scholarly journals Can we decode phonetic features in inner speech using surface electromyography?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ladislas Nalborczyk ◽  
Romain Grandchamp ◽  
Ernst H. W. Koster ◽  
Marcela Perrone-Bertolotti ◽  
Hélène Loevenbruck
Keyword(s):  
Speech Production ◽  
Surface Electromyography ◽  
Specific Activity ◽  
Inner Speech ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
History Of ◽  
Phonetic Features ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Overt Speech ◽  
Accuracy Rates

Although having a long history of scrutiny in experimental psychology, it is still controversial whether inner speech (covert speech) production is accompanied by specific activity in speech muscles. We address this question by briefly reviewing previous findings related to inner speech and to the broader phenomenon of motor imagery. We then present the results of a preregistered experiment looking at the electromyographic correlates of both overt speech and inner speech production of two phonetic classes of nonwords. An automatic classification approach was undertaken to discriminate between two articulatory features contained in nonwords uttered in both overt and covert speech. Although this approach led to reasonable accuracy rates during overt speech production, it failed to discriminate inner speech phonetic content based on surface electromyography signals alone. However, exploratory analyses conducted at the individual level revealed that it seemed possible to distinguish between rounded and spread nonwords covertly produced, in two participants. We discuss these results in relation to the existing literature and suggest alternative ways to test the engagement of the speech motor system during inner speech production. Pre-registered protocol, preprint, data, as well as reproducible code and figures are available at: https://osf.io/czer4/.

scholarly journals Natural History of NAFLD

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 1161
Author(s):  
Raluca Pais ◽  
Thomas Maurel
Keyword(s):  
Liver Disease ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Disease Progression ◽  
Specific Treatment ◽  
Alcoholic Fatty Liver ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Impact

The epidemiology and the current burden of chronic liver disease are changing globally, with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) becoming the most frequent cause of liver disease in close relationship with the global epidemics of obesity, type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome. The clinical phenotypes of NAFLD are very heterogeneous in relationship with multiple pathways involved in the disease progression. In the absence of a specific treatment for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), it is important to understand the natural history of the disease, to identify and to optimize the control of factors that are involved in disease progression. In this paper we propose a critical analysis of factors that are involved in the progression of the liver damage and the occurrence of extra-hepatic complications (cardiovascular diseases, extra hepatic cancer) in patients with NAFLD. We also briefly discuss the impact of the heterogeneity of the clinical phenotype of NAFLD on the clinical practice globally and at the individual level.

scholarly journals Emotion and liking: how director emotional expression and knowledge of (dis)liking may impact adults’ ability to follow the instructions of an ignorant speaker

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca L. Monk ◽  
Lauren Colbert ◽  
Gemma Darker ◽  
Jade Cowling ◽  
Bethany Jones ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Target Object ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Object Selection ◽  
Knowledge And Beliefs ◽  
Correct Object ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Accuracy Rates

Abstract Background Theory of mind (ToM), the ability to understand that others have different knowledge and beliefs to ourselves, has been the subject of extensive research which suggests that we are not always efficient at taking another’s perspective, known as visual perspective taking (VPT). This has been studied extensively and a growing literature has explored the individual-level factors that may affect perspective taking (e.g. empathy and group membership). However, while emotion and (dis)liking are key aspects within everyday social interaction, research has not hitherto explored how these factors may impact ToM. Method A total of 164 participants took part in a modified director task (31 males (19%), M age = 20.65, SD age = 5.34), exploring how correct object selection may be impacted by another’s emotion (director facial emotion; neutral × happy × sad) and knowledge of their (dis)likes (i.e. director likes specific objects). Result When the director liked the target object or disliked the competitor object, accuracy rates were increased relative to when he disliked the target object or liked the competitor object. When the emotion shown by the director was incongruent with their stated (dis)liking of an object (e.g. happy when he disliked an object), accuracy rates were also increased. None of these effects were significant in the analysis of response time. These findings suggest that knowledge of liking may impact ToM use, as can emotional incongruency, perhaps by increasing the saliency of perspective differences between participant and director. Conclusion As well as contributing further to our understanding of real-life social interactions, these findings may have implications for ToM research, where it appears that more consideration of the target/director’s characteristics may be prudent.

scholarly journals Associations between patterns in comorbid diagnostic trajectories of individuals with schizophrenia and etiological factors

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Morten Dybdahl Krebs ◽  
Gonçalo Espregueira Themudo ◽  
Michael Eriksen Benros ◽  
Ole Mors ◽  
Anders D. Børglum ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Latent Factors ◽  
Prospective Longitudinal Study ◽  
Etiological Factors ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Danish Health ◽  
Stable Clusters ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Prospective Longitudinal ◽  
Ordered Pairs

AbstractSchizophrenia is a heterogeneous disorder, exhibiting variability in presentation and outcomes that complicate treatment and recovery. To explore this heterogeneity, we leverage the comprehensive Danish health registries to conduct a prospective, longitudinal study from birth of 5432 individuals who would ultimately be diagnosed with schizophrenia, building individual trajectories that represent sequences of comorbid diagnoses, and describing patterns in the individual-level variability. We show that psychiatric comorbidity is prevalent among individuals with schizophrenia (82%) and multi-morbidity occur more frequently in specific, time-ordered pairs. Three latent factors capture 79% of variation in longitudinal comorbidity and broadly relate to the number of co-occurring diagnoses, the presence of child versus adult comorbidities and substance abuse. Clustering of the factor scores revealed five stable clusters of individuals, associated with specific risk factors and outcomes. The presentation and course of schizophrenia may be associated with heterogeneity in etiological factors including family history of mental disorders.

scholarly journals Homebound by COVID19: The Benefits and Consequences of Non-Pharmaceutical Intervention Strategies

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Buse Eylul Oruc ◽  
Arden Baxter ◽  
Pinar Keskinocak ◽  
John Asplund ◽  
Nicoleta Serban
Keyword(s):  
School Closure ◽  
Disease Spread ◽  
Contact Network ◽  
Population Mixing ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
History Of ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Infection Spread

Abstract Background. Recent research has been conducted by various countries and regions on the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on reducing the spread of COVID19. This study evaluates the tradeoffs between potential benefits (e.g., reduction in infection spread and deaths) of NPIs for COVID19 and being homebound (i.e., refraining from interactions outside of the household).Methods. An agent-based simulation model, which captures the natural history of the disease at the individual level, and the infection spread via a contact network assuming heterogeneous population mixing in households, peer groups (workplaces, schools), and communities, is adapted to project the disease spread and estimate the number of homebound people and person-days under multiple scenarios, including combinations of shelter-in-place, voluntary quarantine, and school closure in Georgia from March 1 to September 1, 2020.Results. Compared to no intervention, under voluntary quarantine, voluntary quarantine with school closure, and shelter-in-place with school closure scenarios 4.5, 23.1, and 200+ homebound adult-days were required to prevent one infection, with the maximum number of adults homebound on a given day in the range of 119K-248K, 465K-499K, 5,388K-5,389K, respectively. Compared to no intervention, school closure only reduced the percentage of the population infected by less than 16% while more than doubling the peak number of adults homebound.Conclusions. Voluntary quarantine combined with school closure significantly reduced the number of infections and deaths with a considerably smaller number of homebound person-days compared to shelter-in-place.

Genocide and Memory

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Stone
Keyword(s):  
Western Culture ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Life Narratives ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Traumatic Memories ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
With Memory

This article explores the history of genocide by looking at collective memories, from the point of view of Western culture. Western culture is suffused with autobiographies, especially with traumatic life narratives about the legacies of abusive childhoods. For the individual victims of genocide, traumatic memories cannot be escaped; for societies, genocide has profound effects that are immediately felt and that people are exhorted never to forget. The discussion shows how genocide is bound up with memory, on an individual level of trauma and on a collective level in terms of the creation of stereotypes, prejudice, and post-genocide politics. Despite the risks of perpetuating old divisions or reopening unhealed wounds, grappling with memory remains essential in order to remind the victims that they are not the worthless or less than human beings that their tormentors have portrayed them as such.

Responsible for Destiny

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 198-226
Author(s):  
Katherine Ward ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Being And Time ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Way

Historizing is the way Dasein takes up possibilities and roles to project itself into the future. It is why we experience continuity throughout our lives, and it is the basis for historicality – our sense of a more general continuity of “history.” In Being and Time, Heidegger identifies both inauthentic and authentic modes of historizing that give rise, respectively, to inauthentic and authentic modes of histori­cality. He focuses on historizing at the individual level but gestures at a communal form of historizing. In this paper, I develop the concept of co-historizing in both its authentic and inauthentic modes. I argue that Heidegger’s unarticulated concept of inauthentic co-historizing is what necessitated the planned (but unfinished) second half of Being and Time – the “phenomenological destruction of the history of ontology.” I consider what it means to take responsibility for our destiny as a people and specifically as a community of philosophers.

scholarly journals Language policies and multilingualism in modern Tunisia

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (62) (Special Issue) ◽  
pp. 207-232
Author(s):  
Ibtissem SMARI ◽  
Ildikó HORTOBÁGYI
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Media Communication ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
History Of ◽  
Societal Level ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Tunisian Arabic

"In a multicultural and multilingual world, people negotiate their identities along contextual lines. Online mediated information about countries and cultures build bridges at the individual level and create a sense of “global citizenship” (Hortobagyi 2015; 2017). Languages policies and linguistic landscapes facilitate the exploration of the multilingual texture of a country, thus research in imminently multicultural environments fosters a better understanding of multiple linguistic identities. Situated at the intersection of social and language sciences, drawing on relevant literature and using a comparative approach, the presentation highlights Tunisia’s long history of linguistic and political confrontation since its independence from France (Riguet 1984) and focuses on the educational reforms that have been undertaken, particularly on the various policies and guidelines pertaining to modifying the language policy of the country. Since the 1970s, a significant process of Arabization has been underway, alongside the strengthening of bilingual education, which was launched as early as 1956. Considering that English started to be taught in Tunisian schools shortly after the independence (Battenburg 1997), Tunisian education has always been trilingual with English as the most common foreign language added to Arabic and French. The first years of the 21st century were marked by the introduction of additional foreign languages in secondary education, such as Russian, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, German, and Turkish among others. All these policies have allowed Tunisia to access modernity (Messadi 1967 cited in Belazi 1991, 53). Currently, Tunisian Arabic and Berber are languages that have not yet been added to the political agenda. Nevertheless, the return to the standardization of Arabic through teaching, the noticeable decline of the use of French, and the emergence of English as a new alternative, indicate linguistic policies in which multilingualism is becoming the new norm, with manifest representations both at the societal level and in the new media communication."

scholarly journals Does different activation between the medial and the lateral gastrocnemius during walking translate into different fascicle behavior?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raphaël Hamard ◽  
Jeroen Aeles ◽  
Nicole Y. Kelp ◽  
Romain Feigean ◽  
François Hug ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mechanical Behavior ◽  
Surface Electromyography ◽  
Muscle Activation ◽  
Medial Gastrocnemius ◽  
Functional Difference ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Lateral Gastrocnemius ◽  
Functional Roles ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Individual

The functional difference between the medial gastrocnemius (MG) and lateral gastrocnemius (LG) during walking in humans has not yet been fully established. Although evidence highlights that the MG is activated more than the LG, the link with potential differences in mechanical behavior between these muscles remains unknown. In this study, we aimed to determine whether differences in activation between the MG and LG translate into different fascicle behavior during walking. Fifteen participants walked at their preferred speed under two conditions: 0% and 10% incline treadmill grade. We used surface electromyography and B-mode ultrasound to estimate muscle activation and fascicle dynamics in the MG and LG. We observed a higher normalized activation in the MG than LG during stance, which did not translate into greater MG normalized fascicle shortening. However, we observed significantly less normalized fascicle lengthening in the MG than LG during early stance, which matched with the timing of differences in activation between muscles. This resulted in more isometric behavior of the MG, which likely influences the muscle-tendon interaction and enhances the catapult-like mechanism in the MG compared to the LG. Nevertheless, this interplay between muscle activation and fascicle behavior, evident at the group level, was not observed at the individual level as revealed by the lack of correlation between the MG-LG differences in activation and MG-LG differences in fascicle behavior. The MG and LG are often considered as equivalent muscles but the neuromechanical differences between them suggest that they may have distinct functional roles during locomotion.

scholarly journals Forced Migration and Muslim Rituals: An Area of Cultural Psychology?

1993 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 117-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nora Ahlberg
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Psychology ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Traumatic Experiences ◽  
Critical Question ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Psychological Foundation ◽  
General Influence

The psychological foundation of rites de passage have long been debated within the history of religion and related areas. The significance of such rites in facilitating emotional readjustment to a new life situation have been particularly stressed. Emotional reactions on the individual level largely remain outside the competence of anthropologists, despite their awareness of the general influence of culture on this as on other areas of human endeavour. Focusing on traumatized female refugees from Iran, a critical question is whether the changing living conditions which have provoked traumatic experiences in the lives of these refugees have been in any way related to Muslim ritual requirements or rites de passage.

A comprehensive, interdisciplinary view of inner speech may be a unique lens through which we can better understand living with aphasia and aphasia recovery

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brielle C Stark ◽  
Julianne M Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Therapy Response ◽  
Inner Speech ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Personal Factors ◽  
Living Well ◽  
Narrow View ◽  
Phonetic Features ◽  
Overt Speech ◽  
Future Work ◽  
Aphasia Recovery

Purpose: While behavioral aphasia therapy is beneficial (Brady et al., 2016), we do not fully understand factors that predict therapy response, or that contribute to extra-linguistic aspects of living with aphasia (e.g., psychosocial). The purpose of this Viewpoint is to postulate that inner speech – the ability to talk to oneself in one’s head – may be an important factor. However, prior work evaluating inner speech in aphasia has been limited in scope. Here, we innovatively draw from interdisciplinary evidence to discuss a more comprehensive view of inner speech and propose how evaluating a multidimensional inner speech may be meaningful in understanding living with aphasia and aphasia recovery. Methods: We give an interdisciplinary overview of inner speech, as it relates to aphasia. Results: Research with persons with aphasia shows that inner speech can be relatively spared in comparison to overt speech. However, this research has taken a narrow view of inner speech, defining inner speech as a covert ‘voice’ drawn upon during experimental tasks, such as object naming, rhyme decisions, or tongue twisters. Cross disciplinary research evaluating inner speech has identified its multidimensionality (specifically, dimensions of intentionality, condensation, and dialogality). Inner speech evaluated across these dimensions in neurotypical populations has shown that inner speech can be related to personal factors like self-awareness; retain phonetic features but also be like ‘thinking in pure pictures; and be both monologic and dialogic. Conclusions: Quantifying a multidimensional inner speech in aphasia will enable future work elaborating on factors related to extra-linguistic and linguistic processes of recovery, as well as living well with aphasia.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document