Synchrony, metastability, dynamic integration, and competition in the spontaneous functional connectivity of the human brain.

The human brain is functionally organized into large-scale neural networks that are dynamically interconnected. Multiple short-lived states of resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) identified transiently synchronized networks and cross-network integration. However, little is known about the way brain couplings covary as rsFC states wax and wane.

Neural substrates of subphonemic variation and lexical competition in spoken word recognition.

In spoken word recognition, subphonemic variation influences lexical activation, with sounds near a category boundary increasing phonetic competition as well as lexical competition. The current study investigated the interplay of these factors using a visual world task in which participants were instructed to look at a picture of an auditory target (e.g.

No "Self" Advantage for Audiovisual Speech Aftereffects.

Although the default state of the world is that we see and hear other people talking, there is evidence that seeing and hearing ourselves rather than someone else may lead to visual (i.e., lip-read) or auditory "self" advantages.

The impact of bilingualism on executive functions and working memory in young adults.

A bilingual advantage in a form of a better performance of bilinguals in tasks tapping into executive function abilities has been reported repeatedly in the literature. However, recent research defends that this advantage does not stem from bilingualism, but from uncontrolled factors or imperfectly matched samples. In this study we explored the potential impact of bilingualism on executive functioning abilities by testing large groups of young adult bilinguals and monolinguals in the tasks that were most extensively used when the advantages were reported.

Genetic association study of dyslexia and ADHD candidate genes in a Spanish cohort: Implications of comorbid samples.

Dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are two complex neuro-behaviorally disorders that co-occur more often than expected, so that reading disability has been linked to inattention symptoms. We examined 4 SNPs located on genes previously associated to dyslexia (KIAA0319, DCDC2, DYX1C1 and FOXP2) and 3 SNPs within genes related to ADHD (COMT, MAOA and DBH) in a cohort of Spanish children (N = 2078) that met the criteria of having one, both or none of these disorders (dyslexia and ADHD). We used a case-control approach comparing different groups of samples based on each individual diagnosis.

A probabilistic atlas of the human thalamic nuclei combining ex vivo MRI and histology.

The human thalamus is a brain structure that comprises numerous, highly specific nuclei. Since these nuclei are known to have different functions and to be connected to different areas of the cerebral cortex, it is of great interest for the neuroimaging community to study their volume, shape and connectivity in vivo with MRI. In this study, we present a probabilistic atlas of the thalamic nuclei built using ex vivo brain MRI scans and histological data, as well as the application of the atlas to in vivo MRI segmentation.

Self-bias and the emotionality of foreign languages.

Foreign language contexts impose a relative psychological and emotional distance in bilinguals. In our previous studies, we demonstrated that the use of a foreign language changes the strength of the seemingly automatic emotional responses in the self-paradigm, showing a robust asymmetry in the self-bias effect in a native and a foreign language context. Namely, larger effects were found in the native language, suggesting an emotional blunting in the foreign language context.

Top-down beta oscillatory signaling conveys behavioral context in early visual cortex.

Top-down modulation of sensory processing is a critical neural mechanism subserving numerous important cognitive roles, one of which may be to inform lower-order sensory systems of the current 'task at hand' by conveying behavioral context to these systems. Accumulating evidence indicates that top-down cortical influences are carried by directed interareal synchronization of oscillatory neuronal populations, with recent results pointing to beta-frequency oscillations as particularly important for top-down processing. However, it remains to be determined if top-down beta-frequency oscillations indeed convey behavioral context.

Prediction is Production: The missing link between language production and comprehension.

Language comprehension often involves the generation of predictions. It has been hypothesized that such prediction-for-comprehension entails actual language production. Recent studies provided evidence that the production system is recruited during language comprehension, but the link between production and prediction during comprehension remains hypothetical.

Why space is not one-dimensional: Location may be categorical and imagistic.

In our commentary, we raise concerns with the idea that location should be considered a gestural component of sign languages. We argue that psycholinguistic studies provide evidence for location as a "categorical" element of signs. More generally, we propose that the use of space in sign languages comes in many flavours and may be both categorical and imagistic.

Electrophysiological evidence for differences between fusion and combination illusions in audiovisual speech perception.

Incongruent audiovisual speech stimuli can lead to perceptual illusions such as fusions or combinations. Here, we investigated the underlying audiovisual integration process by measuring ERPs. We observed that visual speech-induced suppression of P2 amplitude (which is generally taken as a measure of audiovisual integration) for fusions was similar to suppression obtained with fully congruent stimuli, whereas P2 suppression for combinations was larger.

Evidence for a bimodal bilingual disadvantage in letter fluency.

Many bimodal bilinguals are immersed in a spoken language-dominant environment from an early age and, unlike unimodal bilinguals, do not necessarily divide their language use between languages. Nonetheless, early ASL-English bilinguals retrieved fewer words in a letter fluency task in their dominant language compared to monolingual English speakers with equal vocabulary level. This finding demonstrates that reduced vocabulary size and/or frequency of use cannot completely account for bilingual disadvantages in verbal fluency.

Phonological and orthographic coding in deaf skilled readers.

Written language is very important in daily life. However, most deaf people do not achieve good reading levels compared to their hearing peers. Previous research has mainly focused on their difficulties when reading in a language with an opaque orthography such as English.

Brain-to-brain entrainment: EEG interbrain synchronization while speaking and listening.

Electroencephalographic hyperscanning was used to investigate interbrain synchronization patterns in dyads of participants interacting through speech. Results show that brain oscillations are synchronized between listener and speaker during oral narratives. This interpersonal synchronization is mediated in part by a lower-level sensory mechanism of speech-to-brain synchronization, but also by the interactive process that takes place in the situation per se.

Language switching across modalities: Evidence from bimodal bilinguals.

This study investigated whether language control during language production in bilinguals generalizes across modalities, and to what extent the language control system is shaped by competition for the same articulators. Using a cued language-switching paradigm, we investigated whether switch costs are observed when hearing signers switch between a spoken and a signed language. The results showed an asymmetrical switch cost for bimodal bilinguals on reaction time (RT) and accuracy, with larger costs for the (dominant) spoken language.

MultiPic: A standardized set of 750 drawings with norms for six European languages.

Numerous studies in psychology, cognitive neuroscience and psycholinguistics have used pictures of objects as stimulus materials. Currently, authors engaged in cross-linguistic work or wishing to run parallel studies at multiple sites where different languages are spoken must rely on rather small sets of black-and-white or colored line drawings. These sets are increasingly experienced as being too limited.

Cross-modal noise compensation in audiovisual words.

Perceiving linguistic input is vital for human functioning, but the process is complicated by the fact that the incoming signal is often degraded. However, humans can compensate for unimodal noise by relying on simultaneous sensory input from another modality. Here, we investigated noise-compensation for spoken and printed words in two experiments.

The development of spontaneous sound-shape matching in monolingual and bilingual infants during the first year.

Recently it has been proposed that sensitivity to nonarbitrary relationships between speech sounds and objects potentially bootstraps lexical acquisition. However, it is currently unclear whether preverbal infants (e.g.

Consonantal overlap effects in a perceptual matching task.

This study investigates the processing of letter position coding by exploring whether or not two explicitly presented words that share the same consonants, but that differ in their vowels, exert mutual interference more than two words that do not share their consonants. In an explicit perceptual matching task, word targets were preceded by a word reference that could share all the consonants either at the same position or in a different absolute position (while keeping their relative position intact) or preceded by an unrelated reference. Experiment 1 showed larger discrimination costs for pairs sharing the consonants at the same position than for pairs sharing their consonants in a different position.

Quantifying lip-read-induced suppression and facilitation of the auditory N1 and P2 reveals peak enhancements and delays.

Lip-read speech suppresses and speeds up the auditory N1 and P2 peaks, but these effects are not always observed or reported. Here, the robustness of lip-read-induced N1/P2 suppression and facilitation in phonetically congruent audiovisual speech was assessed by analyzing peak values that were taken from published plots and individual data. To determine whether adhering to the additive model of AV integration (i.

The role of letter features in visual-word recognition: Evidence from a delayed segment technique.

Do all visual features in a word's constituent letters have the same importance during lexical access? Here we examined whether some components of a word's letters (midsegments, junctions, terminals) are more important than others. To that end, we conducted two lexical decision experiments using a delayed segment technique with lowercase stimuli. In this technique a partial preview appears for 50ms and is immediately followed by the target item.

The proactive bilingual brain: Using interlocutor identity to generate predictions for language processing.

The present study investigated the proactive nature of the human brain in language perception. Specifically, we examined whether early proficient bilinguals can use interlocutor identity as a cue for language prediction, using an event-related potentials (ERP) paradigm. Participants were first familiarized, through video segments, with six novel interlocutors who were either monolingual or bilingual.

Automated segmentation of the human hippocampus along its longitudinal axis.

The human hippocampal formation is a crucial brain structure for memory and cognitive function that is closely related to other subcortical and cortical brain regions. Recent neuroimaging studies have revealed differences along the hippocampal longitudinal axis in terms of structure, connectivity, and function, stressing the importance of improving the reliability of the available segmentation methods that are typically used to divide the hippocampus into its anterior and posterior parts. However, current segmentation conventions present two main sources of variability related to manual operations intended to correct in-scanner head position across subjects and the selection of dividing planes along the longitudinal axis.

Foreign-accented speech modulates linguistic anticipatory processes.

Listeners are able to anticipate upcoming words during sentence comprehension, and, as a result, they also pre-activate semantically related words. In the present study, we aim at exploring whether these anticipatory processes are modulated by indexical properties of the speakers, such as a speaker's accent. Event-related brain potentials were obtained while native speakers of Spanish listened to native (Experiment 1) or foreign-accented speakers (Experiment 2) of Spanish producing highly constrained sentences.