Tennet XV Abstracts

Estimations of Imagined Reaching Movements in Hemispace, Diala

Ammar, Carl Gabbard, and Luis Rodrigues, Texas A&M University,
TAMU 4243, College Station, TX 77843, USA
A common observation in studies of imagined compared to actual
movement in a reaching paradigm is the tendency to overestimate. Of
the studies noted, reaching tasks have been presented in the midline
range with visual information transmitted via both eyes open. In the
present study, strong right-handers were asked to judge imagined
reachability to visual targets, projected onto a table surface for 150 ms.
In addition to random target distances at the midline, the same pre-
sentation was projected in right- and left-visual elds. Our ndings at
the midline support those of previous studies; that is, the tendency to
overestimate. In regard to visual eld conditions (RVF and LVF),
participants underestimated their reachability. These ndings are dis-
cussed in consideration of use of visual information, mental strategy,
and postural state. Underlying our intent with the study of imagined
compared to actual reachability, is the wish to gain a better under-
standing of the cognitive level of action processing.
Performance of adults and children on the Lateralized Attention
Network Test, Anat Barnea
a
, Anat Rassis
a
, Amir Raz
b
, and Eran
Zaidel
c
,
a
Bio-Keshev Clinic, Kibutz Givat Chaim Ichud, Israel,
b
Department of Psychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons,
Columbia University, NY, USA,
c
Department of Psychology,
University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1563, USA
The Attention Network Test (ANT) is a brief computerized battery
measuring three independent behavioral components of attention:
Conict, Orienting, and Alerting. These components are each associ-
ated with a specic neurotransmitter and specic cortical regions. We
tested 12 young adults (ages 23 2.63 years) and 10 children (ages
11 1.2 years) on both the ANT and a lateralized version of the ANT
(LANT).
Adults were faster on the LANT than on the ANT. Adults were
also faster than children. ANT data showed comparable Conict,
Orienting, and Alerting in children and in adults. The LANT yielded
more stable measures than the ANT in adults, but it detected only
Conict in children. None of the attention network measures changed
as a function of age. Surprisingly, attentional LANT scores were
generally comparable across the two hemispheres.
In sum, the three attentional networks showed no change with
age in either the central (ANT) or the lateralized (LANT) versions
of the test. Further, the LANT showed independent networks in the
two hemispheres, but very few hemispheric dierences in both age
groups.
Vowel acquisition by prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants:
Phonetic and acoustic studies, Marie-Eve Bouchard
a
, Marie-There`se Le
Normand
b
, Lucie Menard
c
, Maryline Gould
c
, and Henri Cohen
a
,
a
Cognitive Neuroscience Center, University of Quebec at Montreal,
Montreal, Quebec, Canada,
b
Child Neuropsychology Laboratory,
Ho pital de la Salpetrie`re, Paris, France,
c
Linguistic Department,
University of Quebec at Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Phonetic transcriptions (Study 1) and acoustic analysis (Study 2)
were used to clarify the nature and rhythm of vowel acquisition fol-
lowing the cochlear implantation of prelingually deaf children. In the
rst study, seven children were divided according to their degree of
hearing loss (DHL): DHL I: 90-100 dB of hearing loss, 1 children;
DHL II: 100-110 dB, 3 children and DHL III: over 110 dB, 3 children.
Spontaneous speech productions were recorded and videotaped 6 and
12 months post-surgery and vowel inventories were obtained by listing
all vowels that occurred at least twice in the childs repertoire at the
time of recording. Results showed that degree of hearing loss and age
at implantation have a signicant impact on vowel acquisition. Indeed,
DHL I and II children demonstrated more diversied as well as more
typical pattern of acquisition. In the second study, the values of the
rst and second formants were extracted. The results suggest and
evolving use of the acoustic space, reecting the use of auditory
feedback to produce the three phonological features exploited to
contrast French vowels (height, place of articulation, and rounding).
The possible inuence of visual feedback before cochlear implant is
discussed.
Omission errors in simple reaction time can index attention, Claude M.J.
Braun, Caroline Larocque, and Andre Achim, Centre de Neuroscience
de la Cognition, Universite du Quebec a` Montreal, Centre-Ville,
Montreal, Que., Canada H3C 3P8
With 135 subjects presenting 5815 omission errors in a simple
reaction time (Poenberger) paradigm, Braun, Villeneuve and Achim
(1996) found that omission errors distributed themselves as a signif-
icantly negative crossed-uncrossed dierence (CUD)potentially in-
terpretable as an interhemispheric relay gain, rather than the usual
cost. The present experiment automatically adjusted detectability of
stimuli, on line, so that each of 18 normal right-handed subjects
made the same overall number of omission errors, i.e., on 3 trials out
of every 10 (total: 3500 errors). The experiment failed to replicate
Braun et al. (1996) nding to the eect that omission errors generate
a negative CUD in relatively ordinary implementation of the Pof-
fenberger paradigm (uncrossed ngers or arms conditions) However,
it did demonstrate that, in SRT, omission errors can signicantly
reect, and even mimic, an attentional process, visible in SRTs,
namely spatial compatibility (indexed by means of a crossed ngers
or arms conditions). In a simple detection task, some omissions are
full misses, but occasionally an omission represents a trial in which a
subject actually detected the stimulus subliminally, but without su-
cient condence to reach the limen for the response. These trials can
Brain and Cognition 57 (2005) 276289
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doi:10.1016/j.bandc.2004.08.004
suce for patterns of omission errors to mimic cognitive eects ob-
served in the RTs.
Reference
Braun, C. M. J., Villeneuve, L., & Achim, A. (1996). Balance of cost in
interhemispheric relay in the Poenberger paradigm: Evidence
from omission errors. Neuropsychology, 10, 565572.
Handedness and accident-related injuries, P.J. Bryden and P. Fletcher,
Kinesiology and Physical Education, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada
Coren and Halpern (1991) reported that left-handers have a re-
duced life span as compared to right-handers. One of the contrib-
uting factors they noted was an increased risk of accidental death and
injury by left-handers. More specically, Coren (1990) found that
left-handers were 1.89 times more likely to report having an injury
requiring medical attention. One of the diculties with this research
has been the method of classifying handedness. The purpose of the
current study was to examine a range in accident-related injuries as a
function of dierent handedness groups. Four hundred and ninteen
undergraduate students completed a survey indicating the total
number of contact sport, non-contact sport, car-related, and regular
injuries they had experienced. Questions relating to handedness al-
lowed individuals to be classied into handedness groups using three
different methods. Several signicant dierences were noted when
participants were classied into consistent and inconsistent handed-
ness groups. Inconsistent handers reported signicantly more injuries
than either consistent left- or right-handers for both contact sport
injuries (F(2, 416) = 7.223, p < .01) and the total number of all in-
juries (F(2, 416) = 4.896, p < .01). As well, consistent left-handers
reported signicantly more car-related injuries than consistent right-
handers (F(2, 416) = 3.834, p < .05). In comparison, when partici-
pants were classied into left- and right-handers based on either self-
professed handedness or their responses on the questionnaire, the
only nding was that left-handers reported approximately three times
more car-related injuries than right-handers. These ndings support
previous work that inconsistent handers and left-handers are more at
risk for injury.
References
Coren, S. (1990). In Left-handedness: Behavioural implications and
anomalies. Advances in psychology (Vol. 67). Oxford, England:
North-Holland.
Coren, S., & Halpern, D. F. (1991). Left-handedness: A marker for
decreased survival tness. Psychological Bulletin, 109, 90106.
Use of a simulated prosthetic limb in working space, P.J. Bryden
a
, E.A.
Roy
b
, S. Wallace
c
, D. Anderson
c
, and B. Connor
c
,
a
Kinesiology,
Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ont., Canada,
b
Kinesiology,
University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ont., Canada,
c
San Francisco State
University, USA
Relatively little is understood about how individuals learn to use a
prosthetic limb after losing their own limb. The purpose of the current
study was to conduct a preliminary examination of what factors inu-
ence the use of a simulated prosthetic limb. Fifty right-handed under-
graduate students completed a series of reaching tasks using both their
anatomical hands and a simulated prosthetic limb. The reaching task
involved manipulating objects at ve positions in working space while
the experimenter observed which hand was used. Data were analyzed to
compare performance of the reaching task with the anatomical limb to
the simulated prosthetic limb. A 2 (prosthetic limb) 2 (arm) 4
(task) 5 (position) repeated measures ANOVA was conducted. It was
found that signicantly more preferred hand reaches were made in the
anatomical hand condition (F(1, 20) = 5.52, p < .05). As well, signi-
cantly more preferred hand reaches were made when the simulated
prosthetic limb was placed on the non-preferred hand (F(3, 30) = 27.59,
p < .01). A trend toward increasing preferred hand use as one moved
into right working space (F(4, 80) = 86.8, p < .01) was also found.
Several interactions were also noted, however, the most important in-
teractionindicatedthat there were only dierences between performance
with the anatomical hand and the prosthetic limb when the prosthetic
limb was placed on the preferred hand (F(3, 30) = 20.08, p < .01). In
conclusion, the ndings indicate that the prosthetic limb drastically in-
uenced how individuals perform everyday tasks in working space, as
compared to their normal performance.
The negative symptom complex in schizophrenia is marked by both
paucity of thought and motor slowing: A quantitative speech acoustic
study, Michael S. Cannizzaro
a
, Nicole Reilly
a
, and Peter J. Snyder
a,b,c
,
a
Voice Acoustics Laboratory, WW Clinical Technology (CNS), Pzer
Global Research and DevelopmentGroton Laboratories, Groton,
CT 06340, USA,
b
Department of Psychology, University of
Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA,
c
Centre de Neuroscience de la
Cognition, Universite du Quebec a` Montreal, Que., Canada
Prior work on voice acoustical correlates of schizophrenia suggest
that patients who present with predominantly negative symptoms of
schizophrenia (NSZ) can be quantitatively characterized by a number
of atypical parameters of speech prosody, including unusual pause
features. These ndings, coupled with information from neuropsy-
chological rating scales (e.g., PANSS) and linguistic analyses, have
led some researchers to the conclusion that atypical speech pause
characteristics are related to alogia (i.e., paucity of thought and
speech content; cf. Alpert, Kotsaftis, & Pouget, 1997; Alpert, 2001).
Others have suggested that aspects of neuromotor dysfunction are a
non-specic decit present in the speech of persons with NSZ
(Dworkin, 1996). In the present study, 13 NSZ participants were
compared to six healthy controls, and acoustic analyses were used to
directly contrast the pause features between a rote-speech task (i.e.,
no novel thought/language generation) and a free-speech descriptive
task (i.e., requiring thought/language generation). Both tasks neces-
sarily make use of the same motor subsystems to generate speech
output and should therefore be similarly aected by motor decits
associated with NSZ. Average pause duration, cumulative pause
time, and percentage of pause all signicantly dierentiated partici-
pant and control groups in the free-speech task; whereas only the
average pause duration measure dierentiated patients from controls
on the rote-speech task. These results suggest that average pause
duration maybe indicative of speech motor slowing while more global
measures, such as cumulative and percentage pause time across the
entire task, may better reect a paucity of thought and idea gener-
ation related to the cognitive-linguistic aspects of free-speech. Find-
ings in this study corroborate and extend the paucity of thought
hypothesis related to alogia and at aect to include an inuence of
motor slowing on speech output.
References
Alpert, M., Kotsaftis, A., & Pouget, E. R. (1997). At issue: Speech
uency and schizophrenic negative signs. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 23
(2), 171177.
Alpert, M. (2001). Prosody and lexical accuracy in at aect
schizophrenia. Psychiatry Research, 97(23), Dec-118
Tennet XV Abstracts / Brain and Cognition 57 (2005) 276289 277
Dworkin, R. H. (1996). Does aective blunting in schizophrenia reect
aective decit or neuromotor dysfunction? Schizophrenia Re-
search, 20(3), Jul-306.
Puschel, J., Stassen, H. H., Bomben, G., Scharfetter, C., & Hell, D.
(1998). Speaking behavior and speech sound characteristics in
acute schizophrenia. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 32(2), 8997.
The role of perceptual and semantic information in episodic memory
performance: Study of a semantic dementia patient, Nicole Caza
a
,
Francine S. Fontaine
b
, Jean-Francois Gagnon
b
, and et Raymonde
Labrecque
c
,
a
Centre de recherche de lInstitut universitaire de geriatrie
de Montreal,
b
Service de psychologie, Institut universitaire de geriatrie
de Montreal,
c
Service de neurologie, Centre hospitalier de lUniversite
de Montreal
In Tulvings (1995) SPI model, information to be remembered is
encoded serially: it is rst processed by the perceptual system, followed
by the semantic system, and then by the episodic memory system.
Consequently, damage to semantic memory necessarily aects episodic
memory. However, recent evidence from studies of semantic dementia
patients suggests that these patients may show a relatively normal
performance on some episodic memory tasks, namely recognition
memory. Graham and colleagues (2000) have thus challenged the SPI
model by suggesting that, in the absence of semantic information,
perceptual information may sustain episodic memory performance.
The goal of this study was to test this alternative hypothesis in a patient
with semantic dementia. We compared the patients performance to a
control group on several recognition tasks that varied the perceptual
content of both the targets and the distractors, while maintaining the
semantic content of the stimuli at minimum, and on a free recall and
associative recognition tasks. The results from the recognition tasks
indicate that the patients performance was clearly inuenced by the
perceptual features of the stimuli, in accord with the view that the
perceptual system directly contributes to recognition memory.
However, the patients performance was impaired on the episodic
memory tasks that could not be resolved using stimulus familiarity
(re: free recall and associative recognition). These later results sup-
port the view that recollective-based memory depends on the per-
sons knowledge of the stimuli to be remembered, as suggested by
many theoretical views (Craik & Lockhart, 1972; Tulving, 1995).
Theoretical and experimental neuropsychology (TENNET XV)
Montreal, Canada, June 2426, 2004
Cognitive determinants of pragmatic decits in right brain damaged and
schizophrenic individuals: A comparative study, Maud Champagne
a,c
,
Emmanuel Stip
b,c
, and Yves Joanette
a,c
,
a
Centre de recherche, Institut
universitaire de geriatrie de Montreal, 4565 chemin Queen-Mary,
Montreal QC, Canada H3W 1W5,
b
Centre de recherche Fernand-
Seguin, Ho pital Louis-H. Lafontaine,
c
Faculte de medecine, Universite
de Montreal, Canada
Many studies have reported that both individuals with right-
hemisphere brain damage (RHD) and schizophrenic individuals can be
impaired in their pragmatic abilities, typically aecting the processing
of non-literal speech acts (Mitchley et al., 1998; Joanette et al., 1990).
Such non-literal utterances require the ability to process the speakers
utterance beyond its literal meaning in order to allow grasping the
speakers intention by reference to the contextual information. Sab-
bagh (1999) refers to this process as the ability to identify communi-
cative intention.
Various hypotheses have been proposed in order to explain im-
pairments in understanding non-literal language, such as reduced at-
tentional capacities, reduced exibility, diculty in suppressing
irrelevant information or attributing mental states to others, the latter
referred to as theory of mind (ToM) abilities (Frith, 1992; Happe et al.,
1999; Jansen et al., 2002). Using a multiple single-case comparative
approach, the present study aims to see whether pragmatic decits
always coexist with ToM impairments and/or impairments of executive
functions. Five RHD individuals, ve schizophrenic adults and ve
matched normal control participants (NC)all right-handed and na-
tive French speakerswere tested individually on three abilities: (a)
pragmatic (indirect speech acts and metaphors), (b) ToM (original 1st
and 2nd order mental state attribution tasks), and (c) executive func-
tions (Hayling, Trail making, Stroop, Fluency, WCST, and an dapted
version of the London Tower). Results allowed to unveil numerous
patterns of impairment in all three groups of participants However,
taken globally, results point to a link between pragmatic decits and
ToM limitations.
References
Frith, C. D. (1992). The cognitive neuropsychology of schizophrenia.
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd.
Happe, F., Brownell, H., & Winner, E. (1999). Acquired theory of
mind impairments following stroke. Cognition, 70, 211240.
Janssen, I., Krabbendam, L., Jolles, J., & van Os, J. (2003). Alterations
in theory of mind in patients with schizophrenia and non-psychoric
relatives. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 108, 110117.
Joanette, Y., Goulet, P., & Hannequin, D. (1990). Right hemisphere
and verbal communication. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Mitchley, N. J., Berber, J., Gray, J. M., Brooks, D. N., & Livingston,
M. G. (1998). Comprehension of irony in schizophrenia. Cognitive
Neuropsychiatry, 3, 127138.
Sabbagh, M. A. (1999). Communicative intentions and language:
Evidence from right-hemisphere damage and autism. Brain and
Language, 70, 2969.
Visual search performance and attention ratings in a population based
sample of school children: Is there a link between genes and behavior?
Kim Cornish
a
and John Wilding
b
,
a
Neuroscience Laboratory for
Research and Education in Neurodevelopmental Disorders, McGill
University, Montreal, Que., Canada,
b
University of London, UK
Susceptibility genes that might contribute to impairments in chil-
dren with ADHD have been investigated intensively; it is now widely
accepted that several genes, each contributing a small amount to the
total genetic variance, are implicated. Genetic variation in the dopa-
mine transporter gene (DAT1 or SLC6A3) is of particular interest,
given that the transporter is the target of stimulant action, and func-
tional neuroimaging studies have demonstrated increased dopamine
transporter density in children with ADHD. However, the extent of
the link between DAT1 and ADHD symptoms is still not established.
Most studies incorporate only clinical samples and few have investi-
gated the link between DAT1 polymorphisms and cognitive end-
ophenotypes of ADHD.
In the present study, a quantitative trait approach was adopted. In
an epidemiological sample of children, extreme high and low groups
were dened by teacher ratings on a new ADHD scale, to investigate
the link between DAT1 polymorphisms and two cognitive end-
ophenotypes of ADHD, selective and sustained attention. It was hy-
pothesized that the high risk DAT 10/10 genotype would be related to
the ratings and to decits in these aspects of attention. Two comput-
erized tasks were employed, testing visual search and vigilance. The
poor attention group made signicantly more errors than the good
attention group when required to alternate search between two targets
and made more false alarms in the vigilance task. Though attention
ratings were related to DAT1 status at a marginally signicant level,
there was no relation between DAT1 status and performance on either
task.
278 Tennet XV Abstracts / Brain and Cognition 57 (2005) 276289
POSTER ABSTRACT SUBMISSION: TENNET XV, Montre al,
Qc., June 2004
Healthy elderly volunteers who decline cognitively over six months
show subtle executive function defects at baseline, Jennifer R. Cromer,
Nina Silverberg, Marwan Sabbagh, Donald J. Connor, Alex Rohrer,
and Peter J. Snyder, CNS Clinical Research, Bldg. 260, Pzer Global
R&D, Eastern Point Road, Groton, CT 06340, USA
Background and rationale. In the design and conduct of any clinical
trial for treating MCI or AD, it is often desirable to include a group of
matched elderly control subjects. However, it is well known that not all
healthy elderly will remain healthy throughout a study, and it would
be benecial to tighten inclusion criteria to exclude potential control
subjects that may show subtle neuropsychological decits at a
screening exam.
Methods. We report the results of a one-year study of progression
in Alzheimers disease that involved a matched control group of 24
healthy elderly volunteers (Mean[SD] age = 75.8[6.9] years). All 24
control subjects completed MMSE and ADAS-Cog tests at baseline,
and then again at 6 months post-baseline. In addition, at each time
point all subjects completed the Groton Maze Learning Test (GMLT),
a novel computer touch-screen administered measure of a subjects
ability to acquire and eciently use an internal spatial map of a
complex hidden two-dimensional maze.
Results. Of the 24 subjects who met all inclusion criteria at
baseline for randomization to our healthy elderly control group, two
showed a decline in MMSE scores of P3 points within 6 months
(intra-rater test-retest reliability for MMSE ratings across all sub-
jects in study: r = .92). Both of these subjects were non-carriers of
the ApoE e4 allele (ApoE status: 2/3 for both subjects), both had
completed at least some college-level education (1418 years of ed-
ucation), and both subjects had ADAS-Cog scores of between 4 and
6 at baseline. One subject was an 85.5-year-old male, and the other
was a 81.1-year-old female. On retrospective review of baseline
GMLT performance, these two subjects were extreme outliers,
compared to the rest of the entire control sample, with respect to
the number of perseverative errors made (Mean[SE] = 24[2.6] vs.
5.0[0.81] for the other 22 subjects) over 5 consecutive trials to learn
a hidden maze path with 28 moves and 11 turns. Additionally, these
two subjects showed markedly worse performance at baseline on a
measure of the mean number of correct moves made per second,
averaged across the 5 learning trials (Mean[SE] = .27[.10] vs.
.63[.04] for the other 22 subjects). Interestingly, although two of our
other control subjects were homozygotic for the ApoE e4 allele, they
both performed quite well on the GMLT at both baseline and on
their 6 month visits.
Conclusion. The GMLT, and particularly measures of perseverative
errors and of learning eciency, may be used as a brief screening
measure to identify elderly volunteers who should be excluded from a
healthy control group in clinical trials. ApoE genotype status does
not appear to be predictive of which subjects, participating in an el-
derly control group, are most likely to show cognitive decline over a six
month period.
The role of the accent mark in left neglect dyslexia, Roberto Cubelli
a
and Nicoletta Beschin
a,b,c
,
a
Institute of Psychology, University of
Urbino, Italy,
b
Rehabilitation Department, Somma Lombardo
Hospital, Italy,
c
Department of Psychology, University of Aberdeen,
UK
Patients with left neglect dyslexia tend to omit, add or substitute
initial letters of written words. Their performance is aected either by
the visuo-perceptual characteristics of the stimuli, such as length and
size, or by psycholinguistic variables, such as frequency and morpho-
logical structure. In Italian, polysyllabic words with the stress falling
on the last syllable are written with a diacritic sign on the last vowel
(e.g., Carlo Umilta`). It is a perceptual feature that could horizontally
extent (capital letters: UMILTA) or enlarge (lower case: Umilta`) the
word. Further, it is an orthographic information that allows discrim-
inating between two words with the same orthographic segments (e.g.,
papa [pope], papa` [dad]). The eect of the accent mark in left neglect
dyslexia has never been investigated.
In the current study six patients with neglect dyslexia were asked to
read aloud homographic words (calamita` [catastrophe], calamita
[magnet]) and nonwords (salamita, salamita`), with or without the ac-
cent mark, randomly presented in lower case or capital letters. The
total errors ranged between 12 and 60%, most of them resulting from
the omission of the initial letters. Accuracy was signicantly higher
with real words and with capital letter stimuli. The presence of the
accent mark improved reading performance but only with real words.
This benecial eect appears to be orthographic in nature, rather than
perceptual or attentional. We conclude that the accent mark is speci-
ed as an independent information in a multidimensional orthographic
representation.
Perception and action in the somatosensory system, H. Chris Dijkerman
and Edward H.F. de Haan, Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University,
The Netherlands
The somatosensory system is involved in many aspects of our be-
haviour. It provides information about the position of dierent body
parts, it can be used to localise touch and forms the basis of all motor
action. Moreover, somatosensory information can inform us through
tactile exploration about the characteristics of external objects. We
present a new model of the cortical somatosensory system that in-
corporates all these aspects. Our model is based on three main dis-
tinctions:
1. Parallel as well as serial processing occurs within the somatosensory
system. Neuroanatomical studies suggest that beyond SI processing
occurs along two main routes terminating in the posterior parietal
cortex (PPC) and the insula, respectively. Within these routes there
is a progressive integration of features culminating in representa-
tions of objects or a body schema.
2. Like the visual system, processing of somatosensory input for the
guidance of action can be dissociated from perceptual identication.
For example, patients have been reported to be able to guide their
action towards tactile stimuli without perceiving them (numbsense).
Dissociations have also been found between tactile object recogni-
tion (perception) and exploratory nger movements (action).
3. Somatosensory processes that provide information about the body
itself (internal information) occur separate from processes that
provide information about external targets such as objects. Both
type of information are used for perceptual identication and for
the guidance of action. Functional imaging and patient studies
suggests that (possibly distinct areas in) the PPC play a role for both
internal and external information, while the insula has been asso-
ciated with perceptual recognition, learning, and emotional aspects.
The Rev. John Wesleys empirical medicine in the 18th century, James
G. Donat (Independent researcher)
The Rev. John Wesley, M.A. (17031791) is commonly remembered
as the founder of the Methodist Church. Largely forgotten is the fact
that he considered the medical treatment of his followers to be part of
his pastoral responsibility. He read widely from the medical works
available to him from the 17th and 18th centuries, and selectively fol-
lowed contemporary trends in the eld. He did not do surgery, and
passed on complicated cases to physicians. His rst medical publica-
tion, in 17451746, was entitled, A Collection of Receits for the Use of
Tennet XV Abstracts / Brain and Cognition 57 (2005) 276289 279
the Poor and appeared in three editions. This was expanded into
Primitive Physick, Or, An Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most
Diseases, which in the years 17471791, was continually revised
through 23 editions, containing what Wesley thought to be the best
available remedies gathered froma variety of sources, many of which he
himself tried. This paper is mainly about the latter of these two works.
Submission to TENNET conference of June 2426, 2004
Clinical utility of the P300 event-related potential in Alzheimers disease:
A review, Louise Dulude
a
,
a
School of Psychology, University of
Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
To assess the clinical utility of the P300 event-related potential
(ERP) of the electroencephalogram (EEG) in the diagnosis, monitor-
ing, and treatment of Alzheimers disease (AD), this review analysed
62 empirical studies of the P300 and AD. The heterogeneity of the
studies precluded a meta-analysis. Negative correlations between P300
latencies and Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores suggest
that the P300 may be useful in charting AD progression, and the P300
was useful in assessing AD drug eects, but P300s elicited with the
classic auditory oddball paradigm were not eective in dierentiating
AD from other diseases. Other paradigms should be further explored,
including visual oddball paradigms, olfactory paradigms, or auditory
and visual (active and passive) novelty paradigms. Most promising
are multi-component analyses combining P300s and other ERPs. One
multi-component study used the extended projected pursuit method to
distinguish AD patients and controls with a sensitivity of 100% and a
specicity of 94%.
Explicit and implicit memory in children with Type I diabetes: Eects of
metabolic control and time of day, Lila Elkhadem and Mary Desrocher,
York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ont., Canada M3J 1P3
It has been proposed that explicit and implicit memory are dier-
entially aected by poor metabolic control in children with Type I
diabetes. The prefrontal cortex and medial temporal regions of the
brain, which have been implicated in explicit memory, are sensitive to
abnormal glucose levels. In addition, the hippocampal region is vul-
nerable to damage from hypoglycemic insults. Therefore, we predicted
that explicit memory would be aected by poor metabolic control,
whereas implicit memory performance should be unaected, as it
functions independently of the hippocampal and prefrontal regions.
We investigated the relationship between diabetes variables (Du-
ration of Diabetes, Age at Onset, average HbA1c levels [a measure of
metabolic control], Blood Glucose Level at time of testing) and verbal
and perceptual explicit and implicit memory in children aged 618.
Explicit memory measures used included the California Verbal
Learning Test - Childrens Version (CVLT-C), Childrens Memory
Scale (CMS), and Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test (Rey-O). Im-
plicit memory was examined using experimental picture priming and
semantic priming tasks. No dierences were found between diabetes
and control groups on implicit memory measures and no diabetes
variables were signicantly correlated with these measures. In contrast,
duration of diabetes was signicantly correlated with word list and
story recall, with longer durations associated with poorer performance.
HbA1c was signicantly correlated with recall of stories, visual
memory (Rey-O), and learning and recall of word pairs, with poorer
metabolic control associated with lower scores. These ndings are
consistent with previous studies on cognitive functioning in individuals
with Type I diabetes.
Neurophysiologic Correlates of Mental Fatigue in University Students
with and without Developmental Dyslexia- a pilot study, Z. Eviatar
b,c
,
S. Sapir
a,b
, J. Attias
a
, and L. Davidson
b,c
,
a
Department of
Communication Sciences and Disorders, Faculty of Social Welfare
and Health Studies,
b
Institute of Information Processing and Decision
Making,
c
Department of Psychology, University of Haifa
We examined dynamic changes in brain activity associated with task
learning, fatigue, and acoustic parameters of auditory stimulation in 6
university students with and without developmental dyslexia (DD).
EEG recordings, as well as response latency and accuracy, were made
while participants made temporal judgments about speech-like and
pure-tone synthesized stimuli. We used three Runs of 200 trials, with
participants completing a fatigue questionnaire between runs. Ques-
tionnaire results show equivalent amounts of fatigue in DD and control
participants in the pure tone conditions. The controls show the same
amount of fatigue in both conditions. The dyslexic participants rated
themselves as much more tired and annoyed after the speechlike sessions
than after the pure-tone sessions. FFT analysis of the ERP data reveal
dierent pattern of change between groups. Run had a stronger eect on
the brain states of the DD than for the controls. The eect of run was
dierent in the dyslexic group for speechlike stimuli and for pure tones.
For speech-like stimuli, dyslexics show less alpha over the frontal leads
then do the controls, with the opposite pattern occurring for pure-tone
stimuli. P300 latency revealedlearning in the control participants in both
sessions. In both sessions, the dyslexics have a shorter P300 than the
controls, but this lengthens with Run with speech-like stimuli, reecting
fatigue. Their P300 latencies remain constant with pure tone stimuli.
These data reect diering cortical networks for auditory processing in
DD, showing intensive, frontal activation that depletes resources, es-
pecially when stimuli are linguistic.
The eect of bilingualism on susceptibility to memory interference from
divided attention, Myra A. Fernandes
a
, Jane Logan
a,b
, Ellen Bialystok
b
,
and Fergus Craik
a
,
a
Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre for
Geriatric Care, Toronto, Canada,
b
York University, Toronto, Canada
It has been suggested that bilingual individuals are better than
monolinguals at cognitive tasks requiring executive control, and worse
on semantic uency tasks. Research investigating the eects of divided
attention (DA) on memory has shown that encoding relies on executive
processing resources, whereas retrieval depends on reactivation of se-
mantic and perceptual aspects of the memory trace. In this study we
examined how bilingualism aected memory interference from DA
conditions, whether this diered at encoding compared to retrieval,
and whether the degree of semantic relatedness between items in the
concurrent tasks modulated the eect. Monolingual and bilingual
young adults studied a list of related words presented auditorily, and
later recalled them aloud. During either study or retrieval, they con-
currently performed a distracting task requiring size decisions for
words presented visually, where the objects were either related or un-
related to the list of studied words. In line with other studies, memory
was signicantly reduced by DA, though more so when the distracting
task was performed during study than during retrieval, and when the
distracting task words were related to the memory task. While there
were no reliable group dierences from DA at encoding, bilinguals
showed disproportionately higher interference from DA at retrieval,
and from related compared to unrelated words in the distracting task.
Results suggest that bilingualism creates dierences in susceptibility to
memory interference at retrieval, indicating a diculty in this group
when tasks are more reliant upon representational systems, but not at
encoding, when tasks are more reliant upon executive resources.
Semantic representation in the time and space domains following frontal
and parietal lesions, L. Godbout
a
, P. Cloutier
a
, C. Bouchard
a
, C.M.J.
Braun
b
, and S. Gagnon
c
,
a
Departement de psychologie, universite du
Quebec a` Trois-Rivie`res, Canada,
b
Laboratoire de Neurosciences
280 Tennet XV Abstracts / Brain and Cognition 57 (2005) 276289
Cognitives, Universite du Quebec a` Montreal, Canada,
c
E

cole de
Psychologie, Universite dOttawa, Canada
The purpose of this investigation was to distinguish parietal from
frontal contributions to semantic representation. Eleven patients with
excised tumors of the frontal lobe were compared to 12 age, gender,
and education matched controls. Nine patients with parietal lesions
were also compared to nine similarly matched controls. Subjects were
tested for their semantic knowledge of space and of time with esti-
mation tasks. The frontal patients were impaired in semantic knowl-
edge of both space and time and the parietal patients only in the spatial
semantic domain. The results suggest that the frontal lobes make an
important multimodal contribution to semantic representation,
whereas the parietal lobes contribute more specically to semantic
representation in the spatial domain.
Levels of word processing in aphasia, Verena Hendrich, Marion
Grande, Francesca Longoni, and Walter Huber, Neurolinguistics at
the Department of Neurology, University of Technology (RWTH)
Aachen, Germany
It is widely accepted that the mental lexicon comprises both se-
mantic and formal representations of words (concepts and lexemes).
The assumption of a further level of representation for syntactic in-
formation (lemmas) is still controversial. The goal of the present study
was to detect patterns of performance in aphasic patients when pro-
cessing conceptual, syntactic or morpho-phonological features of
words. We measured reaction times and accuracy in three dierent
decision tasks focussing specically on each level of word processing
(conceptual, syntactic, and morpho-phonological level). The parame-
ters were natural gender (concept task), grammatical gender
(lemma task), and word form derivation (lexeme task), respec-
tively. The patients (n = 20) showed overall longer RTs and a higher
error rate in comparison to control subjects (n = 14). In the patients,
decisions on natural gender led to signicantly shorter RTs compared
to the lemma and the lexeme condition. In a single subject analysis, 18
patientscompared to the control groupshowed a signicant dis-
crepancy between the grammatical gender and the word form deriva-
tion task. The comparison between these two conditions, lemma and
lexeme, revealed a dissociation between one subgroup of patients with
higher RTs for the former and another subgroup of patients with
higher RTs for the latter. Within the same task, some patients showed
a dissociation between accuracy and RTs (low error rate but long RT;
high error rate but short RT). We interpret these results as further
evidence for a representation of syntactic features separated from
morpho-phonological representations in the mental lexicon.
Directed forgetting in normal aging: The role of processing speed,
Michael Hogge, Stephane Adam, and Fabienne Collette, Department
of Cognitive Sciences, Neuropsychology Unit, University of Lie`ge, B33
Sart Tilman, B-4000 Lie`ge, Belgium
Directed forgetting refers to the voluntary suppression of memory
content and has been interpreted as an index of good inhibitory abili-
ties. The item-method was used to investigate the inhibitory account of
the eect of normal aging on directed forgetting abilities. Results in-
dicated that older subjects did not present the directed forgetting eect
when the number of items increased and when the recall of items was
explicit. However, this absence of directed forgetting eect for older
subjects is obviously not due to an inhibitory decit per se but seems
rather to be caused by age-related dierences in processing speed.
Visual spatial neglect: Dissociations in perception and action, Laura E.
Hughes
a
, Timothy C. Bates
a
, and Anne Aimola Davies
a,b
,
a
Macquarie
Centre for Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia,
b
School of Psychology, The Australian National University, Canberra
ACT 0200, Australia
Patients with visual spatial neglect can be unimpaired in tasks re-
quiring global processing and visually guided actions. The current case
study reports a patient with profound visual spatial neglect, and ex-
plores a possible relationship between these two intact functions. An
initial rod-bisection task demonstrated that while perceptual judg-
ments were impaired, visually guided actions remained relatively in-
tact. Two further tasks manipulated the local and global processing
demands which partially removed the dissociation. Specically, a local-
processing task variant resulted in poor performance for both per-
ceptual judgments and for visually guided actions. On the global
processing variant, the original dissociation of impaired perceptual
judgment and preserved visually guided action was obtained. Jointly,
these results suggest that processing demands can expose decits in
both perceptual judgments and perception for actions in patients with
neglect, and should be accounted for in comprehensive explanations of
these dissociations.
Title of Poster Presentation
Great expectations: Humor comprehension across hemispheres, Rachel
Hull
a
, Hsin-Chin Chen
b
, Jyotsna Vaid
b
, and Francisco Martinez
b
,
a
Department of Psychology, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005,
USA,
b
Department of Psychology, Texas A&M University, College
Station, TX 77843-4235, USA
Psycholinguistic research on humor processing suggests that
meanings related to the initial but incorrect interpretation of joke texts
are primed early and remain active as late as the punchline, whereas
meanings related to the true joke interpretation are primed immedi-
ately upon joke oset and become selectively primed thereafter (Vaid,
Hull, Heredia, Gerkens, & Martinez, 2003). Laterality research has
suggested a role for the right hemisphere (RH) in maintaining an array
of candidate meanings of ambiguous words in a sentence context (e.g.,
Faust & Chiarello, 1998), including humorous sentences (Coulson &
Kutas, 2001; Coulson, unpub.). Furthermore, evidence from brain-
damaged patients appreciation of humor suggests that the right
temporal lobe is particularly involved in inference-making that con-
tributes to discourse coherence necessary for getting a joke (Bihrle,
Brownell & Gardner, 1986; see also imaging evidence, Goel & Dolan,
2001). The present research with brain-intact adults examined hemi-
spheric dierences in the time course of joke comprehension by com-
paring the priming of target words presented immediately upon joke
oset vs. shortly after joke oset. A self-paced, rapid serial visual
presentation procedure was used with lexical decision to laterally
presented target words. It was hypothesized that target words related
to the initial meaning would be accessed more readily in the left
hemisphere, whereas joke meanings would be accessed more readily in
the RH, particularly in the delayed condition. The results support
involvement of the RH in the processing of joke meaning, consistent
with the RHs established role in mediating integrative semantic pro-
cesses that require global coherence.
References
Bihrle, A. M., Brownell, H., & Powelson, J. A. (1986). Comprehension
of humorous and nonhumorous materials by left and right brain
damaged patients. Brain and Cognition, 5(4), 399411.
Coulson, S., & Kutas, M. (2001). Getting it: Human event-related
brain response to jokes in good and poor comprehenders.
Neuroscience Letters, 316, 7174.
Tennet XV Abstracts / Brain and Cognition 57 (2005) 276289 281
Faust, M., & Chiarello, C. (1998). Sentence context and lexical
ambiguity resolution by the two hemispheres. Neuropsychologia,
36(9), 827835.
Goel, V., & Dolan, R. (2001). The functional anatomy of humor:
Segregating cognitive and aective components. Nature Neu-
roscience, 4, 237238.
Vaid, J., Hull, R., Heredia, R., Gerkens, D. P., & Martinez, F. (2003).
Getting a joke: The time course of meaning activation in verbal
humor. Journal of Pragmatics, 35, 14311449.
Impairment in mapping semantics to phonology: Avariant formof primary
progressive aphasia, Janet L. Ingles
a,b
, John D. Fisk
b,c,d
, Michael
Passmore
d
, and Sultan Darvesh
c
,
a
School of Human Communication
Disorders, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada B3H 1R2,
b
Department of Psychology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS,
Canada B3H 1R2,
c
Department of Medicine, Dalhousie University,
Halifax, NS, Canada B3H 1R2,
d
Department of Psychiatry, Dalhousie
University, Halifax, NS, Canada B3H 1R2
We describe a 59-year-old woman with a documented progressive
language impairment over a four year interval and most recent neu-
roimaging ndings of decreased perfusion (SPECT) and focal atrophy
(MRI) in the left temporal region. The most prominent feature of her
three neuropsychological assessments has been a profound and pro-
gressive impairment in visual confrontation naming (with substantial
benet from phonemic cues) and naming to auditory description. In
spite of this, she performs well on tests of semantic processing (e.g.,
auditory word-picture matching with semantic distractors, verbal
generation of denitions) and phonological output (e.g., word, non-
word and sentence repetition, and regular and irregular word reading).
Her spontaneous speech has remained uent with preserved syntax and
articulation but with word-nding problems and occasional phonemic
paraphasias. All other cognitive abilities have been stable and intact,
with the exception of mild diculties on tests of attention and working
memory. These ndings suggest a variant form of frontotemporal
dementia with features that are not consistent with either the uent/
semantic or non-uent types of progressive aphasia. Specically an
impairment of mapping semantic representations onto phonological
output is suggested with these two systems themselves remaining rel-
atively intact.
Screening for Parkinsons disease with response time batteries: A pilot
study, Andrew M. Johnson
a
, Philip A. Vernon
b
, Quincy J. Almeida
c,d
,
Linda L. Grantier
d
, and Mandar S. Jog
d
,
a
Faculty of Health Sciences,
University of Western Ontario, London, Ont., Canada N6A 3K7,
b
Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, London,
Ont., Canada,
c
Department of Kinesiology, University of Waterloo,
Waterloo, Ont., Canada,
d
Department of Clinical Neurological
Sciences, London Health Sciences Centre, University Campus,
London, Ont., Canada
Although signicant response time decits (both reaction time
and movement time) have been identied in patients with Parkin-
sons disease (PD), no eort has been made to evaluate the use of
these measures in screening for PD. In the present study, cuto
scores for a unit-weighted composite of two tasks were determined
in a sample of 40 patients and 40 healthy participants, and these
scores were used to predict disease state in an independent set of
data. The high sensitivity and specicity in the cross-validation
sample suggests a potential role for response time batteries in
screening for PD.
Modulation of the N2pc by concurrent memory and attentional load,
Pierre Jolicoeur
a
, Paola Sessa
b
, and Roberto DellAcqua
b
,
a
Department of Psychology, Universite de Montreal, Canada,
b
Department of Psychology, University of Padova, Italy
The N2pc, an event-related potential with a greater negativity
over posterior brain regions contralateral to a lateralized visual tar-
get, appears to reect the deployment of spatial attention to the
target. We modied the attentional blink paradigm by presenting T2
(the second of two targets) to the left or right of xation, concur-
rently with a distractor on the other side. This paradigm allowed us
to study possible interactions between central attention (the AB) and
spatial attention (reected by the N2pc). We discovered that the
magnitude of the N2pc was reduced when T1 was processed, and
more so when the time interval between T1 and T2 was short. The
results suggest that the early sensory enhancement associated with
visual spatial attention depends on control processes that share
mechanisms that are also used for the control of central attentional
operations.
Free viewing perceptual asymmetry for distance judgments: Objects in
right hemispace are closer than they appear, Daniel Brian Krupp
a
, Lorin
J. Elias
b
, and Brent M. Robinson
c
,
a
Department of Psychology,
McMaster University, 1280 Main St. W., Hamilton, Ont., Canada L8S
4K1,
b
Department of Psychology, University of Saskatchewan, 9
Campus Dr., Saskatoon, Sask., Canada S7N 5A5,
c
College of Law,
University of Saskatchewan, 15 Campus Dr., Saskatoon, Sask., Canada
S7N 5A6
Neurologically normal individuals demonstrate leftward biases in
tasks of line bisection and judgments of brightness, numerosity, or size.
Normals also report a right-sided bias when bumping into objects.
Collectively, these results suggest that normals neglect the right
hemispace. The present experiment investigated the possibility that
normals will also demonstrate leftward biases for judgments of dis-
tance. Participants viewed two equivalent but mirror-reversed three-
dimensional shapes (boxes and pyramids) of various orientations,
sizes, and angles, making judgments about the perceived closeness of
the stimuli. Signicant leftward biases were exhibited for judgments of
the closeness of boxes, but not for pyramids. Several participants re-
marked that the pyramids did not give the illusion of depth, which
might account for the lack of bias elicited by these stimuli. The ndings
of the current study support the hypothesis that the normal tendency
to bump into objects with the right-side of ones body might be due to
a perceptual asymmetry for distance judgments.
Depressive changes in working and non-working stroke patients,
S. Lacher
a
, T. Leim
a
, B. Stemmer
b
, and P.W. Scho nle
c
,
a
Lurija
Institute for Rehabilitation and Health Sciences at the University of
Konstanz, Allensbach, Germany,
b
Centre de Recherche, IUGM,
Montreal, Canada,
c
Neurologisches Rehabilitationszentrum,
Magdeburg, Germany
Depression has frequently been described in stroke patients.
However, little is known about its time course and its correlation with
vocational re-integration. The objective of our study was to compare
the course of depressive symptoms at dierent times during the reha-
bilitation process in non-aphasic stroke patients. We investigated 73
rst time non-aphasic stroke patients who had previously been active
members of the work force at the time of admission to neurological
rehabilitation and 6, 12, and 36 months after discharge using the
Cornell depression scale (CDS).
Compared to the non-working group the working group showed
signicantly less depressive symptoms at 6 and 12 month after dis-
charge. The groups did not dier at 36 months. The within group
comparison revealed that the depressive symptoms of the working
group had improved signicantly over time for the rst 12 months
282 Tennet XV Abstracts / Brain and Cognition 57 (2005) 276289
after discharge but then deteriorated during the following 24 months.
The depressive symptoms of the non-working group did not change
during the rst 12 months but then improved in the following 24
months.
Our results show a dierent time course for depressive symptoms in
stroke patients returning to work versus those who do not. It seems
that those who show less depressive symptoms at an early stage are
more likely to return to work. However, their depressive symptoms
then increase possibly related to problems coping with the demands of
the working situation. The long-term improvement of the depressive
symptoms of the non-working group may be related to adjusting to
their life situation.
Predicting quality of life after stroke, T. Leim
a
, B. Stemmer
b
, S. Lacher
a
,
J. Ide
a
, and P.W. Scho nle
c
,
a
Lurija Institute for Rehabilitation and
Health Sciences at the University of Konstanz, Allensbach, Germany,
b
Centre de Recherche, IUGM, Montreal, Canada,
c
Neurologisches
Rehabilitationszentrum, Magdeburg, Germany
Despite the diculty of conceptualization (Lau & McKenna, 2001),
quality of life is getting increased attention as an outcome measure of
health care intervention after stroke. Based on current evidence that
views quality of life as a holistic and multi-dimensional concept (Kim
et al., 1999) we examined whether and to what degree cognitive,
emotional, physical and sociodemographic factors predict quality of
life of stroke survivors three years after discharge from neurological
rehabilitation. Seventy-three non-aphasic rst-time stroke patients
were submitted to a wide variety of tests and scales assessing the
functional and psychosocial status at admission. Three years after
discharge the patients rated their quality of life using the World Health
Organization Bref-Scale (WHOQUALITY OF LIFE-BREF). Quality
of life tended to be lower for the stroke patients than for a healthy
control group. Stepwise multiple regression analysis indicated that
depressive symptoms, physical disabilities, and processing speed had
the highest predictive value for long-term quality of life. Higher cog-
nitive functions and sociodemographic factors, including age, sex, and
education failed to show a strong inuence on long-term quality of life.
Our results corroborate studies that have identied depression and
physical status as good predictors for quality of life (Jaracz & Ko-
zubski, 2003; Williams et al., 1999). In addition we also identied
processing speed as inuencing quality of life suggesting that besides
physical and emotional factors basic cognitive functions also need to
be considered.
References
Jaracz, K., & Kozubski, W. (2003). Quality of life in stroke patients.
Acta Neurologica Scandinavica, 107(5), 324330.
Kim, P., Warren, S., Madill, H., & Hadley, M. (1999). Quality of life of
stroke survivors. Quality of Life Research: An International Journal
of Quality of Life Aspects of Treatment, Care & Rehabilitation, 8(4),
293301.
Lau, A., & McKenna, K. (2001). Conceptualizing quality of life for
elderly people with stroke. Disability and Rehabilitation, 23(6), 227
238.
Williams, L. S., Weinberger, M., Harris, L. E., & Biller, J. (1999)
Measuring quality of life in a way that is meaningful to stroke
patients. Neurology, 53(8), 18391943.
Frames of reference for pointing to a remembered target, Martin Lemay
a
and George E. Stelmach
b
,
a
Cognitive Neuroscience Center, Universite
du Quebec a` Montreal, BOX 8888, Montreal, Que., Canada, H3C 3P8,
b
Motor Control Laboratory, Arizona State University, USA
Pointing with an unseen hand to a visual target that disappears
prior to movement requires (1) information about target location and
initial arm position be translated into a common frame of reference
and (2) maintaining a memory representation about the target loca-
tion. The target location can be transformed either into a hand-cen-
tered frame of reference during target presentation and remembered
under that form or remembered in terms of retinal and extra-retinal
cues and transformed into a hand-centered frame of reference before
movement initiation. The main goal of the present study was to in-
vestigate whether the target is stored in memory in an eye-centered,
hand-centered or in both frames of reference concomitantly. The task
was to memorize a target location for 8 s and point to this remembered
target. During the recall delay, participants were asked to move their
hand or their eyes. Movement of the eyes was expected to disrupt an
eye-centered memory representation whereas movement of the hand
was expected to disrupt a hand-centered memory representation by
increasing movement variability to the target. Results showed that
participants were more variable on the directional component of the
movement when required to move their hand during recall delay. On
the contrary, moving the eyes caused an increase in variability only in
the extent component of the pointing movement. Taken together, these
results suggest that the direction of the movement is coded and re-
membered relative to the position of the hand whereas the extent of the
movement is remembered relative to the eyes.
The laboratory First-Night Eect as a model of sleep deprivation:
Measures of intra-hemispheric EEG coherence during REM sleep, Cathy
Leveille
a,b,d
, Marc-Andre Gingras
a,b,d
, Claude M.J.Braun
d
, and Roger
Godbout
a,b,c
,
a
Neurodevelopmental Disorders Program, Ho pital
Rivie`re-des-Prairies,
b
Centre de recherche Fernand-Seguin, Ho pital
Rivie`re-des-Prairies,
c
Department of Psychiatry, Universite de
Montreal (Quebec) Canada,
d
Department of Psychology, Universite
du Quebec a` Montreal, Montreal (Quebec) Canada
Having to sleep for a rst night in a laboratory is accompanied by
disorders that have been used to model sleep deprivation. Brain
imagery and neuropsychological studies have shown that sleep de-
privation is associated with changes in antero-posterior cortical
connectivity. The aim of this study was to verify whether the rst-
night eect (FNE) is associated with changes in intra-hemispheric
EEG coherence (a measure of functional connectivity between cor-
tical regions) during REM sleep (a state of endogenous CNS acti-
vation sensitive).
Methods. Five men and ve women (21.4 4.9 years) were re-
corded for two consecutive nights. All were right-handed. Ninety-six
seconds of REM sleep EEG (Fp1, Fp2, F7, F8, C3, C4, T3, T4, O1,
O2) were submitted to Fast Fourier Transform. Night 1 and night 2
magnitude of coherence function (expressed in %) for the 10 intra-
hemispheric pairs of recording sites was compared on total spectrum
(0.75 to 20.25 Hz) using paired t-tests.
Results. Sleep architecture showed a typical FNE, including in-
creased wakefulness and decreased deep stages of sleep. Compared to
night 2, a weaker intra-hemispheric EEG coherence was found on
night 1 for Fp1-T3 (p < .01), F7-T3 (p < .02), and C3-O1 (p < .02).
Conclusion. These results indicate that FNE is associated with an
antero-posterior uncoupling of cortical areas during REM sleep. This
may represent one of the mechanisms by which sleep deprivation in-
uences REM sleep-related cognitive activity. The fact all signicant
changes were found over the left hemisphere in right-handers calls for
further investigation.
Making science in troubled times: The other side of Donald Olding
HEBB experimental studies, Nicolas Marchand, Universite du Quebec
a` Montreal, Case postale 8888, Succursale Centre-ville, Montreal,
Que., Canada H3C3P8
Tennet XV Abstracts / Brain and Cognition 57 (2005) 276289 283
According to the Canadian psychologist Donald Olding Hebb
(19041985), the sensory deprivation studies that he conducted with his
team at McGill University in the early 1950s were one signicant piece
of his career (CPA Oral Archives Project, NAC MG28I161). These
studies were indeed inuential in experimental psychology and neu-
ropsychology. They are often presented as strong arguments for the
environmental role in the thought processes, and are still used in some
introductory courses. Besides their experimental design, the theory
underlying them and their clear-cut results, one has also to retain that
these studies were initiated in the context of the Korean War and what
we may call Cold War Science. These studies were in fact contracted in
1951 by the Defence Research Board of Canada, a military Federal
agency dedicated to research and development, in collaboration with
US and UK allied forces. Their primary goal was to solve the so-called
brainwashing methods that American forces suspected to be employed
by the Reds (see, for example, D.O. Hebb et W. Heron, Eects of
Radical Isolation Upon Intellectual Function and the Manipulation of
Attitudes, Report No. HR63, DRB, 1955), in the light of the strange
behaviors of their returning P.O.Ws. This contribution, based on un-
published archival material (personal correspondence and government
reports) and primary scientic publications from Hebbs research
team, presents the Cold War context of these studies and discusses how
a scientist dealt with it to enhance the status of Psychology in the
Canadian research system and made ourish, in the process, the sub-
eld of Experimental Psychology.
Attentional reorienting underlies the attentional blink, S. Marti, M.
Thibeault, and F. Richer, Cognitive Neuroscience Center, C.P. 8888,
Succursale Centre-Ville, Montreal, Que., Canada
The perception of a visual stimulus can be strongly impaired if a
second stimulus is presented within 100 ms (backward visual masking).
The identication of the target stimulus requires attentional processes
which extend over a 500 ms period. If a second masked target is pre-
sented during this period, its perception is strongly impaired, the at-
tentional blink (AB) eect. Previous studies suggest that this decit
reects the attentional demands of the rst target. However, we have
recently found that when targets and masks have simultaneous onsets
the AB is signicantly reduced. This suggests that the attentional
processes associated with stimulus onsets could produce the AB. In the
present study, we tested the role of stimulus onsets in the production of
the AB by comparing the amplitude of the AB in dierent masking
conditions at the second target. The targets were white squares with
one or two gaps. First, we used a standard backward masking pro-
cedure in which a target was followed by a distinct mask. This delayed
presentation of the mask produced a strong AB. In a second condition,
the mask was presented twice in each trial, rst simultaneously to the
target and second after target oset, so that the delayed mask was no
longer a new visual item. In this condition, we did not observe an AB.
These results show that it is the delayed presentation of a new visual
item rather than a delayed onset which determine the production of an
AB. We suggest that the cerebral processes engaged in the automatic
reorienting of attention to new visual items are, at least partially, re-
sponsible for the AB.
The biological substrate of language: The evolution of a question
throughout the centuries, Evelyne Mercure, Yves Joanette, and
Bernadette Ska, Centre de recherche de lInstitut universitaire de
geriatrie de Montreal, Faculte de medecine de lUniversite de Montreal
The question of the biological substrate of language is one that has
fascinated for centuries, even millennia. Today, an important amount
of information concerning this question is widely accepted. It is thus
well known that while language is mainly a left-hemisphere-based
brain attribute, there is also an important contribution from the right
hemisphere, such that the presence of crucial interhemispheric coo-
perations is now a widely acknowledged concept. Furthermore, it has
been demonstrated that specic brain areas are activated during spe-
cic language behavior and that these areas are most probably orga-
nized in functional networks, which can be unveiled, at least partly,
through functional and eective connectivity. However, the very basis
of this actual conception of the biological substrate of language has
not always been known or accepted. Before current views could be
accepted, many questions needed to be asked and many chapters of the
story, written.
Looking back at history, some chapters appear more essential than
others. What distinguishes those chapters from the other ones is that
they represent a point in time at which the question of the biological
substrate of language was redened and re-expressed in a totally new
way. The goal of the present historical analysis is to study how im-
portant advancements in the search for the biological substrate of
language were provided by new formulations of the question. Re-
viewing those brilliant chapters of history outlines two interesting
thoughts: rst, that any revolution in the search for the biological
substrate of language would hinge upon our ability to redene the
question in a totally new way and second, that the position in the nal
history book, of the current conceptions of the biological substrate of
languagebeginning, middle or endis still totally unknown.
Task attendance behaviors and the dopamine transporter gene in school-
aged children, Dominique Morisano
a
, Kim Cornish
a,b
, and Ridha
Joober
a
,
a
McGill University, Montreal, Que., Canada,
b
University of
Nottingham, UK
Although Attention Decit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is
dened as a categorical entity, it is expressed in the form of extreme
behaviors along three continuous dimensions: inattention, motor hy-
peractivity, and impulsiveness. Recent genetic studies indicate an as-
sociation between ADHD and the dopamine transporter gene (DAT1)
with possible preferential relation to hyperactivity and impulsivity, but
not inattention. The DAT1 may also be implicated in the modulation
of specic motor behaviors in non-clinical populations of children. The
present study investigated behaviors related to task disengagement and
genetics in a non-clinical sample, to determine whether the modulation
of these behaviors is associated with genetic variability of the DAT1
within the normal population. Twenty-seven children (9 males, 18 fe-
males) between the ages of 6 and 8 years were recruited from a public
elementary school in Montreal, Canada. Children were observed in the
classroom during performance of independent academic work over
three 15 min sessions. Task disengagement behaviors (o task,
dgets, out of seat, vocalizes, plays with objects) were scored
using the Restricted Academic Situation Scale by trained research as-
sistants. The Conners Teacher Rating Scale-Revised: Short Form was
used to measure major behavioral problems. Participants provided
DNA using a saliva sampling procedure, and were genotyped ac-
cording to the 3
0
end VNTR of the DAT1 using a PCR-based method.
MANOVA will be used to test for association between allelic variants
of the DAT1 and task attendance behaviors. The ndings will move us
one step closer towards an understanding of the link between specic
genes and the ADHD phenotype.
Minimalism, nature of features, and neuropsychological syndromes
aecting language, Celso Novaes, Department of Linguistics, Federal
University of Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
Two aphasic patients speaking Brazilian Portuguese and presenting
the characteristics of Brocas aphasics were analyzed in relation to
their capacities to express tense and agreement features. The analysis
consisted of looking at the violations committed by the two agram-
matic aphasic patients. Although in dierent proportions in relation to
284 Tennet XV Abstracts / Brain and Cognition 57 (2005) 276289
some data from literature, dissociation between tense and agreement
could be observed: the two aphasics examined showed problems with
tense but not with agreement. These results were interpreted as a
consequence of dierent natures of the features under consideration.
Anatomical limitations and cerebral processes in mental transformations
of body parts, Leila S. Petit
a,b
, Irina M. Harris
a
, and Alan J. Pegna
b
,
a
Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Macquarie University,
Sydney NSW 2109, Australia,
b
Functional Brain Mapping
Laboratory, Neurology Department, Geneva University Hospital, 24
Micheli-du-Crest, 1211 Geneva 14, Switzerland
This study investigated whether anatomical limitations constrain
the way in which subjects perform mental transformations of body
parts. Subjects viewed body parts presented in dierent orientations
and decided whether or not they were anatomically correct. Event-
related potentials (ERP) were recorded at the same time. Behavioural
results show that subjects found it much easier to carry out the task
when the picture was anatomically realistic, both in terms of featural
plausibility and normal range of movement. Moreover, typical mental
rotation functions were only present for anatomically correct body
parts. Mean ERP series were computed for each class of stimuli (i.e.,
anatomically plausible or implausible, upright or rotated limbs). The
succession of microstates (i.e., periods of stable map topographies),
thought to reect the dierent stages of information processing, were
then extracted from the grand mean map series. Dierences in mi-
crostates yielded two major ndings. First, an additional microstate
appeared only in the case of anatomically impossible limbs around
130 ms after stimulus presentation. Then, at about 400 ms, a specic
microstate appeared for rotated limbs only, therefore suggesting the
actual mental rotation process. Thus, preliminary results show that a
stimulus may be recognised as anatomically possible or impossible
within the rst 130 ms, prior to its mental rotation (400 ms). Distrib-
uted linear inverse solutions applied to the rotation microstate
suggest that it occurs in the left parietal region. These results are
consistent with the existence of a specialised cognitive system that deals
with mental transformations of body parts, and incorporates knowl-
edge of the anatomical and biomechanical constraints of real bodies.
Decits in rapid movements are dierent in atypical parkinsonian
syndromes and Parkinsons disease, Maxime Philibert
a
, Francois
Richer
a,b
, Pierre Blanchet
b,c
, Sylvain Chouinard
b
, Anne-Sophie
Dubarry
d
, and Eric Fimbel
d
,
a
Cognitive Neuroscience Center,
Universite du Quebec, Box 8888, Montreal, QC, Canada H3C 3P8,
b
Centre Hospitalier de lUniversite de Montreal, Montreal, QC,
Canada,
c
Departement de stomatologie Faculte de medecine dentaire
Universite de Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada,
d
Ecole de Technologie
Superieure, Canada
Parkinsonism has long been associated with problems in voluntary
movements. The lack of smoothness of voluntary movements in pa-
tients with Parkinsons disease (PD) has been observed in a variety of
tasks (Poizner et al., 1998; Rand, Stelmach, & Bloedel, 2000) Atypical
parkinsonian syndromes (APS) are often dicult to distinguish from
PD during early stages. Since APS produce striatal damage unlike PD,
these motor disorders may distinctly alter voluntary motor control.
This study examined the presence of discrete motor abnormalities in
ballistic aiming movements in APS (MSA, PSP, and CBD) and PD.
Patients and age-matched controls performed rapid ballistic arm ex-
tension movements on a digitizing tablet without visual feedback.
Events corresponding to qualitative changes in the rst derivative of
acceleration (jerk) were detected by means of a pattern recognition
software (Fimbel, Dubarry, Philibert, & Beuter, 2003). Results show
that APS patients present longer movement time, lower maximal
speed, and signicantly higher numbers of abnormalities in jerk
compared to PD patients and controls. No dierence was found be-
tween control and PD groups. Thus, simple aiming movements can
show dierences in irregularity between patients with APS and PD.
This suggests that irregularity in voluntary movements is more linked
to the striatal damage associated with APS than to the midbrain
damage typical of early PD.
References
Fimbel, E., Dubarry, A. N., Philibert, M., & Beuter, A. (2003). Event
identication in movement recordings by means of qualitative
patterns. Neuroinformatics, 1, 239258.
Poizner, H., Fookson, O. I., Berkinblit, M. B., Hening, W., Feldman,
G., & Adamovich, S. (1998). Pointing to remembered targets in 3-
D space in Parkinsons disease. Motor Control, 2(3), 251277.
Rand, M. K., Stelmach, G. E., & Bloedel, J. R. (2000). Movement
accuracy constraints in Parkinsons disease patients. Neuropsych-
ologia, 38(2), 203212.
The repetition of logatoms by pilot children partially-sighted and
children: A linguistic task connected to acquisition of the written
language, Veronique Prost, Carine Sabater, and Veronique Rey,
Laboratoire Parole et Langage, Universite de Provence, UMR 6057
CNRS 29, Avenue Robert Schuman, 13621 Aix-en-Provence
Word and logatom repetition tasks are often used in language skills
evaluations of adults. Nevertheless we can wonder whether these tasks
are relevant for children and whether they allow us to evaluate chil-
drens decits in written learning. This research aims to prove that
these tasks track a developmental process which is related to oral and
writing skills. We proposed a word and logatom repetition exercise to a
group of visually impaired children, who had just started learning how
to write and to three control groups of sighted children at dierent
school levels. Visually impaired children only discover written lan-
guage at school, when they learn how to read, not before. Their pro-
ductions at the proposed exercises thus allow us to validate the link
between written learning and repetition task. The subjects productions
were analysed in terms of errors types made according to the syntag-
matic and paradigmatic axes. It conrmed the results for the group of
adults and ratied the relevance of the use of logatoms as a linguistic
evaluation tool. Repetition performances follow a developmental
process and are indeed correlated with reading capacities. Finally, by
analogy, the two-way model (that is, global way and analytical way)
used to describe the reading process, provides an interpretation of the
procedures used in repetition and allows us to interpret the diculties
in logatom repetition.
Numerical processing in children with typical and atypical developmental
pathways: A cross-syndrome perspective, Amira Rahman, Simone
Levey, Kim Archambault, Irene Maragos, Sylvain Roy, Danielle
Osteld, and Kim Cornish, Neuroscience Laboratory for Research and
Education in Developmental Disorders, McGill University, Montreal,
Canada
The past decade has seen unparalleled advances in the eld of
cognitive neuroscience. Collaboratively, these advances have facilitat-
ed our understanding of how genes can impact upon behavior, through
the identication of specic decits and patterns of cognitive pro-
cessing that are typical of a specic neuro-developmental disorder. In
the present study we will focus on one aspect of cognition that has been
consistently under-researched in atypical populationsnumerical
ability. In contrast to the existing body of knowledge on typically
developing children, there remains a considerable gap in our under-
standing of basic number skills in atypical populations. Although
Tennet XV Abstracts / Brain and Cognition 57 (2005) 276289 285
many developmental disorders report decits in numerical cognition
(e.g., Williams syndrome, Turners syndrome), relatively few studies
have systematically investigated the nature of any impairment using a
cross syndrome perspective. In the present study, performance by
children with fragile X syndrome (FXS) was compared to children with
Down syndrome (DS) and two groups of typically developing children.
Using a range of measures that tap numerical cognition we found, as
expected, an overall impairment in general number processing in both
syndrome groups. However, closer inspection of the data revealed
dissociation in performance, with the FXS children performing sig-
nicantly worse, compared to children with DS, on tasks that require
numerical operations. In contrast, skills that require mathematical
reasoning were more impaired in the DS group. These ndings un-
derline the importance of moving towards identifying syndrome spe-
cic prociencies and deciencies and away from the assumption that
reduced performance reects a general cognitive delay irrespective of
genetic etiology.
Executive dysfunction in schizophrenia is not dierentially aected by
long-term typical or atypical neuroleptic medication, Sophie Remillard
a
,
Emmanuelle Pourcher
b
and Henri Cohen
a
,
a
Cognitive Neuroscience
Center, Universite du Quebec a` Montreal,
b
Movement and Memory
Disorder Clinic ,Polyclinique Ste-Anne, Quebec, Canada
Cognitive dysfunctions (as in memory, attention and executive
function) have been recognized as fundamental features of schizo-
phrenia. Executive dysfunction is a major obstacle to functional
outcome, community functioning and rehabilitation success and it is
crucial to assess the eects of so-called antypsychotic medication in
this domain of cognitive functioning. Atypical neuroleptics have been
reported to improve cognitive functioning in schizophrenia, but there
are still controversies regarding these results. Given that the great
majority of studies have assessed the eects of antipsychotics only at
short treatment intervals and with no healthy comparison group, our
studys objective was to evaluate the eects of atypical (Risperidone)
and conventional (Haloperidol) neuroleptics on executive skills in 32
patients with schizophrenia over a 18-month period relative to the
performance of age- and education-matched healthy controls. In this
randomized, double-blind study, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test
(WCST) was administered at baseline, 3, 6, 12, and 18 months after
initiating medication. Relative to healthy controls, patients with
schizophrenia showed marked decits in WCST from baseline
through 18 months of treatment. Individuals with schizophrenia
performed signicantly worse than the healthy controls on number
of categories achieved, percent perseverative errors and total errors.
There was no dierence in performance or improvement between
both atypical and typical drugs on WCST at all assessment periods.
These results indicate that, relative to the performance of healthy
controls, executive dysfunction in schizophrenia does not particularly
benet from a specic neuroleptic treatmentwhether typical or
atypical.
Fundamental properties of the N2pc as an index of spatial attention:
Eects of backward masking, Nicolas Robitaille, and Pierre Jolicoeur,
Department of Psychology, Universite de Montreal, Canada
N2pc, a greater negativity over posterior brain regions contralat-
eral to a visual target, has been argued to reect the deployment of
spatial attention. Masking has been implicated as an important factor
in the attentional blink paradigm, and we wished to discover whether
masking would modulate the N2pc. We presented a target and a dis-
tractor simultaneously, to either side of xation (3 degrees), for about
50 ms (duration staircased), and these stimuli were followed by a bi-
lateral mask on half of trials. Letters were targets for half of the
subjects and digits were targets for the other half. The targets were red
for half of the subjects and green for the other half. The task was a
speeded choice response based on the identity of the target. Event-
related potentials were recorded from 8 observers. The mask increased
reaction time signicantly but had no signicant eect on accuracy,
facilitating the interpretation of the ERPs. A clear N2pc was found for
unmasked as well as for masked targets over posterior electrode sites
(O1/O2, P3/P4, T5/T6) between 190 and 280 ms. Although the mask
itself was bilateral and identical on both sides, the eect of the mask
was clearly laterlatized as a function of the side of the target and
generated a positivity contralateral to the target, between 225 and
325 ms. Thus, the eect of the mask appeared not to inuence N2pc,
but rather to add a new component. Properties of this component will
be discussed.
Inhibitory interaction between the hemispheres in dyslexia on a lexical
decision task, Barbara J. Rutherford, Psychology Department,
Okanagan University College, 3000 College Way, Kelowna, B.C.,
Canada V1V 1V7
Two explanations for dyslexia are tested. According to the in-
hibitory-interaction hypothesis (Wey et al., 1993), the left-hemisphere
advantage for linguistic processing develops with experience as the
left increasingly suppresses the right hemisphere. It follows that in-
adequate suppression in dyslexia should be apparent when letter
strings are orthographically correct but not incorrect because of more
experience reading correct strings. Alternatively, Kershner and Mi-
callef (1991) submit that exuberant activity of the right hemisphere is
associated with an attentional dysfunction that impairs the left from
engaging in linguistic processing. It follows that this should hold
regardless of the type of letter string. Adult reading-disabled males
with or without dyslexia were presented letter strings to the centre
visual eld for lexical decision. Orthographically incorrect (non-
words), orthographically correct not-word strings (pseudowords) or
words were or were not accompanied by a blinking light to the left or
right visual eld. Comparison of the response times of the dyslexics
to normal readers showed no asymmetry for either group in the
nonword condition. For pseudowords, the dyslexics showed a right-
rather than left-hemisphere advantage. For words, the left advantage
was less stable than in controls. The ndings deny an attentional
dysfunction but support a failure to develop normal hemispheric
suppression.
The neural basis for the processingof shape features and their conjunctions,
Daniel Saumier
a,b
, Jasmin Leveille
c
, and Martin Arguin
b,c
,
a
Bloomeld
Centre for Research in Aging, Lady Davis Institute for Medical
Research, and Jewish General Hospital/McGill University, Canada,
b
Centre de recherche, Institut Universitaire de Geriatrie de Montreal,
Canada,
c
Groupe de Recherche en Neuropsychologie Experimentale,
Departement de psychologie, Universite de Montreal, Canada
We have previously reported two visual search studies (Arguin &
Saumier, 2000; Saumier & Arguin, 2003) indicating that the visual
search rates for single-feature targets dened by shape properties that
are linearly separable from those of their distractors yield markedly
faster search rates than non-linearly separable targets, or targets made
of a conjunction of distractor features. These ndings suggest the ex-
istence of a visual shape encoding mechanism that eciently processes
shapes that possess a unique feature ant that are linearly separable.
The present study investigated the neural basis of this system by using
a visual search task that required subjects (n = 9) to rapidly search for
linearly separable single-feature, linearly non-separable, and conjunc-
tion targets while evoked response potentials (ERPs) were recorded.
Targets were present on half of the trials and display size varied from
2, 4, 7, or 9 shapes. The behavioral results replicate those obtained by
Arguin and Saumier (2000) and Saumier and Arguin (2003). More
286 Tennet XV Abstracts / Brain and Cognition 57 (2005) 276289
importantly, however, the electrophysiological data reveal a late
(P450) component that signicantly distinguishes the linearly separable
single-feature from the linearly non-separable, and conjunction con-
ditions. These ndings suggest that single feature linearly separable
targets may invoke special physiological processes that occur relatively
late in the visual processing stream.
Poster abstract submission for TENNET XV
Culture and language modulate processing of emotional prosody, Annett
Schirmer
a
, Ming Lui
b
, Mandy Chan
c
, and Trevor B. Penney
c
,
a
Max
PlanckInstitute of HumanCognitive andBrainSciences, Stephanstrasse
1a, Leipzig, Germany, D-04103,
b
Department of Psychology,
Northwestern University, 2029 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208-
2710, USA,
c
Psychology Department, Chinese University of Hong
Kong, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong SAR
Previous event-related potential (ERP) studies from our lab
(Schirmer & Kotz, 2003) revealed gender dierences in the processing
of emotional speech in German listeners. More specically, women
integrated the emotional prosody of an utterance more readily into
language processing than men. The present study investigated whe-
ther these gender dierences are present in a dierent culture/lan-
guage and whether attention to emotional prosody modulates their
occurrence. To this end, we presented emotional words (e.g., win)
that were spoken with congruous (i.e., happy) or incongruous (i.e.,
sad) prosody to native Cantonese speaking listeners. Participants
evaluated either the emotional meaning of each word or the con-
gruence between the emotional meaning of a word and its emotional
prosody. ERPs revealed gender dierences that are comparable to
those reported for German listeners. When the task focused on the
emotional meaning of a word, women, but not men, showed dier-
ential processing of congruous and incongruous presentations.
However, these processing dierences occurred later than in the
German sample. Furthermore, evaluating the congruence between
word meaning and emotional prosody reduced the onset latency of
ERP dierences between congruous and incongruous presentations
and eliminated the gender dierences. The implications of these
ndings for the role of attention and culture/language in emotional
speech processing will be discussed.
Linguistic prole of adults with prader-willi syndrome: evidence from a
narrative task, Teresa M. Sgaramella
a
, Cristina Pagni
b
, Salvatore
Soresi
b
, Lucia Meligrana
a
, Giorgio Andrighetto
c
, P. Parmigiani
c
, and
S. Pandolfo
c
,
a
Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Ospedale Civile di
Vicenza, Viale Rodol, 36100 Vicenza, Italy,
b
Centro di Ateneo per le
Disabilita`, Universita` di Padova, Italy,
c
BIRD Foundation, Vicenza,
Italy
Research on language has recently focused on the nature of lin-
guistic skills that individual with mental retardation in genetic disor-
ders may exhibit, trying to demonstrate that some language processes
may be preserved and function independently of mental retardation
(MR) and of other cognitive systems.
The aim of this study was to highlight the level of development and
organization that adults with Prader-Willy (P-W) syndrome may reach
on oral production and the possible relationship with general cognitive
development.
We studied a group of 12 young adults with P-W syndrome (mean
age 24.3), with mild to moderate mental retardation, as dened by
CPM and TIB.
Subjects were asked to produce a story, depicted on connected
pictures. The extracted narrative sample (mean number of words was
305.7) was analyzed along a set of measures: speech rate, morpho-
logical measures ( e.g., open/closed class, noun/ verb ratio, token/types
ratios) and structural measures (e.g., sentences types and frequencies,
embedding index). Speech repairs were also analyzed.
Our subjects, divided according to MR level, showed marked dif-
ferences both qualitative and quantitative in speech rate, morpholog-
ical and structural measures. Results seem to suggest that young adults
with P-W syndrome may have developed some complex linguistic
processes and mechanisms and that general cognitive skills might in-
terfere on their ability to activate and extensively use these knowledge
during narrative speech production.
Time and event based prospective remembering in migraine patients,
Teresa M. Sgaramella
a
, Alessia Segat
a
, Vito Toso
a
, and Francesco
Perini
a,b
,
a
Headache and Stroke Centre, Vicenza, Italy,
b
Dipartimento
di Neuroscienze, Ospedale Civile di Vicenza, Viale Rodol, 36100
Vicenza, Italy
Realizing future actions requires that a person remembers what has
to be executed and when it has to be carried out, both in the case of
time and event based actions. Ten patients suering from migraine
were included in this pilot study. While performing traditional cogni-
tive assessment patients were asked to execute time and event based
PM tasks respectively at 1
0
and 5
0
time interval. An extended neuro-
psychological battery was administered to all subjects in two sessions
in order to assess the role of attentional, executive and memory abil-
ities of the participants. From this pilot study a specic pattern seems
to arise, where migraine patients show marked diculties on time
based PM tasks. Prospective remembering diculties appearing in this
group of patients seem to rely on self-initiating processes and executive
control of attentional resources rather than on memory decits.
Luigi Galvani and neuroscience, Raaella Simili and Miriam Focaccia,
University of Bologna
In 1791, Luigi Galvani, professor of Anatomy and Obstetrics at the
University of Bologna, published a memoir entitled De Viribus elec-
tricitatis in motu musculari, in the transactions of the Bolognese Istituto
delle Scienze. In this work he summarised the results of a long series of
experiments on electro-physiology that he began in the early 1780s. In
this seminal memoir, Galvani presented his ideas on the relation be-
tween electrical forces and the contraction of animal muscles. His
crucial discovery was that the contraction of the muscles of some dead
animals, and frogs in particular, was due to an electrical spark ob-
tained by an electrical machine.
Galvani concluded that he had discovered the presence in nature of
a new kind of natural electricity, detectable by studying the contrac-
tions of animal muscles.
The discovery of animal electricity was an extraordinary response
to the solution of all the problems faced by the supporters of the old
theory of irritability.
The point is that Galvani, faithful to Malpighis and Newtons
ideas, believed in an organism understood as a dynamic system of
communication, with a proper internal organisation based on the
brain, not the heart, as Haller held. From this point of view, Galvani
also kept in touch with the anti-Hallerian positions of Robert Whytt
and William Cullen.
In the last part of the De Viribus, Galvani claimed:
Now inasmuch as we have already shown that electric uid is
carried through the nerves of the muscles, it must therefore be trans-
mitted through all of the nerves. Furthermore all these nerves must
draw it from a single common source, namely the cerebrum. Otherwise
[...] they do not seem to be adapted to activating and secreting one and
the same uid. We believe, therefore, that the electric uid is produced
by the activity of the cerebrum, that it is extracted in all probability
from the blood, and that it enters the nerves and circulates within them
in the event that they are hollow and empty, or, as seems more likely,
Tennet XV Abstracts / Brain and Cognition 57 (2005) 276289 287
they are carriers for a very ne lymph or other similarly subtle uid
which is secreted from the cortical substance of the brain, as many
believe. If this be the case, perhaps at last the nature of animal spirits,
which has been hidden and vainly sought after for so long, will be
brought to light with clarity. But however this may be, I think no one
in the future will have doubts concerning their electrical nature in view
of our experiments.
The relation between the right-hemisphere advantage for anomaly
detection and global perception, Stephen D. Smith, Tom A. Schweizer,
M. Barbara Bulman-Fleming, and Michael J. Dixon, Department of
Psychology, Vanderbilt University, 301 Wilson Hall, 111 21st Avenue,
Nashville, Tennessee 37203, USA
Previous research with both brain-damaged and neurologically
intact participants has demonstrated that the right hemisphere is su-
perior to the left hemisphere at detecting anomalies in objects (Ra-
machandran, 1995; Smith, Tays, Dixon, & Bulman-Fleming, 2002).
This right-hemisphere advantage is not simply a function of its supe-
riority at visuospatial tasks; reaction times on anomaly-detection tests
are negatively correlated with reaction times on mental-rotation tests
(Smith, Dixon, Tays, & Bulman-Fleming, in press). The current re-
search extends this examination of the cognitive and perceptual
mechanisms of anomaly detection by examining the relations between
anomaly detection and global perception, another task that favours the
right hemisphere. Sixty right-handed male participants completed the
same anomaly-detection task used in previous studies in our lab.
Participants also performed a test assessing global- and local-percep-
tion abilities in which hierarchical gures (e.g., a large H composed of
physically smaller Ns) were presented to one visual eld or the other.
The current research produced two important ndings. First, this
study replicated the pattern of data found in our earlier anomaly-de-
tection studies. Specically, the right hemisphere produced faster re-
action times in response to anomalous objects than did the left
hemisphere. Second, the correlation between the right hemispheres
performance on the two tasks was small but statistically signicant (r =
0.33; p < .025). These results suggest that the ability to perceive the
global structure of an object is a component of the process of anomaly
detection; however, a larger portion of anomaly-detection performance
appears to be a result of a distinct cognitive process.
Morphological versus semantic priming eects in the processing of
German verbs: Evidence from event-related potentials, Eva Smolka
a
,
Frank Ro sler
a
, and Richard Wiese
b
,
a
Experimental and Biological
Psychology, Philipps University Marburg, Gutenbergstr. 18, 35032
Marburg, Germany,
b
Institute of German Linguistics, University of
Marburg, Germany
Regular and irregular verb forms have been used to investigate the
structure of the mental lexicon. In particular, some models assume
rule-generation for regular verbs in contrast to lexical storage for ir-
regular verbs. If the assumption of two dierent mechanisms holds,
then participle priming of regularly inected verb forms should dier
from that of irregularly inected verbs. Moreover, if irregular verb
forms are stored in a semantic network, then participle priming should
be similar to the priming observed for semantic associates, such as
black and white. In contrast, if regular participles are decomposed, this
should produce dierent eects than semantic priming. The present
study contrasted regular participle formation (regular stem, regular
sux) with two types of irregular participle formations (regular/ir-
regular stem, irregular sux). Event-related potentials (ERPs) were
measured when verb targets, e.g., kaufe (buy), were primed by them-
selves, kaufe, by their own participle, gekauft (bought), by a semanti-
cally related prime, zahle (pay), by a semantic participle prime, gezahlt
(paid), or by an unrelated verb, sitze (sit). Participle priming diered
for verb regularities in a gradual way. Completely regular verbs pro-
duced widespread frontal and parietal eects, semi-regulars frontal
eects, and completely irregulars no eects at all. Unlike participle
priming, semantic priming for both regular and irregular verbs showed
N400 modulations. These results do not provide evidence for two
qualitatively distinct inectional mechanisms. Rather, irregularity
seems to be a matter of degree.
HandEye coordination test performance in the elderly: A preliminary
report, Shianna R. Stanczak
a
, AndrewJ. Tomlinson
a
, Emilie Boisseau
b
,
Peter B. Scherzer
b
, Henri Cohen
b
, Sheila L. Burns
a
, and Yves Turgeon
c
,
a
Northern Michigan University,
b
Universite du Quebec a` Montreal,
c
Lakehead University
Elderly, healthy, English speaking adults from a rural community
were asked to move a stylus as quickly and accurately as possible to
designated targets. Movement time and accuracy were measured in
two dierent conditions, with and without a cue in the center of the
target. Both male and female participants exhibited increased accuracy
when the target included a central cue. Results also showed that in-
creased speed leads to decreased accuracy. The data from this preli-
minary report suggests that movement time and accuracy is inuenced
by dierent variables and that they are related. This brief report is
based on 20 of 67 participants, who constituted the normative group.
Event-related potentials and the relationship to behavioral and
psychometric measures in neurological rehabilitation, B. Stemmer
a
,
T. Leim
b
, and W. Witzke
c
,
a
Centre de recherche, IUGM, Montreal,
b
Lurija Institut at the University of Konstanz, Allensbach,
c
Kliniken
Schmieder, Allensbach
Whereas behavioral and psychometric measures are routine mea-
sures in neurological rehabilitation, event-related potentials are rarely
used for diagnostic or monitoring purposes. There is some indication
that brain infarction aects P300 latency (Korpelainen et al., 2000; Tao
et al., 2000) and amplitude (Gummow et al., 1987), and that the la-
tency change may be related to post-stroke depression. In traumatic
brain injury (TBI) patients reduced P300 amplitudes indicating subtle
information processing decits have been found despite good behav-
ioral recovery (Segalowitz et al., 2001). Other authors have shown an
improvement of the P300 latency in TBI patients over time which
correlated with verbal recall tests (Keren et al., 1998). The contingent
negative variation (CNV) has also been reported to be aected by
brain injury (Gaetz & Weinberg, 2000).
The objective of our study was toinvestigate the relationshipbetween
specic ERP components and behavioral and psychometric measures in
stroke and TBI patients during the rehabilitation process. 30 non-
aphasic stroke and trauma patients were assessed with a series of psy-
chometric and behavioral measures capturing attention, memory, ex-
ecutive functions, depressive symptoms, general severity of motor and
cognitive functions and ERP (P300, CNV). The results of various
analyses investigating the relationship between the ERP components
and the neuropsychological and behavioral measures at dierent points
in time over a three year rehabilitation period will be presented.
Mental rotation and Parkinsons disease: A brief report on a procedural
learning exploratory study, Andrew J. Tomlinson
a
, Neil F. Pascoe
b
,
Crystal L. Cederna
a
, Sheila L. Burns
a
, Charles R. Leith
a
, and Yves
Turgeon
b
,
a
Northern Michigan University,
b
Lakehead University
This study employed a simplied computerized mental rotation
task (patterned after the original task by Shepard & Metzler, 1971) as
an exploratory procedure on the eects of Parkinsons Disease (PD) on
procedural learning. Consistent with earlier research, (Lee, Harris, and
288 Tennet XV Abstracts / Brain and Cognition 57 (2005) 276289
Calvert (1998)) this study shows that PD initially slows both the re-
action time and the mental rotation time in mental rotation tasks.
Results suggest that while PD participants can improve the reaction
time component with practice (eventually matching normal perfor-
mance) they show little improvement of the mental rotation rate with
practice.
References
Lee, A. C., Harris, J. P., & Calvert, J. E. (1998). Impairments of mental
rotation in Parkinsons Disease. Neuropsychologia, 36, 109114.
Shepard, R., & Metzler, J. (1971). Mental rotation of three-dimen-
sional objects. Psychology Press, 2000XIV, (431), 313316.
Performance of children and adolescents on sentence working memory
span, Darlene Walker, Mary Desrocher, and Katherine Hofman
Purpose. The purpose of this study was to develop a computerized
neuropsychological task to assess childrens sentence working memory.
The goal was to make an assessment package that is valid, reliable,
quick and easy to administer. It was hypothesized that sentence
working memory capacity would increase with age in children, and that
a gender dierence would exist. Females were hypothesized to have a
larger sentence working memory capacity, especially in younger chil-
dren, due to more developed verbal skills than males of the same age.
Method. Reliability of this task was determined through adminis-
tration to 174 normal participants between the ages of 8 and 18 years.
They were of average intelligence with no known neurological impair-
ment or learning disabilities.
Sentence Working Memory Task. The task required the child to look
at the computer screen while an increasing number of sentences were
presented to them. The sentences remained on screen for a limited pe-
riod of time and then disappeared. The child was asked a question re-
ferring to only one of the sentences, then requested to recall the last
word of each sentence.
Analysis. Participants were divided by age to determine norms and
reliability of the task for each age level. In addition, each age group was
divided by gender to determine if a dierence existed between those
groups.
Results. Signicant dierences were observed between age groups
and between gender, although an interaction eect was not observed.
Childrens sentence working memory span was observed to increase
with age, while females had a slightly larger sentence working memory
span than males.
Claude-Francois lallemand and the tradition of clinical-pathological
correlation at the debut of the 19th century, Harry Whitaker
a
, and
Claudio Luzzati
b
,
a
Northern Michigan University,
b
University of
Milan
Lallemands Recherches anatomo-pathologiques sur le`ncephale
et ses dependances went through several editions between 1820 and
1834. It is another milestone in the tradition of compendia such as
those of Wepfer and Morgagni. At the same time it furnished the data
that inspired J.B. Bouillaud to defend Galls language localization
hypothesis that culminated in the work of Broca; It also furnished data
that Marc Dax used to argue that language was localized in the left
hemisphere.
Medieval cell doctrine as the origin of western models of brain function,
Harry Whitaker, Northern Michigan University
Medieval cell doctrine originated in Aristotles cognitive model and
was further developed in the 5th century by the early church fathers
and in the 10th century by Avicenna. From the 11th to the 17th cen-
turies MCD not only explained brain function, it accounted for the
sequelae of brain injury. The major components of MCD are (a)
Formation of the mental image, (b) Cognitive operations on the
mental image, (c) Storing the mental image in memory, (d) Informa-
tion Transfer (movement) and (e) Localization in the brain.
Tennet XV Abstracts / Brain and Cognition 57 (2005) 276289 289