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Executive control over low-level information processing is impaired proximal to psychosis onset with evidence of recovery over the first year of illness. However, previous studies demonstrating diminished perceptual modulation via attention are complicated by simultaneously impaired perceptual responses. The present study examined the early auditory gamma-band response (EAGBR), a marker of early cortical processing that appears preserved in first-episode psychosis (FEP), and its modulation by attention in a longitudinal FEP sample.
Methods
Magnetoencephalography was recorded from 25 FEP and 32 healthy controls (HC) during active and passive listening conditions in an auditory oddball task at baseline and follow-up (4–12 months) sessions. EAGBR inter-trial phase coherence (ITPC) and evoked power were measured from responses to standard tones. Symptoms were assessed using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS).
Results
There was no group difference in EAGBR power or ITPC. While EAGBR ITPC increased with attention in HC, this modulation was impaired among FEP. Diminished EAGBR modulation in FEP persisted at longitudinal follow-up. However, among FEP, recovery of EAGBR modulation was associated with reduced PANSS negative scores.
Conclusion
FEP exhibit impaired executive control over the flow of information at the earliest stages of sensory processing within auditory cortex. In contrast to previous work, this deficit was observed despite an intact measure of sensory processing, mitigating potential confounds. Recovery of sensory gain modulation over time was associated with reductions in negative symptoms, highlighting a source of potential resiliency against some of the most debilitating and treatment refractory symptoms in early psychosis.
In this contribution, we explore the question of whether there is reason to maintain the traditional view of language aptitude as a relatively fixed trait that is resistant to experience, or if it should instead be seen as a rather flexible and acquirable skill. Both bilingualism and visual loss have been reported to have enhancing effects on language-related as well as non-linguistic cognition, but few studies have focused on their effects on language aptitude specifically, especially in the case of blindness. In a study of 80 blind and sighted L1 and L2 speakers of Swedish, we compare the relative experiential effects on the phonological aptitude of (1) having learned an L2 and having been a long-term functional and fluent bilingual in adulthood with (2) having lived with total visual deprivation for a significant period of life. The chapter closes with a discussion on what it would mean for current views on the role of age of L2 acquisition and critical period(s) if the above-average language aptitude hitherto robustly associated with adult near-native L2 learning should turn out to be nothing but an effect of L2 learning itself.
Is phonological form perceived, understood, stored, and accessed in the same way and with the same neural mapping in signed and spoken languages? This is the complex and multifaceted question that the work on sign language processing has addressed since the beginning. The methodologies and technologies used to address this question have become more sophisticated over the last sixty years. Since the beginning, a psycholinguistic tradition was at the center of the work on sign languages, and we trace the trajectory of this work in this chapter.
This review aimed to summarise present knowledge surrounding cochlear implants and neuroplasticity using positron emission tomography.
Overview:
Cochlear implants are an established device for severe sensorineural hearing loss. However, the outcomes following a cochlear implant are variable and unpredictable. Furthermore, despite increasing numbers of implantations taking place, there are still uncertainties regarding how individuals learn to process speech using an implant. Functional neuroimaging studies using techniques such as positron emission tomography provide an insight into the cortical changes that take place in patients with cochlear implants.
Conclusion:
Only when the underlying mechanisms responsible for speech processing in implantees are understood can appropriate rehabilitation for those with poor speech perception be provided and outcomes improved.
Whole-head magnetoencephalographic (MEG) responses
to repeating standard tones and to infrequent slightly
higher deviant tones and complex novel sounds were recorded
together with event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Deviant
tones and novel sounds elicited the mismatch negativity
(MMN) component of the ERP and its MEG counterpart (MMNm)
both when the auditory stimuli were attended to and when
they were ignored. MMNm generators were located bilateral
to the superior planes of the temporal lobes where preattentive
auditory discrimination appears to occur. A subsequent
positive P3a component was elicited by deviant tones and
with a larger amplitude by novel sounds even when the sounds
were to be ignored. Source localization for the MEG counterpart
of P3a (P3am) suggested that the auditory cortex in the
superior temporal plane is involved in the neural network
of involuntary attention switching to changes in the acoustic
environment.
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