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This paper presents an audiovisual perceptual analysis of the wh-question and wh-exclamation intonation in Brazilian Portuguese using auditory–visual congruent and incongruent stimuli, to investigate the relative importance of each modality in signaling pragmatic meanings. Ten Brazilian Portuguese speakers (five female) were filmed while producing both speech acts 10 times. Next, artificial stimuli were created: audio and visual cues were either matched (audio and video from the same speech act) or mismatched (audio and video from the different speech acts), resulting in 10 congruent and 10 incongruent stimuli of the wh-questions and the wh-exclamations. The perceptual experiment was taken by 36 Brazilians who identified the stimulus as a question or an exclamation. Results from the logistic regression showed that the factor ‘congruence’ was significant and had a significant interaction with ‘speakers’, which means that the congruent stimuli increased the comprehension of the Brazilian Portuguese wh-questions and wh-exclamations. In contrast, the incongruent stimuli tended to lower listeners’ identification, but to a degree depending on individual speakers’ strategies. Although variation in the accuracy of expressing both speech acts was also found across speakers, this study corroborates that the visual channel impacts the perceptual identification of the pragmatic intonation function of distinguishing sentence mode.

The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) has diverse functions and several functional subdivisions. This study implemented a counting Stroop task that presented incongruent (INC) and congruent (CON) stimuli at two speeds to probe dorsal (dACC) and ventral (vACC) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Eighteen healthy subjects completed the task twice: once outside the scanner while heart rate variability (HRV) was recorded and once during fMRI. In both sessions, subjects completed two runs. Stimuli were presented every 2.0 s in one run and every 1.5 s in the other. fMRI data analysis revealed two important findings. First, by computing differential activation between INC and CON stimuli, a cluster of activation related to response inhibition was observed in the left dACC. Additionally, by calculating the interaction of speed with stimulus congruency, a cluster of activation was observed in the left vACC. This activation correlated significantly with high-frequency HRV ( P < 0.02 for CON and P < 0.003 for INC) and represents the parasympathetic modulatory role of the vACC. This study supports the notion of functional subdivisions within the ACC and links the processes of cognitive interference and parasympathetic modulation with activation in specific subregions of the ACC, a structure that is critical for the interface between cognition and emotion.

In immersive virtual reality, the own body is often visually represented by an avatar. This may induce a feeling of body ownership over the virtual limbs. Importantly, body ownership and the motor system share neural correlates. Yet, evidence on the functionality of this neuroanatomical coupling is still inconclusive. Findings from previous studies may be confounded by the congruent vs. incongruent multisensory stimulation used to modulate body ownership. This study aimed to investigate the effect of body ownership and congruency of information on motor performance in immersive virtual reality. We aimed to modulate body ownership by providing congruent vs. incongruent visuo-tactile stimulation (i.e., participants felt a brush stroking their real fingers while seeing a virtual brush stroking the same vs. different virtual fingers). To control for congruency effects, unimodal stimulation conditions (i.e., only visual or tactile) with hypothesized low body ownership were included. Fifty healthy participants performed a decision-making (pressing a button as fast as possible) and a motor task (following a defined path). Body ownership was assessed subjectively with established questionnaires and objectively with galvanic skin response (GSR) when exposed to a virtual threat. Our results suggest that congruency of information may decrease reaction times and completion time of motor tasks in immersive virtual reality. Moreover, subjective body ownership is associated with faster reaction times, whereas its benefit on motor task performance needs further investigation. Therefore, it might be beneficial to provide congruent information in immersive virtual environments, especially during the training of motor tasks, e.g., in neurorehabilitation interventions.

In the present study, we examined modulations of the second language (L2) positive emotion-label words, positive emotion-laden words, and neutral words on conflict processing in a flanker task. Twenty Chinese–English bilinguals were instructed to decide the color of the central words that were vertically surrounded by the same words with the same or different color. During the task, their cortical activation was recorded. The result showed that L2 positive emotion-laden words elicited different brain activations from emotion-label words and neutral words at both early and late stages. Differential modulations on conflict processing between positive emotion-label words and positive emotion-laden words in the L2 existed even after approach-motivation intensity was controlled. These results suggest emotion word type affects conflict processing, even in L2.

It is a fundamental ability to discriminate incongruent information in daily activity. The underlying neural dynamics, however, is still unclear. Using stereo-electroencephalography (SEEG), we herein investigated the fine-grained and different states of incongruent information processing in patients with refractory epilepsy who underwent intracranial electrodes implantation. All patients performed delayed match-to-sample paradigm were designed in the sequential pairs of visual stimuli (S1 followed by S2). Participants were asked to discriminate whether the relevant feature of S2 was identical with S1 while ignoring the irrelevant feature. The spatiotemporal cortical responses that were evoked by different conditions were calculated and compared respectively in the context of brain intrinsic functional networks. In total, we obtained SEEG recordings from 241 contacts in gray matter. In the process of irrelevant incongruent information, the activated brain areas include superior parietal lobule, supramarginal gyrus, angular gyrus, inferior temporal gyrus and fusiform gyrus. By comparing the relevant incongruent condition with congruent condition, the activated brain areas include middle frontal gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, posterior superior temporal sulcus and posterior cingulate cortex. We demonstrated the dynamic of incongruent information processing with high spatiotemporal resolution and suggested the process of automatic detection of irrelevant incongruent information requires the involvement of local regions and a relatively few networks. Meanwhile, controlled discrimination of relevant incongruent information needs the participation of extensive regions and a wide range of nodes in the network. Furthermore, both frontoparietal control network and default mode network were engaged in the incongruent information processing.

A complex neural problem must be solved before a voluntary eye movement is triggered away from a stimulus (antisaccade). The location code activated by a stimulus must be internally translated into an appropriate signal to direct the eyes into the opposite visual field, while the reflexive tendency to look directly at the stimulus must be suppressed. No doubt these extra processes contribute to the ubiquitous slowing of antisaccades. However, there is no consensus on the cognitive mechanisms that contribute to the antisaccade programme. Visual attention is closely associated with the generation of saccadic eye movements and it has been shown that attention will track an illusion of line motion. A series of experiments combined this illusion with a saccadic eye movement that was congruent (i.e. directed towards), or incongruent with (i.e. direct away from), a peripheral target. Experiment 1 showed that congruent saccades had faster reaction times than incongruent saccades. In contrast, Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that, with illusory line motion, incongruent saccades now had faster reaction times than congruent saccades. These findings demonstrate that an illusory phenomenon can accelerate the processing of an incongruent relative to a congruent saccade.