Comparison of metabolic rates, language, and memory in subcortical aphasias

Four patients with subcortical lesions and either aphasia or amnesia were compared to four patients with cortical lesions and aphasia. Each patient had [18F] fluorodeoxyglucose positron-emission computed tomography, language, and memory evaluations. Marked metabolic depression was found in the thalamus and caudate in all patients. The subcortical patients had only mild left-cortical changes, while the cortical patients showed marked cortical metabolic changes in the left hemisphere. Language changes were mild in the subcortical patients, while moderate to severe in the cortical patients. All patients showed severe verbal memory dysfunction. The only common abnormalities in the two groups were metabolic changes in the thalamus and severity of verbal memory dysfunction. These findings suggest a relationship between verbal memory and thalamic function.     

Could positive affect help engineer robot control systems?

Emotions have long been seen as counteracting rational thought, but over the last decades, they have been viewed as adaptive processes to optimize human (but also animal) behaviour. In particular, positive affect appears to be a functional aspect of emotions closely related to that. We argue that positive affect as understood in Kuhl’s PSI model of the human cognitive architecture appears to have an interpretation in state-of-the-art hybrid robot control architectures, which might help tackle some open questions in the field.     

Correlations of glucose metabolism and structural damage to language function in aphasia

Studies of aphasic patients using [18F]fluorodeoxyglucose positron computed tomographs have shown areas of metabolic depression in the left hemisphere larger than the area of infarction noted on CT. To evaluate these metabolic differences in relationship to language abnormalities, 11 patients had metabolic scans, CT, and were administered the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Battery and the Porch Index of Communicative Ability. Correlation analyses were computed between metabolic, CT, and language data. CT demonstrated reliable correlations of speaking, oral reading, and repetition to Wernicke' area, consistent with current anatomic language models, while metabolic data from areas posterior, inferior, and superior to the traditional Wernicke's area and the head of the caudate nucleus also had reliable correlations with aphasic language function. The utilization of both structural and metabolic brain measures may improve our understanding of the anatomy of language as related to aphasia.     

Intuition,affect, and personality: unconscious coherence judgments and self-regulation of negative affect

According to personality systems interaction theory, a negative mood was expected to reduce access to extended semantic networks and to reduce performance on intuitive judgments of coherence for participants who have an impaired ability to down-regulate negative affect (i.e., state-oriented participants). Consistent with expectations, state-oriented participants reporting higher levels of perseverating negative mood had a reduced discrimination between coherent and incoherent standard word triples (Study 1) and individually derived word triples describing persons (Study 2). Participants who are able to down-regulate negative affect (i.e., action-oriented participants) did not show this tendency. In addition, Study 2 revealed a dissociation between state orientation and Neuroticism that is discussed in terms of a functional difference between the two constructs.