Words offer a unique opportunity to separate the processing mechanisms of object subcomponents from those of the whole object, because the phonological or semantic information provided by the word subcomponents (i.e., sublexical information) can confl…
Estimating the direction of functional connectivity (FC) can help further elucidate complex brain function. However, the estimation of directed FC at the voxel level in fMRI data, and evaluating its performance, has yet to be done. We therefore develo…
Dopamine (DA) and norepinephrine (NE) have been repeatedly implicated in neuropsychiatric vulnerability, in part via their roles in mediating the decision-making processes. Although two neuromodulators share a synthesis pathway and are coactivated und…
The capabilities of the human ear are remarkable. We can normally detect acoustic stimuli down to a threshold sound-pressure level of 0 dB (decibels) at the entrance to the external ear, which elicits eardrum vibrations in the picometer range. Fr…
In demanding listening situations, a listener’s motivational state may affect their cognitive investment. Here, we aim to delineate how domain-specific sensory processing, domain-general neural alpha power, and pupil size as a proxy for cognitive inve…
The superior colliculus receives a direct projection from retinal ganglion cells. In primates, it remains unknown if the same ganglion cells also supply the lateral geniculate nucleus. To address this issue, a double-label experiment was performed in …
It is well established that holding information in working memory (WM) elicits sustained stimulus-specific patterns of neural activity. Nevertheless, here we provide evidence for a distinct class of neural activity that tracks the number of individuat…
Harmonics are an integral part of music, speech, and vocalizations of animals. Since the rest of the auditory environment is primarily made up of nonharmonic sounds, the auditory system needs to perceptually separate the above two kinds of sounds. In …
Odor information arrives first in the main olfactory bulb and is then broadcasted to the olfactory cortices and striatum. Downstream regions have unique cellular and connectivity architectures that may generate different coding patterns to the same od…