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1.
Brain Behav ; 14(3): e3335, 2024 Mar.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38450912

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Despite its impact on daily life, impulsivity in Huntington's disease (HD) is understudied as a neuropsychiatric symptom. Our aim is to characterize temporal impulsivity in HD and to disentangle the white matter correlate associated with impulsivity. METHODS: Forty-seven HD individuals and 36 healthy controls were scanned and evaluated for temporal impulsivity using a delay-discounting (DD) task and complementary Sensitivity to Punishment and Sensitivity to Reward Questionnaire. Diffusion tensor imaging was employed to characterize the structural connectivity of three limbic tracts: the uncinate fasciculus (UF), the accumbofrontal tract (NAcc-OFC), and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex connectig the caudate nucleus (DLPFC-cn). Multiple linear regression analyses were applied to analyze the relationship between impulsive behavior and white matter microstructural integrity. RESULTS: Our results revealed altered structural connectivity in the DLPC-cn, the NAcc-OFC and the UF in HD individuals. At the same time, the variability in structural connectivity of these tracts was associated with the individual differences in temporal impulsivity. Specifically, increased structural connectivity in the right NAcc-OFC and reduced connectivity in the left UF were associated with higher temporal impulsivity scores. CONCLUSIONS: The present findings highlight the importance of investigating the spectrum of temporal impulsivity in HD. As, while less prevalent than other psychiatric features, this symptom is still reported to significantly impact the quality of life of patients and caregivers. This study provides evidence that individual differences observed in temporal impulsivity may be explained by variability in limbic frontostriatal tracts, while shedding light on the role of sensitivity to reward in modulating impulsive behavior through the selection of immediate rewards.


Subject(s)
Diffusion Tensor Imaging , Huntington Disease , Humans , Huntington Disease/diagnostic imaging , Quality of Life , Impulsive Behavior , Individuality
2.
Sci Adv ; 9(15): eade4083, 2023 04 14.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-37043570

ABSTRACT

In language, grammatical dependencies often hold between items that are not immediately adjacent to each other. Acquiring these nonadjacent dependencies is crucial for learning grammar. However, there are potentially infinitely many dependencies in the language input. How does the infant brain solve this computational learning problem? Here, we demonstrate that while rudimentary sensitivity to nonadjacent regularities may be present relatively early, robust and reliable learning can only be achieved when convergent statistical and perceptual, specifically prosodic cues, are both present, helping the infant brain detect the building blocks that form a nonadjacent dependency. This study contributes to our understanding of the neural foundations of rule learning that pave the way for language acquisition.


Subject(s)
Cues , Learning , Humans , Infant , Language Development , Language , Linguistics
3.
Parkinsonism Relat Disord ; 105: 83-89, 2022 12.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-36395542

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Apathy, a prevalent feature in neurological disorders including Huntington's disease (HD), is characterized by a reduction in goal-directed behavior across cognitive, auto-activation (i.e., self-activating thoughts/behavior), and emotional domains. Nonetheless, current diagnostic criteria are incapable of distinguishing multidimensional apathy profiles. Meanwhile, the short-Lille Apathy Rating Scale (LARS-s) bears potential as an operative diagnostic tool to disentangle apathy dimensions in clinical practice. The present study thereby examines the psychometric properties and factor structure of the LARS-s to tap into apathy profiles and their underlying neural correlates in HD. METHODS: Forty HD individuals were scanned and evaluated for apathy using the LARS-s, assessed for reliability and validity in HD, and the short-Problem Behavior Assessment (PBA-s). To study the dimensional structure of apathy, principal component analysis (PCA) of the LARS-s was implemented. Resulting factors were associated with gray matter volume through whole-brain voxel-based morphometry. RESULTS: The LARS-s demonstrated satisfactory psychometric properties, sharing convergent validity with PBA-s apathy and discriminant validity against depression. PCA resulted in three factors representative of apathy profiles across cognitive, auto-activation, and emotional domains. Anatomically, global apathy was significantly related with large-scale motor, cognitive, and limbic networks. Exploratory analyses of apathy profiles revealed correspondence between each factor and distinct cortical and subcortical nodes. CONCLUSION: The LARS-s is capable of capturing the multidimensional spectrum of apathy. At the same time, apathy profiles in HD are underpinned by functionally diverse neural networks. Such findings promote the continued study of apathy domains to pinpoint personalized therapeutic targets in neurologic disorders in addition to HD.


Subject(s)
Apathy , Huntington Disease , Humans , Huntington Disease/diagnostic imaging , Reproducibility of Results , Emotions , Brain
4.
Infancy ; 27(5): 963-971, 2022 09.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-35833310

ABSTRACT

Infants start tracking auditory-only non-adjacent dependencies (NAD) between 15 and 18 months of age. Given that audiovisual speech, normally available in a talker's mouth, is perceptually more salient than auditory speech and that it facilitates speech processing and language acquisition, we investigated whether 15-month-old infants' NAD learning is modulated by attention to a talker's mouth. Infants performed an audiovisual NAD learning task while we recorded their selective attention to the eyes, mouth, and face of an actress while she spoke an artificial language that followed an AXB structure (tis-X-bun; nal-X-gor) during familiarization. At test, the actress spoke the same language (grammatical trials; tis-X-bun; nal-X-gor) or a novel one that violated the AXB structure (ungrammatical trials; tis-X-gor; nal-X-bun). Overall, total duration of looking did not differ during the familiar and novel test trials but the time-course of selective attention to the talker's face and mouth revealed that the novel trials maintained infants' attention to the face more than did the familiar trials. Crucially, attention to the mouth increased during the novel test trials while it did not change during the familiar test trials. These results indicate that the multisensory redundancy of audiovisual speech facilitates infants' discrimination of non-adjacent dependencies.


Subject(s)
Language Development , Speech Perception , Female , Humans , Infant , Language , Speech
5.
PLoS Biol ; 19(9): e3001119, 2021 09.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-34491980

ABSTRACT

Statistical learning (SL) is the ability to extract regularities from the environment. In the domain of language, this ability is fundamental in the learning of words and structural rules. In lack of reliable online measures, statistical word and rule learning have been primarily investigated using offline (post-familiarization) tests, which gives limited insights into the dynamics of SL and its neural basis. Here, we capitalize on a novel task that tracks the online SL of simple syntactic structures combined with computational modeling to show that online SL responds to reinforcement learning principles rooted in striatal function. Specifically, we demonstrate-on 2 different cohorts-that a temporal difference model, which relies on prediction errors, accounts for participants' online learning behavior. We then show that the trial-by-trial development of predictions through learning strongly correlates with activity in both ventral and dorsal striatum. Our results thus provide a detailed mechanistic account of language-related SL and an explanation for the oft-cited implication of the striatum in SL tasks. This work, therefore, bridges the long-standing gap between language learning and reinforcement learning phenomena.


Subject(s)
Corpus Striatum/physiology , Language Development , Probability Learning , Reinforcement, Psychology , Corpus Striatum/diagnostic imaging , Female , Humans , Magnetic Resonance Imaging , Male , Pattern Recognition, Physiological , Young Adult
6.
Mov Disord ; 36(9): 2162-2172, 2021 09.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-33998063

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Apathy, a common neuropsychiatric disturbance in Huntington's disease (HD), is subserved by a complex neurobiological network. However, no study has yet employed a whole-brain approach to examine underlying regional vulnerabilities that may precipitate apathy changes over time. OBJECTIVES: To identify whole-brain gray matter volume (GMV) vulnerabilities that may predict longitudinal apathy development in HD. METHODS: Forty-five HD individuals (31 female) were scanned and evaluated for apathy and other neuropsychiatric features using the short-Problem Behavior Assessment for a maximum total of six longitudinal visits (including baseline). In order to identify regions where changes in GMV may describe changes in apathy, we performed longitudinal voxel-based morphometry (VBM) on those 33 participants with a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan on their second visit at 18 ± 6 months follow-up (78 MRI datasets). We next employed a generalized linear mixed-effects model (N = 45) to elucidate whether initial and specific GMV may predict apathy development over time. RESULTS: Utilizing longitudinal VBM, we revealed a relationship between increases in apathy and specific GMV atrophy in the right middle cingulate cortex (MCC). Furthermore, vulnerability in the right MCC volume at baseline successfully predicted the severity and progression of apathy over time. CONCLUSIONS: This study highlights that individual differences in apathy in HD may be explained by variability in atrophy and initial vulnerabilities in the right MCC, a region implicated in action-initiation. These findings thus serve to facilitate the prediction of an apathetic profile, permitting targeted, time-sensitive interventions in neurodegenerative disease with potential implications in otherwise healthy populations. © 2021 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.


Subject(s)
Apathy , Huntington Disease , Neurodegenerative Diseases , Brain/diagnostic imaging , Female , Gray Matter/diagnostic imaging , Humans , Huntington Disease/diagnostic imaging , Magnetic Resonance Imaging
7.
J Exp Child Psychol ; 206: 105070, 2021 06.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-33601290

ABSTRACT

Temporal expectations critically influence perception and action. Previous research reports contradictory results in children's ability to endogenously orient attention in time as well as the developmental course. To reconcile this seemingly conflicting evidence, we put forward the hypothesis that expectancy violations-through the use of invalid trials-are the source of the mixed evidence reported in the literature. With the aim of offering new results that could reconcile previous findings, we tested a group of young children (4- to 7-year-olds), an older group (8- to 12-year-olds), and a group of adults. Temporal cues provided expectations about target onset time, and invalid trials were used such that the target appeared at the unexpected time in 25% of the trials. In both experiments, the younger children responded faster in valid trials than in invalid trials, showing that they benefited from the temporal cue. These results show that young children rely on temporal expectations to orient attention in time endogenously. Importantly, younger children exhibited greater validity effects than older children and adults, and these effects correlated positively with participants' performance in the invalid (unexpected) trials. We interpret the reduction of validity effects with age as an index of better adaptation to the invalid (unexpected) condition. By using invalid trials and testing three age groups, we demonstrate that previous findings are not inconsistent. Rather, evidence converges when considering the presence of expectancy violations that require executive control mechanisms, which develop progressively during childhood. We propose a distinction between rigid and flexible mechanisms of temporal orienting to accommodate all findings.


Subject(s)
Attention , Cues , Adolescent , Adult , Child , Child, Preschool , Executive Function , Humans , Reaction Time
8.
Neurobiol Lang (Camb) ; 2(4): 586-604, 2021.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-37214627

ABSTRACT

The benefits of bilingualism in executive functions are highly debated. Even so, in switching tasks, these effects seem robust, although smaller than initially thought (Gunnerud et al., 2020; Ware et al., 2020). By handling two languages throughout their lifespan, bilinguals appear to train their executive functions and show benefits in nonlinguistic switching tasks compared to monolinguals. Nevertheless, because bilinguals need to control for the interference of another language, they may show a disadvantage when dealing with task-switching paradigms requiring language control, particularly when those are performed in their less dominant language. The present work explored this issue by studying bilingualism's effects on task switching within the visual and language domains. On the one hand, our results show that bilinguals were overall faster and presented reduced switch costs compared to monolinguals when performing perceptual geometric judgments with no time for task preparation. On the other hand, no bilingual advantage was found when a new sample of comparable bilinguals and monolinguals completed a within-language switching task. Our results provide clear evidence favoring the bilingual advantage, yet only when the task imposes greater executive demands and does not involve language control.

9.
PLoS Biol ; 18(11): e3000895, 2020 11.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-33137084

ABSTRACT

A crucial aspect when learning a language is discovering the rules that govern how words are combined in order to convey meanings. Because rules are characterized by sequential co-occurrences between elements (e.g., "These cupcakes are unbelievable"), tracking the statistical relationships between these elements is fundamental. However, purely bottom-up statistical learning alone cannot fully account for the ability to create abstract rule representations that can be generalized, a paramount requirement of linguistic rules. Here, we provide evidence that, after the statistical relations between words have been extracted, the engagement of goal-directed attention is key to enable rule generalization. Incidental learning performance during a rule-learning task on an artificial language revealed a progressive shift from statistical learning to goal-directed attention. In addition, and consistent with the recruitment of attention, functional MRI (fMRI) analyses of late learning stages showed left parietal activity within a broad bilateral dorsal frontoparietal network. Critically, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) on participants' peak of activation within the left parietal cortex impaired their ability to generalize learned rules to a structurally analogous new language. No stimulation or rTMS on a nonrelevant brain region did not have the same interfering effect on generalization. Performance on an additional attentional task showed that this rTMS on the parietal site hindered participants' ability to integrate "what" (stimulus identity) and "when" (stimulus timing) information about an expected target. The present findings suggest that learning rules from speech is a two-stage process: following statistical learning, goal-directed attention-involving left parietal regions-integrates "what" and "when" stimulus information to facilitate rapid rule generalization.


Subject(s)
Attention/physiology , Learning/physiology , Parietal Lobe/physiology , Adult , Brain/physiology , Brain Mapping/methods , Cognition/physiology , Female , Frontal Lobe/physiology , Functional Laterality/physiology , Humans , Language , Linguistics/methods , Magnetic Resonance Imaging/methods , Male , Photic Stimulation/methods , Reaction Time/physiology , Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation/methods , Young Adult
10.
Neurosci Biobehav Rev ; 108: 308-321, 2020 01.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-31734171

ABSTRACT

The ability to pick out a unique entity with a proper name is an important component of human language. It has been a primary focus of research in the philosophy of language since the nineteenth century. Brain-based evidence has shed new light on this capacity, and an extensive literature indicates the involvement of distinct fronto-temporal and temporo-occipito-parietal association cortices in proper-name retrieval. However, comparatively few efforts have sought to explain how memory encoding processes lead to the later recruitment of these distinct regions at retrieval. Here, we provide a unified account of proper-name encoding and retrieval, reviewing evidence that socio-emotional and unitized encoding subserve the retrieval of proper names via anterior-temporal-prefrontal activations. Meanwhile, non-unitized item-item and item-context encoding support subsequent retrieval, largely dependent on the temporo-occipito-parietal cortex. We contend that this well-established divergence in encoding systems can explain how proper names are later retrieved from distinct neural structures. Furthermore, we explore how evidence reviewed here can inform a century-and-a-half-old debate about proper names and the meanings they pick out.


Subject(s)
Association , Cerebral Cortex/physiology , Mental Recall/physiology , Names , Recognition, Psychology/physiology , Humans
11.
Neuroimage Clin ; 24: 101965, 2019.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-31401404

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Apathy is the neuropsychiatric syndrome that correlates most highly with Huntington's disease progression, and, like early patterns of neurodegeneration, is associated with lesions to cortico-striatal connections. However, due to its multidimensional nature and elusive etiology, treatment options are limited. OBJECTIVES: To disentangle underlying white matter microstructural correlates across the apathy spectrum in Huntington's disease. METHODS: Forty-six Huntington's disease individuals (premanifest (N = 22) and manifest (N = 24)) and 35 healthy controls were scanned at 3-tesla and underwent apathy evaluation using the short-Problem Behavior Assessment and short-Lille Apathy Rating Scale, with the latter being characterized into three apathy domains, namely emotional, cognitive, and auto-activation deficit. Diffusion tensor imaging was used to study whether individual differences in specific cortico-striatal tracts predicted global apathy and its subdomains. RESULTS: We elucidate that apathy profiles may develop along differential timelines, with the auto-activation deficit domain manifesting prior to motor onset. Furthermore, diffusion tensor imaging revealed that inter-individual variability in the disruption of discrete cortico-striatal tracts might explain the heterogeneous severity of apathy profiles. Specifically, higher levels of auto-activation deficit symptoms significantly correlated with increased mean diffusivity in the right uncinate fasciculus. Conversely, those with severe cognitive apathy demonstrated increased mean diffusivity in the right frontostriatal tract and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex to caudate nucleus tract. CONCLUSIONS: The current study provides evidence that white matter correlates associated with emotional, cognitive, and auto-activation subtypes may elucidate the heterogeneous nature of apathy in Huntington's disease, as such opening a door for individualized pharmacological management of apathy as a multidimensional syndrome in other neurodegenerative disorders.


Subject(s)
Apathy/physiology , Brain/pathology , Huntington Disease/pathology , Neural Pathways/pathology , White Matter/pathology , Adult , Diffusion Tensor Imaging , Female , Humans , Huntington Disease/complications , Male , Middle Aged
12.
Neuroimage Clin ; 23: 101900, 2019.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-31255947

ABSTRACT

Huntington's disease (HD) is a genetic neurodegenerative disease which involves a triad of motor, cognitive and psychiatric disturbances. However, there is great variability in the prominence of each type of symptom across individuals. The neurobiological basis of such variability remains poorly understood but would be crucial for better tailored treatments. Multivariate multimodal neuroimaging approaches have been successful in disentangling these profiles in other disorders. Thus we applied for the first time such approach to HD. We studied the relationship between HD symptom domains and multimodal measures sensitive to grey and white matter structural alterations. Forty-three HD gene carriers (23 manifest and 20 premanifest individuals) were scanned and underwent behavioural assessments evaluating motor, cognitive and psychiatric domains. We conducted a multimodal analysis integrating different structural neuroimaging modalities measuring grey matter volume, cortical thickness and white matter diffusion indices - fractional anisotropy and radial diffusivity. All neuroimaging measures were entered into a linked independent component analysis in order to obtain multimodal components reflecting common inter-subject variation across imaging modalities. The relationship between multimodal neuroimaging independent components and behavioural measures was analysed using multiple linear regression. We found that cognitive and motor symptoms shared a common neurobiological basis, whereas the psychiatric domain presented a differentiated neural signature. Behavioural measures of different symptom domains correlated with different neuroimaging components, both the brain regions involved and the neuroimaging modalities most prominently associated with each type of symptom showing differences. More severe cognitive and motor signs together were associated with a multimodal component consisting in a pattern of reduced grey matter, cortical thickness and white matter integrity in cognitive and motor related networks. In contrast, depressive symptoms were associated with a component mainly characterised by reduced cortical thickness pattern in limbic and paralimbic regions. In conclusion, using a multivariate multimodal approach we were able to disentangle the neurobiological substrates of two distinct symptom profiles in HD: one characterised by cognitive and motor features dissociated from a psychiatric profile. These results open a new view on a disease classically considered as a uniform entity and initiates a new avenue for further research considering these qualitative individual differences.


Subject(s)
Cerebral Cortex/pathology , Huntington Disease/pathology , Magnetic Resonance Imaging , Neuroimaging , White Matter/pathology , Adult , Cerebral Cortex/diagnostic imaging , Diffusion Tensor Imaging , Female , Heterozygote , Humans , Huntington Disease/diagnostic imaging , Male , Middle Aged , Multimodal Imaging , White Matter/diagnostic imaging
13.
Nat Neurosci ; 22(4): 627-632, 2019 04.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-30833700

ABSTRACT

We introduce a deceptively simple behavioral task that robustly identifies two qualitatively different groups within the general population. When presented with an isochronous train of random syllables, some listeners are compelled to align their own concurrent syllable production with the perceived rate, whereas others remain impervious to the external rhythm. Using both neurophysiological and structural imaging approaches, we show group differences with clear consequences for speech processing and language learning. When listening passively to speech, high synchronizers show increased brain-to-stimulus synchronization over frontal areas, and this localized pattern correlates with precise microstructural differences in the white matter pathways connecting frontal to auditory regions. Finally, the data expose a mechanism that underpins performance on an ecologically relevant word-learning task. We suggest that this task will help to better understand and characterize individual performance in speech processing and language learning.


Subject(s)
Brain/anatomy & histology , Brain/physiology , Language , Learning/physiology , Speech Perception/physiology , Speech , Acoustic Stimulation , Adult , Brain Mapping , Female , Humans , Individuality , Magnetic Resonance Imaging , Magnetoencephalography , Male , Middle Aged , Neural Pathways/anatomy & histology , Neural Pathways/physiology
14.
Brain Behav ; 9(1): e01157, 2019 01.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-30516021

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: It has long been posited that threat learning operates and forms under an affective and a cognitive learning system that is supported by different brain circuits. A primary drawback in exposure-based therapies is the high rate of relapse that occurs when higher order areas fail to inhibit responses driven by the defensive circuit. It has been shown that implicit exposure of fearful stimuli leads to a long-lasting reduction in avoidance behavior in patients with phobia. Despite the potential benefits of this approach in the treatment of phobias and posttraumatic stress disorder, implicit extinction is still underinvestigated. METHODS: Two groups of healthy participants were threat conditioned. The following day, extinction training was conducted using a stereoscope. One group of participants was explicitly exposed with the threat-conditioned image, while the other group was implicitly exposed using a continuous flash suppression (CFS) technique. On the third day, we tested the spontaneous recovery of defensive responses using explicit presentations of the images. RESULTS: On the third day, we found that only the implicit extinction group showed reduced spontaneous recovery of defensive responses to the threat-conditioned stimulus, measured by threat-potentiated startle responses but not by the electrodermal activity. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that implicit extinction using CFS might facilitate the modulation of the affective component of fearful memories, attenuating its expression after 24 hr. The limitations of the CFS technique using threatful stimuli urge the development of new strategies to improve implicit presentations and circumvent such limitations. Our study encourages further investigations of implicit extinction as a potential therapeutic target to further advance exposure-based psychotherapies.


Subject(s)
Fear , Learning/physiology , Memory/physiology , Reflex, Startle/physiology , Adult , Conditioning, Classical/physiology , Extinction, Psychological/physiology , Fear/physiology , Fear/psychology , Female , Galvanic Skin Response , Humans , Male
15.
Neuropsychologia ; 122: 116-124, 2019 01.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-30563619

ABSTRACT

A cognitive stimulating lifestyle has been observed to confer cognitive benefits in multiple neurodegenerative diseases. However, the underlying neurobiological basis of this phenomenon remains unclear. Huntington's disease can provide a suitable model to study the effects and neural mechanisms of cognitive engagement in neurodegeneration. In this study, we investigate the effect of lifestyle factors such as education, occupation and engagement in cognitive activities in Huntington's disease gene carriers on cognitive performance and age of onset as well as the underlying neural changes sustaining these effects, measured by magnetic resonance imaging. Specifically, we analyzed both gray matter volume and the strength of connectivity of the executive control resting-state network. High levels of cognitive engagement were significantly associated with more preserved executive functions, a delay in the appearance of symptoms, reduced volume loss of the left precuneus and the bilateral caudate and a modulation of connectivity strength of anterior cingulate cortex and left angular gyrus with the executive control network. These findings suggest that a cognitively stimulating lifestyle may promote brain maintenance by modulating the executive control resting-state network and conferring protection against neurodegeneration, which results in a delayed onset of symptoms and improved performance in executive functions.


Subject(s)
Brain/diagnostic imaging , Brain/physiopathology , Cognition/physiology , Huntington Disease/diagnostic imaging , Huntington Disease/psychology , Life Style , Brain/pathology , Brain Mapping , Cognitive Reserve , Disease Progression , Executive Function/physiology , Female , Gray Matter/diagnostic imaging , Gray Matter/pathology , Gray Matter/physiopathology , Heterozygote , Humans , Huntington Disease/genetics , Huntington Disease/physiopathology , Magnetic Resonance Imaging , Male , Middle Aged , Neural Pathways/diagnostic imaging , Neural Pathways/physiopathology , Neuroprotection , Organ Size , Protective Factors , Rest
16.
PLoS One ; 13(4): e0194959, 2018.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-29608612

ABSTRACT

Experiencing a syntactic structure affects how we process subsequent instances of that structure. This phenomenon, called structural priming, is observed both in language production and in language comprehension. However, while abstract syntactic structures can be primed independent of lexical overlap in sentence production, evidence for structural priming in comprehension is more elusive. In addition, when structural priming in comprehension is found, it can often be accounted for in terms of participants' explicit expectations. Participants may use the structural repetition over several sentences and build expectations, which create a priming effect. Here, we use a new experimental paradigm to investigate structural priming in sentence comprehension independent of lexical overlap and of participants' expectations. We use an outcome dependent variable instead of commonly used online measures, which allows us to more directly compare these effects with those found in sentence production studies. We test priming effects in syntactically homogeneous and heterogeneous conditions on a sentence-picture matching task that forces participants to fully parse the sentences. We observe that, while participants learn the structural regularity in the homogeneous condition, structural priming is also found in the heterogeneous condition, in which participants do not expect any particular structure. In fact, we find that a single prime is enough to trigger priming. Our results indicate that-like in sentence production-structural priming can be observed in sentence comprehension without lexical repetition and independent of participants' expectation.


Subject(s)
Comprehension , Language , Models, Psychological , Adult , Female , Humans , Male , Young Adult
17.
PLoS One ; 13(1): e0190734, 2018.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-29293669

ABSTRACT

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0184698.].

18.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) ; 71(6): 1469-1481, 2018 Jun.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-28856956

ABSTRACT

We studied the initial acquisition and overnight consolidation of new spoken words that resemble words in the native language (L1) or in an unfamiliar, non-native language (L2). Spanish-speaking participants learned the spoken forms of novel words in their native language (Spanish) or in a different language (Hungarian), which were paired with pictures of familiar or unfamiliar objects, or no picture. We thereby assessed, in a factorial way, the impact of existing knowledge (schema) on word learning by manipulating both semantic (familiar vs unfamiliar objects) and phonological (L1- vs L2-like novel words) familiarity. Participants were trained and tested with a 12-hr intervening period that included overnight sleep or daytime awake. Our results showed (1) benefits of sleep to recognition memory that were greater for words with L2-like phonology and (2) that learned associations with familiar but not unfamiliar pictures enhanced recognition memory for novel words. Implications for complementary systems accounts of word learning are discussed.


Subject(s)
Memory/physiology , Phonetics , Recognition, Psychology/physiology , Semantics , Verbal Learning/physiology , Adolescent , Adult , Analysis of Variance , Association Learning , Choice Behavior/physiology , Female , Humans , Male , Reaction Time/physiology , Sleep/physiology , Young Adult
19.
Cortex ; 100: 71-83, 2018 03.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-28859906

ABSTRACT

Cognitive decline accompanying the clinically more salient motor symptoms of Huntington's disease (HD) has been widely noted and can precede motor symptoms onset. Less clear is how such decline bears on language functions in everyday life, though a small number of experimental studies have revealed difficulties with the application of rule-based aspects of language in early stages of the disease. Here we aimed to determine whether there is a systematic linguistic profile that characterizes spontaneous narrative speech in both pre-manifest and/or early manifest HD, and how it is related to striatal degeneration and neuropsychological profiles. Twenty-eight early-stage patients (19 manifest and 9 gene-carriers in the pre-manifest stage), matched with 28 controls, participated in a story-telling task. Speech was blindly scored by independent raters according to fine-grained linguistic variables distributed over 5 domains for which composite scores were computed (Quantitative, Fluency, Reference, Connectivity, and Concordance). Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was used to link specific brain degeneration patterns to loci of linguistic decline. In all of these domains, significant differences were observed between groups. Deficits in Reference and Connectivity were seen in the pre-manifest stage, where no other neuropsychological impairment was detected. Among HD patients, there was a significant positive correlation only between the values in the Quantitative domain and gray matter volume bilaterally in the putamen and pallidum. These results fill the gap of qualitative data of spontaneous narrative speech in HD and reveal that HD is characterized by systematic linguistic impairments leading to dysfluencies and disorganization in core domains of grammatical organization. This includes the referential use of noun phrases and the embedding of clauses, which mediate crucial dimensions of meaning in language in its normal social use. Moreover, such impairment is seen prior to motor symptoms onset and when standardized neuropsychological test profiles are otherwise normal.


Subject(s)
Huntington Disease/psychology , Image Processing, Computer-Assisted , Language Disorders/psychology , Speech/physiology , Adult , Aged , Brain/pathology , Brain/physiopathology , Cognition Disorders/psychology , Female , Humans , Language , Male , Middle Aged , Neuropsychological Tests , Young Adult
20.
Hum Brain Mapp ; 39(1): 54-71, 2018 01.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-28990240

ABSTRACT

Huntington's disease (HD) is a neurodegenerative disorder which is primarily associated with striatal degeneration. However, the alterations in connectivity of this structure in HD have been underinvestigated. In this study, we analyzed the functional and structural connectivity of the left putamen, while participants performed a finger-tapping task. Using fMRI and DW-MRI, 30 HD gene expansion carriers (HDGEC) and 29 healthy participants were scanned. Psychophysiological interaction analysis and DTI-based tractography were employed to examine functional and structural connectivity, respectively. Manifest HDGEC exhibited a reduced functional connectivity of the left putamen with the left and the right primary sensorimotor areas (SM1). Based on this result, the inhibitory functional connectivity between the left SM1 and the right SM1 was explored, appearing to be also decreased. In addition, the tract connecting these areas (motor corpus callosum), and the tract connecting the left putamen with the left SM1 appeared disrupted in HDGEC compared to controls. Significant correlations were found between measures of functional and structural connectivity of the motor corpus callosum, showing a coupling of both types of alterations in this tract. The observed reduction of functional and structural connectivity was associated with worse motor scores, which highlights the clinical relevance of these results. Hum Brain Mapp 39:54-71, 2018. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


Subject(s)
Cerebral Cortex/diagnostic imaging , Cerebral Cortex/physiopathology , Corpus Striatum/diagnostic imaging , Corpus Striatum/physiopathology , Huntington Disease/diagnostic imaging , Huntington Disease/physiopathology , Adult , Diffusion Tensor Imaging , Female , Fingers/physiopathology , Heterozygote , Humans , Huntington Disease/genetics , Magnetic Resonance Imaging , Male , Middle Aged , Motor Activity/physiology , Neural Pathways/diagnostic imaging , Neural Pathways/physiopathology
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