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Scientific Reports Apr 2018Autobiographical remembering can depend on two forms of memory: episodic (event) memory and autobiographical semantic memory (remembering personally relevant semantic...
Autobiographical remembering can depend on two forms of memory: episodic (event) memory and autobiographical semantic memory (remembering personally relevant semantic knowledge, independent of recalling a specific experience). There is debate about the degree to which the neural signals that support episodic recollection relate to or build upon autobiographical semantic remembering. Pooling data from two fMRI studies of memory for real-world personal events, we investigated whether medial temporal lobe (MTL) and parietal subregions contribute to autobiographical episodic and semantic remembering. During scanning, participants made memory judgments about photograph sequences depicting past events from their life or from others' lives, and indicated whether memory was based on episodic or semantic knowledge. Results revealed several distinct functional patterns: activity in most MTL subregions was selectively associated with autobiographical episodic memory; the hippocampal tail, superior parietal lobule, and intraparietal sulcus were similarly engaged when memory was based on retrieval of an autobiographical episode or autobiographical semantic knowledge; and angular gyrus demonstrated a graded pattern, with activity declining from autobiographical recollection to autobiographical semantic remembering to correct rejections of novel events. Collectively, our data offer insights into MTL and parietal cortex functional organization, and elucidate circuitry that supports different forms of real-world autobiographical memory.
Topics: Brain Mapping; Female; Hippocampus; Humans; Imaging, Three-Dimensional; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Memory, Episodic; Parietal Lobe; Semantics; Temporal Lobe
PubMed: 29670138
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-24549-y -
Cognitive Neuropsychology 2022We assessed effects of semantic interference in people with aphasia (PWA). Two naming tasks (continuous naming and cyclic blocking) were contrasted with tasks which...
We assessed effects of semantic interference in people with aphasia (PWA). Two naming tasks (continuous naming and cyclic blocking) were contrasted with tasks which required suppression of competitors but minimized lexical access (probe task) or required extra-lexical mechanisms of control (Stroop task). In continuous naming, some PWA showed increased interference compared to control participants, with slower RTs and increased omissions. Others showed normal or weaker interference effects in terms of RTs but increased semantic errors. Patterns were consistent only between naming tasks. We explain results by assuming that some PWA are slow at implementing mechanisms of control/selection which weed-out competitors. Others, instead, will have activation difficulties which will induce them to lower the threshold needed for selection. Results highlight how different kinds of brain damage may induce different compensatory strategies and how semantic relatedness may induce both interference and facilitation. Implications for models of lexical selection are discussed.
Topics: Humans; Semantics; Aphasia
PubMed: 36967227
DOI: 10.1080/02643294.2023.2189004 -
Medical Science Educator Feb 2022Lectures remain a common instructional method in medical education. Instructor methods, curricular factors, and technology affect students' use of scheduled live...
BACKGROUND
Lectures remain a common instructional method in medical education. Instructor methods, curricular factors, and technology affect students' use of scheduled live lectures that may impact faculty job satisfaction.
AIM
This study identified instructor methods and curriculum issues that influenced preclinical medical students' use of scheduled lectures as well as faculty perceptions of lectures and students' attendance.
METHODS
First- and second-year osteopathic medical students ( = 304) were invited to complete a voluntary, anonymous semantic differential scale, Likert scale, and dichotomous question survey, rating 22 lecturer methods and 9 curriculum factors that influence use of live lectures. Preclinical faculty ( = 35) were also asked to complete a differential scale survey, rating 17 issues regarding live lectures and student attendance. Student and faculty surveys were analyzed using the appropriate central tendency and variability measures.
RESULTS
Students that completed the survey ( = 144) rated the ability to explain complex concepts in an understandable manner as "Very Important" and wearing professional attire as "Not Important" for attending lectures, respectively. Availability of recorded lectures, time to an upcoming exam, and unscheduled time gaps between lectures were rated as Very Important curricular factors for attending lectures. Faculty completed the survey ( = 21) and agree that lectures should continue as a major mode of instruction, while the majority reported spending over 9 h preparing new lectures.
CONCLUSIONS
Faculty lecture methods and overarching curricular decisions greatly impact students' attendance of live lectures. Regardless, most students and faculty believe that scheduled lectures should continue as an option for students who prefer to attend live lectures.
PubMed: 34877072
DOI: 10.1007/s40670-021-01459-9 -
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review Dec 2016Notable progress has been made recently on computational models of semantics using vector representations for word meaning (Mikolov, Chen, Corrado, & Dean, 2013;... (Review)
Review
Notable progress has been made recently on computational models of semantics using vector representations for word meaning (Mikolov, Chen, Corrado, & Dean, 2013; Mikolov, Sutskever, Chen, Corrado, & Dean, 2013). As representations of meaning, recent models presumably hone in on plausible organizational principles for meaning. We performed an analysis on the organization of the skip-gram model's semantic space. Consistent with human performance (Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957), the skip-gram model primarily relies on affective distinctions to organize meaning. We showed that the skip-gram model accounts for unique variance in behavioral measures of lexical access above and beyond that accounted for by affective and lexical measures. We also raised the possibility that word frequency predicts behavioral measures of lexical access due to the fact that word use is organized by semantics. Deconstruction of the semantic representations in semantic models has the potential to reveal organizing principles of human semantics.
Topics: Humans; Models, Theoretical; Psycholinguistics; Semantics
PubMed: 27138012
DOI: 10.3758/s13423-016-1053-2 -
Cortex; a Journal Devoted To the Study... Nov 2014The amygdala is suggested to serve as a key structure in the emotional brain, implicated in diverse affective processes. Still, the bulk of existing neuroscientific... (Review)
Review
The amygdala is suggested to serve as a key structure in the emotional brain, implicated in diverse affective processes. Still, the bulk of existing neuroscientific investigations of the amygdala relies on conventional neuroimaging techniques such as fMRI, which are very useful but subject to limitations. These limitations are particular to their temporal resolution, but also to their spatial precision at a very fine-grained level. Here, we review studies investigating the functional profile of the human amygdala using intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG), an invasive technique with high temporal and spatial precision. We conducted a systematic literature review of 47 iEEG studies investigating the human amygdala, and we focus on two content-related domains and one process-related domain: (1) memory formation and retrieval; (2) affective processing; and (3) latency components. This review reveals the human amygdala to engage in invariant semantic encoding and recognition of specific objects and individuals, independent of context or visuospatial attributes, and to discriminate between familiar and novel stimuli. The review highlights the amygdala's role in emotion processing witnessed in differential treatment of social-affective facial cues, differential neuronal firing to relevant novel stimuli, and habituation to familiar affective stimuli. Overall, the review suggests the amygdala plays a key role in the processing of affective relevance. Finally, this review delineates effects on amygdala neuronal activity into three time latency windows (post-stimulus onset). The early window (∼ 5 0-290 msec) subsumes effects respective to exogenous stimulus-driven affective processing of faces and emotion. The intermediate window (∼ 270-470 msec) comprises effects related to explicit attention to novel task-relevant stimuli, irrespective of sensory modality. The late window (∼ 600-1400 msec) subsumes effects from tasks soliciting semantic associations and working memory during affective processing. We juxtapose these iEEG data with current clinical topics relevant to amygdala activation and propose avenues for future investigation of the amygdala using iEEG methods.
Topics: Affect; Amygdala; Attention; Electroencephalography; Emotions; Functional Neuroimaging; Humans; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
PubMed: 25043736
DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2014.06.010 -
Scientific Reports Aug 2019Premotor neurons play a fundamental role in transforming physical properties of observed objects, such as size and shape, into motor plans for grasping them, hence...
Premotor neurons play a fundamental role in transforming physical properties of observed objects, such as size and shape, into motor plans for grasping them, hence contributing to "pragmatic" affordance processing. Premotor neurons can also contribute to "semantic" affordance processing, as they can discharge differently even to pragmatically identical objects depending on their behavioural relevance for the observer (i.e. edible or inedible objects). Here, we compared the response of monkey ventral premotor area F5 neurons tested during pragmatic (PT) or semantic (ST) visuomotor tasks. Object presentation responses in ST showed shorter latency and lower object selectivity than in PT. Furthermore, we found a difference between a transient representation of semantic affordances and a sustained representation of pragmatic affordances at both the single neuron and population level. Indeed, responses in ST returned to baseline within 0.5 s whereas in PT they showed the typical sustained visual-to-motor activity during Go trials. In contrast, during No-go trials, the time course of pragmatic and semantic information processing was similar. These findings suggest that premotor cortex generates different dynamics depending on pragmatic and semantic information provided by the context in which the to-be-grasped object is presented.
Topics: Action Potentials; Animals; Hand Strength; Macaca mulatta; Motivation; Motor Cortex; Neurons; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Psychomotor Performance; Stereotaxic Techniques
PubMed: 31406219
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-48216-y -
Scientific Reports Oct 2019Emotional valence is known to influence word processing dependent upon concreteness. Whereas some studies point towards stronger effects of emotion on concrete words,...
Emotional valence is known to influence word processing dependent upon concreteness. Whereas some studies point towards stronger effects of emotion on concrete words, others claim amplified emotion effects for abstract words. We investigated the interaction of emotion and concreteness by means of fMRI and EEG in a delayed lexical decision task. Behavioral data revealed a facilitating effect of high positive and negative valence on the correct processing of abstract, but not concrete words. EEG data yielded a particularly low amplitude response of the late positive component (LPC) following concrete neutral words. This presumably indicates enhanced allocation of processing resources to abstract and emotional words at late stages of word comprehension. In fMRI, interactions between concreteness and emotion were observed within the semantic processing network: the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the left middle temporal gyrus (MTG). Higher positive or negative valence appears to facilitate semantic retrieval and selection of abstract words. Surprisingly, a reversal of this effect occurred for concrete words. This points towards enhanced semantic control for emotional concrete words compared to neutral concrete words. Our findings suggest fine-tuned integration of emotional valence and concreteness. Specifically, at late processing stages, semantic control mechanisms seem to integrate emotional cues depending on the previous progress of semantic retrieval.
Topics: Auditory Perception; Electroencephalography; Emotions; Female; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Semantics; Vocabulary; Young Adult
PubMed: 31594966
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-50755-3 -
NeuroImage Nov 2021Understanding the different neural networks that support human language is an ongoing challenge for cognitive neuroscience. Which divisions are capable of distinguishing... (Meta-Analysis)
Meta-Analysis
Understanding the different neural networks that support human language is an ongoing challenge for cognitive neuroscience. Which divisions are capable of distinguishing the functional significance of regions across the language network? A key separation between semantic cognition and phonological processing was highlighted in early meta-analyses, yet these seminal works did not formally test this proposition. Moreover, organization by domain is not the only possibility. Regions may be organized by the type of process performed, as in the separation between representation and control processes proposed within the Controlled Semantic Cognition framework. The importance of these factors was assessed in a series of activation likelihood estimation meta-analyses that investigated which regions of the language network are consistently recruited for semantic and phonological domains, and for representation and control processes. Whilst semantic and phonological processing consistently recruit many overlapping regions, they can be dissociated (by differential involvement of bilateral anterior temporal lobes, precentral gyrus and superior temporal gyri) only when using both formal analysis methods and sufficient data. Both semantic and phonological regions are further dissociable into control and representation regions, highlighting this as an additional, distinct dimension on which the language network is functionally organized. Furthermore, some of these control regions overlap with multiple-demand network regions critical for control beyond the language domain, suggesting the relative level of domain-specificity is also informative. Multiple, distinct dimensions are critical to understand the role of language regions. Here we present a proposal as to the core principles underpinning the functional organization of the language network.
Topics: Adult; Brain; Female; Humans; Language; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Nerve Net; Semantics; Young Adult
PubMed: 34343627
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118444 -
International Journal of Sexual Health... 2023There is an ongoing controversy about women's sexuality and the existence of different orgasms. The debate is tilted toward anatomical and physiological evidence, which...
BACKGROUND
There is an ongoing controversy about women's sexuality and the existence of different orgasms. The debate is tilted toward anatomical and physiological evidence, which often leaves subjective experiences out of the picture. The aim of the current mixed-methods study was to capture women's accounts of their experiences of orgasmic states.
METHODS
As part of a larger online survey, 513 women ( = 25.89 years, = 5.60) from a community sample filled in open-ended questions on their experience of different kinds of orgasms. Additionally, women rated semantic differentials with bipolar adjectives characterizing vaginal and clitoral orgasms. A sub-sample of = 257 women (50%) had experienced both, vaginal and clitoral orgasms and rated both separately on the semantic differential.
RESULTS
Wilcoxon signed-rank test showed significant differences in that clitoral orgasms were, amongst others, rated as sharper, easier, and more controllable, while vaginal orgasms were rated as wilder, deeper, more pulsating, and extending. In open-ended questions, women talked about various other orgasmic experiences, such as mixed clitoral/vaginal orgasms, whole body, cervical, anal, or mental orgasms. Some women were uncertain about their orgasmic experiences.
CONCLUSION
It is time to integrate anatomical, psychophysiological, and experiential data and conclude that either "all clitoral" or "clitoral and vaginal" falls short to do justice to the complexity of women's orgasms. Understanding and defining these various types of orgasms and allowing for the apparent diversity to have its place in research and in social discourse is a task for future research and pleasure-positive sex education to increase .
PubMed: 38595859
DOI: 10.1080/19317611.2023.2182861 -
Brain Structure & Function Mar 2021Semantic composition, the ability to combine single words to form complex meanings, is a core feature of human language. Despite growing interest in the basis of...
Semantic composition, the ability to combine single words to form complex meanings, is a core feature of human language. Despite growing interest in the basis of semantic composition, the neural correlates and the interaction of regions within this network remain a matter of debate. We designed a well-controlled two-word fMRI paradigm in which phrases only differed along the semantic dimension while keeping syntactic information alike. Healthy participants listened to meaningful ("fresh apple"), anomalous ("awake apple") and pseudoword phrases ("awake gufel") while performing an implicit and an explicit semantic task. We identified neural signatures for distinct processes during basic semantic composition. When lexical information is kept constant across conditions and the evaluation of phrasal plausibility is examined (meaningful vs. anomalous phrases), a small set of mostly left-hemispheric semantic regions, including the anterior part of the left angular gyrus, is found active. Conversely, when the load of lexical information-independently of phrasal plausibility-is varied (meaningful or anomalous vs. pseudoword phrases), conceptual combination involves a wide-spread left-hemispheric network comprising executive semantic control regions and general conceptual representation regions. Within this network, the functional coupling between the left anterior inferior frontal gyrus, the bilateral pre-supplementary motor area and the posterior angular gyrus specifically increases for meaningful phrases relative to pseudoword phrases. Stronger effects in the explicit task further suggest task-dependent neural recruitment. Overall, we provide a separation between distinct nodes of the semantic network, whose functional contributions depend on the type of compositional process under analysis.
Topics: Adult; Brain; Brain Mapping; Comprehension; Female; Functional Laterality; Humans; Language; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Reading; Young Adult
PubMed: 33515279
DOI: 10.1007/s00429-020-02196-2