Although evidence suggests that patients with left hemisphere strokes and non-fluent aphasia who receive 1Hz repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over the intact right inferior frontal gyrus experience persistent benefits in naming, it remains unclear whether the effects of rTMS in these patients generalize to other language…

We investigated how auditory language processing is modified by a listener's previous experience with the specific activities mentioned in the speech. In particular, we asked whether neural responses related to language processing depend on one's experience with the action-based content of this language. Ice-hockey players and novices passively…

With the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2001), schools have become aware of the consequences of successfully teaching children to read. A major building block in early childhood education includes the decoding of phonemes, rhymes, and the rhythm of spoken and written word. As reading is crucial to success in any subject area or career…

Schizophrenia has been associated with deficits in functional brain lateralization. According to some authors, the reduction of asymmetry could even promote this psychosis. At the same time, schizophrenia is accompanied by a high prevalence of nicotine dependency compared to any other population. This association is very interesting, because…

Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we investigated the N400 (an ERP component that occurs in response to meaningful stimuli) in children aged 8-10 years old and examined relationships between the N400 and individual differences in listening comprehension, word recognition and non-word decoding. Moreover, we tested the claim that the N400…

The left inferior frontal cortex, the caudate and the anterior cingulate have been proposed as the neural origin of language switching, but most of the studies were conducted in low proficient bilinguals. In the present study, we investigated brain areas involved in language switching in a sample of 19 early, high-proficient Spanish-Catalan…

Motor theories of speech perception have been re-vitalized as a consequence of the discovery of mirror neurons. Some authors have even promoted a strong version of the motor theory, arguing that the motor speech system is critical for perception. Part of the evidence that is cited in favor of this claim is the observation from the early 1980s that…

Previous literature in alphabetic languages suggests that the occipital-temporal region (the ventral pathway) is specialized for automatic parallel word recognition, whereas the parietal region (the dorsal pathway) is specialized for serial letter-by-letter reading (and). However, few studies have directly examined the role of the ventral and…

A controversial concept suggests that impaired finger dexterity in Parkinson's disease may be related to limb kinetic apraxia that is not explained by elemental motor deficits such as bradykinesia. To explore the nature of dexterous difficulties, the aim of the present study was to assess the relationship of finger dexterity with ideomotor praxis…

Purpose: Studies using speech stimuli to elicit electrophysiologic responses have found approximately 30% of children with language-based learning problems demonstrate abnormal brainstem timing. Research is needed regarding how these responses relate to performance on behavioral tests of central auditory function. The purpose of the study was to…

The impact of prenatal alcohol exposure on memory and brain development was investigated in 92 African-American, young adults who were first identified in the prenatal period. Three groups (Control, n = 26; Alcohol-related Neurodevelopmental Disorder, n = 36; and Dysmorphic, n = 30) were imaged using structural MRI with brain volume calculated for…

We live in a multisensory world and one of the challenges the brain is faced with is deciding what information belongs together. Our ability to make assumptions about the relatedness of multisensory stimuli is partly based on their temporal and spatial relationships. Stimuli that are proximal in time and space are likely to be bound together by…

Purpose: To explore whether individuals with aphasia exhibit differences in the M350, an electrophysiological marker of lexical activation, compared with healthy controls. Method: Seven people with aphasia, 9 age-matched controls, and 10 younger controls completed an auditory lexical decision task while cortical activity was recorded with…

It is well-known that patients having sustained frontal-lobe traumatic brain injury (TBI) are severely impaired on tests of emotion recognition. Indeed, these patients have significant difficulty recognizing facial expressions of emotion, and such deficits are often associated with decreased social functioning and poor quality of life. As of yet,…

Fragile X syndrome is the most common cause of inherited intellectual impairment and the most common single-gene cause of autism. Individuals with fragile X syndrome present with a neurobehavioural phenotype that includes selective deficits in spatiotemporal visual perception associated with neural processing in frontal-parietal networks of the…