Simulating single word processing in the classic aphasia syndromes based on the Wernicke-Lichtheim-Geschwind theory

The Wernicke-Lichtheim-Geschwind (WLG) theory of the neurobiological basis of language is of great historical importance, and it continues to exert a substantial influence on most contemporary theories of language in spite of its widely recognized limitations. Here, we suggest that neurobiologically grounded computational models based on the WLG theory can provide a deeper understanding of which of its features are plausible and where the theory fails. As a first step in this direction, we created a model of the interconnected left and right neocortical areas that are most relevant to the WLG theory, and used it to study visual-confrontation naming, auditory repetition, and auditory comprehension performance. No specific functionality is assigned a priori to model cortical regions, other than that implicitly present due to their locations in the cortical network and a higher learning rate in left hemisphere regions. Following learning, the model successfully simulates confrontation naming and word repetition, and acquires a unique internal representation in parietal regions for each named object. Simulated lesions to the language-dominant cortical regions produce patterns of single word processing impairment reminiscent of those postulated historically in the classic aphasia syndromes. These results indicate that WLG theory, instantiated as a simple interconnected network of model neocortical regions familiar to any neuropsychologist/neurologist, captures several fundamental "low-level" aspects of neurobiological word processing and their impairment in aphasia.     

Infants’ recognition of objects using canonical color

We explored infants’ ability to recognize the canonical colors of daily objects, including two color-specific objects (human face and fruit) and a non-color-specific object (flower), by using a preferential looking technique. A total of 58 infants between 5 and 8 months of age were tested with a stimulus composed of two color pictures of an object placed side by side: a correctly colored picture (e.g., red strawberry) and an inappropriately colored picture (e.g., green-blue strawberry). The results showed that, overall, the 6- to 8-month-olds showed preference for the correctly colored pictures for color-specific objects, whereas they did not show preference for the correctly colored pictures for the non-color-specific object. The 5-month-olds showed no significant preference for the correctly colored pictures for all object conditions. These findings imply that the recognition of canonical color for objects emerges at 6 months of age.     

Goodbye and farewell: Siegel vs. Feyerabend∗

The discussion between Searle and the Churchlands over whether or not symbolmanipulating computers generate semantics will be confronted both with the rulesceptical considerations of Kripke/Wittgenstein and with Wittgenstein's privatelanguage argument in order to show that the discussion focuses on the wrong place: meaning does not emerge in the brain. That a symbol means something should rather be conceived as a social fact, depending on a mutual imputation of linguistic competence of the participants of a linguistic practice to one another. The alternative picture will finally be applied to small children, animals, and computers as well.     

Phonological recoding,rapid automatized naming,and orthographic knowledge

Phonological recoding, orthographic knowledge, and rapid automatized naming (RAN) are three major contributors to word identification. However, the interrelations between these components remain somewhat unclear. The current analyses focus on how phonological recoding and alphanumeric versus non-alphanumeric RAN contribute to different components of orthographic knowledge (word specific vs. general). Results indicate that alphanumeric and non-alphanumeric RAN contribute to orthographic knowledge components differently. Alphanumeric RAN relates more to word-specific orthographic knowledge, whereas non-alphanumeric RAN relates more to general orthographic knowledge. Furthermore, phonological recoding is more closely related to word-specific orthographic knowledge than to general orthographic knowledge.     

Seduction,date rape,and aborted surrender

Abstract

This paper clarifies the dual-layered nature of the “demon lover complex,” with its background of both pre-Oedipal trauma and Oedipal-level desire. It draws on an object relations understanding of the unconscious and dissociated addiction to an internal demon object that has derivations in the personalities of the actual parents, and in the internalization of these parents. The dramatic case of early trauma compounded by adult date rape trauma serves to illustrate how a “developmental mourning process” in treatment can resolve such trauma. It also illustrates how reparation with the mother that partially heals pre-Oedipal trauma cannot immunize anyone against Oedipal-level attractions to a “demon lover” father, as represented in a displacement, resulting in victimized behavior, and in an aborted surrender to heterosexual desire. However, this victimization can be resolved, as seen in the clinical illustration, when the psychoanalyst has an understanding of the mourning process in developmental terms, working with a natural interaction between mourning and transference evolutions in treatment. The case also demonstrates the transitional object role of the psychoanalyst who is involved with the healing of pre-Oedipal trauma through mourning.     

Mirroring,imitation, identification: the sense of self in relation to the mother's internal world

The phenomenon of neonatal imitation, and the use of mutual imitation by mother and baby in the service of attunement, are considered in relation to psychoanalytic theories of mirroring, imitation and identification. Material from infant observation and from the treatment of two children on the autistic spectrum is discussed in terms of the suggestion that developmental imitation implies a perceived position of balance between the external baby and the mother's supposed internal occupant. This is seen as making possible introjective identification and assimilation, with the enrichment of the sense of identity, in contrast to the kind of imitation involving mimicry, in which adhesive or projective identification may be operative.     

Frustration and disappointment

The paper describes research on children’s responses to failures of gratification. Although this has always been an important area of consideration in psychoanalytic thinking, arguments are put forward for the child’s actual feelings of disappointment being significant in ways that have yet to be fully realised theoretically and clinically within Kleinian object relations. Since Freud first used the term ‘frustration’, it has been applied in psychoanalysis as a means by which to describe in an undifferentiated way all those responses to failures of gratification that have an aggressive content. It will be argued that, in a context of the historical shift in thinking from drive to relational models, there is now perhaps scope to posit the existence instead of two discrete object relational positions towards such failures of aim – that frustrated responses can be differentiated in important structural and developmental ways from disappointed ones, by suggesting that the former are schizoid, whilst the latter are depressive in quality. To try and begin to test the hypothesis that there might be an object relational distinction between feelings of frustration and feelings of disappointment, selected process notes from two training cases became the subject of a combined piece of clinical and theoretical research. I will outline how this research was undertaken and present the findings that arose from the clinical part of it. With the use of a content analysis, a method for gathering interesting quantitative data about the children’s various responses to the failures of gratification was arrived at.     

Self objects and development: Infant states of mind in an adolescent girl

In the context of Fordham's model of the deintegrating-reintegrating self, the paper discusses the total quality of the baby's earliest deintegrations and the nature of what Fordham terms the self object. The use of the term ‘whole object’ in Klein's and Fordham's terminology is explored and the self object is placed in the context of Jung's construct of the self and the archetypes. The paper illustrates how residues of the self object permeated a rule-making defensive structure in a 14-year-old girl and how the therapy provided an opportunity for the defence to loosen and for elements that had been locked, as potentials, in a ‘bump car’ self object, to unfold and develop. These elements included the possibility of enjoying the feminine qualities of being a girl and exploration of the mother-infant couple and its confusions in her inner world. In addition, they included getting in touch with an infant, vulnerable part of her personality and modifying a habitual defence which was to take refuge in projective identification with an aggressive, omnipotent phantasied brother. Another important element unfolded through the separation of herself from the idealized, precept-daughter in her mother's mind. A fixed projective identification with a self object became more flexible as the object was explored and developed, and its archetypal absoluteness modified, in the therapeutic relationship.     

RICOEUR'S PHILOSOPHY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR PSYCHOANALYSIS

In differentiation of early and mature shame, the phenomenological content of shame changes with the development of a stable self-state. In this hypothesis, early shame refers to a person's dependence upon mirroring himself and in being mirrored by an outer object, while mature shame refers to introspection and self-reflection. From a developmental psychological point of view, the connection between self-development and mirroring is expounded. Mirroring is defined as a psychic dialectic process between the inner psychic reality and the outer reality. Early shame is connected to dyadic mirroring, which refers to attachment and empathy. Mature shame is connected to triadic mirroring, which refers to separation and reflection. Early shame emerges from discrepancies between the infant's expectations of a complementary affective response and the mother's response, and is defined as an early marker of differences in the mother/infant unit. It is argued that early shame in smaller ‘doses’ has a regulating function on self-development by maintaining the psychic dialectic process, while in larger ‘doses’, it has a disturbing effect on the self-development, resulting in pathological shame. In the therapeutic process, early shame appears as shame scenarios illustrated in the text by a clinical vignette.     

The present and absent object—on thinking and the capacity to symbolize

In this paper, Bion's different theories on the development of thinking will be introduced: on the one hand, his theory of thoughts as resulting from tolerance for the absence of the object, and on the other hand, dream thoughts and thoughts as resulting from the presence of the object, originally through the mother's containing function. The effects of failures in this development will be discussed; among other things, a hypertrophy of the apparatus of projective identification at the expense of thinking capacities. Briefly, a comparison will be made between a facilitating relation between container and contained and the oscillation between the paranoid-schizoid and depressive position, which Bion describes as a prerequisite for open symbolizing processes. Bion's theories and concepts will be supplemented by Winnicott's theories on the “creative illusion” and the breast/the mother as a “subjective object” as a precondition for the symbolizing capacity that later develops in the “potential space”. Very briefly, a comparison is made between Winnicott's term “the subjective object” and Segal's term “symbolic equation”. Clinical vignettes are interpolated.