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Frontiers in Psychology 2023Alterations of verbalized thought occur frequently in psychotic disorders. We characterize linguistic findings in individuals with schizophrenia based on the current... (Review)
Review
INTRODUCTION
Alterations of verbalized thought occur frequently in psychotic disorders. We characterize linguistic findings in individuals with schizophrenia based on the current literature, including findings relevant for differential and early diagnosis.
METHODS
Review of literature published via PubMed search between January 2010 and May 2022.
RESULTS
A total of 143 articles were included. In persons with schizophrenia, language-related alterations can occur at all linguistic levels. Differentiating from findings in persons with affective disorders, typical symptoms in those with schizophrenia mainly include so-called "poverty of speech," reduced word and sentence production, impaired processing of complex syntax, pragmatic language deficits as well as reduced semantic verbal fluency. At the at-risk state, "poverty of content," pragmatic difficulties and reduced verbal fluency could be of predictive value.
DISCUSSION
The current results support multilevel alterations of the language system in persons with schizophrenia. Creative expressions of psychotic experiences are frequently found but are not in the focus of this review. Clinical examinations of linguistic alterations can support differential diagnostics and early detection. Computational methods (Natural Language Processing) may improve the precision of corresponding diagnostics. The relations between language-related and other symptoms can improve diagnostics.
PubMed: 38078276
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1287706 -
Handbook of Clinical Neurology 2022The chapter covers the clinical syndrome of a primary progressive aphasia (PPA), the demographics of this rare neurodegenerative disease, defining clinical and... (Review)
Review
The chapter covers the clinical syndrome of a primary progressive aphasia (PPA), the demographics of this rare neurodegenerative disease, defining clinical and neuroanatomic characteristics of each PPA variant, disease progression, and behavioral features. The chapter begins with a brief introduction that includes references to seminal papers that defined this clinical syndrome and its three variants. The classic PPA subtypes discussed in the chapter are semantic variant PPA (svPPA), nonfluent/agrammatic PPA (nfaPPA), and logopenic variant PPA (lvPPA). The key language and cognitive characteristics, and language tasks that can elicit these language impairments, are detailed. Overlap in the clinical profiles of the PPA variants, which make differential diagnosis challenging, are explained. Disease progression is described, revealing that the PPA variants become more similar over time. Although PPA is language-predominant dementia, there are behavioral manifestations, particularly in svPPA. Changes in behavior in this variant are addressed as well as behavioral changes in nfaPPA and lvPPA that are less well recognized. The patterns of atrophy in the left temporal, parietal, and/or frontal cortices unique to each PPA variant are described. The underlying neuropathologies of the PPA variants are discussed, specifically tauopathies and non-tauopathies associated with svPPA and nfaPPA and Alzheimer's disease pathology in lvPPA.
Topics: Alzheimer Disease; Aphasia, Primary Progressive; Humans; Language; Neurodegenerative Diseases; Neuroimaging
PubMed: 35078612
DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-12-823384-9.00016-5 -
Brain Sciences Oct 2022Number-color synesthesia is a condition in which synesthetes perceive numbers with concurrent experience of specific, corresponding colors. It has been proposed that...
Number-color synesthesia is a condition in which synesthetes perceive numbers with concurrent experience of specific, corresponding colors. It has been proposed that synesthetic association exists primarily between representations of Arabic digit graphemes and colors, and a secondary, semantic connection between numerosity and colors is built via repeated co-activation. However, this distinction between the graphemic and semantic pathways of synesthetic number-color connection has not been empirically tested. The current study aims to dissociate graphemic and semantic aspects of color activations in number-color synesthesia by comparing their time courses. We adopted a synesthetic priming paradigm with varied stimuli onset asynchronies (SOAs). A number (2-6, prime) was presented in one of three notations: digit, dice, or non-canonical dot pattern, and a color patch (target) appeared with an SOA of 0, 100, 300, 400, or 800 ms. Participants reported the color as quickly as possible. Using the congruency effect (i.e., shorter reaction time when target color matched the synesthetic color of number prime) as an index of synesthetic color activation level, we revealed that the effect from the graphemic pathway is quick and relatively persistent, while the effect from the semantic pathway unfolds at a later stage and is more transient. The dissociation between the graphemic and semantic pathways of synesthesia implies further functional distinction within "conceptual synesthesia", which has been originally discussed as a unitary phenomenon. This distinction has been demonstrated by the differential time courses of synesthetic color activations, and suggested that a presumed, single type of synesthesia could involve multiple mechanisms.
PubMed: 36291334
DOI: 10.3390/brainsci12101400 -
Differential Diagnosis Findings Between Alzheimer's Disease and Major Depressive Disorder: A Review.Psychiatry and Clinical... Mar 2022Differentiating diagnosis between Alzheimer's disease and major depressive disorder in the elderly is a great clinical challenge. This study aimed to identify the...
BACKGROUND
Differentiating diagnosis between Alzheimer's disease and major depressive disorder in the elderly is a great clinical challenge. This study aimed to identify the establishment of differential diagnosis protocols between Alzheimer's disease and major depressive disorder.
METHODS
We searched studies in the Ovid MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, and Web of Science databases between 2009 and 2019. A total of 155 references were found for searching relevant articles using Boolean search. After exclusion of redundancies and assessing of title, abstract, and full text for eligibility, 11 articles were selected. The total sample size was 1077 distributed in 8 different countries.
RESULTS
Significant results were found for differential diagnosis between Alzheimer's disease and major depressive disorder, such as overall mental status, episodic memory, visuospatial construction, delayed recognition task, semantic verbal fluency, visual task in short-term memory, atrophy of the hippocampus, cortical activation in specific tasks, and cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers.
CONCLUSION
These findings are good pathways for discriminating Alzheimer's disease from major depression in the elderly.
PubMed: 38764905
DOI: 10.5152/pcp.2022.21133 -
Developmental Psychology Feb 2022Research on the early lexical-semantic system has described how toddlers organize word representations based on semantic and phonological features. This study is a...
Research on the early lexical-semantic system has described how toddlers organize word representations based on semantic and phonological features. This study is a longitudinal investigation of the development of this organization during infancy. Middle-high socioeconomic status Mexican toddlers ( = 28, 15 female) were presented with a preferential looking task using an eye-tracker at 18, 21, and 24 months of age, manipulating semantic and phonological lexical links. The experimental task consisted of presenting an auditory label, which was phonologically or semantically related or unrelated, with a displayed target image. Mean proportion of target looking, time-course of fixations, pupillometry, and vocabulary network analysis were used to describe the properties of priming effects. The results showed that phonological priming developed earlier than semantic priming, and that they were produced by behavioral interference. In addition, pupil dilation showed differential use of cognitive effort in critical developmental periods. Finally, the density of vocabulary networks correlated with semantic effects, and vocabulary size and local network features with phonological effects. These findings extend our understanding of the development of the lexical-semantic system during infancy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
Topics: Child, Preschool; Female; Humans; Linguistics; Motor Activity; Phonetics; Semantics; Vocabulary
PubMed: 34941301
DOI: 10.1037/dev0001290 -
Nucleic Acids Research Jan 2020We present the Small RNA Expression Atlas (SEAweb), a web application that allows for the interactive querying, visualization and analysis of known and novel small RNAs...
We present the Small RNA Expression Atlas (SEAweb), a web application that allows for the interactive querying, visualization and analysis of known and novel small RNAs across 10 organisms. It contains sRNA and pathogen expression information for over 4200 published samples with standardized search terms and ontologies. In addition, SEAweb allows for the interactive visualization and re-analysis of 879 differential expression and 514 classification comparisons. SEAweb's user model enables sRNA researchers to compare and re-analyze user-specific and published datasets, highlighting common and distinct sRNA expression patterns. We provide evidence for SEAweb's fidelity by (i) generating a set of 591 tissue specific miRNAs across 29 tissues, (ii) finding known and novel bacterial and viral infections across diseases and (iii) determining a Parkinson's disease-specific blood biomarker signature using novel data. We believe that SEAweb's simple semantic search interface, the flexible interactive reports and the user model with rich analysis capabilities will enable researchers to better understand the potential function and diagnostic value of sRNAs or pathogens across tissues, diseases and organisms.
Topics: Animals; Bacterial Infections; Cattle; Databases, Nucleic Acid; Humans; Internet; Mice; Organ Specificity; Parkinson Disease; RNA, Bacterial; RNA, Small Untranslated; RNA, Viral; Rats; Virus Diseases
PubMed: 31598718
DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkz869 -
Memory & Cognition Apr 2022While traditional analyses of autobiographical construction tend to focus on the 'internal' or episodic details of the narrative, contemporary studies employing...
While traditional analyses of autobiographical construction tend to focus on the 'internal' or episodic details of the narrative, contemporary studies employing fine-grained scoring measures reveal the 'external' component to contain important information relevant to the individual's life story. Here, we used the recently developed NExt scoring protocol to explore profiles of external details generated by patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) (n = 11) and semantic dementia (SD) (n = 13) on a future thinking task. Overall, distinct NExt profiles were observed for future events in AD and SD. Specifically, AD patients provided significantly more Specific Episode external details compared with Controls. Using voxel-based morphometry, these increased external details within future narratives related to grey matter intensity in medial and lateral frontal regions in AD. By contrast, SD patients displayed an elevation of Specific Episode, Extended Episode, and General Semantic details during future simulation relative to Controls, which related to grey matter intensity of medial and lateral parietal regions. Our findings suggest that the compensatory external details generated during future simulation comprise an array of episodic and semantic details that vary in terms of specificity and self-relevance, which may be differentially affected depending on the locus of underlying neuropathology in dementia. Adopting a fine-grained approach to external details helps to characterise the interplay between episodic and semantic content during future stimulation and suggests potentially differential vulnerability and preservation of distinct components of the constructed narrative in clinical disorders.
Topics: Alzheimer Disease; Frontotemporal Dementia; Humans; Memory, Episodic; Mental Recall; Neuropsychological Tests; Semantics
PubMed: 34401984
DOI: 10.3758/s13421-021-01222-w -
The Journal of General Psychology 2020Difficult-to-attain beauty standards that are promulgated by the media could contribute to body dissatisfaction, but their potential impact upon body image remains...
Difficult-to-attain beauty standards that are promulgated by the media could contribute to body dissatisfaction, but their potential impact upon body image remains unclear. The present study examined reactions to thin-ideal and muscular-ideal images, and examined the effects of ideal image exposure on preferred body shape and time spent deliberating about ideal shape. In a 2 × 2 experimental design, 200 Internet users completed the Kessler psychological distress scale (K10) and were randomly assigned to view idealistic body images or houses (and rated them on semantic differential dimensions). Females viewed thin ideal images and males viewed muscular ideal images, while the control groups viewed images of houses. Between group measures analysis of variance revealed women reacted negatively to thinspirational images. Women were more driven for thinness and idealized a thinner shape for the female body than men. Psychologically distressed participants had a stronger drive for thinness and greater body dissatisfaction compared to low-distress participants. In addition, although beauty ideal imagery had no significant impact on males, females spent more time in choosing ideal body figure. Viewing thin bodies for females created a trend toward desiring a slimmer figure, as well as increased preoccupation with size as they spent more time deliberating over a photorealistic figure rating scale. Therefore, exposure to thinspiration promotes dissatisfaction with self and leads women to dwell more upon their body image.
Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Attentional Bias; Beauty; Body Image; Female; Humans; Male; Personal Satisfaction; Somatotypes; Thinness; Young Adult
PubMed: 31608821
DOI: 10.1080/00221309.2019.1676190 -
Cognitive Research: Principles and... Nov 2022Intersectionality refers to the simultaneous and interacting effects of multiple group categorization on individuals with minoritized status, often leading to being...
Intersectionality refers to the simultaneous and interacting effects of multiple group categorization on individuals with minoritized status, often leading to being perceived in a manner inconsistent with the additive contributions of those categories. For Black women, a number of findings have contributed to the idea that Black women have a unique perceived absence of status, for example, and are perceived as distinct from being Black or a woman. We sought to quantify and visualize the combined effects of race and gender on judgments of persons using data-defined dimensions (the Semantic Differential; Osgood et al. in The measurement of meaning, University of Illinois Press, Champaign, 1957). Our data suggest that gender and race contribute to orthogonal dimensions of difference in the perception of persons. Whereas white males, white females, and Black males all seem to be perceived in accord with additive effects in these two dimensions, Black females seem to be perceived more neutrally, as if neither their gender nor their race is treated as predictive.
Topics: Male; Humans; Female; Intersectional Framework; Black People; Gender Identity
PubMed: 36435861
DOI: 10.1186/s41235-022-00450-1 -
Computers in Biology and Medicine Jun 2021Ontology-based phenotype profiles have been utilised for the purpose of differential diagnosis of rare genetic diseases, and for decision support in specific disease...
Ontology-based phenotype profiles have been utilised for the purpose of differential diagnosis of rare genetic diseases, and for decision support in specific disease domains. Particularly, semantic similarity facilitates diagnostic hypothesis generation through comparison with disease phenotype profiles. However, the approach has not been applied for differential diagnosis of common diseases, or generalised clinical diagnostics from uncurated text-derived phenotypes. In this work, we describe the development of an approach for deriving patient phenotype profiles from clinical narrative text, and apply this to text associated with MIMIC-III patient visits. We then explore the use of semantic similarity with those text-derived phenotypes to classify primary patient diagnosis, comparing the use of patient-patient similarity and patient-disease similarity using phenotype-disease profiles previously mined from literature. We also consider a combined approach, in which literature-derived phenotypes are extended with the content of text-derived phenotypes we mined from 500 patients. The results reveal a powerful approach, showing that in one setting, uncurated text phenotypes can be used for differential diagnosis of common diseases, making use of information both inside and outside the setting. While the methods themselves should be explored for further optimisation, they could be applied to a variety of clinical tasks, such as differential diagnosis, cohort discovery, document and text classification, and outcome prediction.
Topics: Diagnosis, Differential; Humans; Phenotype; Rare Diseases; Semantics
PubMed: 33836447
DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2021.104360