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389 records returned

How to cook a SNARC: Number placement in text rapidly changes spatial-numerical associations.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Most theoreticians believe that reading habits explain why Western adults associate small numbers with left space and large numbers with right space (the SNARC effect). We challenge this belief by documenting, in both English and Hebrew, that SNARC changes during reading: small and large numbers in our texts appeared near the left or right ends of the lines, positioned either spatially congruent or incongruent with reading habits. In English, the congruent group showed reliable SNARC before and after reading and the incongruent group's SNARC was significantly reduced. In Hebrew the incongruent reading condition even in...
Source: Brain and Cognition - November 14, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Fischer MH, Mills RA, Shaki S Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

The two sides of beauty: Laterality and the duality of facial attractiveness.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We hypothesized that facial attractiveness represents a dual judgment, a combination of reward-based, sexual processes, and aesthetic, cognitive processes. Herein we describe a study that demonstrates that sexual and nonsexual processes both contribute to attractiveness judgments and that these processes can be dissociated. Female participants rated the general attractiveness of faces presented in either their left or right visual field. In order to examine sexual and nonsexual components of these judgments, general attractiveness ratings were correlated with ratings of these same faces made by two independent groups o...
Source: Brain and Cognition - November 13, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Franklin RG, Adams RB Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Electrophysiological changes during adolescence: A review.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
While psychological research has long shown that adolescence is a period of major cognitive and affective transition, recent neurophysiological research has shown that adolescence is also accompanied by observable maturational changes in the brain, both in terms of structure and neurotransmitter function. Given this situation, we would expect that there should be observable and perhaps major changes in electrocortical activity and responses. In this review, we discuss developmental reductions in EEG power and alterations in the dominant band of EEG oscillation frequency, moderated by developmental factors such as growt...
Source: Brain and Cognition - November 13, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Segalowitz SJ, Santesso DL, Jetha MK Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Impaired awareness of movement disorders in Parkinson's disease.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that the dopaminergic overstimulation of mesocorticolimbic pathways may cause a dysfunction of prefrontal-subcortical connections related to the impaired insight. PMID: 19914762 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Brain and Cognition)
Source: Brain and Cognition - November 13, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Amanzio M, Monteverdi S, Giordano A, Soliveri P, Filippi P, Geminiani G Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

The mirror reflects both ways: Action influences perception of others.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Substantial evidence links perception of others' bodies and mental representation of the observer's own body; however, the overwhelming majority of this evidence is unidirectional, showing influence from perception to action. It has been proposed that the influence also runs from action to perception, but to date the evidence is scant. Here we report that ordinary motor actions performed by the subject affect concurrent psychophysical judgments of human-body stimuli. Subjects remained unaware of the connection between the action and the main task. The results show that perception can change as a result of the observer'...
Source: Brain and Cognition - November 13, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Blaesi S, Wilson M Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Sex differences in the adolescent brain.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Adolescence is a time of increased divergence between males and females in physical characteristics, behavior, and risk for psychopathology. Here we will review data regarding sex differences in brain structure and function during this period of the lifespan. The most consistent sex difference in brain morphometry is the 9-12% larger brain size that has been reported in males. Individual brain regions that have most consistently been reported as different in males and females include the basal ganglia, hippocampus, and amygdala. Diffusion tensor imaging and magnetization transfer imaging studies have also shown sex dif...
Source: Brain and Cognition - November 12, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Lenroot RK, Giedd JN Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Visual field asymmetry in attentional capture.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The present study examined the spatial distribution of involuntary attentional capture over the two visual hemi-fields. A new experiment, and an analysis of three previous experiments showed that distractors in the left visual field that matched a sought-for target in color produced a much larger capture effect than identical distractors in the right visual field, revealing a visual field asymmetry in color-based contingent capture. On the other hand, abrupt onsets in the two hemi-fields did not differ in the magnitude of their capture effect, indicating a symmetric distribution of onset capture. The different spatial ...
Source: Brain and Cognition - November 11, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Du F, Abrams RA Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Adapted to explore: Reinforcement learning in Autistic Spectrum Conditions.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Recent studies have recorded a tendency of individuals with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) to continually change their choices in repeated choice tasks. In the current study we examine if this finding implies that ASC individuals have a cognitive style that facilitates exploration and discovery. Six decision tasks were administered to adolescents with ASC and matched controls. Significant differences in shifting between choice options appeared in the Iowa Gambling task (Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, & Anderson, 1994). A formal cognitive modeling analysis demonstrated that for about half of the ASC participants the a...
Source: Brain and Cognition - November 11, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Yechiam E, Arshavsky O, Shamay-Tsoory SG, Yaniv S, Aharon J Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Increased sensitivity to proactive interference in amnestic mild cognitive impairment is independent of associative and semantic impairment.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Episodic memory deficit is the hallmark of amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). There is, however, an overlap in performance among patients with aMCI and elderly controls (EC). The memory deficit in aMCI therefore needs to be better characterized. Studies have shown that associative memory is selectively impaired in aMCI, and recent work suggested that aMCI may be hypersensitive to semantic proactive interference (PI). It is not known whether this increased PI is related to associative or semantic impairment. EC (n=44) and patients with aMCI (n=30) performed two tasks presenting a gradually increasing PI effect a...
Source: Brain and Cognition - November 9, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Hanseeuw BJ, Seron X, Ivanoiu A Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

A quantum physics account of consciousness: much less than meets the eye.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
PMID: 19698908 [PubMed - in process] (Source: Brain and Cognition)
Source: Brain and Cognition - August 26, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Segalowitz SJ Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Hemispheric connectivity and the visual-spatial divergent-thinking component of creativity.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
CONCLUSIONS: Although these results were not predicted, perhaps, as suggested by Bogen and Bogen (1988), decreased callosal connectivity enhances hemispheric specialization, which benefits the incubation of ideas that are critical for the divergent-thinking component of creativity, and it is the momentary inhibition of this hemispheric independence that accounts for the illumination that is part of the innovative stage of creativity. Alternatively, decreased CC size may reflect more selective developmental pruning, thereby facilitating efficient functional connectivity. PMID: 19356836 [PubMed - in process] (Source: Brain and Cognition)
Source: Brain and Cognition - June 27, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Moore DW, Bhadelia RA, Billings RL, Fulwiler C, Heilman KM, Rood KM, Gansler DA Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Moving hands, moving entities.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In this study we investigated with a priming paradigm whether uni and bimanual actions presented as primes differently affected language processing. Animals' (self-moving entities) and plants' (not self-moving entities) names were used as targets. As prime we used grasping hands, presented both as static images and videos. The results showed an interference effect with unimanual action primes (both static and moving) with plants' names. No modulation of responses for animals' names was found. We argue that in the present task plants elicit information on unimanual grasping actions they support, while the lack of effect for...
Source: Brain and Cognition - June 27, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Setti A, Borghi AM, Tessari A Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Schizotypal personality traits and atypical lateralization in motor and language functions.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study consisted of three experiments focusing on motor and language functional lateralization in regard to schizotypal personality in the absence of mental illness: line-drawing, finger tapping, and a semantic go/no-go task. The results suggested that positive schizotypal personality might be related to functional non-lateralization in regard to at least some functions (e.g., spatial motor control and semantic processing in the present study). Subjects with high schizotypal personality traits performed equally with their right and left-hands in the line-drawing task and they reacted equally with their right and left-h...
Source: Brain and Cognition - June 27, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Asai T, Sugimori E, Tanno Y Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Musical and verbal memory in Alzheimer's disease: a study of long-term and short-term memory.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Musical memory was tested in Alzheimer patients and in healthy older adults using long-term and short-term memory tasks. Long-term memory (LTM) was tested with a recognition procedure using unfamiliar melodies. Short-term memory (STM) was evaluated with same/different judgment tasks on short series of notes. Musical memory was compared to verbal memory using a task that used pseudowords (LTM) or syllables (STM). Results indicated impaired musical memory in AD patients relative to healthy controls. The deficit was found for both long-term and short-term memory. Furthermore, it was of the same magnitude for both musical ...
Source: Brain and Cognition - June 27, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Ménard MC, Belleville S Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Cognitive conflict and inhibition in primed dichotic listening.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In previous behavioral studies, a prime syllable was presented just prior to a dichotic syllable pair, with instructions to ignore the prime and report one syllable from the dichotic pair. When the prime matched one of the syllables in the dichotic pair, response selection was biased towards selecting the unprimed target. The suggested mechanism was that the prime was inhibited to reduce conflict between task-irrelevant prime processing and task-relevant dichotic target processing, and a residual effect of the prime inhibition biased the resolution of the conflict between the two targets. The current experiment repeate...
Source: Brain and Cognition - June 27, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Saetrevik B, Specht K Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Chronic glucocorticoid hypersecretion in Cushing's syndrome exacerbates cognitive aging.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The objective of the present study was to examine whether the pattern of cognitive deficits in patients with Cushing's syndrome (CS), a disorder characterized by chronic exposure to elevated levels of glucocorticoids (GC), is similar to that observed in older individuals. Ten subjects with CS were compared to sex-, age-, and education-matched healthy controls and older subjects (age of CS subjects+15 yr). All participants were administered tests to assess attention, visuospatial processing, learning and memory, reasoning, concept formation and verbal fluency. MANCOVAs with depression scores as covariate and polynomial cont...
Source: Brain and Cognition - June 27, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Michaud K, Forget H, Cohen H Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

A choice reaction time index of callosal anatomical homotopy.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Tachistoscopically presented bilateral stimulus pairs not parallel to the meridian produced significantly longer RTs on a task requiring discrimination of shapes (Go/no-Go) than pairs emplaced symmetrically on each side of the meridian in Desjardins and Braun [Desjardins, S., & Braun, C. M. J. (2006). Homotopy and heterotopy and the bilateral field advantage in the Dimond paradigm. Acta Psychologica, 121, 125-136]. This was explained by the fact that there are more homotopic than heterotopic fibers in the corpus callosum. However: (1) different parts of the visual field were not equiprobably stimulated, possibly ca...
Source: Brain and Cognition - June 27, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Desjardins S, Braun CM, Achim A, Roberge C Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Directed forgetting in direct and indirect tests of memory: Seeking evidence of retrieval inhibition using electrophysiological measures.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We investigated whether directed forgetting as elicited by the item-cueing method results solely from differential rehearsal of to-be-remembered vs. to-be-forgotten words or, additionally, from inhibitory processes that actively impair retrieval of to-be-forgotten words. During study, participants (N=24) were instructed to remember half of a series of presented words (TBR) and to forget the other half (TBF), as indicated by an instruction cue shown shortly after each word. During test, accuracy and reaction time measures from lexical decisions (indirect memory test) followed by recognition-memory judgements (direct mem...
Source: Brain and Cognition - June 22, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Van Hooff JC, Whitaker TA, Ford RM Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Representation of survey and route spatial descriptions in children with nonverbal (visuospatial) learning disabilities.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study aims to investigate the types of difficulty encountered by children with nonverbal (visuospatial) learning disabilities (NLD) during the processing of spatial information derived from descriptions. Two spatial descriptions - one in survey, one in route perspective - and one nonspatial description were orally presented to children aged 9-12 divided in three groups: (i) with NLD (N=12), (ii) with reading disability (RD) (N=11), and (iii) without learning disabilities who served as controls (N=16). Children performed two tasks: sentence verification and location. In the verification task, NLD performed worse in sur...
Source: Brain and Cognition - June 8, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Mammarella IC, Meneghetti C, Pazzaglia F, Gitti F, Gomez C, Cornoldi C Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

OSP parameters and the cognitive component of reaction time to a missing stimulus: Linking brain and behavior.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This within-subjects experiment tested the relationship between the premotor (cognitive) component of reaction time (RT) to a missing stimulus and parameters of the omitted stimulus potential (OSP) brain wave. Healthy young men (N=28) completed trials with an auditory stimulus that recurred at 2s intervals and ceased unpredictably. Premotor RT and Motor RT were measured on active trials that required an immediate response to a missing stimulus. Passive trials required no response in order to measure the complete set of OSP parameters (i.e., onset, rate of rise, amplitude and peak latency). The results showed that faste...
Source: Brain and Cognition - June 4, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Hernández OH, Vogel-Sprott M Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Electrophysiological markers of categorical perception of color in 7-month old infants.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The origin of color categories has been debated by psychologists, linguists and cognitive scientists for many decades. Here, we present the first electrophysiological evidence for categorical responding to color before color terms are acquired. Event-related potentials were recorded on a visual oddball task in 7-month old infants. Infants were shown frequent presentations of one color (standard) interspersed with infrequent presentations of a color that was either from the same category (within-category deviant) or from a different category (between-category deviant) to the standard. Differences in the event-related po...
Source: Brain and Cognition - June 3, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Clifford A, Franklin A, Davies IR, Holmes A Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Development of preparatory activity indexed by the contingent negative variation in children.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that the motor preparation system in children is less mature than the sensory preparatory system. The children may have used strategies and brain areas different from those of the young adults to prepare for stimuli and responses. PMID: 19500893 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Brain and Cognition)
Source: Brain and Cognition - June 2, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Flores AB, Digiacomo MR, Meneres S, Trigo E, Gómez CM Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Plasma BDNF is reduced among middle-aged and elderly women with impaired insulin function: Evidence of a compensatory mechanism.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) plays a regulatory role in neuronal differentiation and synaptic plasticity and has been linked to glucose regulation and cognition. Associations among plasma BDNF, cognition, and insulin function were explored. Forty-one participants with impaired insulin function (IIF), ranging from insulin resistance to type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), were matched with 41 healthy controls on gender, age, education, and IQ. Participants received complete medical, neurological, psychiatric, and neuropsychological evaluations. IIF individuals had significantly lower plasma BDNF levels than cont...
Source: Brain and Cognition - May 26, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Arentoft A, Sweat V, Starr V, Oliver S, Hassenstab J, Bruehl H, Tirsi A, Javier E, McHugh PF, Convit A Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Cognitive mechanisms of visuomotor transformation in movement imitation: Examining predictions based on models of apraxia and motor control.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
When we observe a movement and then reproduce it, how is this visual input transformed into motor output? Studies on stroke patients with apraxia suggest that there may be two distinct routes used for gesture imitation; an indirect route that recruits stored movement memories (motor programs) and a direct route that bypasses them. The present study examined 30 healthy adults ages 18-80 (mean age=44.0years, SD=19.5) to learn how motor programs are recruited or bypassed in movement imitation depending upon task conditions (whether familiar letters or novel shapes are imitated) and perceptual factors (whether shapes or le...
Source: Brain and Cognition - May 24, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Gravenhorst RM, Walter CB Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

The development of hand preference in children: The effect of task demands and links with manual dexterity.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Lateralisation of hand preference and manual dexterity are known to develop over childhood, while in adulthood strength of hand preference has been shown to interact with extrinsic task demands. Some evidence exists to suggest that strength of hand preference and motor skill may be related. In the current study a handedness inventory, midline crossing (QHP) and peg-moving tasks were used to investigate: (1) the development of hand preference between 4 and 11years; (2) whether extrinsic task demands affect strength of hand preference, and (3) whether strength of hand preference was associated with manual dexterity. Youn...
Source: Brain and Cognition - May 17, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Hill EL, Khanem F Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

On the role of dopamine replacement therapy in decision-making, working memory, and reward in Parkinson's disease: Does the therapy-dose matter?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that the detrimental effects of dopaminergic therapy may be dose-related and that the interaction between monetary reward and dopaminergic therapy can affect and improve some cognitive abilities, such as working memory. PMID: 19442427 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Brain and Cognition)
Source: Brain and Cognition - May 10, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Torta DM, Castelli L, Zibetti M, Lopiano L, Geminiani G Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Analyzing feature distinctiveness in the processing of living and non-living concepts in Alzheimer's disease.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The conceptual structure account (CSA) is a model specifying the role of the living and non-living domain dichotomy in the structure of semantic memory. According to this model, feature distinctiveness and the perceptual-functional inter-correlation of concepts are assumed to play a major role in impairing the ability to discriminate between living and non-living concepts in Alzheimer's disease (AD). The hypothesis was tested in this study by using naming and sorting tasks traditionally considered as assessing distinctiveness, and a property verification task where distinctiveness and perceptual-functional inter-correl...
Source: Brain and Cognition - May 7, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Duarte LR, Marquié L, Marquié JC, Terrier P, Ousset PJ Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

The neural basis of cognitive control: Response selection and inhibition.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The functional neuroanatomy of tasks that recruit different forms of response selection and inhibition has to our knowledge, never been directly addressed in a single fMRI study using similar stimulus-response paradigms where differences between scanning time and sequence, stimuli, and experimenter instructions were minimized. Twelve right-handed participants were scanned on two standard cognitive control tasks, a stimulus-response incompatibility task, and a response inhibition task. A compound trial design allowed comparison of preparing to inhibit an upcoming automatic response to wholly inhibiting an automatic resp...
Source: Brain and Cognition - May 5, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Goghari VM, Macdonald AW Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Serotonin: Modulator of a drive to withdraw.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Serotonin is a fundamental neuromodulator in both vertebrate and invertebrate nervous systems, with a suspected role in many human mental disorders. Yet, because of the complexity of serotonergic function, researchers have been unable to agree on a general theory. One function suggested for serotonin systems is the avoidance of threat. We propose and review evidence for an alternative hypothesis, that a phylogenetically primitive of function of serotonin is to oppose the activating neuromodulators (particularly noradrenalin and dopamine). The functional effect of this opposition can be seen as applying a drive to withd...
Source: Brain and Cognition - May 4, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Tops M, Russo S, Boksem MA, Tucker DM Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

The performance and observation of action shape future behaviour.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The observation of other people's actions plays an important role in shaping the perceptual, cognitive, and motor processes of the observer. It has been suggested that these social influences occur because the observation of action evokes a representation of that response in the observer and that these codes are subsequently accessed by other cognitive systems to modify future behaviour. In the case of social search and movement tasks, the observation-evoked response code is thought to activate the same mechanisms that are activated following internally-generated response codes. In support of this hypothesis, the prese...
Source: Brain and Cognition - April 27, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Welsh TN, McDougall LM, Weeks DJ Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and the cognitive assessment of prefrontal executive functions: A critical update.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
For over four decades the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) has been one of the most distinctive tests of prefrontal function. Clinical research and recent brain imaging have brought into question the validity and specificity of this test as a marker of frontal dysfunction. Clinical studies with neurological patients have confirmed that, in its traditional form, the WCST fails to discriminate between frontal and non-frontal lesions. In addition, functional brain imaging studies show rapid and widespread activation across frontal and non-frontal brain regions during WCST performance. These studies suggest that the conc...
Source: Brain and Cognition - April 15, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Nyhus E, Barceló F Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

The time course effect of moderate intensity exercise on response execution and response inhibition.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This research aimed to investigate the time course effect of a moderate steady-state exercise session on response execution and response inhibition using a stop-task paradigm. Ten participants performed a stop-signal task whilst cycling at a carefully controlled workload intensity (40% of maximal aerobic power), immediately following exercise and 30min after exercise cessation. Results showed that moderate exercise enhances a subjects' ability to execute responses under time pressure (shorter Go reaction time, RT without a change in accuracy) but also enhances a subjects' ability to withhold ongoing motor responses (sh...
Source: Brain and Cognition - April 3, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Joyce J, Graydon J, McMorris T, Davranche K Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Horizontal saccadic eye movements enhance the retrieval of landmark shape and location information.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Recent work has demonstrated that horizontal saccadic eye movements enhance verbal episodic memory retrieval, particularly in strongly right-handed individuals. The present experiments test three primary assumptions derived from this research. First, horizontal eye movements should facilitate episodic memory for both verbal and non-verbal information. Second, the benefits of horizontal eye movements should only be seen when they immediately precede tasks that demand right and left-hemisphere processing towards successful performance. Third, the benefits of horizontal eye movements should be most pronounced in the stron...
Source: Brain and Cognition - April 3, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Brunyé TT, Mahoney CR, Augustyn JS, Taylor HA Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Ichi, Ni, 3, 4: Neural representation of kana, kanji, and Arabic numbers in native Japanese speakers.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The Japanese language represents numbers in kana digit words (a syllabic notation), kanji numbers and Arabic numbers (logographic notations). Kanji and Arabic numbers have previously shown similar patterns of numerical processing, and because of their shared logographic properties may exhibit similar brain areas of numerical representation. Kana digit words require a larger phonetic component, and therefore may show different areas of numerical representation as compared to kanji or Arabic numbers. The present study investigated behavioral reaction times and brain activation with fMRI during the numerical processing of...
Source: Brain and Cognition - March 31, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Coderre EL, Filippi CG, Newhouse PA, Dumas JA Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Empathy and emotion recognition in semantic dementia: A case report.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In this study, we examined two different aspects of these abilities in a patient with semantic dementia (SD), a variant of FTLD. The first aspect was the assessment of the cognitive and emotional components of empathy through the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. The second was the naming and comprehension of emotions using the Ekman 60 Faces Test. The patient's emotion word knowledge was spared and the emotional aspects of empathy preserved. Conversely, the patient performed below average for all of the basic emotions when an emotion word had to be matched with a picture. When picture-to-picture matching was tested, however...
Source: Brain and Cognition - March 30, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Calabria M, Cotelli M, Adenzato M, Zanetti O, Miniussi C Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Visual versus phonological abilities in Spanish dyslexic boys and girls.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Phonological and visual theories propose different primary deficits as part of the explanation for dyslexia. Both theories were put to test in a sample of Spanish dyslexic readers. Twenty-one dyslexic and 22 typically-developing children matched on chronological age were administered phonological discrimination and awareness tasks and coherent motion perception tasks. No differences were found between groups on the coherent motion tasks, whereas dyslexic readers were impaired relative to controls on phonological discrimination tasks. Gender differences followed the opposite pattern, with no differences on phonological ...
Source: Brain and Cognition - March 28, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Bednarek D, Saldaña D, García I Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Sustained attention to local and global target features is different: Performance and tympanic membrane temperature.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Vision researchers have investigated the differences between global and local feature perception. No one has, however, examined the role of global and local feature discrimination in sustained attention tasks. In this experiment participants performed a sustained attention task requiring either global or local letter target discriminations or watched the same displays without any work imperative. Reaction time to targets was slower when global feature discriminations were required than when local feature discriminations were required. Tympanic membrane temperature (TMT) was utilized in this study as an index of cerebra...
Source: Brain and Cognition - March 27, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Helton WS, Hayrynen L, Schaeffer D Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Brain oscillations during semantic evaluation of speech.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Changes in oscillatory brain activity have been related to perceptual and cognitive processes such as selective attention and memory matching. Here we examined brain oscillations, measured with electroencephalography (EEG), during a semantic speech processing task that required both lexically mediated memory matching and selective attention. Participants listened to nouns spoken in male and female voices, and detected an animate target (p=20%) in a train of inanimate standards or vice versa. For a control task, subjects listened to the same words and detected a target male voice in standards of a female voice or vice v...
Source: Brain and Cognition - March 24, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Shahin AJ, Picton TW, Miller LM Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

N400 deficits from semantic matching of pictures in probands and first-degree relatives from multiplex schizophrenia families.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Endophenotypes is one emerging strategy in schizophrenia research that is being used to identify the functional importance of genetically transmitted, brain-based deficits present in this disease. Currently, event-related potentials (ERPs) are timely used in this search. Several ERPs, including N400, present deficits in relation to schizophrenia. In order to assess the genetic liability of N400 as a possible endophenotype, a picture semantic matching task (congruent and incongruent pairs of pictures) was performed by 21 unaffected first-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia, 21 DSM-IV diagnosed schizophrenia ...
Source: Brain and Cognition - March 21, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Guerra S, Ibáñez A, Martín M, Bobes MA, Reyes A, Mendoza R, Bravo T, Domínguez M, Sosa MV Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Temporal sequence of hemispheric network activation during semantic processing: A functional network connectivity analysis.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
To explore the temporal sequence of, and the relationship between, the left and right hemispheres (LH and RH) during semantic memory (SM) processing we identified the neural networks involved in the performance of functional MRI semantic object retrieval task (SORT) using group independent component analysis (ICA) in 47 healthy individuals. SORT requires participants to determine whether word pairs describing object features combine to retrieve an object. Functional network connectivity (FNC) was used to assess the correlations between components' time courses. Results showed that semantic left and right hemisphere net...
Source: Brain and Cognition - March 21, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Assaf M, Jagannathan K, Calhoun V, Kraut M, Hart J, Pearlson G Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Between- and within-ear congruency and laterality effects in an auditory semantic/emotional prosody conflict task.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The present study investigated the influence of within- and between-ear congruency on interference and laterality effects in an auditory semantic/prosodic conflict task. Participants were presented dichotically with words (e.g., mad, sad, glad) pronounced in either congruent or incongruent emotional tones (e.g., angry, happy, or sad) and identified a target word or emotion under one of two conditions. In the within-ear condition, the congruent or incongruent dimensions were bound within a single stimulus and therefore, presented to the same ear. In the between-ear condition, the two dimensions were split between two st...
Source: Brain and Cognition - March 18, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Techentin C, Voyer D, Klein RM Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Walking on a line: A motor paradigm using rotation and reflection symmetry to study mental body transformations.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Researchers have recently reintroduced the own-body in the center of the social interaction theory. From the discovery of the mirror neurons in the ventral premotor cortex of the monkey's brain, a human embodied model of interindividual relationship based on simulation processes has been advanced, according to which we tend to embody spontaneously the other individuals' behavior when interacting. Although the neurocognitive mechanisms of the embodiment process have started being described, the mechanisms of self-location during embodiment are still less known. Here, we designed a motor paradigm which allows investigati...
Source: Brain and Cognition - March 17, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Thirioux B, Jorland G, Bret M, Tramus MH, Berthoz A Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Probing the human brain with stimulating electrodes: The story of Roberts Bartholow's (1874) experiment on Mary Rafferty.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We describe Bartholow's career up to 1874, review the theoretical and empirical background for the experiment, and present Bartholow's own account of the experiment as well as those of his supporters and critics. We then present our own analysis, assess the experiment's influence on contemporaneous scientific opinion about cortical excitability, and trace its citation record into our own time. We also review and assess ethical criticisms of Bartholow and their effects on his career, and we close by discussing the role we think the experiment deserves to play in the history of theory and research on cortical excitability. ...
Source: Brain and Cognition - March 13, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Harris LJ, Almerigi JB Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Face-name repetition priming in semantic dementia: A case report.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Repetition priming (RP) has been employed as a measure of implicit processing in patients suffering from a breakdown of semantic memory, as in the case of semantic dementia (SD), a subtype of frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD). Here, we investigated face-name representation in a case of SD using a paradigm of within- and cross-domain repetition priming. Compared to ten healthy participants, SD patient did not show any facilitation when a famous name was primed by its own face (cross-domain) or when the prime was the same proper name (within-domain). Results are discussed within the hypothesis of a degradation of ...
Source: Brain and Cognition - March 12, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Calabria M, Miniussi C, Bisiacchi PS, Zanetti O, Cotelli M Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Experiencing and regulating sadness: Physiological and cognitive effects.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
No prior study has examined the two most prominent response-focused regulation strategies (suppression and exaggeration) using a within-subjects design. Utilizing this design allows for a direct comparison of physiological patterns and cognitive impairment associated with such efforts. One hundred and nine participants were asked to view a series of three films, each preceded by a 10-second instructional slide which indicated the regulation strategy they were to perform (natural-watch, exaggerate, or suppress). Exaggeration was associated with increased sympathetic activation as indicated by an increase in galvanic ski...
Source: Brain and Cognition - March 10, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Robinson JL, Demaree HA Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Timing dysfunctions in schizophrenia span from millisecond to several-second durations.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Schizophrenia may be associated with a fundamental disturbance in the temporal coordination of information processing in the brain, leading to classic symptoms of schizophrenia such as thought disorder and disorganized and contextually inappropriate behavior. However, the majority of studies that have examined timing behavior in schizophrenia have employed temporal durations in the range of several seconds, which requires higher cognitive processes beyond initial sensory registration for temporal encoding. Accordingly, the present study assessed both millisecond and several-second duration estimates in schizophrenia us...
Source: Brain and Cognition - March 10, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Carroll CA, O'Donnell BF, Shekhar A, Hetrick WP Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Testing the behavioral interaction and integration of attentional networks.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In this study, we aimed to characterize possible behavioral interaction and integration in healthy adult volunteers using a revised attention network test (ANT-R) with cue-target interval and cue validity manipulations. We found that whereas alerting improves overall response speed, it exerts negative influence on executive control under certain conditions. A valid orienting cue enhances but an invalid cue diminishes the ability of executive control to overcome conflict. The results support the hypothesis of functional integration and interaction of these brain networks. PMID: 19269079 [PubMed - as supplied by publishe...
Source: Brain and Cognition - March 5, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Fan J, Gu X, Guise KG, Liu X, Fossella J, Wang H, Posner MI Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Heart rate variability and drawing impairment in hypoxemic COPD.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In conclusion, drawing impairment correlates with depressed sympathetic modulation in patients with COPD, and both might be indexes of COPD severity. PMID: 19261365 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Brain and Cognition)
Source: Brain and Cognition - March 2, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Antonelli Incalzi R, Corsonello A, Trojano L, Pedone C, Acanfora D, Spada A, D'Addio G, Maestri R, Rengo F, Rengo G Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

Adapting to changing memory retrieval demands: Evidence from event-related potentials.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study investigated preparatory processes involved in adapting to changing episodic memory retrieval demands. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants performed a general old/new recognition task and a specific task that also required retrieval of perceptual details. The relevant task remained either constant or changed (predictably or randomly) across trials. Responses were slowed when participants switched from the specific to the general task but not vice versa. Hence, asymmetrical switch costs were observed, suggesting that retrieval preparation is dependent not only on the current retrieval...
Source: Brain and Cognition - February 28, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Benoit RG, Werkle-Bergner M, Mecklinger A, Kray J Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals

The assessment of recognition memory using the Remember/Know procedure in amnestic mild cognitive impairment and probable Alzheimer's disease.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study used the Remember/Know (R/K) procedure combined with signal detection analyses to assess recognition memory in 20 elders with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), 10 patients with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) as well as matched healthy older adults. Signal detection analyses first indicated that aMCI and control participants were comparable on general recognition performance. As regards AD patients, they were impaired relative to both aMCI and healthy elders. When assessing Remember and Know responses the aMCI group showed diminished sensitivity for Remember responses but intact Know responses compare...
Source: Brain and Cognition - February 26, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Hudon C, Belleville S, Gauthier S Tags: Brain Cogn Source Type: journals