Accumulation of the DNA/RNA binding protein fused in sarcoma as cytoplasmic inclusions in neurons and glial cells is the pathological hallmark of all patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis with mutations in "FUS" as well as in several subtypes of frontotemporal lobar degeneration, which are not associated with "FUS" mutations. The mechanisms…

Neuroimaging tests of sensorimotor theories of semantic memory hinge on the extent to which similar activation patterns are observed during perception and retrieval of objects or object properties. The present study was motivated by the hypothesis that some of the seeming discrepancies across studies reflect flexibility in the systems responsible…

Innate auditory sensitivities and familiarity with the sounds of language give rise to clear influences of phonemic categories on adult perception of speech. With few exceptions, current models endorse highly left-hemisphere-lateralized mechanisms responsible for the influence of phonemic category on speech perception, based primarily on results…

Special processes recruited during the recognition of personally familiar people have been assumed to reflect the rich episodic and semantic information that selectively represents each person. However, the processes may also include person nonselective ones, which may require interpretation in terms beyond the memory mechanism. To examine this…

The effect of the visual hemifield to which spatial attention was oriented on the activities of the posterior parietal and occipital visual cortices was examined using functional near-infrared spectroscopy in order to investigate the neural substrates of voluntary visuospatial attention. Our brain imaging data support the theory put forth in a…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the hemispheric effect of creative insight. This study used high-density ERPs to record participants' brain activity while they performed an insight task. Results showed that both insight solutions and incomprehension solutions elicited a more negative ERP deflection (N320~550) than noninsight solutions…

In primates and adult humans direct understanding of others' action is provided by mirror mechanisms matching action observation and action execution (e.g. Casile, Caggiano & Ferrari, 2011). Despite the growing body of evidence detailing the existence of these mechanisms in the adult human brain, their origins and early development are…

Psychological research suggests that foreign-language vocabulary acquisition recruits the phonological loop for verbal working memory. To depict the neural underpinnings and shed light on the process of foreign language learning, we conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging of Japanese participants without previous exposure to the Uzbek…

This study explores oscillatory brain activity by means of event-related synchronization and desynchronization (%ERS/ERD) of EEG activity during the use of phonological and orthographic-morphological spelling strategies in L2 (English) and L1 (German) in native German speaking children. EEG was recorded while 33 children worked on a task requiring…

Most of the mechanisms involved in neural plasticity support cognition, and aging has a considerable effect on some of these processes. The neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) of the immunoglobulin superfamily plays a pivotal role in structural and functional plasticity and is required to modulate cognitive and emotional behaviors. However,…

We present an original model designed to study how a second language (L2) is acquired in bilinguals at different proficiencies starting from an existing L1. The model assumes that the conceptual and lexical aspects of languages are stored separately: conceptual aspects in distinct topologically organized Feature Areas, and lexical aspects in a…

Impaired tool related action in ideomotor apraxia is normally ascribed to loss of sensorimotor memories for habitual actions (engrams), but this account has not been tested against a hypothesis of a general deficit in representation of hand-object spatial relationships. Rapid reaching for familiar tools was compared with reaching for abstract…

This discussion article addresses issues related to expansion of the Wechsler model from four to five factors; multiple broad CHC abilities measured by the Arithmetic subtest; advantages and disadvantages of including complex tasks requiring integration of multiple broad abilities when measuring intelligence; limitations of factor analysis, which…

Dysfunction in an execution/observation matching system, or mirror neuron system, has been proposed to contribute to the social deficits observed in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Atypical activity in this system, as reflected in attenuation of the EEG mu rhythm, has been demonstrated in several studies; however, normative patterns of activity…

U.S. schools teach predominately to the analytical, left-brain, which has foundations in behaviorism, and uses a mechanistic paradigm that influences epistemic beliefs of how learning takes place. This result is that learning is impeded. Using discourse analysis of a set of Piagetian children, this study re-analyzed Piaget's work. This study found…