Inner Speech's Relationship With Overt Speech in Poststroke Aphasia

PURPOSE: Relatively preserved inner speech alongside poor overt speech has been documented in some persons with aphasia (PWA), but the relationship of overt speech with inner speech is still largely unclear, as few studies have directly investigated these factors. The present study investigates the relationship of relatively preserved inner speech in aphasia with selected measures of language and cognition. METHODS: Thirty-eight persons with chronic aphasia (27 men, 11 women; average age 64.53 ± 13.29 years, time since stroke 8–111 months) were classified as having relatively preserved inner and overt speech (n = 21), relatively preserved inner speech with poor overt speech (n = 8), or not classified due to insufficient measurements of inner and/or overt speech (n = 9). Inner speech scores (by group) were correlated with selected measures of language and cognition from the Comprehensive Aphasia Test (Swinburn, Porter, & Al, 2004). RESULTS: The group with poor overt speech showed a significant relationship of inner speech with overt naming (r = .95, p < .01) and with mean length of utterance produced during a written picture description (r = .96, p < .01). Correlations between inner speech and language and cognition factors were not significant for the group with relatively good overt speech. CONCLUSIONS: As in previous research, we show that relatively preserved inner speech is found alongside otherwise severe production deficits in PWA. PWA with poor overt speech may rely more on preserved inner speech for overt picture naming (perhaps due to shared resources with verbal working memory) and for written picture description (perhaps due to reliance on inner speech due to perceived task difficulty). Assessments of inner speech may be useful as a standard component of aphasia screening, and therapy focused on improving and using inner speech may prove clinically worthwhile

Spoken Discourse Assessment and Analysis in Aphasia: An International Survey of Current Practices.

Purpose Spoken discourse analysis is commonly employed in the assessment and treatment of people living with aphasia, yet there is no standardization in assessment, analysis, or reporting procedures, thereby precluding comparison/meta-analyses of data and hindering replication of findings. An important first step is to identify current practices in collecting and analyzing spoken discourse in aphasia. Thus, this study surveyed current practices, with the goal of working toward standardizing spoken discourse assessment first in research settings with subsequent implementation into clinical settings. Method A mixed-methods (quantitative and qualitative) survey was publicized to researchers and clinicians around the globe who have collected and/or analyzed spoken discourse data in aphasia. The survey data were collected between September and November 2019. Results Of the 201 individuals who consented to participate, 189 completed all mandatory questions in the survey (with fewer completing nonmandatory response questions). The majority of respondents reported barriers to utilizing discourse including transcription, coding, and analysis. The most common barrier was time (e.g., lack of time). Respondents also indicated that there was a lack of, and a need for, psychometric properties and normative data for spoken discourse use in the assessment and treatment of persons with aphasia. Quantitative and qualitative results are described in detail. Conclusions The current survey study evaluated spoken discourse methods in aphasia across research and clinical settings. Findings from this study will be used to guide development of process standardization in spoken discourse and for the creation of a psychometric and normative property database. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.166395100

RELICS: spectroscopy of gravitationally lensed z ≃ 2 reionization-era analogues and implications for C III] detections at z > 6

Recent observations have revealed the presence of strong C III] emission (EWCIII]>20 Å) in z > 6 galaxies, the origin of which remains unclear. In an effort to understand the nature of these line emitters, we have initiated a survey targeting C III] emission in gravitationally lensed reionization-era analogues identified in Hubble Space Telescope imaging of clusters from the Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey. Here, we report initial results on four galaxies selected to have low stellar masses (2–8 × 107 M⊙) and J125-band flux excesses indicative of intense [O III] + H β emission (EW[OIII]+Hβ = 500–2000 Å), similar to what has been observed at z > 6. We detect C III] emission in three of the four sources, with the C III] EW reaching values seen in the reionization era (EWCIII]≃17−22 Å) in the two sources with the strongest optical line emission (EW[OIII]+Hβ≃2000 Å). We have obtained a Magellan/FIRE (Folded-port InfraRed Echellette) near-infrared spectrum of the strongest C III] emitter in our sample, revealing gas that is both metal poor and highly ionized. Using photoionization models, we are able to simultaneously reproduce the intense C III] and optical line emission for extremely young (2–3 Myr) and metal-poor (0.06–0.08 Z⊙) stellar populations, as would be expected after a substantial upturn in the star formation rate of a low-mass galaxy. The sources in this survey are among the first for which C III] has been used as the primary means of redshift confirmation. We suggest that it should be possible to extend this approach to z > 6 with current facilities, using C III] to measure redshifts of objects with IRAC excesses indicating EW[OIII]+Hβ≃2000 Å, providing a method of spectroscopic confirmation independent of Ly α

ALMaQUEST. IV. The ALMA-MaNGA QUEnching and STar Formation (ALMaQUEST) Survey

The ALMaQUEST (ALMA-MaNGA QUEnching and STar formation) survey is a program with spatially-resolved $^{12}$CO(1-0) measurements obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) for 46 galaxies selected from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) DR15 optical integral-field spectroscopic survey. The aim of the ALMaQUEST survey is to investigate the dependence of star formation activity on the cold molecular gas content at kpc scales in nearby galaxies. The sample consists of galaxies spanning a wide range in specific star formation rate (sSFR), including starburst (SB), main-sequence (MS), and green valley (GV) galaxies. In this paper, we present the sample selection and characteristics of the ALMA observations, and showcase some of the key results enabled by the combination of spatially-matched stellar populations and gas measurements. Considering the global (aperture-matched) stellar mass, molecular gas mass, and star formation rate of the sample, we find that the sSFR depends on both the star formation efficiency (SFE) and the molecular gas fraction ($f_{\rm H_{2}}$), although the correlation with the latter is slightly weaker. Furthermore, the dependence of sSFR on the molecular gas content (SFE or $f_{\rm H_{2}}$) is stronger than that on either the atomic gas fraction or the molecular-to-atomic gas fraction, albeit with the small HI sample size. On kpc scales, the variations in both SFE and $f_{\rm H_{2}}$ within individual galaxies can be as large as 1-2 dex thereby demonstrating that the availability of spatially-resolved observations is essential to understand the details of both star formation and quenching processes.STFC ER

The influence of semantic and phonological factors on syntactic decisions: An event-related brain potential study

During language production and comprehension, information about a word's syntactic properties is sometimes needed. While the decision about the grammatical gender of a word requires access to syntactic knowledge, it has also been hypothesized that semantic (i.e., biological gender) or phonological information (i.e., sound regularities) may influence this decision. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured while native speakers of German processed written words that were or were not semantically and/or phonologically marked for gender. Behavioral and ERP results showed that participants were faster in making a gender decision when words were semantically and/or phonologically gender marked than when this was not the case, although the phonological effects were less clear. In conclusion, our data provide evidence that even though participants performed a grammatical gender decision, this task can be influenced by semantic and phonological factors

SDSS-IV MaNGA-resolved Star Formation and Molecular Gas Properties of Green Valley Galaxies: A First Look with ALMA and MaNGA

We study the role of cold gas in quenching star formation in the green valley by analyzing ALMA 12 CO (1-0) observations of three galaxies with resolved optical spectroscopy from the MaNGA survey. We present resolution-matched maps of the star formation rate and molecular gas mass. These data are used to calculate the star formation efficiency (SFE) and gas fraction (f gas ) for these galaxies separately in the central "bulge" regions and outer disks. We find that, for the two galaxies whose global specific star formation rate (sSFR) deviates most from the star formation main sequence, the gas fraction in the bulges is significantly lower than that in their disks, supporting an "inside-out" model of galaxy quenching. For the two galaxies where SFE can be reliably determined in the central regions, the bulges and disks share similar SFEs. This suggests that a decline in f gas is the main driver of lowered sSFR in bulges compared to disks in green valley galaxies. Within the disks, there exist common correlations between the sSFR and SFE and between sSFR and f gas on kiloparsec scales - the local SFE or f gas in the disks declines with local sSFR. Our results support a picture in which the sSFR in bulges is primarily controlled by f gas , whereas both SFE and f gas play a role in lowering the sSFR in disks. A larger sample is required to confirm if the trend established in this work is representative of the green valley as a whole.The work is supported by the Ministry of Science & Technology of Taiwan under the grant MOST 103-2112-M-001-031-MY3 and 106-2112-M-001-034. R.M. and F.B. acknowledge support by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). R.M. acknowledges ERC Advanced Grant 695671 "QUENCH.

Mapping Genetically Compensatory Pathways from Synthetic Lethal Interactions in Yeast

Background: Synthetic lethal genetic interaction analysis has been successfully applied to predicting the functions of genes and their pathway identities. In the context of synthetic lethal interaction data alone, the global similarity of synthetic lethal interaction patterns between two genes is used to predict gene function. With physical interaction data, such as proteinprotein interactions, the enrichment of physical interactions within subsets of genes and the enrichment of synthetic lethal interactions between those subsets of genes are used as an indication of compensatory pathways. Result: In this paper, we propose a method of mapping genetically compensatory pathways from synthetic lethal interactions. Our method is designed to discover pairs of gene-sets in which synthetic lethal interactions are depleted among the genes in an individual set and where such gene-set pairs are connected by many synthetic lethal interactions. By its nature, our method could select compensatory pathway pairs that buffer the deleterious effect of the failure of either one, without the need of physical interaction data. By focusing on compensatory pathway pairs where genes in each individual pathway have a highly homogenous cellular function, we show that many cellular functions have genetically compensatory properties. Conclusion: We conclude that synthetic lethal interaction data are a powerful source to map genetically compensatory pathways, especially in systems lacking physical interaction information, and that the cellular function network contain

Characteristic Evolution and Matching

I review the development of numerical evolution codes for general relativity based upon the characteristic initial value problem. Progress in characteristic evolution is traced from the early stage of 1D feasibility studies to 2D axisymmetric codes that accurately simulate the oscillations and gravitational collapse of relativistic stars and to current 3D codes that provide pieces of a binary black hole spacetime. Cauchy codes have now been successful at simulating all aspects of the binary black hole problem inside an artificially constructed outer boundary. A prime application of characteristic evolution is to extend such simulations to null infinity where the waveform from the binary inspiral and merger can be unambiguously computed. This has now been accomplished by Cauchy-characteristic extraction, where data for the characteristic evolution is supplied by Cauchy data on an extraction worldtube inside the artificial outer boundary. The ultimate application of characteristic evolution is to eliminate the role of this outer boundary by constructing a global solution via Cauchy-characteristic matching. Progress in this direction is discussed.Comment: New version to appear in Living Reviews 2012. arXiv admin note: updated version of arXiv:gr-qc/050809

The expression of FHIT, PCNA and EGFR in benign and malignant breast lesions

Immunohistochemical staining for FHIT and PCNA proteins was carried out in 451 breast lesions showing nonproliferative benign breast disease (BBD) (n=263), proliferative BBD without atypia (n=128), proliferative BBD with atypia (n=11), carcinoma in situ (n=15) or invasive carcinoma (n=34) and for EGFR protein in a subset of 71 of these cases. FHIT underexpression was not detected in nonproliferative lesions, but occurred in 2% of proliferative BBD without atypia, 10% proliferative BBD with atypia, 27% of carcinoma in situ and 41% of invasive carcinoma, which suggests that it could be useful in assessing those carcinoma in situ lesions (ductal, DCIS and lobular, LCIS) that are more likely to progress to malignancy. Preliminary microarray comparisons on DCIS and invasive carcinoma samples dissected from formalin-fixed paraffin sections showed a consistent downregulation of two previously identified FHIT-related genes, caspase 1 and BRCA1 in lesions underexpressing FHIT

Heterozygous Yeast Deletion Collection Screens Reveal Essential Targets of Hsp90

Hsp90 is an essential eukaryotic chaperone with a role in folding specific “client” proteins such as kinases and hormone receptors. Previously performed homozygous diploid yeast deletion collection screens uncovered broad requirements for Hsp90 in cellular transport and cell cycle progression. These screens also revealed that the requisite cellular functions of Hsp90 change with growth temperature. We present here for the first time the results of heterozygous deletion collection screens conducted at the hypothermic stress temperature of 15°C. Extensive bioinformatic analyses were performed on the resulting data in combination with data from homozygous and heterozygous screens previously conducted at normal (30°C) and hyperthermic stress (37°C) growth temperatures. Our resulting meta-analysis uncovered extensive connections between Hsp90 and (1) general transcription, (2) ribosome biogenesis and (3) GTP binding proteins. Predictions from bioinformatic analyses were tested experimentally, supporting a role for Hsp90 in ribosome stability. Importantly, the integrated analysis of the 15°C heterozygous deletion pool screen with previously conducted 30°C and 37°C screens allows for essential genetic targets of Hsp90 to emerge. Altogether, these novel contributions enable a more complete picture of essential Hsp90 functions