Embedded hierarchical structures, such as "the rat the cat ate was brown", constitute a core generative property of a natural language theory. Several recent studies have reported learning of hierarchical embeddings in artificial grammar learning (AGL) tasks, and described the functional specificity of Broca's area for processing such structures.…

The Clock Drawing Test (CDT) is a widely used instrument in the neuropsychological assessment of Alzheimer's disease (AD). As CDT performance necessitates several cognitive functions (e.g., visuospatial and constructional abilities, executive functioning), an interaction of multiple brain regions is likely. Fifty-one subjects with mild cognitive…

The effects of prenatal choline availability on Pavlovian conditioning were assessed in adult male rats (3-4 mo). Neither supplementation nor deprivation of prenatal choline affected the acquisition and extinction of simple Pavlovian conditioned excitation, or the acquisition and retardation of conditioned inhibition. However, prenatal choline…

In the present paper, we address brain-behaviour relationships in children with acquired aphasia, by reviewing some recent studies on the effects of focal brain lesions on language development. Timing of the lesion, in terms of its occurrence, before or after the onset of speech and language acquisition, may be a major factor determining language…

Objective: Functional MRI was used to determine differences in patterns of cortical activation between children who suffered perinatal left middle cerebral artery (MCA) stroke and healthy children performing a silent verb generation task. Methods: Ten children with prior perinatal left MCA stroke (age 6-16 years) and ten healthy age matched…

Adult educators are committed to learning that encourages adults to see themselves and the world around them in more complex ways. They have therefore focused their practice on teaching with development in mind (Taylor, 2000; Lamoreaux, 2005). Recently, however, a colleague (Johnson, 2003) pointed the authors to a body of research that examines…

Much of what happens in the learning process focuses on teaching to the average student, but the bell curve has deflated with fewer students in the middle, making the educational dilemma more about "how to connect" with students regardless of diverse abilities and various backgrounds. According to the "Twenty-Fourth Annual Report to Congress" by…

Unlike the aphasic syndromes, the organization of affective prosody in brain has remained controversial because affective-prosodic deficits may occur after left or right brain damage. However, different patterns of deficits are observed following left and right brain damage that suggest affective prosody is a dominant and lateralized function of…

We report on three experiments that provide a real-time processing perspective on the poor comprehension of Broca's aphasic patients for non-canonically structured sentences. In the first experiment we presented sentences (via a Cross Modal Lexical Priming (CMLP) paradigm) to Broca's patients at a normal rate of speech. Unlike the pattern found…

Smooth pursuit eye movements are performed in order to prevent retinal image blur of a moving object. Rhesus monkeys are able to perform smooth pursuit eye movements quite similar as humans, even if the pursuit target does not consist in a simple moving dot. Therefore, the study of the neuronal responses as well as the consequences of…

Using imaging technology that can probe the deepest workings of the brain, researchers have found that children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are using less of a certain part of their brains to hold back their itchy trigger fingers, compared with typically developing children performing the same task. This information was shared…

A number of previous studies have indicated that Broca's area has an important role in understanding and producing syntactically complex sentences and other language functions. If Broca's area is critical for these functions, then either infarction of Broca's area or temporary hypoperfusion within this region should cause impairment of these…

Recent work has shown that Whorf effects of language on color discrimination are stronger in the right visual field than in the left. Here we show that this phenomenon is not limited to color: The perception of animal figures (cats and dogs) was more strongly affected by linguistic categories for stimuli presented to the right visual field than…

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and insular cortex are implicated in distributed neural circuitry that supports emotional decision-making. Previous studies of patients with vmPFC lesions have focused primarily on decision-making under uncertainty, when outcome probabilities are ambiguous (e.g. the Iowa Gambling Task). It remains unclear…

Early language development sets the stage for a lifetime of competence in language and literacy. However, the neural mechanisms associated with the relative advantages of early communication success, or the disadvantages of having delayed language development, are not well explored. In this study, 174 elementary school-age children whose parents…