SH Annabel Chen

Nanyang Technological University | ntu · Psychology, School of Social Sciences

We investigated whether extensive repetition can diminish age-related differences between younger and older adults in functional magnetic resonance adaptation (fMR-A). Datasets were obtained from 26 younger and 24 older healthy adults presented with two scenes that repeated 20 times amongst other novel scenes during fMRI scanning. The average corti...

Evidence for an anterior-posterior gradient of age-related volume reduction along the hippocampal longitudinal axis has been reported in normal aging, but functional changes have yet to be systematically investigated. The current study applied an advanced brain mapping technique, large deformation diffeomorphic metric mapping (LDDMM), automatically...

Complaints of persistent cognitive deficits following mild head trauma are often uncorroborated by structural brain imaging and neuropsychological examination. To investigate, using positron emission tomography (PET), the in vivo changes in regional cerebral uptake of 2-[(18)F]fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose (FDG) and regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) i...

Previous functional magnetic resonance imaging and patient studies indicate cerebellar participation in verbal working memory. In particular, event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging showed superior cerebellar activation during the initial encoding phase of the Sternberg task. This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging-guided...

Background: Interest in research on the Science of Learning continues to grow. However, ambiguity about what this field is can negatively impact communication and collaboration and may inadequately inform educational training programs or funding initiatives that are not sufficiently inclusive in focus. Methods: The present scoping review aimed to...

This pre-test post-test control group design sought to compare the effectiveness of delivering different types of information ([1] factual information vs. [2] factual information + descriptive and explanatory information vs. [3] factual information + descriptive, explanatory + directive information) in an animated video intervention in increasing u...

Background Cognitive flexibility refers to the capacity to shift between conceptual representations particularly in response to changes in instruction and feedback. It enables individuals to swiftly adapt to changes in their environment and has significant implications for learning. The present study focuses on investigating changes in cognitive fl...

Background Cognitive flexibility (CF) enables individuals to readily shift from one concept or mode of practice/thoughts to another in response to changes in the environment and feedback, making CF vital to optimise success in obtaining goals. However, how CF relates to other executive functions (e.g., working memory, response inhibition), mental a...

Background: Cognitive flexibility refers to the capacity to shift between conceptual representations particularly in response to changes in instruction and feedback. It is enables individuals to swiftly adapt to changes in their environment and has significant implications for learning. The present study focuses on investigating changes in cognitiv...

Visual illusions are a gateway to understand how we construct our experience of reality. Unfortunately, important questions remain open, such as the hypothesis of a common factor underlying the sensitivity to different types of illusions, as well as of personality correlates of illusion sensitivity. In this study, we used a novel parametric framewo...

The posterior-to-anterior shift in aging (PASA) effect is seen as a compensatory model that enables older adults to meet increased cognitive demands to perform comparably as their young counterparts. However, empirical support for the PASA effect investigating age-related changes in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), hippocampus, and parahippocampus...

The extrastriate body area (EBA) is a region in the lateral occipito-temporal cortex which is sensitive to perceived body parts. Neuroimaging studies suggested that EBA is related to body and tool processing, regardless of the sensory modalities. However, how essential this region is for visual tool processing and non-visual object processing remai...

Interest in research on the Science of Learning continues to grow. However, ambiguity makes it unclear what is meant when governments, universities, or researchers talk about research on the Science of Learning. This ambiguity can negatively impact communication and collaboration and may inadequately inform educational training programs or funding...

Social and non-social deficits in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) persist into adulthood and may share common regions of aberrant neural activations. The current meta-analysis investigated activation differences between ASD and neurotypical controls irrespective of task type. Activation likelihood estimation meta-analyses were performed to examine...

Neuroimaging studies have shown that the lateral occipito-temporal cortex is involved in multisensory object processing. However, how essential this region is for non-visual object processing remains a matter of controversy. In this preregistered fMRI-guided repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) study, we examined the causal involveme...

Visual illusions highlight how the brain uses contextual and prior information to inform our perception of reality. Unfortunately, illusion research has been hampered by the difficulty to experimentally manipulate these stimuli, leaving unanswered the hypothesis of a potential unique factor underlying the sensitivity to different types of illusions...

The malleability of the adult brain to adapt in response to experience (termed neuroplasticity) is well documented. However, the capacity in which the aging trajectory and experiential factors impact neuroplasticity and learning over the lifespan remains an ongoing topic of research. Advancements in non-invasive human neuroimaging allow for the qua...

Background Conventionally, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) aims to focalize the current reaching the target region-of-interest (ROI). The focality can be quantified by the dose-target-determination-index (DTDI). Despite having a uniform tDCS setup, some individuals receive focal stimulation (high DTDI) while others show reduced focal...

Background The number of autistic students enroling into universities and completing a higher education qualification is increasing. They would have to decide whether to disclose their diagnosis in order to receive appropriate and adequate support or not to share their diagnosis due to possible stigmatisation faced by them. This study examined the...

There has been an increasing trend towards the use of complexity analysis in quantifying neural activity measured by electroencephalography (EEG) signals. On top of revealing complex neuronal processes of the brain that may not be possible with linear approaches, EEG complexity measures have also demonstrated their potential as biomarkers of psycho...

Complexity quantification, through entropy, information theory and fractal dimension indices, is gaining a renewed traction in psychophsyiology, as new measures with promising qualities emerge from the computational and mathematical advances. Unfortunately, few studies compare the relationship and objective performance of the plethora of existing m...

Specific facial features in infants automatically elicit attention, affection, and nurturing behaviour of adults, known as the baby schema effect. There is also an innate tendency to categorize people into in-group and out-group members based on salient features such as ethnicity. Societies are becoming increasingly multi-cultural and multi-ethnic,...

Complexity quantification, through entropy, information and fractal dimension indices, is gaining a renewed traction in psychophysiology, as new measures with promising qualities emerge from the computational and mathematical advances. Unfortunately, few studies compare the relationship and objective performance of the plethora of existing metrics,...

An increasing body of evidence points to the involvement of the cerebellum in cognition. Specifically, previous studies have shown that the superior and inferior portions of the cerebellum are involved in different verbal working memory (WM) mechanisms as part of two separate cerebro-cerebellar loops for articulatory rehearsal and phonological stor...

Learning mechanisms have been postulated to be one of the primary reasons why different individuals have similar or different emotional responses to music. While existing studies have largely examined mechanisms related to learning in terms of cultural familiarity or recognition, few studies have conceptualized it in terms of an individual’s level...

Almost a century after Jacob Levy Moreno pioneered the group practice of psychodrama, research in this area has flourished to include different sub-fields of study and psychodramatic intervention for various psychological conditions. By making use of scientometric analysis, particularly document citation analysis and keyword analysis, this study ma...

Heart Rate Variability (HRV) can be estimated using a myriad of mathematical indices, but the lack of systematic comparison between these indices renders the evaluation and interpretation of results difficult. In this study, we assessed the relationship between 57 HRV metrics collected from 302 human recordings using a variety of structure-analysis...

Introduction The observed variability in the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is influenced by the amount of current reaching the targeted region-of-interest (ROI). Age and sex might affect current density at target ROI due to their impact on cortical anatomy. The present tDCS simulation study investigates the effects of co...

Visual illusions are fascinating phenomena that have been used and studied by artists and scientists for centuries, leading to important discoveries about the neurocognitive underpinnings of perception, consciousness, and neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia or autism. Surprisingly, despite their historical and theoretical importance as...

Background: In transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), the injected current becomes distributed across the brain areas. The objective is to stimulate the target region of interest (ROI) while minimizing the current in non-target ROIs (the ‘focality’ of tDCS). For this purpose, determining the appropriate current dose for an individual is di...

While electroencephalography (EEG) signals are commonly examined using conventional linear methods, there has been an increasing trend towards the use of complexity analysis in quantifying neural activity. On top of revealing complex neuronal processes of the brain that may not be possible with linear approaches, EEG complexity measures have also d...

Background: More than half of the people with dementia live in lower-middle income countries (LMIC), yet we lack research and evidence-based knowledge to guide health promotion and prevention strategies for cognitive decline. In the Philippines, the prevalence of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and cardiovascular risk factors among older persons ar...

Background: In Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) the injected current gets distributed across the brain areas. The motive is to stimulate the target region-of-interest (ROI), while minimizing the current in non-target ROIs. For this purpose, determining the appropriate current-dose for an individual is difficult. Aim: To introduce Dose...

The use of heart rate variability (HRV) in research has been greatly popularized over the past decades due to the ease and affordability of HRV collection, coupled with its clinical relevance and significant relationships with psychophysiological constructs and psychopathological disorders. Despite the wide use of electrocardiograms (ECG) in resear...

The use of heart rate variability (HRV) in research has been greatly popularized over the past decades due to the ease and affordability of HRV collection, coupled with its clinical relevance and significant relationships with psychophysiological constructs and psychopathological disorders. Despite the wide use of electrocardiogram (ECG) in researc...

The conceptualization of deception as a dispositional trait is under-represented in the literature. Despite scientific evidence supporting the existence of individual differences in lying, a validated measure of dispositional deception is still lacking. This study aims to explore the structure of dispositional deception by validating a 16-item ques...

The impetus for nations to build resilience for rapid changes and uncertainty, and the increasing complexity of challenges has made sustainable development a priority. Lifelong learning holds the key to sustainability in maximizing human potential to address the needs of the future. The development of the science of lifelong learning is emerging an...

Background. The global COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a fundamental reexamination of how human psychological research can be conducted both safely and robustly in a new era of digital working and physical distancing. Online web-based testing has risen to the fore as a promising solution for rapid mass collection of cognitive data without requiring...

BACKGROUND The global COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a fundamental reexamination of how human psychological research can be conducted both safely and robustly in a new era of digital working and physical distancing. Online web-based testing has risen to the fore as a promising solution for rapid mass collection of cognitive data without requiring...

Background The global COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a fundamental reexamination of how human psychological research can be conducted safely and robustly in a new era of digital working and physical distancing. Online web-based testing has risen to the forefront as a promising solution for the rapid mass collection of cognitive data without requir...

NeuroKit2 is an open-source, community-driven, and user-centered Python package for neurophysiological signal processing. It provides a comprehensive suite of processing routines for a variety of bodily signals (e.g., ECG, PPG, EDA, EMG, RSP). These processing routines include high-level functions that enable data processing in a few lines of code...

There is significant interest in understanding the pathophysiology of Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder (OCD) using resting-state fMRI (rsfMRI). Previous studies acknowledge abnormalities within and beyond the fronto-striato-limbic circuit in OCD that require further clarifications. However, limited information could be inferred from the conventional w...

The efficacy of listening comprehension is presumably sustained over the life span, contradicting the stereotype of universal cognitive decline. It is thus worth investigating whether and how the preserved auditory semantic function is supported by affected or unaffected neural mechanism with age. To investigate this issue, 22 younger and 21 older...

Introduction: tDCS can modulate reading which is processed by lexical (ventral) and sub-lexical (dorsal) pathways. Previous research indicates that pathway recruitment in bilinguals depends on a script's orthographic depth and a reader's proficiency with it. The effect of tDCS on each reading pathway has not been investigated in bilinguals. We sti...

Purpose: Everyday social communication emphasizes speech comprehension. To date, most neurobiological models regarding auditory semantic processing are based on alphabetic languages, where the character-based languages such as Chinese are largely underrepresented. Thus, the current study attempted to investigate the neural network of speech compre...

Background: Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) is a technique where a weak current is passed through the electrodes placed on the scalp. The distribution of the electric current induced in the brain due to tDCS is provided by simulation toolbox like Realistic-volumetric-Approach-based-Simulator-for-Transcranial-electric-stimulation (RO...

This study utilized a brief online growth mindset intervention to promote students’ cognitive, academic and behavioural skill development. It explored the strategies developed by Dweck and colleagues to promote a growth mindset in university students. There were 120 university students who participated in this study and were randomly divided into t...

In the concluding chapter of this book, we explain how the reported research works are aligned with the current developments in higher education: the demands for developing knowledge workers due to the advent of knowledge society, the research evidence culled from years of research in learning sciences that inform effective ways of learning, and th...

The diverse language profiles of learners have posed a critical challenge for education in many multilingual societies. Here we proposed a systematic research framework to address this issue. Within this framework, we reviewed and summarized the findings from several of our studies that examined the impact of bilingualism on teaching and learning i...

NeuroKit2 is an open-source, community-driven, and user-friendly Python package dedicated to neurophysiological signal processing with an initial focus on bodily signals (e.g., ECG, PPG, EDA, EMG, RSP). Its design philosophy is centred on user-experience and accessibility to both novice and advanced users. The package provides a consistent set of h...

Background Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) is a technique where a weak current is passed through the electrodes placed on the scalp. The distribution of the electric current induced in the brain due to tDCS is provided by simulation toolbox like Realistic-volumetric-Approach-based-Simulator-for-Transcranial-electric-stimulation (ROAS...

COVER ILLUSTRATION Resting‐state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs‐fMRI) is widely used to compare relevant features of the resting‐state brain between a clinically‐disordered and healthy‐control group. Thus, the rsfMRI of individuals in a healthy‐control group that constitutes the baseline of comparison plays a vital role in the appropriat...

The predominant role of the primary motor cortex (M1) in motor execution is well acknowledged. However, additional roles of M1 are getting evident in humans owing to advances in noninvasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques. This review collates such studies in humans and proposes that M1 also plays a key role in higher cognitive processes. The r...

While deception is considered as a common phenomenon with important implications, its conceptualization and study as a dispositional trait is under-represented in the literature. Critically, and despite scientific evidence supporting the existence of individual differences in lying, a validated measure of dispositional deception is still lacking. T...

This book chronicles the journeys of educational researchers and academics who have engaged in research and development to improve teaching and learning at universities. It highlights the research evidence, approaches, and in many cases, the journey of transformation rather than prescribing certain principles of and approaches to effective instruct...

When you trust someone in a social transaction, you accept dependence on that person despite uncertainty about how that person will behave. While you positively expect that person to reciprocate your trust, there is an uncontrollable risk of betrayal. Researchers from various disciplines have been attempting to unveil psychological and neural mecha...

Turmoil has engulfed psychological science. Causes and consequences of the reproducibility crisis are in dispute. With the hope of addressing some of its aspects, Bayesian methods are gaining increasing attention in psychological science. Some of their advantages, as opposed to the frequentist framework, are the ability to describe parameters in pr...

Patterns in resting‐state fMRI (rs‐fMRI) are widely used to characterize the trait effects of brain function. In this aspect, multiple rs‐fMRI scans from single subjects can provide interesting clues about the rs‐fMRI patterns, though scan‐to‐scan variability pose challenges. Therefore, rs‐fMRI's are either concatenated or the functional connectivi...

Translating Neuroscience to education involves providing accurate and simplified information about neuroscience to teachers. The aim of this research was to understand if providing translated abstracts from neuroscientific articles helped teachers understand content more thoroughly. Surveys, experimental manipulation, and focus group discussions we...

The potential of educational neuroscience in teacher training and continuing professional development has been debated extensively, yet knowledge translation is largely absent in this field. Without objective methods for translating and disseminating educational neuroscience evidence, the impact of training on educators and the children they serve...

Patterns in resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) are widely used to characterize the trait effects of brain function. In this aspect, multiple rs-fMRI scans from single subjects can provide interesting clues about the rs-fMRI patterns, though scan-to-scan variability pose challenges. Therefore, rs-fMRIs are either concatenated or the functional connectivit...