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Background: Intra-individual variability (IIV), a measure of variance within an individual's performance, has been demonstrated as metrics of brain responses for neural functionality. However, how mental fatigue modulates IIV remains unclear. Consequently, the development of robust mental fatigue detection methods at the single-trial level is challenging., New Methods: Based on a long-duration flanker task EEG dataset, the modulations of mental fatigue on IIV were explored in terms of response time (RT) and trial-to-trial latency variations of event-related potentials (ERPs). Specifically, latency variations were quantified using residue iteration decomposition (RIDE) to reconstruct latency-corrected ERPs. We compared reconstructed ERPs with raw ERPs by means of temporal principal component analysis (PCA). Furthermore, a single-trial classification pipeline was developed to detect the changes of mental fatigue levels., Results: We found an increased IIV in the RT metric in the fatigue state compared to the alert state. The same sequence of ERPs (N1, P2, N2, P3a, P3b, and slow wave, or SW) was separated from both raw and reconstructed ERPs using PCA, whereas differences between raw and reconstructed ERPs in explained variances for separated ERPs were found owing to IIV. Particularly, a stronger N2 was detected in the fatigue than alert state after RIDE. The single-trial fatigue detection pipeline yielded an acceptable accuracy of 73.3%., Comparison With Existing Methods: The IIV has been linked to aging and brain disorders, and as an extension, our finding demonstrates IIV as an efficient indicator of mental fatigue., Conclusions: This study reveals significant modulations of mental fatigue on IIV at the behavioral and neural levels and establishes a robust mental fatigue detection pipeline., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Recent continuous task studies, such as narrative speech comprehension, show that fluctuations in brain functional connectivity (FC) are altered and enhanced compared to the resting state. Here, we characterized the fluctuations in FC during comprehension of speech and time-reversed speech conditions. The correlations of Hilbert envelope of source-level EEG data were used to quantify FC between spatially separate brain regions. A symmetric multivariate leakage correction was applied to address the signal leakage issue before calculating FC. The dynamic FC was estimated based on a sliding time window. Then, principal component analysis (PCA) was performed on individually concatenated and temporally concatenated FC matrices to identify FC patterns. We observed that the mode of FC induced by speech comprehension can be characterized with a single principal component. The condition-specific FC demonstrated decreased correlations between frontal and parietal brain regions and increased correlations between frontal and temporal brain regions. The fluctuations of the condition-specific FC characterized by a shorter time demonstrated that dynamic FC also exhibited condition specificity over time. The FC is dynamically reorganized and FC dynamic pattern varies along a single mode of variation during speech comprehension. The proposed analysis framework seems valuable for studying the reorganization of brain networks during continuous task experiments.

The human brain can be described as a complex network of functional connections between distinct regions, referred to as the brain functional network. Recent studies show that the functional network is a dynamic process and its community structure evolves with time during continuous task performance. Consequently, it is important for the understanding of the human brain to develop dynamic community detection techniques for such time-varying functional networks. Here, we propose a temporal clustering framework based on a set of network generative models and surprisingly it can be linked to Block Component Analysis to detect and track the latent community structure in dynamic functional networks. Specifically, the temporal dynamic networks are represented within a unified three-way tensor framework for simultaneously capturing multiple types of relationships between a set of entities. The multi-linear rank- $(L_{r}, L_{r}, 1)$ block term decomposition (BTD) is adopted to fit the network generative model to directly recover underlying community structures with the specific evolution of time from the temporal networks. We apply the proposed method to the study of the reorganization of the dynamic brain networks from electroencephalography (EEG) data recorded during free music listening. We derive several network structures ($L_{r}$ communities in each component) with specific temporal patterns (described by BTD components) significantly modulated by musical features, involving subnetworks of frontoparietal, default mode, and sensory-motor networks. The results show that the brain functional network structures are dynamically reorganized and the derived community structures are temporally modulated by the music features. The proposed generative modeling approach can be an effective tool for describing community structures in brain networks that go beyond static methods and detecting the dynamic reconfiguration of modular connectivity elicited by continuously naturalistic tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To examine the electrophysiological underpinnings of the functional networks involved in music listening, previous approaches based on spatial independent component analysis (ICA) have recently been used to ongoing electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG). However, those studies focused on healthy subjects, and failed to examine the group-level comparisons during music listening. Here, we combined group-level spatial Fourier ICA with acoustic feature extraction, to enable group comparisons in frequency-specific brain networks of musical feature processing. It was then applied to healthy subjects and subjects with major depressive disorder (MDD). The music-induced oscillatory brain patterns were determined by permutation correlation analysis between individual time courses of Fourier-ICA components and musical features. We found that (1) three components, including a beta sensorimotor network, a beta auditory network and an alpha medial visual network, were involved in music processing among most healthy subjects; and that (2) one alpha lateral component located in the left angular gyrus was engaged in music perception in most individuals with MDD. The proposed method allowed the statistical group comparison, and we found that: (1) the alpha lateral component was activated more strongly in healthy subjects than in the MDD individuals, and that (2) the derived frequency-dependent networks of musical feature processing seemed to be altered in MDD participants compared to healthy subjects. The proposed pipeline appears to be valuable for studying disrupted brain oscillations in psychiatric disorders during naturalistic paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of motivation on selective visual attention in states of high vs. low vigilance is poorly understood. To explore the possible differences in the influence of motivation on behavioral performance and neural activity in high and low vigilance levels, we conducted a prolonged 2 h 20 min flanker task and provided monetary rewards during the 20- to 40- and 100- to 120-min intervals of task performance. Both the behavioral and electrophysiological measures were modulated by prolonged task engagement. Moreover, the effect of reward was different in high vs. low vigilance states. The monetary reward increased accuracy and decreased the reaction time (RT) and number of omitted responses in the low but not in the high vigilance state. The fatigue-related decrease in P300 amplitude recovered to its level in the high vigilance state by manipulating motivation, whereas the fatigue-related increase in P300 latency was not modulated by reward. Additionally, the fatigue-related increase in event-related spectral power at 1–4 Hz was sensitive to vigilance decrement and reward. However, the spectral power at 4–8 Hz was only affected by the decrease in vigilance. These electrophysiological measures were not influenced by motivation in the state of high vigilance. Our results suggest that neural processing capacity, but not the timing of processing, is sensitive to motivation. These findings also imply that the fatigue-related impairments in behavioral performance and neural activity underlying selective visual attention only partly recover after manipulating motivation. Furthermore, our results provide evidence for the dissociable neural mechanisms underlying the fatigue-related decrease vs. reward-related increase in attentional resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graphical abstract Highlights • Fifth-order nonnegative CANDECOMP/PARAFAC model was applied to fifth-order ERP tensor with full decomposition in all modes. • A smoothed DIFFIT method was proposed to select optimal component number. • More interesting components and coherent activities were extracted, compared with previous study. Abstract Background Preprocessed Event-related potential (ERP) data are usually organized in multi-way tensor, in which tensor decomposition serves as a powerful tool for data processing. Due to the limitation of computation burden for multi-way data and the low algorithm performance of stability and efficiency, multi-way ERP data are conventionally reorganized into low-order tensor or matrix before further analysis. However, the reorganization may hamper mode specification and spoil the interaction information among different modes. New method In this study, we applied a fifth-order tensor decomposition to a set of fifth-order ERP data collected by exerting proprioceptive stimulus on left and right hand. One of the latest nonnegative CANDECOMP/PARAFAC (NCP) decomposition methods implemented by alternating proximal gradient (APG) was employed. We also proposed an improved DIFFIT method to select the optimal component number for the fifth-order tensor decomposition. Results By the fifth-order NCP model with a proper component number, the ERP data were fully decomposed into spatial, spectral, temporal, subject and condition factors in each component. The results showed more pairs of components with symmetric activation region in left and right hemisphere elicited by contralateral stimuli on hand. Comparison with existing method(s) In our experiment, more interesting components and coherent brain activities were extracted, compared with previous studies. Conclusions The discovered activities elicited by proprioceptive stimulus are in line with those in relevant cognitive neuroscience studies. Our proposed method has proved to be appropriate and viable for processing high-order EEG data with well-preserved interaction information among all modes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]