Verbal and musical stimuli were presented to infants in a study of the relations of evoked potential left-right amplitude asymmetries to gender and hand preference. There was a relation between asymmetry and hand preference, and for girls, between asymmetry and stimulus condition. Results suggest a gender difference in cerebral hemisphere…

A discussion of the Total Physical Response method of second language instruction places the concept within the context of other unconventional language learning methods, reviews the rationale behind the approach, and outlines the classroom procedures used. A sampling of useful commands for classroom use is included. (19 references) (MSE)

This article summarizes work in progress at the Bowman Gray School of Medicine (North Carolina) on the structure and physiological profiles of reading disability and relates the findings to core left-hemisphere language functions. Data add evidence of the structural anomalies associated with dyslexia and evidence of its heritability, especially of…

A study used positron emission tomography (PET) to study patterns of brain activation during auditory processing in five high-functioning adults with autism. Results found that participants showed reversed hemispheric dominance during the verbal auditory stimulation and reduced activation of the auditory cortex and cerebellum. (CR)

This pilot study estimated the incidence of nondysphasic language and communication problems following right cerebral hemisphere damage (RHD) in 11 subjects who completed language assessments within 2 weeks of onset and again 3 months later. Results found some language impairment for 50% of the sample and marked difficulties for 20%. (Author/DB)

Presents the observations of a panel of research experts who have conducted research on music and the brain. States that the participants are Andrea Halpern, Larry Parsons, Ralph Spintge, and Sandra Trehub. After an introduction of each person, the participants characterized their principal findings. (CMK)

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…

Studies of American Sign language including functional magnetic resonance imaging of deaf signers confirms the importance of left hemisphere structures in signed language, but also the contributions of right hemisphere regions to sign language processing. A case study involving cortical stimulation mapping in a deaf signer provides evidence for…

This article proposes a neurobiological account of reading and reading disability suggesting that for normally developing readers, the dorsal (tempo-parietal) circuit predominates at first, and in conjunction with premotor systems, is associated with analytic processing necessary for learning to integrate orthographic with phonological and…

Drawing on the "new" [c. 2000], upgraded science of the human brain with its three different kinds of neural structures--mental, emotional and spiritual--Zohar [14] offers a model for structure, leadership and learning within an organization that allows them to thrive on uncertainty, deal creatively with rapid change, and realize the full…

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…

Mastication results from the interaction of an intrinsic rhythmical neural pattern and sensory feedback from the mouth, muscles and joints. The pattern is matched to the physical characteristics of food, but also varies with age. There are large differences in masticatory movements among subjects. The intrinsic rhythmical pattern is generated by…

This research provides further data regarding non-literal language comprehension following right hemisphere damage (RHD). To assess the impact of RHD on the processing of non-literal language, ten participants presenting with RHD and ten matched healthy control participants were administered tasks tapping humour appreciation and pragmatic…

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,…