A study of semantic memory after brain injury: Learning newly coined French words

AbstractObjectiveTo investigate semantic memory in brain-injured patients.MethodsWe used the new word questionnaire (QMN) to assess the ability of 12 brain-injured patients and 12 healthy controls to define French words, which had been admitted to the dictionary in 1996 to 1997 or in 2006 to 2007.ResultsDespite amnesia or severe executive disorders, the brain-injured patients were able to learn new words and remember those that they already learnt. They successfully selected the relevant phrase in which the new word was placed and were reasonably good at recognizing the right definition from among decoys. In contrast, they had trouble defining the words and compensated for this by giving examples. These problems were correlated with their vocabulary and executive function scores in a battery of neuropsychological tests.ConclusionOur results suggest that frontal injury leads to an impairment in accurate word selection and the scheduling abilities required to generate word definitions

Quality of life in childhood epilepsy with lateralized epileptogenic foci

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Measuring quality of life (QOL) helps to delineate mechanisms underlying the interaction of disease and psychosocial factors. In adults, epileptic foci in the left temporal lobe led to lower QOL and higher depression and anxiety as compared to the right-sided foci. No study addressed the development of QOL disturbances depending on the lateralization of epileptogenic focus. The objective of our study was to examine QOL in children with lateralized epileptiform discharges.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Thirty-one parents of children with epilepsy filled the Health-Related Quality of Life in Childhood Epilepsy Questionnaire (QOLCE). Fifteen children had foci in the left hemisphere and sixteen in the right, as verified with Electroencephalography (EEG) examinations.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We found a significant correlation between foci lateralization and reduced QOL (Spearman's rho = 0.361, p < 0.046). Children with right hemispheric foci exhibited lower overall QOL, particularly in five areas: anxiety, social-activities, stigma, general-health, and quality-of-life.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We demonstrated for the first time that in children left- and right-hemispheric foci were associated with discordant QOL scores. Unlike in adults, foci in the right hemisphere led to worse emotional and social functioning demonstrating that seizures impact the brain differentially during development.</p

Processing emotion from abstract art in frontotemporal lobar degeneration

Abstract art may signal emotions independently of a biological or social carrier: it might therefore constitute a test case for defining brain mechanisms of generic emotion decoding and the impact of disease states on those mechanisms. This is potentially of particular relevance to diseases in the frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) spectrum. These diseases are often led by emotional impairment despite retained or enhanced artistic interest in at least some patients. However, the processing of emotion from art has not been studied systematically in FTLD. Here we addressed this issue using a novel emotional valence matching task on abstract paintings in patients representing major syndromes of FTLD (behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia, n=11; sematic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA), n=7; nonfluent variant primary progressive aphasia (nfvPPA), n=6) relative to healthy older individuals (n=39). Performance on art emotion valence matching was compared between groups taking account of perceptual matching performance and assessed in relation to facial emotion matching using customised control tasks. Neuroanatomical correlates of art emotion processing were assessed using voxel-based morphometry of patients' brain MR images. All patient groups had a deficit of art emotion processing relative to healthy controls; there were no significant interactions between syndromic group and emotion modality. Poorer art emotion valence matching performance was associated with reduced grey matter volume in right lateral occopitotemporal cortex in proximity to regions previously implicated in the processing of dynamic visual signals. Our findings suggest that abstract art may be a useful model system for investigating mechanisms of generic emotion decoding and aesthetic processing in neurodegenerative diseases

Categorical and coordinate spatial relations: fMRI evidence for hemispheric specialization.

International audienceFunctional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was applied to determine the involvement of the angular gyri in the processing of categorical and coordinate spatial relations. In a categorical task, subjects were asked to judge whether a dot was presented above or below a horizontal line. In a coordinate task, they were asked to judge whether or not the distance between the dot and the bar was within a reference distance. Results showed stronger activation of the left than of the right angular gyrus in the categorical task, and stronger activation, initially, of the right than of the left angular gyrus in the coordinate task. In addition, in the latter task, the involvement of the right angular gyrus decreased with practice while that of the left angular gyrus increased. These results are interpreted in terms of the development of new categorical representations with practice in the coordinate task

Acquisition du langage et phonologie

Devant la diversité et la multiplicité des méthodes de recueil et de traitements des données, ce numéro de Lidil propose une réflexion sur les liens entre la construction et/ou l’utilisation d’outils méthodologiques par les chercheurs travaillant sur les domaines liés à l’acquisition phonologique et les options théoriques qui sous-tendent les choix méthodologiques. L’inventaire des théories phonologiques d’acquisition et des méthodes d’observation est bien documenté. Cet inventaire montre que chaque théorie est liée à une méthodologie spécifique ou, si plusieurs méthodes sont utilisées, qu’elles sont différentes l’une de l’autre. Par exemple, la question de l’influence de l’input sur l’acquisition phonologique peut être traitée avec des recueils d’inputs naturels ou artificiels. Ainsi, les questions peu posées encore à ce jour, concernent-elles le choix de la méthode appropriée à la théorie/modèle d’acquisition tout comme la question de la complémentarité des méthodes. L’objectif est donc à travers ce numéro, de proposer une réflexion sur les outils d’observation en croisant objet(s) d’étude lié(s) à l’acquisition de phénomènes phonologiques en langue maternelle, méthode(s) de recueil et de traitement de données et théorie(s) d’acquisition. Toutes les contributions rassemblent chacune un nombre important de données traitées statistiquement avec une grande rigueur, que ce soit pour caractériser l’environnement du sujet en cours de développement ou dans le cadre d’une situation d’expérimentation. Elles prouvent que le fil conducteur des recherches en acquisition phonologique repose sur des traitements quantitatifs quel que soit le modèle théorique