Individual differences in working memory capacity are reflected in different ERP and EEG patterns to task difficulty

Cortical activity during cued picture naming predicts individual differences in stuttering frequency

“…Within clinical populations, both neurophysiological (ERP/EEG) and behavioral measures can in tandem be outside of the normal range and correlate to each other (Thatcher et al 2001; Arciniegas 2011). Also, neurophysiological measures from normal healthy controls can be within normal ranges and still correlate to individual differences in cognitive measures (Polich 2007; Yurgil and Golob 2010; Finnigan and Robertson 2011; Chen et al 2015; Dong et al 2015). Given the complex etiology of stuttering, multiple influences on scalp EEG/ERP measures are to be expected, and relatively, small experimental studies are not sufficient to tease apart such complex relations.…”

Because difficulty is not the same for everyone: the impact of complexity in working memory is associated with cannabinoid 1 receptor genetic variation in young adults

“…Individual differences have been reported previously in WM performance (Dong et al, 2015;Vogel et al, 2005). Only when subjects are challenged with a high complexity task (i.e., 3-or 4-back tasks), but not in a relatively easy WM task, do differences in performance and in electrophysiological markers emerge between participants previously classified as high vs. low WM ability (Dong et al, 2015).…”

“…Only when subjects are challenged with a high complexity task (i.e., 3-or 4-back tasks), but not in a relatively easy WM task, do differences in performance and in electrophysiological markers emerge between participants previously classified as high vs. low WM ability (Dong et al, 2015). Specifically, alpha power is diminished and theta power is augmented in high WM ability subjects, compared to low WM individuals, at the highest complexity N-back task (Dong et al, 2015). It is possible that part of the neural basis that underlies individual differences in WM performance can be explained by genetic factors, such as the CNR1 genetic variation, as one candidate gene.…”

“…In this sense, complexity can be manipulated in the N-back task. When complexity in N-back tasks increases, several effects have been reported: (1) performance decreases (Dong, Reder, Yao, Liu, & Chen, 2015;Ginestet & Simmons, 2011;Ruiz-Contreras et al, 2013;Sala-Llonch et al, 2012), (2) activation in left dorsolateral prefrontal (León-Domín-guez et al, 2015;Owen, Mcmillan, Laird, & Bullmore, 2005) and bilateral parietal (Volle et al, 2008) cortices increases, (3) functional network connectivity strength decreases (Ginestet & Simmons, 2011) and (4) amplitude of P300 decreases (Dong et al, 2015). All these epiphenomena might reveal the cost of the level of complexity in maintenance, in manipulation or in both processes, as a function of the challenge imposed by the task.…”

“…Variations in the performance among individuals (Dong et al, 2015), and in their brain response have been documented (Dong et al, 2015;Sala-Llonch et al, 2012;Vogel, McCollough, & Machizawa, 2005). Several factors, such as environmental (Colzato, van den Wildenberg, Zmigrod, & Hommel, 2013;Ruiz-Contreras et al, 2014) or genetic factors (Kondo, Nomura, & Kashino, 2015), can influence WM ability.…”