Linguistic testing during ON/OFF states of electrical stimulation in the associative portion of the subthalamic nucleus.

Introduction: Long-term studies of subthalamic nucleus (STN) deep brain stimulation (DBS) in patients with Parkinson's disease have shown potential cognitive and linguistic side-effects. In this pilot study, we examined whether direct monopolar stimulation in the ventral, associative STN would result in language effects.

Methods: Three subjects participated in two linguistic tasks targeting language generation (language samples) and language composition (syntactic/grammatical structures).

Review of studies on metabolic genes and cancer in populations of African descent.

Genetic polymorphisms described for a number of enzymes involved in the metabolism of tobacco carcinogens and alcohol have been linked to increase cancer risk. Racial disparities in cancer between whites and populations of African descent are well documented. In addition to differences in access to health care, both environment and genetic factors and their interaction may contribute to the increased cancer risk in minority populations.

Lexical access in college students with learning disabilities: an electrophysiological and performance-based investigation.

The purpose of this study was to compare the semantic processing abilities of college students with learning disabilities (LD) to those of their peers without learning disabilities (NLD) who were matched for age, gender, and intelligence. Participants were compared on results from the Test of Adolescent/Adult Word Finding (TAWF) and from event-related potential (N400) sampling to the processing of semantically incongruous sentences. The LD and NLD groups did not significantly differ in accuracy on the TAWF; however, students with LD demonstrated a significantly greater number of delayed responses.