Subjects: Other Disciplines >> Synthetic discipline submitted time 2023-10-09 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： The left visual word form area (VWFA) of the brain in adults is more sensitive to orthographic information, whereas the right fusiform face area (FFA) is preferentially involved in the processing of facial information. The cognitive neural processing mechanism of the competitive development of the complementary pattern of hemispheric lateralization in word and face recognition is systematically examined using the neuronal recycling hypothesis and the distributed account of the hemispheric organization, combined with the multidimensional computational model composed of posterior-anterior axis and medial-lateral axis in the fusiform gyrus (FG). The posterior-anterior axis distinguishes regions within a domain and is associated with hierarchical transformation. The medial-lateral axis differentiates regions across domains. Along the posterior-anterior axis in FG, area FG2, which is posterior lateral to FG, receives mainly bottom-up incoming information from the early visual cortex. Additionally, both word and face recognition require fine discrimination between highly similar stimuli, relying on high-acuity visual information from the fovea. Therefore, word and face representation should share processing resources for early perception and compete for neural space in FG2. These areas are sculpted further over development and begin to emerge being labelled the VWFA-1 in the left hemisphere (lateral to the medial-lateral axis) and the FFA-1 in the right hemisphere (medial to the medial-lateral axis). Moreover, as learning to read words and face recognition experience accumulated, the processing of word or face information transformed from VWFA-1 and FFA-1 in FG2 to VWFA-2 (lateral to the medial-lateral axis) and FFA-2 (medial to the medial-lateral axis) in FG4 located in the lateral middle part of FG, respectively. Because learning to read words improves the connectivity between VWFA-2 and the left hemisphere language network, this top-down lateralization modulation strengthens the competitive processing between words and faces, resulting in stronger leftward lateralization of VWFA-2 and accelerating rightward lateralization of FFA-2. At the same time, the face learning experience also improves the right-sided connectivity between FFA-2 and related brain networks, and this top-down modulation results in stronger right-lateralized FFA-2.Future studies should examine the following five aspects. First, some researchers propose a revised model of the neuronal recycling hypothesis, known as the blocking model, in which they suppose that in literate children, the progressive dedication of an increasing number of neuronal patches to words in the left FG prevents the expansion of the nearby object and face patches, resulting in face recognition being gradually replaced by right FG. Therefore, future studies could use high-resolution (<1mm) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine whether words directly compete with faces or block the development of faces. Second, while cytoarchitectonic similarities between FG2 and FG4 are found, the differences between them may help explain the fine-scale functional heterogeneity of FG. Based on differences in cell types, receptor densities, laminar distribution patterns, synaptic connections, and myelination between FG2 and FG4, further research could provide insight into the functional role of both fusiform areas subserving face and word recognition. Third, research has shown that preschool children's learning to read Chinese characters requires the right hemisphere to distinguish character form, and use the left hemisphere to access orthography and phonological and semantic information, so their early reading experience may compete with faces for processing resources in the right and left hemispheres. It is necessary to adopt the intertemporal study design of preschool and school-age children and use event-related potentials (ERPs) with high temporal resolution and fMRI with high spatial resolution to systematically investigate the unique mechanism of children's early reading experience affecting the competitive processing of Chinese characters and faces. Fourth, the development of right-lateralized face recognition may be influenced by factors other than learning to read words. The development of right-lateralized face recognition will experience a long time delay, which is influenced not only by brain development and learning to read but also by the gradual accumulation of facial experience. Therefore, future studies should not only focus on how learning to read words competes with face representation for processing resources in left FG, but also examine how face perception experience affects the right-lateralized development of FFA and its processing mechanism in competition with other cortical areas for space resources. Finally, visual numbers and musical notations are also cultural inventions, and learning to read them can cause brain plasticity changes similar to words. The brain structures and functional networks of learning to read words, numbers, and musical notations are both separated and overlapped, competing and coordinating with each other. Importantly, children can learn to read these three visual symbols synchronously or asynchronously. Therefore, exploring the temporal dynamics and brain mechanisms of the interaction between children's learning to read words, numbers, and musical notations not only has theoretical significance for deepening the understanding of brain plasticity of cultural learning, but also has practical significance for guiding the early teaching of language, mathematics, and music.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Active maternal behavior refers to a set of motivated behaviors that promote female mammals to effectively care for the pups during their lactation, so it has a vital important role for the survival and behavioral development in pups. Evidence has shown that the active maternal behavior in rodents could dynamically change from the onset and maintenance in early postpartum to the decline in late postpartum, which reflects female rodents’ adaptation to the stage changes of incentive values in pups. This process not only involves in the pathway of medial preoptic area (MPOA)-ventral tegmental area (VTA)-nucleus accumbens (NA)-ventral pallidum (VP) opened by hormone profile at parturition, but also requires the basolateral amygdala (BLA), medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), and other areas to real-timely regulate this pathway. Studies on the dynamic changes about active maternal behavior and its neural mechanisms in lactating rodents could deepen our knowledge about the evolution and early development of behaviors, and also be helpful for the clinical intervention to postpartum depression in humans. This review illustrates the relationship between incentive values in pups and dynamic changes in active maternal behavior with evidence used by conditioned place preference (CPP), then systematically elaborates the neural mechanisms underlying dynamic changes of active maternal behavior, and finally discusses several major issues or future research directions.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Marriage education (ME), based on empirical research, is a preventive-oriented psychological education model, which has been widely studied and promoted in the past four decades. As a way of universal prevention, the formation and development of ME mainly target middle-class higher-functioning couples in the pre-marital stage. The current research focuses on the selective prevention of couples in poverty and other disadvantage situations and indicated prevention of couples in the early stages of depression. As ME, based on the three-stage preventive model, still has many deficiencies in the theoretical basis and research methods, further development of ME should focus on in-depth research in theory and research, project design and implementation.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Mirror equivalence or invariance, also known as mirror generalization or symmetry generalization, is a perceptual property in which individuals regard the left-right mirror of a visual perception object as the same stimulus. Experimental evidence of animal behavior and human cognition shows that mirror equivalence or invariance is an evolutionary adaptive process of animal and human individuals to the bilateral symmetry of natural objects, which has obvious advantages in reducing cognitive learning load and survival pressure. Recent studies on cognitive neural mechanism finds that mirror equivalence or invariance is hierarchically processed in the ventral visual pathway of primates, and the fusiform gyrus cortex in the human brain is a key region for processing mirror equivalence or invariance information of objects or faces. Importantly, mirror equivalence or invariance may hinder the reading of script containing mirror characters, leading to mirror errors in the early reading for normal children. Therefore, it is necessary for readers to learn to use the inhibitory mechanism of “unlearning” of mirror generalization, so as to break the mirror equivalent or invariance and to acquire the ability of identifying the mirror characters. In this process, the left fusiform gyrus cortex gradually develops into the VWFA capable of recognizing mirror characters, but it still exhibits mirror equivalence or invariance for objects or faces. This is consistent with the neuronal recycling hypothesis, i.e., learning to read must occupy neurons in the left fusiform gyrus previously used for object or face processing. Furthermore, developmental dyslexia children (DD) have difficulty in inhibition of mirror generalization, suggesting the mechanism of breaking mirror equivalence or invariance may be abnormal in DD. Therefore, exploring the cognitive neural mechanism on breaking the mirror equivalent or invariance is important for elucidating the brain plasticity of learning to read. In this paper, we first briefly discuss the evolutionary adaptive theory of mirror equivalence or invariance and early related behavioral and cognitive study evidence. Then we systematically review recent evidence on the hierarchical processing of mirror equivalence or invariance in the ventral visual pathway, the role of the fusiform gyrus cortex of human brain in the process of mirror equivalence or invariance, the cognitive neural mechanism on breaking the mirror equivalent or invariance during learning to read, and the difficulty in mirror generalization inhibition and related brain network abnormality in DD. We propose that the interaction between the left fusiform gyrus or the VWFA and the early visual cortex, the parietal cortex and the brain network of spoken language may be an important neural basis for learning to use the inhibitory mechanism of mirror generalization for breaking the mirror equivalence or invariance. Future studies are needed to focus on the role of the two hemispheres and their commissure fibers in mirror equivalence or invariance processing, the detailed processing mechanism of mirror generalization and inhibition, the influence of mirror generalization and inhibition on mirror writing, and the mirror generalization processing of Chinese characters in normal Chinese children.
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