The central and peripheral visual fields are structurally segregated in the brain and are differentiated by their anatomical and functional characteristics. While the central field appears well suited for tasks such as visual search, the periphery is optimized for rapid processing over broad regions. People vary in their abilities to make use of…

Fifteen years ago, Pascual-Leone and colleagues used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to investigate speech production in pre-surgical epilepsy patients and in doing so, introduced a novel tool into language research. TMS can be used to non-invasively stimulate a specific cortical region and transiently disrupt information processing. These…

The ability to make inferences for the purposes of comprehension is considered an important factor in pragmatic ability. In this experimental group study with stroke patients, the ability to make inferences and its associations with sustained attention and verbal working memory were explored. A group of 14 left-hemisphere-damaged individuals had…

The prefrontal cortex of the primate frontal lobes provides the capacity for judgment which can constantly adapt behavior in order to optimize its outcome. Adjudicating between long-term memory programs and prepotent responses, this capacity reviews all incoming information and provides an interpretation dependent on the events that have just…

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…

The present study examined the relationship between word concreteness and word frequency using event-related potential (ERP) measurements during a lexical decision task. Potential effects of concreteness in the processing of verbs were also examined. ERPs were recorded from 119 scalp electrodes in 23 right-handed participants. The results showed…

Erin Rasmussen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Idaho State University where she teaches learning, behavioral pharmacology, senior seminar, and introductory psychology. She received her MS and PhD in experimental psychology (with a minor in behavioral pharmacology and toxicology) from Auburn University. She taught at…

The cerebral regulation of cardiovascular functioning varies along both a lateral and a longitudinal axis. The parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems are lateralized to the left and right cerebral hemispheres, respectively. Further, the frontal lobes are known to be inhibitory in nature, whereas the temporal lobes are excitatory. However,…

The prism adaptation test examines procedural learning (PL) in which performance facilitation occurs with practice on tasks without the need for conscious awareness. Dynamic interactions between frontostriatal cortices, basal ganglia, and the cerebellum have been shown to play key roles in PL. Disruptions within these neural networks have also…

This primer introduces a Special Section on brain imaging, which includes a commentary and 10 data papers presenting applications of brain imaging to questions on developmental psychopathology. This primer serves two purposes. First, the article summarizes the strength and weaknesses of various brain-imaging techniques typically employed in…

This paper reviews a body of work conducted in our laboratory that applies functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to better understand the biological response and change that occurs during prototype-distortion learning. We review results from two experiments (Little, Klein, Shobat, McClure, & Thulborn, 2004; Little & Thulborn, 2005) that…

Progress in understanding brain/behavior relationships in adult-acquired dysprosody has led to models of cortical hemispheric representation of prosodic processing based on functional (linguistic vs affective) or physical (timing vs pitch) parameters. These explanatory perspectives have not been reconciled, and also a number of neurobehavior…

Standard diagnostic procedures for assessing temporal-processing abilities of adult patients with aphasia have so far not been developed. In our study, temporal-order measurements were conducted using two different experimental procedures to identify a suitable measure for clinical studies. Additionally, phoneme-discrimination abilities were…

The aim of the present study is to compare the pragmatic ability of right- and left-hemisphere-damaged patients excluding the possible interference of linguistic deficits. To this aim, we study extralinguistic communication, that is communication performed only through gestures. The Cognitive Pragmatics Theory provides the theoretical framework:…

In normal right-handed subjects language production usually is a function of the left brain hemisphere. Patients with aphasia following brain damage to the left hemisphere have a considerable potential to compensate for the loss of this function. Sometimes, but not always, areas of the right hemisphere which are homologous to language areas of the…