Oh Hey There

Sequential Processing of Lexical, Grammatical, and Phonological Information Within Broca’s Area

Evidence for modular computation of language! [Reference via loscheiner]

Fig. 2. (A) Main results: sequential processing of lexical, grammatical, and phonological information in overlapping circuits. (Top) Neural activity recorded from several channels in Broca’s area (patient A, Brodmann area 45) shows three LFP components that were consistently evoked by the task (~200, ~320, and ~450 ms). (Bottom) The ~200-ms component is sensitive to word frequency but not word length, suggesting that it indexes a cognitive process such as lexical identification, not simply perception. Stacked waveforms (top and bottom) adopt the axes noted on the first waveform. (B) At ~320 ms, the LFP pattern suggests inflectional processing. (C) At ~450 ms, in a channel 5 mm distant, the complementary pattern suggests phonological processing. (Inset) MRI slices from this patient, annotated with the anatomical location of A4, the contact in common to the two channels reported here. Statistical significance: **** (P < .0001), *** (P < .001), ** (P < .01) (t test, one tail, two-sample, equal variance). Box arrows (bottom) indicate linguistic processing stages, which may be interposed among other stages not addressed here.

Emphasis mine, because it’s those gaps/”interfaces” between major language modules that we theoretical linguists need to investigate.

Scientific American - llusions: What’s in a face?:

The Illusion of Sex, by Harvard psychologist Richard Russell, won Third Prize at the 2009 Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest. The two side-by-side faces are perceived as male (right) and female (left). However, both of them are versions of the same androgynous face. The two images are exactly identical, except that the contrast between the eyes and mouth and the rest of the face is higher for the face on the left than for the face on the right. This illusion shows that contrast is an important cue for determining the sex of a face, with low-contrast faces appearing male and high-contrast faces appearing female. And it may also explain why females in many cultures darken their eyes and mouths with make-up. A made-up face looks more feminine than a fresh face.

There’s two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you’ve made a discovery. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you’ve made a discovery.

— Enrico Fermi (via quote-book) (via infoneernet)

loscheiner:

Gratuitous picture of myself.  Wednesday is my clinic day, which means two things: i get dressed up fancy and i drink an extra cup of coffee so that I don’t miss a thing. My own clinic was cancelled for today, which is a bummer, but it means I get to observe my first adult language client.

Adult language? That means that the adult has had some kind of brain damage resulting in changes to his/her ability to use language, which is called aphasia.  People with aphasia represent the population i most want to study.

Some things I’m currently interested in researching:

-Do aphasic people continue to show preserved ERPs (N400 to violation of semantic relationships e.g., “I like my coffee with sugar and dog”, and  P600 to violations of syntax, e.g., “The boy throw the toy”) to stimuli they hear/read?

People without brain damage show predictable patterns of brain activation miliseconds after hearing a funky sentence like one of the ones I just wrote.  this includes you.  You read those sentences and had a N400 and a P600.  Normal brains just can’t help it, it’s what they do.  But what about people with aphasia?  Their brains are not fully normal, and they often have difficulty with comprehension (especially of complex sentences), and often produce agrammatic phrases.

Is the problem that they have reduced cortical responses to incorrect semantics/syntax?  OR-Do some patients have over-active ERPs, perhaps causing them to second guess every utterance they make because they perceive their own output as incorrect, resulting in halting, nonfluent aphasic speech.

Anyway… some things to think about.

Very cool research topic.

Epigenetics - Wikipedia →

Nova was about epigenetics this week, and it was fascinating. How can only one identical twin be autistic if they share the same genes? Do stresses in our environment effect the health of our grandchildren? We mapped the human genome, but nurture is more important than ever.

Figures Of Speech: Understanding Idioms Requires Both Sides Of The Brain →

Is it better to treat someone with kid gloves or to treat them carefully? Researchers in Italy have investigated how the brain recognises that the first phrase means the same as the second. Publishing in the open access journal BMC Neuroscience, the researchers suggest that we use both hemispheres to understand idioms.

Language Log » Localization of emotion perception in the brain of fish

This is beautiful work, showing that certain areas in the brain of mature Atlantic Salmon “light up” when the animal is asked to categorize the emotions expressed by a set of (human) faces. More amazing still is the fact that the fish performed this task while dead.

Lesson: Correct for false positives in fMRI studies.

loscheiner:

Split Brain-

some people with extreme epilepsy have their corpus collosum (the tissue connecting the two sides of the brain) severed.  this leaves the patient with two independent cerebral hemispheres.  for the most part, the brain still works just fine: patients can talk and think and remember.  no problem.

Even though everything is still functioning, there are some very cool experiments that can be done to show how the left and right hemispheres are specialized for certain tasks (L=language, R=visual interpretation and drawing).  Watch this, it will blow both sides of you unsplit mind.

(Thanks RAR!)

rar22:

Videos like this almost make me want to become a neuroscientist.  Our brains are so cool… right Lolo?  :)

split-brain surgery auto reblog

loscheiner:

For Michelle- good luck in grad school!

I’m in a neuroscience class, and the professor suggested we get this book, The Human Brain Coloring Book.  It’s exactly what it sounds like: essentially color-by-number views of the brain.  It just came in the mail, and I’m excited to break out some colored pencils…

Humans time blinks so they don't miss information - Telegraph →

Dr Tamami Nakano, of Tokyo University, said: “We seem to be unconsciously searching for a good timing for a blink to minimize the chance of losing critical information during the blink.”

Dr Nakano, whose findings are published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, said: “Spontaneous eyeblinks were synchronized both within and across subjects when they viewed the same video stories.

“This blink synchronization was not observed when they viewed background videos that did not contain any story or when they listened to a narrated story.

“Thus, the synchronization required a story, but the need to follow a storyline per se was not the cause of synchronization.

“The blink synchrony occurred only when subjects had to follow a storyline by extracting information from a stream of visual events.”