English/Arabic/English Machine Translation: A Historical Perspective

This paper examines the history and development of Machine Translation (MT) applications for the Arabic language in the context of the history and machine translation in general. It starts with a discussion of the beginnings of MT in the US and then, depending on the work of MT historians, surveys the decline of the work on MT and drying up of funding; then the revival with globalization, development of information technology and the rising needs for breaking the language barriers in the world; and last on the dramatic developments that came with the advances in computer technology. The paper also examined some of the major approaches for MT within a historical perspective. The case of Arabic is treated along the same lines focusing on the work that was done on Arabic by Western research institutes and Western profit motivated companies. Special attention is given to the work of the one Arab company, Sakr of Al-Alamiyya Group, which was established in 1982 and has seriously since then worked on developing software applications for Arabic under the umbrella of natural language processing for the Arabic language. Major available software applications for Arabic/English Arabic MT as well as MT related software were surveyed within a historical framework.Cet article examine l’histoire et l’évolution des applications de la traduction automatique (TA) en langue arabe, dans le contexte de l’histoire de la TA en général. Il commence par décrire les débuts de la TA aux États-Unis et son déclin dû à l’épuisement du financement ; ensuite, son renouveau suscité par la mondialisation, le développement des technologies de l’information et les besoins croissants de lever les barrières linguistiques. Finalement, il aborde les progrès vertigineux réalisés grâce à l’informatique. L’article étudie aussi les principales approches de la TA dans une perspective historique. Le cas de l’arabe est traité dans cette perspective, compte tenu des travaux effectués par les instituts de recherche occidentaux et quelques sociétés privées occidentales. Un accent particulier est mis sur les recherches de la société arabe Sakr, fondée dès 1982, qui a mis au point plusieurs logiciels de traitement de langues naturelles pour l’arabe. Ces divers logiciels de TA arabe-anglais-arabe ainsi que des applications associées sont présentés dans un cadre historique

SYNTHESIZING DYSARTHRIC SPEECH USING MULTI-SPEAKER TTS FOR DSYARTHRIC SPEECH RECOGNITION

Dysarthria is a motor speech disorder often characterized by reduced speech intelligibility through slow, uncoordinated control of speech production muscles. Automatic Speech recognition (ASR) systems may help dysarthric talkers communicate more effectively. However, robust dysarthria-specific ASR requires a significant amount of training speech is required, which is not readily available for dysarthric talkers. In this dissertation, we investigate dysarthric speech augmentation and synthesis methods. To better understand differences in prosodic and acoustic characteristics of dysarthric spontaneous speech at varying severity levels, a comparative study between typical and dysarthric speech was conducted. These characteristics are important components for dysarthric speech modeling, synthesis, and augmentation. For augmentation, prosodic transformation and time-feature masking have been proposed. For dysarthric speech synthesis, this dissertation has introduced a modified neural multi-talker TTS by adding a dysarthria severity level coefficient and a pause insertion model to synthesize dysarthric speech for varying severity levels. In addition, we have extended this work by using a label propagation technique to create more meaningful control variables such as a continuous Respiration, Laryngeal and Tongue (RLT) parameter, even for datasets that only provide discrete dysarthria severity level information. This approach increases the controllability of the system, so we are able to generate more dysarthric speech with a broader range. To evaluate their effectiveness for synthesis of training data, dysarthria-specific speech recognition was used. Results show that a DNN-HMM model trained on additional synthetic dysarthric speech achieves WER improvement of 12.2% compared to the baseline, and that the addition of the severity level and pause insertion controls decrease WER by 6.5%, showing the effectiveness of adding these parameters. Overall results on the TORGO database demonstrate that using dysarthric synthetic speech to increase the amount of dysarthric-patterned speech for training has a significant impact on the dysarthric ASR systems

Validation of the Reading Tendency Index in school-age children: Replication with a bilingual sample

Defining deficits in reading ability may be accomplished through the analysis of a child’s reading tendencies, representing a possible paradigm shift in the conceptualization and assessment of reading disabilities. Based on this premise, Mohl and colleagues (2018) developed a quantitative paradigm to measure reading tendency in children through performance on two lexical decision tasks (LDTs) that differentially rely on decoding and sightword reading abilities. The Reading Tendency Index (RTI; Mohl et al., 2018) is calculated from the differential between drift rates on the phonologic and orthographic LDTs. Scores closer to zero represent a balanced approach whereas scores as a negative or positive value suggest the tendency to rely on phonological decoding or sightword reading strategies, respectively. It was suggested that a balanced approach promotes more proficient reading abilities; however, this original study was performed with a small, male-only sample with a significant number of children with an ADHD diagnosis. The present study provided independent examination of the RTI paradigm, including the two LDT tasks and original calculations, to validate the tasks as a measure of reading abilities in a larger, representative sample of school-aged children. The present study involved the following goals: 1) to replicate the three-group reading tendency structure based on LDT performance in a larger representative sample of school-aged children, 2) to examine the construct validity of the RTI groupings and LDT tasks as a quantitative measure of reading ability, 3) to determine whether RTI group membership can be predicted based on reading and other cognitive skills, and 4) to explore performance differences, if any, in participants enrolled in French Immersion programs. The final sample included 92 participants aged 7 to 14 years (Mage = 9.96 years) recruited from English (n = 49) and French Immersion (n = 43) schools. Results indicated the following: 1) the three-group RTI structure was replicated in the larger sample of typically-developing school-aged children; 2) Sightword Readers had poorer performance on reading fluency, reading comprehension, and spelling than Balanced Readers and Decoders, but groups did not differ otherwise; 3) only reading comprehension predicted membership for the Sightword group; and 4) French Immersion students demonstrated similar patterns of performance on the RTI and other cognitive measures as English-only students. Supplemental post-hoc analyses were performed to explore different cut-off scores and methods for determining RTI groups. Implications and limitations of the current findings as well as considerations for future studies are discussed

Music and musicality in brain surgery:The effect on delirium and language

Delirium is a neuropsychiatric clinical syndrome with overlapping symptoms withthe neurologic primary disease. This is why delirium is such a difficult and underexposedtopic in neurosurgical literature. Delirium is a complication which mightaffect recovery after brain surgery, hence we describe in Chapter 2 a systematicreview which focuses on how delirium is defined in the neurosurgical literature.We included twenty-four studies (5589 patients) and found no validation studiesof screening instruments in neurosurgical papers. Delirium screening instruments,validated in other cohorts, were used in 70% of the studies, consisting of theConfusion Assessment Method (- Intensive Care Unit) (45%), Delirium ObservationScreening Scale (5%), Intensive Care Delirium Screening Checklist (10%), Neelonand Champagne Confusion Scale (5%), and Nursing Delirium Screening Scale (5%).Incidence of post-operative delirium after intracranial surgery was 19%, ranging from12 – 26% caused by variation in clinical features and delirium assessment methods.Our review highlighted the need of future research on delirium in neurosurgery,which should focus on optimizing diagnosis, and assessing prognostic significanceand management.It is unclear what the impact of delirium is on the recovery after brain surgery,as delirium is often a self-limiting and temporary complication. In Chapter 3 wetherefore investigated the impact of delirium, by means of incidence and healthoutcomes, and identified independent risk factors by including 2901 intracranialsurgical procedures. We found that delirium was present in 19.4% with an averageonset (mean/SD) within 2.62/1.22 days and associated with more Intensive CareUnit (ICU) admissions and more discharge towards residential care. These numbersconfirm the impact of delirium with its incidence rates, which were in line with ourprevious systematic review, and significant health-related outcomes. We identifiedseveral independent non-modifiable risk factors such as age, pre-existing memoryproblems, emergency operations, and modifiable risk factors such as low preoperativepotassium and opioid and dexamethasone administration, which shed lighton the pathophysiologic mechanisms of POD in this cohort and could be targetedfor future intervention studies.10As listening to recorded music has been proven to lower delirium-eliciting factors inthe surgical population, such as pain, we were interested in the size of analgesic effectand its underlying mechanism before applying this into our clinical setting. In Chapter4 we describe the results of a two-armed experimental randomized controlled trial inwhich 70 participants received increasing electric stimuli through their non-dominantindex finger. This study was conducted within a unique pain model as participantswere blinded for the outcome. Participants in the music group received a 20-minutemusic intervention and participants in the control group a 20-minute resting period.Although the effect of the music intervention on pain endurance was not statisticallysignificant in our intention-to-treat analysis (p = 0.482, CI -0.85; 1.79), the subgroupanalyses revealed an increase in pain endurance in the music group after correcting fortechnical uncertainties (p = 0.013, CI 0.35; 2.85). This effect on pain endurance couldbe attributed to increased parasympathetic activation, as an increased Heart RateVariability (HRV) was observed in the music vs. the control group (p=0.008;0.032).As our prior chapters increased our knowledge on the significance of delirium on thepost-operative recovery after brain surgery and the possible beneficial effects of music,we decided to design a randomized controlled trial. In Chapter 5 we describe theprotocol and in Chapter 6 we describe the results of this single-centered randomizedcontrolled trial. In this trial we included 189 patients undergoing craniotomy andcompared the effects of music administered before, during and after craniotomy withstandard of clinical care. The primary endpoint delirium was assessed by the deliriumobservation screening scale (DOSS) and confirmed by a psychiatrist accordingto DSM-5 criteria. A variety of secondary outcomes were assessed to substantiatethe effects of music on delirium and its clinical implications. Our results supportthe efficacy of music in preventing delirium after craniotomy, as found with DOSS(OR:0.49, p=0.048) but not after DSM-5 confirmation (OR:0.47, p=0.342). Thispossible beneficial effect is substantiated by the effect of music on pre-operativeautonomic tone, measured with HRV (p=0.021;0.025), and depth of anesthesia(p=&lt;0.001;0.022). Our results fit well within the current literature and support theimplementation of music for the prevention of delirium within the neurosurgicalpopulation. However, delirium screening tools should be validated and the long-termimplications should be evaluated after craniotomy to assess the true impact of musicafter brain surgery.Musicality and language in awake brain surgeryIn the second part of this thesis, the focus swifts towards maintaining musicality andlanguage functions around awake craniotomy. Intra-operative mapping of languagedoes not ensure complete maintenance which mostly deteriorates after tumor resection.Most patients recover to their baseline whereas other remain to suffer from aphasiaaffecting their quality of life. The level of musical training might affect the speed andextend of postoperative language recovery, as increased white matter connectivity inthe corpus callosum is described in musicians compared to non-musicians. Hence,in Chapter 7 we evaluate the effect of musicality on language recovery after awakeglioma surgery in a cohort study of forty-six patients. We divided the patients intothree groups based on the musicality and compared the language scores between thesegroups. With the first study on this topic, we support that musicality protects againstlanguage decline after awake glioma surgery, as a trend towards less deterioration oflanguage was observed within the first three months on the phonological domain (p= 0.04). This seemed plausible as phonology shares a common hierarchical structurebetween language and singing. Moreover, our results support the hypothesis ofmusicality induced contralateral compensation in the (sub-) acute phase through thecorpus callosum as the largest difference of size was found in the anterior corpuscallosum in non- musicians compared to trained musicians (p = 0.02).In Chapter 8 we addressed musicality as a sole brain function and whether it canbe protected during awake craniotomy in a systematic review consisting of tenstudies and fourteen patients. Isolated music disruption, defined as disruption duringmusic tasks with intact language/speech and/or motor functions, was identified intwo patients in the right superior temporal gyrus, one patient in the right and onepatient in the left middle frontal gyrus and one patient in the left medial temporalgyrus. Pre-operative functional MRI confirmed these localizations in three patients.Assessment of post-operative musical function, only conducted in seven patients bymeans of standardized (57%) and non-standardized (43%) tools, report no loss ofmusical function. With these results we concluded that mapping music is feasibleduring awake craniotomy. Moreover, we identified certain brain regions relevant formusic production and detected no decline during follow-up, suggesting an addedvalue of mapping musicality during awake craniotomy. A systematic approach to mapmusicality should be implemented, to improve current knowledge on the added valueof mapping musicality during awake craniotomy.<br/

Music and musicality in brain surgery:The effect on delirium and language

Delirium is a neuropsychiatric clinical syndrome with overlapping symptoms withthe neurologic primary disease. This is why delirium is such a difficult and underexposedtopic in neurosurgical literature. Delirium is a complication which mightaffect recovery after brain surgery, hence we describe in Chapter 2 a systematicreview which focuses on how delirium is defined in the neurosurgical literature.We included twenty-four studies (5589 patients) and found no validation studiesof screening instruments in neurosurgical papers. Delirium screening instruments,validated in other cohorts, were used in 70% of the studies, consisting of theConfusion Assessment Method (- Intensive Care Unit) (45%), Delirium ObservationScreening Scale (5%), Intensive Care Delirium Screening Checklist (10%), Neelonand Champagne Confusion Scale (5%), and Nursing Delirium Screening Scale (5%).Incidence of post-operative delirium after intracranial surgery was 19%, ranging from12 – 26% caused by variation in clinical features and delirium assessment methods.Our review highlighted the need of future research on delirium in neurosurgery,which should focus on optimizing diagnosis, and assessing prognostic significanceand management.It is unclear what the impact of delirium is on the recovery after brain surgery,as delirium is often a self-limiting and temporary complication. In Chapter 3 wetherefore investigated the impact of delirium, by means of incidence and healthoutcomes, and identified independent risk factors by including 2901 intracranialsurgical procedures. We found that delirium was present in 19.4% with an averageonset (mean/SD) within 2.62/1.22 days and associated with more Intensive CareUnit (ICU) admissions and more discharge towards residential care. These numbersconfirm the impact of delirium with its incidence rates, which were in line with ourprevious systematic review, and significant health-related outcomes. We identifiedseveral independent non-modifiable risk factors such as age, pre-existing memoryproblems, emergency operations, and modifiable risk factors such as low preoperativepotassium and opioid and dexamethasone administration, which shed lighton the pathophysiologic mechanisms of POD in this cohort and could be targetedfor future intervention studies.10As listening to recorded music has been proven to lower delirium-eliciting factors inthe surgical population, such as pain, we were interested in the size of analgesic effectand its underlying mechanism before applying this into our clinical setting. In Chapter4 we describe the results of a two-armed experimental randomized controlled trial inwhich 70 participants received increasing electric stimuli through their non-dominantindex finger. This study was conducted within a unique pain model as participantswere blinded for the outcome. Participants in the music group received a 20-minutemusic intervention and participants in the control group a 20-minute resting period.Although the effect of the music intervention on pain endurance was not statisticallysignificant in our intention-to-treat analysis (p = 0.482, CI -0.85; 1.79), the subgroupanalyses revealed an increase in pain endurance in the music group after correcting fortechnical uncertainties (p = 0.013, CI 0.35; 2.85). This effect on pain endurance couldbe attributed to increased parasympathetic activation, as an increased Heart RateVariability (HRV) was observed in the music vs. the control group (p=0.008;0.032).As our prior chapters increased our knowledge on the significance of delirium on thepost-operative recovery after brain surgery and the possible beneficial effects of music,we decided to design a randomized controlled trial. In Chapter 5 we describe theprotocol and in Chapter 6 we describe the results of this single-centered randomizedcontrolled trial. In this trial we included 189 patients undergoing craniotomy andcompared the effects of music administered before, during and after craniotomy withstandard of clinical care. The primary endpoint delirium was assessed by the deliriumobservation screening scale (DOSS) and confirmed by a psychiatrist accordingto DSM-5 criteria. A variety of secondary outcomes were assessed to substantiatethe effects of music on delirium and its clinical implications. Our results supportthe efficacy of music in preventing delirium after craniotomy, as found with DOSS(OR:0.49, p=0.048) but not after DSM-5 confirmation (OR:0.47, p=0.342). Thispossible beneficial effect is substantiated by the effect of music on pre-operativeautonomic tone, measured with HRV (p=0.021;0.025), and depth of anesthesia(p=&lt;0.001;0.022). Our results fit well within the current literature and support theimplementation of music for the prevention of delirium within the neurosurgicalpopulation. However, delirium screening tools should be validated and the long-termimplications should be evaluated after craniotomy to assess the true impact of musicafter brain surgery.Musicality and language in awake brain surgeryIn the second part of this thesis, the focus swifts towards maintaining musicality andlanguage functions around awake craniotomy. Intra-operative mapping of languagedoes not ensure complete maintenance which mostly deteriorates after tumor resection.Most patients recover to their baseline whereas other remain to suffer from aphasiaaffecting their quality of life. The level of musical training might affect the speed andextend of postoperative language recovery, as increased white matter connectivity inthe corpus callosum is described in musicians compared to non-musicians. Hence,in Chapter 7 we evaluate the effect of musicality on language recovery after awakeglioma surgery in a cohort study of forty-six patients. We divided the patients intothree groups based on the musicality and compared the language scores between thesegroups. With the first study on this topic, we support that musicality protects againstlanguage decline after awake glioma surgery, as a trend towards less deterioration oflanguage was observed within the first three months on the phonological domain (p= 0.04). This seemed plausible as phonology shares a common hierarchical structurebetween language and singing. Moreover, our results support the hypothesis ofmusicality induced contralateral compensation in the (sub-) acute phase through thecorpus callosum as the largest difference of size was found in the anterior corpuscallosum in non- musicians compared to trained musicians (p = 0.02).In Chapter 8 we addressed musicality as a sole brain function and whether it canbe protected during awake craniotomy in a systematic review consisting of tenstudies and fourteen patients. Isolated music disruption, defined as disruption duringmusic tasks with intact language/speech and/or motor functions, was identified intwo patients in the right superior temporal gyrus, one patient in the right and onepatient in the left middle frontal gyrus and one patient in the left medial temporalgyrus. Pre-operative functional MRI confirmed these localizations in three patients.Assessment of post-operative musical function, only conducted in seven patients bymeans of standardized (57%) and non-standardized (43%) tools, report no loss ofmusical function. With these results we concluded that mapping music is feasibleduring awake craniotomy. Moreover, we identified certain brain regions relevant formusic production and detected no decline during follow-up, suggesting an addedvalue of mapping musicality during awake craniotomy. A systematic approach to mapmusicality should be implemented, to improve current knowledge on the added valueof mapping musicality during awake craniotomy.<br/

The Recognition of Words in Pure Alexia and Hemianopic Alexia: a Neuropsychological Study of 6 Patients

During my PhD I investigated how shape and motion information are processed by the rat visual system, so as to establish how advanced is the representation of higher-order visual information in this species and, ultimately, to understand to what extent rats can present a valuable alternative to monkeys, as experimental models, in vision studies. Specifically, in my thesis work, I have investigated: 1) The possible visual strategies underlying shape recognition. 2) The ability of rat visual cortical areas to represent motion and shape information. My work contemplated two different, but complementary experimental approaches: psychophysical measurements of the rat\u2019s recognition ability and strategy, and in vivo extracellular recordings in anaesthetized animals passively exposed to various (static and moving) visual stimulation. The first approach implied training the rats to an invariant object recognition task, i.e. to tolerate different ranges of transformations in the object\u2019s appearance, and the application of an mage classification technique known as The Bubbles to reveal the visual strategy the animals were able, under different conditions of stimulus discriminability, to adopt in order to perform the task. The second approach involved electrophysiological exploration of different visual areas in the rat\u2019s cortex, in order to investigate putative functional hierarchies (or streams of processing) in the computation of motion and shape information. Results show, on one hand, that rats are able, under conditions of highly stimulus discriminability, to adopt a shape-based, view-invariant, multi-featural recognition strategy; on the other hand, the functional properties of neurons recorded from different visual areas suggest the presence of a putative shape-based, ventral-like stream of processing in the rat\u2019s visual cortex. The general purpose of my work is and has been the unveiling the neural mechanisms that make object recognition happen, with the goal of eventually 1) be able to relate my findings on rats to those on more visually-advanced species, such as human and non-human primates; and 2) collect enough biological data to support the artificial simulation of visual recognition processes, which still presents an important scientific challeng

Fine motor control in using pen for writing and copying: in the impaired and healthy brain

The central issue of the dissertation is to investigate the neural-cognitive basis of writing and copying figures focusing on fine motor abilities. The neuronal recycling hypothesis is used as the theoretical framework, assuming that the ability to use pen emerged from other closely related cognitive abilities. The thesis contained four independent studies with either ischemic stroke patients or healthy participants. Chapter 2 describe the general methods used in our study. Chapter 3 is a neuropsychological study that utilizes principle component analysis and voxel-based morphometry. It explores the neural-cognitive basis underlying complex figure copying (CFC). It demonstrates the involvement of different processing stages that supports figure copying along the dorsal pathway, from visual through eye-hand coordination to the motor associative cortex. Chapters 4-6 focus on writing abilities, across two different systems: phonological and logographic. Chapter 4, is a neuropsychological study that utilized machine learning to explore the latent relationship between writing with other cognitive tasks in English and Chinese. Across the two-writing systems impairment in writing skills could be reliably classified using the same features. These cognitive features were related to CFC, attention, reading, memory and age. Chapter 5 presents two neuropsychological studies that examine the neuro-cognitive makeup of the ability to write words (phonological) and numbers (logographic). The first study is a detail comorbidity analysis of writing deficits of words, numbers, language and motor deficits. It demonstrates that pure writing deficits are very rare, with the majority of writing deficits overlapping with motor (CFC) or language impairments. The second study in this chapter is a VBM study focus on writing numbers and words. We identified two dissociable networks that have been specifically evolved to support writing: a visual-manual motor ability to use pen mediated by right angular and middle frontal gyri; and an ability to transform symbolic representations grapheme to manual programs for use with the pen. Chapter 6 is an fMRI study with healthy participants investigating the neural substrates associated with writing English, Chinese and Pinyin. The study identifies different brain networks that support writing abilities across writing systems: visual information perception and visual motor transformation, semantic component. Chapter 7, summarize and compare the main finding of the four studies. Overall, the studies demonstrate the close relations between the sue of pen and other more basic cognitive functions, such as control of hand movement, language, attention. As predicted by the neuronal recycling hypothesis there were minimal pure deficits of writing or copying; and for proficient writers, the same neural structures supported different writing systems

The representation of language in bilinguals : neural overlap as a function of modality, representational level, language proficiency and context

status: accepte

Semantic radical consistency and character transparency effects in Chinese: an ERP study

BACKGROUND: This event-related potential (ERP) study aims to investigate the representation and temporal dynamics of Chinese orthography-to-semantics mappings by simultaneously manipulating character transparency and semantic radical consistency. Character components, referred to as radicals, make up the building blocks used dur...postprin