While motor dominance appears to drive limb selection for reaching movements at the midline and ipsilateral (dominant) side, this study examined the possible determinants associated with what drives the programming of movements in response to stimuli presented in contralateral space. Experiment 1 distinguished between object proximity and a…

The burgeoning interest over recent decades about the human brain, and possible implications for education, has, perhaps not surprisingly, fostered a suite of urban myths about brain functioning. The prize for the barmiest goes to the one about using only 10% of the brain, but there are plenty more that deserve dishonourable mention. The most…

The structure of the brain and the nature of evolution suggest that, despite its uniqueness, language likely depends on brain systems that also subserve other functions. The declarative/procedural (DP) model claims that the mental lexicon of memorized word-specific knowledge depends on the largely temporal-lobe substrates of declarative memory,…

In this paper studies of executive function in autism spectrum disorder are reviewed. Executive function is an umbrella term for functions such as planning, working memory, impulse control, inhibition, and shifting set, as well as for the initiation and monitoring of action. In this review, the focus will be on planning, inhibition, shifting set,…

Broca's region in the dominant cerebral hemisphere is known to mediate the production of language but also contributes to comprehension. This region evolved only in humans and is constituted of Brodmann's areas 44 and 45 in the inferior frontal gyrus. There is, however, evidence that Broca's region overlaps, at least in part, with the ventral…

Sex differences in cognition are consistently reported, men excelling in most visuospatial tasks and women in certain verbal tasks. It has been hypothesized that these sex differences in cognition results from a more bilateral pattern of language representation in women than in men. This bilateral pattern of language representation in women is…

In this study, we examine the suitability of a relatively new imaging technique, "arterial spin labeled perfusion imaging," for the study of continuous, gradual changes in neural activity. Unlike BOLD imaging, the perfusion signal is stable over long time-scales, allowing for accurate assessment of continuous performance. In addition, perfusion…

The purpose of this study is to determine, by functional magnetic resonance imaging, how the activated regions of the brain change as a Japanese sentence is presented in a grammatically correct order. In this study, we presented constituents of a sentence to Japanese participants one by one at regular intervals. The results showed that the left…

Previous research has revealed a lack of planum temporale (PT) asymmetry in adults with autism. This finding is now extended to children and adolescents with the disorder. MRI scans were obtained from 12 children with autism and 12 gender, handedness and age-matched comparison participants. The volume of gray matter in the PT and Heschl's gyrus…

Hemispheric contributions to the processing of emotional speech prosody were investigated by comparing adults with a focal lesion involving the right (n=9) or left (n=11) hemisphere and adults without brain damage (n=12). Participants listened to semantically anomalous utterances in three conditions ("discrimination," "identification," and…

Two divided visual field lexical decision experiments were conducted to examine the role of the cerebral hemispheres in transposed-letter similarity effects. In Experiment 1, we created two types of nonwords: nonadjacent transposed-letter nonwords ("TRADEGIA"; the base word was "TRAGEDIA," the Spanish for "TRAGEDY") and two-letter different…

By integrating previous computational models of corticohippocampal function, the authors develop and test a unified theory of the neural substrates of familiarity, recollection, and classical conditioning. This approach integrates models from 2 traditions of hippocampal modeling, those of episodic memory and incremental learning, by drawing on an…

We investigated the role of acetylcholine (ACh) during encoding and retrieval of tone/shock-induced fear conditioning with the aim of testing Hasselmo's cholinergic modulation model of encoding and retrieval using a task sensitive to hippocampal disruption. Lesions of the hippocampus impair acquisition and retention of contextual conditioning with…

Protein synthesis-dependent late phase of LTP (L-LTP) is typically induced by repeated high-frequency stimulation (HFS). This form of L-LTP is reduced in the aged animal and is positively correlated with age-related memory loss. Here we report a novel form of protein synthesis-dependent late phase of LTP in the CA1 region of hippocampus induced by…

Benzodiazepines have been useful tools for investigating mechanisms underlying learning and memory. The present set of experiments investigates the role of hippocampal GABA[subscript A]/benzodiazepine receptors in memory consolidation using Pavlovian fear conditioning. Rats were prepared with cannulae aimed at the dorsal hippocampus and trained…