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Lehet M, Rolfs M, Bao J, Fattal J, Thakkar KN. Pre-saccadic shifts of attention in individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia. Brain Behav 2024; 14:e3466. [PMID: 38450916 PMCID: PMC10918725 DOI: 10.1002/brb3.3466] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/18/2023] [Revised: 02/15/2024] [Accepted: 02/18/2024] [Indexed: 03/08/2024] Open
Abstract
INTRODUCTION Pathophysiological theories of schizophrenia (SZ) symptoms posit an abnormality in using predictions to guide behavior. One such prediction is based on imminent movements, via corollary discharge signals (CD) that relay information about planned movement kinematics to sensory brain regions. Empirical evidence suggests a reduced influence of sensorimotor predictions in individuals with SZ within multiple sensory systems, including in the visual system. One function of CD in the visual system is to selectively enhance visual sensitivity at the location of planned eye movements (pre-saccadic attention), thus enabling a prediction of the to-be-foveated stimulus. We expected pre-saccadic attention shifts to be less pronounced in individuals with SZ than in healthy controls (HC), resulting in unexpected sensory consequences of eye movements, which may relate to symptoms than can be explained in the context of altered allocation of attention. METHODS We examined this question by testing 30 SZ and 30 HC on a pre-saccadic attention task. On each trial participants made a saccade to a cued location in an array of four stimuli. A discrimination target that was either congruent or incongruent with the cued location was briefly presented after the cue, during saccade preparation. Pre-saccadic attention was quantified by comparing accuracy on congruent trials to incongruent trials within the interval preceding the saccade. RESULTS Although SZs were less accurate overall, the magnitude of the pre-saccadic attention effect generally did not differ across groups nor show a convincing relationship with symptom severity. We did, however, observe that SZ had reduced pre-saccadic attention effects when the discrimination target (probe) was presented at early stages of saccade planning, when pre-saccadic attention effects first emerged in HC. CONCLUSION These findings suggest generally intact pre-saccadic shifts of attention in SZ, albeit slightly delayed. Results contribute to our understanding of altered sensory predictions in people with schizophrenia.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matthew Lehet
- Department of PsychologyMichigan State UniversityEast LansingMichiganUSA
| | - Martin Rolfs
- Department of PsychologyHumboldt UniversityBerlinGermany
| | - Jacqueline Bao
- Department of PsychologyMichigan State UniversityEast LansingMichiganUSA
| | - Jessica Fattal
- Department of PsychologyNorthwestern UniversityEvanstonIllinoisUSA
| | - Katharine N. Thakkar
- Department of PsychologyMichigan State UniversityEast LansingMichiganUSA
- Psychiatry and Behavioral MedicineMichigan State University College of Human MedicineEast LansingMichiganUSA
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Fattal J, Brascamp JW, Slate RE, Lehet M, Achtyes ED, Thakkar KN. Blunted pupil light reflex is associated with negative symptoms and working memory in individuals with schizophrenia. Schizophr Res 2022; 248:254-262. [PMID: 36115190 PMCID: PMC9613610 DOI: 10.1016/j.schres.2022.09.019] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/27/2021] [Revised: 08/21/2022] [Accepted: 09/05/2022] [Indexed: 10/14/2022]
Abstract
Two largely separate lines of research have documented altered pupillary dynamics in individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia. An older set of studies has demonstrated reductions in the pupillary light reflex (PLR) in individuals with schizophrenia; however, clinical and cognitive correlates of this blunted PLR have been relatively unexplored. More recently, a large body of work has demonstrated reductions in pupillary dilation in response to cognitive demands in individuals with schizophrenia, and the degree of this blunted pupil dilation has been related to more severe cognitive deficits and motivational negative symptoms. These clinically relevant alterations in the cognitive modulation of pupil size have been interpreted as reflecting insufficient information processing resources or inappropriate effort allocation. To begin to bridge these two lines of work, we investigated the PLR in 34 individuals with schizophrenia and 30 healthy controls and related the amplitude of the PLR to motivational negative symptoms and cognitive performance. Consistent with prior work, we found that the PLR was reduced in individuals with schizophrenia, and furthermore, that these measurements were highly reliable across individuals. Blunted constriction was associated with more severe motivational negative symptoms and poorer working memory among individuals with schizophrenia. These observed correlates provide a bridge between older literature documenting an altered PLR and more recent work reporting associations between negative symptoms, cognition, and blunted pupillary dilation in response to cognitive demands in individuals with schizophrenia. We provide possible mechanistic interpretations of our data and consider a parsimonious explanation for reduced cognitive- and light-related modulation of pupil size.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jessica Fattal
- Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States of America
| | - Jan W Brascamp
- Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States of America
| | - Rachael E Slate
- Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States of America
| | - Matthew Lehet
- Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States of America
| | - Eric D Achtyes
- Division of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine, Michigan State University, Grand Rapids, MI, United States of America; Cherry Health, Grand Rapids, MI, United States of America
| | - Katharine N Thakkar
- Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States of America; Division of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine, Michigan State University, Grand Rapids, MI, United States of America.
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Lehet M, Tso IF, Neggers SFW, Thompson IA, Yao B, Kahn RS, Thakkar KN. Altered effective connectivity within an oculomotor control network in individuals with schizophrenia. Neuroimage Clin 2021; 31:102764. [PMID: 34284336 PMCID: PMC8313596 DOI: 10.1016/j.nicl.2021.102764] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/10/2021] [Revised: 07/09/2021] [Accepted: 07/10/2021] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
Abstract
Rapid inhibition or modification of actions is a crucial cognitive ability, which is impaired in persons with schizophrenia (SZP). Primate neurophysiology studies have identified a network of brain regions that subserves control over gaze. Here, we examine effective connectivity within this oculomotor control network in SZP and healthy controls (HC). During fMRI, participants performed a stop-signal task variant in which they were instructed to saccade to a visual target (no-step trials) unless a second target appeared (redirect trials); on redirect trials, participants were instructed to inhibit the planned saccade and redirect to the new target. We compared functional responses on redirect trials to no-step trials and used dynamic causal modelling (DCM) to examine group differences in network effective connectivity. Behaviorally, SZP were less efficient at inhibiting, which was related to their employment status. Compared to HC, they showed a smaller difference in activity between redirect trials and no-step trials in frontal eye fields (FEF), supplementary eye fields (SEF), inferior frontal cortex (IFC), thalamus, and caudate. DCM analyses revealed widespread group differences in effective connectivity across the task, including different patterns of self-inhibition in many nodes in SZP. Group differences in how effective connectivity was modulated on redirect trials revealed differences between the FEF and SEF, between the SEF and IFC, between the superior colliculus and the thalamus, and self-inhibition within the FEF and caudate. These results provide insight into the neural mechanisms of inefficient inhibitory control in individuals with schizophrenia.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matthew Lehet
- Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA
| | - Ivy F Tso
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
| | | | - Ilse A Thompson
- Department of Psychiatry, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, the Netherlands
| | - Beier Yao
- Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA
| | - René S Kahn
- Department of Psychiatry, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, the Netherlands; Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA
| | - Katharine N Thakkar
- Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA; Department of Psychiatry, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, the Netherlands; Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Medicine, Michigan State University, Grand Rapids, MI, USA.
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Dilley L, Lehet M, Wieland EA, Arjmandi MK, Kondaurova M, Wang Y, Reed J, Svirsky M, Houston D, Bergeson T. Individual Differences in Mothers' Spontaneous Infant-Directed Speech Predict Language Attainment in Children With Cochlear Implants. J Speech Lang Hear Res 2020; 63:2453-2467. [PMID: 32603621 PMCID: PMC7838839 DOI: 10.1044/2020_jslhr-19-00229] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/21/2019] [Revised: 01/17/2020] [Accepted: 04/01/2020] [Indexed: 06/11/2023]
Abstract
Purpose Differences across language environments of prelingually deaf children who receive cochlear implants (CIs) may affect language acquisition; yet, whether mothers show individual differences in how they modify infant-directed (ID) compared with adult-directed (AD) speech has seldom been studied. This study assessed individual differences in how mothers realized speech modifications in ID register and whether these predicted differences in language outcomes for children with CIs. Method Participants were 36 dyads of mothers and their children aged 0;8-2;5 (years;months) at the time of CI implantation. Mothers' spontaneous speech was recorded in a lab setting in ID or AD conditions before ~15 months postimplantation. Mothers' speech samples were characterized for acoustic-phonetic and lexical properties established as canonical indices of ID speech to typically hearing infants, such as vowel space area differences, fundamental frequency variability, and speech rate. Children with CIs completed longitudinal administrations of one or more standardized language assessment instruments at variable intervals from 6 months to 9.5 years postimplantation. Standardized scores on assessments administered longitudinally were used to calculate linear regressions, which gave rise to predicted language scores for children at 2 years postimplantation and language growth over 2-year intervals. Results Mothers showed individual differences in how they modified speech in ID versus AD registers. Crucially, these individual differences significantly predicted differences in estimated language outcomes at 2 years postimplantation in children with CIs. Maternal speech variation in lexical quantity and vowel space area differences across ID and AD registers most frequently predicted estimates of language attainment in children with CIs, whereas prosodic differences played a minor role. Conclusion Results support that caregiver language behaviors play a substantial role in explaining variability in language attainment in children receiving CIs. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12560147.
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Affiliation(s)
- Laura Dilley
- Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, Michigan State University, East Lansing
| | - Matthew Lehet
- Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, Michigan State University, East Lansing
| | - Elizabeth A. Wieland
- Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, Michigan State University, East Lansing
| | - Meisam K. Arjmandi
- Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, Michigan State University, East Lansing
| | - Maria Kondaurova
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, KY
| | - Yuanyuan Wang
- Department of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery, The Ohio State University, Columbus
| | - Jessa Reed
- Department of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery, The Ohio State University, Columbus
| | - Mario Svirsky
- Department of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery, New York University, New York City
| | - Derek Houston
- Department of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery, The Ohio State University, Columbus
- Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, OH
| | - Tonya Bergeson
- Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, Butler University, Indianapolis
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Lehet M, Holt LL. Nevertheless, it persists: Dimension-based statistical learning and normalization of speech impact different levels of perceptual processing. Cognition 2020; 202:104328. [PMID: 32502867 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104328] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/01/2018] [Revised: 05/04/2020] [Accepted: 05/13/2020] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
Abstract
Speech is notoriously variable, with no simple mapping from acoustics to linguistically-meaningful units like words and phonemes. Empirical research on this theoretically central issue establishes at least two classes of perceptual phenomena that accommodate acoustic variability: normalization and perceptual learning. Intriguingly, perceptual learning is supported by learning across acoustic variability, but normalization is thought to counteract acoustic variability leaving open questions about how these two phenomena might interact. Here, we examine the joint impact of normalization and perceptual learning on how acoustic dimensions map to vowel categories. As listeners categorized nonwords as setch or satch, they experienced a shift in short-term distributional regularities across the vowels' acoustic dimensions. Introduction of this 'artificial accent' resulted in a shift in the contribution of vowel duration in categorization. Although this dimension-based statistical learning impacted the influence of vowel duration on vowel categorization, the duration of these very same vowels nonetheless maintained a consistent influence on categorization of a subsequent consonant via duration contrast, a form of normalization. Thus, vowel duration had a duplex role consistent with normalization and perceptual learning operating on distinct levels in the processing hierarchy. We posit that whereas normalization operates across auditory dimensions, dimension-based statistical learning impacts the connection weights among auditory dimensions and phonetic categories.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matthew Lehet
- Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15232, USA; Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, Pittsburgh, PA 15232, USA
| | - Lori L Holt
- Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15232, USA; Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, Pittsburgh, PA 15232, USA; Neuroscience Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15232, USA.
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Lemaitre G, Pyles JA, Halpern AR, Navolio N, Lehet M, Heller LM. Who's that Knocking at My Door? Neural Bases of Sound Source Identification. Cereb Cortex 2019; 28:805-818. [PMID: 28052922 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhw397] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/13/2016] [Accepted: 12/14/2016] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
When hearing knocking on a door, a listener typically identifies both the action (forceful and repeated impacts) and the object (a thick wooden board) causing the sound. The current work studied the neural bases of sound source identification by switching listeners' attention toward these different aspects of a set of simple sounds during functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning: participants either discriminated the action or the material that caused the sounds, or they simply discriminated meaningless scrambled versions of them. Overall, discriminating action and material elicited neural activity in a left-lateralized frontoparietal network found in other studies of sound identification, wherein the inferior frontal sulcus and the ventral premotor cortex were under the control of selective attention and sensitive to task demand. More strikingly, discriminating materials elicited increased activity in cortical regions connecting auditory inputs to semantic, motor, and even visual representations, whereas discriminating actions did not increase activity in any regions. These results indicate that discriminating and identifying material requires deeper processing of the stimuli than discriminating actions. These results are consistent with previous studies suggesting that auditory perception is better suited to comprehend the actions than the objects producing sounds in the listeners' environment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Guillaume Lemaitre
- Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Basis of Cognition, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
| | - John A Pyles
- Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Basis of Cognition, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
| | - Andrea R Halpern
- Bucknell University, Department of Psychology, Lewisburg 17837, PA, USA
| | - Nicole Navolio
- Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Basis of Cognition, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
| | - Matthew Lehet
- Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Basis of Cognition, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
| | - Laurie M Heller
- Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Basis of Cognition, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
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7
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Abstract
Time is talked about in terms of space more frequently than the other way around. Some have suggested that this asymmetry runs deeper than language. The idea that we think about abstract domains (like time) in terms of relatively more concrete domains (like space) but not vice versa can be traced to Conceptual Metaphor Theory. This theoretical account has some empirical support. Previous experiments suggest an embodied basis for space-time asymmetries that runs deeper than language. However, these studies frequently involve verbal and/or visual stimuli. Because vision makes a privileged contribution to spatial processing it is unclear whether these results speak to a general asymmetry between time and space based on each domain’s general level of relative abstractness, or reflect modality-specific effects. The present study was motivated by this uncertainty and what appears to be audition’s privileged contribution to temporal processing. In Experiment 1, using an auditory perceptual task, temporal duration and spatial displacement were shown to be mutually contagious. Irrelevant temporal information influenced spatial judgments and vice versa with a larger effect of time on space. Experiment 2 examined the mutual effects of space, time, and pitch. Pitch was investigated because it is a fundamental characteristic of sound perception. It was reasoned that if space is indeed less relevant to audition than time, then spatial distance judgments should be more easily contaminated by variations in auditory frequency, while variations in distance should be less effective in contaminating pitch perception. While time and pitch were shown to be mutually contagious in Experiment 2, irrelevant variation in auditory frequency affected estimates of spatial distance while variations in spatial distance did not affect pitch judgments. Results overall suggest that the perceptual asymmetry between spatial and temporal domains does not necessarily generalize across modalities, and that time is not generally more abstract than space.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alexander Kranjec
- Department of Psychology, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, United States.,Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, United States
| | - Matthew Lehet
- Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, United States.,Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, United States
| | - Adam J Woods
- Cognitive Aging and Memory Clinical Translational Research Program, Institute on Aging, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, United States.,Department of Aging and Geriatric Research, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, United States
| | - Anjan Chatterjee
- Department of Neurology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
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Lehet M, Holt LL. Dimension-Based Statistical Learning Affects Both Speech Perception and Production. Cogn Sci 2016; 41 Suppl 4:885-912. [PMID: 27666146 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12413] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/28/2015] [Revised: 04/04/2016] [Accepted: 04/29/2016] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
Multiple acoustic dimensions signal speech categories. However, dimensions vary in their informativeness; some are more diagnostic of category membership than others. Speech categorization reflects these dimensional regularities such that diagnostic dimensions carry more "perceptual weight" and more effectively signal category membership to native listeners. Yet perceptual weights are malleable. When short-term experience deviates from long-term language norms, such as in a foreign accent, the perceptual weight of acoustic dimensions in signaling speech category membership rapidly adjusts. The present study investigated whether rapid adjustments in listeners' perceptual weights in response to speech that deviates from the norms also affects listeners' own speech productions. In a word recognition task, the correlation between two acoustic dimensions signaling consonant categories, fundamental frequency (F0) and voice onset time (VOT), matched the correlation typical of English, and then shifted to an "artificial accent" that reversed the relationship, and then shifted back. Brief, incidental exposure to the artificial accent caused participants to down-weight perceptual reliance on F0, consistent with previous research. Throughout the task, participants were intermittently prompted with pictures to produce these same words. In the block in which listeners heard the artificial accent with a reversed F0 × VOT correlation, F0 was a less robust cue to voicing in listeners' own speech productions. The statistical regularities of short-term speech input affect both speech perception and production, as evidenced via shifts in how acoustic dimensions are weighted.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matthew Lehet
- Department of Psychology and the Center for Neural Basis of Cognition, Carnegie Mellon University
| | - Lori L Holt
- Department of Psychology and the Center for Neural Basis of Cognition, Carnegie Mellon University
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Göksun T, Lehet M, Malykhina K, Chatterjee A. Spontaneous gesture and spatial language: Evidence from focal brain injury. Brain Lang 2015; 150:1-13. [PMID: 26283001 PMCID: PMC4663137 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2015.07.012] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/12/2015] [Revised: 07/27/2015] [Accepted: 07/30/2015] [Indexed: 05/26/2023]
Abstract
People often use spontaneous gestures when communicating spatial information. We investigated focal brain-injured individuals to test the hypotheses that (1) naming motion event components of manner-path (represented by verbs-prepositions in English) are impaired selectively, (2) gestures compensate for impaired naming. Patients with left or right hemisphere damage (LHD or RHD) and elderly control participants were asked to describe motion events (e.g., running across) depicted in brief videos. Damage to the left posterior middle frontal gyrus, left inferior frontal gyrus, and left anterior superior temporal gyrus (aSTG) produced impairments in naming paths of motion; lesions to the left caudate and adjacent white matter produced impairments in naming manners of motion. While the frequency of spontaneous gestures were low, lesions to the left aSTG significantly correlated with greater production of path gestures. These suggest that producing prepositions-verbs can be separately impaired and gesture production compensates for naming impairments when damage involves left aSTG.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tilbe Göksun
- Department of Psychology, Koç University, Turkey.
| | - Matthew Lehet
- Department of Neurology, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, United States; Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, United States; Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, United States
| | | | - Anjan Chatterjee
- Department of Neurology, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, United States; Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, United States
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Göksun T, Lehet M, Malykhina K, Chatterjee A. Naming and gesturing spatial relations: evidence from focal brain-injured individuals. Neuropsychologia 2013; 51:1518-27. [PMID: 23685196 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.05.006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/24/2012] [Revised: 02/21/2013] [Accepted: 05/07/2013] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Abstract
Spatial language helps us to encode relations between objects and organize our thinking. Little is known about the neural instantiations of spatial language. Using voxel-lesion symptom mapping (VLSM), we tested the hypothesis that focal brain injured patients who had damage to left frontal-parietal peri-Sylvian regions would have difficulty in naming spatial relations between objects. We also investigated the relationship between impaired verbalization of spatial relations and spontaneous gesture production. Patients with left or right hemisphere damage and elderly control participants were asked to name static (e.g., an apple on a book) and dynamic (e.g., a pen moves over a box) locative relations depicted in brief video clips. The correct use of prepositions in each task and gestures that represent the spatial relations were coded. Damage to the left posterior middle frontal gyrus, the left inferior frontal gyrus, and the left anterior superior temporal gyrus were related to impairment in naming spatial relations. Production of spatial gestures negatively correlated with naming accuracy, suggesting that gestures might help or compensate for difficulty with lexical access. Additional analyses suggested that left hemisphere patients who had damage to the left posterior middle frontal gyrus and the left inferior frontal gyrus gestured less than expected, if gestures are used to compensate for impairments in retrieving prepositions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tilbe Göksun
- Department of Neurology and Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
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Abstract
Humans use kinematic temporal and spatial information from the environment to infer the causal dynamics (e.g., force) of an event. We hypothesize that the basis for these inferences are malleable and modulated by contextual temporal and spatial information. Specifically, the present research investigates whether the extent of a person’s ongoing experience with direct causal events (e.g., temporally contiguous and spatially continuous) alters their use of time and space in judgments of causality. Participants made inferences of causality on animated launching events depicting a blue ball colliding with and then “launching” a red ball. We parametrically manipulated temporal contiguity and spatial continuity by varying the duration of contact between the balls and the angle of the second ball’s movement. We manipulated participants’ level of exposure to direct causal events (i.e., events with no delay or angle change) between experiments (Experiment 1: 2%, Experiment 2: 25%, Experiment 3: 75%). We found that participants adjust the temporal and spatial parameters they use to judge causality to accommodate the context in which they apprehended launching events. Participants became more conservative in their use of temporal and spatial parameters to judge causality as their exposure to direct causal events increased. People use time and space flexibly to infer causality based on their ongoing experiences. Such flexibility in making causal inferences may have adaptive significance.
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Affiliation(s)
- Adam J Woods
- Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA, USA ; Department of Neurology, Center for Functional Neuroimaging, University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA, USA
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12
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Schmidt GL, Cardillo ER, Kranjec A, Lehet M, Widick P, Chatterjee A. Not all analogies are created equal: Associative and categorical analogy processing following brain damage. Neuropsychologia 2012; 50:1372-9. [PMID: 22402184 PMCID: PMC3384712 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2012.02.022] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/18/2011] [Revised: 02/24/2012] [Accepted: 02/25/2012] [Indexed: 11/23/2022]
Abstract
Current research on analogy processing assumes that different conceptual relations are treated similarly. However, just as words and concepts are related in distinct ways, different kinds of analogies may employ distinct types of relationships. An important distinction in how words are related is the difference between associative (dog-bone) and categorical (dog-cat) relations. To test the hypothesis that analogical mapping of different types of relations would have different neural instantiations, we tested patients with left and right hemisphere lesions on their ability to understand two types of analogies, ones expressing an associative relationship and others expressing a categorical relationship. Voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) and behavioral analyses revealed that associative analogies relied on a large left-lateralized language network while categorical analogies relied on both left and right hemispheres. The verbal nature of the task could account for the left hemisphere findings. We argue that categorical relations additionally rely on the right hemisphere because they are more difficult, abstract, and fragile, and contain more distant relationships.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gwenda L Schmidt
- Department of Psychology, Hope College, 35 E 12th St, Holland, MI 49423, USA.
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Amorapanth P, Kranjec A, Bromberger B, Lehet M, Widick P, Woods AJ, Kimberg DY, Chatterjee A. Language, perception, and the schematic representation of spatial relations. Brain Lang 2012; 120:226-236. [PMID: 22070948 PMCID: PMC3299879 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2011.09.007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/18/2010] [Revised: 09/23/2011] [Accepted: 09/25/2011] [Indexed: 05/31/2023]
Abstract
Schemas are abstract nonverbal representations that parsimoniously depict spatial relations. Despite their ubiquitous use in maps and diagrams, little is known about their neural instantiation. We sought to determine the extent to which schematic representations are neurally distinguished from language on the one hand, and from rich perceptual representations on the other. In patients with either left hemisphere damage or right hemisphere damage, a battery of matching tasks depicting categorical spatial relations was used to probe for the comprehension of basic spatial concepts across distinct representational formats (words, pictures, and schemas). Left hemisphere patients underperformed right hemisphere patients across all tasks. However, focused residual analyses using voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) suggest that (1) left hemisphere deficits in the representation of categorical spatial relations are difficult to distinguish from deficits in naming these relations and (2) the right hemisphere plays a special role in extracting schematic representations from richly textured pictures.
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Affiliation(s)
- Prin Amorapanth
- Neurology Department and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
| | - Alexander Kranjec
- Psychology Department, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, USA
- Neurology Department and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
| | - Bianca Bromberger
- Neurology Department and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
| | - Matthew Lehet
- Neurology Department and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
| | - Page Widick
- Neurology Department and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
| | - Adam J. Woods
- Neurology Department and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
| | - Daniel Y. Kimberg
- Neurology Department and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
| | - Anjan Chatterjee
- Neurology Department and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
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Abstract
Space, time, and causality provide a natural structure for organizing our experience. These abstract categories allow us to think relationally in the most basic sense; understanding simple events requires one to represent the spatial relations among objects, the relative durations of actions or movements, and the links between causes and effects. The present fMRI study investigates the extent to which the brain distinguishes between these fundamental conceptual domains. Participants performed a 1-back task with three conditions of interest (space, time, and causality). Each condition required comparing relations between events in a simple verbal narrative. Depending on the condition, participants were instructed to either attend to the spatial, temporal, or causal characteristics of events, but between participants each particular event relation appeared in all three conditions. Contrasts compared neural activity during each condition against the remaining two and revealed how thinking about events is deconstructed neurally. Space trials recruited neural areas traditionally associated with visuospatial processing, primarily bilateral frontal and occipitoparietal networks. Causality trials activated areas previously found to underlie causal thinking and thematic role assignment, such as left medial frontal and left middle temporal gyri, respectively. Causality trials also produced activations in SMA, caudate, and cerebellum; cortical and subcortical regions associated with the perception of time at different timescales. The time contrast, however, produced no significant effects. This pattern, indicating negative results for time trials but positive effects for causality trials in areas important for time perception, motivated additional overlap analyses to further probe relations between domains. The results of these analyses suggest a closer correspondence between time and causality than between time and space.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alexander Kranjec
- Psychology Department, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA 15282, USA.
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