Is the WBE model appropriate for semi-arid shrubs subjected to clear cutting?

It is crucial to understand the adaptive mechanisms of woody plants facing periodic drought to assess their vulnerability to the increasing climate variability predicted in the Sahel. Guiera senegalensis J.F.

A Procedure to Measure the Hygrothermal Behavior of Earth Walls.

Rammed earth is a sustainable material with low embodied energy. However, its development as a building material requires a better evaluation of its moisture-thermal buffering abilities and its mechanical behavior. Both of these properties are known to strongly depend on the amount of water contained in wall pores and its evolution.

The influence of idiomatic salience during the comprehension of ambiguous idioms by patients with schizophrenia.

This study investigates whether figurative comprehension in schizophrenia is influenced by the salience of idiomatic meaning, and whether it is affected by clinical and demographic factors and IQ. Twenty-seven schizophrenic patients and 25 healthy participants performed a semantic relatedness judgement task which required the comprehension of idioms with two plausible meanings (literal and figurative). The study also used literal expressions.

N400 and P300 modulation as functions of processing level in schizophrenia patients exhibiting formal thought disorder.

In a semantic priming paradigm, the effects of different levels of processing on N400 were assessed by changing task demands in 10 schizophrenics and 10 matched controls. In the lexical decision task subjects had to discriminate between words and nonwords, and in the physical task subjects had to discriminate between cyan and blue ink letters. A lexicality test of reaction times demonstrated that the physical task was performed non-lexically in both groups.

Left temporal impairment of auditory information processing in prematurely born 9-year-old children: an electrophysiological study.

Children born preterm more than average display cognitive difficulties that are significant enough to prevent normal schooling. The aim of our study was to provide better understanding of the long-term neuropathological processes associated with preterm injury, through the hypothesis that mild cognitive disorders might be related to slight deficits in primary functions such as attention and perception. Assessment of auditory pre-attentive processes was performed by recording the obligatory sensory response (N250) and the change-detection response (Mismatch Negativity, MMN).

On understanding idiomatic language: The salience hypothesis assessed by ERPs.

Giora's [Giora, R., 1997. Understanding figurative and literal language: the Graded Salience Hypothesis.

ERPs of metaphoric, literal, and incongruous semantic processing in schizophrenia.

The ability of schizophrenia patients to access metaphorical meaning was studied on the basis of psycholinguistic models of metaphor processing. ERPs were recorded from 20 schizophrenic and 20 control participants who were asked to read metaphorical, literal, and incongruous sentences and to judge their meaningfulness. In all participants, incongruous endings to sentences evoked the most negative N400 amplitude, whereas literal endings evoked more negative N400 amplitude than metaphorical ones, consistent with the direct model of metaphor processing.

N400 anomalies in schizophrenia are correlated with the severity of formal thought disorder.

We explored the link between N400 anomalies and clinical profile in schizophrenia patients. N400 was recorded in 50 schizophrenia patients and 40 healthy controls during a lexical decision task with semantic priming. Comparison between controls and schizophrenia patients showed the classical anomalies reported for N400 in schizophrenia patients: greater amplitude for related words and lack of N400 effect.

An electrophysiologic study: can semantic context processes be mobilized in patients with thought-disordered schizophrenia?

Objective: The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that reinforcing the structuring of verbal material may bring about an improvement in contextualization processes in patients with formal thought-disordered schizophrenia.

Method: A total of 38 schizophrenia patients with formal thought disorders and 24 matched healthy control subjects performed 2 lexical decision tasks, involving 2 levels of contextual structuring (with 16.7% and 33% of related words, respectively).