The relationship between two classes of retrieval process--retrieval orientation and retrieval effort--was investigated using electrophysiological (ERP) and behavioural measures. ERPs were recorded during retrieval phases of exclusion tasks in which participants focused on retrieval of either phonological or semantic associates that were generated…

N400 is an event-related brain potential that indexes operations in semantic memory conceptual space, whether elicited by language or some other representation (e.g., drawings). Language models typically propose three stages: lexical access or orthographic- and phonological-level analysis; lexical selection or word-level meaning and associate…

It has long been known that the number of letters in a word has more of an effect on recognition speed and accuracy in the left visual field (LVF) than in the right visual field (RVF) provided that the word is presented in a standard, horizontal format. After considering the basis of the length by visual field interaction two further differences…

Confrontation naming is impaired in neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer's disease (AD), frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and corticobasal degeneration (CBD). Some behavioural observations suggest a common source of impaired naming across these patient groups, while others find partially unique patterns of naming difficulty. We hypothesized…

Cholinesterase inhibitors positively affect cognition in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other conditions, but no controlled functional MRI studies have examined where their effects occur in the brain. We examined the effects of donepezil hydrochloride (Aricept[Registered sign]) on cognition and brain activity in patients with amnestic mild cognitive…

Noun and verb comprehension and production was investigated in two groups of late bilingual, Greek-English speakers: individuals with anomic aphasia and a control group of non-brain injured individuals matched for age and gender. There were no significant differences in verb or noun comprehension between the two groups in either language. However,…

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…

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…

People show a left visual field (LVF) bias for faces, i.e., involving the right hemisphere of the brain. Lesion and neuroimaging studies confirm the importance of the right-hemisphere and suggest separable neural pathways for processing facial identity vs. emotions. We investigated the hemispheric processing of faces in adults with and without…

The Oxford dictionary defines exceptionality as "forming an exception; very unusual; outstandingly good." A thesaurus provides the following synonyms: outstanding, excellent, brilliant, antonym of ordinary. In education and psychology textbooks and journals, however, it is often defined in ways that focus on limitations, with synonyms…

The idea of visual complexity, the history of its measurement, and its implications for behavior are reviewed, starting with structuralism and Gestalt psychology at the beginning of the 20th century and ending with visual complexity theory, perceptual learning theory, and neural circuit theory at the beginning of the 21st. Evidence is drawn from…

The purpose of this resource guide on traumatic brain injury (TBI) is to provide assistance to educators, families, and professionals who may be striving to increase their knowledge and understanding of brain injury. This guide will hopefully become an initial resource. It provides: a glossary of TBI Terms; contact information for and brief…

Previous studies of the Stroop task propose two key mediators: the prefrontal and cingulate cortices but hints exist of functional specialization within these regions. This study aimed to examine the effect of task modality upon the prefrontal and cingulate response by examining the response to colour, number, and shape Stroop tasks whilst BOLD…

Learning to discriminate between spatial locations defined by two adjacent arms of a radial maze in the conditioned cue preference paradigm requires two kinds of information: latent spatial learning when the rats explore the maze with no food available, and learning about food availability in two spatial locations when the rats are then confined…

In the adult brain, the expression of NT-3 is largely confined to the hippocampal dentate gyrus (DG), an area exhibiting significant neurogenesis. Using a conditional mutant line in which the "NT-3" gene is deleted in the brain, we investigated the role of NT-3 in adult neurogenesis, hippocampal plasticity, and memory. Bromodeoxyuridine…