UNASSIGNED: Hoarding disorder (HD) is characterized by cognitive control impairments and abnormal brain activity in the insula and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) during disposal of personal items or certain executive function tasks. However, whether there are any changes in resting-state functional connectivity of the insula and ACC remains unclear.
UNASSIGNED: A total of 55 subjects, including 24 patients with HD and 31 healthy controls (HCs), participated in the study. We acquired resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data and examined group differences in functional connectivity from the insula and ACC in whole-brain voxels.
UNASSIGNED: In patients with HD, functional connectivity was significantly lower between the right insula and right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and left superior temporal gyrus (STG) compared to HCs. There was no correlation between these connectivities and HD symptoms.
UNASSIGNED: Although the clinical implication is uncertain, our results suggest that patients with HD have resting-state functional alterations between the insula and IFG and STG, corresponding with the results of previous fMRI studies. These findings provide new insight into the neurobiological basis of HD.

OBJECTIVE: Painful menstruation is a common problem associated with many limitations in day-to-day functioning. There is limited research on the temporary effects of menstrual pain on cognitive functioning.
METHODS: A longitudinal pilot study was conducted. A group of 32 women was tested with the Brief Test of Adult Cognition by Telephone (BTACT), which consists of 7 tests measuring various cognitive functions. Participants were tested both on a regular, pain-free day and the most painful day of their period.
RESULTS: The subjects displayed significantly lower results in several domains of cognitive functions during measurement on the most painful day of the period. We observed a decline in inhibitory and cognitive control, attention functioning and processing speed.
CONCLUSIONS: The results provide tentative evidence for experiencing cognitive difficulties under the influence of menstrual pain and may contribute to raising awareness about related difficulties.

Infants rely on developing attention skills to identify relevant stimuli in their environments. Although caregivers are socially rewarding and a critical source of information, they are also one of many stimuli that compete for infants\' attention. Young infants preferentially hold attention on caregiver faces, but it is unknown whether they also preferentially orient to caregivers and the extent to which these attention biases reflect reward-based attention mechanisms. To address these questions, we measured 4- to 10-month-old infants\' (N = 64) frequency of orienting and duration of looking to caregiver and stranger faces within multi-item arrays. We also assessed whether infants\' attention to these faces related to individual differences in Surgency, an indirect index of reward sensitivity. Although infants did not show biased attention to caregiver versus stranger faces at the group level, infants were increasingly biased to orient to stranger faces with age and infants with higher Surgency scores showed more robust attention orienting and attention holding biases to caregiver faces. These effects varied based on the selective attention demands of the task, suggesting that infants\' attention biases to caregiver faces may reflect both developing attention control skills and reward-based attention mechanisms.

Substance use disorders (SUDs) are seen as a continuum ranging from goal-directed and hedonic drug use to loss of control over drug intake with aversive consequences for mental and physical health and social functioning. The main goals of our interdisciplinary German collaborative research centre on Losing and Regaining Control over Drug Intake (ReCoDe) are (i) to study triggers (drug cues, stressors, drug priming) and modifying factors (age, gender, physical activity, cognitive functions, childhood adversity, social factors, such as loneliness and social contact/interaction) that longitudinally modulate the trajectories of losing and regaining control over drug consumption under real-life conditions. (ii) To study underlying behavioural, cognitive and neurobiological mechanisms of disease trajectories and drug-related behaviours and (iii) to provide non-invasive mechanism-based interventions. These goals are achieved by: (A) using innovative mHealth (mobile health) tools to longitudinally monitor the effects of triggers and modifying factors on drug consumption patterns in real life in a cohort of 900 patients with alcohol use disorder. This approach will be complemented by animal models of addiction with 24/7 automated behavioural monitoring across an entire disease trajectory; i.e. from a naïve state to a drug-taking state to an addiction or resilience-like state. (B) The identification and, if applicable, computational modelling of key molecular, neurobiological and psychological mechanisms (e.g., reduced cognitive flexibility) mediating the effects of such triggers and modifying factors on disease trajectories. (C) Developing and testing non-invasive interventions (e.g., Just-In-Time-Adaptive-Interventions (JITAIs), various non-invasive brain stimulations (NIBS), individualized physical activity) that specifically target the underlying mechanisms for regaining control over drug intake. Here, we will report on the most important results of the first funding period and outline our future research strategy.

Predictive learning can engage a selective form of cognitive control that biases choice between actions based on information about future outcomes that the learning provides. This influence has been hypothesized to depend on a feedback circuit in the brain through which the basal ganglia modulate activity in the prefrontal cortex; however, direct evidence for this functional circuit has proven elusive. Here, using an animal model of cognitive control, we found that the influence of predictive learning on decision making is mediated by an inhibitory feedback circuit linking the medial ventral pallidum and the mediodorsal thalamus, the activation of which causes disinhibition of the orbitofrontal cortex via reduced activation of inhibitory parvalbumin interneurons during choice. Thus, we found that, for this function, the mediodorsal thalamus serves as a pallidal-cortical relay through which predictive learning controls action selection, which has important implications for understanding cognitive control and its vicissitudes in various psychiatric disorders and addiction.

UNASSIGNED: To examine the manifestation of cognitive control deficit of children with different levels of hyperactivity, an \"at risk\" dimension for ADHD.
UNASSIGNED: A group of children with high hyperactivity (N = 40) and another group of children with low levels of hyperactivity (N = 38) performed a modified stop-signal anticipation task, a revised Go/NoGo task, and the AX-continuous performance test (AX-CPT).
UNASSIGNED: Children with higher levels of hyperactivity displayed: (1) significantly prolonged stop signal reaction time (SSRT) in the modified stop-signal anticipation task; (2) no notable differences in commission errors in the revised Go/NoGo task; (3) increased reaction time (RT) in stop-signal task and Go/NoGo task with increased probabilities of stop or NoGo signal; and (4) positive proactive behavioral index scores in AX-CPT.
UNASSIGNED: The results suggested that children with heightened hyperactivity exhibited impaired reactive control, especially for responses already underway, but preserved proactive control. Further studies concerning these children are warranted.

In the present study, we investigated the influence of performance-contingent reward prospects on task performance across three visual conflict tasks with manual responses (Experiments 1 & 2: Simon and Stroop tasks; Experiment 3: Simon and Eriksen flanker task) using block-wise (Experiment 1) and trial-wise (Experiments 2 & 3) manipulations to signal the possibility of reward. Across all experiments, task performance (in reaction time and/or error rates) generally improved in reward compared with no-reward conditions in each conflict task. However, there was, if any, little evidence that the reward manipulation modulated the size of the mean conflict effects, and there was also no evidence for conflict-specific effects of reward when controlling for time-varying fluctuations in conflict processing via distributional analyses (delta plots). Thus, the results provide no evidence for conflict-specific accounts and instead favor performance-general accounts, where reward anticipation leads to overall performance improvements without affecting conflict effects. We discuss possible implications for how proactive control might modulate the interplay between target- and distractor-processing in conflict tasks.

Bilingualism and multilingualism provide a unique lens for exploring how human experiences influence language and cognition. This editorial presents a collection of studies on the relationship between bilingualism/multilingualism and cognition in typically developing and neurodiverse populations. The articles assembled in this issue synthesize findings from diverse linguistic populations (e.g., second-language learners, heritage speakers, different-script bilinguals, etc.) and techniques (e.g., behavioral, magnetic resonance imaging, electroencephalography, eye-tracking, etc.) to provide compelling evidence that knowing more than one language can benefit learning, health, and social outcomes. Translational research on bilingualism and multilingualism is necessary for informing policy and can serve as a guide to researchers, practitioners, and educators who work with linguistically diverse populations, as well as individuals and parents who speak multiple languages. We conclude that multilingualism shapes cells, selves, and societies.

Recent studies suggest that instrumental hypnosis is a useful experimental tool to investigate emotional and language processing effects. However, the capacity of hypnotic suggestions to intervene during the response inhibition of emotional words remains elusive. This study investigated whether hypnotic suggestion can improve the inhibition of prepotent negative word responses in an emotional Hayling sentence completion task. High-suggestible participants performed a computerised emotional Hayling task. They were first asked to select the appropriate words ending highly predictable sentences among two propositions (initiation part), and then to select the filler words that did not end the sentences correctly (inhibition part). Half of the expected final words had a negative emotional valence, while the other half was neutral. The task was performed in a control condition (without suggestion) and with a hypnotic suggestion to decrease emotional reactivity. The results revealed that hypnotic suggestion (compared to the control condition) hastened response times on negative final words in the inhibition part, showing that hypnotic suggestion can enhance cognitive control over prepotent negative word responses in a sentence completion task. We suggest that this modulation stems from a reduction in the emotional relevance of the final words caused by the hypnotic suggestion.

The brain exhibits a remarkable ability to learn and execute context-appropriate behaviors. How it achieves such flexibility, without sacrificing learning efficiency, is an important open question. Neuroscience, psychology, and engineering suggest that reusing and repurposing computations are part of the answer. Here, we review evidence that thalamocortical architectures may have evolved to facilitate these objectives of flexibility and efficiency by coordinating distributed computations. Recent work suggests that distributed prefrontal cortical networks compute with flexible codes, and that the mediodorsal thalamus provides regularization to promote efficient reuse. Thalamocortical interactions resemble hierarchical Bayesian computations, and their network implementation can be related to existing gating, synchronization, and hub theories of thalamic function. By reviewing recent findings and providing a novel synthesis, we highlight key research horizons integrating computation, cognition, and systems neuroscience.