Thermonociceptive stimulation can modulate ongoing neural oscillations. However, it remains unclear whether these modulations reflect subjective stimulus perception, objective stimulus intensity, or stimulus saliency, i.e., the capacity of a stimulus to stand out from its environment.

To address this, thirty-five healthy participants received sustained periodic thermonociceptive stimulation during a periodic oddball paradigm. 64-channel electroencephalography was recorded and analyzed using a frequency-tagging approach. Oddball stimuli were delivered at either a higher or lower intensity than baseline stimulation (“high” and “low” oddball conditions). Continuous perception ratings were collected using a Visual Analog Scale throughout the stimulation to track moment-to-moment changes in stimulus perception.

In the high-oddball condition, oddball stimuli induced changes in perception ratings and ongoing oscillations. In contrast, in the low-oddball condition, oddball stimuli did not elicit changes in perception ratings or neural oscillations. This unexpected lack of dissociation between stimulus intensity and saliency prevented disentangling their effects.

Conducted as a Registered Report (RR) with the Peer Community in Registered Reports, this project was peer-reviewed prior to data collection, with hypotheses and analyses specified a priori and all data and analysis scripts openly shared. While not being able to disentangle the main hypothesis, the investigation provides a transparent foundation for follow-up studies and illustrates how the RR framework supports the dissemination of rigorous findings regardless of outcome.

Paired associative stimulation (PAS) can induce long-term potentiation (LTP)- and depression (LTD)-like effects in the human motor system that are timing-dependent, long-lasting, and input-specific. This modulation is achieved through repeated application of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) pulses over the primary motor cortex (M1), time-locked with electrical stimulation of the contralateral median nerve. Previous literature has primarily assessed the effectiveness of M1-PAS by measuring corticospinal excitability (i.e., motor-evoked potentials, MEPs) or behavioral outcomes. Concurrent TMS and electroencephalography (TMS-EEG) co-registration can provide further evidence about cortical fingerprints of PAS-induced plasticity.

In the present work, we leveraged TMS-EEG to track cortical dynamics related to M1-PAS, aiming to characterize the neurophysiological substrates of this protocol. This investigation provides evidence about the specificity of early TMS-evoked potential (TEP) components in reflecting changes in M1 functional activity underpinning PAS effects and LTP-/LTD-like plasticity induction.

In two counterbalanced, within-subject sessions, 30 healthy participants underwent standard M1-PAS protocols inducing LTP-like (interstimulus interval - ISI - 25 ms) and LTD-like (ISI 10 ms) effects. MEPs and M1-TEPs were measured before, immediately after, and 30 minutes post-protocol, at supra- (110%) and sub- (90%) resting motor threshold intensities.

Results replicated MEP enhancement and inhibition after PAS_LTP and PAS_LTD. P30 and N100 M1-TEP components were significantly modulated immediately following PAS, but only in suprathreshold conditions. Exploratory analyses showed that baseline P60 amplitude predicted P30 modulation after PAS_LTP. These findings support the specificity of early TEP components as biomarkers of PAS-induced plasticity.

Experiments contrasting conscious and masked stimulus processing have shaped and continue to shape cognitive and neurobiological theories of consciousness. Our research started from the simple observation that report-based paradigms often qualify as dual-tasking situations. In this preregistered study, we examined the dual-task architecture of a masked response priming paradigm, where prime visibility was assessed trial-wise using a subjective measure. Our aims were twofold: to estimate the influence of response-related parameters on the masked priming effects, and to study the neural underpinnings of our dual-tasking manipulations.

In a metacontrast masking experiment using event-related potentials (ERPs), participants rapidly discriminated a target via keypress and then reported prime visibility either vocally or manually (factor "modality"). The visibility measure was a variant of the perceptual awareness scale (PAS) with either two or four items (factor “complexity”). Behavioral results showed standard dual-task RT costs, and unimodal and higher complexity conditions resulted in slower responses, consistent with interference and shared-resource accounts. Unexpectedly, masked priming effects were larger in single-task than dual-task conditions, and dual-task manipulations did not significantly modulate priming.

ERPs in the preregistered P3b window were similar across single and dual tasks, but unimodal dual-task trials elicited larger P3b amplitudes than cross-modal trials. These results demonstrate that modality of the prime-related, second task alters response preparation for the priming task, underscoring dual-task characteristics as a critical design consideration in masked response priming. This modulation offers a clear direction for future work on how concurrent task demands shape masked priming. (IPA retrievable under: https://osf.io/ds2w5)

Elderly people and patients with neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s Disease (PD) rely on arithmetic skills to lead an independent life. Activities such as financial transactions or using public transport require intact abilities to manipulate numbers with different arithmetic operations. However, research on cognitive deficits in PD has focussed on domain-general functions such as executive functions or attention – largely neglecting potential domain-specific aspects of numerical cognition (e.g., carry or problem size effect). These aspects should be addressed, as PD-immanent neurodegeneration suggests mechanisms of both primary and secondary (mediated by other cognitive deficits) arithmetic deficits, respectively. The current study systematically investigated arithmetic performance and effects in PD patients differing in cognitive impairment, targeting domain-specific cognitive representations of arithmetic as well as the influence of domain-general factors. Besides healthy controls (HC), PD patients with normal cognition (PD-NC) and PD patients with mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI) were compared in arithmetic performance in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The deficits consisted of problems in two-digit addition and subtraction in PD-MCI, as well as delayed arithmetic fact retrieval for single-digit multiplication and division in PD-NC and PD-MCI. Deficits were not domain-specific, as arithmetic effects (problem size, carry, and borrow effects) did not differ between the groups. The study results help us to understand the underlying mechanisms of arithmetic deficits faced by PD patients in daily life. Furthermore, the process of submitting a registered report with PCI Registered Reports as a PhD student working with a clinical sample during the Covid19 pandemic will be discussed.