Hemispheric activation during cognitive tasks using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can be difficult to interpret, uncomfortable, and is not widely available. This study investigated whether tympanic membrane thermometry could be used as a broad measure of hemispheric activation. Infrared probes measured ear temperature continuously…

The right and left visual fields each project to the contralateral cerebral hemispheres, but the extent of the functional overlap of the two hemifields along the vertical meridian is still under debate. After presenting the spatial, temporal, and functional specifications of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), we show that TMS is particularly…

We examined hemispheric specialization in a lateralized Stroop facial identification task. A 2 (presentation side: left or right visual field [LVF or RVF])x2 (picture emotion: happy or angry)x3 (emotion of distractor word: happy, angry, or blank) factorial design placed the right hemispheric specialization for emotional expression processing and…

Previous findings indicate that the noradrenergic, dopaminergic, and cholinergic innervations of the basolateral amygdala (BLA) modulate memory consolidation. The current study investigated whether memory enhancement induced by post-training intra-BLA infusions of a [beta]-adrenergic or muscarinic cholinergic agonist requires concurrent activation…

Speech-related changes in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) were measured using H[subscript 2][superscript 15]O positron-emission tomography in 9 adults with adductor spasmodic dysphonia (ADSD) before and after botulinum toxin (BTX) injection and 10 age- and gender-matched volunteers without neurological disorders. Scans were acquired at rest…

This article presents 3 studies that examine how students and experts employ mental rotation and a learned heuristic to solve chemistry tasks that involve spatial information. Results from Study 1 indicate that despite instruction in analytical strategies, students choose to employ mental rotation on canonical assessment tasks. In Study 2, experts…

When bisecting words in their middle, people reveal leftward bisection errors. This tendency might emerge from an attentional bias towards the beginning of the word. However, when longer meaningless letter strings are presented, people reveal a rightward bisection bias. To test the role of semantic information on leftward or rightward bisection…

Poor readers perform worse than their normal reading peers on a variety of speech perception tasks, which may be linked to their phonological processing abilities. The purpose of the study was to compare the brain activation patterns of normal and impaired readers on speech perception to better understand the phonological basis in reading…

Research investigating risk perception suggests that not only the quantitative parameters used in technical risk assessment (i.e., frequency and severity of harm) but also "qualitative" aspects such as the dread a hazard provokes or its controllability influence risk judgments. It remains to be elucidated, however, which neural mechanism underlie…

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,…

This article describes a dynamic, short-term art therapy approach that has been developed for the treatment of trauma related disorders. Using a modified Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) protocol with alternating tactile and auditory bilateral stimulation, associations are rapidly brought to conscious awareness and expressed in…

C. M. MacLeod and P. A. MacDonald (2000) suggested that congruent and incongruent Stroop stimuli cause more task conflict than neutral stimuli because the anterior cingulate cortex is more activated with these stimuli. This study investigated behavioral expression for this pattern. Experiment 1 reduced task conflict control by increasing the…

Background: This preliminary study served as a pilot for an ongoing analysis of spectral power in adults with Down syndrome (DS) using a 151 channel whole head magnetoencephalography (MEG). The present study is the first step for examining and comparing cortical responses during spontaneous and task related activity in DS. Method: Cortical…

The nucleus basalis magnocellularis (NBM) is known to be involved in the memorization of several conditioned responses. To investigate the role of the NBM in fear conditioning memorization, this neural site was subjected to fully reversible tetrodotoxin (TTX) inactivation during consolidation in adult male Wistar rats that had undergone fear…

Three experiments were carried out to investigate hemispheric asymmetry in color processing among normal participants. In Experiment 1, it was shown that the reaction times (RTs) of the dominant and non-dominant hands assessed using a visual target presented at the central visual field, were not significantly different. In Experiment 2, RTs of…