The aim of the present study was to examine verb generation in a larger group of children and adolescents with acute focal lesions of the cerebellum. Nine children and adolescents with cerebellar tumours participated. Subjects were tested a few days after tumour surgery. For comparison, a subgroup was tested also 1 or 2 days before surgery. None…

This study investigates the compensatory impact of cognitive aids on left and right temporal lobe epileptic patients suffering from verbal memory disorders, who were candidates for surgery. Cognitive aids are defined in the levels-of-processing framework and deal with the depth of encoding, the elaboration of information, and the use of retrieval…

Three experiments explore aspects of the dissociable neural subsystems theory of hemispheric specialisation proposed by Marsolek and colleagues, and in particular a study by [Deason, R. G., & Marsolek, C. J. (2005). A critical boundary to the left-hemisphere advantage in word processing. "Brain and Language," 92, 251-261]. Experiment 1A showed…

Ellis, Ansorge and Lavidor (2007) [Ellis, A.W., Ansorge, L., & Lavidor, M. (2007). Words, hemispheres, and dissociable subsystems: The effects of exposure duration, case alternation, priming and continuity of form on word recognition in the left and right visual fields. "Brain and Language," 103, 292-303.] presented three experiments investigating…

Although advances in diffusion tensor imaging have enabled us to better study the anatomy of the inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF), its function remains poorly understood. Recently, it was suggested that the subcortical network subserving the language semantics could be constituted, in parallel with the inferior occipitofrontal fasciculus, by…

Previous laterality studies have implicated the right hemisphere in the processing of metaphors, however it is not clear if this result is due to metaphoricity per se or another aspect of semantic processing. Three divided visual field experiments varied metaphorical and literal sentence familiarity. We found a right hemisphere advantage for…

Why females generally perform better on language tasks than males is unknown. Sex differences were here identified in children (ages 9-15) across two linguistic tasks for words presented in two modalities. Bilateral activation in the inferior frontal and superior temporal gyri and activation in the left fusiform gyrus of girls was greater than in…

Through much is known about the N400 component, an event-related EEG potential that is sensitive to semantic manipulations, it is unclear whether modulations of N400 amplitude reflect automatic processing, controlled processing, or both. We examined this issue using a semantic judgment task that manipulated local and global contextual cues. Word…

In this paper we present the "grounded adaptive agent" computational framework for studying the emergence of communication and language. This modeling framework is based on simulations of population of cognitive agents that evolve linguistic capabilities by interacting with their social and physical environment (internal and external symbol…

Responds to previous studies on the relationship between event-related brain potential (ERP) responses to linguistic syntactic anomalies and domain-general unexpected events. After reviewing relevant data, this paper concludes that the ERP response to syntactic anomalies is at least partially distinct from the ERP response to unexpected anomalies…

The present fMRI study of semantic fluency for animal and tool names provides further evidence for category-specific brain activations, and reports task-related changes in effective connectivity among defined cerebral regions. Two partially segregated systems of functional integration were highlighted: the tool condition was associated with an…

The function of suppression of context-inappropriate meanings during lexical ambiguity resolution was examined in 25 adults with prefrontal cortex damage (PFCD) localized to the left (N = 8), right (N = 6), or bilaterally (N = 11); and 21 matched Controls. Results revealed unexpected inverse patterns of suppression between PFCD and Control groups,…

Patients with lesions of the left hemisphere often suffer from oral-facial apraxia, apraxia of speech, and aphasia. In these patients, visual features often play a critical role in speech and language therapy, when pictured lip shapes or the therapist's visible mouth movements are used to facilitate speech production and articulation. This demands…

Consistent with converging experimental evidence, we assume that foveal information is initially split across the two cerebral hemispheres. We have previously presented the SERIOL model of letter-position coding, which specifies how the resulting two halves of a letter string are integrated into an abstract representation of letter order. This…

The recent neuroimaging literature gives conflicting evidence about whether the left fusiform gyrus (FG) might recognize words as unitary visual objects. The sensitivity of the left FG to word frequency might provide a neural basis for the orthographic input lexicon theorized by reading models [Patterson, K., Marshall, J. C., & Coltheart, M.…