Perceptual accent rating and attribution in psychogenic FAS: some further evidence challenging Whitaker's operational definition

A 40-year-old, non-aphasic, right-handed, and polyglot (L1: French, L2: Dutch, L3: English) woman with a 12 year history of addiction to opiates and psychoactive substances, and clear psychiatric problems, presented with a foreign accent of sudden onset in L1. Speech evolved towards a mostly fluent output, despite a stutter-like behavior and a marked grammatical output disorder. The psychogenic etiology of the accent foreignness was construed based upon the patient’s complex medical history, and psychodiagnostic, neuropsychological, and neurolinguistic assessments. The presence of a foreign accent was affirmed by a perceptual accent rating and attribution experiment. It is argued that this patient provides additional evidence demonstrating the outdatedness of Whitaker’s (1982) definition of Foreign Accent Syndrome, as only one of the four operational criteria was unequivocally applicable to our patient: her accent foreignness was not only recognized by her relatives and the medical staff, but also by a group of native French-speaking laymen. However, our patient defied the three remaining criteria, as central nervous system damage could not conclusively be demonstrated, psychodiagnostic assessment raised the hypothesis of a conversion disorder, and the patient was a polyglot whose newly gained accent was associated with a range of foreign languages, which exceeded the ones she spoke

Psychogenic Foreign Accent Syndrome: A New Case

This paper presents the case of a 33-year-old, right-handed, French-speaking Belgian lady who was involved in a car accident as a pedestrian. Six months after the incident she developed a German/Flemish-like accent. The patient's medical history, the onset of the FAS and the possible psychological causes of the accent change are analyzed. Relevant neuropsychological, neurolinguistic, and psychodiagnostic test results are presented and discussed. The psychodiagnostic interview and testing will receive special attention, because these have been underreported in previous FAS case reports. Furthermore, an accent rating experiment was carried out in order to assess the foreign quality of the patient's speech. Pre- and post-morbid spontaneous speech samples were analyzed phonetically to identify the pronunciation characteristics associated with this type of FAS. Several findings were considered essential in the diagnosis of psychogenic FAS: the psychological assessments as well as the clinical interview confirmed the presence of psychological problems, while neurological damage was excluded by means of repeated neuroimaging and neurological examinations. The type and nature of the speech symptoms and the accent fluctuations associated with the patient's psychological state cannot be explained by a neurological disorder. Moreover, the indifference of the patient toward her condition may also suggest a psychogenic etiology, as the opposite is usually observed in neurogenic FAS patients

The observed galaxy bispectrum from single-field inflation in the squeezed limit

Using the consistency relation in Fourier space, we derive the observed galaxy bispectrum from single- eld in ation in the squeezed limit, in which one of the three modes has a wavelength much longer than the other two. This provides a non-trivial check of the full computation of the bispectrum based on second-order cosmological perturbation theory in this limit. We show that gauge modes need to be carefully removed in the second-order cosmological perturbations in order to calculate the observed galaxy bispectrum in the squeezed limit. We then give an estimate of the e ective non- Gaussianity due to general-relativistic lightcone e ects that could mimic a primordial non-Gaussian signal

Human, Nature, Dynamism: The Effects of Content and Movement Perception on Brain Activations during the Aesthetic Judgment of Representational Paintings

Movement perception and its role in aesthetic experience have been often studied, within empirical aesthetics, in relation to the human body. No such specificity has been defined in neuroimaging studies with respect to contents lacking a human form. The aim of this work was to explore, through functional magnetic imaging (f MRI), how perceived movement is processed during the aesthetic judgment of paintings using two types of content: human subjects and scenes of nature. Participants, untutored in the arts, were shown the stimuli and asked to make aesthetic judgments. Additionally, they were instructed to observe the paintings and to rate their perceived movement in separate blocks. Observation highlighted spontaneous processes associated with aesthetic experience, whereas movement judgment outlined activations specifically related to movement processing. The ratings recorded during aesthetic judgment revealed that nature scenes received higher scored than human content paintings. The imaging data showed similar activation, relative to baseline, for all stimuli in the three tasks, including activation of occipito-temporal areas, posterior parietal, and premotor cortices. Contrast analyses within aesthetic judgment task showed that human content activated, relative to nature, precuneus, fusiform gyrus, and posterior temporal areas, whose activation was prominent for dynamic human paintings. In contrast, nature scenes activated, relative to human stimuli, occipital and posterior parietal cortex/precuneus, involved in visuospatial exploration and pragmatic coding of movement, as well as central insula. Static nature paintings further activated, relative to dynamic nature stimuli, central and posterior insula. Besides insular activation, which was specific for aesthetic judgment, we found a large overlap in the activation pattern characterizing each stimulus dimension (content and dynamism) across observation, aesthetic judgment, and movement judgment tasks. These findings support the idea that the aesthetic evaluation of artworks depicting both human subjects and nature scenes involves a motor component, and that the associated neural processes occur quite spontaneously in the viewer. Furthermore, considering the functional roles of posterior and central insula, we suggest that nature paintings may evoke aesthetic processes requiring an additional proprioceptive and sensori-motor component implemented by “motor accessibility” to the represented scenario, which is needed to judge the aesthetic value of the observed painting

Outcomes from elective colorectal cancer surgery during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

This study aimed to describe the change in surgical practice and the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on mortality after surgical resection of colorectal cancer during the initial phases of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

Chastity : or, Our secret sins /

Mode of access: Internet

Introduction to the Laplace transform,

Mode of access: Internet

The new gymnastics for men, women, and children.

"The new gymnastics as an instrument in education. A lecture delivered before the British College of Preceptors, London, March 7, 1864, by Moses Coit Tyler": p. [243]-267.Mode of access: Internet

The new gymnastics for men, women and children,: with a translation of Prof. Kloss's Dumb-bell instructor and Prof. Schreber's Pangymnastikon.

274 p. : ill. ; 20 cm.Electronic text and image data. Ann Arbor, Mich. : University of Michigan, Digital Library Initiatives, 1996. Includes both TIFF files and keyword searchable text. [Making of America] This volume is made possible by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation