Mapping sentence comprehension and syntactic complexity: evidence from 131 stroke survivors.

Understanding and interpreting how words are organized in a sentence to convey distinct meanings is a cornerstone of human communication. The neural underpinnings of this ability, known as syntactic comprehension, are far from agreed upon in current neurocognitive models of language comprehension. Traditionally, left frontal regions (e.

Voxel-Based Lesion Analysis of Ideomotor Apraxia.

Ideomotor apraxia is a cognitive disorder most often resulting from acquired brain lesions (i.e., strokes or tumors).

The California Cognitive Assessment Battery (CCAB).

Introduction: We are developing the California Cognitive Assessment Battery (CCAB) to provide neuropsychological assessments to patients who lack test access due to cost, capacity, mobility, and transportation barriers.

Methods: The CCAB consists of 15 non-verbal and 17 verbal subtests normed for telemedical assessment. The CCAB runs on calibrated tablet computers over cellular or Wi-Fi connections either in a laboratory or in participants' homes.

Cerebral perfusion in post-stroke aphasia and its relationship to residual language abilities.

Stroke alters blood flow to the brain resulting in damaged tissue and cell death. Moreover, the disruption of cerebral blood flow (perfusion) can be observed in areas surrounding and distal to the lesion. These structurally preserved but suboptimally perfused regions may also affect recovery.

A Randomized, Controlled Pilot Study of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction in Healthy Older Adults.

Objectives: As the aging population increases, it is critical to find ways to sustain older adults' health and well-being. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) may be one approach, but its effects are difficult to discern because few studies have conducted randomized controlled trials with an active control group and blinded examiners. We begin to address these gaps with a pilot study examining the feasibility of conducting an MBSR intervention with an active control condition in healthy older adults.

The unique role of the frontal aslant tract in speech and language processing.

The frontal aslant tract (FAT) is a recently described intralobar tract that connects the superior and inferior frontal gyri. The FAT has been implicated in various speech and language processes and disorders, including motor speech impairments, stuttering disorders, opercular syndrome, and verbal fluency, but the specific function(s) of the FAT have yet to be elucidated. In the current study, we aimed to address this knowledge gap by investigating the underlying role that the FAT plays in motor aspects of speech and language abilities in post-stroke aphasia.

BCG vaccination at birth and COVID-19: a case-control study among U.S. military Veterans.

In the early stages of the COVID-19 global pandemic, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) appeared to be experiencing lower morbidity and mortality rates than high-income countries, particularly the United States. Various suggestions put forward to account for this included the possibility that LMICs might be experiencing off-target benefits of infant vaccination with BCG, intended primarily to protect against tuberculosis. A number of ecologic epidemiological studies that considered COVID-19 morbidity and mortality rates across countries appeared to support this suggestion.

Auditory Comprehension Deficits in Post-stroke Aphasia: Neurologic and Demographic Correlates of Outcome and Recovery.

One of the most challenging symptoms of aphasia is an impairment in auditory comprehension. The inability to understand others has a direct impact on a person's quality of life and ability to benefit from treatment. Despite its importance, limited research has examined the recovery pattern of auditory comprehension and instead has focused on aphasia recovery more generally.

Functional Contributions of the Arcuate Fasciculus to Language Processing.

Current evidence strongly suggests that the arcuate fasciculus (AF) is critical for language, from spontaneous speech and word retrieval to repetition and comprehension abilities. However, to further pinpoint its unique and differential role in language, its anatomy needs to be explored in greater detail and its contribution to language processing beyond that of known cortical language areas must be established. We address this in a comprehensive evaluation of the specific functional role of the AF in a well-characterized cohort of individuals with chronic aphasia ( = 33) following left hemisphere stroke.

Case study: A selective tactile naming deficit for letters and numbers due to interhemispheric disconnection.

The role of white matter pathways in cognition is a topic of active investigation that is vital to both the fields of clinical neurology and cognitive neuroscience. White matter pathways provide critical connectivity amongst numerous specialized brain regions thereby enabling higher level cognition. While the effects of dissections and lesions of the corpus callosum have been reported, it is less understood how unilateral focal white matter lesions may impact cognitive processes.

Neural Underpinnings of Proactive Interference in Working Memory: Evidence From Patients With Unilateral Lesions.

Proactive interference in working memory refers to the fact that memory of past experiences can interfere with the ability to hold new information in working memory. The left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) has been proposed to play an important role in resolving proactive interference in working memory. However, the role of white matter pathways and other cortical regions has been less investigated.

An empirical comparison of univariate versus multivariate methods for the analysis of brain-behavior mapping.

Lesion symptom mapping (LSM) tools are used on brain injury data to identify the neural structures critical for a given behavior or symptom. Univariate lesion symptom mapping (ULSM) methods provide statistical comparisons of behavioral test scores in patients with and without a lesion on a voxel by voxel basis. More recently, multivariate lesion symptom mapping (MLSM) methods have been developed that consider the effects of all lesioned voxels in one model simultaneously.

Role of the left hemisphere in visuospatial working memory.

Visuospatial processing deficits are typically associated with damage to the right hemisphere. However, deficits on spatial working memory have been reported among some individuals with focal left hemisphere damage (LHD). It has been suggested that the left hemisphere may play a role in such non-verbal working memory tasks due to the use of subvocal, verbally-mediated strategies.

Voxel-based lesion analysis of brain regions underlying reading and writing.

The neural basis of reading and writing has been a source of inquiry as well as controversy in the neuroscience literature. Reading has been associated with both left posterior ventral temporal zones (termed the "visual word form area") as well as more dorsal zones, primarily in left parietal cortex. Writing has also been associated with left parietal cortex, as well as left sensorimotor cortex and prefrontal regions.

What Do Language Disorders Reveal about Brain-Language Relationships? From Classic Models to Network Approaches.

Studies of language disorders have shaped our understanding of brain-language relationships over the last two centuries. This article provides a review of this research and how our thinking has changed over the years regarding how the brain processes language. In the 19th century, a series of famous case studies linked distinct speech and language functions to specific portions of the left hemisphere of the brain, regions that later came to be known as Broca's and Wernicke's areas.

Impaired reasoning and problem-solving in individuals with language impairment due to aphasia or language delay.

The precise nature of the relationship between language and thought is an intriguing and challenging area of inquiry for scientists across many disciplines. In the realm of neuropsychology, research has investigated the inter-dependence of language and thought by testing individuals with compromised language abilities and observing whether performance in other cognitive domains is diminished. One group of such individuals is patients with aphasia who have an impairment in speech and language arising from a brain injury, such as a stroke.

You may now kiss the bride: Interpretation of social situations by individuals with right or left hemisphere injury.

While left hemisphere damage (LHD) has been clearly shown to cause a range of language impairments, patients with right hemisphere damage (RHD) also exhibit communication deficits, such as difficulties processing prosody, discourse, and social contexts. In the current study, individuals with RHD and LHD were directly compared on their ability to interpret what a character in a cartoon might be saying or thinking, in order to better understand the relative role of the right and left hemisphere in social communication. The cartoon stimuli were manipulated so as to elicit more or less formulaic responses (e.

Grey and white matter correlates of picture naming: evidence from a voxel-based lesion analysis of the Boston Naming Test.

A number of recent studies utilizing both functional neuroimaging and lesion analysis techniques in neurologic patients have produced conflicting results with respect to the neural correlates of picture naming. Picture naming involves a number of cognitive processes, from visual perception/recognition to lexical-semantic retrieval to articulation. This middle process, the ability to retrieve a name associated with an object, has been attributed in some cases to posterior portions of the left lateral temporal lobe and in other cases, to anterior temporal cortex.

Brain Regions Underlying Repetition and Auditory-Verbal Short-term Memory Deficits in Aphasia: Evidence from Voxel-based Lesion Symptom Mapping.

Background: A deficit in the ability to repeat auditory-verbal information is common among individuals with aphasia. The neural basis of this deficit has traditionally been attributed to the disconnection of left posterior and anterior language regions via damage to a white matter pathway, the arcuate fasciculus. However, a number of lesion and imaging studies have called this notion into question.

Conduction aphasia, sensory-motor integration, and phonological short-term memory - an aggregate analysis of lesion and fMRI data.

Conduction aphasia is a language disorder characterized by frequent speech errors, impaired verbatim repetition, a deficit in phonological short-term memory, and naming difficulties in the presence of otherwise fluent and grammatical speech output. While traditional models of conduction aphasia have typically implicated white matter pathways, recent advances in lesions reconstruction methodology applied to groups of patients have implicated left temporoparietal zones. Parallel work using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has pinpointed a region in the posterior most portion of the left planum temporale, area Spt, which is critical for phonological working memory.

Aphasic patients exhibit a reversal of hemispheric asymmetries in categorical color discrimination.

Patients with left hemisphere (LH) or right hemisphere (RH) brain injury due to stroke were tested on a speeded, color discrimination task in which two factors were manipulated: (1) the categorical relationship between the target and the distracters and (2) the visual field in which the target was presented. Similar to controls, the RH patients were faster in detecting targets in the right visual field when the target and distracters had different color names compared to when their names were the same. This effect was absent in the LH patients, consistent with the hypothesis that injury to the left hemisphere handicaps the automatic activation of lexical codes.

Role of the precentral gyrus of the insula in complex articulation.

Previous research has suggested that the left anterior insula, specifically the superior precentral gyrus of the insula (SPGI), is a critical brain region for the coordination of complex articulatory movements. However, previous studies have not determined which articulatory factors are specifically dependent on this brain region. In the current study, 33 left hemisphere stroke patients with varying degrees of speech impairment were asked to perform multiple repetitions of single words that varied along three separate dimensions: number of syllables, degree of articulatory travel (i.