Evidence that the vigor of the startle reflex varies systematically with the organism's emotional state is reviewed. A theory elucidating this relationship suggests how amplitude of eyeblink response to a probe may be modulated by affective content of perception and thought. Implications for research on emotion are outlined. (SLD)

Examines sentence comprehension in second language learners using event-related brain potentials. Japanese speakers who had learned German as a second language after puberty listened to German sentences that were either correct, semantically incorrect, syntactically incorrect or both semantically and syntactically incorrect, Brain responses were…

Functional neuroimaging of bilinguals and monolinguals used in conjunction with experimental cognitive tasks has been successful in establishing functional specialization as a principle of brain organization in humans. Consistent results show that attained proficiency and possibly language exposure are more important than age of acquisition as a…

Two priming experiments demonstrated exogenous attentional persistence to the fundamental auditory dimensions of frequency (Experiment 1) and time (Experiment 2). In a divided-attention task, participants responded to an independent dimension, the identification of three-tone sequence patterns, for both prime and probe stimuli. The stimuli were…

Event-related potential (ERP) studies have shown that emotional stimuli elicit greater amplitude late positive-polarity potentials (LPPs) than neutral stimuli. This effect has been attributed to arousal, but emotional stimuli are also more semantically coherent than uncategorized neutral stimuli. ERPs were recorded during encoding of positive,…

It has been argued that critical functions of the human amygdala are to modulate the moment-to-moment vigilance level and to enhance the processing and the consolidation of memories of emotionally arousing material. In this functional magnetic resonance study, pictures of human faces bearing fearful, angry, and happy expressions were presented to…

The visual system continually selects some information for processing while bypassing the processing of other information, and as a consequence, participants often fail to notice large changes to visual stimuli. In the present studies, the authors investigated whether knowledge about the probability of particular changes occurring over time…

The relations among early cumulative medical risk, cumulative environmental risk, attentional control, and brain activation were assessed in 15-16-year-old adolescents who were born preterm. Functional magnetic resonance imaging found frontal, temporal, and parietal cortex activation during an attention task with greater activation of the left…

Neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies implicate attentional difficulties in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), but results are inconsistent due possibly to sample heterogeneity and lack of control of comorbid disorders, such as Tourette's syndrome (TS). Nevertheless, it has been suggested that OCD symptomatology may be a result of…

Recent imaging studies have suggested that developmental changes may parallel aspects of adult learning in cortical activation becoming less diffuse and more focal over time. However, while adult learning studies examine changes within subjects, developmental findings have been based on cross-sectional samples and even comparisons across studies.…

Procedural and declarative memory systems are postulated to interact in either a synergistic or a competitive manner, and memory consolidation appears to be a highly critical stage for this process. However, the precise cellular mechanisms subserving these interactions remain unknown. To investigate this issue, 24-h retention performances were…

Event-related potentials were recorded to substantiate the claim of a distinct psycholinguistic status of (a) pronouns vs. proper names and (b) ellipses vs. proper names. In two studies 41 students read sentences in which the number of intervening words between the anaphor and its antecedent was either small or large. Comparing the far with the…

Recent research indicates that individuals with nonthalamic subcortical (NS) lesions can experience difficulties processing lexical ambiguities in a variety of contexts. This study examined how prior processing of a lexical ambiguity influences subsequent meaning activation in 10 individuals with NS lesions and 10 matched healthy controls.…

The phase-synchronization of Gamma-band oscillations has been postulated as a mechanism of "network binding" and implicated in various aspects of perception, memory, and cognition. The current study investigates a possible link between Gamma synchrony and individual differences in intelligence within the theory of fluid and crystallized…

Velocardiofacial syndrome (VCFS), also known as 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, is a neurogenetic disorder that is associated with both learning disabilities and a consistent neuropsychological phenotype, including deficits in executive function, visuospatial perception, and working memory. Anatomic imaging studies have identified significant…