223 real negative results, null findings, and replication failures in Neuroscience · Negative / Null Result Report. Search the index →
WASTE indexes published research — it does not host or republish full papers. Each entry is a metadata record compiled from open scholarly databases; the abstract is shown in full only where the paper is openly licensed, otherwise a short excerpt under fair use. Classifications are automated and approximate.
Tiago Pereira, Ana María Abreu, Alexandre Castro‐Caldas · 2013 · Perceptual and Motor Skills
This study aimed to assess how the capacity to acquire, form and consolidate motor memories might vary across different tasks and different groups (with and without motor expertise). 20 athletes and 21 non-athletes were tested on five…
View details →Peter Hagell, Stephen S. Smith · 2013 · Journal of Huntington s Disease
BACKGROUND: The carer impact of neurodegenerative disorders such as Huntington's disease (HD) is vast. Attempts to measure carer QoL in neurodegenerative disorders include the three-dimensional (Practical aspects of Caregiving, PC;…
View details →Thomas Cope, Manon Grube, Arnab Mandal et al. · 2014 · Neuropsychologia
Bilateral, high-frequency stimulation of the basal ganglia (STN-DBS) is in widespread use for the treatment of the motor symptoms of Parkinson׳s disease (PD). We present here the first psychophysical investigation of the effect of STN-DBS upon perceptual timing in the hundreds of milliseconds range, with both duration-based (absolute) and beat-based (relative) tasks; 13 patients with PD were assessed with their STN-DBS 'on', 'off', and then 'on' again. Paired parametric analyses revealed no statistically significant differences for any task according to DBS status. We demonstrate, from the exa
View details →Anne Krogh Nøhr, Morten Lindow, Annika Forsingdal et al. · 2021 · Neuropsychopharmacology
A better understanding of the biological factors underlying antidepressant treatment in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) is needed. We perform gene expression analyses and explore sources of variability in peripheral blood related to antidepressant treatment and treatment response in patients suffering from recurrent MDD at baseline and after 8 weeks of treatment. The study includes 281 patients, which were randomized to 8 weeks of treatment with vortioxetine (N = 184) or placebo (N = 97). To our knowledge, this is the largest dataset including both gene expression in blood and pl
View details →Shao-Chin Hung, Aaron R. Seitz · 2011 · PLoS ONE
Consolidation, a process that stabilizes memory trace after initial acquisition, has been studied for over a century. A number of studies have shown that a skill or memory must be consolidated after acquisition so that it becomes resistant to interference from new information. Previous research found that training on a peripheral 3-dot hyperacuity task could retrogradely interfere with earlier training on the same task but with a mirrored stimulus configuration. However, a recent study failed to replicate this finding. Here we address the controversy by replicating both patterns of results, ho
View details →Maliha Ashraf, Alexandre Chapiro, Rafał Mantiuk · 2025 · Nature Communications
As large engineering efforts go towards improving the resolution of mobile, augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR) displays, it is important to know the maximum resolution at which further improvements bring no noticeable benefit. This limit is often referred to as the retinal resolution, although the limiting factor may not necessarily be attributed to the retina. To determine the ultimate resolution at which an image appears sharp to our eyes with no perceivable blur, we created an experimental setup with a sliding display, which allows for continuous control of the resolution. The
View details →Stefan Wiens, Erik van Berlekom, Malina Szychowska et al. · 2019 · Frontiers in Psychology
The mismatch negativity (MMN) has been of particular interest in auditory perception because of its sensitivity to auditory change. It is typically measured in an oddball task and is computed as the difference of deviant minus standard tones. Previous studies suggest that the oddball MMN can be reduced by crossmodal attention to a concurrent, difficult visual task. However, more recent studies did not replicate this effect. Because previous findings seem to be biased, we preregistered the present study and used Bayesian hypothesis testing to measure the strength of evidence for or against an e
View details →Daniel F. Kripke, Caroline M. Nievergelt, Gregory J. Tranah et al. · 2013 · Journal of Circadian Rhythms
BACKGROUND: There are several indications that malfunctions of the circadian clock contribute to depression. To search for particular circadian gene polymorphisms associated with depression, diverse polymorphisms were genotyped in two samples covering a range of depressed volunteers and participants with normal mood. METHODS: Depression mood self-ratings and DNA were collected independently from a sample of patients presenting to a sleep disorders center (1086 of European origin) and from a separate sample consisting of 399 participants claiming delayed sleep phase symptoms and 406 partly-matc
View details →Laurent Grégoire, Pierre Perruchet, Bénédicte Poulin-Charronnat · 2014 · Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition
Most earlier studies investigating the evolution of the Stroop effect with the amount of reading practice have reported data consistent with an inverted U-shaped curve, whereby the Stroop effect appears early during reading acquisition,…
View details →Nuno Gomes, Bettina M. Pause, Monique A. M. Smeets et al. · 2023 · Chemical Senses
Fear and anxiety are the most frequently studied emotional states in chemosignal research. Despite differences between these two emotional states, findings from research using fear and anxiety body odors (BOs) are often treated as part of…
View details →Jessica Nicosia, David A. Balota · 2020 · Psychology and Aging
Recent evidence indicates that older adults' decreased ability to inhibit irrelevant information may lead to increased processing and greater memory for distractor information compared with younger adults. The present experiments examine…
View details →Susanne Clinch, Stacie Hudgens, Elizabeth Gibbons et al. · 2023 · Patient Related Outcome Measures
Purpose: Adaptive Behavior Scale is often used in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) trials. The Adaptive Behavior Composite Score (VABS-ABC) is the standardized overall score (the average of the Socialization, Communication and Daily Living…
View details →Clara E. James · 2012 · Frontiers in Psychology
A commentary on Musical expertise and statistical learning of musical and linguistic structures by Schön, D., and François, C. (2011). Front. Psychology 2:167. doi: 10.3389/ fpsyg.2011.00167 Both language and music consist of discrete elements organized in embedded hierarchical structures. Schön and François nicely expose in this review that musical expertise facilitates learning of both linguistic and musical structures. At the behavioral level, the musicians did not outperform the nonmusicians. However, ERP analyses showed that acquisition of boundary perception (segmentation) between units
View details →Daniel Griffiths-King, Amanda Wood, Jan Novák · 2023 · Scientific Reports
Brain development is regularly studied using structural MRI. Recently, studies have used a combination of statistical learning and large-scale imaging databases of healthy children to predict an individual's age from structural MRI. This data-driven, predicted 'Brainage' typically differs from the subjects chronological age, with this difference a potential measure of individual difference. Few studies have leveraged higher-order or connectomic representations of structural MRI data for this Brainage approach. We leveraged morphometric similarity as a network-level approach to structural MRI t
View details →Nicole T. Ong, Jamie Hawke, Nicola J. Hodges · 2019 · Brain Sciences
We evaluated if and how success perceptions, through target size manipulations, impact processes related to motor learning. This work was based on recent literature suggesting that expectations and self-efficacy exert a direct impact on learning. We measured arousal, kinematics, learner expectancies, motivation, and outcomes in a dart-throwing task. Novices (n = 29) were assigned to either a “Large-target” (horizontal target, 10-cm high) or “Small-target” (2-cm high) group for practice (t = 90), and both groups completed 24-h retention tests. The Small-target group took longer to plan and proc
View details →Yanyan Yang, Hongan Wang, XU Hai-ping et al. · 2023 · Autism Research
The early start Denver model (ESDM) has been extensively studied as a promising early intervention approach for young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Various methodological drawbacks from earlier ESDM investigations must be…
View details →Alice Mason, Casimir J. H. Ludwig, Simon Farrell · 2016 · Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
Reward is thought to enhance episodic memory formation via dopaminergic consolidation. Bunzeck, Dayan, Dolan, and Duzel [(2010). A common mechanism for adaptive scaling of reward and novelty. Human Brain Mapping, 31, 1380-1394] provided functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and behavioural evidence that reward and episodic memory systems are sensitive to the contextual value of a reward-whether it is relatively higher or lower-as opposed to absolute value or prediction error. We carried out a direct replication of their behavioural study and did not replicate their finding that memory p
View details →Anne Gast, Jasmin Richter, Borys Ruszpel · 2019 · Cognition & Emotion
In three experiments we investigated whether memory-independent evaluative conditioning (EC) and other memory-independent contingency learning (CL) effects occur in the valence contingency task (VCT). In the VCT, participants respond to…
View details →Katherine A. Rawson, Kathryn T. Wissman, Kalif E. Vaughn · 2015 · Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition
Recent research on testing effects (i.e., practice tests are more effective than restudy for enhancing subsequent memory) has focused on explaining when and why testing enhances memory. Of particular interest for present purposes, Zaromb…
View details →Nathan Leggett, Nicole A. Thomas, Michael E. R. Nicholls · 2015 · Cognition & Emotion
Approach motivation leads to greater left hemisphere activation, whereas an avoidant motivational state activates the right hemisphere. Recent research, which served as the basis for the current experiment, suggests line bisection provides…
View details →Sera Wiechert, Leonie Hannah Shoshana Loewy, Ineke Wessel et al. · 2023 · Memory
Post-traumatic stress disorder is characterised by recurring memories of a traumatic experience despite deliberate attempts to forget (i.e., suppression). The Think/No-Think (TNT) task has been used widely in the laboratory to study…
View details →Astrid Feiten, Kilian Dahm, Kai Schlepckow et al. · 2026 · Nature Communications
Triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells 2 (TREM2) is a central regulator of microglial activity and loss-of-function coding variants are major risk factors for late onset Alzheimer's disease (LOAD). To better understand the molecular and functional changes associated with TREM2 signalling in microglia, we generated a TREM2 reporter mouse. In APP transgenic animals, bulk RNA-sequencing of isolated microglia sorted based on reporter expression highlighted TREM2 level-related changes in major immunometabolic pathways, and enrichment of genes in oxidative phosphorylation and cholesterol met
View details →Eric A. Finkel, Yi-Ting Chang, Rajan Dasgupta et al. · 2024 · Cell Reports
The brain receives constant tactile input, but only a subset guides ongoing behavior. Actions associated with tactile stimuli thus endow them with behavioral relevance. It remains unclear how the relevance of tactile stimuli affects…
View details →James Downar, James Downar, Julie Lapenskie et al. · 2024 · Palliative Medicine
Background: Psychological and existential suffering affects many people with advanced illness, and current therapeutic options have limited effectiveness. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is a safe and effective therapy…
View details →Olivier Senn, Florian Hoesl, Toni Bechtold et al. · 2024 · PLoS ONE
There is a broad consensus in groove research that the experience of groove, understood as a pleasurable urge to move in response to music, is to some extent related to the complexity of the rhythm. Specifically, music with medium rhythmic complexity has been found to motivate greater urge to move compared to low or high complexity music (inverted-U hypothesis). Studies that confirmed the inverted-U hypothesis usually based their measure of complexity on the rhythmic phenomenon of syncopation, where rhythms with more and/or stronger syncopation are considered to be more complex than less synco
View details →Ola Ozernov‐Palchik, Amanda O’Brien, Elizabeth Jiachen Lee et al. · 2026 · Nature Communications
In adults, left hemisphere (LH) damage often leads to aphasia, but many cases of early damage leave linguistic processing intact, with a functional language system developing in the right hemisphere. To explain this early apparent equipotentiality of the two hemispheres for language, some have proposed that the language system is more bilateral during early development and becomes increasingly left-lateralized with age. We examined language lateralization using fMRI in two large developmental cohorts (total n=273 children aged 4-16 years; n=107 adults). Strong, adult-like LH lateralization (in
View details →Ruth Horry, Neil Brewer, Nathan Weber · 2015 · Law and Human Behavior
When making a memorial judgment, respondents can regulate their accuracy by adjusting the precision, or grain size, of their responses. In many circumstances, coarse-grained responses are less informative, but more likely to be accurate,…
View details →Chao Jiang, Yingying Dai, Yunheng Ding et al. · 2024 · Brain Sciences
Electroencephalography (EEG)-based emotion recognition is increasingly pivotal in the realm of affective brain-computer interfaces. In this paper, we propose TSANN-TG (temporal-spatial attention neural network with a task-specific graph), a novel neural network architecture tailored for enhancing feature extraction and effectively integrating temporal-spatial features. TSANN-TG comprises three primary components: a node-feature-encoding-and-adjacency-matrices-construction block, a graph-aggregation block, and a graph-feature-fusion-and-classification block. Leveraging the distinct temporal sca
View details →Linda Liu, Zachary Burchill, Michael K. Tanenhaus et al. · 2017 · eScholarship (California Digital Library)
Sentence understanding is affected by recent experience. Animportant open question is whether this reflects adaptationto the statistics of the input. Support for this hypothesiscomes from the recent finding that listeners can…
View details →Jacob A. Westerberg, Pieter R. Roelfsema · 2025 · Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Perceptual experience depends on recurrent interactions between lower and higher cortices. One theory, predictive coding, posits that feedback from higher to lower brain regions decreases neuronal activity predicted by higher-level representations. Despite the widespread adoption of predictive coding in neuroscience, the correspondence to neurophysiological findings in sensory cortices remains elusive. Here, we review how the canonical patterns of intra- and inter-cortical interactions that occur during perception and shifts of attention deviate from those predicted by predictive coding. We ar
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