scholarly journals An fMRI Study of Syntactic Adaptation

2004 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 702-713 ◽  
Author(s):  
U. Noppeney ◽  
C. J. Price
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Reading Time ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Blood Oxygenation ◽  
Behavioral Measure ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Sentence Reading ◽  
Fmri Study ◽  
Oxygenation Level ◽  
Mri Study

It is easier to produce and comprehend a series of sentences when they have similar syntactic structures. This “syntactic priming” effect was investigated during silent sentence reading using (i) blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) response as a physiological measure in an f MRI study and (ii) reading time as a behavioral measure in a complementary selfpaced reading paradigm. We found that reading time and left anterior temporal activation were decreased when subjects read sentences with similar relative to dissimilar syntactic forms. Thus, syntactic adaptation during sentence comprehension is demonstrated in a neural area that has previously been linked to both lexical semantic and sentence processing.

scholarly journals Sentence Reading: A Functional MRI Study at 4 Tesla

1997 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 664-686 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Bavelier ◽  
D. Corina ◽  
P. Jezzard ◽  
S. Padmanabhan ◽  
V. P. Clark ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Word Processing ◽  
Blood Oxygenation ◽  
Anterior Portion ◽  
Individual Subject ◽  
Sentence Reading ◽  
Wernicke’S Area ◽  
Classical Language ◽  
Mri Study ◽  
Language Areas

In this study, changes in blood oxygenation and volume were monitored while monolingual right-handed subjects read English sentences. Our results confirm the role of the left peri-sylvian cortex in language processing. Interestingly, individual subject analyses reveal a pattern of activation characterized by several small, limited patches rather than a few large, anatomically well-circumscribed centers. Between-subject analyses confirm a lateralized pattern of activation and reveal active classical language areas including Broca's area, Wernicke's area, and the angular gyms. In addition they point to areas only more recently considered as language-relevant including the anterior portion of the superior temporal sulcus. This area has not been reliably observed in imaging studies of isolated word processing. This raises the hypothesis that activation in this area is dependent on processes specific to sentence reading.

Abnormal Emotional Responses to Pleasant and Unpleasant Visual Stimuli in First Episode Schizophrenia: f-MRI Investigation

2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (S1) ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
M. Casacchia ◽  
M. Mazza ◽  
A. Catalucci ◽  
R. Pollice ◽  
M. Gallucci ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Negative Symptoms ◽  
Psychiatric Service ◽  
Visual Stimuli ◽  
Chronic Schizophrenia ◽  
Normal Subjects ◽  
Blood Oxygenation ◽  
First Episode ◽  
Affective Deficits ◽  
Oxygenation Level ◽  
Mri Study

Aims:Affective deficits (flat affect, a diminished expression of emotion, anhedonia, and lowered ability to experience pleasure) are very common in schizophrenia. In emotion feeling, the crucial role of the insula, rather than of the primary somatosensory cortices, strongly suggests that the neural substrate for emotions is not merely sensorial. It is more likely that the activation of the insula representation of the viscero-motor activity is responsible for feeling of disgust. A recent MRI study demonstrated specific left anterior insular volume reduction in chronic schizophrenia patients: sustainable is the suggestion that emotion of disgust or of taste may be related to the experience of pleasure, which probably is compromise in schizophrenics.We investigated fMRI brain activations in first episode schizophrenic subjects with negative symptoms and in healthy subjects elicited by pleasant and unpleasant visual stimuli.Method:Ten first-episode schizophrenic subjects with normal IQ were recruited from the psychiatric service “SMILE” of San Salvatore Hospital and 10 healthy volunteers matched for age and education were scanned during observation of pleasant and unpleasant visual stimuli. Functional images were acquired with a 1.5T MRI scanner. Blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) contrast was obtained using EPI T2* weighted images.Results:The most important result of the study was the demonstration that anterior insula was activated by the exposure to disgusting stimula in normal subjects but not in schizophrenic subjects.Conclusion:This failure of the neural systems used to support emotional attribution is consistent with pervasive problems in experiencing emotions by schizophrenics.

Progressive Frontal Dysconnectivity During Working Memory in eos Patients: A Longitudinal Functional MRI Study

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (S1) ◽  
pp. S60-S60
Author(s):  
S. Frangou ◽  
M. Kyriakopoulos ◽  
D. Danai
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Disease Onset ◽  
Blood Oxygenation ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Prefrontal Dysfunction ◽  
Oxygenation Level ◽  
Dependent Signal ◽  
Competing Interest ◽  
Mri Study

Working memory (WM) dysfunction is considered a cardinal feature of schizophrenia. Typically developing adolescents show significant gains in WM performance, which have been attributed to increased “frontalisation” within the fronto-cingulate-parietal network that underpins WM. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging and psycho-physiological interaction to measure blood oxygenation level–dependent signal and functional connectivity in response to the 2-back WM task from 25 youths with EOS and 25 yoked healthy adolescents that were assessed twice with a mean interval of 4 years between assessments. Patients showed reduced prefrontal connectivity at baseline and the magnitude of this effect increased over the follow-up period. Our results suggest on-going functional connectivity abnormalities in EOS patients’ post-disease onset that are linked to prefrontal dysfunction and contribute to worsening WM despite anti–psychotic treatment.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

scholarly journals What Limits Our Capacity to Process Nested Long-Range Dependencies in Sentence Comprehension?

Entropy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 446
Author(s):  
Yair Lakretz ◽  
Stanislas Dehaene ◽  
Jean-Rémi King
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Semantic Representation ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Capacity Limitation ◽  
Capacity Limit ◽  
Alternative Approach

Sentence comprehension requires inferring, from a sequence of words, the structure of syntactic relationships that bind these words into a semantic representation. Our limited ability to build some specific syntactic structures, such as nested center-embedded clauses (e.g., “The dog that the cat that the mouse bit chased ran away”), suggests a striking capacity limitation of sentence processing, and thus offers a window to understand how the human brain processes sentences. Here, we review the main hypotheses proposed in psycholinguistics to explain such capacity limitation. We then introduce an alternative approach, derived from our recent work on artificial neural networks optimized for language modeling, and predict that capacity limitation derives from the emergence of sparse and feature-specific syntactic units. Unlike psycholinguistic theories, our neural network-based framework provides precise capacity-limit predictions without making any a priori assumptions about the form of the grammar or parser. Finally, we discuss how our framework may clarify the mechanistic underpinning of language processing and its limitations in the human brain.

scholarly journals The Contributions of Singular and Plural Nouns to Sentence Processing Complexity: Evidence from Reading Time

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel H. Messer ◽  
Shelia Kennison
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
Reading Time ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Conceptual Representation ◽  
Psychonomic Bulletin ◽  
Psycholinguistic Research ◽  
Garden Path ◽  
And Linguistics ◽  
Processing Difficulty

The nature of semantic representations of plural nouns has been a subject of debates in the literature. The present research investigated the extent to which there are differences in the processing of plural versus single noun descriptions (e.g., the large chairs vs. the large chair).  In two reading experiments, we tested whether plural (versus singular) nouns appearing in sentences were more difficult to process initially and/or led to increased processing difficulty when occurring in sentences that contain a temporary syntactic ambiguity. Reading time on syntactically ambiguous sentences containing plural or singular nouns were compared with reading time on unambiguous control sentences. The results of both experiments demonstrated significant effects of sentence ambiguity.  No effects or interactions involving noun number were observed, indicating that the complexity of plural nouns does not result in processing difficulty during sentence comprehension. References Adams, B., Clifton, C., & Mitchell, D. (1998). Lexical guidance in sentence processing? Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 5(2), 265-270. Baayen, R. H., Dijkstra, T., & Schreuder, R. (1997). Singulars and plurals in Dutch: Evidence for a parallel dual-route model. Journal of Memory and Language, 37(1), 94-117. Barker, C. (1992). Group Terms in English: Representing Groups as Atoms. Journal of Semantics 9, 69-93. Barsalou, L. W. (1999).  Perceptual symbol systems. Brain and Behavioral Sciences, 22, 577-660. Clark, H. H. (1973). The language-as-fixed-effect fallacy: A critique of language statistics in psychological research. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior, 12, 335-359. Dominguez, A., Cuetos, F., & Segui, J. (1999). The processing of grammatical gender and number in Spanish. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 28(5), 485-498. Ferreira, F., & Henderson, J. (1990). Use of verb information during syntactic parsing: Evidence from eye tracking and word by word self-paced reading. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 16, 555-568. Ferreira, F., & Henderson, J. M. (1991). Recovery from misanalyses of garden-path sentences. Journal of Memory and Language, 30(6), 725-745. Ferreira, F., & McClure, K. K. (1997). Parsing of garden-path sentences with reciprocal verbs. Language and Cognitive Processes, 12, 273–306. Garnsey, S. M., Pearlmutter, N. J., Myers, E., & Lotocky, M. (1997). The contributions of verb bias and plausibility to the comprehension of temporarily ambiguous sentences. Journal of Memory & Language, 37, 58-93. Johnson-Laird, P. (1983). Mental Models: Towards a Cognitive Science of Language, Inference, and Consciousness.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kennison, S. M. (2001). Limitations on the use of verb information in sentence comprehension.  Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8, 132-138. Kennison, S. M. (2005).  Different time courses of integrative semantic processing for plural and singular nouns: Implications for theories of sentence processing. Cognition, 97, 269-294. Mitchell, D. C. (1987). Lexical guidance in human parsing: Locus and processing characteristics. In M. Coltheart (Ed.), Attention and Performance 12: The psychology of reading (pp. 601-618). Hillsdale, NJ, England: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.  New, B., Brysbaert, M., Segui, J., Ferrand, L., & Rastle, K. (2004). The processing of singular and plural nouns in French and English. Journal of Memory and Language, 51, 568-585. Patson, N. D. (2014). The processing of plural expressions. Language and Linguistics Compass, 8(8), 319-329. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12085 Patson, N. D., George, G., & Warren, T. (2014). The conceptual representation of number. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67(7), 1349-1365. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2013.863372 Patson, N.(2014). The processing of plural expressions. Language and Linguistics Compass, 8(8), 319-329. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12085 Patson, N. (2016). Evidence in support of a scalar implicature account of plurality. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 42(7), 1140-1153. doi:10.1037/xlm0000224 Patson, N. D., & Ferreira, F. (2009). Conceptual plural information is used to guide early parsing decisions: Evidence from garden-path sentences with reciprocal verbs. Journal of Memory and Language, 60, 464-486. Patson, N., George, G., & Warren, T. (2014). The conceptual representation of number. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67(7), 1349-1365. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2013.863372 Patson, N., & Warren, T. (2011). Building complex reference objects from dual sets. Journal of Memory and Language, 64, 443–459. Patson, N., & Warren, T. (2014). Comparing the roles of referents and event structures in parsing preferences. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 29, 408–423. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01690965.2013.788197 Schneider, W., Eschman, A., & Zuccolotto, A. (2002). E-Prime (Version 2.0). [Computer software and manual]. Pittsburgh, PA: Psychology Software Tools Inc. Schreuder, R., & Baayen, R. (1997). How complex simple words can be. Journal of Memory and Language, 37(1), 118-139.   Schwarzschild, R. (1996). Pluralities. Kluwer, Dordrecht. Sereno, J. A., & Jongman, A. (1997). Processing of English inflectional morphology. Memory & Cognition, 25(4), 425-437. Sturt, P., Pickering, M. J., & Crocker, M. W. (2000). Search strategies in syntactic reanalysis. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 29(2), 183-194. Zwaan, R. A., Stanfield, R. A., & Yaxley, R. H. (2002).  Language comprehenders mentally represent the shapes of objects. Psychological science, 13(2), 168-171.

scholarly journals Taste Perception and Caffeine Consumption: An fMRI Study

Nutrients ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Gramling ◽  
Eleni Kapoulea ◽  
Claire Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Blood Oxygenation ◽  
Taste Perception ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Caffeine Consumption ◽  
Fmri Study ◽  
Oxygenation Level ◽  
Hedonic Evaluation ◽  
Taste Processing ◽  
With Memory

Caffeine is ubiquitous, yet its impact on central taste processing is not well understood. Although there has been considerable research on caffeine’s physiological and cognitive effects, there is a paucity of research investigating the effects of caffeine on taste. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate group differences between caffeine consumers and non-consumers in blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) activation during hedonic evaluation of taste. We scanned 14 caffeine consumers and 14 caffeine non-consumers at 3 Tesla, while they rated three tastes: caffeine (bitter), sucrose (sweet), and saccharin (sweet with bitter after taste), in aqueous solutions. Differences in BOLD activation were analyzed using voxel wise independent samples t-tests within Analysis of Functional Neuroimage (AFNI). Results indicated that during the hedonic evaluation of caffeine or sucrose, caffeine non-consumers had significantly greater activation in neuronal areas associated with memory and reward. During the hedonic evaluation of saccharin, caffeine consumers had significantly greater activation in areas associated with memory and information processing. The findings suggest caffeine consumption is associated with differential activation in neuronal areas involved in reward, memory, and information processing. Further research on intensity and hedonics of bitter and sweet stimuli in caffeine consumers and non-consumers will be of great interest to better understand the nature of differences in taste perception between caffeine consumers and non-consumers.

scholarly journals Static and Dynamic Functional Connectivity Analysis of Cerebrovascular Reactivity: An fMRI Study

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Lewis ◽  
H. Lu ◽  
P. Liu ◽  
X. Hou ◽  
E. Damaraju ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Vascular System ◽  
Network Connectivity ◽  
Cerebrovascular Diseases ◽  
Blood Oxygenation ◽  
Cerebrovascular Reactivity ◽  
Fmri Study ◽  
Oxygenation Level ◽  
Intrinsic Connectivity Networks ◽  
The One ◽  
Cerebrovascular System

ABSTRACTThe human brain, as a finely-tuned system, needs a constant flow of oxygen to function properly. To accomplish this, the cerebrovascular system ensures a steady stream of oxygenation to brain cells. One tool that the cerebrovascular system uses is cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR), which is the system’s ability to react to vasoactive stimuli. Understanding CVR can provide unique information about cerebrovascular diseases and general brain function. CVR can be evaluated by scanning subjects with blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they periodically inhale room air and CO2-enriched gas, a powerful and widely-used vasodilator. Our goal is to understand the effect of vasodilation on individual intrinsic connectivity networks (ICNs), as well as how functional network connectivity (FNC) adapts to the same vasodilation. To achieve this goal, we first developed an innovative metric to measure the effect of CVR on ICNs, which contrasts to the commonly used voxel-wise CVR. Furthermore, for the first time, we studied static (sFNC) and dynamic (dFNC) FNC in the context of CVR. Our results show that network connectivity is generally weaker during vascular dilation, and these results are more pronounced in dFNC analysis. dFNC analysis reveals that participants did not return to the pre-CO2 inhalation state, suggesting that the one-minute period of room-air inhalation is not enough for the CO2 effect to fully dissipate in humans. Overall, we see new relationships between CVR and ICNs, as well as how FNC adapts to vascular system changes.

Absence of haemodynamic refractory effects in patients with migraine without aura – an interictal fMRI study

Cephalalgia ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 31 (11) ◽  
pp. 1220-1231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benedicte Descamps ◽  
Pieter Vandemaele ◽  
Harmen Reyngoudt ◽  
Karel Deblaere ◽  
Luc Leybaert ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Migraine Without Aura ◽  
Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent ◽  
Blood Oxygenation ◽  
Time To Peak ◽  
Fmri Study ◽  
Blood Oxygenation Level ◽  
Oxygenation Level ◽  
The Face ◽  
Reference Situation ◽  
Face Stimuli

Background: In healthy controls, haemodynamic refractory effects are observed with blood-oxygenation-level dependent (BOLD) functional MRI (fMRI): the haemodynamic response function (HRF) to the second stimulus in a pair of stimuli with short interstimulus interval (ISI) shows a decreased amplitude and an increased time-to-peak. We hypothesize that there may be interictal haemodynamic abnormalities in migraineurs. Methods: An event-related fMRI design with paired face stimuli and varying ISIs was used to measure interictal HRFs in the face recognition area of patients with migraine without aura (MwoA) and controls. Net responses to the second stimulus in a pair were calculated and averaged per participant. Several characterizing parameters of the net responses were quantified and examined within each group. Results: Refractory effects were not observed in our patient group. There are no changes in the net responses compared with the reference situation in patients, irrespective of the ISI, whereas in controls all HRF parameters are decreased or delayed for an ISI of 1 second. Conclusion: This is the first fMRI study investigating the haemodynamic refractory effects in MwoA patients. Unlike in controls, these effects are not observed in migraineurs. Although currently unclear, it is tempting to speculate that this observation reflects the neurovascular correlate of lack of habituation measured with evoked potentials in migraineurs.

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