Semantic priming in Turkish was examined in 36 right-handed healthy participants in a delayed lexical decision task via taxonomic relations using EEG. Prime--target relations included related- unrelated- and pseudo-words. Taxonomically related words at long stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) were shown to modulate N400 and late positive component…

Background and aims: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by language impairment, and challenges with social interaction, communication, and repetitive behaviors. Although genetics are a primary cause of ASD, the exact genes and molecular mechanisms involved in its pathogenesis are not completely clear. The…

Research over the past three decades has seen a revived interest in the way the human body--and the way in which it is perceived--interacts with aspects of our experience. Consequently, interoception (i.e. the perception of physiological feedback from the body) has recently been shown to be associated with a wide range of cognitive, emotional, and…

While a considerable number of youth with autism spectrum disorder exhibit impaired self-regulation (dysregulation), little is known about the neural correlates of dysregulation in autism spectrum disorder. In a sample of intellectually able boys with autism spectrum disorder (further categorized as those with and without dysregulation) and…

Purpose: Speech recognition in complex listening environments is enhanced by the extent of spatial separation between the speech source and background competing sources, an effect known as spatial release from masking (SRM). The aim of this study was to investigate whether the phase-locked neural activity in the central auditory pathways,…

This paper, authored in collaboration with researchers from Harvard University's Center for Education Policy Research and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reviews findings from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) at a partner school, focused on understanding the effects of a direct-to-student intervention on students' mindfulness…

The first 1,000 days of life are a critical window of vulnerability to exposure to socioeconomic and health challenges (i.e. poverty/undernutrition). The Brain Imaging for Global Health (BRIGHT) project has been established to deliver longitudinal measures of brain development from 0 to 24 months in UK and Gambian infants and to assess the impact…

Technology is ubiquitous and takes many forms. Digital media consumption (e.g., television, video games, etc.) has increased significantly in its prevalence in our lives as well as in social acceptability. However, it has also been consistently implicated in poorer health outcomes. The extent to which cognitive functions are adversely affected by…

The ability to predict future events in the environment and learn from them is a fundamental component of adaptive behavior across species. Here we propose that inferring predictions facilitates speech processing and word learning in the early stages of language development. Twelve- and 24-month olds' electrophysiological brain responses to heard…

Creativity is the ability to come up with new and original solutions to problems. It is characterized along a dipole spectrum, with the opposing ends defined as convergent and divergent thinking. Previous studies have provided evidence that various cognitive functions and insight into non-verbal problems can be enhanced using non-invasive brain…

Theoretical perspectives of cognitive development have maintained that functional integration of the prefrontal cortex across infancy underlies the emergence of attentional control and higher cognitive abilities in early childhood. To investigate these proposed relations, we tested whether functional integration of prefrontal regions across the…

We apply a biopsychosocial conceptualization to attention development in the 1st year and examine the role of neurophysiological and social processes on the development of early attention processes. We tested whether maternal behavior measured during 2 mother-child interaction tasks when infants (N = 388) were 5 months predicted infant medial…

The perception of target events presented in a rapid stream of non-targets is impaired for early target positions, but then gradually improves, a phenomenon known as attentional awakening. This phenomenon has been associated with better resource allocation. It is unclear though whether improved resource allocation and attentional awakening are a…

The present study tested whether the hypothesis that high levels of progesterone (P) have a decoupling effect on the function of the brain hemispheres (Hausmann & Gunturkun, 2000) also extends to attentional functions, referential connections between verbal and nonverbal representations and the degree to which implicit motivational needs match a…

Rapidly changing environments in day-to-day activities, enriched with stimuli competing for attention, require a cognitive control mechanism to select relevant stimuli, ignore irrelevant stimuli, and shift attention between alternative features of the environment. Such attentional orchestration is essential to the acquisition of reading skills. In…