Lesion studies have demonstrated impairments of specific types of phonological processes. However, results from neuropsychological studies of speech sound processing have been inconclusive as to the role of specific brain regions because of a lack of a one-to-one correspondence between behavioural patterns and lesion location. Functional…

Classic dichotic-listening paradigms reveal a right-ear advantage (REA) for speech sounds as compared to non-speech sounds. This REA is assumed to be associated with a left-hemisphere dominance for meaningful speech processing. This study objectively probed the relationship between ear advantage and hemispheric dominance in a dichotic-listening…

Five nonfluent aphasia patients participated in a picture-naming treatment that used an intention manipulation (opening a box and pressing a button on a device in the box with the left hand) to initiate naming trials and was designed to re-lateralize word production mechanisms from the left to the right frontal lobe. To test the underlying…

The intersection of Theory of Mind (ToM) processing and complex narrative comprehension in high functioning autism was examined by comparing cortical activation during the reading of passages that required inferences based on either intentions, emotional states, or physical causality. Right hemisphere activation was substantially greater for all…

Traditional neuropsychology employs visual half-field (VHF) experiments to assess cerebral language dominance. This approach is based on the assumption that left cerebral dominance for language leads to faster and more accurate recognition of words in the right visual half-field (RVF) than in the left visual half-field (LVF) during tachistoscopic…

Early periventricular brain lesions can not only cause cerebral palsy, but can also induce a reorganization of language. Here, we asked whether these different functional consequences can be attributed to topographically distinct portions of the periventricular white matter damage. Eight patients with pre- and perinatally acquired left-sided…

It has been claimed that verb processing (as opposed to noun processing) is subserved by specific neural circuits in the left prefrontal cortex. In this study, we took advantage of the unusual grammatical characteristics of clitic pronouns in Italian (e.g., "lo" and "la" in "portalo" and "portala" "bring it [masculine]/[feminine]",…

This study investigated the effects of phonologic treatment for anomia in aphasia. We proposed that if treatment were directed at the level of the phonologic processor, opportunities for naming via a phonological route, as opposed to a strictly whole word route, would be enhanced, thereby improving naming. The participants, ten people with anomia…

Prosody or speech melody subserves linguistic (e.g., question intonation) and emotional functions in speech communication. Findings from lesion studies and imaging experiments suggest that, depending on function or acoustic stimulus structure, prosodic speech components are differentially processed in the right and left hemispheres. This direct…

Previous research suggests that the left hemisphere (LH) focuses on strongly related word meanings; the right hemisphere (RH) may contribute uniquely to the processing of lexical ambiguity by activating and maintaining a wide range of meanings, including subordinate meanings. The present study used the word-lists false memory paradigm [Roediger,…

Goals: Research with lateralized word presentation has suggested that strong ("close") and weak ("remote") semantic associates are processed differently in the left and right cerebral hemispheres [e.g., Beeman, M. j., & Chiarello, C. (1998). Complementary right- and left-hemisphere language comprehension. "Current Directions in Psychological…

Functional imaging studies of single word production have consistently reported activation of the lateral prefrontal and cingulate cortex. Its contribution has been shown to be sensitive to task demands, which can be manipulated by the degree of response specification. Compared with classical verbal fluency, free word association relies less on…

In this study spectral delta percentage was used to assess both brain dysfunction/inhibition and functional linguistic impairment during different phases of word processing. To this aim, EEG delta amplitude was measured in 17 chronic non-fluent aphasic patients while engaged in three linguistic tasks: Orthographic, Phonological and Semantic.…

Previous neuropsychological studies on acquired dyslexia revealed a double dissociation in reading impairments. Patients with phonological dyslexia have selective difficulty in reading pseudo-words, while those with surface dyslexia misread exception words. This double dissociation in reading abilities has often been reported in brain-damaged…

The research presented in this dissertation examined changes in brain activity associated with learning, forgetting and using a second language. The first experiment investigated the changes that occur when novice adult second language learners acquire and forget second language words. Event-related brain potentials were measured while native…