Showing papers by "Matti Laine published in 2023"

Assessment of goal-directed behavior with the 3D videogame EPELI: Psychometric features in a web-based adult sample

Abstract: EPELI (Executive Performance in Everyday LIving) is a recently developed gaming tool for objective assessment of goal-directed behavior and prospective memory (PM) in everyday contexts. This pre-registered study examined psychometric features of a new EPELI adult online version, modified from the original child version and further developed for self-administered web-based testing at home. A sample of 255 healthy adults completed EPELI where their task was to perform household chores instructed by a virtual character. The participants also filled out PM-related questionnaires and a diary and performed two conventional PM tasks and an intelligence test. We expected that the more “life-like” EPELI task would show stronger associations with conventional PM questionnaires and diary-based everyday PM reports than traditional PM tasks would do. This hypothesis did not receive support. Although EPELI was rated as more similar to everyday tasks, performance in it was not associated with the questionnaires and the diary. However, there were associations between time-monitoring behavior in EPELI and the traditional PM tasks. Taken together, online adult-EPELI was found to be a reliable method with high ecological face validity, but its convergent validity requires further research.

The right uncinate fasciculus supports verbal short-term memory in aphasia

Abstract: Abstract Verbal short-term memory (STM) deficits are associated with language processing impairments in people with aphasia. Importantly, the integrity of STM can predict word learning ability and anomia therapy gains in aphasia. While the recruitment of perilesional and contralesional homologous brain regions has been proposed as a possible mechanism for aphasia recovery, little is known about the white-matter pathways that support verbal STM in post-stroke aphasia. Here, we investigated the relationships between the language-related white matter tracts and verbal STM ability in aphasia. Nineteen participants with post-stroke chronic aphasia completed a subset of verbal STM subtests of the TALSA battery including nonword repetition (phonological STM), pointing span (lexical-semantic STM without language output) and repetition span tasks (lexical-semantic STM with language output). Using a manual deterministic tractography approach, we investigated the micro- and macrostructural properties of the structural language network. Next, we assessed the relationships between individually extracted tract values and verbal STM scores. We found significant correlations between volume measures of the right Uncinate Fasciculus and all three verbal STM scores, with the association between the right UF volume and nonword repetition being the strongest one. These findings suggest that the integrity of the right UF is associated with phonological and lexical-semantic verbal STM ability in aphasia and highlight the potential compensatory role of right-sided ventral white matter language tracts in supporting verbal STM after aphasia-inducing left hemisphere insult.

Assessing goal-directed behavior in virtual reality with the neuropsychological task EPELI: children prefer head-mounted display but flat screen provides a viable performance measure for remote testing

Abstract: Background and objective: EPELI (Executive Performance of Everyday LIving) is a Virtual Reality (VR) task that was developed to study goal-directed behavior in everyday life contexts in children. In this study, we had 72 typically developing 9- to 13-year-old children to play EPELI with an immersive version implemented with a head-mounted display (HMD) and a non-immersive version employing a flat screen display (FSD) in a counterbalanced order to see if the two versions yield similar results. The children’s everyday executive functions were assessed with the parent-rated Behavior Rating Inventory for Executive Functions (BRIEF) questionnaire. To assess the applicability of EPELI for online testing, half of the flat screen display version gameplays were conducted remotely and the rest in the laboratory. Results: All EPELI performance measures were correlated across the versions. The children’s performance was mostly similar in the two versions, but small effects reflecting higher performance in FSD-EPELI were found in the measures of Total score, Task efficacy, and Time-based prospective memory score. The children engaged in more active time monitoring in FSD-EPELI. While the children evaluated the feeling of presence and usability of both versions favorably, most children preferred HMD-EPELI, and evaluated its environment to be more involving and realistic. Both versions showed only negligible problems with the interface quality. No differences in task performance or subjective evaluations were found between the home-based and laboratory-based assessments of FSD-EPELI. In both EPELI versions, the efficacy measures were correlated with BRIEF on the first assessment, but not on the second. This raises questions about the stability of the associations reported between executive function tasks and questionnaires. Conclusions: Both the HMD and FSD versions of EPELI are viable tools for the naturalistic assessment of goal-directed behavior in children. While the HMD version provides a more immersive user experience and naturalistic movement tracking, the FSD version can maximize scalability, reachability, and cost efficacy, as it can be used with common hardware and remotely. Taken together, the findings highlight similarities between the HMD and FSD versions of a cognitively complex VR task, but also underline the specific advantages of these common presentation modes.

Assessment of goal-directed behavior and prospective memory in adult ADHD with an online 3D videogame simulating everyday tasks

Abstract: The diagnosis of ADHD is based on real-life attentional-executive deficits, but they are harder to detect in adults than in children and objective quantitative measures reflecting these everyday problems are lacking. We developed an online version of EPELI 3D videogame for naturalistic and scalable assessment of goal-directed action and prospective memory in adult ADHD. In EPELI, participants perform instructed everyday chores in a virtual apartment from memory. Our pre-registered hypothesis predicted weaker EPELI performances in adult ADHD compared to controls. The sample comprised 112 adults with ADHD and 255 neurotypical controls comparable in age (mean 31, SD = 8 years), gender distribution (71% females) and educational level. Using web-browser, the participants performed EPELI and other cognitive tasks, including Conner's Continuous Performance Test (CPT). They also filled out questionnaires probing everyday executive performance and kept a 5-day diary of everyday prospective memory errors. Self-reported strategy use in the EPELI game was also examined. The ADHD participants' self-ratings indicated clearly more everyday executive problems than in the controls. Differences in the EPELI game were mostly seen in the ADHD participants' higher rates of task-irrelevant actions. Gender differences and a group × gender interaction was found in the number of correctly performed tasks, indicating poorer performance particularly in ADHD males. Discriminant validity of EPELI was similar to CPT. Strategy use strongly predicted EPELI performance in both groups. The results demonstrate the feasibility of EPELI for online assessment and highlight the role of impulsivity as a distinctive everyday life problem in adult ADHD.

Abnormal wiring of the structural connectome in adults with ADHD

Abstract: Current knowledge of white matter changes in large-scale brain networks in adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is scarce. We collected diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging data in 40 adults with ADHD and 36 neurotypical controls and used constrained spherical deconvolution based tractography to reconstruct whole-brain structural connectivity networks. We used network-based statistic (NBS) and graph theoretical analysis to investigate differences in these networks between the ADHD and control groups, as well as associations between structural connectivity and ADHD symptoms assessed with the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale or performance in the Conners Continuous Performance Test 2 (CPT-2). NBS revealed decreased connectivity in the ADHD group compared to the neurotypical controls in widespread unilateral networks, which included subcortical and corticocortical structures and encompassed dorsal and ventral attention networks and visual and somatomotor systems. Furthermore, hypoconnectivity in a predominantly left-frontal network was associated with higher amount of commission errors in CPT-2. Graph theoretical analysis did not reveal topological differences between the groups or associations between topological properties and ADHD symptoms or task performance. Our results suggest that abnormal structural wiring of the brain in adult ADHD is manifested as widespread intrahemispheric hypoconnectivity in networks previously associated with ADHD in functional neuroimaging studies.

EXPRESS: Spontaneous Memory Strategies In A Videogame Simulating Everyday Memory Tasks.

Abstract: People can use different internal strategies to manage their daily tasks, but systematic research on these strategies and their significance for actual performance is still quite sparse. Here we examined self-reported internal strategy use with a 10-block version of the videogame EPELI in a group of 202 neurotypical adults of 18 to 50 years of age. In the game, participants perform lists of everyday tasks from memory while navigating in a virtual apartment. Open-ended strategy reports were collected after each EPELI task block, and for comparison also after an EPELI Instruction Recall task and a Word List Learning task assessing episodic memory. On average 45% of the participants reported using some strategy in EPELI, the most common types being grouping (e.g., performing the tasks room by room), utilizing a familiar action schema, and condensing information (e.g., memorizing only keywords). Our pre-registered hypothesis on the beneficial effect of self-initiated strategy use gained support, as strategy users showed better performance on EPELI as compared to no strategy users. One of the strategies, grouping, was identified as a clearly effective strategy type. Block-by-block transitions suggested gradual stabilization of strategy use over the 10 EPELI blocks. The proneness to use strategies showed a weak but reliable association between EPELI and Word List Learning. Overall, the present results highlight the importance of internal strategy use for understanding individual differences in memory performance, as well as the potential benefit for internal strategy employment when faced with everyday memory tasks.

Selective attention to audiovisual speech is associated with recurrent feedback-feedforward loops in the ventral processing stream

Abstract: Electrophysiological studies show that top-down modulation enhances neural tracking of attended speech in environments with overlapping speech. Yet, the specific cortical regions involved remain unclear due to the limited spatial resolution of most electrophysiological techniques. Therefore, we performed speech envelope reconstruction and representational dissimilarity-based EEG-fMRI fusion (using temporal response function estimated from EEG, n = 19, and fMRI, n = 19) to determine the spatiotemporal dynamics of attention to audiovisual cocktail-party speech. Attention related enhancement of neural tracking fluctuated in predictable temporal profiles. Such temporal dynamics may arise due to interactions between attention and prediction or other plastic mechanisms in the auditory cortex, or both. EEG-fMRI fusion revealed attention-related recurrent feedforward-feedback loops in the ventral processing stream. Our findings support models where attention facilitates dynamic neural changes in the auditory cortex, ultimately aiding discrimination of relevant sounds from irrelevant ones using minimal neural resources.