New insights into name category-related effects: is the Age of Acquisition a possible factor?

which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Background: Electrophysiological, hemodynamic and neuropsychological studies have provided evidence of dissociation in the way words belonging to different semantic categories (e.g., animals, tools, actions) are represented in the brain. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether a word's semantic domain may affect the amplitude and latency of ERP components, independently of any other factor. Methods: EEGs were recorded from 16 volunteers engaged in a lexical decision task (word/nonword discrimination) involving 100 words (flora and fauna names). This task allowed us to evaluate differences in processing between words belonging to different categories (fauna vs. flora) independently of task demands. All stimuli were balanced in terms of length, frequency of occurrence, familiarity and imageability. Low Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography (LORETA) was performed on ERP difference waves of interest. Results: Our findings showed that the two categories were discriminated as early as 200 ms poststimulus, with larger responses to flora names over the left occipito-temporal areas, namely BA3

Neural markers of a greater female responsiveness to social stimuli

Abstract Background There is fMRI evidence that women are neurally predisposed to process infant laughter and crying. Other findings show that women might be more empathic and sensitive than men to emotional facial expressions. However, no gender difference in the brain responses to persons and unanimated scenes has hitherto been demonstrated. Results Twenty-four men and women viewed 220 images portraying persons or landscapes and ERPs were recorded from 128 sites. In women, but not in men, the N2 component (210–270) was much larger to persons than to scenes. swLORETA showed significant bilateral activation of FG (BA19/37) in both genders when viewing persons as opposed to scenes. Only women showed a source of activity in the STG and in the right MOG (extra-striate body area, EBA), and only men in the left parahippocampal area (PPA). Conclusion A significant gender difference was found in activation of the left and right STG (BA22) and the cingulate cortex for the subtractive condition women minus men, thus indicating that women might have a greater preference or interest for social stimuli (faces and persons).</p

Dissociating object familiarity from linguistic properties in mirror word reading

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>It is known that the orthographic properties of linguistic stimuli are processed within the left occipitotemporal cortex at about 150–200 ms. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) to words in standard or mirror orientation to investigate the role of visual word form in reading. Word inversion was performed to determine whether rotated words lose their linguistic properties.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>About 1300 Italian words and legal pseudo-words were presented to 18 right-handed Italian students engaged in a letter detection task. EEG was recorded from 128 scalp sites.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>ERPs showed an early effect of word orientation at ~150 ms, with larger N1 amplitudes to rotated than to standard words. Low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (LORETA) revealed an increase in N1 to rotated words primarily in the right occipital lobe (BA 18), which may indicate an effect of stimulus familiarity. N1 was greater to target than to non-target letters at left lateral occipital sites, thus reflecting the first stage of orthographic processing. LORETA revealed a strong focus of activation for this effect in the left fusiform gyrus (BA 37), which is consistent with the so-called visual word form area (VWFA). Standard words (compared to pseudowords) elicited an enhancement of left occipito/temporal negativity at about 250–350 ms, followed by a larger anterior P3, a reduced frontal N400 and a huge late positivity. Lexical effects for rotated strings were delayed by about 100 ms at occipito/temporal sites, and were totally absent at later processing stages. This suggests the presence of implicit reading processes, which were pre-attentive and of perceptual nature for mirror strings.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The contrast between inverted and standard words did not lead to the identification of a purely linguistic brain region. This finding suggests some caveats in the interpretation of the inversion effect in subtractive paradigms.</p

The role of left and right hemispheres in the comprehension of idiomatic language: an electrical neuroimaging study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The specific role of the two cerebral hemispheres in processing idiomatic language is highly debated. While some studies show the involvement of the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG), other data support the crucial role of right-hemispheric regions, and particularly of the middle/superior temporal area. Time-course and neural bases of literal vs. idiomatic language processing were compared. Fifteen volunteers silently read 360 idiomatic and literal Italian sentences and decided whether they were semantically related or unrelated to a following target word, while their EEGs were recorded from 128 electrodes. Word length, abstractness and frequency of use, sentence comprehensibility, familiarity and cloze probability were matched across classes.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Participants responded more quickly to literal than to idiomatic sentences, probably indicating a difference in task difficulty. Occipito/temporal N2 component had a greater amplitude in response to idioms between 250-300 ms. Related swLORETA source reconstruction revealed a difference in the activation of the left fusiform gyrus (FG, BA19) and medial frontal gyri for the contrast idiomatic-minus-literal. Centroparietal N400 was much larger to idiomatic than to literal phrases (360-550 ms). The intra-cortical generators of this effect included the left and right FG, the left cingulate gyrus, the right limbic area, the right MTG (BA21) and the left middle frontal gyrus (BA46). Finally, an anterior late positivity (600-800 ms) was larger to idiomatic than literal phrases. ERPs also showed a larger right centro-parietal N400 to associated than non-associated targets (not differing as a function of sentence type), and a greater right frontal P600 to idiomatic than literal associated targets.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The data indicate bilateral involvement of both hemispheres in idiom comprehension, including the right MTG after 350 ms and the right medial frontal gyrus in the time windows 270-300 and 500-780 ms. In addition, the activation of left and right limbic regions (400-450 ms) suggests that they have a role in the emotional connotation of colourful idiomatic language. The data support the view that there is direct access to the idiomatic meaning of figurative language, not dependent on the suppression of its literal meaning, for which the LIFG was previously thought to be responsible.</p

How Are ‘Barack Obama’ and ‘President Elect’ Differentially Stored in the Brain? An ERP Investigation on the Processing of Proper and Common Noun Pairs

BACKGROUND:One of the most debated issues in the cognitive neuroscience of language is whether distinct semantic domains are differentially represented in the brain. Clinical studies described several anomic dissociations with no clear neuroanatomical correlate. Neuroimaging studies have shown that memory retrieval is more demanding for proper than common nouns in that the former are purely arbitrary referential expressions. In this study a semantic relatedness paradigm was devised to investigate neural processing of proper and common nouns. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:780 words (arranged in pairs of Italian nouns/adjectives and the first/last names of well known persons) were presented. Half pairs were semantically related ("Woody Allen" or "social security"), while the others were not ("Sigmund Parodi" or "judicial cream"). All items were balanced for length, frequency, familiarity and semantic relatedness. Participants were to decide about the semantic relatedness of the two items in a pair. RTs and N400 data suggest that the task was more demanding for common nouns. The LORETA neural generators for the related-unrelated contrast (for proper names) included the left fusiform gyrus, right medial temporal gyrus, limbic and parahippocampal regions, inferior parietal and inferior frontal areas, which are thought to be involved in the conjoined processing a familiar face with the relevant episodic information. Person name was more emotional and sensory vivid than common noun semantic access. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE:When memory retrieval is not required, proper name access (conspecifics knowledge) is not more demanding. The neural generators of N400 to unrelated items (unknown persons and things) did not differ as a function of lexical class, thus suggesting that proper and common nouns are not treated differently as belonging to different grammatical classes

ITALIAN CANCER FIGURES - REPORT 2015: The burden of rare cancers in Italy = I TUMORI IN ITALIA - RAPPORTO 2015: I tumori rari in Italia

OBJECTIVES: This collaborative study, based on data collected by the network of Italian Cancer Registries (AIRTUM), describes the burden of rare cancers in Italy. Estimated number of new rare cancer cases yearly diagnosed (incidence), proportion of patients alive after diagnosis (survival), and estimated number of people still alive after a new cancer diagnosis (prevalence) are provided for about 200 different cancer entities. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Data herein presented were provided by AIRTUM population- based cancer registries (CRs), covering nowadays 52% of the Italian population. This monograph uses the AIRTUM database (January 2015), which includes all malignant cancer cases diagnosed between 1976 and 2010. All cases are coded according to the International Classification of Diseases for Oncology (ICD-O-3). Data underwent standard quality checks (described in the AIRTUM data management protocol) and were checked against rare-cancer specific quality indicators proposed and published by RARECARE and HAEMACARE (www.rarecarenet.eu; www.haemacare.eu). The definition and list of rare cancers proposed by the RARECAREnet "Information Network on Rare Cancers" project were adopted: rare cancers are entities (defined as a combination of topographical and morphological codes of the ICD-O-3) having an incidence rate of less than 6 per 100,000 per year in the European population. This monograph presents 198 rare cancers grouped in 14 major groups. Crude incidence rates were estimated as the number of all new cancers occurring in 2000-2010 divided by the overall population at risk, for males and females (also for gender-specific tumours).The proportion of rare cancers out of the total cancers (rare and common) by site was also calculated. Incidence rates by sex and age are reported. The expected number of new cases in 2015 in Italy was estimated assuming the incidence in Italy to be the same as in the AIRTUM area. One- and 5-year relative survival estimates of cases aged 0-99 years diagnosed between 2000 and 2008 in the AIRTUM database, and followed up to 31 December 2009, were calculated using complete cohort survival analysis. To estimate the observed prevalence in Italy, incidence and follow-up data from 11 CRs for the period 1992-2006 were used, with a prevalence index date of 1 January 2007. Observed prevalence in the general population was disentangled by time prior to the reference date (≤2 years, 2-5 years, ≤15 years). To calculate the complete prevalence proportion at 1 January 2007 in Italy, the 15-year observed prevalence was corrected by the completeness index, in order to account for those cancer survivors diagnosed before the cancer registry activity started. The completeness index by cancer and age was obtained by means of statistical regression models, using incidence and survival data available in the European RARECAREnet data. RESULTS: In total, 339,403 tumours were included in the incidence analysis. The annual incidence rate (IR) of all 198 rare cancers in the period 2000-2010 was 147 per 100,000 per year, corresponding to about 89,000 new diagnoses in Italy each year, accounting for 25% of all cancer. Five cancers, rare at European level, were not rare in Italy because their IR was higher than 6 per 100,000; these tumours were: diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and squamous cell carcinoma of larynx (whose IRs in Italy were 7 per 100,000), multiple myeloma (IR: 8 per 100,000), hepatocellular carcinoma (IR: 9 per 100,000) and carcinoma of thyroid gland (IR: 14 per 100,000). Among the remaining 193 rare cancers, more than two thirds (No. 139) had an annual IR &lt;0.5 per 100,000, accounting for about 7,100 new cancers cases; for 25 cancer types, the IR ranged between 0.5 and 1 per 100,000, accounting for about 10,000 new diagnoses; while for 29 cancer types the IR was between 1 and 6 per 100,000, accounting for about 41,000 new cancer cases. Among all rare cancers diagnosed in Italy, 7% were rare haematological diseases (IR: 41 per 100,000), 18% were solid rare cancers. Among the latter, the rare epithelial tumours of the digestive system were the most common (23%, IR: 26 per 100,000), followed by epithelial tumours of head and neck (17%, IR: 19) and rare cancers of the female genital system (17%, IR: 17), endocrine tumours (13% including thyroid carcinomas and less than 1% with an IR of 0.4 excluding thyroid carcinomas), sarcomas (8%, IR: 9 per 100,000), central nervous system tumours and rare epithelial tumours of the thoracic cavity (5%with an IR equal to 6 and 5 per 100,000, respectively). The remaining (rare male genital tumours, IR: 4 per 100,000; tumours of eye, IR: 0.7 per 100,000; neuroendocrine tumours, IR: 4 per 100,000; embryonal tumours, IR: 0.4 per 100,000; rare skin tumours and malignant melanoma of mucosae, IR: 0.8 per 100,000) each constituted &lt;4% of all solid rare cancers. Patients with rare cancers were on average younger than those with common cancers. Essentially, all childhood cancers were rare, while after age 40 years, the common cancers (breast, prostate, colon, rectum, and lung) became increasingly more frequent. For 254,821 rare cancers diagnosed in 2000-2008, 5-year RS was on average 55%, lower than the corresponding figures for patients with common cancers (68%). RS was lower for rare cancers than for common cancers at 1 year and continued to diverge up to 3 years, while the gap remained constant from 3 to 5 years after diagnosis. For rare and common cancers, survival decreased with increasing age. Five-year RS was similar and high for both rare and common cancers up to 54 years; it decreased with age, especially after 54 years, with the elderly (75+ years) having a 37% and 20% lower survival than those aged 55-64 years for rare and common cancers, respectively. We estimated that about 900,000 people were alive in Italy with a previous diagnosis of a rare cancer in 2010 (prevalence). The highest prevalence was observed for rare haematological diseases (278 per 100,000) and rare tumours of the female genital system (265 per 100,000). Very low prevalence (&lt;10 prt 100,000) was observed for rare epithelial skin cancers, for rare epithelial tumours of the digestive system and rare epithelial tumours of the thoracic cavity. COMMENTS: One in four cancers cases diagnosed in Italy is a rare cancer, in agreement with estimates of 24% calculated in Europe overall. In Italy, the group of all rare cancers combined, include 5 cancer types with an IR&gt;6 per 100,000 in Italy, in particular thyroid cancer (IR: 14 per 100,000).The exclusion of thyroid carcinoma from rare cancers reduces the proportion of them in Italy in 2010 to 22%. Differences in incidence across population can be due to the different distribution of risk factors (whether environmental, lifestyle, occupational, or genetic), heterogeneous diagnostic intensity activity, as well as different diagnostic capacity; moreover heterogeneity in accuracy of registration may determine some minor differences in the account of rare cancers. Rare cancers had worse prognosis than common cancers at 1, 3, and 5 years from diagnosis. Differences between rare and common cancers were small 1 year after diagnosis, but survival for rare cancers declined more markedly thereafter, consistent with the idea that treatments for rare cancers are less effective than those for common cancers. However, differences in stage at diagnosis could not be excluded, as 1- and 3-year RS for rare cancers was lower than the corresponding figures for common cancers. Moreover, rare cancers include many cancer entities with a bad prognosis (5-year RS &lt;50%): cancer of head and neck, oesophagus, small intestine, ovary, brain, biliary tract, liver, pleura, multiple myeloma, acute myeloid and lymphatic leukaemia; in contrast, most common cancer cases are breast, prostate, and colorectal cancers, which have a good prognosis. The high prevalence observed for rare haematological diseases and rare tumours of the female genital system is due to their high incidence (the majority of haematological diseases are rare and gynaecological cancers added up to fairly high incidence rates) and relatively good prognosis. The low prevalence of rare epithelial tumours of the digestive system was due to the low survival rates of the majority of tumours included in this group (oesophagus, stomach, small intestine, pancreas, and liver), regardless of the high incidence rate of rare epithelial cancers of these sites. This AIRTUM study confirms that rare cancers are a major public health problem in Italy and provides quantitative estimations, for the first time in Italy, to a problem long known to exist. This monograph provides detailed epidemiologic indicators for almost 200 rare cancers, the majority of which (72%) are very rare (IR&lt;0.5 per 100,000). These data are of major interest for different stakeholders. Health care planners can find useful information herein to properly plan and think of how to reorganise health care services. Researchers now have numbers to design clinical trials considering alternative study designs and statistical approaches. Population-based cancer registries with good quality data are the best source of information to describe the rare cancer burden in a population

Sense of Coherence Predicts Physical Activity Maintenance and Health-Related Quality of Life: A 3-Year Longitudinal Study on Cardiovascular Patients

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality globally. A physically active lifestyle can improve the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of people with CVD. Nevertheless, adherence to a physically active lifestyle is poor. This study examined the longitudinal (pre-event, 6-, 12-, 24-, and 36-month follow-ups) physical activity profiles in 275 patients (mean age = 57.1 years; SD = 7.87; 84% men) after the first acute coronary event. Moreover, it investigated the associations among physical activity, sense of coherence (SOC), and HRQoL. Physical activity profiles were identified through latent class growth analysis, and linear regressions were then performed to explore the association between physical activity, SOC, and HRQoL. After the cardiovascular event, 62% of patients reached adequate physical activity levels and maintained them over time (virtuous profile). The remaining 38% could not implement (23%) or maintain (15%) a healthy behavior. A strong SOC at baseline (standardized &beta; = 0.19, p = 0.002) predicted the probability of belonging to the virtuous profile. Moreover, a strong SOC at baseline (standardized &beta; = 0.27, p &lt; 0.001), together with the probability of belonging to the virtuous profile (standardized &beta; = 0.16, p = 0.031), predicted a better HRQoL at the final follow-up. Findings showed a strong relationship between SOC, the ability to adopt a physically active lifestyle stably over time, and HRQoL in patients with CVD. They suggest the importance of tailoring physical activity interventions by promoting resilience resources such as SOC to improve patients&rsquo; quality of life after an acute coronary event

Congenital Unilateral Deafness Affects Cerebral Organization of Reading

It is known that early sensory deprivation modifies brain functional structure and connectivity. The aim of the present study was to investigate the neuro-functional organization of reading in a patient with profound congenital unilateral deafness. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we compared cortical networks supporting the processing of written words in patient RA (completely deaf in the right ear since birth) and in a group of control volunteers. We found that congenital unilateral hearing deprivation modifies neural mechanisms of word reading. Indeed, while written word processing was left-lateralized in controls, we found a strong right lateralization of the fusiform and inferior occipital gyri activation in RA. This finding goes in the same direction of recent proposals that the ventral occipito-temporal activity in word reading seem to lateralize to the same hemisphere as the one involved in spoken language processing