ABSTRACT
Chinese differs from Indo-European languages in both its written and spoken forms. Being a tonal language, tones convey lexically meaningful information. The current study examines patterns of neurophysiological activity in temporal and temporoparietal brain areas as speakers of two Indo-European languages (Spanish and English) and speakers of Mandarin-Chinese were engaged in a spoken-word recognition task that is used clinically for the presurgical determination of hemispheric dominace for receptive language functions. Brain magnetic activation profiles were obtained from 92 healthy adult volunteers: 30 monolingual native speakers of Mandarin-Chinese, 20 Spanish-speaking, and 42 native speakers of American English. Activation scans were acquired in two different whole-head MEG systems using identical testing methods. Results indicate that (a) the degree of hemispheric asymmetry in the duration of neurophysiological activity in temporal and temporoparietal regions was reduced in the Chinese group, (b) the proportion of individuals who showed bilaterally symmetric activation was significantly higher in this group, and (c) group differences in functional hemispheric asymmetry were first noted after the initial sensory processing of the word stimuli. Furthermore, group differences in the degree of hemispheric asymmetry were primarily due to greater degree of activation in the right temporoparietal region in the Chinese group, suggesting increased participation of this region in the spoken word recognition in Mandarin-Chinese.
Subject(s)
Cerebral Cortex , Language , Magnetoencephalography/methods , Phonetics , Speech Perception/physiology , Adolescent , Adult , Asian People , Brain Mapping , Case-Control Studies , Cerebral Cortex/anatomy & histology , Cerebral Cortex/diagnostic imaging , Discrimination, Psychological/physiology , England , Female , Functional Laterality/physiology , Hispanic or Latino , Humans , Image Processing, Computer-Assisted , Magnetic Resonance Imaging , Male , Middle Aged , Neuropsychological Tests , Pattern Recognition, Automated , Radionuclide Imaging , Reaction Time/physiology , Statistics, Nonparametric , United States/ethnology , Verbal Behavior/physiology , Verbal LearningABSTRACT
A prospective randomized double blind study was carried out on 60 patients undergoing elective gastrointestinal endoscopy. Patients in group A were sedated with diazepam (0.15 mg/kg) and those in group B received midazolam (0.10 mg/kg). There were no differences between the groups in age, sex, previous drug intake, level of anxiety prior to the procedure and from the endoscopist point of view the easiness to perform the studies. The group of patients who received midazolam (B) showed a significantly greater sedation, had less pain in the site of injection, their retrograde amnesia was more effective and tolerated much better the overall procedure (p < 0.05). There were no complications in either group. The cost per dosage was 2:1 greater with midazolam. It is concluded that midazolam has some advantages over diazepam used for sedation of patients undergoing gastrointestinal endoscopy. The time for recovery and cost are its disadvantages.
