A Comparison of White Matter Brain Differences in Monolingual and Highly Proficient Multilingual Speakers.

Language processing relies on the communication between brain regions that is achieved through several white matter tracts, part of the dorsal, ventral, and medial pathways involved in language processing and control (Coggins et al., 2004; Friederici & Gierhan, 2013; Hickok & Poeppel, 2007; Luk et al., 2011).

Electrophysiological study of visual processing in children with cochlear implants.

Electrophysiological studies of congenitally deaf children and adults have reported atypical visual evoked potentials (VEPs) which have been associated with both behavioral enhancements of visual attention as well as poorer performance and outcomes in tests of spoken language speech processing. This pattern has often been interpreted as a maladaptive consequence of early auditory deprivation, whereby a remapping of auditory cortex by the visual system ultimately reduces resources necessary for optimal rehabilitative outcomes of spoken language acquisition and use. Making use of a novel electrophysiological paradigm, we compare VEPs in children with severe to profound congenital deafness who received a cochlear implant(s) prior to 31 months (n = 28) and typically developing age matched controls (n = 28).

Visual attention for linguistic and non-linguistic body actions in non-signing and native signing children.

Evidence from adult studies of deaf signers supports the dissociation between neural systems involved in processing visual linguistic and non-linguistic body actions. The question of how and when this specialization arises is poorly understood. Visual attention to these forms is likely to change with age and be affected by prior language experience.

Electrophysiological Examination of Ambient Speech Processing in Children With Cochlear Implants.

Purpose: This research examined the expression of cortical auditory evoked potentials in a cohort of children who received cochlear implants (CIs) for treatment of congenital deafness ( = 28) and typically hearing controls ( = 28).

Method: We make use of a novel electroencephalography paradigm that permits the assessment of auditory responses to ambiently presented speech and evaluates the contributions of concurrent visual stimulation on this activity.

Results: Our findings show group differences in the expression of auditory sensory and perceptual event-related potential components occurring in 80- to 200-ms and 200- to 300-ms time windows, with reductions in amplitude and a greater latency difference for CI-using children.

Semantic word integration in children with cochlear implants: Electrophysiological evidence.

Differential auditory experiences of children with hearing-loss who receive cochlear implants (CIs) may influence the integration of lexical and conceptual information. Here we measured event-related potentials during a word-picture priming task in CI-using children (n = 29, mean age = 81 months) and typically-hearing children (n = 19, mean age = 75 months) while they viewed audiovisual-word primes and picture targets that were semantically congruent or incongruent. In both groups, semantic relatedness modulated ERP amplitude 300-500ms after picture onset, signifying an N400 semantic effect.

Cortical Encoding of Manual Articulatory and Linguistic Features in American Sign Language.

The fluent production of a signed language requires exquisite coordination of sensory, motor, and cognitive processes. Similar to speech production, language produced with the hands by fluent signers appears effortless but reflects the precise coordination of both large-scale and local cortical networks. The organization and representational structure of sensorimotor features underlying sign language phonology in these networks remains unknown.

Effects of age on American Sign Language sentence repetition.

The study of deaf users of signed languages, who often experience delays in primary language (L1) acquisition, permits a unique opportunity to examine the effects of aging on the processing of an L1 acquired under delayed or protracted development. A cohort of 107 congenitally deaf adult signers ages 45-85 years who were exposed to American Sign Language (ASL) either in infancy, early childhood, or late childhood were tested using an ASL sentence repetition test. Participants repeated 20 sentences that gradually increased in length and complexity.

A novel EEG paradigm to simultaneously and rapidly assess the functioning of auditory and visual pathways.

Objective assessment of the sensory pathways is crucial for understanding their development across the life span and how they may be affected by neurodevelopmental disorders (e.g., autism spectrum) and neurological pathologies (e.

Putting underspecification in context: ERP evidence for sparse representations in morphophonological alternations.

Numerous studies have shown evidence for a sparse lexicon in speech perception, often in the guise of underspecification, where certain information is omitted in the specification of phonological forms. While previous work has made a good case for underspecifying certain features of single speech sounds, the role of phonological context in underspecification has been overlooked. Contextually-mediated underspecification is particularly relevant to conceptualizations of the lexicon, as it is couched in item-specific (as opposed to phoneme-specific) patterning.

Rutin and Its Cyclodextrin Inclusion Complexes: Physico-chemical Evaluation and in vitro Activity on B164A5 Murine Melanoma Cell Line.

Background: Recent studies have shown that rutin presents a heightened interest due to the plethora of biological activities. The major drawback for this phytocompound is the poor water solubility, a parameter that limits its bioavailability. The study aimed to prepare and assess the inclusion complexes of rutin with β-cyclodextrin (BCD) and hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin (HPBCD), followed by the evaluation of the antioxidant, antiproliferative and pro-apoptotic activity against B164A5 murine melanoma cell line.

Auditory and Visual Electrophysiology of Deaf Children with Cochlear Implants: Implications for Cross-modal Plasticity.

Deaf children who receive a cochlear implant early in life and engage in intensive oral/aural therapy often make great strides in spoken language acquisition. However, despite clinicians' best efforts, there is a great deal of variability in language outcomes. One concern is that cortical regions which normally support auditory processing may become reorganized for visual function, leaving fewer available resources for auditory language acquisition.

Distinguishing underlying and surface variation patterns in speech perception.

This study examines the relationship between patterns of variation and speech perception using two English prefixes: 'in-'/'im-' and 'un-'. In natural speech, 'in-' varies due to an underlying process of phonological assimilation, while 'un-' shows a pattern of surface variation, assimilating before labial stems. In a go/no-go lexical decision experiment, subjects were presented a set of 'mispronounced' stimuli in which the prefix nasal was altered (replacing [n] with [m], or vice versa), in addition to real words with unaltered prefixes.

Physico-chemical and Biological Evaluation of Flavonols: Fisetin, Quercetin and Kaempferol Alone and Incorporated in beta Cyclodextrins.

Background: Fisetin,quercetin and kaempferol are among the important representatives of flavonols, biological active phytocomounds, with low water solubility.

Objective: To evaluate the antimicrobial effect, respectively the antiproliferative and pro apoptotic activity on the B164A5 murine melanoma cell line of pure flavonols and their beta cyclodextrins complexes.

Method: Incorporation of fisetin, quercetin and kaempferol in beta cyclodextrins was proved by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), differencial scanning calorimetry (DSC) and X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD).

The Processing of Biologically Plausible and Implausible forms in American Sign Language: Evidence for Perceptual Tuning.

The human auditory system distinguishes speech-like information from general auditory signals in a remarkably fast and efficient way. Combining psychophysics and neurophysiology (MEG), we demonstrate a similar result for the processing of visual information used for language communication in users of sign languages. We demonstrate that the earliest visual cortical responses in deaf signers viewing American Sign Language (ASL) signs show specific modulations to violations of anatomic constraints that would make the sign either possible or impossible to articulate.

Human temporal cortical single neuron activity during working memory maintenance.

The Working Memory model of human memory, first introduced by Baddeley and Hitch (1974), has been one of the most influential psychological constructs in cognitive psychology and human neuroscience. However the neuronal correlates of core components of this model have yet to be fully elucidated. Here we present data from two studies where human temporal cortical single neuron activity was recorded during tasks differentially affecting the maintenance component of verbal working memory.

An fMRI study of perception and action in deaf signers.

Since the discovery of mirror neurons, there has been a great deal of interest in understanding the relationship between perception and action, and the role of the human mirror system in language comprehension and production. Two questions have dominated research. One concerns the role of Broca's area in speech perception.

Phonological awareness for american sign language.

This paper examines the concept of phonological awareness (PA) as it relates to the processing of American Sign Language (ASL). We present data from a recently developed test of PA for ASL and examine whether sign language experience impacts the use of metalinguistic routines necessary for completion of our task. Our data show that deaf signers exposed to ASL from infancy perform better than deaf signers exposed to ASL later in life and that this relationship remains even after controlling for the number of years of experience with a signed language.

An Investigation of Place and Voice Features Using fMRI-Adaptation.

A widely accepted view of speech perception holds that in order to comprehend language, the variable acoustic signal must be parsed into a set of abstract linguistic representations. However, the neural basis of early phonological processing, including the nature of featural encoding of speech, is still poorly understood. In part, progress in this domain has been constrained by the difficulty inherent in extricating the influence of acoustic modulations from those which can be ascribed to the abstract, featural content of the stimuli.

Deaf readers' response to syntactic complexity: evidence from self-paced reading.

This study was designed to determine the feasibility of using self-paced reading methods to study deaf readers and to assess how deaf readers respond to two syntactic manipulations. Three groups of participants read the test sentences: deaf readers, hearing monolingual English readers, and hearing bilingual readers whose second language was English. In Experiment 1, the participants read sentences containing subject-relative or object-relative clauses.

Lexical processing in deaf readers: an FMRI investigation of reading proficiency.

Individuals with significant hearing loss often fail to attain competency in reading orthographic scripts which encode the sound properties of spoken language. Nevertheless, some profoundly deaf individuals do learn to read at age-appropriate levels. The question of what differentiates proficient deaf readers from less-proficient readers is poorly understood but topical, as efforts to develop appropriate and effective interventions are needed.

Cross-linguistic differences in the neural representation of human language: evidence from users of signed languages.

Studies of deaf individuals who are users of signed languages have provided profound insight into the neural representation of human language. Case studies of deaf signers who have incurred left- and right-hemisphere damage have shown that left-hemisphere resources are a necessary component of sign language processing. These data suggest that, despite frank differences in the input and output modality of language, core left perisylvian regions universally serve linguistic function.

Handshape monitoring: Evaluation of linguistic and perceptual factors in the processing of American Sign Language.

We investigated the relevance of linguistic and perceptual factors to sign processing by comparing hearing individuals and deaf signers as they performed a handshape monitoring task, a sign-language analogue to the phoneme-monitoring paradigms used in many spoken-language studies. Each subject saw a series of brief video clips, each of which showed either an ASL sign or a phonologically possible but non-lexical "non-sign," and responded when the viewed action was formed with a particular handshape. Stimuli varied with respect to the factors of Lexicality, handshape Markedness (Battison, 1978), and Type, defined according to whether the action is performed with one or two hands and for two-handed stimuli, whether or not the action is symmetrical.

Lexical access in American Sign Language: an ERP investigation of effects of semantics and phonology.

That language forms (phonology) are arbitrarily related to their meanings (semantics) is often considered a basic property of human languages. Naturally occurring sign languages, however, often appear to conflate form and meaning. In this paper we examine whether this close coupling has processing consequences for lexical access.