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Revista de NeurologiaThe aim of this study was to survey the information available regarding the N400 component of event related potentials (ERP) as an electrophysiological measure of... (Review)
Review
AIM
The aim of this study was to survey the information available regarding the N400 component of event related potentials (ERP) as an electrophysiological measure of semantic processing.
DEVELOPMENT
The N400 component of ERP is characterised, the advantages and disadvantages of studies that use this type of electrophysiological measures are presented, and the main findings of the experiments conducted in recent years to establish how N400 is related to linguistic processes are analysed. We also present some of the ways its study can be applied to understanding the brain processes underlying dementias, and especially Alzheimer s disease. The value of this component of ERP in the scientific study of mental processes is clearly illustrated.
CONCLUSIONS
Electrophysiological measures of ERP are a very promising tool for the study of the cognitive processes that sustain the understanding and organisation of language and memory. ERP are changes in voltage that are registered on the scalp and which are synchronised with an observable (sensory, motor or cognitive) event. They are a non invasive method of monitoring brain processes in real time and as such can be used to obtain electrophysiological evidence of brain functioning and of psychological processes. The N400 component of ERP has been linked mainly to language processing and has been recorded in association with examples of semantic incongruence found in sentences, words or visually presented figures.
Topics: Cerebral Cortex; Dementia; Evoked Potentials; Humans; Language; Verbal Behavior
PubMed: 12833239
DOI: No ID Found -
Laterality 2014The relationship between manual laterality and cognitive skills remains highly controversial. Some studies have reported that strongly lateralised participants had...
The relationship between manual laterality and cognitive skills remains highly controversial. Some studies have reported that strongly lateralised participants had higher cognitive performance in verbal and visuo-spatial domains compared to non-lateralised participants; however, others found the opposite. Moreover, some have suggested that familial sinistrality and sex might interact with individual laterality factors to alter cognitive skills. The present study addressed these issues in 237 right-handed and 199 left-handed individuals. Performance tests covered various aspects of verbal and spatial cognition. A principal component analysis yielded two verbal and one spatial factor scores. Participant laterality assessments included handedness, manual preference strength, asymmetry of motor performance, and familial sinistrality. Age, sex, education level, and brain volume were also considered. No effect of handedness was found, but the mean factor scores in verbal and spatial domains increased with right asymmetry in motor performance. Performance was reduced in participants with a familial history of left-handedness combined with a non-maximal preference strength in the dominant hand. These results elucidated some discrepancies among previous findings in laterality factors and cognitive skills. Laterality factors had small effects compared to the adverse effects of age for spatial cognition and verbal memory, the positive effects of education for all three domains, and the effect of sex for spatial cognition.
Topics: Adult; Brain; Female; Functional Laterality; Hand; Humans; Male; Neuropsychological Tests; Psychomotor Performance; Space Perception; Verbal Behavior; Young Adult
PubMed: 23745714
DOI: 10.1080/1357650X.2013.796965 -
Cognition Mar 1992This paper introduces a special issue of Cognition on lexical access in speech production. Over the last quarter century, the psycholinguistic study of speaking, and in... (Review)
Review
This paper introduces a special issue of Cognition on lexical access in speech production. Over the last quarter century, the psycholinguistic study of speaking, and in particular of accessing words in speech, received a major new impetus from the analysis of speech errors, dysfluencies and hesitations, from aphasiology, and from new paradigms in reaction time research. The emerging theoretical picture partitions the accessing process into two subprocesses, the selection of an appropriate lexical item (a "lemma") from the mental lexicon, and the phonological encoding of that item, that is, the computation of a phonetic program for the item in the context of utterance. These two theoretical domains are successively introduced by outlining some core issues that have been or still have to be addressed. The final section discusses the controversial question whether phonological encoding can affect lexical selection. This partitioning is also followed in this special issue as a whole. There are, first, four papers on lexical selection, then three papers on phonological encoding, and finally one on the interaction between selection and phonological encoding.
Topics: Female; Humans; Male; Phonetics; Speech; Verbal Behavior; Vocabulary
PubMed: 1582153
DOI: 10.1016/0010-0277(92)90038-j -
Neuroepidemiology 2017Cognitive capabilities change in later life, although their onset and rate of decline, and how they are shaped by lifetime socioeconomic position, childhood cognition...
BACKGROUND
Cognitive capabilities change in later life, although their onset and rate of decline, and how they are shaped by lifetime socioeconomic position, childhood cognition and adult health status are all unclear.
METHODS
From the Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development, we analysed 3,192 participants undergoing one or more cognitive assessments at ages 43, 53, 60-64 and 69. Linear mixed models described cognitive trajectories, adjusting for factors across the life course.
RESULTS
For both search speed and verbal memory, better performance at age 43 (the intercept) was associated with higher paternal and own education, childhood cognition, and adult occupational class. For search speed, the trajectory was best described as a quadratic function (decline of 45.6 letters/5-years + 4.6 letters). Verbal memory showed a linear decline of 0.20 words/5-years between ages 43 and 60 and a steeper linear decline of 0.95 words/5-years between ages 60 and 69. Decline in verbal memory in the latter period was steeper in those with higher educational achievements at age 26 (additional 0.28 words/5-years for highest attainment).
CONCLUSIONS
Decline in verbal memory and search speed across midlife is evident, though with different non-linear trajectories. By implication, pathways to cognitive impairment and dementia in older age may have their origins in this period.
Topics: Adult; Age Factors; Aged; Cohort Studies; Female; Health Surveys; Humans; Male; Mental Recall; Middle Aged; Reaction Time; United Kingdom; Verbal Behavior; Visual Perception
PubMed: 29145205
DOI: 10.1159/000481136 -
Infant Behavior & Development Dec 2008Twenty mother-infant dyads (10 boys, 10 girls) were videotaped longitudinally at ages 10, 13, 17, and 21 months during in-home free play and bath sessions. Mothers' and... (Comparative Study)
Comparative Study
Twenty mother-infant dyads (10 boys, 10 girls) were videotaped longitudinally at ages 10, 13, 17, and 21 months during in-home free play and bath sessions. Mothers' and infants' responses to their partners' naturally occurring action and vocal/verbal imitations were described, and relations to infants' imitation rates and vocabularies were examined. Mothers' response rates were consistently high and unrelated to infants' imitation rates. As early as 10 months, infants responded to the great majority of maternal imitations, especially action imitations, often with actions. Infants' return imitations to action matching indicated increasing awareness of being imitated. Infants' responses to mothers' vocal/verbal imitation were associated with their later vocabulary levels. Children who would be more lexically advanced at 17 and/or 21 months provided more social responses at 10 months, more socially responsive actions and return verbal imitations at 13 months, and more non-imitative socially responsive words at 17 and 21 months.
Topics: Female; Follow-Up Studies; Humans; Imitative Behavior; Infant; Infant Behavior; Longitudinal Studies; Male; Maternal Behavior; Mother-Child Relations; Speech; Spouses; Verbal Behavior
PubMed: 18533270
DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2008.04.005 -
Methods and Findings in Experimental... Mar 1999This article aims to answer the question whether developing technology is now capable of measuring objectively and accurately the effects of psychoactive pharmacological... (Review)
Review
This article aims to answer the question whether developing technology is now capable of measuring objectively and accurately the effects of psychoactive pharmacological agents by means of computerized assessments of psychological states and traits through the analysis of content and form of people's speech. At the present time, psychopharmacological researchers involved in clinical trials rely on DSM-IV criteria and standardized self-report measures and observer rating scales to assess psychoactive drug effects. Attention is drawn to the potentially unrecognized measurement errors and relatively low interrater reliability by these methods--for example, all raters are not free of observer bias and every subject administered a drug is not equally and accurately well-informed about the self. The computerized content analysis methods tend to avoid these biases and measurement errors. A review is provided describing the Gottschalk-Gleser method of measuring psychobiological dimensions from the form and content of short (usually five-minute) speech samples of verbal behavior, generally elicited by standardized and purposely ambiguous instructions to talk about any interesting or dramatic personal life experiences. Norms have been obtained by this method of speech elicitation, adjusted for age, sex and educational level. Sections are provided covering cross-cultural and language validation research on the Gottschalk-Gleser content analysis method, the influence of medical or psychiatric illness as well as psychoactive drugs on verbal content analysis-derived scores, and the research carried out for more than 20 years computerizing this content analysis procedure through the development of artificial intelligence software enabling these measurements to be done from typescripts of speech samples on computer diskettes. A brief review deals with the general applications of this method of measurement to basic and clinical psychiatry, psychosomatic medicine, neuropsychology, the diagnostic process in a psychiatry outpatient clinic, children's mental health problems, dream research, and assessment of mental processes during PET scanning of the brain. This is followed by a review of the applications of this method of content analysis of speech to neuropsychopharmacological testing of antianxiety, antidepressive, antipsychotic, and other psychoactive drugs, as well as to pharmacokinetic variables and clinical response. This method is now in the process of being used in clinical trials in psychopharmacology and is recommended for more extensive use in this research area.
Topics: Artificial Intelligence; Female; Humans; Male; Psychopharmacology; Psychotropic Drugs; Verbal Behavior
PubMed: 10327394
DOI: 10.1358/mf.1999.21.2.529240 -
Behavioural Neurology 2022Semantic fluency is the ability to name items from a given category within a limited time, which relies on semantic memory, working memory, and executive function....
Semantic fluency is the ability to name items from a given category within a limited time, which relies on semantic memory, working memory, and executive function. Semantic disfluency is a common problem in Parkinson's disease (PD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). We demonstrated a graph theoretical analysis of semantic fluency in patients with PD ( = 86), patients with AD ( = 40), and healthy controls (HC, = 88). All participants completed a standard animal fluency test. Their verbal responses were recorded, transcripted, and transformed into directed speech graphs. Patients with PD generated fewer correct words than HC and more correct words than patients with AD. Patients with PD showed higher density, shorter diameter, and shorter average shortest path length than HC, but lower density, longer diameter, and longer average shortest path length than patients with AD. It suggests that patients with PD produced relatively smaller and denser speech graphs. Moreover, in PD, the densities of speech graphs correlated with the severity of non-motor symptoms, but not the severity of motor symptoms. The graph theoretical analysis revealed new features of semantic disfluency in patients with PD.
Topics: Alzheimer Disease; Humans; Memory, Short-Term; Neuropsychological Tests; Parkinson Disease; Semantics; Verbal Behavior
PubMed: 35502419
DOI: 10.1155/2022/6935263 -
Personality Disorders Mar 2018In schizophrenia-spectrum populations, analyzing the words people use has offered promise for unlocking information about affective states and social behaviors. The...
In schizophrenia-spectrum populations, analyzing the words people use has offered promise for unlocking information about affective states and social behaviors. The electronically activated recorder (EAR) is an application-based program that is combined with widely used smartphone technology to capture a person's real-world interactions via audio recordings. It improves on the ecological validity of current methodologies by providing objective and naturalistic samples of behavior. This study is the first to implement the EAR in people endorsing elevated traits of schizophrenia-spectrum personality disorders (i.e., schizotypy), and we expected the EAR to (a) differentiate high and low schizotypy groups on affective disturbances and social engagement and (b) show that high schizotypy status moderates links between affect and social behavior using a multimethod approach. Lexical analysis of EAR recordings revealed greater negative affect and decreased social engagement in those high in schizotypy. When assessing specific traits, EAR and ecological momentary assessment (EMA) converged to show that positive schizotypy predicted negative affect. Finally, high schizotypy status moderated links between negative affect and social engagement when the EAR was combined with EMA. Adherence did not influence results, as both groups wore the EAR more than 90% of their waking hours. Findings supported using the EAR to assess real-world expressions of personality and functioning in schizotypy. Evidence also showed that the EAR can be used alongside EMA to provide a mixed-method, real-world assessment that is high in ecological validity and offers a window into the daily lives of those with elevated traits of schizophrenia-spectrum personality disorders. (PsycINFO Database Record
Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Ecological Momentary Assessment; Female; Humans; Interpersonal Relations; Male; Mobile Applications; Schizotypal Personality Disorder; Social Behavior; Verbal Behavior; Young Adult
PubMed: 29215902
DOI: 10.1037/per0000266 -
Developmental Medicine and Child... Feb 2007Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a progressive pediatric disorder that affects both muscle and brain. Children with DMD have mean IQ scores that are about one... (Comparative Study)
Comparative Study
Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a progressive pediatric disorder that affects both muscle and brain. Children with DMD have mean IQ scores that are about one standard deviation lower than population means, with lower Verbal IQ than Performance IQ scores. For the present study, verbal skills and verbal memory skills were examined in males with DMD with the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, 3rd edition, and the California Verbal Learning Test for Children. Performance of 50 males with DMD (age range 6-14 y, mean 9 y 4 mo [SD 2 y 1 mo]) was compared to normative values. Two subsets of the probands were also compared with two comparison groups: unaffected siblings (n=24; DMD group age range 6-12 y, mean 9 y 1 mo [SD 1 y 8 mo]; sibling age range 6-15 y, mean 9 y 11 mo [SD 2 y 4 mo]) and males with cerebral palsy (CP); (n=23; DMD group age range 6-9 y, mean 7 y 8 mo [SD 1 y 2 mo]; CP age range 6-8 y, mean 6 y 8 mo [SD 0 y 8 mo]). Results demonstrated that although males with DMD performed slightly more poorly than normative values, they performed comparably to the controls on most measures. Consistent deficits were observed only on tests requiring immediate repetition for verbal material (Recalling Sentences, and Concepts and Directions). On other language tasks, including tests of understanding and use of grammar, and understanding of semantic relationships, the males with DMD performed well. Moreover, the males with DMD performed well on multiple indices of verbal recall, and there was no evidence of declarative memory deficits. DMD is a single-gene disorder that is selectively associated with decreased verbal span capacity, but not impaired recall.
Topics: Adolescent; Child; Disabled Persons; Humans; Language Tests; Male; Memory; Multivariate Analysis; Muscular Dystrophy, Duchenne; Neuropsychological Tests; Siblings; Verbal Behavior; Verbal Learning
PubMed: 17254000
DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-8749.2007.00123.x -
Scientific Reports Dec 2020Social and pragmatic difficulties in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are widely recognized, although their underlying neural level processing is not well understood. The...
Social and pragmatic difficulties in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are widely recognized, although their underlying neural level processing is not well understood. The aim of this study was to examine the activity of the brain network components linked to social and pragmatic understanding in order to reveal whether complex socio-pragmatic events evoke differences in brain activity between the ASD and control groups. Nineteen young adults (mean age 23.6 years) with ASD and 19 controls (mean age 22.7 years) were recruited for the study. The stimulus data consisted of video clips showing complex social events that demanded processing of pragmatic communication. In the analysis, the functional magnetic resonance imaging signal responses of the selected brain network components linked to social and pragmatic information processing were compared. Although the processing of the young adults with ASD was similar to that of the control group during the majority of the social scenes, differences between the groups were found in the activity of the social brain network components when the participants were observing situations with concurrent verbal and non-verbal communication events. The results suggest that the ASD group had challenges in processing concurrent multimodal cues in complex pragmatic communication situations.
Topics: Adult; Autism Spectrum Disorder; Brain; Communication; Cues; Female; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Verbal Behavior; Young Adult
PubMed: 33303942
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-78874-2