Human drone interaction in delivery of medical supplies: A scoping review of experimental studies.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic, ageing populations and the increasing shortage of skilled workers pose great challenges for the delivery of supplies for people with and without care needs. The potential of drones, as unmanned air vehicles, in healthcare are huge and are discussed as an effective new way to delivery urgent medicines and medical devices, especially in rural areas. Although the advantages are obvious, perspectives of users are important particularly in the development process.

Inner versus Overt Speech Production: Does This Make a Difference in the Developing Brain?

Studies in adults showed differential neural processing between overt and inner speech. So far, it is unclear whether inner and overt speech are processed differentially in children. The present study examines the pre-activation of the speech network in order to disentangle domain-general executive control from linguistic control of inner and overt speech production in 6- to 7-year-olds by simultaneously applying electroencephalography (EEG) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS).

Uncovering electrophysiological and vascular signatures of implicit emotional prosody.

The capability of differentiating between various emotional states in speech displays a crucial prerequisite for successful social interactions. The aim of the present study was to investigate neural processes underlying this differentiating ability by applying a simultaneous neuroscientific approach in order to gain both electrophysiological (via electroencephalography, EEG) and vascular (via functional near-infrared-spectroscopy, fNIRS) responses. Pseudowords conforming to angry, happy, and neutral prosody were presented acoustically to participants using a passive listening paradigm in order to capture implicit mechanisms of emotional prosody processing.

The Brain Differentially Prepares Inner and Overt Speech Production: Electrophysiological and Vascular Evidence.

Speech production not only relies on spoken (overt speech) but also on silent output (inner speech). Little is known about whether inner and overt speech are processed differently and which neural mechanisms are involved. By simultaneously applying electroencephalography (EEG) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), we tried to disentangle executive control from motor and linguistic processes.

Impact of associative word learning on phonotactic processing in 6-month-old infants: A combined EEG and fNIRS study.

During early language development native phonotactics are acquired in a 'bottom-up' fashion, relying on exquisite auditory differentiation skills operational from birth. Since basic lexico-semantic abilities have been demonstrated from 6 months onwards, 'top-down' influences on phonotactic learning may complement the extraction of transitional probabilities in phonotactic learning. Such a bidirectional acquisition strategy predicts, that familiarization with (proto)words should affect processing of untrained word-forms of similar phonological structure.