Poor neural and perceptual phoneme discrimination during acoustic variation in dyslexia

Whereas natural acoustic variation in speech does not compromise phoneme discrimination in healthy adults, it was hypothesized to be a challenge for developmental dyslexics. We investigated dyslexics’ neural and perceptual discrimination of native language phonemes during acoustic variation. Dyslexics and non-dyslexics heard /æ/ and /i/ phonemes in a context with fo variation and then in a context without it. Mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a responses to phoneme changes were recorded with electroencephalogram to compare groups during ignore and attentive listening. perceptual phoneme discrimination in the variable context was evaluated with hit-ratios and reaction times. MMN/N2bs were diminished in dyslexics in the variable context. Hit-ratios were smaller in dyslexics than controls. MMNs did not differ between groups in the context without variation. These results suggest that even distinctive vowels are challenging to discriminate for dyslexics when the context resembles natural variability of speech. This most likely reflects poor categorical perception of phonemes in dyslexics. Difficulties to detect linguistically relevant invariant information during acoustic variation in speech may contribute to dyslexics’ deficits in forming native language phoneme representations during infancy. Future studies should acknowledge that simple experimental paradigms with repetitive stimuli can be insensitive to dyslexics’ speech processing deficits.Peer reviewe

Atypical MEG inter-subject correlation during listening to continuous natural speech in dyslexia

Listening to speech elicits brain activity time-locked to the speech sounds. This so-called neural entrainment to speech was found to be atypical in dyslexia, a reading impairment associated with neural speech processing deficits. We hypothesized that the brain responses of dyslexic vs. normal readers to real-life speech would be different, and thus the strength of inter-subject correlation (ISC) would differ from that of typical readers and be reflected in reading-related measures. We recorded magnetoencephalograms (MEG) of 23 dyslexic and 21 typically-reading adults during listening to ∼10 min of natural Finnish speech consisting of excerpts from radio news, a podcast, a self-recorded audiobook chapter and small talk. The amplitude envelopes of band-pass-filtered MEG source signals were correlated between subjects in a cortically-constrained source space in six frequency bands. The resulting ISCs of dyslexic and typical readers were compared with a permutation-based t-test. Neuropsychological measures of phonological processing, technical reading, and working memory were correlated with the ISCs utilizing the Mantel test. During listening to speech, ISCs were mainly reduced in dyslexic compared to typical readers in delta (0.5–4 Hz) and high gamma (55–90 Hz) frequency bands. In the theta (4−8 Hz), beta (12–25 Hz), and low gamma (25−45 Hz) bands, dyslexics had enhanced ISC to speech compared to controls. Furthermore, we found that ISCs across both groups were associated with phonological processing, technical reading, and working memory. The atypical ISC to natural speech in dyslexics supports the temporal sampling deficit theory of dyslexia. It also suggests over-synchronization to phoneme-rate information in speech, which could indicate more effort-demanding sampling of phonemes from speech in dyslexia. These irregularities in parsing speech are likely some of the complex neural factors contributing to dyslexia. The associations between neural coupling and reading-related skills further support this notion.Peer reviewe

Ystävyyttä ja epäluuloja:Suomen Tallinnan suurlähetystön välittämä kuva Suomen ja Viron suhteista 1924–1925

Tiivistelmä. Tutkielmassa käsitellään Suomen ja Viron välisiä suhteita Tallinnan suurlähetystön poliittisia raportteja läpikäymällä. Aikarajauksena toimii noin puolentoista vuoden mittainen jakso kesästä 1924 vuoden 1925 loppuun. Tutkimuksella pyritään luomaan yleiskuva suhteiden tilasta ja siitä, mitkä asiakokonaisuudet olivat lähetystön raportoinnin kannalta oleellisia ajanjakson sisällä. Raportteja käydään läpi ottaen huomioon kirjoittajien mahdolliset motiivit tiettyjen asioiden korostamiseen. Suomalaisten ja virolaisten mielikuvat toisistaan ovat myös käsittelyn kohteena. Pääosa käsitellyistä raporteista on väliaikaisena lähetystöpäällikkönä toimineen Eljas Erkon ja suurlähettiläs Rudolf Holstin kirjoittamia. Viron merkitys Suomelle jäi ajanjakson sisällä varsin vähäiseksi. Viron suurin toive Suomen suhteen oli turvallisuuspolitiikan alalla ja asiaa pyrittiin edistämään Helsingin pääministerikonferenssissa. Suomella ei ollut halua poliittiseen liittoon Viron kanssa ja se aiheutti pettymystä virolaisten keskuudessa. Suomen haluttomuus hidasti todennäköisesti myös pienempien poliittisten ja taloudellisten asioiden edistymistä maiden välillä. Lähettiläs Holsti suhtautui liittoajatukseen myönteisesti, mutta oli sidottuna hallituksensa linjaan. Hänen raporteissaan Viron tilanne nähtiin usein positiivisessa valossa. Erkko näki Viron tilanteen vuoden 1924 puolella huolestuttava etenkin taloudellisen tilanteen vuoksi. Hän toivoi Suomen ja Viron välille politiikkaa, jonka tuli perustua konkretiaan. Suomen politiikan tuli Erkon visiossa pyrkiä saattamaan Viro aiempaa enemmän Suomesta riippuvaiseksi. Erkon ja Holstin raporteista käy ilmi se, miten eri tavalla kaksi raportoijaa näkivät Viron tilanteen ja Suomen politiikan mahdollisuudet. Erkko ei pitänyt liittoutumista realistisena mahdollisuutena. Hän pyrki edistämään politiikkaa, jossa Suomella olisi ollut etuasema. Erkko ei ottanut huomioon, ettei virolaisilla ollut halukkuutta antaa Suomelle erityisetuja ilman vastapalveluksia. Raporteista käy ilmi, miten vaikeaa pientenkin asioiden hoitaminen oli, jos virolaiset tulkitsivat Suomen yrittävän hyötyä Viron kustannuksella. Suomella ei ollut Virolle juuri mitään tarjottavaa taloudellisesti. Maatila-asioiden korvauskysymyksissä ei tapahtunut edistystä, eikä Suomella ollut erityisasemaa naapuruussuhteen perusteella. Virolaiset innostuivat herkästi, jos heräsi toiveita Suomen halusta yhteistyön syventämiseen. Erkon ehdotus sotilaallisesta yhteistyöstä ja Presidentti Relanderin matka nostivat hetkittäistä innostusta. Pettymys seurasi, kun huomattiin, että Suomelta oli jälleen toivottu liikoja. Pettymys tuli ilmi poliitikkojen ivallisten huomautusten ja lehtikirjoittelun muodossa. Suomen ja Viron erityislaatuinen suhde nousi esiin isänmaallisissa tilaisuuksissa, joiden yhteydessä välit nähtiin raporteissa sydämellisinä. Viron kansalla nähtiin olevan vahvoja sympatioita Suomea kohtaan etenkin Tallinnan ulkopuolella. Virolaisten ihannoiva Suomi-kuva nousi esiin näissä tilaisuuksissa. Poliitikkojen piirissä vallitsi hieman varautuneempi suhtautuminen, joka oli seurausta Suomen ulkopolitiikan linjanvedoista. Politiikan tasolla ystävyyttä ei onnistuttu hyödyntämään taloudellisissa eikä oikeudellisissa kysymyksissä. Kummatkin maat valvoivat etujaan tarkasti eikä heimoveljelle annettu erityiskohtelua. Holstin mielikuva virolaisista näyttäytyy positiivisempana kuin Erkon. Holstille Viro oli yleisesti ottaen tasavertaisempi kumppani kuin Erkolle. Viron ystävänä tunnetun Holstin mahdollisuudet ajaa toisenlaista politiikkaa olivat hyvin rajalliset. Suomen ulkoministeriö oli epäilevä lähettilään linjan suhteen. Suomen tekemät valinnat konferenssipolitiikassa olivat tärkein syy sille, että Suomen ja Viron välit jäivät viileiksi. Lehdistön kirjoittelun perusteella Suomen suhtautuminen tulkittiin välinpitämättömäksi ja se vahvisti epäluuloisuutta. Virolaisesta näkökulmasta katsottuna Suomen politiikan nähtiin seurailevan Saksan ja Neuvostoliiton intressejä. Holsti koki asemansa vaikeaksi, eikä keinoja virolaisten epäluulojen liennyttämiseksi ollut helppo löytää

Impaired neural discrimination of emotional speech prosody in children with autism spectrum disorder and language impairment

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by deficient social and communication skills, including difficulties in perceiving speech prosody. The present study addressed processing of emotional prosodic changes (sad, scornful and commanding) in natural word stimuli in typically developed school aged children and in children with ASD and language impairment. We found that the responses to a repetitive word were diminished in amplitude in the children with ASD, reflecting impaired speech encoding. Furthermore, the amplitude of the MMN/LDN component, reflecting cortical discrimination of sound changes, was diminished in the children with ASD for the scornful deviant. In addition, the amplitude of the P3a, reflecting involuntary orienting to attention-catching changes, was diminished in the children with ASD for the scornful deviant and tended to be smaller for the sad deviant. These results suggest that prosody processing in ASD is impaired at various levels of neural processing, including deficient pre-attentive discrimination and involuntary orientation to speech prosody. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe

Corticomuscular Coherence Is Tuned to the Spontaneous Rhythmicity of Speech at 2-3 Hz

Human speech features rhythmicity that frames distinctive, fine-grained speech patterns. Speech can thus be counted among rhythmic motor behaviors that generally manifest characteristic spontaneous rates. However, the critical neural evidence for tuning of articulatory control to a spontaneous rate of speech has not been uncovered. The present study examined the spontaneous rhythmicity in speech production and its relationship to cortex–muscle neurocommunication, which is essential for speech control. Our MEG results show that, during articulation, coherent oscillatory coupling between the mouth sensorimotor cortex and the mouth muscles is strongest at the frequency of spontaneous rhythmicity of speech at 2–3 Hz, which is also the typical rate of word production. Corticomuscular coherence, a measure of efficient cortex–muscle neurocommunication, thus reveals behaviorally relevant oscillatory tuning for spoken language.Peer reviewe

Infancy and early childhood maturation of neural auditory change detection and its associations to familial dyslexia risk

Objective: We investigated early maturation of the infant mismatch response MMR, including mismatch negativity (MMN), positive MMR (P-MMR), and late discriminative negativity (LDN), indexing auditory discrimination abilities, and the influence of familial developmental dyslexia risk. Methods: We recorded MMRs to vowel, duration, and frequency deviants in pseudo-words at 0, 6, and 28 months and compared MMRs in subgroups with vs. without dyslexia risk, in a sample overrepresented by risk infants. Results: Neonatal MMN to the duration deviant became larger and earlier by 28 months; MMN was elicited by more deviants only at 28 months. The P-MMR was predominant in infancy; its amplitude increased by 6 and decreased by 28 months; latency decreased with increasing age. An LDN emerged by 6 months and became larger and later by 28 months. Dyslexia risk affected MMRs and their maturation. Conclusions: MMRs demonstrate an expected maturational pattern with 2-3 peaks by 28 months. The effects of dyslexia risk are prominent but not always as expected. Significance: This large-scale longitudinal study shows MMR maturation with three age groups and three deviants. Results illuminate MMR's relation to the adult responses, and hence their cognitive underpinnings, and help in identifying typical/atypical auditory development in early childhood. (c) 2022 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Peer reviewe

Mindsets and Failures : Neural Differences in Reactions to Mistakes among 2nd Grade Finnish Girls

Mindsets have been identified as an important factor in explaining learning differences among students. Growth mindset students have been shown to recover from mistakes easier than fixed mindset students, and recent neuroscientific research has shown differences in the brain’s event-related potentials to errors in fixed and growth mindset participants. The purpose of this study was to examine and evaluate these differences in the Finnish elementary school context. To achieve this, event-related potentials of five fixed and five growth mindset 8-9-year-old female students were recorded during a go/no-go task. Differences between the two groups emerged, however, they were different from the results of some previous studies in the field. These findings are discussed in the light of earlier neuroscientific research related to mindsets, including limitations and suggestions for future research in the field.Peer reviewe

Multicenter, International Assessment of the Eighth Edition of the American Joint Committee on Cancer Cancer Staging Manual for Conjunctival Melanoma

This case series assesses whether the eighth edition of the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) Cancer Staging Manual can be used to accurately estimate mortality rates of conjunctival melanoma. Key PointsQuestionCan the eighth edition of the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) Cancer Staging Manual for conjunctival melanoma be used to accurately estimate metastasis and mortality rates? FindingsIn this case series of 288 patients, there was a significantly higher cumulative mortality rate among patients with cT2 and cT3 conjunctival melanoma compared with those presenting with cT1 conjunctival melanoma. MeaningHigher T-staged tumors were associated with both an earlier and greater incidence of metastasis; therefore, the results from this multicenter, international registry study support the use of the eighth edition AJCC staging system for conjunctival melanoma. ImportanceEye cancer staging systems used for standardizing patient care and research need to be validated. ObjectiveTo evaluate the accuracy of the eighth edition of the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) Cancer Staging Manual in estimating metastatis and mortality rates of conjunctival melanoma. Design, Setting, and ParticipantsThis international, multicenter, registry-based case series pooled data from 10 ophthalmic oncology centers from 9 countries on 4 continents. A total of 288 patients diagnosed with conjunctival melanoma from January 1, 2001, to December 31, 2013, were studied. Data analysis was performed from July 7, 2018, to September 11, 2018. InterventionsTreatments included excision biopsy, cryotherapy, topical chemotherapy, radiation therapy, enucleation, and exenteration. Main Outcomes and MeasuresMetastasis rates and 5-year and 10-year Kaplan-Meier mortality rates according to the clinical T categories and subcategories of the eighth edition of the AJCC Cancer Staging Manual. ResultsA total of 288 eyes from 288 patients (mean [SD] age, 59.7 [16.8] years; 147 [51.0%] male) with conjunctival melanoma were studied. Clinical primary tumors (cT) were staged at presentation as cT1 in 218 patients (75.7%), cT2 in 34 (11.8%), cT3 in 15 (5.2%), and cTx in 21 (7.3%). There were no T4 tumors. Pathological T categories (pT) were pTis in 43 patients (14.9%), pT1 in 169 (58.7%), pT2 in 33 (11.5%), pT3 in 12 (4.2%), and pTx in 31 (10.8%). Metastasis at presentation was seen in 5 patients (1.7%). Metastasis during follow-up developed in 24 patients (8.5%) after a median time of 4.3 years (interquartile range, 2.9-6.0 years). Of the 288 patients, 29 died (melanoma-related mortality, 10.1%) at a median time of 5.3 years (interquartile range, 1.8-7.0 years). The cumulative rates of mortality among patients with cT1 tumors were 0% at 1 year, 2.5% (95% CI, 0.7%-7.7%) at 5 years, and 15.2% (95% CI, 8.1%-27.4%) at 10 years of follow-up; among patients with cT2 tumors, 0% at 1 year, 28.6% (95% CI, 12.9%-58.4%) at 5 years, and 43.6% (95% CI, 19.6%-77.9%) at 10 years of follow-up; and among patients with cT3 tumors, 21.1% (95% CI, 8.1%-52.7%) at 1 year of follow-up and 31.6% (95% CI, 13.5%-64.9%) at 5 years of follow-up. Patients with cT2 and cT3 tumors had a significantly higher cumulative mortality rate compared with those presenting with cT1 tumors (log-rank PPeer reviewe

Infant event-related potentials to speech are associated with prelinguistic development

Neural auditory processing and prelinguistic communication build the foundation for later language development, but how these two are associated is not well known. The current study investigated how neural speech processing is associated with the level and development of prelinguistic skills in 102 infants. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) in 6-months-olds to assess the neural detection of a pseudoword (obligatory responses), as well as the neural discrimination of changes in the pseudoword (mismatch responses, MMRs). Prelinguistic skills were assessed at 6 and 12 months of age with a parental questionnaire (Infant-Toddler Checklist). The association between the ERPs and prelinguistic skills was examined using latent change score models, a method specifically constructed for longitudinal analyses and explicitly modeling intra-individual change. The results show that a large obligatory P1 at 6 months of age predicted strong improvement in prelinguistic skills between 6 and 12 months of age. The MMR to a frequency change was associated with the concurrent level of prelinguistic skills, but not with the improvement of the skills. Overall, our results highlight the strong association between ERPs and prelinguistic skills, possibly offering opportunities for early detection of atypical linguistic and communicative development.Peer reviewe

Longitudinal Associations of High-Volume and Vigorous-Intensity Exercise With Hip Fracture Risk in Men

Maintenance of vigorous exercise habits from young to old age is considered protective against hip fractures, but data on fracture risk in lifelong vigorous exercisers are lacking. This longitudinal cohort study examined the hazard of hip fractures in 1844 male former athletes and 1216 population controls and in relation to exercise volume and intensity in later years. Incident hip fractures after age 50 years were identified from hospital discharge register from 1972 to 2015. Exercise and covariate information was obtained from questionnaires administered in 1985, 1995, 2001, and 2008. Analyses were conducted using extended proportional hazards regression model for time-dependent exposures and effects. During the mean +/- SD follow-up of 21.6 +/- 10.3 years, 62 (3.4%) athletes and 38 (3.1%) controls sustained a hip fracture. Adjusted hazard ratio (HR) indicated no statistically significant difference between athletes and controls (0.84; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.55-1.29). In subgroup analyses, adjusted HRs for athletes with recent high (>= 15 metabolic equivalent hours [MET-h]/week) and low (= 6 METs at least 75 minutes/week) had initially 77% lower hazard rate (adjusted HR 0.23; 95% CI, 0.06-0.86) than controls. However, the HR was time-dependent (adjusted HR 1.04; 95% CI, 1.01-1.07); by age 75 years the HRs for the athletes with vigorous-intensity exercise reached the level of the controls, but after 85 years the HRs for these athletes increased approximately 1.3-fold annually relative to the controls. In conclusion, these data suggest that continuation of vigorous-intensity exercise is associated with lower HR of hip fracture up to old age. (c) 2022 The Authors. Journal of Bone and Mineral Research published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR).Peer reviewe