The neural structures involved in ongoing appetitive and/or observational learning behaviors remain largely unknown. Operant conditioning and observational learning were evoked and recorded in a modified Skinner box provided with an on-line video recording system. Mice improved their acquisition of a simple operant conditioning task by…

Trials on Mobile Games are presenting a huge potential in cognitive, physical and mental rehabilitation. This paper is to discuss user viewpoints of trials with mobile games combining cognitive stimulation and physical exercise in rehabilitation: Game#1 controlled by tilting the mobile phone embedded in a balance board; Game#2 controlled by…

We have previously found that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over right inferior frontal cortex (RIFC) enhances performance during learning of a difficult visual target detection task (Clark et al., 2012). In order to examine the cognitive mechanisms of tDCS that lead to enhanced performance, here we analyzed its differential…

Aim: To examine the cognitive functioning of young people with pantothenate-kinase-associated neurodegeneration (PKAN) after pallidal deep brain stimulation (DBS). PKAN is characterized by progressive generalized dystonia and has historically been associated with cognitive decline. With growing evidence that DBS can improve motor function in…

Although there is strong evidence that Broca's area is important for syntax, this may simply be a by-product of greater working memory and/or cognitive control demands for more complex syntactic structures. Here we report an experiment with event-related transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to investigate whether Broca's area plays a causal…

Purpose: In this study, the authors aimed to identify speech information processed by a hearing aid (HA) that is additive to information processed by a cochlear implant (CI) as a function of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Method: Speech recognition was measured with CI alone, HA alone, and CI + HA. Ten participants were separated into 2 groups; good…

We applied near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and electrocorticography (ECoG) recordings during cortical stimulation to a temporal lobe epilepsy patient who underwent subdural electrode implantation. Using NIRS, changes in blood concentrations of oxyhemoglobin (HbO[subscript 2]) and deoxyhemoglobin (HbR) during cortical stimulation of the left…

The significance of mind-mindedness, or the tendency of adults to ascribe mental states and processes when describing and interpreting children's behavior, is well established in home contexts. The purpose of this study was to explore the prevalence and pedagogical implications of the mind-mindedness of 24 early childhood practitioners working…

Despite language disabilities in autism, music abilities are frequently preserved. Paradoxically, brain regions associated with these functions typically overlap, enabling investigation of neural organization supporting speech and song in autism. Neural systems sensitive to speech and song were compared in low-functioning autistic and age-matched…

Intercalated (ITC) amygdala neurons regulate fear expression by controlling impulse traffic between the input (basolateral amygdala; BLA) and output (central nucleus; Ce) stations of the amygdala for conditioned fear responses. Previously, stimulation of the infralimbic (IL) cortex was found to reduce fear expression and the responsiveness of Ce…

Patients with right hemisphere lesions often omit or misread words on the left side of a text or the initial letters of single words, a phenomenon termed neglect dyslexia (ND). Omissions of words on the contralesional side of the page are considered as egocentric or space-based errors, whereas misread words can be viewed as a type of…

Excitatory anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (A-tDCS) over the left dorsal prefrontal cortex (DPFC) has been shown to improve language production. The present study examined neurophysiological underpinnings of this effect. In a single-blinded within-subject design, we traced effects of A-tDCS compared to sham stimulation over the left…

Humans have an unparalleled ability to represent objects as members of multiple categories. A given object, such as a pillow may be--depending on current task demands--represented as an instance of something that is soft, as something that contains feathers, as something that is found in bedrooms, or something that is larger than a toaster. This…

Long-term potentiation (LTP) is typically studied using either continuous high-frequency stimulation or theta burst stimulation. Previous studies emphasized the physiological relevance of theta frequency; however, synchronized hippocampal activity occurs over a broader frequency range. We therefore tested burst stimulation at intervals from 100…

Divergent thinking tasks are a popular basis for research on group creative problem solving, or brainstorming. The brainstorming literature has been dominated by research that investigates group performance by measuring the total number of generated ideas using the original rules put forth by Osborn (1953). This review of empirical literature on…