Previous studies have identified several brain regions that appear to be involved in the acquisition of novel word forms. Standard word-by-word presentation is often used although exposure to a new language normally occurs in a natural, real world situation. In the current experiment we investigated naturalistic language exposure and applied a…

Background: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the relationship between brain tumour location and core areas of cognitive and behavioural functioning for paediatric brain tumour survivors. The extant literature both supports and refutes an association between paediatric brain tumour location and neurocognitive outcomes. We examined…

Quality of mothering relies on the integrity of multiple physiological and behavioral systems and on two maternal factors, one proximal and one distal, that have a great impact on how a mother mothers: postpartum depression and early experiences. To mother appropriately requires the action of systems that regulate sensation, perception, affect,…

The scope, breadth, and volume of data characterizing our current understanding of how the brain functions is growing at an increasingly rapid pace. What is more, theories are becoming increasing complex and nuanced, integrating knowledge from multiple previously independent sources of scientific inquiry. The research described within this…

The purpose of my paper is to identify the difference between psychotherapy and art therapy. Then to introduce a technique within the field of art therapy that is relevant to neuro-plasticity Del Giacco Neuro Art Therapy. The paper identifies the importance of the amygdala and the hippocampus within the role of art therapy. Supporting…

Cognitive control theory suggests conflict effects are reduced following high- relative to low-conflict trials. Such reactive adjustments in control, frequently termed "conflict adaptation effects," indicate a dynamic interplay between regulative and evaluative components of cognitive control necessary for adaptable goal-directed behavior. The…

Object-location memory is an important form of spatial memory, comprising different subcomponents that each process specific types of information within memory, i.e. remembering objects, remembering positions and binding these features in memory. In the current study we investigated the neural correlates of binding categorical (relative) or…

Readers acquire information outside the current eye fixation. Previous research indicates that having only the fixated word available slows reading, but when the next word is visible, reading is almost as fast as when the whole line is seen. Parafoveal-on-foveal effects are interpreted to reflect that the characteristics of a parafoveal word can…

In this study we contrasted the Category fluency and Letter fluency performance of 198 normal subjects, 57 Alzheimer's patients and 57 patients affected by traumatic brain injury (TBI). The aim was to check whether, besides the prevalence of Category fluency deficit often reported among Alzheimer's patients, the TBI group presented the opposite…

We investigated the relative involvement of cortical regions supporting attentional control in older and younger adults during performance on a modified version of the Stroop task. Participants were exposed to two different types of incongruent trials. One of these, an incongruent-ineligible condition, produces conflict at the non-response level,…

Mnemonic deficits in patients with medial temporal lobe (MTL) damage arising from temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) are traditionally constrained to long-term episodic memory, sparing short-term and working memory (WM). This view of WM as being independent of MTL structures has recently been challenged by a small number of patient and neuroimaging…

The nucleus accumbens is critical for reward-guided learning and decision-making. It is thought to "gate" the flow of a diverse range of information (e.g., rewarding, aversive, and novel events) from limbic afferents to basal ganglia outputs. Gating and information encoding may be achieved via cross-frequency coupling, in which bursts of…

The current study investigated the neural correlates that underlie the processing of ambiguous words and the potential effects of semantic competition on that processing. Participants performed speeded lexical decisions on semantically related and unrelated prime-target pairs presented in the auditory modality. The primes were either ambiguous…

Priming effects have been well documented in behavioral psycholinguistics experiments: The processing of a word or a sentence is typically facilitated when it shares lexico-semantic or syntactic features with a previously encountered stimulus. Here, we used fMRI priming to investigate which brain areas show adaptation to the repetition of a…

Effective goal-directed behavior relies on a network of regions including anterior cingulate cortex and ventral striatum to learn from negative outcomes in order to improve performance. We employed fMRI to determine if this frontal-striatal system is also involved in instances of behavior that do not presume negative circumstances. Participants…