The Bilingual Lexicon, Back and Forth: Electrophysiological Signatures of Translation Asymmetry.

Mainstream theories of first and second language (L1, L2) processing in bilinguals are crucially informed by word translation research. A core finding is the translation asymmetry effect, typified by slower performance in forward translation (FT, from L1 into L2) than in backward translation (BT, from L2 into L1). Yet, few studies have explored its neural bases and none has employed (de)synchronization measures, precluding the integration of bilingual memory models with neural (de)coupling accounts of word processing.

Multimodal mechanisms of human socially reinforced learning across neurodegenerative diseases.

Social feedback can selectively enhance learning in diverse domains. Relevant neurocognitive mechanisms have been studied mainly in healthy persons, yielding correlational findings. Neurodegenerative lesion models, coupled with multimodal brain measures, can complement standard approaches by revealing direct multidimensional correlates of the phenomenon.

The Neural Blending of Words and Movement: Event-Related Potential Signatures of Semantic and Action Processes during Motor-Language Coupling.

Behavioral embodied research shows that words evoking limb-specific meanings can affect responses performed with the corresponding body part. However, no study has explored this phenomenon's neural dynamics under implicit processing conditions, let alone by disentangling its conceptual and motoric stages. Here, we examined whether the blending of hand actions and manual action verbs, relative to nonmanual action verbs and nonaction verbs, modulates electrophysiological markers of semantic integration (N400) and motor-related cortical potentials during a lexical decision task.

Interoception Primes Emotional Processing: Multimodal Evidence from Neurodegeneration.

Recent frameworks in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral neurology underscore interoceptive priors as core modulators of negative emotions. However, the field lacks experimental designs manipulating the priming of emotions via interoception and exploring their multimodal signatures in neurodegenerative models. Here, we designed a novel task that involves interoceptive and control-exteroceptive priming conditions followed by post-interoception and post-exteroception facial emotion recognition (FER).

Time to Face Language: Embodied Mechanisms Underpin the Inception of Face-Related Meanings in the Human Brain.

In construing meaning, the brain recruits multimodal (conceptual) systems and embodied (modality-specific) mechanisms. Yet, no consensus exists on how crucial the latter are for the inception of semantic distinctions. To address this issue, we combined electroencephalographic (EEG) and intracranial EEG (iEEG) to examine when nouns denoting facial body parts (FBPs) and nonFBPs are discriminated in face-processing and multimodal networks.

Motor-system dynamics during naturalistic reading of action narratives in first and second language.

Do embodied semantic systems play different roles depending on when and how well a given language was learned? Emergent evidence suggests that this is the case for isolated, decontextualized stimuli, but no study has addressed the issue considering naturalistic narratives. Seeking to bridge this gap, we assessed motor-system dynamics in 26 Spanish-English bilinguals as they engaged in free, unconstrained reading of naturalistic action texts (ATs, highlighting the characters' movements) and neutral texts (NTs, featuring low motility) in their first and second language (L1, L2). To explore functional connectivity spread over each reading session, we recorded ongoing high-density electroencephalographic signals and subjected them to functional connectivity analysis via a spatial clustering approach.

Task-specific signatures in the expert brain: Differential correlates of translation and reading in professional interpreters.

Insights on the neurocognitive particularities of expert individuals have benefited from language studies on professional simultaneous interpreters (PSIs). Accruing research indicates that behavioral advantages in this population are restricted to those skills that are directly taxed during professional practice (e.g.

Explicit and implicit monitoring in neurodegeneration and stroke.

Monitoring is a complex multidimensional neurocognitive phenomenon. Patients with fronto-insular stroke (FIS), behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) show a lack of self-awareness, insight, and self-monitoring, which translate into anosognosia and daily behavioural impairments. Notably, they also present damage in key monitoring areas.

Reading Shakespearean tropes in a foreign tongue: Age of L2 acquisition modulates neural responses to functional shifts.

Functional shifts (FSs) - morphosyntactically marked words evoking coherent but novel meanings - are ubiquitous in English and, specially, in Shakespearean literature. While their neural signatures have been explored in native speakers, no study has targeted foreign-language users, let alone comparing early and late bilinguals. Here, we administered a validated FS paradigm to subjects from both populations and evaluated time-frequency modulations evoked by FS and control sentences.

Action Semantics at the Bottom of the Brain: Insights From Dysplastic Cerebellar Gangliocytoma.

Recent embodied cognition research shows that access to action verbs in shallow-processing tasks becomes selectively compromised upon atrophy of the cerebellum, a critical motor region. Here we assessed whether cerebellar damage also disturbs explicit semantic processing of action pictures and its integration with ongoing motor responses. We evaluated a cognitively preserved 33-year-old man with severe dysplastic cerebellar gangliocytoma (Lhermitte-Duclos disease), encompassing most of the right cerebellum and the posterior part of the left cerebellum.

Towards affordable biomarkers of frontotemporal dementia: A classification study via network's information sharing.

Developing effective and affordable biomarkers for dementias is critical given the difficulty to achieve early diagnosis. In this sense, electroencephalographic (EEG) methods offer promising alternatives due to their low cost, portability, and growing robustness. Here, we relied on EEG signals and a novel information-sharing method to study resting-state connectivity in patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) and controls.

Implicit emotional awareness in frontotemporal dementia.

The preserved "implicit awareness" in patients with Alzheimer disease (AD) presenting anosognosia has opened a new branch of research regarding explicit-implicit integration. The behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), contrary to AD, would present impaired anosognosia-related implicit awareness due to a dysfunctional implicit integration of contextual information caused by an abnormal fronto-insular-temporal network. Loss of insight and anosognosia are pervasive in bvFTD, but no reports have assessed the implicit emotional awareness in this condition.