The Contribution of Neuroimaging to the Study of Language and Aphasia

New structural and functional imaging methods continue to be developed at a rapid pace. In the last 25 years, advanced imaging techniques have provided insights into how language is represented and processed in the brain and how it can be disrupted by damage to, or dysfunction of, various parts of the brain. Imaging studies have also yielded new information regarding how individuals recover language after stroke. We briefly review the strengths and weaknesses of the various radiological methods currently used to study language and aphasia.     

Hippocampal c-fos is necessary for long-term memory of a socially transmitted food preference

The present article examined the requirement of hippocampal c-Fos for learning a socially transmitted food preference (STFP). We reported previously that expression of the c-Fos protein is increased in the dorsal and ventral hippocampus of rats trained on the STFP (Countryman, Orlowski, Brightwell, Oskowitz, & Colombo, 2005). Pretraining intrahippocampal antisense to the immediate early gene c-fos was administered to adult male Long-Evans rats to determine if c-fos expression is necessary for either short- or long-term memory for STFP. Guide cannulae were implanted bilaterally into the dorsal hippocampus. Antisense oligodeoxynucleotides (ODNs) were administered unilaterally either 6.5, 8.5, 10.5, or 12.5 h prior to STFP training while either sense ODNs or saline were infused into the opposite hemisphere. Immunocytochemistry was performed, and cells showing c-Fos immunoreactivity (ir) were counted from the antisense-treated hemisphere and compared to cell counts from the control hemisphere. The results indicated significant suppression of learning-induced c-Fos protein at the 8.5 and 10.5 infusion-train intervals. Additional rats were implanted with cannulae into the dorsal and ventral hippocampus, and antisense ODNs, sense ODNs, or saline were administered bilaterally 8.5h prior to training. Rats were tested immediately and 14 days after training. Rats in all groups showed a significant preference for the demonstrated food at the short-term memory test. At the long-term memory test, however, rats infused with c-fos antisense showed no preference for the demonstrated food whereas rats infused with either sense or saline maintained their preference. The present findings suggest that c-fos is necessary for consolidation of non-spatial hippocampal-dependent memory.     

Idiom comprehension in aphasic patients

Idiom comprehension was assessed in 10 aphasic patients with semantic deficits by means of a string-to-picture matching task. Patients were also submitted to an oral explanation of the same idioms, and to a word comprehension task. The stimuli of this last task were the words following the verb in the idioms. Idiom comprehension was severely impaired, with a bias toward the literal interpretation. Very few errors were produced with words, making impossible to establish a correlation between comprehension of idioms and of individual words. The difficulties in idiom comprehension seemed to be due to the fact that patients rely on a literal-first strategy, accessing a figurative interpretation only when the linguistic analysis fails to yield acceptable results.     

Perceptual and Response Bias in Unilateral Neglect: Two Modified Versions of the Milner Landmark Task

Perceptual and response bias in estimating the proportion of the two segments of prebisected lines were disambiguated in a group of 121 patients suffering from left neglect by means of two variants of the Milner Landmark task (Milner et al., 1993). The first variant, LANDMARK-V, required a verbal response; the second variant, LANDMARK-M, required manual pointing. The paper reports and discusses the results obtained on each task and their correlations, as well as the relationships between either kind of bias and the intrahemispheric location of the lesion. It is argued that besides their usefulness as a diagnostic tool the proposed variants of the Milner Landmark task provide results that are worth further investigation in their own right.     

Triadic transferences of pathological family images

Traditionally, self-object and psychosexual transferences have been thought of as dyadic processes. This paper emphasizes the importance of seeing the triadic transferences that are contained within the more visible dyadic transferences. Triadic transferences are the partial recreation of replicas of pathological family images that were constructed from experiences with father-motherchild triads during childhood. Detecting them lessens the likelihood of therapeutic impasses occurring which resemble family of origin dyadic alliances. Childhood development and developmental arrest are discussed from a triadic perspective. In a healthy psychological family a triadic heterosexual family image is constructed which contains a triadic self and a resolved Oedipus.Revision of a paper presented at the 12th International Congress of the International Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions, Kyoto, Japan, July 20, 1990. A preliminary version, entitled Triadic Transferences, was presented at the 12th Annual Meeting of the American Family Therapy Association, Philadelphia, PA, June 21, 1990.The masculine gender form is used for convenience, but with the recognition that statements apply to both genders.     

Effects of the medical resonance therapy music® on haemodynamic parameter in children with autonomic nervous system disturbances

The present investigation is dedicated to the effects of the Medical Resonance Therapy Music^® (MRT-Music) on basic haemodynamic parameter in children with transient arterial hypertension due to disturbances of the autonomic nervous system with different degrees of initial sympatheticotonia. After the nuclear accident at Chernobyl many children developed blood pressure too high for their age norm. Having already observed a decrease in high blood pressure in pregnant women during Medical Resonance Therapy Music (Gerasimovich, Einysh, 1999; Gerasimovich, Sidorenko, 1995; Sidorenko, Tetiorkina, Korotkov, 1997) we studied the effects of the Medical Resonance Therapy Music^® (MRT-Music) on such children—with very positive results: the treatment with the music preparations demonstrated a clear sympatholythic effect and led the disturbed haemodynamic state back to its healthy age norm.     

Effects of the medical resonance therapy music in the complex treatment of epileptic patients

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of Medical Resonance Therapy Music (MRT-Music) as a psycho-physiological method for the treatment of epilepsy in severe epileptic patients, whose attacks persevered despite comprehensive drug treatments. Under investigation were frequency and severity of epileptic attacks, the subjective state, the dynamics of the inter-paroxysmal symptoms and the individual parameters of the functional asymmetry of the brain (IPFA). Frequency and severity of the paroxysms changed positively in 80 percent of the cases: frequency of attacks were reduced by 75 percent and many attacks manifested in the form of abortive variants. The paroxysmal component, the degree of amnesia and the polymorphism of the attacks were reduced. Such positive changes were 4 times less frequent in the control group. Changes in subjective state were 90 percent positive: the patients felt more healthy, were calmer, had a better mood and fewer ups and downs in mood, released tension, and reduced unrest, wrath, and irritation. The evaluation of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) showed clear improvements in the inter-paroxysmal clinical picture, particularly in those paramaters that characterise the general degree of sickness, psychasthenic and paranoid traits, hypochondria, aggression and depressive states. Similar positive changes in the control group were observed two times less frequently. The changes of the IPFA-values were positive in 73.3 percent of the patients (27.8 percent in controls), had differently directed shiftings, were dependent on the initial level, and were determined by the location of the epileptic focus. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A31BB039 00004     

Claw-in-the-door: pigeons,like humans,display the foot-in-the-door effect

Animal Cognition - People are more likely to comply with a large request when it is preceded by another, smaller request, and this is known as the “foot-in-the-door” (FITD). The FITD...