Gestures accent and illustrate our communication. Although previous studies have uncovered the positive effects of gestures on communication, little is known about the specific cognitive functions of different types of gestures, or the instantaneous multi-brain dynamics. Here we used the fNIRS-based hyperscanning technique to track the brain…

Optimizing collaborative behavior is crucial in educational activities, directly improving academic performance, social skills, and social-emotional learning for both teachers and students. In an effort to decipher the mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of collaborative learning, educators and neuroscientists have initiated the collection and…

Longitudinal changes in trusting behavior across adolescence and their neural correlates were examined. Neural regions of interest (ROIs) included the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), left anterior insula (AI), bilateral ventral striatum (VS), and right dorsal striatum (DS). Participants (wave 1 age: M =…

The brain must strike a balance between reliable information processing and adaptation to an ever-changing environment. At a gross anatomical level, the brain's wiring diagram is believed to be relatively set after development. Therefore, a fundamental question arises: how does stereotyped wiring lead to flexible dynamics, computation, and…

Caregiver executive functions (EFs) play an integral role in shaping cognitive development. Here, we investigated how caregiver EF abilities (86 caregivers; "mean age" = 33.4 years, SD = 4.5) was associated with visual working memory (VWM) in infants (86 infants females; mean age = 250.6 days, SD = 35.8). The BRIEF-A was used to assess…

Operant reward learning of feeding behavior in "Aplysia" increases the frequency and regularity of biting, as well as biases buccal motor patterns (BMPs) toward ingestion-like BMPs (iBMPs). The engram underlying this memory comprises cells that are part of a central pattern generating (CPG) circuit and includes increases in the intrinsic…

Purpose: Understanding the brain basis of language and cognitive outcomes is a major goal of aphasia research. Prior studies have not often considered the many ways that brain features can relate to behavioral outcomes or the mechanisms underlying these relationships. The purpose of this review article is to provide a new framework for…

The neural bases of cognition may be greatly informed by relating temporally defined developmental changes in behavior with concurrent alterations in neural function. A robust improvement in performance in spatial learning and memory tasks occurs at 3 wk of age in rodents. We reported that the developmental increase of spontaneous alternation in a…

Development and sex differentiation impart an organizational influence on the neuroanatomy and behavior of mammalian species. Prior studies suggest that brain regions associated with fear motivated defensive behavior undergo a protracted and sex-dependent development. Outside of adult animals, evidence for developmental sex differences in…

The serine protease inhibitor neuroserpin regulates the activity of tissue-type plasminogen activator (tPA) in the nervous system. Neuroserpin expression is particularly prominent at late stages of neuronal development in most regions of the central nervous system (CNS), whereas it is restricted to regions related to learning and memory in the…

The neuronal systems that promote protective defensive behaviours have been studied extensively using Pavlovian conditioning. In this paradigm, an initially neutral-conditioned stimulus is paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus leading the subjects to display behavioural signs of fear. Decades of research into the neural bases of this…

Difficulty in retrieving specific autobiographical memories is known as overgeneral autobiographical memory (OGM). OGM has been related with clinical psychopathology (e.g., depression, schizophrenia, etc.). People presenting an OGM style usually recall more repetitive summary-type memories, so-called categoric memories, (e.g., "each time I…

Once a memory has formed, it is thought to undergo a gradual transition within the brain from short- to long-term storage. This putative process, however, also poses a unique problem to the memory system in that the same learned items must also be retrieved across broadly varying time scales. Here, we find that neurons in the ventrolateral…

Episodic memory shows striking improvement during early childhood. However, neural contributions to these behavioral changes are not well understood. This study examined associations between episodic memory and volume of subregions (head, body, and tail) of the hippocampus--a structure known to support episodic memory in school-aged children and…

Purpose: Our purpose was to create a comprehensive review of speech impairment in frontotemporal dementia (FTD), primary progressive aphasia (PPA), and progressive apraxia of speech in order to identify the most effective measures for diagnosis and monitoring, and to elucidate associations between speech and neuroimaging. Method: Speech and…