Posted: December 16th, 2022

Cognitive neuroscience

Objective The objectives of the paper are: 1) to demonstrate a rigour°us understanding of how cognitive nou•os•ion( lot’ do ask questions and b,st, hypotheses, 2) to take the knowl,dge and intuit you gain dining the course lectures and discussions and apply it to a gnostical in cognitive neuroscience interests you. 3) To donamstrate knowledge 01 the conipleitiontary act ivity hod (EE(: 01101) to what you proposed in your group projoct.
Paper specifications Length: 4-5 pages plus One page for yOur prediction figure, strict page limits (pages 1,00,11(1 page 5 will sot be looked at and will be assumed t.o be missing for the purposes of grading). Limits do not include references, nor tire one page with the prediction figure. Optional tit to page won’t be counted for the length limit. Optional additional figures/tables will be counted within the page limits. Double-spaced, font size=12 pt, margins at least .5″ on all sides. File formals: Only Adobe Acrobat (.pelf) or Microsoft Word (.doe or .docx) will be ac-cepic,l dire to the itnpossibility ‘1 having all possible software. The pelf format is preferred; if you do not know how to make .pdf from pair original file format., the 1ST people are very good at walking you through this. Each report should be submit tool electronically via moodle and Must include the follow-ing, with these section headings: 1. Your Name and your own paper’s Title (not the title of the background article) 2. Introduction. explaining the background and overall. goal of the study. Here is where you should for sure cite background art isles. Build closely from a prior study: otherwise. pm will not be able to defend the feasibility of the study. Propose an experiment i loot wlk’ target a substant ive ;pie, inn thal is closerly rekted to one or more pulilishod studios • I.e., nut just fixing t e/.1 icd1 dolma, but ‘ask yourself, if I wen, working in i his research group, what \■., ail( I he an interesting question to ask next, but one that would follow closely from previous oxperimeni [5%] 3. Methods lot ,iiling both t he behavioural (task) methods and brain-activity (EEG/fMRI) methods, including what you will measure and what you will compare. NOTE: If your group’s proposal project used electrophysiology methods (EEG), then the pro-posal should use neuroimaging methods (fMRI), and vice-versa. [10%) 4. Anticipated Results referring to the prediction figure (soo next). Be very specific, explain how you would test for statistical robustness of the results, and include at least
two plausible outcomes that could each tell us something different, and state what those different conclusions would be. [10%] 5. Prediction Figure An additional page in the document with a fully labelled figure illus-trating your chief prediction. The figure should also include a full caption no the reader can understand it sufficiently well. The figure may be hand-drawn and seamed, or created in a draw/paint program, or modified from a journal article figure or other source (but in that case, the original source must Ice fully referenced). [10%) 6. References (in APA format). As always, all appropriate work must be cited correctly. In addition to (and including) your target article, cite anything you used to justify your choice of measure in your follow-up proposal.

Cognitive neuroscience
Visual Short-term Memory Consolidation: Does unusual images speed up consolidation? –
change does to do
Overall comments:Your paper simply lacks flow, and proper explanations. The weakest
points are that you hypothesis concerning EEG is not clear; and you don’t explain important
details particularly what CDA is, how it should be interpreted, what pattern of activity would
support your hypothesis which is loosely defined to begin with.
Introduction: 2/5 Change “researches” into just research. Fix the wording of this sentence:
“While unfamiliar images in the Weizhen study are images that are distinguishable but are
ones that participants have not seen before such as a Pokemon character (Xie & Zhang,
2018)”. So Xie & Zhang (2018) and Mayer, Kim & Park (2011) contradict each other? “My
hypothesis is that the unusual image will speed up memory consolidation” – but how will you
draw that conclusion? What kind of brain activity are you expecting?
Methods: 3/10If the participants will be young adults, I wouldn’t call them girls and boys.
“The first group will be the control group which will be given 1000 msec to encode the image;
this amount of time is relatively adequate for consolidation of short term memory to occur.” –
citation? The spaces where you wanted to show your upside/flipped letter example are blank.
“CDA is a negative slow wave and looks at visual working memory” – I would rather say that
CDA has been linked to working memory; “so therefore it is a good way to measure brain
activity during the tasks when the experimenters are seeing if the subjects were able to
consolidate the image” – I think you would first need to explain some more about CDA (how
researchers interpreted it, the task they used) before making a claim like this. Also your
sentences are too wordy. Lastly, there doesn’t seem to be any mention of how you would set
up the baseline, and the other technical stuff that comes when explaining an EEG experiment.
Anticipated Results: 1/10 Because CDA is not thoroughly explained, your predictions section
feels meaningless. This is what I get out of it: “CDA is linked to working memory, therefore it
must relate to consolidation. The experimental group should have a lower CDA when
encoding unusual letters because… why?”. The flow is very messy, and it just doesn’t feel
like there is a lot of logic to your argument, that consolidation should be harder for unusual
letters and that this should be somehow reflected by CDA.
Prediction Figure: 3/10=I like your drawings, but again, they just feels meaningless because
it’s not clear how CDA should relate to consolidation. The figures are missing captions (I
assume they’re looking at CDA). So more negative CDA means weaker consolidation?
Visual Short-term Memory Consolidation: Does unusual images speed up consolidation?
Introduction
The process of short- term memory consolidation is the transfer of sensory information
into actual representation in the short term memory system. Encoding of information
can be done through different sensory pathways. Previous researches have looked at
visual aspects of memory and how this has influenced memory consolidation and
encoding. A study was conducted on how familiarity of a visual image can speed up
STM consolidation (Xie & Zhang, 2018). Their findings indicate that having previous or
earlier experience with a stimulus will allow for a faster consolidation since individuals
have already seen the image, therefore it does not require too much attention compared
to unfamiliar stimuli (Xie & Zhang, 2018). Another study was done which looked at how
novelty of an image enhances working memory encoding because of perceptual
salience, in that it stands out and captures the attention of the participants (Mayer, Kim,
& Park, 2011). In the latter study, novelty is portrayed as more of an unusual image such
as the letter A presented upside down (Mayer, Kim, & Park, 2011). While unfamiliar
images in the Weizhen study are images that are distinguishable but are ones that
participants have not seen before such as a Pokemon character (Xie & Zhang, 2018). In
my proposal, I would like to look at how novelty or “nonsense” images influence brain
activity in short-term memory consolidation. My hypothesis is that the unusual image will
speed up memory consolidation.
Methods for behavioral task and EEG
For this study, forty university male or female students will be recruited between the
ages of 18- 35 years with normal visual acuity and color vision, as well as no history of
neurological or psychiatric illnesses. The behavioral task, like the reference article, will
include two different groups which will be divided equally between girls and boys, and
the participants will be randomly assigned to each. The first group will be the control
group which will be given 1000 msec to encode the image; this amount of time is
relatively adequate for consolidation of short term memory to occur. The second group
will be the experimental group which will be given 500 msec for encoding. The task will
be for the subject to look at a screen with a fixation point, then a left or right arrow cue
will appear above the fixation point. After the cue, there will be 8 visual images of either
an upside/flipped letter, such as or , or the original image of the letter, A or F. Then,
there will be a 1000 msec delay period where the screen will go blank. Before the start
of the study, participants were told to only remember the images that were on the cue
side. After the delay period, one of the images from the cue side will appear; either it will
be the same image at the same location or a different image at a different location. If it
is the same then the subjects will press a button on their right side. If the test array is
different, they push a left button. The main goal of this task is to check for accuracy
rather than speed. The figure below illustrates the behavioral method. Similar to
Weizhen et al’s study, we will use an electroencephalography (EEG) to test for brain
activity with an event related potential component, which is called a contralateral delay
activity (CDA). CDA is a negative slow wave and looks at visual working memory (Xie &
Zhang, 2018),so therefore it is a good way to measure brain activity during the tasks
when the experimenters are seeing if the subjects were able to consolidate the image.
Figure 1: Method for behavioral task
Anticipated Results
The results that I anticipate is that the control group will show relatively the same activity
and wave for the unusual letters and for the familiar looking letters because the group
has enough time to consolidate the image. While the experimental group will show
variance in activity. The unusual letter image will depict more brain activity compared to
the familiar looking letter. This further illustrates that the unusual letters are consolidated
into short-term memory at a faster rate. It is more novel to the brain than a regular or
familiar image, therefore it will be vividly portrayed in our memory, so it is easier to
consolidate and recall. Another finding is that the experimental group will show more
activity than the control group because the participants have to put more effort to
remember the image. Even though the experimental group had less time to consolidate,
they will show faster consolidation for the unusual letters. To test for statistical
significance, we can conduct an one way analysis of variance (ANOVA) test to see if
there is a robust difference between the two groups. The F-value needs to be high in
order to reject the null hypothesis that the two groups are equal in comparison. This
scientific hypothesis is falsifiable in that maybe letters are not as familiar to our minds
on its own, and so further studies can look at how familiar faces are consolidated into
memory. For example, a study that looks at popular celebrity faces versus faces that are
upside down or unusual and see its influence on memory consolidation.
Prediction
ADD CAPTIONS!
References
Mayer, J. S., Kim, J., & Park, S. (2011). Enhancing visual working memory encoding:
The role of target novelty. Visual Cognition, 19, 863–885.
Weizhen Xie, Weiwei Zhang; Familiarity Speeds Up Visual Short-term Memory
Consolidation: Electrophysiological Evidence from Contralateral Delay Activities.
J Cogn Neurosci 2018; 30 (1): 1–13. doi:

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