Jan R. Wessel
@janw
Clement T. & Sylvia H. Hanson Family Chair, Professor Cognitive Control Collaborative guy, #FirstGen wessellab.org | cognitivecontrol.net
We're excited to welcome three new post-docs to the lab this month: Dr. Chenye Bao (University of Missouri) Dr. Gizem Filiz (Washington University in St. Louis) Dr. Veronica Zarr (University of Utah) Exciting times ahead!
First, we found that the pupil response once again tracked conscious error awareness. Moreover, atomoxetine indeed significantly changed this phasic pupil dilation response to errors. So the causal manipulation of phasic autonomic reactivity to errors worked.
Here, we tested whether this blunted orienting response to errors causally contributes to conscious error detection (as predicted by some theories) or not. 30 healthy older adults performed an error awareness on 80mg atomoxetine (an sNRI to modulate autonomic responsivity) and on placebo.
There is much more in the paper, including multi-variate decoding analyses of the EEG, EMG, and a lateralization analysis of STN. That latter analysis shows that β bursts in the bilateral STN are extremely tightly coupled, and there is little evidence for lateralized β in STN during stopping.
Moreover, STN beta burst rates were strongly coupled with fronto-central beta burst rates during all trials. This suggests that the fronto-STN circuit flexibly coordinates behavioral adjustments by rapidly inhibiting, releasing, and re-inhibiting movement, depending on the contextual requirements.
So what are these precise adjustments? On global stop-trials, STN β burst rates kept rising above baseline levels after the initial increase, sustaining there for over a second. On selective stop & ignore trials, where some (or all) movement had to continue, STN β bursts first went DOWN again.
There's a bunch of findings in the paper, and I won't go over all of them. Most notably, STN initially showed the same fast β burst increase across 'global' stop trials (all movements are stopped), response-selective stop trials (only some movements are stopped), and even ignore trials (no stopping)
So Mario made a stimulus- and response- selective task, where only some signals meant "stop", whereas others had to be ignored. Moreover, sometimes only some movements had to stop, while others had to continue.
Second, unlike the SST, real-world stopping is 'response-selective': most often, only some movements are stopped, while others continue. In other words, you can stop walking across the road without dropping your grocery bag. In the SST, you stop all initiated movements.
First, unlike the stop-signal task (SST), real-world stopping is 'stimulus-selective': movements are stopped only to some salient stimuli - unlike in the SST, where every salient signal means 'stop'. Picture crossing this road: you only stop walking after a car horn, but not a ship's air horn.
However, this work has so far been limited to very simple stop-signal tasks. That is because human STN recordings have to be performed during neurosurgery, where cognition and behavior are substantially impaired. Stop-signal tasks, however, are a poor model of real-world control.
Big day in the household as my wife Kristi Hendrickson won the Dean's Scholar Award for outstanding tenure package, and I was named Clement T. and Sylvia H. Hanson Family Chair of Psychological and Brain Sciences. Many thanks to the University of Iowa for continuing to support both of us!
The NoA of one of our R01s finally came through. You know what they say: Better six months too late and cut by 25% than never.
Currently trying to get a hold of literally anyone in a German lab and received out of office messages from - the PI directing me to the postdoc - the postdoc directing me to the grad student - the grad student saying that they will not be reachable in any way under any circumstances at all.
Had a great time at @cogneuronews.bsky.social It's become my favorite meeting over the last few years. Kudos to the organizers for another outstanding program! Boston is quite lovely, too. #CNS2025 #CCC #LotsOfMoneyAtIowa
I'm a little afraid that they dispatched @russpoldrack.bsky.social to my house to kick me in the groin just for good measure 😂
Hey, the new Psych Science looks great. I think I may even submit something there. The New Psych Science: "U-U-U-Ultra Reject" 😂
Please welcome the world's newest PhD, Dr. @cheolsoh.bsky.social. I'm personally very excited.
I thought of this this morning as I was eating an egg btw. Do yourself a favor and go to an African store and pick up this stuff, put a few drops on the yolk of a HALFED HB egg (soy sauce works in a pinch). No extra salt needed. Little dab of mayo on top and down the hatch. Thank me later.
The end of summer would be very sad, if not for the best part of every year: First-Generation Student Brain Research Workshop! Great group of students this year, as always. 4 days filled with a ton of fun for us and them. This was our last year with NSF funding, but we'll do it again next year!
Ok, let's hope this takes because for once I'd be EARLY to a social media thing :) Hi #psychscisky #neuroskyence, I'm Jan, I run a Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at Iowa. I like the outdoors, animals, and building stuff. I am also the only German ever born that likes to laugh. I once did it in public.