The effects of right and left hemiparkinsonism on prosody

Recent studies show right hemisphere dominance in the mediation of emotional prosody and left hemisphere contribution to linguistic prosody in patients with cortical injury. The present study investigated emotional and linguistic functions of prosody as well as facial and musical processing in 21 patients with lateralized subcortical disease. Fourteen right hemiparkinsonians (RPD) and 7 left hemiparkinsonians (LPD) were compared to 17 normal controls (NC). Patients were impaired on receptive and expressive tests of emotional and linguistic prosody. Patients were also selectively impaired on emotional processing of facial stimuli and in the musical processing of pitch and tonal memory, though not timber. These findings suggest that monotone speech reported in PD is of multimodal origins and may involve dysfunction in neural centers involved in emotional and linguistic processing. There were no differences between RPD and LPD groups in the pattern of deficits, suggesting bilateral involvement in emotional processing at the subcortical level.     

Dissociating perceptual and conceptual implicit memory in multiple sclerosis patients

Previous studies indicate that Multiple Sclerosis (MS) patients exhibit deficits in tests of explicit memory such as free recall, but show normal priming on implicit tests of memory such as word stem completion. However, the memory performance of patients with different MS disease subtypes has not been fully examined. In the current study, memory was assessed in Primary Progressive (PPMS), Relapsing Remitting (RRMS), and Secondary Progressive (SPMS) MS subgroups. Explicit memory as well as perceptual and conceptual implicit memory were examined using free recall, word fragment completion, and exemplar generation tests, respectively. All three groups of MS patients exhibited free recall deficits and normal priming on the exemplar generation test. However, the PPMS group exhibited a deficit in word fragment completion priming, whereas the RRMS and SPMS groups exhibited normal levels of priming on this task. Lesion load was assessed using magnetic resonance imaging and was negatively correlated with explicit memory performance, but it did not account for the observed deficits in perceptual implicit memory. The results indicate that PPMS patients exhibit a pattern of memory impairment that is distinct from that of the RRMS and SPMS groups. Moreover, the results indicate that perceptual implicit memory can be neurologically dissociated from conceptual implicit memory.     

Effects of cognitive impairment on prosodic parameters of speech production planning in multiple sclerosis

Cognitive impairment (CI) affects 40–65% of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). CI can have a negative impact on a patient's everyday activities, such as engaging in conversations. Speech production planning ability is crucial for successful verbal interactions and thus for preserving social and occupational skills. This study investigates the effect of cognitive-linguistic demand and CI on speech production planning in MS, as reflected in speech prosody. A secondary aim is to explore the clinical potential of prosodic features for the prediction of an individual's cognitive status in MS. A total of 45 subjects, that is 22 healthy controls (HC) and 23 patients in early stages of relapsing-remitting MS, underwent neuropsychological tests probing specific cognitive processes involved in speech production planning. All subjects also performed a read speech task, in which they had to read isolated sentences manipulated as for phonological length. Results show that the speech of MS patients with CI is mainly affected at the temporal level (articulation and speech rate, pause duration). Regression analyses further indicate that rate measures are correlated with working memory scores. In addition, linear discriminant analysis shows the ROC AUC of identifying MS patients with CI is 0.70 (95% confidence interval: 0.68–0.73). Our findings indicate that prosodic planning is deficient in patients with MS-CI and that the scope of planning depends on patients’ cognitive abilities. We discuss how speech-based approaches could be used as an ecological method for the assessment and monitoring of CI in MS.     

Understanding speaker attitudes from prosody by adults with Parkinson's disease

The ability to interpret vocal (prosodic) cues during social interactions can be disrupted by Parkinson's disease, with notable effects on how emotions are understood from speech. This study investigated whether PD patients who have emotional prosody deficits exhibit further difficulties decoding the attitude of a speaker from prosody. Vocally inflected but semantically nonsensical ‘pseudo‐utterances’ were presented to listener groups with and without PD in two separate rating tasks. Task 1 required participants to rate how confident a speaker sounded from their voice and Task 2 required listeners to rate how polite the speaker sounded for a comparable set of pseudo‐utterances. The results showed that PD patients were significantly less able than HC participants to use prosodic cues to differentiate intended levels of speaker confidence in speech, although the patients could accurately detect the polite/impolite attitude of the speaker from prosody in most cases. Our data suggest that many PD patients fail to use vocal cues to effectively infer a speaker's emotions as well as certain attitudes in speech such as confidence, consistent with the idea that the basal ganglia play a role in the meaningful processing of prosodic sequences in spoken language ( Pell & Leonard, 2003 ).     

Impaired perception of vocal emotions in Parkinson's disease: influence of speech time processing and executive functioning

Little is known about the underlying dimensions of impaired recognition of emotional prosody that is frequently observed in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). Because patients with PD also suffer from working memory deficits and impaired time perception, the present study examined the contribution of (a) working memory (frontal executive functioning) and (b) processing of the acoustic parameter speech rate to the perception of emotional prosody in PD. Two acoustic parameters known to be important for emotional classifications (speech duration and pitch variability) were systematically varied in prosodic utterances. Twenty patients with PD and 16 healthy controls (matched for age, sex, and IQ) participated in the study. The findings imply that (1) working memory dysfunctions and perception of emotional prosody are not independent in PD, (2) PD and healthy control subjects perceived vocal emotions categorically along two acoustic manipulation continua, and (3) patients with PD show impairments in processing of speech rate information.     

Using ERPs to explore the impact of affective distraction on working memory stages in schizophrenia

Research on individuals with schizophrenia (SCZ) shows a variety of emotional and cognitive deficits. We examined the hypothesis that ineffective emotional interference control may impact working memory (WM) performance by disrupting information encoding, maintenance, or retrieval in SCZ. Twenty-eight SCZ and 28 matched healthy controls (HC) performed the visual and verbal delayed-matching-to-sample task (DMST) with trials preceded by negative and nonemotional visual distractors. Event-Related Potentials associated with affective stimuli processing (Late Positive Potential-LPP) and WM-encoding (target-P3), maintenance (Negative Slow Wave-NSW), and retrieval (probe-P3) were analyzed. Patients showed overall worse DMST accuracy than HC. Emotional distraction negatively impacted accuracy during the verbal DMST in both groups combined. Both groups also displayed similar LPP modulation during the presentation of emotional distractors. HC showed enhanced NSW after presentation of a negative distraction, whereas this did not occur in SCZ. Comparable effects of emotional distraction were found for WM-encoding and retrieval in both groups. While emotional and neutral stimuli differentially impacted WM-maintenance on the neural level in HC, we did not observe this effect in SCZ, even though both groups showed similar behavioral and neurophysiological reactions to affective stimuli. Deficits in inhibitory mechanisms in SCZ may be responsible for this effect and may have particular relevance for WM-maintenance difficulties.     

Emotional processing following cortical and subcortical brain damage: contribution of the fronto-striatal circuitry

The present study examined the differential contribution of cortical and subcortical brain structures in emotional processing by comparing patients with focal cortical lesions (n = 32) to those with primarily subcortical dysregulation of the basal ganglia (Parkinson's disease n = 14). A standardized measure of emotional perception (Tübingen Affect Battery) was used. Only patients in the more advanced stages of Parkinson's disease and patients with focal damage to the (right) frontal lobe differed significantly from controls in both facial expression and affective prosody recognition. The findings imply involvement of the fronto-striatal circuitry in emotional processing.     

Depression and cognitive impairment in disability-free early multiple sclerosis

Cognitive and emotional capabilities were evaluated in 73 female patients with stable relapsing-remitting definite, and/or laboratory-supported multiple sclerosis (MS) and were compared with 32 matched healthy controls. Patients were categorized according to their score in the expanded disability status scale (EDSS) to either no (EDSS 0, n = 33) or few clinical signs (EDSS 1-2, n = 40) of MS without physical disability. Patients with EDSS > 0 were characterized by significantly (p < 0.001) higher scores on "von Zerssen's" depression scale, compared to controls. Patients with higher EDSS scores (1-2) showed significantly decreased performance with respect to the total score of Kimura's Recurring-Figures-Test (p < 0.001), in addition. Regarding visuo-constructive functioning, patients with EDSS=0 performed to a significantly lower level (p < 0.001), compared to controls. These results indicate that depression may present as an early sign in MS followed by cognitive impairment, in particular visuo-spatial short-term memory, before physical disability appears. Neuropsychological tests as mentioned here could serve as early diagnostic tools to detect subtle disease progression and to initiate and monitor disease modifying therapies.     

情绪韵律调节情绪词识别的ERP研究

采用韵律/词汇干扰范式和延迟匹配任务, 通过两个ERP实验, 考察了汉语口语中情绪韵律能否、以及如何调节情绪词的识别。实验一中, 不同类型的情绪韵律分组呈现, ERP结果显示, 同与情绪韵律效价一致的情绪词相比, 与情绪韵律效价不一致的情绪词诱发了走向更负的P200、N300和N400成分; 实验二中, 不同类型的情绪韵律随机呈现, 上述效价一致性效应依然存在。实验结果表明, 情绪韵律能够调节情绪词识别, 主要表现在对情绪词的音韵编码和语义加工的双重易化上。     

Neurology of affective prosody and its functional-anatomic organization in right hemisphere

Unlike the aphasic syndromes, the organization of affective prosody in brain has remained controversial because affective-prosodic deficits may occur after left or right brain damage. However, different patterns of deficits are observed following left and right brain damage that suggest affective prosody is a dominant and lateralized function of the right hemisphere. Using the Aprosodia Battery, which was developed to differentiate left and right hemisphere patterns of affective-prosodic deficits, functional-anatomic evidence is presented in patients with focal ischemic strokes to support the concepts that (1) affective prosody is a dominant and lateralized function of the right hemisphere, (2) the intrahemispheric organization of affective prosody in the right hemisphere, with the partial exception of Repetition, is analogous to the organization of propositional language in the left hemisphere and (3) the aprosodic syndromes are cortically based as part of evolutionary adaptations underlying human language and communication.     

Memories defining the self in Alzheimer’s disease

ABSTRACT

There is a debate over the extent to which personal identity or the self is preserved in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Autobiographical memory deficits at early stages of AD could contribute to altering patients’ self. However, the nature of the relationship between autobiographical memory deficits and the self in AD has not been much investigated experimentally. In the present study, we aimed to investigate the integrative meaning of self-defining memories (SDMs) in early stages of AD and to analyse its relationship with the self-concept. The results showed that, when compared to the control group, AD patients less frequently extracted meaning from their SDMs and the meaning was less frequently tied to the self. Patients exhibited some altered aspects of the self-concept (i.e., complexity and strength), though some other components still persisted (i.e., valence and certainty). Correlation analyses showed that the impaired integrative meaning in the AD group was correlated with some changes in self-concept. We suggest that integrative meaning may act as a bridge between autobiographical memories and the self-concept, with reduced integration abilities appearing as a potential mechanism for the deterioration of the self-concept in AD.     

Emotional prosody effects on verbal memory in older and younger adults

Prosody, or the way things are said, can modify the meaning of utterances making qualitatively different affective prosodies useful for understanding how auditory affective information is processed and remembered. In this study, we collected behavioral data from 225 younger (M age = 20.8 years, SD = 2.5 years; 119 males) and 225 older adults (M age = 71.6 years, SD = 6.5 years; 119 males) in order to examine age differences in emotional prosody effects on verbal memory. Participants were randomly divided into three subgroups according to different prosody listening conditions (positive, negative, and neutral) and prosody effects on a yes–no recognition memory task were investigated. The results showed how older adults who listened to the story read with a neutral prosody remembered more words than those who listened to the same story with a positive or negative prosody. Younger adults showed no valence effects. Our findings highlighted an age and affective prosody interaction that affects remembering in older adults alone.     

Dream actors in the theatre of memory: Their role in the psychoanalytic process2

The author notes that neuropsychological research has discovered the existence of two long‐term memory systems, namely declarative or explicit memory, which is conscious and autobiographical, and non‐declarative or implicit memory, which is neither conscious nor verbalisable. It is suggested that pre‐verbal and pre‐symbolic experience in the child's primary relations is stored in implicit memory, where it constitutes an unconscious nucleus of the self which is not repressed and which influences the person's affective, emotional, cognitive and sexual life even as an adult. In the analytic relationship this unconscious part can emerge essentially through certain modes of communication (tone of voice, rhythm and prosody of the voice, and structure and tempo of speech), which could be called the ‘musical dimension’ of the transference, and through dream representations. Besides work on the transference, the critical component of the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis is stated to consist in work on dreams as pictographic and symbolic representations of implicit pre‐symbolic and pre‐verbal experiences. A case history is presented in which dream interpretation allowed some of a patient's early unconscious, non‐repressed experiences to be emotionally reconstructed and made thinkable even though they were not actually remembered.     

Memory factors in Rey AVLT: Implications for early staging of cognitive decline

Supraspan verbal list learning is widely used to assess dementia and related cognitive disorders where declarative memory deficits are a major clinical sign. While the overall learning rate is important for diagnosis, serial position patterns may give insight into more specific memory processes in patients with cognitive impairment. This study explored these patterns in a memory clinic clientele. One hundred eighty three participants took the Rey Auditory‐Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT). The major groups were patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), Vascular Dementia (VD), Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), and Subjective Cognitive Impairment (SCI) as well as healthy controls (HC). Raw scores for the five trials and five serial partitions were factor analysed. Three memory factors were found and interpreted as Primacy, Recency, and Resistance to Interference. AD and MCI patients had impaired scores in all factors. SCI patients were significantly impaired in the Resistance to Interference factor, and in the Recency factor at the first trial. The main conclusion is that serial position data from word list testing reflect specific memory capacities which vary with levels of cognitive impairment.     

老年人群的韵律感知

老龄化导致听觉系统、认知功能有所衰退。老年人群的言语理解能力减弱, 韵律信息解析存在困难。老年人对重音、语调、语速等语言韵律感知能力退化, 对情感韵律的加工也出现问题, 特别是消极情绪韵律加工减退较快。老年疾病进一步加深韵律加工难度, 韵律感知呈现出与特定疾病的相关性。未来研究需考察不同语言背景老年人群的韵律感知表现与机制、复杂交流环境的影响、韵律感知障碍对老年疾病的预测、韵律感知的早期干预与复健等问题。     

Memory for emotional faces in major depression following judgement of physical facial characteristics at encoding

The aim of the present study was to establish if patients with major depression (MD) exhibit a memory bias for sad faces, relative to happy and neutral, when the affective element of the faces is not explicitly processed at encoding. To this end, 16 psychiatric out-patients with MD and 18 healthy, never-depressed controls (HC) were presented with a series of emotional faces and were required to identify the gender of the individuals featured in the photographs. Participants were subsequently given a recognition memory test for these faces. At encoding, patients with MD exhibited a non-significant tendency towards slower gender identification (GI) times, relative to HC, for happy faces. However, the GI times of the two groups did not differ for sad or neutral faces. At memory testing, patients with MD did not exhibit the expected memory bias for sad faces. Similarly, HC did not demonstrate enhanced memory for happy faces. Overall, patients with MD were impaired in their memory for the faces relative to the HC. The current findings are consistent with the proposal that mood-congruent memory biases are contingent upon explicit processing of the emotional element of the to-be-remembered material at encoding.     

Postconcussion Symptoms

Research pertaining to the self-report of symptoms after traumatic brain injury was reviewed. Cognitive, emotional, and motivational factors have more relevance than demographic (except for female sex) and personality factors. Specific neuropsychological deficits in attention and memory have been found in the early stages after head injury of even mild severity. This is unlikely to be the only factor affecting symptom persistence. Exaggeration of cognitive dysfunction occurs in some cases, but appears unrelated to symptom overreport. Increased emotional distress typically accompanies symptom persistence. The psychological reaction of preoccupation with symptoms and emotional distress is not unique to concussion, but also occurs after severe head injury and back injury and relates more to the personal interpretation of the effect of the trauma than to objective indicators of brain injury severity.     

Multiple routes to enhanced memory for emotionally relevant events

Events associated with aversive or rewarding outcomes are prioritized in memory. This memory boost is commonly attributed to the elicited affective response, closely linked to noradrenergic and dopaminergic modulation of hippocampal plasticity. Herein we review and compare this ‘affect’ mechanism to an additional, recently discovered, ‘prediction’ mechanism whereby memories are strengthened by the extent to which outcomes deviate from expectations, that is, by prediction errors (PEs). The mnemonic impact of PEs is separate from the affective outcome itself and has a distinct neural signature. While both routes enhance memory, these mechanisms are linked to different – and sometimes opposing – predictions for memory integration. We discuss new findings that highlight mechanisms by which emotional events strengthen, integrate, and segment memory.     

The Comprehension of Syntactic and Affective Prosody by Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder Without Accompanying Cognitive Deficits

The present study investigates the comprehension of syntactic and affective prosody in adults with autism spectrum disorder without accompanying cognitive deficits (ASD w/o cognitive deficits) as well as age-, education- and gender-matched unimpaired adults, while processing orally presented sentences. Two experiments were conducted: (a) an on-line sentence completion task containing local subject/object ambiguities and (b) an affective prosody task exploring the comprehension of six emotions. The syntactic prosody task revealed that the experimental group performed similar to the control group on the fillers and the object condition. On the other hand, the ASD w/o cognitive deficits group manifested lower accuracy compared to the unimpaired controls in the subject reading condition, as well as slower reaction times in all conditions. In the affective prosody task, the experimental group performed significantly worse than the controls in the recognition of the emotion of surprise, whereas no differences between the experimental and the control group were attested in the recognition of all other emotions. A positive correlation was found between the two tasks in the ASD w/o cognitive deficits group. Thus, individuals with ASD w/o cognitive deficits face slight difficulties with the decoding of prosody, both the syntactic and the affective one. More specifically, these difficulties are attested in the most difficult conditions, i.e. the subject reading and the emotion of surprise.