Breaking Down the Bilingual Cost in Speech Production.

Bilinguals have been shown to perform worse than monolinguals in a variety of verbal tasks. This study investigated this bilingual verbal cost in a large-scale picture-naming study conducted in Spanish. We explored how individual characteristics of the participants and the linguistic properties of the words being spoken influence this performance cost.

The Temporal Dynamics of Regularity Extraction in Non-Human Primates.

Extracting the regularities of our environment is one of our core cognitive abilities. To study the fine-grained dynamics of the extraction of embedded regularities, a method combining the advantages of the artificial language paradigm (Saffran, Aslin, & Newport, ) and the serial response time task (Nissen & Bullemer, ) was used with a group of Guinea baboons (Papio papio) in a new automatic experimental device (Fagot & Bonté, ). After a series of random trials, monkeys were exposed to language-like patterns.

Neural correlates for task-relevant facilitation of visual inputs during visually-guided hand movements.

Vision is a powerful source of information for controlling movements, especially fine actions produced by the hand that require a great deal of accuracy. However, the neural processes that enable vision to enhance movement accuracy are not well understood. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that the cortical sensitivity to visual inputs increases during a spatially-constrained hand movement compared to a situation where visual information is irrelevant to the task.

Childhood neglect predicts disorganization in schizophrenia through grey matter decrease in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

Objective: Psychosocial trauma during childhood is associated with schizophrenia vulnerability. The pattern of grey matter decrease is similar to brain alterations seen in schizophrenia. Our objective was to explore the links between childhood trauma, brain morphology and schizophrenia symptoms.

Rigidity transition in materials: hardness is driven by weak atomic constraints.

Understanding the composition dependence of the hardness in materials is of primary importance for infrastructures and handled devices. Stimulated by the need for stronger protective screens, topological constraint theory has recently been used to predict the hardness in glasses. Herein, we report that the concept of rigidity transition can be extended to a broader range of materials than just glass.

An ERP investigation of orthographic priming with superset primes.

Prime stimuli formed by inserting unrelated letters in a given target word (called "superset" primes) provide a means to modify the relative positions of the letters shared by prime and target. Here we examined the time-course of superset priming effects in an ERP study using the sandwich-priming paradigm. We compared the effects of superset primes formed by the insertion of unrelated letters (e.

Probabilistic cognition in two indigenous Mayan groups.

Is there a sense of chance shared by all individuals, regardless of their schooling or culture? To test whether the ability to make correct probabilistic evaluations depends on educational and cultural guidance, we investigated probabilistic cognition in preliterate and prenumerate Kaqchikel and K'iche', two indigenous Mayan groups, living in remote areas of Guatemala. Although the tested individuals had no formal education, they performed correctly in tasks in which they had to consider prior and posterior information, proportions and combinations of possibilities. Their performance was indistinguishable from that of Mayan school children and Western controls.

On the time-course of adjacent and non-adjacent transposed-letter priming.

We compared effects of adjacent (e.g., atricle-ARTICLE) and non-adjacent (e.

Eye dominance influences triggering action: the Poffenberger paradigm revisited.

Our dominant eye (DE) is the one we unconsciously choose when performing a monocular task. Although it has been recognized for centuries, eye dominance and its behavioral consequences remain poorly understood. Here we used the simple and well-known Poffenberger paradigm (1912) in which participants press a button with the right or left index finger, in reaction to the appearance of a lateralized visual stimulus.

Improving public interpretation of probabilistic test results: distributive evaluations.

Health service users err in posttest probability evaluations. Here we document for the first time that users succeed when they reason about numbers of cases and make distributive evaluations. A sample of women interested in prenatal testing incorrectly evaluated the posttest probability that a given fetus had an anomaly, but regardless of their numeracy level, they correctly apportioned the cases for and against that hypothesis.

Effects of freely accessible computerized test systems on the spontaneous behaviors and stress level of Guinea baboons (Papio papio).

Fagot and Paleressompoulle [Fagot and Paleressompoulle (2009) Behav Res Methods 41: 396-404] described a new automated learning device for monkeys (ALDM) to test the cognitive functions of nonhuman primates within their social groups. However, the impact of the ALDM procedure on animal well-being needs to be investigated. The present study assessed the consequences of ALDM testing on the behavioral repertoire of Guinea baboons (Papio papio) and their stress levels as inferred from measurements of saliva cortisol.

X-ray structure of a superinfection exclusion lipoprotein from phage TP-J34 and identification of the tape measure protein as its target.

Lipoproteins of temperate phage are a broad family of membrane proteins encoded in the lysogeny module of temperate phages. Expression of the ltp(TP-J34) gene of temperate Streptococcus thermophilus phage TP-J34 interferes with phage infection at the stage of triggering DNA release and injection into the cell. Here, we report the first structure of a superinfection exclusion protein.

Separate contributions of kinematic and kinetic errors to trajectory and grip force adaptation when transporting novel hand-held loads.

Numerous studies of motor learning have examined the adaptation of hand trajectories and grip forces when moving grasped objects with novel dynamics. Such objects initially result in both kinematic and kinetic errors; i.e.

Importance of carbon solubility and wetting properties of nickel nanoparticles for single wall nanotube growth.

Optimized growth of single wall carbon nanotubes requires full knowledge of the actual state of the catalyst nanoparticle and its interface with the tube. Using tight binding based atomistic computer simulations, we calculate carbon adsorption isotherms on nanoparticles of nickel, a typical catalyst, and show that carbon solubility increases for smaller nanoparticles that are either molten or surface molten under experimental conditions. Increasing carbon content favors the dewetting of Ni nanoparticles with respect to sp(2) carbon walls, a necessary property to limit catalyst encapsulation and deactivation.

The unbearable articulatory nature of naming: on the reliability of word naming responses at the item level.

Single-word naming is one of the most widely used experimental paradigms for studying how we read words. Following the seminal study by Spieler and Balota (Psychological Science 8:411-416, 1997), accounting for variance in item-level naming databases has become a major challenge for computational models of word reading. Using a new large-scale database of naming responses, we first provided a precise estimate of the amount of reproducible variance that models should try to account for with such databases.

The ups and downs of β oscillations in sensorimotor cortex.

Since the first descriptions of sensorimotor rhythms by Berger (1929) and by Jasper and Penfield (1949), the potential role of beta oscillations (~13-30 Hz) in the brain has been intensely investigated. We start this review by showing that experimental studies in humans and monkeys have reached a consensus on the facts that sensorimotor beta power is low during movement, transiently increases after movement end (the "beta rebound") and tonically increases during object grasping. Recently, a new surge of studies exploiting more complex sensorimotor tasks including multiple events, such as instructed delay tasks, reveal novel characteristics of beta oscillatory activity.

Fractional factorial approach combining 4 Escherichia coli strains, 3 culture media, 3 expression temperatures and 5 N-terminal fusion tags for screening the soluble expression of recombinant proteins.

Producing recombinant proteins in Escherichia coli (E. coli) is generally performed using a trial and error approach with the different expression variables being tested independently from each other. As a consequence, variable interactions are lost which makes the trial and error approach quite time-consuming.

Orthographic processing in baboons (Papio papio).

Skilled readers use information about which letters are where in a word (orthographic information) in order to access the sounds and meanings of printed words. We asked whether efficient processing of orthographic information could be achieved in the absence of prior language knowledge. To do so, we trained baboons to discriminate English words from nonsense combinations of letters that resembled real words.

Deciphering CAPTCHAs: what a Turing test reveals about human cognition.

Turning Turing's logic on its head, we used widespread letter-based Turing Tests found on the internet (CAPTCHAs) to shed light on human cognition. We examined the basis of the human ability to solve CAPTCHAs, where machines fail. We asked whether this is due to our use of slow-acting inferential processes that would not be available to machines, or whether fast-acting automatic orthographic processing in humans has superior robustness to shape variations.

Single pH buffer refolding screen for protein from inclusion bodies.

We previously reported the set up of an automated test for screening the refolding of recombinant proteins expressed as inclusion bodies in Escherichia coli[1]. The screen used 96 refolding buffers and was validated with 24 proteins, 70% of which remained soluble in at least one buffer. In the present paper, we have analyzed in more detail these experimental data to see if the refolding process can be driven by general rules.

One-step generation of error-prone PCR libraries using Gateway® technology.

Background: Error-prone PCR (epPCR) libraries are one of the tools used in directed evolution. The Gateway® technology allows constructing epPCR libraries virtually devoid of any background (i.e.

A sulfurtransferase is essential for activity of formate dehydrogenases in Escherichia coli.

l-Cysteine desulfurases provide sulfur to several metabolic pathways in the form of persulfides on specific cysteine residues of an acceptor protein for the eventual incorporation of sulfur into an end product. IscS is one of the three Escherichia coli l-cysteine desulfurases. It interacts with FdhD, a protein essential for the activity of formate dehydrogenases (FDHs), which are iron/molybdenum/selenium-containing enzymes.