Language processing and executive functions in early treated adults with phenylketonuria (PKU)

9045 Background: Children with cerebellar tumor are at risk for cognitive deficits (CD) depending on surgery and radiotherapy. Only few studies analyze the role of tumor itself in mental functioning (Ellenberg et al., ‘87). Data about neuropsychological organization before any treatment are essential to understand the effect of tumor and have a baseline for analyzing the negative impact of the different treatments in the CD. Aim of this study is to prospectively analyze cognitive functions before treatment in patients (pts) with cerebellar tumors. Methods: Twenty-five pts with cerebellar tumor were assessed at diagnosis.Children with previous and severe neurological disturbances neurological were excluded. Intelligence quotient (IQ) and sectorial cognitive abilities (memory, attention, language, visuospatial and executive functions) were evaluated. Neurological examination (BUSPAR) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) were performed in the same period of cognitive assessment. Neurological deficits were classified as major, mild or absent in relation with the results of BUSPAR. Results: Twenty pts were selected; males/females: 12/8; age: 7.6 years (range: 18 m-14.8 y); histhology: pilocytic astrocytoma (9 pts), medulloblastoma (9), ependymoma (1) and atypical teratoid-rabdoid (1); tumor location: right cerebellar hemisphere (4), left (4), vermal (12); neurological examination: major neurological signs (2 pts), mild (10), absent (6); hydrocephalus: 50% of pts. Three pts had IQ values below the average level, although mean IQ values were normal (mean: 99.6; range: 78–118). Sixteen/20 pts had selective CD mainly involving working memory, executive functions, attention, and visual motor integration. Language processing was defective in 6 pts (2/4 right-sides lesions, 4/12 vermal lesion). Conclusions: Sectorial CD are present before treatment in about 80% of pts, mainly related to the location of tumor. Preliminar data suggest a correlation between specific sites inside cerebellum and selective CD, with language problems mainly in right hemispheric tumor. Complex cognitive impairment was present in 15% of pts before treatment. These data will represent the baseline for further analysis about the impact of treatment on cognitive outcome. No significant financial relationships to disclose.

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Language Deficits as a Preclinical Window into Parkinson’s Disease: Evidence from Asymptomatic Parkin and Dardarin Mutation Carriers

Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society ◽

10.1017/s1355617716000710 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 23 (2) ◽

pp. 150-158 ◽

Cited By ~ 23

Author(s):

Adolfo M. García ◽

Lucas Sedeño ◽

Natalia Trujillo ◽

Yamile Bocanegra ◽

Diana Gomez ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Parkinson’S Disease ◽

Parkinson's Disease ◽

Executive Functions ◽

Language Processing ◽

Memory Load ◽

Analysis Of Covariance ◽

Mutation Carriers ◽

Language Measures ◽

Asymptomatic Individuals ◽

Processing Mechanisms

AbstractObjectives:The worldwide spread of Parkinson’s disease (PD) calls for sensitive and specific measures enabling its early (or, ideally, preclinical) detection. Here, we use language measures revealing deficits in PD to explore whether similar disturbances are present in asymptomatic individualsat riskfor the disease.Methods:We administered executive, semantic, verb-production, and syntactic tasks to sporadic PD patients, genetic PD patients with PARK2 (parkin) or LRRK2 (dardarin) mutation, asymptomatic first-degree relatives of the latter with similar mutations, and socio-demographically matched controls. Moreover, to detectsui generislanguage disturbances, we ran analysis of covariance tests using executive functions as covariate.Results:The two clinical groups showed impairments in all measures, most of which survived covariation with executive functions. However, the key finding concerned asymptomatic mutation carriers. While these subjects showed intact executive, semantic, and action-verb production skills, they evinced deficits in a syntactic test with minimal working memory load.Conclusions:We propose that thissui generisdisturbance may constitute a prodromal sign anticipating eventual development of PD. Moreover, our results suggest that mutations on specific genes (PARK2 and LRRK2) compromising basal ganglia functioning may be subtly related to language-processing mechanisms. (JINS, 2017,23, 150–158)

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Maternal reading fluency is associated with functional connectivity between the child’s future reading network and regions related to executive functions and language processing in preschool-age children

Brain and Cognition ◽

10.1016/j.bandc.2018.11.010 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 131 ◽

pp. 87-93 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Paige Greenwood ◽

John Hutton ◽

Jon Dudley ◽

Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus

Keyword(s):

Functional Connectivity ◽

Executive Functions ◽

Language Processing ◽

Reading Fluency ◽

Preschool Age ◽

Preschool Age Children

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Executive Functions Predictors of Learners' Language Processing Abilities: A Training Study

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e528942014-877 ◽

2014 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Lucia Pozzan ◽

John Trueswell

Keyword(s):

Executive Functions ◽

Language Processing ◽

Training Study ◽

Processing Abilities

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Bilingualism effects on the cognitive flexibility of autistic children: Evidence from verbal dual-task paradigms

Neurobiology of Language ◽

10.1162/nol_a_00055 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-73

Author(s):

Eleni Peristeri ◽

Margreet Vogelzang ◽

Ianthi Maria Tsimpli

Keyword(s):

Executive Functions ◽

Cognitive Flexibility ◽

Language Processing ◽

Dual Task ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Autistic Children ◽

Target Information ◽

Typically Developing Children ◽

Language Abilities ◽

Dual Tasks

Abstract The deficit in cognitive flexibility, i.e. the ability to adapt cognitive behavior to changing contexts, is one of the most prominent characteristics of autistic individuals. Inflexibility may manifest in restricted interests and increased susceptibility to the effects of misinformation either through inefficient inhibition of non-target information or deficient recall of correct information. Bilingualism has been shown to enhance executive functions in both typically-developing children and autistic children, yet, the effect of bilingualism on cognitive flexibility in autism remains underexplored. In this study, we used verbal dual-tasks to compare cognitive flexibility across 50 monolingual autistic and 50 bilingual autistic children, and 50 monolingual and 50 bilingual typically-developing children. The children were also administered language ability tests and a nonverbal global-local cognitive flexibility task, in order to investigate whether performance in the dual-tasks would be modulated by the children’s language and executive function skills. The bilingual autistic children outperformed their monolingual autistic peers in the dual tasks. The strength of the bilingualism effect, however, was modulated by the type of language processing that interfered with the target information in each dual-task, which suggests that the bilingual autistic children calibrated their processing resources and efficiently adapted them to the changing demands of the dual-task only to the extent that the task did not exceed their language abilities. Bilingual autistic children relied on their executive functions rather than on their language abilities while performing in the dual-tasks. The overall results show that bilingualism compensates for the reduced cognitive flexibility in autism.

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The Role of the Striatum in Processing Language Rules: Evidence from Word Perception in Huntington's Disease

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn.2006.18.9.1555 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 18 (9) ◽

pp. 1555-1569 ◽

Cited By ~ 33

Author(s):

Marc Teichmann ◽

Emmanuel Dupoux ◽

Sid Kouider ◽

Anne-Catherine Bachoud-Lévi

Keyword(s):

Executive Functions ◽

Huntington's Disease ◽

Huntington’S Disease ◽

Language Processing ◽

Early Stage ◽

Temporal Cortex ◽

Morphological Operations ◽

Verb Forms ◽

Rule Application

On the assumption that linguistic faculties reflect both lexical storage in the temporal cortex and combinatorial rules in the striatal circuits, several authors have shown that striatal-damaged patients are impaired with conjugation rules while retaining lexical knowledge of irregular verbs [Teichmann, M., Dupoux, E., Kouider, S., Brugières, P., Boissé, M. F., Baudic, S., Cesaro, P., Peschanski, M., & Bachoud-Lévi, A. C. (2005). The role of the striatum in rule application. The model of Huntington's disease at early stage. Brain, 128, 1155–1167; Ullman, M. T., Corkin, S., Coppola, M., Hickok, G., Growdon, J. H., Koroshetz, W. J., & Pinker, S. (1997). A neural dissociation within language: Evidence that the mental dictionary is part of declarative memory, and that grammatical rules are processed by the procedural system. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 9, 266–276]. Yet, such impairment was documented only with explicit conjugation tasks in the production domain. Little is known about whether it generalizes to other language modalities such as perception and whether it refers to implicit language processing or rather to intentional rule operations through executive functions. We investigated these issues by assessing perceptive processing of conjugated verb forms in a model of striatal dysfunction, namely, in Huntington's Disease (HD) at early stages. Rule application and lexical processes were evaluated in an explicit task (acceptability judgments on verb and nonword forms) and in an implicit task (lexical decision on frequency-manipulated verb forms). HD patients were also assessed in executive functions, and striatal atrophy was evaluated with magnetic resonance imaging (bicaudate ratio). Results from both tasks showed that HD patients were selectively impaired for rule application but lexical abilities were spared. Bicaudate ratios correlated with rule scores on both tasks, whereas executive parameters only correlated with scores on the explicit task. We argue that the striatum has a core function in linguistic rule application generalizing to perceptive aspects of morphological operations and pertaining to implicit language processes. In addition, we suggest that the striatum may enclose computational circuits that underpin explicit manipulation of regularities.

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Relationships of Attention and Executive Functions to Oral Language, Reading, and Writing Skills and Systems in Middle Childhood and Early Adolescence

Journal of Learning Disabilities ◽

10.1177/0022219415617167 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 50 (4) ◽

pp. 434-449 ◽

Cited By ~ 27

Author(s):

Virginia Berninger ◽

Robert Abbott ◽

Clayton R. Cook ◽

William Nagy

Keyword(s):

Executive Function ◽

Executive Functions ◽

Language Learning ◽

Language Processing ◽

Middle Childhood ◽

Oral Language ◽

Word Reading ◽

Written Language ◽

Childhood And Adolescence ◽

Reading And Writing

Relationships between attention/executive functions and language learning were investigated in students in Grades 4 to 9 ( N = 88) with and without specific learning disabilities (SLDs) in multiword syntax in oral and written language (OWL LD), word reading and spelling (dyslexia), and subword letter writing (dysgraphia). Prior attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis was correlated only with impaired handwriting. Parental ratings of inattention, but not hyperactivity, correlated with measures of written language but not oral language. Sustaining switching attention correlated with writing the alphabet from memory in manuscript or by keyboard and fast copying of a sentence with all the letters of the alphabet. Multiple regressions based on a principal component for composites of multiple levels of language (subword, word, and syntax/text) showed that measures of attention and executive function involving language processing rather than ratings of attention and executive function not specifically related to language accounted for more variance and identified more unique predictors in the composite outcomes for oral language, reading, and writing systems. Inhibition related to focused attention uniquely predicted outcomes for the oral language system. Findings are discussed in reference to implications for assessing and teaching students who are still learning to pay attention to heard and written language and self-regulate their language learning during middle childhood and adolescence.

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A Cognitive Neural Model of Executive Functions in Natural Language Processing

Procedia Computer Science ◽

10.1016/j.procs.2015.12.200 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 71 ◽

pp. 196-201 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Bruno Golosio ◽

Angelo Cangelosi ◽

Olesya Gamotina ◽

Giovanni Luca Masala

Keyword(s):

Natural Language Processing ◽

Natural Language ◽

Executive Functions ◽

Language Processing ◽

Neural Model

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How different code-switching types modulate bilinguals’ executive functions: A dual control mode perspective

Bilingualism Language and Cognition ◽

10.1017/s1366728919000804 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 23 (4) ◽

pp. 909-925 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Julia Hofweber ◽

Theodoros Marinis ◽

Jeanine Treffers-Daller

Keyword(s):

Executive Functions ◽

Language Processing ◽

Flanker Task ◽

Code Switching ◽

Control Mode ◽

Dual Control ◽

Reactive Control ◽

Co Activation ◽

Dense Code ◽

Proactive Monitoring

AbstractMost existing studies on the relationship between code-switching and executive functions have focused on experimentally induced language-switching, which differs fundamentally from naturalistic code-switching. This study investigated whether and how bilinguals’ code-switching practices modulate different aspects of executive functioning. Our findings suggest that existing processing models of code-switching should be extended by a dual control mode perspective, differentiating between reactive and proactive monitoring. Bilinguals engaging in code-switching types that keep languages more separate (Alternation) displayed inhibitory advantages in a flanker task inducing reactive control. Dense code-switching, which requires bilinguals to constantly monitor cross-linguistic competition, explained performance in proactive monitoring conditions. Furthermore, a correlation between Dense code-switching and response inhibition suggests that linguistic co-activation may persist during articulatory stages of language processing. Crucially, bilinguals outperformed monolinguals at those aspects of the executive system that were trained by their most frequent code-switching habits. This underlines the importance of sociolinguistic variables in bilingualism research.

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