Aphasia and congenital deafness: A case study

The case of a 57-year-old congenitally deaf man who suffered a cerebral vascular accident is presented. Resultant symptomatology included right hemiplegia and aphasia. The authors' findings and conclusions concur with a small, but slowly growing, body of literature which suggests that the fundamental linguistic processes are the same for the congenitally deaf and for the normal hearing population.     

Primary Progressive Aphasia: A Review of 112 Cases

Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) was first recognized by Mesulam in 1982. Although dozens of cases have since been described, it has been difficult to place these cases into a coherent framework due to the wide variation in measures which have been reported. We review 170 contacts with 112 patients to provide a clinical, neuroanatomical, and neuropsychological profile of patients with the disorder. The progression of the disease is analyzed over a 10-year reporting period starting from symptom onset to show how progression affects five general linguistic skills: oral and written naming, reading, repetition, and general comprehension. The pattern of functional and neurological deficits in PPA is heterogeneous. Differences in the distribution of neurological anomalies between patients with bilateral and unilateral changes suggest that there may be two separate disease processes involved.     

Semantic aphasia: A neglected entity

Three cases of semantic aphasia are reported. Computerized brain tomography showed bilateral temporo-parieto-occipital junction hemorrhages in one patient, and left parieto-occipital junction infarctions in the other two patients. The auditory comprehension defect of the three patients was characterized by preserved understanding of single words and impaired understanding of grammatically complex constructions. It is suggested that this comprehension defect reflects an inability to fully grasp the meaning of words and grammatical constructions imbued with spatial or quasi-spatial significance. Each of the three patients showed a complex spatial disorder that included constructional apraxia, spatial agnosia, and elements of Gerstmann's syndrome. The aphasic as well as the spatial disorder of semantic aphasics may be manifestations of a common defect in the perception of spatial relationships produced by left temporo-parieto-occipital region damage.     

Subcortical Aphasia(s): A Controversial and Promising Topic

Many aspects of subcortical aphasias are not accounted for by a unique pathophysiological mechanism; rather the diversity of the observed symptoms suggests that many functional ensembles, more or less related, to language functions may be disturbed by subcortical lesions. However, such disorders are only moderate in intensity and subcortical aphasias certainly constitute an interesting model for studying the dynamics of recovery of language functions and related neural systems, combining neurolinguistic concepts with advanced functional imaging techniques.     

Drug Therapy of Post-Stroke Aphasia: A Review of Current Evidence

This review considers the role of drug therapy in the treatment of post-stroke aphasia, the evidence for efficacy of different agents, and the theory-based explanations of drug-related benefits for aphasia rehabilitation. Pharmacological interventions modulating stroke-induced disruption of diverse neurotransmitters may improve language and communication deficits in aphasic patients through facilitation of brain plasticity and long-term potentiation. However, benefits are not evident for all compounds and refinement in clinical trial designs is required. Some pharmacological trials have failed because drug treatment was not combined with speech-language therapy, while other trials combining drugs with intensive model-driven therapies also failed probably because of short-trial duration, inadequate sample selection, or lack of drug action. Preliminary data reveals that combining neuroscience-based intensive aphasia techniques (constraint-induced aphasia therapy) and drugs acting on cholinergic and glutamatergic neurotransmitter systems are associated with better outcomes than other strategies and long-term maintenance of benefits. Although further studies are needed, current state of the evidence suggests that drug therapy may play a key role in the treatment of post-stroke aphasia.     

Conspiracy Formation Is in the Detail: On the Interaction of Conspiratorial Predispositions and Semantic Cues

Significant events are frequently followed by discussions about the event's ‘true nature’. Yet, there is only little evidence whether the conspiratorial reasoning of conspiracy believers and sceptics is a priori determined, or if certain characteristics of information are responsible for provoking a polarization. We investigated how depicted causation (direct vs. indirect; Study 1) and intention (strong vs. weak purposeful; Study 2) might invoke a bias in believers and sceptics regarding conspiratorial reasoning about an ongoing event, namely, whether US investigations against FIFA were more or less likely to be seen as a conspiracy against Russia to sabotage the football World Cup in 2018. We revealed that judgments of conspiracy believers and sceptics about the event's ‘true nature’ are not a priori divided—in fact, conspiracy formation is only affected when direct causation or strong purposeful intentions were obvious. Results point to the relevance of conspiratorial predispositions and semantic cues in conspiracy formation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Aphasia for Morse code: A comment on Wyler and Ray (1986)

A. R. Wyler and R. W. Ray (1986, Brain and Language, 27, 195-199), present a case of aphasia for Morse code; they relate the deficit to the inability to detect high-speed auditory temporal sequences. Based on a personal observation of transient aphasia for Morse code, we proposed that at least three different abilities participate in recognizing and producing Morse code messages: (1) a specific linguistic ability, (2) a praxic skill, and (3) an auditory discrimination skill. Our patient presents difficulties in the first and second abilities, Wyler and Ray's in the third ability.     

Correlations between Dual-Pathway White Matter Alterations and Language Impairment in Patients with Aphasia: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Neuropsychology Review - While converging evidence suggests linguistic roles of white matter tracts, detailed associations between white matter alterations of dual pathways and language abilities...     

HYPE: A System of Hyperintensional Logic (with an Application to Semantic Paradoxes)

Journal of Philosophical Logic - This article introduces, studies, and applies a new system of logic which is called ‘HYPE’. In HYPE, formulas are evaluated at states that may exhibit...     

Representations of Self and Other: A Semantic Space Model

ABSTRACT This article describes a semantic space model of personality. According to the model, representations of facets of the self (e.g., actual self, self) and of others are arrayed in a semantic space, with proximities among representations predicted to be associated with mood, self-evaluation, broad personality dimensions. The relation of proximities among pairs of representations to personality and mood measures was found to be mediated by spatial proximity of other representations, indicating that the representations constitute dynamic systems. Proximities among representations were shown predict self-esteem and self-evaluative moods even after controlling for the contribution of the personality dimensions of Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Agreeableness. Generally, the semantic space model led to better predictions did several related models concerning representations of self and other.     

Novel metaphor comprehension: Semantic neighbourhood density interacts with concreteness

Previous research suggests that metaphor comprehension is affected both by the concreteness of the topic and vehicle and their semantic neighbours (Kintsch, 2000; Xu, 2010). However, studies have yet to manipulate these 2 variables simultaneously. To that end, we composed novel metaphors manipulated on topic concreteness and semantic neighbourhood density (SND) of topic and vehicle. In Experiment 1, participants rated the metaphors on the suitability (e.g. sensibility) of their topic-vehicle pairings. Topic concreteness interacted with SND such that participants rated metaphors from sparse semantic spaces to be more sensible than those from dense semantic spaces and preferred abstract topics over concrete topics only for metaphors from dense semantic spaces. In Experiments 2 and 3, we used presentation deadlines and found that topic concreteness and SND affect the online processing stages associated with metaphor comprehension. We discuss how the results are aligned with established psycholinguistic models of metaphor comprehension.     

Correction to: HYPE: A System of Hyperintensional Logic (with an Application to Semantic Paradoxes)

Journal of Philosophical Logic - The original version of the article unfortunately contained a mistake. The author missed to mention the support by a EU-funded research network that he is involved...     

Semantic effects in encoding specificity: A levels of processing approach

The semantic characteristics of study and retrieval contexts were varied in a cued recall paradigm. In the first experiment, ambiguous words (homographs) were modified at input and output by identical adjectives or by different adjectives reflecting either the same meaning or a different meaning. The results supported the principle of encoding specificity (Thomson & Tulving, 1970), but only for identical input and output cues; the results showed no facilitation of similar semantic context on recall. The second experiment used a depth-of-processing manipulation to show that the results predicted by a semantic interpretation of encoding specificity are obtainable, but only when subjects are induced to process deeply. The implications of these data for the generality of encoding specificity are discussed.     

Approximate Semantic Transference: A Computational Theory of Metaphors and Analogies

In this paper we start from the assumption that in a metaphor, or an analogy, some terms belonging to one domain (source domain) are used to refer to objects other than their conventional referents belonging to a possibly different domain (target domain). We describe a formalism, which is based on the First Order Predicate Calculus, for representing the knowledge structure associated with a domain and then develop a theory of Constrained Semantic Transference [CST] which allows the terms and the structural relationships of the source domain to be transferred coherently across to the target domain. We show how metaphors and analogies can be characterized in CST in such a way that many of their cognitive properties con be explained. We then propose a theory of Approximate Semantic Transference [AST] which is a computational version of CST and is derived from it by replacing the coherency requirement with approximate coherency. We show how AST can be used as a basis for designing models of cognitive processes involved in comprehending metaphors and analogies.     

Semantic memory: A feature-based analysis and new norms for Italian

Semantic norms for properties produced by native speakers are valuable tools for researchers interested in the structure of semantic memory and in category-specific semantic deficits in individuals following brain damage. The aims of this study were threefold. First, we sought to extend existing semantic norms by adopting an empirical approach to category (Exp. 1) and concept (Exp. 2) selection, in order to obtain a more representative set of semantic memory features. Second, we extensively outlined a new set of semantic production norms collected from Italian native speakers for 120 artifactual and natural basic-level concepts, using numerous measures and statistics following a feature-listing task (Exp. 3b). Finally, we aimed to create a new publicly accessible database, since only a few existing databases are publicly available online.