Visual-Neural Correlate of Speechreading Ability in Normal-Hearing Adults

1977 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 752-765 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Shepherd ◽  
Robin W. DeLavergne ◽  
Frank X. Frueh ◽  
Carol Clobridge

Significant product-moment correlations ranging from −0.90 to −0.91 were computed between a selected peak-latency in average visual electroencephalic responses and speechreading scores. Subjects were 20 adults with normal hearing and assumed normal vision who had had no formal training in the speechreading process. The negative peak selected as this study’s measure of visual-neural firing time occurs at an average of 130 msec from stimulus-onset in average visual electroencephalic responses evoked from either the right or left side of the head of normal adults. Speechreading measures included word and sentence scores obtained using a videotape of a female speaker presenting the 31 sentences that appear in the Utley Sentence Test of Lipreading Ability, Form B.

1982 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Shepherd

In 1977, Shepherd and colleagues reported significant correlations (–.90, –.91) between speechreading scores and the latency of a selected negative peak (VN 130 measure) on the averaged visual electroencephalic wave form. The primary purpose of this current study was to examine the stability, or repeatability, of this relation between these cognitive and neurophysiologic measures over a period of several months and thus support its test-retest reliability. Repeated speechreading word and sentence scores were gathered during three test-retest sessions from each of 20 normal-hearing adults. An average of 56 days occurred from the end of one to the beginning of another speechreading sessions. During each of four other test-retest sessions, averaged visual electroencephalic responses (AVER s ) were evoked from each subject. An average of 49 clays intervened between AVER sessions. Product-moment correlations computed among repeated word scores and VN l30 measures ranged from –.61 to –.89. Based on these findings, it was concluded that the VN l30 measure of visual neural firing time is a reliable correlate of speech-reading in normal-hearing adults.


1969 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 351-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurice I. Mendel ◽  
Robert Goldstein

The early components of the averaged electroencephalic response (AER) were examined at three-hour intervals in eight normal hearing adults over a single, sleepless 24-hour span. During each of the eight sessions, three series of clicks at 50 dB SL were presented to the right ear of the subject as he sat reading. 1024 clicks at the rate of 9.6/sec were used in obtaining each averaged response. Electroencephalic activity was recorded from an electrode on the vertex referred to the left earlobe. The response pattern was very stable, characterized by a polyphasic configuration with mean peak latencies of (P o ) 13.3 msec, (N a ) 22.0 msec, (P a ) 32.3 msec, and (N b ) 45.1 msec. An earlier negative peak (N o ) with a mean peak latency of 8.3 msec occurred in many of the responses. At the conclusion of the 24-hour span, three of the subjects were tested with the same stimuli during various stages of sleep. The early components of the AER remained consistent even during sleep. Threshold searches were successfully carried out on two of the sleeping subjects. The long-term stability of the early components of the AER in the awake and sleep states makes them practical as a response index for electroencephalic audiometry. Their characteristics are more compatible with a neurogenic than with a myogenic theory of their origin.


1967 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 697-705 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Goldstein ◽  
Leslie B. Rodman

Averaged evoked responses to clicks were elicited from 20 normal-hearing subjects between the ages of 16 and 41. Two thousand clicks were presented to the right ear at the rate of 10 per sec at 60, 30, 10, 5, 0, −5, and −10 dB SL. Sensation levels were varied randomly. In each series two control conditions without stimulation were randomly interspersed. Electroencephalic potentials were recorded from an electrode on the vertex of the skull referred to the left earlobe. The response pattern was relatively consistent with a vertex-negative peak (N a ) at about 20–24 msec, and a vertex-positive peak (P a ) at about 31–35 msec. Another vertex-negative peak (N b ) at about 46–50 msec was seen less frequently. Criteria for response were established on the basis of the occurrence of N a and P a within prescribed latencies as well as the interval between the two peaks of about 12–13 msec. The number of identifiable responses diminished with diminishing sensation levels but responses were observed in about one-half of the subjects as low as −5 dB SL.


2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 135-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miroslaw Wyczesany ◽  
Szczepan J. Grzybowski ◽  
Jan Kaiser

Abstract. In the study, the neural basis of emotional reactivity was investigated. Reactivity was operationalized as the impact of emotional pictures on the self-reported ongoing affective state. It was used to divide the subjects into high- and low-responders groups. Independent sources of brain activity were identified, localized with the DIPFIT method, and clustered across subjects to analyse the visual evoked potentials to affective pictures. Four of the identified clusters revealed effects of reactivity. The earliest two started about 120 ms from the stimulus onset and were located in the occipital lobe and the right temporoparietal junction. Another two with a latency of 200 ms were found in the orbitofrontal and the right dorsolateral cortices. Additionally, differences in pre-stimulus alpha level over the visual cortex were observed between the groups. The attentional modulation of perceptual processes is proposed as an early source of emotional reactivity, which forms an automatic mechanism of affective control. The role of top-down processes in affective appraisal and, finally, the experience of ongoing emotional states is also discussed.


1992 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 529-555 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. A Mondor ◽  
M.P. Bryden

In the typical visual laterality experiment, words and letters are more rapidly and accurately identified in the right visual field than in the left. However, while such studies usually control fixation, the deployment of visual attention is rarely restricted. The present studies investigated the influence of visual attention on the visual field asymmetries normally observed in single-letter identification and lexical decision tasks. Attention was controlled using a peripheral cue that provided advance knowledge of the location of the forthcoming stimulus. The time period between the onset of the cue and the onset of the stimulus (Stimulus Onset Asynchrony—SOA) was varied, such that the time available for attention to focus upon the location was controlled. At short SO As a right visual field advantage for identifying single letters and for making lexical decisions was apparent. However, at longer SOAs letters and words presented in the two visual fields were identified equally well. It is concluded that visual field advantages arise from an interaction of attentional and structural factors and that the attentional component in visual field asymmetries must be controlled in order to approximate more closely a true assessment of the relative functional capabilities of the right and left cerebral hemispheres.


2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 521-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Oppermann ◽  
Uwe Hassler ◽  
Jörg D. Jescheniak ◽  
Thomas Gruber

The human cognitive system is highly efficient in extracting information from our visual environment. This efficiency is based on acquired knowledge that guides our attention toward relevant events and promotes the recognition of individual objects as they appear in visual scenes. The experience-based representation of such knowledge contains not only information about the individual objects but also about relations between them, such as the typical context in which individual objects co-occur. The present EEG study aimed at exploring the availability of such relational knowledge in the time course of visual scene processing, using oscillatory evoked gamma-band responses as a neural correlate for a currently activated cortical stimulus representation. Participants decided whether two simultaneously presented objects were conceptually coherent (e.g., mouse–cheese) or not (e.g., crown–mushroom). We obtained increased evoked gamma-band responses for coherent scenes compared with incoherent scenes beginning as early as 70 msec after stimulus onset within a distributed cortical network, including the right temporal, the right frontal, and the bilateral occipital cortex. This finding provides empirical evidence for the functional importance of evoked oscillatory activity in high-level vision beyond the visual cortex and, thus, gives new insights into the functional relevance of neuronal interactions. It also indicates the very early availability of experience-based knowledge that might be regarded as a fundamental mechanism for the rapid extraction of the gist of a scene.


2000 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 2443-2452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simo Vanni ◽  
Kimmo Uutela

When attending to a visual object, peripheral stimuli must be monitored for appropriate redirection of attention and gaze. Earlier work has revealed precentral and posterior parietal activation when attention has been directed to peripheral vision. We wanted to find out whether similar cortical areas are active when stimuli are presented in nonattended regions of the visual field. The timing and distribution of neuromagnetic responses to a peripheral luminance stimulus were studied in human subjects with and without attention to fixation. Cortical current distribution was analyzed with a minimum L1-norm estimate. Attention enhanced responses 100–160 ms after the stimulus onset in the right precentral cortex, close to the known location of the right frontal eye field. In subjects whose right precentral region was not distinctly active before 160 ms, focused attention commonly enhanced right inferior parietal responses between 180 and 240 ms, whereas in the subjects with clear earlier precentral response no parietal enhancement was detected. In control studies both attended and nonattended stimuli in the peripheral visual field evoked the right precentral response, whereas during auditory attention the visual stimuli failed to evoke such response. These results show that during focused visual attention the right precentral cortex is sensitive to stimuli in all parts of the visual field. A rapid response suggests bypassing of elaborate analysis of stimulus features, possibly to encode target location for a saccade or redirection of attention. In addition, load for frontal and parietal nodi of the attentional network seem to vary between individuals.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (03) ◽  
pp. e276-e280
Author(s):  
Gleide Viviani Maciel Almeida ◽  
Angela Ribas ◽  
Jorge Calleros

Introduction Even people with normal hearing may have difficulties locating a sound source in unfavorable sound environments where competitive noise is intense. Objective To develop, describe, validate and establish the normality curve of the sound localization test. Method The sample consisted of 100 healthy subjects with normal hearing, > 18 years old, who agreed to participate in the study. The sound localization test was applied after the subjects underwent a tonal audiometry exam. For this purpose, a calibrated free field test environment was set up. Then, 30 random pure tones were presented in 2 speakers placed at 45° (on the right and on the left sides of the subject), and the noise was presented from a 3rd speaker, placed at 180°. The noise was presented in 3 hearing situations: optimal listening condition (no noise), noise in relation to 0 dB, and noise in relation to - 10 dB. The subject was asked to point out the side where the pure tone was being perceived, even in the presence of noise. Results All of the 100 participants performed the test in an average time of 99 seconds. The average score was 21, the medium score was 23, and the standard deviation was 3.05. Conclusion The sound localization test proved to be easy to set-up and to apply. The results obtained in the validation of the test suggest that individuals with normal hearing should locate 70% of the presented stimuli. The test can constitute an important instrument in the measurement of noise interference in the ability to locate the sound.


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 236-243
Author(s):  
Fahad H Alhazmi

Aim The association between hearing acuity and white-matter (WM) microstructure integrity was evaluated in a normal healthy population with a variety of hearing acuity using an automated tractography technique known as TRACULA (TRActs Constrained by UnderLying Anatomy) in order to investigate whether hearing acuity decline is correlated with brain structural connectivity. Methods Forty healthy controls were recruited to this study, which used a Siemens 3T Trio with a standard eight-channel head coil. Hearing acuity was assessed using pure-tone air conduction audiometry (Amplivox 2160, with Audiocups to eliminate noise and allow accurate pure-tone audiometry). Handedness and anxiety and depression were assessed for all participants in this study using the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, respectively. Results This study showed a significant reduction in WM volume of the left cingulum angular bundle (CAB; t = 2.32, p = 0.02) in the mild to moderate hearing-loss group (238 ± 223 mm2) compared to the group with normal hearing (105  ± 121 mm2). The WM integrity of the left CAB was found to be significantly different ( t = 2.06, p = 0.04) in the mild to moderate hearing-loss group (0.18 ± 0.06 mm2/s) compared to the group with normal hearing (0.22 ± 0.05 mm2/s). The WM integrity of the left anterior thalamic radiation (ATR) was found to be significantly different ( t = 2.58, p = 0.014) in the mild to moderate hearing-loss group (0.33 ± 0.05 mm2/s) compared to the group with normal hearing (0.37 ± 0.03 mm2/s). A significant negative correlation was found between age and the WM integrity of the right ATR ( r = −0.33, p = 0.038), and between hearing acuity and the WM integrity of the right ATR ( r = −0.38, p = 0.013) and left CAB ( r = −0.36, p = 0.019). Discussion and conclusion: An important finding in this study is that brain structural connectivity changes in the left hemisphere seem to be associated with age-related hearing loss found mainly in the ATR and CAB tracts.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (7) ◽  
pp. 356-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Silverston

Choosing the right treatment for the patient requires that the right diagnosis is made first. In primary and ambulatory care, however, diagnostic errors are both common and commonly preventable. The World Health Organization has recommended that all health professionals should receive formal training in the principles of diagnostic reasoning and the causes of diagnostic error, and that strategies and interventions to reduce the risk of diagnostic error should be used in clinical practice. This article describes a mnemonic checklist, SAFER PRACTICES, which can be used in an integrated approach to the prevention and detection of diagnostic errors that starts in the classroom and continues through to the consulting room.


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