Zhang A, Zhang H, Zhu Y
… +5 more, Guo Y, Zhuang Z, Ma T, Cai Y, Liu L
Ann N Y Acad Sci
· 2026 Jun · PMID 42229374
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Tactile paving is essential for ensuring the safe and independent travel of visually impaired individuals in urban environments. However, existing segmentation models often fail to generalize well across diverse scenario...Tactile paving is essential for ensuring the safe and independent travel of visually impaired individuals in urban environments. However, existing segmentation models often fail to generalize well across diverse scenarios and rely heavily on color information, neglecting the physical structure of tactile patterns. This article introduces EGM-Unet, a novel segmentation method that incorporates an edge-aware multi-scale attentional fusion block (EMAF-Block) to enhance edge feature extraction, a recursive gated attention (RGA) mechanism to focus on critical regions, and a multidimensional cooperative aggregation attention (MCAA) module to refine texture features. Additionally, we utilize CLIPSeg with a correlative self-attention (CSA) mechanism to improve generalization. Our experiments demonstrate that EGM-Unet outperforms standard U-Net and other mainstream models, achieving a mean IoU of 93.73%, an IoU of 89.09%, and an accuracy of 98.56%. These results highlight the robustness of our method in segmenting tactile paving regions across various materials and lighting conditions, providing a solid foundation for high-precision tactile paving perception.
Albury AW, Bianco R, Johnson AP
… +1 more, Penhune VB
Ann N Y Acad Sci
· 2026 Jun · PMID 42229373
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The ability to predict or anticipate musical events contributes to music-related pleasure and memory; however, their contributions to learning to play a melody have been less well-explored. In this study, we investigated...The ability to predict or anticipate musical events contributes to music-related pleasure and memory; however, their contributions to learning to play a melody have been less well-explored. In this study, we investigated how musical predictability and pleasure influenced how nonmusicians learned to play short melodies, as well as post-learning recall. Participants listened to and rated perceived pleasure for melodies that varied in predictability while we measured pupil dilation as an index of attention and arousal. Participants then learned to play the ending of each melody. We found that pupil dilation during listening was sensitive to musical predictability and liking ratings, with pupil size increasing for more liked and more predictable melodies. During the motor learning task, participants' asynchrony scores were modulated by liking and predictability: More predictable melodies resulted in lower asynchrony overall, whereas more liked melodies elicited steeper learning slopes. During recall, more predictable melodies were better recognized. Finally, individuals with better recognition performance also showed greater pupil dilation during the initial listening, along with steeper motor learning slopes. Altogether, these findings indicate that arousal is linked to predictability and pleasure, and that all three factors are related to auditory encoding, motor learning, and explicit recognition of musical stimuli.
Le Guennec M, Tchechmedjiev A, Kelso JAS
… +1 more, Lagarde J
Ann N Y Acad Sci
· 2026 Jun · PMID 42229371
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How does a person's cultural background and prior experience with diverse rhythms of music and life affect basic sensorimotor skills? The present research investigated invariance and variations in synchronization abiliti...How does a person's cultural background and prior experience with diverse rhythms of music and life affect basic sensorimotor skills? The present research investigated invariance and variations in synchronization abilities among French and Indian non-musician and non-dancer students. Participants were instructed to tap along to a regular sound sequence, whose rate was increased in a stepwise fashion. Relative phase variability and frequency mismatch did not show significant differences between the groups, indicating comparable levels of performance. Surprisingly, however, French participants exhibited a tendency to tap before the sound (considered ubiquitous in previous studies), whereas Indian participants exhibited a mean asynchrony close to zero. When synchronization was lost at higher rates, the frequency mismatch between movement and metronome showed that only French participants overestimated the metronome rate. To our knowledge, using an empirical geographic proxy assuming a causal role of enculturation, this study is the first to provide evidence for such similarities and variations in the basic ability to synchronize movement with sound. The fact that enculturation could affect functions as elementary as simple synchronization suggests the need for a more systematic development of comparative studies in the classic paradigms typical of the human sciences.
Cangelosi M, Cavicchioli M, Mesce M
… +15 more, Torelli A, Benfante A, Romeo A, Nimbi FM, Castelli L, Ghiotto N, Sances G, de Icco R, Tassorelli C, Sarzi-Puttini P, di Franco M, Iannucceli C, Tanzilli A, Galli F, Bottiroli S
Ann N Y Acad Sci
· 2026 Jun · PMID 42229368
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Chronic migraine (CM) and fibromyalgia (FM) are central sensitization pain conditions, with FM representing a prototypical nociplastic disorder. While both involve altered pain processing, their psychological profiles ma...Chronic migraine (CM) and fibromyalgia (FM) are central sensitization pain conditions, with FM representing a prototypical nociplastic disorder. While both involve altered pain processing, their psychological profiles may differ, particularly in comorbid forms. In this cross-sectional multicenter study, 318 women were assessed: 97 with CM (M = 47.4 ± 12.9), 130 with FM (M = 49.8 ± 12.1), and 91 with CM+FM (M = 49.9 ± 9.9). Participants completed standardized self-reports of depression, anxiety, psychological distress, and defensive functioning. Women with CM showed more preserved affective regulation, whereas FM and CM+FM did not differ significantly. Cluster analysis identified three phenotypes: vulnerable (n = 73; 16% CM, 43% FM, 41% CM+FM), intermediate (n = 122; 32% CM, 43% FM, 25% CM+FM), and resilient (n = 76; 50% CM, 29% FM, 21% CM+FM). CM patients were mainly represented in the resilient cluster, while CM+FM patients were overrepresented in the vulnerable cluster. These findings indicate distinct psychological functioning in CM compared to FM and highlight greater psychological complexity in comorbid cases. Overall, results support a dimensional, transdiagnostic model of chronic pain, underscoring psychological functioning as a central factor for personalized care.
Ann N Y Acad Sci
· 2026 Jun · PMID 42229365
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Recent data show that loneliness is more prevalent in lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs), compared to higher-income countries (HICs). This evidence suggests that loneliness is not simply an issue in HICs or a res...Recent data show that loneliness is more prevalent in lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs), compared to higher-income countries (HICs). This evidence suggests that loneliness is not simply an issue in HICs or a result of living alone. Instead, loneliness is closely tied to structural factors, some of which may be more salient in LMICs. In this perspective article, the contextual aspects that are closely tied to loneliness in research from LMICs, where the majority of the world's population resides, are presented. The discussed aspects go beyond the differentiation between individualism versus collectivism found in loneliness literature from HICs. Instead, the article sheds light on the often-cyclical relationships between loneliness and poverty, political instability, stigma, migration, culture, religion, and climate change. Shedding light on loneliness research from LMICs, this perspective provides novel and exciting directions for loneliness research in both HICs and LMICs. As these structural influences are often entangled and mostly affect those populations who are already socially and economically disadvantaged, this perspective echoes scholars who view loneliness as a social justice issue and, additionally, calls for recognizing loneliness as a truly global phenomenon.
Ann N Y Acad Sci
· 2026 Jun · PMID 42217252
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Gender categorization of faces and body silhouettes is fundamental to human behavior. However, it remains unclear whether encoding of gender similarity of faces and body silhouettes engages similar or distinct neural mec...Gender categorization of faces and body silhouettes is fundamental to human behavior. However, it remains unclear whether encoding of gender similarity of faces and body silhouettes engages similar or distinct neural mechanisms at different stages of the categorical processing. We addressed this issue by recording magnetoencephalography signals while female participants viewed faces or body silhouettes presented in a repetition suppression (RS) paradigm. We found that early neural RS effects within 200 ms after stimulus onset occurred for female faces in high-beta (22-30 Hz) power in the left inferior frontal cortex (IFC) but for female body silhouettes in alpha band (9-14 Hz) power in the cuneus and in beta band (15-20 Hz) power in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). RS of beta band (15-20 Hz) power in the left temporoparietal junction (TPJ) occurred for both female faces and body silhouettes at 200-300 ms. Bidirectional alpha-band transfer between the IFC and TPJ was observed for female faces, whereas unidirectional alpha/beta band transfer from the TPJ to ACC and then to cuneus was evident for female body silhouettes. Our findings suggest a two-stage model of neural encoding of intragender similarity during gender categorization of faces and body silhouettes in women.
Ann N Y Acad Sci
· 2026 Jun · PMID 42212405
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The origin of a typological suffixing bias-the tendency to exploit suffixes more often than prefixes to express grammatical meanings-is unknown. One hypothesis suggests that there is a cognitive bias favoring sequences w...The origin of a typological suffixing bias-the tendency to exploit suffixes more often than prefixes to express grammatical meanings-is unknown. One hypothesis suggests that there is a cognitive bias favoring sequences with a variable part appended at the end of a fixed part rather than sequences with a variable part appended before a fixed part. We aimed to determine whether such cognitive bias exists and whether it is domain-general or language-specific. We set up an artificial language learning experiment with native speakers of Arabic. In Arabic, grammatical meanings are expressed via vowel templates rather than by adding a variable ending (suffix) or beginning (prefix) to fixed syllabic constituents (stems). This allowed us to minimize the effect of native language typology (whether it uses suffixes or prefixes) on cognitive performance. We did not observe evidence of a cognitive bias in Arabic speakers and suggest that the individual cognitive bias observed in earlier studies is defined by the typological properties of participants' native languages. This casts doubt on the possibility that domain-general cognitive bias could lead to the emergence of typological suffixing bias across world languages. We propose several possible origins of typological bias; each requires empirical verification.
Sun J, Liao G, Feng Y
… +6 more, Yin R, Karimov R, Huang K, Yang Y, Ullmann A, Brauner N
Ann N Y Acad Sci
· 2026 May · PMID 42189731
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Laminar flow of viscous non-Newtonian fluids in annular pipes is of considerable practical importance. The Carreau-Yasuda (C-Y) model provides unmatched flexibility to characterize the complex rheology of a broad class o...Laminar flow of viscous non-Newtonian fluids in annular pipes is of considerable practical importance. The Carreau-Yasuda (C-Y) model provides unmatched flexibility to characterize the complex rheology of a broad class of non-Newtonian fluids used in the petroleum and chemical industries, including polymer solutions, drilling fluids, and foams. Despite its extensive applicability, the laminar flow characteristics of C-Y fluids in annular geometries have not been systematically investigated in the literature. We establish a comprehensive analytical-numerical framework for laminar C-Y flow in annuli. A generalized Reynolds number and friction factor correlation are derived via the Rabinowitsch-Mooney (R-M) method for annular C-Y flow, unifying pressure-drop flow-rate prediction. Asymptotic solutions for weak and strong shear-thinning conditions are derived via perturbation. Systematic comparisons with numerical simulations and R-M solutions delineate the valid parameter ranges of each method. Within these ranges, the solutions quantify the effects of key rheological and flow parameters on velocity profiles and flow rate, identifying dominant flow-governing parameters under varying conditions. This framework combines the simplicity of closed-form solutions with numerical accuracy, delivering practical value for hydraulic design and pressure-drop prediction in oil drilling and well-completion operations.
Alkhatatbeh T, Alkhatatbeh A, Liao Y
… +4 more, Zhang Z, Fang H, Chen W, Zhang R
Ann N Y Acad Sci
· 2026 May · PMID 42179107
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Intra-articular hyaluronic acid (IAHA) injections are used for knee osteoarthritis, but clinical response is highly variable. This study evaluated whether quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) radiomics provides...Intra-articular hyaluronic acid (IAHA) injections are used for knee osteoarthritis, but clinical response is highly variable. This study evaluated whether quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) radiomics provides incremental predictive value over clinical variables and assessed the impact of cross-validation strategies on performance. Using data from the Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI), we identified 262 participants (329 knees) treated with IAHA, of whom 106 participants (128 knees) had baseline 3D double-echo steady-state (DESS) MRI suitable for automated segmentation and radiomics extraction. We compared clinical-only, radiomics-only, and combined models. Under rigorous participant-level grouped cross-validation, the clinical-only model achieved the highest performance (ROC-AUC: 0.716; 95% CI: 0.689-0.742 in the full cohort; ROC-AUC: 0.718 in the MRI subset). The radiomics-only model failed to predict response (ROC-AUC: 0.499; 95% CI: 0.446-0.549), and the combined model (ROC-AUC: 0.693; 95% CI: 0.646-0.736) did not improve upon clinical predictors alone. A knee-level sensitivity analysis yielded higher but artificially inflated estimates (combined AUC: 0.773), confirming the necessity of participant-level grouping. We conclude that routine clinical variables, principally baseline pain and age, outperform DESS-MRI radiomics for predicting IAHA response. This study demonstrates that improper validation strategies significantly overestimate radiomics utility, highlighting the critical necessity of participant-level grouping in musculoskeletal imaging research to prevent data leakage.
Ann N Y Acad Sci
· 2026 May · PMID 42175769
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Resilience-the capacity to adapt, recover, and engage dynamically with adversity-has emerged as a central construct for understanding psychological health. Although meditation offers a promising route for cultivating res...Resilience-the capacity to adapt, recover, and engage dynamically with adversity-has emerged as a central construct for understanding psychological health. Although meditation offers a promising route for cultivating resilience, current scholarship rarely differentiates between the mechanisms of focused attention meditation (FAM) and open monitoring meditation (OMM), thereby obscuring their distinct contributions to adaptive functioning. This perspective article integrates contemporary resilience theory with cognitive-affective models of meditation to propose the Meditation-Resilience Interaction Model (MRIM). The MRIM conceptualizes resilience as a dynamic triad of recoverability, vulnerability, and interactivity, each mapping onto distinct neurocognitive and regulatory processes. Specifically, FAM enhances recoverability via executive control, whereas OMM attenuates vulnerability and facilitates interactivity through decentering. Importantly, these practices operate synergistically: FAM provides the essential attentional scaffold for OMM to exert its broader resilience-promoting effects. By unifying contemplative science and resilience theory, the MRIM advances a process-based framework that informs personalized meditation interventions and lays a robust conceptual foundation for future empirical validation.
Ann N Y Acad Sci
· 2026 May · PMID 42175759
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Music listening induces a pleasurable urge to move, termed groove, which the active inference framework explains as a motivation for bodily movement that emerges to refine beat and metrical predictions under rhythmic unc...Music listening induces a pleasurable urge to move, termed groove, which the active inference framework explains as a motivation for bodily movement that emerges to refine beat and metrical predictions under rhythmic uncertainty. If this is the case, does bodily movement modulate the groove sensation? We asked 42 participants to rate urge-to-move and pleasure after withholding movement or tapping on the onbeat or offbeat within a four-beat meter while listening to melodies with three degrees of syncopation. At the low degree of syncopation, urge-to-move and pleasure ratings were higher in both the onbeat and offbeat tapping conditions compared with the no-tapping condition. Furthermore, relative to the offbeat and no-tapping conditions, onbeat tapping increased neural and behavioral entrainment to the beat, as reflected in the steady-state auditory evoked potentials in electroencephalography and intertap interval variability, respectively, and these measures of entrainment were positively associated with groove ratings. The results suggest that tapping enhances the sensation of groove, but the underlying mechanism may not be active inference.
Czeisler MÉ, Weaver MD, Xin Q
… +2 more, Quan SF, Czeisler CA
Ann N Y Acad Sci
· 2026 May · PMID 42153986
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Beijing has undergone profound economic growth and ecological change this century. Given the roles of sleep and mental health in worker performance, the objective of this analysis was to characterize sleep and mental hea...Beijing has undergone profound economic growth and ecological change this century. Given the roles of sleep and mental health in worker performance, the objective of this analysis was to characterize sleep and mental health among adult residents of Beijing. During September 29, 2022, through October 5, 2022, cross-sectional surveys available in English and Mandarin were administered to 2000 adults with residence in Beijing. Among 1741 adults in the final analytic sample, descriptive statistics and multivariable regression models were used to characterize sleep, mental health, and their relationship. Of 1730 respondents (response rate: 65.4%), 55.9% averaged 7-9 h of sleep duration per 24 h, and 42.1% had symptoms of insomnia or obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Of respondents diagnosed with insomnia or OSA, 85.2% were untreated. Additionally, 42.5% of respondents were experiencing adverse mental health symptoms. In models adjusted for demographics and sleep characteristics, the variables most strongly associated with adverse mental health symptoms were poor self-rated health, frequent sleep medication use, low sleep quality, and short sleep duration. Insufficient or impaired sleep, risk of sleep disorders, and adverse mental health symptoms were common among employed adults in Beijing. These findings reveal a significant unmet need to address sleep health and mental health in this population.
Ann N Y Acad Sci
· 2026 May · PMID 42153980
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Ellipsis refers to the omission of words or phrases, requiring listeners to fill in the missing elements from earlier in the conversation. Ambiguity in elliptical questions, such as "How about X," has received little att...Ellipsis refers to the omission of words or phrases, requiring listeners to fill in the missing elements from earlier in the conversation. Ambiguity in elliptical questions, such as "How about X," has received little attention in research on children's testimony. This study examined how 3- to 5-year-olds (n = 78) and adults (n = 30) interpreted "how about" questions. In the Sentence task, participants heard a statement describing one animal chasing another, followed by a "how about" question about a novel animal in a different array. Children and adults usually interpreted the "how about" question as asking about the novel animal as a subject. In the Question tasks, the first question clearly referred to an animal as either a subject ("Who's the [animal] chasing?") or an object ("Who's chasing the [animal]?"), followed by a "how about" question about a novel animal. Although the first question influenced both children's and adults' interpretation of the "how about" questions, children exhibited subject bias, often interpreting the "how about" question as referring to the novel animal as a subject. These findings suggest that ambiguous "how about" questions may lead to misinterpretation, and highlight the need to examine children's understanding of elliptical questions more broadly.
Ann N Y Acad Sci
· 2026 May · PMID 42153973
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Individual differences in auditory-motor synchronization ability, as measured by performance on a speech-to-speech synchronization test (SSS test), may explain variations in early auditory music processing, independent o...Individual differences in auditory-motor synchronization ability, as measured by performance on a speech-to-speech synchronization test (SSS test), may explain variations in early auditory music processing, independent of formal musical training. We investigated whether high synchronizers, identified through this test, exhibit enhanced neural encoding and deviance detection in response to music, even in the absence of musical expertise. Using electroencephalography in nonmusicians, we compared neural responses between high and low synchronizers during a passive auditory musical oddball paradigm featuring melodic and rhythmic deviations. Our results reveal pronounced neurophysiological differences between groups at early preattentive stages. High synchronizers demonstrated significantly larger N100 amplitudes to melody onsets, indicating enhanced initial sensory encoding. They also exhibited superior cortical tracking of the musical envelope, as measured by multivariate temporal response function (mTRF) modeling. Crucially, high synchronizers exhibited enhanced mismatch negativity (MMN) responses to both melodic and rhythmic deviations, indicating stronger automatic detection of deviance. However, no significant correlations were found between mTRF accuracy, N100, and MMN amplitudes, suggesting distinct neural mechanisms for initial sensory encoding, envelope tracking, and higher-order deviance detection. These findings establish that inherent auditory-motor synchronization ability predicts a robust neurophysiological advantage in the early, preattentive processing of musical structure.
Gaillard T, Contreras V, Martinez D
… +1 more, Viollet S
Ann N Y Acad Sci
· 2026 May · PMID 42148885
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Studying the sensorimotor response of flying insects is usually done in tethered conditions. The righting reflex, for example, is studied with insects that are released either from a rigid or a magnetic tether. The attac...Studying the sensorimotor response of flying insects is usually done in tethered conditions. The righting reflex, for example, is studied with insects that are released either from a rigid or a magnetic tether. The attached tether or magnet may, however, induce proprioceptive biases and behavioral artifacts through physical contact and additional mass or inertia. Here, we propose a contactless tether apparatus based on acoustic levitation. It relies on the emission of ultrasonic waves on both sides of the device, creating standing pressure waves-visualized using the schlieren technique-that enable insect levitation. We demonstrate its effectiveness on living hoverflies Episyrphus balteatus. By quantifying the rate of motion of four natural body markers (head, abdomen, wing, and leg) and the wingbeat response, we show that hoverfly levitation can be stable for a long period of time, with minimal behavioral perturbation under ultrasound stimulation. We further illustrate the application of ultrasound tethering to study the hoverfly righting reflex. Beyond hoverflies, ultrasound tethering was applied successfully to levitate other insect species, such as dead Drosophila and ants. More broadly, ultrasound tethering might be relevant in the context of behavioral studies with flying or walking insects.
Videsen SKA, Raimondi T, Sørensen PM
… +8 more, Pedersen MB, Zimmer WMX, van Geel NCF, Risch D, Cook P, King SL, Ravignani A, Madsen PT
Ann N Y Acad Sci
· 2026 May · PMID 42145236
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Male sperm whales produce loud, low-frequency clicks at low repetition rates. By combining measurements of source properties with sound propagation modeling, we show that sperm whale slow clicks with source levels > 200 ...Male sperm whales produce loud, low-frequency clicks at low repetition rates. By combining measurements of source properties with sound propagation modeling, we show that sperm whale slow clicks with source levels > 200 dB re 1 µPa (peak-peak) are the loudest communication signal of any mammal, and that such loud, low-frequency clicks in deep ocean waters have an estimated active space of up to 70 km. We show that these slow clicks are highly rhythmic at rates of 0.1-0.3 Hz, which is an order of magnitude slower than other rhythmic communication signals among mammals and birds. Thus, slow clicks may allow for timing information to be maintained over extreme distances, and we, therefore, propose that sperm whale slow click production is a low entropy, long-range communication signal that may offer honest advertisement through rhythm-keeping to distant receivers. We speculate that the production of such loud, rhythmic clicks at extremely slow rates may be achieved by the sperm whales using extrinsic echo information from the environment to maintain extreme isochrony.
Møller C, Celma-Miralles A, Borges HB
… +4 more, Stupacher J, Christensen CB, Vuust P, Kidmose P
Ann N Y Acad Sci
· 2026 May · PMID 42127316
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In polyrhythms, two pulse trains at different rates are presented simultaneously, yet listeners perceive only one as the underlying beat. This makes polyrhythms ideal for studying neural correlates of divergent percepts...In polyrhythms, two pulse trains at different rates are presented simultaneously, yet listeners perceive only one as the underlying beat. This makes polyrhythms ideal for studying neural correlates of divergent percepts from identical stimuli. Across two electroencephalographic studies, we distinguished acoustic balance from perceptual ambiguity by designing stimuli that controlled for acoustic imbalances within the power spectrum and perceptual biases in polyrhythm beat perception. Using frequency tagging, we assessed metrical priming effects in 3:4 (Study 1: perceptual ambiguity) and 2:3 (Study 2: acoustic balance) polyrhythms under three conditions: no priming, fast-pulse priming, and slow-pulse priming. In Study 1, priming the 3-beat slightly increased neural activity at its periodicity. In Study 2, participants tapped the perceived beat after each trial, enabling trial classification by subjective perception. This revealed close correspondence between perceived beat and neural activity, an effect obscured in the priming-based analysis. Tapping responses revealed differences in priming success across conditions and individuals, highlighting the need for trial-by-trial measures of perceived beat in polyrhythm studies assessing endogenous contributions to beat perception. Together, the two studies show that polyrhythm perception is influenced by metrical priming at both behavioral and neural levels, but is also constrained by perceptual biases.
Rotenstreich L, Vituri A, Shahar M
… +5 more, Eliyahu K, Farkas O, Edery N, Moss L, Marom A
Ann N Y Acad Sci
· 2026 May · PMID 42127299
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The downward pulling of the mouth corner in humans is attributed to the depressor anguli oris (DAO), yet the evolutionary history of this muscle remains unresolved. Classical comparative accounts have often assumed that...The downward pulling of the mouth corner in humans is attributed to the depressor anguli oris (DAO), yet the evolutionary history of this muscle remains unresolved. Classical comparative accounts have often assumed that nonhuman primates (NHPs) possess a homologous lower component within the caninus-triangularis complex (CTC), but this proposition has not been systematically tested. Here, we examined the architecture of the CTC across 10 primate species using a multimodal anatomical approach combining gross dissection, morphometric analysis, histology, and fiber-level quantification. We analyzed 30 NHP specimens and 61 human specimens to determine whether NHPs possess a discrete mandibular muscle homologous to the human DAO. In all human specimens, the CTC consisted of two distinct bellies, the levator anguli oris and DAO, whereas in NHPs, including great apes, the CTC appeared as a continuous sheet lacking a discrete mandibular DAO homolog. Morphometric and fiber-level analyses supported this distinction, revealing a characteristic human pattern around the labial commissure consistent with bipartite organization. Although the present study does not test behavioral function directly, it motivates the hypothesis that this derived muscular architecture may have been recruited into an expressive facial signal associated with helplessness during infancy in the context of cooperative breeding.