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Humans are goal‐directed; however, goal‐unrelated information still affects us, but how? The Stroop task is often used to answer this question, relying on conflict (incongruency) between attributes, one targeted by the task and another irrelevant to the task. The frontal regions of the brain are known to play a crucial role in processing such conflict, as they show increased activity when we encounter incongruent stimuli. Notably, the Stroop stimuli also consist of conceptual dimensions, such as semantic or emotional content, that are independent of the attributes that define the conflict. Since the non‐targeted attribute usually refers to the same conceptual dimension as the targeted‐attribute, it is relevant to the task at hand. For example, when naming the emotion of an emotional face superimposed by an emotional word, both the targeted‐attribute and the non‐targeted attribute refer to the conceptual dimension “emotion”. We designed an fMRI paradigm to investigate how conflicts between different conceptual dimensions impact us. Even though the conflict was task‐irrelevant, incongruent stimuli resulted in longer reaction times, indicating a behavioral congruency effect. When examining the neural mechanisms that underlie this effect, we found that the frontal regions exhibited repetition suppression, while the bilateral intraparietal sulcus (IPS) showed a congruency effect linked to the behavioral effect. Taken together, these findings suggest that individuals are unable to completely ignore task‐irrelevant information, and that the IPS plays a crucial role in processing such information. We developed a modified fMRI Stroop paradigm with a task‐irrelevant conflict. We found that information unrelated to the current goal still influences human behavior, and the effect is modulated via the parietal, rather than the frontal regions.

Although contemporary socio-cultural changes dramatically increased fathers' involvement in childrearing, little is known about the brain basis of human fatherhood, its comparability with the maternal brain, and its sensitivity to caregiving experiences. We measured parental brain response to infant stimuli using functional MRI, oxytocin, and parenting behavior in three groups of parents (n = 89) raising their firstborn infant: heterosexual primary-caregiving mothers (PC-Mothers), heterosexual secondary-caregiving fathers (SC-Fathers), and primary-caregiving homosexual fathers (PC-Fathers) rearing infants without maternal involvement. Results revealed that parenting implemented a global “parental caregiving” neural network, mainly consistent across parents, which integrated functioning of two systems: the emotional processing network including subcortical and paralimbic structures associated with vigilance, salience, reward, and motivation, and mentalizing network involving frontopolar-medial-prefrontal and temporo-parietal circuits implicated in social understanding and cognitive empathy. These networks work in concert to imbue infant care with emotional salience, attune with the infant state, and plan adequate parenting. PC-Mothers showed greater activation in emotion processing structures, correlated with oxytocin and parent-infant synchrony, whereas SC-Fathers displayed greater activation in cortical circuits, associated with oxytocin and parenting. PC-Fathers exhibited high amygdala activation similar to PC-Mothers, alongside high activation of superior temporal sulcus (STS) comparable to SC-Fathers, and functional connectivity between amygdala and STS. Among all fathers, time spent in direct childcare was linked with the degree of amygdala-STS connectivity. Findings underscore the common neural basis of maternal and paternal care, chart brain–hormone–behavior pathways that support parenthood, and specify mechanisms of brain malleability with caregiving experiences in human fathers.

Numerous neuroimaging studies have implicated default mode network (DMN) involvement in both internally driven processes and memory. Nevertheless, it is unclear whether memory operations reflect a particular case of internally driven processing or alternatively involve the DMN in a distinct manner, possibly depending on memory type. This question is critical for refining neurocognitive memory theorem in the context of other endogenic processes and elucidating the functional significance of this key network. We used functional MRI to examine DMN activity and connectivity patterns while participants overtly generated words according to nonmnemonic (phonemic) or mnemonic (semantic or episodic) cues. Overall, mnemonic word fluency was found to elicit greater DMN activity and stronger within-network functional connectivity compared with nonmnemonic fluency. Furthermore, two levels of functional organization of memory retrieval were shown. First, across both mnemonic tasks, activity was greater mainly in the posterior cingulate cortex, implying selective contribution to generic aspects of memory beyond its general involvement in endogenous processes. Second, parts of the DMN showed distinct selectivity for each of the mnemonic conditions; greater recruitment of the anterior prefrontal cortex, retroesplenial cortex, and hippocampi and elevated connectivity between anterior and posterior medial DMN nodes characterized the semantic condition, whereas increased recruitment of posterior DMN components and elevated connectivity between them characterized the episodic condition. This finding emphasizes the involvement of DMN elements in discrete aspects of memory retrieval. Altogether, our results show a specific contribution of the DMN to memory processes, corresponding to the specific type of memory retrieval.

Impaired pulmonary diffusing capacity for carbon monoxide (DLCO) following COVID-19 has been consistently reported among individuals recovering from severe-critical infection. However, most long COVID cases follow non-severe COVID-19. We assessed DLCO among individuals with long COVID recovering from mild to moderate acute illness. A cross-sectional study of adults with long COVID, assessed at a COVID recovery clinic > 3 months following the onset of acute infection, during 2020–2021. Participants subjectively ranked their dyspnea severity based on its impact on their daily living and underwent comprehensive pulmonary function testing (PFT). Clinical correlates for impaired DLCO (defined as < 80%) were assessed using multivariable logistic regression models. A total of 458 individuals, their mean age 45 (SD 16) and 246 (54%) of whom are women, were evaluated at an average of ~ 4 months following acute COVID-19. The most frequent PFT impairment was reduced DLCO, identified among 67 (17%) of the cohort. Clinical correlates of impaired DLCO included women (odds ration [OR] 3.64, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.78–7.45, p  < 0.001), cigarette smoking (OR 2.25, 95% CI 1.14–4.43, p  = 0.019), and moderate-severe dyspnea (OR 2.77, 95% CI 1.39–5.50, p  = 0.004). BMI inversely correlated with DLCO (OR 0.90, 95% CI 0.85–0.96 per 1 unit, p  = 0.002). Impaired DLCO was not uncommon among individuals recovering from mild to moderate COVID-19. Women are at a greater risk, and subjective dyspnea correlated with impaired DLCO. Clinicians can rely on self-reported significant dyspnea to guide further assessment.

•Similar fMRI occipitotemporal representation of 1st and 2nd items at encoding.•Advantaged representation of 1st vs. 2nd items in the post-encoding period.•The neural advantage of 1st items predicted the behavioral primacy effect in memory. Visual areas activated during perception can retain specific information held in memory without the presence of physical stimuli via distributed activity patterns. Neuroimaging studies have shown that the delay-period representation of information in visual areas is modulated by factors such as memory load and task demands, raising the possibility of serial position as another potential modulator. Specifically, enhanced representation of first items during the post-encoding delay period may serve as a mechanism underlying the well-established but not well-understood primacy effect – the mnemonic advantage of first items. To test this hypothesis, 13 males and 16 females performed a human fMRI task, wherein each trial consisted of the sequential encoding of two stimuli (a famous face and landscape, order counterbalanced), followed by a distracting task, a delay period, and then a cued recall of one of the items. Participants exhibited the expected behavioral primacy effect, manifested as faster recall of the first items. In order to elucidate the still debated neural underpinnings of this effect, using multivariate decoding, a classifier was trained on data collected during encoding to differentiate stimulus categories (i.e., faces vs. landscapes) and tested on data collected during the post-encoding period. Greater reactivation of first versus second items was observed in the ventral occipito-temporal cortex during the entire post-encoding period but not during encoding. Moreover, trial-level analyses revealed that the degree of first-item neural advantage during the post-encoding delay predicted the behavioral primacy effect. These findings highlight the role of item reinstatement in ventral occipito-temporal cortex in the primacy effect and are discussed in the context of the uniqueness of the very first item and event boundaries, illuminating putative neural mechanisms underlying the effect.

Prior knowledge can either assist or hinder the ability to learn new information. These contradicting behavioral outcomes, referred to as schema benefit and proactive interference respectively, have been studied separately. Here we examined whether the known neural correlates of each process coexist, and how they are influenced by attentional loading and aging. To this end we used an fMRI task that affected both processes simultaneously by presenting pairs of related short movies in succession. The first movie of each pair provided context for the second movie, which could evoke schema benefit and/or proactive interference. Inclusion of an easy or hard secondary task performed during encoding of the movies, as well as testing both younger (22–35y) and older (65–79y) adults, allowed examining the effect of attentional load and older age on the neural patterns associated with context. Analyses focused on three predefined regions and examined how their inter-subject correlation (inter-SC) and functional connectivity (FC) with the hippocampi changed between the first and second movie. The results in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) matched and expanded previous findings: higher inter-SC and lower FC were observed during the second compared to the first movie; yet the differentiation between the first and second movies in these regions was attenuated under high attentional load, pointing to dependency on attentional resources. Instead, at high load there was a significant context effect in the FC of the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC), and greater FC in the second movie was related to greater proactive interference. Further, older adults showed context effect in the PCC and vlPFC. Intriguingly, older adults with inter-SC mPFC patterns similar to younger adults exhibited schema benefit in our task, while those with inter-SC PCC patterns similar to younger adults showed proactive interference in an independent task. The brain-behavior relationships corroborate the functional significance of these regions and indicate that the mPFC mainly contributes to schema benefit, while the left vlPFC and PCC contribute to proactive interference. Importantly, our findings show that the functions of the regions are retained throughout the lifespan and may predict the predominant behavioral outcome. •mPFC is related to schema benefit, the left vlPFC and PCC to proactive interference.•The mPFC and PCC showed context effect at low, but not at high attentional load.•The left vlPFC showed context effect at high load related to proactive interference.•Older adults showed proactive interference responses in the PCC.•The functions of the regions are retained with age and predict behavioral outcome.

Background: Long COVID has become a burden on healthcare systems worldwide. Research into the etiology and risk factors has been impeded by observing all diverse manifestations as part of a single entity. We aimed to determine patterns of symptoms in convalescing COVID-19 patients. Methods: Symptomatic patients were recruited from four countries. Data were collected regarding demographics, comorbidities, acute disease and persistent symptoms. Factor analysis was performed to elucidate symptom patterns. Associations of the patterns with patients’ characteristics, features of acute disease and effect on daily life were sought. Results: We included 1027 symptomatic post-COVID individuals in the analysis. The majority of participants were graded as having a non-severe acute COVID-19 (N = 763, 74.3%). We identified six patterns of symptoms: cognitive, pain-syndrome, pulmonary, cardiac, anosmia-dysgeusia and headache. The cognitive pattern was the major symptoms pattern, explaining 26.2% of the variance; the other patterns each explained 6.5–9.5% of the variance. The cognitive pattern was higher in patients who were outpatients during the acute disease. The pain-syndrome pattern was associated with acute disease severity, higher in women and increased with age. The pulmonary pattern was associated with prior lung disease and severe acute disease. Only two of the patterns (cognitive and cardiac) were associated with failure to return to pre-COVID occupational and physical activity status. Conclusion: Long COVID diverse symptoms can be grouped into six unique patterns. Using these patterns in future research may improve our understanding of pathophysiology and risk factors of persistent COVID, provide homogenous terminology for clinical research, and direct therapeutic interventions.

Memory decline is a feature of some, but not all, healthy older adults. The neural patterns of this variability are still largely unknown. We examined the resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) of older and younger adults before and after cognitive effort as an underlying feature for subsequent memory changes, focusing on the RSFC between the left anterior hippocampus (laHC) and the posterior hippocampi (pHC). Results showed that for younger adults, post-effort increases in laHC-pHC RSFC were related to increases in RSFC between the laHC and the hubs of the default mode network (DMN). However, for older adults, post-effort increases in the RSFC of laHC-pHC were related to decreases in the RSFC of the laHC and right precentral gyrus. Thus, the correlation between intra-HC and inter-HC RSFC was altered with cognitive effort and aging. Importantly, older adults who had lower post-effort RSFC between the laHC and the pHC demonstrated a decline in episodic memory 2 years later. Hence, the change in intra-HC RSFC following cognitive effort was able to predict subsequent memory function with aging in our sample.

When encoding a real-life, continuous stimulus, the same neural circuits support processing and integration of prior as well as new incoming information. This ongoing interplay is modulated by attention, and is evident in regions such as the prefrontal cortex section of the task positive network (TPN), and in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), a hub of the default mode network (DMN). Yet the exact nature of such modulation is still unclear. To investigate this issue, we utilized an fMRI task that employed movies as the encoded stimuli and manipulated attentional load via an easy or hard secondary task that was performed simultaneously with encoding. Results showed increased intersubject correlation (inter-SC) levels when encoding movies in a condition of high, as compared to low attentional load. This was evident in bilateral ventrolateral and dorsomedial prefrontal cortices and the dorsal PCC (dPCC). These regions became more attuned to the combination of the movie and the secondary task as the attentional demand of the latter increased. Activation analyses revealed that at higher load the prefrontal TPN regions were more activated, whereas the dPCC was more deactivated. Attentional load also influenced connectivity within and between the networks. At high load the dPCC was anti-correlated to the prefrontal regions, which were more functionally coherent amongst themselves. Finally and critically, greater inter-SC in the dPCC at high load during encoding predicted lower memory strength when that information was retrieved. This association between inter-SC levels and memory strength suggest that as attentional demands increased, the dPCC was more attuned to the secondary task at the expense of the encoded stimulus, thus weakening memory for the encoded stimulus. Together, our findings show that attentional load modulated the function of core TPN and DMN regions. Furthermore, the observed relationship between memory strength and the modulation of the dPCC points to this region as a key area involved in the manipulation of attentional load on memory function.