Purpose: We explore a new approach to the study of cognitive effort involved in listening to speech by measuring the brain activity in a listener in relation to the brain activity in a speaker. We hypothesize that the strength of this brain-to-brain synchrony (coupling) reflects the magnitude of cognitive effort involved in verbal communication…

Continued human and animal research has strengthened evidence for aberrant excitatory-inhibitory neural processes underlying autism and schizophrenia spectrum disorder psychopathology, particularly psychosocial functioning, in clinical and nonclinical populations. We investigated the extent to which autistic traits and schizotypal dimensions were…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to examine how the brains of individuals with cochlear implants (CIs) respond to spoken language tasks that underlie successful language acquisition and processing. Method: During functional near-infrared spectroscopy imaging, CI recipients with hearing impairment (n = 10, mean age: 52.7 ± 17.3 years) and…

Over the past years functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has substantially contributed to the understanding of language and its neural correlates. In contrast to other imaging techniques, fNIRS is well suited to study language function in healthy and psychiatric populations due to its cheap and easy application in a quiet and natural…

Before performing neurosurgery, an exhaustive presurgical assessment is required, usually including an investigation of language cerebral lateralization. Among the available procedures, the intracarotid amobarbital test (IAT) was formerly the most widely used. However, this procedure has many limitations: it is invasive and potentially traumatic,…

Mutations in the catalytic subunit of the mitochondrial DNA-polymerase gamma cause a wide spectrum of clinical disease ranging from infantile hepato-encephalopathy to juvenile/adult-onset spinocerebellar ataxia and late onset progressive external ophthalmoplegia. Several of these syndromes are associated with an encephalopathy that…

Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy ([to the first power]H-MRS) is a technique for the assay of brain neurochemistry "in vivo." N-acetylaspartate (NAA), the most prominent metabolite visible within the [to the first power]H-MRS spectrum, is found primarily within neurons. The current study was designed to further elucidate NAA-cognition…

Intercellular signaling is vital to communication within neuronal circuits. The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), the master circadian clock of mammals, contains a dense collection of neurons that align their intrinsic rhythmicity with environmental stimulus and physiological state. While peptide physiology has been demonstrated as a contributor to…

Upon stimulation, areas of the brain associated with specific cognitive processing tasks may undergo observable physiological changes, and measures of such changes have been used to create brain maps for visualization of stimulated areas in task-related brain "activation" studies. These perturbations usually continue throughout the period of the…

We discuss the fruits of educational neuroscience research from our laboratory and show how the typical maturational timing milestones in bilingual language acquisition provide educators with a tool for differentiating a bilingual child experiencing language and reading delay versus deviance. Further, early schooling in two languages…

Objective: Although abnormalities of neural circuits involving the cortex, striatum, and thalamus are hypothesized to underlie Tourette's disorder, the neuronal abnormalities within components of these circuits are unknown. The purpose of this study was to examine the cellular neurochemistry within these circuits in Tourette's disorder using…