Healthy aging is characterized by a number of changes on brain structure and function. Several neuroimaging studies have shown an age-related reduction in hemispheric asymmetry on various cognitive tasks, a phenomenon captured by Cabeza (2002) in the Hemispheric Asymmetry Reduction in Older Adults (HAROLD) model. Although this phenomenon is…

This dissertation contains several projects, each addressing different questions with different techniques. In chapter 1, I argue that they are unified thematically by their goal of "scaling up psycholinguistics"; they are all aimed at analyzing large data-sets using tools that reveal patterns to propose and test mechanism-neutral hypotheses about…

This study explored the electrophysiology underlying intonational phrase processing at different stages of syntax acquisition. Developmental studies suggest that children's syntactic skills advance significantly between 2 and 3 years of age. Here, children of three age groups were tested on phrase-level prosodic processing before and after this…

A visual attention (VA) span disorder has been reported in dyslexic children as potentially responsible for their poor reading outcome. The purpose of the current paper was to identify the cerebral correlates of this VA span disorder. For this purpose, 12 French dyslexic children with severe reading and VA span disorders and 12 age-matched control…

The manipulation of voice onset time (VOT) during dichotic listening has provided novel insights regarding brain function. To date, the most common design is the utilisation of four VOT conditions: short-long pairs (SL), where a CV syllable with a short VOT is presented to the left ear and a CV syllable with a long VOT is presented to the right…

This article presents an overview of our studies in elderly and Alzheimer patients employing Kimura's dichotic digits paradigm as a measure for left hemispheric predominance for processing language stimuli. In addition to structural brain mechanisms, we demonstrated that attention modulates the direction and degree of ear asymmetry in dichotic…

Background: Research points to the importance of breastfeeding for promoting close mother-infant contact and social-emotional development. Recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have identified brain regions related to maternal behaviors. However, little research has addressed the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the…

The expression of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is highly heterogeneous, owing to the complex interactions between genes, the brain, and behavior throughout development. Here we present a model of ASD that implicates an early and initial failure to develop the specialized functions of one or more of the set of neuroanatomical structures involved…

While previous research has suggested that music training is associated with improvements in various cognitive and linguistic skills, the mechanisms mediating or underlying these associations are mostly unknown. Here, we addressed the hypothesis that previous music training is related to improved working memory. Using event-related potentials…

In individuals with ASD, difficulties with language comprehension are most evident when higher-level semantic-pragmatic language processing is required, for instance when context has to be used to interpret the meaning of an utterance. Until now, it is unclear at what level of processing and for what type of context these difficulties in language…

Recently, an event-related potential (ERP) study (Lorenzo-Lopez et al., 2008) provided evidence that normal aging significantly delays and attenuates the electrophysiological correlate of the allocation of visuospatial attention (N2pc component) during a feature-detection visual search task. To further explore the effects of normal aging on the…

Objective: Emotional reactivity is one of the most disabling symptoms associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We aimed to identify neural substrates associated with emotional reactivity and to assess the effects of stimulants on those substrates. Method: We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess neural…

The present study examined the effects of a 9-month randomized control physical activity intervention aimed at improving cardiorespiratory fitness on changes in working memory performance in preadolescent children relative to a waitlist control group. Participants performed a modified Sternberg task, which manipulated working memory demands based…

The brain is highly sensitive to environmental hypoxia. Little is known, however, about the neuropsychological effects of high altitude residence in the developing brain. We recently described only minor changes in processing speed in native Bolivian children and adolescents living at approximately 3700 m. However, evidence for loss of cerebral…

Embodied semantic theories suppose that representation of word meaning and actual sensory-motor processing are implemented in overlapping systems. According to this view, association and dissociation of different word meaning should correspond to dissociation and association of the described sensory-motor processing. Previous studies demonstrate…