Autism is associated with genomic instability, which is regulated by telomere length (TL) and index of global methylation (LINE-1). This study will determine relative TL (RTL) and LINE-1 methylation percentage for 69 patients and 33 control subjects to evaluate their potential role as biomarkers for autism. The results displayed a significant…

Concrete symbols (e.g., "sun," "run") can be learned in the context of objects and actions, thereby grounding their meaning in the world. However, it is controversial whether a comparable avenue to semantic learning exists for abstract symbols (e.g., "democracy"). When we simulated the putative brain mechanisms of…

Recent studies show that oxidative stress has an important role in the etiology of autism. In our study, Nrf2, which is the main regulator of cellular antioxidant response, and Keap1 and Gsk-3[beta], which are the main proteins that regulate this pathway, were compared between children with autism and healthy controls. To the best of our…

The fast pace and relative ease at which individuals with typical language acquire and use words belie the complexity and vulnerability of lexical representation development (i.e., word learning) and lexical-semantic processing. Lexical-semantic processing impairments are common in both developmental and acquired communication disorders and, even…

Metacognitive calibration--the capacity to accurately self-assess one's performance--forms the basis for error detection and self-monitoring and is a potential catalyst for conceptual change. Limited brain imaging research on authentic learning tasks implicates the lateral prefrontal and anterior cingulate brain regions in expert scientific…

Human intelligence has the ability to capture abstract concepts from experience and utilize that learned knowledge for adaptation to new situations. Lifelong machine learning aims to achieve those same properties of human intelligence by designing algorithms to learn from a sequence of tasks, extract useful knowledge of previous tasks, and re-use…

A significant number of individuals with tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) exhibit language difficulties. Here, we examined the language-related brain morphometry in 59 participants (7 participants with TSC and comorbid autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (TSC + ASD), 13 with TSC but no ASD (TSC-ASD), 10 with ASD-only (ASD), and 29 typically developing…

Research in verbal and visual narratives has often emphasized backward-looking inferences, where absent information is subsequently inferred. However, comics use conventions like star-shaped "action stars" where a reader "knows" events are undepicted "at that moment," rather than omitted entirely. We contrasted the…

The role of the right hemisphere in phonetic processing is thought to be relatively minimal, at least in comparison to the role of the left hemisphere. However, the right hemisphere is known to play a critical role in vocal identity processing, a fact that is striking given that the acoustic-phonetic details of the speech signal can differ…

Skilled reading requires the convergent brain network between spoken language and reading. Here, we examined the developmental changes in this convergent network between beginning and skilled readers. We used fMRI data from 41 adults (aged from 20 to 21 years) and 21 children (aged from 9 to 12 years) who performed a Chinese word sound matching…

The current study explored the neuroanatomical basis of creative personality using the voxel-based morphometric (VBM) approach. The sample comprised two groups -- Creative (CR) group (professional creative artists) and matched controls with no demonstrated artistic creativity (NC) with 20 participants in each group, in the age range of 20-40…

To make sense of the auditory world, listeners must organize diverse, continuously varying sounds into meaningful perceptual categories. The auditory categorization process is believed to be a foundational skill for language development and speech perception. Despite decades of behavioral research, neuroscientific evidence is only beginning to…

To date, neuroanatomy education courses are still based on two-dimensional (2D) illustrations combined with cadaver dissections. To gain a more comprehensive understanding of neuroanatomy, we offered mixed reality experience using a head-mounted device (HMD) for medical students during their neuroanatomy course. This pilot study´s purpose was to…

Creative thinking stems from the cognitive process that fosters the creation of new ideas and problem-solving solutions. Artificial intelligence systems and neural network models can reduce the intricacy of understanding creative cognition. For instance, the generation of ideas could be symbolized as patterns of binary code in which clusters of…

Episodic retrieval plays a functional-adaptive role in supporting divergent creative thinking, the ability to creatively combine different pieces of information. However, the same constructive memory process that provides this benefit can also lead to memory errors. Prior behavioral work has shown that there is a positive correlation between the…