Cognitive reserve involves decision making and is associated with left parietal and hippocampal hypertrophy in neurodegeneration.

Cognitive reserve is the ability to actively cope with brain deterioration and delay cognitive decline in neurodegenerative diseases. It operates by optimizing performance through differential recruitment of brain networks or alternative cognitive strategies. We investigated cognitive reserve using Huntington's disease (HD) as a genetic model of neurodegeneration to compare premanifest HD, manifest HD, and controls.

Language disorders in patients with striatal lesions: Deciphering the role of the striatum in language performance.

The classical neural model of language refers to a cortical network involving frontal, parietal and temporal regions. However, patients with subcortical lesions of the striatum have language difficulties. We investigated whether the striatum is directly involved in language or whether its role in decision-making has an indirect effect on language performance, by testing carriers of Huntington's disease (HD) mutations and controls.

The role of the striatum in linguistic selection: Evidence from Huntington's disease and computational modeling.

Though accumulating evidence indicates that the striatum is recruited during language processing, the specific function of this subcortical structure in language remains to be elucidated. To answer this question, we used Huntington's disease as a model of striatal lesion. We investigated the morphological deficit of 30 early Huntington's disease patients with a novel linguistic task that can be modeled within an explicit theory of linguistic computation.

Structural priming in sentence comprehension: A single prime is enough.

Experiencing a syntactic structure affects how we process subsequent instances of that structure. This phenomenon, called structural priming, is observed both in language production and in language comprehension. However, while abstract syntactic structures can be primed independent of lexical overlap in sentence production, evidence for structural priming in comprehension is more elusive.

Cortical thickness, stance control, and arithmetic skill: An exploratory study in premanifest Huntington disease.

Background: Huntington disease (HD) is an inherited neurodegenerative disorder most commonly manifesting in adulthood. Identification of biomarkers tracking neurodegeneration before the onset of motor symptoms is important for future interventional studies. Our study aimed to contribute in the phenotypic characterization of the premanifest HD phase.

Complex linguistic rules modulate early auditory brain responses.

During speech perception, listeners compensate for phonological rules of their language. For instance, English place assimilation causes green boat to be typically pronounced as greem boat; English listeners, however, perceptually compensate for this rule and retrieve the intended sound (n). Previous research using EEG has focused on rules with clear phonetic underpinnings, showing that perceptual compensation occurs at an early stage of speech perception.

The role of the striatum in sentence processing: disentangling syntax from working memory in Huntington's disease.

The role of sub-cortical structures in language processing remains controversial. In particular, it is unclear whether the striatum subserves language-specific processes such as syntax or whether it solely affects language performance via its significant role in executive functioning and/or working memory. Here, in order to address this issue, we attempted to equalize working memory constraints while varying syntactic complexity, to study sentence comprehension in 15 patients with striatal damage, namely Huntington's disease at early stage, and in 15 healthy controls.