The Rodriguez-Fornells, Rotte, Heinze, Nosselt, and Munte (2002) paper "Brain Potential and Functional MRI Evidence for How to Handle Two Languages with One Brain," is discussed by two of two of its authors, both neuroscientists, and by two language scientists. (Author/VWL)

The majority of studies have demonstrated a right hemisphere (RH) advantage for the perception of emotions. Other studies have found that the involvement of each hemisphere is valence specific, with the RH better at perceiving negative emotions and the LH better at perceiving positive emotions [Reuter-Lorenz, P., & Davidson, R.J. (1981)…

The functional link between the amygdala and hippocampus in humans has not been well documented. We examined the effect of unpleasant loud noise on hippocampal and amygdaloid activities during picture encoding by means of fMRI, and on the correct response in humans. The noise reduced activity in the hippocampus during picture encoding, decreased…

By employing visual lexical decision and functional MRI, we studied the neural correlates of morphological decomposition in a highly inflected language (Finnish) where most inflected noun forms elicit a consistent processing cost during word recognition. This behavioral effect could reflect suffix stripping at the visual word form level and/or…

Background: Friedreich's ataxia is one of the most common hereditary disorders of the nervous system. Dysarthria is a pervasive symptom of Friedreich's ataxia, yet the clinical presentation of speech symptoms remains poorly understood, leaving clinicians without the evidence required to develop therapy interventions. Aims: The research reported…

Music, as language, is a universal human trait. Throughout human history and across all cultures, people have produced and enjoyed music. Despite its ubiquity, the musical capacity is rarely studied as a biological function. Music is typically viewed as a cultural invention. In this paper, the evidence bearing on the biological perspective of the…

Presents major characteristics of comtemporary views on oral and written language development. Critically reviews recent theoretical and research findings on language function and brain and concludes that very little information exists about the relationship between brain development and language development. (CMG)

Discusses several neurolinguistic investigations of lateralization in the deaf. Questions frequency of bilingualism among deaf and suggests other factors relating to structural facets of sign language and to sociolinguistic organization of the deaf community also need to be taken into account in order to explain lateralization patterns in native…

Summarizes and evaluates research on aphasia, and indicates problem areas that must be studied. (52 references) (CFM)

Describes investigation of relationship between verbal predicate matching of modality of clients' primary representational system (PRS) and understanding of therapist by assessing participants' objective understanding and subjective understanding. Suggests weak support of enhanced accuracy of objective understanding and greater understanding and…

Analysis of a conversation with an Alzheimer's disease sufferer with word-finding problems revealed that social context, speaker characteristics, and awareness of the other speaker's perspective governed such conversational aspects of turn taking and turn giving, which allowed full development of both speakers' personas. (23 references) (CB)

Previous researchers have argued that objects associated with a protagonist may be foregrounded, or held active, in memory. This study expanded on previous work by using an inconsistency paradigm to investigate the effects of protagonist association on object accessibility. Readers experienced more processing difficulty when a target sentence…

Event-related brain potentials were recorded while subjects listened to sentences containing a controlled infinitival complement. Subject and object control items were used, both with 2 potential antecedents in the upper clause. Half of the sentences had a gender agreement violation between the null subject of the infinitival complement and an…

In this study, we used a novel cognitive paradigm and event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (ER-fMRI) to investigate the neural substrates involved in processing three different types of sentences. Participants read either metaphoric ("Some surgeons are butchers"), literal ("Some surgeons are fathers"), or non-meaningful sentences…

Investigates the effectiveness of non-speech auditory stimuli in eliciting transformations analogous to those reported for speech stimuli to determine if a non-verbal analogue to the verbal transformation effect exists. (DD)