Journal of Neurolinguistics最新文献

We investigated whether semantic knowledge is organized according to domain- or feature-dimensions during a semantic categorization task. In addition, using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), we assessed whether the left or right inferior parietal lobule is differentially engaged based on these dimensions. To this end, four different tDCS electrode montage groups were employed (anodal left, cathodal left, anodal right, cathodal right). Reaction times and accuracy were recorded in response to visually presented words (living and non-living concepts with a high or low number of features). In line with our expectations, living concepts elicited faster reaction times compared with non-living concepts and concepts with a high number of features elicited faster reaction times compared with concepts with a low number of features. In addition, a general, regionally and polarity-unspecific, deteriorating effect of tDCS emerged, with stimulation slowing down reaction times compared with sham. The results are discussed in the frameworks of major theories on the organization of semantic knowledge, including the Distributed Domain-Specific Hypothesis.

This paper aims to review the literature on the therapeutic approaches employed for the treatment of verb tense inflection in individuals with agrammatic aphasia and the reported outcomes on language production and verb tense inflection. All studies on the treatment of verb tense inflection were found by searching Cochrane library, ISI Web of Knowledge, Google Scholar, Pubmed, and Scopus until December 2020, with the combination of these keywords, ‘aphasia, verb, morphology, tense, therapy, treatment, rehabilitation’. All studies (single-case or group design) on the treatment of verb tense inflection in individuals with acquired aphasia were reviewed. Data were synthesized descriptively through tables to allow the facilitated comparison of the studies. The methodology of the reviewed studies was assessed using single-case experimental designs (SCED) scale. An adaptation of the Cochrane Collaboration's risk of bias (RoB) tool was employed to evaluate the risk of bias (RoB) in the reviewed studies. A total of 14 studies were selected and reviewed. The results of the reviewed studies demonstrated that the remediation of tense morphology production in individuals with agrammatic aphasia is effective and verb tense marking can be improved by therapies that specifically target this disorder. This review highlights the need for a more systematic investigation of different types of treatments for tense marking. Also, more detailed information about the treatment of regular vs irregular verbs are required to elucidate the potential efficiency of these two verb types in the treatment of tense inflection. Overall, regarding the theoretical and clinical aspects, the number of studies that specifically target tense morphology are growing and based on the positive potential of these treatments, they could be suitable for the rehabilitation of people with aphasia, especially those with agrammatism.

The understanding of alternation is a key goal in phonological research. But little is known about how phonological alternations are implemented in speech production. The current study tested the hypothesis that the production of words that undergo a highly productive alternation, Mandarin Tone 3 sandhi, is supported by a computation mechanism, which predicts that this alternation is subserved by neural activity in a time-window associated with post-lexical phonological and phonetic encoding regardless of word frequency. ERPs were recorded while participants sub-vocally produced high- and low-frequency disyllabic words that do or do not require sandhi. Sandhi words elicited more positive ERPs than non-sandhi words over left anterior channels around 336–520 ms after participants saw the cue instructing them to initiate sub-vocal production, but this effect was not significantly modulated by word frequency. These findings are consistent with predictions of the computation mechanism and have implications for current psycholinguistic models of speech production. (150 words)

Language and music rely on complex sequences organized according to syntactic principles that are implicitly understood by enculturated listeners. Across both domains, syntactic processing involves predicting and integrating incoming elements into higher-order structures. According to the Shared Syntactic Integration Resource Hypothesis (SSIRH; Patel, 2003), musical and linguistic syntactic processing rely on shared resources for integrating incoming elements (e.g., chords, words) into unfolding sequences. One prediction of the SSIRH is that people with agrammatic aphasia (whose deficits are due to syntactic integration problems) should present with deficits processing musical syntax. We report the first neural study to test this prediction: event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured in response to musical and linguistic syntactic violations in a group of people with agrammatic aphasia (n = 7) compared to a group of healthy controls (n = 14) using an acceptability judgement task. The groups were matched with respect to age, education, and extent of musical training. Violations were based on morpho-syntactic relations in sentences and harmonic relations in chord sequences. Both groups presented with a significant P600 response to syntactic violations across both domains. The aphasic participants presented with a reduced-amplitude posterior P600 compared to the healthy controls in response to linguistic, but not musical, violations. Participants with aphasia did however present with larger frontal positivities in response to violations in both domains. Intriguingly, extent of musical training was associated with larger posterior P600 responses to syntactic violations of language and music in both groups. Overall, these findings are not consistent with the predictions of the SSIRH, and instead suggest that linguistic, but not musical, syntactic processing may be selectively impaired in stroke-induced agrammatic aphasia. However, the findings also suggest a relationship between musical training and linguistic syntactic processing, which may have clinical implications for people with aphasia, and motivates more research on the relationship between these two domains.

The event-related potential (ERP) technique provides a temporally accurate measure to distinguish among different linguistic processes. Here, we measured ERPs in response to known words, pseudowords and nonwords in 24-month-old French-learning children to investigate how individual vocabulary skills contribute to the processing of native-like and non-native-like words during a listening task. The N200 was more pronounced for pseudowords than for nonwords while no difference was found between known words and pseudowords. The amplitude difference between known words and pseudowords was, however, correlated with the productive vocabulary. Toddlers with a higher vocabulary score exhibited a bigger difference than toddlers with a lower vocabulary score. Similarly for the frontally distributed late negativity, only those toddlers with higher vocabulary knowledge exhibited a gradient pattern of activity in response to three word types while children with lower vocabulary skills exhibited a similar responsiveness to each word type. Our results suggest that vocabulary skills contribute to the magnitudes of brain signals in response to native and non-native words in a non-referential listening task.

Background

Aphasic disorders are observed in patients with both vascular and neurodegenerative pathology. Although spontaneous speech in the various forms of aphasia has some features that are identifiable on a purely linguistic level, diagnosing the type of aphasia critically relies on the support of clinical and neuroimaging data.

Objective

To identify some core characteristics of different types of fluent aphasias (i.e., disorders of speech production due to lesions in the posterior regions of the left perisylvian areas not associated with articulatory deficits or apraxia of speech) in spontaneous speech using T-LAB computer-assisted qualitative analyses. This is a mixed-method software that allows exploring narratives by highlighting their key features using linguistic, statistical and graphical tools.

Methods

We collected samples of spontaneous speech (narratives) from 34 fluent aphasic Italian speakers (i.e.,11 post-stroke aphasic patients, 17 with the logopenic variant of Primary Progressive Aphasia and 6 with the semantic variant) during the description of the Cookie Theft Picture of the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination. Thirty-four healthy control subjects were asked to complete the same task. Analyses of the entire corpus (all of the narratives), specific metadata introduction and tagging were performed by two raters and any conflicts were resolved by a third rater.

Results

T-LAB analysis revealed statistically significant differences between both aphasic patients and healthy controls and between vascular and degenerative patients. Although the main distinction emerged between post-stroke and neurodegenerative aphasias, important differences also emerged between the individuals with the logopenic variant and the semantic variant.

Discussion

These findings underline the potential usefulness of a computer-assisted analysis of speech production to identify the core linguistic characteristics of different aphasic disorders, independently of any clinical support.

Intelligence (measured by IQ) varies across individuals. An individual's IQ has been evidenced to be positively associated with verbal-humor production. However, to our knowledge, no study to date has examined how intelligence affects verbal-humor processing. The objective of this current electroencephalogram (EEG) study is to explore the dynamic impact of intelligence on processing patterns in three stages of verbal-humor processing from both temporal and oscillatory perspectives. Twenty-six subjects were recruited and required to read setup-punchline type statements in three conditions (funny, unfunny and unrelated). Event-related Potentials (ERPs) analysis found the earliest differences between relatively higher IQ (RHI) group and relatively lower IQ (RLI) group in dealing with unfunny conditions in the P200 component due to its role as a neural marker mediated by intelligence in language processing; more importantly, the processing patterns in two stages, incongruity detection and mirth, were found to be modulated by intelligence levels: the analysis of the N400 effect presented typical characteristics of incongruity detection for RHI group, while nontypical characteristics close to N300-like effect were found for RLI group; in the stage of mirth, RHI group presented a sustained P600 effect, while RLI group presented proper features of emotion processing. At the global level, these results indicate that people with different intelligence levels may employ dual-pattern model in processing two stages among three stages of verbal-humor appreciation. Event-related Oscillations (EROs) analysis revealed the functional role of the theta band and disclosed the impact of intelligence levels on the early stage of verbal-humor processing from the perspective of ERO. In the future research, further methodological considerations should be included to clarify the innate brain mechanisms aiming at examining intelligence differences regarding verbal-humor processing or indeed on any other issues.

Thiamine, vitamin B1, is a crucial component in brain development. This study examined the role thiamine plays in the development of language, by examining the long-term effects of thiamine deficiency in infancy. The participants were a young adult who had consumed a thiamine-deficient baby formula at age 1;0–1;5, and her non-identical twin sister, who had consumed a non-deficient formula. We conducted a comprehensive assessment of various language abilities, including syntax, morphology, lexical encoding and retrieval, word and nonword reading, and phonological working memory, most of which have not been previously tested in individuals who had thiamine deficiency in infancy. The twin who had thiamine deficiency showed selective deficits in various language domains, including syntactic movement, morphology, and lexical abilities (which also caused surface dyslexia in reading aloud). She also showed impaired input and output phonological working memory and impaired reading aloud of nonwords (involving voicing errors, morphological errors, and lexicalizations). Her twin sister, who did not have thiamine deficiency, showed typical language abilities. The findings show for the first time that language disorders due to thiamine deficiency in infancy persist into adulthood. In light of previous literature of adults whose thiamine deficiency took place in adulthood, who do not show language impairments, we suggest that thiamine is crucial for language development during the critical period for first language acquisition in the first years of life. Thiamine deficiency during the critical period may cause long-lasting impairments in syntax, morphology, reading, phonological working memory, and lexical abilities.

Although a few neuroimaging studies have examined the role of rapid automatized naming in reading, they have all been conducted in alphabetic orthographies and have focused on brain activation. The present study investigated the shared and unique functional and effective connectivity of Chinese character naming with alphanumeric (digits) and non-alphanumeric (objects) RAN in 20 Chinese university students by using fMRI. Compared to RAN objects, character naming recruited an additional connection between the visual word form area and the left superior temporal gyrus. Compared to RAN digits, character naming recruited more connections between the language-related regions in the right hemisphere. Character naming had similar connections in the language-related regions with RAN digits and in the right hemisphere with RAN objects. These results support the notion that RAN is a “microcosm” of reading and integrates neural resources involved in object identification and naming.

Socio-pragmatic factors, such as social roles and language experience, could be key variables influencing language processing. However, little is known regarding the neural correlates of syntactic processing mediated by socio-pragmatic factors. Honorific agreement in Japanese is well-suited for the investigation of this issue. Japanese honorifics are governed by socio-pragmatic and syntactic rules. Lower social status speakers are expected to address higher social status counterparts in accordance with these rules. This linguistic skill is typically developed through language experience accrued in social contexts. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging study investigated the neural correlates of the honorific agreement processing mediated by socio-pragmatic factors. Thirty-three native Japanese speakers performed a socio-pragmatic judgment task containing sentence conditions manipulated by conventionality (i.e., conventional vs. unconventional) and speaker (lower-status vs. higher-status). The lower-status conditions elicited significantly more activation of the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), bilateral insula, and dorsal medial prefrontal cortex than the higher-status ones, irrespective of conventionality. This suggests that social cues (i.e., speaker social status) trigger computation of honorific agreement via the left IFG. Furthermore, the conventional conditions significantly enhanced activation of the bilateral anterior temporal lobes (ATLs), compared with the unconventional conditions. Finally, the listener's experience with honorific use in the workplace was positively correlated with activation of the left inferior parietal lobule (IPL) during comprehension of conventional honorific utterances. Our findings demonstrate the importance of socio-pragmatic factors in Japanese honorific agreement processing, which involves the ATLs and IPL.