Overt social interaction and resting state in young adult males with autism: core and contextual neural features.

Conversation is an important and ubiquitous social behaviour. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (autism) without intellectual disability often have normal structural language abilities but deficits in social aspects of communication like pragmatics, prosody, and eye contact. Previous studies of resting state activity suggest that intrinsic connections among neural circuits involved with social processing are disrupted in autism, but to date no neuroimaging study has examined neural activity during the most commonplace yet challenging social task: spontaneous conversation.

Sleep extension reduces pain sensitivity.

Introduction: Insufficient sleep increases pain sensitivity in healthy individuals. Additionally, extending sleep (eg, increasing nocturnal sleep time or adding a mid-day nap) has been shown to restore pain sensitivity to baseline levels in sleep deprived/restricted individuals. Whether sleep extension can reduce pain sensitivity beyond baseline levels in non-sleep restricted/deprived individuals remains unknown.

Fronto-parietal mirror neuron system modeling: Visuospatial transformations support imitation learning independently of imitator perspective.

Although the human mirror neuron system (MNS) is critical for action observation and imitation, most MNS investigations overlook the visuospatial transformation processes that allow individuals to interpret and imitate actions observed from differing perspectives. This problem is not trivial since accurately reaching for and grasping an object requires a visuospatial transformation mechanism capable of precisely remapping fine motor skills where the observer's and imitator's arms and hands may have quite different orientations and sizes. Accordingly, here we describe a novel neural model to investigate the dynamics between the fronto-parietal MNS and visuospatial processes during observation and imitation of a reaching and grasping action.

Neural Efficiency in Expert Cognitive-Motor Performers During Affective Challenge.

Skilled individuals demonstrate a spatially localized or relatively lower response in brain activity characterized as neural efficiency when performing within their domain of expertise. Elite athletes are experts in their chosen sport and thus must be not only adept in the motor domain but must be resilient to performing under the stress of high-level competition. Such stability of performance suggests this population processes emotion and mental stress in an adaptive and efficient manner.

Association between Rare Variants in AP4E1, a Component of Intracellular Trafficking, and Persistent Stuttering.

Stuttering is a common, highly heritable neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by deficits in the volitional control of speech. Whole-exome sequencing identified two heterozygous AP4E1 coding variants, c.1549G>A (p.

Mucolipidosis types II and III and non-syndromic stuttering are associated with different variants in the same genes.

Homozygous mutations in GNPTAB and GNPTG are classically associated with mucolipidosis II (ML II) alpha/beta and mucolipidosis III (ML III) alpha/beta/gamma, which are rare lysosomal storage disorders characterized by multiple pathologies. Recently, variants in GNPTAB, GNPTG, and the functionally related NAGPA gene have been associated with non-syndromic persistent stuttering. In a worldwide sample of 1013 unrelated individuals with non-syndromic persistent stuttering we found 164 individuals who carried a rare non-synonymous coding variant in one of these three genes.

Characteristics of Fluency and Speech in Two Families With High Incidences of Stuttering.

Purpose: This study presents data from 2 families with high incidence of stuttering, comparing methods of phenotype assignment and exploring the presence of other fluency disorders and corresponding speech characteristics.

Method: Three methods for assigning phenotype of stuttering were used: self-identification, family identification, and expert identification. Agreement on which individuals were assigned by each of these methods was studied.

MEG-based detection and localization of perilesional dysfunction in chronic stroke.

Post-stroke impairment is associated not only with structural lesions, but also with dysfunction in surviving perilesional tissue. Previous studies using equivalent current dipole source localization of MEG/EEG signals have demonstrated a preponderance of slow-wave activity localized to perilesional areas. Recent studies have also demonstrated the utility of nonlinear analyses such as multiscale entropy (MSE) for quantifying neuronal dysfunction in a wide range of pathologies.

Brain activity and connectivity during poetry composition: Toward a multidimensional model of the creative process.

Creativity, a multifaceted construct, can be studied in various ways, for example, investigating phases of the creative process, quality of the creative product, or the impact of expertise. Previous neuroimaging studies have assessed these individually. Believing that each of these interacting features must be examined simultaneously to develop a comprehensive understanding of creative behavior, we examined poetry composition, assessing process, product, and expertise in a single experiment.

Personal experience with narrated events modulates functional connectivity within visual and motor systems during story comprehension.

Past experience of everyday life activities, which forms the basis of our knowledge about the world, greatly affects how we understand stories. Yet, little is known about how this influence is instantiated in the human brain. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate how past experience facilitates functional connectivity during the comprehension of stories rich in perceptual and motor details.

Denoising the speaking brain: toward a robust technique for correcting artifact-contaminated fMRI data under severe motion.

A comprehensive set of methods based on spatial independent component analysis (sICA) is presented as a robust technique for artifact removal, applicable to a broad range of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments that have been plagued by motion-related artifacts. Although the applications of sICA for fMRI denoising have been studied previously, three fundamental elements of this approach have not been established as follows: 1) a mechanistically-based ground truth for component classification; 2) a general framework for evaluating the performance and generalizability of automated classifiers; and 3) a reliable method for validating the effectiveness of denoising. Here we perform a thorough investigation of these issues and demonstrate the power of our technique by resolving the problem of severe imaging artifacts associated with continuous overt speech production.

Neural correlates and network connectivity underlying narrative production and comprehension: a combined fMRI and PET study.

The neural correlates of narrative production and comprehension remain poorly understood. Here, using positron emission tomography (PET), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), contrast and functional network connectivity analyses we comprehensively characterize the neural mechanisms underlying these complex behaviors. Eighteen healthy subjects told and listened to fictional stories during scanning.

Decreased connectivity between the thalamus and the neocortex during human nonrapid eye movement sleep.

Study Objectives: To determine whether thalamocortical signaling between the thalamus and the neocortex decreases from wakefulness to nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep.

Design: Electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging data were collected simultaneously at 02:30 after 44 h of sleep deprivation.

Setting: Clinical research hospital.

P600-like positivity and Left Anterior Negativity responses are elicited by semantic reversibility in nonanomalous sentences.

ERPs are commonly elicited by semantic and syntactic violations in sentences, leading to proposals that they reflect neural activity underlying ordinary language comprehension. We examined ERPs in an auditory sentence-picture-matching task, using nonanomalous sentences that were either semantically reversible, (boy pushes girl) or irreversible, (boy eats apple). Timelocked to the end of the critical clause, which occurred in the middle of a longer sentence, we observed an enhanced central-posterior positivity in response to the reversible sentences.

Separating lexical-semantic access from other mnemonic processes in picture-name verification.

We present a novel paradigm to identify shared and unique brain regions underlying non-semantic, non-phonological, abstract, audio-visual (AV) memory vs. naming using a longitudinal functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment. Participants were trained to associate novel AV stimulus pairs containing hidden linguistic content.

Embodied comprehension of stories: interactions between language regions and modality-specific neural systems.

The embodied view of language processing proposes that comprehension involves multimodal simulations, a process that retrieves a comprehender's perceptual, motor, and affective knowledge through reactivation of the neural systems responsible for perception, action, and emotion. Although evidence in support of this idea is growing, the contemporary neuroanatomical model of language suggests that comprehension largely emerges as a result of interactions between frontotemporal language areas in the left hemisphere. If modality-specific neural systems are involved in comprehension, they are not likely to operate in isolation but should interact with the brain regions critical to language processing.

Spatial and temporal features of superordinate semantic processing studied with fMRI and EEG.

The relationships between the anatomical representation of semantic knowledge in the human brain and the timing of neurophysiological mechanisms involved in manipulating such information remain unclear. This is the case for superordinate semantic categorization-the extraction of general features shared by broad classes of exemplars (e.g.

Rhythmic alternating patterns of brain activity distinguish rapid eye movement sleep from other states of consciousness.

Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep constitutes a distinct "third state" of consciousness, during which levels of brain activity are commensurate with wakefulness, but conscious awareness is radically transformed. To characterize the temporal and spatial features of this paradoxical state, we examined functional interactions between brain regions using fMRI resting-state connectivity methods. Supporting the view that the functional integrity of the default mode network (DMN) reflects "level of consciousness," we observed functional uncoupling of the DMN during deep sleep and recoupling during REM sleep (similar to wakefulness).

Adaptive significance of right hemisphere activation in aphasic language comprehension.

Aphasic patients often exhibit increased right hemisphere activity during language tasks. This may represent takeover of function by regions homologous to the left-hemisphere language networks, maladaptive interference, or adaptation of alternate compensatory strategies. To distinguish between these accounts, we tested language comprehension in 25 aphasic patients using an online sentence-picture matching paradigm while measuring brain activation with MEG.

Neural correlates of lyrical improvisation: an FMRI study of freestyle rap.

The neural correlates of creativity are poorly understood. Freestyle rap provides a unique opportunity to study spontaneous lyrical improvisation, a multidimensional form of creativity at the interface of music and language. Here we use functional magnetic resonance imaging to characterize this process.

Dissociating neural correlates of meaningful emblems from meaningless gestures in deaf signers and hearing non-signers.

Emblems are meaningful, culturally-specific hand gestures that are analogous to words. In this fMRI study, we contrasted the processing of emblematic gestures with meaningless gestures by pre-lingually Deaf and hearing participants. Deaf participants, who used American Sign Language, activated bilateral auditory processing and associative areas in the temporal cortex to a greater extent than the hearing participants while processing both types of gestures relative to rest.

Selective left, right and bilateral stimulation of subthalamic nuclei in Parkinson's disease: differential effects on motor, speech and language function.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus improves the motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease, but may produce a worsening of speech and language performance at rates and amplitudes typically selected in clinical practice. The possibility that these dissociated effects might be modulated by selective stimulation of left and right STN has never been systematically investigated. To address this issue, we analyzed motor, speech and language functions of 12 patients implanted with bilateral stimulators configured for optimal motor responses.

Common and unique responses to dopamine agonist therapy and deep brain stimulation in Parkinson's disease: an H(2)(15)O PET study.

Background: Dopamine agonist therapy and deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) are antiparkinsonian treatments that act on a different part of the basal ganglia-thalamocortical motor circuitry, yet produce similar symptomatic improvements.

Objective/hypothesis: The purpose of this study was to identify common and unique brain network features of these standard treatments.

Methods: We analyzed images produced by H(2)(15)O positron emission tomography (PET) of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) at rest.

An EEG-MEG Dissociation between Online Syntactic Comprehension and Post Hoc Reanalysis.

Successful comprehension of syntactically complex sentences depends on online language comprehension mechanisms as well as reanalysis in working memory. To differentiate the neural substrates of these processes, we recorded electroencephalography and magnetoencephalography (MEG) during sentence-picture-matching in healthy subjects, assessing the effects of two difficulty factors: syntactic complexity (object-embedded vs. subject-embedded relative clauses) and semantic reversibility on neuronal oscillations during sentence presentation, and during a subsequent memory delay prior to picture onset.