Browsing by Author "Chang, Erik C."

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Gender differences in wayfinding in virtual environments with global or local landmarks
(2012-06-01)
Lin, Chin-Teng
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Huang, Teng-Yi
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Lin, Wen-Jing
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Chang, Shu-Yen
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Lin, Yin-Hung
This study assesses gender differences in wayfinding in environments with global or local landmarks by analyzing both overall and fine-grained measures of performance. Both female and male participants were required to locate targets in grid-like virtual environments with local or global landmarks. Interestingly, the results of the two overall measures did not converge: although females spent more time than males in locating targets, both genders were generally equivalent in terms of corrected travel path. Fine-grained measures account for different aspects of wayfinding behavior and provide additional information that explains the divergence in overall measures; females spent less time traveling away from the target location, a higher proportion of time not traversing, and made more rotations when stopping than males did. Rather than unequivocally supporting male superiority in wayfinding tasks, both the overall and fine-grained measures partially indicate that males and females are differentially superior when using global and local landmark information, respectively. To summarize, males moved faster than females but did not necessarily navigate the spatial surroundings more efficiently. Each gender showed different strengths related to wayfinding; these differences require the application of both overall and fine-grained measures for accurate assessment. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Monetary Reward and Punishment to Response Inhibition Modulate Activation and Synchronization Within the Inhibitory Brain Network
(2018-03-01)
Chikara, Rupesh K.
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Chang, Erik C.
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Lu, Yi-Chen
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Lin, Dar-Shong
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Lin, Chin-Teng
A reward or punishment can modulate motivation and emotions, which in turn affect cognitive processing. The present simultaneous functional magnetic resonance imaging-electroencephalography study examines neural mechanisms of response inhibition under the influence of a monetary reward or punishment by implementing a modified stop-signal task in a virtual battlefield scenario. The participants were instructed to play as snipers who open fire at a terrorist target but withhold shooting in the presence of a hostage. The participants performed the task under three different feedback conditions in counterbalanced order: a reward condition where each successfully withheld response added a bonus (i.e., positive feedback) to the startup credit, a punishment condition where each failure in stopping deduced a penalty (i.e., negative feedback), and a no-feedback condition where response outcome had no consequences and served as a control setting. Behaviorally both reward and punishment conditions led to significantly down-regulated inhibitory function in terms of the critical stop-signal delay. As for the neuroimaging results, increased activities were found for the no-feedback condition in regions previously reported to be associated with response inhibition, including the right inferior frontal gyrus and the pre-supplementary motor area. Moreover, higher activation of the lingual gyrus, posterior cingulate gyrus (PCG) and inferior parietal lobule were found in the reward condition, while stronger activation of the precuneus gyrus was found in the punishment condition. The positive feedback was also associated with stronger changes of delta, theta, and alpha synchronization in the PCG than were the negative or no-feedback conditions. These findings depicted the intertwining relationship between response inhibition and motivation networks.
Neural Mechanisms of Inhibitory Response in a Battlefield Scenario: A Simultaneous fMRI-EEG Study
(2016-05-02)
Ko, Li-Wei
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Shih, Yi-Cheng
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Chikara, Rupesh Kumar
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Chuang, Ya-Ting
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Chang, Erik C.
The stop-signal paradigm has been widely adopted as a way to parametrically quantify the response inhibition process. To evaluate inhibitory function in realistic environmental settings, the current study compared stop-signal responses in two different scenarios: one uses simple visual symbols as go and stop signals, and the other translates the typical design into a battlefield scenario (BFS) where a sniper-scope view was the background, a terrorist image was the go signal, a hostage image was the stop signal, and the task instructions were to shoot at terrorists only when hostages were not present but to refrain from shooting if hostages appeared. The BFS created a threatening environment and allowed the evaluation of how participants' inhibitory control manifest in this realistic stop-signal task. In order to investigate the participants' brain activities with both high spatial and temporal resolution, simultaneous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) recordings were acquired. The results demonstrated that both scenarios induced increased activity in the right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG) and presupplementary motor area (preSMA), which have been linked to response inhibition. Notably, in right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) we found both higher blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) activation and synchronization of theta-alpha activities (4-12 Hz) in the BFS than in the traditional scenario after the stop signal. The higher activation of rTPJ in the BFS may be related to morality judgments or attentional reorienting. These results provided new insights into the complex brain networks involved in inhibitory control within naturalistic environments.
Neural oscillations in Temporoparietal lobes under Inhibitory Control in a Naturalistic situation
(2016)
Ko, Li-Wei
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Chikara, Rupesh Kumar
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Shih, Yi-Cheng
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Chang, Erik C.
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生物科技學系
The stop-signal paradigm has been commonly applied as a measure of inhibitory control due to its exclusive ability to capture theoretically important parameters related to the response inhibition. To observe the inhibitory function in realistic environmental settings, we designed a battlefield scenario (BFS), which is inspired by real condition like open fire between soldier and terrorist for saving civilian because terrorism is serious problem worldwide. The stop-signal task has been widely adopted as a way to parametrically quantify the response inhibition process. This study compared the response inhibition in two different scenarios: One used traditional simple visual symbols as go and stop signals i.e. symbol scenario (SBS), and the other translated the typical design into a battlefield scenario. The outcomes confirmed that both scenarios induced increased activity in the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and pre supplementary motor area (preSMA), which have been associated to response inhibition. Particularly, in right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) we found both higher BOLD activation and EEG power modulation in the battlefield scenario than in the traditional scenario after the stop stimulus onset.