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Matusz Paul

Professeur-e HES Assistant-e

Main skills

Sensory & brain rehabilitation

Professeur-e HES Assistant-e

Desktop: LEU

HES-SO Valais-Wallis - Haute Ecole de Santé
Chemin de l'Agasse 5, 1950 Sion, CH

Faculty
Santé

Main Degree Programme
Physiothérapie

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Ongoing

Optimizing Vision reHABilitation with virtual-reality games in paediatric amblyopia (V-HAB)

Role: Collaborator

Financement: European Commission

Description du projet :

To reach for a bottle (motor), we need to be able to identify its properties (attention) and know where in space it is located (3-dimensional (3D) vision). This cascade is however impaired in some developmental disorders of vision, like Paediatric Amblyopia (PA) or lazy eye.
With this proposal, I first aim to gain insights in the underlying deficits of PA, by combining expertise from the vision sciences, cognition and motor control research fields. These insights will provide a deeper understanding of the core deficits of children with PA, and their inter-relationship. I will put specific emphasis on the study of 3D vision and its impact on selective attention and motor planning, as these have previously been understudied, despite their clear impact on vision and potential coexistence in PA. Second, I aim to test the efficiency of a novel, ethological, and engaging 3D games in a virtual reality environment to improve vision in children with PA. Thirdly, I will examine whether the improvements on vision are accompanied by changes in attention and motor control and which are the underlying brain mechanisms of such improvements. Lastly, by using artificial intelligence approaches on treatment outcome, I will be able to provide guidelines toward a personalized medicine tailored to the patient’s needs.
To succeed in this project, I will (i) combine measures of the traditional basic vision tests with novel functional vision evaluation, (ii) quantify uni- and multisensory selective attention with behavioural and brain imaging (electrical neuroimaging) methods, (iii) integrate sensor-based measures of motor planning during reaching, (iv) develop a novel, efficient and ethological virtual reality training to recover 3D vision in children with PA. This project will accumulate clinically relevant results that will be disseminated to the scientific community and communicated to the clinicians and the children’s families through a variety of activities.

Research team within HES-SO: Simon-Martinez Cristina , Müller Henning , Matusz Paul

Partenaires académiques: Micah Murray, University of Lausanne

Durée du projet: 01.01.2021 - 31.12.2022

Montant global du projet: 214'000 CHF

Statut: Ongoing

Understanding the role of attention in visual rehabilitation: Amblyopia as a model

Role: Main Applicant

Financement: Swiss National Science Foundation

Description du projet :

Content and objectives of the research work

Poor treatment of amblyopia can have serious visual, cognitive and emotional consequences for patients both the short and long term. This project will first allow us to identify the sensory, cognitive and cortical deficits of amblyopia through transdisciplinary and innovative experimental protocol. In a second step, we will test the effectiveness of therapeutic video games, more particularly, virtual reality as an amblyopia treatment. Finally, this project will allow us to establish the respective importance of sensory and cognitive processes in the visual rehabilitation of amblyopia. This project is the result of an interdisciplinary collaboration bringing together biomedical engineering, mathematical modeling, neuroscience and ophthalmology. This singular approach to vision disorders is innovative both on a fundamental dimension as well as on an applied dimension.

Research team within HES-SO: Matusz Paul

Partenaires académiques: Prof. Gabrielle Thumann, MD, University Hospital Geneva (HUG); Prof. Heimo Steffen, MD, University Hospital Geneva (HUG); Prof. Daphne Bavelier, PhD, University of Geneva; Prof. Dennis Levi, OD, PhD, UC Berkeley; Prof. Micah Murray, PhD, University Hospital Center - University of Lausanne (CHUV - UNIL)

Partenaires professionnels: Ben Bachus, Vivid Vision

Durée du projet: 01.01.2018

Url of the project site: http://p3.snf.ch/project-174150

Statut: Ongoing

2023

Stereoptic serious games as a visual rehabilitation tool for individuals with a residual amblyopia (AMBER trial) :

Scientific paper ArODES

a protocol for a crossover randomized controlled trial

Cristina Simon-Martinez, Maria-Paraskevi Antoniou, Walid Bouthour, Daphne Bavelier, Dennis Levi, Benjamin T. Backus, Brian Dornbos, James J. Blaha, Martina Kropp, Henning Müller, Micah Murray, Gabriele Thumann, Heimo Steffen, Pawel J. Matusz

BMC Ophthalmology, 2023, vol. 23, no 220

Link to the publication

Summary:

Background Amblyopia is the most common developmental vision disorder in children. The initial treatment consists of refractive correction. When insufficient, occlusion therapy may further improve visual acuity. However, the challenges and compliance issues associated with occlusion therapy may result in treatment failure and residual amblyopia. Virtual reality (VR) games developed to improve visual function have shown positive preliminary results. The aim of this study is to determine the efficacy of these games to improve vision, attention, and motor skills in patients with residual amblyopia and identify brain-related changes. We hypothesize that a VR-based training with the suggested ingredients (3D cues and rich feedback), combined with increasing the difficulty level and the use of various games in a home-based environment is crucial for treatment efficacy of vision recovery, and may be particularly effective in children. Methods The AMBER study is a randomized, cross-over, controlled trial designed to assess the effect of binocular stimulation (VR-based stereoptic serious games) in individuals with residual amblyopia (n = 30, 6–35 years of age), compared to refractive correction on vision, selective attention and motor control skills. Additionally, they will be compared to a control group of age-matched healthy individuals (n = 30) to account for the unique benefit of VR-based serious games. All participants will play serious games 30 min per day, 5 days per week, for 8 weeks. The games are delivered with the Vivid Vision Home software. The amblyopic cohort will receive both treatments in a randomized order according to the type of amblyopia, while the control group will only receive the VR-based stereoscopic serious games. The primary outcome is visual acuity in the amblyopic eye. Secondary outcomes include stereoacuity, functional vision, cortical visual responses, selective attention, and motor control. The outcomes will be measured before and after each treatment with 8-week follow-up.

2022

Assessing the degree of ecological validity of your study :

Scientific paper ArODES

introducing the multidimensional assessment of research in context ( MARC ) tool

Sandra Naumann, Michelle L. Byrne, Alethia de la Fuente, Anita Harrewijn, Tehila Nugiel, Maya Rosen, Nienke van Atteveldt, Pawel J. Matusz

Mind, brain, and education, August 2022, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 228-238

Link to the publication

Summary:

In cognitive neurosciences, fundamental principles of mental processes and functional brain organization have been established with highly controlled tasks and testing environments. Recent technical advances allowed the investigation of these functions and their brain mechanisms in naturalistic settings. The diversity in those approaches have been recently (Matusz, P. J., Dikker, S., Huth, A. G., & Perrodin, C. (2019). Are we ready for real-world neuroscience? Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 31(3), 327–338. doi:10.1162/jocn_e_01276) classified via a three-category cycle, including controlled laboratory, partially naturalistic laboratory, and naturalistic real-world research. Based on this model, we developed the Multidimensional Assessment of Research in Context (MARC) tool to easily delineate the approach researchers have taken in their study. MARC provides means to describe the degree of ecological validity for each component of a study (e.g., sample, stimuli, measures, etc.), and the study's location on the cycle. The tool comprises seven questions concerning a study's characteristics. It outputs a summary of those and a compass plot, which can be used for presentations, preregistration, grant proposals, and papers. It aims to improve drawing conclusions across studies and raise awareness about the generalizability of research findings.

2021

Towards understanding how we pay attention in naturalistic visual search settings

Scientific paper ArODES

Nora Turoman, Ruxandra I. Tivadar, Chrysa Retsa, Micah M. Murray, Pawel J. Matusz

NeuroImage, 2021, vol. 244, article no. 118556, pp. 1-17

Link to the publication

Summary:

Research on attentional control has largely focused on single senses and the importance of behavioural goals in controlling attention. However, everyday situations are multisensory and contain regularities, both likely influencing attention. We investigated how visual attentional capture is simultaneously impacted by top-down goals, the multisensory nature of stimuli, and the contextual factors of stimuli's semantic relationship and temporal predictability. Participants performed a multisensory version of the Folk et al. (1992) spatial cueing paradigm, searching for a target of a predefined colour (e.g. a red bar) within an array preceded by a distractor. We manipulated: 1) stimuli's goal-relevance via distractor's colour (matching vs. mismatching the target), 2) stimuli's multisensory nature (colour distractors appearing alone vs. with tones), 3) the relationship between the distractor sound and colour (arbitrary vs. semantically congruent) and 4) the temporal predictability of distractor onset. Reaction-time spatial cueing served as a behavioural measure of attentional selection. We also recorded 129-channel event-related potentials (ERPs), analysing the distractor-elicited N2pc component both canonically and using a multivariate electrical neuroimaging framework. Behaviourally, arbitrary target-matching distractors captured attention more strongly than semantically congruent ones, with no evidence for context modulating multisensory enhancements of capture. Notably, electrical neuroimaging of surface-level EEG analyses revealed context-based influences on attention to both visual and multisensory distractors, in how strongly they activated the brain and type of activated brain networks. For both processes, the context-driven brain response modulations occurred long before the N2pc time-window, with topographic (network-based) modulations at ∼30 ms, followed by strength-based modulations at ∼100 ms post-distractor onset. Our results reveal that both stimulus meaning and predictability modulate attentional selection, and they interact while doing so. Meaning, in addition to temporal predictability, is thus a second source of contextual information facilitating goal-directed behaviour. More broadly, in everyday situations, attention is controlled by an interplay between one's goals, stimuli's perceptual salience, meaning and predictability. Our study calls for a revision of attentional control theories to account for the role of contextual and multisensory control.

Uncovering the mechanisms of real-world attentional control over the course of primary education

Scientific paper ArODES

Nora Turoman, Ruxandra I. Tivadar, Chrysta Retsa, Anne M. Maillard, Gaia Scerif, Pawel J. Matusz

Mind, brain, and education, To be published

Link to the publication

Summary:

Schooling may shape children's abilities to control their attention, but it is unclear if this impact extends from control over visual objects to encompass multisensory objects, which are more typical of everyday environments. We compared children across three primary school grades (Swiss first, third, and fifth grades) on their performance on a game-like audiovisual attentional control task, while recording their electroencephalogram (EEG). Behavioral markers of visual attentional control were present from third grade (after 2 years of schooling), whereas multisensory attentional control was not detected in any group. However, multivariate whole-brain EEG analyses (“electrical neuroimaging”) revealed stable patterns of brain activity that indexed both types of attentional control—visual control in all age groups, and multisensory attentional control from third grade onward. Multivariate EEG approaches can uncover otherwise undetectable mechanisms of attentional control over visual and multisensory objects, and characterize how these mechanisms differ across educational stages.

The development of attentional control mechanisms in multisensory environments

Scientific paper ArODES

Nora Turoman, Ruxandra I. Tivadar, Chrysta Retsa, Anne M. Maillard, Gaia Scerif, Pawel J. Matusz

Developmental cognitive neuroscience, 2021, vol. 48, article no. 100930, pp. 1-14

Link to the publication

Summary:

Outside the laboratory, people need to pay attention to relevant objects that are typically multisensory, but it remains poorly understood how the underlying neurocognitive mechanisms develop. We investigated when adult-like mechanisms controlling one’s attentional selection of visual and multisensory objects emerge across childhood. Five-, 7-, and 9-year-olds were compared with adults in their performance on a computer game-like multisensory spatial cueing task, while 129-channel EEG was simultaneously recorded. Markers of attentional control were behavioural spatial cueing effects and the N2pc ERP component (analysed traditionally and using a multivariate electrical neuroimaging framework). In behaviour, adult-like visual attentional control was present from age 7 onwards, whereas multisensory control was absent in all children groups. In EEG, multivariate analyses of the activity over the N2pc time-window revealed stable brain activity patterns in children. Adult-like visual-attentional control EEG patterns were present age 7 onwards, while multisensory control activity patterns were found in 9-year-olds (albeit behavioural measures showed no effects). By combining rigorous yet naturalistic paradigms with multivariate signal analyses, we demonstrated that visual attentional control seems to reach an adult-like state at ∼7 years, before adult-like multisensory control, emerging at ∼9 years. These results enrich our understanding of how attention in naturalistic settings develops.

2020

Selective attention to sound features mediates cross-modal activation of visual cortices

Scientific paper ArODES

Chrysa Retsa, Pawel J. Matusz, Jan W. H. Schnupp, Micah M. Murray

Neuropsychologia, 2020, vol. 144, article 107498, pp. 1-10

Link to the publication

Summary:

Contemporary schemas of brain organization now include multisensory processes both in low-level cortices as well as at early stages of stimulus processing. Evidence has also accumulated showing that unisensory stimulus processing can result in cross-modal effects. For example, task-irrelevant and lateralised sounds can activate visual cortices; a phenomenon referred to as the auditory-evoked contralateral occipital positivity (ACOP). Some claim this is an example of automatic attentional capture in visual cortices. Other results, however, indicate that context may play a determinant role. Here, we investigated whether selective attention to spatial features of sounds is a determining factor in eliciting the ACOP. We recorded high-density auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) while participants selectively attended and discriminated sounds according to four possible stimulus attributes: location, pitch, speaker identity or syllable. Sound acoustics were held constant, and their location was always equiprobable (50% left, 50% right). The only manipulation was to which sound dimension participants attended. We analysed the AEP data from healthy participants within an electrical neuroimaging framework. The presence of sound-elicited activations of visual cortices depended on the to-be-discriminated, goal-based dimension. The ACOP was elicited only when participants were required to discriminate sound location, but not when they attended to any of the non-spatial features. These results provide a further indication that the ACOP is not automatic. Moreover, our findings showcase the interplay between task-relevance and spatial (un)predictability in determining the presence of the cross-modal activation of visual cortices.

Multisensory gains in simple detection predict global cognition in schoolchildren

Scientific paper ArODES

Solange Denervaud, Edouard Gentaz, Pawel J. Matusz, Micah M. Murray

Scientific reports, 2020, vol. 10, article 1394, pp. 1-11

Link to the publication

Summary:

The capacity to integrate information from different senses is central for coherent perception across the lifespan from infancy onwards. Later in life, multisensory processes are related to cognitive functions, such as speech or social communication. During learning, multisensory processes can in fact enhance subsequent recognition memory for unisensory objects. These benefits can even be predicted; adults’ recognition memory performance is shaped by earlier responses in the same task to multisensory – but not unisensory – information. Everyday environments where learning occurs, such as classrooms, are inherently multisensory in nature. Multisensory processes may therefore scaffold healthy cognitive development. Here, we provide the first evidence of a predictive relationship between multisensory benefits in simple detection and higher-level cognition that is present already in schoolchildren. Multiple regression analyses indicated that the extent to which a child (N = 68; aged 4.5–15years) exhibited multisensory benefits on a simple detection task not only predicted benefits on a continuous recognition task involving naturalistic objects (p = 0.009), even when controlling for age, but also the same relative multisensory benefit also predicted working memory scores (p = 0.023) and fluid intelligence scores (p = 0.033) as measured using age-standardised test batteries. By contrast, gains in unisensory detection did not show significant prediction of any of the above global cognition measures. Our findings show that low-level multisensory processes predict higher-order memory and cognition already during childhood, even if still subject to ongoing maturation. These results call for revision of traditional models of cognitive development (and likely also education) to account for the role of multisensory processing, while also opening exciting opportunities to facilitate early learning through multisensory programs. More generally, these data suggest that a simple detection task could provide direct insights into the integrity of global cognition in schoolchildren and could be further developed as a readily-implemented and cost-effective screening tool for neurodevelopmental disorders, particularly in cases when standard neuropsychological tests are infeasible or unavailable.

Multisensory contributions to object recognition and memory across the life span

Book chapter ArODES

Pawel J. Matusz, Mark T. Wallace, Micah M. Murray

Dans Ramachandran, V.S., Sathian, K., Multisensory perception : from laboratory to clinic (Pp. 135-154). 2020, Cham, Switzerland : Elsevier

Link to the publication

Summary:

Everyday environments, such as classrooms or the High Street, typically stimulate multiple senses at once (i.e., are multisensory). Evidence from the last 40 years has characterized how multisensory perception unfolds and manifests neurophysiologically. However, a large majority of this research has focused on the effects of multisensory processes on instantaneous perception. This omission is important inasmuch as learning in multisensory settings is a rule rather than an exception. Furthermore, it is increasingly recognized that object representations are inherently multisensory in nature. This chapter reviews efforts to understand when and how multisensory information improves learning and memory, particularly in the context of single-trial encoding that emulates real-world settings. This chapter bridges multisensory findings and the more traditional, unisensory literature on object representations and provides a tentative roadmap for more scientifically based utilization of multisensory processes toward improving two crucial domains of everyday life, i.e., education and rehabilitation of sensory and cognitive functions.

2019

Expert attention: attentional allocation depends on the differential development of multisensory number representations

Scientific paper ArODES

Pawel J. Matusz, Rebecca Merkley, Michelle Faure, Gaia Scerif

Cognition, May 2019, vol. 186, pp. 171-177

Link to the publication

Summary:

Traditional models developed within cognitive psychology suggest that attention is deployed flexibly and irrespective of differences in expertise with to-be-attended stimuli. However, everyday environments are inherently multisensory and observers differ in familiarity with particular unisensory representations (e.g., number words, in contrast with digits). To test whether the predictions of the traditional models extend to such naturalistic settings, six-year-olds, 11-year-olds and young adults (N = 83) searched for predefined numerals amongst a small or large number of distractor digits, while distractor number words, digits or their combination were presented peripherally. Concurrently presented number words and audiovisual stimuli that were compatible with the target digit facilitated young children’s selective attention. In contrast, for older children and young adults number words and audiovisual stimuli that were incompatible with their visual targets resulted in a cost on reaction time. These findings suggest that multisensory and familiarity-based influences interact dynamically as they shape selective attention. Therefore, models of selective attention should include multisensory and familiarity-dependent constraints: more or less familiar object representations across modalities will be attended to differently, with their effects visible as predominant benefits for attention at one level but costs at another.

Brain and cognitive mechanisms of top–down attentional control in a multisensory world: benefits of electrical neuroimaging

Scientific paper ArODES

Pawel J. Matusz, Nora Turoman, Ruxandra I. Tivadar, Chrysa Retsa, Micah M. Murray

Journal of cognitive neuroscience, March 2019, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 412-430

Link to the publication

Summary:

In real-world environments, information is typically multisensory, and objects are a primary unit of information processing. Object recognition and action necessitate attentional selection of task-relevant from among task-irrelevant objects. However, the brain and cognitive mechanisms governing these processes remain not well understood. Here, we demonstrate that attentional selection of visual objects is controlled by integrated top–down audiovisual object representations (“attentional templates”) while revealing a new brain mechanism through which they can operate. In multistimulus (visual) arrays, attentional selection of objects in humans and animal models is traditionally quantified via “the N2pc component”: spatially selective enhancements of neural processing of objects within ventral visual cortices at approximately 150–300 msec poststimulus. In our adaptation of Folk et al.'s [Folk, C. L., Remington, R. W., & Johnston, J. C. Involuntary covert orienting is contingent on attentional control settings. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 18, 1030–1044, 1992] spatial cueing paradigm, visual cues elicited weaker behavioral attention capture and an attenuated N2pc during audiovisual versus visual search. To provide direct evidence for the brain, and so, cognitive, mechanisms underlying top–down control in multisensory search, we analyzed global features of the electrical field at the scalp across our N2pcs. In the N2pc time window (170–270 msec), color cues elicited brain responses differing in strength and their topography. This latter finding is indicative of changes in active brain sources. Thus, in multisensory environments, attentional selection is controlled via integrated top–down object representations, and so not only by separate sensory-specific top–down feature templates (as suggested by traditional N2pc analyses). We discuss how the electrical neuroimaging approach can aid research on top–down attentional control in naturalistic, multisensory settings and on other neurocognitive functions in the growing area of real-world neuroscience.

Mental rotation of digitally-rendered haptic objects

Scientific paper ArODES

Ruxandra I. Tivadar, Tom Rouillard, Cédrick Chappaz, Jean-François Knebel, Nora Turoman, Fatima Anaflous, Jean Roche, Pawel J. Matusz, Micah M. Murray

Frontiers in integrative neuroscience, March 2019, vol.13

Link to the publication

Summary:

Sensory substitution is an effective means to rehabilitate many visual functions after visual impairment or blindness. Tactile information, for example, is particularly useful for functions such as reading, mental rotation, shape recognition, or exploration of space. Extant haptic technologies typically rely on real physical objects or pneumatically driven renderings and thus provide a limited library of stimuli to users. New developments in digital haptic technologies now make it possible to actively simulate an unprecedented range of tactile sensations. We provide a proof-of-concept for a new type of technology (hereafter haptic tablet) that renders haptic feedback by modulating the friction of a flat screen through ultrasonic vibrations of varying shapes to create the sensation of texture when the screen is actively explored. We reasoned that participants should be able to create mental representations of letters presented in normal and mirror-reversed haptic form without the use of any visual information and to manipulate such representations in a mental rotation task. Healthy sighted, blindfolded volunteers were trained to discriminate between two letters (either L and P, or F and G; counterbalanced across participants) on a haptic tablet. They then tactually explored all four letters in normal or mirror-reversed form at different rotations (0°, 90°, 180°, and 270°) and indicated letter form (i.e., normal or mirror-reversed) by pressing one of two mouse buttons. We observed the typical effect of rotation angle on object discrimination performance (i.e., greater deviation from 0° resulted in worse performance) for trained letters, consistent with mental rotation of these haptically-rendered objects. We likewise observed generally slower and less accurate performance with mirror-reversed compared to prototypically oriented stimuli. Our findings extend existing research in multisensory object recognition by indicating that a new technology simulating active haptic feedback can support the generation and spatial manipulation of mental representations of objects. Thus, such haptic tablets can offer a new avenue to mitigate visual impairments and train skills dependent on mental object-based representations and their spatial manipulation.

Are we ready for real-world neuroscience?

Scientific paper ArODES

Pawel J. Matusz, Suzanne Dikker, Alexander G. Huth, Catherine Perrodin

Journal of cognitive neuroscience, March 2019, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 327-338

Link to the publication

Summary:

Real-world environments are typically dynamic, complex, and multisensory in nature and require the support of top–down attention and memory mechanisms for us to be able to drive a car, make a shopping list, or pour a cup of coffee. Fundamental principles of perception and functional brain organization have been established by research utilizing well-controlled but simplified paradigms with basic stimuli. The last 30 years ushered a revolution in computational power, brain mapping, and signal processing techniques. Drawing on those theoretical and methodological advances, over the years, research has departed more and more from traditional, rigorous, and well-understood paradigms to directly investigate cognitive functions and their underlying brain mechanisms in real-world environments. These investigations typically address the role of one or, more recently, multiple attributes of real-world environments. Fundamental assumptions about perception, attention, or brain functional organization have been challenged—by studies adapting the traditional paradigms to emulate, for example, the multisensory nature or varying relevance of stimulation or dynamically changing task demands. Here, we present the state of the field within the emerging heterogeneous domain of real-world neuroscience. To be precise, the aim of this Special Focus is to bring together a variety of the emerging “real-world neuroscientific” approaches. These approaches differ in their principal aims, assumptions, or even definitions of “real-world neuroscience” research. Here, we showcase the commonalities and distinctive features of the different “real-world neuroscience” approaches. To do so, four early-career researchers and the speakers of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society 2017 Meeting symposium under the same title answer questions pertaining to the added value of such approaches in bringing us closer to accurate models of functional brain organization and cognitive functions.

2018

Somatosensory plasticity in pediatric cerebral palsy following constraint-induced movement therapy

Scientific paper ArODES

Pawel J. Matusz, Alexandra Key, Shirley Gogliotti, Jennifer Pearson, Megan Auld, Micah M. Murray, Nathalie Maitre

Neural plasticity, Vol. 2018, Article ID 1891978

Link to the publication

Summary:

Cerebral palsy (CP) is predominantly a disorder of movement, with evidence of sensory-motor dysfunction. CIMT1 is a widely used treatment for hemiplegic CP. However, effects of CIMT on somatosensory processing remain unclear. To examine potential CIMT-induced changes in cortical tactile processing, we designed a prospective study, during which 10 children with hemiplegic CP (5 to 8 years old) underwent an intensive one-week-long non-removable hard-constraint CIMT. Before and directly after the treatment, we recorded their cortical event-related potential responses (ERPs) to calibrated light touch (versus a control stimulus) at the more and less-affected hand. To provide insights into the core neurophysiological deficits in light touch processing in CP as well as into the plasticity of this function following CIMT, we analyzed the ERPs within an electrical neuroimaging framework. After CIMT, brain areas governing the more affected hand responded to touch in configurations similar to those activated by the hemisphere controlling the less-affected hand before CIMT. Furthermore, dysfunctional patterns of brain activity, identified using hierarchical ERP cluster analyses, appeared reduced after CIMT in proportion with changes in sensory-motor measures (grip or pinch movements). These novel results suggest recovery of functional sensory activation as one possible mechanism underlying the effectiveness of intensive constraint-based therapy on motor functions in the more affected upper extremity in CP. However, maladaptive effects on the less-affected, constrained extremity may also occur. Our findings also highlight the use of electrical neuroimaging as feasible methodology to measure changes in tactile function after treatment even in young children, as it does not require active participation.

Sounds enhance visual completion processes

Scientific paper ArODES

Ruxandra I. Tivada, Chrysa Retsa, Nora Turoman, Pawel J. Matusz, Micah M. Murray

NeuroImage, 1 October 2018, vol.179, pp. 480-488

Link to the publication

What's what in auditory cortices?

Scientific paper ArODES

Chrysa Retsa, Pawel J. Matusz, Jan W.H. Schnupp, Micah M. Murray

NeuroImage, 1 August 2018, vol. 176, pp. 29-40

Link to the publication

Summary:

Distinct anatomical and functional pathways are postulated for analysing a sound's object-related (‘what’) and space-related (‘where’) information. It remains unresolved to which extent distinct or overlapping neural resources subserve specific object-related dimensions (i.e. who is speaking and what is being said can both be derived from the same acoustic input). To address this issue, we recorded high-density auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) while participants selectively attended and discriminated sounds according to their pitch, speaker identity, uttered syllable (‘what’ dimensions) or their location (‘where’). Sound acoustics were held constant across blocks; the only manipulation involved the sound dimension that participants had to attend to. The task-relevant dimension was varied across blocks. AEPs from healthy participants were analysed within an electrical neuroimaging framework to differentiate modulations in response strength from modulations in response topography; the latter of which forcibly follow from changes in the configuration of underlying sources. There were no behavioural differences in discrimination of sounds across the 4 feature dimensions. As early as 90ms post-stimulus onset, AEP topographies differed across ‘what’ conditions, supporting a functional sub-segregation within the auditory ‘what’ pathway. This study characterises the spatio-temporal dynamics of segregated, yet parallel, processing of multiple sound object-related feature dimensions when selective attention is directed to them.

Sensory dominance and multisensory integration as screening tools in aging

Scientific paper ArODES

Micah M. Murray, Alison F. Eardley, Trudi Edginton, Rebecca Oyekan, Emily Smyth, Pawel J. Matusz

Scientific Reports, To be published

Link to the publication

Summary:

Multisensory information typically confers neural and behavioural advantages over unisensory information. We used a simple audio-visual detection task to compare healthy young (HY), healthy older (HO) and mild-cognitive impairment (MCI) individuals. Neuropsychological tests assessed individuals’ learning and memory impairments. First, we provide much-needed clarification regarding the presence of enhanced multisensory benefits in both healthily and abnormally aging individuals. The pattern of sensory dominance shifted with healthy and abnormal aging to favour a propensity of auditory-dominant behaviour (i.e., detecting sounds faster than flashes). Notably, multisensory benefits were larger only in healthy older than younger individuals who were also visually-dominant. Second, we demonstrate that the multisensory detection task offers benefits as a time- and resourceeconomic MCI screening tool. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis demonstrated that MCI diagnosis could be reliably achieved based on the combination of indices of multisensory integration together with indices of sensory dominance. Our findings showcase the importance of sensory profiles in determining multisensory benefits in healthy and abnormal aging. Crucially, our findings open an exciting possibility for multisensory detection tasks to be used as a cost-effective screening tool. These findings clarify relationships between multisensory and memory functions in aging, while offering new avenues for improved dementia diagnostics.

2022

Serious games embedded in virtual reality as a visual rehabilitation tool for individuals with pediatric amblyopia :

Conference ArODES

a protocol for a crossover randomized controlled trial

Cristina Simon-Martinez, Ben Backus, Brian Dornbos, Maria-Paraskevi Antoniou, Martina Kropp, Gabrielle Thumann, Walid Bouthour, Heimo Steffen, Pawel J. Matusz

Proceedings of the 34th European Academy Of Childhood Disability (EACD)

Link to the conference

2021

To pay or not to pay attention :

Conference ArODES

classifying and interpreting visual selective attention frequency features

Laura Fanda, Yashin Dicente Cid, Pawel J. Matusz, Davide Calvaresi

Explainable and Transparent AI and Multi-Agent Systems : Third International Workshop, EXTRAAMAS 2021, Virtual Event, May 3–7, 2021, Revised Selected Papers

Link to the conference

Summary:

Selective attention is the ability to promote the processing of objects important for the accomplishment of our behavioral goals (target objects) over the objects not important to those goals (distractor objects). Previous investigations have shown that the mechanisms of selective attention contribute to enhancing perception in both simple daily tasks and more complex activities requiring learning new information. Recently, it has been verified that selective attention to target objects and distractor objects is separable in the frequency domain, using Logistic Regression (LR) and Support Vector Machines (SVMs) classification. However, discerning dynamics of target and distractor objects in the context of selective attention has not been accomplished yet. This paper extends the investigations on the possible classification and interpretation of distraction and intention solely relying on neural activity (frequency features). In particular, this paper (i) classifies distractor objects vs. target object replicating the LR classification of prior studies, extending the analysis by (ii) interpreting the coefficient weights relating to all features with a focus on N2PC features, and (iii) retrains an LR classifier with the features deemed important by the interpretation analysis. As a result of the interpretation methods, we have successfully decreased the feature size to 7.3% of total features – i.e., from 19,072 to 1,386 features – while recording only a 0.04 loss in performance accuracy score—i.e., from 0.65 to 0.61. Additionally, the interpretation of the classifiers’ coefficient weights unveiled new evidence regarding frequency which has been discussed along with the paper.

Achievements

PEOPLE@HES-SO
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Matusz Paul

Professeur-e HES Assistant-e

Main skills

Brain imaging (EEG, MRI)

Sensory & brain rehabilitation

Neurotechnology

Cognitive development

Attention

Professeur-e HES Assistant-e

PEOPLE@HES-SO Directory and Skills inventory

Matusz Paul

Professeur-e HES Assistant-e

Main skills

Brain imaging (EEG, MRI)

Sensory & brain rehabilitation

Neurotechnology

Cognitive development

Attention

Professeur-e HES Assistant-e

PEOPLE@HES-SO
Directory and Skills inventory