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Background: Humans perceive and interpret the world through the lens of self-reference processes, typically facilitating enhanced performance for the task at hand. However, this research has predominantly emphasized the automatic facet of self-reference processing, overlooking how it interacts with control processes affecting everyday situations. Methods: We investigated this relationship between automatic and control self-reference processing in neuropsychological patients performing self-face perception tasks and the Birmingham frontal task measuring executive functions. Results: Principal component analysis across tasks revealed two components: one loaded on familiarity/orientation judgments reflecting automatic self-reference processing, and the other linked to the cross task and executive function indicating control processing requirements. Voxel-based morphometry and track-wise lesion-mapping analyses showed that impairments in automatic self-reference were associated with reduced grey matter in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and right inferior temporal gyrus, and white matter damage in the right inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus. Deficits in executive control were linked to reduced grey matter in the bilateral inferior parietal lobule and left anterior insula, and white matter disconnections in the left superior longitudinal fasciculus and arcuate fasciculus. Conclusions: The causal evidence suggests that automatic and control facets of self-reference processes are subserved by distinct yet integrated ventral prefrontal–temporal and dorsal frontal–parietal networks, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using electroencephalogram (EEG), we tested the hypothesis that the association of a neutral stimulus with the self would elicit ultra-fast neural responses from early top-down feedback modulation to late feedforward periods for cognitive processing, resulting in self-prioritization in information processing. In two experiments, participants first learned three associations between personal labels (self, friend, stranger) and geometric shapes (Experiment 1) and three colors (Experiment 2), and then they judged whether the shape/color–label pairings matched. Stimuli in Experiment 2 were shown in a social communicative setting with two avatars facing each other, one aligned with the participant's view (first-person perspective) and the other with a third-person perspective. The color was present on the t-shirt of one avatar. This setup allowed for an examination of how social contexts (i.e., perspective taking) affect neural connectivity mediating self-related processing. Functional connectivity analyses in the alpha band (8–12 Hz) revealed that self–other discrimination was mediated by two distinct phases of neural couplings between frontal and occipital regions, involving an early phase of top-down feedback modulation from frontal to occipital areas followed by a later phase of feedforward signaling from occipital to frontal regions. Moreover, while social communicative settings influenced the later feedforward connectivity phase, they did not alter the early feedback coupling. The results indicate that regardless of stimulus type and social context, the early phase of neural connectivity represents an enhanced state of awareness towards self-related stimuli, whereas the later phase of neural connectivity may be associated with cognitive processing of socially meaningful stimuli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has discovered a robust bias towards the processing of self-relevant information in perceptual matching. Self-associated stimuli are processed faster and more accurately than other-associated stimuli. Priming of independent or interdependent self-construal can dynamically modulate self-biases in high-level cognitive tasks. This study explored whether priming of independent/interdependent mindsets can modulate the self-bias effect in perceptual matching. In two experiments, British participants performed a priming task (Experiment 1 using a word-search task—an implicit priming approach, Experiment 2 with a reflective thinking task—an explicit priming method) immediately followed by a perceptual matching task, where they first learned to associate geometric shapes with labels (e.g., circle is you, square is friend, triangle is stranger) and then made judgments on whether shape-label pairs displayed on-screen were the correct associations or not. The analysis in Experiment 1 revealed that priming the interdependent self-construal led to a reduced self-bias effect in perceptual matching in participants who had low bias compared to those with high bias in the neutral/non-priming condition. In contrast, priming the independent self-construal did not modulate the self-bias in perceptual matching. The effects were replicated in Experiment 2. The results indicate that the self is a dynamic concept that can modulate perceptual processing by accessing different cultural contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neurological disorders are a leading cause of death and disability worldwide. Can virtual reality (VR) based intervention, a novel technology-driven change of paradigm in rehabilitation, reduce impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions? This question is directly addressed here for the first time using an umbrella review that assessed the effectiveness and quality of evidence of VR interventions in the physical and cognitive rehabilitation of patients with stroke, traumatic brain injury and cerebral palsy, identified factors that can enhance rehabilitation outcomes and addressed safety concerns. Forty-one meta-analyses were included. The data synthesis found mostly low- or very low-quality evidence that supports the effectiveness of VR interventions. Only a limited number of comparisons were rated as having moderate and high quality of evidence, but overall, results highlight potential benefits of VR for improving the ambulation function of children with cerebral palsy, mobility, balance, upper limb function, and body structure/function and activity of people with stroke, and upper limb function of people with acquired brain injury. Customization of VR systems is one important factor linked with improved outcomes. Most studies do not address safety concerns, as only nine reviews reported adverse effects. The results provide critical recommendations for the design and implementation of future VR programs, trials and systematic reviews, including the need for high quality randomized controlled trials to test principles and mechanisms, in primary studies and in meta-analyses, in order to formulate evidence-based guidelines for designing VR-based rehabilitation interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self and emotions are key motivational factors of a person strivings for health and well-being. Understanding neural mechanisms supporting the relationship between these factors bear far-reaching implications for mental health disorders. Recent work indicates a substantial overlap between self-relevant and emotion information processing and has proposed the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) as one shared neural signature. However, the precise cognitive and neural mechanisms represented by the MPFC in investigations of self- and emotion-related processing are largely unknown. Here we examined whether the neural underpinnings of self-related processing in the MPFC link to positive or negative emotions. We collected fMRI data to test the distinct and shared neural circuits of self- and emotion-related processing while participants performed personal (self, friend, or stranger) and emotion (happy, sad, or neutral) associative matching tasks. By exploiting tight control over the factors that determine the effects of self-relevance and emotions (positive: Happy vs. neutral; negative: Sad vs. neutral), our univariate analysis revealed that the ventral part of the MPFC (vmPFC), which has established involvement in self-prioritisation effects, was not recruited in the negative emotion prioritisation effect. In contrast, there were no differences in brain activity between the effects of positive emotion- and self-prioritisation. These results were replicated by both region of interest (ROI)-based analysis in the vmPFC and the seed- to voxel functional connectivity analysis between the MPFC and the rest of the brain. The results suggest that the prioritisation effects for self and positive emotions are tightly linked together, and the MPFC plays a large role in discriminating between positive and negative emotions in relation to self-relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of hair follicle in cashmere goats shows significant periodic change, as with mice and humans. However, for cashmere goat with double-coat, the periodic change may be due to other regulatory molecules and signal pathways. To understand the mechanism of periodic development of hair follicle, we performed a weighted gene coexpression network analysis (WGCNA) to mine key genes and establish an interaction network by utilizing the NCBI public dataset. Ten coexpression modules, including 7689 protein-coding genes, were constructed by WGCNA, six of which are considered to be significantly related to the development of the hair follicle cycle. A functional enrichment analysis for each model showed that they are closely related to ECM- receptor interaction, focal adhesion, PI3K-Akt signaling pathway, estrogen signaling pathway, and so on. Combined with the analysis of differential expressed genes, 12 hub genes from coexpression modules were selected as candidate markers, i.e., COL1A1, C1QTNF6, COL1A2, AQP3, KRTAP3-1, KRTAP11-1, FA2H, NDUFS5, DERL2, MRPL14, ANTKMT and XAB2, which might be applied to improve cashmere production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gyroscope, accelerometer and angular encoder are the most important components in a dual-axis rotation inertial navigation system (RINS). However, there are asynchronies among the sensors, which will thus lead to navigation errors. The impact of asynchrony between the gyroscope and angular encoder on the azimuth error and the impact of asynchrony between the gyroscope and accelerometer on the velocity error are analyzed in this paper. A self-calibration method based on navigation errors is proposed based on the analysis above. Experiments show that azimuth and velocity accuracy can be improved by compensating the asynchronies.