20044890	The present study aimed to examine the influence of musical expertise on the metric and semantic aspects of speech processing. In two attentional conditions (metric and semantic tasks), musicians listened to short sentences ending in trisyllabic words that were semantically and/or metrically congruous or incongruous. Both ERPs and behavioral data were analyzed and the results were compared to previous nonmusicians' data. Regarding the processing of meter, results showed that musical expertise influenced the automatic detection of the syllable temporal structure (P200 effect), the integration of metric structure and its influence on word comprehension (N400 effect), as well as the reanalysis of metric violations (P600 and late positivities effects). By contrast, results showed that musical expertise did not influence the semantic level of processing. These results are discussed in terms of transfer of training effects from music to speech processing.	t	\N
20117764	We present new evidence based on fMRI for the existence and neural architecture of an abstract supramodal language system that can integrate linguistic inputs arising from different modalities such that speech and print each activate a common code. Working with sentence material, our aim was to find out where the putative supramodal system is located and how it responds to comprehension challenges. To probe these questions we examined BOLD activity in experienced readers while they performed a semantic categorization task with matched written or spoken sentences that were either well-formed or contained anomalies of syntactic form or pragmatic content. On whole-brain scans, both anomalies increased net activity over non-anomalous baseline sentences, chiefly at left frontal and temporal regions of heteromodal cortex. The anomaly-sensitive sites correspond approximately to those that previous studies (Michael et al., 2001; Constable et al., 2004) have found to be sensitive to other differences in sentence complexity (object relative minus subject relative). Regions of interest (ROIs) were defined by peak response to anomaly averaging over modality conditions. Each anomaly-sensitive ROI showed the same pattern of response across sentence types in each modality. Voxel-by-voxel exploration over the whole brain based on a cosine similarity measure of common function confirmed the specificity of supramodal zones.	t	\N
20146608	The neural responses to sensory consequences of a self-produced motor act are suppressed compared with those in response to a similar but externally generated stimulus. Previous studies in the somatosensory and auditory systems have shown that the motor-induced suppression of the sensory mechanisms is sensitive to delays between the motor act and the onset of the stimulus. The present study investigated time-dependent neural processing of auditory feedback in response to self-produced vocalizations. ERPs were recorded in response to normal and pitch-shifted voice auditory feedback during active vocalization and passive listening to the playback of the same vocalizations. The pitch-shifted stimulus was delivered to the subjects' auditory feedback after a randomly chosen time delay between the vocal onset and the stimulus presentation. Results showed that the neural responses to delayed feedback perturbations were significantly larger than those in response to the pitch-shifted stimulus occurring at vocal onset. Active vocalization was shown to enhance neural responsiveness to feedback alterations only for nonzero delays compared with passive listening to the playback. These findings indicated that the neural mechanisms of auditory feedback processing are sensitive to timing between the vocal motor commands and the incoming auditory feedback. Time-dependent neural processing of auditory feedback may be an important feature of the audio-vocal integration system that helps to improve the feedback-based monitoring and control of voice structure through vocal error detection and correction.	t	\N
20347261	In this study, the subjective and objective voice measures of seven female physical education student teachers during a semester of student teaching were investigated. The participants completed the voice measures at three data collection time points: baseline, middle, and end of the semester. The voice measures included acoustic and aerodynamic data, perceptual rating scales of vocal quality and vocal fatigue, an end-of-semester questionnaire, and the Voice Handicap Index. Results demonstrated that the subjective and objective voice measures changed at the middle and the end of the semester as compared with those at baseline. The change in the voice measures may suggest that the vocal mechanism was adapting to the increased vocal demands of teaching physical education.	t	\N
20411315	Noisy recordings of dialogue often serve as evidence in criminal proceedings. The present article explores the ability of two types of contextual information, currently present in the legal system, to bias subjective interpretations of such evidence. The present experiments demonstrate that the general context of the legal system and the presence of transcripts of the recorded speech are both able to bias interpretations of degraded & benign recordings into interpretable & incriminating. Furthermore we demonstrate a curse of knowledge whereby people become miscalibrated to the true quality of degraded recordings when provided transcripts. Current methods of dealing with auditory evidence are insufficient to mollify the effects of biasing information within the criminal justice system.	t	\N
20433240	On the basis of results from behavioral studies that spatial attention improves the exclusion of external noise in the target region, we predicted that attending to a spatial region would reduce the impact of external noise on the BOLD response in corresponding cortical areas, seen as reduced BOLD responses in conditions with large amounts of external noise but relatively low signal, and increased dynamic range of the BOLD response to variations in signal contrast. We found that, in the presence of external noise, covert attention reduced the trial-by-trial BOLD response by 15.5-18.9% in low signal contrast conditions in V1. It also increased the BOLD dynamic range in V1, V2, V3, V3A/B, and V4 by a factor of at least three. Overall, covert attention reduced the impact of external noise by about 73-85% in these early visual areas. It also increased the contrast gain by a factor of 2.6-3.8.	t	\N
20576373	Patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) may develop hearing and balance disorders as a result of the immune-mediated inner ear damage due to vasculitis or ototoxicity of drugs used in SLE treatment. The aim of the study was evaluation of the hearing organ disorders in patients with SLE with particular regard to their prevalence and relationship to duration and severity of disease. The severity was assessed from involvement of organs that resulted in poorer SLE outcome, i.e. kidneys and central nervous system (CNS), and from the presence of antibodies associated with unfavourable SLE prognosis. Thirty-five unselected, consecutive patients (33 women, two men, mean age 47.8 years) with SLE diagnosed in compliance to the international diagnostic criteria of the American Rheumatism Association (1982) were enrolled into the study. The control group consisted of 30 otologically healthy persons matched to the SLE group for age and sex. Case history was recorded for all patients from questionnaire data and laryngological examinations were performed, followed by pure-tone, speech and impedance audiometry and auditory brainstem response audiometry (ABR). In the anamnesis 71.4% of patients reported vertigo, 62.9% headaches, 40% tinnitus, 25.7% hyperacusis, 17.1% hearing loss and 2.9% ear fullness. It was found that SLE patients had a significantly poorer mean hearing thresholds than the control group for all frequencies, except for 500; 2000 and 4000 Hz. Longer ABR latency averages were observed in the group of SLE patients compared to control. Ten patients (28.6%) developed high-frequency and symmetric sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). Significant positive correlation between mean air-conduction hearing thresholds and SLE duration (r = 0.46, p < 0.001) was found. After taking age into consideration, hearing acuity in SLE was related to duration of disease in younger patients. Furthermore, no relation was seen between hearing level and severity of disease. Auditory system involvement ought to be considered as one of elements of the clinical picture of systemic lupus erythematosus while determination of its character, original or secondary, requires further research.	t	\N
20599334	The children with difficulty in receiving sounds presented at rapid rates in speech sounds and language learning period, may have delay in speech sounds and language development due to hearing speech sounds not clearly. Auditory temporal processing (ATP) is the ability to perceive auditory signals of brief duration accurately when presented at rapid rates. ATP can be evaluated by the random gap detection test (RGDT), which detects a brief gap between two stimuli. In this study, we investigated performance of children with previous language delay (PLD), currently having disorders in more than one speech sounds, on random gap detection test (RGDT) and RGDT-expanded (RGDT-EXP) tests. 12 children (8 male, 4 female) with previous language delay (PLD) and complaint of expressing speech sounds distorted, were included into the study. They had applied language training for at least one-year period in the past and in the current time, their language development is normal. They expressed one or more speech sounds as distorted. The control group consisted of 10 normal hearing children with normal phonological development and language matched for age; and who had not PLD (5 male, 5 female). Children language levels were evaluated by Preschool Language Scale-4 test; or Clinical evaluation of language fundamentals, fourth edition (CELF-4) according to child's age. Speech sounds development was assessed by Speech Sound Development Test (SSDT). They were applied RGDT and/if necessary, RGDT-EXP. Each child responded whether he/she heard one or two tones. Their responses were taken as verbally and/or hold up one finger or two fingers. In the second test, they were applied speech discrimination test in quiet environment and in noise. Gap detection thresholds (GDTs) were detected at 500-4000 Hz; and Composite GDTs (CGDTs) were found for the study and control groups. GDT/CGDT > 20 ms was considered as abnormal for temporal processing disorder. In the study group with PLD, mean of the GDTs were all over the normal limits; and in control group, mean of GDTs were all in normal limits. The difference between the mean GDTs of the study group were significantly higher than the control groups at all frequencies of 500-4000 Hz. In PLD group, CGDT (103.53 ± 11.63 ms) was significantly higher than that of the control group, (10.35 ± 0.65 ms) (p=0.021). The children with PLD have difficulties in perception of speech sounds at a certain rate, even they have not language learning difficulties. Therefore, difficulty in distinguishing of speech sounds may cause especially receptive language development delay. We believe that perception of the speech sounds and language in a certain speed; and temporally degraded speech programmes should be incorporated into the training programme and may help to prevent delays.	t	\N
20617885	The present study investigated the effects of auditory selective attention on the processing of syntactic information in music and speech using event-related potentials. Spoken sentences or musical chord sequences were either presented in isolation, or simultaneously. When presented simultaneously, participants had to focus their attention either on speech, or on music. Final words of sentences and final harmonies of chord sequences were syntactically either correct or incorrect. Irregular chords elicited an early right anterior negativity (ERAN), whose amplitude was decreased when music was simultaneously presented with speech, compared to when only music was presented. However, the amplitude of the ERAN-like waveform elicited when music was ignored did not differ from the conditions in which participants attended the chord sequences. Irregular sentences elicited an early left anterior negativity (ELAN), regardless of whether speech was presented in isolation, was attended, or was to be ignored. These findings suggest that the neural mechanisms underlying the processing of syntactic structure of music and speech operate partially automatically, and, in the case of music, are influenced by different attentional conditions. Moreover, the ERAN was slightly reduced when irregular sentences were presented, but only when music was ignored. Therefore, these findings provide no clear support for an interaction of neural resources for syntactic processing already at these early stages.	t	\N
20642737	Acoustic and visual interceptive actions were tested in this research by comparing the performance of blind, blind-folded, and sighted individuals. An indirect interception method was employed in which the participant had to roll an intercepting ball towards a moving target on a perpendicular track. The interception task used conditions that varied the speed, rolling distance, and target size/intensity. While performance was highly consistent and accurate for visual participants in this research, the blind and blind-folded participants demonstrated much more performance variability in response to changes in speed and distance. Manipulation of target size and intensity did not affect judgments, however performance tended to be more accurate at shorter distances and with faster target speeds. Results from this research are discussed in terms of their implications for tau in acoustic interception, and the use of spatial and temporal cues for guiding interceptive actions.	t	\N
20644955	Two experiments investigated the effects of interval duration ratio on perception of local timing perturbations, accuracy of rhythm production, and phase correction in musicians listening to or tapping in synchrony with cyclically repeated auditory two-interval rhythms. Ratios ranged from simple (1:2) to complex (7:11, 5:13), and from small (5:13 = 0.38) to large (6:7 = 0.86). Rhythm production and perception exhibited similar ratio-dependent biases: rhythms with small ratios were produced with increased ratios, and timing perturbations in these rhythms tended to be harder to detect when they locally increased the ratio than when they reduced it. The opposite held for rhythms with large ratios. This demonstrates a close relation between rhythm perception and production. Unexpectedly, however, the neutral "attractor" was not the simplest ratio (1:2 = 0.50) but a complex ratio near 4:7 (= 0.57). Phase correction in response to perturbations was generally rapid and did not show the ratio-dependent biases observed in rhythm perception and production. Thus, phase correction operates efficiently and autonomously even in synchronization with rhythms exhibiting complex interval ratios.	t	\N
20663254	Patients with schizophrenia (SZ) characteristically exhibit supranormal levels of cortical activity to self-induced sensory stimuli, ostensibly because of abnormalities in the neural signals (corollary discharges, CDs) normatively involved in suppressing the sensory consequences of self-generated actions. The nature of these abnormalities is unknown. This study investigated whether SZ patients experience CDs that are abnormally delayed in their arrival at the sensory cortex. Twenty-one patients with SZ and 25 matched control participants underwent electroencephalography (EEG). Participants' level of cortical suppression was calculated as the amplitude of the N1 component evoked by a button press-elicited auditory stimulus, subtracted from the N1 amplitude evoked by the same stimulus presented passively. In the three experimental conditions, the auditory stimulus was delivered 0, 50 or 100 ms subsequent to the button-press. Fifteen SZ patients and 17 healthy controls (HCs) also underwent diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), and the fractional anisotropy (FA) of participants' arcuate fasciculus was used to predict their level of cortical suppression in the three conditions. While the SZ patients exhibited subnormal N1 suppression to undelayed, self-generated auditory stimuli, these deficits were eliminated by imposing a 50-ms, but not a 100-ms, delay between the button-press and the evoked stimulus. Furthermore, the extent to which the 50-ms delay normalized a patient's level of N1 suppression was linearly related to the FA of their arcuate fasciculus. These data suggest that SZ patients experience temporally delayed CDs to self-generated auditory stimuli, putatively because of structural damage to the white-matter (WM) fasciculus connecting the sites of discharge initiation and destination.	t	\N
20665720	The effect of stimulus modulation rate on the underlying neural activity in human auditory cortex is not clear. Human studies (using both invasive and noninvasive techniques) have demonstrated that at the population level, auditory cortex follows stimulus envelope. Here we examined the effect of stimulus modulation rate by using a rare opportunity to record both spiking activity and local field potentials (LFP) in auditory cortex of patients during repeated presentations of an audio-visual movie clip presented at normal, double, and quadruple speeds. Mean firing rate during evoked activity remained the same across speeds and the temporal response profile of firing rate modulations at increased stimulus speeds was a linearly scaled version of the response during slower speeds. Additionally, stimulus induced power modulation of local field potentials in the high gamma band (64-128 Hz) exhibited similar temporal scaling as the neuronal firing rate modulations. Our data confirm and extend previous studies in humans and anesthetized animals, supporting a model in which both firing rate, and high-gamma LFP power modulations in auditory cortex follow the temporal envelope of the stimulus across different modulation rates.	t	\N
20666594	Spoken word recognition is achieved via competition between activated lexical candidates that match the incoming speech input. The competition is modulated by prelexical cues that are important for segmenting the auditory speech stream into linguistic units. One such prelexical cue that listeners rely on in spoken word recognition is phonotactics. Phonotactics defines possible combinations of phonemes within syllables or words in a given language. The present study aimed at investigating both temporal and topographical aspects of the neuronal correlates of phonotactic processing by simultaneously applying ERPs and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Pseudowords, either phonotactically legal or illegal with respect to the participants' native language, were acoustically presented to passively listening adult native German speakers. ERPs showed a larger N400 effect for phonotactically legal compared to illegal pseudowords, suggesting stronger lexical activation mechanisms in phonotactically legal material. fNIRS revealed a left hemispheric network including fronto-temporal regions with greater response to phonotactically legal pseudowords than to illegal pseudowords. This confirms earlier hypotheses on a left hemispheric dominance of phonotactic processing most likely due to the fact that phonotactics is related to phonological processing and represents a segmental feature of language comprehension. These segmental linguistic properties of a stimulus are predominantly processed in the left hemisphere. Thus, our study provides first insights into temporal and topographical characteristics of phonotactic processing mechanisms in a passive listening task. Differential brain responses between known and unknown phonotactic rules thus supply evidence for an implicit use of phonotactic cues to guide lexical activation mechanisms.	t	\N
20801079	Tinnitus can be considered an auditory phantom percept, in which patients hear an internal sound in the absence of any external sound source, mimicking tonal memory. Tinnitus however can be perceived exclusively uni- or bilaterally. The neurophysiological differences were investigated between unilateral and bilateral tinnitus using LORETA source localized resting state EEG recordings. The difference between unilateral and bilateral tinnitus is reflected by high frequency activity (beta and gamma) in the superior prefrontal gurus, right parahippocampus, right angular gyrus and right auditory cortex. Unilateral tinnitus is characterized by contralateral beta2 in the superior prefrontal gyrus in comparison to bilateral tinnitus, but gamma in comparison to non-tinnitus subjects. Bilateral tinnitus has delta activity in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex in comparison to unilateral tinnitus, and bilateral beta1 in comparison to non-tinnitus subjects. Bilateral tinnitus is also characterized by bilateral frontopolar beta1 activity. Unilateral and bilateral tinnitus can be differentiated based on their resting state oscillation patterns: beta3 and gamma-band activity in the superior premotor cortex, parahippocampal area and angular gyrus seem to form the core of a spatial localization network involved in tinnitus. These differences should be taken into account when evaluating functional neuroimaging data relating to tinnitus.	t	\N
20808225	The purpose of this study was to examine speech recognition through hearing aids for seven telephone listening conditions. Speech recognition scores were measured for 20 participants in six wireless routing transmission conditions and one acoustic telephone condition. In the wireless conditions, the speech signal was delivered to both ears simultaneously (bilateral speech) or to one ear (unilateral speech). The effect of changing the noise level in the nontest ear during unilateral conditions was also examined. Participants were fitted with hearing aids using both nonoccluding and occluding dome ear tips. Participants were seated in a room with background noise present and speech was transmitted to the participants without additional noise. There was no effect of changing the noise level in the nontest ear and no difference between unilateral wireless routing and acoustic telephone listening. For wireless transmission, bilateral presentation resulted in significantly better speech recognition than unilateral presentation. Bilateral wireless conditions allowed for significantly better recognition than the acoustic telephone condition for participants fitted with occluding ear tips only. Routing the signal to both hearing aids resulted in significantly better speech recognition than unilateral signal routing. Wireless signal routing was shown to be beneficial compared with acoustic telephone listening and in some conditions resulted in the best performance of all of the listening conditions evaluated. However, this advantage was only evident when the signal was routed to both ears and when hearing aid wearers were fitted with occluding domes. Therefore, it is expected that the benefits of this new wireless streaming technology over existing telephone coupling methods will be most evident clinically in hearing aid wearers who require more limited venting than is typically used in open canal fittings.	t	\N
20812786	In contrast to visual object processing, relatively little is known about how the human brain processes everyday real-world sounds, transforming highly complex acoustic signals into representations of meaningful events or auditory objects. We recently reported a fourfold cortical dissociation for representing action (nonvocalization) sounds correctly categorized as having been produced by human, animal, mechanical, or environmental sources. However, it was unclear how consistent those network representations were across individuals, given potential differences between each participant's degree of familiarity with the studied sounds. Moreover, it was unclear what, if any, auditory perceptual attributes might further distinguish the four conceptual sound-source categories, potentially revealing what might drive the cortical network organization for representing acoustic knowledge. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to test participants before and after extensive listening experience with action sounds, and tested for cortices that might be sensitive to each of three different high-level perceptual attributes relating to how a listener associates or interacts with the sound source. These included the sound's perceived concreteness, effectuality (ability to be affected by the listener), and spatial scale. Despite some variation of networks for environmental sounds, our results verified the stability of a fourfold dissociation of category-specific networks for real-world action sounds both before and after familiarity training. Additionally, we identified cortical regions parametrically modulated by each of the three high-level perceptual sound attributes. We propose that these attributes contribute to the network-level encoding of category-specific acoustic knowledge representations.	t	\N
20844257	It is important to ensure that hearing aid fitting strategies for infants take into account the infant's developing speech perception system. As a way of exploring this issue, this study examined how 6- and 9-month-olds with normal hearing perceive native-language speech in which the natural spectral shape was altered to emphasize either high-frequency (positive spectral tilt) or low-frequency (negative spectral tilt) information. Discrimination was tested using a visual habituation procedure. Forty-eight 6-month-olds and forty-eight 9-month-olds were presented with a fricative contrast, /f/-/s/, in 1 of 3 conditions: (a) as unmodified speech; (b) with a -6 dB/octave tilt; or (c) with a +6 dB/octave tilt. Six-month-olds showed evidence of discriminating /f/-/s/ in all 3 conditions, but 9-month-olds showed such evidence only in the unmodified condition. The findings suggest that the perceptual reorganization that emerges for consonants at the end of the first year affects 9-month-olds' discrimination of native speech sounds. Perceptual reorganization is usually indexed by a decline in the ability to discriminate nonnative speech sounds. In this study, 6-month-olds demonstrated an acoustic-based sensitivity to both modified and unmodified native speech sounds, but 9-month-olds were most sensitive to the unmodified speech sounds that adhered to the native spectral profile.	t	\N
20864070	Auditory and visual processes demonstrably enhance each other based on spatial and temporal coincidence. Our recent results on visual search have shown that auditory signals also enhance visual salience of specific objects based on multimodal experience. For example, we tend to see an object (e.g., a cat) and simultaneously hear its characteristic sound (e.g., "meow"), to name an object when we see it, and to vocalize a word when we read it, but we do not tend to see a word (e.g., cat) and simultaneously hear the characteristic sound (e.g., "meow") of the named object. If auditory-visual enhancements occur based on this pattern of experiential associations, playing a characteristic sound (e.g., "meow") should facilitate visual search for the corresponding object (e.g., an image of a cat), hearing a name should facilitate visual search for both the corresponding object and corresponding word, but playing a characteristic sound should not facilitate visual search for the name of the corresponding object. Our present and prior results together confirmed these experiential association predictions. We also recently showed that the underlying object-based auditory-visual interactions occur rapidly (within 220ms) and guide initial saccades towards target objects. If object-based auditory-visual enhancements are automatic and persistent, an interesting application would be to use characteristic sounds to facilitate visual search when targets are rare, such as during baggage screening. Our participants searched for a gun among other objects when a gun was presented on only 10% of the trials. The search time was speeded when a gun sound was played on every trial (primarily on gun-absent trials); importantly, playing gun sounds facilitated both gun-present and gun-absent responses, suggesting that object-based auditory-visual enhancements persistently increase the detectability of guns rather than simply biasing gun-present responses. Thus, object-based auditory-visual interactions that derive from experiential associations rapidly and persistently increase visual salience of corresponding objects.	t	\N
20883507	The prior entry hypothesis of attention holds that attended stimuli are perceived earlier than unattended stimuli. Whereas this speeding of perceptual processing has been repeatedly demonstrated for spatial attention, it has not been reported within the temporal domain. To fill this gap, we tested whether temporal attention accelerates auditory perceptual processing by employing event-related potentials as on-line indicators of perceptual processing. In a modified oddball paradigm, we presented a single tone in each trial, either a frequent standard tone or an infrequent deviant or target tone. Temporal attention to tones was manipulated via constant foreperiods. We observed that the latency of the N2, an event-related potential reflecting perceptual processing, is shortened by temporal attention. This result provides first evidence for the idea that temporal attention accelerates perceptual processing as suggested by the prior entry hypothesis.	t	\N
20890206	Perception-in-noise deficits have been demonstrated across many populations and listening conditions. Many factors contribute to successful perception of auditory stimuli in noise, including neural encoding in the central auditory system. Physiological measures such as cortical auditory-evoked potentials (CAEPs) can provide a view of neural encoding at the level of the cortex that may inform our understanding of listeners' abilities to perceive signals in the presence of background noise. To understand signal-in-noise neural encoding better, we set out to determine the effect of signal type, noise type, and evoking paradigm on the P1-N1-P2 complex. Tones and speech stimuli were presented to nine individuals in quiet and in three background noise types: continuous speech spectrum noise, interrupted speech spectrum noise, and four-talker babble at a signal-to-noise ratio of -3 dB. In separate sessions, CAEPs were evoked by a passive homogenous paradigm (single repeating stimulus) and an active oddball paradigm. The results for the N1 component indicated significant effects of signal type, noise type, and evoking paradigm. Although components P1 and P2 also had significant main effects of these variables, only P2 demonstrated significant interactions among these variables. Signal type, noise type, and evoking paradigm all must be carefully considered when interpreting signal-in-noise evoked potentials. Furthermore, these data confirm the possible usefulness of CAEPs as an aid to understand perception-in-noise deficits.	t	\N
20932562	Functional neuroimaging studies of syntactic processing have been interpreted as identifying the neural locations of parsing and interpretive operations. However, current behavioral studies of sentence processing indicate that many operations occur simultaneously with parsing and interpretation. In this review, we point to issues that arise in discriminating the effects of these concurrent processes from those of the parser/interpreter in neural measures and to approaches that may help resolve them.	t	\N
20934172	This paper presents the results of three studies of intelligibility and quality of speech recorded through a bone conduction microphone (BCM). All speech signals were captured and recorded using a Temco HG-17 BCM. Twelve locations on or close to the skull were selected for the BCM placement. In the first study, listeners evaluated the intelligibility and quality of the bone conducted speech signals presented through traditional earphones. Listeners in the second study evaluated the intelligibility and quality of signals presented through a loudspeaker. In the third study the signals were reproduced through a bone conduction headset; however, signal evaluation was limited to speech intelligibility only. In all three studies, the Forehead and Temple BCM locations yielded the highest intelligibility and quality rating scores. The Collarbone location produced the least intelligible and lowest quality signals across all tested BCM locations.	t	\N
20950509	To assess the hearing changes associated with sacrificing an intact ossicular chain during cholesteatoma surgery. We reviewed the operation notes of surgical procedures performed by the senior author between October 2000 and April 2006. Thirty-three cases were identified in which cholesteatoma surgery had been performed in the presence of a mobile, intact ossicular chain. One set of case notes was missing; therefore, 32 cases were included in the analysis. The ossicular chain was preserved in 17 cases (14 males and three females) and sacrificed in 15 (eight males and seven females). At the first post-operative assessment, a median air-bone gap deterioration of 3.3 dB was seen in patients in whom the ossicular chain had been sacrificed, while a median air-bone gap improvement of 3.3 dB was seen in those in whom the chain had been preserved. However, multivariable logistic regression analysis suggested that this difference in hearing outcomes was due to pre-operative hearing status, and that preservation of the ossicular chain did not lead to a better outcome. In cholesteatoma surgery, there is at most a marginal benefit in preserving the ossicular chain. In the current study, the better hearing outcomes associated with preservation of the ossicular chain were accounted for by patients' better pre-operative hearing status. This study did not demonstrate a difference in residual disease rate, but was underpowered to do so.	t	\N
20961518	Researchers often conduct visual world studies to investigate how listeners integrate linguistic information with prior context. Such studies are likely to generate anticipatory baseline effects (ABEs), differences in listeners' expectations about what a speaker might mention that exist before a critical speech stimulus is presented. ABEs show that listeners have attended to and accessed prior contextual information in time to influence the processing of the critical speech stimulus. However, further evidence is required to show that the information actually did influence subsequent processing. ABEs can compromise the validity of inferences about information integration if they are not appropriately controlled. We discuss four solutions: statistical estimation, experimental control, elimination of "on-target" trials, and neutral gaze. An experiment compares the performance of these solutions, and suggests that the elimination of on-target trials introduces bias in the direction of ABEs, due to the statistical phenomenon of regression toward the mean. We conclude that statistical estimation, possibly coupled with experimental control, offers the most valid and least biased solution.	t	\N
21060141	To investigate the effects of increased syntactic complexity and utterance length demands on speech production and comprehension in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) using behavioral and physiological measures. Speech response latency, interarticulatory coordinative consistency, accuracy of speech production, and response latency and accuracy on a receptive language task were analyzed in 16 individuals with PD and 16 matched control participants. Individuals with PD had higher oral motor coordination variability, took a longer time to initiate speech, and made more errors on the speaking task compared with the control group. They also received lower scores on the 2 complex conditions of the receptive language task. Increased length and syntactic complexity negatively affected performance in both groups of speakers. These findings provide a novel window into the speech deficits associated with PD by examining performance on longer, sentence-level utterances in contrast to earlier investigations of single-word or nonword productions. Speech motor control processes and language comprehension were adversely affected in the majority of our participants with mild to moderate PD compared to the control group. Finally, increased syntactic complexity and sentence length affected both the healthy aging and PD groups' speech production performance at the behavioral and kinematic levels.	t	\N
21067852	Integration of simultaneous auditory and visual information about an event can enhance our ability to detect that event. This is particularly evident in the perception of speech, where the articulatory gestures of the speaker's lips and face can significantly improve the listener's detection and identification of the message, especially when that message is presented in a noisy background. Speech is a particularly important example of multisensory integration because of its behavioural relevance to humans and also because brain regions have been identified that appear to be specifically tuned for auditory speech and lip gestures. Previous research has suggested that speech stimuli may have an advantage over other types of auditory stimuli in terms of audio-visual integration. Here, we used a modified adaptive psychophysical staircase approach to compare the influence of congruent visual stimuli (brief movie clips) on the detection of noise-masked auditory speech and non-speech stimuli. We found that congruent visual stimuli significantly improved detection of an auditory stimulus relative to incongruent visual stimuli. This effect, however, was equally apparent for speech and non-speech stimuli. The findings suggest that speech stimuli are not specifically advantaged by audio-visual integration for detection at threshold when compared with other naturalistic sounds.	t	\N
21073461	Impaired cognitive control has been implicated as an important developmental pathway to attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Cognitive control is crucial to suppress interference resulting from conflicting information and can be measured by Stroop-like tasks. This study was conducted to gain insight into conflict processing in children with ADHD. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in an auditory Stroop task. Twenty-four children with ADHD were compared with 24 control children (aged 8-12 years). No deficit in interference control was found on the auditory Stroop task in children with ADHD. Children with ADHD responded more slowly, less accurately and more variably compared to controls. No differences between the groups occurred in the early conflict-related ERPs. However, the difference between the congruent and the incongruent condition in the 450-550 ms time window was absent in the ADHD group compared to controls. In addition, the conflict sustained potential was found frontally in the ADHD group but parietally in the control group. These ERP findings suggest that children with ADHD evaluate conflict to a lesser extent and differ in the way their brains select appropriate responses during conflict compared with controls.	t	\N
21144500	Phonetic variation has been considered a barrier that listeners must overcome in speech perception, but has been proved beneficial in category learning. In this paper, I show that listeners use within-speaker variation to accommodate gross categorical variation. Within the perceptual learning paradigm, listeners are exposed to p-initial words in English produced by a native speaker of French. Critically, listeners are trained on these words with either invariant or highly-variable VOTs. While a gross boundary shift is made for participants exposed to the variable VOTs, no such shift is observed after exposure to the invariant stimuli. These data suggest that increasing variation improves the mapping of perceptually mismatched stimuli.	t	\N
21150681	To evaluate the results of late cochlear implantation in prelingually deaf patients with significant residual hearing loss and to evaluate patient factors relevant to postoperative auditory outcomes in this patient group. Analysis of results of cochlear implantation using postoperative speech perception test scores per each condition. Tertiary referral center. Thirty-two subjects with severe to profound hearing loss that developed before the age of 4. Subjects were implanted at a mean age of 24.8 years (range, 16-44) with Nucleus CI24 (n = 18, 56%), Clarion HiRes 90K (n = 11, 34%), and Medel PULSA (n = 3, 10%) device. Details of etiology, duration of deafness, hearing aid history, hearing thresholds before operation, communication mode, and educational environment were investigated. Speech perception tests were performed preoperatively and 12 months after the operation. Postoperative speech perception test scores between different options within patient group. : The results showed significant improvement in open set speech perception (sentence) scores after the implantation (mean scores from 7.0 to 46.7, p < 0.05). Preoperative hearing of better ear and preoperative speech perception scores correlated with postoperative performances (r = -0.70 and r = 0.46, respectively, p < 0.05). Education and communication mode were also closely related to postoperative performances. In the group with poorer performances, preoperative hearing thresholds were significantly worse than those with better performances, and a larger portion of those patients attended special schools and used sign language. We found that residual auditory capacity in the better ear is an important factor in predicting outcomes after cochlear implantation in patients with prelingual hearing loss.	t	\N
21161816	The present study focuses on language laterality as measured with dichotic listening (DL) to consonant-vowel syllables (CV syllables) in refugees with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is associated with impaired callosal transfer and with increased right hemisphere activation and impaired executive skills that could influence the processing of dichotic stimuli. A total of 22 participants with PTSD were compared to 23 participants without a diagnosis of PTSD. All participants had similar experiences of acts of war and political violence. They were tested with dichotic listening to CV syllables with free recall and directed attention following the forced attention paradigm. The PTSD group showed increased right ear advantage due to impaired left ear reporting and also smaller attention modulation compared to the control group, and the performance shared variance with self-report measures of arousal and intrusive memories. The results are discussed towards a model of impaired functionality of the frontal lobe and right hemisphere versus impaired callosal transfer, both yielding predictions for the processing of the left ear input and the ability to attention modulation of the performance.	t	\N
21167923	Psychoacoustic studies have shown that complex tones containing resolved harmonics evoke stronger pitches than complex tones with only unresolved harmonics. Also, unresolved harmonics presented in alternating sine and cosine (ALT) phase produce a doubling of pitch. We examine here whether the temporal pattern of phase-locked neural activity reflected in the scalp recorded human frequency following response (FFR) preserves information relevant to pitch strength, and to the doubling of pitch for ALT stimuli. Results revealed stronger neural periodicity strength for resolved stimuli, although the effect of resolvability was weak compared to the effect observed behaviorally; autocorrelation functions and FFR spectra suggest a different pattern of phase-locked neural activity for ALT stimuli with resolved and unresolved harmonics consistent with the doubling of pitch observed in our behavioral estimates; and the temporal pattern of neural activity underlying pitch encoding appears to be similar at the auditory nerve (auditory nerve model response) and the rostral brainstem level (FFR). These findings suggest that the phase-locked neural activity reflected in the scalp recorded FFR preserves neural information relevant to pitch that could serve as an electrophysiological correlate of the behavioral pitch measure. The scalp recorded FFR may provide for a non-invasive analytic tool to evaluate neural encoding of complex sounds in humans.	t	\N
21178803	To determine the response to treatment of pediatric patients diagnosed with autoimmune inner ear disease. Seven children who presented with sensorineural hearing loss and were diagnosed with autoimmune inner ear disease. Diagnosis through blood testing. Treatment with steroids and/or cytotoxic medication. Improvement in pure-tone average and speech discrimination scores on audiometric testing. Six of the 7 children (85.7%) improved with treatment, and the remaining patient had no measurable progression of disease. Children with autoimmune inner ear disease seem to benefit from treatment with steroids and/or cytotoxic medication. Although such medications must be used with caution in the pediatric population, they should not be withheld simply because of young age.	t	\N
21196054	Humans and other animals can attend to one of multiple sounds and follow it selectively over time. The neural underpinnings of this perceptual feat remain mysterious. Some studies have concluded that sounds are heard as separate streams when they activate well-separated populations of central auditory neurons, and that this process is largely pre-attentive. Here, we argue instead that stream formation depends primarily on temporal coherence between responses that encode various features of a sound source. Furthermore, we postulate that only when attention is directed towards a particular feature (e.g. pitch) do all other temporally coherent features of that source (e.g. timbre and location) become bound together as a stream that is segregated from the incoherent features of other sources.	t	\N
21198980	Important to Western tonal music is the relationship between pitches both within and between musical chords; melody and harmony are generated by combining pitches selected from the fixed hierarchical scales of music. It is of critical importance that musicians have the ability to detect and discriminate minute deviations in pitch in order to remain in tune with other members of their ensemble. Event-related potentials indicate that cortical mechanisms responsible for detecting mistuning and violations in pitch are more sensitive and accurate in musicians as compared with non-musicians. The aim of the present study was to address whether this superiority is also present at a subcortical stage of pitch processing. Brainstem frequency-following responses were recorded from musicians and non-musicians in response to tuned (i.e. major and minor) and detuned (± 4% difference in frequency) chordal arpeggios differing only in the pitch of their third. Results showed that musicians had faster neural synchronization and stronger brainstem encoding for defining characteristics of musical sequences regardless of whether they were in or out of tune. In contrast, non-musicians had relatively strong representation for major/minor chords but showed diminished responses for detuned chords. The close correspondence between the magnitude of brainstem responses and performance on two behavioral pitch discrimination tasks supports the idea that musicians' enhanced detection of chordal mistuning may be rooted at pre-attentive, sensory stages of processing. Findings suggest that perceptually salient aspects of musical pitch are not only represented at subcortical levels but that these representations are also enhanced by musical experience.	t	\N
21211833	Metaphonological tasks, such as rhyme judgment, have been the primary tool for the investigation of the effects of orthographic knowledge on spoken language. However, it has been recently argued that the orthography effect in rhyme judgment does not reflect the automatic activation of orthographic codes but rather stems from sophisticated response strategies. Such a claim stands in sharp contrast with recent findings using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in lexical and semantic tasks, which were taken to suggest that orthographic information occurs early enough to affect the core process of lexical access. Here, we show that the electrophysiological signature of the orthography effect in rhyme judgment is indeed different from the one obtained in online lexical or semantic tasks. That is, we did not find the orthography effect in the 300-350 ms time window which has previously been shown to process lexical information in the lexico-semantic tasks, but the effect appeared within the 175-250 ms and the 375-750 ms time-windows which we interpreted to reflect segmentation and decisional process, respectively. We conclude that the interactions between phonology and orthography are task-specific. Metaphonological tasks appear of limited use for studying the core processes and interactions that underlie lexical access.	t	\N
21216396	We show that comprehenders' expectations about upcoming discourse coherence relations influence the resolution of local structural ambiguity. We employ cases in which two clauses share both a syntactic relationship and a discourse relationship, and hence in which syntactic and discourse processing might be expected to interact. An off-line sentence-completion study and an on-line self-paced reading study examined readers' expectations for high/low relative-clause attachments following implicit-causality and non-implicit causality verbs (John detests/babysits the children of the musician who…). In the off-line study, the widely reported low-attachment preference for English is observed in the non-implicit causality condition, but this preference gives way to more high attachments in the implicit-causality condition in cases in which (i) the verb's causally implicated referent occupies the high-attachment position and (ii) the relative clause provides an explanation for the event described by the matrix clause (e.g., …who are arrogant and rude). In the on-line study, a similar preference for high attachment emerges in the implicit-causality context-crucially, before the occurrence of any linguistic evidence that the RC does in fact provide an explanation-whereas the low-attachment preference is consistent elsewhere. These findings constitute the first demonstration that expectations about ensuing discourse coherence relationships can elicit full reversals in syntactic attachment preferences, and that these discourse-level expectations can affect on-line disambiguation as rapidly as lexical and morphosyntactic cues.	t	\N
21236276	Categorical perception (CP) is a mechanism whereby non-identical stimuli that have the same underlying meaning become invariantly represented in the brain. Through behavioral identification and discrimination tasks, CP has been demonstrated to occur broadly across the auditory modality, including in perception of speech (e.g. phonemes) and music (e.g. chords) stimuli. Several functional imaging studies have linked CP of speech with activity in multiple regions of the left superior temporal sulcus (STS). As language processing is generally left-hemisphere dominant and, conversely, fine-grained spectral processing shows a right hemispheric bias, we hypothesized that CP of musical stimuli would be associated with right STS activity. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to test healthy, musically-trained volunteers as they (a) underwent a musical chord adaptation/habituation paradigm and (b) performed an active discrimination task on within- and between-category chord pairs, as well as an acoustically-matched, more continuously-perceived orthogonal sound set. As predicted, greater right STS activity was linked to categorical processing in both experimental paradigms. The results suggest that the left and right STS are functionally specialized and that the right STS may take on a key role in CP of spectrally complex sounds.	t	\N
21236499	To evaluate the audiological outcome of children with congenital cytomegalovirus infection. In a prospective study, the hearing of ninety seven congenitally cytomegalovirus-infected children, born between January 2003 and July 2009, was systematically evaluated until the age of six, applying the Flemish CMV protocol. Depending on the age of the child, the protocol provides hearing evaluation by objective-, play- or conventional audiometry. Symptomatic children with hearing loss at birth were treated with ganciclovir, if parents consented. Seventy children had a pass on initial screening, 27 had unilateral or bilateral hearing loss. Within the normal hearing group, one asymptomatic and two symptomatic children developed late-onset hearing loss. Within the group with hearing loss, 8 children received ganciclovir, while 8 symptomatic and 11 asymptomatic children did not receive ganciclovir. As for the treated group, 37.5% of the children had stable hearing loss, one child had progressive and one child had fluctuating hearing loss. Improvement of hearing threshold occurred in 37.5% of the children. Among the untreated symptomatic children, hearing loss remained stable in 50%, while progression occurred in 37.5%. In the group of asymptomatic children with hearing loss, hearing loss was most commonly stable (72.7%). Within the group of normal hearing ears at birth (n=156), there is a significant better progression in pure tone average for ears of asymptomatic subjects in comparison to ears of symptomatic subjects (p≤0.0001). As for the group of ears with hearing loss at birth (n=38), analysis shows no evidence for a difference in pure tone average progression between the different groups (p=0.38). Cytomegalovirus infection may cause hearing loss, in both symptomatic and asymptomatic children. Our data show a significant difference, between both groups, in the progression of pure tone average of normal hearing ears at birth, in favor of the asymptomatic children. This is not the case for ears with hearing loss at birth. However, this may be due to the small number of ears in this group. Our data show the tendency that treatment with ganciclovir increases the likelihood of improvement and reduces the likelihood of deterioration of the hearing.	t	\N
21241284	Several studies have found that women tend to demonstrate stronger preferences for masculine men as short-term partners than as long-term partners, though there is considerable variation among women in the magnitude of this effect. One possible source of this variation is individual differences in the extent to which women perceive masculine men to possess antisocial traits that are less costly in short-term relationships than in long-term relationships. Consistent with this proposal, here we show that the extent to which women report stronger preferences for men with low (i.e., masculine) voice pitch as short-term partners than as long-term partners is associated with the extent to which they attribute physical dominance and low trustworthiness to these masculine voices. Thus, our findings suggest that variation in the extent to which women attribute negative personality characteristics to masculine men predicts individual differences in the magnitude of the effect of relationship context on women's masculinity preferences, highlighting the importance of perceived personality attributions for individual differences in women's judgments of men's vocal attractiveness and, potentially, their mate preferences.	t	\N
21251921	Recent neuroimaging studies proposed the importance of the anterior auditory pathway for speech comprehension. Its clinical significance is implicated by semantic dementia or pure word deafness. Neurodegenerative or cerebrovascular nature, however, precluded precise localization of the cortex responsible for speech perception. Electrical cortical stimulation could delineate such localization by producing transient, functional impairment. We investigated engagement of the left anterior temporal cortex in speech perception by means of direct electrical cortical stimulation. Subjects were two partial epilepsy patients, who underwent direct cortical stimulation as a part of invasive presurgical evaluations. Stimulus sites were coregistered to presurgical 3D-MRI, and then to MNI standard space for anatomical localization. Separate from the posterior temporal language area, electrical cortical stimulation revealed a well-restricted language area in the anterior part of the superior temporal sulcus and gyrus (aSTS/STG) in both patients. Auditory sentence comprehension was impaired upon electrical stimulation of aSTS/STG. In one patient, additional investigation revealed that the functional impairment was restricted to auditory sentence comprehension with preserved visual sentence comprehension and perception of music and environmental sounds. Both patients reported that they could hear the voice but not understand the sentence well (e.g., heard as a series of meaningless utterance). The standard coordinates of this restricted area at left aSTS/STG well corresponded with the coordinates of speech perception reported in neuroimaging activation studies in healthy subjects. The present combined anatomo-functional case study, for the first time, demonstrated that aSTS/STG in the language dominant hemisphere actively engages in speech perception.	t	\N
21255123	To advance our understanding of the biological basis of speech-in-noise perception, we investigated the effects of background noise on both subcortical- and cortical-evoked responses, and the relationships between them, in normal hearing young adults. The addition of background noise modulated subcortical and cortical response morphology. In noise, subcortical responses were later, smaller in amplitude and demonstrated decreased neural precision in encoding the speech sound. Cortical responses were also delayed by noise, yet the amplitudes of the major peaks (N1, P2) were affected differently, with N1 increasing and P2 decreasing. Relationships between neural measures and speech-in-noise ability were identified, with earlier subcortical responses, higher subcortical response fidelity and greater cortical N1 response magnitude all relating to better speech-in-noise perception. Furthermore, it was only with the addition of background noise that relationships between subcortical and cortical encoding of speech and the behavioral measures of speech in noise emerged. Results illustrate that human brainstem responses and N1 cortical response amplitude reflect coordinated processes with regards to the perception of speech in noise, thereby acting as a functional index of speech-in-noise perception.	t	\N
21261450	Many models of spoken word recognition posit that the acoustic stream is parsed into phoneme level units, which in turn activate larger representations [McClelland, J. L., & Elman, J. L. The TRACE model of speech perception. Cognitive Psychology, 18, 1-86, 1986], whereas others suggest that larger units of analysis are activated without the need for segmental mediation [Greenberg, S. A multitier theoretical framework for understanding spoken language. In S. Greenberg & W. A. Ainsworth (Eds.), Listening to speech: An auditory perspective (pp. 411-433). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2005; Klatt, D. H. Speech perception: A model of acoustic-phonetic analysis and lexical access. Journal of Phonetics, 7, 279-312, 1979; Massaro, D. W. Preperceptual images, processing time, and perceptual units in auditory perception. Psychological Review, 79, 124-145, 1972]. Identifying segmental effects in the brain's response to speech may speak to this question. For example, if such effects were localized to relatively early processing stages in auditory cortex, this would support a model of speech recognition in which segmental units are explicitly parsed out. In contrast, segmental processes that occur outside auditory cortex may indicate that alternative models should be considered. The current fMRI experiment manipulated the phonotactic frequency (PF) of words that were auditorily presented in short lists while participants performed a pseudoword detection task. PF is thought to modulate networks in which phoneme level units are represented. The present experiment identified activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus that was positively correlated with PF. No effects of PF were found in temporal lobe regions. We propose that the observed phonotactic effects during speech listening reflect the strength of the association between acoustic speech patterns and articulatory speech codes involving phoneme level units. On the basis of existing lesion evidence, we interpret the function of this auditory-motor association as playing a role primarily in production. These findings are consistent with the view that phoneme level units are not necessarily accessed during speech recognition.	t	\N
21261634	Tones that are self-generated elicit a smaller N1 than externally triggered tones. Typically, however, self-generated tones are also more predictable in time than externally triggered ones. The present study investigated whether the attenuated N1 can be explained by predictability based on the temporal relationship between action and effect. Participants listened to tones that were self-generated by a key-press or preceded by a visual cue. The tones followed the key-presses or cues after a fixed (predictable context) or variable delay (unpredictable context). Tones triggered by a key-press elicited a smaller N1 than tones following a visual cue. This finding suggests that the reduced N1 to self-generated tones is not merely due to the fact that the tone's timing can be predicted based on its temporal relationship to the key-press. Whether a tone was presented in a predictable or an unpredictable context did not affect the N1.	t	\N
21264707	When two targets are presented in rapid succession at the same spatial location, processing of the first is highly efficient, while processing of the second is often profoundly impaired at brief inter-target intervals (attentional blink; AB). While the AB has been shown to impact many processes, it is still unclear whether this includes the ability to shift spatial attention. The present study examined this question using a more sensitive dependent measure than past studies; namely, response times. It also evaluated whether masking of the cue stimulus modulated the effect of the AB on spatial shifts. The results showed significant cueing effects on T2 response times that were strongly modulated by the AB. This supports suggested links between mechanisms underlying object processing and spatial shifts of attention.	t	\N
21264734	The fast and accurate enumeration of a small set of objects, called subitizing, is thought to involve a different mechanism from other numerosity judgments, such as those based on estimation. In this report, we examine the subitizing limit using a novel enumeration task that obtained the perceived locations of enumerated objects. Observers were shown brief masked displays (50, 200, and 350 ms) of 2-9 small black discs randomly placed on a gray screen and then asked to place a marker where each disc had been located. The number of these markers provided an estimate of the number of items processed. This "pointing" methodology enabled observers to accurately "enumerate" displays containing up to six items in contrast with the four-item limit typically found when using standard reporting methods (and replicated here in Experiment 2). These results suggest a different account of the limits found in most subitizing and enumeration studies.	t	\N
21272630	The auditory system can encode interaural delays in highpass-filtered complex sounds by phase locking to their slowly modulating envelopes. Spectrotemporal analysis of interaurally time-delayed highpass waveforms reveals the presence of a concomitant interaural level cue. The current study systematically investigated the contribution of time and concomitant level cues carried by positive and negative envelope slopes of a modified sinusoidally amplitude-modulated (SAM) high-frequency carrier. The waveforms were generated from concatenation of individual modulation cycles whose envelope peaks were extended by the desired interaural delay, allowing independent control of delays in the positive and negative modulation slopes. In experiment 1, thresholds were measured using a 2-interval forced-choice adaptive task for interaural delays in either the positive or negative modulation slopes. In a control condition, thresholds were measured for a standard SAM tone. In experiment 2, decision weights were estimated using a multiple-observation correlational method in a single-interval forced-choice task for interaural delays carried simultaneously by the positive, and independently, negative slopes of the modulation envelope. In experiment 3, decision weights were measured for groups of 3 modulation cycles at the start, middle, and end of the waveform to determine the influence of onset dominance or recency effects. Results were consistent across experiments: thresholds were equal for the positive and negative modulation slopes. Decision weights were positive and equal for the time cue in the positive and negative envelope slopes. Weights were also larger for modulations cycles near the waveform onset. Weights estimated for the concomitant interaural level cue were positive for the positive envelope slope and negative for the negative slope, consistent with exclusive use of time cues.	t	\N
21272930	Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we investigated the N400 (an ERP component that occurs in response to meaningful stimuli) in children aged 8-10 years old and examined relationships between the N400 and individual differences in listening comprehension, word recognition and non-word decoding. Moreover, we tested the claim that the N400 effect provides a valuable indicator of behavioural vocabulary knowledge. Eighteen children were presented with picture-word pairs that were either 'congruent' (the picture depicted the spoken word) or 'incongruent' (they were unrelated). Three peaks were observed in the ERP waveform triggered to the onset of the picture-word stimuli: an N100 in fronto-central channels, an N200 in central-parietal channels and an N400 in frontal, central and parietal channels. In contrast to the N100 peak, the N200 and N400 peaks were sensitive to semantic incongruency with greater peak amplitudes for incongruent than congruent conditions. The incongruency effects for each peak correlated positively with listening comprehension but when the peak amplitudes were averaged across congruent/incongruent conditions they correlated positively with non-word decoding. These findings provide neurophysiological support for the position that sensitivity to semantic context (reflected in the N400 effect) is crucial for comprehension whereas phonological decoding skill relates to more general processing differences reflected in the ERP waveform. There were no correlations between ERP and behavioural measures of expressive or receptive vocabulary knowledge for the same items, suggesting that the N400 effect may not be a reliable estimate of vocabulary knowledge in children aged 8-10 years.	t	\N
21275499	Hearing-aid users' problems with their own voice caused by occlusion are well known. Conversely, it remains essentially undocumented whether hearing-aid users expected not to have occlusion-related problems experience own-voice issues. To investigate this topic, a dedicated Own Voice Qualities (OVQ) questionnaire was developed and used in two experiments with stratified samples. In the main experiment, the OVQ was administered to 169 hearing-aid users (most of whom were expected not to have occlusion-related problems) and to a control group of 56 normally-hearing people. In the follow-up experiment, the OVQ was used in a cross-over study where 43 hearing-aid users rated own voice for an open fitting and a small-vent earmould fitting. The results from the main experiment show that hearing-aid users (without occlusion) have more problems than the normal-hearing controls on several dimensions of own voice. The magnitude of these differences was found to be generally larger than the differences observed between the open fitting and the small-vent fitting in the follow-up experiment. This suggests that own voice is a potentially important concern, even for hearing-aid users who are not expected to have occlusion-related problems.	t	\N
21295773	Does extensive practice reduce or eliminate central interference in dual-task processing? We explored the reorganization of task architecture with practice by combining interference analysis (delays in dual-task experiment) and random-walk models of decision making (measuring the decision and non-decision contributions to RT). The main delay observed in the Psychologically Refractory Period at short stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) values was largely unaffected by training. However, the range of SOAs over which this interference regime held diminished with learning. This was consistent with an overall shift observed in single-task performance from a highly variable decision time to a reliable (non-decision time) contribution to response time. Executive components involved in coordinating dual-task performance decreased (and became more stable) after extensive practice. The results suggest that extensive practice reduces the duration of central decision stages, but that the qualitative property of central seriality remains a structural invariant.	t	\N
21299376	To implement a fast method for measuring psychophysical tuning curves (PTCs) for use in clinical applications, such as assessment of frequency selectivity and detection of dead regions in the cochlea. The method is based on that described by Sek et al (2005) and has been implemented in software that can be run on a PC with a good-quality sound card. In addition to the main narrowband noise masker, a lowpass noise masker can be generated to prevent detection of a distortion band corresponding to the simple difference tone. The software includes a routine for measuring the absolute threshold at the signal frequency and includes methods for estimating the frequency at the tip of the PTC. A PTC can typically be determined in about three minutes. A small amount of practice (two to three runs) may be required to achieve stable results. The software implementation allows PTCs to be measured quickly without a requirement for specialised equipment.	t	\N
21305548	To investigate the level of hearing loss and the configuration of the mean audiometric curve over the course of Menière's disease, correcting the data according to patient age. A retrospective study of 3,963 hearing tests. Descriptive, longitudinal study of pure-tone audiometries of 237 patients at a tertiary hospital who had been diagnosed with definitive Menière's disease according to the American Academy of Otorhinolaryngology criteria. All audiometric results were age-corrected, and patients were followed for 1 to 31 years. In patients who had undergone surgery, only the data collected before the operation were assessed. In patients with unilateral disease, the mean hearing loss was characteristically low frequency, even in very advanced stages of the disease. Hearing loss was accentuated at 5 and 15 years from onset. In bilateral cases, hearing loss was slightly more severe and the average loss produced a flatter audiometric curve than in unilateral cases. In Menière's disease, audiometry results corrected for patient age show an inherent upward-sloping configuration of the mean audiometric curve at all time points during the disease. The hearing pattern differs between unilateral and bilateral disease. The audiometric curve configuration may be an indicator of future bilateral disease.	t	\N
21305666	Both sighted and blind individuals can readily interpret meaning behind everyday real-world sounds. In sighted listeners, we previously reported that regions along the bilateral posterior superior temporal sulci (pSTS) and middle temporal gyri (pMTG) are preferentially activated when presented with recognizable action sounds. These regions have generally been hypothesized to represent primary loci for complex motion processing, including visual biological motion processing and audio-visual integration. However, it remained unclear whether, or to what degree, life-long visual experience might impact functions related to hearing perception or memory of sound-source actions. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we compared brain regions activated in congenitally blind versus sighted listeners in response to hearing a wide range of recognizable human-produced action sounds (excluding vocalizations) versus unrecognized, backward-played versions of those sounds. Here, we show that recognized human action sounds commonly evoked activity in both groups along most of the left pSTS/pMTG complex, though with relatively greater activity in the right pSTS/pMTG by the blind group. These results indicate that portions of the postero-lateral temporal cortices contain domain-specific hubs for biological and/or complex motion processing independent of sensory-modality experience. Contrasting the two groups, the sighted listeners preferentially activated bilateral parietal plus medial and lateral frontal networks, whereas the blind listeners preferentially activated left anterior insula plus bilateral anterior calcarine and medial occipital regions, including what would otherwise have been visual-related cortex. These global-level network differences suggest that blind and sighted listeners may preferentially use different memory retrieval strategies when hearing and attempting to recognize action sounds.	t	\N
21309643	To measure the mental health status of deaf adolescents with cochlear implants (CI). STUDY SAMPLE AND DESIGN: We used the "Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire" (SDQ) to assess the mental health problems of 32 adolescents with CI (mean age 15.0 years) and 212 normal hearing peers (mean age 15.0 years). Parent and teacher ratings for the CI subjects (ES emotional symptoms, HA inattention-hyperactivity, CP conduct-problems and PBS pro-social behavior) did not differ significantly from the results of normal hearing peers. However, teachers rated significantly more cases as having peer problems (PP) and more cases as having very high (clinical) total difficulty scores (TDS) in the CI group. The SDQ results of the CI users correlated significantly with poor results in auditory performance and special school education. The age at CI implantation was not found to be a correlated with emotional, behavioral and social problems. Our findings indicate that the mental health of deaf adolescents with CI is comparable to that of normal hearing peers.	t	\N
21315158	Music perception generally involves processing the frequency relationships between successive pitches and extraction of the melodic contour. Previous evidence has suggested that the 'ups' and 'downs' of melodic contour are categorically and automatically processed, but knowledge of the brain regions that discriminate different types of contour is limited. Here, we examined melodic contour discrimination using multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) of fMRI data. Twelve non-musicians were presented with various ascending and descending melodic sequences while being scanned. Whole-brain MVPA was used to identify regions in which the local pattern of activity accurately discriminated between contour categories. We identified three distinct cortical loci: the right superior temporal sulcus (rSTS), the left inferior parietal lobule (lIPL), and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). These results complement previous findings of melodic processing within the rSTS, and extend our understanding of the way in which abstract auditory sequences are categorized by the human brain.	t	\N
21316354	This study examined the electrophysiological correlates of auditory and visual working memory in children with Specific Language Impairments (SLI). Children with SLI and age-matched controls (11;9-14;10) completed visual and auditory working memory tasks while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. In the auditory condition, children with SLI performed similarly to controls when the memory load was kept low (1-back memory load). As expected, when demands for auditory working memory were higher, children with SLI showed decreases in accuracy and attenuated P3b responses. However, children with SLI also evinced difficulties in the visual working memory tasks. In both the low (1-back) and high (2-back) memory load conditions, P3b amplitude was significantly lower for the SLI as compared to CA groups. These data suggest a domain-general working memory deficit in SLI that is manifested across auditory and visual modalities.	t	\N
21325685	Our auditory system separates and tracks temporally interleaved sound sources by organizing them into distinct auditory streams. This streaming phenomenon is partly determined by physical stimulus properties but additionally depends on the internal state of the listener. As a consequence, streaming perception is often bistable and reversals between one- and two-stream percepts may occur spontaneously or be induced by a change of the stimulus. Here, we used functional MRI to investigate perceptual reversals in streaming based on interaural time differences (ITD) that produce a lateralized stimulus perception. Listeners were continuously presented with two interleaved streams, which slowly moved apart and together again. This paradigm produced longer intervals between reversals than stationary bistable stimuli but preserved temporal independence between perceptual reversals and physical stimulus transitions. Results showed prominent transient activity synchronized with the perceptual reversals in and around the auditory cortex. Sustained activity in the auditory cortex was observed during intervals where the ΔITD could potentially produce streaming, similar to previous studies. A localizer-based analysis additionally revealed transient activity time locked to perceptual reversals in the inferior colliculus. These data suggest that neural activity associated with streaming reversals is not limited to the thalamo-cortical system but involves early binaural processing in the auditory midbrain, already.	t	\N
21327367	Identification of the second of two targets (T1, T2, inserted in a stream of distractors) is impaired when presented within 500 ms after the first (attentional blink, AB). Barring a T1-T2 task-switch, it is thought that T2 must be backward-masked to obtain an AB (Giesbrecht & Di Lollo, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 24, 1454-1466, 1998). We tested the hypothesis that Giesbrecht & Di Lollo's findings were vitiated by ceiling constraints arising from either response scale (experiment 1) or data limitations (experiment 2). In experiment 1, digit-distractors were replaced with pseudoletters to increase task difficulty, bringing performance below ceiling. An AB occurred without backward masking of T2. In experiment 2, a ceiling-free procedure estimated the number of noise dots needed for 80% T2 identification. An AB was revealed: fewer noise dots were required during the AB period than outside it. Both outcomes confirm that an AB can be obtained without either masking of T2 or task switching.	t	\N
21335029	Brain-computer interface (BCI) is a developing, novel mode of communication for individuals with severe motor impairments or those who have no other options for communication aside from their brain signals. However, the majority of current BCI systems are based on visual stimuli or visual feedback, which may not be applicable for severe locked-in patients that have lost their eyesight or the ability to control their eye movements. In the present study, we investigated the feasibility of using auditory steady-state responses (ASSRs), elicited by selective attention to a specific sound source, as an electroencephalography (EEG)-based BCI paradigm. In our experiment, two pure tone burst trains with different beat frequencies (37 and 43 Hz) were generated simultaneously from two speakers located at different positions (left and right). Six participants were instructed to close their eyes and concentrate their attention on either auditory stimulus according to the instructions provided randomly through the speakers during the inter-stimulus interval. EEG signals were recorded at multiple electrodes mounted over the temporal, occipital, and parietal cortices. We then extracted feature vectors by combining spectral power densities evaluated at the two beat frequencies. Our experimental results showed high classification accuracies (64.67%, 30 commands/min, information transfer rate (ITR) = 1.89 bits/min; 74.00%, 12 commands/min, ITR = 2.08 bits/min; 82.00%, 6 commands/min, ITR = 1.92 bits/min; 84.33%, 3 commands/min, ITR = 1.12 bits/min; without any artifact rejection, inter-trial interval = 6s), enough to be used for a binary decision. Based on the suggested paradigm, we implemented a first online ASSR-based BCI system that demonstrated the possibility of materializing a totally vision-free BCI system.	t	\N
21342695	The purpose of this exploratory study was to assess perceptions of quality of life for individuals with hearing impairment who have not consulted for services and their significant others who are in same-sex relationships vs. those who are in different-sex relationships. Data were collected on a total of 20 older couples: 10 in same-sex relationships and 10 in different-sex relationships. In each of the couples, one member self-identified as having hearing impairment. The couples completed an audiologic evaluation, a disease-specific quality of life questionnaire, and a short, structured interview (which served as a general measure of quality of life). No differences between the groups were found on demographic or audiologic variables. Differences between the groups and within the couples were found on the disease-specific and overall quality of life measures. Participants with hearing impairment in different-sex relationships reported significantly more total consequences of hearing impairment than those in the same-sex relationships. Differences were found in the rate of reporting for various contributors to overall quality of life and consequences of hearing impairment on quality of life. There was more congruity between same-sex couples than different-sex couples. There appear to be important differences in perceptions of both disease-specific and overall quality of life based on sexual orientation for older couples who have not consulted for hearing services. These differences can help inform clinical practice with this under-researched population. Readers will be able to: (1) Describe quality of life variables for individuals with hearing problems in same- and different-sex relationships, (2) understand the differences in quality of life variables between same- and different-sex couples, (3) consider the clinical implications of these quality of life variables.	t	\N
21358012	The aim of the current study is to investigate hearing function in patients with allergic rhinitis. Fifty-eight patients with positive skin prick test (Group 1) (116 ears) and 31 subjects with negative skin prick test (62 ears) as group 2 were included. Pure tone audiometry at 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 4000 and 8000 Hz and immittance measures, including tympanometry and acoustic reflex tests, were performed in both groups. There was statistically significant difference between pure-tone threshold of the group 1 and group 2 at 8000 Hz (p< 0.05). Based on our study, the patients with allergic rhinitis had better hearing than the control group at 8000 Hz.	t	\N
21361412	Perturbation analysis was used to determine the relative contribution of target enhancement and noise cancellation in the identification of rudimentary sound source in noise. In a two-interval, forced-choice procedure, listeners identified the impact sound produced by the larger of two stretched membranes as target. The noise on each presentation was the impact sound of a variable-sized plate. For four of five listeners, the relative weights on the noise were positive indicating enhancement, and for the remaining listeners, they were negative indicating cancellation. The results underscore the difficulty with evaluating models of masking solely in terms of measures of performance accuracy.	t	\N
21361445	Low-frequency masking by intense high-frequency noise bands, referred to as remote masking (RM), was the first evidence to challenge energy-detection models of signal detection. Its underlying mechanisms remain unknown. RM was measured in five normal-hearing young-adults at 250, 350, 500, and 700 Hz using equal-power, spectrally matched random-phase noise (RPN) and low-noise noise (LNN) narrowband maskers. RM was also measured using equal-power, two-tone complex (TC2) and eight-tone complex (TC8). Maskers were centered at 3000 Hz with one or two equivalent rectangular bandwidths (ERBs). Masker levels varied from 80 to 95 dB sound pressure level in 5 dB steps. LNN produced negligible masking for all conditions. An increase in bandwidth in RPN yielded greater masking over a wider frequency region. Masking for TC2 was limited to 350 and 700 Hz for one ERB but shifted to only 700 Hz for two ERBs. A spread of masking to 500 and 700 Hz was observed for TC8 when the bandwidth was increased from one to two ERBs. Results suggest that high-frequency noise bands at high levels could generate significant low-frequency masking. It is possible that listeners experience significant RM due to the amplification of various competing noises that might have significant implications for speech perception in noise.	t	\N
21361446	The additivity of nonsimultaneous masking was studied using Gaussian-shaped tone pulses (referred to as Gaussians) as masker and target stimuli. Combinations of up to four temporally separated Gaussian maskers with an equivalent rectangular bandwidth of 600 Hz and an equivalent rectangular duration of 1.7 ms were tested. Each masker was level-adjusted to produce approximately 8 dB of masking. Excess masking (exceeding linear additivity) was generally stronger than reported in the literature for longer maskers and comparable target levels. A model incorporating a compressive input/output function, followed by a linear summation stage, underestimated excess masking when using an input/output function derived from literature data for longer maskers and comparable target levels. The data could be predicted with a more compressive input/output function. Stronger compression may be explained by assuming that the Gaussian stimuli were too short to evoke the medial olivocochlear reflex (MOCR), whereas for longer maskers tested previously the MOCR caused reduced compression. Overall, the interpretation of the data suggests strong basilar membrane compression for very short stimuli.	t	\N
21368435	A human factors experiment employed a hemi-anechoic sound field in which listeners were required to localize a vehicular backup alarm warning signal (both a standard and a frequency-augmented alarm) in 360-degrees azimuth in pink noise of 60 dBA and 90 dBA. Measures of localization performance included: (1) percentage correct localization, (2) percentage of right--left localization errors, (3) percentage of front-rear localization errors, and (4) localization absolute deviation in degrees from the alarm's actual location. In summary, the data demonstrated that, with some exceptions, normal hearing listeners' ability to localize the backup alarm in 360-degrees azimuth did not improve when wearing augmented hearing protectors (including dichotic sound transmission earmuffs, flat attenuation earplugs, and level-dependent earplugs) as compared to when wearing conventional passive earmuffs or earplugs of the foam or flanged types. Exceptions were that in the 90 dBA pink noise, the flat attenuation earplug yielded significantly better accuracy than the polyurethane foam earplug and both the dichotic and the custom-made diotic electronic sound transmission earmuffs. However, the flat attenuation earplug showed no benefit over the standard pre-molded earplug, the arc earplug, and the passive earmuff. Confusions of front-rear alarm directions were most significant in the 90 dBA noise condition, wherein two types of triple-flanged earplugs exhibited significantly fewer front-rear confusions than either of the electronic muffs. On all measures, the diotic sound transmission earmuff resulted in the poorest localization of any of the protectors due to the fact that its single-microphone design did not enable interaural cues to be heard. Localization was consistently more degraded in the 90 dBA pink noise as compared with the relatively quiet condition of the 60 dBA pink noise. A frequency-augmented backup alarm, which incorporated 400 Hz and 4000 Hz components to exploit the benefits of interaural phase and intensity cues respectively, slightly but significantly improved localization compared with the standard, more narrow-bandwidth backup alarm, and these results have implications for the updating of backup alarm standards.	t	\N
21368442	Numerous studies have shown that the reliability of using laboratory measurements to predict individual or even group hearing protector attenuation for occupationally exposed workers is quite poor. This makes it difficult to properly assign hearing protectors when one wishes to closely match attenuation to actual exposure. An alternative is the use of field-measurement methods, a number of which have been proposed and are beginning to be implemented. We examine one of those methods, namely the field microphone-in-real-ear (F-MIRE) approach in which a dual-element microphone probe is used to measure noise reduction by quickly sampling the difference in noise levels outside and under an earplug, with appropriate adjustments to predict real-ear attenuation at threshold (REAT). We report on experiments that validate the ability of one commercially available F-MIRE device to predict the REAT of an earplug fitted identically for two tests. Results are reported on a representative roll-down foam earplug, stemmed-style pod plug, and pre-molded earplug, demonstrating that the 95% confidence level of the Personal Attenuation Rating (PAR) as a function of the number of fits varies from ± 4.4 dB to ± 6.3 dB, depending on the plug type, which can be reduced to ± 3.1 dB to ± 4.5 dB with a single repeat measurement. The added measurement improves precision substantially. However, the largest portion of the error is due to the user's fitting variability and not the uncertainty of the measurement system. Further we evaluated the inherent uncertainty of F-MIRE vs. the putative "gold standard" REAT procedures finding, that F-MIRE measurement uncertainty is less than one-half that of REAT at most test frequencies. An American National Standards Institute (ANSI) working group (S12/WG11) is currently involved in developing methods similar to those in this paper so that procedures for evaluating and reporting uncertainty on all types of field attenuation measurement systems can be standardized. We conclude that the hearing conservationist now has available a portable, convenient, quick, and easy-to-use system that can improve training and motivation of employees, assign hearing protection devices based on noise exposures, and address other management and compliance issues.	t	\N
21380585	With a new metric called phonological Levenshtein distance (PLD20), the present study explores the effects of phonological similarity and word frequency on spoken word recognition, using polysyllabic words that have neither phonological nor orthographic neighbors, as defined by neighborhood density (the N-metric). Inhibitory effects of PLD20 were observed for these lexical hermits: Close-PLD20 words were recognized more slowly than distant PLD20 words, indicating lexical competition. Importantly, these inhibitory effects were found only for low- (not high-) frequency words, in line with previous findings that phonetically related primes inhibit recognition of low-frequency words. These results indicate that the properties of PLD20--a continuous measure of word-form similarity--make it a promising new metric for quantifying phonological distinctiveness in spoken word recognition research.	t	\N
21382386	Although developmental dyslexia is often referred to as a cross-modal disturbance, tests of different modalities using the same stimuli are lacking. We compared the performance of 23 children with dyslexia and 42 chronologically matched control readers on reading versus repetition tasks and visual versus auditory lexical decision using the same stimuli. With respect to control readers, children with dyslexia were impaired only on stimuli in the visual modality; they had no deficit on the repetition and auditory lexical decision tasks. By applying the rate-amount model (Faust et al., 1999), we showed that performance of children with dyslexia on visual (but not auditory) tasks was associated with that of control readers by a linear relationship (with a 1.78 slope), suggesting that a global factor accounts for visual (but not auditory) task performance. We conclude that the processing of linguistic stimuli in the visual and auditory modalities is carried out by independent processes and that dyslexic children have a selective deficit in the visual modality.	t	\N
21388613	Perceptual implicit memory is typically most robust when the perceptual processing at encoding matches the perceptual processing required during retrieval. A consistent exception is the robust priming that semantic generation produces on the perceptual identification test (Masson & MacLeod, 2002), a finding which has been attributed to either (1) conceptual influences in this nominally perceptual task, or (2) covert orthographic processing during generative encoding. The present experiments assess these possibilities using both auditory and visual perceptual identification, tests in which participants identify auditory words in noise or rapidly-presented visual words. During the encoding phase of the experiments, participants generated some words and perceived others in an intermixed study list. The perceptual control condition was visual (reading) or auditory (hearing), and varied across participants. The reading and hearing conditions exhibited the expected modality-specificity, producing robust intra-modal priming and non-significant cross-modal priming. Priming in the generate condition depended on the perceptual control condition. With a read control condition, semantic generation produced robust visual priming but no auditory priming. With a hear control condition, the results were reversed: semantic generation produced robust auditory priming but not visual priming. This set of results is not consistent with a straightforward application of either the conceptual-influence or covert-orthography account, and implies that the nature of encoding in the generate condition is influenced by the broader list context.	t	\N
21389700	Bone conduction (BC) is the way sound energy is transmitted by the skull bones to the cochlea causing a sound perception. Even if the BC sound transmission involves several pathways including sound pressure induced in the ear canal, inertial forces acting on the middle ear ossicles and cochlear fluids, alteration of the cochlear space, and pressure transmission through the 3rd window of the cochlea, the BC sound ultimately produces a wave motion on the basilar membrane similar to that of air-conducted sound. The efficiency of the BC stimulation is largely dependent on the skull bone where the skull acts as a rigid body at low frequencies and incorporates different types of wave transmission at higher frequencies. The interaural stimulation difference is determined by the difference between contralateral and ipsilateral BC sound transmission: the transcranial BC sound transmission. To benefit from binaural processing, the transcranial transmission should be low, while the same should be high when using BC hearing aids for unilateral deaf subjects. By appropriately positioning the stimulation, high or low transcranial transmission can be achieved.	t	\N
21390207	Human languages evolve continuously, and a puzzling problem is how to reconcile the apparent robustness of most of the deep linguistic structures we use with the evidence that they undergo possibly slow, yet ceaseless, changes. Is the state in which we observe languages today closer to what would be a dynamical attractor with statistically stationary properties or rather closer to a non-steady state slowly evolving in time? Here we address this question in the framework of the emergence of shared linguistic categories in a population of individuals interacting through language games. The observed emerging asymptotic categorization, which has been previously tested--with success--against experimental data from human languages, corresponds to a metastable state where global shifts are always possible but progressively more unlikely and the response properties depend on the age of the system. This aging mechanism exhibits striking quantitative analogies to what is observed in the statistical mechanics of glassy systems. We argue that this can be a general scenario in language dynamics where shared linguistic conventions would not emerge as attractors, but rather as metastable states.	t	\N
21398015	A meaningful interaction with our environment relies on the ability to focus on relevant sensory input and to ignore irrelevant information, i.e. top-down control and attention processes are employed to select from competing stimuli following internal goals. In this, the demands for the recruitment of top-down control processes depend on the relative perceptual salience of the competing stimuli. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we investigated the recruitment of top-down control processes in response to varying degrees of control demands in the auditory modality. For this purpose, we tested 20 male and 20 female subjects with a dichotic listening paradigm, in which the relative perceptual salience of two simultaneously presented stimuli was systematically manipulated by varying the inter-aural intensity difference (IID) and asking the subjects to selectively attend to either ear. The analysis showed that the interaction between IID and attentional direction involves two networks in the brain. A fronto-parietal network, including the pre-supplementary motor area, anterior cingulate cortex, inferior frontal junction, insula and inferior parietal lobe, was recruited during cognitively demanding conditions and can thus be seen as a top-down cognitive control network. In contrast, a second network including the superior temporal and the post-central gyri was engaged under conditions with low cognitive control demands. These findings demonstrate how cognitive control is achieved through the interplay of distinct brain networks, with their differential engagement determined as a function of the level of competition between the sensory stimuli.	t	\N
21417674	This study was designed to evaluate an automated pure-tone audiometric procedure (AMTAS(®)) for 4-8 year-old children, and a quality assessment method (QUALIND(®)) that predicts the accuracy of the test. Children were tested with AMTAS and conventional manual air-conduction audiometry. A group of adults was tested for comparison. Eighty-one 4-8 year-old children and 15 adults. Most had normal hearing. For most subjects (93% of adults and 91% of children) differences between AMTAS and manual thresholds were similar to differences that occur when two experienced audiologists test the same subjects. QUALIND detected the inaccurate audiograms with a sensitivity of 71% and a specificity of 91%. When inaccurate audiograms identified by QUALIND are excluded, the accuracy of AMTAS is similar to the accuracy of manual audiometry. AMTAS produces accurate air-conduction audiograms in a high proportion of 4-8 year-old children and adults. QUALIND successfully identified most inaccurate AMTAS audiograms. The method can decrease the cost and increase efficiency and accessibility of hearing testing.	t	\N
21420739	Perception of environmental sounds from impacted materials (Wood, Metal and Glass) was examined by conducting a categorization experiment. Stimuli consisted of sound continua evoking progressive transitions between material categories. Results highlighted shallower response curves in subjects with schizophrenia than healthy participants, and are discussed in the framework of Signal Detection Theory and in terms of impaired perception of specific timbre features in schizophrenia.	t	\N
21420989	There is ongoing debate with respect to interpretation of the finding that, in contrast to perceptual size judgments, actions are relatively unaffected by the Müller-Lyer illusion. In normal unrestricted viewing situations observers cannot perform an action directed at an object without simultaneously perceiving the object - this makes it difficult to unequivocally establish whether observed effects are a function of vision for perception, vision for action, a combination of both, or of a single all-purpose visual system. However, there is evidence that observers are capable of performing actions towards objects of which they are not consciously aware, implying that two distinct visual thresholds may exist; one accompanying vision for action and one accompanying vision for perception. To investigate this possibility we created a situation in which visual information was presented below the perception threshold, but above the purported action threshold, allowing examination of action responses independent of contributions from vision for perception. Following a perceptual categorization task, participants performed delayed pointing movements towards briefly exposed masked Müller-Lyer targets of different sizes. When the targets were presented below the perception threshold, participants were unable to discriminate between them, yet their delayed pointing movements were affected by target size (but not the illusion). The results imply that vision for action is functional even after a delay and/or that the pickup of egocentric information is associated with a lower visual threshold than the pickup of allocentric information.	t	\N
21422306	To evaluate the significance of the Carhart notch (a 2-kHz bone conduction threshold dip [2KBD]) in the diagnosis of stapes fixation by comparing its incidence among ears with various ossicular chain abnormalities. Retrospective study. University hospital. A total of 153 ears among 127 consecutive patients with a congenital ossicular anomaly or otosclerosis. The 2KBD depth was defined as the threshold at 2 kHz minus the mean of thresholds at 1 and 4 kHz. The presence of 2KBD (depth, ≥10 dB), 2KBD depth, relationship between 2KBD depth and air-bone gap, and 2-kHz bone conduction recovery after operation were evaluated in a stapes fixation group (which included cases of otosclerosis and congenital stapes fixation), an incudostapedial joint detachment group, and a malleus or incus fixation group. A 2KBD was present in 32 of 102 stapes fixation ears (31.4%), 5 of 19 incudostapedial joint detachment ears (26.3%), and 6 of 20 malleus or incus fixation ears (30.0%) (12 ears had other diagnoses). The mean (SD) 2KBD depths were 17.3 (5.2) dB in the stapes fixation group, 18.5 (2.2) dB in the incudostapedial joint detachment group, and 16.3 (2.1) dB in the malleus or incus fixation group. No statistically significant differences were noted among these 3 groups. No correlation was noted between 2KBD depth and air-bone gap extent. Recovery of 2-kHz bone conduction threshold in the stapes fixation group was less than that in the other 2 groups. Incidence of 2KBD was similar among the stapes fixation, incudostapedial joint detachment, and malleus or incus fixation groups, implying that 2KBD is not a useful predictor of stapes fixation.	t	\N
21424256	Assessing intentions, direction, and velocity of others is necessary for most daily tasks, and such information is often made available by both visual and auditory motion cues. Therefore, it is not surprising our great ability to perceive human motion. Here, we explore the multisensory integration of cues of biological motion walking speed. After testing for audiovisual asynchronies (visual signals led auditory ones by 30 ms in simultaneity temporal windows of 76.4 ms), in the main experiment, visual, auditory, and bimodal stimuli were compared to a standard audiovisual walker in a velocity discrimination task. Results in variance reduction conformed to optimal integration of congruent bimodal stimuli across all subjects. Interestingly, the perceptual judgements were still close to optimal for stimuli at the smallest level of incongruence. Comparison of slopes allows us to estimate an integration window of about 60 ms, which is smaller than that reported in audiovisual speech.	t	\N
21431434	Our objective is to determine whether the degree of endolymphatic hydrops as it is detected in vivo in patients with definite Meniere's disease correlates with audiovestibular function. In this prospective study, 37 patients with definite Meniere's disease according to AAO-HNS criteria were included. Intratympanic contrast enhanced temporal bone MRI was performed using a 3D FLAIR protocol. The degree of endolymphatic hydrops in the cochlea and the vestibulum was graded on a Likert scale (0-3). The degree of hydrops was then analyzed with respect to its correlation with audiometric hearing levels, electrocochleographic SP/AP ratios, interaural amplitude ratios of vestibular evoked myogenic potentials and degree of horizontal semicircular canal paresis on caloric irrigation. There was a significant correlation between the degree of hydrops on the one hand and the averaged hearing level at 0.25-1 and 0.5-3 kHz and the vestibular evoked myogenic potential interaural amplitude ratio on the other hand. A trend toward a correlation was noticed between the hydrops and the caloric response, no correlation was noticed between the hydrops and the SP/AP ratio. The degree of endolymphatic hydrops correlates with a progressive loss of auditory and sacculus function in patients with Meniere`s disease.	t	\N
21432625	Emotional inferences from speech require the integration of verbal and vocal emotional expressions. We asked whether this integration is comparable when listeners are exposed to their native language and when they listen to a language learned later in life. To this end, we presented native and non-native listeners with positive, neutral and negative words that were spoken with a happy, neutral or sad tone of voice. In two separate tasks, participants judged word valence and ignored tone of voice or judged emotional tone of voice and ignored word valence. While native listeners outperformed non-native listeners in the word valence task, performance was comparable in the voice task. More importantly, both native and non-native listeners responded faster and more accurately when verbal and vocal emotional expressions were congruent as compared to when they were incongruent. Given that the size of the latter effect did not differ as a function of language proficiency, one can conclude that the integration of verbal and vocal emotional expressions occurs as readily in one's second language as it does in one's native language.	t	\N
21440971	Congenital amusia manifests as a lifelong difficulty in making sense of musical sound. The extent to which this disorder is accompanied by deficits in visuo-spatial processing is an important question, bearing on the issue of whether pitch processing draws on supramodal spatial representations. The present study assessed different aspects of visuo-spatial processing with a range of tasks (Shepard-Metzler Mental Rotation, Corsi Blocks Task, Visual Patterns Test) in 14 amusics and matched controls. The absence of a group difference on any of these tasks fails to support a previous claim that the disorder is strongly related to deficits in spatial processing. However, a subgroup of amusics, with significantly elevated thresholds on a pitch direction discrimination task relative to the rest of the group, were slower, but equally accurate, at Mental Rotation. This finding is discussed in relation to the nature of supramodal representations of contour and strategies for dynamic mental transformation.	t	\N
21458056	Speech production can be broadly separated into two distinct components: Phonation and Articulation. These two aspects require the efficient control of several phono-articulatory effectors. Speech is indeed generated by the vibration of the vocal-folds in the larynx (F0) followed by ''filtering" by articulators, to select certain resonant frequencies out of that wave (F1, F2, F3, etc.). Recently it has been demonstrated that the motor representation of articulators (lips and tongue) participates in the discrimination of articulatory sounds (lips- and tongue-related speech sounds). Here we investigate whether the results obtained on articulatory sounds discrimination could be extended to phonation by applying a dual-pulse TMS protocol while subjects had to discriminate F0-shifted vocal utterances [a]. Stimulation over the larynx motor representation, compared to the control site (tongue/lips motor cortex), induced a reduction in RT for stimuli including a subtle pitch shift. We demonstrate that vocal pitch discrimination, in analogy with the articulatory component, requires the contribution of the motor system and that this effect is somatotopically organized.	t	\N
21463563	Bone-conduction thresholds have been used in audiologic assessments of both infants and adults to differentiate between conductive and sensorineural hearing losses. However, air- and bone-conduction thresholds estimated for infants with normal hearing using physiological measures have identified an "air-bone gap" in the low frequencies that does not result from conductive hearing impairment but, rather, from maturational differences in sensitivity. This maturational air-bone gap appears to be present up to at least 2 yr of age. Because most infants older than 6 mo of age are clinically assessed behaviorally, rather than physiologically, it is necessary to determine whether a similar maturational air-bone gap is present for behavioral air- and bone-conduction thresholds. The purpose of this study was to estimate behavioral bone-conduction thresholds for infants using a standard clinical visual reinforcement audiometry (VRA) protocol to determine whether frequency-dependent maturational patterns exist as previously reported for physiological bone-conduction thresholds. Behavioral bone-conduction minimum response levels were estimated at 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz using VRA for each participant. Young (7-15 mo; N = 17) and older (18-30 mo; N = 20) groups of infants were assessed. All infants were screened and considered to be at low risk for hearing loss. Preliminary "normal levels" were determined by calculating the 90th percentile for responses present as a cumulative percentage. Mean bone-conduction thresholds were compared and analyzed using a mixed-model analysis of variance across frequency and age group. Linear regression analysis was also performed to assess the effect of age on bone-conduction thresholds. Results of this study indicate that, when measured behaviorally, infants under 30 mo of age show frequency-dependent bone-conduction thresholds whereby their responses at 500 and 1000 Hz are significantly better than those at 2000 and 4000 Hz. However, thresholds obtained from the younger group of infants (mean age of 10.6 mo) were not significantly different from those obtained from the older group of infants (mean age of 23.0 mo) at any frequency. The findings of the present study are similar to the results obtained from previous physiological studies. Compared to previously documented air-conduction thresholds of infants using similar VRA techniques, a maturational air-bone gap is observed in the low frequencies. Therefore, differences between infant and adult bone-conduction thresholds persist until at least 30 mo of age. As a result, different "normal levels" should be used when assessing bone-conduction hearing sensitivity of infants using behavioral methods.	t	\N
21476653	Different non-exponential decays such as the concave and the convex double sloped decays in the coupled rooms provide distinct sound qualities. These are commonly considered to occur in the less reverberant sub-room and the more reverberant sub-room, respectively. However, numerical simulations and experiments in this paper show that the demarcation line is not located along the physical boundaries (e.g., the partition and the coupling aperture), but in the more reverberant sub-room. The sound field with the concave double sloped decay penetrates into the auxiliary sub-room to an extent which is influenced by the difference between the two natural reverberations of the sub-rooms. Furthermore the sound energy flows in different regions are investigated, demonstrating how energy feedback leads to the concave double sloped decay.	t	\N
21476654	Talkers adjust their vocal effort to communicate at different distances, aiming to compensate for the sound propagation losses. The present paper studies the influence of four acoustically different rooms on the speech produced by 13 male talkers addressing a listener at four distances. Talkers raised their vocal intensity by between 1.3 and 2.2 dB per double distance to the listener and lowered it as a linear function of the quantity "room gain" at a rate of -3.6 dB/dB. There were also significant variations in the mean fundamental frequency, both across distance (3.8 Hz per double distance) and among environments (4.3 Hz), and in the long-term standard deviation of the fundamental frequency among rooms (4 Hz). In the most uncomfortable rooms to speak in, talkers prolonged the voiced segments of the speech they produced, either as a side-effect of increased vocal intensity or in order to compensate for a decrease in speech intelligibility.	t	\N
21476664	The enhancement effect is consistently shown when simultaneously masked stimuli are preceded by the masker alone, with a reduction in the amount of masking relative to when that precursor is absent. One explanation for this effect proposed by Viemeister and Bacon [(1982). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 71, 1502-1507] is the adaptation of inhibition, which predicts that an enhanced component (the "target") will be effectively more intense within the auditory system than one that has not been enhanced. Forward masking studies have indicated this effect of increased gain; however, other explanations of the enhancement effect have also been suggested. In order to provide an alternative measure of the amount of effective gain for an enhanced target, a subjective binaural centering task was used in which listeners matched the intensities of enhanced and unenhanced 2-kHz tones presented to opposite ears to produce a centered stimulus. The results showed that the enhancement effect produces an effective 4-5 dB increase in the level of the enhanced target. The enhancement effect was also measured using other enhancement paradigms which yielded similar results over a range of levels for the target, supporting an account based on adaptation of inhibition.	t	\N
21477909	Operatic music involves both singing and acting (as well as rich audiovisual background arising from the orchestra and elaborate scenery and costumes) that multiply the mechanisms by which emotions are induced in listeners. The present study investigated the effects of music, plot, and acting performance on emotions induced by opera. There were three experimental conditions: (1) participants listened to a musically complex and dramatically coherent excerpt from Tosca; (2) they read a summary of the plot and listened to the same musical excerpt again; and (3) they re-listened to music while they watched the subtitled film of this acting performance. In addition, a control condition was included, in which an independent sample of participants succesively listened three times to the same musical excerpt. We measured subjective changes using both dimensional, and specific music-induced emotion questionnaires. Cardiovascular, electrodermal, and respiratory responses were also recorded, and the participants kept track of their musical chills. Music listening alone elicited positive emotion and autonomic arousal, seen in faster heart rate, but slower respiration rate and reduced skin conductance. Knowing the (sad) plot while listening to the music a second time reduced positive emotions (peacefulness, joyful activation), and increased negative ones (sadness), while high autonomic arousal was maintained. Watching the acting performance increased emotional arousal and changed its valence again (from less positive/sad to transcendent), in the context of continued high autonomic arousal. The repeated exposure to music did not by itself induce this pattern of modifications. These results indicate that the multiple musical and dramatic means involved in operatic performance specifically contribute to the genesis of music-induced emotions and their physiological correlates.	t	\N
21491357	Obesity may be associated with increased tissue bulk in the laryngeal airway, neck, and chest wall, and as such may affect vocal function. Eight obese and eight nonobese adults participated in this study; the obese participants underwent bariatric surgical procedures. This mixed-design study included cross-sectional analysis for group differences and longitudinal analysis for multidimensional changes in vocal function from four assessments collected over 6 months. No significant differences were detected between groups from the preoperative assessment. Further, no changes were detected over time for acoustic parameters, maximum phonation time, laryngeal airway resistance, and airflow during a sustained vowel for either group. Only minor differences were detected for strain, pitch, and loudness perceptions of voice over time, but not between groups. Phonation threshold pressure (PTP), at comfortable and high pitches (30% and 80% of the F0 range) changed significantly over time, but not between groups. Examination of individual data revealed a trend for PTP at 30% F0 to decrease as body mass index decreased. PTP may be informative for assessing vocal function in clients who present with obesity and voice symptoms.	t	\N
21493300	The aim of this prospective study was to audiologically evaluate consecutive glaucoma patients with or without exfoliation. Prospective study. Glaucoma Unit and Audiology Department at a university hospital. Consecutive subjects with exfoliative glaucoma (XFG) or primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) aged between 50 and 70 years were enrolled. Auditory thresholds at 0.5, 1.0, 2.0, 4.0, and 8.0 Hz were measured bilaterally. Cochlear activity was assessed by recording distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOEs). Functional changes in the retrocochlear auditory pathway were evaluated by auditory brainstem responses (ABRs). One hundred and ten patients with XFG and 85 patients with POAG who presented in a glaucoma clinic were investigated. The mean age of study patients was 66.2 ± 5.6 years; range, 50-70 years). The odds of pathologic ABR central transmission time (interpeak latencies I-III, III-V, and I-V and waves I, III, and V) were 4.34 times higher in patients with XFG than in patients with POAG (95% confidence interval [CI], 2.22-8.49; P < .001). This significant association remained after adjusting for sex and age (odds ratio [OR] 4.12; 95% CI, 2.07-8.22; P < .001). Furthermore, the odds of ABR remained significantly higher in patients with XFG than in patients with POAG (OR 4.36; 95% CI, 2.10-9.06; P < .001) after controlling for systemic diseases (arterial hypertension, coronary heart disease, high cholesterol, and stroke). In the first study to compare XFG and POAG monitoring of the peripheral and central auditory pathway, it has been documented that XFG patients show a greater prevalence of retrocochlear pathology.	t	\N
21493334	To compare noise reduction of commercially available ear-level hearing protection (muffs/inserts) to that of firearm muzzle suppressors. Experimental sound measurements under consistent environmental conditions. None. Muzzle suppressors for 2 pistol and 2 rifle calibers were tested using the Bruel & Kjaer 2209 sound meter and Bruel & Kjaer 4136 microphone calibrated with the Bruel & Kjaer Pistonphone using Military-Standard 1474D placement protocol. Five shots were recorded unsuppressed and 10 shots suppressed under consistent environmental conditions. Sound reduction was then compared with the real-world noise reduction rate of the best available ear-level protectors. All suppressors offered significantly greater noise reduction than ear-level protection, usually greater than 50% better. Noise reduction of all ear-level protectors is unable to reduce the impulse pressure below 140 dB for certain common firearms, an international standard for prevention of sensorineural hearing loss. Modern muzzle-level suppression is vastly superior to ear-level protection and the only available form of suppression capable of making certain sporting arms safe for hearing. The inadequacy of standard hearing protectors with certain common firearms is not recognized by most hearing professionals or their patients and should affect the way hearing professionals counsel patients and the public.	t	\N
21506894	To assess the effect of the static force of a bone vibrator on the results of bone conduction (BC) threshold measurements and comfort. BC thresholds were determined for 40 participants using the standardized P-3333 headband and a leather adjustable headstrap with variable static forces (2.4, 3.4, 4.4, 5.4 N). Comfort ratings were examined using a five-point Likert scale. Mean BC thresholds were within ± 2 dB across all conditions; differences may be considered small enough to be clinically insignificant. Participants experienced significantly greater discomfort with the P-3333 versus the adjustable headstrap. The mean static force of the P-3333 varied considerably and was higher in situ than the calibration standard of 5.4 N. The results suggest that future revisions of relevant international and national standards should address the use of an adjustable headstrap and a static force less than 5.4 N.	t	\N
21512424	To evaluate the outcomes of younger (<60 yr) and older (≥60 yr) patients implanted with the Vibrant Soundbridge (VSB). The aim was to determine if there were differences between groups. A retrospective study was used to evaluate all patients who were implanted and fit with a VSB during 2008 and 2009 at the Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Medical University Innsbruck. Differences in audiologic, medical, and surgical outcomes between younger and older patients were evaluated. No patients had major complications during or after the surgical procedure. All patients had a good hearing benefit as supported by improvements in hearing thresholds from the preoperative to the postoperative condition in the sound field. There were differences between groups in speech understanding postoperatively; however, the differences were not statistically significant. All patients had, independent of age, good audiologic benefit from VSB use. Based on the low risk of medical or surgical complications, the easy use of the hearing implant, audiologic improvements, and potential social benefits, we think that the VSB should be regularly offered to adults with hearing loss, whether they are young or old.	t	\N
21517207	The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of expertise on motion anticipation. We conducted 2 experiments in which novices and expert pilots viewed simulated aircraft landing scenes. The scenes were interrupted by the display of a black screen and then started again after a forward or backward shift. The participant's task was to determine whether the moving scene had been shifted forward or backward. A forward misjudgment of the final position of the moving scene was interpreted as a representational momentum (RM) effect. Experiment 1 showed that an RM effect was detected only for experts. The lack of motion anticipation on the part of novices is a surprising result for the RM literature. It could be related to scene unfamiliarity, encoding time, or shift size. Experiment 2 was run with novices only. It was aimed at testing the potential impact of 2 factors on the RM effect: scene encoding time and shift size. As a whole, the results showed that encoding time and shift size are important factors in anticipation processes in realistic dynamic situations.	t	\N
21524739	Word segmentation from continuous speech is a difficult task that is faced by human infants when they start to learn their native language. Several studies indicate that infants might use several different cues to solve this problem, including intonation, linguistic stress, and transitional probabilities between subsequent speech sounds. In this work, a computational model for word segmentation and learning of primitive lexical items from continuous speech is presented. The model does not utilize any a priori linguistic or phonemic knowledge such as phones, phonemes or articulatory gestures, but computes transitional probabilities between atomic acoustic events in order to detect recurring patterns in speech. Experiments with the model show that word segmentation is possible without any knowledge of linguistically relevant structures, and that the learned ungrounded word models show a relatively high selectivity towards specific words or frequently co-occurring combinations of short words.	t	\N
21525779	The results reported in this paper indicate that native speakers of Mandarin Chinese rate the perceptual similarities among the lexical tones of Mandarin differently than do native speakers of American English. Mandarin listeners were sensitive to tone contour while English listeners attended to pitch levels. Chinese listeners also rated tones that are neutralized by phonological tone sandhi rules in Mandarin as more similar to each other than did English speakers--indicating a role of phonology in determining perceptual salience. In two further experiments, we found that some of these differences were eliminated when the listening task focused listeners' attention on the auditory properties of the stimuli, but, interestingly, a degree of language specificity remained even in the most purely psychophysical listening tasks with speech stimuli.	t	\N
21540053	The auditory system faithfully represents sufficient details from sound sources such that downstream cognitive processes are capable of acting upon this information effectively even in the face of signal uncertainty, degradation or interference. This robust sound source representation leads to an invariance in perception vital for animals to interact effectively with their environment. Due to unique nonlinearities in the cochlea, sound representations early in the auditory system exhibit a large amount of variability as a function of stimulus intensity. In other words, changes in stimulus intensity, such as for sound sources at differing distances, create a unique challenge for the auditory system to encode sounds invariantly across the intensity dimension. This challenge and some strategies available to sensory systems to eliminate intensity as an encoding variable are discussed, with a special emphasis upon sound encoding.	t	\N
21543605	The mammalian auditory system contains descending neural pathways, some of which project onto the cochlea via the medial olivocochlear (MOC) system. The function of this efferent auditory system is not entirely clear. Behavioral studies in animals with olivocochlear (OC) lesions suggest that the MOC serves to facilitate sound localization in noise. In the current work, noise-induced OC activity (the OC reflex) and sound-localization performance in noise were measured in normal-hearing humans. Consistent with earlier studies, both measures were found to vary substantially across individuals. Importantly, significant correlations were observed between OC-reflex strength and the effect of noise on sound-localization performance; the stronger the OC reflex, the less marked the effect of noise. These results suggest that MOC activation by noise helps to counteract the detrimental effects of background noise on neural representations of direction-dependent spectral features, which are especially important for accurate localization in the up/down and front/back dimensions.	t	\N
21545768	Previous studies have demonstrated a relation between cognitive capacity, in particular working memory, and the ability to understand speech in noise with different types of hearing aid signal processing. The present study investigates the relation between working memory capacity and the speech recognition performance of persons with hearing impairment under both aided and unaided conditions, following a period of familiarization to both fast- and slow-acting compression settings in the participants' own hearing aids. Speech recognition was tested in modulated and steady state noise with fast and slow compression release settings (for aided conditions) with each of two materials. Working memory capacity was also measured. Thirty experienced hearing aid users with a mean age of 70 yr (SD = 7.8) and pure-tone average hearing threshold across the frequencies 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 kHz (PTA7) and for both ears of 45.8 dB HL (SD = 6.6. 9 wk experience with each of fast-acting and slow-acting compression. Speech recognition data were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance with the within-subjects factors of material (high constraint, low constraint), noise type (steady state, modulated), and compression (fast, slow), and the between-subjects factor working memory capacity (high, low). With high constraint material, there were three-way interactions including noise type and working memory as well as compression, in aided conditions, and performance level, in unaided conditions, but no effects of either working memory or compression with low constraint material. Investigation of simple main effects showed a significant effect of working memory during speech recognition under conditions of both "high degradation" (modulated noise, fast-acting compression, low signal-to-noise ratio [SNR]) and "low degradation" (steady state noise, slow-acting compression, high SNR). The finding of superior performance of persons with high working memory capacity in modulated noise with fast-acting compression agrees with findings of previous studies including a familiarization period of at least 9 wk, in contrast to studies with familiarization of 4 wk or less that have shown that persons with lower cognitive capacity may benefit from slow-acting compression. Working memory is a crucial factor in speech understanding in noise for persons with hearing impairment, irrespective of whether hearing is aided or unaided. Working memory supports speech understanding in noise under conditions of both "high degradation" and "low degradation." A subcomponent view of working memory may contribute to our understanding of these phenomena. The effect of cognition on speech understanding in modulated noise with fast-acting compression may only pertain after a period of 4-9 wk of familiarization and that prior to such a period, persons with lower cognitive capacity may benefit more from slow-acting compression.	t	\N
21547604	Listeners require context to understand the highly reduced words that occur in casual speech. The present study reports four auditory lexical decision experiments in which the role of semantic context in the comprehension of reduced versus unreduced speech was investigated. Experiments 1 and 2 showed semantic priming for combinations of unreduced, but not reduced, primes and low-frequency targets. In Experiment 3, we crossed the reduction of the prime with the reduction of the target. Results showed no semantic priming from reduced primes, regardless of the reduction of the targets. Finally, Experiment 4 showed that reduced and unreduced primes facilitate upcoming low-frequency related words equally if the interstimulus interval is extended. These results suggest that semantically related words need more time to be recognized after reduced primes, but once reduced primes have been fully (semantically) processed, these primes can facilitate the recognition of upcoming words as well as do unreduced primes.	t	\N
21554838	Tinnitus is a disturbing symptom and is often the main reason for otology referral. It is usually associated with hearing loss of varying aetiology, and is thought to begin in the cochlea, with later abnormal central activity. We hypothesise that tinnitus without hearing loss may be caused by central and subcortical abnormalities and altered outer hair cell function. To compare the auditory brainstem responses, middle latency responses and otoacoustic emissions in normal-hearing individuals with and without tinnitus. The audiological test results of 25 normal hearing subjects with tinnitus (age 18-45 years) were determined, and compared with those of a control group. A statistically significant difference was found between study group tinnitus ears vs control group ears, as regards wave I latency prolongation, shortening of wave V and absolute I-III and I-V interpeak latency, enlargement of wave Na and Pa amplitude, and distortion product and transient evoked otoacoustic emission signal-to-noise ratios. There was no statistically significant difference between unilateral vs bilateral tinnitus ears. The pathogenesis and optimum management of tinnitus are still unclear. It often occurs with primary ear disease, usually associated with hearing loss, but may occur in patients with normal hearing. Observed changes in auditory brainstem and middle latency responses indicate central auditory alterations. Tinnitus involves both peripheral and central activity, and complete audiological and neurophysiological investigation is required. Management should be based on both audiological and neurophysiological findings.	t	\N
21563460	To understand the usage of MP3 and effects on hearing of middle school students in Xi'an, and discuss controlling strategies. Stratified random cluster sampling method was used in the 1567 middle school students in Xi'an through questionnaire survey, ear examination and hearing examination, data were analysed by the SPSS13.0 statistical software. 1) The rate of holding MP3 in the middle school students was 85.2%. Average daily use time was (1.41 +/- 1.11) h. 2) The noise group of pure tone hearing threshold was significantly higher compared with the control group (P<0.01), and increased the detection rate of hearing loss with the increasing use of MP3. 3) The detection rate of symptoms increased with the increasing use of MP3. The usage of MP3 can harm hearing in middle school students, which can result in neurasthenic syndrome.	t	\N
21568377	The ability of listeners with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss to localize a speech source in a multitalker mixture was measured. Five simultaneous words spoken by different talkers were presented over loudspeakers in a small room, and listeners localized one target word. Errors were significantly larger in this group compared to a control group with normal hearing. Localization of the target presented alone was not different between groups. The results suggest that hearing loss does not impair spatial hearing per se, but degrades the spatial representation of multiple simultaneous sounds.	t	\N
21568378	A previous letter by Gee et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 121, EL1-EL7 (2007)] revealed likely shortcomings in using common, stationary (long-term) spectrum-based measures to quantify the perception of nonlinearly propagated noise. Here, the Glasberg and Moore [J. Audio Eng. Soc. 50, 331-342 (2002)] algorithm for time-varying loudness is investigated. Their short-term loudness, when applied to a shock-containing broadband signal and a phase-randomized signal with equivalent long-term spectrum, does not show a significant difference in loudness between the signals. Further analysis and discussion focus on the possible utility of the instantaneous loudness and the need for additional investigation in this area.	t	\N
21569784	In recent years it has been shown that a disorder in recognizing familiar people can be observed in patients with lesions affecting the anterior parts of the temporal lobes and that these disorders can be multi-modal, simultaneously affecting the visual, auditory and linguistic channels that allow person identification. Several authors have also shown that patients with right anterior temporal atrophy are more impaired in assessing familiarity and in retrieving person-specific semantic information from faces than from names, whereas the opposite pattern of performance can be observed in patients with left temporal lobe atrophy. Voice recognition disorders have been studied much less even despite their clinical and theoretical importance. The aim of the present review, therefore, was to compare recognition of familiar faces and voices, taking into account not only results obtained in individual patients with right anterior temporal lesions, but also those of group studies of unselected right- and left brain-damaged patients and results of experimental investigations conducted on face and voice recognition in normal subjects. Results of the review showed that: (1) voice recognition disorders are mainly due to right temporal lesions, similarly to face recognition disorders; (2) famous voice recognition disorders can be dissociated from unfamiliar voice discrimination impairments; (3) although face and voice recognition disorders tend to co-occur, they can also dissociate and in these patients there is a prevalent involvement of the right fusiform gyrus when face recognition disorders are on the foreground, and of the right superior temporal gyrus when voice recognition disorders are prominent; (4) normal subjects have greater difficulty evaluating familiarity and drawing semantic information from the voices than from the faces of celebrities. These data are at variance with models which assume that familiarity feelings may be generated at the level of person identity nodes (PINs) and that the latter may be considered as modality-free gateways to single semantic systems in which information about people is stored in an amodal format.	t	\N
21586256	In a number of European countries, a functional self-test to screen for hearing impairment is available via telephone and the Internet. The tests estimate speech-reception thresholds using an adaptive procedure in which digit triplets are presented at varying signal-to-noise ratios. In different languages, the stimuli were created either with or without coarticulation; and some implementations use fresh noise samples, while others do not. The present investigation concerns the influence of coarticulation, prosody, and noise freshness on measured thresholds. We performed a laboratory study using 12 normal-hearing listeners. In a blocked design we compared speech-reception thresholds for conditions with and without fresh noise tokens. In each block we used three types of triplets: with coarticulation and prosody, with neither, and without coarticulation but with prosody. Thirty-six thresholds were recorded per subject, and they were analyzed using analyses of variance. The results showed no significant differences among the three triplet conditions. The freshness of the noise did not affect thresholds when, at least, a fresh noise token was used per threshold estimate (23 presentations). Scores dropped significantly when a whole experimental block was performed with a single noise token.	t	\N
21601842	Evolution and the brain have done a marvelous job solving many tricky problems in action control, including problems of learning, hierarchical control over serial behavior, continuous recalibration, and fluency in the face of slow feedback. Given that evolution tends to be conservative, it should not be surprising that these solutions are exploited to solve other tricky problems, such as the design of a communication system. We propose that a mechanism of motor control, paired controller/predictor models, has been exploited for language learning, comprehension, and production. Our account addresses the development of grammatical regularities and perspective, as well as how linguistic symbols become meaningful through grounding in perception, action, and emotional systems.	t	\N
21603614	Recent studies suggest that human auditory perception follows a prolonged developmental trajectory, sometimes continuing well into adolescence. Whereas both sensory and cognitive accounts have been proposed, the development of the ability to base current perceptual decisions on prior information, an ability that strongly benefits adult perception, has not been directly explored. Here we ask whether the auditory frequency discrimination of preschool children also improves when given the opportunity to use previously presented standard stimuli as perceptual anchors, and whether the magnitude of this anchoring effect undergoes developmental changes. Frequency discrimination was tested using two adaptive same/different protocols. In one protocol (with-reference), a repeated 1-kHz standard tone was presented repeatedly across trials. In the other (no-reference), no such repetitions occurred. Verbal memory and early reading skills were also evaluated to determine if the pattern of correlations between frequency discrimination, memory and literacy is similar to that previously reported in older children and adults. Preschool children were significantly more sensitive in the with-reference than in the no-reference condition, but the magnitude of this anchoring effect was smaller than that observed in adults. The pattern of correlations among discrimination thresholds, memory and literacy replicated previous reports in older children. The processes allowing the use of context to form perceptual anchors are already functional among preschool children, albeit to a lesser extent than in adults. Nevertheless, immature anchoring cannot fully account for the poorer frequency discrimination abilities of young children. That anchoring is present among the majority of typically developing preschool children suggests that the anchoring deficits observed among individuals with dyslexia represent a true deficit rather than a developmental delay.	t	\N
21604886	Inhibitory control functions in old age were investigated with the "masked prime" paradigm in which participants executed speeded manual choice responses to simple visual targets. These were preceded--either immediately or at some earlier time--by a backward-masked prime. Young adults produced positive compatibility effects (PCEs)--faster and more accurate responses for matching than for nonmatching prime-target pairs--when prime and target immediately followed each other, and the reverse effect (negative compatibility effect, NCE) for targets that followed the prime after a short interval. Older adults produced similar PCEs to young adults, indicating intact low-level motor activation, but failed to produce normal NCEs even with longer delays (Experiment 1), increased opportunity for prime processing (Experiment 2), and prolonged learning (Experiment 3). However, a fine-grained analysis of each individual's time course of masked priming effects revealed NCEs in the majority of older adults, of the same magnitude as those of young adults. These were significantly delayed (even more than expected on the basis of general slowing), indicating a disproportionate impairment of low-level inhibitory motor control in old age.	t	\N
21616987	This project examined receptive vocabulary treatment outcomes in the two languages of a bilingual preschooler with moderate to severe language impairment. A series of single-subject experimental designs was used to compare English-only (EO) and bilingual (BI) approaches to receptive vocabulary treatment. The participant, Nam, was a boy age 3;11 (years;months) who was learning Vietnamese as a first language at home and English in his early childhood education program. Treatment was implemented by an EO interventionist using a computer interface and prerecorded audio files in Vietnamese and English. The dependent measure was the percentage of items that were correctly identified in each language. Combined studies revealed that the BI approach increased Nam's attention to task and was as effective as the EO approach for increasing his receptive vocabulary in English. Nam made vocabulary gains in both treatment conditions; receptive vocabulary gains were evident in both Vietnamese and English. This project showed that it is feasible for an EO clinician to promote gains in both the home and school languages of a BI child through creative collaborations with BI colleagues and the use of technology. Replication with additional participants and treatment activities is needed to make further generalizations.	t	\N
21623776	Isotretinoin is widely used in the treatment of extensive and nodulocystic acne. The objective of this prospective study was to investigate whether oral isotretinoin could affect the hearing system. Thirty-eight patients with acne vulgaris (76 ears) who were diagnosed and treated at the Department of Dermatology were included in the current study. Study evaluation visits were performed at baseline and at Weeks 1, 2 and 3. Pure-tone averages (PTAs) of air conduction thresholds at 250 Hz (PTA1); 500, 1000, and 2000 Hz (PTA2); 4000, 8000, and 10,000 Hz (PTA3); and 12,500, 16,000, 18,000 and 20,000 Hz (PTA4) for each ear were calculated separately. Assessment of the efficacy was based on the audiometric findings. Compared with pre-treatment evaluation, the PTAs of patients were found to be significantly different at the first week for PTA2 (P = 0.033) and PTA3 (P = 0.001), at the second week for PTA1 (P = 0.036), and at the third week for PTA4 (P = 0.002). Our results suggest that the oral isotretinoin (13-cis retinoic acid), which is a derivative of retinol (vitamin A), improved the hearing level of the patients in all audiometric frequencies in a short-period follow-up.	t	\N
21624926	Cognitive impairment is a core element shared by a large number of different neurological and neuropsychiatric diseases. Irrespective of their different aetiologies and symptomatologies, most appear to converge at the functional deficiency of the auditory-frontal cortex network of auditory discrimination, which indexes cognitive impairment shared by these abnormalities. This auditory-frontal cortical deficiency, and hence cognitive decline, can now be objectively measured with the mismatch negativity and its magnetic equivalent. The auditory-frontal cortical network involved seems, therefore, to play a pivotal, unifying role in the different abnormalities. It is, however, more likely that the dysfunction that can be detected with the mismatch negativity and its magnetoencephalographic equivalent manifests a more widespread brain disorder, namely, a deficient N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor function, shared by these abnormalities and accounting for most of the cognitive decline.	t	\N
21625011	The McGurk effect demonstrates the influence of visual cues on auditory perception. Mismatching information from both sensory modalities can fuse to a novel percept that matches neither the auditory nor the visual stimulus. This illusion is reported in 60-80% of trials. We were interested in the impact of ongoing brain oscillations-indexed by fluctuating local excitability and interareal synchronization-on upcoming perception of identical stimuli. The perception of the McGurk effect is preceded by high beta activity in parietal, frontal, and temporal areas. Beta activity is pronounced in the left superior temporal gyrus (lSTG), which is considered as a site of multimodal integration. This area is functionally (de)coupled to distributed frontal and temporal regions in illusion trials. The disposition to fuse multisensory information is enhanced as the lSTG is more strongly coupled to frontoparietal regions. Illusory perception is accompanied by a decrease in poststimulus theta-band activity in the cuneus, precuneus, and left superior frontal gyrus. Event-related activity in the left middle temporal gyrus is pronounced during illusory perception. Thus, the McGurk effect depends on fluctuating brain states suggesting that functional connectedness of left STS at a prestimulus stage is crucial for an audiovisual percept.	t	\N
21639675	It is well established that in masked priming, a target word (e.g., JUDGE) is primed more effectively by a transposed letter (TL) prime (e.g., jugde) than by an orthographic control prime (e.g., junpe). This is inconsistent with the slot coding schemes used in many models of visual word recognition. Several alternative coding schemes have been proposed in which special bigram detectors for frequently occurring nonadjacent letter combinations are developed as a product of perceptual learning. In order to examine this perceptual learning hypothesis, we asked whether bigram detectors are defined in terms of visuospatial coordinates. Japanese-English bilinguals who were equally familiar with horizontal and vertical text in Japanese demonstrated strong TL priming in both orientations when reading Japanese words, but, when reading English words, the evidence for vertical TL priming was not as strong. However, native English speakers showed a clear TL priming effect with vertically presented English words despite minimal exposure to vertical text, which is not consistent with a perceptual learning account. It is proposed instead that the initial letter array is transformed into an abstract ordinal code (first to last) regardless of orientation and that the speed with which this transformation is carried out depends on the familiarity of the script.	t	\N
21645986	The etiology of developmental dyslexia remains widely debated. An appealing theory postulates that the reading and spelling problems in individuals with dyslexia originate from reduced sensitivity to slow-rate dynamic auditory cues. This low-level auditory deficit is thought to provoke a cascade of effects, including inaccurate speech perception and eventually unspecified phoneme representations. The present study investigated sensitivity to frequency modulation and amplitude rise time, speech-in-noise perception and phonological awareness in 11-year-old children with dyslexia and a matched normal-reading control children. Group comparisons demonstrated that children with dyslexia were less sensitive than normal-reading children to slow-rate dynamic auditory processing, speech-in-noise perception, phonological awareness and literacy abilities. Correlations were found between slow-rate dynamic auditory processing and phonological awareness, and speech-in-noise perception and reading. Yet, no significant correlation between slow-rate dynamic auditory processing and speech-in-noise perception was obtained. Together, these results indicate that children with dyslexia have difficulties with slow-rate dynamic auditory processing and speech-in-noise perception and that these problems persist until sixth grade.	t	\N
21647889	To study to what extent it is possible to achieve identical insertion depths and to maintain the same performance after cochlear reimplantation. Outcome research on a retrospective case series in a tertiary university referral center. Data were collected for 12 adults and three children who underwent reimplantation during the last 3 years with a new HiRes90K device with HiFocus 1J electrode owing to failure of the feed-through seal. Multislice computed tomography scans were used to compare positions of the original and newly placed electrode arrays. The speech-perception scores on a consonant-vowel-consonant word test before and after reimplantation were compared. All reimplantations were successfully performed by two experienced cochlear implantation surgeons, and no complications were observed. Postoperative imaging showed that the average displacement of the new implant was only 0.59 mm. Reactivation of the implant gave immediate open set speech understanding in all patients, and speech perception rapidly returned to the previous level obtained with the original implant within weeks; it was even significantly better at the 3-month follow-up. No relation was found between changes in performance and the amount of displacement of the electrode array. After cochlear reimplantation with the same device, electrode-array position can be accurately replicated and speech perception can be regained or even improved within weeks.	t	\N
21649758	This event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study was designed in such a manner so as to contribute to the present debate on behavioural and functional transfer effects associated with intensive language training. To address this novel issue, we measured professional simultaneous interpreters and control subjects while they performed a non-verbal auditory discrimination task that primarily relies on attention and categorization functions. The fMRI results revealed that the discrimination of the target stimuli was associated with differential blood oxygen level-dependent responses in fronto-parietal regions between the two groups, even though in-scanner behavioural results did not show significant group differences. These findings are in line with previous observations showing the contribution of fronto-parietal regions to auditory attention and categorization functions. Our results imply that language training modulates brain activity in regions involved in the top-down regulation of auditory functions.	t	\N
21669859	It is generally agreed that considerable amounts of low-level sensory processing of visual stimuli can occur without conscious awareness. On the other hand, the degree of higher level visual processing that occurs in the absence of awareness is as yet unclear. Here, event-related potential (ERP) measures of brain activity were recorded during a sandwich-masking paradigm, a commonly used approach for attenuating conscious awareness of visual stimulus content. In particular, the present study used a combination of ERP activation contrasts to track both early sensory-processing ERP components and face-specific N170 ERP activations, in trials with versus without awareness. The electrophysiological measures revealed that the sandwich masking abolished the early face-specific N170 neural response (peaking at ~170 ms post-stimulus), an effect that paralleled the abolition of awareness of face versus non-face image content. Furthermore, however, the masking appeared to render a strong attenuation of earlier feedforward visual sensory-processing signals. This early attenuation presumably resulted in insufficient information being fed into the higher level visual system pathways specific to object category processing, thus leading to unawareness of the visual object content. These results support a coupling of visual awareness and neural indices of face processing, while also demonstrating an early low-level mechanism of interference in sandwich masking.	t	\N
21675563	This study examined the effects of visual-verbalload (as measured by a visually presented reading-memory task with three levels) on a visual/auditory stimulus-response task. The three levels of load were defined as follows: "No Load" meant no other stimuli were presented concurrently; "Free Load" meant that a letter (A, B, C, or D) appeared at the same time as the visual or auditory stimulus; and "Force Load" was the same as "Free Load," but the participants were also instructed to count how many times the letter A appeared. The stimulus-response task also had three levels: "irrelevant," "compatible," and "incompatible" spatial conditions. These required different key-pressing responses. The visual stimulus was a red ball presented either to the left or to the right of the display screen, and the auditory stimulus was a tone delivered from a position similar to that of the visual stimulus. Participants also processed an irrelevant stimulus. The results indicated that participants perceived auditory stimuli earlier than visual stimuli and reacted faster under stimulus-response compatible conditions. These results held even under a high visual-verbal load. These findings suggest the following guidelines for systems used in driving: an auditory source, appropriately compatible signal and manual-response positions, and a visually simplified background.	t	\N
21676085	The phonological deficit theory of dyslexia assumes that degraded speech sound representations might hamper the acquisition of stable letter-speech sound associations necessary for learning to read. However, there is only scarce and mainly indirect evidence for this assumed letter-speech sound association problem. The present study aimed at clarifying the nature and the role of letter-speech sound association problems in dyslexia by analysing event-related potentials (ERP) of 11-year-old dyslexic children to speech sounds in isolation or combined with letters, which were presented either simultaneously with or 200 ms before the speech sounds. Recent studies with normal readers revealed that letters systematically modulated speech sound processing in an early (mismatch negativity or MMN) and late (Late Discriminatory Negativity or LDN) time-window. The amplitude of the MMN and LDN to speech sounds was enhanced when speech sounds were presented with letters. The dyslexic readers in the present study, however, did not exhibit any early influences of letters on speech sounds even after 4 years of reading instruction, indicating no automatic integration of letters and speech sounds. Interestingly, they revealed a systematic late effect of letters on speech sound processing, probably reflecting the mere association of letters and speech sounds. This pattern is strongly divergent from that observed in age-matched normal readers, who showed both early and late effects, but reminiscent of that observed in beginner normal readers in a previous study (Froyen, Bonte, van Atteveldt & Blomert, 2009). The finding that the quality of letter-speech sound processing is directly related to reading fluency urges further research into the role of audiovisual integration in the development of reading failure in dyslexia.	t	\N
21676091	Early post-natal nutrition influences later development, but there are no studies comparing brain function in healthy infants as a function of dietary intake even though the major infant diets differ significantly in nutrient composition. We studied brain responses (event-related potentials; ERPs) to speech sounds for infants who were fed either breast milk (BF), milk-based formula (MF), or soy formula (SF) during the first 6 months of life. Two syllables presented in an oddball paradigm elicited a late positive wave (P350) from temporal and frontal brain regions involved in language processes. All groups showed significantly greater response amplitudes to the infrequent syllable across sites at 3 months and frontally at 6 months, but significant discrimination at temporal sites was only observed at 6 months in BF infants. Decreases in response amplitudes from 3 to 6 months were greater for the frequently presented syllable, most prominent in BF infants, and greater in females than males. The results indicate greater syllable discrimination in BF than formula-fed infants, but whether this can be attributed to dietary influences alone remains unclear. Feeding method and background factor differences between breastfed and formula-fed infants may also contribute to the observed differences. The general absence of differences between formula-fed groups is notable and suggests that milk-based formula and soy formula equally support brain development and function during the first post-natal 6 months. Finally, the results indicate gender differences in the development of neural and temporal processes involved in sensory discrimination, and suggest that at 6 months these processes are better developed in females.	t	\N
21676999	The conditions of sound fields used in research, especially testing and fitting of hearing aids, are usually simplified or reduced to fundamental physical fields, such as the free or the diffuse sound field. The concepts of such ideal conditions are easily introduced in theoretical and experimental investigations and in models for directional microphones, for example. When it comes to real-world application of hearing aids, however, the field conditions are more complex with regard to specific stationary and transient properties in room transfer functions and the corresponding impulse responses and binaural parameters. Sound fields can be categorized in outdoor rural and urban and indoor environments. Furthermore, sound fields in closed spaces of various sizes and shapes and in situations of transport in vehicles, trains, and aircrafts are compared with regard to the binaural signals. In laboratory tests, sources of uncertainties are individual differences in binaural cues and too less controlled sound field conditions. Furthermore, laboratory sound fields do not cover the variety of complex sound environments. Spatial audio formats such as higher-order ambisonics are candidates for sound field references not only in room acoustics and audio engineering but also in audiology.	t	\N
21678230	Studies of change detection have increased our understanding of attention, perception, and memory. In two innovative experiments we showed that the change detection phenomenon can be used to examine other areas of cognition-specifically, the processing of linguistic and indexical information in spoken words. One hypothesis suggests that cognitive resources must be used to process indexical information, whereas an alternative suggests that it is processed more slowly than linguistic information. Participants performed a lexical decision task and were asked whether the voice presenting the stimuli changed. Nonwords varying in their likeness to real words were used in the lexical decision task to encourage participants to vary the amount of cognitive resources/processing time. More cognitive resources/processing time are required to make a lexical decision with word-like nonwords. Participants who heard word-like nonwords were more likely to detect the change when it occurred (Experiment 1) and were more confident that the voice was the same when it did not change (Experiment 2). These results suggest that indexical information is processed more slowly than linguistic information and demonstrate how change detection can provide insight to other areas of cognition.	t	\N
21681660	Two experiments examined whether perceptual recovery from Korean consonant-cluster simplification is based on language-specific phonological knowledge. In tri-consonantal C1C2C3 sequences such as /lkt/ and /lpt/ in Seoul Korean, either C1 or C2 can be completely deleted. Seoul Koreans monitored for C2 targets (/p/ or / k/, deleted or preserved) in the second word of a two-word phrase with an underlying /l/-C2-/t/ sequence. In Experiment 1 the target-bearing words had contextual lexical-semantic support. Listeners recovered deleted targets as fast and as accurately as preserved targets with both Word and Intonational Phrase (IP) boundaries between the two words. In Experiment 2, contexts were low-pass filtered. Listeners were still able to recover deleted targets as well as preserved targets in IP-boundary contexts, but better with physically-present targets than with deleted targets in Word-boundary contexts. This suggests that the benefit of having target acoustic-phonetic information emerges only when higher-order (contextual and phrase-boundary) information is not available. The strikingly efficient recovery of deleted phonemes with neither acoustic-phonetic cues nor contextual support demonstrates that language-specific phonological knowledge, rather than language-universal perceptual processes which rely on fine-grained phonetic details, is employed when the listener perceives the results of a continuous-speech process in which reduction is phonetically complete.	t	\N
21682395	The perceived negative influence of standard hearing protectors on communication is a common argument for not wearing them. Thus, "augmented" protectors have been developed to improve speech intelligibility. Nevertheless, their actual benefit remains a point of concern. In this paper, speech perception with active earplugs is compared to standard passive custom-made earplugs. The two types of active protectors included amplify the incoming sound with a fixed level or to a user selected fraction of the maximum safe level. For the latter type, minimal and maximal amplification are selected. To compare speech intelligibility, 20 different speech-in-noise fragments are presented to 60 normal-hearing subjects and speech recognition is scored. The background noise is selected from realistic industrial noise samples with different intensity, frequency, and temporal characteristics. Statistical analyses suggest that the protectors' performance strongly depends on the noise condition. The active protectors with minimal amplification outclass the others for the most difficult and the easiest situations, but they also limit binaural listening. In other conditions, the passive protectors clearly surpass their active counterparts. Subsequently, test fragments are analyzed acoustically to clarify the results. This provides useful information for developing prototypes, but also indicates that tests with human subjects remain essential.	t	\N
21682407	When a test sound consisting of pure tones with equal intensities is preceded by a precursor sound identical to the test sound except for a reduction in the intensity of one tone, an auditory "enhancement" phenomenon occurs: In the test sound, the tone which was previously softer stands out perceptually. Here, enhancement was investigated using inharmonic sounds made up of five pure tones well resolved in the auditory periphery. It was found that enhancement can be elicited not only by increases in intensity but also by shifts in frequency. In both cases, when the precursor and test sounds are separated by a 500-ms delay, inserting a burst of pink noise during the delay has little effect on enhancement. Presenting the precursor and test sounds to opposite ears rather than to the same ear significantly reduces the enhancement resulting from increases in intensity, but not the enhancement resulting from shifts in frequency. This difference suggests that the mechanisms of enhancement are not identical for the two types of change. For frequency shifts, enhancement may be partly based on the existence of automatic "frequency-shift detectors" [Demany and Ramos, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 117, 833-841 (2005)].	t	\N
21688937	Cross-modal temporal recalibration describes a shift in the point of subjective simultaneity (PSS) between 2 events following repeated exposure to asynchronous cross-modal inputs--the adaptors. Previous research suggested that audiovisual recalibration is insensitive to the spatial relationship between the adaptors. Here we show that audiovisual recalibration can be driven by cross-modal spatial grouping. Twelve participants adapted to alternating trains of lights and tones. Spatial position was manipulated, with alternating sequences of a light then a tone, or a tone then a light, presented on either side of fixation (e.g., left tone--left light--right tone--right light, etc.). As the events were evenly spaced in time, in the absence of spatial-based grouping it would be unclear if tones were leading or lagging lights. However, any grouping of spatially colocalized cross-modal events would result in an unambiguous sense of temporal order. We found that adapting to these stimuli caused the PSS between subsequent lights and tones to shift toward the temporal relationship implied by spatial-based grouping. These data therefore show that temporal recalibration is facilitated by spatial grouping.	t	\N
21689988	Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D major, K.448 (Mozart K.448), has been shown to improve mental function, leading to what is known as the Mozart Effect. Our previous work revealed that epileptiform discharges in children with epilepsy decrease during and right after listening to Mozart K.448. However, the duration of the effect was not studied. In the study described here, we evaluated the long-term effect of Mozart K.448 on epileptiform discharges in children with epilepsy. Eighteen children with epilepsy whose seizures were clinically well controlled with antiepileptic drugs were included. For each child, EEGs had revealed persistent epileptiform discharges for at least 6 months. These patients listened to Mozart K.448 for 8 minutes once a day before bedtime for 6 months. Epileptiform discharges were recorded and compared before and after 1, 2, and 6 months of listening to Mozart K.448. All of the children remained on the same antiepileptic drug over the 6 months. Relationships between number of epileptiform discharges and foci of discharges, intelligence, epilepsy etiology, age, and gender were analyzed. Epileptiform discharges significantly decreased by 53.2±47.4, 64.4±47.1, and 71.6±45.8%, respectively, after listening to Mozart K.448 for 1, 2, and 6 months. All patients except those with occipital discharges showed a significant decrease in epileptiform discharges. Patients with normal intelligence and idiopathic epilepsy had greater decreases than those with mental retardation and symptomatic epilepsy. Age and gender did not affect the results. We conclude that long-term listening to Mozart K.448 may be effective in decreasing epileptiform discharges in children with epilepsy in a chronologically progressive manner.	t	\N
21700953	We previously reported that fast-moving dot arrays cause orientation-tuned masking of static gratings (D. Apthorp, J. Cass, & D. Alais, 2010), which we attribute to "motion streaks." Using similar "streaky" dot motion, we describe spatial frequency tuning of grating threshold elevations caused by masking (Experiment 1) and adaptation (Experiment 2) to motion. To compare the streaks with psychophysical tunings, we Fourier analyzed time-averaged translating dots, which were bandpass (peaking at ∼2.3 c/deg). Masking, however, was strongest at lower test frequencies (≤1 c/deg) and largely isotropic over orientation, although a small orientation-tuned effect occurred at ∼1.2 c/deg. Results were broadly similar across monoptic and dichoptic conditions. Adaptation to fast motion produced spatially bandpass threshold elevations for parallel test gratings, peaking slightly lower than the peak Fourier frequency, with little elevation below 1 c/deg (unlike the low-pass elevation resulting from masking). Slow adaptation produced little elevation for parallel gratings. For orthogonal test gratings, fast motion adaptation produced low-pass threshold elevations and slow motion produced bandpass elevations, suggesting that separable mechanisms process fast (streaky) and slow motion. The different threshold elevation patterns over spatial frequency for masking and adaptation suggest that the adaptation effects are mainly within-channel suppression, whereas the masking effects may be mainly due to between-channel suppression.	t	\N
21717096	The ocular vestibular evoked myogenic potential (oVEMP) is a relatively new method used to assess otolith-ocular pathways in humans. When elicited using air-conducted (AC) sound stimulation, the oVEMP is thought to reflect mostly saccular activation. However, it has been recently suggested that utricular afferents may also contribute to the AC evoked oVEMP. While previous frequency tuning studies of the AC evoked oVEMP report predominately high frequency sensitivity (>400 Hz), few have included the lower frequencies (<200 Hz) at which it has been proposed the utricle is most sensitive. In this study, ten normal subjects were stimulated with AC sound delivered unilaterally using headphones over frequencies from 50 to 1,200 Hz at a near constant A-weighted intensity of 120 dB peak sound pressure level. For AC stimulation, the oVEMP demonstrated maximum amplitudes around 600 Hz, with a second, smaller peak occurring around 100 Hz. The AC evoked oVEMP tuning has two peaks, a dominant one consistent with excitation of the saccule and a smaller one consistent with excitation of the utricle.	t	\N
21724369	In spite of voice being an important parameter of mate choice, none of the studies have described the acoustic characteristics of the sexually appealing voice. Two hundred adults (100 men and 100 women) in the age range of 18-24 years were asked to narrate a topic, which was recorded directly onto Computerized Speech Lab (CSL) 6103 hardware. Recorded stimuli were presented to the six judges, and they were asked to indicate if the voice is sexually appealing on a five-point rating scale. The voices, which are consistently identified as sexually very attractive and unattractive were subjected to cepstral analysis through CSL. The results of perceptual analysis revealed that 28 of the female voice samples and 39 of the male voice samples were rated as sexually attractive. These ratings were consistent within and across the judges. The cepstral analysis was then performed in all the voice samples and the results of independent t test revealed higher values of cepstral peak parameter (CPP) in the sexually attractive voices in comparison to the other voice samples in both the genders. The obtained results are discussed with respect to the harmonic organization in the voice samples. The results of cepstral analysis in sexually attractive voices revealed higher values of CPP in comparison to the voices rated as sexually not appealing. This could be because of the presence of well-defined harmonic structure evidenced in the sexually appealing voice in comparison to voices rated as very unappealing. Our findings suggest that cepstral analysis is a good indicator of sexually appealing voice.	t	\N
21728456	Cognitive control resolves conflicts between appropriate and inappropriate response tendencies. Is this achieved by a unitary all-purpose conflict control system, or do independent subsystems deal with different aspects of conflicting information? In a fully factorial hybrid prime-Simon task, participants responded to the identity of targets displayed at different nominally irrelevant screen locations, preceded by nominally irrelevant, consciously or nonconsciously perceived primes. The response required by the target's identity could match or mismatch (a) the target's location, and (b) the prime's identity, resulting in potential conflict (a) across and (b) within stimulus domains. Conflict effects were investigated within and across trials. Results suggest that (i) nonconsciously perceived information elicits within-trial control, but--unlike consciously perceived information--no across-trial behavioral modulation; (ii) separate subsystems deal with conflicts arising from different stimulus domains; and (iii) occasional apparent interactions between domains reflect a particular difficulty in reactivating a just-discarded response (reactivation aversion effect, RAE).	t	\N
21728464	Increasing perceptual load reduces the processing of visual stimuli outside the focus of attention, but the mechanism underlying these effects remains unclear. Here we tested an account attributing the effects of perceptual load to modulations of visual cortex excitability. In contrast to stimulus competition accounts, which propose that load should affect simultaneous, but not sequential, stimulus presentations, the visual excitability account makes the novel prediction that load should affect detection sensitivity for both simultaneous and sequential presentations. Participants fixated a stimulus stream, responding to targets defined by either a color (low load) or color and orientation conjunctions (high load). Additionally, detection sensitivity was measured for a peripheral critical stimulus (CS) presented occasionally. Increasing load at fixation reduced sensitivity to the peripheral CSs; this effect was similar regardless of whether CSs were presented simultaneously with central stimuli or during the (otherwise empty) interval between them. Controls ruled out explanations of the results in terms of strategic task prioritization. These findings support a cortical excitability account for perceptual load, challenging stimulus competition accounts.	t	\N
21729437	To describe the effect of age and noise on high frequency hearing thresholds in an Italian population aged 70 years and older, in order to investigate the interaction between presbycusis and noise exposure. We compared 460 subjects: 367 affected by presbycusis alone (204 women and 163 men) and 93 affected by presbycusis and noise exposure (eight women and 85 men). Pure tone average hearing thresholds, for each ear, were compared between groups, and between sexes and ages within groups. A slight threshold difference was found between the two groups at 4 kHz. After adjusting for age and gender, this difference was found to be related only to differing patient age. Men's and women's thresholds differed significantly in both groups, especially at high frequencies, at which threshold deterioration was worse in men than women. The threshold differences between patients with presbycusis with and without noise exposure were limited. Larger studies are needed to assess the relative effects of ageing and noise exposure on hearing thresholds.	t	\N
21750713	In the present study we investigated the capacity of the memory store underlying the mismatch negativity (MMN) response in musicians and nonmusicians for complex tone patterns. While previous studies have focused either on the kind of information that can be encoded or on the decay of the memory trace over time, we studied capacity in terms of the length of tone sequences, i.e., the number of individual tones that can be fully encoded and maintained. By means of magnetoencephalography (MEG) we recorded MMN responses to deviant tones that could occur at any position of standard tone patterns composed of four, six or eight tones during passive, distracted listening. Whereas there was a reliable MMN response to deviant tones in the four-tone pattern in both musicians and nonmusicians, only some individuals showed MMN responses to the longer patterns. This finding of a reliable capacity of the short-term auditory store underlying the MMN response is in line with estimates of a three to five item capacity of the short-term memory trace from behavioural studies, although pitch and contour complexity covaried with sequence length, which might have led to an understatement of the reported capacity. Whereas there was a tendency for an enhancement of the pattern MMN in musicians compared to nonmusicians, a strong advantage for musicians could be shown in an accompanying behavioural task of detecting the deviants while attending to the stimuli for all pattern lengths, indicating that long-term musical training differentially affects the memory capacity of auditory short-term memory for complex tone patterns with and without attention. Also, a left-hemispheric lateralization of MMN responses in the six-tone pattern suggests that additional networks that help structuring the patterns in the temporal domain might be recruited for demanding auditory processing in the pitch domain.	t	\N
21755126	To assess the difficulty of paced auditory serial addition test (PASAT) in a population of high intellectual level, under ideal cognitive testing circumstances. One hundred medical students underwent PASAT testing. They had slept well the night before, they had eaten before the assessment, they were not using any drugs that could affect the central nervous system and they did not have depression, anxiety or any chronic disease. The average result from the three-second version of PASAT was 57.5% and, from the two-second version, it was 44.3%. Even under ideal circumstances, PASAT is a very difficult test for the general population. It may not be ideal for neurologists to screen, assess and follow up patients with cognitive function in multiple sclerosis.	t	\N
21762032	Reaction times for categorization of a probe face according to its sex or fame were contrasted as a function of whether the category of a preceding, sandwich-masked prime face was congruent or incongruent. Prime awareness was measured by the ability to later categorize the primes, and this was close to chance and typically uncorrelated with priming. When prime faces were never presented as visible probes within a test, priming was not reliable; when prime faces were also seen as probes, priming was only reliable if visible and masked presentation of faces were interleaved (not simply if primes had been visible in a previous session). In the latter case, priming was independent of experimentally induced face-response or face-category contingencies, ruling out any simple form of stimulus-response learning. We conclude that the reliable masked congruency priming reflects bindings between stimuli and multiple, abstract classifications that can be generated both overtly and covertly.	t	\N
21762876	Schizophrenia patients have vocal affect (prosody) deficits that are treatment resistant and associated with negative symptoms and poor outcome. The neural correlates of this dysfunction are unclear. Prior study has suggested that schizophrenia vocal affect perception deficits stem from an inability to use acoustic cues, notably pitch, in decoding emotion. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was performed in 24 schizophrenia patients and 28 healthy control subjects, during the performance of a four-choice (happiness, fear, anger, neutral) vocal affect identification task in which items for each emotion varied parametrically in affective salient acoustic cue levels. We observed that parametric increases in cue levels in schizophrenia failed to produce the same identification rate increases as in control subjects. These deficits correlated with diminished reciprocal activation changes in superior temporal and inferior frontal gyri and reduced temporo-frontal connectivity. Task activation also correlated with independent measures of pitch perception and negative symptom severity. These findings illustrate the interplay between sensory and higher-order cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia. Sensory contributions to vocal affect deficits also suggest that this neurobehavioral marker could be targeted by pharmacological or behavioral remediation of acoustic feature discrimination.	t	\N
21765387	To compare hearing results in patients undergoing ossiculoplasty using either partial ossicular replacement prosthesis (PORP) or total ossicular replacement prosthesis (TORP) with Silastic banding and malleus relocation techniques in cases with malleus and stapes both present and mobile. Prospective nonrandomized clinical study. Tertiary referral center. Five hundred eighty-five patients undergoing ossiculoplasty were enrolled in this study from April 1991 to May 2010. Comparative analyses were made between a group of 304 patients who underwent ossiculoplasty with partial prosthesis positioned from the malleus to the stapes head and 281 patients who underwent ossiculoplasty with total prosthesis positioned from the malleus to the stapes footplate. Preoperative and postoperative audiometric evaluation using conventional audiometry, that is, air-bone gap (ABG), bone-conduction thresholds, and air-conduction thresholds were assessed. In the PORP group, the mean postoperative ABG was 13.1 dB compared with 8.9 dB in the TORP group, (95% confidence interval [CI], 2.2-6.2 dB; p ≤ 0.001). Fifty-four percent of patients from the PORP group had a postoperative ABG of 10 dB or less, compared with 68.9% in the TORP group (mean difference, 14.6%; 95% CI, 6%-23%; p < 0.001). The postoperative ABG was closed to within 20 dB in 70.4% of cases in the PORP group compared with 86.9% in the TORP group (mean difference, 14.5%; 95% CI, 10%-23%; p < 0.001). In patients with an absent incus and intact stapes and malleus, ossicular reconstruction with TORP combined with our malleus relocation and Silastic banding technique results in significantly better hearing outcomes compared with reconstructions with PORP.	t	\N
21767048	The urge to move in response to music, combined with the positive affect associated with the coupling of sensory and motor processes while engaging with music (referred to as sensorimotor coupling) in a seemingly effortless way, is commonly described as the feeling of being in the groove. Here, we systematically explore this compelling phenomenon in a population of young adults. We utilize multiple levels of analysis, comprising phenomenological, behavioral, and computational techniques. Specifically, we show (a) that the concept of the groove is widely appreciated and understood in terms of a pleasurable drive toward action, (b) that a broad range of musical excerpts can be appraised reliably for the degree of perceived groove, (c) that the degree of experienced groove is inversely related to experienced difficulty of bimanual sensorimotor coupling under tapping regimes with varying levels of expressive constraint, (d) that high-groove stimuli elicit spontaneous rhythmic movements, and (e) that quantifiable measures of the quality of sensorimotor coupling predict the degree of experienced groove. Our results complement traditional discourse regarding the groove, which has tended to take the psychological phenomenon for granted and has focused instead on the musical and especially the rhythmic qualities of particular genres of music that lead to the perception of groove. We conclude that groove can be treated as a psychological construct and model system that allows for experimental exploration of the relationship between sensorimotor coupling with music and emotion.	t	\N
21786896	The form of the psychometric function (PF) for auditory frequency discrimination is of theoretical interest and practical importance. In this study, PFs for pure-tone frequency discrimination were measured for several standard frequencies (200-8000 Hz) and levels [35-85 dB sound pressure level (SPL)] in normal-hearing listeners. The proportion-correct data were fitted using a cumulative-Gaussian function of the sensitivity index, d', computed as a power transformation of the frequency difference, Δf. The exponent of the power function corresponded to the slope of the PF on log(d')-log(Δf) coordinates. The influence of attentional lapses on PF-slope estimates was investigated. When attentional lapses were not taken into account, the estimated PF slopes on log(d')-log(Δf) coordinates were found to be significantly lower than 1, suggesting a nonlinear relationship between d' and Δf. However, when lapse rate was included as a free parameter in the fits, PF slopes were found not to differ significantly from 1, consistent with a linear relationship between d' and Δf. This was the case across the wide ranges of frequencies and levels tested in this study. Therefore, spectral and temporal models of frequency discrimination must account for a linear relationship between d' and Δf across a wide range of frequencies and levels.	t	\N
21787870	Repetition has been shown to activate the so-called 'dorsal stream', a network of temporo-parieto-frontal areas subserving the mapping of acoustic speech input onto articulatory-motor representations. Among these areas, a region in the posterior Sylvian fissure at the temporo-parietal boundary (also called 'area Spt') has been suggested to play a central role particularly with increasing computational demands on phonological processing. Most of the relevant evidence stems from tasks requiring metalinguistic processing. To date, the relevance of area Spt in natural phonological operations based on implicit linguistic knowledge has not yet been investigated. We examined two types of phonological processes assumed to be lateralized differently, i.e., the processing of syllabic stress versus subsyllabic segmental processing. In two ways, subjects modified an auditorily presented pseudoword before reproducing it overtly: (a) by a prosodic manipulation involving a stress shift across syllable boundaries, (b) by a segmental manipulation involving a vowel substitution. Manipulation per se was expected to engage area Spt. Segmental compared to prosodic processing was expected to reveal predominantly left lateralized activation, while prosodic compared to segmental processing was expected to result in bilateral or right-lateralized activation. Contrary to expectation, activation in area Spt did not vary with increased phonological processing demand. Instead, area Spt was engaged regardless of whether subjects simply repeated a pseudoword or performed a phonological manipulation before reproduction. However, for both segmental and prosodic stimuli, reproduction after manipulation (compared to repetition) activated the left intraparietal sulcus and left inferior frontal cortex. We propose that these parieto-frontal regions are recruited when the task requires phonological manipulation over and above the more automated transfer of auditory into articulatory verbal codes, which appears to involve area Spt. When directly contrasted with prosodic manipulation, segmental manipulation resulted in increased activation predominantly in left inferior frontal areas. This may be due to an increased demand on phonological sequencing operations at the subsyllabic phoneme level. Contrasted with segmental manipulations, prosodic manipulation did not result in increased activation, which may be due to a lower degree of morphosyntactic and to syllable-level processing.	t	\N
21792976	To evaluate vestibular function in patients with the mitochondrial A3243G mutation. Data from patients with the A3243G mutation attending an academic tertiary referral center were prospectively recorded. The clinical histories of 13 unrelated patients with the mitochondrial A3243G mutation (six mitochondrial encephalomyopathy, lactic acidosis, and stroke-like episodes; and seven maternally inherited diabetes and deafness) were recorded, in particular their history of vestibular symptoms. Vestibular examinations including caloric testing and vestibular evoked myogenic potentials in response to air-conducted sound (ACS-VEMPs) were performed. In seven patients who showed abnormal ACS-VEMP, VEMP in response to galvanic stimuli (galvanic-VEMP) were also recorded. Eleven of the 13 patients had vestibular symptoms. The age of onset of vestibular symptoms was significantly later than the ages of onset of hearing loss and diabetes mellitus (P < .05). Ten of the 13 patients showed abnormal caloric responses, whereas 12 patients showed abnormal ACS-VEMPs on one or both sides. All of the seven patients who underwent galvanic-VEMP testing showed normal responses. The A3243G mutation is associated with vestibular dysfunction involving both the superior and inferior vestibular nerve systems. Furthermore, our results from galvanic-VEMP testing suggests that a labyrinthine lesion is primarily responsible for the symptoms of vestibular dysfunction.	t	\N
21812557	Several perspectives on speech perception posit a central role for the representation of articulations in speech comprehension, supported by evidence for premotor activation when participants listen to speech. However, no experiments have directly tested whether motor responses mirror the profile of selective auditory cortical responses to native speech sounds or whether motor and auditory areas respond in different ways to sounds. We used fMRI to investigate cortical responses to speech and nonspeech mouth (ingressive click) sounds. Speech sounds activated bilateral superior temporal gyri more than other sounds, a profile not seen in motor and premotor cortices. These results suggest that there are qualitative differences in the ways that temporal and motor areas are activated by speech and click sounds: Anterior temporal lobe areas are sensitive to the acoustic or phonetic properties, whereas motor responses may show more generalized responses to the acoustic stimuli.	t	\N
21812560	Complex auditory exposures in ambient environments include systems of not only linguistic but also musical sounds. Because musical exposure is often passive, consisting of listening rather than performing, examining listeners without formal musical training allows for the investigation of the effects of passive exposure on our nervous system without active use. Additionally, studying listeners who have exposure to more than one musical system allows for an evaluation of how the brain acquires multiple symbolic and communicative systems. In the present fMRI study, listeners who had been exposed to Western-only (monomusicals) and both Indian and Western musical systems (bimusicals) since childhood and did not have significant formal musical training made tension judgments on Western and Indian music. Significant group by music interactions in temporal and limbic regions were found, with effects predominantly driven by between-music differences in temporal regions in the monomusicals and by between-music differences in limbic regions in the bimusicals. Effective connectivity analysis of this network via structural equation modeling (SEM) showed significant path differences across groups and music conditions, most notably a higher degree of connectivity and larger differentiation between the music conditions within the bimusicals. SEM was also used to examine the relationships among the degree of music exposure, affective responses, and activation in various brain regions. Results revealed a more complex behavioral-neural relationship in the bimusicals, suggesting that affective responses in this group are shaped by multiple behavioral and neural factors. These three lines of evidence suggest a clear differentiation of the effects of the exposure of one versus multiple musical systems.	t	\N
21812631	To determine administration times for word recognition presented via monitored live voice (MLV) and compact disc (CD) recordings. A quasi-experimental design was used. Fifty-word NU-6 lists were presented in three conditions: (1) MLV, (2) short ISI CD recording, and (3) long ISI CD recording. Listeners with normal hearing (NH) and hearing impairment (HI) participated in this study. Average administration time using MLV was significantly shorter than using recorded word lists for both groups of listeners. MLV presentation to the NH listeners was significantly faster than the MLV presentation to the HI listeners. There were no significant differences between groups in the administration times for any of the recorded lists (long or short ISI). Considerably more variability in administration time was observed for MLV presentation compared to recorded presentations. MLV presentation was about one minute faster than the shortest CD recording of the NU-6 fifty-item word lists, but it was only 49 seconds quicker when administering tests to individuals with hearing loss. Because the majority of our patients are hearing impaired, the difference of 49 seconds is not clinically significant. This difference is even less when 25-item word lists are used.	t	\N
21812635	The objective of this study was to evaluate hearing loss among workers exposed to styrene, alone or with noise. This cross-sectional study was conducted as part of NoiseChem, a European Commission 5th Framework Programme research project, by occupational health institutes in Finland, Sweden, and Poland. Participants' ages ranged from 18-72 years (n = 1620 workers). Participants exposed to styrene, alone or with noise, were from reinforced fiberglass products manufacturing plants (n = 862). Comparison groups were comprised of workers noise-exposed (n = 400) or controls (n = 358). Current styrene exposures ranged from 0 to 309 mg/m(3), while mean current noise levels ranged from 70-84 dB(A). Hearing thresholds of styrene-exposed participants were compared with Annexes A and B from ANSI S3.44, 1996. The audiometric thresholds of styrene exposed workers were significantly poorer than those in published standards. Age, gender, and styrene exposure met the significance level criterion in the multiple logistic regression for the binary outcome 'hearing loss' (P = 0.0000). Exposure to noise (<85 dBA p = 0.0001; ≥85 dB(A) p = 0.0192) interacted significantly with styrene exposure. Occupational exposure to styrene is a risk factor for hearing loss, and styrene-exposed workers should be included in hearing loss prevention programs.	t	\N
21817926	Recent studies have shown that audiovisual synchrony is recalibrated after exposure to asynchronous auditory and visual signals. This temporal recalibration has been shown only under a dual-task situation for speech signals. Here we examined whether the temporal recalibration occurs for audiovisual speech in a single-task situation using an offline adaptation method. In the experiment, participants were exposed to synchronous or asynchronous audiovisual syllables (either congruent or incongruent) for 3 min. The adaptation phase was followed by test trials, in which participants judged whether the auditory or visual stimulus was presented first. Results showed shifts in the point of subjective simultaneity and the sensitivity. Our results suggest that attention to adaptation stimuli is necessary to induce temporal recalibration for speech.	t	\N
21824022	Attentional bias to threatening visual stimuli (words or pictures) is commonly present in anxious individuals, but not in non-anxious people. There is evidence to show that attentional bias to threat can be induced in all individuals when threat is imposed by threat not of symbolic nature, but by cues that predict aversive stimulation (loud noise or electric shock). However, it is not known whether attentional bias in such situations is still influenced by individual differences in anxiety. This question was addressed in two experiments using a spatial cuing task in which visual cues predicted the occurrence of an aversive event consisting of a loud human scream. Speeded attentional engagement to threat cues was positively correlated with trait anxiety in Experiment 1. Experiment 2 showed that speeded attentional engagement was present only in participants selected for high anxiety but not in low-anxious participants. In both experiments, slower disengagement from threat cues was found in all participants, irrespective of their trait anxiety levels.	t	\N
21826005	Reduced hearing ability has been shown to influence various aspects of daily life, such as communication, psychosocial functioning, and working life. The aim of this study is to examine the association between hearing ability in noise and both sick leave and self-reported work productivity. In addition, the relationship between hearing ability and perceived health-caused limitations at work is examined. Data were collected at the baseline measurement of the Dutch "National Longitudinal Study on Hearing" and at each month during a subsequent period of 3 mo. Hearing ability was determined by means of the National Hearing Test, a speech-in-noise test over the Internet using digit triplets. The sample comprised 748 workers (385 with normal hearing ability and 363 with insufficient or poor hearing ability). Linear regression analyses revealed a significant adverse association between reduced hearing ability and self-reported absolute and differential productivity; for every dB signal-to-noise ratio (dB SNR) poorer hearing ability, self-rated absolute productivity for people experiencing little social support decreased by 0.054 points on a scale from 0 to 10 (b = -0.054; 95% confidence interval [CI] = -0.088 to -0.02). For people with less than three other chronic conditions, self-rated differential productivity also decreased significantly with decreasing hearing ability (no chronic conditions: b = -0.048 points/dB SNR on a scale from -10 to + 10, 95% CI = -0.094 to -0.001; one or two other chronic conditions: b = -0.035 points/dB SNR, 95% CI = -0.067 to -0.002). With adjustment for confounders, poorer hearing ability in noise furthermore significantly increased the odds for experiencing limitations (in the type or amount of work one could do) sometimes (odds ratio = 1.14; 95% CI = 1.07-1.21) and often to very often (odds ratio = 1.24; 95% CI = 1.05-1.45) in comparison with experiencing limitation seldom to never. A higher level of need for recovery among people with poorer hearing ability appeared to be one of the factors mediating the higher odds for sick leave of more than 5 days. Reduced hearing ability in noise was significantly associated with a lower self-reported absolute and differential productivity in specific cases. Also, poorer hearing increased the odds for experiencing health-caused limitations in the type or amount of work one can do. The significant relationship between hearing ability and sick leave, which was found when not adjusting for confounders, could partly be explained by a higher need for recovery among people with reduced hearing ability in noise.	t	\N
21832862	To investigate interactions (if any) in the bone-conduction auditory steady-state response (BC ASSR) between multiple brief tones presented simultaneously. 500-, 1,000-, 2,000-, and 4,000-Hz brief tones, repeated at a rate of 77-101 Hz, were presented using a B-71 vibrator. BC ASSR thresholds and amplitudes at 50 dB nHL were measured in two conditions where the stimulus was either presented alone or together with other stimuli. Significantly larger amplitudes in the single-stimulus condition were found at 50 dB nHL. However, there was no significant threshold difference between single- and multiple-stimulus conditions. The BC ASSR thresholds (means ± SD) at 500, 1,000, 2,000, and 4,000 Hz were 96.7 ± 9.7, 75.3 ± 11.5, 65.6 ± 7.4, and 57.8 ± 7.2 dB re 1 μN ppe, respectively. Interactions occurred in the multiple-stimulus condition at high presentation levels, but not at threshold levels. The results of the present study imply that BC ASSR thresholds to multiple brief-tone stimuli can be assessed at the same time, at least in normal-hearing adults.	t	\N
21832892	This report focuses on how speech perception, speech production, language, and literacy performance in adolescence are influenced by a common set of predictor variables obtained during elementary school in a large group of teenagers using cochlear implants (CIs). Time-lag analyses incorporating seven common predictor variables associated with the elementary school test period were evaluated. The elementary school-age variables included five contributors across the performance domains: gender, performance intelligence quotient, family size, socioeconomic status, and duration of deafness (operationally defined as the time period between the age of implantation and the onset of deafness). Regression analyses then examined how communication mode in early elementary grades influenced skills exhibited in high school and how this influence was mediated by information capacity of immediate memory. High correlations occurred between outcome measures collected at CI-E session and similar measures collected at CI-HS (values ranging from 0.75 to 0.83), indicating that the relative standing of individuals on these outcomes is highly stable over time. The best performers in elementary grades exhibit the best outcomes in high school, and early difficulties tend to persist throughout the elementary and high school years. The most highly related outcome areas were language and reading/literacy (values ranging from 0.74 to 0.88). These skills seem closely linked, and CI children who demonstrate the best vocabulary and syntax skills in elementary grades achieved the highest literacy performance in high school. Speech perception and speech production skills are also highly correlated with one another (r = 0.69 to 0.87), suggesting that the most direct result of improved auditory input from a CI is the child's ability to produce intelligible speech. The lowest correlations are observed between reading/literacy and speech perception (r = 0.30 to 0.54) or speech production (values ranging from 0.31 to 0.58). CI-E verbal rehearsal speed is an independent and powerful predictor of each early performance outcome, accounting for between 13% and 30% of the variance in early outcomes above and beyond that accounted for by gender, family size, socioeconomic status, performance intelligence quotient, duration of deafness, and the CI-E sign enhancement ratio. Group mean scores for language, reading, and social adjustment were generally within an SD of normative samples of typically developing age-mates with normal hearing. Use of sign to enhance spoken communication negatively influenced verbal rehearsal speed, which was a strong predictor of all early outcomes, which in turn strongly influenced later outcomes. These analyses suggest that early communication mode exerts a powerful influence on early outcomes that persist into later years. Speech perception, speech intelligibility, language, literacy, and psychosocial adjustment far exceeded that reported for similar groups before the advent of CI technology.	t	\N
21835531	Behavioral and neurophysiological transfer effects from music experience to language processing are well-established but it is currently unclear whether or not linguistic expertise (e.g., speaking a tone language) benefits music-related processing and its perception. Here, we compare brainstem responses of English-speaking musicians/non-musicians and native speakers of Mandarin Chinese elicited by tuned and detuned musical chords, to determine if enhancements in subcortical processing translate to improvements in the perceptual discrimination of musical pitch. Relative to non-musicians, both musicians and Chinese had stronger brainstem representation of the defining pitches of musical sequences. In contrast, two behavioral pitch discrimination tasks revealed that neither Chinese nor non-musicians were able to discriminate subtle changes in musical pitch with the same accuracy as musicians. Pooled across all listeners, brainstem magnitudes predicted behavioral pitch discrimination performance but considering each group individually, only musicians showed connections between neural and behavioral measures. No brain-behavior correlations were found for tone language speakers or non-musicians. These findings point to a dissociation between subcortical neurophysiological processing and behavioral measures of pitch perception in Chinese listeners. We infer that sensory-level enhancement of musical pitch information yields cognitive-level perceptual benefits only when that information is behaviorally relevant to the listener.	t	\N
21840170	This study investigates the effect of consensus training of listeners on intrarater and interrater reliability and agreement of perceptual voice analysis. The use of such training, including a reference voice sample, could be assumed to make the internal standards held in memory common and more robust, which is of great importance to reduce the variability of auditory perceptual ratings. A prospective design with testing before and after training. Thirteen students of audiologopedics served as listening subjects. The ratings were made using a multidimensional protocol with four-point equal-appearing interval scales. The stimuli consisted of text reading by authentic dysphonic patients. The consensus training for each perceptual voice parameter included (1) definition, (2) underlying physiology, (3) presentation of carefully selected sound examples representing the parameter in three different grades followed by group discussions of perceived characteristics, and (4) practical exercises including imitation to make use of the listeners' proprioception. Intrarater reliability and agreement showed a marked improvement for intermittent aphonia but not for vocal fry. Interrater reliability was high for most parameters before training with a slight increase after training. Interrater agreement showed marked increases for most voice quality parameters as a result of the training. The results support the recommendation of specific consensus training, including use of a reference voice sample material, to calibrate, equalize, and stabilize the internal standards held in memory by the listeners.	t	\N
21842332	The visible movement of a talker's face is an influential component of speech perception. However, the ability of this influence to function when large areas of the face (~50%) are covered by simple substantial occlusions, and so are not visible to the observer, has yet to be fully determined. In Experiment 1, both visual speech identification and the influence of visual speech on identifying congruent and incongruent auditory speech were investigated using displays of a whole (unoccluded) talking face and of the same face occluded vertically so that the entire left or right hemiface was covered. Both the identification of visual speech and its influence on auditory speech perception were identical across all three face displays. Experiment 2 replicated and extended these results, showing that visual and audiovisual speech perception also functioned well with other simple substantial occlusions (horizontal and diagonal). Indeed, displays in which entire upper facial areas were occluded produced performance levels equal to those obtained with unoccluded displays. Occluding entire lower facial areas elicited some impairments in performance, but visual speech perception and visual speech influences on auditory speech perception were still apparent. Finally, implications of these findings for understanding the processes supporting visual and audiovisual speech perception are discussed.	t	\N
21846981	The Nucleus Straight Research Array (SRA) cochlear implant has a new 25-mm electrode carrier designed to minimize insertion trauma, in particular allowing easy insertion via the round window. The aims of this study were to measure preoperative to postoperative benefit in terms of speech recognition in quiet and in noise in three groups of patients (electrical complement, EC; electrical stimulation, ES; electro-acoustic stimulation, EAS) with varying levels of low-frequency hearing, and to evaluate the preservation of residual hearing after implantation with the SRA cochlear implant. The study design was prospective with sequential enrolment and within-subject comparisons: 23 adult cochlear implant candidates were divided into three groups according to their level of preoperative residual hearing at 500 Hz (EC ≤50 dB; 50 dB < EAS < 80 dB; ES ≥80 dB). Monosyllabic word recognition using the SRA cochlear implant in combination with residual low-frequency hearing was assessed at 4 and 13 months after implantation. Hearing threshold levels were also monitored over time. Subjects across all three groups had significant improvements in speech recognition scores (i.e. >20 percentage points) both for listening in quiet (71% of subjects) and in noise (100% of subjects). The average score at 4 months after operation for words presented in quiet was 61.7%, and in 10 dB SNR noise 46.5%, compared to 34.4 and 10.6% preoperatively (p < 0.001). All subjects retained measurable hearing at 500 Hz in the implanted ear at 4 months after the operation; mean increases were 19, 29 and 1 dB for the EC, EAS and ES groups (n = 21). Across frequencies of 125-1000 Hz, the median increase in thresholds was 15 dB up to 13 months postoperatively (n = 15). Speech recognition performance of subjects with various levels of residual low-frequency hearing was significantly improved with the SRA cochlear implant. A high level and rate of hearing preservation was achieved with the SRA implanted using a round window surgical technique. Subjects with preoperative low-frequency hearing levels between 50 and 80 dB HL (EAS group) tended to lose more hearing than those with either better or worse hearing.	t	\N
21848924	Tinnitus is characterized by an ongoing conscious perception of a sound in the absence of any external sound source. Chronic tinnitus is notoriously characterized by its resistance to treatment. In the present study the objective was to verify whether the neural generators and/or the neural tinnitus network, evaluated through EEG recordings, change over time as previously suggested by MEG. We therefore analyzed the source-localized EEG recordings of a very homogenous group of left-sided narrow-band noise tinnitus patients. Results indicate that the generators involved in tinnitus of recent onset seem to change over time with increased activity in several brain areas [auditory cortex, supplementary motor area and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) plus insula], associated with a decrease in connectivity between the different auditory and nonauditory brain structures. An exception to this general connectivity decrease is an increase in gamma-band connectivity between the left primary and secondary auditory cortex and the left insula, and also between the auditory cortices and the right dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex. These networks are both connected to the left parahippocampal area. Thus acute and chronic tinnitus are related to differential activity and connectivity in a network comprising the auditory cortices, insula, dACC and premotor cortex.	t	\N
21849065	Segregating auditory scenes into distinct objects or streams is one of our brain's greatest perceptual challenges. Streaming has classically been studied with bistable sound stimuli, perceived alternately as a single group or two separate groups. Throughout the last decade different methodologies have yielded inconsistent evidence about the role of auditory cortex in the maintenance of streams. In particular, studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have been unable to show persistent activity within auditory cortex (AC) that distinguishes between perceptual states. We use bistable stimuli, an explicit perceptual categorization task, and a focused region of interest (ROI) analysis to demonstrate an effect of perceptual state within AC. We find that AC has more activity when listeners perceive the split percept rather than the grouped percept. In addition, within this ROI the pattern of acoustic response across voxels is significantly correlated with the pattern of perceptual modulation. In a whole-brain exploratory test, we corroborate previous work showing an effect of perceptual state in the intraparietal sulcus. Our results show that the maintenance of auditory streams is reflected in AC activity, directly relating sound responses to perception, and that perceptual state is further represented in multiple, higher level cortical regions.	t	\N
21861386	The listener-distinctive features of recognition of different emotional intonations (positive, negative and neutral) of male and female speakers in the presence or absence of background noise were studied in 49 adults aged 20-79 years. In all the listeners noise produced the most pronounced decrease in recognition accuracy for positive emotional intonation ("joy") as compared to other intonations, whereas it did not influence the recognition accuracy of "anger" in 65-79-year-old listeners. The higher emotion recognition rates of a noisy signal were observed for speech emotional intonations expressed by female speakers. Acoustic characteristics of noisy and clear speech signals underlying perception of speech emotional prosody were found for adult listeners of different age and gender.	t	\N
21862447	The distractibility that older adults experience when listening to speech in challenging conditions has been attributed in part to reduced inhibition of irrelevant information within and across sensory systems. Whereas neuroimaging studies have shown that younger adults readily suppress visual cortex activation when listening to auditory stimuli, it is unclear the extent to which declining inhibition in older adults results in reduced suppression or compensatory engagement of other sensory cortices. The current functional magnetic resonance imaging study examined the effects of age and stimulus intelligibility in a word listening task. Across all participants, auditory cortex was engaged when listening to words. However, increasing age and declining word intelligibility had independent and spatially similar effects: both were associated with increasing engagement of visual cortex. Visual cortex activation was not explained by age-related differences in vascular reactivity but rather auditory and visual cortices were functionally connected across word listening conditions. The nature of this correlation changed with age: younger adults deactivated visual cortex when activating auditory cortex, middle-aged adults showed no relation, and older adults synchronously activated both cortices. These results suggest that age and stimulus integrity are additive modulators of crossmodal suppression and activation.	t	\N
21875609	Event-related potential (ERP) evidence indicates that listeners selectively attend to word onsets in continuous speech, but the reason for this preferential processing is unknown. The current study measured ERPs elicited by syllable onsets in an artificial language to test the hypothesis that listeners direct attention to word onsets because their identity is unpredictable. Both before and after recognition training, participants listened to a continuous stream of six nonsense words arranged in pairs, such that the second word in each pair was completely predictable. After training, first words in pairs elicited a larger negativity beginning around 100 ms after onset. This effect was not evident for the completely predictable second words in pairs. These results suggest that listeners are most likely to attend to the segments in speech that they are least able to predict.	t	\N
21877811	The conventional articulation index (AI) measure cannot be applied in situations where non-linear operations are involved and additive noise is present. This is because the definitions of the target and masker signals become vague following non-linear processing, as both the target and masker signals are affected. The aim of the present work is to modify the basic form of the AI measure to account for non-linear processing. This was done using a new definition of the output or effective SNR obtained following non-linear processing. The proposed output SNR definition for a specific band was designed to handle cases where the non-linear processing affects predominantly the target signal rather than the masker signal. The proposed measure also takes into consideration the fact that the input SNR in a specific band cannot be improved following any form of non-linear processing. Overall, the proposed measure quantifies the proportion of input band SNR preserved or transmitted in each band after non-linear processing. High correlation (r = 0.9) was obtained with the proposed measure when evaluated with intelligibility scores obtained by normal-hearing listeners in 72 noisy conditions involving noise-suppressed speech corrupted in four different real-world maskers.	t	\N
21884311	Infants attune to their birth language during the second half of infancy. However, internationally adopted children are often uniquely required to attune to their birth language, and then reattune to their adoptive language. Children who were adopted from India into America at ages 6-60 months (N = 8) and had minimal further exposure to their birth languages were compared to age-matched American non-adopted controls. Without training, neither group could discriminate a phonemic contrast that occurs in their birth language but not in English. However, after training on the contrast, the adopted group (N = 8) improved significantly and discriminated the contrast more accurately than their non-adopted peers. While English had explicitly replaced the birth language of the adopted sample, traces of early exposure conferred privileges on subsequent learning. These findings are consistent with behavioral and neurophysiological data from animals that have identified some of the mechanisms underlying such a 'retention without further use' phenomenon.	t	\N
21895386	An important step in developing a theory of calibration is establishing what it is that participants become calibrated to as a result of feedback. Three experiments used a transfer of calibration paradigm to investigate this issue. In particular, these experiments investigated whether recalibration of perception of length transferred from audition to dynamic (i.e., kinesthetic) touch when objects were grasped at one end (Experiment 1), when objects were grasped at one end and when they were grasped at a different location (i.e., the middle) (Experiment 2), and when false (i.e., inflated) feedback was provided about object length (Experiment 3). In all three experiments, there was a transfer of recalibration of perception of length from audition to dynamic touch when feedback was provided on perception by audition. Such results suggest that calibration is not specific to a particular perceptual modality and are also consistent with previous research that perception of object length by audition and dynamic touch are each constrained by the object's mechanical properties.	t	\N
21898434	To determine the effect of cochlear implantation (CI) on health-related quality of life (HRQoL), tinnitus, and psychological comorbidity in patients with severe to profound postlingual hearing loss and to analyze the relationship between these parameters. Prospective study. Using six validated questionnaires, we evaluated the pre-CI and post-CI scores of HRQoL, tinnitus, perceived stress, symptoms of depression and anxiety, and coping strategies in 43 patients implanted unilaterally with a multichannel implant for at least 6 months. In addition to improvements in hearing, speech understanding, and disease-specific HRQoL, psychological comorbidity was reduced and coping strategies were improved following CI. In the 39 tinnitus patients, their tinnitus was reduced. We found negative correlations between HRQoL and stress, depression, and anxiety. Pre-CI, tinnitus severity did not correlate with HRQoL and psychological comorbidity. However, patients with a high-level tinnitus had lower HRQoL as well as a higher level of perceived stress and anxiety symptoms than patients with a low-level tinnitus and no/incidental tinnitus before CI. Moreover, patients with severe hearing loss had a higher level of perceived symptoms of stress and depression than patients with profound hearing loss before CI. The present study provides evidence that tinnitus and psychological comorbidity may play an important role in the rehabilitation of CI patients, and that there is a correlation between HRQoL and these parameters. In addition to hearing tests, tinnitus, stress, and psychological comorbidity should be assessed using validated questionnaires before and after CI. This will help to improve the rehabilitation process.	t	\N
21902007	The purpose of the present study was to see if 7-10-year-old socially anxious children (n = 26) made systematic errors in identifying and sending emotions in facial expressions, paralanguage, and postures as compared with the more random errors of children who were inattentive-hyperactive (n = 21). It was found that socially anxious children made more errors in identifying anger and fear in children's facial expressions and anger in adults' postures and in expressing anger in their own facial expressions than did their inattentive-hyperactive peers. Results suggest that there may be systematic difficulties specifically in visual nonverbal emotion communication that contribute to the personal and social difficulties socially anxious children experience.	t	\N
21902880	In visual competition, the perception of ambiguous visual patterns changes spontaneously. Although the process causing this perceptual alternation remains unclear, recent evidence suggests various types of non-visual influences in resolving visual ambiguity. In the present study, we investigated cross-modal modulation of a transient stimulus on visual perceptual stability (i.e., alternation frequency). Participants observed an ambiguous visual figure and reported their perceptual alternations. Concurrently, we presented visual and auditory transient events. The results revealed that the auditory as well as visual transient events destabilize the current perception (i.e., they increase alternation frequency) around 0.5-1.5 s after the event. In addition, the magnitudes of auditory and visual effects were comparable and positively correlated within participants. These results suggest that the visual perceptual stability can be under the influence of processes that are shared by different senses.	t	\N
21903084	Rainstorms, insect swarms, and galloping horses produce "sound textures"--the collective result of many similar acoustic events. Sound textures are distinguished by temporal homogeneity, suggesting they could be recognized with time-averaged statistics. To test this hypothesis, we processed real-world textures with an auditory model containing filters tuned for sound frequencies and their modulations, and measured statistics of the resulting decomposition. We then assessed the realism and recognizability of novel sounds synthesized to have matching statistics. Statistics of individual frequency channels, capturing spectral power and sparsity, generally failed to produce compelling synthetic textures; however, combining them with correlations between channels produced identifiable and natural-sounding textures. Synthesis quality declined if statistics were computed from biologically implausible auditory models. The results suggest that sound texture perception is mediated by relatively simple statistics of early auditory representations, presumably computed by downstream neural populations. The synthesis methodology offers a powerful tool for their further investigation.	t	\N
21904250	The diversion of attention from a primary goal by irrelevant events is known as attention capture, and is often followed by a directed action. The hypothesis that corticospinal excitability is modulated by attention capture was tested using transcranial magnetic stimulation. Participants watched a video while sounds were intermittently presented. Motor evoked potentials (MEPs) were elicited in each hand using transcranial magnetic stimulation 1 s after sound onset. MEP amplitudes were assessed as a function of hand (dominant, nondominant), sound location (ipsilateral or contralateral to hand location), and sound sample valence (negative, neutral, positive). Results showed that MEP amplitudes increased during sound presentation, but only for the dominant hand. There were no effects of location or emotional valence. The selective modulation of the dominant hand motor cortex may indicate that auditory events can prime the preferred hand for action.	t	\N
21909974	A key requirement for encoding the auditory environment is the ability to dynamically alter cochlear sensitivity. However, merely attaining a steady state of maximal sensitivity is not a viable solution since the sensory cells and ganglion cells of the cochlea are prone to damage following exposure to loud sound. Most often, such damage is via initial metabolic insult that can lead to cellular death. Thus, establishing the highest sensitivity must be balanced with protection against cellular metabolic damage that can lead to loss of hair cells and ganglion cells, resulting in loss of frequency representation. While feedback mechanisms are known to exist in the cochlea that alter sensitivity, they respond only after stimulus encoding, allowing potentially damaging sounds to impact the inner ear at times coincident with increased sensitivity. Thus, questions remain concerning the endogenous signaling systems involved in dynamic modulation of cochlear sensitivity and protection against metabolic stress. Understanding endogenous signaling systems involved in cochlear protection may lead to new strategies and therapies for prevention of cochlear damage and consequent hearing loss. We have recently discovered a novel cochlear signaling system that is molecularly equivalent to the classic hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. This cochlear HPA-equivalent system functions to balance auditory sensitivity and susceptibility to noise-induced hearing loss, and also protects against cellular metabolic insults resulting from exposures to ototoxic drugs. We review the anatomy, physiology, and cellular signaling of this system, and compare it to similar signaling in other organs/tissues of the body.	t	\N
21914244	How do children develop the mapping between prosody and other levels of linguistic knowledge? This question has received considerable attention in child language research. In the present study two experiments were conducted to investigate four- to five-year-old Mandarin-speaking children's sensitivity to prosody in ambiguity resolution. Experiment 1 used eye-tracking to assess children's use of stress in resolving structural ambiguities. Experiment 2 took advantage of special properties of Mandarin to investigate whether children can use intonational cues to resolve ambiguities involving speech acts. The results of our experiments show that children's use of prosodic information in ambiguity resolution varies depending on the type of ambiguity involved. Children can use prosodic information more effectively to resolve speech act ambiguities than to resolve structural ambiguities. This finding suggests that the mapping between prosody and semantics/pragmatics in young children is better established than the mapping between prosody and syntax.	t	\N
21916216	Processing of auditory information in central nervous system bases on the series of quickly occurring neural processes that cannot be separately monitored using only the fMRI registration. Simultaneous recording of the auditory evoked potentials, characterized by good temporal resolution, and the functional magnetic resonance imaging with excellent spatial resolution allows studying higher auditory functions with precision both in time and space. was to implement the simultaneous AEP-fMRI recordings method for the investigation of information processing at different levels of central auditory system. Five healthy volunteers, aged 22-35 years, participated in the experiment. The study was performed using high-field (3T) MR scanner from Siemens and 64-channel electrophysiological system Neuroscan from Compumedics. Auditory evoked potentials generated by acoustic stimuli (standard and deviant tones) were registered using modified odd-ball procedure. Functional magnetic resonance recordings were performed using sparse acquisition paradigm. The results of electrophysiological registrations have been worked out by determining voltage distributions of AEP on skull and modeling their bioelectrical intracerebral generators (dipoles). FMRI activations were determined on the basis of deviant to standard and standard to deviant functional contrasts. Results obtained from electrophysiological studies have been integrated with functional outcomes. Morphology, amplitude, latency and voltage distribution of auditory evoked potentials (P1, N1, P2) to standard stimuli presented during simultaneous AEP-fMRI registrations were very similar to the responses obtained outside scanner room. Significant fMRI activations to standard stimuli were found mainly in the auditory cortex. Activations in these regions corresponded with N1 wave dipoles modeled based on auditory potentials generated by standard tones. Auditory evoked potentials to deviant stimuli were recorded only outside the MRI scanner. However, deviant stimuli induced significant fMRI activations. They were observed mainly in the anterior cingulate gyrus, insula and parietal lobes. These regions of the brain are related to attention and decision-making processes. The results showed that applied paradigm is suitable for investigation of acoustic processing on the level of auditory cortex. Technique of the simultaneous AEP-fMRI registrations seems to be promising for investigation of more complex nervous processes in central auditory system with good temporo-spatial resolution.	t	\N
21917204	Modern health services need efficient tools for measuring outcomes from interventions, that is, tools of proven efficacy which make minimal demands on the time of clinicians in learning to administer tests and in interpreting results. This paper describes an apparatus designed to meet those requirements. The apparatus administers performance tests of spatial listening for children and adults with unilateral and bilateral cochlear implants. The apparatus was designed with guidance from clinicians. It possesses three key attributes: it is simple to use; the results of tests are scored automatically and are compared with reference data; the apparatus generates comprehensive personalized reports for individual participants that can be included in clinical notes. This paper describes the apparatus and reports results of a test measuring spatial release from masking of speech which illustrates the compatibility between the new apparatus and an older apparatus with which the reference data were gathered.	t	\N
21917210	Bilateral cochlear implants (CIs) have been provided to children who are deaf in both ears with intent to promote binaural hearing. If it is possible to establish binaural hearing with two CIs, these children would be able to make use of interaural level and timing differences to localize sound and to distinguish between sounds separated in space. These skills are central to the ability to attend to one particular sound amidst a number of sound sources. This may be particularly important for children because they are typically learning and interacting in groups. However, the development of binaural processing could be disrupted by effects of bilateral deafness, effects of unilateral CI use, or issues related to the child's age at onset of deafness and age at the time of the first and second cochlear implantation. This research aims to determine whether binaural auditory processing is affected by these variables in an effort to determine the optimal timing for bilateral cochlear implantation in children. It is now clear that the duration of bilateral deafness should be limited in children to restrict reorganization in the auditory thalamo-cortical pathways. It has also been shown that unilateral CI use can halt such reorganization to some extent and promote auditory development. At the same time, however, unilateral input might compromise the development of binaural processing if CIs are provided sequentially. Mismatches in responses from the auditory brainstem and cortex evoked by the first and second CI after a long period of unilateral CI use suggest asymmetry in the bilateral auditory pathways which is significantly more pronounced than in children receiving bilateral implants simultaneously. Moreover, behavioural responses to level and timing differences between implants suggest that these important binaural cues are not being processed normally by children who received a second CI after a long period of unilateral CI use and at older ages. In sum, there may be multiple sensitive periods in the developing auditory system, which must be considered when determining the optimal timing for bilateral cochlear implantation.	t	\N
21918451	To determine whether common approaches to setting stimulus parameters influence the depth of fine structure present in the distortion product otoacoustic emission (DPOAE) response. Because the presence of fine structure has been suggested as a possible source of errors, if one of the common parametric approaches results in reduced fine-structure depth, it may be preferred over other approaches. DPOAE responses were recorded in a group of 21 subjects with normal hearing for 1/3-octave intervals surrounding 3 f2s (1, 2, and 4 kHz) at three L2s (30, 45, and 55 dB SPL). For each f2 and L2 combination, L1 and f2/f1 were set according to three commonly used parametric approaches. These included a simple approach, the approach recommended by Kummer et al., and the approach described by Johnson et al. These three approaches primarily differ in the recommended relationship between L1 and L2. For each parametric approach, DPOAE fine structure was evaluated by varying f2 in small steps. Differences in DPOAE level and DPOAE fine-structure depth across f2, L2, and the various stimulus parameters were evaluated using repeated-measures analysis of variance. As expected, significant variations in DPOAE level were observed across the three parametric approaches. For stimulus levels #45 dB SPL, the simple stimuli resulted in lower DPOAE levels than were observed for other approaches. An unexpected finding was that stimulus parameters developed by Johnson et al., which were believed to produce higher DPOAE levels than other approaches, produced the lowest DPOAE levels of the three approaches when f2 = 4 kHz. Significant differences in fine-structure depth were also observed. Greater fine-structure depth was observed with the simple parameters, although this effect was restricted to L2 # 45 dB SPL. When L2 = 55 dB SPL, all three parametric approaches resulted in equivalent fine-structure depth. A significant difference in fine-structure depth across the 3 f2s was also observed. The interval surrounding 2 kHz was associated with greater fine-structure depth than the intervals surrounding 1 and 4 kHz. The simple stimulus parameters resulted in more fine structure than the other parametric approaches; however, this effect was restricted to L2 # 45 dB SPL. At the moderate stimulus levels used in most clinical applications of DPOAEs (L2 = 55 dB SPL), all three approaches resulted in similar fine-structure depths. These findings suggest that manipulating stimulus parameters, particularly the L1, L2 relationship, is not an effective technique for reducing fine structure, except at the lowest stimulus levels, and that all the common parameters result in equivalent fine structure for moderate stimulus levels. These results also suggest that the stimulus parameters used in future studies of the clinical implications of fine structure may be relatively unimportant, unless stimulus levels #45 dB SPL will be evaluated.	t	\N
21921852	Bilateral stimulation through cochlear implants induces a brain activity pattern closer to the normal one than unilateral stimulation. Although it has been shown that speech comprehension through bilateral cochlear implants leads to better performances than after unilateral implantation, the existence of neural underpinnings of this improvement remains to be studied. We performed an H2O positron emission tomographic study of word recognition in 5 patients with bilateral cochlear implants and 5 normal-hearing controls. Subjects had to distinguish words from nonwords in binaural and monaural conditions. There was no overactivation in patients for binaural stimulation, with a hypoactivation in the right temporal cortex. For monaural stimulation, patients demonstrated more activation contralaterally to the stimulation side in the posterior temporal cortex and in the cerebellum. Binaural stimulation through cochlear implants is advantageous compared with the monaural at the neurofunctional level because the pattern of brain activity is closer to the normal one.	t	\N
21924100	To explore the factors that influence the stability of evaluation results judged by a jury through a standard research on perceptual evaluation measurements of voice quality. Voice samples from 300 patients with dysphonia and 100 control subjects with normal voice were recorded and assessed by a jury composed of 6 experienced listeners from different hospitals. The voice samples were discourse voices and ordered randomly 3 times, and the mean of 3 evaluations using visual analogue scale were the final results. The jury was instructed to classify voice samples according to the G (grade), R (rough) and B (breathy) components of the GRBAS scale on a 4-point scale ranging from 0 for normal to 3 for severe dysphonia. Κ value was used to analyze the concordance of evaluation results and regression analysis was used to research the effects of the extent of voice disorder to the stability of perceptual evaluation. The discordance of evaluation existed both between the jury and in listeners themselves. The concordance of listeners themselves of each evaluation parameter was not bad, good, or even very good, and the concordance of evaluation of G was the best (κ value: 0.46 - 0.85), then R (κ value: 0.41 - 0.84) and B (κ value: 0.41 - 0.81). The concordance between the jury was worse than that in themselves. And except a listener whose concordance of evaluation was under the requirement, the concordance of evaluation of G was the best (κ value: 0.43 - 0.96), then R (κ value: 0.33 - 0.78) and B (κ value: 0.002 - 0.45). The stability of evaluation of normal voice and severe voice disorder was better than mild and moderate voice disorder. The discordance between the jury was the main factor that influence the stability of perceptual evaluation. The evaluation parameters and extent of voice disorder will influence the stability of perceptual evaluation of the jury.	t	\N
21925521	The left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) exhibits increased responsiveness when people listen to words composed of speech sounds that frequently co-occur in the English language (Vaden, Piquado, & Hickok, 2011), termed high phonotactic frequency (Vitevitch & Luce, 1998). The current experiment aimed to further characterize the relation of phonotactic frequency to LIFG activity by manipulating word intelligibility in participants of varying age. Thirty six native English speakers, 19-79 years old (mean=50.5, sd=21.0) indicated with a button press whether they recognized 120 binaurally presented consonant-vowel-consonant words during a sparse sampling fMRI experiment (TR=8 s). Word intelligibility was manipulated by low-pass filtering (cutoff frequencies of 400 Hz, 1000 Hz, 1600 Hz, and 3150 Hz). Group analyses revealed a significant positive correlation between phonotactic frequency and LIFG activity, which was unaffected by age and hearing thresholds. A region of interest analysis revealed that the relation between phonotactic frequency and LIFG activity was significantly strengthened for the most intelligible words (low-pass cutoff at 3150 Hz). These results suggest that the responsiveness of the left inferior frontal cortex to phonotactic frequency reflects the downstream impact of word recognition rather than support of word recognition, at least when there are no speech production demands.	t	\N
21932260	Cross-modal processing enables the utilization of information received via different sensory organs to facilitate more complicated human actions. We used functional MRI on early-blind individuals to study the neural processes associated with cross auditory-spatial learning. The auditory signals, converted from echoes of ultrasonic signals emitted from a navigation device, were novel to the participants. The subjects were trained repeatedly for 4 weeks in associating the auditory signals with different distances. Subjects' blood-oxygenation-level-dependent responses were captured at baseline and after training using a sound-to-distance judgment task. Whole-brain analyses indicated that the task used in the study involved auditory discrimination as well as spatial localization. The learning process was shown to be mediated by the inferior parietal cortex and the hippocampus, suggesting the integration and binding of auditory features to distances. The right cuneus was found to possibly serve a general rather than a specific role, forming an occipital-enhanced network for cross auditory-spatial learning. This functional network is likely to be unique to those with early blindness, since the normal-vision counterparts shared activities only in the parietal cortex.	t	\N
21936759	The present study investigated the relationship between non-verbal behaviours and perceptions of the communication abilities of an individual with anomia secondary to traumatic brain injury (TBI). Thirty-four university students studying Communication Sciences and Disorders were randomly assigned to watch or listen to six short clips of an individual with TBI engaged in conversation. Participants rated the individual on communication parameters from a modified version of the Pragmatic Protocol and four other dependent measures of communicative competence. A significant positive correlation was identified between perceptions of gestures and ratings of overall communicative competence, and between perceptions of hand and arm movements and ratings of overall communicative competence. Participant raters who viewed the individual's movements as inappropriate also rated her overall communication abilities less favourably. This finding highlights individuality in perception of communication competence and the importance of assessing communication partners' perceptions in a client's environment to determine socially relevant treatment goals.	t	\N
21939965	Listeners rapidly adjust to talkers' pronunciations, accommodating those pronunciations into the relevant phonemic category to improve subsequent perception. Previous work has suggested that such learning is restricted to pronunciations that are representative of how the speaker talks (Kraljic, Samuel, & Brennan, 2008). If an ambiguous pronunciation, for example, can be attributed to an external source (such as a pen in the speaker's mouth), or if it is preceded by normal pronunciations of the same sound, learning is blocked. In three experiments, we explore this blocking effect in more detail. Our aim is to better understand the nature of the representations underlying the perceptual learning process. Experiment 1 replicates the blocking effect. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrate that it can be eliminated when certain visual information occurs simultaneously with the auditory signal. The pattern of learning and non-learning is best accounted for by the view that speech perception is mediated by episodic representations that include potentially relevant visual information.	t	\N
21940463	Several studies report that adults and adolescents with reading disabilities also experience difficulties with selective attention. In the present study, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were used to examine the neural mechanisms of selective attention in kindergarten children at risk for reading disabilities (AR group, n = 8) or on track in early literacy skills (OT group, n = 6) across the first semester of kindergarten. The AR group also received supplemental instruction with the Early Reading Intervention (ERI). Following ERI, the AR group demonstrated improved skills on standardized early literacy measures such that there were no significant differences between the AR and OT groups at posttest or winter follow-up. Analysis of the ERP data revealed that at the start of kindergarten, the AR group displayed reduced effects of attention on sensorineural processing compared to the OT group. Following intervention, this difference between groups disappeared, with the AR group only showing improvements in the effect of attention on sensorineural processing. These data indicate that the neural mechanisms of selective attention are atypical in kindergarten children at risk for reading failure but can be improved by effective reading interventions.	t	\N
21942418	We report a series of experiments designed to demonstrate that the presentation of a sound can facilitate the identification of a concomitantly presented visual target letter in the backward masking paradigm. Two visual letters, serving as the target and its mask, were presented successively at various interstimulus intervals (ISIs). The results demonstrate that the crossmodal facilitation of participants' visual identification performance elicited by the presentation of a simultaneous sound occurs over a very narrow range of ISIs. This critical time-window lies just beyond the interval needed for participants to differentiate the target and mask as constituting two distinct perceptual events (Experiment 1) and can be dissociated from any facilitation elicited by making the visual target physically brighter (Experiment 2). When the sound is presented at the same time as the mask, a facilitatory, rather than an inhibitory effect on visual target identification performance is still observed (Experiment 3). We further demonstrate that the crossmodal facilitation of the visual target by the sound depends on the establishment of a reliable temporally coincident relationship between the two stimuli (Experiment 4); however, by contrast, spatial coincidence is not necessary (Experiment 5). We suggest that when visual and auditory stimuli are always presented synchronously, a better-consolidated object representation is likely to be constructed (than that resulting from unimodal visual stimulation).	t	\N
21945200	The human auditory brainstem is known to be exquisitely sensitive to fine-grained spectro-temporal differences between speech sound contrasts, and the ability of the brainstem to discriminate between these contrasts is important for speech perception. Recent work has described a novel method for translating brainstem timing differences in response to speech contrasts into frequency-specific phase differentials. Results from this method have shown that the human brainstem response is surprisingly sensitive to phase differences inherent to the stimuli across a wide extent of the spectrum. Here we use an animal model of the auditory brainstem to examine whether the stimulus-specific phase signatures measured in human brainstem responses represent an epiphenomenon associated with far-field (i.e., scalp-recorded) measurement of neural activity, or alternatively whether these specific activity patterns are also evident in auditory nuclei that contribute to the scalp-recorded response, thereby representing a more fundamental temporal processing phenomenon. Responses in anaesthetized guinea pigs to three minimally-contrasting consonant-vowel stimuli were collected simultaneously from the cortical surface vertex and directly from central nucleus of the inferior colliculus (ICc), measuring volume conducted neural activity and multiunit, near-field activity, respectively. Guinea pig surface responses were similar to human scalp-recorded responses to identical stimuli in gross morphology as well as phase characteristics. Moreover, surface-recorded potentials shared many phase characteristics with near-field ICc activity. Response phase differences were prominent during formant transition periods, reflecting spectro-temporal differences between syllables, and showed more subtle differences during the identical steady state periods. ICc encoded stimulus distinctions over a broader frequency range, with differences apparent in the highest frequency ranges analyzed, up to 3000 Hz. Based on the similarity of phase encoding across sites, and the consistency and sensitivity of response phase measured within ICc, results suggest that a general property of the auditory system is a high degree of sensitivity to fine-grained phase information inherent to complex acoustical stimuli. Furthermore, results suggest that temporal encoding in ICc contributes to temporal features measured in speech-evoked scalp-recorded responses.	t	\N
21949873	The modulation of brain activity as a function of auditory location was investigated using electro-encephalography in combination with standardized low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography. Auditory stimuli were presented at various positions under anechoic conditions in free-field space, thus providing the complete set of natural spatial cues. Variation of electrical activity in cortical areas depending on sound location was analyzed by contrasts between sound locations at the time of the N1 and P2 responses of the auditory evoked potential. A clear-cut double dissociation with respect to the cortical locations and the points in time was found, indicating spatial processing (1) in the primary auditory cortex and posterodorsal auditory cortical pathway at the time of the N1, and (2) in the anteroventral pathway regions about 100 ms later at the time of the P2. Thus, it seems as if both auditory pathways are involved in spatial analysis but at different points in time. It is possible that the late processing in the anteroventral auditory network reflected the sharing of this region by analysis of object-feature information and spectral localization cues or even the integration of spatial and non-spatial sound features.	t	\N
21957257	Children use information from both the auditory and visual modalities to aid in understanding speech. A dramatic illustration of this multisensory integration is the McGurk effect, an illusion in which an auditory syllable is perceived differently when it is paired with an incongruent mouth movement. However, there are significant interindividual differences in McGurk perception: some children never perceive the illusion, while others always do. Because converging evidence suggests that the posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) is a critical site for multisensory integration, we hypothesized that activity within the STS would predict susceptibility to the McGurk effect. To test this idea, we used BOLD fMRI in 17 children aged 6-12 years to measure brain responses to the following three audiovisual stimulus categories: McGurk incongruent, non-McGurk incongruent, and congruent syllables. Two separate analysis approaches, one using independent functional localizers and another using whole-brain voxel-based regression, showed differences in the left STS between perceivers and nonperceivers. The STS of McGurk perceivers responded significantly more than that of nonperceivers to McGurk syllables, but not to other stimuli, and perceivers' hemodynamic responses in the STS were significantly prolonged. In addition to the STS, weaker differences between perceivers and nonperceivers were observed in the fusiform face area and extrastriate visual cortex. These results suggest that the STS is an important source of interindividual variability in children's audiovisual speech perception.	t	\N
21959609	The literature suggests that contralateral acoustic stimulation (CAS) alters the amplitude of the distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs), but it is still unknown whether the DPOAE Input/Output (I/O) functions are also affected. To elucidate this aspect of the DPOAEs, the present study assessed the effects of CAS on DPOAE I/O functions at the frequencies of 2 kHz and 4 kHz, in a sample of term neonatal subjects. Sixty randomly selected neonates were included in the study. The DPOAE I/O functions were obtained at 2 kHz and 4 kHz, in the presence of a 60 dB SPL broad band-contralateral white noise, using the TDH39 headphones contralaterally. DPOAEs were recorded up to a stimulus level of L2 = 35 dB peSPL. Significant DPOAE amplitude suppression effects were observed at various L2 stimulus levels for both tested frequencies at 2 and 4 kHz. In contrast, the corresponding DPOAE slopes showed various alterations that were not statistically significant. The data from the present study show that contralateral acoustic stimulation significantly affects only the amplitude of the DPOAE I/O functions; the slope is affected, but not significantly. This observation can shed light on the nature of CAS, suggesting that the latter is primarily a linear phenomenon without the cochlear compression and non-linear components seen in the healthy cochlea. From the available data it is not possible to infer whether the sample size has influenced the obtained results and the study should be repeated with a larger sample size and assessing more frequencies.	t	\N
21964385	Temporal summation of C-fiber evoked responses generates an increase in action potential discharge in second-order neurons and in perceived pain intensity (wind-up). This may be related to the central serotonergic system which modulates and partly inhibits sensory input. Aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between wind-up and serotonergic activity using loudness dependence of auditory evoked potentials (LDAEP). 18 healthy subjects were compared to 18 patients with major depression, a disease with a putative serotonin deficit. They were examined with quantitative sensory testing (QST) using the protocol of the German Research Network on Neuropathic Pain (DFNS), including the wind-up ratio (WUR), LDAEP, and psychometric measurements. We found a slight positive correlation between WUR and LDAEP both in healthy controls and depressed patients combined (r=0.340, p=0.043), indicating that WUR may be modulated by serotonergic activity. It can be concluded that inhibitory control to noxious stimuli is partly associated with the central serotonergic function as indicated by LDAEP.	t	\N
21972849	Filmmakers use continuity editing to engender a sense of situational continuity or discontinuity at editing boundaries. The goal of this study was to assess the impact of continuity editing on how people perceive the structure of events in a narrative film and to identify brain networks that are associated with the processing of different types of continuity editing boundaries. Participants viewed a commercially produced film and segmented it into meaningful events, while brain activity was recorded with functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We identified three degrees of continuity that can occur at editing locations: edits that are continuous in space, time, and action; edits that are discontinuous in space or time but continuous in action; and edits that are discontinuous in action as well as space or time. Discontinuities in action had the biggest impact on behavioral event segmentation, and discontinuities in space and time had minor effects. Edits were associated with large transient increases in early visual areas. Spatial-temporal changes and action changes produced strikingly different patterns of transient change, and they provided evidence that specialized mechanisms in higher order perceptual processing regions are engaged to maintain continuity of action in the face of spatiotemporal discontinuities. These results suggest that commercial film editing is shaped to support the comprehension of meaningful events that bridge breaks in low-level visual continuity, and even breaks in continuity of spatial and temporal location.	t	\N
21973370	Within an auditory channel, the speech waveform contains both temporal envelope (E(O)) and temporal fine structure (TFS) information. Vocoder processing extracts a modified version of the temporal envelope (E') within each channel and uses it to modulate a channel carrier. The resulting signal, E'(Carr), has reduced information content compared to the original "E(O) + TFS" signal. The dynamic range over which listeners make additional use of E(O) + TFS over E'(Carr) cues was investigated in a competing-speech task. The target-and-background mixture was processed using a 30-channel vocoder. In each channel, E(O) + TFS replaced E'(Carr) at either the peaks or the valleys of the signal. The replacement decision was based on comparing the short-term channel level to a parametrically varied "switching threshold," expressed relative to the long-term channel level. Intelligibility was measured as a function of switching threshold, carrier type, target-to-background ratio, and replacement method. Scores showed a dependence on all four parameters. Derived intensity-importance functions (IIFs) showed that E(O) + TFS information from 8-13 dB below to 10 dB above the channel long-term level was important. When E(O) + TFS information was added at the peaks, IIFs peaked around -2 dB, but when E(O) + TFS information was added at the valleys, the peaks lay around +1 dB.	t	\N
21973372	Deutsch's octave illusion occurs when two tones that are spaced an octave apart are repeatedly presented in alternation; the sequence is presented to both ears simultaneously but offset by one tone, so that two dichotic chords are repeatedly presented in alternation. The most common illusory percept consists of an intermittent high tone in one ear alternating with an intermittent low tone in the other ear. The aim of this study was to investigate whether, once the illusory percept has emerged, the illusion will persist when the original sequence is followed by another sequence consisting of the repeated presentation of one of the two dichotic chords. Forty naïve subjects were tested with stimuli consisting first of a priming sequence containing dichotic octaves alternating between ears followed immediately by a test sequence consisting of a single dichotic octave presented repeatedly. The durations of the priming and test sequences were manipulated. The findings showed that the illusory percept is maintained after the switch from alternation to repetition and that the relative length of the priming and test sequences has a negligible influence on the persistence of the illusory percept.	t	\N
21974490	Naive listeners' perceptual assimilations of non-native vowels to first-language (L1) categories can predict difficulties in the acquisition of second-language vowel systems. This study demonstrates that listeners having two slightly different dialects as their L1s can differ in the perception of foreign vowels. Specifically, the study shows that Bohemian Czech and Moravian Czech listeners assimilate Dutch high front vowels differently to L1 categories. Consequently, the listeners are predicted to follow different paths in acquiring these Dutch vowels. These findings underscore the importance of carefully considering the specific dialect background of participants in foreign- and second-language speech perception studies.	t	\N
21981669	The neural representation of segmental and tonal phonological distinctions has been shown by means of the MMN ERP, yet this is not the case for intonational discourse contrasts. In Catalan, a rising-falling intonational sequence can be perceived as a statement or as a counterexpectational question, depending exclusively on the size of the pitch range interval of the rising movement. We tested here, using the MMN, whether such categorical distinctions elicited distinct neurophysiological patterns of activity, supporting their specific neural representation. From a behavioral identification experiment, we set the boundary between the two categories and defined four stimuli across the continuum. Although the physical distance between each pair of stimuli was kept constant, the central pair represented an across-category contrast, whereas the other pairs represented within-category contrasts. These four auditory stimuli were contrasted by pairs in three different oddball blocks. The mean amplitude of the MMN was larger for the across-category contrast, suggesting that intonational contrasts in the target language can be encoded automatically in the auditory cortex. These results are in line with recent findings in other fields of linguistics, showing that, when a boundary between categories is crossed, the MMN response is not just larger but rather includes a separate subcomponent.	t	\N
21985220	The high energy demand of the auditory and visual pathways render these sensory systems prone to diseases that impair mitochondrial function. Primary open-angle glaucoma, a neurodegenerative disease of the optic nerve, has recently been associated with a spectrum of mitochondrial abnormalities. This study sought to investigate auditory processing in individuals with open-angle glaucoma. DESIGN/STUDY SAMPLE: Twenty-seven subjects with open-angle glaucoma underwent electrophysiologic (auditory brainstem response), auditory temporal processing (amplitude modulation detection), and speech perception (monosyllabic words in quiet and background noise) assessment in each ear. A cohort of age, gender and hearing level matched control subjects was also tested. While the majority of glaucoma subjects in this study demonstrated normal auditory function, there were a significant number (6/27 subjects, 22%) who showed abnormal auditory brainstem responses and impaired auditory perception in one or both ears. The finding that a significant proportion of subjects with open-angle glaucoma presented with auditory dysfunction provides evidence of systemic neuronal susceptibility. Affected individuals may suffer significant communication difficulties in everyday listening situations.	t	\N
21987910	When the fundamental frequency (f0) is removed from a complex stimulus, the pitch of the f0 is still perceived by the listener. Through the use of the scalp-recorded frequency-following response, this study examined the relative contributions of thef0 and its harmonics in pitch processing by systematically manipulating the speech stimulus to remove component frequencies. 12 American and 12 Chinese adults were recruited. There were statistically significant effects of pitch strength and frequency error for the experimental-condition factor. There were significantly larger responses to the harmonics-only conditions than those obtained in the f0-only and control conditions. No statistically significant difference was observed between the two groups of participants. These findings indicate that neural responses associated with individual harmonics dominate the pitch processing in the human brainstem, irrespective of whether the listener's native language is nontonal or tonal.	t	\N
22000998	Recent years have seen a growing debate concerning the function of the cerebellum. Here we used a pitch discrimination task and PET to test for cerebellar involvement in the active control of sensory data acquisition. Specifically, we predicted greater cerebellar activity during active pitch discrimination compared to passive listening, with the greatest activity when pitch discrimination was most difficult. Ten healthy subjects were trained to discriminate deviant tones presented with a slightly higher pitch than a standard tone, using a Go/No Go paradigm. To ensure that discrimination performance was matched across subjects, individual psychometric curves were assessed beforehand using a two-step psychoacoustic procedure. Subjects were scanned while resting in the absence of any sounds, while passively listening to standard tones, and while detecting deviant tones slightly higher in pitch among these standard tones at four different performance levels. Consistent with our predictions, 1) passive listening alone elicited cerebellar activity (lobule IX), 2) cerebellar activity increased during pitch discrimination as compared to passive listening (crus I and II, lobules VI, VIIB, and VIIIB), and 3) this increase was correlated with the difficulty of the discrimination task (lobules V, VI, and IX). These results complement recent findings showing pitch discrimination deficits in cerebellar patients (Parsons et al., 2009) and further support a role for the cerebellum in sensory data acquisition. The data are discussed in the light of anatomical and physiological evidence functionally connecting auditory system and cerebellum.	t	\N
22002633	Attentional blink (AB) refers to a phenomenon where the correct identification of a first target (i.e., target) impairs the processing of a second target (i.e., probe) nearby in time. In the present study, we investigate the influence of temporal attention on auditory AB by means of scalp-recorded event-related potentials. Participants were instructed to focus their attention on a particular time interval following the target (i.e., short, middle, or long temporal position) in order to detect the occurrence of the probe in a rapid series of distractor sounds. We found a large probe processing deficit when the probe occurred immediately after the target. This AB decreased as the time interval between the target and the probe increased and coincided with the generation of a positive wave at parietal sites (i.e., P3b). The P3b elicited by the probe peaked earlier when the probe occurred at the designated time than when it occurred at another position in time. The results indicate that temporal attention can be deployed to a particular time, which facilitates short-term consolidation of the probe.	t	\N
22004192	Speech processing requires sensitivity to long-term regularities of the native language yet demands listeners to flexibly adapt to perturbations that arise from talker idiosyncrasies such as nonnative accent. The present experiments investigate whether listeners exhibit dimension-based statistical learning of correlations between acoustic dimensions defining perceptual space for a given speech segment. While engaged in a word recognition task guided by a perceptually unambiguous voice-onset time (VOT) acoustics to signal beer, pier, deer, or tear, listeners were exposed incidentally to an artificial "accent" deviating from English norms in its correlation of the pitch onset of the following vowel (F0) to VOT. Results across four experiments are indicative of rapid, dimension-based statistical learning; reliance on the F0 dimension in word recognition was rapidly down-weighted in response to the perturbation of the correlation between F0 and VOT dimensions. However, listeners did not simply mirror the short-term input statistics. Instead, response patterns were consistent with a lingering influence of sensitivity to the long-term regularities of English. This suggests that the very acoustic dimensions defining perceptual space are not fixed and, rather, are dynamically and rapidly adjusted to the idiosyncrasies of local experience, such as might arise from nonnative-accent, dialect, or dysarthria. The current findings extend demonstrations of "object-based" statistical learning across speech segments to include incidental, online statistical learning of regularities residing within a speech segment.	t	\N
22005285	Feelings of deliciousness during having foods are mainly produced by perceptions of sensory information extracted from foods themselves, such as taste and olfaction. However, environmental factors might modify the feeling of deliciousness. In the present study, we investigated how the condition of audio-visual environments affects the feeling of deliciousness during having sweet foods. Electroencephalograms (EEGs) were recorded from the frontal region of the scalp of healthy participants under virtual scenes of tearoom and construction work, respectively. The participants were asked to rate deliciousness after the recordings. Frequency analyses were performed from the EEGs. During having the foods, occupancy rates of beta frequency band between tearoom scenes and construction work scenes were markedly different, but not in other frequency bands. During having no food, in contrast, there was no difference of occupancy rates in respective frequency bands between the two different scenes. With regard to deliciousness during having sweet foods, all participants rated high scores under the scenes of tearoom than those under the scenes of construction work. Interestingly, there is a positive correlation between occupancy rates of beta frequency band and scores of deliciousness. These findings suggest that comfortable audio-visual environments play an important role in increasing the feeling of deliciousness during having sweet foods, in which beta frequency rhythms may be concerned with producing comprehensive feelings of deliciousness.	t	\N
22005291	Neural sensitivity to acoustic regularities supports fundamental human behaviors such as hearing in noise and reading. Although the failure to encode acoustic regularities in ongoing speech has been associated with language and literacy deficits, how auditory expertise, such as the expertise that is associated with musical skill, relates to the brainstem processing of speech regularities is unknown. An association between musical skill and neural sensitivity to acoustic regularities would not be surprising given the importance of repetition and regularity in music. Here, we aimed to define relationships between the subcortical processing of speech regularities, music aptitude, and reading abilities in children with and without reading impairment. We hypothesized that, in combination with auditory cognitive abilities, neural sensitivity to regularities in ongoing speech provides a common biological mechanism underlying the development of music and reading abilities. We assessed auditory working memory and attention, music aptitude, reading ability, and neural sensitivity to acoustic regularities in 42 school-aged children with a wide range of reading ability. Neural sensitivity to acoustic regularities was assessed by recording brainstem responses to the same speech sound presented in predictable and variable speech streams. Through correlation analyses and structural equation modeling, we reveal that music aptitude and literacy both relate to the extent of subcortical adaptation to regularities in ongoing speech as well as with auditory working memory and attention. Relationships between music and speech processing are specifically driven by performance on a musical rhythm task, underscoring the importance of rhythmic regularity for both language and music. These data indicate common brain mechanisms underlying reading and music abilities that relate to how the nervous system responds to regularities in auditory input. Definition of common biological underpinnings for music and reading supports the usefulness of music for promoting child literacy, with the potential to improve reading remediation.	t	\N
22005389	Several studies demonstrated that active exploration as compared to passive observation of a variety of objects leads to improved performance concerning these actively studied objects later on. These results may be specifically due to an improvement in perceptual recognition but in principle they may also be due to a speeding up of responses to actively studied objects. Recently, however, it was suggested that the benefit of active exploration on perceptual recognition may be restricted to a specific class of (biologically relevant) stimuli. By employing measures derived from signal detection theory we were able to show in all our three experiments that active exploration of virtual 3D objects leads to improved perceptual sensitivity in a subsequent test phase. The improvement with these objects means that the benefit of active exploration is not restricted to a specific class of biologically relevant stimuli. The results of our second experiment further demonstrate that the benefit of active exploration is even strong enough to fully compensate for the effect of perceptual degradation, thereby emphasizing the major impact of active exploration. In our third experiment, we explored the possibility that effects of active exploration might be due to major changes in attentional strategies rather than to the action-related aspect. Results revealed that an attentional requirement left the active-passive difference by and large intact supporting the view that the advantage of active object exploration lies in the action itself.	t	\N
22006524	This article provides a demonstration of an analytical technique that can be used to investigate the causes of perceptual phenomena. The technique is based on the concept of the ideal observer, an optimal signal classifier that makes decisions that maximize the probability of a correct response. To demonstrate the technique, an analysis was conducted to investigate the role of the auditory periphery in the production of temporal masking effects. The ideal observer classified output from four models of the periphery. Since the ideal observer is the best of all possible observers, if it demonstrates masking effects, then all other observers must as well. If it does not demonstrate masking effects, then nothing about the periphery requires masking to occur, and therefore masking would occur somewhere else. The ideal observer exhibited several forward masking effects but did not exhibit backward masking, implying that the periphery has a causal role in forward but not backward masking. A general discussion of the strengths of the technique and supplementary equations are also included.	t	\N
22010902	Language acquisition involves both acquiring a set of words (i.e. the lexicon) and learning the rules that combine them to form sentences (i.e. syntax). Here, we show that consonants are mainly involved in word processing, whereas vowels are favored for extracting and generalizing structural relations. We demonstrate that such a division of labor between consonants and vowels plays a role in language acquisition. In two very similar experimental paradigms, we show that 12-month-old infants rely more on the consonantal tier when identifying words (Experiment 1), but are better at extracting and generalizing repetition-based srtuctures over the vocalic tier (Experiment 2). These results indicate that infants are able to exploit the functional differences between consonants and vowels at an age when they start acquiring the lexicon, and suggest that basic speech categories are assigned to different learning mechanisms that sustain early language acquisition.	t	\N
22015572	Sparse and clustered-sparse temporal sampling fMRI protocols have been devised to reduce the influence of auditory scanner noise in the context of auditory fMRI studies. Here, we report an improvement of the previously established clustered-sparse acquisition scheme. The standard procedure currently used by many researchers in the field is a scanning protocol that includes relatively long silent pauses between image acquisitions (and therefore, a relatively long repetition time or cluster-onset asynchrony); it is during these pauses that stimuli are presented. This approach makes it unlikely that stimulus-induced BOLD response is obscured by scanner-noise-induced BOLD response. It also allows the BOLD response to drop near baseline; thus, avoiding saturation of BOLD signal and theoretically increasing effect size. A possible drawback of this approach is the limited number of stimulus presentations and image acquisitions that are possible in a given period of time, which could result in an inaccurate estimation of effect size (higher standard error). Since this line of reasoning has not yet been empirically tested, we decided to vary the cluster-onset asynchrony (7.5, 10, 12.5, and 15 s) in the context of a clustered-sparse protocol. In this study sixteen healthy participants listened to spoken sentences. We performed whole-brain fMRI group statistics and region of interest analysis with anatomically defined regions of interest (auditory core and association areas). We discovered that the protocol, which included a short cluster-onset asynchrony (7.5 s), yielded more advantageous results than the other protocols, which involved longer cluster-onset asynchrony. The short cluster-onset asynchrony protocol exhibited a larger number of activated voxels and larger mean effect sizes with lower standard errors. Our findings suggest that, contrary to prior experience, a short cluster-onset asynchrony is advantageous because more stimuli can be delivered within any given period of time. Alternatively, a given number of stimuli can be presented in less time, and this broadens the spectrum of possible fMRI applications.	t	\N
22046436	The present study investigated the minimum amount of auditory stimulation that allows differentiation of spoken voices, instrumental music, and environmental sounds. Three new findings were reported. 1) All stimuli were categorized above chance level with 50 ms-segments. 2) When a peak-level normalization was applied, music and voices started to be accurately categorized with 20 ms-segments. When the root-mean-square (RMS) energy of the stimuli was equalized, voice stimuli were better recognized than music and environmental sounds. 3) Further psychoacoustical analyses suggest that the categorization of extremely brief auditory stimuli depends on the variability of their spectral envelope in the used set. These last two findings challenge the interpretation of the voice superiority effect reported in previously published studies and propose a more parsimonious interpretation in terms of an emerging property of auditory categorization processes.	t	\N
22047947	Predictive coding theories posit that the perceptual system is structured as a hierarchically organized set of generative models with increasingly general models at higher levels. The difference between model predictions and the actual input (prediction error) drives model selection and adaptation processes minimizing the prediction error. Event-related brain potentials elicited by sensory deviance are thought to reflect the processing of prediction error at an intermediate level in the hierarchy. We review evidence from auditory and visual studies of deviance detection suggesting that the memory representations inferred from these studies meet the criteria set for perceptual object representations. Based on this evidence we then argue that these perceptual object representations are closely related to the generative models assumed by predictive coding theories.	t	\N
22051554	Relative blindsight is said to occur when different levels of subjective awareness are obtained at equality of objective performance. Using metacontrast masking, Lau and Passingham (2006) reported relative blindsight in normal observers at the shorter of two stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs) between target and mask. Experiment 1 replicated the critical asymmetry in subjective awareness at equality of objective performance. We argue that this asymmetry cannot be regarded as evidence for relative blindsight because the observers' responses were based on different attributes of the stimuli (criterion contents) at the two SOAs. With an invariant criterion content (Experiment 2), there was no asymmetry in subjective awareness across the two SOAs even though objective performance was the same. Experiment 3 examined the effect of criterion level on estimates of relative blindsight. Collectively, the present results question whether metacontrast masking is a suitable paradigm for establishing relative blindsight. Implications for theories of consciousness are discussed.	t	\N
22056506	Behavioral and neurophysiological studies have shown an enhancement of visual perception in crossmodal audiovisual stimulation conditions, both for sensitivity and reaction times, when the stimulation in the two sensory modalities occurs in condition of space and time congruency. The purpose of the present work is to verify whether congruent visual and acoustic stimulations can improve the detection of visual stimuli in people affected by low vision. Participants were asked to detect the presence of a visual stimulus (yes/no task) either presented in isolation (i.e., unimodal visual stimulation) or simultaneously with auditory stimuli, which could be placed in the same spatial position (i.e., crossmodal congruent conditions) or in different spatial positions (i.e., crossmodal incongruent conditions). The results show for the first time audiovisual integration effects in low vision individuals. In particular, it has been observed a significant visual detection benefit in the crossmodal congruent as compared to the unimodal visual condition. This effect is selective for visual stimulation that occurs in the portion of visual field that is impaired, and disappears in the region of space in which vision is spared. Surprisingly, there is a marginal crossmodal benefit when the sound is presented at 16 degrees far from the visual stimulus. The observed crossmodal effect seems to be determined by the contribution of both senses to a model of optimal combination, in which the most reliable provides the highest contribution. These results, indicating a significant beneficial effect of synchronous and spatially congruent sounds in a visual detection task, seem very promising for the development of a rehabilitation approach of low vision diseases based on the principles of multisensory integration.	t	\N
22070077	To analyze the hearing loss profiles in patients with tinnitus, and then provide clinical foundation for further studying the etiology and examination methods of tinnitus. Ear specialist examination, acoustic impedance test,normal frequency pure tone audiometry and extended high frequency audiometry were applied to 200 patients with chief complaint of subjective tinnitus. Among the 200 tinnitus cases, 123 (61.5%) patients were diagnosed with unilateral tinnitus, 77 (38.5%) patients with bilateral tinnitus and 46 (23.0%) cases with normal hearing. In those patients with unilateral tinnitus, by comparing the hearing threshold of affected side and contralateral side (0.125-8 kHz), the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05), but in extended high frequency (> 10 kHz), the difference between two groups was not statistically significant (P > 0.05). There was significant difference in hearing threshold between tinnitus patients with normal and abnormal hearing in normal frequency (P < 0.05), meantime the detection rate in abnormal hearing group was lower than the normal group. Tinnitus can occur in people with normal hearing. Early in tinnitus,further study need be undertaken on whether the audiometry extended high frequency can offer the early evidence of hearing loss for tinnitus patients or not.	t	\N
22072599	Difficulty understanding speech in background noise, even with amplification to restore audibility, is a common problem for hearing-impaired individuals and is especially frequent in older adults. Despite the debilitating nature of the problem the cause is not yet completely clear. This review considers the role of spatial processing ability in understanding speech in noise, highlights the potential impact of disordered spatial processing, and attempts to establish if aging leads to reduced spatial processing ability. Evidence supporting and opposing the hypothesis that spatial processing is disordered among the aging population is presented. With a few notable exceptions, spatial processing ability was shown to be reduced in an older population in comparison to young adults, leading to poorer speech understanding in noise. However, it is argued that to conclude aging negatively effects spatial processing ability may be oversimplified or even premature given potentially confounding factors such as cognitive ability and hearing impairment. Further research is required to determine the effect of aging and hearing impairment on spatial processing and to investigate possible remediation options for spatial processing disorder.	t	\N
22073602	The effectiveness of bone anchored hearing aid (BAHA) for the patients with congenital aural atresia was evaluated by multicenter clinical study in Japan. Twenty patients (17 bilateral and 3 hemilateral) of congenital auricular atresia were registered for this study and finally, 18 of them (15 bilateral and 3 unilateral) were subjected to further evaluation. Primary endpoint of this study was free sound-field pure-tone audiometory and speech threshold hearing test in quiet and noisy circumstances. Secondary endpoint of this study was patient's satisfaction based upon APHAB (Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit) questionnaire survey. These results were compared between before and 12 weeks after BAHA surgery. Both hearing level of pure tone and speech threshold significantly improved after BAHA surgery. APHAB scores also suggested the improvement of the QOL after BAHA usage, except for the scores that concerned with unpleasantness of noisy sound. BAHA is one of the useful options for the treatment of congenital auricular atresia.	t	\N
22080221	Gender is salient, socially critical information obtained from faces and voices, yet the brain processes underlying gender discrimination have not been well studied. We investigated neural correlates of gender processing of voices in two ERP studies. In the first, ERP differences were seen between female and male voices starting at 87 ms, in both spatial-temporal and peak analyses, particularly the fronto-central N1 and P2. As pitch differences may drive gender differences, the second study used normal, high- and low-pitch voices. The results of these studies suggested that differences in pitch produced early effects (27-63 ms). Gender effects were seen on N1 (120 ms) with implicit pitch processing (study 1), but were not seen with manipulations of pitch (study 2), demonstrating that N1 was modulated by attention. P2 (between 170 and 230 ms) discriminated male from female voices, independent of pitch. Thus, these data show that there are two stages in voice gender processing; a very early pitch or frequency discrimination and a later more accurate determination of gender at the P2 latency.	t	\N
22087889	The effect of temporal asymmetry on amplitude modulation detection was studied using sawtooth modulators with rising (ramped) or falling (damped) temporal envelopes within each period of modulation. For pure-tone carriers, damped modulation was more detectable than ramped modulation for a 5-kHz carrier (by a threshold difference of 3.2 dB on average) but not for a 1-kHz carrier. The threshold difference obtained at 5 kHz between the ramped and damped modulators was consistent across modulation rates (8-128 Hz). This carrier frequency dependence suggests that the effect of temporally asymmetry on modulation detection originates from envelope-based, within-channel mechanisms.	t	\N
22087927	Speech-in-noise-measurements are important in clinical practice and have been the subject of research for a long time. The results of these measurements are often described in terms of the speech reception threshold (SRT) and SNR loss. Using the basic concepts that underlie several models of speech recognition in steady-state noise, the present study shows that these measures are ill-defined, most importantly because the slope of the speech recognition functions for hearing-impaired listeners always decreases with hearing loss. This slope can be determined from the slope of the normal-hearing speech recognition function when the SRT for the hearing-impaired listener is known. The SII-function (i.e., the speech intelligibility index (SII) against SNR) is important and provides insights into many potential pitfalls when interpreting SRT data. Standardized SNR loss, sSNR loss, is introduced as a universal measure of hearing loss for speech in steady-state noise. Experimental data demonstrates that, unlike the SRT or SNR loss, sSNR loss is invariant to the target point chosen, the scoring method or the type of speech material.	t	\N
22088028	Monolingual Peruvian Spanish listeners identified natural tokens of the Canadian French (CF) and Canadian English (CE) /ɛ/ and /æ/, produced in five consonantal contexts. The results demonstrate that while the CF vowels were mapped to two different native vowels, /e/ and /a/, in all consonantal contexts, the CE contrast was mapped to the single native vowel /a/ in four out of five contexts. Linear discriminant analysis revealed that acoustic similarity between native and target language vowels was a very good predictor of context-specific perceptual mappings. Predictions are made for Spanish learners of the /ɛ/-/æ/ contrast in CF and CE.	t	\N
22090001	The primary purpose of this study was to evaluate a group of postlingually deafened adults, whose aided speech recognition exceeded commonly accepted candidacy criteria for implantation. The study aimed to define performance and qualitative outcomes of cochlear implants in these individuals compared with their optimally fitted hearing aid(s). Retrospective case series. Tertiary referral center. All postlingually deafened subjects (N = 27), who were unsuccessful hearing aid users implanted between 2000 and 2010 with a preimplantation Hearing in Noise Test (HINT) score of 60% or more were included. We compared patients' preoperative performance (HINT score) with hearing aids to postoperative performance with the cochlear implant after 12 months of device use. In addition, the Hearing Handicap Inventory questionnaire was used to quantify the hearing-related handicap change perceived after the implantation. The study group demonstrated significant postoperative improvement on all outcome measures; most notably, the mean HINT score improved from 68.4% (standard deviation, 8.3) to 91.9% (standard deviation, 9.7). Additionally, there was a significant improvement in hearing-related handicap perceived by all patients. The envelope of implantation candidacy criteria continues to expand as shown by this study's cohort. Patient satisfaction and speech recognition results are very encouraging in support of treating those who currently perform at a level above the conventional candidacy threshold but struggle with optimally fitted hearing aids.	t	\N
22099165	Behavioral and electrophysiological measures of target and distractor processing were examined in an auditory selective attention task before and after three weeks of distractor suppression training. Behaviorally, training improved target recognition and led to less conservative and more rapid responding. Training also effectively shortened the temporal distance between distractors and targets needed to achieve a fixed level of target sensitivity. The effects of training on event-related potentials were restricted to the distracting stimulus: earlier N1 latency, enhanced P2 amplitude, and weakened P3 amplitude. Nevertheless, as distractor P2 amplitude increased, so too did target P3 amplitude, connecting experience-dependent changes in distractor processing with greater distinctiveness of targets in working memory. We consider the effects of attention training on the processing priorities, representational noise, and inhibitory processes operating in working memory.	t	\N
22100742	Tinnitus occurs with or without prior noise exposure (noise-induced tinnitus (NIT) and spontaneous tinnitus (ST)), and is considered a symptom related to permanent hearing impairment (HI) or temporary hearing threshold shift (TTS). To carry out a cross-sectional interview study on TTS, ST and NIT during a standard audiometric screening of 756 7-year-old children in Gothenburg. 41% out of 756 children reported either NIT or ST on several occasions, 17% reported recurrent TTS and 7% failed the audiometry screening. The probability of ST was 27% for children with no HI or TTS (OR=1.23 (95% CI 1.12 to 1.34)) but 63% (OR=1.16 (95% CI 1.02 to 1.33)) if exhibiting both HI and TTS. This study confirms an increased occurrence of spontaneous tinnitus in children with TTS or HI and in children with both TTS and HI, in particular, but also in children with normal hearing. Possibly, tinnitus in young children correlates with stress as in adolescents and adults.	t	\N
22107443	The objective of this study was to compare two recently proposed methods for fast measurements of psychophysical tuning curves (fast-PTCs) in terms of resulting tuning curve features and training effects. Fast-PTCs with swept-noise (SN) and gated-noise (GN) maskers were measured at signal frequencies of 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz. The effect of amplitude modulating the signal in the GN condition was evaluated. Two PTC runs were obtained for each condition to assess training effects. Eight normally-hearing young adults participated in the study. The SN and GN methods resulted in similar estimates of frequency selectivity when training effects were considered. Amplitude modulating the tone in the GN method reduced the effect of training. On average, SN-PTCs were most repeatable compared to the two other methods and they were not affected by training. Estimation of the shift in the PTC tip frequency was not affected by the measurement method or training effects. Fast-PTC methods resulted in similar estimates of tuning as compared to published notched-noise data. The SN method and the GN procedure with amplitude modulated signals allowed for time-efficient estimation of frequency selectivity that was unaffected by training.	t	\N
22115727	We used a qualitative dissociation procedure to assess semantic priming from spatially attended and unattended masked words. Participants categorized target words that were preceded by parafoveal prime words belonging to either the same (20%) or the opposite (80%) category as the target. Using this paradigm, only non-strategic use of the prime would result in facilitation of the target responses in related trials. Primes were immediately masked or masked with a delay, while spatial attention was allocated to the primes' location or away from the primes' location. Immediate masked, strongly related primes facilitated target responses irrespective of the spatial attention. Delayed masked, related primes led to reversed (strategic) or facilitatory priming depending on whether they were cued or uncued. These findings demonstrate that perceiving a stimulus with or without awareness depends on both stimulus quality and attention orienting and that non-strategic priming can be observed from clear visible but spatially unattended words.	t	\N
22119398	Impairment in long-term memory is one of the most salient alterations in cognitive aging. Findings of age-related deficits in source monitoring and recollection have revealed a selective decline in memory for detailed information. The underlying mechanism of this phenomenon is not well understood. We hypothesized that the influence of task-irrelevant visual stimuli present in our environment interferes with retrieval of detailed memories more for older than younger adults. We compared memory performance on a recall test for visual details when older adult participants' eyes were closed versus performance when their eyes were open and irrelevant visual stimuli were presented. The results showed that the presence of irrelevant visual information diminished long-term memory performance based on an objective measure of recollection for visual details. Comparison of the current results to findings from our earlier study using the same experimental paradigm with younger adults revealed that visual distraction disrupted recollection of relevant details to a greater degree in older than younger adults. This result suggests that visual distraction overwhelms older adults' declining cognitive control resources that are instrumental in the retrieval and selection of mnemonic details. More generally, these findings explicate a mechanistic basis for selective impairment of recollection in normal aging.	t	\N
22124890	Interaural time differences (ITDs) can be used to localize sounds in the horizontal plane. ITDs can be extracted from either the fine structure of low-frequency sounds or from the envelopes of high-frequency sounds. Studies of the latter have included stimuli with periodic envelopes like amplitude-modulated tones or transposed stimuli, and high-pass filtered Gaussian noises. Here, four experiments are presented investigating the perceptual relevance of ITD cues in synthetic and recorded "rustling" sounds. Both share the broad long-term power spectrum with Gaussian noise but provide more pronounced envelope fluctuations than Gaussian noise, quantified by an increased waveform fourth moment, W. The current data show that the JNDs in ITD for band-pass rustling sounds tended to improve with increasing W and with increasing bandwidth when the sounds were band limited. In contrast, no influence of W on JND was observed for broadband sounds, apparently because of listeners' sensitivity to ITD in low-frequency fine structure, present in the broadband sounds. Second, it is shown that for high-frequency rustling sounds ITD JNDs can be as low as 30 μs. The third result was that the amount of dominance for ITD extraction of low frequencies decreases systematically with increasing amount of envelope fluctuations. Finally, it is shown that despite the exceptionally good envelope ITD sensitivity evident with high-frequency rustling sounds, minimum audible angles of both synthetic and recorded high-frequency rustling sounds in virtual acoustic space are still best when the angular information is mediated by interaural level differences.	t	\N
22127548	The present acoustic-phonetic study explores whether voicing and devoicing assimilations of French fricatives are equivalent in magnitude and whether they operate similarly (i.e., complete vs. gradient, obligatory vs. optional, regressive vs. progressive). It concurrently assesses the contribution of speakers' articulation rate to the proportion of voicing (i.e., voicing ratios) in /s/ and /z/ embedded in fricative#stop sequences. Data analyses show that voicing and devoicing assimilation are similar in many regards: the absolute amounts of voicing change are equivalent in magnitude (0.77, 0.78) for the two processes: changes in voicing ratios are accompanied by changes in fricative and preceding vowel durations. These concomitant alterations result in the increased acoustic-phonetic similarity between the assimilated and the non-assimilated forms, suggesting that the two processes might be complete. In addition, the two processes operate regressively and across word-boundary. However, data show that the voicing assimilation of /s/ is not rate dependent, which suggest that it might be obligatory, while the devoicing assimilation of /z/ is rate dependent, which suggest that it might be optional.	t	\N
22133279	To investigate the relationship between plasma reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels and severity of age-related hearing impairment in humans. We recruited 302 adult subjects aged 40-77 years with normal or symmetrical sensorineural hearing loss. The association of plasma ROS levels on pure tone average of low frequencies (PTA-low) and pure tone average of high frequencies (PTA-high) were analyzed. Luminol-dependent chemiluminescence signals, which reflect hydrogen peroxide (H(2)O(2)), hypochlorite (HOCl/OCl(-)) and hydroxyl radicals (•OH) levels, showed significant positive association with PTA-low and PTA-high after adjusting for age, gender, central obesity, systemic diseases, and health-related habits (smoking, drinking, antioxidant intake). Lucigenin-dependent chemiluminescence signals, which mainly reflect superoxide anion (O(2)•(-)) levels, showed significant positive association with PTA-low, but not with PTA-high after adjusting for other variables. We concluded that plasma ROS levels were associated with severity of age-related hearing impairment in humans. Various ROS may differently affect auditory dysfunctions.	t	\N
22162387	In typically developing (TD) individuals, behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) studies suggest that audiovisual (AV) integration enables faster and more efficient processing of speech. However, little is known about AV speech processing in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). This study examined ERP responses to spoken words to elucidate the effects of visual speech (the lip movements accompanying a spoken word) on the range of auditory speech processing stages from sound onset detection to semantic integration. The study also included an AV condition, which paired spoken words with a dynamic scrambled face in order to highlight AV effects specific to visual speech. Fourteen adolescent boys with ASD (15-17 years old) and 14 age- and verbal IQ-matched TD boys participated. The ERP of the TD group showed a pattern and topography of AV interaction effects consistent with activity within the superior temporal plane, with two dissociable effects over frontocentral and centroparietal regions. The posterior effect (200-300 ms interval) was specifically sensitive to lip movements in TD boys, and no AV modulation was observed in this region for the ASD group. Moreover, the magnitude of the posterior AV effect to visual speech correlated inversely with ASD symptomatology. In addition, the ASD boys showed an unexpected effect (P2 time window) over the frontocentral region (pooled electrodes F3, Fz, F4, FC1, FC2, FC3, FC4), which was sensitive to scrambled face stimuli. These results suggest that the neural networks facilitating processing of spoken words by visual speech are altered in individuals with ASD.	t	\N
22171057	Neural activity in the auditory system decreases with repeated stimulation, matching stimulus probability in multiple timescales. This phenomenon, known as stimulus-specific adaptation, is interpreted as a neural mechanism of regularity encoding aiding auditory object formation. However, despite the overwhelming literature covering recordings from single-cell to scalp auditory-evoked potential (AEP), stimulation timing has received little interest. Here we investigated whether timing predictability enhances the experience-dependent modulation of neural activity associated with stimulus probability encoding. We used human electrophysiological recordings in healthy participants who were exposed to passive listening of sound sequences. Pure tones of different frequencies were delivered in successive trains of a variable number of repetitions, enabling the study of sequential repetition effects in the AEP. In the predictable timing condition, tones were delivered with isochronous interstimulus intervals; in the unpredictable timing condition, interstimulus intervals varied randomly. Our results show that unpredictable stimulus timing abolishes the early part of the repetition positivity, an AEP indexing auditory sensory memory trace formation, while leaving the later part (≈ >200 ms) unaffected. This suggests that timing predictability aids the propagation of repetition effects upstream the auditory pathway, most likely from association auditory cortex (including the planum temporale) toward primary auditory cortex (Heschl's gyrus) and beyond, as judged by the timing of AEP latencies. This outcome calls for attention to stimulation timing in future experiments regarding sensory memory trace formation in AEP measures and stimulus probability encoding in animal models.	t	\N
22172209	Using online measures of familiar word recognition in the looking-while-listening procedure, this prospective longitudinal study revealed robust links between processing efficiency and vocabulary growth from 18 to 30 months in children classified as typically developing (n = 46) and as "late talkers" (n = 36) at 18 months. Those late talkers who were more efficient in word recognition at 18 months were also more likely to "bloom," showing more accelerated vocabulary growth over the following year, compared with late talkers less efficient in early speech processing. Such findings support the emerging view that early differences in processing efficiency evident in infancy have cascading consequences for later learning and may be continuous with individual differences in language proficiency observed in older children and adults.	t	\N
22174701	In this review paper aimed at the non-specialist, we explore the use that neuroscientists and musicians have made of perceptual illusions based on ambiguity. The pivotal issue is auditory scene analysis (ASA), or what enables us to make sense of complex acoustic mixtures in order to follow, for instance, a single melody in the midst of an orchestra. In general, ASA uncovers the most likely physical causes that account for the waveform collected at the ears. However, the acoustical problem is ill-posed and it must be solved from noisy sensory input. Recently, the neural mechanisms implicated in the transformation of ambiguous sensory information into coherent auditory scenes have been investigated using so-called bistability illusions (where an unchanging ambiguous stimulus evokes a succession of distinct percepts in the mind of the listener). After reviewing some of those studies, we turn to music, which arguably provides some of the most complex acoustic scenes that a human listener will ever encounter. Interestingly, musicians will not always aim at making each physical source intelligible, but rather express one or more melodic lines with a small or large number of instruments. By means of a few musical illustrations and by using a computational model inspired by neuro-physiological principles, we suggest that this relies on a detailed (if perhaps implicit) knowledge of the rules of ASA and of its inherent ambiguity. We then put forward the opinion that some degree perceptual ambiguity may participate in our appreciation of music.	t	\N
22177410	The study of the neural basis of syntactic processing has greatly benefited from neuroimaging techniques. Research on syntactic processing in bilinguals has used a variety of techniques, including mainly functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and event-related potentials (ERP). This paper reports on a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) study on syntactic processing in highly proficient young adult speakers of Portuguese (mother tongue) (L1) and French (second language) (L2). They made a syntactic judgment of visually presented sentences, which either did or did not contain noun-verb agreement violations. The results showed that syntactic processing in both languages resulted in significant activation in anterior frontal regions of the left hemisphere and in the temporal superior posterior areas of the right hemisphere, with a more prominent activation for L2 in some areas. These findings corroborate previously reported neuroimaging evidence, showing the suitability of fNIRS for the study of syntactic processing in the bilingual brain.	t	\N
22178743	Rhythm is a phenomenon that fundamentally affects the perception of events unfolding in time. In language, we define 'rhythm' as the temporal structure that underlies the perception and production of utterances, whereas 'meter' is defined as the regular occurrence of beats (i.e. stressed syllables). In stress-timed languages such as German, this regularity functions as a powerful temporal and structural cue in speech comprehension. Recent evidence shows that it also interacts with higher level linguistic faculties such as syntax (Schmidt-Kassow & Kotz, 2009a). The current ERP experiment investigated the impact of metric structure on lexico-semantic processing, comparing the effects of semantic and metric expectancy in regular and irregular metric sentence contexts. We predicted that (1) semantically unexpected words would result in an increased N400 amplitude and (2) metric context modulates the N400 amplitude. Our results confirm these predictions: semantically unexpected words elicit an N400 that is significantly smaller in a metrically regular than a metrically irregular sentence context. The current findings support the idea that metric regularity enhances the prediction of stress locations in a sentence context, which in turn facilitates lexico-semantic integration.	t	\N
22183282	Different studies have been carried out in order to correlate audiometric thresholds and distortion product otoacoustic emissions measurements (DPOAE). However, high variability and external interferences make hearing thresholds estimates by means of the DPOAE very little sensitive. The aim of this study was to check the correspondence between the pure tone thresholds and the cochlear response thresholds by DPOAE Input/output functions, considering the influence of the following variables: gender, past of acute otitis media, and ear side. Prospective study comprehending 69 normal hearing individuals. Multiple mix regression models were applied to evaluate the correspondence between the two measurements studied. Statistically significant positive correlation was observed among all the frequencies compared (2000, 3000, 4000 e 6000 Hz). The 1 dB HL resolution pure tone thresholds and the above-mentioned variables had a direct impact on the high correlation between the measures studied, and it also reduced response variability. Nevertheless, response variability was still high, limiting the use of DPOAE I/O functions for hearing threshold estimates. We suggest that these variables should be considered for future studies with pure tone thresholds estimations by DPOAE I/O functions.	t	\N
22197571	This study aimed to assess the effect of musical training in statistical learning of tone sequences using Magnetoencephalography (MEG). Specifically, MEG recordings were used to investigate the neural and functional correlates of the pre-attentive ability for detection of deviance, from a statistically learned tone sequence. The effect of long-term musical training in this ability is investigated by means of comparison of MMN in musicians to non-musicians. Both groups (musicians and non-musicians) showed a mismatch negativity (MMN) response to the deviants and this response did not differ amongst them neither in amplitude nor in latency. Another interesting finding of this study is that both groups revealed a significant difference between the standards and the deviants in the response of P50 and this difference was significantly larger in the group of musicians. The increase of this difference in the group of musicians underlies that intensive, specialized and long term exercise can enhance the ability of the auditory cortex to discriminate new auditory events from previously learned ones according to transitional probabilities. A behavioral discrimination task between the standard and the deviant sequences followed the MEG measurement. The behavioral results indicated that the detection of deviance was not explicitly learned by either group, probably due to the lack of attentional resources. These findings provide valuable insights on the functional architecture of statistical learning.	t	\N
22199192	The effects of type of stimuli (i.e., nonspeech vs. speech), speech (i.e., natural vs. synthetic), gender of speaker and listener, speaker (i.e., self vs. other), and frequency alteration in self-produced speech on the late auditory cortical evoked potential were examined. Young adult men (n = 15) and women (n = 15), all with normal hearing, participated. P1-N1-P2 components were evoked with the following stimuli: 723-Hz tone bursts; naturally produced male and female /a/ tokens; synthetic male and female /a/ tokens; an /a/ token self-produced by each participant; and the same /a/ token produced by the participant but with a shift in frequency. In general, P1-N1-P2 component latencies were significantly shorter when evoked with the tonal stimulus versus speech stimuli and natural versus synthetic speech (p < .05). Women had significantly shorter latencies for only the P2 component (p < .05). For the tonal versus speech stimuli, P1 amplitudes were significantly smaller, and N1 and P2 amplitudes were significantly larger (p < .05). There was no significant effect of gender on the P1, N1, or P2 amplitude (p > .05). These findings are consistent with the notion that spectrotemporal characteristics of nonspeech and speech stimuli affect P1-N1-P2 latency and amplitude components.	t	\N
22201556	Congenital amusia is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is characterized primarily by difficulties in the pitch domain. The aim of the present study was to investigate the perception of musical timbre in a group of individuals with congenital amusia by probing discrimination and short-term memory for real-world timbral stimuli as well as examining the ability of these individuals to sort instrumental tones according to their timbral similarity. Thirteen amusic individuals were matched with thirteen non-amusic controls on a range of background variables. The discrimination task included stimuli of two different durations and pairings of instrumental tones that reflected varying distances in a perceptual timbre space. Performance in the discrimination task was at ceiling for both groups. In contrast, amusic individuals scored lower than controls on the short-term timbral memory task. Amusic individuals also performed worse than controls on the sorting task, suggesting differences in the higher-order representation of musical timbre. These findings add to the emerging picture of amusia as a disorder that has consequences for the perception and memory of musical timbre, as well as pitch.	t	\N
22209062	To investigate the relationships between objective measures and the results of subjective assessment of voice quality and speech intelligibility in patients submitted to total laryngectomy and tracheoesophageal (TE) puncture. Retrospective. Twenty patients implanted with voice prosthesis were studied. After surgery, the entire sample performed speech rehabilitation. The assessment protocol included maximum phonation time (MPT), number of syllables per deep breath, acoustic analysis of the sustained vowel /a/ and of a bisyllabic word, perceptual evaluation (pleasantness and intelligibility%), and self-assessment. The correlation between pleasantness and intelligibility% was statistically significant. Both the latter were significantly correlated with the acoustic signal type, the number of formant peaks, and the F2-F1 difference. The intelligibility% and number of formant peaks were significantly correlated with the MPT and number of syllables per deep breath. Moreover, significant correlations were found between the number of formant peaks and both intelligibility% and pleasantness. The higher the number of syllables per deep breath and the longer the MPT, significantly higher was the number of formant peaks and the intelligibility%. The study failed to show significant correlation between patient's self-assessment of voice quality and both pleasantness and communication effectiveness. The multidimensional assessment seems to be a reliable tool to evaluate the TE functional outcome. Particularly, the results showed that both pleasantness and intelligibility of TE speech are correlated to the availability of expired air and the function of the vocal tract.	t	\N
22213748	To determine the efficacy of cochlear implantation (CI) in prelingually deafened adolescent children and to evaluate predictive variables for successful outcomes. Retrospective medical record review. Children aged 10 to 17 years with prelingual hearing loss (mean length of deafness, 11.5 years) who received a unilateral CI (mean age at CI, 12.9 years). Unilateral CI. Standard speech perception testing (Consonant-Nucleus-Consonant [CNC] monosyllabic word test and Hearing in Noise [HINT] sentence test) was performed preoperatively, 1 year postoperatively (year 1), and at the last follow-up/end of the study (EOS). There was a highly significant improvement in speech perception scores for both HINT sentence and CNC word testing from the preoperative testing to year 1 (mean change score, 51.10% and 32.23%, respectively; P < .001) and from the preoperative testing to EOS (mean change score, 60.02% and 38.73%, respectively; P < .001), with a significantly greater increase during the first year (P < .001). In addition, there was a highly significant correlation between improvements in performance scores on the CNC word and HINT sentence speech perception tests and both age at CI and length of deafness at the year 1 testing (P ≤.009) but not from the year 1 testing to EOS testing. Adolescents with progressive deafness and those using oral communication before CI performed significantly better than age-matched peers. Adolescents with prelingual deafness undergoing unilateral CI show significant improvement in objective hearing outcome measures. Patients with shorter lengths of deafness and earlier age at CI tend to outperform their peers. In addition, patients with progressive deafness and those using oral communication have significantly better objective outcomes than their peers.	t	\N
22218296	Visual attention has temporal limitations. In the attentional blink (AB) a stream of stimuli such as letters or digits are presented to a participant on a computer monitor at a rapid rate. Embedded in the stream are two targets that the participant must try to identify. Identification of the second target is severely impaired if it is presented within approximately 500ms of the first target. This is the 'blink' in visual attention. In this study we examined the role of the magnocellular visual pathway in the AB. This fast conducting pathway has high temporal resolution and contrast sensitivity. It is also insensitive to the direction of chromatic contrast, and this attribute was exploited in order to isolate its contributions to temporal attention. Colour defined, luminance noise masked AB streams were compared to AB streams of varying achromatic contrast. The four observers, (2F and 2M) aged between 21 and 35years, had normal visual acuity and colour vision. The colour stimuli produced a similar blink to the moderate contrast achromatic stimuli. This indicates that the magnocellular pathway does not have a privileged role in the attentional blink. We provide an explanation of previous apparently contradictory findings in terms of the role of different types of visual masking in the attentional blink.	t	\N
22232388	The goal of this study was to compare clinical and research-based cochlear implant (CI) measures using telehealth versus traditional methods. This prospective study used an ABA design (A = laboratory, B = remote site). All measures were made twice per visit for the purpose of assessing within-session variability. Twenty-nine adult and pediatric CI recipients participated. Measures included electrode impedance, electrically evoked compound action potential thresholds, psychophysical thresholds using an adaptive procedure, map thresholds and upper comfort levels, and speech perception. Subjects completed a questionnaire at the end of the study. Results for all electrode-specific measures revealed no statistically significant differences between traditional and remote conditions. Speech perception was significantly poorer in the remote condition, which was likely due to the lack of a sound booth. In general, subjects indicated that they would take advantage of telehealth options at least some of the time, if such options were available. Results from this study demonstrate that telehealth is a viable option for research and clinical measures. Additional studies are needed to investigate ways to improve speech perception at remote locations that lack sound booths and to validate the use of telehealth for pediatric services (e.g., play audiometry), sound-field threshold testing, and troubleshooting equipment.	t	\N
22232404	Older adults exhibit difficulty understanding speech that has been experimentally degraded. Age-related changes to the speech mechanism lead to natural degradations in signal quality. We tested the hypothesis that older adults with hearing loss would exhibit declines in speech recognition when listening to the speech of older adults, compared with the speech of younger adults, and would report greater amounts of listening effort in this task. Nineteen individuals with age-related hearing loss completed speech recognition and listening effort scaling tasks. Both were conducted in quiet, when listening to high- and low-predictability phrases produced by younger and older speakers, respectively. No significant difference in speech recognition existed when stimuli were derived from younger or older speakers. However, perceived effort was significantly higher when listening to speech from older adults, as compared with younger adults. For older individuals with hearing loss, natural degradations in signal quality may require greater listening effort. However, they do not interfere with speech recognition-at least in quiet. Follow-up investigation of the effect of speaker age on speech recognition and listening effort under more challenging noise conditions appears warranted.	t	\N
22232413	The ability to detect a tone added to a random masker improves when a preview of the masker is provided. In 2 experiments, the authors explored the role that perceptual organization plays in this release from masking. Detection thresholds were measured in informational masking studies. The maskers were drawn at random prior to each trial. Masker or signal-plus-masker precursors preceded the detection interval, and the time between the precursor and the detection interval was systematically altered. In Experiment 1, the signal frequency was either fixed or random. In Experiment 2, the random masker was composed of harmonics of a common fundamental frequency (F (0)), and the randomly chosen signal frequency was either harmonically related to, or mistuned from, the masker's F (0). For a masker precursor, the release from informational masking withstood longer precursor-detection interval delays (a) when the signal frequency was fixed versus random and (b) when the signal was mistuned relative to a harmonic of the masker's F (0). These results suggest that listeners' ability to attend to the signal may contribute to the long-lived release from masking with a masker precursor.	t	\N
22237163	The aim of this study was to investigate potential effects of age on the ability of normal-hearing (NH) adult listeners to utilize spectral and temporal cues when performing a voice gender identification task. Ten younger and 10 older NH adult listeners were measured on their ability to correctly identify the speaker gender of six different vowel tokens (H-/vowel/-D) when spoken by eight speakers (four male and four female). Spectral (number of channels) and temporal cues (low-pass cut-off frequency for temporal envelope extraction) were systematically manipulated using noiseband vocoding techniques; stimuli contained 1, 4, 8, 16, or 32 spectral channels, while the low-pass cut-off frequency of the temporal envelope filter was 20, 50, 100, 200, or 400 Hz. Furthermore, the fundamental frequencies (F0s) of the vowel tokens were manipulated to create two conditions: "Expanded" (large range of F0 values) and "Compressed" (small range of F0 values). In general, younger listeners performed better than the older listeners but only when stimuli were spectrally degraded. For both the Expanded and Compressed conditions, the overall performance of the younger listeners was better than that of the older listeners, suggesting age-related deficits in both spectral and temporal processing. Furthermore, a significant interaction between age group and temporal envelope cues revealed that older listeners received less benefit from increasing temporal envelope information compared with the benefit observed among younger listeners. In particular, the performance of the younger NH group (collapsed across number of channels), but not the older NH group, improved as the temporal envelope cut-off frequency was increased from 50 to 400 Hz. The results reported here support previous findings of senescent declines in perceiving spectrally reduced speech and temporal amplitude modulation processing. These results suggest that when F0 values are similar to one another, younger listeners can use temporal cues alone to glean voice-pitch information but older listeners exhibit a lessened ability to use such cues. Previous studies have demonstrated the importance of temporal envelope cues in periodicity perception (e.g., gender recognition) by cochlear implant listeners. The results of this study suggest that aging affects the use of such cues, and consequently gender recognition might be poorer among older cochlear implant recipients.	t	\N
22245012	An event-related potential, the Phonological Mapping Negativity (PMN), has been reported to reflect recognition of phonological mismatches in speech stimuli. The purpose of the present study was to explore how the PMN response to the auditory nonsense syllable reflects phonological processing in isolation without the letter prime or lexical/semantic context. Sixty-four nonsense syllable stimuli were composed for each of three stimulus conditions: phonological match (PM), phonological mismatch with similar sound (PMMS), and phonological mismatch with different sound (PMMD), making a total of 192 stimuli. The PMN was measured from fourteen normal-hearing listeners. Electroencephalogram (EEG) activity was recorded while subjects were listening to the stimuli and responding behaviorally. Subjects were asked to determine what vowel-consonant-vowel (VCV) (e.g. /apa/) would be formed from the combination of the preceding vowel (V) (e.g. /a/) and consonant-vowel (CV) (e.g. /pa/), and press a 'correct' or 'incorrect' response button as soon as they decided whether the target VCV stimulus matched their expectation. In this way, along with the PMN, behavioral response accuracy and reaction times were obtained. The results were as follows: (1) PMN amplitude was not different by stimulus condition, (2) PMN amplitude was larger over frontal and central than posterior regions, but not different between the left versus right hemisphere, (3) PMN was detected in the absence of N400, and (4) behavioral responses were more accurate and faster in PMMD than PM and PMMS. Results indicate that the PMN can reflect phonological processing of auditory nonsense syllables in isolation. The scalp distribution of PMN is most dominant in the fronto-central regions without lateralization. Lastly, behavioral response accuracy and reaction times appear to be influenced by the extent of the task difficulty or processing demand rather than by the extent of phonological violation.	t	\N
22247221	We employed a variant of the mask-onset delay paradigm in order to limit the availability of visual information in central and peripheral vision within individual fixations during scene viewing. Subjects viewed full-color scene photos with instructions to search for a target object (Experiment 1) or to study them for a later memory test (Experiment 2). After a fixed interval following the onset of each eye fixation (50-100 ms), the scene was scrambled either in the central visual field or over the entire display. The intact scene was presented when the subject made an eye movement. Our results reconcile different sets of findings from prior research regarding the masking of central and peripheral visual information at different intervals following fixation onset. In particular, we found that when the entire display was scrambled, both search and memory performance were impaired even at relatively long mask-onset intervals. In contrast, when central vision was scrambled, there were subtle impairments that depended on the viewing task. In the 50-ms mask-onset interval, subjects were selectively impaired at identifying, but not in locating, the search target (Experiment 1), while memory performance (Experiment 2) was unaffected in this condition, and hence, the reliance on central and peripheral visual information depends partly on the viewing task.	t	\N
22251050	Given that semantic processes mediate early processes in the elicitation of emotions, we expect that already activated emotion-specific information can influence the elicitation of an emotion. In Experiment 1, participants were exposed to masked International Affective Picture System (IAPS) pictures that elicited either disgust or fear. Following the presentation of the primes, other IAPS pictures were presented as targets that elicited either disgust or fear. The participants' task was to classify the target picture as either disgust or fear evoking. In Experiment 2, we substituted the IAPS primes with facial expressions of either disgust or fear. In Experiment 3, we substituted the IAPS primes with the words disgust or fear. In all three experiments, we found that prime-target combinations of the same emotion were responded to faster than prime-target combinations of different emotions. Our findings suggest that the influence of primes on the elicitation of emotion is mediated by activated schemata or appraisal processes.	t	\N
22253008	Auditory brainstem implants (ABIs) can provide highly beneficial hearing sensations to individuals deafened by bilateral vestibular schwannomas (neurofibromatosis type 2). Relatively little is known about the status of stimulated neurons after long-term ABI use. Direct examination of the cochlear nuclear complex (CN) of one 5-year ABI user indicated no deleterious effect. Recently, we examined the brainstem of a patient who used his ABI daily for 15 years with excellent performance. There was good preservation of CN cell size, morphology, and packing density, a very favorable sign considering that a number of infants are now receiving ABIs.	t	\N
22264101	Our findings show that all cochlear implanted temporal bones had a varied degree of trauma and inflammatory reaction from cochlear implantation. No definitive relationship was observed from our limited number of specimens between residual spiral ganglion cells (SGCs) in implanted temporal bones and clinical speech performance. We hypothesize that there is a relationship between residual SGCs in cochlear implanted temporal bones and clinical speech performance. Our aim was to examine the histopathology of multi-channel cochlear implant temporal bones and to evaluate the relationship of residual SGC counts to clinical hearing performance. Temporal bones from four cochlear implant patients were examined histologically. Comparisons were made between implanted and nonimplanted temporal bones. Clinical performance data were obtained from patient charts. There were varying amounts of inflammation in the basal turn of the cochleae in all four implanted temporal bones. Trauma to the facial nerve at the facial recess was noticed in one case. Surviving dendrites varied from 5% to 30% among four cases, with no relationship to clinical performance. The speech recognition scores, measured with Central Institute of the Deaf (CID) sentence score, varied among patients from 4% to 89%, while the patient with the highest SGCs had the best clinical outcome.	t	\N
22280721	A psychophysical pitch function, describing the relation of perceived magnitude of pitch to the frequency of a pure tone, was determined by absolute magnitude estimation. Pitch estimates were made by listeners with relative pitch and by absolute pitch possessors for 27 tones spanning a frequency range of 31.5-12,500 Hz in 1/3 octave steps. Results show that the pitch function, plotted in log-log coordinates, is steeper below 200 Hz than at higher frequencies. It is hypothesized that the pitch function's bend may reflect the diversity of neurophysiological mechanisms of pitch encoding in frequency ranges below and above 200 Hz. The variation of the function's slope implies that pitch distances between tones with the same frequency ratios are perceived as larger below 200 Hz than at higher frequencies. It is argued that this implication may apply only to a purely sensory concept of pitch distance and cannot be extended to the perception of musical intervals, a phenomenon governed by musical cognitive principles. The results also show that pitch functions obtained for listeners with relative and absolute pitch have a similar shape, which means that quantitative pitch relations determined for both groups of listeners do not differ appreciably along the frequency scale.	t	\N
22289507	In this event-related potential (ERP) study a masking technique that prevents conscious perception of words and non-words through attentional distraction was used to reveal the temporal dynamics of word processing under non-conscious and conscious conditions. In the non-conscious condition, ERP responses differed between masked words and non-words from 112 to 160 ms after stimulus-onset over posterior brain areas. The early onset of the word-non-word differences was compatible with previous studies that reported non-conscious access to orthographic information within this time period. Moreover, source localisations provided evidence for automatic activation of prelexical phonological information, whereas no evidence for non-conscious semantic processing was found. When subjects were informed about the masking technique, lexical differences occurred at later time intervals, suggesting conscious access to additional word related information. These results indicate that early visual word processing does not depend entirely on attentional resources, but that non-conscious processing probably is restricted to rather lower-level linguistic information.	t	\N
22290344	Synesthesia is a sensory disorder where the stimulation of one sensory modality can lead to a reaction in another which would not usually be expected to respond; for instance, someone might see a color on hearing a word such as a day of the week. Disordered perception of sensory information also appears to contribute to the pathophysiology of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). The purpose of this exploratory study was to ascertain whether these two conditions might be linked in any way. Two hundred consecutive IBS outpatients were screened for synesthesia and compared with 200 matched healthy volunteers (controls). Positive responders were tested for two types of synesthesia (grapheme-color and music-color/shape) using a questionnaire which was repeated after 3 months to test for reproducibility. Of the 200 IBS outpatients screened, 26 (13%) patients and six (3%) controls claimed to be synesthetic (P < 0.001). Reproducibility was more variable in IBS patients than controls but despite this variability, 15 (7.5%) patients compared with 5 (2.5%) controls had greater than 75% consistency (P = 0.036), and 19 (9.5%) patients and 6 (3%) controls had greater than 50% consistency (P = 0.012). A reproducibility of less than 50% was observed in seven (3.5%) patients and no controls (0%) (P = 0.015), and these individuals were classified as having pseudo-synesthesia. IBS patients clearly differ from controls in terms of claiming to have synesthetic experiences. These results justify additional studies on the relationship between IBS and synesthesia to further understand the neural mechanisms underpinning these two conditions and to establish whether they may be linked.	t	\N
22292985	The effects of the use of cochlear implant (CI) on speech intelligibility, speaking rate, and vowel formant characteristics and the relationships between speech intelligibility, speaking rate, and vowel formant characteristics for children are clinically important. The purposes of this study were to report on the comparisons for speaking rate and vowel space area, and their relationship with speech intelligibility, between 24 Mandarin-speaking children with CI and 24 age-sex-education level matched normal hearing (NH) controls. Participants were audio recorded as they read a designed Mandarin intelligibility test, repeated prolongation of each of the three point vowels /i/, /a/, and /u/ five times, and repeated each of three sentences carrying one point vowel five times. Compared to the NH group, the CI group exhibited: (1) mild-to-moderate speech intelligibility impairment; (2) significantly reduced speaking rate mainly due to significantly longer inter-word pauses and larger pause proportion; and (3) significantly less vowel reduction in the horizontal dimension in sustained vowel phonation. The limitations of speech intelligibility development in children after cochlear implantation were related to atypical patterns and to a smaller degree in vowel reduction and slower speaking rate resulting from less efficient articulatory movement transition.	t	\N
22302814	Understanding speech in noisy environments is often taken for granted; however, this task is particularly challenging for people with cochlear hearing loss, even with hearing aids or cochlear implants. A significant limitation to improving auditory prostheses is our lack of understanding of the neural basis for robust speech perception in noise. Perceptual studies suggest the slowly varying component of the acoustic waveform (envelope, ENV) is sufficient for understanding speech in quiet, but the rapidly varying temporal fine structure (TFS) is important in noise. These perceptual findings have important implications for cochlear implants, which currently only provide ENV; however, neural correlates have been difficult to evaluate due to cochlear transformations between acoustic TFS and recovered neural ENV. Here, we demonstrate the relative contributions of neural ENV and TFS by quantitatively linking neural coding, predicted from a computational auditory nerve model, with perception of vocoded speech in noise measured from normal hearing human listeners. Regression models with ENV and TFS coding as independent variables predicted speech identification and phonetic feature reception at both positive and negative signal-to-noise ratios. We found that: (1) neural ENV coding was a primary contributor to speech perception, even in noise; and (2) neural TFS contributed in noise mainly in the presence of neural ENV, but rarely as the primary cue itself. These results suggest that neural TFS has less perceptual salience than previously thought due to cochlear signal processing transformations between TFS and ENV. Because these transformations differ between normal and impaired ears, these findings have important translational implications for auditory prostheses.	t	\N
22304406	Children ask questions and learn from the responses they receive; however, little is known about how children learn from listening to others ask questions. Five experiments examined preschoolers' (N = 179) ability to solve simple problems using information gathered from listening to question-and-answer exchanges between 2 parties present in the same room. Overall, the ability to efficiently use information gathered from overheard exchanges improved between ages 3 and 5. Critically, however, across ages children solved the majority of problems correctly, suggesting preschoolers are capable of learning from others' questions. Moreover, children learned from others' questions without explicit instruction and when engaged in another activity. Implications for the development of problem-solving skills are discussed.	t	\N
22317269	The purpose of this study was to assess normal hearing listeners' performance in detecting a stationary backup alarm signal and to quantify the linear distance at detection point. Detection distances for 12 participants with normal hearing were measured while they were fitted with 7 hearing protectors and while they were unoccluded (open ear). A standard (narrowband) backup alarm signal and a broadband (pulsed white noise) backup alarm signal from Brigade[1] were used. The method of limits, with distance as the physical measurement variable and threshold detection as the task, was employed to find at which distance the participant could first detect the backup alarms. A within-subject Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) revealed a significant main effect of the listening conditions on the detection distance in feet. Post hoc analyses indicated that the Bilsom L3HV conventional passive earmuff (at 1132.2 ft detection distance) was significantly poorer compared to all other HPDs and the open ear in detection distance achieved, and that there were no statistically-significant differences between the unoccluded ear (1652.3 ft), EB-15-Lo BlastPLGTM (1546.2 ft), EB-15-Hi BlastPLGTM (1543.4 ft), E-A-R/3M Combat ArmsTM earplug-nonlinear, level-dependent state (1507.8 ft), E-A-R/3M HiFiTM earplug (1497.7 ft), and Bilsom ImpactTM dichotic electronic earmuff (1567.2 ft). In addition, the E-A-R/3M Combat ArmsTM earplug-passive steady state resulted in significantly longer detection distances than only the open ear condition, at 1474.1 ft versus 1652.3 ft for the open ear. ANOVA also revealed a significant main effect of the backup alarm type on detection distance. The means were 1600.9 ft for the standard (narrowband) backup alarm signal, and a significantly closer 1379.4 ft was required for the Brigade broadband backup alarm signal. For on-ground workers, it is crucial to detect backup alarm signals as far away as possible rather than at close distances since this will provide them more time to react to approaching vehicles. The results of this study suggest that as the attenuation of the hearing protectors increases, precautions should be considered by safety professionals. This is because, as it was the case with the Bilsom passive earmuff and E-A-R/3M Combat ArmsTM earplug-passive steady state, high attenuation minimizes the detection distance and as a result on-foot workers will have less time to react to any approaching vehicle. The main effects of the type of backup alarm signal demonstrated a statistically-significant advantage of the standard backup alarm over the broadband backup alarm on detection distance in feet. The magnitude of the improvement produced by the standard backup alarm was 221.5 feet, a very large margin. For example, with a vehicle backing at 10 mph, the 221.5 ft decrease in detection distance with the Brigade alarm equates to the vehicle arriving 15 seconds sooner at the worker from the point at which its alarm was first heard.	t	\N
22321294	This study was designed to separately test the effect of the cued/cueless nature of deviant stimuli and that of temporal distance between sound and deviance onsets on the mismatch negativity (MMN) as well as to look for discrepancies between behavioural discrimination performances and MMN amplitude when deviants are cueless. Ten healthy adults passively listened to stimuli that were contrasted by the presence or absence of a frequency sweep starting early or late within the sound. Discrimination performances were collected after the electrophysiological sessions. MMNs were much larger for cued than for cueless deviants. The temporal distance between sound and deviance onsets affected MMNs evoked by both cued and cueless deviants, even to the point of abolishing the MMN when cueless deviance occurred late in the stimulus. Behavioural data were at ceiling levels for all conditions, contrasting with the absence of MMN evoked by cueless deviants with late onset. Two mechanisms contribute to the MMN evoked by cued deviants: the memory comparison process and the adaptation/fresh-afferent one. Within the temporal window of integration, the delay at which each component disappears is different. Comparing waveforms evoked by cued versus cueless deviants provides a fairly simple way of isolating the MMN memory-based component.	t	\N
22323627	The ability to detect and track relevant acoustic signals embedded in a background of other sounds is crucial for hearing in complex acoustic environments. This ability is exemplified by a perceptual phenomenon known as "rhythmic masking release" (RMR). To demonstrate RMR, a sequence of tones forming a target rhythm is intermingled with physically identical "Distracter" sounds that perceptually mask the rhythm. The rhythm can be "released from masking" by adding "Flanker" tones in adjacent frequency channels that are synchronous with the Distracters. RMR represents a special case of auditory stream segregation, whereby the target rhythm is perceptually segregated from the background of Distracters when they are accompanied by the synchronous Flankers. The neural basis of RMR is unknown. Previous studies suggest the involvement of primary auditory cortex (A1) in the perceptual organization of sound patterns. Here, we recorded neural responses to RMR sequences in A1 of awake monkeys in order to identify neural correlates and potential mechanisms of RMR. We also tested whether two current models of stream segregation, when applied to these responses, could account for the perceptual organization of RMR sequences. Results suggest a key role for suppression of Distracter-evoked responses by the simultaneous Flankers in the perceptual restoration of the target rhythm in RMR. Furthermore, predictions of stream segregation models paralleled the psychoacoustics of RMR in humans. These findings reinforce the view that preattentive or "primitive" aspects of auditory scene analysis may be explained by relatively basic neural mechanisms at the cortical level.	t	\N
22337498	In this study, the authors (a) investigated whether a group of people with severe aphasia could learn a vocabulary of pantomime gestures through therapy and (b) compared their learning of gestures with their learning of words. The authors also examined whether gesture therapy cued word production and whether naming therapy cued gestures. Fourteen people with severe aphasia received 15 hr of gesture and naming treatments. Evaluations comprised repeated measures of gesture and word production, comparing treated and untreated items. Baseline measures were stable but improved significantly following therapy. Across the group, improvements in naming were greater than improvements in gesture. This trend was evident in most individuals' results, although 3 participants made better progress in gesture. Gains were item specific, and there was no evidence of cross-modality cueing. Items that received gesture therapy did not improve in naming, and items that received naming therapy did not improve in gesture. Results show that people with severe aphasia can respond to gesture and naming therapies. Given the unequal gains, naming may be a more productive therapy target than gesture for many (although not all) individuals with severe aphasia. The communicative benefits of therapy were not examined but are addressed in a follow-up article.	t	\N
22352496	The standard method for the calibration of audiometric bone vibrators requires the use of an artificial mastoid, a device that converts vibratory energy to an electrical analog. The mechanical input impedance of the device is designed to represent the average mechanical impedance of the human head. For calibration purposes, it is not necessary that the coupling device represent the impedance of the head. It is only necessary that it provides a repeatable measurement of the output of the vibrator that can be related to the normal threshold of hearing at each test frequency. In addition to the mechanical output that serves as the stimulus for the hearing test, bone vibrators produce an acoustic signal that is proportional to the mechanical force delivered to the head. By determining the transfer function relating the acoustic sound pressure to the mechanical force, the acoustic signal can serve as a proxy for the vibratory stimulus. This article describes the design and validation of an acoustic coupler for the calibration of audiometric bone vibrators.	t	\N
22352502	The reliability of distortion-product otoacoustic emission (DPOAE) measurements and their relation to loudness measurements was examined in 16 normal-hearing subjects and 58 subjects with hearing loss. The level of the distortion product (L(d)) was compared across two sessions and resulted in correlations that exceeded 0.90. The reliability of DPOAEs was less when parameters from nonlinear fits to the input/output (I/O) functions were compared across visits. Next, the relationship between DPOAE I/O parameters and the slope of the low-level portion of the categorical loudness scaling (CLS) function (soft slope) was assessed. Correlations of 0.65, 0.74, and 0.81 at 1, 2, and 4 kHz were observed between CLS soft slope and combined DPOAE parameters. Behavioral threshold had correlations of 0.82, 0.83, and 0.88 at 1, 2, and 4 kHz with CLS soft slope. Combining DPOAEs and behavioral threshold provided little additional information. Lastly, a multivariate approach utilizing the entire DPOAE I/O function was used to predict the CLS rating for each input level (dB SPL). Standard error of the estimate when using this method ranged from 2.4 to 3.0 categorical units (CU), suggesting that DPOAE I/O functions can predict CLS measures within the CU step size used in this study (5).	t	\N
22352514	Cross-generational and cross-dialectal variation in vowels among speakers of American English was examined in terms of vowel identification by listeners and vowel classification using pattern recognition. Listeners from Western North Carolina and Southeastern Wisconsin identified 12 vowel categories produced by 120 speakers stratified by age (old adults, young adults, and children), gender, and dialect. The vowels /ɝ, o, ʊ, u/ were well identified by both groups of listeners. The majority of confusions were for the front /i, ɪ, e, ɛ, æ/, the low back /ɑ, ɔ/ and the monophthongal North Carolina /aɪ/. For selected vowels, generational differences in acoustic vowel characteristics were perceptually salient, suggesting listeners' responsiveness to sound change. Female exemplars and native-dialect variants produced higher identification rates. Linear discriminant analyses which examined dialect and generational classification accuracy showed that sampling the formant pattern at vowel midpoint only is insufficient to separate the vowels. Two sample points near onset and offset provided enough information for successful classification. The models trained on one dialect classified the vowels from the other dialect with much lower accuracy. The results strongly support the importance of dynamic information in accurate classification of cross-generational and cross-dialectal variations.	t	\N
22352516	This study examined whether speech-on-speech masking is sensitive to variation in the degree of similarity between the target and the masker speech. Three experiments investigated whether speech-in-speech recognition varies across different background speech languages (English vs Dutch) for both English and Dutch targets, as well as across variation in the semantic content of the background speech (meaningful vs semantically anomalous sentences), and across variation in listener status vis-à-vis the target and masker languages (native, non-native, or unfamiliar). The results showed that the more similar the target speech is to the masker speech (e.g., same vs different language, same vs different levels of semantic content), the greater the interference on speech recognition accuracy. Moreover, the listener's knowledge of the target and the background language modulate the size of the release from masking. These factors had an especially strong effect on masking effectiveness in highly unfavorable listening conditions. Overall this research provided evidence that that the degree of target-masker similarity plays a significant role in speech-in-speech recognition. The results also give insight into how listeners assign their resources differently depending on whether they are listening to their first or second language.	t	\N
22352522	Automatic speech recognition (ASR) refers to the task of extracting a transcription of the linguistic content of an acoustical speech signal automatically. Despite several decades of research in this important area of acoustic signal processing, the accuracy of ASR systems is still far behind human performance, especially in adverse acoustic scenarios. In this context, one of the most challenging situations is the one concerning simultaneous speech in cocktail-party environments. Although source separation methods have already been investigated to deal with this problem, the separation process is not perfect and the resulting artifacts pose an additional problem to ASR performance. In this paper, a specific training to improve the percentage of recognized words in real simultaneous speech cases is proposed. The combination of source separation and this specific training is explored and evaluated under different acoustical conditions, leading to improvements of up to a 35% in ASR performance.	t	\N
22352609	There is substantial performance variability among listeners who transcribe degraded speech. Error patterns from 88 listeners who transcribed dysarthric speech were examined to identify differential use of syllabic strength cues for lexical segmentation. Transcripts from listeners were divided into four groups (ranging from Better- to Poorer- performing). Phrases classified as Higher- and Lower-intelligibility were analyzed separately for each performance group to assess the independent variable of severity. Results revealed that all four listener groups used syllabic strength cues for lexical segmentation of Higher-intelligibility speech, but only the Poorer listeners persisted with this strategy for the Lower-intelligibility phrases. This finding and additional analyses suggest testable hypotheses to address the role of cue-use and performance patterns.	t	\N
22353676	Age-related declines in auditory and cognitive processing may contribute to the difficulties with listening in noise that are often reported by older adults. Such difficulties are reported even by those who have relatively good audiograms that could be considered "normal" for their age (ISO 7029-2000 [ISO, 2000]). The Speech, Spatial, and Qualities of Hearing Scale (SSQ; Gatehouse and Noble, 2004) is a questionnaire developed to measure a listener's self-reported ability to hear in a variety of everyday situations, such as those that are challenging for older adults, and it can provide insights into the possible contributions of auditory and cognitive factors to their listening difficulties. The SSQ has been shown to be a sensitive and reliable questionnaire to detect benefits associated with the use of different hearing technologies and potentially other forms of intervention. Establishing how age-matched listeners with audiograms "normal" for their age rate the items on the SSQ could enable an extension of its use in audiological assessment and in setting rehabilitative goals. The main purpose of this study was to investigate how younger and older adults who passed audiometric screening and who had thresholds considered to be "normal" for their age responded on the SSQ. It was also of interest to compare these results to those reported previously for older listeners with hearing loss in an attempt to tease out the relative effects of age and hearing loss. The SSQ was administered to 48 younger (mean age = 19 yr; SD = 1.0) and 48 older (mean age = 70 yr, SD = 4.1) adults with clinically normal audiometric thresholds below 4 kHz. The younger adults were recruited through an introductory psychology course, and the older adults were volunteers from the local community. Both age groups completed the SSQ. The differences between the groups were analyzed. Correlations were used to compare the pattern of results across items for the two age groups in the present study and to assess the relationship between SSQ scores and objective measures of hearing. Comparisons were also made to published results for older adults with hearing loss. The pattern of reported difficulty across items was similar for both age groups, but younger adults had significantly higher scores than older adults on 42 of the 46 items. On average, younger adults scored 8.8 (SD = 0.6) out of 10 and older adults scored 7.7 (SD = 1.2) out of 10. By comparison, scores of 5.5 (SD = 1.9) have been reported for older adults (mean age = 71 yr, SD = 8.1) with moderate hearing loss (Gatehouse and Noble, 2004). By establishing the best scores that could reasonably be expected from younger and older adults with "normal" hearing thresholds, these results provide clinicians with information that should assist them in setting realistic targets for interventions for adults of different ages.	t	\N
22355005	To determine (a) the effect of fundamental frequency (f₀) on speech intelligibility, acceptability, and perceived gender in electrolaryngeal (EL) speakers, and (b) the effect of known gender on speech acceptability in EL speakers. A 2-part study was conducted. In Part 1, 34 healthy adults provided speech recordings using electrolarynges set at 75 Hz, 130 Hz, and 175 Hz, and 36 listeners transcribed the recordings. In Part 2, 22 speech samples were presented to 16 listeners. First, listeners identified the gender of each speaker and judged his or her speech acceptability using rating scales. Second, listeners judged the same samples for speech acceptability when gender information was provided. In Part 1, speakers were significantly more intelligible when using 75-Hz devices. In Part 2, the f₀ of the speech signal significantly impacted listeners' accuracy in perceiving the speaker's gender: In gender-incongruent conditions (males using 175-Hz devices, females using 75-Hz devices), listeners were unable to identify female speakers. Speech acceptability judgments were directly related to intelligibility. Finally, listeners differentially penalized female speakers who used 75-Hz devices when gender information was known. Low f₀ facilitated speech intelligibility. However, at low f₀, listeners were unable to identify females as female, and females were differentially penalized for speech acceptability. Results may have implications for rehabilitation.	t	\N
22355541	The potentiality to find precursors of human language in nonhuman primates is questioned because of differences related to the genetic determinism of human and nonhuman primate acoustic structures. Limiting the debate to production and acoustic plasticity might have led to underestimating parallels between human and nonhuman primates. Adult-young differences concerning vocal usage have been reported in various primate species. A key feature of language is the ability to converse, respecting turn-taking rules. Turn-taking structures some nonhuman primates' adult vocal exchanges, but the development and the cognitive relevancy of this rule have never been investigated in monkeys. Our observations of Campbell's monkeys' spontaneous vocal utterances revealed that juveniles broke the turn-taking rule more often than did experienced adults. Only adults displayed different levels of interest when hearing playbacks of vocal exchanges respecting or not the turn-taking rule. This study strengthens parallels between human conversations and nonhuman primate vocal exchanges.	t	\N
22361165	Sensory-motor interactions between auditory and articulatory representations in the dorsal auditory processing stream are suggested to contribute to speech perception, especially when bottom-up information alone is insufficient for purely auditory perceptual mechanisms to succeed. Here, we hypothesized that the dorsal stream responds more vigorously to auditory syllables when one is engaged in a phonetic identification/repetition task subsequent to perception compared to passive listening, and that this effect is further augmented when the syllables are embedded in noise. To this end, we recorded magnetoencephalography while twenty subjects listened to speech syllables, with and without noise masking, in four conditions: passive perception; overt repetition; covert repetition; and overt imitation. Compared to passive listening, left-hemispheric N100m equivalent current dipole responses were amplified and shifted posteriorly when perception was followed by covert repetition task. Cortically constrained minimum-norm estimates showed amplified left supramarginal and angylar gyri responses in the covert repetition condition at ~100ms from stimulus onset. Longer-latency responses at ~200ms were amplified in the covert repetition condition in the left angular gyrus and in all three active conditions in the left premotor cortex, with further enhancements when the syllables were embedded in noise. Phonetic categorization accuracy and magnitude of voice pitch change between overt repetition and imitation conditions correlated with left premotor cortex responses at ~100 and ~200ms, respectively. Together, these results suggest that the dorsal stream involvement in speech perception is dependent on perceptual task demands and that phonetic categorization performance is influenced by the left premotor cortex.	t	\N
22364395	Young infants perceive an object's trajectory as continuous across occlusion provided the temporal or spatial gap in perception is small. In 3 experiments involving 72 participants the authors investigated the effects of different forms of auditory information on 4-month-olds' perception of trajectory continuity. Provision of dynamic auditory information about the object's trajectory enhanced perception of trajectory continuity. However, a smaller positive effect was also obtained when the sound was continuous but provided no information about the object's location. Finally, providing discontinuous auditory information or auditory information that was dislocated relative to vision had negative effects on trajectory perception. These results are discussed relative to the intersensory redundancy hypothesis and emphasize the need to take an intersensory approach to infant perception.	t	\N
22364434	Vowels with extreme articulatory-acoustic properties act as natural referents. Infant perceptual asymmetries point to an underlying bias favoring these referent vowels. However, as language experience is gathered, distributional frequency of speech sounds could modify this initial bias. The perception of the /i/-/e/ contrast was explored in 144 Catalan- and Spanish-learning infants (2 languages with a different distribution of vowel frequency of occurrence) at 4, 6, and 12 months. The results confirmed an acoustic bias at 4 and 6 months in all infants. However, at 12 months, discrimination was not affected by the acoustic bias but by the frequency of occurrence of the vowel.	t	\N
22366801	Many studies have shown that the visual cortex of blind humans is activated in non-visual tasks. However, the electrophysiological signals underlying this cross-modal plasticity are largely unknown. Here, we characterize the neuronal population activity in the visual and auditory cortex of congenitally blind humans and sighted controls in a complex cognitive task. We recorded magnetoencephalographic responses from participants performing semantic categorization of meaningful sounds that followed the presentation of a semantically related or unrelated haptic object. Source analysis of the spectrally resolved magnetoencephalography data revealed that: (i) neuronal responses to sounds were stronger and longer lasting in the auditory cortex of blind subjects; (ii) auditory stimulation elicited strong oscillatory responses in the visual cortex of blind subjects that closely resembled responses to visual stimulation in sighted humans; (iii) the signal in the gamma frequency range was modulated by semantic congruency between the sounds and the preceding haptic objects; and (iv) signal power in the gamma range was correlated on a trial-by-trial basis between auditory and visual cortex in blind subjects, and the strength of this correlation was modulated by semantic congruency. Our results suggest that specifically oscillatory activity in the gamma range reflects non-visual processing in the visual cortex of blind individuals. Moreover, our results provide evidence that the deprived visual cortex is functionally integrated into a larger network that serves non-visual functions.	t	\N
22367585	In recent years, it has become evident that neural responses previously considered to be unisensory can be modulated by sensory input from other modalities. In this regard, visual neural activity elicited to viewing a face is strongly influenced by concurrent incoming auditory information, particularly speech. Here, we applied an additive-factors paradigm aimed at quantifying the impact that auditory speech has on visual event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited to visual speech. These multisensory interactions were measured across parametrically varied stimulus salience, quantified in terms of signal to noise, to provide novel insights into the neural mechanisms of audiovisual speech perception. First, we measured a monotonic increase of the amplitude of the visual P1-N1-P2 ERP complex during a spoken-word recognition task with increases in stimulus salience. ERP component amplitudes varied directly with stimulus salience for visual, audiovisual, and summed unisensory recordings. Second, we measured changes in multisensory gain across salience levels. During audiovisual speech, the P1 and P1-N1 components exhibited less multisensory gain relative to the summed unisensory components with reduced salience, while N1-P2 amplitude exhibited greater multisensory gain as salience was reduced, consistent with the principle of inverse effectiveness. The amplitude interactions were correlated with behavioral measures of multisensory gain across salience levels as measured by response times, suggesting that change in multisensory gain associated with unisensory salience modulations reflects an increased efficiency of visual speech processing.	t	\N
22371164	The finding that serial recall performance for visually presented items is impaired by concurrently presented task-irrelevant speech or sounds is referred to as the irrelevant-speech/-sound effect (ISE). Substantial evidence has indicated that the impairment of serial rehearsal can result in an ISE, and this may be explained by several models. The present series of experiments has demonstrated an ISE in surprise nonserial recognition tasks in which participants were unaware of the need to maintain a large number of visual items for a later memory test, suggesting that neither the rehearsal nor maintenance of order information is necessary for observing the ISE. This effect was observed for both steady-state and changing-state irrelevant sounds, suggesting that the present results do not derive from a confusion of order information, but instead provide evidence that identity representations can also be impaired by irrelevant sound.	t	\N
22371616	Auditory streaming and visual plaids have been used extensively to study perceptual organization in each modality. Both stimuli can produce bistable alternations between grouped (one object) and split (two objects) interpretations. They also share two peculiar features: (i) at the onset of stimulus presentation, organization starts with a systematic bias towards the grouped interpretation; (ii) this first percept has 'inertia'; it lasts longer than the subsequent ones. As a result, the probability of forming different objects builds up over time, a landmark of both behavioural and neurophysiological data on auditory streaming. Here we show that first percept bias and inertia are independent. In plaid perception, inertia is due to a depth ordering ambiguity in the transparent (split) interpretation that makes plaid perception tristable rather than bistable: experimental manipulations removing the depth ambiguity suppressed inertia. However, the first percept bias persisted. We attempted a similar manipulation for auditory streaming by introducing level differences between streams, to bias which stream would appear in the perceptual foreground. Here both inertia and first percept bias persisted. We thus argue that the critical common feature of the onset of perceptual organization is the grouping bias, which may be related to the transition from temporally/spatially local to temporally/spatially global computation.	t	\N
22371621	Auditory stream segregation involves linking temporally separate acoustic events into one or more coherent sequences. For any non-trivial sequence of sounds, many alternative descriptions can be formed, only one or very few of which emerge in awareness at any time. Evidence from studies showing bi-/multistability in auditory streaming suggest that some, perhaps many of the alternative descriptions are represented in the brain in parallel and that they continuously vie for conscious perception. Here, based on a predictive coding view, we consider the nature of these sound representations and how they compete with each other. Predictive processing helps to maintain perceptual stability by signalling the continuation of previously established patterns as well as the emergence of new sound sources. It also provides a measure of how well each of the competing representations describes the current acoustic scene. This account of auditory stream segregation has been tested on perceptual data obtained in the auditory streaming paradigm.	t	\N
22379692	The attentional blink (AB) is a well-established paradigm in which identification of a target T2 is reduced shortly after presentation of an earlier target T1. An important question concerns the importance of backward masking during the AB. While task switching has been found to be a strong modulator mediating the AB without any masking of T2, the present study investigated whether spatial switching could similarly produce an AB without masking. Using a spatial AB paradigm in which items appeared at different locations; we found (a) a significant AB without backward masking of T2 but no AB when no distractors followed T2, (b) no evidence for Lag 1 sparing. These findings show that when there is a spatial switch between the targets, presenting the distractor following T2 at the same location than T2 (backward masking) is not a necessary condition for the AB to occur, but T2 has to be followed by surrounding distractors (appearing at different locations than T2). This pattern of data confirms that spatial switching is a robust modulator of the AB, but to a less extent than task switching.	t	\N
22384765	Hemodynamic changes can be noninvasively real-time monitored in stroke patients by means of transcranial Doppler sonography (TCD). The aim of this pilot study was to assess hemodynamic changes in both middle cerebral arteries (MCA) in aphasic stroke patients by means of TCD during verbal stimulation. Eight aphasic patients with stroke in the territory of the left MCA were tested by modified Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (BDAE) within 3 days of stroke onset. Both MCA were monitored simultaneously by means of TCD with 2 MHz probes. Basic MCA mean blood flow velocity (MBFV) values were assessed and monitored during verbal stimulation. Verbal stimulation was performed with 30 photos of objects for daily usage, arranged by function. The same test was performed in 16 right-handed healthy controls. In stroke patients, the mean MBFV were 56 cm/s in the left MCA and 56 cm/s in the right MCA. A mean 30% increase was observed in the left MCA and 22% in the right MCA. In healthy controls, a mean 21.7% increase was observed in the left MCA and 18% in the right MCA. A trend toward higher percentage of MBFV increase was observed in the left MCA during verbal stimulations in aphasic patients as compared to control subjects.	t	\N
22390292	Human multisensory systems are known to bind inputs from the different sensory modalities into a unified percept, a process that leads to measurable behavioral benefits. This integrative process can be observed through multisensory illusions, including the McGurk effect and the sound-induced flash illusion, both of which demonstrate the ability of one sensory modality to modulate perception in a second modality. Such multisensory integration is highly dependent upon the temporal relationship of the different sensory inputs, with perceptual binding occurring within a limited range of asynchronies known as the temporal binding window (TBW). Previous studies have shown that this window is highly variable across individuals, but it is unclear how these variations in the TBW relate to an individual's ability to integrate multisensory cues. Here we provide evidence linking individual differences in multisensory temporal processes to differences in the individual's audiovisual integration of illusory stimuli. Our data provide strong evidence that the temporal processing of multiple sensory signals and the merging of multiple signals into a single, unified perception, are highly related. Specifically, the width of right side of an individuals' TBW, where the auditory stimulus follows the visual, is significantly correlated with the strength of illusory percepts, as indexed via both an increase in the strength of binding synchronous sensory signals and in an improvement in correctly dissociating asynchronous signals. These findings are discussed in terms of their possible neurobiological basis, relevance to the development of sensory integration, and possible importance for clinical conditions in which there is growing evidence that multisensory integration is compromised.	t	\N
22390745	The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of the Global Voice Therapy Model (GVTM) on acoustic, aerodynamic, and perceptual voice measures of four adults seeking voice therapy for a voice disorder. A speech-language pathologist facilitated speaking voice therapy with the four participants using the GVTM. Participants completed acoustic, aerodynamic, and perceptual voice measures at pre- and post-therapy time points. Differences were seen in the voice measures from pre- to post-therapy. The GVTM was successful in facilitating an improvement in the acoustic, aerodynamic, and perceptual measures of the participants.	t	\N
22395654	Tactile sensation, which is one of the earliest developing sensory systems, is very important in the perception of an individual's body and the surrounding physical environment, especially in newborns. However, currently, only little is known about the response of a newborn's brain to tactile sensation. The objective of the present study was to determine the response of a newborn's brain to tactile sensation and to compare the brain responses to various sensory stimuli. Ten healthy newborns, 2-9 days after birth, were enrolled. A multichannel near-infrared spectroscopy system was used to measure brain responses. The probe array covered broad cortical areas, including the parietal, temporal, and occipital areas. We measured cortical hemodynamic changes in response to three different types of stimuli: tactile, auditory, and visual. Activated areas were analyzed by t-tests, and the number of activated channels among the three different stimuli was compared by χ²-tests. The results showed that when the brain responded to each type of stimulation, the corresponding primary sensory area was activated, and tactile stimuli induced broader areas of brain activation than the other two types of stimuli (auditory or visual). Thus, broad brain areas, including the temporal and parietal areas, were activated by tactile stimuli in early newborn periods. These results suggest that there are differences in newborns' reactions to various types of sensory stimuli, which may reflect the importance of tactile sensation in the early newborn period.	t	\N
22403933	Often it is difficult to find a natural explanation as to why a surprising coincidence occurs. In attempting to find one, people may be inclined to accept paranormal explanations. The objective of this study was to investigate whether people with a lower threshold for being surprised by coincidences have a greater propensity to become believers compared to those with a higher threshold. Participants were exposed to artificial coincidences, which were formally defined as less or more probable, and were asked to provide remarkability ratings. Paranormal belief was measured by the Australian Sheep-Goat Scale. An analysis of the remarkability ratings revealed a significant interaction effect between Sheep-Goat score and type of coincidence, suggesting that people with lower thresholds of surprise, when experiencing coincidences, harbor higher paranormal belief than those with a higher threshold. The theoretical aspects of these findings were discussed.	t	\N
22405960	Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and neuroimaging studies suggest a functional link between the emotion-related brain areas and the motor system. It is not well understood, however, whether the motor cortex activity is modulated by specific emotions experienced during music listening. In 23 healthy volunteers, we recorded the motor evoked potentials (MEP) following TMS to investigate the corticospinal excitability while subjects listened to music pieces evoking different emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, and displeasure), an emotionally neutral piece, and a control stimulus (musical scale). Quality and intensity of emotions were previously rated in an additional group of 30 healthy subjects. Fear-related music significantly increased the MEP size compared to the neutral piece and the control stimulus. This effect was not seen with music inducing other emotional experiences and was not related to changes in autonomic variables (respiration rate, heart rate). Current data indicate that also in a musical context, the excitability of the corticomotoneuronal system is related to the emotion expressed by the listened piece.	t	\N
22405961	Conceptual knowledge is classically supposed to be abstract and represented in an amodal unitary system, distinct from the sensory and motor brain systems. A more recent embodiment view of conceptual knowledge, however, proposes that concepts are grounded in distributed modality-specific brain areas which typically process sensory or action-related object information. Recent neuroimaging evidence suggested the significance of left auditory association cortex encompassing posterior superior and middle temporal gyrus in coding conceptual sound features of everyday objects. However, a causal role of this region in processing conceptual sound information has yet to be established. Here we had the unique chance to investigate a patient, JR, with a focal lesion in left posterior superior and middle temporal gyrus. To test the necessity of this region in conceptual and perceptual processing of sound information we administered four different experimental tasks to JR: Visual word recognition, category fluency, sound recognition and voice classification. Compared with a matched control group, patient JR was consistently impaired in conceptual processing of sound-related everyday objects (e.g., "bell"), while performance for non-sound-related everyday objects (e.g., "armchair"), animals, whether they typically produce sounds (e.g., "frog") or not (e.g., "tortoise"), and musical instruments (e.g., "guitar") was intact. An analogous deficit pattern in JR was also obtained for perceptual recognition of the corresponding sounds. Hence, damage to left auditory association cortex specifically impairs perceptual and conceptual processing of sounds from everyday objects. In support of modality-specific theories, these findings strongly evidence the necessity of auditory association cortex in coding sound-related conceptual information.	t	\N
22410432	This article reports on an investigation of graphophonological processes in deaf readers of French over a 1-year period. Deaf readers are known to have a phonological deficit compared to hearing peers, and conclusions from studies on this question are often conflicting. Among the different types of phonological processing, we can identify graphophonological processes based on correspondences between the oral and the written language. In this investigation, we evaluated graphophonemic and graphosyllabic processes using, in each case, two different tasks varying in their degree of cognitive constraints (CC- vs. CC+). Nineteen 11 year-old deaf students were compared to younger normal readers of the same reading level (RA, n = 17) and to normal readers of the same age (CA, n = 20). Two variables were considered in the analyses: accuracy and response latency. Results show that deaf readers do process written items at the graphophonological level and that graphophonological processes are related to reading ability. Also, results indicate main effects of task (CC- vs. CC+), time (T1 vs. T2), and group. In general, deaf participants' performances are comparable to those of RA and differ from those of CA. Results are discussed within the framework of the study of phonology in deaf readers and its relation to reading acquisition.	t	\N
22411494	To determine the effects of noise and speech style on word learning in typically developing school-age children. Thirty-one participants ages 9;0 (years;months) to 10;11 attempted to learn 2 sets of 8 novel words and their referents. They heard all of the words 13 times each within meaningful narrative discourse. Signal-to-noise ratio (noise vs. quiet) and speech style (plain vs. clear) were manipulated such that half of the children heard the new words in broadband white noise and half heard them in quiet; within those conditions, each child heard one set of words produced in a plain speech style and another set in a clear speech style. Children who were trained in quiet learned to produce the word forms more accurately than those who were trained in noise. Clear speech resulted in more accurate word form productions than plain speech, whether the children had learned in noise or quiet. Learning from clear speech in noise and plain speech in quiet produced comparable results. Noise limits expressive vocabulary growth in children, reducing the quality of word form representation in the lexicon. Clear speech input can aid expressive vocabulary growth in children, even in noisy environments.	t	\N
22411713	This article describes the development and evaluation of The University of Western Ontario (UWO) Plurals Test, which is an English language measure of detection of the word-final fricative cue for plurality. Normative data are provided for 26 listeners with normal hearing and 24 listeners with hearing impairment (children and adults), as are evaluations of the acoustical properties of the stimuli, the test's test-retest reliability, and the test's sensitivity to changes in hearing aid signal processing (e.g., nonlinear frequency compression). Results indicate reliable, repeated outcome measurement at the level of the individual. When compared to a global measure of real-world listening preference, the UWO Plurals Test was found to be somewhat sensitive to the effects of changes in hearing aid signal processing. Findings suggest potential use of the UWO Plurals Test to evaluate aided and unaided ability of listeners between the ages of 6 and 81 years to detect the word-final fricatives /s/ and /z/ as they occur in English plural nouns.	t	\N
22414595	Musicians' skills in auditory processing depend highly on instrument, performance practice, and on level of expertise. Yet, it is not known though whether the style/genre of music might shape auditory processing in the brains of musicians. Here, we aimed at tackling the role of musical style/genre on modulating neural and behavioral responses to changes in musical features. Using a novel, fast and musical sounding multi-feature paradigm, we measured the mismatch negativity (MMN), a pre-attentive brain response, to six types of musical feature change in musicians playing three distinct styles of music (classical, jazz, rock/pop) and in non-musicians. Jazz and classical musicians scored higher in the musical aptitude test than band musicians and non-musicians, especially with regards to tonal abilities. These results were extended by the MMN findings: jazz musicians had larger MMN-amplitude than all other experimental groups across the six different sound features, indicating a greater overall sensitivity to auditory outliers. In particular, we found enhanced processing of pith and sliding up to pitches in jazz musicians only. Furthermore, we observed a more frontal MMN to pitch and location compared to the other deviants in jazz musicians and left lateralization of the MMN to timbre in classical musicians. These findings indicate that the characteristics of the style/genre of music played by musicians influence their perceptual skills and the brain processing of sound features embedded in a musical context. Musicians' brain is hence shaped by the type of training, musical style/genre, and listening experiences.	t	\N
22415447	Although it has been well documented that the spatial inhibitory effect induced by repetition of location (i.e., spatial inhibition of return, or IOR) occurs cross-modally, we do not yet know whether nonspatial (e.g., color-based) repetition-induced inhibition occurs in a cross-modal fashion as well. In the present study, a novel cross-modal paradigm with regard to color-based repetition was adopted. An intervening neutral cue, whose semantic identity was different from those of both the prime and the target, was introduced between the prime and the target in a repetition-priming task. The modalities of the prime, the neutral cue, and the target could be either visual or auditory, and the prime and the target could refer either to the same or to different semantic identities. By adopting this paradigm, we aimed to answer two questions: (1) What are the specific conditions under which cross-modal semantic-based repetition inhibition occurs? (2) Are the representations inhibited in the semantic-based repetition inhibition effect supramodal or modality-specific? Our results suggested that semantic-based repetition inhibition occurs only when the prime and the neutral cue are from the same sensory modality, and it occurs irrespective of whether the modality of the target is cued and irrespective of whether the modality of the target is auditory or visual. Taken together, our results suggest that the occurrence of cross-modal nonspatial repetition inhibition is conditional and that the nonspatial representations inhibited by the repetition inhibition are supramodal.	t	\N
22419678	Infants must learn to make sense of real-world auditory environments containing simultaneous and overlapping sounds. In adults, event-related potential studies have demonstrated the existence of separate preattentive memory traces for concurrent note sequences and revealed perceptual dominance for encoding of the voice with higher fundamental frequency of 2 simultaneous tones or melodies. Here, we presented 2 simultaneous streams of notes (15 semitones apart) to 7-month-old infants. On 50% of trials, either the higher or the lower note was modified by one semitone, up or down, leaving 50% standard trials. Infants showed mismatch negativity (MMN) to changes in both voices, indicating separate memory traces for each voice. Furthermore, MMN was earlier and larger for the higher voice as in adults. When in the context of a second voice, representation of the lower voice was decreased and that of the higher voice increased compared with when each voice was presented alone. Additionally, correlations between MMN amplitude and amount of weekly music listening suggest that experience affects the development of auditory memory. In sum, the ability to process simultaneous pitches and the dominance of the highest voice emerge early during infancy and are likely important for the perceptual organization of sound in realistic environments.	t	\N
22423819	Hearing-aid wearers have reported sound source locations as being perceptually internalized (i.e., inside their head). The contribution of hearing-aid design to internalization has, however, received little attention. This experiment compared the sensitivity of hearing-impaired (HI) and normal-hearing listeners to externalization cues when listening with their own ears and simulated behind-the-ear hearing-aids in increasingly complex listening situations and reduced pinna cues. Participants rated the degree of externalization using a multiple-stimulus listening test for mixes of internalized and externalized speech stimuli presented over headphones. The results showed that HI listeners had a contracted perception of externalization correlated with high-frequency hearing loss.	t	\N
22427328	Imaging studies in blind subjects have consistently shown that sensory and cognitive tasks evoke activity in the occipital cortex, which is normally visual. The precise areas involved and degree of activation are dependent upon the cause and age of onset of blindness. Here, we investigated the cortical language network at rest and during an auditory covert naming task in five bilaterally anophthalmic subjects, who have never received visual input. When listening to auditory definitions and covertly retrieving words, these subjects activated lateral occipital cortex bilaterally in addition to the language areas activated in sighted controls. This activity was significantly greater than that present in a control condition of listening to reversed speech. The lateral occipital cortex was also recruited into a left-lateralized resting-state network that usually comprises anterior and posterior language areas. Levels of activation to the auditory naming and reversed speech conditions did not differ in the calcarine (striate) cortex. This primary 'visual' cortex was not recruited to the left-lateralized resting-state network and showed high interhemispheric correlation of activity at rest, as is typically seen in unimodal cortical areas. In contrast, the interhemispheric correlation of resting activity in extrastriate areas was reduced in anophthalmia to the level of cortical areas that are heteromodal, such as the inferior frontal gyrus. Previous imaging studies in the congenitally blind show that primary visual cortex is activated in higher-order tasks, such as language and memory to a greater extent than during more basic sensory processing, resulting in a reversal of the normal hierarchy of functional organization across 'visual' areas. Our data do not support such a pattern of organization in anophthalmia. Instead, the patterns of activity during task and the functional connectivity at rest are consistent with the known hierarchy of processing in these areas normally seen for vision. The differences in cortical organization between bilateral anophthalmia and other forms of congenital blindness are considered to be due to the total absence of stimulation in 'visual' cortex by light or retinal activity in the former condition, and suggests development of subcortical auditory input to the geniculo-striate pathway.	t	\N
22431327	Previous neuroimaging studies have shown that the patterns of brain activity during the processing of personally relevant names (e.g., own name, friend's name, partner's name, etc.) and the names of famous people (e.g., celebrities) are different. However, it is not known how the activity in this network is influenced by the modality of the presented stimuli. In this fMRI study, we investigated the pattern of brain activations during the recognition of aurally and visually presented full names of the subject, a significant other, a famous person and unknown individuals. In both modalities, we found that the processing of self-name and the significant other's name was associated with increased activation in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). Acoustic presentations of these names also activated bilateral inferior frontal gyri (IFG). This pattern of results supports the role of MPFC in the processing of personally relevant information, irrespective of their modality.	t	\N
22432606	Contact quotient (CQ), measured by electroglottogram (EGG), is a ratio which illustrates the duration of vocal fold contact during one vocal fold period. In the present study CQ(EGG) was calculated from a sustained vowel phonation in three different phonation types (breathy, normal, pressed) at three amplitude threshold levels (25%, 35%, 50%). CQ(EGG) values were compared with experts' perceptual evaluation of the firmness of phonation. The contact time of the vocal folds differed significantly between the different phonation types at all threshold levels (P < 0.01). Perceptual evaluation correlated best with CQ(EGG) at threshold levels 25% and 35%. The results of the linear regression model suggested that by using threshold level 25% the effect of F0 and SPL on CQ(EGG) were not significant.	t	\N
22434397	Female as opposed to male listeners were better able to use a delayed informative cue at the end of a long sentence to report an earlier word which was disrupted by noise. Informative (semantically related) or uninformative (semantically unrelated) word cues were presented 2, 6, or 10 words after a target word whose initial phoneme had been replaced with noise. A total of 84 young adults (45 males) listened to each sentence and then repeated it after its offset. The semantic benefit effect (SBE) was the difference in the accuracy of report of the disrupted target word during informative vs. uninformative sentences. Women had significantly higher SBEs than men even though there were no significant sex differences in terms of number of non-target words reported, the effect of distance between the disrupted target word and the informative cue, or kinds of errors generated. We suggest that the superior ability of women to use delayed semantic information to decode an earlier ambiguous speech signal may be linked to women's tendency to engage the hemispheres more bilaterally than men during word processing. Since the maintenance of semantic context under ambiguous conditions demands more right than left hemispheric resources, this may give women an advantage.	t	\N
22454230	Vibrant Soundbridge (VSB) has been recommended for both adults and children with all types of hearing loss. The aim of this study was to evaluate the objective and subjective benefits with VSB and the difference in benefits for patients with different types of hearing loss. A retrospective case review was conducted on seven consecutive patients who had received VSB implantations at the National University Hospital of Singapore from March 2006 to November 2009. Patients were divided into the Sensorineural Hearing Loss (SNHL) Group and Conductive Hearing Loss (CHL)/Mixed Hearing Loss (MHL) Group. Surgical complications were evaluated, and objective and subjective results were compared between the two groups. No major complications were observed during the follow-up of up to 4 years. Greater objective and subjective benefits were observed in the CHL/MHL Group. Subjective benefits were consistent with objective improvements. Pre-operative counseling for realistic expectations is important, especially for patients with SNHL.	t	\N
22459559	This study examined the role of modality in correct recognition and misinformation acceptance in a naturalistic event cognition task that reflected an everyday life sequence of events. Participants heard, observed or acted out a sequence of events and were tested on memory for these events after being presented with an accurate description of the events or a description containing misinformation. The results indicated that recognition of unaltered information was higher in the enactment condition than the auditory or visual conditions and that this effect persisted over time. Misinformation acceptance for the immediate recognition test was lowest in the auditory condition but this advantage disappeared over time. Modality congruence of the auditory condition with the modality in which misinformation was presented and different retrieval processes underlying recognition of altered and unaltered information may explain these findings.	t	\N
22463939	This case study describes a 45-yr-old female with bilateral, profound sensorineural hearing loss due to Ménière's disease. She received her first cochlear implant in the right ear in 2008 and the second cochlear implant in the left ear in 2010. The case study examines the enhancement to speech recognition, particularly in noise, provided by bilateral cochlear implants. Speech recognition tests were administered prior to obtaining the second implant and at a number of test intervals following activation of the second device. Speech recognition in quiet and noise as well as localization abilities were assessed in several conditions to determine bilateral benefit and performance differences between ears. The results of the speech recognition testing indicated a substantial improvement in the patient's ability to understand speech in noise and her ability to localize sound when using bilateral cochlear implants compared to using a unilateral implant or an implant and a hearing aid. In addition, the patient reported considerable improvement in her ability to communicate in daily life when using bilateral implants versus a unilateral implant. This case suggests that cochlear implantation is a viable option for patients who have lost their hearing to Ménière's disease even when a number of medical treatments and surgical interventions have been performed to control vertigo. In the case presented, bilateral cochlear implantation was necessary for this patient to communicate successfully at home and at work.	t	\N
22465324	Nonverbal emotional vocalizations are one of the most elementary ways of communicating in humans. We examined the impact of sex differences on neural responses to laughter and crying produced by the same and opposite sex. Thirty subjects (15 women) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging during a sex identification task for laughter, crying, and neutral voices. The parahippocampal gyrus was involved in both men and women while hearing laughter of the same sex, suggesting greater positive emotional processing and greater attention toward emotional context in response to laughter of the same sex than of the opposite sex. The posterior cingulate was involved in both men and women while hearing crying of the opposite sex, suggesting that empathic processing may occur more in response to crying of the opposite sex than of the same sex. Furthermore, brain responses to crying of the opposite sex seem to reflect upon men's efforts to perform emotional regulation and women's empathic concerns.	t	\N
22465475	Neglect is a neurological syndrome characterised by a lack of conscious perception of events localised in the contralesional side of space. Here, we consider the possible multisensory nature of this disorder, critically reviewing the literature devoted to multisensory manifestations and processing in neglect. Although its most striking manifestations have been observed in the visual domain, a number of studies demonstrate that neglect can affect virtually any sensory modality, in particular touch and audition. Furthermore, a few recent studies have reported a correlation in severity between visual and non-visual neglect-related deficits evaluated in the same patients, providing some preliminary support for a multisensory conception of neglect. Sensory stimulation and sensorimotor adaptation techniques, aimed at alleviating neglect, have also been shown to affect several sensory modalities, including some that were not directly affected by the intervention. Finally, in some cases neglect can bias multisensory interactions known to occur in healthy individuals, leading to abnormal behaviour or uncovering multisensory compensation mechanisms. This evidence, together with neurophysiological and neuroimaging data revealing the multisensory role played by the areas that are most commonly damaged in neglect patients, seems to speak in favour of neglect as a multisensory disorder. However, since most previous studies were not conducted with the specific purpose of systematically investigating the multisensory nature of neglect, we conclude that more research is needed to appropriately assess this question, and suggest some methodological guidelines that we hope will help clarify this issue. At present, the conception of neglect as a multisensory disorder remains a promising working hypothesis that may help define the pathophysiology of this syndrome.	t	\N
22476724	That auditory perceptual training may alleviate tinnitus draws on two observations: (1) tinnitus probably arises from altered activity within the central auditory system following hearing loss and (2) sound-based training can change central auditory activity. Training that provides sound enrichment across hearing loss frequencies has therefore been hypothesised to alleviate tinnitus. We tested this prediction with two randomised trials of frequency discrimination training involving a total of 70 participants with chronic subjective tinnitus. Participants trained on either (1) a pure-tone standard at a frequency within their region of normal hearing, (2) a pure-tone standard within the region of hearing loss or (3) a high-pass harmonic complex tone spanning a region of hearing loss. Analysis of the primary outcome measure revealed an overall reduction in self-reported tinnitus handicap after training that was maintained at a 1-month follow-up assessment, but there were no significant differences between groups. Secondary analyses also report the effects of different domains of tinnitus handicap on the psychoacoustical characteristics of the tinnitus percept (sensation level, bandwidth and pitch) and on duration of training. Our overall findings and conclusions cast doubt on the superiority of a purely acoustic mechanism to underpin tinnitus remediation. Rather, the nonspecific patterns of improvement are more suggestive that auditory perceptual training affects impact on a contributory mechanism such as selective attention or emotional state.	t	\N
22480025	In grammar books, the various functions of and as phrasal coordinator and clausal conjunction are treated as standard knowledge. In addition, studies on the uses of and in everyday talk-in-interaction have described its discourse-organizational functions on a more global level. In the phonetic literature, in turn, a range of phonetic forms of and have been listed. Yet, so far few studies have related the phonetic features of and to its function. This contribution surveys a range of phonetic forms of and in a corpus of private American English telephone conversations. It shows that the use of forms such as [ænd], [εn], or [en], among others, is not random but, in essence, correlates with the syntactic-pragmatic scope of and and the cognitive closeness of the items the and connects. This, in turn, allows the phonetic design of and to contribute to the organization of turn-taking. The findings presented are based on conversation-analytic and interactional-linguistic methodology, which includes quantitative analyses.	t	\N
22480027	This paper investigates hearers' use of response tokens (back-channels), in maintaining and differentiating their actions. Initial observations suggest that hearers produce a sequence of phonetically similar responses to disengage from the current topic, and dissimilar responses to engage with the current topic. This is studied systematically by combining detailed interactional and phonetic analysis in a collection of naturally-occurring talk in Norwegian. The interactional analysis forms the basis for labeling actions as maintained ('doing the same') and differentiated ('NOT doing the same'), which is then used as a basis for phonetic analysis. The phonetic analysis shows that certain phonetic characteristics, including pitch, loudness, voice quality and articulatory characteristics, are associated with 'doing the same', as different from 'NOT doing the same'. Interactional analysis gives further evidence of how this differentiation is of systematic relevance in the negotiations of a next turn. This paper addresses phonetic variation and variability by focusing on the relationship between sequence and phonetics in the turn-by-turn development of meaning. This has important implications for linguistic/phonetic research, and for the study of back-channels.	t	\N
22492193	The auditory system codes spatial locations in a way that deviates from the spatial representations found in other modalities. This difference is especially striking in the cortex, where neurons form topographical maps of visual and tactile space but where auditory space is represented through a population rate code. In this hemifield code, sound source location is represented in the activity of two widely tuned opponent populations, one tuned to the right and the other to the left side of auditory space. Scientists are only beginning to uncover how this coding strategy adapts to various spatial processing demands. This review presents the current understanding of auditory spatial processing in the cortex. To this end, the authors consider how various implementations of the hemifield code may exist within the auditory cortex and how these may be modulated by the stimulation and task context. As a result, a coherent set of neural strategies for auditory spatial processing emerges.	t	\N
22500627	Behavior varies from trial to trial even when the stimulus is maintained as constant as possible. In many models, this variability is attributed to noise in the brain. Here, we propose that there is another major source of variability: suboptimal inference. Importantly, we argue that in most tasks of interest, and particularly complex ones, suboptimal inference is likely to be the dominant component of behavioral variability. This perspective explains a variety of intriguing observations, including why variability appears to be larger on the sensory than on the motor side, and why our sensors are sometimes surprisingly unreliable.	t	\N
22501070	Judgments of whether a sinusoidal probe is higher or lower in frequency than the closest partial ("target") in a multi-partial complex are improved when the target is pulsed on and off. These experiments explored the contribution of reduction in perceptual confusion and recovery from adaptation to this effect. In experiment 1, all partials except the target were replaced by noise to reduce perceptual confusion. Performance was much better than when the background was composed of multiple partials. When the level of the target was reduced to avoid ceiling effects, no effect of pulsing the target occurred. In experiment 2, the target and background partials were irregularly and independently amplitude modulated. This gave a large effect of pulsing the target, suggesting that if recovery from adaptation contributes to the effect, amplitude fluctuations do not prevent this. In experiment 3, the background was composed of multiple steady partials, but the target was irregularly amplitude modulated. This gave better performance than when the target was unmodulated and a moderate effect of pulsing the target. It is argued that when the target and background are steady tones, pulsing the target may result both in reduction of perceptual confusion and recovery from adaptation.	t	\N
22501078	Research on children's speech perception and production suggests that consonant voicing and place contrasts may be acquired early in life, at least in word-onset position. However, little is known about the development of the acoustic correlates of later-acquired, word-final coda contrasts. This is of particular interest in languages like English where many grammatical morphemes are realized as codas. This study therefore examined how various non-spectral acoustic cues vary as a function of stop coda voicing (voiced vs. voiceless) and place (alveolar vs. velar) in the spontaneous speech of 6 American-English-speaking mother-child dyads. The results indicate that children as young as 1;6 exhibited many adult-like acoustic cues to voicing and place contrasts, including longer vowels and more frequent use of voice bar with voiced codas, and a greater number of bursts and longer post-release noise for velar codas. However, 1;6-year-olds overall exhibited longer durations and more frequent occurrence of these cues compared to mothers, with decreasing values by 2;6. Thus, English-speaking 1;6-year-olds already exhibit adult-like use of some of the cues to coda voicing and place, though implementation is not yet fully adult-like. Physiological and contextual correlates of these findings are discussed.	t	\N
22501083	This study tested the hypothesis that the reduction in spatial release from masking (SRM) resulting from sensorineural hearing loss in competing speech mixtures is influenced by the characteristics of the interfering speech. A frontal speech target was presented simultaneously with two intelligible or two time-reversed (unintelligible) speech maskers that were either colocated with the target or were symmetrically separated from the target in the horizontal plane. The difference in SRM between listeners with hearing impairment and listeners with normal hearing was substantially larger for the forward maskers (deficit of 5.8 dB) than for the reversed maskers (deficit of 1.6 dB). This was driven by the fact that all listeners, regardless of hearing abilities, performed similarly (and poorly) in the colocated condition with intelligible maskers. The same conditions were then tested in listeners with normal hearing using headphone stimuli that were degraded by noise vocoding. Reducing the number of available spectral channels systematically reduced the measured SRM, and again, more so for forward (reduction of 3.8 dB) than for reversed speech maskers (reduction of 1.8 dB). The results suggest that non-spatial factors can strongly influence both the magnitude of SRM and the apparent deficit in SRM for listeners with impaired hearing.	t	\N
22511719	Monkeys can easily form lasting central representations of visual and tactile stimuli, yet they seem unable to do the same with sounds. Humans, by contrast, are highly proficient in auditory long-term memory (LTM). These mnemonic differences within and between species raise the question of whether the human ability is supported in some way by speech and language, e.g., through subvocal reproduction of speech sounds and by covert verbal labeling of environmental stimuli. If so, the explanation could be that storing rapidly fluctuating acoustic signals requires assistance from the motor system, which is uniquely organized to chain-link rapid sequences. To test this hypothesis, we compared the ability of normal participants to recognize lists of stimuli that can be easily reproduced, labeled, or both (pseudowords, nonverbal sounds, and words, respectively) versus their ability to recognize a list of stimuli that can be reproduced or labeled only with great difficulty (reversed words, i.e., words played backward). Recognition scores after 5-min delays filled with articulatory-suppression tasks were relatively high (75-80% correct) for all sound types except reversed words; the latter yielded scores that were not far above chance (58% correct), even though these stimuli were discriminated nearly perfectly when presented as reversed-word pairs at short intrapair intervals. The combined results provide preliminary support for the hypothesis that participation of the oromotor system may be essential for laying down the memory of speech sounds and, indeed, that speech and auditory memory may be so critically dependent on each other that they had to coevolve.	t	\N
22516238	Over the years, a large body of work on the brain basis of language comprehension has accumulated, paving the way for the formulation of a comprehensive model. The model proposed here describes the functional neuroanatomy of the different processing steps from auditory perception to comprehension as located in different gray matter brain regions. It also specifies the information flow between these regions, taking into account white matter fiber tract connections. Bottom-up, input-driven processes proceeding from the auditory cortex to the anterior superior temporal cortex and from there to the prefrontal cortex, as well as top-down, controlled and predictive processes from the prefrontal cortex back to the temporal cortex are proposed to constitute the cortical language circuit.	t	\N
22516315	The primary goal of this study was to evaluate a nonlinear dynamic approach to the acoustic analysis of dysphonia associated with vocal fold scar and sulcus vocalis. Case-control study. Acoustic voice samples from scar/sulcus patients and age-/sex-matched controls were analyzed using correlation dimension (D2) and phase plots, time-domain based perturbation indices (jitter, shimmer, signal-to-noise ratio [SNR]), and an auditory-perceptual rating scheme. Signal typing was performed to identify samples with bifurcations and aperiodicity. Type 2 and 3 acoustic signals were highly represented in the scar/sulcus patient group. When data were analyzed irrespective of signal type, all perceptual and acoustic indices successfully distinguished scar/sulcus patients from controls. Removal of type 2 and 3 signals eliminated the previously identified differences between experimental groups for all acoustic indices except D2. The strongest perceptual-acoustic correlation in our data set was observed for SNR and the weakest correlation was observed for D2. These findings suggest that D2 is inferior to time-domain based perturbation measures for the analysis of dysphonia associated with scar/sulcus; however, time-domain based algorithms are inherently susceptible to inflation under highly aperiodic (ie, type 2 and 3) signal conditions. Auditory-perceptual analysis, unhindered by signal aperiodicity, is therefore a robust strategy for distinguishing scar/sulcus patient voices from normal voices. Future acoustic analysis research in this area should consider alternative (e.g., frequency- and quefrency-domain based) measures alongside additional nonlinear approaches.	t	\N
22522205	There is ample evidence that individuals with dyslexia have a phonological deficit. A growing body of research also suggests that individuals with dyslexia have problems with categorical perception, as evidenced by weaker discrimination of between-category differences and better discrimination of within-category differences compared to average readers. Whether the categorical perception problems of individuals with dyslexia are a result of their reading problems or a cause has yet to be determined. Whether the observed perception deficit relates to a more general auditory deficit or is specific to speech also has yet to be determined. To shed more light on these issues, the categorical perception abilities of children at risk for dyslexia and chronological age controls were investigated before and after the onset of formal reading instruction in a longitudinal study. Both identification and discrimination data were collected using identical paradigms for speech and non-speech stimuli. Results showed the children at risk for dyslexia to shift from an allophonic mode of perception in kindergarten to a phonemic mode of perception in first grade, while the control group showed a phonemic mode already in kindergarten. The children at risk for dyslexia thus showed an allophonic perception deficit in kindergarten, which was later suppressed by phonemic perception as a result of formal reading instruction in first grade; allophonic perception in kindergarten can thus be treated as a clinical marker for the possibility of later reading problems.	t	\N
22524348	The present manuscript summarizes and discusses the implications of recent neuroimaging studies, which have investigated the relationship between musical expertise and structural, as well as functional, changes in an auditory-related association cortex, namely, the planum temporale (PT). Since the bilateral PT is known to serve as a spectrotemporal processor that supports perception of acoustic modulations in both speech and music, it comes as no surprise that musical expertise corresponds to functional sensitivity and neuroanatomical changes in cortical architecture. In this context, we focus on the following question: To what extent does musical expertise affect the functioning of the left and right plana temporalia? We discuss the relationship between behavioral, hemodynamic, and neuroanatomical data obtained from musicians in light of maturational and developmental issues. In particular, we introduce two studies of our group that show to what extent brains of musicians are more proficient in phonetic task performance.	t	\N
22524375	Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental condition characterized by atypical social and communication skills, repetitive behaviors, and atypical visual and auditory perception. Studies in vision have reported enhanced detailed ("local") processing but diminished holistic ("global") processing of visual features in ASD. Individuals with ASD also show enhanced processing of simple visual stimuli but diminished processing of complex visual stimuli. Relative to the visual domain, auditory global-local distinctions, and the effects of stimulus complexity on auditory processing in ASD, are less clear. However, one remarkable finding is that many individuals with ASD have enhanced musical abilities, such as superior pitch processing. This review provides a critical evaluation of behavioral and brain imaging studies of auditory processing with respect to current theories in ASD. We have focused on auditory-musical processing in terms of global versus local processing and simple versus complex sound processing. This review contributes to a better understanding of auditory processing differences in ASD. A deeper comprehension of sensory perception in ASD is key to better defining ASD phenotypes and, in turn, may lead to better interventions.	t	\N
22529921	Overall success of current tinnitus therapies is low, which may be due to the heterogeneity of tinnitus patients. Therefore, subclassification of tinnitus patients is expected to improve therapeutic allocation, which, in turn, is hoped to improve therapeutic success for the individual patient. The present study aims to define factors that differentially influence subjectively perceived tinnitus loudness and tinnitus-related distress. In a questionnaire-based cross-sectional survey, the data of 4705 individuals with tinnitus were analyzed. The self-report questionnaire contained items about subjective tinnitus loudness, type of onset, awareness and localization of the tinnitus, hearing impairment, chronic comorbidities, sleep quality, and psychometrically validated questionnaires addressing tinnitus-related distress, depressivity, anxiety, and somatic symptom severity. In a binary step-wise logistic regression model, we tested the predictive power of these variables on subjective tinnitus loudness and tinnitus-related distress. The present data contribute to the distinction between subjective tinnitus loudness and tinnitus-related distress. Whereas subjective loudness was associated with permanent awareness and binaural localization of the tinnitus, tinnitus-related distress was associated with depressivity, anxiety, and somatic symptom severity. Subjective tinnitus loudness and the potential presence of severe depressivity, anxiety, and somatic symptom severity should be assessed separately from tinnitus-related distress. If loud tinnitus is the major complaint together with mild or moderate tinnitus-related distress, therapies should focus on auditory perception. If levels of depressivity, anxiety or somatic symptom severity are severe, therapies and further diagnosis should focus on these symptoms at first.	t	\N
22530620	The effortfulness hypothesis implies that difficulty in decoding the surface form, as in the case of age-related sensory limitations or background noise, consumes the attentional resources that are then unavailable for semantic integration in language comprehension. Because ageing is associated with sensory declines, degrading of the surface form by a noisy background can pose an extra challenge for older adults. In two experiments, this hypothesis was tested in a self-paced moving window paradigm in which younger and older readers' online allocation of attentional resources to surface decoding and semantic integration was measured as they read sentences embedded in varying levels of visual noise. When visual noise was moderate (Experiment 1), resource allocation among young adults was unaffected but older adults allocated more resources to decode the surface form at the cost of resources that would otherwise be available for semantic processing; when visual noise was relatively intense (Experiment 2), both younger and older participants allocated more attention to the surface form and less attention to semantic processing. The decrease in attentional allocation to semantic integration resulted in reduced recall of core ideas in both experiments, suggesting that a less organized semantic representation was constructed in noise. The greater vulnerability of older adults at relatively low levels of noise is consistent with the effortfulness hypothesis.	t	\N
22533977	For pediatric cochlear implant (CI) users, CI processor technology, map characteristics, and fitting strategies are known to have a substantial impact on speech perception scores at young ages. It is unknown whether these benefits continue over time as these children reach adolescence. To document changes in CI technology, map characteristics, and speech perception scores in children between elementary grades and high school, and to describe relations between map characteristics and speech perception scores over time. A longitudinal design with participants 8-9-yr-old at session 1 and 15-18-yr-old at session 2. Participants were 82 adolescents with unilateral CIs, who are a subset of a larger longitudinal study. Mean age at implantation was 3.4 yr (range: 1.7-5.4), and mean duration of device use was 5.5 yr (range: 3.8-7.5) at session 1 and 13.3 yr (range: 10.9-15) at session 2. Speech perception tests at sessions 1 and 2 were the Lexical Neighborhood Test (LNT) presented at 70 dB SPL (LNT-70) and Bamford-Kowal-Bench sentences in quiet (BKB-Q) presented at 70 dB SPL. At session 2, the LNT was also administered at 50 dB SPL (LNT-50), and BKB sentences were administered in noise with a +10 dB SNR (BKB-N). CI processor technology type and CI map characteristics (coding strategy, number of electrodes, threshold levels, and comfort levels) were obtained at both sessions. Electrical dynamic range was computed, and descriptive statistics, correlations, and repeated-measures ANOVAs were employed. Participants achieved significantly higher LNT and BKB scores, at 70 dB SPL, at ages 15-18 than at ages 8-9 yr. Forty-two participants had 1-3 electrodes either activated or deactivated in their map between test sessions, and 40 had no change in number of active electrodes (mean change: -0.5; range: -3 to +2). After conversion from arbitrary clinical map units to charge-per-phase in nanocoulombs (nC), no significant difference was found for T levels across time. Average comfort levels (C levels) decreased by 19 nC. Seventy-three participants (89%) upgraded their CI processor technology type. At both sessions, significant correlations were found between electrical dynamic range (EDR) and all speech perception measures except LNT-50 (r range: .31 to .47; p < 0.01). Similarly, significant correlations were also found between C levels and all speech perception measures (r range: .29 to .49; p < 0.01). At session 2, a significant correlation was found between processor technology type and the LNT-50 scores (r = .38; p < 0.01). Significant improvement in speech scores was observed between elementary grades and high school for children who had used a CI since preschool. On average, T levels (nC) and electrode function remained stable for these long-term pediatric users. Analyses of maps did not allow for the determination of the exact cause of C level reductions, though power limitations in new processor systems and changes in perceived loudness over time are possible. Larger EDRs and higher C levels were associated with better speech scores. Newer speech processor technology was associated with better speech scores at a softer level.	t	\N
22542616	Individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) have deviations in auditory perception perhaps attributable to altered neural oscillatory response properties in thalamo-cortical and/or local cortico-cortical circuits. Previous EEG studies of auditory steady-state responses (aSSRs; a measure of sustained neuronal entrainment to repetitive stimulation) in SZ have indicated attenuated gamma range (≈40 Hz) neural entrainment. Stimuli in most such studies have been relatively brief (500-1000 ms) trains of 1 ms clicks or amplitude modulated pure tones (1000 Hz) with short, fixed interstimulus intervals (200-1000 ms). The current study used extended (1500 ms), more aurally dense broadband stimuli (500-4000 Hz noise; previously demonstrated to elicit larger aSSRs) with longer, variable interstimulus intervals (2700-3300 ms). Dense array EEG (256 sensor) was collected while 17 SZ and 16 healthy subjects passively listed to stimuli modulated at 15 different frequencies spanning beta and gamma ranges (16-44 Hz in 2 Hz steps). Results indicate that SZ have augmented aSSRs that were most extreme in the gamma range. Results also constructively replicate previous findings of attenuated low frequency auditory evoked responses (2-8 Hz) in SZ. These findings (i) highlight differential characteristics of low versus high frequency and induced versus entrained oscillatory auditory responses in both SZ and healthy stimulus processing, (ii) provide support for an NMDA-receptor hypofunction-based pharmacological model of SZ, and (iii) report a novel pattern of aSSR abnormalities suggesting that gamma band neural entrainment deviations among SZ may be more complex than previously supposed, including possibly being substantially influenced by physical stimulus properties.	t	\N
22546730	Pseudoneglect is a normal left sided spatial bias observed with attempted bisections of horizontal lines and a normal upward bias observed with attempted bisections of vertical lines. Horizontal pseudoneglect has been attributed to right hemispheric dominance for the allocation of attention. The goal of this study was to test the hypothesis that the upward bias in vertical line bisection may also relate to right hemispheric dominance for the allocation of attention and/or action-intention. Twenty right handed healthy adults were asked to bisect vertical lines presented in the midsagittal plane (center space) and in sagittal planes to the left and right of the midsagittal plane (left and right hemispace) when using a pen held in either the right or left hand. Vertical line bisections were biased upward in all three sagittal planes and higher in left than right hemispace. However, bisections made with the left hand were lower than those made with the right hand. Whereas these results suggest a left hemispace-right hemispheric visuospatial attentional upward bias and a relative left hemispheric-right hand upward action-intentional bias, further studies are needed to document this intentional versus attentional bias and to understand the brain mechanisms that produce these biases.	t	\N
22553024	The temporal context of an acoustic signal can greatly influence its perception. The present study investigated the neural correlates underlying perceptual facilitation by regular temporal contexts in humans. Participants listened to temporally regular (periodic) or temporally irregular (nonperiodic) sequences of tones while performing an intensity discrimination task. Participants performed significantly better on intensity discrimination during periodic than nonperiodic tone sequences. There was greater activation in the putamen for periodic than nonperiodic sequences. Conversely, there was greater activation in bilateral primary and secondary auditory cortices (planum polare and planum temporale) for nonperiodic than periodic sequences. Across individuals, greater putamen activation correlated with lesser auditory cortical activation in both right and left hemispheres. These findings suggest that temporal regularity is detected in the putamen, and that such detection facilitates temporal-lobe cortical processing associated with superior auditory perception. Thus, this study reveals a corticostriatal system associated with contextual facilitation for auditory perception through temporal regularity processing.	t	\N
22553042	Signal duration is important for identifying sound sources and determining signal meaning. Duration-tuned neurons (DTNs) respond preferentially to a range of stimulus durations and maximally to a best duration (BD). Duration-tuned neurons are found in the auditory midbrain of many vertebrates, although studied most extensively in bats. Studies of DTNs across vertebrates have identified cells with BDs and temporal response bandwidths that mirror the range of species-specific vocalizations. Neural tuning to stimulus duration appears to be universal among hearing vertebrates. Herein, we test the hypothesis that neural mechanisms underlying duration selectivity may be similar across vertebrates. We instantiated theoretical mechanisms of duration tuning in computational models to systematically explore the roles of excitatory and inhibitory receptor strengths, input latencies, and membrane time constant on duration tuning response profiles. We demonstrate that models of duration tuning with similar neural circuitry can be tuned with species-specific parameters to reproduce the responses of in vivo DTNs from the auditory midbrain. To relate and validate model output to in vivo responses, we collected electrophysiological data from the inferior colliculus of the awake big brown bat, Eptesicus fuscus, and present similar in vivo data from the published literature on DTNs in rats, mice, and frogs. Our results support the hypothesis that neural mechanisms of duration tuning may be shared across vertebrates despite species-specific differences in duration selectivity. Finally, we discuss how the underlying mechanisms of duration selectivity relate to other auditory feature detectors arising from the interaction of neural excitation and inhibition.	t	\N
22555987	Although it is well known that cisplatin is associated with ototoxicity, there is still a lack of knowledge concerning the ototoxicity of cisplatin, especially in Japanese head and neck cancer patients. The objectives of this study were to determine the incidence rate of cisplatin ototoxicity and to determine the threshold dose causing ototoxicity in the Japanese population. Before-and-after study in a tertiary referral hospital. The distortion product otoacoustic emission (DPOAE) was measured 1 week after each administration of cisplatin in 44 Japanese head and neck cancer patients treated at Kyoto University Hospital. We determined the incidence and threshold dose of cisplatin ototoxicity according to DPOAE data. The incidence of ototoxicity detected by DPOAE was 77.3%. The average DPOAE value was significantly lower in patients who received more than 200 mg/m(2) cisplatin than the baseline DPOAE value. The threshold dose for cisplatin ototoxicity was lower in Japanese patients than in European patients. Our data suggest that Japanese patients are more susceptible to cisplatin-induced ototoxicity. This is presumably caused by a genetic difference.	t	\N
22559374	Previous studies investigating sensitivity to step changes in tempo and prediction of tone onset time have generally utilized isochronous sequences. This study investigates subjects' ability to detect deviations from a gradual change in the tempo of a tone sequence (experiment 1) and their judgment of the perceptually optimal timing of this tone (experiment 2). In experiment 1, inter-onset-intervals within pairs of eight-tone sequences followed a geometric progression to create a gradual tempo change. In one sequence, the final tone was presented either earlier or later than specified by the progression. Subjects performed well at detecting deviations that exaggerated the tempo progression but poorly when it was counteracted. Experiment 2 used similar pairs except that the final tone was always presented earlier in one sequence than the other. Final interval length was adaptively adjusted to subjects' judgments; it was adjudged in best agreement with the progression when its length was roughly half way between the mathematically correct value and the length of the penultimate interval. The data support "multiple-look" and entrainment models of tempo sensitivity and suggest that temporal prediction is based less on the tempo contour of a whole sequence than on the duration of the preceding interval.	t	\N
22559382	Recent evidence suggests that spectral change, as measured by cochlea-scaled entropy (CSE), predicts speech intelligibility better than the information carried by vowels or consonants in sentences. Motivated by this finding, the present study investigates whether intelligibility indices implemented to include segments marked with significant spectral change better predict speech intelligibility in noise than measures that include all phonetic segments paying no attention to vowels/consonants or spectral change. The prediction of two intelligibility measures [normalized covariance measure (NCM), coherence-based speech intelligibility index (CSII)] is investigated using three sentence-segmentation methods: relative root-mean-square (RMS) levels, CSE, and traditional phonetic segmentation of obstruents and sonorants. While the CSE method makes no distinction between spectral changes occurring within vowels/consonants, the RMS-level segmentation method places more emphasis on the vowel-consonant boundaries wherein the spectral change is often most prominent, and perhaps most robust, in the presence of noise. Higher correlation with intelligibility scores was obtained when including sentence segments containing a large number of consonant-vowel boundaries than when including segments with highest entropy or segments based on obstruent/sonorant classification. These data suggest that in the context of intelligibility measures the type of spectral change captured by the measure is important.	t	\N
22561890	The basic deficits underlying the severe and persistent reading difficulties in dyslexia are still highly debated. One of the major topics of debate is whether these deficits are language specific, or affect both verbal and non-verbal stimuli. Recently, Ahissar and colleagues proposed the "anchoring-deficit hypothesis" (Ahissar, Lubin, Putter-Katz, & Banai, 2006), which suggests that dyslexics have a general difficulty in automatic extraction of stimulus regularities from auditory inputs. This hypothesis explained a broad range of dyslexics' verbal and non-verbal difficulties. However, it was not directly tested in the context of reading and verbal memory, which poses the main stumbling blocks to dyslexics. Here we assessed the abilities of adult dyslexics to efficiently benefit from ("anchor to") regularities embedded in repeated tones, orally presented syllables, and written words. We also compared dyslexics' performance to that of individuals with attention disorder (ADHD), but no reading disability. We found an anchoring effect in all groups: all gained from stimulus repetition. However, in line with the anchoring-deficit hypothesis, controls and ADHD participants showed a significantly larger anchoring effect in all tasks. This study is the first that directly shows that the same domain-general deficit, poor anchoring, characterizes dyslexics' performance in perceptual, working memory and reading tasks.	t	\N
22562828	The evidence of a deficit in working memory in specific language impairment (SLI) is of sufficient magnitude to suggest a primary role in developmental language disorder. However, little research has investigated memory in late talkers who recover from their early delay. Drawing on a longitudinal, community sample, this study compared the memory profiles of 3 groups of 5-year-olds: children with SLI who had been identified as late talkers, resolved late talkers (RLTs), and children with typical language development (TLD). Participants were 25 children with SLI, 45 RLTs, and 32 children with TLD. Subtests from the Working Memory Test Battery for Children and the Children's Memory Scale plus recalling sentences and nonword repetition tasks were administered to test the components of Baddeley's working memory model. The SLI group showed significantly poorer performance than the RLT and TLD groups on measures of the phonological loop and episodic buffer. The RLT and TLD groups scored similarly on all memory measures. The results support previous findings that sentence recall and nonword repetition are markers of SLI. Although residual effects of late-talking status may emerge over time, RLTs do not necessarily show memory deficits at 5 years of age despite delayed early vocabulary development.	t	\N
22564904	This investigation examined the effect of repeated exposure to novel and repeated spoken words in typical environments on the intelligibility of 2 synthesized voices and human recorded speech in preschools. Eighteen preschoolers listened to and repeated single words presented in human-recorded speech, DECtalk Paul, and AT&T Voice Michael during 5 experimental sessions. Stimuli consisted of repeated and novel words presented in each speech output condition during each session. Sessions took place in the presence of typically occurring noise in classroom or home settings. There was a significant main effect for voice as participants accurately identified significantly more words in the human-recorded speech and AT&T Voice than in the DECtalk speech output condition. When averaged across speech output conditions, children increased their accuracy as they participated in additional sessions. There was a statistically significant interaction between session and voice. DECtalk had a slightly larger effect of session than did AT&T Voice and human-recorded speech.	t	\N
22568633	Elevated levels of hypoxia-inducible factor 1α (HIF-1α) in middle ear effusion may play an important role in the pathogenesis of bone conduction impairment associated with otitis media with effusion (OME). The mechanism may be related to the up-regulation of nitric oxide (NO) expression. This study was undertaken to investigate the role of HIF-1α in the pathogenesis of sensorineural hearing loss associated with OME. One hundred and eight OME patients were divided into two groups: OME without bone conduction impairment (group 1) and OME with bone conduction impairment (group 2). The levels of HIF-1α, NO, and quinolinic acid (QUIN) in the middle ear effusion and serum of these patients were investigated. The relationship between these factors and the bone conduction threshold (BCT) differences were analyzed. The levels of HIF-1α and NO concentrations in the middle ear effusion were found to be signiﬁcantly higher in group 2 than in group 1 (both p < 0.05). The OME patients' BCT differences at 4000 Hz were correlated with the levels of HIF-1α and the NO concentrations in the middle ear effusion. Furthermore, the HIF-1α levels were correlated with the levels of NO but not with the levels of QUIN in the effusion.	t	\N
22568993	Both 80 Hz auditory steady state responses (ASSRs) and tone burst auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) have been shown to provide reasonable estimates of the behavioral thresholds. Although ASSRs provide statistically objective estimates that can be easily automated by computers, they present no information for the neurophysiological interpretation of the results. ABRs, on the other hand, do not provide easily automated information and usually need expert interpretation of the recorded waveforms. A recently developed continuous loop averaging deconvolution algorithm offers an alternative solution by acquiring slightly jittered 80 Hz quasi auditory steady state responses (QASSRs), thus enabling the acquisition of both recordings simultaneously. The purpose of this study is to investigate a specially developed 80 Hz QASSR paradigm for simultaneous acquisition for both responses for threshold detection purposes. Sixteen ears from eight adults with normal hearing were tested. Amplitude modulated QASSRs were obtained using slightly jittered temporal sequences of tone bursts presented at a mean rate of 78.125 Hz. Four carrier frequencies (500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz) at several stimulus intensity levels were monaurally presented and QASSRs to 128 sweeps blocks were recorded. The ABRs were extracted using the CLAD algorithm. Wave V was visually identified and analyzed in the time domain as in everyday clinical practice. In addition, statistically objective ƒMP computation method was used to automatically detect ABR threshold as well. The QASSRs were analyzed in the frequency domain and magnitudes, phase delays, and thresholds were obtained. Phasor (polar plot) diagrams were constructed. QASSR and ABR hearing thresholds were obtained and compared with behavioral thresholds. Study reveals that the QASSR method provides accurate objective estimation of the audiometric thresholds from extracted ASSRs and latency/amplitude information from extracted ABRs. The largest mean threshold difference for QASSR was within 5 dB for all carrier frequencies including 500 Hz. For auditory threshold estimation in adults with normal hearing, the Hotelling's T-Square test in four dimensions in the frequency domain was more accurate than the ƒMP or visual ABR threshold detection in the time domain. Simultaneously recorded ASSR and ABR from QASSRs provide accurate and effective method for frequency-specific hearing threshold estimation with neurophysiological information in adults with normal hearing. Further research is required for hearing-impaired adults, newborns, and infants.	t	\N
22570723	Multisensory learning and resulting neural brain plasticity have recently become a topic of renewed interest in human cognitive neuroscience. Music notation reading is an ideal stimulus to study multisensory learning, as it allows studying the integration of visual, auditory and sensorimotor information processing. The present study aimed at answering whether multisensory learning alters uni-sensory structures, interconnections of uni-sensory structures or specific multisensory areas. In a short-term piano training procedure musically naive subjects were trained to play tone sequences from visually presented patterns in a music notation-like system [Auditory-Visual-Somatosensory group (AVS)], while another group received audio-visual training only that involved viewing the patterns and attentively listening to the recordings of the AVS training sessions [Auditory-Visual group (AV)]. Training-related changes in cortical networks were assessed by pre- and post-training magnetoencephalographic (MEG) recordings of an auditory, a visual and an integrated audio-visual mismatch negativity (MMN). The two groups (AVS and AV) were differently affected by the training. The results suggest that multisensory training alters the function of multisensory structures, and not the uni-sensory ones along with their interconnections, and thus provide an answer to an important question presented by cognitive models of multisensory training.	t	\N
22571383	Previous studies of source monitoring and auditory hallucinations (AH) have often conflated spatial source (internal-external) with source agency (self-other). Other studies have used suboptimal manipulations of auditory space (e.g., imagine saying vs. saying aloud). We avoided these problems by presenting experimenter-generated stimuli over headphones in the voice of another person so that the location of the voice sounded either internal or external to the participant's head. Participants (N=121) studied 96 words and indicated for each whether it was presented internally or externally (online spatial source monitoring). At test, studied words were presented visually, intermixed randomly with 96 unstudied words. Participants indicated whether each item was old or new (item memory) and whether it was presented internally or externally during study (spatial source memory). Independent measures of memory accuracy and response bias were derived for online source monitoring, item memory and source memory using signal detection theory. Performance on these measures was compared between two groups of 30 participants who scored low or high on a measure of AH proneness. ANOVAs revealed no differences between the high- and low-AH groups in online spatial source monitoring, item memory, or spatial source memory. We found no evidence that proneness to AH in a sample of healthy volunteers was related to any of the measures of spatial source monitoring performance. We recommend that the methods introduced be applied to future investigations of spatial source monitoring with patient groups and with individuals at-risk for psychosis.	t	\N
22584229	Children's language skills develop rapidly with increasing age, and several studies indicate that they use language- and age-specific strategies to understand complex sentences. In the present experiment, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and behavioral measures were used to investigate the acquisition of case-marking cues for sentence interpretation in the developing brain of German preschool children with a mean age of 6 years. Short sentences were presented auditorily, consisting of a transitive verb and two case-marked arguments with canonical subject-initial or non canonical object-initial word order. Overall group results revealed mainly left hemispheric activation in the perisylvian cortex with increased activation in the inferior parietal cortex (IPC), and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) for object-initial compared to subject-initial sentences. However, single-subject analysis suggested two distinct activation patterns within the group which allowed a classification into two subgroups. One subgroup showed the predicted activation increase in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) for the more difficult object-initial compared to subject-initial sentences, while the other group showed the reverse effect. This activation in the left IFG can be taken to reflect the degree to which adult-like sentence processing strategies, necessary to integrate case-marking information, are applied. Additional behavioral data on language development tests show that these two subgroups differ in their grammatical knowledge. Together with these behavioral findings, the results indicate that the use of a particular processing strategy is not dependent on age as such, but rather on the child's individual grammatical knowledge and the ability to use specific language cues for successful sentence comprehension.	t	\N
22595658	The aim of this experiment was to examine the preattentive processing of syllables in 9-11-year-old children with dyslexia and matched controls using the Mismatch Negativity (MMN), an auditory Event-Related brain potential (ERP) related to preattentive discrimination. Children were presented with a sequence of syllables that included standards (the syllable "Ba") and deviants in vowel frequency, vowel duration and Voice Onset Time (VOT) that were either close to or far from the standard (Small and Large deviants). No between-group differences were found for frequency deviants. However, whilst normal-reading children showed larger MMNs to Large than to Small deviants in vowel duration and VOT, no such deviance size effect was found in children with dyslexia. These results are taken to indicate that the preattentive processing of vowel duration and VOT is impaired in children with dyslexia, with no impairment in the processing of vowel frequency deviants. By revealing processing deficits of both duration and VOT deviants, these results suggest a strong link between acoustical and phonological processing.	t	\N
22609772	Older adults often find it more difficult than younger adults to attend to a target talker when there are other people talking. One possible reason for this difficulty is that it may take them longer to perceptually segregate the target speech from competing speech. This study investigated age-related differences in the time it takes to segregate target speech from either a speech spectrum noise masker or a babble masker (many people talking simultaneously). Specifically, we employed five different delays (0.1 s-1.1 s) between masker onset and target speech onset. Four signal-to-masker ratios were employed at each delay to determine the 50% thresholds for word recognition accuracy when target words were masked by either speech spectrum noise or multi-talker babble. Thresholds for word recognition decreased exponentially as a function of the masker-word-onset delay, at the same rate for younger and older adults, when the masker was speech spectrum noise. When the masker was babble, thresholds for younger adults decreased exponentially with delay at the same rate as they did when the masker was speech spectrum noise. The word recognition thresholds for older adults, however, did not appear to change over the range of delays explored in this study. In addition, the average difference between word recognition thresholds for younger and older adults (younger adult thresholds < older adult thresholds) was significantly larger when the masker was babble than when it was noise. These results indicate that older adults are as fast as younger adults at separating speech from a steady-state noise masker, but are not as capable as younger adults of taking advantage of the delayed onset of the speech target when the masker is babble. The potential contributions of age-related sensory and cognitive declines to these stream segregation effects are discussed. Finally, we conclude that age-related differences in the timeline for stream segregation contribute to the difficulties older adults experience in listening to speech in a background of babble.	t	\N
22633004	While perceiving speech, people see mouth shapes that are systematically associated with sounds. In particular, a vertically stretched mouth produces a /woo/ sound, whereas a horizontally stretched mouth produces a /wee/ sound. We demonstrate that hearing these speech sounds alters how we see aspect ratio, a basic visual feature that contributes to perception of 3D space, objects and faces. Hearing a /woo/ sound increases the apparent vertical elongation of a shape, whereas hearing a /wee/ sound increases the apparent horizontal elongation. We further demonstrate that these sounds influence aspect ratio coding. Viewing and adapting to a tall (or flat) shape makes a subsequently presented symmetric shape appear flat (or tall). These aspect ratio aftereffects are enhanced when associated speech sounds are presented during the adaptation period, suggesting that the sounds influence visual population coding of aspect ratio. Taken together, these results extend previous demonstrations that visual information constrains auditory perception by showing the converse - speech sounds influence visual perception of a basic geometric feature.	t	\N
22641191	The present study uses a systems engineering approach to delineate the relationship between tinnitus and hyperacusis as a result of either hearing loss in the ear or an imbalanced state in the brain. Specifically examined is the input-output function, or loudness growth as a function of intensity in both normal and pathological conditions. Tinnitus reduces the output dynamic range by raising the floor, while hyperacusis reduces the input dynamic range by lowering the ceiling or sound tolerance level. Tinnitus does not necessarily steepen the loudness growth function but hyperacusis always does. An active loudness model that consists of an expansion stage following a compression stage can account for these key properties in tinnitus and hyperacusis loudness functions. The active loudness model suggests that tinnitus is a result of increased central noise, while hyperacusis is due to increased nonlinear gain. The active loudness model also generates specific predictions on loudness growth in tinnitus, hyperacusis, hearing loss or any combinations of the three conditions. These predictions need to be verified by experimental data and have explicit implications for treatment of tinnitus and hyperacusis.	t	\N
22646514	Sensory consequences of our own actions are perceived differently from the sensory stimuli that are generated externally. The present event-related potential (ERP) study examined the neural responses to self-triggered stimulation relative to externally-triggered stimulation as a function of delays between the motor act and the stimulus onset. While sustaining a vowel phonation, subjects clicked a mouse and heard pitch-shift stimuli (PSS) in voice auditory feedback at delays of either 0 ms (predictable) or 500-1000 ms (unpredictable). The motor effect resulting from the mouse click was corrected in the data analyses. For the externally-triggered condition, PSS were delivered by a computer with a delay of 500-1000 ms after the vocal onset. As compared to unpredictable externally-triggered PSS, P2 responses to predictable self-triggered PSS were significantly suppressed, whereas an enhancement effect for P2 responses was observed when the timing of self-triggered PSS was unpredictable. These findings demonstrate the effect of the temporal predictability of stimulus delivery with respect to the motor act on the neural responses to self-triggered stimulation. Responses to self-triggered stimulation were suppressed or enhanced compared with the externally-triggered stimulation when the timing of stimulus delivery was predictable or unpredictable. Enhancement effect of unpredictable self-triggered stimulation in the present study supports the idea that sensory suppression of self-produced action may be primarily caused by an accurate prediction of stimulus timing, rather than a movement-related non-specific suppression.	t	\N
22648606	According to many theories of decision making, of which signal detection theory is the most prominent, randomness is the main factor responsible for imperfect performance. These theories imply that correcting for attenuation due to randomness should result in perfect scores as long as the participants use nonextreme decision criteria. On the basis of a recent advance termed potential performance theory (Trafimow & Rice, Psychological Review 115:447-462, 2008), we performed auditory and visual detection experiments and corrected the scores for attenuation. Most participants in both experiments tended to perform at a less-than-perfect level, even after their scores were corrected. The findings demonstrate that at least one systematic factor influences detection that is not included in signal detection theory.	t	\N
22653919	The authors investigated lengthening effects in child-directed speech (CDS) across the sentence, testing the additive effects on duration of Word Position, Register, Focus, and Sentence Mode (statement/question). Five theater students produced 6 sentences containing 5 monosyllabic words in a simulated dialogue, varying in Register, Focus, and Sentence Mode. The authors segmented a total of 1,800 sentences using forced-alignment tools, and they analyzed the duration of each word. The results show significant effects of Register, Word Position, and their interactions. The simple effect of Register was significant in all 5 word positions, indicating a global elongation effect in CDS. Interestingly, there was no proportional increase of the final word in CDS. In addition, the 3-way interactions Register × Word Position × Focus and Register × Word Position × Sentence Mode were significant, which converge to the conclusion that the utterance-final word in CDS is additively elongated when it is focused and in a statement. Elongation in CDS is a global effect, but the additive effects of duration demonstrated in the authors' data suggest that the effect of enhanced utterance-final lengthening in CDS in naturalistic samples may be a by-product of discourse characteristics of CDS.	t	\N
22664896	To examine the association between dehiscence length in patients with superior semicircular canal dehiscence syndrome and their clinical findings, including objective audiometric and vestibular testing results. Retrospective study. Tertiary referral center. Patients included in this study were diagnosed with superior semicircular canal dehiscence syndrome and underwent surgical repair of the dehiscence through middle fossa craniotomy. The dehiscence length was measured intraoperatively in all cases. Correlation between dehiscence length with pure-tone average (PTA), average bone-conduction threshold, maximal air-bone gap, cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potential thresholds, and presenting signs and symptoms. The correlation between dehiscence length and maximal air-bone gap was statistically significant on both univariate and multivariate regression analyses. The correlations between dehiscence length and PTA, average bone-conduction threshold, cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potential threshold, and presenting signs and symptoms were not statistically significant. The dehiscence length correlated positively with the maximal air-bone gap in patients with superior semicircular canal dehiscence. The correlation was statistically significant. The dehiscence length did not correlate with the other variables examined in this study.	t	\N
22666781	The purpose of the study was to acoustically compare the performance of children who do and do not stutter on diadochokinesis tasks in terms of syllable duration, syllable periods, and peak intensity. In this case-control study, acoustical analyses were performed on 26 children who stutter and 20 aged-matched normally fluent children (both groups stratified into preschoolers and school-aged children) during a diadochokinesis task: the repetition of articulatory segments through a task testing the ability to alternate movements. Speech fluency was assessed using the Fluency Profile and the Stuttering Severity Instrument. The children who stutter and those who do not did not significantly differ in terms of the acoustic patterns they produced in the diadochokinesis tasks. Significant differences were demonstrated between age groups independent of speech fluency. Overall, the preschoolers performed poorer. These results indicate that the observed differences are related to speech-motor age development and not to stuttering itself. Acoustic studies demonstrate that speech segment durations are most variable, both within and between subjects, during childhood and then gradually decrease to adult levels by the age of eleven to thirteen years. One possible explanation for the results of the present study is that children who stutter presented higher coefficients of variation to exploit the motor equivalence to achieve accurate sound production (i.e., the absence of speech disruptions).	t	\N
22672110	Auditory spatial deficits occur frequently after hemispheric damage; a previous case report suggested that the explicit awareness of sound positions, as in sound localisation, can be impaired while the implicit use of auditory cues for the segregation of sound objects in noisy environments remains preserved. By assessing systematically patients with a first hemispheric lesion, we have shown that (1) explicit and/or implicit use can be disturbed; (2) impaired explicit vs. preserved implicit use dissociations occur rather frequently; and (3) different types of sound localisation deficits can be associated with preserved implicit use. Conceptually, the dissociation between the explicit and implicit use may reflect the dual-stream dichotomy of auditory processing. Our results speak in favour of systematic assessments of auditory spatial functions in clinical settings, especially when adaptation to auditory environment is at stake. Further, systematic studies are needed to link deficits of explicit vs. implicit use to disability in everyday activities, to design appropriate rehabilitation strategies, and to ascertain how far the explicit and implicit use of spatial cues can be retrained following brain damage.	t	\N
22686693	The goal of an action can consist of generating a change in the environment (to produce an effect) or changing one's own situation in the environment (to move to a physical target). To investigate whether the mechanisms of effect-directed and target-directed action control are similar, participants performed continuous reversal movements. They either synchronized movement reversals with regularly presented tones (temporal targets) or produced tones at reversals isochronously (temporal effects). In both goal conditions an irrelevant goal characteristic was integrated into the goal representation (loudness, Experiment 1). When targets and effects were presented within the same reversal movement, similarities were enhanced (Experiment 2). When the task posed spatial demands in addition to temporal demands, target- and effect-directed movement kinematics changed equally with tempo (Experiment 3). Correlations between target-directed and effect-directed movements in temporal variability indicated similar timing mechanisms (Experiments 1 and 2). Only gradual differences between target- and effect-directed movements were observed. We conclude that the same mechanisms of action control, including the anticipation of upcoming events, underlie effect-directed and target-directed movements. Ideomotor theories of action control should incorporate action targets as goals similar to action effects.	t	\N
22696248	We examined the effects of hedges and the discourse marker like on how people recalled specific details about precise quantities in spontaneous speech. We found that listeners treated hedged information differently from like-marked information, although both are thought to be indicators of uncertainty or vagueness. In addition, hedges had different effects depending on whether speakers were (1) retelling conversations to another person or (2) answering questions about material they had heard. When retelling to another person, listeners were more likely to report information that was either unmarked or marked with a like than hedged information (Experiment 1). Yet when answering questions by themselves, hedges enhanced memory for details, in comparison with likes (Experiment 2). Hedges appear to provide pragmatic cues about what information is reliable enough to repeat in a conversational context. But although hedged information may be left out, it is not forgotten.	t	\N
22696304	This study determined the effects of phonology and semantics on the distribution of cortical activity to the second of a pair of words in first and second language (mixed pairs). The effects of relative proficiency in the two languages and linguistic setting (monolinguistic or mixed) are reported in a companion paper. Ten early bilinguals and 14 late bilinguals listened to mixed pairs of words in Arabic (L1) and Hebrew (L2) and indicated whether both words in the pair had the same or different meanings. The spatio-temporal distribution of current densities of event-related potentials were estimated for each language and according to semantic and phonologic relationship (same or different) compared with the first word in the pair. During early processing (<300 ms), brain activity in temporal and temporoparietal auditory areas was enhanced by phonologic incongruence between words in the pair and in Wernicke's area by both phonologic and semantic priming. In contrast, brain activities during late processing (>300 ms) were enhanced by semantic incongruence between the two words, particularly in temporal areas and in left hemisphere Broca's and Wernicke's areas. The latter differences were greater when words were in L2. Surprisingly, no significant effects of relative proficiency on processing the second word in the pair were found. These results indicate that the distribution of brain activity to the second of two words presented bilingually is affected differently during early and late processing by both semantic and phonologic priming by- and incongruence with the immediately preceding word.	t	\N
22698777	Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), a non-invasive neuroimaging optical technique which measures the cortical concentration changes in oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin (O(2)Hb and HHb, respectively), has been extensively utilized in language studies. Most of these studies investigated the ventrolateral/dorsolateral cortex responses, while few language studies on the frontopolar cortex are reported. The aim of this study was to investigate by fNIRS the frontopolar cortex response to a letter verbal fluency task (VFT) in single healthy subjects to better understand the symmetry/asymmetry of language processing. The O(2)Hb and HHb changes were measured on 33 University students by a 8-channel fNIRS system. A significant increase in O(2)Hb (p<0.001), accompanied by a smaller significant decrease in HHb (p<0.001), was observed in each measurement point. However, the laterality index of 21 out of the 33 subjects evidenced a hemispheric dominance (right 9, left 12). Although these results have confirmed a bilateral activation over the frontopolar cortex upon VFT, no clear pattern of lateralization was found. Considering the importance of establishing a response pattern related to cognitive functions in clinical populations, the fNIRS investigation of the frontopolar cortex (and other areas involved in language) in single subject and the use of the laterality index are recommended.	t	\N
22699985	To report and review the clinical experiences of patients who required reimplantation from an ongoing trial of patients with partial deafness who were treated with electroacoustic stimulation (EAS) cochlear implantation. Retrospective case series review. Tertiary referral center. Two patients with partial deafness, 1 child and 1 adult, who required reimplantation because of device failure occurring 12 to 18 months after hearing preservation cochlear implantation with a Med-El Sonata Flex-EAS electrode array. Reimplantation (with full insertion) of a Med-El Sonata Flex-EAS array (child) and the new complete cochlear coverage Med-El Sonata Flex-28 electrode array (adult). Surgical techniques used include round window insertion with slow insertion speed and the use of preoperative systemic steroids and preoperative, perioperative, and postimplantation intratympanic steroids. Preservation of residual hearing. Both patients had complete preservation of residual hearing after reimplantation. The adult patient had stable improvement in hearing from 750 to 2,000 Hz of 5 to 10 dB. Both patients reported increased benefit after reimplantation. We report a case series of successful pediatric and adult EAS reimplantation, in the adult hearing improvement after reimplantation with a deep insertion electrode was observed. Reimplantation with preservation of residual hearing in patients with EAS is possible with current surgical hearing preserving techniques and atraumatic electrode arrays of variable length.	t	\N
22709398	Infants begin to segment novel words from speech by 7.5 months, demonstrating an ability to track, encode and retrieve words in the context of larger units. Although it is presumed that word recognition at this stage is a prerequisite to constructing a vocabulary, the continuity between these stages of development has not yet been empirically demonstrated. The goal of the present study is to investigate whether infant word segmentation skills are indeed related to later lexical development. Two word segmentation tasks, varying in complexity, were administered in infancy and related to childhood outcome measures. Outcome measures consisted of age-normed productive vocabulary percentiles and a measure of cognitive development. Results demonstrated a strong degree of association between infant word segmentation abilities at 7 months and productive vocabulary size at 24 months. In addition, outcome groups, as defined by median vocabulary size and growth trajectories at 24 months, showed distinct word segmentation abilities as infants. These findings provide the first prospective evidence supporting the predictive validity of infant word segmentation tasks and suggest that they are indeed associated with mature word knowledge. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxzLi5oLZQ8.	t	\N
22717191	Patients with schizophrenia consistently demonstrate information processing abnormalities assessed with visual masking (VM) tasks, and these deficits have been linked to clinical and functional severity. It has been suggested that VM impairments may be a vulnerability marker in individuals at risk for developing psychosis. Forward and backward VM performance was assessed in 72 first-episode (FE) psychosis patients, 98 subjects at risk (AR) for psychosis and 98 healthy controls (HC) using two identification tasks (with either a high- or low-energy mask) and a location task. VM was examined for stability in a subgroup (FE, n=15; AR, n=35; HC, n=21) and assessed relative to clinical and functional measures. In the identification tasks, backward VM deficits were observed in both FE and AR relative to HC whereas forward VM deficits were only present in FE patients compared to HC. In the location task, AR subjects demonstrated superior performance in forward VM relative to HC. VM performance was stable over time, and VM deficits were associated with baseline functional measures and predicted future negative symptom severity in AR subjects. Visual information processing deficits, as indexed by backward VM, are present before and after the onset of frank psychosis, and probably represent a stable vulnerability marker that is associated with negative symptoms and functional decline. Additionally, the paradoxically better performance of AR subjects in select forward tasks suggests that early compensatory changes may characterize an emerging psychotic state.	t	\N
22721630	Vocal expressions commonly elicit activity in superior temporal and inferior frontal cortices, indicating a distributed network to decode vocally expressed emotions. We examined the involvement of this fronto-temporal network for the decoding of angry voices during attention towards (explicit attention) or away from emotional cues in voices (implicit attention) based on a reanalysis of previous data (Frühholz, S., Ceravolo, L., Grandjean, D., 2012. Cerebral Cortex 22, 1107-1117). The general network revealed high interconnectivity of bilateral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) to different bilateral voice-sensitive regions in mid and posterior superior temporal gyri. Right superior temporal gyrus (STG) regions showed connectivity to the left primary auditory cortex and secondary auditory cortex (AC) as well as to high-level auditory regions. This general network revealed differences in connectivity depending on the attentional focus. Explicit attention to angry voices revealed a specific right-left STG network connecting higher-level AC. During attention to a nonemotional vocal feature we also found a left-right STG network implicitly elicited by angry voices that also included low-level left AC. Furthermore, only during this implicit processing there was widespread interconnectivity between bilateral IFG and bilateral STG. This indicates that while implicit attention to angry voices recruits extended bilateral STG and IFG networks for the sensory and evaluative decoding of voices, explicit attention to angry voices solely involves a network of bilateral STG regions probably for the integrative recognition of emotional cues from voices.	t	\N
22723356	The integration of facial gestures and vocal signals is an essential process in human communication and relies on an interconnected circuit of brain regions, including language regions in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Studies have determined that ventral prefrontal cortical regions in macaques [e.g., the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC)] share similar cytoarchitectonic features as cortical areas in the human IFG, suggesting structural homology. Anterograde and retrograde tracing studies show that macaque VLPFC receives afferents from the superior and inferior temporal gyrus, which provide complex auditory and visual information, respectively. Moreover, physiological studies have shown that single neurons in VLPFC integrate species-specific face and vocal stimuli. Although bimodal responses may be found across a wide region of prefrontal cortex, vocalization responsive cells, which also respond to faces, are mainly found in anterior VLPFC. This suggests that VLPFC may be specialized to process and integrate social communication information, just as the IFG is specialized to process and integrate speech and gestures in the human brain.	t	\N
22724279	The main goal of this study was to investigate the effects of acoustic characteristics, including timbre and fundamental frequency (F0), on the musical pitch discrimination of cochlear implant users. Eight postlingually deafened cochlear implant users were recruited, along with 8 control subjects with normal hearing. Pitch discrimination tests were carried out using test stimuli from 4 musical instruments plus synthetic complex stimuli. Three reference tones with different F0s were used. The mean difference limens were 1.8 to 10.7 semitones in the just-noticeable difference task and 2.1 to 13.6 semitones in the pitch-direction discrimination task for different timbre and F0 combinations. Three-way analysis of variance showed that the acoustic characteristics of the musical stimuli, such as timbre and F0, significantly influenced pitch discrimination performance. Acoustic characteristics determine the complexity of the electrical stimulation pattern, which directly affects performance in pitch discrimination. A place pattern with a clear and regular low-order harmonic structure is most important for good pitch discrimination. A clear F0-related temporal pattern is also useful when the F0 is low. Pitch perception performance will worsen when there is interference in the high-frequency channels.	t	\N
22727355	The objective of this study was to evaluate the relationship between developmental delays and speech perception in pre-lingually deafened cochlear implant recipients. This study was a retrospective review of patient charts conducted at a tertiary referral center. Thirty-five pre-lingually deafened children underwent multichannel cochlear implantation and habilitation at the Kyoto University Hospital Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. A pre-operative cognitive-adaptive developmental quotient was evaluated using the Kyoto scale of psychological development. Post-operative speech performance was evaluated with speech perception tests two years after cochlear implantation. We computed partial correlation coefficients (controlled for age at the time of implantation and the average pre-operative aided hearing level) between the cognitive-adaptive developmental quotient and speech performance. A developmental delay in the cognitive-adaptive area was weakly correlated with speech perception (partial correlation coefficients for consonant-vowel syllables and phrases were 0.38 and 0.36, respectively). A pre-operative developmental delay was only weakly associated with poor post-operative speech perception in pre-lingually deafened cochlear implant recipients.	t	\N
22728130	The neural processing of auditory information engages pathways that begin initially at the cochlea and that eventually reach forebrain structures. At these higher levels, the computations necessary for extracting auditory source and identity information rely on the neuroanatomical connections between the thalamus and cortex. Here, the general organization of these connections in the medial geniculate body (thalamus) and the auditory cortex is reviewed. In addition, we consider two models organizing the thalamocortical pathways of the non-tonotopic and multimodal auditory nuclei. Overall, the transfer of information to the cortex via the thalamocortical pathways is complemented by the numerous intracortical and corticocortical pathways. Although interrelated, the convergent interactions among thalamocortical, corticocortical, and commissural pathways enable the computations necessary for the emergence of higher auditory perception.	t	\N
22731996	The influence of top-down cognitive control on 2 putatively distinct forms of distraction was investigated. Attentional capture by a task-irrelevant auditory deviation (e.g., a female-spoken token following a sequence of male-spoken tokens)-as indexed by its disruption of a visually presented recall task-was abolished when focal-task engagement was promoted either by increasing the difficulty of encoding the visual to-be-remembered stimuli (by reducing their perceptual discriminability; Experiments 1 and 2) or by providing foreknowledge of an imminent deviation (Experiment 2). In contrast, distraction from continuously changing auditory stimuli ("changing-state effect") was not modulated by task-difficulty or foreknowledge (Experiment 3). We also confirmed that individual differences in working memory capacity--typically associated with maintaining task-engagement in the face of distraction--predict the magnitude of the deviation effect, but not the changing-state effect. This convergence of experimental and psychometric data strongly supports a duplex-mechanism account of auditory distraction: Auditory attentional capture (deviation effect) is open to top-down cognitive control, whereas auditory distraction caused by direct conflict between the sound and focal-task processing (changing-state effect) is relatively immune to such control.	t	\N
22753470	A visual scene is perceived in terms of visual objects. Similar ideas have been proposed for the analogous case of auditory scene analysis, although their hypothesized neural underpinnings have not yet been established. Here, we address this question by recording from subjects selectively listening to one of two competing speakers, either of different or the same sex, using magnetoencephalography. Individual neural representations are seen for the speech of the two speakers, with each being selectively phase locked to the rhythm of the corresponding speech stream and from which can be exclusively reconstructed the temporal envelope of that speech stream. The neural representation of the attended speech dominates responses (with latency near 100 ms) in posterior auditory cortex. Furthermore, when the intensity of the attended and background speakers is separately varied over an 8-dB range, the neural representation of the attended speech adapts only to the intensity of that speaker but not to the intensity of the background speaker, suggesting an object-level intensity gain control. In summary, these results indicate that concurrent auditory objects, even if spectrotemporally overlapping and not resolvable at the auditory periphery, are neurally encoded individually in auditory cortex and emerge as fundamental representational units for top-down attentional modulation and bottom-up neural adaptation.	t	\N
22764349	Presenting synchronous auditory and visual stimuli in separate locations creates the illusion that the sound originates from the direction of the visual stimulus. Participants' auditory localization bias, called the ventriloquism effect, has revealed factors affecting the perceptual integration of audio-visual stimuli. However, many studies on audio-visual processes have focused on performance in simplified experimental situations, with a single stimulus in each sensory modality. These results cannot necessarily explain our perceptual behavior in natural scenes, where various signals exist within a single sensory modality. In the present study we report the contributions of a cognitive factor, that is, the audio-visual congruency of speech, although this factor has often been underestimated in previous ventriloquism research. Thus, we investigated the contribution of speech congruency on the ventriloquism effect using a spoken utterance and two videos of a talking face. The salience of facial movements was also manipulated. As a result, when bilateral visual stimuli are presented in synchrony with a single voice, cross-modal speech congruency was found to have a significant impact on the ventriloquism effect. This result also indicated that more salient visual utterances attracted participants' auditory localization. The congruent pairing of audio-visual utterances elicited greater localization bias than did incongruent pairing, whereas previous studies have reported little dependency on the reality of stimuli in ventriloquism. Moreover, audio-visual illusory congruency, owing to the McGurk effect, caused substantial visual interference to auditory localization. This suggests that a greater flexibility in responding to multi-sensory environments exists than has been previously considered.	t	\N
22768163	Auditory sensory modulation difficulties are common in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and may stem from a faulty arousal system that compromises the ability to regulate an optimal response. To study neurophysiological correlates of the sensory modulation difficulties, we recorded magnetic field responses to clicks in 14 ASD and 15 typically developing (TD) children. We further analyzed the P100m, which is the most prominent component of the auditory magnetic field response in children and may reflect preattentive arousal processes. The P100m was rightward lateralized in the TD, but not in the ASD children, who showed a tendency toward P100m reduction in the right hemisphere (RH). The atypical P100m lateralization in the ASD subjects was associated with greater severity of sensory abnormalities assessed by Short Sensory Profile, as well as with auditory hypersensitivity during the first two years of life. The absence of right-hemispheric predominance of the P100m and a tendency for its right-hemispheric reduction in the ASD children suggests disturbance of the RH ascending reticular brainstem pathways and/or their thalamic and cortical projections, which in turn may contribute to abnormal arousal and attention. The correlation of sensory abnormalities with atypical, more leftward, P100m lateralization suggests that reduced preattentive processing in the right hemisphere and/or its shift to the left hemisphere may contribute to abnormal sensory behavior in ASD.	t	\N
22773778	Because acoustic landscapes are complex and rapidly changing, auditory systems have evolved mechanisms that permit rapid detection of novel sounds, sound source segregation, and perceptual restoration of sounds obscured by noise. Perceptual restoration is particularly important in noisy environments because it allows organisms to track sounds over time even when they are masked. The continuity illusion is a striking example of perceptual restoration with sounds perceived as intact even when parts of them have been replaced by gaps and rendered inaudible by being masked by an extraneous sound. The mechanisms of auditory filling-in are complex and are currently not well-understood. The present study used the high temporal resolution of EEG to examine brain activity related to continuity illusion perception. Masking noise loudness was adjusted individually for each subject so that physically identical sounds on some trials elicited a continuity illusion (failure to detect a gap in a sound) and on other trials resulted in correct gap detection. This design ensured that any measurable differences in brain activity would be due to perceptual differences rather than physical differences among stimuli. We found that baseline activity recorded immediately before presentation of the stimulus significantly predicted the occurrence of the continuity illusion in 10 out of 14 participants based on power differences in γ-band EEG (34-80 Hz). Across all participants, power in the β and γ (12- to 80-Hz range) was informative about the subsequent perceptual decision. These data suggest that a subject's baseline brain state influences the strength of continuity illusions.	t	\N
22774804	The issue investigated in the present research is the nature of the information that is responsible for producing masked priming effects (e.g., semantic information or stimulus-response [S-R] associations) when responding to number stimuli. This issue was addressed by assessing both the magnitude of the category congruence (priming) effect and the nature of the priming distance effect across trials using single-digit primes and targets. Participants made either magnitude (i.e., whether the number presented was larger or smaller than 5) or identification (i.e., press the left button if the number was either a 1, 2, 3, or 4 or the right button if the number was either a 6, 7, 8, or 9) judgments. The results indicated that, regardless of task instruction, there was a clear priming distance effect and a significantly increasing category congruence effect. These results indicated that both semantic activation and S-R associations play important roles in producing masked priming effects.	t	\N
22776903	Stuttering is generally considered to be a speech disorder that affects ∼1% of the global population. Various forms of speech feedback have been shown to reduce overt stuttered speaking, and in particular, second speech signal through speech feedback has drastically reduced utterances of stuttered speech in adults with persistent stuttering. This study reports data for increased overt fluency of speech in an adult stuttering population, whereby the vocalization of the speaker is captured by a microphone or an accelerometer, signal processed, and returned as mechanical tactile speech feedback to the speaker's skin. A repeated measures analysis of variance was used to show that both the microphone and the accelerometer speaking conditions were significantly more fluent than a control (no feedback) condition, with the microphone-driven tactile feedback reducing instances of stuttering by 71% and the accelerometer-driven tactile feedback reducing instances of stuttering by 80%. It is apparent that self-generated tactile feedback can be used to enhance fluency significantly in those who stutter.	t	\N
22777734	A growing literature has suggested that processing of visual information presented near the hands is facilitated. In this study, we investigated whether the near-hands superiority effect also occurs with the hands moving. In two experiments, participants performed a cyclical bimanual movement task requiring concurrent visual identification of briefly presented letters. For both the static and dynamic hand conditions, the results showed improved letter recognition performance with the hands closer to the stimuli. The finding that the encoding advantage for near-hand stimuli also occurred with the hands moving suggests that the effect is regulated in real time, in accordance with the concept of a bimodal neural system that dynamically updates hand position in external space.	t	\N
22788230	Altered auditory feedback can facilitate speech fluency in adults who stutter. However, other findings suggest that adults who stutter show anomalies in 'audiovocal integration', such as longer phonation reaction times to auditory stimuli and less effective pitch tracking. To study audiovocal integration in adults who stutter using the pitch-shift paradigm. Fourteen adult stuttering participants and 16 normally fluent adults produced the vowel /a/while monitoring their own voice through earphones. Unanticipated pitch-shifts were applied in the upward or downward direction for 500 ms. Short latency pitch-shift responses (or pitch-shift responses) were elicited in all participants. In stuttering participants, vocal response onset latency was significantly delayed and amplitude tended to be reduced. Atypical audiovocal responses could be associated with stuttering. It is not clear how audiovocal integration influences stuttering, but could signal inadequate activation of internal models.	t	\N
22796516	In the present study we examined the effect of positional noise on spatial resolution in younger and older observers. We used a yes/no discrimination task in which observers indicated whether the size of two gaps in a Landolt-C-like contour was the same or not. The proportion of trials observers perceived one gap larger was measured when gaps-position was fixed (low positional noise) and random (high positional noise). Specifically, we compared, across conditions and groups, the values of threshold, lower and upper asymptote of the psychometric function. In the younger group, noise does not prevent detection of gap-size difference although sensitivity is lower, as revealed by higher threshold and lower upper asymptote, i.e., the proportion of responses "I see a larger gap" at the largest gap-size difference (asymptotic performance). In the older group detection is prevented, as revealed by threshold, lower and upper asymptote data. This may be because, at stimulus onset, high positional noise has associated coarse filter analysers averaging across the two gaps, which cannot be switched off.	t	\N
22799761	Little is known about how sex influences functional brain maturation. The current study investigated sex differences in the maturation of event-related potential (ERP) amplitudes during an auditory oddball task (N = 170; age = 6-17 years). Performance improved with age. N200 amplitude declined with age: parietal sites showed earlier development than temporal and frontal locations. Girls showed greater bilateral frontal P300 amplitude development, approaching the higher values observed in boys during childhood. After controlling for age, right frontal P300 amplitude was associated with reaction time in girls. The findings demonstrate sex differences in ERP maturation in line with behavioral and neuroimaging studies.	t	\N
22802637	Unlike nonhuman primates, songbirds learn to vocalize very much like human infants acquire spoken language. In humans, Broca's area in the frontal lobe and Wernicke's area in the temporal lobe are crucially involved in speech production and perception, respectively. Songbirds have analogous brain regions that show a similar neural dissociation between vocal production and auditory perception and memory. In both humans and songbirds, there is evidence for lateralization of neural responsiveness in these brain regions. Human infants already show left-sided dominance in their brain activation when exposed to speech. Moreover, a memory-specific left-sided dominance in Wernicke's area for speech perception has been demonstrated in 2.5-mo-old babies. It is possible that auditory-vocal learning is associated with hemispheric dominance and that this association arose in songbirds and humans through convergent evolution. Therefore, we investigated whether there is similar song memory-related lateralization in the songbird brain. We exposed male zebra finches to tutor or unfamiliar song. We found left-sided dominance of neuronal activation in a Broca-like brain region (HVC, a letter-based name) of juvenile and adult zebra finch males, independent of the song stimulus presented. In addition, juvenile males showed left-sided dominance for tutor song but not for unfamiliar song in a Wernicke-like brain region (the caudomedial nidopallium). Thus, left-sided dominance in the caudomedial nidopallium was specific for the song-learning phase and was memory-related. These findings demonstrate a remarkable neural parallel between birdsong and human spoken language, and they have important consequences for our understanding of the evolution of auditory-vocal learning and its neural mechanisms.	t	\N
22805019	To establish the method of conducting electrical evoked middle latency response (EMLR) monitoring in cochlear implantation operation and further to assess the neural response of auditory pathway under electrical stimulation. Twenty cases of cochlear implantation subjects were investigated in this study. Fourteen cases were pre-lingual deaf and 6 were post-lingual deaf. The surface recording electrodes were placed on the patients under general anesthesia, with language processor connected to the triggering port of the auditory evoked potential device. After the electrode was implanted, the electrode No.3 was selected to conduct. The electrically evoked auditory nerve compound active potentials (ECAP) were firstly tested in all patients, thereafter the EABR mode was selected, and the stimulation parameters were changed to EMLR mode with monopole biphasic, alternation stimulation, pulse width from 50 to 100 µs, the stimulation intensity decreased or increased from 20 CL above the strength of the ECAP threshold to the reaction threshold with a step of 5CL. To evaluate the correlation between the ECAP thresholds and EMLR, another 6 cases of normal hearing healthy subjects were recruited to record their short-sound evoked auditory middle-latency response (AMLR), as the control of morphology and latency of MLR by electrical stimulation. The typical AMLR waveforms could be recorded by the composition of five waves in the 6 cases of normal hearing healthy subjects, with an average response threshold of (12.5±8.6) dBnHL, close to the behavioral audiometric threshold (10.8±7.3) dBHL. The EMLR waveforms could be recorded in 20 patients, which was similar to the AMLR waveforms. However, the wave latency and wave interval shortened. There were lower volatility and longer latency in pre-lingual deaf than post-lingual deaf. The EMLR threshold (140.55±9.92) CL was significantly lower than the ECAP threshold (160.75±13.34) CL (t=10.467, P<0.01), a positive correlation between the thresholds was detected (r=0.763, P<0.01). We successfully established the method of EMLR monitoring in cochlear implantation surgery. The EMLR threshold is lower than the ECAP threshold but it is close to the behavioral audiometric threshold; EMLR can provide neural response information closer to the auditory center, and can serve as an effective objective method to evaluate the effect of hearing rehabilitation.	t	\N
22829158	The aim of this study was to describe the outcome and possible complications of subtotal petrosectomy (SP) for Vibrant Soundbridge (VSB) device surgery in a tertiary referral center. A secondary objective was the evaluation of hearing results in a subgroup of subjects who received the VSB device. Between 2009 and early 2011, 22 adult subjects with chronic otitis media (COM) underwent a SP, blind sac closure of the external auditory canal and abdominal fat obliteration to facilitate the application of an active middle ear implant (AMEI) in a staged procedure. Indications consisted of mixed hearing loss after previous tympanomastoplasty and failure of hearing rehabilitation with a hearing aid or bone conduction device in COM. Pre- and postoperative pure-tone audiograms were analyzed in respect to deterioration of inner ear function, unaided and aided (hearing aid, bone-anchored hearing aid and VSB) speech audiograms were compared to verify improvements in communications skills and functional gains. Incidence and type of complications were reviewed. No significant change was observed regarding mean bone conduction thresholds after the first stage procedure. Some minor wound healing problems were noted. Speech perception using the VSB (n = 16) showed a mean aided speech discrimination at 65-dB SPL of 75 % [standard deviation (SD) 28.7], at 80-dB SPL of 90 % (SD 25.1). Our results suggest that for selected patients with open mastoid cavities and chronic middle ear disease, SP with abdominal fat obliteration is an effective and safe technique to facilitate safe AMEI placement.	t	\N
22832675	Auditory-perceptual evaluation of dysphonia may be influenced by the type of speech/voice task used to render judgements during the clinical evaluation, i.e., sustained vowels versus continuous speech. This study explored (a) differences in listener dysphonia severity ratings on the basis of speech/voice tasks, (b) the influence of speech/voice task on dysphonia severity ratings of stimuli that combined sustained vowels and continuous speech, and (c) the differences in inter-rater reliability of dysphonia severity ratings between both speech tasks. Five experienced listeners rated overall dysphonia severity in sustained vowels, continuous speech and concatenated speech samples elicited by 39 subjects with various voice disorders and degrees of hoarseness. Data confirmed that sustained vowels are rated significantly more dysphonic than continuous speech. Furthermore, dysphonia severity in concatenated speech samples is least determined by the sustained vowel. Finally, no significant difference was found in inter-rater reliability between dysphonia severity ratings of sustained vowels versus continuous speech. Based upon the results, both types of speech/voice tasks (i.e., sustained vowel and continuous speech) should be elicited and judged by clinicians in the auditory-perceptual rating of dysphonia severity.	t	\N
22844984	A fundamental issue in the design and the interpretation of experimental studies of perception relates to the question of whether the participants in these experiments could perform the perceptual task assigned to them using another feature, or cue, than that intended by the experimenter. An approach frequently used by auditory- and visual-perception researchers to guard against this possibility involves applying random variations to the stimuli across presentations or trials so as to make the "unwanted" cue unreliable for the participants. However, the theoretical basis of this widespread practice is not well developed. In this article, we describe a 2-channel model based on general principles of psychophysical signal detection theory, which can be used to assess the respective contributions of the unwanted cue and of the primary cue to performance or thresholds measured in perceptual discrimination experiments involving stimulus randomization. Example applications of the model to the analysis of results obtained in representative studies from the auditory- and visual-perception literature are provided. In several cases, the results of the model-based analyses indicate that the effectiveness of the randomization procedure was less than originally assumed by the authors of these studies. These findings underscore the importance of quantifying the potential influence of unwanted cues on the results of psychophysical experiments, even when stimulus randomization is used.	t	\N
22846767	Previous studies have demonstrated that human evaluation of subjective loudness and acoustic comfort depends on a series of factors in a particular situation rather than only on sound pressure levels. In the present study, a large-scale subjective survey has been undertaken on underground shopping streets in Harbin, China, to determine how individual sound sources influence subjective loudness and acoustic comfort evaluation. Based on the analysis of case study results, it has been shown that all individual sound sources can increase subjective loudness to a certain degree. However, their levels of influence on acoustic comfort are different. Background music and the public address system can increase acoustic comfort, with a mean difference of 0.18 to 0.32 and 0.21 to 0.27, respectively, where a five-point bipolar category scale is used. Music from shops and vendor shouts can decrease acoustic comfort, with a mean difference of -0.11 to -0.38 and -0.39 to -0.62, respectively. The feasibility of improving acoustic comfort by changing certain sound sources is thus demonstrated.	t	\N
22866682	Two experiments tested the effects of preview sentences and headings on the quality of college students' outlines of informational texts. Experiment 1 found that performance was much better in the preview sentences condition than in a no-signals condition for both printed text and text-to-speech (TTS) audio rendering of the printed text. In contrast, performance in the headings condition was good for the printed text but poor for the auditory presentation because the TTS software failed to communicate nonverbal information carried by the visual headings. Experiment 2 compared outlining performance for five headings conditions during TTS presentation. Using a theoretical framework, "signaling available, relevant, accessible" (SARA) information, to provide an analysis of the information content of headings in the printed text, the manipulation of the headings systematically restored information that was omitted by the TTS application in Experiment 1. The result was that outlining performance improved to levels similar to the visual headings condition of Experiment 1. It is argued that SARA is a useful framework for guiding future development of TTS software for a wide variety of text signaling devices, not just headings.	t	\N
22891070	Perceptual training with spectrally degraded environmental sounds results in improved environmental sound identification, with benefits shown to extend to untrained speech perception as well. The present study extended those findings to examine longer-term training effects as well as effects of mere repeated exposure to sounds over time. Participants received two pretests (1 week apart) prior to a week-long environmental sound training regimen, which was followed by two posttest sessions, separated by another week without training. Spectrally degraded stimuli, processed with a four-channel vocoder, consisted of a 160-item environmental sound test, word and sentence tests, and a battery of basic auditory abilities and cognitive tests. Results indicated significant improvements in all speech and environmental sound scores between the initial pretest and the last posttest with performance increments following both exposure and training. For environmental sounds (the stimulus class that was trained), the magnitude of positive change that accompanied training was much greater than that due to exposure alone, with improvement for untrained sounds roughly comparable to the speech benefit from exposure. Additional tests of auditory and cognitive abilities showed that speech and environmental sound performance were differentially correlated with tests of spectral and temporal-fine-structure processing, whereas working memory and executive function were correlated with speech, but not environmental sound perception. These findings indicate generalizability of environmental sound training and provide a basis for implementing environmental sound training programs for cochlear implant (CI) patients.	t	\N
22892280	Three studies investigated developmental changes in facial expression processing, between 3 years-of-age and adulthood. For adults and older children, the addition of sunglasses to upright faces caused an equivalent decrement in performance to face inversion. However, younger children showed better classification of expressions of faces wearing sunglasses than children who saw the same faces un-occluded. When the mouth area was occluded with a mask, children under nine years showed no impairment in expression classification, relative to un-occluded faces. An early selective focus of attention on the eyes may be optimal for socialization, but mediate against accurate expression classification. The data support a model in which a threshold level of attentional control must be reached before children can develop adult-like configural processing skills and be flexible in their use of face- processing strategies.	t	\N
22892586	We introduce a new version of the perceptual retouch model. This model was used for explaining properties of temporal interaction of successive objects in reaching conscious representation. The new model incorporates two interactive binding operations - binding features for objects and binding the bound feature-objects with a large scale oscillatory system that corresponds to perceptual consciousness. Here, the typical result of masking experiments - second object advantage in conscious perception - is achieved by applying the effects of a common synchronizing oscillator with a delay. This delayed modulation of each of the feature-binding first-order oscillators that represent emerging and decaying neural activities of each of the objects guarantees that the oscillating synchrony of the feature-neurons of the following object is higher than the synchrony of the feature-neurons of the first presented object. Thus we model the fact that the following object dominates the preceding object in conscious perception. We also show the capacity of the model to simulate illusory misbinding of features from different objects. The third qualitative effect, the relative release of the first object from backward masking is achieved by priming the non-specific oscillatory modulation ahead in time.	t	\N
22894217	Green [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 87, 2662-2674 (1990)] suggested an efficient, maximum-likelihood-based approach for adaptively estimating thresholds. Such procedures determine the signal strength on each trial by first identifying the most likely psychometric functions among the pre-proposed alternatives based on responses from previous trials, and then finding the signal strength at the "sweet point" on that most likely function. The sweet point is the point on the psychometric function that is associated with the minimum expected variance. Here, that procedure is extended to reduce poor estimates that result from lapses in attention. The sweet points for the threshold, slope, and lapse parameters of a transformed logistic psychometric function are derived. In addition, alternative stimulus placement algorithms are considered. The result is a relatively fast and robust estimation of a three-parameter psychometric function.	t	\N
22894232	Speaker variability and noise are two common sources of acoustic variability. The goal of this study was to examine whether these two sources of acoustic variability affected native and non-native perception of Mandarin fricatives to different degrees. Multispeaker Mandarin fricative stimuli were presented to 40 native and 52 non-native listeners in two presentation formats (blocked by speaker and mixed across speakers). The stimuli were also mixed with speech-shaped noise to create five levels of signal-to- noise ratios. The results showed that noise affected non-native identification disproportionately. By contrast, the effect of speaker variability was comparable between the native and non-native listeners. Confusion patterns were interpreted with reference to the results of acoustic analysis, suggesting native and non-native listeners used distinct acoustic cues for fricative identification. It was concluded that not all sources of acoustic variability are treated equally by native and non-native listeners. Whereas noise compromised non-native fricative perception disproportionately, speaker variability did not pose a special challenge to the non-native listeners.	t	\N
22895701	Critical periods in language acquisition have been discussed primarily with reference to studies of people who are deaf or bilingual. Here, we provide evidence on the opening of sensitivity to the linguistic environment by studying the response to a change of phoneme at a native and nonnative phonetic boundary in full-term and preterm human infants using event-related potentials. Full-term infants show a decline in their discrimination of nonnative phonetic contrasts between 9 and 12 months of age. Because the womb is a high-frequency filter, many phonemes are strongly degraded in utero. Preterm infants thus benefit from earlier and richer exposure to broadcast speech. We find that preterms do not take advantage of this enriched linguistic environment: the decrease in amplitude of the mismatch response to a nonnative change of phoneme at the end of the first year of life was dependent on maturational age and not on the duration of exposure to broadcast speech. The shaping of phonological representations by the environment is thus strongly constrained by brain maturation factors.	t	\N
22897876	Neurophysiological studies of infant speech suggest that mismatch responses (MMRs) have predictive value for later language. Their value, however, is diminished because unexplained differences in the MMR patterns are seen across studies. The current study aimed to identify the functional nature of infant MMRs by recording event-related-potentials (ERPs) to an infrequent English vowel change in internal or final positions of a sequence of ten vowels in six-month-old monolingually and bilingually exposed infants. Increased negativity of the MMR (infrequent minus frequent) was found in final compared to internal positions and correlated with an index of increased attention to the final position. This pattern helps explain the overall greater negativity to the speech sounds in the bilingually exposed female infants. These findings substantially advance our understanding of neural indices of speech perception development and show promise for furthering our understanding of bilingual language development.	t	\N
22907183	Although central nervous system abnormalities are incidentally detected in preoperative brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies in pediatric cochlear implant (CI) candidates, the clinical significance of the abnormalities remains unclear. We aimed to assess post-implantation auditory and speech performance in patients with brain lesions seen on MRI. Pediatric CI recipients (n = 177) who underwent preoperative MRI scans of the brain between January 2002 and June 2009 were included in this study. Patients with brain lesions on MRI were reviewed and categorized into the following groups: brain parenchymal lesions (focal vs. diffuse), ventriculomegaly, and extra-axial lesion. The main communication mode as well as progress in auditory perception and speech production were evaluated preoperatively and at 3, 6, 12, and 24 months postoperatively. Performance in patients with brain lesions was compared with the age- and sex-matched control group. Various brain lesions were found in 27 out of 177 patients. Children with brain lesions who received CIs showed gradual progress in auditory and speech outcomes for 2 years, though performance was reduced compared with the control group. In addition, there was a significant difference in the main communication mode between the two groups at 2 years following cochlear implantation. This difference was especially significant in patients with diffuse brain parenchymal lesions after further stratification of the brain lesion group. Preoperative brain MRI may have a role in improving the prediction of adverse outcomes in pediatric CI recipients. In particular, children with diffuse brain parenchymal lesions should be counseled regarding the poor prognosis preoperatively, and followed up with special attention.	t	\N
22922236	Cognitive models propose that auditory verbal hallucinations arise through inner speech misidentification. However, such models cannot explain why the voices in hallucinations often have identities different from the hearer. This study investigated whether a general voice identity recognition difficulty might be present in schizophrenia and related to auditory verbal hallucinations. Twenty-five schizophrenia patients and 13 healthy controls were tested on recognition of famous voices. Signal detection theory was used to calculate perceptual sensitivity and response criterion measures. Schizophrenia patients obtained fewer hits and had lower perceptual sensitivity to detect famous voices than healthy controls did. There were no differences between groups in false alarm rate or response criterion. A symptom-based analysis demonstrated that especially those patients with auditory verbal hallucinations performed poorly in the task. The results indicate that patients with hallucinations are impaired at voice identity recognition because of decreased sensitivity, which may result in inner speech misidentification.	t	\N
22922606	To evaluate, with a long-term follow-up, the speech perception and language development in children with cytomegalovirus (CMV)-related deafness after cochlear implantation. A retrospective study on CMV-related profound deafness and cochlear implantation was performed from 1995 to 2010. Six children with an average follow-up of 10 years were included in this research. Medical history, imaging, cognitive delay, speech perception and production data were reviewed. Two of the 6 patients developed a functional language with the use of phrases and word sequences based on morphological and syntactic rules; the others demonstrated the development of a preverbal or transitional language with the use of single words only. Patients with CMV-related deafness benefit from cochlear implantation; however, the expectations of the parents must be evaluated in a series of counseling efforts prior to the surgery.	t	\N
22923209	Autism spectrum disorder is typically associated with social deficits and is often specifically linked to difficulty with processing faces and other socially relevant stimuli. Emerging research has suggested that children with autism might also have deficits in basic perceptual abilities including multisensory processing (e.g., simultaneously processing visual and auditory inputs). The current study examined the relationship between multisensory temporal processing (assessed via a simultaneity judgment task wherein participants were to report whether a visual stimulus and an auditory stimulus occurred at the same time or at different times) and self-reported symptoms of autism (assessed via the Autism Spectrum Quotient questionnaire). Data from over 100 healthy adults revealed a relationship between these two factors as multisensory timing perception correlated with symptoms of autism. Specifically, a stronger bias to perceive auditory stimuli occurring before visual stimuli as simultaneous was associated with greater levels of autistic symptoms. Additional data and analyses confirm that this relationship is specific to multisensory processing and symptoms of autism. These results provide insight into the nature of multisensory processing while also revealing a continuum over which perceptual abilities correlate with symptoms of autism and that this continuum is not just specific to clinical populations but is present within the general population.	t	\N
22925516	We live in a world rich in sensory information, and consequently the brain is challenged with deciphering which cues from the various sensory modalities belong together. Determinations regarding the relatedness of sensory information appear to be based, at least in part, on the spatial and temporal relationships between the stimuli. Stimuli that are presented in close spatial and temporal correspondence are more likely to be associated with one another and thus 'bound' into a single perceptual entity. While there is a robust literature delineating behavioral changes in perception induced by multisensory stimuli, maturational changes in multisensory processing, particularly in the temporal realm, are poorly understood. The current study examines the developmental progression of multisensory temporal function by analyzing responses on an audiovisual simultaneity judgment task in 6- to 23-year-old participants. The overarching hypothesis for the study was that multisensory temporal function will mature with increasing age, with the developmental trajectory for this change being the primary point of inquiry. Results indeed reveal an age-dependent decrease in the size of the 'multisensory temporal binding window', the temporal interval within which multisensory stimuli are likely to be perceptually bound, with changes occurring over a surprisingly protracted time course that extends into adolescence.	t	\N
22926436	The results of two experiments are presented which explore the effect of distractor items on face and voice recognition. Following from the suggestion that voice processing is relatively weak compared to face processing, it was anticipated that voice recognition would be more affected by the presentation of distractor items between study and test compared to face recognition. Using a sequential matching task with a fixed interval between study and test that either incorporated distractor items or did not, the results supported our prediction. Face recognition remained strong irrespective of the number of distractor items between study and test. In contrast, voice recognition was significantly impaired by the presence of distractor items regardless of their number (Experiment 1). This pattern remained whether distractor items were highly similar to the targets or not (Experiment 2). These results offer support for the proposal that voice processing is a relatively vulnerable method of identification.	t	\N
22946856	Motivational interviewing (MI) is a directive, client-centered therapeutic method employed in the treatment of substance abuse, with strong evidence of effectiveness. To date, the sole mechanism of action in MI with any consistent empirical support is "change talk" (CT), which is generally defined as client within-session speech in support of a behavior change. "Sustain talk" (ST) incorporates speech in support of the status quo. MI maintains that during treatment, clients essentially talk themselves into change. Multiple studies have now supported this theory, linking within-session speech to substance use outcomes. Although a causal chain has been established linking therapist behavior, client CT, and substance use outcome, the neural substrate of CT has been largely uncharted. We addressed this gap by measuring neural responses to clients' own CT using magnetoencephalography (MEG), a noninvasive neuroimaging technique with excellent spatial and temporal resolution. Following a recorded MI session, MEG was used to measure brain activity while participants heard multiple repetitions of their CT and ST utterances from that session, intermingled and presented in a random order. Results suggest that CT processing occurs in a right-hemisphere network that includes the inferior frontal gyrus, insula, and superior temporal cortex. These results support a representation of CT at the neural level, consistent with the role of these structures in self-perception. This suggests that during treatment sessions, clinicians who are able to evoke this special kind of language are tapping into neural circuitry that may be essential to behavior change.	t	\N
22951258	Comprehension of spoken narratives requires coordination of multiple language skills. As such, for normal children narrative skills develop well into the school years and, during this period, are particularly vulnerable in the face of brain injury or developmental disorder. For these reasons, we sought to determine the developmental trajectory of narrative processing using longitudinal fMRI scanning. 30 healthy children between the ages of 5 and 18 enrolled at ages 5, 6, or 7, were examined annually for up to 10 years. At each fMRI session, children were presented with a set of five, 30s-long, stories containing 9, 10, or 11 sentences designed to be understood by a 5 year old child. fMRI data analysis was conducted based on a hierarchical linear model (HLM) that was modified to investigate developmental changes while accounting for missing data and controlling for factors such as age, linguistic performance and IQ. Performance testing conducted after each scan indicated well above the chance (p<0.002) comprehension performance. There was a linear increase with increasing age in bilateral superior temporal cortical activation (BAs 21 and 22) linked to narrative processing. Conversely, age-related decreases in cortical activation were observed in bilateral occipital regions, cingulate and cuneus, possibly reflecting changes in the default mode networks. The dynamic changes observed in this longitudinal fMRI study support the increasing role of bilateral BAs 21 and 22 in narrative comprehension, involving non-domain-specific integration in order to achieve final story interpretation. The presence of a continued linear development of this area throughout childhood and teenage years with no apparent plateau, indicates that full maturation of narrative processing skills has not yet occurred and that it may be delayed to early adulthood.	t	\N
22957659	The Adaptive Tests of Temporal Resolution (ATTR©) software provides within-channel (WC) and across-channel (AC) adaptive measures of temporal resolution that are feasible for clinical applications. The purpose of the present study was to obtain normative values for young adults on two of the ATTR tests: the narrow-band noise within-channel (NBN-WC) test and the narrow-band noise across-channel (NBN-AC) test, at different stimulus intensities. Gap detection thresholds were measured at five sensation levels. A Latin square design was used to control for practice effects. The NBN-WC group and the NBN-AC group each consisted of 25 young adults with normal hearing. Gap detection thresholds for both conditions decreased with increasing stimulus intensity, and stimulus intensities above 20 dB SL were not associated with large improvements in performance. Variability was larger in the NBN-AC condition. Values obtained for the NBC-WC condition were very similar to previously reported ATTR results despite equipment and design differences. Results provide normative values for NBN-WC and NBN-AC performance on the ATTR and suggest that the ATTR is a robust test for clinical use.	t	\N
22963230	Properties of auditory working memory for sounds that lack strong semantic associations and are not readily verbalized or sung are poorly understood. We investigated auditory working memory capacity for lists containing 2-6 easily discriminable abstract sounds synthesized within a constrained timbral space, at delays of 1-6 s (Experiment 1), and the effect of greater perceptual variability among list items on capacity estimates at delays of 1-6 s (Experiment 2). Working memory capacity estimates of 1-2 items were found in all conditions and increased significantly as the perceptual variability among the list items increased. Nonetheless, the capacity estimates were smaller than the commonly observed average working memory capacity limit of 3-5 items. Decay profiles in both experiments were comparable with those previously reported in the verbal and auditory working memory literature. The results help define boundary conditions on capacity estimates for nonverbalizable timbres that lack strong long-term memory associations.	t	\N
22978899	A common complaint of the hearing impaired is the inability to understand speech in noisy environments even with their hearing assistive devices. Only a few single-channel algorithms have significantly improved speech intelligibility in noise for hearing-impaired listeners. The current study introduces a cochlear noise reduction algorithm. It is based on a cochlear representation of acoustic signals and real-time derivation of a binary speech mask. The contribution of the algorithm for enhancing word recognition in noise was evaluated on a group of 42 normal-hearing subjects, 35 hearing-aid users, 8 cochlear implant recipients, and 14 participants with bimodal devices. Recognition scores of Hebrew monosyllabic words embedded in Gaussian noise at several signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) were obtained with processed and unprocessed signals. The algorithm was not effective among the normal-hearing participants. However, it yielded a significant improvement in some of the hearing-impaired subjects under different listening conditions. Its most impressive benefit appeared among cochlear implant recipients. More than 20% improvement in recognition score of noisy words was obtained by 12, 16, and 26 hearing-impaired at SNR of 30, 24, and 18 dB, respectively. The algorithm has a potential to improve speech intelligibility in background noise, yet further research is required to improve its performances.	t	\N
22978901	The auditory octave illusion arises when dichotically presented tones, one octave apart, alternate rapidly between the ears. Most subjects perceive an illusory sequence of monaural tones: A high tone in the right ear (RE) alternates with a low tone, incorrectly localized to the left ear (LE). Behavioral studies suggest that the perceived pitch follows the RE input, and the perceived location the higher-frequency sound. To explore the link between the perceived pitches and brain-level interactions of dichotic tones, magnetoencephalographic responses were recorded to 4 binaural combinations of 2-min long continuous 400- and 800-Hz tones and to 4 monaural tones. Responses to LE and RE inputs were distinguished by frequency-tagging the ear-specific stimuli at different modulation frequencies. During dichotic presentation, ipsilateral LE tones elicited weaker and ipsilateral RE tones stronger responses than when both ears received the same tone. During the most paradoxical stimulus-high tone to LE and low tone to RE perceived as a low tone in LE during the illusion-also the contralateral responses to LE tones were diminished. The results demonstrate modified binaural interaction of dichotic tones one octave apart, suggesting that this interaction contributes to pitch perception during the octave illusion.	t	\N
22981882	Dyslexia is heritable and associated with auditory processing deficits. We investigate whether temporal auditory processing is compromised in young children at-risk for dyslexia and whether it is associated with later language and reading skills. We recorded EEG from 17 months-old children with or without familial risk for dyslexia to investigate whether their auditory system was able to detect a temporal change in a tone pattern. The children were followed longitudinally and performed an intelligence- and language development test at ages 4 and 4.5 years. Literacy related skills were measured at the beginning of second grade, and word- and pseudo-word reading fluency were measured at the end of second grade. The EEG responses showed that control children could detect the temporal change as indicated by a mismatch response (MMR). The MMR was not observed in at-risk children. Furthermore, the fronto-central MMR amplitude correlated with preliterate language comprehension and with later word reading fluency, but not with phonological awareness. We conclude that temporal auditory processing differentiates young children at risk for dyslexia from controls and is a precursor of preliterate language comprehension and reading fluency.	t	\N
22982103	Production of actions is highly dependent on concurrent sensory information. In speech production, for example, movement of the articulators is guided by both auditory and somatosensory input. It has been demonstrated in non-human primates that self-produced vocalizations and those of others are differentially processed in the temporal cortex. The aim of the current study was to investigate how auditory and motor responses differ for self-produced and externally produced speech. Using functional neuroimaging, subjects were asked to produce sentences aloud, to silently mouth while listening to a different speaker producing the same sentence, to passively listen to sentences being read aloud, or to read sentences silently. We show that that separate regions of the superior temporal cortex display distinct response profiles to speaking aloud, mouthing while listening, and passive listening. Responses in anterior superior temporal cortices in both hemispheres are greater for passive listening compared with both mouthing while listening, and speaking aloud. This is the first demonstration that articulation, whether or not it has auditory consequences, modulates responses of the dorsolateral temporal cortex. In contrast posterior regions of the superior temporal cortex are recruited during both articulation conditions. In dorsal regions of the posterior superior temporal gyrus, responses to mouthing and reading aloud were equivalent, and in more ventral posterior superior temporal sulcus, responses were greater for reading aloud compared with mouthing while listening. These data demonstrate an anterior-posterior division of superior temporal regions where anterior fields are suppressed during motor output, potentially for the purpose of enhanced detection of the speech of others. We suggest posterior fields are engaged in auditory processing for the guidance of articulation by auditory information.	t	\N
22984436	Amplitude modulation can serve as a cue for segregating streams of sounds from different sources. Here we evaluate stream segregation in humans using ABA- sequences of sinusoidally amplitude modulated (SAM) tones. A and B represent SAM tones with the same carrier frequency (1000, 4000 Hz) and modulation depth (30, 100%). The modulation frequency of the A signals (f(modA)) was 30, 100 or 300 Hz, respectively. The modulation frequency of the B signals was up to four octaves higher (Δf(mod)). Three different ABA- tone patterns varying in tone duration and stimulus onset asynchrony were presented to evaluate the effect of forward suppression. Subjects indicated their 1- or 2-stream percept on a touch screen at the end of each ABA- sequence (presentation time 5 or 15 s). Tone pattern, f(modA), Δf(mod), carrier frequency, modulation depth and presentation time significantly affected the percentage of a 2-stream percept. The human psychophysical results are compared to responses of avian forebrain neurons evoked by different ABA- SAM tone conditions [1] that were broadly overlapping those of the present study. The neurons also showed significant effects of tone pattern and Δf(mod) that were comparable to effects observed in the present psychophysical study. Depending on the carrier frequency, modulation frequency, modulation depth and the width of the auditory filters, SAM tones may provide mainly temporal cues (sidebands fall within the range of the filter), spectral cues (sidebands fall outside the range of the filter) or possibly both. A computational model based on excitation pattern differences was used to predict the 50% threshold of 2-stream responses. In conditions for which the model predicts a considerably larger 50% threshold of 2-stream responses (i.e., larger Δf(mod) at threshold) than was observed, it is unlikely that spectral cues can provide an explanation of stream segregation by SAM.	t	\N
22992710	Auditory perception of vowels in background noise is enhanced when combined with visually perceived speech features. The objective of this study was to investigate whether the influence of visual cues on vowel perception extends to incongruent vowels, in a manner similar to the McGurk effect observed with consonants. Identification of Dutch front vowels /i, y, e, Y/ that share all features other than height and lip-rounding was measured for congruent and incongruent audiovisual conditions. The audio channel was systematically degraded by adding noise, increasing the reliance on visual cues. The height feature was more robustly carried over through the auditory channel and the lip-rounding feature through the visual channel. Hence, congruent audiovisual presentation enhanced identification, while incongruent presentation led to perceptual fusions and thus decreased identification. Visual cues influence the identification of congruent as well as incongruent audiovisual vowels. Incongruent visual information results in perceptual fusions, demonstrating that the McGurk effect can be instigated by long phonemes such as vowels. This result extends to the incongruent presentation of the visually less reliably perceived height. The findings stress the importance of audiovisual congruency in communication devices, such as cochlear implants and videoconferencing tools, where the auditory signal could be degraded.	t	\N
22993261	Temporal selection poses unique challenges to the perceptual system. Selection is needed to protect goal-relevant stimuli from interference from new sensory input. In addition, contextual information that occurs at the same time as goal-relevant stimuli may be critical for learning. Using fMRI, we characterized how visual cortical regions respond to the temporal selection of auditory and visual stimuli. Critically, we focused on brain regions that are not involved in processing the target itself. Participants pressed a button when they heard a prespecified target tone and did not respond to other tones. Although more attention was directed to auditory input when the target tone was selected, activity in primary visual cortex increased more after target tones than after distractor tones. In contrast to spatial attention, this effect was larger in V1 than in V2 and V3. It was present in regions not typically involved in representing the target stimulus. Additional experiments demonstrated that these effects were not due to multimodal processing, rare targets, or motor responses to the targets. Thus temporal selection of behaviorally relevant stimuli enhances, rather than reduces, activity in perceptual regions involved in processing other information.	t	\N
22995182	Auditory feedback plays an important role in monitoring vocal output and determining when adjustments are necessary. In this study a group of untrained singers participated in a frequency altered feedback experiment to examine if accuracy at matching a note could predict the degree of compensation to auditory feedback that was shifted in frequency. Participants were presented with a target note and instructed to match the note in pitch and duration. Following the onset of the participants' vocalizations their vocal pitch was shifted down one semi-tone at a random time during their utterance. This altered auditory feedback was instantaneously presented back to them through headphones. Results indicated that note matching accuracy did not correlate with compensation magnitude, however, a significant correlation was found between baseline variability and compensation magnitude. These results suggest that individuals with a more stable baseline fundamental frequency rely more on feedforward control mechanisms than individuals with more variable vocal production. This increased weighting of feedforward control means they are less sensitive to mismatches between their intended vocal production and auditory feedback.	t	\N
23000118	Users of a cochlear implant together with a hearing aid in the non-implanted ear currently use devices that were developed separately and are often fitted separately. This results in very different growth of loudness with level in the two ears, potentially leading to decreased wearing comfort and suboptimal perception of interaural level differences. A loudness equalisation strategy, named 'SCORE bimodal', is proposed. It equalises loudness growth for the two modalities using existing models of loudness for acoustic and electric stimulation, and is suitable for implementation in wearable devices. Loudness balancing experiments were performed with six bimodal listeners to validate the strategy. In a first set of experiments, the function of each loudness model used was validated by balancing the loudness of four harmonic complexes of different bandwidths, ranging from 200 Hz to 1000 Hz, separately for each ear. Both the electric and acoustic loudness models predicted the data well. In a second set of experiments, binaural balancing was done for the same stimuli. It was found that SCORE significantly improved binaural balance.	t	\N
23000801	Cochlear implants (CIs) help many deaf children achieve near-normal speech and language (S/L) milestones. Nevertheless, high levels of unexplained variability in S/L outcomes are limiting factors in improving the effectiveness of CIs in deaf children. The objective of this study was to longitudinally assess the role of verbal short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) capacity as a progress-limiting source of variability in S/L outcomes after CI in children. Longitudinal study of 66 children with CIs for prelingual severe-to-profound hearing loss. Outcome measures included performance on digit span forward (DSF), digit span backward (DSB), and four conventional S/L measures that examined spoken-word recognition (Phonetically Balanced Kindergarten word test), receptive vocabulary (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test ), sentence-recognition skills (Hearing in Noise Test), and receptive and expressive language functioning (Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals Fourth Edition Core Language Score; CELF). Growth curves for DSF and DSB in the CI sample over time were comparable in slope, but consistently lagged in magnitude relative to norms for normal-hearing peers of the same age. For DSF and DSB, 50.5% and 44.0%, respectively, of the CI sample scored more than 1 SD below the normative mean for raw scores across all ages. The first (baseline) DSF score significantly predicted all endpoint scores for the four S/L measures, and DSF slope (growth) over time predicted CELF scores. DSF baseline and slope accounted for an additional 13 to 31% of variance in S/L scores after controlling for conventional predictor variables such as: chronological age at time of testing, age at time of implantation, communication mode (auditory-oral communication versus total communication), and maternal education. Only DSB baseline scores predicted endpoint language scores on Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and CELF. DSB slopes were not significantly related to any endpoint S/L measures. DSB baseline scores and slopes taken together accounted for an additional 4 to 19% of variance in S/L endpoint measures after controlling for the conventional predictor variables. Verbal STM/WM scores, process measures of information capacity, develop at an average rate in the years after cochlear implantation, but were found to consistently lag in absolute magnitude behind those reported for normal-hearing peers. Baseline verbal STM/WM predicted long-term endpoint S/L outcomes, but verbal STM slopes predicted only endpoint language outcomes. Verbal STM/WM processing skills reflect important underlying core elementary neurocognitive functions and represent potential intervention targets for improving endpoint S/L outcomes in pediatric CI users.	t	\N
23014760	In this paper, we present a Bayesian framework for the active multimodal perception of 3-D structure and motion. The design of this framework finds its inspiration in the role of the dorsal perceptual pathway of the human brain. Its composing models build upon a common egocentric spatial configuration that is naturally fitting for the integration of readings from multiple sensors using a Bayesian approach. In the process, we will contribute with efficient and robust probabilistic solutions for cyclopean geometry-based stereovision and auditory perception based only on binaural cues, modeled using a consistent formalization that allows their hierarchical use as building blocks for the multimodal sensor fusion framework. We will explicitly or implicitly address the most important challenges of sensor fusion using this framework, for vision, audition, and vestibular sensing. Moreover, interaction and navigation require maximal awareness of spatial surroundings, which, in turn, is obtained through active attentional and behavioral exploration of the environment. The computational models described in this paper will support the construction of a simultaneously flexible and powerful robotic implementation of multimodal active perception to be used in real-world applications, such as human-machine interaction or mobile robot navigation.	t	\N
23015425	Depth-electrode recordings from the auditory cortex of humans undergoing presurgical evaluation for epilepsy allow the recording of ensemble responses to pitch in the form of local field potentials. These recordings allow another test of the hypothesis that there is a specialized neural ensemble for pitch within auditory cortex. Moreover, the technique allows recordings from multiple sites with millisecond temporal resolution to allow modeling of the effective connectivity between these sites. Here we argue that this takes the form of a hierarchical network of pitch-sensitive regions. Activity can be understood as reflecting predictive coding, in which perceptual predictions and error messages are continuously exchanged between a higher pitch center and lower-level auditory cortex.	t	\N
23025156	Change blindness is the failure of observers to notice otherwise obvious changes to a visual scene when those changes are masked in some way (eg by blotches or a blanking ofthe screen). Typically, change blindness is taken as evidence that our representation of the visual world is capacity limited. The locus of this capacity limit is thought to be visual short-term memory (vSTM). The capacity of vSTM is usually estimated with a high-threshold model which assumes that each element in the stimulus array is either fully encoded or not encoded at all, and, furthermore, that false alarms can arise only by guessing, not by noise. Low-threshold models, by contrast, suggest that false alarms can arise by noise at the level of detection/discrimination and/or decision. In this study, we use a well-controlled stimulus display in which a single element changes over a blanking of the screen and contrast predictions from a popular high-threshold model of vSTM with the predictions of a low-threshold model (specifically, the sample-size model) of visual search and vSTM. The data were better predicted by the low-threshold model.	t	\N
23025164	Cross-sensory correspondences automatically intrude on performance in elaborate laboratory tasks (see Spence 2011 Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 73 971-995, for a review). Outside such tasks, might they be responsible for some popular misconceptions about natural phenomena? Four simple demonstrations reveal how the correspondences between surface-lightness and weight, and between surface-lightness and auditory pitch, generate misconceptions about the weight and movement of objects and the vocalisations of animals. Specifically, people expect darker objects to be heavier than lighter-coloured objects, to free-fall more quickly, to roll across a table more slowly, and to make lower-pitched vocalisations when they come to life.	t	\N
23028516	We physically interact with external stimuli when they occur within a limited space immediately surrounding the body, i.e., Peripersonal Space (PPS). In the primate brain, specific fronto-parietal areas are responsible for the multisensory representation of PPS, by integrating tactile, visual and auditory information occurring on and near the body. Dynamic stimuli are particularly relevant for PPS representation, as they might refer to potential harms approaching the body. However, behavioural tasks for studying PPS representation with moving stimuli are lacking. Here we propose a new dynamic audio-tactile interaction task in order to assess the extension of PPS in a more functionally and ecologically valid condition. Participants vocally responded to a tactile stimulus administered at the hand at different delays from the onset of task-irrelevant dynamic sounds which gave the impression of a sound source either approaching or receding from the subject's hand. Results showed that a moving auditory stimulus speeded up the processing of a tactile stimulus at the hand as long as it was perceived at a limited distance from the hand, that is within the boundaries of PPS representation. The audio-tactile interaction effect was stronger when sounds were approaching compared to when sounds were receding. This study provides a new method to dynamically assess pps representation: The function describing the relationship between tactile processing and the position of sounds in space can be used to estimate the location of PPS boundaries, along a spatial continuum between far and near space, in a valuable and ecologically significant way.	t	\N
23029113	An auditory neuron can preserve the temporal fine structure of a low-frequency tone by phase-locking its response to the stimulus. Apart from sound localization, however, much about the role of this temporal information for signal processing in the brain remains unknown. Through psychoacoustic studies we provide direct evidence that humans employ temporal fine structure to discriminate between frequencies. To this end we construct tones that are based on a single frequency but in which, through the concatenation of wavelets, the phase changes randomly every few cycles. We then test the frequency discrimination of these phase-changing tones, of control tones without phase changes, and of short tones that consist of a single wavelet. For carrier frequencies below a few kilohertz we find that phase changes systematically worsen frequency discrimination. No such effect appears for higher carrier frequencies at which temporal information is not available in the central auditory system.	t	\N
23029492	Findings on song perception and song production have increasingly suggested that common but partially distinct neural networks exist for processing lyrics and melody. However, the neural substrates of song recognition remain to be investigated. The purpose of this study was to examine the neural substrates involved in the accessing "song lexicon" as corresponding to a representational system that might provide links between the musical and phonological lexicons using positron emission tomography (PET). We exposed participants to auditory stimuli consisting of familiar and unfamiliar songs presented in three ways: sung lyrics (song), sung lyrics on a single pitch (lyrics), and the sung syllable 'la' on original pitches (melody). The auditory stimuli were designed to have equivalent familiarity to participants, and they were recorded at exactly the same tempo. Eleven right-handed nonmusicians participated in four conditions: three familiarity decision tasks using song, lyrics, and melody and a sound type decision task (control) that was designed to engage perceptual and prelexical processing but not lexical processing. The contrasts (familiarity decision tasks versus control) showed no common areas of activation between lyrics and melody. This result indicates that essentially separate neural networks exist in semantic memory for the verbal and melodic processing of familiar songs. Verbal lexical processing recruited the left fusiform gyrus and the left inferior occipital gyrus, whereas melodic lexical processing engaged the right middle temporal sulcus and the bilateral temporo-occipital cortices. Moreover, we found that song specifically activated the left posterior inferior temporal cortex, which may serve as an interface between verbal and musical representations in order to facilitate song recognition.	t	\N
23033450	This study aimed to compare sound production errors arising due to phonological processing impairment with errors arising due to motor speech impairment. Two speakers with similar clinical profiles who produced similar consonant cluster simplification errors were examined using a repetition task. We compared both overall accuracy and acoustic details of hundreds of productions with target consonant clusters to tokens with singletons. Changes in accuracy over the course of the study were also compared. In target words with consonant cluster simplification, the individual whose errors reflected phonological impairment produced articulatory timing consistent with singleton onsets. These productions improved when resyllabification was possible, but error rates were not affected by exposure. In contrast, the individual with motoric-based errors produced simplifications that contained the articulatory timing associated with clusters. Accuracy was not affected by the ability to resyllabify, but it did significantly improve following repeated production. Our findings reveal clear differences between errors arising in phonological processing and in motor planning that reflect the underlying systems. The changes over the course of the study suggest that error types with different sources are responsive to different intervention strategies.	t	\N
23036182	The present event-related potential (ERP) study examined the developmental mechanisms of auditory-vocal integration in normally developing children. Neurophysiological responses to altered auditory feedback were recorded to determine whether they are affected by age and sex. Forty-two children were pairwise matched for sex and were divided into a group of younger (10-12years) and a group of older (13-15years) children. Twenty healthy young adults (20-25years) also participated in the experiment. ERPs were recorded from the participants who heard their voice pitch feedback unexpectedly shifted -50, -100, or -200 cents during sustained vocalization. P1 amplitudes became smaller as subjects increased in age from childhood to adulthood, and males produced larger N1 amplitudes than females. An age-related decrease in the P1-N1 latencies was also found: latencies were shorter in young adults than in school children. A complex age-by-sex interaction was found for the P2 component, where an age-related increase in P2 amplitudes existed only in girls, and boys produced longer P2 latencies than girls but only in the older children. These findings demonstrate that neurophysiological responses to pitch errors in voice auditory feedback depend on age and sex in normally developing children. The present study provides evidence that there is a sex-specific development of the neural mechanisms involved in auditory-vocal integration.	t	\N
23047260	To determine the effect of oral steroid treatment on hearing in unilateral Ménière's disease and endolymphatic hydrops patients. Retrospective chart review. Tertiary referral center. All patients presenting during the 2010 calendar year with confirmed unilateral Ménière's disease or endolymphatic hydrops. Those with a first visit and second visit audiogram (n = 58) were included in the analysis of oral steroid treatment effect. Steroid treatment for hearing loss. Change in hearing, as defined by change in affected ear threshold values or speech discrimination score from pretreatment visit to posttreatment visit. Hearing (threshold, speech discrimination score) in patients' affected ear did not significantly change from first visit to second visit after treatment with steroids relative to patients who did not receive steroid treatment. The results of this and other studies would indicate that a Ménière's disease or endolymphatic hydrops patient is unlikely to experience an improvement in hearing from a short course of oral steroid. Clinically observed temporary improvement did not sustain over several months. Further work to elucidate the mechanisms underlying hearing loss in hydrops, perhaps focusing on the dendrite damage noted in animal models of hydrops, is warranted.	t	\N
23056592	Time-compressed speech, a form of rapidly presented speech, is harder to comprehend than natural speech, especially for non-native speakers. Although it is possible to adapt to time-compressed speech after a brief exposure, it is not known whether additional perceptual learning occurs with further practice. Here, we ask whether multiday training on time-compressed speech yields more learning than that observed during the initial adaptation phase and whether the pattern of generalization following successful learning is different than that observed with initial adaptation only. Two groups of non-native Hebrew speakers were tested on five different conditions of time-compressed speech identification in two assessments conducted 10-14 days apart. Between those assessments, one group of listeners received five practice sessions on one of the time-compressed conditions. Between the two assessments, trained listeners improved significantly more than untrained listeners on the trained condition. Furthermore, the trained group generalized its learning to two untrained conditions in which different talkers presented the trained speech materials. In addition, when the performance of the non-native speakers was compared to that of a group of naïve native Hebrew speakers, performance of the trained group was equivalent to that of the native speakers on all conditions on which learning occurred, whereas performance of the untrained non-native listeners was substantially poorer. Multiday training on time-compressed speech results in significantly more perceptual learning than brief adaptation. Compared to previous studies of adaptation, the training induced learning is more stimulus specific. Taken together, the perceptual learning of time-compressed speech appears to progress from an initial, rapid adaptation phase to a subsequent prolonged and more stimulus specific phase. These findings are consistent with the predictions of the Reverse Hierarchy Theory of perceptual learning and suggest constraints on the use of perceptual-learning regimens during second language acquisition.	t	\N
23059750	The ability to identify stop consonants from brief onset spectra was compared between a group of Chinese children with phonological dyslexia (the PD group, with a mean age of 10 years 4 months) and a group of chronological age-matched control children. The linguistic context, which included vowels and speakers, and durations of stop onset spectra were varied. Children with PD showed lower identification accuracy and exhibited a smaller vowel context effect for some stop-vowel combinations compared with the chronological age-matched control group. Further analyses revealed that the PD group had more variable response patterns, and their responses were less consistent with the acoustic characteristics of stop onset spectra. The results suggest that Chinese children with PD do not show greater sensitivity to allophonic acoustic variability compared with control children and exhibit a generally less robust response pattern to phonetic categories.	t	\N
23085111	Recent electrophysiological studies have reported short latency modulations in cortical regions for multisensory stimuli, thereby suggesting a subcortical, possibly thalamic origin of these modulations. Concurrently, there is an ongoing debate, whether multisensory interplay reflects automatic, bottom-up driven processes or relies on top-down influences. Here, we dissociated the effects of task set and stimulus configurations on BOLD-signals in the human thalamus with event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We orthogonally manipulated temporal and spatial congruency of audio-visual stimulus configurations, while subjects judged either their temporal or spatial congruency. Voxel-based fMRI results revealed increased fMRI-signals for the temporal versus spatial task in posterior and central thalamus, respectively. A more sensitive region of interest (ROI)-analysis confirmed that the posterior thalamic nuclei showed a preference for the temporal task and central thalamic nuclei for the spatial task. Moreover, the ROI-analysis also revealed enhanced fMRI-signals for spatially incongruent stimuli in the central thalamus. Together, our results demonstrate that both audio-visual stimulus configurations and task-related processing of spatial or temporal stimulus features selectively modulate thalamic processing and thus are in a position to influence cortical processing at an early stage.	t	\N
23088507	Sensitivity to frequency ratios is essential for the perceptual processing of complex sounds and the appreciation of music. This study assessed the effect of ratio simplicity on ratio discrimination for pure tones presented either simultaneously or sequentially. Each stimulus consisted of four 100-ms pure tones, equally spaced in terms of frequency ratio and presented at a low intensity to limit interactions in the auditory periphery. Listeners had to discriminate between a reference frequency ratio of 0.97 octave (about 1.96:1) and target frequency ratios, which were larger than the reference. In the simultaneous condition, the obtained psychometric functions were nonmonotonic: as the target frequency ratio increased from 0.98 octave to 1.04 octaves, discrimination performance initially increased, then decreased, and then increased again; performance was better when the target was exactly one octave (2:1) than when the target was slightly larger. In the sequential condition, by contrast, the psychometric functions were monotonic and there was no effect of frequency ratio simplicity. A control experiment verified that the non-monotonicity observed in the simultaneous condition did not originate from peripheral interactions between the tones. Our results indicate that simultaneous octaves are recognized as "special" frequency intervals by a mechanism that is insensitive to the sign (positive or negative) of deviations from the octave, whereas this is apparently not the case for sequential octaves.	t	\N
23094319	The paper reports on a perception experiment in German that investigated the neuro-cognitive processing of information structural concepts and their prosodic marking using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Experimental conditions controlled the information status (given vs. new) of referring and non-referring target expressions (nouns vs. adjectives) and were elicited via context sentences, which did not - unlike most previous ERP studies in the field--trigger an explicit focus expectation. Target utterances displayed prosodic realizations of the critical words which differed in accent position and accent type. Electrophysiological results showed an effect of information status, maximally distributed over posterior sites, displaying a biphasic N400--Late Positivity pattern for new information. We claim that this pattern reflects increased processing demands associated with new information, with the N400 indicating enhanced costs from linking information with the previous discourse and the Late Positivity indicating the listener's effort to update his/her discourse model. The prosodic manipulation registered more pronounced effects over anterior regions and revealed an enhanced negativity followed by a Late Positivity for deaccentuation, probably also reflecting costs from discourse linking and updating respectively. The data further lend indirect support for the idea that givenness applies not only to referents but also to non-referential expressions ('lexical givenness').	t	\N
23095266	A retrospective review was performed of patients treated for middle ear cholesteatoma with bone defects of the skull base via a combined transmastoid/middle fossa approach at the University of Tsukuba Hospital from 2006 through 2011 to determine the safety and effectiveness of a combined transmastoid/middle fossa approach for the treatment of cholesteatoma involving the middle cranial fossa. The bone defects of the skull base were reconstructed with a galeal flap pedicled with a parietal branch of the superficial temporal artery and an autologous bone flap. The clinical and radiological data were analyzed. This series included 8 patients (6 men and 2 women) with a mean age of 46.3 years (range 10-67 years). One of the patients preoperatively exhibited meningoencephalocele of the middle fossa skull base, and in the remaining 7 patients, petrous bone involvement such as involvement of the supralabyrinthine cells was observed. The cholesteatoma lesion was totally removed and inner ear function preserved in all the patients. Cerebrospinal fluid leakage was observed in 1 patient during and after the surgery. Neither meningitis nor recurrence was observed in any patient during the follow-up periods (mean 29.4 months, range 6-64 months). The combined transmastoid/middle fossa approach allowed complete removal of cholesteatoma with middle cranial fossa involvement while preserving hearing and preventing postoperative cerebrospinal fluid leakage and meningitis.	t	\N
23102977	For children, learning often occurs in the presence of background noise. As such, there is growing desire to improve a child's access to a target signal in noise. Given adult musicians' perceptual and neural speech-in-noise enhancements, we asked whether similar effects are present in musically-trained children. We assessed the perception and subcortical processing of speech in noise and related cognitive abilities in musician and nonmusician children that were matched for a variety of overarching factors. Outcomes reveal that musicians' advantages for processing speech in noise are present during pivotal developmental years. Supported by correlations between auditory working memory and attention and auditory brainstem response properties, we propose that musicians' perceptual and neural enhancements are driven in a top-down manner by strengthened cognitive abilities with training. Our results may be considered by professionals involved in the remediation of language-based learning deficits, which are often characterized by poor speech perception in noise.	t	\N
23103362	Adolescence is a time of great change in the brain in terms of structure and function. It is possible to track the development of neural function across adolescence using auditory event-related potentials (ERPs). We measured passive auditory ERPs to pure tones and consonant-vowel (CV) syllables in 90 children and adolescents aged 10-18 years, as well as 10 adults. With one exception, the pattern of results were the same for tones and speech: Across adolescence, the P1 ERP peak decreased in size and latency, the N1 increased in size and decreased in latency, the P2 remained constant in size, and the N2 decreased in size but remained stable across adolescence. The exception was P2 latency, which increased for speech but remained stable for tones. Interesting step-like changes were observed for N1 latency for both tones and speech stimuli in 15- to 16-year-olds. These may stem from rapid hormonal changes that affect neurotransmitter activity of the ERP-generating neurons.	t	\N
23103517	The present study builds on our previous study within the framework of Wyer and Collin's comprehension-elaboration theory of humor processing. In this study, an attempt is made to segregate the neural substrates of incongruity detection and incongruity resolution during the comprehension of verbal jokes. Although a number of fMRI studies have investigated the incongruity-resolution process, the differential neurological substrates of comprehension are still not fully understood. The present study utilized an event-related fMRI design incorporating three conditions (unfunny, nonsensical and funny) to examine distinct brain regions associated with the detection and resolution of incongruities. Stimuli in the unfunny condition contained no incongruities; stimuli in the nonsensical condition contained irresolvable incongruities; and stimuli in the funny condition contained resolvable incongruities. The results showed that the detection of incongruities was associated with greater activation in the right middle temporal gyrus and right medial frontal gyrus, and the resolution of incongruities with greater activation in the left superior frontal gyrus and left inferior parietal lobule. Further analysis based on participants' rating scores provided converging results. Our findings suggest a three-stage neural circuit model of verbal humor processing: incongruity detection and incongruity resolution during humor comprehension and inducement of the feeling of amusement during humor elaboration.	t	\N
23106730	The acquisition of the function of case-marking is a key step in the development of sentence processing for German-speaking children since case-marking reveals the relations between sentential arguments. In this study, we investigated the development of the processing of case-marking and argument structures in children at 3, 4;6 and 6 years of age, as well as its processing in adults. Using EEG, we measured event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to object-initial compared to subject-initial German sentences including transitive verbs and case-marked noun phrases referring to animate arguments. We also tested children's behavioral competence in a sentence-picture matching task. Word order and case-marking were manipulated in German main clauses. Adults' behavioral performance was close to perfect and their ERPs revealed a negativity for the processing of the topicalized accusative marked noun phrase (NP1) and no effect for the second NP (NP2) in the object-initial structure. Children's behavioral data showed a significant above-chance outcome in the subject-initial condition for all age groups, but not for the object-initial condition. In contrast to adults, the ERPs of 3-year-olds showed a positivity at NP1, indicating difficulties in processing the non-canonical object-initial structures. Children at the age of 4;6 did not differ in the processing patterns of object-initial vs. subject-initial sentences at NP1 but showed a slight positivity at NP2. This positivity at NP2, which implies syntactic integration difficulties, is more pronounced in 6-year-olds but is absent in adults. At NP1, however, 6-year-olds show the same negativity as adults. In sum, the behavioral and electrophysiological findings demonstrate that children in each age group use different strategies, which are indicative of their developmental stage. While 3-year-olds merely detect differences in the two sentence structures without being able to use this information for sentence comprehension, 4;6-year-olds proceed to use mainly a word-order strategy, processing NP1 in both conditions in the same manner, which leads to processing difficulties upon detecting case-marking cues at NP2. At the age of 6, children are able to use case-marking cues for comprehension but still show enhanced effort for correct thematic-role assignment.	t	\N
23106737	Integrating the multisensory features of talking faces is critical to learning and extracting coherent meaning from social signals. While we know much about the development of these capacities at the behavioral level, we know very little about the underlying neural processes. One prominent behavioral milestone of these capacities is the perceptual narrowing of face-voice matching, whereby young infants match faces and voices across species, but older infants do not. In the present study, we provide neurophysiological evidence for developmental decline in cross-species face-voice matching. We measured event-related brain potentials (ERPs) while 4- and 8-month-old infants watched and listened to congruent and incongruent audio-visual presentations of monkey vocalizations and humans mimicking monkey vocalizations. The ERP results indicated that younger infants distinguished between the congruent and the incongruent faces and voices regardless of species, whereas in older infants, the sensitivity to multisensory congruency was limited to the human face and voice. Furthermore, with development, visual and frontal brain processes and their functional connectivity became more sensitive to the congruence of human faces and voices relative to monkey faces and voices. Our data show the neural correlates of perceptual narrowing in face-voice matching and support the notion that postnatal experience with species identity is associated with neural changes in multisensory processing (Lewkowicz & Ghazanfar, 2009).	t	\N
23110123	The common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) is a small New World primate that has increasingly been used as a non-human model in the fields of sensory, motor, and cognitive neuroscience. However, little knowledge exists regarding behavioral methods in this species. Developing an understanding of the neural basis of perception and cognition in an animal model requires measurement of both brain activity and behavior. Here we describe an operant conditioning behavioral training method developed to allow controlled psychoacoustic measurements in marmosets. We demonstrate that marmosets can be trained to consistently perform a Go/No-Go auditory task in which a subject licks at a feeding tube when it detects a sound. Correct responses result in delivery of a food reward. Crucially, this operant conditioning task generates little body movement and is well suited for pairing behavior with single-unit electrophysiology. Successful implementation of an operant conditioning behavior opens the door to a wide range of new studies in the field of auditory neuroscience using the marmoset as a model system.	t	\N
23110674	Evaluation of pure-tone audiometry (PTA) in hearing screening of a population with mild to profound intellectual disability (ID). PTA was performed at six frequencies at the screening level 20 dB HL. Referral criteria were threshold levels ≥ 25 dB HL at two or more frequencies for one ear or both. 1478 participants aged 7-91 years were included. 1470 (99.5%) people cooperated in screening of which 1325 (90%) could be tested on both ears at all six frequencies. A majority, 987 (66.8%), performed ordinary PTA, 234 (15.8%) conditioned play audiometry, and 249 (16.9%) behavioural observation audiometry. Six hundred and sixty-nine (45%) passed and 809 (55%) failed according to referral criteria. Of those failing, 441 (54.5%) accepted referral to clinical evaluation. PTA with slight modifications is applicable for screening of a population with mild to profound intellectual disability. The most challenging and time-consuming activity is to introduce the test procedure in a way that reduces anxiety and establishes trust.	t	\N
23116815	The supratemporal plane contains several functionally heterogeneous subregions that respond strongly to speech. Much of the prior work on the issue of speech processing in the supratemporal plane has focused on neural responses to single speech vs. non-speech sounds rather than focusing on higher-level computations that are required to process more complex auditory sequences. Here we examined how information is integrated over time for speech and non-speech sounds by quantifying the BOLD fMRI response to stochastic (non-deterministic) sequences of speech and non-speech naturalistic sounds that varied in their statistical structure (from random to highly structured sequences) during passive listening. Behaviorally, the participants were accurate in segmenting speech and non-speech sequences, though they were more accurate for speech. Several supratemporal regions showed increased activation magnitude for speech sequences (preference), but, importantly, this did not predict sensitivity to statistical structure: (i) several areas showing a speech preference were sensitive to statistical structure in both speech and non-speech sequences, and (ii) several regions that responded to both speech and non-speech sounds showed distinct responses to statistical structure in speech and non-speech sequences. While the behavioral findings highlight the tight relation between statistical structure and segmentation processes, the neuroimaging results suggest that the supratemporal plane mediates complex statistical processing for both speech and non-speech sequences and emphasize the importance of studying the neurocomputations associated with auditory sequence processing. These findings identify new partitions of functionally distinct areas in the supratemporal plane that cannot be evoked by single stimuli. The findings demonstrate the importance of going beyond input preference to examine the neural computations implemented in the superior temporal plane.	t	\N
23117057	Introducing coherent masker envelope modulation to frequency regions neighboring the signal frequency can reduce detection thresholds for a pure-tone signal. Verhey and Ernst (2009) reported that irregular masker modulation conferred greater benefit than regular modulation when the masker was broadband, but that there was no difference when the masker was narrowband. The present study evaluated two possible explanations for this result: one based on modulation adaptation and the other based on the introduction of relatively long-duration modulation minima in the irregular masker modulation condition. The first experiment replicated the results of Verhey and Ernst (2009), but also included conditions in which a 12.5-ms signal was presented in a 12.5-ms modulation minimum, which was exempted from envelope jitter. The second experiment used a continuous masker and suspended jitter during epochs associated with either a 12.5- or 87.5-ms signal. No benefit of masker envelope irregularity before or after the signal was observed in either experiment. These findings are inconsistent with an explanation based on modulation adaptation, implicating instead the introduction of relatively long-duration modulation minima in the large masking release obtained for a long-duration signal in an irregularly modulated masker.	t	\N
23123219	The current study was undertaken to investigate changes in forward masking patterns using on-frequency and off-frequency maskers of 7 and 10 kHz probes in the Sprague-Dawley rat. Off-frequency forward masking growth functions have been shown in humans to be non-linear, while on-frequency functions behave linearly. The non-linear nature of the off-frequency functions is attributable to active processing from the outer hair cells, and was therefore expected to be sensitive to noise-induced cochlear damage. For the study, nine Sprague-Dawley rats' auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) were recorded with and without forward maskers. Forward masker-induced changes in latency and amplitude of the initial positive peak of the rats' auditory brainstem responses were assessed with both off-frequency and on-frequency maskers. The rats were then exposed to a noise designed to induce 20-40 dB of permanent threshold shift. Twenty-one days after the noise exposure, the forward masking growth functions were measured to assess noise-induced changes in the off-frequency and on-frequency forward masking patterns. Pre-exposure results showed compressive non-linear masking effects of the off-frequency conditions on both latency and amplitude of the auditory brainstem response. The noise rendered the off-frequency forward masking patterns more linear, consistent with human behavioral findings. On- and off-frequency forward masking growth functions were calculated, and they displayed patterns consistent with human behavioral functions, both prior to noise and after the noise exposure.	t	\N
23132604	Common-coding theory posits that (1) perceiving an action activates the same representations of motor plans that are activated by actually performing that action, and (2) because of individual differences in the ways that actions are performed, observing recordings of one's own previous behavior activates motor plans to an even greater degree than does observing someone else's behavior. We hypothesized that if observing oneself activates motor plans to a greater degree than does observing others, and if these activated plans contribute to perception, then people should be able to lipread silent video clips of their own previous utterances more accurately than they can lipread video clips of other talkers. As predicted, two groups of participants were able to lipread video clips of themselves, recorded more than two weeks earlier, significantly more accurately than video clips of others. These results suggest that visual input activates speech motor activity that links to word representations in the mental lexicon.	t	\N
23135616	The objective was to develop and evaluate a new sentence test, the Sentence Test with Adaptive Randomized Roving levels, intended to emulate everyday listening experience, using both normal-hearing (NH) and cochlear implant (CI) groups, examining practicality, learning, test-retest variability, and interlist variability. In experiment 1, each of 25 NH adults was tested using five lists, each comprising 30 sentences. One male and one female speaker each spoke 15 sentences. Ten sentences were presented at each of three presentation levels: 50, 65, and 80 dB SPL. The relative level of a speech-shaped noise was varied adaptively to estimate the speech reception threshold (SRT). Counterbalance for list order was achieved by staggering the allocation of lists to participants. To allow assessment of learning effects, no practice was given. The variability of mean SRTs across lists was small, but correction factors were derived for each list so that, after correction, all lists gave the same mean SRT. Test-retest variability was estimated by examining the corrected SRTs for each subject's five lists. In experiment 2, 25 CI users each received one test list after a small amount of practice. Experiment 3 examined the effect of speech rate using time-compressed speech, for age-matched NH and CI users. The mean SRT for the NH participants was approximately -6 dB and was similar for the male and female speakers. There was a small but significant improvement in SRTs between the first and later lists administered, but no further improvement for subsequent lists. On the basis of the variability of the corrected SRTs within each participant, a 2.2 dB difference in SRT is meaningful for comparisons using one test list per condition, for a single participant. The percentage of key words correct varied with presentation level over a 13% range, being best at 65 dB SPL. Only 40% of the CI group achieved an SRT lower than 20 dB for both speakers. There was large individual variability in the SRTs, and SRTs were higher for the female than for the male speaker. For the CI participants, the percentage of key words correct varied markedly with level, from 19% at the lowest level to 57% at the medium level. Time compression had a small effect for NH participants but a very large effect for CI participants. The Sentence Test with Adaptive Randomized Roving levels seems practical to administer and is reasonably sensitive. For NH participants, a 2.2 dB difference in SRT is meaningful for a single list per condition and a single participant. Although learning effects were small for NH participants, it seems prudent to provide some practice sentences when testing hearing-impaired or CI participants. The very large effect of time compression for the CI group has implications for live voice testing of children, because speech rate is only poorly controlled in such testing.	t	\N
23144191	This is the first study on adults' physiological reactivity to infant cry sounds and the association with intended harsh parenting using salivary α-amylase (sAA) as a novel and noninvasive marker of autonomic nervous system activity. The sample consisted of 184 adult twin pairs. In an experimental design, cry sounds were presented and adults' perception and their intended caregiving responses were measured. Saliva samples were collected after each cry sound. For the majority of the sample, a decrease in sAA across the cry paradigm was observed. However, adults who indicated that they would respond in a harsh way to the crying infant were significantly less likely to show a decrease in sAA. Consistent with previous studies on physiological hyperreactivity in abusive parents, these findings suggest that failure to habituate to repeated infant crying may be one of the mediating mechanisms through which excessive, inconsolable, and high-pitched infant crying triggers less optimal caregiving.	t	\N
23145600	Subjective evaluation of acoustics was studied by recording nine concert halls with a simulated symphony orchestra on a seat 12 m from the orchestra. The recorded music was spatially reproduced for subjective listening tests and individual vocabulary profiling. In addition, the preferences of the assessors and objective parameters were gathered. The results show that concert halls were discriminated using perceptual characteristics, such as Envelopment/Loudness, Reverberance, Bassiness, Proximity, Definition, and Clarity. With these perceptual dimensions the preference ratings can be explained. Seventeen assessors were divided into two groups based on their preferences. The first group preferred concert halls with relatively intimate sound, in which it is quite easy to hear individual instruments and melody lines. In contrast, the second group preferred a louder and more reverberant sound with good envelopment and strong bass. Even though all halls were recorded exactly at the same distance, the preference is best explained with subjective Proximity and with Bassiness, Envelopment, and Loudness to some extent. Neither the preferences nor the subjective ratings could be fully explained by objective parameters (ISO3382-1:2009), although some correlations were found.	t	\N
23151776	To examine and compare the family environment of preschool- and school-age children with cochlear implants and assess its influence on children's executive function and spoken language skills. Retrospective between-subjects design. Outpatient research laboratory. Prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants and no additional disabilities and their families. Cochlear implantation and speech-language therapy. Parents completed the Family Environment Scale and the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (or the preschool version). Children were tested using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-4 and either the Preschool Language Scales-4 or the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-4. The family environments of children with cochlear implants differed from normative data obtained from hearing children, but average scores were within 1 standard deviation of norms on all subscales. Families of school-age children reported higher levels of control than those of preschool-age children. Preschool-age children had fewer problems with emotional control when families reported higher levels of support and lower levels of conflict. School-age children had fewer problems with inhibition but more problems with shifting of attention when families reported lower levels of conflict. School-age children's receptive vocabularies were enhanced by families with lower levels of control and higher levels of organization. Family environment and its relation to language skills and executive function development differed across the age groups in this sample of children with cochlear implants. Because family dynamics is one developmental/environmental factor that can be altered with therapy and education, the present results have important clinical implications for family-based interventions for deaf children with cochlear implants.	t	\N
23151778	To present the preliminary results of new malleus replacement prosthesis combined with a total ossicular prosthesis in middle ear reconstruction in patients missing the malleus and stapes. Prospective experimental and nonrandomized clinical study. Tertiary referral center. An original titanium malleus replacement prosthesis (MRP) was designed to be inserted into the external auditory canal and to replace a missing malleus for various middle ear pathologies. The MRP was tested experimentally and clinically. The vibratory properties of the new prosthesis were measured using laser Doppler vibrometry. Ninety patients with missing malleus and stapes, undergoing 92 ossicular reconstructions were enrolled in this study from September 1994 to March 2012. Comparative analyses were made between a group of 34 cases of ossicular reconstructions with total prosthesis (TORP) positioned from the tympanic membrane to the stapes footplate (TM-to-footplate assembly) and a group of 58 cases of ossicular reconstructions with TORP positioned from a newly designed malleus replacement prosthesis (MRP) to the stapes footplate (MRP-to-footplate assembly). Preoperative and postoperative audiometric evaluation using conventional audiometry, that is, air-bone gap (ABG), bone-conduction thresholds (BC), and air-conduction thresholds (AC) were assessed. Experimentally, the vibratory properties of the MRP are promising and remain very good even when the MRP is cemented into the bony canal wall mimicking its complete osseous-integration, if this were to occur. This finding supports the short-term clinical results as in the TM-to-footplate group; the 3-month postoperative mean ABG was 23.3 dB compared with 12.5 dB in the MRP-to-footplate group (difference, 10.8; 95% confidence interval, 4.0-17.6); 37.0% of patients from the TM-to-footplate group had a postoperative ABG of 10 dB or less, and 48.1% of patients had a postoperative ABG of 20 dB or less, as compared with 58.1% and 79.1%, respectively, in the MRP-to-footplate group. The average gain in AC was 11.0 dB in the TM-to-footplate group as compared with 21.3 dB in the MRP-to-footplate group (difference, -10.3; 95% confidence interval, -18.2 to -2.4). The results of this study indicate that superior postoperative hearing thresholds could be achieved using a MRP-to-footplate assembly, compared with a TM-to-footplate assembly in patients with an absent malleus undergoing ossiculoplasty. The postoperative AC thresholds, after 3 months and 1 year, are significantly lower in patients treated with the MRP-to-footplate assembly.	t	\N
23156899	The study presented in this paper aimed to investigate the pattern of semantic priming effects, under masked and unmasked conditions, in the lexical decision task, manipulating type of semantic relation and associative strength. Three different kinds of word relations were examined in two experiments: only-semantically related words [e.g., codo (elbow)-rodilla (knee)] and semantic/associative related words with strong [e.g., mesa (table)-silla (chair) and weak association strength [e.g., sapo (toad)-rana (frog)]. In Experiment 1 a masked priming procedure was used with a prime duration of 56 ms, and in Experiment 2, the prime was presented unmasked for 150 ms. The results showed that there were masked priming effects with strong associates, but no evidence of these effects was found with weak associates or only-semantic related word pairs. When the prime was presented unmasked, the three types of relations produced significant priming effects and they were not influenced by association strength.	t	\N
23165224	This study describes a vocoder-based frequency-lowering system that enhances spectral cues for nonsonorant consonants differing in place of articulation. The goal of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of this system for speech recognition by hearing-impaired listeners. Experiment 1 evaluated fricative consonant recognition in quiet. Eight fricatives in /VCV/ context were used. Experiment 2 evaluated consonant recognition in quiet with 22 consonants. Six listeners with steeply sloping high-frequency sensorineural hearing loss participated in experiment 1. The same six listeners and three additional listeners with flat/mid-frequency sensorineural hearing loss participated in experiment 2. Two processing conditions-frequency lowering and conventional amplification-were tested in each experiment. Insertion gains based on the NAL-RP formula were provided up to 8000 Hz for each processing condition. In addition, speech stimuli were low-pass (LP) filtered at 1000, 1500, and 2000 Hz to evaluate the effect of lack of high-frequency speech information on consonant perception with and without frequency lowering. For these LP speech conditions, amplification was provided up to the cutoff frequencies. Overall percent correct and percent information transmission were calculated for each processing and speech condition. The frequency-lowering system provided significant benefit for the perception of fricative consonants and perception of the place-of-articulation feature for hearing-impaired listeners without affecting their perception of sonorant consonants and other consonant features (i.e., voicing and nasality). The improvement of fricative consonant perception was observed for both wideband and LP speech conditions for the steeply sloping hearing-loss listeners. The results indicate that individuals with unaidable hearing loss above 1000 to 2000 Hz would receive significant benefit with the system compared with conventional amplification for the perception of fricative consonants, and more importantly, significant benefit for the perception of place of articulation.	t	\N
23165382	To objectively determine changes in sensorineural hearing in children with mucopolysaccharidosis (MPS) by comparing audiological data before and after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). Retrospective medical chart analysis. Tertiary referral hospital. Thirty pediatric patients with the diagnosis of MPS who underwent HSCT and had audiological data before and after HSCT. Data were extracted from medical charts for patients seen at our institution from January 1, 1999, to December 1, 2009. Hearing was assessed using behavioral audiometry testing and auditory brainstem responses (ABR) before and after HSCT. Patient demographics, diagnosis, and age at HSCT were also evaluated. Thirty patients with MPS were included. Four (13%) had MPS type 3a, 2 (7%) had MPS type 2, and 24 (80%) had MPS type 1. The average age at HSCT was 19 months (range, 5-44 months). Hearing improvement was evaluated by audiogram (20 patients), ABR (8 patients), and qualitative measures (30 patients). On average, patients did not show improvement on audiogram (P = .28; paired t test). The ABR click threshold improved 19 dB on average (P < .001). Qualitatively, 3 patients had normal hearing before and after HSCT. Of the remaining 27 patients, 20 (67%) showed improvement in sensorineural hearing (P < .001). Five (17%) had hearing loss and did not improve. Two (7%) had worsening hearing. Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation at the age of 25 months or younger was significantly correlated with hearing improvement (P = .03). Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation may provide improvement in MPS-associated sensorineural hearing loss. Hearing improvement is more likely to occur in patients who undergo transplantation at 25 months or younger.	t	\N
23166292	Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was employed to identify neural regions engaged during the encoding of contextual features belonging to different modalities. Subjects studied objects that were presented to the left or right of fixation. Each object was paired with its name, spoken in either a male or a female voice. The test requirement was to discriminate studied from unstudied pictures and, for each picture judged old, to retrieve its study location and the gender of the voice that spoke its name. Study trials associated with accurate rather than inaccurate location memory demonstrated enhanced activity in the fusiform and parahippocampal cortex and the hippocampus and reduced activity (a negative subsequent memory effect) in the medial occipital cortex. Successful encoding of voice information was associated with enhanced study activity in the right middle superior temporal sulcus and activity reduction in the right superior frontal cortex. These findings support the proposal that encoding of a contextual feature is associated with enhanced activity in regions engaged during its online processing. In addition, they indicate that negative subsequent memory effects can also demonstrate feature-selectivity. Relative to other classes of study trials, trials for which both contextual features were later retrieved demonstrated enhanced activity in the lateral occipital complex and reduced activity in the temporo-parietal junction. These findings suggest that multifeatural encoding was facilitated when the study item was processed efficiently and study processing was not interrupted by redirection of attention toward extraneous events.	t	\N
23167712	Despite its fundamental relevance for representing the emotional world surrounding us, human affective neuroscience research has widely neglected the auditory system, at least in comparison to the visual domain. Here, we have investigated the spatiotemporal dynamics of human affective auditory processing using time-sensitive whole-head magnetoencephalography. A novel and highly challenging affective associative learning procedure, 'MultiCS conditioning', involving multiple conditioned stimuli (CS) per affective category, was adopted to test whether previous findings from intramodal conditioning of multiple click-tones with an equal number of auditory emotional scenes (Bröckelmann et al., 2011 J. Neurosci., 31, 7801) would generalise to crossmodal conditioning of multiple click-tones with an electric shock as single aversive somatosensory unconditioned stimulus (UCS). Event-related magnetic fields were recorded in response to 40 click-tones before and after four contingent pairings of 20 CS with a shock and the other half remaining unpaired. In line with previous findings from intramodal MultiCS conditioning we found an affect-specific modulation of the auditory N1m component 100-150 ms post-stimulus within a distributed frontal-temporal-parietal neural network. Increased activation for shock-associated tones was lateralised to right-hemispheric regions, whereas unpaired safety-signalling tones were preferentially processed in the left hemisphere. Participants did not show explicit awareness of the contingent CS-UCS relationship, yet behavioural conditioning effects were indicated on an indirect measure of stimulus valence. Our findings imply converging evidence for a rapid and highly differentiating affect-specific modulation of the auditory N1m after intramodal as well crossmodal MultiCS conditioning and a correspondence of the modulating impact of emotional attention on early affective processing in vision and audition.	t	\N
23168357	We investigated gender differences in the identification of personally familiar voices in a gender-balanced sample of 40 listeners. From various types of utterances, listeners had to identify by name 20 speakers (10 female) among a set of 70 possible classmates who were all 12th grade pupils from the same local secondary school. Mean identification rates were 67% from sentences, and around 35% for an isolated /Hello/ or a VCV syllable. Even from non-verbal harrumphs, speakers were identified with an accuracy of 18%, i.e. highly above chance levels. Substantial individual differences were observed between listeners. Importantly, superior overall performance of female listeners was qualified by an interaction between voice gender and listener gender. Male listeners exhibited an own-gender bias (i.e. better identification for male than female voices), whereas female listeners identified voices of both genders at similar levels. Individual own-gender identification biases were correlated with differences in reported contact to a speaker's voice and voice distinctiveness. Overall, the present study establishes a number of factors that account for substantial individual differences in personal voice identification.	t	\N
23169196	Patients with single-sided deafness (SSD), where one ear has an unaidable hearing loss and the other ear has normal or aidable hearing, often complain of difficulties understanding speech and localizing sound sources, and report a higher self-perceived hearing disability. Patients with SSD may benefit from using contralateral routing of signal (CROS) or bilateral contralateral routing of the signal (BiCROS) amplification. Dissatisfaction of previously available (Bi)CROS devices has been reported, such as, interfering transmissions, low-fidelity sound quality, poor "user-friendly" set-up, and a bulky and cosmetically cumbersome appearance. Recent advances in hearing aid technology have improved (Bi)CROS hearing aids; however, these devices have not been experimentally evaluated. We hypothesized that newer technology with reports of improved digital signal processing, wireless transmission, and physical design would be as good, or better than, our participants' previous-generation BiCROS systems. A within-subjects, pretest-posttest design was executed. Thirty-nine veterans (one female, 38 males; mean age = 74 yr, range = 49-85 yr) from the Audiology Section of the Bay Pines Veterans Affair Healthcare System participated. All participants were previously experienced BiCROS hearing aid users with varying degrees of sensorinerual hearing impairment in their better ear. Participants were provided at least 4 wk of consistent use with the new BiCROS. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSES: Participants completed three research visits. At Visit 1, with their previous BiCROS, and at Visit 3, with their new BiCROS, the following objective and subjective measures were obtained: (1) soundfield speech-in-noise testing using the Words-In-Noise (WIN) test; (2) speech, spatial, and qualities of the hearing scale (SSQ) questionnaire; (3) selected questions from the MarkeTrak questionnaire; and, (4) three open-ended questions. Data were analyzed using parametric and nonparametric statistics. Overall, the objective (WIN) and subjective (SSQ, MarkeTrak, and open-ended questions) measures indicated that the new BiCROS provided better outcomes than the previous BiCROS system. In addition, an overlap of favorable results was seen across measures. Of the 39 participants, 95% reported improvements with the new BiCROS and chose to utilize the device regularly. The favorable objective and subjective outcomes indicate that the new BiCROS system is as good, or better than, what was previously utilized by our sample of veterans.	t	\N
23174416	Speech contains a variety of acoustic cues to auditory and phonetic contrasts that are exploited by the listener in decoding the acoustic signal. In three experiments, we tried to elucidate whether listeners rely on formant peak frequencies or whole spectrum attributes in vowel discrimination. We created two vowel continua in which the acoustic distance in formant frequencies was constant but the continua differed in spectral moments (i.e., the whole spectrum modeled as a probability density function). In Experiment 1, we measured reaction times and response accuracy while listeners performed a go/no-go discrimination task. The results indicated that the performance of the listeners was based on the spectral moments (especially the first and second moments), and not on formant peaks. Behavioral results in Experiment 2 showed that, when the stimuli were presented in noise eliminating differences in spectral moments between the two continua, listeners employed formant peak frequencies. In Experiment 3, using the same listeners and stimuli as in Experiment 1, we measured an automatic brain potential, the mismatch negativity (MMN), when listeners did not attend to the auditory stimuli. Results showed that the MMN reflects sensitivity only to the formant structure of the vowels. We suggest that the auditory cortex automatically and pre-attentively encodes formant peak frequencies, whereas attention can be deployed for processing additional spectral information, such as spectral moments, to enhance vowel discrimination.	t	\N
23178211	Blind people may compensate for their visual loss by the increased use of auditory spatial information, thus showing normal or even supra-normal ability to localize sources of sound. However, the problem of how blind persons develop and maintain an internal concept of the topography of the auditory space in the absence of calibration by visual information is still unsolved. The present study demonstrated a substantial superiority of blind subjects in perception of auditory motion: The minimum audible movement angle of blind subjects (mean 3°) was about half the value found in matched sighted controls, whereas no such advantage was demonstrable for localization of stationary sound. There were no significant differences between early or congenitally blind subjects and late blind subjects, suggesting that long-term visual deprivation per se, independently of the point in time of its onset, was relevant for the superiority in auditory motion perception. The results were compatible with the hypothesis that in the absence of visual input the calibration of the auditory space is performed by audiomotor feedback, that is, by the evaluation of systematic changes of auditory spatial cues resulting from head and body movements. It is reasonable to assume that with blindness the neuronal circuits specifically concerned with the analysis of auditory motion are more intensely trained than in sighted people. It seems possible that the higher demand of motion analysis associated with blindness is related to processes of reorganization in the brain, as have been previously reported to occur also in areas known to be involved in auditory and/or visual motion analysis in sighted persons.	t	\N
23231122	Measures of spectral ripple resolution have become widely used psychophysical tools for assessing spectral resolution in cochlear-implant (CI) listeners. The objective of this study was to compare spectral ripple discrimination and detection in the same group of CI listeners. Ripple detection thresholds were measured over a range of ripple frequencies and were compared to spectral ripple discrimination thresholds previously obtained from the same CI listeners. The data showed that performance on the two measures was correlated, but that individual subjects' thresholds (at a constant spectral modulation depth) for the two tasks were not equivalent. In addition, spectral ripple detection was often found to be possible at higher rates than expected based on the available spectral cues, making it likely that temporal-envelope cues played a role at higher ripple rates. Finally, spectral ripple detection thresholds were compared to previously obtained speech-perception measures. Results confirmed earlier reports of a robust relationship between detection of widely spaced ripples and measures of speech recognition. In contrast, intensity difference limens for broadband noise did not correlate with spectral ripple detection measures, suggesting a dissociation between the ability to detect small changes in intensity across frequency and across time.	t	\N
23231815	Normal temporal processing is important for the perception of speech in quiet and in difficult listening situations. Temporal resolution is commonly measured using a behavioral gap detection task, where the patient or subject must participate in the evaluation process. This is difficult to achieve with subjects who cannot reliably complete a behavioral test. However, recent research has investigated the use of evoked potential measures to evaluate gap detection. The purpose of the current study was to record N1-P2 responses to gaps in broadband noise in normal hearing young adults. Comparisons were made of the N1 and P2 latencies, amplitudes, and morphology to different length gaps in noise in an effort to quantify the changing responses of the brain to these stimuli. It was the goal of this study to show that electrophysiological recordings can be used to evaluate temporal resolution and measure the influence of short and long gaps on the N1-P2 waveform. This study used a repeated-measures design. All subjects completed a behavioral gap detection procedure to establish their behavioral gap detection threshold (BGDT). N1-P2 waveforms were recorded to the gap in a broadband noise. Gap durations were 20 msec, 2 msec above their BGDT, and 2 msec. These durations were chosen to represent a suprathreshold gap, a near-threshold gap, and a subthreshold gap. Fifteen normal-hearing young adult females were evaluated. Subjects were recruited from the local university community. Latencies and amplitudes for N1 and P2 were compared across gap durations for all subjects using a repeated-measures analysis of variance. A qualitative description of responses was also included. Most subjects did not display an N1-P2 response to a 2 msec gap, but all subjects had present clear evoked potential responses to 20 msec and 2+ msec gaps. Decreasing gap duration toward threshold resulted in decreasing waveform amplitude. However, N1 and P2 latencies remained stable as gap duration changed. N1-P2 waveforms can be elicited by gaps in noise in young normal-hearing adults. The responses are present as low as 2 msec above behavioral gap detection thresholds (BGDT). Gaps that are below BGDT do not generally evoke an electrophysiological response. These findings indicate that when a waveform is present, the gap duration is likely above their BGDT. Waveform amplitude is also a good index of gap detection, since amplitude decreases with decreasing gap duration. Future studies in this area will focus on various age groups and individuals with auditory disorders.	t	\N
23231816	Most cochlear implant (CI) users describe music as a noise-like and unpleasant sound. Using behavioral tests, most prior studies have shown that perception of pitch-based melody and timbre is poor in CI users. This article will focus on cortical encoding of timbre changes in CI users, which may allow us to find solutions to further improve CI benefits. Furthermore, the value of using objective measures to reveal neural encoding of timbre changes may be reflected in this study. A case-control study of the mismatch negativity (MMN) using electrophysiological technique was conducted. To derive MMNs, three randomly arranged oddball paradigms consisting of standard/deviant instrumental pairs: saxophone/piano, cello/trombone, and flute/French horn, respectively, were presented. Ten CI users and ten normal-hearing (NH) listeners participated in this study. After filtering, epoching, and baseline correction, independent component analysis (ICA) was performed to remove artifacts. The averaged waveforms in response to the standard stimuli (STANDARD waveform) and the deviant stimuli (DEVIANT waveform) in each condition were separately derived. The responses from nine electrodes in the fronto-central area were averaged to form one waveform. The STANDARD waveform was subtracted from the DEVIANT waveform to derive the difference waveform, for which the MMN was judged to be present or absent. The measures used to evaluate the MMN included the MMN peak latency and amplitude as well as MMN duration. The MMN, which reflects the ability to automatically detect acoustic changes, was present in all NH listeners but only approximately half of CI users. In CI users with present MMNs, the MMN peak amplitude and duration were significantly smaller and shorter compared to those in NH listeners. Our electrophysiological results were consistent with prior behavioral results that CI users' performance in timbre perception was significantly poorer than that in NH listeners. Our results may suggest that timbre information is poorly registered in the auditory cortex of CI users and the capability of automatic detection of timbre changes is degraded in CI users. Although there are some limitations of the MMN in CI users, along with other objective auditory evoked potential tools, the MMN may be a useful objective tool to indicate the extent of sound registration in auditory cortex in the future efforts of improving CI design and speech strategy.	t	\N
23237416	Children with phonological impairment (PI) often have difficulties perceiving insufficiencies in their own speech. The use of recordings has been suggested as a way of directing the child's attention toward his/her own speech, despite a lack of evidence that children actually recognize their recorded voice as their own. We present two studies of children's self-voice identification, one exploring developmental aspects, and one exploring potential effects of having a PI. The results indicate that children from 4 to 8 years recognize their recorded voice well (around 80% accuracy), regardless of whether they have a PI or not. A subtle change in this ability from 4 to 8 years is observed that could be linked to a development in short-term memory. Clinically, one can indeed expect an advantage of using recordings in therapy; this could constitute an intermediate step toward the more challenging task of online self-monitoring.	t	\N
23238175	To investigate the relationship between the threshold and the interaural amplitude difference ratio (IADR) in cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potential (cVEMP) testing and pursuit the clinical significance of the parameters. cVEMP responses were recorded while the SCM contraction was controlled using a pressure cuff. The intensities of the sound stimulation decreased from 95 dB n HL by 5 dB, until no responses were evoked. Thresholds, interaural threshold difference (ITD), amplitudes, and interaural amplitude difference ratio at the stimulation of 95 dB n HL were calculated and the relationship between them was examined. All subjects showed cVEMP responses bilaterally. Thresholds measured were overall 76 dB n HL and most (92%) ears showed the ITD of 0 or 5 dB. The amplitudes of cVEMP responses showed a positive correlation with the sound intensities, and more specifically with the sound intensity above each threshold value. There was no significant difference in IADR values by the ITD. Based on our study, the ITD is less than 10 dB in most normal subjects and estimation of threshold should be added to cVEMP testing for probing vestibular asymmetry. Getting a threshold might be helpful in determining whether the abnormal interaural amplitude difference ratio is related to the abnormal ITD.	t	\N
23241212	Coloured-hearing (CH) synesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon in which an acoustic stimulus (the inducer) initiates a concurrent colour perception (the concurrent). Individuals with CH synesthesia "see" colours when hearing tones, words, or music; this specific phenomenon suggesting a close relationship between auditory and visual representations. To date, it is still unknown whether the perception of colours is associated with a modulation of brain functions in the inducing brain area, namely in the auditory-related cortex and associated brain areas. In addition, there is an on-going debate as to whether attention to the inducer is necessarily required for eliciting a visual concurrent, or whether the latter can emerge in a pre-attentive fashion. By using the EEG technique in the context of a pre-attentive mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm, we show that the binding of tones and colours in CH synesthetes is associated with increased MMN amplitudes in response to deviant tones supposed to induce novel concurrent colour perceptions. Most notably, the increased MMN amplitudes we revealed in the CH synesthetes were associated with stronger intracerebral current densities originating from the auditory cortex, parietal cortex, and ventral visual areas. The automatic binding of tones and colours in CH synesthetes is accompanied by an early pre-attentive process recruiting the auditory cortex, inferior and superior parietal lobules, as well as ventral occipital areas.	t	\N
23249352	Psychophysical experiments show that auditory change detection can be disturbed in situations in which listeners have to monitor complex auditory input. We made use of this change deafness effect to segregate the neural correlates of physical change in auditory input from brain responses related to conscious change perception in an fMRI experiment. Participants listened to two successively presented complex auditory scenes, which consisted of six auditory streams, and had to decide whether scenes were identical or whether the frequency of one stream was changed between presentations. Our results show that physical changes in auditory input, independent of successful change detection, are represented at the level of auditory cortex. Activations related to conscious change perception, independent of physical change, were found in the insula and the ACC. Moreover, our data provide evidence for significant effective connectivity between auditory cortex and the insula in the case of correctly detected auditory changes, but not for missed changes. This underlines the importance of the insula/anterior cingulate network for conscious change detection.	t	\N
23258317	Steady state responses (SSRs), between 75 and 110 Hz, evoked by auditory amplitude modulated single or multiple tone stimuli, may be used to estimate objective hearing threshold. The aim of this study was to compare SSRs and click-evoked auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) in both ears of 20 adults (10 males and 10 females, aged between 24 and 36 years) with normal hearing threshold. Mean ABR threshold was found at 21.25 (± 5.9) dB nHL. Mean SSR threshold was found at 15.6 (± 9.6) dB nHL after a single frequency stimulus (1 kHz); at 10.5 (± 18.2) dB nHL and at 7.1 (± 12.4) dB nHL after bifrequency stimulation (0.5 and 2 kHz). SSR thresholds after multifrequency stimulation (0.5, 1, 2 and 4 kHz) were found, respectively, at 12.1 (± 12.9) dB nHL, 12.2 (± 12.8) dB nHL, 12.3 (± 8.3) dB nHL and 18.9 (± 17.2) dB nHL. Mean duration of the recording session was 6 min in the case of ABRs, while it was 25 min in the single frequency condition and 29 min in the multifrequency condition in the case of SSRs. SSRs can be used for frequency-specific objective audiometry. The multifrequency stimulation greatly reduces the whole testing time.	t	\N
23258616	Modern digital hearing aids have provided improved fidelity over those of earlier decades for speech. The same however cannot be said for music. Most modern hearing aids have a limitation of their "front end," which comprises the analog-to-digital (A/D) converter. For a number of reasons, the spectral nature of music as an input to a hearing aid is beyond the optimal operating conditions of the "front end" components. Amplified music tends to be of rather poor fidelity. Once the music signal is distorted, no amount of software manipulation that occurs later in the circuitry can improve things. The solution is not a software issue. Some characteristics of music that make it difficult to be transduced without significant distortion include an increased sound level relative to that of speech, and the crest factor- the difference in dB between the instantaneous peak of a signal and its RMS value. Clinical strategies and technical innovations have helped to improve the fidelity of amplified music and these include a reduction of the level of the input that is presented to the A/D converter.	t	\N
23263015	Anesthesiology requires performing visually oriented procedures while monitoring auditory information about a patient's vital signs. A concern in operating room environments is the amount of competing information and the effects that divided attention has on patient monitoring, such as detecting auditory changes in arterial oxygen saturation via pulse oximetry. The authors measured the impact of visual attentional load and auditory background noise on the ability of anesthesia residents to monitor the pulse oximeter auditory display in a laboratory setting. Accuracies and response times were recorded reflecting anesthesiologists' abilities to detect changes in oxygen saturation across three levels of visual attention in quiet and with noise. Results show that visual attentional load substantially affects the ability to detect changes in oxygen saturation concentrations conveyed by auditory cues signaling 99 and 98% saturation. These effects are compounded by auditory noise, up to a 17% decline in performance. These deficits are seen in the ability to accurately detect a change in oxygen saturation and in speed of response. Most anesthesia accidents are initiated by small errors that cascade into serious events. Lack of monitor vigilance and inattention are two of the more commonly cited factors. Reducing such errors is thus a priority for improving patient safety. Specifically, efforts to reduce distractors and decrease background noise should be considered during induction and emergence, periods of especially high risk, when anesthesiologists has to attend to many tasks and are thus susceptible to error.	t	\N
23268357	Fine structure in the frequency response of distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) can severely limit the usefulness of DPOAEs in estimating auditory thresholds. Here, fine structure is removed by extracting the primary-source DPOAE component using the onset-decomposition technique (Vetešník et al., 2009) and auditory threshold estimates are compared to those obtained from DPOAEs in response to conventional, continuous two-tone stimulation. Auditory thresholds are predicted using the estimated distortion product thresholds (EDPTs), obtained from linear regression of input-output (I/O) functions of DPOAE pressure amplitude versus second-tone stimulus level (Boege and Janssen, 2002). The accuracy of the auditory-threshold predictions is derived by comparison with measured auditory thresholds. The parameters of the two primary stimulus tones of frequency f(1) and f(2) and levels of L(1) and L(2) are chosen as: f(2)/f(1) = 1.2 with 1.5 ≤ f(2) ≤ 2.5 kHz, and L(1) = 0.4L(2) + 39 dB SPL, with 25 ≤ L(2) ≤ 65 dB SPL. Data are from 12 normal-hearing subjects with profound DPOAE fine structure. 255 DPOAE I/O functions were measured for each of the two DPOAE paradigms. An EDPT value was accepted as reliable if: 1) the squared correlation coefficient, r(2) ≥ 0.8, 2) the regression slope, s(I/O) ≥ 0.2 μPa/dB, and 3) the standard deviation of the EDPT, σ(EDPT) ≤ 10 dB. The proportion of rejected I/O functions was 8% for onset-decomposition DPOAEs, and 25% for continuous-tone DPOAEs. Removal of data points from the saturation region of the DPOAE I/O function by an automated algorithm reduced the rejection rate, to zero for onset-decomposition DPOAEs, but to only 13% for continuous-tone DPOAEs. In the absence of saturated DPOAE responses, auditory thresholds were predicted with standard deviation of only 4 dB for onset-decomposition DPOAEs, but 12 dB for continuous-tone DPOAEs. In summary, by extracting the primary-source component of the DPOAE by the method of onset-decomposition it is possible to predict human auditory threshold with hitherto unattainable accuracy.	t	\N
23268783	According to predictive coding models of sensory processing, stimulus expectations have a profound effect on sensory cortical responses. This was supported by experimental results, showing that fMRI repetition suppression (fMRI RS) for face stimuli is strongly modulated by the probability of stimulus repetitions throughout the visual cortical processing hierarchy. To test whether processing of voices is also affected by stimulus expectations, here we investigated the effect of repetition probability on fMRI RS in voice-selective cortical areas. Changing ('alt') and identical ('rep') voice stimulus pairs were presented to the listeners in blocks, with a varying probability of alt and rep trials across blocks. We found auditory fMRI RS in the nonprimary voice-selective cortical regions, including the bilateral posterior STS, the right anterior STG and the right IFC, as well as in the IPL. Importantly, fMRI RS effects in all of these areas were strongly modulated by the probability of stimulus repetition: auditory fMRI RS was reduced or not present in blocks with low repetition probability. Our results revealed that auditory fMRI RS in higher-level voice-selective cortical regions is modulated by repetition probabilities and thus suggest that in audition, similarly to the visual modality, processing of sensory information is shaped by stimulus expectation processes.	t	\N
23274182	Speech recognition is improved when complementary visual information is available, especially under noisy acoustic conditions. Functional neuroimaging studies have suggested that the superior temporal sulcus (STS) plays an important role for this improvement. The spectrotemporal dynamics underlying audiovisual speech processing in the STS, and how these dynamics are affected by auditory noise, are not well understood. Using electroencephalography, we investigated how auditory noise affects audiovisual speech processing in event-related potentials (ERPs) and oscillatory activity. Spoken syllables were presented in audiovisual (AV) and auditory only (A) trials at three different auditory noise levels (no, low, and high). Responses to A stimuli were subtracted from responses to AV stimuli, separately for each noise level, and these responses were subjected to the statistical analysis. Central ERPs differed between the no noise and the two noise conditions from 130 to 150 ms and 170 to 210 ms after auditory stimulus onset. Source localization using the local autoregressive average procedure revealed an involvement of the lateral temporal lobe, encompassing the superior and middle temporal gyrus. Neuronal activity in the beta-band (16 to 32 Hz) was suppressed at central channels around 100 to 400 ms after auditory stimulus onset in the averaged AV minus A signal over the three noise levels. This suppression was smaller in the high noise compared to the no noise and low noise condition, possibly reflecting disturbed recognition or altered processing of multisensory speech stimuli. Source analysis of the beta-band effect using linear beamforming demonstrated an involvement of the STS. Our study shows that auditory noise alters audiovisual speech processing in ERPs localized to lateral temporal lobe and provides evidence that beta-band activity in the STS plays a role for audiovisual speech processing under regular and noisy acoustic conditions.	t	\N
23275424	Fitting a cochlear implant (CI) for optimal speech perception does not necessarily optimize listening effort. This study aimed to show that listening effort may change between CI processing conditions for which speech intelligibility remains constant. Nineteen normal-hearing participants listened to CI simulations with varying numbers of spectral channels. A dual-task paradigm combining an intelligibility task with either a linguistic or nonlinguistic visual response-time (RT) task measured intelligibility and listening effort. The simultaneously performed tasks compete for limited cognitive resources; changes in effort associated with the intelligibility task are reflected in changes in RT on the visual task. A separate self-report scale provided a subjective measure of listening effort. All measures showed significant improvements with increasing spectral resolution up to 6 channels. However, only the RT measure of listening effort continued improving up to 8 channels. The effects were stronger for RTs recorded during listening than for RTs recorded between listening. The results suggest that listening effort decreases with increased spectral resolution. Moreover, these improvements are best reflected in objective measures of listening effort, such as RTs on a secondary task, rather than intelligibility scores or subjective effort measures.	t	\N
23290461	The white matter bundles that underlie comprehension and production of language have been investigated for a number of years. Several studies have examined which fiber bundles (or tracts) are involved in auditory language processing, and which kind of language information is transmitted by which fiber tract. However, there is much debate about exactly which fiber tracts are involved, their precise course in the brain, how they should be named, and which functions they fulfill. Therefore, the present article reviews the available language-related literature, and educes a neurocognitive model of the pathways for auditory language processing. Besides providing an overview of the current methods used for relating fiber anatomy to function, this article details the precise anatomy of the fiber tracts and their roles in phonological, semantic and syntactic processing, articulation, and repetition.	t	\N
23297922	Previous studies have suggested that cochlear implant users may have particular difficulties exploiting opportunities to glimpse clear segments of a target speech signal in the presence of a fluctuating masker. Although it has been proposed that this difficulty is associated with a deficit in linking the glimpsed segments across time, the details of this mechanism are yet to be explained. The present study introduces a method called Zebra-speech developed to investigate the relative contribution of simultaneous and sequential segregation mechanisms in concurrent speech perception, using a noise-band vocoder to simulate cochlear implants. One experiment showed that the saliency of the difference between the target and the masker is a key factor for Zebra-speech perception, as it is for sequential segregation. Furthermore, forward masking played little or no role, confirming that intelligibility was not limited by energetic masking but by across-time linkage abilities. In another experiment, a binaural cue was used to distinguish the target and the masker. It showed that the relative contribution of simultaneous and sequential segregation depended on the spectral resolution, with listeners relying more on sequential segregation when the spectral resolution was reduced. The potential of Zebra-speech as a segregation enhancement strategy for cochlear implants is discussed.	t	\N
23298012	The present study explored the acoustic characteristics of prosodic cues that indicate a speaker's reluctance when giving permission or agreement using a single word ("okay"). Eight speakers (four male, four female) produced the recorded materials that were subsequently validated through a listening experiment using 12 normal-hearing listeners. Acoustic analyses revealed that significantly longer word duration was the cue used most consistently across speakers to communicate reluctance. Voice quality, fundamental voice frequency, and intensity cues also differed significantly between the two prosodic conditions, but the manner in which these cues were applied varied greatly across speakers.	t	\N
23301004	For humans and animals, the ability to discriminate speech and conspecific vocalizations is an important physiological assignment of the auditory system. To reveal the underlying neural mechanism, many electrophysiological studies have investigated the neural responses of the auditory cortex to conspecific vocalizations in monkeys. The data suggest that vocalizations may be hierarchically processed along an anterior/ventral stream from the primary auditory cortex (A1) to the ventral prefrontal cortex. To date, the organization of vocalization processing has not been well investigated in the auditory cortex of other mammals. In this study, we examined the spike activities of single neurons in two early auditory cortical regions with different anteroposterior locations: anterior auditory field (AAF) and posterior auditory field (PAF) in awake cats, as the animals were passively listening to forward and backward conspecific calls (meows) and human vowels. We found that the neural response patterns in PAF were more complex and had longer latency than those in AAF. The selectivity for different vocalizations based on the mean firing rate was low in both AAF and PAF, and not significantly different between them; however, more vocalization information was transmitted when the temporal response profiles were considered, and the maximum transmitted information by PAF neurons was higher than that by AAF neurons. Discrimination accuracy based on the activities of an ensemble of PAF neurons was also better than that of AAF neurons. Our results suggest that AAF and PAF are similar with regard to which vocalizations they represent but differ in the way they represent these vocalizations, and there may be a complex processing stream between them.	t	\N
23306571	The phenomenon of Late-Onset Unilateral Auditory Deprivation was first reported in 1984. However, a high number of unilateral hearing aid fittings are still carried out in cases of bilateral hearing loss, justified by non-auditory factors such as cost, vanity, misinformation and public health policies. To carry out behavioral and electrophysiological assessment of the auditory performance of adults using unilateral amplification compared with individuals exposed to bilateral symmetric auditory stimulation. Thirty five adults, all with symmetric bilateral sensorineural hearing loss, regular users of unilateral hearing aid, bilateral hearing aids and not users of hearing aids, were assessed on behavioral and electrophysiological tests. Variance analysis revealed that in the unilaterally fitted group, P300 latency was significantly greater in ears with auditory deprivation compared with those fitted with the hearing aid (p < 0.05). This same group also had poorer performance on the Sentence Recognition Test in Noise held in free field. These results corroborate findings in the literature showing that unilateral auditory deprivation can lead to physiological and perceptual changes.	t	\N
23307427	Using a tactile variant of the negative-priming paradigm, we analyzed the influence of Gestalt grouping on the ability of participants to ignore distracting tactile information. The distance between participants' hands, to which the target and distractor stimuli were simultaneously delivered, was varied (near/touching hands vs. hands far apart). In addition, the influence of touching hands was controlled, as participants wore gloves and their hands were blocked from vision by a cover. The magnitude of the tactile negative-priming effect was modulated by the interaction between hand separation and whether or not gloves were worn. When the hands were touching, negative priming emerged only while wearing gloves that prevented direct skin-to-skin contact. In contrast, when the separation between the participants' hands was larger, negative priming emerged only when gloves were not worn. This pattern of results is interpreted in terms of the competing influences of two interacting Gestalt principles--namely, connectedness and proximity--on the processing of tactile distractors.	t	\N
23316925	The event-related potential (ERP) correlates of sound detection are attenuated when eliciting sounds coincide with our own actions. The role of attention in this effect was investigated in two experiments by presenting tones separated by random intervals. In the homogeneous condition of Experiments 1 and 2, the same tone was repeated, whereas in the mixed condition of Experiment 1, tones with five different frequencies were presented. Participants performed a time-interval production task by marking intervals with keypresses in Experiment 1, and tried to produce keypress-tone coincidences in Experiment 2. Although the auditory ERPs were attenuated for coincidences, no modulation by the multiplicity of tone frequencies in Experiment 1, or by the task-relevancy of tones and coincidences in Experiment 2, was found. This suggests that coincidence-related ERP attenuation cannot be fully explained by voluntary attentional mechanisms.	t	\N
23321588	To assess the auditory performance of Digisonic(®) cochlear implant users with electric stimulation (ES) and electro-acoustic stimulation (EAS) with special attention to the processing of low-frequency temporal fine structure. Six patients implanted with a Digisonic(®) SP implant and showing low-frequency residual hearing were fitted with the Zebra(®) speech processor providing both electric and acoustic stimulation. Assessment consisted of monosyllabic speech identification tests in quiet and in noise at different presentation levels, and a pitch discrimination task using harmonic and disharmonic intonating complex sounds ( Vaerenberg et al., 2011 ). These tests investigate place and time coding through pitch discrimination. All tasks were performed with ES only and with EAS. Speech results in noise showed significant improvement with EAS when compared to ES. Whereas EAS did not yield better results in the harmonic intonation test, the improvements in the disharmonic intonation test were remarkable, suggesting better coding of pitch cues requiring phase locking. These results suggest that patients with residual hearing in the low-frequency range still have good phase-locking capacities, allowing them to process fine temporal information. ES relies mainly on place coding but provides poor low-frequency temporal coding, whereas EAS also provides temporal coding in the low-frequency range. Patients with residual phase-locking capacities can make use of these cues.	t	\N
23327452	In order to provide effective intervention for children with specific language impairment (SLI), it is crucial that there is an understanding of the underlying deficit in SLI. This study utilized a battery of phonological processing tasks to compare the phonological processing skills of children with SLI to typically-developing peers matched for age or language. The children with SLI had significantly poorer performance than age-matched peers on measures of phonological representations, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, phonological short-term memory, and one measure of working memory. Of particular significance, the SLI group also demonstrated significantly weaker performance than language-matched peers on one measure of phonological representations, and one measure of working memory. The findings provide some support for a phonological processing account of SLI and highlight the utility of using tasks that draw on a comprehensive model of speech processing to profile and consider children's phonological processing skills in detail.	t	\N
23331545	The auditory N1 event-related potential has previously been observed to be attenuated for tones that are triggered by human actions. This attenuation is thought to be generated by motor prediction mechanisms and is considered to be important for agency attribution. The present study was designed to rigorously test the notion of action prediction-based sensory attenuation. Participants performed one of four voluntary actions on each trial, with each button associated with either predictable or unpredictable action effects. In addition, actions with each hand could result in action effects that were either congruent or incongruent with hand-specific prediction. We observed no significant differences in N1 amplitude between predictable and unpredictable tones. When contrasting action effects that were congruent or incongruent with hand-specific prediction, we observed significant attenuation for prediction-congruent compared to prediction-incongruent action-effects. These novel findings suggest that accurate action-effect prediction drives sensory attenuation of auditory stimuli. These findings have important implications for understanding the mechanisms of action-effect prediction and sensory attenuation, and may have clinical implications for studies investigating action awareness and agency in schizophrenia.	t	\N
23334356	Several studies have shown that the ability to identify the timbre of musical instruments is reduced in cochlear implant (CI) users compared with normal-hearing (NH) listeners. However, most of these studies have focused on tasks that require specific musical knowledge. In contrast, the present study investigates the perception of timbre by CI subjects using a multidimensional scaling (MDS) paradigm. The main objective was to investigate whether CI subjects use the same cues as NH listeners do to differentiate the timbre of musical instruments. Three groups of 10 NH subjects and one group of 10 CI subjects were asked to make dissimilarity judgments between pairs of instrumental sounds. The stimuli were 16 synthetic instrument tones spanning a wide range of instrument families. All sounds had the same fundamental frequency (261 Hz) and were balanced in loudness and in perceived duration before the experiment. One group of NH subjects listened to unprocessed stimuli. The other two groups of NH subjects listened to the same stimuli passed through a four-channel or an eight-channel noise vocoder, designed to simulate the signal processing performed by a real CI. Subjects were presented with all possible combinations of pairs of instruments and had to estimate, for each pair, the amount of dissimilarity between the two sounds. These estimates were used to construct dissimilarity matrices, which were further analyzed using an MDS model. The model output gave, for each subject group, an optimal graphical representation of the perceptual distances between stimuli (the so-called "timbre space"). For all groups, the first two dimensions of the timbre space were strikingly similar and correlated strongly with the logarithm of the attack time and with the center of gravity of the spectral envelope, respectively. The acoustic correlate of the third dimension differed across groups but only accounted for a small proportion of the variance explained by the MDS solution. Surprisingly, CI subjects and NH subjects listening to noise-vocoded simulations gave relatively more weight to the spectral envelope dimension and less weight to the attack-time dimension when making their judgments than NH subjects listening to unprocessed stimuli. One possible reason for the relatively higher salience of spectral envelope cues in real and simulated CIs may be that the degradation of local fine spectral details produced a more stable spectral envelope across the stimulus duration. The internal representation of musical timbre for isolated musical instrument sounds was found to be similar in NH and in CI listeners. This suggests that training procedures designed to improve timbre recognition in CIs will indeed train CI subjects to use the same cues as NH listeners. Furthermore, NH subjects listening to noise-vocoded sounds appear to be a good model of CI timbre perception as they show the same first two perceptual dimensions as CI subjects do and also exhibit a similar change in perceptual weights applied to these two dimensions. This last finding validates the use of simulations to evaluate and compare training procedures to improve timbre perception in CIs.	t	\N
23336003	A large-scale subjective survey was conducted in six shopping malls in Harbin City, China, to determine the influence of social and behavioural characteristics of users on their evaluation of subjective loudness and acoustic comfort. The analysis of social characteristics shows that evaluation of subjective loudness is influenced by income and occupation, with correlation coefficients or contingency coefficients of 0.10 to 0.40 (p<0.05 or p<0.01). Meanwhile, evaluation of acoustic comfort evaluation is influenced by income, education level, and occupation, with correlation coefficients or contingency coefficients of 0.10 to 0.60 (p<0.05 or p<0.01). The effect of gender and age on evaluation of subjective loudness and acoustic comfort is statistically insignificant. The effects of occupation are mainly caused by the differences in income and education level, in which the effects of income are greater than that of education level. In terms of behavioural characteristics, evaluation of subjective loudness is influenced by the reason for visit, frequency of visit, and length of stay, with correlation coefficients or contingency coefficients of 0.10 to 0.40 (p<0.05 or p<0.01). Evaluation of acoustic comfort is influenced by the reason for visit to the site, the frequency of visit, length of stay, and also season of visit, with correlation coefficients of 0.10 to 0.30 (p<0.05 or p<0.01). In particular, users who are waiting for someone show lower evaluation of acoustic comfort, whereas users who go to shopping malls more than once a month show higher evaluation of acoustic comfort. On the contrary, the influence of the period of visit and the accompanying persons are found insignificant.	t	\N
23339556	This study explored the developmental trends and phonetic category formation in bilingual children and adults. Participants included 30 fluent Spanish-English bilingual children, aged 8-11, and bilingual adults, aged 18-40. All completed gating tasks that incorporated code-mixed Spanish-English stimuli. There were significant differences in performance according to phonotactic construction of the stimuli, with fastest word recognition on words with voiceless initial consonants. Analysis of developmental trends revealed significant differences in children's performance by grade level and fastest recognition on English voiceless initial consonants than Spanish voiceless initial consonants. Differences in voice onset time between English and Spanish may have contributed to quicker recognition of English voiceless consonants than Spanish voiceless consonants. It is also possible that increased exposure to both spoken and written English may account for faster recognition of English voiceless words than Spanish voiceless words. In conclusion, multiple factors may influence perception of a second language.	t	\N
23340379	Since deafness is the most common sensorineural disorder in humans, better understanding of the underlying causes is necessary to improve counseling and rehabilitation. A Dutch family with autosomal dominantly inherited sensorineural hearing loss was clinically and genetically assessed. The MYO6 gene was selected to be sequenced because of similarities with other, previously described DFNA22 phenotypes and a pathogenic c.3610C > T (p.R1204W) mutation was found to co-segregate with the disease. This missense mutation results in a flat configured audiogram with a mild hearing loss, which becomes severe to profound and gently to steeply downsloping later in life. The age-related typical audiograms (ARTA) constructed for this family resemble presbyacusis. Speech audiometry and results of loudness scaling support the hypothesis that the phenotype of this specific MYO6 mutation mimics presbyacusis.	t	\N
23341954	Two experiments investigated deaf individuals' ability to discriminate between same-sex talkers based on vibrotactile stimulation alone. Nineteen participants made same/different judgments on pairs of utterances presented to the lower back through voice coils embedded in a conforming chair. Discrimination of stimuli matched for F0, duration, and perceived magnitude was successful for pairs of spoken sentences in Experiment 1 (median percent correct = 83%) and pairs of vowel utterances in Experiment 2 (median percent correct = 75%). Greater difference in spectral tilt between "different" pairs strongly predicted their discriminability in both experiments. The current findings support the hypothesis that discrimination of complex vibrotactile stimuli involves the cortical integration of spectral information filtered through frequency-tuned skin receptors.	t	\N
23351131	The suppression of the auditory N1 event-related potential (ERP) to self-initiated sounds became a popular tool to tap into sensory-specific forward modeling. It is assumed that processing in the auditory cortex is attenuated due to a match between sensory stimulation and a specific sensory prediction afforded by a forward model of the motor command. The present study shows that N1 suppression was dramatically increased with long (≈ 3 s) stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA), whereas P2 suppression was equal in all SOA conditions (0.8, 1.6, 3.2 s). Thus, the P2 was found to be more sensitive to self-initiation effects than the N1 with short SOAs. Moreover, only the unspecific but not the sensory-specific N1 components were suppressed for self-initiated sounds suggesting that N1-suppression effects mainly reflect an attenuated orienting response. We argue that the N1-suppression effect is a rather indirect measure of sensory-specific forward models.	t	\N
23351849	This work investigates the nature of the comprehension impairment in Wernicke's aphasia (WA), by examining the relationship between deficits in auditory processing of fundamental, non-verbal acoustic stimuli and auditory comprehension. WA, a condition resulting in severely disrupted auditory comprehension, primarily occurs following a cerebrovascular accident (CVA) to the left temporo-parietal cortex. Whilst damage to posterior superior temporal areas is associated with auditory linguistic comprehension impairments, functional-imaging indicates that these areas may not be specific to speech processing but part of a network for generic auditory analysis. We examined analysis of basic acoustic stimuli in WA participants (n = 10) using auditory stimuli reflective of theories of cortical auditory processing and of speech cues. Auditory spectral, temporal and spectro-temporal analysis was assessed using pure-tone frequency discrimination, frequency modulation (FM) detection and the detection of dynamic modulation (DM) in "moving ripple" stimuli. All tasks used criterion-free, adaptive measures of threshold to ensure reliable results at the individual level. Participants with WA showed normal frequency discrimination but significant impairments in FM and DM detection, relative to age- and hearing-matched controls at the group level (n = 10). At the individual level, there was considerable variation in performance, and thresholds for both FM and DM detection correlated significantly with auditory comprehension abilities in the WA participants. These results demonstrate the co-occurrence of a deficit in fundamental auditory processing of temporal and spectro-temporal non-verbal stimuli in WA, which may have a causal contribution to the auditory language comprehension impairment. Results are discussed in the context of traditional neuropsychology and current models of cortical auditory processing.	t	\N
23354172	Visual speech inputs can enhance auditory speech information, particularly in noisy or degraded conditions. The natural statistics of audiovisual speech highlight the temporal correspondence between visual and auditory prosody, with lip, jaw, cheek and head movements conveying information about the speech envelope. Low-frequency spatial and temporal modulations in the 2-7 Hz range are of particular importance. Dyslexic individuals have specific problems in perceiving speech envelope cues. In the current study, we used an audiovisual noise-vocoded speech task to investigate the contribution of low-frequency visual information to intelligibility of 4-channel and 16-channel noise vocoded speech in participants with and without dyslexia. For the 4-channel speech, noise vocoding preserves amplitude information that is entirely congruent with dynamic visual information. All participants were significantly more accurate with 4-channel speech when visual information was present, even when this information was purely spatio-temporal (pixelated stimuli changing in luminance). Possible underlying mechanisms are discussed.	t	\N
23357092	Here we present two experiments investigating the implicit orienting of attention over time by entrainment to an auditory rhythmic stimulus. In the first experiment, participants carried out a detection and discrimination tasks with auditory and visual targets while listening to an isochronous, auditory sequence, which acted as the entraining stimulus. For the second experiment, we used musical extracts as entraining stimulus, and tested the resulting strength of entrainment with a visual discrimination task. Both experiments used reaction times as a dependent variable. By manipulating the appearance of targets across four selected metrical positions of the auditory entraining stimulus we were able to observe how entraining to a rhythm modulates behavioural responses. That our results were independent of modality gives a new insight into cross-modal interactions between auditory and visual modalities in the context of dynamic attending to auditory temporal structure.	t	\N
23362674	It has been shown that humans are able to recognise their own movement. While visual cues have been amply studied, the contribution of auditory cues is not clear. Our aim was to investigate the role of temporal auditory cues in the identification of one's own or others' performance in a complex movement--a golf swing. We investigated whether golfers are able to discriminate between the sounds associated with their own swings and other golfers' swings, by using the relative timing and the overall duration of the movement. The sounds produced by the participants performing 65 m shots have been recorded and used to create the stimuli. The experimental conditions were: participants' swing sounds and the sounds of other golfers having equal both relative timing and overall duration, equal relative timing but different overall duration, different relative timing but equal overall duration, and both different relative timing and overall duration. The task of the participants was to say whether each sound corresponded or did not correspond to their own swing. Results show that golfers are able to recognise their own movements, but they also recognise as their own the sound produced by other athletes having equal both relative timing and overall duration.	t	\N
23363116	Detection thresholds for 100 ms of either 5- or 20-Hz frequency modulation (FM) were measured at various temporal positions within a 600-ms, 4-kHz pure-tone carrier. The results indicated that the temporal position of the signal relative to the fringe influences detection thresholds, including an effect that is reminiscent of auditory backward recognition masking. A task involving frequency increments, rather than sinusoidal FM, yielded similar results. Additional manipulation of total carrier duration indicated that FM detection thresholds improve as the duration of the forward fringe increases, while a backward fringe only degrades performance in the absence of any forward fringe. The results suggest that listeners are insensitive to subtle frequency changes that occur at the onset of a longer stimulus and that the interaction between the opposing effects of the forward and backward fringes is not additive.	t	\N
23363122	The vocal tract length of a speaker is the primary determinant of the range of formant frequencies (FFs) produced by that speaker. Listeners have demonstrated sensitivity to the average FFs produced by voices, for example, in estimating the relative heights of two speakers based on their speech. However, it is not known whether they can learn to identify voices based on the acoustic characteristic associated with the average FFs produced by a voice (this characteristic will be referred to as FF-scaling). To investigate this, a series of vowels corresponding to voices that differed in their average f0 and/or FF-scaling were synthesized. Listeners (n = 71) were trained to identify these voices using a training procedure where, for each trial, they heard the vowels representing a voice and then had to identify the stimulus voice from among a series of candidate voices that differed in terms of their FF-scaling and/or their f0. Results indicate that listeners can identify voices on the basis of FF-scaling quite accurately and consistently after only a short training session and that, although f0 weakly influences these estimates, they are most strongly determined by the stimulus FFs.	t	\N
23363188	Good localization accuracy depends on an auditory spatial map that provides consistent binaural information across frequency and level. This study investigated whether mapping bilateral cochlear implants (CIs) independently contributes to distorted perceptual spatial maps. In a meta-analysis, interaural level differences necessary to perceptually center sound images were calculated for 127 pitch-matched pairs of electrodes; many needed large current adjustments to be perceptually centered. In a separate experiment, lateralization was also found to be inconsistent across levels. These findings suggest that auditory spatial maps are distorted in the mapping process, which likely reduces localization accuracy and target-noise separation in bilateral CIs.	t	\N
23363191	Listeners presented with noise were asked to press a key whenever they heard the vowels [a] or [i:]. The noise had a random spectrum, with levels in 60 frequency bins changing every 0.5 s. Reverse correlation was used to average the spectrum of the noise prior to each key press, thus estimating the features of the vowels for which the participants were listening. The formant frequencies of these reverse-correlated vowels were similar to those of their respective whispered vowels. The success of this response-triggered technique suggests that it may prove useful for estimating other internal representations, including perceptual phenomena like tinnitus.	t	\N
23363193	Speech understanding difficulties for older adults (OAs) are well documented. Very little is known about whether age-related changes affect their speech production as well. Intelligibility of conversational and clear speech sentences produced by five OA talkers was examined. The results of the sentence-in-noise listening tests revealed that OAs enhanced their intelligibility for young adult (YA) listeners through clear speech modifications. Importantly, though, OAs were less effective at improving their speech to benefit listeners compared to YA talkers [reported in Smiljanic and Bradlow, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 118(3), 1677-1688 (2005)]. The results suggest that auditory and cognitive changes across lifespan can affect OA's speech patterns and intelligibility.	t	\N
23363194	Stilp and Kluender [(2010). Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 107(27), 12387-12392] reported measures of sensory change over time (cochlea-scaled spectral entropy, CSE) reliably predicted sentence intelligibility for normal-hearing listeners. Here, implications for listeners with atypical hearing were explored using noise-vocoded speech. CSE was parameterized as Euclidean distances between biologically scaled spectra [measured before sentences were noise vocoded (CSE)] or between channel amplitude profiles in simulated cochlear-implant processing [measured after vocoding (CSE(CI))]. Sentence intelligibility worsened with greater amounts of information replaced by noise; patterns of performance did not differ between CSE and CSE(CI). Results demonstrate the importance of information-bearing change for speech perception in simulated electric hearing.	t	\N
23366748	Emotional arousal, or affective patterns, can be probed using observable bioelectric signals, in particular using the fluctuations of electroencephalographic potentials from the human scalp. Hearing impairment related to increased threshold of audio tone detection may cause the loss of intelligibility of speech resulting in an innate automatic emotional response. An adaptive support vector machine can be trained to identify a subject's unique affective response based upon an audiogram hearing test. This paper presents the efficacy of our model, initial SVM classification data, and discusses potential application.	t	\N
23398728	Superior semi-circular canal dehiscence (SSCD) is a known cause of hearing loss. This study quantifies hearing loss in SSCD ears in a frequency-specific fashion. A meta-analysis of English language literature pertaining to SSCD was performed, with extraction and evaluation of available human audiometric data. Our own institution's case series of SSCD patients was also similarly analysed. Hearing loss in SSCD ears was compared to same patient control ears and to age-matched normative audiometric data. Ears with SSCD had statistically significant worse hearing as compared to both normative data and to own normal ear controls at 2000 Hz and below. The effect appears to diminish with increasing frequency. The presence of statistically significant conductive hearing loss in the low frequencies was confirmed for SSCD ears. SSCD may also predispose ears to high frequency sensorineural hearing loss.	t	\N
23404529	The purpose of the study was to investigate the potential clinical advantages of incorporating a contralateral routing of signals (CROS) microphone in unilateral cochlear implant (CI) users. A prospective study was undertaken on a group of 21 postlingually deafened adults who were all implanted with the same multichannel CI system. Performance with a unilateral CI was compared with performance using both a unilateral implant and a CROS microphone system worn on the opposite site (CI-CROS). Speech understanding using the AzBio sentence was evaluated in quiet, with speech presented at 0° and 270° azimuth in the horizontal plane. Speech understanding in noise was performed with speech at 0°, and noise at 0°, 90°, and 270°. A significant gain in speech understanding using CI-CROS compared to the unilateral CI alone was found in quiet when speech was presented at 270° (average improvement of 8.8%, P < .01). Participants also demonstrated statistically significant improvement using CI-CROS compared with the unilateral CI alone when noise was presented at 90° and speech at 0° (average improvement of 6.7%, P < .01). Adding a contralateral microphone to a unilateral CI resulted in a significant improvement in speech understanding in different conditions. This method could provide a greater cost/benefit ratio than bilateral CIs and be a potential improvement for those who are not candidates for bilateral CIs.	t	\N
23418635	Cochlear implantation (CI) has proven in long term prospective trials to reduce significantly incapacitating tinnitus in single sided deafness (SSD). Discussion arises whether electrical stimulation near the round window (RW) is also able to reduce tinnitus. to assess whether electrical stimulation of the basal first 4 intracochlear electrodes of a CI could sufficiently reduce tinnitus and to compare these results with stimulation with all CI electrodes. 7 patients who met the criteria of severe tinnitus due to SSD were implanted with a Med-El Sonata Ti100 with a FlexSoftTM or Flex24TM electrode. After 4 weeks only the basal electrode pair (E12) nearest to the RW was activated. Each week the following pair was activated until the 4th pair.Thereafter all electrodes were activated. Tinnitus was assessed before CI surgery and before each electrode pair was activated. When all electrodes were fitted, evaluation was done after 1, 3 and 6 months.Tinnitus was assessed with Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) for loudness, psychoacoustic tinnitus loudness comparison at 1 kHz and Tinnitus Questionnaire (TQ) for the effect on quality of life. To evaluate the natural evolution, a tightly matched control group with severe tinnitus due to SSD was followed prospectively. All the tinnitus outcome measures remained unchanged with 1, 2, 3 or 4 activated electrode pairs. With complete CI activation, the tinnitus decreased significantly comparable with earlier reports.Pre-implantation the tinnitus loudness was 8.2/10 on the VAS and was reduced to 4.1/10 6 months postimplantation.Psychometrically the loudness level went from 21.7 dB SL (SD: 16.02) to 7.5 dB SL (SD: 5.24)and the TQ from 60/84 to 39/84. The non-implanted group had no decrease of the tinnitus, the average VAS remained stable at 8.9/10 throughout the follow-up period of 6 months. with the current stimulation parameters electrical stimulation in the first 8e10 mm of the basal part of the scala tympani is insufficient to reduce tinnitus. However, stimulation over the complete CI length yields immediate tinnitus reduction confirming earlier results.	t	\N
23421638	BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: The perception of naturalistic events depends on the ability to integrate perceptual information from multiple sensory systems. Currently, little is known about how multisensory integration is affected by normal aging. The authors conducted two experiments to investigate audiovisual temporal processing in younger (18-29 years) and older (70+ years) adults. In both experiments, participants were presented with a brief visual stimulus and a brief auditory stimulus separated by various temporal offsets, and participants judged which stimulus was presented first. In Experiment 1, the auditory and visual stimuli were presented from the same perceived location, whereas in Experiment 2 they were presented from different locations. The authors found no effect of stimulus location, and no evidence of age-related declines in performance in either experiment. Older adults appear to retain the ability to discriminate the temporal order of audiovisual stimuli and can perform similarly to younger adults.	t	\N
23422927	Prosody includes suprasegmental components of speech, such as intonation and rate, which add meaning beyond the words being spoken. Sensitivity to pragmatic prosody could improve communication within conversations. These studies investigated adults' and preschoolers' sensitivity to pragmatic prosody. Experiment 1 demonstrated that adults and children comprehend pragmatic prosody; they selected fast actions when descriptions were spoken fast versus when descriptions were spoken slowly. Experiment 2 demonstrated that adults and children spontaneously produce pragmatic prosody-their descriptions of fast actions were faster than their descriptions of slow actions-even when it was not necessary for the task. These studies conclude that children, like adults, are capable of using and producing pragmatic prosody; however, children are less sensitive than adults to subtle prosodic distinctions.	t	\N
23426091	To maintain optimal understanding, persons with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) often report a need for increased attention, concentration, and "listening effort" compared with persons without hearing loss. It is generally assumed that this increased effort is related to subjective reports of mental fatigue in persons with hearing loss. Although the benefits of hearing aids for improving intelligibility are well documented, their impact on listening effort and mental fatigue are less clear. This study used subjective and objective measures to examine the effects of hearing aid use and advanced hearing aid features on listening effort and mental fatigue in adults with SNHL. Sixteen adults (aged 47-69 years) with mild to severe sloping SNHL participated. A dual-task paradigm assessed word recognition, word recall, and visual reaction times (RTs) to objectively quantify listening effort and fatigue. Mental fatigue was operationally defined as a decrement in performance over the duration of the experiment (approximately 1 hr). Participants were fitted with study hearing aids and tested unaided and in two aided conditions (omnidirectional and with directional processing and digital noise reduction active). Subjective ratings of listening effort experienced during the day and ratings of fatigue and attentiveness immediately before and after the dual-task were also obtained. Word recall was better and dual-task RTs were significantly faster in the aided compared with unaided conditions, suggesting a decrease in listening effort when listening aided. Word recognition and recall in unaided and aided conditions remained relatively stable over the duration of the dual-task, suggesting these processes were resistant to mental fatigue. In contrast, dual-task RTs systematically increased over the duration of the speech task when listening unaided, consistent with development of mental fatigue. However, dual-task RTs remained stable over time in both aided conditions suggesting that hearing aid use reduced susceptibility to mental fatigue. Subjective ratings of fatigue and attentiveness also increased significantly after completion of the dual-task; however, no differences between unaided and aided subjective ratings were observed. Correlation analyses between subjective and objective measures of listening effort and mental fatigue showed no strong or consistent relationship. Likewise, subject variables such as age and degree of hearing loss showed no strong or consistent relationship to either subjective or objective measures of listening effort or mental fatigue. Results from subjective and select objective measures suggest sustained speech-processing demands can lead to mental fatigue in persons with hearing loss. It is important to note that the use of clinically fit hearing aids may reduce listening effort and susceptibility to mental fatigue associated with sustained speech-processing demands. The present study design did not reveal additional benefits, in terms of reduced listening effort or fatigue, from use of directional processing and digital noise-reduction algorithms. However, experimental design limitations suggest further work in this area is needed. Finally, subjective and objective measures of listening effort and mental fatigue due to sustained speech-processing demands, were not strongly associated, suggesting that these measures may assess different aspects of listening effort and mental fatigue.	t	\N
23438484	Two experiments tested the effect of exposure to masked phobic stimuli at a very brief stimulus onset asynchrony on reducing the subjective experience of fear caused by in vivo exposure to a feared object. In the main experiment, 35 spider-fearful and 35 non-fearful participants were identified with a questionnaire and a behavioural avoidance test (BAT) with a live tarantula. One week later, they were individually administered one of two continuous series of masked images: spiders or flowers. They engaged in the BAT again immediately thereafter. They provided ratings of subjective fear at the end of each BAT (pre- and post-manipulation). Very brief exposure to images of spiders reduced the fearful group's and not the non-fearful group's experience of fear at the end of the BAT. This effect was replicated with another sample of 26 spider-fearful participants from the same population. Theoretical implications are discussed.	t	\N
23442566	Performance in tone perception and production are correlated in prelingually deafened pediatric cochlear implant (CI) users across individuals. Demographic variables, such as age at implantation, contribute to the performance variability. Poor representation of pitch information in CI devices hinders pitch perception and affects perception of lexical tones in cochlear implant users who speak tonal languages. One hundred ten Mandarin-speaking, prelingually deafened CI subjects and 125 typically developing, normal-hearing subjects were recruited from Beijing, China. Lexical tone perception was measured using a computerized tone contrast test. Tone production was judged by native Mandarin-speaking adult listeners as well as analyzed acoustically and with an artificial neural network. A general linear model analysis was performed to determine factors that accounted for performance variability. CI subjects scored ≈ 67% correct on the lexical tone perception task. The degree of differentiation of tones produced by the CI group was significantly lower than the control group as revealed by acoustic analysis. Tone production performance assessed by the neural network was highly correlated with that evaluated by human listeners. There was a moderate correlation between the overall tone perception and production performance across CI subjects. Duration of implant use and age at implantation jointly explained ≈ 29% of the variance in the tone perception performance. Age at implantation was the only significant predictor for tone production performance in the CI subjects. Tone production performance in pediatric CI users is dependent on accurate perception. Early implantation predicts a better outcome in lexical tone perception and production.	t	\N
23446715	It is generally agreed that the auditory perception skills of children with developmental language disorders are more limited than those of typically developing children. It is not easy to determine exactly how the capacity to discriminate and the capacity to pronounce phonemes influence each other in children with language disorders. For most authors, the inability to discriminate certain phonemes accurately causes a developmental delay in pronunciation, whereas others claim the influence is mutual. The aim of this study is to determine in which consonants perceptive difficulty is more likely to occur and in which cases there is a greater probability of difficulty when it comes to articulating them. The sample used in the study consisted of 86 children with a mean age of 4 years and 7 months. The phonological processes involved in simplifying speech were identified. Their errors were used as the basis on which to construct and apply a specific speech perception test. The relationship between the articulatory and perceptive skills of children with substitutive processes were analysed by means of two comparisons: first, in all the processes detected taken as a whole and, second, in the three most frequent substitutive processes. These analyses were carried out to determine whether the nature of the consonant implied a greater probability of perceptive difficulty. The findings provide information about a relation between the articulatory and perceptive skills, and about whether the nature of the consonant determines a higher probability of perceptive or articulatory difficulties. These results can be of value in the assessment, design and effectiveness of speech therapy programmes.	t	\N
23448103	To evaluate the auditory brainstem response (ABR) amplitudes evoked by tone pip and narrowband chirp (NB CE-Chirp) stimuli when testing post-screening newborns and to determine the difference in estimated hearing level correction values. Tests were performed with tone pips and NB CE-Chirps at 4 kHz or 1 kHz. The response amplitude, response quality (Fmp), and residual noise were compared for both stimuli. Thirty babies (42 ears) who passed our ABR discharge criterion at 4 kHz following referral from their newborn hearing screen. Overall, NB CE-Chirp responses were 64% larger than the tone pip responses, closer to those evoked by clicks. Fmp was significantly higher for NB CE-Chirps. It is anticipated that there could be significant reductions in test time for the same signal to noise ratio by using NB CE-Chirps when testing newborns. This effect may vary in practice and is likely to be most beneficial for babies with low amplitude ABR responses. We propose that the ABR nHL threshold to eHL correction for NB CE-Chirps should be approximately 5 dB less than the corrections for tone pips at 4 and 1 kHz.	t	\N
23453221	This study examined the ability of prelingually deaf children with bilateral implants to identify emotion (i.e. happiness or sadness) in speech and music. Participants in Experiment 1 were 14 prelingually deaf children from 5-7 years of age who had bilateral implants and 18 normally hearing children from 4-6 years of age. They judged whether linguistically neutral utterances produced by a man and woman sounded happy or sad. Participants in Experiment 2 were 14 bilateral implant users from 4-6 years of age and the same normally hearing children as in Experiment 1. They judged whether synthesized piano excerpts sounded happy or sad. Child implant users' accuracy of identifying happiness and sadness in speech was well above chance levels but significantly below the accuracy achieved by children with normal hearing. Similarly, their accuracy of identifying happiness and sadness in music was well above chance levels but significantly below that of children with normal hearing, who performed at ceiling. For the 12 implant users who participated in both experiments, performance on the speech task correlated significantly with performance on the music task and implant experience was correlated with performance on both tasks. Child implant users' accurate identification of emotion in speech exceeded performance in previous studies, which may be attributable to fewer response alternatives and the use of child-directed speech. Moreover, child implant users' successful identification of emotion in music indicates that the relevant cues are accessible at a relatively young age.	t	\N
23458475	The purpose of this study was to measure real-ear aided and saturated responses of SpeechEasy™ devices and compare responses while devices delivered altered auditory feedback (AAF) and non-altered feedback (NAF). A repeated measures quasi-experimental design was employed. Ten people fitted with completely-in-the-canal or open fit behind-the-ear devices participated. Probe microphone measures were obtained with speech, and 17 chirp stimuli presented at 75 dB and 85 dB SPL, respectively. Measurements were compared with devices delivering AAF (i.e. delayed and frequency shifted) versus NAF. Maximum outputs were approximately 100-105 dB SPL in the 2000-4000 Hz range. Statistically significant differences in device SPL output as a function of device setting (AAF vs. NAF) were found for seven chirp stimuli (p <.05) when levels were sampled at points that were not temporally aligned with the output chirps but not for speech stimulus (p = .17). Device output varied across individuals and with open fit devices dominated by ear canal resonance effects. Real-ear aided responses were equivalent with speech input when devices delivered AAF and NAF. Real-ear saturated responses were not, however, comparable between AAF and NAF settings and may be underestimated if AAF delay is not accounted for.	t	\N
23461765	Advantages associated with the left ear (right brain hemisphere) have been reported in some studies. Of these, some have specifically suggested that the left ear has a more heightened ability to detect emotional tones. Meanwhile others have pointed to factors such as age and gender as potentially leading to manifestations of human laterality. This study investigates which brain hemisphere is more involved in emotional processing of auditory information in Arab participants. We aimed to replicate the previous studies because no single study has been done in the Arabic region previously. Additionally, people in this region prefer to use the right side of their body, e.g., hand, ear, foot, etc., for most daily tasks. To acquire data a dichotic listening task (DLT) was administered to 28 male and 23 female (Edinburgh, UK) university students aged 19 to 38; 13 were left-handed and 38 were right-handed. The results showed a significant left ear advantage in the auditory processing of emotional information. There was a significant negative correlation between ear preference and handedness. Left ear advantage related only to handedness. Thus right-handed participants were more likely than left-handers to have a left ear advantage. The relationship between ear preference and gender was non-significant. The conclusion that might be drawn from this study is that the left ear (right hemisphere) is more involved in emotional processing than the right ear (left hemisphere), especially for right-handed people.	t	\N
23462430	We set out to determine whether extra-striate ventral stream function was compromised in amblyopia and to compare any observed deficit with previous data on comparable dorsal stream function. We devised a multi-element orientation task where orientation coherence sensitivity could be measured in a comparable way to motion coherence. The use of spatial frequency narrowband elements allowed for accurate correction of any upstream contrast sensitivity influence and ensured that the orientation bandwidth of our elements did not covary with the measured coherence. Using a standard equivalent noise analysis, we varied both the local orientation bandwidth of individual elements as well as the global orientation bandwidth of the element array to obtain estimates of both local and global internal noise and efficiency. The results show that for this ventral stream task there is only a subtle amblyopic deficit in processing global orientation relative to control observers. This deficit is present for both amblyopic and fixing eyes, and appears to reflect poorer efficiency in processing local orientation, suggesting a subtle deficit at the input stage to extra-striate cortex where orientation coherence is processed.	t	\N
23463992	A decision weight analysis is used to investigate transition bandwidths [Berg (2007). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 121, 3639-2645]. The psychophysical task is similar to a standard profile analysis experiment except that the spacing of the tones comprising the stimuli is linear and very narrow (e.g., 20 Hz). An increment in the level of the central tone constitutes the signal. Pitch cues and single channel energy cues are degraded with randomization procedures. Thresholds increase as the number of tones comprising the stimulus (n) increases up to a transition bandwidth and then decrease or stay constant with further increases in n. It is proposed that the transition bandwidth reflects a discrete change in the underlying process, with a temporal process (e.g., envelope processor) dominating for stimulus bandwidths less than the transition bandwidth and a process of spectral profile analysis at wider bandwidths. Estimates of decision weights support the proposal.	t	\N
23464020	Just noticeable differences in interaural correlation (ρ-jnds) from diffuse sound field reference correlations are obtained. In a three-interval, three-alternative forced-choice procedure, ρ-jnds are measured for positive and negative deviations from nine narrowband reference conditions. Stimuli are 1 equivalent rectangular bandwidth wide noise bursts with center frequencies between 165 and 1500 Hz. The frequency dependent reference correlation (ρref) is determined by the simulated interaural correlation under ideal diffuse sound field conditions. Results show that the interaural correlation at threshold for deviation toward the positive correlation range follows the reference curve in a nonlinear fashion. For deviation toward the negative correlation range the interaural correlation at threshold is further afar the reference curve and does not markedly resemble its trend. The results indicate that the previously found asymmetry for correlation discrimination from uncorrelated broadband stimuli to the positive and negative correlation range becomes less pronounced for narrowband stimuli. For positive deviation, the highest jnds are found for the region where the reference curve occupies the global minimum in ρref; despite that, the interaural correlation at threshold for positive deviation exhibits its lowest value at that point.	t	\N
23464027	Acousticians generally assess the acoustic qualities of a concert hall or any other room using impulse response-based measures such as the reverberation time, clarity index, and others. These parameters are used to predict perceptual attributes related to the acoustic qualities of the room. Various studies show that these physical measures are not able to predict the related perceptual attributes sufficiently well under all circumstances. In particular, it has been shown that physical measures are dependent on the state of occupation, are prone to exaggerated spatial fluctuation, and suffer from lacking discrimination regarding the kind of acoustic stimulus being presented. Accordingly, this paper proposes a method for the derivation of signal-based measures aiming at predicting aspects of room acoustic perception from content specific signal representations produced by a binaural, nonlinear model of the human auditory system. Listening tests were performed to test the proposed auditory parameters for both speech and music. The results look promising; the parameters correlate with their corresponding perceptual attributes in most cases.	t	\N
23464028	Several lines of evidence indicate that auditory temporal resolution improves over childhood, whereas other data implicate the development of processing efficiency. The present study used the masking period pattern paradigm to examine the maturation of temporal processing in normal-hearing children (4.8 to 10.7 yrs) compared to adults. Thresholds for a brief tone were measured at 6 temporal positions relative to the period of a 5-Hz quasi-square-wave masker envelope, with a 20-dB modulation depth, as well as in 2 steady maskers. The signal was a pure tone at either 1000 or 6500 Hz, and the masker was a band of noise, either spectrally wide or narrow (21.3 and 1.4 equivalent rectangular bandwidths, respectively). Masker modulation improved thresholds more for wide than narrow bandwidths, and adults tended to receive more benefit from modulation than young children. Fits to data for the wide maskers indicated a change in window symmetry with development, reflecting relatively greater backward masking for the youngest listeners. Data for children >6.5 yrs of age appeared more adult-like for the 6500- than the 1000-Hz signal. Differences in temporal window asymmetry with listener age cannot be entirely explained as a consequence of a higher criterion for detection in children, a form of inefficiency.	t	\N
23464037	In spoken word identification and memory tasks, stimulus variability from numerous sources impairs performance. In the current study, the influence of foreign-accent variability on spoken word identification was evaluated in two experiments. Experiment 1 used a between-subjects design to test word identification in noise in single-talker and two multiple-talker conditions: multiple talkers with the same accent and multiple talkers with different accents. Identification performance was highest in the single-talker condition, but there was no difference between the single-accent and multiple-accent conditions. Experiment 2 further explored word recognition for multiple talkers in single-accent versus multiple-accent conditions using a mixed design. A detriment to word recognition was observed in the multiple-accent condition compared to the single-accent condition, but the effect differed across the language backgrounds tested. These results demonstrate that the processing of foreign-accent variation may influence word recognition in ways similar to other sources of variability (e.g., speaking rate or style) in that the inclusion of multiple foreign accents can result in a small but significant performance decrement beyond the multiple-talker effect.	t	\N
23466938	Change deafness describes the failure to perceive even intense changes within complex auditory input, if the listener does not attend to the changing sound. Remarkably, previous psychophysical data provide evidence that this effect occurs independently of successful stimulus encoding, indicating that undetected changes are processed to some extent in auditory cortex. Here we investigated cortical representations of detected and undetected auditory changes using electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings and a change deafness paradigm. We applied a one-shot change detection task, in which participants listened successively to three complex auditory scenes, each of them consisting of six simultaneously presented auditory streams. Listeners had to decide whether all scenes were identical or whether the pitch of one stream was changed between the last two presentations. Our data show significantly increased middle-latency Nb responses for both detected and undetected changes as compared to no-change trials. In contrast, only successfully detected changes were associated with a later mismatch response in auditory cortex, followed by increased N2, P3a and P3b responses, originating from hierarchically higher non-sensory brain regions. These results strengthen the view that undetected changes are successfully encoded at sensory level in auditory cortex, but fail to trigger later change-related cortical responses that lead to conscious perception of change.	t	\N
23467170	Cochlear implant (CI) users typically have excellent speech recognition in quiet but struggle with understanding speech in noise. It is thought that broad current spread from stimulating electrodes causes adjacent electrodes to activate overlapping populations of neurons which results in interactions across adjacent channels. Current focusing has been studied as a way to reduce spread of excitation, and therefore, reduce channel interactions. In particular, partial tripolar stimulation has been shown to reduce spread of excitation relative to monopolar stimulation. However, the crucial question is whether this benefit translates to improvements in speech perception. In this study, we compared speech perception in noise with experimental monopolar and partial tripolar speech processing strategies. The two strategies were matched in terms of number of active electrodes, microphone, filterbanks, stimulation rate and loudness (although both strategies used a lower stimulation rate than typical clinical strategies). The results of this study showed a significant improvement in speech perception in noise with partial tripolar stimulation. All subjects benefited from the current focused speech processing strategy. There was a mean improvement in speech recognition threshold of 2.7 dB in a digits in noise task and a mean improvement of 3 dB in a sentences in noise task with partial tripolar stimulation relative to monopolar stimulation. Although the experimental monopolar strategy was worse than the clinical, presumably due to different microphones, frequency allocations and stimulation rates, the experimental partial-tripolar strategy, which had the same changes, showed no acute deficit relative to the clinical.	t	\N
23489145	Under adverse listening conditions, speech comprehension profits from the expectancies that listeners derive from the semantic context. However, the neurocognitive mechanisms of this semantic benefit are unclear: How are expectancies formed from context and adjusted as a sentence unfolds over time under various degrees of acoustic degradation? In an EEG study, we modified auditory signal degradation by applying noise-vocoding (severely degraded: four-band, moderately degraded: eight-band, and clear speech). Orthogonal to that, we manipulated the extent of expectancy: strong or weak semantic context (±con) and context-based typicality of the sentence-last word (high or low: ±typ). This allowed calculation of two distinct effects of expectancy on the N400 component of the evoked potential. The sentence-final N400 effect was taken as an index of the neural effort of automatic word-into-context integration; it varied in peak amplitude and latency with signal degradation and was not reliably observed in response to severely degraded speech. Under clear speech conditions in a strong context, typical and untypical sentence completions seemed to fulfill the neural prediction, as indicated by N400 reductions. In response to moderately degraded signal quality, however, the formed expectancies appeared more specific: Only typical (+con +typ), but not the less typical (+con -typ) context-word combinations led to a decrease in the N400 amplitude. The results show that adverse listening "narrows," rather than broadens, the expectancies about the perceived speech signal: limiting the perceptual evidence forces the neural system to rely on signal-driven expectancies, rather than more abstract expectancies, while a sentence unfolds over time.	t	\N
23495123	We assessed the automaticity of spatial-numerical and spatial-musical associations by testing their intentionality and load sensitivity in a dual-task paradigm. In separate sessions, 16 healthy adults performed magnitude and pitch comparisons on sung numbers with variable pitch. Stimuli and response alternatives were identical, but the relevant stimulus attribute (pitch or number) differed between tasks. Concomitant tasks required retention of either color or location information. Results show that spatial associations of both magnitude and pitch are load sensitive and that the spatial association for pitch is more powerful than that for magnitude. These findings argue against the automaticity of spatial mappings in either stimulus dimension.	t	\N
23503620	Abnormal auditory adaptation is a standard clinical tool for diagnosing auditory nerve disorders due to acoustic neuromas. In the present study we investigated auditory adaptation in auditory neuropathy owing to disordered function of inner hair cell ribbon synapses (temperature-sensitive auditory neuropathy) or auditory nerve fibres. Subjects were tested when afebrile for (i) psychophysical loudness adaptation to comfortably-loud sustained tones; and (ii) physiological adaptation of auditory brainstem responses to clicks as a function of their position in brief 20-click stimulus trains (#1, 2, 3 … 20). Results were compared with normal hearing listeners and other forms of hearing impairment. Subjects with ribbon synapse disorder had abnormally increased magnitude of loudness adaptation to both low (250 Hz) and high (8000 Hz) frequency tones. Subjects with auditory nerve disorders had normal loudness adaptation to low frequency tones; all but one had abnormal adaptation to high frequency tones. Adaptation was both more rapid and of greater magnitude in ribbon synapse than in auditory nerve disorders. Auditory brainstem response measures of adaptation in ribbon synapse disorder showed Wave V to the first click in the train to be abnormal both in latency and amplitude, and these abnormalities increased in magnitude or Wave V was absent to subsequent clicks. In contrast, auditory brainstem responses in four of the five subjects with neural disorders were absent to every click in the train. The fifth subject had normal latency and abnormally reduced amplitude of Wave V to the first click and abnormal or absent responses to subsequent clicks. Thus, dysfunction of both synaptic transmission and auditory neural function can be associated with abnormal loudness adaptation and the magnitude of the adaptation is significantly greater with ribbon synapse than neural disorders.	t	\N
23506662	Various dimensions of auditory processing, especially the perception of speech in the presence of background competition, have been shown to deteriorate with age. A persistent problem in the assessment of these age-related changes has been the high prevalence of age-related high-frequency hearing loss in elderly persons. Some investigators have suggested that a more fruitful approach to the study of age-related decline might be to study middle-aged, rather than elderly, persons, where confounding high-frequency hearing loss is less prevalent. To determine whether an increase in the left-ear disadvantage (LED) in dichotic listening could be demonstrated in a group of middle-aged persons. The N400 component of the auditory event-related potential (AERP) was utilized to evaluate interaural asymmetry in a quasi-dichotic competing speech task. Electrophysiological responses were obtained on a word-pair semantic categorization task presented through a front loudspeaker while the listener ignored competing speech presented through either left (competition left [CL]) or right (competition right [CR]) loudspeakers. Study Samples: Twenty young (18-24 yr) and 20 middle-aged (44-57 yr) females with normal hearing sensitivity. Individual, as well as grand-averaged, AERP waveforms and scalp topographies were analyzed for the word pairs. Peak amplitude and latency measures of the N400 component were subjected to a mixed design analysis of variance (ANOVA). No significant interaural asymmetry was found in the AERP waveform for the reference word condition in either age group. In response to the second word of the pair, however, middle-aged females showed significantly greater N400 negativity in the CR condition than in the CL condition. No significant laterality effect was found in the young females. The study of young versus middle-aged participants may be an effective way of avoiding the confound of high-frequency hearing loss in elderly persons when studying age effects on auditory processing.	t	\N
23507387	It was the aim of this study to delineate the areas along the right superior temporal sulcus (STS) for processing of faces, voices, and face-voice integration using established functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) localizers and to assess their structural connectivity profile with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). We combined this approach with an fMRI adaptation design during which the participants judged emotions in facial expressions and prosody and demonstrated response habituation in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) which occurred irrespective of the sensory modality. These functional data were in line with DTI findings showing separable fiber projections of the three different STS modules converging in the OFC which run through the external capsule for the voice area, through the dorsal superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) for the face area and through the ventral SLF for the audiovisual integration area. The OFC was structurally connected with the supplementary motor area (SMA) and activation in these two areas was correlated with faster stimulus evaluation during repetition priming. Based on these structural and functional properties, we propose that the OFC is part of the extended system for perception of emotional information in faces and voices and constitutes a neural interface linking sensory areas with brain regions implicated in generation of behavioral responses.	t	\N
23518401	This study investigated the development of children's skills in identifying ecologically relevant sound objects within naturalistic listening environments, using a non-linguistic analog of the classic 'cocktail-party' situation. Children aged 7-12.5 years completed a closed-set identification task in which brief, commonly encountered environmental sounds were presented at varying signal-to-noise ratios. To simulate the complexity of real-world acoustic environments, target sounds were embedded in either a single, stereophonically presented scene, or in one of two different scenes, with each scene presented to a single ear. Each target sound was either congruent or incongruent with the auditory context. Identification accuracy improved with increasing age, particularly in trials with low signal-to-noise ratios. Performance was most accurate when target sounds were incongruent with the background scene, and when sounds were presented in a single background scene. The presence of two backgrounds disproportionately disrupted children's performance relative to that of previously tested adults, and reduced children's sensitivity to contextual cues. Successful identification of familiar sounds in complex auditory contexts is the outcome of a protracted learning process, with children reaching adult levels of performance after a decade or more of experience.	t	\N
23523270	The ability to perceive and produce speech undergoes important changes in late adulthood. The goal of the present study was to characterize functional and structural age-related differences in the cortical network that support speech perception and production, using magnetic resonance imaging, as well as the relationship between functional and structural age-related changes occurring in this network. We asked young and older adults to observe videos of a speaker producing single words (perception), and to observe and repeat the words produced (production). Results show a widespread bilateral network of brain activation for Perception and Production that was not correlated with age. In addition, several regions did show age-related change (auditory cortex, planum temporale, superior temporal sulcus, premotor cortices, SMA-proper). Examination of the relationship between brain signal and regional and global gray matter volume and cortical thickness revealed a complex set of relationships between structure and function, with some regions showing a relationship between structure and function and some not. The present results provide novel findings about the neurobiology of aging and verbal communication.	t	\N
23534128	The aim of this study was to establish the expression rate of autoimmunity in patients with sudden sensorineural hearing loss and to determine whether a positive marker is associated with a higher rate of hearing recovery after steroid treatment. A prospective study was performed on 137 patients who experienced sudden sensorineural hearing loss and underwent immunoserologic investigations. Autoantibodies evaluated on the day of admission included anti-double-stranded DNA, rheumatoid factor, antiphospholipid immunoglobulins G and M, antinuclear antibody, and complements C3 and C4. Of 137 patients, 75 were male and 62 were female (mean age, 45.1 years). Hearing loss was found on the left side in 61 patients and on the right side in 76 patients. Elevation of at least 1 autoantibody or abnormal complement levels were found in 80 patients (58%), and abnormalities of 2 or more antibodies were found in 28 (20%). There were no statistically significant correlations between autoantibody abnormalities and age, initial hearing level, or positive treatment response. There is no clear evidence of a correlation between autoimmunity and hearing improvement in patients with autoantibody abnormalities. A high (but not significant) expression rate of autoantibody abnormality and complement level was seen in patients with sudden sensorineural hearing loss.	t	\N
23539259	Cochlear implant systems that combine electric and acoustic stimulation in the same ear are now commercially available and the number of patients using these devices is steadily increasing. In particular, electric-acoustic stimulation is an option for patients with severe, high frequency sensorineural hearing impairment. There have been a range of approaches to combining electric stimulation and acoustic hearing in the same ear. To develop a better understanding of fitting practices for devices that combine electric and acoustic stimulation, we conducted a systematic review addressing three clinical questions: what is the range of acoustic hearing in the implanted ear that can be effectively preserved for an electric-acoustic fitting?; what benefits are provided by combining acoustic stimulation with electric stimulation?; and what clinical fitting practices have been developed for devices that combine electric and acoustic stimulation? A search of the literature was conducted and 27 articles that met the strict evaluation criteria adopted for the review were identified for detailed analysis. The range of auditory thresholds in the implanted ear that can be successfully used for an electric-acoustic application is quite broad. The effectiveness of combined electric and acoustic stimulation as compared with electric stimulation alone was consistently demonstrated, highlighting the potential value of preservation and utilization of low frequency hearing in the implanted ear. However, clinical procedures for best fitting of electric-acoustic devices were varied. This clearly identified a need for further investigation of fitting procedures aimed at maximizing outcomes for recipients of electric-acoustic devices.	t	\N
23540912	The present study investigated phonological encoding skills in children who stutter (CWS) and those who do not (CNS). Participants were 9 CWS (M=11.8 years, SD=1.5) and 9 age and sex matched CNS (M=11.8 years, SD=1.5). Participants monitored target phonemes located at syllable onsets and offsets of bisyllabic words. Performance in the phoneme monitoring task was compared to an auditory tone monitoring task. Repeated measures analysis of the response time data revealed significant Group×Task×Position interaction with the CWS becoming progressively slower than the CNS in monitoring subsequent phonemes located within the bisyllabic words; differences were not observed in the auditory tone monitoring task. Repeated measures analysis of the error data indicated that the groups were comparable in the percent errors in phoneme vs. tone monitoring. The CWS group was also significantly slower in a picture naming task compared to the CNS. Present findings suggest that CWS experience temporal asynchronies in one or more processes leading up to phoneme monitoring. The findings are interpreted within the scope of contemporary theories of stuttering. At the end of this activity the reader will be able to: (a) discuss the literature on phonological encoding skills in children who stutter, (b) identify theories of phonological encoding in stuttering, (c) define the process of phonological encoding and its implications for fluent speech, (d) suggest future areas of research in the investigation of phonological encoding abilities in children who stutter.	t	\N
23544047	Because classical music has greatly affected our life and culture in its long history, it has attracted extensive attention from researchers to understand laws behind it. Based on statistical physics, here we use a different method to investigate classical music, namely, by analyzing cumulative distribution functions (CDFs) and autocorrelation functions of pitch fluctuations in compositions. We analyze 1,876 compositions of five representative classical music composers across 164 years from Bach, to Mozart, to Beethoven, to Mendelsohn, and to Chopin. We report that the biggest pitch fluctuations of a composer gradually increase as time evolves from Bach time to Mendelsohn/Chopin time. In particular, for the compositions of a composer, the positive and negative tails of a CDF of pitch fluctuations are distributed not only in power laws (with the scale-free property), but also in symmetry (namely, the probability of a treble following a bass and that of a bass following a treble are basically the same for each composer). The power-law exponent decreases as time elapses. Further, we also calculate the autocorrelation function of the pitch fluctuation. The autocorrelation function shows a power-law distribution for each composer. Especially, the power-law exponents vary with the composers, indicating their different levels of long-range correlation of notes. This work not only suggests a way to understand and develop music from a viewpoint of statistical physics, but also enriches the realm of traditional statistical physics by analyzing music.	t	\N
23544676	Sound sequences, such as music, are usually organized perceptually into concurrent "streams." The mechanisms underlying this "auditory streaming" phenomenon are not completely known. The present study sought to test the hypothesis that synchrony limits listeners' ability to separate sound streams. To test this hypothesis, both perceptual-organization judgments and performance measures were used. In Experiment 1, listeners indicated whether they perceived sequences of alternating or synchronous tones as a single stream or as two streams. In Experiments 2 and 3, listeners detected rare changes in the intensity of "target" tones at one frequency in the presence of synchronous or asynchronous random-intensity "distractor" tones at another frequency. The results of these experiments showed that, for large frequency separations between the tones, the probability of perceiving two streams was lower on average for synchronous than for alternating tones, and that sensitivity to intensity changes in the target sequence was greater for asynchronous than for synchronous distractors. Overall, these results are consistent with the hypothesis that synchrony limits listeners' ability to form separate streams and/or to attend selectively to certain sounds in the presence of other sounds, even when the target and distractor sounds are well separated from each other in frequency.	t	\N
23547103	Intertrial repetition priming plays a striking role in visual search. For instance, when searching for a target with a unique color, performance is substantially better when the specific color of the target repeats on successive trials (Maljkovic & Nakayama, 1994). Recent research has relied on objective measures of performance to show that priming improves the perceptual quality of the repeated target. Here, we examined the relation between priming and conscious perception of the target by adding a subjective measure of perception. We used backward masking to create liminal perception, that is, different levels of subjectively conscious perception of the target using exactly the same stimulus conditions. The displays in either probe trials (in which priming benefits are measured, experiment 1) or in prime trials (in which memory traces are laid down, experiment 2) were masked. The results showed that intertrial priming improves full access to awareness of the repeated target but only for targets that already achieved partial access to awareness. In addition, they show that full awareness of the target is necessary in both the prime and probe trials for intertrial priming effects to emerge. Implications for the role of implicit short-term memory in visual search are discussed.	t	\N
23547105	When two objects are flashed at one location in close temporal proximity in the visual periphery, an intriguing illusion occurs whereby a single flash presented concurrently at another location appears to flash twice (the visual double-flash illusion: Chatterjee et al., 2011, Wilson & Singer, 1981). Here, for the first time, we investigate the time course of the effect, and directly compare it to the time course of the auditory (sound-induced flash illusion) effect, for both fission (single test flash, double inducer) and fusion (double test flash, single inducer) conditions, across stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 30 to 250 ms. In addition, using a novel audiovisual stimulus, we directly compare the cue strength of the two modalities, and whether they are additive in effect. The results show that the time course of fission and fusion is different for visual inducers, but not for auditory inducers. In audiovisual conditions, in situations of uncertainty, observers tended to follow the more reliable (auditory) cue. There was little evidence for a superadditive effect of auditory and visual cues; rather, observers tended to follow one or the other modality. The results suggest that the visually induced flash illusion and the auditory-induced effect may both stem from perceptual uncertainty, with the difference in time courses attributable to the lower temporal resolution of vision compared to audition.	t	\N
23555217	The processing characteristics of neurons in the central auditory system are directly shaped by and reflect the statistics of natural acoustic environments, but the principles that govern the relationship between natural sound ensembles and observed responses in neurophysiological studies remain unclear. In particular, accumulating evidence suggests the presence of a code based on sustained neural firing rates, where central auditory neurons exhibit strong, persistent responses to their preferred stimuli. Such a strategy can indicate the presence of ongoing sounds, is involved in parsing complex auditory scenes, and may play a role in matching neural dynamics to varying time scales in acoustic signals. In this paper, we describe a computational framework for exploring the influence of a code based on sustained firing rates on the shape of the spectro-temporal receptive field (STRF), a linear kernel that maps a spectro-temporal acoustic stimulus to the instantaneous firing rate of a central auditory neuron. We demonstrate the emergence of richly structured STRFs that capture the structure of natural sounds over a wide range of timescales, and show how the emergent ensembles resemble those commonly reported in physiological studies. Furthermore, we compare ensembles that optimize a sustained firing code with one that optimizes a sparse code, another widely considered coding strategy, and suggest how the resulting population responses are not mutually exclusive. Finally, we demonstrate how the emergent ensembles contour the high-energy spectro-temporal modulations of natural sounds, forming a discriminative representation that captures the full range of modulation statistics that characterize natural sound ensembles. These findings have direct implications for our understanding of how sensory systems encode the informative components of natural stimuli and potentially facilitate multi-sensory integration.	t	\N
23556554	Auditory and visual digit span tests were administered to a group of absolute pitch (AP) possessors, and a group of AP nonpossessors matched for age, and for age of onset and duration of musical training. All subjects were speakers of English. The AP possessors substantially and significantly outperformed the nonpossessors on the auditory test, while the two groups did not differ significantly on the visual test. It is conjectured that a large auditory memory span, including memory for speech sounds, facilitates the development of associations between pitches and their verbal labels early in life, so promoting the acquisition of AP.	t	\N
23556594	Thresholds for sinusoids interaurally in phase (S0) and antiphase (Sπ) were measured in the presence of a diotic notched-noise masker (N0) as a function of notch width. The signal frequency was 250, 500, 1000, or 2000 Hz. For all signal frequencies, the difference between N0S0 and N0Sπ thresholds (binaural masking-level difference, BMLD) decreased continuously as the notch width increased. Model simulations showed that this result cannot be accounted for by a model that only processes the output of the auditory filter centered at the signal frequency, even if the nonlinear behavior of the monaural frequency selectivity or interaural differences in the filter shape are considered. The data were predicted well if a detrimental across-channel process was included, either by an addition of portions of the output of adjacent filters to the output of the on-frequency filter or by a notch-width dependent adverse shift in interaural phase in the binaural stage. The strength of this detrimental across-channel process tends to decrease with increasing signal frequencies.	t	\N
23573184	Stress is prevalent in human life and threatens both physical and mental health; stress coping is thus of adaptive value for individual's survival and well-being. Although there has been extensive research on how the neural and physiological systems respond to stressful stimulation, relatively little is known about how the brain dynamically copes with stress evoked by this stimulation. Here we investigated how stress is relieved by a popular coping behavior, namely, gum chewing. In an fMRI study, we used loud noise as an acute stressor and asked participants to rate their feeling of stress in gum-chewing and no-chewing conditions. The participants generally felt more stressful when hearing noise, but less so when they were simultaneously chewing gum. The bilateral superior temporal sulcus (STS) and the left anterior insula (AI) were activated by noise, and their activations showed a positive correlation with the self-reported feeling of stress. Critically, gum chewing significantly reduced the noise-induced activation in these areas. Psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analysis showed that the functional connectivity between the left AI and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) was increased by noise to a lesser extent when the participants were chewing gum than when not chewing gum. Dynamic causality modeling (DCM) demonstrated that gum chewing inhibited the connectivity from the STS to the left AI. These findings demonstrate that gum chewing relieves stress by attenuating the sensory processing of external stressor and by inhibiting the propagation of stress-related information in the brain stress network.	t	\N
23575462	It would be clinically valuable if an electrophysiological validation of hearing aid effectiveness in conveying speech information could be performed when a device is first provided to the individual after electroacoustic verification. This study evaluated envelope following responses (EFRs) elicited by English vowels in a steady state context and in natural sentences. It was the purpose of this study to determine whether EFRs could be detected rapidly enough to be clinically useful. EFRs were elicited using 5 vowels spanning the English vowel space, /i/, /ε/, /æ/, /(Equation is included in full-text article.)/, and /u/. These were presented either as concatenated steady state vowels (total duration 10.04 seconds) or in three 5-word sentences (total duration 11.77 seconds), where each vowel appeared once per sentence. Single-channel electroencephalogram was recorded from vertex (Cz) to the nape of the neck for 190 and 160 repetitions of the steady state vowels and sentences, respectively. The stimuli were presented at 70 dBA SPL. The fundamental frequency (f0) track from the stimuli was used with a Fourier analyzer to estimate the EFRs to each vowel. Noise amplitudes were also calculated at neighboring frequencies. Fifteen normal-hearing subjects who were 20 to 34 years of age participated in the experiment. In the analysis of steady state vowels, the mean response amplitude of /i/ was statistically the largest at 173 nV. The other 4 steady state vowels did not differ in mean response amplitude, which varied between 73 and 106 nV. In the analysis of vowels from the 3 sentences, the largest response amplitudes tended to be for /u/. Mean amplitudes for /u/ were 164, 111, and 140 nV for the words "booed," "food," and "Sue," respectively. The vowel /u/ produced statistically larger responses than /i/, /ε/, and /(Equation is included in full-text article.)/ when grouped across words, whereas other vowels did not differ. Mean response amplitudes for the other vowel categories in the sentences varied between 82 and 105 nV. All subjects showed significant EFRs in response to the words "Bee's" and "booed," but only 9 subjects showed significant EFRs for "pet," "bed," and "Bob." The authors were readily able to detect significant EFRs elicited by vowels in a steady state context and from 3 natural sentences. These results are promising as an early step in developing a clinical tool for validating that vowel stimuli are at least partially encoded at the level of the auditory brainstem. Future research will require evaluation of the technique with aided listeners, where the natural sentences are expected to be treated as typical speech by hearing aid signal-processing algorithms.	t	\N
23576809	Major depression goes along with affective and social-cognitive deficits. Most research on affective deficits in depression has, however, only focused on unimodal emotion processing, whereas in daily life, emotional perception is often highly dependent on the evaluation of multimodal inputs. We thus investigated emotional audiovisual integration in patients with depression and healthy subjects. Subjects rated the expression of happy, neutral and fearful faces while concurrently being exposed to emotional or neutral sounds. Results demonstrated group differences in left inferior frontal gyrus and inferior parietal cortex when comparing incongruent to congruent happy facial conditions, mainly due to a failure of patients to deactivate these regions in response to congruent stimulus pairs. Moreover, healthy subjects decreased activation in right posterior superior temporal gyrus/sulcus and midcingulate cortex when an emotional stimulus was paired with a neutral rather than another emotional one. In contrast, patients did not show such deactivation when neutral stimuli were integrated. These results demonstrate aberrant neural response in audiovisual processing in depression, indicated by failure to deactivate regions involved in inhibition and salience processing when congruent and neutral audiovisual stimuli pairs are integrated, providing a possible mechanism of constant arousal and readiness to act in this patient group.	t	\N
23591684	Migraine attacks consist of head pain and hypersensitivities to somatosensory, visual, auditory, and olfactory stimuli. Investigating how the migraine brain simultaneously processes and responds to multiple incoming stimuli may yield insights into migraine pathophysiology and migraine symptoms. The presence and intensity of hypersensitivity to one stimulus type are positively associated with the presence and intensity of hypersensitivities to other stimuli and to headache intensity. Furthermore, exposure to visual, auditory, and olfactory stimuli can trigger migraine attacks. These relationships suggest a role for multisensory integration in migraine. Multisensory integration of somatosensory, visual, auditory, and olfactory stimuli by the migraine brain may be an important concept for understanding migraine.	t	\N
23593198	It has been proposed that the loudness dependence of auditory evoked potentials (LDAEP) would be a reliable indicator of central serotonin system activity in humans. Serotonin levels and turnover are also increased by brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). The aim of the present study was to determine whether there is an association between genetic polymorphisms of BDNF and the LDAEP in healthy Korean young adults. The cohort comprised 211 mentally and physically healthy subjects, all of whom were nonsmokers (111 males, 100 females; age: 20∼32 years). To avoid hormonal effects, the LDAEP was measured during days 2-5 after the beginning of menstruation for female subjects. In addition, BDNF polymorphisms (rs6265, rs2030324, and rs1491850) were genotyped. The strength of the LDAEP differed significantly among the BDNF genotype groups. Furthermore, the distribution of genotypic frequencies differed significantly between subjects with high and low LDAEPs. In particular, subjects with the Val/Met (A/G) genotype for rs6265, the T/T genotype for rs2030324, or the C/C genotype for rs1491850 had a higher LDAEP, indicating lower central serotonergic activity. A low LDAEP was more prevalent than a high LDAEP among those with the C-T haplotype (C genotype for rs2030424 and T genotype for rs1491850). Our results concur with previous findings on BDNF polymorphisms and serotonergic drug responses in psychiatric disorder patients. The present results suggest the possibility that BDNF polymorphisms and LDAEP patterns can predict altered serotonergic activity.	t	\N
23603423	Language is more than a source of information for accessing higher-order conceptual knowledge. Indeed, language may determine how people perceive and interpret visual stimuli. Visual processing in linguistic contexts, for instance, mirrors language processing and happens incrementally, rather than through variously-oriented fixations over a particular scene. The consequences of this atypical visual processing are yet to be determined. Here, we investigated the integration of visual and linguistic input during a reasoning task. Participants listened to sentences containing conjunctions or disjunctions (Nancy examined an ant and/or a cloud) and looked at visual scenes containing two pictures that either matched or mismatched the nouns. Degree of match between nouns and pictures (referential anchoring) and between their expected and actual spatial positions (spatial anchoring) affected fixations as well as judgments. We conclude that language induces incremental processing of visual scenes, which in turn becomes susceptible to reasoning errors during the language-meaning verification process.	t	\N
23613083	The lack of fine structure information in conventional cochlear implant (CI) encoding strategies presumably contributes to the generally poor music perception with CIs. To improve CI users' music perception, a harmonic-single-sideband-encoder (HSSE) strategy was developed , which explicitly tracks the harmonics of a single musical source and transforms them into modulators conveying both amplitude and temporal fine structure cues to electrodes. To investigate its effectiveness, vocoder simulations of HSSE and the conventional continuous-interleaved-sampling (CIS) strategy were implemented. Using these vocoders, five normal-hearing subjects' melody and timbre recognition performance were evaluated: a significant benefit of HSSE to both melody (p < 0.002) and timbre (p < 0.026) recognition was found. Additionally, HSSE was acutely tested in eight CI subjects. On timbre recognition, a significant advantage of HSSE over the subjects' clinical strategy was demonstrated: the largest improvement was 35% and the mean 17% (p < 0.013). On melody recognition, two subjects showed 20% improvement with HSSE; however, the mean improvement of 7% across subjects was not significant (p > 0.090). To quantify the temporal cues delivered to the auditory nerve, the neural spike patterns evoked by HSSE and CIS for one melody stimulus were simulated using an auditory nerve model. Quantitative analysis demonstrated that HSSE can convey temporal pitch cues better than CIS. The results suggest that HSSE is a promising strategy to enhance music perception with CIs.	t	\N
23615803	Although the ferret has become an important model species for studying both fundamental and clinical aspects of spatial hearing, previous behavioral work has focused on studies of sound localization and spatial release from masking in the free field. This makes it difficult to tease apart the role played by different spatial cues. In humans and other species, interaural time differences (ITDs) and interaural level differences (ILDs) play a critical role in sound localization in the azimuthal plane and also facilitate sound source separation in noisy environments. In this study, we used a range of broadband noise stimuli presented via customized earphones to measure ITD and ILD sensitivity in the ferret. Our behavioral data show that ferrets are extremely sensitive to changes in either binaural cue, with levels of performance approximating that found in humans. The measured thresholds were relatively stable despite extensive and prolonged (>16 weeks) testing on ITD and ILD tasks with broadband stimuli. For both cues, sensitivity was reduced at shorter durations. In addition, subtle effects of changing the stimulus envelope were observed on ITD, but not ILD, thresholds. Sensitivity to these cues also differed in other ways. Whereas ILD sensitivity was unaffected by changes in average binaural level or interaural correlation, the same manipulations produced much larger effects on ITD sensitivity, with thresholds declining when either of these parameters was reduced. The binaural sensitivity measured in this study can largely account for the ability of ferrets to localize broadband stimuli in the azimuthal plane. Our results are also broadly consistent with data from humans and confirm the ferret as an excellent experimental model for studying spatial hearing.	t	\N
23616552	The combined use of multisensory signals is often beneficial. Based on neuronal recordings in the superior colliculus of cats, three basic rules were formulated to describe the effectiveness of multisensory signals: the enhancement of neuronal responses to multisensory compared with unisensory signals is largest when signals occur at the same location ("spatial rule"), when signals are presented at the same time ("temporal rule"), and when signals are rather weak ("principle of inverse effectiveness"). These rules are also considered with respect to multisensory benefits as observed with behavioral measures, but do they capture these benefits best? To uncover the principles that rule benefits in multisensory behavior, we here investigated the classical redundant signal effect (RSE; i.e., the speedup of response times in multisensory compared with unisensory conditions) in humans. Based on theoretical considerations using probability summation, we derived two alternative principles to explain the effect. First, the "principle of congruent effectiveness" states that the benefit in multisensory behavior (here the speedup of response times) is largest when behavioral performance in corresponding unisensory conditions is similar. Second, the "variability rule" states that the benefit is largest when performance in corresponding unisensory conditions is unreliable. We then tested these predictions in two experiments, in which we manipulated the relative onset and the physical strength of distinct audiovisual signals. Our results, which are based on a systematic analysis of response time distributions, show that the RSE follows these principles very well, thereby providing compelling evidence in favor of probability summation as the underlying combination rule.	t	\N
23627836	Theories of auditory attention suggest that humans decompose complex auditory input into individual auditory objects, which then compete for attention to dominate auditory perception. Since emotional significance of external stimuli has been argued to provide cues for sensory prioritization and allocation of attention, emotionally salient auditory objects can receive attention to dominate auditory perception. On the basis of the function of audition as an alarm system that informs the organism about its immediate surroundings, and on empirical evidence that emotion can modulate auditory perception, we argue that auditory stimuli with greater emotional saliency would dominate perception in multisource environments. To test our hypothesis, we employed a change detection task in which participants were asked to indicate whether multisource auditory scenes were identical or different. Participants were better at detecting changes at the presence of an emotionally negative environment compared to neutral environment. Further, we found that participants were better at detecting changes of emotionally negative targets compared to neutral targets. Our results demonstrate that detecting changes in auditory scenes is influenced by emotion. The findings are discussed in the light of the theories of auditory attention, emotional modulation of attention, and the adaptive function of emotion for perception.	t	\N
23632885	It has been suggested that an auditory phantom percept is the result of multiple, parallel but overlapping networks. One of those networks encodes tinnitus loudness and is electrophysiologically separable from a nonspecific distress network. The present study investigates how these networks anatomically overlap, what networks are involved, and how and when these networks interact. Electroencephalography data of 317 tinnitus patients and 256 healthy subjects were analyzed, using independent component analysis. Results demonstrate that tinnitus is characterized by at least 2 major brain networks, each consisting of multiple independent components. One network reflects tinnitus distress, while another network reflects the loudness of the tinnitus. The component coherence analysis shows that the independent components that make up the distress and loudness networks communicate within their respective network at several discrete frequencies in parallel. The distress and loudness networks do not intercommunicate for patients without distress, but do when patients are distressed by their tinnitus. The obtained data demonstrate that the components that build up these 2 separable networks communicate at discrete frequencies within the network, and only between the distress and loudness networks in those patients in whom the symptoms are also clinically linked.	t	\N
23632973	The purpose of this study was to determine how the bandwidth of the hearing aid (HA) fitting affects bimodal speech recognition of listeners with a cochlear implant (CI) in one ear and severe-to-profound hearing loss in the unimplanted ear (but with residual hearing sufficient for wideband amplification using National Acoustic Laboratories Revised, Profound [NAL-RP] prescriptive guidelines; unaided thresholds no poorer than 95 dB HL through 2000 Hz). Recognition of sentence material in quiet and in noise was measured with the CI alone and with CI plus HA as the amplification provided by the HA in the high and mid-frequency regions was systematically reduced from the wideband condition (NAL-RP prescription). Modified bandwidths included upper frequency cutoffs of 2000, 1000, or 500 Hz. On average, significant bimodal benefit was obtained when the HA provided amplification at all frequencies with aidable residual hearing. Limiting the HA bandwidth to only low-frequency amplification (below 1000 Hz) did not yield significant improvements in performance over listening with the CI alone. These data suggest the importance of providing amplification across as wide a frequency region as permitted by audiometric thresholds in the HA used by bimodal users.	t	\N
23639338	To investigate auditory perception, speech production, and language ability of prelingually deaf toddlers with cerebral palsy (CP) who were implanted within a sensitive period and who received proper speech therapy. Comparison of their outcomes with age- and sex-matched CI recipients without additional disabilities was also performed. We retrospectively reviewed a cohort of pediatric CI in Samsung Medical Center. Eight CP subjects who received CI before 3 years of age and age-sex matched control recipients who had no additional disabilities except idiopathic sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) were included for the analysis. Preoperative evaluation included the Categories of Auditory Performance (CAP) score, Korean Version of the Ling's Stage (K-Ling), Sequenced Language Scale for Infants (SELSI), Bailey Scales of Infant Development II assessment, Social Maturity Scale test, and grading of CP severity using severity level and Gross Motor Function Classification System for CP (GMFCS). To measure the outcome, the CAP scores, K-Ling, and SELSI were performed at 3, 6, 12, and 24 months after implantation. Four CP children with outstanding performances showed comparable achievement with matched control recipients. These patients had less severe motor disabilities (mild-moderate severity, GMFCS level 1-3), better social quotient, and better cognitive abilities. Although the others showed poor language abilities and hardly produced meaningful speech, their CAP scores reached 1 or 2 in 24 months after implantation. Deaf children with CP could have various ranges of benefits up to the levels of normal peers whose only disability was hearing loss, when CI was performed within a critical period. Especially, children with mild or moderate CP had a favorable outcome after CI, equivalent to that of normal peers.	t	\N
23653412	It has previously been shown that the perceived roughness of a surface touched by one digit is influenced by the roughness of a different surface touched simultaneously by another digit on the same hand. The present study was designed to examine whether this is the case when surfaces of varying roughness are touched using digits on separate hands. Participants touched pairs of sandpaper surfaces, in sequence, using the same digit, and identified which of the two was rougher. Roughness discrimination was measured in the presence of distractor surfaces touched simultaneously with the target surface, but using a different digit either on the same or on the other hand. The overall perception of roughness of the attended surfaces was better on the left than on the right hand. Perceived roughness also varied systematically with the roughness of the distractor surfaces. Attended surfaces were more likely to be perceived as smoother when they were paired with smooth rather than rough distractors. Likewise, attended surfaces tended to be perceived as rougher with rough distractors. This pattern of results occurred whether the attended and distractor digits were on the same hand or different hands. These data confirm that it is difficult to restrict tactile attention for roughness to a single digit and show that this difficulty extends to restricting attention to a single hand. Furthermore, the effect of a stimulus at an unattended body location was not simply to impair perception in general, but to bias it in the roughness direction of the distractor surface.	t	\N
23654389	Auditory filter bandwidths are measured for a temporal process using an amplitude-modulation detection task. The signal is a 200 Hz wide, sinusoidally amplitude-modulated band of noise centered within an unmodulated notched-noise masker. A modulation rate of 10 Hz is used to avoid possible information loss at more central processing levels for high modulation rates. Threshold functions are obtained for 10-14 notch widths for each of four different center frequencies (0.6, 1, 2, and 4 kHz) to determine the maximum notch width at which the masker has an effect. The ratio of center frequency to maximum notch width is ~2 at all center frequencies. It is proposed that the bandwidths observed in temporal tasks, which are consistently greater than expected from the viewpoint of critical band theory, be characterized as "temporal critical bands." This proposal does not oppose, but provides a complement to the traditional critical band obtained in tasks involving spectral discrimination.	t	\N
23654392	Measurement of sensitivity to differences in the rate of change of auditory signal parameters is complicated by confounds among duration, extent, and velocity of the changing signal. Dooley and Moore [(1988) J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 84(4), 1332-1337] proposed a method for measuring sensitivity to rate of change using a duration discrimination task. They reported improved duration discrimination when an additional intensity or frequency change cue was present. The current experiments were an attempt to use this method to measure sensitivity to the rate of change in intensity and spatial position. Experiment 1 investigated whether duration discrimination was enhanced when additional cues of rate of intensity change, rate of spatial position change, or both were provided. Experiment 2 determined whether participant listening experience or the testing environment influenced duration discrimination task performance. Experiment 3 assessed whether duration discrimination could be used to measure sensitivity to rates of changes in intensity and spatial position for stimuli with lower rates of change, as well as emphasizing the constancy of the velocity cue. Results of these experiments showed that duration discrimination was impaired rather than enhanced by the additional velocity cues. The findings are discussed in terms of the demands of listening to concurrent changes along multiple auditory dimensions.	t	\N
23654413	Inharmonicity of piano tones is an essential property of their timbre that strongly influences the tuning, leading to the so-called octave stretching. It is proposed in this paper to jointly model the inharmonicity and tuning of pianos on the whole compass. While using a small number of parameters, these models are able to reflect both the specificities of instrument design and tuner's practice. An estimation algorithm is derived that can run either on a set of isolated note recordings, but also on chord recordings, assuming that the played notes are known. It is applied to extract parameters highlighting some tuner's choices on different piano types and to propose tuning curves for out-of-tune pianos or piano synthesizers.	t	\N
23656101	In this study, two methods are proposed to modify the normalized covariance metric (NCM) measure to reduce the effects of gain-induced nonlinear distortions introduced by most noise-suppression algorithms. Considering that the gain-induced distortions behave differently dependent on the signal-to-noise ratio between the noise-reduced speech and the noise, the first approach introduces a penalty factor involving this ratio in the modified NCM measure. The second approach deemphasizes segments marked with amplification distortions that contribute less to intelligibility via adaptive thresholding. Significantly higher correlations with intelligibility scores were obtained from the modified NCM measures compared with the original NCM measures.	t	\N
23656102	A reference-free speech quality measure is proposed and assessed for hearing aid applications. The proposed speech quality metric is validated with subjective ratings obtained from hearing impaired listeners under a number of noisy and reverberant conditions. In addition, a comparison is drawn between the proposed measure and a state-of-the-art electroacoustic measure that relies on a clean reference signal. The results showed that the reference-free measure had a lower correlation with the subjective ratings of hearing aid speech quality in comparison to the correlations achieved by the measure utilizing a reference signal. Nevertheless, advantages of the reference-free approach are discussed.	t	\N
23658664	In reverberant rooms with multiple-people talking, spatial separation between speech sources improves recognition of attended speech, even though both the head-shadowing and interaural-interaction unmasking cues are limited by numerous reflections. It is the perceptual integration between the direct wave and its reflections that bridges the direct-reflection temporal gaps and results in the spatial unmasking under reverberant conditions. This study further investigated (1) the temporal dynamic of the direct-reflection-integration-based spatial unmasking as a function of the reflection delay, and (2) whether this temporal dynamic is correlated with the listeners' auditory ability to temporally retain raw acoustic signals (i.e., the fast decaying primitive auditory memory, PAM). The results showed that recognition of the target speech against the speech-masker background is a descending exponential function of the delay of the simulated target reflection. In addition, the temporal extent of PAM is frequency dependent and markedly longer than that for perceptual fusion. More importantly, the temporal dynamic of the speech-recognition function is significantly correlated with the temporal extent of the PAM of low-frequency raw signals. Thus, we propose that a chain process, which links the earlier-stage PAM with the later-stage correlation computation, perceptual integration, and attention facilitation, plays a role in spatially unmasking target speech under reverberant conditions.	t	\N
23665378	The integration of auditory feedback with vocal motor output is important for the control of voice fundamental frequency (F0). We used a pitch-shift paradigm where subjects respond to an alteration, or shift, of voice pitch auditory feedback with a reflexive change in F0. We presented varying magnitudes of pitch shifted auditory feedback to subjects during vocalization and passive listening and measured event related potentials (ERPs) to the feedback shifts. Shifts were delivered at +100 and +400 cents (200 ms duration). The ERP data were modeled with dynamic causal modeling (DCM) techniques where the effective connectivity between the superior temporal gyrus (STG), inferior frontal gyrus and premotor areas were tested. We compared three main factors: the effect of intrinsic STG connectivity, STG modulation across hemispheres and the specific effect of hemisphere. A Bayesian model selection procedure was used to make inference about model families. Results suggest that both intrinsic STG and left to right STG connections are important in the identification of self-voice error and sensory motor integration. We identified differences in left-to-right STG connections between 100 cent and 400 cent shift conditions suggesting that self- and non-self-voice error are processed differently in the left and right hemisphere. These results also highlight the potential of DCM modeling of ERP responses to characterize specific network properties of forward models of voice control.	t	\N
23667666	Audition--what listeners hear--is generally studied in terms of the physical properties of sound stimuli and physiological properties of the auditory system. Based on recent work in vision, we here consider an alternative perspective that sensory percepts are based on past experience. In this framework, basic auditory qualities (e.g., loudness and pitch) are based on the frequency of occurrence of stimulus patterns in natural acoustic stimuli. To explore this concept of audition, we examined five well-documented psychophysical functions. The frequency of occurrence of acoustic patterns in a database of natural sound stimuli (speech) predicts some qualitative aspects of these functions, but with substantial quantitative discrepancies. This approach may offer a rationale for auditory phenomena that are difficult to explain in terms of the physical attributes of the stimuli as such.	t	\N
23678126	For effective interactions with our dynamic environment, it is critical for the brain to integrate motion information from the visual and auditory senses. Combining fMRI and psychophysics, this study investigated how the human brain integrates auditory and visual motion into benefits in motion discrimination. Subjects discriminated the motion direction of audiovisual stimuli that contained directional motion signal in the auditory, visual, audiovisual, or no modality at two levels of signal reliability. Therefore, this 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design manipulated: (1) auditory motion information (signal vs noise), (2) visual motion information (signal vs noise), and (3) reliability of motion signal (intact vs degraded). Behaviorally, subjects benefited significantly from audiovisual integration primarily for degraded auditory and visual motion signals while obtaining near ceiling performance for "unisensory" signals when these were reliable and intact. At the neural level, we show audiovisual motion integration bilaterally in the visual motion areas hMT+/V5+ and implicate the posterior superior temporal gyrus/planum temporale in auditory motion processing. Moreover, we show that the putamen integrates audiovisual signals into more accurate motion discrimination responses. Our results suggest audiovisual integration processes at both the sensory and response selection levels. In all of these regions, the operational profile of audiovisual integration followed the principle of inverse effectiveness, in which audiovisual response suppression for intact stimuli turns into response enhancements for degraded stimuli. This response profile parallels behavioral indices of audiovisual integration, in which subjects benefit significantly from audiovisual integration only for the degraded conditions.	t	\N
23684863	In ordinary conversations, literal meanings of an utterance are often quite different from implicated meanings and the inference about implicated meanings is essentially required for successful comprehension of the speaker's utterances. Inference of finding implicated meanings is based on the listener's assumption that the conversational partner says only relevant matters according to the maxim of relevance in Grice's theory of conversational implicature. To investigate the neural correlates of comprehending implicated meanings under the maxim of relevance, a total of 23 participants underwent an fMRI task with a series of conversational pairs, each consisting of a question and an answer. The experimental paradigm was composed of three conditions: explicit answers, moderately implicit answers, and highly implicit answers. Participants were asked to decide whether the answer to the Yes/No question meant 'Yes' or 'No'. Longer reaction time was required for the highly implicit answers than for the moderately implicit answers without affecting the accuracy. The fMRI results show that the left anterior temporal lobe, left angular gyrus, and left posterior middle temporal gyrus had stronger activation in both moderately and highly implicit conditions than in the explicit condition. Comprehension of highly implicit answers had increased activations in additional regions including the left inferior frontal gyrus, left medial prefrontal cortex, left posterior cingulate cortex and right anterior temporal lobe. The activation results indicate involvement of these regions in the inference process to build coherence between literally irrelevant but pragmatically associated utterances under the maxim of relevance. Especially, the left anterior temporal lobe showed high sensitivity to the level of implicitness and showed increased activation for highly versus moderately implicit conditions, which imply its central role in inference such as semantic integration. The right hemisphere activation, uniquely found in the anterior temporal lobe for highly implicit utterances, suggests its competence for integrating distant concepts in implied utterances under the relevance principle.	t	\N
23691185	Listening to and understanding people in a "cocktail-party situation" is a remarkable feature of the human auditory system. Here we investigated the neural correlates of the ability to localize a particular sound among others in an acoustically cluttered environment with healthy subjects. In a sound localization task, five different natural sounds were presented from five virtual spatial locations during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Activity related to auditory stream segregation was revealed in posterior superior temporal gyrus bilaterally, anterior insula, supplementary motor area, and frontoparietal network. Moreover, the results indicated critical roles of left planum temporale in extracting the sound of interest among acoustical distracters and the precuneus in orienting spatial attention to the target sound. We hypothesized that the left-sided lateralization of the planum temporale activation is related to the higher specialization of the left hemisphere for analysis of spectrotemporal sound features. Furthermore, the precuneus - a brain area known to be involved in the computation of spatial coordinates across diverse frames of reference for reaching to objects - seems to be also a crucial area for accurately determining locations of auditory targets in an acoustically complex scene of multiple sound sources. The precuneus thus may not only be involved in visuo-motor processes, but may also subserve related functions in the auditory modality.	t	\N
23694737	Multiple auditory steady-state responses (ASSRs) to air- and bone-conduction stimuli were recorded in young children with otitis media with effusion (OME). After treatment for OME, differences between pre-treatment bone-conduction ASSR levels and post-treatment conditioned orientation reflex (COR) or air-conduction ASSR levels were examined, and compared with ASSR-estimated air-bone gap (ABG) before treatment. Navigator Pro with Master was used to assess the threshold of air- and bone-conduction ASSR in both ears at 500Hz, 1000Hz, 2000Hz and 4000Hz. For bone-conduction ASSR, RadioEar B-71 bone-vibrator placed on the mastoid was used with white-noise masking on the contralateral ear. After ventilation tube placement, the thresholds of COR got closer to those of pre-treatment bone-conduction ASSR in young children with OME. Moreover, post-treatment air-conduction ASSR thresholds also got closer to those of pre-treatment bone-conduction ASSR. The differences between pre-treatment bone-conduction ASSR thresholds and post-treatment COR or air-conduction ASSR thresholds became much smaller than ASSR-estimated ABG before treatment. These findings suggest that bone-conduction ASSR can assess the normal or near normal cochlear sensitivity in young children with conductive hearing loss. It is also suggested that ASSR-estimated ABG can be used clinically to predict their accurate ABG.	t	\N
23694738	The aim of our study is to investigate the relationship between the complaint of speech understanding in noisy environments and the findings of contralateral suppression of transient evoked otoacoustic emissions and speech recognition in noise test methods in individuals with normal hearing. Sixty-nine subjects between 18 and 53 years of age with normal hearing participated in the present study. The subjects were assigned to one of two groups, reported difficulty understanding speech in noise or no reported difficulty understanding speech in noise. After hearing and immitancemetric evaluation, contralateral suppression of transient evoked otoacoustic emissions and speech recognition in noise tests were administered to both groups. Suppression was calculated in half-octave frequency bands centered at 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0kHz. We found out that the speech recognition in noise scores and contralateral suppression values were lower in subjects with the complaint of speech understanding in noise than those who do not have such complaints. We concluded that the complaint of speech understanding in noise may be related to the medial efferent system dysfunction, so central auditory nervous system.	t	\N
23700960	We investigated the effects of focusing attention towards auditory or somatosensory stimuli on perceptual sensitivity and response bias using a signal detection task. Participants (N = 44) performed an unspeeded detection task in which weak (individually calibrated) somatosensory or auditory stimuli were delivered. The focus of attention was manipulated by the presentation of a visual cue at the start of each trial. The visual cue consisted of the word "warmth" or the word "tone". This word cue was predictive of the corresponding target on two-thirds of the trials. As hypothesised, the results showed that cueing attention to a specific sensory modality resulted in a higher perceptual sensitivity for validly cued targets than for invalidly cued targets, as well as in a more liberal response criterion for reporting stimuli in the valid modality than in the invalid modality. The value of this experimental paradigm for investigating excessive attentional focus or hypervigilance in various non-clinical and clinical populations is discussed.	t	\N
23705807	Cochlear implantation (CI) is a standard treatment for severe-profound sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). However, consensus has yet to be reached on its effectiveness for hearing loss caused by auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD). This review aims to summarize and synthesize current evidence of the effectiveness of CI in improving speech recognition in children with ANSD. Systematic review. A total of 27 studies from an initial selection of 237. All selected studies were observational in design, including case studies, cohort studies, and comparisons between children with ANSD and SNHL. Most children with ANSD achieved open-set speech recognition with their CI. Speech recognition ability was found to be equivalent in CI users (who previously performed poorly with hearing aids) and hearing-aid users. Outcomes following CI generally appeared similar in children with ANSD and SNHL. Assessment of study quality, however, suggested substantial methodological concerns, particularly in relation to issues of bias and confounding, limiting the robustness of any conclusions around effectiveness. Currently available evidence is compatible with favourable outcomes from CI in children with ANSD. However, this evidence is weak. Stronger evidence is needed to support cost-effective clinical policy and practice in this area.	t	\N
23708733	Dyslexic and non-dyslexic readers engaged in a short training aimed at learning eight basic letter-speech sound correspondences within an artificial orthography. We examined whether a letter-speech sound binding deficit is behaviorally detectable within the initial steps of learning a novel script. Both letter knowledge and word reading ability within the artificial script were assessed. An additional goal was to investigate the influence of instructional approach on the initial learning of letter-speech sound correspondences. We assigned children from both groups to one of three different training conditions: (a) explicit instruction, (b) implicit associative learning within a computer game environment, or (c) a combination of (a) and (b) in which explicit instruction is followed by implicit learning. Our results indicated that dyslexics were outperformed by the controls on a time-pressured binding task and a word reading task within the artificial orthography, providing empirical support for the view that a letter-speech sound binding deficit is a key factor in dyslexia. A combination of explicit instruction and implicit techniques proved to be a more powerful tool in the initial teaching of letter-sound correspondences than implicit training alone.	t	\N
23714710	To investigate safety and efficacy of a new transcutaneous bone conduction hearing implant, over a 3-month follow-up period. Prospective, single-subject repeated-measures design in which each subject serves as his/her own control. Departments of Otolaryngology at 4 hospitals in Germany and Austria. Subjects were 12 German-speaking adults who suffered from conductive or mixed hearing loss. The upper bone conduction threshold limit was set to 45 dB HL at frequencies between 500 Hz and 4 kHz. Implantation of a transcutaneous bone conduction hearing implant. Subjects' speech perception (word recognition scores and SRT 50%) and audiometric thresholds (air conduction, bone conduction and sound field at frequencies 500 Hz to 8 kHz) were assessed preoperatively, 1 month postoperatively and 3 months postoperatively. The subjects were monitored for adverse events and given a questionnaire to assess their satisfaction levels. Speech perception as measured by word recognition scores and SRT 50% improved on average about 78.8% and 25 dB HL, respectively, 3 months after implantation. Aided thresholds also improved postoperatively at all tested frequencies and continued to improve from 1 to 3 months postoperatively. Air conduction and bone conduction thresholds showed no significant changes, confirming that subjects' residual unaided hearing was not deteriorated by the treatment. Only minor adverse events were reported and resolved by the end of the study. The new transcutaneous bone conduction implant was demonstrated to be safe and effective in adults up to 3 months of device use.	t	\N
23715097	In this study, we used magnetoencephalography and a mismatch paradigm to investigate speech processing in stroke patients with auditory comprehension deficits and age-matched control subjects. We probed connectivity within and between the two temporal lobes in response to phonemic (different word) and acoustic (same word) oddballs using dynamic causal modelling. We found stronger modulation of self-connections as a function of phonemic differences for control subjects versus aphasics in left primary auditory cortex and bilateral superior temporal gyrus. The patients showed stronger modulation of connections from right primary auditory cortex to right superior temporal gyrus (feed-forward) and from left primary auditory cortex to right primary auditory cortex (interhemispheric). This differential connectivity can be explained on the basis of a predictive coding theory which suggests increased prediction error and decreased sensitivity to phonemic boundaries in the aphasics' speech network in both hemispheres. Within the aphasics, we also found behavioural correlates with connection strengths: a negative correlation between phonemic perception and an inter-hemispheric connection (left superior temporal gyrus to right superior temporal gyrus), and positive correlation between semantic performance and a feedback connection (right superior temporal gyrus to right primary auditory cortex). Our results suggest that aphasics with impaired speech comprehension have less veridical speech representations in both temporal lobes, and rely more on the right hemisphere auditory regions, particularly right superior temporal gyrus, for processing speech. Despite this presumed compensatory shift in network connectivity, the patients remain significantly impaired.	t	\N
23716019	Our environment is richly structured, with objects producing correlated information within and across sensory modalities. A prominent challenge faced by our perceptual system is to learn such regularities. Here, we examined statistical learning and addressed learners' ability to track transitional probabilities between elements in the auditory and visual modalities. Specifically, we investigated whether cross-modal information affects statistical learning within a single modality. Participants were familiarized with a statistically structured modality (e.g., either audition or vision) accompanied by different types of cues in a second modality (e.g., vision or audition). The results revealed that statistical learning within either modality is affected by cross-modal information, with learning being enhanced or reduced according to the type of cue provided in the second modality.	t	\N
23716122	Cross-orientation masking (XOM) occurs when the detection of a test grating is masked by a superimposed grating at an orthogonal orientation, and is thought to reveal the suppressive effects mediating contrast normalization. Medina and Mullen (2009) reported that XOM was greater for chromatic than achromatic stimuli at equivalent spatial and temporal frequencies. Here we address whether the greater suppression found in binocular color vision originates from a monocular or interocular site, or both. We measure monocular and dichoptic masking functions for red-green color contrast and achromatic contrast at three different spatial frequencies (0.375, 0.75, and 1.5 cpd, 2 Hz). We fit these functions with a modified two-stage masking model (Meese & Baker, 2009) to extract the monocular and interocular weights of suppression. We find that the weight of monocular suppression is significantly higher for color than achromatic contrast, whereas dichoptic suppression is similar for both. These effects are invariant across spatial frequency. We then apply the model to the binocular masking data using the measured values of the monocular and interocular sources of suppression and show that these are sufficient to account for color binocular masking. We conclude that the greater strength of chromatic XOM has a monocular origin that transfers through to the binocular site.	t	\N
23716218	High-frequency pure tones (>6 kHz), which alone do not produce salient melodic pitch information, provide melodic pitch information when they form part of a harmonic complex tone with a lower fundamental frequency (F0). We explored this phenomenon in normal-hearing listeners by measuring F0 difference limens (F0DLs) for harmonic complex tones and pure-tone frequency difference limens (FDLs) for each of the tones within the harmonic complexes. Two spectral regions were tested. The low- and high-frequency band-pass regions comprised harmonics 6-11 of a 280- or 1,400-Hz F0, respectively; thus, for the high-frequency region, audible frequencies present were all above 7 kHz. Frequency discrimination of inharmonic log-spaced tone complexes was also tested in control conditions. All tones were presented in a background of noise to limit the detection of distortion products. As found in previous studies, F0DLs in the low region were typically no better than the FDL for each of the constituent pure tones. In contrast, F0DLs for the high-region complex were considerably better than the FDLs found for most of the constituent (high-frequency) pure tones. The data were compared with models of optimal spectral integration of information, to assess the relative influence of peripheral and more central noise in limiting performance. The results demonstrate a dissociation in the way pitch information is integrated at low and high frequencies and provide new challenges and constraints in the search for the underlying neural mechanisms of pitch.	t	\N
23716223	We report a series of psychophysics experiments that investigated listeners' sensitivity to changes in complex acoustic scenes. Specifically, we sought to test the hypothesis that change detection is supported by sensitivity to change-related transients (an abrupt change in stimulus power within a certain frequency band, associated with the appearance or disappearance of a scene element). This hypothesis, in the context of natural scenes, is commonly dismissed on account that the elements of the scene may themselves be characterized by on-going energy fluctuations that would mask any genuine change-related transients. We created artificial 'scenes' populated by multiple pure-tone components. Tones were modulated (by a square wave at a distinct rate) so as to mimic the fluctuation properties of complex sounds. "Change" was defined as the appearance or disappearance of one such element. Importantly, such scenes lack semantic attributes, which may have been a limiting factor in interpreting previous auditory change-detection studies, thus allowing us to probe the low-level, pre-semantic, processes involved in auditory change perception. In Experiment 1 we measured listeners' ability to detect item appearance and disappearance in conditions where change-related transients are masked by a silent gap. In Experiment 2, we investigated the effect of an acoustic distractor - a brief signal that occurs at the time of change, but does not mask any scene components. The data show that gaps adversely affected the processing of item appearance but not disappearance. However, distractors reduced both -appearance and disappearance detection. Together our results suggest a role for sensitivity to transients in the process of auditory change detection, similar to what has been demonstrated for visual change detection.	t	\N
23716230	Advances in the design of cochlear implants (CIs), as well as improved CI surgical techniques, have led to an increase in the number of patients who retain some residual low-frequency acoustic hearing in the implanted ear. Many of these patients also possess some hearing in the unimplanted ear. Although their low-frequency audiometric configurations will likely be asymmetrical across ears, they may nevertheless be able to process interaural time differences (ITDs) which might aid them in localizing sound sources and achieving a spatial release from masking. We recently published research (Brown and Yost 2011) showing how sensitivity to ITD differences was affected when the stimulus bandwidths were varied between the ears, to simulate asymmetrical hearing loss in the low-frequency region. We showed that ITD discrimination thresholds decreased as the bandwidth of the noise presented to one ear increased beyond that presented to the other ear. In the current experiment, we expand upon those conditions to ­further explore ITD processing in the presence of interaural spectral differences. ITD sensitivity was measured when a fixed band of noise was presented to one ear and the center frequency of a spectral band of the same width was moved upward in frequency in the other ear. The data suggest that listeners have difficulty attending to ITD differences in one spectral region when there are other spectral regions that contain conflicting or inconsistent spatial information, which is likely to be the case for many CI patients who possess bilateral residual hearing.	t	\N
23716240	Jørgensen and Dau (J Acoust Soc Am 130:1475-1487, 2011) proposed the speech-based envelope power spectrum model (sEPSM) in an attempt to overcome the limitations of the classical speech transmission index (STI) and speech intelligibility index (SII) in conditions with nonlinearly processed speech. Instead of considering the reduction of the temporal modulation energy as the intelligibility metric, as assumed in the STI, the sEPSM applies the signal-to-noise ratio in the envelope domain (SNRenv). This metric was shown to be the key for predicting the intelligibility of reverberant speech as well as noisy speech processed by spectral subtraction. The key role of the SNRenv metric is further supported here by the ability of a short-term version of the sEPSM to predict speech masking release for different speech materials and modulated interferers. However, the sEPSM cannot account for speech subjected to phase jitter, a condition in which the spectral structure of the intelligibility of speech signal is strongly affected, while the broadband temporal envelope is kept largely intact. In contrast, the effects of this distortion can be predicted -successfully by the spectro-temporal modulation index (STMI) (Elhilali et al., Speech Commun 41:331-348, 2003), which assumes an explicit analysis of the spectral "ripple" structure of the speech signal. However, since the STMI applies the same decision metric as the STI, it fails to account for spectral subtraction. The results from this study suggest that the SNRenv might reflect a powerful decision metric, while some explicit across-frequency analysis seems crucial in some conditions. How such across-frequency analysis is "realized" in the auditory system remains unresolved.	t	\N
23716257	We recently showed that listeners with normal hearing thresholds vary in their ability to direct spatial attention and that ability is related to the fidelity of temporal coding in the brainstem. Here, we recruited additional middle-aged listeners and extended our analysis of the brainstem response, measured using the frequency-following response (FFR). We found that even though age does not predict overall selective attention ability, middle-aged listeners are more susceptible to the detrimental effects of reverberant energy than young adults. We separated the overall FFR into orthogonal envelope and carrier components and used an existing model to predict which auditory channels drive each component. We find that responses in mid- to high-frequency auditory channels dominate envelope FFR, while lower-frequency channels dominate the carrier FFR. Importantly, we find that which component of the FFR predicts selective attention performance changes with age. We suggest that early aging degrades peripheral temporal coding in mid-to-high frequencies, interfering with the coding of envelope interaural time differences. We argue that, compared to young adults, middle-aged listeners, who do not have strong temporal envelope coding, have more trouble following a conversation in a reverberant room because they are forced to rely on fragile carrier ITDs that are susceptible to the degrading effects of reverberation.	t	\N
23716261	Humans and other animals can attend to one of multiple sounds, and -follow it selectively over time. The neural underpinnings of this perceptual feat remain mysterious. Some studies have concluded that sounds are heard as separate streams when they activate well-separated populations of central auditory neurons, and that this process is largely pre-attentive. Here, we propose instead that stream formation depends primarily on temporal coherence between responses that encode various features of a sound source. Furthermore, we postulate that only when attention is directed toward a particular feature (e.g., pitch or location) do all other temporally coherent features of that source (e.g., timbre and location) become bound together as a stream that is segregated from the incoherent features of other sources. Experimental -neurophysiological evidence in support of this hypothesis will be presented. The focus, however, will be on a computational realization of this idea and a discussion of the insights learned from simulations to disentangle complex sound sources such as speech and music. The model consists of a representational stage of early and cortical auditory processing that creates a multidimensional depiction of various sound attributes such as pitch, location, and spectral resolution. The following stage computes a coherence matrix that summarizes the pair-wise correlations between all channels making up the cortical representation. Finally, the perceived segregated streams are extracted by decomposing the coherence matrix into its uncorrelated components. Questions raised by the model are discussed, especially on the role of attention in streaming and the search for further neural correlates of streaming percepts.	t	\N
23720086	The CHRNA4 gene is known to be associated with individual differences in attention. However, its associations with other cognitive functions remain to be elucidated. In the present study, we investigated the effects of genetic variations in CHRNA4 on rapid scene categorization by 100 healthy human participants. In Experiment 1, we also conducted the Attention Network Test (ANT) in order to examine whether the genetic effects could be accounted for by attention. CHRNA4 was genotyped as carrying the TT, CT, or CC allele. The scene categorization task required participants to judge whether the category of a scene image (natural or man-made) was consistent with a cue word displayed at the response phase. The target-mask stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) ranged from 13 to 93 ms. In comparison with CC-allele carriers, CT- and TT-allele carriers responded more accurately at the long SOA (93 ms) only during natural-scene categorization. In contrast, we observed no consistent association between CHRNA4 and the ANT, and no intertask correlation between scene categorization and the ANT. To validate our natural-scene categorization results, Experiment 2, carried out with an independent sample of 100 participants and a different stimulus set, successfully replicated the association between CHRNA4 genotypes and natural-scene categorization accuracy at long SOAs (67 and 93 ms). Our findings demonstrate, for the first time, that genetic variations in CHRNA4 can moderately contribute to individual differences in natural-scene categorization performance.	t	\N
23727710	Successful interactions between people are dependent on rapid recognition of social cues. We investigated whether head direction--a powerful social signal--is processed in the absence of conscious awareness. We used continuous flash interocular suppression to render stimuli invisible and compared the reaction time for face detection when faces were turned towards the viewer and turned slightly away. We found that faces turned towards the viewer break through suppression faster than faces that are turned away, regardless of eye direction. Our results suggest that detection of a face with attention directed at the viewer occurs even in the absence of awareness of that face. While previous work has demonstrated that stimuli that signal threat are processed without awareness, our data suggest that the social relevance of a face, defined more broadly, is evaluated in the absence of awareness.	t	\N
23734220	To understand why human sensitivity for complex objects is so low, we study how word identification combines eye and ear or parts of a word (features, letters, syllables). Our observers identify printed and spoken words presented concurrently or separately. When researchers measure threshold (energy of the faintest visible or audible signal) they may report either sensitivity (one over the human threshold) or efficiency (ratio of the best possible threshold to the human threshold). When the best possible algorithm identifies an object (like a word) in noise, its threshold is independent of how many parts the object has. But, with human observers, efficiency depends on the task. In some tasks, human observers combine parts efficiently, needing hardly more energy to identify an object with more parts. In other tasks, they combine inefficiently, needing energy nearly proportional to the number of parts, over a 60∶1 range. Whether presented to eye or ear, efficiency for detecting a short sinusoid (tone or grating) with few features is a substantial 20%, while efficiency for identifying a word with many features is merely 1%. Why? We show that the low human sensitivity for words is a cost of combining their many parts. We report a dichotomy between inefficient combining of adjacent features and efficient combining across senses. Joining our results with a survey of the cue-combination literature reveals that cues combine efficiently only if they are perceived as aspects of the same object. Observers give different names to adjacent letters in a word, and combine them inefficiently. Observers give the same name to a word's image and sound, and combine them efficiently. The brain's machinery optimally combines only cues that are perceived as originating from the same object. Presumably such cues each find their own way through the brain to arrive at the same object representation.	t	\N
23742322	This study tested the hypothesis that the reduced spatial release from speech-on-speech masking typically observed in listeners with sensorineural hearing loss results from increased energetic masking. Target sentences were presented simultaneously with a speech masker, and the spectral overlap between the pair (and hence the energetic masking) was systematically varied. The results are consistent with increased energetic masking in listeners with hearing loss that limits performance when listening in speech mixtures. However, listeners with hearing loss did not exhibit reduced spatial release from masking when stimuli were filtered into narrow bands.	t	\N
23742375	This study investigates the effectiveness of three high variability training paradigms in training 42 speakers of American English to correctly perceive and produce Spanish intervocalic /d, r, r/. Since Spanish spirantization and English flapping both affect /d/ intervocalically, the acquisition of the /d/-/r/ contrast proves difficult for English learners of Spanish. The acquisition of the trill /r/ is also problematic because it is a new phoneme for English learners and is articulatorily difficult to produce. Past research reported that high-variability perceptual training improves both perception and production [Bradlow et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 101, 2299-2310 (1997); Wang et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 113, 1033-1043 (2003)] and that production training improves both as well [Hirata, Comp. Assisted Lang. Learning 17, 357-376 (2004)]. However, trainees were able to listen to stimuli during production training, making it unclear whether production training alone transfers to perception. This study systematically controls both training modalities so they can be directly compared and introduces a third training methodology that includes both perception and production. All three training paradigms proved effective. While perception and production trainees primarily made gains in perception, combination trainees made gains in production. The effectiveness of each training modality depended on the nature of the contrast being trained and the modality of the test.	t	\N
23751862	We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to localize brain activity related to the retention of tones differing in pitch. Participants retained one or two simultaneously presented tones. After a two second interval a test tone was presented and the task was to determine if that tone was in memory. We focused on brain activity during the retention interval that increased as the number of sounds retained in auditory short-term memory (ASTM) increased. Source analyses revealed that the superior temporal gyrus in both hemispheres is involved in ASTM. In the right hemisphere, the inferior temporal gyrus, the inferior frontal gyrus, and parietal structures also play a role. Our method provides good spatial and temporal resolution for investigating neuronal correlates of ASTM and, as it is the first MEG study using a memory load manipulation without using sequences of tones, it allowed us to isolate brain regions that most likely reflect the simple retention of tones.	t	\N
23751864	Neurobiological correlates of adaptation to spectrally degraded speech were investigated with fMRI before and after exposure to a portable real-time speech processor that implements an acoustic simulation model of a cochlear implant (CI). The speech processor, in conjunction with isolating insert earphones and a microphone to capture environment sounds, was worn by participants over a two week chronic exposure period. fMRI and behavioral speech comprehension testing were conducted before and after this two week period. After using the simulator each day for 2h, participants significantly improved in word and sentence recognition scores. fMRI shows that these improvements came accompanied by changes in patterns of neuronal activation. In particular, we found additional recruitment of visual, motor, and working memory areas after the perceptual training period. These findings suggest that the human brain is able to adapt in a short period of time to a degraded auditory signal under a natural learning environment, and gives insight on how a CI might interact with the central nervous system. This paradigm can be furthered to investigate neural correlates of new rehabilitation, training, and signal processing strategies non-invasively in normal hearing listeners to improve CI patient outcomes.	t	\N
23757047	Temporal orienting--that is, selective attention to instants in time--has been shown to modulate performance in terms of faster responses in a variety of paradigms. Electrophysiological recordings have shown that temporal orienting modulates neural processing at early, probably perceptual, and late, probably decision- or response-related, stages. Recently, it was shown that the effect of temporal orienting on early auditory brain potentials is independent of the effect of the physical sound feature intensity. This indicates that temporal orienting might not affect stimulus processing by increasing the sensory gain of attended stimuli. In the present study, we investigated whether the independence of temporal-orienting and sound-intensity effects could be replicated behaviorally. Sequences were presented that were either rhythmic, most likely creating temporal expectations, or arrhythmic, presumably not creating such expectations. As hypothesized, the main effects of temporal expectation and sound intensity on reaction times were independent (Experiment 1). The exact pattern of results was replicated with a slightly altered paradigm (Experiment 2) and with a different kind of task (Experiment 3). In sum, these results corroborate the notion that the effect of temporal orienting might not rely on the same processes as the effect of sound intensity does.	t	\N
23760984	The neural mechanisms of pitch coding have been debated for more than a century. The two main mechanisms are coding based on the profiles of neural firing rates across auditory nerve fibers with different characteristic frequencies (place-rate coding), and coding based on the phase-locked temporal pattern of neural firing (temporal coding). Phase locking precision can be partly assessed by recording the frequency-following response (FFR), a scalp-recorded electrophysiological response that reflects synchronous activity in subcortical neurons. Although features of the FFR have been widely used as indices of pitch coding acuity, only a handful of studies have directly investigated the relation between the FFR and behavioral pitch judgments. Furthermore, the contribution of degraded neural synchrony (as indexed by the FFR) to the pitch perception impairments of older listeners and those with hearing loss is not well known. Here, the relation between the FFR and pure-tone frequency discrimination was investigated in listeners with a wide range of ages and absolute thresholds, to assess the respective contributions of subcortical neural synchrony and other age-related and hearing loss-related mechanisms to frequency discrimination performance. FFR measures of neural synchrony and absolute thresholds independently contributed to frequency discrimination performance. Age alone, i.e., once the effect of subcortical neural synchrony measures or absolute thresholds had been partialed out, did not contribute to frequency discrimination. Overall, the results suggest that frequency discrimination of pure tones may depend both on phase locking precision and on separate mechanisms affected in hearing loss.	t	\N
23761928	In vision, humans use summary statistics (e.g., the average facial expression of a crowd) to efficiently perceive the gist of groups of features. Here, we present direct evidence that ensemble coding is also important for auditory processing. We found that listeners could accurately estimate the mean frequency of a set of logarithmically spaced pure tones presented in a temporal sequence (Experiment 1). Their performance was severely reduced when only a subset of tones from a given sequence was presented (Experiment 2), which demonstrates that ensemble coding is based on a substantial number of the tones in a sequence. This precise ensemble coding occurred despite very limited representation of individual tones from the sequence: Listeners were poor at identifying specific individual member tones (Experiment 3) and at determining their positions in the sequence (Experiment 4). Together, these results indicate that summary statistical coding is not limited to visual processing and is an important auditory mechanism for extracting ensemble frequency information from sequences of sounds.	t	\N
23769004	A 3-year longitudinal study was conducted to investigate changes in vocal quality as a result of singing training at a tertiary level conservatorium in Australia. Singers performed a messa di voce (MDV) at intervals of 6 months over the 3-year period of training. The study investigated the evolving acoustic features of the singers' voices exhibited during the MDV, including sound pressure level (SPL), short-term energy ratio (STER), duration, and vibrato parameters of the fundamental frequency (F0), SPL, and STER. The maximum SPL exhibited a marginal systematic increase over the training period, but the maximum STER did not systematically change. F0 vibrato extent increased significantly, whereas the extent of SPL and STER vibrato did not change significantly.	t	\N
23772828	Noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) is the most reported occupational health disease in the Netherlands. The internet-based speech-in-noise test Earcheck (Albrecht et al, 2005; Leensen et al, 2011b) is designed to detect beginning NIHL and can be a valuable tool in occupational hearing health surveillance. The aim of this study is to investigate the validity of Earcheck compared to regular screening audiometry. Subjects performed online Earcheck tests at home. The results are compared to a pure-tone screening audiogram obtained during regular occupational health examination. A subgroup performed the measurements twice to assess test-retest reliability. Two hundred and forty-nine male construction employees who recently had a periodic occupational health examination participated. An average learning effect of -1.6 dB was found, that reduced with increasing test number. The test-retest variability was 1.6 dB. Sensitivity to detect beginning NIHL was 68%, with a specificity of 71%. Although sensitivity and specificity values are only moderate, the broad internet application still promises a valuable addition to current practice. The relatively high learning effect indicates that more reliable results can be obtained after a longer test session. When this is put into practice some improvement in sensitivity and specificity may be expected as well.	t	\N
23774181	A linguistic construction is typically viewed as encoding the pairing of syntactic form and semantic information that is independent of the meaning of constituent words. Here with the event-related potentials (ERPs) we demonstrate that such a construction can also encode pragmatic constraints (event likelihood) that immediately influence online sentence comprehension and the associated neural activity. The lian…dou…construction in Chinese (similar to even in English) normally describes an event of low expectedness (a semantic constraint); it also introduces a pragmatic scale implying that any event with a higher likelihood than the event described must occur (pragmatic inference). By embedding a highly likely event (a rich man buying a house) or an underspecified event (a man buying a house) in the construction, we created an incongruent condition and an underspecified condition and compared both with a control condition in which an event of low expectedness (a poor man buying a house) was described. ERPs on the main verb phrases showed an N400 with a maximum in the right hemisphere followed by a late negativity with an anterior maximum for both the incongruent and underspecified conditions, with a larger N400 effect for the former than for the latter. ERPs on the sentence-final phrases showed a sustained negativity for the incongruent, but not for the underspecified condition. The N400 effect may reflect the increased difficulty in unifying the current event into the lian…dou… construction. The late negativity may reflect a second-pass revision according to the likelihood scale to satisfy the pragmatic constraints of the construction.	t	\N
23786393	The purpose of this study was to test the ability to discriminate low-frequency pure-tone stimuli for ears with and without contralateral dead regions, in subjects with bilateral high-frequency hearing loss; we examined associations between hearing loss characteristics and frequency discrimination of low-frequency stimuli in subjects with high-frequency hearing loss. Cochlear dead regions were diagnosed using the TEN-HL test. A frequency discrimination test utilizing an adaptive three-alternative forced choice method provided difference limens for reference frequencies 0.25 kHz and 0.5 kHz. Among 105 subjects with bilateral high-frequency hearing loss, unilateral dead regions were found in 15 subjects. These, and an additional 15 matched control subjects without dead regions, were included in the study. Ears with dead regions performed best at the frequency discrimination test. Ears with a contralateral dead region performed significantly better than ears without a contralateral dead region at 0.5 kHz, the reference frequency closest to the mean audiogram cut-off, while the opposite result was obtained at 0.25 kHz. Results may be seen as sign of a contralateral effect of unilateral dead regions on the discrimination of stimuli with frequencies well below the audiogram cut-off in adult subjects with bilateral high-frequency hearing loss.	t	\N
23786439	Most theories of human language production assume that generating a sentence involves several stages, including an initial stage where the prelinguistic message is determined and a subsequent stage of grammatical encoding. However, it is contentious whether grammatical encoding involves separate stages of grammatical-function assignment and linearization. To address this question, we examined the mapping between the message level and grammatical encoding in two structural priming experiments in which German speakers choose between three different structures expressing ditransitive events. Although speakers showed a tendency to repeat the order of constituents (noun phrase-prepositional phrase, NP-PP, vs. NP-NP), they were additionally primed to repeat the order of thematic roles when constituent structure was constant (NPRECIPIENT-NPTHEME vs. NPTHEME-NPRECIPIENT). Experiment 2 found that the latter effect could not be due to persistence of the order of phrases referring to animate and inanimate entities. These results suggest a direct mapping of thematic roles to word order, consistent with a model in which the message is mapped onto syntactic structure in a single stage.	t	\N
23787044	Coordinating movements to music is often considered a uniquely human skill. A new study dispels this notion by showing that male Australian lyrebirds also perform 'dance' moves which are predictably matched with specific songs in their display routines.	t	\N
23789391	Auditory evoked response and mismatch negativity potential have been studied using the reversed odd-ball paradigm of standard and deviant stimulus presentation. In the experiments, three types of spatial sound stimuli (stationary and moving either gradually or abruptly from the head midline) were presented in three configurations. Each configuration employed one stimulus type as standard and the other two types as deviants. It was demonstrated that the configuration reversals influenced significantly the evoked response and mismatch negativity. The results obtained are discussed as the possible evidence of the categorical perception of auditory motion revealed at the earlier stages of sound processing in the hearing system.	t	\N
23789637	Pickering & Garrod (P&G) put forward the interesting idea that language production relies on forward modeling operating at multiple processing levels. The evidence currently available to substantiate this idea mostly concerns sensorimotor processes and not more abstract linguistic levels (e.g., syntax, semantics, phonology). The predictions that follow from the claim seem too general, in their current form, to guide specific empirical tests.	t	\N
23789872	We welcome the proposal to use forward models to understand predictive processes in language processing. However, Pickering & Garrod (P&G) miss the opportunity to provide a strong framework for future work. Forward models need to be pursued in the context of learning. This naturally leads to questions about what prediction error these models aim to minimize.	t	\N
23790043	Although the target article emphasizes the important role of prediction in language use, prediction may well also play a key role in the initial formation of linguistic representations, that is, in language development. We outline the role of prediction in three relevant language-learning domains: transitional probabilities, statistical preemption, and construction learning.	t	\N
23792078	Abundant evidence from both field and lab studies has established that conspecific vocalizations (CVs) are of critical ecological significance for a wide variety of species, including humans, non-human primates, rodents, and other mammals and birds. Correspondingly, a number of experiments have demonstrated behavioral processing advantages for CVs, such as in discrimination and memory tasks. Further, a wide range of experiments have described brain regions in many species that appear to be specialized for processing CVs. For example, several neural regions have been described in both mammals and birds wherein greater neural responses are elicited by CVs than by comparison stimuli such as heterospecific vocalizations, nonvocal complex sounds, and artificial stimuli. These observations raise the question of whether these regions reflect domain-specific neural mechanisms dedicated to processing CVs, or alternatively, if these regions reflect domain-general neural mechanisms for representing complex sounds of learned significance. Inasmuch as CVs can be viewed as complex combinations of basic spectrotemporal features, the plausibility of the latter position is supported by a large body of literature describing modulated cortical and subcortical representation of a variety of acoustic features that have been experimentally associated with stimuli of natural behavioral significance (such as food rewards). Herein, we review a relatively small body of existing literature describing the roles of experience, learning, and memory in the emergence of species-typical neural representations of CVs and auditory system plasticity. In both songbirds and mammals, manipulations of auditory experience as well as specific learning paradigms are shown to modulate neural responses evoked by CVs, either in terms of overall firing rate or temporal firing patterns. In some cases, CV-sensitive neural regions gradually acquire representation of non-CV stimuli with which subjects have training and experience. These results parallel literature in humans describing modulation of responses in face-sensitive neural regions through learning and experience. Thus, although many questions remain, the available evidence is consistent with the notion that CVs may acquire distinct neural representation through domain-general mechanisms for representing complex auditory objects that are of learned importance to the animal. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled "Communication Sounds and the Brain: New Directions and Perspectives".	t	\N
23792769	This event-related potential (ERP) study examines the time course of context-dependent talker normalization in spoken word identification. We found three ERP components, the N1 (100-220 ms), the N400 (250-500 ms) and the Late Positive Component (500-800 ms), which are conjectured to involve (a) auditory processing, (b) talker normalization and lexical retrieval, and (c) decisional process/lexical selection respectively. Talker normalization likely occurs in the time window of the N400 and overlaps with the lexical retrieval process. Compared with the nonspeech context, the speech contexts, no matter whether they have semantic content or not, enable listeners to tune to a talker's pitch range. In this way, speech contexts induce more efficient talker normalization during the activation of potential lexical candidates and lead to more accurate selection of the intended word in spoken word identification.	t	\N
23809517	Cochlear implantation has significant effects on language abilities and reading skills. The current study compared the reading performance of children with cochlear implants with that of typically developing children in second and third grades. This descriptive-analytic study was performed including 24 children with cochlear implants and 24 typically developing peers. The grade range of the participants was second and third grades. All of students were selected from Tehran city elementary schools. The reading performance of children was assessed by the "Nama" reading test. The results showed that the means of reading scores of typically developed children were significantly greater than the children with cochlear implants (P < 0.01) and there was a significant relationship between reading skills and age of surgery (P < 0.05). Also, there was a significant relationship between reading skills and the period of cochlear implantation (P < 0.05). Children with cochlear implants showed a weak performance in reading skills in comparison to typically developing children due to lower accessibility to phonological information. However, this limitation can be compensated for partly by early surgery. Parents should refer their deaf children for cochlear implantation before the age of language learning.	t	\N
23815480	The origin of the Western preference for consonance remains unresolved, with some suggesting that the preference is innate. In Experiments 1 and 2 of the present study, 6-month-old infants heard six different consonant/dissonant pairs of stimuli, including those tested in previous research. In contrast to the findings of others, infants in the present study failed to listen longer to consonant stimuli. After 3 minutes of exposure to consonant or dissonant stimuli in Experiment 3, 6-month-old infants listened longer to the familiar stimulus, whether consonant or dissonant. Our findings are inconsistent with innate preferences for consonant stimuli. Instead, the effect of short-term exposure is consistent with the view that familiarity underlies the origin of the Western preference for consonant intervals.	t	\N
23819616	In an earlier study ( Beach et al, 2012 ), detailed noise exposure measurements were obtained through individual dosimetry. In this further analysis of the data we ask the question "Can the effort required to converse in noise be used to estimate the experienced A-weighted noise level?" The noise levels experienced during specific activities were obtained from the analysis of dosimetry results from personal noise exposure meters worn by study participants. The measured noise levels from particular events were compared to a subjectively judged 'loudness rating' reported by the person wearing the dosimeter during the measured event. Volunteers (females = 20, males = 22) between 18 and 35 years (average age = 26.8) willing to wear dosimeters and keep a simple activity log. The relation between the objectively measured and the subjectively judged levels was consistent for the group over a large number of events. The subjective loudness rating index was shown to be a convenient tool that can be utilized for the retrospective estimation of noise levels from individual activities.	t	\N
23824440	In this study, the authors examined the effects of aging and residual hearing on the identification of acoustically similar and dissimilar vowels in adults with postlingual deafness who use hearing aids (HAs) and/or cochlear implants (CIs). The authors used two groups of acoustically similar and dissimilar vowels to assess vowel identification. Also, the Consonant-Nucleus-Consonant Word Recognition Test (Peterson & Lehiste, 1962) and sentences from the Hearing in Noise Test (Nilsson, Soli, & Sullivan, 1994) were administered. Forty CI recipients with postlingual deafness (ages 31-81 years) participated in the study. Acoustically similar vowels were more difficult to identify than acoustically dissimilar vowels. With increasing age, performance deteriorated when identifying acoustically similar vowels. Vowel identification was also affected by the use of a contralateral HA and the degree of residual hearing prior to implantation. Moderate correlations were found between speech perception and vowel identification performance. Identification performance was affected by the acoustic similarity of the vowels. Older adults experienced more difficulty identifying acoustically similar confusable vowels than did younger adults. The findings might lend support to the ease of language understanding model (Ronnberg, Rudner, Foo, & Lunner, 2008), which proposes that the quality and perceptual robustness of acoustic input affects speech perception.	t	\N
23833281	The relations of phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness and vocabulary to word reading and spelling were examined for 304 first-grade children who were receiving differentiated instruction in a Response to Intervention (RtI) model of instruction. First-grade children were assessed on their phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness; expressive vocabulary; word reading; and spelling. Year-end word reading and spelling were outcome variables, and phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness; expressive vocabulary; and RtI status (Tiers 1, 2, & 3) were predictor variables. The 3 linguistic awareness skills were unique predictors of word reading, and phonological and orthographic awareness were unique predictors of spelling. The contributions that these linguistic awareness skills and vocabulary made to word reading and spelling did not differ by children's RtI tier status. These results, in conjunction with previous studies, suggest that even beginning readers and spellers draw on multiple linguistic awareness skills for their word reading and spelling regardless of their level of literacy abilities. Educational implications are discussed.	t	\N
23833989	To investigate hidden hearing loss in tinnitus patients with normal audiograms by means of auditory brainstem response (ABR) and explore the origin of tinnitus. Pure tone thresholds, ABR thresholds, amplitude of wave I and wave V of ABR were analyzed in 40 tinnitus patients and 15 controls. There was no significantly difference in pure tone thresholds and ABR thresholds between those tinnitus patients and controls while a reduced amplitude of wave I and normal amplitude of wave V of ABR in the tinnitus patients became evident. Tinnitus patients with normal audiograms have hidden hearing loss at the level of primary auditory nerve and the generation of tinnitus is likely attributed to a homeostatic response of neurons in brainstem.	t	\N
23846434	CHENFIT-AMP is a novel nonlinear strategy that combines the fitting (gain prescription) and amplification (gain implementation) procedures for cochlear hearing loss. The fitting part of CHENFIT-AMP prescribes gain for outer hair cell (OHC) and inner hair cell (IHC) loss, respectively. The gain for OHC loss varies with the cochlear gain decided by the value of OHC loss and the input level. The gain for IHC loss varies with the value of IHC loss only and will be limited to a constant if there is a "dead region." The amplification part of CHENFIT-AMP is responsible for estimating the input level and cochlear gain based on Chen's loudness model. CHENFIT-AMP is evaluated with four typical audiograms and nine individual audiograms. A widely used nonlinear fitting procedure, NAL-NL2, is evaluated to compare prescription results with CHENFIT-AMP; a standard nonlinear amplification algorithm, multichannel compression (MCC), with the parameters provided by NAL-NL2, is also evaluated to compare amplification results with CHENFIT-AMP. For long-term average speech spectrum (LTASS) inputs, CHENFIT-AMP generally prescribes similar gain as NAL-NL2 for the typical audiograms; however, gain prescribed by CHENFIT-AMP is more individualized than NAL-NL2 for the individual audiograms, especially when the audiograms have big deviations in the slope. For LTASS-shaped noise input, the gain implemented by MCC with parameters provided by NAL-NL2 cannot completely realize the gain prescribed by NAL-NL2. For speech sentence inputs, average ratings by subjects indicated that amplification by CHENFIT-AMP was preferred and led to a louder perception than that by MCC with parameters from NAL-NL2.	t	\N
23846719	Inner speech is one of the most common, but least investigated, mental activities humans perform. It is an internal copy of one's external voice and so is similar to a well-established component of motor control: corollary discharge. Corollary discharge is a prediction of the sound of one's voice generated by the motor system. This prediction is normally used to filter self-caused sounds from perception, which segregates them from externally caused sounds and prevents the sensory confusion that would otherwise result. The similarity between inner speech and corollary discharge motivates the theory, tested here, that corollary discharge provides the sensory content of inner speech. The results reported here show that inner speech attenuates the impact of external sounds. This attenuation was measured using a context effect (an influence of contextual speech sounds on the perception of subsequent speech sounds), which weakens in the presence of speech imagery that matches the context sound. Results from a control experiment demonstrated this weakening in external speech as well. Such sensory attenuation is a hallmark of corollary discharge.	t	\N
23847464	Evaluating series of complex sounds like those in speech and music requires sequential comparisons to extract task-relevant relations between subsequent sounds. With the present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we investigated whether sequential comparison of a specific acoustic feature within pairs of tones leads to a change in lateralized processing in the auditory cortex (AC) of humans. For this we used the active categorization of the direction (up vs. down) of slow frequency modulated (FM) tones. Several studies suggest that this task is mainly processed in the right AC. These studies, however, tested only the categorization of the FM direction of each individual tone. In the present study we ask the question whether the right lateralized processing changes when, in addition, the FM direction is compared within pairs of successive tones. For this we use an experimental approach involving contralateral noise presentation in order to explore the contributions made by the left and right AC in the completion of the auditory task. This method has already been applied to confirm the right-lateralized processing of the FM direction of individual tones. In the present study, the subjects were required to perform, in addition, a sequential comparison of the FM direction in pairs of tones. The results suggest a division of labor between the two hemispheres such that the FM direction of each individual tone is mainly processed in the right AC whereas the sequential comparison of this feature between tones in a pair is probably performed in the left AC.	t	\N
23850664	Over the last four decades, a range of different neuroimaging tools have been used to study human auditory attention, spanning from classic event-related potential studies using electroencephalography to modern multimodal imaging approaches (e.g., combining anatomical information based on magnetic resonance imaging with magneto- and electroencephalography). This review begins by exploring the different strengths and limitations inherent to different neuroimaging methods, and then outlines some common behavioral paradigms that have been adopted to study auditory attention. We argue that in order to design a neuroimaging experiment that produces interpretable, unambiguous results, the experimenter must not only have a deep appreciation of the imaging technique employed, but also a sophisticated understanding of perception and behavior. Only with the proper caveats in mind can one begin to infer how the cortex supports a human in solving the "cocktail party" problem. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled Human Auditory Neuroimaging.	t	\N
23855264	Accurate tuning is an important aspect of singing in harmony in the context of a choir or vocal ensemble. Tuning and 'pitch drift' are concerning factors in performance for even the most accomplished professional choirs when singing a cappella (unaccompanied). In less experienced choirs tuning often lacks precision, typically because individual singers have not developed appropriate listening skills. In order to investigate accuracy of tuning in ensemble singing situations, a chorally appropriate reference is required against which frequency measurements can be made. Since most basic choral singing involves chords in four parts, a four-part reference template is used in which the fundamental frequencies of the notes in each chord can be accurately set. This template can now be used in experiments where three of the reference parts are tuned in any musical temperament (tuning system), in this case equal and just temperaments, and played over headphones to a singer to allow her/his tuning strategy to be investigated. This paper describes a practical implementation of a four-part choral synthesis system in Pure Data (Pd) and its use in an investigation of tuning of notes by individual singers using an exercise originally written to explore pitch drift in a cappella choral singing.	t	\N
23859060	To examine the relationship between portable digital audio player listening behaviours and (1) measured sound pressure levels, (2) audiometric measures, (3) self-reported hearing loss symptoms. A questionnaire to evaluate listening behaviours, including self-reported hearing loss symptoms and listening duration/volume settings. Multivariate regression analysis was used to determine the relationship between these variables, audiometric evaluation, calculated exposure levels, Lex(8hr), and measured sound pressure levels, Leq(32sec). This study included 103 males and 134 female subjects aged 10 to 17 years. Calculated Lex(8hr) and measured Leq(32sec) levels increased with age and self-reported usage time. Audiometric thresholds averaged over 4 and 8 kHz were higher when usage exceeded five years as compared to less than one year. Higher measured sound pressure levels were associated with worse audiometric thresholds at (0.5, 1, 2 kHz, averaged) and 4 kHz. Self-reported hearing loss symptoms were reported by 33% to 50% of subjects. In this cohort sample, our results support a statistical association between hearing acuity and (1) Self-reported weekly usage in hours; (2) Tightness of fit; (3) Years of usage; and (4) Measured sound pressure levels. Generalizing these results beyond the current sample would require additional research.	t	\N
23862816	Tone-in-noise detection has been studied for decades; however, it is not completely understood what cue or cues are used by listeners for this task. Model predictions based on energy in the critical band are generally more successful than those based on temporal cues, except when the energy cue is not available. Nevertheless, neither energy nor temporal cues can explain the predictable variance for all listeners. In this study, it was hypothesized that better predictions of listeners' detection performance could be obtained using a nonlinear combination of energy and temporal cues, even when the energy cue was not available. The combination of different cues was achieved using the logarithmic likelihood-ratio test (LRT), an optimal detector in signal detection theory. A nonlinear LRT-based combination of cues was proposed, given that the cues have Gaussian distributions and the covariance matrices of cue values from noise-alone and tone-plus-noise conditions are different. Predictions of listeners' detection performance for three different sets of reproducible noises were computed with the proposed model. Results showed that predictions for hit rates approached the predictable variance for all three datasets, even when an energy cue was not available.	t	\N
23862818	A number of precedence-effect models have been developed to simulate the robust localization performance of humans in reverberant conditions. Although they are able to reduce reverberant information for many conditions, they tend to fail for ongoing stimuli with truncated on/offsets, a condition human listeners master when localizing a sound source in the presence of a reflection, according to a study by Dizon and Colburn [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 119, 2947-2964 (2006)]. This paper presents a solution for this condition by using an autocorrelation mechanism to estimate the delay and amplitude ratio between the leading and lagging signals. An inverse filter is then used to eliminate the lag signal, before it is localized with a standard localization algorithm. The current algorithm can operate on top of a basic model of the auditory periphery (gammatone filter bank, half-wave rectification) to simulate psychoacoustic data by Braasch et al. [Acoust. Sci. Tech. 24, 293-303 (2003)] and Dizon and Colburn. The model performs robustly with these on/offset truncated and interaural level difference based stimuli and is able to demonstrate the Haas effect.	t	\N
23862821	In noise repetition-detection tasks, listeners have to distinguish trials of continuously running noise from trials in which noise tokens are repeated in a cyclic manner. Recently, it has been shown that using the exact same noise token across several trials ("reference noise") facilitates the detection of repetitions for this token [Agus et al. (2010). Neuron 66, 610-618]. This was attributed to perceptual learning. Here, the nature of the learning was investigated. In experiment 1, reference noise tokens were embedded in trials with or without cyclic presentation. Naïve listeners reported repetitions in both cases, thus responding to the reference noise even in the absence of an actual repetition. Experiment 2, with the same listeners, showed a similar pattern of results even after the design of the experiment was made explicit, ruling out a misunderstanding of the task. Finally, in experiment 3, listeners reported repetitions in trials containing the reference noise, even before ever hearing it presented cyclically. The results show that listeners were able to learn and recognize noise tokens in the absence of an immediate repetition. Moreover, the learning mandatorily interfered with listeners' ability to detect repetitions. It is concluded that salient perceptual changes accompany the learning of noise.	t	\N
23862833	Effective communication between staff members is key to patient safety in hospitals. A variety of patient care activities including admittance, evaluation, and treatment rely on oral communication. Surprisingly, published information on speech intelligibility in hospitals is extremely limited. In this study, speech intelligibility measurements and occupant evaluations were conducted in 20 units of five different U.S. hospitals. A variety of unit types and locations were studied. Results show that overall, no unit had "good" intelligibility based on the speech intelligibility index (SII > 0.75) and several locations found to have "poor" intelligibility (SII < 0.45). Further, occupied spaces were found to have 10%-15% lower SII than unoccupied spaces on average. Additionally, staff perception of communication problems at nurse stations was significantly correlated with SII ratings. In a targeted second phase, a unit treated with sound absorption had higher SII ratings for a larger percentage of time as compared to an identical untreated unit. Taken as a whole, the study provides an extensive baseline evaluation of speech intelligibility across a variety of hospitals and unit types, offers some evidence of the positive impact of absorption on intelligibility, and identifies areas for future research.	t	\N
23862901	Categorical perception experiments were performed on an English /b-p/ voice onset time (VOT) continuum with native (American English) and non-native (Korean) listeners to examine whether and how phonetic categorization is modulated by prosodic boundary and language experience. Results demonstrated perceptual shifting according to prosodic boundary strength: A longer VOT was required to identify a sound as /p/ after an intonational phrase than a word boundary, regardless of the listeners' language experience. This suggests that segmental perception is modulated by the listeners' computation of an abstract prosodic structure reflected in phonetic cues of phrase-final lengthening and domain-initial strengthening, which are common across languages.	t	\N
23862903	A previous report [Margolis and Stiepan (2012). "Acoustic method for calibration of audiometric bone vibrators," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 131, 1221-1225] described a reliable, inexpensive, acoustic method for calibration of audiometric bone vibrators. As a follow up to that report harmonic distortion measurements were made with the standard electromechanical method and the acoustic method using five Radioear B71 vibrators and one Radioear B81 prototype vibrator. Lower distortion was seen for measurements made with the acoustic method compared to the electromechanical method and for the Radioear B81 vibrator compared to the Radioear B71 vibrator.	t	\N
23865332	Masking therapy can make patients accustom to tinnitus. This therapy is safe and easy to implement, so that it has become a widely used treatment of curing tinnitus. According to surveys of tinnitus sounds, cicada sound is one of the most usual tinnituses. Meanwhile, we have not hitherto found published papers concerning how to synthesize cicada sound and to use it to ameliorate tinnitus. Inspired by the human acoustics theory, we proposed a method to synthesize medical masking sound and to realize the diversity by illustrating the process of synthesizing various cicada sounds. In addition, energy attenuation problem in spectrum shifting process has been successfully solved. Simulation results indicated that the proposed method achieved decent results and would have practical value for the future applications.	t	\N
23867553	We study the developmental trajectory of morphology and function of the superior temporal cortex (STC) in children (8-9 years), adolescents (14-15 years) and young adults. We analyze cortical surface landmarks and functional MRI (fMRI) responses to voices, other natural categories and tones and examine how hemispheric asymmetry and inter-subject variability change across age. Our results show stable morphological asymmetries across age groups, including a larger left planum temporale and a deeper right superior temporal sulcus. fMRI analyses show that a rightward lateralization for voice-selective responses is present in all groups but decreases with age. Furthermore, STC responses to voices change from being less selective and more spatially diffuse in children to highly selective and focal in adults. Interestingly, the analysis of morphological landmarks reveals that inter-subject variability increases during development in the right--but not in the left--STC. Similarly, inter-subject variability of cortically-realigned functional responses to voices, other categories and tones increases with age in the right STC. Our findings reveal asymmetric developmental changes in brain regions crucial for auditory and voice perception. The age-related increase of inter-subject variability in right STC suggests that anatomy and function of this region are shaped by unique individual developmental experiences.	t	\N
23882002	To determine the relative importance of acoustic parameters (fundamental frequency [F0], formant frequencies [FFs], aperiodicity, and spectrum level [SL]) on voice gender perception, the authors used a novel parameter-morphing approach that, unlike spectral envelope shifting, allows the application of nonuniform scale factors to transform formants and more direct comparison of parameter impact. In each of 2 experiments, 16 listeners with normal hearing (8 female, 8 male) classified voice gender for morphs between female and male speakers, using syllable tokens from 2 male-female speaker pairs. Morphs varied single acoustic parameters (Experiment 1) or selected combinations (Experiment 2), keeping residual parameters androgynous, as determined in a baseline experiment. The strongest cue related to gender perception was F0, followed by FF and SL. Aperiodicity did not systematically influence gender perception. Morphing F0 and FF in conjunction produced convincing changes in perceived gender-changes that were equivalent to those for Full morphs interpolating all parameters. Despite the importance of F0, morphing FF and SL in combination produced effective changes in voice gender perception. The most important single parameters for gender perception are, in order, F0, FF, and SL. At the same time, F0 and vocal tract resonances have a comparable impact on voice gender perception.	t	\N
23883861	The observation that near-threshold low-contrast visual distractors can equally influence perceptual state and goal-directed motor responses was recently taken as an argument against a sharp separation between a conscious vision for perception and an unconscious vision for action. However, data supporting the dual visual system theory have principally involved high-contrast stimuli. In the present study, we assessed the effect of varying the contrast of a near-threshold visual distractor while keeping its visibility constant with backward noise masks. Eight participants performed fast manual reaching movements toward a highly visible target while subsequently reporting the presence/absence of a near-threshold distractor appearing at the opposite location with respect to the body midline. For all distractor contrasts, hand trajectory deviations toward the distractor were observed when the distractor was present and detected. When the distractor remained undetected deviations also occurred, but for higher contrasts. The subliminal motor effect traditionally observed in visual masking studies may therefore primarily depend on the luminance contrast of the interfering stimuli. These results suggest that dissociations between perceptual and motor responses can be explained by a single-signal model involving differential thresholds for perception and action that are specifically modulated as a function of both the requirements of the task and the contrast level of the stimuli. Such modulation is compatible with neurophysiological accounts of visual masking in which feedforward activation to--and feedback activation from--higher visual areas are correlated with the actual presence of the stimulation and its conscious perception, respectively.	t	\N
23902521	This study investigated the effect of electrode configuration, stimulus rate, and EEG rejection level on the efficiency of ABR testing in babies. ABR to click stimuli at 40 dB nHL were simultaneously recorded from two electrode configurations, ipsilateral mastoid to high forehead (Mi-Fh) and nape to high forehead (N-Fh), with two EEG rejection levels (± 5 μV and ± 10 μV). Stimulus rates were between 39.1 and 69.1 per second. Efficiency was measured by confidence in the ABR for a given test time. Thirty babies who had passed a targeted newborn hearing screen with ABR thresholds ≤ 40 dB nHL. The N-Fh configuration, as expected, gave on average a larger response amplitude compared to the Mi-Fh configuration but was only marginally significantly better in terms of test efficiency. There was no significant effect of stimulus rate on test efficiency between 39.1/s and 59.1/s. The lower ± 5 μV EEG rejection level was more test efficient. This study provides some evidence that, for ABR threshold testing in babies, alternatives of ipsilateral mastoid or nape electrode and a range of stimulus rates have little or no effect on test efficiency. The results support the use of low EEG rejection limits.	t	\N
23915050	In everyday listening situations, we need to constantly switch between alternative sound sources and engage attention according to cues that match our goals and expectations. The exact neuronal bases of these processes are poorly understood. We investigated oscillatory brain networks controlling auditory attention using cortically constrained fMRI-weighted magnetoencephalography/EEG source estimates. During consecutive trials, participants were instructed to shift attention based on a cue, presented in the ear where a target was likely to follow. To promote audiospatial attention effects, the targets were embedded in streams of dichotically presented standard tones. Occasionally, an unexpected novel sound occurred opposite to the cued ear to trigger involuntary orienting. According to our cortical power correlation analyses, increased frontoparietal/temporal 30-100 Hz gamma activity at 200-1400 msec after cued orienting predicted fast and accurate discrimination of subsequent targets. This sustained correlation effect, possibly reflecting voluntary engagement of attention after the initial cue-driven orienting, spread from the TPJ, anterior insula, and inferior frontal cortices to the right FEFs. Engagement of attention to one ear resulted in a significantly stronger increase of 7.5-15 Hz alpha in the ipsilateral than contralateral parieto-occipital cortices 200-600 msec after the cue onset, possibly reflecting cross-modal modulation of the dorsal visual pathway during audiospatial attention. Comparisons of cortical power patterns also revealed significant increases of sustained right medial frontal cortex theta power, right dorsolateral pFC and anterior insula/inferior frontal cortex beta power, and medial parietal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex gamma activity after cued versus novelty-triggered orienting (600-1400 msec). Our results reveal sustained oscillatory patterns associated with voluntary engagement of auditory spatial attention, with the frontoparietal and temporal gamma increases being best predictors of subsequent behavioral performance.	t	\N
23920156	The current study investigated the role of resumption in the interpretation of object relative clauses (RCs) in Persian-speaking children. Sixty-four (N=64) children aged 3;2-6;0 (M=4;8) completed a referent selection task that tested their comprehension of subject RCs, gapped object RCs, and object RCs containing either a resumptive pronoun or an object clitic. The results showed that the presence of a resumptive element (pronoun or clitic) had a facilitative effect on children's processing of object RCs. In both cases object RCs with resumptive elements were interpreted more accurately than gapped subject and object RCs, suggesting that resumptive elements ease processing burden in syntactically complex contexts because they provide local cues to thematic role assignment.	t	\N
23926291	Previously, Gygi and Shafiro (2011) found that when environmental sounds are semantically incongruent with the background scene (e.g., horse galloping in a restaurant), they can be identified more accurately by young normal-hearing listeners (YNH) than sounds congruent with the scene (e.g., horse galloping at a racetrack). This study investigated how age and high-frequency audibility affect this Incongruency Advantage (IA) effect. In Experiments 1a and 1b, elderly listeners ( N = 18 for 1a; N = 10 for 1b) with age-appropriate hearing (EAH) were tested on target sounds and auditory scenes in 5 sound-to-scene ratios (So/Sc) between -3 and -18 dB. Experiment 2 tested 11 YNH on the same sound-scene pairings lowpass-filtered at 4 kHz (YNH-4k). The EAH and YNH-4k groups exhibited an almost identical pattern of significant IA effects, but both were at approximately 3.9 dB higher So/Sc than the previously tested YNH listeners. However, the psychometric functions revealed a shallower slope for EAH listeners compared with YNH listeners for the congruent stimuli only, suggesting a greater difficulty for the EAH listeners in attending to sounds expected to occur in a scene. These findings indicate that semantic relationships between environmental sounds in soundscapes are mediated by both audibility and cognitive factors and suggest a method for dissociating these factors.	t	\N
23927115	Laback et al. [(2011). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 129, 888-897] investigated the additivity of nonsimultaneous masking using short Gaussian-shaped tones as maskers and target. The present study involved Gaussian stimuli to measure the additivity of simultaneous masking for combinations of up to four spectrally separated maskers. According to most basilar membrane measurements, the maskers should be processed linearly at the characteristic frequency (CF) of the target. Assuming also compression of the target, all masker combinations should produce excess masking (exceeding linear additivity). The results for a pair of maskers flanking the target indeed showed excess masking. The amount of excess masking could be predicted by a model assuming summation of masker-evoked excitations in intensity units at the target CF and compression of the target, using compressive input/output functions derived from the nonsimultaneous masking study. However, the combinations of lower-frequency maskers showed much less excess masking than predicted by the model. This cannot easily be attributed to factors like off-frequency listening, combination tone perception, or between-masker suppression. It was better predicted, however, by assuming weighted intensity summation of masker excitations. The optimum weights for the lower-frequency maskers were smaller than one, consistent with partial masker compression as indicated by recent psychoacoustic data.	t	\N
23927133	Much recent interest surrounds listeners' abilities to adapt to various transformations that distort speech. An extreme example is spectral rotation, in which the spectrum of low-pass filtered speech is inverted around a center frequency (2 kHz here). Spectral shape and its dynamics are completely altered, rendering speech virtually unintelligible initially. However, intonation, rhythm, and contrasts in periodicity and aperiodicity are largely unaffected. Four normal hearing adults underwent 6 h of training with spectrally-rotated speech using Continuous Discourse Tracking. They and an untrained control group completed pre- and post-training speech perception tests, for which talkers differed from the training talker. Significantly improved recognition of spectrally-rotated sentences was observed for trained, but not untrained, participants. However, there were no significant improvements in the identification of medial vowels in /bVd/ syllables or intervocalic consonants. Additional tests were performed with speech materials manipulated so as to isolate the contribution of various speech features. These showed that preserving intonational contrasts did not contribute to the comprehension of spectrally-rotated speech after training, and suggested that improvements involved adaptation to altered spectral shape and dynamics, rather than just learning to focus on speech features relatively unaffected by the transformation.	t	\N
23933145	Prepulse inhibition (PPI) of startle is a measure of inhibitory function in which a weak leading stimulus suppresses the startle response to an intense stimulus. Usually, startle blink reflexes to an intense sound are used for measuring PPI. A recent magnetoencephalographic study showed that a similar phenomenon is observed for auditory change-related cortical response (Change-N1m) to an abrupt change in sound features. It has been well established that nicotine enhances PPI of startle. Therefore, in the present magnetoencephalographic study, the effects of acute nicotine on PPI of the Change-N1m were studied in 12 healthy subjects (two females and 10 males) under a repeated measures and placebo-controlled design. Nicotine (4 mg) was given as nicotine gum. The test Change-N1m response was elicited with an abrupt increase in sound pressure by 6 dB in a continuous background sound of 65 dB. PPI was produced by an insertion of a prepulse with a 3-dB-louder or 6-dB-weaker sound pressure than the background 75 ms before the test stimulus. Results show that nicotine tended to enhance the test Change-N1m response and significantly enhanced PPI for both prepulses. Therefore, nicotine's enhancing effect on PPI of the Change-N1m was similar to that on PPI of the startle. The present results suggest that the two measures share at least some mechanisms.	t	\N
23973563	The physical intensity of a sound, usually expressed in dB on a logarithmic ratio scale, can easily be measured using technical equipment. Loudness is the perceptual correlate of sound intensity, and is usually determined by means of some sort of psychophysical scaling procedure. The interrelation of sound intensity and perceived loudness is still a matter of debate, and the physiological correlate of loudness perception in the human auditory pathway is not completely understood. Various studies indicate that the activation in human auditory cortex is more a representation of loudness sensation rather than of physical sound pressure level. This raises the questions (1), at what stage or stages in the ascending auditory pathway is the transformation of the physical stimulus into its perceptual correlate completed, and (2), to what extent other factors affecting individual loudness judgements might modulate the brain activation as registered by auditory neuroimaging. An overview is given about recent studies on the effects of sound intensity, duration, bandwidth and individual hearing status on the activation in the human auditory system, as measured by various approaches in auditory neuroimaging. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled Human Auditory Neuroimaging.	t	\N
23974947	Tonal music is characterized by a continuous flow of tension and resolution. This flow of tension and resolution is closely related to processes of expectancy and prediction and is a key mediator of music-evoked emotions. However, the neural correlates of subjectively experienced tension and resolution have not yet been investigated. We acquired continuous ratings of musical tension for four piano pieces. In a subsequent functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment, we identified blood oxygen level-dependent signal increases related to musical tension in the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex (pars orbitalis of the inferior frontal gyrus). In addition, a region of interest analysis in bilateral amygdala showed activation in the right superficial amygdala during periods of increasing tension (compared with decreasing tension). This is the first neuroimaging study investigating the time-varying changes of the emotional experience of musical tension, revealing brain activity in key areas of affective processing.	t	\N
23990061	We aim to evaluate the incidence and clinical manifestations of sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) in adult patients with acute otitis media (AOM). Seventy-five patients (age > 18 years; 83 ears) diagnosed with AOM between January 2008 and March 2011 at our clinic were enroled and retrospectively reviewed. We detected audiometrically confirmed SNHL during the course of AOM in eight patients. The clinical course, treatment, and audiometric final outcome of each case were reviewed. SNHL was associated with AOM in 8 out of 83 ears (9.3%). The mean age of patients was 57.5 years, and the mean follow-up period was 21.1 months (range 0.6-46.3 months). The most common symptom was tinnitus. Mean bone conduction hearing threshold was 39.5 dB in pure tone audiometry. All patients showed high-frequency HL, and three showed pan-frequency HL. All patients were treated with oral antibiotics at the initial visit. Seven ears were treated with a combination of oral steroids. Myringotomy was also performed. Seven of eight patients showed improvement; however, 8 kHz thresholds were not improved. This suggested that the inflammation spread through the round window. The mean duration of recovery was 18.6 days. SNHL associated with AOM in adult patients occurs during the early phases of the disease course. High-frequency hearing was commonly affected and was well treated with oral antibiotics, myringotomy, and steroid therapy. Audiometry can be helpful for treating adult patients with AOM. Active treatment, including myringotomy, should be performed during the early phase, if SNHL is suspected.	t	\N
23992133	The development of presbycusis, or age-related hearing loss, is determined by a combination of genetic and environmental factors. The auditory periphery exhibits a progressive bilateral, symmetrical reduction of auditory sensitivity to sound from high to low frequencies. The central auditory nervous system shows symptoms of decline in age-related cognitive abilities, including difficulties in speech discrimination and reduced central auditory processing, ultimately resulting in auditory perceptual abnormalities. The pathophysiological mechanisms of presbycusis include excitotoxicity, oxidative stress, inflammation, aging and oxidative stress-induced DNA damage that results in apoptosis in the auditory pathway. However, the originating signals that trigger these mechanisms remain unclear. For instance, it is still unknown whether insulin is involved in auditory aging. Auditory aging has preclinical lesions, which manifest as asymptomatic loss of periphery auditory nerves and changes in the plasticity of the central auditory nervous system. Currently, the diagnosis of preclinical, reversible lesions depends on the detection of auditory impairment by functional imaging, and the identification of physiological and molecular biological markers. However, despite recent improvements in the application of these markers, they remain under-utilized in clinical practice. The application of antisenescent approaches to the prevention of auditory aging has produced inconsistent results. Future research will focus on the identification of markers for the diagnosis of preclinical auditory aging and the development of effective interventions.	t	\N
23992488	The state of hearing in 75-year old persons was measured in a population based epidemiological study with the aim of studying if hearing had changed during a time span of 29 years. An epidemiological study of generational effects in three age cohorts. Three age cohorts were included: cohort 1 (n: 267) born in 1976-77, cohort 4 (n: 197) in 1990-91, and cohort 6 (n: 570) in 2005. The same test procedures using pure-tone audiometry and a short questionnaire were applied to the three cohorts of 75-year old residents in the same city. The hearing was essentially unchanged during the span of the investigation-almost three decades. Low-frequency hearing was up to about 10 dB poorer in the most recently studied cohort compared to the previously studied cohorts. The reason for this difference is considered to depend on methodological factors. Self-assessed hearing and tinnitus was mainly unchanged, or had minor changes both to the better and to the worse. The hearing, both measured with pure-tone audiometry and with a short questionnaire, of 75-year old persons has not changed at all, or only marginally, over three decades.	t	\N
23994183	Speech comprehension relies on auditory as well as visual information, and is enhanced in healthy subjects, when audiovisual (AV) information is present. Patients with schizophrenia have been reported to have problems regarding this AV integration process, but little is known about which underlying neural processes are altered. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was performed in 15 schizophrenia patients (SP) and 15 healthy controls (HC) to study functional connectivity of Broca's area by means of a beta series correlation method during perception of audiovisually presented bisyllabic German nouns, in which audio and video either matched or did not match. Broca's area of SP showed stronger connectivity with supplementary motor cortex for incongruent trials whereas HC connectivity was stronger for congruent trials. The right posterior superior temporal sulcus (RpSTS) area showed differences in connectivity for congruent and incongruent trials in HC in contrast to SP where the connectivity was similar for both conditions. These smaller differences in connectivity in SP suggest a less adaptive processing of audiovisually congruent and incongruent speech. The findings imply that AV integration problems in schizophrenia are associated with maladaptive connectivity of Broca's and RpSTS area in particular when confronted with incongruent stimuli. Results are discussed in light of recent AV speech perception models.	t	\N
23998484	Electrode impedance increases following implantation and undergoes transitory reduction with onset of electrical stimulation. The studies in this paper measured the changes in access resistance and polarization impedance in vivo before and following electrical stimulation, and recorded the time course of these changes. Impedance measures recorded in (a) four cats following 6 months of cochlear implant use, and (b) three cochlear implant recipients with 1.5-5 years cochlear implant experience. Both the experimental and clinical data exhibited a reduction in electrode impedance, 20 and 5% respectively, within 15-30 minutes of stimulation onset. The majority of these changes occurred through reduction in polarization impedance. Cessation of stimulation was followed by an equivalent rise in impedance measures within 6-12 hours. Stimulus-induced reductions in impedance exhibit a rapid onset and are evident in both chronic in vivo models tested, even several years after implantation. Given the impedance changes were dominated by the polarization component, these findings suggest that the electrical stimulation altered the electrode surface rather than the bulk tissue and fluid in the cochlea.	t	\N
24001008	Classical theories of semantic memory assume that concepts are represented in a unitary amodal memory system. In challenging this classical view, pure or hybrid modality-specific theories propose that conceptual representations are grounded in the sensory-motor brain areas, which typically process sensory and action-related information. Although neuroimaging studies provided evidence for a functional-anatomical link between conceptual processing of sensory or action-related features and the sensory-motor brain systems, it has been argued that aspects of such sensory-motor activation may not directly reflect conceptual processing but rather strategic imagery or postconceptual elaboration. In the present ERP study, we investigated masked effects of acoustic and action-related conceptual features to probe unconscious automatic conceptual processing in isolation. Subliminal feature-specific ERP effects at frontocentral electrodes were observed, which differed with regard to polarity, topography, and underlying brain electrical sources in congruency with earlier findings under conscious viewing conditions. These findings suggest that conceptual acoustic and action representations can also be unconsciously accessed, thereby excluding any postconceptual strategic processes. This study therefore further substantiates a grounding of conceptual and semantic processing in action and perception.	t	\N
24002965	Dual-system models of visual category learning posit the existence of an explicit, hypothesis-testing reflective system, as well as an implicit, procedural-based reflexive system. The reflective and reflexive learning systems are competitive and neurally dissociable. Relatively little is known about the role of these domain-general learning systems in speech category learning. Given the multidimensional, redundant, and variable nature of acoustic cues in speech categories, our working hypothesis is that speech categories are learned reflexively. To this end, we examined the relative contribution of these learning systems to speech learning in adults. Native English speakers learned to categorize Mandarin tone categories over 480 trials. The training protocol involved trial-by-trial feedback and multiple talkers. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the effect of manipulating the timing (immediate vs. delayed) and information content (full vs. minimal) of feedback. Dual-system models of visual category learning predict that delayed feedback and providing rich, informational feedback enhance reflective learning, while immediate and minimally informative feedback enhance reflexive learning. Across the two experiments, our results show that feedback manipulations that targeted reflexive learning enhanced category learning success. In Experiment 3, we examined the role of trial-to-trial talker information (mixed vs. blocked presentation) on speech category learning success. We hypothesized that the mixed condition would enhance reflexive learning by not allowing an association between talker-related acoustic cues and speech categories. Our results show that the mixed talker condition led to relatively greater accuracies. Our experiments demonstrate that speech categories are optimally learned by training methods that target the reflexive learning system.	t	\N
24003904	In a system where tens of thousands of words are made up of a limited number of phonemes, many words are bound to sound alike. This similarity of the words in the lexicon as characterized by phonological neighbourhood density (PhND) has been shown to affect speed and accuracy of word comprehension and production. Whereas there is a consensus about the interfering nature of neighbourhood effects in comprehension, the language production literature offers a more contradictory picture with mainly facilitatory but also interfering effects reported on word production. Here we report both of these two types of effects in the same study. Multiple regression mixed models analyses were conducted on PhND effects on errors produced in a naming task by a group of 21 participants with aphasia. These participants produced more formal errors (interfering effect) for words in dense phonological neighbourhoods, but produced fewer nonwords and semantic errors (a facilitatory effect) with increasing density. In order to investigate the nature of these opposite effects of PhND, we further analysed a subset of formal errors and nonword errors by distinguishing errors differing on a single phoneme from the target (corresponding to the definition of phonological neighbours) from those differing on two or more phonemes. This analysis confirmed that only formal errors that were phonological neighbours of the target increased in dense neighbourhoods, while all other errors decreased. Based on additional observations favouring a lexical origin of these formal errors (they exceeded the probability of producing a real-word error by chance, were of a higher frequency, and preserved the grammatical category of the targets), we suggest that the interfering effect of PhND is due to competition between lexical neighbours and target words in dense neighbourhoods.	t	\N
24003982	This study employed Boothroyd and Nittrouer's k (1988) to directly quantify effectiveness in native versus non-native listeners' use of semantic cues. Listeners were presented speech-perception-in-noise sentences processed at three levels of concurrent multi-talker babble and reverberation. For each condition, 50 sentences with multiple semantic cues and 50 with minimum semantic cues were randomly presented. Listeners verbally reported and wrote down the target words. The metric, k, was derived from percent-correct scores for sentences with and without semantics. Ten native and 33 non-native listeners participated. The presence of semantics increased recognition benefit by over 250% for natives, but access to semantics remained limited for non-native listeners (90-135%). The k was comparable across conditions for native listeners, but level-dependent for non-natives. The k for non-natives was significantly different from 1 in all conditions, suggesting semantic cues, though reduced in importance in difficult conditions, were helpful for non-natives. Non-natives as a group were not as effective in using semantics to facilitate English sentence recognition as natives. Poor listening conditions were particularly adverse to the use of semantics in non-natives, who may rely on clear acoustic-phonetic cues before benefitting from semantic cues when recognizing connected speech.	t	\N
24005532	It has been hypothesized that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI)-induced sexual dysfunction can occur more frequently in patients with higher central serotonergic activity, and that this higher serotonergic activity can induce inhibition of sexual desire, ejaculation, and orgasm. Thus, the aim of this study was to determine the relationship between SSRI-induced sexual dysfunction and increased serotonin. Event-related potentials for the loudness dependence of auditory evoked potentials (LDAEP) were measured in 46 patients at a single time point. The subjects' scores on the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and Antidepressant Side-Effect Checklist were also determined by the investigators at the same time point. All patients had received SSRI monotherapy. Overall, 37 % (17/46) of the patients experienced some form of SSRI-induced sexual dysfunction: lack of sexual desire, impotence, orgasm, and menstrual abnormality or mastalgia were experienced by 21.7, 8.3, 15.2, and 20.6 % of the patients, respectively. The subjects were thus divided into two groups-those with and without sexual dysfunction-and their data were compared. There was a tendency for the LDAEP to be lower in the group with sexual dysfunction (1.04 ± 0.77 μV) than the group without sexual dysfunction (1.45 ± 0.86 μV), although the difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.086). Furthermore, the distribution of the frequency of SSRI-induced sexual dysfunction differed marginally significantly between patients with low and high LDAEP, dichotomized according to the median LDAEP on the Cz electrode (χ (2) = 3.664, p = 0.056). There was a relatively high frequency of SSRI-induced sexual dysfunction in patients with low LDAEP.	t	\N
24009759	Recent studies employing speech stimuli to investigate 'cocktail-party' listening have focused on entrainment of cortical activity to modulations at syllabic (5 Hz) and phonemic (20 Hz) rates. The data suggest that cortical modulation filters (CMFs) are dependent on the sound-frequency channel in which modulations are conveyed, potentially underpinning a strategy for separating speech from background noise. Here, we characterize modulation filters in human listeners using a novel behavioral method. Within an 'inverted' adaptive forced-choice increment detection task, listening level was varied whilst contrast was held constant for ramped increments with effective modulation rates between 0.5 and 33 Hz. Our data suggest that modulation filters are tonotopically organized (i.e., vary along the primary, frequency-organized, dimension). This suggests that the human auditory system is optimized to track rapid (phonemic) modulations at high sound-frequencies and slow (prosodic/syllabic) modulations at low frequencies.	t	\N
24022792	Processing multiple complex features to create cohesive representations of objects is an essential aspect of both the visual and auditory systems. It is currently unclear whether these processes are entirely modality specific or whether there are amodal processes that contribute to complex object processing in both vision and audition. We investigated this using a dual-stream target detection task in which two concurrent streams of novel visual or auditory stimuli were presented. We manipulated the degree to which each stream taxed processing conjunctions of complex features. In two experiments, we found that concurrent visual tasks that both taxed conjunctive processing strongly interfered with each other but that concurrent auditory and visual tasks that both taxed conjunctive processing did not. These results suggest that resources for processing conjunctions of complex features within vision and audition are modality specific.	t	\N
24023379	Effects of clicks and tonebursts on early and late auditory middle latency response (AMLR) components were evaluated in young and older cigarette smokers and nonsmokers. Participants ( n = 49) were categorized by smoking and age into 4 groups: (a) older smokers, (b) older nonsmokers, (c) young smokers, and (d) young nonsmokers. Monaural, 2-channel AMLRs were acquired from Fz and Cz electrodes with 3 stimuli (clicks, 500 Hz, and 3000 Hz). Group differences included significantly higher V-Na amplitude in young adults and shorter Pb latency in older nonsmokers. Young smokers had a significantly higher Nb-Pb amplitude and shorter Nb latency than other groups. Toneburst stimuli yielded significantly longer V, Na, and Pa latencies compared to clicks. Pb latency was shorter at Fz than at Cz. Relative amplitudes were significantly higher at Fz than at Cz overall; Pa-Nb and Nb-Pb were significantly lower for 3000 Hz than for 500 Hz and clicks. Responses from young smokers revealed a higher amplitude and shorter latency for later AMLR waves, reflecting an arousal effect of smoking in cortical and subcortical generators. AMLR differences in older adults may be due to age-related neurochemical changes in the central nervous system. Stimulus and electrode differences plus smoking and aging effects can guide neurodiagnostic AMLR protocols, especially in young adult smokers.	t	\N
24026024	To standardize the information for families of children having functional surgery for middle ear malformations, we describe the audiometric results of the subgroup of patients with the most favorable anatomic conditions: viable auditory canal, intact tympanic membrane, mobile stapes, and corresponding to a Jahrsdoerfer score of 8 or higher. Case series, tertiary referral center. Charts of patients undergoing functional surgery for congenital middle ear malformations were reviewed for demographic data, preoperative Jahrsdoerfer score, ossicular chain status, type of ossiculoplasty, and audiometric data before and 6 months postsurgery. Eighteen consecutive interventions were performed on 13 patients (average age of 9 years, 8 girls and 5 boys) between 2004 and 2011. The ossiculoplasties performed were as follows: incus repositioning (4), double-layer tragal cartilage (5), intact native chain reconstruction (3), and partial ossicular prosthesis (6). Mean air bone gap (ABG) was 40.8 ± 12.4 dB preoperatively and 20.9 ± 12.9 dB postoperatively (p < 0.0001). Preoperative and postoperatively mean air conduction PTA thresholds were 49.9 ± 9.5 and 30.0 ± 14.1 dB, respectively (p < 0.0001). All ears operated on except one had air conduction improvement. There were no complications. Functional surgery for congenital middle ear malformations gives variable hearing outcomes. In this study, with the most favorable anatomic conditions, 12 ears (67%) of 18 had air conduction improvement below 30 dB.	t	\N
24028890	Most hearing aid prescriptions focus on the optimization of a metric derived from the long-term average spectrum of speech, and do not consider how the prescribed values might distort the temporal envelope shape. A growing body of evidence suggests that such distortions can lead to systematic errors in speech perception, and therefore hearing aid prescriptions might benefit by including preservation of the temporal envelope shape in their rationale. To begin to explore this possibility, we designed a genetic algorithm (GA) to find the multiband compression settings that preserve the shape of the original temporal envelope while placing that envelope in the listener's audiometric dynamic range. The resulting prescription had a low compression threshold, short attack and release times, and a combination of compression ratio and gain that placed the output signal within the listener's audiometric dynamic range. Initial behavioral tests of individuals with impaired hearing revealed no difference in speech-in-noise perception between the GA and the NAL-NL2 prescription. However, gap detection performance was superior with the GA in comparison to NAL-NL2. Overall, this work is a proof of concept that consideration of temporal envelope distortions can be incorporated into hearing aid prescriptions.	t	\N
24041778	Congenital amusia is a neuro-developmental disorder of music perception and production. Recent findings have demonstrated that this deficit is linked to an impaired short-term memory for tone sequences. As it has been shown before that non-musicians' implicit knowledge of musical regularities can improve short-term memory for tone information, the present study investigated if this type of implicit knowledge could also influence amusics' short-term memory performance. Congenital amusics and their matched controls, who were non-musicians, had to indicate whether sequences of five tones, presented in pairs, were the same or different; half of the pairs respected musical regularities (tonal sequences) and the other half did not (atonal sequences). As previously reported for non-musician participants, the control participants showed better performance (as measured with d') for tonal sequences than for atonal ones. While this improvement was not observed in amusics, both control and amusic participants showed faster response times for tonal sequences than for atonal sequences. These findings suggest that some implicit processing of tonal structures is potentially preserved in congenital amusia. This observation is encouraging as it strengthens the perspective to exploit implicit knowledge to help reducing pitch perception and memory deficits in amusia.	t	\N
24043402	Our previous studies using fMRI have demonstrated that activations in human auditory cortex (AC) are strongly dependent on the characteristics of the task. The present study tested whether source estimation of scalp-recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) can be used to investigate task-dependent AC activations. Subjects were presented with frequency-varying two-part tones during pitch discrimination, pitch n-back memory, and visual tasks identical to our previous fMRI study (Rinne et al., J Neurosci 29:13338-13343, 2009). ERPs and their minimum-norm source estimates in AC were strongly modulated by task at 200-700 ms from tone onset. As in the fMRI study, the pitch discrimination and pitch memory tasks were associated with distinct AC activation patterns. In the pitch discrimination task, increased activity in the anterior AC was detected relatively late at 300-700 ms from tone onset. Therefore, this activity was probably not associated with enhanced pitch processing but rather with the actual discrimination process (comparison between the two parts of tone). Increased activity in more posterior areas associated with the pitch memory task, in turn, occurred at 200-700 ms suggesting that this activity was related to operations on pitch categories after pitch analysis was completed. Finally, decreased activity associated with the pitch memory task occurred at 150-300 ms consistent with the notion that, in the demanding pitch memory task, spectrotemporal analysis is actively halted as soon as category information has been obtained. These results demonstrate that ERP source analysis can be used to complement fMRI to investigate task-dependent activations of human AC.	t	\N
24043565	What conditions, if any, can fully prevent attentional capture (i.e., involuntary allocation of spatial attention to an irrelevant object) has been a matter of debate. In a previous study, Folk, Ester, and Troemel (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 16:127-132, 2009) suggested that attentional capture can be blocked entirely when attention is already engaged in a different object. This conclusion relied on the finding that in a search for a known-color target in a rapid serial visual presentation stream, a peripheral distractor with the target color did not further impair target identification performance when a distractor also with the target color that appeared in the stream had already captured attention. In the present study, we argue that this conclusion is unwarranted, because the effects of the central and peripheral distractors could not be disentangled. In order to isolate the effect of the peripheral distractor, we introduced a distractor-target letter compatibility manipulation. Our results showed that the peripheral distractor summoned attention, irrespective of whether attention had just been engaged. We conclude that neither spatially focused attention nor attentional engagement is sufficient to prevent attentional capture.	t	\N
24055624	This study investigated the perceptual relationship between acoustic and electric stimuli presented to CI users with functional contralateral hearing. Fourteen subjects with unilateral profound deafness implanted with a MED-EL CI scaled the perceptual differences between pure tones presented to the acoustic hearing ear and electric biphasic pulse trains presented to the implanted ear. The differences were analyzed with a multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis. Additionally, speech performance in noise was tested using sentence material presented in different spatial configurations while patients listened with both their acoustic hearing and implanted ears. Results of alternating least squares scaling (ALSCAL) analysis consistently demonstrate that a change in place of stimulation is in the same perceptual dimension as a change in acoustic frequency. However, the relative perceptual differences between the acoustic and the electric stimuli varied greatly across subjects. A degree of perceptual separation between acoustic and electric stimulation (quantified by relative dimensional weightings from an INDSCAL analysis) was hypothesized that would indicate a change in perceptual quality, but also be predictive of performance with combined acoustic and electric hearing. Perceptual separation between acoustic and electric stimuli was observed for some subjects. However, no relationship between the degree of perceptual separation and performance was found.	t	\N
24059596	To establish the reliability and validity of an automated hearing screening test system for children. Cross-sectional within a comparative study of subjects. Subjects were 325 first-grade and second-grade children (6-10 years old) from primary schools in Shenzhen, China. Using the conventional pure-tone screening test with the pass/refer criterion set as 25 dB HL, as the 'gold standard", the sensitivity and specificity of the automated hearing screening test was 0.63 and 0.82, respectively. No specific pattern in the failure rates was observed to relate to the students' grade. There was no statistically significant age effect or gender effect. The results suggest that with further improvement in terms of its sensitivity and specificity, it may be feasible to use the automated hearing screening test system to conduct routine school hearing screenings.	t	\N
24067501	To confirm an increased susceptibility to informational masking among individuals with single-sided deafness (SSD). To demonstrate a reduction in informational masking when SSD is treated with an integrated bone conduction hearing aid (IBC). To identify the acoustic cues that contribute to IBC-aided masking release. To determine the effects of device experience on the IBC advantage. Informational masking was evaluated with the coordinate-response measure. Participants performed the task by reporting color and number coordinates that changed randomly within target sentences. The target sentences were presented in free field accompanied by zero to three distracting sentences. Target and distracting sentences were spoken by different talkers and originated from different source locations, creating two sources of information for auditory streaming. Susceptibility to informational masking was inferred from the error rates of unaided SSD patients relative to normal controls. These baseline measures were derived by testing inexperienced IBC users without the device on the day of their initial fitting. The benefits of IBC-aided listening were assessed by measuring the aided performance of users who had at least 3 months' device experience. The acoustic basis of the listening advantage was isolated by correlating response errors with the voice pitch and location of distracting sentences. The effects of learning on cue effectiveness were evaluated by comparing the error rates of experienced and inexperienced users. Unaided SSD participants (inexperienced users) performed as well as normal controls when tested without distracting sentences but produced significantly higher error rates when tested with distracting sentences. Most errors involved responding with coordinates that were contained in distracting sentences. This increased susceptibility to informational masking was significantly reduced when experienced IBC users were tested with the device. The listening advantage was most strongly correlated with the availability of voice pitch cues, although performance was also influenced by the location of distracting sentences. Directional asymmetries appear to be dictated by location-dependent cues that are derived from the distinctive transmission characteristics of IBC stimulation. Experienced users made better use of these cues than inexperienced users. These results suggest that informational masking is a significant source of communication impairment among individuals with SSD. Despite the lateralization of auditory function, unaided SSD subjects experience informational masking when distractors occur in either the deaf or normal spatial hemifield. Restoration of aural sensitivity in the deaf hemifield with an IBC enhances speech intelligibility under complex listening conditions, presumably by providing additional sound-segregation cues that are derived from voice pitch and spatial location. The optimal use of these cues is not immediate, but a significant listening advantage is observed after 3 months of unstructured use.	t	\N
24071587	Stereo vision has a well-known anisotropy: At low frequencies, horizontally oriented sinusoidal depth corrugations are easier to detect than vertically oriented corrugations (both defined by horizontal disparities). Previously, Serrano-Pedraza and Read (2010) suggested that this stereo anisotropy may arise because the stereo system uses multiple spatial-frequency disparity channels for detecting horizontally oriented modulations but only one for vertically oriented modulations. Here, we tested this hypothesis using the critical-band masking paradigm. In the first experiment, we measured disparity thresholds for horizontal and vertical sinusoids near the peak of the disparity sensitivity function (0.4 cycles/°), in the presence of either broadband or notched noise. We fitted the power-masking model to our results assuming a channel centered on 0.4 cycles/°. The estimated channel bandwidths were 2.95 octaves for horizontal and 2.62 octaves for vertical corrugations. In our second experiment we measured disparity thresholds for horizontal and vertical sinusoids of 0.1 cycles/° in the presence of band-pass noise centered on 0.4 cycles/° with a bandwidth of 0.5 octaves. This mask had only a small effect on the disparity thresholds, for either horizontal or vertical corrugations. We simulated the detection thresholds using the power-masking model with the parameters obtained in the first experiment and assuming either single-channel and multiple-channel detection. The multiple-channel model predicted the thresholds much better for both horizontal and vertical corrugations. We conclude that the human stereo system must contain multiple independent disparity channels for detecting horizontally oriented and vertically oriented depth modulations.	t	\N
24073696	To investigate the effects of emotional music on visual processes, we analyzed visual evoked magnetic fields (VEF) on listening to emotional music in 14 healthy subjects. Positive and negative pieces of music were delivered during VEF recording following stimulation by emotionally neutral pictures of faces and landscapes. VEF components at 100 (M100) and 150 (M170)ms after stimulus onset were analyzed, and the estimated current strength for M170 following face stimulation was enhanced with negative compared to positive music in the right hemisphere. The equivalent current dipole for M100 and M170 was estimated in the primary visual cortex (V1) and inferior temporal area (IT), respectively. The present results indicate that background music showed a top-down control of the visual processes in IT, which is a core site responsible for the interpretation of facial expression. The emotional contents of music could alter visual processes, especially those involving the face.	t	\N
24076424	For much of the past 30 years, investigations of auditory perception and language have been enhanced or even driven by the use of functional neuroimaging techniques that specialize in localization of central responses. Beginning with investigations using positron emission tomography (PET) and gradually shifting primarily to usage of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), auditory neuroimaging has greatly advanced our understanding of the organization and response properties of brain regions critical to the perception of and communication with the acoustic world in which we live. As the complexity of the questions being addressed has increased, the techniques, experiments and analyses applied have also become more nuanced and specialized. A brief review of the history of these investigations sets the stage for an overview and analysis of how these neuroimaging modalities are becoming ever more effective tools for understanding the auditory brain. We conclude with a brief discussion of open methodological issues as well as potential clinical applications for auditory neuroimaging. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled Human Auditory Neuroimaging.	t	\N
24076425	Harmonic complexes that generate highly modulated temporal envelopes on the basilar membrane (BM) mask a tone less effectively than complexes that generate relatively flat temporal envelopes, because the non-linear active gain of the BM selectively amplifies a low-level tone in the dips of a modulated masker envelope. The present study examines a similar effect in speech recognition. Speech reception thresholds (SRTs) were measured for a voice masked by harmonic complexes with partials in sine phase (SP) or in random phase (RP). The masker's fundamental frequency (F0) was 50, 100 or 200 Hz. SRTs were considerably lower for SP than for RP maskers at 50-Hz F0, but the two converged at 100-Hz F0, while at 200-Hz F0, SRTs were a little higher for SP than RP maskers. The results were similar whether the target voice was male or female and whether the masker's spectral profile was flat or speech-shaped. Although listening in the masker dips has been shown to play a large role for artificial stimuli such as Schroeder-phase complexes at high levels, it contributes weakly to speech recognition in the presence of harmonic maskers with different crest factors at more moderate sound levels (65 dB SPL).	t	\N
24086676	The auditory illusory perception "scale illusion" occurs when a tone of ascending scale is presented in one ear, a tone of descending scale is presented simultaneously in the other ear, and vice versa. Most listeners hear illusory percepts of smooth pitch contours of the higher half of the scale in the right ear and the lower half in the left ear. Little is known about neural processes underlying the scale illusion. In this magnetoencephalographic study, we recorded steady-state responses to amplitude-modulated short tones having illusion-inducing pitch sequences, where the sound level of the modulated tones was manipulated to decrease monotonically with increase in pitch. The steady-state responses were decomposed into right- and left-sound components by means of separate modulation frequencies. It was found that the time course of the magnitude of response components of illusion-perceiving listeners was significantly correlated with smooth pitch contour of illusory percepts and that the time course of response components of stimulus-perceiving listeners was significantly correlated with discontinuous pitch contour of stimulus percepts in addition to the contour of illusory percepts. The results suggest that the percept of illusory pitch sequence was represented in the neural activity in or near the primary auditory cortex, i.e., the site of generation of auditory steady-state response, and that perception of scale illusion is maintained by automatic low-level processing.	t	\N
24089491	The strategies by which the central nervous system decodes the properties of sensory stimuli, such as sound source location, from the responses of a population of neurons are a matter of debate. We show, using the average firing rates of neurons in the inferior colliculus (IC) of awake rabbits, that prevailing decoding models of sound localization (summed population activity and the population vector) fail to localize sources accurately due to heterogeneity in azimuth tuning across the population. In contrast, a maximum-likelihood decoder operating on the pattern of activity across the population of neurons in one IC accurately localized sound sources in the contralateral hemifield, consistent with lesion studies, and did so with a precision consistent with rabbit psychophysical performance. The pattern decoder also predicts behavior in response to incongruent localization cues consistent with the long-standing "duplex" theory of sound localization. We further show that the pattern decoder accurately distinguishes two concurrent, spatially separated sources from a single source, consistent with human behavior. Decoder detection of small amounts of source separation directly in front is due to neural sensitivity to the interaural decorrelation of sound, at both low and high frequencies. The distinct patterns of IC activity between single and separated sound sources thereby provide a neural correlate for the ability to segregate and localize sources in everyday, multisource environments.	t	\N
24095845	Pitch is derived by the auditory system through complex spectrotemporal processing. Pitch extraction is thought to depend on both spectral cues arising from lower harmonics that are resolved by cochlear filters in the inner ear, and on temporal cues arising from the pattern of action potentials contained in the cochlear output. Adults are capable of extracting pitch in the absence of robust spectral cues, taking advantage of the temporal cues that remain. However, recent behavioral evidence suggests that infants have difficulty discriminating between stimuli with different pitches when resolvable spectral cues are absent. In the current experiments, we used the mismatch negativity (MMN) component of the event related potential derived from electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings to examine a cortical representation of pitch discrimination for iterated rippled noise (IRN) stimuli in 4- and 8-month-old infants. IRN stimuli are pitch-evoking sounds generated by repeatedly adding a segment of white noise to itself at a constant delay. We created IRN stimuli (delays of 5 and 6ms creating pitch percepts of 200 and 167Hz) and high-pass filtered them to remove all resolvable spectral pitch cues. In experiment 1, we did not find EEG evidence that infants could detect the change in the pitch of these IRN stimuli. However, in Experiment 2, after a brief period of pitch-priming during which we added a sine wave component to the IRN stimulus at its perceived pitch, infants did show significant MMN in response to pitch changes in the IRN stimuli with sine waves removed. This suggests that (1) infants can use temporal cues to process pitch, although such processing is not mature and (2) that a short amount of pitch-priming experience can alter pitch representations in auditory cortex during infancy.	t	\N
24105268	This study examined the ability of click auditory brainstem response (ABR) undertaken below the age of 6 months (from expected date of delivery) to differentiate between conductive and sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), using the latency of wave V measured 20 dB above threshold. Subjects were recruited if they had an ABR threshold of ≥ 40 dB nHL and ≤ 70 dB nHL in one or both ears measured below the age of 6 months and they had also attended follow-up appointments for behavioral assessment of their hearing in which the type of hearing loss had been confirmed. Forty-five children (84 ears) with SNHL, 82 children (141 ears) with temporary conductive hearing loss (TCHL), and 5 children (10 ears) with permanent conductive hearing loss (PCHL) were recruited. The differences between mean wave V latencies measured 20 dB above ABR threshold were examined using the independent t-test for the groups of cases with SNHL, TCHL, and PCHL. Signal-detection theory was used to examine the relationship between sensitivity and specificity when the latency of wave V 20 dB above threshold was used to identify the presence of SNHL. Receiver operating characteristics were generated and the coordinates of the curve examined for the best compromise between sensitivity and false-alarm rate. The specificity, positive predictive value, and probability of missing a true case were determined for the most promising criteria. There were significant differences between the two groups with SNHL and TCHL. The mean latency of wave V 20 dB above threshold was 1 msec shorter in those with SNHL compared with those with TCHL. There were significant differences between children with PCHL and SNHL but no difference between those with PCHL and TCHL. When a criterion of < 7.6 msec was chosen to predict the presence of SNHL the test sensitivity was 0.98, test specificity 0.71, and positive predictive value was 0.66. Nine out of 10 of those with a latency 20 dB above threshold of < 7.0 msec had an SNHL. The latency of wave V 20 dB above threshold measured using click ABR is a useful indicator of the type of hearing loss in babies referred from newborn hearing screening.	t	\N
24108804	Synchronizing movements with rhythmic inputs requires tight coupling of sensory and motor neural processes. Here, using a novel approach based on the recording of steady-state-evoked potentials (SS-EPs), we examine how distant brain areas supporting these processes coordinate their dynamics. The electroencephalogram was recorded while subjects listened to a 2.4-Hz auditory beat and tapped their hand on every second beat. When subjects tapped to the beat, the EEG was characterized by a 2.4-Hz SS-EP compatible with beat-related entrainment and a 1.2-Hz SS-EP compatible with movement-related entrainment, based on the results of source analysis. Most importantly, when compared with passive listening of the beat, we found evidence suggesting an interaction between sensory- and motor-related activities when subjects tapped to the beat, in the form of (1) additional SS-EP appearing at 3.6 Hz, compatible with a nonlinear product of sensorimotor integration; (2) phase coupling of beat- and movement-related activities; and (3) selective enhancement of beat-related activities over the hemisphere contralateral to the tapping, suggesting a top-down effect of movement-related activities on auditory beat processing. Taken together, our results are compatible with the view that rhythmic sensorimotor synchronization is supported by a dynamic coupling of sensory and motor related activities.	t	\N
24110502	Bone-conducted ultrasound (BCU) is perceived even by the profoundly sensorineural deaf. A novel hearing aid using the perception of amplitude-modulated BCU (BCU hearing aid: BCUHA) has been developed. However, there is room for improvement particularly in terms of articulation and sound quality. BCU speech is accompanied by a strong high-pitched tone and contain some distortion. In this study, transposed modulation, that can be expected to reduce the high-pitched tone was newly employed as a modulation method in the BCUHA, and its resulting articulation, intelligibility and sound quality were evaluated. The results showed that transposed modulation showed nearly equal articulation and intelligibility scores to and better sound quality than the existing method, DSB-TC modulation. These results provide useful information for further development of the BCUHA.	t	\N
24111102	Auditory Brainstem Responses (ABRs) are commonly used in clinical practice to determine hearing impairments and hearing thresholds. Although many research groups work on automatic recognition of ABRs - in order to decrease the acquisition times - measures to determine the quality of ABR measurements objectively are still missing. In fact, recently released new standards for electroencephalographic measurements in auditory examinations require an objective measurement quality assessment for neurodiagnostic devices. Thus there is a pressing need for the development and evaluation of such a quality control. In this study, we propose (a) a novel technique for the assessment of the ABR measurement quality and (b) evaluate and compare this technique to two other approaches which have been suggested in literature as required by the new standards.	t	\N
24116424	Speech reception thresholds were obtained in normally hearing listeners for sentence targets masked by harmonic complexes constructed with different phase relationships. Maskers had either a constant fundamental frequency (F0), or had F0 changing over time, following a pitch contour extracted from natural speech. The median F0 of the target speech was very similar to that of the maskers. In experiment 1 differences in the masking produced by Schroeder positive and Schroeder negative phase complexes were small (around 1.5 dB) for moderate levels [60 dB sound pressure level (SPL)], but increased to around 6 dB for maskers at 80 dB SPL. Phase effects were typically around 1.5 dB larger for maskers that had naturally varying F0 contours than for maskers with constant F0. Experiment 2 showed that shaping the long-term spectrum of the maskers to match the target speech had no effect. Experiment 3 included additional phase relationships at moderate levels and found no effect of phase. Therefore, the phase relationship within harmonic complexes appears to have only minor effects on masking effectiveness, at least at moderate levels, and when targets and maskers are in the same F0 range.	t	\N
24121087	Functional hemispheric differences for speech and language processing have been traditionally studied by using verbal dichotic-listening paradigms. The commonly observed right-ear preference for the report of dichotically presented syllables is taken to reflect the left hemispheric dominance for speech processing. However, the results of recent functional imaging studies also show that both hemispheres - not only the left - are engaged by dichotic listening, suggesting a more complex relationship between behavioral laterality and functional hemispheric activation asymmetries. In order to more closely examine the hemispheric differences underlying dichotic-listening performance, we report an analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data of 104 right-handed subjects, for the first time combining an interhemispheric difference and conjunction analysis. This approach allowed for a distinction of homotopic brain regions which showed symmetrical (i.e., brain region significantly activated in both hemispheres and no activation difference between the hemispheres), relative asymmetrical (i.e., activated in both hemispheres but significantly stronger in one than the other hemisphere), and absolute asymmetrical activation patterns (i.e., activated only in one hemisphere and this activation is significantly stronger than in the other hemisphere). Symmetrical activation was found in large clusters encompassing temporal, parietal, inferior frontal, and medial superior frontal regions. Relative and absolute left-ward asymmetries were found in the posterior superior temporal gyrus, located adjacent to symmetrically activated areas, and creating a lateral-medial gradient from symmetrical towards absolute asymmetrical activation within the peri-Sylvian region. Absolute leftward asymmetry was also found in the post-central and medial superior frontal gyri, while rightward asymmetries were found in middle temporal and middle frontal gyri. We conclude that dichotic listening engages a bihemispheric cortical network, showing a symmetrical and mostly leftward asymmetrical pattern. The here obtained functional (a)symmetry map might serve as a basis for future studies which - by studying the relevance of the here identified regions - clarify the relationship between behavioral laterality measures and hemispheric asymmetry.	t	\N
24121711	The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of contingent auditory feedback on the development of infant reaching. Eleven full-term infants were observed biweekly from the age of 10 weeks to 16 weeks, and their arm kinematics were recorded. Auditory feedback that was contingent on arm kinematics was provided in the form of: (a) the mother's voice; and (b) musical tones. Results showed that providing auditory feedback (mother's voice or musical tones): (i) increased the amplitude of exploratory arm movements before the onset of reaching; and (ii) increased the number of reaches at the onset of reaching. These results show that infants are able to use contingent auditory feedback to explore the relevant possibilities for action that are subsequently shaped into goal-directed movements.	t	\N
24122619	To determine the effectiveness of simultaneous versus sequential bilateral cochlear implantation on postoperative outcomes in children with bilateral deafness and to evaluate the impact of the inter-implant interval and age at second implantation on postoperative outcomes in children who already received their first cochlear implant. PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science. All studies comparing the effects of simultaneous with sequential bilateral cochlear implantation on postoperative outcomes and those evaluating the impact of the inter-implant interval and age at second implantation were retrieved. Four studies compared the effects of simultaneous with sequential bilateral cochlear implantation. All studies lacked randomization. Of these, three reported better speech perception and expressive language development at one year of bilateral experience for simultaneous cochlear implantation. Of the nineteen publications on the impact of the inter-implant interval on postoperative outcomes, the risk of bias was low-moderate for seven studies which were derived from five different study populations. In two of these populations no impact of the inter-implant interval was found, while in three a longer inter-implant interval was associated with poorer speech and language development. Observational studies suggest that simultaneous implantation in children may be associated with improved speech and language development, and that a prolonged inter-implant interval between both implantations may have a negative impact on these postoperative outcomes. Randomized trials are, however, needed to demonstrate whether simultaneous implantation indeed is superior to sequential bilateral implantation in children with bilateral deafness. NA.	t	\N
24125574	It is not unusual to find it stated as a fact that the left hemisphere is specialized for the processing of rapid, or temporal aspects of sound, and that the dominance of the left hemisphere in the perception of speech can be a consequence of this specialization. In this review we explore the history of this claim and assess the weight of this assumption. We will demonstrate that instead of a supposed sensitivity of the left temporal lobe for the acoustic properties of speech, it is the right temporal lobe which shows a marked preference for certain properties of sounds, for example longer durations, or variations in pitch. We finish by outlining some alternative factors that contribute to the left lateralization of speech perception.	t	\N
24125858	Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) are the experience of hearing voices in the absence of any speaker, often associated with a schizophrenia diagnosis. Prominent cognitive models of AVHs suggest they may be the result of inner speech being misattributed to an external or non-self source, due to atypical self- or reality monitoring. These arguments are supported by studies showing that people experiencing AVHs often show an externalising bias during monitoring tasks, and neuroimaging evidence which implicates superior temporal brain regions, both during AVHs and during tasks that measure verbal self-monitoring performance. Recently, efficacy of noninvasive neurostimulation techniques as a treatment option for AVHs has been tested. Meta-analyses show a moderate effect size in reduction of AVH frequency, but there has been little attempt to explain the therapeutic effect of neurostimulation in relation to existing cognitive models. This article reviews inner speech models of AVHs, and argues that a possible explanation for reduction in frequency following treatment may be modulation of activity in the brain regions involving the monitoring of inner speech.	t	\N
24132709	Three cross-modal priming experiments examined the influence of preexposure to pictures and printed words on the speed of spoken word recognition. Targets for auditory lexical decision were spoken Dutch words and nonwords, presented in isolation (Experiments 1 and 2) or after a short phrase (Experiment 3). Auditory stimuli were preceded by primes, which were pictures (Experiments 1 and 3) or those pictures' printed names (Experiment 2). Prime-target pairs were phonologically onset related (e.g., pijl-pijn, arrow-pain), were from the same semantic category (e.g., pijl-zwaard, arrow-sword), or were unrelated on both dimensions. Phonological interference and semantic facilitation were observed in all experiments. Priming magnitude was similar for pictures and printed words and did not vary with picture viewing time or number of pictures in the display (either one or four). These effects arose even though participants were not explicitly instructed to name the pictures and where strategic naming would interfere with lexical decision making. This suggests that, by default, processing of related pictures and printed words influences how quickly we recognize spoken words.	t	\N
24165303	Distortion-product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) collected after sound pressure level (SPL) calibration are susceptible to standing waves that affect measurements at the plane of the probe microphone due to overlap of incident and reflected waves. These standing-wave effects can be as large as 20 dB, and may affect frequencies both above and below 4 kHz. It has been shown that forward pressure level (FPL) calibration minimizes standing-wave effects by isolating the forward-propagating component of the stimulus. Yet, previous work has failed to demonstrate more than a small difference in test performance and behavioral-threshold prediction with DPOAEs after SPL and FPL calibration. One potential limitation in prior studies is that measurements were restricted to octave and interoctave frequencies; as a consequence, data were not necessarily collected at the standing-wave null frequency. In the present study, DPOAE responses were measured with f2 set to each participant's standing-wave frequency in an effort to increase the possibility that differences in test performance and threshold prediction would be observed for SPL and FPL calibration methods. Data were collected from 42 normal-hearing participants and 93 participants with hearing loss. DPOAEs were measured with f2 set to 4 kHz and at each participant's notch frequency after SPL and FPL calibration. DPOAE input/output functions were obtained from -10 to 80 dB in 5 dB steps for each calibration/stimulus condition. Test performance was evaluated using clinical decision theory. Both area under receiver operating characteristic curves for all stimulus levels and cumulative distributions when L2 = 50 dB (a level at which the best performance was observed regardless of calibration method) were used to evaluate the accuracy with which auditory status was determined. A bootstrap procedure was used to evaluate the significance of the differences in test performance between SPL and FPL calibrations. DPOAE predictions of behavioral threshold were evaluated by correlating actual behavioral thresholds and predicted thresholds using a multiple linear regression model. First, larger DPOAE levels were measured after SPL calibration than after FPL calibration, which demonstrated the expected impact of standing waves. Second, for both FPL and SPL calibration, test performance was best for moderate stimulus levels. Third, differences in test performance between calibration methods were evident at low- and high-stimulus levels. Fourth, there were small but statistically significant improvements in test performance after FPL calibration for clinically relevant conditions. Fifth, calibration method had no effect on threshold prediction. Standing waves after SPL calibration have an impact on DPOAE levels. Although the effect of calibration method on test performance was small, test performance was better after FPL calibration than after SPL calibration. There was no effect of calibration method on predictions of behavioral threshold.	t	\N
24167235	A phonological deficit is thought to affect most individuals with developmental dyslexia. The present study addresses whether the phonological deficit is caused by difficulties with perceptual learning of fine acoustic details. A demanding test of nonverbal auditory memory, "noise learning," was administered to both adults with dyslexia and control adult participants. On each trial, listeners had to decide whether a stimulus was a 1-s noise token or 2 abutting presentations of the same 0.5-s noise token (repeated noise). Without the listener's knowledge, the exact same noise tokens were presented over many trials. An improved ability to perform the task for such "reference" noises reflects learning of their acoustic details. Listeners with dyslexia did not differ from controls in any aspect of the task, qualitatively or quantitatively. They required the same amount of training to achieve discrimination of repeated from nonrepeated noises, and they learned the reference noises as often and as rapidly as the control group. However, they did show all the hallmarks of dyslexia, including a well-characterized phonological deficit. The data did not support the hypothesis that deficits in basic auditory processing or nonverbal learning and memory are the cause of the phonological deficit in dyslexia.	t	\N
24174656	Despite the prevalence of poverty worldwide, little is known about how early socioeconomic adversity affects auditory brain function. Socioeconomically disadvantaged children are underexposed to linguistically and cognitively stimulating environments and overexposed to environmental toxins, including noise pollution. This kind of sensory impoverishment, we theorize, has extensive repercussions on how the brain processes sound. To characterize how this impoverishment affects auditory brain function, we compared two groups of normal-hearing human adolescents who attended the same schools and who were matched in age, sex, and ethnicity, but differed in their maternal education level, a correlate of socioeconomic status (SES). In addition to lower literacy levels and cognitive abilities, adolescents from lower maternal education backgrounds were found to have noisier neural activity than their classmates, as reflected by greater activity in the absence of auditory stimulation. Additionally, in the lower maternal education group, the neural response to speech was more erratic over repeated stimulation, with lower fidelity to the input signal. These weaker, more variable, and noisier responses are suggestive of an inefficient auditory system. By studying SES within a neuroscientific framework, we have the potential to expand our understanding of how experience molds the brain, in addition to informing intervention research aimed at closing the achievement gap between high-SES and low-SES children.	t	\N
24180796	This article investigates the relationship between the shape of the mouthpiece and its acoustical properties in brass instruments. The hypothesis is that not only different volumes but also particular cup shapes affect the embouchure and the tone quality in both a physical and perceivable way. Three professional trumpet players were involved, and two different internal cup contours characterized by a "U" and a "V" shape with two types of throat junction (round and sharp) were chosen, based on a Vincent Bach 1 [1/2] C medium mouthpiece. A third intermediate contour was designed as a combination of these. Over 600 sound samples were produced under controlled conditions, the study involving four different stages: (1) Simulation of air-flow, (2) analysis of the sound spectra, (3) study of the players' subjective responses, and (4) perceptual analysis of their timbral differences. Results confirm the U shape is characterized by a stronger air recirculation and produces stronger spectral components above 8 kHz, compared to the V shape. A round throat junction may also be preferable to a sharp one in terms of playability. There is moderate agreement on the aural perception of these differences although the verbal attributes used to qualify these are not shared.	t	\N
24181980	The role of visual cues in native listeners' perception of speech produced by nonnative speakers has not been extensively studied. Native perception of English sentences produced by native English and Korean speakers in audio-only and audiovisual conditions was examined. Korean speakers were rated as more accented in audiovisual than in the audio-only condition. Visual cues enhanced word intelligibility for native English speech but less so for Korean-accented speech. Reduced intelligibility of Korean-accented audiovisual speech was associated with implicit visual biases, suggesting that listener-related factors partially influence the efficiency of audiovisual integration for nonnative speech perception.	t	\N
24184174	Expert musicians are able to time their actions accurately and consistently during a musical performance. We investigated how musical expertise influences the ability to reproduce auditory intervals and how this generalises across different techniques and sensory modalities. We first compared various reproduction strategies and interval length, to examine the effects in general and to optimise experimental conditions for testing the effect of music, and found that the effects were robust and consistent across different paradigms. Focussing on a 'ready-set-go' paradigm subjects reproduced time intervals drawn from distributions varying in total length (176, 352 or 704 ms) or in the number of discrete intervals within the total length (3, 5, 11 or 21 discrete intervals). Overall, Musicians performed more veridical than Non-Musicians, and all subjects reproduced auditory-defined intervals more accurately than visually-defined intervals. However, Non-Musicians, particularly with visual stimuli, consistently exhibited a substantial and systematic regression towards the mean interval. When subjects judged intervals from distributions of longer total length they tended to regress more towards the mean, while the ability to discriminate between discrete intervals within the distribution had little influence on subject error. These results are consistent with a Bayesian model that minimizes reproduction errors by incorporating a central tendency prior weighted by the subject's own temporal precision relative to the current distribution of intervals. Finally a strong correlation was observed between all durations of formal musical training and total reproduction errors in both modalities (accounting for 30% of the variance). Taken together these results demonstrate that formal musical training improves temporal reproduction, and that this improvement transfers from audition to vision. They further demonstrate the flexibility of sensorimotor mechanisms in adapting to different task conditions to minimise temporal estimation errors.	t	\N
24192718	Dexamethasone administered prior to cochlear implantation has been shown to reduce the loss of residual hearing in experimental settings. However, its effect on the tissue response around the implant has not been extensively studied. In this study dexamethasone sodium phosphate was administered to guinea pigs via local delivery to the round window (2% dexamethasone for 120 min prior to surgery, 'local 2/120', or 20% dexamethasone for 30 min prior to surgery) or intravenously (2 mg/kg dexamethasone for 60 min) prior to implantation. Auditory brainstem responses (ABR) were monitored for 3 months, after which the cochleae were embedded in Spurr's resin and sectioned. The extent of the tissue response and the survival of the neurosensory structures were analysed. Both local 2/120 and systemically delivered dexamethasone improved ABR thresholds when compared with control animals. Systemic dexamethasone also reduced the tissue response around the electrode. This suggests that whilst both locally and systemically administered dexamethasone can protect residual hearing after cochlear implantation, their effects upon the tissue response to implantation may differ.	t	\N
24198087	Cognitive skills, such as processing speed, memory functioning, and the ability to divide attention, are known to diminish with aging. The present study shows that, despite these changes, older adults can successfully compensate for degradations in speech perception. Critically, the older participants of this study were not pre-selected for high performance on cognitive tasks, but only screened for normal hearing. We measured the compensation for speech degradation using phonemic restoration, where intelligibility of degraded speech is enhanced using top-down repair mechanisms. Linguistic knowledge, Gestalt principles of perception, and expectations based on situational and linguistic context are used to effectively fill in the inaudible masked speech portions. A positive compensation effect was previously observed only with young normal hearing people, but not with older hearing-impaired populations, leaving the question whether the lack of compensation was due to aging or due to age-related hearing problems. Older participants in the present study showed poorer intelligibility of degraded speech than the younger group, as expected from previous reports of aging effects. However, in conditions that induce top-down restoration, a robust compensation was observed. Speech perception by the older group was enhanced, and the enhancement effect was similar to that observed with the younger group. This effect was even stronger with slowed-down speech, which gives more time for cognitive processing. Based on previous research, the likely explanations for these observations are that older adults can overcome age-related cognitive deterioration by relying on linguistic skills and vocabulary that they have accumulated over their lifetime. Alternatively, or simultaneously, they may use different cerebral activation patterns or exert more mental effort. This positive finding on top-down restoration skills by the older individuals suggests that new cognitive training methods can teach older adults to effectively use compensatory mechanisms to cope with the complex listening environments of everyday life.	t	\N
24198324	Temporal pole (TP) cortex is associated with higher-order sensory perception and/or recognition memory, as human patients with damage in this region show impaired performance during some tasks requiring recognition memory (Olson et al. 2007). The underlying mechanisms of TP processing are largely based on examination of the visual nervous system in humans and monkeys, while little is known about neuronal activity patterns in the auditory portion of this region, dorsal TP (dTP; Poremba et al. 2003). The present study examines single-unit activity of dTP in rhesus monkeys performing a delayed matching-to-sample task utilizing auditory stimuli, wherein two sounds are determined to be the same or different. Neurons of dTP encode several task-relevant events during the delayed matching-to-sample task, and encoding of auditory cues in this region is associated with accurate recognition performance. Population activity in dTP shows a match suppression mechanism to identical, repeated sound stimuli similar to that observed in the visual object identification pathway located ventral to dTP (Desimone 1996; Nakamura and Kubota 1996). However, in contrast to sustained visual delay-related activity in nearby analogous regions, auditory delay-related activity in dTP is transient and limited. Neurons in dTP respond selectively to different sound stimuli and often change their sound response preferences between experimental contexts. Current findings suggest a significant role for dTP in auditory recognition memory similar in many respects to the visual nervous system, while delay memory firing patterns are not prominent, which may relate to monkeys' shorter forgetting thresholds for auditory vs. visual objects.	t	\N
24210181	A time interval between the onset and the offset of a continuous sound (filled interval) is often perceived to be longer than a time interval between two successive brief sounds (empty interval) of the same physical duration. The present study examined whether and how this phenomenon, sometimes called the filled duration illusion (FDI), occurs for short time intervals (40-520 ms). The investigation was conducted with the method of adjustment (Experiment 1) and the method of magnitude estimation (Experiment 2). When the method of adjustment was used, the FDI did not appear for the majority of the participants, but it appeared clearly for some participants. In the latter case, the amount of the FDI increased as the interval duration lengthened. The FDI was more likely to occur with magnitude estimation than with the method of adjustment. The participants who showed clear FDI with one method did not necessarily show such clear FDI with the other method.	t	\N
24218156	Declarative memory evaluation is an essential step in the clinical and neuropsychological assessment of a variety of neurological disorders. It typically addresses the issue of normality/abnormality of an individual's performance. Another clinical application of the neuropsychological assessment of declarative memory is the longitudinal evaluation of an individual's performance change. In fact, in a variety of neurological conditions repeated assessments are needed to evaluate the modifications of a memory disorder as a function of time or in response to a pharmacological or rehabilitation treatment. This study was aimed at collecting data for measuring and interpreting performance change on a memory test for verbal material. For this purpose, we administered to 100 healthy subjects (age range 20-80 years; years of formal education range 8-17 years) three parallel forms of a test requiring the immediate and delayed recall of a 15-word list. The subjects performed the recall test three times (each time with a different list) at least 1 week apart. The order of the lists was randomized across subjects. Results revealed that performance on the three lists was highly correlated and did not vary as a function of the order of presentation. However, accuracy of recall was slightly better on a list compared to the others. Based on a method devised by Payne and Jones (J Clin Psychol 13:115-121, 1957), we provide normative data for establishing whether a discrepancy in recall accuracy on two versions of the test exceeds the discrepancy expected based on the performance of normal controls.	t	\N
24218332	Sound localization is important for orienting and focusing attention and for segregating sounds from different sources in the environment. In humans, horizontal sound localization mainly relies on interaural differences in sound arrival time and sound level. Despite their perceptual importance, the neural processing of interaural time and level differences (ITDs and ILDs) remains poorly understood. Animal studies suggest that, in the brainstem, ITDs and ILDs are processed independently by different specialized circuits. The aim of the current study was to investigate whether, at higher processing levels, they remain independent or are integrated into a common code of sound laterality. For that, we measured late auditory cortical potentials in response to changes in sound lateralization elicited by perceptually matched changes in ITD and/or ILD. The responses to the ITD and ILD changes exhibited significant morphological differences. At the same time, however, they originated from overlapping areas of the cortex and showed clear evidence for functional coupling. These results suggest that the auditory cortex contains an integrated code of sound laterality, but also retains independent information about ITD and ILD cues. This cue-related information might be used to assess how consistent the cues are, and thus, how likely they would have arisen from the same source.	t	\N
24224991	Today's compression hearing aids with noise reduction systems may not manage transient noises effectively because of the short duration of these sounds compared to the onset times of the compressors and/or noise reduction algorithms. The current study was designed to evaluate the effect of a transient noise reduction (TNR) algorithm on listening comfort, speech intelligibility in quiet, and preferred wearer gain in the presence of transients. A single-blinded, repeated-measures design was used. Thirteen experienced hearing aid users with bilaterally symmetrical (≤7.5 dB) sensorineural hearing loss participated in the study. Speech identification in quiet (no transient noise) was identical between the TNR On and the TNR Off conditions. The participants showed subjective preference for the TNR algorithm when "comfortable listening" was used as the criterion. Participants preferred less gain than the default prescription in the presence of transient noise sounds. However, the preferred gain was 2.9 dB higher when the TNR was activated than when it was deactivated. This translated to 12.1% improvement in phoneme identification over the TNR Off condition for soft speech. This study demonstrated that the use of the TNR algorithm would not negatively affect speech identification. The results also suggested that this algorithm may improve listening comfort in the presence of transient noise sounds and ensure consistent use of prescribed gain. Such an algorithm may ensure more consistent audibility across listening environments.	t	\N
24225652	The aim of this study was to comprehensively evaluate the auditory phenotype in Niemann-Pick disease, type C1 (NPC1), to understand better the natural history of this complex, heterogeneous disorder, and to define further the baseline auditory deficits associated with NPC1 so that use of potentially ototoxic interventions (e.g., 2-hydroxypropyl-ß-cyclodextrin) may be more appropriately monitored and understood. Fifty patients with NPC1 ranging in age from 4 months to 21 years (mean = 9.3 years) enrolled in a natural history/observational study at the National Institutes of Health. The auditory test battery included, when possible, immittance audiometry, pure-tone and speech audiometry, otoacoustic emission testing, and a neurotologic auditory brainstem response study. Longitudinal data were collected on a subset of patients. Over half of the cohort exhibited hearing loss involving the high frequencies ranging from a slight to moderate degree, and 74% of patients presented with clinically significant hearing loss involving the frequencies most important to speech understanding (0.5, 1, 2, 4 kHz). Despite the heterogeneity of the sample, results among patients were sufficiently consistent to implicate retrocochlear dysfunction in the majority (66%) of individuals, with (22%) or without (44%) accompanying cochlear involvement. Some patients (10%) presented with a profile for auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder. The combination of cross-sectional and longitudinal data indicates these patients are at risk for a progressive decline in auditory function. This is the largest cohort of patients with NPC1 evaluated comprehensively for auditory dysfunction, and results implicate the pathological processes of NPC1 in the manifestation of hearing loss. Patients with NPC1 should be monitored audiologically throughout their lives, beginning at the time of diagnosis. Clinicians and researchers should be aware of this historically overlooked aspect of the phenotype.	t	\N
24227733	Previous imaging studies of congenital blindness have studied individuals with heterogeneous causes of blindness, which may influence the nature and extent of cross-modal plasticity. Here, we scanned a homogeneous group of blind people with bilateral congenital anophthalmia, a condition in which both eyes fail to develop, and, as a result, the visual pathway is not stimulated by either light or retinal waves. This model of congenital blindness presents an opportunity to investigate the effects of very early visual deafferentation on the functional organization of the brain. In anophthalmic animals, the occipital cortex receives direct subcortical auditory input. We hypothesized that this pattern of subcortical reorganization ought to result in a topographic mapping of auditory frequency information in the occipital cortex of anophthalmic people. Using functional MRI, we examined auditory-evoked activity to pure tones of high, medium, and low frequencies. Activity in the superior temporal cortex was significantly reduced in anophthalmic compared with sighted participants. In the occipital cortex, a region corresponding to the cytoarchitectural area V5/MT+ was activated in the anophthalmic participants but not in sighted controls. Whereas previous studies in the blind indicate that this cortical area is activated to auditory motion, our data show it is also active for trains of pure tone stimuli and in some anophthalmic participants shows a topographic mapping (tonotopy). Therefore, this region appears to be performing early sensory processing, possibly served by direct subcortical input from the pulvinar to V5/MT+.	t	\N
24230923	The Rey Auditory-Verbal Learning Test is an easy to administer test that assesses many memory domains and is, therefore, widely used in the area of clinical neuropsychology. The purpose of this study was to provide normative data for an elderly population living in Spain. The sample of this study was comprised of 156 volunteers over 60 years of age, which were grouped into six different age groups. These groups comprised of 10 participants between the ages of 61 and 65 in the first group, 23 participants (66-70) in the second, 28 participants (71-75) in the third, 35 participants (76-80) in the fourth, 32 participants (81-85)in the fifth and 28 participants (86-95) in the sixth group. Demographic data were collected and means, deviations, and ranges of all the measures were evaluated. Normative data were calculated from the percentiles, and then converted into age-corrected scaled scores with a mean of 10 and a standard deviation of 3.	t	\N
24231418	In the basic sciences, many researchers now use gap pre-pulse inhibition of the acoustic startle reflex (GPIAS) to determine if an animal has tinnitus after exposure to an ototoxic drug or intense noise. Tinnitus is assumed to be present if the silent gap in an ongoing narrow band noise (NBN) fails to suppress the startle reflex response evoked by an intense noise burst. The lack of gap pre-pulse inhibition presumably occurs because tinnitus fills in the silent intervals in the background noise. To test the perceptual aspects of this hypothesis, we asked hearing impaired subjects with tinnitus if they could perceive 50 ms silent intervals presented in a NBN, which was located above, below or at the subject's tinnitus pitch. The same tests were performed on normal hearing subjects without tinnitus. All subjects, with and without tinnitus, could detect the 50 ms gaps. Thus, using the stimulus parameters similar to those employed in animal and human GPIAS studies, we found that the tinnitus percept does not fill in the silent interval in a perceptual gap detection task; however, these finding do not rule out the possibility that tinnitus interferes with pre-attentive filtering of sensory stimuli in the GPIAS sensorimotor gating paradigm.	t	\N
24232066	Compare preoperative and postoperative performance in patients undergoing cochlear implantation (CI) for unilateral severe-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss (single-sided deafness, SSD). IRB-approved, prospective Tertiary center Twenty-nine patients have undergone CI for SSD. SSD was due to Ménière's disease (MD) in 10 subjects; these also suffered from recalcitrant vertigo spells and in these 10 patients along with 2 others the CI was placed simultaneous with a labyrinthectomy. CI with or without labyrinthectomy. CNC word and AzBio sentences in quiet were administered to the implanted ear. A multiple-loudspeaker sound localization test was administered in the bilateral listening condition. All data were collected preoperatively and 3, 6, and 12 months postoperatively with postoperative data available for 19 subjects. Additionally, a tinnitus handicap questionnaire is administered pre- and 12-months post-operatively. CNC word and AzBio sentence scores showed improvement in the implanted ear. Sound localization appeared to improve in an experience-dependent fashion in some patients. Most patients reported diminished tinnitus after cochlear implantation. All patients undergoing labyrinthectomy experienced resolution of vertigo attacks. CI restores auditory function to the deafened ear. Additionally, the binaural input appears to improve sound localization for most patients. In patients with severe hearing loss and recalcitrant vertigo attacks because of MD, simultaneous labyrinthectomy and CI effectively relieves vertigo attacks and improves auditory function.	t	\N
24234167	Are listeners able to adapt to a foreign-accented speaker who has, as is often the case, an inconsistent accent? Two groups of native Dutch listeners participated in a cross-modal priming experiment, either in a consistent-accent condition (German-accented items only) or in an inconsistent-accent condition (German-accented and nativelike pronunciations intermixed). The experimental words were identical for both groups (words with vowel substitutions characteristic of German-accented speech); additional contextual words differed in accentedness (German-accented or nativelike words). All items were spoken by the same speaker: a German native who could produce the accented forms but could also pass for a Dutch native speaker. Listeners in the consistent-accent group were able to adapt quickly to the speaker (i.e., showed facilitatory priming for words with vocalic substitutions). Listeners in the inconsistent-accent condition showed adaptation to words with vocalic substitutions only in the second half of the experiment. These results indicate that adaptation to foreign-accented speech is rapid. Accent inconsistency slows listeners down initially, but a short period of additional exposure is enough for them to adapt to the speaker. Listeners can therefore tolerate inconsistency in foreign-accented speech.	t	\N
24238764	Two experiments examined when monolingual, English-learning 19-month-old infants learn a second object label. Two experimenters sat together. One labeled a novel object with one novel label, whereas the other labeled the same object with a different label in either the same or a different language. Infants were tested on their comprehension of each label immediately following its presentation. Infants mapped the first label at above chance levels, but they did so with the second label only when requested by the speaker who provided it (Experiment 1) or when the second experimenter labeled the object in a different language (Experiment 2). These results show that 19-month-olds learn second object labels but do not readily generalize them across speakers of the same language. The results highlight how speaker and language spoken guide infants' acceptance of second labels, supporting sociopragmatic views of word learning.	t	\N
24256043	The procedure maximally retains the physiological structure of the middle ear and external auditory canal, thus effectively improving the patient's hearing ability. We explored the clinical outcomes of treating chronic suppurative otitis media using improved intact canal wall radical mastoidectomy with sandwich graft tympanoplasty. We chose to perform intact canal wall radical mastoidectomy with sandwich graft tympanoplasty in patients with chronic suppurative otitis media. A total of 170 patients were included in the study. Statistical analysis was carried out using software SPSS18.0, adjusted with the chi-squared test. In all, 140 cases were shown to have been treated effectively (82.35%, 140/170). The increased auditory threshold of preoperative bone conduction was not related to the duration of disease and/or the presence of cholesteatoma (p > 0.05), but was associated with ossicular chain disruption or fixation (p < 0.05), specifically the ossicular chain destruction/absorption, granulation tissue wrapping, and consequent fixation. During the procedure, the sleeve-like pedicle flap of external auditory canal and tympanic membrane is covered with graft, allowing good fixation with maintenance of the tympanic membrane's natural shape. The auditory threshold test revealed equal or above normal levels (30 dB) for 126 cases (74.12%, 126/170). The primary healing rate of tympanic membrane achieved was 96.47% (164/170).	t	\N
24258458	While bilateral cochlear implants (CIs) provide some binaural benefits, these benefits are limited compared to those observed in normal-hearing (NH) listeners. The large frequency-to-electrode allocation bandwidths (BWs) in CIs compared to auditory filter BWs in NH listeners increases the interaural fluctuation rate available for binaural unmasking, which may limit binaural benefits. The purpose of this work was to investigate the effect of interaural fluctuation rate on correlation change discrimination and binaural masking-level differences in NH listeners presented a CI simulation using a pulsed-sine vocoder. In experiment 1, correlation-change just-noticeable differences (JNDs) and tone-in-noise thresholds were measured for narrowband noises with different BWs and center frequencies (CFs). The results suggest that the BW, CF, and/or interaural fluctuation rate are important factors for correlation change discrimination. In experiment 2, the interaural fluctuation rate was systematically varied and dissociated from changes in BW and CF by using a pulsed-sine vocoder. Results indicated that the interaural fluctuation rate did not affect correlation change JNDs for correlated reference noises; however, slow interaural fluctuations increased correlation change JNDs for uncorrelated reference noises. In experiment 3, the BW, CF, and vocoder pulse rate were varied while interaural fluctuation rate was held constant. JNDs increased for increasing BW and decreased for increasing CF. In summary, relatively fast interaural fluctuation rates are not detrimental for detecting changes in interaural correlation. Thus, limiting factors to binaural benefits in CI listeners could be a result of other temporal and/or spectral deficiencies from electrical stimulation.	t	\N
24260183	In the real world, human speech recognition nearly always involves listening in background noise. The impact of such noise on speech signals and on intelligibility performance increases with the separation of the listener from the speaker. The present behavioral experiment provides an overview of the effects of such acoustic disturbances on speech perception in conditions approaching ecologically valid contexts. We analysed the intelligibility loss in spoken word lists with increasing listener-to-speaker distance in a typical low-level natural background noise. The noise was combined with the simple spherical amplitude attenuation due to distance, basically changing the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Therefore, our study draws attention to some of the most basic environmental constraints that have pervaded spoken communication throughout human history. We evaluated the ability of native French participants to recognize French monosyllabic words (spoken at 65.3 dB(A), reference at 1 meter) at distances between 11 to 33 meters, which corresponded to the SNRs most revealing of the progressive effect of the selected natural noise (-8.8 dB to -18.4 dB). Our results showed that in such conditions, identity of vowels is mostly preserved, with the striking peculiarity of the absence of confusion in vowels. The results also confirmed the functional role of consonants during lexical identification. The extensive analysis of recognition scores, confusion patterns and associated acoustic cues revealed that sonorant, sibilant and burst properties were the most important parameters influencing phoneme recognition. . Altogether these analyses allowed us to extract a resistance scale from consonant recognition scores. We also identified specific perceptual consonant confusion groups depending of the place in the words (onset vs. coda). Finally our data suggested that listeners may access some acoustic cues of the CV transition, opening interesting perspectives for future studies.	t	\N
24271979	Integrating visual and auditory language information is critical for reading. Suppression and congruency effects in audiovisual paradigms with letters and speech sounds have provided information about low-level mechanisms of grapheme-phoneme integration during reading. However, the central question about how such processes relate to reading entire words remains unexplored. Using ERPs, we investigated whether audiovisual integration occurs for words already in beginning readers, and if so, whether this integration is reflected by differences in map strength or topography (aim 1); and moreover, whether such integration is associated with reading fluency (aim 2). A 128-channel EEG was recorded while 69 monolingual (Swiss)-German speaking first-graders performed a detection task with rare targets. Stimuli were presented in blocks either auditorily (A), visually (V) or audiovisually (matching: AVM; nonmatching: AVN). Corresponding ERPs were computed, and unimodal ERPs summated (A + V = sumAV). We applied TANOVAs to identify time windows with significant integration effects: suppression (sumAV-AVM) and congruency (AVN-AVM). They were further characterized using GFP and 3D-centroid analyses, and significant effects were correlated with reading fluency. The results suggest that audiovisual suppression effects occur for familiar German and unfamiliar English words, whereas audiovisual congruency effects can be found only for familiar German words, probably due to lexical-semantic processes involved. Moreover, congruency effects were characterized by topographic differences, indicating that different sources are active during processing of congruent compared to incongruent audiovisual words. Furthermore, no clear associations between audiovisual integration and reading fluency were found. The degree to which such associations develop in beginning readers remains open to further investigation.	t	\N
24278326	The purpose of this study was to design and to verify a new hearing-aid fitting strategy (Aescu HRL-1) based on the acoustic features of Mandarin. The subjective and objective outcomes were compared to those fitted with NAL-NL1 (National Acoustic Laboratory Non-Linear, version1) in Mandarin-speaking hearing-aid users. Fifteen subjects with sensorineural hearing loss participated in this preliminary study. Each subject wore a pair of four-channel hearing aids fitted with the Aescu HRL-1 and NAL-NL1 prescriptions alternatively for 1 month. Objective and subjective tests including the Mandarin Monosyllable Recognition Test (MMRT), Mandarin Hearing in Noise Test (MHINT), International Outcome Inventory for Hearing Aids (IOI-HA), and a sound-quality questionnaire were used to evaluate the performance of the two prescriptions. The mean MMRT scores were 79.9% and 81.1% for NAL-NL1 and Aescu HRL-1 respectively. They are not statistically different. The corresponding MHINT signal-to-noise ratios were 0.87 and 0.85 dB, also, no significant difference was found between these two strategies. However, in subjective questionnaires, overall, the sound-quality and IOI-HA scores were higher for Aescu HRL-1. The speech recognition performance based on Aescu HRL-1 is as good as that of NAL-NL1 for Mandarin-speaking hearing-aid users. Moreover, the subjects generally responded that Aescu HRL-1 provides a more natural, richer, and better sound quality than does NAL-NL1.	t	\N
24296543	The acoustic basis of intelligibility associated with varied clear speech instructions was studied. Twelve healthy speakers read 18 sentences in 'habitual', 'clear', 'hearing impaired' and 'overenunciate' conditions. The latter 3 conditions are varieties of clear speech. Acoustic measures included tense and lax vowel space area, a measure of vowel spectral change, articulation rate and sentence-level vocal intensity. Sentences were mixed with multitalker babble to prevent ceiling effects and were orthographically transcribed by 40 listeners. Percent-correct scores were obtained for each speaker and condition. Regression analyses were used to quantify relationships between acoustic measures and intelligibility. Univariate regressions indicated that greater magnitudes of acoustic change in nonhabitual conditions were associated with greater increases in intelligibility. Multivariate regression analysis further indicated that lax vowel space, articulation rate and vocal intensity were significant predictors of intelligibility. Acoustic variables associated with intelligibility differed depending on whether relationships were examined using univariate or multivariate statistics. Multivariate statistics indicated that articulation rate was the strongest predictor of improvements in intelligibility above and beyond all other variables studied. The findings have implications for optimizing therapeutic use of clear speech for clinical populations.	t	\N
24302571	The activity of sensory neural populations carries information about the environment. This may be extracted from neural activity using different strategies. In the auditory brainstem, a recent theory proposes that sound location in the horizontal plane is decoded from the relative summed activity of two populations in each hemisphere, whereas earlier theories hypothesized that the location was decoded from the identity of the most active cells. We tested the performance of various decoders of neural responses in increasingly complex acoustical situations, including spectrum variations, noise, and sound diffraction. We demonstrate that there is insufficient information in the pooled activity of each hemisphere to estimate sound direction in a reliable way consistent with behavior, whereas robust estimates can be obtained from neural activity by taking into account the heterogeneous tuning of cells. These estimates can still be obtained when only contralateral neural responses are used, consistently with unilateral lesion studies. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.01312.001.	t	\N
24311693	Dyslexia is a severe and persistent reading and spelling disorder caused by impairment in the ability to manipulate speech sounds. We combined functional magnetic resonance brain imaging with multivoxel pattern analysis and functional and structural connectivity analysis in an effort to disentangle whether dyslexics' phonological deficits are caused by poor quality of the phonetic representations or by difficulties in accessing intact phonetic representations. We found that phonetic representations are hosted bilaterally in primary and secondary auditory cortices and that their neural quality (in terms of robustness and distinctness) is intact in adults with dyslexia. However, the functional and structural connectivity between the bilateral auditory cortices and the left inferior frontal gyrus (a region involved in higher-level phonological processing) is significantly hampered in dyslexics, suggesting deficient access to otherwise intact phonetic representations.	t	\N
24312408	Nucleus cochlear implant systems incorporate a fast-acting front-end automatic gain control (AGC), sometimes called a compression limiter. The objective of the present study was to determine the effect of replacing the front-end compression limiter with a newly proposed envelope profile limiter. A secondary objective was to investigate the effect of AGC speed on cochlear implant speech intelligibility. The envelope profile limiter was located after the filter bank and reduced the gain when the largest of the filter bank envelopes exceeded the compression threshold. The compression threshold was set equal to the saturation level of the loudness growth function (i.e. the envelope level that mapped to the maximum comfortable current level), ensuring that no envelope clipping occurred. To preserve the spectral profile, the same gain was applied to all channels. Experiment 1 compared sentence recognition with the front-end limiter and with the envelope profile limiter, each with two release times (75 and 625 ms). Six implant recipients were tested in quiet and in four-talker babble noise, at a high presentation level of 89 dB SPL. Overall, release time had a larger effect than the AGC type. With both AGC types, speech intelligibility was lower for the 75 ms release time than for the 625 ms release time. With the shorter release time, the envelope profile limiter provided higher group mean scores than the front-end limiter in quiet, but there was no significant difference in noise. Experiment 2 measured sentence recognition in noise as a function of presentation level, from 55 to 89 dB SPL. The envelope profile limiter with 625 ms release time yielded better scores than the front-end limiter with 75 ms release time. A take-home study showed no clear pattern of preferences. It is concluded that the envelope profile limiter is a feasible alternative to a front-end compression limiter.	t	\N
24317426	Previous research demonstrates that meaningfully related sounds enhance visual sensitivity to point-light displays of human movement. Here we report two psychophysical studies that investigated whether, and if so when, this facilitation is modulated by the temporal relationship between auditory and visual stimuli. In Experiment 1, participants detected point-light walkers in masks while listening to footsteps that were either synchronous or out-of-phase with point-light footfalls. The relative timing of auditory and visual walking did not impact performance. Experiment 2 further tested the importance of multisensory timing by disrupting the rhythm of the auditory and visual streams. Participants detected point-light walkers while listening to footstep or tone sounds that were either synchronous or temporally random with regards to point-light footfalls. Heard footsteps improved visual sensitivity over heard tones regardless of timing. Taken together, these results suggest that during the detection of others' actions, the perceptual system makes use of meaningfully related sounds whether or not they are synchronous. These results are discussed in relation to the unity assumption theory as well as recent empirical data that suggest that temporal correspondence is not always a critical factor in multisensory perception and integration.	t	\N
24329490	To link outcome measures used in audiological research to the ICF classification and thereby describe audiological research from the ICF perspective. Through a peer-reviewed or a joint linking procedure, link outcome measures to the ICF classification system using standardized ICF linking rules. Additional linking rules were developed in combination with the established rules to overcome difficulties when connecting audiological data to ICF. Absolute and relative frequencies of ICF categories were reported. The identified outcome measures from the previous study (Part I) constituted the empirical material. In total, 285 ICF categories were identified. The most prevalent categories were related to listening, hearing functions, auditory perceptions, emotions and the physical environment, such as noise and hearing aids. Categories related to communication showed lower relative frequencies, as did categories related to the social and attitudinal environment. Based on the linked outcome measures, communication as a research topic is subordinated to other research topics. The same conclusion can be drawn for research targeting the social and attitudinal environment of adults with HL. Difficulties in the linking procedure were highlighted and discussed, and suggestions for future revisions of the ICF from the audiological perspective were described.	t	\N
24333301	Mutations in the connexin 26 gene (GJB2) are the most common genetic cause of deafness, leading to congenital bilateral non-syndromic sensorineural hearing loss. Here we report the generation of a mouse model for a connexin 26 (Cx26) mutation, in which cre-Sox10 drives excision of the Cx26 gene from non-sensory cells flanking the auditory epithelium. We determined that these conditional knockout mice, designated Gjb2-CKO, have a severe hearing loss. Immunocytochemistry of the auditory epithelium confirmed absence of Cx26 in the non-sensory cells. Histology of the organ of Corti and the spiral ganglion neurons (SGNs) performed at ages 1, 3, or 6 months revealed that in Gjb2-CKO mice, the organ of Corti began to degenerate in the basal cochlear turn at an early stage, and the degeneration rapidly spread to the apex. In addition, the density of SGNs in Rosenthal's canal decreased rapidly along a gradient from the base of the cochlea to the apex, where some SGNs survived until at least 6 months of age. Surviving neurons often clustered together and formed clumps of cells in the canal. We then assessed the influence of brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene therapy on the SGNs of Gjb2-CKO mice by inoculating Adenovirus with the BDNF gene insert (Ad.BDNF) into the base of the cochlea via the scala tympani or scala media. We determined that over-expression of BDNF beginning around 1 month of age resulted in a significant rescue of neurons in Rosenthal's canal of the cochlear basal turn but not in the middle or apical portions. This data may be used to design therapies for enhancing the SGN physiological status in all GJB2 patients and especially in a sub-group of GJB2 patients where the hearing loss progresses due to ongoing degeneration of the auditory nerve, thereby improving the outcome of cochlear implant therapy in these ears.	t	\N
24342151	The purpose of the study was to identify structural brain differences in school-age children with residual speech sound errors. Voxel based morphometry was used to compare gray and white matter volumes for 23 children with speech sound errors, ages 8;6-11;11, and 54 typically speaking children matched on age, oral language, and IQ. We hypothesized that regions associated with production and perception of speech sounds would differ between groups. Results indicated greater gray matter volumes for the speech sound error group relative to typically speaking controls in bilateral superior temporal gyrus. There was greater white matter volume in the corpus callosum for the speech sound error group, but less white matter volume in right lateral occipital gyrus. Results may indicate delays in neuronal pruning in critical speech regions or differences in the development of networks for speech perception and production.	t	\N
24344364	Previous studies in both humans and animals have documented improved performance following discrimination training. This enhanced performance is often associated with cortical response changes. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that long-term speech training on multiple tasks can improve primary auditory cortex (A1) responses compared to rats trained on a single speech discrimination task or experimentally naïve rats. Specifically, we compared the percent of A1 responding to trained sounds, the responses to both trained and untrained sounds, receptive field properties of A1 neurons, and the neural discrimination of pairs of speech sounds in speech trained and naïve rats. Speech training led to accurate discrimination of consonant and vowel sounds, but did not enhance A1 response strength or the neural discrimination of these sounds. Speech training altered tone responses in rats trained on six speech discrimination tasks but not in rats trained on a single speech discrimination task. Extensive speech training resulted in broader frequency tuning, shorter onset latencies, a decreased driven response to tones, and caused a shift in the frequency map to favor tones in the range where speech sounds are the loudest. Both the number of trained tasks and the number of days of training strongly predict the percent of A1 responding to a low frequency tone. Rats trained on a single speech discrimination task performed less accurately than rats trained on multiple tasks and did not exhibit A1 response changes. Our results indicate that extensive speech training can reorganize the A1 frequency map, which may have downstream consequences on speech sound processing.	t	\N
24344815	Dyslexia is commonly attributed to a phonological deficit, but whether it effectively compromises the phonological grammar or lower level systems is rarely explored. To address this question, we gauge the sensitivity of dyslexics to grammatical phonological restrictions on spoken onset clusters (e.g., bl in block). Across languages, certain onsets are preferred to others (e.g., blif ≻ bnif ≻ bdif, where ≻ indicates a preference). Here, we show that dyslexic participants (adult native speakers of Hebrew) are fully sensitive to these phonological restrictions, and they extend them irrespective of whether the onsets are attested in their language (e.g., bnif vs. bdif) or unattested (e.g., mlif vs. mdif). Dyslexics, however, showed reduced sensitivity to phonetic contrasts (e.g., blif vs. belif; ba vs. pa). Together, these results suggest that the known difficulties of dyslexics in speech processing could emanate not from the phonological grammar, but rather from lower level impairments to acoustic/phonetic encoding, lexical storage, and retrieval.	t	\N
24349414	The diagnosis of tinnitus relies on self-report. Psychoacoustic measurements of tinnitus pitch and loudness are essential for assessing claims and discriminating true from false ones. For this reason, the quantification of tinnitus remains a challenging research goal. We aimed to: (1) assess the precision of a new tinnitus likeness rating procedure with a continuous-pitch presentation method, controlling for music training, and (2) test whether tinnitus psychoacoustic measurements have the sensitivity and specificity required to detect people faking tinnitus. Musicians and non-musicians with tinnitus, as well as simulated malingerers without tinnitus, were tested. Most were retested several weeks later. Tinnitus pitch matching was first assessed using the likeness rating method: pure tones from 0.25 to 16 kHz were presented randomly to participants, who had to rate the likeness of each tone to their tinnitus, and to adjust its level from 0 to 100 dB SPL. Tinnitus pitch matching was then assessed with a continuous-pitch method: participants had to match the pitch of their tinnitus to an external tone by moving their finger across a touch-sensitive strip, which generated a continuous pure tone from 0.5 to 20 kHz in 1-Hz steps. The predominant tinnitus pitch was consistent across both methods for both musicians and non-musicians, although musicians displayed better external tone pitch matching abilities. Simulated malingerers rated loudness much higher than did the other groups with a high degree of specificity (94.4%) and were unreliable in loudness (not pitch) matching from one session to the other. Retest data showed similar pitch matching responses for both methods for all participants. In conclusion, tinnitus pitch and loudness reliably correspond to the tinnitus percept, and psychoacoustic loudness matches are sensitive and specific to the presence of tinnitus.	t	\N
24350693	To investigate the predicted threshold shift associated with the use of nonlinear hearing aids fitted to the NAL-NL2 or the DSL m[i/o] prescription for children with the same audiograms. For medium and high input levels, we asked: (1) How does predicted asymptotic threshold shifts (ATS) differ according to the choice of prescription? (2) How does predicted ATS vary with hearing level for gains prescribed by the two prescriptions? A mathematical model consisting of the modified power law combined with equations for predicting temporary threshold shift (Macrae, 1994b) was used to predict ATS. Predicted threshold shift were determined for 57 audiograms at medium and high input levels. For the 57 audiograms, DSL m[i/o] gains for high input levels were associated with increased risk relative to NAL-NL2. The variation of ATS with hearing level suggests that NAL-NL2 gains became unsafe when hearing loss > 90 dB HL. The gains prescribed by DSL m[i/o] became unsafe when hearing loss > 80 dB HL at a medium input level, and > 70 dB HL at a high input level. There is a risk of damage to hearing for children using nonlinear amplification. Vigilant checking for threshold shift is recommended.	t	\N
24357104	Middle ear disease is the primary cause of hearing loss in children and has a significant impact on language development and academic performance. Multiple prognostic factors have previously been examined, but there is little published data regarding frequency-specific hearing outcomes. To examine the relationship between type I tympanoplasty in a pediatric population and frequency-specific hearing changes, as well as the relationship between several prognostic factors and graft retention. Retrospective medical chart review (February 2006 to October 2011) of 492 consecutive pediatric otolaryngology patients undergoing type I tympanoplasty for tympanic membrane (TM) perforation of any etiology at a tertiary-care pediatric otolaryngology practice. Type I tympanoplasty. Preoperative and postoperative audiometric data were collected for patients undergoing successful TM repair. It was hypothesized before data collection that conductive hearing would improve at all frequencies with no significant change in sensorineural hearing. Data collected included air conduction at 250 to 8000 Hz, speech reception thresholds, bone conduction at 500 to 4000 Hz, and air-bone gap at 500 to 4000 Hz. Demographic data obtained included sex, age, size, mechanism, location of perforation, and operative repair technique. Of 492 patients, 320 were excluded; results were thus examined for 172 patients. Surgery was successful for 73.8% of patients. Perforation size was significantly associated with repair success (mean [SD] surgical success rate of 38.6% [15.3%] vs surgical failure rate of 31.4% [15.0%]; P < .01); however, mean (SD) age (9.02 [3.89] years [surgical success] vs 8.52 [3.43] years [surgical failure]; P > .05) and repair technique (medial [73.08%] vs lateral [76.47%] graft success; P > .99) were not. Air conduction significantly improved from 250 to 2000 Hz (P < .001), did not significantly improve at 4000 Hz (P = .08), and there was a nonsignificant decline at 8000 Hz (P = .12). Speech reception threshold significantly improved (20 vs 15 dB; P < .001). This large review found an association of TM perforation size with surgical success and an improvement in speech reception threshold, air conduction at 250 to 2000 Hz, air-bone gap at 500 to 2000 Hz, and worsening bone conduction at 4000 Hz. Patients with high-frequency hearing loss due to TM perforation should not anticipate significant recovery from type I tympanoplasty. Hearing loss at higher frequencies may require postoperative hearing rehabilitation.	t	\N
24364392	Previous research has shown that damage to the left temporal pole (LTP) is associated with impaired retrieval of words for unique entities, including names of famous people and landmarks. However, it is not known whether retrieving names for famous melodies is associated with the LTP. The aim of this study was to investigate the hypothesis that damage to the LTP would be associated with impaired naming of famous musical melodies. A Melody Naming Test was administered to patients with LTP damage, brain damaged comparison (BDC) patients, and normal comparison participants (NC). The test included various well-known melodies (e.g., "Pop Goes the Weasel"). After hearing each melody, participants were asked to rate their familiarity with the melody and identify it by name. LTP patients named significantly fewer melodies than BDC and NC participants. Recognition of melodies did not differ significantly between groups. The findings suggest that LTP supports retrieval of names for famous melodies. More broadly, these results extend support for the theoretical notion that LTP is important for retrieving proper names for unique concepts, irrespectively of stimulus modality or category.	t	\N
24366693	The visual cues involved in auditory speech processing are not restricted to information from lip movements but also include head or chin gestures and facial expressions such as eyebrow movements. The fact that visual gestures precede the auditory signal implicates that visual information may influence the auditory activity. As visual stimuli are very close in time to the auditory information for audiovisual syllables, the cortical response to them usually overlaps with that for the auditory stimulation; the neural dynamics underlying the visual facilitation for continuous speech therefore remain unclear. In this study, we used a three-word phrase to study continuous speech processing. We presented video clips with even (without emphasis) phrases as the frequent stimuli and with one word visually emphasized by the speaker as the non-frequent stimuli. Negativity in the resulting ERPs was detected after the start of the emphasizing articulatory movements but before the auditory stimulus, a finding that was confirmed by the statistical comparisons of the audiovisual and visual stimulation. No such negativity was present in the control visual-only condition. The propagation of this negativity was observed between the visual and fronto-temporal electrodes. Thus, in continuous speech, the visual modality evokes predictive coding for the auditory speech, which is analysed by the cerebral cortex in the context of the phrase even before the arrival of the corresponding auditory signal.	t	\N
24372066	In this study, 35 young, healthy adults were tested on whether speech-like stimuli evoke a unique response in the auditory efferent system. To this end, descending cortical influences on medial olivocochlear (MOC) activity were indirectly evaluated by studying the effects of contralateral suppression on distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) under four conditions: (a) in the absence of any contralateral noise (Baseline), (b) presence of contralateral broadband noise (Noise Baseline), (c) vowel discrimination-in-noise task (VDN) and (d) tone discrimination-in-noise (TDN) task. A statistically significant release from suppression was evident across all tested DPOAE frequencies (1, 1.5 and 2 kHz) only for the VDN task (p < 0.05), which yielded greater release from suppression than the TDN task. These findings indicate that during active listening in the presence of noise, the MOC activity may be differentially modulated depending on the type of stimulus (vowel vs. tone). Specifically, in the presence of background noise, vowels may show a greater release from suppression in the cochlea than frequency, intensity and duration matched tones.	t	\N
24376601	During sentence production, linguistic information (semantics, syntax, phonology) of words is retrieved and assembled into a meaningful utterance. There is still debate on how we assemble single words into more complex syntactic structures such as noun phrases or sentences. In the present study, event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to investigate the time course of syntactic planning. Thirty-three volunteers described visually animated scenes using naming formats varying in syntactic complexity: from simple words ('W', e.g., "triangle", "red", "square", "green", "to fly towards"), to noun phrases ('NP', e.g., "the red triangle", "the green square", "to fly towards"), to a sentence ('S', e.g., "The red triangle flies towards the green square."). Behaviourally, we observed an increase in errors and corrections with increasing syntactic complexity, indicating a successful experimental manipulation. In the ERPs following scene onset, syntactic complexity variations were found in a P300-like component ('S'/'NP'>'W') and a fronto-central negativity (linear increase with syntactic complexity). In addition, the scene could display two actions - unpredictable for the participant, as the disambiguation occurred only later in the animation. Time-locked to the moment of visual disambiguation of the action and thus the verb, we observed another P300 component ('S'>'NP'/'W'). The data show for the first time evidence of sensitivity to syntactic planning within the P300 time window, time-locked to visual events critical of syntactic planning. We discuss the findings in the light of current syntactic planning views.	t	\N
24376662	Previous research suggests that deficits in attention-emotion interaction are implicated in schizophrenia symptoms. Although disruption in auditory processing is crucial in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia, deficits in interaction between emotional processing of auditorily presented language stimuli and auditory attention have not yet been clarified. To address this issue, the current study used a dichotic listening task to examine 22 patients with schizophrenia and 24 age-, sex-, parental socioeconomic background-, handedness-, dexterous ear-, and intelligence quotient-matched healthy controls. The participants completed a word recognition task on the attended side in which a word with emotionally valenced content (negative/positive/neutral) was presented to one ear and a different neutral word was presented to the other ear. Participants selectively attended to either ear. In the control subjects, presentation of negative but not positive word stimuli provoked a significantly prolonged reaction time compared with presentation of neutral word stimuli. This interference effect for negative words existed whether or not subjects directed attention to the negative words. This interference effect was significantly smaller in the patients with schizophrenia than in the healthy controls. Furthermore, the smaller interference effect was significantly correlated with severe positive symptoms and delusional behavior in the patients with schizophrenia. The present findings suggest that aberrant interaction between semantic processing of negative emotional content and auditory attention plays a role in production of positive symptoms in schizophrenia. (224 words).	t	\N
24384081	Large variations in perceptual directional microphone benefit, which far exceed the variation expected from physical performance measures of directional microphones, have been reported in the literature. The cause for the individual variation has not been systematically investigated. To determine the factors that are responsible for the individual variation in reported perceptual directional benefit. A correlational study. Physical performance measures of the directional microphones obtained after they had been fitted to individuals, cognitive abilities of individuals, and measurement errors were related to perceptual directional benefit scores. Fifty-nine hearing-impaired adults with varied degrees of hearing loss participated in the study. All participants were bilaterally fitted with a Motion behind-the-ear device (500 M, 501 SX, or 501 P) from Siemens according to the National Acoustic Laboratories' non-linear prescription, version two (NAL-NL2). Using the Bamford-Kowal-Bench (BKB) sentences, the perceptual directional benefit was obtained as the difference in speech reception threshold measured in babble noise (SRTn) with the devices in directional (fixed hypercardioid) and in omnidirectional mode. The SRTn measurements were repeated three times with each microphone mode. Physical performance measures of the directional microphone included the angle of the microphone ports to loudspeaker axis, the frequency range dominated by amplified sound, the in situ signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and the in situ three-dimensional, articulation-index weighted directivity index (3D AI-DI). The cognitive tests included auditory selective attention, speed of processing, and working memory. Intraparticipant variation on the repeated SRTn's and the interparticipant variation on the average SRTn were used to determine the effect of measurement error. A multiple regression analysis was used to determine the effect of other factors. Measurement errors explained 52% of the variation in perceptual directional microphone benefit (95% confidence interval [CI]: 34-78%), while another 37% of variation was explained primarily by the physical performance of the directional microphones after they were fitted to individuals. The most contributing factor was the in situ 3D AI-DI measured across the low frequencies. Repeated SRTn measurements are needed to obtain a reliable indication of the perceptual directional benefit in an individual. Further, to obtain optimum benefit from directional microphones, the effectiveness of the microphones should be maximized across the low frequencies.	t	\N
24386719	Listener retention of silent, gap-length duration was studied. Just noticeable differences (JNDs) for gap length within standard and comparison stimuli were obtained for intervals with and without intervening noise bursts, including a condition with gapped intervening bursts. Outcomes indicate that gap duration itself can be determinant. Also, JNDs were similar whether intervening stimuli were present or absent, differing from results reported for pitch, loudness, and timbre retention. The latter suggests additional/alternative cortical resources might be employed for retention of auditory-temporal information.	t	\N
24408329	To investigate the auditory behavior of patients with chronic renal failure (CRF) undergoing kidney transplantation. Thirty patients were evaluated, 10 (33.33%) females and 20 (66.67%) males, aging from 13 to 26 years (average, 16.97 years; standard deviation, 3.60 years). Patients underwent the following procedures: anamnesis, otolaryngological examination, audiological evaluation (pure tone and high frequency), acoustic impedance measurements and central auditory processing evaluation. A control group was used to compare the high-frequency audiometry results. The following observations were made: absence of auditory complaints at the time of anamnesis; pure-tone audiometry was predominantly normal; patients presented lower hearing levels at the high-frequency audiometry, when compared to the control group, and as for the acoustic impedance measurements, curves of the type A were predominant; there was a change of the central auditory processing for 14 patients (46.67%) in the Staggered Spondaic Word Test (SSW); there was a significant difference between the age variable and the result of the pure-tone audiometry, that is, hearing sensitivity in thresholds from 250Hz to 8,000Hz decreased with advancing age; and the relation between the type of donor and the SSW test result was significant. Rates were higher when the patients had been transplanted from deceased donors compared to living donors. There were no changes in conventional audiological and high-frequency evaluation, or in the central auditory processing. Professionals involved in the care of kidney transplantation recipients must be better informed about the care, prevention, and early identification of auditory disorders.	t	\N
24408330	The objective of this research was to assess the auditory abilities of Portuguese children and compare such abilities to the score of the Scale of Auditory Behaviors (SAB). Fifty-one children were evaluated with audiometry, speech audiometry, acoustic immittance measures, and eight behavioral tests involving dichotic listening, monotic listening, temporal processing, and sound localization. Their parents filled in the SAB questionnaire adapted to European A. SAB scores and auditory tests scores were submitted to Pearson's correlation coefficient. There is significant correlation between the score on SAB questionnaire and the auditory processing tests. The greatest coefficient was observed in temporal processing test (p=0.000). There was correlation between the score of SAB and the performance in auditory processing tests, suggesting that the SAB may be used for auditory processing screening.	t	\N
24413019	The neural underpinnings of auditory information processing have often been investigated using the odd-ball paradigm, in which infrequent sounds (deviants) are presented within a regular train of frequent stimuli (standards). Traditionally, this paradigm has been applied using either high temporal resolution (EEG) or high spatial resolution (fMRI, PET). However, used separately, these techniques cannot provide information on both the location and time course of particular neural processes. The goal of this study was to investigate the neural correlates of auditory processes with a fine spatio-temporal resolution. A simultaneous auditory evoked potentials (AEP) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technique (AEP-fMRI), together with an odd-ball paradigm, were used. Six healthy volunteers, aged 20-35 years, participated in an odd-ball simultaneous AEP-fMRI experiment. AEP in response to acoustic stimuli were used to model bioelectric intracerebral generators, and electrophysiological results were integrated with fMRI data. fMRI activation evoked by standard stimuli was found to occur mainly in the primary auditory cortex. Activity in these regions overlapped with intracerebral bioelectric sources (dipoles) of the N1 component. Dipoles of the N1/P2 complex in response to standard stimuli were also found in the auditory pathway between the thalamus and the auditory cortex. Deviant stimuli induced fMRI activity in the anterior cingulate gyrus, insula, and parietal lobes. The present study showed that neural processes evoked by standard stimuli occur predominantly in subcortical and cortical structures of the auditory pathway. Deviants activate areas non-specific for auditory information processing.	t	\N
24419006	Three experiments investigated the role of memory and rehearsal in a dichotic emotion recognition task by manipulating the response procedure as well as the interval between encoding and retrieval while taking into account order of report. For all experiments, right-handed undergraduates were presented with dichotic pairs of the words bower, dower, power, and tower pronounced in a sad, angry, happy, or neutral tone of voice. Participants were asked to report the two emotions presented on each trial by clicking on the corresponding drawings or words on a computer screen, either following no delay or a five second delay. Experiment 1 applied the delay conditions as a between-subjects factor whereas it was a within-subject factor in Experiment 2. In Experiments 1 and 2, more correct responses occurred for the left than the right ear, reflecting a left ear advantage (LEA) that was slightly larger with a nonverbal than a verbal response. The LEA was also found to be larger with no delay than with the 5s delay. In addition, participants typically responded first to the left ear stimulus. In fact, the first response produced a LEA whereas the second response produced a right ear advantage. Experiment 3 involved a concurrent task during the delay to prevent rehearsal. In Experiment 3, the pattern of results supported the claim that rehearsal could account for the findings of the first two experiments. The findings are interpreted in the context of the role of rehearsal and memory in models of dichotic listening.	t	\N
24429136	How humans solve the cocktail party problem remains unknown. However, progress has been made recently thanks to the realization that cortical activity tracks the amplitude envelope of speech. This has led to the development of regression methods for studying the neurophysiology of continuous speech. One such method, known as stimulus-reconstruction, has been successfully utilized with cortical surface recordings and magnetoencephalography (MEG). However, the former is invasive and gives a relatively restricted view of processing along the auditory hierarchy, whereas the latter is expensive and rare. Thus it would be extremely useful for research in many populations if stimulus-reconstruction was effective using electroencephalography (EEG), a widely available and inexpensive technology. Here we show that single-trial (≈60 s) unaveraged EEG data can be decoded to determine attentional selection in a naturalistic multispeaker environment. Furthermore, we show a significant correlation between our EEG-based measure of attention and performance on a high-level attention task. In addition, by attempting to decode attention at individual latencies, we identify neural processing at ∼200 ms as being critical for solving the cocktail party problem. These findings open up new avenues for studying the ongoing dynamics of cognition using EEG and for developing effective and natural brain-computer interfaces.	t	\N
24429520	Historically, the study of speech processing has emphasized a strong link between auditory perceptual input and motor production output. A kind of 'parity' is essential, as both perception- and production-based representations must form a unified interface to facilitate access to higher-order language processes such as syntax and semantics, believed to be computed in the dominant, typically left hemisphere. Although various theories have been proposed to unite perception and production, the underlying neural mechanisms are unclear. Early models of speech and language processing proposed that perceptual processing occurred in the left posterior superior temporal gyrus (Wernicke's area) and motor production processes occurred in the left inferior frontal gyrus (Broca's area). Sensory activity was proposed to link to production activity through connecting fibre tracts, forming the left lateralized speech sensory-motor system. Although recent evidence indicates that speech perception occurs bilaterally, prevailing models maintain that the speech sensory-motor system is left lateralized and facilitates the transformation from sensory-based auditory representations to motor-based production representations. However, evidence for the lateralized computation of sensory-motor speech transformations is indirect and primarily comes from stroke patients that have speech repetition deficits (conduction aphasia) and studies using covert speech and haemodynamic functional imaging. Whether the speech sensory-motor system is lateralized, like higher-order language processes, or bilateral, like speech perception, is controversial. Here we use direct neural recordings in subjects performing sensory-motor tasks involving overt speech production to show that sensory-motor transformations occur bilaterally. We demonstrate that electrodes over bilateral inferior frontal, inferior parietal, superior temporal, premotor and somatosensory cortices exhibit robust sensory-motor neural responses during both perception and production in an overt word-repetition task. Using a non-word transformation task, we show that bilateral sensory-motor responses can perform transformations between speech-perception- and speech-production-based representations. These results establish a bilateral sublexical speech sensory-motor system.	t	\N
24431427	The new DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) include sensory disturbances in addition to the well-established language, communication, and social deficits. One sensory disturbance seen in ASD is an impaired ability to integrate multisensory information into a unified percept. This may arise from an underlying impairment in which individuals with ASD have difficulty perceiving the temporal relationship between cross-modal inputs, an important cue for multisensory integration. Such impairments in multisensory processing may cascade into higher-level deficits, impairing day-to-day functioning on tasks, such as speech perception. To investigate multisensory temporal processing deficits in ASD and their links to speech processing, the current study mapped performance on a number of multisensory temporal tasks (with both simple and complex stimuli) onto the ability of individuals with ASD to perceptually bind audiovisual speech signals. High-functioning children with ASD were compared with a group of typically developing children. Performance on the multisensory temporal tasks varied with stimulus complexity for both groups; less precise temporal processing was observed with increasing stimulus complexity. Notably, individuals with ASD showed a speech-specific deficit in multisensory temporal processing. Most importantly, the strength of perceptual binding of audiovisual speech observed in individuals with ASD was strongly related to their low-level multisensory temporal processing abilities. Collectively, the results represent the first to illustrate links between multisensory temporal function and speech processing in ASD, strongly suggesting that deficits in low-level sensory processing may cascade into higher-order domains, such as language and communication.	t	\N
24437771	Auditory deprivation and stimulation can change the threshold of the acoustic middle ear reflex as well as loudness in adult listeners. However, it has remained unclear whether changes in these measures are due to the same mechanism. In this study, deprivation was achieved using a monaural earplug that was worn by listeners for 7 days. Acoustic reflex thresholds (ARTs) and categorical loudness ratings were measured using a blinded design in which the experimenter was unaware of which ear had been plugged. Immediately after terminating unilateral deprivation, ARTs were obtained at a lower sound pressure level in the ear that had been fitted with an earplug and at a higher sound pressure level in the control ear. In contrast, categorical judgments of loudness changed in the same direction in both ears with a given stimulus level reported as louder after unilateral deprivation. The relationship between changes to the ART and loudness judgments was not statistically significant. For both the ARTs and the categorical loudness judgments, most of the changes had disappeared within 24 h after earplug removal. The changes in ARTs, as a consequence of unilateral sound deprivation, are consistent with a gain control mechanism; however, the lack of relationship with the categorical loudness judgments, and the different pattern of findings for each measure, suggests the possibility of multiple gain mechanisms.	t	\N
24437774	The discrimination of interaural phase differences (IPDs) requires accurate binaural temporal processing and has been used as a measure of sensitivity to temporal envelope and temporal fine structure (TFS). Previous studies found that TFS-IPD discrimination declined with age and with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), but age and SNHL have often been confounded. The aim of this study was to determine the independent contributions of age and SNHL to TFS and envelope IPD discrimination by using a sample of adults with a wide range of ages and SNHL. A two-interval, two-alternative forced-choice procedure was used to measure IPD discrimination thresholds for 20-Hz amplitude-modulated tones with carrier frequencies of 250 or 500 Hz when the IPD was in either the stimulus envelope or TFS. There were positive correlations between absolute thresholds and TFS-IPD thresholds, but not envelope-IPD thresholds, when age was accounted for. This supports the idea that SNHL affects TFS processing independently to age. Age was positively correlated with envelope-IPD thresholds at both carrier frequencies and TFS-IPD thresholds at 500 Hz, when absolute thresholds were accounted for. These results suggest that age negatively affects the binaural processing of envelope and TFS at some frequencies independently of SNHL.	t	\N
24441742	Abnormal hearing tests have been noted in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients in several studies, but the nature of the hearing deficit has not been clearly defined. The authors performed a cross-sectional study of both HIV+ and HIV- individuals in Tanzania by using an audiological test battery. The authors hypothesized that HIV+ adults would have a higher prevalence of abnormal central and peripheral hearing test results compared with HIV- controls. In addition, they anticipated that the prevalence of abnormal hearing assessments would increase with antiretroviral therapy (ART) use and treatment for tuberculosis (TB). Pure-tone thresholds, distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs), tympanometry, and a gap-detection test were performed using a laptop-based hearing testing system on 751 subjects (100 HIV- in the United States, plus 651 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, including 449 HIV+ [130 ART- and 319 ART+], and 202 HIV-, subjects. No U.S. subjects had a history of TB treatment. In Tanzania, 204 of the HIV+ and 23 of the HIV- subjects had a history of TB treatment. Subjects completed a video and audio questionnaire about their hearing, as well as a health history questionnaire. HIV+ subjects had reduced DPOAE levels compared with HIV- subjects, but their hearing thresholds, tympanometry results, and gap-detection thresholds were similar. Within the HIV+ group, those on ART reported significantly greater difficulties understanding speech in noise, and were significantly more likely to report that they had difficulty understanding speech than the ART- group. The ART+ group had a significantly higher mean gap-detection threshold compared with the ART- group. No effects of TB treatment were seen. The fact that the ART+/ART- groups did not differ in measures of peripheral hearing ability (DPOAEs, thresholds), or middle ear measures (tympanometry), but that the ART+ group had significantly more trouble understanding speech and had higher gap-detection thresholds indicates a central processing deficit. These data suggest that: (1) hearing deficits in HIV+ individuals could be a CNS side effect of HIV infection, (2) certain ART regimens might produce CNS side effects that manifest themselves as hearing difficulties, and/or (3) some ART regimens may treat CNS HIV inadequately, perhaps due to insufficient CNS drug levels, which is reflected as a central hearing deficit. Monitoring of central hearing parameters could be used to track central effects of either HIV or ART.	t	\N
24447236	This discussion paper aims to synthesise the literature on patient-centred care from a range of health professions and to relate this to the field of rehabilitative audiology. Through review of the literature, this paper addresses five questions: What is patient-centred care? How is patient-centred care measured? What are the outcomes of patient-centred care? What are the factors contributing to patient-centred care? What are the implications for audiological rehabilitation? Literature review and synthesis. Publications were identified by structured searches in PubMed, Cinahl, Web of Knowledge, and PsychInfo, and by inspecting the reference lists of relevant articles. Few publications from within the audiology profession address this topic and consequently a review and synthesis of literature from other areas of health were used to answer the proposed questions. This paper concludes that patient-centred care is in line with the aims and scope of practice for audiological rehabilitation. However, there is emerging evidence that we still need to inform the conceptualisation of patient-centred audiological rehabilitation. A definition of patient-centred audiological rehabilitation is needed to facilitate studies into the nature and outcomes of it in audiological rehabilitation practice.	t	\N
24456399	Crossmodal integration of auditory and visual information, such as phonemes and graphemes, is a critical skill for fluent reading. Previous work has demonstrated that white matter connectivity along the arcuate fasciculus (AF) is predicted by reading skill and that crossmodal processing particularly activates the posterior STS (pSTS). However, the relationship between this crossmodal activation and white matter integrity has not been previously reported. We investigated the interrelationship of crossmodal integration, both in terms of behavioral performance and pSTS activity, with AF tract coherence using a rhyme judgment task in a group of 47 children with a range of reading abilities. We demonstrate that both response accuracy and pSTS activity for crossmodal (auditory-visual) rhyme judgments was predictive of fractional anisotropy along the left AF. Unimodal (auditory-only or visual-only) pSTS activity was not significantly related to AF connectivity. Furthermore, activity in other reading-related ROIs did not show the same AV-only AF coherence relationship, and AV pSTS activity was not related to connectivity along other language-related tracts. This study is the first to directly show that crossmodal brain activity is specifically related to connectivity in the AF, supporting its role in phoneme-grapheme integration ability. More generally, this study helps to define an interdependent neural network for reading-related integration.	t	\N
24488957	In categorical perception (CP), continuous physical signals are mapped to discrete perceptual bins: mental categories not found in the physical world. CP has been demonstrated across multiple sensory modalities and, in audition, for certain over-learned speech and musical sounds. The neural basis of auditory CP, however, remains ambiguous, including its robustness in nonspeech processes and the relative roles of left/right hemispheres; primary/nonprimary cortices; and ventral/dorsal perceptual processing streams. Here, highly trained musicians listened to 2-tone musical intervals, which they perceive categorically while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Multivariate pattern analyses were performed after grouping sounds by interval quality (determined by frequency ratio between tones) or pitch height (perceived noncategorically, frequency ratios remain constant). Distributed activity patterns in spheres of voxels were used to determine sound sample identities. For intervals, significant decoding accuracy was observed in the right superior temporal and left intraparietal sulci, with smaller peaks observed homologously in contralateral hemispheres. For pitch height, no significant decoding accuracy was observed, consistent with the non-CP of this dimension. These results suggest that similar mechanisms are operative for nonspeech categories as for speech; espouse roles for 2 segregated processing streams; and support hierarchical processing models for CP.	t	\N
24489819	This study tested the hypothesis that the previously reported advantage of musicians over non-musicians in understanding speech in noise arises from more efficient or robust coding of periodic voiced speech, particularly in fluctuating backgrounds. Speech intelligibility was measured in listeners with extensive musical training, and in those with very little musical training or experience, using normal (voiced) or whispered (unvoiced) grammatically correct nonsense sentences in noise that was spectrally shaped to match the long-term spectrum of the speech, and was either continuous or gated with a 16-Hz square wave. Performance was also measured in clinical speech-in-noise tests and in pitch discrimination. Musicians exhibited enhanced pitch discrimination, as expected. However, no systematic or statistically significant advantage for musicians over non-musicians was found in understanding either voiced or whispered sentences in either continuous or gated noise. Musicians also showed no statistically significant advantage in the clinical speech-in-noise tests. Overall, the results provide no evidence for a significant difference between young adult musicians and non-musicians in their ability to understand speech in noise.	t	\N
24490946	Studies of face recognition in older adults (60 years of age and older) report increases in false alarms over younger adults (usually 18-30 years of age), but no age differences in hits. To examine this phenomenon, we compared older and younger adults in categorical perception of faces. We hypothesized that face representations in older adults would be broadly tuned, resulting in overlapping representations, manifested by a shallower slope in identity categorization than in younger adults, and age-related reductions in the advantage for between-categories, as compared with within-category, face discrimination. We morphed faces to change linearly from one identity to another. We used familiar or unfamiliar faces in separate conditions to examine the role of familiarity. Categorical perception was assessed in an identity-classification task and a discrimination task. Older adults showed a shallower slope and poorer discrimination compared with younger adults, and both groups exhibited better performance with familiar than unfamiliar faces. Enhanced discriminability for between-categories as compared with within-category faces was seen for both familiar and unfamiliar faces in younger adults, but only for familiar faces in older adults. The more broadly tuned representations of unfamiliar faces in older adults may lead to misidentification and greater false alarms for unfamiliar faces, but not for familiar faces.	t	\N
24496288	This study evaluated effects of nonlinear frequency compression (NLFC) processing in children with hearing loss for consonant identification in quiet and for spondee identification in competing noise or speech. It was predicted that participants would benefit from NLFC for consonant identification in quiet when access to high-frequency information was critical, but that NLFC would be less beneficial, or even detrimental, when identification relied on mid-frequency cues. Further, it was hypothesized that NLFC could result in greater susceptibility to masking in the spondee task. The rationale for these predictions is that improved access to high-frequency information comes at the cost of decreased spectral resolution. A repeated-measures design compared speech-perception outcomes in 17 pediatric hearing aid users (9 to 17 years of age) wearing Naida V SP "laboratory" hearing aids with NLFC on and off. Data were also collected in an initial baseline session in which children wore their personal hearing aids. Children with a wide range of audiometric configurations were included, but all participants were full-time users of hearing aids with active NLFC. For each hearing aid condition, speech perception was assessed in the sound field by using a closed-set 12-alternative consonant-vowel identification measure in quiet, and a closed-set four-alternative spondee-identification measure in a speech-shaped noise or in a two-talker speech masker. No significant differences in performance were observed between laboratory hearing aid conditions with NLFC activated or deactivated for either speech-perception measure. An unexpected finding was that the majority of participants had no difficulty identifying the high-frequency consonant /s/ even when NLFC was deactivated. Investigation into individual differences revealed that subjects with a greater difference in audible bandwidth with NLFC on versus NLFC off were less likely to demonstrate improvements in high-frequency consonant identification in quiet, but were more likely to demonstrate improvements in spondee identification in speech-shaped noise. Group results observed in the initial baseline assessment using personal aids fitted with more aggressive NLFC settings than used in laboratory aids indicated better consonant identification accuracy in quiet. However, spondee identification in the two-talker masker was poorer with personal compared with laboratory hearing aids. Comparisons across personal and laboratory hearing aids are tempered, however, by the potential of an order effect. The observation of comparable performance with NLFC on and NLFC off in the laboratory aids provides evidence that NLFC is neither detrimental nor advantageous when modest in strength. Results with personal hearing aids fitted with stronger compression settings than laboratory aids (NLFC on) highlight the critical need for further research to determine the impact of NLFC processing on speech perception for a wider range of speech-perception measures and compression settings.	t	\N
24503772	The bone-anchored hearing device (BAHD) was not introduced in China until 2010. To our knowledge, this is the first study to assess the efficacy of Chinese Mandarin-speaking patients with bilateral aural atresia. To evaluate the speech recognition of Chinese Mandarin-speaking patients with BAHDs as well as patients' satisfaction using 2 questionnaires. A retrospective case review of 16 patients with bilateral aural atresia conducted at a tertiary referral center. A BAHD was implanted during auricle reconstruction surgery or after the auricle was rebuilt. A surgical method to combine the BAHD implantation with the second stage of ear reconstruction was introduced. Speech audiometry test and mean pure-tone threshold results were compared among patients with unaided hearing and those with BAHDs. Scores from the BAHD user questionnaire and Glasgow Children's Benefit Inventory (GCBI) were used to measure patients' satisfaction and subjective health benefit. The mean (SD) speech discrimination scores measured in a sound field with a presentation level of 45 dB HL (hearing level) were 6.7% (7.4%) unaided and 86.5% (4.4%) with a BAHD. Scores with a presentation level of 65 dB HL were 56.5% (7.4%) unaided and 90.1% (3.4%) with a BAHD. The speech reception threshold was 60.6 (7.5) dB HL unaided and 24.7 (5.0) dB HL with a BAHD. The mean (SD) pure-tone threshold of the patients was 61.6 (7.8) dB HL unaided and 23.8 (5.9) dB HL with a BAHD. The BAHD application questionnaire demonstrated excellent patient satisfaction. The mean (SD) benefit score of GCBI was 45.6 (14.4). For aural atresia, the BAHD has been one of the most reliable methods of auditory rehabilitation. It can improve the patient's word recognition performance and quality of life. The technique of BAHD implantation combined with auricular reconstruction in a 2-stages-in-1 surgery and the modified incision of patients with reconstructed auricle proved to be safe and effective.	t	\N
24508369	Acoustic communication requires gathering, transforming, and interpreting diverse sound cues. To achieve this, all the spatial and temporal features of complex sound stimuli must be captured in the firing patterns of the primary sensory neurons and then accurately transmitted along auditory pathways for additional processing. The mammalian auditory system relies on several synapses with unique properties in order to meet this task: the auditory ribbon synapses, the endbulb of Held, and the calyx of Held. Each of these synapses develops morphological and electrophysiological characteristics that enable the remarkably precise signal transmission necessary for conveying the miniscule differences in timing that underly sound localization. In this article, we review the current knowledge of how these synapses develop and mature to acquire the specialized features necessary for the sense of hearing.	t	\N
24508791	Amblyopia is a developmental disorder that results in both monocular and binocular deficits. Although traditional treatment in clinical practice (i.e., refractive correction, or occlusion by patching and penalization of the fellow eye) is effective in restoring monocular visual acuity, there is little information on how binocular function, especially stereopsis, responds to traditional amblyopia treatment. We aim to evaluate the effects of perceptual learning on stereopsis in observers with amblyopia in the current study. Eleven observers (21.1 ± 5.1 years, six females) with anisometropic or ametropic amblyopia were trained to judge depth in 10 to 13 sessions. Red-green glasses were used to present three different texture anaglyphs with different disparities but a fixed exposure duration. Stereoacuity was assessed with the Fly Stereo Acuity Test and visual acuity was assessed with the Chinese Tumbling E Chart before and after training. Averaged across observers, training significantly reduced disparity threshold from 776.7″ to 490.4″ (P < 0.01) and improved stereoacuity from 200.3″ to 81.6″ (P < 0.01). Interestingly, visual acuity also significantly improved from 0.44 to 0.35 logMAR (approximately 0.9 lines, P < 0.05) in the amblyopic eye after training. Moreover, the learning effects in two of the three retested observers were largely retained over a 5-month period. Perceptual learning is effective in improving stereo vision in observers with amblyopia. These results, together with previous evidence, suggest that structured monocular and binocular training might be necessary to fully recover degraded visual functions in amblyopia. Chinese Abstract.	t	\N
24514158	This study analyses the meaning spaces of German pitch contours using two modes of melodic movement: continuous or in steps of sustained pitch. Both the continuous and stepped movements are represented by a set of five basic patterns, the latter being derived from the former. Thirty-six German native speakers judged the pattern sets on a 12-scale semantic differential. The semantic profiles confirm that stepped contours can be conceived of as stylized intonation, in a formal as well as in a functional sense. On the one hand, continuous (non-stylized) and stepped (stylized) contours are assigned different overall meanings (especially on the scales astonished - commonplace and interested - not interested). On the other hand, listeners organize the two contour sets in a similar fashion, which speaks in favour of parallel pattern inventories of continuous and stepped movement, respectively. However, the meaning space of the stylized patterns is affected by formal restrictions, for instance in the step transformation of continuous rises.	t	\N
24525262	What are the temporal dynamics of perceptual sampling during visual search tasks, and how do they differ between a difficult (or inefficient) and an easy (or efficient) task? Does attention focus intermittently on the stimuli, or are the stimuli processed continuously over time? We addressed these questions by way of a new paradigm using periodic fluctuations of stimulus information during a difficult (color-orientation conjunction) and an easy (+ among Ls) search task. On each stimulus, we applied a dynamic visual noise that oscillated at a given frequency (2-20 Hz, 2-Hz steps) and phase (four cardinal phase angles) for 500 ms. We estimated the dynamics of attentional sampling by computing an inverse Fourier transform on subjects' d-primes. In both tasks, the sampling function presented a significant peak at 2 Hz; we showed that this peak could be explained by nonperiodic search strategies such as increased sensitivity to stimulus onset and offset. Specifically in the difficult task, however, a second, higher-frequency peak was observed at 9 to 10 Hz, with a similar phase for all subjects; this isolated frequency component necessarily entails oscillatory attentional dynamics. In a second experiment, we presented difficult search arrays with dynamic noise that was modulated by the previously obtained grand-average attention sampling function or by its converse function (in both cases omitting the 2 Hz component to focus on genuine oscillatory dynamics). We verified that performance was higher in the latter than in the former case, even for subjects who had not participated in the first experiment. This study supports the idea of a periodic sampling of attention during a difficult search task. Although further experiments will be needed to extend these findings to other search tasks, the present report validates the usefulness of this novel paradigm for measuring the temporal dynamics of attention.	t	\N
24533757	The effect of deactivating indiscriminable cochlear implant (CI) electrodes for unilaterally implanted adults was evaluated using the BKB (Bamford-Kowal-Bench) sentence test in quiet and in pink noise (signal-to-noise ratio of +10dBA) and the adaptive Coordinate Response Measure (CRM). Each CI recipient who failed electrode differentiation (ED) in at least one electrode-pair, based on results of a pure-tone pitch-ranking task received two research programmes to try out in a cross-over study. Research programmes (RP) either employed discriminable electrodes only or the most discriminable two-thirds of the electrodes in the electrode array for CI recipients failing ED for more than a third of the electrodes. The participants were also asked to subjectively report improvement of or decline in sound quality in everyday listening situations. There was significant improvement in CRM speech reception thresholds (SRTs) (Z = -3.24, N = 15, P = 0.001), BKB sentence scores in quiet (t = 3.17, df = 24, P < 0.005) and also in pink noise (t = 2.26, df = 19, P < 0.005) after deactivating indiscriminable electrodes.	t	\N
24548324	Not much is known about how people comprehend ironic utterances, and to date, most studies have simply compared processing of ironic versus non-ironic statements. A key aspect of the graded salience hypothesis, distinguishing it from other accounts (such as the standard pragmatic view and direct access view), is that it predicts differences between processing of familiar and unfamiliar ironies. Specifically, if an ironic utterance is familiar, then the ironic interpretation should be available without the need for extra inferential processes, whereas for unfamiliar ironies, the literal interpretation would be computed first, and a mismatch with context would lead to a re-interpretation of the statement as being ironic. We recorded participants' eye movements while they were reading (Experiment 1), and electrical brain activity while they were listening to (Experiment 2), familiar and unfamiliar ironies compared to non-ironic controls. Results show disruption to eye movements and an N400-like effect for unfamiliar ironies only, supporting the predictions of the graded salience hypothesis. In addition, in Experiment 2, a late positivity was found for both familiar and unfamiliar ironic materials, compared to non-ironic controls. We interpret this positivity as reflecting ongoing conflict between the literal and ironic interpretations of the utterance.	t	\N
24557002	The rapidly evolving field of early diagnostics after the introduction of newborn hearing screening requires rapid, valid, and objective methods, which have to be thoroughly evaluated in adults before use in infants. The aim was to study cross-correlation analysis of interleaved auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) in a wide dynamic range in normal-hearing adults. Off-line analysis allowed for comparison with psychoacoustical click threshold (PCT), pure-tone threshold, and determination of ABR input/output function. Specifically, nonfiltered and band-pass filtered ABRs were studied in various time segments along with time elapsed for ensemble of sweeps reaching a specific detection criterion. Fourteen healthy normal-hearing subjects (18 to 35 years of age, 50% females) without any history of noise exposure participated. They all had pure-tone thresholds better than 20 dB HL (125 to 8000 Hz). ABRs were recorded in both ears using 100 μsec clicks, from 71.5 dB nHL down to -18.5 dB nHL, in 10 dB steps (repetition rate, 39 Hz; time window, 15 msec; filter, 30 to 8000 Hz). The number of sweeps increased from 2000 at 71.5 dB nHL, up to 30000 at -18.5 dB nHL. Each sweep was stored in a data base for off-line analysis. Cross-correlation analysis between two subaverages of interleaved responses was performed in the time domain for nonfiltered and digitally band-pass filtered (300 to 1500 Hz) entire and time-windowed (1 to 11 and 5 to 11 msec) responses. PCTs were measured using a Bekesy technique with the same insert phone and stimulus as used for the ABR (repetition rate, 20 Hz). Time elapsed (≈ number of accepted sweeps/repetition rate) for the ensemble of sweeps needed to reach a cross-correlation coefficient (ρ) of 0.70 (=3.7 dB signal-to-noise ratio [SNR]) was analyzed. Mean cross-correlation coefficients exceeded 0.90 in both ears at stimulus levels ≥11.5 dB nHL for the entire nonfiltered ABR. At 1.5 dB nHL, mean(SD) ρ was 0.53(0.32) and 0.44(0.40) for left and right ears, respectively (n = 14) (=0 dB SNR). In comparison, mean(SD) PCT was -1.9(2.9) and -2.5(3.2) dB nHL for left and right ears, respectively (n = 14), while mean pure-tone average (500 to 2000 Hz) was 2.5 dB HL (n = 28). Almost no effect of band-pass filtering or reduced analysis time window existed. Average time elapsed needed to reach ρ = 0.70 was approximately 20 seconds or less at stimulus levels ≥41.5 dB nHL, and ≈30 seconds at 31.5 dB nHL. The average (interpolated) stimulus level corresponding to ρ=0.70 for the entire nonfiltered ABR was 6.5 dB nHL (n = 28), which coincided with the estimated psychoacoustical threshold for single clicks. ABR could be identified in a short period of time using cross-correlation analysis between interleaved responses. The average stimulus level corresponding to 0 dB SNR in the entire nonfiltered ABR occurred at 1.5 dB nHL, 4 dB above the average PCT. The mean input/output function for the ensemble of sweeps required to reach ρ = 0.70 increased monotonically with increasing stimulus level, in parallel with the ABR based on all sweeps (≥1.5 dB nHL). Time domain cross-correlation analysis of ABR might form the basis for automatic response identification and future threshold-seeking procedures.	t	\N
24564623	To evaluate the hearing of adolescents with diabetes mellitus type 1(DM1) by otoacoustic emissions (OAEs), and by comparing different tests with pure-tone audiometry to identify potential early cochlear impairments. Pure-tone audiometry, transient evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOAEs), and distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) were performed in a group of adolescents with and without DM1. Clinical characteristics, disease duration, and glycated haemoglobin levels were studied. Participants were 40 adolescents with DM1 and 40 healthy subjects. Sensorineural hearing loss, affecting frequencies of 6000 and 8000 Hz, was found only in DM1 subjects when compared to the controls (7.7% vs. 0%, p < 0.05). A higher prevalence of cochlear damage was detected by DPOAE responses, 32% belonging from the diabetic group, vs. 3.7% in the control group. Absent TEOAE responses were observed in only three individuals, all from the diabetic group (5.1% of the tests performed in the diabetic group). Additionally, hearing thresholds were better in diabetic subjects with good control when compared to ones with regular or poor control (p = 0.00). Hearing thresholds were higher in poorly controlled diabetics when compared to subjects with good (p = 0.000) or regular control (p = 0.006). Early evidence of cochlear damage was detected in adolescents with DM1 leading to hearing loss at high frequencies. Abnormal DPOAEs responses were found more frequently than the alterations in TEOAEs and pure-tone audiometry, suggesting that DPOAEs evaluation is the most sensitive and it could be used for monitoring the progression of cochlear damage during the early stages of hearing impairment.	t	\N
24564624	Detailed information on the hearing threshold levels (HTLs) of young Australians was gathered as part of a large-scale study of the relationship between HTL and leisure-noise exposure in young Australians. HTL data for the study population (18-35 year olds) was carefully collected, as well as otoscopy, tympanometry, contra-lateral acoustic reflexes, and otoacoustic emissions (transient and distortion product), together with a comprehensive hearing health history - both past and present. The sample cohort consisted of 1407 individuals, females and males. Prior to analysis, HTL data were filtered according to both a 'Low' and 'High' set of exclusion criteria. The results obtained for both high-screen and low-screen datasets were around +5 dB above the traditionally accepted values of audiometric zero. This is consistent with previous published reports. Comparison with 'ISO 7029 Acoustics: Statistical distribution of hearing thresholds as a function of age' indicated that threshold values for this dataset have a similar distribution to those of the Standard. This data provides a suitable reference HTL ('normative') database for young Australians.	t	\N
24564688	To characterize the impulse noise exposure and auditory risk for youth recreational firearm users engaged in outdoor target shooting events. The youth shooting positions are typically standing or sitting at a table, which places the firearm closer to the ground or reflective surface when compared to adult shooters. Acoustic characteristics were examined and the auditory risk estimates were evaluated using contemporary damage-risk criteria for unprotected adult listeners and the 120-dB peak limit suggested by the World Health Organization (1999) for children. Impulses were generated by 26 firearm/ammunition configurations representing rifles, shotguns, and pistols used by youth. Measurements were obtained relative to a youth shooter's left ear. All firearms generated peak levels that exceeded the 120 dB peak limit suggested by the WHO for children. In general, shooting from the seated position over a tabletop increases the peak levels, LAeq8 and reduces the unprotected maximum permissible exposures (MPEs) for both rifles and pistols. Pistols pose the greatest auditory risk when fired over a tabletop. Youth should utilize smaller caliber weapons, preferably from the standing position, and always wear hearing protection whenever engaging in shooting activities to reduce the risk for auditory damage.	t	\N
24568928	A new study reports that activations of superior temporal regions for speech are normal in dyslexia, although being less well connected to downstream frontal regions. These findings support the hypothesis of a deficit in the access to phonological representations rather than in the representations themselves.	t	\N
24569986	Viewing behavior exhibits temporal and spatial structure that is independent of stimulus content and task goals. One example of such structure is horizontal biases, which are likely rooted in left-right asymmetries of the visual and attentional systems. Here, we studied the existence, extent, and mechanisms of this bias. Left- and right-handed subjects explored scenes from different image categories, presented in original and mirrored versions. We also varied the spatial spectral content of the images and the timing of stimulus onset. We found a marked leftward bias at the start of exploration that was independent of image category. This left bias was followed by a weak bias to the right that persisted for several seconds. This asymmetry was found in the majority of right-handers but not in left-handers. Neither low- nor high-pass filtering of the stimuli influenced the bias. This argues against mechanisms related to the hemispheric segregation of global versus local visual processing. Introducing a delay in stimulus onset after offset of a central fixation spot also had no influence. The bias was present even when stimuli were presented continuously and without any requirement to fixate, associated to both fixation- and saccade-contingent image changes. This suggests the bias is not caused by structural asymmetries in fixation control. Instead the pervasive horizontal bias is compatible with known asymmetries of higher-level attentional areas related to the detection of novel events.	t	\N
24580021	To evaluate the impact on voice of 2 hours of continuous oral reading. Fifty normophonic women underwent two sessions of voice loading in which the required intensity level varied: 60-65 dB(A) for the first session, and 70-75 dB(A) for the second session. Ten expert judges evaluated the breathiness of one sentence recorded before and after each loading session. Pairs of stimuli were presented randomly to the judges, who were asked to designate the breathiest sample. A significant decrease in breathiness was observed following both sessions, suggesting an improvement of voice subsequent to loading. When comparing the two intensity levels, no difference was found for breathiness after vocal loading.	t	\N
24584899	The ability of humans to echolocate has been recognized since the 1940s. Little is known about what determines individual differences in echolocation ability, however. Although hearing ability has been suggested as an important factor in blind people and sighted-trained echolocators, there is evidence to suggest that this may not be the case for sighted novices. Therefore, non-auditory aspects of human cognition might be relevant. Previous brain imaging studies have shown activation of the early 'visual', i.e. calcarine, cortex during echolocation in blind echolocation experts, and also during visual imagery in blind and sighted people. Therefore, here we investigated the relationship between echolocation ability and vividness of visual imagery (VVI). Twenty-four sighted echolocation novices completed Marks' (Br J Psychol 1:17-24, 1973) VVI questionnaire and they also performed an echolocation size-discrimination task. Furthermore, they participated in a battery of auditory tests that determined their ability to detect fluctuations in sound frequency and intensity, as well as hearing differences between the right and left ear. A correlational analysis revealed a significant relationship between participants' VVI and echolocation ability, i.e. participants with stronger VVI also had higher echolocation ability, even when differences in auditory abilities were taken into account. In terms of underlying mechanisms, we suggest that either the use of visual imagery is a strategy for echolocation, or that visual imagery and echolocation both depend on the ability to recruit calcarine cortex for cognitive tasks that do not rely on retinal input.	t	\N
24588528	To investigate the occurrence of 27 chronic medical conditions in a cohort of adults with and without hearing impairment, and to examine the association between these conditions and hearing ability. The National Longitudinal Study on Hearing (NL-SH study) is a large prospective study among adults aged 18 to 70 years, conducted via the internet in the Netherlands. Hearing ability was measured with a digits-in-noise test and comorbidity was assessed through self-report. Cross-sectional data of 890 hearing-impaired and 975 normally-hearing adults were analyzed. Both descriptive statistics and multinomial logistic regression analyses were conducted. Of the NL-SH participants with insufficient or poor hearing ability, 78.5% reported to suffer from at least one additional chronic condition. This proportion was larger than in the normally-hearing group (68.6% with one or more chronic conditions and 37.7% with two or more). After adjustment for age and gender, 'dizziness causing falling', 'diabetes' and 'arthritis types other than osteoarthritis and rheumatic arthritis' were significantly associated with poor hearing ability. Our results show that some previously reported associations do not only occur in older age groups, but also in younger cohorts. Comorbidity is relevant in the rehabilitation (multi-disciplinary care) and the clinical encounter.	t	\N
24598525	Changes in amplitude and frequency jointly determine much of the communicative significance of complex acoustic signals, including human speech. We have previously described responses of neurons in the core auditory cortex of awake rhesus macaques to sinusoidal amplitude modulation (SAM) signals. Here we report a complementary study of sinusoidal frequency modulation (SFM) in the same neurons. Responses to SFM were analogous to SAM responses in that changes in multiple parameters defining SFM stimuli (e.g., modulation frequency, modulation depth, carrier frequency) were robustly encoded in the temporal dynamics of the spike trains. For example, changes in the carrier frequency produced highly reproducible changes in shapes of the modulation period histogram, consistent with the notion that the instantaneous probability of discharge mirrors the moment-by-moment spectrum at low modulation rates. The upper limit for phase locking was similar across SAM and SFM within neurons, suggesting shared biophysical constraints on temporal processing. Using spike train classification methods, we found that neural thresholds for modulation depth discrimination are typically far lower than would be predicted from frequency tuning to static tones. This "dynamic hyperacuity" suggests a substantial central enhancement of the neural representation of frequency changes relative to the auditory periphery. Spike timing information was superior to average rate information when discriminating among SFM signals, and even when discriminating among static tones varying in frequency. This finding held even when differences in total spike count across stimuli were normalized, indicating both the primacy and generality of temporal response dynamics in cortical auditory processing.	t	\N
24606277	While many studies have assessed the efficacy of similarity-based cues for auditory stream segregation, much less is known about whether and how the larger-scale structure of sound sequences support stream formation and the choice of sound organization. Two experiments investigated the effects of musical melody and rhythm on the segregation of two interleaved tone sequences. The two sets of tones fully overlapped in pitch range but differed from each other in interaural time and intensity. Unbeknownst to the listener, separately, each of the interleaved sequences was created from the notes of a different song. In different experimental conditions, the notes and/or their timing could either follow those of the songs or they could be scrambled or, in case of timing, set to be isochronous. Listeners were asked to continuously report whether they heard a single coherent sequence (integrated) or two concurrent streams (segregated). Although temporal overlap between tones from the two streams proved to be the strongest cue for stream segregation, significant effects of tonality and familiarity with the songs were also observed. These results suggest that the regular temporal patterns are utilized as cues in auditory stream segregation and that long-term memory is involved in this process.	t	\N
24606289	For assessing hearing aid algorithms, a method is sought to shift the threshold of a speech-in-noise test to (mostly positive) signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) that allow discrimination across algorithmic settings and are most relevant for hearing-impaired listeners in daily life. Hence, time-compressed speech with higher speech rates was evaluated to parametrically increase the difficulty of the test while preserving most of the relevant acoustical speech cues. A uniform and a non-uniform algorithm were used to compress the sentences of the German Oldenburg Sentence Test at different speech rates. In comparison, the non-uniform algorithm exhibited greater deviations from the targeted time compression, as well as greater changes of the phoneme duration, spectra, and modulation spectra. Speech intelligibility for fast Oldenburg sentences in background noise at different SNRs was determined with 48 normal-hearing listeners. The results confirmed decreasing intelligibility with increasing speech rate. Speech had to be compressed to more than 30% of its original length to reach 50% intelligibility at positive SNRs. Characteristics influencing the discrimination ability of the test for assessing effective SNR changes were investigated. Subjective and objective measures indicated a clear advantage of the uniform algorithm in comparison to the non-uniform algorithm for the application in speech-in-noise tests.	t	\N
24606291	The present study investigated the importance of overall segment amplitude and intrinsic segment amplitude modulation of consonants and vowels to sentence intelligibility. Sentences were processed according to three conditions that replaced consonant or vowel segments with noise matched to the long-term average speech spectrum. Segments were replaced with (1) low-level noise that distorted the overall sentence envelope, (2) segment-level noise that restored the overall syllabic amplitude modulation of the sentence, and (3) segment-modulated noise that further restored faster temporal envelope modulations during the vowel. Results from the first experiment demonstrated an incremental benefit with increasing resolution of the vowel temporal envelope. However, amplitude modulations of replaced consonant segments had a comparatively minimal effect on overall sentence intelligibility scores. A second experiment selectively noise-masked preserved vowel segments in order to equate overall performance of consonant-replaced sentences to that of the vowel-replaced sentences. Results demonstrated no significant effect of restoring consonant modulations during the interrupting noise when existing vowel cues were degraded. A third experiment demonstrated greater perceived sentence continuity with the preservation or addition of vowel envelope modulations. Overall, results support previous investigations demonstrating the importance of vowel envelope modulations to the intelligibility of interrupted sentences.	t	\N
24606310	Musicians have been shown to better perceive pitch and timbre cues in speech and music, compared to non-musicians. It is unclear whether this "musician advantage" persists under conditions of spectro-temporal degradation, as experienced by cochlear-implant (CI) users. In this study, gender categorization was measured in normal-hearing musicians and non-musicians listening to acoustic CI simulations. Recordings of Dutch words were synthesized to systematically vary fundamental frequency, vocal-tract length, or both to create voices from the female source talker to a synthesized male talker. Results showed an overall musician effect, mainly due to musicians weighting fundamental frequency more than non-musicians in CI simulations.	t	\N
24606491	This research employed a forward-masking paradigm to estimate the current spread of monopolar (MP) and bipolar (BP) maskers, with current amplitudes adjusted to elicit the same loudness. Since the spatial separation between active and return electrodes is smaller in BP than in MP configurations, the BP current spread is more localized and presumably superior in terms of speech intelligibility. Because matching the loudness requires higher current in BP than in MP stimulation, previous forward-masking studies show that BP current spread is not consistently narrower across subjects or electrodes within a subject. The present forward-masking measures of current spread differ from those of previous studies by using the same BP probe electrode configuration for both MP and BP masker configurations, and adjusting the current levels of the MP and BP maskers so as to match them in loudness. With this method, the estimate of masker current spread would not be contaminated by differences in probe current spread. Forward masking was studied in four cochlear implant patients, two females and two males, with speech recognition scores higher than 50%; that is, their auditory-nerve survival status was more than adequate to carry out the experiments. The data showed that MP and BP masker configurations produce equivalent masking patterns (and current spreads) in three participants. A fourth participant displayed asymmetrical patterns with enhancement rather than masking in some cases, especially when the probe and masker were at the same location. This study showed equivalent masking patterns for MP and BP maskers when the BP masker current amplitude was increased to match the loudness of the MP masker, and the same BP probe configuration is used with both maskers. This finding could help to explain why cochlear implant users often fail to accrue higher speech intelligibility benefit from BP stimulation.	t	\N
24610168	Longitudinal analysis of audiometric data of a large population of noise-exposed workers provides insight into the development of noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) as a function of noise exposure and age, particularly during the first decade of noise exposure. Data of pure-tone audiometry of 17,930 construction workers who underwent periodic occupational hearing screening at least twice during a 4-year period were available for analysis. These concerned all follow-up measurements of the baseline cohort described by Leensen et al. (Int Arch Occup Environ Health 84:577-590, 2011). Linear mixed models explored the relationship between the annual rate of change in hearing and noise exposure level, exposure duration, and age. Data of 3,111 workers who were tested on three occasions were used to investigate the pattern of hearing loss development. The mean annual deterioration in hearing in this study population was 0.54 dB/yr, and this became larger with increasing noise exposure level and increasing age. Remarkably, during the first decade of noise exposure, an improvement in hearing threshold levels (HTLs) was observed. The change in hearing over three measurements showed a concave development of hearing loss as a function of time, which corresponds to NIHL development. Overall, hearing deteriorated over the measurement period. Because HTLs at follow-up were better than those obtained at baseline, no statement can be made about the NIHL development during the first decade of noise exposure. This improvement in HTLs rather resembles the result of measurement variation in occupational screening audiometry than an actual improvement in hearing ability.	t	\N
24611446	The role in which two tones are first encountered in an unattended oddball sequence affects how deviance detection, reflected by mismatch negativity, treats them later when the roles reverse: a "primacy bias." We tested whether this effect is modulated by previous behavioral relevance assigned to the two tones. To this end, sequences in which the roles of the two tones alternated were preceded by a go/no-go task in which tones were presented with equal probability. Half of the participants were asked to respond to the short sounds, the other half to long sounds. Primacy bias was initially abolished but returned dependent upon the go-stimulus that the participant was assigned. Results demonstrate a long-term impact of prior learning on deviance detection, and that even when prior importance/equivalence is learned, the bias ultimately returns. Results are discussed in terms of persistent go-stimulus specific changes in responsiveness to sound.	t	\N
24616979	The aim of this study is to evaluate the development of auditory performance and speech intelligibility within the first year after hearing aid fitting in children with moderate or severe hearing loss, investigate the effects of hearing level on auditory performance and speech intelligibility and provide a clinical database for their hearing and speech habilitation. Twenty-nine children participated in this study, ranging in age at hearing aid fitting from 3 to 8 years old with a mean of 5. 6 years old. 19 were boys and 10 were girls. According to their hearing level, they were divided into two groups. 14 children were in group of moderate hearing loss (41-60 dB HL). 15 children were in group of severe hearing loss (61-80 dB HL). The categories of auditory performance (CAP) and speech intelligibility rating (SIR) were used to evaluate their auditory performance and speech intelligibility. The evaluation was performed before hearing aid fitting and 1, 3, 6, 9, 12 months after fitting. There was significant difference in mean score of CAP between group of moderate hearing loss and severe hearing loss before hearing aid fitting (P < 0.05). However, no significant differences were observed between these two groups at 1, 3, 6, 9, 12 months after fitting (P > 0.05). There was also significant difference in mean score of SIR between group of moderate hearing loss and severe hearing loss before hearing aid fitting (P < 0.05). How ever, no significant differences were also observed between these two groups at 1, 3, 6, 9, 12 months after fitting (P > 0.05). The mean scores of CAP for group of moderate hearing loss at 6, 9, 12 months after fitting were significantly superior in comparison with the score before hearing aid fitting (P < 0.05). The mean scores of SIR for group of moderate hearing loss at 6, 9, 12 months after fitting were significantly superior in comparison with the score before hearing aid fitting (P < 0.05); the mean score at 12 months after fitting was also significantly superior in comparison with the score at 1 month after fitting (P < 0.05). The mean scores of CAP for group of severe hearing loss at 3, 6, 9, 12 months after fitting were significantly superior in comparison with the score before hearing aid fitting (P < 0.05); the mean scores at 9,12 months after fitting were significantly superior in comparison with the score at 1 month after fitting (P < 0.05). The mean scores of SIR for group of severe hearing loss at 3, 6, 9, 12 months after fitting were significantly superior in comparison with the score before hearing aid fitting (P < 0.05); the mean scores at 6, 9, 12 months after fitting were also significantly superior in comparison with the score at 1 month after fitting (P < 0.05). Auditory performance and speech intelligibility in children with moderate or severe hearing loss improved significantly within the first year after hearing aid fitting. The development followed different trajectory.	t	\N
24621149	Since being approved in 2009, bilateral simultaneous cochlear implantation (CI) has been the standard treatment for children in the UK who meet the criteria for CI. The aim was to report surgical outcomes of bilateral CI in the UK. Between January 2010 and December 2011, 14 UK CI centres collected data prospectively: demographics, aetiology, use of imaging, device type, surgery duration, use of intra-operative electrophysiology, length of stay, and post-operative complications. 1397 CI procedures in 961 CI recipients were included; 436 bilateral simultaneous, 394 bilateral sequential, and 131 unilateral. The majority (85%) were congenitally deaf. The commonest causes of acquired deafness were meningitis and cytomegalovirus infection. The median age for congenitally deaf bilateral simultaneous CI was 2.2 years, mean surgical duration 4.5 hours. 6.3% surgeries were day case procedures. Eight cases (2.0%) of planned bilateral CI had unilateral surgery. The overall major complication rate was 1.6% (0.9% excluding device failures), including explantation due to infection (0.2%), cerebrospinal fluid leak (0.2%), and meningitis (0.1%). There were no permanent facial nerve palsies and no deaths. Sixty-two (6.5%) immediate minor complications included 12 (1.3%) children with significant vestibular impairment. The complication rate was similar following bilateral CI compared to sequential and unilateral CI, and is comparable to other published series. This prospective multi-centre audit provides evidence that bilateral paediatric CI is a safe procedure in the UK, thus endorsing its role as a major therapeutic intervention in childhood deafness.	t	\N
24626890	Auditory steady-state responses (ASSR) are an important tool to detect objectively frequency-specific hearing thresholds. Pure-tone audiometry is the gold-standard for hearing evaluation, although sometimes it may be inconclusive, especially in children and uncooperative adults. Compare pure tone thresholds (PT) with ASSR thresholds in normal hearing subjects. In this prospective cross-sectional study we included 26 adults (n = 52 ears) of both genders, without any hearing complaints or otologic diseases and normal puretone thresholds. All subjects had clinical history, otomicroscopy, audiometry and immitance measurements. This evaluation was followed by the ASSR test. The mean pure-tone and ASSR thresholds for each frequency were calculated. The mean difference between PTand ASSR thresholdswas 7,12 for 500 Hz, 7,6 for 1000 Hz, 8,27 for 2000 Hz and 9,71 dB for 4000 Hz. There were no difference between PT and ASSR means at either frequency. ASSR thresholds were comparable to pure-tone thresholds in normal hearing adults. Nevertheless it should not be used as the only method of hearing evaluation.	t	\N
24627225	The goal of this study was to tease apart the roles of phonological awareness (pA) and phonological short-term memory (pSTM) in sentence comprehension, sentence production, and word reading. Children 6- to 10-years of age (N = 377) completed standardized tests of pA ('Elision') and pSTM ('Nonword Repetition') from the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing. Concepts and Following Directions (CFD) and Formulated Sentences (FS) were taken from the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Fourth Edition, as measures of sentence comprehension and production, respectively. Children also completed the Word Identification (Word Id) and Word Attack (Word Att) subtests of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test-Third Edition. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses controlling for age and nonverbal IQ revealed that Elision was the only significant predictor of CFD and FS. While Elision was the strongest predictor of Word Id and Word Att, Nonword Repetition accounted for additional variance in both reading measures. These results emphasize the usefulness of breaking down phonological processing into multiple components and they also have implications language and reading disordered populations.	t	\N
24630052	To investigate the clinical usefulness of the LS-chirp auditory brainstem response for estimation of behavioral thresholds in young children with mild to severe hearing losses. 68 infants (136 ears) aged 6-12 months (mean age=9.2 months) with bilateral mild to severe hearing losses were studied at Children's Hospital of Fudan University. In all cases, the children were referred for LS-chirp ABR and visual reinforcement audiometric (VRA) measurements. The low-frequency band chirp (LF-chirp) thresholds (frequency band=0.1-0.85kHz) were compared to the average VRA thresholds (frequency band=0.25-0.5kHz), whereas the high-frequency band chirp (HF-chirp) thresholds (frequency band=1-10kHz) were compared to the average VRA thresholds (frequency band=1-4kHz) using statistical correlation coefficient values. The LS-chirp ABR thresholds are very close to behavioral hearing levels. The mean differences between chirp-ABR and VRA thresholds were within 5dBHL for all measurements. The smallest mean threshold difference (<3dBHL) was obtained for the severe hearing loss group. The correlation coefficient values (r) were 0.97 at low-frequency and high-frequency bands. For each carrier frequency, the best correlations between chirp-ABR thresholds and VRA thresholds were obtained at VRA frequency of 0.25kHz/LF-chirp (r=0.98) and VRA frequency of 1kHz/HF-chirp (r=0.98). This study demonstrates the effectiveness using chirp-ABR predicted frequency-specific thresholds, especially of low and middle frequencies. LS-chirp ABR thresholds determined behavioral thresholds in patients with severe hearing losses were better than for mild hearing losses. The use of a chirp-ABR testing ensures higher sensitivity and accuracy than that of auditory stead-state evoked response (ASSR) for measuring frequency-specific thresholds in young children.	t	\N
24631260	The left anterior temporal lobe (LATL) is robustly implicated in semantic processing by a growing body of literature. However, these results have emerged from two distinct bodies of work, addressing two different processing levels. On the one hand, the LATL has been characterized as a 'semantic hub׳ that binds features of concepts across a distributed network, based on results from semantic dementia and hemodynamic findings on the categorization of specific compared to basic exemplars. On the other, the LATL has been implicated in combinatorial operations in language, as shown by increased activity in this region associated with the processing of sentences and of basic phrases. The present work aimed to reconcile these two literatures by independently manipulating combination and concept specificity within a minimal MEG paradigm. Participants viewed simple nouns that denoted either low specificity (fish) or high specificity categories (trout) presented in either combinatorial (spotted fish/trout) or non-combinatorial contexts (xhsl fish/trout). By combining these paradigms from the two literatures, we directly compared the engagement of the LATL in semantic memory vs. semantic composition. Our results indicate that although noun specificity subtly modulates the LATL activity elicited by single nouns, it most robustly affects the size of the composition effect when these nouns are adjectivally modified, with low specificity nouns eliciting a much larger effect. We conclude that these findings are compatible with an account in which the specificity and composition effects arise from a shared mechanism of meaning specification.	t	\N
24632323	This study investigated audiovisual synchrony perception in a rhythmic context, where the sound was not consequent upon the observed movement. Participants judged synchrony between a bouncing point-light figure and an auditory rhythm in two experiments. Two questions were of interest: (1) whether the reference in the visual movement, with which the auditory beat should coincide, relies on a position or a velocity cue; (2) whether the figure form and motion profile affect synchrony perception. Experiment 1 required synchrony judgment with regard to the same (lowest) position of the movement in four visual conditions: two figure forms (human or non-human) combined with two motion profiles (human or ball trajectory). Whereas figure form did not affect synchrony perception, the point of subjective simultaneity differed between the two motions, suggesting that participants adopted the peak velocity in each downward trajectory as their visual reference. Experiment 2 further demonstrated that, when judgment was required with regard to the highest position, the maximal synchrony response was considerably low for ball motion, which lacked a peak velocity in the upward trajectory. The finding of peak velocity as a cue parallels results of visuomotor synchronization tasks employing biological stimuli, suggesting that synchrony judgment with rhythmic motions relies on the perceived visual beat.	t	\N
24636747	Similar to other zona pellucida mutations in the alpha-tectorin (TECTA) gene, the p.Y1870C alteration in DFNA8/12 causes prelingual, nonsyndromic, autosomal dominant hearing loss. Here we investigated the effect of p.Y1870C on reverse transduction by audiometric studies in the family. Pure tone audiometry, brainstem evoked response audiometry, the Freiburger test for speech understanding and transient evoked and distortion product otoacoustic emissions were assessed in three available affected members bearing p.Y1870C. Pure tone audiometry showed U-shaped curves with moderate to severe degrees of hearing impairment confirmed by brainstem evoked response audiometry. Transient evoked and distortion product otoacoustic emissions were completely absent in all affected family members whereas word recognition scores were up to 95%. Although the missense p.Y1870C TECTA mutation leads to complete failure of the cochlear amplifier in humans, very high speech perception scores can be achieved with appropriate therapy.	t	\N
24639033	Although individuals with autism are known to have significant communication problems, the cellular mechanisms responsible for impaired communication are poorly understood. Valproic acid (VPA) is an anticonvulsant that is a known risk factor for autism in prenatally exposed children. Prenatal VPA exposure in rats causes numerous neural and behavioral abnormalities that mimic autism. We predicted that VPA exposure may lead to auditory processing impairments which may contribute to the deficits in communication observed in individuals with autism. In this study, we document auditory cortex responses in rats prenatally exposed to VPA. We recorded local field potentials and multiunit responses to speech sounds in primary auditory cortex, anterior auditory field, ventral auditory field. and posterior auditory field in VPA exposed and control rats. Prenatal VPA exposure severely degrades the precise spatiotemporal patterns evoked by speech sounds in secondary, but not primary auditory cortex. This result parallels findings in humans and suggests that secondary auditory fields may be more sensitive to environmental disturbances and may provide insight into possible mechanisms related to auditory deficits in individuals with autism.	t	\N
24647432	Different brain areas integrate information over different timescales, and this capacity to accumulate information increases from early sensory areas to higher order perceptual and cognitive areas. It is currently unknown whether the timescale capacity of each brain area is fixed or whether it adaptively rescales depending on the rate at which information arrives from the world. Here, using functional MRI, we measured brain responses to an auditory narrative presented at different rates. We asked whether neural responses to slowed (speeded) versions of the narrative could be compressed (stretched) to match neural responses to the original narrative. Temporal rescaling was observed in early auditory regions (which accumulate information over short timescales) as well as linguistic and extra-linguistic brain areas (which can accumulate information over long timescales). The temporal rescaling phenomenon started to break down for stimuli presented at double speed, and intelligibility was also impaired for these stimuli. These data suggest that 1) the rate of neural information processing can be rescaled according to the rate of incoming information, both in early sensory regions as well as in higher order cortexes, and 2) the rescaling of neural dynamics is confined to a range of rates that match the range of behavioral performance.	t	\N
24657592	Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is a common inherited cause of intellectual disability that results from a CGG repeat expansion in the FMR1 gene. Large repeat expansions trigger both transcriptional and translational suppression of Fragile X protein (FMRP) production. Fragile X-associated Tremor/Ataxia Syndrome (FXTAS) is an allelic neurodegenerative disease caused by smaller "pre-mutation" CGG repeat expansions that enhance FMR1 transcription but lead to translational inefficiency and reduced FMRP expression in animal models. Sensorimotor gating as measured by pre-pulse inhibition (PPI) is altered in both FXS patients and Fmr1 knock out (KO) mice. Similarly, FXTAS patients have demonstrated PPI deficits. Recent work suggests there may be overlapping synaptic defects between Fmr1 KO and CGG knock-in premutation mouse models (CGG KI). We therefore sought to interrogate PPI in CGG KI mice. Using a quiet PPI protocol more akin to human testing conditions, we find that Fmr1 KO animals have significantly impaired PPI. Using this same protocol, we find CGG KI mice demonstrate an age-dependent impairment in PPI compared to wild type (WT) controls. This study describes a novel phenotype in CGG KI mice that can be used in future therapeutic development targeting premutation associated symptoms.	t	\N
24660803	This study investigates the extent to which age-related language processing difficulties are due to a decline in sensory processes or to a deterioration of cognitive factors, specifically, attentional control. Two facets of attentional control were examined: inhibition of irrelevant information and divided attention. Younger and older adults were asked to categorize the initial phoneme of spoken syllables ("Was it m or n?"), trying to ignore the lexical status of the syllables. The phonemes were manipulated to range in eight steps from m to n. Participants also did a discrimination task on syllable pairs ("Were the initial sounds the same or different?"). Categorization and discrimination were performed under either divided attention (concurrent visual-search task) or focused attention (no visual task). The results showed that even when the younger and older adults were matched on their discrimination scores: (1) the older adults had more difficulty inhibiting lexical knowledge than did younger adults, (2) divided attention weakened lexical inhibition in both younger and older adults, and (3) divided attention impaired sound discrimination more in older than younger listeners. The results confirm the independent and combined contribution of sensory decline and deficit in attentional control to language processing difficulties associated with aging. The relative weight of these variables and their mechanisms of action are discussed in the context of theories of aging and language.	t	\N
24663012	The present study aimed to vocally assess a group of rock singers who use growl voice and reinforced falsetto. A group of 21 rock singers and a control group of 18 pop singers were included. Singing and speaking voice was assessed through acoustic, perceptual, functional and laryngoscopic analysis. No significant differences were observed between groups in most of the analyses. Acoustic and perceptual analysis of the experimental group demonstrated normality of speaking voice. Endoscopic evaluation showed that most rock singers presented during singing voice a high vertical laryngeal position, pharyngeal compression and laryngeal supraglottic compression. Supraglottic activity during speaking voice tasks was also observed. However, overall vocal fold integrity was demonstrated in most of the participants. Slightly abnormal observations were demonstrated in few of them. Singing voice handicap index revealed that the most affected variable was the physical sphere, followed by the social and emotional spheres. Although growl voice and reinforced falsetto represent laryngeal and pharyngeal hyperfunctional activity, they did not seem to contribute to the presence of any major vocal fold disorder in our subjects. Nevertheless, we cannot rule out the possibility that more evident vocal fold disorders could be found in singers who use these techniques more often and during a longer period of time.	t	\N
24672005	The inner ear receives two types of efferent feedback from the brainstem: one pathway provides gain control on outer hair cells' contribution to cochlear amplification, and the other modulates the excitability of the cochlear nerve. Although efferent feedback can protect hair cells from acoustic injury and thereby minimize noise-induced permanent threshold shifts, most prior studies focused on high-intensity exposures (>100 dB SPL). Here, we show that efferents are essential for long-term maintenance of cochlear function in mice aged 1 year post-de-efferentation without purposeful acoustic overexposure. Cochlear de-efferentation was achieved by surgical lesion of efferent pathways in the brainstem and was assessed by quantitative analysis of immunostained efferent terminals in outer and inner hair cell areas. The resultant loss of efferent feedback accelerated the age-related amplitude reduction in cochlear neural responses, as seen in auditory brainstem responses, and increased the loss of synapses between hair cells and the terminals of cochlear nerve fibers, as seen in confocal analysis of the organ of Corti immunostained for presynaptic and postsynaptic markers. This type of neuropathy, also seen after moderate noise exposure, has been termed "hidden hearing loss", because it does not affect thresholds, but can be seen in the suprathreshold amplitudes of cochlear neural responses, and likely causes problems with hearing in a noisy environment, a classic symptom of age-related hearing loss in humans. Since efferent reflex strength varies among individuals and can be measured noninvasively, a weak reflex may be an important risk factor, and prognostic indicator, for age-related hearing impairment.	t	\N
24681401	Voice control is critical to communication. To date, studies have used behavioral, electrophysiological and functional data to investigate the neural correlates of voice control using perturbation tasks, but have yet to examine the interactions of these neural regions. The goal of this study was to use structural equation modeling of functional neuroimaging data to examine network properties of voice with and without perturbation. Results showed that the presence of a pitch shift, which was processed as an error in vocalization, altered connections between right STG and left STG. Other regions that revealed differences in connectivity during error detection and correction included bilateral inferior frontal gyrus, and the primary and pre motor cortices. Results indicated that STG plays a critical role in voice control, specifically, during error detection and correction. Additionally, pitch perturbation elicits changes in the voice network that suggest the right hemisphere is critical to pitch modulation.	t	\N
24681402	Converging evidence suggests that understanding our first-language (L1) results in reactivation of experiential sensorimotor traces in the brain. Surprisingly, little is known regarding the involvement of these processes during second-language (L2) processing. Participants saw L1 or L2 words referring to entities with a typical location (e.g., star, mole) (Experiment 1 & 2) or to an emotion (e.g., happy, sad) (Experiment 3). Participants responded to the words' ink color with an upward or downward arm movement. Despite word meaning being fully task-irrelevant, L2 automatically activated motor responses similar to L1 even when L2 was acquired rather late in life (age >11). Specifically, words such as star facilitated upward, and words such as root facilitated downward responses. Additionally, words referring to positive emotions facilitated upward, and words referring to negative emotions facilitated downward responses. In summary our study suggests that reactivation of experiential traces is not limited to L1 processing.	t	\N
24684405	We sought to determine whether the results of audiological tests and tinnitus characteristics, particularly tinnitus pitch and minimum masking level (MML), depend on tinnitus etiology, and what other etiology-specific tinnitus characteristics there are. The patients answered questions concerning tinnitus laterality, duration, character, aggravation, alleviation, previous treatment, and circumstances of onset. The results of tympanometry, pure-tone audiometry, distortion-product otoacoustic emissions, tinnitus likeness spectrum, MML, and uncomfortable loudness level were evaluated. Patients with several tinnitus etiological factors were excluded. The remaining participants were divided into groups according to medical history: acute acoustic trauma: 67 ears; chronic acoustic trauma: 82; prolonged use of oral estrogen and progesterone contraceptives: 46; Ménière's disease: 25; congenital hearing loss: 19; sensorineural sudden deafness: 40; dull head trauma: 19; viral labyrinthitis: 53; stroke: 6; presbycusis: 152. Data of 509 ears were analysed. Tinnitus pitch was highest in patients with acute acoustic trauma and lowest in patients receiving estrogen and progesterone. MML was lowest after acute acoustic trauma and in congenital hearing loss, and highest after a stroke and in the case of presbytinnitus. Tinnitus pitch and MML are etiology dependent.	t	\N
24686520	PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to investigate how linguistic knowledge interacts with indexical knowledge in older children's perception under demanding listening conditions created by extensive talker variability. METHOD Twenty-five 9- to 12-year-old children, 12 from North Carolina (NC) and 13 from Wisconsin (WI), identified 12 vowels in isolated /hVd/ words produced by 120 talkers representing the 2 dialects (NC and WI), both genders, and 3 age groups (generations) of residents from the same geographic locations as the listeners. RESULTS Identification rates were higher for responses to talkers from the same dialect as the listeners and for female speech. Listeners were sensitive to systematic positional variations in vowels and their dynamic structure (formant movement) associated with generational differences in vowel pronunciation resulting from sound change in a speech community. Overall identification rate was 71.7%, which is 8.5% lower than for the adults responding to the same stimuli in Jacewicz and Fox (2012). CONCLUSION Typically developing older children were successful in dealing with both phonetic and indexical variation related to talker dialect, gender, and generation. They were less consistent than the adults, most likely because of less efficient encoding of acoustic-phonetic information in the speech of multiple talkers and relative inexperience with indexical variation.	t	\N
24686901	PURPOSE The aim of this study was to evaluate the understanding of English sentences produced by native (English) and nonnative (Spanish) talkers by listeners with normal hearing (NH) and listeners with cochlear implants (CIs). METHOD Sentence recognition in noise was measured in adult subjects with CIs and subjects with NH, all of whom were native talkers of American English. Test sentences were from the Hearing in Noise Test (HINT) database and were produced in English by four native and eight nonnative talkers. Subjects also rated the intelligibility and accent for each talker. RESULTS The speech recognition thresholds in noise of subjects with CIs and subjects with NH were 4.23 dB and 1.32 dB poorer with nonnative talkers than with native talkers, respectively. Performance was significantly correlated with talker intelligibility and accent ratings for subjects with CIs but only correlated with talker intelligibility ratings for subjects with NH. For all subjects, performance with individual nonnative talkers was significantly correlated with talkers' number of years of residence in the United States. CONCLUSION CI users exhibited a larger deficit in speech understanding with nonnative talkers than did subjects with NH, relative to native talkers. Nonnative talkers' experience with native culture contributed strongly to speech understanding in noise, intelligibility ratings, and accent ratings of both listeners with NH and listeners with CIs.	t	\N
24686915	The purpose of this study was to develop a task to evaluate children's English and Spanish speech perception abilities in either noise or competing speech maskers. Eight bilingual Spanish-English and 8 age-matched monolingual English children (ages 4.9-16.4 years) were tested. A forced-choice, picture-pointing paradigm was selected for adaptively estimating masked speech reception thresholds. Speech stimuli were spoken by simultaneous bilingual Spanish-English talkers. The target stimuli were 30 disyllabic English and Spanish words, familiar to 5-year-olds and easily illustrated. Competing stimuli included either 2-talker English or 2-talker Spanish speech (corresponding to target language) and spectrally matched noise. For both groups of children, regardless of test language, performance was significantly worse for the 2-talker than for the noise masker condition. No difference in performance was found between bilingual and monolingual children. Bilingual children performed significantly better in English than in Spanish in competing speech. For all listening conditions, performance improved with increasing age. Results indicated that the stimuli and task were appropriate for speech recognition testing in both languages, providing a more conventional measure of speech-in-noise perception as well as a measure of complex listening. Further research is needed to determine performance for Spanish-dominant listeners and to evaluate the feasibility of implementation into routine clinical use.	t	\N
24687018	Although a number of questionnaires are available to assess hearing aid benefit and general hearing disability, relatively few investigate spatial hearing ability in more complex listening situations. The aim of this study was to document the performance of individuals with normal hearing using the Spatial Hearing Questionnaire (SHQ; Tyler, Perreau, & Ji, 2009) and to compare performance with published data from cochlear implant (CI) users. Fifty-one participants with normal hearing participated. All participants completed the 24-item SHQ. Also, a factor analysis and reliability tests were performed. Performance on the SHQ was high (87%) for the participants with normal hearing. Subjective ratings varied across different listening situations: Understanding speech in quiet (98%) was rated higher than sound localization (84%) and understanding speech in a background of noise (85%). Compared with previously published data (Tyler, Perreau, & Ji, 2009), listeners with normal hearing rated their spatial hearing ability significantly better than bilateral and unilateral CI users. Results confirmed that the SHQ is a reliable measure of spatial hearing ability for listeners with normal hearing. Overall, results indicated that the SHQ is able to capture expected differences between individuals with normal hearing and CI users. These new data can be used as targets following the provision of hearing devices.	t	\N
24687041	To describe the inheritance patterns and auditory phenotype features of 3 Canadian families with mutations in 2 X-linked "deafness" genes (DFNX). Audiological, medical, and family histories were collected and family members interviewed to compare hearing thresholds and case histories between cases with mutations in SMPX versus POU3F4. The family pedigrees reveal characteristic X-linked inheritance patterns. Phenotypic features associated with the SMPX (DFNX4) mutation include early onset in males with rapid progression from mild and flat to sloping sensorineural loss, with highly variable onset and hearing loss severity in females. In contrast, phenotypic features associated with the POU3F4 (DFNX2) mutation are characterized by an early onset, mixed hearing loss with fluctuation in males, and a normal hearing phenotype reported for females. The study shows how this unique inheritance pattern and both gender and mutation-specific phenotype variations can alert audiologists to the presence of X-linked genetic etiologies in their clinical practice. By incorporating this knowledge into clinical decision making, audiologists can facilitate the early identification of X-linked hearing loss and contribute to the effective team management of affected families.	t	\N
24704377	Perceptual synchrony and multisensory integration both vary as a function of stimulus onset asynchrony, but evidences from behavioral, patient, and lesion studies all support some dissociation between these two processes. Although it has been found that both perceptual synchrony and multisensory integration are recalibrated after exposure to asynchronous multisensory stimuli, no studies have directly compared these two recalibration patterns. We addressed this by using McGurk speech and requiring participants to perform simultaneity judgments and a syllable identification task in separate sessions. The results revealed that after exposure to asynchrony, both perceptual synchrony and McGurk fusion shifted toward the temporal lag. The recalibration aftereffects (i.e., the magnitude of shifts) of these two processes have no significant difference and correlation. In addition, McGurk fusion increased strongly at the direction of the temporal lag, which could not be fully explained by fusion shifts. Thus, the present research implies that recalibration patterns of explicit and implicit timing represented by perceptual synchrony and multisensory integration have both similarity and difference.	t	\N
24709357	Although there is an extensive literature on the study of the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) this is a subject that is far from being considered over. In this paper we present a novel experimental paradigm, based on binocular rivalry, to study internally and externally generated conscious experiences. We called this procedure bimodal rivalry. In addition, and assuming the non-linear nature of the EEG signals, we propose the use of fractal dimension to characterize the complexity of the EEG signal associated with each percept. Analysis of the data showed a significant difference in complexity between the internally generated and externally generated percepts. Moreover, EEG complexity was dissimilar for externally generated auditory and visual percepts. These results support fractal dimension analyses as a new tool to characterize conscious perception.	t	\N
24715101	The current study investigated the mechanism underlying subliminal inhibition using the negative compatibility effect (NCE) paradigm. We hypothesized that a decrease in prime activation affects the subsequent inhibitory process, delaying onset of inhibition and reducing its strength. Two experiments tested this hypothesis using arrow stimuli as primes and targets. Two different irrelevant masks (i.e., a mask sharing no prime features) were presented in succession in each trial to not only ensure that primes were processed subliminally, but also avoid feature updating between primes and masks. Prime/target compatibility and prime background density were manipulated in Experiment 1. Results showed that under subliminal inhibitory condition, the NCE disappears when the density increases (i.e., pixel density in the prime's background of 25 %) in Experiment 1. However, when we fixed the prime's background at the density of 25 % and manipulated prime/target compatibility as well as inter-stimuli-interval (ISI) between mask and target in Experiment 2, behavioral results showed marginally significant NCEs in the 150-ms ISI condition. Electrophysiological evidence showed the lateralized readiness potential for compatible trials was significantly more positive than that for incompatible trials during the two consecutive time windows (i.e., 400-450 and 450-500 ms) in the 150-ms ISI condition. In addition, the NCE size was significant smaller in Experiment 2 than in Experiment 1. All of the results support predictions of the continuous subliminal inhibitory mechanism hypothesis which posits that decreases in prime activation strength lead to delay in inhibitory onset and decline in inhibitory strength.	t	\N
24727491	The binaural cues used by terrestrial animals for sound localization in azimuth may not always suffice for accurate sound localization underwater. The purpose of this research was to examine the theoretical limits of interaural timing and level differences available underwater using computational and physical models. A paired-hydrophone system was used to record sounds transmitted underwater and recordings were analyzed using neural networks calibrated to reflect the auditory capabilities of terrestrial mammals. Estimates of source direction based on temporal differences were most accurate for frequencies between 0.5 and 1.75 kHz, with greater resolution toward the midline (2°), and lower resolution toward the periphery (9°). Level cues also changed systematically with source azimuth, even at lower frequencies than expected from theoretical calculations, suggesting that binaural mechanical coupling (e.g., through bone conduction) might, in principle, facilitate underwater sound localization. Overall, the relatively limited ability of the model to estimate source position using temporal and level difference cues underwater suggests that animals such as whales may use additional cues to accurately localize conspecifics and predators at long distances.	t	\N
24735233	The dichotic listening task is typically administered by presenting a consonant-vowel (CV) syllable to each ear and asking the participant to report the syllable heard most clearly. The results tend to show more reports of the right ear syllable than of the left ear syllable, an effect called the right ear advantage (REA). The REA is assumed to be due to the crossing over of auditory fibres and the processing of language stimuli being lateralised to left temporal areas. However, the tendency for most dichotic listening experiments to use only CV syllable stimuli limits the extent to which the conclusions can be generalised to also apply to other speech phonemes. The current study re-examines the REA in dichotic listening by using both CV and vowel-consonant (VC) syllables and combinations thereof. Results showed a replication of the REA response pattern for both CV and VC syllables, thus indicating that the general assumption of left-side localisation of processing can be applied for both types of stimuli. Further, on trials where a CV is presented in one ear and a VC is presented in the other ear, the CV is selected more often than the VC, indicating that these phonemes have an acoustic or processing advantage.	t	\N
24735850	To form a coherent percept of the environment, the brain needs to bind sensory signals emanating from a common source, but to segregate those from different sources [1]. Temporal correlations and synchrony act as prominent cues for multisensory integration [2-4], but the neural mechanisms by which such cues are identified remain unclear. Predictive coding suggests that the brain iteratively optimizes an internal model of its environment by minimizing the errors between its predictions and the sensory inputs [5,6]. This model enables the brain to predict the temporal evolution of natural audiovisual inputs and their statistical (for example, temporal) relationship. A prediction of this theory is that asynchronous audiovisual signals violating the model's predictions induce an error signal that depends on the directionality of the audiovisual asynchrony. As the visual system generates the dominant temporal predictions for visual leading asynchrony, the delayed auditory inputs are expected to generate a prediction error signal in the auditory system (and vice versa for auditory leading asynchrony). Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we measured participants' brain responses to synchronous, visual leading and auditory leading movies of speech, sinewave speech or music. In line with predictive coding, auditory leading asynchrony elicited a prediction error in visual cortices and visual leading asynchrony in auditory cortices. Our results reveal predictive coding as a generic mechanism to temporally bind signals from multiple senses into a coherent percept.	t	\N
24736111	The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between serum albumin, affective prosody, and symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) found coincidentally in a recently published study. Here, serum albumin levels were assessed as a covariate. Twenty healthy male adults (controls) and 20 adult male patients with ADHD participated in the study on two study days. Serum albumin levels and performance in an affective prosody task were assessed, and correlations were determined. Serum albumin had a significant correlation with performance on an affective prosody task on both of the 2 study days. The same correlations were not significant in the healthy control group. There was no difference in the serum albumin level between patients with ADHD and healthy controls. The association between serum albumin and affective prosody in adults with ADHD is a novel finding. However, to date, there is no clear theory that explains this association. Future research should analyze whether serum albumin influences causes changes in performance in affective prosody using experimental designs.	t	\N
24736186	We investigated whether unattended visual, auditory and tactile stimuli compete for capacity-limited early sensory processing across senses. In three experiments, we probed competitive audio-visual, visuo-tactile and audio-tactile stimulus interactions. To this end, continuous visual, auditory and tactile stimulus streams ('reference' stimuli) were frequency-tagged to elicit steady-state responses (SSRs). These electrophysiological oscillatory brain responses indexed ongoing stimulus processing in corresponding senses. To induce competition, we introduced transient frequency-tagged stimuli in same and/or different senses ('competitors') during reference presentation. Participants performed a separate visual discrimination task at central fixation to control for attentional biases of sensory processing. A comparison of reference-driven SSR amplitudes between competitor-present and competitor-absent periods revealed reduced amplitudes when a competitor was presented in the same sensory modality as the reference. Reduced amplitudes indicated the competitor's suppressive influence on reference stimulus processing. Crucially, no such suppression was found when a competitor was presented in a different than the reference modality. These results strongly suggest that early sensory competition is exclusively modality-specific and does not extend across senses. We discuss consequences of these findings for modeling the neural mechanisms underlying intermodal attention.	t	\N
24738537	Neuroscientific and musicological approaches to music cognition indicate that listeners familiarized in the Western tonal tradition expect a musical phrase boundary at predictable time intervals. However, phrase boundary prediction processes in music remain untested. We analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs) and event-related induced power changes at the onset and offset of a boundary pause. We made comparisons with modified melodies, where the pause was omitted and filled by tones. The offset of the pause elicited a closure positive shift (CPS), indexing phrase boundary detection. The onset of the filling tones elicited significant increases in theta and beta powers. In addition, the P2 component was larger when the filling tones started than when they ended. The responses to boundary omission suggest that listeners expected to hear a boundary pause. Therefore, boundary prediction seems to coexist with boundary detection in music segmentation.	t	\N
24744448	Interest in the perception of the material of objects has been growing. While material perception is a critical ability for animals to properly regulate behavioral interactions with surrounding objects (e.g., eating), little is known about its underlying processing. Vision and audition provide useful information for material perception; using only its visual appearance or impact sound, we can infer what an object is made from. However, what material is perceived when the visual appearance of one material is combined with the impact sound of another, and what are the rules that govern cross-modal integration of material information? We addressed these questions by asking 16 human participants to rate how likely it was that audiovisual stimuli (48 combinations of visual appearances of six materials and impact sounds of eight materials) along with visual-only stimuli and auditory-only stimuli fell into each of 13 material categories. The results indicated strong interactions between audiovisual material perceptions; for example, the appearance of glass paired with a pepper sound is perceived as transparent plastic. Rating material-category likelihoods follow a multiplicative integration rule in that the categories judged to be likely are consistent with both visual and auditory stimuli. On the other hand, rating-material properties, such as roughness and hardness, follow a weighted average rule. Despite a difference in their integration calculations, both rules can be interpreted as optimal Bayesian integration of independent audiovisual estimations for the two types of material judgment, respectively.	t	\N
24750038	Alarms are ubiquitous in anaesthetic practice, but their net effect on anaesthesiologists' performance and patient safety is debated. In this study, 27 anaesthesiologists performed two simulation sessions in random order; one session was programmed to include an alarm condition, with a standard, frequent, clearly audible alarm sound. During these sessions, adverse events were simulated and anaesthesiologists' response times to these events were recorded. Perceived workload was assessed with the NASA Task Load Index. Response times to adverse events and perceived workload were similar in both groups. Pooled response times to atrial fibrillation and desaturation were fast, with a median (range [IQR]) of 8 (4-14 [1-41]) s and 9 (6-16 [1-44]) s, respectively. Pooled response times to an ST segment elevation on the ECG and an obstructed intravenous line were significantly slower, with median (IQR[range]) times of 34 (21-76[4-300]) s and 227 (95-399 [2-600]) s, respectively (p < 0.001). This study shows that in a simulated anaesthesia environment, response times to adverse events are similar in the absence or presence of an audible alarm, and that response times to various critical events differ.	t	\N
24751750	To prospectively evaluate hearing outcomes in patients with osteogenesis imperfecta undergoing primary stapes surgery and to isolate prognostic factors for success. A nonrandomized, open, prospective case series. A tertiary referral center. Twenty-five consecutive patients who underwent 32 primary stapedotomies for osteogenesis imperfecta with evidence of stapes fixation and available postoperative pure-tone audiometry. Primary stapedotomy with vein graft interposition and reconstruction with a regular Teflon piston or bucket handle-type piston. Preoperative and postoperative audiometric evaluation using conventional 4-frequency (0.5, 1, 2, and 4 kHz) audiometry. Air-conduction thresholds, bone-conduction thresholds, and air-bone gap were measured. The overall audiometric results as well as the results of audiometric evaluation at 3 months and at least 1 year after surgery were used. Overall, postoperative air-bone gap closure to within 10 dB was achieved in 88% of cases. Mean (standard deviation) gain in air-conduction threshold was 22 (9.4) dB for the entire case series, and mean (standard deviation) air-bone gap closure was 22 (9.0) dB. Backward multivariate logistic regression showed that a model with preoperative air-bone gap closure and intraoperatively established incus length accurately predicts success after primary stapes surgery. Stapes surgery is a feasible and safe treatment option in patients with osteogenesis imperfecta. Success is associated with preoperative air-bone gap and intraoperatively established incus length.	t	\N
24754219	Diachronic velar palatalization is taken as the case study for modeling the emergence of a new phoneme category. The spread of a palatalized variant through the lexicon is treated as a stochastic classification task for the listener/learner. The model combines two measures of similarity to determine classification within an exemplar-theoretic framework: acoustic distance and phonotactic expectation. There are three model outcomes: contrast, allophony, or contextual neutralization between the plain and palatalized velars. It is shown, through a series of simulations, that these can be predicted from the distribution of sounds within the pre-change lexicons, namely, the ratio of the /k-vowel/ sequences containing naturally palatalizing vowels (i, I, e), to those containing non-palatalizers. "Unnatural" phonotactic associations can arise in individual lexicons, but are sharply limited due to the large size of the lexicon and the local nature of the phoneme changes. "Anti-natural" distributions, which categorically violate the proposed implicational relationship between palatalization and frontness/height, are absent. This work provides an explicit and restrictive model of phoneme change. The results also serve as an existence proof for an outcome-blind mechanism of avoiding over-generation.	t	\N
24755208	A wide range of literature is available on the features of ataxic dysarthria, investigating segmental and prosodic characteristics by acoustic and perceptual means. However, very few studies have been published that look closely at the relationship between the observed phonetic disturbances and their perceptual sequelae, particularly in the area of prosody. The aim of the current study was therefore to examine the stress production of eight individuals with ataxic dysarthria and matched healthy controls, and to relate the results of phonological and perceptual evaluations to phonetic performances to better understand the relationship between these three components for speech outcomes. Speakers performed a sentence stress task which was analysed phonologically in terms of inventory, distribution, implementation and function of pitch accentuation. These data were then evaluated in relation to previously published phonetic and perceptual results on the same speaker group by the authors. Results indicated that the speakers with ataxia used a wide range of pitch patterns, but pitch-accented a higher number of words, and produced shorter phrases. The increased number of pitch accents per phrase was furthermore reflected in a reduced percentage of de-accented words in post-focal position. Perceptual results established this pattern as the main cause for listener errors in identifying the intended stressed item in an utterance. In addition, the performances of two speakers are discussed in greater detail. Although they were unable to de-accent, they nevertheless marked stress appropriately through phonetic compensatory strategies. After reading this article the reader will be able to (1) explain the relevance of phonology and phonetics in the perception of stress production in ataxic dysarthria; (2) describe the different levels of intonational analysis; and (3) understand the observed intonation patterns in ataxic dysarthria as well as the compensatory mechanisms speakers may adopt to produce stress.	t	\N
24763046	Obesity-related disorders are closely associated with the development of age-related hearing impairment (ARHI). Adiponectin (APN) exerts protective effects against obesity-related conditions including endothelial dysfunction and atherosclerosis. Here, we investigated the impact of APN on ARHI. APN-knockout (APN-KO) mice developed exacerbation of hearing impairment, particularly in the high frequency range, compared with wild-type (WT) mice. Supplementation with APN prevented the hearing impairment in APN-KO mice. At 2 months of age, the cochlear blood flow and capillary density of the stria vascularis (SV) were significantly reduced in APN-KO mice as compared with WT mice. APN-KO mice also showed a significant increase in terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL)-positive apoptotic cells in the organ of Corti in the cochlea at 2 months of age. At the age of 6 months, hair cells were lost at the organ of Corti in APN-KO mice. In cultured auditory HEI-OC1 cells, APN reduced apoptotic activity under hypoxic conditions. Clinically, plasma APN levels were significantly lower in humans with ARHI. Multiple logistic regression analysis identified APN as a significant and independent predictor of ARHI. Our observations indicate that APN has an important role in preventing ARHI.	t	\N
24764261	We investigated the relative effects of simple and complex auditory-visual discrimination training using an adapted alternating treatments design to establish derived stimulus relations in 2 children who had been diagnosed with autism and 1 typically developing peer. Emergence of untrained conditional relations was observed after training in both conditions, with a possible advantage of simple-sample training for 1 participant. Results of generalization and follow-up probes were mixed.	t	\N
24769166	Although alterations of the limbic system have been linked to tinnitus persistence, the neural networks underlying such alteration are unclear. The present study investigated the effect of tinnitus on emotional processing in middle-aged adults using functional magnetic resonance imaging and stimuli from the International Affective Digital Sounds database. There were three groups of participants: bilateral hearing loss with tinnitus (TIN), age- and gender-matched controls with bilateral hearing loss without tinnitus (HL) and matched normal hearing controls without tinnitus (NH). In the scanner, subjects rated sounds as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. The TIN and NH groups, but not the HL group, responded faster to affective sounds compared to neutral sounds. The TIN group had elevated response in bilateral parahippocampus and right insula compared to the NH group, and left parahippocampus compared to HL controls for pleasant relative to neutral sounds. A region-of-interest analysis detected increased activation for NH controls in the right amygdala when responding to affective stimuli, but failed to find a similar heightened response in the TIN and HL groups. All three groups showed increased response in auditory cortices for the affective relative to neutral sounds comparisons. Our results suggest that the emotional processing network is altered in tinnitus to rely on the parahippocampus and insula, rather than the amygdala, and this alteration may maintain a select advantage for the rapid processing of affective stimuli despite the hearing loss. The complex interaction of tinnitus and the limbic system should be accounted for in development of new tinnitus management strategies.	t	\N
24769280	Lexical access during speech comprehension comprises numerous computations, including activation, competition, and selection. The spatio-temporal profile of these processes involves neural activity in peri-auditory cortices at least as early as 200 ms after stimulation. Their oscillatory dynamics are less well understood, although reports link alpha band de-synchronization with lexical processing. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to examine whether these alpha-related oscillations reflect the speed of lexical access, as would be predicted if they index lexical activation. In an auditory semantic priming protocol, monosyllabic nouns were presented while participants performed a lexical decision task. Spatially-localizing beamforming was used to examine spectro-temporal effects in left and right auditory cortex time-locked to target word onset. Alpha and beta de-synchronization (10-20 Hz ERD) was attenuated for words following a related prime compared to an unrelated prime beginning about 270 ms after stimulus onset. This timing is consistent with how information about word identity unfolds incrementally in speech, quantified in information-theoretic terms. These findings suggest that alpha de-synchronization during auditory word processing is associated with early stages of lexical access.	t	\N
24769430	In this study meaningful social stimuli were used as probes in a task requiring the judgment of semantic appropriateness to investigate contextual integration ability to test the ability of people with Williams syndrome (WS) to integrate information, as opposed to the use of meaningless syllables in audiovisual studies (the McGurk effect). Participants were presented with background auditory primes followed by targets that were either congruent or incongruent with the prime. Two modes of target were presented: a visual target (AV task) or an auditory target (AA task). Participants were asked to respond yes to contextually appropriate pairs and no to those that were contextually inappropriate. The congruency effect was measured as an index of successful central coherence. Similar to normally developing controls, people with WS showed shorter response latencies and greater accuracy in recognizing congruent pairs compared with incongruent pairs. Their performance did not differ from that of controls matched by mental age, but was inferior to that of controls matched by chronological age. The results revealed generalized contextual integration for auditory primes in both tasks, consistent with previous studies using visual presentation of social-related stimuli in people with WS (Hsu, 2013a, 2013c). Further demonstration of the presence of a modality effect on contextual coherence implies that cross-modal learning may be advantageous compared with unimodal learning.	t	\N
24783989	To assist the human operator, modern auditory interfaces increasingly rely on sound spatialisation to display auditory information and warning signals. However, we often operate in environments that apply vibrations to the whole body, e.g. when driving a vehicle. Here, we report three experiments investigating the effect of sinusoidal vibrations along the vertical axis on spatial hearing. The first was a free-field, narrow-band noise localisation experiment with 5- Hz vibration at 0.88 ms(-2). The other experiments used headphone-based sound lateralisation tasks. Experiment 2 investigated the effect of vibration frequency (4 vs. 8 Hz) at two different magnitudes (0.83 vs. 1.65 ms(-2)) on a left-right discrimination one-interval forced-choice task. Experiment 3 assessed the effect on a two-interval forced-choice location discrimination task with respect to the central and two peripheral reference locations. In spite of the broad range of methods, none of the experiments show a reliable effect of whole-body vibrations on localisation performance. We report three experiments that used both free-field localisation and headphone lateralisation tasks to assess their sensitivity to whole-body vibrations at low frequencies. None of the experiments show a reliable effect of either frequency or magnitude of whole-body vibrations on localisation performance.	t	\N
24809252	The aim of this work was to investigate perceived loudness change in response to melodies that increase (up-ramp) or decrease (down-ramp) in acoustic intensity, and the interaction with other musical factors such as melodic contour, tempo, and tonality (tonal/atonal). A within-subjects design manipulated direction of linear intensity change (up-ramp, down-ramp), melodic contour (ascending, descending), tempo, and tonality, using single ramp trials and paired ramp trials, where single up-ramps and down-ramps were assembled to create continuous up-ramp/down-ramp or down-ramp/up-ramp pairs. Twenty-nine (Exp 1) and thirty-six (Exp 2) participants rated loudness continuously in response to trials with monophonic 13-note piano melodies lasting either 6.4s or 12s. Linear correlation coefficients >.89 between loudness and time show that time-series loudness responses to dynamic up-ramp and down-ramp melodies are essentially linear across all melodies. Therefore, 'indirect' loudness change derived from the difference in loudness at the beginning and end points of the continuous response was calculated. Down-ramps were perceived to change significantly more in loudness than up-ramps in both tonalities and at a relatively slow tempo. Loudness change was also greater for down-ramps presented with a congruent descending melodic contour, relative to an incongruent pairing (down-ramp and ascending melodic contour). No differential effect of intensity ramp/melodic contour congruency was observed for up-ramps. In paired ramp trials assessing the possible impact of ramp context, loudness change in response to up-ramps was significantly greater when preceded by down-ramps, than when not preceded by another ramp. Ramp context did not affect down-ramp perception. The contribution to the fields of music perception and psychoacoustics are discussed in the context of real-time perception of music, principles of music composition, and performance of musical dynamics.	t	\N
24809744	Since Köhler's experiments in the 1920s, researchers have demonstrated a correspondence between words and shapes. Dubbed the "Bouba-Kiki" effect, these auditory-visual associations extend across cultures and are thought to be universal. More recently the effect has been shown in other modalities including taste, suggesting the effect is independent of vision. The study presented here tested the "Bouba-Kiki" effect in the auditory-haptic modalities, using 2D cut-outs and 3D models based on Köhler's original drawings. Presented with shapes they could feel but not see, sighted participants showed a robust "Bouba-Kiki" effect. However, in a sample of people with a range of visual impairments, from congenital total blindness to partial sight, the effect was significantly less pronounced. The findings suggest that, in the absence of a direct visual stimulus, visual imagery plays a role in crossmodal integration.	t	\N
24811450	Mice are emerging as an important behavioral model for studies of auditory perception and acoustic communication. These mammals frequently produce ultrasonic vocalizations, although the details of how these vocalizations are used for communication are not entirely understood. An important step in determining how they might be differentiating their calls is to measure discrimination and identification of the dimensions of various acoustic stimuli. Here, behavioral operant conditioning methods were employed to assess frequency difference limens for pure tones. We found that their thresholds were similar to those in other rodents but higher than in humans. We also asked mice, in an identification paradigm, whether they would use frequency or duration differences to classify stimuli varying on those two dimensions. We found that the mice classified the stimuli based on frequency rather than duration.	t	\N
24815249	Personal audio refers to the creation of a listening zone within which a person, or a group of people, hears a given sound program, without being annoyed by other sound programs being reproduced in the same space. Generally, these different sound zones are created by arrays of loudspeakers. Although these devices have the capacity to achieve different sound zones in an anechoic environment, they are ultimately used in normal rooms, which are reverberant environments. At high frequencies, reflections from the room surfaces create a diffuse pressure component which is uniform throughout the room volume and thus decreases the directional characteristics of the device. This paper shows how the reverberant performance of an array can be modeled, knowing the anechoic performance of the radiator and the acoustic characteristics of the room. A formulation is presented whose results are compared to practical measurements in reverberant environments. Due to reflections from the room surfaces, pressure variations are introduced in the transfer responses of the array. This aspect is assessed by means of simulations where random noise is added to create uncertainties, and by performing measurements in a real environment. These results show how the robustness of an array is increased when it is designed for use in a reverberant environment.	t	\N
24815280	Recent studies on binary masking techniques make the assumption that each time-frequency (T-F) unit contributes an equal amount to the overall intelligibility of speech. The present study demonstrated that the importance of each T-F unit to speech intelligibility varies in accordance with speech content. Specifically, T-F units are categorized into two classes, speech-present T-F units and speech-absent T-F units. Results indicate that the importance of each speech-present T-F unit to speech intelligibility is highly related to the loudness of its target component, while the importance of each speech-absent T-F unit varies according to the loudness of its masker component. Two types of mask errors are also considered, which include miss and false alarm errors. Consistent with previous work, false alarm errors are shown to be more harmful to speech intelligibility than miss errors when the mixture signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is below 0 dB. However, the relative importance between the two types of error is conditioned on the SNR level of the input speech signal. Based on these observations, a mask-based objective measure, the loudness weighted hit-false, is proposed for predicting speech intelligibility. The proposed objective measure shows significantly higher correlation with intelligibility compared to two existing mask-based objective measures.	t	\N
24815292	Behind-the-ear (BTE) processors of cochlear implant (CI) devices offer little to almost no protection from wind noise in most incidence angles. To assess speech intelligibility, eight CI recipients were tested in 3 and 9 m/s wind. Results indicated that speech intelligibility decreased substantially when the wind velocity, and in turn the wind sound pressure level, increased. A two-microphone wind noise suppression strategy was developed. Scores obtained with this strategy indicated substantial gains in speech intelligibility over other conventional noise reduction strategies tested.	t	\N
24820112	This study aimed to propose an ototoxicity grading system sensitive to the effect of ototoxicity on specific daily life situations like speech intelligibility and the perception of ultra-high sounds and to test its feasibility compared to current criteria. Pure tone averages (PTAs) for speech perception (1-2-4 kHz) and ultra-high frequencies (8-10-12.5 kHz) were incorporated. Threshold shift and hearing level posttreatment were taken into account. Criteria were tested on head and neck cancer patients treated with (chemo-)radiotherapy ([C]RT) and compared with the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events version 4 (CTCAEv4) and the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association criteria (ASHA). Grades 1 and 2 were based on threshold shifts from baseline (in dB) and subjective complaints. Grades 3 and 4 were defined as treatment-induced hearing loss of ≥ 35 dB at PTA 1-2-4 kHz and ≥ 70 dB at PTA 1-2-4 kHz, respectively. In high-dose cisplatin CRT incidences by the new criteria, CTCAEv4 and ASHA were comparable (78%-88%). In RT and low-dose cisplatin CRT, incidences were 36% to 39% in the new criteria versus 22% to 53% in CTCAEv4 and ASHA. The new criteria show an increased sensitivity to ototoxicity compared to CTCAEv4 and ASHA and provide insight into the effect of hearing loss on certain daily life situations. The new grading system seems feasible for clinic and research purposes.	t	\N
24834939	Our results indicated that electric acoustic stimulation (EAS) is beneficial for Japanese-speaking patients, including those with less residual hearing at lower frequencies. Comparable outcomes for the patients with less residual hearing indicated that current audiological criteria for EAS could be expanded. Successful hearing preservation results, together with the progressive nature of loss of residual hearing in these patients, mean that minimally invasive full insertion of medium/long electrodes in cochlear implantation (CI) surgery is a desirable solution. The minimally invasive concepts that have been obtained through EAS surgery are, in fact, crucial for all CI patients. This study was conducted to evaluate hearing preservation results and speech discrimination outcomes of hearing preservation surgeries using medium/long electrodes. A total of 32 consecutive minimally invasive hearing preservation CIs (using a round window approach with deep insertion of a flexible electrode) were performed in 30 Japanese patients (two were bilateral cases), including patients with less residual hearing. Hearing preservation rates as well as speech discrimination/perception scores were investigated on a multicenter basis. Postoperative evaluation after full insertion of the flexible electrodes (24 mm, 31.5 mm) showed that residual hearing was well preserved in all 32 ears. In all patients, speech discrimination and perception scores were improved postoperatively.	t	\N
24840132	Helmets provide soldiers with ballistic and fragmentation protection but impair auditory spatial processing. Missed auditory information can be fatal for a soldier; therefore, helmet design requires compromise between protection and optimal acoustics. Twelve soldiers localised two sound signals presented from six azimuth angles and three levels of elevation presented at two intensity levels and with three background noises. Each participant completed the task while wearing no helmet and with two U.S. Army infantry helmets - the Personnel Armor System for Ground Troops (PASGT) helmet and the Advanced Combat Helmet (ACH). Results showed a significant effect of helmet type on the size of both azimuth and elevation error. The effects of level, background noise, azimuth and elevation were found to be significant. There was no effect of sound signal type. As hypothesised, localisation accuracy was greatest when soldiers did not wear helmet, followed by the ACH. Performance was worst with the PASGT helmet.	t	\N
24840711	Test data were used to explore the neurocognitive processing of a group of children with cochlear implants (CIs) whose language development is below expectations. This cross-sectional study examines the relationship between neurocognitive processing, as assessed by the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children-Second Edition, and verbal language standard scores, assessed using either the Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language or the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals in 22 school-age children with CIs. Processing scores of CI recipients with language scores below expectations were compared to those of children meeting or exceeding language expectations. Multiple linear regression estimated the associations of simultaneous and sequential processing with language scores. Though simultaneous processing scores between the two groups were similar, the mean sequential processing score (91.2) in the below expectations group (n = 13) was significantly lower (P = 0.002) than that of children (n = 9) meeting expectations (110.8). After adjusting for age at implantation, a 10-point higher sequential processing score was associated with a 7.4 higher language score (P = 0.027). Simultaneous processing capacity was at least within the average range of cognitive performance, and was not associated with language performance in children with CIs. Conversely, reduced sequential processing capacity was significantly associated with lower language scores. Neurocognitive skills, specifically cognitive sequencing, serial ordering, and auditory-verbal memory may be targets for therapeutic intervention. Intensive cognitive and educational habilitation and in milieu intervention may improve language learning in children with CIs.	t	\N
24841996	Auditory objects, like their visual counterparts, are perceptually defined constructs, but nevertheless must arise from underlying neural circuitry. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings of the neural responses of human subjects listening to complex auditory scenes, we review studies that demonstrate that auditory objects are indeed neurally represented in auditory cortex. The studies use neural responses obtained from different experiments in which subjects selectively listen to one of two competing auditory streams embedded in a variety of auditory scenes. The auditory streams overlap spatially and often spectrally. In particular, the studies demonstrate that selective attentional gain does not act globally on the entire auditory scene, but rather acts differentially on the separate auditory streams. This stream-based attentional gain is then used as a tool to individually analyze the different neural representations of the competing auditory streams. The neural representation of the attended stream, located in posterior auditory cortex, dominates the neural responses. Critically, when the intensities of the attended and background streams are separately varied over a wide intensity range, the neural representation of the attended speech adapts only to the intensity of that speaker, irrespective of the intensity of the background speaker. This demonstrates object-level intensity gain control in addition to the above object-level selective attentional gain. Overall, these results indicate that concurrently streaming auditory objects, even if spectrally overlapping and not resolvable at the auditory periphery, are individually neurally encoded in auditory cortex, as separate objects.	t	\N
24847936	False physiologic monitor alarms are extremely common in the hospital environment. High false alarm rates have the potential to lead to alarm fatigue, leading nurses to delay their responses to alarms, ignore alarms, or disable them entirely. Recent evidence from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and The Joint Commission has demonstrated a link between alarm fatigue and patient deaths. Yet, very little scientific effort has focused on the rigorous quantitative measurement of alarms and responses in the hospital setting. We developed a system using multiple temporarily mounted, minimally obtrusive video cameras in hospitalized patients' rooms to characterize physiologic monitor alarms and nurse responses as a proxy for alarm fatigue. This allowed us to efficiently categorize each alarm's cause, technical validity, actionable characteristics, and determine the nurse's response time. We describe and illustrate the methods we used to acquire the video, synchronize and process the video, manage the large digital files, integrate the video with data from the physiologic monitor alarm network, archive the video to secure servers, and perform expert review and annotation using alarm "bookmarks." We discuss the technical and logistical challenges we encountered, including the root causes of hardware failures as well as issues with consent, confidentiality, protection of the video from litigation, and Hawthorne-like effects. The description of this video method may be useful to multidisciplinary teams interested in evaluating physiologic monitor alarms and alarm responses to better characterize alarm fatigue and other patient safety issues in clinical settings.	t	\N
24848460	Behavioral and neural findings demonstrate that animals can locate low-frequency sounds along the azimuth by detecting microsecond interaural time differences (ITDs). Information about ITDs is also available in the amplitude modulations (i.e., envelope) of high-frequency sounds. Since medial superior olivary (MSO) neurons encode low-frequency ITDs, we asked whether they employ a similar mechanism to process envelope ITDs with high-frequency carriers, and the effectiveness of this mechanism compared with the process of low-frequency sound. We developed a novel hybrid in vitro dynamic-clamp approach, which enabled us to mimic synaptic input to brain-slice neurons in response to virtual sound and to create conditions that cannot be achieved naturally but are useful for testing our hypotheses. For each simulated ear, a virtual sound, computer generated, was used as input to a computational auditory-nerve model. Model spike times were converted into synaptic input for MSO neurons, and ITD tuning curves were derived for several virtual-sound conditions: low-frequency pure tones, high-frequency tones modulated with two types of envelope, and speech sequences. Computational models were used to verify the physiological findings and explain the biophysical mechanism underlying the observed ITD coding. Both recordings and simulations indicate that MSO neurons are sensitive to ITDs carried by spectrotemporally complex virtual sounds, including speech tokens. Our findings strongly suggest that MSO neurons can encode ITDs across a broad-frequency spectrum using an input-slope-based coincidence-detection mechanism. Our data also provide an explanation at the cellular level for human localization performance involving high-frequency sound described by previous investigators.	t	\N
24851353	The purpose of this chapter is to describe the vocabulary development and promising, evidence-based vocabulary interventions for English learners (ELs) from preschool through second grade. To achieve this purpose, we have taken six steps. First, we describe the elements of language development in the native language (L1) and a second language (L2) and how these elements relate to three phases of reading development (i.e., the prereading phase, the learning to read phase, and the reading to learn phase). We contend that in order for ELs to succeed in school, they need a strong language foundation prior to entering kindergarten. This language foundation needs to continue developing during the "learning to read" and "reading to learn" phases. Second, we describe the limitations of current practice in preschool for ELs related to vocabulary instruction and to family involvement to support children's language development. Third, we report curricular challenges faced by ELs in early elementary school, and we relate these challenges to the increase in reading and language demands outlined in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Specific language activities that can help meet some of the demands are provided in a table. Fourth, we synthesize the research on evidence-based vocabulary instruction and intervention and discuss implications for practice with ELs. Fifth, we describe two intervention projects under development that have the potential to improve EL vocabulary and language proficiency in the early grades. We conclude with a summary of the chapter and provide additional resources on the topic.	t	\N
24856412	The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between perceived discrimination and psychotic experiences (PE) using validated measures of discrimination and a racially/ethnically diverse population-level sample. Data were drawn from two population-level surveys (The National Latino and Asian American Survey and The National Survey of American Life), which were analyzed together using survey weights and stratification variables. The analytic sample (N=8990) consisted of Latino, Asian, African-American, and Afro-Caribbean adults living in the United States. Separate unadjusted and adjusted multivariable logistic regression models were used, first to examine the crude bivariate relationship between perceived discrimination and PE, and second to examine the relationship adjusting for demographic variables. Adjusted logistic regression models were also used to examine the relationships between perceived discrimination and specific sub-types of PE (auditory and visual hallucinatory experiences, and delusional ideation). When compared to individuals who did not report any discrimination, those who reported the highest levels of discrimination were significantly more likely to report both 12-month PE (Adjusted OR=4.590, p<0.001) and lifetime PE (adjusted OR=4.270, p<0.001). This held true for visual hallucinatory experiences (adjusted OR=3.745, p<0.001), auditory hallucinatory experiences (adjusted OR=5.649, p<0.001), and delusional ideation (adjusted OR=7.208, p<0.001). Perceived discrimination is associated with the increased probability of reporting psychotic experiences in a linear Fashion in the US general population.	t	\N
24861540	Considerable evidence suggests that performance across a variety of cognitive tasks is effectively supported by the use of verbal and nonverbal strategies. Studies exploring the usefulness of such strategies in children with specific language impairment (SLI) are scarce and report inconsistent findings. To examine the effects of induced labelling and auditory cues on the performance of children with and without SLI during a categorization task. Sixty-six school-age children (22 with SLI, 22 age-matched controls, 22 language-matched controls) completed three versions of a computer-based categorization task: one baseline, one requiring overt labelling and one with auditory cues (tones) on randomized trial blocks. Labelling had no effect on performance for typically developing children but resulted in lower accuracy and longer reaction time in children with SLI. The presence of tones had no effect on accuracy but resulted in faster reaction time and post-error slowing across groups. Verbal strategy use was ineffective for typically developing children and negatively affected children with SLI. All children showed faster performance and increased performance monitoring as a result of tones. Overall, effects of strategy use in children appear to vary based on task demands, strategy domain, age and language ability. Results suggest that children with SLI may benefit from auditory cues in their clinical intervention but that further research is needed to determine when and how verbal strategies might similarly support performance in this population.	t	\N
24867743	The prevalence of deformational plagiocephaly has risen dramatically in recent years, now affecting 15 percent or more of infants. Prior research using developmental scales suggests that these children may be at elevated risk for developmental delays. However, the low positive predictive value of such instruments in identifying long-term impairment, coupled with their poor reliability in infants, warrants the development of methods to more precisely measure brain function in craniofacial patients. Event-related potentials offer a direct measure of cortical activity that is highly applicable to young populations and has been implemented in other disorders to predict long-term cognitive functioning. The current study used event-related potentials to contrast neural correlates of auditory perception in infants with deformational plagiocephaly and typically developing children. Event-related potentials were recorded while 16 infants with deformational plagiocephaly and 18 nonaffected controls passively listened to speech sounds. Given prior research suggesting their association with subsequent functioning, analyses focused on the P150 and N450 event-related potential components. Deformational plagiocephaly patients and normal controls showed comparable cortical responses to speech sounds at both auditory event-related potential components. Children with deformational plagiocephaly demonstrate neural responses to language that are consistent with normative expectations and comparable to those of typical children. These results indicate that head shape deformity secondary to supine sleep is not associated with impairments in auditory processing. The applicability of the current methods in early infancy suggests that electrophysiologic brain recordings represent a promising method of monitoring brain development in children with cranial disorders. Risk, II.	t	\N
24869441	Hearing preservation surgery requires specially a traumatic technique. Having some preoperative anatomical data of the size of patient's cochlea surgeon can design his or her insertion depth. In the study we have evaluated a relation between hearing preservation rate and angular insertion depth estimated intraoperatively and postoperatively having measured insertion angle from radiological assessment and calculations given by Escude. There has not been no statistically significant difference between insertion depth angle, either estimated intraoperatively and measured and calculated post-operatively, and hearing preservation rate in the group. This analysis confirms a traumaticy of insertion in hearing preservation surgery.	t	\N
24869443	To establish whether complex signal processing is beneficial for users of bone anchored hearing aids. Review and analysis of two studies from our own group, each comparing a speech processor with basic digital signal processing (either Baha Divino or Baha Intenso) and a processor with complex digital signal processing (either Baha BP100 or Baha BP110 power). The main differences between basic and complex signal processing are the number of audiologist accessible frequency channels and the availability and complexity of the directional multi-microphone noise reduction and loudness compression systems. Both studies show a small, statistically non-significant improvement of speech understanding in quiet with the complex digital signal processing. The average improvement for speech in noise is +0.9 dB, if speech and noise are emitted both from the front of the listener. If noise is emitted from the rear and speech from the front of the listener, the advantage of the devices with complex digital signal processing as opposed to those with basic signal processing increases, on average, to +3.2 dB (range +2.3 … +5.1 dB, p ≤ 0.0032). Complex digital signal processing does indeed improve speech understanding, especially in noise coming from the rear. This finding has been supported by another study, which has been published recently by a different research group. When compared to basic digital signal processing, complex digital signal processing can increase speech understanding of users of bone anchored hearing aids. The benefit is most significant for speech understanding in noise.	t	\N
24908093	Inconsistent information from different modalities can be delusive for perception. This phenomenon can be observed with simultaneously presented inconsistent numbers of brief flashes and short tones. The conflict of bimodal information is reflected in double flash or fission, and flash fusion illusions, respectively. The temporal resolution of the vision system plays a fundamental role in the development of these illusions. As the parallel, dorsal and ventral pathways have different temporal resolution we presume that these pathways play different roles in the illusions. We used pathway-optimized stimuli to induce the illusions on separately driven visual streams. Our results show that both pathways support the double flash illusion, while the presence of the fusion illusion depends on the activated pathway. The dorsal pathway, which has better temporal resolution, does not support fusion, while the ventral pathway which has worse temporal resolution shows fusion strongly.	t	\N
24909603	The current pupillometry study examined the impact of speech-perception training on word recognition and cognitive effort in older adults with hearing loss. Trainees identified more words at the follow-up than at the baseline session. Training also resulted in an overall larger and faster peaking pupillary response, even when controlling for performance and reaction time. Perceptual and cognitive capacities affected the peak amplitude of the pupil response across participants but did not diminish the impact of training on the other pupil metrics. Thus, we demonstrated that pupillometry can be used to characterize training-related and individual differences in effort during a challenging listening task. Importantly, the results indicate that speech-perception training not only affects overall word recognition, but also a physiological metric of cognitive effort, which has the potential to be a biomarker of hearing loss intervention outcome.	t	\N
24911919	It is usually easy to understand speech, but when several people are talking at once it becomes difficult. The brain must select one speech stream and ignore distracting streams. We tested a theory about the neural and computational mechanisms of attentional selection. The theory is that oscillating signals in brain networks phase-lock with amplitude fluctuations in speech. By doing this, brain-wide networks acquire information from the selected speech, but ignore other speech signals on the basis of their non-preferred dynamics. Two predictions were supported: first, attentional selection boosted the power of neuroelectric signals that were phase-locked with attended speech, but not ignored speech. Second, this phase selectivity was associated with better recall of the attended speech.	t	\N
24919347	Auditory stimuli often facilitate visual perception. Audiovisual integration requires spatial and/or temporal proximity between visual and auditory stimuli; additionally, sensory processing speed affects the audiovisual integration process. In the present study we examined the relationship between processing speed and the auditory facilitation effect on visual representations by manipulating dot quantity patterns. We hypothesized that the auditory facilitation effect would be observed in longer interstimulus interval conditions with more dot quantities. This is because more processing time would be required to integrate visual and auditory stimuli. During a backward masking paradigm used in experiment 1, the auditory facilitation effect depended on dot quantity among patterns and the interval between visual stimuli and masks. Moreover, differences in processing time required to integrate visual and auditory stimuli between dot quantities was confirmed from a same-different discrimination task in experiment 2. Therefore, dot quantity affects sensory processing time, and a longer processing time is required for integrating visual and auditory stimuli when visual dot quantity is high.	t	\N
24920615	The human voice carries speech as well as important nonlinguistic signals that influence our social interactions. Among these cues that impact our behavior and communication with other people is the perceived emotional state of the speaker. A theoretical framework for the neural processing stages of emotional prosody has suggested that auditory emotion is perceived in multiple steps (Schirmer and Kotz, 2006) involving low-level auditory analysis and integration of the acoustic information followed by higher-level cognition. Empirical evidence for this multistep processing chain, however, is still sparse. We examined this question using functional magnetic resonance imaging and a continuous carry-over design (Aguirre, 2007) to measure brain activity while volunteers listened to non-speech-affective vocalizations morphed on a continuum between anger and fear. Analyses dissociated neuronal adaptation effects induced by similarity in perceived emotional content between consecutive stimuli from those induced by their acoustic similarity. We found that bilateral voice-sensitive auditory regions as well as right amygdala coded the physical difference between consecutive stimuli. In contrast, activity in bilateral anterior insulae, medial superior frontal cortex, precuneus, and subcortical regions such as bilateral hippocampi depended predominantly on the perceptual difference between morphs. Our results suggest that the processing of vocal affect recognition is a multistep process involving largely distinct neural networks. Amygdala and auditory areas predominantly code emotion-related acoustic information while more anterior insular and prefrontal regions respond to the abstract, cognitive representation of vocal affect.	t	\N
24923315	The present study examines the articulation and acoustics of the typologically rare and understudied 'whistled' fricative sound in Xitsonga, a Southern Bantu language. Using ultrasound imaging and video recording, we examine the lingual and labial articulation of the whistled fricative. For the acoustic analysis, we employ the multitaper spectral analysis, which ensures reliable spectral estimates. The results revealed an interplay between multiple articulators involved in the production of the sound: the retroflex lingual gesture and the narrowing of the lower lip toward the upper teeth. Acoustically, the spectra of the whistled fricative are more peaked and compact than the acoustically similar palatoalveolar fricative, and the differences manifest themselves most clearly in two acoustic parameters, dynamic amplitude (Ad) and M2 (variance). The acoustic differences are also manifested in F2 and F3 in the surrounding vowels. Additionally, the 'whistled' fricative in Xitsonga is not quite whistled, contrary to the label given to the sound in previous studies. Building on the current articulatory and acoustic results, we discuss two different aerodynamic models for the whistled fricatives in Southern Bantu languages and conclude that the whistled fricative in Xitsonga is best characterized as a retroflex segment accompanied by weak whistling.	t	\N
24923465	It has been suggested that high-frequency audiometry (HFA) could represent a useful preventive measure in exposed workers. The aim was to investigate the effects of age, ultrasound and noise on high-frequency hearing thresholds. We tested 24 industrial ultrasound-exposed subjects, 113 industrial noise-exposed subjects and 148 non-exposed subjects. Each subject was tested with both conventional-frequency (0.125-8 kHz) and high-frequency (9-18 kHz) audiometry. The hearing threshold at high frequency deteriorated as a function of age, especially in subjects more than 30 years old. The ultrasound-exposed subjects had significantly higher hearing thresholds than the non-exposed ones at the high frequencies, being greatest from 10 to 14 kHz. This hearing loss was already significantly evident in subjects with exposure <5 years and increased with years of exposure and advancing age. The noise exposure group had significantly higher hearing thresholds than the non-exposed group at the conventional frequencies 4 and 6 kHz and at the high frequency of 14 kHz. After stratification for age, there was a significant difference between the two groups at 9-10 and 14-15 kHz only for those under 30 years of age. Multivariate analysis indicated that age was the primary predictor, and noise and ultrasound exposure the secondary predictors of hearing thresholds in the high-frequency range. The results suggest that HFA could be useful in the early diagnosis of noise-induced hearing loss in younger groups of workers (under 30 years of age).	t	\N
24923619	The investigators compared event-related potential (ERP) amplitudes and event-related oscillations across a broad frequency range during an auditory oddball task using a comprehensive analysis approach to describe shared and unique neural auditory processing characteristics among healthy subjects (HP), schizophrenia probands (SZ) and their first-degree relatives, and bipolar disorder I with psychosis probands (BDP) and their first-degree relatives. This Bipolar-Schizophrenia Network on Intermediate Phenotypes sample consisted of clinically stable SZ (n = 229) and BDP (n = 188), HP (n = 284), first-degree relatives of schizophrenia probands (n = 264), and first-degree relatives of bipolar disorder I with psychosis probands (n = 239). They were administered an auditory oddball task in the electroencephalography environment. Principal components analysis derived data-driven frequency bands evoked power. Spatial principal components analysis reduced ERP and frequency data to component waveforms for each subject. Clusters of time bins with significant group differences on response magnitude were assessed for proband/relative differences from HP and familiality. Nine variables survived a linear discriminant analysis between HP, SZ, and BDP. Of those, two showed evidence (deficit in relatives and familiality) as genetic risk markers more specific to SZ (N1, P3b), one was specific to BDP (P2) and one for psychosis in general (N2). This study supports for both shared and unique deficits in early sensory and late cognitive processing across psychotic diagnostic groups. Additional ERP and time-frequency component alterations (frontal N2/P2, late high, early, mid, and low frequency) may provide insight into deficits in underlying neural architecture and potential protective/compensatory mechanisms in unaffected relatives.	t	\N
24933411	Cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEPs) were obtained for vowel tokens presented in an oddball stimulus paradigm. Perceptual measures of vowel discrimination were obtained using a visually-reinforced head-turn paradigm. The hypothesis was that CAEP latencies and amplitudes would differ as a function of vowel type and be correlated with perceptual performance. Twenty normally hearing infants aged 4-12 months were evaluated. CAEP component amplitudes and latencies were measured in response to the standard, frequent token /a/ and for infrequent, deviant tokens /i/, /o/ and /u/, presented at rates of 1 and 2 tokens/s. The perceptual task required infants to make a behavioral response for trials that contained two different vowel tokens, and ignore those in which the tokens were the same. CAEP amplitudes were larger in response to the deviant tokens, when compared to the control condition in which /a/ served as both standard and deviant. This was also seen in waveforms derived by subtracting the response to standard /a/ from the responses to deviant tokens. CAEP component latencies in derived responses at 2/s also demonstrated some sensitivity to vowel contrast type. The average hit rate for the perceptual task was 68.5%, with a 25.7% false alarm rate. There were modest correlations of CAEP amplitudes and latencies with perceptual performance. The CAEP amplitude differences for vowel contrasts could be used as an indicator of the underlying neural capacity to encode spectro-temporal differences in vowel sounds. This technique holds promise for translation to clinical methods for evaluating speech perception.	t	\N
24936778	To understand the third mobile window effect of chronic otitis media with cholesteatoma with inner ear fistula on the bone conduction threshold, we examined changes in the bone conduction audiogram after tympanoplasty with mastoidectomy for chronic otitis media with cholesteatoma with canal fistula. Retrospective case review. Tertiary referral center. According to the intraoperative classification of Dornhoffer and Milewski, we focused especially on Type IIa (anatomic bony fistula with no perilymph leak). We checked the bone conduction threshold at least 3 times: just before, just after, and 6 months after surgery in 20 ears with Type IIa lateral semicircular canal fistula. Tympanoplasty with mastoidectomy. Bone conduction thresholds before and after tympanoplasty with mastoidectomy. Compared with the preoperative bone conduction threshold, 6 cases were better, 12 cases were unchanged, and 2 cases were worse within the first postoperative week. Finally, 1 case was better, 15 cases were unchanged, and 4 cases were worse at the sixth postoperative month. Patients with a better bone conduction threshold in the low-tone frequencies immediately after surgery had a tendency to show no preoperative fistula symptoms. Postoperative spontaneous nystagmus had a tendency to be observed in patients with a worse bone conduction threshold in the high-tone frequencies. The better bone conduction threshold at low-tone frequencies immediately after tympanoplasty with mastoidectomy and no preoperative fistula symptoms might imply the third mobile window theory. The worse bone conduction threshold in high-tone frequencies with spontaneous nystagmus after surgery might indicate inner ear damage.	t	\N
24937187	Change deafness is the failure to notice changes in an auditory scene. In this study, we sought to determine if change deafness is a perceptual error, rather than only a reflection of verbal memory limitations. We also examined how successful encoding of objects within a scene is related to successful detection of changes. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while listeners completed a change-detection and an object-encoding task with scenes composed of recognizable sounds or unrecognizable temporally scrambled versions of the recognizable sounds. More change deafness occurred for the unrecognizable, compared to recognizable sounds, indicating that change deafness is a perceptual error and not solely a product of verbal memory. ERPs from both the recognizable and unrecognizable scenes revealed an enhanced P3b (at PZ/1/2, POZ/3/4 from 350 to 750ms) to detected changes, a marker that conscious change detection has occurred. Recognizable scenes resulted in an enhanced T400 (at T8/TP8, C6/CP6 from 315 to 660ms) to detected changes, possibly indicating activation of established memory representations. Unrecognizable scenes elicited an enhanced P3a (at FCZ/1/2 from 280 to 600ms) to detected changes, indicating enhanced orienting to acoustic change. Performance on the object-encoding task revealed that change deafness was reduced, but not eliminated, when performance on the object-encoding task was accurate.	t	\N
24937544	Executive functions (EF) are cognitive capacities that allow for planned, controlled behavior and strongly correlate with academic abilities. Several extracurricular activities have been shown to improve EF, however, the relationship between musical training and EF remains unclear due to methodological limitations in previous studies. To explore this further, two experiments were performed; one with 30 adults with and without musical training and one with 27 musically trained and untrained children (matched for general cognitive abilities and socioeconomic variables) with a standardized EF battery. Furthermore, the neural correlates of EF skills in musically trained and untrained children were investigated using fMRI. Adult musicians compared to non-musicians showed enhanced performance on measures of cognitive flexibility, working memory, and verbal fluency. Musically trained children showed enhanced performance on measures of verbal fluency and processing speed, and significantly greater activation in pre-SMA/SMA and right VLPFC during rule representation and task-switching compared to musically untrained children. Overall, musicians show enhanced performance on several constructs of EF, and musically trained children further show heightened brain activation in traditional EF regions during task-switching. These results support the working hypothesis that musical training may promote the development and maintenance of certain EF skills, which could mediate the previously reported links between musical training and enhanced cognitive skills and academic achievement.	t	\N
24949818	During childhood, verbal learning and memory are important for academic performance. Recent functional MRI studies have reported on the functional correlates of verbal memory proficiency, but few have reported the underlying structural correlates. The present study sought to test the relationship between fronto-temporal white matter integrity and verbal memory proficiency in children. Diffusion weighted images were collected from 17 Black children (age 8-11 years) who also completed the California Verbal Learning Test. To index white matter integrity, fractional anisotropy values were calculated for bilateral uncinate fasciculus. The results revealed that low anisotropy values corresponded to poor verbal memory, whereas high anisotropy values corresponded to significantly better verbal memory scores. These findings suggest that a greater degree of myelination and cohesiveness of axonal fibers in uncinate fasciculus underlie better verbal memory proficiency in children.	t	\N
24952106	This study evaluated the clinical effectiveness of wireless contralateral routing of offside signals hearing aids (CROS) in patients with severe to profound unilateral sensorineural hearing loss (USNHL). Twenty-one patients with USNHL were enrolled in this prospective study. The change of subjective satisfaction was evaluated using three questionnaires (K-HHIE, K-IOI-HA, K-SSQ). Changes in objective measurements were evaluated with sound localization test (SLT) and hearing in noise test (HINT). These tests were performed at pre-CROS fitting, 2 and 4 weeks after use of CROS. Subjects were grouped according to the age: young (<40 years) vs. old (≥40 years) group. The average K-HHIE and K-SSQ scores significantly improved with the use of CROS. SLT result revealed that hit rate and error degree improved in the young group and lateralization ability improved in both groups. In quiet environments, the reception threshold for speech also indicated a significant benefit in the young group. When the noise was presented to the normal ear, HINT revealed benefit of CROS, while loss of performance with CROS use was significant when noise was presented to the impaired ear. Wireless CROS provided increased satisfaction and overall improvement of localization and hearing. Although true binaural hearing cannot be obtained, CROS is a practical option for rehabilitation of USNHL.	t	\N
24959621	Accurate and effective voice activity detection (VAD) is a fundamental step for robust speech or speaker recognition. In this study, we proposed a hierarchical framework approach for VAD and speech enhancement. The modified Wiener filter (MWF) approach is utilized for noise reduction in the speech enhancement block. For the feature selection and voting block, several discriminating features were employed in a voting paradigm for the consideration of reliability and discriminative power. Effectiveness of the proposed approach is compared and evaluated to other VAD techniques by using two well-known databases, namely, TIMIT database and NOISEX-92 database. Experimental results show that the proposed method performs well under a variety of noisy conditions.	t	\N
24960432	Research on unconscious or unaware vision has demonstrated that unconscious processing can be flexibly adapted to the current goals of human agents. The present review focuses on one area of research, masked visual priming. This method uses visual stimuli presented in a temporal sequence to lower the visibility of one of these stimuli. In this way, a stimulus can be masked and even rendered invisible. Despite its invisibility, a masked stimulus if used as a prime can influence a variety of executive functions, such as response activation, semantic processing, or attention shifting. There are also limitations on the processing of masked primes. While masked priming research demonstrates the top-down dependent usage of unconscious vision during task-set execution it also highlights that the set-up of a new task-set depends on conscious vision as its input. This basic distinction captures a major qualitative difference between conscious and unconscious vision.	t	\N
24961249	The sound-induced flash illusion (SIFI) is a multisensory perceptual phenomenon in which the number of brief visual stimuli perceived by an observer is influenced by the number of concurrently presented sounds. While the strength of this illusion has been shown to be modulated by the temporal congruence of the stimuli from each modality, there is conflicting evidence regarding its dependence upon their spatial congruence. We addressed this question by examining SIFIs under conditions in which the spatial reliability of the visual stimuli was degraded and different sound localization cues were presented using either free-field or closed-field stimulation. The likelihood of reporting a SIFI varied with the spatial cue composition of the auditory stimulus and was highest when binaural cues were presented over headphones. SIFIs were more common for small flashes than for large flashes, and for small flashes at peripheral locations, subjects experienced a greater number of illusory fusion events than fission events. However, the SIFI was not dependent on the spatial proximity of the audiovisual stimuli, but was instead determined primarily by differences in subjects' underlying sensitivity across the visual field to the number of flashes presented. Our findings indicate that the influence of auditory stimulation on visual numerosity judgments can occur independently of the spatial relationship between the stimuli.	t	\N
24972303	Groove-based rhythm is a basic and much appreciated feature of Western popular music. It is commonly associated with dance, movement and pleasure and is characterized by the repetition of a basic rhythmic pattern. At various points in the musical course, drum breaks occur, representing a change compared to the repeated pattern of the groove. In the present experiment, we investigated the brain response to such drum breaks in a repetitive groove. Participants were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while listening to a previously unheard naturalistic groove with drum breaks at uneven intervals. The rhythmic pattern and the timing of its different parts as performed were the only aspects that changed from the repetitive sections to the breaks. Differences in blood oxygen level-dependent activation were analyzed. In contrast to the repetitive parts, the drum breaks activated the left cerebellum, the right inferior frontal gyrus (RIFG), and the superior temporal gyri (STG) bilaterally. A tapping test using the same stimulus showed an increase in the standard deviation of inter-tap-intervals in the breaks versus the repetitive parts, indicating extra challenges for auditory-motor integration in the drum breaks. Both the RIFG and STG have been associated with structural irregularity and increase in musical-syntactical complexity in several earlier studies, whereas the left cerebellum is known to play a part in timing. Together these areas may be recruited in the breaks due to a prediction error process whereby the internal model is being updated. This concurs with previous research suggesting a network for predictive feed-forward control that comprises the cerebellum and the cortical areas that were activated in the breaks.	t	\N
24972535	The aim of this study was to establish a multiparameter voice assessment profile using objective multiparameter test and subjective voice quality assessment. We assessed 50 patients with voice disorders before and after operation. The assessment incorporates (1) subjective voice quality assessment, (2) patients' self-assessment, and (3) objective acoustic analysis. The subjective voice quality assessment uses GRABS system to evaluates the grade of hoarseness (G), proposed by the Japanese Society for Logopedics and Phoniatrics. Patients' self-assessment is modified based on the Chinese version of voice handicap index (VHI) scale, composed of functional (F), physiological (P), emotional (E) part, and a total score (T). The acoustical analysis evaluate the patients' voice sample by voice analysis software "Dr. Speech". Three parameters, jitter (J), shimmer(S), and normalized noise energy (NNE), were taken in analysis. We observed high correlations among subentries F, P, and the total score TvH of the VHI scale in patients' subjective assessment. Parameter E does not correlate well with other assessed parameters. The Chinese version of VHI, which incorporate multifactors including age, education, and especially the cultural difference may account for the inconsistent correction in parameter E. In the objective acoustic analysis, high correlation among the three parameters J, S, and NNE is observed. Systemic assessment combining a subjective voice quality assessment, an objective acoustic analysis, and a self-assessment is helpful in clinical practice in the diagnosis and treatment for voice disorders. The E component in VHI scale assessment may not be a reliable parameter to evaluate treatment outcome.	t	\N
24975453	The Hearing Implant Sound Quality Index (HISQUI19) seems to be a valid tool for quantifying the self-perceived level of auditory benefit that cochlear implant (CI) users experience in everyday listening situations. Additional research is, however, required. To develop and validate a user-friendly instrument for quantifying the self-perceived level of auditory benefit that CI users experience in everyday listening situations. This was an explorative, uncontrolled, single-group, cross-sectional study. Items for the HISQUI19 were decided upon using user input and verified by professionals. The HISQUI19 was assessed on 75 CI users from hearing implant centres in Germany and Austria to determine the questions. The HISQUI19, consisting of 19 items scored on a 7-point Likert scale, was validated. Subjects older than 60 years at time of implantation did not have significantly higher mean values than subjects younger than 60 years. Gender and whether subjects are unilateral or bilateral implant CI users did not influence self-perceived functioning. Subjects with ≤20 years of hearing loss reported no significantly higher functioning than those with >20 years of hearing loss.	t	\N
24980742	The motivation for infants' non-word vocalizations in the second half of the first year of life and later is unclear. This study of hearing infants and infants with profound hearing loss with and without cochlear implants addressed the hypothesis that vocalizations are primarily motivated by auditory feedback. Early access to cochlear implants has created unique conditions of auditory manipulation that permit empirical tests of relations between auditory perception and infant behavior. Evidence from two separate tests of the research hypothesis showed that, before cochlear implantation, infants with profound hearing loss vocalized significantly less often than hearing infants; however, soon after cochlear implantation, they vocalized at levels commensurate with hearing peers. In contrast, vocal behaviors that are typically considered reflexive or emotion-based signals (e.g., crying) were infrequent overall and did not vary with auditory access. These results support the hypothesis that auditory feedback is a critical component motivating early vocalization frequency.	t	\N
24990679	The human music faculty might have evolved from rudimentary components that occur in non-human animals. The evolutionary history of these rudimentary perceptual features is not well understood and rarely extends beyond a consideration of vertebrates that possess a cochlea. One such antecedent is a preferential response to what humans perceive as consonant harmonic sounds, which are common in many animal vocal repertoires. We tested the phonotactic response of female túngara frogs (Physalaemus pustulosus) to variations in the frequency ratios of their harmonically structured mating call to determine whether frequency ratio influences attraction to acoustic stimuli in this vertebrate that lacks a cochlea. We found that the ratio of frequencies present in acoustic stimuli did not influence female response. Instead, the amount of inner ear stimulation predicted female preference behaviour. We conclude that the harmonic relationships that characterize the vocalizations of these frogs did not evolve in response to a preference for frequency intervals with low-integer ratios. Instead, the presence of harmonics in their mating call, and perhaps in the vocalizations of many other animals, is more likely due to the biomechanics of sound production rather than any preference for 'more musical' sounds.	t	\N
24993544	Three experiments investigated memory for semantic information with the goal of determining boundary conditions for the manifestation of semantic auditory distraction. Irrelevant speech disrupted the free recall of semantic category- exemplars to an equal degree regardless of whether the speech coincided with presentation or test phases of the task (Experiment 1), and this occurred regardless of whether it comprised random words or coherent sentences (Experiment 2). The effects of background speech were greater when the irrelevant speech was semantically related to the to-be-remembered material, but only when the irrelevant words were high in output dominance (Experiment 3). The implications of these findings in relation to the processing of task material and the processing of background speech are discussed.	t	\N
24993633	To compare the Naida CI UltraZoom adaptive beamformer and T-Mic settings in a real life environment. Speech reception thresholds (SRTs) were measured in a moderately reverberant room, using the German Oldenburger sentence test. The speech signal was always presented from the front loudspeaker at 0° azimuth and fixed masking noise was presented either simultaneously from all eight loudspeakers around the subject at 0°, ±45°, ±90°, ±135°, and 180° azimuth or from five loudspeakers positioned at ±70°, ±135°, and 180° azimuth. In the third test setup, an additional roving noise was added to the six loudspeaker arrangement. There was a significant difference in mean SRTs between the Naida CI T-Mic and UltraZoom in each of the three test setups. The largest improvements were seen in the six speaker roving and fixed noise conditions. Adding ClearVoice to the Naida CI T-Mic setting significantly improved the SRT in both fixed noise conditions, but not in the roving noise condition. In each setup, the lowest SRTs were obtained with the UltraZoom plus ClearVoice setting. The degree of improvement was consistent with previous beamforming studies. In the most challenging listening situation, with noise from eight speakers and speech and noise presented coincidentally from the front, UltraZoom still provided a significant benefit. When a moving noise source was added, the improvement in SRT provided by UltraZoom was maintained. When tested in challenging and realistic noise environments, the Naida CI UltraZoom adaptive beamformer resulted in significantly lower mean SRTs than when the T-Mic alone was used.	t	\N
24995902	Neuroplasticity (NPL), neuromodulation (NM), and neuroprotection (NPT) are ongoing biophysiological processes that are linked together in sensory systems, the goal being the maintenance of a homeostasis of normal sensory function in the central nervous system. It is hypothesized that when the balance between excitatory - inhibitory action is broken in sensory systems, predominantly due to neuromodulatory activity with reduced induced inhibition and excitation predominates, sensory circuits become plastic with adaptation at synaptic levels to environmental inputs(1). Tinnitus an aberrant auditory sensation, for all clinical types, is clinically considered to reflect a failure of NPL, NM, and NPT to maintain normal auditory function at synaptic levels in sensory cortex and projected to downstream levels in the central auditory system in brain and sensorineural elements in ear. Clinically, the tinnitus sensation becomes behaviorally manifest with varying degrees of annoyance, reflecting a principle of sensory physiology that each sensation has components, i.e. sensory, affect/behavior, psychomotor and memory. Modalities of tinnitus therapies, eg instrumentation, pharmacology, surgery, target a particular component of tinnitus, with resultant activation of neuromodulators at multiple neuromodulatory centers in brain and ear. Effective neuromodulation at sensory neuronal synaptic levels results in NPL in sensory cortex, NPT and tinnitus relief. Functional brain imaging, metabolic (PET brain) and electrophysiology quantitative electroencephalography (QEEG) data in a cochlear implant soft failure patient demonstrates what is clinically considered to reflect NPL, NM, NPT. The reader is provided with a rationale for tinnitus diagnosis and treatment, with a focus on ES, reflecting the biology underlying NPL, NM, NPT.	t	\N
25013945	Music as alternate engagement (MAE) can be used effectively to distract children during painful or anxiety-provoking medical procedures. For such interventions to be successful, it would seem important to assess the degree to which a child can attend to musical stimuli. The purposes of this study were as follows: (a) To establish construct validity by determining the extent to which the Music Attentiveness Screening Assessment (MASA) measures auditory attention; and (b) to gather evidence regarding MASA test-retest and inter-observer reliability. The Auditory Attention (AA) subtest from the NEPSY-II (NEPSY, Second Edition) and the two items from MASA were administered to a nonclinical sample of children (N = 50) aged 5 to 9 years. There was a statistically significant proportion of AA score variance shared with MASA (both items), R (2) = .21, F(2, 47) = 6.34, p = .004. Test-retest reliability on the first MASA item was moderately high (Pearson r = .84) while on the second item it was lower (r = .63). Similarly, interobserver agreement was high for Item I (intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC] = .95) and lower for Item II (ICC = .71). Evidence suggests that MASA measures, at least in part, auditory attention. Despite this finding, a large proportion of unexplained variance remains. Furthermore, reliability estimates (test-retest and interobserver agreement) differ between both items. These findings are discussed with particular attention paid to the ways in which MASA should be revised and further study conducted.	t	\N
25016092	Lesion and neuroimaging studies indicate that the insula mediates motor aspects of speech production, specifically, articulatory control. Although it has direct connections to Broca's area, the canonical speech production region, the insula is also broadly connected with other speech and language centres, and may play a role in coordinating higher-order cognitive aspects of speech and language production. The extent of the insula's involvement in speech and language processing was assessed using the Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) method. Meta-analyses of 42 fMRI studies with healthy adults were performed, comparing insula activation during performance of language (expressive and receptive) and speech (production and perception) tasks. Both tasks activated bilateral anterior insulae. However, speech perception tasks preferentially activated the left dorsal mid-insula, whereas expressive language tasks activated left ventral mid-insula. Results suggest distinct regions of the mid-insula play different roles in speech and language processing.	t	\N
25026154	The purpose of this study was to compare 3 T and 1.5 T fMRI results during emotional music listening. Stimuli comprised of psychoacoustically balanced instrumental musical pieces, with three different affective expressions (fear, neutral, joy). Participants (N=32) were split into two groups, one subjected to fMRI scanning using 3 T and another group scanned using 1.5 T. Whole brain t-tests (corrected for multiple comparisons) compared joy and fear in each of the two groups. The 3 T group showed significant activity differences between joy and fear localized in bilateral superficial amygdala, bilateral hippocampus and bilateral auditory cortex. The 1.5 T group showed significant activity differences between joy and fear localized in bilateral auditory cortex and cuneus. This is the first study to compare results obtained under different field strengths with regard to affective processes elicited by means of auditory/musical stimulation. The findings raise concern over false negatives in the superficial amygdala and hippocampus in affective studies conducted under 1.5 T and caution that imaging improvements due to increasing magnetic field strength can be influenced by region-specific characteristics.	t	\N
25031365	The neural mechanisms underlying the attainment of fear memory accuracy for appropriate discriminative responses to aversive and nonaversive stimuli are unclear. Considerable evidence indicates that coactivator of transcription and histone acetyltransferase cAMP response element binding protein (CREB) binding protein (CBP) is critically required for normal neural function. CBP hypofunction leads to severe psychopathological symptoms in human and cognitive abnormalities in genetic mutant mice with severity dependent on the neural locus and developmental time of the gene inactivation. Here, we showed that an acute hypofunction of CBP in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) results in a disruption of fear memory accuracy in mice. In addition, interruption of CREB function in the mPFC also leads to a deficit in auditory discrimination of fearful stimuli. While mice with deficient CBP/CREB signaling in the mPFC maintain normal responses to aversive stimuli, they exhibit abnormal responses to similar but nonrelevant stimuli when compared to control animals. These data indicate that improvement of fear memory accuracy involves mPFC-dependent suppression of fear responses to nonrelevant stimuli. Evidence from a context discriminatory task and a newly developed task that depends on the ability to distinguish discrete auditory cues indicated that CBP-dependent neural signaling within the mPFC circuitry is an important component of the mechanism for disambiguating the meaning of fear signals with two opposing values: aversive and nonaversive.	t	\N
25032683	Categorization is an important cognitive process. However, the correct categorization of a stimulus is often challenging because categories can have overlapping boundaries. Whereas perceptual categorization has been extensively studied in vision, the analogous phenomenon in audition has yet to be systematically explored. Here, we test whether and how human subjects learn to use category distributions and prior probabilities, as well as whether subjects employ an optimal decision strategy when making auditory-category decisions. We asked subjects to classify the frequency of a tone burst into one of two overlapping, uniform categories according to the perceived tone frequency. We systematically varied the prior probability of presenting a tone burst with a frequency originating from one versus the other category. Most subjects learned these changes in prior probabilities early in testing and used this information to influence categorization. We also measured each subject's frequency-discrimination thresholds (i.e., their sensory uncertainty levels). We tested each subject's average behavior against variations of a Bayesian model that either led to optimal or sub-optimal decision behavior (i.e. probability matching). In both predicting and fitting each subject's average behavior, we found that probability matching provided a better account of human decision behavior. The model fits confirmed that subjects were able to learn category prior probabilities and approximate forms of the category distributions. Finally, we systematically explored the potential ways that additional noise sources could influence categorization behavior. We found that an optimal decision strategy can produce probability-matching behavior if it utilized non-stationary category distributions and prior probabilities formed over a short stimulus history. Our work extends previous findings into the auditory domain and reformulates the issue of categorization in a manner that can help to interpret the results of previous research within a generative framework.	t	\N
25033791	Noise has the potential to impair cognitive performance. For nonnative speakers, the effect of noise on performance is more severe than their native counterparts. What remains unknown is the effectiveness of countermeasures such as noise attenuating devices in such circumstances. Therefore, the main aim of the present research was to examine the effectiveness of active noise attenuating countermeasures in the presence of simulated aircraft noise for both native and nonnative English speakers. Thirty-two participants, half native English speakers and half native German speakers completed four recognition (cued) recall tasks presented in English under four different audio conditions, all in the presence of simulated aircraft noise. The results of the research indicated that in simulated aircraft noise at 65 dB(A), performance of nonnative English speakers was poorer than for native English speakers. The beneficial effects of noise cancelling headphones in improving the signal to noise ratio led to an improved performance for nonnative speakers. These results have particular importance for organizations operating in a safety-critical environment such as aviation.	t	\N
25046122	Behavioral investigations of the acquisition of some have shown that children favor its logical interpretation (some and possibly all). Adults, however, use the pragmatic interpretation (some but not all) derived by a scalar implicature. Certain experimental manipulations increase children's rates of adult-like responses, indicating that children are capable of computing implicatures. A functional MRI (fMRI) study examining adults linked the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) to implicature computation, and prefrontal regions, the left middle frontal gyrus (MFG), and medial frontal gyrus (MeFG), to processing the mismatch between implicatures and the context in which they were presented. In the current fMRI study, we aimed to determine whether children's failure to give pragmatic interpretations to some results from a failure in implicature computation or in implicature-mismatch processing. We explored children's brain activations with the same experimental task administered to adults. In a region-of-interest analysis, children showed an activational pattern similar to the one observed in adults in the left IFG with increased activations for the implicature conditions. By contrast, in the left MFG, children showed decreased activation for the mismatched implicatures compared with matched and no implicature conditions. No difference between the conditions was observed in the MeFG. For both implicature conditions, no activation in the left IFG was observed when comparing adults and children directly. However, for mismatched implicatures, adults showed greater activation in the prefrontal regions compared with children. Our results suggest that children may have an adult-like computation of implicatures (even when their behavior does not necessarily indicate that), but they fail in resolving implicature-mismatch situations.	t	\N
25056109	There is converging evidence for the notion that pain affects a broad range of attentional domains. This study investigated the influence of pain on the involuntary capture of attention as indexed by the P3a component in the event-related potential derived from the electroencephalogram. Participants performed in an auditory oddball task in a pain-free and a pain condition during which they submerged a hand in cold water. Novel, infrequent and unexpected auditory stimuli were presented randomly in a series of frequent standard and infrequent target tones. P3a and P3b amplitudes were observed to novel, unexpected and target-related stimuli, respectively. Both electrophysiological components were characterized by reduced amplitudes in the pain compared with the pain-free condition. Hit rate and reaction time to target stimuli did not differ between the two conditions presumably because the experimental task was not difficult enough to exceed attentional capacities under pain conditions. These results indicate that voluntary attention serving the maintenance and control of ongoing information processing (reflected by the P3b amplitude) is impaired by pain. In addition, the involuntary capture of attention and orientation to novel, unexpected information (measured by the P3a) is also impaired by pain. Thus, neurophysiological measures examined in this study support the theoretical positions proposing that pain can reduce attentional processing capacity. These findings have potentially important implications at the theoretical level for our understanding of the interplay of pain and cognition, and at the therapeutic level for the clinical treatment of individuals experiencing ongoing pain.	t	\N
25064434	The present magnetoencephalography study used the cortically constrained minimum-norm estimates of human brain activity to elucidate functional roles of neural generators for detecting different magnitudes of lexical tones changes. A multiple-deviant oddball paradigm was used in which the syllable "yi" with a low-dipping tone (T3) was the common standard sound and the same syllable with a high-level tone (T1) or a high-rising tone (T2) were the large and small deviant sounds, respectively. The data revealed a larger magnetic mismatch field (MMNm) for large deviant in the left hemisphere. The source analysis also confirmed that the MMNm to lexical tone changes was generated in bilateral superior temporal gyri and only the large deviant revealed left lateralization. A set of frontal generators was activated at a later time and revealed differential sensitivities to the degree of deviance. The left anterior insula, the right anterior cingulate cortex, and the right ventral orbital frontal cortex were activated when detecting a large deviant, whereas the right frontal-opercular region was sensitive to the small deviant. These frontal generators were thought to be associated with various top-down mechanisms for attentional modulation. The time frequency (TF) analysis showed that large deviants yielded large theta band (5-7Hz) activity over the left anterior scalp and the left central scalp, while small deviants yielded large alpha band activity (9-11Hz) over the posterior scalp. The results of TF analyses implied that mechanisms of working memory and functional inhibition involved in the processes of acoustic change detection.	t	\N
25074900	Studies of visual masking have provided a wide range of important insights into the processes involved in visual coding. However, very few of these studies have employed natural scenes as masks. Little is known on how the particular features found in natural scenes affect visual detection thresholds and how the results obtained using unnatural masks relate to the results obtained using natural masks. To address this issue, this paper describes a psychophysical study designed to obtain local contrast detection thresholds for a database of natural images. Via a three-alternative forced-choice experiment, we measured thresholds for detecting 3.7 cycles/° vertically oriented log-Gabor noise targets placed within an 85 × 85-pixels patch (1.9° patch) drawn from 30 natural images from the CSIQ image database (Larson & Chandler, Journal of Electronic Imaging, 2010). Thus, for each image, we obtained a masking map in which each entry in the map denotes the root mean squared contrast threshold for detecting the log-Gabor noise target at the corresponding spatial location in the image. From qualitative observations we found that detection thresholds were affected by several patch properties such as visual complexity, fineness of textures, sharpness, and overall luminance. Our quantitative analysis shows that except for the sharpness measure (correlation coefficient of 0.7), the other tested low-level mask features showed a weak correlation (correlation coefficients less than or equal to 0.52) with the detection thresholds. Furthermore, we evaluated the performance of a computational contrast gain control model that performed fairly well with an average correlation coefficient of 0.79 in predicting the local contrast detection thresholds. We also describe specific choices of parameters for the gain control model. The objective of this database is to provide researchers with a large ground-truth dataset in order to further investigate the properties of the human visual system using natural masks.	t	\N
25080602	In an ever-changing environment, selecting appropriate responses in conflicting situations is essential for biological survival and social success and requires cognitive control, which is mediated by dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). How these brain regions communicate during conflict processing (detection, resolution, and adaptation), however, is still unknown. The Stroop task provides a well-established paradigm to investigate the cognitive mechanisms mediating such response conflict. Here, we explore the oscillatory patterns within and between the DMPFC and DLPFC in human epilepsy patients with intracranial EEG electrodes during an auditory Stroop experiment. Data from the DLPFC were obtained from 12 patients. Thereof four patients had additional DMPFC electrodes available for interaction analyses. Our results show that an early θ (4-8 Hz) modulated enhancement of DLPFC γ-band (30-100 Hz) activity constituted a prerequisite for later successful conflict processing. Subsequent conflict detection was reflected in a DMPFC θ power increase that causally entrained DLPFC θ activity (DMPFC to DLPFC). Conflict resolution was thereafter completed by coupling of DLPFC γ power to DMPFC θ oscillations. Finally, conflict adaptation was related to increased postresponse DLPFC γ-band activity and to θ coupling in the reverse direction (DLPFC to DMPFC). These results draw a detailed picture on how two regions in the prefrontal cortex communicate to resolve cognitive conflicts. In conclusion, our data show that conflict detection, control, and adaptation are supported by a sequence of processes that use the interplay of θ and γ oscillations within and between DMPFC and DLPFC.	t	\N
25090306	It is widely acknowledged that individuals with elevated depressive symptoms exhibit deficits in inter-personal communication. Research has primarily focused on speech production in individuals with elevated depressive symptoms. Little is known about speech perception in individuals with elevated depressive symptoms, especially in challenging listening conditions. Here, we examined speech perception in young adults with low- or high-depressive (HD) symptoms in the presence of a range of maskers. Maskers were selected to reflect various levels of informational masking (IM), which refers to cognitive interference due to signal and masker similarity, and energetic masking (EM), which refers to peripheral interference due to signal degradation by the masker. Speech intelligibility data revealed that individuals with HD symptoms did not differ from those with low-depressive symptoms during EM, but they exhibited a selective deficit during IM. Since IM is a common occurrence in real-world social settings, this listening deficit may exacerbate communicative difficulties.	t	\N
25092665	What do we hear when someone speaks and what does auditory cortex (AC) do with that sound? Given how meaningful speech is, it might be hypothesized that AC is most active when other people talk so that their productions get decoded. Here, neuroimaging meta-analyses show the opposite: AC is least active and sometimes deactivated when participants listened to meaningful speech compared to less meaningful sounds. Results are explained by an active hypothesis-and-test mechanism where speech production (SP) regions are neurally re-used to predict auditory objects associated with available context. By this model, more AC activity for less meaningful sounds occurs because predictions are less successful from context, requiring further hypotheses be tested. This also explains the large overlap of AC co-activity for less meaningful sounds with meta-analyses of SP. An experiment showed a similar pattern of results for non-verbal context. Specifically, words produced less activity in AC and SP regions when preceded by co-speech gestures that visually described those words compared to those words without gestures. Results collectively suggest that what we 'hear' during real-world speech perception may come more from the brain than our ears and that the function of AC is to confirm or deny internal predictions about the identity of sounds.	t	\N
25096108	The summation of loudness across ears is often studied by measuring the level difference required for equal loudness (LDEL) of monaural and diotic sounds. Typically, the LDEL is ∼5-6 dB, consistent with the idea that a diotic sound is ∼1.5 times as loud as the same sound presented monaurally at the same level, as predicted by the loudness model of Moore and Glasberg [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 121, 1604-1612 (2007)]. One might expect that the LDEL would be <5-6 dB for hearing-impaired listeners, because loudness recruitment leads to a more rapid change of loudness for a given change in level. However, previous data sometimes showed similar LDEL values for normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners. Here, the LDEL was measured for hearing-impaired listeners using narrowband and broadband noises centered at 500 Hz, where audiometric thresholds were near-normal, and at 3000 or 4000 Hz, where audiometric thresholds were elevated. The mean LDEL was 5.6 dB at 500 Hz and 4.2 dB at the higher center frequencies. The results were predicted reasonably well by an extension of the loudness model of Moore and Glasberg.	t	\N
25096138	The effects of audiovisual versus auditory training for speech-in-noise identification were examined in 60 young participants. The training conditions were audiovisual training, auditory-only training, and no training (n = 20 each). In the training groups, gated consonants and words were presented at 0 dB signal-to-noise ratio; stimuli were either audiovisual or auditory-only. The no-training group watched a movie clip without performing a speech identification task. Speech-in-noise identification was measured before and after the training (or control activity). Results showed that only audiovisual training improved speech-in-noise identification, demonstrating superiority over auditory-only training.	t	\N
25113242	This study investigates the influence of rhythmic expectancies on language processing. It is assumed that language rhythm involves an alternation of strong and weak beats within a linguistic domain. Hence, in some contexts rhythmically induced stress shifts occur in order to comply with the Rhythm Rule. In English, this rule operates to prevent clashes of stressed adjacent syllables or lapses of adjacent unstressed syllables. While previous studies investigated effects on speech production and perception, this study focuses on brain responses to structures either obeying or deviating from this rule. Event-related potentials show that rhythmic regularity is relevant for language processing: rhythmic deviations evoked different ERP components reflecting the deviance from rhythmic expectancies. An N400 effect found for shifted items reflects higher costs in lexical processing due to stress deviation. The overall results disentangle lexical and rhythmical influences on language processing and complement the findings of previous studies on rhythmical processing.	t	\N
25118042	To compare the fitting time requirements and the efficiency in achieving improvements in speech perception during the first 6 months after initial stimulation of computer-assisted fitting with the Fitting to Outcome eXpert' (FOX) and a standard clinical fitting procedure. Twenty-seven post-lingually deafened adults, newly implanted recipients of the Advanced Bionics HiRes 90K™ cochlear implant from Germany, the UK, and France took part in a controlled, randomized, clinical study. Speech perception was measured for all participants and fitting times were compared across groups programmed using FOX and conventional programming methods. The fitting time for FOX was significantly reduced at 14 days (P < 0.001) but equivalent over the 6-month period. The groups were not well matched for duration of deafness; therefore, speech perception could not be compared across groups. Despite including more objective measures of performance than a standard fitting approach and the adjustment of a greater range of parameters during initial fitting, FOX did not add to the overall fitting time when compared to the conventional approach. FOX significantly reduced the fitting time in the first 2 weeks and by providing a standard fitting protocol, reduced variability across centres. FOX computer-assisted fitting can be successfully used at switch on, in different clinical environments, reducing fitting time in the first 2 weeks and is efficient at providing a usable program.	t	\N
25121623	The current study provides evidence that the absence of a syntactically expected item leads to a sustained cognitive processing demand. Event-related potentials were measured at the omission of a syntactically expected object argument in a speech sequence. English monolingual adults listened to paired sentences. The first sentence in the pair established a context. The second sentence provided a response to the first sentence that was either grammatically correct by containing an overt object argument in the form of a pronoun, or was syntactically unacceptable by omitting the expected object pronoun. Event-related potentials measured at the omission of the object argument showed a prolonged positivity for 100-600 ms with a broad scalp distribution, and for 600-1000 ms with a focus in the anterior region. This observed omitted stimulus potential may contain characteristics of the P300 component, associated with the detection of the deviation of an expected stimulus, and the classical P600 related to syntactic reanalysis. Further, the late anterior P600 may indicate an increased memory demand in sentence comprehension. Thus, this linguistic omitted stimulus potential is a cognitive indicator of language processing that can be used to investigate the organization of linguistic knowledge.	t	\N
25126691	To evaluate the relationship between conductive hearing loss and maxillary constriction. A total of 120 people, aged from 7 to 40 years, who were referred to an audiologist when taking out health insurance or for school pre-registration check-up, were selected for this study. A total of 60 participants who had hearing threshold levels greater than 15 dB in both ears were chosen as the conductive hearing loss group. The remaining 60, with normal hearing thresholds of less than 15 dB, were used as the control group. All participants were referred to an orthodontic clinic. Participants who had a posterior crossbite and high palatal vault were considered to suffer from maxillary constriction. There were no significant differences between the sex ratios and mean ages of the groups. However, participants with conductive hearing loss were 3.5 times more likely than controls to suffer from maxillary constriction. Patients who suffer from conductive hearing loss are likely to show a maxillary abnormality when examined by an orthodontist.	t	\N
25139422	We investigated global integration (wrap-up) processes at the boundaries of musical phrases by comparing the effects of well and non-well formed phrases on event-related potentials time-locked to two boundary points: the onset and the offset of the boundary pause. The Closure Positive Shift, which is elicited at the boundary offset, was not modulated by the quality of phrase structure (well vs. non-well formed). In contrast, the boundary onset potentials showed different patterns for well and non-well formed phrases. Our results contribute to specify the functional meaning of the Closure Positive Shift in music, shed light on the large-scale structural integration of musical input, and raise new hypotheses concerning shared resources between music and language.	t	\N
25150964	Timbre is an important attribute of sound both in music and nature. Previously, using an operant conditioning paradigm, we found that black-capped chickadees and humans show similar response patterns in discriminating triadic chords of the same timbre and transferred this discrimination to a novel key center (novel absolute pitch). The current study examined how varying the timbre of the chords influenced discrimination. Using a similar operant conditioning procedure, we trained humans (Experiment 1) and chickadees (Experiments 2 and 3) to discriminate a major chord from 6 other chord types that had semitone deviations from the major chord. The pattern of errors of the 2 species replicated our previous findings. We then tested participants with novel timbres. We found that humans readily transferred their discrimination to novel timbres, suggesting they were attending to triadic pitch relations. The chickadees failed to transfer to novel timbres, suggesting they were using a different strategy to perform the original chord discrimination. We conducted an acoustic analysis examining frequency ranges that are biologically relevant to chickadees. We found that the relative intensity within each chord of the frequencies used in black-capped chickadee song significantly correlated with chickadees' percent response during probe testing. In Experiment 3, we trained a new set of chickadees by including either expanded pitch or timbre training before testing. Although chickadees showed some transfer to novel chords following this expanded training, we found that neither type of expanded training helped the chickadees when probe tested with novel stimuli.	t	\N
25151640	Congenital amusia has been described as a lifelong deficit of music perception and production, notably including amusic individuals' difficulties to recognize a familiar tune without the aid of lyrics. The present study aimed to evaluate whether amusic individuals might have acquired long-term knowledge of familiar music, and to test for the minimal amount of acoustic information necessary to access this knowledge (if any) in amusia. Segments of familiar and unfamiliar instrumental musical pieces were presented with increasing duration (250, 500, 1000 msec etc.), and participants provided familiarity judgments for each segment. Results showed that amusic individuals succeeded in differentiating familiar from unfamiliar excerpts with as little acoustic information as did control participants (i.e., within 500 msec). The findings reveal that amusic individuals have stored musical pieces in long-term memory (LTM), and, together with other recent findings, they suggest that congenital amusia might impair conscious access to music processing rather than music processing per se.	t	\N
25158372	Cortical auditory-evoked potentials (CAEPs), an objective measure of human speech encoding in individuals with normal or impaired auditory systems, can be used to assess the outcomes of hearing aids and cochlear implants in infants, or in young children who cannot co-operate for behavioural speech discrimination testing. The current study aimed to determine whether naturally produced speech stimuli /m/, /g/ and /t/ evoke distinct CAEP response patterns that can be reliably recorded and differentiated, based on their spectral information and whether the CAEP could be an electrophysiological measure to differentiate between these speech sounds. CAEPs were recorded from 18 school-aged children with normal hearing, tested in two groups: younger (5 - 7 years) and older children (8 - 12 years). Cortical responses differed in their P1 and N2 latencies and amplitudes in response to /m/, /g/ and /t/ sounds (from low-, mid- and high-frequency regions, respectively). The largest amplitude of the P1 and N2 component was for /g/ and the smallest was for /t/. The P1 latency in both age groups did not show any significant difference between these speech sounds. The N2 latency showed a significant change in the younger group but not in the older group. The N2 latency of the speech sound /g/ was always noted earlier in both groups. This study demonstrates that spectrally different speech sounds are encoded differentially at the cortical level, and evoke distinct CAEP response patterns. CAEP latencies and amplitudes may provide an objective indication that spectrally different speech sounds are encoded differently at the cortical level.	t	\N
25158615	To evaluate methods for measuring long-term benefits of cochlear implantation in a patient with single-sided deafness (SSD) with respect to spatial hearing and to document improved quality of life because of reduced tinnitus. A single adult male with profound right-sided sensorineural hearing loss and normal hearing in the left ear who underwent right-sided cochlear implantation. The subject was evaluated at 6, 9, 12, and 18 months after implantation on speech intelligibility with specific target-masker configurations, sound localization accuracy, audiologic performance, and tinnitus handicap. Testing conditions involved the acoustic (NH) ear only, the cochlear implant (CI) ear (acoustic ear plugged), and the bilateral condition (CI+NH). Measures of spatial hearing included speech intelligibility improvement because of spatial release from masking (SRM) and sound localization. In addition, traditional measures known as "head shadow," "binaural squelch," and "binaural summation" were evaluated. The best indicator for improved speech intelligibility was SRM, in which both ears are activated, but the relative locations of target and masker(s) are manipulated. Measures that compare performance with a single ear to performance using bilateral auditory input indicated evidence of the ability to integrate inputs across the ears, possibly reflecting early binaural processing, with 12 months of bilateral input. Sound localization accuracy improved with addition of the implant, and a large improvement with respect to tinnitus handicap was observed. Cochlear implantation resulted in improved sound localization accuracy when compared with performance using only the NH ear, and reduced tinnitus handicap was observed with use of the implant. The use of SRM addresses some of the current limitations of traditional measures of spatial and binaural hearing, as spatial cues related to target and maskers are manipulated, rather than the ear(s) tested. Sound testing methods and calculations described here are therefore recommended for assessing performance of a larger sample size of individuals with SSD who receive a CI.	t	\N
25167217	Objective To investigate the effect of increasing phase duration (pulse width, T-pulse) using a biphasic pulse composed of an initial anodic active phase followed by a balancing cathodic phase on the electrically evoked auditory brainstem responses (eABRs) recorded at the time of cochlear implantation. Design eABRs recorded during 188 surgeries for cochlear implantation from 1999 to 2006 in a single center were retrospectively reviewed by two independent observers. All patients were fitted with a NEURELEC cochlear implant (CI) device, initially DIGISONIC(®) then DIGISONIC SP(®) (2004-2006). Result Immediately following cochlear implantation, stimulation by the CI resulted in reliable wave III and V eABR waveforms (mean wave III latency 2.23 ± 0.38 ms SD and wave V latency 4.28 ± 0.42 ms SD). Latencies followed an apical to basal gradient (0.32 ms increase in mean eV latency and 0.12 ms for eIII latency). With increasing phase duration, wave III and wave V latencies significantly decreased in association with a shortening of the eIII-eV interwave gap, while amplitudes of both waves increased. Conclusion The impact of increasing phase duration on latency and amplitude of brainstem responses in a large set of patients implanted with NEURELEC CIs was reported.	t	\N
25170794	The neural resonance theory of musical meter explains musical beat tracking as the result of entrainment of neural oscillations to the beat frequency and its higher harmonics. This theory has gained empirical support from experiments using simple, abstract stimuli. However, to date there has been no empirical evidence for a role of neural entrainment in the perception of the beat of ecologically valid music. Here we presented participants with a single pop song with a superimposed bassoon sound. This stimulus was either lined up with the beat of the music or shifted away from the beat by 25% of the average interbeat interval. Both conditions elicited a neural response at the beat frequency. However, although the on-the-beat condition elicited a clear response at the first harmonic of the beat, this frequency was absent in the neural response to the off-the-beat condition. These results support a role for neural entrainment in tracking the metrical structure of real music and show that neural meter tracking can be disrupted by the presentation of contradictory rhythmic cues.	t	\N
25176617	Verbal memory is a fundamental prerequisite for language learning. This study investigated 7-month-olds' (N = 62) ability to remember the identity and order of elements in a multisyllabic word. The results indicate that infants detect changes in the order of edge syllables, or the identity of the middle syllables, but fail to encode the order of middle syllables. This suggests that the representational format of multisyllabic words is determined by core mnemonic biases, which favor accurate encoding of edges and limits the encoding of temporal order for internal segments. The studies support accounts proposing that content and order are encoded separately; in addition, the data show that this dissociation occurs early in development.	t	\N
25185802	In two studies based on Stanley Milgram's original pilots, we present the first systematic examination of cyranoids as social psychological research tools. A cyranoid is created by cooperatively joining in real-time the body of one person with speech generated by another via covert speech shadowing. The resulting hybrid persona can subsequently interact with third parties face-to-face. We show that naïve interlocutors perceive a cyranoid to be a unified, autonomously communicating person, evidence for a phenomenon Milgram termed the "cyranic illusion." We also show that creating cyranoids composed of contrasting identities (a child speaking adult-generated words and vice versa) can be used to study how stereotyping and person perception are mediated by inner (dispositional) vs. outer (physical) identity. Our results establish the cyranoid method as a unique means of obtaining experimental control over inner and outer identities within social interactions rich in mundane realism.	t	\N
25188354	Although active listening is an influential behavior, which can affect the social responses of others, the neural correlates underlying its perception have remained unclear. Sensing active listening in social interactions is accompanied by an improvement in the recollected impressions of relevant experiences and is thought to arouse positive feelings. We therefore hypothesized that the recognition of active listening activates the reward system, and that the emotional appraisal of experiences that had been subject to active listening would be improved. To test these hypotheses, we conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on participants viewing assessments of their own personal experiences made by evaluators with or without active listening attitude. Subjects rated evaluators who showed active listening more positively. Furthermore, they rated episodes more positively when they were evaluated by individuals showing active listening. Neural activation in the ventral striatum was enhanced by perceiving active listening, suggesting that this was processed as rewarding. It also activated the right anterior insula, representing positive emotional reappraisal processes. Furthermore, the mentalizing network was activated when participants were being evaluated, irrespective of active listening behavior. Therefore, perceiving active listening appeared to result in positive emotional appraisal and to invoke mental state attribution to the active listener.	t	\N
25190323	In a standard center cueing paradigm, participants are asked to identify a target object presented either to the left or the right of a center cue (e.g., eye gaze, head-turn, arrow, etc.). When the center cue is non-predictive (e.g., the arrow points to the correct location of the target only 50 % of the time), the target can still be identified faster at the validly cued location than at the invalidly cued location. However, the abrupt onset of an object can elicit reflexive attention orientation. It is important to investigate whether this abrupt onset effect interferes with the cueing effect elicited by center cues because this interference effect, if it exists, should be controlled for in order to improve the test validity of the center cueing task. In an attentional cueing paradigm, we examined how the abrupt appearance of an exogenous target object mitigates the influence of center cues involving either a head turn (Experiment 1) or an arrow (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, a non-predictive head-turn cue was followed by a target object (circle or square) presented in the left or right visual field. In the non-distractor condition, the target object was presented by itself. In this case, it is assumed that the sudden appearance of the target provides an orienting cue to the observer. To equalize the cueing effect of the target object, we presented a competing distractor object (triangle) in the opposite visual field to the target object. The participant's task was to categorize the target object as either a circle or square while ignoring the non-target triangle object in the opposite visual field. In Experiment 2, the arrow version of the cued recognition task was used, in which a single-headed arrow pointed to the object. The results from both experiments showed that both the non-predictive head-turn and arrow cues produced a reliable cueing effect in the distractor and non-distractor conditions. However, the magnitude of the cueing effect was greater in the distractor condition than in the non-distractor condition, suggesting that the abrupt onset of the target object acts like an exogenous signal, thereby reducing the impact of the internal head turn and arrow cues.	t	\N
25190394	Factors that might affect perceptual pitch match between acoustic and electric stimulation were examined in 25 bimodal listeners using magnitude estimation. Pre-operative acoustic thresholds in both ears, and duration of severe-profound loss, were first examined as correlates with degree of match between the measured pitch and that predicted by the spiral ganglion frequency-position model. The degree of match was examined with respect to (1) the ratio between the measured and predicted pitch percept on the most apical electrode and (2) the ratio between the slope of the measured and predicted pitch function. Second, effect of listening experience was examined to assess whether adaptation occurred over time to match the frequency assignment to electrodes. Pre-experience pitch estimates on the apical electrode were within the predicted range in only 28% of subjects, and the slope of the electrical pitch function was lower than predicted in all except one subject. Subjects with poorer hearing tended to have a lower pitch and a shallower electrical pitch function than predicted by the model. Pre-operative hearing thresholds in the contralateral ear and hearing loss duration were not correlated with the degree of pitch match, and there was no significant group effect of listening experience.	t	\N
25190407	Normal-hearing (NH) listeners make use of context, speech redundancy and top-down linguistic processes to perceptually restore inaudible or masked portions of speech. Previous research has shown poorer perception and restoration of interrupted speech in CI users and NH listeners tested with acoustic simulations of CIs. Three hypotheses were investigated: (1) training with CI simulations of interrupted sentences can teach listeners to use the high-level restoration mechanisms more effectively, (2) phonemic restoration benefit, an increase in intelligibility of interrupted sentences once its silent gaps are filled with noise, can be induced with training, and (3) perceptual learning of interrupted sentences can be reflected in clinical speech audiometry. To test these hypotheses, NH listeners were trained using periodically interrupted sentences, also spectrally degraded with a noiseband vocoder as CI simulation. Feedback was presented by displaying the sentence text and playing back both the intact and the interrupted CI simulation of the sentence. Training induced no phonemic restoration benefit, and learning was not transferred to speech audiometry measured with words. However, a significant improvement was observed in overall intelligibility of interrupted spectrally degraded sentences, with or without filler noise, suggesting possibly better use of restoration mechanisms as a result of training.	t	\N
25194209	Roles of subcortical structures in language processing are vague, but, interestingly, basal ganglia and thalamic Deep Brain Stimulation can go along with reduced lexical capacities. To deepen the understanding of this impact, we assessed word processing as a function of thalamic versus subthalamic Deep Brain Stimulation. Ten essential tremor patients treated with thalamic and 14 Parkinson׳s disease patients with subthalamic Deep Brain Stimulation performed an acoustic Lexical Decision Task ON and OFF stimulation. Combined analysis of task performance and event-related potentials allowed the determination of processing speed, priming effects, and N400 as neurophysiological correlate of lexical stimulus processing. 12 age-matched healthy participants acted as control subjects. Thalamic Deep Brain Stimulation prolonged word decisions and reduced N400 potentials. No comparable ON-OFF effects were present in patients with subthalamic Deep Brain Stimulation. In the latter group of patients with Parkinson' disease, N400 amplitudes were, however, abnormally low, whether under active or inactive Deep Brain Stimulation. In conclusion, performance speed and N400 appear to be influenced by state functions, modulated by thalamic, but not subthalamic Deep Brain Stimulation, compatible with concepts of thalamo-cortical engagement in word processing. Clinically, these findings specify cognitive sequels of Deep Brain Stimulation in a target-specific way.	t	\N
25196041	Cognitive enhancement resulting from nicotinic acetylcholine receptor stimulation may be evidenced by increased efficiency of the auditory-frontal cortex network of auditory discrimination, which is impaired in schizophrenia, a cognitive disorder associated with excessive tobacco use. Investigating automatic (preattentive) detection of acoustic change with the mismatch negativity (MMN) brain event-related potential in response to nicotine in individuals with varying baseline levels of auditory discrimination may provide useful insight into the cholinergic regulation of this neural network and its potential amelioration with novel nicotinic agents. Sixty healthy, non-smoking male volunteers were presented with an 'optimal' multi-feature MMN paradigm in a randomized, placebo controlled double-blind design with 6 mg of nicotine gum. Participants with low, medium, and high baseline amplitudes responded differently to nicotine (vs. placebo), and nicotine response was feature specific. Whereas MMN in individuals with high amplitudes was diminished by nicotine, MMN increased in those with low amplitudes. Nicotine effects were not shown in medium amplitude participants. These findings provide preliminary support for the role of nicotinic neurotransmission in sensory memory processing of auditory change and suggest that nicotinic receptor modulation can both enhance and diminish change detection, depending on baseline MMN and its eliciting stimulus feature.	t	\N
25201816	Evidence suggests that deafness-induced changes in visual perception, cognition and attention may compensate for a hearing loss. Such alterations, however, may also negatively influence adaptation to a cochlear implant. This study investigated whether involuntary attentional capture by salient visual stimuli is altered in children who use a cochlear implant. Thirteen experienced implant users (aged 8-16 years) and age-matched normally hearing children were presented with a rapid sequence of simultaneous visual and auditory events. Participants were tasked with detecting numbers presented in a specified color and identifying a change in the tonal frequency whilst ignoring irrelevant visual distractors. Compared to visual distractors that did not possess the target-defining characteristic, target-colored distractors were associated with a decrement in visual performance (response time and accuracy), demonstrating a contingent capture of involuntary attention. Visual distractors did not, however, impair auditory task performance. Importantly, detection performance for the visual and auditory targets did not differ between the groups. These results suggest that proficient cochlear implant users demonstrate normal capture of visuospatial attention by stimuli that match top-down control settings.	t	\N
25208843	When an action produces an effect, both events are perceived to be shifted in time toward each other. This shift is called Intentional Binding (IB) effect. First evidence shows that this shift does not depend on the statistical predictability of the produced effect's identity (Desantis, Hughes, & Waszak, 2012). We confirm this result by comparing the perceived duration of action-effect intervals before valid and invalid action effects using the method of constant stimuli. The perceived duration of action-effect intervals did not differ for valid and invalid effects. This result was true for different durations of the action-effect interval (Experiments 1-4: 250 ms, Experiments 1 & 2: 400 ms), different effect modalities (Experiments 1 & 3: visual, Experiments 2-4: auditive), and two types of validity variations (Experiments 1 & 2: 80% valid, Experiments 3 & 4: 100% valid vs. random). We validated our results by using a clock paradigm and a numerical duration estimation task (Experiment 4). We conclude that the IB effect is not the result of internal prediction due to action-effect bindings, but might rely on higher-order processes.	t	\N
25214304	Prior studies of spatial negative priming indicate that distractor-assigned keypress responses are inhibited as part of visual, but not auditory, processing. However, recent evidence suggests that static keypress responses are not directly activated by spatially presented sounds and, therefore, might not call for an inhibitory process. In order to investigate the role of response inhibition in auditory processing, we used spatially directed responses that have been shown to result in direct response activation to irrelevant sounds. Participants localized a target sound by performing manual joystick responses (Experiment 1) or head movements (Experiment 2B) while ignoring a concurrent distractor sound. Relations between prime distractor and probe target were systematically manipulated (repeated vs. changed) with respect to identity and location. Experiment 2A investigated the influence of distractor sounds on spatial parameters of head movements toward target locations and showed that distractor-assigned responses are immediately inhibited to prevent false responding in the ongoing trial. Interestingly, performance in Experiments 1 and 2B was not generally impaired when the probe target appeared at the location of the former prime distractor and required a previously withheld and presumably inhibited response. Instead, performance was impaired only when prime distractor and probe target mismatched in terms of location or identity, which fully conforms to the feature-mismatching hypothesis. Together, the results suggest that response inhibition operates in auditory processing when response activation is provided but is presumably too short-lived to affect responding on the subsequent trial.	t	\N
25215617	Previous studies of frequency discrimination training (FDT) for tinnitus used repetitive task-based training programmes relying on extrinsic factors to motivate participation. Studies reported limited improvement in tinnitus symptoms. To evaluate FDT exploiting intrinsic motivations by integrating training with computer-gameplay. Sixty participants were randomly assigned to train on either a conventional task-based training, or one of two interactive game-based training platforms over six weeks. Outcomes included assessment of motivation, tinnitus handicap, and performance on tests of attention. Participants reported greater intrinsic motivation to train on the interactive game-based platforms, yet compliance of all three groups was similar (∼ 70%) and changes in self-reported tinnitus severity were not significant. There was no difference between groups in terms of change in tinnitus severity or performance on measures of attention. FDT can be integrated within an intrinsically motivating game. Whilst this may improve participant experience, in this instance it did not translate to additional compliance or therapeutic benefit. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02095262.	t	\N
25218167	Knowing the context of a discourse is an essential prerequisite for comprehension. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to disclose brain networks supporting context-dependent speech comprehension. During fMRI, 20 participants listened to 1-min spoken narratives preceded by pictures that were either contextually matching or mismatching with the narrative. Matching pictures increased narrative comprehension, decreased hemodynamic activity in Broca׳s area, and enhanced its functional connectivity with left anterior superior frontal gyrus, bilateral inferior parietal cortex, as well as anterior and posterior cingulate cortex. Further, the anterior (BA 45) and posterior (BA 44) portions of Broca׳s area differed in their functional connectivity patterns. Both BA 44 and BA 45 have shown increased connectivity with right angular gyrus and supramarginal gyrus. Whereas BA 44 showed increased connectivity with left angular gyrus, left inferior/middle temporal gyrus and left postcentral gyrus, BA 45 showed increased connectivity with right posterior cingulate cortex, right anterior inferior frontal gyrus, lateral occipital cortex and anterior cingulate cortex. Our results suggest that a fronto-parietal functional network supports context-dependent narrative comprehension, and that Broca׳s area is involved in resolving ambiguity from speech when appropriate contextual cues are lacking.	t	\N
25223106	A sound's duration provides important information about the event producing it. Although many of the sounds we hear every day are 'percussive' in nature (ie resulting from two objects impacting) and therefore exhibit decaying/damped amplitude envelopes, perceptual experiments frequently use tones synthesized with 'flat' or abruptly ending envelopes. Such sounds afford an estimation strategy involving calculating the elapsed time between tone onset and offset--a strategy that would be problematic for ecologically pervasive decaying sounds. Here we compare duration judgments for tones with percussive (ie gradually decaying) and flat (ie abruptly ending) amplitude envelopes, finding evidence for the use of different strategies. This result is discussed in terms of its implications for dominant theories and models of sensory perception that are often assessed using artificial sounds (ie 'flat tones') affording strategies that may not be optimal or even available for everyday listening.	t	\N
25224031	In human and nonhuman primates, the cortical motor system comprises a collection of brain areas primarily related to motor control. Existing evidence suggests that no other mammalian group has the number, extension, and complexity of motor-related areas observed in the frontal lobe of primates. Such diversity is probably related to the wide behavioral flexibility that primates display. Indeed, recent comparative anatomical, psychophysical, and neurophysiological studies suggest that the evolution of the motor cortical areas closely correlates with the emergence of high cognitive abilities. Advances in understanding the cortical motor system have shown that these areas are also related to functions previously linked to higher-order associative areas. In addition, experimental observations have shown that the classical distinction between perceptual and motor functions is not strictly followed across cortical areas. In this paper, we review evidence suggesting that evolution of the motor system had a role in the shaping of different cognitive functions in primates. We argue that the increase in the complexity of the motor system has contributed to the emergence of new abilities observed in human and nonhuman primates, including the recognition and imitation of the actions of others, speech perception and production, and the execution and appreciation of the rhythmic structure of music.	t	\N
25226375	We seek to determine the extent of age-related decline in speech perception performance among cochlear implant recipients as quantified by various metrics. Retrospective chart review. Tertiary referral center. The records of 70 postlingually deafened adults who received cochlear implants between 2004 and 2013 were reviewed. Unilateral cochlear implantation. Postoperative AzBio and Consonant-Nucleus-Consonant (CNC) scores at greater than 3 months postactivation. Group analyses comparing patients aged 65 years and older (elderly) with younger adult patients (control). In addition, multivariate linear regression analyses were performed that incorporated preoperative pure-tone audiograms, duration of deafness, duration of follow-up, sex, and laterality of the implanted ear to quantitate the dependence of AzBio and CNC results on age at implantation (AAI). Performance on AzBio for the control and elderly groups were 74.6% ± 4.1% and 59.5% ± 4.5% (p = 0.032), respectively. Performance on CNC scores were 63.9% ± 3.4% and 55.3% ± 3.3% (p = 0.098), respectively. Multiple linear regression showed a significant correlation of AzBio with AAI, whereas CNC did not correlate significantly (correlation coefficients = -0.006 and -0.003, p = 0.019 and 0.081, respectively). Patients implanted at a later age performed more poorly on AzBio sentences. A similar trend was noted with CNC scores although not significant. The variability in correlation coefficients and significance between both speech perception tests and AAI suggests that, as patients age, their performance on each individual test will be affected to a varying degree.	t	\N
25234731	Mandarin Chinese is a lexical tone language that has four tones, with a change in tone denoting a change in lexical meaning. There are few studies regarding lexical tone identification abilities in deafened children using either cochlear implants (CIs) or hearing aids (HAs). Furthermore, no study has compared the lexical tone identification abilities of deafened children with their hearing devices turned on and off. The present study aimed to investigate the lexical tone identification abilities of deafened children with CIs or HAs. Forty prelingually deafened children (20 with CIs and 20 with HAs) participated in the study. In the HA group, 20 children were binaurally aided. In the CI group, all of the children were unilaterally implanted. All of the subjects completed a computerized lexical tone pairs test with their hearing devices turned on and off. The correct answers of all items were recorded as the total score and the correct answers of the tone pairs were recorded as subtotal scores. No significant differences in the tone pair identification scores were found between the CI group and HA group either with the devices turned on or off (t=1.62, p=0.11; t=1.863, p=0.07, respectively). The scores in the aided condition were higher than in the unaided condition regardless of the device used (t=22.09, p<0.001, in the HA group; t=20.20, p<0.001, in the CI group). Significantly higher scores were found in the tone pairs that contained tone 4. Age at fitting of the devices was correlated with tone identification abilities in both the CI and HA groups. Other demographic factors were not correlated with tone identification ability. The hearing device, whether a hearing aid or cochlear implant, is beneficial for tone identification. The lexical tone identification abilities were similar regardless of whether the subjects wore a HA or CI. Lexical tone pairs with different durations and dissimilar tone contour patterns are more easily identified. Receiving devices at earlier age tends to produce better lexical tone identification abilities in prelingually deafened children.	t	\N
25234885	This study examined the ability of listeners to utilize syntactic structure to extract a target stream of speech from among competing sounds. Target talkers were identified by voice or location, which was held constant throughout a test utterance, and paired with correct or incorrect (random word order) target sentence syntax. Both voice and location provided reliable cues for identifying target speech even when other features varied unpredictably. The target sentences were masked either by predominantly energetic maskers (noise bursts) or by predominantly informational maskers (similar speech in random word order). When the maskers were noise bursts, target sentence syntax had relatively minor effects on identification performance. However, when the maskers were other talkers, correct target sentence syntax resulted in significantly better speech identification performance than incorrect syntax. Furthermore, conformance to correct syntax alone was sufficient to accurately identify the target speech. The results were interpreted as supporting the idea that the predictability of the elements comprising streams of speech, as manifested by syntactic structure, is an important factor in binding words together into coherent streams. Furthermore, these findings suggest that predictability is particularly important for maintaining the coherence of an auditory stream over time under conditions high in informational masking.	t	\N
25235005	The contribution of recovered envelopes (RENVs) to the utilization of temporal-fine structure (TFS) speech cues was examined in normal-hearing listeners. Consonant identification experiments used speech stimuli processed to present TFS or RENV cues. Experiment 1 examined the effects of exposure and presentation order using 16-band TFS speech and 40-band RENV speech recovered from 16-band TFS speech. Prior exposure to TFS speech aided in the reception of RENV speech. Performance on the two conditions was similar (∼50%-correct) for experienced listeners as was the pattern of consonant confusions. Experiment 2 examined the effect of varying the number of RENV bands recovered from 16-band TFS speech. Mean identification scores decreased as the number of RENV bands decreased from 40 to 8 and were only slightly above chance levels for 16 and 8 bands. Experiment 3 examined the effect of varying the number of bands in the TFS speech from which 40-band RENV speech was constructed. Performance fell from 85%- to 31%-correct as the number of TFS bands increased from 1 to 32. Overall, these results suggest that the interpretation of previous studies that have used TFS speech may have been confounded with the presence of RENVs.	t	\N
25243615	It is well established that categorising the emotional content of facial expressions may differ depending on contextual information. Whether this malleability is observed in the auditory domain and in genuine emotion expressions is poorly explored. We examined the perception of authentic laughter and crying in the context of happy, neutral and sad facial expressions. Participants rated the vocalisations on separate unipolar scales of happiness and sadness and on arousal. Although they were instructed to focus exclusively on the vocalisations, consistent context effects were found: For both laughter and crying, emotion judgements were shifted towards the information expressed by the face. These modulations were independent of response latencies and were larger for more emotionally ambiguous vocalisations. No effects of context were found for arousal ratings. These findings suggest that the automatic encoding of contextual information during emotion perception generalises across modalities, to purely non-verbal vocalisations, and is not confined to acted expressions.	t	\N
25247311	Neonatal necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is associated with an increased incidence of poor neurodevelopment. The knowledge of underlying neurophysiology is very limited, and the influence of NEC on the preterm brainstem is very poorly understood. To assess the effect of NEC on the immature auditory brainstem by excluding any possible confounding effect of preterm birth. We recorded and analyzed brainstem auditory evoked response (BAER) at different click rates in preterm babies (30-34 weeks gestation) after NEC. The results were compared with those in age-matched healthy preterm babies who had no NEC. At click rate 21/s, the latencies of BAER waves I and III in the preterm NEC babies were similar to those babies without NEC. However, wave V latency was longer in the NEC babies than in those without NEC. The I-V interpeak interval was also longer in the NEC babies than in those without NEC. These abnormalities were persistent at higher click rates 51 and 91/s. Wave I amplitude in the preterm NEC babies did not differ significantly from that in those without NEC, but wave III and V amplitudes were smaller than in those without NEC at all 21-91/s clicks. Compared with healthy preterm babies, preterm babies after NEC showed a major increase in wave V latency and I-V interval at all 21-91/s clicks. Brainstem auditory function is impaired in preterm NEC babies after excluding the possible confounding effect of preterm birth. Neonatal NEC and associated perinatal conditions adversely affect the premature brainstem.	t	\N
25248101	Using an auditory variant of task switching, we examined the ability to intentionally switch attention in a dichotic-listening task. In our study, participants responded selectively to one of two simultaneously presented auditory number words (spoken by a female and a male, one for each ear) by categorizing its numerical magnitude. The mapping of gender (female vs. male) and ear (left vs. right) was unpredictable. The to-be-attended feature for gender or ear, respectively, was indicated by a visual selection cue prior to auditory stimulus onset. In Experiment 1, explicitly cued switches of the relevant feature dimension (e.g., from gender to ear) and switches of the relevant feature within a dimension (e.g., from male to female) occurred in an unpredictable manner. We found large performance costs when the relevant feature switched, but switches of the relevant feature dimension incurred only small additional costs. The feature-switch costs were larger in ear-relevant than in gender-relevant trials. In Experiment 2, we replicated these findings using a simplified design (i.e., only within-dimension switches with blocked dimensions). In Experiment 3, we examined preparation effects by manipulating the cueing interval and found a preparation benefit only when ear was cued. Together, our data suggest that the large part of attentional switch costs arises from reconfiguration at the level of relevant auditory features (e.g., left vs. right) rather than feature dimensions (ear vs. gender). Additionally, our findings suggest that ear-based target selection benefits more from preparation time (i.e., time to direct attention to one ear) than gender-based target selection.	t	\N
25255036	In human face-to-face communication, language comprehension is a multi-modal, situated activity. However, little is known about how we combine information from different modalities during comprehension, and how perceived communicative intentions, often signaled through visual signals, influence this process. We explored this question by simulating a multi-party communication context in which a speaker alternated her gaze between two recipients. Participants viewed speech-only or speech+gesture object-related messages when being addressed (direct gaze) or unaddressed (gaze averted to other participant). They were then asked to choose which of two object images matched the speaker's preceding message. Unaddressed recipients responded significantly more slowly than addressees for speech-only utterances. However, perceiving the same speech accompanied by gestures sped unaddressed recipients up to a level identical to that of addressees. That is, when unaddressed recipients' speech processing suffers, gestures can enhance the comprehension of a speaker's message. We discuss our findings with respect to two hypotheses attempting to account for how social eye gaze may modulate multi-modal language comprehension.	t	\N
25261772	Amazing progress has been made in providing useful hearing to hearing-impaired individuals using cochlear implants, but challenges remain. One such challenge is understanding the effects of partial degeneration of the auditory nerve, the target of cochlear implant stimulation. Here we review studies from our human and animal laboratories aimed at characterizing the health of the implanted cochlea and the auditory nerve. We use the data on cochlear and neural health to guide rehabilitation strategies. The data also motivate the development of tissue-engineering procedures to preserve or build a healthy cochlea and improve performance obtained by cochlear implant recipients or eventually replace the need for a cochlear implant. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled <Lasker Award>.	t	\N
25263528	Although children can use social categories to intelligently select informants, children's preference for in-group informants has not been consistently demonstrated across age and context. This research clarifies the extent to which children use social categories to guide learning by presenting participants with a live or video-recorded action demonstration by a linguistic in-group and/or out-group model. Participants' (N = 104) propensity to imitate these actions was assessed. Nineteen-month-olds did not selectively imitate the actions of the in-group model in live contexts, though in-group preferences were found after watching the demonstration on video. Three-year-olds selectively imitated the actions demonstrated by the in-group member regardless of context. These results indicate that in-group preferences have a more nuanced effect on social learning than previous research has indicated.	t	\N
25269621	Despite the fact that no invariant acoustic property corresponds to a single stop consonant coupled with different vowels (e.g., [da], [de], and [du]), adults effortlessly identify the same consonant embedded in different syllables. In so doing, they solve the invariance problem. Can 3- and 6-month-olds solve it as well? To answer this question, we developed a novel methodology based on pupillometry. In Experiment 1, we demonstrated for the first time that infants are sensitive to the distinction between frequent and infrequent acoustic stimuli, showing greater pupil dilation in response to infrequent stimuli. Building on this effect, in Experiment 2, we showed that 6-month-olds, but not 3-month-olds, solve the invariance problem. Moreover, this ability develops before, and therefore independently of, the ability to produce well-formed syllables.	t	\N
25275862	To compare within-subject bilateral-binaural and bimodal complementary abilities between bimodal (cochlear implant and hearing aid; CI/HA) and bilateral CI hearing (CI/CI), thereby enabling better-informed counseling of experienced CI/HA users contemplating contralateral implantation. Comparative within-subject case review. Outpatient hearing clinic. Ten experienced adult CI/HA users with severe-to-profound hearing loss in the HA ear, who converted to CI/CI between 2 and 11 years after initial implantation. Task-specific testing of bilateral-binaural hearing (sound lateralization, binaural summation/redundancy/unmasking, head-shadow effect), bimodal complementary benefit (contribution of low-frequency information), and a self-report Speech, Spatial, and Qualities of Hearing (SSQ) questionnaire, all before and 1 year after contralateral cochlear implantation. Test result differences between CI/HA and CI/CI conditions. CI/CI hearing was better than CI/HA for speech lateralization and for perception of semantically unpredictable sentences in speech noise with speech at 0 degrees and noise at +90 degrees azimuth on the old CI side. CI/HA was better than CI/CI only for differences between perception of natural prosody speech and of speech with flattened fundamental frequency (F0) contour with speech and noise in front (at 0 degrees azimuth). Total scores on the SSQ questionnaire were higher in CI/CI than in CI/HA users. Counseling regarding contralateral implantation for CI/HA users with severe-to-profound hearing loss in the HA ear, though generally positive, should consider individual functional needs, and cover expectations about the expected trade-off between gaining improved understanding and speech lateralization in challenging listening conditions and losing some low-frequency cues still available with CI/HA hearing.	t	\N
25280122	Both psychological stress and predictive signals relating to expected sensory input are believed to influence perception, an influence which, when disrupted, may contribute to the generation of auditory hallucinations. The effect of stress and semantic expectation on auditory perception was therefore examined in healthy participants using an auditory signal detection task requiring the detection of speech from within white noise. Trait anxiety was found to predict the extent to which stress influenced response bias, resulting in more anxious participants adopting a more liberal criterion, and therefore experiencing more false positives, when under stress. While semantic expectation was found to increase sensitivity, its presence also generated a shift in response bias towards reporting a signal, suggesting that the erroneous perception of speech became more likely. These findings provide a potential cognitive mechanism that may explain the impact of stress on hallucination-proneness, by suggesting that stress has the tendency to alter response bias in highly anxious individuals. These results also provide support for the idea that top-down processes such as those relating to semantic expectation may contribute to the generation of auditory hallucinations.	t	\N
25281311	Interactions between ourselves and the external world are mediated by a multisensory representation of the space surrounding the body, i.e. the peripersonal space (PPS). In particular, a special interplay is observed among tactile stimuli delivered on a body part, e.g. the hand, and visual or auditory external inputs presented close, but not far, from the same body part, e.g. within hand PPS. This coding of multisensory stimuli as a function of their distance from the hand has a role in upper limb actions. However, it remains unclear whether PPS representation affects the motor system only when stimuli occur specifically at the hand location or when they move within a continuous portion of space where the hand can potentially act. Here, in order to study these two alternatively hypotheses, we assessed the critical distance at which moving sounds have a direct effect on hand corticospinal excitability by using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS). Specifically, TMS single pulses were delivered when a sound source was perceived at six different positions in space: from very close to subjects' hand (15 cm) to far away (90 cm). Moreover, sound direction was manipulated to test if stimuli approaching and receding from the hand might have the same relevance for the motor system. MEPs amplitude was enhanced when sounds were delivered within a limited distance from the hand (around 60 cm) as compared to when the sounds were beyond this space. This effect captures the spatial boundaries within which PPS representation modulates hand cortico-motor excitability. This spatially-dependent modulation of corticospinal activity was not further affected by the sound direction. Such findings support a strict link between the multisensory representation of the space around the body and the motor representation of potential approaching or defensive acts within that space.	t	\N
25282057	A fundamental question in language development is how infants start to assign meaning to words. Here, using three Electroencephalogram (EEG)-based measures of brain activity, we establish that preverbal 11-month-old infants are sensitive to the non-arbitrary correspondences between language sounds and concepts, that is, to sound symbolism. In each trial, infant participants were presented with a visual stimulus (e.g., a round shape) followed by a novel spoken word that either sound-symbolically matched ("moma") or mismatched ("kipi") the shape. Amplitude increase in the gamma band showed perceptual integration of visual and auditory stimuli in the match condition within 300 msec of word onset. Furthermore, phase synchronization between electrodes at around 400 msec revealed intensified large-scale, left-hemispheric communication between brain regions in the mismatch condition as compared to the match condition, indicating heightened processing effort when integration was more demanding. Finally, event-related brain potentials showed an increased adult-like N400 response - an index of semantic integration difficulty - in the mismatch as compared to the match condition. Together, these findings suggest that 11-month-old infants spontaneously map auditory language onto visual experience by recruiting a cross-modal perceptual processing system and a nascent semantic network within the first year of life.	t	\N
25301567	Previous research has shown that the human auditory system continuously monitors its acoustic environment, detecting a variety of irregularities (e.g., deviance from prior stimulation regularity in pitch, loudness, duration, and (perceived) sound source location). Detection of irregularities can be inferred from a component of the event-related brain potential (ERP), referred to as the mismatch negativity (MMN), even in conditions in which participants are instructed to ignore the auditory stimulation. The current study extends previous findings by demonstrating that auditory irregularities brought about by a change in room acoustics elicit a MMN in a passive oddball protocol (acoustic stimuli with differing room acoustics, that were otherwise identical, were employed as standard and deviant stimuli), in which participants watched a fiction movie (silent with subtitles). While the majority of participants reported no awareness for any changes in the auditory stimulation, only one out of 14 participants reported to have become aware of changing room acoustics or sound source location. Together, these findings suggest automatic monitoring of room acoustics.	t	\N
25305712	The pathophysiology of nonfluent primary progressive aphasia (nfvPPA) remains poorly understood. Here, we compared quantitatively speech parameters in patients with nfvPPA versus healthy older individuals under altered auditory feedback, which has been shown to modulate normal speech output. Patients (n=15) and healthy volunteers (n=17) were recorded while reading aloud under delayed auditory feedback [DAF] with latency 0, 50 or 200 ms and under DAF at 200 ms plus 0.5 octave upward pitch shift. DAF in healthy older individuals was associated with reduced speech rate and emergence of speech sound errors, particularly at latency 200 ms. Up to a third of the healthy older group under DAF showed speech slowing and frequency of speech sound errors within the range of the nfvPPA cohort. Our findings suggest that (in addition to any anterior, primary language output disorder) these key features of nfvPPA may reflect distorted speech input signal processing, as simulated by DAF. DAF may constitute a novel candidate pathophysiological model of posterior dorsal cortical language pathway dysfunction in nfvPPA.	t	\N
25306203	Reduced auditory P300 amplitude is a robust schizophrenia deficit exhibiting the qualities of a viable genetic endophenotype. These include heritability, test-retest reliability, and trait-like stability. Recent evidence suggests that P300 may also serve as a predictive biomarker for transition to psychosis during the schizophrenia prodrome. Historically, the utility of the P300 has been limited by its clinical nonspecificity, cross-site measurement variability, and required EEG expertise. The Consortium on the Genetics of Schizophrenia (COGS-2) study provided an opportunity to examine the consistency of the measure across multiple sites with varying degrees of EEG experience, and to identify important modulating factors that contribute to measurement variability. Auditory P300 was acquired from 649 controls and 587 patients at 5 sites. An overall patient deficit was observed with effect size 0.62. Each site independently observed a significant patient deficit, but site differences also existed. In patients, site differences reflected clinical differences in positive symptomatology and functional capacity. In controls, site differences reflected differences in racial stratification, smoking and substance use history. These factors differentially suppressed the P300 response, but only in control subjects. This led to an attenuated patient-control difference among smokers and among African Americans with history of substance use. These findings indicate that the P300 can be adequately assessed quantitatively, across sites, without substantial EEG expertise. Measurements are suitable for both genetic endophenotype analyses and studies of psychosis risk and conversion. However, careful attention must be given to selection of appropriate comparison samples to avoid misleading false negative results.	t	\N
25313714	Perception of spoken language requires attention to acoustic as well as visible phonetic information. This article reviews the known differences in audiovisual speech perception in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and specifies the need for interventions that address this construct. Elements of an audiovisual training program are described. This researcher-developed program delivered via an iPad app presents natural speech in the context of increasing noise, but supported with a speaking face. Children are cued to attend to visible articulatory information to assist in perception of the spoken words. Data from four children with ASD ages 8-10 are presented showing that the children improved their performance on an untrained auditory speech-in-noise task.	t	\N
25319676	Subjective tinnitus is the perception of sound in the absence of a corresponding external sound for which there is no known medical etiology. For a minority of individuals with tinnitus, the condition impacts their ability to lead a normal lifestyle and is severely debilitating. There is no known cure for tinnitus, so current therapy focuses on reducing the effect of tinnitus on the patient's quality of life. Tinnitus retraining therapy (TRT) uses nonpsychiatric tinnitus-specific educational counseling and sound therapy in a habituation-based protocol to reduce the patient's tinnitus-evoked negative reaction to, and awareness of, the tinnitus, with the ultimate goal of reducing the tinnitus impact on the patient's quality of life. Some studies support the efficacy of TRT, but no trial to date has compared TRT with the current standard of care or evaluated the separate contributions of TRT counseling and sound therapy. The Tinnitus Retraining Therapy Trial (TRTT) is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter trial for individuals with intolerable tinnitus. The TRTT is enrolling active-duty and retired military personnel and their dependents with functionally adequate hearing sensitivity and severe tinnitus at US Air Force, Navy, and Army medical centers. Eligible study participants are randomized to TRT, partial TRT, or standard care to determine the efficacy of TRT and its components (TRT counseling and sound therapy). The primary outcome is change in score on the Tinnitus Questionnaire assessed longitudinally between baseline and follow-up (3, 6, 12, and 18 months following treatment). Secondary outcomes include subscale score changes in the Tinnitus Questionnaire, overall and subscale score changes in the Tinnitus Functional Index and Tinnitus Handicap Inventory, and change in the visual analog scale of the TRT Interview Form. Audiological outcomes include tinnitus pitch and loudness match and measures of loudness discomfort levels. The incidence of depression as a safety measure is assessed at each visit using the Beck Depression Inventory Fast Screen. Clinicaltrials.gov NCT01177137.	t	\N
25324150	Recent literature reviews have highlighted the need to better understand the relation between speaker and listener behavior when teaching learners with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The current study used a modified parallel-treatments design to compare directly the degree to which tact and listener behavior emerged during instruction in the opposite relation for 4 children with ASD. Results showed tact training to be either equally or more efficient than listener training for all participants. However, varied patterns of emergent responding across participants indicate a need for further research. Data on collateral responding during instruction did not suggest that the presence or absence of overt collateral behaviors were predictive of emergence. The results highlight the importance for clinicians and educators to assess emergent tact and listener repertoires periodically.	t	\N
25324726	Our concepts of sound localization in the vertebrate brain are widely based on the general assumption that both the ability to detect air-borne sounds and the neuronal processing are homologous in archosaurs (present day crocodiles and birds) and mammals. Yet studies repeatedly report conflicting results on the neuronal circuits and mechanisms, in particular the role of inhibition, as well as the coding strategies between avian and mammalian model systems. Here we argue that mammalian and avian phylogeny of spatial hearing is characterized by a convergent evolution of hearing air-borne sounds rather than by homology. In particular, the different evolutionary origins of tympanic ears and the different availability of binaural cues in early mammals and archosaurs imposed distinct constraints on the respective binaural processing mechanisms. The role of synaptic inhibition in generating binaural spatial sensitivity in mammals is highlighted, as it reveals a unifying principle of mammalian circuit design for encoding sound position. Together, we combine evolutionary, anatomical and physiological arguments for making a clear distinction between mammalian processing mechanisms and coding strategies and those of archosaurs. We emphasize that a consideration of the convergent nature of neuronal mechanisms will significantly increase the explanatory power of studies of spatial processing in both mammals and birds.	t	\N
25325783	Visual crowding is generally thought to affect recognition mostly or only at the level of feature combination. Calling this assertion into question, recent studies have shown that if a target object and its flankers belong to different categories crowding is weaker than if they belong to the same category. Nevertheless, these results can be explained in terms of featural differences between categories. The current study tests if category-level (i.e., high-level) interference in crowding occurs when featural differences are controlled for. First, replicating previous results, we found lower critical spacing for targets and flankers belonging to different categories. Second, we observed the same, albeit weaker, category-specific effect when objects in both categories had the exact same feature set, suggesting that category-specific effects persist even when featural differences are fully controlled for. Third, we manipulated the semantic content of the flankers while keeping their feature set constant, by using upright or rotated objects, and found that meaning modulated crowding. An exclusively feature-based account of crowding would predict no differences due to such changes in meaning. We conclude that crowding results from not only the well-documented feature-level interactions but also additional interactions at a level where objects are grouped by meaning.	t	\N
25326606	What is the perceptual fate of invisible stimuli-are they processed at all and does their processing have consequences for the perception of other stimuli? As has been shown previously in the somatosensory system, even stimuli that are too weak to be consciously detected can influence our perception: Subliminal stimulation impairs perception of near-threshold stimuli and causes a functional deactivation in the somatosensory cortex. In a recent study, we showed that subliminal visual stimuli lead to similar responses, indicated by an increase in alpha-band power as measured with electroencephalography (EEG). In the current study, we investigated whether a behavioral inhibitory mechanism also exists within the visual system. We tested the detection of peripheral visual target stimuli under three different conditions: Target stimuli were presented alone or embedded in a concurrent train of subliminal stimuli either at the same location as the target or in the opposite hemifield. Subliminal stimuli were invisible due to their low contrast, not due to a masking procedure. We demonstrate that target detection was impaired by the subliminal stimuli, but only when they were presented at the same location as the target. This finding indicates that subliminal, low-intensity stimuli induce a similar inhibitory effect in the visual system as has been observed in the somatosensory system. In line with previous reports, we propose that the function underlying this effect is the inhibition of spurious noise by the visual system.	t	\N
25332098	Development and evolution of auditory hindbrain nuclei are two major unsolved issues in hearing research. Recent characterization of transgenic mice identified the rhombomeric origins of mammalian auditory nuclei and unraveled genes involved in their formation. Here, we provide an overview on these data by assembling them into rhombomere-specific gene regulatory networks (GRNs), as they underlie developmental and evolutionary processes. To explore evolutionary mechanisms, we compare the GRNs operating in the mammalian auditory hindbrain with data available from the inner ear and other vertebrate groups. Finally, we propose that the availability of genomic sequences from all major vertebrate taxa and novel genetic techniques for non-model organisms provide an unprecedented opportunity to investigate development and evolution of the auditory hindbrain by comparative molecular approaches. The dissection of the molecular mechanisms leading to auditory structures will also provide an important framework for auditory processing disorders, a clinical problem difficult to tackle so far. These data will, therefore, foster basic and clinical hearing research alike.	t	\N
25344346	It is increasingly recognized that motor routines dynamically shape the processing of sensory inflow (e.g., when hand movements are used to feel a texture or identify an object). In the present research, we captured the shaping of auditory perception by movement in humans by taking advantage of a specific context: music. Participants listened to a repeated rhythmical sequence before and after moving their bodies to this rhythm in a specific meter. We found that the brain responses to the rhythm (as recorded with electroencephalography) after body movement were significantly enhanced at frequencies related to the meter to which the participants had moved. These results provide evidence that body movement can selectively shape the subsequent internal representation of auditory rhythms.	t	\N
25346316	In the United States, falls are the leading cause of accidental deaths in adults aged over 65 years. Epidemiologic studies indicate that there is a correlation between hearing loss and the risk of falling among older people. The vestibular, proprioceptive, and visual systems are known to contribute to postural stability, but the contribution of audition to maintaining balance has not yet been determined. Cross-sectional study to measure postural stability in bilateral hearing-aid users aged over 65 years in aided and unaided conditions. Balance was assessed using the Romberg on foam test and the tandem stance test. Tests were administered in the presence of a point-source broadband white-noise sound (0-4 kHz) source in both unaided and aided conditions in the dark. Subjective measures of balance were made using the Activities-specific Balance Confidence Scale. Performance was significantly better in the aided than the unaided condition (P = 0.005 for both tests). No statistically significant relationship between improvement in balance, and hearing was identified. Participants did not report that they perceived a difference in balance between the two conditions. These results indicate that hearing aids are a novel treatment modality for imbalance in older adults with hearing loss and suggest that wearing hearing aids may offer a significant public-health benefit for avoiding falls in this population.	t	\N
25350757	This study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to assess effects of low-level prenatal lead exposure on auditory recognition memory in 2-month-old infants. Infants were divided into four groups according to cord-blood lead concentration: (1) <2.00 μ g/dL, (2) 2.00-2.99 μ g/dL, (3) 3.0-3.7 μ g/dL, and (4) ≥3.7 μ g/dL. The first group showed the normally expected differences in P2, P750, and late slow wave (LSW) amplitudes elicited by mothers' and strangers' voices. These differences were not observed for one or more ERP components in the other groups. Thus, there was electrophysiological evidence of poorer auditory recognition memory at 2 months with cord-blood lead ≥2.00 μ g/dL.	t	\N
25358027	To evaluate a speech-processing strategy in which the lowest frequency channel is conveyed using an asymmetric pulse shape and "phantom stimulation", where current is injected into one intra-cochlear electrode and where the return current is shared between an intra-cochlear and an extra-cochlear electrode. This strategy is expected to provide more selective excitation of the cochlear apex, compared to a standard strategy where the lowest-frequency channel is conveyed by symmetric pulses in monopolar mode. In both strategies all other channels were conveyed by monopolar stimulation. Within-subjects comparison between the two strategies. Four experiments: (1) discrimination between the strategies, controlling for loudness differences, (2) consonant identification, (3) recognition of lowpass-filtered sentences in quiet, (4) sentence recognition in the presence of a competing speaker. Eight users of the Advanced Bionics CII/Hi-Res 90k cochlear implant. Listeners could easily discriminate between the two strategies but no consistent differences in performance were observed. The proposed method does not improve speech perception, at least in the short term.	t	\N
25358716	Information processing of all acoustic stimuli involves temporal lobe regions referred to as auditory cortices, which receive direct afferents from the auditory thalamus. However, the perception of music (as well as speech or spoken language) is a complex process that also involves secondary and association cortices that conform a large functional network. Using different analytical techniques and stimulation paradigms, several studies have shown that certain areas are particularly sensitive to specific acoustic characteristics inherent to music (e.g., rhythm). This chapter reviews the functional anatomy of the auditory cortices, and highlights specific experiments that suggest the existence of distinct cortical networks for the perception of music and speech.	t	\N
25373970	Otoacoustic emission (OAE) tests of the medial-olivocochlear reflex (MOCR) in humans were assessed for viability as clinical assays. Two reflection-source OAEs [TEOAEs: transient-evoked otoacoustic emissions evoked by a 47 dB sound pressure level (SPL) chirp; and discrete-tone SFOAEs: stimulus-frequency otoacoustic emissions evoked by 40 dB SPL tones, and assessed with a 60 dB SPL suppressor] were compared in 27 normal-hearing adults. The MOCR elicitor was a 60 dB SPL contralateral broadband noise. An estimate of MOCR strength, MOCR%, was defined as the vector difference between OAEs measured with and without the elicitor, normalized by OAE magnitude (without elicitor). An MOCR was reliably detected in most ears. Within subjects, MOCR strength was correlated across frequency bands and across OAE type. The ratio of across-subject variability to within-subject variability ranged from 2 to 15, with wideband TEOAEs and averaged SFOAEs giving the highest ratios. MOCR strength in individual ears was reliably classified into low, normal, and high groups. SFOAEs using 1.5 to 2 kHz tones and TEOAEs in the 0.5 to 2.5 kHz band gave the best statistical results. TEOAEs had more clinical advantages. Both assays could be made faster for clinical applications, such as screening for individual susceptibility to acoustic trauma in a hearing-conservation program.	t	\N
25385771	The ability to perceive a regular beat in music and synchronize to this beat is a widespread human skill. Fundamental to musical behaviour, beat and meter refer to the perception of periodicities while listening to musical rhythms and often involve spontaneous entrainment to move on these periodicities. Here, we present a novel experimental approach inspired by the frequency-tagging approach to understand the perception and production of rhythmic inputs. This approach is illustrated here by recording the human electroencephalogram responses at beat and meter frequencies elicited in various contexts: mental imagery of meter, spontaneous induction of a beat from rhythmic patterns, multisensory integration and sensorimotor synchronization. Collectively, our observations support the view that entrainment and resonance phenomena subtend the processing of musical rhythms in the human brain. More generally, they highlight the potential of this approach to help us understand the link between the phenomenology of musical beat and meter and the bias towards periodicities arising under certain circumstances in the nervous system. Entrainment to music provides a highly valuable framework to explore general entrainment mechanisms as embodied in the human brain.	t	\N
25385777	Physiological rhythms are sensitive to social interactions and could contribute to defining social rhythms. Nevertheless, our knowledge of the implications of breathing in conversational turn exchanges remains limited. In this paper, we addressed the idea that breathing may contribute to timing and coordination between dialogue partners. The relationships between turns and breathing were analysed in unconstrained face-to-face conversations involving female speakers. No overall relationship between breathing and turn-taking rates was observed, as breathing rate was specific to the subjects' activity in dialogue (listening versus taking the turn versus holding the turn). A general inter-personal coordination of breathing over the whole conversation was not evident. However, specific coordinative patterns were observed in shorter time-windows when participants engaged in taking turns. The type of turn-taking had an effect on the respective coordination in breathing. Most of the smooth and interrupted turns were taken just after an inhalation, with specific profiles of alignment to partner breathing. Unsuccessful attempts to take the turn were initiated late in the exhalation phase and with no clear inter-personal coordination. Finally, breathing profiles at turn-taking were different than those at turn-holding. The results support the idea that breathing is actively involved in turn-taking and turn-holding.	t	\N
25401380	Interference between a target and simultaneous maskers occurs both at the cochlear level through energetic masking and more centrally through informational masking (IM). Hence, quantifying the amount of IM requires a strict control of the energetic component. Presenting target and maskers on different sides (i.e., dichotically) reduces energetic masking but provides listeners with important lateralization cues that also drastically reduce IM. The main purpose of this study (Experiment 1) was to evaluate a "switch" manipulation aiming at restoring most of the IM despite dichotic listening. Experiment 2 was designed to investigate the source of the difficulty induced by this switching dichotic condition. In Experiment 1, the authors presented 60 normal-hearing young adults with a detection task in which a regularly repeating target was embedded in a randomly varying background masker. The authors evaluated spatial masking release induced by three different dichotic listening conditions in comparison with a diotic baseline. Dichotic stimuli were presented in either a nonswitching or a switching condition. In the latter case, the presentation sides of dichotic target and maskers alternated several times throughout 10 sec sequences. The impact of the number of switches on IM was investigated parametrically, with both pure and complex tone sequences. In Experiment 2, the authors compared performance of 13 young, normal-hearing listeners in a monotic and dichotic version of the rapidly switching condition, using pure-tone sequences. When target and maskers switched rapidly within sequences, IM was significantly stronger than in nonswitching dichotic sequences and was comparable with the masking effect induced by diotic sequences. Furthermore, Experiment 2 suggests that rapidly switching target and maskers prevent listeners from relying on lateralization cues inherent to the dichotic condition, hence preserving important amounts of IM. This paradigm thus provides an original tool to isolate IM in signal and maskers having overlapping spectra.	t	\N
25412406	Speech comprehension studies have generally focused on the isolation and function of regions with positive blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signals with respect to a resting baseline. Although regions with negative BOLD signals in comparison to a resting baseline have been reported in language-related tasks, their relationship to regions of positive signals is not fully appreciated. Based on the emerging notion that the negative signals may represent an active function in language tasks, the authors test the hypothesis that negative BOLD signals during receptive language are more associated with comprehension than content-free versions of the same stimuli. Regions associated with comprehension of speech were isolated by comparing responses to passive listening to natural speech to two incomprehensible versions of the same speech: one that was digitally time reversed and one that was muffled by removal of high frequencies. The signal polarity was determined by comparing the BOLD signal during each speech condition to the BOLD signal during a resting baseline. As expected, stimulation-induced positive signals relative to resting baseline were observed in the canonical language areas with varying signal amplitudes for each condition. Negative BOLD responses relative to resting baseline were observed primarily in frontoparietal regions and were specific to the natural speech condition. However, the BOLD signal remained indistinguishable from baseline for the unintelligible speech conditions. Variations in connectivity between brain regions with positive and negative signals were also specifically related to the comprehension of natural speech. These observations of anticorrelated signals related to speech comprehension are consistent with emerging models of cooperative roles represented by BOLD signals of opposite polarity.	t	\N
25415467	To determine differences in speech perception outcomes for patients who received a CI422 and a Contour cochlear implant. Retrospective case review. Tertiary referral center. Thirty-two adults who underwent cochlear implantation. Cochlear implantation using a CI422 or Contour device. Bamford-Kowal-Bench (BKB) speech perception scores at 3 and 9 months after activation. The mean BKB scores at 3 months for the CI422 device were 86.0% in quiet and 55.1% in noise. This compares with 86.0% in quiet and 62.3% in noise for the Contour device. At 9 months, the mean BKB scores were 85.9% in quiet and 67.1% in noise for the CI422 and 90.1% in quiet and 77.6% in noise for the Contour device. There was no statistically significant difference (p > 0.05) between speech perception outcomes at 3 or 9 months. This study suggests that CI422 and Contour electrode both improve speech perception outcomes postoperatively, and there does not appear to be any significant difference in outcome between the two types of devices.	t	\N
25415938	Embodied music cognition stresses the role of the human body as mediator for the encoding and decoding of musical expression. In this paper, we set up a low dimensional functional model that accounts for 70% of the variability in the expressive body movement responses to music. With the functional principal component analysis, we modeled individual body movements as a linear combination of a group average and a number of eigenfunctions. The group average and the eigenfunctions are common to all subjects and make up what we call the commonalities. An individual performance is then characterized by a set of scores (the individualities), one score per eigenfunction. The model is based on experimental data which finds high levels of coherence/consistency between participants when grouped according to musical education. This shows an ontogenetic effect. Participants without formal musical education focus on the torso for the expression of basic musical structure (tempo). Musically trained participants decode additional structural elements in the music and focus on body parts having more degrees of freedom (such as the hands). Our results confirm earlier studies that different body parts move differently along with the music.	t	\N
25421408	Individuals lip read themselves more accurately than they lip read others when only the visual speech signal is available (Tye-Murray et al., Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 20, 115-119, 2013). This self-advantage for vision-only speech recognition is consistent with the common-coding hypothesis (Prinz, European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 9, 129-154, 1997), which posits (1) that observing an action activates the same motor plan representation as actually performing that action and (2) that observing one's own actions activates motor plan representations more than the others' actions because of greater congruity between percepts and corresponding motor plans. The present study extends this line of research to audiovisual speech recognition by examining whether there is a self-advantage when the visual signal is added to the auditory signal under poor listening conditions. Participants were assigned to sub-groups for round-robin testing in which each participant was paired with every member of their subgroup, including themselves, serving as both talker and listener/observer. On average, the benefit participants obtained from the visual signal when they were the talker was greater than when the talker was someone else and also was greater than the benefit others obtained from observing as well as listening to them. Moreover, the self-advantage in audiovisual speech recognition was significant after statistically controlling for individual differences in both participants' ability to benefit from a visual speech signal and the extent to which their own visual speech signal benefited others. These findings are consistent with our previous finding of a self-advantage in lip reading and with the hypothesis of a common code for action perception and motor plan representation.	t	\N
25436670	Sound waves emitted by two or more simultaneous sources reach the ear as one complex waveform. Auditory scene analysis involves parsing a complex waveform into separate perceptual representations of the sound sources [Bregman, A. S. Auditory scene analysis: The perceptual organization of sounds. London: MIT Press, 1990]. Harmonicity provides an important cue for auditory scene analysis. Normally, harmonics at integer multiples of a fundamental frequency are perceived as one sound with a pitch corresponding to the fundamental frequency. However, when one harmonic in such a complex, pitch-evoking sound is sufficiently mistuned, that harmonic emerges from the complex tone and is perceived as a separate auditory object. Previous work has shown that the percept of two objects is indexed in both children and adults by the object-related negativity component of the ERP derived from EEG recordings [Alain, C., Arnott, S. T., & Picton, T. W. Bottom-up and top-down influences on auditory scene analysis: Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 27, 1072-1089, 2001]. Here we examine the emergence of object-related responses to an 8% harmonic mistuning in infants between 2 and 12 months of age. Two-month-old infants showed no significant object-related response. However, in 4- to 12-month-old infants, a significant frontally positive component was present, and by 8-12 months, a significant frontocentral object-related negativity was present, similar to that seen in older children and adults. This is in accordance with previous research demonstrating that infants younger than 4 months of age do not integrate harmonic information to perceive pitch when the fundamental is missing [He, C., Hotson, L., & Trainor, L. J. Maturation of cortical mismatch mismatch responses to occasional pitch change in early infancy: Effects of presentation rate and magnitude of change. Neuropsychologia, 47, 218-229, 2009]. The results indicate that the ability to use harmonic information to segregate simultaneous sounds emerges at the cortical level between 2 and 4 months of age.	t	\N
25445239	In this study we validate passive language fMRI protocols designed for clinical application in pediatric epilepsy surgical planning as they do not require overt participation from patients. We introduced a set of quality checks that assess reliability of noninvasive fMRI mappings utilized for clinical purposes. We initially compared two fMRI language mapping paradigms, one active in nature (requiring participation from the patient) and the other passive in nature (requiring no participation from the patient). Group-level analysis in a healthy control cohort demonstrated similar activation of the putative language centers of the brain in the inferior frontal (IFG) and temporoparietal (TPG) regions. Additionally, we showed that passive language fMRI produced more left-lateralized activation in TPG (LI=+0.45) compared to the active task; with similarly robust left-lateralized IFG (LI=+0.24) activations using the passive task. We validated our recommended fMRI mapping protocols in a cohort of 15 pediatric epilepsy patients by direct comparison against the invasive clinical gold-standards. We found that language-specific TPG activation by fMRI agreed to within 9.2mm to subdural localizations by invasive functional mapping in the same patients, and language dominance by fMRI agreed with Wada test results at 80% congruency in TPG and 73% congruency in IFG. Lastly, we tested the recommended passive language fMRI protocols in a cohort of very young patients and confirmed reliable language-specific activation patterns in that challenging cohort. We concluded that language activation maps can be reliably achieved using the passive language fMRI protocols we proposed even in very young (average 7.5 years old) or sedated pediatric epilepsy patients.	t	\N
25449865	Utilizing the high temporal resolution of event-related potentials (ERPs), we examined the effects of temporal reliability of sounds on visual detection. Significantly faster reaction times to visual target stimuli were observed when reliable temporal information was provided by a task-irrelevant auditory stimulus. Three main ERP components related to the effects of auditory temporal reliability were found: the first at 180-240 ms over a wide central area, the second at 300-400 ms over an anterior area, and the third at 300-380 ms over bilateral temporal areas. Our results support the hypothesis that temporal reliability affects visual detection and indicate that auditory facilitation of visual detection is partly due to spread of attention and thus results from implicit temporal linking of auditory and visual information at a relatively late processing stage.	t	\N
25473957	To examine the differences in quality of life for vestibular schwannoma patients undergoing conservative management, gamma knife, and surgery. Vestibular schwannoma patients without a diagnosis of NF2. Vestibular schwannoma treatment or conservative management. Penn Acoustic Neuroma Quality of Life (PANQOL) survey scores (0-100). One hundred eighty-six patients (98 conservative, 49 gamma knife, 39 surgery) were included. Mean patient age (years) of the surgery group (49 ± 14) was significantly younger than both the conservative (58 ± 13) and gamma knife group (59 ± 12) (p < 0.001). Mean follow-up time was 2.6 years.Tumor size (mm) was found to be significantly different between the conservative (8 ± 4.8), gamma knife (18 ± 5.9), and surgery (22 ± 8.3) groups (p < 0.001). Speech recognition threshold and speech discrimination percentage were significantly better for the conservative group compared to the gamma knife or surgery groups (p < 0.001).The hearing domain scores seemed better for the conservative group (62 ± 26) when compared to the surgery group (47 ± 25). The general and total domain scores were similar for all treatment groups, whereas the quality-of-life scores for gamma knife and surgery were similar. Although surgery groups' significantly larger tumors and worse hearing were apparent in specific PANQOL domains, all patients achieved a similar general level of quality of life.	t	\N
25474416	One of the major complaints of people with a single-sided deafness is the inability to localize sound sources. Evidence suggests that subjects with a hearing loss can benefit from the use of a cochlear implant (CI) in sound localization. This study aimed to determine the effect of CI use on localization ability in unilaterally deafened subjects. Sixteen adult subjects with postlingual unilateral deafness, fitted with a CI on the deaf side, were included in this study. The auditory speech sounds evaluation (A§E) localization test was used to determine localization with a CI on (binaural) and a CI off (monaural). The root mean square error was used as a measure of the subject's localization performance. Stratified analyses were performed to test the influence of gender, age of implantation (<55 years and >55 years), and the duration of deafness (<10 years and >10 years) on localization ability. Subjects with a CI on localized significantly better than without a CI. Gender, age, and the duration of deafness had no effect on the localization ability of the subjects. Cochlear implantation is effective in improving localization abilities in subjects with unilateral deafness. The root mean square error dropped significantly with binaural hearing compared to monaural hearing.	t	\N
25477777	For multimodal Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), it is very useful to identify the modalities on which the user is currently processing information. This would enable a system to select complementary output modalities to reduce the user's workload. In this paper, we develop a hybrid Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) which uses Electroencephalography (EEG) and functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to discriminate and detect visual and auditory stimulus processing. We describe the experimental setup we used for collection of our data corpus with 12 subjects. On this data, we performed cross-validation evaluation, of which we report accuracy for different classification conditions. The results show that the subject-dependent systems achieved a classification accuracy of 97.8% for discriminating visual and auditory perception processes from each other and a classification accuracy of up to 94.8% for detecting modality-specific processes independently of other cognitive activity. The same classification conditions could also be discriminated in a subject-independent fashion with accuracy of up to 94.6 and 86.7%, respectively. We also look at the contributions of the two signal types and show that the fusion of classifiers using different features significantly increases accuracy.	t	\N
25480056	Mounting evidence suggests that listeners perceptually compensate for the adverse effects of reverberation in rooms when listening to speech monaurally. However, it is not clear whether the underlying perceptual mechanism would be at all effective in the high levels of stimulus uncertainty that are present in everyday listening. Three experiments investigated monaural compensation with a consonant identification task in which listeners heard different speech on each trial. Consonant confusions frequently arose when a greater degree of reverberation was added to a test-word than to its surrounding context, but compensation became apparent in conditions where the context reverberation was increased to match that of the test-word; here, the confusions were largely resolved. A second experiment shows that information from the test-word itself can also effect compensation. Finally, the time course of compensation was examined by applying reverberation to a portion of the preceding context; consonant identification improves as this portion increases in duration. These findings indicate a monaural compensation mechanism that is likely to be effective in everyday listening, allowing listeners to recalibrate as their reverberant environment changes.	t	\N
25486827	Temporal summation in masking has been measured simultaneously with a resolution of the masker's spectral structure to find psychoacoustic characteristics for estimation of speech intelligibility, to detect the manifestation of peripheral processes in auditory perception in humans. For this, detection thresholds of a test signal with different durations were determined. The test signal was pulse with a Gaussian envelope and a sine-wave carrier. It was presented simultaneously with a noise masker. The minimal pulse duration was inversely proportional to width of the critical bands of hearing, formed at the pulse's center frequency. The maximal pulse duration always was 50 ms. We adopted pulses with duration of 1-10 ms as a model of consonants and pulses with duration of 20-50 ms as a model of vowels. The band pass noises with rippled structure of the amplitude spectrum of two types were used as maskers. The central frequency of one masker coincided with a spectral hump and the central frequency of the other--with the spectral failure. If the pulses and maskers central frequencies were equal, the first and second maskers were called on- and - off- maskers. If the auditory system could discriminate the rippled structure of the masker's spectra, the difference in the detection thresholds of the pulses, which was presented with each of the maskers, was not equal to zero. The difference in the detection thresholds allows us to estimate resolution of the masker's spectra, i.e. frequency selectivity. Changes in the pulse's and masker's central frequencies allow us to evaluate the hearing ability in certain frequency domain. Changes in the masker's levels allow us to find influence of nonlinear dynamic properties of cochlea on temporal summation and frequency selectivity. This paper presents the results of measurements of temporal summation in masking, obtained in two frequency domains 2 and 4 kHz, in 4 subjects with normal hearing and in 1 subject with age-related hearing loss, who complained about deterioration of speech intelligibility. It has been found an increasing temporal summation and an improving the resolution of the rippled structure of the amplitude spectra for the maskers with average levels. We believe, the reasons could be found in the properties of the peripheral pulse coding, such as (1) the stabilization zones of excitation of the basilar.membrane, the range of the characteristic frequencies and the number of excited auditory nerve fibers and the number ofspikes, generated by fibers, due to the nonlinearity of the dynamic properties of the cochlea, (2) increasing synchronization of a reaction of the excited fibers and shortening in time of this reaction, due to thefiber's refractory properties.	t	\N
25514452	Temporal processing ability has been linked to speech understanding ability and older adults often complain of difficulty understanding speech in difficult listening situations. Temporal processing can be evaluated using gap detection procedures. There is some research showing that gap detection can be evaluated using an electrophysiological procedure. However, there is currently no research establishing gap detection threshold using the N1-P2 response. The purposes of the current study were to 1) determine gap detection thresholds in younger and older normal-hearing adults using an electrophysiological measure, 2) compare the electrophysiological gap detection threshold and behavioral gap detection threshold within each group, and 3) investigate the effect of age on each gap detection measure. This study utilized an older adult group and younger adult group to compare performance on an electrophysiological and behavioral gap detection procedure. The subjects in this study were 11 younger, normal-hearing adults (mean = 22 yrs) and 11 older, normal-hearing adults (mean = 64.36 yrs). All subjects completed an adaptive behavioral gap detection procedure in order to determine their behavioral gap detection threshold (BGDT). Subjects also completed an electrophysiologic gap detection procedure to determine their electrophysiologic gap detection threshold (EGDT). Older adults demonstrated significantly larger gap detection thresholds than the younger adults. However, EGDT and BGDT were not significantly different in either group. The mean difference between EGDT and BGDT for all subjects was 0.43 msec. Older adults show poorer gap detection ability when compared to younger adults. However, this study shows that gap detection thresholds can be measured using evoked potential recordings and yield results similar to a behavioral measure.	t	\N
25517630	Auditory processing disorder patients may have deficits in auditory temporal resolution. This study explored: (1) the ear specific norms for young adults using the adaptive tests of temporal resolution (ATTR); (2) the reliability of ATTR using two different modes of stimuli presentation; and (3) the concurrent validity of ATTR with reference to the gaps-in-noise (GIN) test. GIN and ATTR were administered through a standard audiometer and headphones. As ATTR can also be completed using a computer with commercially available headphones, thresholds from these two variants were compared. Thirty normal-hearing young adults were recruited. The mean ATTR gap detection thresholds (GDTs) derived under audiometer administration were 4.60 ms (SD 1.49) and 4.97 ms (SD 1.98) for the left and right ear, respectively. The approximated threshold (A. th.), an equivalent measure to the GDT in the GIN, mean values were 5.37 ms (SD 0.98) and 5.33 ms (SD 1.07) for left and right ears, respectively. No significant threshold difference was found between the ATTR variants. A positive, moderate correlation was found, and Bland-Altman plot analysis revealed good agreement, between GDT and A.th. ATTR and GIN results were moderately associated. Moreover, the ATTR was found to have high test-retest reliability and high specificity for the current participants.	t	\N
25521593	A new approach for the segregation of monaural sound mixtures is presented based on the principle of temporal coherence and using auditory cortical representations. Temporal coherence is the notion that perceived sources emit coherently modulated features that evoke highly-coincident neural response patterns. By clustering the feature channels with coincident responses and reconstructing their input, one may segregate the underlying source from the simultaneously interfering signals that are uncorrelated with it. The proposed algorithm requires no prior information or training on the sources. It can, however, gracefully incorporate cognitive functions and influences such as memories of a target source or attention to a specific set of its attributes so as to segregate it from its background. Aside from its unusual structure and computational innovations, the proposed model provides testable hypotheses of the physiological mechanisms of this ubiquitous and remarkable perceptual ability, and of its psychophysical manifestations in navigating complex sensory environments.	t	\N
25534365	The temporal masking curve (TMC) method is a behavioral technique for inferring human cochlear compression. The method relies on the assumptions that in the absence of compression, forward-masking recovery is independent of masker level and probe frequency. The present study aimed at testing the validity of these assumptions. Masking recovery was investigated for eight listeners with sensorineural hearing loss carefully selected to have absent or nearly absent distortion product otoacoustic emissions. It is assumed that for these listeners basilar membrane responses are linear, hence that masking recovery is independent of basilar membrane compression. TMCs for probe frequencies of 0.5, 1, 2, 4, and 6 kHz were available for these listeners from a previous study. The dataset included TMCs for masker frequencies equal to the probe frequencies plus reference TMCs measured using a high-frequency probe and a low, off-frequency masker. All of the TMCs were fitted using linear regression, and the resulting slope and intercept values were taken as indicative of masking recovery and masker level, respectively. Results for on-frequency TMCs suggest that forward-masking recovery is generally independent of probe frequency and of masker level and hence that it would be reasonable to use a reference TMC for a high-frequency probe to infer cochlear compression at lower frequencies. Results further show, however, that reference TMCs were sometimes shallower than corresponding on-frequency TMCs for identical probe frequencies, hence that compression could be overestimated in these cases. We discuss possible reasons for this result and the conditions when it might occur.	t	\N
25536846	We explored the functional units of speech segmentation in Japanese using dichotic presentation and a detection task requiring no intentional sublexical analysis. Indeed, illusory perception of a target word might result from preattentive migration of phonemes, morae, or syllables from one ear to the other. In Experiment I, Japanese listeners detected targets presented in hiragana and/or kanji. Phoneme migrations did occur, suggesting that orthography-independent sublexical constituents play some role in segmentation. However, syllable and especially mora migrations were more numerous. This pattern of results was not observed in French speakers (Experiment 2), suggesting that it reflects native segmentation in Japanese. To control for the intervention of kanji representations (many words are written in kanji, and one kanji often corresponds to one syllable), in Experiment 3, Japanese listeners were presented with target loanwords that can be written only in katakana. Again, phoneme migrations occurred, while the first mora and syllable led to similar rates of illusory percepts. No migration occurred for the second, "special" mora (/J/ or/N/), probably because this constitutes the latter part of a heavy syllable. Overall, these findings suggest that multiple units, such as morae, syllables, and even phonemes, function independently of orthographic knowledge in Japanese preattentive speech segmentation.	t	\N
25546030	A study was conducted to determine whether modifications to input compression and input frequency response characteristics can improve music-listening satisfaction in cochlear implant users. Experiment 1 compared three pre-processed versions of music and speech stimuli in a laboratory setting: original, compressed, and flattened frequency response. Music excerpts comprised three music genres (classical, country, and jazz), and a running speech excerpt was compared. Experiment 2 implemented a flattened input frequency response in the speech processor program. In a take-home trial, participants compared unaltered and flattened frequency responses. Ten and twelve adult Nucleus Freedom cochlear implant users participated in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively. Experiment 1 revealed a significant preference for music stimuli with a flattened frequency response compared to both original and compressed stimuli, whereas there was a significant preference for the original (rising) frequency response for speech stimuli. Experiment 2 revealed no significant mean preference for the flattened frequency response, with 9 of 11 subjects preferring the rising frequency response. Input compression did not alter music enjoyment. Comparison of the two experiments indicated that individual frequency response preferences may depend on the genre or familiarity, and particularly whether the music contained lyrics.	t	\N
25556198	The auditory steady-state response, which measures the ability of neural ensembles to entrain to rhythmic auditory stimuli, has been used in human electroencephalogram studies to assess sensory processing and electrical oscillatory deficits. Patients with schizophrenia show a deficit in auditory steady-state response at 40 Hz, and therefore this may be a useful biomarker to study this disorder. We used auditory steady-state response recordings from the primary auditory cortex, hippocampus, and vertex electroencephalogram sites in awake behaving rats to determine whether pharmacological impairment of excitatory or inhibitory neurotransmission mimics auditory steady-state response abnormalities in schizophrenia. We found the most robust response to auditory stimuli in the primary auditory cortex, in line with previous studies suggesting this region is the primary generator of the auditory steady-state response in humans. Acute MK-801 (0.1mg/kg i.p.) increased primary auditory cortex intertrial coherence during auditory steady-state response at 20 and 40 Hz. Chronic MK-801 (21-day exposure at this daily dose) had no significant effect on 40-Hz auditory steady-state response. Furthermore, we found no effect of acute or chronic picrotoxin (a GABA-A antagonist) on intertrial coherence. Our data indicate that acute N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor antagonism increases synchronous activity in the primary auditory cortex in a frequency-specific manner, supporting the widely held view that acute N-methyl-d-aspartate antagonism augments gamma oscillations. Thus, rodent auditory steady-state response could be a valuable method to study the cortical ability to support synchronous activity at specific frequencies.	t	\N
25561538	Some of the psychological abilities that underlie human speech are shared with other species. One hallmark of speech is that linguistic context affects both how speech sounds are categorized into phonemes, and how different versions of phonemes are produced. We here confirm earlier findings that swamp sparrows categorically perceive the notes that constitute their learned songs and then investigate how categorical boundaries differ according to context. We clustered notes according to their acoustic structure, and found statistical evidence for clustering into 10 population-wide note types. Examining how three related types were perceived, we found, in both discrimination and labeling tests, that an "intermediate" note type is categorized with a "short" type when it occurs at the beginning of a song syllable, but with a "long" type at the end of a syllable. In sum, three produced note-type clusters appear to be underlain by two perceived categories. Thus, in birdsong, as in human speech, categorical perception is context-dependent, and as is the case for human phonology, there is a complex relationship between underlying categorical representations and surface forms. Our results therefore suggest that complex phonology can evolve even in the absence of rich linguistic components, like syntax and semantics.	t	\N
25565661	The objective of this study was to examine the hypothesis that between-channel gap detection, which includes between-frequency and between-ear gap detection, and perception of stop consonants, which is mediated by the length of voice-onset time (VOT), share common mechanisms, namely relative-timing operation in monitoring separate perceptual channels. The authors measured gap detection thresholds and identification functions of /ba/ and /pa/ along VOT in 49 native young adult Japanese listeners. There were three gap detection tasks. In the between-frequency task, the leading and trailing markers differed in terms of center frequency (Fc). The leading marker was a broadband noise of 10 to 20,000 Hz. The trailing marker was a 0.5-octave band-passed noise of 1000-, 2000-, 4000-, or 8000-Hz Fc. In the between-ear task, the two markers were spectrally identical but presented to separate ears. In the within-frequency task, the two spectrally identical markers were presented to the same ear. The /ba/-/pa/ identification functions were obtained in a task in which the listeners were presented synthesized speech stimuli of varying VOTs from 10 to 46 msec and asked to identify them as /ba/ or /pa/. The between-ear gap thresholds were significantly positively correlated with the between-frequency gap thresholds (except those obtained with the trailing marker of 4000-Hz Fc). The between-ear gap thresholds were not significantly correlated with the within-frequency gap thresholds, which were significantly correlated with all the between-frequency gap thresholds. The VOT boundaries and slopes of /ba/-/pa/ identification functions were not significantly correlated with any of these gap thresholds. There was a close relation between the between-ear and between-frequency gap detection, supporting the view that these two types of gap detection share common mechanisms of between-channel gap detection. However, there was no evidence for a relation between the perception of stop consonants and the between-frequency/ear gap detection in native Japanese speakers.	t	\N
25571013	Binaural beat (BB) illusions are experienced as continuous central pulsations when two sounds with slightly different frequencies are delivered to each ear. It has been shown that steady-state auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) to BBs can be captured and investigated. The authors recently developed a new method of evoking transient AEPs to binaural beats using frequency modulated stimuli. This methodology was able to create single BBs in predetermined intervals with varying carrier frequencies. This study examines the effects of the BB duration and the frequency modulating component of the stimulus on the binaural beats and their evoked potentials. Normal hearing subjects were tested with a set of four durations (25, 50, 100, and 200 ms) with two stimulation configurations, binaural dichotic (binaural beats) and diotic (frequency modulation). The results obtained from the study showed that out of the given durations, the 100 ms beat, was capable of evoking the largest amplitude responses. The frequency modulation effect showed a decrease in peak amplitudes with increasing beat duration until their complete disappearance at 200 ms. Even though, at 200 ms, the frequency modulation effects were not present, the binaural beats were still perceived and captured as evoked potentials.	t	\N
25571287	The pathologic auditory sensation in decompensated tinnitus patients is accompanied by the inability to habituate even temporary to this sound. This disability might originate from simultaneous activation of brain areas for the appraisal of the stimulus valence as, e.g., the limbic system. This coactivation of limbic areas is likely to modulate the degree and persistence of selective attention assigned to the tinnitus stream, which in turn could also explain interindividual differences in tinnitus loudness perception. Preliminary studies demonstrate that the amount of allocated attention and the habituation deficit can be mapped to changes in auditory late evoked responses (ALRs). Utilizing a numerical model for the simulation of ALRs we were able to predict a general habituation behavior in two patient groups with different degrees of tinnitus severity. Evaluating the instantaneous phase of simulated and measured ALRs by its von Mises concentration parameter, we verify a habituation deficit relative to the degree of decompensation and thus provide additional support for our neurofunctional model of limbic influences on neural processing of sensory information.	t	\N
25577901	People with one eye show altered sensory processing. Such changes might reflect a central reweighting of sensory information that might impact on how multisensory cues are integrated. We assessed whether people who lost an eye early in life differ from controls with respect to audiovisual integration. In order to quantify the relative weightings assigned to each sensory system, participants were asked to spatially localize audiovisual events that have been previously shown to be optimally combined and perceptually fused from the point of view of location in a normal population, where the auditory and visual components were spatially disparate. There was no difference in the variability of localizing unimodal visual and auditory targets by people with one eye compared to controls. People with one eye did however, demonstrate slower reaction times to localize visual stimuli compared to auditory stimuli and were slower than binocular and eye-patched control groups. When localizing bimodal targets, the weightings assigned to each sensory modality in both people with one eye and controls were predictable from their unimodal performance, in accordance with Maximum Likelihood Estimation and the time it took all three groups to localize the bimodal targets was faster than for vision alone. Regardless of demonstrating a longer response time to visual stimuli, people with one eye appear to integrate the auditory and visual components of multisensory events optimally when determining spatial location.	t	\N
25597464	There is a paucity of published studies examining how children with hearing loss understand speech over the telephone. Previous studies on adults with hearing aids have suggested that adults with bilateral hearing aids experience significant difficulty recognizing speech on the telephone when listening with one ear, but the provision of telephone input to both ears substantially improved speech understanding. The objectives of this study were to measure speech recognition in quiet and in noise for a group of older children with hearing loss over the telephone and to evaluate the effects of binaural hearing (e.g., DuoPhone) on speech recognition over the telephone. A cross-sectional, repeated-measures design was used in this study. A total of 14 children, ages 6-14 yr, participated in the study. Participants were obtained using convenience sampling from a nonprofit clinic population. Speech recognition in quiet and in noise with binaural versus monaural telephone input was compared in pediatric participants. Monosyllabic word recognition was assessed in quiet and classroom noise set at 50 dBA in conditions with monaural and binaural (DuoPhone) telephone input. The children's speech recognition in quiet and in noise was significantly better with binaural telephone input relative to monaural telephone input. To obtain optimal performance on the telephone, the following considerations may apply: (1) use of amplification with binaural streaming capabilities (e.g., DuoPhone), (2) counseling of family and children on how to best use the telephone, (3) provision of telecoil with microphone attenuation for improved signal-to-noise ratio, and (4) use of probe tube measures to verify the appropriateness of the telephone programs.	t	\N
25597465	In order to differentiate between a conductive hearing loss (CHL) and a sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) in the hearing-impaired individual, we compared thresholds to air conduction (AC) and bone conduction (BC) auditory stimulation. The presence of a gap between these thresholds (an air-bone gap) is taken as a sign of a CHL, whereas similar threshold elevations reflect an SNHL. This is based on the assumption that BC stimulation directly excites the inner ear, bypassing the middle ear. However, several of the classic mechanisms of BC stimulation such as ossicular chain inertia and the occlusion effect involve middle ear structures. An additional mode of auditory stimulation, called soft tissue conduction (STC; also called nonosseous BC) has been demonstrated, in which the clinical bone vibrator elicits hearing when it is applied to soft tissue sites on the head, neck, and thorax. The purpose of this study was to assess the relative contributions of threshold determinations to stimulation by STC, in addition to AC and osseous BC, to the differential diagnosis between a CHL and an SNHL. Baseline auditory thresholds were determined in normal participants to AC (supra-aural earphones), BC (B71 bone vibrator at the mastoid, with 5 N application force), and STC (B71 bone vibrator) to the submental area and to the submandibular triangle with 5 N application force) stimulation in response to 0.5, 1.0, 2.0, and 4.0 kHz tones. A CHL was then simulated in the participants by means of an ear plug. Separately, an SNHL was simulated in these participants with 30 dB effective masking. STUDY SAMPLE consisted of 10 normal-hearing participants (4 males; 6 females, aged 20-30 yr). AC, BC, and STC thresholds were determined in the initial normal state and in the presence of each of the simulations. The earplug-induced CHL simulation led to a mean AC threshold elevation of 21-37 dB (depending on frequency), but not of BC and STC thresholds. The masking-induced SNHL led to a mean elevation of AC, BC, and STC thresholds (23-36 dB, depending on frequency). In each type of simulation, the BC threshold shift was similar to that of the STC threshold shift. These results, which show a similar threshold shift for STC and for BC as a result of these simulations, together with additional clinical and laboratory findings, provide evidence that BC thresholds likely represent the threshold of the nonosseous BC (STC) component of multicomponent BC at the BC stimulation site, and thereby succeed in clinical practice to contribute to the differential diagnosis. This also provides evidence that STC (nonosseous BC) stimulation at low intensities probably does not involve components of the middle ear, represents true cochlear function, and therefore can also contribute to a differential diagnosis (e.g., in situations where the clinical bone vibrator cannot be applied to the mastoid or forehead with a 5 N force, such as in severe skull fracture).	t	\N
25605693	Tetramethylpyrazine has been suggested to have a therapeutic effect on impaired hearing that is induced by aminoglycoside antibiotics. However, its effectiveness on streptomycin ototoxicity and its cellular mechanisms are relatively unknown. Here we investigate the protective effect of tetramethylpyrazine on streptomycin-induced ototoxicity in guinea pig cochlea. Prospective randomized laboratory study. Hearing Research Laboratory of China Medical University. Adult guinea pigs were randomized to 4 groups. Hearing sensitivity of guinea pigs was tested by auditory brainstem response measurements before streptomycin exposure and again 10 days later. The cochlear tissues were prepared for electron microscopy and immunohistochemical staining of heat shock protein 70 (HSP70). The effect of tetramethylpyrazine on streptomycin-induced activation of caspase-3 was evaluated by Western blotting. Co-therapy with tetramethylpyrazine reduced a profound streptomycin-induced auditory threshold shift compared with streptomycin treatment alone (P = .0002 or P = .00008). Tetramethylpyrazine also attenuated the structural disruption in streptomycin-treated outer hair cells and marginal cells of vascular stria by transmission electronic microscopy and scanning electronic microscopy, respectively. Moreover, tetramethylpyrazine decreased the streptomycin-stimulated expressions of HSP70 and caspase-3. The correlation analysis demonstrated that HSP70 expression had a positive correlation with auditory brainstem response thresholds (|R| = 0.6-0.9, P = .0073 or P = .0169). Our data suggest that the protective effect of tetramethylpyrazine on hearing function is associated with the reduction of stress response and inhibition of apoptosis. Tetramethylpyrazine may have therapeutic potential for patients with ototoxicity diseases.	t	\N
25611857	This study reviewed whether advanced age should be a consideration when revision cochlear implantation is warranted. To examine whether age at revision cochlear implantation is related to postrevision speech perception performance. A retrospective analysis was performed in an academic tertiary care center. Participants included 14 younger adults (<65 years) and 15 older adults (≥65 years) who underwent revision cochlear implantation. Revision cochlear implantation. Speech perception performance, as measured with consonant-nucleus-consonant [CNC] words in quiet, at the best prerevision interval as well as the 3- and 6-month postrevision intervals were compared between the 2 cohorts. The CNC word test consists of 10 lists of 50 phonemically balanced monosyllabic words, scored with a range of 0% to 100% correct. Both cohorts experienced a restoration in speech perception scores after revision cochlear implantation compared with their best performance before the revision (mean [SD] CNC word test scores for the younger cohort: 43.9% [25.6%] before revision and 47.7% [21.3%] at 3 months and 47.6% [19.8%] at 6 months after revision; for the older cohort: 36.3% [19.1%] before revision and 35.3% [17.2%] at 3 months and 39.9% [16.3%] at 6 months after revision; F₂,₅₄= 0.93; P = .40). There was no interaction between age at revision surgery and speech perception performance at each assessment interval (F₂,₅₄= 0.51; P = .60). In this study, age at revision cochlear implantation was not related to postrevision speech perception performance. Advanced age should not be considered a contraindication to revision cochlear implantation.	t	\N
25613931	To study electrical stimulation, auditory functionality, and language development in patients with inner ear malformations involving the anterior labyrinth who underwent cochlear implantation. Retrospective case review. Reference hospital for cochlear implantation. Review of 14 cases of severe hearing loss with major (common cavity deformity and cochlear hypoplasia) or minor (e.g., incomplete partition and basal turn aplasia) malformations. After cochlear implantation, data were gathered on the threshold (THR) and maximum comfort level (MCL) of the electrical stimulation and the number of functioning electrodes. Auditory responses to speech (EARS protocol) subtests were used to evaluate auditory functionality and language acquisition at 6, 12, and 24 months post-implantation. Tests used were: LIP profile, MTP (3, 6 and 12 words), OLD (open set test) and CLD (close set test). Results were compared with findings in a control group of 28 cochlear implantation patients without these malformations and with congenital hearing loss. The mean THR was 11.02μC in patients with malformations versus 3.5μC in those without, a significant difference. The THR also significantly differed between groups with major and minor malformations. Fewer functioning electrodes were used in patients with malformations. Auditory functionality scores were best in controls than in patients with malformations, who scored ≤50%, finding the lowest scores in those with major malformations. Patients with inner ear malformations undergoing cochlear implantation require greater stimuli to obtain an auditory response and have worse auditory functionality outcomes; these differences are greater in those with major versus minor malformations Nevertheless, cochlear implantation appears to be beneficial for all patients with these malformations to a greater or lesser extent.	t	\N
25617593	We examined 4- and 6-month-old infants' sensitivity to the perceptual association between pitch and object size. Crossmodal correspondence effects were observed in 6-month-old infants but not in younger infants, suggesting that experience and/or further maturation is needed to fully develop this crossmodal association.	t	\N
25618049	An acoustic survey of secondary schools in England has been undertaken. Room acoustic parameters and background noise levels were measured in 185 unoccupied spaces in 13 schools to provide information on the typical acoustic environment of secondary schools. The unoccupied acoustic and noise data were correlated with various physical characteristics of the spaces. Room height and the amount of glazing were related to the unoccupied reverberation time and therefore need to be controlled to reduce reverberation to suitable levels for teaching and learning. Further analysis of the unoccupied data showed that the introduction of legislation relating to school acoustics in England and Wales in 2003 approximately doubled the number of school spaces complying with current standards. Noise levels were also measured during 274 lessons to examine typical levels generated during teaching activities in secondary schools and to investigate the influence of acoustic design on working noise levels in the classroom. Comparison of unoccupied and occupied data showed that unoccupied acoustic conditions affect the noise levels occurring during lessons. They were also related to the time spent in disruption to the lessons (e.g., students talking or shouting) and so may also have an impact upon student behavior in the classroom.	t	\N
25618071	Listeners can use pitch changes in speech to identify talkers. Individuals exhibit large variability in sensitivity to pitch and in accuracy perceiving talker identity. In particular, people who have musical training or long-term tone language use are found to have enhanced pitch perception. In the present study, the influence of pitch experience on talker identification was investigated as listeners identified talkers in native language as well as non-native languages. Experiment 1 was designed to explore the influence of pitch experience on talker identification in two groups of individuals with potential advantages for pitch processing: musicians and tone language speakers. Experiment 2 further investigated individual differences in pitch processing and the contribution to talker identification by testing a mediation model. Cumulatively, the results suggested that (a) musical training confers an advantage for talker identification, supporting a shared resources hypothesis regarding music and language and (b) linguistic use of lexical tones also increases accuracy in hearing talker identity. Importantly, these two types of hearing experience enhance talker identification by sharpening pitch perception skills in a domain-general manner.	t	\N
25618091	This study reports a finding about vocal expressions of emotion in Mandarin Chinese. Production and perception experiments used the same tone and mixed tone sequences to test whether pitch variation is restricted due to the presence of lexical tones. Results showed that the restriction of pitch variation occurred in all high level tone sequences (tone 1 group) with the expression of happiness but did not happen for other dynamic tone groups. However, perception analysis revealed that all the emotions in every tone group received high identification rates; this indicates that listeners used other cues for encoding happiness in the tone 1 group. This study demonstrates that the restriction of pitch variation does not affect the perception of vocal emotions.	t	\N
25618101	Speech perception studies generally focus on the acoustic information present in the frequency regions below 6 kHz. Recent evidence suggests that there is perceptually relevant information in the higher frequencies, including information affecting speech intelligibility. This experiment examined whether listeners are able to accurately identify a subset of vowels and consonants in CV-context when only high-frequency (above 5 kHz) acoustic information is available (through high-pass filtering and masking of lower frequency energy). The findings reveal that listeners are capable of extracting information from these higher frequency regions to accurately identify certain consonants and vowels.	t	\N
25628152	The aim of the present study was to investigate whether the saliency effect for word beginnings reported in children with dyslexia (Marshall & Van der Lely, 2009) can be found also in typically developing children. Thirty-four typically developing Italian children aged 8-10 years completed two specifically designed tasks: a production task and a perception task. Both tasks used nonwords containing clusters consisting of plosive plus liquid (e.g. pl). Clusters could be either in a stressed or in an unstressed syllable and could be either in initial position (first syllable) or in medial position (second syllable). In the production task, children were asked to repeat the nonwords. In the perception task, the children were asked to discriminate between two nonwords differing in one phoneme belonging to a cluster by reporting whether two repetitions were the same or different. Results from the production task showed that children are more accurate in repeating stressed than unstressed syllables, but there was no difference with respect to position of the cluster. Results from the perception task showed that children performed more accurately when discriminating word initial contrasts than when discriminating word medial contrasts, especially if the cluster was unstressed. Implications of this finding for clinical assessments are discussed.	t	\N
25630393	The objective of this study was to test if stimulating multiple electrodes can improve temporal pitch ranking performance at low and high stimulation rates. Temporal pitch cues are usually based on modifying the stimulation rate of the implant and thereby provide a continuum of pitches on a single electrode up to approximately 300 Hz. Ten cochlear implant subjects were asked to pitch rank stimuli presented with direct electrical stimulation. The pulses were applied on one, three, six, or eleven electrodes. In one of the conditions the current amplitude of each pulse was randomly varied between 0 and 100%. Their frequency ranged from 100 up to 500 pps. Listeners showed the previously reported performance pattern in most conditions with very good performance at the lowest standard rates and deteriorating performance to near chance level at the highest rate tested. Performance with eleven electrodes was significantly better than performance with one electrode at 500 pps. Stimulating on multiple electrodes can improve temporal pitch perception.	t	\N
25634776	To compare some perceptual and acoustic characteristics of the voices of children who use the advanced combination encoder (ACE) or fine structure processing (FSP) speech coding strategies, and to investigate whether these characteristics differ from children with normal hearing. Acoustic analysis of the sustained vowel /a/ was performed using the multi-dimensional voice program (MDVP). Analyses of sequential and spontaneous speech were performed using the real time pitch. Perceptual analyses of these samples were performed using visual-analogic scales of pre-selected parameters. Seventy-six children from three years to five years and 11 months of age participated. Twenty-eight were users of ACE, 23 were users of FSP, and 25 were children with normal hearing. Although both groups with CI presented with some deviated vocal features, the users of ACE presented with voice quality more like children with normal hearing than the users of FSP. Sound processing of ACE appeared to provide better conditions for auditory monitoring of the voice, and consequently, for better control of the voice production. However, these findings need to be further investigated due to the lack of comparative studies published to understand exactly which attributes of sound processing are responsible for differences in performance.	t	\N
25636271	The major purpose of this study was to explore the changes in the local/global gamma-band neural synchronies during target/non-target processing due to task difficulty under an auditory three-stimulus oddball paradigm. Multichannel event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from fifteen healthy participants during the oddball task. In addition to the conventional ERP analysis, we investigated the modulations in gamma-band activity (GBA) and inter-regional gamma-band phase synchrony (GBPS) for infrequent target and non-target processing due to task difficulty. The most notable finding was that the difficulty-related changes in inter-regional GBPS (33-35 Hz) at P300 epoch (350-600 ms) completely differed for target and non-target processing. As task difficulty increased, the GBPS significantly reduced for target processing but increased for non-target processing. This result contrasts with the local neural synchrony in gamma-bands, which was not affected by task difficulty. Another major finding was that the spatial patterns of functional connectivity were dissociated for target and non-target processing with regard to the difficult task. The spatial pattern for target processing was compatible with the top-down attention network, whereas that for the non-target corresponded to the bottom-up attention network. Overall, we found that the inter-regional gamma-band neural synchronies during target/non-target processing change significantly with task difficulty and that this change is dissociated between target and non-target processing. Our results indicate that large-scale neural synchrony is more relevant for the difference in information processing between target and non-target stimuli.	t	\N
25638938	When one hears footsteps in the hall, one is able to instantly recognise it as a person: this is an everyday example of auditory biological motion perception. Despite the familiarity of this experience, research into this phenomenon is in its infancy compared with visual biological motion perception. Here, two experiments explored sensitivity to, and recognition of, auditory stimuli of biological and nonbiological origin. We hypothesised that the cadence of a walker gives rise to a temporal pattern of impact sounds that facilitates the recognition of human motion from auditory stimuli alone. First a series of detection tasks compared sensitivity with three carefully matched impact sounds: footsteps, a ball bouncing, and drumbeats. Unexpectedly, participants were no more sensitive to footsteps than to impact sounds of nonbiological origin. In the second experiment participants made discriminations between pairs of the same stimuli, in a series of recognition tasks in which the temporal pattern of impact sounds was manipulated to be either that of a walker or the pattern more typical of the source event (a ball bouncing or a drumbeat). Under these conditions, there was evidence that both temporal and nontemporal cues were important in recognising theses stimuli. It is proposed that the interval between footsteps, which reflects a walker's cadence, is a cue for the recognition of the sounds of a human walking.	t	\N
25646513	Neural overlap in processing music and speech, as measured by the co-activation of brain regions in neuroimaging studies, may suggest that parts of the neural circuitries established for language may have been recycled during evolution for musicality, or vice versa that musicality served as a springboard for language emergence. Such a perspective has important implications for several topics of general interest besides evolutionary origins. For instance, neural overlap is an important premise for the possibility of music training to influence language acquisition and literacy. However, neural overlap in processing music and speech does not entail sharing neural circuitries. Neural separability between music and speech may occur in overlapping brain regions. In this paper, we review the evidence and outline the issues faced in interpreting such neural data, and argue that converging evidence from several methodologies is needed before neural overlap is taken as evidence of sharing.	t	\N
25653354	Perceptual phase entrainment improves speech intelligibility by phase-locking the brain's high-excitability and low-excitability phases to relevant or irrelevant events in the speech input. However, it remains unclear whether phase entrainment to speech can be explained by a passive "following" of rhythmic changes in sound amplitude and spectral content or whether entrainment entails an active tracking of higher-level cues: in everyday speech, rhythmic fluctuations in low-level and high-level features always covary. Here, we resolve this issue by constructing novel speech/noise stimuli with intelligible speech but without systematic changes in sound amplitude and spectral content. The probability of detecting a tone pip, presented to human listeners at random moments during our speech/noise stimuli, was significantly modulated by the rhythmic changes in high-level information. Thus, perception can entrain to the speech rhythm even without concurrent fluctuations in sound amplitude or spectral content. Strikingly, the actual entrainment phase depended on the tone-pip frequency, with tone pips within and beyond the principal frequency range of the speech sound modulated in opposite fashion. This result suggests that only those neural populations processing the actually presented frequencies are set to their high-excitability phase, whereas other populations are entrained to the opposite, low-excitability phase. Furthermore, we show that the perceptual entrainment is strongly reduced when speech intelligibility is abolished by presenting speech/noise stimuli in reverse, indicating that linguistic information plays an important role for the observed perceptual entrainment.	t	\N
25656953	This study investigated the sensitivity of 9-month-old infants to the alignment between prosodic and gesture prominences in pointing-speech combinations. Results revealed that the perception of prominence is multimodal and that infants are aware of the timing of gesture-speech combinations well before they can produce them.	t	\N
25665752	This study compared the timing of appearance of three components of age-related hearing loss that determine the pattern and severity of presbycusis: the functional and structural pathologies of sensory cells and neurons and changes in gap detection (GD), the latter as an indicator of auditory temporal processing. Using UM-HET4 mice, genetically heterogeneous mice derived from four inbred strains, we studied the integrity of inner and outer hair cells by position along the cochlear spiral, inner hair cell-auditory nerve connections, spiral ganglion neurons (SGN), and determined auditory thresholds, as well as pre-pulse and gap inhibition of the acoustic startle reflex (ASR). Comparisons were made between mice of 5-7, 22-24 and 27-29 months of age. There was individual variability among mice in the onset and extent of age-related auditory pathology. At 22-24 months of age a moderate to large loss of outer hair cells was restricted to the apical third of the cochlea and threshold shifts in the auditory brain stem response were minimal. There was also a large and significant loss of inner hair cell-auditory nerve connections and a significant reduction in GD. The expression of Ntf3 in the cochlea was significantly reduced. At 27-29 months of age there was no further change in the mean number of synaptic connections per inner hair cell or in GD, but a moderate to large loss of outer hair cells was found across all cochlear turns as well as significantly increased ABR threshold shifts at 4, 12, 24 and 48 kHz. A statistical analysis of correlations on an individual animal basis revealed that neither the hair cell loss nor the ABR threshold shifts correlated with loss of GD or with the loss of connections, consistent with independent pathological mechanisms.	t	\N
25669257	Individual factors beyond the audiogram, such as age and cognitive abilities, can influence speech intelligibility and speech quality judgments. This paper develops a neural network framework for combining multiple subject factors into a single model that predicts speech intelligibility and quality for a nonlinear hearing-aid processing strategy. The nonlinear processing approach used in the paper is frequency compression, which is intended to improve the audibility of high-frequency speech sounds by shifting them to lower frequency regions where listeners with high-frequency loss have better hearing thresholds. An ensemble averaging approach is used for the neural network to avoid the problems associated with overfitting. Models are developed for two subject groups, one having nearly normal hearing and the other mild-to-moderate sloping losses.	t	\N
25673838	Critical periods are developmental windows during which the stimuli an animal encounters can reshape response properties in the affected system to a profound degree. Despite this window's importance, the neural mechanisms that regulate it are not completely understood. Pioneering studies in visual cortex initially indicated that norepinephrine (NE) permits ocular dominance column plasticity during the critical period, but later research has suggested otherwise. More recent work implicating NE in experience-dependent plasticity in the adult auditory cortex led us to re-examine the role of NE in critical period plasticity. Here, we exposed dopamine β-hydroxylase knock-out (Dbh(-/-)) mice, which lack NE completely from birth, to a biased acoustic environment during the auditory cortical critical period. This manipulation led to a redistribution of best frequencies (BFs) across auditory cortex in our control mice, consistent with prior work. By contrast, Dbh(-/-) mice failed to exhibit the expected redistribution of BFs, even though NE-deficient and NE-competent mice showed comparable auditory cortical organization when reared in a quiet colony environment. These data suggest that while intrinsic tonotopic patterning of auditory cortical circuitry occurs independently from NE, NE is required for critical period plasticity in auditory cortex.	t	\N
25685775	The aim of this research was to analyze temporal auditory processing and phonological awareness in school-age children with benign childhood epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes (BECTS). Patient group (GI) consisted of 13 children diagnosed with BECTS. Control group (GII) consisted of 17 healthy children. After neurological and peripheral audiological assessment, children underwent a behavioral auditory evaluation and phonological awareness assessment. The procedures applied were: Gaps-in-Noise test (GIN), Duration Pattern test, and Phonological Awareness test (PCF). Results were compared between the groups and a correlation analysis was performed between temporal tasks and phonological awareness performance. GII performed significantly better than the children with BECTS (GI) in both GIN and Duration Pattern test (P < 0.001). GI performed significantly worse in all of the 4 categories of phonological awareness assessed: syllabic (P = 0.001), phonemic (P = 0.006), rhyme (P = 0.015) and alliteration (P = 0.010). Statistical analysis showed a significant positive correlation between the phonological awareness assessment and Duration Pattern test (P < 0.001). From the analysis of the results, it was concluded that children with BECTS may have difficulties in temporal resolution, temporal ordering, and phonological awareness skills. A correlation was observed between auditory temporal processing and phonological awareness in the suited sample.	t	\N
25693304	When we interact with objects in our environment, as a general rule we are not aware of the proximal stimulation they provide, but we directly experience the external object. This process of assigning an external cause is known as distal attribution. It is extremely difficult to measure how distal attribution emerges because it arises so early in life and appears to be automatic. Sensory substitution systems give us the possibility to measure the process as it occurs online. With these devices, objects in our environment produce novel proximal stimulation patterns and individuals have to establish the link between the proximal stimulation and the distal object. This review disentangles the contributing factors that allow the nervous system to assign a distal cause, thereby creating the experience of an external world. In particular, it highlights the role of the assumption of a stable world, the role of movement, and finally that of calibration. From the existing sensory substitution literature it appears that distal attribution breaks down when one of these principles is violated and as such the review provides an important piece to the puzzle of distal attribution.	t	\N
25698006	The present study investigated the possibility that the human auditory system demonstrates frequency selectivity to spectro-temporal amplitude modulations. Threshold modulation depth for detecting sinusoidal spectro-temporal modulations was measured using a generalized masked threshold pattern paradigm with narrowband masker modulations. Four target spectro-temporal modulations were examined, differing in their temporal and spectral modulation frequencies: a temporal modulation of -8, 8, or 16 Hz combined with a spectral modulation of 1 cycle/octave and a temporal modulation of 4 Hz combined with a spectral modulation of 0.5 cycles/octave. The temporal center frequencies of the masker modulation ranged from 0.25 to 4 times the target temporal modulation. The spectral masker-modulation center-frequencies were 0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, and 2 times the target spectral modulation. For all target modulations, the pattern of average thresholds for the eight normal-hearing listeners was consistent with the hypothesis of a spectro-temporal modulation filter. Such a pattern of modulation-frequency sensitivity was predicted on the basis of psychoacoustical data for purely temporal amplitude modulations and purely spectral amplitude modulations. An analysis of separability indicates that, for the present data set, selectivity in the spectro-temporal modulation domain can be described by a combination of a purely spectral and a purely temporal modulation filter function.	t	\N
25721795	Music and speech are skills that require high temporal precision of motor output. A key question is how humans achieve this timing precision given the poor temporal resolution of somatosensory feedback, which is classically considered to drive motor learning. We hypothesise that auditory feedback critically contributes to learn timing, and that, similarly to visuo-spatial learning models, learning proceeds by correcting a proportion of perceived timing errors. Thirty-six participants learned to tap a sequence regularly in time. For participants in the synchronous-sound group, a tone was presented simultaneously with every keystroke. For the jittered-sound group, the tone was presented after a random delay of 10-190 ms following the keystroke, thus degrading the temporal information that the sound provided about the movement. For the mute group, no keystroke-triggered sound was presented. In line with the model predictions, participants in the synchronous-sound group were able to improve tapping regularity, whereas the jittered-sound and mute group were not. The improved tapping regularity of the synchronous-sound group also transferred to a novel sequence and was maintained when sound was subsequently removed. The present findings provide evidence that humans engage in auditory feedback error-based learning to improve movement quality (here reduce variability in sequence tapping). We thus elucidate the mechanism by which high temporal precision of movement can be achieved through sound in a way that may not be possible with less temporally precise somatosensory modalities. Furthermore, the finding that sound-supported learning generalises to novel sequences suggests potential rehabilitation applications.	t	\N
25724819	Older adults, even with clinically normal hearing sensitivity, often report difficulty understanding speech in the presence of background noise. Part of this difficulty may be related to age-related degradations in the neural representation of speech sounds, such as formant transitions. Frequency-following responses (FFRs), which are dependent on phase-locked neural activity, were elicited using sounds consisting of linear frequency sweeps, which may be viewed as simple models of formant transitions. Eighteen adults (ten younger, 22-24 years old, and nine older, 51-67 years old) were tested. FFRs were elicited by tonal sweeps in six conditions. Two directions of frequency change, rising or falling, were used for each of three rates of frequency change. Stimulus-to-response cross correlations revealed that older adults had significantly poorer representation of the tonal sweeps, and that FFRs became poorer for faster rates of change. An additional FFR signal-to-noise ratio analysis based on time windows revealed that across the FFR waveforms and rates of frequency change, older adults had smaller (poorer) signal-to-noise ratios. These results indicate that older adults, even with clinically-normal hearing sensitivity, have degraded phase-locked neural representations of dynamic frequency.	t	\N
25726264	Speech is a complex acoustic signal showing a quasiperiodic structure at several timescales. Integrated neural signals recorded in the cortex also show periodicity at different timescales. In this chapter we outline the neural mechanisms that potentially allow the auditory cortex to segment and encode continuous speech. This chapter focuses on how the human auditory cortex uses the temporal structure of the acoustic signal to extract phonemes and syllables, the two major constituents of connected speech. We argue that the quasiperiodic structure of collective neural activity in auditory cortex represents the ideal mechanical infrastructure to fractionate continuous speech into linguistic constituents of variable sizes.	t	\N
25726287	Neural disorders of the auditory nerve are associated with particular disorders of auditory perceptions dependent on processing of acoustic temporal cues. These include: (1) speech perception; (2) localizing a sound's origin in space; and (3) identifying sounds in background noise. Auditory neuropathy (AN) is a consequence of: (1) presynaptic disorders affecting inner hair cell ribbon synapses; (2) postsynaptic disorders of auditory nerve dendrites; and (3) postsynaptic disorders of auditory nerve axons. The etiologies of these disorders are diverse, similar to other cranial or peripheral neuropathies. The pathologies cause attenuated and dyssynchronous auditory nerve discharges. Therapies and management of patients with AN are reviewed.	t	\N
25726290	Neglect is a neurologic disorder, typically associated with lesions of the right hemisphere, in which patients are biased towards their ipsilesional - usually right - side of space while awareness for their contralesional - usually left - side is reduced or absent. Neglect is a multimodal disorder that often includes deficits in the auditory domain. Classically, auditory extinction, in which left-sided sounds that are correctly perceived in isolation are not detected in the presence of synchronous right-sided stimulation, has been considered the primary sign of auditory neglect. However, auditory extinction can also be observed after unilateral auditory cortex lesions and is thus not specific for neglect. Recent research has shown that patients with neglect are also impaired in maintaining sustained attention, on both sides, a fact that is reflected by an impairment of auditory target detection in continuous stimulation conditions. Perhaps the most impressive auditory symptom in full-blown neglect is alloacusis, in which patients mislocalize left-sided sound sources to their right, although even patients with less severe neglect still often show disturbance of auditory spatial perception, most commonly a lateralization bias towards the right. We discuss how these various disorders may be explained by a single model of neglect and review emerging interventions for patient rehabilitation.	t	\N
25730449	To assess whether recombinant growth factor (hGH) therapy has an effect on cochlear implant (CI) performance. Two pediatric CI recipients (S1, S2) who underwent treatment with hGH for short stature were identified for review. S1 has bilateral labyrinthine dysplasia and received implants at ages 10 months (right) and 4 years 3 months (left). S2 was diagnosed with severe to progressive sensorineural hearing loss bilaterally and received a CI at age 9 years 10 months (left). Case series. Cochlear implant, hGH, and speech perception data were collected. Phonetically Balanced Kindergarten (PBK) and Consonant Nucleus Consonant (CNC) word recognition scores were reviewed to assess auditory perception. Electrode impedances, threshold levels, and comfort levels were also reviewed. After 4 months of hGH, word recognition scores for S1 were observed to decrease from 90 to 72% (right) and were stable at 40% (left). Despite troubleshooting, performance continued to decline bilaterally to 52% (right) and 28% (left), and the decision was made to discontinue hGH. One month after cessation of hGH, word recognition scores began improving to 74% (right) and 68% (left). Word recognition scores for S2 were observed to have decreased from 92% the previous year to 82% after taking hGH for 2 months. Given both our previous experience with S1 and discussions with S2's parents, hGH was discontinued after 10 months of therapy. Two months after cessation of hGH, S2's word recognition had improved to 86% (left). Our case studies illustrate that implanted children undergoing treatment with hGH may experience a decrease in speech perception, which recovers after the cessation of treatment. Since hGH use has become more prevalent in recent years, it is important to inquire whether children undergoing, or who have undergone, implantation are receiving hGH so that they may be appropriately monitored.	t	\N
25731581	While potentially improving audibility for listeners with considerable high frequency hearing loss, the effects of implementing nonlinear frequency compression (NFC) for listeners with moderate high frequency hearing loss are unclear. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of activating NFC for listeners who are not traditionally considered candidates for this technology. Participants wore study hearing aids with NFC activated for a 3-4 week trial period. After the trial period, they were tested with NFC and with conventional processing on measures of consonant discrimination threshold in quiet, consonant recognition in quiet, sentence recognition in noise, and acceptableness of sound quality of speech and music. Seventeen adult listeners with symmetrical, mild to moderate sensorineural hearing loss participated. Better ear, high frequency pure-tone averages (4, 6, and 8 kHz) were 60 dB HL or better. Activating NFC resulted in lower (better) thresholds for discrimination of /s/, whose spectral center was 9 kHz. There were no other significant effects of NFC compared to conventional processing. These data suggest that the benefits, and detriments, of activating NFC may be limited for this population.	t	\N
25731582	To evaluate wideband amplification and non-linear frequency compression (NLFC) as a means to improve speech recognition for children with mild/moderate hearing loss. Randomized within-subject design with repeated measures across test conditions. Eleven children with mild to moderate hearing loss were evaluated with: (1) Phonak BTE without NLFC, (2) Phonak BTE with NLFC, and (3) Oticon BTE with wideband response extending to 8000 Hz. Use of NLFC provided better detection and recognition of high-frequency stimuli (e.g. /sh/ and /s/). No difference in performance between conditions was observed for speech recognition when measured with the University of Western Ontario (UWO) plurals test and the UWO distinctive features difference test. Finally, there were no differences between conditions on the BKB-SIN test. Children with mild to moderate hearing loss have good access to high-frequency phonemes presented at fixed levels (e.g. 50 to 60 dBA) with both wideband and NLFC technology. Similarly, sentence recognition in noise was similar with wideband and NLFC. Adaptive test procedures that probe performance at lower input levels showed small but significant improvements in the detection and recognition of the phonemes /s/ and /sh/ with NLFC condition when compared to the NLFC Off and wideband conditions.	t	\N
25733362	With the growing number of older adults receiving cochlear implants (CI), there is general agreement that substantial benefits can be gained. Nonetheless, variability in speech perception performance is high, and the relative contribution and interactions among peripheral, central-auditory, and cognitive factors are not fully understood. The goal of the present study was to compare auditory-cognitive processing in older-adult CI recipients with that of older normal-hearing (NH) listeners by means of behavioral and electrophysiologic manifestations of a high-load cognitive task. Auditory event-related potentials (AERPs) were recorded from 9 older postlingually deafened adults with CI (age at CI >60) and 10 age-matched listeners with NH, while performing an auditory Stroop task. Participants were required to classify the speaker's gender (male/female) that produced the words 'mother' or 'father' while ignoring the irrelevant congruent or incongruent word meaning. Older CI and NH listeners exhibited comparable reaction time, performance accuracy, and initial sensory-perceptual processing (i.e. N1 potential). Nonetheless, older CI recipients showed substantially prolonged and less efficient perceptual processing (i.e. P3 potential). Congruency effects manifested in longer reaction time (i.e. Stroop effect), execution time, and P3 latency to incongruent versus congruent stimuli in both groups in a similar fashion; however, markedly prolonged P3 and shortened execution time were evident in older CI recipients. Collectively, older adults (CI and NH) employed a combined perceptual and postperceptual conflict processing strategy; nonetheless, the relative allotment of perceptual resources was substantially enhanced to maintain adequate performance in CI recipients. In sum, the recording of AERPs together with the simultaneously obtained behavioral measures during a Stroop task exposed a differential time course of auditory-cognitive processing in older CI recipients that was not manifested in the behavioral end products of processing. These data may have implications regarding clinical evaluation and rehabilitation procedures that should be tailored specifically for this unique group of patients.	t	\N
25734571	This study assesses attention and response control through visual and auditory stimuli in a primary care pediatric sample. The sample consisted of 191 participants aged between 7 and 13 years old. It was divided into 2 groups: (a) 90 children with ADHD, according to diagnostic (DSM-IV-TR) (APA, 2002) and clinical (ADHD Rating Scale-IV) (DuPaul, Power, Anastopoulos, & Reid, 1998) criteria, and (b) 101 children without a history of ADHD. The aims were: (a) to determine and compare the performance of both groups in attention and response control, (b) to identify attention and response control deficits in the ADHD group. Assessments were carried out using the Integrated Visual and Auditory Continuous Performance Test (IVA/CPT, Sandford & Turner, 2002). Results showed that the ADHD group had visual and auditory attention deficits, F(3, 170) = 14.38; p < .01, deficits in fine motor regulation (Welch´s t-test = 44.768; p < .001) and sensory/motor activity (Welch'st-test = 95.683, p < .001; Welch's t-test = 79.537, p < .001). Both groups exhibited a similar performance in response control, F(3, 170) = .93, p = .43.Children with ADHD showed inattention, mental processing speed deficits, and loss of concentration with visual stimuli. Both groups yielded a better performance in attention with auditory stimuli.	t	\N
25740521	Speech recognition in noise can be challenging for older adults and elicits elevated activity throughout a cingulo-opercular network that is hypothesized to monitor and modify behaviors to optimize performance. A word recognition in noise experiment was used to test the hypothesis that cingulo-opercular engagement provides performance benefit for older adults. Healthy older adults (N = 31; 50-81 years of age; mean pure tone thresholds <32 dB HL from 0.25 to 8 kHz, best ear; species: human) performed word recognition in multitalker babble at 2 signal-to-noise ratios (SNR = +3 or +10 dB) during a sparse sampling fMRI experiment. Elevated cingulo-opercular activity was associated with an increased likelihood of correct recognition on the following trial independently of SNR and performance on the preceding trial. The cingulo-opercular effect increased for participants with the best overall performance. These effects were lower for older adults compared with a younger, normal-hearing adult sample (N = 18). Visual cortex activity also predicted trial-level recognition for the older adults, which resulted from discrete decreases in activity before errors and occurred for the oldest adults with the poorest recognition. Participants demonstrating larger visual cortex effects also had reduced fractional anisotropy in an anterior portion of the left inferior frontal-occipital fasciculus, which projects between frontal and occipital regions where activity predicted word recognition. Together, the results indicate that older adults experience performance benefit from elevated cingulo-opercular activity, but not to the same extent as younger adults, and that declines in attentional control can limit word recognition.	t	\N
25770375	Arthur Lessac developed a voice training approach that concentrated on three energies: structural action, tonal action, and consonant action. In Lessac-Madsen Resonant Voice Therapy (LMRVT), speech-language pathologists help patients achieve a resonant voice through structural posturing and awareness of tonal changes. However, LMRVT many not necessarily include the third component of Lessac's approach: consonant action.This study examines the effect that increased effort on consonant production has on the speaking voice-particularly regarding vocal loudness and projection. Audio samples were collected from eight actor participants who read a monologue using three distinct styles: normal articulation, poor articulation (elicited using a bite block), and overarticulation (elicited using a Lessac-based training intervention). Twenty graduate students of speech-language pathology listened to speech samples from the different conditions and made comparative judgments regarding articulation, loudness, and projection. Group results showed a strong correlation between the articulatory condition and the level of perceived loudness and projection. That is, as precision of articulation increased, the ratings of perceived loudness and projection increased, as well. These findings indicate that articulation treatment may have a positive influence on the perception of vocal loudness and projection. This has implications for future directions in expanding voice therapy modalities.	t	\N
25773636	Most people derive pleasure from music. Neuroimaging studies show that the reward system of the human brain is central to this experience. Specifically, the dorsal and ventral striatum release dopamine when listening to pleasurable music, and activity in these structures also codes the reward value of musical excerpts. Moreover, the striatum interacts with cortical mechanisms involved in perception and valuation of musical stimuli. Recent studies have begun to explore individual differences in the way that this complex system functions. Development of a questionnaire for music reward experiences has allowed the identification of separable factors associated with musical pleasure, described as music-seeking, emotion-evocation, mood regulation, sensorimotor, and social factors. Applying this questionnaire to a large sample uncovered approximately 5% of the population with low sensitivity to musical reward in the absence of generalized anhedonia or depression. Further study of this group revealed that there are individuals who respond normally both behaviorally and psychophysiologically to rewards other than music (e.g., monetary value) but do not experience pleasure from music despite normal music perception ability and preserved ability to identify intended emotions in musical passages. This specific music anhedonia bears further study, as it may shed light on the function and dysfunction of the reward system.	t	\N
25774428	The perception of near-threshold visual stimuli has been shown to depend in part on the phase (i.e., time in the cycle) of ongoing alpha (8-13 Hz) oscillations in the visual cortex relative to the onset of that stimulus. However, it is currently unknown whether the phase of the ongoing alpha activity can be manipulated by top-down factors such as attention or expectancy. Using three variants of a cross-modal attention paradigm with constant predictable stimulus onsets, we examined if cues signaling to attend to either the visual or the auditory domain influenced the phase of alpha oscillations in the associated sensory cortices. Importantly, intermixed in all three experiments, we included trials without a target to estimate the phase at target presentation without contamination from the early evoked responses. For these blank trials, at the time of expected target and distractor onset, we examined (1) the degree of the uniformity in phase angles across trials, (2) differences in phase angle uniformity compared with a pretarget baseline, and (3) phase angle differences between visual and auditory target conditions. Across all three experiments, we found that, although the cues induced a modulation in alpha power in occipital electrodes, neither the visual condition nor the auditory cue condition induced any significant phase-locking across trials during expected target or distractor presentation. These results suggest that, although alpha power can be modulated by top-down factors such as attention and expectation, the phase of the ongoing alpha oscillation is not under such control.	t	\N
25774653	The effect of stimulation history on the perception of a current event can yield two opposite effects, namely: adaptation or hysteresis. The perception of the current event thus goes in the opposite or in the same direction as prior stimulation, respectively. In audiovisual (AV) synchrony perception, adaptation effects have primarily been reported. Here, we tested if perceptual hysteresis could also be observed over adaptation in AV timing perception by varying different experimental conditions. Participants were asked to judge the synchrony of the last (test) stimulus of an AV sequence with either constant or gradually changing AV intervals (constant and dynamic condition, respectively). The onset timing of the test stimulus could be cued or not (prospective vs. retrospective condition, respectively). We observed hysteretic effects for AV synchrony judgments in the retrospective condition that were independent of the constant or dynamic nature of the adapted stimuli; these effects disappeared in the prospective condition. The present findings suggest that knowing when to estimate a stimulus property has a crucial impact on perceptual simultaneity judgments. Our results extend beyond AV timing perception, and have strong implications regarding the comparative study of hysteresis and adaptation phenomena.	t	\N
25781179	Lifestyle including smoking, noise exposure with MP3 player and drinking alcohol are considered as risk factors for affecting hearing synergistically. However, little is known about the association of cigarette smoking with hearing impairment among subjects who carry a lifestyle without using MP3 player and drinking alcohol. We showed here the influence of smoking on hearing among Bangladeshi subjects who maintain a lifestyle devoid of using MP3 player and drinking alcohol. A total of 184 subjects (smokers: 90; non-smokers: 94) were included considering their duration and frequency of smoking for conducting this study. The mean hearing thresholds of non-smoker subjects at 1, 4, 8 and 12 kHz frequencies were 5.63 ± 2.10, 8.56±5.75, 21.06 ± 11.06, 40.79 ± 20.36 decibel (dB), respectively and that of the smokers were 7 ± 3.8, 13.27 ± 8.4, 30.66 ± 12.50 and 56.88 ± 21.58 dB, respectively. The hearing thresholds of the smokers at 4, 8 and 12 kHz frequencies were significantly (p<0.05) higher than those of the non-smokers, while no significant differences were observed at 1 kHz frequency. We also observed no significant difference in auditory thresholds among smoker subgroups based on smoking frequency. In contrast, subjects smoked for longer duration (>5 years) showed higher level of auditory threshold (62.16 ± 19.87 dB) at 12 kHz frequency compared with that (41.52 ± 19.21 dB) of the subjects smoked for 1-5 years and the difference in auditory thresholds was statistically significant (p<0.0002). In this study, the Brinkman Index (BI) of smokers was from 6 to 440 and the adjusted odds ratio showed a positive correlation between hearing loss and smoking when adjusted for age and body mass index (BMI). In addition, age, but not BMI, also played positive role on hearing impairment at all frequencies. Thus, these findings suggested that cigarette smoking affects hearing level at all the frequencies tested but most significantly at extra higher frequencies.	t	\N
25786320	The spatial specificity of auditory approaching and withdrawing aftereffects was investigated in an anechoic chamber. The adapting and testing stimuli were presented from loudspeakers located in front of the subject at the distance of 1.1 m (near) and 4.5 m (far) from the listener's head. Approach and withdrawal of stimuli were simulated by increasing or decreasing the amplitude of the wide-noise impulse sequence. The listeners were required to determine the movement direction of test stimulus following each 5-s adaptation period. The listeners' "withdrawal" responses were used for psychometric functions plotting and for quantitative assessment of auditory aftereffect. The data summarized for all 8 participants indicated that the asymmetry of approaching and withdrawing aftereffects depended on spatial localization of adaptor and test. The asymmetry of aftereffects was largest when adaptor and test were presented from the same loudspeaker (either near or far). Adaptation to the approach induced a directionally dependent displacement of the psychometric functions relative to control condition without adaptation and adaptation to the withdrawal was not. The magnitude of approaching aftereffect was greater when adaptor and test were located in near spatial domain than when they came from far domain. When adaptor and test were presented from the distinct loudspeakers, magnitude approaching aftereffect was decreasing in comparison to the same spatial localization, but after adaptation to withdrawal it was increasing. As a result, the directionally dependent displacements of the psychometric functions relative to control condition were observed after adaptation as to approach and to withdrawal. The discrepancy of the psychometric functions received after adaptation to approach and to withdrawal at near and far spatial domains was greater under the same localization of adaptor and test in comparison to their distinct localization. We assume that the peculiarities of approaching and withdrawing aftereffects observed reflect their spatial specificity. It is possible that spatial peculiarities of approaching and withdrawing aftereffects can be associated with specialized mechanisms for analysis of motion at the different distance from subject.	t	\N
25786957	Performing a secondary task while listening to speech has a detrimental effect on speech processing, but the locus of the disruption within the speech system is poorly understood. Recent research has shown that cognitive load imposed by a concurrent visual task increases dependency on lexical knowledge during speech processing, but it does not affect lexical activation per se. This suggests that "lexical drift" under cognitive load occurs either as a post-lexical bias at the decisional level or as a secondary consequence of reduced perceptual sensitivity. This study aimed to adjudicate between these alternatives using a forced-choice task that required listeners to identify noise-degraded spoken words with or without the addition of a concurrent visual task. Adding cognitive load increased the likelihood that listeners would select a word acoustically similar to the target even though its frequency was lower than that of the target. Thus, there was no evidence that cognitive load led to a high-frequency response bias. Rather, cognitive load seems to disrupt sublexical encoding, possibly by impairing perceptual acuity at the auditory periphery.	t	\N
25788705	Spatial crowding refers to impaired target identification when the target is surrounded by other stimuli in space temporal crowding refers to impaired target identification when the target is surrounded by other stimuli in time previously, when spatial and temporal crowding were measured in the fovea they were interrelated with amblyopic observers but almost absent with normal observers bonneh, sagi, & polat, 2007. In the current study we examined whether reliable temporal crowding can be found for normal observers with peripheral presentation 9° of eccentricity, and whether similar relations between temporal and spatial crowding will emerge to that end, we presented a sequence of three displays separated by a varying interstimulus interval (ISI). Each display included either one letter : experiments 1a ,: 1b ,: 1c or three letters separated by a varying interletter spacing: Experiments 2a ,: 2b). One of these displays included an oriented T. Observers indicated the T's orientation. As expected, we found spatial crowding: accuracy improved as the interletter spacing increased. Critically, we also found temporal crowding: in all experiments accuracy increased as the ISI increased, even when only stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs) larger than 150 ms were included, ensuring this effect does not reflect mere ordinary masking. Thus, with peripheral presentation, temporal crowding also emerged for normal observers. However, only a weak interaction between temporal and spatial crowding was found.	t	\N
25798581	Contralateral masking is the phenomenon where a masker presented to one ear affects the ability to detect a signal in the opposite ear. For normal hearing listeners, contralateral masking results in masking patterns that are both sharper and dramatically smaller in magnitude than ipsilateral masking. The goal of this study was to investigate whether medial olivocochlear (MOC) efferents are needed for the sharpness and relatively small magnitude of the contralateral masking function. To do this, bilateral cochlear implant patients were tested because, by directly stimulating the auditory nerve, cochlear implants circumvent the effects of the MOC efferents. The results indicated that, as with normal hearing listeners, the contralateral masking function was sharper than the ipsilateral masking function. However, although there was a reduction in the magnitude of the contralateral masking function compared to the ipsilateral masking function, it was relatively modest. This is in sharp contrast to the results of normal hearing listeners where the magnitude of the contralateral masking function is greatly reduced. These results suggest that MOC function may not play a large role in the sharpness of the contralateral masking function but may play a considerable role in the magnitude of the contralateral masking function.	t	\N
25816820	The Fukuda stepping test is commonly used to assess peripheral vestibular function. It has, however, been suggested that its maximal sensitivity and specificity are 70 per cent and 50 per cent, respectively. This study was undertaken to evaluate environmental factors that may influence the reliability of this assessment and hence to 'sharpen' its use in a clinical setting. Forty-four participants aged between 20 and 43 years were asked to perform the Fukuda stepping test in both a standard clinic room and a soundproofed room under the following conditions in a randomised order: on the floor versus on foam; with and without a sound-localising source; and with and without ear defenders. Significant differences in the extent of rotation were found when comparing the results obtained in several settings, including standing on the floor in a standard room versus a soundproofed room (p = 0.036), and standing on foam in a standard room versus a soundproofed room (p = 0.015). Our results suggest that certain alterations to the test environment may improve the sensitivity of this clinical examination.	t	\N
25832187	Previous studies have shown that discrimination sensitivity in 2AFC tasks depends on the presentation order of the standard and comparison stimulus. The present study examined whether this so-called Type B effect generalizes across different standard magnitudes. Therefore, Experiment 1 employed an auditory duration discrimination task with short (100 ms) and long (1,000 ms) standard durations and a constant interstimulus interval (ISI) of 1,000 ms. For both standard durations, a clear Type B effect emerged. In Experiment 2, discrimination sensitivity was assessed for short (300 ms) and long (1,000 ms) ISIs and a constant standard duration of 100 ms, in order to examine whether the Type B effect diminishes or even reverses when both stimuli are presented in rapid succession, as was suggested by previous studies. In the short, but not the long ISI condition, the Type B effect was virtually eliminated. Taken together, the present experiments suggest that the Type B effect is robust across standard magnitude, but diminishes when the time interval between both stimuli is reduced. This result pattern is discussed within the framework of the Internal Reference Model and the Sensation Weighting Model. It is also demonstrated that both models provide a quantitative account of the present results.	t	\N
25878263	Amplitude modulations are fundamental features of natural signals, including human speech and nonhuman primate vocalizations. Because natural signals frequently occur in the context of other competing signals, we used a forward-masking paradigm to investigate how the modulation context of a prior signal affects cortical responses to subsequent modulated sounds. Psychophysical "modulation masking," in which the presentation of a modulated "masker" signal elevates the threshold for detecting the modulation of a subsequent stimulus, has been interpreted as evidence of a central modulation filterbank and modeled accordingly. Whether cortical modulation tuning is compatible with such models remains unknown. By recording responses to pairs of sinusoidally amplitude modulated (SAM) tones in the auditory cortex of awake squirrel monkeys, we show that the prior presentation of the SAM masker elicited persistent and tuned suppression of the firing rate to subsequent SAM signals. Population averages of these effects are compatible with adaptation in broadly tuned modulation channels. In contrast, modulation context had little effect on the synchrony of the cortical representation of the second SAM stimuli and the tuning of such effects did not match that observed for firing rate. Our results suggest that, although the temporal representation of modulated signals is more robust to changes in stimulus context than representations based on average firing rate, this representation is not fully exploited and psychophysical modulation masking more closely mirrors physiological rate suppression and that rate tuning for a given stimulus feature in a given neuron's signal pathway appears sufficient to engender context-sensitive cortical adaptation.	t	\N
25885195	To verify the effect of long-term use of hearing aids with frequency compression for verbal behavior tests and daily activities. Thirty-two adults, aged between 30 and 60 years old, with moderate to severe sensorineural hearing loss at high frequencies with steeply sloping configuration were divided into two groups: 16 with hearing aids with frequency compression algorithm enabled and 16 not enabled. All participants underwent the detection tests of consonant sounds, monosyllable recognition in quiet environments, identification of fricative monosyllables, and Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit (APHAB) questionnaire in five times throughout a 12-month trial. Detection of consonant sounds, recognition of monosyllables in quiet environments and identification of fricative monosyllables improved significantly with frequency compression enabled. Participants had their APHAB scores improved whether they were adapted to the frequency compression or not. Frequency compression provides the anticipated improvement in audibility, detection of high-frequency consonant sounds, and recognition of monosyllables.	t	\N
25913551	Since 1972, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared noise as a pollutant. Over the last decades, the quality of the urban environment has attracted the interest of researchers due to the growing urban sprawl, especially in developing countries. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of noise exposure in six urban soundscapes: Areas with high and low levels of noise in scenarios of leisure, work, and home. Cross-sectional study. The study was conducted in two steps: Evaluation of noise levels, with the development of noise maps, and health related inquiries. 180 individuals were interviewed, being 60 in each scenario, divided into 30 exposed to high level of noise and 30 to low level. Chi-Square test and Ordered Logistic Regression Model (P < 0,005). 70% of the interviewees reported noticing some source of noise in the selected scenarios and it was observed an association between exposure and perception of some source of noise (P < 0.001). 41.7% of the interviewees reported some degree of annoyance, being that this was associated with exposure (P < 0.001). There was also an association between exposure in different scenarios and reports of poor quality of sleep (P < 0.001). In the scenarios of work and home, the chance of reporting annoyance increased when compared with the scenario of leisure. We conclude that the use of this sort of assessment may clarify the relationship between urban noise exposure and health.	t	\N
25914528	The possible relationship between audiometric hearing thresholds and cognitive performance on language tests was analyzed in a cross-sectional cohort of older adults aged ≥65 years (N=98) with different degrees of cognitive impairment. Participants were distributed into two groups according to Reisberg's Global Deterioration Scale (GDS): a normal/predementia group (GDS scores 1-3) and a moderate/moderately severe dementia group (GDS scores 4 and 5). Hearing loss (pure-tone audiometry) and receptive and production-based language function (Verbal Fluency Test, Boston Naming Test, and Token Test) were assessed. Results showed that the dementia group achieved significantly lower scores than the predementia group in all language tests. A moderate negative correlation between hearing loss and verbal comprehension (r=-0.298; P<0.003) was observed in the predementia group (r=-0.363; P<0.007). However, no significant relationship between hearing loss and verbal fluency and naming scores was observed, regardless of cognitive impairment. In the predementia group, reduced hearing level partially explains comprehension performance but not language production. In the dementia group, hearing loss cannot be considered as an explanatory factor of poor receptive and production-based language performance. These results are suggestive of cognitive rather than simply auditory problems to explain the language impairment in the elderly.	t	\N
25920851	Broadened auditory filters associated with sensorineural hearing loss have clearly been shown to diminish speech recognition in noise for adults, but far less is known about potential effects for children. This study examined speech recognition in noise for adults and children using simulated auditory filters of different widths. Specifically, 5 groups (20 listeners each) of adults or children (5 and 7 yrs), were asked to recognize sentences in speech-shaped noise. Seven-year-olds listened at 0 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) only; 5-yr-olds listened at +3 or 0 dB SNR; and adults listened at 0 or -3 dB SNR. Sentence materials were processed both to smear the speech spectrum (i.e., simulate broadened filters), and to enhance the spectrum (i.e., simulate narrowed filters). Results showed: (1) Spectral smearing diminished recognition for listeners of all ages; (2) spectral enhancement did not improve recognition, and in fact diminished it somewhat; and (3) interactions were observed between smearing and SNR, but only for adults. That interaction made age effects difficult to gauge. Nonetheless, it was concluded that efforts to diagnose the extent of broadening of auditory filters and to develop techniques to correct this condition could benefit patients with hearing loss, especially children.	t	\N
25994736	A follow-up experiment to those conducted by Brown and Yost [(2011). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 130, 358-364; (2013). Basic Aspects of Hearing: Physiology and Perception (Springer, London, UK)] examined interaural time difference (ITD) discrimination for a low-frequency target noise band flanked by monotic noise bands that were either lower-frequency than the target band, higher-frequency, or both. The flanking bands were either spectrally contiguous with the target band or spectrally separated. Significant interference in ITD processing occurred in the presence of the high-frequency flanking band. Results are discussed by way of a comparison of the conditions in the present study to those in studies of binaural interference. The possible role of attention is also discussed.	t	\N
25997868	In cochlear implant (CI) recipients with unilateral hearing loss (UHL) and normal hearing (NH) in the contralateral ear, the central auditory system receives signals of different auditory modalities, i.e. electrically via the CI ear as well as acoustically via the NH ear. The present study investigates binaural integration of bimodal stimulation in the central auditory system of 10 CI subjects with UHL by applying a modified version of the Rapidly Alternating Speech Perception (RASP) test to characterise speech recognition ability under monotic and dichotic listening arrangements. Subsequently, the results for each monotic and dichotic test condition were compared to quantify the binaural benefit from CI usage. The study results demonstrate significantly improved speech recognition under dichotic compared to monotic listening conditions, providing evidence that there is binaural integration of acoustically and electrically transmitted speech segments in the central nervous system at brainstem and cortical levels. In contrast to more commonly used tests of binaural integration, such as localisation, the RASP test provides the clinical option to investigate binaural integration involving structures at the cortical level.	t	\N
25998097	Recommendation for cochlear implant (CI) treatment for individuals with severe to profound single-sided deafness (SSD) and asymmetrical hearing loss (AHL) is on the rise. This raises the need for greater consistency in the definition of CI candidacy for these cases and in the assessment methods of patient-related benefits to permit effective comparison and interpretation of the outcomes with both conventional and implantable options across studies. During a dedicated seminar on implant treatment in AHL patients, the panellists of the closing round table reviewed the clinical experience presented with the aim to define clear audiometric characteristics for both AHL and SSD cases, as well as a common data set enabling consistent evaluation of hearing benefits in this population. The panellists agreed on a clear differentiation between AHL and SSD CI candidates, defining average pure-tone thresholds up to 4 kHz for better and poorer ears. Agreement was reached on a minimum set of assessment procedures, and included the necessity of trials with conventional CROS/BICROS hearing aids and bone conduction devices before considering CI treatment. Objective assessment of sound localisation abilities was identified as the most relevant criterion to quantify performance before and after treatment. In parallel, subjective assessment of overall hearing ability was recommended via the Speech, Spatial and Qualities of hearing questionnaire. Longitudinal follow-up of these parameters and the hours of daily use were considered essential to reflect the potential treatment benefits for this population. The consistency in the data collection and its report will further support health authorities in their decision on acceptable gains from available hearing loss treatment options.	t	\N
26017796	To compare the efficacy and feasibility of teleaudiometry with that of sweep audiometry in elementary school children, using pure-tone audiometry as the gold standard. A total of 243 students with a mean age of 8.3 years participated in the study. Of these, 118 were boys, and 125 were girls. The following procedures were performed: teleaudiometry screening with software that evaluates hearing at frequencies of 1,000, 2000 and 4000 Hz at 25 dBHL; sweep audiometry screening in an acoustic booth (20 dBHL at the same frequencies); pure-tone audiometry thresholds in an acoustic booth (frequencies of 500, 1000, 2000 and 4000 Hz); and acoustic immittance measurements. The diagnostic capacities of the teleaudiometry/sweep audiometry screening methods were as follows: sensitivity  ϝ  58%/65%; specificity  ϝ  86%/99%; positive predictive value  ϝ  51%/91%; negative predictive value  ϝ  89%/92%; and accuracy  ϝ  81%/92%. Teleaudiometry and sweep audiometry showed moderate agreement. Furthermore, the use of these methods in series with immittance testing improved the specificity, whereas parallel testing improved the sensitivity. Teleaudiometry was found to be reliable and feasible for screening hearing in school children. Moreover, teleaudiometry is the preferred method for remote areas where specialized personnel and specific equipment are not available, and its use may reduce the costs of hearing screening programs.	t	\N
26025759	Our fMRI study investigates auditory rhyme processing in spoken language to further elucidate the topic of functional lateralization of language processing. During scanning, 14 subjects listened to four different types of versed word strings and subsequently performed either a rhyme or a meter detection task. Our results show lateralization to auditory-related temporal regions in the right hemisphere irrespective of task. As for the left hemisphere we report responses in the supramarginal gyrus as well as in the opercular part of the inferior frontal gyrus modulated by the presence of regular meter and rhyme. The interaction of rhyme and meter was associated with increased involvement of the superior temporal sulcus and the putamen of the right hemisphere. Overall, these findings support the notion of right-hemispheric specialization for suprasegmental analyses during processing of spoken sentences and provide neuroimaging evidence for the influence of metrics on auditory rhyme processing.	t	\N
26055197	The timely diagnosis and treatment of acquired hearing loss in the pediatric population has significant implications for a child's development. Audiological assessment in children, however, carries both technological and logistical challenges. Typically, specialized methods (such as play audiometry) are required to maintain the child's attention and can be resource intensive. These challenges were previously addressed by a novel, calibrated, interactive play audiometer for Apple(®) iOS(®) called "ShoeBOX Audiometry". This device has potential applications for deployment in environments where traditional clinical audiometry is either unavailable or impractical. The objective of this study was to assess the screening capability of the tablet audiometer in an uncontrolled environment using consumer ear-bud headphones. Consecutive patients presenting to the Audiology Clinic at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (ages 4 and older) were recruited. Participants' hearing was evaluted using the tablet audiometer calibrated to Apple(®) In-Ear headphones. The warble tone thresholds obtained were compared to gold standard measurements taken with a traditional clinical audiometer inside a soundbooth. 80 patients were enrolled. The majority of participants were capable of completing an audiologic assessment using the tablet computer. Due to ambient noise levels outside a soundbooth, thresholds obtained at 500Hz were not consistent with traditional audiometry. Excluding 500Hz threholds, the tablet audiometer demonstrated strong negative predictive value (89.7%) as well as strong sensitivity (91.2%) for hearing loss. Thresholds obtained in an uncontrolled setting are not reflective of diagnostic thresholds due to the uncalibrated nature of the headphones and variability of the setting without a booth. Nevertheless, the tablet audiometer proved to be both a valid and sensitive instrument for unsupervised screening of warble-tone thresholds in children.	t	\N
26065403	To date, there have been less than 30 cases of cochlear implantation (CI) in patients with superficial siderosis (SS) reported in the literature. The primary objective of the current study is to evaluate CI outcomes in six additional patients (seven ears) with SS and sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) and to perform a systematic review of the literature. Case series and systematic review of the literature. Two tertiary academic CI centers. All patients with SS who underwent CI between 2007 and 2014. Cochlear implantation. Pre- and post-implantation speech perception scores and durability of benefit. A total of seven ears (four males; median age 52 yr) with SS and SNHL met inclusion criteria. All patients developed progressive bilateral SNHL that was no longer amenable to conventional hearing aids. Additional presenting symptoms included vestibulopathy (n = 4), cerebellar ataxia (n = 3), mild dementia (n = 1), and myelopathy (n = 1). All patients underwent uncomplicated CI, and intraoperative device telemetry revealed normal responses in all electrodes. The median postoperative auditory threshold average was 32.5 dB HL (range 16-36 dB) and the median postoperative CNC word score was 51% (range 46-64%). The median duration of follow-up was 15.5 months (range 3-64 mo). All patients demonstrated initial improvement in speech perception testing. Two patients had performance decline and worsening dementia resulting from progressive SS. Cochlear implantation is a viable strategy for auditory rehabilitation in patients with SS and associated SNHL. Most individuals enjoy benefit from CI; however, patients should be counseled regarding the risks of performance decline with progressive SS.	t	\N
26093425	Natural auditory scenes often consist of several sound sources overlapping in time, but separated in space. Yet, location is not fully exploited in auditory grouping: spatially separated sounds can get perceptually fused into a single auditory object and this leads to difficulties in the identification and localization of concurrent sounds. Here, the brain mechanisms responsible for grouping across spatial locations were explored in magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings. The results show that the cortical representation of a vowel spatially separated into two locations reflects the perceived location of the speech sound rather than the physical locations of the individual components. In other words, the auditory scene is neurally rearranged to bring components into spatial alignment when they were deemed to belong to the same object. This renders the original spatial information unavailable at the level of the auditory cortex and may contribute to difficulties in concurrent sound segregation.	t	\N
26093429	Sound focusing is to create a concentrated acoustic field in the region surrounded by a loudspeaker array. This problem was tackled in the previous research via the Helmholtz integral approach, brightness control, acoustic contrast control, etc. In this paper, the same problem was revisited from the perspective of beamforming. A source array model is reformulated in terms of the steering matrix between the source and the field points, which lends itself to the use of beamforming algorithms such as minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) and linearly constrained minimum variance (LCMV) originally intended for sensor arrays. The beamforming methods are compared with the conventional methods in terms of beam pattern, directional index, and control effort. Objective tests are conducted to assess the audio quality by using perceptual evaluation of audio quality (PEAQ). Experiments of produced sound field and listening tests are conducted in a listening room, with results processed using analysis of variance and regression analysis. In contrast to the conventional energy-based methods, the results have shown that the proposed methods are phase-sensitive in light of the distortionless constraint in formulating the array filters, which helps enhance audio quality and focusing performance.	t	\N
26093435	Working memory capacity has been linked to performance on many higher cognitive tasks, including the ability to perceive speech in noise. Current efforts to train working memory have demonstrated that working memory performance can be improved, suggesting that working memory training may lead to improved speech perception in noise. A further advantage of working memory training to improve speech perception in noise is that working memory training materials are often simple, such as letters or digits, making them easily translatable across languages. The current effort tested the hypothesis that working memory training would be associated with improved speech perception in noise and that materials would easily translate across languages. Native Mandarin Chinese and native English speakers completed ten days of reversed digit span training. Reading span and speech perception in noise both significantly improved following training, whereas untrained controls showed no gains. These data suggest that working memory training may be used to improve listeners' speech perception in noise and that the materials may be quickly adapted to a wide variety of listeners.	t	\N
26093448	Physiological measures of neural activity in the auditory cortex have revealed plasticity following unilateral deafness. Central projections from the remaining ear reorganize to produce a stronger cortical response than normal. However, little is known about the perceptual consequences of this increase. One possibility is improved sound intensity discrimination. Intensity difference limens were measured in 11 individuals with unilateral deafness that were previously shown to exhibit increased cortical activity to sounds heard by the intact ear. Significantly smaller mean difference limens were observed compared with controls. These results provide evidence of the perceptual consequences of plasticity in humans following unilateral deafness.	t	\N
26107084	To examine the voice and personality characteristics of patients diagnosed with organic dysphonia secondary to vocal fold immobility. The study comprised patients of both genders, attending the Clinic School of Speech Therapy of the Federal University of Paraíba, with otorhinolaryngological diagnosis of vocal fold immobility and speech therapy diagnosis of dysphonia. The self-assessment of voice was measured through a Vocal Screening Protocol and Voice Symptoms Scale (VoiSS), the voice was collected for auditory-perceptive evaluation, and the Factorial Personality Battery (FPB) was used. Descriptive statistical analysis was performed to determine the frequency, mean, and standard deviation of the studied variables. Eight patients participated in the study, of both genders, with average age of 40.4 ± 16.9 years. The more frequent risk factors were the personal ones (4.7 ± 2.1). In the VoiSS, the patients presented a higher average in the limitation score (34.1 ± 15.7). From the auditory-perceptive evaluation, moderate intensity of vocal deviation was obtained, with predominant vocal roughness (57.7 ± 25.2). In the FPB, the patients had an average higher than the cutoff scores in neuroticism (3.8 ± 1.4) and accomplishment (5.2 ± 1.0). The predominant vocal parameter was roughness. The patients referred to a few risk factors that compromise the vocal behavior and presented the neuroticism and realization factors as a highlight in their personality. Thus, individuals with vocal fold immobility show personality characteristics that may be a reflection of their voice disorder, not a factor that determines their dysphonia.	t	\N
26121827	To assess the clinical effeetiveness of prelingually deaf children after cochlear implantation at different ages so as to provide reasonable expectations for the patients and guidance for the clinical treatment. Electronic databases PubMed, YZ365. COM, WANFANG DATA, CMJD, CHKD, CNKI were searched using relevant keywords. Extracted data included author, year of publication, diagnosis, et al. Reported treatment outcomes were clustered into speech discrimination and hearing abilities. Meta-analyses were performed on studies with numerical results using random or fixed effects model. There were eight randomized control studies including 442 patients. Comparing speech perception of prelingually deaf children after cochlear implantation younger than three years old (experimental group) and 3-6 years old (control group), three and six months after operation showed that experimental group performed significantly worse than control group; 12 months after operation showed that experimental group performed significantly better than control group. Comparing hearing abilities, three and six months after operation showed that experimental group performed significantly worse than control group; 12 months after operation showed showed that experimental group performed significantly better than control group. Comparing speech perception of younger or older than 4. 5 years old children showed that after 1.5-2 years of operation children implanted younger than 4.5 years of age performed significantly better than children implanted older than 4.5 years old. Comparing speech perception of 7-12 years old children showed that after 3, 6, 12 months of operation patients of 7-12 years old performed significantly better than those children older than 12 years old. Comparing speech perception of implantation younger or older than 18 years old (7-14 yeas old was group A, > 14-18 yeas old was group B, older than 18 yeas old was group C) showed that after one and four years of operation A > B > C, and there were significant differences among them. Comparing warble tone threshold average (WTA) showed that after one year of operation A < B < C, and there were significant differences among them. However, after four years of operation, there was no significant difference among them. Prelinguistically deafened patients younger than three years old with cochlear implantation, insisting on scienctific rehabilitation training for a long period of time can receive the optimal recovery effect. The older patients are suggested as early as possible receiving cochlear implantation. The longer they are implanted, the better results they will receive. Moreover, the younger age they are implanted, the faster postoperative language progress they will receive. Further controlled studies with longer follow-up periods and more person included may make the effectiveness of cochlear implantaion more reliable.	t	\N
26152053	During the first years of life, sensory modalities communicate with each other. This process is fundamental for the development of unisensory and multisensory skills. The absence of one sensory input impacts on the development of other modalities. Since 2008 we have studied these aspects and developed our cross-sensory calibration theory. This theory emerged from the observation that children start to integrate multisensory information (such as vision and touch) only after 8-10 years of age. Before this age the more accurate sense teaches (calibrates) the others; when one calibrating modality is missing, the other modalities result impaired. Children with visual disability have problems in understanding the haptic or auditory perception of space and children with motor disabilities have problems in understanding the visual dimension of objects. This review presents our recent studies on multisensory integration and cross-sensory calibration in children and adults with and without sensory and motor disabilities. The goal of this review is to show the importance of interaction between sensory systems during the early period of life in order to correct perceptual development to occur.	t	\N
26152058	Echolocation can be used by blind and sighted humans to navigate their environment. The current study investigated the neural activity underlying processing of path direction during walking. Brain activity was measured with fMRI in three blind echolocation experts, and three blind and three sighted novices. During scanning, participants listened to binaural recordings that had been made prior to scanning while echolocation experts had echolocated during walking along a corridor which could continue to the left, right, or straight ahead. Participants also listened to control sounds that contained ambient sounds and clicks, but no echoes. The task was to decide if the corridor in the recording continued to the left, right, or straight ahead, or if they were listening to a control sound. All participants successfully dissociated echo from no echo sounds, however, echolocation experts were superior at direction detection. We found brain activations associated with processing of path direction (contrast: echo vs. no echo) in superior parietal lobule (SPL) and inferior frontal cortex in each group. In sighted novices, additional activation occurred in the inferior parietal lobule (IPL) and middle and superior frontal areas. Within the framework of the dorso-dorsal and ventro-dorsal pathway proposed by Rizzolatti and Matelli (2003), our results suggest that blind participants may automatically assign directional meaning to the echoes, while sighted participants may apply more conscious, high-level spatial processes. High similarity of SPL and IFC activations across all three groups, in combination with previous research, also suggest that all participants recruited a multimodal spatial processing system for action (here: locomotion).	t	\N
26177161	Code-blends (simultaneous words and signs) are a unique characteristic of bimodal bilingual communication. Using fMRI, we investigated code-blend comprehension in hearing native ASL-English bilinguals who made a semantic decision (edible?) about signs, audiovisual words, and semantically equivalent code-blends. English and ASL recruited a similar fronto-temporal network with expected modality differences: stronger activation for English in auditory regions of bilateral superior temporal cortex, and stronger activation for ASL in bilateral occipitotemporal visual regions and left parietal cortex. Code-blend comprehension elicited activity in a combination of these regions, and no cognitive control regions were additionally recruited. Furthermore, code-blends elicited reduced activation relative to ASL presented alone in bilateral prefrontal and visual extrastriate cortices, and relative to English alone in auditory association cortex. Consistent with behavioral facilitation observed during semantic decisions, the findings suggest that redundant semantic content induces more efficient neural processing in language and sensory regions during bimodal language integration.	t	\N
26185045	Discourse structure enables us to generate expectations based upon linguistic material that has already been introduced. The present magnetoencephalography (MEG) study addresses auditory perception of test sentences in which discourse coherence was manipulated by using presuppositions (PSP) that either correspond or fail to correspond to items in preceding context sentences with respect to uniqueness and existence. Context violations yielded delayed auditory M50 and enhanced auditory M200 cross-correlation responses to syllable onsets within an analysis window of 1.5s following the PSP trigger words. Furthermore, discourse incoherence yielded suppression of spectral power within an expanded alpha band ranging from 6 to 16Hz. This effect showed a bimodal temporal distribution, being significant in an early time window of 0.0-0.5s following the PSP trigger and a late interval of 2.0-2.5s. These findings indicate anticipatory top-down mechanisms interacting with various aspects of bottom-up processing during speech perception.	t	\N
26185046	A number of studies have shown that from an early age, bilinguals outperform their monolingual peers on executive control tasks. We previously found that bilingual children and adults also display greater attention to unexpected language switches within speech. Here, we investigated the effect of a bilingual upbringing on speech perception in one language. We recorded monolingual and bilingual toddlers' event-related potentials (ERPs) to spoken words preceded by pictures. Words matching the picture prime elicited an early frontal positivity in bilingual participants only, whereas later ERP amplitudes associated with semantic processing did not differ between groups. These results add to the growing body of evidence that bilingualism increases overall attention during speech perception whilst semantic integration is unaffected.	t	\N
26200250	Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) demonstrate that human auditory cortical responses are sensitive to changes in static pitch as indexed by the pitch onset response (POR), a negativity generated at the initiation of acoustic periodicity. Yet, it is still unclear if this brain signature is sensitive to dynamic, time-varying properties of pitch more characteristic of those found in naturalistic speech and music. Neuroelectric PORs were recorded in response to contrastive pitch patterns differing in their pitch height, time-variance, and directionality (i.e., rise vs. fall). Broadband noise followed by contiguous iterated rippled noise (producing salient pitch sweeps) was used to temporally separate neural activity coding the onset of acoustic energy from the onset of time-varying pitch. Analysis of PORs revealed distinct modulations in response latency that distinguished static from time-varying pitch contours (steady-state<dynamic) and pitch height (high<low). However, PORs were insensitive to the direction of pitch sweeps (rise=fall). Our findings suggest that the POR signature provides a useful neural index of auditory cortical pitch processing for some, but not all pitch-evoking stimuli.	t	\N
26222937	To analyze the occurrence of acoustic reflex and its threshold on newborns using the 226 and 1,000 Hz probes. Thirty-six newborns with "PASS" results in newborn hearing screening and tympanogram with one or two peaks for both probe tones were included. Group I comprised 20 full-term newborns without risk indicator for hearing loss, and Group II comprised 16 newborns with at least one risk indicator. The study about ipsilateral acoustic reflex thresholds was conducted in 500, 1,000, 2,000, and 4,000 Hz. The groups presented the acoustic reflex thresholds between 50 and 100 dB for both probe tones. In the comparison between the probes, there were differences in all frequencies evaluated in Group I, with the lowest threshold mean for the 1,000 Hz probe. In Group II, differences were detected at 2,000 Hz. The mean acoustic reflex thresholds were similar in both groups for the 226 Hz probe. There was a difference for the 1,000 Hz probe in all tested frequencies. The percentage of response was higher in both groups for the 1,000 Hz probe. The kappa test showed extremely poor agreement in the comparison of results between both probes. The occurrence of acoustic reflex was higher in newborns and its thresholds were lower with the 1,000 Hz probe both for healthy newborns and for newborns at risk.	t	\N
26290244	Plasticity in the visual cortex of blind individuals provides a rare window into the mechanisms of cortical specialization. In the absence of visual input, occipital ("visual") brain regions respond to sound and spoken language. Here, we examined the time course and developmental mechanism of this plasticity in blind children. Nineteen blind and 40 sighted children and adolescents (4-17 years old) listened to stories and two auditory control conditions (unfamiliar foreign speech, and music). We find that "visual" cortices of young blind (but not sighted) children respond to sound. Responses to nonlanguage sounds increased between the ages of 4 and 17. By contrast, occipital responses to spoken language were maximal by age 4 and were not related to Braille learning. These findings suggest that occipital plasticity for spoken language is independent of plasticity for Braille and for sound. We conclude that in the absence of visual input, spoken language colonizes the visual system during brain development. Our findings suggest that early in life, human cortex has a remarkably broad computational capacity. The same cortical tissue can take on visual perception and language functions. Studies of plasticity provide key insights into how experience shapes the human brain. The "visual" cortex of adults who are blind from birth responds to touch, sound, and spoken language. To date, all existing studies have been conducted with adults, so little is known about the developmental trajectory of plasticity. We used fMRI to study the emergence of "visual" cortex responses to sound and spoken language in blind children and adolescents. We find that "visual" cortex responses to sound increase between 4 and 17 years of age. By contrast, responses to spoken language are present by 4 years of age and are not related to Braille-learning. These findings suggest that, early in development, human cortex can take on a strikingly wide range of functions.	t	\N
26323201	To determine if differences between dyslexic and typical readers in their reading scores and verbal IQ are evident as early as first grade and whether the trajectory of these differences increases or decreases from childhood to adolescence. The subjects were the 414 participants comprising the Connecticut Longitudinal Study, a sample survey cohort, assessed yearly from 1st to 12th grade on measures of reading and IQ. Statistical analysis employed longitudinal models based on growth curves and multiple groups. As early as first grade, compared with typical readers, dyslexic readers had lower reading scores and verbal IQ, and their trajectories over time never converge with those of typical readers. These data demonstrate that such differences are not so much a function of increasing disparities over time but instead because of differences already present in first grade between typical and dyslexic readers. The achievement gap between typical and dyslexic readers is evident as early as first grade, and this gap persists into adolescence. These findings provide strong evidence and impetus for early identification of and intervention for young children at risk for dyslexia. Implementing effective reading programs as early as kindergarten or even preschool offers the potential to close the achievement gap.	t	\N
26336746	Dynamics of activity in the frequency band of theta waves during of procedures, listening of the acoustic image of the own EEG was investigated. The formation of the acoustic image EEG was performed with a significant reduction of musical properties. It is shown that the increase in activity in the theta range depends on the level of synchronization and consistency of the presentation of the acoustic image own EEG relative to the current bioelectrical activity of the brain. The maximum increase in activity in the theta range was observed with minimum time delay and maximum consistency requirements of sounds with the current EEG. It is concluded that the increase in activity in the range of theta waves in the listening environment acoustic image own EEG is determined by the correlation of sounds with the current bioelectric activity of the brain.	t	\N
26377472	Human cortex is comprised of specialized networks that support functions, such as visual motion perception and language processing. How do genes and experience contribute to this specialization? Studies of plasticity offer unique insights into this question. In congenitally blind individuals, "visual" cortex responds to auditory and tactile stimuli. Remarkably, recent evidence suggests that occipital areas participate in language processing. We asked whether in blindness, occipital cortices: (1) develop domain-specific responses to language and (2) respond to a highly specialized aspect of language-syntactic movement. Nineteen congenitally blind and 18 sighted participants took part in two fMRI experiments. We report that in congenitally blind individuals, but not in sighted controls, "visual" cortex is more active during sentence comprehension than during a sequence memory task with nonwords, or a symbolic math task. This suggests that areas of occipital cortex become selective for language, relative to other similar higher-cognitive tasks. Crucially, we find that these occipital areas respond more to sentences with syntactic movement but do not respond to the difficulty of math equations. We conclude that regions within the visual cortex of blind adults are involved in syntactic processing. Our findings suggest that the cognitive function of human cortical areas is largely determined by input during development. Human cortex is made up of specialized regions that perform different functions, such as visual motion perception and language processing. How do genes and experience contribute to this specialization? Studies of plasticity show that cortical areas can change function from one sensory modality to another. Here we demonstrate that input during development can alter cortical function even more dramatically. In blindness a subset of "visual" areas becomes specialized for language processing. Crucially, we find that the same "visual" areas respond to a highly specialized and uniquely human aspect of language-syntactic movement. These data suggest that human cortex has broad functional capacity during development, and input plays a major role in determining functional specialization.	t	\N
26380997	The usage of personal listening devices (PLDs) is associated with risks of hearing loss. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effects of music exposure from these devices on high-frequency hearing thresholds of PLD users. A total of 282 young adults were questioned regarding their listening habits and symptoms associated with PLD listening. Their audiogram thresholds were determined at high (3-8 kHz) frequencies and extended high frequencies (EHFs, 9-16 kHz). The preferred listening volumes of PLD users were used to compute their overall 8-h equivalent music exposure levels (LAeq8h). Approximately 80% of the subjects were regular PLD users. Of these, 20.1% had LAeq8h of ≥75 dBA, while 4.4% of them had LAeq8h of ≥85 dBA, which carries a high risk of hearing damage. Compared with those exposed to LAeq8h of <75 dBA, subjects who had LAeq8h of ≥75 dBA reported a significantly higher incidence of tinnitus and difficulty in hearing others immediately after using PLDs. PLD users who were exposed to LAeq8h of ≥75 dBA and had been using their devices for ≥4 years also showed significantly higher mean audiogram thresholds compared with non-users at most EHFs tested. In addition, the thresholds of PLD users at EHFs showed a weak but significant positive correlation with their LAeq8h. The present findings suggest that excessive exposure to music among PLD users may lead to initial effects on their hearing at very high frequencies.	t	\N
26536965	It has been shown that musicians are at risk of noise-induced hearing loss. The aim of the study has been to evaluate the temporary changes of hearing in the case of orchestral musicians after group rehearsals. The study group comprised 18 orchestral musicians, aged 30-58 years old (mean: 40 years old) having 12-40 years (mean: 22 years) of professional experience. The temporary changes in hearing after group rehearsals were determined using transient-evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOAEs). Noise exposures during group rehearsals were also evaluated. Musicians' hearing threshold levels were higher (worse) than expected for the equivalent non-noise-exposed population. Moreover, the high frequency notched audiograms were observed in some of them. After rehearsals, during which musicians were exposed to orchestral noise at A-weighted equivalent-continuous sound pressure level (normalized to 8-h working day) varied from 75.6-83.1 dB (mean: 79.4 dB). The significant post-exposure reductions of TEOAE amplitudes (approx. 0.7 dB) both for the total response and frequency bands of 2000 and 3000 Hz were noted. However, there were no significant differences between pre- and postexposure reproducibility of TEOAE. Obtained results have confirmed that orchestral musicians are at risk of hearing loss due to their professional activities, even at exposures to orchestral noise less than the limit values for occupational noise.	t	\N
26538659	Deficits in auditory emotion recognition (AER) are a core feature of schizophrenia and a key component of social cognitive impairment. AER deficits are tied behaviorally to impaired ability to interpret tonal ("prosodic") features of speech that normally convey emotion, such as modulations in base pitch (F0M) and pitch variability (F0SD). These modulations can be recreated using synthetic frequency modulated (FM) tones that mimic the prosodic contours of specific emotional stimuli. The present study investigates neural mechanisms underlying impaired AER using a combined event-related potential/resting-state functional connectivity (rsfMRI) approach in 84 schizophrenia/schizoaffective disorder patients and 66 healthy comparison subjects. Mismatch negativity (MMN) to FM tones was assessed in 43 patients/36 controls. rsfMRI between auditory cortex and medial temporal (insula) regions was assessed in 55 patients/51 controls. The relationship between AER, MMN to FM tones, and rsfMRI was assessed in the subset who performed all assessments (14 patients, 21 controls). As predicted, patients showed robust reductions in MMN across FM stimulus type (p = 0.005), particularly to modulations in F0M, along with impairments in AER and FM tone discrimination. MMN source analysis indicated dipoles in both auditory cortex and anterior insula, whereas rsfMRI analyses showed reduced auditory-insula connectivity. MMN to FM tones and functional connectivity together accounted for ∼50% of the variance in AER performance across individuals. These findings demonstrate that impaired preattentive processing of tonal information and reduced auditory-insula connectivity are critical determinants of social cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia, and thus represent key targets for future research and clinical intervention. Schizophrenia patients show deficits in the ability to infer emotion based upon tone of voice [auditory emotion recognition (AER)] that drive impairments in social cognition and global functional outcome. This study evaluated neural substrates of impaired AER in schizophrenia using a combined event-related potential/resting-state fMRI approach. Patients showed impaired mismatch negativity response to emotionally relevant frequency modulated tones along with impaired functional connectivity between auditory and medial temporal (anterior insula) cortex. These deficits contributed in parallel to impaired AER and accounted for ∼50% of variance in AER performance. Overall, these findings demonstrate the importance of both auditory-level dysfunction and impaired auditory/insula connectivity in the pathophysiology of social cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia.	t	\N
26562889	Visual search is an essential task for many lifesaving professions; airport security personnel search baggage X-ray images for dangerous items and radiologists examine radiographs for tumors. Accuracy is critical for such searches; however, there are potentially negative influences that can affect performance; for example, the displays can be cluttered and can contain multiple targets. Previous research has demonstrated that clutter can hurt search performance and a second target is less likely to be detected in a multiple-target search after a first target has been found, which raises a concern-how does clutter affect multiple-target search performance? The current study explored clutter in a multiple-target search paradigm, where there could be one or two targets present, and targets appeared in varying levels of clutter. There was a significant interaction between clutter and target number: Increasing levels of clutter did not affect single-target detection but did reduce detection of a second target. Multiple-target search accuracy is known to be sensitive to contextual influences, and the current results reveal a specific effect wherein clutter disproportionally affected multiple-target search accuracy. These results suggest that the detection and processing of a first target might enhance the masking effects of clutter around a second target.	t	\N
26575193	We examined short-term memory for sequences of visual stimuli embedded in varying multisensory contexts. In two experiments, subjects judged the structure of the visual sequences while disregarding concurrent, but task-irrelevant auditory sequences. Stimuli were eight-item sequences in which varying luminances and frequencies were presented concurrently and rapidly (at 8 Hz). Subjects judged whether the final four items in a visual sequence identically replicated the first four items. Luminances and frequencies in each sequence were either perceptually correlated (Congruent) or were unrelated to one another (Incongruent). Experiment 1 showed that, despite encouragement to ignore the auditory stream, subjects' categorization of visual sequences was strongly influenced by the accompanying auditory sequences. Moreover, this influence tracked the similarity between a stimulus's separate audio and visual sequences, demonstrating that task-irrelevant auditory sequences underwent a considerable degree of processing. Using a variant of Hebb's repetition design, Experiment 2 compared musically trained subjects and subjects who had little or no musical training on the same task as used in Experiment 1. Test sequences included some that intermittently and randomly recurred, which produced better performance than sequences that were generated anew for each trial. The auditory component of a recurring audiovisual sequence influenced musically trained subjects more than it did other subjects. This result demonstrates that stimulus-selective, task-irrelevant learning of sequences can occur even when such learning is an incidental by-product of the task being performed.	t	\N
26753216	The stress response has been well documented in past music therapy literature. However, hypometabolism, or the relaxation response, has received much less attention. Music therapists have long utilized various music-assisted relaxation techniques with both live and recorded music to elicit such a response. The ongoing proliferations of relaxation music through commercial media and the dire lack of evidence to support such claims warrant attention from healthcare professionals and music therapists. The purpose of these 3 studies was to investigate the correlational relationships between 12 psychophysical properties of music, preference, familiarity, and degree of perceived relaxation in music. Fourteen music therapists recommended and analyzed 30 selections of relaxation music. A group of 80 healthy adults then rated their familiarity, preference, and degree of perceived relaxation in the music. The analysis provided a detailed description of the intrinsic properties in music that were perceived to be relaxing by listeners. These properties included tempo, mode, harmonic, rhythmic, instrumental, and melodic complexities, timbre, vocalization/lyrics, pitch range, dynamic variations, and contour. In addition, music preference was highly correlated with listeners' perception of relaxation in music for both music therapists and healthy adults. The correlation between familiarity and degree of relaxation reached significance in the healthy adult group. Results from this study provided an in-depth operational definition of the intrinsic parameters in relaxation music and also highlighted the importance of preference and familiarity in eliciting the relaxation response.	t	\N
26891543	PROBLEM/OBJECTIVES: Maxillary constriction and high palatal arch are associated with increased risk of chronic eustachian tube dysfunction and conductive hearing loss (CHL) due to chronic effusion. However, this relationship has not been clearly demonstrated. This study assessed CHL in school children with a narrowed maxilla and deep palatal vault. Thirty-two children with maxillary constriction were randomly selected for the study group and 28 children with normal transverse maxillary development were selected for the control group. Pure-tone audiograms were obtained for all children, and hearing levels and air-bone gaps were measured. Air-bone gap measurements in the control group ranged from 5.50 to 14.50 decibels (dB), and in the study group they were between 5.00 and 24.00 dB. In the study group, 14 (43.8%) children had slight CHL, and the remaining 18 (56.2%) children had normal hearing levels. In the control group, all of the children had normal hearing levels. Hearing levels and air-bone gaps were greater in the study group than the control group. This study showed that children with a narrowed maxilla and deep palatal vault may have slight CHL. Therefore, the onset of CHL should be followed with hearing screening programs.	t	\N
26941686	Actions that produce sounds infuse our daily lives. Some of these sounds are a natural consequence of physical interactions (such as a clang resulting from dropping a pan), but others are artificially designed (such as a beep resulting from a keypress). Although the relationship between actions and sounds has previously been examined, the frame of reference of these associations is still unknown, despite it being a fundamental property of a psychological representation. For example, when an association is created between a keypress and a tone, it is unclear whether the frame of reference is egocentric (gesture-sound association) or exocentric (key-sound association). This question is especially important for artificially created associations, which occur in technology that pairs sounds with actions, such as gestural interfaces, virtual or augmented reality, and simple buttons that produce tones. The frame of reference could directly influence the learnability, the ease of use, the extent of immersion, and many other factors of the interaction. To explore whether action-sound associations are egocentric or exocentric, an experiment was implemented using a computer keyboard's number pad wherein moving a finger from one key to another produced a sound, thus creating an action-sound association. Half of the participants received egocentric instructions to move their finger with a particular gesture. The other half of the participants received exocentric instructions to move their finger to a particular number on the keypad. All participants were performing the same actions, and only the framing of the action varied between conditions by altering task instructions. Participants in the egocentric condition learned the gesture-sound association, as revealed by a priming paradigm. However, the exocentric condition showed no priming effects. This finding suggests that action-sound associations are egocentric in nature. A second part of the same session further confirmed the egocentric nature of these associations by showing no change in the priming effect after moving to a different starting location. Our findings are consistent with an egocentric representation of action-sound associations, which could have implications for applications that utilize these associations.	t	\N
22619989	The paper involves exposure to noise of the State Police officers connected with the use of firearms. The noise generated by these weapons is of short duration and high intensity. The research was carried out during the sessions of firearm training of State Police officers to assess exposure to noise. The values of the various investigations, both audiometric and phonometric, carried out made it possible to demonstrate a significant exposure and a temporary increase in the threshold, above the frequency of 6000 Hz. Even taking account of the abatement from use of headphones, an exposure was demonstrated that was above the statutory limits, as was confirmed by the temporary hearing threshold shift.	t	\N
19933712	Despite robust evidence of hippocampal abnormalities in schizophrenia, it is unclear whether hippocampal dysfunction predates the onset of psychosis. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate hippocampal function in subjects with an at-risk mental state (ARMS). Eighteen subjects meeting criteria for an ARMS and 22 healthy controls, matched for age, gender, and premorbid IQ, were scanned while performing a version of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott false memory task. During an encoding phase, subjects read lists of words aloud. Following a delay, they were presented with 24 target words, 24 semantically related lure words, and 24 novel words and required to indicate if each had been presented before. Behaviorally, the ARMS group made more false alarm responses for novel words than controls (P = .04) and had a lower discrimination accuracy for target words (P = .02). During encoding, ARMS subjects showed less activation than healthy controls in the left middle frontal gyrus, the bilateral medial frontal gyri, and the left parahippocampal gyrus. Correct recognition relative to false alarms was associated with differential engagement of the hippocampus bilaterally in healthy controls, but this difference was absent in the ARMS group. The ARMS was associated with altered function in the medial temporal cortex, as well as in the prefrontal regions, during both verbal encoding and recognition. These neurofunctional differences were associated with diminished recognition performance and may reflect the greatly increased risk of psychosis associated with the ARMS.	f	\N
20146593	Top-down control of visual sensory cortex has long been tied to the orienting of visual spatial attention on a rapid, moment-to-moment basis. Here, we examined whether sensory responses in visual cortex are also modulated by natural and comparatively slower fluctuations in whether or not one is paying attention to the task at hand. Participants performed a simple visual discrimination task at fixation as the ERPs to task-irrelevant probes in the upper visual periphery were recorded. At random intervals, participants were stopped and asked to report on their attentional state at the time of stoppage-either "on-task" or "off-task." ERPs to the probes immediately preceding these subjective reports were then examined as a function of whether attention was in an on-task versus off-task state. We found that sensory-evoked responses to the probes were significantly attenuated during off-task relative to on-task states, as measured by the visual P1 ERP component. In two additional experiments, we replicated this effect while (1) finding that off-task sensory attenuation extends to the auditory domain, as measured by the auditory N1 ERP component, and (2) eliminating state-dependent shifts in general arousal as a possible explanation for the effects. Collectively, our findings suggest that sensory gain control in cortex is yoked to the natural ebb and flow in how much attention we pay to the current task over time.	f	\N
20213858	Cognitive assessment in individuals with cancer requires both measured performance on neuropsychological tests and self-report of effectiveness in functioning. Few instruments are available to assess the perceived impact of cognitive alterations on daily functioning in individuals treated for cancer. In this study, we investigated the psychometric properties of a theoretically based instrument, and the Attentional Function Index (AFI), designed to measure perceived effectiveness in common activities requiring attention and working memory, particularly the ability to formulate plans, carry out tasks, and function effectively in daily life. Women (N=172), ages 27-86 years, completed the questionnaire before primary treatment for early stage breast cancer. Construct validity was established using exploratory principal component factor analysis with varimax rotation. A 13-item instrument emerged with 3 subscales, namely effective action, attentional lapses, and interpersonal effectiveness, which explained 74.69% of total variance. The internal consistency coefficients (Cronbach's α) were 0.92 for the total instrument, and ranged from 0.80 to 0.92 for the 3 subscales. Further examination of validity indicated that the scores on the AFI (1) showed expected correlations with established measures of ability to concentrate, cognitive failures, states of confusion, and mental fatigue, and (2) could distinguish differences in perceived cognitive functioning between younger and older age groups. AFI scores were not significantly associated with years of education or presence of comorbid conditions. The brief AFI has demonstrated usefulness for assessment of perceived cognitive functioning in populations with life-threatening and chronic illness, such as breast cancer.	f	\N
20350175	Grapheme-color synesthesia is a heritable trait where graphemes ("2") elicit the concurrent perception of specific colors (red). Researchers have questioned whether synesthetic experiences are meaningful or simply arbitrary associations and whether these associations are perceptual or conceptual. To address these fundamental questions, ERPs were recorded as 12 synesthetes read statements such as "The Coca-Cola logo is white and 2," in which the final grapheme induced a color that was either contextually congruous (red) or incongruous ("...white and 7," for a synesthetes who experienced 7 as green). Grapheme congruity was found to modulate the amplitude of the N1, P2, N300, and N400 components in synesthetes, suggesting that synesthesia impacts perceptual as well as conceptual aspects of processing. To evaluate whether observed ERP effects required the experience of colored graphemes versus knowledge of grapheme-color pairings, we ran three separate groups of controls on a similar task. Controls trained to a synesthete's associations elicited N400 modulation, indicating that knowledge of grapheme-color mappings was sufficient to modulate this component. Controls trained to synesthetic associations and given explicit visualization instructions elicited both N300 and N400 modulations. Lastly, untrained controls who viewed physically colored graphemes ("2" printed in red) elicited N1 and N400 modulations. The N1 grapheme congruity effect began earlier in synesthetes than colored grapheme controls but had similar scalp topography. Data suggest that, in synesthetes, achromatic graphemes engage similar visual processing networks as colored graphemes in nonsynesthetes and are in keeping with models of synesthesia that posit early feed-forward connections between form and color processing areas in extrastriate cortex. The P2 modulation was unique to the synesthetes and may reflect neural activity that underlies the conscious experience of the synesthetic induction.	f	\N
20459310	Understanding the relation between prestimulus neural activity and subsequent stimulus processing has become an area of active investigation. Computational modeling, as well as in vitro and in vivo single-unit recordings in animal preparations, have explored mechanisms by which background synaptic activity can influence the responsiveness of cortical neurons to afferent input. How these mechanisms manifest in humans is not well understood. Although numerous EEG/MEG studies have considered the role of prestimulus alpha oscillations in the genesis of visual-evoked potentials, no consensus has emerged, and divergent reports continue to appear. The present work addresses this problem in three stages. First, a theoretical model was developed in which the background synaptic activity and the firing rate of a neural ensemble are related through a sigmoidal function. The derivative of this function, referred to as local gain, has an inverted-U shape and is postulated to be proportional to the trial-by-trial response evoked by a transient stimulus. Second, the theoretical model was extended to noninvasive studies of human visual processing, where the model variables are reinterpreted in terms of ongoing EEG oscillations and event-related potentials. Predictions were derived from the model and tested by recording high-density scalp EEG from healthy volunteers performing a trial-by-trial cued spatial visual attention task. Finally, enhanced stimulus processing by attention was linked to an increase in the overall slope of the sigmoidal function. The commonly observed reduction of alpha magnitude with attention was interpreted as signaling a shift of the underlying neural ensemble toward an optimal excitability state that enables the increase in global gain.	f	\N
20525771	Efficient attention is pivotal for cognitive functioning, and individual differences in attentional functions are likely related to variations in structural properties of the brain. Attention is supported by separate processes, and models of the relationship between attention and brain structure must take this into account. The Attention Network Test (ANT) yields behavioral measures of 3 independent attentional components: executive control (EC), alerting, and orienting. EC relates to resolving cognitive interference, alerting refers to continuous maintenance of a vigilant state, and orienting to selection of and orienting toward sensory information. Evidence from functional neuroimaging studies suggests that the ANT components recruit different cortical networks. However, the structural correlates are not established. Therefore, ANT scores were correlated with cortical thickness across the brain surface in 268 healthy adults spanning 20-84 years of age. Specific correlations were found between cortical thickness and EC and alerting in regions implicated by functional neuroimaging and lesion studies, including anterior cingulate, lateral prefrontal, and right inferior frontal gyri for EC and parietal areas for alerting. The brain-behavior correlations were relatively stable across adulthood, indicating that factors influencing cortical maturation rather than aging-related atrophy specifically were instrumental in shaping the structural foundation for visuospatial attention in adults.	f	\N
20525773	Contemporary sensory gating definitions are generally tied to the perceptual and attentional phenomenology described by McGhie and Chapman, including abnormalities in the quality of sensory input, heightened awareness of background noises, and poor selective attention reported by individuals with schizophrenia. Despite these explicit phenomenological origins, little is known about the experiential phenomena underlying contemporary operationalizations of the sensory gating construct, such as whether the construct is restricted to experiences associated with the modulation of sensory percepts includes selective attention and distractibility or even whether the construct is accessible via self-report. Because clarification of these issues has important implications for the development and testing of psychological theories and the study of psychopathology, a series of studies was conducted to (a) empirically identify the major dimensions of sensory gating-like perceptual and attentional phenomenology in healthy young adults and (b) develop a psychometrically sound self-report rating scale to capture these dimensions, the Sensory Gating Inventory (SGI). Factor analyses of Likert items measuring a broad range of sensory gating-like subjective experiences revealed 1 primary factor that encompassed anomalies of perceptual modulation (eg, perceptions of heightened stimulus sensitivity and sensory inundation) and 3 other factors measuring disturbances in the processes of focal and radial attention as well as exacerbation of sensory gating-like anomalies by fatigue and stress. Psychometrically, the SGI demonstrated strong reliability and validity. An empirically based conceptual demarcation of the sensory gating construct is offered, and directions for future research are described.	f	\N
20529417	Anorexia nervosa (AN), at the stage of starvation and emaciation, is characterized by abnormalities in cognitive function, including memory performance. It is unclear whether memory impairment persists or is reversible following weight restoration, and whether memory function differs between AN subtypes. The aim of the present study was to investigate general memory performance in currently ill and fully weight-restored patients of different AN subtypes. Memory performance was assessed using the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised (WMS-R) in a total of 99 participants, including 34 restricting-type AN patients (AN-RESTR), 19 binge-eating/purging-type AN patients (AN-PURGE), 16 weight-restored AN patients (AN-W-R) and 30 healthy controls (CONTROL). Cognitive evaluation included a battery of standardized neuropsychological tasks for validating the findings on memory function. Deficits were found with respect to immediate and delayed story recall in currently ill AN patients irrespective of AN subtype. These deficits persisted in weight-restored AN patients. Currently ill and weight-restored AN patients did not differ significantly from healthy controls with respect to working memory or other measures of neuropsychological functioning. The findings suggest that impaired memory performance is either a stable trait characteristic or a scar effect of chronic starvation that may play a role in the development and/or persistence of the disorder.	f	\N
20530459	This study evaluated the alerting, orienting, and executive attention abilities of children with ADHD and their typically developing (TD) peers using a modified version of the adult attention network test (ANT-I). A total of 25 children with ADHD, Combined Type (ADHD-C, mean age = 9.20 years), 20 children with ADHD, Predominantly Inattentive Type (ADHD-I, mean age = 9.58 years), and 45 TD children (mean age = 9.41 years) matched on age and intelligence to the ADHD group completed the ANT-I. As hypothesized, children with ADHD (n = 45) displayed significantly weaker alerting and executive attention than TD children (n = 45) but did not differ from TD children in orienting ability. Children with ADHD-C (n = 25) did not differ from children with ADHD-I (n = 20) on any of the three networks. Results supported the growing body of evidence that has found alerting and executive attention deficits in children with ADHD.	f	\N
20629939	Actigraphic (ACT) recordings are used widely in schoolchildren as a less intrusive and more extended approach to evaluation of sleep problems. However, critical assessment of the validity and reliability of ACT against overnight polysomnography (NPSG) are unavailable. Thus, we explored the degree of concordance between NPSG and ACT in school-aged children to delineate potential ACT boundaries when interpreting pediatric sleep. Non-dominant wrist ACT was recorded simultaneously with NPSG in 149 healthy school-aged children (aged 4.1-8.8 years, 41.7% boys, 80.4% Caucasian) recruited from the community. Analyses were limited to the Actiware (MiniMitter-64) calculated parameters originating from 1-min epoch sampling and medium sensitivity threshold value of 40; i.e. sleep period time (SPT), total sleep time (TST) and wake after sleep onset (WASO). SPT was not significantly different between ACT and NPSG. However, ACT underestimated TST significantly by 32.2±33.4 min and overestimated WASO by 26.3±34.4 min. The decreased precision of ACT was also evident from moderate to small concordance correlation coefficients (0.47 for TST and 0.09 for WASO). ACT in school-aged children provides reliable assessment of sleep quantity, but is relatively inaccurate during determination of sleep quality. Thus, caution is advocated in drawing definitive conclusions from ACT during evaluation of the sleep-disturbed child.	f	\N
20645311	Impaired understanding of others' sensations and emotions as well as abnormal experience of their own emotions and sensations is frequently reported in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). It is hypothesized that these abnormalities are based on altered connectivity within "shared" neural networks involved in emotional awareness of self and others. The insula is considered a central brain region in a network underlying these functions, being located at the transition of information about bodily arousal and the physiological state of the body to subjective feelings. The present study investigated the intrinsic functional connectivity properties of the insula in 14 high-functioning participants with ASD (HF-ASD) and 15 typically developing (TD) participants in the age range between 12 and 20 years by means of "resting state" or "nontask" functional magnetic resonance imaging. Essentially, a distinction was made between anterior and posterior regions of the insular cortex. The results show a reduced functional connectivity in the HF-ASD group, compared with the TD group, between anterior as well as posterior insula and specific brain regions involved in emotional and sensory processing. It is suggested that functional abnormalities in a network involved in emotional and interoceptive awareness might be at the basis of altered emotional experiences and impaired social abilities in ASD, and that these abnormalities are partly based on the intrinsic functional connectivity properties of such a network.	f	\N
20663569	The processing of emotional stimuli is thought to be negatively biased in major depression. This study investigates this issue using musical, vocal and facial affective stimuli. 23 depressed in-patients and 23 matched healthy controls were recruited. Affective information processing was assessed through musical, vocal and facial emotion recognition tasks. Depression, anxiety level and attention capacity were controlled. The depressed participants demonstrated less accurate identification of emotions than the control group in all three sorts of emotion-recognition tasks. The depressed group also gave higher intensity ratings than the controls when scoring negative emotions, and they were more likely to attribute negative emotions to neutral voices and faces. Our in-patient group might differ from the more general population of depressed adults. They were all taking anti-depressant medication, which may have had an influence on their emotional information processing. Major depression is associated with a general negative bias in the processing of emotional stimuli. Emotional processing impairment in depression is not confined to interpersonal stimuli (faces and voices), being also present in the ability to feel music accurately.	f	\N
20668875	Action perception may involve a mirror-matching system, such that observed actions are mapped onto the observer's own motor representations. The strength of such mirror system activation should depend on an individual's experience with the observed action. The motor interference effect, where an observed action interferes with a concurrently executed incongruent action, is thought to arise from mirror system activation. However, this view was recently challenged. If motor interference arises from mirror system activation, this effect should be sensitive to prior sensorimotor experience with the observed action. To test this prediction, we measured motor interference in two groups of participants observing the same incongruent movements. One group had received brief visuo-motor practice with the observed incongruent action, but not the other group. Action observation induced a larger motor interference in participants who had practiced the observed action. This result thus supports a mirror system account of motor interference.	f	\N
20704645	We studied a novel non-contact biomotion sensor, which has been developed for identifying sleep/wake patterns in adult humans. The biomotion sensor uses ultra low-power reflected radiofrequency waves to determine the movement of a subject during sleep. An automated classification algorithm has been developed to recognize sleep/wake states on a 30-s epoch basis based on the measured movement signal. The sensor and software were evaluated against gold-standard polysomnography on a database of 113 subjects [94 male, 19 female, age 53±13years, apnoea-hypopnea index (AHI) 22±24] being assessed for sleep-disordered breathing at a hospital-based sleep laboratory. The overall per-subject accuracy was 78%, with a Cohen's kappa of 0.38. Lower accuracy was seen in a high AHI group (AHI >15, 63 subjects) than in a low AHI group (74.8% versus 81.3%); however, most of the change in accuracy can be explained by the lower sleep efficiency of the high AHI group. Averaged across subjects, the overall sleep sensitivity was 87.3% and the wake sensitivity was 50.1%. The automated algorithm slightly overestimated sleep efficiency (bias of +4.8%) and total sleep time (TST; bias of +19min on an average TST of 288min). We conclude that the non-contact biomotion sensor can provide a valid means of measuring sleep-wake patterns in this patient population, and also allows direct visualization of respiratory movement signals.	f	\N
20709594	We investigated the role of the frontostriatal system in contextual processing, by examining neural correlates of local contextual processing in Parkinson's disease (PD). Local context was defined as the occurrence of a short predictive series of visual stimuli occurring before delivery of a target event. EEG was recorded in eight PD patients and eight controls. Recording blocks consisted of targets preceded by randomized sequences of standards and by sequences including a predictive sequence signaling the occurrence of a subsequent target event. Subjects pressed a button in response to targets. Peak P3b amplitude and latency were evaluated for targets after predictive and non-predictive sequences. Behavioral and electrophysiological measures showed that controls processed predicted and random targets differentially, while PD patients processed these similarly. Reaction times were shorter for predictable than for random targets in controls but not in patients. PD patients failed to generate the expected P3b latency shift between predicted and random targets, which is observed in controls. These findings show that predictive local context effects on target detection are altered in PD patients. The findings suggest a key role for the frontostriatal system in contextual processing.	f	\N
20723021	The concept of 'repression' dates back to Freud, assuming that undesirable memories can become suppressed and that dreams ease repression by permitting these memories to be reinstated. Here, we followed this idea adopting the 'directed forgetting' approach of experimental psychology. The voluntary suppression of unwanted memories results in impaired later retrieval. Because sleep is known to benefit consolidation of newly learned materials, including cognitive skills, we hypothesized that memory suppression would be enhanced by sleep, and perhaps particularly by rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is associated more often with dream reports. Subjects (n=42) learned a list of word-pairs and, subsequently, the first (cue) words of the pairs were presented again; for half these words subjects had to recall respective second words (response pairs) and for the other half they had to keep respective second words out of mind (suppression pairs). Retrieval of both response and suppression pairs was tested after 8h of sleep or wakefulness (main experiment) or after 3-h periods of early slow wave sleep (SWS)-rich or late REM-rich sleep (supplementary experiment). Response pairs were generally recalled better after sleep than wakefulness (P<0.05). Recall of suppression pairs was, as expected, worse than of response pairs. Contrary to our hypothesis, memory for suppression pairs was not affected differentially by sleep. In the supplementary experiment, compared to SWS-rich sleep, REM-rich sleep even improved recall of suppression pairs (P<0.05). Thus, sleep does not benefit the forgetting of unwanted memories but, on the contrary, REM sleep might even counteract the voluntary suppression of memories making them more accessible for retrieval.	f	\N
20723987	We examined the contributions of risk factors to the psychological and neuroendocrine status of children admitted to a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), and explored the feasibility of a full-scale study of these risk factors. A prospective, correlational design was used. Risk factors included parental stress, parental anxiety, child anxiety, severity of the child's illness, and invasive procedures administered to the child. Outcomes variables were pediatric posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and salivary cortisol levels. Measures were taken at 3 time points over 3 months. The mothers' state anxiety significantly increased over time, whereas the children's PTSD symptoms decreased. Most children with average or high anxiety demonstrated varying degrees of PTSD symptomatology, whereas children with low anxiety exhibited doubtful or mild symptoms of PTSD. As the severity of PTSD symptoms increased over time, the level of salivary cortisol decreased at two weeks and three months after hospital discharge. Predicted trends in data were found and warrant further investigation, using a similar methodology in a full-scale study with an emphasis on recruiting the most seriously ill children.	f	\N
20727700	We evaluated the cyclic alternating pattern (CAP) during the first year of life in order to obtain information on the maturation of arousal mechanisms during NREM sleep and to provide normative data for CAP parameters in this age range (5-16months). Eleven healthy children (mean age 7.9±3.3months, seven boys) were studied while they slept in the morning. They underwent a 3-h video-EEG-polysomnographic recording at the Pediatric Sleep Unit of Sant'Andrea Hospital in Rome, Italy. Sleep was scored visually for sleep architecture and CAP analysis using standard criteria. Our results were complemented by CAP data from a previous sample of healthy infants (2-4months), studied when they slept during the morning, in order to correlate CAP parameters with age. The total sample comprised 24 children. The sleep period was approximately 2h, with a first REM latency of about 30min, and a clear distinction between stages N1, N2, and N3. The arousal index was 12±2.1 events/hour of sleep. The total CAP rate was 23.7±7.6%, and it increased progressively with the deepness of sleep; the highest values were observed during stage N3 and the lowest values during stage N1. A1 phases were the most numerous (78.2%), followed by A2 (14%) and A3 (7.7%) phases. The A1 index was higher than the A2 and A3 indices, whereas the mean duration of B was higher than that of A. The correlation showed that the CAP rate, A1, A2, A3 indices, A2, A3 percentages, and the average duration of B increased with age, whereas the A1 percentage decreased. We provide the first data on CAP analysis in children aged 5-16months, studied when they slept during the morning. Our results confirm the trend toward an increase in CAP rate during the first year of life. In addition, we observed a progressive increase in CAP rate with deepness of sleep, and with age, reflecting maturation of slow-wave activity. The decreased percentage of A1 subtypes may reflect the maturation of arousability.	f	\N
20809377	Three experiments explored attention to eye gaze, which is incompletely understood in typical development and is hypothesized to be disrupted in autism. Experiment 1 (n = 26 typical adults) involved covert orienting to box, arrow, and gaze cues at two probabilities and cue-target times to test whether reorienting for gaze is endogenous, exogenous, or unique; experiment 2 (total n = 80: male and female children and adults) studied age and sex effects on gaze cueing. Gaze cueing appears endogenous and may strengthen in typical development. Experiment 3 tested exogenous, endogenous, and gaze-based orienting in 25 typical and 27 Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) children. ASD children made more saccades, slowing their reaction times; however, exogenous and endogenous orienting, including gaze cueing, appear intact in ASD.	f	\N
20813504	To determine whether increased physiological arousal immediately after trauma or at emergency admission can predict post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in motor vehicle accident (MVA) survivors with physical injuries. We included 119 MVA survivors with physical injuries. In this prospective cohort study, heart rate (HR) and blood pressure (BP) were assessed during ambulance transport (T1) and at hospital admission (T2). One and four months after the accident, we assessed patients for PTSD (Davidson trauma scale, confirmed with the structured clinical interview for DSM-IV axis I disorders). Multivariate logistic regression models assessed the relationship between HR or BP and PTSD. PTSD was diagnosed in 54 (45.4%) patients at 1 month and in 39 (32.8%) at 4 months. In the multivariate analysis, HR at T1 or at T2 predicted PTSD at 1 month (OR=1.156, 95% CI [1.094;1.221] p<0.0001). Only HR at T1 (not at T2) predicted PTSD at 4 months (OR=1.059, 95% CI [1.013; 1.108] p=0.012). Injury severity predicted PTSD at 4 months (OR=1.207, 95% CI [1.085; 1.342] p=0.001). A cut-off of 84 beats per minute yielded a sensitivity of 62.5% and a specificity of 75.0% for PTSD. HR measured at the scene of MVA and severity of injury predicted PTSD 4 months later.	f	\N
20817320	Recently there has been much interest in social coordination of motor movements, or as it is referred to by some researchers, joint action. This paper reviews the cognitive perspective's common coding/mirror neuron theory of joint action, describes some of its limitations and then presents the behavioral dynamics perspective as an alternative way of understanding social motor coordination. In particular, behavioral dynamics' ability to explain the temporal coordination of interacting individuals is detailed. Two experiments are then described that demonstrate how dynamical processes of synchronization are apparent in the coordination underlying everyday joint actions such as martial art exercises, hand-clapping games, and conversations. The import of this evidence is that emergent dynamic patterns such as synchronization are the behavioral order that any neural substrate supporting joint action (e.g., mirror systems) would have to sustain.	f	\N
20822301	The attentional blink is the marked deficit in awareness of a 2nd target (T2) when it is presented shortly after the 1st target (T1) in a stream of distractors. When the distractors between T1 and T2 are replaced by even more targets, the attentional blink is reduced or absent, indicating that the attentional blink results from online selection mechanisms that act in response to distracting input rather than being the result of T1-induced cognitive resource depletion. However, Dell'Acqua, Jolicoeur, Luria, and Pluchino (2009) recently contended that an attentional blink is found in the multiple-target case as long as the appropriate trial context and analyses are used, thus reinstating resource-based explanations of the attentional blink and challenging the selection account. Specifically, an attentional blink reemerges when target performance is analyzed contingent on previous target accuracy. We argue on theoretical and empirical grounds that neither the trial context nor the type of analysis poses a serious problem for selection accounts. We show that the attentional blink and previous target contingency effects can be dissociated, with the latter depending more on low-level, short-range competition. We conclude that selection mechanisms involved in filtering for targets still provide a strong and coherent explanation of the attentional blink.	f	\N
20832868	Bipolar disorder (BD) and adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) usually manifest with shared clinical symptoms, proving quite challenging to thoroughly differentiate one from another. Previous research has characterized these two disorders independently, but no study compared both pathologies from a neuropsychological perspective. The aim of this study was to compare the neuropsychological profile of adult ADHD and BD with each other and against a control group, in order to understand the way in which comprehensive cognitive assessment can contribute to their discrimination as distinct clinical entities as well as their differential diagnosis. All groups were successfully matched for age, sex, years of education, and premorbid IQ. Participants were assessed with an extensive neuropsychological battery evaluating multiple domains. Compared to controls, BD patients had a poorer performance on immediate verbal memory tasks. Both clinical groups exhibited significantly lower scores than controls on the recognition phase of verbal and non-verbal memory tasks, as well as on a task of executive functioning with high working memory demand. Noticeably, however, ADHD had significantly better performance than BD on the recognition phase of both the Rey list memory task and the Rey Figure. The better performance of ADHD patients over BD may reflect the crucial role of the executive component on their memory deficits and gives empirical support to further differentiate the neuropsychological profile of BD and adult ADHD patients in clinical practice.	f	\N
20835973	Fundamental to adaptive behaviour is the ability to select environmental objects that best satisfy current needs and preferences. Here we investigated whether temporary changes in food preference influence visual selective attention. To this end, we exploited the fact that when a food is eaten to satiety its motivational value and perceived pleasantness decrease relative to other foods not eaten in the meal, an effect termed sensory-specific satiety. A total of 26 hungry participants were fed until sated with one of two palatable foods. Before and after selective satiation, participants rated the pleasantness of the two foods and then viewed the same as stimuli on a computer screen while attention was assessed by a visual probe task. Results showed that the attentional bias for the food eaten decreased markedly from pre- to postsatiety, along with the subjective pleasantness for that food. By contrast, subjective pleasantness and attentional bias for the food not eaten did not show any such decrease. These findings suggest that the allocation of visual selective attention is flexibly and rapidly adjusted to reflect temporary shift in relative preference for different foods.	f	\N
20838776	Abuse and neglect are highly prevalent in children and have enduring neurobiological effects. Stressful early life environments perturb the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which in turn may predispose to psychiatric disorders in adulthood. However, studies of childhood maltreatment and adult HPA function have not yet rigorously investigated the differential effects of maltreatment subtypes, including physical abuse. In this study, we sought to replicate our previous finding that childhood maltreatment was associated with attenuated cortisol responses to stress and determine whether the type of maltreatment was a determinant of the stress response. Salivary cortisol response to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) was examined in a non-clinical sample of women (n = 110). Subjects had no acute medical problems and were not seeking psychiatric treatment. Effects of five maltreatment types, as measured by the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, on cortisol response to the TSST were investigated. To further examine the significant (p < 0.005) effect of one maltreatment type, women with childhood physical abuse (PA) (n = 20) were compared to those without past PA (n = 90). Women reporting childhood PA displayed a significantly blunted cortisol response to the TSST compared with subjects without PA, after controlling for estrogen use, age, other forms of maltreatment, and other potential confounds. There were no differences between PA and control groups with regard to physiological arousal during the stress challenge. In a non-clinical sample of women with minimal or no current psychopathology, physical abuse is associated with a blunted cortisol response to a psychosocial stress task.	f	\N
20859069	The purpose of this study was to examine relationships among gait and mobility under single and dual task conditions in older adults. Community-dwelling older adults (n=41, mean age=75) completed mobility and gait tasks. Mobility was assessed with the Timed-Up-and-Go (TUG). Select gait parameters were examined while individuals walked at their preferred speed across the GAITRite electronic walkway. Two age groups were studied (younger age group=65-75; older age group=76+). Multiple linear regression analyses were used to examine the relationship between gait and mobility under single vs dual conditions. Older adults required more time to complete the TUG when concurrently performing a second cognitive task (10.84 sec vs 15.77 sec). In addition, one or more gait characteristic such as stride length, cadence and stance explained (a) a high percentage of variance in mobility performance under single task conditions (TUG 74%) and (b) a smaller portion of variance in mobility performance under dual task conditions (TUGc 25%). No salient age group differences were observed in TUG performance, but gait characteristics accounted for a larger portion of variance in TUGc performance (46%) for the older age group (mean age=81) than for the younger age group (mean age=69; TUGc 18%).	f	\N
20883507	The prior entry hypothesis of attention holds that attended stimuli are perceived earlier than unattended stimuli. Whereas this speeding of perceptual processing has been repeatedly demonstrated for spatial attention, it has not been reported within the temporal domain. To fill this gap, we tested whether temporal attention accelerates auditory perceptual processing by employing event-related potentials as on-line indicators of perceptual processing. In a modified oddball paradigm, we presented a single tone in each trial, either a frequent standard tone or an infrequent deviant or target tone. Temporal attention to tones was manipulated via constant foreperiods. We observed that the latency of the N2, an event-related potential reflecting perceptual processing, is shortened by temporal attention. This result provides first evidence for the idea that temporal attention accelerates perceptual processing as suggested by the prior entry hypothesis.	f	\N
20920531	Obesity and drug addiction, both a result of aberrant motivated behavior, are growing problems in western society. Increased dopamine neurotransmission occurs with both drug-seeking and ingestive behaviors and has been linked to effort related functions. Hypocretin/orexin (Hcrt/ox) neurons have long been known to mediate arousal and feeding. Over the last 5 years, hcrt/ox has been demonstrated to play a novel role in mediating a variety of reward-seeking behaviors and can modulate the activity and output of dopamine neurons. Here, we propose that hcrt/ox action on mesolimbic dopamine circuitry serves to promote effort to obtain highly salient natural or drug rewards.	f	\N
20934190	Major depressive disorder (MDD) is characterized by the presence of disturbances in emotional processing. However, the neural correlates of these alterations, and how they may be affected by therapeutic interventions, remain unclear. The present study addressed these issues in a preliminary investigation using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine neural responses to positive, negative, and neutral pictures in unmedicated MDD patients (N = 22) versus controls (N = 14). After this initial scan, MDD patients were treated with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and scanned again after treatment. Within regions that showed pre-treatment differences between patients and controls, we tested the association between pre-treatment activity and subsequent treatment response as well as activity changes from pre- to post-treatment. This study yielded three main findings. First, prior to treatment and relative to controls, patients exhibited overall reduced activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (PFC), diminished discrimination between emotional and neutral items in the amygdala, caudate, and hippocampus, and enhanced responses to negative versus positive stimuli in the left anterior temporal lobe (ATL) and right dorsolateral PFC. Second, CBT-related symptom improvement in MDD patients was predicted by increased activity at baseline in ventromedial PFC as well as the valence effects in the ATL and dorsolateral PFC. Third, from pre- to post-treatment, MDD patients exhibited overall increases in ventromedial PFC activation, enhanced arousal responses in the amygdala, caudate, and hippocampus, and a reversal of valence effects in the ATL. The study was limited by the relatively small sample that was able to complete both scan sessions, as well as an inability to determine the influence of comorbid disorders within the current sample. Nevertheless, components of the neural networks corresponding to emotion processing disturbances in MDD appear to resolve following treatment and are predictive of treatment response, possibly reflecting improvements in emotion regulation processes in response to CBT.	f	\N
20969453	We conducted a study of the relationships between Internet self-efficacy, sensation seeking, the need for cognition, and problematic use of the Internet. The study was based on a randomly selected sample of 979 adult Internet users. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis of these subjects' responses on a questionnaire consisting of relevant items indicated that Internet self-efficacy and sensation seeking positively predicted problematic Internet use. Contrastingly, the need for cognition was significantly negatively associated with problematic Internet use.	f	\N
20977513	There is profound knowledge that sleep restriction increases tonic (event-unrelated) electroencephalographic (EEG) activity. In the present study we focused on time-locked activity by means of phasic (event-related) EEG analysis during a psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) over the course of sleep deprivation. Twenty healthy subjects (10 male; mean age ± SD: 23.45 ± 1.97 years) underwent sleep deprivation for 24 h. Subjects had to rate their sleepiness hourly (Karolinska Sleepiness Scale) and to perform a PVT while EEG was recorded simultaneously. Tonic EEG changes in the δ (1-4 Hz), θ (4-8 Hz) and α (8-12 Hz) frequency range were investigated by power spectral analyses. Single-trial (phase-locking index, PLI) and event-related potential (ERP) analyses (P1, N1) were used to examine event-related changes in EEG activity. Subjective sleepiness, PVT reaction times and tonic EEG activity (delta and theta spectral power) significantly increased over the night. In contrast, event-related EEG parameters decreased throughout sleep deprivation. Specifically, the ERP component P1 diminished in amplitude, and delta and theta PLI estimates decreased progressively over the night. It is suggested that event-related EEG measures (such as the amplitude of the P1 and especially delta/theta phase-locking) serve as a complimentary method to track the deterioration of attention and performance during sleep loss. As these measures actually reflect the impaired response to specific events rather than tonic changes during sleep deprivation they are a promising tool for future sleep research.	f	\N
21035107	The aim of this work is to determine the influence of multisensory (visual-haptic) integration and the level of interaction (seeing photographs, seeing the actual product, touching it and using it) on the perception of products, including perceived ergonomics. The product selected for the experiment was the hammer, as this will help to establish whether emotional design studies can also apply to 'commercial' products. Subjective opinions of users were evaluated through semantic differential tests. A factor analysis identified six semantic factors or axes (Quality/Robustness, Ergonomics/Appearance, Innovation, Lightness, Dynamic Effects, and Efficacy). Results show that Lightness and Dynamic Effects are quite sensitive to the level of interaction, while Ergonomics/Appearance is partially affected. However, the perceptions of Innovation, Quality/Robustness and Efficacy are not so affected and they could be detected through a lower level of interaction (i.e. seeing photographs). This suggests that commercial products seem sensitive to emotional design studies and that multisensory integration enhances the perception of the factors that are clearly linked with physical interaction between users and tools, i.e. Ergonomics/Appearance, Lightness and Dynamic Effects. Additionally, it should be highlighted that some aspects related with the ergonomics and ease of use of products are also perceived at different stages of interaction.	f	\N
21035195	Although false memories and confabulation have been linked to both executive dysfunction and greater suggestibility, similar associations with the emergence of delusional thinking remain unexamined. We therefore compared healthy individuals who scored high and low on the Peters Delusional Inventory (PDI: Peters et al., 1999) on measures of set-shifting (the intra-extradimensional set shift task: IED) planning (the Stockings of Cambridge Task: SOC). Additionally, we examined whether high delusion-prone individuals show greater suggestibility on the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale (GSS 2: Gudjonsson, 1987). On the IED task, the high group made more pre-extradimensional shift errors than the low PDI group, and this was especially notable for reversal learning. By contrast, no differences emerged on any aspect of the SOC. Finally, and intriguingly, the high PDI group was less likely than the low PDI group to change their responses after receiving suggestive negative feedback. We propose that delusional-style thinking may be underpinned by an orbitofrontal-based reversal learning difficulty affecting the flexibility to adapt responses to changing contingencies and external pressure.	f	\N
21056046	The brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a member of the neurotrophin family, is involved in nerve growth and survival. Especially, a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the BDNF gene, Val66Met, has gained a lot of attention, because of its effect on activity-dependent BDNF secretion and its link to impaired memory processes. We hypothesize that the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism may have modulatory effects on the visual sensory (iconic) memory performance. Two hundred and eleven healthy German students (106 female and 105 male) were included in the data analysis. Since BDNF is also discussed to be involved in the pathogenesis of depression, we additionally tested for possible interactions with depressive mood. The BDNF Val66Met polymorphism significantly influenced iconic-memory performance, with the combined Val/Met-Met/Met genotype group revealing less time stability of information stored in iconic memory than the Val/Val group. Furthermore, this stability was positively correlated with depressive mood exclusively in the Val/Val genotype group. Thus, these results show that the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism has an effect on pre-attentive visual sensory memory processes.	f	\N
21062120	Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy improved not only apnea-hypopnea during sleep and sleep structure but also sleep-related deglutition, especially respiratory phase patterns associated with deglutition. Sleep-related deglutition and related respiratory phase patterns in patients with obstructive sleep apnea-hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS) under CPAP therapy were investigated. Deglutition during sleep was examined in 10 patients who had severe OSAHS under CPAP therapy via time-matched recordings of polysomnography and surface electromyography. The mean number of swallows per hour during the total sleep time was 1.6 ± 1.3. The mean period of the longest absence of deglutition was 66.4 ± 19.6 min. Deglutition was related to the sleep stage. The mean number of swallows per hour was 6.8 ± 8.4 during stage 1 sleep, 1.1 ± 0.8 during stage 2 sleep, 0.1 ± 0.4 during stage 3 sleep, and 0 during stage 4 sleep. The deeper the sleep stage, the lower the mean deglutition frequency. The mean number of swallows per hour was 0.8 ± 0.5 during REM sleep. Most deglutition occurred in association with spontaneous electroencephalographic arousal. Swallows followed by inspiration were markedly reduced. Under CPAP therapy, sleep-related deglutition and its respiratory phase pattern had normalized.	f	\N
21062948	One hundred thirty child sexual abusers were diagnosed using each of following four methods: (a) phallometric testing, (b) strict application of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text revision [DSM-IV-TR]) criteria, (c) Rapid Risk Assessment of Sex Offender Recidivism (RRASOR) scores, and (d) "expert" diagnoses rendered by a seasoned clinician. Comparative utility and intermethod consistency of these methods are reported, along with recidivism data indicating predictive validity for risk management. Results suggest that inconsistency exists in diagnosing pedophilia, leading to diminished accuracy in risk assessment. Although the RRASOR and DSM-IV-TR methods were significantly correlated with expert ratings, RRASOR and DSM-IV-TR were unrelated to each other. Deviant arousal was not associated with any of the other methods. Only the expert ratings and RRASOR scores were predictive of sexual recidivism. Logistic regression analyses showed that expert diagnosis did not add to prediction of sexual offence recidivism over and above RRASOR alone. Findings are discussed within a context of encouragement of clinical consistency and evidence-based practice regarding treatment and risk management of those who sexually abuse children.	f	\N
21071267	Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to examine neural responses to face stimuli in a masking paradigm. Images of faces (neutral or fearful) and objects were presented in subthreshold, threshold, and suprathreshold conditions (exposure durations of approximately 20, 30 and 300 ms, respectively), followed by a 1000-ms pattern mask. We recorded ERP responses at Oz, T5, T6, Cz and Pz. The effects of physical stimulus features were examined by inverted stimuli. The occipital N1 amplitude (approximately 160 ms) was significantly smaller in response to faces than objects when presented at a subthreshold duration. In contrast, the occipitotemporal N170 amplitude was significantly greater in the threshold and suprathreshold conditions compared with the subthreshold condition for faces, but not for objects. The P1 amplitude (approximately 120 ms) elicited by upright faces in the subthreshold condition was significantly larger than for inverted faces. P1 and N1 components at Oz were sensitive to subthreshold faces, which suggests the presence of fast face-specific process(es) prior to face-encoding. The N170 reflects the robustness of the face selective response in the occipitotemporal area. Even when presented for a subthreshold duration, faces were processed differently to images of objects at an early stage of visual processing.	f	\N
21073480	To study defensive mobilization elicited by the exposure to interoceptive arousal sensations, we exposed highly anxiety sensitive students to a symptom provocation task. Symptom reports, autonomic arousal, and the startle eyeblink response were monitored during guided hyperventilation and a recovery period in 26 highly anxiety sensitive persons and 22 controls. Normoventilation was used as a non-provocative comparison condition. Hyperventilation led to autonomic arousal and a marked increase in somatic symptoms. While high and low anxiety sensitive persons did not differ in their defensive activation during hyperventilation, group differences were detected during early recovery. Highly anxiety sensitive students exhibited a potentiation of startle response magnitudes and increased autonomic arousal after hyper- as compared to after normoventilation, indicating defensive mobilization evoked by the prolonged presence of feared somatic sensations.	f	\N
21077720	Negative priming (NP) refers to the finding that people's responses to probe targets previously presented as prime distractors are usually slower and more error prone than to unrepeated stimuli. In a typical NP experiment, each probe target is accompanied by a distractor. It is an accepted, albeit puzzling, finding that the NP effect depends on the presence of these probe distractors; for, without probe distractors, NP diminishes. This phenomenon causes severe problems for the majority of theoretical accounts of NP. In the present study, we follow a simple argument, namely that without probe distractors, the difficulty of responding to the probe is so low that NP becomes irrelevant. Hence, by increasing perceptual processing difficulty, as well as by increasing conceptual processing difficulty, significant NP effects with constantly absent probe distractors can be reliably observed. In addition, our results also show that NP without probe distractors can be found by exclusively manipulating probe display processing. This finding furthers our understanding of the processes causing NP.	f	\N
21094573	Learning movement sequences is thought to develop from an initial controlled attentive phase to a more automatic inattentive phase. Furthermore, execution of sequences becomes faster with practice, which may result from changes at a general motor processing level rather than at an effector specific motor processing level. In the current study, we examined whether these changes are already present during preparation. Fixed series of six keypresses, either familiar or unfamiliar, had to be prepared and executed/withheld after a go/nogo signal. Reaction time results confirmed that familiar sequences were executed faster than unfamiliar sequences. Results derived from the electroencephalogram showed a decreased demand on general motor preparation and visual-working memory before familiar sequences as compared to unfamiliar sequences. We propose that with familiar sequences the presetting segments of responses is less demanding than with unfamiliar sequences, as familiar sequences can be regarded as less complex than unfamiliar sequences. Finally, the decreasing demand on visual-working memory before familiar sequences suggests that sequence learning indeed develops from an attentive to an automatic phase.	f	\N
21106695	To examine resource allocation and sentence processing, this study examined the effects of auditory distraction on grammaticality judgment (GJ) of sentences varied by semantics (reversibility) and short-term memory requirements. Experiment 1: Typical young adult females (N = 60) completed a whole-sentence GJ task in distraction (Quiet, Noise, or Talk). Participants judged grammaticality of Passive sentences varied by sentence (length), grammaticality, and reversibility. Reaction time (RT) data were analyzed using a mixed analysis of variance. Experiment 2: A similar group completed a self-paced reading GJ task using the similar materials. Experiment 1: Participants responded faster to Bad and to Nonreversible sentences, and in the Talk distraction. The slowest RTs were noted for Good-Reversible-Padded sentences in the Quiet condition. Experiment 2: Distraction did not differentially affect RTs for sentence components. Verb RTs were slower for Reversible sentences. Results suggest that narrative distraction affected GJ, but by speeding responses, not slowing them. Sentence variables of memory and reversibility slowed RTs, but narrative distraction resulted in faster processing times regardless of individual sentence variables. More explicit, deliberate tasks (self-paced reading) resulted in less effect from distraction. Results are discussed in terms of recent theories about auditory distraction.	f	\N
21108940	Previous research has demonstrated that cross-language activation is present even when proficient bilinguals perform a task only in one language. The present study investigated the time-course of cross-language activation during word production in a second language (L2) by using a picture-word interference paradigm with event-related potentials (ERPs). Spanish-English bilinguals living in an L2 environment named pictures in their L2 English while ignoring L2 English distractor words that were visually presented with the pictures. Participants named pictures more slowly when distractors were semantically related or phonologically related to either the English name of the picture or the Spanish name of the picture than when picture and distractor word were unrelated. Interference was also detectable in the mean amplitude of the N2 peak (200-260 ms) and the N3 range (350-400 ms). The results suggest that lexical alternatives from both languages compete for selection in the process of L2 speech planning in a predominantly L2 context.	f	\N
21112093	There is substantial evidence that cognitive deficits and brain structural abnormalities are present in patients with Bipolar Disorder (BD) and in their first-degree relatives. Previous studies have demonstrated associations between cognition and functional outcome in BD patients but have not examined the role of brain morphological changes. Similarly, the functional impact of either cognition or brain morphology in relatives remains unknown. Therefore we focused on delineating the relationship between psychosocial functioning, cognition and brain structure, in relation to disease expression and genetic risk for BD. Clinical, cognitive and brain structural measures were obtained from 41 euthymic BD patients and 50 of their unaffected first-degree relatives. Psychosocial function was evaluated using the General Assessment of Functioning (GAF) scale. We examined the relationship between level of functioning and general intellectual ability (IQ), memory, attention, executive functioning, symptomatology, illness course and total gray matter, white matter and cerebrospinal fluid volumes. Cross-sectional design. Multiple regression analyses revealed that IQ, total white matter volume and a predominantly depressive illness course were independently associated with functional outcome in BD patients, but not in their relatives, and accounted for a substantial proportion (53%) of the variance in patients' GAF scores. There were no significant domain-specific associations between cognition and outcome after consideration of IQ. Our results emphasise the role of IQ and white matter integrity in relation to outcome in BD and carry significant implications for treatment interventions.	f	\N
21147519	Numerous investigations into schizophrenia have reported impairment in self-other source monitoring, and studies on healthy subjects have suggested that the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is a critical region underlying self-monitoring abilities. In the current study, we examined the mPFC-related modulation of other brain regions in schizophrenia during self-other monitoring using a psychophysiological interaction approach. Twenty-three patients with schizophrenia and 33 healthy controls performed a self-other source monitoring task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning. Independent component analysis was used to identify the mPFC region of interest, and the averaged mPFC time course was extracted and entered into a general linear regression model for use with the psychophysiological interaction analysis, with Self vs. Other monitoring being the psychological condition of interest. Results suggested that connectivity between the mPFC and the left superior temporal gyrus (LSTG) was greater in the Other than the Self condition for the healthy subjects, but this was reversed for the schizophrenia patients, such that mPFC-LSTG connectivity was greater during Self than the Other condition. The modified functional connectivity associated with the performance of recollection of self-source information suggests that schizophrenia patients invoke circuits normally involved in retrieving other-generated information when processing self-generated information, thereby providing a possible biological basis for the self-other confusion characteristic of schizophrenia.	f	\N
21147857	The presence of distracting stimuli during eating increases the meal size and could thereby contribute to overeating and obesity. However, the effects of within-meal distraction on later food intake are less clear. We sought to test the hypothesis that distraction inhibits memory encoding for a meal, which, in turn, increases later food intake. The current study assessed the effects of playing solitaire (a computerized card-sorting game) during a fixed lunch, which was eaten at a fixed rate, on memory for lunch and food intake in a taste test 30 min later. A between-subjects design was used with 44 participants. Participants in the no-distraction group ate the same lunch in the absence of any distracting stimuli. Distracted individuals were less full after lunch, and they ate significantly more biscuits in the taste test than did nondistracted participants (mean intake: 52.1 compared with 27.1 g; P = 0.017). Furthermore, serial-order memory for the presentation of the 9 lunch items was less accurate in participants who had been distracted during lunch. These findings provide further evidence that distraction during one meal has the capacity to influence subsequent eating. They may also help to explain the well-documented association between sedentary screen-time activities and overweight.	f	\N
21148667	The aim of this study was to explore if the divergent results regarding attentional functions in patients with mood disorders are due to selective impairments in higher level or more basic and distinctive attentional subcomponents. We compared outpatients with current major depressive disorders (MDD; n = 37) and MDD with comorbid anxiety disorder (MDDA; n = 24) with healthy controls (n = 92) on Stroop and Attentional Network Test (ANT). The current data indicate that significant impairment in attentional functions corresponds to the presence of MDD and MDDA. MDDA displayed significantly lower performance on the Stroop variables, and MDD were significantly impaired in the alerting function in ANT. These results show impairments on different levels of attention in mood disorders. MDDA show impairments on higher level executive attention functions, whereas MDD display deficits at the basic attentional level. These findings suggest that including comorbid anxiety disorder in MDD is important for future research.	f	\N
21159327	Worry-prone individuals have less residual working memory capacity during worry compared to low-worriers (Hayes, Hirsch, & Mathews, 2008). People typically worry in verbal form, and the present study investigated whether verbal worry depletes working memory capacity more than worry in imagery-based form. High and low-worriers performed a working memory task, random interval generation, whilst thinking about a worry in verbal or imagery form. High (but not low) worriers had less available working memory capacity when worrying in verbal compared to imagery-based form. The findings could not be accounted for by general attentional control, amount of negatively-valenced thought, or appraisals participants made about worry topics. The findings indicate that the verbal nature of worry is implicated in the depletion of working memory resources during worry among high-worriers, and point to the potential value of imagery-based techniques in cognitive-behavioural treatments for problematic worry.	f	\N
21176782	A recent physiologically based model of human sleep is extended to incorporate the effects of caffeine on sleep-wake timing and fatigue. The model includes the sleep-active neurons of the hypothalamic ventrolateral preoptic area (VLPO), the wake-active monoaminergic brainstem populations (MA), their interactions with cholinergic/orexinergic (ACh/Orx) input to MA, and circadian and homeostatic drives. We model two effects of caffeine on the brain due to competitive antagonism of adenosine (Ad): (i) a reduction in the homeostatic drive and (ii) an increase in cholinergic activity. By comparing the model output to experimental data, constraints are determined on the parameters that describe the action of caffeine on the brain. In accord with experiment, the ranges of these parameters imply significant variability in caffeine sensitivity between individuals, with caffeine's effectiveness in reducing fatigue being highly dependent on an individual's tolerance, and past caffeine and sleep history. Although there are wide individual differences in caffeine sensitivity and thus in parameter values, once the model is calibrated for an individual it can be used to make quantitative predictions for that individual. A number of applications of the model are examined, using exemplar parameter values, including: (i) quantitative estimation of the sleep loss and the delay to sleep onset after taking caffeine for various doses and times; (ii) an analysis of the system's stable states showing that the wake state during sleep deprivation is stabilized after taking caffeine; and (iii) comparing model output successfully to experimental values of subjective fatigue reported in a total sleep deprivation study examining the reduction of fatigue with caffeine. This model provides a framework for quantitatively assessing optimal strategies for using caffeine, on an individual basis, to maintain performance during sleep deprivation.	f	\N
21213194	This study examined whether the process of temporal preparation for a target stimulus is the same regardless of the task required by the target stimulus. To this end, the same variable-foreperiod design was used in a temporal discrimination task (Experiment 1) and a reaction time task (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, both temporal sensitivity and perceived duration increased as a function of foreperiod, whereas in Experiment 2, foreperiod did not influence reaction time. Furthermore, both temporal sensitivity and perceived duration revealed an asymmetric sequential effect of foreperiod, but the pattern of this effect was opposite to the pattern observed in the reaction time task. Together these dissociative patterns of foreperiod effects suggest that the mechanism of temporal preparation depends on the task required by the target stimulus.	f	\N
21215298	The N2pc component of the event-related potentials is assumed to indicate attentional filtering processes during visual search tasks. In this study, we investigated the effects of physical disparity between a target stimulus and distracter stimuli and discrimination difficulty of the target item, on N2pc component by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) while subjects completed a visual search task. In the visual search task, we presented a round array of stimuli and manipulated the color disparity between the target and distracters and the discriminative difficulty of the target's form. The results showed that higher amplitude of N2pc was elicited in the high color disparity condition compared to the low disparity condition. However, no significant effect was found for the discriminative difficulty. The results suggested that the N2pc component could be modulated by the physical disparity between the target item and the distracters in the searching processes, which most likely reflects allocation of attention to select an object based on the perceptual saliency of that object.	f	\N
21221825	Lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 (Lp-PLA2), a novel marker of vulnerable plaque to prone rupture, is a predictor of both cardiovascular event and cerebrovascular event, and highly sensitive-C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) is an acute-phase response protein implicated in a broad range of cardiovascular diseases. We aimed to examine the association between periodic limb movements in sleep (PLMs) with circulating Lp-PLA2 and hs-CRP levels in patients with PLMs. Seventy patients with newly diagnosed PLM with polysomnography were enrolled this study. Patients were divided into two groups according to PLM index (normal PLM index, <15; elevated PLM index, ≥15). Lp-PLA2 and hs-CRP concentrations were measured in serum samples by turbidimetric and nephelometric methods, respectively. The concentrations of these parameters were compared between two groups and correlation analysis was performed between PLMs and Lp-PLA2 and hs-CRP levels. Lp-PLA2 levels and hs-CRP were significantly increased in elevated PLM index group compared with the control group (206.8 ± 78.1 vs 157.8 ± 56.7, p = 0.003, and 4.2 ± 3.5 vs 2.4 ± 2.1, p = 0.02, respectively). PLM index was positively correlated with Lp-PLA2 levels (r = 0.40, p = 0.001) and hs-CRP (r = 0.24, p = 0.05). In the linear regression model, Lp-PLA2 was an independent predictor of PLM index (R(2) = 0.36, p = 0.005). This study demonstrated an independent linear relation between PLM index and Lp-PLA2. In addition, it was seen increased Lp-PLA2 and hs-CRP levels in patients with elevated PLM index. Based on these results, we can suggest that risk of vascular events may be increased in patients with PLMs and with increased PLM index.	f	\N
21232884	The iris regulates the intensity of light that stimulates the retina. The pupils dilate also in response to mental activities as sign of attention. We hypothesized that the response of the foetal pupil to vibro-acoustic stimulation (VAS) reflects foetal attention. To determine whether the changes in the foetal pupil produced by vibroacoustic stimulation is a sign of foetal attention. We studied sonographically the pupils and iris of 151 foetuses between 27 and 41 weeks of gestation, using maximum ultrasonic zoom. 160 human foetuses between the 27th and the 41st week of gestation. The diameters of the pupil and iris were compared before and after VAS. At baseline, the pupils were miotic. We observed a response to VAS, manifest as a prominent pupillary dilatation in all foetuses. At all gestational ages, the percent increase in pupillary diameter was ≥57% (mean 87%; range: 57-135%). VAS dilated the foetal pupil. Sonographic assessment of the foetal pupil provided important insights in the development of foetal neurological functions.	f	\N
21249517	This study examined two potential developmental pathways through which the temperament risk factor of negative emotionality (NE) leads to prospective increases in depressive symptoms through the mediating role of stressors and anxious symptoms in a sample of early to middle adolescents (N = 350, 6th-10th graders). The primary hypothesized model was that baseline NE leads to increased stressors, which results in increases in anxious arousal, which culminates with elevated depressive symptoms. An alternate model hypothesized that baseline NE leads to increased anxious arousal, which results in increases in stressors, and this culminates in elevated depressive symptoms. Youth completed self-report measures of NE, stressors, anxious arousal, and depressive symptoms at four time-points. Path analysis supported the primary model and showed that the mediating influence of stressors and anxious arousal explained 78% of the association between NE and prospective elevations in depressive symptoms. The alternate model was not supported. Neither gender nor age were moderators.	f	\N
21264619	Traditional "activation" views of masked priming explain the identity priming effect in terms of facilitation due to 'pre-activation' of stored representations. Norris and Kinoshita's (2008) Bayesian Reader theory of masked priming instead explains priming in terms of the evidence that the prime contributes towards the decision required to the target. In support of the Bayesian Reader account, Norris and Kinoshita showed that the absence of priming for nonwords in the lexical decision task and for targets requiring a Different decision in the same-different match task can be explained based on a single principle. Against this, Bowers (2010) argued that the absence of priming should be explained instead by a combination of sublexical priming and "familiarity bias". As evidence, Bowers cited Bodner and Masson's (1997) finding that nonword priming did emerge with targets presented in visually unfamiliar cAsE-AlTeRnAtEd format. We present evidence that this finding was due to the use of an ambiguous letter in case-alternated format; when using unambiguous letters, we consistently failed to find priming of case-alternated nonwords. We suggest that the Bayesian Reader, rather than the familiarity bias hypothesis, explains the absence of priming.	f	\N
21264645	Studies of electrophysiological indices of performance monitoring, such as the error-related negativity (ERN), posterror positivity (Pe), and N2 components of the event-related potential (ERP), suggest that increased ERN and Pe amplitudes and decreased N2 amplitudes are associated with better cognitive flexibility and cognitive control abilities; however, few studies have directly examined the relationship between cognitive performance and ERP indices of performance monitoring. We examined the neuropsychological profile of 89 healthy individuals who performed a modified flanker task. The neuropsychological domains tested included memory, verbal fluency, and attention/executive functioning. Pearson's correlations and multiple regression analyses showed a significant relationship between measures of attention/executive functioning and ERN amplitude, even when negative affect, reaction time interference, and posterror slowing were controlled. N2 amplitude related only to posterror slowing. The amplitude of the Pe was not significantly related to any cognitive domains. These findings are consistent with recent work indicating that performance monitoring requires attention skills and cognitive flexibility. Implications for the conflict-monitoring and reinforcement-learning theories are discussed.	f	\N
21264726	This study demonstrates that when people attempt to identify a facial expression of emotion (FEE) by haptically exploring a 3D facemask, they are affected by viewing a simultaneous, task-irrelevant visual FEE portrayed by another person. In comparison to a control condition, where visual noise was presented, the visual FEE facilitated haptic identification when congruent (visual and haptic FEEs same category). When the visual and haptic FEEs were incongruent, haptic identification was impaired, and error responses shifted toward the visually depicted emotion. In contrast, visual emotion labels that matched or mismatched the haptic FEE category produced no such effects. The findings indicate that vision and touch interact in FEE recognition at a level where featural invariants of the emotional category (cf. precise facial geometry or general concepts) are processed, even when the visual and haptic FEEs are not attributable to a common source. Processing mechanisms behind these effects are considered.	f	\N
21266181	Dynamic stimuli are ubiquitous in natural viewing conditions implying that grouping operations need to operate, not only in space, but also jointly in space and time. Moreover, in natural viewing, attention plays an important role in controlling how resources are allocated. We investigated how attention interacts with spatio-temporal perceptual grouping by using a bistable stimulus, called the Ternus-Pikler display. Ternus-Pikler displays can give rise to two different motion percepts, called Element Motion (EM) and Group Motion (GM), the former dominating at short Inter-Stimulus Intervals (ISIs) and the latter at long ISIs. Our results indicate that GM grouping requires more attentional resources than EM grouping. Different theoretical accounts of perceptual grouping and attention are discussed and evaluated in the light of the current results.	f	\N
21267599	Nocturnal polyuria, nocturnal detrusor overactivity and high arousal thresholds are central in the pathogenesis of enuresis. An underlying mechanism on the brainstem level is probably common to these mechanisms. Enuretic children have an increased risk for psychosocial comorbidity. The primary evaluation of the enuretic child is usually straightforward, with no radiology or invasive procedures required, and can be carried out by any adequately educated nurse or physician. The first-line treatment, once the few cases with underlying disorders, such as diabetes, kidney disease or urogenital malformations, have been ruled out, is the enuresis alarm, which has a definite curative potential but requires much work and motivation. For families not able to comply with the alarm, desmopressin should be the treatment of choice. In therapy-resistant cases, occult constipation needs to be ruled out, and then anticholinergic treatment-often combined with desmopressin-can be tried. In situations when all other treatments have failed, imipramine treatment is warranted, provided the cardiac risks are taken into account.	f	\N
21272839	Witt et al. (2008) have recently shown that golfers who putt with more success perceive the hole to be bigger than golfers who putt with less success. In three experiments, we systematically examined whether this phenomenon, labelled action-specific perception, depends on directing visual attention towards the action target. In Experiment 1 we replicated previously reported action-specific effects on perception in golf putting. In Experiments 2 and 3 we directly assessed whether action-specific effects on perception in golf putting are dependent on focusing visual attention on the target. To this end, the participants performed the putting task while visual attention towards the target was either completely withheld (Experiment 2) or divided over the target and other task-relevant objects (Experiment 3). No action-specific effects were found when visual attention towards the action target was occluded or partially diverted from the target. Together, our results provide evidence to suggest that focusing visual attention on the target while performing the action is a prerequisite for the emergence of action-specific perception.	f	\N
21276839	This study characterized preferential choice in binary trials and investigated intra-session variations in response time (RT). In Experiment 1, participants (N=77) were asked to choose the preferred of two images of body wash; all unique combinations of 19 images were presented. The results showed: (a) marked and consistent individual preferences for specific stimuli; (b) RT decreased monotonically with increasing exposure to each stimulus; (c) RT decreased exponentially as a function of relative preference ranking of the 2 images in a trial; and (d) a regression model efficiently predicted trial RT as a function of exposure and relative preference. Experiment 2 (N=112) explored the effect of amount of exposure on RT, and relative preference as a function of the type of choice task (a previously completed vs. a new choice task). The results showed that: (a) within a single choice task, amount of exposure and relative preference between the stimuli predicted the systematic changes in RT observed in Exp. 1; and (b) when the choice task changed, the effects of previous amount of exposure, and relative stimulus preference did not transfer to the new task.	f	\N
21282341	Visual salience maps are assumed to mediate target selection decisions in a motor-unspecific manner; accordingly, modulations of salience influence yes/no target detection or left/right localization responses in manual key-press search tasks, as well as ocular or skeletal movements to the target. Although widely accepted, this core assumption is based on little psychophysical evidence. At least four modulations of salience are known to influence the speed of visual search for feature singletons: (i) feature contrast, (ii) cross-trial dimension sequence and (iii) semantic pre-cueing of the target dimension, and (iv) dimensional target redundancy. If salience guides also manual pointing movements, their initiation latencies (and durations) should be affected by the same four manipulations of salience. Four experiments, each examining one of these manipulations, revealed this to be the case. Thus, these effects are seen independently of the motor response required to signal the perceptual decision (e.g., directed manual pointing as well as simple yes/no detection responses). This supports the notion of a motor-unspecific salience map, which guides covert attention as well as overt eye and hand movements.	f	\N
21285440	Frequency-of-occurrence effects (e.g., effects of word frequency or familiarity) are widely thought to arise through differences in resting levels of activation in localist input-output modules. A different account posits that these effects at least partially reflect the strength of connections between various localist modules. Given that Arabic numerals appear more frequently than their alphabetic counterparts, we contrasted reaction times to stimuli in both formats in a naming/reading-aloud task and a parity-judgment task. The script effect (the difference between reaction times to Arabic and to alphabetic formats) was large in the parity-judgment task but absent in the naming/reading-aloud task. This script-by-task interaction follows naturally from the idea that at least part of the effect of frequency of occurrence of a printed word or digit (and other instances of familiarity) resides in the strength of connections between specialized localist input-output modules and a localist semantic module. This conclusion is likely applicable across a variety of domains.	f	\N
21286495	To explore the time of day effects of alcohol on sleep, we examined sleep following alcohol administered at four times of day and three homeostatic loads during a 20-hr forced desynchrony (FD) protocol. Twenty-six healthy young adults (21-25 yrs) were studied. Participants were dosed at 4 clock times: 0400 (n = 6; 2 females), 1600 (n = 7; 4 females), 1000 (n = 6; 1 female) or 2200 (n = 7; 2 females). Participants slept 2300 to 0800 for at least 12 nights before the in-lab FD study. Double blind placebo and alcohol (vodka tonic targeting 0.05g% concentration) beverages were each administered three times during FD at different homeostatic loads: low (4.25 or 2.24 hrs awake), medium (8.25 or 6.25 hrs awake), high (12.25 or 10.25 hrs awake) in the 0400 and 1600 or 1000 and 2200 groups, respectively. Sleep was staged and subjected to spectral analysis. Breath Alcohol Concentration (BrAC) confirmed targeted maximal levels. At bedtime, BrAC was 0 in the low and medium homeostatic load conditions; however, at high homeostatic load, BrAC was still measurable. Spectral characteristics of sleep were unaffected with alcohol at any time of day. Few alcohol related changes were seen for sleep stages; however, with alcohol given at 0400 at a high homeostatic load there was an increase in wake. These data lend support to the idea that alcohol may be disruptive to sleep; however, our findings are inconsistent with the idea that a low dose of alcohol is a useful sleep aid when attempting to sleep at an adverse circadian phase.	f	\N
21286898	In this study, we examined a source-monitoring phenomenon that arises from reactivated related information from the study phase. Three experiments showed that source attributions for target events were influenced not only by the target item itself, but also by studied information about related items. In Experiment 1, source memory for target items that have a high forward association value to a single related study item (e.g., credit) were affected by the source of the associated information (e.g., card), so that memory performance was better when associated items were presented in the same source rather than a different source. A similar effect occurred with bidirectional associates (Exp. 2), as well as with synonymous pairs of words (Exp. 3). We argue that the source information of the reactivated material can be commingled with information about a candidate during a source judgment at retrieval and thereby can affect performance.	f	\N
21288505	Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a mental disorder characterized by depressed mood and inability to experience pleasure. Mismatch negativity (MMN) has been established as a correlate of preattentive change detection. In this study, preattentive processing of visual information in MDD patients was investigated using visual MMN (vMMN), and an abnormal vMMN was predicted in depressed patients relative to healthy participants because of dysfunction at the preattentive level. The processes underlying vMMN in MDD patients were also explored, and memory-based comparison preattentive processing was hypothesized to be impaired in MDD patients. Subjects included 14 medication-free patients (41.4 ± 12.6 years) with a DSM-IV diagnosis of MDD and 14 age-matched healthy volunteers (41.7 ± 17.5 years). vMMN was investigated using event-related potentials. The protocol used both an equiprobable sequence and a traditional oddball sequence, and three kinds of difference waves (i.e., deviant-minus-standard, deviant-minus-control, and control-minus-standard) were investigated. Mean amplitudes and peak latencies were subjected to repeated-measures analysis of variance. Although MDD patients showed no reduction in the oddball-vMMN (deviant-minus-standard), they showed a significantly decreased deviant-minus-control difference waves and a trend for an increased control-minus-standard difference waves compared with healthy participants. These data provide evidence for anomalous preattentive information processing in MDD patients. In particular, the abnormality may be due to an attenuated memory-based comparison process and an enhanced refractory process.	f	\N
21289533	Atypical sensory-based behaviors are a ubiquitous feature of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). In this article, we review the neural underpinnings of sensory processing in autism by reviewing the literature on neurophysiological responses to auditory, tactile, and visual stimuli in autistic individuals. We review studies of unimodal sensory processing and multisensory integration that use a variety of neuroimaging techniques, including electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG), and functional MRI. We then explore the impact of covert and overt attention on sensory processing. With additional characterization, neurophysiologic profiles of sensory processing in ASD may serve as valuable biomarkers for diagnosis and monitoring of therapeutic interventions for autism and reveal potential strategies and target brain regions for therapeutic interventions.	f	\N
21293871	Limb-girdle muscular dystrophy 2I (LGMD2I) is a neuromuscular disorder with a heterogeneous phenotype. It is caused by mutations in the Fukutin Related Protein (FKRP) gene, which is ubiquitously expressed in human tissues. FKRP functions in CNS are largely unknown. To investigate possible cognitive impairment in LGMD2I and to describe brain MRI features. Ten LGMD2I patients (four males and six females, mean age 44 years, age range 19-69 years) were assessed with an extensive neuropsychological battery, psychopathological tests and neuromuscular specific quality-of-life questionnaire. Adults were compared with ten matched healthy controls. All patients underwent complete neurological examination, and nine underwent brain MRI scanning. Patients showed a fairly specific cognitive profile with mild impairment in executive functions and visuo-spatial planning without substantial impairment in global and logic IQ. MRI findings were heterogeneous: four patients showed non-specific white matter abnormalities; two patients showed moderate ventriculomegaly; three patients showed mild enlargement of subarachnoid spaces, without a specific pattern. Cerebellar atrophy was marked in one patient. Abnormal glycosylation of α-dystroglycan in LGMD2I may interfere with brain development and cognitive performances involving the frontal and posterior parietal regions, but does not result in specific brain MRI abnormalities.	f	\N
21296417	Growing evidence indicates that neuromedin U (NmU) neuropeptide system plays an integral role in mediating the stress response through the corticotrophin-releasing factor (CRF) pathways. Stress is often associated with alteration in sleep-wake architecture both in human and laboratory animals. Here, we investigated whether activation of the NmU₂ receptor, a major high affinity receptor for NmU predominantly expressed in the brain, affects sleep behavior in rats. Effects of single (acute) intracebroventricular (icv) infusion of 2.5 nmol of the full agonists porcine NmU8 and rat NmU23 were assessed on sleep-wake architecture in freely moving rats, which were chronically implanted with EEG and EMG electrodes. In addition, repeated once daily administration of NmU8 at 2.5 nmol during 8 consecutive days (sub-chronic) was studied. Acute icv infusion of NmU23 elicited a robust alteration in sleep-wake architecture, namely enhanced wakefulness and suppressed sleep during the first 4h after administration. Acute infusion NmU8 had no effect on spontaneous sleep-wake architecture. However, sub-chronic icv infusion of NmU8 increased the amount of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and intermediate stage (IS), while decreased light sleep. Additionally, NmU8 increased transitions from sleep states towards wakefulness suggesting a disruption in sleep continuity. The present results show that central-activation of NmU₂ receptor markedly reduced sleep duration and disrupted the mechanisms underlying NREM-REM sleep transitions. Given that sleep-wakefulness cycle is strongly influenced by stress and the role of NmU/NmU₂ receptor signaling in stress response, the disruption in sleep pattern associated with peptides species may support at least some signs of stress.	f	\N
21298569	Affective stimuli are increasingly used in emotion research. Typically, stimuli are selected from databases providing affective norms. The validity of these norms is a critical factor with regard to the applicability of the stimuli for emotion research. We therefore probed the validity of the Leipzig Affective Norms for German (LANG) by correlating valence and arousal ratings across different sensory modalities. A sample of 120 words was selected from the LANG database, and auditory recordings of these words were obtained from two professional actors. The auditory stimuli were then rated again for valence and arousal. This cross-modal validation approach yielded very high correlations between auditory and visual ratings (>.95). These data confirm the strong validity of the Leipzig Affective Norms for German and encourage their use in emotion research.	f	\N
21315746	Recent neuropsychological studies have attempted to distinguish between different types of anxiety by contrasting patterns of brain organisation or activation; however, lateralisation for processing emotional stimuli has received relatively little attention. This study examines the relationship between strength of lateralisation for the processing of facial expressions of emotion and three measures of anxiety: state anxiety, trait anxiety and social anxiety. Across all six of the basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise) the same patterns of association were found. Participants with high levels of trait anxiety were more strongly lateralised to the right hemisphere for processing facial emotion. In contrast, participants with high levels of self-reported physiological arousal in response to social anxiety were more weakly lateralised to the right hemisphere, or even lateralised to the left hemisphere, for the processing of facial emotion. There were also sex differences in these associations: the relationships were evident for males only. The finding of distinct patterns of lateralisation for trait anxiety and self-reported physiological arousal suggests different neural circuitry for trait and social anxiety.	f	\N
21319930	The serotonin transporter promoter region polymorphism (5-HTTLPR) is associated with neural response to negative images in brain regions involved in the experience of emotion. However, the behavioral implications of this sensitivity have been studied far less extensively. The current study used eye-tracking methodology to examine how individuals genotyped for the 5-HTTLPR, including the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs25531, allocated attention during prolonged (30-s) exposure to face stimuli depicting positive and negative emotion. Short 5-HTTLPR allele carriers and carriers of the long allele with guanine at the sixth nucleotide (S/LG) displayed a stronger gaze bias (total fixation time, number of fixations, mean fixation length) for positive than for sad, threat, or neutral stimuli. In contrast, those homozygous for the long 5-HTTLPR allele with adenine at the sixth nucleotide (LA) viewed the emotion stimuli in an unbiased fashion. Time course analyses indicated no initial 5-HTTLPR group differences; however, S/LG 5-HTTLPR allele carriers were more likely than LA 5-HTTLPR homozygotes to direct gaze toward happy than toward sad stimuli over time. This bias toward positive stimuli during the later stages of information processing likely reflects a strategic effort to downregulate heightened reactivity to negative stimuli among 5-HTTLPR S/LG allele carriers.	f	\N
21325507	During coordinated eye-hand movements, saccade reaction times (SRTs) and reach reaction times (RRTs) are correlated in humans and monkeys. Reaction times (RTs) measure the degree of movement preparation and can correlate with movement speed and accuracy. However, RTs can also reflect effector nonspecific influences, such as motivation and arousal. We use a combination of behavioral psychophysics and computational modeling to identify plausible mechanisms for correlations in SRTs and RRTs. To disambiguate nonspecific mechanisms from mechanisms specific to movement coordination, we introduce a dual-task paradigm in which a reach and a saccade are cued with a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). We then develop several variants of integrate-to-threshold models of RT, which postulate that responses are initiated when the neural activity encoding effector-specific movement preparation reaches a threshold. The integrator models formalize hypotheses about RT correlations and make predictions for how each RT should vary with SOA. To test these hypotheses, we trained three monkeys to perform the eye-hand SOA task and analyzed their SRTs and RRTs. In all three subjects, RT correlations decreased with increasing SOA duration. Additionally, mean SRT decreased with decreasing SOA, revealing facilitation of saccades with simultaneous reaches, as predicted by the model. These results are not consistent with the predictions of the models with common modulation or common input but are compatible with the predictions of a model with mutual excitation between two effector-specific integrators. We propose that RT correlations are not simply attributable to motivation and arousal and are a signature of coordination.	f	\N
21327341	The placebo effect is an important phenomenon whereby real changes occur in response to an otherwise inert intervention. Despite increasing research attention, it remains unclear exactly which processes are amenable to placebo effects. The current study tested whether an instructional manipulation could produce placebo effects on a nonconscious cognitive task, namely implicit learning. Four hundred and sixty-four university students completed a visual search task while smelling an odor or no odor, in alternating blocks. Unknown to them, the task contained a contingency whereby on half the trials the target's location was cued by the pattern of distractors, which was achieved by repeating some configurations of targets and distractors. Prior to the task, participants received positive, negative, or no information about the odor's possible effects on performance. Those given positive information demonstrated faster reaction times on cued trials than other participants. Those given negative information showed slower reaction times on cued trials compared with participants given no information. Further, the cuing effect appeared to be nonconscious, with participants' ability to recognize the repeated configurations equivalent to chance and no evidence that performance on a recognition test was related to the magnitude of the cuing effect. This suggests that instructional manipulations can produce placebo effects on some nonconscious processes.	f	\N
21327350	Many theories of contingency learning assume (either explicitly or implicitly) that predicting whether an outcome will occur should be easier than making a causal judgment. Previous research suggests that outcome predictions would depart from normative standards less often than causal judgments, which is consistent with the idea that the latter are based on more numerous and complex processes. However, only indirect evidence exists for this view. The experiment presented here specifically addresses this issue by allowing for a fair comparison of causal judgments and outcome predictions, both collected at the same stage with identical rating scales. Cue density, a parameter known to affect judgments, is manipulated in a contingency learning paradigm. The results show that, if anything, the cue-density bias is stronger in outcome predictions than in causal judgments. These results contradict key assumptions of many influential theories of contingency learning.	f	\N
21327356	A picture-word interference experiment examined the origin of the distractor frequency effect, the effect that pictures are named slower in the context of low-frequency than high-frequency words (Miozzo & Caramazza, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 132, 228-252, 2003). We compared two accounts of the effect: an early, input-related account and a late, response-related account. Participants named high and low-frequency pictures with low and high-frequency distractors in two conditions. In the immediate naming condition, picture and distractor were presented simultaneously. In the delayed naming condition, the distractor was presented 1,000 ms after the picture; pictures had to be named upon distractor presentation. There was a distractor frequency effect in both conditions, but an effect of picture frequency only in the immediate naming condition (showing that in the delayed naming condition, lexical selection had been completed). These results support a late origin of the distractor frequency effect.	f	\N
21333960	When the interval between a warning signal (WS) and an imperative signal (IS), termed the foreperiod (FP), is variable across trials, reaction time (RT) to the IS typically decreases with increasing FP length. Here we examined the auditory filled-FP effect, which refers to a performance decrement after FPs filled with irrelevant auditory stimulation compared to FPs without additional stimulation. According to one account, irrelevant stimulation distracts individuals from processing time and probability information during the FP (distraction-during-FP hypothesis). This should predominantly affect long-FP trials. Alternatively, the filled-FP effect may arise from a failure to shift attention from FP modality to IS modality (attention-to-modality hypothesis). The first hypothesis focuses on preparatory processing, predicting a selective RT increase on long-FP trials, whereas the second hypothesis focuses on target processing, only predicting a global RT increase irrespective of FP length. Across four experiments, a filled-FP (compared to a blank-FP) condition consistently yielded a selective RT increase on long-FP trials, irrespective of FP-IS modality pairing. This pattern of results contradicts the attention-to-modality hypothesis but corroborates the distraction-during-FP hypothesis. More generally, these data have theoretical implications by supporting a multi-process view of temporal preparation under time uncertainty.	f	\N
21347239	Few finance theories consider the influence of "skewness" (or large and asymmetric but unlikely outcomes) on financial choice. We investigated the impact of skewed gambles on subjects' neural activity, self-reported affective responses, and subsequent preferences using functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI). Neurally, skewed gambles elicited more anterior insula activation than symmetric gambles equated for expected value and variance, and positively skewed gambles also specifically elicited more nucleus accumbens (NAcc) activation than negatively skewed gambles. Affectively, positively skewed gambles elicited more positive arousal and negatively skewed gambles elicited more negative arousal than symmetric gambles equated for expected value and variance. Subjects also preferred positively skewed gambles more, but negatively skewed gambles less than symmetric gambles of equal expected value. Individual differences in both NAcc activity and positive arousal predicted preferences for positively skewed gambles. These findings support an anticipatory affect account in which statistical properties of gambles--including skewness--can influence neural activity, affective responses, and ultimately, choice.	f	\N
21357280	Obesity has been associated with increased cardiac sympathetic activation during wakefulness, but the effect on sleep-related sympathetic modulation is not known. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of fat gain on cardiac autonomic control during wakefulness and sleep in humans. We performed a randomized, controlled study to assess the effects of fat gain on heart rate variability. We recruited 36 healthy volunteers, who were randomized to either a standardized diet to gain ≈4 kg over 8 weeks followed by an 8-week weight loss period (n=20) or to serve as a weight-maintainer control (n=16). An overnight polysomnogram with power spectral analysis of heart rate variability was performed at baseline, after weight gain, and after weight loss to determine the ratio of low-frequency to high-frequency power and to examine the relationship between changes in heart rate variability and changes in insulin, leptin, and adiponectin levels. Mean weight gain was 3.9 kg in the fat gain group versus 0.1 kg in the maintainer group. Low frequency/high frequency increased both during wakefulness and sleep after fat gain and returned to baseline after fat loss in the fat gain group and did not change in the control group. Insulin, leptin, and adiponectin also increased after fat gain and fell after fat loss, but no clear pattern of changes was seen that correlated consistently with changes in heart rate variability. Short-term fat gain in healthy subjects is associated with increased cardiac sympathetic activation during wakefulness and sleep, but the mechanisms remain unclear.	f	\N
21371485	Patients with lesions in rostral prefrontal cortex (PFC) often experience problems in everyday-life situations requiring multitasking. A key cognitive component that is critical in multitasking situations is prospective memory, defined as the ability to carry out an intended action after a delay period filled with unrelated activity. The few functional imaging studies investigating prospective memory have shown consistent activation in both medial and lateral rostral PFC but also in more posterior prefrontal regions and non-frontal regions. The aim of this study was to determine regions that are necessary for prospective memory performance, using the human lesion approach. We designed an experimental paradigm allowing us to assess time-based (remembering to do something at a particular time) and event-based (remembering to do something in a particular situation) prospective memory, using two types of material, words and pictures. Time estimation tasks and tasks controlling for basic attention, inhibition and multiple instructions processing were also administered. We examined brain-behaviour relationships with a voxelwise lesion method in 45 patients with focal brain lesions and 107 control subjects using this paradigm. The results showed that lesions in the right polar prefrontal region (in Brodmann area 10) were specifically associated with a deficit in time-based prospective memory tasks for both words and pictures. This deficit could not be explained by impairments in basic attention, detection, inhibition or multiple instruction processing, and there was also no deficit in event-based prospective memory conditions. In addition to their prospective memory difficulties, these polar prefrontal patients were significantly impaired in time estimation ability compared to other patients. The same region was found to be involved using both words and pictures, suggesting that right rostral PFC plays a material nonspecific role in prospective memory. This is the first lesion study showing that rostral PFC is crucial for time-based prospective memory. The findings suggest that time-based and event-based prospective memory might be supported at least in part by distinct brain regions. Two particularly plausible explanations for the deficit rest upon a possible role for polar prefrontal structures in supporting in time estimation, and/or in retrieving an intention to act. More broadly, the results are consistent with the view that the deficit of rostral patients in multitasking situations might at least in part be explained by a deficit in prospective memory.	f	\N
21371916	To report on minor modification of laparoscopic Vecchietti vaginoplasty and to examine the quality of sexual life after the operation. A retrospective study to examine the role of minor modification during laparoscopic Vecchietti operation to prevent injuries and to evaluate the sexual function of patients with neovagina. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Pécs, Faculty of Medicine, a tertiary supply center in Hungary. PATICIPANTS: Twenty-three adolescents or young adults, ages 16 to 26 with vaginal agenesis (Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome) were operated. Twenty-five sexually active patients with matched age served as controls. Laparoscopic Vecchietti operation was modified with the use of endovaginal ultrasound transducer to visualize the narrow vesico-rectal space. The quality of sexual life 2-11 years after the operation was measured by the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI). Complications occurring during operations; desire, arousal, orgasm, satisfaction, lubrication, and pain during sexual intercourse. The technical modification of the operation, with endovaginal transducer, improved the method. Serious injuries of the bladder or rectum could be avoided. Anatomic and functional results shown by the total FSFI scores did not differ from that of the control group. Desire, arousal, orgasm, and satisfaction of the operated patients were similar to controls; however, patients with neovagina tended to have less lubrication and more pain during sexual intercourse. Laparoscopic Vecchietti operation modified by the use of endovaginal transducer is a safe procedure to create a neovagina, which guarantees good quality of sexual life with high satisfaction for patients.	f	\N
21372116	The impact of lesion location on cognitive functioning was assessed in a group of 97 patients with a clinically isolated syndrome. Using the Brief Repeatable Battery, we evidenced that 24% of patients showed at least one abnormal test, 20% at least two and 15% at least three. Verbal learning performances were inversely associated with presence of lesions in Broca's area, in the right frontal lobe and in the splenium while spatial learning performances were inversely correlated to the presence of lesions in the deep white matter. No associations were evidenced between lesion location and performance of tasks exploring attention and executive functions.	f	\N
21373192	The ability to coordinate with others' head and eye orientation to look in the same direction is considered a key step towards an understanding of others mental states like attention and intention. Here, we investigated the ontogeny and habituation patterns of gaze following into distant space and behind barriers in nine hand-raised wolves. We found that these wolves could use conspecific as well as human gaze cues even in the barrier task, which is thought to be more cognitively advanced than gazing into distant space. Moreover, while gaze following into distant space was already present at the age of 14 weeks and subjects did not habituate to repeated cues, gazing around a barrier developed considerably later and animals quickly habituated, supporting the hypothesis that different cognitive mechanisms may underlie the two gaze following modalities. More importantly, this study demonstrated that following another individuals' gaze around a barrier is not restricted to primates and corvids but is also present in canines, with remarkable between-group similarities in the ontogeny of this behaviour. This sheds new light on the evolutionary origins of and selective pressures on gaze following abilities as well as on the sensitivity of domestic dogs towards human communicative cues.	f	\N
21382218	High levels of multidimensional perfectionism may be dysfunctional in their own right and can also impact on the maintenance and treatment of Axis I psychiatric disorders. This paper sought to describe the behavioural expressions and imagery associated with perfectionism in a non-clinical sample. Participants (n = 59) completed a newly developed questionnaire to assess behavioural expressions of perfectionism, and an adapted interview to assess perfectionism-related intrusive mental images. The study found that those high in perfectionism took longer to complete tasks, experienced more checking and safety behaviour whilst carrying out tasks, and had greater trouble actually completing tasks compared to those low in perfectionism. In addition, those with higher levels of perfectionism experienced intrusive mental imagery, which was more distressing, harder to dismiss, and had more impact on behaviour than those with lower levels of perfectionism. This research provides an initial exploration of the specific behaviours and intrusive mental imagery associated with perfectionism. The new behavioural measure of perfectionism could prove useful clinically in the assessment of change; however, these findings are preliminary and warrant replication in a clinical sample in order to examine their treatment implications.	f	\N
21389102	Recent studies have shown that a variety of aftereffects occurs in a non-retinotopic frame of reference. These findings have been taken as strong evidence that remapping of visual information occurs in a hierarchic manner in the human cortex with an increasing magnitude from early to higher levels. Other studies, however, failed to find non-retinotopic aftereffects. These experiments all relied on paradigms involving eye movements. Recently, we have developed a new paradigm, based on the Ternus-Pikler display, which tests retinotopic vs. non-retinotopic processing without the involvement of eye movements. Using this paradigm, we found strong evidence that attention, form, and motion processing can occur in a non-retinotopic frame of reference. Here, we show that motion and tilt aftereffects are largely retinotopic.	f	\N
21392554	Research has shown that during emotional imagery, valence and arousal each modulate the startle reflex. Here, two imagery-startle experiments required participants to attend to the startle probe as a simple reaction time cue. In experiment 1, four emotional conditions differing in valence and arousal were examined. Experiment 2, to accentuate potential valence effects, included two negative high arousal, a positive high arousal and a negative low arousal condition. Imagery effectively manipulated emotional valence and arousal, as indicated by heart rate and subjective ratings. Compared to baseline, imagery facilitated startle responses. However, valence and arousal failed to significantly affect startle magnitude in both experiments and startle latency in Experiment 1. Results suggest that emotional startle modulation is eclipsed when the probe is significant for task completion and/or cues a motor response. Findings suggest that an active, rather than defensive, response set may interfere with affective startle modulation, warranting further investigation.	f	\N
21398561	Dependent on criteria used, between 35% and 53% of the participants with cerebral palsy fulfilled the criteria of clinically relevant executive function problems as defined by Conners' (1994) Continuous Performance Test. Executive function problems were noticed mainly in participants with bilateral brain lesions and who had been born preterm. Findings highlight the need to check for attention problems in children with cerebral palsy.	f	\N
21401233	In two experiments, we examined the effects of emotional valence and arousal on associative binding. Participants studied negative, positive, and neutral word pairs, followed by an associative recognition test. In Experiment 1, with a short-delayed test, accuracy for intact pairs was equivalent across valences, whereas accuracy for rearranged pairs was lower for negative than for positive and neutral pairs. In Experiment 2, we tested participants after a one-week delay and found that accuracy was greater for intact negative than for intact neutral pairs, whereas rearranged pair accuracy was equivalent across valences. These results suggest that, although negative emotional valence impairs associative binding after a short delay, it may improve binding after a longer delay. The results also suggest that valence, as well as arousal, needs to be considered when examining the effects of emotion on associative memory.	f	\N
21404129	An influential account of how cognitive control deals with conflicting sources of information holds that conflict is monitored by a module that automatically recruits attention to resolve the conflict. This leads to reduced effects of conflict on the subsequent trial, a phenomenon termed conflict adaptation. A prominent question is whether control processes are domain specific--that is, recruited only by the particular type of conflict they resolve. Previous studies that have examined this question used two-choice tasks in which feature repetition effects could be responsible for domain-specific adaptation effects. We report two experiments using four-choice (Experiment 1) and five-choice (Experiment 2) tasks that contain two types of irrelevant sources of potentially conflicting information: stimulus location (Simon conflict) and distractors (flanker conflict). In both experiments, we found within-type conflict adaptation for both types of conflict after eliminating trials on which stimulus features were repeated from one trial to the next. Across-type conflict adaptation, however, was not significant. Thus, conflict adaptation was due to domain-specific recruitment of cognitive control. Our results add converging evidence to the idea that multiple independent control processes are involved in reactive cognitive control, although whether control is always local remains to be determined.	f	\N
21407245	Inter-individual variability in perception, thought and action is frequently treated as a source of 'noise' in scientific investigations of the neural mechanisms that underlie these processes, and discarded by averaging data from a group of participants. However, recent MRI studies in the human brain show that inter-individual variability in a wide range of basic and higher cognitive functions - including perception, motor control, memory, aspects of consciousness and the ability to introspect - can be predicted from the local structure of grey and white matter as assessed by voxel-based morphometry or diffusion tensor imaging. We propose that inter-individual differences can be used as a source of information to link human behaviour and cognition to brain anatomy.	f	\N
21420518	We present recent empirical and theoretical advances in conflict and error monitoring in the Simon task. On the basis of the adaptation by binding account for conflict adaptation and the orienting account for post-error slowing, we predict a dissociation between conflict and error monitoring. This prediction is tested and confirmed as conflict adaptation is task-specific while post-error slowing is not.	f	\N
21426626	Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a highly heritable neurodevelopmental disorder with complex genetic aetiology. The identification of candidate intermediate phenotypes may facilitate the detection of susceptibility genes and neurobiological mechanisms underlying the disorder. Electroencephalography (EEG) is an ideal neuroscientific approach, providing a direct measurement of neural activity that demonstrates reliability, developmental stability and high heritability. This systematic review evaluates the utility of a subset of electrophysiological measures as potential intermediate phenotypes for ADHD: quantitative EEG indices of arousal and intraindividual variability, and functional investigations of attention, inhibition and performance monitoring using the event-related potential (ERP) technique. Each measure demonstrates consistent and meaningful associations with ADHD, a degree of genetic overlap with ADHD and potential links to specific genetic variants. Investigations of the genetic and environmental contributions to EEG/ERP and shared genetic overlap with ADHD might enhance molecular genetic studies and provide novel insights into aetiology. Such research will aid in the precise characterisation of the clinical deficits seen in ADHD and guide the development of novel intervention and prevention strategies for those at risk.	f	\N
21429025	Although the treatment of early gastric cancer with endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) has been widely carried out, a standardized method of sedation for ESD has not been established. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of sedation with dexmedetomidine (DEX). We conducted a randomized study involving 90 patients with gastric tumors who were intended to be treated with ESD. The patients were sedated either with DEX (i.v. infusion of 3.0 µg/kg per h over 5 min followed by continuous infusion at 0.4 µg/kg per h [n = 30]), propofol (PF [n = 30]), or midazolam (MDZ [n = 30]). In all groups, 1 mg MDZ was added i.v. as needed. En bloc resection of the gastric tumor was achieved in 88 (98%) patients. None of the DEX-sedated patients showed a significant reduction of the oxygen saturation level. The percentage of patients who showed body movement in the DEX group was significantly lower than those in the PF and MDZ groups, and the mean dose of additional MDZ in the DEX group was significantly smaller than that in the MDZ group. The rate of effective sedation was significantly higher in the DEX group compared with the MDZ or PF group. The mean length of ESD in the DEX group was 65 min, which was significantly shorter than in the other two groups. No DEX-sedated patient developed major surgical complications. Sedation with DEX is effective and safe for patients with gastric tumors who are undergoing ESD.	f	\N
21429736	We consider the potential role of oscillations in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in mediating attention, working memory and memory consolidation. Activity in the theta, beta, and gamma bands is related to communication between PFC and different brain areas. While gamma/beta oscillations mediate bottom-up and top-down interactions between PFC and visual cortices, related to attention, theta rhythms are engaged by hippocampal/PFC interplay. These interactions are dynamic, depending on the nature and relevance of the information currently being processed. The profound modifications of the PFC neuronal network associated with changes in oscillatory coherence are controlled by neuromodulators such as dopamine, which thereby allow or prevent the formation of cell assemblies for information encoding and storage.	f	\N
21432617	We established a neuropsychological testing profile among Turkish adults presenting with ADHD controlling for general intelligence and comorbid psychiatric conditions. Adults with ADHD frequently present with comorbid conditions (e.g., mood and substance use/abuse disorders) that may have a detrimental impact on neurocognitive function. Hence, we excluded patients with ADHD meeting criteria for comorbid psychiatric syndromes. A comprehensive neuropsychological test battery was administered to adults with ADHD attending a general psychiatry clinic in Istanbul, Turkey, and healthy control participants. Adults with ADHD demonstrated performance deficits on tests of attention, information processing speed, and general and working memory. Patients with ADHD also reported a significantly greater number of symptoms associated with frontal lobe syndromes (i.e., dysexecutive symptoms and disinhibition). Patients with ADHD demonstrated rather striking deficits on tests of verbal and nonverbal memory. Once information was encoded, however, patients with ADHD do not demonstrate significant information loss. Patients with ADHD and healthy controls did not differ on tests of alternation learning, inhibitory control (error rates), and ToM skills. Findings support the contention that dorsal-prefrontal (rather than ventral-prefrontal) dysfunction is associated with adult ADHD. Unexpectedly, groups did not differ on executive control and fluency tasks. Yet patients with ADHD obtained substantially higher scores on a self-report measure of executive dysfunction. This suggests that dysexecutive symptoms among patients with ADHD in the current study do not reflect set-shifting or organizational deficits. Rather, symptoms may reflect attentional and working memory deficits as well as diminished information processing speed.	f	\N
21435770	The experiments conducted aimed to investigate whether reduced accuracy when counting stimuli presented in rapid temporal sequence in adults with dyslexia could be explained by a sensory processing deficit, a general slowing in processing speed or difficulties shifting attention between stimuli. To achieve these aims, the influence of the inter-stimulus interval (ISI), stimulus duration, and sequence length were evaluated in two experiments. In the first that used skilled readers only, significantly more errors were found with presentation of long sequences when the ISI or stimulus durations were short. Experiment 2 used a wider range of ISIs and stimulus durations. Compared to skilled readers, a group with dyslexia had reduced accuracy on two-stimulus sequences when the ISI was short, but not when the ISI was long. Although reduced accuracy was found on all short and long sequences by the group with dyslexia, when performance on two-stimulus sequences was used as an index of sensory processing efficiency and controlled, group differences were found with presentation of stimuli of short duration only. We concluded that continuous, repetitive stimulation to the same visual area can produce a capacity limitation on rapid counting tasks in all readers when the ISIs or stimulus durations are short. While reduced accuracy on rapid sequential counting tasks can be explained by a sensory processing deficit when the stimulus duration is long, slower processing speed in the group with dyslexia explains the greater inaccuracy found as sequence length is increased when the stimulus duration is short.	f	\N
21437989	Kava (Piper methysticum) elicits dose-dependent psychotropic effects and thus may potentially deleteriously affect cognitive performance. Clinical trials have assessed the effects of kava on cognition, however, to our knowledge no systematic review has been conducted in this area. To systematically review the effects of kava on cognition, providing an analysis of the individual study's methodological quality, results and effect sizes. A systematic review was conducted of publications up to June 15th 2010, using the electronic databases MEDLINE, PsychINFO, CINAHL, Web of Science and The Cochrane Library. The search criteria involved kava and cognition related terms, e.g. memory and attention. Ten human clinical trials met inclusion criteria (acute n = 7, chronic n = 3). One acute study found that kava significantly improved visual attention and working memory processes while another found that kava increased body sway. One chronic study found that kava significantly impaired visual attention during high-cognitive demand. Potential enhanced cognition may be attributed to the ability of kava to inhibit re-uptake of noradrenaline in the pre-frontal cortex, while increased body sway may be due to GABA pathway modulation. The majority of evidence suggests that kava has no replicated significant negative effects on cognition.	f	\N
21440073	According to the default-mode interference hypothesis, suboptimal performance in tasks requiring selective attention occurs when off-task processing (e.g., mind wandering) supported by default-mode regions interferes with on-task processing (e.g., attention) enabled by task-positive regions. In the present functional MRI study, we therefore investigated whether suboptimal performance in a selective attention task was linked to heightened interactions between a key default-mode region (the posterior cingulate cortex; PCC) and a key task-positive region (the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; DLPFC). We also investigated whether heightened interactions between the PCC and the left DLPFC were linked to enhanced future performance, consistent with prior data suggesting that such interactions index adaptive changes to the cognitive system. In line with both of these predictions, increases of current-trial functional connectivity between the PCC and the left DLPFC were linked to increases of response time in the current trial (i.e., suboptimal performance), but to decreases of response time in the next trial (i.e., enhanced performance). This double dissociation provides novel support for the default-mode interference hypothesis. Moreover, it suggests the possibility that, in at least some cases, default-mode interference indexes processes that optimize future performance.	f	\N
21441920	Selective attention filters information to limit what is encoded and maintained in working memory. Although the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is central to both selective attention and working memory, the underlying neural processes that link these cognitive abilities remain elusive. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging to guide repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation with electroencephalographic recordings in humans, we perturbed PFC function at the inferior frontal junction in participants before they performed a selective-attention, delayed-recognition task. This resulted in diminished top-down modulation of activity in posterior cortex during early encoding stages, which predicted a subsequent decrement in working memory accuracy. Participants with stronger fronto-posterior functional connectivity displayed greater disruptive effects. Our data further suggests that broad alpha-band (7-14 Hz) phase coherence subserved this long-distance top-down modulation. These results suggest that top-down modulation mediated by the prefrontal cortex is a causal link between early attentional processes and subsequent memory performance.	f	\N
21444327	to determine if there are age-related differences in locomotor targeting (LT) performance and step length (SL) regulatory behaviour under structural interference. forty older (n = 20, mean age = 77.9) and younger (n = 20, mean age = 25.2) participants walked 11.6 m while stepping on a target positioned at the 9.5 m point. Participants completed seven trials under each of three conditions, including the control (C) (no structural interference), low structural interference (L) and high structural interference (H). The structural interference conditions required participants to engage in LT while simultaneously verbally identifying letters that were visually presented on one of two monitors. One monitor was located near the target (low interference), while the other monitor was elevated to require participants to direct their gaze further away from the target to identify a letter (high interference). Outcome measures included LT error, SL, SL variability and the distribution of SL adjustment. structural interference had a detrimental effect on the LT accuracy of the older group (2.75 cm mean increase in absolute error) but not on the younger group (1.05 cm mean increase in absolute error), even though the interference caused the older group alone to adopt a more conservative gait pattern involving shorter SLs. The older participants exhibited shorter mean SL with each increase in structural interference (conditions C vs. L, P = 0.004; conditions L vs. H, P = 0.050), whereas the younger participants' mean SL did not differ across conditions. The manner in which older and younger participants distributed SL adjustment across the steps in advance of the target did not differ. the results confirmed that LT demands more attention from older adults than it does from younger adults, and revealed that a consequence of this age difference is a decline in LT accuracy among older adults. The study implicates age-related impaired visual attention switching as a potential source of impaired walking performance among older adults.	f	\N
21452076	As a rule, the discriminability of multiple symmetries from random patterns increases with the number of symmetry axes, but this number does not seem to be the only determinant. In particular, multiple symmetries with orthogonal axes seem better discriminable than multiple symmetries with nonorthogonal axes. In six experiments on imperfect two-fold symmetry, we investigated whether this is due to extra structure in the form of so-called correlation rectangles, which arise only in the case of orthogonal axes, or to the relative orientation of the axes as such. The results suggest that correlation rectangles are not perceptually relevant and that the percept of a multiple symmetry results from an orientation-dependent interaction between the constituent single symmetries. The results can be accounted for by a model involving the analysis of symmetry at all orientations, smoothing (averaging over neighboring orientations), and extraction of peaks.	f	\N
21452088	Stressful life events can result into declined memory performance at later age. One hypothesis suggests that stress affects the hippocampus, a brain area important for memory functioning. This study explored a potential relationship between the number of negative stressful life events and hippocampus-dependent declarative but not hippocampus-independent procedural memory performance in a community sample of 255 children, aged 6-12 years. The findings revealed that negative stressful life events were negatively related to verbal declarative memory, but not to nonverbal declarative and procedural memory. The memory impairments could not be accounted for by attention and sleep disturbances, and parenting characteristics as perceived by the child did not influence the vulnerability for the stress-related memory impairments. These findings provide further insight into the deleterious effects of negative stressful life events on learning in school-aged children.	f	\N
21455862	Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) is a chronic disease characterized by recurrent episodes of partial or complete upper airway collapse and obstruction during sleep, associated with intermittent oxygen desaturation, sleep fragmentation, and symptoms of disruptive snoring and daytime sleepiness. Increasing focus is being placed on the relationship between OSAS and all-cause and cardiovascular disease-related mortality, but it still largely unclear whether this association is causative or simply speculative and epidemiological. Basically, reliable clinical evidence supports the hypothesis that OSAS might be associated with essential and resistant hypertension, as well as with an incremental risk of developing stroke, cardiac rhythm perturbations (e.g., atrial fibrillation, bradyarrhythmias, supraventricular and ventricular arrhythmias), coronary artery disease, acute myocardial infarction, and heart failure. Although it is still unclear whether OSAS might represent an independent risk factor for several acute or chronic conditions, or rather might trigger cardiovascular disease in the presence of traditional cardiovascular risk factors (e.g., obesity, diabetes, and dyslipidemia), there is a plausible biological background underlying this association, in that most of the mechanisms implicated in the pathogenesis of OSAS (i.e., hypoxia, hypercapnia, negative intrathoracic pressure, micro-arousal, sympathetic hyperactivity, metabolic and hormonal changes, oxidative stress, phlogosis, endothelial dysfunction, hypercoagulability, and genetic predisposition) might also be involved in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disorders. In this article we discuss the different aspects of the relationship between OSAS and pathogenically different conditions such as systemic hypertension, coronary artery disease, stroke, metabolic abnormalities, arrhythmias, and heart failure, and we also discuss the kaleidoscope of phenomena implicated in the pathogenesis of this challenging disease.	f	\N
21457759	When multiple objects are present in a visual scene, salient and behaviorally relevant objects are attentionally selected and receive enhanced processing at the expense of less salient or less relevant objects. Here we examined three lateralized components of the event-related potential (ERP) - the N2pc, Ptc, and SPCN - as indices of target and distractor processing in a visual search paradigm. Participants responded to the orientation of a target while ignoring an attentionally salient distractor and ERPs elicited by the target and the distractor were obtained. Results indicate that both the target and the distractor elicit an N2pc component which may index the initial attentional selection of both objects. In contrast, only the distractor elicited a significant Ptc, which may reflect the subsequent suppression of distracting or irrelevant information. Thus, the Ptc component appears to be similar to another ERP component - the Pd - which is also thought to reflect distractor suppression. Furthermore, only the target elicited an SPCN component which likely reflects the representation of the target in visual short term memory.	f	\N
21458476	We investigated the organization of eye-movement classes in a natural and dynamical setup. To mimic the goals and objectives of the natural world in a controlled environment, we studied eye-movements while participants played Breakout, an old Atari game which remains surprisingly entertaining, often addictive, in spite of its graphic and structural simplicity. Our results show that eye-movement dynamics can be explained in terms of simple principles of moments of prediction and urgency of action. We observed a consistent anticipatory behavior (gaze was directed ahead of ball trajectory) except during the moment in which the ball bounced either in the walls, or in the paddle. At these moments, we observed a refractory period during which there are no blinks and saccades. Saccade delay caused the gaze to fall behind the ball. This pattern is consistent with a model by which participants postpone saccades at the bounces while predicting the ball trajectory and subsequently make a catch-up saccade directed to a position which anticipates ball trajectory. During bounces, trajectories were smooth and curved interpolating the V-shape function of the ball with minimal acceleration. These results pave the path to understand the taxonomy of eye-movements on natural configurations in which stimuli and goals switch dynamically in time.	f	\N
21459622	People can maintain accurate representations of visual changes without necessarily being aware of them. Here, we investigate whether a similar phenomenon (implicit change detection) also exists in touch. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants detected the presence of a change between two consecutively-presented tactile displays. Tactile change blindness was observed, with participants failing to report the presence of tactile change. Critically, however, when participants had to make a forced choice response regarding the number of stimuli presented in the two displays, their performance was significantly better than chance (i.e., implicit change detection was observed). Experiment 3 demonstrated that tactile change detection does not necessarily involve a shift of spatial attention toward the location of change, regardless of whether the change is explicitly detected. We conclude that tactile change detection likely results from comparing representations of the two displays, rather than by directing spatial attention to the location of the change.	f	\N
21466088	An internal clock model has often been used to explain disruptions in timing production that occur when temporal and nontemporal tasks are performed simultaneously. In this study, participants' ability to walk 8 m in 8 sec. while executing various secondary concurrent nontemporal tasks was assessed for 16 children enrolled in sports at school. Children participated in six trials under five randomized task conditions involving different coordinative and cognitive workloads. The duration of timing production increased as the attention requirements or cognitive demands placed upon the completion of the task increased. However, participants also showed learning of timing over the six trials. Significant differences were found between the timing task and the concurrent nontemporal tasks depending on the difficulty and cognitive load of the secondary tasks. Results are discussed using attention models of time estimation and production.	f	\N
21470571	The purpose of this study was to investigate sex differences in cognitive control as measured by the stimulus-locked N2 component of the event-related potential (ERP). High-density ERPs were obtained from 114 healthy individuals (60 females, 54 males) who completed a modified Eriksen Flanker Task. Behavioral measures (i.e., error rates, reaction times) and N2 amplitudes were analyzed. On the flanker task, females responded significantly slower and committed more errors than males. For N2 amplitude, there was a significant main effect of congruency, with increased amplitude to incongruent trials. Importantly, sexes differed as a function of congruency, with males showing significantly larger incongruent N2 amplitudes than females. Sex differences in N2 amplitude remained in a subgroup of participants that did not differ for behavioral, demographic, and affective variables. No sex differences were shown for electrophysiological or behavioral indices of conflict adaptation. Results indicate sex differences in brain activation associated with conflict monitoring. Findings may be explained by two contradictory possibilities: (1) females more effectively monitor conflict as indicated by less neural activation than males for similar behavioral performance in a matched subsample, or, (2) females less effectively monitor conflict than males.	f	\N
21474638	There is a lack of studies related to virtual reality (VR)-augmented balance training on postural control in people with Parkinson disease (PD). The purposes of this study were: (1) to examine the effects of VR-augmented balance training on the sensory integration of postural control under varying attentional demands and (2) to compare the results with those of a conventional balance training (CB) group and an untrained control group. A longitudinal, randomized controlled trial was used. The intervention was conducted in the clinic, and the assessment was performed in a research laboratory. Forty-two people with PD (Hoehn and Yahr stages II-III) were recruited. The VR and CB groups received a 6-week balance training program. The sensory organization tests (SOTs) of computerized posturography with single- and dual-task conditions were conducted prior to training, after training, and at follow-up. Equilibrium scores, sensory ratios, and verbal reaction times (VRTs) were recorded. There were no significant differences in equilibrium scores or VRTs between the VR and CB groups. However, the equilibrium scores in SOT-6 (ie, unreliable vision and somatosensation) of the VR group increased significantly more than that of the control group after training. The equilibrium scores in SOT-5 (ie, unreliable somatosensation with eyes closed) of the CB group also increased significantly more than that of the control group after training. The functional significance of the improvements in equilibrium scores in the SOTs was not known, and the sample size was small. Both VR and CB training improved sensory integration for postural control in people with PD, especially when they were deprived of sensory redundancy. However, the attentional demand for postural control was not changed after either VR or CB training.	f	\N
21476025	This study examined the relationship between the developmental trajectories of neuropsychological functioning and ADHD symptomatology in a longitudinal sample of children ages 9 to 14. Participants and measures were derived from the Multimodal Treatment Study for ADHD including 534MTA participants and 254 normal controls. Despite improvement over time, MTA participants continued to receive higher ratings of ADHD symptomatology and exhibit greater difficulties across the majority of neuropsychological outcomes. No relations were found between improvements in neuropsychological functioning and ADHD symptomatology over time. Findings provide support for the persistence of neuropsychological functioning and ADHD symptomatology. Findings did not support the hypothesized relation between improvements in frontally-mediated neuropsychological functioning and ADHD symptomatology possibly due to the brief 1-year lag and limited assessment battery. Findings are discussed in relation to neuropsychological development including recommendations for future research.	f	\N
21480683	The immediate emotional and situational antecedents of ad-libitum smoking are still not well understood. We reanalyzed data from ecological momentary assessment using novel point process analyses to assess how craving, mood, and social setting influence smoking rate, as well as to assess the moderating effects of gender and nicotine dependence. Smokers (N = 304) recorded craving, mood, and social setting using electronic diaries when smoking and at random nonsmoking times over 16 days of smoking. Point process analysis, which makes use of the known random sampling scheme for momentary variables, examined main effects of setting and interactions with gender and dependence. Increased craving was associated with higher rates of smoking, particularly among women. Negative affect was not associated with smoking rate, even in interaction with arousal, but restlessness was associated with substantially higher smoking rates. Women's smoking tended to be less affected by negative affect. Nicotine dependence had little moderating effect on situational influences. Smoking rates were higher when smokers were alone or with others who were smoking, and smoking restrictions reduced smoking rates. However, the presence of others who are smoking undermined the effects of restrictions. The more sensitive point process analyses confirmed earlier findings, including the surprising conclusion that negative affect by itself was not related to smoking rates. Contrary to hypothesis, men's and not women's smoking was influenced by negative affect. Both smoking restrictions and the presence of others who are not smoking suppress smoking, but the presence of others who are not smoking undermines the effects of restrictions. Point process analyses of ecological momentary assessment data can bring out even small influences on smoking rate.	f	\N
21487761	Low-grade gliomas are slow-growing tumors invading eloquent areas and white matter pathways. For many decades these tumors were considered inoperable because of their high tropism for eloquent areas. However, the young age of the patients and the inescapable anaplastic transformation have recently suggested more aggressive treatments. We analyzed the neurological and neuro-oncological outcome of 12 patients who underwent surgery fully awake for the resection of LGG, harboring eloquent areas. 10 right- and 2 left-handed patients underwent pre-operative assessment: Karnofsky Performance Status, Edinburgh Handedness Inventory Score; neuropsychological and neurophysiological evaluations, according to the tumor location. During surgery we performed: sensory-motor-evoked potentials, continuous electro-corticography and bipolar/monopolar cortico-subcortical mapping during neuropsychological tests. The resection rate was calculated with neuro-imaging elaboration software. No permanent post-operative deficits were reported; 2 patients improved after surgery. No impairment of cognitive functions was reported. The KPS improved in 8 patients and was steady in the others. The mean resection rate was 78.3%. The resection allowed the control of pre-operative seizures without increasing the drug intake. Awake surgery allowed a good resection rate despite the eloquent location of the tumors, without post-operative deficit. The neuropsychological outcome was unchanged after surgery. The resection seems to improve seizure control. All the patients came back to normal life and work. In conclusion, awake surgery is reliable and feasible in removal of LGG, even if invading the main eloquent areas and networks. All the patients experienced a normal life after surgery, without permanent deficits.	f	\N
21489866	Studies indicate that the change from closed to open eyes in a resting condition results in an increase in skin conductance level (SCL) and a global decrease in EEG alpha activity, both indicative of increased arousal. Other studies show that ingestion of caffeine also produces SCL increase and alpha reduction. This study investigated the additivity of the effects of these two independent arousing variables. EEG activity and SCL were recorded from 22 university students during both eyes-closed and eyes-open resting conditions, under the action of both caffeine and placebo, in a counterbalanced randomised double-blind study. SCL increased significantly from eyes-closed to eyes-open conditions, and from placebo to caffeine, with no interaction. Global reductions in EEG alpha amplitude were apparent with opening of the eyes and caffeine ingestion; again, there was no interaction. Caffeine had a larger effect than opening the eyes on SCL, but their relative effect sizes were reversed in alpha. The two dependent measures showed the predicted negative correlation in both eyes-closed placebo and eyes-open caffeine conditions, with the latter substantially reduced relative to the former. Caffeine and opening the eyes have additive effects on two measures of arousal, increasing SCL and reducing global EEG alpha. However, the independent variable effects are not equivalent, suggesting that one or both measures reflect additional non-arousal processes. As caffeine is widely used by both children and adults, knowledge of the additivity of arousal effects of caffeine and opening the eyes is important in controlling participant state in EEG studies. The current results confirm the use of mean global alpha amplitude as a measure of resting-state arousal, but also point to non-arousal effects of visual input.	f	\N
21493707	Object-based attention facilitates the processing of features that form the object. Two hypotheses are conceivable for how object-based attention is deployed to an object's features: first, the object is attended by selecting its features; alternatively, a configuration of features as such is attended by selecting the object representation they form. Only for the latter alternative, the perception of a feature configuration as entity ("objecthood") is a necessary condition for object-based attention. Disentangling the two alternatives requires the comparison of identical feature configurations that induce the perception of an object in one condition ("bound") and do not do so in another condition ("unbound"). We used an ambiguous stimulus, whose percept spontaneously switches between bound and unbound, while the stimulus itself remains unchanged. We tested discrimination on the boundary of the diamond as well as detection of probes inside and outside the diamond. We found discrimination performance to be increased if features were perceptually bound into an object. Furthermore, detection performance was higher within and lower outside the bound object as compared to the unbound configuration. Consequently, the facilitation of processing by object-based attention requires objecthood, that is, a unified internal representation of an "object"-not a mere collection of features.	f	\N
21497444	Psychological stress prompts activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis resulting in increased release of cortisol. Long-term HPA aberrations have been observed for stress-related affective disorders but research into acute effects of cortisol on affect-regulation has only recently begun. Previous studies reported that exogenous cortisol acutely attenuated automatic attentional processing of task-irrelevant threatening information. This has been taken to suggest that cortisol may have acute anxiolytic properties, possibly through facilitating inhibition of threatening information. However, the role of cortisol in attentional inhibition of non-threatening arousing stimuli remained unclear. Therefore acute effects of 40 mg cortisol on performance of a masked and unmasked emotional Stroop task (EST) were assessed. Results for only the unmasked task demonstrated EST interference (interpreted as increased automatic attention) for erotic stimuli which was abolished by cortisol administration. This implies that effects of cortisol may not be restricted to attenuation of specifically anxiogenic information processing, as previously suggested.	f	\N
21500047	In order to truly empathise with another, we need to recognise and understand how they feel. Perception-action models of empathy predict that attending to another's emotion will spontaneously activate the observer's own conceptual knowledge for the state, but it is unclear how this activation is related to facial mimicry, trait empathy, or attention to emotion more generally. In the current study, participants did spontaneously encode background facial expressions at a conceptual level even though they were irrelevant to the task (the Emostroop effect; Preston & Stansfield, 2008), but this encoding was not associated with mimicry of the faces, trait empathy, the ability to resolve competing semantic representations (Colour-naming Stroop task), or the tendency to be distracted by emotional information more generally (Intrusive Cognitions task). Our results suggest that trait empathy increases attention to emotional information, but conceptual encoding occurs across individuals as a natural consequence of attended perception.	f	\N
21500317	Recordings of event-related potentials (ERPs) were combined with structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the timing and localization of stimulus selection processes during visual-spatial attention to pattern-reversing gratings. Pattern reversals were presented in random order to the left and right visual fields at a rapid rate, while subjects attended to the reversals in one field at a time. On separate runs, stimuli were presented in the upper and lower visual quadrants. The earliest ERP component (C1, peaking at around 80 ms), which inverted in polarity for upper versus lower field stimuli and was localized in or near visual area V1, was not modulated by attention. In the latency range 80-250 ms, multiple components were elicited that were increased in amplitude by attention and were colocalized with fMRI activations in specific visual cortical areas. The principal anatomical sources of these attention-sensitive components were localized by fMRI-seeded dipole modeling as follows: P1 (ca. 100 ms-source in motion-sensitive area MT+), C2 (ca. 130 ms-same source as C1), N1a (ca. 145 ms-source in horizontal intraparietal sulcus), N1b (ca. 165 ms-source in fusiform gyrus, area V4/V8), N1c (ca. 180 ms-source in posterior intraparietal sulcus, area V3A), and P2 (ca. 220 ms-multiple sources, including parieto-occipital sulcus, area V6). These results support the hypothesis that spatial attention acts to amplify both feed-forward and feedback signals in multiple visual areas of both the dorsal and ventral streams of processing.	f	\N
21500944	Previous work suggested the association between intentionality and the reported time of action was exclusive, with intentionality as the primary facilitator to the mental time compression between the reported time of action and its effect (Haggard, Clark, & Kalogeras, 2002). In three experiments, we examined whether mental time compression could also be observed in an unintended action. Participants performed an externally cued key press task that elicited one of two possible tones. The reported time of action shifted closer to the tone when the tone was used to indicate the winner of a race (Exp.2) compared to when the tone was meaningless and did not indicate winning (Exp.1). This suggests that reported time of an unintended action could shift toward the effect in some contexts. Furthermore, the results from Exp.2 and Exp.3 (tones were substituted with verbal feedback) showed that a presumed winning action was judged to occur earlier whereas a presumed losing action was judged to be later. These findings therefore support the view that the reported time of action is reconstructed from known temporal information rather than determined by intentionality.	f	\N
21504670	The principal goal of this study was to verify whether it was possible to obtain both aversive and appetitive electrodermal classical conditioning, using pictures as conditioned stimuli (CS), and unconditioned stimuli (US). Additionally, we tried to verify whether, as a consequence of such conditioning, diminution of the unconditioned response (UR) was observed. With this aim, IAPS («International Affective Picture System») pictures were selected as stimuli. A picture showing a burnt face was used as the aversive US (USav), and a picture showing a scene with erotic content was used as the appetitive US (USap). As the aversive CS (CSav), and appetitive CS (CSap), two images with intermediate values of valence and arousal showing male faces were selected. In the experimental group, 10 CSav/USav and 10 CSap/USap trials were presented. In the control group 10 CSav, CSap, USav, and USap trials were presented in pseudorandom order. Skin conductance response (SCR) elicited by both the CSs and the USs was scored. Results showed aversive conditioning, but neither appetitive conditioning nor UR diminution. Problems to obtain conditioning using pictures as stimuli and possible options to overcome them in future research are discussed.	f	\N
21507423	We investigated the associations of appraisal and coping styles with emotion regulation in a community sample of preadolescents (N=196, 9-12 years of age), with appraisal, coping styles, and emotion regulation measured at a single time point. In a previous study, we identified five frustration and four anxiety emotion regulation profiles based on children's physiological, behavioral, and self-reported reactions to emotion-eliciting tasks. In this study, preadolescents' self-reported appraisal and coping styles were associated with those emotion regulation profiles. Overall, findings revealed that children who were more effective at regulating their emotions during the emotion-eliciting tasks had higher levels of positive appraisal and active coping when dealing with their own problems. Conversely, children who regulated their emotions less effectively had higher levels of threat appraisal and avoidant coping.	f	\N
21518064	This was a realistic military-type exercise assessing unexpected, abrupt early-morning awakening effects on immediate 'executive function' and the ability to comprehend and deal with a sudden emergency under a changing situation. Twenty (average age 21years) healthy, highly motivated junior officer reservists were assigned randomly to two equal, independent groups, unforewarned as to what would happen. The experimental group was woken abruptly at 03:00h (<3h sleep) and confronted immediately with a 'paper exercise' of an enemy attack, requiring a feasible plan of engagement with minimal loss of resources, to be completed within 15min. A control group slept until 07:30h; they were then presented with the identical emergency 1h later. Participants worked individually, under time pressure, receiving written information, map and other details, all containing relevant, irrelevant and misleading information. Halfway through, they were given (unexpectedly) a critical update necessitating a change of tactics. Performance was scored blind by instructors, under five categories. Eight of the experimental group versus three controls failed overall, with significant group differences on three specific categories relying on flexible decision-making: 'identification of available cover', 'use of available assets' and 'extraction of relevant from irrelevant information'. Other, logical and highly trained skills were unimpaired. Ours was a 'worst case scenario', combining short sleep, circadian 'trough' and sleep inertia, all of which differentiated the two groups, unlike typical laboratory studies. Nevertheless, it was relevant to real-life situations involving highly motivated, trained individuals making critical innovative decisions in the early morning versus the normal waking day.	f	\N
21518701	Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists, such as leuprorelin, are recommended in the patients with pedophilia at highest risk of offending. However, the cerebral mechanisms of the effects of these testosterone-decreasing drugs are poorly known. This study aimed to identify changes caused by leuprorelin in a pedophilic patient's brain responses to pictures representing children. Clinical, endocrine, and fMRI investigations were done of a man with pedophilia before leuprorelin therapy and 5 months into leuprorelin therapy. Patient was compared with an age-matched healthy control also assessed 5 months apart. Before therapy, pictures of boys elicited activation in the left calcarine fissure, left insula, anterior cingulate cortex, and left cerebellar vermis. Five months into therapy, all the above-mentioned activations had disappeared. No such activations and, consequently, no such decreases occurred in the healthy control. The results of this pilot study suggest that leuprorelin decreased activity in regions known to mediate the perceptual, motivational, and affective responses to visual sexual stimuli.	f	\N
21526441	The aim of the present study is to investigate visual orientation in hospitalized boys with severe early onset conduct disorder and borderline intellectual functioning. It is tested whether boys with the dual diagnosis have a stronger action-oriented response style to visual-cued go signals than the norm. To this end, boys with the dual diagnosis were compared with a peer control group on Posner's (1980) visual-spatial detection test. Here, on each trial, a visual cue points either in the direction of the location of a subsequent go signal (valid cue), or points in the opposite direction away from the location of the subsequent go signal (invalid cue). Findings indicated superior orientation (a strong action-oriented response style) of children with the dual diagnosis in valid-cued trials as well as in invalid-cued trials in both the left and the right visual hemifield. Findings were controlled for attention scores on the Child Behavior Checklist -Teacher Form and IQ scores.	f	\N
21534030	Eight participants with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) were trained to recall names of countries using the spaced-retrieval memory intervention. Six training sessions were administered on alternate days over a 2-week period. Half of the participants studied a target country alone and the other half studied a target country along with eight distractor countries. Training stimuli appeared in text-only format in half of the sessions and text with a color photograph of the country in the other sessions. On each trial, participants selected the target at increasingly longer retention intervals, contingent upon successful recall. Results indicated that the mean proportion of correct trials and longest duration achieved increased across training sessions, confirming the success of the spaced-retrieval intervention. Pictorial illustrations enhanced explicit memory for target country names. Implications of these data for current views on memory remediation in cognitively impaired older adults are discussed.	f	\N
21534031	In two experiments recognition of actions of a robbery presented in a video was examined in older and younger adults. In both experiments older adults had more false alarms and showed less accurate recognition than younger adults. In addition, when participants were asked in Experiment 1 to indicate Remember/Know/Guess judgments for actions they considered true, older adults accepted more false actions with Remember judgments. And when participants were asked in Experiment 2 to attribute the source (i.e., perpetrator), the older adults were less able to attribute actions that occurred during the robbery to their correct sources. Furthermore, we found a robust positive correlation between source attribution ability and recognition accuracy. Thus, source-memory deficits may contribute to older adults' false memories in real-life eyewitness situations.	f	\N
21534706	We investigated how people interpret conditionals and how stable their interpretation is over a long series of trials. Participants were shown the colored patterns on each side of a 6-sided die and were asked how sure they were that a conditional holds of the side landing upward when the die is randomly thrown. Participants were presented with 71 trials consisting of all combinations of binary dimensions of shape (e.g., circles and squares) and color (e.g., blue and red) painted onto the sides of each die. In 2 experiments (N₁ = 66, N₂ = 65), the conditional event was the dominant interpretation, followed by conjunction, and material conditional responses were negligible. In both experiments, the percentage of participants giving a conditional event response increased from around 40% at the beginning of the task to nearly 80% at the end, with most participants shifting from a conjunction interpretation. The shift was moderated by the order of shape and color in each conditional's antecedent and consequent: Participants were more likely to shift if the antecedent referred to a color. In Experiment 2 we collected response times: Conditional event interpretations took longer to process than conjunction interpretations (mean difference = 500 ms). We discuss implications of our results for mental models theory and probabilistic theories of reasoning.	f	\N
21534986	Schizophrenia (SZ) patients showed increased volitional saccade latencies, suggesting deficient volitional initiation of action. Yet increased volitional saccade latencies may also result from deficits in attention shifts. To dissociate attention shifting and saccade initiation, we asked 25 SZ patients and 25 healthy subjects to make saccades toward newly appearing (onset) targets and toward the loci of disappearing (offset) targets. Similar onsets and offsets were also used as attention cues in a Posner-type manual task. As expected, onsets and offsets had similar effects on attention. In contrast, saccade latencies were considerably longer with offset compared to onset targets, reflecting additional time for volitional saccade initiation. Unexpectedly, SZ patients had normal saccade latencies. Presumably, the expected deficit was compensated by decreased fixation-related neural activity, which was induced by the disappearance of fixation stimuli.	f	\N
21545293	Wearable medical devices have enabled unobtrusive monitoring of vital signs and emerging biofeedback services in a pervasive manner. This article describes a wearable respiratory biofeedback system based on a generalized body sensor network (BSN) platform. The compact BSN platform was tailored for the strong requirements of overall system optimizations. A waist-worn biofeedback device was designed using the BSN. Extensive bench tests have shown that the generalized BSN worked as intended. In-situ experiments with 22 subjects indicated that the biofeedback device was discreet, easy to wear, and capable of offering wearable respiratory trainings. Pilot studies on wearable training patterns and resultant heart rate variability suggested that paced respirations at abdominal level and with identical inhaling/exhaling ratio were more appropriate for decreasing sympathetic arousal and increasing parasympathetic activities.	f	\N
21545978	Despite the importance of determining the effects of interletter spacing on visual-word recognition, this issue has often been neglected in the literature. The goal of the present study is to shed some light on this topic. The rationale is that a thin increase in interletter spacing, as in casino, may reduce lateral interference among internal letters without destroying a word's integrity and/or allow a more precise encoding of a word's letter positions. Here we examined whether identification times for word stimuli in a lexical decision task were faster when the target word had a slightly wider than default interletter spacing value relative to the default settings (e.g., casino vs. casino). In Experiment 1, we examined whether interletter spacing interacted with word-frequency, whereas in Experiment 2, we examined whether interletter spacing interacted with word length. Results showed that responses to words using a thin increase in interletter spacing were faster than the responses to words using the default settings-regardless of word-frequency and word length. Thus, interletter spacing plays an important role at modulating the identification of visually presented words.	f	\N
21547070	We aimed to investigate whether novel stimulus relations would emerge from stimulus correlations when those relations explicitly conflicted with reinforced relations. In a symbolic matching-to-sample task using kanji characters as stimuli, we arranged class-specific incorrect comparison stimuli in each of three classes. After presenting either Ax or Cx stimuli as samples, choices of Bx were reinforced and choices of Gx or Hx were not. Tests for symmetry, and combined symmetry and transitivity, showed the emergence of three 3-member (AxBxCx) stimulus classes in 5 of 5 human participants. Subsequent tests for all possible emergent relations between Ax, Bx, Cx and the class-specific incorrect comparisons Gx and Hx showed that these relations emerged for 4 of 5 the participants after extended overtraining of the baseline relations. These emergent relations must have been based on stimulus-stimulus correlations, and were not properties of the trained discriminated operants, because they required control by relations explicitly extinguished during training. This result supports theoretical accounts of emergent relations that emphasize stimulus correlation over operant contingencies.	f	\N
21547759	According to the Proust phenomenon, olfactory memory triggers are more evocative than other-modality triggers resulting in more emotional and detailed memories. An experimental paradigm was used to investigate this in aversive memories, similar to those experienced by patients with posttraumatic stress disorder. Seventy healthy participants watched an aversive film, while simultaneously being exposed to olfactory, auditory and visual triggers, which were matched on intensity, valence, arousal and salience. During a second session one week later, participants were randomly exposed to one of the three triggers, and asked to think back about the film and to rate the resulting memory. Results revealed that odour-evoked memories of aversive events were more detailed, unpleasant and arousing than memories evoked by auditory, but not visual, triggers.	f	\N
21547763	Although laughter plays an essential part in emotional vocal communication, little is known about the acoustical correlates that encode different emotional dimensions. In this study we examined the acoustical structure of laughter sounds differing along four emotional dimensions: arousal, dominance, sender's valence, and receiver-directed valence. Correlation of 43 acoustic parameters with individual emotional dimensions revealed that each emotional dimension was associated with a number of vocal cues. Common patterns of cues were found with emotional expression in speech, supporting the hypothesis of a common underlying mechanism for the vocal expression of emotions.	f	\N
21555734	Previous studies have estimated that wake-up strokes comprise 8%to 28% of all ischemic strokes, but these studies were either small or not population-based. We sought to establish the proportion and event rate of wake-up strokes in a large population-based study and to compare patients who awoke with stroke symptoms with those who were awake at time of onset. First-time and recurrent ischemic strokes among residents of the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky region (population 1.3 million) in 2005 were identified using International Classification of Diseases-9 codes 430-436 and verified via study physician review. Ischemic strokes in patients aged 18 years and older presenting to an emergency department were included. Baseline characteristics were ascertained, along with discharge modified Rankin Scale scores and 90-day mortality. We identified 1,854 ischemic strokes presenting to an emergency department, of which 273 (14.3%) were wake-up strokes. There were no differences between wake-up strokes and all other strokes with regard to clinical features or outcomes except for minor differences in age and baseline retrospective NIH Stroke Scale score. The adjusted wake-up stroke event rate was 26.0/100,000. Of the wake-up strokes, at least 98 (35.9%) would have been eligible for thrombolysis if arrival time were not a factor. Within our population, approximately 14% of ischemic strokes presenting to an emergency department were wake-up strokes. Wake-up strokes cannot be distinguished from other strokes by clinical features or outcome. We estimate that approximately 58,000 patients with wake-up strokes presented to an emergency department in the United States in 2005.	f	\N
21555787	The Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT) is commonly used to evaluate an individual's switching attention and processing speed. However, its test-retest reliability and practice effect are not well known in patients with stroke, limiting its utility in both clinical and research settings. The present study examined the two aforementioned psychometric properties of the oral-format SDMT on a group of 30 outpatients with stroke. The oral-format SDMT demonstrated excellent test-retest reliability (ICC = 0.89) and a small practice effect (Cohen's d = 0.26) within a 1-week interval. A practice effect-corrected reliable change index [-5.29, 10.89] was also provided to help clinicians and researchers interpret their clients' test results. Patients' characteristics and the test-retest interval should be considered before applying the findings of the present study to clinical settings.	f	\N
21564270	Theories of embodied cognition hold that the conceptual system uses perceptual simulations for the purposes of representation. A strong prediction is that perceptual phenomena should emerge in conceptual processing, and, in support, previous research has shown that switching modalities from one trial to the next incurs a processing cost during conceptual tasks. However, to date, such research has been limited by its reliance on the retrieval of familiar concepts. We therefore examined concept creation by asking participants to interpret modality-specific compound phrases (i.e., conceptual combinations). Results show that modality switching costs emerge during the creation of new conceptual entities: People are slower to simulate a novel concept (e.g., auditory jingling onion) when their attention has already been engaged by a different modality in simulating a familiar concept (e.g., visual shiny penny). Furthermore, these costs cannot be accounted for by linguistic factors alone. Rather, our findings support the embodied view that concept creation, as well as retrieval, requires situated perceptual simulation.	f	\N
21568633	The specific role of different parietal regions to episodic retrieval is a topic of intense debate. According to the Attention to Memory (AtoM) model, dorsal parietal cortex (DPC) mediates top-down attention processes guided by retrieval goals, whereas ventral parietal cortex (VPC) mediates bottom-up attention processes captured by the retrieval output or the retrieval cue. This model also hypothesizes that the attentional functions of DPC and VPC are similar for memory and perception. To investigate this last hypothesis, we scanned participants with event-related fMRI whereas they performed memory and perception tasks, each comprising an orienting phase (top-down attention) and a detection phase (bottom-up attention). The study yielded two main findings. First, consistent with the AtoM model, orienting-related activity for memory and perception overlapped in DPC, whereas detection-related activity for memory and perception overlapped in VPC. The DPC overlap was greater in the left intraparietal sulcus, and the VPC overlap in the left TPJ. Around overlapping areas, there were differences in the spatial distribution of memory and perception activations, which were consistent with trends reported in the literature. Second, both DPC and VPC showed stronger connectivity with medial-temporal lobe during the memory task and with visual cortex during the perception task. These findings suggest that, during memory tasks, some parietal regions mediate similar attentional control processes to those involved in perception tasks (orienting in DPC vs. detection in VPC), although on different types of information (mnemonic vs. sensory).	f	\N
21570431	Research has shown that standard chewing gum can affect aspects of both attention and memory. The present study examined the effects of Think Gum®, a caffeinated-herbal chewing gum, on both concentration and memory using a series of paper-based and online testing. Compared to standard chewing gum and a no-gum control, chewing caffeinated-herbal gum during testing improved aspects of memory, but did not affect concentration. The findings suggest that caffeinated-herbal chewing gum is an effective memory aid.	f	\N
21593013	Evidence suggests that gait is influenced by higher order cognitive and cortical control mechanisms. However, less is known about the functional correlates of cortical control of gait. Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy, the current study was designed to evaluate whether increased activations in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) were detected in walking while talking (WWT) compared with normal pace walking (NW) in 11 young and 11 old participants. Specifically, the following two hypotheses were evaluated: (a) Activation in the PFC would be increased in WWT compared with NW. (b) The increase in activation in the PFC during WWT as compared with NW would be greater in young than in old participants. Separate linear mixed effects models with age as the two-level between-subject factor, walking condition (NW vs WWT) as the two-level repeated within-subject factor, and HbO2 levels in each of the 16 functional near-infrared spectroscopy channels as the dependent measure revealed significant task effects in 14 channels, indicating a robust bilateral increased activation in the PFC in WWT compared with NW. Furthermore, the group-by-task interaction was significant in 11 channels with young participants showing greater WWT-related increase in HbO2 levels compared with the old participants. This study provided the first evidence that oxygenation levels are increased in the PFC during WWT compared with NW in young and old individuals. This effect was modified by age suggesting that older adults may under-utilize the PFC in attention-demanding locomotion tasks.	f	\N
21607816	The present study investigated working memory consolidation in focused and distributed attention tasks by examining the time course of the consolidation process (Experiment 1) and its dependence on capacity-limited central resources (Experiment 2) in both tasks. In a match-to-sample design using masks at various intervals to vary consolidation rates, the participants performed either an identification task (focused attention) or a mean estimation task (distributed attention) with (Experiment 1) or without (Experiment 2) prior knowledge of what task they were to perform. We found that consolidation in the distributed attention task was more efficient and was about twice as fast as in the focused attention task. In addition, both tasks suffered interference when they had to be performed together, indicating that both types of attention rely on a common set of control processes. These findings can be attributed to differences in the resolution of object representations and in the scope of attention associated with focused and distributed attention.	f	\N
21611188	Visual search tasks have been used to understand how, where and when attention influences visual processing. Current theories suggest the involvement of a high-level "saliency map" that selects a candidate location to focus attentional resources. For a parallel (or "pop-out") task, the first chosen location is systematically the target, but for a serial (or "difficult") task, the system may cycle on a few distractors before finally focusing on the target. This implies that attentional effects upon early visual areas, involving feedback from higher areas, should be visible at longer latencies during serial search. A previous study from Juan & Walsh (2003) had used Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to support this conclusion; however, only a few post-stimulus delays were compared, and no control TMS location was used. Here we applied TMS double-pulses (sub-threshold) to induce a transient inhibition of area V1 at every post-stimulus delay between 100 ms and 500 ms (50 ms steps). The search array was presented either at the location affected by the TMS pulses (previously identified by applying several pulses at supra-threshold intensity to induce phosphene perception), or in the opposite hemifield, which served as a retinotopically-defined control location. Two search tasks were used: a parallel (+ among Ls) and a serial one (T among Ls). TMS specifically impaired the serial, but not the parallel search. We highlight an involvement of V1 in serial search 300 ms after the onset; conversely, V1 did not contribute to parallel search at delays beyond 100 ms. This study supports the idea that serial search differs from parallel search by the presence of additional cycles of a select-and-focus iterative loop between V1 and higher-level areas.	f	\N
21614702	The present study explored the nature of attention control problems associated with ruminative traits. Experiment 1 aimed to establish the validity of a modified mental counting task that assesses individuals' ability to switch attention between internal mental representations. Reaction time and brain activity (event related potential; ERP) measures were examined, and results showed that the task was sensitive to internal attention switching effects. Experiment 2 assessed how the relationship between ruminative tendencies and switching performance differs when participants attend to neutral versus affective materials under different mood states. Although reaction-time analysis suggested that both mood condition and stimulus affectivity were not significant in altering this association, ERP analysis suggested otherwise. A significant task type×trait rumination × mood condition effect was found for switch-related ERP responses, whereby high ruminators were found to deploy more neuronal resources when switching affective materials in sad mood state.	f	\N
21616989	The purpose of this study was to determine if sound-field amplification (SFA) devices affected student performance in 3 different types of classrooms. The classroom performance of 147 children (77 males, 70 females, ages 8;2 [years;months] ± 5 months) was measured at the beginning and end of the second semester of their third year in 1 of 4 primary schools in Brisbane, Australia. Each school contained 2 participating classrooms, 1 with and 1 without an SFA device. The SFA devices contributed to small but significant improvements in student listening (p < .01) and auditory analysis (p < .05) skills, but only in the school where the participating classrooms were in a brick building (vs. a demountable building) with neighboring classrooms separated by solid walls (vs. open spaces). The classrooms in this school showed the lowest background noise measures (47-50 dB 1 hr, A weighted) and the second lowest reverberation times (0.87-0.91 s) overall, although these values still exceeded the maximums recommended by American National Standards Institute S12.60-2002 (2002). These results suggest that any potential benefits of SFA devices are more likely to be realized in classrooms with better acoustics.	f	\N
21621179	To test whether cueing by color can affect orienting without first computing the location of the cued color, the impact of reorienting on the validity effect was examined. In Experiment 1 subjects were asked to detect a black dot target presented at random on either of two colored forms. The forms started being presented 750 ms before the onset of a central cue (either an arrow or a colored square). In some proportion of the trials the colors switched locations 150 ms after cue onset, simultaneously with target onset. The color switch was not found to retard responses following a color cue more than following a location cue. Furthermore, it did not reduce the validity effect of the color cue: Though the validity effect of the location cue was quite larger than the validity effect of the color cue, both effects were additive with the presence/absence of a color switch. In Experiment 2, subjects were rather asked to detect a change in shape of one of the colored forms. In this case, color switch was found to affect performance even less following a color cue. The fact that across experiments, color switch did not retard neither responding nor orienting selectively in the color cue condition, indicates that when attention is set to a certain color, reorienting to a new object following color switch does not require re-computing the address of the cued color. That finding is argued to embarrass a strong space-based view of visual attention.	f	\N
21621549	Sleep plays a role in the consolidation of declarative memories. Although this influence has attracted much attention at the level of behavioural performance, few reports have searched for neural correlates. Here, we studied the impact of sleep upon memory for the context in which stimuli were learned at both behavioural and neural levels. Participants retrieved the association between a presented foreground object and its encoding context following a 12-h retention interval including either wake only or wake plus a night of sleep. Since sleep has been shown to selectively enhance some forms of emotional memory, we examined both neutral and emotionally valenced contexts. Behaviourally, less forgetting was observed across retention intervals containing sleep than retention intervals containing only wakefulness, and this benefit was accompanied by stronger responses in hippocampus and superior parietal cortex. This sleep-related reduction in forgetting did not differ between neutral and negative contexts, but there was a clear interaction between sleep and context valence at the functional level, with left amygdala, right parahippocampus, and other components of the episodic memory system all responding more strongly during correct memory for emotional contexts post-sleep. Connectivity between right parahippocampus and bilateral amygdala/periamygdala was also enhanced during correct post-sleep attribution of emotional contexts. Because there was no interaction between sleep and valence in terms of context memory performance these functional results may be associated with memory for details about the emotional encoding context rather than for the link between that context and the foreground object. Overall, our data show that while context memory decays less across sleep than across an equivalent period of wake, the sleep-related protection of such associations is not influenced by context emotionality in the same way as direct recollection of emotional information.	f	\N
21632030	The three experiments reported here test whether object-modulated attentional spreading can be obtained when the target location is 100% certain. Experiment 1 uses the reaction time (RT)-based flanker task similar to Shomstein and Yantis (2002), and replicates the null result of the object-modulated attentional spreading. RT and accuracy (ACC) have been shown to reflect different processes: postperceptual decision vs. perceptual process (Santee & Egeth, 1982). Experiment 2 adopts the data-limited ACC-based measure and reports that attention could spread within the attended object. To avoid ceiling effects, Experiment 3 adjusts the presentation time based on the trials where the target and flankers were compatible and on the same objects, and provides the convergent evidence supporting the object-modulated attentional spreading. These results suggest that because the RT-based measure is less sensitive in reflecting the quality of perceptual representations, it is not sufficiently a strong evidence to distinguish between sensory enhancement and scanning prioritization accounts.	f	\N
21639611	We continue the process of investigating the probabilistic paired associate paradigm in an effort to understand the memory access control processes involved and to determine whether the memory structure produced is in transition between episodic and semantic memory. In this paradigm two targets are probabilistically paired with a cue across a large number of short lists. Participants can recall the target paired with the cue in the most recent list (list specific test), produce the first of the two targets that have been paired with that cue to come to mind (generalised test), and produce a free association response (semantic test). Switching between a generalised test and a list specific test did not produce a switching cost indicating a general similarity in the control processes involved. In addition, there was evidence for a dissociation between two different strength manipulations (amount of study time and number of cue-target pairings) such that number of pairings influenced the list specific, generalised and the semantic test but amount of study time only influenced the list specific and generalised test.	f	\N
21639619	Being able to wait is an essential part of self-regulation. In the present study, the authors examined the developmental course of changes in the latency to and duration of target-waiting behaviors by following 65 boys and 55 girls from rural and semirural economically strained homes from ages 18 months to 48 months. Age-related changes in latency to and duration of children's anger expressions and attention focus (e.g., self-initiated distraction) during an 8-min wait for a gift were found. On average, at 18 and 24 months of age, children were quick to react angrily and slower to shift attention away from the desired object than they were at later ages. Over time, children were quicker to distract themselves. By 36 months, distractions occurred before children expressed anger, and anger expressions were briefer. At 48 months, children typically made a quick bid to their mothers about having to wait before distracting themselves; on average, they did not appear angry until the latter half of the wait. Unexpectedly, children bid to their mothers as much at age 48 months as they had at 18 months; however, bids became less angry as children got older. Developmental changes in distraction and bidding predicted age-related changes in the latency to anger. Findings are discussed in terms of the neurocognitive control of attention around age 30 months, the limitations of children's self-regulatory efforts at age 48 months, and the importance of fostering children's ability to forestall, as well as modulate, anger.	f	\N
21641942	A variety of event-related potential (ERP) based studies have shown differences in neuronal processes underlying attention, inhibition and error processing in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) compared to controls. However, so far there are no studies that have compared children with ADHD and typically developing (TD) children regarding effects in ERP components associated with the attention network test (ANT). The ANT allows to differentiate between three particular aspects of attention: alerting, orienting, conflict. Twenty-five children with ADHD and 19 TD children (comparable with respect to age, sex, and IQ) performed the ANT while ERPs were recorded. Based on DSM-IV, the group of children with ADHD was divided in an inattentive (ADHDin, n=10) and a combined (ADHDcom, n=15) subgroup. On the performance level, the ADHD group showed a significantly higher variability of reaction times. Concerning ERP measures, smaller cue-P3 amplitudes were found in the ADHD group indicating that children with ADHD allocate less attentional resources for cue processing. In addition, the target-P3 in ADHD showed smaller amplitudes. Subgroup analysis revealed reduced cue-P3 amplitudes in both subgroups and reduced target-P3 amplitudes in ADHDin compared to TD children. Except for a higher alerting score in ADHD after correction for cue-P3 group differences, performance data revealed no group differences specific for the three attention networks. No group differences related to the attention networks were observed at the ERP level. Our results suggest that deviant attentional processing in children with ADHD is only partly related to ANT-specific effects. Findings are compatible with the model of a suboptimal energetic state regulation in ADHD. Furthermore, our results suggest that deviant cue processing in ADHD and related differences in task modulations should be accounted for in data analysis.	f	\N
21643485	This case describes the clinical course of a cannabis-dependent individual entering a 12-week abstinence-based research program. The case illustrates the effects of chronic, heavy cannabis use on executive functions at three time points: 1) 24 hours of abstinence; 2) 4 weeks of abstinence; and 3) 12 weeks of abstinence. It is followed by discussions by two clinical psychologists and a psychiatrist. The findings described here have important clinical implications, as executive functions have a vital role in treatment participation and in sustaining recovery. It should be of particular interest to clinicians who work with people with cannabis use disorders.	f	\N
21646824	While neuropsychological impairment in bipolar disorder is well documented, the effect size of this impairment is rarely compared directly to that in other clinically familiar cognitive disorders. This study compares neuropsychological functioning of euthymic bipolar patients to those with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) as well as healthy controls. Following evaluation during regular follow-up in a mood disorders clinic, 58 euthymic adult bipolar subjects were administered a validated and fully computerized cognitive assessment (Mindstreams; NeuroTrax Corp., N.Y., USA). Study data were compared to existing data for MCI and cognitively healthy individuals tested with the same assessment. Final analyses were based on 51 bipolar patients, 162 MCI patients and 495 healthy comparison subjects. Significant (p < 0.001) group effects were found for every parameter. Post hoc analysis revealed that the bipolar and MCI groups showed statistically equivalent functioning in memory, executive function, verbal function, and information processing speed. In the domains of visual-spatial processing, attention, and motor skills, the MCI group outperformed the bipolar group. In every domain, the healthy control group outperformed both the bipolar and the MCI groups. The cognitive function of euthymic bipolar patients and those diagnosed with MCI was found to be similar in most but not all domains. Both groups performed significantly less well than the comparison group of healthy subjects. It may be helpful for clinicians to conceptualize the overall level of cognitive impairment in bipolar patients as similar to that in MCI.	f	\N
21649633	To test the main and interactive effects of activities derived from the Need-Driven Dementia-Compromised Behavior model for responding to behavioral symptoms in nursing home residents. Randomized double-blind clinical trial. Nine community-based nursing homes. One hundred twenty-eight cognitively impaired residents randomly assigned to activities adjusted to functional level (FL) (n=32), personality style of interest (PSI) (n=33), functional level and personality style of interest (FL+PSI) (n=31), or active control (AC) (n=32). Three weeks of activities provided twice daily. Agitation, passivity, engagement, affect, and mood assessed from video recordings and real-time observations during baseline, intervention, random times outside of intervention, and 1 week after intervention. All treatments improved outcomes during intervention except mood, which worsened under AC. During intervention the PSI group demonstrated greater engagement, alertness, and attention than the other groups; the FL+PSI group demonstrated greater pleasure. During random times, engagement returned to baseline levels except in the FL group in which it decreased. There was also less agitation and passivity in groups with a component adjusted to PSI. One week after the intervention, mood, anxiety, and passivity improved over baseline; significantly less pleasure was displayed after withdrawal of treatment. The hypothesis that activities adjusted to FL+PSI would improve behavioral outcomes to a greater extent than partially adjusted or nonadjusted activities was partially supported. PSI is a critical component of individualized activity prescription.	f	\N
21652032	It has been proposed that the most fundamental units of attentional selection are "objects" that are grouped according to Gestalt factors such as similarity or connectedness. Previous studies using event-related potentials (ERPs) have shown that object-based attention is associated with modulations of the visual-evoked N1 component, which reflects an early cortical mechanism that is shared with spatial attention. However, these studies only examined the case of perceptually continuous objects. The present study examined the case of separate objects that are grouped according to feature similarity (color, shape) by indexing lateralized potentials at posterior sites in a sustained-attention task that involved bilateral stimulus arrays. A behavioral object effect was found only for task-relevant shape similarity. Electrophysiological results indicated that attention was guided to the task-irrelevant side of the visual field due to achromatic-color similarity in N1 (155-205 ms post-stimulus) and early N2 (210-260 ms) and due to shape similarity in early N2 and late N2 (280-400 ms) latency ranges. These results are discussed in terms of selection mechanisms and object/group representations.	f	\N
21652777	In three experiments, we tested whether people can protect their ongoing goal pursuits from antagonistic priming effects by using if-then plans (i.e., implementation intentions). In Experiment 1, concept priming did not influence lexical decision time for a critical stimulus when participants had formed if-then plans to make fast responses to that stimulus. In Experiment 2, participants who were primed with a prosocial goal allowed a confederate who asked for help to interrupt their work on a focal task for a longer time if they had merely formed goal intentions to perform well than if they had also formed implementation intentions for concentrating on the task. In Experiment 3, priming the goal of being fast increased driving speed and errors for participants who had formed mere goal intentions to drive only as fast as safety allowed or who had formed no goal intentions, whereas the driving of participants who had formed such goal intentions as well as implementation intentions showed no such priming effects. Our findings indicate that implementation intentions are an effective self-regulatory tool for shielding actions from disruptive concept- or goal-priming effects.	f	\N
21660498	Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been associated with sensory hypersensitivity. A recent study reported visual acuity (VA) in ASD in the region reported for birds of prey. The validity of the results was subsequently doubted. This study examined VA in 34 individuals with ASD, 16 with schizophrenia (SCH), and 26 typically developing (TYP). Participants with ASD did not show higher VA than those with SCH and TYP. There were no substantial correlations of VA with clinical severity in ASD or SCH. This study could not confirm the eagle-eyed acuity hypothesis of ASD, or find evidence for a connection of VA and clinical phenotypes. Research needs to further address the origins and circumstances associated with altered sensory or perceptual processing in ASD.	f	\N
21664936	The processing of successive targets requires that attention be engaged and disengaged. Whereas attentional engagement can be studied by means of the N2pc component of the event-related potential (ERP), no ERP component has been linked to attentional disengagement. Here, we report the finding of such a component using an RSVP paradigm with multiple, successive targets and with a spatial-cuing paradigm. In both experiments, disengagement of attention was necessary to attend to subsequent targets. A distinct waveform following the N2pc, which we call the P4pc (Positivity 400 ms post-target posterior contralateral), was found. The P4pc was found when a lateralized cue indicated that attention would be needed for the processing of a target at either the same or a different location as the cue, but not when only the cue was to be responded to, indicating that the need to disengage attention is a prerequisite for the P4pc to occur. We expect the P4pc to provide a valuable addition to the set of electrophysiological measures used to study the dynamics and mechanisms of visual attention and visual search.	f	\N
21664952	Visual perception is influenced at early processing stages by geometric spatiotemporal context regularities (consistent with the "vision-as-inference" view) and by attention, yet little is known about the interaction between these two influences on visual processing. Here, we investigate the temporal dynamics of the interaction between attention and spatiotemporal context regularity in target detection using event-related potentials (ERP). Spatial attention was withdrawn from the context by a secondary task in Experiment 1, and the role of task-relevance was explored in Experiment 2 by including a passive viewing condition. The ERP correlates of spatiotemporal regularity reported in an earlier study were replicated in single task (Experiment 1) and active viewing (Experiment 2): P1 and N1 peak-latency was shorter when the target was preceded by a context. Latency first differentiated between the two context conditions at N1, where latency was shortest for targets preceded by a context with both spatial and temporal regularities (compared with temporal regularity only). In dual task and passive viewing, this N1 latency-shift was abolished. Comparisons of "low-attention" (dual task or passive viewing) with "high-attention" conditions (single task or active viewing) revealed that attention only shortened N1 peak-latency when the target was preceded by stimulus sequences with spatial and temporal regularity. P1 latency was unaffected by manipulation of top-down attention factors. Attentional factors are likely to modulate influences of spatiotemporal context through re-afferent projections at later stages of visual processing in regions of extrastriate cortex associated with the generators of the N1 waveform.	f	\N
21665985	Principles of saccadic eye movement control in the real world have been derived by the study of self-paced well-known tasks such as sandwich or tea making. Little is known whether these principles generalize to high-speed sensorimotor tasks and how they are affected by learning and automatization. In the present study, right-handers practiced the speed-stacking task in 14 consecutive daily training sessions, while their eye movements were recorded. Speed stacking is a high-speed sensorimotor task that requires grasping, moving, rotating, and placing of objects. The following main results emerged. Throughout practice, the eyes led the hands, displayed by a positive eye-hand time span. Moreover, visual information was gathered for the subsequent manual sub-action, displayed by a positive eye-hand unit span. With automatization, the eye-hand time span became shorter, yet it increased when corrected by the decreasing trial duration. In addition, fixations were mainly allocated to the goal positions of the right hand or objects in the right hand. The number of fixations decreased while the fixation rate remained constant. Importantly, all participants fixated on the same task-relevant locations in a similar scan path across training days, revealing a long-term memory-based mode of attention control after automatization of a high-speed sensorimotor task.	f	\N
21668095	Affective priming studies have shown that participants are faster to pronounce affectively polarized target words that are preceded by affectively congruent prime words than affectively polarized target words that are preceded by affectively incongruent prime words. We examined whether affective priming of naming responses depends on the valence proportion (i.e., the proportion of stimuli that are affectively polarized). In one group of participants, experimental trials were embedded in a context of filler trials that consisted of affectively polarized stimulus materials (i.e., high valence proportion condition). In a second group, the same set of experimental trials was embedded in a context of filler trials consisting of neutral stimuli (i.e., low valence proportion condition). Results showed that affective priming of naming responses was significantly stronger in the high valence proportion condition than in the low valence proportion condition. We conclude that (a) subtle aspects of the procedure can influence affective priming of naming responses, (b) finding affective priming of naming responses does not allow for the conclusion that affective stimulus processing is unconditional, and (c) affective stimulus processing depends on selective attention for affective stimulus information.	f	\N
21668098	In laboratory experiments, infants are sensitive to patterns of visual features that co-occur (e.g., Fiser & Aslin, 2002). Once infants learn the statistical regularities, however, what do they do with that knowledge? Moreover, which patterns do infants learn in the cluttered world outside of the laboratory? Across 4 experiments, we show that 9-month-olds use this sensitivity to make inferences about object properties. In Experiment 1, 9-month-old infants expected co-occurring visual features to remain fused (i.e., infants looked longer when co-occurring features split apart than when they stayed together). Forming such expectations can help identify integral object parts for object individuation, recognition, and categorization. In Experiment 2, we increased the task difficulty by presenting the test stimuli simultaneously with a different spatial layout from the familiarization trials to provide a more ecologically valid condition. Infants did not make similar inferences in this more distracting test condition. However, Experiment 3 showed that a social cue did allow inferences in this more difficult test condition, and Experiment 4 showed that social cues helped infants choose patterns among distractor patterns during learning as well as during test. These findings suggest that infants can use feature co-occurrence to learn about objects and that social cues shape such foundational learning in distraction-filled environments.	f	\N
21676591	We present results from continuous intracranial electroencephalographic (iEEG) monitoring in 6 dogs with naturally occurring epilepsy, a disorder similar to the human condition in its clinical presentation, epidemiology, electrophysiology and response to therapy. Recordings were obtained using a novel implantable device wirelessly linked to an external, portable real-time processing unit. We demonstrate previously uncharacterized intracranial seizure onset patterns in these animals that are strikingly similar in appearance to human partial onset epilepsy. We propose: (1) canine epilepsy as an appropriate model for testing human antiepileptic devices and new approaches to epilepsy surgery, and (2) this new technology as a versatile platform for evaluating seizures and response to therapy in the natural, ambulatory setting.	f	\N
21677255	This study examined the influence of thyroid markers (TSH and FT4) on cognition in a sample of rural-dwelling women. Data were analyzed from 81 women who were enrolled in an ongoing study of rural health, Project FRONTIER. Cognition was assessed with the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS). TSH levels were significantly related to the RBANS Attention Index, and FT4 levels were significantly related to the RBANS Language Index. The current study found that TSH and FT4 were differentially related to neurocognitive domains, with TSH being related only to measures of attention and FT4 to measures of language.	f	\N
21679910	The fate of irrelevant and overtly presented stimuli that was temporally aligned with an attended target in a separate task was explored. Seitz and Watanabe (2003) demonstrated that if an irrelevant motion stimulus was implicit (i.e., subthreshold), a later facilitation for the same motion direction was observed if the previously presented implicit motion (of the same direction) was temporally aligned with the presence of an attended target. Later research, however, demonstrated that if the motion stimulus aligned with the attended target was explicit (i.e., suprathreshold), a later inhibition was observed (Tsushima, Seitz, & Watanabe, 2008). The current study expands on this by using more salient stimuli (words and pictures) in an inattentional blindness paradigm, and suggests that when attention is depleted, recognition for target-aligned task-irrelevant items is impaired in a subsequent recognition task. Participants were required to respond to either immediate picture, or word, repetitions in a stream of simultaneously presented line drawings and written words, and later given a surprise recognition test that measured recognition for the words or the pictures. When analyzing word recognition performance after attention had been directed to the pictures, words that had appeared simultaneously with a picture repetition in the repetition detection task were recognized at levels significantly below chance. The same inhibition was mirrored when testing for picture recognition after having attended to the words in the repetition detection task. These data suggest an inhibitory mechanism that is exhibited in later recognition tests for salient information that was previously unattended and had been simultaneously being presented with an attended target in a different task.	f	\N
21684179	Research has shown repeatedly that attention influences implicit learning effects. In a similar vein, interoceptive awareness might be involved in unaware fear conditioning: The fact that the CS is repeatedly presented in the context of aversive bodily experiences might facilitate the development of conditioned responding. We investigated the role of interoceptive attention in a subliminal conditioning paradigm. Conditioning was embedded in a spatial cueing task with subliminally presented cues that were followed by a masking stimulus. Response times to the targets that were either validly or invalidly predicted by the cues served as index of conditioning. Interoceptive attention was manipulated between-subjects. Half the participants completed a heartbeat detection task before conditioning. This task tunes attention to one's own bodily signals. We found that conditioned responding was facilitated in this latter group of participants. These results are in line with the hypothesis that a rise interoceptive attention enhances unaware conditioned responding.	f	\N
21684618	The primary purpose of the present study was to examine kinematic characteristics and force control during a golf-putting task under a pressure condition. The secondary purpose was to provide an exploratory investigation of the relationship between changes in behavior (kinematics and force control) and performance on the one hand, and psychological (attention and affect) and physiological (arousal level) changes on the other hand. Twenty male novices performed 150 acquisition trials, followed by 10 test trials during a pressure condition induced by performance-contingent distracters: a cash reward or punishment. A three-dimensional motion analysis revealed that, during the pressure test, angular displacements of rotational movements at the horizontal plane and movement time of the arms and club during the backswing and downswing phases all decreased, while acceleration of the elbows during the downswing phase increased. Mean performance indices in all participants' were unchanged in spite of the kinematic changes under the pressure condition. Multiple regression analyses indicated that the decrement in performance, as well as increased variability of movement time and speed, were more likely to increase when participants shifted their attention to movements. Furthermore, changes in heart rate and negative affect were related to both the increase in movement acceleration and a decrease in grip force. These findings suggest that performance and behavioral changes during golf-putting under pressure can be associated with attentional changes, along with the influences of physiological-emotional responses.	f	\N
21688874	There is a wealth of evidence showing enhanced attention toward drug-related information (i.e., attentional bias) in substance abusers. However, little is known about attentional bias in deregulated behaviors without substance use such as abnormal gambling. This study examined whether problem gamblers (PrG, as assessed through self-reported gambling-related craving and gambling dependence severity) exhibit attentional bias for gambling-related cues. Forty PrG and 35 control participants performed a change detection task using the flicker paradigm, in which two images differing in only one aspect are repeatedly flashed on the screen until the participant is able to report the changing item. In our study, the changing item was either neutral or related to gambling. Eye movements were recorded, which made it possible to measure both initial orienting of attention as well as its maintenance on gambling information. Direct (eye-movements) and indirect (change in detection latency) measures of attention in individuals with problematic gambling behaviors suggested the occurrence of both engagement and of maintenance attentional biases toward gambling-related visual cues. Compared to nonproblematic gamblers, PrG exhibited (a) faster reaction times to gambling-cues as compared to neutral cues, (b) higher percentage of initial saccades directed toward gambling pictures, and (c) an increased fixation duration and fixation count on gambling pictures. In the PrG group, measures of gambling-related attentional bias were not associated with craving for gambling and gambling dependence severity. Theoretical and clinical implications of these results are discussed.	f	\N
21691865	This study examined the hypothesis of an atypical interaction between attention and language in ASD. A dual-task experiment with three conditions was designed, in which sentences were presented that contained errors requiring attentional focus either at (a) low level, or (b) high level, or (c) both levels of language. Speed and accuracy for error detection were measured from 16 high-functioning adults with ASD, and 16 matched controls. For controls, there was an attentional cost of dual level processing for low level performance but not for high level performance. For participants with ASD, there was an attentional cost both for low level and for high level performance. These results suggest a compensatory strategic use of attention during language processing in ASD.	f	\N
21697709	To examine the relationship between self-assessed attentional skills and objective neuropsychological measures of attention in Parkinson disease (PD) and controls. The reliable self-assessment of one's own cognitive skills and deficits is an important but difficult task, especially in a chronic neurological condition like PD. Theories point out that brain structures involved in a realistic self-appraisal might be affected in PD. No study directly examined the association between self-assessed attentional skills and objective neuropsychological measures of attention in PD. We applied a case control design with 54 participants in the PD group and 54 healthy controls. PD patients and controls completed questionnaires on depression and self-assessed attention and were examined with computerized tests of attention. PD patients differed from controls in subjective and objective assessment of attention. Depression and self-assessed attention share a significant amount of variance, but are unrelated to objective measures of attention in both groups. In PD patients, there are no associations between functional outcome and objective and subjective measures of attention. Conscious reports in PD patients and controls are based on different processes rather than actual attentional performance. These processes are not differentially affected in PD. Nevertheless, patients' self-assessments are not an accurate indicator of their level of objective attentional functioning. Without a definite validity criterion, it cannot be decided whether the objective or subjective assessment of attention is more valid. Therefore, a multidimensional approach integrating different sources of information is most adequate in the assessment of attentional capacities and their meaning for everyday life in PD patients.	f	\N
21698055	The mechanisms of the increased cardiac and vascular events in patients with OSA are not well understood. Arousal which is an important component of OSA was associated with increased sympathetic activation and electrocardiographic changes which prone to arrhythmias. We planned to examine the association among arousal, circulating Lp-PLA2 and total antioxidant capacity in male patients with OSA. Fifty male patients with newly diagnosed OSA were enrolled the study. A full-night polysomnography was performed and arousal index was obtained. Lp-PLA2 concentrations were measured in serum samples with the PLAC Test. Total antioxidant capacity in patients was determined with Antioxidant Assay Kit. Arousal was positively correlated with LP-PLA2 levels (r=0.43, p=0.002) and was negatively correlated with total antioxidant capacity (r= -0.29, p=0.04). Elevated LP-PLA2 levels and decreased total antioxidant activities were found in the highest arousal quartile compared with the lowest and 2nd quartiles (p=0.02, p=0.05, respectively). LP-PLA2 was an independently predictor of arousal index in regression model (β=0.357, p=0.002) This study demonstrated a moderate linear relationship between arousal and LP-PLA2 levels. Also, total antioxidant capacities were decreased in the higher arousal index. Based on the study result, the patients with higher arousal index may be prone to vascular events.	f	\N
21707217	Previous research has proposed that tests enhance retention more than do restudy opportunities because they promote the effectiveness of mediating information--that is, a word or concept that links a cue to a target (Pyc & Rawson, 2010). Although testing has been shown to promote retention of mediating information that participants were asked to generate, it is unknown what type of mediators are spontaneously activated during testing and how these contribute to later retention. In the current study, participants learned cue-target pairs through testing (e.g., Mother: _____) or restudying (e.g., Mother: Child) and were later tested on these items in addition to a never-before-presented item that was strongly associated with the cue (e.g., Father)--that is, the semantic mediator. Compared with participants who learned the items through restudying, those who learned the items through testing exhibited higher false alarm rates to semantic mediators on a final recognition test (Experiment 1) and were also more likely to recall the correct target from the semantic mediator on a final cued recall test (Experiment 2). These results support the mediator effectiveness hypothesis and demonstrate that semantically related information may be 1 type of natural mediator that is activated during testing.	f	\N
21715631	Gamma-band (25-90 Hz) peaks in local field potential (LFP) power spectra are present throughout the cerebral cortex and have been related to perception, attention, memory, and disorders (e.g., schizophrenia and autism). It has been theorized that gamma oscillations provide a "clock" for precise temporal encoding and "binding" of signals about stimulus features across brain regions. For gamma to function as a clock, it must be autocoherent: phase and frequency conserved over a period of time. We computed phase and frequency trajectories of gamma-band bursts, using time-frequency analysis of LFPs recorded in macaque primary visual cortex (V1) during visual stimulation. The data were compared with simulations of random networks and clock signals in noise. Gamma-band bursts in LFP data were statistically indistinguishable from those found in filtered broadband noise. Therefore, V1 LFP data did not contain clock-like gamma-band signals. We consider possible functions for stochastic gamma-band activity, such as a synchronizing pulse signal.	f	\N
21722739	Both the size and location of injury in the brain influences the type and severity of cognitive or sensorimotor dysfunction. However, even with advances in MR imaging and analysis, the correspondence between lesion location and clinical deficit remains poorly understood. Here, structural and diffusion images from 14 healthy subjects are used to create spatially unbiased white matter connectivity importance maps that quantify the amount of disruption to the overall brain network that would be incurred if that region were compromised. Some regions in the white matter that were identified as highly important by such maps have been implicated in strategic infarct dementia and linked to various attention tasks in previous studies. Validation of the maps is performed by investigating the correlations of the importance maps' predicted cognitive deficits in a group of 15 traumatic brain injury patients with their cognitive test scores measuring attention and memory. While no correlation was found between amount of white matter injury and cognitive test scores, significant correlations (r>0.68, p<0.006) were found when including location information contained in the importance maps. These tools could be used by physicians to improve surgical planning, diagnosis, and assessment of disease severity in a variety of pathologies like multiple sclerosis, trauma, and stroke.	f	\N
21726855	Cognitive-behavioural models of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) suggest that mirrors can act as a trigger for individuals with BDD, resulting in a specific mode of cognitive processing, characterised by an increase in self-focussed attention and associated distress. The aim of the current study was to investigate these factors experimentally by exposing participants with BDD (n=25) and without BDD (n=25) to a mirror in a controlled setting. An additional aim was to ascertain the role of duration of mirror gazing in the maintenance of distress and self-consciousness by manipulating the length of gazing (short check vs. long gazing). Findings demonstrated that contrary to what was predicted, not only participants with BDD, but also those without BDD experienced an increase in distress and self-focused attention upon exposure to the mirror. In addition, people without BDD, unlike those with BDD, experienced more distress when looking in the mirror for a long period of time as opposed to a short period of time. This lends some support to the idea that, for people with BDD, gazing in a mirror, regardless of duration, might act as an immediate trigger for an abnormal mode of processing and associated distress, and that this association has developed from past excessive mirror gazing. Further theoretical implications of these findings, as well as subsidiary research questions relating to additional cognitive factors are discussed.	f	\N
21728402	Previous research has shown that the picture superiority effect (PSE) is seen in tests of associative recognition for random pairs of line drawings compared to pairs of concrete words (Hockley, 2008). In the present study we demonstrated that the PSE for associative recognition is still observed when subjects have correctly identified the individual items of each pair as old (Experiment 1), and that this effect is not due to rehearsal borrowing (Experiment 2). The PSE for associative recognition also is shown to be present but attenuated for mixed picture-word pairs (Experiment 3), and similar in magnitude for pairs of simple black and white line drawings and coloured photographs of detailed objects (Experiment 4). The results are consistent with the view that the semantic meaning of nameable pictures is activated faster than that of words thereby affording subjects more time to generate and elaborate meaningful associations between items depicted in picture form.	f	\N
21729104	Phobic fear is accompanied by intense bodily responses modulated by the amygdala. An amygdala moderated psychophysiological measure related to arousal is electrodermal activity. We evaluated the contributions of electrodermal activity to amygdala-parahippocampal regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) during phobic memory encoding in subjects with spider or snake phobia. Recognition memory was increased for phobia-related slides and covaried with rCBF in the amygdala and the parahippocampal gyrus. The covariation between parahippocampal rCBF and recognition was related to electrodermal activity suggesting that parahippocampal memory processes were associated with sympathetic activity. Electrodermal activity further mediated the amygdala effect on parahippocampal activity. Memory encoding during phobic fear therefore seems contingent on amygdala's influence on arousal and parahippocampal activity.	f	\N
21742561	We examined whether anxiodepressive patients with left temporal lobe epilepsy could be differentiated from those with depression but without epilepsy on tasks that investigate attentional bias toward and explicit judgment of emotional stimuli. Eight depressive patients, eight anxiodepressive patients with epilepsy, and eight controls participated in the present study. Anxiodepressive with epilepsy and depressive patients had comparable depression scores and the same cognitive profile. Two distinct emotional tasks were used: the decision lexical task and the number comparison task. Three emotional connotations were presented: neutral, positive, and negative. The pattern of results showed an attentional bias toward negative words and pictures in depressive patients and only toward negative words in anxiodepressive patients with epilepsy. Moreover, depressive patients explicitly judged negative stimuli with lower intensity and anxiodepressive patients judged neutral stimuli with higher intensity. The present study specifies the emotional functioning in depression with or without left temporal lobe epilepsy.	f	\N
21744949	During the first half of the 2nd year of life, infants struggle to use phonemic distinctions in label-object association tasks. Prior experiments have demonstrated that exposure to the phonemes in distinct lexical forms (e.g., /d/ and /t/ in daddy and tiger, respectively) facilitates infants' use of phonemic contrasts but also that they struggle to generalize the use of phonemic contrasts to novel syllabic contexts (Thiessen, 2007; Thiessen & Yee, 2010). Further, in prior research, infants have been provided only with experience in lexical forms that refer to novel objects, while many lexical forms in the natural environment do not have easily identified visual referents. The experiments in this article show that even lexical forms without referents can facilitate use of phonemic contrasts. Additionally, the results indicate that when lexical forms provide infants with enough variability (for example, a consonant followed by multiple different vowels), infants are able to generalize to novel contexts.	f	\N
21749372	In two birth cohort studies with genetic, sensitive parenting, and attachment data of more than 1,000 infants in total, we tested main and interaction effects of candidate genes involved in the dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin systems (DRD4, DRD2, COMT, 5-HTT, OXTR) on attachment security and disorganization. Parenting was assessed using observational rating scales for parental sensitivity (Ainsworth, Bell, & Stayton, 1974), and infant attachment was assessed with the Strange Situation Procedure. We found no consistent additive genetic associations for attachment security and attachment disorganization. However, specific tests revealed evidence for a codominant risk model for COMT Val158Met, consistent across both samples. Children with the Val/Met genotype showed higher disorganization scores (combined effect size d = .22, CI = .10-.34, p < .001). Gene-by-environment interaction effects were not replicable across the two samples. This unexpected finding might be explained by a broader range of plasticity in heterozygotes, which may increase susceptibility to environmental influences or to dysregulation of emotional arousal. This study is unique in combining the two largest attachment cohorts with molecular genetic and observed rearing environment data to date.	f	\N
21751991	In the typical visual search experiment, participants search for targets that are present on half of the trials and absent on the other half. However, many real-world tasks involve targets that are present only occasionally. Given this, it is important to know how people deal with the problem of finding targets they have little experience with. One possibility is that they develop an awareness of the degree to which they have effectively completed a search through complex target-absent scenes. To test this hypothesis, we had participants complete two relatively long search tasks in which only a minority of trials included targets. Stimuli were cluttered real-world scenes, and targets were defined by category. We examined participants' ability to terminate search on the target-absent scenes based on an accurate assessment of scene difficulty. Scene difficulty was estimated by computing the mean correct-trial response time (RT) for each of the target-absent scenes across all participants. These group RTs were then correlated with each participants' individual correct-trial RTs for the same stimuli to assess the degree to which a given participant's search-termination times were correlated with those of the group. These correlations successfully predicted participants' target-detection success in both experiments. These experiments suggest that an integral part of visual search is the need to calibrate search behaviour to scenes of varying levels of complexity even when no targets are present.	f	\N
21757505	We asked how visual similarity relationships affect search guidance to categorically defined targets (no visual preview). Experiment 1 used a web-based task to collect visual similarity rankings between two target categories, teddy bears and butterflies, and random-category objects, from which we created search displays in Experiment 2 having either high-similarity distractors, low-similarity distractors, or "mixed" displays with high-, medium-, and low-similarity distractors. Analysis of target-absent trials revealed faster manual responses and fewer fixated distractors on low-similarity displays compared to high-similarity displays. On mixed displays, first fixations were more frequent on high-similarity distractors (bear = 49%; butterfly = 58%) than on low-similarity distractors (bear = 9%; butterfly = 12%). Experiment 3 used the same high/low/mixed conditions, but now these conditions were created using similarity estimates from a computer vision model that ranked objects in terms of color, texture, and shape similarity. The same patterns were found, suggesting that categorical search can indeed be guided by purely visual similarity. Experiment 4 compared cases where the model and human rankings differed and when they agreed. We found that similarity effects were best predicted by cases where the two sets of rankings agreed, suggesting that both human visual similarity rankings and the computer vision model captured features important for guiding search to categorical targets.	f	\N
21767062	The ability to detect a change, to accurately assess the magnitude of the change, and to react to that change in a commensurate fashion are of critical importance in many decision domains. Thus, it is important to understand the factors that systematically affect people's reactions to change. In this article we document a novel effect: decision makers' reactions to a change (e.g., a visual change, a technology change) were systematically affected by the type of categorizations they encountered in an unrelated prior task (e.g., the response categories associated with a survey question). We found that prior exposure to narrow, as opposed to broad, categorizations improved decision makers' ability to detect change and led to stronger reactions to a given change. These differential reactions occurred because the prior categorizations, even though unrelated, altered the extent to which the subsequently presented change was perceived as either a relatively large change or a relatively small one.	f	\N
21787078	It has been suggested that downward pointing triangles convey negative valence, perhaps because they mimic an underlying primitive feature present in negative facial expressions (Larson, Aronoff, and Stearns, 2007). Here, we test this proposition using a flanker interference paradigm in which participants indicated the valence of a central face target, presented between two adjacent distracters. Experiment 1 showed that, compared with face flankers, downward pointing triangles had little influence on responses to face targets. However, in Experiment 2, when attentional competition was increased between target and flankers, downward pointing triangles slowed responses to positively valenced face targets, and speeded them to negatively valenced targets, consistent with valence-based flanker compatibility effects. These findings provide converging evidence that simple geometric shapes may convey emotional valence.	f	\N
21787101	Face processing has several distinctive hallmarks that researchers have attributed either to face-specific mechanisms or to extensive experience distinguishing faces. Here, we examined the face-processing hallmark of selective attention failure--as indexed by the congruency effect in the composite paradigm--in a domain of extreme expertise: chess. Among 27 experts, we found that the congruency effect was equally strong with chessboards and faces. Further, comparing these experts with recreational players and novices, we observed a trade-off: Chess expertise was positively related to the congruency effect with chess yet negatively related to the congruency effect with faces. These and other findings reveal a case of expertise-dependent, facelike processing of objects of expertise and suggest that face and expert-chess recognition share common processes.	f	\N
21791293	An interocular conflict arises when different images are presented to each eye at the same spatial location. The visual system resolves this conflict through binocular rivalry: observers consciously perceive spontaneous alternations between the two images. Visual attention is generally important for resolving competition between neural representations. However, given the seemingly spontaneous and automatic nature of binocular rivalry, the role of attention in resolving interocular competition remains unclear. Here we test whether visual attention is necessary to produce rivalry. Using an EEG frequency-tagging method to track cortical representations of the conflicting images, we show that when attention was diverted away, rivalry stopped. The EEG data further suggested that the neural representations of the dichoptic images combined without attention. Thus, attention is necessary for dichoptic images to be engaged in sustained rivalry and may be generally required for resolving conflicting, potentially ambiguous input and giving a single interpretation access to consciousness.	f	\N
21804667	Pulse transit time (PPT) has been introduced as a useful screening tool to diagnose sleep disordered breathing (SDB). Since the prevalence of SDB increases with age, the question is whether PTT could be used to diagnose SDB in the elderly. We assess the effectiveness of PTT for SDB screening in a large healthy elderly population. Community-based sample in home and research clinical settings. N/A. Seven hundred eighty volunteers, free of cardiac and neurologic disease, aged 68.6 ± 1.0 years, underwent ambulatory polygraphy to measure the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI). The presence of SDB was defined as an AHI of 15 or greater. The PTT was continuously monitored during the nocturnal study, and the overall autonomic arousal index (AAI) was calculated. SDB was diagnosed in 447 (57.3%) subjects. In these subjects, the Bland-Altman plot for AAI revealed an underestimation with a bias of -8.04 ± 16.55 events per hour (mean ± 95% confidence interval). Receiver operating characteristic curves constructed for an AHI of 15 or greater defined an area under the curve of 0.67 and a cutoff point to AAI 32.3 events per hour, giving a sensitivity of 70.5% and a specificity of 54.7%. For prediction of an AHI of at least 30, the area under the curve was equal to 0.74 for a cutoff point of 56.3 events per hour, giving a better specificity (94.7%) but a lower sensitivity (32.2%). In a healthy older population, the AAI showed moderate sensitivity for predicting SDB. This data does not allow us to use PTT as a screening tool for the diagnosis of SDB in the elderly. NCT 00759304 and NCT 00766584.	f	\N
21811130	The primary aim of the present study was to test diazepam (DZ) effect, a benzodiazepine (BDZ) usually prescribed to reduce anxiety and to induce sleep, on EEG activity while performing a visual sustained attention task. The EEG activity was recorded in a double-blind placebo experiment, and prestimulus spectral power and inter- and intrahemispheric temporal coupling were assessed during visual sustained attention task performance. A single DZ dose (5 mg) was enough to increase reaction times during visual sustained attention task responses. DZ decreased prestimulus EEG power in the 1- to 6-, 8- to 12-, and 19- to 35-Hz bands and disrupted right intrahemispheric temporal coupling in the α-frequency range (8-12 Hz). The combined reduction in power and temporal coupling suggests both local and interregional DZ-induced disruption of neuronal synchronicity especially in the right hemisphere in agreement with the prominent attention-related networks in this hemisphere. These data support the notion that the influence of DZ on behavior goes beyond sedative effects and can potentially compromise higher cognitive functions with negative consequences to daily life situations.	f	\N
21812567	The human cognitive system is highly efficient in extracting information from our visual environment. This efficiency is based on acquired knowledge that guides our attention toward relevant events and promotes the recognition of individual objects as they appear in visual scenes. The experience-based representation of such knowledge contains not only information about the individual objects but also about relations between them, such as the typical context in which individual objects co-occur. The present EEG study aimed at exploring the availability of such relational knowledge in the time course of visual scene processing, using oscillatory evoked gamma-band responses as a neural correlate for a currently activated cortical stimulus representation. Participants decided whether two simultaneously presented objects were conceptually coherent (e.g., mouse-cheese) or not (e.g., crown-mushroom). We obtained increased evoked gamma-band responses for coherent scenes compared with incoherent scenes beginning as early as 70 msec after stimulus onset within a distributed cortical network, including the right temporal, the right frontal, and the bilateral occipital cortex. This finding provides empirical evidence for the functional importance of evoked oscillatory activity in high-level vision beyond the visual cortex and, thus, gives new insights into the functional relevance of neuronal interactions. It also indicates the very early availability of experience-based knowledge that might be regarded as a fundamental mechanism for the rapid extraction of the gist of a scene.	f	\N
21812705	The repetition-lag training procedure developed by Jennings and Jacoby (2003 , Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 14, 417) has been shown to improve older adults' performance in the recognition memory task used for training, and to improve performance in a variety of other memory and executive function tasks ( Jennings, Webster, Kleykamp, & Dagenbach, 2005 , Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 12, 278). The present study examined the effects of concurrent interference tasks during the study or test phases of training to localize the source of gains. Overall, the results suggest that training is resilient and resistant to interference, but also that the processes used during the test phases of training are more important to the gains seen in the primary task and in the transfer tasks than those used in the study phases.	f	\N
21819388	Circadian rhythms in mammals are regulated by a system of endogenous circadian oscillators (clock cells) in the brain and in most peripheral organs and tissues. One group of clock cells in the hypothalamic SCN (suprachiasmatic nuclei) functions as a pacemaker for co-ordinating the timing of oscillators elsewhere in the brain and body. This master clock can be reset and entrained by daily LD (light-dark) cycles and thereby also serves to interface internal with external time, ensuring an appropriate alignment of behavioural and physiological rhythms with the solar day. Two features of the mammalian circadian system provide flexibility in circadian programming to exploit temporal regularities of social stimuli or food availability. One feature is the sensitivity of the SCN pacemaker to behavioural arousal stimulated during the usual sleep period, which can reset its phase and modulate its response to LD stimuli. Neural pathways from the brainstem and thalamus mediate these effects by releasing neurochemicals that inhibit retinal inputs to the SCN clock or that alter clock-gene expression in SCN clock cells. A second feature is the sensitivity of circadian oscillators outside of the SCN to stimuli associated with food intake, which enables animals to uncouple rhythms of behaviour and physiology from LD cycles and align these with predictable daily mealtimes. The location of oscillators necessary for food-entrained behavioural rhythms is not yet certain. Persistence of these rhythms in mice with clock-gene mutations that disable the SCN pacemaker suggests diversity in the molecular basis of light- and food-entrainable clocks.	f	\N
21823798	In older adults, difficulties processing complex auditory scenes, such as speech comprehension in noisy environments, might be due to a specific impairment of temporal processing at early, automatic processing stages involving auditory sensory memory (ASM). Even though age effects on auditory temporal processing have been well-documented, there is a paucity of research on how ASM processing of more complex tone-patterns is altered by age. In the current study, age effects on ASM processing of temporal and frequency aspects of two-tone patterns were investigated using a passive listening protocol. The P1 component, the mismatch negativity (MMN) and the P3a component of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to tone frequency and temporal pattern deviants were recorded in younger and older adults as a measure of auditory event detection, ASM processing, and attention switching, respectively. MMN was elicited with smaller amplitude to both frequency and temporal deviants in older adults. Furthermore, P3a was elicited only in the younger adults. In conclusion, the smaller MMN amplitude indicates that automatic processing of both frequency and temporal aspects of two-tone patterns is impaired in older adults. The failure to initiate an attention switch, suggested by the absence of P3a, indicates that impaired ASM processing of patterns may lead to less distractibility in older adults. Our results suggest age-related changes in ASM processing of patterns that cannot be explained by an inhibitory deficit.	f	\N
21828324	Sleep-disordered breathing (characterized by recurrent arousals from sleep and intermittent hypoxemia) is common among older adults. Cross-sectional studies have linked sleep-disordered breathing to poor cognition; however, it remains unclear whether sleep-disordered breathing precedes cognitive impairment in older adults. To determine the prospective relationship between sleep-disordered breathing and cognitive impairment and to investigate potential mechanisms of this association. Prospective sleep and cognition study of 298 women without dementia (mean [SD] age: 82.3 [3.2] years) who had overnight polysomnography measured between January 2002 and April 2004 in a substudy of the Study of Osteoporotic Fractures. Sleep-disordered breathing was defined as an apnea-hypopnea index of 15 or more events per hour of sleep. Multivariate logistic regression was used to determine the independent association of sleep-disordered breathing with risk of mild cognitive impairment or dementia, adjusting for age, race, body mass index, education level, smoking status, presence of diabetes, presence of hypertension, medication use (antidepressants, benzodiazepines, or nonbenzodiazepine anxiolytics), and baseline cognitive scores. Measures of hypoxia, sleep fragmentation, and sleep duration were investigated as underlying mechanisms for this relationship. Adjudicated cognitive status (normal, dementia, or mild cognitive impairment) based on data collected between November 2006 and September 2008. Compared with the 193 women without sleep-disordered breathing, the 105 women (35.2%) with sleep-disordered breathing were more likely to develop mild cognitive impairment or dementia (31.1% [n = 60] vs 44.8% [n = 47]; adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 1.85; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.11-3.08). Elevated oxygen desaturation index (≥15 events/hour) and high percentage of sleep time (>7%) in apnea or hypopnea (both measures of disordered breathing) were associated with risk of developing mild cognitive impairment or dementia (AOR, 1.71 [95% CI, 1.04-2.83] and AOR, 2.04 [95% CI, 1.10-3.78], respectively). Measures of sleep fragmentation (arousal index and wake after sleep onset) or sleep duration (total sleep time) were not associated with risk of cognitive impairment. Among older women, those with sleep-disordered breathing compared with those without sleep-disordered breathing had an increased risk of developing cognitive impairment.	f	\N
21839179	Top-down attention enhances neural processing, but its effect on metabolic activity in primary visual cortex (V1) is unclear. Combined blood flow and oxygenation measurements provide the best tool for investigating modulations of oxidative metabolism. We measured the human V1 response to a peripheral low contrast stimulus using fMRI and found a larger fractional modulation of blood flow with attention compared to the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) response, thus indicating a much larger modulation of oxygen metabolism than was previously thought. These findings point to different aspects of neural activity driving flow and metabolic changes to different degrees. We propose that V1 flow is driven strongly but not exclusively by the initial sensory-driven neural activity, which dominates the response in the unattended condition, while V1 oxygen metabolism is driven strongly by the overall neural activity, which is modulated by top-down signals related to attention.	f	\N
21839675	This study sought to better characterize the contributions of deficits in attention allocation and distracter inhibition to the poor performance on attention tasks often seen in children with ADHD. Electrophysiological (Nd, P3b) and behavioral measures (speed and accuracy) were examined during an auditory selective attention task in children with ADHD, children with typical development (TD), and adults. Thirty children (15 ADHD; 13 females) between the ages of 7 and 13 and 16 adults (8 females) participated. Nd waveforms were elicited from adults and children with TD, but not from children with ADHD. Further, those with ADHD exhibited significantly smaller auditory responses at 100 ms (Ta). P3bs were elicited in all three groups by targets but not by unattended deviants. Performance was significantly poorer in children with ADHD than TD and RTs were more variable. Children with ADHD evidenced poorer attention allocation, as measured by Nd and hits, but were not more distracted by unattended deviants, as measured by P3b and false alarms, than children with TD. Findings for Nd, P3b, and Ta considered together suggest that deficits in auditory selective attention in children with ADHD may be attributable to reduced information early in the processing stream.	f	\N
21853782	Attention plays an important role in the design of human-machine interfaces. However, current knowledge about attention is largely based on data obtained when using devices of moderate display size. With advancement in display technology comes the need for understanding attention behavior over a wider range of viewing sizes. The effect of display size on test participants' visual search performance was studied. The participants (N = 12) performed two types of visual search tasks, that is, parallel and serial search, under three display-size conditions (16 degrees, 32 degrees, and 60 degrees). Serial, but not parallel, search was affected by display size. In the serial task, mean reaction time for detecting a target increased with the display size.	f	\N
21854681	Individual differences in emotional processing are likely to contribute to vulnerability and resilience to emotional disorders such as depression and anxiety. Genetic variation is known to contribute to these differences but they remain incompletely understood. The serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) and α2B-adrenergic autoreceptor (ADRA2B) insertion/deletion polymorphisms impact on two separate but interacting monaminergic signalling mechanisms that have been implicated in both emotional processing and emotional disorders. Recent studies suggest that the 5-HTTLPR s allele is associated with a negative attentional bias and an increased risk of emotional disorders. However, such complex behavioural traits are likely to exhibit polygenicity, including epistasis. This study examined the contribution of the 5-HTTLPR and ADRA2B insertion/deletion polymorphisms to attentional biases for aversive information in 94 healthy male volunteers and found evidence of a significant epistatic effect (p<0.001). Specifically, in the presence of the 5-HTTLPR s allele, the attentional bias for aversive information was attenuated by possession of the ADRA2B deletion variant whereas in the absence of the s allele, the bias was enhanced. These data identify a cognitive mechanism linking genotype-dependent serotonergic and noradrenergic signalling that is likely to have implications for the development of cognitive markers for depression/anxiety as well as therapeutic drug effects and personalized approaches to treatment.	f	\N
21861678	Recent neuroimaging evidence indicates that visual consciousness of objects is reflected by the activation in the lateral occipital cortex as well as in the frontal and parietal cortex. However, most previous studies used behavioral paradigms in which attention raised or enhanced visual consciousness (visibility or recognition performance). This co-occurrence made it difficult to reveal whether an observed cortical activation is related to visual consciousness or attention. The present fMRI study investigated the dissociability of neural activations underlying these two cognitive phenomena. Toward this aim, we used a visual backward masking paradigm in which directing attention could either enhance or reduce the object visibility. The participants' task was to report the level of subjective visibility for a briefly presented target object. The target was presented in the center with four flankers, which was followed by the same number of masks. Behavioral results showed that attention to the flankers enhanced the target visibility, whereas attention to the masks attenuated it. The fMRI results showed that the occipito-temporal sulcus increased activation in the attend flankers condition compared with the attend masks condition, and occipito-temporal sulcus activation levels positively correlated with the target visibility in both attentional conditions. On the other hand, the inferior frontal gyrus and the intraparietal sulcus increased activation in both the attend flankers and attend masks compared with an attend neither condition, and these activation levels were independent of target visibility. Taken together, present results showed a clear dissociation in neural activities between conscious visibility and attention.	f	\N
21870308	Anxiety sensitivity refers to the extent of beliefs that anxiety symptoms or arousal can have harmful consequences. There is growing evidence for anxiety sensitivity as a risk factor for anxiety disorders. Anxiety sensitivity is elevated in panic disorder as well as other anxiety disorders. It is thought to contribute to the maintenance and severity of anxiety symptoms. Studies have shown that anxiety sensitivity more specifically predicts the future occurrence of panic attacks. The Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI), which measures the construct of anxiety sensitivity, has three subscales, namely, the ASI-Physical subscale, ASI-Social subscale and ASI-Mental Incapacitation Concerns subscale. The dimension reflecting "fear of physical sensations" of anxiety sensitivity is the most predictive one of panic attacks and panic disorder. Research on the ASI has demonstrated that persons diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and social anxiety disorder all had ASI scores higher than normal controls. Depression was speculated to hold a positive correlation to high anxiety sensitivity scores. The relationships between anxiety sensitivity, alcohol and substance use disorders are still unknown. There is evidence that anxiety sensitivity is related with "drinking used as a way of coping". Since anxiety sensitivity is a cognitive construct, it should be taken into consideration when evaluating patients with anxiety and psychotherapeutic formulations.	f	\N
21871503	In the current study, rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task combined with event related potentials (ERP) was used to investigate attention biases toward body-related words in a nonclinical sample of body dissatisfied females. Consistent with the hypotheses, the amplitudes of N100, N170 and P3 are sensitive to different body-related words in the RSVP paradigm only among body weight dissatisfied women (WD group), while control group did not show this difference. The early anterior N100 and bi-lateral parietal and occipital N170 amplitudes elicited by fatness-related words were larger than those elicited by thinness-related and neutral words among WD group, a finding which is consistent with the presence of a 'negativity bias'. Also, WD group women showed significantly different amplitudes in response to three categories of stimuli with thin words eliciting the largest P3 amplitudes, followed by fat words and the least neutral words. The current findings indicated that attention biases toward body weight related words were evident during both sensory and cognitive stages of information processing. Findings are also consistent with hypotheses of cognitive-behavioral accounts of body weight dissatisfaction which propose, in part, that individual differences on cognitive tasks reveal underlying psychopathology; attentional biases reflect disordered body schema, not disordered eating, and can therefore be seen in non-clinical samples.	f	\N
21872853	Brain regions simultaneously activated during any cognitive process are functionally connected, forming large-scale networks. These functional networks can be examined during active conditions [i.e., task-functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)] and also in passive states (resting-fMRI), where the default mode network (DMN) is the most widely investigated system. The role of the DMN remains unclear, although it is known to be responsible for the shift between resting and focused attention processing. There is also some evidence for its malleability in relation to previous experience. Here we investigated brain connectivity patterns in 16 healthy young subjects by using an n-back task with increasing levels of memory load within the fMRI context. Prior to this working memory (WM) task, participants were trained outside fMRI with a shortened test version. Immediately after, they underwent a resting-state fMRI acquisition followed by the full fMRI n-back test. We observed that the degree of intrinsic correlation within DMN and WM networks was maximal during the most demanding n-back condition (3-back). Furthermore, individuals showing a stronger negative correlation between the two networks under both conditions exhibited better behavioural performance. Interestingly, and despite the fact that we considered eight different resting-state fMRI networks previously identified in humans, only the connectivity within the posteromedial parts of the DMN (precuneus) prior to the fMRI n-back task predicted WM execution. Our results using a data-driven probabilistic approach for fMRI analysis provide the first evidence of a direct relationship between behavioural performance and the degree of negative correlation between the DMN and WM networks. They further suggest that in the context of expectancy for an imminent cognitive challenge, higher resting-state activity in the posteromedial parietal cortex may be related to increased attentional preparatory resources.	f	\N
21875215	Dissociable prototype learning systems have been demonstrated behaviorally and with neuroimaging in younger adults as well as with patient populations. In A/not-A (AN) prototype learning, participants are shown members of category A during training, and during test are asked to decide whether novel items are in category A or are not in category A. Research suggests that AN learning is mediated by a perceptual learning system. In A/B (AB) prototype learning, participants are shown members of category A and B during training, and during test are asked to decide whether novel items are in category A or category B. In contrast to AN, research suggests that AB learning is mediated by a declarative memory system. The current study examined the effects of normal aging on AN and AB prototype learning. We observed an age-related deficit in AB learning, but an age-related advantage in AN learning. Computational modeling supports one possible interpretation based on narrower selective attentional focus in older adults in the AB task and broader selective attention in the AN task. Neuropsychological testing in older participants suggested that executive functioning and attentional control were associated with better performance in both tasks. However, nonverbal memory was associated with better AN performance, while visual attention was associated with worse AB performance. The results support an interactive memory systems approach and suggest that age-related declines in one memory system can lead to deficits in some tasks, but to enhanced performance in others.	f	\N
21875701	Though the humans are more susceptible to unpleasant stimuli of higher intensity, how the valence intensity of unpleasant stimuli impacts subsequent cognitive processing, and whether this impact increases with the unpleasantness, require clarification. For this purpose, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded for highly negative (HN), mildly negative (MN) and neutral cueing pictures, and subsequently for the non-emotional target picture while subjects were required to discriminate the location of the target. Cue-induced ERPs showed more negative deflections for the HN than for the neutral pictures in the 450-650 ms time interval. The emotion effect for the MN cueing stimuli, however, was non-significant in this interval. In contrast, target-induced P3 amplitudes were significantly more negative following MN versus neutral cueing pictures, while the P3 amplitudes were not significantly different between HN and neutral conditions, irrespective of cueing validity. Thus, despite weak immediate impact, MN stimuli influenced subsequent target processing more heavily than HN stimuli. This suggests that the impact of unpleasant events on cognition doesn't necessarily increase with the unpleasantness. Mild unpleasant stimulus, which is weak in immediate emotion arousal, should not be neglected due to the likelihood of producing a sustained impact.	f	\N
21879613	This study investigated the effects of stimulus modality, standard duration, sex, and laterality in duration discrimination by musicians and nonmusicians. Seventeen musicians (M age = 24.1 yr.) and 22 nonmusicians (M age = 26.8 yr.) participated. Auditory (1,000 Hz) and tactile (250 Hz) sinusoidal suprathreshold stimuli with varying durations were used. The standard durations tested were 0.5 and 3.0 sec. Participants discriminated comparison stimuli which had durations slightly longer and shorter than the standard durations. Difference limens were found by the method of limits and converted to Weber fractions based on the standard durations. Musicians had lower, i.e., better, Weber fractions than nonmusicians in the auditory modality, but there was no significant difference between musicians and nonmusicians in the tactile modality. Auditory discrimination was better than tactile discrimination. Discrimination improved when the standard duration was increased both for musicians and nonmusicians. These results support previous findings of superior auditory processing by musicians. Significant differences between discrimination in the millisecond and second ranges may be due to a deviation from Weber's law and the discontinuity of timing in different duration ranges reported in the literature.	f	\N
21883941	Recent nationally representative studies documenting event-level sexual behavior have included samples that are predominantly heterosexual, resulting in limited information on the sexual repertoire of gay and bisexually identified men. This study sought to document the sexual behaviors that gay and bisexually identified men report during their most recent male-partnered sexual event and to describe the situational characteristics and participants' evaluation of these events. Via an internet-based survey, data were collected from 24,787 gay and bisexually identified men (ages 18-87 years) from 50 US states and the District of Columbia. Measures included items related to sociodemographics, recent sexual behavior history, situational characteristics, orgasm, and ratings of arousal and pleasure. Participants' mean age was 39.2 years; ethnicities included white (84.6%), Latino (6.4%), and African American (3.6%); and most men (79.9%) identified as homosexual. The most commonly reported behavior was kissing a partner on the mouth (74.5%), followed by oral sex (72.7%), and partnered masturbation (68.4%). Anal intercourse occurred among less than half of participants (37.2%) and was most common among men ages 18-24 (42.7%). Sex was most likely to occur in the participant's home (46.8%), with less frequently reported locations including hotels (7.4%) and public spaces (3.1%). The number of behaviors engaged in during last sexual event varied with most (63.2%) including 5-9 different sexual behaviors. These data provide one of the first examinations of sexual behaviors during the most recent male-partnered sexual event among gay and bisexually identified men in the United States. Findings from this study suggest that gay and bisexually identified men have a diverse sexual repertoire and that partnered sexual behaviors are not limited solely to acts of penile insertion.	f	\N
21887382	Successful integration of various simultaneously perceived perceptual signals is crucial for social behavior. Recent findings indicate that this multisensory integration (MSI) can be modulated by attention. Theories of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) suggest that MSI is affected in this population while it remains unclear to what extent this is related to impairments in attentional capacity. In the present study Event-related potentials (ERPs) following emotionally congruent and incongruent face-voice pairs were measured in 23 high-functioning, adult ASD individuals and 24 age- and IQ-matched controls. MSI was studied while the attention of the participants was manipulated. ERPs were measured at typical auditory and visual processing peaks, namely, P2 and N170. While controls showed MSI during divided attention and easy selective attention tasks, individuals with ASD showed MSI during easy selective attention tasks only. It was concluded that individuals with ASD are able to process multisensory emotional stimuli, but this is differently modulated by attention mechanisms in these participants, especially those associated with divided attention. This atypical interaction between attention and MSI is also relevant to treatment strategies, with training of multisensory attentional control possibly being more beneficial than conventional sensory integration therapy.	f	\N
21899000	In this paper, we reviewed the brain imaging studies of male sexual function in recent years from three aspects: the brain mechanism of normal sexual function, the brain mechanism of sexual dysfunction, and the mechanism of drug therapy for sexual dysfunction. Studies show that the development stages of male sexual activities, such as the excitement phase, plateau phase and orgasm phase, are controlled by different neural networks. The mesodiencephalic transition zone may play an important role in the start up of male ejaculation. There are significant differences between sexual dysfunction males and normal males in activation patterns of the brain in sexual arousal. The medial orbitofrontal cortex and inferior frontal gyrus in the abnormal activation pattern are correlated with sexual dysfunction males in sexual arousal. Serum testosterone and morphine are commonly used drugs for male sexual dysfunction, whose mechanisms are to alter the activating levels of the medial orbitofrontal cortex, insula, claustrum and inferior temporal gyrus.	f	\N
21903462	Studies on brain computer interfaces (BCIs) have been mainly concerned with algorithm improvement for better signal classification. Fewer studies, however, have addressed to date the role of cognitive mechanisms underlying the elicitation of brain-signals in BCIs. We tested the effect of visuospatial attention orienting on a P300-guided BCI, by comparing the effectiveness of three visual interfaces, which elicited different modalities of visuospatial attention orienting (exogenous vs. endogenous). Twelve healthy participants performed 20 sessions, using the abovementioned P300-guided BCI interfaces to control a cursor. Brain waves were recorded on each trial and were subsequently classified on-line using an ad hoc algorithm. Each time the P300 was correctly classified, the cursor moved towards the target position. The "endogenous" interface was associated with significantly higher performance than the other two interfaces during the testing sessions, but not in the follow-up sessions. Endogenous visuospatial attention orienting can be effectively implemented to increase the performance of P300-guided BCIs. The study of visuospatial attention underlying participants' performance is essential for implementing efficient visual BCIs.	f	\N
21903593	Visual search for feature singletons is slowed when a task-irrelevant, but more salient distracter singleton is concurrently presented. While there is a consensus that this distracter interference effect can be influenced by internal system settings, it remains controversial at what stage of processing this influence starts to affect visual coding. Advocates of the "stimulus-driven" view maintain that the initial sweep of visual processing is entirely driven by physical stimulus attributes and that top-down settings can bias visual processing only after selection of the most salient item. By contrast, opponents argue that top-down expectancies can alter the initial selection priority, so that focal attention is "not automatically" shifted to the location exhibiting the highest feature contrast. To precisely trace the allocation of focal attention, we analyzed the Posterior-Contralateral-Negativity (PCN) in a task in which the likelihood (expectancy) with which a distracter occurred was systematically varied. Our results show that both high (vs. low) distracter expectancy and experiencing a distracter on the previous trial speed up the timing of the target-elicited PCN. Importantly, there was no distracter-elicited PCN, indicating that participants did not shift attention to the distracter before selecting the target. This pattern unambiguously demonstrates that preattentive vision is top-down modifiable.	f	\N
21905997	Neuroimaging studies have found that alcohol dependent patients display dopaminergic dysfunction in the ventral striatum, which is associated with alcohol craving. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) was introduced as a promising new treatment option for depression, and among other neurobiological mechanisms, it is able to stimulate the striatal dopaminergic system. The aim of our study was to investigate the effect of high frequency rTMS of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex compared to sham stimulation on craving and mood in alcohol dependent women. Furthermore, the impact on an attentional blink (AB) paradigm to pictures with neutral, emotional and alcohol-related contents was proofed. Nineteen female detoxified patients were randomized either to a high frequency rTMS (20 Hz) over the left DLPFC (n = 10) or a sham stimulations (n = 9) at 10 days. Alcohol craving was determined with the Obsessive Compulsive Drinking Scale, depressive symptoms were registered by means of Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and Beck' Depression Inventory. For the AB paradigm an age-matched control group was investigated. There were no significantly differences between both groups regarding alcohol craving or mood. In the AB paradigm, real stimulated patients detected alcohol related T2 targets incorrectly in comparison to the sham stimulated and control subjects. Although there were no differences in clinical parameters such as craving or mood after real high frequency rTMS compared to sham stimulation, we found an interesting difference between the real and the sham stimulated group and controls in the AB paradigm indicating an increase of the AB effect to alcohol-related pictures after real stimulation. Further studies are needed to replicate these findings and correlate them to clinical and neurophysiological data.	f	\N
21910776	Central nervous system (CNS) histamine is low in individuals with narcolepsy, a disease characterized by severe fragmentation of both sleep and wake. We have developed a primate model, the squirrel monkey, with which we can examine the role of the CNS in the wake-consolidation process, as these primates are day-active, have consolidated wake and sleep and have cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) that is readily accessible. Using this model and three distinct protocols, we report herein on the role of CNS histamine in the wake consolidation process. CSF histamine has a robust daily rhythm, with a mean of 24.9 ± 3.29 pg mL(-1) , amplitude of 31.7 ± 6.46 pg mL(-1) and a peak at 17:49 ± 70.3 min (lights on 07:00-19:00 hours). These levels are not significantly affected by increases (up to 161 ± 40.4% of baseline) or decreases (up to 17.2 ± 2.50% of baseline) in locomotion. In direct contrast to the effects of sleep deprivation in non-wake-consolidating mammals, in whom CSF histamine increases, pharmacologically induced sleep (γ-hydroxybutyrate) and wake (modafinil) have no direct effects on CSF histamine concentrations. These data indicate that the time-course of histamine in CSF in the wake-consolidated squirrel monkey is robust against variation in activity and sleep and wake-promoting pharmacological compounds, and may indicate that histamine physiology plays a role in wake-consolidation such as is present in the squirrel monkey and humans.	f	\N
21923791	Visuo-spatial representations of the alphabet (so-called 'alphabet forms') may be as common as other types of sequence-space synaesthesia, but little is known about them or the way they relate to implicit spatial associations in the general population. In the first study, we describe the characteristics of a large sample of alphabet forms visualized by synaesthetes. They most often run from left to right and have salient features (e.g., bends, breaks) at particular points in the sequence that correspond to chunks in the 'Alphabet Song' and at the alphabet mid-point. The Alphabet Song chunking suggests that the visuo-spatial characteristics are derived, at least in part, from those of the verbal sequence learned earlier in life. However, these synaesthetes are no faster at locating points in the sequence (e.g., what comes before/after letter X?) than controls. They tend to be more spatially consistent (measured by eye tracking) and letters can act as attentional cues to left/right space in synaesthetes with alphabet forms (measured by saccades), but not in non-synaesthetes. This attentional cueing suggests dissociation between numbers (which reliably act as attentional cues in synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes) and letters (which act as attentional cues in synaesthetes only).	f	\N
21931715	Successful completion of many everyday tasks depends on interactions between voluntary attention, which acts to maintain current goals, and reflexive attention, which enables responding to unexpected events by interrupting the current focus of attention. Past studies, which have mostly examined each attentional mechanism in isolation, indicate that volitional and reflexive orienting depend on two functionally specialized cortical networks in the human brain. Here we investigated how the interplay between these two cortical networks affects sensory processing and the resulting overt behavior. By combining measurements of human performance and electrocortical recordings with a novel analytical technique for estimating spatiotemporal activity in the human cortex, we found that the subregions that comprise the reflexive ventrolateral attention network dissociate both spatially and temporally as a function of the nature of the sensory information and current task demands. Moreover, we found that together with the magnitude of the early sensory gain, the spatiotemporal neural dynamics accounted for the high amount of the variance in the behavioral data. Collectively these data support the conclusion that the ventrolateral attention network is recruited flexibly to support complex behaviors.	f	\N
21948954	The influence of personality on the neural correlates of emotional processing is still not well characterized. We investigated the relationship between extraversion and neuroticism and emotional perception using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a group of 23 young, healthy women. Using a parametric modulation approach, we examined how the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal varied with the participants' ratings of arousal and valence, and whether levels of extraversion and neuroticism were related to these modulations. In particular, we wished to test Eysenck's biological theory of personality, which links high extraversion to lower levels of reticulothalamic-cortical arousal, and neuroticism to increased reactivity of the limbic system and stronger reactions to emotional arousal. Individuals high in neuroticism demonstrated reduced sustained activation in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and attenuated valence processing in the right temporal lobe while viewing emotional images, but an increased BOLD response to emotional arousal in the right medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). These results support Eysenck's theory, as well as our hypothesis that high levels of neuroticism are associated with attenuated reward processing. Extraversion was inversely related to arousal processing in the right cerebellum, but positively associated with arousal processing in the right insula, indicating that the relationship between extraversion and arousal is not as simple as that proposed by Eysenck.	f	\N
21957705	The influence of internal (movement focus) and external (outcome focus) attentional-focusing instructions on muscular endurance were investigated using three exercise protocols with experienced exercisers. Twenty-three participants completed a maximal repetition, assisted bench-press test on a Smith's machine. An external focus of attention resulted in significant (p < .05) improvements in performance compared to the internal focus of attention, but not the control condition. Seventeen participants completed repetitions to failure at 75% 1-RM on free bench press and squat exercises. In both tasks, externally focused instructions resulted in significantly greater repetitions to failure than control and internal focus conditions (p < .05). These results support previous research showing beneficial effects of externally focused instructions on movement efficiency.	f	\N
21963321	Age-related cognitive impairments have been attributed to deficits in inhibitory processes that mediate both motor restraint and sensory filtering. However, behavioral studies have failed to show an association between tasks that measure these distinct types of inhibition. In the present study, we hypothesized neural markers reflecting each type of inhibition may reveal a relationship across inhibitory domains in older adults. Electroencephalography (EEG) and behavioral measures were used to explore whether there was an across-participant correlation between sensory suppression and motor inhibition. Sixteen healthy older adult participants (65-80 years) engaged in two separate experimental paradigms: a selective attention, delayed-recognition task and a stop-signal task. Findings revealed no significant relationship existed between neural markers of sensory suppression (P1 amplitude; N170 latency) and markers of motor inhibition (N2 and P3 amplitude and latency) in older adults. These distinct inhibitory domains are differentially impacted in normal aging, as evidenced by previous behavioral work and the current neural findings. Thus a generalized inhibitory deficit may not be a common impairment in cognitive aging. Given that some theories of cognitive aging suggest age-related failure of inhibitory mechanisms may span different modalities, the present findings contribute to an alternative view where age-related declines within each inhibitory modality are unrelated.	f	\N
21963529	The last decade underwent a revival of interest in the perception of time and duration. The present short essay does not compete with the many other recent reviews and books on this topic. Instead, it is meant to emphasize the notion that humans (and most likely other animals) have at their disposal more than one time measuring device and to propose that they use these devices jointly to appraise the passage of time. One possible consequence of this conjecture is that the same physical duration can be judged differently depending on the reference 'clock' used in any such judgment. As this view has not yet been tested empirically, several experimental manipulations susceptible to directly test it are suggested. Before, are summarized a number of its latent precursors, namely the relativity of perceived duration, current trends in modeling time perception and its neural and pharmacological substrate, the experimental literature supporting the existence of multiple 'clocks' and a selected number of experimental manipulations known to induce time perception illusions which together with many others are putatively accountable in terms of alternative clock readings.	f	\N
21965547	Cortisol concentration in both serum and saliva sharply increases and reaches a peak within the first hour after waking in the morning. This phenomenon is known as the cortisol awakening response (CAR) and is used as an index of hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis function. We examined whether ovarian steroid concentrations increased after awakening as with the CAR in the HPA axis. To do this, cortisol, estradiol-17β (E(2)), and progesterone (P(4)) concentrations were determined in saliva samples collected immediately upon awakening and 30 and 60 min after awakening in women with regular menstrual cycles and postmenopausal women. We found that both E(2) and P(4) concentrations increased during the post-awakening period in women with regular menstrual cycles, but these phenomena were not seen in any postmenopausal women. The area under the E(2) and P(4) curve from the time interval immediately after awakening to 60 min after awakening (i.e. E(2)auc and P(4)auc) in women with regular menstrual cycles were greater than those in the postmenopausal women. E(2) and P(4) secretory activity during the post-awakening period was influenced by the phase of the menstrual cycle. E(2)auc in the peri-ovulatory phase and P(4)auc in the early to mid-luteal phase were greater than in the menstrual phase. Meanwhile, cortisol secretory activity during the post-awakening period was not influenced by menstrual status or the phase of menstrual cycle. These findings indicate that, as with the CAR in the HPA axis function, ovarian steroidogenic activity increased after awakening and is closely associated with menstrual status and phase of menstrual cycle.	f	\N
21965551	Both visual attention and visual short-term memory (VSTM) have been shown to have capacity limits of 4 ± 1 objects, driving the hypothesis that they share a visual processing buffer. However, these capacity limitations also show strong individual differences, making the degree to which these capacities are related unclear. Moreover, other research has suggested a distinction between attention and VSTM buffers. To explore the degree to which capacity limitations reflect the use of a shared visual processing buffer, we compared individual subject's capacities on attentional and VSTM tasks completed in the same testing session. We used a multiple object tracking (MOT) and a VSTM change detection task, with varying levels of distractors, to measure capacity. Significant correlations in capacity were not observed between the MOT and VSTM tasks when distractor filtering demands differed between the tasks. Instead, significant correlations were seen when the tasks shared spatial filtering demands. Moreover, these filtering demands impacted capacity similarly in both attention and VSTM tasks. These observations fail to support the view that visual attention and VSTM capacity limits result from a shared buffer but instead highlight the role of the resource demands of underlying processes in limiting capacity.	f	\N
21969076	Stimulus over-selectivity occurs when one aspect of the environment controls behavior at the expense of other equally salient aspects. Participants were trained on a match-to-sample (MTS) discrimination task. Levels of over-selectivity in a group of children (4-18 years) with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) were compared with a mental-aged matched typically-developing group. There was more over-selectivity in the ASD group. When retention intervals were added between the sample and comparisons in the MTS task, both groups showed an increased level of over-selectivity, with the ASD group showing a more pronounced effect.	f	\N
21981900	Previous studies demonstrate that attentional selection can be object-based, in which the object is defined in terms of Gestalt principles or lexical organizations. Here we investigate how attentional selection functions when the two types of objects are manipulated jointly. Experiment 1 replicated Li and Logan (2008) by showing that attentional shift between two Chinese characters is more efficient when they form a compound word than when they form a nonword. Experiment 2A presented characters either alone or within rectangles (Egly, Driver, & Rafal, 1994) and the characters in a rectangle formed either a word or a nonword. Experiment 2B differed from Experiment 2A in that the two characters forming a word were in different rectangles. Experiment 3A presented the two characters of a word either within a rectangle or in different rectangles. Experiment 3B used the same design as Experiment 3A but presented stimuli of different types in random orders, rather than in blocks as in Experiments 2A, 2B and 3A. In blocked presentation, detection responses to the target color on a character were faster when this character and the cue character formed a word than when they did not, and the size of this lexical-based object effect did not vary according to whether the two characters were presented alone or within or between rectangles. In random presentation, however, the lexical-based object effect was diminished when the two characters of a word were presented in different rectangles. Overall, these findings suggest that the processes that constrain attention deployment over conjoined objects can be strategically adjusted.	f	\N
21982581	Even when focused on an effortful task we retain the ability to detect salient environmental information, and even irrelevant visual stimuli can be automatically detected. However, to which extent unattended information affects attentional control is not fully understood. Here we provide evidences of how the brain spontaneously organizes its cognitive resources by shifting attention between a selective-attending and a stimulus-driven modality within a single task. Using a spatial cueing paradigm we investigated the effect of cue-target asynchronies as a function of their probabilities of occurrence (i.e., relative frequency). Results show that this accessory information modulates attentional shifts. A valid spatial cue improved participants' performance as compared to an invalid one only in trials in which target onset was highly predictable because of its more robust occurrence. Conversely, cuing proved ineffective when spatial cue and target were associated according to a less frequent asynchrony. These patterns of response depended on asynchronies' probability and not on their duration. Our findings clearly demonstrate that through a fine decision-making, performed trial-by-trial, the brain utilizes implicit information to decide whether or not voluntarily shifting spatial attention. As if according to a cost-planning strategy, the cognitive effort of shifting attention depending on the cue is performed only when the expected advantages are higher. In a trade-off competition for cognitive resources, voluntary/automatic attending may thus be a more complex process than expected.	f	\N
21986189	Changes in blood glucose are hypothesized to influence cognitive performance and these changes can be affected by certain nutrients. This double-blind 4-period cross-over study evaluated the effects of a slow-release modified sucrose (isomaltulose) in combination with a high concentration of lactose on cognitive performance of 5-6 year old children. Thirty children received a standard growing upmilk (Std GUM), reformulated growing up milk (Reform GUM), standard growing up milk with lactose-isomaltulose (Iso GUM), and a standard glucose drink (Glucose). The CDR System, a computerised cognitive assessment system, was used to assess various measures of attention and memory of the children at baseline (T=0), 60 (T=1), 120 (T=2), and 180 (T=3) minutes following the intake of test products. Overall, there was a decline in performance over the morning on almost every cognitive task. Children showed better attention following consumption of Iso GUM compared to Std GUM but attention was not significantly different than Reform GUM and glucose. Also, Iso GUM conferred a beneficial effect over both Reform GUM and glucose on sensitivity index of numeric working memory with no difference observed between Iso GUM and Std GUM. Surprisingly, glucose group showed lowest decline in the sensitivity index of spatial working memory and highest speed in picture recognition, although the latter was significantly better than Reform GUM only. For speed of spatial working memory, Reform GUM had the lowest decline but was significantly different only with Std GUM. There was, however, no significant difference among conditions for continuity of attention, speed of numeric working memory and picture recognition sensitivity. Despite the small sample size, the findings are intriguing as carbohydrate composition seems to influence some aspects of cognitive performance such as attention and memory. However, further studies are needed to confirm these findings.	f	\N
21988891	Doing two things at once is difficult. When two tasks have to be performed within a short interval, the second is sharply delayed, an effect called the Psychological Refractory Period (PRP). Similarly, when two successive visual targets are briefly flashed, people may fail to detect the second target (Attentional Blink or AB). Although AB and PRP are typically studied in very different paradigms, a recent detailed neuromimetic model suggests that both might arise from the same serial stage during which stimuli gain access to consciousness and, as a result, can be arbitrarily routed to any other appropriate processor. Here, in agreement with this model, we demonstrate that AB and PRP can be obtained on alternate trials of the same cross-modal paradigm and result from limitations in the same brain mechanisms. We asked participants to respond as fast as possible to an auditory target T1 and then to a visual target T2 embedded in a series of distractors, while brain activity was recorded with magneto-encephalography (MEG). For identical stimuli, we observed a mixture of blinked trials, where T2 was entirely missed, and PRP trials, where T2 processing was delayed. MEG recordings showed that PRP and blinked trials underwent identical sensory processing in visual occipito-temporal cortices, even including the non-conscious separation of targets from distractors. However, late activations in frontal cortex (>350 ms), strongly influenced by the speed of task-1 execution, were delayed in PRP trials and absent in blinked trials. Our findings suggest that PRP and AB arise from similar cortical stages, can occur with the same exact stimuli, and are merely distinguished by trial-by-trial fluctuations in task processing.	f	\N
21992968	The review of literature in sociology and distributed artificial intelligence reveals that the occurrence of conflict is a remarkable precursor to the disruption of multi-agent systems. The study of this concept could be applied to human factors concerns, as man-system conflict appears to provoke perseveration behavior and to degrade attentional abilities with a trend to excessive focus. Once entangled in such conflicts, the human operator will do anything to succeed in his current goal even if it jeopardizes the mission. In order to confirm these findings, an experimental setup, composed of a real unmanned ground vehicle, a ground station is developed. A scenario involving an authority conflict between the participants and the robot is proposed. Analysis of the effects of the conflict on the participants' cognition and arousal is assessed through heart-rate measurement (reflecting stress level) and eye-tracking techniques (index of attentional focus). Our results clearly show that the occurrence of the conflict leads to perseveration behavior and can induce higher heart rate as well as excessive attentional focus. These results are discussed in terms of task commitment issues and increased arousal. Moreover, our results suggest that individual differences may predict susceptibility to perseveration behavior.	f	\N
22001768	Attentional scanning was studied in anxious and non-anxious participants, using a modified change detection paradigm. Participants detected changes in pairs of emotional scenes separated by two task irrelevant slides, which contained an emotionally valenced scene (the 'distractor scene') and a visual mask. In agreement with attentional control theory, change detection latencies were slower overall for anxious participants. Change detection in anxious, but not non-anxious, participants was influenced by the emotional valence and exposure duration of distractor scenes. When negative distractor scenes were presented at subliminal exposure durations, anxious participants detected changes more rapidly than when supraliminal negative scenes or subliminal positive scenes were presented. We propose that for anxious participants, subliminal presentation of emotionally negative distractor scenes stimulated attention into a dynamic state in the absence of attentional engagement. Presentation of the same scenes at longer exposure times was accompanied by conscious awareness, attentional engagement, and slower change detection.	f	\N
22004198	The differential effects of task and response conflict in priming paradigms where associations are strengthened between a stimulus, a task, and a response have been demonstrated in recent years with neuroimaging methods. However, such effects are not easily disentangled with only measurements of behavior, such as reaction times (RTs). Here, we report the application of ex-Gaussian distribution analysis on task-switching RT data and show that conflict related to stimulus-response associations retrieved after a switch of tasks is reflected in the Gaussian component. By contrast, conflict related to the retrieval of stimulus-task associations is reflected in the exponential component. Our data confirm that the retrieval of stimulus-task and -response associations affects behavior differently. Ex-Gaussian distribution analysis is a useful tool for pulling apart these different levels of associative priming that are not distinguishable in analyses of RT means.	f	\N
22004518	Eye tracking has indicated that older and young adults process distracters similarly when reading single sentences. The present study extended this approach by presenting short paragraphs, sentence by sentence. Eye tracking measures included reading times per word, and the duration of the first fixation and total fixations to the distracters and target words. Comprehension was tested following each paragraph, and recognition of distracters and target words was assessed. The results indicated that young adults were able to learn to ignore the distracters as they read through the paragraphs, whereas older adults were less successful at learning to ignore the distracters.	f	\N
22006524	This article provides a demonstration of an analytical technique that can be used to investigate the causes of perceptual phenomena. The technique is based on the concept of the ideal observer, an optimal signal classifier that makes decisions that maximize the probability of a correct response. To demonstrate the technique, an analysis was conducted to investigate the role of the auditory periphery in the production of temporal masking effects. The ideal observer classified output from four models of the periphery. Since the ideal observer is the best of all possible observers, if it demonstrates masking effects, then all other observers must as well. If it does not demonstrate masking effects, then nothing about the periphery requires masking to occur, and therefore masking would occur somewhere else. The ideal observer exhibited several forward masking effects but did not exhibit backward masking, implying that the periphery has a causal role in forward but not backward masking. A general discussion of the strengths of the technique and supplementary equations are also included.	f	\N
22006528	In visual search tasks, the relative proportions of target-present and -absent trials have important effects on behavior. Miss error rates rise as target prevalence decreases (Wolfe, Horowitz, & Kenner, Nature 435, 439-440, 2005). At the same time, search termination times on target-absent trials become shorter (Wolfe & Van Wert, Current Biology 20, 121-124, 2010). These effects must depend on some implicit or explicit knowledge of the current prevalence. What is the nature of that knowledge? In Experiment 1, we conducted visual search tasks at three levels of prevalence (6%, 50%, and 94%) and analyzed performance as a function of "local prevalence," the prevalence over the last n trials. The results replicated the usual effects of overall prevalence but revealed only weak or absent effects of local prevalence. In Experiment 2, the overall prevalence in a block of trials was 20%, 50%, or 80%. However, a 100%-valid cue informed observers of the prevalence on the next trial. These explicit cues had a modest effect on target-absent RTs, but explicit expectation could not explain the full prevalence effect. We conclude that observers predict prevalence on the basis of an assessment of a relatively long prior history. Each trial contributes a small amount to that assessment, and this can be modulated but not overruled by explicit instruction.	f	\N
22007628	Stroke patients are at a higher risk of falling than the community-dwelling elderly, and many falls are due to contact with an obstacle. This study compared the effects of the simultaneous addition of a cognitive task during obstacle crossing between stroke patients and community-dwelling older adults (control subjects). Participants comprised 20 stroke patients who could walk with or without supervision and 20 control subjects matched for age and height with the stroke patients. Participants were asked to cross a 4-cm-high obstacle while walking at a self-selected speed. The number of failures and the spatial and temporal parameters were compared between a single-task condition (i.e., crossing task only) and a dual-task condition (i.e., verbal fluency task: listing vegetables or animals). Under the dual-task condition, six stroke patients (30%) and three community-dwelling elderly individuals (15%) failed to complete the motor task. Task failure was only due to heel-obstacle contact after toe clearance. In both groups, obstacle-heel distance after clearance was reduced, and the time from heel contact to toe clearance and stride time were significantly increased under dual-task condition versus single-task condition. In addition, group-task interaction for the time from heel contact to toe clearance of the obstacle was significant; this increase in time was significantly greater under dual-task condition in stroke patients than in control subjects. Obstacle crossing in stroke patients involved an increase in crossing performance time and a risk of heel-obstacle contact after crossing. These tendencies appeared stronger under the dual-task condition.	f	\N
22021081	Previous studies have indicated that increasing working memory (WM) load can affect the attentional selection of signals originating from one object/location. Here we assessed whether WM load affects also the selection of multiple objects/locations (divided attention). Participants monitored either two object-categories (vs. one category; object-based divided attention) or two locations (vs. one location; space-based divided attention) while maintaining in WM either a variable number of objects (object-based WM load) or locations (space-based WM load). Behavioural results showed that WM load affected attentional performance irrespective of divided or focused attention. However, fMRI results showed that the activity associated with object-based divided attention increased linearly with increasing object-based WM load in the left and right intraparietal sulcus (IPS); while, in the same areas, activity associated with space-based divided attention was not affected by any type of WM load. These findings support the hypothesis that WM contributes to the maintenance of resource-demanding attentional sets in a domain-specific manner. Moreover, the dissociable impact of WM load on performance and brain activity suggests that increased IPS activation reflects a recruitment of additional, domain-specific processing resources that enable dual-task performance under conditions of high WM load and high attentional demand.	f	\N
22022989	Child maltreatment is associated with heightened risk for depression; however, not all individuals who experience maltreatment develop depression. Previous research indicates that maltreatment contributes to an attention bias for emotional cues, and that depressed individuals show attention bias for sad cues. The present study examined attention patterns for sad, depression-relevant cues in children with and without experience of maltreatment. We also explored whether individual differences in physiological reactivity and emotion regulation in response to a sad emotional state predict heightened attention to sad cues associated with depression. Children who experienced high levels of maltreatment showed an increase in attention bias for sad faces throughout the course of the study, such that they showed biased attention for sad faces following the initiation of a sad emotional state. Maltreated children who had high levels of trait rumination showed an attention bias toward sad faces across all time points. These data suggest that maltreated children show heightened attention for depression-relevant cues in certain contexts (e.g. after experience of a sad emotional state). Additionally, maltreated children who tend to engage in rumination show a relatively stable pattern of heightened attention for depression-relevant cues. These patterns may identify which maltreated children are most likely to exhibit biased attention for sad cues and be at heightened risk for depression.	f	\N
22024021	Persistent genital arousal disorder (PGAD) is a rare condition in women that causes a lot of suffering. The pathophysiology is not well understood and an approach promising effective treatment has not been established so far. This study aims to make colleagues aware of two treatment options, which proved to be successful in one case each and which might be worth further investigation. Subjective distress from unwanted sexual arousal, unwanted orgasms, and pain in the genital area. Treatment of two women--36 and 41 years old--suffering from PGAD with duloxetine and pregabalin, respectively. In both women, the treatment proved to be very successful over a long period of time. One of them experienced full remission (duloxetine) and the other one experienced substantial improvement (pregabalin), over a period now lasting for more than a year. Pregabalin and duloxetine, in particular, should be further investigated as possible medication for the treatment of PGAD.	f	\N
22033363	The human 'pain network' includes cortical areas that are activated during the response to painful stimuli (termed category 1) or during psychological processes that modulate pain, for example, distraction (termed category 2). These categories include parts of the parasylvian (PS), medial frontal (MF), and paracentral cortex (S1&M1). Here we test the hypothesis that causal interactions both within and between category 1 and category 2 modules occur during attention to a painful stimulus. Event-related causality (ERC) was calculated from local field potentials recorded directly from these cortical areas during the response to a painful cutaneous laser stimulus in patients being monitored for epilepsy. The number of electrodes involved in pairs with significant ERC in category 1 was greater for pre-stimulus vs post-stimulus and for attention vs distraction. This is consistent with our prior evidence that the category 1 'pain network' changes rapidly with time intervals and tasks. In contrast, the interaction between categories was often unchanged or stable across intervals and tasks, particularly in MF. The proportion of contacts involved in interactions with PS was greater during distraction vs attention while activation was less, which suggests that distraction involves an inhibitory process in PS. Functional interactions between categories were overwhelmingly in the direction from category 2>1, particularly for contacts in MF which often had a driver role. These results demonstrate that MF is densely interconnected throughout the 'pain network' so that stimulation of MF might be used to disrupt the 'pain network' as a therapy for pain.	f	\N
22035945	It is common to use verbal instructions when performing complex tasks. To evaluate how such instructions contribute to cognitive control, mixing costs (as a measure of sustained concentration on task) were evaluated in two task-switching experiments combining the list and alternating runs paradigms. Participants responded to bivalent stimuli according to a characteristic explicitly defined by a visually presented instructional cue. The processing of the cue was conducted under four conditions across the two experiments: Silent Reading, Reading Aloud, Articulatory Suppression, and dual mode (visual and audio) presentation. The type of cue processing produced a substantial impact on the mixing costs, where its magnitude was greatest with articulatory suppression and minimal with reading aloud and dual mode presentations. Interestingly, silently reading the cue only provided medium levels of mixing cost. The experiments demonstrate that relevant verbal instructions boost sustained concentration on task goals when maintaining multiple tasks.	f	\N
22039917	Three experiments explored online recognition in a nonspeech domain, using a novel experimental paradigm. Adults learned to associate abstract shapes with particular melodies, and at test they identified a played melody's associated shape. To implicitly measure recognition, visual fixations to the associated shape versus a distractor shape were measured as the melody played. Degree of similarity between associated melodies was varied to assess what types of pitch information adults use in recognition. Fixation and error data suggest that adults naturally recognize music, like language, incrementally, computing matches to representations before melody offset, despite the fact that music, unlike language, provides no pressure to execute recognition rapidly. Further, adults use both absolute and relative pitch information in recognition. The implicit nature of the dependent measure should permit use with a range of populations to evaluate postulated developmental and evolutionary changes in pitch encoding.	f	\N
22041529	The objective of this study was to clarify the relationship between feeling upon awakening (FA) and time spent using information technology (IT) devices by children in kindergartens, elementary schools, and junior high schools in Shimane, Japan. In October 2008, a self-report survey was distributed to 2075 children in kindergartens (n = 261), elementary schools (n = 1162), and junior high schools (n = 652) in Shimane, Japan. The questionnaire gathered data on sex, school year, feeling upon awakening, and time spent using IT devices after school (television, videos on television, video games, personal computers, and cellular phones). After adjusting for sex and school year, data were analyzed by multivariate logistic regression analysis to calculate odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). A total of 2030 children completed this survey (response rate, 97.8%). Negative FA was associated with watching television more than 2 hours/day (OR = 1.51, 95% CI = 1.23-1.85), playing video games more than 30 minutes/day (1.50, 1.20-1.87), and using personal computers more than 30 minutes/day (1.35, 1.04-1.75). Time spent using IT devices affected the FA of children in kindergarten through junior high school. We propose the development of guidelines regarding the appropriate amount of time this population should spend using IT devices.	f	\N
22043127	Women report increasing sleep difficulties during menopause, but polysomnographic measures do not detect sleep disturbances. We examined whether two spectral analysis sleep measures, delta and beta power, were related to menopausal status. The Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN) Sleep Study compared cross-sectionally spectral sleep measures in women in different stages of menopause. Sleep EEG was recorded in the participants' homes with ambulatory recorders. A multi-ethnic cohort of premenopausal and early perimenopausal (n = 189), late perimenopausal (n = 73), and postmenopausal (n = 59) women. EEG power in the delta and beta frequency bands was calculated for all night NREM and all night REM sleep. Physical, medical, psychological, and socioeconomic data were collected from questionnaires and diaries. Beta EEG power in NREM and REM sleep in late perimenopausal and postmenopausal women exceeded that in pre- and early perimenopausal women. Neither all night delta power nor the trend in delta power across the night differed by menopausal status. In a multivariate model that controlled for the physical, demographic, behavioral, psychological, and health-related changes that accompany menopause, beta power in both NREM and REM sleep EEG was significantly related to menopausal status. The frequency of hot flashes explained part but not all of the relation of beta power to menopausal status. Elevated beta EEG power in late perimenopausal and postmenopausal women provides an objective measure of disturbed sleep quality in these women. Elevated beta EEG activity suggests that arousal level during sleep is higher in these women.	f	\N
22048563	The regulation of sleep and wakefulness is well modeled with two underlying processes: a circadian and a homeostatic one. So far, the parameters and mechanisms of additional sleep-permissive and wake-promoting conditions have been largely overlooked. The present overview focuses on one of these conditions: the effect of skin temperature on the onset and maintenance of sleep, and alertness. Skin temperature is quite well suited to provide the brain with information on sleep-permissive and wake-promoting conditions because it changes with most if not all of them. Skin temperature changes with environmental heat and cold, but also with posture, environmental light, danger, nutritional status, pain, and stress. Its effect on the brain may thus moderate the efficacy by which the clock and homeostat manage to initiate or maintain sleep or wakefulness. The review provides a brief overview of the neuroanatomical pathways and physiological mechanisms by which skin temperature can affect the regulation of sleep and vigilance. In addition, current pitfalls and possibilities of practical applications for sleep enhancement are discussed, including the recent finding of impaired thermal comfort perception in insomniacs.	f	\N
22048613	Typical measures of the useful field of view (UFOV) involve many components of attention. The objective of the current research was to examine the attentional operations that might underlie declines in the UFOV. We used 2 basic attention tasks to characterize the profile of visual attention in UFOV-impaired and -unimpaired observers. Our results suggested that declines in the UFOV result from a deficit in attentional disengagement, not a decrease in attentional breadth or scope. The results suggested that UFOV decline in normal aging can be associated with a specific attentional operation, namely attentional disengagement. These results suggest that the underlying cause of UFOV decline may not be a restriction in the breadth or scope of attention. Because the UFOV is a reliable predictor of driving safety, our results point to attentional components that are critical for the visual behavior of older adults.	f	\N
22048839	Treatments of female sexual dysfunction have been largely unsuccessful because they do not address the psychological factors that underlie female sexuality. Negative self-evaluative processes interfere with the ability to attend and register physiological changes (interoceptive awareness). This study explores the effect of mindfulness meditation training on interoceptive awareness and the three categories of known barriers to healthy sexual functioning: attention, self-judgment, and clinical symptoms. Forty-four college students (30 women) participated in either a 12-week course containing a "meditation laboratory" or an active control course with similar content or laboratory format. Interoceptive awareness was measured by reaction time in rating physiological response to sexual stimuli. Psychological barriers were assessed with self-reported measures of mindfulness and psychological well-being. Women who participated in the meditation training became significantly faster at registering their physiological responses (interoceptive awareness) to sexual stimuli compared with active controls (F(1,28) = 5.45, p = .03, η(p)(2) = 0.15). Female meditators also improved their scores on attention (t = 4.42, df = 11, p = .001), self-judgment, (t = 3.1, df = 11, p = .01), and symptoms of anxiety (t = -3.17, df = 11, p = .009) and depression (t = -2.13, df = 11, p < .05). Improvements in interoceptive awareness were correlated with improvements in the psychological barriers to healthy sexual functioning (r = -0.44 for attention, r = -0.42 for self-judgment, and r = 0.49 for anxiety; all p < .05). Mindfulness-based improvements in interoceptive awareness highlight the potential of mindfulness training as a treatment of female sexual dysfunction.	f	\N
22051208	Individuals who are methamphetamine dependent exhibit higher rates of cognitive dysfunction than healthy people who do not use methamphetamine, and this dysfunction may have a negative effect on the success of behavioral treatments for the disorder. Therefore, a medication that improves cognition, such as modafinil (Provigil), may serve as a useful adjunct to behavioral treatments for methamphetamine dependence. Although cognitive-enhancing effects of modafinil have been reported in several populations, little is known about the effects of modafinil in methamphetamine-dependent individuals. We thus sought to evaluate the effects of modafinil on the cognitive performance of methamphetamine-dependent and healthy individuals. Seventeen healthy subjects and 24 methamphetamine- dependent subjects participated in this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study. Effects of modafinil (200 mg, single oral dose) were assessed on participants' performance on tests of inhibitory control, working memory, and processing speed/attention. Across subjects, modafinil improved performance on a test of sustained attention, with no significant improvement on any other cognitive tests. However, within the methamphetamine-dependent group only, participants with a high baseline frequency of methamphetamine use demonstrated a greater effect of modafinil on tests of inhibitory control and processing speed than those participants with low baseline use of methamphetamine. Although modafinil produced limited effects across all participants, methamphetamine-dependent participants with a high baseline use of methamphetamine demonstrated significant cognitive improvement on modafinil relative to those with low baseline methamphetamine use. These results add to the findings from a clinical trial that suggested that modafinil may be particularly useful in methamphetamine-dependent subjects who use the drug frequently.	f	\N
22059332	Contingent negative variation (CNV) topography, hemispheric asymmetry and time-course were investigated in healthy subjects and non-medicated paranoid schizophrenic patients in two antisaccade paradigms with the short (800-1000 ms) and long (1200-1400 ms) durations of the fixation period. EEG and electrooculogram (EOG) were recorded. Saccade characteristics and mean amplitudes of slow cortical potentials time-locked to peripheral target were analyzed in 23 healthy volunteers and 19 schizophrenic patients. Compared to healthy control subjects, schizophrenic patients had significantly slower antisaccades and committed significantly more erroneous saccades in the both antisaccade tasks. The prolongation of the fixation period resulted in noticeable decrease of error percent in patients group. The analysis of CNV time-course has revealed two distinct stages in both groups. The early CNV stage was represented by a negative wave with the maximal amplitude over midline fronto-central area, and the late stage was characterized by increased CNV amplitude at the midline and left parietal electrode sites. In healthy subjects the simultaneous activation of frontal and parietal areas was observed in the paradigm with the shorter fixation interval; the increase of the fixation period produced consecutive activation of these areas. Schizophrenic patients' CNV amplitude was generally smaller than that of healthy subjects. The most pronounced between-group differences of the negative shift amplitude were revealed at frontal electrode sites during the early CNV stage in both modifications of the antisaccade task. The deficit of frontal activation revealed in patients at the early stage of antisaccade preparatory set in both antisaccadic paradigms may be related to pathogenesis of paranoid schizophrenia.	f	\N
22060144	In four experiments, task-switching processes were investigated with variants of the alternating runs paradigm and the explicit cueing paradigm. The classical diffusion model for binary decisions (Ratcliff, 1978) was used to dissociate different components of task-switching costs. Findings can be reconciled with the view that task-switching processes take place in successive phases as postulated by multiple-components models of task switching (e.g., Mayr & Kliegl, 2003; Ruthruff, Remington, & Johnston, 2001). At an earlier phase, task-set reconfiguration (Rogers & Monsell, 1995) or cue-encoding (Schneider & Logan, 2005) takes place, at a later phase, the response is selected in accord with constraints set in the first phase. Inertia effects (Allport, Styles, & Hsieh, 1994; Allport & Wylie, 2000) were shown to affect this later stage. Additionally, findings support the notion that response caution contributes to both global as well as to local switching costs when task switches are predictable.	f	\N
22069145	Hypothesis-testing performance on Wason's (Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 12:129-140, 1960) 2-4-6 task is typically poor, with only around 20% of participants announcing the to-be-discovered "ascending numbers" rule on their first attempt. Enhanced solution rates can, however, readily be observed with dual-goal (DG) task variants requiring the discovery of two complementary rules, one labeled "DAX" (the standard "ascending numbers" rule) and the other labeled "MED" ("any other number triples"). Two DG experiments are reported in which we manipulated the usefulness of a presented MED exemplar, where usefulness denotes cues that can establish a helpful "contrast class" that can stand in opposition to the presented 2-4-6 DAX exemplar. The usefulness of MED exemplars had a striking facilitatory effect on DAX rule discovery, which supports the importance of contrast-class information in hypothesis testing. A third experiment ruled out the possibility that the useful MED triple seeded the correct rule from the outset and obviated any need for hypothesis testing. We propose that an extension of Oaksford and Chater's (European Journal of Cognitive Psychology 6:149-169, 1994) iterative counterfactual model can neatly capture the mechanisms by which DG facilitation arises.	f	\N
22080448	The flash-drag (FDE) effect refers to the phenomenon in which the position of a stationary flashed object in one location appears shifted in the direction of nearby motion. Over the past decade, it has been debated how bottom-up and top-down processes contribute to this illusion. In this study, we demonstrate that randomly phase-shifting gratings can produce the FDE. In the random motion sequence we used, the FDE inducer (a sinusoidal grating) jumped to a random phase every 125 ms and stood still until the next jump. Because this random sequence could not be tracked attentively, it was impossible for the observer to discern the jump direction at the time of the flash. By sorting the data based on the flash's onset time relative to each jump time in the random motion sequence, we found that a large FDE with a broad temporal tuning occurred around 50 to 150 ms before the jump and that this effect was not correlated with any other jumps in the past or future. These results suggest that as few as two frames of unpredictable apparent motion can preattentively cause the FDE with a broad temporal tuning.	f	\N
22086650	The effects of bilingual proficiency on recognition memory were examined in an experiment with Spanish-English bilinguals. Participants learned lists of words in English and Spanish under shallow- and deep-encoding conditions. Overall, hit rates were higher, discrimination greater, and response times shorter in the nondominant language, consistent with effects previously observed for lower frequency words. Levels-of-processing effects in hit rates, discrimination, and response time were stronger in the dominant language. Specifically, with shallow encoding, the advantage for the nondominant language was larger than with deep encoding. The results support the idea that memory performance in the nondominant language is impacted by both the greater demand for cognitive resources and the lower familiarity of the words.	f	\N
22088577	Depression and anxiety disorders (ADs) are highly co-morbid, but the reason for this co-morbidity is unclear. One possibility is that they predispose one another. An informative way to examine interactions between disorders without the confounds present in patient populations is to manipulate the psychological processes thought to underlie the pathological states in healthy individuals. In this study we therefore asked whether a model of the sad mood in depression can enhance psychophysiological responses (startle) to a model of the anxiety in ADs. We predicted that sad mood would increase anxious anxiety-potentiated startle responses. In a between-subjects design, participants (n=36) completed either a sad mood induction procedure (MIP; n=18) or a neutral MIP (n=18). Startle responses were assessed during short-duration predictable electric shock conditions (fear-potentiated startle) or long-duration unpredictable threat of shock conditions (anxiety-potentiated startle). Induced sadness enhanced anxiety- but not fear-potentiated startle. This study provides support for the hypothesis that sadness can increase anxious responding measured by the affective startle response. This, taken together with prior evidence that ADs can contribute to depression, provides initial experimental support for the proposition that ADs and depression are frequently co-morbid because they may be mutually reinforcing.	f	\N
22090187	In three experiments, we tested whether sequentially coding two visual stimuli can create a spatial misperception of a visual moving stimulus. In Experiment 1, we showed that a spatial misperception, the flash-lag effect, is accompanied by a similar temporal misperception of first perceiving the flash and only then a change of the moving stimulus, when in fact the two events were exactly simultaneous. In Experiment 2, we demonstrated that when the spatial misperception of a flash-lag effect is absent, the temporal misperception is also absent. In Experiment 3, we extended these findings and showed that if the stimulus conditions require coding first a flash and subsequently a nearby moving stimulus, a spatial flash-lag effect is found, with the position of the moving stimulus being misperceived as shifted in the direction of its motion, whereas this spatial misperception is reversed so that the moving stimulus is misperceived as shifted in a direction opposite to its motion when the conditions require coding first the moving stimulus and then the flash. Together, the results demonstrate that sequential coding of two stimuli can lead to a spatial misperception whose direction can be predicted from the order of coding the moving object versus the flash. We propose an attentional sequential-coding explanation for the flash-lag effect and discuss its explanatory power with respect to related illusions (e.g., the Fröhlich effect) and other explanations.	f	\N
22090272	Prenatal deficit of androgens or androgen action results in atypical genitalia in individuals with XY disorders of sex development (XY,DSD). XY,DSD include mainly disorders of gonadal development and testosterone synthesis and action. Previously, most XY,DSD individuals were assigned to the female sex. Constructive genital surgery allowing heterosexual intercourse, gonadectomy, and hormone therapy for feminization were often performed. However, outcome studies are scarce. Our objective was evaluation of satisfaction with genital surgery and sexual life in adults with XY,DSD. We evaluated 57 individuals with XY,DSD from the German multicenter clinical evaluation study with a condition-specific questionnaire. The individuals were divided into subgroups reflecting the absence/presence of partial androgen effect or genital constructive surgery. Dissatisfaction with function of the surgical result (47.1%) and clitoral arousal (47.4%) was high in XY,DSD partially androgenized females after feminization surgery. Dissatisfaction with overall sex life (37.5%) and sexual anxieties (44.2%) were substantial in all XY,DSD individuals. Problems with desire (70.6%), arousal (52.9%), and dyspareunia (56.3%) were significant in XY,DSD complete females. 46,XY partially androgenized females reported significantly more often partners of female (9.1%) or both sexes (18.2%) and dyspareunia (56.5%) compared with controls. Individuals with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome stated significant problems with desire (81.8%), arousal (63.6%), and dyspareunia (70%). Care should be improved in XY,DSD patients. Constructive genital surgery should be minimized and performed mainly in adolescence or adulthood with the patients' consent. Individuals with DSD and their families should be informed with sensibility about the condition. Multidisciplinary care with psychological and nonprofessional support (parents, peers, and patients' support groups) is mandatory from child to adulthood.	f	\N
22091581	Much has been learned about the age-related cognitive declines associated with the attentional processes that utilize perceptual features during visual search. However, questions remain regarding the ability of older adults to use scene information to guide search processes, perhaps as a compensatory mechanism for declines in perceptual processes. The authors had younger and older adults search pseudorealistic scenes for targets with strong or no spatial associations. Both younger and older adults exhibited reaction time benefits when searching for a target that was associated with a specific scene region. Eye movement analyses revealed that all observers dedicated most of their time to scanning target-consistent display regions and that guidance to these regions was often evident on the initial saccade of a trial. Both the benefits and costs related to contextual information were larger for older adults, suggesting that this information was relied on heavily to guide search processes towards the target.	f	\N
22093142	To assess whether an intensive multifactorial treatment can reduce cognitive decrements and cognitive decline in screen-detected type 2 diabetes. The multinational ADDITION-study, a cluster-randomized parallel group trial in patients with screen-detected type 2 diabetes, compared the effectiveness of intensive multifactorial treatment (IT; lifestyle advice and strict regulation of metabolic parameters) with routine care (RC) on cardiovascular outcome. In The Netherlands randomization was stratified according to practice organization. Allocation was concealed from patients. The present study assessed the effect of IT on cognition through two neuropsychological assessments (NPA) on two occasions. The assessments took place three and six years after the start of the intervention. Non-diabetic controls served as reference group. The first NPA was performed in 183 patients (IT: 97; RC: 86) and 69 controls. The second NPA was performed in 135 patients (IT: 71; RC: 64) and 55 controls. Primary outcome was a composite score, including the domains memory, information-processing speed and attention and executive function. Comparisons between the treatment groups were performed with multi-level analyses. The first NPA showed no differences between the treatment groups (mean difference composite z-score: 0.00; 95%-CI -0.16 to 0.16; IT vs RC). Over the next three years cognitive decline in the diabetic groups was within the range of the reference group and did not differ between the treatment arms (difference decline between diabetic groups -0.12; -0.24 to 0.01; IT vs RC). Six years of IT in screen-detected type 2 diabetes had no benefit on cognitive functioning over RC.	f	\N
22095256	We used a probe-dot procedure to examine the roles of excitatory attentional guidance and distractor suppression in search for movement-form conjunctions. Participants in Experiment 1 completed a conjunction (moving X amongst moving Os and static Xs) and two single-feature (moving X amongst moving Os, and static X amongst static Os) conditions. "Active" participants searched for the target, whereas "passive" participants viewed the displays without responding. Subsequently, both groups located (left or right) a probe dot appearing in either an occupied or an unoccupied location. In the conjunction condition, the active group located probes presented on static distractors more slowly than probes presented on moving distractors, reversing the direction of the difference found within the passive group. This disadvantage for probes on static items was much stronger in conjunction than in single-feature search. The same pattern of results was replicated in Experiment 2, which used a go/no-go procedure. Experiment 3 extended the go/no-go procedure to the case of search for a static target and revealed increased probe localisation times as a consequence of active search, primarily for probes on moving distractor items. The results demonstrated attentional guidance by inhibition of distractors in conjunction search.	f	\N
22098127	The sustained attention to response task comprises withholding key presses to one in nine of 225 target stimuli; it proved to be a sensitive measure of vigilance in a small group of narcoleptics. We studied sustained attention to response task results in 96 patients from a tertiary narcolepsy referral centre. Diagnoses according to ICSD-2 criteria were narcolepsy with (n=42) and without cataplexy (n=5), idiopathic hypersomnia without long sleep time (n=37), and obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (n=12). The sustained attention to response task was administered prior to each of five multiple sleep latency test sessions. Analysis concerned error rates, mean reaction time, reaction time variability and post-error slowing, as well as the correlation of sustained attention to response task results with mean latency of the multiple sleep latency test and possible time of day influences. Median sustained attention to response task error scores ranged from 8.4 to 11.1, and mean reaction times from 332 to 366ms. Sustained attention to response task error score and mean reaction time did not differ significantly between patient groups. Sustained attention to response task error score did not correlate with multiple sleep latency test sleep latency. Reaction time was more variable as the error score was higher. Sustained attention to response task error score was highest for the first session. We conclude that a high sustained attention to response task error rate reflects vigilance impairment in excessive daytime sleepiness irrespective of its cause. The sustained attention to response task and the multiple sleep latency test reflect different aspects of sleep/wakefulness and are complementary.	f	\N
22098265	The concept of the "mnemonic scotoma," a spatially circumscribed region of working memory impairment produced by unilateral lesions of the PFC, is central to the view that PFC is critical for the short-term retention of information. Presented here, however, are previously unpublished data that offer an alternative, nonmnemonic interpretation of this pattern of deficit. In their study, Wajima and Sawaguchi [Wajima, K., & Sawaguchi, T. The role of GABAergic inhibiton in suppressing perseverative responses in the monkey prefrontal cortex. Neuroscience Research, 50(Suppl. 1), P3-P317, 2004] applied the GABA(A) antagonist bicuculline methiodide unilaterally to the PFC of two monkeys while they performed an oculomotor delayed-response task. Consistent with previous studies, errors for the initial memory-guided saccade were markedly higher when the cued location fell into the region of the visual field affected by the infusion. These erroneous saccades tended to select an alternative target location (out of a possible 16) that had not been cued on that trial. By extending the analysis window, however, it was observed that the second, "corrective" saccade often acquired the location that had been cued on that trial. Further analysis of the erroneous initial saccades indicated that they tended to be directed to a location that had been relevant on the previous trial. Thus, the deficit was not one of "forgetting" the cued location. Rather, it was one of selecting between currently and previously relevant locations. These findings suggest a need for a reconsideration of the concept of the mnemonic scotoma, which in turn invites a reconsideration of functional interpretations of sustained neuronal activity in PFC.	f	\N
22099868	Neurophysiological studies to evaluate spatial attention in children with primary headache are lacking. Tactile spatial attention modulates the N140 somatosensory evoked potential (SEP) amplitude. The aims of the study are: (1) to investigate the effect of spatial attention on the N140 amplitude in children with migraine and tension-type headache (TTH) and in healthy children, and (2) to correlate the neurophysiological results with a neuropsychological test for spatial attention. We studied 16 patients with migraine without aura (MoA), 12 TTH children and 10 healthy subjects. "Deux Barrage" test for spatial attention was administered. SEPs were recorded in a neutral condition (NC) and in a spatial attention condition (SAC). No significant differences in neuropsychological measures were found between MoA, TTH and healthy subjects. The N140 amplitude increase during SAC, as compared to NC, was significantly higher in patients than in healthy controls. Migraineurs showed a positive correlation between the N140 amplitude increase during SAC and their neuropsychological performance. Although spatial attention performances in children with headache are as good as in controls, the N140 amplitude increase during SAC in headache patients suggests that the psychophysiological mechanisms subtending spatial attention are different from those in healthy children.	f	\N
22100147	Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is typically associated with long-term memory dysfunction. The frontal lobes support high-level cognition comprising executive skills and working memory that is vital for daily life functioning. Deficits in these functions have been increasingly reported in TLE. Evidence from both the neuropsychological and neuroimaging literature suggests both executive function and working memory are compromised in the presence of TLE. In relation to executive impairment, particular focus has been paid to set shifting as measured by the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task. Other discrete executive functions such as decision-making and theory of mind also appear vulnerable but have received little attention. With regard to working memory, the medial temporal lobe structures appear have a more critical role, but with emerging evidence of hippocampal dependent and independent processes. The relative role of underlying pathology and seizure spread is likely to have considerable bearing upon the cognitive phenotype and trajectory in TLE. The identification of the nature of frontal lobe dysfunction in TLE thus has important clinical implications for prognosis and surgical management. Longitudinal neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies assessing frontal lobe function in TLE patients pre- and postoperatively will improve our understanding further.	f	\N
22100380	Self harm is a serious public health problem worldwide. Implicit attitude measures offer a novel method of exploring associations with self harm (SH). Here we used implicit measures in order to (i) examine implicit evaluative and arousal associations with SH (ii) compare the discriminatory power of implicit and explicit attitude measures in a non-clinical sample at high risk of SH. Two experiments using Go No-Go Association (GNAT) tasks designed to tap implicit attitudes toward SH in an undergraduate sample. In Study One logistic regression analysis demonstrated that explicit, rather than implicit measures successfully discriminated between SH cases and controls which contrasts with previous research. Faster reaction times were observed for negative implicit associations (SH and 'I dislike') compared to positive implicit associations (SH and 'I like') for both SH cases and controls. The SH group were faster to respond to arousal implicit associations compared to implicit sedation associations. Study Two extended this finding to demonstrate associations between evaluative/arousal GNATs and self-reported functions of SH. Internal motivations for self harmful behaviour were significantly related to an implicit sedation association with SH, whereas interpersonal motivations were associated with an implicit arousal association with SH. These findings are consonant with existing functional accounts of SH. Longitudinal data is necessary to identify whether the attitudes assessed could predict future SH. The findings provide novel experimental support for the hypothesised role of automatic/affect regulation and social/interpersonal functions of SH. Implications for intervention are discussed.	f	\N
22104981	This study examined the effect of armodafinil on late-in-shift clinical condition, wakefulness, and overall functioning of patients with shift work disorder. Patients with clinically diagnosed shift work disorder received armodafinil or placebo on nights worked for 6 weeks. Patients included in the study experienced late-in-shift sleepiness between 4 AM and 8 AM (Karolinska Sleepiness Scale ≥6) and were functionally impaired (Global Assessment of Functioning <70). Efficacy was determined by improvements in clinical condition (Clinical Global Impression-Change), late-in-the-shift Karolinska Sleepiness Scale score, and overall Global Assessment of Functioning score. Tolerability was assessed. Patients receiving armodafinil showed significant improvements in late-in-shift clinical condition, wakefulness, and global functioning, compared to placebo at final visit. Armodafinil was generally well tolerated. Armodafinil improved clinical condition and wakefulness late in the night shift of patients with shift work disorder. Overall patient functioning was also improved.	f	\N
22114879	Contemporary research indicates that brain development occurs during childhood and into early adulthood, particularly in certain regions. A critical question is whether premature or atypical hormone exposures impact brain development (e.g., structure) or function (e.g., neuropsychological functioning). The current study enrolled 40 girls (aged 6-8 years) diagnosed with premature adrenarche (PA) and a comparison group of 36 girls with on-time maturation. It was hypothesized that girls with PA would demonstrate lower IQ and performance on several neuropsychological tasks. The potential for a sexually dimorphic neuropsychological profile in PA was also explored. No significant univariate or multivariate group differences emerged for any neuropsychological instrument. However, effect size confidence intervals contained medium-sized group differences at the subscale level. On-time girls performed better on verbal, working memory, and visuospatial tasks. Girls with PA showed improved attention, but not a sexually dimorphic profile. These results, though preliminary, suggest that premature maturation may influence neuropsychological functioning.	f	\N
22114988	The present study describes the development and validation of an instrument designed to examine athletes' selective attention returning to competition following a musculoskeletal injury--the attention questionnaire of rehabilitated athletes returning to competition (AQ-RARC). Using a sample of 186 rehabilitated athletes, exploratory factor analysis revealed a 10-item model that examines functional attention and distraction attention. Confirmatory factor analysis further supported the factorial validity of the AQ-RARC with another sample of 184 rehabilitated athletes. The two subscales have good internal consistency and test-retest reliability. The concurrent and discriminant validity of the new instrument were confirmed by examining correlations between the AQ-RARC with other constructs. It is concluded that the AQ-RARC is a valid and reliable instrument that can be used for clinical and research purposes.	f	\N
22115281	To explore the idea of a perceptual distortion of space in spatial neglect, neglect patients, age-matched healthy controls and right hemisphere control patients judged the vanishing point of horizontally and vertically-moving stimuli. Hemifield of presentation and movement direction of the stimulus presentation was manipulated. The results suggest that neglect patients show a stronger response bias in the direction of the moving stimuli ("representational momentum") than healthy and right hemisphere controls. Furthermore, neglect patients, but not the control groups, showed a direction-specific response whereby the presence of neglect was associated with a larger representational momentum for leftward-moving stimuli. The one left-hemisphere patient with right-sided neglect showed the opposite effect. Thus, neglect patients showed a relative overextension into their neglected side of space. While these findings are in line with the idea of an extension in the representation of contralesional space, other explanations such as deficient spatial remapping, impairments in smooth pursuit and distortions in memorized visuo-motor movements are considered.	f	\N
22121850	Previous research has shown that social drinkers continue to show attentional bias toward alcohol-related stimuli even after consuming a moderate dose of alcohol. In contrast, little is known about how alcohol acutely affects attentional bias in groups at risk to develop alcohol-related problems, such as adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Such individuals may show increased attentional bias following alcohol relative to nonclinical controls. The present study tested this hypothesis by examining acute alcohol effects on attentional bias in 20 social drinkers with ADHD and 20 social drinkers with no history of ADHD. Participants performed a visual-probe task after receiving the following doses of alcohol: 0.64 g/kg, 0.32 g/kg, and 0.0 g/kg (placebo). Those in the ADHD group showed increased attentional bias under active alcohol doses, whereas attentional bias was similar across doses in the control group. Attentional bias predicted ad libitum alcohol consumption during a taste-rating session. This relation was observed only in the ADHD group. These findings indicate that an acute alcohol dose increases attentional bias in adults with ADHD. Further, attentional bias appears to be a predictor of ad libitum consumption in this group.	f	\N
22131446	Has evolution optimized visual selective attention to make the best possible use of all information available? If so, then Bayesian optimal performance in a localization task is achieved by optimally weighting the visual evidence with one's prior spatial expectations. In 2 psychophysical experiments, participants conducted covert target localization where both visual cues and prior expectations were available. The amount of information conveyed by the visual evidence was held constant, while the degree of belief was manipulated via peripheral cuing (Experiment 1) and spatial probabilities (Experiment 2). A number of findings result: (1) People appear to optimally combine slightly biased prior beliefs with sensory evidence. (2) These biases are directly comparable to those descriptively accounted for by the Prospect Theory. (3) Probabilistic information about a target's upcoming location is integrated identically, irrespective of whether endogenous or exogenous cuing is used. (4) In localization tasks, spatial attention can be understood and quantitatively modeled as a set of prior expectations over space that modulate incoming noisy sensory evidence.	f	\N
22133872	A randomized control trial comparing two social communication treatments for children with autism spectrum disorder examined the effect of treatment on object interest. Thirty-two children, 18-60 months, were randomly assigned to the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) or Responsive Education and Prelinguistic Milieu Teaching (RPMT) condition. Assessment of object interest was conducted in an unstructured play session with different toys, activities, adult, and location than experienced in treatment. Results indicated children in the RPMT condition showed greater increases in object interest as compared to children in the PECS condition. Because child characteristics such as interest in objects may influence response to interventions using object play as contexts for treatment, it is important to improve our understanding of whether intervention can affect object interest.	f	\N
22139023	A series of four experiments investigating gaze behavior and decision making in the context of wayfinding is reported. Participants were presented with screenshots of choice points taken in large virtual environments. Each screenshot depicted alternative path options. In Experiment 1, participants had to decide between them to find an object hidden in the environment. In Experiment 2, participants were first informed about which path option to take as if following a guided route. Subsequently, they were presented with the same images in random order and had to indicate which path option they chose during initial exposure. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate (1) that participants have a tendency to choose the path option that featured the longer line of sight, and (2) a robust gaze bias towards the eventually chosen path option. In Experiment 2, systematic differences in gaze behavior towards the alternative path options between encoding and decoding were observed. Based on data from Experiments 1 and 2 and two control experiments ensuring that fixation patterns were specific to the spatial tasks, we develop a tentative model of gaze behavior during wayfinding decision making suggesting that particular attention was paid to image areas depicting changes in the local geometry of the environments such as corners, openings, and occlusions. Together, the results suggest that gaze during a wayfinding tasks is directed toward, and can be predicted by, a subset of environmental features and that gaze bias effects are a general phenomenon of visual decision making.	f	\N
22141746	It has been shown that, when observing an action, infants can rely on either outcome selection information (i.e., actions that express a choice between potential outcomes) or means selection information (i.e., actions that are causally efficient toward the outcome) in their goal attribution. However, no research has investigated the relationship between these two types of information when they are present simultaneously. In an experiment that addressed this question directly, we found that when outcome selection information could disambiguate the goal of the action (e.g., the action is directed toward one of two potential targets), but means selection information could not (i.e., the action is not efficiently adjusted to the situational constraints), 7- and 9-month-old infants did not attribute a goal to an observed action. This finding suggests that means selection information takes primacy over outcome selection information. The early presence of this bias sheds light on the nature of the notion of goal in action understanding.	f	\N
22142207	Past studies have revealed that encountering negative events interferes with cognitive processing of subsequent stimuli. The present study investigates whether negative events affect semantic and perceptual processing differently. Presentation of negative pictures produced slower reaction times than neutral or positive pictures in tasks that require semantic processing, such as natural or man-made judgments about drawings of objects, commonness judgments about objects, and categorical judgments about pairs of words. In contrast, negative picture presentation did not slow down judgments in subsequent perceptual processing (e.g., color judgments about words, size judgments about objects). The subjective arousal level of negative pictures did not modulate the interference effects on semantic or perceptual processing. These findings indicate that encountering negative emotional events interferes with semantic processing of subsequent stimuli more strongly than perceptual processing, and that not all types of subsequent cognitive processing are impaired by negative events.	f	\N
22145814	We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to evaluate functional activity in the brain of adolescents with spina bifida when performing selective attention and response inhibition tasks. We then compared the results to that of age-matched controls. Our results showed that adolescents with spina bifida had decreased frontal and superior parietal activation and more apparently low involvement of left brain hemisphere during these tasks. Our results indicated activation deficits and possibly abnormal functional organization in adolescents with spina bifida and associated pathologies such as hydrocephalus.	f	\N
22150963	The present study addresses the suitability of electrodermal lability as an indicator of individual vulnerability to the effects of total sleep deprivation. During two complete circadian cycles, the effects of 48h of total sleep deprivation on physiological measures (electrodermal activity and body temperature), subjective sleepiness (measured by visual analogue scale and tiredness symptom scale) and task performance (reaction time and errors in a go/no go task) were investigated. Analyses of variance with repeated measures revealed substantial decreases of the number of skin conductance responses, body temperature, and increases for subjective sleepiness, reaction time and error rates. For all changes, strong circadian oscillations could be observed as well. The electrodermal more labile subgroup reported higher subjective sleepiness compared with electrodermal more stable participants, but showed no differences in the time courses of body temperature and task performance. Therefore, electrodermal lability seems to be a specific indicator for the changes in subjective sleepiness due to total sleep deprivation and circadian oscillations, but not a suitable indicator for vulnerability to the effects of sleep deprivation per se.	f	\N
22152279	In healthy individuals and those with insomnia, poor sleep quality is associated with decrements in performance on tests of cognition, especially executive function. Sleep disturbances and cognitive deficits are both prevalent in Parkinson's disease (PD). Sleep problems occur in over 75% of patients, with sleep fragmentation and decreased sleep efficiency being the most common sleep complaints, but their relation to cognition is unknown. We examined the association between sleep quality and cognition in PD. In 35 non-demented individuals with PD and 18 normal control adults (NC), sleep was measured using 24-hr wrist actigraphy over 7 days. Cognitive domains tested included attention and executive function, memory and psychomotor function. In both groups, poor sleep was associated with worse performance on tests of attention/executive function but not memory or psychomotor function. In the PD group, attention/executive function was predicted by sleep efficiency, whereas memory and psychomotor function were not predicted by sleep quality. Psychomotor and memory function were predicted by motor symptom severity. This study is the first to demonstrate that sleep quality in PD is significantly correlated with cognition and that it differentially impacts attention and executive function, thereby furthering our understanding of the link between sleep and cognition.	f	\N
22154736	The question whether memory aberrations in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) also manifest as an increased production of false memories is important for both theoretical and practical reasons, but is yet unsolved. Therefore, for the present study we investigated veridical and false recognition in PTSD with a new scenic variant of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, which was administered to traumatized individuals with PTSD (n=32), traumatized individuals without PTSD (n=30), and non-traumatized controls (n=30). The PTSD group neither produced higher rates of false memories nor expressed more confidence in errors, but did show inferior memory sensitivity. Whereas depressive symptoms did not correlate with veridical nor false recognition, state dissociation was positively associated with false memories.	f	\N
22160371	The adaptive threat-detection advantage takes the form of a preferential orienting of attention to threatening scenes. In this study, we compared attention to social scenes in 15 high-functioning individuals with autism (ASD) and matched typically developing (TD) individuals. Eye-tracking was recorded while participants were presented with pairs of scenes, either emotional positive-neutral, emotional negative-neutral or neutral-neutral scenes. Early allocation of attention, the first image fixated in each pair, differed between groups: contrary to TD individuals who showed the typical threat-detection advantage towards negative images, the ASD group failed to show a bias toward threat-related scenes. Later processing of stimuli, indicated by the total fixation to the images during the 3-s presentation, was found unaffected in the ASD group. These results support the hypothesis of an early atypical allocation of attention towards natural social scenes in ASD, that is compensated in later stages of visual processing.	f	\N
22171909	Insulin resistance (IR) and disorders of glucose metabolism (DGM) are risk factors for cardiovascular diseases. There are different reasons for development of DGM in patients with obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS) and this association is controversial. We investigated the frequency of DGM and IR in patients with OSAS and determining factors for these disorders. One hundred and twelve untreated patients with OSAS and 19 non-apnoeic snoring subjects upon polysomnography were included in this study. Oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) was performed in all subjects who had fasting blood glucose < 125 mg/dl. IR method was analysed using homeostasis assessment model (HOMA-IR). Diabetes mellitus (DM), impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) and impaired fasting glucose (IFG) were defined according to values of OGTT. DGM was defined as having one of the diagnoses of DM, IGT or IFG. Subjective sleepiness of all subjects was assessed with Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS). Excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) was described as ESS score ≥ 10. Fasting glucose and the rate of DGM in patients with OSAS were higher than in non-apnoeic snoring subjects. DGM were shown in % 15.7 of non-apnoeic snoring subjects, 29.6% of mild sleep apnoea, 50% of moderate sleep apnoea and 61.8% of severe sleep apnoea. The rate of DGM in patients with moderate and severe OSAS was higher than in non-apnoeic snoring subjects and in patients with severe OSAS higher than in patients with mild OSAS. DGM are associated with body mass index (BMI), severity of OSAS, arousal index and EDS. In addition, IR is associated with apnoea hypopnoea index, BMI, arousal index and ESS score. Obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome is associated with high frequency of DGM. In addition, the progression of disease from simple snoring and mild OSAS to severe OSAS increases the rate of DGM. Thus, DGM especially in patients with severe OSAS should be examined in regular periods.	f	\N
22182346	Little is known about the neurobiological foundations of psychotherapy for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Prior studies have shown that PTSD is associated with altered processing of threatening and aversive stimuli. It remains unclear whether this functional abnormality can be changed by psychotherapy. This is the first randomized controlled treatment trial that examines whether narrative exposure therapy (NET) causes changes in affective stimulus processing in patients with chronic PTSD. 34 refugees with PTSD were randomly assigned to a NET group or to a waitlist control (WLC) group. At pre-test and at four-months follow-up, the diagnostics included the assessment of clinical variables and measurements of neuromagnetic oscillatory brain activity (steady-state visual evoked fields, ssVEF) resulting from exposure to aversive pictures compared to neutral pictures. PTSD as well as depressive symptom severity scores declined in the NET group, whereas symptoms persisted in the WLC group. Only in the NET group, parietal and occipital activity towards threatening pictures increased significantly after therapy. Our results indicate that NET causes an increase of activity associated with cortical top-down regulation of attention towards aversive pictures. The increase of attention allocation to potential threat cues might allow treated patients to re-appraise the actual danger of the current situation and, thereby, reducing PTSD symptoms. REGISTRATION OF THE CLINICAL TRIAL: Number: NCT00563888Name: "Change of Neural Network Indicators Through Narrative Treatment of PTSD in Torture Victims" ULR: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00563888.	f	\N
22185491	The topic of spatial attention is of great relevance for researchers in various fields, including neuropsychology, cognitive neuroscience, and cognitive psychology, as well as for clinical practice. Deficits of spatial attentional arising from parietal brain damage remain largely confined to the left visual field. The mechanisms underlying this hemispheric asymmetry are still elusive. We mimicked the neuropsychological syndrome of contralesional extinction by temporarily inducing a spatial attentional bias in healthy volunteers with TMS. We investigated whether directing covert spatial attention could enhance or, more importantly, counteract the resulting behavioral deficits. Although both the left and right parietal TMS induced contralateral extinction, only left hemifield extinction following right parietal TMS was severely aggravated by a competing stimulus in the ipsilesional (right) hemifield. We put forward the hypothesis that an asymmetry with respect to the ability of detaching attention from a distractor is contributing to the right hemispheric lateralization with regard to extinction. On a broader level, we suggest that "virtual patients" might be used for evaluating neuropsychological treatment in an early stage of development, reducing the burden on actual patients.	f	\N
22197881	Temporal orienting enhances early (N1) and late (P3) stages of auditory processing. However, the functional significance of these effects has not been settled yet. The present study tested a motor inhibition account on the temporal orienting P3 effect to non-target stimuli. A temporal cuing paradigm was used, where the level of motor preparation (high vs. low) was varied: If motor preparation is higher, more inhibition is necessary to withhold a response when a non-target is presented at the attended time point. Consequently, if the enhanced P3 to temporally attended non-targets reflected increased motor inhibition, higher motor preparation should further enhance the P3. Overall, temporal orienting enhanced both the N1 and the P3, thus replicating earlier findings. Moreover, the temporal orienting P3 effect was larger when motor preparation was higher. Inconsistent with the motor-inhibition account, however, the P3 to temporally attended non-targets did not differ as a function of motor preparation.	f	\N
22201462	Human actions are guided either by endogenous action plans or by external stimuli in the environment. These two types of action control seem to be mediated by neurophysiologically and functionally distinct systems that interfere if an endogenously planned action suddenly has to be performed in response to an exogenous stimulus. In this case, the endogenous representation has to be deactivated first to give way to the exogenous system. Here we show that interference of endogenous and exogenous action control is not limited to motor-related aspects but also affects the perception of action-related stimuli. Participants associated two actions with contingent sensory effects in learning blocks. In subsequent test blocks, preparing one of these actions specifically impaired responding to the associated effect in an exogenous speeded detection task, yielding a blindness-like effect for arbitrary, learned action effects. In accordance with the theory of event coding, this finding suggests that action planning influences perception even in the absence of any physical similarities between action and to-be-perceived stimuli.	f	\N
22201464	The attention literature distinguishes two general mechanisms by which attention can benefit performance: gain (or resource) models and orienting (or switching) models. In gain models, processing efficiency is a function of a spatial distribution of capacity or resources; in orienting models, an attentional spotlight must be aligned with the stimulus location, and processing efficiency is a function of when this occurs. Although they involve different processing mechanisms, these models are difficult to distinguish empirically. We compared performance with abrupt-onset and no-onset Gabor patch stimuli in a cued detection task in which we obtained distributions of reaction time (RT) and accuracy as a function of stimulus contrast. In comparison to abrupt-onset stimuli, RTs to miscued no-onset stimuli were increased and accuracy was reduced. Modeling the data with the integrated system model of Philip L. Smith and Roger Ratcliff (2009) provided evidence for reallocation of processing resources during the course of a trial, consistent with an orienting account. Our results support a view of attention in which processing efficiency depends on a dynamic spatiotemporal distribution of resources that has both gain and orienting properties.	f	\N
22205494	Attention plays a crucial role in the Stroop task, which requires attending to less automatically processed task-relevant attributes of stimuli and the suppression of involuntary processing of task-irrelevant attributes. The experiment assessed the allocation of attention by monitoring eye movements throughout congruent and incongruent trials. Participants viewed two stimulus arrays that differed regarding the amount of items and their numerical value and judged by manual response which of the arrays contained more items, while disregarding their value. Different viewing patterns were observed between congruent (e.g., larger array of numbers with higher value) and incongruent (e.g., larger array of numbers with lower value) trials. The direction of first saccades was guided by task-relevant information but in the incongruent condition directed more frequently towards task-irrelevant information. The data further suggest that the difference in the deployment of attention between conditions changes throughout a trial, likely reflecting the impact and resolution of the conflict. For instance, stimulus arrays in line with the correct response were attended for longer and fixations were longer for incongruent trials, with the second fixation and considering all fixations. By the time of the correct response, this latter difference between conditions was absent. Possible mechanisms underlying eye movement patterns are discussed.	f	\N
22207631	Previous findings suggest that women are more likely than men to take on the submissive role during sexual activities (e.g., waiting for their partner to initiate and orchestrate sexual activities), often to the detriment of their sexual satisfaction. Extending previous research on gender role motivation, the authors recruited 181 heterosexual couples to examine scripted sexual behavior, motivation for such behavior, and relationship outcomes (sexual satisfaction, perceptions of closeness, and relationship satisfaction) for both women and their partners. Using the actor-partner interdependence model, path analyses revealed that women's submissive behavior had negative links to personal sexual satisfaction and their partner's sexual satisfaction but only when their submission was inconsistent with their sexual preferences. Moreover, the authors show there are negative downstream consequences of diminished sexual satisfaction on perceptions of closeness and overall relationship satisfaction for both partners in the relationship.	f	\N
22209816	Visual search, a vital task for humans and animals, has also become a common and important tool for studying many topics central to active vision and cognition ranging from spatial vision, attention, and oculomotor control to memory, decision making, and rewards. While visual search often seems effortless to humans, trying to recreate human visual search abilities in machines has represented an incredible challenge for computer scientists and engineers. What are the brain computations that ensure successful search? This review article draws on efforts from various subfields and discusses the mechanisms and strategies the brain uses to optimize visual search: the psychophysical evidence, their neural correlates, and if unknown, possible loci of the neural computations. Mechanisms and strategies include use of knowledge about the target, distractor, background statistical properties, location probabilities, contextual cues, scene context, rewards, target prevalence, and also the role of saliency, center-surround organization of search templates, and eye movement plans. I provide overviews of classic and contemporary theories of covert attention and eye movements during search explaining their differences and similarities. To allow the reader to anchor some of the laboratory findings to real-world tasks, the article includes interviews with three expert searchers: a radiologist, a fisherman, and a satellite image analyst.	f	\N
22215929	To evaluate reliability of single objective tests in assessing sleepiness. Subjects who completed polysomnography underwent a 4-nap multiple sleep latency test (MSLT) the following day. Prior to each nap opportunity on MSLT, subjects performed the psychomotor vigilance test (PVT) and divided attention driving task (DADT). Results of single versus multiple test administrations were compared using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and adjusted for test administration order effects to explore time of day effects. Measures were explored as continuous and binary (i.e., impaired or not impaired). Community-based sample evaluated at a tertiary, university-based sleep center. 372 adult commercial vehicle operators oversampled for increased obstructive sleep apnea risk. N/A. AS CONTINUOUS MEASURES, ICC WERE AS FOLLOWS: MSLT 0.45, PVT median response time 0.69, PVT number of lapses 0.51, 10-min DADT tracking error 0.87, 20-min DADT tracking error 0.90. Based on binary outcomes, ICC were: MSLT 0.63, PVT number of lapses 0.85, 10-min DADT 0.95, 20-min DADT 0.96. Statistically significant time of day effects were seen in both the MSLT and PVT but not the DADT. Correlation between ESS and different objective tests was strongest for MSLT, range [-0.270 to -0.195] and persisted across all time points. Single DADT and PVT administrations are reliable measures of sleepiness. A single MSLT administration can reasonably discriminate individuals with MSL < 8 minutes. These results support the use of a single administration of some objective tests of sleepiness when performed under controlled conditions in routine clinical care.	f	\N
22216305	Some authors have speculated that the cognitive component (P3) of the Event-Related Potential (ERP) can function as a psychophysiological measure of sexual interest. The aim of this study was to determine if the P3 ERP component in a workload task can be used as a specific and objective measure of sexual motivation by comparing the neurophysiologic response to stimuli of motivational relevance with different levels of valence and arousal. A total of 30 healthy volunteers watched different films clips with erotic, horror, social-positive and social-negative content, while answering an auditory oddball paradigm. Erotic film clips resulted in larger interference when compared to both the social-positive and auditory alone conditions. Horror film clips resulted in the highest levels of interference with smaller P3 amplitudes than erotic and also than social-positive, social-negative and auditory alone condition. No gender differences were found. Both horror and erotic film clips significantly decreased heart rate (HR) when compared to both social-positive and social-negative films. The erotic film clips significantly increased the skin conductance level (SCL) compared to the social-negative films. The horror film clips significantly increased the SCL compared to both social-positive and social-negative films. Both the highly arousing erotic and non-erotic (horror) movies produced the largest decrease in the P3 amplitude, a decrease in the HR and an increase in the SCL. These data support the notion that this workload task is very sensitive to the attentional resources allocated to the film clip, although they do not act as a specific index of sexual interest. Therefore, the use of this methodology seems to be of questionable utility as a specific measure of sexual interest or as an objective measure of the severity of Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder.	f	\N
22226937	Cell phone use among pedestrians leads to increased cognitive distraction, reduced situation awareness and increases in unsafe behavior. Performing a dual-task, such as talking or texting with a cell phone while walking, may interfere with working memory and result in walking errors. At baseline, thirty-three participants visually located a target 8m ahead; then vision was occluded and they were instructed to walk to the remembered target. One week later participants were assigned to either walk, walk while talking on a cell phone, or walk while texting on a cell phone toward the target with vision occluded. Duration and final location of the heel were noted. Linear distance traveled, lateral angular deviation from the start line, and gait velocity were derived. Changes from baseline to testing were analyzed with paired t-tests. Participants engaged in cell phone use presented with significant reductions in gait velocity (texting: 33% reduction, p=0.01; talking: 16% reduction, p=0.02). Moreover, participants who were texting while walking demonstrated a 61% increase in lateral deviation (p=0.04) and 13% increase in linear distance traveled (p=0.03). These results suggest that the dual-task of walking while using a cell phone impacts executive function and working memory and influences gait to such a degree that it may compromise safety. Importantly, comparison of the two cell phone conditions demonstrates texting creates a significantly greater interference effect on walking than talking on a cell phone.	f	\N
22238632	Human morning and evening chronotypes differ in their preferred timing for sleep and wakefulness, as well as in optimal daytime periods to cope with cognitive challenges. Recent evidence suggests that these preferences are not a simple by-product of socio-professional timing constraints, but can be driven by inter-individual differences in the expression of circadian and homeostatic sleep-wake promoting signals. Chronotypes thus constitute a unique tool to access the interplay between those processes under normally entrained day-night conditions, and to investigate how they impinge onto higher cognitive control processes. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we assessed the influence of chronotype and time-of-day on conflict processing-related cerebral activity throughout a normal waking day. Sixteen morning and 15 evening types were recorded at two individually adapted time points (1.5 versus 10.5 hours spent awake) while performing the Stroop paradigm. Results show that interference-related hemodynamic responses are maintained or even increased in evening types from the subjective morning to the subjective evening in a set of brain areas playing a pivotal role in successful inhibitory functioning, whereas they decreased in morning types under the same conditions. Furthermore, during the evening hours, activity in a posterior hypothalamic region putatively involved in sleep-wake regulation correlated in a chronotype-specific manner with slow wave activity at the beginning of the night, an index of accumulated homeostatic sleep pressure. These results shed light into the cerebral mechanisms underlying inter-individual differences of higher-order cognitive state maintenance under normally entrained day-night conditions.	f	\N
22238852	An analysis of psychological well-being (self-esteem and subjective vitality) of 639 Spanish university students was performed, while accounting for the amount of leisure-time physical activity. The Spanish versions of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and Subjective Vitality Scale were employed. Participants were divided into four groups (Low, Moderate, High, and Very high) depending on estimation of energy expenditure in leisure-time physical activity. Men and women having higher physical activity rated higher mean subjective vitality; however, differences in self-esteem were observed only in men, specifically between Very high and the other physical activity groups.	f	\N
22238854	Summary.-Images of pleasant scenes usually produce increased activity over the zygomaticus major muscie, as measured by electromyography (EMG), while less activity is elicited by unpleasant images. However, increases in zygomaticus major EMG activity while viewing unpleasant images have occasionally been reported in the literature on affective facial expression (i.e., "grimacing"). To examine the possibility that individual differences in emotion regulation might be responsible for this inconsistently observed phenomenon, the habitual emotion regulation tendencies of 63 participants (32 women) were assessed and categorized according to their regulatory tendencies. Participants viewed emotionally salient images while zygomaticus major EMG activity was recorded. Participants also provided self-report ratings of their experienced emotional valence and arousal while viewing the pictures. Despite demonstrating intact affective ratings, the "grimacing" pattern of zygomaticus major activity was observed in those who were less likely to use the cognitive reappraisal strategy to regulate their emotions.	f	\N
22239962	In a modified reflexive spatial attention paradigm, when the cue and the target are at the same spatial location, processing of the target is faster when the cue and the target have different shapes compared to same (shape effect). Recent physiological findings suggest distinct population level encoding of shape in ventral versus dorsal cortical visual streams in monkeys. In human observers, we tested whether the effect of shape on reflexive spatial attention could be attributed to ventral and/or dorsal stream encoding of shape. In the modified reflexive spatial attention paradigm, we varied the shapes of the cue and target. Based on data from monkey physiology (Lehky & Sereno, 2007), we selected four pairs of cue and target shapes. In some pairs, cue and target were similarly encoded (similar encoding distance) by a population of cells in the lateral intraparietal cortex, a dorsal stream area, but more dissimilarly encoded (having a greater encoding distance) by a population of cells in the anterior inferotemporal cortex (AIT), a ventral stream area. In other pairs, cue and target were similarly encoded in AIT and had greater dissimilarity in LIP encoding. We found that pairs of cue and target with greater dissimilarity in LIP encoding produced larger and more consistent shape effects up to a cue to target onset asynchrony (CTOA) of 450 ms. The shape effects for cue and target pairs with greater dissimilarity in AIT encoding were smaller and inconsistent, suggesting that shape effects in reflexive spatial attention are largely driven by the dorsal stream.	f	\N
22245090	In this paper, a rule-based automatic sleep staging method was proposed. Twelve features including temporal and spectrum analyses of the EEG, EOG, and EMG signals were utilized. Normalization was applied to each feature to eliminating individual differences. A hierarchical decision tree with fourteen rules was constructed for sleep stage classification. Finally, a smoothing process considering the temporal contextual information was applied for the continuity. The overall agreement and kappa coefficient of the proposed method applied to the all night polysomnography (PSG) of seventeen healthy subjects compared with the manual scorings by R&K rules can reach 86.68% and 0.79, respectively. This method can integrate with portable PSG system for sleep evaluation at-home in the near future.	f	\N
22250914	There is converging evidence that the feeling of conscious recollection is usually accompanied by the bound retrieval of context features of the encoding episode (e.g., Meiser, Sattler, & Weiβer, 2008). Recently, however, important limiting conditions have been identified for the binding between context features in memory. For example, focusing on the semantics of the stimuli during encoding eliminates binding between perceptual context features (Meiser & Sattler, 2007). In the present research, we investigated the interplay of the focus of attention during encoding and stimulus characteristics in context-context binding. In particular, it has been suggested that context features differ in the degree to which they can be regarded as intrinsic or extrinsic to the items and that intrinsic features might be given more attentional processing during encoding than extrinsic features (e.g., Ecker, Zimmer, & Groh-Bordin, 2007a). In two experiments, we manipulated the "intrinsicality" of context features to investigate whether context-context binding might be limited to features that are in the focus of processing. Multinomial modeling analyses revealed that while context-context binding was eliminated for incidentally processed extrinsic context features (Experiment 1), it was preserved for intentionally processed extrinsic context features (Experiment 2).	f	\N
22251291	Previous research has established that infants are unable to perceive causality until 6¼ months of age. The current experiments examined whether infants' ability to engage in causal action could facilitate causal perception prior to this age. In Experiment 1, 4½-month-olds were randomly assigned to engage in causal action experience via Velcro sticky mittens or not engage in causal action because they wore non-sticky mittens. Both groups were then tested in the visual habituation paradigm to assess their causal perception. Infants who engaged in causal action - but not those without this causal action experience - perceived the habituation events as causal. Experiment 2 used a similar design to establish that 4½-month-olds are unable to generalize their own causal action to causality observed in dissimilar objects. These data are the first to demonstrate that infants under 6 months of age can perceive causality, and have implications for the mechanisms underlying the development of causal perception.	f	\N
22251308	Examine age group effects and sex differences by applying a comprehensive computerized battery of identical behavioral measures linked to brain systems in youths that were already genotyped. Such information is needed to incorporate behavioral data as neuropsychological "biomarkers" in large-scale genomic studies. We developed and applied a brief computerized neurocognitive battery that provides measures of performance accuracy and response time for executive-control, episodic memory, complex cognition, social cognition, and sensorimotor speed domains. We tested a population-based sample of 3,500 genotyped youths ages 8-21 years. Substantial improvement with age occurred for both accuracy and speed, but the rates varied by domain. The most pronounced improvement was noted in executive control functions, specifically attention, and in motor speed, with some effect sizes exceeding 1.8 standard deviation units. The least pronounced age group effect was in memory, where only face memory showed a large effect size on improved accuracy. Sex differences had much smaller effect sizes but were evident, with females outperforming males on attention, word and face memory, reasoning speed, and all social cognition tests and males outperforming females in spatial processing and sensorimotor and motor speed. These sex differences in most domains were seen already at the youngest age groups, and age group × sex interactions indicated divergence at the oldest groups with females becoming faster but less accurate than males. The results indicate that cognitive performance improves substantially in this age span, with large effect sizes that differ by domain. The more pronounced improvement for executive and reasoning domains than for memory suggests that memory capacities have reached their apex before age 8. Performance was sexually modulated and most sex differences were apparent by early adolescence.	f	\N
22256888	This study examined the test-retest reliability of executive function tasks in preschool children. Measures of working memory, response inhibition, attentional flexibility, and planning were administered to thirty three preschool children between the ages of 36 and 72 months (M = 54.75 months) on two testing occasions approximately three weeks apart (M interval = 21.64 days). Working memory tasks showed higher test-retest reliability than measures of response inhibition. There were significant practice effects on three measures of complex working memory. Implications of these findings for the assessment of executive function in preschool children are discussed.	f	\N
22259184	In two experiments, we examined the ability of task-irrelevant changes in luminance to capture attention in an irrelevant singleton search. By using uniform increment and decrement arrays, we were able to create changes of the same absolute magnitude, but resulting in a singleton with either higher or lower contrast magnitude, relative to other elements in the search array. A condition where a singleton changed contrast polarity without a concomitant change in the overall contrast magnitude was also included. It was found that only luminance changes resulting in a singleton having increased contrast (or saliency) were effective in capturing attention. In addition, no attentional capture was observed when the irrelevant singleton was characterized by the equivalent amount of static luminance differences, suggesting a unique attentional prioritization of luminance changes that increase singleton saliency.	f	\N
22264198	The discovery of mirror neurons-neurons that code specific actions both when executed and observed-in area F5 of the macaque provides a potential neural mechanism underlying action understanding. To date, neuroimaging evidence for similar coding of specific actions across the visual and motor modalities in human ventral premotor cortex (PMv)-the putative homologue of macaque F5-is limited to the case of actions observed from a first-person perspective. However, it is the third-person perspective that figures centrally in our understanding of the actions and intentions of others. To address this gap in the literature, we scanned participants with fMRI while they viewed two actions from either a first- or third-person perspective during some trials and executed the same actions during other trials. Using multivoxel pattern analysis, we found action-specific cross-modal visual-motor representations in PMv for the first-person but not for the third-person perspective. Additional analyses showed no evidence for spatial or attentional differences across the two perspective conditions. In contrast, more posterior areas in the parietal and occipitotemporal cortex did show cross-modal coding regardless of perspective. These findings point to a stronger role for these latter regions, relative to PMv, in supporting the understanding of others' actions with reference to one's own actions.	f	\N
22265727	We investigated response activation and suppression processes in Parkinson's disease patients with freezing of gait (FOG). Fourteen freezers, 14 nonfreezers, and 14 matched healthy controls performed the attention network task (ANT) and the Stroop task. The former task has more stimulus-response overlap and is expected to elicit stronger irrelevant response activation, requiring more inhibition. Congruency effects were used as a general measure of conflict resolution. Supplementary reaction time (RT) distribution analyses were utilized to calculate conditional accuracy functions (CAFs) and delta plots to measure response activation and suppression processes. In agreement with previous research, freezers showed a general conflict resolution deficit compared with nonfreezers and healthy controls. Moreover, CAFs pointed to a strong initial incorrect response activation in FOG. As expected, conflict resolution impairment was only apparent in the ANT, and not in the Stroop task. These results suggest an imbalance between automatic and controlled processes in FOG, leading to a breakdown in both motor and cognitive response control.	f	\N
22266073	Cognitive theories of anxiety postulate that negative processing biases play a causal role in the pathogenesis of a disorder, while a normalisation of bias drives recovery. To test these assumptions it is essential to investigate whether biases seen in anxiety are treatment-sensitive, or whether they instead represent enduring vulnerability factors. Twenty-nine spider fearfuls were tested before and after brief cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT), with half of them additionally being tested before a waiting period to control for retest effects. Using three cognitive bias tasks, we measured implicit threat evaluation (Extrinsic Affective Simon Task), avoidance tendency (Approach-Avoidance Task), and working memory for threat. CBT significantly enhanced negative implicit evaluation and avoidance. This indicates that these cognitive biases are no stable risk factors and provides further evidence for their potential key role in the development and remission of anxiety.	f	\N
22266110	A current controversy exists about the relationship between spatial attention and conscious perception. While some authors propose that these phenomena are intimately related (Bartolomeo, 2008; Chun & Marois, 2002; O'Regan & Noë, 2001; Posner, 1994), others report dissociations between them (Kentridge et al., 1999; Koch & Tsuchiya, 2007; Wyart & Tallon-Baudry, 2008). However, spatial attention is not a unitary mechanism, and it is possible that not all forms of attention dissociate from conscious perception. In the present study we used a paradigm in which endogenous and exogenous forms of attention are orthogonally manipulated in order to investigate their relation with conscious perception within the same design. By analyzing two different cue-related components, our results demonstrated that while endogenous attention was electrophysiologically dissociated from conscious perception, exogenous attention was not, consistent with the hypothesis that exogenous attention is an important antecedent of our conscious experience. Our results support previous claims of dissociations between some forms of spatial attention and conscious perception, but also highlight the importance of exogenous orienting on the selection of information for conscious access.	f	\N
22266172	We present a history of the concepts and developments that have led us to focus on the resting state as an object of study. We then discuss resting state research performed in our laboratory since 2005 with an emphasis on papers of particular interest.	f	\N
22267203	In vivo translational imaging techniques, such as positron emission tomography and single-photon emission-computed tomography, are the only ways to adequately determine that a drug engages its target. Unfortunately, there are far more experimental mechanisms being tested in the clinic than there are radioligands, impeding the use of this risk-mitigating approach in modern drug discovery and development. Pharmacological magnetic resonance imaging (phMRI) offers an approach for developing new biomarkers with the potential to determine central activity and dose selection in animals and humans. Using phMRI, we characterized the effects of xanomeline on ketamine-induced activation on blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal. In the present studies, xanomeline alone dose-dependently increased the BOLD signal across several regions of interest, including association and motor and sensory cortical regions. It is noteworthy that xanomeline dose-dependently attenuated ketamine-induced brain activation patterns, effects that were antagonized by atropine. In conclusion, the muscarinic 1/4-preferring receptor agonist xanomeline suppressed the effects of the N-methyl-D-aspartate channel blocker ketamine in a number of brain regions, including the association cortex, motor cortex, and primary sensory cortices. The region-specific brain activation observed in this ketamine challenge phMRI study may provide a method of confirming central activity and dose selection for novel antipsychotic drugs in early clinical trials for schizophrenia, if the data obtained in animals can be recapitulated in humans.	f	\N
22268914	Research with the maintenance-rehearsal paradigm, in which word pairs are rehearsed as distractor material during a series of digit recall trials, has previously indicated that low frequency and new word pairs capture attention to a greater degree than high frequency and old word pairs. This impacts delayed recognition of the pairs and interferes with immediate digit recall. The effect on immediate digit recall may provide the missing converging evidence for the role of attention in memory. In the current study, 3 experiments were conducted to further investigate the role of attention capture and novelty in storage and forgetting. In addition to the previously established effects, the novelty of switching rehearsal between 2 pairs was found to impair both digit recall and memory for the first pair. The attentional effects we obtained were dependent upon participant expectation, and forgetting appears to be due to interference with consolidation rather than decay or traditional associative interference. Finally, the attentional effects we observed in associative recognition were primarily reflected in a lowering of the false alarm rate with increases in the strength of the parent pairs. Although dual-process models can accommodate this finding on the assumption that recollection is invoked at test alongside familiarity, we showed that the level of recall in this paradigm is so small that recollection can be ruled out. Accordingly, our results are challenging for the existing models of associative recognition to accommodate.	f	\N
22269546	Worldwide, both brake lamps and tail lamps on motor vehicles are required to be red. Previous studies have not examined the effect of this confound in a complex, high-traffic scenario in a driving simulator or on visuomotor behavior. In the first experiment, drivers detected brake lamps on nine lead vehicles and lane changes on two rear vehicles in a 15 min simulated night time highway drive. A second experiment was used to examine the findings in the context of pre-attentive visual processing research. A third experiment analyzed visuomotor behavior and subjective workload during a vigilance task to further evaluate this hypothesis. For all studies, tail lamp color was manipulated, resulting in two conditions: the currently mandated red tail lamps and red brake lamps vs. yellow tail lamps and red brake lamps. Compared to current rear lighting, employing yellow tail lamps with red brake lamps reduced RT, error, subjective workload, improved performance in detecting lane changes and also changed visuomotor behavior. It is suggested that the mechanism allowing better performance is pre-attentive, parallel visual processing.	f	\N
22276405	This experiment was designed to investigate whether and how decreasing the amount of attentional focus invested in postural control could affect bipedal postural control. Twelve participants were asked to stand upright as immobile as possible on a force platform in one control condition and one cognitive condition. In the latter condition, they performed a short-term digit-span memory task. Decreased center-of-gravity displacements and decreased center-of-foot-pressure displacements minus center-of-gravity displacements were observed in the cognitive condition relative to the control condition. These results suggest that shifting the attentional focus away from postural control by executing a concurrent attention-demanding task could increase postural performance and postural efficiency.	f	\N
22277309	A growing body of literature investigating the neural correlates of emotion word processing has emerged in recent years. Written words have been shown to represent a suitable means to study emotion processing and most importantly to address the distinct and interactive contributions of the two dimensions of emotion: valence and arousal. The aim of the present review is to integrate findings from electrophysiological (ERP) and hemodynamic neuroimaging (fMRI) studies in order to provide a better understanding of emotion word processing. It provides an up-to-date review of recent ERP studies since the review by Kissler et al. (2006) as well as the first review of hemodynamic brain imaging studies in the field. A discussion of theoretical and methodological issues is also presented, along with suggestions for future research.	f	\N
22278094	The intranasal application of oxytocin (OT) has been shown to influence behavioral and neural correlates of social processing. These effects are probably mediated by genetic variations within the OT system. One potential candidate could be the CD38 gene, which codes for a transmembrane protein engaged in OT secretion processes. A common variation in this gene (rs3796863) was recently found to be associated with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Using an imaging genetics approach, we studied differential effects of an intranasal OT application on neural processing of social stimuli in 55 healthy young men depending on their CD38 gene variant in a double-blind placebo-controlled crossover design. Genotype had a significant influence on both behavioral and neuronal measures of social processing. Homozygotic risk allele carriers showed slower reaction times (RT) and higher activation of left fusiform gyrus during visual processing of social stimuli. Under OT activation differences between genotypes were more evident (though not statistically significantly increased) and RT were accelerated in homozygotic risk allele carriers. According to our data, rs3796863 mainly influences fusiform gyrus activation, an area which has been widely discussed in ASD research. OT seems to modulate this effect by enhancing activation differences between allele groups, which suggests an interaction between genetic makeup and OT availability on fusiform gyrus activation. These results support recent approaches to apply OT as a pharmacological treatment of ASD symptoms.	f	\N
22290697	ADHD has been linked to various constructs, yet there is a lack of focus on how its symptom clusters differentially associate with personality, which this study addresses. The current study examines the relationship between impulsive and inattentive ADHD traits and personality, indexed by the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-III), in a sample of undergraduates. Impulsivity was associated with NEO-PI-R and MCMI-III traits characterized by emotional distress, interpersonal problems, and disruptive behavior, whereas inattention was associated only with focus-oriented constructs. ADHD-related inattention is a relatively modest predictor of personality traits, as compared with hyperactivity-impulsivity. These findings have implications regarding the distinctiveness and etiology of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text rev.; DSM-IV-TR) ADHD types.	f	\N
22291031	Head movement imposes the additional burdens on the visual system of maintaining visual acuity and determining the origin of retinal image motion (i.e., self-motion vs. object-motion). Although maintaining visual acuity during self-motion is effected by minimizing retinal slip via the brainstem vestibular-ocular reflex, higher order visuovestibular mechanisms also contribute. Disambiguating self-motion versus object-motion also invokes higher order mechanisms, and a cortical visuovestibular reciprocal antagonism is propounded. Hence, one prediction is of a vestibular modulation of visual cortical excitability and indirect measures have variously suggested none, focal or global effects of activation or suppression in human visual cortex. Using transcranial magnetic stimulation-induced phosphenes to probe cortical excitability, we observed decreased V5/MT excitability versus increased early visual cortex (EVC) excitability, during vestibular activation. In order to exclude nonspecific effects (e.g., arousal) on cortical excitability, response specificity was assessed using information theory, specifically response entropy. Vestibular activation significantly modulated phosphene response entropy for V5/MT but not EVC, implying a specific vestibular effect on V5/MT responses. This is the first demonstration that vestibular activation modulates human visual cortex excitability. Furthermore, using information theory, not previously used in phosphene response analysis, we could distinguish between a specific vestibular modulation of V5/MT excitability from a nonspecific effect at EVC.	f	\N
22292831	Auditory discrimination, memory, and attention-related functions were investigated in healthy 2-3-year-olds by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) to changes in five auditory features and two types of novel sounds using the fast multifeature paradigm (MFP). ERP profiles consisting of the mismatch negativity (MMN), P3a, and prominent late discriminative negativities (LDN) were obtained, for the first time, from this age group in a considerably shorter time compared to the traditional paradigms. Statistically significant responses from individual children were obtained mainly for the novel sounds. Thus, the MFP shows promise as a time-efficient paradigm for investigating central auditory functions in toddlers.	f	\N
22292917	The ability to make accurate judgments and execute effective skilled movements under severe temporal constraints are fundamental to elite performance in a number of domains including sport, military combat, law enforcement, and medicine. In two experiments, we examine the effect of stimulus strength on response time and accuracy in a temporally constrained, real-world, decision-making task. Specifically, we examine the effect of low stimulus intensity (black) and high stimulus intensity (sequin) uniform designs, worn by teammates, to determine the effect of stimulus strength on the ability of soccer players to make rapid and accurate responses. In both field- and laboratory-based scenarios, professional soccer players viewed developing patterns of play and were required to make a penetrative pass to an attacking player. Significant differences in response accuracy between uniform designs were reported in laboratory- and field-based experiments. Response accuracy was significantly higher in the sequin compared with the black uniform condition. Response times only differed between uniform designs in the laboratory-based experiment. These findings extend the literature into a real-world environment and have significant implications for the design of clothing wear in a number of domains.	f	\N
22293586	Hypothalamic orexin neurons are known to regulate sleep/wake stability, feeding behavior, emotions, autonomic nerve activity, and whole-body energy metabolism. In addition, emerging evidence indicates that orexin contributes to central regulation of glucose homeostasis. Intriguingly, central administration of orexin is reported to cause blood glucose-elevating effect or blood glucose-lowering effect in rodents, depending on the experimental conditions. Here we reviewed the recent reports regarding the mode and mechanism of actions of orexin on these two opposing effects, and discuss the functional significance for the maintenance of glucose homeostasis. The fact that orexin exhibits biphasic effects on autonomic nerve activity and lipolysis suggests that orexin dually regulates the glucose appearance. In fact, orexin neurons are activated not only depending on the demand for glucose but also according to a circadian rhythm in the suprachiasmatic nucleus. The excited orexin neurons appear to alter the sympathetic or parasympathetic outflow to the periphery, and modulate the glucose production and utilization. Furthermore, deficiency of orexin action, particularly reduction of orexin 2 receptor-signaling, disrupts the mechanism for protection against insulin resistance associated with aging or induced by chronic high fat feeding in mice. Taken together, hypothalamic orexin system may manage multiple tasks to coordinate the interconnection among the arousal, feeding, circadian, and glucose homeostasis pathways.	f	\N
22294809	The Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT) is a widely used assay of behavioral alertness sensitive to the effects of sleep loss and circadian misalignment. The standard 10-minute duration of the PVT is often considered impractical for operational or clinical environments. Therefore, we developed and validated an adaptive-duration version of the PVT (PVT-A) that stops sampling once it has gathered enough information to correctly classify PVT performance. Repeated-measures experiments involving 10-minute PVT assessments every 2 hours across both acute total sleep deprivation (TSD) and 5 days of chronic partial sleep deprivation (PSD). Controlled laboratory environment. Seventy-four healthy subjects (34 women), aged 22 to 45 years. A TSD experiment involving 33 hours awake (n = 31 subjects), and a PSD experiment involving 5 nights of 4 hours time in bed (n = 43 subjects). The PVT-A algorithm was trained with 527 TSD test bouts and validated with 880 PSD test bouts. Based on our primary outcome measure "number of lapses (response times ≥ 500 ms) plus false starts (premature responses or response times < 100 ms)," 10-minute PVT performance was classified into high (≤ 5 lapses and false starts), medium (> 5 and ≤ 16 lapses and false starts), or low (> 16 lapses and false starts). The decision threshold for PVT-A termination was set so that at least 95% of training data-set tests were classified correctly and no test was classified incorrectly across 2 performance categories (i.e., high as low or low as high), resulting in an average test duration of 6.0 minutes (SD 2.4 min). In the validation data set, 95.7% of test bouts were correctly classified, and there were no incorrect classifications across 2 categories. Agreement corrected for chance was excellent (κ = 0.92). Across the 3 performance categories, sensitivity averaged 93.7% (range 87.2%-100%), and specificity averaged 96.8% (range 91.6%-99.9%). Test duration averaged 6.4 minutes (SD 1.7 min), with a minimum of 27 seconds. We developed and validated a highly accurate, sensitive, and specific adaptive-duration version of the 10-minute PVT. Test duration of the adaptive PVT averaged less than 6.5 minutes, with 60 tests (4.3%) terminating after less than 2 minutes, increasing the practicability of the test in operational and clinical settings. The adaptive-duration strategy may be superior to a simple reduction of PVT duration in which the fixed test duration may be too short to identify subjects with moderate impairment (showing deficits only later during the test) but unnecessarily long for those who are either fully alert or severely impaired.	f	\N
22306518	Spatial attention and eye-movements are tightly coupled, but the precise nature of this coupling is controversial. The influential but controversial Premotor theory of attention makes four specific predictions about the relationship between motor preparation and spatial attention. Firstly, spatial attention and motor preparation use the same neural substrates. Secondly, spatial attention is functionally equivalent to planning goal directed actions such as eye-movements (i.e. planning an action is both necessary and sufficient for a shift of spatial attention). Thirdly, planning a goal directed action with any effector system is sufficient to trigger a shift of spatial attention. Fourthly, the eye-movement system has a privileged role in orienting visual spatial attention. This article reviews empirical studies that have tested these predictions. Contrary to predictions one and two there is evidence of anatomical and functional dissociations between endogenous spatial attention and motor preparation. However, there is compelling evidence that exogenous attention is reliant on activation of the oculomotor system. With respect to the third prediction, there is correlational evidence that spatial attention is directed to the endpoint of goal-directed actions but no direct evidence that this attention shift is dependent on motor preparation. The few studies to have directly tested the fourth prediction have produced conflicting results, so the extent to which the oculomotor system has a privileged role in spatial attention remains unclear. Overall, the evidence is not consistent with the view that spatial attention is functionally equivalent to motor preparation so the Premotor theory should be rejected, although a limited version of the Premotor theory in which only exogenous attention is dependent on motor preparation may still be tenable. A plausible alternative account is that activity in the motor system contributes to biased competition between different sensory representations with the winner of the competition becoming the attended item.	f	\N
22307939	Inhibition of return (IOR) is thought to reflect inhibition of previously attended but irrelevant stimuli. Deficient IOR would increase the likelihood of revisiting previously searched locations or objects, thus leading to unproductive perseverations. Therefore, using a novel IOR task, we investigated whether high scoring checkers attentional biases to threat would result in dysfunctional inhibitory functioning compared to low checkers. In two tasks, we compared 53 subclinical high and 49 low checkers regarding IOR effects for stimuli that were concordant with the concerns of high but not of low checkers (electrical kitchen appliances: e.g., toaster, kettle). The difference between the two tasks was the cueing procedure. In one task, an appliance was switched "ON" and "OFF" as an unpredictive cue, drawing attention to the functionality of the stimulus. In this task, IOR was specifically attenuated in high checkers. In the other task, however, the cue was more abstract in form of a yellow outline that appeared around one of two appliances. Although the appliance was either "ON" or "OFF," this did not seem to matter and high checkers revealed a typical IOR pattern similar to low checkers. We conclude that IOR mechanisms might not be generally deficient in high checkers; rather only when attention is drawn to the threatening aspects of ecologically valid stimuli, then disengagement of attention is deficient in high checkers. We make suggestions on how our task-specific findings may inform cognitive interventions that target attentional control in the treatment of checking/obsessive-compulsive disorder.	f	\N
22309824	Maternal stress during pregnancy has been repeatedly associated with problematic child development. According to the fetal programming hypothesis adverse experiences during pregnancy increase maternal cortisol, which is then assumed to exert a negative effect on fetal development. Recent studies in non-pregnant women report significant associations between positive emotionality and low cortisol levels. We tested in a sample of 60 pregnant women whether both negative and positive life events independently predicted third-trimester baseline awakening cortisol levels. While the effect of negative life events proved unrelated positive life events significantly predicted lower cortisol levels. These findings suggest that positive experiences are of relevance regarding maternal morning cortisol levels in pregnancy reflecting a resource with potentially beneficial effects for the mother and the developing fetus. It might be promising for psychological intervention programs to focus on increasing positive experiences of the expecting mother rather than exclusively trying to reduce maternal stress during pregnancy.	f	\N
22311202	Emotion-eliciting films are commonly used to evoke subjective emotional responses in experimental settings. The main aim of the present study was to investigate whether a set of film clips with discrete emotions were capable to elicit measurable objective physiological responses. The convergence between subjective and objective measures was evaluated. Finally, the effect of gender on emotional responses was investigated. A sample of 123 subjects participated in the study. Individuals were asked to view a set of emotional film clips capable to induce seven emotions: anger, fear, sadness, disgust, amusement, tenderness and neutral state. Skin conductance level (SCL), heart rate (HR) and subjective emotional responses were measured for each film clip. In comparison with neutral films, SCL was significantly increased after viewing fear films, and HR was also significantly incremented for anger and fear films. Physiological variations were associated with arousal measures indicating a convergence between subjective and objective reactions. Women appeared to display significantly greater SCL and HR responses for films inducing sadness. The findings suggest that physiological activation would be more easily induced by emotion-eliciting films that tap into emotions with higher subjective arousal such as anger and fear.	f	\N
22313064	There has been no research performed concerning the effects of the use of laptops and smartphones in the operating theatre on anaesthetist performance, yet these devices are now in frequent use. This article explores the implications of this phenomenon. The cognitive and environmental factors that support or detract from vigilance and multi-tasking are explored and core anaesthetic literature on the nature of anaesthetic work and operating theatre distractions is reviewed. Experienced anaesthetists are skilled at multi-tasking while maintaining situational awareness, but there are limits. Noise, interruptions and emotional arousal are detrimental to the cognitive performance of anaesthetists. While limited reading during periods of low task load may not reduce vigilance, computer use introduces text-based activities that are more interactive and potentially more distracting. All anaesthetists need to be mindful of the limits to the human attention span which requires observation and limiting distractions. Trainees have less experience and less 'attentional' safety margin, so should avoid adding additional distractions such as discretionary use of laptops or smartphones to their operating theatre work. We provide recommendations for future research on the specific advantages and disadvantages of pervasive computing in the operative theatre.	f	\N
22317652	This paper presents an analysis of cognitive-ergonomic aspects of e-learning courses, offered by an organism from Brazilian Public Administration. The Cognitive Ergonomic studies conductive and cognitive aspects concerning to the relation between human, physics elements and social elements of the work space. From that usability aspects were evaluated by these points: i) visualization; ii) text comprehension lecture; iii) memory; iv) interface; v) instructional design; and vi) attention and learning. That survey is characterized as having been applied using the following techniques: (1) bibliographic survey, (2) field survey and (3) analysis of the documents. It was chosen the semi-structured questionnaire as the main method of data collection. About the interacting with artifacts, the interface of the courses is classified as direct engagement, because it allows the user to get the feeling that acts directly on the objects. Although the courses are well-structured they have flaws that will be discussed below. Even with these problems, the courses have a good degree of usability.	f	\N
22318206	Several studies have demonstrated that one exercise session (ES) on a cycloergometer or ergometric treadmill causes a reduction in blood pressure (BP). However, there are few similar studies on walking, which is the exercise modality most available to the elderly. We investigated the immediate and 24-h effects of walking on BP in independent, community-living elderly individuals. Volunteers participated in a single ES and resting control session (CS). Before and after each session, BP was measured by auscultatory and oscillometric methods. After each session, 24-h ambulatory blood pressure monitoring was conducted. An accelerometer was installed 48 h before the sessions and left in place for 5 days. The mean volunteer age was 67.7±3.5 years; 11 were hypertensive patients under treatment, and 12 were normotensive. In the total sample, there were immediate 14mm Hg and 12 mm Hg reductions in systolic BP (SBP) after the ES according to the auscultatory and oscillometric methods, respectively. Diastolic BP (DBP) was reduced by 4 mm Hg after the ES according to both methods. SBP during wakefulness and sleep and DBP during wakefulness were lower after the ES than after the CS (P<0.01), when wakefulness and sleep were determined individually (variable-time pattern) using data from the activity monitors and provided by the volunteers. The variable-time pattern was more effective in detecting reductions in BP than the fixed-time pattern.	f	\N
22332788	Many cognitive neuroscience studies show that the ability to attend to and identify global or local information is lateralised between the two hemispheres in the human brain; the left hemisphere is biased towards the local level, whereas the right hemisphere is biased towards the global level. Results of two studies show attention-focused people with a right ear preference (biased towards the left hemisphere) are better at local tasks, whereas people with a left ear preference (biased towards the right hemisphere) are better at more global tasks. In a third study we determined if right hemisphere-biased followers who attend to global stimuli are likely to have a stronger relationship between attention and globally based supervisor ratings of performance. Results provide evidence in support of this hypothesis. Our research supports our model and suggests that the interaction between attention and lateral preference is an important and novel predictor of work-related outcomes.	f	\N
22348638	This commentary highlights some recent trends in sex research that have particular relevance for research on condom use, including studies investigating the meaning of sexual arousal, desire and pleasure; a focus on couple-level investigations; and the relevance of individual differences and personality characteristics to sexual risk-taking. Although historically, sexuality-related issues have received little systematic attention in the field of public health, researchers are now paying more attention to the role of pleasure and sexual arousal in condom use. It is argued that a better integration of findings from the area of sex research into the HIV and sexually transmissible infection (STI) field is needed to develop and improve programs to reduce the risk of STIs and unintended pregnancy.	f	\N
22354708	The main purpose of this eye tracking study was to map the correlates of gaze performance in a brief test of spontaneous gaze and point-gesture following in young children with autistic disorder (AD), Pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS), or typical development (TD). Gaze measures included the children's spontaneous tendency to look at the correct (attended) toy, and the latency of their correct responses. In addition to group differences (AD vs. TD), we found that in AD, accuracy of performance was specifically related to adaptive communication skills. The study also indicated that the latency of correct gaze shifts is related to verbal intelligence. These results have direct implications for our understanding of (responsive) joint attention impairments in AD.	f	\N
22360143	The effects of acoustic confusion (phonological similarity), word length, and concurrent articulation (articulatory suppression) are cited as support for Working Memory's phonological loop component (e.g., Baddeley, 2000 , Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 7, 544). Research has focused on younger adults, with no studies examining whether concurrent articulation reduces the word length and acoustic confusion effects among older adults. In the current study, younger and older adults were given lists of similar and dissimilar letters (Experiment 1) or long and short words (Experiment 2) for immediate serial reconstruction of order. Items were presented visually or auditorily, with or without concurrent articulation. As expected, younger and older adults demonstrated effects of acoustic confusion, word length, and concurrent articulation. Further, concurrent articulation reduced the effects of acoustic confusion and word length equally for younger and older adults. This suggests that age-related differences occur in overall performance, but do not reflect an age-related deficiency in the functioning of the phonological loop component of working memory.	f	\N
22363538	Primary monosymptomatic nocturnal enuresis (PMNE) is a common disorder in school-aged children. Previous studies have suggested that a developmental delay might play a role in the pathology of children with PMNE. However, microstructural abnormalities in the brains of these children have not been thoroughly investigated. In this work, we evaluated structural changes in the brains of children with PMNE using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Two groups consisting of 26 children with PMNE and 26 healthy controls were scanned using magnetic resonance DTI. The diffusion parameters of fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) were subjected to whole-brain, voxel-wise group comparisons using statistical parametric mapping (SPM). When compared to healthy subjects, children with PMNE showed both a decrease in FA and an increase in MD in the thalamus. MD also increased in the frontal lobe, the anterior cingulate cortex and the insula; these areas are all involved in controlling micturition. The significant changes seen in the thalamus could affect both urine storage and arousal from sleep. The microstructure abnormalities were observed in the thalamus, the medial frontal gyrus, the anterior cingulate cortex and the insula, which are involved in micturition control network. This indicates developmental delay in these areas may be the cause of PMNE.	f	\N
22372566	This study examined the effect of the processing demands of to-be-remembered (TBR) words on item-method directed forgetting. Experiment 1 found that a standard memory group remembered fewer to-be-forgotten (TBF) words than a naming group, in which participants simply named the TBR words during the study phase, even though both groups were equally instructed to forget the TBF words. Experiment 2 manipulated the number of TBR words in the study list, keeping the number of TBF words constant, and found that TBF word forgetting was more difficult in the few TBR words condition than the more TBR words condition. The same pattern was found in the result of Experiment 3 when a cued recall test, instead of a free recall test, was used. In all the experiments, participants were asked to recall the TBF words before the TBR words. These findings are consistent with the cognitive load hypothesis that it is easier to forget when there are fewer cognitive resources available during encoding.	f	\N
22380663	The tendency to express emotions non-verbally is positively related to perception of emotions in oneself. This study examined its relationship to perception of emotions in others. In 40 healthy adults, EEG theta synchronization was used to indicate emotion processing following presentation of happy, angry, and neutral faces. Both positive and negative expressiveness were associated with higher emotional sensitivity, as shown by cortical responses to facial expressions during the early, unconscious processing stage. At the late, conscious processing stage, positive expressiveness was associated with higher sensitivity to happy faces but lower sensitivity to angry faces. Thus, positive expressiveness predisposes people to allocate fewer attentional resources for conscious perception of angry faces. In contrast, negative expressiveness was consistently associated with higher sensitivity. The effects of positive expressiveness occurred in cortical areas that deal with emotions, but the effects of negative expressiveness occurred in areas engaged in self-referential processes in the context of social relationships.	f	\N
22390290	Voluntary shifts of attention are often motivated in experimental contexts by using well-known symbols that accurately predict the direction of targets. The authors report 3 experiments, which showed that the presentation of predictive spatial information does not provide sufficient incentive to elicit voluntary shifts of attention. For instance, when allowed to spontaneously choose between using a 100%-valid spatial word cue versus searching without the aid of the cue, observers consistently searched for a unique target without the aid of the cue. Another experiment showed that observers' choice to use spatial word cues could be biased by providing dedicated time to process the cue before the target display appeared (i.e., nonzero, cue-target SOAs). Although this dedicated processing time has routinely been included in spatial cuing experiments, its incentive-inducing role has never been acknowledged. Implications for theories of both voluntary and involuntary control are discussed.	f	\N
22390708	Although biased attention to emotional stimuli is considered a vulnerability factor for anxiety and dysphoria, research has infrequently related such attentional biases to dimensional models of vulnerability for anxiety and mood disorders. In two studies (Study 1, n = 64; Study 2, n = 168), we evaluate the differential associations of general negative affectivity, anxiety, and dysphoria with biases in selective attention among nonclinical participants selected to vary in both anxiety and dysphoria. Across both studies, preferential processing of angry faces at a 300-ms exposure duration was associated with a general tendency to experience a range of negative affect, rather than being specific to symptoms of either anxiety or dysphoria. In the second study, we found evidence of a suppressor relationship between anxiety and dysphoria in the prediction of delayed attentional biases (1,000 ms) for sad faces. In particular, dysphoria was specifically associated with biased attention toward sad cues, but only after statistically accounting for anxiety; by contrast, anxiety was specifically associated with attentional avoidance of sad cues, but only after statistically accounting for dysphoria. These results suggest that the specificity of relationships between components of negative affectivity and attention to emotional stimuli varies as a function of the time course at which attentional biases are assessed, highlighting the importance of evaluating both anxiety and dysphoria in research on attentional processing of emotional stimuli.	f	\N
22390710	This study tested whether a performance stressor characterized by social-evaluative threat (SET) elicits more rumination than a stressor without this explicit evaluative component and whether this difference persists minutes, hours, and days later. The mediating role of shame-related cognition and emotion (SRCE) was also examined. During a laboratory visit, 144 undergraduates (50% female) were randomly assigned to complete a speech stressor in a social-evaluative threat condition (SET; n = 86), in which an audience was present, or a nonexplicit social-evaluative threat condition (ne-SET; n = 58), in which they were alone in a room. Participants completed measures of stressor-related rumination 10 and 40 min posttask, later that night, and upon returning to the laboratory 3-5 days later. SRCE and other emotions experienced during the stressor (fear, anger, and sadness) were assessed immediately posttask. As hypothesized, the SET speech stressor elicited more rumination than the ne-SET speech stressor, and these differences persisted for 3-5 days. SRCE-but not other specific negative emotions or general emotional arousal-mediated the effect of stressor context on rumination. Stressors characterized by SET may be likely candidates for eliciting and maintaining ruminative thought immediately and also days later, potentially by eliciting shame-related emotions and cognitions.	f	\N
22396120	The ability to estimate the time remaining until collision occurs with an approaching object (time-to-collision, TTC) is crucial for any mobile animal. In the present study, we report three experiments examining whether higher level cognitive factors, represented by affective value of approaching objects, could affect judgments of TTC. A theory of TTC estimates based purely on the optical variable tau does not predict an influence of the affective value of an approaching object. In Experiments 1 and 2, we compared TTC estimates of threatening and neutral pictures that approached our participants on a screen and disappeared from view before a collision would have occurred. Images were taken from the International Affective Picture System. Threatening pictures-in particular, the picture of a frontal attack-were judged to collide earlier than neutral pictures. In Experiment 3, the approaching stimuli were faces with different emotional expressions. TTC tended to be underestimated for angry faces. We discuss these results, considering the roles of affective and cognitive mechanisms modulating TTC estimation and general time perception.	f	\N
22408336	Sexual activity is an important part of the human being's life but this instinct could be influenced by some factors such as diseases, drug using, aging, and menopause. But information about that is limited. The aim of this study is to determine the status of sexual activity among married menopausal women in Amol, Iran. This descriptive analytical study was conducted to describe the sexual activity and sexual dysfunction of women after menopause. Data were collected from health centers in Amol from 280 married women using a questionnaire (self-completed or by interview). Mean age of subjects were 55.9 ± 6.02 years. 23.4% of subjects reported that their sexual intercourse had been low. 70% of subjects reported a decrease in their sexual activities after menopause. Sexual dysfunctions includes sexual desire disorder 80% arousal dysfunction 80%, orgasmic dysfunction 25%, dyspareunia 55.6%, and lack of sexual satisfaction 43.2%. Findings revealed high percentage of sexual desire disorder and sexual arousal disorder in menopausal women. Therefore, we should have emphasis on counseling and education about sexual activities during the menopause period.	f	\N
22415562	The overall aim of this study was to examine the relationship between subjective memory complaints and objective cognitive performance in perimenopausal women. The specific aims were to determine (1) if subjective complaints of memory problems relate to objective performance on memory tests, (2) if subjective complaints of memory problems relate to other domains of cognitive function, and (3) if subjective memory complaints relate to other noncognitive factors, such as depression, anxiety, and sleep quality. Seventy-five perimenopausal women completed a comprehensive neuropsychological battery, which included measures of attention, working memory, verbal memory, verbal fluency, visuospatial skill, and fine motor dexterity; completed self-report inventories of their perceived memory and menopausal symptoms; and provided serum levels of estradiol and follicle-stimulating hormone. Memory complaints were not associated with verbal learning or verbal memory but were associated with working memory and complex attention/vigilance. Memory complaints were also associated with symptoms of depression, anxiety, somatic complaints, and sleep disturbance. Regression analyses revealed that memory complaints were best predicted by depressive symptoms, somatic complaints, and working memory performance. Memory complaints in the menopausal transition may reflect true difficulties with attentionally mediated cognitive processes. Memory complaints may also be associated with other menopausal-related symptoms.	f	\N
22417186	Inattention is among the most commonly referred problems for school-aged youth. Research suggests distinct mechanisms may contribute to attention problems in youth with anxiety disorders versus youth with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This study compared children (8-17 years) with anxiety disorders (n = 24) and children (8-16 years) with ADHD (n = 23) on neurocognitive tests of both general and emotion-based attention processes. As hypothesized, children with ADHD demonstrated poorer selective and sustained attention, whereas youth with anxiety disorders demonstrated greater attentional bias toward threatening faces on a visual probe task. Findings suggest the neuropsychological differentiation of attention problems in anxious and ADHD children, despite potentially similar phenotypes.	f	\N
22423353	While attention bias modification (ABM) is a promising novel treatment for anxiety disorders, clinical trial data remain restricted to adults. The authors examined whether ABM induces greater reductions in pediatric anxiety symptoms and symptom severity than multiple control training interventions. From a target sample of 186 treatment-seeking children at a hospital-based child anxiety clinic, 40 patients with an ongoing anxiety disorder who met all inclusion criteria were enrolled in the study. Children were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: ABM designed to shift attention away from threat; placebo attention training using stimuli identical to those in the ABM condition; and placebo attention training using only neutral stimuli. All participants completed four weekly 480-trial sessions (1,920 total trials). Before and after the attention training sessions, children's clinical status was determined via semistructured interviews and questionnaires. Reduction in the number of anxiety symptoms and their severity was compared across the three groups. Change in the number of anxiety symptoms and their severity differed across the three conditions. This reflected significant reductions in the number of anxiety symptoms and symptom severity in the ABM condition but not in the placebo attention training or placebo-neutral condition. ABM, compared with two control conditions, reduces pediatric anxiety symptoms and severity. Further study of efficacy and underlying mechanisms is warranted.	f	\N
22424288	People with eating disorders (EDs) have difficulties with social functioning. One explanatory mechanism is a problem with over-sensitivity to rejection and/or low sensitivity to social reward. The aim of this study is to investigate attentional bias to facial stimuli in people with a lifetime diagnosis of EDs and healthy controls (HCs) and to test whether these attentional biases are linked to adverse early experiences. Forty-six participants with a current diagnosis of EDs (29 with anorexia nervosa (AN) and 17 with bulimia nervosa (BN)), 22 participants recovered from an eating disorder (13 with past AN and nine with past BN) and 50 HCs completed a dot-probe task with faces expressing rejection and acceptance. Participants reported on parental style and adverse early experiences. People with a lifetime diagnosis of EDs show an attentional bias to rejecting faces and a difficulty disengaging attention from these stimuli. Also, they had a sustained attentional avoidance of accepting faces. HCs demonstrated the opposite attentional pattern. The attentional bias to rejection was correlated with adverse childhood experiences. People with an EDs show vigilance to rejection and avoidance of social reward. This may contribute to the causation or maintenance of the illness.	f	\N
22425345	Most types of neuromuscular diseases are known to be associated with a high risk of sleep-disordered breathing. We performed a prospective study in a well individualized group of muscular disorders, congenital muscular dystrophies (CMD), to characterize the frequency of sleep-disordered breathing and thereby to determine the potential usefulness of sleep studies in such patients. Twenty CMD children (12 F, 8 M, aged 4-17 years) were included. Using overnight polysomnography, we determined the following parameters: sleep stages, sleep latency, sleep efficiency index, wake time duration, total sleep time (TST), apnea/hypopnea index (AHI), arterial blood oxygen saturation, and nocturnal paroxysmal EEG activity. As compared to healthy controls, we detected in our study group frequent awakenings, a decreased TST (mean 448 ± 44.4 min) and a decreased REM duration (mean 11.5 ± 3.5% of TST). Significant increase in wake time duration (28-90 min) and decrease in REM duration were observed in 12 patients. An apnea/hypopnea syndrome was detected in 13 patients (65%) with central apneas in 8, obstructive apneas in 2 and 3 mixed apneas in 3 patients. AHI was >10 in 3 cases, <10> 5 in 4 cases and were concomitant with blood oxygen de-saturation in four cases. NPA were detected in 10 patients ranging from 10 to 40% of TST. Our results confirm the high incidence of sleep disordered breathing in children with CMD, and thereby, the usefulness of overnight polysomnography recordings in such patients.	f	\N
22438275	Characterization of large-scale brain networks using blood-oxygenation-level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging is typically based on the assumption of network stationarity across the duration of scan. Recent studies in humans have questioned this assumption by showing that within-network functional connectivity fluctuates on the order of seconds to minutes. Time-varying profiles of resting-state networks (RSNs) may relate to spontaneously shifting, electrophysiological network states and are thus mechanistically of particular importance. However, because these studies acquired data from awake subjects, the fluctuating connectivity could reflect various forms of conscious brain processing such as passive mind wandering, active monitoring, memory formation, or changes in attention and arousal during image acquisition. Here, we characterize RSN dynamics of anesthetized macaques that control for these accounts, and compare them to awake human subjects. We find that functional connectivity among nodes comprising the "oculomotor (OCM) network" strongly fluctuated over time during awake as well as anaesthetized states. For time dependent analysis with short windows (<60 s), periods of positive functional correlations alternated with prominent anticorrelations that were missed when assessed with longer time windows. Similarly, the analysis identified network nodes that transiently link to the OCM network and did not emerge in average RSN analysis. Furthermore, time-dependent analysis reliably revealed transient states of large-scale synchronization that spanned all seeds. The results illustrate that resting-state functional connectivity is not static and that RSNs can exhibit nonstationary, spontaneous relationships irrespective of conscious, cognitive processing. The findings imply that mechanistically important network information can be missed when using average functional connectivity as the single network measure.	f	\N
22448903	The bizarreness effect and the orthographic distinctiveness effect (OD effect) are typical cases of secondary-distinctiveness-based effects. This study tested the simple attentional account or processing time hypothesis as a possible explanation of the bizarreness effect and the OD effect. In the bizarreness effect literature, this hypothesis gained support by some studies but was also discredited by other research. In light of these conflicting results, Experiment 1 was devised to test the processing time hypothesis in the bizarreness effect by using black-and-white concrete images and manipulating the time allotted for processing the stimuli (500 ms, 1000 ms, 3000 ms). Concerning the OD effect, no research has directly investigated the impact of processing time by examining the effect under varying amounts of study time. Experiment 2 was thus devised to investigate this same hypothesis in the OD effect and time allotted for processing the stimuli was manipulated (250 ms, 500 ms, 1000 ms, 3000 ms). Results did not support the processing time hypothesis since the magnitude of the bizarreness effect and of the OD effect was not modulated by the amount of time allotted for processing the stimuli. We refer to alternative explanations to account for these two secondary-distinctiveness-based effects.	f	\N
22449132	The automatic processing of the place-value of digits in a multi-digit number was investigated in 4 experiments. Experiment 1 and two control experiments employed a numerical comparison task in which the place-value of a non-zero digit was varied in a string composed of zeros. Experiment 2 employed a physical comparison task in which strings of digits varied in their physical sizes. In both types of tasks, the place-value of the non-zero digit in the string was irrelevant to the task performed. Interference of the place-value information was found in both tasks. When the non-zero digit occupied a lower place-value, it was recognized slower as a larger digit or as written in a larger font size. We concluded that place-value in a multi-digit number is processed automatically. These results support the notion of a decomposed representation of multi-digit numbers in memory.	f	\N
22449135	In the 1st reported experiment, we demonstrate that auditory memory is robust over extended retention intervals (RIs) when listeners compare the timbre of complex tones, even when active or verbal rehearsal is difficult or impossible. Thus, our tones have an abstract timbre that resists verbal labeling, they differ across trials so that no "standard" comparison stimulus is built up, and the spectral change to be discriminated is very slight and therefore does not shift stimuli across verbal categories. Nonetheless, performance in this nonverbal immediate memory task was better at short (1-, 2-, or 4-s) than long (8-, 16-, or 32-s) RIs, an outcome predicted by temporal distinctiveness theory whereby at long RIs, tones are closer in time to tones on previous trials. We reject this account in the 2nd experiment, where we demonstrate that the ratio of RI to intertrial interval makes absolutely no difference to performance. We suggest that steady forgetting is consistent with a psychoacoustically derived conception of an auditory memory (the timbre memory model) that embodies time-based forgetting in the absence of feature-specific interference.	f	\N
22450570	In the present study we examined, first, whether voluntary and involuntary attention manifest differently in people who differ in impulsivity (measured with the Barratt Impulsivity Scale). For Experiment 1, we used the spatial cueing task with informative and noninformative spatial cues to probe voluntary and involuntary attention, respectively. We found that participants with high impulsivity scores exhibited larger involuntary attention effects, whereas participants with low impulsivity scores exhibited larger voluntary attention effects. For Experiment 2, we used the correlated-flanker task to determine whether the differences between groups in Experiment 1 were due to high-impulsive participants being less sensitive to the display contingencies or to high-impulsive participants having a greater spread of spatial attention. Surprisingly, high-impulsive participants showed a greater sensitivity to contingencies in the environment (correlated-flanker effect). Our results illustrate one situation in which involuntary attention associated with high impulsivity can play a useful role.	f	\N
22455840	In order to execute a correct eye movement to a target in a search display, a saccade program toward the target element must be activated, while saccade programs toward distracting elements must be inhibited. The aim of the present study was to elucidate the role of the frontal eye fields (FEFs) in oculomotor competition. Functional magnetic resonance imaging-guided single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was administered over either the left FEF, the right FEF, or the vertex (control site) at 3 time intervals after target presentation, while subjects performed an oculomotor capture task. When TMS was applied over the FEF contralateral to the visual field where a target was presented, there was less interference of an ipsilateral distractor compared with FEF stimulation ipsilateral to the target's visual field or TMS over vertex. Furthermore, TMS over the FEFs decreased latencies of saccades to the contralateral visual field, irrespective of whether the saccade was directed to the target or to the distractor. These findings show that single-pulse TMS over the FEFs enhances the selection of a target in the contralateral visual field and decreases saccade latencies to the contralateral visual field.	f	\N
22456823	Amygdala dysfunction has been reported to exist in youths and adults with psychopathic traits. However, there has been disagreement as to whether this dysfunction reflects a primary emotional deficit or is secondary to atypical attentional control. The authors examined the validity of the contrasting predictions. Participants were 15 children and adolescents (ages 10–17 years) with both disruptive behavior disorders and psychopathic traits and 17 healthy comparison youths. Functional MRI was used to assess the response of the amygdala and regions implicated in top-down attentional control (the dorsomedial and lateral frontal cortices) to emotional expression under conditions of high and low attentional load. Relative to youths with disruptive behavior disorders and psychopathic traits, healthy comparison subjects showed a significantly greater increase in the typical amygdala response to fearful expressions under low relative to high attentional load conditions. There was also a selective inverse relationship between the response to fearful expressions under low attentional load and the callous-unemotional component (but not the narcissism or impulsivity component) of psychopathic traits. In contrast, the two groups did not differ in the significant recruitment of the dorsomedial and lateral frontal cortices as a function of attentional load. Youths with disruptive behavior disorders and psychopathic traits showed reduced amygdala responses to fearful expressions under low attentional load but no indications of increased recruitment of regions implicated in top-down attentional control. These findings suggest that the emotional deficit observed in youths with disruptive behavior disorders and psychopathic traits is primary and not secondary to increased top-down attention to nonemotional stimulus features.	f	\N
22458959	This study investigated the effects of two very commonly used countermeasures against driver sleepiness, opening the window and listening to music, on subjective and physiological sleepiness measures during real road driving. In total, 24 individuals participated in the study. Sixteen participants received intermittent 10-min intervals of: (i) open window (2 cm opened); and (ii) listening to music, during both day and night driving on an open motorway. Both subjective sleepiness and physiological sleepiness (blink duration) was estimated to be significantly reduced when subjects listened to music, but the effect was only minor compared with the pronounced effects of night driving and driving duration. Open window had no attenuating effect on either sleepiness measure. No significant long-term effects beyond the actual countermeasure application intervals occurred, as shown by comparison to the control group (n = 8). Thus, despite their popularity, opening the window and listening to music cannot be recommended as sole countermeasures against driver sleepiness.	f	\N
22459732	The goal of this study was to investigate the effects of different strategies for regulating emotions associated with smoking on subjective, cognitive, and behavioral correlates of smoking. Emotion regulation was manipulated by instructing participants to reappraise (n = 32), accept (n = 31), or suppress (n = 31) their emotions associated with smoking. The dependent measures included subjective reports of craving, negative affect, and attentional biases, as measured by a modified dot-probe task, and persistence during a task to measure distress tolerance. Individuals who were encouraged to reappraise the consequences of smoking showed diminished craving, lower negative affect, had reduced attentional biases for smoking-related cues, and exhibited greater task persistence than those who were instructed to accept and suppress their urge to smoke. These findings suggest that reappraisal techniques are more effective than acceptance or suppression strategies for targeting smoking-related problems.	f	\N
22465299	Mechanisms of attention are required to prioritise goal-relevant sensory events under conditions of stimulus competition. According to the perceptual load model of attention, the extent to which task-irrelevant inputs are processed is determined by the relative demands of discriminating the target: the more perceptually demanding the target task, the less unattended stimuli will be processed. Although much evidence supports the perceptual load model for competing stimuli within a single sensory modality, the effects of perceptual load in one modality on distractor processing in another is less clear. Here we used steady-state evoked potentials (SSEPs) to measure neural responses to irrelevant visual checkerboard stimuli while participants performed either a visual or auditory task that varied in perceptual load. Consistent with perceptual load theory, increasing visual task load suppressed SSEPs to the ignored visual checkerboards. In contrast, increasing auditory task load enhanced SSEPs to the ignored visual checkerboards. This enhanced neural response to irrelevant visual stimuli under auditory load suggests that exhausting capacity within one modality selectively compromises inhibitory processes required for filtering stimuli in another.	f	\N
22468726	The current study focuses on the relationship between alerting and executive attention. Previous studies reported an increased flanker congruency effect following alerting cues. In the first two experiments, we found that the alertness-congruency interaction did not exist for all executive tasks (it appeared for a flanker task but not for a Stroop task). In Experiments 3 and 4, we show that alerting increases the congruency effect in a response selection task only when the relevant and irrelevant information is spatially separated. We suggest that alerting modulates the allocation of attention by prioritizing processing of spatial information presented in the visual field. This process can be adaptive under many circumstances, but it comes at a cost. Alerting could possibly compromise our performance when required to filter out irrelevant spatial information.	f	\N
22476609	Biased processing of drug-associated stimuli is believed to be a crucial feature of addiction. Particularly, an attentional bias seems to contribute to the disorder's maintenance. Recent studies suggest differential effects for stimuli associated with the beginning (BEGIN-smoking-stimuli) or the terminal stage of the smoking ritual (END-smoking-stimuli), with the former but not the later evoking high cue-reactivity. The current study investigated the neuronal network underlying an attentional bias to BEGIN-smoking-stimuli and END-smoking-stimuli in smokers and tested the hypothesis that the attentional bias is greater for BEGIN-smoking-stimuli. Sixteen non-deprived smokers and 16 non-smoking controls participated in an fMRI study. Drug pictures (BEGIN-smoking-stimuli, END-smoking-stimuli) and control pictures were overlaid with geometrical figures and presented for 300 ms. Subjects had to identify picture content (identification-task) or figure orientation (distraction-task). The distraction-task was intended to demonstrate attentional bias. Behavioral data revealed an attentional bias to BEGIN-smoking-stimuli but not to END-smoking-stimuli in both groups. However, only smokers showed mesocorticolimbic deactivations in the distraction-task with BEGIN-smoking-stimuli. Importantly, these deactivations were significantly stronger for BEGIN- than for END-smoking-stimuli and correlated with the attentional bias score. Several explanations may account for missing group differences in behavioral data. Brain data suggest smokers using regulatory strategies in response to BEGIN-smoking-stimuli to prevent the elicitation of motivational responses interfering with distraction-task performance. These strategies could be reflected in the observed deactivations and might lead to a performance level in smokers that is similar to that of non-smokers.	f	\N
22477056	Previous studies investigating transfer of perceptual learning between luminance-defined (LD) motion and texture-contrast-defined (CD) motion tasks have found little or no transfer from LD to CD motion tasks but nearly perfect transfer from CD to LD motion tasks. Here, we introduce a paradigm that yields a clean double dissociation: LD training yields no transfer to the CD task, but more interestingly, CD training yields no transfer to the LD task. Participants were trained in two variants of a global motion task. In one (LD) variant, motion was defined by tokens that differed from the background in mean luminance. In the other (CD) variant, motion was defined by tokens that had mean luminance equal to the background but differed from the background in texture contrast. The task was to judge whether the signal tokens were moving to the right or to the left. Task difficulty was varied by manipulating the proportion of tokens that moved coherently across the four frames of the stimulus display. Performance in each of the LD and CD variants of the task was measured as training proceeded. In each task, training produced substantial improvement in performance in the trained task; however, in neither case did this improvement show any significant transfer to the nontrained task.	f	\N
22480345	Although circadian and sleep research has made extraordinary progress in the recent years, one remaining challenge is the objective quantification of sleepiness in individuals suffering from sleep deprivation, sleep restriction, and excessive somnolence. The major goal of the present study was to apply principal component analysis to the wake electroencephalographic (EEG) spectrum in order to establish an objective measure of sleepiness. The present analysis was led by the hypothesis that in sleep-deprived individuals, the time course of self-rated sleepiness correlates with the time course score on the 2nd principal component of the EEG spectrum. The resting EEG of 15 young subjects was recorded at 2-h intervals for 32-50 h. Principal component analysis was performed on the sets of 16 single-Hz log-transformed EEG powers (1-16 Hz frequency range). The time course of self-perceived sleepiness correlated strongly with the time course of the 2nd principal component score, irrespective of derivation (frontal or occipital) and of analyzed section of the 7-min EEG record (2-min section with eyes open or any of the five 1-min sections with eyes closed). This result indicates the possibility of deriving an objective index of physiological sleepiness by applying principal component analysis to the wake EEG spectrum.	f	\N
22484996	The purpose of this paper is to review the literature examining subjective and physiological arousal associated with an individual's preferred modes of gambling. Arousal is hypothesised to play a central role in the onset and maintenance of problem gambling. Most studies have failed to differentiate relevant patterns of arousal elicited by stimuli associated with preferred versus non-preferred modes of gambling on the assumption that similar processes motivate all gamblers. At the conceptual level, sub-typing theories of problem gambling propose differences in the motivation to gamble, and the associated role arousal plays in maintaining behaviours. A review of the existing literature reveals preliminary findings that indicate that gamblers respond differentially to preferred compared to non-preferred gambling stimuli, and that gamblers may display greater reactivity in arousal to gambling cues compared to non-gamblers. Understanding differences in such patterns of arousal can be used to inform clinical interventions by effectively targeting the nature and role of arousal associated with preferred modes of gambling, and determining the extent to which non-preferred modes act as secondary reinforces triggering by gambling urges.	f	\N
22487940	Motor overflow is extraneous movement in a limb not involved in a motor action. Typically, overflow is observed in people with neurological impairments and in healthy children and adults during strenuous and attention-demanding tasks. In the current study, we found that young infants produce vast amounts of motor overflow, corroborating claims of symmetry being the default state of the motor system. While manipulating an object with one hand, all 27 of the typically developing 4.5- to 7.5-month-old infants who we observed displayed overflow movements of the free hand (on 4/5 of unimanual actions). Mirror-image movements of the hands occurred on 1/8 of unimanual actions, and the hands and legs moved in synchrony on 1/3 of unimanual acts. Motor overflow was less frequent when infants were in a sitting posture and when infants watched their acting hand, suggesting that upright posture and visual examination may help to alleviate overflow and break obligatory symmetry in healthy infants.	f	\N
22502818	The present study highlights the utility of context-specific learning for different probe types in accounting for the commonly observed dependence of negative priming on probe selection. Using a Stroop priming procedure, Experiments 1a and 1b offered a demonstration that Stroop priming effects can differ qualitatively for selection and no-selection probes when probe selection is manipulated between subjects, but not when it is manipulated randomly from trial to trial within subject (see also Moore, 1994). In Experiments 2 and 3, selection and no-selection probes served as two contexts that varied randomly from trial to trial, but for which proportion repeated was manipulated separately. A context-specific proportion repeated effect was observed in Experiment 2, characterized by modest quantitative shifts in the repetition effects as a function of the context-specific proportion repeated manipulation. However, with a longer intertrial interval in Experiment 3, a context-specific proportion repeated manipulation that focused on the no-selection probes changed the repetition effect qualitatively, from negative priming when the proportion repeated was .25 to positive priming when the proportion repeated was .75. The results are discussed with reference to the role of rapid, context-specific learning processes in the integration of prior experiences with current perception and action.	f	\N
22504294	Recent findings suggest that, relative to negative feedback, positive feedback counteracts conflict processing and subsequent attentional adaptation. Here we hypothesize that this interaction may direct adjustments in perception and action via the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). We recorded EEG while participants performed an arrow flanker task with monetary gain or loss as arbitrary reward feedback between trials. As predicted, we found a reduction in conflict-driven adaptation for trials in which conflict was followed by monetary gain (vs. monetary loss), a behavioral effect accompanied by a modulation in early visual processing related to the processing of the distracters. Moreover, time-frequency analyses showed that ongoing fronto-central theta oscillations induced by previous conflict sustained longer after loss than after gain, an interaction presumably reflecting ACC modulation. These data provide a first important step toward understanding the neural mechanism underlying the affective regulation of conflict-driven behavior.	f	\N
22507824	Previous studies have documented the positive effects of mindfulness meditation on executive control. What has been lacking, however, is an understanding of the mechanism underlying this effect. Some theorists have described mindfulness as embodying two facets-present moment awareness and emotional acceptance. Here, we examine how the effect of meditation practice on executive control manifests in the brain, suggesting that emotional acceptance and performance monitoring play important roles. We investigated the effect of meditation practice on executive control and measured the neural correlates of performance monitoring, specifically, the error-related negativity (ERN), a neurophysiological response that occurs within 100 ms of error commission. Meditators and controls completed a Stroop task, during which we recorded ERN amplitudes with electroencephalography. Meditators showed greater executive control (i.e. fewer errors), a higher ERN and more emotional acceptance than controls. Finally, mediation pathway models further revealed that meditation practice relates to greater executive control and that this effect can be accounted for by heightened emotional acceptance, and to a lesser extent, increased brain-based performance monitoring.	f	\N
22508639	In this article, we illustrate how cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can be adapted for the treatment of PTSD among traumatized refugees and ethnic minority populations, providing examples from our treatment, culturally adapted CBT, or CA-CBT. CA-CBT has a unique approach to exposure (typical exposure is poorly tolerated in these groups), emphasizes the treatment of somatic sensations (a particularly salient part of the presentation of PTSD in these groups), and addresses comorbid anxiety disorders and anger. To accomplish these treatment goals, CA-CBT emphasizes emotion exposure and emotion regulation techniques such as meditation and aims to promote emotional and psychological flexibility. We describe 12 key aspects of adapting CA-CBT that make it a culturally sensitive treatment of traumatized refugee and ethnic minority populations. We discuss three models that guide our treatment and that can be used to design culturally sensitive treatments: (a) the panic attack-PTSD model to illustrate the many processes that generate PTSD in these populations, highlighting the role of arousal and somatic symptoms; (b) the arousal triad to demonstrate how somatic symptoms are produced and the importance of targeting comorbid anxiety conditions and psychopathological processes; and (c) the multisystem network (MSN) model of emotional state to reveal how some of our therapeutic techniques (e.g., body-focused techniques: bodily stretching paired with self-statements) bring about psychological flexibility and improvement.	f	\N
22510246	Despite the interest for the brain correlates of male sexual arousal, few studies investigated neural mechanisms underlying psychogenic erectile dysfunction (ED). Although these studies showed several brain regions active in ED patients during visual erotic stimulation, the dynamics of inhibition of sexual response is still unclear. This study investigated the dynamics of brain regions involved in the psychogenic ED. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and simultaneous penile tumescence (PT) were used to study brain activity evoked in 17 outpatients with psychogenic ED and 19 healthy controls during visual erotic stimulation. Patterns of brain activation related to different phases of sexual response in the two groups were compared. Simultaneous recording of blood oxygen level-dependent fMRI responses and PT during visual erotic stimulation. During visual erotic stimuli, a larger activation was observed for the patient group in the left superior parietal lobe, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and posterior cingulate cortex, whereas the control group showed larger activation in the right middle insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and hippocampus. Moreover, the left superior parietal lobe showed a larger activation in patients than controls especially during the later stage of sexual response. Our results suggest that, among regions more active in patient group, the left superior parietal lobe plays a crucial role in inhibition of sexual response. Previous studies showed that left superior parietal lobe is involved in monitoring of internal body representation. The larger activation of this region in patients during later stages of sexual response suggests a high monitoring of the internal body representation, possibly affecting the behavioral response. These findings provide insight on brain mechanisms involved in psychogenic ED.	f	\N
22524263	Memory-guided decision making is dynamic and context-dependent, even though many studies describe an enhancement of the P3 for recognized items in memory tasks ("old-new effect"). This study utilized a delay-dependent working memory task during which decision making could be optimized by focusing attention on detected changes instead of recognized similarities. Mean P3 amplitude and delta activity were analyzed from participants who classified probe stimuli as identical or modified. The P3 amplitudes were larger for modified than for identical probes, even when the probe occurred 4,000 ms after the primary stimulus. Enhanced single-trial amplitude, trial-by-trial consistency, and frontoparietal phase coherence of delta activity contributed to the larger P3 for the modified probe. Thus, context-dependent attentional resource allocation supporting memory-guided decisions might explain the enhancement of the P3 for specific probe types.	f	\N
22524337	This paper outlines the principal behavioral methods used to study music processing in infancy. The advantages of conditioning procedures are offset by high attrition rates and restrictions on the stimuli that can be used. The head-turn preference procedure is more user-friendly but poses greater interpretive challenges. In view of the multidimensional nature of infant attention, no single response measure, whether behavioral, physiological, or neural, can provide unambiguous information about music processing in infancy. Greater use of ecologically valid stimuli is likely to generate increased cooperation from infants and greater generality of the findings.	f	\N
22526718	Response priming refers to the finding that a prime stimulus preceding a target stimulus influences the response to the following target stimulus. Typically, responses are faster and more accurate if the prime calls for the same response as the target (i.e., compatible trials), as compared with the situation where primes and targets trigger different responses (i.e., incompatible trials). However, the effect depends on presentational and temporal parameters such as the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of prime and target, or prime duration. Until now, the special role of moving stimuli was largely ignored. In the present research, experiments were conducted using clearly visible moving dots as primes and static arrows as targets. Essentially, with short SOAs up to 200 ms, participants responded faster to compatible targets. In contrast, with SOAs above 200 ms, participants responded faster to incompatible targets. The results were compared with response priming with static primes. Here, a different pattern of results emerged, with faster responses to compatible than incompatible targets at a long SOA of 300 ms. Overall, the experiments provide evidence for the existence of an inhibitory mechanism in action control when (distracting) motion stimuli are present. Results could be explained with slight changes to different accounts of negative response priming effects, as well as theories of attention.	f	\N
22528785	In a category-learning experiment, we assessed whether participants were able to selectively attend to different components of a compound stimulus in two distinct contexts. The participants were presented with stimulus compounds for which they had to learn categorical labels. Each compound comprised one feature from each of two dimensions, and on different trials the compound was presented in two contexts, X and Y. In Context X, Dimension A was relevant to the solution of the categorization task and Dimension B was irrelevant, whereas in Context Y, Dimension A was irrelevant and Dimension B was relevant. The results of transfer tests to novel stimuli suggested that people learned to attend selectively to Dimension A in Context X and Dimension B in Context Y. These findings contribute to the growing body of evidence that people can learn to selectively attend to particular dimensions of stimuli dependent on the context in which the stimuli are presented. Furthermore, the findings demonstrate that context-dependent changes in attention transfer to other categorization tasks involving novel stimuli.	f	\N
22532384	We have previously reported evidence that repetitions of letters, colors, sizes, and common motion paths are more rapidly detected when they are presented unilaterally (i.e., both in the same visual field) versus bilaterally (one element in each visual field; Butcher and Cavanagh (Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 70:714-724, 2008). Here, we report evidence that this unilateral field advantage (UFA) for repetition detection does not depend on prior experience with the elements that comprise the repetition. In Experiment 1, native English, Persian, and Japanese speakers were tested on a repetition detection task involving characters from Western, Arabic, and Japanese character sets. The character sets were tested in blocks, in each of which subjects were presented with four characters for 16 ms and asked to report whether any two of the characters were identical. The subjects were faster detecting repetitions that were presented unilaterally rather than bilaterally, and there was no interaction with stimulus familiarity. A second experiment replicated this finding with native English speakers only, using a longer stimulus duration (150 ms). We had previously proposed that the UFA arises because the low-level processes that group physically identical items operate more efficiently within than across hemifields. Our data now indicate that this grouping process is insensitive to item familiarity, supporting the claim that the process is low-level.	f	\N
22537695	Deficits in cognitive functioning are associated with many safety concerns, including difficulties performing activities of daily living, medication errors, motor vehicle accidents, impaired awareness of deficits, decision-making capacity, falls, and travel away from home. Preventing adverse safety outcomes is particularly relevant in rehabilitation patients. Integration of information and recommendations stemming from allied disciplines, such as rehabilitation medicine, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and neuropsychology, is the most effective way to limit poor outcomes. Education and prevention counseling by health care professionals is an important approach in limiting adverse safety outcomes in patients with cognitive impairment.	f	\N
22545929	Recognition memory for unfamiliar faces is facilitated when contextual cues (e.g., head pose, background environment, hair and clothing) are consistent between study and test. By contrast, inconsistencies in external features, especially hair, promote errors in unfamiliar face-matching tasks. For the construction of facial composites, as carried out by witnesses and victims of crime, the role of external features (hair, ears, and neck) is less clear, although research does suggest their involvement. Here, over three experiments, we investigate the impact of external features for recovering facial memories using a modern, recognition-based composite system, EvoFIT. Participant-constructors inspected an unfamiliar target face and, one day later, repeatedly selected items from arrays of whole faces, with "breeding," to "evolve" a composite with EvoFIT; further participants (evaluators) named the resulting composites. In Experiment 1, the important internal-features (eyes, brows, nose, and mouth) were constructed more identifiably when the visual presence of external features was decreased by Gaussian blur during construction: higher blur yielded more identifiable internal-features. In Experiment 2, increasing the visible extent of external features (to match the target's) in the presented face-arrays also improved internal-features quality, although less so than when external features were masked throughout construction. Experiment 3 demonstrated that masking external-features promoted substantially more identifiable images than using the previous method of blurring external-features. Overall, the research indicates that external features are a distractive rather than a beneficial cue for face construction; the results also provide a much better method to construct composites, one that should dramatically increase identification of offenders.	f	\N
22560111	Consciousness alterations can be experienced during unstructured, monotonous stimuli. These effects have not been linked to particular cognitive operations; individual differences in response to such stimulation remain poorly understood. We examined the role of hypnotizability and dissociative tendencies in mind-wandering (MW) during a sensory homogenization procedure (ganzfeld). We expected that the influence of ganzfeld on MW would be more pronounced among highly hypnotizable individuals (highs), particularly those high in dissociative tendencies. High and low hypnotizables, also stratified by dissociation, completed the sustained attention to response task during ganzfeld and control conditions. High dissociative highs made more commission errors during ganzfeld, suggesting increased MW, whereas the other groups displayed the opposite pattern. Increases in commission errors from the control condition to ganzfeld were associated with more alterations in consciousness and negative affect, but only among highs. Sensory homogenization had opposite effects on MW depending on the interaction of hypnotizability and dissociation.	f	\N
22563629	Sounds deviating from an otherwise repeated stream of task-irrelevant auditory stimuli (deviant sounds among standard sounds) are known to capture attention and impact negatively on ongoing behavioral performance (behavioral oddball distraction). Traditional views consider such distraction as the ineluctable consequence of the deviant sounds' low probability of occurrence relative to that of the standard. Contrary to this contention, recent evidence demonstrates that distraction by deviant sounds is not obligatory and occurs only when sounds (standards and deviants), though to be ignored, act as useful warning cues by providing information as to whether and when a target stimulus is to be presented (Parmentier, Elsley, & Ljungberg, 2010). The present study aimed to extend this finding by disentangling the roles of event information (target's probability of occurrence) and temporal information (target's time of occurrence). Comparing performance in a cross-modal oddball task where standard and deviant sounds provided temporal information, event information, both, or none, we found that distraction by deviant sounds emerged when sounds conveyed event information. These results suggest that unexpected changes in a stream of sounds yield behavioral distraction to the extent that standards and deviants carry relevant goal-directed information, specifically, the likelihood of occurrence of an upcoming target.	f	\N
22563872	The search for predictors of schizophrenia has accelerated with a growing focus on early intervention and prevention of psychotic illness. Studying nonpsychotic relatives of individuals with schizophrenia enables identification of markers of vulnerability for the illness independent of confounds associated with psychosis. The goal of these studies was to develop new auditory continuous performance tests (ACPTs) and evaluate their effects in individuals with schizophrenia and their relatives. We carried out two studies of auditory vigilance with tasks involving working memory (WM) and interference control with increasing levels of cognitive load to discern the information-processing vulnerabilities in a sample of schizophrenia patients, and two samples of nonpsychotic relatives of individuals with schizophrenia and controls. Study 1 assessed adults (mean age = 41), and Study 2 assessed teenagers and young adults age 13-25 (M = 19). Patients with schizophrenia were impaired on all five versions of the ACPTs, whereas relatives were impaired only on WM tasks, particularly the two interference tasks that maximize cognitive load. Across all groups, the interference tasks were more difficult to perform than the other tasks. Schizophrenia patients performed worse than relatives, who performed worse than controls. For patients, the effect sizes were large (Cohen's d = 1.5), whereas for relatives they were moderate (d = ~0.40-0.50). There was no age by group interaction in the relatives-control comparison except for participants <31 years of age. Novel WM tasks that manipulate cognitive load and interference control index an important component of the vulnerability to schizophrenia.	f	\N
22564396	A previous study reported a method for measuring the spectral transmittance of individual human eyelids. A prototype light mask using narrow-band "green" light (λmax = 527 nm) was used to deliver light through closed eyelids in two within-subjects studies. The first study investigated whether an individual-specific light dose could suppress melatonin by 40% through the closed eyelid without disrupting sleep. The light doses were delivered at three times during the night: 1) beginning (while subjects were awake), 2) middle (during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep), and 3) end (during non-REM sleep). The second study investigated whether two individual-specific light doses expected to suppress melatonin by 30% and 60% and delivered through subjects' closed eyelids before the time of their predicted minimum core body temperature would phase delay the timing of their dim light melatonin onset (DLMO). Compared to a dark control night, light delivered through eyelids suppressed melatonin by 36% (p = 0.01) after 60-minute light exposure at the beginning, 45% (p = 0.01) at the middle, and 56% (p < 0.0001) at the end of the night. In the second study, compared to a dark control night, melatonin was suppressed by 25% (p = 0.03) and by 45% (p = 0.009) and circadian phase, as measured by DLMO, was delayed by 17 minutes (p = 0.03) and 71 minutes (ns) after 60-minute exposures to light levels 1 and 2, respectively. These studies demonstrate that individual-specific doses of light delivered through closed eyelids can suppress melatonin and phase shift DLMO and may be used to treat circadian sleep disorders.	f	\N
22571890	The present study tested predictions derived from the Risk as Feelings hypothesis about the effects of prior patients' negative treatment outcomes on physicians' subsequent treatment decisions. Two experiments at The University of Chicago, U.S.A., utilized a computer simulation of an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) patient with enhanced realism to present participants with one of three experimental conditions: AAA rupture causing a watchful waiting death (WWD), perioperative death (PD), or a successful operation (SO), as well as the statistical treatment guidelines for AAA. Experiment 1 tested effects of these simulated outcomes on (n = 76) laboratory participants' (university student sample) self-reported emotions, and their ratings of valence and arousal of the AAA rupture simulation and other emotion-inducing picture stimuli. Experiment 2 tested two hypotheses: 1) that experiencing a patient WWD in the practice trial's experimental condition would lead physicians to choose surgery earlier, and 2) experiencing a patient PD would lead physicians to choose surgery later with the next patient. Experiment 2 presented (n = 132) physicians (surgeons and geriatricians) with the same experimental manipulation and a second simulated AAA patient. Physicians then chose to either go to surgery or continue watchful waiting. The results of Experiment 1 demonstrated that the WWD experimental condition significantly increased anxiety, and was rated similarly to other negative and arousing pictures. The results of Experiment 2 demonstrated that, after controlling for demographics, baseline anxiety, intolerance for uncertainty, risk attitudes, and the influence of simulation characteristics, the WWD experimental condition significantly expedited decisions to choose surgery for the next patient. The results support the Risk as Feelings hypothesis on physicians' treatment decisions in a realistic AAA patient computer simulation. Bad outcomes affected emotions and decisions, even with statistical AAA rupture risk guidance present. These results suggest that bad patient outcomes cause physicians to experience anxiety and regret that influences their subsequent treatment decision-making for the next patient.	f	\N
22574846	In a recent paper published in the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, we assessed the differences between sexually victimized and nonsexually victimized male adolescent sexual abusers ( Burton, Duty, & Leibowitz, 2011 ). We found that the sexually victimized group had more severe developmental antecedents (e.g., trauma and early exposure to pornography) and behavioral difficulties (sexual aggression, arousal, pornography use, and nonsexual offenses). The present study compares sexually victimized and nonsexually victimized adolescent sexual abusers with a group of nonsexually victimized delinquent youth. Findings included that delinquent youth had fewer behavioral and developmental problems than the comparison groups. In addition, sexually victimized sexual abusers had the highest mean scores on trauma and personality measures. Implications for research and treatment are offered.	f	\N
22579705	Patients with multimodal semantic impairment following stroke (referred to here as 'semantic aphasia' or SA) fail to show the standard effects of frequency in comprehension tasks. Instead, they show absent or even reverse frequency effects: i.e., better understanding of less common words. In addition, SA is associated with poor regulatory control of semantic processing and executive deficits. We used a synonym judgement task to investigate the possibility that the normal processing advantage for high frequency (HF) words fails to emerge in these patients because HF items place greater demands on executive control. In the first part of this study, SA patients showed better performance on more imageable as opposed to abstract items, but minimal or reverse frequency effects in the same task, and these negative effects of word frequency on comprehension were related to the degree of executive impairment. Ratings from healthy subjects indicated that it was easier to establish potential semantic associations between probe and distracter words for HF trials, suggesting that reverse frequency effects might reflect a failure to suppress spurious associations between HF probes and distracters. In a subsequent experiment, the aphasic patients' performance improved when HF probes and targets were presented alongside low frequency distracters, supporting this hypothesis. An additional study with healthy participants used dual task methodology to examine the impact of divided attention on synonym judgement. Although frequently encountered words were processed more efficiently overall, the secondary task selectively disrupted performance for high but not low frequency trials. Taken together, these results show that positive effects of frequency are counteracted in SA by increases in semantic control requirements for HF words.	f	\N
22579968	Processing in one sensory modality may modulate processing in another. Here we investigate how simply viewing the hand can influence the sense of touch. Previous studies showed that non-informative vision of the hand enhances tactile acuity, relative to viewing an object at the same location. However, it remains unclear whether this Visual Enhancement of Touch (VET) involves a phasic enhancement of tactile processing circuits triggered by the visual event of seeing the hand, or more prolonged, tonic neuroplastic changes, such as recruitment of additional cortical areas for tactile processing. We recorded somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) evoked by electrical stimulation of the right middle finger, both before and shortly after viewing either the right hand, or a neutral object presented via a mirror. Crucially, and unlike prior studies, our visual exposures were unpredictable and brief, in addition to being non-informative about touch. Viewing the hand, as opposed to viewing an object, enhanced tactile spatial discrimination measured using grating orientation judgements, and also the P50 SEP component, which has been linked to early somatosensory cortical processing. This was a trial-specific, phasic effect, occurring within a few seconds of each visual onset, rather than an accumulating, tonic effect. Thus, somatosensory cortical modulation can be triggered even by a brief, non-informative glimpse of one's hand. Such rapid multisensory modulation reveals novel aspects of the specialised brain systems for functionally representing the body.	f	\N
22580017	Covert spatial attention can increase contrast sensitivity either by changes in contrast gain or by changes in response gain, depending on the size of the attention field and the size of the stimulus (Herrmann et al., 2010), as predicted by the normalization model of attention (Reynolds & Heeger, 2009). For feature-based attention, unlike spatial attention, the model predicts only changes in response gain, regardless of whether the featural extent of the attention field is small or large. To test this prediction, we measured the contrast dependence of feature-based attention. Observers performed an orientation-discrimination task on a spatial array of grating patches. The spatial locations of the gratings were varied randomly so that observers could not attend to specific locations. Feature-based attention was manipulated with a 75% valid and 25% invalid pre-cue, and the featural extent of the attention field was manipulated by introducing uncertainty about the upcoming grating orientation. Performance accuracy was better for valid than for invalid pre-cues, consistent with a change in response gain, when the featural extent of the attention field was small (low uncertainty) or when it was large (high uncertainty) relative to the featural extent of the stimulus. These results for feature-based attention clearly differ from results of analogous experiments with spatial attention, yet both support key predictions of the normalization model of attention.	f	\N
22582689	Many sports require fine spatiotemporal resolution for optimal performance. Previous studies have compared anticipatory skills and the decision-making process in athletes; however, there is little information on visual skills of elite athletes, particularly hockey players. To assess visual skills of Olympic hockey players and analyze differences by playing position, and to analyze improvement of visual skills after training, 21 Olympic field hockey players were pre- and post-tested on 11 visual tasks following a 10-wk. visual training program consisting of computer-based visual exercises. There were no mean differences at pre-test between players of different positions, suggesting that performance on these visual skills was independent of playing position. However, after training, an improvement was seen in all players (when scores were averaged across all 11 visual tasks) with goalkeepers improving significantly more than any other position. This suggests the possibility of improving visual skills even in an elite population.	f	\N
22583090	QuikScan (QS) is an innovative design that aims to improve accessibility, comprehensibility, and subsequent recall of expository text by means of frequent within-document summaries that are formatted as numbered list items. The numbers in the QS summaries correspond to numbers placed in the body of the document where the summarized ideas are discussed in full. To examine the influence of QS summaries on participants' perceptions of text quality (i.e., comprehensibility, structure, and interest) and recall, an experimental - control group design compared the effects of a QS text with a structured abstract (SA) text. Forty psychology students participated voluntarily or received course credits. Students first read a control (SA) or experimental (QS) text on flashbulb memory (FBM). Next, their perceptions of text quality were measured through a questionnaire. Recall was assessed with an open answer test with items for facts, comprehension and higher order information. Perceptions of text quality did not vary across conditions. But QS did lead to significantly and substantially (d= 1.57) higher overall recall scores. Participants with the QS text performed significantly better on all item types than participants with the SA text. Studying a QS text led to a substantial improvement in recall compared to an SA text. Further research is needed to examine how readers study QS texts and whether a text model hypothesis or a repetition effect hypothesis accounts for the effectiveness. The first hypothesis posits that the QS summaries support the reader in constructing a text schema. The second attributes the effects of these summaries to their repetition of text topics.	f	\N
22612165	One approach to understanding working memory (WM) holds that individual differences in WM capacity arise from the amount of information a person can store in WM over short periods of time. This view is especially prevalent in WM research conducted with the visual arrays task. Within this tradition, many researchers have concluded that the average person can maintain approximately 4 items in WM. The present study challenges this interpretation by demonstrating that performance on the visual arrays task is subject to time-related factors that are associated with retrieval from long-term memory. Experiment 1 demonstrates that memory for an array does not decay as a product of absolute time, which is consistent with both maintenance- and retrieval-based explanations of visual arrays performance. Experiment 2 introduced a manipulation of temporal discriminability by varying the relative spacing of trials in time. We found that memory for a target array was significantly influenced by its temporal compression with, or isolation from, a preceding trial. Subsequent experiments extend these effects to sub-capacity set sizes and demonstrate that changes in the size of k are meaningful to prediction of performance on other measures of WM capacity as well as general fluid intelligence. We conclude that performance on the visual arrays task does not reflect a multi-item storage system but instead measures a person's ability to accurately retrieve information in the face of proactive interference.	f	\N
22612769	Performing two cognitive tasks at the same time can degrade performance for either domain-general reasons (e.g., both tasks require attention) or domain-specific reasons (e.g., both tasks require visual working memory). We tested predictions of these two accounts of interference on the task of driving while using language, a naturally occurring dual task. Using language and driving a vehicle use different perceptual and motor skills. As a consequence, a domain-general explanation for interference in this dual task appears most plausible. However, recent evidence from the language processing literature suggests that when people use language with motor content (e.g., language about actions) or visual content (e.g., language about visible objects and events), they engage their motor and perceptual systems in ways specifically reflecting the actions and percepts that the language is about. This raises the possibility that language might interfere with driving for domain-specific reasons when the language has visual or motor content. To test this, we had participants drive a simulated vehicle while simultaneously answering true-false statements that had motor, visual, or abstract content. A domain-general explanation for interference would predict greater distraction in each of these three conditions compared with control, while a domain-specific explanation would predict greater interference in the motor and visual conditions. Both of these predictions were borne out but on different measures of distraction, suggesting that language-driven distraction during driving and dual tasks involving language in general may be the result not only of domain-general causes but also specific interference caused by linguistic content.	f	\N
22620487	We previously described dynamic, noncontrast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the female genitalia as a reproducible, nonintrusive, objective means of quantifying sexual arousal response in women without sexual difficulties. These studies showed an increase in clitoral engorgement ranging from 50 to 300% in healthy women during sexual arousal. This study sought to evaluate the genital arousal response in women with female sexual arousal disorder (FSAD) after administration of sildenafil and placebo. We performed a multicenter, double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over study to assess the clitoral engorgement response using dynamic MRI in women with FSAD after administering sildenafil and placebo followed by audiovisual sexual stimulation (AVSS). Nineteen premenopausal women with FSAD underwent two MRI sessions. Subjects were randomized to receive either (i) sildenafil 100 mg during the first session followed by placebo during the second session, or (ii) placebo followed by sildenafil. During each session, baseline MR images were obtained while subjects viewed a neutral video. Subjects then ingested sildenafil or placebo. After 30 minutes, a series of MRIs were obtained at 3-minute intervals for 10 time points while subjects viewed AVSS. A positive sexual arousal response was achieved if clitoral volume increased ≥50% from baseline. Thirteen of 19 (68%) subjects achieved a ≥50% increase in clitoral engorgement from baseline when administered sildenafil or placebo 30 minutes after dose administration. At 60 minutes after administration, 17/19 (89%) subjects receiving sildenafil and 16/19 (84%) subjects receiving placebo had responded (P value 0.3173). Sildenafil did not augment the genital response in women with FSAD. Secondarily, a majority of women in this study did not have impaired clitoral engorgement as measured by MRI, suggesting that FSAD is not predominantly a disorder of genital engorgement.	f	\N
22621354	Long-haul airline pilots often experience elevated levels of fatigue due to extended work hours and circadian misalignment of sleep and wake periods. During long-haul trips, pilots are typically given 1-3 d off between flights (i.e., layover) to recover from, and prepare for, duty. Anecdotally, some pilots prefer long layovers because it maximizes the time available for recovery and preparation, but others prefer short layovers because it minimizes both the length of the trip, and the degree to which the body clock changes from "home time" to the layover time zone. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of layover length on the sleep, subjective fatigue levels, and capacity to sustain attention of long-haul pilots. Participants were 19 male pilots (10 Captains, 9 First Officers) working for an international airline. Data were collected during an 11- or 12-d international trip. The trips involved (i) 4 d at home prior to the trip; (ii) an eastward flight of 13.5 h across seven time zones; (iii) a layover of either 39 h (i.e., short, n = 9) or 62 h (i.e., long, n = 10); (iv) a return westward flight of 14.3 h across seven time zones; and (v) 4 d off at home after the trip. Sleep was recorded using a self-report sleep diary and wrist activity monitor; subjective fatigue level was measured using the Samn-Perelli Fatigue Checklist; and sustained attention was assessed using the psychomotor vigilance task for a personal digital assistant (PalmPVT). Mixed-model regression analyses were used to determine the effects of layover length (short, long) on the amount of sleep that pilots obtained during the trip, and on the pilots' subjective fatigue levels and capacity to sustain attention. There was no main effect of layover length on ground-based sleep or in-flight sleep, but pilots who had a short layover at the midpoint of their trip had higher subjective fatigue levels and poorer sustained attention than pilots who had a long layover. The results of this study indicate that a short layover during a long-haul trip does not substantially disrupt pilots' sleep, but it may result in elevated levels of fatigue during and after the trip. If short layovers are used, pilots should have a minimum of 4 d off to recover prior to their next long-haul trip.	f	\N
22624007	The aim of this study was to investigate, using eye-tracking technique, the influence of bottom-up and top-down processes on visual behavior while subjects, naïve to art criticism, were presented with representational paintings. Forty-two subjects viewed color and black and white paintings (Color) categorized as dynamic or static (Dynamism) (bottom-up processes). Half of the images represented natural environments and half human subjects (Content); all stimuli were displayed under aesthetic and movement judgment conditions (Task) (top-down processes). Results on gazing behavior showed that content-related top-down processes prevailed over low-level visually-driven bottom-up processes when a human subject is represented in the painting. On the contrary, bottom-up processes, mediated by low-level visual features, particularly affected gazing behavior when looking at nature-content images. We discuss our results proposing a reconsideration of the definition of content-related top-down processes in accordance with the concept of embodied simulation in art perception.	f	\N
22628142	To explore treatment response to Osmotic Release Oral System(®) (OROS) methylphenidate in children with ADHD with and without comorbid learning disability (LD). Data were analyzed from two 6-week, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, crossover studies evaluating individually determined doses of OROS methylphenidate versus placebo in 135 children (ages 9 to 12 years) with ADHD with or without an LD in reading, math, or both. The sample was demographically diverse, with 31% females and more than 40% minority, predominantly African American and Hispanic. On two laboratory school days, participants received either OROS methylphenidate or placebo and were given a battery of cognitive and behavioral tests. Treatment with OROS methylphenidate led to improvement in ADHD Rating Scale scores for participants with or without comorbid LD. Both groups performed better during treatment with OROS methylphenidate than placebo on measures of cognitive skills (i.e., Test of Variables of Attention, Finger Windows Backwards), academically related tasks (i.e., Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, Test of Handwriting Skills-Revised, Permanent Product Math Test), and observed classroom behavior (i.e., Swanson, Kotkin, Alger, M-Flynn, and Pelham Scale). In children with ADHD with or without comorbid LD, behavior and performance improved during treatment with OROS methylphenidate.	f	\N
22637710	Previous studies have shown independent attentional selection of targets in the left and right visual hemifields during attentional tracking (Alvarez & Cavanagh, 2005) but not during a visual search (Luck, Hillyard, Mangun, & Gazzaniga, 1989). Here we tested whether multifocal spatial attention is the critical process that operates independently in the two hemifields. It is explicitly required in tracking (attend to a subset of object locations, suppress the others) but not in the standard visual search task (where all items are potential targets). We used a modified visual search task in which observers searched for a target within a subset of display items, where the subset was selected based on location (Experiments 1 and 3A) or based on a salient feature difference (Experiments 2 and 3B). The results show hemifield independence in this subset visual search task with location-based selection but not with feature-based selection; this effect cannot be explained by general difficulty (Experiment 4). Combined, these findings suggest that hemifield independence is a signature of multifocal spatial attention and highlight the need for cognitive and neural theories of attention to account for anatomical constraints on selection mechanisms.	f	\N
22648655	Perhaps the most common method of depicting data, in both scientific communication and popular media, is the bar graph. Bar graphs often depict measures of central tendency, but they do so asymmetrically: A mean, for example, is depicted not by a point, but by the edge of a bar that originates from a single axis. Here we show that this graphical asymmetry gives rise to a corresponding cognitive asymmetry. When viewers are shown a bar depicting a mean value and are then asked to judge the likelihood of a particular data point being part of its underlying distribution, viewers judge points that fall within the bar as being more likely than points equidistant from the mean, but outside the bar--as if the bar somehow "contained" the relevant data. This "within-the-bar bias" occurred (a) for graphs with and without error bars, (b) for bars that originated from both lower and upper axes, (c) for test points with equally extreme numeric labels, (d) both from memory (when the bar was no longer visible) and in online perception (while the bar was visible during the judgment), (e) both within and between subjects, and (f) in populations including college students, adults from the broader community, and online samples. We posit that this bias may arise due to principles of object perception, and we show how it has downstream implications for decision making.	f	\N
22652346	People with schizophrenia have neuro-cognitive deficits that are associated with poor functional outcome, yet their awareness of their cognitive deficiencies is variable. As new treatments for cognition are developed, it will be important that patients are receptive to the need for more therapy. Since insight into symptoms has been associated with treatment compliance, it may be of value to provide psycho-education to improve understanding about cognition in schizophrenia. We report a randomized controlled trial that enrolled 80 subjects in either a brief psycho-education intervention about cognition, or a control condition. Subjects in the two conditions did not differ at baseline in insight or receptiveness to treatment, or on demographic, cognitive, or psychiatric variables. Current cognitive impairment of subjects was evidenced by the indice of working memory, attention and executive functioning abilities, (X=77.45 intervention group; 82.50 control condition), that was significantly below both the normative mean and estimated average premorbid IQs (X=101.3 intervention group; X=104.57 control condition). Multivariate repeated measures ANOVAs indicated that subjects who received the psycho-education did not improve insight into their cognitive deficits or willingness to engage in treatment for cognitive dysfunction. While the failure to find a significant impact of this intervention on awareness of cognitive deficit and receptiveness to cognitive treatment raises questions about the malleability of insight into neuro-cognitive deficits, the intervention was briefer than most reported psycho-education programs and multi-session formats may prove to be more effective.	f	\N
22659025	Experts sometimes show higher working memory performance than novices but contrary to this finding, evidence for a positive effect of item-specific training is rare. This study provides evidence for item-specific training gains. We presented Chinese characters and artificial patterns (spotted figures) in a change detection task before and after training (varying set size from 1 to 3). A part of the Chinese characters were trained; others and the spotted figures were not trained. Memory capacity was between one and two items. For set size two, memory performance for trained characters was higher than for untrained characters and they were processed faster. Within superior intraparietal sulcus and middle occipital cortex (part of the putative posterior working memory network), the neural activity asymptotically increased with set size. Untrained items reached the activation maximum already at set size two. For this set size, the activity was significantly reduced for trained items so that a further increase from two to three items was observed. We interpret this difference as a correlate of a gain in neural efficiency. The size of this difference correlated with the training gain in memory. We assume that training causes a more efficient neural representation of trained items supported by long-term memory and this allows holding more items in working memory.	f	\N
22676077	Recent conceptualisations of anxiety posit that equivocal findings related to the time-course of disengaging from threat-relevant stimuli may be attributable to individual differences in associative and rule-based processing. The current study was designed to test the hypothesis that strength of spider-fear associations would indirectly predict reported spider fear via impaired disengagement. One hundred and thirty-one undergraduate volunteer participants completed the Go/No-go Association Task, a visual search task, and self-report spider fear questionnaires. Stronger spider-fear associations were associated with reduced disengagement accuracy, whereas higher levels of reported spider fear were related to faster engagement with and disengagement from spiders. Bootstrapping multiple mediation analyses demonstrated that stronger-spider fear associations evidenced an indirect relationship with reported spider fear via reduced disengagement accuracy, highlighting the importance of fine-grained analyses of different aspects of cognitive bias. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive models of anxiety.	f	\N
22683449	During covert shifts of tactile spatial attention both somatotopic and external reference frames are employed to encode hand location. When participants cross their hands these frames of references produce conflicting spatial codes which disrupt tactile attentional selectivity. Because attentional shifts are triggered not only in Attention tasks but also during covert movement preparation, the present study aimed at investigating the reference frame employed during such 'motor shifts of attention'. Event related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a Motor task where a visual cue (S1) indicated the relevant hand for a manual movement prior to a tactile Go/Nogo stimulus (S2). For comparison, we ran a tactile Attention task where the same cue (S1) now indicated the relevant hand for a tactile discrimination (S2). Both tasks were performed under uncrossed and crossed hands conditions. In both Attention and Motor tasks similar lateralized components were observed following S1 presentation. Anterior and posterior ERP components indicative of covert attention shifts were exclusively guided by an external reference frame, while a later central negativity operated according to a somatotopic reference frame in both tasks. In the Motor task, this negativity reflected selective activation of the motor cortex in preparation for movement execution. In the Attention task, this component might reflect activity in the somatosensory cortex in preparation for the subsequent tactile discrimination. The presence of multiple and conflicting spatial codes resulted in disruption of tactile attentional selection in the Attention task where attentional modulations of tactile processing were delayed and attenuated with crossed hands as indicated by the analysis of ERPs elicited by S2. In contrast, attentional modulations of S2 processing in the Motor task were largely unaffected by the hand posture manipulation, suggesting that motor attention employs primarily one spatial coordinate system.	f	\N
22683945	This study investigated whether trauma-related stimuli are preferentially processed at the expense of ongoing processing of neutral stimuli. Participants in the experimental group viewed negative pictures (Trauma) as an analogue trauma induction. Participants in the control group viewed visually similar neutral pictures (Neutral Match). In a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) task participants identified two target pictures. The first target (T1) was a neutral picture, whereas the second target (T2) was a familiar negative or neutral picture or a new neutral or negative picture. In line with hypotheses, only participants in the experimental group showed preferential processing of Trauma pictures. In the experimental group, negative T2 impaired the identification of (neutral) T1 if the T2 immediately followed the T1 in the RSVP stream. The results are consistent with a processing priority of trauma-related information, apparently at the expense of the ongoing processing of neutral information.	f	\N
22684039	Arousal from sleep is a major defense mechanism in infants against hypoxia and/or hypercapnia. Arousal failure may be an important contributor to SIDS. Areas of the brainstem that have been found to be abnormal in a majority of SIDS infants are involved in the arousal process. Arousal is sleep state dependent, being depressed during AS in most mammals, but depressed during QS in human infants. Repeated exposure to hypoxia causes a progressive blunting of arousal that may involve medullary raphe GABAergic mechanisms. Whereas CB chemoreceptors contribute heavily to arousal in response to hypoxia, serotonergic central chemoreceptors have been implicated in the arousal response to CO(2). Pulmonary or chest wall mechanoreceptors also contribute to arousal in proportion to the ventilatory response and decreases in their input may contribute to depressed arousal during AS. Little is known about specific arousal pathways beyond the NTS. Whether CB chemoreceptor stimulation directly stimulates arousal centers or whether this is done indirectly through respiratory networks remains unknown. This review will focus on arousal in response to hypoxia and CO(2) in the fetus and newborn and will outline what we know (and do not know) about the involvement of the carotid body in this process.	f	\N
22685575	The attentional set-shifting deficit that has been observed in Parkinson's disease (PD) has long been considered neuropsychological evidence of the involvement of meso-prefrontal and prefrontal-striatal circuits in cognitive flexibility. However, recent studies have suggested that non-dopaminergic, posterior cortical pathologies may also contribute to this deficit. Although several neuroimaging studies have addressed this issue, the results of these studies were confounded by the use of tasks that required other cognitive processes in addition to set-shifting, such as rule learning and working memory. In this study, we attempted to identify the neural correlates of the attentional set-shifting deficit in PD using a compound letter task and 18F-fluoro-deoxy-glucose (FDG) positron emission tomography during rest. Shift cost, which is a measure of attentional set-shifting ability, was significantly correlated with hypometabolism in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, including the putative human frontal eye field. Our results provide direct evidence that dysfunction in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex makes a primary contribution to the attentional set-shifting deficit that has been observed in PD patients.	f	\N
22686406	Mind wandering occurs when a person's stream of thought moves from the primary task to task-unrelated matters. Some theories of mind wandering suggest that it is caused by decreased attentional control associated with lower working memory (WM) capacity. Others suggest that it is caused by attention being directed toward internally generated thoughts and that it is associated with higher WM capacity. These ideas were assessed testing older adults because they have been argued to have reduced attentional control and lower WM capacity. The first account predicts that mind wandering should increase in older adults, while the second account predicts the opposite. Two experiments show that older adults exhibited a lower rate of mind wandering than younger adults. However, when using text interest as a covariate, the age difference in mind wandering disappeared. These results are further addressed in light of participants' current concerns and preserved situation model processing in cognitive aging.	f	\N
22687333	A dynamic systems model was used to generate parameters describing a phenotype of Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) behavior in a sample of 36 patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and/or fibromyalgia (FM) and 36 case-matched healthy controls. Altered neuroendocrine function, particularly in relation to somatic symptoms and poor sleep quality, may contribute to the pathophysiology of these disorders. Blood plasma was assayed for cortisol and ACTH every 10 min for 24h. The dynamic model was specified with an ordinary differential equation using three parameters: (1) ACTH-adrenal signaling, (2) inhibitory feedback, and (3) non-ACTH influences. The model was "personalized" by estimating an individualized set of parameters from each participant's data. Day and nighttime parameters were assessed separately. Two nocturnal parameters (ACTH-adrenal signaling and inhibitory feedback) significantly differentiated the two patient subgroups ("fatigue-predominant" patients with CFS only versus "pain-predominant" patients with FM and comorbid chronic fatigue) from controls (all p's<.05), whereas daytime parameters and diurnal/nocturnal slopes did not. The same nocturnal parameters were significantly associated with somatic symptoms among patients (p's<.05). There was a significantly different pattern of association between nocturnal non-ACTH influences and sleep quality among patients versus controls (p<.05). Although speculative, the finding that patient somatic symptoms decreased when more cortisol was produced per unit ACTH, is consistent with cortisol's anti-inflammatory and sleep-modulatory effects. Patients' HPA systems may compensate by promoting more rapid or sustained cortisol production. Mapping "behavioral phenotypes" of stress-arousal systems onto symptom clusters may help disentangle the pathophysiology of complex disorders with frequent comorbidity.	f	\N
22691441	Recent data suggest that word valence modulates subsequent cognitive processing. However, the contribution of word arousal is less understood. In this study, behavioral and electrophysiological measures to neutral nouns and pseudowords that were preceded by either a high-arousal or a low-arousal word were recorded during a lexical decision task. Effects were found at an electrophysiological level. Target words and pseudowords elicited enhanced N100 amplitudes when they were preceded by high- compared to low-arousing words. This effect may reflect perceptual potentiation during the allocation of attentional resources when the new stimulus is processed. Enhanced amplitudes in a late positivity when target words and pseudowords followed high-arousal primes were also observed, which could be related to sustained attention during supplementary analyses at a post-lexical level.	f	\N
22694365	Dual-tasking probes divided attention and causes performance changes that are associated with an increased risk for falls in the elderly. There is no systematic review investigating the effect of task type and complexity on the prediction of elderly falls. This article synthesizes research evidence regarding this issue on the contents of dual-tasking walking. Relevant studies were systematically identified from electronic databases of Medline, PubMed, CINAHL, Cochrane CENTRAL and PsycINFO, and the reference lists of identified articles. The selection criteria were defined a priori. Two independent reviewers classified task types based on properties for cognitive demand, assessed the methodological quality with a customized checklist, and calculated the odds ratio of fall prediction. There was one study of reaction time, one of discrimination and decision-making, 10 of mental tracking, three of verbal fluency and five of manual tasks. The methodological heterogeneity was manifested in the selection criteria, faller classification, tasks and measures, resulting in substantial heterogeneity (I(2) 87-92%). Meta-analyses resulted in a significant pooled odds ratio 1.33 (95% CI 1.18-1.50). The mental tracking task was the only type that yielded a significant odds ratio 3.30 (95% CI 2.00-5.44). Running meta-analyses separately for simple and difficult mental tracking task showed similar odds ratios. The mental tracking task yielded significant dual-task-related changes for fall prediction. Most studies successively used an appropriate level of task complexity specific to the specified population of interest. More research is required for definite conclusions regarding the effect of task type and complexity.	f	\N
22696535	It is well established that the prefrontal cortex is involved during memory-guided tasks whereas visually guided tasks are controlled in part by a frontal-parietal network. However, the nature of the transition from visually guided to memory-guided force control is not as well established. As such, this study examines the spatiotemporal pattern of brain activity that occurs during the transition from visually guided to memory-guided force control. We measured 128-channel scalp electroencephalography (EEG) in healthy individuals while they performed a grip force task. After visual feedback was removed, the first significant change in event-related activity occurred in the left central region by 300 ms, followed by changes in prefrontal cortex by 400 ms. Low-resolution electromagnetic tomography (LORETA) was used to localize the strongest activity to the left ventral premotor cortex and ventral prefrontal cortex. A second experiment altered visual feedback gain but did not require memory. In contrast to memory-guided force control, altering visual feedback gain did not lead to early changes in the left central and midline prefrontal regions. Decreasing the spatial amplitude of visual feedback did lead to changes in the midline central region by 300 ms, followed by changes in occipital activity by 400 ms. The findings show that subjects rely on sensorimotor memory processes involving left ventral premotor cortex and ventral prefrontal cortex after the immediate transition from visually guided to memory-guided force control.	f	\N
22704744	The Family Smoking Prevention and Control Act gave the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) legal authority to mandate graphic warning labels on cigarette advertising and packaging. The FDA requires that these graphic warning labels be embedded into cigarette advertising and packaging by September 2012. The aim of this study was to examine differences in recall and viewing patterns of text-only versus graphic cigarette warning labels and the association between viewing patterns and recall. Participants (current daily smokers; N=200) were randomized to view a cigarette advertisement with either text-only or graphic warning labels. Viewing patterns were measured using eye-tracking, and recall was later assessed. Sessions were conducted between November 2008 and November 2009. Data analysis was conducted between March 2011 and July 2011. There was a significant difference in percentage correct recall of the warning label between those in the text-only versus graphic warning label condition, 50% vs 83% (χ(2)=23.74, p=0.0001). Time to first viewing of the graphic warning label text and dwell time duration (i.e., time spent looking) on the graphic image were significantly associated with correct recall. Warning labels that drew attention more quickly and resulted in longer dwell times were associated with better recall. Graphic warning labels improve smokers' recall of warning and health risks; these labels do so by drawing and holding attention.	f	\N
22711264	Conceiving of development with reference to homology can help identify developmental continuity where surface form shows considerable variation across age. I argue that there is a homology of structure between the object-centred, or triadic, interactions that emerge in infancy and later language. The structure of triadic interaction in infancy is first described as involving joint attention and joint engagement about a shared topic, and then a case is made that this structure is maintained through three levels of complexity in language-single word utterances, multiword utterances, and finally complex constructions. A focus on the homological relation between these social interactive structures may be useful in revealing developmental continuities where these may be obscured by quite different surface forms.	f	\N
22712535	Attentional disengagement from negative affective information and engagement toward positive affective information appears to reflect an avoidant coping mechanism, one that may be associated with the belief that negative emotions are dangerous or undesirable (BNED). To test this hypothesis, we conducted two studies using a dot-probe task measuring attentional preference among college undergraduates. In the first study, BNED was associated with an attentional preference for positive facial cues over negative facial cues, evident after 1000 ms of exposure. In the second study, we included three exposure-time conditions; BNED appeared to be associated with an early disengagement from negative facial cues between 500 and 750 ms post-exposure and a subsequent orientation toward positive facial cues between 750 and 1000 ms post-exposure. We discuss these results in relation to avoidant coping and the relationship between anxiety and attention to affective cues.	f	\N
22716195	We investigate the effects of exenatide on excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS), driving performance and depression score in patients with type 2 diabetes with EDS. Eight obese patients with diabetes but without obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) participated in a placebo-controlled single-blind study during which multiple wakefulness and sleep latency test, Epworth score, driving performance, depression score, fasting glucose and glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) levels were assessed at baseline, end of placebo and treatment phase at baseline and after 22 weeks of treatment. Mean (±standard error of the mean) age, body mass index (kg m(2) ) and HbA1c [mmol mol(-1) (%)] of patients at baseline were 50 ± 4.9 years, 37.6 ± 1.1 and 65 ± 19 (8.06 ± 0.41), respectively. When compared to placebo, exenatide treatment was associated with a decrease in both subjective and objective sleepiness, based on the Epworth score reduction and the sleep latency increase assessed by multiple objective sleepiness and sustained attention (OSLER) tests, respectively. Mean sleep latency time (adjusted for change in HbA1c and weight) were 32.1 ± 1.7, 29.1 ± 1.7 and 37.7 ± 1.7, respectively (P = 0.002). Modelling for covariates suggested that improvement in mean sleep latency time is predicted by changes in weight (P = 0.003), but not by changes in HbA1c (P = 0.054). Epworth sleepiness score was reduced significantly (values for placebo versus exenatide: 11.3 ± 1.2 versus 5.7 ± 1.3; P = 0.003). No significant change was noted in the depression score and driving performance. Exenatide is associated with a significant reduction in objective sleepiness in obese patients with type 2 diabetes without OSA, independent of HbA1c levels. These findings could form a basis for further studies to investigate the pathophysiological mechanisms of sleepiness in obese patients with type 2 diabetes.	f	\N
22732031	The present research demonstrates that very brief variations in affect, being around 1 s in length and changing from trial to trial independently from semantic relatedness of primes and targets, modulate the amount of semantic priming. Implementing consonant and dissonant chords (Experiments 1 and 5), naturalistic sounds (Experiment 2), and visual facial primes (Experiment 3) in an (in)direct semantic priming paradigm, as well as brief facial feedback in a summative priming paradigm (Experiment 4), yielded increased priming effects under brief positive compared to negative affect. Furthermore, this modulation took place on the level of semantic spreading rather than on strategic mechanisms (Experiment 5). Alternative explanations such as distraction, motivation, arousal, and cognitive tuning could be ruled out. This phasic affective modulation constitutes a mechanism overlooked thus far that may contaminate priming effects in all priming paradigms that involve affective stimuli. Furthermore, this mechanism provides a novel explanation for the observation that priming effects are usually larger for positive than for negative stimuli. Finally, it has important implications for linguistic research, by suggesting that association norms may be biased for affective words.	f	\N
22732349	We studied the interaction between the control mechanisms subserving spatial attention and central attention using the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm. Two stimuli, a pure tone (T(1)) and a circular visual array (T(2)), including a salient target and a salient distractor, were presented at varying stimulus onset asynchronies, each requiring a speeded response. Target-specific and distractor-specific lateralized event-related potentials were isolated by placing one of them at a lateral position and the other on the vertical midline. As SOA was decreased, a progressive reduction and postponement of a T(2)-locked N2pc component was observed with a lateral target and a central distractor. No lateralized potentials were associated with a lateral distractor and a central target. The sustained posterior contralateral negativity (SPCN) was observed independently of SOA modulation, only with a lateral target. We also observed an earlier positive deflection, the Ppc (positivity posterior contralateral), that was contralateral to both lateral targets and distractors, whose amplitude and latency were not affected by SOA variations. We conclude that central processing interferes specifically with target processing reflected by the N2pc and SPCN. We propose that the Ppc reflects an initial, bottom-up response to the presence of a salient stimulus, whereas the N2pc and SPCN reflect the controlled deployment of spatial attention to targets and maintenance of target information in visual short-term memory, respectively.	f	\N
22739547	This study was designed to assess sexual dysfunction in women suffering from type 2 diabetes mellitus. Forty-five type 2 diabetic, non-menopausal married women, aged 20-55 years, who were referred to Shahid Labbafinejad Clinics from March 2008 to June 2009 were included in this study. They were compared to 91 non-diabetic volunteers. Sexual function was evaluated by the sexual function questionnaire. Genitourinary examination was performed in all subjects. Blood sample tests were requested for fasting blood sugar, hemoglobin A(1c), 2-hour postprandial glucose and lipid profile measurements. Ophthalmologic and neurologic examinations (checking deep tendon reflexes) were done for cases. The mean age of cases and controls was 42.17± 5.91 and 34.96 ± 8.30 years, respectively (p < 0.001). The prevalence of a high probability of female sexual dysfunction in 6 domains including desire, arousal sensation, arousal lubrication, orgasm, pain and enjoyment was 71.1, 84.4, 55.6, 71.1, 8.9 and 66.7% in the diabetes mellitus women and 56.6, 67.0, 59.3, 57.1, 25.3 and 53.8% in the non-diabetic volunteers, respectively. Differences were statistically significant in the 3 domains of desire, arousal sensation and pain (p < 0.05). Deep tendon reflexes were normal in all and 12.5% showed diabetic retinopathy. Sexual dysfunction in cases as well as in controls was high; however, further studies with a higher number of patients are needed to confirm the results.	f	\N
22744778	The aim of this study was to identify the motor, cognitive, and behavioral determinants of driving status and risk factors for driving cessation in Huntington's disease (HD). Seventy-four patients with HD were evaluated for cognitive, motor, psychiatric, and functional status using a standardized battery (Unified Huntington's Disease Rating Scale [UHDRS] and supplemental neuropsychological testing) during a research clinic visit. Chart review was used to categorize patients into two driving status categories: (1) "currently driving" included those driving and driving but with clinician recommendation to restrict, and (2) "not driving" included those with clinician recommendation to cease driving and those not currently driving because of HD. Multi- and univariate logistic regression was used to identify significant clinical predictors of those driving versus not driving. Global cognitive performance and UHDRS Total Functional Capacity scores provided the best predictive model of driving cessation (Nagelkerke R(2) = 0.65; P < 0.0001). Measures of learning (P = 0.006) and psychomotor speed/attention (P = 0.003) accounted for the overall cognitive finding. In univariate analyses, numerous cognitive, motor, and daily functioning items were significantly associated with driving. Although driving status is associated with many aspects of the disease, results suggest that the strongest association is with cognitive performance. A detailed cognitive evaluation is an important component of multidisciplinary clinical assessment in patients with HD who are driving.	f	\N
22748562	Epidemiological, cross-sectional, and prospective studies suggest that insomnia, chronic pain, and depression frequently co-occur and are mutually interacting conditions. However, the mechanisms underlying these comorbid disorders have yet to be elucidated. Overlapping mechanisms in the central nervous system suggest a common neurobiological substrate(s) may underlie the development and interplay of these disorders. We propose that the mesolimbic dopamine system is an underappreciated and attractive venue for the examination of neurobiological processes involved in the interactions, development, exacerbation, and maintenance of this symptom complex. In the present article, studies from multiple disciplines are reviewed to highlight the role of altered dopaminergic function in the promotion of arousal, pain sensitivity, and mood disturbance. We argue that studies aiming to elucidate common factors accounting for the comorbidity of insomnia, chronic pain, and depression should evaluate functioning within the mesolimbic dopaminergic system and its effect on common processes known to be dysregulated in all three disorders.	f	\N
22750676	To investigate which frames of reference guide shifts of attention triggered during eye and hand movement preparation and the specificity of their effects on somatosensory processing, we recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in a Go/Nogo task where a cue indicated to prepare an eye movement toward--or a hand movement with--the left or right hand. Before the imperative stimulus, a tactile probe was presented to one hand. Spatially selective modulations of tactile processing were more sustained for hand than eye movements, indicating stronger attentional modulations for the modality of the effector's sensory organ. Importantly, attentional modulations of somatosensory processing as well as lateralized ERP components in the preparation interval were virtually identical under uncrossed and crossed hands conditions, suggesting that shifts of attention triggered during hand and eye movement preparation are guided by a common external reference frame.	f	\N
22752788	Cognitive functions may be altered in patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) and it has been proposed that vigilance and attention changes play a fundamental role in all aspects of cognitive deficits noted in this disease. The use of event-related potentials (ERPs) is a high-time resolution technique that can be used to explore the presence of cognitive dysfunction. We review 23 empirical articles on ERPs in OSAS in order to contribute to the clarification of the pattern of cognitive deficits that are specific to this disease and to see whether there might be an improvement of abnormal psychophysiological findings with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) treatment. We conclude that ERP studies have contributed to demonstrating changes in cognitive attentive processing in OSAS, mainly in association with altered functioning of the prefrontal cortex, and that CPAP treatment may improve vigilance and attention and generally improve cerebral information processing in these patients. The remaining deficits during sufficient CPAP therapy may, however, reflect irreversible hypoxic cerebral damage.	f	\N
22776904	Amphetamine-based medications robustly suppress symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but their exact mechanisms remain poorly understood. Recent hemodynamic imaging studies have suggested that amphetamines may modulate the prefrontal and anterior cingulate brain regions, although few studies have been published and the results have not been entirely consistent. Meanwhile, several electrophysiological studies have shown that abnormal fast oscillations (in the γ range) may be closely linked to inattention and other cardinal symptoms of ADHD. In this study, we utilized magnetoencephalography to examine how amphetamines modulate high-frequency brain activity in adults with ADHD. Participants performed an auditory attention task, which required sustained attention in one block and passive listening in a separate block. Participants completed the task twice in the on-medication and off-medication states. All data were analyzed using beamforming techniques to resolve cortical regions showing event-related synchronizations and desynchronizations. Our primary findings indicated that oral administration of amphetamine decreased γ-band event-related desynchronization activity significantly in the medial prefrontal area and decreased event-related synchronization in bilateral superior parietal areas, left inferior parietal, and the left inferior frontal gyrus. These results suggest that psychostimulants strongly modulate γ activity in frontal and parietal cortical areas, which are known to be central to the brain's core attentional networks.	f	\N
22782542	Heightened anticipation of future events has been characterized as a feature of certain anxiety disorders. In functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, anticipation of fearful/threatening images has been shown to robustly activate the insular cortex and amygdala in healthy subjects, in subjects with high trait anxiety, and in some with anxiety disorders. Blood oxygenation level dependent activation in response to negative image anticipation is also sensitive to anxiolytic treatment, suggesting that image anticipation probes anxiety systems. It is not clear, however, if behavioral responses to image anticipation are also sensitive to anxiolytics. This study tested the hypothesis that anxiety behaviors during anticipation of negative images are sensitive to anxiolytic treatment. This study examined the effects of alprazolam and pregabalin treatment on potentiated startle during affective image anticipation. There was an effect of anticipation type (negative versus neutral versus positive) on startle reactivity and subjective ratings, suggesting that the task was effective in assaying negative anticipatory arousal. Both treatments significantly reduced overall startle magnitude. However, neither treatment specifically affected potentiated startle during aversive anticipation. These data suggest that potentiated startle in response to anticipation of aversive images is not sensitive to anxiolytic treatments in a healthy population, limiting its use as a predictive model of anxiolytic activity. This article is a US Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.	f	\N
22796982	People suppressing their emotions while facing an emotional event typically remember it less well. However, the neural mechanisms underlying the impairing effect of emotion suppression on successful memory encoding are not well understood. Because successful memory encoding relies on the hippocampus and the amygdala, we hypothesized that memory impairments due to emotion suppression are associated with down-regulated activity in these brain areas. 59 healthy females were instructed either to simply watch the pictures or to down-regulate their emotions by using a response-focused emotion suppression strategy. Brain activity was recorded using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and free recall of pictures was tested afterwards. As expected, suppressing one's emotions resulted in impaired recall of the pictures. On the neural level, the memory impairments were associated with reduced activity in the right hippocampus during successful encoding. No significant effects were observed in the amygdala. In addition, functional connectivity between the hippocampus and the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was strongly reduced during emotion suppression, and these reductions predicted free-recall performance. Our results indicate that emotion suppression interferes with memory encoding on the hippocampal level, possibly by decoupling hippocampal and prefrontal encoding processes, suggesting that response-focused emotion suppression might be an adaptive strategy for impairing hippocampal memory formation in highly arousing situations.	f	\N
22800656	The goal of the present study was to determine whether female restrained and unrestrained eaters demonstrated differential levels of attentional bias to high calorie foods when they were presented as distractors in a flanker task. This task consisted of four blocks of 68 trials in which three food pictures were briefly presented simultaneously on a computer screen. On each trial a high or low calorie target food was presented in the center of a pair of high or low calorie food flanker pictures and participants' reaction times to answer a basic question about whether they would consume the target food for breakfast were recorded. In Experiment 1, in which all participants were fed a snack prior to engaging in the flanker task, there was no evidence that restrained (n=29) or unrestrained (n=37) eaters had an attentional bias. However, in Experiment 2, when participants completed the flanker task while hungry, restrained eaters (n=27) experienced response conflict only when low calorie targets were flanked by high calorie distractors, whereas unrestrained eaters (n=46) were distracted by high calorie flankers regardless of the caloric content of the target cue. The results from this implicit task indicate that flankers interfere with hungry participants' responses to varying degrees depending on their cognitive restraint. Whether attentional bias to food cues subsequently affects food choices and eating behavior is a topic for further investigation.	f	\N
22806665	In this research work, we contribute with a behaviour learning process for a hierarchical Bayesian framework for multimodal active perception, devised to be emergent, scalable and adaptive. This framework is composed by models built upon a common spatial configuration for encoding perception and action that is naturally fitting for the integration of readings from multiple sensors, using a Bayesian approach devised in previous work. The proposed learning process is shown to reproduce goal-dependent human-like active perception behaviours by learning model parameters (referred to as "attentional sets") for different free-viewing and active search tasks. Learning was performed by presenting several 3D audiovisual virtual scenarios using a head-mounted display, while logging the spatial distribution of fixations of the subject (in 2D, on left and right images, and in 3D space), data which are consequently used as the training set for the framework. As a consequence, the hierarchical Bayesian framework adequately implements high-level behaviour resulting from low-level interaction of simpler building blocks by using the attentional sets learned for each task, and is able to change these attentional sets "on the fly," allowing the implementation of goal-dependent behaviours (i.e., top-down influences).	f	\N
22808722	The accuracy and variability of a sustained low-level force contraction (2% of maximum voluntary contraction) was measured while participants viewed unpleasant, pleasant, and neutral images during a feedback occluded force control task. Exposure to pleasant and unpleasant images led to a relative increase in force production but did not alter the variability of force production compared to conditions in which participants viewed neutral images. Findings are discussed with respect to prior work, emphasizing arousal specific changes that emerge at low target force levels.	f	\N
22815960	The ability to quickly detect changes in our surroundings has been crucial to human adaption and survival. In everyday life we often need to identify whether an object is new and if an object has changed its location. In the current event-related potential (ERP) study we investigated the electrophysiological correlates and the time course in detecting different types of changes of an objecṫs location and identity. In a delayed match-to-sample task participants had to indicate whether two consecutive scenes containing a road, a house, and two objects, were either the same or different. In six randomly intermixed conditions the second scene was identical, one of the objects had changed its identity, one of the objects had changed its location, or the objects had switched locations. The results reveal different time courses for the processing of identity and location changes in spatial scenes. Whereas location changes elicited a posterior N2 effect, indicating early mismatch detection, followed by a P3 effect reflecting post-perceptual processing, identity changes elicited an anterior N3 effect, which was delayed and functionally distinct from the N2 effect found for the location changes. The condition in which two objects switched position elicited a late ERP effect, reflected by a P3 effect similar to that obtained for the location changes. In sum, this study is the first to cohesively show different time courses for the processing of location changes, identity changes, and object switches in spatial scenes, which manifest themselves in different electrophysiological correlates.	f	\N
22824198	Preterm infants are exposed to loud noises during their stay in the neonatal intensive care unit which can lead to physiologic and behavioral alterations and even hearing loss. The use of earmuffs can reduce sound level and these changes. The objective of the present study is to evaluate the effectiveness of the earmuffs in preterm infants solely cared for in closed incubators. A comparative prospective study comprising 20 clinically stable preterm infants weighing less than 1500 g cared in closed incubator was conducted. Preterm infants acted as their own controls whereby they were observed without earmuffs (Group 1) for 2 days and with earmuffs (Group 2) on consecutive 2 days. The preterm infants' physiologic responses and Anderson Behavioral State Scoring System (ABSS) scores were assessed over 30s every 2h for 8h during daytime for 4 days. Out of 20 preterm infants, 6 were male and 14 female with a mean birth weight of 1220 ± 209 g, gestational age of 29.9 ± 2.1 weeks. The total number of measurements was 320. The mean ABSS scores of Group 1 and 2 were 3.07±1.1 and 1.34 ± 0.3, respectively. Statistically significant difference was noted between the means of ABSS scores (p<0.001). Preterm infants with earmuffs (87.5%) were more frequently observed in a quiet sleep state of ABSS compared with those without earmuffs (29.4%). Noise level reduction was associated with significant improvement in behavioral states of ABSS. We suggest that noise reduction in preterm infants with earmuffs is helpful by improving sleep efficiency and increasing time of quiet sleep.	f	\N
22834729	This review considers the challenges ahead for developing a generalizable strategy for the use of central thalamic deep brain stimulation (CT/DBS) to support arousal regulation mechanisms in the severely injured brain. Historical efforts to apply CT/DBS to patients with severe brain injuries and a proof-of-concept result from a single-subject study are discussed. Circuit and cellular mechanisms underlying the recovery of consciousness are considered for their relevance to the application of CT/DBS, to improve consciousness and cognition in nonprogressive brain injuries. Finally, directions for development, and testing of generalizable criteria for CT/DBS are suggested, which aim to identify neuronal substrates and behavioral profiles that may optimally benefit from support of arousal regulation mechanisms.	f	\N
22844142	This multiple-study experiment evaluated the utility of assessing and treating severe self-injurious behavior SIB based on the outcomes of a functional analysis of precursor behavior. In Study 1, a precursor to SIB was identified using descriptive assessment and conditional probability analyses. In Study 2, a functional analysis of precursor behavior was conducted. Finally, study 3 evaluated the effects of a treatment in which precursor behavior produced the maintaining variable identified in the precursor functional analysis. Studies 1 and 3 were conducted in two settings in the participants natural environment, where data collection was ongoing throughout the course of the study. Results showed that it was possible to identify a precursor to infrequent but severe SIB, that a functional analysis of precursor behavior suggested a clear operant function, and that treatment based on the results of the precursor functional analysis reduced SIB in the natural environment.	f	\N
22851806	Sleep is regulated by circadian and homeostatic processes and is highly organized temporally. Our study was designed to determine whether this organization is preserved in patients receiving mechanical ventilation (MV) and intravenous sedation. Observational study. Academic medical intensive care unit. Critically ill patients receiving MV and intravenous sedation. Continuous polysomnography (PSG) was initiated an average of 2.0 (1.0, 3.0) days after ICU admission and continued ≥ 36 h or until the patient was extubated. Sleep staging and power spectral analysis were performed using standard approaches. We also calculated the electroencephalography spectral edge frequency 95% SEF₉₅, a parameter that is normally higher during wakefulness than during sleep. Circadian rhythmicity was assessed in 16 subjects through the measurement of aMT6s in urine samples collected hourly for 24-48 hours. Light intensity at the head of the bed was measured continuously. We analyzed 819.7 h of PSG recordings from 21 subjects. REM sleep was identified in only 2/21 subjects. Slow wave activity lacked the normal diurnal and ultradian periodicity and homeostatic decline found in healthy adults. In nearly all patients, SEF₉₅ was consistently low without evidence of diurnal rhythmicity (median 6.3 [5.3, 7.8] Hz, n = 18). A circadian rhythm of aMT6s excretion was present in most (13/16, 81.3%) patients, but only 4 subjects had normal timing. Comparison of the SEF₉₅ during the melatonin-based biological night and day revealed no difference between the 2 periods (P = 0.64). The circadian rhythms and PSG of patients receiving mechanical ventilation and intravenous sedation exhibit pronounced temporal disorganization. The finding that most subjects exhibited preserved, but phase delayed, excretion of aMT6s suggests that the circadian pacemaker of such patients may be free-running.	f	\N
22856389	The development of sustained attention in the preschool years is not yet fully understood. Delineating age-related changes of attentional proficiencies and deficiencies is important for understanding atypical developmental trajectories, specifically in neurodevelopmental disorders that are characterized by attentional difficulties. The objective of the current study was to develop preschool-appropriate measures for assessing sustained attention and to chart developmental changes in attention in early childhood. Using adapted computerized paradigms, the present study investigated age-related changes in visual and auditory sustained attention in seventy typically developing children aged 3 to 6 years. The results indicated that similar age-related gains in performance emerged across both visual and auditory attention tasks. The findings suggest that the adapted measures developed in this study are sensitive enough to capture developmental variations in attention performance.	f	\N
22871541	The causative mechanisms of type 2 diabetes (T2D) on cognitive dysfunction are still undergoing development. To explore the cognitive dysfunction profile and its relation to the potential role of arterial stiffness in later middle age T2D patients. We studied 37 patients with T2D (age range 45-65 years) and 22 normal controls. All participants underwent comprehensive neuropsychological assessment. The carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (CF-PWV) measurements were taken with the PulsePen device. Our results showed significantly poorer performance on all tests assessing attention/executive functions and processing speed in patients with T2D. In addition to cognitive slowing T2D patients demonstrated significant deficits in almost all measures of verbal episodic memory after adjustment for age, education and blood pressure (BP) levels (p<0.05). Carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (CF-PWV) appeared significantly higher in T2D subjects than in normal controls after adjustment for age and BP level (p<0.001). Significant relationship was observed between CF-PWV and cognitive status. We revealed that arterial stiffness was increased and associated with cognitive impairment in T2D. The cognitive profile indicates hippocampal amnestic type mild cognitive impairment associated with a pronounced dysexecutive syndrome suggesting that diabetes may affect cognition through both vascular and neurodegenerative processes. However, neurodegenerative cognitive profile caused by hippocampal atrophy in a pure vascular process could not be excluded.	f	\N
22872509	We used the Re-enactment of intention paradigm to investigate whether children would re-enact what an adult intended to do in a video presentation as they do when presented with a live demonstration (Meltzoff in Dev Psychol 31(5):838-850, 1995). Unlike the 18-month-old infants studied by Meltzoff (Dev Psychol 31(5):838-850, 1995), the 18- and 24-month-olds in the current study did not frequently imitate unsuccessful goal-directed actions presented in a video model. Children who performed better in the task also tended to share more of their attention with the experimenter during co-viewing of the video. Performance on the Re-enactment of intention task was positively related to categorization score, an independent measure of cognitive functioning.	f	\N
22875718	This study was conducted to test interpersonal, attitudinal, and sexual predictors of sexual assertiveness in a Spanish sample of 1,619 men and 1,755 women aged 18-87 years. Participants completed measures of sexual assertiveness, solitary and dyadic sexual desire, sexual arousal, erectile function, sexual attitudes, and frequency of partner abuse. In men, higher sexual assertiveness was predicted by less non-physical abuse, more positive attitudes toward sexual fantasies and erotophilia, higher dyadic desire, and higher sexual arousal. In women, higher sexual assertiveness was predicted by less non-physical abuse, less solitary sexual desire and higher dyadic sexual desire, arousal, erotophilia, and positive attitudes towards sexual fantasies. Results were discussed in the light of prevention and educational programs that include training in sexual assertiveness skills.	f	\N
22878512	The authors examined longitudinal associations between 2 categories of parent verbal responsiveness and language comprehension and production 1 year later in 40 toddlers and preschoolers with a diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Parent-child play samples using a standard toy set were digitally captured and coded for child engagement with objects and communication acts and for parent verbal responses to play and communication. After controlling for parent education, child engagement, and initial language level, only parent directives for language that followed into the child's focus of attention accounted for unique variance in predicting both comprehension and production 1 year later. A series of exploratory analyses revealed that parent comments that followed into the child's focus of attention also accounted for unique variance in later comprehension and production for children who were minimally verbal at the initial time period. Child developmental level may warrant different types of linguistic input to facilitate language learning. Children with ASD who have minimal linguistic skills may benefit from parent language input that follows into the child's focus of attention. Children with ASD who are verbally fluent may need more advanced language input to facilitate language development.	f	\N
22878565	Affinity is a computerized assessment tool that combines viewing time and self-report measures of sexual interest. The present study was designed to assess the diagnostic properties of Affinity with respect to sexual interest in prepubescent children. Reliability of both self-report and viewing time components was estimated to be high. The group profile of a sample of pedophilic adult male child molesters (n = 42, all of whom admitted their offenses) differed from the group profiles of male community controls (n = 95) and male nonsexual offenders (n = 27), respectively. More specifically, both ratings and viewing times for images showing small children or prejuvenile children were significantly higher within the child molester sample than in either of the other two groups, attesting to the validity of the measures. Overall classification accuracy, however, was mediocre: A multivariate classification routine yielded 50% sensitivity for child molester status at the cost of 13% false positives. The implications for forensic use of Affinity are discussed.	f	\N
22882160	Recent studies propose that a mechanism termed "inhibitory tagging" acts upon the processing of the target at the attended location by temporarily blocking the stimulus-response mapping. Here we combined the cue-target paradigm with the Stroop task and measured event-related potential (ERP) responses to the color of a color word presented at the previously attended (cued) or unattended (uncued) location. We found that the conflict-related N450 effect emerged later and had a smaller size at the cued than the uncued location. The overall ERP responses to the target showed lower P1 and N1 amplitude at the cued than the uncued location. Although the P1/N1 effect may reflect deficient perceptual processing of the target, the delay of the N450 suggests that the link between perceptual processing and response activation is temporarily blocked at the previously attended location.	f	\N
22882736	Previous research with adults indicates that plain packaging increases visual attention to health warnings in adult non-smokers and weekly smokers, but not daily smokers. The present research extends this study to adolescents aged 14-19 years. Mixed-model experimental design, with smoking status as a between-subjects factor and pack type (branded or plain pack) and eye gaze location (health warning or branding) as within-subjects factors. Three secondary schools in Bristol, UK. A convenience sample of adolescents comprising never-smokers (n = 26), experimenters (n = 34), weekly smokers (n = 13) and daily smokers (n = 14). Number of eye movements to health warnings and branding on plain and branded packs. Analysis of variance, irrespective of smoking status revealed more eye movements to health warnings than branding on plain packs, but an equal number of eye movements to both regions on branded packs (P = 0.033). This was observed among experimenters (P < 0.001) and weekly smokers (P = 0.047), but not among never-smokers or daily smokers. Among experimenters and weekly smokers, plain packaging increases visual attention to health warnings and away from branding. Daily smokers, even relatively early in their smoking careers, seem to avoid the health warnings on cigarette packs. Adolescent never-smokers attend the health warnings preferentially on both types of packs, a finding which may reflect their decision not to smoke.	f	\N
22888795	This study addresses the relationship between trait impulsivity and inhibitory control, two features known to be impaired in a number of psychiatric conditions. While impulsivity is often measured using psychometric self-report questionnaires, the inhibition of inappropriate, impulsive motor responses is typically measured using experimental laboratory tasks. It remains unclear, however, whether psychometrically assessed impulsivity and experimentally operationalized inhibitory performance are related to each other. Therefore, we investigated the relationship between these two traits in a large sample using correlative and latent variable analysis. A total of 504 healthy individuals completed the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-11) and a battery of four prepotent response inhibition paradigms: the antisaccade, Stroop, stop-signal, and go/no-go tasks. We found significant associations of BIS impulsivity with commission errors on the go/no-go task and directional errors on the antisaccade task, over and above effects of age, gender, and intelligence. Latent variable analysis (a) supported the idea that all four inhibitory measures load on the same underlying construct termed "prepotent response inhibition" and (b) revealed that 12% of variance of the prepotent response inhibition construct could be explained by BIS impulsivity. Overall, the magnitude of associations observed was small, indicating that while a portion of variance in prepotent response inhibition can be explained by psychometric trait impulsivity, the majority of variance remains unexplained. Thus, these findings suggest that prepotent response inhibition paradigms can account for psychometric trait impulsivity only to a limited extent. Implications for studies of patient populations with symptoms of impulsivity are discussed.	f	\N
22888823	The present study investigated parental attention and sensitivity to their child's pain and the moderating role of child's facial pain expressiveness and induced threat. Sixty-two parents (49 mothers; 13 fathers) of schoolchildren observed their child undergoing painful and nonpainful heat trials and were requested to rate the presence of pain after each trial. Painful versus nonpainful trials were signaled by the presence of either a yellow or blue circle; one color served as a cue for possible pain delivery (i.e., conditioned pain cue), whereas the other served as a cue for a nonpainful trial. A subsequent visual search task (VST) assessed attention to pain cues by asking parents to identify a target presented within the conditioned pain cue or one of several other colored circles. Parents were randomly assigned to a "high threat" or "low threat" group in which either threatening or neutral information about the child's pain was provided. Signal detection analyses indicated that parents' ability to detect pain (i.e., sensitivity) was enhanced for parents in the high-threat group and for parents whose children expressed high pain. Visual search analyses indicated attentional engagement to child pain only among parents in the high-threat group whose child showed high-pain expressiveness. In all other circumstances, a tendency to avoid pain cues was observed. These findings attest to the importance of pain-related threat in understanding parent attention to child pain. Theoretical and clinical implications and future research directions are discussed.	f	\N
22895881	Active exploration of the visual world depends on sequential shifts of gaze that bring prioritized regions of a scene into central vision. The efficiency of this system is commonly attributed to a mechanism of "inhibition of return" (IOR) that discourages re-examination of previously-visited locations. Such a process is fundamental to computational models of attentional selection and paralleled by neurophysiological observations of inhibition of target-related activity in visuomotor areas. However, studies examining eye movements in naturalistic visual scenes appear to contradict the hypothesis that IOR promotes exploration. Instead, these reports reveal a surprisingly strong tendency to shift gaze back to the previously fixated location, suggesting that refixations might even be facilitated under natural conditions. Here we resolve this apparent contradiction, based on a probabilistic analysis of gaze patterns recorded during both free-viewing and search of naturalistic scenes. By simulating saccadic selection based on instantaneous influences alone, we show that the observed frequency of return saccades is in fact substantially less than predicted for a memoryless system, demonstrating that refixation is actively inhibited under natural viewing conditions. Furthermore, these observations reveal that gaze history significantly influences the way in which natural scenes are explored, contrary to accounts that suggest visual search has no memory.	f	\N
22896722	Item-specific spatial information is essential for interacting with objects and for binding multiple features of an object together. Spatial relational information is necessary for implicit tasks such as recognizing objects or scenes from different views but also for explicit reasoning about space such as planning a route with a map and for other distinctively human traits such as tool construction. To better understand how the brain supports these two different kinds of information, we used functional MRI to directly contrast the neural encoding and maintenance of spatial relations with that for item locations in equivalent visual scenes. We found a double dissociation between the two: whereas item-specific processing implicates a frontoparietal attention network, including the superior frontal sulcus and intraparietal sulcus, relational processing preferentially recruits a cognitive control network, particularly lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) and inferior parietal lobule. Moreover, pattern classification revealed that the actual meaning of the relation can be decoded within these same regions, most clearly in rostrolateral PFC, supporting a hierarchical, representational account of prefrontal organization.	f	\N
22900551	In this article the author argues that in order to be psychoanalysis, the 'here and now' technical approach needs to be firmly grounded theoretically and technically in a practice that includes the notion of reverie or its equivalent. The author has argued previously that the analyst's theory is the essential 'third' of the two-person analytic situation. She now suggests that it is specifically the theories of temporality and the attitude of 'evenly suspended attention' or its more contemporary development, 'reverie', that are the crucial aspects of that theory. She refers to these essential aspects as the 'theory in practice' in so far as they are more than a technical approach or a theory of practice but reflect directly a particular analyst's internalisation of the whole psychoanalytic theoretical corpus. While she believes this to be an essential component in any true psychoanalysis, in developing her argument the author looks at situations in which the analyst is particularly prone to forgo this temporal aspect, as is the case when patients show an absence of symbolic thinking within the analytic situation. In fact, with those patients reverie and the visual images it produces within the analyst's mind offer perhaps the only hope of a meeting ground between the concrete and the symbolic and the possibility of avoiding an impasse. Impasse, she suggests, has at its root the absence of reverie as a third and temporal element, inevitably giving rise to concrete thinking on the part of patient and analyst and so to a situation that cannot evolve.	f	\N
22914520	Despite shorter duty hours, fatigue remains a problem among medical residents. The authors tested the effect of a short, mid-day nap on the cognitive functioning and alertness of first-year internal medicine (IM) residents during normal duty hours. This was a controlled, interventional study performed between July 2008 and April 2010. The authors recruited a nap group of 18 residents and a rest (control) group of 11 residents. Investigators connected all participants to an ambulatory sleep monitor before the beginning of their shifts in order to monitor rolling eye movements, a proxy for attention failures. At mid-day, both groups took Conner's Continuous Performance Test (CPT II) to evaluate their cognitive functioning and then were placed in a reclining chair designed for napping. The authors instructed nap group residents to nap for up to 20 minutes and chatted with control group residents to prevent them from napping. All residents took the CPT II again immediately after the intervention. Residents' attention failures were recorded until the end of the workday. The authors compared the mean outcome parameters of the two groups through analysis of variance, using effect-of-treatment and baseline covariates. Nap group participants slept a mean of 8.4±3.0 minutes. Compared with controls whose cognitive functioning and number of attention failures did not change from morning to afternoon, the nap group's cognitive functioning improved and their number of attention failures decreased. A short, mid-day nap can improve cognitive functioning and alertness among first-year IM residents.	f	\N
22923230	Progressive asphyxia, produced by a prolonged voluntary breath hold (end-expiratory apnoea), evokes large bursts of muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA). These bursts increase in amplitude until the asphyxic break point is reached, at which point the bursts are inhibited. We tested the hypothesis that lung inflation, rather than relief from hypoxia and hypercapnia, is responsible for the inhibition of MSNA. Multiunit MSNA was recorded from motor fascicles of the common peroneal nerve in 11 subjects. Following a period of quiet breathing, subjects were instructed to behave as follows: (i) to hold their breath in expiration for as long as they could (mean duration 32.3 ± 1.9 s); (ii) to take a single breath of room air, 100% N(2) or 10% CO(2) + 90% N(2) at the asphyxic break point; (iii) to exhale and continue the apnoea until the next break point; and then (iv) to resume breathing. All subjects reported relief during inhalation of any gas, and could continue holding their breath for a further 30.7 ± 2.8 s with room air, 18.6 ± 1.7 s with N(2) and 11.8 ± 1.8 s with 10% CO(2) + 90% N(2). Despite the exaggerated chemoreceptor drive in the latter two conditions (hence the significantly shorter latencies to the subsequent asphyxic break point), the inhibition still occurred; moreover, there was no significant difference in duration of the inhibition of MSNA following the single breath of room air (7.6 ± 0.7 s), N(2) (6.2 ± 0.6 s) or 10% CO(2) + 90% N(2) (5.5 ± 0.4 s). Following the resumption of breathing, however, the duration of MSNA inhibition (11.0 ± 1.0 s) was significantly longer than that following a single breath. To investigate the involvement of chemoreceptors in the respiratory modulation of MSNA further, the same gases were used during an inspiratory-capacity apnoea, which causes a brief inhibition of MSNA during the inflation phase and a sustained increase during the hold phase. The duration of the apnoea was shortest after a breath of 10% O(2) + 90% N(2), but the latency until the bursts resumed after the inspiratory breath hold were similar for all gases, which suggests that there is no chemoreceptor involvement during the sympathetic silence seen during the inflation phase of inspiratory-capacity apnoeas. We conclude that neither peripheral nor central chemoreceptors are responsible for the inhibition of muscle vasoconstrictor drive following an end-expiratory apnoea or an end-inspiratory apnoea. Rather, we suggest that the inhibition is evoked by stretch receptors in the lungs and/or chest wall, which may also contribute to the longer inhibition associated with the hyperventilation following the subsequent resumption of rhythmic breathing.	f	\N
22934427	To investigate the behavior difference of allergic rhinitis with adenoid hypertrophy between study group and control group. One hundred and seventeen children diagnosed as allergic rhinitis with adenoid hypertrophy were enrolled in our study were divided into study group and control group. Forty-two children treated with local steroid nasal spray for two to three months and antihistamine were control group. Seventy-five children treated with endoscopic adenoidectomy and drug treatment were study group; All children' parents were inquired for their clinical presentation. No distinctive differences were found between the two groups (P > 0.05) in adenoid hypertrophy, accompanying nasal problems and clinical questionnaire scoring. Significant statistical distinction were found (P < 0.05) in snoring, sleep disturbance and frequent arousal, nasal obstructive moth-breathing, and recurrent respiratory tract infection between the two groups after three-month follow up. Endoscopic adenoidectomy should be taken into account for allergic rhinitis with adenoid hypertrophy in children. Adenoidectomy would be useful for the improvement of behavior symptoms.	f	\N
22934682	Theories of motor learning predict that training a movement reduces the amount of attention needed for its performance (i.e., more automatic). If training one movement transfers, then the amount of attention needed for performing a second movement should also be reduced, as measured under dual task conditions. The authors' purpose was to test whether dual task paradigms are feasible for detecting transfer of training between two naturalistic movements. Immediately following motor training, subjects improved performance of a second untrained movement under single and dual task conditions. Subjects with no training did not. Improved performance in the untrained movement was likely due to transfer, and suggests that dual tasks may be feasible for detecting transfer between naturalistic actions.	f	\N
22935330	We studied the effects of training on auditory attention in healthy adults with a speech perception task involving dichotically presented syllables. Training involved bottom-up manipulation (facilitating responses from the harder-to-report left ear through a decrease of right-ear stimulus intensity), top-down manipulation (focusing attention on the left-ear stimuli through instruction), or their combination. The results showed significant training-related effects for top-down training. These effects were evident as higher overall accuracy rates in the forced-left dichotic listening (DL) condition that sets demands on attentional control, as well as a response shift toward left-sided reports in the standard DL task. Moreover, a transfer effect was observed in an untrained auditory-spatial attention task involving bilateral stimulation where top-down training led to a relatively stronger focus on left-sided stimuli. Our results indicate that training of attentional control can modulate the allocation of attention in the auditory space in adults. Malleability of auditory attention in healthy adults raises the issue of potential training gains in individuals with attentional deficits.	f	\N
22936100	We conducted a series of experiments to determine whether negative priming is used in the process of target selection for a saccadic eye movement. The key questions addressed the circumstances in which the negative priming of an object takes place, and the distinction between spatial and object-based effects. Experiment 1 revealed that after fixating a target (cricket ball) amongst an array of semantically related distracters, saccadic eye movements in a subsequent display were faster to the target than to the distracters or new objects, irrespective of location. The main finding was that of the facilitation of a recent target, not the inhibition of a recent distracter or location. Experiment 2 replicated this finding by using silhouettes of objects for selection that is based on feature shape. Error rates were associated with distracters with high target-shape similarity; therefore, Experiment 3 presented silhouettes of animals using distracters with low target-shape similarity. The pattern of results was similar to that of Experiment 2, with clear evidence of target facilitation rather than the inhibition of distracters. Experiment 4 and 5 introduced a distracter together with the target into the probe display, to generate a level of competitive selection in the probe condition. In these circumstances, clear evidence of spatial inhibition at the location of the previous distracters emerged. We discuss the implications for our understanding of selective attention and consider why it is essential to supplement response time data with the analysis of eye movement behaviour in spatial negative priming paradigms.	f	\N
22937090	In this single case study, visuospatial neglect patient P1 demonstrated a dissociation between an intact ability to make appropriate reflexive eye movements to targets in the neglected field with latencies of <400 ms, while failing to report targets presented at such durations in a separate verbal detection task. In contrast, there was a failure to evoke the usually robust Remote Distractor Effect in P1, even though distractors in the neglected field were presented at above threshold durations. Together those data indicate that the tight coupling that is normally shown between attention and eye movements appears to be disrupted for low-level orienting in P1. A comparable disruption was also found for high-level cognitive processing tasks, namely reading and scene scanning. The findings are discussed in relation to sampling, attention and awareness in neglect.	f	\N
22939462	Left fronto-cortical hypoactivity, thought to reflect reduced activity in approach-related systems, and right parietal hypoactivity, associated with emotional under-arousal, have been noted in major depressive disorder (MDD). Altered theta activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) has also been associated with the disorder. We assessed resting frontal and parietal alpha asymmetry and power in non-medicated MDD (N = 53; 29 females) and control (N = 43; 23 females) individuals. Theta activity was examined using standardized low-resolution electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) in the ACC [BA24ab and BA32 comprising the rostral ACC and BA25/subgenual (sg) ACC]. The MDD group, and particularly depressed males, displayed increased overall frontal and parietal alpha power and left midfrontal hypoactivity (alpha(2)-indexed). They also exhibited increased sgACC theta(2) activity. MDD females had increased right parietal activity, suggesting increased emotive arousal. Thus, unmedicated depressed adults were characterized by lower activity in regions implicated in approach/positive affective tendencies as well as diffuse cortical hypoarousal, though sex specific modulations emerged. Altered theta in the sgACC may reflect emotion regulation abnormalities in MDD.	f	\N
22948452	The aim of this study was to compare female sexual function after surgical treatment of anterior vaginal prolapse with either small intestine submucosa grafting or traditional colporrhaphy. Subjects were randomly assigned, preoperatively, to the small intestine submucosa graft (n = 29) or traditional colporrhaphy (n = 27) treatment group. Postoperative outcomes were analyzed at 12 months. The Female Sexual Function Index questionnaire was used to assess sexual function. Data were compared with independent samples or a paired Student's t-test. In the small intestine submucosa group, the total mean Female Sexual Function Index score increased from 15.5±7.2 to 24.4±7.5 (p<0.001). In the traditional colporrhaphy group, the total mean Female Sexual Function Index score increased from 15.3±6.8 to 24.2±7.0 (p<0.001). Improvements were noted in the domains of desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, satisfaction, and pain. There were no differences between the two groups at the 12-month follow-up. Small intestine submucosa repair and traditional colporrhaphy both improved sexual function postoperatively. However, no differences were observed between the two techniques.	f	\N
22948506	To evaluate the influence of climacteric symptoms on the sexual function in middle-aged women. A cross-sectional population study was conducted on a sample of 370 middle-aged women, aged 40 to 65 years-old, cared for at the Basic Health Units in Natal, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. We used a questionnaire containing questions on sociodemographic, clinical, and behavioral characteristics. Sexual function was evaluated by the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI), while the menopause symptoms by the Menopause Rating Scale (MRS). In the studied group, 67% of the women reported risk for sexual dysfunction (FSFI≤26.5). All FSFI domains (desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, satisfaction, and pain) were lower in women with risk for sexual dysfunction (p<0.001). The arousal, orgasm, and pain domains were most likely to contribute to lower FSFI scores. All somatovegetative, urogenital, and psychological MRS symptoms were more elevated in women with risk for sexual dysfunction, being significant for all comparisons (p<0.001). Logistic regression analysis revealed that the likelihood of women with risks of sexual dysfunction to present hot flushes, depression, sexual problems, and vaginal dryness was, respectively, 2.1 (95%CI 1.2 - 3.5); 2.4 (95%CI 1.5 - 4.1); 2.3 (95%CI 1.4 - 3.8), and 2.2 (95%CI 1.3 - 3.6) times higher, respectively, compared to those without any risk. Climacteric symptoms seem to influence the sexual function in middle-aged women.	f	\N
22954837	Balance training to improve postural control in elderly can contribute to the prevention of falls. Video games that require body movements have the potential to improve balance. However, research about the effects of type of visual feedback (i.e. the exergame) on the quality of movement and experienced workout intensity is scarce. In this study twelve healthy older and younger subjects performed anterior-posterior or mediolateral oscillations on a wobble board, in three conditions: no feedback, real-time visual feedback, and real-time visual feedback with a competitive game element. The Elderly moved slower, less accurately and more irregularly than younger people. Both feedback conditions ensured a more controlled movement technique on the wobble-board and increased experienced workout intensity. The participants enjoyed the attention demanding competitive game element, but this game did not improve balance performance more than interacting with a game that incorporated visual feedback. These results show the potential of exergames with visual feedback to enhance postural control.	f	\N
22960269	The hyperarousal model of primary insomnia suggests that a deficit of attenuating arousal during sleep might cause the experience of non-restorative sleep. In the current study, we examined EEG spectral power values for standard frequency bands as indices of cortical arousal and sleep protecting mechanisms during sleep in 25 patients with primary insomnia and 29 good sleeper controls. Patients with primary insomnia demonstrated significantly elevated spectral power values in the EEG beta and sigma frequency band during NREM stage 2 sleep. No differences were observed in other frequency bands or during REM sleep. Based on prior studies suggesting that EEG beta activity represents a marker of cortical arousal and EEG sleep spindle (sigma) activity is an index of sleep protective mechanisms, our findings may provide further evidence for the concept that a simultaneous activation of wake-promoting and sleep-protecting neural activity patterns contributes to the experience of non-restorative sleep in primary insomnia.	f	\N
22963503	We previously found that Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) improves learning and performance in a task where subjects learn to detect potential threats indicated by small target objects hidden in a complex virtual environment. In the present study, we examined the hypothesis that these effects on learning and performance are related to changes in attention. The effects of tDCS were tested for three forms of attention (alerting, orienting, and executive attention) using the Attention Network Task (ANT), which were compared with performance on the object-learning task. Participants received either 0.1 mA (N = 10) or 2.0 mA (N = 9) tDCS during training and were tested for performance in object-identification before training (baseline-test) and again immediately after training (immediate test). Participants next performed the Attention Networks Task (ANT), and were later tested for object-identification performance a final time (delayed test). Alerting, but not orienting or executive attention, was significantly higher for participants receiving 2.0 mA compared with 0.1 mA tDCS (p < 0.02). Furthermore, alerting scores were significantly correlated with the proportion of hits (p < 0.01) for participants receiving 2.0 mA. These results indicate that tDCS enhancement of performance in this task may be related in part to the enhancement of alerting attention, which may benefit the initial identification, learning and/or subsequent recognition of target objects indicating potential threats.	f	\N
22964544	Since the inception of the field of psychoneuroimmunolology research, there has been an appreciation that the physiological response to stressors includes modulation of immune function. Investigators initially focused on the effect of stress on cellular migration and immunosuppression and the resultant decreases in tumor surveillance, anti-viral T cell immunity and antigen-specific antibody responses. More recently, it has become clear that exposure to stressors also potentiate innate immune processes. Stressor exposure, for example, can change the activation status of myeloid lineage cells such as monocytes, macrophages, neutrophils, and microglia, leading to a primed state. In addition, stressor exposure increases the synthesis and release of a vast cadre' of inflammatory proteins both in the blood and within tissues (i.e., spleen, liver, adipose, vasculature and brain). The mechanisms for stress-evoked innate immune 'arousal' remain unknown. The goals of this presidential address are the following: (1) offer a personalized, brief overview of stress and immunity with a focus on 'aroused' innate immunity; (2) describe sterile inflammatory processes and the role of the inflammasome; and (3) suggest that these same processes likely contribute to primed myeloid cells and inflammatory protein responses (systemic and tissue) produced by stress in the absence of pathogens.	f	\N
22965527	The aim of this study was to measure forces created by progressive mandibular advancement with an oral device, during natural sleep, in a sample of adult patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS). A pressure transducer system was placed on the acrylic arms of a two-piece oral appliance (Herbst type) used by nine moderate to severe OSAS patients, in addition to all captors routinely used for polysomnography. Strains on the left and right sides were collected, during stable sleep stages without arousal, for each step of 1 mm advancement. The mean force in this sample was 1.18 N/mm and showed an almost linear evolution. Measurements showed intra- and inter-individual variability. The force values recorded in this study may explain the occlusal and skeletal side effects associated with long-term use of these oral appliances. They illustrate the influence of the extent of mandibular advancement, and indicate a possible dose-dependent effect.	f	\N
22971667	Guide dogs help visually impaired persons both physically and psychologically. More than half of all candidate dogs do not qualify, mainly for behavioral reasons. Improved training efficacy is desirable, and earlier prediction of qualification-related traits would be beneficial. In a previous study, we identified 'Distraction', assessed during the training period, as an important behavioral trait for judging the qualification of guide dogs at the Japan Guide Dog Association. As a second step, we aimed to develop an index that can predict during the puppy period. In this study, candidate guide dogs, 5-month-old Labrador retrievers, were assessed by puppy raisers using a newly developed questionnaire that consisted of 20 items. The same dogs were assessed later, at 15 months, by trainers to determine 'Distraction'. In principal components analysis, nine items, including excitability toward strangers, initiative while out for a walk, and exploration, composed the first principal component (PC1). When we compared PC1 points with 'Distraction' points, the two categories were positively correlated (n=110, r(s)=0.31, P=0.0009). Although the accuracy of the questionnaire should be increased, the results of the present study suggest that it may be possible to assess and predict 'Distraction', which is associated with disqualification for guide dogs, early in the puppy-raising period.	f	\N
22975896	This study reports an experiment investigating the relative effects of intramodal, crossmodal and bimodal cues on visual and auditory temporal order judgements. Pairs of visual or auditory targets, separated by varying stimulus onset asynchronies, were presented to either side of a central fixation (±45°), and participants were asked to identify the target that had occurred first. In some of the trials, one of the targets was preceded by a short, non-predictive visual, auditory or audiovisual cue stimulus. The cue and target stimuli were presented at the exact same locations in space. The point of subjective simultaneity revealed a consistent spatiotemporal bias towards targets at the cued location. For the visual targets, the intramodal cue elicited the largest, and the crossmodal cue the smallest, bias. The bias elicited by the bimodal cue fell between the intramodal and crossmodal cue biases, with significant differences between all cue types. The pattern for the auditory targets was similar apart from a scaling factor and greater variance, so the differences between the cue conditions did not reach significance. These results provide evidence for multisensory integration in exogenous attentional cueing. The magnitude of the bimodal cueing effect was equivalent to the average of the facilitation elicited by the intramodal and crossmodal cues. Under the assumption that the visual and auditory cues were equally informative, this is consistent with the notion that exogenous attention, like perception, integrates multimodal information in an optimal way.	f	\N
22993448	Non-motor symptoms are very common among patients with Parkinson's disease since the earliest stage, but little is known about their progression and their relationship with dopaminergic replacement therapy. We studied non-motor symptoms before and after 2 years from dopaminergic therapy introduction in ninety-one newly diagnosed previously untreated PD patients. At baseline, nearly all patients (97.8%) referred at least one non-motor symptom. At follow-up, only few non-motor symptoms significantly changed. Particularly, depression and concentration became less frequent, while weight change significantly increased after introduction of dopamine agonists. We reported for the first time a 2-year prospective study on non-motor symptoms before and after starting therapy in newly diagnosed PD patients. Even if non-motor symptoms are very frequent in early stage, they tend to remain stable during the early phase of disease, being only few non-motor symptoms affected from dopaminergic therapy and, specifically, by the use of dopamine agonists.	f	\N
22998058	Recent neuroimaging and surgical results support the crucial role of white matter in mediating motor and higher-level processing within the frontal lobe, while suggesting the limited compensatory capacity after damage to subcortical structures. Consequently, an accurate knowledge of the anatomofunctional organization of the pathways running within this region is mandatory for planning safe and effective surgical approaches to different diseases. The aim of this dissection study was to improve the neurosurgeon's awareness of the subcortical anatomofunctional architecture for a lateral approach to the frontal region, to optimize both resection and postoperative outcome. Ten human hemispheres (5 left, 5 right) were dissected according to the Klingler technique. Proceeding lateromedially, the main association and projection tracts as well as the deeper basal structures were identified. The authors describe the anatomy and the relationships among the exposed structures in both a systematic and topographical surgical perspective. Structural results were also correlated to the functional responses obtained during resections of infiltrative frontal tumors guided by direct cortico-subcortical electrostimulation with patients in the awake condition. The eloquent boundaries crucial for a safe frontal lobectomy or an extensive lesionectomy are as follows: 1) the motor cortex; 2) the pyramidal tract and premotor fibers in the posterior and posteromedial part of the surgical field; 3) the inferior frontooccipital fascicle and the superior longitudinal fascicle posterolaterally; and 4) underneath the inferior frontal gyrus, the head of the caudate nucleus, and the tip of the frontal horn of the lateral ventricle in the depth. Optimization of results following brain surgery, especially within the frontal lobe, requires a perfect knowledge of functional anatomy, not only at the cortical level but also with regard to subcortical white matter connectivity.	f	\N
22999215	Optimized therapy in epilepsy should include individual care for cognitive functions. Here we introduce a computerized screening instrument, called "Computerized Cognitive Testing in Epilepsy" (CCTE), which allows for time-efficient repetitive assessment of the patient's cognitive profile regarding the domains of memory and attention, which are frequently impaired due to side effects of antiepileptic medication. The CCTE battery takes 30min and covers tasks of verbal and figural memory, cognitive speed, attention and working memory. The patient's results are displayed immediately in comparison to age-related normative data. For evaluation of psychometrics and clinical correlations, data from patients of a tertiary referral epilepsy center (n=240) and healthy subjects (n=83) were explored. CCTE subtests show good reliability and concurrent validity compared to standard neuropsychological tests (p<0.01). Adverse cognitive effects of antiepileptic medication can be detected (p<0.05), e.g. significant negative effects of increasing drug load. Specific epilepsy subgroups, e.g. focal versus primary generalized epilepsy or right versus left mesial temporal lobe epilepsy, showed different CCTE profiles. CCTE appears valuable for early detection of individual cognitive alterations related to medication. In addition, it displays interesting differences between epilepsy syndromes. The CCTE battery provides a standardized, time- and personnel-efficient assessment of cognitive functions open to a large number of patients and applicable for clinical and scientific use in epilepsy.	f	\N
22999984	To compare the frequency of airway complications during removal of the Laryngeal Mask Airway (LMA) in 2 to 6 year old pediatric patients. Prospective randomized study. Operating room at a university hospital. 92 ASA physical status 1 and 2 pediatric patients, aged 2 to 6 years. Participants were randomized to two groups: anesthesia state (anesthesia group) and awake state (awake group). Anesthesia was induced and maintained with sevoflurane. Patients were allowed to maintain spontaneous respiration. In the anesthesia group, the LMA was removed during anesthesia with 2.2% of sevoflurane. In the awake group, the LMA was removed when patients met the recovery criteria, including facial grimace, spontaneous eye opening, and purposeful arm movement. During and after removal of the LMA, the frequencies of airway-related complications including cough, severe salivation, LMA biting or teeth clenching, breath holding, laryngospasm, desaturation (SpO(2) < 95%), and vomiting, were recorded. The frequencies of upper airway obstruction and duration of emergence from anesthesia also were compared. The frequency of airway-related complications was significantly less in the anesthesia group than the awake group (4.8% vs 37.2%, P = 0.001). Of the complications, cough, desaturation, excessive secretion, and LMA biting were less common in the anesthesia group. No differences between groups were noted in the frequency of upper airway obstruction and duration of emergence from anesthesia. In 2 to 6 year old pediatric patients, an adequate anesthetic state is preferable to the awake state during LMA removal, producing fewer complications.	f	\N
23001075	Urinary and sexual dysfunctions are recognized complications of rectal cancer surgery. Their incidence after robotic surgery is as yet unknown. The aim of this study was to prospectively evaluate the impact of robotic surgery for rectal cancer on sexual and urinary functions in male and female patients. From April 2008 to December 2010, 74 patients undergoing fully robotic resection for rectal cancer were prospectively included in the study. Urinary and sexual dysfunctions affecting quality of life were assessed with specific self-administered questionnaires in all patients undergoing robotic total mesorectal excision (RTME). Results were calculated with validated scoring systems and statistically analyzed. The analyses of the questionnaires completed by the 74 patients who underwent RTME showed that sexual function and general sexual satisfaction decreased significantly 1 month after intervention: 19.1 ± 8.7 versus 11.9 ± 10.2 (P < 0.05) for erectile function and 6.9 ± 2.4 versus 5.3 ± 2.5 (P < 0.05) for general satisfaction in men; 2.6 ± 3.3 versus 0.8 ± 1.4 (P < 0.05) and 2.4 ± 2.5 versus 0.7 ± 1.6 (P < 0.05) for arousal and general satisfaction, respectively, in women. Subsequently, both parameters increased progressively, and 1 year after surgery, the values were comparable to those measured before surgery. Concerning urinary function, the grade of incontinence measured 1 year after the intervention was unchanged for both sexes. RTME allows for preservation of urinary and sexual functions. This is probably due to the superior movements of the wristed instruments that facilitate fine dissection, coupled with a stable and magnified view that helps in recognizing the inferior hypogastric plexus.	f	\N
23010335	In a forward-masked intensity discrimination task, we manipulated the perceived lateralization of the masker via variation of the interaural time difference (ITD). The maskers and targets were 500 Hz pure tones with a duration of 30 ms. Standards of 30 and 60 dB SPL were combined with 60 or 90 dB SPL maskers. As expected, the presentation of a forward masker perceived as lateralized to the other side of the head as the target resulted in a significantly smaller elevation of the intensity difference limen than a masker lateralized ipsilaterally. This binaural release from masking in forward-masked intensity discrimination cannot be explained by peripheral mechanisms because varying the ITD leaves the neural representation in the monaural channels (i.e., in the auditory nerve) unaltered. Instead, our results are compatible with the assumption that lateralization differences between masker and target promote object segregation and therefore facilitate object-based selective attention to the target.	f	\N
23011860	Sleep homeostasis occurs during prolonged wakefulness. Drowsiness and sleep pressure are its behavioral manifestations and, when sleep is allowed, there is a sleep rebound of sufficient duration and intensity to compensate for the previous deprivation. Adenosine is one of the molecules involved in sleep homeostasic regulation. Caffeine and theophylline, stimulants widely consumed by the humans, are antagonists. It is an endogenous factor, resulting from ATP metabolism in neurons and glia. Adenosine accumulates in the extracellular space, where it can exert regulatory actions on the sleep-wakefulness cycle circuits. Adenosine acts through the purinergic receptors A1 and A2. This paper reviews: 1) the metabolic pathways of cerebral adenosine, and the mechanisms of its release by neurons and glia to the extracellular space; 2) the actions of adenosine and its antagonists in regions of the central nervous system related to wakefulness, non-REM sleep, and REM sleep, and 3) the synaptic mechanisms involved in these actions.	f	\N
23017595	It is widely reported that inverting a face dramatically affects its recognition. Previous studies have shown that face inversion increases the amplitude and delays the latency of the face-specific N170 component of the event-related potential (ERP) and also enhances the amplitude of the occipital P1 component (latency 100-132 ms). The present study investigates whether these effects of face inversion can be modulated by visual spatial attention. Participants viewed two streams of visual stimuli, one to the left and one to the right of fixation. One stream consisted of a sequence of alphanumeric characters at 6.67 Hz, and the other stream consisted of a series of upright and inverted images of faces and houses presented in randomized order. The participants' task was to attend selectively to one or the other of the streams (during different blocks) in order to detect infrequent target stimuli. ERPs elicited by inverted faces showed larger P1 amplitudes compared to upright faces, but only when the faces were attended. In contrast, the N170 amplitude was larger to inverted than to upright faces only when the faces were not attended. The N170 peak latency was delayed to inverted faces regardless of attention condition. These inversion effects were face specific, as similar effects were absent for houses. These results suggest that early stages of face-specific processing can be enhanced by attention, but when faces are not attended the onset of face-specific processing is delayed until the latency range of the N170.	f	\N
23019004	Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ) is activated during detection of salient stimuli, including pain, in the sensory environment. Right TPJ damage more often produces spatial neglect than left TPJ damage. We recently reported a right lateralized system of white matter connectivity of the TPJ. However, lateralization in intrinsic TPJ functional connectivity during a task/stimuli-independent state has not been fully characterized. Here we used resting-state functional MRI in healthy humans to compare the functional connectivity of right and left TPJ with salience- and attention-related brain networks. Independent components analysis revealed that both right and left TPJ were functionally connected with a network that included the anterior insula, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), and mid-cingulate cortex, considered to be the salience/ventral attention network. Dual regression revealed this network was more strongly connected with right TPJ than left TPJ. Seed-based functional connectivity analysis showed 1) negative connectivity the TPJ bilaterally with the "default mode network"; 2) positive connectivity of TPJ bilaterally with the salience/ventral attention network; 3) stronger connectivity between right TPJ compared with left TPJ with regions within the salience/ventral attention network and mid-insula, S2, and temporal/parietal opercula (implicated in pain); and 4) stronger connectivity of left TPJ compared with right TPJ with the "executive control network," including the dorsomedial/medial PFC, inferior frontal gyrus, and cerebellum (crus I/II). Our findings build on classic lesion and neuroimaging studies, demonstrating a complex spatial network organization of lateralization in TPJ functional connectivity in the absence of an overt stimulus.	f	\N
23022432	The effect of aging on functional network activation associated with task-switching was examined in 24 young (age=25.2±2.73 years) and 23 older adults (age=65.2±2.65 years) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The study goals were to (1) identify a network shared by both young and older adults, (2) identify additional networks in each age group, and (3) examine the relationship between the networks identified and behavioral performance in task-switching. Ordinal trend covariance analysis was used to identify the networks, which takes advantage of increasing activation with greater task demand to isolate the network of regions recruited by task-switching. Two task-related networks were found: a shared network that was strongly expressed by both young and older adults and a second network identified in the young data that was residualized from the shared network. Both networks consisted of regions associated with task-switching in previous studies including the middle frontal gyrus, the precentral gyrus, the anterior cingulate, and the superior parietal lobule. Not only was pattern expression of the shared network associated with reaction time in both age groups, the difference in the pattern expression across task conditions (task-switch minus single-task) was also correlated with the difference in RT across task conditions. On the contrary, expression of the young-residual network showed a large age effect such that older adults do not increase expression of the network with greater task demand as young adults do and correlation between expression and accuracy was significant only for young adults. Thus, while a network related to RT is preserved in older adults, a different network related to accuracy is disrupted.	f	\N
23030631	Accurate measurement of a child's executive functioning (EF) is important for diagnosis, description of functional impairment, and treatment planning. EF assessment typically consists of administration of a battery of performance-based tests involving abilities such as attention, inhibition, reasoning, planning, and mental flexibility. In recent years, observer (e.g., parent) rating scales have been added to the typical EF battery. However, research has revealed that performance-based tests and parent rating scales are not highly correlated. In other words, level of impairment indicated by one source of data often does not match level of impairment indicated by the other source of data. This disagreement places the clinician in a difficult situation when attempting to interpret evaluation results. The profession of pediatric neuropsychology needs to provide guidance about handling this disagreement. Using the current assessment tools, specific EF subdomains may need to be examined systematically to identify precisely where the disagreements lie. Perhaps the relative validity of the two data sources can be determined, and decisions can be made about what to emphasize and what/when to interpret cautiously. Alternatively, perhaps the goal should be to develop and/or refine measurement tools to increase agreement in order to improve accuracy and validity of test interpretation. At this time, the results of performance-based tests and rating scales of EF are being used together but are not being integrated. Evidence-based practice requires that more work be done to enhance the use of these two sources of data.	f	\N
23041338	Neuroimaging has demonstrated anatomical overlap between covert and overt attention systems, although behavioral and electrophysiological studies have suggested that the two systems do not rely on entirely identical circuits or mechanisms. In a parallel line of research, topographically-specific modulations of alpha-band power (~8-14 Hz) have been consistently correlated with anticipatory states during tasks requiring covert attention shifts. These tasks, however, typically employ cue-target-interval paradigms where attentional processes are examined across relatively protracted periods of time and not at the rapid timescales implicated during overt attention tasks. The anti-saccade task, where one must first covertly attend for a peripheral target, before executing a rapid overt attention shift (i.e. a saccade) to the opposite side of space, is particularly well-suited for examining the rapid dynamics of overt attentional deployments. Here, we asked whether alpha-band oscillatory mechanisms would also be associated with these very rapid overt shifts, potentially representing a common neural mechanism across overt and covert attention systems. High-density electroencephalography in conjunction with infra-red eye-tracking was recorded while participants engaged in both pro- and anti-saccade task blocks. Alpha power, time-locked to saccade onset, showed three distinct phases of significantly lateralized topographic shifts, all occurring within a period of less than 1s, closely reflecting the temporal dynamics of anti-saccade performance. Only two such phases were observed during the pro-saccade task. These data point to substantially more rapid temporal dynamics of alpha-band suppressive mechanisms than previously established, and implicate oscillatory alpha-band activity as a common mechanism across both overt and covert attentional deployments.	f	\N
23046905	Correctly processing rapid sequences of sounds is essential for developmental milestones, such as language acquisition. We investigated the sensitivity of two-month-old infants to violations of a temporal regularity, by recording event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in an auditory oddball paradigm from 36 waking and 40 sleeping infants. Standard tones were presented at a regular 300 ms inter-stimulus interval (ISI). One deviant, otherwise identical to the standard, was preceded by a 100 ms ISI. Two other deviants, presented with the standard ISI, differed from the standard in their spectral makeup. We found significant differences between ERP responses elicited by the standard and each of the deviant sounds. The results suggest that the ability to extract both temporal and spectral regularities from a sound sequence is already functional within the first few months of life. The scalp distribution of all three deviant-stimulus responses was influenced by the infants' state of alertness.	f	\N
23051899	Lifetime experiences shape people's attitudes toward sexual stimuli. Visual sexual stimulation (VSS), for instance, may be perceived as pleasurable by some, but as disgusting or ambiguous by others. VSS depicting explicit penile-vaginal penetration (PEN) is relevant in this respect, because the act of penetration is a core sexual activity. In this study, 20 women without sexual complaints participated. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging and a single-target implicit association task to investigate how brain responses to PEN were modulated by the initial associations in memory (PEN-'hot' vs PEN-disgust) with such hardcore pornographic stimuli. Many brain areas responded to PEN in the same way they responded to disgust stimuli, and PEN-induced brain activity was prone to modulation by subjective disgust ratings toward PEN stimuli. The relative implicit PEN-disgust (relative to PEN-'hot') associations exclusively modulated PEN-induced brain responses: comparatively negative (PEN-disgust) implicit associations with pornography predicted the strongest PEN-related responses in the basal forebrain (including nucleus accumbens and bed nucleus of stria terminalis), midbrain and amygdala. Since these areas are often implicated in visual sexual processing, the present findings should be taken as a warning: apparently their involvement may also indicate a negative or ambivalent attitude toward sexual stimuli.	f	\N
23062452	Deficits in the communication and identifying of feelings are usually observed in substance abuse. Research in several countries has reported sensation seeking and alexithymia implication in addiction. According to a cognitive-developmental model of emotional experience proposed, alexithymia is a deficit in the cognitive processing of emotion that can be seen as an impairment in the ability to consciously experience feeling in the context of autonomic activation indicate of emotional arousal. The primary objective of this study was to identify certain personality dimensions linked with emotions' regulation, i.e. Zuckerman's sensation seeking, alexithymia, and emotional awareness in ecstasy and cocaine users at techno parties. Subjects were divided in two groups: 37 male ecstasy or cocaine abusers, and 37 male non-drug users. We hypothesized that ecstasy and cocaine users would exhibit high levels of sensation seeking (high level of sensation seeking,), and emotional dysregulation (high level of alexithymia and depression, low level of emotional awareness). The methodology comprised a questionnaire developed for the study, designed to record sociodemographic data and evaluate psychoactive substance use, the MlINI (mini international psychiatric interview), the Zuckerman 40-item Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS-IV), the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS), and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-13). Subjects were recruited during rave-parties. The results showed significantly higher sensation seeking scores for ecstasy and cocaine users for the score total and the disinhibition and experience seeking subdimensions. Ecstasy and cocaine abusers exhibited higher TAS-20 and BDI-13 scores and lower levels of emotional awareness than non-drug users. No correlation between the TAS-20 and depression symptomatology emerged. No significant correlations were found between LEAS and TAS-20. These results provide new elements concerning the profile of drug users at techno parties and illustrate the changing practices of ecstasy use. The LEAS and the TAS-20 were not intercorrelated; it seems plausible that they reflect two sides of the emotional states self-report. These results reinforce the suggestion of combining the use of self-reports with non self-report methods.	f	\N
23066810	Considerable evidence suggests that subliminal information can trigger cognitive and neural processes. Here, we examined whether elicitation of orienting response by personally significant (PS) verbal information requires conscious awareness of the input. Subjects were exposed to the Concealed Information Test (CIT), in which autonomic responses for autobiographical items are typically larger than for control items. These items were presented subliminally using two different masking protocols: single or multiple presentation of the masked item. An objective test was used to verify unawareness to the stimuli. As predicted, PS items elicited significantly stronger skin conductance responses than the control items in both exposure conditions. The results extend previous findings showing that autonomic responses can be elicited following subliminal exposure to aversive information, and also may have implications on the applied usage of the CIT.	f	\N
23074247	The neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) can enhance the impact of positive social cues but may reduce that of negative ones by inhibiting amygdala activation, although it is unclear whether the latter causes blunted emotional and mnemonic responses. In two independent double-blind placebo-controlled experiments, each involving over 70 healthy male subjects, we investigated whether OXT affects modulation of startle reactivity by aversive social stimuli as well as subsequent memory for them. Intranasal OXT potentiated acoustic startle responses to negative stimuli, without affecting behavioral valence or arousal judgments, and biased subsequent memory toward negative rather than neutral items. A functional MRI analysis of this mnemonic effect revealed that, whereas OXT inhibited amygdala responses to negative stimuli, it facilitated left insula responses for subsequently remembered items and increased functional coupling between the left amygdala, left anterior insula, and left inferior frontal gyrus. Our results therefore show that OXT can potentiate the protective and mnemonic impact of aversive social information despite reducing amygdala activity, and suggest that the insula may play a role in emotional modulation of memory.	f	\N
23078760	The current study investigated the time course of the implicit processing of erotic stimuli using event-related potentials (ERPs). ERPs elicited by erotic pictures were compared with those by three other types of pictures: non-erotic positive, negative, and neutral pictures. We observed that erotic pictures evoked enhanced neural responses compared with other pictures at both early (P2/N2) and late (P3/positive slow wave) temporal stages. These results suggested that erotic pictures selectively captured individuals' attention at early stages and evoked deeper processing at late stages. More importantly, the amplitudes of P2, N2, and P3 only discriminated between erotic and non-erotic (i.e., positive, neutral, and negative) pictures. That is, no difference was revealed among non-erotic pictures, although these pictures differed in both valence and arousal. Thus, our results suggest that the erotic picture processing is beyond the valence and arousal.	f	\N
23083097	The present study provides first evidence that attentional breadth responses can be influenced by proximity-distance goals in adult attachment relationships. In a sample of young couples, we measured attachment differences in the breadth of attentional focus in response to attachment-related cues. Results showed that priming with a negative attachment scenario broadens attention when confronted with pictures of the attachment figure in highly avoidant men. In women, we found that attachment anxiety was associated with a more narrow attentional focus on the attachment figure, yet only at an early stage of information processing. We also found that women showed a broader attentional focus around the attachment figure when their partner was more avoidantly attached. This pattern of results reflects the underlying action of attachment strategies and provides insight into the complex and dynamic influence of attachment on attentional processing in a dyadic context.	f	\N
23085239	We investigated the precision of orientation representations with two tasks, change detection and recall. Previously change detection has been measured only with relatively large orientation changes compared to psychophysical thresholds. In the first experiment, we measured the observers' ability (d') to detect small changes in orientation (5-30°) with 1-4 Gabor items. With one item even a 10° change was well detected (average d'=2.5). As the amount of change increased to 30°, the d' increased to 5.2. When the number of items was increased, the d's gradually decreased. In the second experiment, we used a recall task and the observers adjusted the orientation of a probe Gabor to match the orientation of a Gabor held in the memory. The standard deviation (s.d.) of errors was calculated from the Gaussian distribution fitted to the data. As the number of items increased from 1 to 6, the s.d. increased from 8.6° to 19.6°. Even with six items, the observers did not make any random adjustments. The results show a square root relation between the d'/s.d. and the number of items. The d' in change detection is directly proportional to the square root of (1/n) and the orientation change. The increase of the s.d. in recall task is inversely proportional to square root of (1/n). The results suggest that limited resources and precision of representations, without additional assumptions, determine the memory performance.	f	\N
23088575	Reviews of the effects of noise on performance carried out in the 1980s suggested that results depended on the type of noise, nature of the task, and characteristics of the person performing in noise. This general view has been confirmed in the recent meta-analysis and synthesis by Szalma and Hancock (2011). There are, however, some notable omissions from this review. For example, beneficial effects of noise in low alertness states receive no coverage, and yet these provide the strongest support for arousal theories. The importance of predictability and perceived control was also overlooked, yet relevant studies, especially those looking at aftereffects of noise, are crucial for explanations based on compensatory effort. Also neglected was research emphasizing the importance of examining the microstructure of responding and strategies of performance. Recent accounts emphasize the importance of considering the specific processes involved in carrying out a task and show that analyses based on gross characteristics present an inappropriate profile of effects. Laboratory studies of auditory distraction are now largely restricted to investigation of the effects of irrelevant speech. Noise and performance research has also moved toward field studies, including effects of chronic noise exposure on children. Future noise research is likely to focus on different noise parameters and performance outcomes, potentially leading to the investigation of different underlying mechanisms. This type of research will have clear implications for policy and practice.	f	\N
23095428	Several chronic health conditions of childhood, including pediatric cancers, traumatic brain injury (TBI), and sickle cell disease (SCD) are associated with significant neurocognitive impairments that can compromise educational attainment and future vocational opportunities. The prominence of attentional deficits as part of the neurocognitive sequelae associated with each of these conditions has led some researchers to draw parallels with another chronic condition that manifests in childhood, specifically the inattentive subtype of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Because ADHD shares similar neurocognitive and symptomatological features with pediatric cancer, TBI, and SCD, stimulant medications may be indicated to treat associated deficits in each condition. However, relatively few studies have investigated the safety and effectiveness of stimulant medications in treating neurocognitive sequelae in children with cancer, TBI, or SCD. Thus, clinicians have received little guidance regarding a potentially useful treatment modality for ameliorating the neurocognitive deficits that can profoundly impact the educational, psychosocial, and vocational development of youth with these chronic health conditions. We provide a review of the literature and synthesize current developments in research regarding treatment with stimulant medication for children with cancer, TBI, and SCD, as well as discuss special considerations for each condition.	f	\N
23104227	Research has shown that water supplementation positively affects cognitive performance in children and adults. The present study considered whether this could be a result of expectancies that individuals have about the effects of water on cognition. Forty-seven participants were recruited and told the study was examining the effects of repeated testing on cognitive performance. They were assigned either to a condition in which positive expectancies about the effects of drinking water were induced, or a control condition in which no expectancies were induced. Within these groups, approximately half were given a drink of water, while the remainder were not. Performance on a thirst scale, letter cancellation, digit span forwards and backwards and a simple reaction time task was assessed at baseline (before the drink) and 20 min and 40 min after water consumption. Effects of water, but not expectancy, were found on subjective thirst ratings and letter cancellation task performance, but not on digit span or reaction time. This suggests that water consumption effects on letter cancellation are due to the physiological effects of water, rather than expectancies about the effects of drinking water.	f	\N
23106374	In the present study, we tested whether subliminal abrupt-onset cues capture attention in a bottom-up or top-down controlled manner. For our tests, we varied the searched-for target-contrast polarity (i.e., dark or light targets against a gray background) over four experiments. In line with the bottom-up hypothesis, our results indicate that subliminal-onset cues capture attention independently of the searched-for target-contrast polarity (Experiment 1), and this effect is not stronger for targets that matched the searched-for target-contrast polarity (Experiment 2). In fact, even to-be-ignored cues associated with a no-go response captured attention in a salience-driven way (Experiment 3). For supraliminal cues, we found attentional capture only by cues with a matching contrast polarity, reflecting contingent capture (Experiment 4). The results point toward a specific role of subliminal abrupt onsets for attentional capture.	f	\N
23111150	Epidemiological studies have associated the negative effects of sedentary time and sedentary patterns on health indices. However, these studies have used methodologies that do not directly measure the sedentary state. Recent technological developments in the area of motion sensors have incorporated inclinometers, which can measure the inclination of the body directly, without relying on self-report or count thresholds. This paper aims to provide a detailed description of methodologies used to examine a range of relevant variables, including sedentary levels and patterns from an inclinometer-based motion sensor. The activPAL Professional physical activity logger provides an output which can be interpreted and used without the need for further processing and additional variables were derived using a custom designed MATLAB® computer program. The methodologies described have been implemented on a sample of 44 adolescent females, and the results of a range of daily physical activity and sedentary variables are described and presented. The results provide a range of objectively measured and objectively processed variables, including total time spent sitting/lying, standing and stepping, number and duration of daily sedentary bouts and both bed hours and non-bed hours, which may be of interest when making association between physical activity, sedentary behaviors and health indices.	f	\N
23117329	The present study examined whether the relationship between light exposure and cognitive functioning is mediated by psychological well-being in elderly persons working night shifts. The role of psychological well-being has been neglected so far in the relationship between bright light and cognitive performance. Sleepiness and mood were applied as indicators of psychological well-being. Cognitive functioning was examined in terms of concentration, working memory, and divided attention. A total of thirty-two test persons worked in three consecutive simulated night shifts, 16 under bright light (3,000 lux) and 16 under room light (300 lux). Concentration, working memory, and divided attention were measured by computerised tasks. The hypothesised mediators were recorded by questionnaires. Mediation analyses were conducted for estimating direct, total, and indirect effects in simple mediation models. Results indicate that sleepiness and mood did not function as mediators in the prediction of concentration, working memory, and/or divided attention by light exposure. Sleepiness led to an underestimation of the positive bright-light effect on concentration performance. Mood showed only a random effect due to the positive bright-light effect on working memory. Sleepiness and mood could completely be excluded as mediators in the relationship between light exposure and cognitive functioning. This study underlines that psychological well-being of elderly persons is not a critical component in the treatment of bright light on cognitive performance in the night shift workplace. In summary, it becomes evident that bright light has a strong direct and independent effect on cognitive performance, particularly on working memory and concentration.	f	\N
23121170	Interpersonal self-support is an indigenous Chinese personality concept. It represents the idealized notion of the kind of personality traits that help individuals deal with interpersonal problems and develop and maintain the harmonic and appropriate social relationships required in China's collectivistic and interdependent culture. It also was assumed to be a protective personality factor with regard to mental health and was found to be negatively related to psychosomatic symptoms. In the current study, cognitive processing of interpersonal information is assumed to be an underlying mechanism that connects interpersonal self-support with interpersonal relationships and mental health. To test this hypothesis, we conducted two experiments to investigate whether attentional bias on positive and negative interpersonal information was related to high and low interpersonal self-support. A spatial cueing task and the emotional Stroop task were administered to two samples of high and low interpersonal self-support Chinese undergraduate students to measure attentional bias. The results from both experiments suggested that high interpersonal self-support students had an attentional bias toward positive interpersonal information, while low interpersonal self-support students preferentially attended to negative interpersonal information. Study 1 indicated that attentional bias toward positive interpersonal information was easily engaged in the high interpersonal self-support group, while attentional bias toward negative interpersonal information was both easy to engage and difficult to disengage in the low interpersonal self-support students. These results support our hypotheses that high interpersonal self-support people engage in positive processing of interpersonal information, whereas low interpersonal self-support people engage in negative processing of interpersonal information. The differential balance between positive and negative processing on interpersonal information may explain why interpersonal self-support predicts both mental health and interpersonal relationships. In addition, the relational schema may explain why interpersonal self-support is associated with an attentional bias toward interpersonal information.	f	\N
23124137	Face processing is a neural mechanism that allows understanding social information and cues conveyed by faces, whose dysfunction has been postulated to underlie some of the behavioral impairments characterizing autism spectrum disorders (ASD). A special region of the cortex, the fusiform gyrus (FG), is believed to be the specific area for processing face features and emotions. However, behavioral, fMRI and ERP studies addressed to investigate the role of FG dysfunction in ASD have led to conflicting results. Using a high-density EEG system, we recorded the face-sensitive ERP to neutral and emotional (happiness and fearful) faces, as a measure of early activity of the FG, in children with high functioning ASD. By controlling a number of experimental and clinical variables that could have biased previous research--such as gaze direction, attention to tasks, stimulus appearance and clinical profiles--we aimed to assess the effective role of the FG in the face emotion processing deficit hypothesized in ASD. No significant differences in early face-sensitive ERP components were found between ASD and neurotypical children. However, a systematic latency delay and amplitude reduction of all early potentials were observed in the ASD group, regardless of the stimulus, although more evident for emotions. Therefore, we can assume a diffuse dysfunction of neural mechanisms and networks in driving and integrating social information conveyed by faces, in particular when emotions are involved, rather than a specific impairment of the FG-related face processing circuit. Nevertheless, there is need of further investigation.	f	\N
23124187	Growing research literature has documented the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions for anxiety and depressive disorders. Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) teaches a series of mindfulness meditation and yoga practices, delivered in a group format during eight weekly sessions plus one full-day session. This case report demonstrates how MBSR was associated with dramatic clinical improvement of an individual with symptoms of panic, generalized anxiety, and depression. Scores on clinical assessment measures suggested clinically severe levels of anxious arousal, generalized anxiety, worry, fear of negative evaluation, and depression at the beginning of the intervention. The scores on all these measures fell well within normal limits 7 weeks later at the end of the intervention, and no remaining symptoms were reported afterward. Increased life satisfaction and quality of life were documented as well. This case illustrates the potential benefit of MBSR as an alternative or adjunctive treatment for comorbid anxiety and depressive disorder symptoms.	f	\N
23127474	Typing performance involves hierarchically structured control systems: At the higher level, an outer loop generates a word or a series of words to be typed; at the lower level, an inner loop activates the keystrokes comprising the word in parallel and executes them in the correct order. The present experiments examined contributions of the outer- and inner-loop processes to the control of speed and accuracy in typewriting. Experiments 1 and 2 involved discontinuous typing of single words, and Experiments 3 and 4 involved continuous typing of paragraphs. Across experiments, typists were able to trade speed for accuracy but were unable to type at rates faster than 100 ms/keystroke, implying limits to the flexibility of the underlying processes. The analyses of the component latencies and errors indicated that the majority of the trade-offs were due to inner-loop processing. The contribution of outer-loop processing to the trade-offs was small, but it resulted in large costs in error rate. Implications for strategic control of automatic processes are discussed.	f	\N
23128366	New methods to enhance colorectal cancer (CRC) screening rates are needed. The web offers novel possibilities to educate patients and to improve health behaviors, such as cancer screening. Evidence supports the efficacy of health communications that are targeted and tailored to improve the uptake of recommendations. We identified unscreened women at average risk for CRC from the scheduling databases of obstetrics and gynecology practices in 2 large health care systems. Participants consented to a randomized controlled trial that compared CRC screening uptake after receipt of CRC screening information delivered via the web or in print form. Participants could also be assigned to a control (usual care) group. Women in the interventional arms received tailored information in a high- or low-monitoring Cognitive Social Information Processing model-defined attentional style. The primary outcome was CRC screening participation at 4 months. A total of 904 women were randomized to the interventional or control group. At 4 months, CRC screening uptake was not significantly different in the web (12.2%), print (12.0%), or control (12.9%) group. Attentional style had no effect on screening uptake for any group. Some baseline participant factors were associated with greater screening, including higher income (P = .03), stage of change (P < .001), and physician recommendation to screen (P < .001). A web-based educational intervention was no more effective than a print-based one or control (no educational intervention) in increasing CRC screening rates in women at average risk of CRC. Risk messages tailored to attentional style had no effect on screening uptake. In average-risk populations, use of the Internet for health communication without additional enhancement is unlikely to improve screening participation. clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00459030.	f	\N
23130782	In three related manuscripts we describe our drug development program for the treatment of Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD). In this first theoretical article we will defend the hypothesis that different causal mechanisms are responsible for the emergence of HSDD: low sexual desire in women (with HSDD) could be due to either a relative insensitive brain system for sexual cues or to enhanced activity of sexual inhibitory mechanisms. This distinction in etiological background was taken into account when designing and developing new pharmacotherapies for this disorder. Irrespective of circulating plasma levels of testosterone, administration of sublingual 0.5 mg testosterone increases the sensitivity of the brain to sexual cues. The effects of an increase in sexual sensitivity of the brain depend on the motivational state of an individual. It might activate sexual excitatory mechanisms in low sensitive women, while it could evoke (or strengthen) sexual inhibitory mechanisms in women prone to sexual inhibition. Sexual stimulation in the brain is necessary for phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitor (PDE5i)-mediated increase in genital sexual response. Accordingly, a single dose of T+PDE5i might enhance sexual responsiveness, especially in women with low sensitivity to sexual cues. In other women sexual stimulation might elicit a prefrontal cortex (PFC)-mediated phasic increase in sexual inhibition, in which activity of 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT, serotonin) is involved. We hypothesize that a single dose of 5-hydroxytryptamine receptor agonist (5-HT(1A)ra) will reduce the sexual-stimulation-induced PFC-mediated sexual inhibition during a short period after administration. Consequently, treatment with T+5-HT(1A)ra will be more effective, in particular in women exhibiting sexual inhibition. Based on the results of our efficacy studies described in parts 2 and 3 of the series, we conclude that tailoring on-demand therapeutics to different underlying etiologies might be a useful approach to treat common symptoms in subgroups of women with HSDD.	f	\N
23148868	In 3 human predictive learning experiments, we investigated whether the allocation of attention can come under the control of contextual stimuli. In each experiment, participants initially received a conditional discrimination for which one set of cues was trained as relevant in Context 1 and irrelevant in Context 2, and another set was relevant in Context 2 and irrelevant in Context 1. For Experiments 1 and 2, we observed that a second discrimination based on cues that had previously been trained as relevant in Context 1 during the conditional discrimination was acquired more rapidly in Context 1 than in Context 2. Experiment 3 revealed a similar outcome when new stimuli from the original dimensions were used in the test stage. Our results support the view that the associability of a stimulus can be controlled by the stimuli that accompany it.	f	\N
23151577	Biological clocks are genetically encoded oscillators that allow organisms to anticipate changes in the light-dark environment that are tied to the rotation of Earth. Clocks enhance fitness and growth in prokaryotes, and they are expressed throughout the central nervous system and peripheral tissues of multicelled organisms in which they influence sleep, arousal, feeding and metabolism. Biological clocks capture the imagination because of their tie to geophysical time, and tools are now in hand to analyse their function in health and disease at the cellular and molecular level.	f	\N
23151960	Many theories of category learning incorporate mechanisms for selective attention, typically implemented as attention weights that change on a trial-by-trial basis. This is because there is relatively little data on within-trial changes in attention. We used eye tracking and mouse tracking as fine-grained measures of attention in three complex visual categorization tasks to investigate temporal patterns in overt attentional behavior within individual categorization decisions. In Experiments 1 and 2, we recorded participants' eye movements while they performed three different categorization tasks. We extended previous research by demonstrating that not only are participants less likely to fixate irrelevant features, but also, when they do, these fixations are shorter than fixations to relevant features. We also found that participants' fixation patterns show increasingly consistent temporal patterns. Participants were faster, although no more accurate, when their fixation sequences followed a consistent temporal structure. In Experiment 3, we replicated these findings in a task where participants used mouse movements to uncover features. Overall, we showed that there are important temporal regularities in information sampling during category learning that cannot be accounted for by existing models. These can be used to supplement extant models for richer predictions of how information is attended to during the buildup to a categorization decision.	f	\N
23153115	Emerging evidence suggests that some individuals may be simultaneously more responsive to the effects from environmental adversity and enrichment (i.e., differential susceptibility). Given that parenting behavior and a variable number tandem repeat polymorphism in the 3'untranslated region of the dopamine transporter (DAT1) gene are each independently associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), our goal was to evaluate the potential interactive effects of child DAT1 genotype with positive and negative parenting behaviors on childhood ADHD. We recruited an ethnically diverse sample of 150 six- to nine-year-old boys and girls with and without ADHD. Children were genotyped for a common polymorphism of the DAT1 gene, and objective counts of observed parenting behavior (i.e., negativity and praise) were obtained from a valid parent-child interaction task. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the interactive effects of DAT1 and observed parenting with a latent ADHD factor. We detected a significant interaction between observed praise and child DAT1 (coded additively), which suggested that praise was associated with increased ADHD, but only among youth with the 9/10 genotype. In addition, a marginally significant interaction between DAT1 (coded additively and recessively) and observed negativity emerged for ADHD, such that negativity was positively associated with ADHD but only for youth with the 9/9 genotype. Although differential susceptibility theory was not fully supported, these preliminary results suggest that interactive exchanges between parenting behavior and child genotype potentially contribute to the development of ADHD. Clinical implications for interactions between parenting behavior and child genotype are discussed.	f	\N
23154040	In order to become a proficient user of language, infants must detect temporal cues embedded within the noisy acoustic spectra of ongoing speech by efficient attentional engagement. According to the neuro-constructivist approach, a multi-sensory dysfunction of attentional engagement - hampering the temporal sampling of stimuli - might be responsible for language deficits typically shown in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). In the present study, the efficiency of visual attentional engagement was investigated in 22 children with SLI and 22 typically developing (TD) children by measuring attentional masking (AM). AM refers to impaired identification of the first of two sequentially presented masked objects (O1 and O2) in which the O1-O2 interval was manipulated. Lexical and grammatical comprehension abilities were also tested in both groups. Children with SLI showed a sluggish engagement of temporal attention, and individual differences in AM accounted for a significant percentage of unique variance in grammatical performance. Our results suggest that an attentional engagement deficit - probably linked to a dysfunction of the right fronto-parietal attentional network - might be a contributing factor in these children's language impairments.	f	\N
23156620	The study was designed to show how driver attention to the road scene and engagement of a choice of secondary tasks are affected by the level of automation provided to assist or take over the basic task of vehicle control. It was also designed to investigate the difference between support in longitudinal control and support in lateral control. There is comparatively little literature on the implications of automation for drivers' engagement in the driving task and for their willingness to engage in non-driving-related activities. A study was carried out on a high-level driving simulator in which drivers experienced three levels of automation: manual driving, semiautomated driving with either longitudinal or lateral control provided, and highly automated driving with both longitudinal and lateral control provided. Drivers were free to pay attention to the roadway and traffic or to engage in a range of entertainment and grooming tasks. Engagement in the nondriving tasks increased from manual to semiautomated driving and increased further with highly automated driving. There were substantial differences in attention to the road and traffic between the two types of semiautomated driving. The literature on automation and the various task analyses of driving do not currently help to explain the effects that were found. Lateral support and longitudinal support may be the same in terms of levels of automation but appear to be regarded rather differently by drivers.	f	\N
23156621	A driving simulator study compared the effect of changes in workload on performance in manual and highly automated driving. Changes in driver state were also observed by examining variations in blink patterns. With the addition of a greater number of advanced driver assistance systems in vehicles, the driver's role is likely to alter in the future from an operator in manual driving to a supervisor of highly automated cars. Understanding the implications of such advancements on drivers and road safety is important. A total of 50 participants were recruited for this study and drove the simulator in both manual and highly automated mode. As well as comparing the effect of adjustments in driving-related workload on performance, the effect of a secondary Twenty Questions Task was also investigated. In the absence of the secondary task, drivers' response to critical incidents was similar in manual and highly automated driving conditions. The worst performance was observed when drivers were required to regain control of driving in the automated mode while distracted by the secondary task. Blink frequency patterns were more consistent for manual than automated driving but were generally suppressed during conditions of high workload. Highly automated driving did not have a deleterious effect on driver performance, when attention was not diverted to the distracting secondary task. As the number of systems implemented in cars increases, an understanding of the implications of such automation on drivers' situation awareness, workload, and ability to remain engaged with the driving task is important.	f	\N
23160204	Do stimuli appear to be closer when they are more threatening? We tested people's perceptions of distance to stimuli that they felt were threatening relative to perceptions of stimuli they felt were disgusting or neutral. Two studies demonstrated that stimuli that emitted affective signals of threat (e.g., an aggressive male student) were seen as physically closer than stimuli that emitted affective signals of disgust (e.g., a repulsive male student) or no affective signal. Even after controlling for the direct effects of physiological arousal, object familiarity, and intensity of the negative emotional reaction, we found that threatening stimuli appeared to be physically closer than did disgusting ones (Study 2). These findings highlight the links among biased perception, action regulation, and successful navigation of the environment.	f	\N
23167479	Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a main cause of mortality and morbidity. Association studies between hospitalization variables and cognitive impairment after TBI are frequently retrospective, including non-consecutive patients showing variable degrees of TBI severity, and poor management of missing (drop out) cases. We assessed prospectively the demographic and hospitalization variables of 234 consecutive patients with severe TBI (admission Glasgow Coma Scale [GCS] ≤8) and determined their independent association with cognitive performance in a representative sample (n = 46) of surviving patients (n = 172) evaluated 3 (±1.8) years after hospitalization. In all, 85% of patients were male and the mean age was 34 (SD ±13) years. The education level was 9 (±4.7) years. As expected, education and age showed a moderately to strong linear relationship with the cognitive performance in 14 of 15 neuropsychological tests (R coefficient = 0.6-0.8). The cognitive test scores were not independently associated with gender, admission GCS, associated trauma, and Marshal CT classification. Admission-elevated blood glucose levels and the presence of sub-arachnoid haemorrhage were independently associated with lower scores on Rey Auditory Verbal Learning retention and Logical Memory-I tests, respectively. After correction for education and age distribution, the variables that are commonly associated with mortality or Glasgow Outcome Scale including admission pupils' examination, Marshal CT Classification, GCS, and serum glucose showed a limited predictive power for long-term cognitive prognosis. Identification of clinical, radiological, and laboratory variables as well as new biomarkers independently associated with cognitive outcome remains an important challenge for further work involving severe TBI patients.	f	\N
23167664	Clozapine, a second generation antipsychotic which is relatively safe in overdose, has been used as an effective treatment alternative to traditional antipsychotics. The therapeutic use in children remains controversial. However, in accordance with the increasing prescription in adults, the accidental ingestion in childhood becomes more frequent. We report the youngest case of accidental clozapine ingestion. A 13-month-old girl presented with acute respiratory insufficiency and coma of unknown origin. The medical history, laboratory and radiological assessment did not link to aetiology until an almost spontaneous arousal after 22 h pointed towards intoxication. The initial standard drug screening using immunoassay had been negative. Hence, liquid chromatography mass spectrometry/mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) was performed, and clozapine was detected with a serum concentration of 736 ng/mL. This case illustrates the diagnostic and forensic pitfalls in a coma of unknown origin due to the limits of toxicological screening immunoassays. LC-MS/MS analysis by an established method showed clozapine metabolites (norclozapine and clozapine-N-oxide) are detectable for longer period, especially in urine, when compared with clozapine. The clinical course is presented in unique correlation with plasma and urine concentrations of clozapine and its metabolites. The elimination pattern of clozapine in toddlers is similar to adults, and the toxic dose was found to be lower when compared with school-age children and adults.	f	\N
23179030	This article proposes a means for better understanding the self and consciousness. Data indicate that the basic "emotional brain" continually computes potential survival risk against reward to rank consequent "emotion scores" for all sensory inputs. These scores compete to yield winner-takes-all outcomes that determine the choice of attention or action. This mechanism prevails regardless of whether the competing options gain their emotion scores through a rational or an intuitive pathway. There is no need to postulate any homunculus or inner self in control of such choice; indeed, our belief in a first-person self in overall control is wrong. The self is a passive construct arising from each individual's social development, where language acquisition vastly heightens communication and awareness not only outwardly, but also inwardly, as if to a controlling "inner I." However, when society comes to hold the maturing being accountable for his or her actions, the brain must respond, and it does so in the only way it can, by deeming that this passive, inner self-construct act as if it were the active self in charge. Consciousness emerges when the language-based output of the higher brain is referred for ownership to this artificial self-construct.	f	\N
23181686	We investigated the role of implicit spatiotemporal learning in the Posner spatial cueing of attention task. During initial training, the proportion of different trial types was altered to produce a complex pattern of spatiotemporal contingencies between cues and targets. For example, in the short invalid and long valid condition, targets reliably appeared either at an uncued location after a short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA; 100 ms) or at a cued location after a long SOA (350 ms). As revealed by postexperiment questioning, most participants were unaware of these manipulations. Whereas prior studies have examined reaction times during training, the current study examined the long-term effect of training on subsequent testing that removed these contingencies. An initial experiment found training effects only for the long SOAs that typically produce inhibition of return (IOR) effects. For instance, after short invalid and long valid training, there was a benefit at long SOAs rather than an IOR effect. A 2nd experiment ruled out target-cue overlap as an explanation of the difference between learning for long versus short SOAs. Rather than a mix of perfectly predictable spatiotemporal contingencies, Experiment 3 used only short SOA trials during training with a probabilistic spatial contingency. There was a smaller but reliable training effect in subsequent testing. These results demonstrate that implicit learning for specific combinations of location and SOA can affect behavior in spatial cueing paradigms, which is a necessary result if more generally spatial cueing reflects learned spatiotemporal regularities.	f	\N
23200451	Driver distraction is estimated to be one of the leading causes of motor vehicle accidents. However, little is known about the role of emotional distraction on driving, despite evidence that attention is highly biased toward emotion. In the present study, we used a dual-task paradigm to examine the potential for driver distraction from emotional information presented on roadside billboards. This purpose was achieved using a driving simulator and three different types of emotional information: neutral words, negative emotional words, and positive emotional words. Participants also responded to target words while driving and completed a surprise free recall task of all the words at the end of the study. The findings suggest that driving performance is differentially affected by the valence (negative versus positive) of the emotional content. Drivers had lower mean speeds when there were emotional words compared to neutral words, and this slowing effect lasted longer when there were positive words. This may be due to distraction effects on driving behavior, which are greater for positive arousing stimuli. Moreover, when required to process non-emotional target stimuli, drivers had faster mean speeds in conditions where the targets were interspersed with emotional words compared to neutral words, and again, these effects lasted longer when there were positive words. On the other hand, negative information led to better memory recall. These unique effects may be due to separate processes in the human attention system, particularly related to arousal mechanisms and their interaction with emotion. We conclude that distraction that is emotion-based can modulate attention and decision-making abilities and have adverse impacts on driving behavior for several reasons.	f	\N
23211268	We investigated motion extrapolation in object tracking in two experiments. In Experiment 1, we used a multiple-object-tracking task (MOT; three targets, three distractors) combined with a probe detection task to investigate the distribution of attention around a target object. We found anisotropic probe detection rates with increased probe detection at locations where a target is heading. In Experiment 2, we introduced a black line (wall) in the center of the screen and block-wise manipulated the object's motion: either objects bounced realistically against the wall or objects went through the wall. Just before a target coincided with the wall, a probe could appear either along the bounce path or along the straight path. In addition to MOT, we included a single-object-tracking task (SOT; one target, five distractors) to control for attentional load. We found that linear extrapolation is dominant (better probe detection along the straight path than bounce path) regardless of attentional load and the motion condition. Anticipation of bouncing behavior did occur but only when attentional load was low. We conclude that attention is not tightly bound to moving target objects but encompasses the object's current position and the area in front of it. Furthermore, under the present experimental conditions, the visuo-attentional system does not seem to anticipate object bounces in the MOT task.	f	\N
23212302	In brain surgery procedures, such as deep brain stimulation, drug-resistant epilepsy and tumour surgery, the patient is intentionally awakened to map functional neural bases via electrophysiological assessment. This assessment can involve patient's body movements; thus, increasing the mechanical load on the head-restraint systems used for keeping the skull still during the surgery. The loads exchanged between the head and the restraining device can potentially result into skin and bone damage. The aim of this work is to assess such loads for laying down the requirements of a surgical robotics system for dynamic head movements compensation by fast moving arms and by an active restraint able to damp such actions. A Mayfield(®) head clamp was tracked and instrumented with strain gages (SGs). SG locations were chosen according to finite element analyses. During an actual brain surgery, displacements and strains were measured and clustered according to events that generated them. Loads were inferred from strain data. The greatest force components were exerted vertically (median 5.5 N, maximum 151.87 N) with frequencies up to 1.5 Hz. Maximum measured displacement and velocity were 9 mm and 60 mm/s, with frequencies up to 2.8 Hz. The analysis of loads and displacements allowed to identify the surgery steps causing maximal loads on the head-restraint device.	f	\N
23216374	Studies on adults have revealed a disadvantageous effect of negative emotional stimuli on executive functions (EF), and it is suggested that this effect is amplified in children. The present study's aim was to assess how emotional facial expressions affected working memory in 9- to 12-year-olds, using a working memory task with emotional facial expressions as stimuli. Additionally, we explored how degree of internalizing and externalizing symptoms in typically developing children was related to performance on the same task. Before employing the working memory task with emotional facial expressions as stimuli, an independent sample of 9- to 12-year-olds was asked to recognize the facial expressions intended to serve as stimuli for the working memory task and to rate the facial expressions on the degree to which the emotion was expressed and for arousal to obtain a baseline for how children during this age recognize and react to facial expressions. The first study revealed that children rated the facial expressions with similar intensity and arousal across age. When employing the working memory task with facial expressions, results revealed that negatively valenced expressions impaired working memory more than neutral and positively valenced expressions. The ability to successfully complete the working memory task increased between 9 to 12 years of age. Children's total problems were associated with poorer performance on the working memory task with facial expressions. Results on the effect of emotion on working memory are discussed in light of recent models and empirical findings on how emotional information might interact and interfere with cognitive processes such as working memory.	f	\N
23216771	The unique role of the EEG alpha rhythm in different states of cortical activity is still debated. The main theories regarding alpha function posit either sensory processing or attention allocation as the main processes governing its modulation. Closing and opening eyes, a well-known manipulation of the alpha rhythm, could be regarded as attention allocation from inward to outward focus though during light is also accompanied by visual change. To disentangle the effects of attention allocation and sensory visual input on alpha modulation, 14 healthy subjects were asked to open and close their eyes during conditions of light and of complete darkness while simultaneous recordings of EEG and fMRI were acquired. Thus, during complete darkness the eyes-open condition is not related to visual input but only to attention allocation, allowing direct examination of its role in alpha modulation. A data-driven ridge regression classifier was applied to the EEG data in order to ascertain the contribution of the alpha rhythm to eyes-open/eyes-closed inference in both lighting conditions. Classifier results revealed significant alpha contribution during both light and dark conditions, suggesting that alpha rhythm modulation is closely linked to the change in the direction of attention regardless of the presence of visual sensory input. Furthermore, fMRI activation maps derived from an alpha modulation time-course during the complete darkness condition exhibited a right frontal cortical network associated with attention allocation. These findings support the importance of top-down processes such as attention allocation to alpha rhythm modulation, possibly as a prerequisite to its known bottom-up processing of sensory input.	f	\N
23217629	This study analyzes the effects of attention disruption factors, such as sending text messages (STM) and performing searching navigation (SN) on driving performance patterns while actively driving, centering on motion signals. To this end, it analyzes not only data on control of the vehicle including the Anterior-Posterior Coefficient of Variation (APCV), Medial-Lateral Coefficient of Variation (MLCV), and Deviation of Vehicle Speed but also motion data such as the Jerk-Cost function (JC). A total of 55 drivers including 28 males (age: 24.1 ± 1.5, driving experience: 1.8 years ± 1.7 years) and 27 females (age: 23.8 ± 2.6, driving experience: 1.5 ± 1.0) participated in this study. All subjects were instructed to drive at a constant speed (90 km/h) for 2 min while keeping a distance of 30 m from the front car also running at a speed of 90 km/h. They were requested to drive for the first 1 min and then drive only (Driving Only) or conduct tasks while driving for the subsequent 1 min (Driving + STM or Driving + SN). The information on APCV, MLCV, and deviation of speed were delivered by a driving simulator. Furthermore, the motion signal was measured using 4 high-speed infrared cameras and based on the measurement results, JCs in a total of 6 parts including left shoulder (L.shoulder), left elbow (L.elbow), left hand (L.hand), right knee (R.knee), right ankle (R.ankle), and right toe (R.toe) were calculated. Differences among the results of 3 conditions of experiment, Driving Only, Driving + STM, and Driving + SN, were compared and analyzed in terms of APCV, MLCV, Deviation of Vehicle Speed, and JC. APCV and Deviation of Vehicle Speed increased in Driving + SN, rather than in Driving Only. MLCV increased in Driving + STM and Driving + SN, rather than in Driving Only. In the case of most JCs except that of L.hand, the values increased in Driving + SN, compared to Driving Only. This study indicated that JC could be a reliable parameter for the evaluation of driving performance patterns. In addition, it was discovered that additional tasks under driving, such as STM and SN, impaired smoothness or proficiency in driving motion, thereby increasing anterior-posterior and medio-lateral variability and deviation of speed.	f	\N
23221862	The current state of knowledge suggests that disruption of neuronal information integration may be a common mechanism of anesthetic-induced unconsciousness. A neural system critical for information integration is the thalamocortical system whose specific and nonspecific divisions may play the roles for representing and integrating information, respectively. How anesthetics affect the function of these systems individually is not completely understood. The authors studied the effect of propofol on thalamocortical functional connectivity in the specific and nonspecific systems, using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Eight healthy volunteers were instructed to listen to and encode 40 English words during wakeful baseline, light sedation, deep sedation, and recovery in the scanner. Functional connectivity was determined as the temporal correlation of blood oxygen level-dependent signals with seed regions defined within the specific and nonspecific thalamic nuclei. Thalamocortical connectivity at baseline was dominantly medial and bilateral frontal and temporal for the specific system, and medial frontal and medial parietal for the nonspecific system. During deep sedation, propofol reduced functional connectivity by 43% (specific) and 79% (nonspecific), a significantly greater reduction in the nonspecific than in the specific system and in the left hemisphere than in the right. Upon regaining consciousness, functional connectivity increased by 58% (specific) and 123% (nonspecific) during recovery, exceeding their values at baseline. Propofol conferred differential changes in functional connectivity of the specific and nonspecific thalamocortical systems, particularly in left hemisphere, consistent with the verbal nature of stimuli and task. The changes in nonspecific thalamocortical connectivity may correlate with the loss and return of consciousness.	f	\N
23224515	Fragile X syndrome (FXS) and Williams syndrome (WS) are both genetic disorders which present with similar cognitive-behavioral problems, but distinct social phenotypes. Despite these social differences both syndromes display poor social relations which may result from abnormal social processing. This study aimed to manipulate the location of socially salient information within scenes to investigate the visual attentional mechanisms of: capture, disengagement, and/or general engagement. Findings revealed that individuals with FXS avoid social information presented centrally, at least initially. The WS findings, on the other hand, provided some evidence that difficulties with attentional disengagement, rather than attentional capture, may play a role in the WS social phenotype. These findings are discussed in relation to the distinct social phenotypes of these two disorders.	f	\N
23228587	Prominent models of social phobia highlight the role played by attentional factors, such as self-focused attention, in the development and maintenance of social phobia. Elevated self-focused attention is associated with increases in self-rated anxiety. Treatments that aim to modify and change attentional processes, specifically self-focused attention, will have a direct effect on social phobia symptoms. Thus, Attention Training targets attentional focus. The present study aimed to investigate the efficacy of Attention Training in comparison to an established treatment for social phobia, Cognitive Therapy. Participants (Intention-to-treat = 45; completers = 30) were allocated to either 6 weeks of Attention Training or Cognitive Therapy. It was hypothesized that both treatments would be effective in reducing social phobia symptoms, but that Attention Training would work primarily by reducing levels of self-focused attention. The results found an overall effectiveness of both treatment conditions in reducing social phobia symptoms. However, Attention Training significantly improved scores on the Self-Focused Attention questionnaire and the Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation questionnaire compared to Cognitive Therapy. Attention Training seems to be a promising treatment for social phobia.	f	\N
23233157	Working memory (WM) and attention have been studied as separate cognitive constructs, although it has long been acknowledged that attention plays an important role in controlling the activation, maintenance, and manipulation of representations in WM. WM has, conversely, been thought of as a means of maintaining representations to voluntarily guide perceptual selective attention. It has more recently been observed, however, that the contents of WM can capture visual attention, even when such internally maintained representations are irrelevant, and often disruptive, to the immediate external task. Thus, the precise relationship between WM and attention remains unclear, but it appears that they may bidirectionally impact one another, whether or not internal representations are consistent with the external perceptual goals. This reciprocal relationship seems, further, to be constrained by limited cognitive resources to handle demands in either maintenance or selection. We propose here that the close relationship between WM and attention may be best described as a give-and-take interdependence between attention directed toward either actively maintained internal representations (traditionally considered WM) or external perceptual stimuli (traditionally considered selective attention), underpinned by their shared reliance on a common cognitive resource. Put simply, we argue that WM and attention should no longer be considered as separate systems or concepts, but as competing and influencing one another because they rely on the same limited resource. This framework can offer an explanation for the capture of visual attention by irrelevant WM contents, as well as a straightforward account of the underspecified relationship between WM and attention.	f	\N
23234490	People have significant psychological resources to improve their well-being and performance, but these resources often go unused and could be better harnessed. In the medical domain, it is well established that these resources can be mobilized under certain conditions, for example in the context of the placebo effect. Here we explored whether the placebo principle can be used to enhance cognitive performance. To do so, we employed a modified placebo induction--a bogus priming method that we told participants would unconsciously enhance their knowledge and that they should hence trust their skills in an upcoming knowledge test. Participant performance was indeed enhanced, compared to a group that did not think the priming process would improve their knowledge. The study documents the relevance of the placebo effect outside the medical and therapeutic setting.	f	\N
23237079	Previous theories about the etiology of cognitive dysfunction in bipolar disorder (BD) emphasized trait factors such as neurological impairment. State factors, other than mood symptoms, that may exacerbate functional deficits have not yet been considered. The purpose of this study was to examine autonomic nervous system (ANS) arousal following cognitive challenge. The study compared patients with BD and healthy controls (HC) in physiological measures and neuropsychological test scores. Thirty euthymic patients with BD and 22 HC completed the study. Participants completed mood [Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) and Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS)], anxiety (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory), and substance abuse (Drug Abuse Screening Test-20 item and Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test) measures. They were connected to an electrogram, a sensitive thermometer for measuring finger temperature, and electrodes that measure galvanic skin response. After a five-min baseline measurement in a restful state, participants completed a computerized neuropsychological battery (CNS Vital Signs). The group with BD reported significantly more mood symptoms (BDI-II, t = 3.71, p < 0.001; YMRS, t = 6.73, p < 0.001) and scored higher on a measure of trait-anxiety (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, t = 2.91, p < 0.001) than HC. A multivariate analysis of variance revealed higher arousal on all physiological measures in the BD group relative to HC at baseline [F(3,48) = 13.1, p < 0.001] and during cognitive testing [F(3,48) = 11.3, p < 0.001]. The increase in physiological arousal from a restful state to the time of testing was higher for the BD group [F(3,37) = 8.06, p < 0.001]. With respect to cognitive data, HC scored higher than patients with BD across the measures of memory (F = 8.5, p < 0.001), sustained (F = 9.5, p < 0.001) and complex (F = 2.7, p < 0.04) attention, processing speed (F = 10.0, p < 0.001), reaction time (F = 7.8, p < 0.001), cognitive flexibility (F = 19.7, p < 0.001), working memory (F = 10.8, p < 0.001), and social acuity (F = 5.7, p < 0.01), with partial eta-squared from 0.18 to 0.62. Correlational analysis revealed significant associations between various cognitive test scores and changes in physiological arousal from baseline to testing (-0.59 ≤ r ≤ 0.22). Relative to HC, patients with BD experience larger changes in ANS arousal between a restful baseline and cognitive testing, and achieve lower cognitive test scores. Further research is needed to determine whether acute physiological symptoms of anxiety directly compromise cognitive functioning in BD.	f	\N
23237331	The present study investigated whether counter-regulation in affective processing is triggered by emotions. Automatic attention allocation to valent stimuli was measured in the context of positive and negative affective states. Valence biases were assessed by comparing the detection of positive versus negative words in a visual search task (Experiment 1) or by comparing interference effects of positive and negative distractor words in an emotional Stroop task (Experiment 2). Imagining a hypothetical emotional situation (Experiment 1) or watching romantic versus depressing movie clips (Experiment 2) increased attention allocation to stimuli that were opposite in valence to the current emotional state. Counter-regulation is assumed to reflect a basic mechanism underlying implicit emotion regulation.	f	\N
23242199	Performance of unimanual movements is associated with bihemispheric activity in the motor cortex in old adults. However, the causal functional role of the ipsilateral MC (iMC) for motor control is still not completely known. Here, the behavioral consequences of interference of the iMC during training of a complex motor skill were tested. Healthy old (58-85 years) and young volunteers (22-35 years) were tested in a double-blind, cross-over, sham-controlled design. Participants attended 2 different study arms with either cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation (ctDCS) or sham concurrent with training. Motor performance was evaluated before, during, 90 min, and 24 h after training. During training, a reduced slope of performance with ctDCS relative to sham was observed in old compared with young (F = 5.8, P = 0.02), with a decrease of correctly rehearsed sequences, an effect that was evident even after 2 consecutive retraining periods without intervention. Furthermore, the older the subject, the more prominent was the disruptive effect of ctDCS (R(2) = 0.50, P = 0.01). These data provide direct evidence for a causal functional link between the iMC and motor skill acquisition in old subjects pointing toward the concept that the recruitment of iMC in old is an adaptive process in response to age-related declines in motor functions.	f	\N
23244316	Rumination, defined as repetitive thinking about negative information, has been found to lead to serious maladaptive consequences, including longer and more severe episodes of major depression. In this review, we present and discuss research findings motivated by the formulation that individual differences in cognitive processes that control how information is processed influence the likelihood that thoughts will become repetitive and negative. Several studies have demonstrated that a tendency to ruminate (i.e., trait rumination) is related to difficulties updating working memory (WM) and disengaging from and forgetting no-longer-relevant information. Other investigators have documented that trait rumination is also associated with an enhanced ability to ignore distracting information and with more stable maintenance of task-relevant information. In contrast to trait rumination, a state of rumination has been found to be related to widespread deficits in cognitive control. In this article, we discuss how the current accounts of control functioning cannot explain this pattern of anomalous control functioning. To explain these findings, including unexpected and contradictory results, we present an attentional scope model of rumination that posits that a constricted array of thoughts, percepts, and actions that are activated in WM or available for selection from long-term memory affects the control functioning of trait ruminators. This model explains, at a cognitive level, why rumination is particularly likely to arise when individuals are in a negative mood state; it also accounts for a number of findings outside of the rumination-control literature and generates several novel predictions.	f	\N
23250122	Stroke thrombolysis is limited by the "last-seen well" principle, which defines stroke onset time. A significant minority of stroke patients (~15%) awake with their symptoms and are by definition ineligible for thrombolysis because they were "last-seen well" at the time they went to bed implying an interval that is most often greater than three hours. A single-centre prospective, safety study was designed to thrombolyse 20 subjects with stroke-on-awakening. Patients were eligible for inclusion if they were last seen well less than 12 hours previously, specifically including those who awoke from sleep with their stroke deficits. They had a baseline computed tomogram (CT) scan with an ASPECTS score greater than 5, no evidence of well-evolved infarction and a CT angiogram / Trans-cranial Doppler ultrasound study demonstrating an intracranial arterial occlusion. Patients fulfilled all other standard criteria for stroke thrombolysis. The primary outcome was safety defined by symptomatic ICH or death. Among 89 screened patients, 20 were treated with thrombolysis. Two patients (10%) died due to massive carotid territory stroke and two patients (10%) died of stroke complications. Two patients (10%) showed asymptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) (petechial hemorrhage) and none symptomatic ICH. Reasons for exclusion were: (a) ASPECTS ≤ 5 (29); (b) well-evolved infarcts on CT (19); (c) historical mRS > 2 (17); (d) no demonstrable arterial occlusion or were too mild to warrant treatment (10). Patients who awake with their deficits can be safely treated with thrombolysis based upon a tissue window defined by NCCT and CTA/TCD.	f	\N
23252922	Attention deficit has been reported in both schizophrenia patients and patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). The aim of this study was to elucidate the deficits in sustained attention and associated neural network dysfunctions in schizophrenia patients and MDD patients, and to investigate the difference between the two patient groups. Twelve schizophrenia patients, 12 patients with non-psychotic MDD, and 12 healthy control subjects participated in this study. A sustained attention to response task (SART) was used to measure attention capacity. Cerebral blood flow (CBF) during attention tasks was measured using H(2) (15) O positron emission tomography. Statistical parametric mapping and analysis of covariance were performed to compare the behavioral performance and CBF changes during SART among three groups. Behavioral performances were not significantly different among the three groups except for an increased commission error rate in the schizophrenia group. Regional CBF during SART was significantly reduced in the left inferior frontal gyrus, the left cuneus, and the right superior parietal lobule and increased in the right superior frontal gyrus and the right cuneus in the schizophrenia group compared to the healthy control group. In the MDD group, neither significant regional CBF difference nor behavioral deficit was found compared to the healthy control group. Behavioral performance deficit and perfusion changes in the prefrontal and parietal cortices during SART were observed only in the schizophrenia group. Prefrontal and parietal network dysfunction for sustained attention may be involved in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia.	f	\N
23261418	The memory for goals model (Altmann & Trafton, 2002) posits the importance of a short delay (the 'interruption lag') before an interrupting task to encode suspended goals for retrieval post-interruption. Two experiments used the theory of soft constraints (Gray, Simms, Fu & Schoelles, 2006) to investigate whether the efficacy of an interruption lag could be improved by increasing goal-state access cost to induce a more memory-based encoding strategy. Both experiments used a copying task with three access cost conditions (Low, Medium, and High) and a 5-s interruption lag with a no lag control condition. Experiment 1 found that the participants in the High access cost condition resumed more interrupted trials and executed more actions correctly from memory when coupled with an interruption lag. Experiment 2 used a prospective memory test post-interruption and an eyetracker recorded gaze activity during the interruption lag. The participants in the High access cost condition with an interruption lag were best at encoding target information during the interruption lag, evidenced by higher scores on the prospective memory measure and more gaze activity on the goal-state during the interruption lag. Theoretical and practical issues regarding the use of goal-state access cost and an interruption lag are discussed.	f	\N
23265305	To study the sexual activities and prevalence of sexual dysfunctions in midlife Chinese women and their correlations with demographic factors, sexual dissatisfaction and interpersonal difficulty. This is a cross-sectional survey of a convenience sample of women aged 40-60, who requested gynecological checkup or attend social activities at Women's Club. Sexual activities, sexual dysfunctions, sexual dissatisfaction, demographic factors and interpersonal difficulty were assessed by self-administered questionnaire. Among 371 eligible subjects, 22.4% and 39.6% women had low intimacy and coitus frequency (0 to <12 acts in one year), respectively. The odds ratios for low coital frequency in the natural menopausal and surgical menopausal subgroups were 3.00 and 5.09, respectively (95% confidence interval: 1.73-5.19 and 1.77-14.69, respectively). Overall, 77.2% women had at least one type of sexual dysfunctions; this proportion was highest in the surgically menopausal subgroup (88.9%) followed by the naturally menopausal subgroup (79.3%), the perimenopausal subgroup (78.2%) and the premenopausal subgroup (72.2%) (p=0.003). No lubrication (42.9%) was the commonest sexual dysfunction and predominantly affected naturally and surgically menopaused women (p=0.001). Sexual dysfunction was the major contributor to sexual dissatisfaction (0.80), followed by interpersonal difficulty (0.2). Arousal disorder was the pivot of interaction between sexual dissatisfaction, menopausal status and low coital frequency. Chinese women had fewer intimate contacts and less coitus when menopause progressed. No lubrication was the commonest sexual dysfunction and predominantly affected menopaused women. Our model showed that sexual dysfunction is the main contributor to sexual dissatisfaction.	f	\N
23274853	Behavioral studies suggest that postural control requires increased cognitive control and visuospatial processing with aging. Consequently, performance can decline when concurrently performing a postural and a demanding cognitive task. We aimed to identify the neural substrate underlying this effect. A demanding cognitive task, requiring visuospatial transformations, was performed with varying postural loads. More specifically, old and young subjects performed mental rotations of abstract figures in a seated position and when standing on a force platform. Additionally, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to identify brain regions associated with mental rotation performance. Old as compared to young subjects showed increased blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) responses in a frontoparietal network as well as activations in additional areas. Despite this overall increased activation, they could still modulate BOLD responses with increasing task complexity. Importantly, activity in left lingual gyrus was highly predictive (r = -0.83, adjusted R(2) = 0.65) of the older subjects' degree of success in mental rotation performance when shifting from a sitting to a standing position. More specifically, increased activation in this area was associated with better performance, once postural load increased.	f	\N
23275056	To assess for the increased risk of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in young children with prenatal methamphetamine exposure from the multicenter, longitudinal Infant Development, Environment, and Lifestyle (IDEAL) study. The IDEAL study enrolled 412 mother-infant pairs at 4 sites (Tulsa, OK; Des Moines, IA; Los Angeles, CA; and Honolulu, HI). Methamphetamine-exposed subjects (n = 204) were identified by self-report and/or gas chromatography/mass spectrometry confirmation of amphetamine and metabolites in infant meconium. Matched subjects (n = 208) denied methamphetamine use and had a negative meconium screen. This analysis included a subsample of 301 subjects who were administered the Conners' Kiddie Continuous Performance Test (K-CPT) at 5.5 years of age (153 exposed and 148 comparison). Hierarchical linear models adjusted for covariates tested exposure effects on K-CPT measures. Using the same covariates, logistic regression was used to determine the effect of exposure on the incidence of a positive ADHD confidence index score, defined as greater than 50%. There were no differences between the groups in omission or commission errors or reaction time for correct trials. However, methamphetamine exposure was associated with subtle differences in other outcomes predictive of ADHD, including increased slope of reaction time across blocks (p < .001), increased variability in reaction time with longer interstimulus intervals (p < .01), and increased likelihood of greater than 50% on the ADHD confidence index (odds ratio, 3.1; 95% confidence interval, 1.2-7.8; p = .02). Prenatal methamphetamine exposure was associated with subtle differences in K-CPT scores at 5.5 years of age. Even at this relatively young age, these children exhibit indicators of risk for ADHD and warrant monitoring.	f	\N
23276727	Coordinated joint engagement (CJE) is a behavioral measure used in the infant-caregiver interaction paradigm to measure joint attention. To know how mothers scaffold infant attention to prompt joint engagement states, this study attempted to determine (a) which specific maternal attention-directing strategies facilitate CJE in mother-infant interactions and (b) how attention-directing strategies precede a range of infant engagement states. Free play in 33 low-SES dyads was analyzed sequentially, a method that reveals temporal relations between the behaviors involved in an interaction. Maintaining was the only strategy that preceded CJE, and Introducing and Redirecting preceded infant Engagement with Object, Onlooking, and Supported Joint Engagement. The results point to the scaffolding role of Maintaining and the mediating role of Introducing and Redirecting maternal strategies. To understand how low-SES infants attain CJE is important given the relation between joint attention and cognitive development. Implications of the results for interventions aimed at reducing socioeconomic inequities in early cognitive development are discussed.	f	\N
23279174	Schizophrenia is a complex epigenetic puzzle, the antecedents of which are presumed to lie in neurodevelopmental dysmaturation. This dysmaturation has an impact on children and adolescents at genetic risk for schizophrenia. In this framework, normative mechanisms of brain development that are highly dynamic in adolescence are likely to be disrupted in the at-risk adolescent brain. It is likely that what is affected is the integrity of brain networks that sub-serve fundamental domains of function such as sustained attention. Notably, expansion in proficiency in sustained attention that is characteristic of typical development is likely to be compromised in adolescents at risk for schizophrenia. This confluence of at-risk adolescents and neuro-behavioral domains of inquiry is discussed. We outline the evidence for developmental antecedents of schizophrenia, and their bases in systems and molecular mechanisms in the brain. Then we juxtapose these results against neuro-behavioral evidence of attention deficits in high-risk populations, and fMRI evidence of dysfunctional responses in critical brain regions. We end by advocating the application of systems-based approaches toward understanding the progression of network dysfunction in the adolescent risk-state.	f	\N
23280545	Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) has shown beneficial aphrodisiac effects in some animal and human studies. The aim of the present study was to assess the safety and efficacy of saffron on selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor-induced sexual dysfunction in women. This was a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled study. Thirty-eight women with major depression who were stabilized on fluoxetine 40 mg/day for a minimum of 6 weeks and had experienced subjective feeling of sexual dysfunction entered the study. The patients were randomly assigned to saffron (30 mg/daily) or placebo for 4 weeks. Measurement was performed at baseline, week 2, and week 4 using the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI). Side effects were systematically recorded. Thirty-four women had at least one post-baseline measurement and completed the study. Two-factor repeated measure analysis of variance showed significant effect of time × treatment interaction [Greenhouse-Geisser's corrected: F(1.580, 50.567) = 5.366, p = 0.012] and treatment for FSFI total score [F(1, 32) = 4.243, p = 0.048]. At the end of the fourth week, patients in the saffron group had experienced significantly more improvement in total FSFI (p < 0.001), arousal (p = 0.028), lubrication (p = 0.035), and pain (p = 0.016) domains of FSFI but not in desire (p = 0.196), satisfaction (p = 0.206), and orgasm (p = 0.354) domains. Frequency of side effects was similar between the two groups. It seems saffron may safely and effectively improve some of the fluoxetine-induced sexual problems including arousal, lubrication, and pain.	f	\N
23288020	To verify the auditory selective attention in children with stroke. Dichotic tests of binaural separation (non-verbal and consonant-vowel) and binaural integration - digits and Staggered Spondaic Words Test (SSW) - were applied in 13 children (7 boys), from 7 to 16 years, with unilateral stroke confirmed by neurological examination and neuroimaging. The attention performance showed significant differences in comparison to the control group in both kinds of tests. In the non-verbal test, identifications the ear opposite the lesion in the free recall stage was diminished and, in the following stages, a difficulty in directing attention was detected. In the consonant- vowel test, a modification in perceptual asymmetry and difficulty in focusing in the attended stages was found. In the digits and SSW tests, ipsilateral, contralateral and bilateral deficits were detected, depending on the characteristics of the lesions and demand of the task. Stroke caused auditory attention deficits when dealing with simultaneous sources of auditory information.	f	\N
23297206	Language production and spatial attention are the most salient lateralized cerebral functions, and their complementary specialization has been observed in the majority of the population. To investigate whether the complementary specialization has a causal origin (the lateralization of one function causes the opposite lateralization of the other) or rather is a statistical phenomenon (different functions lateralize independently), we determined the lateralization for spatial attention in a group of individuals with known atypical right hemispheric (RH) lateralization for speech production, based on a previous large-scale screening of left-handers. We show that all 13 participants with RH language dominance have left-hemispheric dominance for spatial attention, and all but one of 16 participants with left-hemispheric language dominance are RH dominant for spatial attention. Activity was observed in the dorsal fronto-parietal pathway of attention, including the inferior parietal sulcus and superior parietal lobule, the frontal eye-movement field, and the inferior frontal sulcus/gyrus, and these regions functionally colateralized in the hemisphere dominant for attention, independently of the side of lateralization. Our results clearly support the Causal hypothesis about the complementary specialization, and we speculate that it derives from a longstanding evolutionary origin. We also suggest that the conclusions about lateralization based on an unselected sample of the population and laterality assessment using coarse functional transcranial Doppler sonography should be interpreted with more caution.	f	\N
23299718	The neuropeptide orexin is synthesized by neurons exclusively located in the hypothalamus. However, these neurons send axons over virtually the entire brain and spinal cord and therefore constitute a unique central orexinergic system. It is well known that central orexin plays a crucial role in the regulation of various basic non-somatic and somatic physiological functions, including feeding, energy homeostasis, the sleep/wake cycle, reward, addiction, and neuroendocrine, as well as motor control. Moreover, the absence of orexin results in narcolepsy-cataplexy, a simultaneous somatic and non-somatic dysfunction. In this review, we summarize these central functions of the orexinergic system and associated diseases, and suggest that this system may hold a key position in somatic-non-somatic integration.	f	\N
23300231	This paper focuses on an innovative intersection between education, health and arts. Taking a broad definition of health it examines some social and psychological well-being impacts of extended collaborations between a theatre company and children with communication difficulties. It seeks to test aspects of Fredrickson's(1) broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions in a primary school curriculum context. The researcher participated in a project called Speech Bubbles. The programme was devised by theatre practitioners and aimed at six- and seven-year-olds with difficulties in speech, language and communication. Sessions were observed, videoed and analysed for levels of child well-being using an established scale. In addition, responses regarding perceived improvements in speech, language and communication were gathered from school records and teachers, teaching assistants, practitioners and parents. Data were captured using still images and videos, children's recorded commentaries, conversations, written feedback and observation. Using grounded research methods, themes and categories arose directly from the collected data. Fluency, vocabulary, inventiveness and concentration were enhanced in the large majority of referred children. The research also found significant positive developments in motivation and confidence. Teachers and their assistants credited the drama intervention with notable improvements in attitude, behaviour and relationships over the year. Aspects of many children's psychological well-being also showed marked signs of progress when measured against original reasons for referral and normal expectations over a year. An unexpected outcome was evidence of heightened well-being of the teaching assistants involved. Findings compared well with expectations based upon Fredrickson's theory and also the theatre company's view that theatre-making promotes emotional awareness and empathy. Improvements in both children's well-being and communication were at least in part related to the sustained and playful emphases on the processes and practice of drama, clear values and an inclusive environment.	f	\N
23303907	Circadian rhythms occur in almost all species and control vital aspects of our physiology, from sleeping and waking to neurotransmitter secretion and cellular metabolism. Epidemiological studies from recent decades have supported a unique role for circadian rhythm in metabolism. As evidenced by individuals working night or rotating shifts, but also by rodent models of circadian arrhythmia, disruption of the circadian cycle is strongly associated with metabolic imbalance. Some genetically engineered mouse models of circadian rhythmicity are obese and show hallmark signs of the metabolic syndrome. Whether these phenotypes are due to the loss of distinct circadian clock genes within a specific tissue versus the disruption of rhythmic physiological activities (such as eating and sleeping) remains a cynosure within the fields of chronobiology and metabolism. Becoming more apparent is that from metabolites to transcription factors, the circadian clock interfaces with metabolism in numerous ways that are essential for maintaining metabolic homeostasis.	f	\N
23317941	Neonates with hypoplastic left heart syndrome have significant hemodynamic threats to cerebral perfusion and are at risk of reduced neurodevelopmental performance. We hypothesized that cerebral hypoxia, detectable by near-infrared spectroscopy in the early postoperative period, would be related to later neurodevelopmental performance. The study population was a sequential cohort of patients who had undergone stage 1 palliation of hypoplastic left heart syndrome under standard conditions, including neonatal perioperative monitoring with cerebral near-infrared spectroscopy, and who had undergone a neurodevelopmental assessment at age 4 to 5 years. The neonatal demographic and 48-hour perioperative hemodynamic parameters, including cerebral oxygen saturation, were tested for their relationship to 4 domains of neurodevelopmental performance, including visual-motor integration in childhood in univariate and multivariate models. The neurodevelopmental scores were classified as low if less than 85 (-1 standard deviation) and abnormal if less than 70 (-2 standard deviations). For the 51 patients in the surgical cohort, the early survival was 94%, the cumulative survival was 86%, and the neurodevelopmental assessment was completed by 21 (48%) of the survivors, without evidence of an ascertainment bias. At the test age of 56.3 ± 5.5 months, the composite neurodevelopmental index, constructed from equally weighted measures in 4 domains, was 97.6 ± 9.6, not different from the age-based norms, with 3 of 21 in the low range and none abnormal. The mean visual-motor integration was 93.4 ± 14, slightly less than the population norm (P < .05), with 2 of 21 having low scores and 1 abnormal scores. In patients with low to abnormal visual-motor integration, the perioperative stage 1 palliation cerebral oxygenation saturation was significantly lower (63.6 ± 8.1 vs 67.8 ± 8.1, P < .05). Two patients had discrete embolic strokes after their initial hospitalization; the occurrence of late stroke reduced the visual-motor integration performance but was not related to the early cerebral oxygen saturation. Nonlinear relationships of cerebral oxygen saturation to the neurodevelopmental measures found cerebral oxygen saturation thresholds of 49% to 62%. The hours at a cerebral oxygen saturation less than 45% and 55% were related to low visual-motor integration and neurodevelopmental index scores in the univariate and multivariate models. A multivariate model of age and weight at stage 1 palliation, cerebral oxygen saturation, arterial oxygen saturation, cardiopulmonary bypass and deep hypothermic circulatory arrest times, and later stroke predicted visual-motor integration to an important degree (R(2) = 0.53, P < .001). The actual and predicted visual-motor integration and neurodevelopmental index were normal when a cerebral oxygen saturation less than 45% and other risk conditions were avoided. Neurodevelopmental performance was related to demographic, neonatal perioperative physiologic, and later factors. Perioperative cerebral oxygenation assessed by near-infrared spectroscopy can detect hypoxic-ischemic conditions associated with injury and reduced neurodevelopmental performance and was the most significant physiologic factor identified. These data suggest that efforts to avoid cerebral hypoxia are likely to improve the outcomes in this high-risk population.	f	\N
23328130	The aim of this study was to compare sleep pattern, tiredness sensation and quality of life between different chronotypes in train drivers from a Brazilian transportation company. Ninety-one train drivers, working a rotary work schedule including night shift, were divided into three groups according to their chronotype (morning types, intermediate or evening types) and were assessed for their sleep and quality of life, as characterized by a subjective questionnaire and the Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT), applied before and immediately after the night shift. The pattern of activity and rest was measured for 10 days by actigraphy, and the chronotype was determined through the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire. Forty-one (45.1%) individuals were classified as morning type, 44 (48.4%) were classified as intermediate and 6 (6.6%) as evening type. The evening types had a tendency to remain awake for a longer period of time before the night shift (p = 0.05) and scored worse overall for quality of life compared to morning types (p = 0.11). There was no significant difference between the groups regarding variability in the PVT performance, even when covaried by the period of waking time before the test. There was no significant difference either in feelings of fatigue before and after starting the shift. Although the evening type number was small, evening type individuals scored worse relative to sleep and quality of life than morning type individuals.	f	\N
23328270	The antiepileptic drug ezogabine (EZG; US adopted name for retigabine [the international nonproprietary name]) reduces neuronal excitability by enhancing potassium channel activity. EZG has been approved as adjunctive treatment for adults with partial-onset seizures. The goal of this study was to examine the impact of coadministration of ethanol 1 g/kg on the safety and tolerability of EZG and the consequences of coadministration on pharmacokinetic (PK) and pharmacodynamic (PD) parameters in healthy volunteers. In a randomized, 4-way crossover, partially double-blind study, volunteers received 4 oral treatments (EZG 200 mg + ethanol placebo [light apple juice]; placebo + ethanol 1 g/kg; EZG 200 mg + ethanol 1 g/kg; or placebo + ethanol placebo) separated by 5 to 21 days. PK and PD parameters were evaluated in 17 healthy volunteers (19 to 55 years) who were currently moderate alcohol drinkers. Ethanol coadministration increased EZG AUC(0-∞) and C(max) by 36% and 23%, respectively. EZG had no impact on ethanol PK. Ethanol alone impaired balance, blurred vision, and increased intoxication and dizziness. Objective tests (reaction times, response accuracy, attention, and manual tracking) were also impaired by ethanol. EZG treatment alone had no impact on PD measures other than a variable, transient increase in blurred vision (vision clear-crisp visual analog scale scores). Treatments were generally tolerated, with no serious adverse events or discontinuations owing to adverse events. Ethanol increased EZG exposure, which did not seem to be clinically relevant. Except for an increase in blurred vision, impairment effects observed were related primarily to ethanol and were not exacerbated by the addition of EZG, which was generally tolerated with or without ethanol.	f	\N
23331374	Individual variation in serotonergic function is associated with reactivity, risk for affective disorders, as well as an altered response to disease. Our study used a nonhuman primate model to further investigate whether a functional polymorphism in the promoter region for the serotonin transporter gene helps to explain differences in proinflammatory responses. Homology between the human and rhesus monkey polymorphisms provided the opportunity to determine how this genetic variation influences the relationship between a psychosocial stressor and immune responsiveness. Leukocyte numbers in blood and interleukin-6 (IL-6) responses are sensitive to stressful challenges and are indicative of immune status. The neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio and cellular IL-6 responses to in vitro lipopolysaccharide stimulation were assessed in 27 juvenile male rhesus monkeys while housed in stable social groups (NLL  = 16, NS  = 11) and also in 18 animals after relocation to novel housing (NLL  = 13, NS  = 5). Short allele monkeys had significantly higher neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratios than homozygous Long allele carriers at baseline [t(25) = 2.18, P = 0.02], indicative of an aroused state even in the absence of disturbance. In addition, following the housing manipulation, IL-6 responses were more inhibited in short allele carriers (F1,16  = 8.59, P = 0.01). The findings confirm that the serotonin transporter gene-linked polymorphism is a distinctive marker of reactivity and inflammatory bias, perhaps in a more consistent manner in monkeys than found in many human studies.	f	\N
23332428	Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) tend to be more vulnerable to various forms of voiding dysfunction and nocturnal enuresis (NE). We attempt to compare the clinical manifestations and attentional performance between ADHD children with NE and those without NE. We consecutively enrolled children diagnosed with ADHD in child and adolescent psychiatric clinics. The questionnaires for evaluation of ADHD symptoms and voiding dysfunction symptoms were administered to all study participants. All participants also received the Test Battery for Attention Performance (TAP) for assessment of attentional function. A total of 53 children were enrolled in this study, comprising 47 boys and six girls. The prevalence rate of NE was 28.3%. Children in the NE group had statistically significant higher dysfunctional voiding symptom score (5.40 ± 3.66 vs.3.16 ± 2.74; p = 0.018) and two subscales of "When I wet myself, my underwear is soaked" (p < 0.001) and "I miss having a bowel movement every day" (p = 0.047). There were no significant differences with regard to all psychiatric evaluations between the NE and non-NE groups. In the TAP test, the NE group showed a significantly shorter reaction time in the domain of inhibitory control, working memory, and auditory sustained attention than the non-NE group. Children with ADHD have a high prevalence of NE. ADHD children with NE had a significantly higher dysfunctional voiding symptom score and shorter reaction time in most domains of the TAP test. Further study is needed to discern the impact of NE on the neuropsychological function of ADHD children.	f	\N
23332817	Inhibition of return (IOR) reflects a bias to preferentially attend to non-previously attended or inspected spatial locations. IOR is paramount to efficiently explore our environment, by avoiding repeated scanning of already visited locations. Patients with left visual neglect after right parietal damage or fronto-parietal disconnection demonstrated impaired manual, but not saccadic, IOR for right-sided targets (Bourgeois et al., 2012). Here we aimed at investigating in healthy participants the causal role of distinct cortical sites within the right hemisphere in manual and saccadic IOR, by evaluating the offline effects of repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) on the right intra-parietal sulcus (IPS) and the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). Our results show that rTMS over both sites lastingly interfered with manual but not saccadic IOR for right-sided targets. This behavioral pattern closely mimicked the performance of neglect patients evaluated with the same paradigm. In contrast, for left-sided targets, rTMS over the right IPS impaired both manual and saccadic IOR, while rTMS over the right TPJ produced no modulation in either task. We concluded that distinct parietal nodes of the dorsal and ventral spatial attention networks of the right hemisphere make different contributions to exogenous orienting processes implicated in IOR, and that such effects are hemifield- and task-dependent.	f	\N
23336519	The present study addresses gaps in the literature on affect-biased health perceptions by (a) investigating health bias while considering both valence and arousal components of affect; (b) establishing the presence of, and variability in, affective health bias at the daily level; and (c) exploring daily health bias in a non-clinical, community sample of adults. Participants were 477 adults (aged 33-80 years) who reported daily health events, health satisfaction and affect for up to 56 days. Health bias was present when the effect of a given day's health events on that day's health satisfaction was significantly moderated by that day's affect. Multilevel modelling was used to investigate fixed and random within-day effects. Daily health satisfaction. Significant interaction effects indicated the presence of health bias on the daily level: positively valenced affect buffered the negative impact of health events on health satisfaction, whereas negatively valenced affect exacerbated this association; additionally, valence emerged as the most salient characteristic of positive affect, whereas arousal was a differentiating factor for negative affect. The results provide evidence that both valence and arousal components of affect are important to consider when investigating day-level health bias, and that these effects can be detected using a general population of adults.	f	\N
23337080	Memory tasks combining storage and distracting tasks performed at either encoding or retrieval have provided divergent results pointing towards accounts of forgetting in terms of either temporal decay or event-based interference respectively. The aim of this study was to shed light on the possible sources of such a divergence that could rely on methodological aspects or deeper differences in the memory traces elicited by the different paradigms used. Methodological issues were explored in a first series of experiments by introducing at retrieval computer-paced distracting tasks that involved articulatory suppression, attentional demand, or both. A second series of experiments that used a similar design was intended to induce differences in the nature of memory traces by increasing the time allowed for encoding the to-be-remembered items. Although the introduction of computer-paced distracting tasks allowed for a strict control of temporal parameters, the first series of experiments replicated the effects usually attributed to event-based interference. However, deeper encoding abolished these effects while time-related effects remained unchanged. These findings suggest that the interplay between temporal factors and event-based interference in forgetting at short term is more complex than expected and could depend on the nature of memory traces.	f	\N
23337616	Previous research has demonstrated that emotional material is more likely to be remembered than neutral material (Hamann, 2001). The present study employed the item-method of directed forgetting in order to examine whether emotionally negative words are not only easier to remember, but also harder to forget. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were additionally measured in order to investigate the processes of selective rehearsal and active inhibition in directed forgetting. The results demonstrated directed forgetting effects for both neutral and negative words, with a stronger effect for negative items. Late positive potentials (LPPs) for 'to-be-remembered' (TBR) relative to 'to-be-forgotten' (TBF) cues were enhanced when the cues followed negative in comparison to neutral words, indicating the greater selective rehearsal of TBR negative items. Frontal positivities to TBF relative to TBR cues were not modulated by word valence, indicating that inhibitory processes were unaffected by emotion. Taken together, the present research demonstrates for the first time that, not only are emotionally negative words prone to the same directed forgetting effects as neutral words, but that these effects are in fact enhanced for negative words and due to increased selective rehearsal of TBR negative items. The discrepancies between the present findings and those of previous studies are discussed.	f	\N
23345413	Attention to a spatial location or feature in a visual scene can modulate the responses of cortical neurons and affect perceptual biases in illusions. We add attention to a cortical model of spatial context based on a well-founded account of natural scene statistics. The cortical model amounts to a generalized form of divisive normalization, in which the surround is in the normalization pool of the center target only if they are considered statistically dependent. Here we propose that attention influences this computation by accentuating the neural unit activations at the attended location, and that the amount of attentional influence of the surround on the center thus depends on whether center and surround are deemed in the same normalization pool. The resulting form of model extends a recent divisive normalization model of attention (Reynolds & Heeger, 2009). We simulate cortical surround orientation experiments with attention and show that the flexible model is suitable for capturing additional data and makes nontrivial testable predictions.	f	\N
23347592	Sexual function of women suffering from pelvic organ prolapse (POP) and/or urinary incontinence (UI) is adversely affected. However, our current understanding of the exact relationship between female sexual dysfunction and POP and/or UI is incomplete. A qualitative study can improve our understanding by describing what women themselves perceive as the real problem. To gain a more in-depth understanding of the impact of POP and/or UI on the different categories of female sexual dysfunction by way of a qualitative study. Qualitative semistructured interviews were conducted in 37 women scheduled for pelvic floor surgery, and one was excluded from analysis due to incomplete recordings. The impact of POP and/or UI on female sexual function. Only 17% of women were completely positive about their sex life. Both POP and UI had a negative effect on body image. Women with POP had a negative image of their vagina, which caused them to be insecure about their partner's sexual experience, while women with UI were embarrassed about their incontinence and pad use, and feared smelling of urine. Worries about the presence of POP during sexual activity, discomfort from POP, and reduced genital sensations were the most important reasons for decreased desire, arousal, and difficulty reaching an orgasm in women with POP. Fear of incontinence during intercourse affected desire, arousal, and orgasm and could be a cause for dyspareunia in women with UI. Desire was divided into two main elements: "drive" and "motivation." Although "drive," i.e., spontaneous sexual interest, was not commonly affected by POP and/or UI, a decrease in "motivation" or the willingness to engage in sexual activity was the most common sexual dysfunction mentioned. Body image plays a key role in the sexual functioning of women with POP and/or UI with the biggest impact on women's "motivation."	f	\N
23350301	This review examines attention research appearing in The American Journal of Psychology over the journal's rich 125-year history. In particular, the review examines studies focused on selective attention's role in modulating the influence of distraction and the methods used to capture the nature of selective attention. Special attention is given to classic articles by Treisman (1964a, 1964b), Neisser (1963), and Eriksen and Rohrbaugh (1970), whose methods and results are examined in detail in light of current theory and research in selective attention.	f	\N
23351098	Past research suggests that high approach-motivated positive affects narrow attentional scope and cause greater late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes. However, because arousal is related to motivational intensity, arousal may be responsible for these past findings. The present research investigated whether arousal, manipulated independently of affect using physical exercise, would influence attentional and LPP responses to stimuli. Results revealed that appetitive (vs. neutral) pictures evoked larger LPPs over central and left frontal regions, and caused more attentional narrowing. Individual differences in approach motivation predicted more attentional narrowing following appetitive stimuli. However, manipulated arousal did not influence attentional scope or LPPs to neutral or appetitive stimuli. Results suggest that attentional narrowing and LPPs to appetitive stimuli are related to approach motivation rather than enhanced general arousal.	f	\N
23356511	Previous research regarding anxiety and female sexual functioning has yielded conflicting conclusions. This study examined the effect of state/trait anxiety and anxiety sensitivity on sexual responding and the propensity toward sexual inhibition/excitation in women without an anxiety disorder (n = 100, M age = 28.8 years) compared with women with an anxiety disorder (panic disorder or generalized anxiety disorder, n = 30, M age = 30.2 years). Participants completed self-report measures of state and trait anxiety, anxiety sensitivity, sexual functioning, and sexual inhibition/excitation. Women with an anxiety disorder reported worse sexual functioning compared with those without an anxiety disorder (except for desire, lubrication, and pain) and a greater propensity toward sexual inhibition, because of the threat of performance failure and its consequences. Dispositional anxiety and related worries significantly predicted various types of sexual dysfunctions. Findings suggested the importance of considering the relation between anxiety and sexual functioning to design optimal prevention and therapeutic interventions for women with anxiety disorders.	f	\N
23356552	The prefrontal cortex and its connections with other cortical areas participate in processing erotic stimuli and hence sexual arousal. Visual erotic stimuli elicit sexual arousal that is associated with changes in electroencephalographic activity. The electroencephalographic correlation analysis provides information on the functional synchronization among areas. This study analyzed the functional interaction among the prefrontal, parietal, and temporal cortices during sexual arousal in young men induced by observing erotic photographs. In 2 groups of heterosexual men-an erotic stimulation group and a neutral stimulation group-the authors recorded electroencephalograms at the F3, F4, T3, T4, P3, and P4 derivations under 2 conditions: baseline and visual stimulation. Heart rate was monitored as a measure of peripheral activation. Participants in the erotic stimulation group reported a moderate degree of sexual arousal and a decrease in heart rate. Decreased inter- and intrahemispheric correlations of the fast frequencies were obtained only in erotic stimulation. These data support differential hemisphere participation in modulating sexual arousal and show that decreased synchronization patterns between prefrontal and posterior cortices (parietal and temporal) favor sexual arousal in young men. The results of this study may contribute to a better understanding of the central nervous system's mechanisms that underlie sexual arousal.	f	\N
23366539	This paper describes EEG analysis of frontal lobe area in arousal maintenance state against sleepiness. Arousal maintenance state is considered different physiological state from the normal sleep onset. To analyze the EEG of frontal area might be important because we believe that the arousal maintenance state against sleepiness causes neuron activities from the frontal lobe, which coordinates behavior, to hypothalamus, which coordinates wakefulness and sleep. It is, however, hard to use EEG signals in the frontal area consistently because blinking artifacts are mixed in the EEG signals. In this paper, we have analyzed the EEG signals of the frontal lobe in arousal maintenance state against sleepiness after removing the eye-blinking artifact from the scalp EEG signals using an ICA denoising method. As a result, the EEG signals of the frontal area in the arousal maintenance state against sleepiness have wide bandwidth as in the EEG of the occipital area. It strengthens our speculation, i.e., the EEG desynchronization occurs because of the neuron activities from the frontal lobe to hypothalamus in order to maintain arousal state against sleepiness.	f	\N
23369930	This study examined the effect of pain interference and attentional interference on the anticipatory postural adjustments of trunk muscles in patients with nonspecific chronic low back pain. Fifty-nine patients performed rapid flexion movements of the right arm under 6 conditions, namely a control condition and conditions with different attention demands. The latency between the activations of the shoulder and different trunk muscles, as measured with surface electromyography, was used as the outcome. Using repeated measures analysis of variance, attention conditions and group comparisons were tested between those who scored high and low on pain intensity, fear of movement, or pain catastrophizing. There were significant (although minimal) interactive effects but significant and potentially clinically relevant group and attention main effects. The group with the lowest scores showed delayed activity (14 to 29 ms) relative to those with higher scores. One attention-demanding condition delayed (20 to 35 ms) the latencies of some trunk muscles relative to the control condition, namely the one that was the most attention-demanding according to the reaction time results. These findings suggest that patients with chronic low back pain, who are characterized by higher scores on some pain-related variables (visual analog scale, Tampa Scale of Kinesiophobia, Pain Catastrophizing Scale), react favorably to protect the spine from further pain and injuries but would be at greater risk of injury when performing a complex physical task requiring more attention demand.	f	\N
23371434	Hyperarousal is a hallmark of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD has been associated with increased blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR) in veteran populations. We retrospectively identified male patients consulted to outpatient psychiatry at the Iowa City Veterans Affairs Healthcare System. Patients were divided into PTSD (n = 88) and non-PTSD (n = 98) groups. All PTSD patients and a subset of non-PTSD patients had documented blast exposure during service. The study investigated whether patients with PTSD had higher systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and heart rate (HR) than patients without PTSD. The effect of trauma exposure on BP was also examined. Mean SBP (133.8 vs. 122.3 mm Hg; p < .001), DBP (87.6 vs. 78.6 mm Hg; p < .001), and HR (78.9 vs. 73.1 bpm; p < .001) were all significantly higher in the PTSD group. Trauma-exposed patients without PTSD had significantly higher BP than nonexposed patients. The prevalence of hypertension (HTN) was 34.1% (diagnosed and undiagnosed) among PTSD patients. Patients with PTSD had higher BP and HR compared to patients without PTSD. Trauma exposure may increase BP in this population. These findings will increase awareness about the cardiovascular implications of PTSD.	f	\N
23374543	The dominant model that informs clinical training for preventing violence and managing aggression posits arousal as mediated downwards from higher cortical structures. This view results in an often-misplaced reliance on verbal and cognitive techniques for de-escalation. The emergence of sensory modulation, via the Six Core Strategies, is an alternative or complementary approach that is associated with reduced rates of seclusion and restraint. Sensory-based interventions are thought to promote adaptive regulation of arousal and emotion, but this connection has had limited theoretical and empirical development. This paper presents results of a pilot trial of sensory-based interventions in four inpatient mental health units in New Zealand. Narrative analysis of interview and focus group data suggest that modifications to the environment and the use of soothing stimuli moderate or optimize arousal and promote an ability to adaptively regulate emotion. Findings are discussed in light of recent advances in the neurophysiology of emotional regulation and the General Aggression Model that posits arousal and maladaptive emotional regulation as precursors to aggression.	f	\N
23375117	In recent years, chewing has been discussed as producing effects of maintaining and sustaining cognitive performance. We have reported that chewing may improve or recover the process of working memory; however, the mechanisms underlying these phenomena are still to be elucidated. We investigated the effect of chewing on aspects of attention and cognitive processing speed, testing the hypothesis that this effect induces higher cognitive performance. Seventeen healthy adults (20-34 years old) were studied during attention task with blood oxygenation level-dependent functional (fMRI) at 3.0 T MRI. The attentional network test (ANT) within a single task fMRI containing two cue conditions (no cue and center cue) and two target conditions (congruent and incongruent) was conducted to examine the efficiency of alerting and executive control. Participants were instructed to press a button with the right or left thumb according to the direction of a centrally presented arrow. Each participant underwent two back-to-back ANT sessions with or without chewing gum, odorless and tasteless to remove any effect other than chewing. Behavioral results showed that mean reaction time was significantly decreased during chewing condition, regardless of speed-accuracy trade-off, although there were no significant changes in behavioral effects (both alerting and conflict effects). On the other hand, fMRI analysis revealed higher activations in the anterior cingulate cortex and left frontal gyrus for the executive network and motor-related regions for both attentional networks during chewing condition. These results suggested that chewing induced an increase in the arousal level and alertness in addition to an effect on motor control and, as a consequence, these effects could lead to improvements in cognitive performance.	f	\N
23377282	Although major depression is projected to be among the top three causes of disability-adjusted life years lost in 2030, relatively little is known concerning the extent to which depressed mood states can bias social-economic decision making away from optimal outcomes. One experimental framework to study the interaction between negative emotion and social-economic decisions is the ultimatum game (UG), where the fair, cooperative player altruistically punishes the unfair, non-cooperative player. To assess a potential susceptibility of altruistic punishment to depressed mood, we repeatedly administered the UG task to a cohort of 20 currently depressed patients with a diagnosis of recurrent major depressive disorder and 20 healthy controls. Furthermore, valence and arousal ratings of emotionally laden pictures were obtained from all participants in order to assess a depressed mood-related distortion of emotion judgments. Compared to healthy controls, depressed patients over-sanctioned unfair proposals in the UG and judged emotional stimuli too negatively. Thus, major depression is associated with a negative emotional bias that hampers social-economic decision making and produces large personal costs.	f	\N
23381193	Spatial visualization abilities are positively related to performance on science, technology, engineering, and math tasks, but this relationship is influenced by task demands and learner strategies. In two studies, we illustrate these interactions by demonstrating situations in which greater spatial ability leads to problematic performance. In Study 1, chemistry students observed and explained sets of simultaneously presented displays depicting chemical phenomena at macroscopic and particulate levels of representation. Prior to viewing, the students were asked to make predictions at the macroscopic level. Eye movement analyses revealed that greater spatial ability was associated with greater focus on the prediction-relevant macroscopic level. Unfortunately, that restricted focus was also associated with lower-quality explanations of the phenomena. In Study 2, we presented the same displays but manipulated whether participants were asked to make predictions prior to viewing. Spatial ability was again associated with restricted focus, but only for students who completed the prediction task. Eliminating the prediction task encouraged attempts to integrate the displays that related positively to performance, especially for participants with high spatial ability. Spatial abilities can be recruited in effective or ineffective ways depending on alignments between the demands of a task and the approaches individuals adopt for completing that task.	f	\N
23381483	People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often exhibit superior performance in visual search compared to others. However, most studies demonstrating this advantage have employed simple, uncluttered images with fully visible targets. We compare the performance of high-functioning adults with ASD and matched controls on a naturalistic luggage screening task. Although the two groups were equally accurate in detecting targets, the ASD adults improve in their correct elimination of target-absent bags faster than controls. This feature of their behavior is extremely important for many real-world monitoring tasks that require sustained attention for long time periods. Further analyses suggest that this improvement is attributable neither to the motor speed nor to the level of intelligence of the adults with ASD. These findings may have possible implications for employment opportunities of adult individuals with ASD.	f	\N
23382513	Although the literature on parent-child interactions in young children with autism has examined dyadic style, synchrony, and sustained engagement, the examination of parental skill in sustaining and developing play skills themselves has not been targeted. This study examined the extent to which parents of young children with autism match and scaffold their child's play. Sixteen dyads of parents and their children with autism participated in this study along with 16 matched dyads of typically developing children. Both groups were administered a structured play assessment and were observed during a 10-min free play situation. Strategies of play were examined and results revealed that parents of children with autism initiated more play schemes and suggested and commanded play acts more than parents of typical children. They also responded to their child's play acts more often with a higher level play act, while parents of typical children matched/expanded their responses to their child. Parent imitation was also related to longer sequences of play. The findings can guide further research and play intervention for parents.	f	\N
23387907	Sexual health issues for women who have cancer are an important and under-diagnosed and under-treated survivorship issue. Survivorship begins at the time a cancer is detected and addresses health-care issues beyond diagnosis and acute treatment. This includes improving access to care and quality-of-life considerations, as well as dealing with the late effects of treatment. Difficulties with sexual function are one of the more common late effects in women. This article attempted to characterize the etiology, prevalence, and treatment for sexual health concerns for women with gynecological cancer. A systematic survey of currently available relevant literature published in English was conducted. The issue of sexual health for women with cancer is a prevalent medical concern that is rarely addressed in clinical practice. The development of sexual morbidity in the female cancer survivor is a multifactorial problem incorporating psychological, physiologic, and sociological elements. Treatments such as chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgery, and hormonal manipulation appear to have the greatest influence on the development of sexual consequences. Sexual complaints include but are not limited to changes in sexual desire, arousal, and orgasmic intensity and latency. Many women suffer from debilitating vaginal dryness and painful intercourse. Many of the sexual health issues experienced by cancer survivors can be addressed in clinical practice. A multimodal treatment paradigm is necessary to effectively treat these sexual complaints in this special patient population.	f	\N
23399829	Conceptualizations of emotion regulation have led to the identification of cognitive and behavioral regulatory abnormalities that contribute to the development and maintenance of emotional disorders. However, existing research on emotion regulation in anxiety and mood disorders has primarily focused on the regulation of negative emotions rather than positive emotions. Recent findings indicate that disturbances in positive emotion regulation occur across emotional disorders, and may be a generative target for treatment research. The aims of this paper are to: 1. Present a transdiagnostic model of positive emotion disturbances in emotional disorders; 2. Review evidence for disturbances in positive emotion regulation in emotional disorders across categories of emotion regulation; and 3. Propose treatment strategies that may address these disturbances.	f	\N
23407975	Multisensory visuo-vestibular cortical areas are important for spatial orientation and facilitate the control of the brainstem-mediated vestibular ocular reflex (VOR). Despite reports of visual input and cognitive tasks modulating the VOR through cortical control, it is unknown whether higher-order visual stimuli such as bistable perception and attention tasks involving visual imagery have an effect on the VOR. This is a possibility since such stimuli recruit cortical areas overlapping with those engaged during vestibular activation. Here we used a novel paradigm in which human subjects view bistable perceptual stimuli or perform complex attention tasks during concurrent vestibular stimulation. Bistable perceptual phenomena and attention tasks asymmetrically modulated the VOR but only if they involved a visuospatial component (e.g., binocular motion rivalry but not color rivalry). Strikingly, the lateralization effect was dependent upon the subjects' handedness, making this report the first behavioral demonstration that vestibular cortical processing is strongly lateralized to the non-dominant hemisphere. Furthermore, we show that perceptual transitions can modulate the dynamics of the vestibular system contingent upon the presence of a spatial component in the perceptual transition stimuli. Both perceptual transitions and attentional tasks are thought to invoke a redirection of spatial attention. We infer that such redirection of spatial attention engages multisensory vestibular cortical areas that modulate low-level vestibular function which, in turn, may contribute to spatial orientation.	f	\N
23413011	An increasing number of studies have demonstrated that a response in one task can be activated automatically on the basis merely of instructed stimulus-response (S-R) mappings belonging to another task. Such instruction-based response activations are considered to be evidence for the formation of S-R associations on the basis of the S-R mappings for an upcoming, but not yet executed, task. A crucial but somewhat neglected assumption is that instructed S-R associations are formed only under conditions that impose a sufficient degree of task preparation. Accordingly, in the present study we investigated the relation between task preparation and the instruction-based task-rule congruency effect, which is an index of response activation on the basis of instructions. The results from two experiments demonstrated that merely instructed S-R mappings of a particular task only elicit instruction-based response activations when that task is prepared for to a sufficient degree. Implications are discussed for the representation of instructed S-R mappings in working memory.	f	\N
23417238	A subject's sensitivity to a stimulus variation can be studied by estimating the psychometric function. Generally speaking, three parameters of the psychometric function are of interest: the performance threshold, the slope of the function, and the rate at which attention lapses occur. In the present study, three psychophysical procedures were used to estimate the three-parameter psychometric function for an auditory gap detection task. These were an up-down staircase (up-down) procedure, an entropy-based Bayesian (entropy) procedure, and an updated maximum-likelihood (UML) procedure. Data collected from four young, normal-hearing listeners showed that while all three procedures provided similar estimates of the threshold parameter, the up-down procedure performed slightly better in estimating the slope and lapse rate for 200 trials of data collection. When the lapse rate was increased by mixing in random responses for the three adaptive procedures, the larger lapse rate was especially detrimental to the efficiency of the up-down procedure, and the UML procedure provided better estimates of the threshold and slope than did the other two procedures.	f	\N
23419275	This study aimed to further understanding of intimate partner stalking victimization in post-abuse women, with particular attention to the definition of stalking (with or without fear and threat) most predictive of posttraumatic stress (PTS) symptoms. In community midlife women with histories of divorce (N = 192), a history of stalking victimization accompanied by fear and threat was positively correlated with PTS symptom severity, after accounting for other partner abuse. The presence, compared with absence, of fear-and-threat stalking history doubled the odds of symptomatic levels of hyperarousal. Greater physical assault and injury chronicity differentiated fear-and-threat stalked women from other stalked women. Stalking contributed to a fuller understanding of PTS symptoms in women, showing particular relevance for hyperarousal.	f	\N
23419887	To compare a mindfulness-based intervention with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for the group treatment of anxiety disorders. One hundred five veterans (83% male, mean age=46 years, 30% minority) with one or more DSM-IV anxiety disorders began group treatment following randomization to adapted mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) or CBT. Both groups showed large and equivalent improvements on principal disorder severity thru 3-month follow up (ps<.001, d=-4.08 for adapted MBSR; d=-3.52 for CBT). CBT outperformed adapted MBSR on anxious arousal outcomes at follow up (p<.01, d=.49) whereas adapted MBSR reduced worry at a greater rate than CBT (p<.05, d=.64) and resulted in greater reduction of comorbid emotional disorders (p<.05, d=.49). The adapted MBSR group evidenced greater mood disorders and worry at Pre, however. Groups showed equivalent treatment credibility, therapist adherence and competency, and reliable improvement. CBT and adapted MBSR were both effective at reducing principal diagnosis severity and somewhat effective at reducing self-reported anxiety symptoms within a complex sample. CBT was more effective at reducing anxious arousal, whereas adapted MBSR may be more effective at reducing worry and comorbid disorders.	f	\N
23421322	Two experiments examined the impact of encoding conditions and information content in memory for positive, neutral, and negative pictures. We examined the hypotheses that the positivity effect in memory (i.e., a bias in favor of positive or against negative information in later life) would be reduced when (a) pictures were viewed under structured as opposed to unstructured conditions, and (b) contained social as opposed to nonsocial content. Both experiments found that the positivity effect observed with nonsocial stimuli was absent with social stimuli. In addition, little evidence was obtained that encoding conditions affected the strength of the positivity effect. We argue that some types of social stimuli may engage different types of processing than nonsocial stimuli, perhaps encouraging self-referential processing that engages attention and supports memory. This processing may then conflict with the goal-driven, top-down processing that is hypothesized to drive the positivity effect. Thus, our results identify further boundary conditions associated with the positivity effect in memory, arguing that stimulus factors as well as situational goals may affect its occurrence. Further research awaits to determine if this effect is specific to all social stimuli or specific subsets.	f	\N
23427480	Accurately assessing how physicians perform in practice remains an unresolved psychometric challenge. Neither chart reviews nor patient surveys indicate when physicians overlook important information, which can result in a missed opportunity for a correct diagnosis and appropriate plan of care. Standardized patient (SP) assessments provide an opportunity for direct observation of clinical behavior and are increasingly used in licensure examinations. (SPs who are sent incognito are termed unannounced standardized patients [USPs].) One study showed that physicians had particular difficulty adapting care to individual patient context ("contextual error"). In a subsequent study with the same actors, SP cases, and outcomes, an intervention was deployed to reduce contextual error among medical students. In an exploratory reanalysis of data from the two studies, clinicians' assessments of SPs and USPs were compared. Participants in the first study were 65 board-certified internists visited by USPs; the 59 participants in the second were fourth-year medical students examining SPs in a clinical performance center. Attending physicians measured with USPs significantly underperformed medical students measured with SPs in the probing of biomedical red flags (odds ratio [OR] = 0.45 [0.30 to 0.67]) and contextual red flags (OR = 0.66 [0.45 to 0.99]) and in planning appropriate care (OR = 0.43 [0.27 to 0.67]). Across these two studies, attending physicians underperformed medical students on the same outcomes, measured with the same patient cases presented by the same actors. Studies that seek to assess elicitation and incorporation of patient information by physicians as measures of individualization of care should weigh the benefits and costs of direct observation by USPs.	f	\N
23432829	Elucidating the neural basis of joint attention in infancy promises to yield important insights into the development of language and social cognition, and directly informs developmental models of autism. We describe a new method for evaluating responding to joint attention performance in infancy that highlights the 9- to 10-month period as a time interval of maximal individual differences. We then demonstrate that fractional anisotropy in the right uncinate fasciculus, a white matter fiber bundle connecting the amygdala to the ventral-medial prefrontal cortex and anterior temporal pole, measured in 6-month-olds predicts individual differences in responding to joint attention at 9 months of age. The white matter microstructure of the right uncinate was not related to receptive language ability at 9 months. These findings suggest that the development of core nonverbal social communication skills in infancy is largely supported by preceding developments within right lateralized frontotemporal brain systems.	f	\N
23434910	When sleep followed implicit training on a motor sequence, children showed greater gains in explicit sequence knowledge after sleep than adults. This greater explicit knowledge in children was linked to their higher sleep slow-wave activity and to stronger hippocampal activation at explicit knowledge retrieval. Our data indicate the superiority of children in extracting invariant features from complex environments, possibly as a result of enhanced reprocessing of hippocampal memory representations during slow-wave sleep.	f	\N
23437628	Our conception of attention is intricately linked to limited processing capacity and the consequent requirement to select, in both space and time, what objects and actions will have access to these limited resources. Seminal studies by Treisman (Cognitive Psychology, 12, 97-136, 1980) and Broadbent (Perception and Psychophysics, 42, 105-113, 1987; Raymond et al. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 18, 849-860, 1992) offered the field tasks for exploring the properties of attention when searching in space and time. After describing the natural history of a search episode we briefly review some of these properties. We end with the question: Is there one attentional "beam" that operates in both space and time to integrate features into objects? We sought an answer by exploring the distribution of errors when the same participant searched for targets presented at the same location with items distributed over time (McLean et al. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 35A, 171-186, 1982) and presented all at once with items distributed over space (Snyder Journal of Experimental Psychology; 92, 428-431, 1972). Preliminary results revealed a null correlation between spatial and temporal slippage suggesting separate selection mechanisms in these two domains.	f	\N
23443466	Previous research has failed to find a consistent relation between Sluggish Cognitive Tempo (SCT) and executive function (EF) in youth with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) when laboratory-based neuropsychological tasks of EF are used, whereas recent research with youth and adults suggests a significant relation between SCT and ratings of EF. The purpose of this study was to examine ADHD dimensions and SCT symptoms in relation to ratings of EF in adolescents with ADHD. Fifty-two adolescents (ages 12-16; 70 % male) participated in this study. Parents and teachers completed validated measures of SCT, ADHD symptoms, and EF in daily life. Adolescents' intelligence and academic achievement were also assessed. ADHD and SCT symptoms were significantly correlated with ratings of EF. Regression analyses demonstrated that, as hypothesized, ADHD hyperactive-impulsive symptoms were strongly associated with behavioral regulation EF deficits, with ADHD inattentive and SCT symptoms unrelated to behavioral regulation EF when hyperactive-impulsivity symptoms were included in the model. The parent-reported SCT Slow scale measuring motivation, initiative, and apathy predicted both parent- and teacher-reported metacognitive EF deficits above and beyond youth characteristics and ADHD symptoms. In contrast, teacher-reported ADHD inattention was most clearly associated with teacher-reported metacognitive EF deficits. This study provides preliminary evidence for the importance of SCT symptoms in relation to metacognitive EF deficits among adolescents with ADHD and the need to further investigate the overlap and distinctiveness of SCT/ADHD. Further research is needed to replicate and extend these findings.	f	\N
23446727	Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a very heterogeneous neurobiological condition. It is the most common neurodevelopmental disorder in the childhood population. Its prevalence is estimated to be 3-6% in school-age children. AIM. To review the characteristics of patients with inattentive subtype ADHD, including those who could be grouped in a more homogenous subtype which the DSM-5 proposes for classification as the restrictive subtype. The characteristic triad of symptoms consists of attention deficit, hyperactivity and impulsivity. The diagnostic criteria are defined in the DSM-IV-TR. For those with deterioration due to ADHD with no significant hyperactivity problems, this manual offers a confusing diagnostic label. Indeed, the neurobiological substrate underlying the diverse subtypes seems to be different in certain aspects, since the frontostriatal circuit appears to be more affected in combined ADHD, while the frontoparietal circuit is more compromised in the inattentive subtype. For these and other reasons, the DSM-5 will reformulate the different subtypes of ADHD and will probably include a new subgroup that will comprise those patients who satisfy at least six inattention criteria and fewer than two criteria for hyperactivity-impulsivity (restrictive ADHD). The definition of this subgroup could make it easier to detect some patients who have so far received little attention from the point of view of both research and clinical practice.	f	\N
23450537	The Lennox-Gastaut syndrome (LGS) is an age-specific disorder, characterised by epileptic seizures, a characteristic electroencephalogram (EEG), psychomotor delay and behavioural disorder. It occurs more frequently in males and onset is usually before the age of eight years, with a peak between three and five years of age. Late cases occurring in adolescence and early adulthood have rarely been reported. Language is frequently affected, with both slowness in ideation and expression in addition to difficulties of motor dysfunction. Severe behavioural disorders (e.g. hyperactivity, aggressiveness and autistic tendencies) and personality disorders are nearly always present. There is also a tendency for psychosis to develop with time. The long-term prognosis is poor; although the epilepsy often improves, complete seizure freedom is rare and conversely the mental and psychiatric disorders tend to worsen with time. To compare the effects of pharmaceutical therapies used to treat LGS in terms of control of seizures and adverse effects. Many people who suffer from this syndrome will already be receiving other antiepileptic medications at the time of their entry into a trial. However, for the purpose of this review we will only consider the effect of the single therapeutic agent being trialled (often as add-on therapy). We searched the Cochrane Epilepsy Group's Specialized Register (18 October 2012), the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL, The Cochrane Library Issue 10 of 12, 2012) and MEDLINE (1946 to October week 2, 2012). We also searched EMBASE (1980 to March 2003). We imposed no language restrictions. We searched the International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number (ISRCTN) register (18 October 2012) for ongoing trials and in addition, we contacted pharmaceutical companies and colleagues in the field to seek any unpublished or ongoing studies. All randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of the administration of drug therapy to patients with LGS. Two review authors independently extracted data. Analysis included assessing study quality, as well as statistical analysis of the effects on overall seizure rates and effects on specific seizure types (e.g. drop attacks), adverse effects and mortality. We found nine RCTs, but were unable to perform any meta-analysis, because each trial looked at different populations, different therapies and considered different outcomes. The optimum treatment for LGS remains uncertain and no study to date has shown any one drug to be highly efficacious; rufinamide, lamotrigine, topiramate and felbamate may be helpful as add-on therapy, clobazam may be helpful for drop seizures. Until further research has been undertaken, clinicians will need to continue to consider each patient individually, taking into account the potential benefit of each therapy weighed against the risk of adverse effects.	f	\N
23454277	Using electrophysiology, the attentional functions of target selection and distractor filtering were investigated during visual search. Observers searched for multiple tilted line segments amidst vertical distractors. In different conditions, observers were either looking for a specific line orientation ("feature-based" selection), or for any tilted line ("salience-based"). The search array could contain both left- and rightward tilted lines simultaneously (requiring spatial filtering) or only one line type (no filtering). The amplitude of the P1 event-related potential component was reduced during feature-based selection, compared to salience-based selection. The N1 showed a similar effect, at least when filtering was required. Amplitudes were also somewhat reduced when competing nontarget stimuli required filtering. Interactions between selection and filtering became stronger on the N2a and P3. When both feature-based selection and filtering were required, N2a amplitude was highest, and P3 amplitude was lowest. The results support an early locus of feature-based attentional selection in multi-item search.	f	\N
23457685	Typical interventions for acute pain in children attempt to reduce pain by directing attention away from pain. Conversely, mindfulness involves devoting attention to one's experience in an accepting and nonjudgmental way. However, the effect that instructing children to mindfully devote attention to acute pain has on pain outcomes is unknown. To examine whether mindful attention can help children attend to pain without increasing pain intensity or decreasing pain tolerance; to compare the effects of mindful attention with a well-established intervention designed to take attention away from pain (guided imagery); and to test whether baseline coping style or trait mindfulness alter the effects of these interventions. A total of 82 children (10 to 14 years of age) completed measures of coping style and trait mindfulness. Participants then received either mindful attention or guided imagery instructions designed to direct attention toward or away from pain, respectively, before participating in a cold pressor task. The mindful attention group reported more awareness of the physical sensations of pain and thoughts about those sensations. Overall, there were no between-group differences in measures of pain intensity or pain tolerance during the cold pressor task, and no evidence of an interaction between baseline characteristics of the child and experimental condition. Mindful attention was successful in helping children focus attention on experimental pain without increasing pain intensity or decreasing tolerance compared with a well-established intervention for acute pain reduction.	f	\N
23460366	Intervention studies indicate that children's early child-care experiences can be leveraged to foster their development of effective self-regulation skills. It is less clear whether typical child-care experiences play a similar role. In addition, evidence suggests that children with a common variant of the DRD4 gene (48-bp VNTR, 7-repeat) may be more sensitive to their experiences than those without this variant. Using data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, we considered the degree to which children's early child-care experiences-quantity, quality, and type-were associated with their attention and self-regulation abilities in prekindergarten, and, in particular, whether these relations were conditional on DRD4 genotype. G × E interactions were evident across multiple neuropsychological and observational measures of children's attention and self-regulation abilities. Across most outcome measures, DRD4 7+ children spending fewer hours in child care showed more effective attention/self-regulation abilities. For those without a copy of the DRD4 7-repeat allele, such associations were typically null. The results for child-care quality and type indicated no interactions with genotype; the main-effect associations were somewhat inconsistent.	f	\N
23462516	Parkinson's disease (PD) patients frequently develop obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). In order to clarify the clinical significance of OSA in PD, we compared descriptive variables between PD patients with OSA (PD+OSA) and without (PD-OSA), and between the PD+OSA group and a group of OSA patients without PD (control OSA). The apnea hypopnea index (AHI) cutoff of 15 episodes/hour on polysomnogram (PSG) was used to assign 107 PD patients to groups; OSA-related symptoms and PSG findings were then compared. Demographic and PSG variables were compared between PD+OSA patients and 31 OSA controls. Twenty-four patients with PD (22.4%) were classified as PD+OSA. There were no significant differences in descriptive variables between the PD+OSA and PD-OSA groups. The PD+OSA group had a higher arousal index on PSG than the PD-OSA group, although the two groups had similar ESS scores. The PD+OSA patients had a lower respiratory arousal index and a smaller decrease in oxygen saturation than the control OSA group, despite having a similar AHI. The prevalence of OSA in PD did not differ from that in the general elderly population, indicating that the clinical significance of OSA as a contributor to daytime sleepiness in PD is low.	f	\N
23474283	Changes in gut microbiota have been reported to alter signaling mechanisms, emotional behavior, and visceral nociceptive reflexes in rodents. However, alteration of the intestinal microbiota with antibiotics or probiotics has not been shown to produce these changes in humans. We investigated whether consumption of a fermented milk product with probiotic (FMPP) for 4 weeks by healthy women altered brain intrinsic connectivity or responses to emotional attention tasks. Healthy women with no gastrointestinal or psychiatric symptoms were randomly assigned to groups given FMPP (n = 12), a nonfermented milk product (n = 11, controls), or no intervention (n = 13) twice daily for 4 weeks. The FMPP contained Bifidobacterium animalis subsp Lactis, Streptococcus thermophiles, Lactobacillus bulgaricus, and Lactococcus lactis subsp Lactis. Participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging before and after the intervention to measure brain response to an emotional faces attention task and resting brain activity. Multivariate and region of interest analyses were performed. FMPP intake was associated with reduced task-related response of a distributed functional network (49% cross-block covariance; P = .004) containing affective, viscerosensory, and somatosensory cortices. Alterations in intrinsic activity of resting brain indicated that ingestion of FMPP was associated with changes in midbrain connectivity, which could explain the observed differences in activity during the task. Four-week intake of an FMPP by healthy women affected activity of brain regions that control central processing of emotion and sensation.	f	\N
23475816	The higher order processes involved in self-regulation are generally thought to depend on cognitive (attentional/executive) functions with limited resources. Experimental studies further show that exerting self-control in a first task results in decreased performance in other following self-control tasks, which may be interpreted as the consequence of either effective or perceived resource depletion outlasting the first task. Given that higher order cognitive/attentional processes are also considered to be involved in pain modulatory mechanisms, we tested the idea that pain could be influenced by prior mobilization of cognitive resources. The present study investigated the consequences of performing a cognitively demanding task on subsequent pain (ratings) and spinal nociceptive responses (nociceptive flexion reflex, NFR) elicited by noxious electrical stimulations in healthy volunteers. Participants received four noxious stimulations immediately after each of six successive blocks (2 min each) of a numerical Stroop task in a neutral condition (low cognitive demand) and six successive blocks in an interference condition (high cognitive demand). Results revealed that pain was rated higher following the condition requiring higher cognitive control. A similar effect was observed on the NFR. These findings suggest that pain regulation mechanisms including the descending pain modulatory system may be less efficient after the performance of tasks requiring high cognitive control resulting in stronger pain experience.	f	\N
23480071	Sex and disgust seem like strange bedfellows. The premise of this review is that disgust-based mechanisms nevertheless hold great promise for improving our understanding of sexual behavior, including dysfunctions. Disgust is a defensive emotion that protects the organism from contamination. Accordingly, disgust is focused on the border of the self, with the mouth and vagina being the body parts that show strongest disgust sensitivity. Given the central role of these organs in sexual behavior, together with the fact that bodily products are among the strongest disgust elicitors, the critical question seems not whether disgust may interfere with sex but rather how people succeed in having pleasurable sex at all. We argue that sexual arousal plays a critical role in counteracting disgust-induced avoidance via lowering the threshold for engaging in "disgusting sex." Following this, all mechanisms that interfere with the generation of sexual arousal or enhance the disgusting properties of sexual stimuli may hamper the functional transition from a sex-avoidance into an approach disposition. Since prolonged contact is the most powerful means to reduce disgust, disgust-based mechanisms that counteract sexual approach may give rise to a self-perpetuating cycle in which enhanced sexual disgust becomes a chronic feature.	f	\N
23492952	Our daily life is characterized by multiple response options that need to be cascaded in order to avoid overstrain of restricted response selection resources. While response selection and goal activation in action cascading are likely driven by a process varying from serial to parallel processing, little is known about the underlying neural mechanisms that may underlie interindividual differences in these modes of response selection. To investigate these mechanisms, we used a stop-change paradigm for the recording of event-related potentials and standardized low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography source localizations in healthy subjects. Systematically varying the stimulus onset asynchrony (the temporal spacing of "stop" and "change" signals), we applied mathematical constraints to classify subjects in more parallel or more serial goal activators during action cascading. On that basis, the electrophysiological data show that processes linking stimulus processing and response execution, but not attentional processes, underlie interindividual differences in either serial or parallel response selection modes during action cascading. On a systems level, these processes were mediated via a distributed fronto-parietal network, including the anterior cingulate cortex (Brodman area 32, BA32) and the temporo-parietal junction (BA40). There was a linear relation between the individual degree of overlap in activated task goals and electrophysiological processes.	f	\N
23499978	There is a long-running debate over the extent to which volitional attention can modulate the appearance of visual stimuli. Here we use monocular rivalry between afterimages to explore the effects of attention on the contents of visual experience. In three experiments, we demonstrate that attended afterimages are seen for longer periods, on average, than unattended afterimages. This occurs both when a feature of the afterimage is attended directly and when a frame surrounding the afterimage is attended. The results of these experiments show that volitional attention can dramatically influence the contents of visual experience.	f	\N
23506806	We examined (a) what rapid automatized naming (RAN) components (articulation time and/or pause time) predict reading and mathematics ability and (b) what processing skills involved in RAN (speed of processing, response inhibition, working memory, and/or phonological awareness) may explain its relationship with reading and mathematics. A sample of 72 children were followed from the beginning of kindergarten until the end of Grade 1 and were assessed on measures of RAN, general cognitive ability, speed of processing, attention, working memory, phonological awareness, reading, and mathematics. The results indicated that pause time was the critical component in both the RAN-reading and RAN-mathematics relationships and that it shared most of its predictive variance in reading and mathematics with speed of processing and working memory. Our findings further suggested that, unlike the relationship between RAN and reading fluency in Grade 1, there is nothing in the RAN task that is uniquely related to math.	f	\N
23507254	Post event processing (PEP) in social anxiety disorder involves rumination about social events after the fact, and is thought to be a crucial feature of the maintenance of the disorder. The current experiment aimed to manipulate the use of PEP in individuals with social anxiety disorder. Forty-one individuals with social anxiety disorder completed a videotaped speech. Anxiety ratings and degree of PEP were measured after the task as well as the day following the experiment. Individuals in the distract group reported a greater decrease in anxiety from baseline to post-experimental task than those asked to focus. Individuals in the distract group also reported higher PEP about the task than those instructed to complete a focus task, which appeared to be partially accounted for by baseline differences in symptom severity and state anxiety. Degree of PEP was positively correlated with anxiety ratings, both after the experimental task as well as 24 hours later. These findings suggest that naturalistic PEP is problematic for individuals with social anxiety disorder, especially for those with more severe symptoms. A distraction task, even with breakthrough PEP, appears to have useful short-term effects on anxiety reduction as compared to focus instructions.	f	\N
23513046	This study compares the behavioral profile of children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) who were diagnosed using the Canadian Guidelines with children with prenatal alcohol exposure who did not meet criteria for a FASD diagnosis. To accomplish this, we used caregiver and teacher questionnaires evaluating different aspects of behavior. Investigated were 170 children, 109 who received a diagnosis of FASD (Diagnosed Group) and 61 who did not (Non-Diagnosed Group). On the caregiver report, children in the Diagnosed Group had more internalizing and externalizing problems on the CBCL, more executive function difficulties on the BRIEF and more attention problems on the Conner's Rating Scale, compared to the Non-Diagnosed Group. On teacher report, children in the Diagnosed Group had more internalizing and externalizing problems on the TRF and more attention problems on the Conner's Rating Scale, compared to the Non-Diagnosed Group. For both informants, more children in the Diagnosed group had scores in the clinically elevated range. Overall, the present results identify key caregiver- and teacher-rated profiles of children with FASD diagnoses. These profiles will aid in better understanding, diagnosing and providing focused treatment approaches for children with FASD.	f	\N
23516055	Sensory feedback and the required attentional demands are important aspects in prosthesis acceptance. In this study, hand-opening feedback is provided and the performance in a virtual grasping task is investigated. Simultaneously, a secondary task was performed to investigate the attentional demands. Ten nondisabled subjects performed the tasks with and without feedback about the hand opening through an array of eight vibrotactile stimulators on the forearm. Activation of one stimulator corresponded to one hand-opening position. For the dual-task experiments, subjects simultaneously performed a secondary auditory counting task. The addition of vibrotactile feedback increased the performance (expressed in percentages of correct hand positions, mean absolute errors in position, and percentages of deviations up to one hand-opening position), but the duration of the tasks was also increased. Three levels of distraction (no distraction, counting task, count and subtract task) were applied, which did not influence the performance in the grasping tasks except for the highest level of distraction. We concluded that the proposed method to provide hand-opening feedback through an array of eight vibrotactile stimulators is successful because the performance in a grasping task increases but it is not significantly attention demanding.	f	\N
23516802	With the assumption that circadian rhythms influence human performance, the work of live line electricians was reorganized and evaluated. The hypothesis was that in highly physical and attention-demanding work, the organization of tasks, according to the ideal period of day and day of week, should diminish stress and consequent work risks. There are only a few studies reporting the work of electricians and even fewer approaching work organization. Moreover, these investigations often do not consider human physiological limitations and capabilities as well as task demands. A new work system was proposed with consideration of (a) the circadian cycles and homeostatic processes; (b) the effect of heat, which is a zeitgeber (synchronizer) for the biological clocks; and (c) the degree of physical and mental demands of the different performed tasks, which was assessed on the basis of opinions of the electricians and physiological markers of stress that are controlled by circadian rhythms. The traditional and new systems were compared on the basis of two cognitive indices (the arrangement of matchsticks and the perception of a minute) and three physiological markers of mental-to-physical loads (heart frequency and the level of adrenaline and noradrenaline). Both physical and mental loads were reduced in the new system. Work organization should include consideration of human circadian rhythms, mainly when stressful and high-risk tasks are involved. The findings can be applied in any work design, but they are especially suited for highly demanding work carried out outdoors.	f	\N
23521354	Children with autism have characteristic difficulties with joint attention. In educational settings, this can present a challenge when directing a child's attention to new objects and activities. Drawing on videotaped interactions between teachers and two children with autism recorded in Finland, we use conversation analysis to examine how teachers manage such transitions during one-to-one teaching. We show how adjusting material objects can be used to manage the child's engagement and how these adjustments can escalate into more conspicuous actions so as to direct the child's attention. Rather than examining participants' use of communicational objects, we are instead concerned with practices that use task-related objects. We thereby offer an empirically grounded account of the interactional practices involved in achieving joint attention through the objects themselves.	f	\N
23521494	Mental functions are influenced by states of physiological arousal. Afferent neural activity from arterial baroreceptors at systole conveys the strength and timing of individual heartbeats to the brain. We presented words under limited attentional resources time-locked to different phases of the cardiac cycle, to test a hypothesis that natural baroreceptor stimulation influences detection and subsequent memory of words. We show memory for words presented around systole was decreased relative to words at diastole. The deleterious memory effect of systole was greater for words detected with low confidence and amplified in individuals with low interoceptive sensitivity, as indexed using a heartbeat counting task. Our observations highlight an important cardiovascular channel through which autonomic arousal impacts a cognitive function, an effect mitigated by metacognition (perceptual confidence) and interoceptive sensitivity.	f	\N
23523374	Lifestyles involving sleep deprivation are common, despite mounting evidence that both acute total sleep deprivation and chronically restricted sleep degrade neurobehavioral functions associated with arousal, attention, memory and state stability. Current research suggests dynamic differences in the way the central nervous system responds to acute versus chronic sleep restriction, which is reflected in new models of sleep-wake regulation. Chronic sleep restriction likely induces long-term neuromodulatory changes in brain physiology that could explain why recovery from it may require more time than from acute sleep loss. High intraclass correlations in neurobehavioral responses to sleep loss suggest that these trait-like differences are phenotypic and may include genetic components. Sleep deprivation induces changes in brain metabolism and neural activation that involve distributed networks and connectivity.	f	\N
23527644	Attention is a complex construct that taps into multiple mechanisms. One type of attention that is underinvestigated in autism is incidentally or implicitly guided attention. The purpose of this study is to characterize how children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) direct spatial attention based on incidental learning. Children with high-functioning ASD and typically developing children engaged in a visual search task. For the first half of the study, over multiple trials, the target was more often found in some locations than other locations. For the second half, the target was equally likely to appear in all locations. We measured search performance for targets located in the high-probability and low-probability locations. Children with ASD were able to direct spatial attention using incidentally learned information about the target's location probability. Although unaware of the experimental manipulation, children with ASD were faster and more efficient in finding a target in the high-probability locations than low-probability locations, and this bias dissipated after the target's location probability was even. The pace and magnitude of learning, as well as later adjustment to new statistics, were comparable between children with ASD and typically developing children. Incidentally learned attention is preserved in children with ASD.	f	\N
23543105	Humans are thought to be able to form shared representations, considered a keystone of social cognition. However, whether and to what extent such representations are social in nature is still open for debate. In the present study, we address the question of whether action co-representation can be modulated by social attitudes, such as judgments about one's own social status. Two groups of participants performed an Interactive Simon task after the experimental induction of a feeling of social inclusion or exclusion (ostracism) by means of a virtual ball tossing game. Results showed a compatibility effect in included, but not in excluded participants. This indicates that judgments about one's own social status modulate action co-representation. We suggest that this modulation may occur by way of a redirection of one's attentional focus away from others when one experiences social exclusion. This is a far-reaching issue given the increasing need for integration in modern society. Indeed, if integration fails, modern society fails also.	f	\N
23545077	The present study evaluated the socio-emotional development of very preterm born infants at 12 months corrected age. Forty-one infants born very preterm (<29 weeks of gestation) were compared to 22 infants born full term on a standardized behavioral assessment and a parental temperament questionnaire, both measuring emotional reactivity to joy, anger and fear, as well as sustained attention. The behavioral assessment showed that very preterm infants exhibited as much joy as full term infants during a joy-eliciting episode. However, they expressed a significantly higher reactivity in anger-eliciting situations and a reduced reactivity toward fear-eliciting situations. For all three emotion-eliciting situations, the preterm infants reacted with a higher level of motor activity. The preterm infants also exhibited a distinct attention pattern with a significantly higher initial attention level which declined rapidly throughout the episode. The questionnaire did not show any group differences. The clinical relevance of these results in terms of preliminary hallmarks of later behavioral difficulties such attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder are discussed as well as the inconsistencies observed between the questionnaire and the behavioral assessment.	f	\N
23548574	Early mother-infant interactions are characterised by periods of synchronous interaction that are interrupted by periods of mismatch; the experience of such mismatches and their subsequent repair is held to facilitate the development of infant self-regulatory capacities (Tronick, Als, Adamson, Wise, & Brazelton, 1978). Infant responding to such interactive challenge is assumed to be a function of both maternal behaviour and pre-existing infant characteristics. However, the latter has received relatively little attention. In a prospective longitudinal study of a sample comprising high and low adversity dyads (n=122), we examined the contributions of both maternal sensitivity and neonatal irritability to infant behavioural and physiological responding to the interactive challenge of the Still Face paradigm. Results indicated that higher levels of maternal sensitivity were associated with more regulated infant behaviour during the Still Face paradigm. Neonatal irritability also predicted poorer behavioural and heart rate recovery following the Still Face challenge. Furthermore, there was an interaction such that irritable infants with insensitive mothers showed the worst behavioural outcomes. The findings highlight the importance of the interplay between maternal and infant characteristics in determining dyadic responding.	f	\N
23549856	The aim of the study is to examine the health-related quality-of-life (HRQOL) impact of the nocturnal awakenings and the duration of the sleep in the Finnish middle-aged and older population. Cross-sectional sample consisted of 823 community-dwelling persons aged 55-75 living in a single municipality in a rural area of Eastern Finland. Frequency of the nocturnal awakenings was dichotomized as reporting "frequent," if the participant reported subjectively awakening "often" or "very often," and "infrequent" if the participant reported awakening "sometimes" or less frequently. HRQOL was measured with a preference-based HRQOL-index instrument, 15D. Analyses were adjusted for gender, BMI, morbidities, depression, employment and marital status, current smoking and drinking, exercise, recommendation to exercise from a health care professional, and subjective opinion about own exercise habits. Frequent nocturnal awakenings had statistically and clinically significant negative impact on HRQOL, the mean (SE) adjusted marginal HRQOL impact being -0.0416 (0.006). More than 10 and less than 6.5 h of daily sleep were associated with higher probability of having low HRQOL, adjusted odd ratios (95 % CI) being 2.65 (1.11-6.33) and 2.65 (1.55-4.52), respectively. However, the changes in daily sleep duration did not have noticeable influence on the significance or magnitude of the negative HRQOL impact of the frequent nocturnal awakenings. Nocturnal awakenings displayed a strong independent association with decreased HRQOL. The findings suggest that both clinicians and researchers should pay closer attention to nocturnal awakenings and other sleep problems in order to find ways to improve the quality of life in individuals with such conditions.	f	\N
23557983	In relative terms, Spanish motorcyclists are more likely to be involved in crashes than other drivers and this tendency is constantly increasing. The objective of this study is to identify the factors that are related to being an offender in motorcycle accidents. A binary logit model is used to differentiate between offender and non-offender motorcyclists. A motorcyclist was considered to be offender when s/he had committed at least one traffic offense at the moment previous to the crash. The analysis is based on the official accident database of the Spanish general directorate of traffic (DGT) for the 2003-2008 time period. A number of explanatory variables including motorcyclist characteristics and environmental factors have been evaluated. The results suggest that inexperienced, older females, not using helmets, absent-minded and non-fatigued riders are more likely to be offenders. Moreover, riding during the night, on weekends, for leisure purposes and along roads in perfect condition, mainly on curves, predict offenses among motorcyclists. The findings of this study are expected to be useful in developing traffic policy decisions in order to improve motorcyclist safety.	f	\N
23558103	In listening to multi-part music, auditory streams can be attended to either selectively or globally. More specifically, musicians rely on prioritized integrative attention which incorporates both stream segregation and integration to assess the relationship between concurrent parts. In this fMRI study, we used a piano duet to investigate which factors of a leader-follower relationship between parts grab the listener's attention and influence the perception of multi-part music. The factors considered included the structural relationship between melody and accompaniment as well as the temporal relationship (asynchronies) between parts. The structural relationship was manipulated by cueing subjects to the part of the duet that had to be prioritized. The temporal relationship was investigated by synthetically shifting the onset times of melody and accompaniment to either a consistent melody or accompaniment lead. The relative importance of these relationship factors for segregation and integration as attentional mechanisms was of interest. Participants were required to listen to the cued part and then globally assess if the prioritized stream was leading or following compared to the second stream. Results show that the melody is judged as more leading when it is globally temporally ahead whereas the accompaniment is not judged as leading when it is ahead. This bias may be a result of the interaction of salience of both leader-follower relationship factors. Interestingly, the corresponding interaction effect in the fMRI-data yields an inverse bias for melody in a fronto-parietal attention network. Corresponding parameter estimates within the dlPFC and right IPS show higher neural activity for attending to melody when listening to a performance without a temporal leader, pointing to an interaction of salience of both factors in listening to music. Both frontal and parietal activation implicate segregation and integration mechanisms and a top-down influence of salience on attention and the perception of leader-follower relations in music.	f	\N
23567211	Research done in two Polish cities has uncovered an influence of an approaching tram on pedestrian behaviour. The measurements were done by counting pedestrians waiting for a green signal, crossing on red signal safely, or crossing on red signal taking a risk of being hit by a car, differentiating between pedestrians attempting to board a public transport vehicle and other pedestrians. It was expected, that pedestrian behaviour might be influenced by traffic control predictability, therefore two cities were chosen for the task: Wrocław with fixed time traffic control and Poznań with a majority of traffic responsive traffic signals. Data from the measurements was compared in order to find behaviour patterns - the comparison led to a conclusion, that an attempt to get on board of an incoming public transport vehicle can be a major cause for pedestrians to violate a red signal, including an increase of unsafe behaviour. These pedestrians may provoke other pedestrians to cross on a red signal. On the other hand if traffic control guarantees boarding the public transport vehicle, passengers-to-be may be even more obedient than other pedestrians.	f	\N
23574346	An experiment (N=123) examined how individuals cognitively process online news stories depicting African-American characters with stereotype-consistent and -inconsistent attributes and whether distracting online ads interfere with story processing. Two cognitive control functions, updating and inhibition, were predicted to moderate the effects of distracting ads. Recall of characters' attributes and overall characters' description were included in the study as dependent measures. Findings indicated that distracting online ads hinder recall of information about and descriptions of story characters. Inhibition and updating affect dependent measures and moderate the effects of distracting online ads on characters' descriptions.	f	\N
23574348	A considerable literature suggests that the right hemisphere is dominant in vigilance for novel and survival-related stimuli, such as predators, across a wide range of species. In contrast to vigilance for change, change blindness is a failure to detect obvious changes in a visual scene when they are obscured by a disruption in scene presentation. We studied lateralised change detection using a series of scenes with salient changes in either the left or right visual fields. In Study 1 left visual field changes were detected more rapidly than right visual field changes, confirming a right hemisphere advantage for change detection. Increasing stimulus difficulty resulted in greater right visual field detections and left hemisphere detection was more likely when change occurred in the right visual field on a prior trial. In Study 2 an intervening distractor task disrupted the influence of prior trials. Again, faster detection speeds were observed for the left visual field changes with a shift to a right visual field advantage with increasing time-to-detection. This suggests that a right hemisphere role for vigilance, or catching attention, and a left hemisphere role for target evaluation, or maintaining attention, is present at the earliest stage of change detection.	f	\N
23574875	To investigate the correlations between cognitive function and clinical outcome variables. Patients diagnosed for the first time with schizophrenia between January 2004 and June 2010 were cognitively tested in conjunction with diagnostic procedures. Cognitive test data were connected to Danish healthcare registers and patients were followed in the registers from their first contact with psychiatric in- and outpatient care until October 2011. Patients had impaired attention, processing speed and executive function as measured by Trail Making Test part B; their executive functions, as measured by the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), and working memory, as measured by Rigshospitalet's digit span test, were unaffected as compared to norms. The admission rate, from schizophrenia diagnosis to the end of the study, was predicted by Trail Making Test part A, Rey's Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT), RAVLT (total learning), RAVLT (memory), d2 Test of Attention (total) and d2 type 2 error (error of commission), independent of gender, age and schizophrenia subtype. The length of hospitalization after the schizophrenia diagnosis was mainly determined by the schizophrenia subtype (schizophrenia simplex: incidence rate ratio (IRR) 0.24; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.15-0.40, p < 0.001). Diagnosis was secondarily determined by deficits in attention and executive function, Trail Making Test part B, d2 Test of Attention (total), d2 type 1 error (error of omission), d2 type 2 error, and also by age and substance use disorder. The outpatient contact rate from schizophrenia diagnosis to the end of the study was predicted by d2 Test of Attention, Trail Making Test part A, and d2 type 2 error. The annual rate of criminal conviction, institutionalization and social retirement pension was mainly predicted by substance misuse. Cognitive function only predicted hospitalization and outpatient contacts to a minor degree in a cohort of newly diagnosed patients with schizophrenia.	f	\N
23576114	Looking for a target in a visual scene becomes more difficult as the number of stimuli increases. In a signal detection theory view, this is due to the cumulative effect of noise in the encoding of the distractors, and potentially on top of that, to an increase of the noise (i.e., a decrease of precision) per stimulus with set size, reflecting divided attention. It has long been argued that human visual search behavior can be accounted for by the first factor alone. While such an account seems to be adequate for search tasks in which all distractors have the same, known feature value (i.e., are maximally predictable), we recently found a clear effect of set size on encoding precision when distractors are drawn from a uniform distribution (i.e., when they are maximally unpredictable). Here we interpolate between these two extreme cases to examine which of both conclusions holds more generally as distractor statistics are varied. In one experiment, we vary the level of distractor heterogeneity; in another we dissociate distractor homogeneity from predictability. In all conditions in both experiments, we found a strong decrease of precision with increasing set size, suggesting that precision being independent of set size is the exception rather than the rule.	f	\N
23586449	Verbal and physical dating aggression is prevalent among college-aged men and women, especially a pattern of mutual aggression in which both partners engage in aggression. Alcohol intoxication and anger arousal have been implicated in the occurrence of aggression, and the ability to regulate one's emotions may interact with both alcohol intoxication and emotional arousal to predict dating aggression. The current study is the first known experimental investigation to examine the effects of alcohol intoxication, alcohol expectancies, emotion regulation, and emotional arousal on dating aggression. Participants were randomized to receive alcohol (n = 48), placebo (n = 48), or no alcohol (n = 48). Intoxicated men and women expressed more verbal and physical aggression intentions than those in the no-alcohol condition, and individuals in the placebo condition did not significantly differ from those in the alcohol and no-alcohol conditions. These results suggest that the pharmacological effects of alcohol were important to the occurrence of dating aggression, whereas the effects of expectancy are less clear. Among those less able to engage in cognitive reappraisal, individuals who consumed or believed they consumed alcohol expressed more verbal and physical aggression intentions than those who received no alcohol. Those with higher arousal who were better able to suppress their emotions expressed fewer verbal and physical aggression intentions than those with lower arousal. In addition to reducing alcohol consumption, interventions for dating aggression might incorporate emotion regulation skills, with a focus on understanding the circumstances in which cognitive reappraisal and emotion suppression are relatively more effective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).	f	\N
23596189	Alexithymia and increased interoceptive awareness have been associated with affective disorders as well as with altered insula and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) function. Brain imaging studies have demonstrated an association between neurotransmitter function and affective disorders as well as personality traits. Here, we first examined the relationship between alexithymic facets as assessed with the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and interoceptive awareness (assessed with the Body Perception Questionnaire) in 18 healthy subjects. Second, we investigated their association with glutamate and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) concentrations in the left insula and the ACC using 3-Tesla proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Behaviorally, we found a close association between alexithymia and interoceptive awareness. Furthermore, glutamate levels in the left insula were positively associated with both alexithymia and awareness of autonomic nervous system reactivity, while GABA concentrations in ACC were selectively associated with alexithymia. Although preliminary, our results suggest that increased glutamate-mediated excitatory transmission-related to enhanced insula activity-reflects increased interoceptive awareness in alexithymia. Suppression of the unspecific emotional arousal evoked by increased awareness of bodily responses in alexithymics might thus be reflected in decreased neuronal activity mediated by increased GABA concentration in ACC.	f	\N
23601793	In the present research we explored the role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in memory retrieval process of positive vs. negative emotional stimulus, as a function of the anxiety levels. Anxiety behavior showed a consistent attentional bias toward negative and aversive memories, induced by a right frontal cortical superiority. This effect was analyzed by using a rTMS paradigm that induced a cortical activation of the left DLPFC. Subjects, who were divided in two different groups depending on their anxiety level (high/low-anxiety, State-Trait-Anxiety-Inventory, STAI), were required to perform a task consisting of two experimental phases: an encoding-phase, where some lists composed by positive and negative emotional words were presented to the subjects; and a retrieval-phase, where the old stimuli and new stimuli were presented for a recognition performance. We found that the rTMS stimulation affects the memory retrieval of emotional material. High-anxiety subjects benefit in greater measure from the left DLPFC stimulation with a reduced negative bias. This result suggested that left DLPFC activation favors the memory retrieval of positive emotional information and might limit the "unbalance effect" induced by a right hemispheric superiority at a high level of anxiety. The potentiality of TMS for anxiety behavior modulation was also discussed.	f	\N
23619205	Past research has reported that a small proportion of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) have excess beta activity in their EEG, rather than the excess theta typical of the syndrome. This atypical group has been tentatively labeled as hyperaroused. The aim of this study was to determine whether these children have a hyperaroused central nervous system. Participants included 104 boys aged 8 to 13 years old, with a diagnosis of either the Combined or Inattentive type of AD/HD (67 combined type), and 67 age-matched male controls. Ten and a half minutes of EEG and skin conductance (SCL) were simultaneously recorded during an eyes-closed resting condition. The EEG was Fourier transformed and estimates of total power, and relative power in the delta, theta, alpha, and beta bands, and the theta/beta ratio, were calculated. AD/HD patients were divided into an excess beta group and a typical excess theta group. Relative to controls, the typical excess theta group had significantly increased frontal total power, theta and theta/beta ratio, with reduced alpha and beta across the scalp. The excess beta group had significantly reduced posterior total power, increased centro-posterior delta, globally reduced alpha, globally increased beta activity, and globally reduced theta/beta ratio. Both AD/HD groups had significantly reduced SCL compared to the control group, but the two groups did not differ from each other on SCL. These results indicate that AD/HD children with excess beta activity are not hyperaroused, and confirm that the theta/beta ratio is not associated with arousal. This is the first study of arousal measures in AD/HD children with excess beta activity, and has implications for existing models of AD/HD.	f	\N
23620190	Stress contributes to headaches, and effective interventions for headaches routinely include relaxation training (RT) to directly reduce negative emotions and arousal. Yet, suppressing negative emotions, particularly anger, appears to augment pain, and experimental studies suggest that expressing anger may reduce pain. Therefore, we developed and tested anger awareness and expression training (AAET) on people with headaches. Young adults with headaches (N = 147) were randomized to AAET, RT, or a wait-list control. We assessed affect during sessions, and process and outcome variables at baseline and 4 weeks after treatment. On process measures, both interventions increased self-efficacy to manage headaches, but only AAET reduced alexithymia and increased emotional processing and assertiveness. Yet, both interventions were equally effective at improving headache outcomes relative to controls. Enhancing anger awareness and expression may improve chronic headaches, although not more than RT. Researchers should study which patients are most likely to benefit from an emotional expression or emotional reduction approach to chronic pain.	f	\N
23624574	Transfer-appropriate processing (TAP) and identification-production frameworks predict that repetition priming will be reduced by encoding-phase divided attention (DA) in implicit memory tasks that involve conceptual analysis of test stimuli and require responses that go beyond the identification of the test cue. This prediction was tested using the verb generation task. Verb generation priming was weakly affected by a number classification distracting task at encoding that impacted recognition, was affected more by a more demanding mental arithmetic task, and was abolished entirely by a selective attention manipulation. Priming originating largely from a process unique to the verb generation task was also found to be attention-sensitive. DA affected priming equivalently for high-competition and low-competition items, against the identification-production framework which predicts greater DA effects on priming in high-competition conditions. The results fit comfortably within the TAP framework.	f	\N
23625323	Minimal hepatic encephalopathy is a syndrome caused by liver cirrhosis and accompanied by a broad spectrum of cognitive symptoms. The objective of the present study was to describe the prevalence of minimal hepatic encephalopathy in cirrhotic patients and to compare their cognitive performance with controls using standardized tests. Patients receiving medication or experiencing comorbidities associated with cognitive disorders were excluded. The final cohort was compared with a control-matched group using the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), as well as Simple Drawing, Clock Drawing, Rey Auditory-Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT), Random Letter, Stroop, Trail-Making Test (TMT) A and B, Boston Naming, Category Verbal Fluency, Digit Span, Constructional Praxis, Processing Speed, and Similarities Tests. The results indicated no differences in the prevalence of cognitive complaints spontaneously reported by 29 patients with cirrhosis versus 22 healthy controls. The most affected tests included: MMSE (26.3 ± 2 vs. 28.1 ± 1.8 points; p = 0.004), learning (35.4 ± 9 vs. 41 ± 9.1 points; p = 0.041), retroactive interference (0.67 ± 0.22 vs. 0.84 ± 0.16 points; p = 0.004), and recognition (8.7 ± 2.6 vs. 11.2 ± 4.1 points; p = 0.024) in RAVLT, TMT-A (63.2 ± 29.3 vs. 47.6 ± 16.5 s; p = 0.029) and TMT-B (197.9 ± 88.1 vs. 146.8 ± 76.5 s; p = 0.03). No differences were observed with respect to age, gender, and education. In conclusion, MMSE proved to be a useful tool for detecting global cognitive impairment experienced by cirrhosis patients. Moreover, the most impaired cognitive functions were verbal episodic memory and information processing speed. These findings suggest that minimal hepatic encephalopathy represents a disorder that affects the medial temporal system and, possibly, the prefrontal cortex, and this requires further study.	f	\N
23627722	Classification is a flexible process that can be affected by mood. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the idea that mood may modulate categorization behavior through an attentional weighting mechanism in which mood changes the attention afforded to different stimulus dimensions. In two experiments, participants learn and are tested on categories while in a calm or sad mood. In Experiment 1, sad participants are faster to learn one- and two-dimensional category structures, but show no advantage on a three-dimensional category structure. In Experiment 2, the generalized context model of categorization is used to measure dimensional weighting. The results suggest that sad participants have a narrower focus of attention, but that the narrowing tends to be on diagnostic dimensions.	f	\N
23632202	Repeated action observation has been shown to alter the cortical representation of the observed movement in the motor system. This change in cortical representation is thought to reflect a motor adaptation to observational training (observational training effect). One factor that may impact the observational training effect is the degree of motor system activation that occurs during the observation of the action (i.e., individual differences in the responsiveness of the motor system during action observation). The present study was conducted to test this hypothesis by assessing the relationship between the change in motor system activity during action observation and the change in cortical representation of action following repeated action observation. To this end, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was used to evoke contractions of thumb muscles in two different protocols: 1) during the observation of thumb movements to assess the responsiveness of each individual's corticospinal system during action observation; and, 2) after the observation of 1800 thumb movements to assess the amount of adaptation in the representation of the thumb following repeated action observation. The key finding was the significant positive relationship between the level of corticospinal system activation during action observation and the amount of change in the direction of TMS evoked thumb movements. These data support the hypothesized relationship between motor system activation during action observation and the motor systems adaptation following observational training. They are also consistent with the notion that a common neural mechanism underlies these effects.	f	\N
23637913	Online social media are increasingly facilitating our social interactions, thereby making available a massive "digital fossil" of human behavior. Discovering and quantifying distinct patterns using these data is important for studying social behavior, although the rapid time-variant nature and large volumes of these data make this task difficult and challenging. In this study, we focused on the emergence of "collective attention" on Twitter, a popular social networking service. We propose a simple method for detecting and measuring the collective attention evoked by various types of events. This method exploits the fact that tweeting activity exhibits a burst-like increase and an irregular oscillation when a particular real-world event occurs; otherwise, it follows regular circadian rhythms. The difference between regular and irregular states in the tweet stream was measured using the Jensen-Shannon divergence, which corresponds to the intensity of collective attention. We then associated irregular incidents with their corresponding events that attracted the attention and elicited responses from large numbers of people, based on the popularity and the enhancement of key terms in posted messages or "tweets." Next, we demonstrate the effectiveness of this method using a large dataset that contained approximately 490 million Japanese tweets by over 400,000 users, in which we identified 60 cases of collective attentions, including one related to the Tohoku-oki earthquake. "Retweet" networks were also investigated to understand collective attention in terms of social interactions. This simple method provides a retrospective summary of collective attention, thereby contributing to the fundamental understanding of social behavior in the digital era.	f	\N
23639615	Imitation is commonly considered as a hierarchical process. The current study explored the reproduction of a multi-task course in deferred imitation. Eighty-five children between 3.5 and 7.5 years old were divided into five groups and instructed to watch a live human adult demonstrator who performed simple successive actions, such as walking, jumping, grasping, carrying objects from one location to another through six sessions. After a five-minute delay, the children were individually instructed to reproduce the course. Their responses were videotaped and coded in dichotomous data at two hierarchical levels, namely goals and their spatial location. The main findings showed no improvement in the replication of goals due either to age or trials. However, there was an improvement in the integration of the goals' spatial location over trials. This signifies that imitation is an active reconstruction mechanism hierarchically organized.	f	\N
23640591	Advanced mathematical models have the potential to capture the complex metabolic and physiological processes that result in energy expenditure (EE). Study objective is to apply quantile regression (QR) to predict EE and determine quantile-dependent variation in covariate effects in nonobese and obese children. First, QR models will be developed to predict minute-by-minute awake EE at different quantile levels based on heart rate (HR) and physical activity (PA) accelerometry counts, and child characteristics of age, sex, weight, and height. Second, the QR models will be used to evaluate the covariate effects of weight, PA, and HR across the conditional EE distribution. QR and ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions are estimated in 109 children, aged 5-18 yr. QR modeling of EE outperformed OLS regression for both nonobese and obese populations. Average prediction errors for QR compared with OLS were not only smaller at the median τ = 0.5 (18.6 vs. 21.4%), but also substantially smaller at the tails of the distribution (10.2 vs. 39.2% at τ = 0.1 and 8.7 vs. 19.8% at τ = 0.9). Covariate effects of weight, PA, and HR on EE for the nonobese and obese children differed across quantiles (P < 0.05). The associations (linear and quadratic) between PA and HR with EE were stronger for the obese than nonobese population (P < 0.05). In conclusion, QR provided more accurate predictions of EE compared with conventional OLS regression, especially at the tails of the distribution, and revealed substantially different covariate effects of weight, PA, and HR on EE in nonobese and obese children.	f	\N
23643925	The cingulate cortex is regarded as the backbone of structural and functional connectivity of the brain. While its functional connectivity has been intensively studied, little is known about its effective connectivity, its modulation by behavioral states, and its involvement in cognitive performance. Given the previously reported effects on cingulate functional connectivity, we investigated how eye-closure and sleep deprivation changed cingulate effective connectivity, estimated from resting-state high-density electroencephalography (EEG) using a novel method to calculate Granger Causality directly in source space. Effective connectivity along the cingulate cortex was dominant in the forward direction. Eyes-open connectivity in the forward direction was greater compared to eyes-closed, in well-rested participants. The difference between eyes-open and eyes-closed connectivity was attenuated and no longer significant after sleep deprivation. Individual variability in the forward connectivity after sleep deprivation predicted subsequent task performance, such that those subjects who showed a greater increase in forward connectivity between the eyes-open and the eyes-closed periods also performed better on a sustained attention task. Effective connectivity in the opposite, backward, direction was not affected by whether the eyes were open or closed or by sleep deprivation. These findings indicate that the effective connectivity from posterior to anterior cingulate regions is enhanced when a well-rested subject has his eyes open compared to when they are closed. Sleep deprivation impairs this directed information flow, proportional to its deleterious effect on vigilance. Therefore, sleep may play a role in the maintenance of waking effective connectivity.	f	\N
23643938	As planners and public health officials in many cities around the world seek to increase bicycle ridership, bicyclists who are performing a secondary task (such as listening to a portable music device) may pose a risk to public safety. This study examines bicycling safety and potentially distracted behavior in The Hague, the Netherlands, a place where bicycling is a common, everyday travel mode among all walks of life and where bicycling infrastructure is well developed. Based on 1360 observations of bicycling behavior, this study shows that bicyclists who were using a cell phone, listening to a portable music device, or talking with other bicyclists exhibited more unsafe behaviors than those bicyclists who were not performing a secondary task. Furthermore, bicyclists who were performing a secondary task also more frequently created situations where other people had to evade them to avoid an accident. As with distracted car driving, the performance of a secondary task while bicycling may be unsafe for the person engaging in the behavior as well as for other people around them.	f	\N
23656993	Traumatic coma is associated with disruption of axonal pathways throughout the brain, but the specific pathways involved in humans are incompletely understood. In this study, we used high angular resolution diffusion imaging to map the connectivity of axonal pathways that mediate the 2 critical components of consciousness-arousal and awareness-in the postmortem brain of a 62-year-old woman with acute traumatic coma and in 2 control brains. High angular resolution diffusion imaging tractography guided tissue sampling in the neuropathologic analysis. High angular resolution diffusion imaging tractography demonstrated complete disruption of white matter pathways connecting brainstem arousal nuclei to the basal forebrain and thalamic intralaminar and reticular nuclei. In contrast, hemispheric arousal pathways connecting the thalamus and basal forebrain to the cerebral cortex were only partially disrupted, as were the cortical "awareness pathways." Neuropathologic examination, which used β-amyloid precursor protein and fractin immunomarkers, revealed axonal injury in the white matter of the brainstem and cerebral hemispheres that corresponded to sites of high angular resolution diffusion imaging tract disruption. Axonal injury was also present within the gray matter of the hypothalamus, thalamus, basal forebrain, and cerebral cortex. We propose that traumatic coma may be a subcortical disconnection syndrome related to the disconnection of specific brainstem arousal nuclei from the thalamus and basal forebrain.	f	\N
23663456	The target article focuses on the predictive coding of "what" and "where" something happened and the "where" and "what" response to make. We extend that scope by addressing the "when" aspect of perception and action. Successful interaction with the environment requires predictions of everything from millisecond-accurate motor timing to far future events. The hierarchical framework seems appropriate for timing.	f	\N
23663497	It is often helpful to distinguish between a theory (Marr's computational level) and a specific implementation of that theory (Marr's physical level). However, in the target article, a single implementation of predictive coding is presented as if this were the theory of predictive coding itself. Other implementations of predictive coding have been formulated which can explain additional neurobiological phenomena.	f	\N
23663498	In important ways, Clark's "hierarchical prediction machine" (HPM) approach parallels the research agenda we have been pursuing. Nevertheless, we remain unconvinced that the HPM offers the best clue yet to the shape of a unified science of mind and action. The apparent convergence of research interests is offset by a profound divergence of theoretical starting points and ideal goals.	f	\N
23663531	Clark offers a powerful description of the brain as a prediction machine, which offers progress on two distinct levels. First, on an abstract conceptual level, it provides a unifying framework for perception, action, and cognition (including subdivisions such as attention, expectation, and imagination). Second, hierarchical prediction offers progress on a concrete descriptive level for testing and constraining conceptual elements and mechanisms of predictive coding models (estimation of predictions, prediction errors, and internal models).	f	\N
23663865	Predictive processing models of cognition are promising an elegant way to unite action, perception, and learning. However, in the current formulations, they are species-unspecific and have very little particularly human about them. I propose to examine how, in this framework, humans can be able to massively interact and to build shared worlds that are both material and symbolic.	f	\N
23666554	Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have reported increased activation of the mesolimbic system in response to anticipation of rewarding stimuli. The anticipation of uncertain outcomes evokes activation in the amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus and insula. Drugs known to effect dopaminergic and serotonergic neurons also alter regional activation. Benzylpiperazine (BZP) and/or trifluoromethylphenylpiperazine (TFMPP) have been recreationally used worldwide for more than a decade. BZP affects mainly dopaminergic neurons, while TFMPP has serotonergic effects. We investigated the effects of an acute dose of BZP, TFMPP or a combination of BZP and TFMPP on the anticipation of reward in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study using fMRI. An event-related gambling paradigm was completed by healthy controls 90 min after taking an oral dose of either BZP (200 mg), TFMPP (either 50 or 60 mg), BZP + TFMPP (100 + 30 mg) or placebo. After giving BZP, the anticipation of a $4 reward decreased the activation of the inferior frontal gyrus, insula and occipital regions in comparison to placebo. TFMPP increased the activation of the putamen but decreased the activity in the insula relative to placebo. When BZP and TFMPP were given in combination, activation of the rolandic operculum occurred. The magnitude of reward also affected neural correlates. We propose that the effects of BZP and TFMPP on dopaminergic and serotonergic circuitry, respectively, reflect regional changes. The dopaminergic effects of BZP appear to increase positive arousal and subsequently reduce the response to uncertainty, while TFMPP appears to alter the response to uncertainty by increasing emotional responses.	f	\N
23677737	Snoring is a common symptom among the adult population, and it is the most common complaint in patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) syndrome. Patients who snore in a sitting position while taking a nap or sleeping may have a narrower upper airway. The aim of this study was to evaluate if snoring in a sitting position is a predictor of OSA in patients. We prospectively enrolled 166 SS+ (with a history of snoring in a sitting position) subjects and 139 SS- (who denied having a history of snoring in a sitting position) patients. All of the participants received questionnaires as well as a standard polysomnography thereafter. Patients with self-reported snoring in a sitting position (with a tilt position greater than 70°, SS+ group) had a higher body mass index as well as greater neck, waist, and buttock circumference and scored higher on the Epworth Sleepiness Scale. During the polysomnographic study, the SS+ group had a higher percentage of N1 sleep and lower percentage of N2 sleep. In addition, the SS+ group had a higher apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) as well as higher arousal index and oxygen desaturation index. The sensitivity and specificity of the SS+ group for OSA (defined as AHI ≥ 5) were 0.59 and 0.73, respectively, with a positive predictive value of 0.93. The likelihood ratio was 2.2. On the other hand, the sensitivity and specificity of the SS+ group for moderate to severe OSA (defined as AHI ≥ 15) were 0.82 and 0.48, respectively. Both SS+ and greater neck circumference have a high likelihood ratio for diagnosing OSA. In the present study, the symptoms of self-reported snoring in a sitting position and greater neck circumference can be useful clinical predictors of OSA in Chinese patients.	f	\N
23682731	The NAB is a comprehensive battery assessing five cognitive domains (Attention, Language, Memory, Spatial, Executive Function). Despite the advantage of co-normative domain data, its clinical utility is not well established because few studies have reported full-battery findings. The aim of this study was to determine if the NAB was sensitive to well documented hemispheric differences in language and spatial skills after unilateral stroke. We compared demographically matched control participants (n = 52) and individuals after left (LHD, n = 36) or right (RHD, n = 33) hemisphere damage due to stroke on the NAB, parts of the Western Aphasia Battery, and traditional visuospatial tasks. Both stroke groups showed impaired NAB Attention, Spatial, and Executive Functions relative to controls, while the LHD group was more impaired than control and RHD groups on Language and Memory modules. LHD patients with aphasia on traditional measures performed worse than control and non-aphasic LHD patients on all NAB domains. RHD patients with spatial impairment on traditional measures performed worse than controls, but not RHD patients without spatial impairment, on the NAB Spatial domain. Findings suggest the NAB is generally comparable to traditional language and visuospatial measures, and it sufficiently detects attention and executive deficits.	f	\N
23683312	Cognition research suggests that allocating attention resources to evolutionarily relevant stimuli is facilitated suggesting that sexual stimuli interfere with human information processing. In a group of gay (n = 13) and straight men (n = 13) recruited in Finland, Germany and Italy, we investigated if and how sexually relevant visual stimuli affect information processing of both a target one (T1) and a subsequent target two (T2) in a dual target rapid serial visual presentation procedure. We hypothesized that: (1) due to the attentional blink (AB) phenomenon, the accuracy of reporting of T2 would decrease when following accurately identified sexually preferred T1 compared to accurately identified non-sexually preferred T1; 2) due to the pop out effect, the accuracy of reporting of T1 and T2 would be relatively increased when T1 and T2 were sexually preferred by the participants compared to when they were not. Our findings did not support hypothesis 1 but supported hypothesis 2. We further found that the pop out effect had a good capacity to differentiate sexual preference between the groups of gay and straight men. We conclude that dual target rapid serial visual presentation can be used as an attention-based measurement to differentiate sexual preference in men. Limitations and the applicability in the field of measuring sexual preference were discussed.	f	\N
23685191	Observers often fail to detect substantial changes in a visual scene. This so-called change blindness is often taken as evidence that visual representations are sparse and volatile. This notion rests on the assumption that the failure to detect a change implies that representations of the changing objects are lost all together. However, recent evidence suggests that under change blindness, object memory representations may be formed and stored, but not retrieved. This study investigated the fate of object memory representations when changes go unnoticed. Participants were presented with scenes consisting of real world objects, one of which changed on each trial, while recording event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants were first asked to localize where the change had occurred. In an additional recognition task, participants then discriminated old objects, either from the pre-change or the post-change scene, from entirely new objects. Neural traces of object memories were studied by comparing ERPs for old and novel objects. Participants performed poorly in the detection task and often failed to recognize objects from the scene, especially pre-change objects. However, a robust old/novel effect was observed in the ERP, even when participants were change blind and did not recognize the old object. This implicit memory trace was found both for pre-change and post-change objects. These findings suggest that object memories are stored even under change blindness. Thus, visual representations may not be as sparse and volatile as previously thought. Rather, change blindness may point to a failure to retrieve and use these representations for change detection.	f	\N
23685391	The pupil constricts in response to light increments and dilates with light decrements. Here we show that a picture of the sun, introducing a small overall decrease in light level across the field of view, results in a pupillary constriction. Thus, the pictorial representation of a high-luminance object (the sun) can override the normal pupillary dilation elicited by a light decrement. In a series of experiments that control for a variety of factors known to modulate pupil size, we show that the effect (a) does not depend on the retinal position of the images and (b) is modulated by attention. It has long been known that cognitive factors can affect pupil diameter by producing pupillary dilations. Our results indicate that high-level visual analysis (beyond the simple subcortical system mediating the pupillary response to light) can also induce pupillary constriction, with an effect size of about 0.1 mm.	f	\N
23696214	Many children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) demonstrate deficits in language comprehension, but little is known about how they process spoken language as it unfolds. Real-time lexical comprehension is associated with language and cognition in children without ASD, suggesting that this may also be the case for children with ASD. This study adopted an individual differences approach to characterizing real-time comprehension of familiar words in a group of 34 three- to six-year-olds with ASD. The looking-while-listening paradigm was employed; it measures online accuracy and latency through language-mediated eye movements and has limited task demands. On average, children demonstrated comprehension of the familiar words, but considerable variability emerged. Children with better accuracy were faster to process the familiar words. In combination, processing speed and comprehension on a standardized language assessment explained 63% of the variance in online accuracy. Online accuracy was not correlated with autism severity or maternal education, and nonverbal cognition did not explain unique variance. Notably, online accuracy at age 5½ was related to vocabulary comprehension 3 years earlier. The words typically learned earliest in life were processed most quickly. Consistent with a dimensional view of language abilities, these findings point to similarities in patterns of language acquisition in typically developing children and those with ASD. Overall, our results emphasize the value of examining individual differences in real-time language comprehension in this population. We propose that the looking-while-listening paradigm is a sensitive and valuable methodological tool that can be applied across many areas of autism research.	f	\N
23698323	We explored the associations of job strain with sleep and alertness of shift working female nurses and nursing assistants. Participants (n=95) were recruited from the Finnish Public Sector Study, from hospital wards that belonged to the top or bottom quartiles on job strain. Participants' own job strain was at least as high in high-strain group or low in low-strain group as the ward's average. The study included three-week measurements with sleep diary and actigraphy. Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT) was performed during one pre-selected morning and night shift and a day off. Sleep efficiency before morning shifts was lower in the high-strain than low-strain group (p=0.03). Low-strain group took more often (72 vs. 45%; p<0.01) and longer naps (62 vs. 35 min; p=0.01) before the first night shift than high-strain group. Difficulties initiating sleep were more common in high-strain group, especially after evening shifts (p<0.01). High-strain group had more often at least one lapse in PVT during the night shift (p=0.02). Average sleep duration (06:49 h) and efficiency (89%) did not differ between these groups. In conclusion, high job strain is associated with difficulties initiating sleep and reduced psychomotor vigilance in night shifts. Shift working contributed to impaired sleep in both high and low job strain group. Individual and organization-based actions are needed to promote sufficient sleep in shift working nurses, especially with high job strain.	f	\N
23701388	This study extracted the error-related negativity (ERN) waveform component recorded from a visual-spatial attention and a visual short-term memory task to assess rigorously the long-term and cumulative effects of concussions on evaluative processes of cognitive control related to performance monitoring. This study demonstrates that, relative to control athletes, multiply concussed athletes show significant ERN amplitude reduction elicited by error generation. These cumulative effects of concussions on ERN amplitude were found in two distinct experimental paradigms designed to solicit concussion-sensitive cognitive abilities such as attention and short-term memory. This suggests that the mechanisms that contribute to the evaluation of cognitive performance may be significantly affected following multiple concussions even in low-conflict situations.	f	\N
23707592	Sleep and the functional connectome are research areas with considerable overlap. Neuroimaging studies of sleep based on EEG-PET and EEG-fMRI are revealing the brain networks that support sleep, as well as networks that may support the roles and processes attributed to sleep. For example, phenomena such as arousal and consciousness are substantially modulated during sleep, and one would expect this modulation to be reflected in altered network activity. In addition, recent work suggests that sleep also has a number of adaptive functions that support waking activity. Thus the study of sleep may elucidate the circuits and processes that support waking function and complement information obtained from fMRI during waking conditions. In this review, we will discuss examples of this for memory, arousal, and consciousness after providing a brief background on sleep and on studying it with fMRI.	f	\N
23707891	In two experiments, participants were required to identify a target stimulus by means of same/different judgments. Previously, they had received simultaneous or blocked pre-exposures to the target and a similar stimulus. Participants' ability to judge pre-exposed stimuli as different was better after simultaneous than after blocked pre-exposures. However, the benefit of the simultaneous schedule disappeared when, after pre-exposure, the distinctive elements were made common (and some common elements made distinctive) by changing their shape and position within the stimulus (Experiment 1). Similar results were obtained when only one of the aforementioned physical features was modified (Experiment 2). These manipulations did not affect performance when the stimuli had been pre-exposed in separate blocks of trials. These findings support the idea that the effect of simultaneous pre-exposure on stimulus differentiation is based on a selective attention process by which attention is selectively directed towards the distinctive features of the stimuli and away from the common features (Gibson, 1969).	f	\N
23718701	The ability to inhibit is a major developmental dimension. Previous studies examined developmental change in instructed inhibition. The current study, however, focused on intentional inhibition. We examined heart rate responses to intentional action and inhibition, with a focus on developmental differences. Three age groups (8-10, 11-12, and 18-26 years) performed a child-friendly marble paradigm in which they had to choose between intentionally acting on, or inhibiting, a prepotent response. As instructed, all age groups chose to intentionally inhibit on approximately 50 percent of the intentional trials. A pronounced heart rate deceleration was observed during both intentional action and intentional inhibition, but this deceleration was most pronounced for intentional inhibition. Heart rate responses did not differentiate between age groups, suggesting that intentional action and inhibition reach mature levels early in childhood.	f	\N
23720086	The CHRNA4 gene is known to be associated with individual differences in attention. However, its associations with other cognitive functions remain to be elucidated. In the present study, we investigated the effects of genetic variations in CHRNA4 on rapid scene categorization by 100 healthy human participants. In Experiment 1, we also conducted the Attention Network Test (ANT) in order to examine whether the genetic effects could be accounted for by attention. CHRNA4 was genotyped as carrying the TT, CT, or CC allele. The scene categorization task required participants to judge whether the category of a scene image (natural or man-made) was consistent with a cue word displayed at the response phase. The target-mask stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) ranged from 13 to 93 ms. In comparison with CC-allele carriers, CT- and TT-allele carriers responded more accurately at the long SOA (93 ms) only during natural-scene categorization. In contrast, we observed no consistent association between CHRNA4 and the ANT, and no intertask correlation between scene categorization and the ANT. To validate our natural-scene categorization results, Experiment 2, carried out with an independent sample of 100 participants and a different stimulus set, successfully replicated the association between CHRNA4 genotypes and natural-scene categorization accuracy at long SOAs (67 and 93 ms). Our findings demonstrate, for the first time, that genetic variations in CHRNA4 can moderately contribute to individual differences in natural-scene categorization performance.	f	\N
23723144	A variety of techniques exist for eliciting acute psychological stress in the laboratory; however, they vary in terms of their ease of use, reliability to elicit consistent responses and the extent to which they represent the stressors encountered in everyday life. There is, therefore, a need to develop simple laboratory techniques that reliably elicit psychobiological stress reactivity that are representative of the types of stressors encountered in everyday life. The multitasking framework is a performance-based, cognitively demanding stressor, representative of environments where individuals are required to attend and respond to several different stimuli simultaneously with varying levels of workload. Psychological (mood and perceived workload) and physiological (heart rate and blood pressure) stress reactivity was observed in response to a 15-min period of multitasking at different levels of workload intensity in a sample of 20 healthy participants. Multitasking stress elicited increases in heart rate and blood pressure, and increased workload intensity elicited dose-response increases in levels of perceived workload and mood. As individuals rarely attend to single tasks in real life, the multitasking framework provides an alternative technique for modelling acute stress and workload in the laboratory.	f	\N
23724570	Because no studies have examined learning in hypnosis in an academic setting, the current study tested whether learning in hypnosis impacts test performance. Participants (N = 43) were randomly assigned into a hypnosis or a control group. Participants listened to an academic lecture, answered questions about their hypnotic depth, and completed a quiz based on the lecture. The data was analyzed using multilevel modeling predicting test performance from group placement. Learning in the hypnosis predicted significantly worse performance compared to the control group. This relationship was significantly mediated by attention, which had a positive relationship to test performance. However, the altered state of awareness produced by the hypnosis condition was associated with a more significant decrease in test performance.	f	\N
23727542	Attentional biases to threat are considered central to anxiety disorders, however physiological evidence of their nature and time course is lacking. Event-related potentials (ERPs) characterized sensory and cognitive changes while 20 outpatients with panic disorder (PD), 20 with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and 20 healthy controls (HCs) responded to the color (emotional Stroop task) or meaning of threatening and neutral stimuli. ERPs indicated larger P1 amplitude and longer N1 latency in OCD, and shorter P1 latency in PD, to threatening (versus neutral) stimuli, across instructions to attend to, or ignore, threat content. Emotional Stroop interference correlated with phobic anxiety and was significant in PD. Participants with emotional Stroop interference had augmented P1 and P3 amplitudes to threat (versus neutral) stimuli when color-naming. The results suggest early attentional biases to threat in both disorders, with disorder-specific characteristics. ERPs supported preferential early attentional capture and cognitive elaboration hypotheses of emotional Stroop interference.	f	\N
23727627	Sleepiness at the wheel is a risk factor for traffic accidents. Past studies have demonstrated the validity of the Maintenance of Wakefulness Test (MWT) scores as a predictor of driving impairment in untreated patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS), but there is limited information on the validity of the maintenance of wakefulness test by MWT in predicting driving impairment in patients with hypersomnias of central origin (narcolepsy or idiopathic hypersomnia). The aim of this study was to compare the MWT scores with driving performance in sleep disorder patients and controls. 19 patients suffering from hypersomnias of central origin (9 narcoleptics and 10 idiopathic hypersomnia), 17 OSAS patients and 14 healthy controls performed a MWT (4×40-minute trials) and a 40-minute driving session on a real car driving simulator. Participants were divided into 4 groups defined by their MWT sleep latency scores. The groups were pathological (sleep latency 0-19 min), intermediate (20-33 min), alert (34-40 min) and control (>34 min). The main driving performance outcome was the number of inappropriate line crossings (ILCs) during the 40 minute drive test. Patients with pathological MWT sleep latency scores (0-19 min) displayed statistically significantly more ILC than patients from the intermediate, alert and control groups (F (3, 46)=7.47, p<0.001). Pathological sleep latencies on the MWT predicted driving impairment in patients suffering from hypersomnias of central origin as well as in OSAS patients. MWT is an objective measure of daytime sleepiness that appears to be useful in estimating the driving performance in sleepy patients.	f	\N
23731432	Following an emotional experience, individuals are confronted with the persistence of ruminative thoughts that disturb the undertaking of other activities. In the present study, we experimentally tested the idea that experiencing a negative emotion triggers a ruminative process that drains working memory (WM) resources normally devoted to other tasks. Undergraduate participants of high versus low WM capacity were administered the operation-word memory span test (OSPAN) as a measure of availability of WM resources preceding and following the presentation of negative emotional versus neutral material. Rumination was assessed immediately after the second OSPAN session and at a 24-hr delay. Results showed that both the individual's WM capacity and the emotional valence of the material influenced WM performance and the persistence of ruminative thoughts. Following the experimental induction, rumination mediated the relationship between the negative emotional state and the concomitant WM performance. Based on these results, we argue that ruminative processes deplete WM resources, making them less available for concurrent tasks; in addition, rumination tends to persist over time. These findings have implications for the theoretical modeling of the long-term effects of emotions in both daily life and clinical contexts.	f	\N
23731911	The effect of dopamine agonists (DAs) on cognition in Parkinson's disease (PD) is not yet completely established. Previous papers reported a worsening effect on some cognitive functions with some DAs, but not with others, suggesting that DAs may differently affect cognition in PD patients according to their pharmacological characteristics. We set out to test the effect of rotigotine and cabergoline on cognitive functions in a group of forty non-demented early-mild PD patients (H &Y <2). Subjects were randomly divided into two groups and evaluated in a randomized cross-over study using neuropsychological tests; at the same time, motor function was monitored under three different treatment conditions: DA (rotigotine or cabergoline), L-dopa, and off therapy. Rotigotine and cabergoline were chosen because while they share a mixed D1 and D2 receptor profile, the former is non-ergolinic and the latter ergolinic. No significant differences were found in cognitive function between the basal condition and the DA treatments. On the basis of the present data, which we compare with previous findings regarding pramipexole IR and pergolide, we hypothesize that combined stimulation of both dopamine receptor families, as occurs with rotigotine, cabergoline, L-dopa and pergolide, may preserve cognitive functions more than pure D2 family stimulation.	f	\N
23735486	It is well-established that environmental and biological risk factors contribute to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). There is also growing consensus that SIDS requires the intersection of multiple risk factors that result in the failure of an infant to overcome cardio-respiratory challenges. Thus, the critical next steps in understanding SIDS are to unravel the physiological determinants that actually cause the sudden death, to synthesize how these determinants are affected by the known risk factors, and to develop novel ideas for SIDS prevention. In this review, we will examine current and emerging perspectives related to cardio-respiratory dysfunctions in SIDS. Specifically, we will review: (1) the role of the preBötzinger complex (preBötC) as a multi-functional network that is critically involved in the failure to adequately respond to hypoxic and hypercapnic challenges; (2) the potential involvement of the preBötC in the gender and age distributions that are characteristic for SIDS; (3) the link between SIDS and prematurity; and (4) the potential relationship between SIDS, auditory function, and central chemosensitivity. Each section underscores the importance of marrying the epidemiological and pathological data to experimental data in order to understand the physiological determinants of this syndrome. We hope that a better understanding will lead to novel ways to reduce the risk to succumb to SIDS.	f	\N
23744347	The reinforcing properties of nicotine may be mediated through release of various neurotransmitters both centrally and systemically. People who smoke report positive effects such as pleasure, arousal, and relaxation as well as relief of negative affect, tension, and anxiety. Opioid (narcotic) antagonists are of particular interest to investigators as potential agents to attenuate the rewarding effects of cigarette smoking. To evaluate the efficacy of opioid antagonists in promoting long-term smoking cessation. The drugs include naloxone and the longer-acting opioid antagonist naltrexone. We searched the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group Specialised Register for trials of naloxone, naltrexone and other opioid antagonists and conducted an additional search of MEDLINE using 'Narcotic antagonists' and smoking terms in April 2013. We also contacted investigators, when possible, for information on unpublished studies. We considered randomised controlled trials comparing opioid antagonists to placebo or an alternative therapeutic control for smoking cessation. We included in the meta-analysis only those trials which reported data on abstinence for a minimum of six months. We also reviewed, for descriptive purposes, results from short-term laboratory-based studies of opioid antagonists designed to evaluate psycho-biological mediating variables associated with nicotine dependence. We extracted data in duplicate on the study population, the nature of the drug therapy, the outcome measures, method of randomisation, and completeness of follow-up. The main outcome measure was abstinence from smoking after at least six months follow-up in patients smoking at baseline. Abstinence at end of treatment was a secondary outcome. We extracted cotinine- or carbon monoxide-verified abstinence where available. Where appropriate, we performed meta-analysis, pooling risk ratios using a Mantel-Haenszel fixed-effect model. Eight trials of naltrexone met inclusion criteria for meta-analysis of long-term cessation. One trial used a factorial design so five trials compared naltrexone versus placebo and four trials compared naltrexone plus nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) versus placebo plus NRT. Results from 250 participants in one long-term trial remain unpublished. No significant difference was detected between naltrexone and placebo (risk ratio (RR) 1.00; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.66 to 1.51, 445 participants), or between naltrexone and placebo as an adjunct to NRT (RR 0.95; 95% CI 0.70 to 1.30, 768 participants). The estimate was similar when all eight trials were pooled (RR 0.97; 95% CI 0.76 to 1.24, 1213 participants). In a secondary analysis of abstinence at end of treatment, there was also no evidence of any early treatment effect, (RR 1.03; 95% CI 0.88 to 1.22, 1213 participants). No trials of naloxone or buprenorphine reported abstinence outcomes. Based on data from eight trials and over 1200 individuals, there was no evidence of an effect of naltrexone alone or as an adjunct to NRT on long-term smoking abstinence, with a point estimate strongly suggesting no effect and confidence intervals that make a clinically important effect of treatment unlikely. Although further trials might narrow the confidence intervals they are unlikely to be a good use of resources.	f	\N
23746822	To study the effects of antiepileptic treatment on sleep parameters and video-polysomnography (VPSG) seizures in nocturnal frontal lobe epilepsy (NFLE). Twenty patients with a clinical and VPSG diagnosis of NFLE (baseline polysomnography [PSG]) underwent a clinical follow-up and performed a second VPSG after effective antiepileptic treatment lasting for at least 6 months. Conventional sleep measures, cyclic alternating pattern (CAP) parameters, and objective VPSG seizures were assessed in NFLE patients before and after treatment and were compared with the results of 20 age- and gender-matched control subjects. Antiepileptic treatment determined a partial reduction of objective VPSG seizures of approximately 25% compared to baseline condition. Alterations of most conventional sleep measures recovered normal values, but nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep instability remained pathologically enhanced (CAP rate, +26% compared to controls) and was associated with persistence of daytime sleepiness. Residual epileptic events and high levels of unstable NREM sleep can define a sort of objective resistance of both seizures and disturbed arousal system to the therapeutic purpose of the antiepileptic drugs in NFLE. This finding could determine the need for new therapeutic options in this particular form of epilepsy.	f	\N
23748945	The tobacco consumption continues being a worrying problem due to the negative consequences in the health. At presents, strategies of prevention based on the persuasion across clue pictures are used, which need to attract the attention of the smoker in order that they are effective. Nevertheless, the number of experimental studies in Spain on attentional biases in smokers is very limited. For it, in this study the aim was to verify the presence of visual attentional biases using the dot probe task in university smokers, stage where the smoking habit is consolidated. The sample was constituted by 337 students of the University of Huelva, with ages between 17 and 30 years. The participation was voluntary and the participants signed an informed assent. 135 subjects presented consumption history, which were distributed, according to classification of the WHO, in daily smokers, occasional smokers and former smokers. A experimental Ex post facto prospective design was used. The results showed that the smokers group was significantly later time to respond to the clue located in the same place that the tobacco picture than the group of not smokers. This shows that the smokers presented more difficulty to disconnect the attention towards smoking cues than not smokers.	f	\N
23768150	In grapheme-colour synaesthesia, letters, numbers, and words elicit involuntary colour experiences. Recently, there has been much emphasis on individual differences and possible subcategories of synaesthetes with different underlying mechanisms. In particular, there are claims that for some, synaesthesia occurs prior to attention and awareness of the inducing stimulus. We first characterized our sample using two versions of the "Synaesthetic Congruency Task" to distinguish "projector" and "associator" synaesthetes who may differ in the extent to which their synaesthesia depends on attention and awareness. We then used a novel modification of the "Embedded Figures Task" that included a set-size manipulation to look for evidence of preattentive "pop-out" from synaesthetic colours, at both a group and an individual level. We replicate an advantage for synaesthetes over nonsynaesthetic controls on the Embedded Figures Task in accuracy, but find no support for pop-out of synaesthetic colours. We conclude that grapheme-colour synaesthetes are fundamentally similar in their visual processing to the general population, with the source of their unusual conscious colour experiences occurring late in the cognitive hierarchy.	f	\N
23786210	Cognitive deficits in several domains have been demonstrated in early-onset schizophrenia patients but their profile and relation to depressive symptoms and intelligence need further characterization. The purpose was to characterize the profile of cognitive deficits in chronic, early-onset schizophrenia patients, assess the potential associations with depressive symptom severity, and examine whether cognitive deficits within several domains reflect intelligence impairments. This study compared attention, visual-construction, aspects of visual and verbal memory, and executive functions in chronic, early-onset schizophrenia patients (mean age = 20.7 years) (N = 18) and healthy controls (N = 38). Schizophrenia diagnoses were established at the time of the patients' first clinical presentation during childhood or adolescence and were confirmed five years later. In the chronic phase of early-onset schizophrenia, significant deficits were observed in all specific cognitive functions. The profile of cognitive deficits was jagged, and visual-construction, attention, and one aspect of verbal memory (verbal stories recall) were differentially impaired. Deficits of visual recall, visual recognition, and executive functions were accounted for by deficits in intelligence, while this was not the case for deficits of verbal recall of stories or attention. No significant associations were observed between the severity of cognitive deficits and that of depressive symptoms. Chronic, early-onset schizophrenia is characterized by a broad and jagged profile of cognitive deficits. Deficits of attention and verbal recall of stories appear not to be accounted for by deficits in intelligence, and the severity of cognitive deficits seems independent from that of depressive symptoms.	f	\N
23797824	Vulnerability to transient insomnia is regarded as a predisposing factor for chronic insomnia. However, most individuals with transient insomnia do not develop chronic insomnia. The current study investigated the differential contributing factors for these two conditions to further the understanding of this phenomenon. Chronic insomnia patients and normal sleepers with high and low vulnerability to transient insomnia completed measures of pre-sleep arousal, dysfunctional sleep beliefs, and sleep-related safety behaviors. Both cognitive and somatic pre-sleep arousals were identified as significant predictors for transient insomnia. Dysfunctional beliefs regarding worry about insomnia and cognitive arousal were predictors for chronic insomnia. Sleep-related safety behavior, although correlated with insomnia severity, was not a significant predictor for both conditions. Dysfunctional beliefs associated with worry and losing control over sleep are the most critical factors in differentiating chronic insomnia from transient insomnia. These factors should be addressed to help prevent individuals with high sleep vulnerability from developing chronic sleep disturbance.	f	\N
23809860	Although cocaine is known to be a highly addictive drug, there appears to be a select subset of individuals who are able to use the substance recreationally without developing dependence. These individuals do not report experiencing feelings of craving for cocaine, an important distinction from dependent users. However, no prior studies have compared attentional bias with cocaine cues between these groups to confirm this difference. Additionally, previous investigations into cognitive abilities in these individuals have been conflicting, and no research has been conducted on the neurobiological processes underlying cognitive functioning in this group. This study administered the emotional cocaine-word Stroop to 27 recreational cocaine users, 50 stimulant-dependent individuals, and 52 healthy control participants during functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning. Behavioral and functional imaging results were compared between groups to assess attentional bias and cognitive effort to resist salient cocaine stimuli. Recreational users did not exhibit attentional bias to the cocaine words and did not differ from control subjects on task performance. Conversely, stimulant-dependent individuals were significantly more impaired on the task. Recreational participants also displayed a unique pattern of activation during performance, with significant underactivation in the orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortices compared with both dependent users and control subjects. The absence of bias to cocaine-related stimuli in recreational users indicates they do not share attentional preference for these words with dependent users. Their distinct pattern of activation suggests a decreased need for cognitive control due to diminished desire for the drug, potentially serving as a resilience factor against dependence.	f	\N
23815454	A selective deficit in the recollection of episodic details is frequently reported in Parkinson's disease (PD). Previous explanations implicate dopamine dysregulation in prefrontal structures on which strategic memory processes rely. However, neuroimaging advancements suggest dopaminergic dysregulation of hippocampally dependent memory processes. Accordingly, dopamine agonists, which target D3 receptors in the hippocampus, may impair hippocampal functioning, causing a more pronounced recollection decline. Recognition memory (RM), familiarity, and recollection were examined in 21 patients with mild-to-moderate PD (Hoehn and Yahr mean: 2.67). Patients were subdivided into two subgroups according to dopamine agonist (pramipexole [PPX] or ropinirole [RPR]), and completed matched versions of an RM test in a medicated and unmedicated condition (termed ON and OFF, respectively). Ten demographically matched healthy volunteers (HVs) also completed both RM tasks in two separate sessions. The PD group (PPX and RPR subgroups combined) showed impairments in RM and recollection, but spared familiarity. When subdivided by dopamine agonist, the PPX subgroup's ON-medication recollection performance was significantly lower than that of both the HVs and RPR subgroup. There was no evidence of decline in OFF-medication recollection or familiarity in either the PPX or RPR subgroups. Recollection in both PD subgroups correlated positively with a composite measure of recall, but not prefrontally dependent measures of cognitive control. These findings suggest that mild-to-moderate PD patients may show relatively preserved recollection and familiarity, but that recollection is selectively disrupted by PPX, but not RPR and that this effect may depend on disrupted hippocampal function rather than impaired pre-frontally dependent executive functions.	f	\N
23832553	In this study, we have investigated the influence of available attentional resources on the dual-task costs of implementing a new action plan and the influence of movement planning on the transfer of information into visuospatial working memory. To approach these two questions, we have used a motor-memory dual-task design in which participants grasped a sphere and planned a placing movement toward a left or right target according to a directional arrow. Subsequently, they encoded a centrally presented memory stimulus (4 × 4 symbol matrix). While maintaining the information in working memory, a visual stay/change cue (presented on the left, center or right) either confirmed or reversed the planned movement direction. That is, participants had to execute either the prepared or the re-planned movement and finally reported the symbols at leisure. The results show that both, shifts of spatial attention required to process the incongruent stay/change cues and movement re-planning, constitute processing bottlenecks as they both reduced visuospatial working memory performance. Importantly, the spatial attention shifts and movement re-planning appeared to be independent of each other. Further, we found that the initial preparation of the placing movement influenced the report pattern of the central working memory stimulus. Preparing a leftward movement resulted in better memory performance for the left stimulus side, while the preparation of a rightward movement resulted in better memory performance for the right stimulus side. Hence, movement planning influenced the transfer of information into the capacity-limited working memory store. Therefore, our results suggest complex interactions in that the processes involved in movement planning, spatial attention and visuospatial working memory are functionally correlated but not linked in a mandatory fashion.	f	\N
23834356	Motivation is well known to enhance working memory (WM) capacity, but the mechanism underlying this effect remains unclear. The WM process can be divided into encoding, maintenance, and retrieval, and in a change detection visual WM paradigm, the encoding and retrieval processes can be subdivided into perceptual and central processing. To clarify which of these segments are most influenced by motivation, we measured ERPs in a change detection task with differential monetary rewards. The results showed that the enhancement of WM capacity under high motivation was accompanied by modulations of late central components but not those reflecting attentional control on perceptual inputs across all stages of WM. We conclude that the "state-dependent" shift of motivation impacted the central, rather than the perceptual functions in order to achieve better behavioral performances.	f	\N
23840558	The behavioral approach system (BAS) from Gray's reinforcement sensitivity theory is a neurobehavioral system involved in the processing of rewarding stimuli that has been related to dopaminergic brain areas. Gray's theory hypothesizes that the functioning of reward brain areas is modulated by BAS-related traits. To test this hypothesis, we performed an fMRI study where participants viewed erotic and neutral pictures, and cues that predicted their appearance. Forty-five heterosexual men completed the Sensitivity to Reward scale (from the Sensitivity to Punishment and Sensitivity to Reward Questionnaire) to measure BAS-related traits. Results showed that Sensitivity to Reward scores correlated positively with brain activity during reactivity to erotic pictures in the left orbitofrontal cortex, left insula, and right ventral striatum. These results demonstrated a relationship between the BAS and reward sensitivity during the processing of erotic stimuli, filling the gap of previous reports that identified the dopaminergic system as a neural substrate for the BAS during the processing of other rewarding stimuli such as money and food.	f	\N
23845453	Attention to general and trauma-relevant threat was examined in individuals with clinical and subthreshold symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Participants' eye gaze was tracked and recorded while they viewed sets of four images over a 6-s presentation (one negative, positive, and neutral image, and either a general threat image or a trauma-relevant threat image). Two trauma-exposed groups (a clinical and a subthreshold PTSD symptom group) were compared to a non-trauma-exposed group. Both the clinical and subthreshold PTSD symptom groups attended to trauma-relevant threat images more than the no-trauma-exposure group, whereas there were no group differences for general threat images. A time course analysis of attention to trauma-relevant threat images revealed different attentional profiles for the trauma-exposed groups. Participants with clinical PTSD symptoms exhibited immediate heightened attention to the images relative to participants with no-trauma-exposure, whereas participants with subthreshold PTSD symptoms did not. In addition, participants with subthreshold PTSD symptoms attended to trauma-relevant threat images throughout the 6-s presentation, whereas participants with clinical symptoms of PTSD exhibited evidence of avoidance. The theoretical and clinical implications of these distinct attentional profiles are discussed.	f	\N
23849666	Increasing empirical studies suggest that the tripartite posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) model described in the DSM-IV does not accurately account for the underlying PTSD factor structure, and several alternative models have been proposed. The present study investigated a newly refined, five-factor model of PTSD symptoms in a sample of Chinese adolescent survivors of an earthquake. A total of 1198 middle school students (653 females, 526 males) with a mean age of 14.4 years (SD = 1.1, range: 11-18) participated in this study one month after an earthquake. The novel five-factor model comprised of intrusion, avoidance, numbing, dysphoric arousal, and anxious arousal demonstrated significantly better fit than two alternative four-factor models. Further analyses revealed differentiable relations between the PTSD factors and external measures of anxiety and depression. These findings provide empirical support for the robustness of five-factor model, and carry implications for further reorganization of PTSD criteria.	f	\N
23855999	The role of interoception and its neural basis with relevance to drug addiction is reviewed. Interoception consists of the receiving, processing, and integrating body-relevant signals with external stimuli to affect ongoing motivated behavior. The insular cortex is the central nervous system hub to process and integrate these signals. Interoception is an important component of several addiction relevant constructs including arousal, attention, stress, reward, and conditioning. Imaging studies with drug-addicted individuals show that the insular cortex is hypo-active during cognitive control processes but hyperactive during cue reactivity and drug-specific, reward-related processes. It is proposed that interoception contributes to drug addiction by incorporating an "embodied" experience of drug uses together with the individual's predicted versus actual internal state to modulate approach or avoidance behavior, i.e. whether to take or not to take drugs. This opens the possibility of two types of interventions. First, one may be able to modulate the embodied experience by enhancing insula reactivity where necessary, e.g. when engaging in drug seeking behavior, or attenuating insula when exposed to drug-relevant cues. Second, one may be able to reduce the urge to act by increasing the frontal control network, i.e. inhibiting the urge to use by employing cognitive training. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled 'NIDA 40th Anniversary Issue'.	f	\N
23856173	Sleep inertia refers to the inability to attain full alertness following awakening from sleep and is a major component of hypersomnia. As event-related potentials (ERPs) are correlated to the degree of consciousness, they allow exploring information processing in transitional states of vigilance. Their modifications during forced awakening (FA) context have been shown to reflect sleep inertia. To assess the diagnostic value of a FA test using an oddball stimulation protocol during a nap in a representative sample of patients with excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS). One hundred and seventy three patients [30 narcolepsy, 62 idiopathic hypersomnia, 33 sleep apnoea syndrome, and 48 other (mainly psychiatric) hypersomnia] performed an auditory target detection stimulation task during pre-, post-nap wakefulness, and during two successive intra-nap FA while the EEG was simultaneously recorded. Both the accuracy of target detection and the ERPs were evaluated. ERPs during forced awakening test were considered to reflect sleep inertia if they presented with a P300 delay and/or sleep negativities (N350/N550). Pre-nap behavior and ERPs were normal in all patients. Behavioral results were significantly worse during FA than during wakefulness for all groups of patients. P300 latencies were significantly delayed on FA conditions in each group of patients except the psychiatric group. Sensitivity and specificity for detection of sleep inertia were 64% and 94%, respectively, with predictive values of 96% (positive) and 50% (negative). Our results suggest that the FA test could be helpful as a diagnostic procedure for discriminating neurological from psychiatric hypersomnia.	f	\N
23857779	The goals of the present study were to: (i) examine similarities and differences in behavioral/emotional problems manifested by children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and those with anxiety disorder (ANX); (ii) test the ability of each of the eight child behavioral checklist (CBCL) and teacher report form (TRF) syndrome scales to differentiate the ASD group from the ANX group; and (iii) test the ability of an ASD scale derived by Ooi et al. to differentiate the ASD group from the ANX group. Archival CBCL and TRF data from 180 children between 4 and 18 years of age (119 males, 61 females) diagnosed with ASD (n = 86) or ANX (n = 94) at an outpatient child psychiatric clinic in Singapore were analyzed. The ASD group scored significantly higher on Social Problems and Attention Problems but significantly lower on Anxious/Depressed and Somatic Complaints than the ANX group. The groups did not show significant differences on Withdrawn/Depressed and Thought Problems. Both the CBCL and TRF ASD scales were significant predictors of the ASD group, with moderate to high sensitivity and specificity. Our findings for an Asian sample support the diagnostic overlap between ASD and ANX reported for Western samples and underscore the importance of treating ASD as both a unitary disease and as a web of overlapping configurations of underlying problem dimensions.	f	\N
23857836	SSRIs are known for their sexual side-effects with a variable rate of sexual dysfunction (SD). 5HT2A (rs6311) single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) was found to have significant association with SD. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of female SDD, its clinical correlates and association with 5HT2A (rs6311) SNP in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) treated with SSRIs. This was a cross-sectional study. We evaluated 95 female outpatients with MDD treated with SSRIs who were in remission. Outcome measures were stratified by the presence or absence of SDD. A buccal swab was obtained from each patient and sent for genotyping in the Pharmacogenomics and Medical Biotechnology Laboratory of Universiti Malaya. The overall prevalence of female SD was 32.6%. The prevalence of female SDD was 62.1%. Those with arousal problem, lubrication problem, sexual satisfaction problem, orgasm problem and problematic marriage were more likely to have sexual desire disorder. The majority of participants who had sexual desire disorder had genotype TT (42.4%) but there was no significant association observed. After controlling for age, number of children, education level, SSRI type, lubrication problem, orgasm problem, satisfaction problem and marital problem, only arousal problem significantly enhanced the presence of sexual desire disorder by 8.5 times (odds ratio = 8.46, 95% confidence interval = 1.24-57.58; P = 0.018). This study showed that there was no significant association between SDD and the 5HT2A (rs6311) SNP. Arousal problem significantly enhanced the presence of sexual desire disorder.	f	\N
23860302	The present study investigates how individuals distribute their attentional resources between a prospective memory task and an ongoing task. Therefore, metacognitive expectations about the attentional demands of the prospective-memory task were manipulated while the factual demands were held constant. In Experiments 1a and 1b, we found attentional costs from a prospective-memory task with low factual demands to be significantly reduced when information about the low to-be-expected demands were provided, while prospective-memory performance remained largely unaffected. In Experiment 2, attentional monitoring in a more demanding prospective-memory task also varied with information about the to-be-expected demands (high vs. low) and again there were no equivalent changes in prospective-memory performance. These findings suggest that attention-allocation strategies of prospective memory rely on metacognitive expectations about prospective-memory task demands. Furthermore, the results suggest that attentional monitoring is only functional for prospective memory to the extent to which anticipated task demands reflect objective task demands.	f	\N
23862902	Effects of word-level phonetic variation on the recognition of words with different pronunciation variants (e.g., center produced with/(out) [t]) are investigated via the semantic- and pseudoword-priming paradigms. A bias favoring clearly articulated words with canonical variants ([nt]) is found. By reducing the bias, words with different variants show robust and equivalent lexical activation. The equivalence of different word forms highlights a snag for frequency-based theories of lexical access: How are words and word productions with vastly different frequencies recognized equally well by listeners? A process-based account is proposed, suggesting that careful speech induces bottom-up processing and casual speech induces top-down processing.	f	\N
23862914	This study reports a role of temporal regularity on the perception of auditory streams. Listeners were presented with two-tone sequences in an A-B-A-B rhythm that was either regular or had a controlled amount of temporal jitter added independently to each of the B tones. Subjects were asked to report whether they perceived one or two streams. The percentage of trials in which two streams were reported substantially and significantly increased with increasing amounts of temporal jitter. This suggests that temporal predictability may serve as a binding cue during auditory scene analysis.	f	\N
23863955	Sleep deprivation immediately following an aversive event reduces fear by preventing memory consolidation during homeostatic sleep. This suggests that acute insomnia might act prophylactically against the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) even though it is also a possible risk factor for PTSD. We examined total sleep deprivation and memory suppression to evaluate the effects of these interventions on subsequent aversive memory formation and fear conditioning. Active suppression of aversive memory impaired retention of event memory. However, although the remembered fear was more reduced in sleep-deprived than sleep-control subjects, suppressed fear increased, and seemed to abandon the sleep-dependent plasticity of fear. Active memory suppression, which provides a psychological model for Freud's ego defense mechanism, enhances fear and casts doubt on the potential of acute insomnia as a prophylactic measure against PTSD. Our findings bring into question the role of sleep in aversive-memory consolidation in clinical PTSD pathophysiology.	f	\N
23864438	Although the relationship between alexithymia and psychopathology has been studied extensively in adults, research is lacking on alexithymia in childhood psychopathology. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between alexithymia and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The Italian version of the Alexithymia Questionnaire for Children was administered to a sample of 50 children with a DSM-IV diagnosis of ADHD, as assessed by means of the K-SADS PL, and to 100 healthy, age- and sex-matched children without ADHD. The total alexithymia score as well as the difficulty in identifying feelings (DIF) and externally oriented thinking factors were significantly associated with ADHD. The total alexithymia score, the DIF, and the difficulty in describing feelings factors were also significantly associated with symptoms of hyperactivity/impulsivity. No significant relationship between alexithymia and inattentiveness symptoms emerged. Results provide preliminary data on the relationship between alexithymia and ADHD. Findings point to an association between difficulty in identifying emotions and hyperactivity/impulsivity. Future studies conducted on larger patient samples, as well as longitudinal designs, are warranted to confirm our findings.	f	\N
23865336	Vigilance is defined as the ability to maintain attention or alertness over prolonged periods of time. Since Mid-20th century, following the increasing man-machine communication, high level of vigilance has been demanded in many areas including driving safety, medical care and therapy, aerospace and military affairs, etc. Therefore, finding quick methods to improve the level of vigilance has become a key issue in medical study. Based on physical regulation, chemical regulation and physiological regulation, the research progress has been summarized in this paper. We, furthermore, also try to predict the future trend in this academic area and develop some tentative ideas about seeking more effective and convenient ways to improve the level of brain vigilance.	f	\N
23875572	One of the most widespread views in vision research is that top-down control over visual selection is achieved by tuning attention to a particular feature value (e.g., red/yellow). Contrary to this view, previous spatial cueing studies showed that attention can be tuned to relative features of a search target (e.g., redder): An irrelevant distractor (cue) captured attention when it had the same relative color as the target (e.g., redder), and failed to capture when it had a different relative color, regardless of whether the distractor was similar or dissimilar to the target. The present study tested whether the same effects would be observed for eye movements when observers have to search for a color or shape target and when selection errors were very noticeable (resulting in an erroneous eye movement to the distractor). The results corroborated the previous findings, showing that capture by an irrelevant distractor does not depend on the distractor's similarity to the target but on whether it matches or mismatches the relative attributes of the search target. Extending on previous work, we also found that participants can be pretrained to select a color target in virtue of its exact feature value. Contrary to the prevalent feature-based view, the results suggest that visual selection is preferentially biased toward the relative attributes of a search target. Simultaneously, however, visual selection can be biased to specific color values when the task requires it, which rules out a purely relational account of attention and eye movements.	f	\N
23892066	Existing batteries for FMRI do not precisely meet the criteria for comprehensive mapping of cognitive functions within minimum data acquisition times using standard scanners and head coils. The goal was to develop a battery of neuropsychological paradigms for FMRI that can also be used in other brain imaging techniques and behavioural research. Participants were 61 healthy, young adult volunteers (48 females and 13 males, mean age: 22.25 ± 3.39 years) from the university community. The battery included 8 paradigms for basic (visual, auditory, sensory-motor, emotional arousal) and complex (language, working memory, inhibition/interference control, learning) cognitive functions. Imaging was performed using standard functional imaging capabilities (1.5-T MR scanner, standard head coil). Structural and functional data series were analysed using Brain Voyager QX2.9 and Statistical Parametric Mapping-8. For basic processes, activation centres for individuals were within a distance of 3-11 mm of the group centres of the target regions and for complex cognitive processes, between 7 mm and 15 mm. Based on fixed-effect and random-effects analyses, the distance between the activation centres was 0-4 mm. There was spatial variability between individual cases; however, as shown by the distances between the centres found with fixed-effect and random-effects analyses, the coordinates for individual cases can be used to represent those of the group. The findings show that the neuropsychological brain mapping battery described here can be used in basic science studies that investigate the relationship of the brain to the mind and also as functional localiser in clinical studies for diagnosis, follow-up and pre-surgical mapping.	f	\N
23896527	Utilizing the high temporal resolution of event-related potentials (ERPs), we examined how visual spatial or temporal cues modulated the auditory stimulus processing. The visual spatial cue (VSC) induces orienting of attention to spatial locations; the visual temporal cue (VTC) induces orienting of attention to temporal intervals. Participants were instructed to respond to auditory targets. Behavioral responses to auditory stimuli following VSC were faster and more accurate than those following VTC. VSC and VTC had the same effect on the auditory N1 (150-170 ms after stimulus onset). The mean amplitude of the auditory P1 (90-110 ms) in VSC condition was larger than that in VTC condition, and the mean amplitude of late positivity (300-420 ms) in VTC condition was larger than that in VSC condition. These findings suggest that modulation of auditory stimulus processing by visually induced spatial or temporal orienting of attention were different, but partially overlapping.	f	\N
23902752	Prolonged adaptation to a stimulus, such as a drifting grating, lowers sensitivity for detecting similar stimuli, and changes their appearance, for example, making gratings of the same orientation appear of lower contrast and move more slowly. It has been suggested that adaptation is increased by sustained attention to the adapting stimulus and is decreased by distracting attention with a competing task. This paper describes a novel 2AFC (spatial) measure of adaptation in which adaptation and bias are carefully distinguished by the random interleaving of different test conditions. The experiment revealed significant adaptation of perceived velocity, but no effect of attentional distraction.	f	\N
23912366	To assess the prevalence of sexual dysfunction in obese and overweight patients treated at the Professor Alberto Antunes University Hospital (HUPAA - UFAL). This is a descriptive study. The sample consisted of overweight or obese females. Anthropometric data were collected for assessment of body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC). In all subjects we measured the levels of blood glucose, total cholesterol and triglycerides. We applied a Portuguese-validated version of the Female Sexual Function Index (FSDI), which assesses sexual response as for desire, arousal, vaginal lubrication, orgasm, sexual satisfaction and pain. The total score is the sum of scores for each domain multiplied by the corresponding factor and can vary from '2 'to '36', a total score less than or equal to '26 ' being considered risky for sexual dysfunction. We evaluated 23 women with a mean age of 44, where 73.9% were obese and 82.6% had a highly increased risk for metabolic complications (WC e" 88 cm). The increased risk for sexual dysfunction was present in 78.3% of the interviewees, causing biopsychosocial impairment. Hypertension, diabetes and dyslipidemia were present in 33.3%, 22.2% and 61.1%, respectively, of patients at risk for sexual dysfunction. The analysis of the results demonstrates the need for better research and attention of physicians to patients with obesity or overweight.	f	\N
23915296	Most free-recall experiments employ a paradigm in which participants are given a preset amount of time to retrieve items from a list. While much has been learned using this paradigm, it ignores an important component of many real-world retrieval tasks: the decision to terminate memory search. The present study examines the temporal characteristics underlying memory search by comparing within subjects a standard retrieval paradigm with a finite, preset amount of time (closed interval) to a design that allows participants to terminate memory search on their own (open interval). Calling on the results of several presented simulations, we anticipated that the threshold for number of retrieval failures varied as a function of the nature of the recall paradigm, such that open intervals should result in lower thresholds than closed intervals. Moreover, this effect was expected to manifest in interretrieval times (IRTs). Although retrieval-interval type did not significantly impact the number of items recalled or error rates, IRTs were sensitive to the manipulation. Specifically, the final IRTs in the closed-interval paradigm were longer than those of the open-interval paradigm. This pattern suggests that providing participants with a preset retrieval interval not only masks an important component of the retrieval process (the memory search termination decision), but also alters temporal retrieval dynamics. Task demands may compel people to strategically control aspects of their retrieval by implementing different stopping rules.	f	\N
23916691	The control of dual-tasking effects is a daily challenge in stroke neurorehabilitation. It maybe one of the reasons why there is poor functional prognosis after a stroke in the right hemisphere, which plays a dominant role in posture control. The purpose of this study was to explore cognitive motor interference in right brain-lesioned and healthy subjects maintaining a standing position while performing three different tasks: a control task, a simple attentional task and a complex attentional task. We measured the sway area of the subjects on a force platform, including the center of pressure and its displacements. Results showed that stroke patients presented a reduced postural sway compared to healthy subjects, who were able to maintain their posture while performing a concomitant attentional task in the same dual-tasking conditions. Moreover, in both groups, the postural sway decreased with the increase in attentional load from cognitive tasks. We also noticed that the stability of stroke patients in dual-tasking conditions increased together with the weight-bearing rightward deviation, especially when the attentional load of the cognitive tasks and lower limb motor impairments were high. These results suggest that stroke patients and healthy subjects adopt a similar postural regulation pattern aimed at maintaining stability in dual-tasking conditions involving a static standing position and different attention-related cognitive tasks. Our results indicate that attention processes might facilitate static postural control.	f	\N
23920422	We aimed to evaluate the efficacy of the selective H3 receptor inverse agonist MK-0249 to treat excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS). In this three-period, double-blind, crossover study, 125 patients (100 men, 25 women; mean age, 48.6 years) with obstructive sleep apnea receiving nasal continuous positive airway pressure therapy who had refractory EDS were randomized to 2 weeks each of daily MK-0249 (5, 8, 10, or 12 mg, adaptively assigned), modafinil 200 mg, and placebo. At baseline and after each treatment period, six maintenance of wakefulness tests (MWT) and Psychomotor Vigilance Tasks (PVT) were conducted at 2-h intervals, beginning 1h postdose (∼09:00). The Epworth sleepiness scale (ESS), Clinical Global Impression of Severity (CGIS) and Digit Symbol Substitution Test (DSST) also were assessed. The primary end point was MWT sleep latency averaged over the first four time points (MWT-early). MWT-early mean change from baseline sleep latency at week 2 was 1.2 min for placebo, 2.1 min for MK-0249 (top two doses pooled; P>.05 vs. placebo), and 5.9 min for modafinil (P < or = .001 vs. placebo). MK-0249 showed improvements vs placebo on secondary and exploratory end points of ESS, CGIS, PVT, and DSST. Insomnia adverse events (AEs) were greater for MK-0249 (combined doses, 17.5%) than for placebo (0.9%) or modafinil (1.8%). MK-0249 did not significantly affect MWT sleep latency. However, the pattern of improvement on subjective ratings and psychomotor performance end points suggested that MK-0249 was associated with changes in aspects of cognition and performance not captured by the MWT.	f	\N
23935931	Auditory sensory modulation difficulties and problems with automatic re-orienting to sound are well documented in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Abnormal preattentive arousal processes may contribute to these deficits. In this study, we investigated components of the cortical auditory evoked potential (CAEP) reflecting preattentive arousal in children with ASD and typically developing (TD) children aged 3-8 years. Pairs of clicks ('S1' and 'S2') separated by a 1 sec S1-S2 interstimulus interval (ISI) and much longer (8-10 sec) S1-S1 ISIs were presented monaurally to either the left or right ear. In TD children, the P50, P100 and N1c CAEP components were strongly influenced by temporal novelty of clicks and were much greater in response to the S1 than the S2 click. Irrespective of the stimulation side, the 'tangential' P100 component was rightward lateralized in TD children, whereas the 'radial' N1c component had higher amplitude contralaterally to the stimulated ear. Compared to the TD children, children with ASD demonstrated 1) reduced amplitude of the P100 component under the condition of temporal novelty (S1) and 2) an attenuated P100 repetition suppression effect. The abnormalities were lateralized and depended on the presentation side. They were evident in the case of the left but not the right ear stimulation. The P100 abnormalities in ASD correlated with the degree of developmental delay and with the severity of auditory sensory modulation difficulties observed in early life. The results suggest that some rightward-lateralized brain networks that are crucially important for arousal and attention re-orienting are compromised in children with ASD and that this deficit contributes to sensory modulation difficulties and possibly even other behavioral deficits in ASD.	f	\N
23935959	There is growing debate on the use of drugs that promote cognitive enhancement. Amphetamine-like drugs have been employed as cognitive enhancers, but they show important side effects and induce addiction. In this study, we investigated the use of modafinil which appears to have less side effects compared to other amphetamine-like drugs. We analyzed effects on cognitive performances and brain resting state network activity of 26 healthy young subjects. A single dose (100 mg) of modafinil was administered in a double-blind and placebo-controlled study. Both groups were tested for neuropsychological performances with the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices II set (APM) before and three hours after administration of drug or placebo. Resting state functional magnetic resonance (rs-FMRI) was also used, before and after three hours, to investigate changes in the activity of resting state brain networks. Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) was employed to evaluate differences in structural connectivity between the two groups. Protocol ID: Modrest_2011; NCT01684306; http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01684306. Results indicate that a single dose of modafinil improves cognitive performance as assessed by APM. Rs-fMRI showed that the drug produces a statistically significant increased activation of Frontal Parietal Control (FPC; p<0.04) and Dorsal Attention (DAN; p<0.04) networks. No modifications in structural connectivity were observed. Overall, our findings support the notion that modafinil has cognitive enhancing properties and provide functional connectivity data to support these effects. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01684306 http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01684306.	f	\N
23939584	During the learning process, whether students remain attentive throughout instruction generally influences their learning efficacy. If teachers can instantly identify whether students are attentive they can be suitably reminded to remain focused, thereby improving their learning effects. Traditional teaching methods generally require that teachers observe students' expressions to determine whether they are attentively learning. However, this method is often inaccurate and increases the burden on teachers. With the development of electroencephalography (EEG) detection tools, mobile brainwave sensors have become mature and affordable equipment. Therefore, in this study, whether students are attentive or inattentive during instruction is determined by observing their EEG signals. Because distinguishing between attentiveness and inattentiveness is challenging, two scenarios were developed for this study to measure the subjects' EEG signals when attentive and inattentive. After collecting EEG data using mobile sensors, various common features were extracted from the raw data. A support vector machine (SVM) classifier was used to calculate and analyze these features to identify the combination of features that best indicates whether students are attentive. Based on the experiment results, the method proposed in this study provides a classification accuracy of up to 76.82%. The study results can be used as a reference for learning system designs in the future.	f	\N
23954763	Major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with risk for chronic pain, but the mechanisms contributing to the MDD and pain relationship are unclear. To examine whether disrupted emotional modulation of pain might contribute, this study assessed emotional processing and emotional modulation of pain in healthy controls and unmedicated persons with MDD (14 MDD, 14 controls). Emotionally charged pictures (erotica, neutral, mutilation) were presented in 4 blocks. Two blocks assessed physiological-emotional reactions (pleasure/arousal ratings, corrugator electromyography (EMG), startle modulation, skin conductance) in the absence of pain and 2 blocks assessed emotional modulation of pain and the nociceptive flexion reflex (NFR, a physiological measure of spinal nociception) evoked by suprathreshold electric stimulations. Results indicated pictures generally evoked the intended emotional responses; erotic pictures elicited pleasure, subjective arousal, and smaller startle magnitudes, whereas mutilation pictures elicited displeasure, corrugator EMG activation, and subjective/physiological arousal. However, emotional processing was partially disrupted in MDD, as evidenced by a blunted pleasure response to erotica and a failure to modulate startle according to a valence linear trend. Furthermore, emotional modulation of pain was observed in controls but not MDD, even though there were no group differences in NFR threshold or emotional modulation of NFR. Together, these results suggest supraspinal processes associated with emotion processing and emotional modulation of pain may be disrupted in MDD, but brain to spinal cord processes that modulate spinal nociception are intact. Thus, emotional modulation of pain deficits may be a phenotypic marker for future pain risk in MDD.	f	\N
23958342	The present study investigates the human brains' sensitivity to the valence strength of emotionally positive and negative chinese words. Event-Related Potentials were recorded, in two different experimental sessions, for Highly Positive (HP), Mildly Positive (MP) and neutral (NP) words and for Highly Negative (HN), Mildly Negative (MN) and neutral (NN) words, while subjects were required to count the number of words, irrespective of word meanings. The results showed a significant emotion effect in brain potentials for both HP and MP words, and the emotion effect occurred faster for HP words than MP words: HP words elicited more negative deflections than NP words in N2 (250-350 ms) and P3 (350-500 ms) amplitudes, while MP words elicited a significant emotion effect in P3, but not in N2, amplitudes. By contrast, HN words elicited larger amplitudes than NN words in N2 but not in P3 amplitudes, whereas MN words produced no significant emotion effect across N2 and P3 components. Moreover, the size of emotion-neutral differences in P3 amplitudes was significantly larger for MP compared to MN words. Thus, the human brain is reactive to both highly and mildly positive words, and this reactivity increased with the positive valence strength of the words. Conversely, the brain is less reactive to the valence of negative relative to positive words. These results suggest that human brains are equipped with increased sensitivity to the valence strength of positive compared to negative words, a type of emotional stimuli that are well known for reduced arousal.	f	\N
23958795	One approach to hypnosis suggests that for hypnotic experience to occur frontal lobe activity must be attenuated. For example, cold control theory posits that a lack of awareness of intentions is responsible for the experience of involuntariness and/or the subjective reality of hypnotic suggestions. The mid-dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex and the ACC are candidate regions for such awareness. Alcohol impairs frontal lobe executive function. This study examined whether alcohol affects hypnotisability. We administered 0.8 mg/kg of alcohol or a placebo to 32 medium susceptible participants. They were subsequently hypnotised and given hypnotic suggestions. All participants believed they had received some alcohol. Participants in the alcohol condition were more susceptible to hypnotic suggestions than participants in the placebo condition. Impaired frontal lobe activity facilitates hypnotic responding, which supports theories postulating that attenuation of executive function facilitates hypnotic response, and contradicts theories postulating that hypnotic response involves enhanced inhibitory, attentional or other executive function.	f	\N
23958866	Drugs-of-abuse may increase the salience of drug cues by sensitizing the dopaminergic (DA) system (Robinson and Berridge, 1993), leading to differential attention to smoking stimuli. Event-related potentials (ERPs) have been used to assess attention to smoking cues but not using an ERP component associated with DA-mediated salience evaluation. In this study the DA-related P2a and the P3, were compared in smokers (N = 21) and non-smokers (N = 21) during an attention selection cue exposure task including both cigarette and neutral images. We predicted that both the P2a and P3 would be larger to targets than non-targets, but larger to non-target cigarette images than non-target neutral images only in the smokers, reflecting smokers' evaluation of smoking stimuli as relevant even when they were not targets. Results indicated that smokers showed behavioral cue reactivity, with more false alarms to cigarette images (responding to cigarette images when they were not targets) than non-smokers; however, both smokers and non-smokers had a larger P2a and P3 to cigarette images. Thus, while smokers showed behavioral evidence of differential salience evaluation of the cigarette images, this group difference was not reflected in differential brain activity. These findings may reflect characteristics of the ERPs (both ERP components were smaller in the smokers), the smoking sample (they were not more impulsive, i.e. reward sensitive, than the non-smokers, in contrast to prior studies) and the design (all participants were aware that the aim of the study was related to smoking).	f	\N
23966452	A growing body of research has illuminated beneficial effects of a single bout of physical activity (i.e., acute exercise) on cognitive function in school-age children. However, the influence of acute exercise on preschoolers' cognitive function has not been reported. To address this shortcoming, the current study examined the effects of a 30-min bout of exercise on preschoolers' cognitive function. Preschoolers' cognitive function was assessed following a single bout of exercise and a single sedentary period. Results revealed that, after engaging in a bout of exercise, preschoolers exhibited markedly better ability to sustain attention, relative to after being sedentary (p = .006, partial eta square = .400). Based on these findings, providing exercise opportunities appears to enhance preschoolers' cognitive function.	f	\N
23968792	The Western Neuro Sensory Stimulation Profile (WNSSP) presents a hierarchy of items suggestive of a sequence of recovery. The aim of this study was to understand the sequence of recovery of neurobehavioral function in patients with brain injury and determine whether this sequence was consistent with the WNSSP test item order. We conducted a retrospective clinical chart audit of 37 adult inpatients (mean age = 29 yr; 31 men, 6 women) with a diagnosis of traumatic brain injury and a minimum of two medical record entries on the WNSSP. The sequence of recovery was statistically derived from the content and structure of the WNSSP. Our analysis did not support the current item ordering of the WNSSP as a function of the sequence of recovery from coma, with the exception of the Arousal/Attention subscale. WNSSP item performance suggested a sequence of recovery; clinicians may consider a revised item order that reflects this observed order.	f	\N
23980142	Cognitive emotion regulation has been widely shown in the laboratory to be an effective way to alter the nature of emotional responses. Despite its success in experimental contexts, however, we often fail to use these strategies in everyday life where stress is pervasive. The successful execution of cognitive regulation relies on intact executive functioning and engagement of the prefrontal cortex, both of which are rapidly impaired by the deleterious effects of stress. Because it is specifically under stressful conditions that we may benefit most from such deliberate forms of emotion regulation, we tested the efficacy of cognitive regulation after stress exposure. Participants first underwent fear-conditioning, where they learned that one stimulus (CS+) predicted an aversive outcome but another predicted a neutral outcome (CS-). Cognitive regulation training directly followed where participants were taught to regulate fear responses to the aversive stimulus. The next day, participants underwent an acute stress induction or a control task before repeating the fear-conditioning task using these newly acquired regulation skills. Skin conductance served as an index of fear arousal, and salivary α-amylase and cortisol concentrations were assayed as neuroendocrine markers of stress response. Although groups showed no differences in fear arousal during initial fear learning, nonstressed participants demonstrated robust fear reduction following regulation training, whereas stressed participants showed no such reduction. Our results suggest that stress markedly impairs the cognitive regulation of emotion and highlights critical limitations of this technique to control affective responses under stress.	f	\N
23982009	We analysed the cognitive influence on walking in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients, in the absence of clinical disability. A case-control study was conducted with 12 MS patients with no disability and 12 matched healthy controls. Subjects were referred for completion a timed walk test of 10 m and a 3D-kinematic analysis. Participants were instructed to walk at a comfortable speed in a dual-task (arithmetic task) condition, and motor planning was measured by mental chronometry. Scores of walking speed and cadence showed no statistically significant differences between the groups in the three conditions. The dual-task condition showed an increase in the double support duration in both groups. Motor imagery analysis showed statistically significant differences between real and imagined walking in patients. MS patients with no disability did not show any influence of divided attention on walking execution. However, motor planning was overestimated as compared with real walking.	f	\N
23988395	To determine whether the Short-Term Executive Plus (STEP) cognitive rehabilitation program improves executive dysfunction after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Randomized, waitlist controlled trial with minimization and blinded outcome assessment. Community. Participants with TBI and executive dysfunction (N=98; TBI severity 50% moderate/severe; mean time since injury ± SD, 12±14y; mean age ± SD, 45±14y; 62% women; 76% white). STEP program: 12 weeks (9h/wk) of group training in problem solving and emotional regulation and individual sessions of attention and compensatory strategies training. Factor analysis was used to create a composite executive function measure using the Problem Solving Inventory, Frontal Systems Behavior Scale, Behavioral Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome, and Self-Awareness of Deficits Interview. Emotional regulation was assessed with the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale. The primary attention measure was the Attention Rating and Monitoring Scale. Secondary measures included neuropsychological measures of executive function, attention, and memory and measures of affective distress, self-efficacy, social participation, and quality of life. Intention-to-treat mixed-effects analyses revealed significant treatment effects for the composite executive function measure (P=.008) and the Frontal Systems Behavior Scale (P=.049) and Problem Solving Inventory (P=.016). We found no between-group differences on the neuropsychological measures or on measures of attention, emotional regulation, self-awareness, affective distress, self-efficacy, participation, or quality of life. The STEP program is efficacious in improving self-reported post-TBI executive function and problem solving. Further research is needed to identify the roles of the different components of the intervention and its effectiveness with different TBI populations.	f	\N
23988869	In this study, we assessed whether unspecific attention processes signaled by general reaction times (RTs), as well as specific facilitatory (validity or facilitation effect) and inhibitory (inhibition of return, IOR) effects involved in the attentional orienting network, are affected by low vigilance due to both circadian factors and sleep deprivation (SD). Eighteen male participants performed a cuing task in which peripheral cues were nonpredictive about the target location and the cue-target interval varied at three levels: 200 ms, 800 ms, and 1,100 ms. Facilitation with the shortest and IOR with the longest cue-target intervals were observed in the baseline session, thus replicating previous related studies. Under SD condition, RTs were generally slower, indicating a reduction in the participants' arousal level. The inclusion of a phasic alerting tone in several trials partially compensated for the reduction in tonic alertness, but not with the longest cue-target interval. With regard to orienting, whereas the facilitation effect due to reflexive shifts of attention was preserved with sleep loss, the IOR was not observed. These results suggest that the decrease of vigilance produced by SD affects both the compensatory effects of phasic alerting and the endogenous component involved in disengaging attention from the cued location, a requisite for the IOR effect being observed.	f	\N
23989094	The updated clinical practice guidelines for the management of pain, agitation, and delirium recommend either daily sedation interruption or maintaining light levels of sedation as methods to improve outcomes for patients who are sedated in the ICU. We review the evidence supporting both methods and discuss whether one method is preferable or if they should be used concurrently. Original research articles identified using the electronic PubMed database. Randomized controlled trials and large prospective cohort studies of mechanically ventilated ICU patients requiring sedation were selected. The methods of daily sedation interruption and targeting light sedation levels (including avoidance of deep sedation) are safe in critically ill patients with no increase, and a potential decrease, in long-term psychiatric disturbances. Randomized trials comparing these methods with standard care, which has traditionally involved moderate to heavy sedation, found that both methods reduced duration of mechanical ventilation and ICU length of stay. Additionally, one trial noted that daily sedation interruption paired with spontaneous breathing trials improved 1-year survival, whereas a large observational study found that deep sedation was associated with decreased 180-day survival. Two common characteristics of these interventions in trials showing benefits were avoidance of deep levels of sedation and significant reductions in sedative doses, especially benzodiazepines. Thus, combining targeted light sedation with daily sedation interruption may be more beneficial than either method alone if sedative doses are reduced and arousal and mobility are facilitated during the ICU stay. Daily sedation interruption and targeting light sedation levels are safe and proven to improve outcomes for sedated ICU patients when these approaches result in reduced sedative exposure and facilitate arousal. It remains unclear as to whether one approach is superior, and further studies are needed to evaluate which patients benefit most from either or both techniques.	f	\N
23991639	We review neuropsychological evidence for visual selection operating in different reference frames. There is general agreement that there may be a separation of coding space near to and farther from the body, and that deficits in selecting stimuli within each form of spatial representation may be impaired in patients with unilateral neglect. However, there remains a lack of consensus about whether all forms of spatial representation relate to the body or whether there are spatial representations based on reference frames abstracted from the body (allocentric and object-centered spatial codes). Here we will review the evidence for spatial coding in these more abstracted reference frames (allocentric and object-centered but also environmental) and argue for the psychological reality of (at least) allocentric spatial coding. We discuss computational accounts of how such codes may be created as objects are selected.	f	\N
23992838	To assess the sexual function of young women with spina bifida and myelomeningocele and to determine the factors influencing their sexual function. A postal cross-sectional study using a self-administered questionnaire was performed in 44 women, mean age 27.66 ± 5.89 years, with spina bifida and myelomeningocele. The questionnaire included the Brief Index of Sexual Functioning for Women and questions about voiding mode, urinary symptoms, socioeconomic status, education level, lifestyle, and partnership. In parallel, data were also collected from the paediatric surgery records of patients who returned the questionnaire. The response rate was 56.8% (25/44). All domains of female sexual function (thoughts/desires, arousal, frequency of sexual activity, receptivity/initiation, pleasure/orgasm, relationship satisfaction) were altered. Urinary incontinence was likely to be the main factor responsible for altered sexual function and was associated with lower thoughts/desires, arousal, and receptivity/initiation scores. Wearing pads also constituted a limitation to achieving intimacy. Young myelomeningocele women report poor sexual functioning. The presence of urinary incontinence is associated with lower thoughts/desire, arousal, and receptivity/initiation.	f	\N
23994913	To study changes in attention and executive functions during psychopharmacotherapy in patients with paranoid schizophrenia, we have examined 120 patients with a first episode of paranoid schizophrenia treated with typical and atypical neuroleptics. Clinical and statistical analyses have revealed the heterogeneity within treatment groups that allowed to define two subgroups. These subgroups were characterized by a differed disease course (favorable or poor type). Before remission was achieved, the effect of atypical neuroleptics on cognitive performance was higher compared to typical neuroleptics. After remission, when doses of neuroleptics were decreased, a type of disease course played a main role. At 6 months after remission, attention and executive functions have improved in subgroups with favorable course of disease regardless of treatment.	f	\N
24000960	Immediately recalling a witnessed event can increase people's susceptibility to later postevent misinformation. But this retrieval-enhanced suggestibility (RES) effect has been shown only when the initial recall test included specific questions that reappeared on the final test. Moreover, it is unclear whether this phenomenon is affected by the centrality of event details. These limitations make it difficult to generalize RES to criminal investigations, which often begin with free recall prior to more specific queries from legal officials and attorneys. In 3 experiments, we examined the influence of test formats (free recall vs. cued recall) and centrality of event details (central vs. peripheral) on RES. In Experiment 1, both the initial and final tests were cued recall. In Experiment 2, the initial test was free recall and the final test was cued recall. In Experiment 3, both the initial and final tests were free recall. Initial testing increased misinformation reporting on the final test for peripheral details in all experiments, but the effect was significant for central details only after aggregating the data from all 3 experiments. These results show that initial free recall can produce RES, and more broadly, that free recall can potentiate subsequent learning of complex prose materials.	f	\N
24005260	Selective attention to features of interest facilitates object processing in a cluttered and dynamic environment. Previous research found that distinct networks of regions across cortex are activated depending on the attended feature. These networks typically consist of posterior feature-preferring regions and anterior regions involved in attentional processes. In the current study, we investigated the role of white matter connections between the posterior and anterior regions within these networks for attention to features of novel colored dynamic objects. We asked participants to perform a 1-back feature-attention task while we acquired both functional and diffusion-weighted images. Using tract-based spatial statistics and probabilistic tractography, we found that the right superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) connected posterior and anterior object-processing regions and that voxels within the SLF correlated with response times on the task. Posterior and anterior regions that were anatomically connected also had increased functional connectivity relative to posterior and anterior regions that were not connected. Our results demonstrate that both functional and structural information has to be taken into account to understand selective attention and object perception.	f	\N
24010959	Although a beneficial role of post-training sleep for declarative memory has been consistently evidenced in children, as in adults, available data suggest that procedural memory consolidation does not benefit from sleep in children. However, besides the absence of performance gains in children, sleep-dependent plasticity processes involved in procedural memory consolidation might be expressed through differential interference effects on the learning of novel but related procedural material. To test this hypothesis, 32 10-12-year-old children were trained on a motor rotation adaptation task. After either a sleep or a wake period, they were first retested on the same rotation applied at learning, thus assessing offline sleep-dependent changes in performance, then on the opposite (unlearned) rotation to assess sleep-dependent modulations in proactive interference coming from the consolidated visuomotor memory trace. Results show that children gradually improve performance over the learning session, showing effective adaptation to the imposed rotation. In line with previous findings, no sleep-dependent changes in performance were observed for the learned rotation. However, presentation of the opposite, unlearned deviation elicited significantly higher interference effects after post-training sleep than wakefulness in children. Considering that a definite feature of procedural motor memory and skill acquisition is the implementation of highly automatized motor behaviour, thus lacking flexibility, our results suggest a better integration and/or automation or motor adaptation skills after post-training sleep, eventually resulting in higher proactive interference effects on untrained material.	f	\N
24012196	Female sexual dysfunctions include a group of sexual complaints and disorders affecting women of all ages, and stemming from a heterogeneous array of etiologies and contributing factors. The classification system for sexual dysfunctions in the woman has evolved from a linear categorization of sexual desire, arousal, orgasm, and pain disorders to one that is more complex and overlapping. Personal distress is a key factor in defining a sexual problem as a dysfunction. The recently released Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, edition 5, collapses former definitions of female sexual disorders and moves away from the older linear model of diagnostic categories. Physicians should be open to discussing sexual problems with women, and may make use of validated questionnaires in the office setting. Evaluation tools available for assessing sexual function in the woman are in use in the research setting, as are physiological measures of assessment.	f	\N
24018716	Temporal expectation is expectation with respect to the timing of an event such as the appearance of a certain stimulus. In this paper, temporal expectancy is investigated in the context of the theory of visual attention (TVA), and we begin by summarizing the foundations of this theoretical framework. Next, we present a parametric experiment exploring the effects of temporal expectation on perceptual processing speed in cued single-stimulus letter recognition with unspeeded motor responses. The length of the cue-stimulus foreperiod was exponentially distributed with one of six hazard rates varying between blocks. We hypothesized that this manipulation would result in a distinct temporal expectation in each hazard rate condition. Stimulus exposures were varied such that both the temporal threshold of conscious perception (t0 ms) and the perceptual processing speed (v letters s(-1)) could be estimated using TVA. We found that the temporal threshold t0 was unaffected by temporal expectation, but the perceptual processing speed v was a strikingly linear function of the logarithm of the hazard rate of the stimulus presentation. We argue that the effects on the v values were generated by changes in perceptual biases, suggesting that our perceptual biases are directly related to our temporal expectations.	f	\N
24022995	It has been suggested that autism-specific imitative deficits may be reduced or even spared in object-related activities. However, most previous research has not sufficiently distinguished object movement reenactment (learning about the ways in which object move) from imitation (learning about the topography of demonstrated actions). Twenty children with autism (CWA) and 20 typically developing children (TDC) were presented with puzzle boxes containing prizes. Test objects and experimental conditions were designed to isolate object- and action-related aspects of demonstrations. There were four types of video demonstrations: (a) a full demonstration by an adult; (b) a ghost demonstration with object movements alone; (c) mimed solutions demonstrated adjacent to the objects; and (d) random actions performed on the surface of the objects. There were no significant between-group differences in the degree to which CWA and TDC matched the full demonstrations, the actual demonstrations or in their times to first solution in any of the conditions. Although there was no clear imitative deficit in the CWA, regression analyses were conducted to explore in more detail whether diagnosis, verbal intelligence quotient (VIQ), nonverbal IQ NVIQ, age or motor coordination predicted performance. The results are discussed in relation to the use of extrinsic vs. intrinsic rewards and the interplay between motor coordination and the relative rigidity vs. pliability of objects.	f	\N
24025057	Survivors of severe brain injuries may end up in a state of 'wakeful unresponsiveness' or in a minimally conscious state. Pharmacological treatments of patients with disorders of consciousness aim to improve arousal levels and recovery of consciousness. We here provide a systematic overview of the therapeutic effects of amantadine, apomorphine and zolpidem in patients recovering from coma. Evidence from clinical trials using these commonly prescribed pharmacological agents suggests positive changes of the patients' neurological status, leading sometimes to dramatic improvements. These findings are discussed in the context of current hypotheses of these agents' therapeutic mechanisms on cerebral function. In order to improve our understanding of the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms of these drugs, we suggest combining sensitive and specific behavioral tools with neuroimaging and electrophysiological measures in large randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled experimental designs. We conclude that the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of amantadine, apomorphine and zolpidem need further exploration to determine which treatment would provide a better neurological outcome regarding the patient's etiology, diagnosis, time since injury and overall condition.	f	\N
24035639	The objective of this study was to obtain preliminary data on the cognitive function of children with unilateral hearing loss in order to identify, quantify, and interpret differences in cognitive and language functions between children with unilateral hearing loss and with normal hearing. Fourteen children ages 9-14 years old (7 with severe-to-profound sensorineural unilateral hearing loss and 7 sibling controls with normal hearing) were administered five tests that assessed cognitive functions of working memory, processing speed, attention, and phonological processing. Mean composite scores for phonological processing were significantly lower for the group with unilateral hearing loss than for controls on one composite and four subtests. The unilateral hearing loss group trended toward worse performance on one additional composite and on two additional phonological processing subtests. The unilateral hearing loss group also performed worse than the control group on the complex letter span task. Analysis examining performance on the two levels of task difficulty revealed a significant main effect of task difficulty and an interaction between task difficulty and group. Cognitive function and phonological processing test results suggest two related deficits associated with unilateral hearing loss: (1) reduced accuracy and efficiency associated with phonological processing, and (2) impaired executive control function when engaged in maintaining verbal information in the face of processing incoming, irrelevant verbal information. These results provide a possible explanation for the educational difficulties experienced by children with unilateral hearing loss.	f	\N
24039108	Improved survival of children with brain tumors (BTs) has increased focus on ameliorating morbidity. To reduce the risk of progressive cognitive decline, remedial strategies need to be instituted early, based upon accurate appraisal of need, yet few studies have investigated cognition in BT children early post-diagnosis. The study aims were to investigate cognition in children with primary BTs 1, 6, and 12 months post-diagnosis compared with healthy children, exploring the impact of disease and treatment variables. Forty-eight children aged 2-16 years with primary BTs, referred to a Regional Neurosurgical Unit over the 2-year study period were eligible for enrollment. The "best friends" model was used to recruit matched controls. Cognition was assessed using age-appropriate Wechsler Intelligence scales; Children's Memory Scale; Test of Everyday Attention for Children, and Wechsler Quicktest. Patients with BTs had significantly reduced performance compared to controls early post-diagnosis in tests of Performance IQ, processing speed, verbal and visual memory, and selective attention. Improved performance over 12 months was seen in patients with BTs although also, for some measures, in controls. Significant deficits in cognitive performance were seen one year post-diagnosis for Verbal IQ; processing speed, visual and verbal immediate memory, and selective attention. Infratentorial site, high tumor grade, hydrocephalus, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy were associated with poorer functioning. Early cognitive impairment is present in BT children, sometimes prior to radiotherapy/chemotherapy treatment, and is associated with hydrocephalus, high tumor grade and infratentorial site. Future studies should investigate the role of early rehabilitation in improving cognition.	f	\N
24040251	Several highly-cited experiments have presented evidence suggesting that neuroimages may unduly bias laypeople's judgments of scientific research. This finding has been especially worrisome to the legal community in which neuroimage techniques may be used to produce evidence of a person's mental state. However, a more recent body of work that has looked directly at the independent impact of neuroimages on layperson decision-making (both in legal and more general arenas), and has failed to find evidence of bias. To help resolve these conflicting findings, this research uses eye tracking technology to provide a measure of attention to different visual representations of neuroscientific data. Finding an effect of neuroimages on the distribution of attention would provide a potential mechanism for the influence of neuroimages on higher-level decisions. In the present experiment, a sample of laypeople viewed a vignette that briefly described a court case in which the defendant's actions might have been explained by a neurological defect. Accompanying these vignettes was either an MRI image of the defendant's brain, or a bar graph depicting levels of brain activity-two competing visualizations that have been the focus of much of the previous research on the neuroimage bias. We found that, while laypeople differentially attended to neuroimagery relative to the bar graph, this did not translate into differential judgments in a way that would support the idea of a neuroimage bias.	f	\N
24044427	Joint attention (JA) is a cornerstone of adaptive human social functioning. Little functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research has examined, in interactive paradigms, neural activation underlying bids for JA, met with a congruent or an incongruent social response. We developed a highly naturalistic fMRI paradigm utilizing eye-tracking to create real-time, contingent social responses to participant-initiated JA. During congruent responses to JA bids, we observed increased activation in the right amygdala, the right fusiform gyrus, anterior and dorsal anterior cingulate cortices, striatum, ventral tegmental area, and posterior parietal cortices. Incongruent responses to JA bids elicited increased activity localized to the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and bilateral cerebellum. No differences in eye-gaze patterns were observed during congruent or incongruent trials. Our results highlight the importance of utilizing interactive fMRI paradigms in social neuroscience and the impact of congruency in recruiting integrated social, reward, and attention circuits for processing JA.	f	\N
24045099	This intervention examined whether fish-oil-supplementation in late infancy modifies free-play test scores and if this is related to blood pressure (BP) and mean RR interval. 83 Danish 9-month-old infants were randomized to ±fish oil (FO) (3.4±1.1mL/d) for 3months and 61 of these completed the free-play-test before and after the intervention. Most of the free-play scores changed during the intervention, but the intervention affected only the number of looks away from the toy, which was increased in +FO and decreased in -FO (p=0.037). The increased numbers of looks away were associated with an increase in erythrocyte eicosapentaenoic acid (r=0.401, p=0.017, n=35) and were also associated with a decrease in systolic-BP (r=-0.511, p<0.001, n=52). The results indicate that n-3 fatty acid intake also in late infancy can influence brain development and that the cognitive and cardiovascular effects may be related.	f	\N
24053045	Our perspective on resting-state electroencephalogram (EEG) is that it provides a window into the substrate of cognitive and perceptual processing, reflecting the dynamic potential of the brain's current functional state. In an extended research program into the electrophysiology of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD), we have examined resting-state EEG power and coherence, and event-related potentials (ERPs), in children, adolescents, and adults with the disorder. We sought initially to identify consistent AD/HD anomalies in these measures, relative to normal control subjects, and then to understand how these differences related to existing models of AD/HD. An emergent strand in this program has been to clarify the EEG correlates of "arousal" and to understand the role of arousal dysfunction as a core anomaly in AD/HD. To date, findings in this strand serve to rule out a commonly held dictum in the AD/HD field: that elevated theta/beta ratio is an indicator of hypo-arousal. In turn, this requires further work to elucidate the ratio's functional significance in the disorder. Our brain dynamics studies relating prestimulus EEG amplitude and phase states to ERP outcomes are expected to help in this regard, but we are still at a relatively early stage, currently examining these relationships in control children, in order to better understand normal aspects of brain dynamics before turning to children with AD/HD. This range of studies provides a framework for our recent work relating resting-state EEG anomalies, in individuals with AD/HD, to their symptom profile. This has had promising results, indicating links between increased inattention scores and reduced resting EEG gamma power. With resting-state EEG coherence, reduced left lateralized coherences across several bands have correlated negatively with inattention scores, while reduced frontal interhemispheric coherence has been correlated negatively with hyperactivity/impulsivity scores. Such linkages appear to provide encouraging leads for future EEG research in AD/HD.	f	\N
24054320	The aim of the study was to explore whether temporal information processing can interfere with performance of a non-temporal task. A new methodology based on the Garner paradigm was employed. Participants were asked to classify two-dimensional stimuli according to either length or duration, with and without variation in the other (task-irrelevant) dimension. Garner interference was detected only with respect to classification by length when irrelevant variation in duration was present. Stroop interference was detected only in classification by length across compatible and non-compatible values of length and duration. Classification by length took more time when done with variation in duration than when duration was constant. Classification by length also took more time when length and duration were not compatible than when they were compatible. The findings indicate that the processing of duration is similar to the processing of other perceptual dimensions. The processing of duration consumes attentional resources and can interfere with the processing of other perceptual dimensions. The findings support attentional models of prospective duration judgment.	f	\N
24056700	Sleep can strengthen memory for emotional information, but whether emotional memories can be specifically targeted and modified during sleep is unknown. In human subjects who underwent olfactory contextual fear conditioning, re-exposure to the odorant context in slow-wave sleep promoted stimulus-specific fear extinction, with parallel reductions of hippocampal activity and reorganization of amygdala ensemble patterns. Thus, fear extinction may be selectively enhanced during sleep, even without re-exposure to the feared stimulus itself.	f	\N
24057352	Visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) component of event-related potentials is elicited by stimuli violating the category rule of stimulus sequences, even if such stimuli are outside the focus of attention. Category-related vMMN emerges to colors, and color-related vMMN is sensitive to language-related effects. A higher-order perceptual category, bilateral symmetry is also represented in the memory processes underlying vMMN. As a relatively large body of research shows, violating the emotional category of human faces elicits vMMN. Another face-related category sensitive to the violation of regular presentation is gender. Finally, vMMN was elicited to the laterality of hands. As results on category-related vMMN show, stimulus representation in the non-conscious change detection system is fairly complex, and it is not restricted to the registration of elementary perceptual regularities.	f	\N
24060644	Task performance can be enhanced by the addition of extra information to a visual environment in which observers search for a target stimulus. One example of such information is the repetition of the searched-for stimulus; a form of target redundancy. In the present study, the electrophysiological correlates of such target redundancy were investigated in a visual discrimination task. Observers were asked to look for targets in displays that always contained two salient singletons (tilted lines; targets and/or nontargets) against a background of vertical distractor lines. Displays contained either two redundant targets, two nontargets, or a single target and nontarget, at opposite sides of the visual field. Search was most efficient when two targets were shown, and effects of target redundancy were observed on the event-related potential as well. Target redundancy modulated the anterior N2, and the P3 in both an early and a late window. The results are compatible with models of visual attention that support a relatively late (i.e., central or decisional) locus of redundancy processing.	f	\N
24065955	Complex neural circuits within the hypothalamus that govern essential autonomic processes and associated behaviors signal using amino acid and monoamine transmitters and a variety of neuropeptide (hormone) modulators, often via G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) and associated cellular pathways. Relaxin-3 is a recently identified neuropeptide that is highly conserved throughout evolution. Neurons expressing relaxin-3 are located in the brainstem, but broadly innervate the entire limbic system including the hypothalamus. Extensive anatomical data in rodents and non-human primate, and recent regulatory and functional data, suggest relaxin-3 signaling via its cognate GPCR, RXFP3, has a broad range of effects on neuroendocrine function associated with stress responses, feeding and metabolism, motivation and reward, and possibly sexual behavior and reproduction. Therefore, this article aims to highlight the growing appreciation of the relaxin-3/RXFP3 system as an important "extrinsic" regulator of the neuroendocrine axis by reviewing its neuroanatomy and its putative roles in arousal-, stress-, and feeding-related behaviors and links to associated neural substrates and signaling networks. Current evidence identifies RXFP3 as a potential therapeutic target for treatment of neuroendocrine disorders and related behavioral dysfunction.	f	\N
24068814	Cortical activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while human subjects viewed 12 stimulus colors and performed either a color-naming or diverted attention task. A forward model was used to extract lower dimensional neural color spaces from the high-dimensional fMRI responses. The neural color spaces in two visual areas, human ventral V4 (V4v) and VO1, exhibited clustering (greater similarity between activity patterns evoked by stimulus colors within a perceptual category, compared to between-category colors) for the color-naming task, but not for the diverted attention task. Response amplitudes and signal-to-noise ratios were higher in most visual cortical areas for color naming compared to diverted attention. But only in V4v and VO1 did the cortical representation of color change to a categorical color space. A model is presented that induces such a categorical representation by changing the response gains of subpopulations of color-selective neurons.	f	\N
24070214	Sexual satisfaction is an important indicator of sexual health and is strongly associated with relationship satisfaction. However, research exploring lay definitions of sexual satisfaction has been scarce. We present thematic analysis of written responses of 449 women and 311 men to the question "How would you define sexual satisfaction?" The participants were heterosexual individuals with a mean age of 36.05 years (SD = 8.34) involved in a committed exclusive relationship. In this exploratory study, two main themes were identified: personal sexual well-being and dyadic processes. The first theme focuses on the positive aspects of individual sexual experience, such as pleasure, positive feelings, arousal, sexual openness, and orgasm. The second theme emphasizes relational dimensions, such as mutuality, romance, expression of feelings, creativity, acting out desires, and frequency of sexual activity. Our results highlight that mutual pleasure is a crucial component of sexual satisfaction and that sexual satisfaction derives from positive sexual experiences and not from the absence of conflict or dysfunction. The findings support definitions and models of sexual satisfaction that focus on positive sexual outcomes and the use of measures that incorporate items linked to personal and dyadic sexual rewards for both men and women.	f	\N
24071775	Although there is evidence to suggest an association between ADHD and alcohol use in college students, results are inconclusive primarily because studies have failed to control for related variables. Thus, this study was designed to systematically compare the relative contributions of inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity to alcohol use and alcohol-related problems in a sample of college students while controlling for effects of antisocial behaviors. A total of 192 undergraduate college students from a rural Midwestern university received class credit for participating in the study. They completed measures of alcohol use, ADHD symptoms, and antisocial behavior. Hierarchical regressions revealed inattention, but not hyperactivity/impulsivity, was related to alcohol-related problems even when controlling for antisocial behavior. However, neither inattention nor hyperactivity/impulsivity was related to alcohol use regardless of whether current antisocial behavior was controlled. Inattention may be an important factor related to alcohol-related problems in college students.	f	\N
24079062	Post-lunch dip is a well-known phenomenon that results in a substantial deterioration in function and productivity after lunch. To assess whether a new herbal-based potentially wake-promoting beverage is effective in counteracting somnolence and reduced post-lunch performance. Thirty healthy volunteers were studied on three different days at the sleep clinic. On each visit they ate a standard lunch at noontime, followed by a drink of "Wake up," 50 mg caffeine, or a placebo in a cross-over double-blind regimen. At 30 and 120 minutes post-drinking, they underwent a battery of tests to determine the effects of the beverage. These included: a) a subjective assessment of alertness and performance based on a visual analog scale, and b) objective function tests: the immediate word recall test, the digit symbol substitution test (DSST), and hemodynamic measurements. The results of the three visits were compared using one-way analysis of variance, with P < 0.05 considered statistically significant. In all performance tests, subjective vigilance and effectiveness assessment, both Wake up and caffeine were significantly superior to placebo 30 minutes after lunch. However, at 2 hours after lunch, performance had deteriorated in those who drank the caffeine-containing drink, while Wake up was superior to both caffeine and placebo. Blood pressure and pulse were higher 2 hours after caffeine ingestion, compared to both Wake up and placebo. These results suggest that a single dose of Wake up is effective in counteracting the somnolence and reduced performance during the post-lunch hours. In the current study it had no adverse hemodynamic consequences.	f	\N
24095116	The mind and body are intrinsically and dynamically coupled. Perceptions, thoughts and feelings change, and respond to, the state of the body. This chapter describes the integration of cognitive and affective processes with the autonomic control of bodily arousal, focusing on reciprocal effects of autonomic responses on decision making, error detection, memory and emotions. Neuroimaging techniques are beginning to detail the neuronal substrates mediating these interactions between mental and physiological states, implicating cortical regions (specifically insular and cingulate cortices) alongside subcortical (amygdala) and brainstem (notably dorsal pons) in these mechanisms. The extent to which bodily states influence mental processes is determined in part by "interoceptive sensitivity," an index of individual differences in the ability to detect one's own bodily sensations. Moreover, the misidentification or misattribution of interoceptive responses is implicated in a number of pathologies such as depersonalization, schizophrenia, and anxiety. Increasing knowledge of the mechanisms of body-mind interactions has wide ranging implications, from decision making to empathy, and may serve elucidate potential avenues of intervention for stress-sensitive conditions in which psychological, cognitive, and emotional factors impact on the expression of physical symptoms.	f	\N
24099547	Four experiments investigated whether infants and adults infer that a novel entity that interacts in a contingent, communicative fashion with an experimenter is itself an intentional agent. The experiments contrasted the hypothesis that such an inference follows from amodal representations of the contingent interaction alone with the hypothesis that features of the experimenter's behavior might also influence intentional attribution. Twelve- to 13-month-old infants and adults observed a novel entity respond contingently to a confederate experimenter, the form of whose actions varied across conditions. For infants, intentionality attribution was assessed by the extent to which they subsequently followed the faceless entity's implied attentional focus. For adults, intentionality attribution was assessed from their use of psychological terms when later describing the entity's behavior. In both groups, construal of the entity as an intentional agent was limited to a subset of contingent interaction conditions. At both ages, the pattern of responses across conditions suggests that whether an observed contingent interaction can be seen as a social interaction influences the attribution of intentional agency. These results further indicate that the agent detection mechanism responding to third-party contingent interactions, as a context-sensitive process, is distinct from the mechanism responding to directly experienced contingent interactions, suggested by prior developmental work to be based solely on amodal representations of an entity's contingent reaction to behaviors of an infant.	f	\N
24110382	Controlling a brain-actuated device requires the participant to look at and to split his attention between the interaction of the device with its environment and the status information of the Brain-Computer Interface (BCI). Such parallel visual tasks are partly contradictory, with the goal of achieving a good and natural device control. Is there a possibility to free the visual channel from one of these tasks? To address this, a stimulation system based on 6 coin-motors is developed, which provides a spatially continuous tactile illusion as BCI feedback, so that the visual channel can be devoted to the device. Several experiments are conducted in this work, to optimize the tactile illusion patterns and to investigate the influence on the electroencephalogram (EEG). Finally, 6 healthy BCI participants compare visual with tactile feedback in online BCI recordings. The developed stimulator can be used without interfering with the EEG. All subjects are able to perceive this type of tactile feedback well, and no statistical degradation in the online BCI performance could be identified between visual and tactile feedback.	f	\N
24111051	Aging is a process that is inevitable, and makes our body vulnerable to age-related diseases. Age is the most consistent factor affecting the sleep structure. Therefore, new automatic sleep staging methods, to be used in both of young and elderly patients, are needed. This study proposes an automatic sleep stage detector, which can separate wakefulness, rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep and non-REM (NREM) sleep using only EEG and EOG. Most sleep events, which define the sleep stages, are reduced with age. This is addressed by focusing on the amplitude of the clinical EEG bands, and not the affected sleep events. The age-related influences are then reduced by robust subject-specific scaling. The classification of the three sleep stages are achieved by a multi-class support vector machine using the one-versus-rest scheme. It was possible to obtain a high classification accuracy of 0.91. Validation of the sleep stage detector in other sleep disorders, such as apnea and narcolepsy, should be considered in future work.	f	\N
24111247	Sleep is a physiological process with an internal program of a number of well defined sleep stages and intermediate wakefulness periods. The sleep stages modulate the autonomous nervous system and thereby the sleep stages are accompanied by different regulation regimes for the cardiovascular and respiratory system. The differences in regulation can be distinguished by new techniques of cardiovascular physics. The number of patients suffering from sleep disorders increases unproportionally with the increase of the human population and aging, leading to very high expenses in the public health system. Therefore, the challenge of cardiovascular physics is to develop highly-sophisticated methods which are able to, on the one hand, supplement and replace expensive medical devices and, on the other hand, improve the medical diagnostics with decreasing the patient's risk. Methods of cardiovascular physics are used to analyze heart rate, blood pressure and respiration to detect changes of the autonomous nervous system in different diseases. Data driven modeling analysis, synchronization and coupling analysis and their applications to biosignals in healthy subjects and patients with different sleep disorders are presented. Newly derived methods of cardiovascular physics can help to find indicators for these health risks.	f	\N
24111262	This paper proposes a novel feature called differential entropy for EEG-based vigilance estimation. By mathematical derivation, we find an interesting relationship between the proposed differential entropy and the existing logarithm energy spectrum. We present a physical interpretation of the logarithm energy spectrum which is widely used in EEG signal analysis. To evaluate the performance of the proposed differential entropy feature for vigilance estimation, we compare it with four existing features on an EEG data set of twenty-three subjects. All of the features are projected to the same dimension by principal component analysis algorithm. Experiment results show that differential entropy is the most accurate and stable EEG feature to reflect the vigilance changes.	f	\N
24112932	The introduction of brain stimulation research techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has greatly advanced the understanding of the somatosensory system in humans. Over the last several years, several studies have focused on applying TMS in a variety of contexts to alter transiently the excitability of the somatosensory cortex or regions that project to it and exert some control over its activity in specific behavioral contexts. Specific foci that are discussed in this chapter are methods of repetitive TMS, including theta-burst protocols, delivered to the primary somatosensory cortex that have been shown to affect behavioral indices of somatic sensation such as tactile perception. Similar stimulation techniques can also be applied to distant areas that interact with and modulate activity in somatosensory cortex (i.e., attentional or motor networks). For example, suppression of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex modifies the attention-modulation of somatosensory information in modality-specific cortices. Overall this chapter is focused on understanding the interaction of activity in systems that function with the somatosensory system in behavioral contexts. These include systems such as those that control attention, whether sustained or selective between sensory modalities, or those that control movement based on targets present in other sensory systems.	f	\N
24113330	To investigate whether pre-attentive auditory discrimination is impaired in patients with essential tremor (ET) and to evaluate the role of age at onset in this function. Seventeen non-demented patients with ET and seventeen age- and sex-matched healthy controls underwent an EEG recording during a classical auditory MMN paradigm. MMN latency was significantly prolonged in patients with elderly-onset ET (>65 years) (p=0.046), while no differences emerged in either latency or amplitude between young-onset ET patients and controls. This study represents a tentative indication of a dysfunction of auditory automatic change detection in elderly-onset ET patients, pointing to a selective attentive deficit in this subgroup of ET patients. The delay in pre-attentive auditory discrimination, which affects elderly-onset ET patients alone, further supports the hypothesis that ET represents a heterogeneous family of diseases united by tremor; these diseases are characterized by cognitive differences that may range from a disturbance in a selective cognitive function, such as the automatic part of the orienting response, to more widespread and complex cognitive dysfunctions.	f	\N
24116885	Evaluative conditioning (EC) refers to the change in the valence of a conditioned stimulus (CS) due to its pairing with a positive or negative unconditioned stimulus (US). To the extent that core affect can be characterised by the two dimensions of valence and arousal, EC has important implications for the origin of affective responses. However, the distinction between valence and arousal is rarely considered in research on EC or conditioned responses more generally. Measuring the subjective feelings elicited by a CS, the results from two experiments showed that (1) repeated pairings of a CS with a positive or negative US of either high or low arousal led to corresponding changes in both CS valence and CS arousal, (2) changes in CS arousal, but not changes in CS valence, were significantly related to recollective memory for CS-US pairings, (3) subsequent presentations of the CS without the US reduced the conditioned valence of the CS, with conditioned arousal being less susceptible to extinction and (4) EC effects were stronger for high arousal than low arousal USs. The results indicate that the conditioning of affective responses can occur simultaneously along two independent dimensions, supporting evidence in related areas that calls for a consideration of both valence and arousal. Implications for research on EC and the acquisition of emotional dispositions are discussed.	f	\N
24117699	To better understand the neurobiological mechanisms by which mindfulness-based practices function in a psychotherapeutic context, this article details the definition, techniques, and purposes ascribed to mindfulness training as described by its Buddhist tradition of origin and by contemporary neurocognitive models. Included is theory of how maladaptive mental processes become habitual and automatic, both from the Buddhist and Western psychological perspective. Specific noting and labeling techniques in open monitoring meditation, described in the Theravada and Western contemporary traditions, are highlighted as providing unique access to multiple modalities of awareness. Potential explicit and implicit mechanisms are discussed by which such techniques can contribute to transforming maladaptive habits of mind and perceptual and cognitive biases, improving efficiency, facilitating integration, and providing the flexibility to switch between systems of self-processing. Finally, a model is provided to describe the timing by which noting and labeling practices have the potential to influence different stages of low- and high-level neural processing. Hypotheses are proposed concerning both levels of processing in relation to the extent of practice. Implications for the nature of subjective experience and self-processing as it relates to one's habits of mind, behavior, and relation to the external world, are also described.	f	\N
24119895	To assess the effects of vaginal discharge on female sexual dysfunction (FSD) by using the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI). In a study at a university hospital in Canakkale, Turkey, women affected by vaginal discharge and age-matched healthy control women were recruited between January and December 2012. Women were grouped in accordance with their vaginal discharge complaints and each participant completed the FSFI questionnaire. A total of 114 women were included in the study. Women in the first group (n=58) had no vaginal discharge or had physiologic vaginal discharge, those in the second group (n=29) had abnormal vaginal discharge with itching, and those in the third group (n=27) had abnormal vaginal discharge without itching. Compared with the first group, women in the second and third groups had higher FSFI scores for desire, arousal, orgasm, and pain, in addition to higher overall FSFI scores. Women with genital malodor had significantly higher FSFI scores than patients without genital malodor (23.83 ± 5.07 vs 21.15 ± 4.78; P=0.008). Women with abnormal vaginal discharges were found to have better FSFI scores for some domains. This finding may be attributed to the adverse effects of sexual intercourse on vaginal infections.	f	\N
24120431	We investigated effects of inter-modal attention on concurrent visual and tactile stimulus processing by means of stimulus-driven oscillatory brain responses, so-called steady-state evoked potentials (SSEPs). To this end, we frequency-tagged a visual (7.5Hz) and a tactile stimulus (20Hz) and participants were cued, on a trial-by-trial basis, to attend to either vision or touch to perform a detection task in the cued modality. SSEPs driven by the stimulation comprised stimulus frequency-following (i.e. fundamental frequency) as well as frequency-doubling (i.e. second harmonic) responses. We observed that inter-modal attention to vision increased amplitude and phase synchrony of the fundamental frequency component of the visual SSEP while the second harmonic component showed an increase in phase synchrony, only. In contrast, inter-modal attention to touch increased SSEP amplitude of the second harmonic but not of the fundamental frequency, while leaving phase synchrony unaffected in both responses. Our results show that inter-modal attention generally influences concurrent stimulus processing in vision and touch, thus, extending earlier audio-visual findings to a visuo-tactile stimulus situation. The pattern of results, however, suggests differences in the neural implementation of inter-modal attentional influences on visual vs. tactile stimulus processing.	f	\N
24123615	Adaptive ongoing behavior requires using immediate sensory input to guide upcoming actions. Using a novel paradigm with volitional exploration of visuo-spatial scenes, we revealed novel deficits among hippocampal amnesic patients in effective spatial exploration of scenes, indicated by less-systematic exploration patterns than those of healthy comparison subjects. The disorganized exploration by amnesic patients occurred despite successful retention of individual object locations across the entire exploration period, indicating that exploration impairments were not secondary to rapid decay of scene information. These exploration deficits suggest that amnesic patients are impaired in integrating memory for recent actions, which may include information such as locations just visited and scene content, to plan immediately forthcoming actions. Using a novel task that measured the on-line links between sensory input and behavior, we observed the critical role of the hippocampus in modulating ongoing behavior.	f	\N
24125802	Drivers are not always aware that they are becoming impaired as a result of sleepiness. Using specific symptoms of sleepiness might assist with recognition of drowsiness related impairment and help drivers judge whether they are safe to drive a vehicle, however this has not been evaluated. In this study, 20 healthy volunteer professional drivers completed two randomized sessions in the laboratory - one under 24h of acute sleep deprivation, and one with alcohol. The Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT) and a 30min simulated driving task (AusEdTM) were performed every 3-4h in the sleep deprivation session, and at a BAC of 0.00% and 0.05% in the alcohol session, while electroencephalography (EEG) and eye movements were recorded. After each test session, drivers completed the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) and the Sleepiness Symptoms Questionnaire (SSQ), which includes eight specific sleepiness and driving performance symptoms. A second baseline session was completed on a separate day by the professional drivers and in an additional 20 non-professional drivers for test-retest reliability. There was moderate test-retest agreement on the SSQ (r=0.59). Significant correlations were identified between individual sleepiness symptoms and the KSS score (r values 0.50-0.74, p<0.01 for all symptoms). The frequency of all SSQ items increased during sleep deprivation (χ(2) values of 28.4-80.2, p<0.01 for all symptoms) and symptoms were related to increased subjective sleepiness and performance deterioration. The symptoms "struggling to keep your eyes open", "difficulty maintaining correct speed", "reactions were slow" and "head dropping down" were most closely related to increased alpha and theta activity on EEG (r values 0.49-0.59, p<0.001) and "nodding off to sleep" and "struggling to keep your eyes open" were related to slow eye movements (r values 0.67 and 0.64, p<0.001). Symptoms related to visual disturbance and impaired driving performance were most accurate at detecting severely impaired driving performance (AUC on ROC curve of 0.86-0.91 for detecting change in lateral lane position greater than the change at a BAC of 0.05%). Individual sleepiness symptoms are related to impairment during acute sleep deprivation and might be able to assist drivers in recognizing their own sleepiness and ability to drive safely.	f	\N
24128879	The present study investigated age-related attentional changes by comparing event-related potentials (ERPs) in young and older adults during a rapid serial visual presentation task. We focused on analyzing the P3a and the N2 in both the target stimulus and the immediately succeeding irrelevant stimulus. As compared with younger adults, older adults exhibited a marked reduction in the amplitude of the P3a and N2 elicited by the stimulus following the target stimulus. Moreover, in younger adults, the P3a and N2 amplitudes did not differ between both stimuli, whereas in older adults these ERP components were significantly reduced in the subsequent stimulus compared to the target one. The age-related attenuation of P3a and N2 amplitudes for the subsequent stimulus indicates that older adults take longer and have more difficulty shifting their attention from one stimulus to the next one.	f	\N
24130703	It has been suggested that sleep selectively enhances memories with future relevance. Given that sleep's benefits can vary by item within a learning context, the present study investigated whether the amount of sleep-dependent consolidation may vary across items based on the value of the to-be-learned material. For this purpose, we used a value-based learning paradigm in which participants studied words paired with point values. There were two groups; participants either studied the words in the evening and were tested after a 12 hr interval containing a full night of sleep, or studied the words in the morning and were tested after 12 hr of continuous daytime wake. Free recall (F(1,36) = 19.35, p<.001) and recognition accuracy (F(1,36) = 7.59, p = .01) for words were better following sleep relative to wake. However there was no difference in the linear increase in the probability of delayed recall with increasing word value for sleep and wake groups (p = .74). Thus, while encoding may vary with the value of the to-be-learned item, sleep-dependent consolidation does not.	f	\N
24131042	This study examines the effects of cognitive reappraisal on the cardiovascular response to affective stimuli. Participants (N = 53) were shown affective images and were asked either to attend to the images, or to downregulate negative affect through reappraisal of negative images or upregulate positive affect through reappraisal of positive images while continuous measures of cardiovascular activity were recorded. Reappraisal of negative images was associated with lower total peripheral resistance and larger cardiac output in the prestimulus period, whereas reappraisal of positive images was associated with less pronounced decreases of heart rate, cardiac output, and mean blood pressure in the viewing period as compared to unregulated conditions. The results indicate that cognitive reappraisal engenders adaptive hemodynamic profiles both during anticipation and during viewing of affective images depending on their valence and the regulatory goal.	f	\N
24131316	Associations are confusable when they share an item. For example, double-function pairs (with the form AB, BC) are harder to remember than control pairs. Although ambiguous pairs are more difficult on average, it is not clear whether memories for associations compete directly with one another (associative competition hypothesis), as assumed by models that incorporate associative symmetry (bidirectional associations). Alternatively, associative interference results might be explained away by: (a) item suppression hypothesis: competition only between memory for the two target items (A and C are both targets of B); (b) candidate competition hypothesis: The cue (B) retrieves two potential targets, A and C, which compete to be output. These alternative hypotheses could explain previous results in the related, AB/AC learning procedure. Our procedure included a large amount of interference that had to be resolved within a single study set. Participants studied sets of control (single-function) and double-function pairs and were asked to produce one or two associates, respectively, to cue items. Recall of AB and BC were negatively correlated and could not be explained away by item suppression or competition between simultaneously retrieved candidate items. Thus, competition can occur at the level of representation of associations, regardless of which item is the cue, consistent with associative symmetry.	f	\N
24133250	Using multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA), we studied how distributed visual representations in human occipitotemporal cortex are modulated by attention and link their modulation to concurrent activity in frontal and parietal cortex. We detected similar occipitotemporal patterns during a simple visuoperceptual task and an attention-to-working-memory task in which one or two stimuli were cued before being presented among other pictures. Pattern strength varied from highest to lowest when the stimulus was the exclusive focus of attention, a conjoint focus, and when it was potentially distracting. Although qualitatively similar effects were seen inside regions relatively specialized for the stimulus category and outside, the former were quantitatively stronger. By regressing occipitotemporal pattern strength against activity elsewhere in the brain, we identified frontal and parietal areas exerting top-down control over, or reading information out from, distributed patterns in occipitotemporal cortex. Their interactions with patterns inside regions relatively specialized for that stimulus category were higher than those with patterns outside those regions and varied in strength as a function of the attentional condition. One area, the frontal operculum, was distinguished by selectively interacting with occipitotemporal patterns only when they were the focus of attention. There was no evidence that any frontal or parietal area actively inhibited occipitotemporal representations even when they should be ignored and were suppressed. Using MVPA to decode information within these frontal and parietal areas showed that they contained information about attentional context and/or readout information from occipitotemporal cortex to guide behavior but that frontal regions lacked information about category identity.	f	\N
24134143	The belief that alcohol makes you cheerful is one of the main reasons for engaging in high-risk drinking, especially among young adults. The aim of the study was to investigate the association between blood alcohol content (BAC) and cheerfulness, focus distraction, and sluggishness among students attending high school parties. Participants included 230 students attending high school parties. BAC, measured by use of a breath analyzer, self-reported cheerfulness (on a score from 0 to 16), focus distraction (score from 0 to 8), and sluggishness (score from 0 to 4) were assessed several times during the party. Data were analyzed by means of linear regression, including robust standard errors and stratified on sex. For girls, cheerfulness increased up to a BAC of 0.113 g% and decreased at higher BACs. At BACs of 0.020, 0.050, 0.100, and 0.150 g% cheerfulness was 11.0 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 10.4 to 11.6), 12.4 (95% CI: 11.8 to 12.9), 13.5 (95% CI: 13.0 to 14.0), and 13.1 (95% CI: 11.9 to 14.4), respectively. For boys, the association was linear with an increase of 0.18 points in cheerfulness (95% CI: 0.01 to 0.36) for every 0.010 g% increase in BAC. Focus distraction increased with increasing BAC: 0.22 (95% CI: 0.16 to 0.28) and 0.24 (95% CI: 0.14 to 0.33) points for girls and boys, respectively, per 0.010 g% increase in BAC. The degree of sluggishness increased only slightly with increasing BAC with 0.02 (95% CI: 0.02 to 0.05) and 0.03 (95% CI: -0.01 to 0.07) points for every 0.010 g% increase in BAC for girls and boys, respectively. Cheerfulness increased up to a certain BAC value for girls, while it increased linearly for boys. Focus distraction increased with increasing BAC.	f	\N
24162862	Saccadic and manual reactions to a peripherally presented target are facilitated by removing a central fixation stimulus shortly before a target onset (the gap effect). The present study examined the effects of removal of a visible and invisible fixation point on the saccadic gap effect and the manual gap effect. Participants were required to fixate a central fixation point and respond to a peripherally presented target as quickly and accurately as possible by making a saccade (Experiment 1) or pressing a corresponding key (Experiment 2). The fixation point was dichoptically presented, and visibility was manipulated by using binocular rivalry and continuous flash suppression technique. In both saccade and key-press tasks, removing the visible fixation strongly quickened the responses. Furthermore, the invisible fixation, which remained on the display but suppressed, significantly delayed the saccadic response. Contrarily, the invisible fixation had no effect on the manual task. These results indicate that partially different processes mediate the saccadic gap effect and the manual gap effect. In particular, unconscious processes might modulate an oculomotor-specific component of the saccadic gap effect, presumably via subcortical mechanisms.	f	\N
24188061	Emotion regulation is generally thought to be a critical ingredient for successful interpersonal relationships. Ironically, few studies have investigated the link between how well spouses regulate emotion and how satisfied they are with their marriages. We utilized data from a 13-year, 3-wave longitudinal study of middle-aged (40-50 years old) and older (60-70 years old) long-term married couples, focusing on the associations between downregulation of negative emotion (measured during discussions of an area of marital conflict at Wave 1) and marital satisfaction (measured at all 3 waves). Downregulation of negative emotion was assessed by determining how quickly spouses reduced signs of negative emotion (in emotional experience, emotional behavior, and physiological arousal) after negative emotion events. Data were analyzed using actor-partner interdependence modeling. Findings showed that (a) greater downregulation of wives' negative experience and behavior predicted greater marital satisfaction for wives and husbands concurrently and (b) greater downregulation of wives' negative behavior predicted increases in wives' marital satisfaction longitudinally. Wives' use of constructive communication (measured between Waves 1 and 2) mediated the longitudinal associations. These results show the benefits of wives' downregulation of negative emotion during conflict for marital satisfaction and point to wives' constructive communication as a mediating pathway.	f	\N
24189992	Recent research has suggested that the extrinsic cognitive load generated by performing a nonlinguistic visual task while perceiving speech increases listeners' reliance on lexical knowledge and decreases their capacity to perceive phonetic detail. In the present study, we asked whether this effect is accounted for better at a lexical or a sublexical level. The former would imply that cognitive load directly affects lexical activation but not perceptual sensitivity; the latter would imply that increased lexical reliance under cognitive load is only a secondary consequence of imprecise or incomplete phonetic encoding. Using the phoneme restoration paradigm, we showed that perceptual sensitivity decreases (i.e., phoneme restoration increases) almost linearly with the effort involved in the concurrent visual task. However, cognitive load had only a minimal effect on the contribution of lexical information to phoneme restoration. We concluded that the locus of extrinsic cognitive load on the speech system is perceptual rather than lexical. Mechanisms by which cognitive load increases tolerance to acoustic imprecision and broadens phonemic categories were discussed.	f	\N
24210355	The neurodevelopmental disorder Williams syndrome (WS) has been associated with a social phenotype of hypersociability, non-social anxiety and an unusual attraction to faces. The current study uses eye tracking to explore attention allocation to emotionally expressive faces. Eye gaze and behavioural measures of anxiety and social reciprocity were investigated in adolescents and adults with WS when compared to typically developing individuals of comparable verbal mental age (VMA) and chronological age (CA). Results showed significant associations between high levels of behavioural anxiety and attention allocation away from the eye regions of threatening facial expressions in WS. The results challenge early claims of a unique attraction to the eyes in WS and suggest that individual differences in anxiety may mediate the allocation of attention to faces in WS.	f	\N
24210745	The interpersonal theory of suicidal behavior proposes that fearlessness of death and physical pain insensitivity is a necessary requisite for self-inflicted lethal self-harm. Repeated experiences with painful and provocative events are supposed to cause an incremental increase in acquired capability. The present study examined whether playing a first-person shooter-game in contrast to a first-person racing game increases pain tolerance, a dimension of the acquired capability construct, and risk-taking behavior, a risk factor for developing acquired capability. N=81 male participants were randomly assigned to either play an action-shooter or a racing game before engaging in a game on risk-taking behavior and performing a cold pressor task (CPT). Participants exhibited higher pain tolerance after playing an action shooter game than after playing a racing game. Furthermore, playing an action shooter was generally associated with heightened risk-taking behavior. Group-differences were not attributable to the effects of the different types of games on self-reported mood and arousal. Overall these results indicate that action-shooter gaming alters pain tolerance and risk-taking behavior. Therefore, it may well be that long-term consumption of violent video games increases a person's capability to enact lethal self-harm.	f	\N
24211372	Many theories of human sexual behavior assume that sexual stimuli obtain arousing properties through associative learning processes. It is widely accepted that classical conditioning contributes to the etiology of both normal and maladaptive human behaviors. Despite the hypothesized importance of basic learning processes in sexual behavior, research on classical conditioning of the sexual response in humans is scarce. In the present paper, animal studies and studies in humans on the role of pavlovian conditioning on sexual responses are reviewed. Animal research shows robust, direct effects of conditioning processes on partner- and place preference. On the contrast, the empirical research with humans in this area is limited and earlier studies within this field are plagued by methodological confounds. Although recent experimental demonstrations of human sexual conditioning are neither numerous nor robust, sexual arousal showed to be conditionable in both men and women. The present paper serves to highlight the major empirical findings and to renew the insight in how stimuli can acquire sexually arousing value. Hereby also related neurobiological processes in reward learning are discussed. Finally, the connections between animal and human research on the conditionability of sexual responses are discussed, and suggestions for future directions in human research are given.	f	\N
24214215	Prospective memory (PM) refers to the ability to remember to do something in the future, either in response to an event (event-based) or after a certain amount of time has elapsed (time-based). While the distinction between event- and time-based PM is widely acknowledged in the literature, little is known about the processes they share and those they do not. This is particularly true concerning their brain substrates, as almost all neuroimaging studies so far have focused on event-based PM. We proposed a functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm assessing both event-based and time-based PM to 20 healthy young individuals. Analyses revealed that event- and time-based PM both induced activation in the posterior frontal and parietal cortices, and deactivation in the medial rostral prefrontal cortex. In addition, activation more specific to each condition, which may underlie differences in strategic monitoring, was highlighted. Thus, occipital areas were more activated during event-based PM, probably reflecting target-checking, while a network comprising the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the cuneus/precuneus and, to a lesser extent, the inferior parietal lobule, superior temporal gyrus, and the cerebellum, was more activated in time-based PM, which may reflect the involvement of time-estimation processes. These results confirm the allocation of attentional resources to the maintenance of intention for event-based and time-based PM, as well as the engagement of distinct mechanisms reflecting the monitoring strategies specific to each condition.	f	\N
24215294	Even single words in isolation can evoke emotional reactions, but the mechanisms by which emotion is involved in automatic lexical processing are unclear. Previous studies using extremely similar materials and methods have yielded apparently incompatible patterns of results. In much previous work, however, words' emotional content is entangled with other non-emotional characteristics such as frequency of occurrence, familiarity and age of acquisition, all of which have potential consequences for lexical processing themselves. In the present study, the authors compare different models of emotion using the British Lexicon Project, a large-scale freely available lexical decision database. After controlling for the potentially confounding effects of non-emotional variables, a variety of statistical approaches revealed that emotional words, whether positive or negative, are processed faster than neutral words. This effect appears to be categorical rather than graded; is not modulated by emotional arousal; and is not limited to words explicitly referring to emotions. The authors suggest that emotional connotations facilitate processing due to the grounding of words' meanings in emotional experience.	f	\N
24219022	People's ability to resist cognitive distraction is crucial in many situations. The present research examines individuals' resistance to attentional distraction under conditions of evaluative pressure. In a series of 4 studies, participants had to complete various attentional tasks while believing their intelligence was or was not under the scrutiny of an experimenter. Using a spatial cuing paradigm, Studies 1 through 3 demonstrated that feeling evaluated led participants to implement stronger feature-based attentional control, which resulted in more (or less) distraction when irrelevant information matched (did not match) the searched-for target. Study 4 ruled out the possibility that the above effects were due to voluntary shifts of attention and demonstrated that the control settings implemented under evaluative pressure resulted in stronger goal-contingent response priming. Thus, the way individuals relate to the task-the performance context in which they are-induces strong attentional selection biases. Altogether, the present findings highlight an overlooked form of top-down modulation of attention based on performance self-relevance. Implications for both the current models of attentional control and the current hypotheses on the impact of evaluative pressure on cognition, as well as the consequences for more complex performances, are discussed.	f	\N
24219089	It has been suggested that individuals have an inherent acceptance of noise in the presence of speech, and that different acceptance of noise results in different hearing-aid (HA) use. The acceptable noise level (ANL) has been proposed for measurement of this property. It has been claimed that the ANL magnitude can predict hearing-aid use patterns. Many papers have been published reporting on different aspects of ANL, but none have challenged the predictive power of ANL. The purpose of this study was to discuss whether ANL can predict HA use and how more reliable ANL results can be obtained. Relevant literature regarding the ANL was found on Medline, Embase, and Google Scholar. Additional information was found as references in the included papers and through personal contacts, for instance when attending audiology conferences. Forty-five papers published in peer reviewed journals as well as a number of papers from trade journals, posters and oral presentations from audiology conventions. An inherent acceptance of noise in the presence of speech may exist, but no method for precise measurement of ANL is available. The ANL model for prediction of HA use has yet to be proven valid.	f	\N
24229338	This study examined the impact of cognition on young children's ability to navigate a speech-generating device (SGD) with dynamic paging. Knowledge of which cognitive factors impact navigational skills could help clinicians select the most appropriate SGD for children who have complex communication needs. A total of 65 typically developing children aged 48-77 months were assessed using the Leiter International Performance Scale-Revised (Leiter-R) and the Automated Working Memory Assessment (AWMA). Although significant correlations were found between the ability to navigate an SGD (using a taxonomic organization) and all cognitive factors except for cognitive flexibility, a stepwise linear regression revealed that sustained attention, categorization, and fluid reasoning were the most pragmatic set of factors to predict navigational skills. Future studies are needed to further understand the factors that impact children's navigational skills.	f	\N
24231166	This article describes the relationship between expressive communication impairments and common challenging behaviors in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Intellectual Disability. The communication challenges of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder/Intellectual Disability are described and several evidence-based intervention strategies are proposed to support communication so as to decrease challenging behaviors. Recommendations for practice are offered.	f	\N
24231224	Individuals with chronic pain consider improved sleep to be one of the most important outcomes of treatment. Physical activity has been shown to have beneficial effects on sleep in the general population. Despite these findings, the physical activity-sleep relationship has not been directly examined in a sample of people with chronic pain. This study aimed to examine the association between objective daytime physical activity and subsequent objective sleep for individuals with chronic pain while controlling for pain and psychosocial variables. An observational, prospective, within-person study design was used. A clinical sample of 50 adults with chronic pain was recruited. Participation involved completing a demographic questionnaire followed by 5 days of data collection. Over this period, participants wore a triaxial accelerometer to monitor their daytime activity and sleep. Participants also carried a handheld computer that administered a questionnaire measuring pain, mood, catastrophizing, and stress 6 times throughout the day. The results demonstrated that higher fluctuations in daytime activity significantly predicted shorter sleep duration. Furthermore, higher mean daytime activity levels and a greater number of pain sites contributed significantly to the prediction of longer periods of wakefulness at night. The small sample size used in this study limits the generalizability of the findings. Missing data may have led to overestimations or underestimations of effect sizes, and additional factors that may be associated with sleep (eg, medication usage, environmental factors) were not measured. The results of this study suggest that engagement in high-intensity activity and high fluctuations in activity are associated with poorer sleep at night; hence, activity modulation may be a key treatment strategy to address sleep complaints in individuals with chronic pain.	f	\N
24238471	Navigation without vision is a skill that is often employed in our daily lives, such as walking in the dark at night. Navigating without vision to a remembered target has previously been studied. However, little is known about the impact of age or obstacles on the attentional demands of a blind navigation task. This study examined the impacts of age and obstacles on reaction time (RT) and navigation precision during blind navigation in dual-task conditions. The aims were to determine the effects of age, obstacles, and auditory stimulus location on RT and navigation precision in a blind navigation task. Ten healthy young adults (24.5±2.5 years) and ten healthy older adults (69.5±2.9 years) participated in the study. Participants were asked to walk to a target located 8m ahead. In half the trials, the path was obstructed with hanging obstacles. Participants performed this task in the absence of vision, while executing a discrete RT task. Results demonstrated that older adults presented increased RT, linear distance travelled (LDT), and obstacle contact; that obstacle presence significantly increased RT compared to trials with no obstacles; and that an auditory stimulus emitted early versus late in the path increased LDT. Results suggest that the attentional demands of blind navigation are higher in older than young adults, as well as when obstacles are present. Furthermore, navigation precision is affected by age and when participants are distracted by the secondary task early in navigation, presumably because the secondary task interferes with path estimation.	f	\N
24245500	Spatial symbols can guide attention to a specific location only when they convey information about both direction and distance. However, the spatial symbols that have been used in previous cuing studies only convey information about direction, but not distance. Consequently, previous studies have only demonstrated that spatial symbols can exert partial control over the guidance of attention to specific locations. The present study investigated whether spatial symbols can also exert a more complete form of control over the guidance of attention to specific locations by presenting symbolic cues that conveyed information about both direction and distance. The effects of each spatial dimension were isolated by varying the spatial validity of each dimension separately. Consistent with the notion of more complete control, the results of 4 experiments showed that observers routinely combined symbolic information about direction and distance to guide their attention to specific locations. Perhaps more importantly, the results also suggested that observers demonstrated greater expertise orienting in response to direction symbols, though this expertise was only observed when these symbols were both familiar and commonly used to orient attention in the outside world. These results extend current theories, and set a new standard for studying symbolic control.	f	\N
24249815	Organophosphate exposures can affect children's neurodevelopment, possibly due to neurotoxicity induced by acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibition, and may affect boys more than girls. We tested the hypothesis that lower AChE activity is associated with lower neurobehavioral development among children living in Ecuadorian floricultural communities. In 2008, we examined 307 children (age: 4-9 years; 52% male) and quantified AChE activity and neurodevelopment in 5 domains: attention/executive functioning, language, memory/learning, visuospatial processing, and sensorimotor (NEPSY-II test). Associations were adjusted for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics and height-for-age, flower worker cohabitation, and hemoglobin concentration. Mean ± standard deviation AChE activity was 3.14 ± 0.49 U/mL (similar for both genders). The range of scores among neurodevelopment subtests was 5.9 to 10.7 U (standard deviation: 2.6-4.9 U). Girls had a greater mean attention/executive functioning domain score than boys. In boys only, there were increased odds ratios of low (<9th percentile) neurodevelopment among those in the lowest tertile versus the highest tertile of AChE activity (odds ratios: total neurodevelopment: 5.14 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.84 to 31.48]; attention/executive functioning domain: 4.55 [95% CI: 1.19 to 17.38], memory/learning domain: 6.03 [95% CI: 1.17 to 31.05]) after adjustment for socioeconomic and demographic factors, height-for-age, and hemoglobin. Within these domains, attention, inhibition and long-term memory subtests were most affected. Low AChE activity was associated with deficits in neurodevelopment, particularly in attention, inhibition, and memory in boys but not in girls. These critical cognitive skills affect learning and academic performance. Added precautions regarding secondary occupational pesticide exposure would be prudent.	f	\N
24259568	Attention, the prioritization of goal-relevant stimuli, and expectation, the modulation of stimulus processing by probabilistic context, represent the two main endogenous determinants of visual cognition. Neural selectivity in visual cortex is enhanced for both attended and expected stimuli, but the functional relationship between these mechanisms is poorly understood. Here, we adjudicated between two current hypotheses of how attention relates to predictive processing, namely, that attention either enhances or filters out perceptual prediction errors (PEs), the PE-promotion model versus the PE-suppression model. We acquired fMRI data from category-selective visual regions while human subjects viewed expected and unexpected stimuli that were either attended or unattended. Then, we trained multivariate neural pattern classifiers to discriminate expected from unexpected stimuli, depending on whether these stimuli had been attended or unattended. If attention promotes PEs, then this should increase the disparity of neural patterns associated with expected and unexpected stimuli, thus enhancing the classifier's ability to distinguish between the two. In contrast, if attention suppresses PEs, then this should reduce the disparity between neural signals for expected and unexpected percepts, thus impairing classifier performance. We demonstrate that attention greatly enhances a neural pattern classifier's ability to discriminate between expected and unexpected stimuli in a region- and stimulus category-specific fashion. These findings are incompatible with the PE-suppression model, but they strongly support the PE-promotion model, whereby attention increases the precision of prediction errors. Our results clarify the relationship between attention and expectation, casting attention as a mechanism for accelerating online error correction in predicting task-relevant visual inputs.	f	\N
24281563	Very few studies have investigated the effects of individual disorder-specific treatment of social phobia (SP) in adolescents. The objective of this study was to compare the effects of individual cognitive therapy for SP, group cognitive behavioural therapy (CBTG) and attentional placebo (AP) among adolescents with a primary diagnosis of SP. A randomized controlled design was used, and a total of 279 adolescents were assessed. Fifty-seven adolescents, between 13 and 16 years old, were allocated to individual cognitive therapy, CBTG or AP. The participants were assessed before treatment, at the end of treatment and at a 12-month follow-up using both self-report and a semi-structured interview. The individual cognitive therapy showed significant reductions in symptoms, impairment and diagnostic criteria both at the end of treatment and at the 12-month follow-up. Compared with CBTG and AP, the individual cognitive therapy group demonstrated significantly greater effects on both symptom reduction and impairment. There were no significant differences between CBTG and AP. In a direct comparison between the most commonly used treatments for adolescent SP, we found that individual therapy was the most effective, yielding better effects than both CBTG and AP.	f	\N
24292879	The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of two 15-min naps on nurses who work at night in a three-shift system. Of the 15 nurses who were included as study subjects on a night shift, eight took two short naps (the Nap condition), and seven worked without taking a nap (the No-nap condition) during the night shift. We measured sublingual temperature and the bispectral index (BIS), obtained heart rate and heart rate variability measures from an electrocardiogram (ECG), and evaluated sleepiness and fatigue levels every hour using the Visual Analog Scale (VAS). Both subjective sleepiness and fatigue increased between 4:00 and 5:00, with no significant differences observed between the two groups. However, the low- to high-frequency ratio (LF/HF) in the Nap condition group was found to be significantly lower than in the No-nap condition group. Furthermore, a sudden, brief increase in HF values was observed in the No-nap condition group in the morning. The results of this study suggest that taking two short naps may effectively reduce tension and prevent a brief increase in HF values by suppressing sympathetic nervous activity in the morning.	f	\N
24295123	Attentional network functioning in emotionally neutral conditions and self-reported attentional control (AC) were analysed as predictors of the tendency to engage in dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies. Diminished attentional orienting predicted an increased tendency to engage in brooding rumination, and enhanced alertness predicted a greater chance of suppression, beyond trait anxiety and self-reported AC, which were not predictive of either rumination or suppression. This is the first study to show that some forms of dysfunctional emotion regulation are related to the attentional network functioning in emotionally neutral conditions. Results are discussed in relation to regulatory temperament and anxiety-related attentional biases literature.	f	\N
24297128	CPAP therapy has remained the standard of care for the treatment of sleep apnea for nearly 4 decades. Its overall effectiveness, however, has been limited by incomplete adherence despite many efforts to improve comfort. Conventional alternative therapies include oral appliances and upper airway surgeries. Recently, several innovative alternatives to CPAP have been developed. These novel approaches include means to increase arousal thresholds, electrical nerve stimulation, oral vacuum devices, and nasal expiratory resistive devices. We will review the physiologic mechanisms and the current evidence for these novel treatments.	f	\N
24307489	Psychological pain may be helpful in conceptualizing suicidal behavior, in that high motivation to avoid pain combined with painful feelings may contribute to an increased risk of suicide. However, no experimental study has tested this hypothesis. The aim of the present study is to provide empirical evidence for the relationship between anhedonia, pain avoidance motivation, and suicidal ideation. The sample comprised 40 depressed outpatients and 20 healthy control subjects. All participants completed the Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation (BSS), Beck Depression Inventory, Psychache Scale, Three-Dimensional Psychological Pain Scale, the monetary incentive delay (MID), and affective incentive delay (AID) tasks. Based on BSS scores, clinical participants were divided into high suicidal ideation (HSI) and low suicidal ideation (LSI) groups. In the AID task, the HSI group had longer response times (RTs) under the reward condition than those under the punishment condition (p = .002). The LSI and control groups had shorter RTs under the reward condition compared with those under the neural condition (p <.001 and p = .008, respectively). The LSI group also had shorter RTs under the reward condition than under the punishment condition (p = .003). Pain arousal (r = -.33, p <.01) and BSS scores were significantly negatively correlated with differences in RTs between neutral and reward conditions. Pain avoidance (r = .35, p <.01) and BSS scores were positively correlated with differences in RTs between neutral and punishment conditions. The AID task was more sensitive than the MID task for the detection of participants' motivation in approaching hedonic experiences and avoiding pain. A suicidal mindset is manifested as decreased motivation to experience hedonia and increased motivation to avoid pain, which could be strong predictors of suicidal behavior.	f	\N
24308752	Understanding the factors that contribute to health-related quality of life (HRQOL) is critical for developing the most appropriate interventions for improving or maintaining the HRQOL in polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) patients. This study sought to determine the most significant predictors of the HRQOL in patients with PCOS. This was a cross-sectional study of 300 women with PCOS that was carried out in Kashan, Iran. A sample of women with PCOS was entered into the study and completed the following questionnaires: the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, the Body Image Concern Inventory (BICI), the Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale score, the modified polycystic ovary syndrome health-related quality of life questionnaire, the Female Sexual Function Index. Both direct and indirect relationships among clinical severity, psychological status, self-esteem, body image, and sexual function as independent predictors of HRQOL were examined using structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis. By using the SEM, we simultaneously test a number of possible hypotheses concerning the interrelations among the predictors of HRQOL in PCOS patients. In relation with severity of PCOS, reproductive history and menstrual status explained a high proportion of the variance of clinical variables (factor loading 0.37 and 0.34, respectively). The highest effect on HRQL was exerted by indirect effect of clinical factor (β = 0.90), self-esteem (β = 1.12), body image (β = 1.06), and sexual function (β = 0.26) that influenced negatively HRQOL. The infertility and menstrual domains were the most affected areas of HRQOL. In relation with sexual dysfunction, the most affected domains were desire and arousal. The highest effect of PCOS symptoms on HRQOL impairment among patients was exerted by self-esteem, body image, and sexual dysfunction. With regard to HRQOL in clinical routine, we conclude these mediating factors should be taken into consideration and adequately treated if present.	f	\N
24308770	The present study addressed the ecological validity of the individual-focused experimental paradigm in sex research. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of partner presence vs. absence in the laboratory testing situation, and of manipulation of attentional focus, on genital and subjective sexual arousal of healthy women and men. Sexually functional heterosexual men (n = 12) and women (n = 12) and their partners participated in this study. During partner presence, the partner sat opposite to the participant; self-focused attention was experimentally manipulated by introducing, respectively, a semi-reflecting glass pane, and a wall-mounted camera. Perceived state self-focused attention and genital and subjective sexual arousal during presentation of audiovisual erotic film stimuli were assessed. Partner presence resulted in higher perceived self-focus (η(p)(2) = 0.22) and lower genital responses to erotic stimulation (η(p)(2) = 0.21). The interaction of partner presence and increased self-focused attention differentially affected genital arousal in female and male participants (η(p)(2) = 0.38). The mean genital response in men was lower during private self-focus than during non-self-focus with the partner present but was higher during private self-focus with the the partner absent (η(p)(2) = 0.23). The genital response in women to public self-focus was lower than to private self-focus and to non-self-focus with their partner present (η(p)(2) = 0.36). With the partner absent, the genital response in women to private self-focus was lower than to non-self-focus (η(p)(2) = 0.23). Retrospective subjective arousal of women was higher with partner present (M = 3.2) than with partner absent (M = 2.9), whereas men reported higher retrospective subjective arousal with their partner absent (M = 3.5) than present (M = 3.1). These findings suggest that mere presence of the partner impacts the sexual response differentially in women and men. Enhancing the ecological validity of the individual-based laboratory paradigm for sex research warrants closer examination in future research.	f	\N
24311058	The change blindness paradigm, in which participants often fail to notice substantial changes in a scene, is a popular tool for studying scene perception, visual memory, and the link between awareness and attention. Some of the most striking and popular examples of change blindness have been demonstrated with digital photographs of natural scenes; in most studies, however, much simpler displays, such as abstract stimuli or "free-floating" objects, are typically used. Although simple displays have undeniable advantages, natural scenes remain a very useful and attractive stimulus for change blindness research. To assist researchers interested in using natural-scene stimuli in change blindness experiments, we provide here a step-by-step tutorial on how to produce changes in natural-scene images with a freely available image-processing tool (GIMP). We explain how changes in a scene can be made by deleting objects or relocating them within the scene or by changing the color of an object, in just a few simple steps. We also explain how the physical properties of such changes can be analyzed using GIMP and MATLAB (a high-level scientific programming tool). Finally, we present an experiment confirming that scenes manipulated according to our guidelines are effective in inducing change blindness and demonstrating the relationship between change blindness and the physical properties of the change and inter-individual differences in performance measures. We expect that this tutorial will be useful for researchers interested in studying the mechanisms of change blindness, attention, or visual memory using natural scenes.	f	\N
24321032	Subjects performed Sternberg-type memory recognition tasks (Sternberg paradigm) in four experiments. Category-instance names were used as learning and testing materials. Sternberg's original experiments demonstrated a linear relation between reaction time (RT) and memory-set size (MSS). A few later studies found no relation, and other studies found a nonlinear relation (logarithmic) between the two variables. These deviations were used as evidence undermining Sternberg's serial scan theory. This study identified two confounding variables in the fixed-set procedure of the paradigm (where multiple probes are presented at test for a learned memory set) that could generate a MSS RT function that was either flat or logarithmic rather than linearly increasing. These two confounding variables were task-switching cost and repetition priming. The former factor worked against smaller memory sets and in favour of larger sets whereas the latter factor worked in the opposite way. Results demonstrated that a null or a logarithmic RT-to-MSS relation could be the artefact of the combined effects of these two variables. The Sternberg paradigm has been used widely in memory research, and a thorough understanding of the subtle methodological pitfalls is crucial. It is suggested that a varied-set procedure (where only one probe is presented at test for a learned memory set) is a more contamination-free procedure for measuring the MSS effects, and that if a fixed-set procedure is used, it is worthwhile examining the RT function of the very first trials across the MSSs, which are presumably relatively free of contamination by the subsequent trials.	f	\N
24333280	During free viewing visual search, observers often refixate the same locations several times before and after target detection is reported with a button press. We analyzed the rate of microsaccades in the sequence of refixations made during visual search and found two important components. One related to the visual content of the region being fixated; fixations on targets generate more microsaccades and more microsaccades are generated for those targets that are more difficult to disambiguate. The other empathizes non-visual decisional processes; fixations containing the button press generate more microsaccades than those made on the same target but without the button press. Pupil dilation during the same refixations reveals a similar modulation. We inferred that generic sympathetic arousal mechanisms are part of the articulated complex of perceptual processes governing fixational eye movements.	f	\N
24345636	The formation of associations between items and their context has been proposed to rely on mechanisms distinct from those supporting memory for a single item. Although emotional experiences can profoundly affect memory, our understanding of how it interacts with different aspects of memory remains unclear. We performed three experiments to examine the effects of emotion on memory for items and their associations. By presenting neutral and negative items with background contexts, Experiment 1 demonstrated that item memory was facilitated by emotional affect, whereas memory for an associated context was reduced. In Experiment 2, arousal was manipulated independently of the memoranda, by a threat of shock, whereby encoding trials occurred under conditions of threat or safety. Memory for context was equally impaired by the presence of negative affect, whether induced by threat of shock or a negative item, relative to retrieval of the context of a neutral item in safety. In Experiment 3, participants were presented with neutral and negative items as paired associates, including all combinations of neutral and negative items. The results showed both above effects: compared to a neutral item, memory for the associate of a negative item (a second item here, context in Experiments 1 and 2) is impaired, whereas retrieval of the item itself is enhanced. Our findings suggest that negative affect impairs associative memory while recognition of a negative item is enhanced. They support dual-processing models in which negative affect or stress impairs hippocampal-dependent associative memory while the storage of negative sensory/perceptual representations is spared or even strengthened.	f	\N
24352689	Despite a growing acceptance that attention and memory interact, and that attention can be focused on an active internal mental representation (i.e., reflective attention), there has been a paucity of work focusing on reflective attention to 'sound objects' (i.e., mental representations of actual sound sources in the environment). Further research on the dynamic interactions between auditory attention and memory, as well as its degree of neuroplasticity, is important for understanding how sound objects are represented, maintained, and accessed in the brain. This knowledge can then guide the development of training programs to help individuals with attention and memory problems. This review article focuses on attention to memory with an emphasis on behavioral and neuroimaging studies that have begun to explore the mechanisms that mediate reflective attentional orienting in vision and more recently, in audition. Reflective attention refers to situations in which attention is oriented toward internal representations rather than focused on external stimuli. We propose four general principles underlying attention to short-term memory. Furthermore, we suggest that mechanisms involved in orienting attention to visual object representations may also apply for orienting attention to sound object representations.	f	\N
24367795	Disturbed sleep is a common problem in both chronic pain and major depressive disorder (MDD). Moreover, many patients with chronic pain are depressed. To examine the effects of depression on the sleep behaviour of chronic pain patients by comparing patients who did or did not meet diagnostic criteria for MDD. A total of 60 patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain underwent structured diagnostic interviews for MDD and insomnia, and completed questionnaires assessing pain severity, disability, sleep quality, beliefs and attitudes about sleep, and sleep hygiene. For four consecutive days, they also completed a sleep diary, and reported on sleep hygiene practices and presleep arousal. Thirty-three patients (55%) met diagnostic criteria for MDD, most of whom (n=32 [97%]) also fulfilled criteria for insomnia disorder. Insomnia was also common among patients without MDD (21 of 27&nbsp;[78%]). Participants with MDD had higher self-reports of pain, disability, dysfunctional beliefs about sleep, and, on a prospective basis, greater presleep arousal and poorer sleep hygiene. However, diary assessments of specific sleep parameters (eg, sleep onset latency, total sleep time, sleep efficiency) did not differ between the groups. Chronic pain patients with comorbid MDD exhibited more dysfunctional beliefs about sleep, poorer sleep hygiene practices and greater presleep arousal; however, diary-recorded sleep characteristics may not differ from those of patients without MDD. Chronic pain itself may disturb sleep so extensively that MDD introduces little additive effect. MDD in chronic pain may be related to the cognitive and behavioural aspects of insomnia, rather than to an incremental disturbance in the initiation or maintenance of sleep.	f	\N
24368220	Visual marking refers to the phenomenon in which old items in a visual search are excluded from the search when new items appear in the visual field. Visual marking may result from inhibition of irrelevant information at the location of old items before new items appear. Moreover, sensitivity to increments in contrast at the old locations has been shown to be lower than that to increments at the new locations. We used equivalent noise analysis to examine whether the reduction in sensitivity is the result of an increase in internal noise or a decrease in calculation efficiency. Following a search in which reaction time was measured, participants were asked to indicate whether a Gaussian luminance blob was present. Parameters estimated from the threshold-versus-noise contrast function indicated that calculation efficiency at old locations was lower than that at new locations, and internal noise did not increase at old locations but rather decreased slightly. Thus, the reduction in sensitivity at old locations is attributable a decrease in calculation efficiency. These data suggest that an inhibitory template for visual marking may benefit visual search by diverting limited attentional resources, such as time and resolution, away from previewed locations and reserving them for the target search.	f	\N
24372764	The sympathetic nervous system and children's sleep serve critical arousal regulation functions. Shortened pre-ejection period, a reliable indirect index of greater sympathetic nervous system activity, has been associated with reduced sleep duration and quality in adults, but limited evidence exists in children regarding associations between pre-ejection period and sleep. We examined relations between pre-ejection period reactivity in response to a laboratory-based stressor and multiple parameters of actigraphy-based sleep duration and quality in children. The sample included 123 boys and 112 girls [mean age = 11.31 years, standard deviation (SD) = 0.63 years]. Controlling for body mass index, sex and pre-ejection period baseline, increased sympathetic nervous system reactivity, indexed by a lower level of pre-ejection period during the challenge than the baseline, was associated with worse sleep quality indicated by lower sleep efficiency, greater sleep activity and greater long wake episodes. The findings add to a small literature on relations between sympathetic nervous system functioning and children's sleep, suggesting that poor sleep quality is related to dysregulation of this stress response system.	f	\N
24374558	The visual system is exquisitely adapted to the task of extracting conceptual information from visual input with every new eye fixation, three or four times a second. Here we assess the minimum viewing time needed for visual comprehension, using rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) of a series of six or 12 pictures presented at between 13 and 80 ms per picture, with no interstimulus interval. Participants were to detect a picture specified by a name (e.g., smiling couple) that was given just before or immediately after the sequence. Detection improved with increasing duration and was better when the name was presented before the sequence, but performance was significantly above chance at all durations, whether the target was named before or only after the sequence. The results are consistent with feedforward models, in which an initial wave of neural activity through the ventral stream is sufficient to allow identification of a complex visual stimulus in a single forward pass. Although we discuss other explanations, the results suggest that neither reentrant processing from higher to lower levels nor advance information about the stimulus is necessary for the conscious detection of rapidly presented, complex visual information.	f	\N
24379080	Unlike men, heterosexual women's genital arousal is gender nonspecific, such that heterosexual women show relatively similar genital arousal to sexual stimuli depicting men and women but typically report greater subjective arousal to male stimuli. Based on the ovulatory-shift hypothesis-that women show a mid-cycle shift in preferences towards more masculine features during peak fertility-we predicted that heterosexual women's genital and subjective arousal would be gender specific (more arousal towards male stimuli) during peak fertility. Twenty-two naturally-cycling heterosexual women were assessed during the follicular and luteal phases of their menstrual cycle to examine the role of menstrual cycle phase in gender specificity of genital and subjective sexual arousal. Menstrual cycle phase was confirmed with salivary hormone assays; phase at the time of first testing was counterbalanced. Women's genital and subjective sexual arousal patterns were gender nonspecific, irrespective of cycle phase. Cycle phase at first testing session did not influence genital or subjective arousal in the second testing session. Similar to previous research, women's genital and subjective sexual arousal varied with cues of sexual activity, but neither genital nor subjective sexual arousal varied by gender cues, with the exception of masturbation stimuli, where women showed higher genital arousal to the stimuli depicting male compared to female actors. These data suggest that menstrual cycle phase does not influence the gender specificity of heterosexual women's genital and subjective sexual arousal.	f	\N
24382820	This study examined correlations between surgical recommendations based on either drug-induced sleep endoscopy (DISE) or common awake examination methods in patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS). Prospective, blinded, clinical trial at a university hospital. An otorhinolaryngologist designed surgical plans for patients with OSAS after clinical examination, lateral cephalometry, the Müller maneuver, and Friedman staging. A second otorhinolaryngologist blinded to the previous plans made surgical recommendations after DISE. A third person tested agreement between the two sets of plans using Cohen's kappa statistic and the chi-squared test. One hundred and sixty-two patients (15 females, 147 males) completed the protocol. Good correlation was observed between DISE and Friedman staging regarding recommendations for isolated oropharyngeal or multilevel surgery (kappa = 0.61). Correlations between DISE and clinical examination, lateral cephalometry, and the Müller maneuver regarding surgical procedures on specific structures contributing to upper airway obstruction ranged from fair for velum/tonsil surgery (k = 0.41-0.60) to poor (k = 0.01-0.20) for tongue-base, lateral pharyngeal wall, and epiglottal surgery. The most informative value was DISE versus clinical evaluation, lateral cephalometry, and the Müller maneuver, which changed surgical recommendations concerning the structures contributing to hypopharyngeal or laryngeal obstruction in > 40% of patients. Our results indicate that DISE provides more information about the anatomical locations and pattern of obstruction, particularly regarding the specific structures contributing to hypopharyngeal and laryngeal obstruction. DISE changes surgical decision making compared to awake evaluation methods.	f	\N
24387832	The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of intention to fall asleep on sleep quality in good sleepers using polysomnographic and subjective nap parameters. We hypothesized that high intention to sleep would lead to arousal, worsening sleep quality. A counterbalanced 2 × 2 experimental design with one intra-individual (neutral versus motivating instruction) and one inter-individual (instruction sequence) variable was used. Thirty-three good sleepers (22 females; mean age: 24.1 ± 8.4 years) each attended two 1-h daytime polysomnographic recording sessions in the laboratory. When providing motivating instruction, the experimenter insisted on the importance of falling asleep as quickly as possible and promised a financial reward. Compared with neutral instruction, motivating instruction was associated with increased waking after sleep onset, number of awakenings and arousal index during napping. No relationship between instruction and subjective nap appraisal was found. The effect of high intention on sleep fragmentation remained significant after controlling for habitual napping, depression, anxiety and sleepiness. Thus, our findings suggest that high intention to fall asleep worsened sleep quality, especially in terms of sleep fragmentation, in good sleepers.	f	\N
24390823	Attention can modulate processing of visual input according to task-relevant features, even as early as approximately 100 ms after stimulus presentation. In the present study, event-related potential and behavioral data revealed that inhibition of distractor features, rather than activation of target features, is the primary driver of early feature-based selection in human observers. This discovery of inhibition consistent with task goals during early visual processing suggests that inhibition plays a much larger role at an earlier stage of target selection than previously recognized. It also highlights the importance of understanding the role of inhibition (in addition to activation) in attention.	f	\N
24405496	To assess cognitive function in children and adolescents presenting with acute conversion symptoms. Fifty-seven participants aged 8.5-18 years (41 girls and 16 boys) with conversion symptoms and 57 age- and gender-matched healthy controls completed the IntegNeuro neurocognitive battery, an estimate of intelligence, and self-report measures of subjective emotional distress. Participants with conversion symptoms showed poorer performance within attention, executive function, and memory domains. Poorer performance was reflected in more errors on specific tests: Switching of Attention (t(79) = 2.17, p = .03); Verbal Interference (t(72) = 2.64, p = .01); Go/No-Go (t(73) = 2.20, p = .03); Memory Recall and Verbal Learning (interference errors for memory recall; t(61) = 3.13, p < .01); and short-delay recall (t(75) = 2.05, p < .01) and long-delay recall (t(62) = 2.24, p = .03). Poorer performance was also reflected in a reduced span of working memory on the Digit Span Test for both forward recall span (t(103) = -3.64, p < .001) and backward recall span (t(100) = -3.22, p < .01). There was no difference between participants and controls on IQ estimate (t(94) = -589, p = .56), and there was no correlation between cognitive function and perceived distress. Children and adolescents with acute conversion symptoms have a reduced capacity to manipulate and retain information, to block interfering information, and to inhibit responses, all of which are required for effective attention, executive function, and memory.	f	\N
24411524	The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that dual-hemisphere transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) could improve performance in a tactile spatial discriminative task, compared with uni-hemisphere or sham tDCS. Nine healthy adults participated in this double-blind, sham-controlled, and cross-over design study. The performance in a grating orientation task (GOT) in the right index finger was evaluated before, during, immediately after and 30min after the dual-hemisphere, uni-hemisphere (1mA, 20min), or sham tDCS (1mA, 30s) over S1. In the dual-hemisphere and sham conditions, anodal tDCS was applied over the left S1, and cathodal tDCS was applied over the right S1. In the uni-hemisphere condition, anodal tDCS was applied over the left S1, and cathodal tDCS was applied over the contralateral supraorbital front. The percentage of correct responses on the GOT during dual-hemisphere tDCS was significantly higher than that in the uni-hemisphere or sham tDCS conditions when the grating width was set to 0.75mm (all p<0.05). Dual-hemisphere tDCS over S1 improved performance in a tactile spatial discrimination task in healthy volunteers. Dual-hemisphere tDCS may be a useful strategy to improve sensory function in patients with sensory dysfunctions.	f	\N
24411652	The main objective was to explore early-age conditions associated to Substance Use Disorders (SUD) in adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD); secondly, to determine which of those conditions are specific to ADHD subjects; and finally, to compare ADHD and non-ADHD subjects in terms of SUD lifetime prevalence and professional, social and personal adjustment. Comparison between ADHD adults with (n=236) and without lifetime SUD (n=309) regarding clinical characteristics of ADHD, externalization disorders, temperamental traits, environmental factors, academic history and family psychiatric history; secondly, ADHD subjects were compared to a non-ADHD group (n=177) concerning those variables. The following variables were found to be positively associated to SUD in ADHD subjects: ADHD severity, CD and ODD comorbidities, temperamental characteristics ("fearful", "accident prone" and "frequent temper tantrums"), "sexual abuse", "be suspended from school", family history of SUD and ADHD, and male gender; ADHD inattentive subtype and "fearful" were inversely associated to SUD. From those variables, "frequent temper tantrums" was also associated to SUD in non-ADHD subjects. ADHD subjects had higher prevalence of lifetime SUD and greater professional, social and personal impairment than non-ADHD subjects. Findings suggest a significant association between ADHD, SUD and early-age conditions, such as CD and ODD comorbidity; other variables from childhood, namely, ADHD subtype, temper characteristics ("fearful", "accident prone"), "sexual abuse", "be suspended from school" and family history of ADHD are associated to SUD in ADHD subjects, but not in non-ADHD subjects. Moreover, this study confirms both the higher prevalence of lifetime SUD and greater professional, social and personal impairment in ADHD subjects than in non-ADHD subjects.	f	\N
24415407	We present the German adaptation of the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW; Bradley & Lang in Technical Report No. C-1. Gainsville: University of Florida, Center for Research in Psychophysiology). A total of 1,003 Words-German translations of the ANEW material-were rated on a total of six dimensions: The classic ratings of valence, arousal, and dominance (as in the ANEW corpus) were extended with additional arousal ratings using a slightly different scale (see BAWL: Võ et al. in Behavior Research Methods 41: 531-538, 2009; Võ, Jacobs, & Conrad in Behavior Research Methods 38: 606-609, 2006), along with ratings of imageability and potency. Measures of several objective psycholinguistic variables (different types of word frequency counts, grammatical class, number of letters, number of syllables, and number of orthographic neighbors) for the words were also added, so as to further facilitate the use of this new database in psycholinguistic research. These norms can be downloaded as supplemental materials with this article.	f	\N
24422248	Patients with extinction fail to report a contralesional stimulus when it is presented at the same time as an ipsilesional stimulus, and patients with unilateral neglect fail to report a contralesional stimulus even when there is no competing ipsilesional stimulus. Whereas extinction and neglect are common following stroke, the related phenomenon of anti-extinction is rare--there are four cases of anti-extinction in the literature, and all four cases demonstrated anti-extinction in the visual modality. Patients with anti-extinction do report a contralesional stimulus when it is presented at the same time as an ipsilesional stimulus; but, like patients with neglect, they fail to report a contralesional stimulus when there is no competing ipsilesional stimulus. We present the first case ofanti-extinction in the tactile modality.	f	\N
24427146	Researchers studying the emotional impact of music have not traditionally been concerned with the principled relationship between form and function in evolved animal signals. The acoustic structure of musical forms is related in important ways to emotion perception, and thus research on non-human animal vocalizations is relevant for understanding emotion in music. Musical behavior occurs in cultural contexts that include many other coordinated activities which mark group identity, and can allow people to communicate within and between social alliances. The emotional impact of music might be best understood as a proximate mechanism serving an ultimately social function. Recent work reveals intimate connections between properties of certain animal signals and evocative aspects of human music, including (1) examinations of the role of nonlinearities (e.g., broadband noise) in non-human animal vocalizations, and the analogous production and perception of these features in human music, and (2) an analysis of group musical performances and possible relationships to non-human animal chorusing and emotional contagion effects. Communicative features in music are likely due primarily to evolutionary by-products of phylogenetically older, but still intact communication systems. But in some cases, such as the coordinated rhythmic sounds produced by groups of musicians, our appreciation and emotional engagement might be driven by an adaptive social signaling system. Future empirical work should examine human musical behavior through the comparative lens of behavioral ecology and an adaptationist cognitive science. By this view, particular coordinated sound combinations generated by musicians exploit evolved perceptual response biases - many shared across species - and proliferate through cultural evolutionary processes.	f	\N
24448520	Contextual cueing reflects a memory-based attentional guidance process that develops through repeated exposure to displays in which a target location has been consistently paired with a specific context. In two experiments, we compared 20 younger children's (6-7 years old), 20 older children's (9-10 years old), and 20 young adults' (18-21 years old) abilities to acquire contextual cueing effects from displays in which half of the distracters predicted the location of the target and half did not. Across experiments, we varied the similarity between the predictive and nonpredictive distracters and the target. In Experiment 1, the predictive distracters were visually similar to the target and dissimilar from the nonpredictive distracters. In Experiment 2, the nonpredictive distracters were also similar to the target and predictive distracters. All three age groups exhibited contextual cueing in Experiment 1, although the effect was not as strong for the younger children relative to older children and adults. All participants exhibited weaker contextual cueing effects in Experiment 2, with the younger children not exhibiting significant contextual cueing at all. Apparently, when search processes could not be guided to the predictive distracters on the basis of salient stimulus features, younger children in particular experienced difficulty in implicitly identifying and using aspects of the context to facilitate with the acquisition of contextual cueing effects.	f	\N
24451416	Mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI) are common, but their outcomes are not very well known. A prospective study was conducted in Annecy hospital, France (CHRA), to assess the incidence of disorders 6 months after the injury and to identify risk factors for persistent disorders. All patients admitted to the emergency department after a mild brain injury between February 2006 and July 2007 were included. They were contacted by telephone 6 months later to detect (by questionnaire) the presence of persistent disorders. Patients reporting disorders were referred to the l ocal brain injury centre for a follow-up check-up. Ninety three of the 795 patients contacted reported disorders: memory disorders (80%), sleep disorders (79%), headaches (65%), irritability (64%), speech disorders (64%) and concentration disorders (62%). Disorders at 6 months were independently associated with age, female gender, presence of headache at the initial examination and CT scan performed in the emergency department. The disorders reported in this study were consistent with the results of previous studies. As these disorders are usually nonspecific, a case-control study or an exposed-unexposed study would be necessary to determine whether or not these disorders are linked to mTBI.	f	\N
24462326	To assess sexual function among women via self-evaluation of female sexual dysfunction (FSD) and to determine risk factors for FSD among Korean women. A preliminary questionnaire-based study in Ansan, Korea, enrolled 935 women between January and December 2010. Participants completed the Female Sexual Function Index and a self-administered survey. Participants were divided into 2 groups: in the recognized group (RG), women were aware of their sexual problems; in the unrecognized group (URG), women were not. The prevalence of FSD was 46.1% (n=431). The prevalence of recognized FSD was 21.5% (n=201), whereas that of unrecognized FSD was 24.6% (n=230) Younger women showed a significantly more positive attitude toward sex compared with older individuals (P<0.001). Sexual desire, sexual arousal, dyspareunia, lubrication, and sexual satisfaction were factors of sexual dysfunction in the RG. In the URG, sexual arousal, sexual desire, orgasm, dyspareunia, and sexual satisfaction were identified as significant factors. Women in the RG had positive attitudes toward sex, whereas those in the URG had negative attitudes. Women who were unsatisfied with their sexual life did not express a need for treatment. The sociocultural background of Korean women should be considered in the diagnosis and treatment of FSD.	f	\N
24462384	The standard of care for pediatric patients with ependymoma involves postoperative radiation therapy. Prior research suggests that conformal radiation therapy (CRT) is associated with relative sparing of cognitive and academic functioning, but little is known about the effect of CRT on emotional and behavioral functioning. A total of 113 patients with pediatric ependymoma underwent CRT using photons as part of their enrollment on an institutional trial. Patients completed annual evaluations of neurocognitive functioning during the first 5 years after CRT. Emotional and behavioral functioning was assessed via the Child Behavior Checklist. Before CRT, emotional and behavioral functioning were commensurate with those of the normative population and within normal limits. After 5 years, means remained within normal limits but were significantly below the normative mean. Linear mixed models revealed a significant increase in attention problems over time. These problems were associated with age at diagnosis/CRT, tumor location, and extent of resection. A higher-than-expected incidence of school problems was present at all assessment points after baseline. The use of photon CRT for ependymoma is associated with relatively stable emotional and behavioral functioning during the first 5 years after treatment. The exception is an increase in attention problems. Results suggest that intervening earlier in the survivorship period-during the first year posttreatment-may be beneficial.	f	\N
24473941	This internet-based study provided descriptive information and exploratory analyses on 1,795 male and 139 female members of the Adult Baby/Diaper Lover (ABDL) community. Based on prior research, some research questions focused on the degree to which ABDL behavior was associated with negative mood states, parental relationships, and attachment style. Based on clinical experience, a second research question focused on discerning two possible subgroups within the ABDL community: persons focused on role play behavior and persons who were primarily interested in sexual arousal in their ABDL behavior. The results showed modest support for the former research questions, but notable support for the last research question. Because of some overlap between the two hypothesized subgroups, additional subgroups may exist. Males in the ABDL community identified their ABDL interests earlier than females and these males may be more focused on sexual aspects of ABDL practices. Both males and females perceived being dominated as important in their ABDL behavior. Most participants were comfortable with their ABDL behavior and reported few problems. ABDL behavior may represent a sexual subculture that is not problematic for most of its participants.	f	\N
24475313	Illusory line motion (ILM) refers to a motion illusion in which a flash at one end of a bar prior to the bar's instantaneous presentation or removal results in the percept of motion. While some theories attribute the origin of ILM to attention or early perceptual mechanisms, others have proposed that ILM results from impletion mechanisms that reinterpret the static bar as one in motion. The current functional magnetic resonance imaging study examined participants while they made decisions about the direction of motion in which a bar appeared to be removed. Preceding the instantaneous removal of the bar with a flash at one end resulted in a motion percept away from the flash. If this flash and the bar's removal overlapped in time, it appeared that the bar was removed towards the flash (reverse ILM). Independent of the motion type, brain responses indicated activations in areas associated with motion (MT+), endogenous and exogenous attention (intraparietal sulcus, frontal eye fields, and ventral frontal cortex), and response selection (ACC). ILM was associated with lower percept scores and higher activations in ACC relative to real motion, but no differences in shape-selective areas emerged. This pattern of brain activation is consistent with the attentional gradient model or bottom-up accounts of ILM in preference to impletion.	f	\N
24490947	The human visual system is continuously confronted with dynamic visual input. One challenge that the visual system must solve, therefore, is recognizing when two distinct objects have appeared at a given location despite their brief presentation and rapid succession, that is, temporal object segmentation. Here we examined the role of magnocellular neurons in this process. We measured temporal object segmentation via object substitution masking (OSM), which reflects the failure to distinguish the target and mask as distinct objects through time. We isolated the selective role of magnocellular neurons by comparing performance under conditions of pulsed luminance pedestals, which are designed to saturate the magnocellular response, with that in a steady-pedestal condition that leaves both magnocellular and parvocellular channels available to process the target. Across two experiments, we found that OSM magnitude was enhanced under pulsed-pedestal conditions, in which the magnocellular response was impaired. This indicates that magnocellular neurons contribute to temporal object segmentation. Given that temporal object segmentation has consequences for which stimuli are consciously perceived, this demonstrates a functional mechanism via which magnocellular neurons contribute to determining the contents conscious perception. Implications for models of specialization of dorsal and ventral cortical streams are discussed.	f	\N
24492883	A physiologically based mathematical model of sleep-wake cycles is used to examine the effects of shift rotation interval (RI) (i.e., the number of days spent on each shift) on sleepiness and circadian dynamics on forward rotating 3-shift schedules. The effects of the schedule start time on the mean shift sleepiness are also demonstrated but are weak compared to the effects of RI. The dynamics are studied for a parameter set adjusted to match a most common natural sleep pattern (i.e., sleep between 0000 and 0800) and for common light conditions (i.e., 350 lux of shift lighting, 200 lux of daylight, 100 lux of artificial lighting during nighttime, and 0 lux during sleep). Mean shift sleepiness on a rotating schedule is found to increase with RI, reach maximum at intermediate RI=6 d, and then decrease. Complete entrainment to shifts within the schedules is not achieved at RI≤10 d. However, circadian oscillations synchronize to the rotation cycles, with RI=1,2 d and RI≥6 d demonstrating regular periodic changes of the circadian rhythm. At rapid rotation, circadian phase stays within a small 4-h interval, whereas slow rotation leads to around-the-clock transitions of the circadian phase with constantly delayed sleep times. Schedules with RI=3-5 d are not able to entrain the circadian rhythms, even in the absence of external circadian disturbances like social commitments and days off. To understand the circadian dynamics on the rotating shift schedules, a shift response map is developed, showing the direction of circadian change (i.e., delay or advance) depending on the relation between the shift start time and actual circadian phase. The map predicts that the un-entrained dynamics come from multiple transitions between advance and delay behavior on the shifts in the schedules. These are primarily caused by the imbalance between the amount of delay and advance on the different shift types within the schedule. Finally, it is argued that shift response maps can aid in the development of shift schedules with desired circadian characteristics.	f	\N
24493837	Numerous studies have investigated the neural substrates supporting cognitive reappraisal, identifying the importance of cognitive control processes implemented by prefrontal cortex (PFC). This study examined how valence and attention affect the processes used for cognitive reappraisal by asking participants to passively view or to cognitively reappraise positive and negative images with full or divided attention. When participants simply viewed these images, results revealed few effects of valence or attention. However, when participants engaged in reappraisal, there was a robust effect of valence, with the reappraisal of negative relative to positive images associated with more widespread activation, including within regions of medial and lateral PFC. There also was an effect of attention, with more lateral PFC recruitment when regulating with full attention and more medial PFC recruitment when regulating with divided attention. Within two regions of medial PFC and one region of ventrolateral PFC, there was an interaction between valence and attention: in these regions, divided attention reduced activity during reappraisal of positive but not negative images. Critically, participants continued to report reappraisal success even during the Divided Attention condition. These results suggest multiple routes to successful cognitive reappraisal, depending upon image valence and the availability of attentional resources.	f	\N
24498297	Cognitive impairment is associated with a negative prognosis in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), as well as with clinical specificity. We investigate neuropsychological function in ALS patients without known genetic mutations in a Korean tertiary clinic. Three hundred and eighteen patients were enrolled in a prospective longitudinal cohort from September 2008 to February 2012. At the time of diagnosis of sporadic ALS, we carried out genetic and comprehensive neuropsychological tests on all patients, and collected demographic and clinical characteristics. Six cognitive domains, namely executive function, attention, language, calculation, visuospatial function and memory were evaluated. ANOVA and t-tests were used to assess differences in clinical characteristics and neuropsychological parameters between sporadic ALS patients. The Kaplan-Meier method and Cox proportional hazard model were used for survival analysis. One hundred and sixty-six patients were categorized into five subtypes: normal cognition (ALS pure), cognitive impairment (ALSci), behavioral impairment (ALSbi), frontotemporal dementia (ALS-FTD), and other types of dementia. Seventy patients (70/166, 42.2%) were cognitively or behaviorally impaired. Among the impaired patients, eight (8/166, 4.8%) had FTD-type dementia and one (1/166, 0.6%) was Alzheimer's disease-type. The ALS patients with cognitive impairment (ALSci) and with FTD (ALS-FTD) were more severely impaired in executive function, attention, language and memory than the cognitively intact ALS patients (ALS pure). In a survival analysis, ALSci (β = 1.925, p = 0.025) and ALS-FTD groups (β = 4.150, p = 0.019) tended to have shorter survival than the ALS pure group. About half of ALS patients without known genetic variation have cognitive or behavioral impairment. ALS patients with cognitive abnormalities, especially FTD, have a poorer prognosis than those without cognitive impairment. In neuropsychological profiling, executive tasks were effective in identifying cognitive impairment in the ALS patients. It would be useful for clinicians to classify ALS according to neuropsychological profiles, and screen for subtle cognitive impairment.	f	\N
24512247	Emotional biases in attention, interpretation, and memory are viewed as important cognitive processes underlying symptoms of depression. To date, there is a limited understanding of the interplay among these processing biases. This study tested the dependence of memory on depression-related biases in attention and interpretation. Subclinically depressed and nondepressed participants completed a computerized version of the scrambled sentences test (measuring interpretation bias) while their eye movements were recorded (measuring attention bias). This task was followed by an incidental free recall test of previously constructed interpretations (measuring memory bias). Path analysis revealed a good fit for the model in which selective orienting of attention was associated with interpretation bias, which in turn was associated with a congruent bias in memory. Also, a good fit was observed for a path model in which biases in the maintenance of attention and interpretation were associated with memory bias. Both path models attained a superior fit compared with path models without the theorized functional relations among processing biases. These findings enhance understanding of how mechanisms of attention and interpretation regulate what is remembered. As such, they offer support for the combined cognitive biases hypothesis or the notion that emotionally biased cognitive processes are not isolated mechanisms but instead influence each other. Implications for theoretical models and emotion regulation across the spectrum of depressive symptoms are discussed.	f	\N
24534417	Low sexual desire is the most common sexual complaint in women. As a result, many women suffer from sexual dissatisfaction which often negatively interferes with their quality of life. These complaints have been classified as the condition Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD), and have recently been merged with the condition Female Sexual Arousal Disorder (FSAD) into the diagnosis Female Sexual Interest/Arousal Disorder (FSIAD) in the DSM-5. To date, no drug treatment approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA)/European Medicines Agency (EMA) is available to treat women with HSDD/FSIAD. As a result, there is an unmet need for a drug treatment for HSDD/FSIAD. In our search for an adequate treatment we followed a different approach compared to other pharmaceutical companies. Based on a personalized sexual medicine approach we proposed that different mechanisms cause low sexual desire in women, namely an insensitive system for sexual cues or dysfunctional activation of sexual inhibitory mechanisms. Subsequently we developed two new on-demand drug treatments for women with HSDD/FSIAD based on these different causal mechanisms. One treatment (testosterone combined with a phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitor) has been developed for women with HSDD/FSIAD due to a relatively insensitive system for sexual cues, while the second treatment (testosterone combined with a 5-HT₁A receptor agonist) has been developed for women with HSDD/FSIAD due to dysfunctional activation of sexual inhibitory mechanisms.	f	\N
24547790	Mental arithmetic shows systematic spatial biases. The association between numbers and space is well documented, but it is unknown whether arithmetic operation signs also have spatial associations and whether or not they contribute to spatial biases found in arithmetic. Adult participants classified plus and minus signs with left and right button presses under two counterbalanced response rules. Results from two experiments showed that spatially congruent responses (i.e., right-side responses for the plus sign and left-side responses for the minus sign) were responded to faster than spatially incongruent ones (i.e., left-side responses for the plus sign and right-side responses for the minus sign). We also report correlations between this novel operation sign spatial association (OSSA) effect and other spatial biases in number processing. In a control experiment with no explicit processing requirements for the operation signs there were no sign-related spatial biases. Overall, the results suggest that (a) arithmetic operation signs can evoke spatial associations (OSSA), (b) experience with arithmetic operations probably underlies the OSSA, and (c) the OSSA only partially contributes to spatial biases in arithmetic.	f	\N
24551458	The ability to concentrate on relevant sounds in the acoustic environment is crucial for everyday function and communication. Converging lines of evidence suggests that transient functional changes in auditory-cortex neurons, "short-term plasticity", might explain this fundamental function. Under conditions of strongly focused attention, enhanced processing of attended sounds can take place at very early latencies (~50 ms from sound onset) in primary auditory cortex and possibly even at earlier latencies in subcortical structures. More robust selective-attention short-term plasticity is manifested as modulation of responses peaking at ~100 ms from sound onset in functionally specialized nonprimary auditory-cortical areas by way of stimulus-specific reshaping of neuronal receptive fields that supports filtering of selectively attended sound features from task-irrelevant ones. Such effects have been shown to take effect in ~seconds following shifting of attentional focus. There are findings suggesting that the reshaping of neuronal receptive fields is even stronger at longer auditory-cortex response latencies (~300 ms from sound onset). These longer-latency short-term plasticity effects seem to build up more gradually, within tens of seconds after shifting the focus of attention. Importantly, some of the auditory-cortical short-term plasticity effects observed during selective attention predict enhancements in behaviorally measured sound discrimination performance.	f	\N
24553279	The purpose of this study was to identify factors influencing behavior guidance technique utilization among practicing pediatric dentists and explore potential barriers to the incorporation of previously unused techniques. The data for this study were obtained from a web-based survey containing 15 multiple choice questions concerning the practitioners' past, current, and anticipated future behavior guidance technique utilization. Most respondents received hands-on training in 10 of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry behavior guidance techniques. The type of training was associated with the practitioners' level of comfort using a given technique upon graduation and with the current frequency of technique utilization. Residency type impacted hands-on behavior guidance training, with 39 percent of respondents reporting no intravenous sedation training. The type of practice was associated with the frequency of behavior guidance technique utilization, as was graduation decade. Currently practicing dentists cited legal concerns, parental acceptance to change, and limited resources as perceived obstacles in the incorporation of new techniques. Behavior guidance technique selection and utilization among practicing pediatric dentists was influenced by multiple factors, including advanced education training, residency type, graduation decade, and practice type. Obstacles to the incorporation of previously unused techniques appear to be multifactorial.	f	\N
24561999	Object-based theories of attention propose that the selection of an object's feature leads to the rapid selection of all other constituent features, even those that are task irrelevant. We used magnetoencephalographic recordings to examine the timing and sequencing of neural activity patterns in feature-specific cortical areas as human subjects performed an object-based attention task. Subjects attended to one of two superimposed moving dot arrays that were perceived as transparent surfaces on the basis either of color or speed of motion. When surface motion was attended, the magnetoencephalographic waveforms showed enhanced activity in the motion-specific cortical area starting at ∼ 150 ms after motion onset, followed after ∼ 60 ms by enhanced activity in the color-specific area. When surface color was attended, this temporal sequence was reversed. This rapid sequential activation of the relevant and irrelevant feature modules provides a neural basis for the binding of an object's features into a unitary perceptual experience.	f	\N
24563397	The electroencephalogram (EEG) of wakefulness, sleep, and anaesthesia changes during childhood. Especially marked are the changes during the first year of life. In the second half of the first year, in most children EEG stages can be classified visually and automatically during anaesthesia which are similar to those observed in older children. In the first months of life, the EEG of anaesthesia is less differentiated, but it is still useful in patient monitoring during anaesthesia.	f	\N
24571815	The last few years have seen much research on girls with conduct disorder (CD). This article summarizes the gender-specific data regarding prevalence, differences with respect to symptomatology (e.g., subtypes of aggression, callous-unemotional (cu)-traits), and it presents data on the autonomic and neuroendocrine stress system as well as genetic, neurocognitive, and neuroimaging data. Differences in the impact of environmental factors on boys and girls for the development of CD are discussed. Taken together, the data indicate that there is great overlap in symptomatology, personality traits, and neurobiological aberrations in girls and boys with CD. Since fewer girls than boys exhibit CD symptomatology, further investigations on CD in girls might help to identify resilience factors that could improve future therapeutic interventions.	f	\N
24577097	The present study is an open-label extension (OLE) aimed at evaluating the effect of 100 mg/day of phosphatidylserine enriched with docosahexaenoic acid (PS-DHA) on cognitive performance in nondemented elderly individuals with memory complaints. From the participants who completed the core study, 122 continued with a 15-week OLE. Efficacy was assessed using a computerized tool and the Clinical Global Impression of Change (CGI-C) rating scale. A significant improvement in sustained attention and memory recognition was observed in the PS-DHA naïve group, while the PS-DHA continuers maintained their cognitive status. Additionally, a significant improvement in CGI-C was observed in the naïve group. The results demonstrate that consumption of 100 mg/day of PS-DHA might be associated with improving or maintaining cognitive status in elderly subjects with memory complaints.	f	\N
24578016	Anxious youth have shown altered behavioral performance on the dot-probe task, but neural activation patterns provoked by the task remain poorly understood. In particular, neural mechanisms of threat disengagement, a clinically relevant construct, have been inadequately explored. During fMRI acquisition, 121 youth (ages 9-13; 90 with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Separation Anxiety Disorder, and/or Social Phobia; 31 nonanxious controls) completed a dot-probe task, which required participants to identify the location of a dot replacing either a neutral or fearful face in a pair containing both faces. We assessed neural substrates of threat disengagement by comparing congruent trials (in which the dot replaces the fearful face) to incongruent trials (in which the dot replaces the neutral face). Across subjects, decreased rostrodorsal anterior cingulate cortex (rdACC) activity was observed specifically during incongruent trials. Nonanxious youth showed a convergent pattern in bilateral parahippocampal and hippocampal regions, whereas anxious youth showed an opposing pattern in these limbic areas, suggesting less integration of response across cortical and limbic areas relevant to threat appraisal. Reduced functional connectivity between rdACC and left parahippocampus/hippocampus was associated with greater anxiety. In the largest dot-probe fMRI sample to date, both anxious and nonanxious youth showed a neural pattern consistent with successful disengagement of threat reactivity in the rdACC. However, anxious youth showed evidence of abnormal disengagement in bilateral parahippocampal/hippocampal clusters when attention was directed away from threat. Early interventions targeting neural mechanisms of threat disengagement may be beneficial, for example, by increasing integration across rdACC and limbic regions.	f	\N
24578091	It is often the case that stimuli (or aspects of a stimulus) are referred to as being "task-irrelevant." Here, we recount where this label originated and argue that the use of this label is at odds with the concept of "relevance" that has arisen in the contingent-capture literature. This is not merely a matter of labels, but a matter of inference: When people describe a flanker stimulus as being "task-irrelevant," they may be (and sometimes are) tempted to infer that the conditions that were studied in the flanker task generalize to other tasks and other types of stimuli. Here, we show that this generalization is not warranted. The flanker effect exists not because attention has failed at selecting only the target from the display, but rather, the effect arises precisely because attention succeeded at selecting target-like (i.e., attentionally relevant) stimuli from the display. As a result, the flanker effect should not be used to infer how stimuli that are entirely unrelated to a participant's main task would be processed. We propose the use of a new terminology to replace this potentially misleading label.	f	\N
24587578	To compare sleep microstructure (cyclic alternating pattern, CAP) characteristics in otherwise healthy overweight (OW) and normal weight (NW) children. Polysomnographic cross-sectional study. Sleep laboratory. Fifty-eight (26 NW and 32 OW) 10-year-old children. N/A. Participants were part of a longitudinal study beginning in infancy and free of sleep disorders. Groups were based on body-mass index (BMI) z-score. From polysomnographic overnight recordings, sleep-waking states were scored according to international criteria. CAP analysis was performed visually during NREM sleep. Conventional sleep parameters were similar between groups. BMI was positively related to CAP rate and CAP sequences but inversely related to CAP B phase duration. Differences between groups were confined to slow-wave sleep (SWS), with OW children showing higher CAP rate, CAP cycles, and CAP A1 number and index and shorter CAP cycles and B phase duration. They also showed more CAP class intervals shorter than 30 s, and a suggestive trend for fewer intervals longer than 30 s. Cyclic alternating pattern characteristics in children related to nutritional status and were altered in overweight subjects during slow-wave sleep. We suggest that the more frequent oscillatory pattern of electroencephalographic slow activity in overweight subjects might reflect less stable slow-wave sleep episodes.	f	\N
24595540	Awake craniotomy is a valuable procedure since it allows brain mapping and live monitoring of eloquent brain functions. The advantage of minimizing resource utilization is also emphasized by some physicians in North America. Data on how well an awake craniotomy is tolerated by patients and how much stress it creates is available from different studies, but this topic has not consequently been summarized in a review of the available literature. Therefore, it is the purpose of this review to shed more light on the still controversially discussed aspect of an awake craniotomy. We reviewed the available English literature published until December 2013 searching for studies that investigated patients' responses to awake craniotomies. Twelve studies, published between 1998 and 2013, including 396 patients with awake surgery were identified. Eleven of these 12 studies set the focus on the perioperative time, one study focused on the later postoperative time. The vast majority of patients felt well prepared and overall satisfaction with the procedure was high. In the majority of studies up to 30 % of the patients recalled considerable pain and 10-14 % experienced strong anxiety during the procedure. The majority of patients reported that they would undergo an awake craniotomy again. A post traumatic stress disorder was present neither shortly nor years after surgery. However, a normal human response to such an exceptional situation can for instance be the delayed appearance of unintentional distressing recollections of the event despite the patients' satisfaction concerning the procedure. For selected patients, an awake craniotomy presents the best possible way to reduce the risk of surgery related neurological deficits. However, benefits and burdens of this type of procedure should be carefully considered when planning an awake craniotomy and the decision should serve the interests of the patient.	f	\N
24597272	Listeners find it relatively difficult to recognize words that are similar-sounding to other known words. In contrast, when asked to identify spoken nonwords, listeners perform better when the nonwords are similar to many words in their language. These effects of sound similarity have been assessed in multiple ways, and both sublexical (phonotactic probability) and lexical (neighborhood) effects have been reported, leading to models that incorporate multiple stages of processing. One prediction that can be derived from these models is that there may be differences among individuals in the size of these similarity effects as a function of working memory abilities. This study investigates how item-individual characteristics of nonwords (both phonotactic probability and neighborhood density) interact with listener-individual characteristics (such as cognitive abilities and hearing sensitivity) in the perceptual identification of nonwords. A set of nonwords was used in which neighborhood density and phonotactic probability were not correlated. In our data, neighborhood density affected identification more reliably than did phonotactic probability. The first study, with young adults, showed that higher neighborhood density particularly benefits nonword identification for those with poorer attention-switching control. This suggests that it may be easier to focus attention on a novel item if it activates and receives support from more similar-sounding neighbors. A similar study on nonword identification with older adults showed increased neighborhood density effects for those with poorer hearing, suggesting that activation of long-term linguistic knowledge is particularly important to back up auditory representations that are degraded as a result of hearing loss.	f	\N
24604626	In typical daily life, adults routinely adapt posture so that balance can be maintained while other goal-directed activities are performed. Interestingly, newly standing infants also control posture based on the demands of a task. It is unknown if the ability to properly adapt postural movements as a goal-directed task is performed emerges soon after the acquisition of independent stance or if it is present at earlier key postural milestones, such as independent sitting. In this study, the postural sway patterns of independently sitting infants were compared while either holding or not holding a toy. Infants exhibited less postural sway when holding the toy. This reduction in sway allowed infants to look at and stabilize the toy in their hand. Thus, the ability to adjust postural movements while performing a concurrent goal-directed task emerges long before the acquisition of independent stance.	f	\N
24617096	A scheme aimed at distracting children in the waiting room of the paediatric ophthalmology department of Bordeaux university hospital was developed and assessed at the end of the first year. Positive results were identified by those involved, benefiting both the children and the caregivers.	f	\N
24623783	The earliest stages of cortical processing of speech sounds take place in the auditory cortex. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies have provided evidence that the human articulatory motor cortex contributes also to speech processing. For example, stimulation of the motor lip representation influences specifically discrimination of lip-articulated speech sounds. However, the timing of the neural mechanisms underlying these articulator-specific motor contributions to speech processing is unknown. Furthermore, it is unclear whether they depend on attention. Here, we used magnetoencephalography and TMS to investigate the effect of attention on specificity and timing of interactions between the auditory and motor cortex during processing of speech sounds. We found that TMS-induced disruption of the motor lip representation modulated specifically the early auditory-cortex responses to lip-articulated speech sounds when they were attended. These articulator-specific modulations were left-lateralized and remarkably early, occurring 60-100 ms after sound onset. When speech sounds were ignored, the effect of this motor disruption on auditory-cortex responses was nonspecific and bilateral, and it started later, 170 ms after sound onset. The findings indicate that articulatory motor cortex can contribute to auditory processing of speech sounds even in the absence of behavioral tasks and when the sounds are not in the focus of attention. Importantly, the findings also show that attention can selectively facilitate the interaction of the auditory cortex with specific articulator representations during speech processing.	f	\N
24630049	Recent studies have correlated neurocognitive function and regional brain volumes in children with epilepsy. We tested whether brain volume differences between children with and without epilepsy explained differences in neurocognitive function. The study sample included 108 individuals with uncomplicated non-syndromic epilepsy (NSE) and 36 healthy age- and gender-matched controls. Participants received a standardized cognitive battery. Whole brain T1-weighted MRI was obtained and volumes analyzed with FreeSurfer (TM). Total brain volume (TBV) was significantly smaller in cases. After adjustment for TBV, cases had significantly larger regional grey matter volumes for total, frontal, parietal, and precentral cortex. Cases had poorer performance on neurocognitive indices of intelligence and variability of sustained attention. In cases, TBV showed small associations with intellectual indices of verbal and perceptual ability, working memory, and overall IQ. In controls, TBV showed medium associations with working memory and variability of sustained attention. In both groups, small associations were seen between some TBV-adjusted regional brain volumes and neurocognitive indices, but not in a consistent pattern. Brain volume differences did not account for cognitive differences between the groups. Patients with uncomplicated NSE have smaller brains than controls but areas of relative grey matter enlargement. That this relative regional enlargement occurs in the context of poorer overall neurocognitive functioning suggests that it is not adaptive. However, the lack of consistent associations between case-control differences in brain volumes and cognitive functioning suggests that brain volumes have limited explanatory value for cognitive functioning in childhood epilepsy.	f	\N
24631246	The human motor system is remarkably proficient in the online control of visually guided movements, adjusting to changes in the visual scene within 100 ms [1-3]. This is achieved through a set of highly automatic processes [4] translating visual information into representations suitable for motor control [5, 6]. For this to be accomplished, visual information pertaining to target and hand need to be identified and linked to the appropriate internal representations during the movement. Meanwhile, other visual information must be filtered out, which is especially demanding in visually cluttered natural environments. If selection of relevant sensory information for online control was achieved by visual attention, its limited capacity [7] would substantially constrain the efficiency of visuomotor feedback control. Here we demonstrate that both exogenously and endogenously cued attention facilitate the processing of visual target information [8], but not of visual hand information. Moreover, distracting visual information is more efficiently filtered out during the extraction of hand compared to target information. Our results therefore suggest the existence of a dedicated visuomotor binding mechanism that links the hand representation in visual and motor systems.	f	\N
24632819	Given the critical risks to public health and safety that can involve lapses in attention (e.g., through implication in workplace accidents), researchers have sought to develop cognitive-state tracking technologies, capable of alerting individuals engaged in cognitively demanding tasks of potentially dangerous decrements in their levels of attention. The purpose of the present study was to address this issue through an investigation of the reliability of optical measures of cortical correlates of attention in conjunction with machine learning techniques to distinguish between states of full attention and states characterized by reduced attention capacity during a sustained attention task. Seven subjects engaged in a 30 minutes duration sustained attention reaction time task with near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) monitoring over the prefrontal and the right parietal areas. NIRS signals from the first 10 minutes of the task were considered as characterizing the 'full attention' class, while the NIRS signals from the last 10 minutes of the task were considered as characterizing the 'attention decrement' class. A two-class support vector machine algorithm was exploited to distinguish between the two levels of attention using appropriate NIRS-derived signal features. Attention decrement occurred during the task as revealed by the significant increase in reaction time in the last 10 compared to the first 10 minutes of the task (p<.05). The results demonstrate relatively good classification accuracy, ranging from 65 to 90%. The highest classification accuracy results were obtained when exploiting the oxyhemoglobin signals (i.e., from 77 to 89%, depending on the cortical area considered) rather than the deoxyhemoglobin signals (i.e., from 65 to 66%). Moreover, the classification accuracy increased to 90% when using signals from the right parietal area rather than from the prefrontal cortex. The results support the feasibility of developing cognitive tracking technologies using NIRS and machine learning techniques.	f	\N
24636071	Although pedophilia is defined by a recurrent sexual interest in prepubescent children, little attention has been paid to the stability or fluidity of this sexual interest over time. The aim of the current study was to investigate if patterns of penile tumescence (as a proxy for sexual interest) measured by penile plethysmography testing (PPT) can change. In this retrospective chart review study, PPT results of 43 men diagnosed with pedophilia were collected and analyzed. All participants displayed a pedophilic sexual arousal pattern at the time of their first PPT. To test for change, we compared initial PPT results with subsequent PPT results measured at least 6 months later. Sexual arousal was assessed using PPT by measuring change in penile circumference induced by the presentation of standardized sexual audio stimuli. Approximately half of the sample (n = 21) displayed a change in PPT results. This change was characterized by a significant decrease of sexual arousal in response to pedophilic (child) stimuli and a significant increase of sexual arousal in response to nonpedophilic (adult) stimuli. No differences between sexual interest changers (ICs) and nonchangers (NC) were found for demographic data or for length of time between assessments. However, between-group comparisons revealed that ICs had significantly lower pedophilic indices at the initial assessment than NCs. Results from the current study indicate that relative pedophilic interest, as defined by increase in penile circumference in response to nonpedophilic stimuli as measured by PPT, changed in about 50% of men diagnosed with pedophilia who also had initial pedophilic PPT sexual responses. This represents a significant challenge to the hypothesis that sexual interest in men with pedophilia is unchangeable and should be the focus of future studies.	f	\N
24636501	A growing body of research has revealed that social evaluative stressors trigger biological and psychological responses that in chronic forms have been linked to aging and disease. Recent research suggests that self-compassion may protect the self from typical defensive responses to evaluation. We investigated whether brief training in self-compassion moderated biopsychological responses to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) in women. Compared to attention (placebo) and no-training control conditions, brief self-compassion training diminished sympathetic (salivary alpha-amylase), cardiac parasympathetic, and subjective anxiety responses, though not HPA-axis (salivary cortisol) responses to the TSST. Self-compassion training also led to greater self-compassion under threat relative to the control groups. In that social stress pervades modern life, self-compassion represents a promising approach to diminishing its potentially negative psychological and biological effects.	f	\N
24642806	The most common explanation for joint-action effects has been the action co-representation account in which observation of another's action is represented within one's own action system. However, recent evidence has shown that the most prominent of these joint-action effects (i.e., the Social Simon effect), can occur when no co-actor is present. In the current work we examined whether another joint-action phenomenon (a movement congruency effect) can be induced when a participant performs their part of the task with a different effector to that of their co-actor and when a co-actor's action is replaced by an attention-capturing luminance signal. Contrary to what is predicted by the action co-representation account, results show that the basic movement congruency effect occurred in both situations. These findings challenge the action co-representation account of this particular effect and suggest instead that it is driven by bottom-up mechanisms.	f	\N
24645871	One form of meditation intervention, the integrative body-mind training (IBMT) has been shown to improve attention, reduce stress and change self-reports of mood. In this paper we examine whether short-term IBMT can improve performance related to creativity and determine the role that mood may play in such improvement. Forty Chinese undergraduates were randomly assigned to short-term IBMT group or a relaxation training (RT) control group. Mood and creativity performance were assessed by the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) questionnaire respectively. As predicted, the results indicated that short-term (30 min per day for 7 days) IBMT improved creativity performance on the divergent thinking task, and yielded better emotional regulation than RT. In addition, cross-lagged analysis indicated that both positive and negative affect may influence creativity in IBMT group (not RT group). Our results suggested that emotion-related creativity-promoting mechanism may be attributed to short-term meditation.	f	\N
24647227	Loss of consciousness in anesthetized healthy participants and in patients with unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS) is associated with substantial alterations of functional connectivity across large-scale brain networks. Yet, a prominent distinction between the two cases is that after anesthesia, brain connectivity and consciousness are spontaneously restored, whereas in patients with UWS this restoration fails to occur, but why? A possible explanation is that the self-organizing capability of the brain is compromised in patients with UWS but not in healthy participants undergoing anesthesia. According to the theory of self-organized criticality, many natural complex systems, including the brain, evolve spontaneously to a critical state wherein system behaviors display spatial and/or temporal scale-invariant characteristics. Here we tested the hypothesis that the scale-free property of brain network organization is in fact fundamentally different between anesthetized healthy participants and UWS patients. We introduced a novel, computationally efficient approach to determine anatomical-functional parcellation of the whole-brain network at increasingly finer spatial scales. We found that in healthy participants, scale-free distributions of node size and node degree were present across wakefulness, propofol sedation, and recovery, despite significant propofol-induced functional connectivity changes. In patients with UWS, the scale-free distribution of node degree was absent, reflecting a fundamental difference between the two groups in adaptive reconfiguration of functional interaction between network components. The maintenance of scale-invariance across propofol sedation in healthy participants suggests the presence of persistent, on-going self-organizing processes to a critical state--a capacity that is compromised in patients with UWS.	f	\N
24650282	Neuropsychological tests are increasingly applied in research studies and clinical practice in psychiatry. In this context, the detection of poor effort is crucial to adequately interpret data. We measured schizophrenia patients' performance on a memory test designed to detect excessive malingering (the "21-Item Test"), before examining whether a second group of schizophrenia patients would excessively malinger on this test when given an incentive to feign memory impairment. Two independent studies including respectively 49 schizophrenia patients and 100 controls (study 1) and 25 schizophrenia patients and 25 controls (study 2) were conducted. In study 1, participants were asked to complete the 21-Item Test to the best of their ability. In study 2, participants were given a hypothetical scenario in which having a memory impairment would be financially advantageous for them, before completing the 21-Item Test. In study 1, no participant scored at levels indicative of excessive malingering. In study 2, 84% of controls but only 36% of patients scored at excessive levels of malingering, and these patients had higher executive functioning than patients who did not excessively malinger, although it should be noted that a significantly greater proportion of patients excessively malingered in study 2 compared to study 1. These results indicate that schizophrenia patients do not normally feign excessive memory impairment during psychological testing. Furthermore, they are less able and/or less inclined to excessively malinger than controls in situations where a memory impairment would be advantageous, perhaps indicating a better ability to malinger without detection. Potential clinical implications are discussed.	f	\N
24652341	While inattentional blindness is a modern classic in attention and perception research, analogous phenomena of inattentional deafness have been widely neglected. We here present the first investigation of inattentional deafness in and with music under controlled experimental conditions. Inattentional deafness in music is defined as the inability to consciously perceive an unexpected musical stimulus when attention is focused on a certain facet of the piece. Participants listened to a modification of the first 1'50″ of Richard Strauss' Thus Spake Zarathustra; while the control group just listened, the experimental group had to count the number of timpani beats. An e-guitar solo served as the unexpected event. In Study 1, experimental data from n = 115 participants were analyzed. Non-musicians were compared with musicians to investigate the impact of expertise. In Study 2 (n = 47), the scope of the inattentional deafness effect was investigated with a more salient unexpected stimulus. Results demonstrate an inattentional deafness effect under dynamic musical conditions. Quite unexpectedly, the effect was structurally equivalent even for musicians. Our findings clearly show that sustained inattentional deafness exists in the musical realm, in close correspondence to inattentional blindness with dynamic visual stimuli.	f	\N
24655152	Flexible and appropriate allocation of attention resources is important during dual-tasking to achieve task goals while maintaining postural safety. This pilot study aimed to examine the influence of explicit prioritization of attention on the dual-task paradigm by employing two levels of difficulty for the postural tasks and reaction time (RT) tasks in healthy young adults. The task entailed standing on a force platform on two feet or on one foot, attending to posture or RT, and completing a simple or choice RT task. Participants verbally responded "top" as soon as the light cue illuminated. In general, attending to RT produced faster RTs (F(1,19) = 30.9, p < 0.001) and improved center of pressure (COP) Displacement (F(1,19) = 5.1, p < 0.05) and 95% Area Ellipse (F(1,19) = 7.1, p < 0.05). These findings suggest that prioritizing attention away from posture may be beneficial for postural performance when completing a second task.	f	\N
24660887	Higher wake promotion against sleep drive boosts cognitive processing, but it also seems to increase the risk of insomnia by reinforcing an obsession with sleep in neurotic patients. To explore whether a personality trait of neuroticism simultaneously facilitates wake-promoting ability and sleep devaluation via a common regional prefrontal function under a sleep-restricted condition, working memory tasks were administered to 49 healthy humans after a 2-h sleep restriction. Higher wake-promoting ability demonstrated in a high-load task was correlated with lower bilateral prefrontal activation, as measured by near-infrared spectroscopy. Structural equation modeling revealed that neuroticism predicts sleep devaluation and wake-promoting ability via left and right regional prefrontal efficiency, respectively. Our results indicate that neuroticism-related neural efficiency increases resilience to sleepiness, but decreases sleep satisfaction.	f	\N
24661175	Visual attention and visual working memory exert severe capacity limitations on cognitive processing. Impairments in both functions may exacerbate the social and communication deficits seen in children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study characterizes spatial working memory and visual attention in school-age children with high-functioning autism. Children with ASD, and age, gender, and IQ-matched typically developing (TD) children performed 2 tasks: a spatial working memory task and an attentive tracking task. Compared with TD children, children with ASD showed a more pronounced deficit in the spatial working memory task than the attentive tracking task, even though the latter placed significant demands on sustained attention, location updating, and distractor inhibition. Because both groups of children were sensitive to configuration mismatches between the sample and test arrays, the spatial working memory deficit was not because of atypical organization of spatial working memory. These findings show that attention and working memory are dissociable, and that children with ASD show a specific deficit in buffering visual information across temporal discontinuity.	f	\N
24661700	All available studies addressing the clinical and legal aspects of child pornography have systematically concerned male abusers. The social lens through which women are viewed tends to play down their responsibility in the sexual abuse of children. Unlike men, women rarely abuse children outside the close or family circle. Furthermore, they have frequently been abused themselves in their childhood. To our knowledge, no cases of women charged with sex-related offences, including child pornography, have been described in the literature. The psychopathological characteristics of female sexual abusers and of the two women in our cases tend to suggest that the deliberate downloading of child pornography images by women is unusual, as their deviant behaviour is not related to paedophile sexual arousal It is hypothesized that the act enables women perpetrators to satisfy the sexual urges of their spouse. Sexual abuse by women exists, but the nature of the abuse appears to be specific to the gender of the perpetrator. We present two cases of women charged with sexual offences concerning minors, including the production of child pornography material.	f	\N
24672782	Attention allows us to selectively process the vast amount of information with which we are confronted, prioritizing some aspects of information and ignoring others by focusing on a certain location or aspect of the visual scene. Selective attention is guided by two cognitive mechanisms: saliency of the image (bottom up) and endogenous mechanisms (top down). These two mechanisms interact to direct attention and plan eye movements; then, the movement profile is sent to the motor system, which must constantly update the command needed to produce the desired eye movement. A new approach is described here to study how the eye motor control could influence this selection mechanism in clinical behavior: two groups of patients (SCA2 and late onset cerebellar ataxia LOCA) with well-known problems of motor control were studied; patients performed a cognitively demanding task; the results were compared to a stochastic model based on Monte Carlo simulations and a group of healthy subjects. The analytical procedure evaluated some energy functions for understanding the process. The implemented model suggested that patients performed an optimal visual search, reducing intrinsic noise sources. Our findings theorize a strict correlation between the "optimal motor system" and the "optimal stimulus encoders."	f	\N
24684315	Despite their similarity as visual patterns, we can discriminate and recognize many thousands of faces. This expertise has been linked to 2 coding mechanisms: holistic integration of information across the face and adaptive coding of face identity using norms tuned by experience. Recently, individual differences in face recognition ability have been discovered and linked to differences in holistic coding. Here we show that they are also linked to individual differences in adaptive coding of face identity, measured using face identity aftereffects. Identity aftereffects correlated significantly with several measures of face-selective recognition ability. They also correlated marginally with own-race face recognition ability, suggesting a role for adaptive coding in the well-known other-race effect. More generally, these results highlight the important functional role of adaptive face-coding mechanisms in face expertise, taking us beyond the traditional focus on holistic coding mechanisms.	f	\N
24687588	The underlying nature of verbal fluency deficits in Alzheimer's disease (AD) was investigated in this study. Participants were 48 individuals with AD and 48 cognitively healthy older adults. Fluency performance on letter and category tasks was analyzed across two 30-s intervals for total words produced, mean cluster size, and total switches. Compared with the control group, AD participants produced fewer words and switches on both fluency tasks and had a reduced category cluster size. The AD group was differentially impaired on category compared with letter fluency and produced more repetitive responses but fewer category exemplars than controls on the category task. A multidimensional scaling approach revealed that AD participants' semantic maps were similar to controls. Overall, the data suggest that executive abilities involving search and retrieval processes and a reduced availability of semantically related words contributed to the AD group's poorer performance despite similar temporal recall and organizational patterns.	f	\N
24692319	Attentional effort relates to the allocation of limited-capacity attentional resources to meet current task demands and involves the activation of top-down attentional systems in the brain. Pupillometry is a sensitive measure of this intensity aspect of top-down attentional control. Studies relate pupillary changes in response to cognitive processing to activity in the locus coeruleus (LC), which is the main hub of the brain's noradrenergic system and it is thought to modulate the operations of the brain's attentional systems. In the present study, participants performed a visual divided attention task known as multiple object tracking (MOT) while their pupil sizes were recorded by use of an infrared eye tracker and then were tested again with the same paradigm while brain activity was recorded using fMRI. We hypothesized that the individual pupil dilations, as an index of individual differences in mental effort, as originally proposed by Kahneman (1973), would be a better predictor of LC activity than the number of tracked objects during MOT. The current results support our hypothesis, since we observed pupil-related activity in the LC. Moreover, the changes in the pupil correlated with activity in the superior colliculus and the right thalamus, as well as cortical activity in the dorsal attention network, which previous studies have shown to be strongly activated during visual tracking of multiple targets. Follow-up pupillometric analyses of the MOT task in the same individuals also revealed that individual differences to cognitive load can be remarkably stable over a lag of several years. To our knowledge this is the first study using pupil dilations as an index of attentional effort in the MOT task and also relating these to functional changes in the brain that directly implicate the LC-NE system in the allocation of processing resources.	f	\N
24700789	Lack of insight into illness is a multidimensional phenomenon that has relevant implications on clinical course and therapy compliance. Here, we focused on metacognitive insight in schizophrenia, that is, the ability to monitor one's changes in state of mind and sensations, with the aim of investigating its neuroanatomical, psychopathological, and neuropsychological correlates. Fifty-seven consecutive patients with Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fourth Edition, Text Revision) diagnosis of schizophrenia were administered the Insight Scale, and comprehensive psychopathological and neuropsychological batteries. They underwent a high-resolution T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging investigation. Gray matter (GM) and white matter (WM) volumes were analyzed on a voxel-by-voxel basis using Statistical Parametric Mapping 8. Reduced metacognitive insight was related to reduced GM volumes in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and insula, and bilateral premotor area and putamen. Further, it was related to reduced WM volumes of the right superior longitudinal fasciculum, left corona radiata, left forceps minor, and bilateral cingulum. Increased metacognitive insight was related to increased depression severity and attentional control impairment, while the latter was related to increased GM volumes in brain areas linked to metacognitive insight. Results of this study suggest that prefrontal GM and WM bundles, all implied in cognitive control and self-reflection, may be the neuroanatomical correlates of metacognitive insight in schizophrenia. Further, higher metacognitive insight is hypothesized to be a risk factor for depression which may subsequently impair attention. This line of research may provide the basis for the development of cognitive interventions aimed at improving self-monitoring and compliance to treatment.	f	\N
24701725	To study the prevalence and associating factors of sexual dysfunction in Thai women using contraception with intrauterine device (IUD). A cross-sectional study was conducted in IUD users at the Family Planning Unit, Siriraj Hospital. Data were recruited between October 2012 and June 2013. The participants answered the questionnaires to collect demographic, obstetric-gynecological data, and female sexual function index (FSFI) score. Two hundred seventy one IUD users participated in this study. The mean age was 32.1 +/- 7.1 years old, mean body mass index (BMI) was 24.1 +/- 5.3 kg/m2. The prevalence of sexual dysfunction in IUD users was 50.9%. The associating factor that affected the sexual dysfunction significantly was observed in BMI group (p-value 0.033). Subgroup analysis illustrated that the underweight group had more sexual dysfunction. The lowest FSFI score was observed in the underweight group. The score was 23.50 +/- 4.52. The significant domains were found to be desirable and arousal domains. The prevalence of female sexual dysfunction in the period after IUD using was 50.9%. The BMI was a significant associating factor Underweight women showed higher trend of sexual dysfunction than other group, especially in the desire and arousal domain.	f	\N
24702791	Younger brains are noisier information processing systems; this means that information for younger individuals has to allow clearer differentiation between those aspects that are required for the processing task in hand (the 'signal') and those that are not (the 'noise'). We compared toddler-directed and adult-directed TV programmes (TotTV/ATV). We examined how low-level visual features (that previous research has suggested influence gaze allocation) relate to semantic information, namely the location of the character speaking in each frame. We show that this relationship differs between TotTV and ATV. First, we conducted Receiver Operator Characteristics analyses and found that feature congestion predicted speaking character location in TotTV but not ATV. Second, we used multiple analytical strategies to show that luminance differentials (flicker) predict face location more strongly in TotTV than ATV. Our results suggest that TotTV designers have intuited techniques for controlling toddler attention using low-level visual cues. The implications of these findings for structuring childhood learning experiences away from a screen are discussed.	f	\N
24705203	The nucleus accumbens (NAcc) plays critical roles in healthy motivation and learning, as well as in psychiatric disorders (including schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). Thus, techniques that confer control of NAcc activity might inspire new therapeutic interventions. By providing second-to-second temporal resolution of activity in small subcortical regions, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can resolve online changes in NAcc activity, which can then be presented as "neurofeedback." In an fMRI-based neurofeedback experiment designed to elicit NAcc activity, we found that subjects could increase their own NAcc activity, and that display of neurofeedback significantly enhanced their ability to do so. Subjects were not as capable of decreasing their NAcc activity, however, and enhanced control did not persist after subsequent removal of neurofeedback. Further analyses suggested that individuals who recruited positive aroused affect were better able to increase NAcc activity in response to neurofeedback, and that NAcc neurofeedback also elicited functionally correlated activity in the medial prefrontal cortex. Together, these findings suggest that humans can modulate their own NAcc activity and that fMRI-based neurofeedback may augment their efforts. The observed association between positive arousal and effective NAcc control further supports an anticipatory affect account of NAcc function.	f	\N
24705681	The existence of a network of brain regions which are activated when one undertakes a difficult visual search task is well established. Two primary nodes on this network are right posterior parietal cortex (rPPC) and right frontal eye fields. Both have been shown to be involved in the orientation of attention, but the contingency that the activity of one of these areas has on the other is less clear. We sought to investigate this question by using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to selectively decrease activity in rPPC and then asking participants to perform a visual search task whilst undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Comparison with a condition in which sham tDCS was applied revealed that cathodal tDCS over rPPC causes a selective bilateral decrease in frontal activity when performing a visual search task. This result demonstrates for the first time that premotor regions within the frontal lobe and rPPC are not only necessary to carry out a visual search task, but that they work together to bring about normal function.	f	\N
24721302	To explore whether cognitive impairment in breast cancer patients after the completion of chemotherapy treatment in comparisons with breast cancer patients without chemotherapy treatment and matched healthy controls. A neuropsychology battery was applied in all breast cancer patients at our hospital from January 2012 to February 2013. Forty-two breast cancer patients with chemotherapy treatment (CT) underwent neuropsychologic testing before the start of chemotherapy (T1) and after treatment (T2). And 37 patients without chemotherapy treatment (non-CT) and matched healthy controls (HC) underwent the same assessment at matched intervals. The CT group performed significantly worse on attention, memory and executive function tests at T2 versus T1 (P < 0.05). As compared with HC and non-CT groups, the correct numbers of backward, digit symbol, delayed recall and recognition were lower in the CT group (P < 0.05). The reacting time of TMT test B, Stroop test B and Stroop test C were longer in the CT group (P < 0.05). There was significant time interaction in three groups (P < 0.05). There are longitudinal changes in cognitive functioning of memory, attention and executive functions in breast cancer patients on Chemotherapy.	f	\N
24728130	To date, tactile distractor processing has primarily been investigated by focusing on the spatial characteristics of distractors and the impact of their presentation on the orienting of attention. In two experiments, we examined the influence of tactile distractors when the location of stimulus presentation was kept constant, thus controlling for the effects of spatial attention. A response priming paradigm was used in which two stimuli were sequentially presented from the same (fixated) direction. Typically, target responses are facilitated when the previously presented distractor (i.e., the prime) happens to map on to the same response as compared to the distractor maps on to the opposite response. Similar response priming effects were observed for tactile and visual distractors within a unimodal experimental setting (Experiments 1a and 1b). Interestingly, however, when the targets and distractors were presented in different sensory modalities, only the visual distractors exerted a crossmodal effect on the subsequent processing of vibrotactile targets (Experiment 2). These results therefore indicate that visual stimuli automatically trigger their corresponding response even when the task at hand is not visual, whereas tactile stimuli are only processed up to the level of response generation when the participants' task is tactile.	f	\N
24729533	Cancer survivors often experience cognitive difficulties after treatment completion. Although chemotherapy enhances risk for cognitive problems, it is likely only one piece of a complex puzzle that explains survivors' cognitive functioning. Loneliness may be one psychosocial risk factor. The current studies included both subjective and objective cognitive measures and tested whether lonelier breast cancer survivors would have more concentration and memory complaints and experience more concentration difficulties than their less lonely counterparts. The relationship between loneliness and cognitive function was tested among three samples of breast cancer survivors. Study 1 was a sample of breast cancer survivors (n = 200) who reported their concentration and memory problems. Study 2a was a sample of breast cancer survivors (n = 185) and noncancer controls (n = 93) who reported their concentration and memory problems. Study 2b was a subsample of Study 2a breast cancer survivors (n = 22) and noncancer controls (n = 21) who completed a standardized neuropsychological test assessing concentration. Studies 1 and 2a revealed that lonelier women reported more concentration and memory problems than less lonely women. Study 2b utilized a standardized neuropsychological continuous performance test and demonstrated that lonelier women experienced more concentration problems than their less lonely counterparts. These studies demonstrated that loneliness is linked to concentration and memory complaints and the experience of concentration problems among breast cancer survivors. The results were also highly consistent across three samples of breast cancer survivors. These data suggest that loneliness may be a risk factor for cognitive difficulties among cancer survivors.	f	\N
24730739	Recent studies have demonstrated that the contents of working memory capture attention when performing a visual search task. However, it remains an intriguing and unresolved question whether all kinds of items stored in working memory capture attention. The present study investigated this issue by manipulating the attentional tags (target or distractor) associated with information maintained in working memory. The results showed that working memory-driven attentional capture is a flexible process, and that attentional tags associated with items stored in working memory do modulate attentional capture. When items were tagged as a target, they automatically captured attention; however, when items were tagged as a distractor, attentional capture was reduced.	f	\N
24745467	The anhedonia paradox has been a topic of ongoing study in schizophrenia. Previous research has found that schizophrenia patients report less enjoyment from various activities when compared to their healthy counterparts; however, the two groups appear to have similar in-the-moment emotional ratings of these events (Gard et al., 2007; Herbener et al., 2007; Horan et al., 2006). This study examined these in-the-moment experiences further, by assessing whether they differed between social and non-social experiences. The data were collected from 38 individuals with schizophrenia and 53 matched healthy controls in the greater Chicago area. In-the-moment emotional experience was measured by self-reported arousal and valence ratings for social and non-social stimuli taken from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). Clinical ratings for patients were gathered by the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. A series of ANOVAs revealed that controls were more aroused by the social than nonsocial unpleasant stimuli, whereas patients did not show this distinction. Further, regression analyses revealed that negative symptom severity uniquely predicted lower arousal responses to unpleasant social, but not nonsocial, stimuli. Our results indicate that both subject and stimulus factors appear to contribute to differences in emotional responses in individuals with schizophrenia.	f	\N
24747873	Responses in the second of two subsequently performed tasks can speed up compatible responses in the temporally preceding first task. Such backward crosstalk effects (BCEs) represent a challenge to the assumption of serial processing in stage models of human information processing, because they indicate that certain features of the second response have to be represented before the first response is emitted. Which of these features are actually relevant for BCEs is an open question, even though identifying these features is important for understanding the nature of parallel and serial response selection processes in dual-task performance. Motivated by effect-based models of action control, we show in three experiments that the BCE to a considerable degree reflects features of intended action effects, although features of the response proper (or response-associated kinesthetic feedback) also seem to play a role. These findings suggest that the codes of action effects (or action goals) can become activated simultaneously rather than serially, thereby creating BCEs.	f	\N
24750256	Studies of infant looking times over the past 50 years have provided profound insights about cognitive development, but their dependent measures and analytic techniques are quite limited. In the context of infants' attention to discrete sequential events, we show how a Bayesian data analysis approach can be combined with a rational cognitive model to create a rich data analysis framework for infant looking times. We formalize (i) a statistical learning model, (ii) a parametric linking between the learning model's beliefs and infants' looking behavior, and (iii) a data analysis approach and model that infers parameters of the cognitive model and linking function for groups and individuals. Using this approach, we show that recent findings from Kidd, Piantadosi and Aslin (iv) of a U-shaped relationship between look-away probability and stimulus complexity even holds within infants and is not due to averaging subjects with different types of behavior. Our results indicate that individual infants prefer stimuli of intermediate complexity, reserving attention for events that are moderately predictable given their probabilistic expectations about the world.	f	\N
24754400	Executive functions (EFs) are interrelated cognitive processes that have been studied in relation to behavior, attention, academic achievement, and developmental disorders. Studies of EF skills assessed through parent report and performance-based measures show correlations between them ranging from none to modest. Few studies have examined the relationship between EF skills measured through parent report and performance-based measures in relation to adaptive function. The present study included preschool children born preterm as a population at high risk for EF impairments. Preschool children (N = 149) completed a battery of EF tasks that assess working memory, response inhibition, idea generation, and attention shifting or cognitive flexibility. Parents reported on children's EF and adaptive skills. Preterm children showed more parent-rated and performance-based EF impairments than did full-term children. The combined use of either parent report or performance-based measures resulted in the identification of a large number of children at risk for EF impairment, especially in the preterm group. Both parent report and performance-based EF measures were associated with children's adaptive function. EF skills are measurable in young child'ren, and we suggest that EF skills may serve as targets for intervention to improve functional outcomes. We recommend the use of both parent report and performance-based measures to characterize children's EF profiles and to customize treatment.	f	\N
24759441	The proliferation of new communication technologies and capabilities has prompted concern about driving safety. This concern is particularly acute for inexperienced adolescent drivers. In addition to being early adopters of technology, many adolescents have not achieved the degree of automaticity in driving that characterizes experienced adults. Consequently, distractions may be more problematic in this group. Yet little is known about the nature or prevalence of distracted driving behaviors or distracting conditions among adolescent drivers. Vehicles of 52 high-school age drivers (N=38 beginners and N=14 more experienced) were equipped for 6 months with unobtrusive event-triggered data recorders that obtain 20-second clips of video, audio, and vehicle kinematic information when triggered. A low recording trigger threshold was set to obtain a sample of essentially random driving segments along with those indicating rough driving behaviors. Electronic device use (6.7%) was the most common single type of distracted behavior, followed by adjusting vehicle controls (6.2%) and grooming (3.8%). Most distracted driver behaviors were less frequent when passengers were present. However, loud conversation and horseplay were quite common in the presence of multiple peer passengers. These conditions were associated with looking away from the road, the occurrence of serious events, and, to a lesser extent, rough driving (high g-force events). Common assumptions about adolescent driver distraction are only partially borne out by in-vehicle measurement. The association of passengers with distraction appears more complex than previously realized. The relationship between distractions and serious events differed from the association with rough driving.	f	\N
24763127	Successful achievement of task goals depends critically on the ability to adjust ongoing actions in response to environmental changes. The neural substrates underlying action modification have been a topic of great controversy: both, posterior parietal cortex and frontal regions, particularly prefrontal cortex have been previously identified as crucial in this regard, with most studies arguing in favor of one or the other. We aimed to address this controversy and understand whether frontal and parietal regions might play distinct roles during action modification. We tested ipsilesional arm performance of 27 stroke patients with focal lesions to frontal or parietal regions of the left or right cerebral hemisphere, and left or right arm performance of 18 healthy subjects on the classic double-step task in which a target is unpredictably displaced to a new location, requiring modification of the ongoing action. Only right hemisphere frontal lesions adversely impacted the timing of initiation of the modified response, while only left hemisphere parietal lesions impaired the accuracy of the modified action. Patients with right frontal lesions tended to complete the ongoing action to the initially displayed baseline target and initiated the new movement after a significant delay. In contrast, patients with left parietal damage did not accurately reach the new target location, but compared to the other groups, initiated the new action during an earlier phase of motion, before their baseline action was complete. Our findings thus suggest distinct, hemisphere specific contributions of frontal and parietal regions to action modification, and bring together, for the first time, disparate sets of prior findings about its underlying neural substrates.	f	\N
24764261	We investigated the relative effects of simple and complex auditory-visual discrimination training using an adapted alternating treatments design to establish derived stimulus relations in 2 children who had been diagnosed with autism and 1 typically developing peer. Emergence of untrained conditional relations was observed after training in both conditions, with a possible advantage of simple-sample training for 1 participant. Results of generalization and follow-up probes were mixed.	f	\N
24766521	This study examined the performance of 198 Veteran research participants deployed during Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and/or Operation New Dawn (OEF/OIF/OND) on four measures of performance validity: the Medical Symptom Validity Test (MSVT), California Verbal Learning Test: Forced Choice Recognition (FCR), Reliable Digit Span (RDS), and TOVA Symptom Exaggeration Index (SEI). Failure on these performance validity tests (PVTs) ranged from 4% to 9%. The overall base rate of poor performance validity, as measured by failure of the MSVT in conjunction with an embedded PVT (FCR, RDS, SEI), was 5.6%. Regression analyses revealed that poor performance validity predicted cognitive test performance and self-reported psychological symptom severity. Furthermore, a greater prevalence of traumatic brain injury (TBI), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), co-morbid TBI/PTSD, and other Axis I diagnoses, was observed among participants with poor effort. Although poor performance validity is relatively uncommon in a research setting, these findings demonstrate that clinicians should be cautious when interpreting psychological symptoms and neuropsychological test performance of Veteran participants who fail effort measures.	f	\N
24773193	Speakers modulate their prosody to express not only emotional information but also semantic information (e.g., raising pitch for upward motion). Moreover, this information can help listeners infer meaning. Work investigating the communicative role of prosodically conveyed meaning has focused on reference resolution, and potential mnemonic benefits remain unexplored. We investigated the effect of prosody on memory for the meaning of novel words, even when it conveys superfluous information. Participants heard novel words, produced with congruent or incongruent prosody, and viewed image pairs representing the intended meaning and its antonym (e.g., a small and a large dog). Importantly, an arrow indicated the image representing the intended meaning, resolving the ambiguity. Participants then completed 2 memory tests, either immediately after learning or after a 24-hr delay, on which they chose an image (out of a new image pair) and a definition that best represented the word. On the image test, memory was similar on the immediate test, but incongruent prosody led to greater loss over time. On the definition test, memory was better for congruent prosody at both times. Results suggest that listeners extract semantic information from prosody even when it is redundant and that prosody can enhance memory, beyond its role in comprehension.	f	\N
24773417	The transition from childhood to adulthood is characterized by improved motor and cognitive performance in many domains. Developmental studies focus on average performance in single domains but ignore consistency of performance across domains. Within-individual variability (WIV) provides an index of that evenness and is a potential marker of development. We gave a computerized battery of 14 neurocognitive tests to 9138 youths ages 8-21 from the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort. As expected, performance improved with age, with both accuracy and speed peaking in adulthood. WIV, however, showed a U-shaped course: highest in childhood, declining yearly into mid-adolescence, and increasing again into adulthood. Young females outperformed and were less variable than males, but by early adulthood male performance matched that of females despite being more variable. We conclude that WIV declines from childhood to adolescence as developmental lags are overcome, and then increases into adulthood reflecting the emergence of cognitive specializations related to skill-honing and brain maturation.	f	\N
24785592	BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: The present study examined the effect of training on age differences in performing a highly practiced task using the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm (Pashler, 1984, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 10, 358-377). Earlier training studies have concentrated on tasks that are not already overlearned. The present question of interest is whether task dual-task integration will be more efficient when single-task performance is approaching asymptotic levels. Task 1 was red/green signal discrimination (green = "go" and red = "wait"; analogous to pedestrian signals) and Task 2 was tone discrimination (white noise vs. a horn "honk"; analogous to traffic sound). The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between Task 1 and Task 2 was varied (50, 150, 600, and 1000 ms). All individuals participated in eight sessions spread over 8 weeks (one session per week). Participants completed a dual-task pretest (Week 1), followed by 6 weeks of single-task testing (Weeks 2-7), followed by a dual-task posttest (Week 8). Although older adults showed larger overall dual-task costs (i.e., PRP effects), they were able to reduce the costs with practice as much as younger adults. However, even when training on Task 1 results in asymptotic performance, this still did not lead to an appreciable reduction in dual-task costs. Also, older adults, but not younger adults, responded more rapidly to green stimuli than to red stimuli in the Task 1 training latency data. The authors confirmed this green/go bias using diffusion modeling, which takes into account response time and error rates at the same time. This green/go bias is potentially dangerous at crosswalks, especially when combined with large dual-task interference, and might contribute to the high rate of crosswalk accidents in the elderly.	f	\N
24794051	A variety of causes of boredom have been proposed including environmental, motivational, emotional, and cognitive factors. Here, we explore four potential cognitive causes of boredom: inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity, and executive dysfunction. Specifically, we examine the unique and common associations between these factors and boredom propensity. Recent research has established that the two most commonly used measures of boredom propensity (BPS and BSS) are not measuring the same underlying construct. Thus, a second goal of the present project is to determine the unique and common roles of inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity and poor executive system functioning in predicting the BPS and BSS specifically. The findings reveal that inattention, hyperactivity and executive dysfunction predict boredom propensity, with shared variance accounting for the greater part of this effect. Further, executive dysfunction and hyperactivity uniquely predict boredom propensity as measured by the BPS and BSS, respectively.	f	\N
24800896	Evidence from a growing body of literature suggests that alcohol, even at moderate-dose levels, disrupts the ability to ignore distractors. However, little work has been done to elucidate the neural processes underlying this deficit. The present study was conducted to determine if low-to-moderate alcohol doses affect sensory gating, an electrophysiological phenomenon believed to reflect the pre-attentive filtering of irrelevant sensory information. Sixty social drinkers were administered one of three doses intended to produce breath alcohol concentrations of 0.0% (placebo), 0.04% (i.e., low dose), and 0.065% (i.e., moderate dose). A paired-click paradigm consisting of 100 pairs of identical tones (S1 and S2) was used to assess sensory gating. Amplitudes of P50, N100, and P200 auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) were used to calculate gating difference (S1-S2) and ratio (S2/S1) scores. The moderate alcohol dose significantly decreased P50 and N100 gating relative to placebo. Comparisons between the difference and ratio scores helped characterize the gating mechanisms affected at these stages of information processing. Alcohol did not alter P200 sensory gating. These data suggest that alcohol disrupts pre-attentional sensory-filtering processes at breath alcohol concentrations (BrACs) below the current 0.08% legal limit. Future studies should perform a combined assessment of sensory gating and selective attention to better understand the relationship between these two alcohol-induced deficits.	f	\N
24806689	The magnitude of repetition suppression (RS) in the Fusiform Face Area is influenced by the probability of repetitions of faces (Summerfield et al., 2008), implying that perceptual expectations affect repetition-related processes. Surprisingly, however, macaque single-cell (Kaliukhovich and Vogels, 2011) and human fMRI (Kovács et al., 2013) studies have failed to find repetition probability [P(rep)] modulations of RS with nonface stimuli in the occipitotemporal cortex, suggesting that the effect is face specific. One possible explanation of this category selectivity is that the extensive experience humans have with faces affects the neural mechanisms of RS specifically, creating P(rep) modulatory effects. To address this question, we used fMRI to test the P(rep) effects for another well trained stimulus category, upright letters of the roman alphabet as well as for unfamiliar false fonts. We observed significant RS for both stimulus sets in the Letter Form Area as well as in the caudodorsal part of the lateral occipital complex. Interestingly, the influence of P(rep) on RS was dependent on the stimulus: while we observed P(rep) modulations for the roman letters, no such effects were found for the unfamiliar false fonts in either area. Our findings suggest that P(rep) effects on RS are manifest for nonface stimuli as well, but that they depend on the experience of the subjects with the stimulus category. This shows, for the first time, that prior experience affects the influence of contextual predictive information on RS in the human occipitotemporal cortex.	f	\N
24820669	Research has shown that integer comparison is quick and efficient. This efficiency may be a function of the structure of the integer comparison system. The present study tests whether integers are compared with an unlimited capacity system or a limited capacity system. We tested these models using a visual search task with time delimitation. The data from Experiments 1 and 2 indicate that integers are encoded, identified, and compared within an unlimited capacity system. The data from Experiment 3 indicate that 2nd-order magnitude comparisons are processed with a highly efficient limited capacity system.	f	\N
24826505	This study examines neuropsychological impairments associated with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and explores their association with related clinical factors. Sixty-eight women with CFS were assessed with a neuropsychological battery. Raw scores were adjusted for age and gender and were converted to T scores according to normative data extracted from a local sample of 250 healthy subjects. Neuropsychological dysfunction was calculated using summary impairment indexes (proportion of test scores outside normal limits-T score <40-for each cognitive domain). Finally, a linear regression was calculated to identify predictors of cognitive deficit, including intrinsic factors of the disease (level of fatigue and length of illness) and extrinsic factors (emotional factors, age, and education). Approximately 50% of scores showed impairment in attention and motor functioning, and nearly 40% showed impairment in speed information processing and executive functioning. Fatigue predicted attention and executive functioning impairment, and emotional factors predicted verbal memory dysfunction. According to our findings, cognitive dysfunction in CFS could be explained by pathophysiological processes of the disease. One implication of this would be the need to identify homogeneous subgroups of patients with CFS by taking into account common factors, which, in turn, would help to identify more specific cognitive profiles, which could then serve to implement appropriate therapeutic measures accordingly.	f	\N
24831114	The serotonin and circadian systems are two important interactive regulatory networks in the mammalian brain that regulate behavior and physiology in ways that are known to impact human mental health. Previous work on the interaction between these two systems suggests that serotonin modulates photic input to the central circadian clock (the suprachiasmatic nuclei; SCN) from the retina and serves as a signal for locomotor activity, novelty, and arousal to shift the SCN clock, but effects of disruption of serotonergic signaling from the raphe nuclei on circadian behavior and on SCN function are not fully characterized. In this study, we examined the effects on diurnal and circadian behavior, and on ex vivo molecular rhythms of the SCN, of genetic deficiency in Pet-1, an ETS transcription factor that is necessary to establish and maintain the serotonergic phenotype of raphe neurons. Pet-1⁻/⁻ mice exhibit loss of rhythmic behavioral coherence and an extended daily activity duration, as well as changes in the molecular rhythms expressed by the clock, such that ex vivo SCN from Pet-1⁻/⁻ mice exhibit period lengthening and sex-dependent changes in rhythmic amplitude. Together, our results indicate that Pet-1 regulation of raphe neuron serotonin phenotype contributes to the period, precision and light/dark partitioning of locomotor behavioral rhythms by the circadian clock through direct actions on the SCN clock itself, as well as through non-clock effects.	f	\N
24838871	Anxious people show an attentional bias towards threatening information. It was investigated whether an attentional bias exists for cancer-related stimuli in breast cancer survivors and if different levels of fear of cancer recurrence would lead to different patterns of selective attention. Breast cancer survivors with high (n = 35) and low (n = 32) fear of cancer recurrence were compared to 40 healthy female hospital employees. Specificity of attentional biases was investigated using a modified Emotional Stroop Task. Self-report measures were used to assess depression and anxiety, feelings of fatigue, and experienced traumas. Compared to control participants, breast cancer survivors with both high and low levels of fear of cancer recurrence showed increased interference for cancer-related words, but not for other word types. The findings suggest a specific attentional bias for cancer-related words in breast cancer survivors that is independent of level of fear of cancer recurrence.	f	\N
24839251	To investigate whether acute total sleep deprivation (TSD) leads to decreased cognitive control when food cues are presented during a task requiring active attention, by assessing the ability to cognitively inhibit prepotent responses. Fourteen males participated in the study on two separate occasions in a randomized, crossover within-subject design: one night of TSD versus normal sleep (8.5 hours). Following each nighttime intervention, hunger ratings and morning fasting plasma glucose concentrations were assessed before performing a go/no-go task. Following TSD, participants made significantly more commission errors when they were presented "no-go" food words in the go/no-go task, as compared with their performance following sleep (+56%; P<0.05). In contrast, response time and omission errors to "go" non-food words did not differ between the conditions. Self-reported hunger after TSD was increased without changes in fasting plasma glucose. The increase in hunger did not correlate with the TSD-induced commission errors. Our results suggest that TSD impairs cognitive control also in response to food stimuli in healthy young men. Whether such loss of inhibition or impulsiveness is food cue-specific as seen in obesity-thus providing a mechanism through which sleep disturbances may promote obesity development-warrants further investigation.	f	\N
24842070	Performance in response inhibition paradigms is typically attributed to inhibitory control. Here we examined the idea that stopping may largely depend on the outcome of a sensory detection process. Subjects performed a speeded go task, but they were instructed to withhold their response when a visual stop signal was presented. The stop signal could occur in the center of the screen or in the periphery. On half of the trials, perceptual distractors were presented throughout the trial. We found that these perceptual distractors impaired stopping, especially when stop signals could occur in the periphery. Furthermore, the effect of the distractors on going was smallest in the central stop-signal condition, medium in a condition in which no signals could occur, and largest in the condition in which stop signals could occur in the periphery. The results show that an important component of stopping is finding a balance between ignoring irrelevant information in the environment and monitoring for the occurrence of occasional stop signals. These findings highlight the importance of sensory detection processes when stopping and could shed new light on a range of phenomena and findings in the response inhibition literature.	f	\N
24845743	We examine how haptic feedback could enable an implicit human-computer interaction, in the context of an audio stream listening use case where a device monitors a user's electrodermal activity for orienting responses to external interruptions. When such a response is detected, our previously developed system automatically places a bookmark in the audio stream for later resumption of listening. Here, we investigate two uses of haptic feedback to support this implicit interaction and mitigate effects of noisy (false-positive) bookmarking: (a) low-attention notification when a bookmark is placed, and (b) focused-attention display of bookmarks during resumptive navigation. Results show that haptic notification of bookmark placement, when paired with visual display of bookmark location, significant improves navigation time. Solely visual or haptic display of bookmarks elicited equivalent navigation time; however, only the inclusion of haptic display significantly increased accuracy. Participants preferred haptic notification over no notification at interruption time, and combined haptic and visual display of bookmarks to support navigation to their interrupted location at resumption time. Our contributions include an approach to handling noisy data in implicit HCI, an implementation of haptic notifications that signal implicit system behavior, and discussion of user mental models that may be active in this context.	f	\N
24857238	Schizophrenia is associated with poor Theory of Mind (ToM), particularly in goal and belief attribution to others. It is also associated with abnormal gaze behaviors toward others: individuals with schizophrenia usually look less to others' face and gaze, which are crucial epistemic cues that contribute to correct mental states inferences. This study tests the hypothesis that impaired ToM in schizophrenia might be related to a deficit in visual attention toward gaze orientation. We adapted a previous non-verbal ToM paradigm consisting of animated cartoons allowing the assessment of goal and belief attribution. In the true and false belief conditions, an object was displaced while an agent was either looking at it or away, respectively. Eye movements were recorded to quantify visual attention to gaze orientation (proportion of time participants spent looking at the head of the agent while the target object changed locations). 29 patients with schizophrenia and 29 matched controls were tested. Compared to controls, patients looked significantly less at the agent's head and had lower performance in belief and goal attribution. Performance in belief and goal attribution significantly increased with the head looking percentage. When the head looking percentage was entered as a covariate, the group effect on belief and goal attribution performance was not significant anymore. Patients' deficit on this visual ToM paradigm is thus entirely explained by a decreased visual attention toward gaze.	f	\N
24859426	Caffeine is the most widely consumed stimulant to counter sleep-loss effects. While the pharmacokinetics of caffeine in the body is well-understood, its alertness-restoring effects are still not well characterized. In fact, mathematical models capable of predicting the effects of varying doses of caffeine on objective measures of vigilance are not available. In this paper, we describe a phenomenological model of the dose-dependent effects of caffeine on psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) performance of sleep-deprived subjects. We used the two-process model of sleep regulation to quantify performance during sleep loss in the absence of caffeine and a dose-dependent multiplier factor derived from the Hill equation to model the effects of single and repeated caffeine doses. We developed and validated the model fits and predictions on PVT lapse (number of reaction times exceeding 500 ms) data from two separate laboratory studies. At the population-average level, the model captured the effects of a range of caffeine doses (50-300 mg), yielding up to a 90% improvement over the two-process model. Individual-specific caffeine models, on average, predicted the effects up to 23% better than population-average caffeine models. The proposed model serves as a useful tool for predicting the dose-dependent effects of caffeine on the PVT performance of sleep-deprived subjects and, therefore, can be used for determining caffeine doses that optimize the timing and duration of peak performance.	f	\N
24866977	Previous research has shown that loading information on working memory affects selective attention. However, whether the load effect on selective attention is domain-general or domain-specific remains unresolved. The domain-general effect refers to the findings that load in one content (e.g. phonological) domain in working memory influences processing in another content (e.g., visuospatial) domain. Attentional control supervises selection regardless of information domain. The domain-specific effect refers to the constraint of influence only when maintenance and processing operate in the same domain. Selective attention operates in a specific content domain. This study is designed to resolve this controversy. Across three experiments, we manipulated the type of representation maintained in working memory and the type of representation upon which the participants must exert control to resolve conflict and select a target into the focus of attention. In Experiments 1a and 1b, participants maintained digits and nonverbalized objects, respectively, in working memory while selecting a target in a letter array. In Experiment 2, we presented auditory digits with a letter flanker task to exclude the involvement of resource competition within the same input modality. In Experiments 3a and 3b, we replaced the letter flanker task with an object flanker task while manipulating the memory load on object and digit representation, respectively. The results consistently showed that memory load modulated distractibility only when the stimuli of the two tasks were represented in the same domain. The magnitude of distractor interference was larger under high load than under low load, reflecting a lower efficacy of information prioritization. When the stimuli of the two tasks were represented in different domains, memory load did not modulate distractibility. Control of processing priority in selective attention demands domain-specific resources.	f	\N
24874173	Sex differences in attentional selection of global and local components of stimuli have been hypothesized to underlie sex differences in cognitive strategy choice. A Navon figure paradigm was employed in 32 men, 41 naturally cycling women (22 follicular, 19 luteal) and 19 users of oral contraceptives (OCs) containing first to third generation progestins in their active pill phase. Participants were first asked to detect targets at any level (divided attention) and then at either the global or the local level only (focused attention). In the focused attention condition, luteal women showed reduced global advantage (i.e. faster responses to global vs. local targets) compared to men, follicular women and OC users. Accordingly, global advantage during the focused attention condition related significantly positively to testosterone levels and significantly negatively to progesterone, but not estradiol levels in a multiple regression model including all naturally cycling women and men. Interference (i.e. delayed rejection of stimuli displaying targets at the non-attended level) was significantly enhanced in OC users as compared to naturally cycling women and related positively to testosterone levels in all naturally cycling women and men. Remarkably, when analyzed separately for each group, the relationship of testosterone to global advantage and interference was reversed in women during their luteal phase as opposed to men and women during their follicular phase. As global processing is lateralized to the right and local processing to the left hemisphere, we speculate that these effects stem from a testosterone-mediated enhancement of right-hemisphere functioning as well as progesterone-mediated inter-hemispheric decoupling.	f	\N
24875233	Hypoxia has been postulated as a key mechanism for neurocognitive impairment in sleep-disordered breathing. However, the effect of hypoxia on the electroencephalogram (EEG) is not clear. We examined quantitative EEG recordings from 20 normal volunteers under three 5-min ventilatory control protocols: progressive hypercapnia with iso-hyperoxia (pO2=150mmHg) (Protocol 1), progressive hypercapnia with iso-hypoxia (pO2=50mmHg) (Protocol 2), and progressive hypoxia with a CO2 scrubber in the circuit (Protocol 3). Each protocol started with a 5-min session of breathing room air as baseline. In Protocol 1, compared to its baseline, iso-hyperoxia hypercapnia led to a lower Alpha% and higher Delta/Alpha (D/A) ratio. Similarly, in Protocol 2, the iso-hypoxia hypercapnia induced a higher Delta%, a lower Alpha% and higher D/A ratio. No difference was found in any EEG spectral band including the D/A ratio when Protocols 1 & 2 were compared. In Protocol 3, the Delta%, Alpha% and D/A ratio recorded during hypoxia were not significantly different from baseline. We found that hypercapnia, but not hypoxia, may play a key role in slowing of the EEG in healthy humans. Hypercapnia may be a greater influence than hypoxia on brain neuroelectrical activities.	f	\N
24878318	The traditional sleep scoring approach has been invented long before the recognition of strictly local nature of the sleep process. It considers sleep as a whole-organism behavior state, and, thus, it cannot be used for identification of sleep onset in a separate brain region. Therefore, this paper was aimed on testing whether the practically useful, simple and reliable yes-or-no criterion of sleep onset in a particular cortical region might be developed through applying principal component analysis to the electroencephalographic (EEG) spectra. The resting EEG was recorded with 2-hour intervals throughout 43-61-hour prolongation of wakefulness, and during 12 20-minute attempts to nap in the course of 24-hour wakefulness (15 and 18 adults, respectively). The EEG power spectra were averaged on 1-min intervals of each resting EEG record and on 1-min intervals of each napping attempt, respectively. Since we earlier demonstrated that scores on the first and second principal components of the EEG spectrum exhibit dramatic changes during the sleep onset period, a zero-crossing buildup of the first score and a zero-crossing decline of the second score were examined as possible yes-or-no markers of regional sleep onsets. The results suggest that, irrespective of electrode location, sleep onset criterion and duration of preceding wakefulness, a highly significant zero-crossing decline of the second principal component score always occurred within 1-minute interval of transition from wakefulness to sleep. Therefore, it was concluded that such zero-crossing decline can serve as a reliable, simple, and practically useful yes-or-no marker of drop off event in a given cortical area.	f	\N
24880095	Visual attention has been shown to progress from the most to the least salient item in a given scene. Cognitive and physiological models assume that this orienting of covert attention relies on the collicular pathway, involving the superior colliculus and the pulvinar. Recent studies questioned this statement as they described attentional capture by visual items invisible to the superior colliculus. Electrophysiological studies shown that there is no direct projections from short-wave receptors to the superior colliculus. S-cone stimuli can thus be employed to assess visual processing without the involvement of the collicular pathway. We have attempted to investigate whether this pathway is involved in the salience-based orientation of attention by presenting S-cone stimuli. Volunteers were asked to make a judgment regarding a target among two distractors (all items of unequal sizes). Items' location and size varied randomly, as well as color, randomly black or calibrated for each subject to activate exclusively S-cones. The hierarchical pattern testifying of the salience-based orientation of attention was only found with black stimuli, arguing in favor of an implication of the collicular pathway in salience. In a second experiment, one item was presented at a time in order to test the item-multiplicity effect by comparing experiments. Performance was the most penalized when presenting multiple stimuli in the black condition. Results were interpreted in terms of distinct modes of processing by the collicular and geniculate pathways. The establishment of salience that determines attentional progression appeared to be only possible when the collicular pathway was solicited.	f	\N
24887007	Sex differences in pain perception are still poorly understood, but they may be related to the way the brains of men and women respond to the affective dimensions of pain. Using a matched pain intensity paradigm, where pain intensity was kept constant across participants but pain unpleasantness was left free to vary among participants, we studied the relationship between pain unpleasantness and pain-evoked brain activity in healthy men and women separately. Experimental pain was provoked using transcutaneous electrical stimulation of the sural nerve while pain-related brain activity was measured using somatosensory-evoked brain potentials with source localization. Cardiac responses to pain were also measured using electrocardiac recordings. Results revealed that subjective pain unpleasantness was strongly associated with increased perigenual anterior cingulate cortex activity in women, whereas it was strongly associated with decreased ventromedial prefrontal cortex activity in men. Only ventromedial prefrontal cortex deactivations in men were additionally associated with increased autonomic cardiac arousal. These results suggest that in order to deal with pain's objectionable properties, men preferentially deactivate prefrontal suppression regions, leading to the mobilization of threat-control circuits, whereas women recruit well-known emotion-processing areas of the brain. This article presents neuroimaging findings demonstrating that subjective pain unpleasantness ratings are associated with different pain-evoked brain responses in men and women, which has potentially important implications regarding sex differences in the risk of developing chronic pain.	f	\N
24906032	To examine the trajectories of sleep duration and nocturnal awakenings in infants from 6 to 18 months of age and to identify predictors of short sleep duration and nocturnal awakenings. Data for this study come from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study conducted at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. A total of 55,831 mother reports of child sleep were used to estimate the stability and predictors of awakenings and short sleep. Nocturnal awakenings were frequent among 6-month-old children. Although there was an overall reduction in both sleep duration and nocturnal awakenings from 6 to 18 months, the chronicity of sleep problems was high and impacted by prior sleep behavior and sleeping arrangements. Bedsharing was an independent and graded predictor of nocturnal awakenings and short sleep duration, also after controlling for prior sleep. Breastfeeding was related to concurrent nocturnal awakening but was not negatively related to later nocturnal awakenings. Considering the chronicity of nocturnal awakening and its association with bedsharing, our findings support current recommendations of reducing bedsharing to improve sleep among infants.	f	\N
24912070	Dopaminergic medication in Parkinson's disease has been proposed to improve cognitive processing by modulating the severely depleted dorsal striatum, while impairing reward processing by modulating the relatively intact ventral striatum. However, there is no direct (neural) evidence for this hypothesis. Here we fill this gap by scanning Parkinson's disease patients (n=15) ON and relatively OFF their dopaminergic medication using functional magnetic resonance imaging. During scanning, patients performed a task that enabled the simultaneous measurement of task-switching and reward-related processing. Brain-behavior correlations revealed that medication-related increases (ON-OFF) in switch-related BOLD signal (switch-repeat) in the dorsomedial striatum were associated, on an individual basis, with improvements in task-switching (i.e. a decreased switch cost). Conversely, medication-related increases (ON-OFF) in reward-related BOLD signal (high-low) in the ventromedial striatum were associated, on an individual basis, with impairments in performance in anticipation of reward (i.e. an increased reward cost). Linear regression analyses demonstrated that the positive relationship between medication-related changes in BOLD and the reward cost was unique to the ventromedial striatum, whereas the negative relationship between medication-related changes in BOLD and the switch cost was not unique to the dorsomedial striatum. These findings extend the dopamine overdose hypothesis, according to which dopamine-induced changes in dorsal and ventral striatal processing lead to cognitive improvement and impairment respectively.	f	\N
24912136	People differ in both their sensitivity for bitter taste and their tendency to respond to emotional stimuli with approach or avoidance. The present study investigated the relationship between these sensitivities in an affective picture paradigm with startle responding. Emotion-induced changes in arousal and attention (pupil modulation), priming of approach and avoidance behavior (startle reflex modulation), and subjective evaluations (ratings) were examined. Sensitivity for bitter taste was assessed with the 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP)-sensitivity test, which discriminated individuals who were highly sensitive to PROP compared to NaCl (PROP-tasters) and those who were less sensitive or insensitive to the bitter taste of PROP. Neither pupil responses nor picture ratings differed between the two taster groups. The startle eye blink response, however, significantly differentiated PROP-tasters from PROP-insensitive subjects. Facilitated response priming to emotional stimuli emerged in PROP-tasters but not in PROP-insensitive subjects at shorter startle lead intervals (200-300ms between picture onset and startle stimulus onset). At longer lead intervals (3-4.5s between picture onset and startle stimulus onset) affective startle modulation did not differ between the two taster groups. This implies that in PROP-sensitive individuals action tendencies of approach or avoidance are primed immediately after emotional stimulus exposure. These results suggest a link between PROP taste perception and biologically relevant patterns of emotional responding. Direct perception-action links have been proposed to underlie motivational priming effects of the startle reflex, and the present results extend these to the sensory dimension of taste.	f	\N
24918067	Affect recognition deficits found in individuals with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) across the lifespan may bias the development of cognitive control processes implicated in the pathophysiology of the disorder. This study aimed to determine the mechanism through which facial expressions influence cognitive control in young adults diagnosed with ADHD in childhood. Fourteen probands with childhood ADHD and 14 comparison subjects with no history of ADHD were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing a face emotion go/no-go task. Event-related analyses contrasted activation and functional connectivity for cognitive control collapsed over face valence and tested for variations in activation for response execution and inhibition as a function of face valence. Probands with childhood ADHD made fewer correct responses and inhibitions overall than comparison subjects, but demonstrated comparable effects of face emotion on response execution and inhibition. The two groups showed similar frontotemporal activation for cognitive control collapsed across face valence, but differed in the functional connectivity of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, with fewer interactions with the subgenual cingulate cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, and putamen in probands than in comparison subjects. Further, valence-dependent activation for response execution was seen in the amygdala, ventral striatum, subgenual cingulate cortex, and orbitofrontal cortex in comparison subjects but not in probands. The findings point to functional anomalies in limbic networks for both the valence-dependent biasing of cognitive control and the valence-independent cognitive control of face emotion processing in probands with childhood ADHD. This limbic dysfunction could impact cognitive control in emotional contexts and may contribute to the social and emotional problems associated with ADHD.	f	\N
24918502	To investigate the existence of correlations between the performance of children in auditory temporal tests (Frequency Pattern and Gaps in Noise--GIN) and IQ, attention, memory and age measurements. Fifteen typically developing individuals between the ages of 7 to 12 years and normal hearing participated in the study. Auditory temporal processing tests (GIN and Frequency Pattern), as well as a Memory test (Digit Span), Attention tests (auditory and visual modality) and intelligence tests (RAVEN test of Progressive Matrices) were applied. Significant and positive correlation between the Frequency Pattern test and age variable were found, which was considered good (p<0.01, 75.6%). There were no significant correlations between the GIN test and the variables tested. Auditory temporal skills seem to be influenced by different factors: while the performance in temporal ordering skill seems to be influenced by maturational processes, the performance in temporal resolution was not influenced by any of the aspects investigated.	f	\N
24932753	A number of studies have shown strong relations between numbers and oriented spatial codes. For example, perceiving numbers causes spatial shifts of attention depending upon numbers' magnitude, in a way suggestive of a spatially oriented, mental representation of numbers. Here, we investigated whether this phenomenon extends to non-symbolic numbers, as well as to the processing of the continuous dimensions of size and brightness, exploring whether different quantitative dimensions are equally mapped onto space. After a numerical (symbolic Arabic digits or non-symbolic arrays of dots; Experiment 1) or a non-numerical cue (shapes of different size or brightness level; Experiment 2) was presented, participants' saccadic response to a target that could appear either on the left or the right side of the screen was registered using an automated eye-tracker system. Experiment 1 showed that, both in the case of Arabic digits and dot arrays, right targets were detected faster when preceded by large numbers, and left targets were detected faster when preceded by small numbers. Participants in Experiment 2 were faster at detecting right targets when cued by large-sized shapes and left targets when cued by small-sized shapes, whereas brightness cues did not modulate the detection of peripheral targets. These findings indicate that looking at a symbolic or a non-symbolic number induces attentional shifts to a peripheral region of space that is congruent with the numbers' relative position on a mental number line, and that a similar shift in visual attention is induced by looking at shapes of different size. More specifically, results suggest that, while the dimensions of number and size spontaneously map onto an oriented space, the dimension of brightness seems to be independent at a certain level of magnitude elaboration from the dimensions of spatial extent and number, indicating that not all continuous dimensions are equally mapped onto space.	f	\N
24935807	Although perception is typically constrained by limits in available processing resources, these constraints can be overcome if information about environmental properties, such as the spatial location or expected onset time of an object, can be used to direct resources to particular sensory inputs. In this work, we examined these temporal expectancy effects in greater detail in the context of the attentional blink (AB), in which identification of the second of two targets is impaired when the targets are separated by less than about half a second. We replicated previous results showing that presenting information about the expected onset time of the second target can overcome the AB. Uniquely, we also showed that information about expected onset (a) reduces susceptibility to distraction, (b) can be derived from salient temporal consistencies in intertarget intervals across exposures, and (c) is more effective when presented consistently rather than intermittently, along with trials that do not contain expectancy information. These results imply that temporal expectancy can benefit object processing at perceptual and postperceptual stages, and that participants are capable of flexibly encoding consistent timing information about environmental events in order to aid perception.	f	\N
24953882	Noise stress (NS) is detrimental to many aspects of human health and behavior. Understanding the effect of noise stressors on human cognitive function is a growing area of research and is crucial to helping clinical populations, such as those with schizophrenia, which are particularly sensitive to stressors. A review of electronic databases for studies assessing the effect of acute NS on cognitive functions in healthy adults revealed 31 relevant studies. The review revealed (1) NS exerts a clear negative effect on attention, working memory and episodic recall, and (2) personality characteristics, in particular neuroticism, and sleep influence the impact of noise stressors on performance in interaction with task complexity. Previous findings of consistent impairment in NS-relevant cognitive domains, heightened sensitivity to stressors, elevated neuroticism and sleep disturbances in schizophrenia, taken together with the findings of this review, highlight the need for empirical studies to elucidate whether NS, a common aspect of urban environments, exacerbates cognitive deficits and other symptoms in schizophrenia and related clinical populations.	f	\N
24954442	The aim of this study was to have a linguistic validation of the Sleep Disturbance Scale for Children (SDSC) in Iranian children with Persian language. The study included a randomly selected sample of children, aged 6-15 years, from three primary and secondary schools located in Isfahan City, Iran. Following the forward-backward translation method, parents completed the SDSC as well as the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL). Reliability (Cronbach's α) and convergent validity (item-subscale and subscale-total correlations) were assessed. The association of SDSC scores with PedsQL scores was evaluated for construct validity. One hundred children were studied; mean age, 9.36±2.58 years, 68 girls. Scale Cronbach's α was 0.82, ranging from 0.40 for 'disorder of arousal' to 0.86 for 'sleep hyperhidrosis' subscales. Convergent validity was acceptable according to the corrected item-subscale correlations (r = 0.22-0.76) and corrected subscale-total correlations (r = 0.30-0.50). The SDSC total score as well as its subscales, except the 'disorder of arousal', were associated with the total PedsQL score and its factors (r = -0.20 to -0.64). The overall psychometric properties of the Persian version of the SDSC seem to be appropriate in Iranian children.	f	\N
24956002	Older adults fixate less on negative parts of skin cancer videos than younger adults, leading them to feel better (Isaacowitz & Choi, 2012). We extended this paradigm to middle-aged adults (ages 35-59, n = 63), whose fixation patterns were measured as they viewed skin cancer videos; mood and behavior were also assessed. Middle-aged adults looked even less at the videos than the other age groups, especially at the negative clips. They also reported the best moods but relatively low levels of learning and positive skin cancer behavior. In some cases, middle-aged adults may show larger "age-related positivity effects" than older adults.	f	\N
24956067	The ability to detect and use information from errors is essential during the acquisition of new skills. There is now a wealth of evidence about the brain mechanisms involved in error processing. However, the extent to which those mechanisms are engaged during the acquisition of new motor skills remains elusive. Here we examined rhythm synchronization learning across 12 blocks of practice in musically naïve individuals and tracked changes in ERP signals associated with error-monitoring and error-awareness across distinct learning stages. Synchronization performance improved with practice, and performance improvements were accompanied by dynamic changes in ERP components related to error-monitoring and error-awareness. Early in learning, when performance was poor and the internal representations of the rhythms were weaker we observed a larger error-related negativity (ERN) following errors compared to later learning. The larger ERN during early learning likely results from greater conflict between competing motor responses, leading to greater engagement of medial-frontal conflict monitoring processes and attentional control. Later in learning, when performance had improved, we observed a smaller ERN accompanied by an enhancement of a centroparietal positive component resembling the P3. This centroparietal positive component was predictive of participant's performance accuracy, suggesting a relation between error saliency, error awareness and the consolidation of internal templates of the practiced rhythms. Moreover, we showed that during rhythm learning errors led to larger auditory evoked responses related to attention orientation which were triggered automatically and which were independent of the learning stage. The present study provides crucial new information about how the electrophysiological signatures related to error-monitoring and error-awareness change during the acquisition of new skills, extending previous work on error processing and cognitive control mechanisms to a more ecologically valid context.	f	\N
24960589	This preliminary study explored differences between adults with and without traumatic brain injury (TBI) for speech processing accuracy, processing speed and effort in various conditions of interference. Ten adults with TBI and six adults without TBI participated. Speech processing was studied using sentence repetition in six listening conditions with different types of interference, including noise and two simultaneous talkers. Participants repeated sentences and rated effort. Participants also completed standardized tests of cognition, including working memory and processing speed measures. Sentence repetition accuracy did not differ between groups. However, the TBI group demonstrated slower processing speed than the control group and also reported significantly greater effort in the two-talker condition. Faster processing speed was also correlated with higher accuracy in the two-talker condition. RESULTS of this study show group similarities in repetition accuracy across listening conditions, but group differences in speed and effort. This preliminary finding, as well as the relationship between processing speed and repetition accuracy, suggests that it is only in the most complex listening conditions that the effects of brain injury may be detectable.	f	\N
24964082	Predators are known to select food of the same type in non-random sequences or "runs" that are longer than would be expected by chance. If prey are conspicuous, predators will switch between available sources, interleaving runs of different prey types. However, when prey are cryptic, predators tend to focus on one food type at a time, effectively ignoring equally available sources. This latter finding is regarded as a key indicator that animal foraging is strongly constrained by attention. It is unknown whether human foraging is equally constrained. Here, using a novel iPad task, we demonstrate for the first time that it is. Participants were required to locate and touch 40 targets from 2 different categories embedded within a dense field of distractors. When individual target items "popped-out" search was organized into multiple runs, with frequent switching between target categories. In contrast, as soon as focused attention was required to identify individual targets, participants typically exhausted one entire category before beginning to search for the other. This commonality in animal and human foraging is compelling given the additional cognitive tools available to humans, and suggests that attention constrains search behavior in a similar way across a broad range of species.	f	\N
24967719	Prior findings are mixed regarding the presence and direction of threat-related interference biases in social anxiety. The current study examined general inhibitory control (IC), measured by the classic colour-word Stroop, as a moderator of the relationship between both threat interference biases [indexed by the emotional Stroop (e-Stroop)] and several social anxiety indicators. High socially anxious undergraduate students (N = 159) completed the emotional and colour-word Stroop tasks, followed by an anxiety-inducing speech task. Participants completed measures of trait social anxiety, state anxiety before and during the speech, negative task-interfering cognitions during the speech and overall self-evaluation of speech performance. Speech duration was used to measure behavioural avoidance. In line with hypotheses, IC moderated the relationship between e-Stroop bias and every anxiety indicator (with the exception of behavioural avoidance), such that greater social-threat interference was associated with higher anxiety among those with weak IC, whereas lesser social-threat interference was associated with higher anxiety among those with strong IC. Implications for the theory and treatment of threat interference biases in socially anxious individuals are discussed.	f	\N
24979861	We report the successful awake tracheal intubation in a patient with hypopharyngeal cancer and gastroesophageal regurgitation with the TaperGuard Evac tracheal tube (TaperGuard) and Pentax-AWS Airwayscope (AWS). A 63-year-old man with hypopharyngeal cancer with invasion to the glottis was scheduled for total laryngectomy under general anesthesia. He had undergone thoracic esophagectomy and could not maintain supine position due to severe gastroesophageal regurgitation. To avoid vomiting after induction of anesthesia, we planned awake intubation in the sitting position with the AWS. After topical anesthesia with 8% lidocaine and infusion of fentanyl and continuous dexmedetomidine, the AWS was inserted into his mouth in the sitting position from the cranial side. The AWS allowed visualizing the glottis avoiding the cancer, leading to safe placement of the tracheal tube.	f	\N
24999612	To dissociate feature-based and object-based stages in the control of spatial attention during visual search, we employed the N2pc component as an electrophysiological marker of attentional object selection. Participants searched for a target object that was defined by a conjunction of color and shape. Some search displays contained the target or a nontarget object that matched either the target color or its shape among 3 nonmatching distractors. In other displays, the target and a partially target-matching nontarget object appeared together. N2pc results demonstrated that the initial stage of attentional object selection is controlled by local feature-specific signals. Attention is allocated in parallel and independently to objects with target-matching features during this early stage, irrespective of whether another target-matching object is simultaneously present elsewhere. From around 250 ms poststimulus, information is integrated across feature dimensions, and spatially selective attentional processing becomes object-based. These findings demonstrate that feature-based and object-based stages of attentional selectivity in visual search can be dissociated in real time.	f	\N
25004102	Research using the diffusion model to decompose task-switching effects has contributed to a better understanding of the processes underlying the observed effect in the explicit task cueing paradigm: Previous findings could be reconciled with multiple component models of task switching or with an account on compound-cue retrieval/repetition priming. In the present study, we used two cues for each task in order to decompose task-switch and cue-switch effects. Response time data support previous findings that comparable parts of the switching effect can be attributed to cue-switching and task-switching. A diffusion model analysis of the data confirmed that non-decision time is increased and drift rates are decreased in unpredicted task-switches. Importantly, it was shown that non-decision time was selectively increased in task-switching trials but not in cue-switching trials. Results of the present study specifically support the notion of additional processes in task-switches and can be reconciled with broader multiple component accounts.	f	\N
25012367	What defines the spatial and temporal boundaries of seizure activity in brain networks? To fully answer this question a precise and quantitative definition of seizures is needed, which unfortunately remains elusive. Nevertheless, it is possible to ask under conditions where clearly divergent patterns of activity occur in large-scale brain networks whether certain activity patterns are part of the seizure while others are not. Here we examine brain network activity during focal limbic seizures, including diverse regions such as the hippocampus, subcortical arousal systems and fronto-parietal association cortex. Based on work from patients and from animal models we describe a characteristic pattern of intense increases in neuronal firing, cerebral blood flow, cerebral blood volume, blood oxygen level dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging (BOLD fMRI) signals and cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen consumption in the hippocampus during focal limbic seizures. Similar increases are seen in certain closely linked subcortical structures such as the lateral septal nuclei and anterior hypothalamus, which contain inhibitory neurons. In marked contrast, decreases in all of these parameters are seen in the subcortical arousal systems of the upper brainstem and intralaminar thalamus, as well as in the fronto-parietal association cortex. We propose that the seizure proper can be defined as regions showing intense increases, while those areas showing opposite changes are inhibited by the seizure network and constitute long-range network consequences beyond the seizure itself. Importantly, the fronto-parietal cortex shows sleep-like slow wave activity and depressed metabolism under these conditions, associated with impaired consciousness. Understanding which brain networks are directly involved in seizures versus which sustain secondary consequences can provide new insights into the mechanisms of brain dysfunction in epilepsy, hopefully leading to innovative treatment approaches.	f	\N
25035439	General anaesthesia (GA) carries high risks of ventilator dependency with increased morbidity and mortality in patients with severe respiratory disease. It also presents an ethical dilemma if surgery remains the only treatment option for patients with advanced terminal chronic respiratory disease. Thoracic epidural anaesthesia for awake thoracic surgery (TEATS) in high-risk patients with dyspnoea at rest could avoid ventilator dependency and speed up recovery even in patients with severe dyspnoea. This retrospective observational study analysed indications, management and outcome of patients contraindicated to GA undergoing awake thoracic surgery with thoracic epidural anaesthesia. From 716 patients requiring thoracic surgery, nine were contraindicated to GA. Eight patients [American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) 4] had a maximum grade four of the modified Medical Research Council dyspnea scale (MMRC). Two patients (ASA 3, grade 1 MMRC and ASA 4, grade 4 MMRC) refused GA. Patients (female : male ratio 1.25 : 1, age 19-76 years) had the following chronic respiratory diseases: pulmonary fibrosis (n = 2), pulmonary metastases (n = 3), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (n = 1), alveolitis (n = 1) and myopathy (n = 2). Surgical indications were: thoracotomy (n = 6) for pleurectomy to treat recurring pneumothorax (n = 3), pleurostomy (n = 1), emphysema surgery (n = 1), lung biopsy (n = 1) and thoracoscopy (n = 3) for pleural/lung biopsy (n = 2), pneumothorax (n = 1). Lidocaine 20 mg/ml or ropivacaine 7.5 mg/ml was titrated to achieve an anaesthesia level T2-T12. No patient required GA [time of surgery: 46-128 min, mean = 76 min, standard deviation (SD) = 23 min]. Seven patients had light sedation with TCI propofol, remifentanyl or both and remained responsive. Fifty percent of patients received phenylephrine or ephedrine to maintain arterial pressure. Two patients went into hypercapnia, which was reversed with assisted mask ventilation. One patient suffered acute respiratory distress 7 days postoperatively and died of intestinal bleeding on Day 25. There were no postoperative complications in other patients. Excluding Patient 9 always remaining in a medical intensive care unit (ICU), the mean postoperative ICU stay in thoracic surgery was 4.4 days (SD 5.2). Hospital discharge was between 5 and 40 days after surgery. TEATS with/without sedation was an alternative to GA for thoracotomy/thoracoscopy in severely dyspnoeic patients (MMRC grade 4, ASA 4) without postoperative sequelae.	f	\N
25039045	To examine the association between domain-specific qualities of formal childcare at age 2-3 years and children's task attentiveness and emotional regulation at age 4-5 and 6-7 years. We used data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (n = 1038). Three domain-specific aspects of childcare quality were assessed: provider and program characteristics of care, activities in childcare, and carer-child relationship. Two self-regulatory abilities were considered: task attentiveness and emotional regulation. Associations between domain-specific qualities of childcare and self-regulation were investigated in linear regression analyses adjusted for confounding, with imputation for missing data. There was no association between any provider or program characteristics of care and children's task attentiveness and emotional regulation. The quality of activities in childcare were associated only with higher levels of emotional regulation at age 4-5 years (β = 0.24; 95% CI, 0.03-0.44) and 6-7 years (β = 0.26; 95% CI, 0.04-0.48). Higher-quality carer-child relationships were associated with higher levels of task attentiveness (β = 0.20; 95% CI, 0.05-0.36) and emotional regulation at age 4-5 years (β = 0.19; 95% CI, 0.04-0.34) that persisted to age 6-7 years (β = 0.26; 95% CI, 0.10-0.42; β = 0.31; 95% CI, 0.16-0.47). Among children using formal childcare, those who experienced higher-quality relationships were better able to regulate their attention and emotions as they started school. Higher emotional regulation was also observed for children engaged in more activities in childcare. Beneficial effects were stable over time.	f	\N
25044928	While forgetfulness is widely reported by breast cancer survivors, studies documenting objective memory performance yield mixed, largely inconsistent, results. Failure to find consistent, objective memory issues may be due to the possibility that cancer survivors misattribute their experience of forgetfulness to primary memory issues rather than to difficulties in attention at the time of learning. To clarify potential attention issues, factor scores for Attention Span, Learning Efficiency, Delayed Memory, and Inaccurate Memory were analyzed for the California Verbal Learning Test-Second Edition (CVLT-II) in 64 clinically referred breast cancer survivors with self-reported cognitive complaints; item analysis was conducted to clarify specific contributors to observed effects, and contrasts between learning and recall trials were compared with normative data. Performance on broader cognitive domains is also reported. The Attention Span factor, but not Learning Efficiency, Delayed Memory, or Inaccurate Memory factors, was significantly affected in this clinical sample. Contrasts between trials were consistent with normative data and did not indicate greater loss of information over time than in the normative sample. Results of this analysis suggest that attentional dysfunction may contribute to subjective and objective memory complaints in breast cancer survivors. These results are discussed in the context of broader cognitive effects following treatment for clinicians who may see cancer survivors for assessment.	f	\N
25051341	Although previous research had related structural changes and impaired cognition to chronic cigarette smoking, recent neuroimaging studies have associated nicotine, which is a main chemical substance in cigarettes, with improvements in cognitive functions (e.g. improved attention performance). However, information about the alterations of whole-brain functional connectivity after acute cigarette smoking is limited. In this study, 22 smokers underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) after abstaining from smoking for 12 hours (state of abstinence, SOA). Subsequently, the smokers were allowed to smoke two cigarettes (state of satisfaction, SOS) before they underwent a second rs-fMRI. Twenty non-smokers were also recruited to undergo rs-fMRI. In addition, high-resolution 3D T1-weighted images were acquired using the same magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI)scanner for all participants. The results showed that smokers had structural changes in insula, thalamus, medial frontal cortex and several regions of the default mode network (DMN) compared with non-smokers. Voxel-wise group comparisons of newly developed global brain connectivity (GBC) showed that smokers in the SOA condition had higher GBC in the insula and superior frontal gyrus compared with non-smokers. However, smokers in the SOS condition demonstrated significantly lower GBC in several regions of the DMN, as compared with smokers in the SOA condition. These results suggest that structural integrity combined with dysfunction of the DMN might be involved in relapses after a short period of time among smokers.	f	\N
25073453	Studies that have measured the effects of attentional training have relied on a range of training formats, which may vary in their efficacy. In particular, it is unclear whether programs that practice dual-tasking are more effective in improving divided attention than programs focusing on flexible allocation priority training. The aims of this study were as follows: (1) to compare the efficacy of different types of attentional training formats and (2) to assess transfer to distal measures. Forty-two healthy older adults were randomly assigned to one of three training groups. In the SINGLE training condition, participants practiced a visual detection and an alphanumeric equation task in isolation. In the FIXED training condition, participants practiced both tasks simultaneously with equal attention allocated to each. In the VARIABLE training condition, participants varied the attentional priority allocated to each task. After training, all participants improved their performance on the alphanumeric equation task when performed individually, including those in the SINGLE training condition. Participants in the FIXED training condition improved their divided attention, but only the participants in the VARIABLE training condition showed a greater capacity to vary their attentional priorities according to the instructions. Regarding transfer, all groups improved their performance on the 2-back condition, but only the VARIABLE and FIXED conditions resulted in better performance on the 1-back condition. Overall, the study supports the notion that attentional control capacities in older adults are plastic and can be improved with appropriate training and that the type of training determines its impact on divided attention.	f	\N
25083012	To determine relationships of polysomnographic (PSG) measures with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a young adult, urban African American population. Cross-sectional, clinical and laboratory evaluation. Community recruitment, evaluation in the clinical research unit of an urban University hospital. Participants (n = 145) were Black, 59.3% female, with a mean age of 23.1 y (SD = 4.8). One hundred twenty-one participants (83.4%) met criteria for trauma exposure, the most common being nonsexual violence. Thirty-nine participants (26.9%) met full (n = 19) or subthreshold criteria (n = 20) for current PTSD, 41 (28.3%) had met lifetime PTSD criteria and were recovered, and 65 (45%) were negative for PTSD. Evaluations included the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) and 2 consecutive nights of overnight PSG. Analysis of variance did not reveal differences in measures of sleep duration and maintenance, percentage of sleep stages, and the latency to and duration of uninterrupted segments of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep by study group. There were significant relationships between the duration of PTSD and REM sleep percentage (r = 0.53, P = 0.001), REM segment length (r = 0.43, P = 0.006), and REM sleep latency (r = -0.34, P < 0.03) among those with current PTSD that persisted when removing cases with, or controlling for, depression. The findings are consistent with observations in the literature of fragmented and reduced REM sleep with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) relatively proximate to trauma exposure and nondisrupted or increased REM sleep with chronic PTSD. Mellman TA, Kobayashi I, Lavela J, Wilson B, Hall Brown TS. A relationship between REM sleep measures and the duration of posttraumatic stress disorder in a young adult urban minority population.	f	\N
25102420	Activation of frontal and parietal brain regions is associated with attentional control during visual search. We used fMRI to characterize age-related differences in frontoparietal activation in a highly efficient feature search task, detection of a shape singleton. On half of the trials, a salient distractor (a color singleton) was present in the display. The hypothesis was that frontoparietal activation mediated the relation between age and attentional capture by the salient distractor. Participants were healthy, community-dwelling individuals, 21 younger adults (19-29 years of age) and 21 older adults (60-87 years of age). Top-down attention, in the form of target predictability, was associated with an improvement in search performance that was comparable for younger and older adults. The increase in search reaction time (RT) associated with the salient distractor (attentional capture), standardized to correct for generalized age-related slowing, was greater for older adults than for younger adults. On trials with a color singleton distractor, search RT increased as a function of increasing activation in frontal regions, for both age groups combined, suggesting increased task difficulty. Mediational analyses disconfirmed the hypothesized model, in which frontal activation mediated the age-related increase in attentional capture, but supported an alternative model in which age was a mediator of the relation between frontal activation and capture.	f	\N
25109005	Depth of field (DOF) is defined as the distance range within which objects are perceived as sharp. Previous research has focused on blur discrimination in artificial stimuli and natural photographs. The discrimination of DOF, however, has received less attention. Since DOF introduces blur which is related to distance in depth, many levels of blur are simultaneously present. As a consequence, it is unclear whether discrimination thresholds for blur are appropriate for predicting discrimination thresholds for DOF. We therefore measured discrimination thresholds for DOF using a two-alternative forced-choice task. Ten participants were asked to observe two images and to select the one with the larger DOF. We manipulated the scale of the scene--that is, the actual depth in the scene. We conducted the experiment under stereoscopic and nonstereoscopic viewing conditions. We found that the threshold for a large DOF (39.1 mm) was higher than for a small DOF (10.1 mm), and the thresholds decreased when scale of scene increased. We also found that there was no significant difference between stereoscopic and nonstereoscopic conditions. We compared our results with thresholds predicted from the literature. We concluded that using blur discrimination thresholds to discriminate DOF may lead to erroneous conclusions because the depth in the scene significantly affects people's DOF discrimination ability.	f	\N
25116758	A phasic change in alertness is produced every time that a warning stimulus precedes a target, and it enhances and maintains the response readiness to an impending stimulus. In the present study, we investigated the Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) phenomenon, as index of phasic alertness, during a S1-S2 paradigm in which the imperative stimulus was represented by a double-choice reaction time task, designed to increase the executive requests at S2. Subjects performed the task at three consecutive time points in order to explore the CNV activity over time. The repetition of a cued double-choice reaction time task reduced the reaction times (RTs), while CNV amplitude remained steady along the sessions. Our data suggest that the continuous recruitment of attentional resources does not undergo habituation when it is related to the brain activity required in the maintenance of working memory when the mental model of the stimulus environment is updated.	f	\N
25117780	Studies investigating the association between 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] and cognition in the very old (85+) are lacking. Cross-sectional (baseline) and prospective data (up to 3 years follow-up) from 775 participants in the Newcastle 85+ Study were analysed for global (measured by the Standardized Mini-Mental State Examination) and attention-specific (measured by the attention battery of the Cognitive Drug Research test) cognitive performance in relation to season-specific 25(OH)D quartiles. Those in the lowest and highest season-specific 25(OH)D quartiles had an increased risk of impaired prevalent (1.66, 95% confidence interval 1.06-2.60, P = 0.03; 1.62, 95% confidence interval 1.02-2.59, P = 0.04, respectively) but not incident global cognitive functioning or decline in functioning compared with those in the middle quartiles adjusted for sociodemographic, health and lifestyle confounders. Random effects models showed that participants belonging to the lowest and highest 25(OH)D quartiles, compared with those in the middle quartiles, had overall slower (log-transformed) attention reaction times for Choice Reaction Time (lowest, β = 0.023, P = 0.01; highest, β = 0.021, P = 0.02), Digit Vigilance Task (lowest, β = 0.009, P = 0.05; highest, β = 0.01, P = 0.02) and Power of Attention (lowest, β = 0.017, P = 0.02; highest, β = 0.022, P = 0.002) and greater Reaction Time Variability (lowest, β = 0.021, P = 0.02; highest, β = 0.02, P = 0.03). The increased risk of worse global cognition and attention amongst those in the highest quartile was not observed in non-users of vitamin D supplements/medication. Low and high season-specific 25(OH)D quartiles were associated with prevalent cognitive impairment and poorer overall performance in attention-specific tasks over 3 years in the very old, but not with global cognitive decline or incident impairment.	f	\N
25119128	Bilateral lung transplantation (BLTx) is an established treatment for end-stage pulmonary hypertension (PH). Ventilator weaning failure and death are more common as in BLTx for other indications. We hypothesized that left ventricular (LV) dysfunction is the main cause of early postoperative morbidity or mortality and investigated a weaning strategy using awake venoarterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). In 23 BLTx for severe PH, ECMO used during BLTx was continued for a minimum of 5 days (BLTx-ECMO group). Echocardiography, left atrial (LA) and Swan-Ganz catheters were used for monitoring. Early extubation after transplantation was attempted under continued ECMO. Preoperatively, all patients had severely reduced cardiac index (mean, 2.1 L/min/m2). On postoperative day 2, reduction of ECMO flow resulted in increasing LA and decreasing systemic blood pressures. On the day of ECMO explantation (median, postoperative day 8), LV diameter had increased; LA and blood pressures remained stable. Survival rates at 3 and 12 months were 100% and 96%, respectively. Data were compared to two historic control groups of BLTx without ECMO (BLTx ventilation) or combined heart-lung transplantation for severe PH. Early after BLTx for severe PH, the LV may be unable to handle normalized LV preload. This can be effectively bridged with awake venoarterial ECMO.	f	\N
25119464	There is enormous interest in designing training methods for reducing cognitive decline in healthy older adults. Because it is impaired with aging, multitasking has often been targeted and has been shown to be malleable with appropriate training. Investigating the effects of cognitive training on functional brain activation might provide critical indication regarding the mechanisms that underlie those positive effects, as well as provide models for selecting appropriate training methods. The few studies that have looked at brain correlates of cognitive training indicate a variable pattern and location of brain changes--a result that might relate to differences in training formats. The goal of this study was to measure the neural substrates as a function of whether divided attentional training programs induced the use of alternative processes or whether it relied on repeated practice. Forty-eight older adults were randomly allocated to one of three training programs. In the single repeated training, participants practiced an alphanumeric equation and a visual detection task, each under focused attention. In the divided fixed training, participants practiced combining verification and detection by divided attention, with equal attention allocated to both tasks. In the divided variable training, participants completed the task by divided attention, but were taught to vary the attentional priority allocated to each task. Brain activation was measured with fMRI pre- and post-training while completing each task individually and the two tasks combined. The three training programs resulted in markedly different brain changes. Practice on individual tasks in the single repeated training resulted in reduced brain activation whereas divided variable training resulted in a larger recruitment of the right superior and middle frontal gyrus, a region that has been involved in multitasking. The type of training is a critical factor in determining the pattern of brain activation.	f	\N
25122911	The mental chronometry of the human brain's processing of sounds to be categorized as targets has intensively been studied in cognitive neuroscience. According to current theories, a series of successive stages consisting of the registration, identification, and categorization of the sound has to be completed before participants are able to report the sound as a target by button press after ∼300-500 ms. Here we use miniature eye movements as a tool to study the categorization of a sound as a target or nontarget, indicating that an initial categorization is present already after 80-100 ms. During visual fixation, the rate of microsaccades, the fastest components of miniature eye movements, is transiently modulated after auditory stimulation. In two experiments, we measured microsaccade rates in human participants in an auditory three-tone oddball paradigm (including rare nontarget sounds) and observed a difference in the microsaccade rates between targets and nontargets as early as 142 ms after sound onset. This finding was replicated in a third experiment with directed saccades measured in a paradigm in which tones had to be matched to score-like visual symbols. Considering the delays introduced by (motor) signal transmission and data analysis constraints, the brain must have differentiated target from nontarget sounds as fast as 80-100 ms after sound onset in both paradigms. We suggest that predictive information processing for expected input makes higher cognitive attributes, such as a sound's identity and category, available already during early sensory processing. The measurement of eye movements is thus a promising approach to investigate hearing.	f	\N
25124118	The specific cognitive-affective mechanisms involved in the activation and regulation of the subjective and genital components of sexual arousal are not fully understood yet. The aim of the present study was to investigate the contribution of self-reported thoughts and affect to the prediction of women's subjective and genital responses to erotica. Twenty-eight sexually functional women (mean age = 32, SD = 6.29) were presented with sexually explicit and nonexplicit romantic films. Genital responses, subjective sexual arousal, state affect, and self-reported thoughts were assessed. Vaginal pulse amplitude was measured using a vaginal photoplethysmograph. Subjective sexual arousal, thoughts, and affective responses were assessed through self-report scales. Correlations between subjective and physiological sexual arousal were low (r = -0.05, P > 0.05). Self-reported thoughts and affect were significant predictors of subjective sexual arousal. The strongest single predictor of subjective arousal was sexual arousal thoughts (e.g., "I'm getting excited") (β = 0.63, P < 0.01). None of the cognitive or affective variables predicted women's genital responses. Overall, results support the role of cognitive (self-reported thoughts) and affective dimensions in women's subjective sexual arousal to erotica and, consistent with previous findings, suggest that subjective and physiological sexual arousal may be impacted by different processes.	f	\N
25142042	There is a paucity of work addressing the distractive, affect-enhancing, and motivational influences of music and video in combination during exercise. We examined the effects of music and music-and-video on a range of psychological and psychophysical variables during treadmill running at intensities above and below ventilatory threshold (VT). Participants (N = 24) exercised at 10 % of maximal capacity below VT and 10 % above under music-only, music-and-video, and control conditions. There was a condition × intensity × time interaction for perceived activation and state motivation, and an intensity × time interaction for state attention, perceived exertion (RPE), and affective valence. The music-and-video condition elicited the highest levels of dissociation, lowest RPE, and most positive affective responses regardless of exercise intensity. Attentional manipulations influence psychological and psychophysical variables at exercise intensities above and below VT, and this effect is enhanced by the combined presentation of auditory and visual stimuli.	f	\N
25148787	We examined ERP indices of proactive and reactive cognitive control processes in younger and older adults performing a sustained attention Go/No-Go task. Behavioral results showed that older adults were able to maintain a stable level of performance over time, while younger adults exhibited a vigilance decrement. The main ERP findings showed that in older adults, the amplitude of the pre-stimulus slow wave, a marker of proactive control, remained stable with time on task, and that the amplitude of the sustained potential, a marker of reactive control, increased with time on task. On the other hand, in younger adults, the amplitudes of both components decreased over time. Overall, older participants also exhibited larger amplitudes of the error negativity than their younger counterparts. These results suggest that age-related differences in the recruitment of proactive and reactive control over the course of the task can explain age differences in sustained attention performance.	f	\N
25151518	The current study aimed to explore whether self-reported attentional control (AC) and the attentional network functioning would predict spontaneous emotion downregulation after emotional induction. A total of 117 healthy volunteers were asked to continuously rate their discomfort while looking at affective pictures, as well as for a period of time after exposure. After controlling for trait anxiety, higher self-reported AC significantly predicted a greater spontaneous emotional downregulation after exposure to aversive pictures. Both higher self-reported AC and lower executive control network functioning (i.e., greater interference) predicted a faster spontaneous emotional downregulation after exposure to affectively neutral pictures. Results are discussed focusing on the relationship between AC and emotion regulation difficulties. (PsycINFO Database Record	f	\N
25153776	Slow oscillations (<1 Hz) during slow wave sleep (SWS) promote the consolidation of declarative memory. Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been shown to display deficits in sleep-dependent consolidation of declarative memory supposedly due to dysfunctional slow brain rhythms during SWS. Using transcranial oscillating direct current stimulation (toDCS) at 0.75 Hz, we investigated whether an externally triggered increase in slow oscillations during early SWS elevates memory performance in children with ADHD. 12 children with ADHD underwent a toDCS and a sham condition in a double-blind crossover study design conducted in a sleep laboratory. Memory was tested using a 2D object-location task. In addition, 12 healthy children performed the same memory task in their home environment. Stimulation enhanced slow oscillation power in children with ADHD and boosted memory performance to the same level as in healthy children. These data indicate that increasing slow oscillation power during sleep by toDCS can alleviate declarative memory deficits in children with ADHD.	f	\N
25154283	When observers are asked to match the depth of an object according to its height, they often report systematic errors depending on viewing distance. Systematic biases can also arise while vergence distances are induced by binocular disparities. Observers of stereoscopic images tend to overestimate the depth of objects displayed in front of the screen, while the depth of objects displayed behind the screen plane is underestimated. This phenomenon creates a serious problem in that veridicality in depth perception appears distorted when one attempts to render the metrics of a captured 3-D world. These distortions could also subsist with structure-from-motion information and during motion-in-depth. Observers judged the circularity of transparent rotating cylinders that were either static or moving in depth. Crossed results show that participants could precisely retrieve the best modulation between presented depth and width. As this effect could be amplified with stimuli containing stronger perspective cues (ie contour perspective), participants judged the rigidity of spinning cubes, moving along the line of sight, which were either edges-defined or defined by randomly textured surfaces (dots). The results showed that, although depth constancy was not improved by contour perspective, perceived rigidity was increased by perspective when the best scaling estimate was displayed. This finding suggests that appropriate binocular disparity information in combination to monocular signal is necessary for stereoscopic depth perception.	f	\N
25159702	The implications of sleep for morality are only starting to be explored. Extending the ethics literature, we contend that because bringing morality to conscious attention requires effort, a lack of sleep leads to low moral awareness. We test this prediction with three studies. A laboratory study with a manipulation of sleep across 90 participants judging a scenario for moral content indicates that a lack of sleep leads to low moral awareness. An archival study of Google Trends data across 6 years highlights a national dip in Web searches for moral topics (but not other topics) on the Monday after the Spring time change, which tends to deprive people of sleep. Finally, a diary study of 127 participants indicates that (within participants) nights with a lack of sleep are associated with low moral awareness the next day. Together, these three studies suggest that a lack of sleep leaves people less morally aware, with important implications for the recognition of morality in others.	f	\N
25173177	Visual cognitive integrative functions need to be evaluated by a behavioral assessment, which requires an experienced evaluator. The Preverbal Visual Assessment (PreViAs) questionnaire was designed to evaluate these functions, both in general pediatric population or in children with high risk of visual cognitive problems, through primary caregivers' answers. We aimed to validate the PreViAs questionnaire by comparing caregiver reports with results from a comprehensive clinical protocol. A total of 220 infants (<2 years old) were divided into two groups according to visual development, as determined by the clinical protocol. Their primary caregivers completed the PreViAs questionnaire, which consists of 30 questions related to one or more visual domains: visual attention, visual communication, visual-motor coordination, and visual processing. Questionnaire answers were compared with results of behavioral assessments performed by three pediatric ophthalmologists. Results of the clinical protocol classified 128 infants as having normal visual maturation, and 92 as having abnormal visual maturation. The specificity of PreViAs questionnaire was >80%, and sensitivity was 64%-79%. More than 80% of the infants were correctly classified, and test-retest reliability exceeded 0.9 for all domains. The PreViAs questionnaire is useful to detect abnormal visual maturation in infants from birth to 24months of age. It improves the anamnesis process in infants at risk of visual dysfunctions.	f	\N
25173722	Expecting a particular stimulus can facilitate processing of that stimulus over others, but what is the fate of other stimuli that are known to co-occur with the expected stimulus? This study examined the impact of learned association on feature-based attention. The findings show that the effectiveness of an uninformative color transient in orienting attention can change by learned associations between colors and the expected target shape. In an initial acquisition phase, participants learned two distinct sequences of stimulus-response-outcome, where stimuli were defined by shape ('S' vs. 'H'), responses were localized key-presses (left vs. right), and outcomes were colors (red vs. green). Next, in a test phase, while expecting a target shape (80% probable), participants showed reliable attentional orienting to the color transient associated with the target shape, and showed no attentional orienting with the color associated with the alternative target shape. This bias seemed to be driven by learned association between shapes and colors, and not modulated by the response. In addition, the bias seemed to depend on observing target-color conjunctions, since encountering the two features disjunctively (without spatiotemporal overlap) did not replicate the findings. We conclude that associative learning - likely mediated by mechanisms underlying visual object representation - can extend the impact of goal-driven attention to features associated with a target stimulus.	f	\N
25174852	The lifetime risk of suicide in patients with schizophrenia is estimated to be 4.9-13%. While there are many known risk factors for suicide in schizophrenia, the relationship between cognitive function and suicide risk is unclear, particularly in non-Caucasian populations. In our cross-sectional study, we administered the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) to 316 Han Chinese chronic inpatients with schizophrenia and compared the performance of those who had attempted suicide (n=25) to non-attempters (n=291). The lifetime suicide attempt data were collected from medical records and interviews with patients and their family members. We found a lifetime suicide attempt rate of 7.9%. Suicide attempters were more likely to be single, but showed no significant differences in other demographic factors such as age, gender, or living arrangements. Contrary to our hypothesis, there was no significant relationship between performance on the RBANS test and lifetime risk of suicide attempts in Han Chinese inpatients with schizophrenia. The literature remains mixed on this topic. Culturally influenced differences in suicidal behavior may have affected the outcome of this study and further investigation of this topic is necessary.	f	\N
25175914	Cannabis-induced psychotic disorder (CIPD) refers to psychotic symptoms that arise in the context of cannabis intoxication. Prepulse inhibition (PPI) deficits have been extensively identified in schizophrenia and in cannabis abusers. We aimed to characterize PPI in CIPD patients. We used a sample of 48 CIPD patients, 54 schizophrenia patients and cannabis abuse (SCHZ), 44 cannabis dependents (CD), and 44 controls. CIPD, SCHZ and CD were abstinent of cannabis consumption for 9 months. Participants were assessed with PPI at 30, 60, and 120 ms. At 30 ms, CIPD showed lower PPI levels than controls, and SCHZ obtained worse functioning than controls and CD. At 60 ms, only SCHZ exhibited worse PPI percentages (of object) than controls. Finally, at 120 ms, CIPD showed higher PPI levels than SCHZ, and SCHZ obtained lower percentages than controls. We found that CIPD and SCHZ patients showed deficits at the most pre-attentional levels, whereas CIPD patients performed better than SCHZ at higher attentional levels. These results suggest that CIPD constitutes a different group of patients than that of SCHZ. Deficits in PPI functioning at 30 ms could be a useful psychophysiological measure to detect CIPD patients, who are frequently confused with cannabis abusers whose symptoms may mimic that of schizophrenia.	f	\N
25184299	Previous research has shown that adults with dyslexia (AwD) are disproportionately impacted by close spacing of stimuli and increased numbers of distractors in a visual search task compared to controls [1]. Using an orientation discrimination task, the present study extended these findings to show that even in conditions where target search was not required: (i) AwD had detrimental effects of both crowding and increased numbers of distractors; (ii) AwD had more pronounced difficulty with distractor exclusion in the left visual field and (iii) measures of crowding and distractor exclusion correlated significantly with literacy measures. Furthermore, such difficulties were not accounted for by the presence of covarying symptoms of ADHD in the participant groups. These findings provide further evidence to suggest that the ability to exclude distracting stimuli likely contributes to the reported visual attention difficulties in AwD and to the aetiology of literacy difficulties. The pattern of results is consistent with weaker and asymmetric attention in AwD.	f	\N
25188718	The relevance of sleep instability is poorly appreciated among the metrics of sleep physiology. The cyclic alternating pattern (CAP) is a periodic electroencephalogram activity of non-REM sleep, characterized by sequences of transient electrocortical events that are distinct from the tonic background and recur at up to 1-min intervals. In the dynamic organization of sleep, CAP expresses a condition of instability that reflects the brain's effort in preserving and regulating the physiological structure of sleep. CAP quantification is a topical feature in the evaluation of sleep quality. In addition to duration, depth, and continuity, sleep restorative properties depend on the brain's capacity to determine the periods of sustained stable sleep. This issue is not confined only to the electroencephalogram activities but reverberates upon the ongoing autonomic and behavioral functions, which are mutually entrained in a synchronized oscillation. As a master clock involved in the dynamic organization of sleep, CAP plays a crucial role in numerous sleep disorders and is powerfully influenced by medication and appropriate treatment. This article reviews the scoring, significance, and clinical applications of CAP.	f	\N
25192605	We aimed to measure the diurnal changes of critical flicker frequency in healthy subjects and cirrhotic patients and to investigate their relationship with sleep disturbance. Cirrhotic patients and healthy volunteers were included. All groups completed the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and a simple sleep questionnaire. Sleep disturbance was defined as a Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index score of >5. Critical flicker frequency was measured twice a day to detect diurnal abnormalities. Overall, 59 cirrhotic patients (54.2% males, Mean Age 59 ± 11 years) and 18 controls (39.9% males, Mean Age 58 ± 9 years) were included. Sleep disturbances were more common in cirrhotics (66.1%) than controls (38.9%, p<0.05). In cirrhotics, the critical flicker frequency was not related to decompensation. The nocturnal values were higher than the morning values in cirrhotics (64.4%), but not in controls (p<0.0001). Additionally, sleep disturbances were more common in cirrhotics who had higher nocturnal values (p<0.05). Changes in the diurnal critical flicker frequency were observed in cirrhotics but not in controls. Sleep disturbances in cirrhotics appear to be associated with deviations of the diurnal rhythm of critical flicker frequency rather than with clinical parameters such as the clinical stages of cirrhosis and the Model For End-Stage Liver Disease and Child-Pugh scores.	f	\N
25203170	The subthalamic nucleus (STN) has been shown to be implicated in the control of voluntary action, especially during tasks involving conflicting choice alternatives or rapid response suppression. However, the precise role of the STN during nonmotor functions remains controversial. First, we tested whether functionally distinct neuronal populations support different executive control functions (such as inhibitory control or error monitoring) even within a single subterritory of the STN. We used microelectrode recordings during deep brain stimulation surgery to study extracellular activity of the putative associative-limbic part of the STN while patients with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder performed a stop-signal task. Second, 2-4 days after the surgery, local field potential recordings of STN were used to test the hypothesis that STN oscillations may also reflect executive control signals. Extracellular recordings revealed three functionally distinct neuronal populations: the first one fired selectively before and during motor responses, the second one selectively increased their firing rate during successful inhibitory control, and the last one fired selectively during error monitoring. Furthermore, we found that beta band activity (15-35 Hz) rapidly increased during correct and incorrect behavioral stopping. Taken together, our results provide critical electrophysiological support for the hypothesized role of the STN in the integration of motor and cognitive-executive control functions.	f	\N
25210709	The underlying processes responsible for the differences between morning and afternoon measurements of postural control have not yet been clearly identified. This study was conducted to specify the role played by vestibular, visual, and somatosensory inputs in postural balance and their link with the diurnal fluctuations of body temperature and vigilance level. Nineteen healthy male subjects (mean age: 20.5 ± 1.3 years) participated in test sessions at 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. after a normal night's sleep. Temperature was measured before the subjects completed a sign cancellation test and a postural control evaluation with eyes both open and closed. Our results confirmed that postural control improved throughout the day according to the circadian rhythm of body temperature and sleepiness/vigilance. The path length as a function of surface ratio increased between 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. This is due to a decrease in the centre-of-pressure surface area, which is associated with an increase in path length. Romberg's index did not change throughout the day; however, the spectral analysis (fast Fourier transform) of the centre-of-pressure excursions (in anteroposterior and mediolateral directions) indicated that diurnal fluctuations in postural control may occur via changes in the different processes responsible for readjustment via muscle contractions.	f	\N
25215475	Previous studies have established that obese adolescents possess a stronger tendency to behave more impulsively and be more inattentive than healthy-weight children. Additionally, gender difference in inattention and impulsivity has also been substantiated by previous researchers. The current study examined the relationship between gender, body weight, and inattention and impulsivity in adolescents. It was hypothesized that obese males and females would have more inattentive and impulsive responses than their healthy-weight peers. Participants were 113 adolescents between the ages of 14 and 19; all participants completed the CPT-II, a measure of inattentive and impulsive response styles. Findings indicated that males who were classified as overweight or obese scored higher on inattention than did obese females, healthy-weight males, and healthy-weight females. Additionally, females committed a greater number of commission errors and were less able to distinguish the target stimuli, suggestive of impulsive responding. These findings indicate a gender difference in regard to impulsive responding, and also reveal an interaction of weight status and gender on inattention. Implications for prevention and treatment are discussed.	f	\N
25224180	Changes of EEG alpha asymmetry in terms of increased right versus left sided activity in prefrontal cortex are considered to index activation of the withdrawal/avoidance motivational system. The present study aimed to add evidence of the validity of individual differences in the EEG alpha asymmetry response and their relevance regarding the impact of emotional events. The magnitude of the EEG alpha asymmetry response while watching a film consisting of scenes of real injury and death correlated with components of transient cardiac responses to sudden horrifying events happening to persons in the film which index withdrawal/avoidance motivation and heightened attention and perceptual intake. Additionally, it predicted greater mood deterioration following the film and film-related intrusive memories and avoidance over the following week. The study provides further evidence for prefrontal EEG alpha asymmetry changes in response to relevant stimuli reflecting an individual's sensitivity to negative social-emotional cues encountered in everyday life.	f	\N
25226214	The emotional connotation of a word is known to shift the process of word recognition. Using the electroencephalographic event-related potentials (ERPs) approach it has been documented that early attentional processing of high-arousing negative words is shifted at a stage of processing where a presented word cannot have been fully identified. Contextual learning has been discussed to contribute to these effects. The present study shows that a manipulation of the familiarity with a word's shape interferes with these earliest emotional ERP effects. Presenting high-arousing negative and neutral words in a familiar or an unfamiliar font results in very early emotion differences only in case of familiar shapes, whereas later processing stages reveal similar emotional effects in both font conditions. Because these early emotion-related differences predict later behavioral differences, it is suggested that contextual learning of emotional valence comprises more visual features than previously expected to guide early visual-sensory processing.	f	\N
25227004	This study investigated neuronal activation differences under two conditions: driving only and distracted driving. Driving and distraction tasks were performed using a Magnetic Resonance (MR)-compatible driving simulator with a driving wheel and pedal. The experiment consisted of three blocks, and each block had both a Rest phase (1 min) and a Driving phase (2 min). During the Rest phase, drivers were instructed to simply look at the stop screen without performing any driving tasks. During the Driving phase, each driver was required to drive at 110 km/h under two conditions: driving only and driving while performing additional distraction tasks. The results show that the precuneus, inferior parietal lobule, supramarginal gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, cuneus, and declive are less activated in distracted driving than in driving only. These regions are responsible for spatial perception, spatial attention, visual processing and motor control. However, the cingulate gyrus and sub-lobar regions (lentiform nucleus and caudate), which are responsible for error monitoring and control of unnecessary movement, show increased activation during distracted driving compared with driving only.	f	\N
25236921	Comparative judgment is a crucial task in ecological settings, as well as in many experimental studies about basic aspects of perceptual processes. It has long been known that sequential comparison is prone to order effects. This phenomenon has received little attention and has often been discounted as a type of response bias. In the present study, we investigated brightness discrimination of two brief (100 ms) spatially disjoint luminance stimuli. In the first and second experiments, stimuli were presented against a dark background with a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) from 0 to 200 ms, in a paradigm controlling for response bias. In the third experiment, stimuli were presented against a bright background. We demonstrate that the time interval between stimuli modulates and even inverts their perceived brightness difference, enhancing the second stimulus relative to the first. When the background is brighter than the target stimuli, the sign of the effect is inverted, suggesting that the underlying mechanism operates on contrast rather than brightness. The magnitude of this effect is shown to depend on SOA and average luminance level of the target stimuli. Hypotheses in terms of neural and attentional dynamics are proposed.	f	\N
25241396	Right brain damage often provokes deficits of visuospatial attention. Although the spatial attention networks have been widely investigated in stroke patients as well as in the healthy brain, little is known about the impact of slow growing lesions in the right hemisphere. We here present a longitudinal study of 20 patients who have been undergoing awake brain surgery with per-operative line bisection testing. Our aim was to investigate the impact of tumour presence and of tumour resection on the functional (re)organization of the attention networks. We assessed patients' performance on lateralized target detection, visual exploration and line bisection before surgery, and in the acute and post-acute operative phases after surgery. Clear evidence for transient neglect signs was observed in the acute post-operative phase, although full recovery had invariably occurred in all patients. The resection of the right angular gyrus was associated with transient neglect-like symptoms in all tasks, whereas resection of more anterior regions correlated with transient deficits only in visual exploration or detection (but not in line bisection). The attentional networks showed substantial functional recovery. This impressive pattern of recovery is discussed in terms of involvement of the contralateral left hemisphere and of preservation of long-range white matter pathways within the right hemisphere.	f	\N
25244118	Working memory (WM) is strongly influenced by attention. In visual WM tasks, recall performance can be improved by an attention-guiding cue presented before encoding (precue) or during maintenance (retrocue). Although precues and retrocues recruit a similar frontoparietal control network, the two are likely to exhibit some processing differences, because precues invite anticipation of upcoming information whereas retrocues may guide prioritization, protection, and selection of information already in mind. Here we explored the behavioral and electrophysiological differences between precueing and retrocueing in a new visual WM task designed to permit a direct comparison between cueing conditions. We found marked differences in ERP profiles between the precue and retrocue conditions. In line with precues primarily generating an anticipatory shift of attention toward the location of an upcoming item, we found a robust lateralization in late cue-evoked potentials associated with target anticipation. Retrocues elicited a different pattern of ERPs that was compatible with an early selection mechanism, but not with stimulus anticipation. In contrast to the distinct ERP patterns, alpha-band (8-14 Hz) lateralization was indistinguishable between cue types (reflecting, in both conditions, the location of the cued item). We speculate that, whereas alpha-band lateralization after a precue is likely to enable anticipatory attention, lateralization after a retrocue may instead enable the controlled spatiotopic access to recently encoded visual information.	f	\N
25248557	The aim of this study was to elucidate the dimensional structure of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and potential moderators and functional correlates of this structure in disaster-affected adolescents. A population-based sample of 2000 adolescents aged 12-17 years (M = 14.5 years; 51% female) completed interviews on post-tornado PTSD symptoms, substance use, and parent-adolescent conflict between 4 and 13 months (M = 8.8, SD = 2.6) after tornado exposure. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed that all models fit well but a 5-factor dysphoric arousal model provided a statistically significantly better representation of adolescent PTSD symptoms compared to 4-factor dysphoria and emotional numbing models. There was evidence of measurement invariance of the dysphoric arousal model across gender and age, although girls and older adolescents aged 15-17 years had higher mean scores than boys and younger adolescents aged 12-14 years, respectively, on some PTSD dimensions. Differential magnitudes of association between PTSD symptom dimensions and functional correlates were observed, with emotional numbing symptoms most strongly positively associated with problematic substance use since the tornado, and dysphoric arousal symptoms most strongly positively associated with parent-adolescent conflict; both correlations were significantly larger than the corresponding correlations with anxious arousal. Taken together, these results suggest that the dimensional structure of tornado-related PTSD symptomatology in adolescents is optimally characterized by five separate clusters of re-experiencing, avoidance, numbing, dysphoric arousal, and anxious arousal symptoms, which showed unique associations with functional correlates. Findings emphasize that PTSD in disaster-exposed adolescents is not best conceptualized as a homogenous construct and highlight potential differential targets for post-disaster assessment and intervention.	f	\N
25253260	Along with urbanization of the living environment, the number of patients with circadian rhythm sleep disorder (CRSD) has been increasing. There are several treatment candidates for CRSD, such as light therapy, drugs (melatonin and vitamin B12), and sleep hygiene education. However, successful treatment method has not been established. In free-running type (FRT) CRSD, the endogenous circadian rhythm cannot be entrained to the 24-h light-dark cycle, resulting in free running on a cycle 0.5-2.5 h longer than the 24-h period. This condition is relatively common in blind individuals and is unusual in sighted individuals. Here we report two sighted patients with FRT, successfully treated with a melatonin receptor agonist, ramelteon. Patient 1 (36-year-old female) had suffered from FRT for nearly 4 months after resigning her job. She was given sleep hygiene education together with ramelteon at first and the free-running cycle stopped after treatment day 15. Triazolam was added from the day 25 to promote earlier sleep onset. And the sleep-wake schedule was normalized by the day 34. Patient 2 (33-year-old male) had suffered from FRT for nearly 8 months after starting to take a leave of absence from his job. He was given sleep hygiene education and was treated with ramelteon and methylcobalamin. His sleep-wake schedule was normalized from the first treatment day. By the combined treatment with ramelteon, both patients have maintained favorable sleep-wake schedules. The agonist action of ramelteon at the melatonin 2 receptor may have primarily contributed to the cessation of the free-running cycle in these patients.	f	\N
25254067	This study investigates the effect of tone inventories on brain activities underlying pitch without focal attention. We find that the electrophysiological responses to across-category stimuli are larger than those to within-category stimuli when the pitch contours are superimposed on nonspeech stimuli; however, there is no electrophysiological response difference associated with category status in speech stimuli. Moreover, this category effect in nonspeech stimuli is stronger for Cantonese speakers. Results of previous and present studies lead us to conclude that brain activities to the same native lexical tone contrasts are modulated by speakers' language experiences not only in active phonological processing but also in automatic feature detection without focal attention. In contrast to the condition with focal attention, where phonological processing is stronger for speech stimuli, the feature detection (pitch contours in this study) without focal attention as shaped by language background is superior in relatively regular stimuli, that is, the nonspeech stimuli. The results suggest that Cantonese listeners outperform Mandarin listeners in automatic detection of pitch features because of the denser Cantonese tone system.	f	\N
25260191	This study tested the effects of a parent-mediated intervention on parental responsiveness with their toddlers at high risk for an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Participants included caregivers and their 66 toddlers at high risk for ASD. Caregivers were randomized to 12 sessions of an individualized parent education intervention aimed at improving parental responsiveness or to a monitoring control group involving 4 sessions of behavioral support. Parental responsiveness and child outcomes were measured at three time points: at beginning and end of the 3-month treatment and at 12-months post-study entry. Parental responsiveness improved significantly in the treatment group but not the control group. However, parental responsiveness was not fully maintained at follow up. There were no treatment effects on child outcomes of joint attention or language. Children in both groups made significant developmental gains in cognition and language skills over one year. These results support parental responsiveness as an important intervention target given its general association with child outcomes in the extant literature; however, additional supports are likely needed to fully maintain the treatment effect and to affect child outcomes.	f	\N
25273924	The study used a dual-task (DT) postural paradigm (two tasks performed at once) that included electroencephalography (EEG) to examine cortical interference when a visual working memory (VWM) task was paired with a postural task. The change detection task was used, as it requires storage of information without updating or manipulation and predicts VWM capacity. Ground reaction forces (GRFs) (horizontal and vertical), EMG, and EEG elements, time locked to support surface perturbations, were used to infer the active neural processes underlying the automatic control of balance in 14 young adults. A significant reduction was seen between single task (ST) and DT conditions in VWM capacity (F(1,13) = 6.175, p < 0.05, r = 06) and event-related potential (ERP) N1 component amplitude over the L motor (p < 0.001) and R sensory (p < 0.05) cortical areas. In addition, a significant increase in the COP trajectory peak (pkcopx) was seen in the DT versus ST condition. Modulation of VWM capacity as well as ERP amplitude and pkcopx in DT conditions provided evidence of an interference pattern, suggesting that the two modalities shared a similar set of attentional resources. The results provide direct evidence of the competition for central processing attentional resources between the two modalities, through the reduction in amplitude of the ERP evoked by the postural perturbation.	f	\N
25294128	The differentiation of the vegetative or unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (VS/UWS) from the minimally conscious state (MCS) is an important clinical issue. The cerebral metabolic rate of glucose (CMRglc) declines when consciousness is lost, and may reveal the residual cognitive function of these patients. However, no quantitative comparisons of cerebral glucose metabolism in VS/UWS and MCS have yet been reported. We calculated the regional and whole-brain CMRglc of 41 patients in the states of VS/UWS (n=14), MCS (n=21) or emergence from MCS (EMCS, n=6), and healthy volunteers (n=29). Global cortical CMRglc in VS/UWS and MCS averaged 42% and 55% of normal, respectively. Differences between VS/UWS and MCS were most pronounced in the frontoparietal cortex, at 42% and 60% of normal. In brainstem and thalamus, metabolism declined equally in the two conditions. In EMCS, metabolic rates were indistinguishable from those of MCS. Ordinal logistic regression predicted that patients are likely to emerge into MCS at CMRglc above 45% of normal. Receiver-operating characteristics showed that patients in MCS and VS/UWS can be differentiated with 82% accuracy, based on cortical metabolism. Together these results reveal a significant correlation between whole-brain energy metabolism and level of consciousness, suggesting that quantitative values of CMRglc reveal consciousness in severely brain-injured patients.	f	\N
25295649	Diagnosis and management of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in adults is complex and challenging because of the frequent comorbidity of other psychiatric disorders that have symptoms overlapping with those of ADHD. The presence of comorbidities can create challenges to making an accurate diagnosis and also impact treatment options and outcomes. This review discusses disorders that may be comorbid with ADHD in adults, including anxiety, mood, substance use disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and borderline personality disorder. Suggestions for recognizing these comorbidities and distinguishing them from ADHD and perspectives on their possible impact on ADHD treatment are included. Adjunctive nonpharmacologic modalities may be especially helpful in the case of comorbid mood, anxiety, substance abuse, or personality disorders.	f	\N
25311333	Women at high risk for ovarian cancer due to BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation or family history are recommended to undergo risk-reducing salpingo-oophorectomy (RRSO) after age 35 or completion of childbearing. This potentially life-saving surgery leads to premature menopause, frequently resulting in distressing and unaddressed sexual dysfunction. To pilot a novel sexual health intervention for women with BRCA1/2 mutations who previously underwent RRSO a using a single-arm trial. Feasibility and primary outcomes including sexual dysfunction and psychological distress were assessed. This single-arm trial included a one-time, half-day educational session comprised of targeted sexual health education, body awareness and relaxation training, and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy strategies, followed by two sessions of tailored telephone counseling. Assessments were completed at baseline and 2 months postintervention. Study end points include feasibility and effectiveness as reported by the participant. Thirty-seven women completed baseline and postintervention assessments. At baseline, participants had a mean age of 44.4 (standard deviation [SD] = 3.9) years and mean duration of 3.8 (SD = 2.7) years since RRSO. Overall sexual functioning (P = 0.018), as well as desire (P = 0.003), arousal (P = 0.003), satisfaction (P = 0.028), and pain (P = 0.018), improved significantly. There were significant reductions in somatization (P = 0.029) and anxiety scores (P < 0.001), and, overall, for the Global Severity Index (P < 0.001) of the Brief Symptom Inventory. Sexual self-efficacy and sexual knowledge also improved significantly from baseline to postintervention (both P < 0.001). Women were highly satisfied with the intervention content and reported utilizing new skills to manage sexual dysfunction. This intervention integrates elements of cognitive behavioral therapy with sexual health education to address a much-neglected problem after RRSO. Results from this promising single-arm study provide preliminary data to move toward conducting a randomized, controlled trial.	f	\N
25314961	To estimate the heritability of child behaviour problems and investigate the association between maternal pre-pregnancy overweight and child behaviour problems in a genetically sensitive design. Observational cross-sectional study. The Twins and Multiple Births Association Heritability Study (TAMBAHS) is an online UK-wide volunteer-based study investigating the development of twins from birth until 5 years of age. A total of 443 (16% of the initial registered members) mothers answered questions on pre-pregnancy weight and their twins' internalising and externalising problems using the Child Behavior Checklist and correcting for important covariates including gestational age, twins' birth weight, age and sex, mother's educational level and smoking (before, during and after pregnancy). The heritability of behaviour problems and their association with maternal pre-pregnancy weight. The genetic analysis suggested that genetic and common environmental factors account for most of the variation in externalising disorders (an ACE model was the most parsimonious with genetic factors (A) explaining 46% (95% CI 33% to 60%) of the variance, common environment (C) explaining 42% (95% CI 27% to 54%) and non-shared environmental factors (E) explaining 13% (95% CI 10% to 16%) of the variance. For internalising problems, a CE model was the most parsimonious model with the common environment explaining 51% (95% CI 44% to 58%) of the variance and non-shared environment explaining 49% (95% CI 42% to 56%) of the variance. Moreover, the regression analysis results suggested that children of overweight mothers showed a trend (OR=1.10, 95% CI 0.58% to 2.06) towards being more aggressive and exhibit externalising behaviours compared to children of normal weight mothers. Maternal pre-pregnancy weight may play a role in children's aggressive behaviour.	f	\N
25322890	Physiological hyperarousal is manifested acutely by increased heart rate, decreased respiratory sinus arrhythmia, and increased skin conductance level and variability. Yet it is uncertain to what extent such activation occurs with the symptomatic hyperarousal of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We compared 56 male veterans with current PTSD to 54 males who never had PTSD. Subjects wore ambulatory devices that recorded electrocardiograms, finger skin conductance, and wrist movement while in their normal environments. Wrist movement was monitored to estimate sleep and waking periods. Heart rate, but not the other variables, was elevated in subjects with PTSD equally during waking and during actigraphic sleep (effect sizes, Cohen's d, ranged from 0.63 to 0.89). The length of the sleep periods and estimated sleep fragmentation did not differ between groups. Group heart rate differences could not be explained by differences in body activity, PTSD hyperarousal symptom scores, depression, physical fitness, or antidepressant use.	f	\N
25325493	Alterations in emotional reactivity may play a key role in the pathophysiology of insomnia disorder (ID). However, only few supporting experimental data are currently available. We evaluated in a hypothesis-driven design whether patients with ID present altered amygdale responses to emotional stimuli related and unrelated to the experience of insomnia and, because of chronic hyperarousal, less habituation of amygdala responses. Case-control study. Departments of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy and of Radiology of the University of Freiburg Medical Center. There were 22 patients with ID (15 females; 7 males; age 40.7 ± 12.6 y) and 38 healthy good sleepers (HGS, 21 females; 17 males; age 39.6 ± 8.9 y). N/A. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging session, five different blocks of pictures with varying emotional arousal, valence, and content (insomnia-relatedness) were presented. Pictures were presented twice to test for habituation processes. Results showed that patients with ID, compared to HGS, presented heightened amygdala responses to insomnia-related stimuli. Moreover, habituation of amygdale responses was observed only in HGS, but not in patients with ID who showed a mixed pattern of amygdala responses to the second presentation of the stimuli. The results provide evidence for an insomnia-related emotional bias in patients with ID. Cognitive behavior treatment for ID could benefit from strategies dealing with the emotional charge associated with the disorder. Further studies should clarify the role of ID with respect to habituation of amygdala responses.	f	\N
25328996	Intermodal integration required for perceptual learning tasks is rife with individual differences. Participants vary in how they use perceptual information to one modality. One participant alone might change her own response over time. Participants vary further in their use of feedback through one modality to inform another modality. Two experiments test the general hypothesis that perceptual-motor fluctuations reveal both information use within modality and coordination among modalities. Experiment 1 focuses on perceptual learning in dynamic touch, in which participants use exploratory hand-wielding of unseen objects to make visually guided length judgments and use visual feedback to rescale their judgments of the same mechanical information. Previous research found that the degree of fractal temporal scaling (i.e., "fractality") in hand-wielding moderates the use of mechanical information. Experiment 1 shows that head-sway fractality moderates the use of visual information. Further, experience with feedback increases head-sway fractality and prolongs its effect on later hand-wielding fractality. Experiment 2 replicates effects of head-sway fractality moderating use of visual information in a purely visual-judgment task. Together, these findings suggest that fractal fluctuations may provide a modal-general window onto not just how participants use perceptual information but also how well they may integrate information among different modalities.	f	\N
25330316	It has been well known that pediatric allergic rhinitis was associated with poor performance at school due to attention deficit. However, there were no cohort studies for the effect of treatment of allergic rhinitis on attention performance in pediatric population. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate whether attention performance was improved after treatment in children with allergic rhinitis. In this ARCO-Kids (Allergic Rhinitis Cohort Study for Kids), consecutive pediatric patients with rhinitis symptoms underwent a skin prick test and computerized comprehensive attention test. According to the skin prick test results, the children were diagnosed as allergic rhinitis or non- allergic rhinitis. All of the patients were regularly followed up and treated with oral medication or intranasal corticosteroid sprays. The comprehensive attention tests consisted of sustained and divided attention tasks. Each of the tasks was assessed by the attention score which was calculated by the number of omission and commission errors. The comprehension attention test was repeated after 1 year. A total of 797 children with allergic rhinitis and 239 children with non-allergic rhinitis were included. Initially, the attention scores of omission and commission errors on divided attention task were significantly lower in children with allergic rhinitis than in children with non-allergic rhinitis. After 1 year of treatment, children with allergic rhinitis showed improvement in attention: commission error of sustained (95.6±17.0 vs 97.0±16.6) and divided attention task (99.1±15.8 vs 91.8±23.5). Meanwhile, there was no significant difference of attention scores in children with non-allergic rhinitis. Our study showed that management of allergic rhinitis might be associated with improvement of attention.	f	\N
25338537	In the present study, we investigated how feature- and location-based selection influences visual working memory (VWM) encoding and maintenance. In Experiment 1, cue type (color, location) and cue timing (precue, retro-cue) were manipulated in a change detection task. The stimuli were color-location conjunction objects, and binding memory was tested. We found a significantly greater effect for color precues than for either color retro-cues or location precues, but no difference between location pre- and retro-cues, consistent with previous studies (e.g., Griffin & Nobre in Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 15, 1176-1194, 2003). We also found no difference between location and color retro-cues. Experiment 2 replicated the color precue advantage with more complex color-shape-location conjunction objects. Only one retro-cue effect was different from that in Experiment 1: Color retro-cues were significantly less effective than location retro-cues in Experiment 2, which may relate to a structural property of multidimensional VWM representations. In Experiment 3, a visual search task was used, and the result of a greater location than color precue effect suggests that the color precue advantage in a memory task is related to the modulation of VWM encoding rather than of sensation and perception. Experiment 4, using a task that required only memory for individual features but not for feature bindings, further confirmed that the color precue advantage is specific to binding memory. Together, these findings reveal new aspects of the interaction between attention and VWM and provide potentially important implications for the structural properties of VWM representations.	f	\N
25348131	To evaluate the frequency, determinants and sleep characteristics of lucid dreaming in narcolepsy. University hospital sleep disorder unit. Case-control study. Consecutive patients with narcolepsy and healthy controls. Participants were interviewed regarding the frequency and determinants of lucid dreaming. Twelve narcolepsy patients and 5 controls who self-identified as frequent lucid dreamers underwent nighttime and daytime sleep monitoring after being given instructions regarding how to give an eye signal when lucid. Compared to 53 healthy controls, the 53 narcolepsy patients reported more frequent dream recall, nightmares and recurrent dreams. Lucid dreaming was achieved by 77.4% of narcoleptic patients and 49.1% of controls (P < 0.05), with an average of 7.6±11 vs. 0.3±0.8 lucid dreams/ month (P < 0.0001). The frequency of cataplexy, hallucinations, sleep paralysis, dyssomnia, HLA positivity, and the severity of sleepiness were similar in narcolepsy with and without lucid dreaming. Seven of 12 narcoleptic (and 0 non-narcoleptic) lucid dreamers achieved lucid REM sleep across a total of 33 naps, including 14 episodes with eye signal. The delta power in the electrode average, in delta, theta, and alpha powers in C4, and coherences between frontal electrodes were lower in lucid than non-lucid REM sleep in spectral EEG analysis. The duration of REM sleep was longer, the REM sleep onset latency tended to be shorter, and the percentage of atonia tended to be higher in lucid vs. non-lucid REM sleep; the arousal index and REM density and amplitude were unchanged. Narcolepsy is a novel, easy model for studying lucid dreaming.	f	\N
25351450	To evaluate sexual function in women undergoing assisted reproductive techniques. This is a case-control study including 278 women assisted in Human Reproduction services and at the Gynecology Clinic of the University Hospital, Federal University of Goiás, Brazil. The women were divided into a study group (168 infertile women) and a control group (110 fertile women), and they answered the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) questionnaire used the assess the sexual function. We calculated the odds ratio (OR) for the chance of sexual dysfunction in infertile women (p<0.05). Out of the analyzed women, 33.09% reported sexual dysfunction, with no difference in the FSFI score between groups (p=0.29). The prevalence of sexual dysfunction was of 36.30% among infertile women and 28.18% among fertile women; however, there was no difference between FSFI scores (p=0.36). The desire and arousal domains were significantly different among infertile women (p=0.01). Infertile women had the same chances of having sexual dysfunction as fertile women (OR=1.4, 95%CI 0.8-2.4; p=0.2). There were no differences between infertile and fertile women. Infertile women undergoing assisted reproduction techniques require professional approach to sexual health regarding desire and arousal.	f	\N
25352218	Coordinated attention to information from multiple senses is fundamental to our ability to respond to salient environmental events, yet little is known about brain network mechanisms that guide integration of information from multiple senses. Here we investigate dynamic causal mechanisms underlying multisensory auditory-visual attention, focusing on a network of right-hemisphere frontal-cingulate-parietal regions implicated in a wide range of tasks involving attention and cognitive control. Participants performed three 'oddball' attention tasks involving auditory, visual and multisensory auditory-visual stimuli during fMRI scanning. We found that the right anterior insula (rAI) demonstrated the most significant causal influences on all other frontal-cingulate-parietal regions, serving as a major causal control hub during multisensory attention. Crucially, we then tested two competing models of the role of the rAI in multisensory attention: an 'integrated' signaling model in which the rAI generates a common multisensory control signal associated with simultaneous attention to auditory and visual oddball stimuli versus a 'segregated' signaling model in which the rAI generates two segregated and independent signals in each sensory modality. We found strong support for the integrated, rather than the segregated, signaling model. Furthermore, the strength of the integrated control signal from the rAI was most pronounced on the dorsal anterior cingulate and posterior parietal cortices, two key nodes of saliency and central executive networks respectively. These results were preserved with the addition of a superior temporal sulcus region involved in multisensory processing. Our study provides new insights into the dynamic causal mechanisms by which the AI facilitates multisensory attention.	f	\N
25366823	This investigation brings together a response-time system identification methodology (e.g., Townsend & Wenger Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 11, 391-418, 2004a) and an accuracy methodology, intended to assess models of integration across stimulus dimensions (features, modalities, etc.) that were proposed by Shaw and colleagues (e.g., Mulligan & Shaw Perception & Psychophysics 28, 471-478, 1980). The goal was to theoretically examine these separate strategies and to apply them conjointly to the same set of participants. The empirical phases were carried out within an extension of an established experimental design called the double factorial paradigm (e.g., Townsend & Nozawa Journal of Mathematical Psychology 39, 321-359, 1995). That paradigm, based on response times, permits assessments of architecture (parallel vs. serial processing), stopping rule (exhaustive vs. minimum time), and workload capacity, all within the same blocks of trials. The paradigm introduced by Shaw and colleagues uses a statistic formally analogous to that of the double factorial paradigm, but based on accuracy rather than response times. We demonstrate that the accuracy measure cannot discriminate between parallel and serial processing. Nonetheless, the class of models supported by the accuracy data possesses a suitable interpretation within the same set of models supported by the response-time data. The supported model, consistent across individuals, is parallel and has limited capacity, with the participants employing the appropriate stopping rule for the experimental setting.	f	\N
25376192	Evidence from perceptually based implicit memory tasks demonstrates greater priming from distracting information among older compared with younger adults. We examined whether older adults also show greater conceptually based implicit priming from distracting information. We measured priming using a general-knowledge test that was preceded by an incidental-encoding task (a color-naming Stroop task in one experiment and a 1-back task involving pictures with irrelevant words superimposed in a second experiment). Younger adults showed no priming from the distracting information in either experiment, whereas older adults showed reliable priming in both experiments. Thus, unlike young adults, older adults process irrelevant information conceptually and then can use that information to boost their performance on a subsequent task.	f	\N
25379451	Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been characterized by atypical socio-communicative behavior, sensorimotor impairment and abnormal neurodevelopmental trajectories. DTI has been used to determine the presence and nature of abnormality in white matter integrity that may contribute to the behavioral phenomena that characterize ASD. Although atypical patterns of sensory responding in ASD are well documented in the behavioral literature, much less is known about the neural networks associated with aberrant sensory processing. To address the roles of basic sensory, sensory association and early attentional processes in sensory responsiveness in ASD, our investigation focused on five white matter fiber tracts known to be involved in these various stages of sensory processing: superior corona radiata, centrum semiovale, inferior longitudinal fasciculus, posterior limb of the internal capsule, and splenium. We acquired high angular resolution diffusion images from 32 children with ASD and 26 typically developing children between the ages of 5 and 8. We also administered sensory assessments to examine brain-behavior relationships between white matter integrity and sensory variables. Our findings suggest a modulatory role of the inferior longitudinal fasciculus and splenium in atypical sensorimotor and early attention processes in ASD. Increased tactile defensiveness was found to be related to reduced fractional anisotropy in the inferior longitudinal fasciculus, which may reflect an aberrant connection between limbic structures in the temporal lobe and the inferior parietal cortex. Our findings also corroborate the modulatory role of the splenium in attentional orienting, but suggest the possibility of a more diffuse or separable network for social orienting in ASD. Future investigation should consider the use of whole brain analyses for a more robust assessment of white matter microstructure.	f	\N
25384235	During search, the disengagement of attention is automatically delayed when a fixated but task-irrelevant object shares features of the search target. We examined whether delayed disengagement based on top-down attention set is potentially functional, resulting in additional processing of the fixated item. To accomplish this, we adapted the oculomotor disengagement paradigm. Participants saccaded to a peripheral object of a particular color and responded to the identity of the letter within it. To initiate search participants made a saccade away from an always irrelevant object at the center of the screen that matched or mismatched the target's color and contained a letter that was congruent or incongruent with the target letter. We found that delayed disengagement based on attention set was associated with deeper processing of the center item: a congruency effect between the center letter and peripheral target letter was only observed when the center object's color matched participants' attention set. Results are consistent with the proposal that delayed disengagement based on attention set is functionally significant, automatically encouraging deeper levels of processing of target-like objects that fall within the focus of attention.	f	\N
25384520	The aim of this study was to assess sexual function in female patients with myocardial infarction (MI). As research instruments, an interview form of 20 questions that questioned personal characteristics was developed by researchers, Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) that evaluated sexual dysfunction was used. The Beck Depression Inventory was used to evaluate depression. In the course of this study, 45 female patients (62.73 ± 8.55 years) with MI and 50 control women were interviewed. The total FSFI score was 16.41 ± 8.04 in the MI group versus 23.13 ± 3.95 (P < 0.001) in the control group. The prevalence of sexual dysfunction is significantly higher and the mean FSFI score was significantly lower in MI group women in comparison with the control group. Subscale scores of desire, arousal, lubrication and orgasm domains were lower than the other subscale scores in the MI group. Besides, 75.6% of the women in the MI group and 48.2% of women in the control group had a female sexual dysfunction. The frequency of intercourse was significantly lower in women with MI (1.55 ± 0.50 times last month) compared to the control group (2.14 ± 1.04 times last month). No significant differences were detected between the mean total BDI scores. But the correlation between FSFI and BDI total scores indicates that the increasing BDI scores in MI and control groups affected the total FSFI scores negatively. Sexual problems are frequent in women with MI. Sexuality should be evaluated after MI and patients' education and counseling may contribute to a better sexual function.	f	\N
25428212	Attention orienting is a cognitive process that facilitates the movement of attention focus from one location to another: this may be impaired in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Dorsal and ventral attention networks (DAN and VAN) sub-serve the process of attention orienting. This study investigated the functional connectivity of attention orienting in these networks in ASD using the Posner Cueing Task. Twenty-one adolescents with ASD and 21 age and IQ matched controls underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging. A psychophysical interaction (PPI) analysis was implemented to investigate task-dependent functional connectivity, measuring synchronicity of brain regions during the task. Regions of interest (ROI) were selected to explore functional connectivity in the DAN during cue-only conditions and in the VAN during invalid and valid trials. Behaviourally, the ASD and control groups performed the task in a similar manner. Functional MRI results indicated that the ASD and control groups activated similar brain regions. During invalid trials (VAN), the ASD group showed significant positive functional connectivity to multiple brain regions, whilst the control group demonstrated negative connectivity. During valid trials (VAN), the two groups also showed contrasting patterns of connectivity. In the cue-only conditions (DAN), the ASD group showed weaker functional connectivity. The DAN analysis suggests that the ASD group has weaker coherence between brain areas involved in goal-driven, endogenous attention control. The strong positive functional connectivity exhibited by the ASD group in the VAN during the invalid trials suggests that individuals with ASD may generate compensatory mechanisms to achieve neurotypical behaviour. These results support the theory of abnormal cortical connectivity in autism.	f	\N
25443228	The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of an internal and external attentional focus on single leg hop jump distance and knee kinematics in patients after ACL reconstruction (ACLR). Experimental. Outpatient physical therapy facility. Sixteen patients after ACLR. Patients received either an instruction with an internal focus or an external focus before performing a single leg hop jump. The jump distance, knee valgus angle at initial contact, peak knee valgus angle, knee flexion angle at initial contact, peak knee flexion angle, total ROM and time to peak angles for the injured and non-injured legs were recorded. A repeated measures MANOVA was used to determine significance between the experimental conditions with the primary outcome measures as dependent variables. The external focus group had significant larger knee flexion angles at initial contact, peak knee flexion, total ROM and time to peak knee flexion for the injured legs. This study demonstrates the applicability of using an external focus during rehabilitation of patients after ACLR to enhance safer movement patterns compared to an internal focus of attention and subsequently may help to reduce second ACL injury risk.	f	\N
25445180	Efforts to determine and understand the causes of autism are currently hampered by a large disconnect between recent molecular genetics findings that are associated with the condition and the core behavioral symptoms that define the condition. In this perspective piece, we propose a systems biology framework to bridge that gap between genes and symptoms. The framework focuses on basic mechanisms of socialization that are highly-conserved in evolution and are early-emerging in development. By conceiving of these basic mechanisms of socialization as quantitative endophenotypes, we hope to connect genes and behavior in autism through integrative studies of neurodevelopmental, behavioral, and epigenetic changes. These changes both lead to and are led by the accomplishment of specific social adaptive tasks in a typical infant's life. However, based on recent research that indicates that infants later diagnosed with autism fail to accomplish at least some of these tasks, we suggest that a narrow developmental period, spanning critical transitions from reflexive, subcortically-controlled visual behavior to interactional, cortically-controlled and social visual behavior be prioritized for future study. Mapping epigenetic, neural, and behavioral changes that both drive and are driven by these early transitions may shed a bright light on the pathogenesis of autism.	f	\N
25446944	We review reports of brain activations that occur immediately prior to the onset or following the offset of to-be-remembered information and can predict subsequent mnemonic success. Memory-predictive pre-encoding processes, occurring from fractions of a second to minutes prior to event onset, are mainly associated with activations in the medial temporal lobe (MTL), amygdala and midbrain, and with enhanced theta oscillations. These activations may be considered as the neural correlates of one or more cognitive operations, including contextual processing, attention, and the engagement of distinct computational modes associated with prior encoding or retrieval. Post-encoding activations that correlate with subsequent memory performance are mainly observed in the MTL, sensory cortices and frontal regions. These activations may reflect binding of elements of the encoded information and initiation of memory consolidation. In all, the findings reviewed here illustrate the importance of brain states in the immediate peri-encoding time windows in determining encoding success. Understanding these brain states and their specific effects on memory may lead to optimization of the encoding of desired memories and mitigation of undesired ones.	f	\N
25448628	The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) state that young people need to have access to the best evidence-based care to improve outcome. The current 'gold standard' ADHD diagnostic assessment combines clinical observation with subjective parent, teacher and self-reports. In routine practice, reports from multiple informants may be unavailable or contradictory, leading to diagnostic uncertainty and delay. The addition of objective tests of attention and activity may help reduce diagnostic uncertainty and delays in initiating treatment leading to improved outcomes. This trial investigates whether providing clinicians with an objective report of levels of attention, impulsivity and activity can lead to an earlier, and more accurate, clinical diagnosis and improved patient outcome. This multisite randomised controlled trial will recruit young people (aged 6-17 years old) who have been referred for an ADHD diagnostic assessment at Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and Community Paediatric clinics across England. Routine clinical assessment will be augmented by the QbTest, incorporating a continuous performance test (CPT) and infrared motion tracking of activity. The participant will be randomised into one of two study arms: QbOpen (clinician has immediate access to a QbTest report): QbBlind (report is withheld until the study end). Primary outcomes are time to diagnosis and diagnostic accuracy. Secondary outcomes include clinician's diagnostic confidence and routine clinical outcome measures. Cost-effective analysis will be conducted, alongside a qualitative assessment of the feasibility and acceptability of incorporating QbTest in routine practice. The findings from the study will inform commissioners, clinicians and managers about the feasibility, acceptability, clinical utility and cost-effectiveness of incorporating QbTest into routine diagnostic assessment of young people with ADHD. The results will be submitted for publication in peer-reviewed journals. The study has received ethical approval. NCT02209116.	f	\N
25460674	Mounting research shows that the tendency to co-ruminate with peers regarding ongoing problems increases adolescents' depression risk; however, the means by which this interpersonal process fosters risk has not been identified. This said, theorists have proposed that co-rumination increases depression risk, in part, by increasing one's tendency to ruminate when alone. We tested this hypothesis in a study of 201 high-school freshmen who completed two assessments, six months apart. Supporting the proposed model, co-rumination predicted prospective increases in rumination and rumination predicted increases in depressive symptoms. The direct effect of co-rumination on depressive symptom change was not significant. Results indicate that co-rumination with friends may serve to increase rumination, which in turn increases depression risk.	f	\N
25461224	The present proof-of-concept study investigated the feasibility of skin conductance biofeedback training in reducing seizures in adults with drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), whose seizures are triggered by stress. Skin conductance biofeedback aims to increase levels of peripheral sympathetic arousal in order to reduce cortical excitability. This might seem somewhat counterintuitive, since such autonomic arousal may also be associated with increased stress and anxiety. Thus, this sought to verify that patients with TLE and stress-triggered seizures are not worsened in terms of stress, anxiety, and negative emotional response to this nonpharmacological treatment. Eleven patients with drug-resistant TLE with seizures triggered by stress were treated with 12 sessions of biofeedback. Patients did not worsen on cognitive evaluation of attentional biases towards negative emotional stimuli (P>.05) or on psychometric evaluation with state anxiety inventory (P = .059); in addition, a significant improvement was found in the Negative Affect Schedule (P = .014) and in the Beck Depression Inventory (P = .009). Biofeedback training significantly reduced seizure frequency with a mean reduction of -48.61% (SD = 27.79) (P = .005). There was a correlation between the mean change in skin conductance activity over the biofeedback treatment and the reduction of seizure frequency (r(11) = .62, P = .042). Thus, the skin conductance biofeedback used in the present study, which teaches patients to achieve an increased level of peripheral sympathetic arousal, was a well-tolerated nonpharmacological treatment. Further, well-controlled studies are needed to confirm the therapeutic value of this nonpharmacological treatment in reducing seizures in adults with drug-resistant TLE with seizures triggered by stress.	f	\N
25462041	During early childhood, girls outperform boys on key dimensions of cognitive functions, including inhibitory control, sustained attention, and working memory. The role of parenting in these sex differences is unknown despite evidence that boys are more sensitive to the effects of the early environment. In this study, we measured parental sensitivity at 14 and 36 months of age, and children's cognitive and executive functions (sustained attention, inhibitory control, and forward/backward memory) at 52 months of age, in a longitudinal cohort (N=752). Boys scored significantly lower than girls on inhibitory control (more Go/NoGo "commission errors") and short-term memory (forward color recall task), but boys did not differ from girls on attention (Go/NoGo "omission errors") or working memory (backward color recall task). In stratified analyses, parental sensitivity at 36 months of age was negatively associated with number of errors of commission (p=.05) and omission (p=.02) in boys, whereas child's age was the only significant predictor of commission and omission errors in girls. A combined analysis of both sexes confirmed an interaction between sex and parenting for omission errors (p=.03). The results indicate that sex differences in cognitive functions are evident in preschoolers, although not across all dimensions we assessed. Boys appear to be more vulnerable to early parenting effects, but only in association with omission errors (attention) and not with the other cognitive function dimensions.	f	\N
25463351	Much research evidences a system in adults and young children for approximately representing quantity. Here we provide evidence that the bias to attend to discrete quantity versus other dimensions may be mediated by set size and culture. Preschool-age English-speaking children in the United States and Japanese-speaking children in Japan were tested in a match-to-sample task where number was pitted against cumulative surface area in both large and small numerical set comparisons. Results showed that children from both cultures were biased to attend to the number of items for small sets. Large set responses also showed a general attention to number when ratio difficulty was easy. However, relative to the responses for small sets, attention to number decreased for both groups; moreover, both U.S. and Japanese children showed a significant bias to attend to total amount for difficult numerical ratio distances, although Japanese children shifted attention to total area at relatively smaller set sizes than U.S. children. These results add to our growing understanding of how quantity is represented and how such representation is influenced by context--both cultural and perceptual.	f	\N
25463457	EEG studies of cue-induced visual alpha power (8-13 Hz) lateralization have been conducted on young adults without examining differences that may develop as a consequence of normal aging. Here, we examined age-related differences in spatial attention by comparing healthy older and younger adults. Our key finding is that cue-induced alpha power lateralization was observed in younger, but not older adults, even though both groups exhibited classic event-related potential signatures of spatial orienting. Specifically, both younger and older adults showed significant early directing-attention negativity (EDAN), anterior directing-attention negativity (ADAN), late directing-attention positivity (LDAP) and contingent negative variation (CNV). Furthermore, target-evoked sensory components were enhanced for attended relative to unattended targets in both younger and older groups. This pattern of results suggests that although older adults can successfully allocate spatial attention, they do so without the lateralization of alpha power that is commonly observed in younger adults. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that younger and older adults might engage different neural mechanisms for attentional orienting, and that alpha power lateralization during visual spatial attention is a phenomenon that diminishes during normal aging.	f	\N
25464934	Some components of generalized anxiety disorder, such as physical symptoms, are thought to reflect autonomic nervous system arousal. This study primarily assessed the relationships between psychophysiological and clinical measures using venlafaxine extended release or applied relaxation, and secondarily, the impact of combination treatment in patients not remitting after 8 weeks. Fifty-eight patients were randomly assigned to 8 weeks of treatment with either venlafaxine or applied relaxation (Phase I). Non-remitted patients received combination treatment for an additional 8 weeks (Phase II). Assessments included the Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAM-A), Beck Depression Inventory, Penn State Worry Questionnaire and the Stroop Color-Word Task coupled with electrophysiological measures (skin conductance and frontalis electromyography (EMG)). In Phase 1, a time effect was found for the clinical and skin conductance measures. Thirteen patients from each group were in remission. In Phase 2, seven additional patients remitted. Baseline psychophysiological measures were not associated with baseline clinical variables or with clinical outcomes. Independently of treatment allocation, a reduction in frontal EMG values at week 4 was significantly associated with a decrease in HAM-A scores at week 8. At week 4, responders from the applied relaxation group had lower electrophysiological activity than the venlafaxine group. Baseline psychophysiological measures were not linked with clinical measures at study inclusion or with treatment response. Frontal EMG response at week 4 is a possible predictor of treatment response. Treatment combination enhances treatment response after initial failure.	f	\N
25466695	Hallucinations and delusions that complicate Parkinson's disease (PD) could lead to nursing home placement and are linked to increased mortality. Cognitive impairments are typically associated with the presence of hallucinations but there are no data regarding whether such a relationship exists with delusions. We hypothesized that hallucinations would be associated with executive and visuospatial disturbance. An exploratory examination of cognitive correlates of delusions was also completed to address the question of whether they differ from hallucinations. 144 PD subjects completed a neuropsychological battery to assess cognition and the SAPS to examine psychosis. Correlational analyses assessed associations between hallucinations and delusions with cognitive domains. 48 subjects (33%) reported psychotic symptoms: 25 (17%) experienced hallucinations without delusions, 23 (16%) had symptoms dominated by delusions. Severity and/or number of hallucination subtypes were significantly correlated with lower scores in language, memory, attention, executive functioning, and visuospatial ability. Correlations with delusions were non-significant. Tests of differences in the size of the correlations between groups revealed a significant relationship between language and visuospatial performance with hallucinations. Cognitive correlates of hallucinations and delusions appear to be different in PD, suggesting distinct pathogenic mechanisms and possibly anatomical substrates. Hence, delusions may not share the same associations with dementia as hallucinations. Since this is a new finding, further studies will be needed to confirm our results.	f	\N
25487871	The physiological effects of white-nose syndrome (WNS) in hibernating bats and ultimate causes of mortality from infection with Pseudogymnoascus (formerly Geomyces) destructans are not fully understood. Increased frequency of arousal from torpor described among hibernating bats with late-stage WNS is thought to accelerate depletion of fat reserves, but the physiological mechanisms that lead to these alterations in hibernation behavior have not been elucidated. We used the doubly labeled water (DLW) method and clinical chemistry to evaluate energy use, body composition changes, and blood chemistry perturbations in hibernating little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) experimentally infected with P. destructans to better understand the physiological processes that underlie mortality from WNS. These data indicated that fat energy utilization, as demonstrated by changes in body composition, was two-fold higher for bats with WNS compared to negative controls. These differences were apparent in early stages of infection when torpor-arousal patterns were equivalent between infected and non-infected animals, suggesting that P. destructans has complex physiological impacts on its host prior to onset of clinical signs indicative of late-stage infections. Additionally, bats with mild to moderate skin lesions associated with early-stage WNS demonstrated a chronic respiratory acidosis characterized by significantly elevated dissolved carbon dioxide, acidemia, and elevated bicarbonate. Potassium concentrations were also significantly higher among infected bats, but sodium, chloride, and other hydration parameters were equivalent to controls. Integrating these novel findings on the physiological changes that occur in early-stage WNS with those previously documented in late-stage infections, we propose a multi-stage disease progression model that mechanistically describes the pathologic and physiologic effects underlying mortality of WNS in hibernating bats. This model identifies testable hypotheses for better understanding this disease, knowledge that will be critical for defining effective disease mitigation strategies aimed at reducing morbidity and mortality that results from WNS.	f	\N
25490078	This paper attempts to integrate child developmental research and early childhood neural-cognitive development within the complexities of the early infant-mother relationship as described by psychoanalytic theory. Accumulating research evidence for the importance of the complex transition from mutual gaze to joint gaze calls into question the origin and analytic significance of the alliance relationship that emerges from the primary relationship between the mother and child. This paper explores the apparently neglected relationship between the respective theories of the therapeutic alliance of Zetzel, Greenson, and Brenner, and the developmental progression from mutual gaze and joint gaze, upon which important aspects of mental and cognitive development rest. Nonblind infants and children rely heavily on the ability to see in order to learn and form representations, while trauma affects these dynamics and perception. This issue is particularly relevant given the high incidence of unresolved childhood trauma in the form of neglect, loss, and abuse in those who seek out therapy. Freud's original conception of developmental phase progression has been unsubstantiated by recent researchers in terms of chronological progression and the receptors through which the infants experience the world. In this paper the author applies specific developmental lenses to this basic conception of the dyadic relationship in psychoanalytic treatment, and will reexamine and redefine both working and therapeutic alliance in the frame of an essential developmental stage of joint visual attention. A clinical example will reveal compromised normal preverbal interactive development, exposing faults in the complex transition from mutual gaze to joint gaze.	f	\N
25490810	We assess the driving distraction potential of texting with Google Glass (Glass), a mobile wearable platform capable of receiving and sending short-message-service and other messaging formats. A known roadway danger, texting while driving has been targeted by legislation and widely banned. Supporters of Glass claim the head-mounted wearable computer is designed to deliver information without concurrent distraction. Existing literature supports the supposition that design decisions incorporated in Glass might facilitate messaging for drivers. We asked drivers in a simulator to drive and use either Glass or a smartphone-based messaging interface, then interrupted them with an emergency brake event. Both the response event and subsequent recovery were analyzed. Glass-delivered messages served to moderate but did not eliminate distracting cognitive demands. A potential passive cost to drivers merely wearing Glass was also observed. Messaging using either device impaired driving as compared to driving without multitasking. Glass in not a panacea as some supporters claim, but it does point the way to design interventions that effect reduced load in multitasking. Discussions of these identified benefits are framed within the potential of new in-vehicle systems that bring both novel forms of distraction and tools for mitigation into the driver's seat.	f	\N
25496437	Erectile dysfunction (ED) is frequent in patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and may act as a surrogate of endothelial dysfunction. Furthermore, impairments of vigilance and sustained attention are also commonly associated with OSA. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether there is an association between ED and sustained attention deficits. A prospective cross-sectional cohort of 401 male in-patients undergoing diagnostic polysomnography for suspected OSA and a 25-minute sustained attention test was analyzed. ED was assessed using the 15-item International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF-15) questionnaire. The Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) served as a measure of daytime sleepiness. Severity of impaired erectile function (EF) assessed by the IIEF-15, core task parameters of the sustained attention test (i.e., CR: correct reactions; V-CR: variation of correct reactions, CE: commission errors, RT: reaction time; V-RT: variation of reaction times). Three hundred eighty-one consecutive patients presenting for in-lab polysomnography were included in the analysis. Impaired EF was diagnosed in 246 patients (65%). With increasing impairment of EF, patients scored significantly worse in all vigilance test parameters and demonstrated more severely diminished vigilance (normal EF: 11.9%, moderately impaired EF: 24.1%, and severely impaired EF: 34.9%). Multivariate regression analyses including established risk factors for ED, OSA, or sleepiness revealed a significant independent association between lower scores for EF and impairments on the following vigilance test variables: odds ratio (95% confidence interval) for V-CR: 0.52 (0.34-0.81), CE: 0.87 (0.80-0.95), and V-RT: 0.91 (0.87-0.96). The ESS was independently associated with both measures of performance instability: odds ratio for V-CR: 6.94 (2.97-16.23) and V-RT: 1.28 (1.14-1.44). In OSA patients, the severity of impaired EF was associated with impaired vigilance performance, independent of other known risk factors for ED or OSA and not mediated by sleepiness. Potentially, the findings suggest a direct relationship between vascular or endothelial dysfunction and impairments in both EF and neurobehavioral cognitive function.	f	\N
25505324	Humans are selective information processors who efficiently prevent goal-inappropriate stimulus information to gain control over their actions. Nonetheless, stimuli, which are both unnecessary for solving a current task and liable to cue an incorrect response (i.e., "distractors"), frequently modulate task performance, even when consistently paired with a physical feature that makes them easily discernible from target stimuli. Current models of cognitive control assume adjustment of the processing of distractor information based on the overall distractor utility (e.g., predictive value regarding the appropriate response, likelihood to elicit conflict with target processing). Although studies on distractor interference have supported the notion of utility-based processing adjustment, previous evidence is inconclusive regarding the specificity of this adjustment for distractor information and the stage(s) of processing affected. To assess the processing of distractors during sensory-perceptual phases we applied EEG recording in a stimulus identification task, involving successive distractor-target presentation, and manipulated the overall distractor utility. Behavioral measures replicated previously found utility modulations of distractor interference. Crucially, distractor-evoked visual potentials (i.e., posterior N1) were more pronounced in high-utility than low-utility conditions. This effect generalized to distractors unrelated to the utility manipulation, providing evidence for item-unspecific adjustment of early distractor processing to the experienced utility of distractor information.	f	\N
25510197	Cognitive performance in healthy persons varies widely between individuals. Sex differences in cognition are well reported, and there is an emerging body of evidence suggesting that the relationship between dopaminergic neurotransmission, implicated in many cognitive functions, is modulated by sex. Here, we examine the influence of sex and genetic variations along the dopaminergic pathway on aspects of cognitive control. A total of 415 healthy individuals, selected from an international consortium linked to Brain Research and Integrative Neuroscience Network (BRAINnet), were genotyped for two common and functional genetic variations of dopamine regulating genes: the catechol-O-methyltransferase [COMT] gene (rs4680) and the dopamine receptor D2 [DRD2] gene (rs6277). Cognitive measures were selected to explore sustained attention (using a continuous performance task), switching of attention (using a Trails B adaptation) and working memory (a visual computerised adaptation of digit span). While there were no main effects for genotype across any tasks, analyses revealed significant sex by genotype interactions for the capacity to switch attention. In relation to COMT, superior performance was noted in females with the Val/Val genotype and for DRD2, superior performance was seen for TT females and CC males. These findings highlight the importance of considering genetic variation in baseline dopamine levels in addition to sex, when considering the impact of dopamine on cognition in healthy populations. These findings also have important implications for the many neuropsychiatric disorders that implicate dopamine, cognitive changes and sex differences.	f	\N
25514652	It is solidly established that top-down (goal-driven) and bottom-up (stimulus-driven) attention mechanisms depend on distributed cortical networks, including prefrontal and frontoparietal regions. On the other hand, it is less clear whether the BG also contribute to one or the other of these mechanisms, or to both. The current study was principally undertaken to clarify this issue. Parkinson disease (PD), a neurodegenerative disorder primarily affecting the BG, has proven to be an effective model for investigating the contribution of the BG to different brain functions; therefore, we set out to investigate deficits of top-down and bottom-up attention in a selected cohort of PD patients. With this objective in mind, we compared the performance on three computerized tasks of two groups of 12 parkinsonian patients (assessed without any treatment), one otherwise pharmacologically treated and the other also surgically treated, with that of a group of controls. The main behavioral tool for our study was an attentional capture task, which enabled us to tap the competition between top-down and bottom-up mechanisms of visual attention. This task was suitably combined with a choice RT and a simple RT task to isolate any specific deficit of attention from deficits in motor response selection and initiation. In the two groups of patients, we found an equivalent increase of attentional capture but also comparable delays in target selection in the absence of any salient distractor (reflecting impaired top-down mechanisms) and movement initiation compared with controls. In contrast, motor response selection processes appeared to be prolonged only in the operated patients. Our results confirm that the BG are involved in both motor and cognitive domains. Specifically, damage to the BG, as it occurs in PD, leads to a distinct deficit of top-down control of visual attention, and this can account, albeit indirectly, for the enhancement of attentional capture, reflecting weakened ability of top-down mechanisms to antagonize bottom-up control.	f	\N
25515099	The rat psychomotor vigilance task (rPVT) was developed as a rodent analog of the human psychomotor vigilance task (hPVT). We examined whether rPVT performance displays time-on-task effects similar to those observed on the hPVT. The rPVT requires rats to respond to a randomly presented light stimulus to obtain a water reward. Rats were water deprived for 22 h prior to each 30-min rPVT session to motivate performance. We analyzed rPVT performance over time on task and as a function of the response-stimulus interval, at baseline and after sleep deprivation. The study was conducted in an academic research vivarium. Male Long-Evans rats were trained to respond to a 0.5 sec stimulus light within 3 sec of stimulus onset. Complete data were available for n = 20 rats. Rats performed the rPVT for 30 min at baseline and after 24 h total sleep deprivation by gentle handling. Compared to baseline, sleep deprived rats displayed increased performance lapses and premature responses, similar to hPVT lapses of attention and false starts. However, in contrast to hPVT performance, the time-on-task performance decrement was not significantly enhanced by sleep deprivation. Moreover, following sleep deprivation, rPVT response times were not consistently increased after short response-stimulus intervals. The rPVT manifests similarities to the hPVT in global performance outcomes, but not in post-sleep deprivation effects of time on task and response-stimulus interval.	f	\N
25521352	In the current study we show that non-verbal food-evoked emotion scores significantly improve food choice prediction over merely liking scores. Previous research has shown that liking measures correlate with choice. However, liking is no strong predictor for food choice in real life environments. Therefore, the focus within recent studies shifted towards using emotion-profiling methods that successfully can discriminate between products that are equally liked. However, it is unclear how well scores from emotion-profiling methods predict actual food choice and/or consumption. To test this, we proposed to decompose emotion scores into valence and arousal scores using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and apply Multinomial Logit Models (MLM) to estimate food choice using liking, valence, and arousal as possible predictors. For this analysis, we used an existing data set comprised of liking and food-evoked emotions scores from 123 participants, who rated 7 unlabeled breakfast drinks. Liking scores were measured using a 100-mm visual analogue scale, while food-evoked emotions were measured using 2 existing emotion-profiling methods: a verbal and a non-verbal method (EsSense Profile and PrEmo, respectively). After 7 days, participants were asked to choose 1 breakfast drink from the experiment to consume during breakfast in a simulated restaurant environment. Cross validation showed that we were able to correctly predict individualized food choice (1 out of 7 products) for over 50% of the participants. This number increased to nearly 80% when looking at the top 2 candidates. Model comparisons showed that evoked emotions better predict food choice than perceived liking alone. However, the strongest predictive strength was achieved by the combination of evoked emotions and liking. Furthermore we showed that non-verbal food-evoked emotion scores more accurately predict food choice than verbal food-evoked emotions scores.	f	\N
25547035	To evaluate the reliability of actigraphy to distinguish the features of estimated daytime and nighttime sleep between patients with central disorders of hypersomnolence and healthy controls. Thirty-nine drug-naïve patients with Narcolepsy Type 1, twenty-four drug-naïve patients with Idiopathic Hypersomnia, and thirty age- and sex- matched healthy controls underwent seven days of actigraphic and self-report monitoring of sleep/wake behavior. The following variables were examined: estimated time in bed (eTIB), estimated total sleep time, estimated sleep latency (eSOL), estimated sleep efficiency, estimated wake after sleep onset, number of estimated awakenings (eAwk), number of estimated awakenings longer than 5 minutes, estimated sleep motor activity (eSMA), number of estimated naps, mean duration of the longest estimated nap (eNapD), and daytime motor activity. All actigraphic parameters significantly differentiated the three groups, except eTIB and eSOL. A discriminant score computed combining actigraphic parameters from nighttime (eSMA, eAwk) and daytime (eNapD) periods showed a wide area under the curve (0.935) and a good balance between positive (95%) and negative predictive (87%) values in Narcolepsy Type 1 cases. Actigraphy provided a reliable objective measurement of sleep quality and daytime napping behavior able to distinguish central disorders of hypersomnolence and in particular Narcolepsy Type 1. The nycthemeral profile, combined with a careful clinical evaluation, may be an ecological information, useful to track disease course.	f	\N
25549505	Boundary extension is a constructive memory error for views of scenes in which viewx tendto be remembered as more spatially expansive than they appeared. In seven experiments xwe examinedwhether local differences in boundary extension within views might exist by presenting par ticipants ith overhead views of single, elongated objects or object pairs on textured ground surfaces i:n whichobjects were oriented either vertically or horizontally. Memory for views' spatial expanse xwas testedwith either a view-recognition test or a border-adjustment test in which participants could ad just thespatial expanse of a test view using the computer's mouse. The border-adjustment test was uused tossess local boundary extension (primarily); the view-recognition test was used to assess paparticipants'emories for the overall spatial expanse of views (ie global boundary extension). Across exexperiments,n the border-adjustment tests specifically, participants showed more spatial expanse along the obobject'songer axis, in some cases restricting the view along the object's shorter axis. In addition, the rerecognition-t data revealed greater boundary extension for views with vertically oriented objects than for x.iviewsth horizontally oriented objects. Taken together, the results suggest that objects in scene x iviews canfect both local and global aspects of memory for spatial expanse of scene views.	f	\N
25560106	The delivery suite is a high-risk environment. Transitions between low-risk and high-risk can be swift, and sentinel events can occur without warning. The prevention of accidents in this environment rests on the vigilance of the individual practitioner at the frontline. It is, therefore, important that the individual practitioner should develop and maintain the cognitive skills to anticipate, recognize, and intercept unfolding error chains. This commentary gives an overview of a nontechnical skill that is essential for safe practice in a delivery suite: situational awareness. A basic description of situational awareness is provided, using examples of loss of situational awareness in the delivery suite and examples of simple interventions that could promote situational awareness. Involuntary automaticity readily creeps in during performance of routine tasks, and cognitive overload could deplete attentional resources that are, by nature, limited. Strategies and tactics for maintaining situational awareness include proactively seeking and managing information on unfolding events, continually updating individual and team mental models, mindful use of checklists and scoreboards, and avoidance of attentional blindness. These simple interventions require minimal financial resources but could immensely enhance clinical performance and patient safety. Situational awareness should be included in the training of obstetrician-gynecologists and other staff working in a delivery suite.	f	\N
25569948	Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a common respiratory disorder among adults. Recently we have shown that sedentary lifestyle causes an increase in diurnal leg fluid volume (LFV), which can shift into the neck at night when lying down to sleep and increase OSA severity. The purpose of this work was to investigate various metrics that represent baseline fluid retention in the legs and examine their correlation with neck fluid volume (NFV) and to develop a robust model for predicting fluid accumulation in the neck. In 13 healthy awake non-obese men, LFV and NFV were recorded continuously and simultaneously while standing for 5 minutes and then lying supine for 90 minutes. Simple regression was used to examine correlations between baseline LFV, baseline neck circumference (NC) and change in LFV with the outcome variables: change in NC (ΔNC) and in NFV (ΔNFV90) after lying supine for 90 minutes. An exhaustive grid search was implemented to find combinations of input variables which best modeled outcomes. We found strong positive correlations between baseline LFV (supine and standing) and ΔNFV90. Models developed for predicting ΔNFV90 included baseline standing LFV, baseline NC combined with change in LFV after lying supine for 90 minutes. These correlations and the developed models suggest that a greater baseline LFV might contribute to increased fluid accumulation in the neck. These results give more evidence that sedentary lifestyle might play a role in the pathogenesis of OSA by increasing the baseline LFV. The best models for predicting ΔNC include baseline LFV and NC; they improved accuracies of estimating ΔNC over individual predictors, suggesting that a combination of baseline fluid metrics is a good predictor of the change in NC while lying supine. Future work is aimed at adding additional baseline demographic features to improve model accuracy and eventually use it as a screening tool to predict severity of OSA prior to sleep.	f	\N
25583612	Selective attention is fundamental for human activity, but the details of its neural implementation remain elusive. One influential theory, the adaptive coding hypothesis (Duncan, 2001, An adaptive coding model of neural function in prefrontal cortex, Nature Reviews Neuroscience 2:820-829), proposes that single neurons in certain frontal and parietal regions dynamically adjust their responses to selectively encode relevant information. This selective representation may in turn support selective processing in more specialized brain regions such as the visual cortices. Here, we use multi-voxel decoding of functional magnetic resonance images to demonstrate selective representation of attended--and not distractor--objects in frontal, parietal, and visual cortices. In addition, we highlight a critical role for task demands in determining which brain regions exhibit selective coding. Strikingly, representation of attended objects in frontoparietal cortex was highest under conditions of high perceptual demand, when stimuli were hard to perceive and coding in early visual cortex was weak. Coding in early visual cortex varied as a function of attention and perceptual demand, while coding in higher visual areas was sensitive to the allocation of attention but robust to changes in perceptual difficulty. Consistent with high-profile reports, peripherally presented objects could also be decoded from activity at the occipital pole, a region which corresponds to the fovea. Our results emphasize the flexibility of frontoparietal and visual systems. They support the hypothesis that attention enhances the multi-voxel representation of information in the brain, and suggest that the engagement of this attentional mechanism depends critically on current task demands.	f	\N
25594946	Contextual cueing refers to a form of implicit spatial learning where participants incidentally learn to associate a target location with its repeated spatial context. Successful contextual learning produces an efficient visual search through familiar environments. Despite the fact that children exhibit the basic ability of implicit spatial learning, their general effectiveness in this form of learning can be compromised by other development-dependent factors. Learning to extract useful information (signal) in the presence of various amounts of irrelevant or distracting information (noise) characterizes one of the most important changes that occur with cognitive development. This research investigated whether signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) affects contextual cueing differently in children and adults. S/N was operationally defined as the ratio of repeated versus new displays encountered over time. Three ratio conditions were created: high (100%), medium (67%), and low (33%) conditions. Results suggested no difference in the acquisition of contextual learning effects in the high and medium conditions across three age groups (6- to 8-year-olds, 10- to 12-year-olds, and young adults). However, a significant developmental difference emerged in the low S/N condition. As predicted, adults exhibited significant contextual cueing effects, whereas older children showed marginally significant contextual cueing and younger children did not show cueing effects. Group differences in the ability to exhibit implicit contextual learning under low S/N conditions and the implications of this difference are discussed.	f	\N
25614241	Cluster analysis was used to create patterns of individual differences reflecting infant behaviors during the initial interaction episode of the Face-to-Face Still-Face (FFSF) paradigm. The clusters were used as the basic unit of analysis for studying infant and maternal behavior and dyadic coordination (i.e., matching and reparation) across FFSF. Seventy-five 4-month-old infants participated with their mothers. Cluster analysis identified three patterns: a Socially Engaged cluster (33%) exhibited high levels of social engagement with their mothers; a Disengaged cluster (60%) showed a tendency to be low in social interaction and a Negatively Engaged cluster (7%) showed high negative emotionality. During the Still-Face episode, the Socially Engaged cluster reacted by reducing focus on their mother and shifting their attention elsewhere, while infants in the Disengaged cluster reduced focus on the environment. Although both the Socially Engaged and Disengaged clusters increased in negative emotionality during the Still-Face, the Socially Engaged group largely recovered during the Reunion, whereas the Disengaged group displayed more negative emotion. The Negatively Engaged cluster demonstrated high levels of negative affect throughout the entire procedure. Mothers of Negatively Engaged infants showed less positive engagement and more social monitoring than mothers in other clusters during all episodes. Dyadic interaction differed between groups, with greater levels of matching and reparations in the engaged group, less in the Disengaged group, and very little coordination in the Negatively Engaged cluster. Findings highlight the role of distinctive patterns of infants' individual differences in determining early dyadic functioning.	f	\N
25624754	There is growing evidence that cognitive training (CT) can improve the cognitive functioning of the elderly. CT may be influenced by cultural and linguistic factors, but research examining CT programs has mostly been conducted on Western populations. We have developed an innovative electroencephalography (EEG)-based brain-computer interface (BCI) CT program that has shown preliminary efficacy in improving cognition in 32 healthy English-speaking elderly adults in Singapore. In this second pilot trial, we examine the acceptability, safety, and preliminary efficacy of our BCI CT program in healthy Chinese-speaking Singaporean elderly. Thirty-nine elderly participants were randomized into intervention (n=21) and wait-list control (n=18) arms. Intervention consisted of 24 half-hour sessions with our BCI-based CT training system to be completed in 8 weeks; the control arm received the same intervention after an initial 8-week waiting period. At the end of the training, a usability and acceptability questionnaire was administered. Efficacy was measured using the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS), which was translated and culturally adapted for the Chinese-speaking local population. Users were asked about any adverse events experienced after each session as a safety measure. The training was deemed easily usable and acceptable by senior users. The median difference in the change scores pre- and post-training of the modified RBANS total score was 8.0 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.0-16.0, P=0.042) higher in the intervention arm than waitlist control, while the mean difference was 9.0 (95% CI: 1.7-16.2, P=0.017). Ten (30.3%) participants reported a total of 16 adverse events - all of which were graded "mild" except for one graded "moderate". Our BCI training system shows potential in improving cognition in both English- and Chinese-speaking elderly, and deserves further evaluation in a Phase III trial. Overall, participants responded positively on the usability and acceptability questionnaire.	f	\N
25631970	Iron deficiency, associated with a decline in cognitive function, is the most common nutritional deficiency globally. The present study aimed to identify the impact of weekly iron supplements on the attention function of female students from a high school in North Khorasan Province, Iran. This was a blind, controlled, clinical trial study, involving 200 female students who were chosen using the stratified randomised sampling method. First, laboratory studies were performed to detect iron consumption limitations. Next, the 200 students were divided randomly and equally into case and control groups. The case group was treated with 50 mg of ferrous sulfate twice a week for 16 weeks. We compared both groups' data on attention, iron status and erythrocyte indices. Questionnaires were used to collect demographic data, while clinical data was collected using complete blood count and Toulouse-Piéron tests. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics, as well as paired and independent t-tests. The mean attention scores of the case and control groups were 104.8 ± 7.0 and 52.7 ± 9.6, respectively (p < 0.001). The mean haemoglobin levels of the two groups were 12.5 ± 0.9 and 11.2 ± 1.0, respectively (p < 0.001). Compared to the control group, the attention scores and haemoglobin concentrations of the case group were found to be improved by approximately 90% and 10%, respectively. Oral iron supplements (50 mg twice a week for 16 weeks) were able to improve the attention span and haematologic indices of female high school students.	f	\N
25637852	Attention has been shown to affect the neural processing of pain. However, the exact mechanisms underlying this modulation remain unknown. Here, we used a new method called pain steady-state evoked potentials (PSSEPs) to investigate whether selective spatial attention affects EEG responses to tonic painful stimuli. In general, steady-state evoked potentials reflect changes in the EEG spectrum at a certain frequency that correspond to the frequency of a train of applied stimuli. In this study, high intensity transcutaneous electrical stimulation was delivered to both hands simultaneously with 31 Hz and 37 Hz, respectively. Subject׳s attention was directed to one of the two trains of stimulation in order to detect a small gap that was occasionally interspersed into the stimulus trains. Thereby, they had to ignore the stimulation applied to the other hand. Results show that PSSEPs were induced at 31 Hz and 37 Hz at frontal and central electrodes. PSSEPs occurred contralaterally to the respective hand stimulated with that frequency. Surprisingly, the magnitude of PSSEPs was not modulated by spatial attention towards one of the two stimuli. Our results indicate that attention can hardly be shifted between two simultaneously applied tonic painful stimulations.	f	\N
25638026	Anabolic-androgenic steroid (AAS) abuse is prevalent not only among elite athletes, but is increasingly common in high school and collegiate sports. AAS are implicated in maladaptive behaviors such as increased aggression and risk taking, which may result from impaired cognition. Because they affect dopamine function in prefrontal cortical (PFC)-striatal circuitry, AAS may disrupt PFC-dependent processes such as behavioral flexibility. This was the focus of the present study. Adolescent male Long-Evans rats were treated chronically with high-dose testosterone (7.5mg/kg in water with 13% cyclodextrin) or vehicle sc, and tested for set-shifting and reversal-learning. For set-shifting, rats were trained on a visual cue task (VCT), then were shifted to a direction cue task (DCT), or vice-versa. For reversal learning, rats were first trained on VCT and were then required to press the opposite lever. 2-cue set-shifting introduced a novel paradigm in which rats shifted from a 1-Light Visual Task (1LVT) to a tone cue task (TCT). Testosterone-treated rats were significantly impaired on the set-shift from DCT to VCT compared to vehicle-treated controls (trials to criterion: vehicle 240.9±29.9, testosterone 388.3±59.3, p<0.05). However, on the set-shift from VCT to DCT, testosterone did not affect performance. During reversal-learning, testosterone significantly increased trials to criterion (vehicle: 495.9±91.8 trials, testosterone: 793.7±96.7 trials, p<0.05). In 2-cue set-shifting, testosterone diminished performance and the difference showed borderline significance (vehicle: 443.2±84.4 trials, testosterone: 800.4±178.2 trials, p=0.09). Our results show that testosterone impairs behavioral flexibility and have implications for understanding cognitive and behavioral changes in human AAS users.	f	\N
25647070	The etiology of premenstrual disorders, including premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and premenstrual dysphoric disorders (PMDD), is not well understood. In the current study, the relationship between self-focused attention (SFA) and premenstrual disorders was examined to explore the hypothesis that women with premenstrual disorders tend to respond to symptoms in a maladaptive manner. Based on retrospective report, clinical interview, and 30-day prospective recording of premenstrual symptoms, women (N = 52) were categorized as meeting criteria for premenstrual disorders (PMD; n = 24) or not (controls; n = 28). Key findings indicated that women with premenstrual disorders reported greater use of SFA in response to negative affect elicited by laboratory tasks than controls, despite no significant differences in change in negative affect between the two groups. Women with premenstrual disorders also reported greater trait levels of SFA and maladaptive coping styles compared to controls. Women with premenstrual disorders may tend to respond to menstrual cycle changes using increased levels of SFA. The interaction between psychological and physiological menstrual cycle-related changes may lead to increased distress and impairment. Implications for psychological contributions to premenstrual distress and disorders are discussed.	f	\N
25647484	This study examined the separate influence and joint influences on event-based prospective memory task performance due to the valence of cues and the valence of contexts. We manipulated the valence of cues and contexts with pictures from the International Affective Picture System. The participants, undergraduate students, showed higher performance when neutral compared to valenced pictures were used for cueing prospective memory. In addition, neutral pictures were more effective as cues when they occurred in a valenced context than in the context of neutral pictures, but the effectiveness of valenced cues did not vary across contexts that differed in valence. The finding of an interaction between cue and context valence indicates that their respective influence on event-based prospective memory task performance cannot be understood in isolation from each other. Our findings are not consistent with by the prevailing view which holds that the scope of attention is broadened and narrowed, respectively, by positively and negatively valenced stimuli. Instead, our findings are more supportive of the recent proposal that the scope of attention is determined by the motivational intensity associated with valenced stimuli. Consistent with this proposal, we speculate that the motivational intensity associated with different retrieval cues determines the scope of attention, that contexts with different valence values determine participants' task engagement, and that prospective memory task performance is determined jointly by attention scope and task engagement.	f	\N
25665861	We set out hypotheses which are based in the technique of Brainspotting (Grand, 2013) [1] but have wider applicability within the range of psychotherapies for post-traumatic and other disorders. We have previously (Corrigan and Grand, 2013) [2] suggested mechanisms by which a Brainspot may be established during traumatic experience and later identified in therapy. Here we seek to formulate mechanisms for the healing processing which occurs during mindful attention to the Brainspot; and we generate hypotheses about what is happening during the time taken for the organic healing process to flow to completion during the therapy session and beyond it. Full orientation to the aversive memory of a traumatic experience fails to occur when a high level of physiological arousal that is threatening to become overwhelming promotes a neurochemical de-escalation of the activation: there is then no resolution. In Brainspotting, and other trauma psychotherapies, healing can occur when full orientation to the memory is made possible by the superior colliculi-pulvinar, superior colliculi-mediodorsal nucleus, and superior colliculi-intralaminar nuclei pathways being bound together electrophysiologically for coherent thalamocortical processing. The brain's response to the memory is "reset" so that the emotional response experienced in the body, and conveyed through the paleospinothalamic tract to the midbrain and thalamus and on to the basal ganglia and cortex, is no longer disturbing. Completion of the orientation "reset" ensures that the memory is reconsolidated without distress and recollection of the event subsequently is no longer dysphorically activating at a physiological level.	f	\N
25678274	While there is growing understanding of visual selective attention in children, some aspects such as selection in the presence of distractors are not well understood. Adult studies suggest that when presented with a visual search task, an enhanced negativity is seen beginning around 200 ms (the N2pc) that reflects selection of a target item among distractors. However, it is not known if similar selective attention-related activity is seen in children during visual search. This study was designed to investigate the presence of the N2pc in children. Nineteen children (ages 9-12 years) and 21 adults (ages 18-22 years) completed a visual search task in which they were asked to attend to a fixation surrounded by both a target and a distractor stimulus. Three types of displays were analyzed at parietal electrodes P7 and P8; lateral target/lateral distractor, lateral target/midline distractor, and midline target/lateral distractor. Both adults and children showed a significant increased negativity contralateral compared to ipsilateral to the target (reflected in the N2pc) in both displays with a lateral target while no such effect was seen in displays with a midline target. This suggests that children also utilized additional resources to select a target item when distractors are present. These findings demonstrate that the N2pc can be used as a marker of attentional object selection in children.	f	\N
25681698	Whether or not awareness entails attention is a much debated question. Since iconic memory has been generally assumed to be attention-free, it has been considered an important piece of evidence that it does not (Koch & Tsuchiya, 2007). Therefore the question of the role of attention in iconic memory matters. Recent evidence (Persuh, Genzer, & Melara, 2012), suggests that iconic memory does depend on attention. Because of the centrality of iconic memory to this debate, we looked again at the role of attention in iconic memory using a standard whole versus partial report task of letters in a 3×2 matrix. We manipulated attention to the array by coupling it with a second task that was either easy or hard and by manipulating the probability of which task was to be performed on any given trial. When attention was maximally diverted from the matrix, participants were able to report less than a single item, confirming the prior results and supporting the conclusion that iconic memory entails attention. It is not an instance of attention-free awareness.	f	\N
25689233	Little attention has been paid to distress in sexual functioning or the sexual satisfaction of people who practice BDSM (Bondage and Discipline, Domination and Submission, Sadism and Masochism). The purpose of this study was to describe sociodemographic characteristics and BDSM practices and compare BDSM practitioners' sexual outcomes (in BDSM and non-BDSM contexts). A convenience sample of 68 respondents completed an online survey that used a participatory research framework. Cronbach's alpha and average inter-item correlations assessed scale reliability, and the Wilcoxon paired samples test compared the total scores between BDSM and non-BDSM contexts separately for men and women. Open-ended questions about BDSM sexual practices were coded using a preexisting thematic tree. We used self-reported demographic factors, including age at the onset of BDSM interest, age at first BDSM experience, and favorite and most frequent BDSM practices. The Global Measure of Sexual Satisfaction measured the amount of sexual distress, including low desire, arousal, maintaining arousal, premature orgasm, and anorgasmia. The participants had an average age of 33.15 years old and were highly educated and waited 6 years after becoming interested in BDSM to act on their interests. The practices in which the participants most frequently engaged did not coincide with the practices in which they were most interested and were overwhelmingly conducted at home. Comparisons between genders in terms of distress in sexual functioning in BDSM and non-BDSM contexts demonstrate that, with the exception of maintaining arousal, we found distress in sexual functioning to be statistically the same in BDSM and non-BDSM contexts for women. For men, we found that distress in sexual functioning, with the exception of premature orgasm and anorgasmia, was statistically significantly lower in the BDSM context. There were no differences in sexual satisfaction between BDSM and non-BDSM contexts for men or women. Our findings suggest that BDSM sexual activity should be addressed in clinical settings that account for BDSM identities, practices, relationships, preferences, sexual satisfaction, and distress in sexual function for men and women. Additional research needs are identified, such as the need to define distressful sexual functioning experiences and expand our understanding of the development of BDSM sexual identities.	f	\N
25689289	Comparing drug-induced driving impairments with the effects of benchmark blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) is an approved approach to determine the clinical relevance of findings for traffic safety. The present study aimed to collect alcohol calibration data to validate findings of clinical trials that were derived from a representative test course in a dynamic driving simulator. The driving performance of 24 healthy volunteers under placebo and with 0.05% and 0.08% BACs was measured in a double-blind, randomized, crossover design. Trained investigators assessed the subjects' driving performance and registered their driving errors. Various driving parameters that were recorded during the simulation were also analyzed. Generally, the participants performed worse on the test course (P < 0.05 for the investigators' assessment) under the influence of alcohol. Consistent with the relevant literature, lane-keeping performance parameters were sensitive to the investigated BACs. There were significant differences between the alcohol and placebo conditions in most of the parameters analyzed. However, the total number of errors was the only parameter discriminating significantly between all three BAC conditions. In conclusion, data show that the present experimental setup is suitable for future psychopharmacological research. Thereby, for each drug to be investigated, we recommend to assess a profile of various parameters that address different levels of driving. On the basis of this performance profile, the total number of driving errors is recommended as the primary endpoint. However, this overall endpoint should be completed by a specifically sensitive parameter that is chosen depending on the effect known to be induced by the tested drug.	f	\N
25690831	Neural responses in the auditory cortex have historically been measured from either anesthetized or awake but non-behaving animals. A growing body of work has begun to focus instead on recording from auditory cortex of animals actively engaged in behavior tasks. These studies have shown that auditory cortical responses are dependent upon the behavioral state of the animal. The longer ascending subcortical pathway of the auditory system and unique characteristics of auditory processing suggest that such dependencies may have a more profound influence on cortical processing in the auditory system compared to other sensory systems. It is important to understand the nature of these dependencies and their functional implications. In this article, we review the literature on this topic pertaining to cortical processing of sounds.	f	\N
25701796	To better understand the contribution of the dorsal system to word reading, we explored transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) effects when adults with developmental dyslexia received active stimulation over the visual extrastriate area MT/V5, which is dominated by magnocellular input. Stimulation was administered in 5 sessions spread over two weeks, and reading speed and accuracy as well as reading fluency were assessed before, immediately after, and a week after the end of the treatment. A control group of adults with developmental dyslexia matched for age, gender, reading level, vocabulary and block-design WAIS-III sub-tests and reading level was exposed to the same protocol but with sham stimulation. The results revealed that active, but not sham stimulation, significantly improved reading speed and fluency. This finding suggests that the dorsal stream may play a role in efficient retrieval from the orthographic input lexicon in the lexical route. It also underscores the potential of tDCS as an intervention tool for improving reading speed, at least in adults with developmental dyslexia.	f	\N
25704737	We examined longitudinal relations between adult interpartner conflict (referred to as marital conflict) and children's subsequent sleep minutes and quality assessed objectively via actigraphy, and tested parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) activity indexed through respiratory sinus arrhythmia reactivity (RSA-R) and initial sleep as moderators of predictive associations. At Wave 1 (W1), children (85 boys, 75 girls) with a mean age of 9.43 years (SD=.69) reported on marital conflict, and their sleep was assessed with actigraphs for seven nights. Sleep minutes, sleep efficiency, sleep activity, and number of long wake episodes were derived. RSA-R was measured in response to a lab challenge. Sleep parameters were assessed again 1 year later at Wave 2 (W2; mean age=10.39; SD=.64). Analyses consistently revealed 3-way interactions among W1 marital conflict, sleep, and RSA-R as predictors of W2 sleep parameters. Sleep was stable among children with more sleep minutes and better sleep quality at W1 or low exposure to marital conflict at W1. Illustrating conditional risk, marital conflict predicted increased sleep problems (reduced sleep minutes, worse sleep quality) at W2 among children with poorer sleep at W1 in conjunction with less apt physiological regulation (i.e., lower levels of RSA-R or less vagal withdrawal) at W1. Findings build on the scant literature and underscore the importance of simultaneous consideration of bioregulatory systems (PNS and initial sleep in this study) in conjunction with family processes in the prediction of children's later sleep parameters.	f	\N
25705797	Patients with primary adrenal insufficiency (AI) need to replace glucocorticoids and mineralocorticoids that act on glucocorticoid (GR) and mineralocorticoid receptors (MR). Both receptors are highly expressed in the hippocampus and are closely associated with cognitive function, which might be impaired by insufficient or increased GR and MR stimulation. However, little is known about cognitive function in patients with AI. It was examined whether patients with AI exhibit worse cognitive function compared to sex-, age-, and education-matched controls. Cognitive function (executive function, concentration, verbal memory, visual memory, working memory, and autobiographical memory) was assessed in 30 patients with AI (mean age 52.4 yrs. ±14.4, n=21 women, mean duration of illness 18.2 yrs. ±11.1) and 30 matched controls. We also measured depressive symptoms, body mass index (BMI), and blood pressure. Patients with AI showed more depressive symptoms, had a greater BMI and lower systolic blood pressure compared to controls. Adjusted analyses controlling for these variables revealed that patients with AI performed significantly worse in verbal learning (F=7.8, p=.007). Executive function, concentration, working memory, verbal memory, visuospatial memory, and autobiographical memory did not differ between groups. No clinically relevant cognitive impairment was found in patients with AI compared to matched controls. Even long-term glucocorticoid and mineralocorticoid substitution over almost two decades appears to have only subtle effects on cognition in patients with AI.	f	\N
25717168	Motor system excitability is transiently suppressed during the preparation of movement. This preparatory inhibition is hypothesized to facilitate response selection and initiation. Given that demands on selection and initiation processes increase with movement complexity, we hypothesized that complexity would influence preparatory inhibition. To test this hypothesis, we probed corticospinal excitability during a delayed-response task in which participants were cued to prepare right- or left-hand movements of varying complexity. Single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied over right primary motor cortex to elicit motor evoked potentials (MEPs) from the first dorsal interosseous (FDI) of the left hand. MEP suppression was greater during the preparation of responses involving coordination of the FDI and adductor digiti minimi relative to easier responses involving only the FDI, independent of which hand was cued to respond. In contrast, this increased inhibition was absent when the complex responses required sequential movements of the two muscles. Moreover, complexity did not influence the level of inhibition when the response hand was fixed for the trial block, regardless of whether the complex responses were performed simultaneously or sequentially. These results suggest that preparatory inhibition contributes to response selection, possibly by suppressing extraneous movements when responses involve the simultaneous coordination of multiple effectors.	f	\N
25723014	We studied influence of the anxiety-related trait Harm Avoidance and the COMT gene, which is an important modulator of prefrontal functioning, on event-related potentials in oddball paradigm and performance effectiveness of selective attention. For 50 individuals accuracy and time of searching words among letters at any desired rate and then under an instruction to perform the task as quickly and accurate as possible were measured. Scores on the Harm Avoidance scale from Cloninger's Temperament and Character Inventory, N100 and P300 parameters, and COMTVa1158Met genotypes were obtained for them as well. Searching accuracy and time were mainly related to N100 amplitude. The COMT genotype and Harm Avoidance did not affect N100 amplitude; however, the N100 amplitude modulated their effects on accuracy and time dynamics. Harm Avoidance was positively correlated with P300 latency. The results suggest that anxiety and the COMT gene effects on performance effectiveness of selective attention depend on cognitive processes reflected in N100 parameters.	f	\N
25723016	In order to study spontaneous attentional lapses the experimental task was used that created a moderately high attentional load and involved response choice based on stimulus feature conjunction. The participant's average correct response rate was 85.1%; they made errors in 9.6% trials and response omissions in 5.4% trials. Peak N1 of the evoked potential was consistent across all behavioral outcomes, while peak P2 amplitude was significantly greater before errors and response omissions compared to correct responses. The analysis of polygraphic indexes (ECG, EMG, SGR) did not reveal any arousal level reduction before attentional lapses. The proposed interpretation of the results obtained is based on the assumption that attentional lapses are mediated by the suppression of external stimuli information processing caused by the state of mind-wandering.	f	\N
25726855	Several organisms irrespective of their complexity in structure and function have an inbuilt circadian rhythm. Zebrafish could be used as an alternate model animal in sleep research as it exhibits similar sleep-wake dynamics as mammals and Drosophila. In this study, we have analysed the adult zebrafish brain for its differential proteome and gene expression during perturbed light/dark cycle. A total of 53 and 25 proteins including sncb, peroxiredoxins and TCR alpha were identified based on two-dimensional gel electrophoresis Fourier transform mass spectrometer/ion trap tandem mass spectrometer and differential in-gel electrophoresis MALDI TOF MS/MS analysis, respectively, with at least 1.5-fold changes between the control and experimental brains. Real time-polymerase chain reaction revealed that many circadian pathway-associated genes, such as per1b, bmal1b, cry1b, bmal2 and nr1d2, were differentially regulated during continuous light/dark exposures. It is hypothesized that the differential regulation of these genes might lead to the discovery of potential diagnostic markers for gaining insight into the light/dark-associated stress in humans.	f	\N
25737257	The contents of working memory (WM) have been repeatedly found to guide the allocation of visual attention; in a dual-task paradigm that combines WM and visual search, actively holding an item in WM biases visual attention towards memory-matching items during search (e.g., Soto et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 31(2), 248-261, 2005). A key debate is whether such memory-based attentional guidance is automatic or under strategic control. Generally, two distinct task paradigms have been employed to assess memory-based guidance, one demonstrating that attention is involuntarily captured by memory-matching stimuli even at a cost to search performance (Soto et al., 2005), and one demonstrating that participants can strategically avoid memory-matching distractors to facilitate search performance (Woodman & Luck, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 33(2), 363-377, 2007). The current study utilized an individual-differences approach to examine why the different paradigms--which presumably tap into the same attentional construct--might support contrasting interpretations. Participants completed a battery of cognitive tasks, including two types of attentional guidance paradigms (see Soto et al., 2005; Woodman & Luck, 2007), a visual WM task, and an operation span task, as well as attention-related self-report assessments. Performance on the two attentional guidance paradigms did not correlate. Subsequent exploratory regression analyses revealed that memory-based guidance in each task was differentially predicted by visual WM capacity for one paradigm, and by attention-related assessment scores for the other paradigm. The current results suggest that these two paradigms--which have previously produced contrasting patterns of performance--may probe distinct aspects of attentional guidance.	f	\N
25752211	To determine the effect of mode of delivery and perineal injury on sexual function at 6 and 12 months postpartum. Prospective cohort study. Tertiary women's hospital in Melbourne, Australia. A cohort of 440 primigravid women. The Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) was completed at first visit (7-19 weeks of gestation), and at 6 and 12 months postpartum. A statistically significant difference in total FSFI or domain scores over time according to mode of delivery or perineal injury. In this cohort 54% of women had a normal vaginal delivery, 21% had an instrumental delivery, and 25% gave birth by caesarean section. No difference was found in total FSFI or domain scores according to mode of delivery over time between antenatal assessment and 12 months postpartum. Pain was decreased in the caesarean group only at 6 months postpartum. All groups showed pain scores at 12 months that were comparable with antenatal levels. For those who gave birth vaginally, 27% had an intact perineum, 50% had an episiotomy, and 6%, 14%, and 3% had first, second, and third-degree tears, respectively. The only differences between groups were found over time according to perineal injury at 6 months in the arousal domain. At 12 months, total FSFI and domain scores were no different to initial scores. At 12 months postpartum sexual function has returned to early pregnancy levels, irrespective of mode of delivery or perineal injury.	f	\N
25761284	Here we show that the pupillary light response reflects exogenous (involuntary) shifts of attention and inhibition of return. Participants fixated in the center of a display that was divided into a bright and a dark half. An exogenous cue attracted attention to the bright or dark side of the display. Initially, the pupil constricted when the bright, as compared to the dark, side of the display was cued, reflecting a shift of attention toward the exogenous cue. Crucially, this pattern reversed about 1 s after cue presentation. This later-occurring, relative dilation (when the bright side was cued) reflected disengagement from the previously attended location, analogous to the behavioral phenomenon of inhibition of return. Indeed, we observed a reliable correlation between "pupillary inhibition" and behavioral inhibition of return. Our results support the view that inhibition of return results from habituation to (or short-term depression of) visual input. We conclude that the pupillary light response is a complex eye movement that reflects how we selectively parse and interpret visual input.	f	\N
25768854	Methylphenidate (MPH) is a stimulant that is commonly used in the treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in children and adults. Several reports are available regarding the relationship of MPH use and sleep bruxism. We report the case of a 9-year-old boy who presented with severe awake bruxism after his second dose of sustained release form of MPH treatment, which was confirmed on rechallenge. This is the first report of its kind showing such relationship in the literature.	f	\N
25772915	Available evidences seem to suggest increasing trend in sleep deficit among teenagers worldwide, and there is limited information on this among Nigerian teenagers. This study was carried out to determine the basic sleep schedule and sleep duration among schooling teenagers in Ilorin, Nigeria. This is a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted among 20 selected public secondary schools in Ilorin, Nigeria. A multistage sampling technique was used to randomly select participating schools. A total of 1033 students participated in the study; of these 47.3% were males and 51.7% females. Students mean age (standard deviation) was 15.3 ± 1.6 years with a range of 12-19 years. Majority (76.2%) of participants co-share bed with at least one person and some (23.8%) slept alone in bed. The three leading reasons given for going to bed were: Tiredness - 31.1%, completion of house assignment - 20.5%, and parental directive - 12.4%. 10% of teenagers do make regular phone calls at night and 5.5% surf internet and use computers at night. Regular habits of daytime sleepiness were reported by 8.2% of study participants. Students' mean sleep duration during school days was 9.33 ± 2.29 h compared to 10.09 ± 1.32 h at weekend (P < 0.05). The duration of night time sleep was adequate (>9 h) in 41% of students; borderline (8-9 h) in 44.3% while 13.3% of the students had insufficient nighttime sleep duration (<8 h) P < 0.05. A substantial number of students had borderline nighttime sleep duration and so had potentials to transit into the problematic insufficient range. To prevent this, there is a need to educate schooling teenagers on the dangers associated with prolonged sleep insufficiency.	f	\N
25782397	Diurnal preference (chronotype) is a useful instrument for studying circadian biology in humans. It harbours trait-like dimensions relating to circadian period and sleep homeostasis, but also has ontogenetic components (morningness increases with age). We used the Morningness-Eveningness questionnaire (MEQ) in the Baependi study, a family-based cohort study based in a small town in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The population is highly admixed and has a cohesive and conservative lifestyle. 825 individuals (497 female) aged 18-89 years (average ± SD = 46.4 ± 16.3) and belonging to 112 different families participated in this study. The average MEQ score was 63.5 ± 11.2 with a significant (P < 0.0001) linear increase with age. Morningness was significantly (P < 0.0001) higher in the rural (70.2 ± 9.8) than in the municipal zone (62.6 ± 11.1), and was also significantly (P = 0.025) higher in male (64.6 ± 10.9) than in female (62.8 ± 11.2) participants. Thus, in spite of universal access to electricity, the Baependi population was strongly shifted towards morningness, particularly in the rural zone. Heritability of MEQ score was 0.48 when adjusted for sex and age, or 0.38 when adjusted for sex, age, and residential zone. The reported MEQ score heritability is more akin to those of previous twin studies than previous family studies.	f	\N
25784489	Electrical stimulation of upper limb nerves evokes a train of high-frequency wavelets (high-frequency oscillations, HFOs) on the human scalp. These HFOs are related to the influence of arousal-promoting structures on somatosensory input processing, and are generated in the primary somatosensory cortex (post-synaptic HFOs) and the terminal tracts of thalamocortical radiations (pre-synaptic HFOs). We previously reported that HFOs do not undergo habituation to repeated stimulations; here, we verified whether HFOs could be modulated by external sensitizing stimuli. We recorded somatosensory evoked potentials (SSEPs) in 15 healthy volunteers before and after sensitization training with an auditory stimulus. Pre-synaptic HFO amplitudes, reflecting somatosensory thalamic/thalamocortical activity, significantly increased after the sensitizing acoustic stimulation, whereas both the low-frequency N20 SSEP component and post-synaptic HFOs were unaffected. Cross-talk between subcortical arousal-related structures is a probable mechanism for the pre-synaptic HFO effect observed in this study. We propose that part of the ascending somatosensory input encoded in HFOs is specifically able to convey sensitized inputs. This preferential involvement in sensitization mechanisms suggests that HFOs play a critical role in the detection of potentially relevant stimuli, and act at very early stages of somatosensory input processing.	f	\N
25788036	Recent studies have shown that attentional facilitation lingers at the retinotopic coordinates of a previously attended position after an eye movement. These results are intriguing, because the retinotopic location becomes behaviorally irrelevant once the eyes have moved. Critically, in these studies participants were asked to maintain attention on a blank location of the screen. In the present study, we examined whether the continuing presence of a visual object at the cued location could affect the allocation of attention across eye movements. We used a trans-saccadic cueing paradigm in which the relevant positions could be defined or not by visual objects (simple square outlines). We find an attentional benefit at the spatiotopic location of the cue only when the object (the placeholder) has been continuously present at that location. We conclude that the presence of an object at the attended location is a critical factor for the maintenance of spatial constancy of attention across eye movements, a finding that helps to reconcile previous conflicting results.	f	\N
25801520	Structural and Electroencephalography (EEG) abnormalities in right temporoparietal cortex have been associated with family history of depression (FH). Here we investigate if functional abnormalities in this area, indexed by attenuated responses to emotionally arousing stimuli, are also family-history-dependent. Neuromagnetic activity for emotional and neutral complex scenes was recorded by Magnetoencephalography (MEG) in 20 depressed patients without, 8 depressed patients with FH, and 15 healthy controls. Emotion-sensitive neuronal steady state responses were cortical source localized and tested for group-by-emotion interactions. The group-by-emotion interaction (F(4, 80)=4.4, p=0.004) was explained by a significant modulation of right temporoparietal cortex activity by emotional arousal in controls and patients without FH. This effect was reduced in FH positive patients. The difference between patient groups remained when clinical variables such as symptom severity were accounted for. All patients were medicated, but differences between patient groups remained after accounting for medication dosage. Further, the sample size was limited, but data-driven resampling statistics showed the robustness of our effects. Finally, the sample consists of female patients only and we cannot generalize our results to male samples. Patients with FH show impaired recruitment of attention-relevant cortical circuitry by emotional stimuli. The neuroanatomical locus of this effect accords with previous reports on structural abnormalities and electrophysiological deficits at rest in individuals with FH. Our results speak to the relevance of right temporoparietal dysfunction in emotional information processing as a potential endophenotype for depression with FH.	f	\N
25801753	The aim of this study was to find out how people with epilepsy in NE Thailand feel about their levels of stress, sleep, diet, exercise habits, and sex lives using a cross-sectional design. Two hundred and three people with epilepsy (PWE) were randomly recruited from a university epilepsy clinic in Khon Kaen and then completed an interview and a questionnaire. A total of 27.6% of the patients believed that diet had an influence on their epilepsy (of those who reported changes, 41.1% stopped consuming alcohol, while 32.1% stopped drinking caffeinated beverages). A total of 47.2% of the patients exercised at least three times per week, while 52.8% exercised two times or less a week. Daytime sleeping was prevalent, with 43.3% saying that they slept during the day frequently or every day. There were 44.3% of the patients who believed that their sex lives changed after the onset of epilepsy, with decreased sexual arousal being most commonly mentioned. A total of 76.4% of the patients said that they had medium or high levels of stress, and epilepsy was listed as the most common reason for their stress (50.2%). Focusing on the problem was the most common method to reduce stress (80.3%). The findings illuminate the need to increase attention towards improving and promoting self-management of epilepsy. As a whole, diet, exercise, sleep, stress reduction, and sex therapy can be valuable tools to improve the quality of life of people with epilepsy.	f	\N
25832193	We used contingent attentional capture to investigate whether capture in a given trial n was affected by the cue-target position relations in a preceding trial n-1. Typically, attentional capture by a cue facilitates reaction times for targets in valid conditions (with the cue and target at the same position) relative to invalid conditions (with the cue and target at different positions). Also, this validity effect holds for cues with a feature similar to the searched-for target features (i.e., matching cues), but not for cues dissimilar to the searched-for target features (i.e., nonmatching cues), a pattern termed contingent capture because capture is assumed to be contingent on the match between the cue and top-down control settings. Here, we replicated this contingent-capture pattern with cues that were nonpredictive of the target position. In addition, we showed that during search for white onset targets, red nonmatching color cues also created a validity effect if the same nonmatching cue had been used as a valid cue in trial n-1 (Exps. 1 and 2). This intertrial contingency of the nonmatching cue's validity effect was also found if the cues and targets both changed their positions from trial to trial, rendering position priming unlikely (Exp. 2). A similar intertrial contingency was found for nonmatching white onset cues, but not for matching red color cues during search for red color targets (Exp. 3). These results are discussed in light of explanations of the contingent-capture effect and of intertrial contingencies.	f	\N
25874883	It is a well-known fact today that driver sleepiness is a contributory factor in crashes. Factors considered as sleepiness contributor are mostly related to time of the day, hours being awake and hours slept. Factors contributing to active and passive fatigue are mostly focusing on the level of cognitive load. Less is known what role external factors, e.g. type of road, sound/noise, vibrations etc., have on the ability to stay awake both under conditions of sleepiness and under active or passive fatigue. The aim of this moving base driving simulator study with 19 drivers participating in a random order day and night time, was to evaluate the effect of low-frequency road noise on driver sleepiness and performance, including both long-term and short-term effects. The results support to some extent the hypothesis that road-induced interior vehicle sound affects driving performance and driver sleepiness. Increased low-frequency noise helps to reduce speed during both day- and night time driving, but also contributes to increase the number of lane crossings during night time.	f	\N
25878263	Amplitude modulations are fundamental features of natural signals, including human speech and nonhuman primate vocalizations. Because natural signals frequently occur in the context of other competing signals, we used a forward-masking paradigm to investigate how the modulation context of a prior signal affects cortical responses to subsequent modulated sounds. Psychophysical "modulation masking," in which the presentation of a modulated "masker" signal elevates the threshold for detecting the modulation of a subsequent stimulus, has been interpreted as evidence of a central modulation filterbank and modeled accordingly. Whether cortical modulation tuning is compatible with such models remains unknown. By recording responses to pairs of sinusoidally amplitude modulated (SAM) tones in the auditory cortex of awake squirrel monkeys, we show that the prior presentation of the SAM masker elicited persistent and tuned suppression of the firing rate to subsequent SAM signals. Population averages of these effects are compatible with adaptation in broadly tuned modulation channels. In contrast, modulation context had little effect on the synchrony of the cortical representation of the second SAM stimuli and the tuning of such effects did not match that observed for firing rate. Our results suggest that, although the temporal representation of modulated signals is more robust to changes in stimulus context than representations based on average firing rate, this representation is not fully exploited and psychophysical modulation masking more closely mirrors physiological rate suppression and that rate tuning for a given stimulus feature in a given neuron's signal pathway appears sufficient to engender context-sensitive cortical adaptation.	f	\N
25902810	To validate the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) as a treatment effect measure in narcolepsy, and to compare the SART with the Maintenance of Wakefulness Test (MWT) and the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS). Validation of treatment effect measurements within a randomized controlled trial (RCT). Ninety-five patients with narcolepsy with or without cataplexy. The RCT comprised a double-blind, parallel-group, multicenter trial comparing the effects of 8-w treatments with pitolisant (BF2.649), modafinil, or placebo (NCT01067222). MWT, ESS, and SART were administered at baseline and after an 8-w treatment period. The severity of excessive daytime sleepiness and cataplexy was also assessed using the Clinical Global Impression scale (CGI-C). The SART, MWT, and ESS all had good reliability, obtained for the SART and MWT using two to three sessions in 1 day. The ability to distinguish responders from nonresponders, classified using the CGI-C score, was high for all measures, with a high performance for the SART (r = 0.61) and the ESS (r = 0.54). The Sustained Attention to Response Task is a valid and easy-to-administer measure to assess treatment effects in narcolepsy, enhanced by combining it with the Epworth Sleepiness Scale.	f	\N
25939700	Memory for multiple features might be limited by the number of features, the number of objects, or both. To focus on the role of features, we tested memory for a variable number of features within a single object. Subjects studied a single ellipse that varied in four features: size, orientation, contrast, and position. We conducted two experiments that differed in how memory was tested. If performance is limited only by the number of objects to be remembered, there should be no effect of the number of relevant features within a single object. Instead, for both experiments, the proportion correct was lower when four features had to be remembered rather than one. The magnitude of these effects varied with the details of the two experiments. Although similar results have been reported for experiments using multiple objects, the present experiments are some of the first to have demonstrated such an effect for a single object. This result is inconsistent with theories in which visual memory has a discrete limit on the number of stored objects, and no limit on the stored features within an object. Instead, it seems likely that objects and features both play roles in limiting performance in memory tasks.	f	\N
25961880	It is commonly assumed that attentional inhibitory functioning decreases with age, even though empirical evidence is mixed. These inconsistencies possibly stem from methodological artifacts: distractor inhibition is typically assessed with the negative priming paradigm, which confounds inhibition and episodic retrieval. In the present study, we investigated age differences in a sequential distractor repetition paradigm (Giesen, Frings, & Rothermund, 2012) that provides independent estimates of distractor inhibition and episodic retrieval processes. Older (60+ yrs) and younger (below 30 years) adults identified target letters that were flanked by distractors (JKJ). Inhibitory processes were preserved in older adults, who showed reliable distractor repetition benefits resulting from persistent distractor inhibition; however, a significant loss of inhibition was apparent for the older subgroup of participants (65+ yrs) compared with a subgroup of young-old participants (60 to 64 years). No age differences were found for episodic retrieval processes of stimulus-response bindings that were indexed by an interaction of distractor repetition and response relation. Findings highlight the importance of dissociating between distractor inhibition and retrieval processes that are differently implicated in age-related cognitive change.	f	\N
25962854	Hearing loss often triggers an inescapable buzz (tinnitus) and causes everyday sounds to become intolerably loud (hyperacusis), but exactly where and how this occurs in the brain is unknown. To identify the neural substrate for these debilitating disorders, we induced both tinnitus and hyperacusis with an ototoxic drug (salicylate) and used behavioral, electrophysiological, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques to identify the tinnitus-hyperacusis network. Salicylate depressed the neural output of the cochlea, but vigorously amplified sound-evoked neural responses in the amygdala, medial geniculate, and auditory cortex. Resting-state fMRI revealed hyperactivity in an auditory network composed of inferior colliculus, medial geniculate, and auditory cortex with side branches to cerebellum, amygdala, and reticular formation. Functional connectivity revealed enhanced coupling within the auditory network and segments of the auditory network and cerebellum, reticular formation, amygdala, and hippocampus. A testable model accounting for distress, arousal, and gating of tinnitus and hyperacusis is proposed.	f	\N
25977319	The aim of this study was to illustrate how a consideration of glance sequences to in-vehicle tasks and their associated distributions can be informative. The rapid growth in the number of nomadic technologies and in-vehicle devices has the potential to create complex, visually intensive tasks for drivers that may incur long in-vehicle glances. Such glances place drivers at increased risk of a motor vehicle crash. We used eye-glance data from a study of distraction training programs to examine the change in glance duration distributions across consecutive glances during the performance of various in-vehicle tasks. The sequential analysis across trained and untrained drivers showed that the proportion of late-sequence glances longer than a 2-s threshold among untrained drivers was almost double the number of such glances for the trained drivers, that the third and later glances were particularly problematic, and that training reduced the proportion of early- and later-sequence glances. Examining how the duration of off-road glances varies as a function of their order in a sequence of glances and the visual demands of the task can offer important insights into the change in the distracting potential of in-vehicle tasks across glances and the effects of training. The sequential analysis of in-vehicle glance data can be useful for researchers and practitioners and has implications for the development and evaluation of training programs as well as for task and interface design.	f	\N
25994341	The food habit is involved in the onset and development of lifestyle-related diseases. In this review I would like to describe a historical case of vitamin B1 deficiency, as well as our case study of fatty acid metabolism abnormality due to carnitine deficiency. In history, the army and navy personnel in Japan at the end of the 19th century received food rations based on a high-carbohydrate diet including white rice, resulting in the onset of beriberi. An epidemiological study by Kenkan Takaki revealed the relationship between the onset of beriberi and rice intake. Then, Takaki was successful in preventing the onset of beriberi by changing the diet. However, the primary cause had yet to be elucidated. Finally, Christian Eijkman established an animal model of beriberi (chickens) showing peripheral neuropathy, and he identified the existence of an anti-beriberi substance, vitamin B1. This is an example of the successful control of a disease by integrating the results of epidemiological and experimental studies. In our study using a murine model of fatty acid metabolism abnormality caused by carnitine deficiency, cardiac abnormality and fatty liver developed depending on the amount of dietary fat. In addition, the mice showed disturbance of orexin neuron activity related to the sleep-arousal system, which is involved in fatigue symptoms under fasting condition, one of the states showing enhanced fatty acid metabolism. These findings suggest that fatty acid toxicity is enhanced when the mice are more dependent on fatty acid metabolism. Almost simultaneously, a human epidemiological study showed that narcolepsy, which is caused by orexin system abnormality, is associated with the polymorphism of the gene coding for carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1B, which is involved in carnitine metabolism. To understand the pathological mechanism of fatty acid toxicity, not only an experimental approach using animal models, but also an epidemiological approach is necessary. The results will be applied to preventing and treating lifestyle-related diseases associated with fatty acid metabolism abnormality.	f	\N
26002721	Auditory selective attention is a critical skill for goal-directed behavior, especially where noisy distractions may impede focusing attention. To better understand the developmental trajectory of auditory spatial selective attention in an acoustically complex environment, in the current study we measured auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) across five age groups: 3-5 years; 10 years; 13 years; 16 years; and young adults. Using a naturalistic dichotic listening paradigm, we characterized the ERP morphology for nonlinguistic and linguistic auditory probes embedded in attended and unattended stories. We documented robust maturational changes in auditory evoked potentials that were specific to the types of probes. Furthermore, we found a remarkable interplay between age and attention-modulation of auditory evoked potentials in terms of morphology and latency from the early years of childhood through young adulthood. The results are consistent with the view that attention can operate across age groups by modulating the amplitude of maturing auditory early-latency evoked potentials or by invoking later endogenous attention processes. Development of these processes is not uniform for probes with different acoustic properties within our acoustically dense speech-based dichotic listening task. In light of the developmental differences we demonstrate, researchers conducting future attention studies of children and adolescents should be wary of combining analyses across diverse ages.	f	\N
26003250	Strokes are the second leading cause of death and the third leading cause of disability worldwide. Thanks in part to better and more available diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation, the vast majority of stroke patients tend to survive strokes, particularly in the industrialized world. Motor disability and cognitive changes such as aphasia and visuospatial disorders are most often considered among the major contributors to stroke burden. This chapter discusses disorders of sexual functions as another frequent sequel of strokes. Strokes generally induce hyposexuality, but in some instances they may be followed by hypersexuality. There is some evidence suggesting that lesions of either hemisphere affect sexual activities, but for different reasons: aphasia and depression after left-hemisphere lesions, a deficit in arousal and perhaps visuospatial disorders after right-hemisphere lesions. Psychologic, psychosocial, and physical factors, as well as medications, play an important role. A better understanding of the psychosocial and physiologic mechanisms underlying sexual functioning can provide insight into improving sexual activity and therefore quality of life in patients affected by strokes and other brain lesions.	f	\N
26042011	In classical conditioning, an initially neutral stimulus (conditioned stimulus, CS) becomes associated with a biologically salient event (unconditioned stimulus, US), which might be pain (aversive conditioning) or food (appetitive conditioning). After a few associations, the CS is able to initiate either defensive or consummatory responses, respectively. Contrary to aversive conditioning, appetitive conditioning is rarely investigated in humans, although its importance for normal and pathological behaviors (e.g., obesity, addiction) is undeniable. The present study intents to translate animal findings on appetitive conditioning to humans using food as an US. Thirty-three participants were investigated between 8 and 10 am without breakfast in order to assure that they felt hungry. During two acquisition phases, one geometrical shape (avCS+) predicted an aversive US (painful electric shock), another shape (appCS+) predicted an appetitive US (chocolate or salty pretzel according to the participants' preference), and a third shape (CS-) predicted neither US. In a extinction phase, these three shapes plus a novel shape (NEW) were presented again without US delivery. Valence and arousal ratings as well as startle and skin conductance (SCR) responses were collected as learning indices. We found successful aversive and appetitive conditioning. On the one hand, the avCS+ was rated as more negative and more arousing than the CS- and induced startle potentiation and enhanced SCR. On the other hand, the appCS+ was rated more positive than the CS- and induced startle attenuation and larger SCR. In summary, we successfully confirmed animal findings in (hungry) humans by demonstrating appetitive learning and normal aversive learning.	f	\N
26042057	Emotional experience has a pervasive impact on choice behavior, yet the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Introducing facial-expression primes into a probabilistic learning task, we investigated how affective arousal regulates reward-related choice based on behavioral, model fitting, and feedback-related negativity (FRN) data. Sixty-six paid subjects were randomly assigned to the Neutral-Neutral (NN), Angry-Neutral (AN), and Happy-Neutral (HN) groups. A total of 960 trials were conducted. Subjects in each group were randomly exposed to half trials of the pre-determined emotional faces and another half of the neutral faces before choosing between two cards drawn from two decks with different assigned reward probabilities. Trial-by-trial data were fit with a standard reinforcement learning model using the Bayesian estimation approach. The temporal dynamics of brain activity were simultaneously recorded and analyzed using event-related potentials. Our analyses revealed that subjects in the NN group gained more reward values than those in the other two groups; they also exhibited comparatively differential estimated model-parameter values for reward prediction errors. Computing the difference wave of FRNs in reward vs. non-reward trials, we found that, compared to the NN group, subjects in the AN and HN groups had larger "General" FRNs (i.e., FRNs in no-reward trials minus FRNs in reward trials) and "Expected" FRNs (i.e., FRNs in expected reward-omission trials minus FRNs in expected reward-delivery trials), indicating an interruption in predicting reward. Further, both AN and HN groups appeared to be more sensitive to negative outcomes than the NN group. Collectively, our study suggests that affective arousal negatively regulates reward-related choice, probably through overweighting with negative feedback.	f	\N
26057772	Encoding of stressful experiences plays an important role in the development of posttraumatic stress disorder. A crucial aspect of memory encoding is binding: the "gluing" of the temporal and spatial elements of an episode into a cohesive unit. This study investigated the effect of emotional arousal on temporal binding and examined whether temporal binding varied as a function of state anxiety and/or state dissociation. Participants saw picture sequences that varied in arousal and valence. After each sequence, participants were presented with all the pictures simultaneously and had to sort the pictures in the original order. Temporal context binding was indexed by sorting accuracy. Binding was generally lower for high than low arousing pictures. Reduced binding of arousing material was specifically pronounced in participants with high state anxiety, whereas it seemed independent of state dissociation. These findings point to the relevance of impaired temporal binding as a component of aberrant memory encoding in stressful situations.	f	\N
26099122	The main aim of this study was to differentiate the magnitude of a pilot's heart rate variability (HRV) when performing assisted and unassisted flights, as well as simple and complex flight tasks. Cardiac monitoring in flights was carried out using a compact, mobile ECG recorder. A frequency analysis of the heart rate (HR) signal was performed to determine the ratio of low-frequency spectral power (LF) to high-frequency spectral power (HF). The LF/HF ratio observed in the zone (M=1.047, SD=0.059) was significantly different than the LF/HF calculated preflight (M=0.877, SD=0.043) and postflight (M=0.793, SD=0.037). There was no main effect of the flight type (unassisted zone flight vs. zone flight with an instructor) on the LF/HF parameter. However, greater psychophysiological load of a pilot was observed in the training zone flights when compared to simple circle flights (main effect of the flight type). As the LF/HF ratio turned out to be significantly higher in the zone than pre- and postflight, this parameter can be useful for predicting the risk of excessive stress and arousal of pilots during flights. Based on the LF/HF ratio we can also estimate difficulty level of flight tasks, because our research has shown higher values of this parameter in the training zone flights than in simple circle flights.	f	\N
26140258	Negative emotions can cause discomforting autonomic arousal, which can be difficult to inhibit using willpower alone. Although previous physiological studies have reported that skin pressure at certain bilateral locations reflexively inhibits sympathetic nervous system activity, few studies have tested the effect of this inhibition on emotion-related autonomic arousal in humans. I recorded skin potential response (SPR) and heart rate (HR) in healthy participants in response to loud noises presented concomitantly with or without skin pressure applied bilaterally to the sides of the chest. Weaker SPR and lower HR were observed in response to the noises accompanied by skin pressure. These findings indicate that skin pressure can be an easy and effective method to inhibit autonomic arousal related to negative emotions.	f	\N
26151610	This meta-analysis examined the effect experimental sleep restriction has on youth's attention and hyperactivity outcomes. Thirteen published studies containing 17 independent samples were included (N = 496). Random- and fixed-effects models were used to estimate pooled effect sizes and moderator effects, respectively. Results indicate that sleep-restricted youth had significantly worse attention outcomes than youth with extended sleep, but no differences were evident regarding hyperactivity. Significant moderators of this effect included age and sex. These results have important implications for both the prevention and treatment of attention problems, highlighting the need for health professionals to screen for and treat underlying sleep issues.	f	\N
26261317	Episodic memory performance is the result of distinct mental processes, such as learning, memory maintenance, and emotional modulation of memory strength. Such processes can be effectively dissociated using computational models. Here we performed gene set enrichment analyses of model parameters estimated from the episodic memory performance of 1,765 healthy young adults. We report robust and replicated associations of the amine compound SLC (solute-carrier) transporters gene set with the learning rate, of the collagen formation and transmembrane receptor protein tyrosine kinase activity gene sets with the modulation of memory strength by negative emotional arousal, and of the L1 cell adhesion molecule (L1CAM) interactions gene set with the repetition-based memory improvement. Furthermore, in a large functional MRI sample of 795 subjects we found that the association between L1CAM interactions and memory maintenance revealed large clusters of differences in brain activity in frontal cortical areas. Our findings provide converging evidence that distinct genetic profiles underlie specific mental processes of human episodic memory. They also provide empirical support to previous theoretical and neurobiological studies linking specific neuromodulators to the learning rate and linking neural cell adhesion molecules to memory maintenance. Furthermore, our study suggests additional memory-related genetic pathways, which may contribute to a better understanding of the neurobiology of human memory.	f	\N
26308302	Extracorporeal life support (ECLS) as a bridge to lung transplantation (LuTx) is a promising option for patients with end-stage lung disease on the transplant waiting list. We investigated the outcome of patients bridged to lung transplantation on ECLS technologies, mainly extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). Between January 2007 and October 2013, ECLS was implanted in 30 patients with intention to bridge to LuTx. Twenty-six patients (26/30) were successfully bridged to LuTx on ECLS. The most common diagnosis was cystic fibrosis (N = 12). Venovenous ECMO was used in 10, venoarterial in 4, interventional lung assist in 5, and stepwise combination of them in 7 recipients. Two patients weaned from ECMO, and 2 patients died on ECMO on the waiting list. Median duration of ECLS was 21 days (1-81 years). Six patients were awake and spontaneously breathing during ECLS support. Thirty-day, 1-year, and 2-year survivals were 89%, 68%, and 53%, respectively, for bridged patients and 96%, 85%, and 79%, respectively, for control group (P = 0.001). Three months conditional survivals were 89% and 69% at 1 and 2 years for ECLS group, compared to 92% and 86% for control group (P = 0.03). Cystic fibrosis recipients had 82% survival rate at 1 and 2 years. All recipients bridged to LuTx on awake ECLS (N = 6) are alive with a median follow-up of 10.8 months (range, 6-21 months). Our data show significantly lower survival in this high-risk group compared to patients transplanted without preoperative ECLS. Awake and ambulatory ECLS provides the best prognosis for these high-risk patients.	f	\N
26320752	In recent years , increasing attention has been given to the development of deaf children, though few studies have included Deaf parents. The present study examined emotional availability (EA) and functions of touch used by Deaf or hearing parents with hearing or deaf infants during free play. Sixty dyads representing four hearing status groups were observed when the infants were 18 months old. Comparisons among all four groups revealed significant differences in regard to parental sensitivity and child responsiveness, with hearing mothers with deaf infants tending to score lowest in the various subcategories of EA. Significant differences were also found for attentional touch and total touch, with deaf mothers of deaf or hearing infants using both types of touch more than hearing mothers of deaf or hearing infants. The importance of support and interventions for hearing mothers with deaf infants is discussed.	f	\N
26420517	Negative non-specific (nocebo-like) effects of medications and electromagnetic fields are often described as results of mistaken attribution. The current study aimed to find empirical evidence supporting this theory. Participants completed questionnaires assessing modern health worries, health anxiety, and somatosensory amplification, were assigned to one of three conditions (placebo pill with sedative information, sham magnetic field, or control), and completed a 14-min vigilance task. Changes in physiological arousal (heart rate, heart rate variability, and skin conductance) and reported symptoms were also measured. Finally, causal attributions concerning cognitive performance and reported symptoms were assessed. No increase in symptom reports and physiological arousal was measured in the two intervention groups. A perceived negative effect on cognitive performance was attributed to both sham conditions, and attributions were connected to modern health worries. A proportion of reported symptoms was ascribed to the placebo pill but not to the sham magnetic field. Symptom attributions were not related to any assessed psychological variables. An aroused physiological state is not necessary for the automatic causal attribution process. Negative effects attributed to medication and environmental factors can be regarded as unavoidable side effects of human cognitive-emotional functioning; they might be alleviated, but cannot be completely eradicated.	f	\N
26442340	Although alexithymia is recognized as a set of traitlike deficits in emotion processing, research suggests there are concomitant cognitive issues as well, including what appears to be an unusual pattern of enhanced working memory (WM) despite broader executive dysfunction. It is unknown whether this enhancement includes the executive elements of WM and whether executive control of WM in alexithymia differs for emotional and neutral stimuli. This study examined how alexithymia moderates patterns of interference resolution in WM with valenced and nonvalenced stimuli. Participants (N = 93) completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale and a recency probes WM task containing positive, negative, and neutral stimuli, with some trials containing proactive interference from previous trials. The reaction time difference between interference and noninterference trials indexed degree of interference resolution. Toronto Alexithymia Scale score moderated a within-subject effect such that, when valenced probes were used, there was less proactive interference in the positive relative to negative valence condition; this valence-based interference discrepancy was significant for a subset of highly alexithymic participants. Alexithymia did not moderate proactive interference to negative or neutral stimuli or accuracy of responses. These results suggest that, although alexithymia does not influence executive control in WM for nonemotional items, alexithymic people demonstrate an idiosyncratic response to positive stimuli that might indicate blunted reactivity.	f	\N
26447746	The Introversion/Extraversion dimension may interact with contextual interference, as random and blocked practice schedules imply distinct levels of variation. This study investigated the effect of different practice schedules in the acquisition of a motor skill in extraverts and introverts. Forty male undergraduate students (M = 24.3 yr., SD = 5.6) were classified as extraverts (n = 20) and introverts (n = 20) by the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and allocated in one of two practice schedules with different levels of contextual interference: blocked (low contextual interference) and random (high contextual interference). Half of each group was assigned to a blocked practice schedule, and the other half was assigned to a random practice schedule. The design had two phases: acquisition and transfer (5 min. and 24 hr.). The participants learned variations of a sequential timing keypressing task. Each variation required the same sequence but different timing; three variations were used in acquisition, and one variation of intermediate length was used in transfer. Results for absolute error and overall timing error (root mean square error) indicated that the contextual interference effect was more pronounced for introverts. In addition, introverts who practiced according to the blocked schedule committed more errors during the 24-hr. transfer, suggesting that introverts did not appear to be challenged by a low contextual interference practice schedule.	f	\N
26468192	Time is central to cognition. However, the neural basis for time-dependent cognition remains poorly understood. We explore how the temporal features of neural activity in cortical circuits and their capacity for plasticity can contribute to time-dependent cognition over short time scales. This neural activity is linked to cognition that operates in the present or anticipates events or stimuli in the near future. We focus on deliberation and planning in the context of decision making as a cognitive process that integrates information across time. We progress to consider how temporal expectations of the future modulate perception. We propose that understanding the neural basis for how the brain tells time and operates in time will be necessary to develop general models of cognition. Time is central to cognition. However, the neural basis for time-dependent cognition remains poorly understood. We explore how the temporal features of neural activity in cortical circuits and their capacity for plasticity can contribute to time-dependent cognition over short time scales. We propose that understanding the neural basis for how the brain tells time and operates in time will be necessary to develop general models of cognition.	f	\N
26501048	People do not use condoms consistently but instead rely on intuition to identify sexual partners high at risk for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. The present study examined gender differences of intuitive impressions about HIV risk. Male and female perceivers evaluated portraits of unacquainted male and female targets regarding their risk for HIV, trait characteristics (trust, responsibility, attractiveness, valence, arousal, and health), and willingness for interaction. Male targets were perceived as more risky than female targets for both perceiver genders. Furthermore, male perceivers reported higher HIV risk perception for both male and female targets than female perceivers. Multiple regression indicated gender differences in the association between person characteristics and HIV risk. In male targets, only trustworthiness predicts HIV risk. In female targets, however, HIV risk is related to trustworthiness, attractiveness, health, valence (for male perceivers), and arousal (for female perceivers). The present findings characterize intuitive impressions of HIV risk and reveal differences according to both target and perceiver gender. Considering gender differences in intuitive judgments of HIV risk may help devise effective strategies by shifting the balance from feelings of risk toward a more rational mode of risk perception and the adoption of effective precautionary behaviors.	f	\N
21895359	Early evidence of social referencing was examined in 5½-month-old infants. Infants were habituated to 2 films of moving toys, one toy eliciting a woman's positive emotional expression and the other eliciting a negative expression under conditions of bimodal (audiovisual) or unimodal visual (silent) speech. It was predicted that intersensory redundancy provided by audiovisual (but not available in unimodal visual) events would enhance detection of the relation between emotional expressions and the corresponding toy. Consistent with predictions, only infants who received bimodal, audiovisual events detected a change in the affect-object relations, showing increased looking during a switch test in which the toy-affect pairing was reversed. Moreover, in a subsequent live preference test, they preferentially touched the 3-dimensional toy previously paired with the positive expression. These findings suggest social referencing emerges by 5½ months in the context of intersensory redundancy provided by dynamic multimodal stimulation and that even 5½-month-old infants demonstrate preferences for 3-dimensional objects on the basis of affective information depicted in videotaped events.	f	\N
21050743	Although the parietal cortex is traditionally associated with spatial attention and sensorimotor integration, recent evidence also implicates it in higher order cognitive functions. We review relevant results from neuron recording studies showing that inferior parietal neurons integrate information regarding target location with a variety of non-spatial signals. Some of these signals are modulatory and alter a stimulus-evoked response according to the action, category, or reward associated with the stimulus. Other non-spatial inputs act independently, encoding the context or rules of a task even before the presentation of a specific target. Despite the ubiquity of non-spatial information in individual neurons, reversible inactivation of the parietal lobe affects only spatial orienting of attention and gaze, but not non-spatial aspects of performance. This suggests that non-spatial signals contribute to an underlying spatial computation, possibly allowing the brain to determine which targets are worthy of attention or action in a given task context.	\N	\N
20049632	Eyeblink and postauricular reflexes to standardized affective images were examined in individuals without (n = 37) and with (n = 20) autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Affective reflex modulation in control participants replicated previous findings. The ASD group, however, showed anomalous reflex modulation patterns, despite similar self-report ratings of pictures. Specifically, the ASD group demonstrated exaggerated eyeblink responses to pleasant images and exaggerated postauricular responses to unpleasant images. Although ASD is often conceptualized in terms of specific deficits in affective responding in the social domain, the present results suggest a domain-general pattern of deficits in affective processing and that such deficits may arise at an early phase in the stream of information processing.	\N	\N
20497902	Though a key symptom underlying many anxiety disorders is hypervigilant threat monitoring, its biological bases in humans remain poorly understood. Animal models suggest that anxious processes such as hypervigilant threat monitoring are distinct from cued fear-like responses and mediated by the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST). Here, we applied psychophysiological and neuroimaging methodologies sensitive to sustained arousal-based responses to test the role of the human BNST in mediating environmental threat monitoring, a potential experimental model for sustained anxiety symptoms. Healthy participants (n = 50) with varying trait anxiety performed an environmental threat-monitoring task during functional magnetic resonance imaging where a stimulus line continuously fluctuated in height, providing information relevant to subsequent risk for electric shocks. Skin conductance was collected in a separate cohort (n = 47) to validate task-evoked modulation of physiological arousal. A forebrain region consistent with the BNST showed greater overall recruitment and exaggerated tracking of threat proximity in individuals with greater anxiety. The insular cortex tracked threat proximity across all participants, showed exaggerated threat proximity responding with greater anxiety, and showed enhanced recruitment when threat proximity was ostensibly controllable. Activity in the BNST and insula continuously monitored changes in environmental threat level and also subserved hypervigilant threat-monitoring processes in more highly trait anxious individuals. These findings bridge human and animal research informing the role of the BNST in anxious-related processes. In addition, these findings suggest that continuous functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigms offer promise in further elucidating the neural circuitries supporting sustained anticipatory features of anxiety.	\N	\N
21278378	Using a mixed model design, this study examined the effects of interactive versus passive distraction on healthy preschool-aged children's cold pressor pain tolerance. Sixty-one children aged 3-5 years were randomly assigned to one of the following: interactive distraction, passive distraction, or no distraction control. Participants underwent a baseline cold pressor trial followed by interactive distraction trial, passive distraction trial, or second baseline trial. One or two additional trials followed. Children originally assigned to distraction received the alternate distraction intervention. Controls participated in both interactive and passive distraction trials in counterbalanced order. Participants showed significantly higher pain tolerance during both interactive and passive distraction relative to baseline. The two distraction conditions did not differ. Interactive and passive video game distraction appear to be effective for preschool-aged children during laboratory pain exposure. Future studies should examine whether more extensive training would enhance effects of interactive video game distraction.	\N	\N
20661292	Light-activated large ventral lateral clock neurons (large LNv) modulate behavioral arousal and sleep in Drosophila while their counterparts, the small LNv (s-LNv) are important for circadian behavior. Recently, it has been proposed that the pattern of day-night locomotor behavioral activity is mediated by two anatomically distinct oscillators composed of a morning oscillator in the small LNv and an evening oscillator in the lateral dorsal neurons and an undefined number of dorsal pacemaker neurons. This contrasts with a circuit described by network models which are not as anatomically constrained. By selectively ablating the small LNv while sparing the large LNv, we tested the relative importance of the small and large LNv for regulating morning behavior of animals living in standard light/dark cycles. Behavioral anticipation of the onset of morning and the high amplitude morning startle response which coincides with light onset are preserved in small LNv functionally-ablated animals. However, the amplitude of the morning behavioral peak is severely attenuated in these animals during the transition from regular light/dark cycles to constant darkness, providing further support that small LNv are necessary for circadian behavior. The large LNv, in combination with the network of other circadian neurons, in the absence of functional small LNv are sufficient for the morning anticipation and the high amplitude light-activated morning startle response.	\N	\N
20939652	Although research on the reasons for engaging in nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) has increased dramatically in the last few years, there are still many aspects of this pernicious behavior that are not well understood. The purpose of this study was to address these gaps in the literature, with a particular focus on investigating whether NSSI (a) regulates affective valence in addition to affective arousal and (b) serves a cognitive regulation function in addition to an affect regulation function. To elucidate these issues, the present study utilized a sample of 112 participants (33 controls, 39 no pain controls, 16 NSSI individuals, and 24 controls matching the affect dysregulation levels of the NSSI group), employed psychophysiological measures of affective valence (startle-alone reactivity) and quality of information processing (prepulse inhibition), and used experimental methods involving an NSSI-proxy to model the NSSI process. Results largely were consistent with predictions, supporting the hypotheses that NSSI serves to regulate cognitive processing and affective valence. On this latter point, however, the control groups also showed a decrease in negative affective valence after the NSSI-proxy. This unexpected finding is consistent with the hypothesis that opponent processes may contribute to the development of self-injurious behaviors (Joiner, 2005). Overall, the present study represents an important extension of previous laboratory NSSI studies and provides a fertile foundation for future studies aimed at understanding why people engage in NSSI.	\N	\N
21034683	A detailed understanding of how individuals diagnosed with social anxiety disorder (SAD) respond physiologically under social-evaluative threat is lacking. Our aim was to isolate the specific components of public speaking that trigger fear in vulnerable individuals and best discriminate between SAD and healthy individuals. Sixteen individuals diagnosed with SAD (DSM-IV-TR criteria) and 16 healthy individuals were enrolled in the study from December 2005 to March 2008. Subjects were asked to prepare and deliver a short speech in a virtual reality (VR) environment. The VR environment simulated standing center stage before a live audience and allowed us to gradually introduce social cues during speech anticipation. Startle eye-blink responses were elicited periodically by white noise bursts presented during anticipation, speech delivery, and recovery in VR, as well as outside VR during an initial habituation phase, and startle reactivity was measured by electromyography. Subjects rated their distress at 4 timepoints in VR using a 0-10 scale, with anchors being "not distressed" to "highly distressed." State anxiety was measured before and after VR with the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Individuals with SAD reported greater distress and state anxiety than healthy individuals across the entire procedure (P values < .005). Analyses of startle reactivity revealed a robust group difference during speech anticipation in VR, specifically as audience members directed their eye gaze and turned their attention toward participants (P < .05, Bonferroni-corrected). The VR environment is sufficiently realistic to provoke fear and anxiety in individuals highly vulnerable to socially threatening situations. Individuals with SAD showed potentiated startle, indicative of a strong phasic fear response, specifically when they perceived themselves as occupying the focus of others' attention as speech time approached. Potentiated startle under social-evaluative threat indexes SAD-related fear of negative evaluation.	\N	\N
21259270	This study examined the relations between impulsivity-related traits (as assessed by the UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale) and aggressive behaviors. Results indicated that UPPS-P Lack of Premeditation and Sensation Seeking were important in predicting general violence. In contrast, UPPS-P Urgency was most useful in predicting intimate partner violence. To further explore relations between intimate partner violence and Urgency, a measure of autonomic response to pleasant and aversive stimuli and facets of Neuroticism from the NEO PI-R were used as control variables. Autonomic responsivity was correlated with intimate partner violence at the zero-order level, and predicted significant variance in intimate partner violence in regression equations. However, UPPS-P Urgency was able to account for unique variance in intimate partner violence, above and beyond measures of Neuroticism and arousal. Implications regarding the use of a multifaceted conceptualization of impulsivity in the prediction of different types of violent behavior are discussed.	\N	\N
21376761	The current study examined emotional reactivity in nonsuicidal self-injurers and noninjuring controls using self-report (the Emotional Reactivity Scale: ERS) and psychophysiological measures (the startle reflex was measured during and after the presentation of IAPS images). Self-injurers reported greater emotional reactivity on the ERS, but did not exhibit differences in startle modulation during or after picture viewing compared to controls. Results suggest a divergence between self-report and psychophysiological measures of emotion in NSSI.	\N	\N
21392554	Research has shown that during emotional imagery, valence and arousal each modulate the startle reflex. Here, two imagery-startle experiments required participants to attend to the startle probe as a simple reaction time cue. In experiment 1, four emotional conditions differing in valence and arousal were examined. Experiment 2, to accentuate potential valence effects, included two negative high arousal, a positive high arousal and a negative low arousal condition. Imagery effectively manipulated emotional valence and arousal, as indicated by heart rate and subjective ratings. Compared to baseline, imagery facilitated startle responses. However, valence and arousal failed to significantly affect startle magnitude in both experiments and startle latency in Experiment 1. Results suggest that emotional startle modulation is eclipsed when the probe is significant for task completion and/or cues a motor response. Findings suggest that an active, rather than defensive, response set may interfere with affective startle modulation, warranting further investigation.	\N	\N
21440905	Research has highlighted the need for new methods to assess emotions in children on multiple levels to gain better insight into the complex processes of emotional development. The startle reflex is a unique translational tool that has been used to study physiological processes during fear and anxiety in rodents and in human participants. However, it has been challenging to implement developmentally appropriate startle experiments in children. This article describes a procedure that uses predictable and unpredictable aversive events to distinguish between phasic fear and sustained anxiety in children and adolescents. We investigated anxious responses, as measured with the startle reflex, in youths (N=36, mean age=12.63 years, range=7-17) across three conditions: no aversive events (N), predictable aversive events (P), and unpredictable aversive events (U). Short-duration cues were presented several times in each condition. Aversive events were signaled by the cues in the P condition but were presented randomly in the U condition. Participants showed fear-potentiated startle to the threat cue in the P condition. Startle responses were also elevated between cues in the U condition compared with the N condition, suggesting that unpredictable aversive events can evoke a sustained state of anxiety in youths. This latter effect was influenced by sex, being greater in girls than in boys. These findings indicate the feasibility of this experimental induction of the startle reflex in response to predictable and unpredictable events in children and adolescents, enabling future research on interindividual differences in fear and anxiety and their development in youths.	\N	\N
21463060	Previous studies reveal age by valence interactions in attention and memory, such that older adults focus relatively more on positive and relatively less on negative stimuli than younger adults. In the current study, eyeblink startle response was used to measure differences in emotional reactivity to images that were equally arousing to both age groups. Viewing positive and negative pictures from the International Affective Picture System had opposite effects on startle modulation for older and younger adults. Younger adults showed the typical startle blink pattern, with potentiated startle when viewing negative pictures compared to positive pictures. Older adults, on the other hand, showed the opposite pattern, with potentiated startle when viewing positive pictures compared to viewing negative and neutral pictures. Potential underlying mechanisms for this interaction are evaluated. This pattern suggests that, compared with younger adults, older adults are more likely to spontaneously suppress responses to negative stimuli and process positive stimuli more deeply.	\N	\N
21477924	The present study examined whether a moderately aversive abdominal threat would lead to greater enhancement in affect- and pain-related defensive responding as indexed by the acoustic startle reflex (ASR) and nociceptive flexion reflex (NFR) in women compared to men. We also predicted sex differences in threat-related autonomic arousal measured by skin conductance responses (SCRs) to acoustic startle and noxious sural nerve stimulation. Unpredictable threat was manipulated by alternating 30-second safe ("no abdominal stimulation will be given") and threat ("abdominal stimulation may occur at anytime") periods. The experiment consisted of 2 blocks, each containing 4 safe and 4 threat periods in which the ASR or NFR was randomly probed 9-21 seconds following period onset. Unpredictable abdominal threat potentiated both ASR and NFR responses compared to periods signaling safety. SCRs to acoustic startle probes and noxious sural nerve stimulation were also significantly elevated during the threat vs safe periods. No sex differences in ASR or startle-evoked SCRs emerged. However, nociceptive responding was moderated by sex; females showed significant increases in NFR magnitudes across both safe and threat periods compared to males. Females also showed greater threat-potentiated SCRs to sural nerve stimulation than males. Our findings indicate that both affect- and pain-related defense and arousal systems are strongly influenced by threat of an aversive, unpredictable event, a situation associated with anticipatory anxiety. Females, compared to males, showed greater nociceptive responding and pain modulation when exposed to an unpredictable threatening context, whereas affect-driven ASR responses showed no such sex differentiation.	\N	\N
21550590	Panic is characterized as a disorder of interoceptive physiologic hyperarousal, secondary to persistent anticipation of panic attacks. The novel aim of this research was to investigate whether severity of agoraphobia within panic disorder covaries with the intensity of physiological reactions to imagery of panic attacks and other aversive scenarios. A community sample of principal panic disorder (n = 112; 41 without agoraphobia, 71 with agoraphobia) and control (n = 76) participants imagined threatening and neutral events while acoustic startle probes were presented and the eye-blink response (orbicularis oculi) recorded. Changes in heart rate, skin conductance level, and facial expressivity were also measured. Overall, panic disorder patients exceeded control participants in startle reflex and heart rate during imagery of standard panic attack scenarios, concordant with more extreme ratings of aversion and emotional arousal. Accounting for the presence of agoraphobia revealed that both panic disorder with and without situational apprehension showed the pronounced heart rate increases during standard panic attack imagery observed for the sample as a whole. In contrast, startle potentiation to aversive imagery was more robust in those without versus with agoraphobia. Reflex diminution was most dramatic in those with the most pervasive agoraphobia, coincident with the most extreme levels of comorbid broad negative affectivity, disorder chronicity, and functional impairment. Principal panic disorder may represent initial, heightened interoceptive fearfulness and concomitant defensive hyperactivity, which through progressive generalization of anticipatory anxiety ultimately transitions to a disorder of pervasive agoraphobic apprehension and avoidance, broad dysphoria, and compromised mobilization for defensive action.	\N	\N
21623612	The SPAN, which is acronym standing for its four components: Startle, Physiological arousal, Anger, and Numbness, is a short post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) screening scale. This study sought to develop and validate a Korean version of the SPAN (SPAN-K). Ninety-three PTSD patients (PTSD group), 73 patients with non-psychotic psychiatric disorders (psychiatric control group), and 88 healthy participants (normal control group) were recruited for this study. Participants completed a variety of psychiatric assessments including the SPAN-K, the Davidson Trauma Scale (DTS), the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS), and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). Cronbach's α and test-retest reliability values for the SPAN-K were both 0.80. Mean SPAN-K scores were 10.06 for the PTSD group, 4.94 for the psychiatric control group, and 1.42 for the normal control group. With respect to concurrent validity, correlation coefficients were 0.87 for SPAN-K vs. CAPS total scores (p<0.001) and 0.86 for SPAN-K vs. DTS scores (p<0.001). Additionally, correlation coefficients were 0.31 and 0.42 for SPAN-K vs. STAI-S and STAI-T, respectively. Receiver operating characteristic analysis of SPAN-K showed good diagnostic accuracy with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.87. The SPAN-K showed the highest efficiency at a cutoff score of 7, with a sensitivity of 0.83, a specificity of 0.81, positive predictive value (PPV) of 0.88, and negative predictive value (NPV) of 0.73. These results suggest that the SPAN-K had good psychometric properties and may be a useful instrument for rapid screening of PTSD patients.	\N	\N
21898707	Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients show heightened fear responses to trauma reminders and an inability to inhibit fear in the presence of safety reminders. Brain imaging studies suggest that this is in part due to amygdala over-reactivity as well as deficient top-down cortical inhibition of the amygdala. Consistent with these findings, previous studies, using fear-potentiated startle (FPS), have shown exaggerated startle and deficits in fear inhibition in PTSD participants. However, many PTSD studies using the skin conductance response (SCR) report no group differences in fear acquisition. The study included 41 participants with PTSD and 70 without PTSD. The fear conditioning session included a reinforced conditioned stimulus (CS+, danger cue) paired with an aversive airblast, and a nonreinforced conditioned stimulus (CS-, safety cue). Acoustic startle responses and SCR were acquired during the presentation of each CS. The results showed that fear conditioned responses were captured in both the FPS and SCR measures. Furthermore, PTSD participants had higher FPS to the danger cue and safety cue compared to trauma controls. However, SCR did not differ between groups. Finally, we found that FPS to the danger cue predicted re-experiencing symptoms, whereas FPS to the safety cue predicted hyper-arousal symptoms. However, SCR did not contribute to PTSD symptom variance. Replicating earlier studies, we showed increased FPS in PTSD participants. However, although SCR was a good measure of differential conditioning, it did not differentiate between PTSD groups. These data suggest that FPS may be a useful tool for translational research.	\N	\N
22088577	Depression and anxiety disorders (ADs) are highly co-morbid, but the reason for this co-morbidity is unclear. One possibility is that they predispose one another. An informative way to examine interactions between disorders without the confounds present in patient populations is to manipulate the psychological processes thought to underlie the pathological states in healthy individuals. In this study we therefore asked whether a model of the sad mood in depression can enhance psychophysiological responses (startle) to a model of the anxiety in ADs. We predicted that sad mood would increase anxious anxiety-potentiated startle responses. In a between-subjects design, participants (n=36) completed either a sad mood induction procedure (MIP; n=18) or a neutral MIP (n=18). Startle responses were assessed during short-duration predictable electric shock conditions (fear-potentiated startle) or long-duration unpredictable threat of shock conditions (anxiety-potentiated startle). Induced sadness enhanced anxiety- but not fear-potentiated startle. This study provides support for the hypothesis that sadness can increase anxious responding measured by the affective startle response. This, taken together with prior evidence that ADs can contribute to depression, provides initial experimental support for the proposition that ADs and depression are frequently co-morbid because they may be mutually reinforcing.	\N	\N
22285891	The affective startle modulation task has been an important measure in understanding physiological aspects of emotion and motivational responses. Research utilizing this method has relied primarily on a 'passive' viewing paradigm, which stands in contrast to everyday life where much of emotion and motivation involves some active choice or agency. The present study investigated the role of choice on the physiology of emotion. Eighty-four participants were randomized into 'choice' (n=44) or 'no-choice' (n=40) groups distinguished by the ability to choose between stimuli. EMG eye blink responses were recorded in both anticipation and stimulus viewing. Results indicated a significant attenuation of the startle magnitude in choice condition trials (relative to no-choice) across all picture categories and probe times. We interpret these findings as an indication that the act of choice may decrease one's defensive response, or conversely, lacking choice may heighten the defensive response. Implications for future research are discussed.	\N	\N
22286850	Trauma is associated with increased risk for anxiety disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). To further understand biologic mechanisms of PTSD, we examined the dark-enhanced startle response, a psychophysiological correlate of anxiety, and heart rate variability (HRV) in traumatized individuals with and without PTSD. The associations of these measures with PTSD may be sex-specific because of their associations with the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, a sexually dimorphic brain structure in the limbic system that is approximately 2.5 times larger in men than in women. The study sample (N = 141) was recruited from a highly traumatized civilian population seeking treatment at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. Psychophysiological responses during a dark-enhanced startle paradigm task included startle magnitude, assessed by eyeblink reflex, and measures of high-frequency HRV, during light and dark phases of the startle session. The startle magnitude was higher during the dark phase than the light phase (mean ± standard error = 98.61 ± 10.68 versus 73.93 ± 8.21 μV, p < .001). PTSD was associated with a greater degree of dark-enhanced startle in women (p = .03) but not in men (p = .38, p interaction = .48). Although HRV measures did not differ between phases, high-frequency HRV was greater in men with PTSD compared with men without PTSD (p = .02). This study demonstrates that the dark-enhanced paradigm provides novel insights into the psychophysiological responses associated with PTSD in traumatized civilian sample. Sex differences in altered parasympathetic and sympathetic function during anxiety regulation tasks may provide further insight into the neurobiological mechanisms of PTSD.	\N	\N
22315106	Knowledge about healthy women’s psychophysiological adaptations during the large neuroendocrine changes of pregnancy and childbirth is essential in order to understand why these events have the potential to disrupt mental health in vulnerable individuals. This study aimed to compare startle response modulation, an objective psychophysiological measure demonstrated to be influenced by anxiety and depression, longitudinally across late pregnancy and the postpartum period. The acoustic startle response modulation was assessed during anticipation of affective images and during image viewing in 31 healthy women during gestational weeks 36–39 and again at 4 to 6 weeks postpartum. No startle modulation by affective images was observed at either time point. Significant modulation during anticipation stimuli was found at pregnancy assessment but was reduced in the postpartum period. The women rated the unpleasant images more negative and more arousing and the pleasant images more positive at the postpartum assessment. Self-reported anxiety and depressive symptoms did not change between assessments. The observed postpartum decrease in modulation of startle by anticipation suggests a relatively deactivated defense system in the postpartum period.	\N	\N
22776995	The endocannabinoid (eCB) system is implicated in several psychiatric disorders. Investigating emotional-motivational dysfunctions as underlying mechanisms, a study in humans revealed that in the C385A polymorphism of the fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH), the degrading enzyme of the eCB anandamide (AEA), A carriers, who are characterized by increased signaling of AEA as compared to C/C carriers, exhibited reduced brain reactivity towards unpleasant faces and enhanced reactivity towards reward. However, the association of eCB system with emotional-motivational reactivity is complex and bidirectional due to upcoming compensatory processes. Therefore, we further investigated the relationship of the FAAH polymorphism and emotional-motivational reactivity in humans. We assessed the affect-modulated startle, and ratings of valence and arousal in response to higher arousing pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant pictures in 67 FAAH C385A C/C carriers and 45 A carriers. Contrarily to the previous functional MRI study, A carriers compared to C/C carriers exhibited an increased startle potentiation and therefore emotional responsiveness towards unpleasant picture stimuli and reduced startle inhibition indicating reduced emotional reactivity in response to pleasant pictures, while both groups did not differ in ratings of arousal and valence. Our findings emphasize the bidirectionality and thorough examination of the eCB system's impact on emotional reactivity as a central endophenotype underlying various psychiatric disorders.	\N	\N
22911829	We have known for decades that social support is associated with positive health outcomes. And yet, the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying this association remain poorly understood. The link between social support and positive health outcomes is likely to depend on the neurophysiological regulatory mechanisms underlying reward and defensive reactions. The present study examines the hypothesis that emotional social support (love) provides safety cues that activate the appetitive reward system and simultaneously inhibit defense reactions. Using the startle probe paradigm, 54 undergraduate students (24 men) viewed black and white photographs of loved (romantic partner, father, mother, and best friend), neutral (unknown), and unpleasant (mutilated) faces. Eye-blink startle, zygomatic major activity, heart rate, and skin conductance responses to the faces, together with subjective ratings of valence, arousal, and dominance, were obtained. Viewing loved faces induced a marked inhibition of the eye-blink startle response accompanied by a pattern of zygomatic, heart rate, skin conductance, and subjective changes indicative of an intense positive emotional response. Effects were similar for men and women, but the startle inhibition and the zygomatic response were larger in female participants. A comparison between the faces of the romantic partner and the parent who shares the partner's gender further suggests that this effect is not attributable to familiarity or arousal. We conclude that this inhibitory capacity may contribute to the health benefits associated with social support.	\N	\N
24156344	Individuals with autism demonstrate atypical and variable responses to social and emotional stimuli, perhaps reflecting heterogeneity of the disorder. The goal of this study was to determine whether unique profiles of psychophysiological responses to such stimuli could be identified in individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), with fragile X syndrome (FXS), and with comorbid autism and fragile X syndrome (ASD + FXS), and in typically developing (TYP) individuals. This study included 52 boys (ages 10-17): idiopathic ASD (n = 12), FXS (n = 12), comorbid ASD + FXS (n = 17), and TYP (n = 11). Physiological responses, including potentiated startle, electrodermal response, heart rate variability, and vagal tone, were collected concurrently while participants viewed emotionally evocative pictures of human faces or nonsocial images. Although some of these measures have been utilized separately for investigations on these diagnostic groups, they have not been considered together. Results using Kruskal-Wallis one-way analysis of variance by ranks indicate statistically significant differences in distributions of autonomic regulation responses between groups. The most notable differences were between the ASD group and both the FXS groups on measures of sympathetic activity, with FXS groups evincing increased activity. Also, both the ASD and ASD + FXS groups showed significantly decreased parasympathetic activity compared with FXS and TYP groups. In addition, the ASD + FXS group demonstrated a unique distribution of startle potentiation and arousal modulation. This study provides evidence that autonomic arousal and regulation profiles could be useful for distinguishing subgroups of autism and shed light on the variability underlying emotional responsivity.	\N	\N
25036222	Body dissatisfaction is the most relevant body image disturbance in bulimia nervosa (BN). Research has shown that viewing one's own body evokes negative thoughts and emotions in individuals with BN. However, the psychophysiological mechanisms involved in this negative reaction have not yet been clearly established. Our aim was to examine the emotional and attentional processes that are activated when patients with BN view their own bodies. We examined the effects of viewing a video of one's own body on the physiological (eye-blink startle, cardiac defense, and skin conductance) and subjective (pleasure, arousal, and control ratings) responses elicited by a burst of 110 dB white noise of 500 ms duration. The participants were 30 women with BN and 30 healthy control women. The experimental task consisted of two consecutive and counterbalanced presentations of the auditory stimulus preceded, alternatively, by a video of the participant's own body versus no such video. The results showed that, when viewing their own bodies, women with BN experienced (a) greater inhibition of the startle reflex, (b) greater cardiac acceleration in the first component of the defense reaction, (c) greater skin conductance response, and (d) less subjective pleasure and control combined with greater arousal, compared with the control participants. Our findings suggest that, for women with BN, peripheral-physiological responses to self-images are dominated by attentional processes, which provoke an immobility reaction caused by a dysfunctional negative response to their own body.	\N	\N
25107317	Data suggests that emotion reactivity as measured by the affect-modulated startle paradigm in those with schizophrenia (SZ) may be similar to healthy controls (HC). However, normative classification of the stimuli may not accurately reflect emotional experience, especially for those with SZ. To examine this possibility, the present study measured the affect-modulated startle response with images classified according to both normative and subjective ratings. Seventeen HC and 17 SZ completed an image viewing task during which startle probes were presented, followed by subjective valence and arousal ratings. Both groups exhibited inhibited startle responses to positive images, intermediate startle amplitudes to neutral images, and potentiated startle amplitudes to negative images. SZ rated the positive images as less positive than HC. When images were reclassified based on subjective valence ratings, both groups' startle magnitudes increased in response to subjectively rated positive images and decreased to subjectively rated neutral images. The number of trials classified into each valence condition suggested a tendency for SZ to classify neutral images as negative more often than HC. Overall, these findings suggest that affective stimuli modulate the startle response in HC and SZ in similar ways, but subjective emotional experience may differ in those with schizophrenia.	\N	\N
25749431	As a form of attention, mindfulness is qualitatively receptive and non-reactive, and is thought to facilitate adaptive emotional responding. One suggested mechanism is that mindfulness facilitates disengagement from an affective stimulus and thereby decreases affective reactivity. However, mindfulness has been conceptualized as a state, intervention, and trait. Because evidence is mixed as to whether self-reported trait mindfulness decreases affective reactivity, we used a multi-method approach to study the relationship between individual differences in self-reported trait mindfulness and electrocortical, electrodermal, electromyographic, and self-reported responses to emotional pictures. Specifically, while participants (N = 51) passively viewed pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant IAPS pictures, we recorded high-density (128 channels) electrocortical, electrodermal, and electromyographic data to the pictures as well as to acoustic startle probes presented during the pictures. Afterwards, participants rated their subjective valence and arousal while viewing the pictures again. If trait mindfulness spontaneously reduces general emotional reactivity, then for individuals reporting high rather than low mindfulness, response differences between emotional and neutral pictures would show relatively decreased early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes, decreased skin conductance responses, and decreased subjective ratings for valence and arousal. High mindfulness would also be associated with decreased emotional modulation of startle eyeblink and P3 amplitudes. Although results showed clear effects of emotion on the dependent measures, in general, mindfulness did not moderate these effects. For most measures, effect sizes were small with rather narrow confidence intervals. These data do not support the hypothesis that individual differences in self-reported trait mindfulness are related to spontaneous emotional responses during picture viewing.	\N	\N
20955866	To explore whether standardized survey instruments and objective performance measures differentiate traditional constructs of sleepiness and fatigue among a sample of postpartum mothers. Additionally, we wanted to explore the independent associations among these measures with actigraphically measured nocturnal sleep variables. Seventy-nine postpartum mothers' subjective sleepiness, fatigue, and performance measures [Stanford Sleepiness Scale (SSS), Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), Visual Analogue of Fatigue Scale (VAS), Profile of Mood States (POMS) subscale items, and the Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT)] and objective actigraphically measured sleep were collected during postpartum week 11. A principal components analysis was calculated, then regressions were calculated among resulting factors and among individual measures with total sleep time and sleep efficiency. Three factors accounted for 83.84% of model variance. Factor 1 (41.41%) included the SSS, ESS, and the VAS. Factor 2 (28.13%) included only PVT variables. Factor 3 (14.30%) included the two POMS subscale items. Factor 1 was associated with nocturnal sleep time and Factor 2 was associated with sleep efficiency. The ESS was independently associated with nocturnal sleep time, whereas, POMS-Vigor subscale and median reaction time, together, were associated with sleep efficiency. Among postpartum mothers, standard instruments used to measure sleepiness, fatigue, and performance were distributed among three distinct factors that did not clearly identify traditional sleepiness and fatigue constructs. Objectively measured sleep time and sleep efficiency were associated with specific factors, as well as specific measures, that correspond to sleepiness and fatigue states.	\N	\N
21677894	Patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) commonly have cognitive complaints, particularly in attention, and report decreased quality of life. We examined how vigilance and sustained attention, as assessed by the Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT), were related to quality of life after controlling for apnea severity and depression in subjects with OSA. Fifty-seven patients with newly diagnosed and untreated OSA had their sleep monitored with polysomnography. Quality of life was assessed by the Short Form-36 health survey questionnaire (SF-36). Mood was assessed by the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression (CES-D) Scale. After sleep monitoring and psychological assessments were performed, the 10-minute PVT was administered. The main outcome variables were PVT lapse count and average response time (RT). Simple correlations and multiple linear regression were used to examine the association between PVT performance and age, body mass index, sleep variables, apnea hypopnea index, oxygen desaturation index, and CES-D. Both the PVT lapse count and RT were significantly associated with the SF-36 physical component summary score (PCS). In multiple linear regression, PVT RT was an independent predictor of the SF-36 PCS (full model R(2) = 0.331, p = 0.003). PVT lapse was also an independent predictor of the SF-36 PCS (full model R(2) = 0.320, p = 0.004). However, neither PVT RT nor lapse was a significant independent predictor of the SF-36 mental component summary score (MCS). Only CES-D was an individual predictor of the SF-36 MCS (β = -0.676, p < 0.001). Impairments in sustained attention and vigilance may underlie the limitations in physical health-related quality of life reported by people with OSA, even after controlling for demographic variables, apnea severity, and depression.	\N	\N
21826029	Psychomotor vigilance testing (PVT) rapidly assesses attention, reaction time (RT), and abnormal vigilance. Thus, PVT may be an adjunct to screening drivers for high-risk obstructive sleep apnea (OSA)/excess daytime sleepiness (EDS). Commercial drivers and emergency responders undergoing occupational examinations took a 10-minute PVT and were instructed to achieve their fastest possible RTs. Participants with maximum RT >5 seconds or ≥ 2 "super lapses" (RT ≥ 1000 ms) were categorized as "microsleepers." Among 193 male participants, the 15 microsleepers (8%) were significantly more obese, but not different on age or Epworth Sleepiness Score. Time of day had no effect on RT. PVT is suitable to occupational clinics and can identify otherwise unrecognized, impaired vigilance. Further studies must validate the PVT abnormalities most predictive of OSA/EDS and vehicular crashes, compared to adiposity measures alone.	\N	\N
22035386	Transcutaneous neurostimulation (TNS) at extracephalic sites is a well known treatment of pain. Thanks to recent technical progress, the Cefaly® device now also allows supraorbital TNS. During observational clinical studies, several patients reported decreased vigilance or even sleepiness during a session of supraorbital TNS. We decided therefore to explore in more detail the potential sedative effect of supraorbital TNS, using standardized psychophysical tests in healthy volunteers. We performed a double-blind cross-over sham-controlled study on 30 healthy subjects. They underwent a series of 4 vigilance tests (Psychomotor Vigilance Task, Critical Flicker Fusion Frequency, Fatigue Visual Numeric Scale, d2 test). Each subject was tested under 4 different experimental conditions: without the neurostimulation device, with sham supraorbital TNS, with low frequency supraorbital TNS and with high frequency supraorbital TNS. As judged by the results of three tests (Psychomotor Vigilance Task, Critical Flicker Fusion Frequency, Fatigue Visual Numeric Scale) there was a statistically significant (p < 0.001) decrease in vigilance and attention during high frequency TNS, while there were no changes during the other experimental conditions. Similarly, performance on the d2 test was impaired during high frequency TNS, but this change was not statistically significant. Supraorbital high frequency TNS applied with the Cefaly® device decreases vigilance in healthy volunteers. Additional studies are needed to determine the duration of this effect, the underlying mechanisms and the possible relation with the stimulation parameters. Meanwhile, this effect opens interesting perspectives for the treatment of hyperarousal states and, possibly, insomnia.	\N	\N
22215925	To test the hypothesis that total sleep deprivation (TSD) slows stimulus detection and evaluation processes. Towards that end we manipulate degradation of the imperative stimulus, a manipulation well established to affect the processes of interest, in a delayed letter recognition (DLR) task and the psychomotor vigilance task (PVT), and predicted that after TSD the ordinary reaction time (RT) slowing effect of stimulus degradation would be increased. These hypotheses were only partially confirmed (see below). Participants were exposed to 48 h of total sleep loss. The PVT and DLR were administered to the same participants. The PVT was administered 8 times -every 6 h from 12:00 on Day 1. The DLR was administered twice, at 09:00 of Day 1 and 48 h later. Participants were continuously monitored in a sleep laboratory. 26 healthy young adults enrolled. Due to dropouts and technical failures, the final n's were 20 for the DLR and 21 for the PVT. General linear mixed models were employed. In the DLR task there was no interaction between TSD and degradation on any variable. There was, however, a significant interaction between TSD and degradation on mean reaction time in the PVT (P = 0.01). As in our previous reports, we observe the specificity with which total sleep deprivation affects cognitive processes. One aspect of visual processing, stimulus detection, was affected by total sleep deprivation and made a significant contribution to the performance impairments observed. Another aspect of visual processing, stimulus evaluation, remained unaffected after 2 days and nights of total sleep loss.	\N	\N
22239924	Individual differences in vulnerability to neurobehavioral performance impairment during sleep deprivation are considerable and represent a neurobiological trait. Genetic polymorphisms reported to be predictors have suggested the involvement of the homeostatic and circadian processes of sleep regulation in determining this trait. We applied mathematical and statistical modeling of these two processes to psychomotor vigilance performance and sleep physiological data from a laboratory study of repeated exposure to 36 h of total sleep deprivation in 9 healthy young adults. This served to quantify the respective contributions of individual differences in the two processes to the magnitudes of participants' individual vulnerabilities to sleep deprivation. For the homeostatic process, the standard deviation for individual differences was found to be about 60% as expressed relative to its group-average contribution to neurobehavioral performance impairment. The same was found for the circadian process. Across the span of the total sleep deprivation period, the group-average effect of the homeostatic process was twice as big as that of the circadian process. In absolute terms, therefore, the impact of the individual differences in the homeostatic process was twice as large as the impact of the individual differences in the circadian process in this study. These modeling results indicated that individualized applications of mathematical models predicting performance on the basis of a homeostatic and a circadian process should account for individual differences in both processes.	\N	\N
22294809	The Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT) is a widely used assay of behavioral alertness sensitive to the effects of sleep loss and circadian misalignment. The standard 10-minute duration of the PVT is often considered impractical for operational or clinical environments. Therefore, we developed and validated an adaptive-duration version of the PVT (PVT-A) that stops sampling once it has gathered enough information to correctly classify PVT performance. Repeated-measures experiments involving 10-minute PVT assessments every 2 hours across both acute total sleep deprivation (TSD) and 5 days of chronic partial sleep deprivation (PSD). Controlled laboratory environment. Seventy-four healthy subjects (34 women), aged 22 to 45 years. A TSD experiment involving 33 hours awake (n = 31 subjects), and a PSD experiment involving 5 nights of 4 hours time in bed (n = 43 subjects). The PVT-A algorithm was trained with 527 TSD test bouts and validated with 880 PSD test bouts. Based on our primary outcome measure "number of lapses (response times ≥ 500 ms) plus false starts (premature responses or response times < 100 ms)," 10-minute PVT performance was classified into high (≤ 5 lapses and false starts), medium (> 5 and ≤ 16 lapses and false starts), or low (> 16 lapses and false starts). The decision threshold for PVT-A termination was set so that at least 95% of training data-set tests were classified correctly and no test was classified incorrectly across 2 performance categories (i.e., high as low or low as high), resulting in an average test duration of 6.0 minutes (SD 2.4 min). In the validation data set, 95.7% of test bouts were correctly classified, and there were no incorrect classifications across 2 categories. Agreement corrected for chance was excellent (κ = 0.92). Across the 3 performance categories, sensitivity averaged 93.7% (range 87.2%-100%), and specificity averaged 96.8% (range 91.6%-99.9%). Test duration averaged 6.4 minutes (SD 1.7 min), with a minimum of 27 seconds. We developed and validated a highly accurate, sensitive, and specific adaptive-duration version of the 10-minute PVT. Test duration of the adaptive PVT averaged less than 6.5 minutes, with 60 tests (4.3%) terminating after less than 2 minutes, increasing the practicability of the test in operational and clinical settings. The adaptive-duration strategy may be superior to a simple reduction of PVT duration in which the fixed test duration may be too short to identify subjects with moderate impairment (showing deficits only later during the test) but unnecessarily long for those who are either fully alert or severely impaired.	\N	\N
22470524	A growing literature supports a role for sleep after training in long-term memory consolidation and enhancement. Consequently, interrupted sleep should result in cognitive deficits. Recent evidence from an animal study indeed showed that optimal memory consolidation during sleep requires a certain amount of uninterrupted sleep. Sleep continuity is disrupted in various medical disorders. We compared performance on a motor sequence learning task (MST) in relatively young subjects with obstructive sleep apnea (n = 16; apnea-hypopnea index 17.1±2.6/h [SEM]) to a carefully matched control group (n = 15, apnea-hypopnea index 3.7±0.4/h, p<0.001. Apart from AHI, oxygen nadir and arousal index, there were no significant differences between groups in total sleep time, sleep efficiency and sleep architecture as well as subjective measures of sleepiness based on standard questionnaires. In addition performance on the psychomotor vigilance task (reaction time and lapses), which is highly sensitive to sleep deprivation showed no differences as well as initial learning performance during the training phase. However there was a significant difference in the primary outcome of immediate overnight improvement on the MST between the two groups (controls = 14.7±4%, patients = 1.1±3.6%; P = 0.023) as well as plateau performance (controls = 24.0±5.3%, patients = 10.1±2.0%; P = 0.017) and this difference was predicted by the arousal index (p = 0.02) rather than oxygen saturation (nadir and time below 90% saturation. Taken together, this outcome provides evidence that there is a clear minimum requirement of sleep continuity in humans to ensure optimal sleep dependent memory processes. It also provides important new information about the cognitive impact of obstructive sleep apnea and challenges its current definitions.	\N	\N
22959616	There is currently no "gold standard" marker of cognitive performance impairment resulting from sleep loss. We utilized pattern recognition algorithms to determine which features of data collected under controlled laboratory conditions could most reliably identify cognitive performance impairment in response to sleep loss using data from only one testing session, such as would occur in the "real world" or field conditions. A training set for testing the pattern recognition algorithms was developed using objective Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT) and subjective Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) data collected from laboratory studies during which subjects were sleep deprived for 26-52h. The algorithm was then tested in data from both laboratory and field experiments. The pattern recognition algorithm was able to identify performance impairment with a single testing session in individuals studied under laboratory conditions using PVT, KSS, length of time awake and time of day information with sensitivity and specificity as high as 82%. When this algorithm was tested on data collected under real-world conditions from individuals whose data were not in the training set, accuracy of predictions for individuals categorized with low performance impairment were as high as 98%. Predictions for medium and severe performance impairment were less accurate. We conclude that pattern recognition algorithms may be a promising method for identifying performance impairment in individuals using only current information about the individual's behavior. Single testing features (e.g., number of PVT lapses) with high correlation with performance impairment in the laboratory setting may not be the best indicators of performance impairment under real-world conditions. Pattern recognition algorithms should be further tested for their ability to be used in conjunction with other assessments of sleepiness in real-world conditions to quantify performance impairment in response to sleep loss.	\N	\N
23941878	One workweek of mild sleep restriction adversely impacts sleepiness, performance, and proinflammatory cytokines. Many individuals try to overcome these adverse effects by extending their sleep on weekends. To assess whether extended recovery sleep reverses the effects of mild sleep restriction on sleepiness/alertness, inflammation, and stress hormones, 30 healthy young men and women (mean age ± SD, 24.7 ± 3.5 yr; mean body mass index ± SD, 23.6 ± 2.4 kg/m(2)) participated in a sleep laboratory experiment of 13 nights [4 baseline nights (8 h/night), followed by 6 sleep restriction nights (6 h/night) and 3 recovery nights (10 h/night)]. Twenty-four-hour profiles of circulating IL-6 and cortisol, objective and subjective daytime sleepiness (Multiple Sleep Latency Test and Stanford Sleepiness Scale), and performance (Psychomotor Vigilance Task) were assessed on days 4 (baseline), 10 (after 1 wk of sleep restriction), and 13 (after 2 nights of recovery sleep). Serial 24-h IL-6 plasma levels increased significantly during sleep restriction and returned to baseline after recovery sleep. Serial 24-h cortisol levels during restriction did not change compared with baseline, but after recovery they were significantly lower. Subjective and objective sleepiness increased significantly after restriction and returned to baseline after recovery. In contrast, performance deteriorated significantly after restriction and did not improve after recovery. Extended recovery sleep over the weekend reverses the impact of one work week of mild sleep restriction on daytime sleepiness, fatigue, and IL-6 levels, reduces cortisol levels, but does not correct performance deficits. The long-term effects of a repeated sleep restriction/sleep recovery weekly cycle in humans remain unknown.	\N	\N
25142762	The Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT) is one of the leading assays of sustained vigilant attention in sleep research and highly sensitive to the effects of sleep loss. Even though PVT is widely used in sleep deprivation studies, little is known about PVT performance in patients suffering from sleep-wake disorders. We aimed to quantify the impact of sleep-wake disorders on PVT outcome measures and examine whether PVT can distinguish between healthy controls and patients with sleep-wake disorders and whether PVT can distinguish between three different disorders that express excessive daytime sleepiness. We compared PVT data of 143 patients and 67 age- and gender-matched healthy controls. Patients were diagnosed with one of the following sleep-wake disorders: narcolepsy with cataplexy (n = 20), insufficient sleep syndrome (ISS, n = 67) and hypersomnia (HS, n = 56). Several PVT outcomes were analyzed: reciprocal mean reaction time, response variability, number of lapses, number of false reaction time, slowest and fastest 10% of reaction time, and duration of lapses. PVT performance was generally better in healthy controls than in patients with any of the sleep-wake disorders analyzed. Patients with narcolepsy and HS performed worse on PVT than subjects with ISS. In controls, but not in patients, older subjects had slower reactions times and higher response variability in PVT. PVT performance shows different patterns in patients with different sleep-wake disorders and control subjects and may add useful information to the diagnostic work-up of sleep-wake disorders.	\N	\N
22664396	Individuals with elevated anxiety sensitivity (AS; i.e., fear of somatic arousal) may binge eat to reduce emotional distress. Because physical activity reduces stress reactivity, we predicted that: (1) the relation between AS and binge eating would be moderated by physical activity and (2) coping motives for eating would mediate the association between AS and binge eating such that the relation would be stronger for those low in physical activity. Participants (N=167) completed online self-report measures. Regression analyses revealed that moderate-intensity physical activity (MPA) moderated the relation between AS and binge eating such that AS was not related to binge eating among those who frequently engaged in MPA but was related to binge eating among those who did not report engaging in MPA. Vigorous-intensity physical activity (VPA) moderated in the opposite direction such that the relation between AS and binge eating was significant among persons reporting high levels of VPA but less strong among persons reporting low levels of VPA. The mediation model was also significant, but was not moderated by MPA or VPA. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.	\N	\N
20410871	Controversy exists regarding the role of cerebellar systems in cognition and whether working memory compromise commonly marking alcoholism can be explained by compromise of nodes of corticocerebellar circuitry. We tested 17 alcoholics and 31 age-matched controls with dual-task, working memory paradigms. Interference tasks competed with verbal and spatial working memory tasks using low (three item) or high (six item) memory loads. Participants also underwent structural MRI to obtain volumes of nodes of the frontocerebellar system. On the verbal working memory task, both groups performed equally. On the spatial working memory with the high-load task, the alcoholic group was disproportionately more affected by the arithmetic distractor than were controls. In alcoholics, volumes of the left thalamus and left cerebellar Crus I volumes were more robust predictors of performance in the spatial working memory task with the arithmetic distractor than the left frontal superior cortex. In controls, volumes of the right middle frontal gyrus and right cerebellar Crus I were independent predictors over the left cerebellar Crus I, left thalamus, right superior parietal cortex, or left middle frontal gyrus of spatial working memory performance with tracking interference. The brain-behavior correlations suggest that alcoholics and controls relied on the integrity of certain nodes of corticocerebellar systems to perform these verbal and spatial working memory tasks, but that the specific pattern of relationships differed by group. The resulting brain structure-function patterns provide correlational support that components of this corticocerebellar system not typically related to normal performance in dual-task conditions may be available to augment otherwise dampened performance by alcoholics.	\N	\N
20532489	We examined how proprioceptive contributions to perception of hand path straightness are influenced by visual, motor and attentional sources of performance variability during horizontal planar reaching. Subjects held the handle of a robot that constrained goal-directed movements of the hand to the paths of controlled curvature. Subjects attempted to detect the presence of hand path curvature during both active (subject driven) and passive (robot driven) movements that either required active muscle force production or not. Subjects were less able to discriminate curved from straight paths when actively reaching for a target versus when the robot moved their hand through the same curved paths. This effect was especially evident during robot-driven movements requiring concurrent activation of lengthening but not shortening muscles. Subjects were less likely to report curvature and were more variable in reporting when movements appeared straight in a novel "visual channel" condition previously shown to block adaptive updating of motor commands in response to deviations from a straight-line hand path. Similarly, compromised performance was obtained when subjects simultaneously performed a distracting secondary task (key pressing with the contralateral hand). The effects compounded when these last two treatments were combined. It is concluded that environmental, intrinsic and attentional factors all impact the ability to detect deviations from a rectilinear hand path during goal-directed movement by decreasing proprioceptive contributions to limb state estimation. In contrast, response variability increased only in experimental conditions thought to impose additional attentional demands on the observer. Implications of these results for perception and other sensorimotor behaviors are discussed.	\N	\N
21278907	Studies investigating the effect of emotional expression on spatial orienting to a gazed-at location have produced mixed results. The present study investigated the role of affective context in the integration of emotion processing and gaze-triggered orienting. In three experiments, a face gazed nonpredictively to the left or right, and then its expression became fearful or happy. Participants identified (Experiments 1 and 2) or detected (Experiment 3) a peripheral target presented 225 or 525 ms after the gaze cue onset. In Experiments 1 and 3 the targets were either threatening (a snarling dog) or nonthreatening (a smiling baby); in Experiment 2 the targets were neutral. With emotionally-valenced targets, the gaze-cuing effect was larger when the face was fearful compared to happy--but only with the longer cue-target interval. With neutral targets, there was no interaction between gaze and expression. Our results indicate that a meaningful context optimizes attentional integration of gaze and expression information.	\N	\N
22004270	A combined experimental, individual-differences, and thought-sampling study tested the predictions of executive attention (e.g., Engle & Kane, 2004) and coordinative binding (e.g., Oberauer, Süβ, Wilhelm, & Sander, 2007) theories of working memory capacity (WMC). We assessed 288 subjects' WMC and their performance and mind-wandering rates during a sustained-attention task; subjects completed either a go/no-go version requiring executive control over habit or a vigilance version that did not. We further combined the data with those from McVay and Kane (2009) to (1) gauge the contributions of WMC and attentional lapses to the worst performance rule and the tail, or τ parameter, of reaction time (RT) distributions; (2) assess which parameters from a quantitative evidence-accumulation RT model were predicted by WMC and mind-wandering reports; and (3) consider intrasubject RT patterns--particularly, speeding--as potential objective markers of mind wandering. We found that WMC predicted action and thought control in only some conditions, that attentional lapses (indicated by task-unrelated-thought reports and drift-rate variability in evidence accumulation) contributed to τ, performance accuracy, and WMC's association with them and that mind-wandering experiences were not predicted by trial-to-trial RT changes, and so they cannot always be inferred from objective performance measures.	\N	\N
22048839	Treatments of female sexual dysfunction have been largely unsuccessful because they do not address the psychological factors that underlie female sexuality. Negative self-evaluative processes interfere with the ability to attend and register physiological changes (interoceptive awareness). This study explores the effect of mindfulness meditation training on interoceptive awareness and the three categories of known barriers to healthy sexual functioning: attention, self-judgment, and clinical symptoms. Forty-four college students (30 women) participated in either a 12-week course containing a "meditation laboratory" or an active control course with similar content or laboratory format. Interoceptive awareness was measured by reaction time in rating physiological response to sexual stimuli. Psychological barriers were assessed with self-reported measures of mindfulness and psychological well-being. Women who participated in the meditation training became significantly faster at registering their physiological responses (interoceptive awareness) to sexual stimuli compared with active controls (F(1,28) = 5.45, p = .03, η(p)(2) = 0.15). Female meditators also improved their scores on attention (t = 4.42, df = 11, p = .001), self-judgment, (t = 3.1, df = 11, p = .01), and symptoms of anxiety (t = -3.17, df = 11, p = .009) and depression (t = -2.13, df = 11, p < .05). Improvements in interoceptive awareness were correlated with improvements in the psychological barriers to healthy sexual functioning (r = -0.44 for attention, r = -0.42 for self-judgment, and r = 0.49 for anxiety; all p < .05). Mindfulness-based improvements in interoceptive awareness highlight the potential of mindfulness training as a treatment of female sexual dysfunction.	\N	\N
22146934	Imitation is an early skill thought to play a role in social development, leading some to suggest that teaching imitation to children with autism should lead to improvements in social functioning. This study used a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the effect of a focused imitation intervention on initiation of joint attention and social-emotional functioning in 27 young children with autism. Results indicated the treatment group made significantly more gains in joint attention initiations at post-treatment and follow-up and social-emotional functioning at follow-up than the control group. Although gains in social functioning were associated with treatment, a mediation analysis did not support imitation as the mechanism of action. These findings suggest the intervention improves social functioning in children with ASD.	\N	\N
22169884	Methylphenidate inhibits the reuptake of dopamine and noradrenaline and is used to treat children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Besides reducing behavioral symptoms, it improves their cognitive function. There are also observations of methylphenidate-induced cognition enhancement in healthy adults, although studies in this area are relatively sparse. We assessed the possible memory-enhancing properties of methylphenidate. In the current study, the possible enhancing effects of three doses of methylphenidate on declarative and working memory, attention, response inhibition and planning were investigated in healthy volunteers. In a double blind placebo-controlled crossover study, 19 healthy young male volunteers were tested after a single dose of placebo or 10, 20 or 40 mg of methylphenidate. Cognitive performance testing included a word learning test as a measure of declarative memory, a spatial working memory test, a set-shifting test, a stop signal test and a computerized version of the Tower of London planning test. Declarative memory consolidation was significantly improved relative to placebo after 20 and 40 mg of methylphenidate. Methylphenidate also improved set shifting and stopped signal task performance but did not affect spatial working memory or planning. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study reporting enhanced declarative memory consolidation after methylphenidate in a dose-related fashion over a dose range that is presumed to reflect a wide range of dopamine reuptake inhibition.	\N	\N
22233352	Several recent studies have supported relations between infant behaviour (alertness and responsiveness) and nutrition in addition to investigating infant behaviour within the context of changes in iron status over time. Existing research is typically limited to the investigation of the effects of a single vitamin or mineral, and no studies have been found that examined the influence that early alertness and responsiveness have on growth in early infancy, despite the fact that relations between behaviour and nutritional status may be bidirectional. The current study used a sample of Ethiopian infants and investigated anthropometrics, haemoglobin, the frequency of alertness and the frequency of responsiveness at 6 and 9 months of age. Six-month weight-for-age predicted 9-month frequency of alertness, while 6-month haemoglobin predicted 9-month frequency of responsiveness. Compared with responsive infants, non-responsive infants at 6 months remained more non-responsive at 9 months, although weight-for-age for both groups converged at 9 months. Results support relations between nutrition and behaviour (alertness and responsiveness) and provide evidence of a potentially useful tool (the Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery) that was adapted to evaluate these relations in Ethiopia.	\N	\N
22378876	Thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH) increases activity and decreases food intake, body weight, and sleep, in part through hypothalamic actions. The mechanism of this action is unknown. Melanin-concentrating hormone (MCH) and hypocretin/orexin neurons in the lateral hypothalamus (LH) together with neuropeptide Y (NPY) and proopiomelanocortin (POMC) neurons in the arcuate nucleus play central roles in energy homeostasis. Here, we provide electrophysiological evidence from GFP-reporter transgenic mouse brain slices that shows TRH modulates the activity of MCH neurons. Using whole-cell current-clamp recording, we unexpectedly found that TRH and its agonist, montrelin, dose-dependently inhibited MCH neurons. Consistent with previous reports, TRH excited hypocretin/orexin neurons. No effect was observed on arcuate nucleus POMC or NPY neurons. The TRH inhibition of MCH neurons was eliminated by bicuculline and tetrodotoxin, suggesting that the effect was mediated indirectly through synaptic mechanisms. TRH increased spontaneous IPSC frequency without affecting amplitude and had no effect on miniature IPSCs or EPSCs. Immunocytochemistry revealed little interaction between TRH axons and MCH neurons, but showed TRH axons terminating on or near GABA neurons. TRH inhibition of MCH neurons was attenuated by Na(+)-Ca(2+) exchanger (NCX) inhibitors, TRPC channel blockers and the phospholipase C inhibitor U-73122. TRH excited LH GABA neurons, and this was also reduced by NCX inhibitors. Finally, TRH attenuated the excitation of MCH neurons by hypocretin. Together, our data suggest that TRH inhibits MCH neurons by increasing synaptic inhibition from local GABA neurons. Inhibition of MCH neurons may contribute to the TRH-mediated reduction in food intake and sleep.	\N	\N
22414937	Attentional biases have been proposed to contribute to symptom maintenance in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), although the neural correlates of these processes have not been well defined; this was the goal of the present study. We administered an attention bias task, the dot probe, to a sample of 37 (19 control, 18 PTSD+) traumatized African-American adults during fMRI. Compared to controls, PTSD+ participants demonstrated increased activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) in response to threat cue trials. In addition, attentional avoidance of threat corresponded with increased ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) activation in the PTSD group, a pattern that was not observed in controls. These data provide evidence to suggest that relative increases in dlPFC, dACC and vlPFC activation represent neural markers of attentional bias for threat in individuals with PTSD, reflecting selective disruptions in attentional control and emotion processing networks in this disorder.	\N	\N
22474609	Neuropsychological assessment has featured prominently over the past 30 years in the characterization of dementia associated with Alzheimer disease (AD). Clinical neuropsychological methods have identified the earliest, most definitive cognitive and behavioral symptoms of illness, contributing to the identification, staging, and tracking of disease. With increasing public awareness of dementia, disease detection has moved to earlier stages of illness, at a time when deficits are both behaviorally and pathologically selective. For reasons that are not well understood, early AD pathology frequently targets large-scale neuroanatomical networks for episodic memory before other networks that subserve language, attention, executive functions, and visuospatial abilities. This chapter reviews the pathognomonic neuropsychological features of AD dementia and how these differ from "normal," age-related cognitive decline and from other neurodegenerative diseases that cause dementia, including cortical Lewy body disease, frontotemporal lobar degeneration, and cerebrovascular disease.	\N	\N
22505867	Somnambulism (sleepwalking) is a disorder of arousal that falls under "parasomnia" group and is more common in children. These phenomena occur as primary sleep events or secondary to systemic disease or can be drug induced. Medications that can cause sleepwalking include neuroleptics, hypnotics, lithium, amitriptyline, and β-blockers. This report presents an unusual adverse effect of topiramate on sleep in a patient with migraine.	\N	\N
22686386	Latent profile analysis (LPA) has been used previously to classify neurobehavioral responses of infants prenatally exposed to cocaine and other drugs of abuse. The objective of this study was to define NICU Network Neurobehavioral Scale (NNNS) profile response patterns in a cohort of infants with no known cocaine exposure or other risks for neurobehavior deficits, and determine whether these profiles predict neurobehavioral outcomes in these low-risk infants. NNNS exams were performed on 355 low-risk infants at approximately 5 weeks after birth. LPA was used to define discrete profiles based on the standard NNNS summary scales. Associations between the infant profiles and neurobehavioral outcomes at one to three years of age were examined. Twelve of the 13 summary scales were used and three discrete NNNS profiles identified: social/easy going infants (44%), hypotonic infants (24%), and high arousal/difficult infants (32%). Statistically significant associations between NNNS profiles and later neurobehavioral outcomes were found for psychomotor development and externalizing behaviors. Hypotonic infants had both lower psychomotor development and lower externalizing scores compared to the other two profiles. Three distinct profiles of the NNNS summary scores were identifiable using LPA among infants with no known cocaine exposure. These profile patterns were associated with early childhood neurobehavioral outcome, similar to findings reported in a study of infants with substantial cocaine exposure, demonstrating the utility of this profiling technique in both exposed and unexposed populations.	\N	\N
22715197	When we look at real-world scenes, attention seems disproportionately attracted by texts that are embedded in these scenes, for instance, on signs or billboards. The present study was aimed at verifying the existence of this bias and investigating its underlying factors. For this purpose, data from a previous experiment were reanalyzed and four new experiments measuring eye movements during the viewing of real-world scenes were conducted. By pairing text objects with matching control objects and regions, the following main results were obtained: (a) Greater fixation probability and shorter minimum fixation distance of texts confirmed the higher attractiveness of texts; (b) the locations where texts are typically placed contribute partially to this effect; (c) specific visual features of texts, rather than typically salient features (e.g., color, orientation, and contrast), are the main attractors of attention; (d) the meaningfulness of texts does not add to their attentional capture; and (e) the attraction of attention depends to some extent on the observer's familiarity with the writing system and language of a given text.	\N	\N
22805501	Impulsivity, conceptualized as impairment in planning and poor attentional and inhibitory control, is a key feature of bipolar disorder. Familial risk for bipolar disorder is known to affect inhibitory control but its impact on the attentional and planning dimensions of impulsivity is still unclear. We administered the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale, version 11 (BIS-11) to 54 euthymic individuals with DSM-IV bipolar I disorder, 57 of their clinically unaffected siblings, and 49 healthy comparison subjects. Groups were compared on the attentional (rapid shifts in attention/impatience with complexity), motor (acting impetuously), and non-planning (absence of weighing upon long-term consequences of actions) subscales of the BIS-11, and on total BIS-11 score. To investigate functional implications of trait impulsivity, total BIS-11 score was examined in relation to current psychosocial functioning and criminal history. Individuals with bipolar I disorder had elevated scores compared to healthy comparison subjects on BIS-11 total score and all three subscales (p < 0.0001). Unaffected siblings had elevated BIS-11 total score (p = 0.0037), motor (p = 0.0027), and non-planning (p = 0.0379) subscales in comparison to unrelated healthy controls. Total BIS-11 score was negatively associated with global assessment of functioning (GAF) score (β = -0.32, p < 0.0001). Our results suggest that impulsivity is sensitive to familial liability for the illness, making it a potential endophenotype for bipolar disorder.	\N	\N
22832959	Recent rodent research has shown that the basolateral amygdala (BLA) inhibits unconditioned, or innate, fear. It is, however, unknown whether the BLA acts in similar ways in humans. In a group of five subjects with a rare genetic syndrome, that is, Urbach-Wiethe disease (UWD), we used a combination of structural and functional neuroimaging, and established focal, bilateral BLA damage, while other amygdala sub-regions are functionally intact. We tested the translational hypothesis that these BLA-damaged UWD-subjects are hypervigilant to facial expressions of fear, which are prototypical innate threat cues in humans. Our data indeed repeatedly confirm fear hypervigilance in these UWD subjects. They show hypervigilant responses to unconsciously presented fearful faces in a modified Stroop task. They attend longer to the eyes of dynamically displayed fearful faces in an eye-tracked emotion recognition task, and in that task recognize facial fear significantly better than control subjects. These findings provide the first direct evidence in humans in support of an inhibitory function of the BLA on the brain's threat vigilance system, which has important implications for the understanding of the amygdala's role in the disorders of fear and anxiety.	\N	\N
22968207	Prior research provides evidence for aberrant cognition-emotion interactions in schizophrenia. In the current study, we aimed to extend these findings by administering the "distractor devaluation" task to 40 individuals with schizophrenia and 32 demographically matched healthy controls. The task consisted of a simple visual search task for neutral faces, followed by an evaluative response made for one of the search items (or a novel item) to determine whether prior attentional selection results in a devaluation of a previously unattended stimulus. We also manipulated working memory demands by preceding the search array with a memory array that required subjects to hold 0, 1, or 2 items in working memory while performing the search array and devaluation task, to determine whether the normative process by which attentional states influence evaluative response is limited by working memory capacity. Results indicated that individuals with schizophrenia demonstrated the typical distractor devaluation effect at working memory load 0, suggesting intact evaluative response. However, the devaluation effect was absent at working memory loads of 1 and 2, suggesting that normal evaluative responses can be abolished in people with schizophrenia when working memory capacity is exceeded. Thus, findings provide further evidence for normal evaluative response in schizophrenia, but clarify that these normal experiences may not hold when working memory demands are too high.	\N	\N
23190433	The question whether Developmental Dyscalculia (DD; a deficit in the ability to process numerical information) is the result of deficiencies in the non symbolic numerical representation system (e.g., a group of dots) or in the symbolic numerical representation system (e.g., Arabic numerals) has been debated in scientific literature. It is accepted that the non symbolic system is divided into two different ranges, the subitizing range (i.e., quantities from 1-4) which is processed automatically and quickly, and the counting range (i.e., quantities larger than 4) which is an attention demanding procedure and is therefore processed serially and slowly. However, so far no study has tested the automaticity of symbolic and non symbolic representation in DD participants separately for the subitizing and the counting ranges. DD and control participants undergo a novel version of the Stroop task, i.e., the Enumeration Stroop. They were presented with a random series of between one and nine written digits, and were asked to name either the relevant written digit (in the symbolic task) or the relevant quantity of digits (in the non symbolic task) while ignoring the irrelevant aspect. DD participants, unlike the control group, didn't show any congruency effect in the subitizing range of the non symbolic task. These findings suggest that DD may be impaired in the ability to process symbolic numerical information or in the ability to automatically associate the two systems (i.e., the symbolic vs. the non symbolic). Additionally DD have deficiencies in the non symbolic counting range.	\N	\N
23299717	Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder with a long-term impact on functioning, productivity and quality of life of patients. This impact is largely due to the symptoms of inattentiveness. However, despite its impairing role in the lives of ADHD patients, inattentiveness has been studied relatively less frequently than have symptoms of impulsivity/hyperactivity and problems with executive function. This review therefore seeks to integrate the neuropsychological theories and current findings in the research fields of neuropsychology, neurophysiology, and neuroimaging, in an attempt to gain a more complete understanding of the role that inattentiveness plays in ADHD, as well as to suggest directions for future studies. The need for a more comprehensive understanding of inattentiveness and ADHD, which integrates findings from each of the three disciplines mentioned above, is emphasized.	\N	\N
23504052	The objective of the presented study was to develop and evaluate a P300 experimental protocol for simultaneous registration of event-related potentials (ERPs) and functional MRI (fMRI) data with continuous imaging. It may be useful for investigating attention and working memory processes in specific populations, such as children and neuropsychiatric patients. Eleven children were investigated with simultaneous ERP-fMRI. To fulfill requirements of both BOLD and electroencephalographic signal registration, a modified oddball task was used. To verify the ERP-fMRI protocol we also performed a study outside the scanner using a typical two-stimuli oddball paradigm. Localization of the P300 component of ERPs partially corresponded with fMRI results in the frontal and parietal brain regions. FMRI activations were found in: middle frontal gyrus, insula, SMA, parietal lobule, thalamus, and cerebellum. Our modified oddball task provided ERP-fMRI results with high level of significance (EEG SNR=35, fMRI p<0.05-Bonf.). ERPs obtained in the scanner were comparable with those registered outside the scanner, although some differences in the amplitude were noticed, mainly in the N100 component. In our opinion the presented paradigm may be successfully applied for simultaneous ERP-fMRI registration of neural correlates of attention in vulnerable populations.	\N	\N
23555220	Neuronal activity differs between wakefulness and sleep states. In contrast, an attractor state, called self-organized critical (SOC), was proposed to govern brain dynamics because it allows for optimal information coding. But is the human brain SOC for each vigilance state despite the variations in neuronal dynamics? We characterized neuronal avalanches--spatiotemporal waves of enhanced activity--from dense intracranial depth recordings in humans. We showed that avalanche distributions closely follow a power law--the hallmark feature of SOC--for each vigilance state. However, avalanches clearly differ with vigilance states: slow wave sleep (SWS) shows large avalanches, wakefulness intermediate, and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep small ones. Our SOC model, together with the data, suggested first that the differences are mediated by global but tiny changes in synaptic strength, and second, that the changes with vigilance states reflect small deviations from criticality to the subcritical regime, implying that the human brain does not operate at criticality proper but close to SOC. Independent of criticality, the analysis confirms that SWS shows increased correlations between cortical areas, and reveals that REM sleep shows more fragmented cortical dynamics.	\N	\N
23770566	Attention is commonly thought to be manifest through local variations in neural gain. However, what would be the effects of brain-wide changes in gain? We hypothesized that global fluctuations in gain modulate the breadth of attention and the degree to which processing is focused on aspects of the environment to which one is predisposed to attend. We found that measures of pupil diameter, which are thought to track levels of locus coeruleus norepinephrine activity and neural gain, were correlated with the degree to which learning was focused on stimulus dimensions that individual human participants were more predisposed to process. In support of our interpretation of this effect in terms of global changes in gain, we found that the measured pupillary and behavioral variables were strongly correlated with global changes in the strength and clustering of functional connectivity, as brain-wide fluctuations of gain would predict.	\N	\N
23934417	Computerized attention modification is a relatively new and empirically validated treatment approach for different types of anxiety disorders. However, its neural basis and processes involved are poorly understood. This study examined the effect of a one-time application of an attention modification program (AMP) on neural substrates underlying emotion processing in individuals with high social anxiety. Fourteen individuals with elevated social anxiety symptoms completed an emotional face processing task during functional magnetic resonance imaging before and after AMP, and were subsequently exposed to a laboratory stressor. Results revealed the following: First, there was attenuated activation from pre- to post-AMP in the bilateral amygdala, bilateral insula and subgenual anterior cingulate cortex. Second, post-AMP, individuals exhibited increased activation in several regions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). Third, those individuals with greater enhancement of ventromedial PFC activation after AMP showed diminished attentional allocation for threat and attenuated anxiety reactivity to the stressor. We conclude that AMP exerts effects that are similar to those previously reported for standard anxiolytics; however, it also appears to foster deployment of top-down brain processes aimed to regulate anxiety.	\N	\N
24126129	Intelligent animals devote much time and energy to exploring and obtaining information, but the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. We review recent developments on this topic that have emerged from the traditionally separate fields of machine learning, eye movements in natural behavior, and studies of curiosity in psychology and neuroscience. These studies show that exploration may be guided by a family of mechanisms that range from automatic biases toward novelty or surprise to systematic searches for learning progress and information gain in curiosity-driven behavior. In addition, eye movements reflect visual information searching in multiple conditions and are amenable for cellular-level investigations. This suggests that the oculomotor system is an excellent model system for understanding information-sampling mechanisms.	\N	\N
24466064	Vestibular signals are strongly integrated with information from several other sensory modalities. For example, vestibular stimulation was reported to improve tactile detection. However, this improvement could reflect either a multimodal interaction or an indirect interaction driven by vestibular effects on spatial attention and orienting. Here we investigate whether natural vestibular activation induced by passive whole-body rotation influences tactile detection. In particular, we assessed the ability to detect faint tactile stimuli to the fingertips of the left and right hand during spatially congruent or incongruent rotations. We found that passive whole-body rotations significantly enhanced sensitivity to faint shocks, without affecting response bias. Critically, this enhancement of somatosensory sensitivity did not depend on the spatial congruency between the direction of rotation and the hand stimulated. Thus, our results support a multimodal interaction, likely in brain areas receiving both vestibular and somatosensory signals.	\N	\N
24512610	Implicit learning about where a visual search target is likely to appear often speeds up search. However, whether implicit learning guides spatial attention or affects postsearch decisional processes remains controversial. Using eye tracking, this study provides compelling evidence that implicit learning guides attention. In a training phase, participants often found the target in a high-frequency, "rich" quadrant of the display. When subsequently tested in a phase during which the target was randomly located, participants were twice as likely to direct the first saccadic eye movement to the previously rich quadrant than to any of the sparse quadrants. The attentional bias persisted for nearly 200 trials after training and was unabated by explicit instructions to distribute attention evenly. We propose that implicit learning guides spatial attention but in a qualitatively different manner than goal-driven attention.	\N	\N
24651580	The orexinergic neurons of the lateral hypothalamus (Orx) are essential for regulating sleep-wake dynamics, and their loss causes narcolepsy, a disorder characterized by severe instability of sleep and wake states. However, the mechanisms through which Orx stabilize sleep and wake are not well understood. In this work, an explanation of the stabilizing effects of Orx is presented using a quantitative model of important physiological connections between Orx and the sleep-wake switch. In addition to Orx and the sleep-wake switch, which is composed of mutually inhibitory wake-active monoaminergic neurons in brainstem and hypothalamus (MA) and the sleep-active ventrolateral preoptic neurons of the hypothalamus (VLPO), the model also includes the circadian and homeostatic sleep drives. It is shown that Orx stabilizes prolonged waking episodes via its excitatory input to MA and by relaying a circadian input to MA, thus sustaining MA firing activity during the circadian day. During sleep, both Orx and MA are inhibited by the VLPO, and the subsequent reduction in Orx input to the MA indirectly stabilizes sustained sleep episodes. Simulating a loss of Orx, the model produces dynamics resembling narcolepsy, including frequent transitions between states, reduced waking arousal levels, and a normal daily amount of total sleep. The model predicts a change in sleep timing with differences in orexin levels, with higher orexin levels delaying the normal sleep episode, suggesting that individual differences in Orx signaling may contribute to chronotype. Dynamics resembling sleep inertia also emerge from the model as a gradual sleep-to-wake transition on a timescale that varies with that of Orx dynamics. The quantitative, physiologically based model developed in this work thus provides a new explanation of how Orx stabilizes prolonged episodes of sleep and wake, and makes a range of experimentally testable predictions, including a role for Orx in chronotype and sleep inertia.	\N	\N
24933663	The role of interhemispheric interactions in the encoding, retention, and retrieval of verbal memory can be clarified by assessing individuals with complete or partial agenesis of the corpus callosum (AgCC), but who have normal intelligence. This study assessed verbal learning and memory in AgCC using the California Verbal Learning Test-Second Edition (CVLT-II). Twenty-six individuals with AgCC were compared to 24 matched controls on CVLT-II measures, as well as Donders׳ four CVLT-II factors (i.e., Attention Span, Learning Efficiency, Delayed Memory, and Inaccurate Memory). Individuals with AgCC performed significantly below healthy controls on the Delayed Memory factor, confirmed by significant deficits in short and long delayed free recall and cued recall. They also performed less well in original learning. Deficient performance by individuals with AgCC during learning trials, as well as deficits in all forms of delayed memory, suggest that the corpus callosum facilitates interhemispheric elaboration and encoding of verbal information.	\N	\N
24964082	Predators are known to select food of the same type in non-random sequences or "runs" that are longer than would be expected by chance. If prey are conspicuous, predators will switch between available sources, interleaving runs of different prey types. However, when prey are cryptic, predators tend to focus on one food type at a time, effectively ignoring equally available sources. This latter finding is regarded as a key indicator that animal foraging is strongly constrained by attention. It is unknown whether human foraging is equally constrained. Here, using a novel iPad task, we demonstrate for the first time that it is. Participants were required to locate and touch 40 targets from 2 different categories embedded within a dense field of distractors. When individual target items "popped-out" search was organized into multiple runs, with frequent switching between target categories. In contrast, as soon as focused attention was required to identify individual targets, participants typically exhausted one entire category before beginning to search for the other. This commonality in animal and human foraging is compelling given the additional cognitive tools available to humans, and suggests that attention constrains search behavior in a similar way across a broad range of species.	\N	\N
25521352	In the current study we show that non-verbal food-evoked emotion scores significantly improve food choice prediction over merely liking scores. Previous research has shown that liking measures correlate with choice. However, liking is no strong predictor for food choice in real life environments. Therefore, the focus within recent studies shifted towards using emotion-profiling methods that successfully can discriminate between products that are equally liked. However, it is unclear how well scores from emotion-profiling methods predict actual food choice and/or consumption. To test this, we proposed to decompose emotion scores into valence and arousal scores using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and apply Multinomial Logit Models (MLM) to estimate food choice using liking, valence, and arousal as possible predictors. For this analysis, we used an existing data set comprised of liking and food-evoked emotions scores from 123 participants, who rated 7 unlabeled breakfast drinks. Liking scores were measured using a 100-mm visual analogue scale, while food-evoked emotions were measured using 2 existing emotion-profiling methods: a verbal and a non-verbal method (EsSense Profile and PrEmo, respectively). After 7 days, participants were asked to choose 1 breakfast drink from the experiment to consume during breakfast in a simulated restaurant environment. Cross validation showed that we were able to correctly predict individualized food choice (1 out of 7 products) for over 50% of the participants. This number increased to nearly 80% when looking at the top 2 candidates. Model comparisons showed that evoked emotions better predict food choice than perceived liking alone. However, the strongest predictive strength was achieved by the combination of evoked emotions and liking. Furthermore we showed that non-verbal food-evoked emotion scores more accurately predict food choice than verbal food-evoked emotions scores.	\N	\N
20450941	Spontaneous cortical arousals in non-REM sleep increase with age and contribute to sleep fragmentation in the elderly. EEG spectral power in the faster frequencies exhibits well-described shifts during arousals. On the other hand, EEG activities also exhibit correlations, which are interpreted as an index of interdependence between distant cortical neural activities. The possibility of changes to the interdependence between cortical regions due to an arousal has not been considered. In this work, using previously recorded C3A2 and C4A1 EEG signals from two groups of adults, middle-aged (42-50 years) and elderly (71-86 years) women, we examined the effects of spontaneous arousals in NREM sleep on cortical interdependence. We quantified the auto- and cross-correlations in these signals using mutual information and characterized these correlations in periods before the onset and following the end of arousals. The pre-arousal period exhibited significantly higher interdependence between central regions than that following the arousal in both age groups (middle-aged: p=0.004, elderly: p<0.0001). Also, for both EEG signals the auto mutual information had a faster rate of decay, implying lower signal predictability, following the arousal than prior to it (both age groups, p<0.0001). These results indicate that the state of the cortex is different after, compared to before, the arousal even when the spectral power changes characteristic of an arousal are no longer visible. The findings suggest that the state following an arousal characterized by lower interdependence may resemble a more vigilant period during which the system may be vulnerable to more arousals.	\N	\N
20525011	Relatively less right parietal activity may reflect reduced arousal and signify risk for major depressive disorder (MDD). Inconsistent findings with parietal electroencephalographic (EEG) asymmetry, however, suggest issues such as anxiety comorbidity and sex differences have yet to be resolved. Resting parietal EEG asymmetry was assessed in 306 individuals (31% male) with (n=143) and without (n=163) a DSM-IV diagnosis of lifetime MDD and no comorbid anxiety disorders. Past MDD+ women displayed relatively less right parietal activity than current MDD+ and MDD- women, replicating prior work. Recent caffeine intake, an index of arousal, moderated the relationship between depression and EEG asymmetry for women and men. Findings suggest that sex differences and arousal should be examined in studies of depression and regional brain activity.	\N	\N
20584721	To examine whether reappraisal modifies responses to subsequent encounters with stimuli, participants viewed neutral and unpleasant pictures that were preceded by negative or neutral descriptions which served as reappraisal frames. A half an hour later, the same pictures were presented, without preceding frames; EEG was recorded and participants rated each picture on arousal and valence. In line with previous work, unpleasant compared to neutral pictures elicited more positive early- (359 ms), mid- (1074 ms) and late-latency (2436 ms) centrally-distributed ERP components. Pictures previously preceded by negative compared to neutral reappraisal frames were rated as more unpleasant and more emotionally arousing; these pictures elicited a larger mid-latency (1074 ms) occipital positivity. Together, the data suggest that reappraisal exerts an enduring effect on both subjective and neural responses to stimuli.	\N	\N
20615239	It has been suggested that perceived mental effort reflects changes in arousal during tasks of attention. Such changes in arousal may be tonic or phasic, and may be mediated by the locus-coeruleus norepinephrine (LC-NE) system. We hypothesized that perceived mental effort during attentional tasks would correlate with tonic changes in cortical arousal, as assessed by relative electroencephalogram (EEG) band power and theta/beta ratio, and not with phasic changes in cortical arousal, assessed by P300 amplitude and latency. Forty-six healthy individuals completed tasks that engage the anterior and posterior attention networks (continuous performance task, go/no-go task, and cued target detection task). During completion of the three attentional tasks a continuous record of tonic and phasic arousal was taken. Cortical measures of arousal included frequency band power, theta/beta ratios over frontal and parietal cortices, and P300 amplitude and latency over parietal cortices. Peripheral measures of arousal included skin conductance responses, heart rate and heart rate variance. Participants reported their perceived mental effort during each of the three attentional tasks. First, changes in arousal were seen from rest to completion of the three attentional tasks and between the attentional tasks. Changes seen between the attentional tasks being related to the task design and the attentional network activated. Second, perceived mental effort increased when demands of the task increased and correlated with left parietal beta band power during the three tasks of attention. Third, increased mental effort during the go/no-go task and the cued target detection task was inversely related to theta/beta ratios. These results indicate that perceived mental effort reflects tonic rather than phasic changes in arousal during tasks of attention. We suggest that perceived mental effort may reflect in part tonic activity of the LC-NE system in healthy individuals.	\N	\N
20620104	Childhood arousals, awakenings, and sleep disturbances during the night are common problems for both patients and their families. Additionally, inadequate sleep may contribute to daytime sleepiness, behavioral problems, and other important consequences of pediatric sleep disorders. Arousals, awakenings, and sleep disturbances can be quantified by routine polysomnography, and arousal scoring is generally performed as part of the standard polysomnogram. Here, we review current approaches to quantification of arousals and sleep disturbances and examine outcomes that have been associated with these measures. Initial data suggest that computer-assisted identification of non-visible arousals, cyclic alternating patterns, or respiratory cycle-related EEG changes may complement what can be accomplished by human scorers. Focus on contiguous bouts of sleep or specific sleep stages may prove similarly useful. Incorporation of autonomic arousal measures-such as heart rate variability, pulse transit time, or peripheral arterial tone-into standard reports may additionally capture subtle sleep fragmentation.	\N	\N
20634711	Elderly subjects exhibit declining sleep efficiency parameters with longer time spent awake at night and greater sleep fragmentation. In this article, we report on the changes in cortical interdependence during sleep stages between 15 middle-aged (range: 42-50 years) and 15 elderly (range: 71-86 years) women subjects. Cortical interdependence assessed from EEG signals typically exhibits increasing levels of correlation because human subjects progress from wake to deeper stages of sleep. EEG signals acquired from previously existing polysomnogram datasets were subjected to mutual information analysis to detect changes in information transmission associated with change in sleep stage and to understand how age affects the interdependence values. We observed a significant reduction in the interdependence between central EEG signals of elderly subjects in nonrapid eye movement and rapid eye movement stage sleep in comparison with middle-aged subjects (age group effect: elderly versus middle aged P < 0.001, sleep stage effect: P < 0.001, interaction effect between age group and sleep stage: P = 0.007). A narrowband analysis revealed that the reduction in mutual information was present in delta, theta, and sigma frequencies. These findings suggest that the lowered cortical interdependence in sleep of elderly subjects may indicate independently evolving dynamic neural activities at multiple cortical sites. The loss of synchronization between neural activities during sleep in the elderly may make these women more susceptible to localized disturbances that could lead to frequent arousals.	\N	\N
20663220	Emotional stimuli are preferentially processed compared to neutral ones. Measuring the magnetic resonance blood-oxygen level dependent (BOLD) response or EEG event-related potentials, this has also been demonstrated for emotional versus neutral words. However, it is currently unclear whether emotion effects in word processing can also be detected with other measures such as EEG steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) or optical brain imaging techniques. In the present study, we simultaneously performed SSVEP measurements and near-infrared diffusing-wave spectroscopy (DWS), a new optical technique for the non-invasive measurement of brain function, to measure brain responses to neutral, pleasant, and unpleasant nouns flickering at a frequency of 7.5 Hz. The power of the SSVEP signal was significantly modulated by the words' emotional content at occipital electrodes, showing reduced SSVEP power during stimulation with pleasant compared to neutral nouns. By contrast, the DWS signal measured over the visual cortex showed significant differences between stimulation with flickering words and baseline periods, but no modulation in response to the words' emotional significance. This study is the first investigation of brain responses to emotional words using simultaneous measurements of SSVEPs and DWS. Emotional modulation of word processing was detected with EEG SSVEPs, but not by DWS. SSVEP power for emotional, specifically pleasant, compared to neutral words was reduced, which contrasts with previous results obtained when presenting emotional pictures. This appears to reflect processing differences between symbolic and pictorial emotional stimuli. While pictures prompt sustained perceptual processing, decoding the significance of emotional words requires more internal associative processing. Reasons for an absence of emotion effects in the DWS signal are discussed.	\N	\N
20842164	A better understanding of carbon dioxide (CO(2)) effect on brain activity may have a profound impact on clinical studies using CO(2) manipulation to assess cerebrovascular reserve and on the use of hypercapnia as a means to calibrate functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signal. This study investigates how an increase in blood CO(2), via inhalation of 5% CO(2), may alter brain activity in humans. Dynamic measurement of brain metabolism revealed that mild hypercapnia resulted in a suppression of cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen (CMRO(2)) by 13.4% ± 2.3% (N=14) and, furthermore, the CMRO(2) change was proportional to the subject's end-tidal CO(2) (Et-CO(2)) change. When using functional connectivity MRI (fcMRI) to assess the changes in resting-state neural activity, it was found that hypercapnia resulted in a reduction in all fcMRI indices assessed including cluster volume, cross-correlation coefficient, and amplitude of the fcMRI signal in the default-mode network (DMN). The extent of the reduction was more pronounced than similar indices obtained in visual-evoked fMRI, suggesting a selective suppression effect on resting-state neural activity. Scalp electroencephalogram (EEG) studies comparing hypercapnia with normocapnia conditions showed a relative increase in low frequency power in the EEG spectra, suggesting that the brain is entering a low arousal state on CO(2) inhalation.	\N	\N
20857862	To identify the extent of sleep disruption in children with various severities of sleep disordered breathing (SDB) using both conventional visually scored assessment of sleep stages and arousal indices together with EEG power spectral analysis. Sleep stages and power spectral analysis of the sleep EEG in children with varying severities of SDB with matched control subjects with no history of snoring were compared across the whole night, across sequential hours from sleep onset, and across sleep stages. Overnight polysomnography was performed on 90 children (49M/41F) aged 7-12 y with SDB and 30 age-matched healthy controls (13M/17F). Sleep stages were visually scored and the EEG spectra were analyzed in 5-s epochs. Conventional visual scoring indicated that, although sleep duration was reduced in severely affected children, sleep quality during the essential stages of SWS and REM was preserved, as evidenced by the lack of any significant decrease in their duration in SDB severity groups. This finding was supported by the lack of substantial differences in EEG spectral power between the groups over the whole night, within specific hours, and in individual sleep stages. Both conventional scoring and EEG spectral analysis indicated only minor disruptions to sleep quality in children with SDB when assessed across the night, in any specific hour of the night, or in any specific sleep stage. These results suggest that reduced daytime functioning previously reported in children with SDB may not be due to sleep disruption. We speculate that in children, in contrast to adults, a stronger sleep drive may preserve sleep quality even in severe SDB.	\N	\N
21077571	Studies of regional hemispheric asymmetries point to relatively less activity in left frontal and right posterior regions in depression. Anxiety was associated with increased right posterior activity, which may be related to arousal and, in anxious-depressed individuals, offset the posterior asymmetry typically seen in depression. These asymmetries have been indexed by resting EEG or inferred through the use of lateralized auditory and visual tasks (e.g., dichotic listening and chimeric faces). However, associations between regional EEG activity and neurocognitive function in depression or anxiety remain unclear. The present study used matched verbal (Word Finding) and spatial (Dot Localization) tasks to compare task-related alpha asymmetries in depressed patients grouped according to level of trait anxiety. EEG and behavioral performance were recorded from depressed patients with high anxiety (n = 14) or low anxiety (n = 14) and 21 age- and education-matched healthy adults during the two tasks, and alpha power was averaged within each task. As predicted, the two patient groups exhibited opposite patterns of regional hemispheric alpha asymmetry. Greater right than left central-parietal activation was seen in the high-anxiety depressed group during the spatial task, whereas greater left than right frontal-central activation was found in the low-anxiety depressed group during the verbal task. Group differences in task performance were in the expected direction but did not reach statistical significance. These results are consistent with Heller's two-dimensional model of depression and anxiety and highlight the sensitivity of task-related EEG alpha in discriminating among subgroups of depressed patients differing in trait anxiety.	\N	\N
21118712	Arousals are often considered to be events which have an abrupt onset and offset, indicating abrupt changes in the state of the cortex. We hypothesized that cortical state, as reflected in electroencephalograph (EEG) signals, exhibits progressive systematic changes before and after a spontaneous, isolated arousal and that the time courses of the spectral components of the EEG before and after an arousal would differ between healthy middle-aged and elderly subjects. We analyzed the power spectrum and Sample Entropy of the C3A2 EEG before and after isolated arousals from 20 middle-aged (47.2±2.0 years) and 20 elderly (78.4±3.8 years) women using polysomnograms from the Sleep Heart Health Study database. In middle-aged women, all EEG spectral band powers <16 Hz exhibited a significant increase relative to baseline at some time in the 21 s before an arousal, but only low- (0.2-2.0 Hz) and high-frequency (2.0-4.0 Hz) delta increased in elderly and only during the last 7 s pre-arousal. Post-arousal, all frequency bands below 12 Hz transiently fell below pre-arousal baseline in both age groups. Consistent with these findings, Sample Entropy decreased steadily before an arousal, increased markedly during the arousal, and remained above pre-arousal baseline levels for ∼30 s after the arousal. In middle-aged, but not in elderly, women the presence of early pre-arousal low delta power was associated with shorter arousals. We propose that this attenuation of the effect of the arousing stimulus may be related to the slow (<1 Hz) cortical state oscillation, and that prolonged alterations of cortical state due to arousals may contribute to the poor correlation between indices of arousals and indices of sleepiness or impaired cognitive function.	\N	\N
21120131	During sleep, sudden drops in pulse wave amplitude (PWA) measured by pulse oximetry are commonly associated with simultaneous arousals and are thought to result from autonomic vasoconstriction. In the present study, we determine whether PWA drops were associated with changes in cortical activity as determined by EEG spectral analysis. A 20% decrease in PWA was chosen as a minimum for a drop. A total of 1085 PWA drops from 10 consecutive sleep recordings were analyzed. EEG spectral analysis was performed over 5 consecutive epochs of 5 seconds: 2 before, 1 during, and 2 after the PWA drop. EEG spectral analysis was performed over delta, theta, alpha, sigma, and beta frequency bands. Within each frequency band, power density was compared across the five 5-sec epochs. Presence or absence of visually scored EEG arousals were adjudicated by an investigator blinded to the PWA signal and considered associated with PWA drop if concomitant. A significant increase in EEG power density in all EEG frequency bands was found during PWA drops (P<0.001) compared to before and after drop. Even in the absence of visually scored arousals, PWA drops were associated with a significant increase in EEG power density (P<0.001) in most frequency bands. Drops in PWA are associated with a significant increase in EEG power density, suggesting that these events can be used as a surrogate for changes in cortical activity during sleep. This approach may prove of value in scoring respiratory events on limited-channel (type III) portable monitors.	\N	\N
21179552	Neural synchronization is a mechanism whereby functionally specific brain regions establish transient networks for perception, cognition, and action. Direct addition of weak noise (fast random fluctuations) to various neural systems enhances synchronization through the mechanism of stochastic resonance (SR). Moreover, SR also occurs in human perception, cognition, and action. Perception, cognition, and action are closely correlated with, and may depend upon, synchronized oscillations within specialized brain networks. We tested the hypothesis that SR-mediated neural synchronization occurs within and between functionally relevant brain areas and thus could be responsible for behavioral SR. We measured the 40-Hz transient response of the human auditory cortex to brief pure tones. This response arises when the ongoing, random-phase, 40-Hz activity of a group of tuned neurons in the auditory cortex becomes synchronized in response to the onset of an above-threshold sound at its "preferred" frequency. We presented a stream of near-threshold standard sounds in various levels of added broadband noise and measured subjects' 40-Hz response to the standards in a deviant-detection paradigm using high-density EEG. We used independent component analysis and dipole fitting to locate neural sources of the 40-Hz response in bilateral auditory cortex, left posterior cingulate cortex and left superior frontal gyrus. We found that added noise enhanced the 40-Hz response in all these areas. Moreover, added noise also increased the synchronization between these regions in alpha and gamma frequency bands both during and after the 40-Hz response. Our results demonstrate neural SR in several functionally specific brain regions, including areas not traditionally thought to contribute to the auditory 40-Hz transient response. In addition, we demonstrated SR in the synchronization between these brain regions. Thus, both intra- and inter-regional synchronization of neural activity are facilitated by the addition of moderate amounts of random noise. Because the noise levels in the brain fluctuate with arousal system activity, particularly across sleep-wake cycles, optimal neural noise levels, and thus SR, could be involved in optimizing the formation of task-relevant brain networks at several scales under normal conditions.	\N	\N
21203376	To examine the impact of using American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) recommended EEG derivations (F4/M1, C4/M1, O2/M1) vs. a single derivation (C4/M1) in polysomnography (PSG) on the measurement of sleep and cortical arousals, including inter- and intra-observer variability. Prospective, non-blinded, randomized comparison. Three Australian tertiary-care hospital clinical sleep laboratories. 30 PSGs from consecutive patients investigated for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) during December 2007 and January 2008. N/A. To examine the impact of EEG derivations on PSG summary statistics, 3 scorers from different Australian clinical sleep laboratories each scored separate sets of 10 PSGs twice, once using 3 EEG derivations and once using 1 EEG derivation. To examine the impact on inter- and intra-scorer reliability, all 3 scorers scored a subset of 10 PSGs 4 times, twice using each method. All PSGs were de-identified and scored in random order according to the 2007 AASM Manual for the Scoring of Sleep and Associated Events. Using 3 referential EEG derivations during PSG, as recommended in the AASM manual, instead of a single central EEG derivation, as originally suggested by Rechtschaffen and Kales (1968), resulted in a mean ± SE decrease in N1 sleep of 9.6 ± 3.9 min (P = 0.018) and an increase in N3 sleep of 10.6 ± 2.8 min (P = 0.001). No significant differences were observed for any other sleep or arousal scoring summary statistics; nor were any differences observed in inter-scorer or intra-scorer reliability for scoring sleep or cortical arousals. This study provides information for those changing practice to comply with the 2007 AASM recommendations for EEG placement in PSG, for those using portable devices that are unable to comply with the recommendations due to limited channel options, and for the development of future standards for PSG scoring and recording. As the use of multiple EEG derivations only led to small changes in the distribution of derived sleep stages and no significant differences in scoring reliability, this study calls into question the need to use multiple EEG derivations in clinical PSG as suggested in the AASM manual.	\N	\N
21206465	Experimental paradigms are valuable insofar as the timing and other parameters of their stimuli are well specified and controlled, and insofar as they yield data relevant to the cognitive processing that occurs under ecologically valid conditions. These two goals often are at odds, since well controlled stimuli often are too repetitive to sustain subjects' motivation. Studies employing electroencephalography (EEG) are often especially sensitive to this dilemma between ecological validity and experimental control: attaining sufficient signal-to-noise in physiological averages demands large numbers of repeated trials within lengthy recording sessions, limiting the subject pool to individuals with the ability and patience to perform a set task over and over again. This constraint severely limits researchers' ability to investigate younger populations as well as clinical populations associated with heightened anxiety or attentional abnormalities. Even adult, non-clinical subjects may not be able to achieve their typical levels of performance or cognitive engagement: an unmotivated subject for whom an experimental task is little more than a chore is not the same, behaviourally, cognitively, or neurally, as a subject who is intrinsically motivated and engaged with the task. A growing body of literature demonstrates that embedding experiments within video games may provide a way between the horns of this dilemma between experimental control and ecological validity. The narrative of a game provides a more realistic context in which tasks occur, enhancing their ecological validity (Chaytor & Schmitter-Edgecombe, 2003). Moreover, this context provides motivation to complete tasks. In our game, subjects perform various missions to collect resources, fend off pirates, intercept communications or facilitate diplomatic relations. In so doing, they also perform an array of cognitive tasks, including a Posner attention-shifting paradigm (Posner, 1980), a go/no-go test of motor inhibition, a psychophysical motion coherence threshold task, the Embedded Figures Test (Witkin, 1950, 1954) and a theory-of-mind (Wimmer & Perner, 1983) task. The game software automatically registers game stimuli and subjects' actions and responses in a log file, and sends event codes to synchronise with physiological data recorders. Thus the game can be combined with physiological measures such as EEG or fMRI, and with moment-to-moment tracking of gaze. Gaze tracking can verify subjects' compliance with behavioural tasks (e.g. fixation) and overt attention to experimental stimuli, and also physiological arousal as reflected in pupil dilation (Bradley et al., 2008). At great enough sampling frequencies, gaze tracking may also help assess covert attention as reflected in microsaccades - eye movements that are too small to foveate a new object, but are as rapid in onset and have the same relationship between angular distance and peak velocity as do saccades that traverse greater distances. The distribution of directions of microsaccades correlates with the (otherwise) covert direction of attention (Hafed & Clark, 2002).	\N	\N
21276977	The purpose of this preliminary study was to assess whether behavioral and psychophysiological correlates of emotional reactivity and regulation are associated with developmental stuttering, as well as determine the feasibility of these methods in preschool-age children. Nine preschool-age children who stutter (CWS) and nine preschool-age children who do not stutter (CWNS) listened to brief background conversations conveying happy, neutral, and angry emotions (a resolution conversation followed the angry conversation), then produced narratives based on a text-free storybook. Electroencephalograms (EEG) recorded during listening examined cortical correlates of emotional reactivity and regulation. Speech disfluencies and observed emotion regulation were measured during a narrative immediately after each background conversation. Results indicated that decreased use of regulatory strategies is related to more stuttering in children who stutter. However, no significant differences were found in EEG measurements of emotional reactivity and regulation between CWS and CWNS or between emotion elicitation conditions. Findings were taken to suggest that use of regulatory strategies may relate to the fluency of preschool-age children's speech-language output. The reader will be able to (1) describe emotional reactivity and regulation processes, (2) discuss evidence for or against the relations of emotional reactivity, regulation and stuttering, (3) understand how multiple measures can be used to measure emotional reactivity and regulation.	\N	\N
21280045	The "ascending reticular activating system" theory proposed that neurons in the upper brainstem reticular formation projected to forebrain targets that promoted wakefulness. More recent formulations have emphasized that most neurons at the pontomesencephalic junction that participate in these pathways are actually in monoaminergic and cholinergic cell groups. However, cell-specific lesions of these cell groups have never been able to reproduce the deep coma seen after acute paramedian midbrain lesions that transect ascending axons at the caudal midbrain level. To determine whether the cortical afferents from the thalamus or the basal forebrain were more important in maintaining arousal, we first placed large cell-body-specific lesions in these targets. Surprisingly, extensive thalamic lesions had little effect on electroencephalographic (EEG) or behavioral measures of wakefulness or on c-Fos expression by cortical neurons during wakefulness. In contrast, animals with large basal forebrain lesions were behaviorally unresponsive and had a monotonous sub-1-Hz EEG, and little cortical c-Fos expression during continuous gentle handling. We then retrogradely labeled inputs to the basal forebrain from the upper brainstem, and found a substantial input from glutamatergic neurons in the parabrachial nucleus and adjacent precoeruleus area. Cell-specific lesions of the parabrachial-precoeruleus complex produced behavioral unresponsiveness, a monotonous sub-1-Hz cortical EEG, and loss of cortical c-Fos expression during gentle handling. These experiments indicate that in rats the reticulo-thalamo-cortical pathway may play a very limited role in behavioral or electrocortical arousal, whereas the projection from the parabrachial nucleus and precoeruleus region, relayed by the basal forebrain to the cerebral cortex, may be critical for this process.	\N	\N
21335015	Visual short-term memory (VSTM) is limited in capacity. Therefore, it is important to encode only visual information that is most likely to be relevant to behaviour. Here we asked which aspects of selective biasing of VSTM encoding predict subsequent memory-based performance. We measured EEG during a selective VSTM encoding task, in which we varied parametrically the memory load and the precision of recall required to compare a remembered item to a subsequent probe item. On half the trials, a spatial cue indicated that participants only needed to encode items from one hemifield. We observed a typical sequence of markers of anticipatory spatial attention: early attention directing negativity (EDAN), anterior attention directing negativity (ADAN), late directing attention positivity (LDAP); as well as of VSTM maintenance: contralateral delay activity (CDA). We found that individual differences in preparatory brain activity (EDAN/ADAN) predicted cue-related changes in recall accuracy, indexed by memory-probe discrimination sensitivity (d'). Importantly, our parametric manipulation of memory-probe similarity also allowed us to model the behavioural data for each participant, providing estimates for the quality of the memory representation and the probability that an item could be retrieved. We found that selective encoding primarily increased the probability of accurate memory recall; that ERP markers of preparatory attention predicted the cue-related changes in recall probability.	\N	\N
21397252	Sleep deprivation can acutely reverse depressive symptoms in some patients with major depression. Because abnormalities in slow wave sleep are one of the most consistent biological markers of depression, it is plausible that the antidepressant effects of sleep deprivation are due to the effects on slow wave homeostasis. This study tested the prediction that selectively reducing slow waves during sleep (slow wave deprivation; SWD), without disrupting total sleep time, will lead to an acute reduction in depressive symptomatology. As part of a multi-night, cross-over design study, participants with major depression (non-medicated; n = 17) underwent baseline, SWD, and recovery sleep sessions, and were recorded with high-density EEG (hdEEG). During SWD, acoustic stimuli were played to suppress subsequent slow waves, without waking up the participant. The effects of SWD on depressive symptoms were assessed with both self-rated and researcher-administered scales. Participants experienced a significant decrease in depressive symptoms according to both self-rated (p = .007) and researcher-administered (p = .010) scales, while vigilance was unaffected. The reduction in depressive symptoms correlated with the overnight dissipation of fronto-central slow wave activity (SWA) on baseline sleep, the rebound in right frontal all-night SWA on recovery sleep, and the amount of REM sleep on the SWD night. In addition to highlighting the benefits of hdEEG in detecting regional changes in brain activity, these findings suggest that SWD may help to better understand the pathophysiology of depression and may be a useful tool for the neuromodulatory reversal of depressive symptomatology.	\N	\N
21419826	A great deal of research over the last century has focused on drowsiness/alertness detection, as fatigue-related physical and cognitive impairments pose a serious risk to public health and safety. Available drowsiness/alertness detection solutions are unsatisfactory for a number of reasons: (1) lack of generalizability, (2) failure to address individual variability in generalized models, and/or (3) lack of a portable, un-tethered application. The current study aimed to address these issues, and determine if an individualized electroencephalography (EEG) based algorithm could be defined to track performance decrements associated with sleep loss, as this is the first step in developing a field deployable drowsiness/alertness detection system. The results indicated that an EEG-based algorithm, individualized using a series of brief "identification" tasks, was able to effectively track performance decrements associated with sleep deprivation. Future development will address the need for the algorithm to predict performance decrements due to sleep loss, and provide field applicability.	\N	\N
21426626	Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a highly heritable neurodevelopmental disorder with complex genetic aetiology. The identification of candidate intermediate phenotypes may facilitate the detection of susceptibility genes and neurobiological mechanisms underlying the disorder. Electroencephalography (EEG) is an ideal neuroscientific approach, providing a direct measurement of neural activity that demonstrates reliability, developmental stability and high heritability. This systematic review evaluates the utility of a subset of electrophysiological measures as potential intermediate phenotypes for ADHD: quantitative EEG indices of arousal and intraindividual variability, and functional investigations of attention, inhibition and performance monitoring using the event-related potential (ERP) technique. Each measure demonstrates consistent and meaningful associations with ADHD, a degree of genetic overlap with ADHD and potential links to specific genetic variants. Investigations of the genetic and environmental contributions to EEG/ERP and shared genetic overlap with ADHD might enhance molecular genetic studies and provide novel insights into aetiology. Such research will aid in the precise characterisation of the clinical deficits seen in ADHD and guide the development of novel intervention and prevention strategies for those at risk.	\N	\N
21675365	Quality sleep possesses numerous benefits to normal nighttime and daytime functioning. High-level spinal cord injury (SCI) often impacts the respiratory muscles that can lead to poor respiratory function during sleep and negatively affect sleep quality. The impact of respiratory muscle training (RMT) on sleep quality, as assessed by overnight polysomnography (PSG), is yet to be determined among the spinal cord-injured population. This case report describes the effects of 10 weeks of RMT on the sleep quality of a 38-year-old male with cervical SCI. Case report. The subject completed overnight PSG, respiratory muscle strength assessment, and subjective sleepiness assessment before and after 10 weeks of RMT. The post-test results indicated improvements in sleep quality (e.g. fewer electroencephalographic (EEG) arousals during sleep) and daytime sleepiness scores following RMT. Respiratory activity has been proven to impact EEG arousal activity during sleep. Arousals during sleep lead to a fragmented sleeping pattern and affect sleep quality and daytime function. Our subject presented with a typical sleep complaint of snoring and excessive sleepiness. The subject's pre-test PSG demonstrated a large number of arousals during sleep. It is important for all individuals complaining of problems during sleep or daytime problems associated with sleep (i.e. excessive daytime sleepiness) to seek medical attention and proper evaluation.	\N	\N
21731598	Despite significant social difficulties, children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are vulnerable to the effects of social exclusion. We recorded EEG while children with ASD and typical peers played a computerized game involving peer rejection. Children with ASD reported ostracism-related distress comparable to typically developing children. Event-related potentials (ERPs) indicated a distinct pattern of temporal processing of rejection events in children with ASD. While typically developing children showed enhanced response to rejection at a late slow wave indexing emotional arousal and regulation, those with autism showed attenuation at an early component, suggesting reduced engagement of attentional resources in the aversive social context. Results emphasize the importance of studying the time course of social information processing in ASD; they suggest distinct mechanisms subserving similar overt behavior and yield insights relevant to development and implementation of targeted treatment approaches and objective measures of response to treatment.	\N	\N
21816115	Healthy adults show considerable within-subject variation of reaction time (RT) when performing cognitive tests. So far, the neurophysiological correlates of these inconsistencies have not yet been investigated sufficiently. In particular, studies rarely have focused on alterations of prestimulus EEG-vigilance as a factor which possibly influences the outcome of cognitive tests. We hypothesised that a low EEG-vigilance state immediately before a reaction task would entail a longer RT. Shorter RTs were expected for a high EEG-vigilance state. 24 female students performed an easy visual discrimination task while an electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. The vigilance stages of 1-sec-EEG-segments before stimulus presentation were classified automatically using the computer-based Vigilance Algorithm Leipzig (VIGALL). The mean RTs of each EEG-vigilance stage were calculated for each subject. A paired t-test for the EEG-vigilance main stage analysis (A vs. B) and a variance analysis for repeated measures for the EEG-vigilance sub-stage analysis (A1, A2, A3, B1, B2/3) were calculated. Individual mean RT was significantly shorter for events following the high EEG-vigilance stage A compared to the lower EEG-vigilance stage B. The main effect of the sub-stage analysis was marginal significant. A trend of gradually increasing RT was observable within the EEG-vigilance stage A. We conclude that an automatically classified low EEG-vigilance level is associated with an increased RT. Thus, intra-individual variances in cognitive test might be explainable in parts by the individual state of EEG-vigilance. Therefore, the accuracy of neuro-cognitive investigations might be improvable by simultaneously controlling for vigilance shifts using the EEG and VIGALL.	\N	\N
21854953	The electrical activity of the brain does not only reflect the current level of arousal, ongoing behavior, or involvement in a specific task but is also influenced by what kind of activity, and how much sleep and waking occurred before. The best marker of sleep-wake history is the electroencephalogram (EEG) spectral power in slow frequencies (slow-wave activity, 0.5-4 Hz, SWA) during sleep, which is high after extended wakefulness and low after consolidated sleep. While sleep homeostasis has been well characterized in various species and experimental paradigms, the specific mechanisms underlying homeostatic changes in brain activity or their functional significance remain poorly understood. However, several recent studies in humans, rats, and computer simulations shed light on the cortical mechanisms underlying sleep regulation. First, it was found that the homeostatic changes in SWA can be fully accounted for by the variations in amplitude and slope of EEG slow waves, which are in turn determined by the efficacy of corticocortical connectivity. Specifically, the slopes of sleep slow waves were steeper in early sleep compared to late sleep. Second, the slope of cortical evoked potentials, which is an established marker of synaptic strength, was steeper after waking, and decreased after sleep. Further, cortical long-term potentiation (LTP) was partially occluded if it was induced after a period of waking, but it could again be fully expressed after sleep. Finally, multiunit activity recordings during sleep revealed that cortical neurons fired more synchronously after waking, and less so after a period of consolidated sleep. The decline of all these electrophysiological measures-the slopes of slow waves and evoked potentials and neuronal synchrony-during sleep correlated with the decline of the traditional marker of sleep homeostasis, EEG SWA. Taken together, these data suggest that homeostatic changes in sleep EEG are the result of altered neuronal firing and synchrony, which in turn arise from changes in functional neuronal connectivity.	\N	\N
21886801	Little attention has gone into linking to its neuronal substrates the dynamic structure of non-rapid-eye-movement (NREM) sleep, defined as the pattern of time-course power in all frequency bands across an entire episode. Using the spectral power time-courses in the sleep electroencephalogram (EEG), we showed in the typical first episode, several moves towards-and-away from deep sleep, each having an identical pattern linking the major frequency bands beta, sigma and delta. The neuronal transition probability model (NTP)--in fitting the data well--successfully explained the pattern as resulting from stochastic transitions of the firing-rates of the thalamically-projecting brainstem-activating neurons, alternating between two steady dynamic-states (towards-and-away from deep sleep) each initiated by a so-far unidentified flip-flop. The aims here are to identify this flip-flop and to demonstrate that the model fits well all NREM episodes, not just the first. Using published data on suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) activity we show that the SCN has the information required to provide a threshold-triggered flip-flop for TIMING the towards-and-away alternations, information provided by sleep-relevant feedback to the SCN. NTP then determines the PATTERN of spectral power within each dynamic-state. NTP was fitted to individual NREM episodes 1-4, using data from 30 healthy subjects aged 20-30 years, and the quality of fit for each NREM measured. We show that the model fits well all NREM episodes and the best-fit probability-set is found to be effectively the same in fitting all subject data. The significant model-data agreement, the constant probability parameter and the proposed role of the SCN add considerable strength to the model. With it we link for the first time findings at cellular level and detailed time-course data at EEG level, to give a coherent picture of NREM dynamics over the entire night and over hierarchic brain levels all the way from the SCN to the EEG.	\N	\N
21909371	Betel quid use and abuse is wide spread in Asia but the physiological basis of intoxication and addiction are unknown. In subjects naïve to the habit of betel quid intoxication, the psychological and physiological profile of intoxication has never been reported. We compared the effect of chewing gum or chewing betel quid, and subsequent betel quid intoxication, on psychological assessment, prospective time interval estimation, numerical and character digit span, computerized 2 choice tests and mental tasks such as reading and mathematics with concurrent monitoring of ECG, EEG and face temperature in healthy, non-sleep deprived, male subjects naïve to the habit of chewing betel quid. Betel quid intoxication, dose dependently induced tachycardia (max 30 bpm) and elevated face temperature (0.7°C) (P<0.001) above the effects observed in response to chewing gum (max 12 bpm and 0.3°C) in 12 subjects. Gross behavioral indices of working memory such as numerical or character digit span in 8 subjects, or simple visual-motor performance such as reaction speed or accuracy in a two choice scenario in 8 subjects were not affected by betel quid intoxication. Betel quid intoxication strongly influenced the psychological aspects of perception such as slowing of the prospective perception of passage of a 1 minute time interval in 8 subjects (P<0.05) and perceived increased arousal (P<0.01) and perceived decreased ability to think (P<0.05) in 31 subjects. The EEG spectral profile recorded from mental states associated with open and closed eyes, and mental tasks such as reading and eyes closed mental arithmetic were significantly modified (P<0.05) relative to chewing gum by betel quid intoxication in 10 subjects. The prevalence of betel quid consumption across a range of social and work settings warrants greater investigation of this widespread but largely under researched drug.	\N	\N
21954087	Viewing emotional pictures is associated with heightened perception and attention, indexed by a relative increase in visual cortical activity. Visual cortical modulation by emotion is hypothesized to reflect re-entrant connectivity originating in higher-order cortical and/or limbic structures. The present study used dense-array electroencephalography and individual brain anatomy to investigate functional coupling between the visual cortex and other cortical areas during affective picture viewing. Participants viewed pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant pictures that flickered at a rate of 10 Hz to evoke steady-state visual evoked potentials (ssVEPs) in the EEG. The spectral power of ssVEPs was quantified using Fourier transform, and cortical sources were estimated using beamformer spatial filters based on individual structural magnetic resonance images. In addition to lower-tier visual cortex, a network of occipito-temporal and parietal (bilateral precuneus, inferior parietal lobules) structures showed enhanced ssVEP power when participants viewed emotional (either pleasant or unpleasant), compared to neutral pictures. Functional coupling during emotional processing was enhanced between the bilateral occipital poles and a network of temporal (left middle/inferior temporal gyrus), parietal (bilateral parietal lobules), and frontal (left middle/inferior frontal gyrus) structures. These results converge with findings from hemodynamic analyses of emotional picture viewing and suggest that viewing emotionally engaging stimuli is associated with the formation of functional links between visual cortex and the cortical regions underlying attention modulation and preparation for action.	\N	\N
22043127	Women report increasing sleep difficulties during menopause, but polysomnographic measures do not detect sleep disturbances. We examined whether two spectral analysis sleep measures, delta and beta power, were related to menopausal status. The Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN) Sleep Study compared cross-sectionally spectral sleep measures in women in different stages of menopause. Sleep EEG was recorded in the participants' homes with ambulatory recorders. A multi-ethnic cohort of premenopausal and early perimenopausal (n = 189), late perimenopausal (n = 73), and postmenopausal (n = 59) women. EEG power in the delta and beta frequency bands was calculated for all night NREM and all night REM sleep. Physical, medical, psychological, and socioeconomic data were collected from questionnaires and diaries. Beta EEG power in NREM and REM sleep in late perimenopausal and postmenopausal women exceeded that in pre- and early perimenopausal women. Neither all night delta power nor the trend in delta power across the night differed by menopausal status. In a multivariate model that controlled for the physical, demographic, behavioral, psychological, and health-related changes that accompany menopause, beta power in both NREM and REM sleep EEG was significantly related to menopausal status. The frequency of hot flashes explained part but not all of the relation of beta power to menopausal status. Elevated beta EEG power in late perimenopausal and postmenopausal women provides an objective measure of disturbed sleep quality in these women. Elevated beta EEG activity suggests that arousal level during sleep is higher in these women.	\N	\N
22119526	Clinical evidence suggests a potentially causal interaction between sleep and affective brain function; nearly all mood disorders display co-occurring sleep abnormalities, commonly involving rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep. Building on this clinical evidence, recent neurobiological frameworks have hypothesized a benefit of REM sleep in palliatively decreasing next-day brain reactivity to recent waking emotional experiences. Specifically, the marked suppression of central adrenergic neurotransmitters during REM (commonly implicated in arousal and stress), coupled with activation in amygdala-hippocampal networks that encode salient events, is proposed to (re)process and depotentiate previous affective experiences, decreasing their emotional intensity. In contrast, the failure of such adrenergic reduction during REM sleep has been described in anxiety disorders, indexed by persistent high-frequency electroencephalographic (EEG) activity (>30 Hz); a candidate factor contributing to hyperarousal and exaggerated amygdala reactivity. Despite these neurobiological frameworks, and their predictions, the proposed benefit of REM sleep physiology in depotentiating neural and behavioral responsivity to prior emotional events remains unknown. Here, we demonstrate that REM sleep physiology is associated with an overnight dissipation of amygdala activity in response to previous emotional experiences, altering functional connectivity and reducing next-day subjective emotionality.	\N	\N
22131608	Major depressive disorder (MDD) is often associated with disturbances in circadian and/or sleep-wake dependent processes, which both regulate daytime energy and sleepiness levels. Analysis of continuous electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings during 40 h of extended wakefulness under constant routine conditions. Artifact-free EEG samples derived from 12 locations were subjected to spectral analysis. Additionally, half-hourly ratings of subjective tension and sleepiness levels and salivary melatonin measurements were collected. Centre for Chronobiology, Psychiatric Hospitals of the University of Basel, Switzerland. Eight young healthy women and 8 young untreated women with MDD. N/A. MDD women exhibited higher frontal low-frequency (FLA) EEG activity (0.5-5.0 Hz) during extended wakefulness than controls, particularly during the night. Enhanced FLA was paralleled by higher levels of subjective sleepiness and tension. In MDD women, overall FLA levels correlated positively with depression scores. The timing of melatonin onset did not significantly differ between the two groups, but the nocturnal secretion of salivary melatonin was significantly attenuated in MDD women. Our data imply that young women with MDD live on a higher homeostatic sleep pressure level, as indexed by enhanced FLA during wakefulness. Its positive correlation with depression scores indicates a possible functional relationship. High FLA could reflect a use-dependent phenomenon in depression (enhanced cognitive rumination or tension) and/or an attenuated circadian arousal signal.	\N	\N
22163262	Cognitive emotion regulation strategies, such as reappraising the emotional meaning of events, are linked to positive adjustment and are disrupted in individuals showing emotional distress, like anxiety. The late positive potential (LPP) is sensitive to reappraisal: LPP amplitudes are reduced when unpleasant pictures are reappraised in a positive light, suggesting regulation of negative emotion. However, only one study has examined reappraisal in children using the LPP. The present study examined whether directed reappraisals reduce the LPP in a group of 5- to 7-year-olds, and correlate with individual differences in fear and anxiety. EEG was recorded from 32 typically developing children via 64 scalp electrodes during a directed reappraisal task. Mothers reported on child anxiety. Fearful behavior was observed. As predicted, LPP amplitudes were larger to unpleasant versus neutral pictures;counter to predictions, the LPP was not sensitive to reappraisal. The degree to which unpleasant versus neutral pictures elicited larger LPPs was correlated with greater anxiety and fear. Results suggest that reappraisal in young children is still developing, but that the LPP is sensitive to individual differences related to fear and anxiety. The utility of the LPP as a measure of cognitive emotion regulation and emotional processing biases in children is discussed.	\N	\N
22215928	Sleep disordered breathing (SDB) is independently associated with insulin resistance, glucose intolerance, and type 2 diabetes mellitus. Experimental sleep fragmentation has been shown to impair insulin sensitivity. Conventional electroencephalogram (EEG)-based sleep-quality measures have been inconsistently associated with indices of glucose metabolism. This analysis explored associations between glucose metabolism and an EEG-independent measure of sleep quality, the sleep spectrogram, which maps coupled oscillations of heart-rate variability and electrocardiogram (ECG)-derived respiration. The method allows improved characterization of the quality of stage 2 non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. Cross-sectional study. N/A. Nondiabetic subjects with and without SDB (n = 118) underwent the frequently sampled intravenous glucose tolerance test (FSIVGTT) and a full-montage polysomnogram. The sleep spectrogram was generated from ECG collected during polysomnography. N/A. Standard polysomnographic stages (stages 1, 2, 3+4, and rapid eye movement [REM]) were not associated with the disposition index (D(I)) derived from the FSIVGTT. In contrast, spectrographic high-frequency coupling (a marker of stable or "effective" sleep) duration was associated with increased, and very-low-frequency coupling (a marker of wake/REM/transitions) associated with reduced D(I). This relationship was noted after adjusting for age, sex, body mass index, slow wave sleep, total sleep time, stage 1, the arousal index, and the apnea-hypopnea index. ECG-derived sleep-spectrogram measures of sleep quality are associated with alterations in glucose-insulin homeostasis. This alternate mode of estimating sleep quality could improve our understanding of sleep and sleep-breathing effects on glucose metabolism.	\N	\N
22314045	Prolonged wakefulness is associated not only with obvious changes in the way we feel and perform but also with well-known clinical effects, such as increased susceptibility to seizures, to hallucinations, and relief of depressive symptoms. These clinical effects suggest that prolonged wakefulness may be associated with significant changes in the state of cortical circuits. While recent animal experiments have reported a progressive increase of cortical excitability with time awake, no conclusive evidence could be gathered in humans. In this study, we combine transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and electroencephalography (EEG) to monitor cortical excitability in healthy individuals as a function of time awake. We observed that the excitability of the human frontal cortex, measured as the immediate (0-20 ms) EEG reaction to TMS, progressively increases with time awake, from morning to evening and after one night of total sleep deprivation, and that it decreases after recovery sleep. By continuously monitoring vigilance, we also found that this modulation in cortical responsiveness is tonic and not attributable to transient fluctuations of the level of arousal. The present results provide noninvasive electrophysiological evidence that wakefulness is associated with a steady increase in the excitability of human cortical circuits that is rebalanced during sleep.	\N	\N
22377810	Functional neuroimaging has shown that the absence of externally observable signs of consciousness and cognition in severely brain-injured patients does not necessarily indicate the true absence of such abilities. However, relative to traumatic brain injury, nontraumatic injury is known to be associated with a reduced likelihood of regaining overtly measurable levels of consciousness. We investigated the relationships between etiology and both overt and covert cognitive abilities in a group of patients in the minimally conscious state (MCS). Twenty-three MCS patients (15 traumatic and 8 nontraumatic) completed a motor imagery EEG task in which they were required to imagine movements of their right-hand and toes to command. When successfully performed, these imagined movements appear as distinct sensorimotor modulations, which can be used to determine the presence of reliable command-following. The utility of this task has been demonstrated previously in a group of vegetative state patients. Consistent and robust responses to command were observed in the EEG of 22% of the MCS patients (5 of 23). Etiology had a significant impact on the ability to successfully complete this task, with 33% of traumatic patients (5 of 15) returning positive EEG outcomes compared with none of the nontraumatic patients (0 of 8). The overt behavioral signs of awareness (measured with the Coma Recovery Scale-Revised) exhibited by nontraumatic MCS patients appear to be an accurate reflection of their covert cognitive abilities. In contrast, one-third of a group of traumatically injured patients in the MCS possess a range of high-level cognitive faculties that are not evident from their overt behavior.	\N	\N
22379239	EEG slow waves are the hallmark of deep NREM sleep and may reflect the restorative functions of sleep. Evidence suggests that increased sleep slow waves after sleep deprivation reflect plastic synaptic processes, and that brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is causally involved in their homeostatic regulation. The functional Val66Met polymorphism of the gene encoding pro-BDNF causes impaired activity-dependent secretion of mature BDNF protein. We investigated whether this polymorphism contributes to the pronounced inter-individual variation in sleep slow wave activity (SWA) in humans. Sleep laboratory in temporal isolation unit. Eleven heterozygous Met allele carriers and 11 individually sex- and age-matched Val/Val homozygotes. Forty hours prolonged wakefulness. Cognitive performance, subjective state, and waking and sleep EEG in baseline and after sleep deprivation were studied. Val/Val homozygotes showed better response accuracy than Met allele carriers on a verbal 2-back working memory task. This difference did not reflect genotype-dependent differences in sleepiness, well-being, or sustained attention. In baseline and recovery nights, deep stage 4 sleep and NREM sleep intensity as quantified by EEG SWA (0.75-4.5 Hz) were higher in Val/Val compared to Val/Met genotype. Similar to sleep deprivation, the difference was most pronounced in the first NREM sleep episode. By contrast, increased activity in higher EEG frequencies (> 6 Hz) in wakefulness and REM sleep was distinct from the effects of prolonged wakefulness. BDNF contributes to the regulation of sleep slow wave oscillations, suggesting that genetically determined variation in neuronal plasticity modulates NREM sleep intensity in humans.	\N	\N
22467988	Cognitive and brain hyperactivation have been associated with trouble falling asleep and sleep misperception in patients with primary insomnia (PI). Activation and synchronization/temporal coupling in frontal and frontoparietal regions involved in executive control and endogenous attention might be implicated in these symptoms. Standard polysomnography (PSG) and electroencephalogram (EEG) were recorded in 10 unmedicated young patients (age 19-34 yr) with PI with no other sleep/medical condition, and in 10 matched control subjects. Absolute power, temporal coupling, and topographic source distribution (variable resolution electromagnetic tomography or VARETA) were obtained for all time spent in waking, Stage 1 and Stage 2 of the wake-sleep transition period (WSTP), and the first 3 consecutive min of N3. Subjective sleep quality and continuity were evaluated. In comparison with control subjects, patients with PI exhibited significantly higher frontal beta power and current density, and beta and gamma frontoparietal temporal coupling during waking and Stage 1. These findings suggest that frontal deactivation and disengagement of brain regions involved in executive control, attention, and self-awareness are impaired in patients with PI. The persistence of this activated and coherent network during the wake-sleep transition period (WSTP) may contribute to a better understanding of underlying mechanisms involved in difficulty in falling asleep, in sleep misperception, and in the lighter, poorer, and nonrefreshing sleep experienced by some patients with PI.	\N	\N
22496862	Binaural beats are an auditory phenomenon that has been suggested to alter physiological and cognitive processes including vigilance and brainwave entrainment. Some personality traits measured by the NEO Five Factor Model have been found to alter entrainment using pulsing light stimuli, but as yet no studies have examined if this occurs using steady state presentation of binaural beats for a relatively short presentation of two minutes. This study aimed to examine if binaural beat stimulation altered vigilance or cortical frequencies and if personality traits were involved. Thirty-one participants were played binaural beat stimuli designed to elicit a response at either the Theta (7 Hz) or Beta (16 Hz) frequency bands while undertaking a zero-back vigilance task. EEG was recorded from a high-density electrode cap. No significant differences were found in vigilance or cortical frequency power during binaural beat stimulation compared to a white noise control period. Furthermore, no significant relationships were detected between the above and the Big Five personality traits. This suggests a short presentation of steady state binaural beats are not sufficient to alter vigilance or entrain cortical frequencies at the two bands examined and that certain personality traits were not more susceptible than others.	\N	\N
22665872	A 62-year-old man presented with a history suggesting both dissociative fugue and a distinct fugue-like hallucination. The dissociative fugues included unplanned travel, loss of personal identity, inability to recall his past and amnesia for the fugue interval. The subjective fugues consisted of a stereotyped hallucination wherein he would travel to a social gathering place, meet his 'imaginary friends' and engage with them in conversation. He experienced the subjective fugues as if they were real, recognised them as hallucinations when he was normally conscious, and remembered them in great detail. A hallucinatory fugue episode occurred during video-EEG monitoring. The patient engaged in semipurposeful behaviour for which he had no memory, and the EEG demonstrated waking rhythms. Epilepsy, sleep disorder, factitious disorder and malingering were excluded from the differential diagnosis, leaving a patient with both dissociative and hallucinatory fugues, likely made possible by remote traumatic injury to limbic, arousal and motor circuits.	\N	\N
22986355	Oscillatory electrical brain activity in the alpha (8-13 Hz) band is a prominent feature of human electroencephalography (EEG) during alert wakefulness, and is commonly thought to arise primarily from the occipital and parietal parts of the cortex. While the thalamus is considered to play a supportive role in the generation and modulation of cortical alpha rhythms, its precise function remains controversial and incompletely understood. To address this, we evaluated the correlation between the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signals in the thalamus and the spontaneous modulation of posterior alpha rhythms based on EEG-fMRI data acquired concurrently during an eyes-closed task-free condition. We observed both negative and positive correlations in the thalamus. The negative correlations were mostly seen within the visual thalamus, with a preference for the pulvinar over lateral geniculate nuclei. The positive correlations were found at the anterior and medial dorsal nuclei. Through functional connectivity analysis of the fMRI data, the pulvinar was found to be functionally associated with the same widespread cortical visual areas where the fMRI signals were negatively correlated with the posterior alpha modulation. In contrast, the dorsal nuclei were part of a distinct functional network that included brain stem, cingulate cortex and cerebellum. These observations are consistent with previous animal electrophysiology studies and the notion that the visual thalamus, and the pulvinar in particular, is intimately involved in the generation and spontaneous modulation of posterior alpha rhythms, facilitated by its reciprocal and widespread interaction with the cortical visual areas. We further postulate that the anterior and medial dorsal nuclei, being part of the ascending neuromodulatory system, may indirectly modulate cortical alpha rhythms by affecting vigilance and arousal levels.	\N	\N
22998925	Human time perception is influenced by various factors such as attention and drowsiness. Nevertheless, the impact of cerebral vigilance fluctuations on temporal perception has not been sufficiently explored. We assumed that the state of vigilance ascertained by electroencephalography (EEG) during the perception of a given auditory rhythm would influence its reproduction. Thus, we hypothesised that the re-tapping interval length and the accuracy of reproduction performance would vary depending on the state of vigilance determined by EEG. 12 female and 9 male subjects ranging from 21 to 38 years (M = 25.52, SD = 3.75) participated in a test paradigm comprising a) a resting EEG for the determination of vigilance while an auditory rhythm was presented, b) a short activity of the proband to be sure of sufficient alertness, and c) a tapping task to reproduce the presented rhythm. Vigilance states of three consecutive 1-sec-EEG-segments of the resting EEG before the reproduction phase were classified using the Vigilance Algorithm Leipzig (VIGALL). Reproduction accuracy was more precise after high EEG-vigilance stages. Thus, the subjects' mean deviation from the given rhythm was lower (t(17) = -2.733, p < 0.05) after high vigilance stage A (MW = 0.046, SD = 0.049) than after low vigilance stage B (MW = 0.065, SD = 0.067). The re-tapping-length was significantly shorter (t(17) = -2.190, p < 0.05) for reproduction phases following high EEG-vigilance stage A compared to the lower EEG-vigilance stage B. These findings support the hypothesis of a varying time perception and of speed alterations of the internal clock after different states of EEG-vigilance, which were automatically classified by VIGALL. Thus, alterations of cognitive processing may be assessable by specific EEG-patterns.	\N	\N
23055094	In this study, we tested the relationship between error-related signals of cognitive control and cortisol reactivity, investigating the hypothesis of common systems for cognitive and emotional self-regulation. Eighty-three participants completed a Stroop task while electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. Three error-related indices were derived from the EEG: the error-related negativity (ERN), error positivity (Pe), and error-related alpha suppression (ERAS). Pre- and posttask salivary samples were assayed for cortisol, and cortisol change scores were correlated with the EEG variables. Better error-correct differentiation in the ERN predicted less cortisol increase during the task, whereas greater ERAS predicted greater cortisol increase during the task; the Pe was not correlated with cortisol changes. We concluded that an enhanced ERN, part of an adaptive cognitive control system, predicts successful stress regulation. In contrast, an enhanced ERAS response may reflect error-related arousal that is not adaptive. The results support the concept of overlapping systems for cognitive and emotional self-regulation.	\N	\N
23060019	The presence of cigarette-related cues has been associated with smoking relapse. These cues are believed to activate brain mechanisms underlying emotion, attention, and memory. Electroencephalography (EEG) alpha desynchronization (i.e., reduction in alpha power) has been suggested to index the engagement of these mechanisms. Analyzing EEG alpha desynchronization in response to affective and smoking cues might improve our understanding of how smokers process these cues, and the potential impact of this processing on relapse. Before the start of a medication-assisted cessation attempt, we recorded EEG from 179 smokers during the presentation of neutral, pleasant, unpleasant, and cigarette-related pictures. Wavelet analysis was used to extract EEG alpha oscillations (8-12 Hz) in response to these pictures. Alpha oscillations were analyzed as a function of picture valence and arousal dimensions. Emotional and cigarette-related stimuli induced a higher level of alpha desynchronization (i.e., less power in the alpha frequency band) than neutral stimuli. In addition, the level of alpha desynchronization induced by cigarette-related stimuli was similar to that induced by highly arousing stimuli (i.e., erotica and mutilations). These results suggest that, for smokers, cigarette-related cues are motivationally significant stimuli that may engage emotional, attentional, and memory-related neural mechanisms at a level comparable to that seen in response to highly arousing stimuli. This finding suggests that activation of emotional, attentional, and memory-related brain mechanisms may be an important contributor to cue-induced smoking relapse.	\N	\N
23127585	To evaluate whether eliciting repetitive cortical and autonomic arousals during sleep is able to induce the occurrence of periodic leg movements during sleep (PLMS). Fifteen normal subjects underwent one night of uninterrupted and two sequential nights of experimental sleep fragmentation achieved by auditory and mechanical stimuli eliciting frequent EEG arousals. Sleep was polygraphically recorded and subsequently used to determine the frequency of arousals and occurrence of leg movement (LM) activity during the first (baseline) and the second fragmentation night. Also, heart rate variability parameters were obtained to assess the autonomic changes induced by the stimulation. Sleep fragmentation was associated with an increase in the arousal index, percentage of sleep stage 1, and frequency of stage shifts. In addition, there was a decrease in sleep latency and in percentage of slow-wave sleep. Moreover, a significant increase in heart rate variability and especially of its sympathetic component, was also found. In contrast, parameters of the leg movement activity showed no significant change following experimental sleep fragmentation. The lack of an increase in leg movement activity was also observed in one subject who demonstrated PLMS at baseline. Experimental sleep fragmentation is not associated with an increase in PLMS in normal young adults.	\N	\N
23193115	New longitudinal sleep data spanning ages 6-10 yr are presented and combined with previous data to analyze maturational trajectories of delta and theta EEG across ages 6-18 yr in non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. NREM delta power (DP) increased from age 6 to age 8 yr and then declined. Its highest rate of decline occurred between ages 12 and 16.5 yr. We attribute the delta EEG trajectories to changes in synaptic density. Whatever their neuronal underpinnings, these age curves can guide research into the molecular-genetic mechanisms that underlie adolescent brain development. The DP trajectories in NREM and REM sleep differed strikingly. DP in REM did not initially increase but declined steadily from age 6 to age 16 yr. We hypothesize that the DP decline in REM reflects maturation of the same brain arousal systems that eliminate delta waves in waking EEG. Whereas the DP age curves differed in NREM and REM sleep, theta age curves were similar in both, roughly paralleling the age trajectory of REM DP. The different maturational curves for NREM delta and theta indicate that they serve different brain functions despite having similar within-sleep dynamics and responses to sleep loss. Period-amplitude analysis of NREM and REM delta waveforms revealed that the age trends in DP were driven more by changes in wave amplitude rather than incidence. These data further document the powerful and complex link between sleep and brain maturation. Understanding this relationship would shed light on both brain development and the function of sleep.	\N	\N
23326604	K-complexes and sleep spindles often grouped together characterize the second stage of NREM sleep and interest has been raised on a possible interaction of their underlying mechanisms. The reported inhibition of spindles power for about 15 seconds following evoked K-complexes has implications on their role in arousal. Our objective was to assess this inhibition following spontaneous K-complexes. We used time-frequency analysis of spontaneous K-complexes selected from whole-night EEG recordings of normal subjects. Our results show that spindles are most often observed at the positive phase following the peak of a spontaneous KC (70%). At latencies of 1-3 s following the peak of the K-complex, spindles almost disappear. Compared to long-term effects described for evoked KCs, sleep spindle power is not affected by spontaneous KCs for latencies of 5-15 s. Observation of the recurrence rate of sporadic spindles suggests that the reduction of power at 1-3 s most likely reflects a refractory period of spindles lasting for 1-2 s, rather than an effect of KCs. These results suggest that the mechanisms underlying spontaneous KCs do not affect spindle power as in the case of evoked KCs.	\N	\N
23643925	The cingulate cortex is regarded as the backbone of structural and functional connectivity of the brain. While its functional connectivity has been intensively studied, little is known about its effective connectivity, its modulation by behavioral states, and its involvement in cognitive performance. Given the previously reported effects on cingulate functional connectivity, we investigated how eye-closure and sleep deprivation changed cingulate effective connectivity, estimated from resting-state high-density electroencephalography (EEG) using a novel method to calculate Granger Causality directly in source space. Effective connectivity along the cingulate cortex was dominant in the forward direction. Eyes-open connectivity in the forward direction was greater compared to eyes-closed, in well-rested participants. The difference between eyes-open and eyes-closed connectivity was attenuated and no longer significant after sleep deprivation. Individual variability in the forward connectivity after sleep deprivation predicted subsequent task performance, such that those subjects who showed a greater increase in forward connectivity between the eyes-open and the eyes-closed periods also performed better on a sustained attention task. Effective connectivity in the opposite, backward, direction was not affected by whether the eyes were open or closed or by sleep deprivation. These findings indicate that the effective connectivity from posterior to anterior cingulate regions is enhanced when a well-rested subject has his eyes open compared to when they are closed. Sleep deprivation impairs this directed information flow, proportional to its deleterious effect on vigilance. Therefore, sleep may play a role in the maintenance of waking effective connectivity.	\N	\N
23707592	Sleep and the functional connectome are research areas with considerable overlap. Neuroimaging studies of sleep based on EEG-PET and EEG-fMRI are revealing the brain networks that support sleep, as well as networks that may support the roles and processes attributed to sleep. For example, phenomena such as arousal and consciousness are substantially modulated during sleep, and one would expect this modulation to be reflected in altered network activity. In addition, recent work suggests that sleep also has a number of adaptive functions that support waking activity. Thus the study of sleep may elucidate the circuits and processes that support waking function and complement information obtained from fMRI during waking conditions. In this review, we will discuss examples of this for memory, arousal, and consciousness after providing a brief background on sleep and on studying it with fMRI.	\N	\N
23731439	This study tested the hypothesis that enhanced neural arousal in response to performance errors would predict poor affect and coping behaviors in everyday life. Participants were preselected as either low-depressed (LD) or high-depressed (HD) based on a screening questionnaire, and they then completed a laboratory Stroop task while EEG was recorded, followed by a 2-week period of daily reports of affect and coping behaviors. The EEG measure of arousal response to errors was the degree of error-related alpha suppression (ERAS) in the intertrial interval, that is the reduction in alpha power following errors compared with correct responses. ERAS was relatively heightened at frontal sites for the HD versus the LD group, and frontal ERAS predicted lower positive affect, higher negative affect, and less adaptive coping behaviors in the daily reports. Together, the results imply that heightened arousal following mistakes is associated with suboptimal emotion and coping with stressors.	\N	\N
23786695	Researchers have long been interested in whether particular temperamental traits in childhood connote risk for depressive disorders. For example, children characterized as having high negative emotionality (NE; sadness, fear, anger) and low positive emotionality (PE; anhedonia, listlessness, and lack of enthusiasm) are hypothesized to be at risk for depression. Few studies, however, have examined whether (and how) these two temperamental dimensions interact to confer risk. In a sample of 329 preschoolers, the present study addressed this question by examining the relation between PE and NE and asymmetry in resting EEG activity in frontal and posterior regions, which are putative biomarkers for depression. Using a laboratory battery to define temperament, we found an interaction of PE and NE on posterior asymmetry. Specifically, when PE was high, NE was associated with greater relative right activity. When PE was low, NE was not related to posterior asymmetry. These results were driven by differences in EEG activity in right posterior regions, an area associated with emotional processing and arousal, and were specific to girls. We found no relation between temperament and frontal asymmetry. These findings suggest that, at least for girls, PE and NE may have an interactive effect on risk for depression.	\N	\N
23810448	Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a disorder of repetitive sleep disruption caused by reduced or blocked respiratory airflow. Although an anatomically compromised airway accounts for the major predisposition to OSA, a patient's arousal threshold and factors related to the central control of breathing (ventilatory control stability) are also important. Arousal from sleep (defined by EEG desynchronization) may be the only mechanism that allows airway re-opening following an obstructive event. However, in many cases arousal is unnecessary and even worsens the severity of OSA. Mechanisms for arousal are poorly understood. However, accumulating data are elucidating the relevant neural pathways and neurotransmitters. For example, serotonin is critically required, but its site of action is unknown. Important neural substrates for arousal have been recently identified in the parabrachial complex (PB), a visceral sensory nucleus in the rostral pons. Moreover, glutamatergic signaling from the PB contributes to arousal caused by hypercapnia, one of the arousal-promoting stimuli in OSA. A major current focus of OSA research is to find means to maintain airway patency during sleep, without sleep interruption.	\N	\N
23899724	In resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), functional connectivity measures can be influenced by the presence of a strong global component. A widely used pre-processing method for reducing the contribution of this component is global signal regression, in which a global mean time series signal is projected out of the fMRI time series data prior to the computation of connectivity measures. However, the use of global signal regression is controversial because the method can bias the correlation values to have an approximately zero mean and may in some instances create artifactual negative correlations. In addition, while many studies treat the global signal as a non-neural confound that needs to be removed, evidence from electrophysiological and fMRI measures in primates suggests that the global signal may contain significant neural correlates. In this study, we used simultaneously acquired fMRI and electroencephalographic (EEG) measures of resting-state activity to assess the relation between the fMRI global signal and EEG measures of vigilance in humans. We found that the amplitude of the global signal (defined as the standard deviation of the global signal) exhibited a significant negative correlation with EEG vigilance across subjects studied in the eyes-closed condition. In addition, increases in EEG vigilance due to the ingestion of caffeine were significantly associated with both a decrease in global signal amplitude and an increase in the average level of anti-correlation between the default mode network and the task-positive network.	\N	\N
23929944	Lack of empathy is a hallmark of social impairments in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, the concept empathy encompasses several socio-emotional and behavioral components underpinned by interacting brain circuits. This study examined empathic arousal and social understanding in individuals with ASD and matched controls by combining pressure pain thresholds (PPT) with functional magnetic resonance imaging (study 1) and electroencephalography/event-related potentials and eye-tracking responses (study 2) to empathy-eliciting stimuli depicting physical bodily injuries. Results indicate that participants with ASD had lower PPT than controls. When viewing body parts being accidentally injured, increased hemodynamic responses in the somatosensory cortex (SI/SII) but decreased responses in the anterior mid-cingulate and anterior insula as well as heightened N2 but preserved late-positive potentials (LPP) were detected in ASD participants. When viewing a person intentionally hurting another, decreased hemodynamic responses in the medial prefrontal cortex and reduced LPP were observed in the ASD group. PPT was a mediator for the SI/SII response in predicting subjective unpleasantness ratings to others' pain. Both ASD and control groups had comparable mu suppression, indicative of typical sensorimotor resonance. The findings demonstrate that, in addition to reduced pain thresholds, individuals with ASD exhibit heightened empathic arousal but impaired social understanding when perceiving others' distress.	\N	\N
23940642	The hedonic meaning of words affects word recognition, as shown by behavioral, functional imaging, and event-related potential (ERP) studies. However, the spatiotemporal dynamics and cognitive functions behind are elusive, partly due to methodological limitations of previous studies. Here, we account for these difficulties by computing combined electro-magnetoencephalographic (EEG/MEG) source localization techniques. Participants covertly read emotionally high-arousing positive and negative nouns, while EEG and MEG were recorded simultaneously. Combined EEG/MEG current-density reconstructions for the P1 (80-120 ms), P2 (150-190 ms) and EPN component (200-300 ms) were computed using realistic individual head models, with a cortical constraint. Relative to negative words, the P1 to positive words predominantly involved language-related structures (left middle temporal and inferior frontal regions), and posterior structures related to directed attention (occipital and parietal regions). Effects shifted to the right hemisphere in the P2 component. By contrast, negative words received more activation in the P1 time-range only, recruiting prefrontal regions, including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Effects in the EPN were not statistically significant. These findings show that different neuronal networks are active when positive versus negative words are processed. We account for these effects in terms of an "emotional tagging" of word forms during language acquisition. These tags then give rise to different processing strategies, including enhanced lexical processing of positive words and a very fast language-independent alert response to negative words. The valence-specific recruitment of different networks might underlie fast adaptive responses to both approach- and withdrawal-related stimuli, be they acquired or biological.	\N	\N
23990240	The aim of this study was to determine the effect of prolonged intensive cycling and postexercise recovery in the heat on brain sources of altered brain oscillations. After a max test and familiarization trial, nine trained male subjects (23 ± 3 yr; maximal oxygen uptake = 62.1 ± 5.3 ml·min(-1)·kg(-1)) performed three experimental trials in the heat (30°C; relative humidity 43.7 ± 5.6%). Each trial consisted of two exercise tasks separated by 1 h. The first was a 60-min constant-load trial, followed by a 30-min simulated time trial (TT1). The second comprised a 12-min simulated time trial (TT2). After TT1, active recovery (AR), passive rest (PR), or cold water immersion (CWI) was applied for 15 min. Electroencephalography was measured at baseline and during postexercise recovery. Standardized low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography was applied to accurately pinpoint and localize altered electrical neuronal activity. After CWI, PR and AR subjects completed TT2 in 761 ± 42, 791 ± 76, and 794 ± 62 s, respectively. A prolonged intensive cycling performance in the heat decreased β activity across the whole brain. Postexercise AR and PR elicited no significant electrocortical differences, whereas CWI induced significantly increased β3 activity in Brodmann areas (BA) 13 (posterior margin of insular cortex) and BA 40 (supramarginal gyrus). Self-paced prolonged exercise in the heat seems to decrease β activity, hence representing decreased arousal. Postexercise CWI increased β3 activity at BA 13 and 40, brain areas involved in somatosensory information processing.	\N	\N
23997704	Transient global amnesia (TGA) is a temporary memory loss characterized by an abrupt onset of antero-grade and retrograde amnesia, totally reversible. Since sleep plays a major role in memory consolidation, and in the storage of memory-related traces into the brain cortex, the aims of the present study were: (1) to evaluate changes in sleep macro-structure in TGA; (2) to assess modifications in sleep micro-structure in TGA, with particular reference to the arousal EEG and to cyclic alternating pattern (CAP); (3) to compare sleep parameters in TGA patients with a control group of patients with acute ischemic events ("minor stroke" or transient ischemic attack [TIA]) clinically and neuroradiologically "similar" to the TGA. TGA GROUP: 17 patients, (8 men and 9 women, 60.2 ± 12.5 years). Stroke or TIA (SoT) group: 17 patients hospitalized in the Stroke Unit for recent onset of minor stroke or TIA with hemispheric localization; healthy controls (HC) group: 17 healthy volunteers, matched for age and sex. Patients and controls underwent full-night polysomnography. In the multivariate analysis (conditions TGA, SoT, and HC) a significant effect of the condition was observed for sleep efficiency index, number of awakenings longer 1 min, REM latency, CAP time, and CAP rate. TGA and SoT differed only for CAP time and CAP rate, which were lower in the TGA group. Microstructural modification associated with tga could be consequent to: (1) hippocampal dysfunction and memory impairment; (2) impairment of arousal-related structures (in particular, cholinergic pathways); (3) emotional distress.	\N	\N
24015304	Over the past several years meditation practice has gained increasing attention as a non-pharmacological intervention to provide health related benefits, from promoting general wellness to alleviating the symptoms of a variety of medical conditions. However, the effects of meditation training on brain activity still need to be fully characterized. Sleep provides a unique approach to explore the meditation-related plastic changes in brain function. In this study we performed sleep high-density electroencephalographic (hdEEG) recordings in long-term meditators (LTM) of Buddhist meditation practices (approximately 8700 mean hours of life practice) and meditation naive individuals. We found that LTM had increased parietal-occipital EEG gamma power during NREM sleep. This increase was specific for the gamma range (25-40 Hz), was not related to the level of spontaneous arousal during NREM and was positively correlated with the length of lifetime daily meditation practice. Altogether, these findings indicate that meditation practice produces measurable changes in spontaneous brain activity, and suggest that EEG gamma activity during sleep represents a sensitive measure of the long-lasting, plastic effects of meditative training on brain function.	\N	\N
24125792	Perception of facial expressions is typically investigated by presenting isolated face stimuli. In everyday life, however, faces are rarely seen without a surrounding visual context that affects perception and interpretation of the facial expression. Conversely, fearful faces may act as a cue, heightening the sensitivity of the visual system to effectively detect potential threat in the environment. In the present study, we used steady-state visually evoked potentials (ssVEPs) to examine the mutual effects of facial expressions (fearful, neutral, happy) and affective visual context (pleasant, neutral, threat). By assigning two different flicker frequencies (12 vs. 15Hz) to the face and the visual context scene, cortical activity to the concurrent stimuli was separated, which represents a novel approach to independently tracking the cortical processes associated with the face and the context. Twenty healthy students viewed flickering faces overlaid on flickering visual scenes, while performing a simple change-detection task at fixation, and high-density EEG was recorded. Arousing background scenes generally drove larger ssVEP amplitudes than neutral scenes. Importantly, background and expression interacted: When viewing fearful facial expressions, the ssVEP in response to threat context was amplified compared to other backgrounds. Together, these findings suggest that fearful faces elicit vigilance for potential threat in the visual periphery.	\N	\N
24127147	Pathophysiological models of insomnia invoke the concept of 24-hour hyperarousal, which could lead to symptoms and physiological findings during waking and sleep. We hypothesized that this arousal could be seen in the waking electroencephalogram (EEG) of individuals with primary insomnia (PI), and that waking EEG power would correlate with non-REM (NREM) EEG. Subjects included 50 PI and 32 good sleeper controls (GSC). Five minutes of eyes closed waking EEG were collected at subjects' usual bedtimes, followed by polysomnography (PSG) at habitual sleep times. An automated algorithm and visual editing were used to remove artifacts from waking and sleep EEGs, followed by power spectral analysis to estimate power from 0.5-32 Hz. We did not find significant differences in waking or NREM EEG spectral power of PI and GSC. Significant correlations between waking and NREM sleep power were observed across all frequency bands in the PI group and in most frequency bands in the GSC group. The absence of significant differences between groups in waking or NREM EEG power suggests that our sample was not characterized by a high degree of cortical arousal. The consistent correlations between waking and NREM EEG power suggest that, in samples with elevated NREM EEG beta activity, waking EEG power may show a similar pattern.	\N	\N
24214921	The different temporal dynamics of emotions are critical to understand their evolutionary role in the regulation of interactions with the surrounding environment. Here, we investigated the temporal dynamics underlying the perception of four basic emotions from complex scenes varying in valence and arousal (fear, disgust, happiness and sadness) with the millisecond time resolution of Electroencephalography (EEG). Event-related potentials were computed and each emotion showed a specific temporal profile, as revealed by distinct time segments of significant differences from the neutral scenes. Fear perception elicited significant activity at the earliest time segments, followed by disgust, happiness and sadness. Moreover, fear, disgust and happiness were characterized by two time segments of significant activity, whereas sadness showed only one long-latency time segment of activity. Multidimensional scaling was used to assess the correspondence between neural temporal dynamics and the subjective experience elicited by the four emotions in a subsequent behavioral task. We found a high coherence between these two classes of data, indicating that psychological categories defining emotions have a close correspondence at the brain level in terms of neural temporal dynamics. Finally, we localized the brain regions of time-dependent activity for each emotion and time segment with the low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography. Fear and disgust showed widely distributed activations, predominantly in the right hemisphere. Happiness activated a number of areas mostly in the left hemisphere, whereas sadness showed a limited number of active areas at late latency. The present findings indicate that the neural signature of basic emotions can emerge as the byproduct of dynamic spatiotemporal brain networks as investigated with millisecond-range resolution, rather than in time-independent areas involved uniquely in the processing one specific emotion.	\N	\N
24235891	Periodic limb movements in sleep (PLMS) are common in the elderly. A previous large polysomnographic (PSG) study examining the relationship of PLMS to sleep architecture and arousals from sleep in women found that leg movements were common in elderly women, and PLMS which were associated with EEG arousals had a strong and consistent association with markers of disturbed sleep. Since sleep differs in men and women, we now investigate the association between PLMS and PSG indices of sleep quality in a large community-based sample of older men. Observational study, cross-sectional analyses. Six clinical sites participating in the Osteoporotic Fractures in Men (MrOS) Study. 2,872 older community-dwelling men (mean age 76.4 years) who completed in-home PSG from 2003-2005. N/A. In-home PSG was performed which included bilateral measurement of leg movements. The total number of leg movements per hour of sleep (PLMI) and the number of leg movements causing EEG-documented arousals per hour of sleep (PLMA) were computed. A PLMI ≥ 5 (70.8%) and PLMA ≥ 5 (27.4%) were both prevalent. Linear regression models were used to examine the relationship between PLMS as predictors and sleep architecture, arousal index, and sleep efficiency as outcomes. The highest quintiles of PLMI (≥ 65.1) and PLMA (≥ 6.8) showed the largest association with indices of sleep architecture; PLMA showed a larger magnitude of effect. After multivariate adjustment, participants with a higher PLMA had a small but significantly higher arousal index, lower sleep efficiency, higher percentages of stages 1 and 2 sleep, and lower percentages of stage 3-4 and REM sleep (p < 0.01). An increased PLMI was similarly associated with a higher arousal index, higher percentage of stage 2 sleep, and lower percentage of stage 3-4 (p < 0.0001), but not with an increase in stage 1, REM sleep, or sleep efficiency. Neither PLMI nor PMLA was associated with subjective sleepiness measured by the Epworth Sleepiness Scale. This study demonstrated that periodic leg movements are very common in older community-dwelling men and regardless of associated arousals, are associated with evidence of lighter and more fragmented sleep.	\N	\N
24252875	Zolpidem produces paradoxical recovery of speech, cognitive and motor functions in select subjects with severe brain injury but underlying mechanisms remain unknown. In three diverse patients with known zolpidem responses we identify a distinctive pattern of EEG dynamics that suggests a mechanistic model. In the absence of zolpidem, all subjects show a strong low frequency oscillatory peak ∼6-10 Hz in the EEG power spectrum most prominent over frontocentral regions and with high coherence (∼0.7-0.8) within and between hemispheres. Zolpidem administration sharply reduces EEG power and coherence at these low frequencies. The ∼6-10 Hz activity is proposed to arise from intrinsic membrane properties of pyramidal neurons that are passively entrained across the cortex by locally-generated spontaneous activity. Activation by zolpidem is proposed to arise from a combination of initial direct drug effects on cortical, striatal, and thalamic populations and further activation of underactive brain regions induced by restoration of cognitively-mediated behaviors. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.01157.001.	\N	\N
24259275	The underlying pathophysiologic mechanism for complex motor stereotypies in children is unknown, with hypotheses ranging from an arousal to a motor control disorder. Movement-related cortical potentials (MRCPs), representing the activation of cerebral areas involved in the generation of movements, precede and accompany self-initiated voluntary movements. The goal of this study was to compare cerebral activity associated with stereotypies to that seen with voluntary movements in children with primary complex motor stereotypies. Electroencephalographic (EEG) activity synchronized with video recording was recorded in 10 children diagnosed with primary motor stereotypies and 7 controls. EEG activity related to stereotypies and self-paced arm movements were analyzed for presence or absence of early or late MRCP, a steep negativity beginning about 1 second before the onset of a voluntary movement. Early MRCPs preceded self-paced arm movements in 8 of 10 children with motor stereotypies and in 6 of 7 controls. Observed MRCPs did not differ between groups. No MRCP was identified before the appearance of a complex motor stereotypy. Unlike voluntary movements, stereotypies are not preceded by MRCPs. This indicates that premotor areas are likely not involved in the preparation of these complex movements and suggests that stereotypies are initiated by mechanisms different from voluntary movements. Further studies are required to determine the site of the motor control abnormality within cortico-striatal-thalamo-cortical pathways and to identify whether similar findings would be found in children with secondary stereotypies.	\N	\N
24260331	We aimed at better understanding the brain mechanisms involved in the processing of alerting meaningful sounds during sleep, investigating alpha activity. During EEG acquisition, subjects were presented with a passive auditory oddball paradigm including rare complex sounds called Novels (the own first name - OWN, and an unfamiliar first name - OTHER) while they were watching a silent movie in the evening or sleeping at night. During the experimental night, the subjects' quality of sleep was generally preserved. During wakefulness, the decrease in alpha power (8-12 Hz) induced by Novels was significantly larger for OWN than for OTHER at parietal electrodes, between 600 and 900 ms after stimulus onset. Conversely, during REM sleep, Novels induced an increase in alpha power (from 0 to 1200 ms at all electrodes), significantly larger for OWN than for OTHER at several parietal electrodes between 700 and 1200 ms after stimulus onset. These results show that complex sounds have a different effect on the alpha power during wakefulness (decrease) and during REM sleep (increase) and that OWN induce a specific effect in these two states. The increased alpha power induced by Novels during REM sleep may 1) correspond to a short and transient increase in arousal; in this case, our study provides an objective measure of the greater arousing power of OWN over OTHER, 2) indicate a cortical inhibition associated with sleep protection. These results suggest that alpha modulation could participate in the selection of stimuli to be further processed during sleep.	\N	\N
24266644	Electroencephalographic (EEG) neurofeedback training has been shown to produce plastic modulations in salience network and default mode network functional connectivity in healthy individuals. In this study, we investigated whether a single session of neurofeedback training aimed at the voluntary reduction of alpha rhythm (8-12 Hz) amplitude would be related to differences in EEG network oscillations, functional MRI (fMRI) connectivity, and subjective measures of state anxiety and arousal in a group of individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Twenty-one individuals with PTSD related to childhood abuse underwent 30 min of EEG neurofeedback training preceded and followed by a resting-state fMRI scan. Alpha desynchronizing neurofeedback was associated with decreased alpha amplitude during training, followed by a significant increase ('rebound') in resting-state alpha synchronization. This rebound was linked to increased calmness, greater salience network connectivity with the right insula, and enhanced default mode network connectivity with bilateral posterior cingulate, right middle frontal gyrus, and left medial prefrontal cortex. Our study represents a first step in elucidating the potential neurobehavioural mechanisms mediating the effects of neurofeedback treatment on regulatory systems in PTSD. Moreover, it documents for the first time a spontaneous EEG 'rebound' after neurofeedback, pointing to homeostatic/compensatory mechanisms operating in the brain.	\N	\N
24412227	Insomnia is among the most prevalent and costly of all sleep-related disorders. To characterize the neural mechanisms underlying subjective dysfunction in insomnia, we examined brain activity in 17 female insomniacs and 17 female healthy controls using simultaneous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) while they were resting and while they were trying to fall asleep. In examining the dynamic regional activity within intrinsic brain networks, we found that, compared with controls, insomniacs had greater involvement of the anterior insula with salience networks, as well as insula BOLD correlation with EEG gamma frequency power during rest in insomniacs. This increased involvement of the anterior insula was associated with negative affect in insomniacs. Aberrant activation of the insula, which integrates temporal and bodily states, in arousal networks may underlie the misperception of sleep quality and subjective distress in insomnia.	\N	\N
24426818	To evaluate sleep modifications induced by chronic benzodiazepine (BDZ) abuse. Cohort study, comparison of sleep measures between BDZs abusers and controls. Drug Addiction Unit (Institute of Psychiatry) and Unit of Sleep Disorders (Institute of Neurology) of the Catholic University in Rome. Six outpatients affected by chronic BDZ abuse were enrolled, (4 men, 2 women, mean age 53.3 ± 14.8, range: 34-70 years); 55 healthy controls were also enrolled (23 men, 32 women, mean age 54.2 ± 13.0, range: 27-76 years). All patients underwent clinical evaluation, psychometric measures, ambulatory polysomnography, scoring of sleep macrostructure and microstructure (power spectral fast-frequency EEG arousal, cyclic alternating pattern [CAP]), and heart rate variability. BDZ abusers had relevant modification of sleep macrostructure and a marked reduction of fast-frequency EEG arousal in NREM (patients: 6.6 ± 3.7 events/h, controls 13.7 ± 4.9 events/h, U-test: 294, p = 0.002) and REM (patients: 8.4 ± 2.4 events/h, controls 13.3 ± 5.1 events/h, U-test: 264, p = 0.016), and of CAP rate (patients: 15.0 ± 8.6%, controls: 51.2% ± 12.1%, U-test: 325, p < 0.001). BDZ abusers have reduction of arousals associated with increased number of nocturnal awakenings and severe impairment of sleep architecture. The effect of chronic BDZ abuse on sleep may be described as a severe impairment of arousal dynamics; the result is the inability to modulate levels of vigilance.	\N	\N
24453310	In the current study we sought to dissociate the component processes of working memory (WM) (vigilance, encoding and maintenance) that may be differentially impaired in attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We collected electroencephalographic (EEG) data from 52 children with ADHD and 47 typically developing (TD) children, ages 7-14 years, while they performed a spatial Sternberg working memory task. We used independent component analysis and time-frequency analysis to identify midoccipital alpha (8-12 Hz) to evaluate encoding processes and frontal midline theta (4-7 Hz) to evaluate maintenance processes. We tested for effects of task difficulty and cue processing to evaluate vigilance. Children with ADHD showed attenuated alpha band event-related desynchronization (ERD) during encoding. This effect was more pronounced when task difficulty was low (consistent with impaired vigilance) and was predictive of memory task performance and symptom severity. Correlated with alpha ERD during encoding were alpha power increases during the maintenance period (relative to baseline), suggesting a compensatory effort. Consistent with this interpretation, midfrontal theta power increases during maintenance were stronger in ADHD and in high-load memory conditions. Furthermore, children with ADHD exhibited a maturational lag in development of posterior alpha power whereas age-related changes in frontal theta power deviated from the TD pattern. Last, subjects with ADHD showed age-independent attenuation of evoked responses to warning cues, suggesting low vigilance. Combined, these three EEG measures predicted diagnosis with 70% accuracy. We conclude that the interplay of impaired vigilance and encoding in ADHD may compromise maintenance and lead to impaired WM performance in this group.	\N	\N
24457211	General anesthesia is a neurophysiological state that consists of unconsciousness, amnesia, analgesia, and immobility along with maintenance of physiological stability. General anesthesia has been used in the United States for more than 167 years. Now, using systems neuroscience paradigms how anesthetics act in the brain and central nervous system to create the states of general anesthesia is being understood. Propofol is one of the most widely used and the most widely studied anesthetics. When administered for general anesthesia or sedation, the electroencephalogram (EEG) under propofol shows highly structured, rhythmic activity that is strongly associated with changes in the patient's level of arousal. These highly structured oscillations lend themselves readily to mathematical descriptions using dynamical systems models. We review recent model descriptions of the commonly observed EEG patterns associated with propofol: paradoxical excitation, strong frontal alpha oscillations, anteriorization and burst suppression. Our analysis suggests that propofol's actions at GABAergic networks in the cortex, thalamus and brainstem induce profound brain dynamics that are one of the likely mechanisms through which this anesthetic induces altered arousal states from sedation to unconsciousness. Because these dynamical effects are readily observed in the EEG, the mathematical descriptions of how propofol's EEG signatures relate to its mechanisms of action in neural circuits provide anesthesiologists with a neurophysiologically based approach to monitoring the brain states of patients receiving anesthesia care.	\N	\N
24505292	For the first time the dynamic repertoires and oscillatory types of local EEG states in 13 diverse conditions (examined over 9 studies) that covered healthy-normal, altered and pathological brain states were quantified within the same methodological and conceptual framework. EEG oscillatory states were assessed by the probability-classification analysis of short-term EEG spectral patterns. The results demonstrated that brain activity consists of a limited repertoire of local EEG states in any of the examined conditions. The size of the state repertoires was associated with changes in cognition and vigilance or neuropsychopathologic conditions. Additionally universal, optional and unique EEG states across 13 diverse conditions were observed. It was demonstrated also that EEG oscillations which constituted EEG states were characteristic for different groups of conditions in accordance to oscillations' functional significance. The results suggested that (a) there is a limit in the number of local states available to the cortex and many ways in which these local states can rearrange themselves and still produce the same global state and (b) EEG individuality is determined by varying proportions of universal, optional and unique oscillatory states. The results enriched our understanding about dynamic microstructure of EEG-signal.	\N	\N
24529045	The interpersonal environment is strongly linked to sleep. However, little is known about interpersonal distress and its association with sleep. We examined the associations among interpersonal distress, objective and subjective sleep in people with and without insomnia. Participants in this cross-sectional observational study included men and women with insomnia (n = 28) and good sleeper controls (n = 38). Interpersonal distress was measured with the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems. Sleep parameters included insomnia severity, self-reported presleep arousal, and sleep quality; and polysomnographically-assessed sleep latency (SL), total sleep time (TST), wake after sleep onset (WASO), percent delta (stage 3 + 4 NREM), percent REM, and EEG beta power. Hierarchical linear regression was used to assess the relationship between distress from interpersonal problems and sleep and the extent to which relationships differed among insomnia patients and controls. More interpersonal distress was associated with more self-reported arousal and higher percentage of REM. More interpersonal distress was associated with greater insomnia severity and more cognitive presleep arousal for individuals with insomnia, but not for controls. Contrary to expectations, interpersonal distress was associated with shorter sleep latency in the insomnia group. Results were attenuated, but still significant, after adjusting for depression symptoms. Distress from interpersonal problems is associated with greater self-reported arousal and higher percent REM. Individuals with insomnia who report more distress from interpersonal problems have greater insomnia severity and cognitive presleep arousal, perhaps due to rumination. These findings extend our knowledge of the association between interpersonal stressors and sleep. Assessment and consideration of interpersonal distress could provide a novel target for insomnia treatment.	\N	\N
24571111	The application of metabolic imaging and genetic analysis, and now the development of appropriate animal models, has generated critical insights into the pathogenesis of epileptic encephalopathies. In this article we present ideas intended to move from the lesions associated with epileptic encephalopathies toward understanding the effects of these lesions on the functioning of the brain, specifically of the cortex. We argue that the effects of focal lesions may be magnified through the interaction between cortical and subcortical structures, and that disruption of subcortical arousal centers that regulate cortex early in life may lead to alterations of intracortical synapses that affect a critical period of cognitive development. Impairment of interneuronal function globally through the action of a genetic lesion similarly causes widespread cortical dysfunction manifesting as increased delta slow waves on electroencephalography (EEG) and as developmental delay or arrest clinically. Finally, prolonged focal epileptic activity during sleep (as occurring in the syndrome of continuous spike-wave in slow sleep, or CSWSS) might interfere with local slow wave activity at the site of the epileptic focus, thereby impairing the neural processes and, possibly, the local plastic changes associated with learning and other cognitive functions. Seizures may certainly add to these pathologic processes, but they are likely not necessary for the development of the cognitive pathology. Nevertheless, although seizures may be either a consequence or symptom of the underlying lesion, their effective treatment can improve outcomes as both clinical and experimental studies may suggest. Understanding their substrates may lead to novel, effective treatments for all aspects of the epileptic encephalopathy phenotype.	\N	\N
24618591	Pupillary measures have been linked to arousal and attention as well as activity in the brainstem's locus coeruleus norepinephrine (LC-NE) system. Similarly, there is evidence that evoked EEG responses, such as the P3, might have LC-NE activity as their basis. Since it is not feasible to record electrophysiological data directly from the LC in humans due to its location in the brainstem, an open question has been whether pupillary measures and EEG variability can be linked in a meaningful way to shed light on the nature of the LC-NE role in attention and arousal. We used an auditory oddball task with a data-driven approach to learn task-relevant projections of the EEG, for windows of data spanning the entire trial. We investigated linear and quadratic relationships between the evoked EEG along these projections and both prestimulus (baseline) and poststimulus (evoked dilation) pupil diameter measurements. We found that baseline pupil diameter correlates with early (175-200 ms) and late (350-400 ms) EEG component variability, suggesting a linear relationship between baseline (tonic) LC-NE activity and evoked EEG. We found no relationships between evoked EEG and evoked pupil dilation, which is often associated with evoked (phasic) LC activity. After regressing out reaction time (RT), the correlation between EEG variability and baseline pupil diameter remained, suggesting that such correlation is not explainable by RT variability. We also investigated the relationship between these pupil measures and prestimulus EEG alpha activity, which has been reported as a marker of attentional state, and found a negative linear relationship with evoked pupil dilation. In summary, our results demonstrate significant relationships between prestimulus and poststimulus neural and pupillary measures, and they provide further evidence for tight coupling between attentional state and evoked neural activity and for the role of cortical and subcortical networks underlying the process of target detection.	\N	\N
24705497	We examined the processing of facial expressions of pain and anger in 8-month-old infants and adults by measuring event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and frontal EEG alpha asymmetry. The ERP results revealed that while adults showed a late positive potential (LPP) to emotional expressions that was enhanced to pain expressions, reflecting increased evaluation and emotional arousal to pain expressions, infants showed a negative component (Nc) to emotional expressions that was enhanced to angry expressions, reflecting increased allocation of attention to angry faces. Moreover, infants and adults showed opposite patterns in their frontal asymmetry responses to pain and anger, suggesting developmental differences in the motivational processes engendered by these facial expressions. These findings are discussed in the light of associated individual differences in infant temperament and adult dispositional empathy.	\N	\N
24899756	The visual appearance of cortical arousals varies considerably, from barely meeting scoring criteria to very intense arousals. Arousal from sleep is associated with an increase in heart rate (HR). Our objective was to quantify the intensity of arousals in an objective manner using the time and frequency characteristics of the electroencephalogram (EEG) and to determine whether HR response to arousal correlates with arousal intensity so determined. Post hoc analysis of 20 preexisting polysomnography (PSG) files. Research and Development Laboratory (YRT Limited). N/A. None. Arousals were scored using the American Academy of Sleep Medicine criteria. The EEG signals' time and frequency characteristics were determined using wavelet analysis. An automatic algorithm was developed to scale arousal intensity based on the change in wavelet features and data from a training set obtained from 271 arousals visually scaled between zero and nine (most intense). There were 2,695 arousals in 20 PSGs that were scaled. HR response (ΔHR) was defined as the difference between the highest HR in the interval [arousal-onset to (arousal-end +8 sec)] and the highest HR between 2 and 12 sec preceding arousal onset. There was a strong correlation between arousal scale and ΔHR within each subject (average r: 0.95 ± 0.04). The slope of the relationship varied among subjects (0.7-2.4 min(-1)/unit scale). Arousal intensity, quantified by wavelet transform, is strongly associated with arousal-related tachycardia, and the gain of the relationship varies among subjects. Quantifying arousal intensity in PSGs provides additional information that may be clinically relevant.	\N	\N
24930577	The extent and time course of competition between a specific fear cue and task-related stimuli in early human visual cortex was investigated using electrophysiology. Steady-state visual evoked potentials (ssVEPs) were evoked using random-dot kinematograms that consisted of rapidly flickering (8.57 Hz) dots moving randomly, superimposed upon emotional or neutral distractor pictures. Participants were asked to detect intervals of coherently moving dots, ignoring the distractor pictures that varied in hedonic content. Women reporting high or low levels of snake fear were recruited from a large sample of healthy college students, and snake pictures served as fear-relevant distractors. The time-varying amplitude of the ssVEP evoked by the motion detection task showed significant reduction when viewing emotionally arousing, compared to neutral, distractors, replicating previous studies. For high-fear participants, snake distractors elicited a sustained attenuation of task evoked ssVEP amplitude, greater than the attenuation prompted by other unpleasant arousing content. These findings support a hypothesis that fear cues prompt sustained hypervigilance rather than perceptual avoidance.	\N	\N
25024660	To examine the measurement differences in sleep and EEG arousal statistics between the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) recommended EEG montage (F4-M1, C4-M1, O2-M1) and acceptable EEG montage (Fz-Cz, C4-M1, Oz-Cz). Prospective, blinded, randomized comparison. Australian clinical sleep laboratory in a tertiary hospital. 50 consecutive patients undertaking polysomnography (PSG) for the clinical suspicion of sleep disordered breathing. N/A. Patient EEGs were recorded using both the AASM recommended and acceptable EEG montages during the PSG. Two scorers were used to examine the difference in PSG statistics using the two EEG montages. The scorers analyzed the 50 studies using the two EEG montages. Ten of the studies were scored twice for each montage by each scorer to calculate intra-scorer and inter-scorer agreement. No statistically significant differences were observed between the PSG statistics of the recommended and acceptable EEG montages. The recommended EEG montage had greater inter-scorer agreement but no difference in intra-scorer agreement. This study demonstrates that the two EEG montages endorsed by the AASM Manual produce similar sleep and EEG arousal statistics.	\N	\N
25051268	Based on evidence of parasympathetic activation, early studies defined meditation as a relaxation response. Later research attempted to categorize meditation as either involving focused or distributed attentional systems. Neither of these hypotheses received strong empirical support, and most of the studies investigated Theravada style meditative practices. In this study, we compared neurophysiological (EEG, EKG) and cognitive correlates of meditative practices that are thought to utilize either focused or distributed attention, from both Theravada and Vajrayana traditions. The results of Study 1 show that both focused (Shamatha) and distributed (Vipassana) attention meditations of the Theravada tradition produced enhanced parasympathetic activation indicative of a relaxation response. In contrast, both focused (Deity) and distributed (Rig-pa) meditations of the Vajrayana tradition produced sympathetic activation, indicative of arousal. Additionally, the results of Study 2 demonstrated an immediate dramatic increase in performance on cognitive tasks following only Vajrayana styles of meditation, indicating enhanced phasic alertness due to arousal. Furthermore, our EEG results showed qualitatively different patterns of activation between Theravada and Vajrayana meditations, albeit highly similar activity between meditations within the same tradition. In conclusion, consistent with Tibetan scriptures that described Shamatha and Vipassana techniques as those that calm and relax the mind, and Vajrayana techniques as those that require 'an awake quality' of the mind, we show that Theravada and Vajrayana meditations are based on different neurophysiological mechanisms, which give rise to either a relaxation or arousal response. Hence, it may be more appropriate to categorize meditations in terms of relaxation vs. arousal, whereas classification methods that rely on the focused vs. distributed attention dichotomy may need to be reexamined.	\N	\N
25061837	Electroencephalogram-based emotion recognition (EEG-ER) has received increasing attention in the fields of health care, affective computing, and brain-computer interface (BCI). However, satisfactory ER performance within a bi-dimensional and non-discrete emotional space using single-trial EEG data remains a challenging task. To address this issue, we propose a three-layer scheme for single-trial EEG-ER. In the first layer, a set of spectral powers of different EEG frequency bands are extracted from multi-channel single-trial EEG signals. In the second layer, the kernel Fisher's discriminant analysis method is applied to further extract features with better discrimination ability from the EEG spectral powers. The feature vector produced by layer 2 is called a kernel Fisher's emotion pattern (KFEP), and is sent into layer 3 for further classification where the proposed imbalanced quasiconformal kernel support vector machine (IQK-SVM) serves as the emotion classifier. The outputs of the three layer EEG-ER system include labels of emotional valence and arousal. Furthermore, to collect effective training and testing datasets for the current EEG-ER system, we also use an emotion-induction paradigm in which a set of pictures selected from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) are employed as emotion induction stimuli. The performance of the proposed three-layer solution is compared with that of other EEG spectral power-based features and emotion classifiers. Results on 10 healthy participants indicate that the proposed KFEP feature performs better than other spectral power features, and IQK-SVM outperforms traditional SVM in terms of the EEG-ER accuracy. Our findings also show that the proposed EEG-ER scheme achieves the highest classification accuracies of valence (82.68%) and arousal (84.79%) among all testing methods.	\N	\N
25348125	To develop and validate an algorithm that provides a continuous estimate of sleep depth from the electroencephalogram (EEG). Retrospective analysis of polysomnograms. Research laboratory. 114 patients who underwent clinical polysomnography in sleep centers at the University of Manitoba (n = 58) and the University of Calgary (n = 56). None. Power spectrum of EEG was determined in 3-second epochs and divided into delta, theta, alpha-sigma, and beta frequency bands. The range of powers in each band was divided into 10 aliquots. EEG patterns were assigned a 4-digit number that reflects the relative power in the 4 frequency ranges (10,000 possible patterns). Probability of each pattern occurring in 30-s epochs staged awake was determined, resulting in a continuous probability value from 0% to 100%. This was divided by 40 (% of epochs staged awake) producing the odds ratio product (ORP), with a range of 0-2.5. In validation testing, average ORP decreased progressively as EEG progressed from wakefulness (2.19 ± 0.29) to stage N3 (0.13 ± 0.05). ORP < 1.0 predicted sleep and ORP > 2.0 predicted wakefulness in > 95% of 30-s epochs. Epochs with intermediate ORP occurred in unstable sleep with a high arousal index (> 70/h) and were subject to much interrater scoring variability. There was an excellent correlation (r(2) = 0.98) between ORP in current 30-s epochs and the likelihood of arousal or awakening occurring in the next 30-s epoch. Our results support the use of the odds ratio product (ORP) as a continuous measure of sleep depth.	\N	\N
25424865	The locationist model of affect, which assumes separate brain structures devoted to particular discrete emotions, is currently being questioned as it has not received enough convincing experimental support. An alternative, constructionist approach suggests that our emotional states emerge from the interaction between brain functional networks, which are related to more general, continuous affective categories. In the study, we tested whether the three-dimensional model of affect based on valence, arousal, and dominance (VAD) can reflect brain activity in a more coherent way than the traditional locationist approach. Independent components of brain activity were derived from spontaneous EEG recordings and localized using the DIPFIT method. The correspondence between the spectral power of the revealed brain sources and a mood self-report quantified on the VAD space was analysed. Activation of four (out of nine) clusters of independent brain sources could be successfully explained by the specific combination of three VAD dimensions. The results support the constructionist theory of emotions.	\N	\N
25456277	High EEG frontal alpha power (FAP) is thought to represent a state of low arousal in the brain, which has been related in past research to antisocial behavior (ASB). We investigated a longitudinal sample of 900 twins in two assessments in late childhood and mid-adolescence to verify whether relationships exist between FAP and both aggressive and nonaggressive ASB. ASB was measured by the Child Behavioral Checklist, and FAP was calculated using connectivity analysis methods that used principal components analysis to derive power of the most dominant frontal activation. Significant positive predictive relationships emerged in males between childhood FAP and adolescent aggressive ASB using multilevel mixed modeling. No concurrent relationships were found. Using bivariate biometric twin modeling analysis, the relationship between childhood FAP and adolescent aggressive ASB in males was found to be entirely due to genetic factors, which were correlated r=0.22.	\N	\N
25581922	To analyze statistically the association between periodic leg movements during sleep (PLMS) and arousals, in order to eventually support or challenge the current scoring rules and to further understand their reciprocal influence. Sleep research center. Twenty untreated consecutive patients with restless legs syndrome (RLS) (13 women and 7 males, mean age 60.9 y). In each recording, we selected all PLMS/arousal pairs that met the following inclusion criteria: (a) PLMS events that were separated from another PLMS event (preceding or following) by at least 10 s of EMG inactivity; (b) arousal events separated from another arousal event (preceding or following) by at least 10 s of stable EEG baseline activity; (c) PLMS/arousal pairs were then selected among events identified according to the previous two criteria, when PLMS and arousals were separated (offset-to-onset) by no more than 10 s, regardless of which was first. We selected a mean of 46.1 (SD 25.55) PLMS/arousal pairs per subject; in these pairs, average PLMS duration was 3.2 s (0.65) and average arousal duration was 6.5 s (0.92). Within these event pairs, the great majority (on average 98.4%, SD 3.88) was separated by less than 0.5 s (i.e., between the end of one event and the onset of the other, regardless of which was first). Arousal onsets preceded PLMS onset in 41.2% of pairs, while the opposite was true for the remaining 58.8% of pairs. A significant correlation between PLMS duration and arousal duration was also found (r = 0.447, P < 0.000001). The results of this study support the current rule for the definition of the association between periodic leg movements during sleep (PLMS) and arousals. The tight time relationship between PLMS and arousals and their correlated durations seem to indicate that both events might be regulated by a complex mechanism, rather than being connected by a simple reciprocal cause/effect relationship.	\N	\N
25756280	To characterize parasomnia behaviors on arousal from NREM sleep in Parkinson's Disease (PD) and Multiple System Atrophy (MSA). From 30 patients with PD, Dementia with Lewy Bodies/Dementia associated with PD, or MSA undergoing nocturnal video-polysomnography for presumed dream enactment behavior, we were able to select 2 PD and 2 MSA patients featuring NREM Parasomnia Behviors (NPBs). We identified episodes during which the subjects seemed to enact dreams or presumed dream-like mentation (NPB arousals) versus episodes with physiological movements (no-NPB arousals). A time-frequency analysis (Morlet Wavelet Transform) of the scalp EEG signals around each NPB and no- NPB arousal onset was performed, and the amplitudes of the spectral frequencies were compared between NPB and no-NPB arousals. 19 NPBs were identified, 12 of which consisting of 'elementary' NPBs while 7 resembling confusional arousals. With quantitative EEG analysis, we found an amplitude reduction in the 5-6 Hz band 40 seconds before NPBs arousal as compared to no-NPB arousals at F4 and C4 derivations (p<0.01). Many PD and MSA patients feature various NREM sleep-related behaviors, with clinical and electrophysiological differences and similarities with arousal parasomnias in the general population. This study help bring to attention an overlooked phenomenon in neurodegenerative diseases.	\N	\N
25759762	Previous research has shown that both acute and chronic physical exercises can induce positive effects on brain function and this is associated with improvements in cognitive performance. However, the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of exercise on cognitive processing are not well understood. This study examined the effects of an acute bout of physical exercise as well as four weeks of exercise training on the individual resting state electroencephalographic (EEG) alpha peak frequency (iAPF), a neurophysiological marker of the individual's state of arousal and attention, in healthy young adults. The subjects completed a steady state exercise (SSE) protocol or an exhaustive exercise (EE) protocol, respectively, on two separate days. EEG activity was recorded for 2 min before exercise, immediately after exercise, and after 10 min of rest. All assessments were repeated following four weeks of exercise training to investigate whether an improvement in physical fitness modulates the resting state iAPF and/or the iAPF response to an acute bout of SSE and EE. The iAPF was significantly increased following EE (P = 0.012) but not following SSE. It is concluded that the iAPF is increased following intense exercise, indicating a higher level of arousal and preparedness for external input.	\N	\N
25883640	Recent findings suggest that specific neural correlates for the key elements of basic emotions do exist and can be identified by neuroimaging techniques. In this paper, electroencephalogram (EEG) is used to explore the markers for video-induced emotions. The problem is approached from a classifier perspective: the features that perform best in classifying person's valence and arousal while watching video clips with audiovisual emotional content are searched from a large feature set constructed from the EEG spectral powers of single channels as well as power differences between specific channel pairs. The feature selection is carried out using a sequential forward floating search method and is done separately for the classification of valence and arousal, both derived from the emotional keyword that the subject had chosen after seeing the clips. The proposed classifier-based approach reveals a clear association between the increased high-frequency (15-32 Hz) activity in the left temporal area and the clips described as "pleasant" in the valence and "medium arousal" in the arousal scale. These clips represent the emotional keywords amusement and joy/happiness. The finding suggests the occurrence of a specific neural activation during video-induced pleasant emotion and the possibility to detect this from the left temporal area using EEG.	\N	\N
20044890	The present study aimed to examine the influence of musical expertise on the metric and semantic aspects of speech processing. In two attentional conditions (metric and semantic tasks), musicians listened to short sentences ending in trisyllabic words that were semantically and/or metrically congruous or incongruous. Both ERPs and behavioral data were analyzed and the results were compared to previous nonmusicians' data. Regarding the processing of meter, results showed that musical expertise influenced the automatic detection of the syllable temporal structure (P200 effect), the integration of metric structure and its influence on word comprehension (N400 effect), as well as the reanalysis of metric violations (P600 and late positivities effects). By contrast, results showed that musical expertise did not influence the semantic level of processing. These results are discussed in terms of transfer of training effects from music to speech processing.	\N	\N
20117764	We present new evidence based on fMRI for the existence and neural architecture of an abstract supramodal language system that can integrate linguistic inputs arising from different modalities such that speech and print each activate a common code. Working with sentence material, our aim was to find out where the putative supramodal system is located and how it responds to comprehension challenges. To probe these questions we examined BOLD activity in experienced readers while they performed a semantic categorization task with matched written or spoken sentences that were either well-formed or contained anomalies of syntactic form or pragmatic content. On whole-brain scans, both anomalies increased net activity over non-anomalous baseline sentences, chiefly at left frontal and temporal regions of heteromodal cortex. The anomaly-sensitive sites correspond approximately to those that previous studies (Michael et al., 2001; Constable et al., 2004) have found to be sensitive to other differences in sentence complexity (object relative minus subject relative). Regions of interest (ROIs) were defined by peak response to anomaly averaging over modality conditions. Each anomaly-sensitive ROI showed the same pattern of response across sentence types in each modality. Voxel-by-voxel exploration over the whole brain based on a cosine similarity measure of common function confirmed the specificity of supramodal zones.	\N	\N
20146608	The neural responses to sensory consequences of a self-produced motor act are suppressed compared with those in response to a similar but externally generated stimulus. Previous studies in the somatosensory and auditory systems have shown that the motor-induced suppression of the sensory mechanisms is sensitive to delays between the motor act and the onset of the stimulus. The present study investigated time-dependent neural processing of auditory feedback in response to self-produced vocalizations. ERPs were recorded in response to normal and pitch-shifted voice auditory feedback during active vocalization and passive listening to the playback of the same vocalizations. The pitch-shifted stimulus was delivered to the subjects' auditory feedback after a randomly chosen time delay between the vocal onset and the stimulus presentation. Results showed that the neural responses to delayed feedback perturbations were significantly larger than those in response to the pitch-shifted stimulus occurring at vocal onset. Active vocalization was shown to enhance neural responsiveness to feedback alterations only for nonzero delays compared with passive listening to the playback. These findings indicated that the neural mechanisms of auditory feedback processing are sensitive to timing between the vocal motor commands and the incoming auditory feedback. Time-dependent neural processing of auditory feedback may be an important feature of the audio-vocal integration system that helps to improve the feedback-based monitoring and control of voice structure through vocal error detection and correction.	\N	\N
20347261	In this study, the subjective and objective voice measures of seven female physical education student teachers during a semester of student teaching were investigated. The participants completed the voice measures at three data collection time points: baseline, middle, and end of the semester. The voice measures included acoustic and aerodynamic data, perceptual rating scales of vocal quality and vocal fatigue, an end-of-semester questionnaire, and the Voice Handicap Index. Results demonstrated that the subjective and objective voice measures changed at the middle and the end of the semester as compared with those at baseline. The change in the voice measures may suggest that the vocal mechanism was adapting to the increased vocal demands of teaching physical education.	\N	\N
20411315	Noisy recordings of dialogue often serve as evidence in criminal proceedings. The present article explores the ability of two types of contextual information, currently present in the legal system, to bias subjective interpretations of such evidence. The present experiments demonstrate that the general context of the legal system and the presence of transcripts of the recorded speech are both able to bias interpretations of degraded & benign recordings into interpretable & incriminating. Furthermore we demonstrate a curse of knowledge whereby people become miscalibrated to the true quality of degraded recordings when provided transcripts. Current methods of dealing with auditory evidence are insufficient to mollify the effects of biasing information within the criminal justice system.	\N	\N
20433240	On the basis of results from behavioral studies that spatial attention improves the exclusion of external noise in the target region, we predicted that attending to a spatial region would reduce the impact of external noise on the BOLD response in corresponding cortical areas, seen as reduced BOLD responses in conditions with large amounts of external noise but relatively low signal, and increased dynamic range of the BOLD response to variations in signal contrast. We found that, in the presence of external noise, covert attention reduced the trial-by-trial BOLD response by 15.5-18.9% in low signal contrast conditions in V1. It also increased the BOLD dynamic range in V1, V2, V3, V3A/B, and V4 by a factor of at least three. Overall, covert attention reduced the impact of external noise by about 73-85% in these early visual areas. It also increased the contrast gain by a factor of 2.6-3.8.	\N	\N
20576373	Patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) may develop hearing and balance disorders as a result of the immune-mediated inner ear damage due to vasculitis or ototoxicity of drugs used in SLE treatment. The aim of the study was evaluation of the hearing organ disorders in patients with SLE with particular regard to their prevalence and relationship to duration and severity of disease. The severity was assessed from involvement of organs that resulted in poorer SLE outcome, i.e. kidneys and central nervous system (CNS), and from the presence of antibodies associated with unfavourable SLE prognosis. Thirty-five unselected, consecutive patients (33 women, two men, mean age 47.8 years) with SLE diagnosed in compliance to the international diagnostic criteria of the American Rheumatism Association (1982) were enrolled into the study. The control group consisted of 30 otologically healthy persons matched to the SLE group for age and sex. Case history was recorded for all patients from questionnaire data and laryngological examinations were performed, followed by pure-tone, speech and impedance audiometry and auditory brainstem response audiometry (ABR). In the anamnesis 71.4% of patients reported vertigo, 62.9% headaches, 40% tinnitus, 25.7% hyperacusis, 17.1% hearing loss and 2.9% ear fullness. It was found that SLE patients had a significantly poorer mean hearing thresholds than the control group for all frequencies, except for 500; 2000 and 4000 Hz. Longer ABR latency averages were observed in the group of SLE patients compared to control. Ten patients (28.6%) developed high-frequency and symmetric sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). Significant positive correlation between mean air-conduction hearing thresholds and SLE duration (r = 0.46, p < 0.001) was found. After taking age into consideration, hearing acuity in SLE was related to duration of disease in younger patients. Furthermore, no relation was seen between hearing level and severity of disease. Auditory system involvement ought to be considered as one of elements of the clinical picture of systemic lupus erythematosus while determination of its character, original or secondary, requires further research.	\N	\N
20599334	The children with difficulty in receiving sounds presented at rapid rates in speech sounds and language learning period, may have delay in speech sounds and language development due to hearing speech sounds not clearly. Auditory temporal processing (ATP) is the ability to perceive auditory signals of brief duration accurately when presented at rapid rates. ATP can be evaluated by the random gap detection test (RGDT), which detects a brief gap between two stimuli. In this study, we investigated performance of children with previous language delay (PLD), currently having disorders in more than one speech sounds, on random gap detection test (RGDT) and RGDT-expanded (RGDT-EXP) tests. 12 children (8 male, 4 female) with previous language delay (PLD) and complaint of expressing speech sounds distorted, were included into the study. They had applied language training for at least one-year period in the past and in the current time, their language development is normal. They expressed one or more speech sounds as distorted. The control group consisted of 10 normal hearing children with normal phonological development and language matched for age; and who had not PLD (5 male, 5 female). Children language levels were evaluated by Preschool Language Scale-4 test; or Clinical evaluation of language fundamentals, fourth edition (CELF-4) according to child's age. Speech sounds development was assessed by Speech Sound Development Test (SSDT). They were applied RGDT and/if necessary, RGDT-EXP. Each child responded whether he/she heard one or two tones. Their responses were taken as verbally and/or hold up one finger or two fingers. In the second test, they were applied speech discrimination test in quiet environment and in noise. Gap detection thresholds (GDTs) were detected at 500-4000 Hz; and Composite GDTs (CGDTs) were found for the study and control groups. GDT/CGDT > 20 ms was considered as abnormal for temporal processing disorder. In the study group with PLD, mean of the GDTs were all over the normal limits; and in control group, mean of GDTs were all in normal limits. The difference between the mean GDTs of the study group were significantly higher than the control groups at all frequencies of 500-4000 Hz. In PLD group, CGDT (103.53 ± 11.63 ms) was significantly higher than that of the control group, (10.35 ± 0.65 ms) (p=0.021). The children with PLD have difficulties in perception of speech sounds at a certain rate, even they have not language learning difficulties. Therefore, difficulty in distinguishing of speech sounds may cause especially receptive language development delay. We believe that perception of the speech sounds and language in a certain speed; and temporally degraded speech programmes should be incorporated into the training programme and may help to prevent delays.	\N	\N
20617885	The present study investigated the effects of auditory selective attention on the processing of syntactic information in music and speech using event-related potentials. Spoken sentences or musical chord sequences were either presented in isolation, or simultaneously. When presented simultaneously, participants had to focus their attention either on speech, or on music. Final words of sentences and final harmonies of chord sequences were syntactically either correct or incorrect. Irregular chords elicited an early right anterior negativity (ERAN), whose amplitude was decreased when music was simultaneously presented with speech, compared to when only music was presented. However, the amplitude of the ERAN-like waveform elicited when music was ignored did not differ from the conditions in which participants attended the chord sequences. Irregular sentences elicited an early left anterior negativity (ELAN), regardless of whether speech was presented in isolation, was attended, or was to be ignored. These findings suggest that the neural mechanisms underlying the processing of syntactic structure of music and speech operate partially automatically, and, in the case of music, are influenced by different attentional conditions. Moreover, the ERAN was slightly reduced when irregular sentences were presented, but only when music was ignored. Therefore, these findings provide no clear support for an interaction of neural resources for syntactic processing already at these early stages.	\N	\N
20642737	Acoustic and visual interceptive actions were tested in this research by comparing the performance of blind, blind-folded, and sighted individuals. An indirect interception method was employed in which the participant had to roll an intercepting ball towards a moving target on a perpendicular track. The interception task used conditions that varied the speed, rolling distance, and target size/intensity. While performance was highly consistent and accurate for visual participants in this research, the blind and blind-folded participants demonstrated much more performance variability in response to changes in speed and distance. Manipulation of target size and intensity did not affect judgments, however performance tended to be more accurate at shorter distances and with faster target speeds. Results from this research are discussed in terms of their implications for tau in acoustic interception, and the use of spatial and temporal cues for guiding interceptive actions.	\N	\N
20644955	Two experiments investigated the effects of interval duration ratio on perception of local timing perturbations, accuracy of rhythm production, and phase correction in musicians listening to or tapping in synchrony with cyclically repeated auditory two-interval rhythms. Ratios ranged from simple (1:2) to complex (7:11, 5:13), and from small (5:13 = 0.38) to large (6:7 = 0.86). Rhythm production and perception exhibited similar ratio-dependent biases: rhythms with small ratios were produced with increased ratios, and timing perturbations in these rhythms tended to be harder to detect when they locally increased the ratio than when they reduced it. The opposite held for rhythms with large ratios. This demonstrates a close relation between rhythm perception and production. Unexpectedly, however, the neutral "attractor" was not the simplest ratio (1:2 = 0.50) but a complex ratio near 4:7 (= 0.57). Phase correction in response to perturbations was generally rapid and did not show the ratio-dependent biases observed in rhythm perception and production. Thus, phase correction operates efficiently and autonomously even in synchronization with rhythms exhibiting complex interval ratios.	\N	\N
20663254	Patients with schizophrenia (SZ) characteristically exhibit supranormal levels of cortical activity to self-induced sensory stimuli, ostensibly because of abnormalities in the neural signals (corollary discharges, CDs) normatively involved in suppressing the sensory consequences of self-generated actions. The nature of these abnormalities is unknown. This study investigated whether SZ patients experience CDs that are abnormally delayed in their arrival at the sensory cortex. Twenty-one patients with SZ and 25 matched control participants underwent electroencephalography (EEG). Participants' level of cortical suppression was calculated as the amplitude of the N1 component evoked by a button press-elicited auditory stimulus, subtracted from the N1 amplitude evoked by the same stimulus presented passively. In the three experimental conditions, the auditory stimulus was delivered 0, 50 or 100 ms subsequent to the button-press. Fifteen SZ patients and 17 healthy controls (HCs) also underwent diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), and the fractional anisotropy (FA) of participants' arcuate fasciculus was used to predict their level of cortical suppression in the three conditions. While the SZ patients exhibited subnormal N1 suppression to undelayed, self-generated auditory stimuli, these deficits were eliminated by imposing a 50-ms, but not a 100-ms, delay between the button-press and the evoked stimulus. Furthermore, the extent to which the 50-ms delay normalized a patient's level of N1 suppression was linearly related to the FA of their arcuate fasciculus. These data suggest that SZ patients experience temporally delayed CDs to self-generated auditory stimuli, putatively because of structural damage to the white-matter (WM) fasciculus connecting the sites of discharge initiation and destination.	\N	\N
20665720	The effect of stimulus modulation rate on the underlying neural activity in human auditory cortex is not clear. Human studies (using both invasive and noninvasive techniques) have demonstrated that at the population level, auditory cortex follows stimulus envelope. Here we examined the effect of stimulus modulation rate by using a rare opportunity to record both spiking activity and local field potentials (LFP) in auditory cortex of patients during repeated presentations of an audio-visual movie clip presented at normal, double, and quadruple speeds. Mean firing rate during evoked activity remained the same across speeds and the temporal response profile of firing rate modulations at increased stimulus speeds was a linearly scaled version of the response during slower speeds. Additionally, stimulus induced power modulation of local field potentials in the high gamma band (64-128 Hz) exhibited similar temporal scaling as the neuronal firing rate modulations. Our data confirm and extend previous studies in humans and anesthetized animals, supporting a model in which both firing rate, and high-gamma LFP power modulations in auditory cortex follow the temporal envelope of the stimulus across different modulation rates.	\N	\N
20666594	Spoken word recognition is achieved via competition between activated lexical candidates that match the incoming speech input. The competition is modulated by prelexical cues that are important for segmenting the auditory speech stream into linguistic units. One such prelexical cue that listeners rely on in spoken word recognition is phonotactics. Phonotactics defines possible combinations of phonemes within syllables or words in a given language. The present study aimed at investigating both temporal and topographical aspects of the neuronal correlates of phonotactic processing by simultaneously applying ERPs and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Pseudowords, either phonotactically legal or illegal with respect to the participants' native language, were acoustically presented to passively listening adult native German speakers. ERPs showed a larger N400 effect for phonotactically legal compared to illegal pseudowords, suggesting stronger lexical activation mechanisms in phonotactically legal material. fNIRS revealed a left hemispheric network including fronto-temporal regions with greater response to phonotactically legal pseudowords than to illegal pseudowords. This confirms earlier hypotheses on a left hemispheric dominance of phonotactic processing most likely due to the fact that phonotactics is related to phonological processing and represents a segmental feature of language comprehension. These segmental linguistic properties of a stimulus are predominantly processed in the left hemisphere. Thus, our study provides first insights into temporal and topographical characteristics of phonotactic processing mechanisms in a passive listening task. Differential brain responses between known and unknown phonotactic rules thus supply evidence for an implicit use of phonotactic cues to guide lexical activation mechanisms.	\N	\N
20801079	Tinnitus can be considered an auditory phantom percept, in which patients hear an internal sound in the absence of any external sound source, mimicking tonal memory. Tinnitus however can be perceived exclusively uni- or bilaterally. The neurophysiological differences were investigated between unilateral and bilateral tinnitus using LORETA source localized resting state EEG recordings. The difference between unilateral and bilateral tinnitus is reflected by high frequency activity (beta and gamma) in the superior prefrontal gurus, right parahippocampus, right angular gyrus and right auditory cortex. Unilateral tinnitus is characterized by contralateral beta2 in the superior prefrontal gyrus in comparison to bilateral tinnitus, but gamma in comparison to non-tinnitus subjects. Bilateral tinnitus has delta activity in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex in comparison to unilateral tinnitus, and bilateral beta1 in comparison to non-tinnitus subjects. Bilateral tinnitus is also characterized by bilateral frontopolar beta1 activity. Unilateral and bilateral tinnitus can be differentiated based on their resting state oscillation patterns: beta3 and gamma-band activity in the superior premotor cortex, parahippocampal area and angular gyrus seem to form the core of a spatial localization network involved in tinnitus. These differences should be taken into account when evaluating functional neuroimaging data relating to tinnitus.	\N	\N
20808225	The purpose of this study was to examine speech recognition through hearing aids for seven telephone listening conditions. Speech recognition scores were measured for 20 participants in six wireless routing transmission conditions and one acoustic telephone condition. In the wireless conditions, the speech signal was delivered to both ears simultaneously (bilateral speech) or to one ear (unilateral speech). The effect of changing the noise level in the nontest ear during unilateral conditions was also examined. Participants were fitted with hearing aids using both nonoccluding and occluding dome ear tips. Participants were seated in a room with background noise present and speech was transmitted to the participants without additional noise. There was no effect of changing the noise level in the nontest ear and no difference between unilateral wireless routing and acoustic telephone listening. For wireless transmission, bilateral presentation resulted in significantly better speech recognition than unilateral presentation. Bilateral wireless conditions allowed for significantly better recognition than the acoustic telephone condition for participants fitted with occluding ear tips only. Routing the signal to both hearing aids resulted in significantly better speech recognition than unilateral signal routing. Wireless signal routing was shown to be beneficial compared with acoustic telephone listening and in some conditions resulted in the best performance of all of the listening conditions evaluated. However, this advantage was only evident when the signal was routed to both ears and when hearing aid wearers were fitted with occluding domes. Therefore, it is expected that the benefits of this new wireless streaming technology over existing telephone coupling methods will be most evident clinically in hearing aid wearers who require more limited venting than is typically used in open canal fittings.	\N	\N
20812786	In contrast to visual object processing, relatively little is known about how the human brain processes everyday real-world sounds, transforming highly complex acoustic signals into representations of meaningful events or auditory objects. We recently reported a fourfold cortical dissociation for representing action (nonvocalization) sounds correctly categorized as having been produced by human, animal, mechanical, or environmental sources. However, it was unclear how consistent those network representations were across individuals, given potential differences between each participant's degree of familiarity with the studied sounds. Moreover, it was unclear what, if any, auditory perceptual attributes might further distinguish the four conceptual sound-source categories, potentially revealing what might drive the cortical network organization for representing acoustic knowledge. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to test participants before and after extensive listening experience with action sounds, and tested for cortices that might be sensitive to each of three different high-level perceptual attributes relating to how a listener associates or interacts with the sound source. These included the sound's perceived concreteness, effectuality (ability to be affected by the listener), and spatial scale. Despite some variation of networks for environmental sounds, our results verified the stability of a fourfold dissociation of category-specific networks for real-world action sounds both before and after familiarity training. Additionally, we identified cortical regions parametrically modulated by each of the three high-level perceptual sound attributes. We propose that these attributes contribute to the network-level encoding of category-specific acoustic knowledge representations.	\N	\N
20844257	It is important to ensure that hearing aid fitting strategies for infants take into account the infant's developing speech perception system. As a way of exploring this issue, this study examined how 6- and 9-month-olds with normal hearing perceive native-language speech in which the natural spectral shape was altered to emphasize either high-frequency (positive spectral tilt) or low-frequency (negative spectral tilt) information. Discrimination was tested using a visual habituation procedure. Forty-eight 6-month-olds and forty-eight 9-month-olds were presented with a fricative contrast, /f/-/s/, in 1 of 3 conditions: (a) as unmodified speech; (b) with a -6 dB/octave tilt; or (c) with a +6 dB/octave tilt. Six-month-olds showed evidence of discriminating /f/-/s/ in all 3 conditions, but 9-month-olds showed such evidence only in the unmodified condition. The findings suggest that the perceptual reorganization that emerges for consonants at the end of the first year affects 9-month-olds' discrimination of native speech sounds. Perceptual reorganization is usually indexed by a decline in the ability to discriminate nonnative speech sounds. In this study, 6-month-olds demonstrated an acoustic-based sensitivity to both modified and unmodified native speech sounds, but 9-month-olds were most sensitive to the unmodified speech sounds that adhered to the native spectral profile.	\N	\N
20864070	Auditory and visual processes demonstrably enhance each other based on spatial and temporal coincidence. Our recent results on visual search have shown that auditory signals also enhance visual salience of specific objects based on multimodal experience. For example, we tend to see an object (e.g., a cat) and simultaneously hear its characteristic sound (e.g., "meow"), to name an object when we see it, and to vocalize a word when we read it, but we do not tend to see a word (e.g., cat) and simultaneously hear the characteristic sound (e.g., "meow") of the named object. If auditory-visual enhancements occur based on this pattern of experiential associations, playing a characteristic sound (e.g., "meow") should facilitate visual search for the corresponding object (e.g., an image of a cat), hearing a name should facilitate visual search for both the corresponding object and corresponding word, but playing a characteristic sound should not facilitate visual search for the name of the corresponding object. Our present and prior results together confirmed these experiential association predictions. We also recently showed that the underlying object-based auditory-visual interactions occur rapidly (within 220ms) and guide initial saccades towards target objects. If object-based auditory-visual enhancements are automatic and persistent, an interesting application would be to use characteristic sounds to facilitate visual search when targets are rare, such as during baggage screening. Our participants searched for a gun among other objects when a gun was presented on only 10% of the trials. The search time was speeded when a gun sound was played on every trial (primarily on gun-absent trials); importantly, playing gun sounds facilitated both gun-present and gun-absent responses, suggesting that object-based auditory-visual enhancements persistently increase the detectability of guns rather than simply biasing gun-present responses. Thus, object-based auditory-visual interactions that derive from experiential associations rapidly and persistently increase visual salience of corresponding objects.	\N	\N
20883507	The prior entry hypothesis of attention holds that attended stimuli are perceived earlier than unattended stimuli. Whereas this speeding of perceptual processing has been repeatedly demonstrated for spatial attention, it has not been reported within the temporal domain. To fill this gap, we tested whether temporal attention accelerates auditory perceptual processing by employing event-related potentials as on-line indicators of perceptual processing. In a modified oddball paradigm, we presented a single tone in each trial, either a frequent standard tone or an infrequent deviant or target tone. Temporal attention to tones was manipulated via constant foreperiods. We observed that the latency of the N2, an event-related potential reflecting perceptual processing, is shortened by temporal attention. This result provides first evidence for the idea that temporal attention accelerates perceptual processing as suggested by the prior entry hypothesis.	\N	\N
20890206	Perception-in-noise deficits have been demonstrated across many populations and listening conditions. Many factors contribute to successful perception of auditory stimuli in noise, including neural encoding in the central auditory system. Physiological measures such as cortical auditory-evoked potentials (CAEPs) can provide a view of neural encoding at the level of the cortex that may inform our understanding of listeners' abilities to perceive signals in the presence of background noise. To understand signal-in-noise neural encoding better, we set out to determine the effect of signal type, noise type, and evoking paradigm on the P1-N1-P2 complex. Tones and speech stimuli were presented to nine individuals in quiet and in three background noise types: continuous speech spectrum noise, interrupted speech spectrum noise, and four-talker babble at a signal-to-noise ratio of -3 dB. In separate sessions, CAEPs were evoked by a passive homogenous paradigm (single repeating stimulus) and an active oddball paradigm. The results for the N1 component indicated significant effects of signal type, noise type, and evoking paradigm. Although components P1 and P2 also had significant main effects of these variables, only P2 demonstrated significant interactions among these variables. Signal type, noise type, and evoking paradigm all must be carefully considered when interpreting signal-in-noise evoked potentials. Furthermore, these data confirm the possible usefulness of CAEPs as an aid to understand perception-in-noise deficits.	\N	\N
20932562	Functional neuroimaging studies of syntactic processing have been interpreted as identifying the neural locations of parsing and interpretive operations. However, current behavioral studies of sentence processing indicate that many operations occur simultaneously with parsing and interpretation. In this review, we point to issues that arise in discriminating the effects of these concurrent processes from those of the parser/interpreter in neural measures and to approaches that may help resolve them.	\N	\N
20934172	This paper presents the results of three studies of intelligibility and quality of speech recorded through a bone conduction microphone (BCM). All speech signals were captured and recorded using a Temco HG-17 BCM. Twelve locations on or close to the skull were selected for the BCM placement. In the first study, listeners evaluated the intelligibility and quality of the bone conducted speech signals presented through traditional earphones. Listeners in the second study evaluated the intelligibility and quality of signals presented through a loudspeaker. In the third study the signals were reproduced through a bone conduction headset; however, signal evaluation was limited to speech intelligibility only. In all three studies, the Forehead and Temple BCM locations yielded the highest intelligibility and quality rating scores. The Collarbone location produced the least intelligible and lowest quality signals across all tested BCM locations.	\N	\N
20950509	To assess the hearing changes associated with sacrificing an intact ossicular chain during cholesteatoma surgery. We reviewed the operation notes of surgical procedures performed by the senior author between October 2000 and April 2006. Thirty-three cases were identified in which cholesteatoma surgery had been performed in the presence of a mobile, intact ossicular chain. One set of case notes was missing; therefore, 32 cases were included in the analysis. The ossicular chain was preserved in 17 cases (14 males and three females) and sacrificed in 15 (eight males and seven females). At the first post-operative assessment, a median air-bone gap deterioration of 3.3 dB was seen in patients in whom the ossicular chain had been sacrificed, while a median air-bone gap improvement of 3.3 dB was seen in those in whom the chain had been preserved. However, multivariable logistic regression analysis suggested that this difference in hearing outcomes was due to pre-operative hearing status, and that preservation of the ossicular chain did not lead to a better outcome. In cholesteatoma surgery, there is at most a marginal benefit in preserving the ossicular chain. In the current study, the better hearing outcomes associated with preservation of the ossicular chain were accounted for by patients' better pre-operative hearing status. This study did not demonstrate a difference in residual disease rate, but was underpowered to do so.	\N	\N
20961518	Researchers often conduct visual world studies to investigate how listeners integrate linguistic information with prior context. Such studies are likely to generate anticipatory baseline effects (ABEs), differences in listeners' expectations about what a speaker might mention that exist before a critical speech stimulus is presented. ABEs show that listeners have attended to and accessed prior contextual information in time to influence the processing of the critical speech stimulus. However, further evidence is required to show that the information actually did influence subsequent processing. ABEs can compromise the validity of inferences about information integration if they are not appropriately controlled. We discuss four solutions: statistical estimation, experimental control, elimination of "on-target" trials, and neutral gaze. An experiment compares the performance of these solutions, and suggests that the elimination of on-target trials introduces bias in the direction of ABEs, due to the statistical phenomenon of regression toward the mean. We conclude that statistical estimation, possibly coupled with experimental control, offers the most valid and least biased solution.	\N	\N
21060141	To investigate the effects of increased syntactic complexity and utterance length demands on speech production and comprehension in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) using behavioral and physiological measures. Speech response latency, interarticulatory coordinative consistency, accuracy of speech production, and response latency and accuracy on a receptive language task were analyzed in 16 individuals with PD and 16 matched control participants. Individuals with PD had higher oral motor coordination variability, took a longer time to initiate speech, and made more errors on the speaking task compared with the control group. They also received lower scores on the 2 complex conditions of the receptive language task. Increased length and syntactic complexity negatively affected performance in both groups of speakers. These findings provide a novel window into the speech deficits associated with PD by examining performance on longer, sentence-level utterances in contrast to earlier investigations of single-word or nonword productions. Speech motor control processes and language comprehension were adversely affected in the majority of our participants with mild to moderate PD compared to the control group. Finally, increased syntactic complexity and sentence length affected both the healthy aging and PD groups' speech production performance at the behavioral and kinematic levels.	\N	\N
21067852	Integration of simultaneous auditory and visual information about an event can enhance our ability to detect that event. This is particularly evident in the perception of speech, where the articulatory gestures of the speaker's lips and face can significantly improve the listener's detection and identification of the message, especially when that message is presented in a noisy background. Speech is a particularly important example of multisensory integration because of its behavioural relevance to humans and also because brain regions have been identified that appear to be specifically tuned for auditory speech and lip gestures. Previous research has suggested that speech stimuli may have an advantage over other types of auditory stimuli in terms of audio-visual integration. Here, we used a modified adaptive psychophysical staircase approach to compare the influence of congruent visual stimuli (brief movie clips) on the detection of noise-masked auditory speech and non-speech stimuli. We found that congruent visual stimuli significantly improved detection of an auditory stimulus relative to incongruent visual stimuli. This effect, however, was equally apparent for speech and non-speech stimuli. The findings suggest that speech stimuli are not specifically advantaged by audio-visual integration for detection at threshold when compared with other naturalistic sounds.	\N	\N
21073461	Impaired cognitive control has been implicated as an important developmental pathway to attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Cognitive control is crucial to suppress interference resulting from conflicting information and can be measured by Stroop-like tasks. This study was conducted to gain insight into conflict processing in children with ADHD. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in an auditory Stroop task. Twenty-four children with ADHD were compared with 24 control children (aged 8-12 years). No deficit in interference control was found on the auditory Stroop task in children with ADHD. Children with ADHD responded more slowly, less accurately and more variably compared to controls. No differences between the groups occurred in the early conflict-related ERPs. However, the difference between the congruent and the incongruent condition in the 450-550 ms time window was absent in the ADHD group compared to controls. In addition, the conflict sustained potential was found frontally in the ADHD group but parietally in the control group. These ERP findings suggest that children with ADHD evaluate conflict to a lesser extent and differ in the way their brains select appropriate responses during conflict compared with controls.	\N	\N
21144500	Phonetic variation has been considered a barrier that listeners must overcome in speech perception, but has been proved beneficial in category learning. In this paper, I show that listeners use within-speaker variation to accommodate gross categorical variation. Within the perceptual learning paradigm, listeners are exposed to p-initial words in English produced by a native speaker of French. Critically, listeners are trained on these words with either invariant or highly-variable VOTs. While a gross boundary shift is made for participants exposed to the variable VOTs, no such shift is observed after exposure to the invariant stimuli. These data suggest that increasing variation improves the mapping of perceptually mismatched stimuli.	\N	\N
21150681	To evaluate the results of late cochlear implantation in prelingually deaf patients with significant residual hearing loss and to evaluate patient factors relevant to postoperative auditory outcomes in this patient group. Analysis of results of cochlear implantation using postoperative speech perception test scores per each condition. Tertiary referral center. Thirty-two subjects with severe to profound hearing loss that developed before the age of 4. Subjects were implanted at a mean age of 24.8 years (range, 16-44) with Nucleus CI24 (n = 18, 56%), Clarion HiRes 90K (n = 11, 34%), and Medel PULSA (n = 3, 10%) device. Details of etiology, duration of deafness, hearing aid history, hearing thresholds before operation, communication mode, and educational environment were investigated. Speech perception tests were performed preoperatively and 12 months after the operation. Postoperative speech perception test scores between different options within patient group. : The results showed significant improvement in open set speech perception (sentence) scores after the implantation (mean scores from 7.0 to 46.7, p < 0.05). Preoperative hearing of better ear and preoperative speech perception scores correlated with postoperative performances (r = -0.70 and r = 0.46, respectively, p < 0.05). Education and communication mode were also closely related to postoperative performances. In the group with poorer performances, preoperative hearing thresholds were significantly worse than those with better performances, and a larger portion of those patients attended special schools and used sign language. We found that residual auditory capacity in the better ear is an important factor in predicting outcomes after cochlear implantation in patients with prelingual hearing loss.	\N	\N
21161816	The present study focuses on language laterality as measured with dichotic listening (DL) to consonant-vowel syllables (CV syllables) in refugees with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is associated with impaired callosal transfer and with increased right hemisphere activation and impaired executive skills that could influence the processing of dichotic stimuli. A total of 22 participants with PTSD were compared to 23 participants without a diagnosis of PTSD. All participants had similar experiences of acts of war and political violence. They were tested with dichotic listening to CV syllables with free recall and directed attention following the forced attention paradigm. The PTSD group showed increased right ear advantage due to impaired left ear reporting and also smaller attention modulation compared to the control group, and the performance shared variance with self-report measures of arousal and intrusive memories. The results are discussed towards a model of impaired functionality of the frontal lobe and right hemisphere versus impaired callosal transfer, both yielding predictions for the processing of the left ear input and the ability to attention modulation of the performance.	\N	\N
21167923	Psychoacoustic studies have shown that complex tones containing resolved harmonics evoke stronger pitches than complex tones with only unresolved harmonics. Also, unresolved harmonics presented in alternating sine and cosine (ALT) phase produce a doubling of pitch. We examine here whether the temporal pattern of phase-locked neural activity reflected in the scalp recorded human frequency following response (FFR) preserves information relevant to pitch strength, and to the doubling of pitch for ALT stimuli. Results revealed stronger neural periodicity strength for resolved stimuli, although the effect of resolvability was weak compared to the effect observed behaviorally; autocorrelation functions and FFR spectra suggest a different pattern of phase-locked neural activity for ALT stimuli with resolved and unresolved harmonics consistent with the doubling of pitch observed in our behavioral estimates; and the temporal pattern of neural activity underlying pitch encoding appears to be similar at the auditory nerve (auditory nerve model response) and the rostral brainstem level (FFR). These findings suggest that the phase-locked neural activity reflected in the scalp recorded FFR preserves neural information relevant to pitch that could serve as an electrophysiological correlate of the behavioral pitch measure. The scalp recorded FFR may provide for a non-invasive analytic tool to evaluate neural encoding of complex sounds in humans.	\N	\N
21178803	To determine the response to treatment of pediatric patients diagnosed with autoimmune inner ear disease. Seven children who presented with sensorineural hearing loss and were diagnosed with autoimmune inner ear disease. Diagnosis through blood testing. Treatment with steroids and/or cytotoxic medication. Improvement in pure-tone average and speech discrimination scores on audiometric testing. Six of the 7 children (85.7%) improved with treatment, and the remaining patient had no measurable progression of disease. Children with autoimmune inner ear disease seem to benefit from treatment with steroids and/or cytotoxic medication. Although such medications must be used with caution in the pediatric population, they should not be withheld simply because of young age.	\N	\N
21196054	Humans and other animals can attend to one of multiple sounds and follow it selectively over time. The neural underpinnings of this perceptual feat remain mysterious. Some studies have concluded that sounds are heard as separate streams when they activate well-separated populations of central auditory neurons, and that this process is largely pre-attentive. Here, we argue instead that stream formation depends primarily on temporal coherence between responses that encode various features of a sound source. Furthermore, we postulate that only when attention is directed towards a particular feature (e.g. pitch) do all other temporally coherent features of that source (e.g. timbre and location) become bound together as a stream that is segregated from the incoherent features of other sources.	\N	\N
21198980	Important to Western tonal music is the relationship between pitches both within and between musical chords; melody and harmony are generated by combining pitches selected from the fixed hierarchical scales of music. It is of critical importance that musicians have the ability to detect and discriminate minute deviations in pitch in order to remain in tune with other members of their ensemble. Event-related potentials indicate that cortical mechanisms responsible for detecting mistuning and violations in pitch are more sensitive and accurate in musicians as compared with non-musicians. The aim of the present study was to address whether this superiority is also present at a subcortical stage of pitch processing. Brainstem frequency-following responses were recorded from musicians and non-musicians in response to tuned (i.e. major and minor) and detuned (± 4% difference in frequency) chordal arpeggios differing only in the pitch of their third. Results showed that musicians had faster neural synchronization and stronger brainstem encoding for defining characteristics of musical sequences regardless of whether they were in or out of tune. In contrast, non-musicians had relatively strong representation for major/minor chords but showed diminished responses for detuned chords. The close correspondence between the magnitude of brainstem responses and performance on two behavioral pitch discrimination tasks supports the idea that musicians' enhanced detection of chordal mistuning may be rooted at pre-attentive, sensory stages of processing. Findings suggest that perceptually salient aspects of musical pitch are not only represented at subcortical levels but that these representations are also enhanced by musical experience.	\N	\N
21211833	Metaphonological tasks, such as rhyme judgment, have been the primary tool for the investigation of the effects of orthographic knowledge on spoken language. However, it has been recently argued that the orthography effect in rhyme judgment does not reflect the automatic activation of orthographic codes but rather stems from sophisticated response strategies. Such a claim stands in sharp contrast with recent findings using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in lexical and semantic tasks, which were taken to suggest that orthographic information occurs early enough to affect the core process of lexical access. Here, we show that the electrophysiological signature of the orthography effect in rhyme judgment is indeed different from the one obtained in online lexical or semantic tasks. That is, we did not find the orthography effect in the 300-350 ms time window which has previously been shown to process lexical information in the lexico-semantic tasks, but the effect appeared within the 175-250 ms and the 375-750 ms time-windows which we interpreted to reflect segmentation and decisional process, respectively. We conclude that the interactions between phonology and orthography are task-specific. Metaphonological tasks appear of limited use for studying the core processes and interactions that underlie lexical access.	\N	\N
21216396	We show that comprehenders' expectations about upcoming discourse coherence relations influence the resolution of local structural ambiguity. We employ cases in which two clauses share both a syntactic relationship and a discourse relationship, and hence in which syntactic and discourse processing might be expected to interact. An off-line sentence-completion study and an on-line self-paced reading study examined readers' expectations for high/low relative-clause attachments following implicit-causality and non-implicit causality verbs (John detests/babysits the children of the musician who…). In the off-line study, the widely reported low-attachment preference for English is observed in the non-implicit causality condition, but this preference gives way to more high attachments in the implicit-causality condition in cases in which (i) the verb's causally implicated referent occupies the high-attachment position and (ii) the relative clause provides an explanation for the event described by the matrix clause (e.g., …who are arrogant and rude). In the on-line study, a similar preference for high attachment emerges in the implicit-causality context-crucially, before the occurrence of any linguistic evidence that the RC does in fact provide an explanation-whereas the low-attachment preference is consistent elsewhere. These findings constitute the first demonstration that expectations about ensuing discourse coherence relationships can elicit full reversals in syntactic attachment preferences, and that these discourse-level expectations can affect on-line disambiguation as rapidly as lexical and morphosyntactic cues.	\N	\N
21236276	Categorical perception (CP) is a mechanism whereby non-identical stimuli that have the same underlying meaning become invariantly represented in the brain. Through behavioral identification and discrimination tasks, CP has been demonstrated to occur broadly across the auditory modality, including in perception of speech (e.g. phonemes) and music (e.g. chords) stimuli. Several functional imaging studies have linked CP of speech with activity in multiple regions of the left superior temporal sulcus (STS). As language processing is generally left-hemisphere dominant and, conversely, fine-grained spectral processing shows a right hemispheric bias, we hypothesized that CP of musical stimuli would be associated with right STS activity. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to test healthy, musically-trained volunteers as they (a) underwent a musical chord adaptation/habituation paradigm and (b) performed an active discrimination task on within- and between-category chord pairs, as well as an acoustically-matched, more continuously-perceived orthogonal sound set. As predicted, greater right STS activity was linked to categorical processing in both experimental paradigms. The results suggest that the left and right STS are functionally specialized and that the right STS may take on a key role in CP of spectrally complex sounds.	\N	\N
21236499	To evaluate the audiological outcome of children with congenital cytomegalovirus infection. In a prospective study, the hearing of ninety seven congenitally cytomegalovirus-infected children, born between January 2003 and July 2009, was systematically evaluated until the age of six, applying the Flemish CMV protocol. Depending on the age of the child, the protocol provides hearing evaluation by objective-, play- or conventional audiometry. Symptomatic children with hearing loss at birth were treated with ganciclovir, if parents consented. Seventy children had a pass on initial screening, 27 had unilateral or bilateral hearing loss. Within the normal hearing group, one asymptomatic and two symptomatic children developed late-onset hearing loss. Within the group with hearing loss, 8 children received ganciclovir, while 8 symptomatic and 11 asymptomatic children did not receive ganciclovir. As for the treated group, 37.5% of the children had stable hearing loss, one child had progressive and one child had fluctuating hearing loss. Improvement of hearing threshold occurred in 37.5% of the children. Among the untreated symptomatic children, hearing loss remained stable in 50%, while progression occurred in 37.5%. In the group of asymptomatic children with hearing loss, hearing loss was most commonly stable (72.7%). Within the group of normal hearing ears at birth (n=156), there is a significant better progression in pure tone average for ears of asymptomatic subjects in comparison to ears of symptomatic subjects (p≤0.0001). As for the group of ears with hearing loss at birth (n=38), analysis shows no evidence for a difference in pure tone average progression between the different groups (p=0.38). Cytomegalovirus infection may cause hearing loss, in both symptomatic and asymptomatic children. Our data show a significant difference, between both groups, in the progression of pure tone average of normal hearing ears at birth, in favor of the asymptomatic children. This is not the case for ears with hearing loss at birth. However, this may be due to the small number of ears in this group. Our data show the tendency that treatment with ganciclovir increases the likelihood of improvement and reduces the likelihood of deterioration of the hearing.	\N	\N
21241284	Several studies have found that women tend to demonstrate stronger preferences for masculine men as short-term partners than as long-term partners, though there is considerable variation among women in the magnitude of this effect. One possible source of this variation is individual differences in the extent to which women perceive masculine men to possess antisocial traits that are less costly in short-term relationships than in long-term relationships. Consistent with this proposal, here we show that the extent to which women report stronger preferences for men with low (i.e., masculine) voice pitch as short-term partners than as long-term partners is associated with the extent to which they attribute physical dominance and low trustworthiness to these masculine voices. Thus, our findings suggest that variation in the extent to which women attribute negative personality characteristics to masculine men predicts individual differences in the magnitude of the effect of relationship context on women's masculinity preferences, highlighting the importance of perceived personality attributions for individual differences in women's judgments of men's vocal attractiveness and, potentially, their mate preferences.	\N	\N
21251921	Recent neuroimaging studies proposed the importance of the anterior auditory pathway for speech comprehension. Its clinical significance is implicated by semantic dementia or pure word deafness. Neurodegenerative or cerebrovascular nature, however, precluded precise localization of the cortex responsible for speech perception. Electrical cortical stimulation could delineate such localization by producing transient, functional impairment. We investigated engagement of the left anterior temporal cortex in speech perception by means of direct electrical cortical stimulation. Subjects were two partial epilepsy patients, who underwent direct cortical stimulation as a part of invasive presurgical evaluations. Stimulus sites were coregistered to presurgical 3D-MRI, and then to MNI standard space for anatomical localization. Separate from the posterior temporal language area, electrical cortical stimulation revealed a well-restricted language area in the anterior part of the superior temporal sulcus and gyrus (aSTS/STG) in both patients. Auditory sentence comprehension was impaired upon electrical stimulation of aSTS/STG. In one patient, additional investigation revealed that the functional impairment was restricted to auditory sentence comprehension with preserved visual sentence comprehension and perception of music and environmental sounds. Both patients reported that they could hear the voice but not understand the sentence well (e.g., heard as a series of meaningless utterance). The standard coordinates of this restricted area at left aSTS/STG well corresponded with the coordinates of speech perception reported in neuroimaging activation studies in healthy subjects. The present combined anatomo-functional case study, for the first time, demonstrated that aSTS/STG in the language dominant hemisphere actively engages in speech perception.	\N	\N
21255123	To advance our understanding of the biological basis of speech-in-noise perception, we investigated the effects of background noise on both subcortical- and cortical-evoked responses, and the relationships between them, in normal hearing young adults. The addition of background noise modulated subcortical and cortical response morphology. In noise, subcortical responses were later, smaller in amplitude and demonstrated decreased neural precision in encoding the speech sound. Cortical responses were also delayed by noise, yet the amplitudes of the major peaks (N1, P2) were affected differently, with N1 increasing and P2 decreasing. Relationships between neural measures and speech-in-noise ability were identified, with earlier subcortical responses, higher subcortical response fidelity and greater cortical N1 response magnitude all relating to better speech-in-noise perception. Furthermore, it was only with the addition of background noise that relationships between subcortical and cortical encoding of speech and the behavioral measures of speech in noise emerged. Results illustrate that human brainstem responses and N1 cortical response amplitude reflect coordinated processes with regards to the perception of speech in noise, thereby acting as a functional index of speech-in-noise perception.	\N	\N
21261450	Many models of spoken word recognition posit that the acoustic stream is parsed into phoneme level units, which in turn activate larger representations [McClelland, J. L., & Elman, J. L. The TRACE model of speech perception. Cognitive Psychology, 18, 1-86, 1986], whereas others suggest that larger units of analysis are activated without the need for segmental mediation [Greenberg, S. A multitier theoretical framework for understanding spoken language. In S. Greenberg & W. A. Ainsworth (Eds.), Listening to speech: An auditory perspective (pp. 411-433). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2005; Klatt, D. H. Speech perception: A model of acoustic-phonetic analysis and lexical access. Journal of Phonetics, 7, 279-312, 1979; Massaro, D. W. Preperceptual images, processing time, and perceptual units in auditory perception. Psychological Review, 79, 124-145, 1972]. Identifying segmental effects in the brain's response to speech may speak to this question. For example, if such effects were localized to relatively early processing stages in auditory cortex, this would support a model of speech recognition in which segmental units are explicitly parsed out. In contrast, segmental processes that occur outside auditory cortex may indicate that alternative models should be considered. The current fMRI experiment manipulated the phonotactic frequency (PF) of words that were auditorily presented in short lists while participants performed a pseudoword detection task. PF is thought to modulate networks in which phoneme level units are represented. The present experiment identified activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus that was positively correlated with PF. No effects of PF were found in temporal lobe regions. We propose that the observed phonotactic effects during speech listening reflect the strength of the association between acoustic speech patterns and articulatory speech codes involving phoneme level units. On the basis of existing lesion evidence, we interpret the function of this auditory-motor association as playing a role primarily in production. These findings are consistent with the view that phoneme level units are not necessarily accessed during speech recognition.	\N	\N
21261634	Tones that are self-generated elicit a smaller N1 than externally triggered tones. Typically, however, self-generated tones are also more predictable in time than externally triggered ones. The present study investigated whether the attenuated N1 can be explained by predictability based on the temporal relationship between action and effect. Participants listened to tones that were self-generated by a key-press or preceded by a visual cue. The tones followed the key-presses or cues after a fixed (predictable context) or variable delay (unpredictable context). Tones triggered by a key-press elicited a smaller N1 than tones following a visual cue. This finding suggests that the reduced N1 to self-generated tones is not merely due to the fact that the tone's timing can be predicted based on its temporal relationship to the key-press. Whether a tone was presented in a predictable or an unpredictable context did not affect the N1.	\N	\N
21264707	When two targets are presented in rapid succession at the same spatial location, processing of the first is highly efficient, while processing of the second is often profoundly impaired at brief inter-target intervals (attentional blink; AB). While the AB has been shown to impact many processes, it is still unclear whether this includes the ability to shift spatial attention. The present study examined this question using a more sensitive dependent measure than past studies; namely, response times. It also evaluated whether masking of the cue stimulus modulated the effect of the AB on spatial shifts. The results showed significant cueing effects on T2 response times that were strongly modulated by the AB. This supports suggested links between mechanisms underlying object processing and spatial shifts of attention.	\N	\N
21264734	The fast and accurate enumeration of a small set of objects, called subitizing, is thought to involve a different mechanism from other numerosity judgments, such as those based on estimation. In this report, we examine the subitizing limit using a novel enumeration task that obtained the perceived locations of enumerated objects. Observers were shown brief masked displays (50, 200, and 350 ms) of 2-9 small black discs randomly placed on a gray screen and then asked to place a marker where each disc had been located. The number of these markers provided an estimate of the number of items processed. This "pointing" methodology enabled observers to accurately "enumerate" displays containing up to six items in contrast with the four-item limit typically found when using standard reporting methods (and replicated here in Experiment 2). These results suggest a different account of the limits found in most subitizing and enumeration studies.	\N	\N
21272630	The auditory system can encode interaural delays in highpass-filtered complex sounds by phase locking to their slowly modulating envelopes. Spectrotemporal analysis of interaurally time-delayed highpass waveforms reveals the presence of a concomitant interaural level cue. The current study systematically investigated the contribution of time and concomitant level cues carried by positive and negative envelope slopes of a modified sinusoidally amplitude-modulated (SAM) high-frequency carrier. The waveforms were generated from concatenation of individual modulation cycles whose envelope peaks were extended by the desired interaural delay, allowing independent control of delays in the positive and negative modulation slopes. In experiment 1, thresholds were measured using a 2-interval forced-choice adaptive task for interaural delays in either the positive or negative modulation slopes. In a control condition, thresholds were measured for a standard SAM tone. In experiment 2, decision weights were estimated using a multiple-observation correlational method in a single-interval forced-choice task for interaural delays carried simultaneously by the positive, and independently, negative slopes of the modulation envelope. In experiment 3, decision weights were measured for groups of 3 modulation cycles at the start, middle, and end of the waveform to determine the influence of onset dominance or recency effects. Results were consistent across experiments: thresholds were equal for the positive and negative modulation slopes. Decision weights were positive and equal for the time cue in the positive and negative envelope slopes. Weights were also larger for modulations cycles near the waveform onset. Weights estimated for the concomitant interaural level cue were positive for the positive envelope slope and negative for the negative slope, consistent with exclusive use of time cues.	\N	\N
21272930	Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we investigated the N400 (an ERP component that occurs in response to meaningful stimuli) in children aged 8-10 years old and examined relationships between the N400 and individual differences in listening comprehension, word recognition and non-word decoding. Moreover, we tested the claim that the N400 effect provides a valuable indicator of behavioural vocabulary knowledge. Eighteen children were presented with picture-word pairs that were either 'congruent' (the picture depicted the spoken word) or 'incongruent' (they were unrelated). Three peaks were observed in the ERP waveform triggered to the onset of the picture-word stimuli: an N100 in fronto-central channels, an N200 in central-parietal channels and an N400 in frontal, central and parietal channels. In contrast to the N100 peak, the N200 and N400 peaks were sensitive to semantic incongruency with greater peak amplitudes for incongruent than congruent conditions. The incongruency effects for each peak correlated positively with listening comprehension but when the peak amplitudes were averaged across congruent/incongruent conditions they correlated positively with non-word decoding. These findings provide neurophysiological support for the position that sensitivity to semantic context (reflected in the N400 effect) is crucial for comprehension whereas phonological decoding skill relates to more general processing differences reflected in the ERP waveform. There were no correlations between ERP and behavioural measures of expressive or receptive vocabulary knowledge for the same items, suggesting that the N400 effect may not be a reliable estimate of vocabulary knowledge in children aged 8-10 years.	\N	\N
21275499	Hearing-aid users' problems with their own voice caused by occlusion are well known. Conversely, it remains essentially undocumented whether hearing-aid users expected not to have occlusion-related problems experience own-voice issues. To investigate this topic, a dedicated Own Voice Qualities (OVQ) questionnaire was developed and used in two experiments with stratified samples. In the main experiment, the OVQ was administered to 169 hearing-aid users (most of whom were expected not to have occlusion-related problems) and to a control group of 56 normally-hearing people. In the follow-up experiment, the OVQ was used in a cross-over study where 43 hearing-aid users rated own voice for an open fitting and a small-vent earmould fitting. The results from the main experiment show that hearing-aid users (without occlusion) have more problems than the normal-hearing controls on several dimensions of own voice. The magnitude of these differences was found to be generally larger than the differences observed between the open fitting and the small-vent fitting in the follow-up experiment. This suggests that own voice is a potentially important concern, even for hearing-aid users who are not expected to have occlusion-related problems.	\N	\N
21295773	Does extensive practice reduce or eliminate central interference in dual-task processing? We explored the reorganization of task architecture with practice by combining interference analysis (delays in dual-task experiment) and random-walk models of decision making (measuring the decision and non-decision contributions to RT). The main delay observed in the Psychologically Refractory Period at short stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) values was largely unaffected by training. However, the range of SOAs over which this interference regime held diminished with learning. This was consistent with an overall shift observed in single-task performance from a highly variable decision time to a reliable (non-decision time) contribution to response time. Executive components involved in coordinating dual-task performance decreased (and became more stable) after extensive practice. The results suggest that extensive practice reduces the duration of central decision stages, but that the qualitative property of central seriality remains a structural invariant.	\N	\N
21299376	To implement a fast method for measuring psychophysical tuning curves (PTCs) for use in clinical applications, such as assessment of frequency selectivity and detection of dead regions in the cochlea. The method is based on that described by Sek et al (2005) and has been implemented in software that can be run on a PC with a good-quality sound card. In addition to the main narrowband noise masker, a lowpass noise masker can be generated to prevent detection of a distortion band corresponding to the simple difference tone. The software includes a routine for measuring the absolute threshold at the signal frequency and includes methods for estimating the frequency at the tip of the PTC. A PTC can typically be determined in about three minutes. A small amount of practice (two to three runs) may be required to achieve stable results. The software implementation allows PTCs to be measured quickly without a requirement for specialised equipment.	\N	\N
21305548	To investigate the level of hearing loss and the configuration of the mean audiometric curve over the course of Menière's disease, correcting the data according to patient age. A retrospective study of 3,963 hearing tests. Descriptive, longitudinal study of pure-tone audiometries of 237 patients at a tertiary hospital who had been diagnosed with definitive Menière's disease according to the American Academy of Otorhinolaryngology criteria. All audiometric results were age-corrected, and patients were followed for 1 to 31 years. In patients who had undergone surgery, only the data collected before the operation were assessed. In patients with unilateral disease, the mean hearing loss was characteristically low frequency, even in very advanced stages of the disease. Hearing loss was accentuated at 5 and 15 years from onset. In bilateral cases, hearing loss was slightly more severe and the average loss produced a flatter audiometric curve than in unilateral cases. In Menière's disease, audiometry results corrected for patient age show an inherent upward-sloping configuration of the mean audiometric curve at all time points during the disease. The hearing pattern differs between unilateral and bilateral disease. The audiometric curve configuration may be an indicator of future bilateral disease.	\N	\N
21305666	Both sighted and blind individuals can readily interpret meaning behind everyday real-world sounds. In sighted listeners, we previously reported that regions along the bilateral posterior superior temporal sulci (pSTS) and middle temporal gyri (pMTG) are preferentially activated when presented with recognizable action sounds. These regions have generally been hypothesized to represent primary loci for complex motion processing, including visual biological motion processing and audio-visual integration. However, it remained unclear whether, or to what degree, life-long visual experience might impact functions related to hearing perception or memory of sound-source actions. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we compared brain regions activated in congenitally blind versus sighted listeners in response to hearing a wide range of recognizable human-produced action sounds (excluding vocalizations) versus unrecognized, backward-played versions of those sounds. Here, we show that recognized human action sounds commonly evoked activity in both groups along most of the left pSTS/pMTG complex, though with relatively greater activity in the right pSTS/pMTG by the blind group. These results indicate that portions of the postero-lateral temporal cortices contain domain-specific hubs for biological and/or complex motion processing independent of sensory-modality experience. Contrasting the two groups, the sighted listeners preferentially activated bilateral parietal plus medial and lateral frontal networks, whereas the blind listeners preferentially activated left anterior insula plus bilateral anterior calcarine and medial occipital regions, including what would otherwise have been visual-related cortex. These global-level network differences suggest that blind and sighted listeners may preferentially use different memory retrieval strategies when hearing and attempting to recognize action sounds.	\N	\N
21309643	To measure the mental health status of deaf adolescents with cochlear implants (CI). STUDY SAMPLE AND DESIGN: We used the "Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire" (SDQ) to assess the mental health problems of 32 adolescents with CI (mean age 15.0 years) and 212 normal hearing peers (mean age 15.0 years). Parent and teacher ratings for the CI subjects (ES emotional symptoms, HA inattention-hyperactivity, CP conduct-problems and PBS pro-social behavior) did not differ significantly from the results of normal hearing peers. However, teachers rated significantly more cases as having peer problems (PP) and more cases as having very high (clinical) total difficulty scores (TDS) in the CI group. The SDQ results of the CI users correlated significantly with poor results in auditory performance and special school education. The age at CI implantation was not found to be a correlated with emotional, behavioral and social problems. Our findings indicate that the mental health of deaf adolescents with CI is comparable to that of normal hearing peers.	\N	\N
21315158	Music perception generally involves processing the frequency relationships between successive pitches and extraction of the melodic contour. Previous evidence has suggested that the 'ups' and 'downs' of melodic contour are categorically and automatically processed, but knowledge of the brain regions that discriminate different types of contour is limited. Here, we examined melodic contour discrimination using multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) of fMRI data. Twelve non-musicians were presented with various ascending and descending melodic sequences while being scanned. Whole-brain MVPA was used to identify regions in which the local pattern of activity accurately discriminated between contour categories. We identified three distinct cortical loci: the right superior temporal sulcus (rSTS), the left inferior parietal lobule (lIPL), and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). These results complement previous findings of melodic processing within the rSTS, and extend our understanding of the way in which abstract auditory sequences are categorized by the human brain.	\N	\N
21316354	This study examined the electrophysiological correlates of auditory and visual working memory in children with Specific Language Impairments (SLI). Children with SLI and age-matched controls (11;9-14;10) completed visual and auditory working memory tasks while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. In the auditory condition, children with SLI performed similarly to controls when the memory load was kept low (1-back memory load). As expected, when demands for auditory working memory were higher, children with SLI showed decreases in accuracy and attenuated P3b responses. However, children with SLI also evinced difficulties in the visual working memory tasks. In both the low (1-back) and high (2-back) memory load conditions, P3b amplitude was significantly lower for the SLI as compared to CA groups. These data suggest a domain-general working memory deficit in SLI that is manifested across auditory and visual modalities.	\N	\N
21325685	Our auditory system separates and tracks temporally interleaved sound sources by organizing them into distinct auditory streams. This streaming phenomenon is partly determined by physical stimulus properties but additionally depends on the internal state of the listener. As a consequence, streaming perception is often bistable and reversals between one- and two-stream percepts may occur spontaneously or be induced by a change of the stimulus. Here, we used functional MRI to investigate perceptual reversals in streaming based on interaural time differences (ITD) that produce a lateralized stimulus perception. Listeners were continuously presented with two interleaved streams, which slowly moved apart and together again. This paradigm produced longer intervals between reversals than stationary bistable stimuli but preserved temporal independence between perceptual reversals and physical stimulus transitions. Results showed prominent transient activity synchronized with the perceptual reversals in and around the auditory cortex. Sustained activity in the auditory cortex was observed during intervals where the ΔITD could potentially produce streaming, similar to previous studies. A localizer-based analysis additionally revealed transient activity time locked to perceptual reversals in the inferior colliculus. These data suggest that neural activity associated with streaming reversals is not limited to the thalamo-cortical system but involves early binaural processing in the auditory midbrain, already.	\N	\N
21327367	Identification of the second of two targets (T1, T2, inserted in a stream of distractors) is impaired when presented within 500 ms after the first (attentional blink, AB). Barring a T1-T2 task-switch, it is thought that T2 must be backward-masked to obtain an AB (Giesbrecht & Di Lollo, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 24, 1454-1466, 1998). We tested the hypothesis that Giesbrecht & Di Lollo's findings were vitiated by ceiling constraints arising from either response scale (experiment 1) or data limitations (experiment 2). In experiment 1, digit-distractors were replaced with pseudoletters to increase task difficulty, bringing performance below ceiling. An AB occurred without backward masking of T2. In experiment 2, a ceiling-free procedure estimated the number of noise dots needed for 80% T2 identification. An AB was revealed: fewer noise dots were required during the AB period than outside it. Both outcomes confirm that an AB can be obtained without either masking of T2 or task switching.	\N	\N
21335029	Brain-computer interface (BCI) is a developing, novel mode of communication for individuals with severe motor impairments or those who have no other options for communication aside from their brain signals. However, the majority of current BCI systems are based on visual stimuli or visual feedback, which may not be applicable for severe locked-in patients that have lost their eyesight or the ability to control their eye movements. In the present study, we investigated the feasibility of using auditory steady-state responses (ASSRs), elicited by selective attention to a specific sound source, as an electroencephalography (EEG)-based BCI paradigm. In our experiment, two pure tone burst trains with different beat frequencies (37 and 43 Hz) were generated simultaneously from two speakers located at different positions (left and right). Six participants were instructed to close their eyes and concentrate their attention on either auditory stimulus according to the instructions provided randomly through the speakers during the inter-stimulus interval. EEG signals were recorded at multiple electrodes mounted over the temporal, occipital, and parietal cortices. We then extracted feature vectors by combining spectral power densities evaluated at the two beat frequencies. Our experimental results showed high classification accuracies (64.67%, 30 commands/min, information transfer rate (ITR) = 1.89 bits/min; 74.00%, 12 commands/min, ITR = 2.08 bits/min; 82.00%, 6 commands/min, ITR = 1.92 bits/min; 84.33%, 3 commands/min, ITR = 1.12 bits/min; without any artifact rejection, inter-trial interval = 6s), enough to be used for a binary decision. Based on the suggested paradigm, we implemented a first online ASSR-based BCI system that demonstrated the possibility of materializing a totally vision-free BCI system.	\N	\N
21342695	The purpose of this exploratory study was to assess perceptions of quality of life for individuals with hearing impairment who have not consulted for services and their significant others who are in same-sex relationships vs. those who are in different-sex relationships. Data were collected on a total of 20 older couples: 10 in same-sex relationships and 10 in different-sex relationships. In each of the couples, one member self-identified as having hearing impairment. The couples completed an audiologic evaluation, a disease-specific quality of life questionnaire, and a short, structured interview (which served as a general measure of quality of life). No differences between the groups were found on demographic or audiologic variables. Differences between the groups and within the couples were found on the disease-specific and overall quality of life measures. Participants with hearing impairment in different-sex relationships reported significantly more total consequences of hearing impairment than those in the same-sex relationships. Differences were found in the rate of reporting for various contributors to overall quality of life and consequences of hearing impairment on quality of life. There was more congruity between same-sex couples than different-sex couples. There appear to be important differences in perceptions of both disease-specific and overall quality of life based on sexual orientation for older couples who have not consulted for hearing services. These differences can help inform clinical practice with this under-researched population. Readers will be able to: (1) Describe quality of life variables for individuals with hearing problems in same- and different-sex relationships, (2) understand the differences in quality of life variables between same- and different-sex couples, (3) consider the clinical implications of these quality of life variables.	\N	\N
21358012	The aim of the current study is to investigate hearing function in patients with allergic rhinitis. Fifty-eight patients with positive skin prick test (Group 1) (116 ears) and 31 subjects with negative skin prick test (62 ears) as group 2 were included. Pure tone audiometry at 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 4000 and 8000 Hz and immittance measures, including tympanometry and acoustic reflex tests, were performed in both groups. There was statistically significant difference between pure-tone threshold of the group 1 and group 2 at 8000 Hz (p< 0.05). Based on our study, the patients with allergic rhinitis had better hearing than the control group at 8000 Hz.	\N	\N
21361412	Perturbation analysis was used to determine the relative contribution of target enhancement and noise cancellation in the identification of rudimentary sound source in noise. In a two-interval, forced-choice procedure, listeners identified the impact sound produced by the larger of two stretched membranes as target. The noise on each presentation was the impact sound of a variable-sized plate. For four of five listeners, the relative weights on the noise were positive indicating enhancement, and for the remaining listeners, they were negative indicating cancellation. The results underscore the difficulty with evaluating models of masking solely in terms of measures of performance accuracy.	\N	\N
21361445	Low-frequency masking by intense high-frequency noise bands, referred to as remote masking (RM), was the first evidence to challenge energy-detection models of signal detection. Its underlying mechanisms remain unknown. RM was measured in five normal-hearing young-adults at 250, 350, 500, and 700 Hz using equal-power, spectrally matched random-phase noise (RPN) and low-noise noise (LNN) narrowband maskers. RM was also measured using equal-power, two-tone complex (TC2) and eight-tone complex (TC8). Maskers were centered at 3000 Hz with one or two equivalent rectangular bandwidths (ERBs). Masker levels varied from 80 to 95 dB sound pressure level in 5 dB steps. LNN produced negligible masking for all conditions. An increase in bandwidth in RPN yielded greater masking over a wider frequency region. Masking for TC2 was limited to 350 and 700 Hz for one ERB but shifted to only 700 Hz for two ERBs. A spread of masking to 500 and 700 Hz was observed for TC8 when the bandwidth was increased from one to two ERBs. Results suggest that high-frequency noise bands at high levels could generate significant low-frequency masking. It is possible that listeners experience significant RM due to the amplification of various competing noises that might have significant implications for speech perception in noise.	\N	\N
21361446	The additivity of nonsimultaneous masking was studied using Gaussian-shaped tone pulses (referred to as Gaussians) as masker and target stimuli. Combinations of up to four temporally separated Gaussian maskers with an equivalent rectangular bandwidth of 600 Hz and an equivalent rectangular duration of 1.7 ms were tested. Each masker was level-adjusted to produce approximately 8 dB of masking. Excess masking (exceeding linear additivity) was generally stronger than reported in the literature for longer maskers and comparable target levels. A model incorporating a compressive input/output function, followed by a linear summation stage, underestimated excess masking when using an input/output function derived from literature data for longer maskers and comparable target levels. The data could be predicted with a more compressive input/output function. Stronger compression may be explained by assuming that the Gaussian stimuli were too short to evoke the medial olivocochlear reflex (MOCR), whereas for longer maskers tested previously the MOCR caused reduced compression. Overall, the interpretation of the data suggests strong basilar membrane compression for very short stimuli.	\N	\N
21368435	A human factors experiment employed a hemi-anechoic sound field in which listeners were required to localize a vehicular backup alarm warning signal (both a standard and a frequency-augmented alarm) in 360-degrees azimuth in pink noise of 60 dBA and 90 dBA. Measures of localization performance included: (1) percentage correct localization, (2) percentage of right--left localization errors, (3) percentage of front-rear localization errors, and (4) localization absolute deviation in degrees from the alarm's actual location. In summary, the data demonstrated that, with some exceptions, normal hearing listeners' ability to localize the backup alarm in 360-degrees azimuth did not improve when wearing augmented hearing protectors (including dichotic sound transmission earmuffs, flat attenuation earplugs, and level-dependent earplugs) as compared to when wearing conventional passive earmuffs or earplugs of the foam or flanged types. Exceptions were that in the 90 dBA pink noise, the flat attenuation earplug yielded significantly better accuracy than the polyurethane foam earplug and both the dichotic and the custom-made diotic electronic sound transmission earmuffs. However, the flat attenuation earplug showed no benefit over the standard pre-molded earplug, the arc earplug, and the passive earmuff. Confusions of front-rear alarm directions were most significant in the 90 dBA noise condition, wherein two types of triple-flanged earplugs exhibited significantly fewer front-rear confusions than either of the electronic muffs. On all measures, the diotic sound transmission earmuff resulted in the poorest localization of any of the protectors due to the fact that its single-microphone design did not enable interaural cues to be heard. Localization was consistently more degraded in the 90 dBA pink noise as compared with the relatively quiet condition of the 60 dBA pink noise. A frequency-augmented backup alarm, which incorporated 400 Hz and 4000 Hz components to exploit the benefits of interaural phase and intensity cues respectively, slightly but significantly improved localization compared with the standard, more narrow-bandwidth backup alarm, and these results have implications for the updating of backup alarm standards.	\N	\N
21368442	Numerous studies have shown that the reliability of using laboratory measurements to predict individual or even group hearing protector attenuation for occupationally exposed workers is quite poor. This makes it difficult to properly assign hearing protectors when one wishes to closely match attenuation to actual exposure. An alternative is the use of field-measurement methods, a number of which have been proposed and are beginning to be implemented. We examine one of those methods, namely the field microphone-in-real-ear (F-MIRE) approach in which a dual-element microphone probe is used to measure noise reduction by quickly sampling the difference in noise levels outside and under an earplug, with appropriate adjustments to predict real-ear attenuation at threshold (REAT). We report on experiments that validate the ability of one commercially available F-MIRE device to predict the REAT of an earplug fitted identically for two tests. Results are reported on a representative roll-down foam earplug, stemmed-style pod plug, and pre-molded earplug, demonstrating that the 95% confidence level of the Personal Attenuation Rating (PAR) as a function of the number of fits varies from ± 4.4 dB to ± 6.3 dB, depending on the plug type, which can be reduced to ± 3.1 dB to ± 4.5 dB with a single repeat measurement. The added measurement improves precision substantially. However, the largest portion of the error is due to the user's fitting variability and not the uncertainty of the measurement system. Further we evaluated the inherent uncertainty of F-MIRE vs. the putative "gold standard" REAT procedures finding, that F-MIRE measurement uncertainty is less than one-half that of REAT at most test frequencies. An American National Standards Institute (ANSI) working group (S12/WG11) is currently involved in developing methods similar to those in this paper so that procedures for evaluating and reporting uncertainty on all types of field attenuation measurement systems can be standardized. We conclude that the hearing conservationist now has available a portable, convenient, quick, and easy-to-use system that can improve training and motivation of employees, assign hearing protection devices based on noise exposures, and address other management and compliance issues.	\N	\N
21380585	With a new metric called phonological Levenshtein distance (PLD20), the present study explores the effects of phonological similarity and word frequency on spoken word recognition, using polysyllabic words that have neither phonological nor orthographic neighbors, as defined by neighborhood density (the N-metric). Inhibitory effects of PLD20 were observed for these lexical hermits: Close-PLD20 words were recognized more slowly than distant PLD20 words, indicating lexical competition. Importantly, these inhibitory effects were found only for low- (not high-) frequency words, in line with previous findings that phonetically related primes inhibit recognition of low-frequency words. These results indicate that the properties of PLD20--a continuous measure of word-form similarity--make it a promising new metric for quantifying phonological distinctiveness in spoken word recognition research.	\N	\N
21382386	Although developmental dyslexia is often referred to as a cross-modal disturbance, tests of different modalities using the same stimuli are lacking. We compared the performance of 23 children with dyslexia and 42 chronologically matched control readers on reading versus repetition tasks and visual versus auditory lexical decision using the same stimuli. With respect to control readers, children with dyslexia were impaired only on stimuli in the visual modality; they had no deficit on the repetition and auditory lexical decision tasks. By applying the rate-amount model (Faust et al., 1999), we showed that performance of children with dyslexia on visual (but not auditory) tasks was associated with that of control readers by a linear relationship (with a 1.78 slope), suggesting that a global factor accounts for visual (but not auditory) task performance. We conclude that the processing of linguistic stimuli in the visual and auditory modalities is carried out by independent processes and that dyslexic children have a selective deficit in the visual modality.	\N	\N
21388613	Perceptual implicit memory is typically most robust when the perceptual processing at encoding matches the perceptual processing required during retrieval. A consistent exception is the robust priming that semantic generation produces on the perceptual identification test (Masson & MacLeod, 2002), a finding which has been attributed to either (1) conceptual influences in this nominally perceptual task, or (2) covert orthographic processing during generative encoding. The present experiments assess these possibilities using both auditory and visual perceptual identification, tests in which participants identify auditory words in noise or rapidly-presented visual words. During the encoding phase of the experiments, participants generated some words and perceived others in an intermixed study list. The perceptual control condition was visual (reading) or auditory (hearing), and varied across participants. The reading and hearing conditions exhibited the expected modality-specificity, producing robust intra-modal priming and non-significant cross-modal priming. Priming in the generate condition depended on the perceptual control condition. With a read control condition, semantic generation produced robust visual priming but no auditory priming. With a hear control condition, the results were reversed: semantic generation produced robust auditory priming but not visual priming. This set of results is not consistent with a straightforward application of either the conceptual-influence or covert-orthography account, and implies that the nature of encoding in the generate condition is influenced by the broader list context.	\N	\N
21389700	Bone conduction (BC) is the way sound energy is transmitted by the skull bones to the cochlea causing a sound perception. Even if the BC sound transmission involves several pathways including sound pressure induced in the ear canal, inertial forces acting on the middle ear ossicles and cochlear fluids, alteration of the cochlear space, and pressure transmission through the 3rd window of the cochlea, the BC sound ultimately produces a wave motion on the basilar membrane similar to that of air-conducted sound. The efficiency of the BC stimulation is largely dependent on the skull bone where the skull acts as a rigid body at low frequencies and incorporates different types of wave transmission at higher frequencies. The interaural stimulation difference is determined by the difference between contralateral and ipsilateral BC sound transmission: the transcranial BC sound transmission. To benefit from binaural processing, the transcranial transmission should be low, while the same should be high when using BC hearing aids for unilateral deaf subjects. By appropriately positioning the stimulation, high or low transcranial transmission can be achieved.	\N	\N
21390207	Human languages evolve continuously, and a puzzling problem is how to reconcile the apparent robustness of most of the deep linguistic structures we use with the evidence that they undergo possibly slow, yet ceaseless, changes. Is the state in which we observe languages today closer to what would be a dynamical attractor with statistically stationary properties or rather closer to a non-steady state slowly evolving in time? Here we address this question in the framework of the emergence of shared linguistic categories in a population of individuals interacting through language games. The observed emerging asymptotic categorization, which has been previously tested--with success--against experimental data from human languages, corresponds to a metastable state where global shifts are always possible but progressively more unlikely and the response properties depend on the age of the system. This aging mechanism exhibits striking quantitative analogies to what is observed in the statistical mechanics of glassy systems. We argue that this can be a general scenario in language dynamics where shared linguistic conventions would not emerge as attractors, but rather as metastable states.	\N	\N
21398015	A meaningful interaction with our environment relies on the ability to focus on relevant sensory input and to ignore irrelevant information, i.e. top-down control and attention processes are employed to select from competing stimuli following internal goals. In this, the demands for the recruitment of top-down control processes depend on the relative perceptual salience of the competing stimuli. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we investigated the recruitment of top-down control processes in response to varying degrees of control demands in the auditory modality. For this purpose, we tested 20 male and 20 female subjects with a dichotic listening paradigm, in which the relative perceptual salience of two simultaneously presented stimuli was systematically manipulated by varying the inter-aural intensity difference (IID) and asking the subjects to selectively attend to either ear. The analysis showed that the interaction between IID and attentional direction involves two networks in the brain. A fronto-parietal network, including the pre-supplementary motor area, anterior cingulate cortex, inferior frontal junction, insula and inferior parietal lobe, was recruited during cognitively demanding conditions and can thus be seen as a top-down cognitive control network. In contrast, a second network including the superior temporal and the post-central gyri was engaged under conditions with low cognitive control demands. These findings demonstrate how cognitive control is achieved through the interplay of distinct brain networks, with their differential engagement determined as a function of the level of competition between the sensory stimuli.	\N	\N
21417674	This study was designed to evaluate an automated pure-tone audiometric procedure (AMTAS(®)) for 4-8 year-old children, and a quality assessment method (QUALIND(®)) that predicts the accuracy of the test. Children were tested with AMTAS and conventional manual air-conduction audiometry. A group of adults was tested for comparison. Eighty-one 4-8 year-old children and 15 adults. Most had normal hearing. For most subjects (93% of adults and 91% of children) differences between AMTAS and manual thresholds were similar to differences that occur when two experienced audiologists test the same subjects. QUALIND detected the inaccurate audiograms with a sensitivity of 71% and a specificity of 91%. When inaccurate audiograms identified by QUALIND are excluded, the accuracy of AMTAS is similar to the accuracy of manual audiometry. AMTAS produces accurate air-conduction audiograms in a high proportion of 4-8 year-old children and adults. QUALIND successfully identified most inaccurate AMTAS audiograms. The method can decrease the cost and increase efficiency and accessibility of hearing testing.	\N	\N
21420739	Perception of environmental sounds from impacted materials (Wood, Metal and Glass) was examined by conducting a categorization experiment. Stimuli consisted of sound continua evoking progressive transitions between material categories. Results highlighted shallower response curves in subjects with schizophrenia than healthy participants, and are discussed in the framework of Signal Detection Theory and in terms of impaired perception of specific timbre features in schizophrenia.	\N	\N
21420989	There is ongoing debate with respect to interpretation of the finding that, in contrast to perceptual size judgments, actions are relatively unaffected by the Müller-Lyer illusion. In normal unrestricted viewing situations observers cannot perform an action directed at an object without simultaneously perceiving the object - this makes it difficult to unequivocally establish whether observed effects are a function of vision for perception, vision for action, a combination of both, or of a single all-purpose visual system. However, there is evidence that observers are capable of performing actions towards objects of which they are not consciously aware, implying that two distinct visual thresholds may exist; one accompanying vision for action and one accompanying vision for perception. To investigate this possibility we created a situation in which visual information was presented below the perception threshold, but above the purported action threshold, allowing examination of action responses independent of contributions from vision for perception. Following a perceptual categorization task, participants performed delayed pointing movements towards briefly exposed masked Müller-Lyer targets of different sizes. When the targets were presented below the perception threshold, participants were unable to discriminate between them, yet their delayed pointing movements were affected by target size (but not the illusion). The results imply that vision for action is functional even after a delay and/or that the pickup of egocentric information is associated with a lower visual threshold than the pickup of allocentric information.	\N	\N
21422306	To evaluate the significance of the Carhart notch (a 2-kHz bone conduction threshold dip [2KBD]) in the diagnosis of stapes fixation by comparing its incidence among ears with various ossicular chain abnormalities. Retrospective study. University hospital. A total of 153 ears among 127 consecutive patients with a congenital ossicular anomaly or otosclerosis. The 2KBD depth was defined as the threshold at 2 kHz minus the mean of thresholds at 1 and 4 kHz. The presence of 2KBD (depth, ≥10 dB), 2KBD depth, relationship between 2KBD depth and air-bone gap, and 2-kHz bone conduction recovery after operation were evaluated in a stapes fixation group (which included cases of otosclerosis and congenital stapes fixation), an incudostapedial joint detachment group, and a malleus or incus fixation group. A 2KBD was present in 32 of 102 stapes fixation ears (31.4%), 5 of 19 incudostapedial joint detachment ears (26.3%), and 6 of 20 malleus or incus fixation ears (30.0%) (12 ears had other diagnoses). The mean (SD) 2KBD depths were 17.3 (5.2) dB in the stapes fixation group, 18.5 (2.2) dB in the incudostapedial joint detachment group, and 16.3 (2.1) dB in the malleus or incus fixation group. No statistically significant differences were noted among these 3 groups. No correlation was noted between 2KBD depth and air-bone gap extent. Recovery of 2-kHz bone conduction threshold in the stapes fixation group was less than that in the other 2 groups. Incidence of 2KBD was similar among the stapes fixation, incudostapedial joint detachment, and malleus or incus fixation groups, implying that 2KBD is not a useful predictor of stapes fixation.	\N	\N
21424256	Assessing intentions, direction, and velocity of others is necessary for most daily tasks, and such information is often made available by both visual and auditory motion cues. Therefore, it is not surprising our great ability to perceive human motion. Here, we explore the multisensory integration of cues of biological motion walking speed. After testing for audiovisual asynchronies (visual signals led auditory ones by 30 ms in simultaneity temporal windows of 76.4 ms), in the main experiment, visual, auditory, and bimodal stimuli were compared to a standard audiovisual walker in a velocity discrimination task. Results in variance reduction conformed to optimal integration of congruent bimodal stimuli across all subjects. Interestingly, the perceptual judgements were still close to optimal for stimuli at the smallest level of incongruence. Comparison of slopes allows us to estimate an integration window of about 60 ms, which is smaller than that reported in audiovisual speech.	\N	\N
21431434	Our objective is to determine whether the degree of endolymphatic hydrops as it is detected in vivo in patients with definite Meniere's disease correlates with audiovestibular function. In this prospective study, 37 patients with definite Meniere's disease according to AAO-HNS criteria were included. Intratympanic contrast enhanced temporal bone MRI was performed using a 3D FLAIR protocol. The degree of endolymphatic hydrops in the cochlea and the vestibulum was graded on a Likert scale (0-3). The degree of hydrops was then analyzed with respect to its correlation with audiometric hearing levels, electrocochleographic SP/AP ratios, interaural amplitude ratios of vestibular evoked myogenic potentials and degree of horizontal semicircular canal paresis on caloric irrigation. There was a significant correlation between the degree of hydrops on the one hand and the averaged hearing level at 0.25-1 and 0.5-3 kHz and the vestibular evoked myogenic potential interaural amplitude ratio on the other hand. A trend toward a correlation was noticed between the hydrops and the caloric response, no correlation was noticed between the hydrops and the SP/AP ratio. The degree of endolymphatic hydrops correlates with a progressive loss of auditory and sacculus function in patients with Meniere`s disease.	\N	\N
21432625	Emotional inferences from speech require the integration of verbal and vocal emotional expressions. We asked whether this integration is comparable when listeners are exposed to their native language and when they listen to a language learned later in life. To this end, we presented native and non-native listeners with positive, neutral and negative words that were spoken with a happy, neutral or sad tone of voice. In two separate tasks, participants judged word valence and ignored tone of voice or judged emotional tone of voice and ignored word valence. While native listeners outperformed non-native listeners in the word valence task, performance was comparable in the voice task. More importantly, both native and non-native listeners responded faster and more accurately when verbal and vocal emotional expressions were congruent as compared to when they were incongruent. Given that the size of the latter effect did not differ as a function of language proficiency, one can conclude that the integration of verbal and vocal emotional expressions occurs as readily in one's second language as it does in one's native language.	\N	\N
21440971	Congenital amusia manifests as a lifelong difficulty in making sense of musical sound. The extent to which this disorder is accompanied by deficits in visuo-spatial processing is an important question, bearing on the issue of whether pitch processing draws on supramodal spatial representations. The present study assessed different aspects of visuo-spatial processing with a range of tasks (Shepard-Metzler Mental Rotation, Corsi Blocks Task, Visual Patterns Test) in 14 amusics and matched controls. The absence of a group difference on any of these tasks fails to support a previous claim that the disorder is strongly related to deficits in spatial processing. However, a subgroup of amusics, with significantly elevated thresholds on a pitch direction discrimination task relative to the rest of the group, were slower, but equally accurate, at Mental Rotation. This finding is discussed in relation to the nature of supramodal representations of contour and strategies for dynamic mental transformation.	\N	\N
21458056	Speech production can be broadly separated into two distinct components: Phonation and Articulation. These two aspects require the efficient control of several phono-articulatory effectors. Speech is indeed generated by the vibration of the vocal-folds in the larynx (F0) followed by ''filtering" by articulators, to select certain resonant frequencies out of that wave (F1, F2, F3, etc.). Recently it has been demonstrated that the motor representation of articulators (lips and tongue) participates in the discrimination of articulatory sounds (lips- and tongue-related speech sounds). Here we investigate whether the results obtained on articulatory sounds discrimination could be extended to phonation by applying a dual-pulse TMS protocol while subjects had to discriminate F0-shifted vocal utterances [a]. Stimulation over the larynx motor representation, compared to the control site (tongue/lips motor cortex), induced a reduction in RT for stimuli including a subtle pitch shift. We demonstrate that vocal pitch discrimination, in analogy with the articulatory component, requires the contribution of the motor system and that this effect is somatotopically organized.	\N	\N
21463563	Bone-conduction thresholds have been used in audiologic assessments of both infants and adults to differentiate between conductive and sensorineural hearing losses. However, air- and bone-conduction thresholds estimated for infants with normal hearing using physiological measures have identified an "air-bone gap" in the low frequencies that does not result from conductive hearing impairment but, rather, from maturational differences in sensitivity. This maturational air-bone gap appears to be present up to at least 2 yr of age. Because most infants older than 6 mo of age are clinically assessed behaviorally, rather than physiologically, it is necessary to determine whether a similar maturational air-bone gap is present for behavioral air- and bone-conduction thresholds. The purpose of this study was to estimate behavioral bone-conduction thresholds for infants using a standard clinical visual reinforcement audiometry (VRA) protocol to determine whether frequency-dependent maturational patterns exist as previously reported for physiological bone-conduction thresholds. Behavioral bone-conduction minimum response levels were estimated at 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz using VRA for each participant. Young (7-15 mo; N = 17) and older (18-30 mo; N = 20) groups of infants were assessed. All infants were screened and considered to be at low risk for hearing loss. Preliminary "normal levels" were determined by calculating the 90th percentile for responses present as a cumulative percentage. Mean bone-conduction thresholds were compared and analyzed using a mixed-model analysis of variance across frequency and age group. Linear regression analysis was also performed to assess the effect of age on bone-conduction thresholds. Results of this study indicate that, when measured behaviorally, infants under 30 mo of age show frequency-dependent bone-conduction thresholds whereby their responses at 500 and 1000 Hz are significantly better than those at 2000 and 4000 Hz. However, thresholds obtained from the younger group of infants (mean age of 10.6 mo) were not significantly different from those obtained from the older group of infants (mean age of 23.0 mo) at any frequency. The findings of the present study are similar to the results obtained from previous physiological studies. Compared to previously documented air-conduction thresholds of infants using similar VRA techniques, a maturational air-bone gap is observed in the low frequencies. Therefore, differences between infant and adult bone-conduction thresholds persist until at least 30 mo of age. As a result, different "normal levels" should be used when assessing bone-conduction hearing sensitivity of infants using behavioral methods.	\N	\N
21476653	Different non-exponential decays such as the concave and the convex double sloped decays in the coupled rooms provide distinct sound qualities. These are commonly considered to occur in the less reverberant sub-room and the more reverberant sub-room, respectively. However, numerical simulations and experiments in this paper show that the demarcation line is not located along the physical boundaries (e.g., the partition and the coupling aperture), but in the more reverberant sub-room. The sound field with the concave double sloped decay penetrates into the auxiliary sub-room to an extent which is influenced by the difference between the two natural reverberations of the sub-rooms. Furthermore the sound energy flows in different regions are investigated, demonstrating how energy feedback leads to the concave double sloped decay.	\N	\N
21476654	Talkers adjust their vocal effort to communicate at different distances, aiming to compensate for the sound propagation losses. The present paper studies the influence of four acoustically different rooms on the speech produced by 13 male talkers addressing a listener at four distances. Talkers raised their vocal intensity by between 1.3 and 2.2 dB per double distance to the listener and lowered it as a linear function of the quantity "room gain" at a rate of -3.6 dB/dB. There were also significant variations in the mean fundamental frequency, both across distance (3.8 Hz per double distance) and among environments (4.3 Hz), and in the long-term standard deviation of the fundamental frequency among rooms (4 Hz). In the most uncomfortable rooms to speak in, talkers prolonged the voiced segments of the speech they produced, either as a side-effect of increased vocal intensity or in order to compensate for a decrease in speech intelligibility.	\N	\N
21476664	The enhancement effect is consistently shown when simultaneously masked stimuli are preceded by the masker alone, with a reduction in the amount of masking relative to when that precursor is absent. One explanation for this effect proposed by Viemeister and Bacon [(1982). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 71, 1502-1507] is the adaptation of inhibition, which predicts that an enhanced component (the "target") will be effectively more intense within the auditory system than one that has not been enhanced. Forward masking studies have indicated this effect of increased gain; however, other explanations of the enhancement effect have also been suggested. In order to provide an alternative measure of the amount of effective gain for an enhanced target, a subjective binaural centering task was used in which listeners matched the intensities of enhanced and unenhanced 2-kHz tones presented to opposite ears to produce a centered stimulus. The results showed that the enhancement effect produces an effective 4-5 dB increase in the level of the enhanced target. The enhancement effect was also measured using other enhancement paradigms which yielded similar results over a range of levels for the target, supporting an account based on adaptation of inhibition.	\N	\N
21477909	Operatic music involves both singing and acting (as well as rich audiovisual background arising from the orchestra and elaborate scenery and costumes) that multiply the mechanisms by which emotions are induced in listeners. The present study investigated the effects of music, plot, and acting performance on emotions induced by opera. There were three experimental conditions: (1) participants listened to a musically complex and dramatically coherent excerpt from Tosca; (2) they read a summary of the plot and listened to the same musical excerpt again; and (3) they re-listened to music while they watched the subtitled film of this acting performance. In addition, a control condition was included, in which an independent sample of participants succesively listened three times to the same musical excerpt. We measured subjective changes using both dimensional, and specific music-induced emotion questionnaires. Cardiovascular, electrodermal, and respiratory responses were also recorded, and the participants kept track of their musical chills. Music listening alone elicited positive emotion and autonomic arousal, seen in faster heart rate, but slower respiration rate and reduced skin conductance. Knowing the (sad) plot while listening to the music a second time reduced positive emotions (peacefulness, joyful activation), and increased negative ones (sadness), while high autonomic arousal was maintained. Watching the acting performance increased emotional arousal and changed its valence again (from less positive/sad to transcendent), in the context of continued high autonomic arousal. The repeated exposure to music did not by itself induce this pattern of modifications. These results indicate that the multiple musical and dramatic means involved in operatic performance specifically contribute to the genesis of music-induced emotions and their physiological correlates.	\N	\N
21491357	Obesity may be associated with increased tissue bulk in the laryngeal airway, neck, and chest wall, and as such may affect vocal function. Eight obese and eight nonobese adults participated in this study; the obese participants underwent bariatric surgical procedures. This mixed-design study included cross-sectional analysis for group differences and longitudinal analysis for multidimensional changes in vocal function from four assessments collected over 6 months. No significant differences were detected between groups from the preoperative assessment. Further, no changes were detected over time for acoustic parameters, maximum phonation time, laryngeal airway resistance, and airflow during a sustained vowel for either group. Only minor differences were detected for strain, pitch, and loudness perceptions of voice over time, but not between groups. Phonation threshold pressure (PTP), at comfortable and high pitches (30% and 80% of the F0 range) changed significantly over time, but not between groups. Examination of individual data revealed a trend for PTP at 30% F0 to decrease as body mass index decreased. PTP may be informative for assessing vocal function in clients who present with obesity and voice symptoms.	\N	\N
21493300	The aim of this prospective study was to audiologically evaluate consecutive glaucoma patients with or without exfoliation. Prospective study. Glaucoma Unit and Audiology Department at a university hospital. Consecutive subjects with exfoliative glaucoma (XFG) or primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) aged between 50 and 70 years were enrolled. Auditory thresholds at 0.5, 1.0, 2.0, 4.0, and 8.0 Hz were measured bilaterally. Cochlear activity was assessed by recording distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOEs). Functional changes in the retrocochlear auditory pathway were evaluated by auditory brainstem responses (ABRs). One hundred and ten patients with XFG and 85 patients with POAG who presented in a glaucoma clinic were investigated. The mean age of study patients was 66.2 ± 5.6 years; range, 50-70 years). The odds of pathologic ABR central transmission time (interpeak latencies I-III, III-V, and I-V and waves I, III, and V) were 4.34 times higher in patients with XFG than in patients with POAG (95% confidence interval [CI], 2.22-8.49; P < .001). This significant association remained after adjusting for sex and age (odds ratio [OR] 4.12; 95% CI, 2.07-8.22; P < .001). Furthermore, the odds of ABR remained significantly higher in patients with XFG than in patients with POAG (OR 4.36; 95% CI, 2.10-9.06; P < .001) after controlling for systemic diseases (arterial hypertension, coronary heart disease, high cholesterol, and stroke). In the first study to compare XFG and POAG monitoring of the peripheral and central auditory pathway, it has been documented that XFG patients show a greater prevalence of retrocochlear pathology.	\N	\N
21493334	To compare noise reduction of commercially available ear-level hearing protection (muffs/inserts) to that of firearm muzzle suppressors. Experimental sound measurements under consistent environmental conditions. None. Muzzle suppressors for 2 pistol and 2 rifle calibers were tested using the Bruel & Kjaer 2209 sound meter and Bruel & Kjaer 4136 microphone calibrated with the Bruel & Kjaer Pistonphone using Military-Standard 1474D placement protocol. Five shots were recorded unsuppressed and 10 shots suppressed under consistent environmental conditions. Sound reduction was then compared with the real-world noise reduction rate of the best available ear-level protectors. All suppressors offered significantly greater noise reduction than ear-level protection, usually greater than 50% better. Noise reduction of all ear-level protectors is unable to reduce the impulse pressure below 140 dB for certain common firearms, an international standard for prevention of sensorineural hearing loss. Modern muzzle-level suppression is vastly superior to ear-level protection and the only available form of suppression capable of making certain sporting arms safe for hearing. The inadequacy of standard hearing protectors with certain common firearms is not recognized by most hearing professionals or their patients and should affect the way hearing professionals counsel patients and the public.	\N	\N
21506894	To assess the effect of the static force of a bone vibrator on the results of bone conduction (BC) threshold measurements and comfort. BC thresholds were determined for 40 participants using the standardized P-3333 headband and a leather adjustable headstrap with variable static forces (2.4, 3.4, 4.4, 5.4 N). Comfort ratings were examined using a five-point Likert scale. Mean BC thresholds were within ± 2 dB across all conditions; differences may be considered small enough to be clinically insignificant. Participants experienced significantly greater discomfort with the P-3333 versus the adjustable headstrap. The mean static force of the P-3333 varied considerably and was higher in situ than the calibration standard of 5.4 N. The results suggest that future revisions of relevant international and national standards should address the use of an adjustable headstrap and a static force less than 5.4 N.	\N	\N
21512424	To evaluate the outcomes of younger (<60 yr) and older (≥60 yr) patients implanted with the Vibrant Soundbridge (VSB). The aim was to determine if there were differences between groups. A retrospective study was used to evaluate all patients who were implanted and fit with a VSB during 2008 and 2009 at the Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Medical University Innsbruck. Differences in audiologic, medical, and surgical outcomes between younger and older patients were evaluated. No patients had major complications during or after the surgical procedure. All patients had a good hearing benefit as supported by improvements in hearing thresholds from the preoperative to the postoperative condition in the sound field. There were differences between groups in speech understanding postoperatively; however, the differences were not statistically significant. All patients had, independent of age, good audiologic benefit from VSB use. Based on the low risk of medical or surgical complications, the easy use of the hearing implant, audiologic improvements, and potential social benefits, we think that the VSB should be regularly offered to adults with hearing loss, whether they are young or old.	\N	\N
21517207	The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of expertise on motion anticipation. We conducted 2 experiments in which novices and expert pilots viewed simulated aircraft landing scenes. The scenes were interrupted by the display of a black screen and then started again after a forward or backward shift. The participant's task was to determine whether the moving scene had been shifted forward or backward. A forward misjudgment of the final position of the moving scene was interpreted as a representational momentum (RM) effect. Experiment 1 showed that an RM effect was detected only for experts. The lack of motion anticipation on the part of novices is a surprising result for the RM literature. It could be related to scene unfamiliarity, encoding time, or shift size. Experiment 2 was run with novices only. It was aimed at testing the potential impact of 2 factors on the RM effect: scene encoding time and shift size. As a whole, the results showed that encoding time and shift size are important factors in anticipation processes in realistic dynamic situations.	\N	\N
21524739	Word segmentation from continuous speech is a difficult task that is faced by human infants when they start to learn their native language. Several studies indicate that infants might use several different cues to solve this problem, including intonation, linguistic stress, and transitional probabilities between subsequent speech sounds. In this work, a computational model for word segmentation and learning of primitive lexical items from continuous speech is presented. The model does not utilize any a priori linguistic or phonemic knowledge such as phones, phonemes or articulatory gestures, but computes transitional probabilities between atomic acoustic events in order to detect recurring patterns in speech. Experiments with the model show that word segmentation is possible without any knowledge of linguistically relevant structures, and that the learned ungrounded word models show a relatively high selectivity towards specific words or frequently co-occurring combinations of short words.	\N	\N
21525779	The results reported in this paper indicate that native speakers of Mandarin Chinese rate the perceptual similarities among the lexical tones of Mandarin differently than do native speakers of American English. Mandarin listeners were sensitive to tone contour while English listeners attended to pitch levels. Chinese listeners also rated tones that are neutralized by phonological tone sandhi rules in Mandarin as more similar to each other than did English speakers--indicating a role of phonology in determining perceptual salience. In two further experiments, we found that some of these differences were eliminated when the listening task focused listeners' attention on the auditory properties of the stimuli, but, interestingly, a degree of language specificity remained even in the most purely psychophysical listening tasks with speech stimuli.	\N	\N
21540053	The auditory system faithfully represents sufficient details from sound sources such that downstream cognitive processes are capable of acting upon this information effectively even in the face of signal uncertainty, degradation or interference. This robust sound source representation leads to an invariance in perception vital for animals to interact effectively with their environment. Due to unique nonlinearities in the cochlea, sound representations early in the auditory system exhibit a large amount of variability as a function of stimulus intensity. In other words, changes in stimulus intensity, such as for sound sources at differing distances, create a unique challenge for the auditory system to encode sounds invariantly across the intensity dimension. This challenge and some strategies available to sensory systems to eliminate intensity as an encoding variable are discussed, with a special emphasis upon sound encoding.	\N	\N
21543605	The mammalian auditory system contains descending neural pathways, some of which project onto the cochlea via the medial olivocochlear (MOC) system. The function of this efferent auditory system is not entirely clear. Behavioral studies in animals with olivocochlear (OC) lesions suggest that the MOC serves to facilitate sound localization in noise. In the current work, noise-induced OC activity (the OC reflex) and sound-localization performance in noise were measured in normal-hearing humans. Consistent with earlier studies, both measures were found to vary substantially across individuals. Importantly, significant correlations were observed between OC-reflex strength and the effect of noise on sound-localization performance; the stronger the OC reflex, the less marked the effect of noise. These results suggest that MOC activation by noise helps to counteract the detrimental effects of background noise on neural representations of direction-dependent spectral features, which are especially important for accurate localization in the up/down and front/back dimensions.	\N	\N
21545768	Previous studies have demonstrated a relation between cognitive capacity, in particular working memory, and the ability to understand speech in noise with different types of hearing aid signal processing. The present study investigates the relation between working memory capacity and the speech recognition performance of persons with hearing impairment under both aided and unaided conditions, following a period of familiarization to both fast- and slow-acting compression settings in the participants' own hearing aids. Speech recognition was tested in modulated and steady state noise with fast and slow compression release settings (for aided conditions) with each of two materials. Working memory capacity was also measured. Thirty experienced hearing aid users with a mean age of 70 yr (SD = 7.8) and pure-tone average hearing threshold across the frequencies 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 kHz (PTA7) and for both ears of 45.8 dB HL (SD = 6.6. 9 wk experience with each of fast-acting and slow-acting compression. Speech recognition data were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance with the within-subjects factors of material (high constraint, low constraint), noise type (steady state, modulated), and compression (fast, slow), and the between-subjects factor working memory capacity (high, low). With high constraint material, there were three-way interactions including noise type and working memory as well as compression, in aided conditions, and performance level, in unaided conditions, but no effects of either working memory or compression with low constraint material. Investigation of simple main effects showed a significant effect of working memory during speech recognition under conditions of both "high degradation" (modulated noise, fast-acting compression, low signal-to-noise ratio [SNR]) and "low degradation" (steady state noise, slow-acting compression, high SNR). The finding of superior performance of persons with high working memory capacity in modulated noise with fast-acting compression agrees with findings of previous studies including a familiarization period of at least 9 wk, in contrast to studies with familiarization of 4 wk or less that have shown that persons with lower cognitive capacity may benefit from slow-acting compression. Working memory is a crucial factor in speech understanding in noise for persons with hearing impairment, irrespective of whether hearing is aided or unaided. Working memory supports speech understanding in noise under conditions of both "high degradation" and "low degradation." A subcomponent view of working memory may contribute to our understanding of these phenomena. The effect of cognition on speech understanding in modulated noise with fast-acting compression may only pertain after a period of 4-9 wk of familiarization and that prior to such a period, persons with lower cognitive capacity may benefit more from slow-acting compression.	\N	\N
21547604	Listeners require context to understand the highly reduced words that occur in casual speech. The present study reports four auditory lexical decision experiments in which the role of semantic context in the comprehension of reduced versus unreduced speech was investigated. Experiments 1 and 2 showed semantic priming for combinations of unreduced, but not reduced, primes and low-frequency targets. In Experiment 3, we crossed the reduction of the prime with the reduction of the target. Results showed no semantic priming from reduced primes, regardless of the reduction of the targets. Finally, Experiment 4 showed that reduced and unreduced primes facilitate upcoming low-frequency related words equally if the interstimulus interval is extended. These results suggest that semantically related words need more time to be recognized after reduced primes, but once reduced primes have been fully (semantically) processed, these primes can facilitate the recognition of upcoming words as well as do unreduced primes.	\N	\N
21554838	Tinnitus is a disturbing symptom and is often the main reason for otology referral. It is usually associated with hearing loss of varying aetiology, and is thought to begin in the cochlea, with later abnormal central activity. We hypothesise that tinnitus without hearing loss may be caused by central and subcortical abnormalities and altered outer hair cell function. To compare the auditory brainstem responses, middle latency responses and otoacoustic emissions in normal-hearing individuals with and without tinnitus. The audiological test results of 25 normal hearing subjects with tinnitus (age 18-45 years) were determined, and compared with those of a control group. A statistically significant difference was found between study group tinnitus ears vs control group ears, as regards wave I latency prolongation, shortening of wave V and absolute I-III and I-V interpeak latency, enlargement of wave Na and Pa amplitude, and distortion product and transient evoked otoacoustic emission signal-to-noise ratios. There was no statistically significant difference between unilateral vs bilateral tinnitus ears. The pathogenesis and optimum management of tinnitus are still unclear. It often occurs with primary ear disease, usually associated with hearing loss, but may occur in patients with normal hearing. Observed changes in auditory brainstem and middle latency responses indicate central auditory alterations. Tinnitus involves both peripheral and central activity, and complete audiological and neurophysiological investigation is required. Management should be based on both audiological and neurophysiological findings.	\N	\N
21563460	To understand the usage of MP3 and effects on hearing of middle school students in Xi'an, and discuss controlling strategies. Stratified random cluster sampling method was used in the 1567 middle school students in Xi'an through questionnaire survey, ear examination and hearing examination, data were analysed by the SPSS13.0 statistical software. 1) The rate of holding MP3 in the middle school students was 85.2%. Average daily use time was (1.41 +/- 1.11) h. 2) The noise group of pure tone hearing threshold was significantly higher compared with the control group (P<0.01), and increased the detection rate of hearing loss with the increasing use of MP3. 3) The detection rate of symptoms increased with the increasing use of MP3. The usage of MP3 can harm hearing in middle school students, which can result in neurasthenic syndrome.	\N	\N
21568377	The ability of listeners with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss to localize a speech source in a multitalker mixture was measured. Five simultaneous words spoken by different talkers were presented over loudspeakers in a small room, and listeners localized one target word. Errors were significantly larger in this group compared to a control group with normal hearing. Localization of the target presented alone was not different between groups. The results suggest that hearing loss does not impair spatial hearing per se, but degrades the spatial representation of multiple simultaneous sounds.	\N	\N
21568378	A previous letter by Gee et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 121, EL1-EL7 (2007)] revealed likely shortcomings in using common, stationary (long-term) spectrum-based measures to quantify the perception of nonlinearly propagated noise. Here, the Glasberg and Moore [J. Audio Eng. Soc. 50, 331-342 (2002)] algorithm for time-varying loudness is investigated. Their short-term loudness, when applied to a shock-containing broadband signal and a phase-randomized signal with equivalent long-term spectrum, does not show a significant difference in loudness between the signals. Further analysis and discussion focus on the possible utility of the instantaneous loudness and the need for additional investigation in this area.	\N	\N
21569784	In recent years it has been shown that a disorder in recognizing familiar people can be observed in patients with lesions affecting the anterior parts of the temporal lobes and that these disorders can be multi-modal, simultaneously affecting the visual, auditory and linguistic channels that allow person identification. Several authors have also shown that patients with right anterior temporal atrophy are more impaired in assessing familiarity and in retrieving person-specific semantic information from faces than from names, whereas the opposite pattern of performance can be observed in patients with left temporal lobe atrophy. Voice recognition disorders have been studied much less even despite their clinical and theoretical importance. The aim of the present review, therefore, was to compare recognition of familiar faces and voices, taking into account not only results obtained in individual patients with right anterior temporal lesions, but also those of group studies of unselected right- and left brain-damaged patients and results of experimental investigations conducted on face and voice recognition in normal subjects. Results of the review showed that: (1) voice recognition disorders are mainly due to right temporal lesions, similarly to face recognition disorders; (2) famous voice recognition disorders can be dissociated from unfamiliar voice discrimination impairments; (3) although face and voice recognition disorders tend to co-occur, they can also dissociate and in these patients there is a prevalent involvement of the right fusiform gyrus when face recognition disorders are on the foreground, and of the right superior temporal gyrus when voice recognition disorders are prominent; (4) normal subjects have greater difficulty evaluating familiarity and drawing semantic information from the voices than from the faces of celebrities. These data are at variance with models which assume that familiarity feelings may be generated at the level of person identity nodes (PINs) and that the latter may be considered as modality-free gateways to single semantic systems in which information about people is stored in an amodal format.	\N	\N
21586256	In a number of European countries, a functional self-test to screen for hearing impairment is available via telephone and the Internet. The tests estimate speech-reception thresholds using an adaptive procedure in which digit triplets are presented at varying signal-to-noise ratios. In different languages, the stimuli were created either with or without coarticulation; and some implementations use fresh noise samples, while others do not. The present investigation concerns the influence of coarticulation, prosody, and noise freshness on measured thresholds. We performed a laboratory study using 12 normal-hearing listeners. In a blocked design we compared speech-reception thresholds for conditions with and without fresh noise tokens. In each block we used three types of triplets: with coarticulation and prosody, with neither, and without coarticulation but with prosody. Thirty-six thresholds were recorded per subject, and they were analyzed using analyses of variance. The results showed no significant differences among the three triplet conditions. The freshness of the noise did not affect thresholds when, at least, a fresh noise token was used per threshold estimate (23 presentations). Scores dropped significantly when a whole experimental block was performed with a single noise token.	\N	\N
21601842	Evolution and the brain have done a marvelous job solving many tricky problems in action control, including problems of learning, hierarchical control over serial behavior, continuous recalibration, and fluency in the face of slow feedback. Given that evolution tends to be conservative, it should not be surprising that these solutions are exploited to solve other tricky problems, such as the design of a communication system. We propose that a mechanism of motor control, paired controller/predictor models, has been exploited for language learning, comprehension, and production. Our account addresses the development of grammatical regularities and perspective, as well as how linguistic symbols become meaningful through grounding in perception, action, and emotional systems.	\N	\N
21603614	Recent studies suggest that human auditory perception follows a prolonged developmental trajectory, sometimes continuing well into adolescence. Whereas both sensory and cognitive accounts have been proposed, the development of the ability to base current perceptual decisions on prior information, an ability that strongly benefits adult perception, has not been directly explored. Here we ask whether the auditory frequency discrimination of preschool children also improves when given the opportunity to use previously presented standard stimuli as perceptual anchors, and whether the magnitude of this anchoring effect undergoes developmental changes. Frequency discrimination was tested using two adaptive same/different protocols. In one protocol (with-reference), a repeated 1-kHz standard tone was presented repeatedly across trials. In the other (no-reference), no such repetitions occurred. Verbal memory and early reading skills were also evaluated to determine if the pattern of correlations between frequency discrimination, memory and literacy is similar to that previously reported in older children and adults. Preschool children were significantly more sensitive in the with-reference than in the no-reference condition, but the magnitude of this anchoring effect was smaller than that observed in adults. The pattern of correlations among discrimination thresholds, memory and literacy replicated previous reports in older children. The processes allowing the use of context to form perceptual anchors are already functional among preschool children, albeit to a lesser extent than in adults. Nevertheless, immature anchoring cannot fully account for the poorer frequency discrimination abilities of young children. That anchoring is present among the majority of typically developing preschool children suggests that the anchoring deficits observed among individuals with dyslexia represent a true deficit rather than a developmental delay.	\N	\N
21604886	Inhibitory control functions in old age were investigated with the "masked prime" paradigm in which participants executed speeded manual choice responses to simple visual targets. These were preceded--either immediately or at some earlier time--by a backward-masked prime. Young adults produced positive compatibility effects (PCEs)--faster and more accurate responses for matching than for nonmatching prime-target pairs--when prime and target immediately followed each other, and the reverse effect (negative compatibility effect, NCE) for targets that followed the prime after a short interval. Older adults produced similar PCEs to young adults, indicating intact low-level motor activation, but failed to produce normal NCEs even with longer delays (Experiment 1), increased opportunity for prime processing (Experiment 2), and prolonged learning (Experiment 3). However, a fine-grained analysis of each individual's time course of masked priming effects revealed NCEs in the majority of older adults, of the same magnitude as those of young adults. These were significantly delayed (even more than expected on the basis of general slowing), indicating a disproportionate impairment of low-level inhibitory motor control in old age.	\N	\N
21616987	This project examined receptive vocabulary treatment outcomes in the two languages of a bilingual preschooler with moderate to severe language impairment. A series of single-subject experimental designs was used to compare English-only (EO) and bilingual (BI) approaches to receptive vocabulary treatment. The participant, Nam, was a boy age 3;11 (years;months) who was learning Vietnamese as a first language at home and English in his early childhood education program. Treatment was implemented by an EO interventionist using a computer interface and prerecorded audio files in Vietnamese and English. The dependent measure was the percentage of items that were correctly identified in each language. Combined studies revealed that the BI approach increased Nam's attention to task and was as effective as the EO approach for increasing his receptive vocabulary in English. Nam made vocabulary gains in both treatment conditions; receptive vocabulary gains were evident in both Vietnamese and English. This project showed that it is feasible for an EO clinician to promote gains in both the home and school languages of a BI child through creative collaborations with BI colleagues and the use of technology. Replication with additional participants and treatment activities is needed to make further generalizations.	\N	\N
21623776	Isotretinoin is widely used in the treatment of extensive and nodulocystic acne. The objective of this prospective study was to investigate whether oral isotretinoin could affect the hearing system. Thirty-eight patients with acne vulgaris (76 ears) who were diagnosed and treated at the Department of Dermatology were included in the current study. Study evaluation visits were performed at baseline and at Weeks 1, 2 and 3. Pure-tone averages (PTAs) of air conduction thresholds at 250 Hz (PTA1); 500, 1000, and 2000 Hz (PTA2); 4000, 8000, and 10,000 Hz (PTA3); and 12,500, 16,000, 18,000 and 20,000 Hz (PTA4) for each ear were calculated separately. Assessment of the efficacy was based on the audiometric findings. Compared with pre-treatment evaluation, the PTAs of patients were found to be significantly different at the first week for PTA2 (P = 0.033) and PTA3 (P = 0.001), at the second week for PTA1 (P = 0.036), and at the third week for PTA4 (P = 0.002). Our results suggest that the oral isotretinoin (13-cis retinoic acid), which is a derivative of retinol (vitamin A), improved the hearing level of the patients in all audiometric frequencies in a short-period follow-up.	\N	\N
21624926	Cognitive impairment is a core element shared by a large number of different neurological and neuropsychiatric diseases. Irrespective of their different aetiologies and symptomatologies, most appear to converge at the functional deficiency of the auditory-frontal cortex network of auditory discrimination, which indexes cognitive impairment shared by these abnormalities. This auditory-frontal cortical deficiency, and hence cognitive decline, can now be objectively measured with the mismatch negativity and its magnetic equivalent. The auditory-frontal cortical network involved seems, therefore, to play a pivotal, unifying role in the different abnormalities. It is, however, more likely that the dysfunction that can be detected with the mismatch negativity and its magnetoencephalographic equivalent manifests a more widespread brain disorder, namely, a deficient N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor function, shared by these abnormalities and accounting for most of the cognitive decline.	\N	\N
21625011	The McGurk effect demonstrates the influence of visual cues on auditory perception. Mismatching information from both sensory modalities can fuse to a novel percept that matches neither the auditory nor the visual stimulus. This illusion is reported in 60-80% of trials. We were interested in the impact of ongoing brain oscillations-indexed by fluctuating local excitability and interareal synchronization-on upcoming perception of identical stimuli. The perception of the McGurk effect is preceded by high beta activity in parietal, frontal, and temporal areas. Beta activity is pronounced in the left superior temporal gyrus (lSTG), which is considered as a site of multimodal integration. This area is functionally (de)coupled to distributed frontal and temporal regions in illusion trials. The disposition to fuse multisensory information is enhanced as the lSTG is more strongly coupled to frontoparietal regions. Illusory perception is accompanied by a decrease in poststimulus theta-band activity in the cuneus, precuneus, and left superior frontal gyrus. Event-related activity in the left middle temporal gyrus is pronounced during illusory perception. Thus, the McGurk effect depends on fluctuating brain states suggesting that functional connectedness of left STS at a prestimulus stage is crucial for an audiovisual percept.	\N	\N
21639675	It is well established that in masked priming, a target word (e.g., JUDGE) is primed more effectively by a transposed letter (TL) prime (e.g., jugde) than by an orthographic control prime (e.g., junpe). This is inconsistent with the slot coding schemes used in many models of visual word recognition. Several alternative coding schemes have been proposed in which special bigram detectors for frequently occurring nonadjacent letter combinations are developed as a product of perceptual learning. In order to examine this perceptual learning hypothesis, we asked whether bigram detectors are defined in terms of visuospatial coordinates. Japanese-English bilinguals who were equally familiar with horizontal and vertical text in Japanese demonstrated strong TL priming in both orientations when reading Japanese words, but, when reading English words, the evidence for vertical TL priming was not as strong. However, native English speakers showed a clear TL priming effect with vertically presented English words despite minimal exposure to vertical text, which is not consistent with a perceptual learning account. It is proposed instead that the initial letter array is transformed into an abstract ordinal code (first to last) regardless of orientation and that the speed with which this transformation is carried out depends on the familiarity of the script.	\N	\N
21645986	The etiology of developmental dyslexia remains widely debated. An appealing theory postulates that the reading and spelling problems in individuals with dyslexia originate from reduced sensitivity to slow-rate dynamic auditory cues. This low-level auditory deficit is thought to provoke a cascade of effects, including inaccurate speech perception and eventually unspecified phoneme representations. The present study investigated sensitivity to frequency modulation and amplitude rise time, speech-in-noise perception and phonological awareness in 11-year-old children with dyslexia and a matched normal-reading control children. Group comparisons demonstrated that children with dyslexia were less sensitive than normal-reading children to slow-rate dynamic auditory processing, speech-in-noise perception, phonological awareness and literacy abilities. Correlations were found between slow-rate dynamic auditory processing and phonological awareness, and speech-in-noise perception and reading. Yet, no significant correlation between slow-rate dynamic auditory processing and speech-in-noise perception was obtained. Together, these results indicate that children with dyslexia have difficulties with slow-rate dynamic auditory processing and speech-in-noise perception and that these problems persist until sixth grade.	\N	\N
21647889	To study to what extent it is possible to achieve identical insertion depths and to maintain the same performance after cochlear reimplantation. Outcome research on a retrospective case series in a tertiary university referral center. Data were collected for 12 adults and three children who underwent reimplantation during the last 3 years with a new HiRes90K device with HiFocus 1J electrode owing to failure of the feed-through seal. Multislice computed tomography scans were used to compare positions of the original and newly placed electrode arrays. The speech-perception scores on a consonant-vowel-consonant word test before and after reimplantation were compared. All reimplantations were successfully performed by two experienced cochlear implantation surgeons, and no complications were observed. Postoperative imaging showed that the average displacement of the new implant was only 0.59 mm. Reactivation of the implant gave immediate open set speech understanding in all patients, and speech perception rapidly returned to the previous level obtained with the original implant within weeks; it was even significantly better at the 3-month follow-up. No relation was found between changes in performance and the amount of displacement of the electrode array. After cochlear reimplantation with the same device, electrode-array position can be accurately replicated and speech perception can be regained or even improved within weeks.	\N	\N
21649758	This event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study was designed in such a manner so as to contribute to the present debate on behavioural and functional transfer effects associated with intensive language training. To address this novel issue, we measured professional simultaneous interpreters and control subjects while they performed a non-verbal auditory discrimination task that primarily relies on attention and categorization functions. The fMRI results revealed that the discrimination of the target stimuli was associated with differential blood oxygen level-dependent responses in fronto-parietal regions between the two groups, even though in-scanner behavioural results did not show significant group differences. These findings are in line with previous observations showing the contribution of fronto-parietal regions to auditory attention and categorization functions. Our results imply that language training modulates brain activity in regions involved in the top-down regulation of auditory functions.	\N	\N
21669859	It is generally agreed that considerable amounts of low-level sensory processing of visual stimuli can occur without conscious awareness. On the other hand, the degree of higher level visual processing that occurs in the absence of awareness is as yet unclear. Here, event-related potential (ERP) measures of brain activity were recorded during a sandwich-masking paradigm, a commonly used approach for attenuating conscious awareness of visual stimulus content. In particular, the present study used a combination of ERP activation contrasts to track both early sensory-processing ERP components and face-specific N170 ERP activations, in trials with versus without awareness. The electrophysiological measures revealed that the sandwich masking abolished the early face-specific N170 neural response (peaking at ~170 ms post-stimulus), an effect that paralleled the abolition of awareness of face versus non-face image content. Furthermore, however, the masking appeared to render a strong attenuation of earlier feedforward visual sensory-processing signals. This early attenuation presumably resulted in insufficient information being fed into the higher level visual system pathways specific to object category processing, thus leading to unawareness of the visual object content. These results support a coupling of visual awareness and neural indices of face processing, while also demonstrating an early low-level mechanism of interference in sandwich masking.	\N	\N
21675563	This study examined the effects of visual-verbalload (as measured by a visually presented reading-memory task with three levels) on a visual/auditory stimulus-response task. The three levels of load were defined as follows: "No Load" meant no other stimuli were presented concurrently; "Free Load" meant that a letter (A, B, C, or D) appeared at the same time as the visual or auditory stimulus; and "Force Load" was the same as "Free Load," but the participants were also instructed to count how many times the letter A appeared. The stimulus-response task also had three levels: "irrelevant," "compatible," and "incompatible" spatial conditions. These required different key-pressing responses. The visual stimulus was a red ball presented either to the left or to the right of the display screen, and the auditory stimulus was a tone delivered from a position similar to that of the visual stimulus. Participants also processed an irrelevant stimulus. The results indicated that participants perceived auditory stimuli earlier than visual stimuli and reacted faster under stimulus-response compatible conditions. These results held even under a high visual-verbal load. These findings suggest the following guidelines for systems used in driving: an auditory source, appropriately compatible signal and manual-response positions, and a visually simplified background.	\N	\N
21676085	The phonological deficit theory of dyslexia assumes that degraded speech sound representations might hamper the acquisition of stable letter-speech sound associations necessary for learning to read. However, there is only scarce and mainly indirect evidence for this assumed letter-speech sound association problem. The present study aimed at clarifying the nature and the role of letter-speech sound association problems in dyslexia by analysing event-related potentials (ERP) of 11-year-old dyslexic children to speech sounds in isolation or combined with letters, which were presented either simultaneously with or 200 ms before the speech sounds. Recent studies with normal readers revealed that letters systematically modulated speech sound processing in an early (mismatch negativity or MMN) and late (Late Discriminatory Negativity or LDN) time-window. The amplitude of the MMN and LDN to speech sounds was enhanced when speech sounds were presented with letters. The dyslexic readers in the present study, however, did not exhibit any early influences of letters on speech sounds even after 4 years of reading instruction, indicating no automatic integration of letters and speech sounds. Interestingly, they revealed a systematic late effect of letters on speech sound processing, probably reflecting the mere association of letters and speech sounds. This pattern is strongly divergent from that observed in age-matched normal readers, who showed both early and late effects, but reminiscent of that observed in beginner normal readers in a previous study (Froyen, Bonte, van Atteveldt & Blomert, 2009). The finding that the quality of letter-speech sound processing is directly related to reading fluency urges further research into the role of audiovisual integration in the development of reading failure in dyslexia.	\N	\N
21676091	Early post-natal nutrition influences later development, but there are no studies comparing brain function in healthy infants as a function of dietary intake even though the major infant diets differ significantly in nutrient composition. We studied brain responses (event-related potentials; ERPs) to speech sounds for infants who were fed either breast milk (BF), milk-based formula (MF), or soy formula (SF) during the first 6 months of life. Two syllables presented in an oddball paradigm elicited a late positive wave (P350) from temporal and frontal brain regions involved in language processes. All groups showed significantly greater response amplitudes to the infrequent syllable across sites at 3 months and frontally at 6 months, but significant discrimination at temporal sites was only observed at 6 months in BF infants. Decreases in response amplitudes from 3 to 6 months were greater for the frequently presented syllable, most prominent in BF infants, and greater in females than males. The results indicate greater syllable discrimination in BF than formula-fed infants, but whether this can be attributed to dietary influences alone remains unclear. Feeding method and background factor differences between breastfed and formula-fed infants may also contribute to the observed differences. The general absence of differences between formula-fed groups is notable and suggests that milk-based formula and soy formula equally support brain development and function during the first post-natal 6 months. Finally, the results indicate gender differences in the development of neural and temporal processes involved in sensory discrimination, and suggest that at 6 months these processes are better developed in females.	\N	\N
21676999	The conditions of sound fields used in research, especially testing and fitting of hearing aids, are usually simplified or reduced to fundamental physical fields, such as the free or the diffuse sound field. The concepts of such ideal conditions are easily introduced in theoretical and experimental investigations and in models for directional microphones, for example. When it comes to real-world application of hearing aids, however, the field conditions are more complex with regard to specific stationary and transient properties in room transfer functions and the corresponding impulse responses and binaural parameters. Sound fields can be categorized in outdoor rural and urban and indoor environments. Furthermore, sound fields in closed spaces of various sizes and shapes and in situations of transport in vehicles, trains, and aircrafts are compared with regard to the binaural signals. In laboratory tests, sources of uncertainties are individual differences in binaural cues and too less controlled sound field conditions. Furthermore, laboratory sound fields do not cover the variety of complex sound environments. Spatial audio formats such as higher-order ambisonics are candidates for sound field references not only in room acoustics and audio engineering but also in audiology.	\N	\N
21678230	Studies of change detection have increased our understanding of attention, perception, and memory. In two innovative experiments we showed that the change detection phenomenon can be used to examine other areas of cognition-specifically, the processing of linguistic and indexical information in spoken words. One hypothesis suggests that cognitive resources must be used to process indexical information, whereas an alternative suggests that it is processed more slowly than linguistic information. Participants performed a lexical decision task and were asked whether the voice presenting the stimuli changed. Nonwords varying in their likeness to real words were used in the lexical decision task to encourage participants to vary the amount of cognitive resources/processing time. More cognitive resources/processing time are required to make a lexical decision with word-like nonwords. Participants who heard word-like nonwords were more likely to detect the change when it occurred (Experiment 1) and were more confident that the voice was the same when it did not change (Experiment 2). These results suggest that indexical information is processed more slowly than linguistic information and demonstrate how change detection can provide insight to other areas of cognition.	\N	\N
21681660	Two experiments examined whether perceptual recovery from Korean consonant-cluster simplification is based on language-specific phonological knowledge. In tri-consonantal C1C2C3 sequences such as /lkt/ and /lpt/ in Seoul Korean, either C1 or C2 can be completely deleted. Seoul Koreans monitored for C2 targets (/p/ or / k/, deleted or preserved) in the second word of a two-word phrase with an underlying /l/-C2-/t/ sequence. In Experiment 1 the target-bearing words had contextual lexical-semantic support. Listeners recovered deleted targets as fast and as accurately as preserved targets with both Word and Intonational Phrase (IP) boundaries between the two words. In Experiment 2, contexts were low-pass filtered. Listeners were still able to recover deleted targets as well as preserved targets in IP-boundary contexts, but better with physically-present targets than with deleted targets in Word-boundary contexts. This suggests that the benefit of having target acoustic-phonetic information emerges only when higher-order (contextual and phrase-boundary) information is not available. The strikingly efficient recovery of deleted phonemes with neither acoustic-phonetic cues nor contextual support demonstrates that language-specific phonological knowledge, rather than language-universal perceptual processes which rely on fine-grained phonetic details, is employed when the listener perceives the results of a continuous-speech process in which reduction is phonetically complete.	\N	\N
21682395	The perceived negative influence of standard hearing protectors on communication is a common argument for not wearing them. Thus, "augmented" protectors have been developed to improve speech intelligibility. Nevertheless, their actual benefit remains a point of concern. In this paper, speech perception with active earplugs is compared to standard passive custom-made earplugs. The two types of active protectors included amplify the incoming sound with a fixed level or to a user selected fraction of the maximum safe level. For the latter type, minimal and maximal amplification are selected. To compare speech intelligibility, 20 different speech-in-noise fragments are presented to 60 normal-hearing subjects and speech recognition is scored. The background noise is selected from realistic industrial noise samples with different intensity, frequency, and temporal characteristics. Statistical analyses suggest that the protectors' performance strongly depends on the noise condition. The active protectors with minimal amplification outclass the others for the most difficult and the easiest situations, but they also limit binaural listening. In other conditions, the passive protectors clearly surpass their active counterparts. Subsequently, test fragments are analyzed acoustically to clarify the results. This provides useful information for developing prototypes, but also indicates that tests with human subjects remain essential.	\N	\N
21682407	When a test sound consisting of pure tones with equal intensities is preceded by a precursor sound identical to the test sound except for a reduction in the intensity of one tone, an auditory "enhancement" phenomenon occurs: In the test sound, the tone which was previously softer stands out perceptually. Here, enhancement was investigated using inharmonic sounds made up of five pure tones well resolved in the auditory periphery. It was found that enhancement can be elicited not only by increases in intensity but also by shifts in frequency. In both cases, when the precursor and test sounds are separated by a 500-ms delay, inserting a burst of pink noise during the delay has little effect on enhancement. Presenting the precursor and test sounds to opposite ears rather than to the same ear significantly reduces the enhancement resulting from increases in intensity, but not the enhancement resulting from shifts in frequency. This difference suggests that the mechanisms of enhancement are not identical for the two types of change. For frequency shifts, enhancement may be partly based on the existence of automatic "frequency-shift detectors" [Demany and Ramos, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 117, 833-841 (2005)].	\N	\N
21688937	Cross-modal temporal recalibration describes a shift in the point of subjective simultaneity (PSS) between 2 events following repeated exposure to asynchronous cross-modal inputs--the adaptors. Previous research suggested that audiovisual recalibration is insensitive to the spatial relationship between the adaptors. Here we show that audiovisual recalibration can be driven by cross-modal spatial grouping. Twelve participants adapted to alternating trains of lights and tones. Spatial position was manipulated, with alternating sequences of a light then a tone, or a tone then a light, presented on either side of fixation (e.g., left tone--left light--right tone--right light, etc.). As the events were evenly spaced in time, in the absence of spatial-based grouping it would be unclear if tones were leading or lagging lights. However, any grouping of spatially colocalized cross-modal events would result in an unambiguous sense of temporal order. We found that adapting to these stimuli caused the PSS between subsequent lights and tones to shift toward the temporal relationship implied by spatial-based grouping. These data therefore show that temporal recalibration is facilitated by spatial grouping.	\N	\N
21689988	Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D major, K.448 (Mozart K.448), has been shown to improve mental function, leading to what is known as the Mozart Effect. Our previous work revealed that epileptiform discharges in children with epilepsy decrease during and right after listening to Mozart K.448. However, the duration of the effect was not studied. In the study described here, we evaluated the long-term effect of Mozart K.448 on epileptiform discharges in children with epilepsy. Eighteen children with epilepsy whose seizures were clinically well controlled with antiepileptic drugs were included. For each child, EEGs had revealed persistent epileptiform discharges for at least 6 months. These patients listened to Mozart K.448 for 8 minutes once a day before bedtime for 6 months. Epileptiform discharges were recorded and compared before and after 1, 2, and 6 months of listening to Mozart K.448. All of the children remained on the same antiepileptic drug over the 6 months. Relationships between number of epileptiform discharges and foci of discharges, intelligence, epilepsy etiology, age, and gender were analyzed. Epileptiform discharges significantly decreased by 53.2±47.4, 64.4±47.1, and 71.6±45.8%, respectively, after listening to Mozart K.448 for 1, 2, and 6 months. All patients except those with occipital discharges showed a significant decrease in epileptiform discharges. Patients with normal intelligence and idiopathic epilepsy had greater decreases than those with mental retardation and symptomatic epilepsy. Age and gender did not affect the results. We conclude that long-term listening to Mozart K.448 may be effective in decreasing epileptiform discharges in children with epilepsy in a chronologically progressive manner.	\N	\N
21700953	We previously reported that fast-moving dot arrays cause orientation-tuned masking of static gratings (D. Apthorp, J. Cass, & D. Alais, 2010), which we attribute to "motion streaks." Using similar "streaky" dot motion, we describe spatial frequency tuning of grating threshold elevations caused by masking (Experiment 1) and adaptation (Experiment 2) to motion. To compare the streaks with psychophysical tunings, we Fourier analyzed time-averaged translating dots, which were bandpass (peaking at ∼2.3 c/deg). Masking, however, was strongest at lower test frequencies (≤1 c/deg) and largely isotropic over orientation, although a small orientation-tuned effect occurred at ∼1.2 c/deg. Results were broadly similar across monoptic and dichoptic conditions. Adaptation to fast motion produced spatially bandpass threshold elevations for parallel test gratings, peaking slightly lower than the peak Fourier frequency, with little elevation below 1 c/deg (unlike the low-pass elevation resulting from masking). Slow adaptation produced little elevation for parallel gratings. For orthogonal test gratings, fast motion adaptation produced low-pass threshold elevations and slow motion produced bandpass elevations, suggesting that separable mechanisms process fast (streaky) and slow motion. The different threshold elevation patterns over spatial frequency for masking and adaptation suggest that the adaptation effects are mainly within-channel suppression, whereas the masking effects may be mainly due to between-channel suppression.	\N	\N
21717096	The ocular vestibular evoked myogenic potential (oVEMP) is a relatively new method used to assess otolith-ocular pathways in humans. When elicited using air-conducted (AC) sound stimulation, the oVEMP is thought to reflect mostly saccular activation. However, it has been recently suggested that utricular afferents may also contribute to the AC evoked oVEMP. While previous frequency tuning studies of the AC evoked oVEMP report predominately high frequency sensitivity (>400 Hz), few have included the lower frequencies (<200 Hz) at which it has been proposed the utricle is most sensitive. In this study, ten normal subjects were stimulated with AC sound delivered unilaterally using headphones over frequencies from 50 to 1,200 Hz at a near constant A-weighted intensity of 120 dB peak sound pressure level. For AC stimulation, the oVEMP demonstrated maximum amplitudes around 600 Hz, with a second, smaller peak occurring around 100 Hz. The AC evoked oVEMP tuning has two peaks, a dominant one consistent with excitation of the saccule and a smaller one consistent with excitation of the utricle.	\N	\N
21724369	In spite of voice being an important parameter of mate choice, none of the studies have described the acoustic characteristics of the sexually appealing voice. Two hundred adults (100 men and 100 women) in the age range of 18-24 years were asked to narrate a topic, which was recorded directly onto Computerized Speech Lab (CSL) 6103 hardware. Recorded stimuli were presented to the six judges, and they were asked to indicate if the voice is sexually appealing on a five-point rating scale. The voices, which are consistently identified as sexually very attractive and unattractive were subjected to cepstral analysis through CSL. The results of perceptual analysis revealed that 28 of the female voice samples and 39 of the male voice samples were rated as sexually attractive. These ratings were consistent within and across the judges. The cepstral analysis was then performed in all the voice samples and the results of independent t test revealed higher values of cepstral peak parameter (CPP) in the sexually attractive voices in comparison to the other voice samples in both the genders. The obtained results are discussed with respect to the harmonic organization in the voice samples. The results of cepstral analysis in sexually attractive voices revealed higher values of CPP in comparison to the voices rated as sexually not appealing. This could be because of the presence of well-defined harmonic structure evidenced in the sexually appealing voice in comparison to voices rated as very unappealing. Our findings suggest that cepstral analysis is a good indicator of sexually appealing voice.	\N	\N
21728456	Cognitive control resolves conflicts between appropriate and inappropriate response tendencies. Is this achieved by a unitary all-purpose conflict control system, or do independent subsystems deal with different aspects of conflicting information? In a fully factorial hybrid prime-Simon task, participants responded to the identity of targets displayed at different nominally irrelevant screen locations, preceded by nominally irrelevant, consciously or nonconsciously perceived primes. The response required by the target's identity could match or mismatch (a) the target's location, and (b) the prime's identity, resulting in potential conflict (a) across and (b) within stimulus domains. Conflict effects were investigated within and across trials. Results suggest that (i) nonconsciously perceived information elicits within-trial control, but--unlike consciously perceived information--no across-trial behavioral modulation; (ii) separate subsystems deal with conflicts arising from different stimulus domains; and (iii) occasional apparent interactions between domains reflect a particular difficulty in reactivating a just-discarded response (reactivation aversion effect, RAE).	\N	\N
21728464	Increasing perceptual load reduces the processing of visual stimuli outside the focus of attention, but the mechanism underlying these effects remains unclear. Here we tested an account attributing the effects of perceptual load to modulations of visual cortex excitability. In contrast to stimulus competition accounts, which propose that load should affect simultaneous, but not sequential, stimulus presentations, the visual excitability account makes the novel prediction that load should affect detection sensitivity for both simultaneous and sequential presentations. Participants fixated a stimulus stream, responding to targets defined by either a color (low load) or color and orientation conjunctions (high load). Additionally, detection sensitivity was measured for a peripheral critical stimulus (CS) presented occasionally. Increasing load at fixation reduced sensitivity to the peripheral CSs; this effect was similar regardless of whether CSs were presented simultaneously with central stimuli or during the (otherwise empty) interval between them. Controls ruled out explanations of the results in terms of strategic task prioritization. These findings support a cortical excitability account for perceptual load, challenging stimulus competition accounts.	\N	\N
21729437	To describe the effect of age and noise on high frequency hearing thresholds in an Italian population aged 70 years and older, in order to investigate the interaction between presbycusis and noise exposure. We compared 460 subjects: 367 affected by presbycusis alone (204 women and 163 men) and 93 affected by presbycusis and noise exposure (eight women and 85 men). Pure tone average hearing thresholds, for each ear, were compared between groups, and between sexes and ages within groups. A slight threshold difference was found between the two groups at 4 kHz. After adjusting for age and gender, this difference was found to be related only to differing patient age. Men's and women's thresholds differed significantly in both groups, especially at high frequencies, at which threshold deterioration was worse in men than women. The threshold differences between patients with presbycusis with and without noise exposure were limited. Larger studies are needed to assess the relative effects of ageing and noise exposure on hearing thresholds.	\N	\N
21750713	In the present study we investigated the capacity of the memory store underlying the mismatch negativity (MMN) response in musicians and nonmusicians for complex tone patterns. While previous studies have focused either on the kind of information that can be encoded or on the decay of the memory trace over time, we studied capacity in terms of the length of tone sequences, i.e., the number of individual tones that can be fully encoded and maintained. By means of magnetoencephalography (MEG) we recorded MMN responses to deviant tones that could occur at any position of standard tone patterns composed of four, six or eight tones during passive, distracted listening. Whereas there was a reliable MMN response to deviant tones in the four-tone pattern in both musicians and nonmusicians, only some individuals showed MMN responses to the longer patterns. This finding of a reliable capacity of the short-term auditory store underlying the MMN response is in line with estimates of a three to five item capacity of the short-term memory trace from behavioural studies, although pitch and contour complexity covaried with sequence length, which might have led to an understatement of the reported capacity. Whereas there was a tendency for an enhancement of the pattern MMN in musicians compared to nonmusicians, a strong advantage for musicians could be shown in an accompanying behavioural task of detecting the deviants while attending to the stimuli for all pattern lengths, indicating that long-term musical training differentially affects the memory capacity of auditory short-term memory for complex tone patterns with and without attention. Also, a left-hemispheric lateralization of MMN responses in the six-tone pattern suggests that additional networks that help structuring the patterns in the temporal domain might be recruited for demanding auditory processing in the pitch domain.	\N	\N
21755126	To assess the difficulty of paced auditory serial addition test (PASAT) in a population of high intellectual level, under ideal cognitive testing circumstances. One hundred medical students underwent PASAT testing. They had slept well the night before, they had eaten before the assessment, they were not using any drugs that could affect the central nervous system and they did not have depression, anxiety or any chronic disease. The average result from the three-second version of PASAT was 57.5% and, from the two-second version, it was 44.3%. Even under ideal circumstances, PASAT is a very difficult test for the general population. It may not be ideal for neurologists to screen, assess and follow up patients with cognitive function in multiple sclerosis.	\N	\N
21762032	Reaction times for categorization of a probe face according to its sex or fame were contrasted as a function of whether the category of a preceding, sandwich-masked prime face was congruent or incongruent. Prime awareness was measured by the ability to later categorize the primes, and this was close to chance and typically uncorrelated with priming. When prime faces were never presented as visible probes within a test, priming was not reliable; when prime faces were also seen as probes, priming was only reliable if visible and masked presentation of faces were interleaved (not simply if primes had been visible in a previous session). In the latter case, priming was independent of experimentally induced face-response or face-category contingencies, ruling out any simple form of stimulus-response learning. We conclude that the reliable masked congruency priming reflects bindings between stimuli and multiple, abstract classifications that can be generated both overtly and covertly.	\N	\N
21762876	Schizophrenia patients have vocal affect (prosody) deficits that are treatment resistant and associated with negative symptoms and poor outcome. The neural correlates of this dysfunction are unclear. Prior study has suggested that schizophrenia vocal affect perception deficits stem from an inability to use acoustic cues, notably pitch, in decoding emotion. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was performed in 24 schizophrenia patients and 28 healthy control subjects, during the performance of a four-choice (happiness, fear, anger, neutral) vocal affect identification task in which items for each emotion varied parametrically in affective salient acoustic cue levels. We observed that parametric increases in cue levels in schizophrenia failed to produce the same identification rate increases as in control subjects. These deficits correlated with diminished reciprocal activation changes in superior temporal and inferior frontal gyri and reduced temporo-frontal connectivity. Task activation also correlated with independent measures of pitch perception and negative symptom severity. These findings illustrate the interplay between sensory and higher-order cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia. Sensory contributions to vocal affect deficits also suggest that this neurobehavioral marker could be targeted by pharmacological or behavioral remediation of acoustic feature discrimination.	\N	\N
21765387	To compare hearing results in patients undergoing ossiculoplasty using either partial ossicular replacement prosthesis (PORP) or total ossicular replacement prosthesis (TORP) with Silastic banding and malleus relocation techniques in cases with malleus and stapes both present and mobile. Prospective nonrandomized clinical study. Tertiary referral center. Five hundred eighty-five patients undergoing ossiculoplasty were enrolled in this study from April 1991 to May 2010. Comparative analyses were made between a group of 304 patients who underwent ossiculoplasty with partial prosthesis positioned from the malleus to the stapes head and 281 patients who underwent ossiculoplasty with total prosthesis positioned from the malleus to the stapes footplate. Preoperative and postoperative audiometric evaluation using conventional audiometry, that is, air-bone gap (ABG), bone-conduction thresholds, and air-conduction thresholds were assessed. In the PORP group, the mean postoperative ABG was 13.1 dB compared with 8.9 dB in the TORP group, (95% confidence interval [CI], 2.2-6.2 dB; p ≤ 0.001). Fifty-four percent of patients from the PORP group had a postoperative ABG of 10 dB or less, compared with 68.9% in the TORP group (mean difference, 14.6%; 95% CI, 6%-23%; p < 0.001). The postoperative ABG was closed to within 20 dB in 70.4% of cases in the PORP group compared with 86.9% in the TORP group (mean difference, 14.5%; 95% CI, 10%-23%; p < 0.001). In patients with an absent incus and intact stapes and malleus, ossicular reconstruction with TORP combined with our malleus relocation and Silastic banding technique results in significantly better hearing outcomes compared with reconstructions with PORP.	\N	\N
21767048	The urge to move in response to music, combined with the positive affect associated with the coupling of sensory and motor processes while engaging with music (referred to as sensorimotor coupling) in a seemingly effortless way, is commonly described as the feeling of being in the groove. Here, we systematically explore this compelling phenomenon in a population of young adults. We utilize multiple levels of analysis, comprising phenomenological, behavioral, and computational techniques. Specifically, we show (a) that the concept of the groove is widely appreciated and understood in terms of a pleasurable drive toward action, (b) that a broad range of musical excerpts can be appraised reliably for the degree of perceived groove, (c) that the degree of experienced groove is inversely related to experienced difficulty of bimanual sensorimotor coupling under tapping regimes with varying levels of expressive constraint, (d) that high-groove stimuli elicit spontaneous rhythmic movements, and (e) that quantifiable measures of the quality of sensorimotor coupling predict the degree of experienced groove. Our results complement traditional discourse regarding the groove, which has tended to take the psychological phenomenon for granted and has focused instead on the musical and especially the rhythmic qualities of particular genres of music that lead to the perception of groove. We conclude that groove can be treated as a psychological construct and model system that allows for experimental exploration of the relationship between sensorimotor coupling with music and emotion.	\N	\N
21786896	The form of the psychometric function (PF) for auditory frequency discrimination is of theoretical interest and practical importance. In this study, PFs for pure-tone frequency discrimination were measured for several standard frequencies (200-8000 Hz) and levels [35-85 dB sound pressure level (SPL)] in normal-hearing listeners. The proportion-correct data were fitted using a cumulative-Gaussian function of the sensitivity index, d', computed as a power transformation of the frequency difference, Δf. The exponent of the power function corresponded to the slope of the PF on log(d')-log(Δf) coordinates. The influence of attentional lapses on PF-slope estimates was investigated. When attentional lapses were not taken into account, the estimated PF slopes on log(d')-log(Δf) coordinates were found to be significantly lower than 1, suggesting a nonlinear relationship between d' and Δf. However, when lapse rate was included as a free parameter in the fits, PF slopes were found not to differ significantly from 1, consistent with a linear relationship between d' and Δf. This was the case across the wide ranges of frequencies and levels tested in this study. Therefore, spectral and temporal models of frequency discrimination must account for a linear relationship between d' and Δf across a wide range of frequencies and levels.	\N	\N
21787870	Repetition has been shown to activate the so-called 'dorsal stream', a network of temporo-parieto-frontal areas subserving the mapping of acoustic speech input onto articulatory-motor representations. Among these areas, a region in the posterior Sylvian fissure at the temporo-parietal boundary (also called 'area Spt') has been suggested to play a central role particularly with increasing computational demands on phonological processing. Most of the relevant evidence stems from tasks requiring metalinguistic processing. To date, the relevance of area Spt in natural phonological operations based on implicit linguistic knowledge has not yet been investigated. We examined two types of phonological processes assumed to be lateralized differently, i.e., the processing of syllabic stress versus subsyllabic segmental processing. In two ways, subjects modified an auditorily presented pseudoword before reproducing it overtly: (a) by a prosodic manipulation involving a stress shift across syllable boundaries, (b) by a segmental manipulation involving a vowel substitution. Manipulation per se was expected to engage area Spt. Segmental compared to prosodic processing was expected to reveal predominantly left lateralized activation, while prosodic compared to segmental processing was expected to result in bilateral or right-lateralized activation. Contrary to expectation, activation in area Spt did not vary with increased phonological processing demand. Instead, area Spt was engaged regardless of whether subjects simply repeated a pseudoword or performed a phonological manipulation before reproduction. However, for both segmental and prosodic stimuli, reproduction after manipulation (compared to repetition) activated the left intraparietal sulcus and left inferior frontal cortex. We propose that these parieto-frontal regions are recruited when the task requires phonological manipulation over and above the more automated transfer of auditory into articulatory verbal codes, which appears to involve area Spt. When directly contrasted with prosodic manipulation, segmental manipulation resulted in increased activation predominantly in left inferior frontal areas. This may be due to an increased demand on phonological sequencing operations at the subsyllabic phoneme level. Contrasted with segmental manipulations, prosodic manipulation did not result in increased activation, which may be due to a lower degree of morphosyntactic and to syllable-level processing.	\N	\N
21792976	To evaluate vestibular function in patients with the mitochondrial A3243G mutation. Data from patients with the A3243G mutation attending an academic tertiary referral center were prospectively recorded. The clinical histories of 13 unrelated patients with the mitochondrial A3243G mutation (six mitochondrial encephalomyopathy, lactic acidosis, and stroke-like episodes; and seven maternally inherited diabetes and deafness) were recorded, in particular their history of vestibular symptoms. Vestibular examinations including caloric testing and vestibular evoked myogenic potentials in response to air-conducted sound (ACS-VEMPs) were performed. In seven patients who showed abnormal ACS-VEMP, VEMP in response to galvanic stimuli (galvanic-VEMP) were also recorded. Eleven of the 13 patients had vestibular symptoms. The age of onset of vestibular symptoms was significantly later than the ages of onset of hearing loss and diabetes mellitus (P < .05). Ten of the 13 patients showed abnormal caloric responses, whereas 12 patients showed abnormal ACS-VEMPs on one or both sides. All of the seven patients who underwent galvanic-VEMP testing showed normal responses. The A3243G mutation is associated with vestibular dysfunction involving both the superior and inferior vestibular nerve systems. Furthermore, our results from galvanic-VEMP testing suggests that a labyrinthine lesion is primarily responsible for the symptoms of vestibular dysfunction.	\N	\N
21812557	Several perspectives on speech perception posit a central role for the representation of articulations in speech comprehension, supported by evidence for premotor activation when participants listen to speech. However, no experiments have directly tested whether motor responses mirror the profile of selective auditory cortical responses to native speech sounds or whether motor and auditory areas respond in different ways to sounds. We used fMRI to investigate cortical responses to speech and nonspeech mouth (ingressive click) sounds. Speech sounds activated bilateral superior temporal gyri more than other sounds, a profile not seen in motor and premotor cortices. These results suggest that there are qualitative differences in the ways that temporal and motor areas are activated by speech and click sounds: Anterior temporal lobe areas are sensitive to the acoustic or phonetic properties, whereas motor responses may show more generalized responses to the acoustic stimuli.	\N	\N
21812560	Complex auditory exposures in ambient environments include systems of not only linguistic but also musical sounds. Because musical exposure is often passive, consisting of listening rather than performing, examining listeners without formal musical training allows for the investigation of the effects of passive exposure on our nervous system without active use. Additionally, studying listeners who have exposure to more than one musical system allows for an evaluation of how the brain acquires multiple symbolic and communicative systems. In the present fMRI study, listeners who had been exposed to Western-only (monomusicals) and both Indian and Western musical systems (bimusicals) since childhood and did not have significant formal musical training made tension judgments on Western and Indian music. Significant group by music interactions in temporal and limbic regions were found, with effects predominantly driven by between-music differences in temporal regions in the monomusicals and by between-music differences in limbic regions in the bimusicals. Effective connectivity analysis of this network via structural equation modeling (SEM) showed significant path differences across groups and music conditions, most notably a higher degree of connectivity and larger differentiation between the music conditions within the bimusicals. SEM was also used to examine the relationships among the degree of music exposure, affective responses, and activation in various brain regions. Results revealed a more complex behavioral-neural relationship in the bimusicals, suggesting that affective responses in this group are shaped by multiple behavioral and neural factors. These three lines of evidence suggest a clear differentiation of the effects of the exposure of one versus multiple musical systems.	\N	\N
21812631	To determine administration times for word recognition presented via monitored live voice (MLV) and compact disc (CD) recordings. A quasi-experimental design was used. Fifty-word NU-6 lists were presented in three conditions: (1) MLV, (2) short ISI CD recording, and (3) long ISI CD recording. Listeners with normal hearing (NH) and hearing impairment (HI) participated in this study. Average administration time using MLV was significantly shorter than using recorded word lists for both groups of listeners. MLV presentation to the NH listeners was significantly faster than the MLV presentation to the HI listeners. There were no significant differences between groups in the administration times for any of the recorded lists (long or short ISI). Considerably more variability in administration time was observed for MLV presentation compared to recorded presentations. MLV presentation was about one minute faster than the shortest CD recording of the NU-6 fifty-item word lists, but it was only 49 seconds quicker when administering tests to individuals with hearing loss. Because the majority of our patients are hearing impaired, the difference of 49 seconds is not clinically significant. This difference is even less when 25-item word lists are used.	\N	\N
21812635	The objective of this study was to evaluate hearing loss among workers exposed to styrene, alone or with noise. This cross-sectional study was conducted as part of NoiseChem, a European Commission 5th Framework Programme research project, by occupational health institutes in Finland, Sweden, and Poland. Participants' ages ranged from 18-72 years (n = 1620 workers). Participants exposed to styrene, alone or with noise, were from reinforced fiberglass products manufacturing plants (n = 862). Comparison groups were comprised of workers noise-exposed (n = 400) or controls (n = 358). Current styrene exposures ranged from 0 to 309 mg/m(3), while mean current noise levels ranged from 70-84 dB(A). Hearing thresholds of styrene-exposed participants were compared with Annexes A and B from ANSI S3.44, 1996. The audiometric thresholds of styrene exposed workers were significantly poorer than those in published standards. Age, gender, and styrene exposure met the significance level criterion in the multiple logistic regression for the binary outcome 'hearing loss' (P = 0.0000). Exposure to noise (<85 dBA p = 0.0001; ≥85 dB(A) p = 0.0192) interacted significantly with styrene exposure. Occupational exposure to styrene is a risk factor for hearing loss, and styrene-exposed workers should be included in hearing loss prevention programs.	\N	\N
21817926	Recent studies have shown that audiovisual synchrony is recalibrated after exposure to asynchronous auditory and visual signals. This temporal recalibration has been shown only under a dual-task situation for speech signals. Here we examined whether the temporal recalibration occurs for audiovisual speech in a single-task situation using an offline adaptation method. In the experiment, participants were exposed to synchronous or asynchronous audiovisual syllables (either congruent or incongruent) for 3 min. The adaptation phase was followed by test trials, in which participants judged whether the auditory or visual stimulus was presented first. Results showed shifts in the point of subjective simultaneity and the sensitivity. Our results suggest that attention to adaptation stimuli is necessary to induce temporal recalibration for speech.	\N	\N
21824022	Attentional bias to threatening visual stimuli (words or pictures) is commonly present in anxious individuals, but not in non-anxious people. There is evidence to show that attentional bias to threat can be induced in all individuals when threat is imposed by threat not of symbolic nature, but by cues that predict aversive stimulation (loud noise or electric shock). However, it is not known whether attentional bias in such situations is still influenced by individual differences in anxiety. This question was addressed in two experiments using a spatial cuing task in which visual cues predicted the occurrence of an aversive event consisting of a loud human scream. Speeded attentional engagement to threat cues was positively correlated with trait anxiety in Experiment 1. Experiment 2 showed that speeded attentional engagement was present only in participants selected for high anxiety but not in low-anxious participants. In both experiments, slower disengagement from threat cues was found in all participants, irrespective of their trait anxiety levels.	\N	\N
21826005	Reduced hearing ability has been shown to influence various aspects of daily life, such as communication, psychosocial functioning, and working life. The aim of this study is to examine the association between hearing ability in noise and both sick leave and self-reported work productivity. In addition, the relationship between hearing ability and perceived health-caused limitations at work is examined. Data were collected at the baseline measurement of the Dutch "National Longitudinal Study on Hearing" and at each month during a subsequent period of 3 mo. Hearing ability was determined by means of the National Hearing Test, a speech-in-noise test over the Internet using digit triplets. The sample comprised 748 workers (385 with normal hearing ability and 363 with insufficient or poor hearing ability). Linear regression analyses revealed a significant adverse association between reduced hearing ability and self-reported absolute and differential productivity; for every dB signal-to-noise ratio (dB SNR) poorer hearing ability, self-rated absolute productivity for people experiencing little social support decreased by 0.054 points on a scale from 0 to 10 (b = -0.054; 95% confidence interval [CI] = -0.088 to -0.02). For people with less than three other chronic conditions, self-rated differential productivity also decreased significantly with decreasing hearing ability (no chronic conditions: b = -0.048 points/dB SNR on a scale from -10 to + 10, 95% CI = -0.094 to -0.001; one or two other chronic conditions: b = -0.035 points/dB SNR, 95% CI = -0.067 to -0.002). With adjustment for confounders, poorer hearing ability in noise furthermore significantly increased the odds for experiencing limitations (in the type or amount of work one could do) sometimes (odds ratio = 1.14; 95% CI = 1.07-1.21) and often to very often (odds ratio = 1.24; 95% CI = 1.05-1.45) in comparison with experiencing limitation seldom to never. A higher level of need for recovery among people with poorer hearing ability appeared to be one of the factors mediating the higher odds for sick leave of more than 5 days. Reduced hearing ability in noise was significantly associated with a lower self-reported absolute and differential productivity in specific cases. Also, poorer hearing increased the odds for experiencing health-caused limitations in the type or amount of work one can do. The significant relationship between hearing ability and sick leave, which was found when not adjusting for confounders, could partly be explained by a higher need for recovery among people with reduced hearing ability in noise.	\N	\N
21832862	To investigate interactions (if any) in the bone-conduction auditory steady-state response (BC ASSR) between multiple brief tones presented simultaneously. 500-, 1,000-, 2,000-, and 4,000-Hz brief tones, repeated at a rate of 77-101 Hz, were presented using a B-71 vibrator. BC ASSR thresholds and amplitudes at 50 dB nHL were measured in two conditions where the stimulus was either presented alone or together with other stimuli. Significantly larger amplitudes in the single-stimulus condition were found at 50 dB nHL. However, there was no significant threshold difference between single- and multiple-stimulus conditions. The BC ASSR thresholds (means ± SD) at 500, 1,000, 2,000, and 4,000 Hz were 96.7 ± 9.7, 75.3 ± 11.5, 65.6 ± 7.4, and 57.8 ± 7.2 dB re 1 μN ppe, respectively. Interactions occurred in the multiple-stimulus condition at high presentation levels, but not at threshold levels. The results of the present study imply that BC ASSR thresholds to multiple brief-tone stimuli can be assessed at the same time, at least in normal-hearing adults.	\N	\N
21832892	This report focuses on how speech perception, speech production, language, and literacy performance in adolescence are influenced by a common set of predictor variables obtained during elementary school in a large group of teenagers using cochlear implants (CIs). Time-lag analyses incorporating seven common predictor variables associated with the elementary school test period were evaluated. The elementary school-age variables included five contributors across the performance domains: gender, performance intelligence quotient, family size, socioeconomic status, and duration of deafness (operationally defined as the time period between the age of implantation and the onset of deafness). Regression analyses then examined how communication mode in early elementary grades influenced skills exhibited in high school and how this influence was mediated by information capacity of immediate memory. High correlations occurred between outcome measures collected at CI-E session and similar measures collected at CI-HS (values ranging from 0.75 to 0.83), indicating that the relative standing of individuals on these outcomes is highly stable over time. The best performers in elementary grades exhibit the best outcomes in high school, and early difficulties tend to persist throughout the elementary and high school years. The most highly related outcome areas were language and reading/literacy (values ranging from 0.74 to 0.88). These skills seem closely linked, and CI children who demonstrate the best vocabulary and syntax skills in elementary grades achieved the highest literacy performance in high school. Speech perception and speech production skills are also highly correlated with one another (r = 0.69 to 0.87), suggesting that the most direct result of improved auditory input from a CI is the child's ability to produce intelligible speech. The lowest correlations are observed between reading/literacy and speech perception (r = 0.30 to 0.54) or speech production (values ranging from 0.31 to 0.58). CI-E verbal rehearsal speed is an independent and powerful predictor of each early performance outcome, accounting for between 13% and 30% of the variance in early outcomes above and beyond that accounted for by gender, family size, socioeconomic status, performance intelligence quotient, duration of deafness, and the CI-E sign enhancement ratio. Group mean scores for language, reading, and social adjustment were generally within an SD of normative samples of typically developing age-mates with normal hearing. Use of sign to enhance spoken communication negatively influenced verbal rehearsal speed, which was a strong predictor of all early outcomes, which in turn strongly influenced later outcomes. These analyses suggest that early communication mode exerts a powerful influence on early outcomes that persist into later years. Speech perception, speech intelligibility, language, literacy, and psychosocial adjustment far exceeded that reported for similar groups before the advent of CI technology.	\N	\N
21835531	Behavioral and neurophysiological transfer effects from music experience to language processing are well-established but it is currently unclear whether or not linguistic expertise (e.g., speaking a tone language) benefits music-related processing and its perception. Here, we compare brainstem responses of English-speaking musicians/non-musicians and native speakers of Mandarin Chinese elicited by tuned and detuned musical chords, to determine if enhancements in subcortical processing translate to improvements in the perceptual discrimination of musical pitch. Relative to non-musicians, both musicians and Chinese had stronger brainstem representation of the defining pitches of musical sequences. In contrast, two behavioral pitch discrimination tasks revealed that neither Chinese nor non-musicians were able to discriminate subtle changes in musical pitch with the same accuracy as musicians. Pooled across all listeners, brainstem magnitudes predicted behavioral pitch discrimination performance but considering each group individually, only musicians showed connections between neural and behavioral measures. No brain-behavior correlations were found for tone language speakers or non-musicians. These findings point to a dissociation between subcortical neurophysiological processing and behavioral measures of pitch perception in Chinese listeners. We infer that sensory-level enhancement of musical pitch information yields cognitive-level perceptual benefits only when that information is behaviorally relevant to the listener.	\N	\N
21840170	This study investigates the effect of consensus training of listeners on intrarater and interrater reliability and agreement of perceptual voice analysis. The use of such training, including a reference voice sample, could be assumed to make the internal standards held in memory common and more robust, which is of great importance to reduce the variability of auditory perceptual ratings. A prospective design with testing before and after training. Thirteen students of audiologopedics served as listening subjects. The ratings were made using a multidimensional protocol with four-point equal-appearing interval scales. The stimuli consisted of text reading by authentic dysphonic patients. The consensus training for each perceptual voice parameter included (1) definition, (2) underlying physiology, (3) presentation of carefully selected sound examples representing the parameter in three different grades followed by group discussions of perceived characteristics, and (4) practical exercises including imitation to make use of the listeners' proprioception. Intrarater reliability and agreement showed a marked improvement for intermittent aphonia but not for vocal fry. Interrater reliability was high for most parameters before training with a slight increase after training. Interrater agreement showed marked increases for most voice quality parameters as a result of the training. The results support the recommendation of specific consensus training, including use of a reference voice sample material, to calibrate, equalize, and stabilize the internal standards held in memory by the listeners.	\N	\N
21842332	The visible movement of a talker's face is an influential component of speech perception. However, the ability of this influence to function when large areas of the face (~50%) are covered by simple substantial occlusions, and so are not visible to the observer, has yet to be fully determined. In Experiment 1, both visual speech identification and the influence of visual speech on identifying congruent and incongruent auditory speech were investigated using displays of a whole (unoccluded) talking face and of the same face occluded vertically so that the entire left or right hemiface was covered. Both the identification of visual speech and its influence on auditory speech perception were identical across all three face displays. Experiment 2 replicated and extended these results, showing that visual and audiovisual speech perception also functioned well with other simple substantial occlusions (horizontal and diagonal). Indeed, displays in which entire upper facial areas were occluded produced performance levels equal to those obtained with unoccluded displays. Occluding entire lower facial areas elicited some impairments in performance, but visual speech perception and visual speech influences on auditory speech perception were still apparent. Finally, implications of these findings for understanding the processes supporting visual and audiovisual speech perception are discussed.	\N	\N
21846981	The Nucleus Straight Research Array (SRA) cochlear implant has a new 25-mm electrode carrier designed to minimize insertion trauma, in particular allowing easy insertion via the round window. The aims of this study were to measure preoperative to postoperative benefit in terms of speech recognition in quiet and in noise in three groups of patients (electrical complement, EC; electrical stimulation, ES; electro-acoustic stimulation, EAS) with varying levels of low-frequency hearing, and to evaluate the preservation of residual hearing after implantation with the SRA cochlear implant. The study design was prospective with sequential enrolment and within-subject comparisons: 23 adult cochlear implant candidates were divided into three groups according to their level of preoperative residual hearing at 500 Hz (EC ≤50 dB; 50 dB < EAS < 80 dB; ES ≥80 dB). Monosyllabic word recognition using the SRA cochlear implant in combination with residual low-frequency hearing was assessed at 4 and 13 months after implantation. Hearing threshold levels were also monitored over time. Subjects across all three groups had significant improvements in speech recognition scores (i.e. >20 percentage points) both for listening in quiet (71% of subjects) and in noise (100% of subjects). The average score at 4 months after operation for words presented in quiet was 61.7%, and in 10 dB SNR noise 46.5%, compared to 34.4 and 10.6% preoperatively (p < 0.001). All subjects retained measurable hearing at 500 Hz in the implanted ear at 4 months after the operation; mean increases were 19, 29 and 1 dB for the EC, EAS and ES groups (n = 21). Across frequencies of 125-1000 Hz, the median increase in thresholds was 15 dB up to 13 months postoperatively (n = 15). Speech recognition performance of subjects with various levels of residual low-frequency hearing was significantly improved with the SRA cochlear implant. A high level and rate of hearing preservation was achieved with the SRA implanted using a round window surgical technique. Subjects with preoperative low-frequency hearing levels between 50 and 80 dB HL (EAS group) tended to lose more hearing than those with either better or worse hearing.	\N	\N
21848924	Tinnitus is characterized by an ongoing conscious perception of a sound in the absence of any external sound source. Chronic tinnitus is notoriously characterized by its resistance to treatment. In the present study the objective was to verify whether the neural generators and/or the neural tinnitus network, evaluated through EEG recordings, change over time as previously suggested by MEG. We therefore analyzed the source-localized EEG recordings of a very homogenous group of left-sided narrow-band noise tinnitus patients. Results indicate that the generators involved in tinnitus of recent onset seem to change over time with increased activity in several brain areas [auditory cortex, supplementary motor area and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) plus insula], associated with a decrease in connectivity between the different auditory and nonauditory brain structures. An exception to this general connectivity decrease is an increase in gamma-band connectivity between the left primary and secondary auditory cortex and the left insula, and also between the auditory cortices and the right dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex. These networks are both connected to the left parahippocampal area. Thus acute and chronic tinnitus are related to differential activity and connectivity in a network comprising the auditory cortices, insula, dACC and premotor cortex.	\N	\N
21849065	Segregating auditory scenes into distinct objects or streams is one of our brain's greatest perceptual challenges. Streaming has classically been studied with bistable sound stimuli, perceived alternately as a single group or two separate groups. Throughout the last decade different methodologies have yielded inconsistent evidence about the role of auditory cortex in the maintenance of streams. In particular, studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have been unable to show persistent activity within auditory cortex (AC) that distinguishes between perceptual states. We use bistable stimuli, an explicit perceptual categorization task, and a focused region of interest (ROI) analysis to demonstrate an effect of perceptual state within AC. We find that AC has more activity when listeners perceive the split percept rather than the grouped percept. In addition, within this ROI the pattern of acoustic response across voxels is significantly correlated with the pattern of perceptual modulation. In a whole-brain exploratory test, we corroborate previous work showing an effect of perceptual state in the intraparietal sulcus. Our results show that the maintenance of auditory streams is reflected in AC activity, directly relating sound responses to perception, and that perceptual state is further represented in multiple, higher level cortical regions.	\N	\N
21861386	The listener-distinctive features of recognition of different emotional intonations (positive, negative and neutral) of male and female speakers in the presence or absence of background noise were studied in 49 adults aged 20-79 years. In all the listeners noise produced the most pronounced decrease in recognition accuracy for positive emotional intonation ("joy") as compared to other intonations, whereas it did not influence the recognition accuracy of "anger" in 65-79-year-old listeners. The higher emotion recognition rates of a noisy signal were observed for speech emotional intonations expressed by female speakers. Acoustic characteristics of noisy and clear speech signals underlying perception of speech emotional prosody were found for adult listeners of different age and gender.	\N	\N
21862447	The distractibility that older adults experience when listening to speech in challenging conditions has been attributed in part to reduced inhibition of irrelevant information within and across sensory systems. Whereas neuroimaging studies have shown that younger adults readily suppress visual cortex activation when listening to auditory stimuli, it is unclear the extent to which declining inhibition in older adults results in reduced suppression or compensatory engagement of other sensory cortices. The current functional magnetic resonance imaging study examined the effects of age and stimulus intelligibility in a word listening task. Across all participants, auditory cortex was engaged when listening to words. However, increasing age and declining word intelligibility had independent and spatially similar effects: both were associated with increasing engagement of visual cortex. Visual cortex activation was not explained by age-related differences in vascular reactivity but rather auditory and visual cortices were functionally connected across word listening conditions. The nature of this correlation changed with age: younger adults deactivated visual cortex when activating auditory cortex, middle-aged adults showed no relation, and older adults synchronously activated both cortices. These results suggest that age and stimulus integrity are additive modulators of crossmodal suppression and activation.	\N	\N
21875609	Event-related potential (ERP) evidence indicates that listeners selectively attend to word onsets in continuous speech, but the reason for this preferential processing is unknown. The current study measured ERPs elicited by syllable onsets in an artificial language to test the hypothesis that listeners direct attention to word onsets because their identity is unpredictable. Both before and after recognition training, participants listened to a continuous stream of six nonsense words arranged in pairs, such that the second word in each pair was completely predictable. After training, first words in pairs elicited a larger negativity beginning around 100 ms after onset. This effect was not evident for the completely predictable second words in pairs. These results suggest that listeners are most likely to attend to the segments in speech that they are least able to predict.	\N	\N
21877811	The conventional articulation index (AI) measure cannot be applied in situations where non-linear operations are involved and additive noise is present. This is because the definitions of the target and masker signals become vague following non-linear processing, as both the target and masker signals are affected. The aim of the present work is to modify the basic form of the AI measure to account for non-linear processing. This was done using a new definition of the output or effective SNR obtained following non-linear processing. The proposed output SNR definition for a specific band was designed to handle cases where the non-linear processing affects predominantly the target signal rather than the masker signal. The proposed measure also takes into consideration the fact that the input SNR in a specific band cannot be improved following any form of non-linear processing. Overall, the proposed measure quantifies the proportion of input band SNR preserved or transmitted in each band after non-linear processing. High correlation (r = 0.9) was obtained with the proposed measure when evaluated with intelligibility scores obtained by normal-hearing listeners in 72 noisy conditions involving noise-suppressed speech corrupted in four different real-world maskers.	\N	\N
21884311	Infants attune to their birth language during the second half of infancy. However, internationally adopted children are often uniquely required to attune to their birth language, and then reattune to their adoptive language. Children who were adopted from India into America at ages 6-60 months (N = 8) and had minimal further exposure to their birth languages were compared to age-matched American non-adopted controls. Without training, neither group could discriminate a phonemic contrast that occurs in their birth language but not in English. However, after training on the contrast, the adopted group (N = 8) improved significantly and discriminated the contrast more accurately than their non-adopted peers. While English had explicitly replaced the birth language of the adopted sample, traces of early exposure conferred privileges on subsequent learning. These findings are consistent with behavioral and neurophysiological data from animals that have identified some of the mechanisms underlying such a 'retention without further use' phenomenon.	\N	\N
21895386	An important step in developing a theory of calibration is establishing what it is that participants become calibrated to as a result of feedback. Three experiments used a transfer of calibration paradigm to investigate this issue. In particular, these experiments investigated whether recalibration of perception of length transferred from audition to dynamic (i.e., kinesthetic) touch when objects were grasped at one end (Experiment 1), when objects were grasped at one end and when they were grasped at a different location (i.e., the middle) (Experiment 2), and when false (i.e., inflated) feedback was provided about object length (Experiment 3). In all three experiments, there was a transfer of recalibration of perception of length from audition to dynamic touch when feedback was provided on perception by audition. Such results suggest that calibration is not specific to a particular perceptual modality and are also consistent with previous research that perception of object length by audition and dynamic touch are each constrained by the object's mechanical properties.	\N	\N
21898434	To determine the effect of cochlear implantation (CI) on health-related quality of life (HRQoL), tinnitus, and psychological comorbidity in patients with severe to profound postlingual hearing loss and to analyze the relationship between these parameters. Prospective study. Using six validated questionnaires, we evaluated the pre-CI and post-CI scores of HRQoL, tinnitus, perceived stress, symptoms of depression and anxiety, and coping strategies in 43 patients implanted unilaterally with a multichannel implant for at least 6 months. In addition to improvements in hearing, speech understanding, and disease-specific HRQoL, psychological comorbidity was reduced and coping strategies were improved following CI. In the 39 tinnitus patients, their tinnitus was reduced. We found negative correlations between HRQoL and stress, depression, and anxiety. Pre-CI, tinnitus severity did not correlate with HRQoL and psychological comorbidity. However, patients with a high-level tinnitus had lower HRQoL as well as a higher level of perceived stress and anxiety symptoms than patients with a low-level tinnitus and no/incidental tinnitus before CI. Moreover, patients with severe hearing loss had a higher level of perceived symptoms of stress and depression than patients with profound hearing loss before CI. The present study provides evidence that tinnitus and psychological comorbidity may play an important role in the rehabilitation of CI patients, and that there is a correlation between HRQoL and these parameters. In addition to hearing tests, tinnitus, stress, and psychological comorbidity should be assessed using validated questionnaires before and after CI. This will help to improve the rehabilitation process.	\N	\N
21902007	The purpose of the present study was to see if 7-10-year-old socially anxious children (n = 26) made systematic errors in identifying and sending emotions in facial expressions, paralanguage, and postures as compared with the more random errors of children who were inattentive-hyperactive (n = 21). It was found that socially anxious children made more errors in identifying anger and fear in children's facial expressions and anger in adults' postures and in expressing anger in their own facial expressions than did their inattentive-hyperactive peers. Results suggest that there may be systematic difficulties specifically in visual nonverbal emotion communication that contribute to the personal and social difficulties socially anxious children experience.	\N	\N
21902880	In visual competition, the perception of ambiguous visual patterns changes spontaneously. Although the process causing this perceptual alternation remains unclear, recent evidence suggests various types of non-visual influences in resolving visual ambiguity. In the present study, we investigated cross-modal modulation of a transient stimulus on visual perceptual stability (i.e., alternation frequency). Participants observed an ambiguous visual figure and reported their perceptual alternations. Concurrently, we presented visual and auditory transient events. The results revealed that the auditory as well as visual transient events destabilize the current perception (i.e., they increase alternation frequency) around 0.5-1.5 s after the event. In addition, the magnitudes of auditory and visual effects were comparable and positively correlated within participants. These results suggest that the visual perceptual stability can be under the influence of processes that are shared by different senses.	\N	\N
21903084	Rainstorms, insect swarms, and galloping horses produce "sound textures"--the collective result of many similar acoustic events. Sound textures are distinguished by temporal homogeneity, suggesting they could be recognized with time-averaged statistics. To test this hypothesis, we processed real-world textures with an auditory model containing filters tuned for sound frequencies and their modulations, and measured statistics of the resulting decomposition. We then assessed the realism and recognizability of novel sounds synthesized to have matching statistics. Statistics of individual frequency channels, capturing spectral power and sparsity, generally failed to produce compelling synthetic textures; however, combining them with correlations between channels produced identifiable and natural-sounding textures. Synthesis quality declined if statistics were computed from biologically implausible auditory models. The results suggest that sound texture perception is mediated by relatively simple statistics of early auditory representations, presumably computed by downstream neural populations. The synthesis methodology offers a powerful tool for their further investigation.	\N	\N
21904250	The diversion of attention from a primary goal by irrelevant events is known as attention capture, and is often followed by a directed action. The hypothesis that corticospinal excitability is modulated by attention capture was tested using transcranial magnetic stimulation. Participants watched a video while sounds were intermittently presented. Motor evoked potentials (MEPs) were elicited in each hand using transcranial magnetic stimulation 1 s after sound onset. MEP amplitudes were assessed as a function of hand (dominant, nondominant), sound location (ipsilateral or contralateral to hand location), and sound sample valence (negative, neutral, positive). Results showed that MEP amplitudes increased during sound presentation, but only for the dominant hand. There were no effects of location or emotional valence. The selective modulation of the dominant hand motor cortex may indicate that auditory events can prime the preferred hand for action.	\N	\N
21909974	A key requirement for encoding the auditory environment is the ability to dynamically alter cochlear sensitivity. However, merely attaining a steady state of maximal sensitivity is not a viable solution since the sensory cells and ganglion cells of the cochlea are prone to damage following exposure to loud sound. Most often, such damage is via initial metabolic insult that can lead to cellular death. Thus, establishing the highest sensitivity must be balanced with protection against cellular metabolic damage that can lead to loss of hair cells and ganglion cells, resulting in loss of frequency representation. While feedback mechanisms are known to exist in the cochlea that alter sensitivity, they respond only after stimulus encoding, allowing potentially damaging sounds to impact the inner ear at times coincident with increased sensitivity. Thus, questions remain concerning the endogenous signaling systems involved in dynamic modulation of cochlear sensitivity and protection against metabolic stress. Understanding endogenous signaling systems involved in cochlear protection may lead to new strategies and therapies for prevention of cochlear damage and consequent hearing loss. We have recently discovered a novel cochlear signaling system that is molecularly equivalent to the classic hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. This cochlear HPA-equivalent system functions to balance auditory sensitivity and susceptibility to noise-induced hearing loss, and also protects against cellular metabolic insults resulting from exposures to ototoxic drugs. We review the anatomy, physiology, and cellular signaling of this system, and compare it to similar signaling in other organs/tissues of the body.	\N	\N
21914244	How do children develop the mapping between prosody and other levels of linguistic knowledge? This question has received considerable attention in child language research. In the present study two experiments were conducted to investigate four- to five-year-old Mandarin-speaking children's sensitivity to prosody in ambiguity resolution. Experiment 1 used eye-tracking to assess children's use of stress in resolving structural ambiguities. Experiment 2 took advantage of special properties of Mandarin to investigate whether children can use intonational cues to resolve ambiguities involving speech acts. The results of our experiments show that children's use of prosodic information in ambiguity resolution varies depending on the type of ambiguity involved. Children can use prosodic information more effectively to resolve speech act ambiguities than to resolve structural ambiguities. This finding suggests that the mapping between prosody and semantics/pragmatics in young children is better established than the mapping between prosody and syntax.	\N	\N
21916216	Processing of auditory information in central nervous system bases on the series of quickly occurring neural processes that cannot be separately monitored using only the fMRI registration. Simultaneous recording of the auditory evoked potentials, characterized by good temporal resolution, and the functional magnetic resonance imaging with excellent spatial resolution allows studying higher auditory functions with precision both in time and space. was to implement the simultaneous AEP-fMRI recordings method for the investigation of information processing at different levels of central auditory system. Five healthy volunteers, aged 22-35 years, participated in the experiment. The study was performed using high-field (3T) MR scanner from Siemens and 64-channel electrophysiological system Neuroscan from Compumedics. Auditory evoked potentials generated by acoustic stimuli (standard and deviant tones) were registered using modified odd-ball procedure. Functional magnetic resonance recordings were performed using sparse acquisition paradigm. The results of electrophysiological registrations have been worked out by determining voltage distributions of AEP on skull and modeling their bioelectrical intracerebral generators (dipoles). FMRI activations were determined on the basis of deviant to standard and standard to deviant functional contrasts. Results obtained from electrophysiological studies have been integrated with functional outcomes. Morphology, amplitude, latency and voltage distribution of auditory evoked potentials (P1, N1, P2) to standard stimuli presented during simultaneous AEP-fMRI registrations were very similar to the responses obtained outside scanner room. Significant fMRI activations to standard stimuli were found mainly in the auditory cortex. Activations in these regions corresponded with N1 wave dipoles modeled based on auditory potentials generated by standard tones. Auditory evoked potentials to deviant stimuli were recorded only outside the MRI scanner. However, deviant stimuli induced significant fMRI activations. They were observed mainly in the anterior cingulate gyrus, insula and parietal lobes. These regions of the brain are related to attention and decision-making processes. The results showed that applied paradigm is suitable for investigation of acoustic processing on the level of auditory cortex. Technique of the simultaneous AEP-fMRI registrations seems to be promising for investigation of more complex nervous processes in central auditory system with good temporo-spatial resolution.	\N	\N
21917204	Modern health services need efficient tools for measuring outcomes from interventions, that is, tools of proven efficacy which make minimal demands on the time of clinicians in learning to administer tests and in interpreting results. This paper describes an apparatus designed to meet those requirements. The apparatus administers performance tests of spatial listening for children and adults with unilateral and bilateral cochlear implants. The apparatus was designed with guidance from clinicians. It possesses three key attributes: it is simple to use; the results of tests are scored automatically and are compared with reference data; the apparatus generates comprehensive personalized reports for individual participants that can be included in clinical notes. This paper describes the apparatus and reports results of a test measuring spatial release from masking of speech which illustrates the compatibility between the new apparatus and an older apparatus with which the reference data were gathered.	\N	\N
21917210	Bilateral cochlear implants (CIs) have been provided to children who are deaf in both ears with intent to promote binaural hearing. If it is possible to establish binaural hearing with two CIs, these children would be able to make use of interaural level and timing differences to localize sound and to distinguish between sounds separated in space. These skills are central to the ability to attend to one particular sound amidst a number of sound sources. This may be particularly important for children because they are typically learning and interacting in groups. However, the development of binaural processing could be disrupted by effects of bilateral deafness, effects of unilateral CI use, or issues related to the child's age at onset of deafness and age at the time of the first and second cochlear implantation. This research aims to determine whether binaural auditory processing is affected by these variables in an effort to determine the optimal timing for bilateral cochlear implantation in children. It is now clear that the duration of bilateral deafness should be limited in children to restrict reorganization in the auditory thalamo-cortical pathways. It has also been shown that unilateral CI use can halt such reorganization to some extent and promote auditory development. At the same time, however, unilateral input might compromise the development of binaural processing if CIs are provided sequentially. Mismatches in responses from the auditory brainstem and cortex evoked by the first and second CI after a long period of unilateral CI use suggest asymmetry in the bilateral auditory pathways which is significantly more pronounced than in children receiving bilateral implants simultaneously. Moreover, behavioural responses to level and timing differences between implants suggest that these important binaural cues are not being processed normally by children who received a second CI after a long period of unilateral CI use and at older ages. In sum, there may be multiple sensitive periods in the developing auditory system, which must be considered when determining the optimal timing for bilateral cochlear implantation.	\N	\N
21918451	To determine whether common approaches to setting stimulus parameters influence the depth of fine structure present in the distortion product otoacoustic emission (DPOAE) response. Because the presence of fine structure has been suggested as a possible source of errors, if one of the common parametric approaches results in reduced fine-structure depth, it may be preferred over other approaches. DPOAE responses were recorded in a group of 21 subjects with normal hearing for 1/3-octave intervals surrounding 3 f2s (1, 2, and 4 kHz) at three L2s (30, 45, and 55 dB SPL). For each f2 and L2 combination, L1 and f2/f1 were set according to three commonly used parametric approaches. These included a simple approach, the approach recommended by Kummer et al., and the approach described by Johnson et al. These three approaches primarily differ in the recommended relationship between L1 and L2. For each parametric approach, DPOAE fine structure was evaluated by varying f2 in small steps. Differences in DPOAE level and DPOAE fine-structure depth across f2, L2, and the various stimulus parameters were evaluated using repeated-measures analysis of variance. As expected, significant variations in DPOAE level were observed across the three parametric approaches. For stimulus levels #45 dB SPL, the simple stimuli resulted in lower DPOAE levels than were observed for other approaches. An unexpected finding was that stimulus parameters developed by Johnson et al., which were believed to produce higher DPOAE levels than other approaches, produced the lowest DPOAE levels of the three approaches when f2 = 4 kHz. Significant differences in fine-structure depth were also observed. Greater fine-structure depth was observed with the simple parameters, although this effect was restricted to L2 # 45 dB SPL. When L2 = 55 dB SPL, all three parametric approaches resulted in equivalent fine-structure depth. A significant difference in fine-structure depth across the 3 f2s was also observed. The interval surrounding 2 kHz was associated with greater fine-structure depth than the intervals surrounding 1 and 4 kHz. The simple stimulus parameters resulted in more fine structure than the other parametric approaches; however, this effect was restricted to L2 # 45 dB SPL. At the moderate stimulus levels used in most clinical applications of DPOAEs (L2 = 55 dB SPL), all three approaches resulted in similar fine-structure depths. These findings suggest that manipulating stimulus parameters, particularly the L1, L2 relationship, is not an effective technique for reducing fine structure, except at the lowest stimulus levels, and that all the common parameters result in equivalent fine structure for moderate stimulus levels. These results also suggest that the stimulus parameters used in future studies of the clinical implications of fine structure may be relatively unimportant, unless stimulus levels #45 dB SPL will be evaluated.	\N	\N
21921852	Bilateral stimulation through cochlear implants induces a brain activity pattern closer to the normal one than unilateral stimulation. Although it has been shown that speech comprehension through bilateral cochlear implants leads to better performances than after unilateral implantation, the existence of neural underpinnings of this improvement remains to be studied. We performed an H2O positron emission tomographic study of word recognition in 5 patients with bilateral cochlear implants and 5 normal-hearing controls. Subjects had to distinguish words from nonwords in binaural and monaural conditions. There was no overactivation in patients for binaural stimulation, with a hypoactivation in the right temporal cortex. For monaural stimulation, patients demonstrated more activation contralaterally to the stimulation side in the posterior temporal cortex and in the cerebellum. Binaural stimulation through cochlear implants is advantageous compared with the monaural at the neurofunctional level because the pattern of brain activity is closer to the normal one.	\N	\N
21924100	To explore the factors that influence the stability of evaluation results judged by a jury through a standard research on perceptual evaluation measurements of voice quality. Voice samples from 300 patients with dysphonia and 100 control subjects with normal voice were recorded and assessed by a jury composed of 6 experienced listeners from different hospitals. The voice samples were discourse voices and ordered randomly 3 times, and the mean of 3 evaluations using visual analogue scale were the final results. The jury was instructed to classify voice samples according to the G (grade), R (rough) and B (breathy) components of the GRBAS scale on a 4-point scale ranging from 0 for normal to 3 for severe dysphonia. Κ value was used to analyze the concordance of evaluation results and regression analysis was used to research the effects of the extent of voice disorder to the stability of perceptual evaluation. The discordance of evaluation existed both between the jury and in listeners themselves. The concordance of listeners themselves of each evaluation parameter was not bad, good, or even very good, and the concordance of evaluation of G was the best (κ value: 0.46 - 0.85), then R (κ value: 0.41 - 0.84) and B (κ value: 0.41 - 0.81). The concordance between the jury was worse than that in themselves. And except a listener whose concordance of evaluation was under the requirement, the concordance of evaluation of G was the best (κ value: 0.43 - 0.96), then R (κ value: 0.33 - 0.78) and B (κ value: 0.002 - 0.45). The stability of evaluation of normal voice and severe voice disorder was better than mild and moderate voice disorder. The discordance between the jury was the main factor that influence the stability of perceptual evaluation. The evaluation parameters and extent of voice disorder will influence the stability of perceptual evaluation of the jury.	\N	\N
21925521	The left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) exhibits increased responsiveness when people listen to words composed of speech sounds that frequently co-occur in the English language (Vaden, Piquado, & Hickok, 2011), termed high phonotactic frequency (Vitevitch & Luce, 1998). The current experiment aimed to further characterize the relation of phonotactic frequency to LIFG activity by manipulating word intelligibility in participants of varying age. Thirty six native English speakers, 19-79 years old (mean=50.5, sd=21.0) indicated with a button press whether they recognized 120 binaurally presented consonant-vowel-consonant words during a sparse sampling fMRI experiment (TR=8 s). Word intelligibility was manipulated by low-pass filtering (cutoff frequencies of 400 Hz, 1000 Hz, 1600 Hz, and 3150 Hz). Group analyses revealed a significant positive correlation between phonotactic frequency and LIFG activity, which was unaffected by age and hearing thresholds. A region of interest analysis revealed that the relation between phonotactic frequency and LIFG activity was significantly strengthened for the most intelligible words (low-pass cutoff at 3150 Hz). These results suggest that the responsiveness of the left inferior frontal cortex to phonotactic frequency reflects the downstream impact of word recognition rather than support of word recognition, at least when there are no speech production demands.	\N	\N
21932260	Cross-modal processing enables the utilization of information received via different sensory organs to facilitate more complicated human actions. We used functional MRI on early-blind individuals to study the neural processes associated with cross auditory-spatial learning. The auditory signals, converted from echoes of ultrasonic signals emitted from a navigation device, were novel to the participants. The subjects were trained repeatedly for 4 weeks in associating the auditory signals with different distances. Subjects' blood-oxygenation-level-dependent responses were captured at baseline and after training using a sound-to-distance judgment task. Whole-brain analyses indicated that the task used in the study involved auditory discrimination as well as spatial localization. The learning process was shown to be mediated by the inferior parietal cortex and the hippocampus, suggesting the integration and binding of auditory features to distances. The right cuneus was found to possibly serve a general rather than a specific role, forming an occipital-enhanced network for cross auditory-spatial learning. This functional network is likely to be unique to those with early blindness, since the normal-vision counterparts shared activities only in the parietal cortex.	\N	\N
21936759	The present study investigated the relationship between non-verbal behaviours and perceptions of the communication abilities of an individual with anomia secondary to traumatic brain injury (TBI). Thirty-four university students studying Communication Sciences and Disorders were randomly assigned to watch or listen to six short clips of an individual with TBI engaged in conversation. Participants rated the individual on communication parameters from a modified version of the Pragmatic Protocol and four other dependent measures of communicative competence. A significant positive correlation was identified between perceptions of gestures and ratings of overall communicative competence, and between perceptions of hand and arm movements and ratings of overall communicative competence. Participant raters who viewed the individual's movements as inappropriate also rated her overall communication abilities less favourably. This finding highlights individuality in perception of communication competence and the importance of assessing communication partners' perceptions in a client's environment to determine socially relevant treatment goals.	\N	\N
21939965	Listeners rapidly adjust to talkers' pronunciations, accommodating those pronunciations into the relevant phonemic category to improve subsequent perception. Previous work has suggested that such learning is restricted to pronunciations that are representative of how the speaker talks (Kraljic, Samuel, & Brennan, 2008). If an ambiguous pronunciation, for example, can be attributed to an external source (such as a pen in the speaker's mouth), or if it is preceded by normal pronunciations of the same sound, learning is blocked. In three experiments, we explore this blocking effect in more detail. Our aim is to better understand the nature of the representations underlying the perceptual learning process. Experiment 1 replicates the blocking effect. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrate that it can be eliminated when certain visual information occurs simultaneously with the auditory signal. The pattern of learning and non-learning is best accounted for by the view that speech perception is mediated by episodic representations that include potentially relevant visual information.	\N	\N
21940463	Several studies report that adults and adolescents with reading disabilities also experience difficulties with selective attention. In the present study, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were used to examine the neural mechanisms of selective attention in kindergarten children at risk for reading disabilities (AR group, n = 8) or on track in early literacy skills (OT group, n = 6) across the first semester of kindergarten. The AR group also received supplemental instruction with the Early Reading Intervention (ERI). Following ERI, the AR group demonstrated improved skills on standardized early literacy measures such that there were no significant differences between the AR and OT groups at posttest or winter follow-up. Analysis of the ERP data revealed that at the start of kindergarten, the AR group displayed reduced effects of attention on sensorineural processing compared to the OT group. Following intervention, this difference between groups disappeared, with the AR group only showing improvements in the effect of attention on sensorineural processing. These data indicate that the neural mechanisms of selective attention are atypical in kindergarten children at risk for reading failure but can be improved by effective reading interventions.	\N	\N
21942418	We report a series of experiments designed to demonstrate that the presentation of a sound can facilitate the identification of a concomitantly presented visual target letter in the backward masking paradigm. Two visual letters, serving as the target and its mask, were presented successively at various interstimulus intervals (ISIs). The results demonstrate that the crossmodal facilitation of participants' visual identification performance elicited by the presentation of a simultaneous sound occurs over a very narrow range of ISIs. This critical time-window lies just beyond the interval needed for participants to differentiate the target and mask as constituting two distinct perceptual events (Experiment 1) and can be dissociated from any facilitation elicited by making the visual target physically brighter (Experiment 2). When the sound is presented at the same time as the mask, a facilitatory, rather than an inhibitory effect on visual target identification performance is still observed (Experiment 3). We further demonstrate that the crossmodal facilitation of the visual target by the sound depends on the establishment of a reliable temporally coincident relationship between the two stimuli (Experiment 4); however, by contrast, spatial coincidence is not necessary (Experiment 5). We suggest that when visual and auditory stimuli are always presented synchronously, a better-consolidated object representation is likely to be constructed (than that resulting from unimodal visual stimulation).	\N	\N
21945200	The human auditory brainstem is known to be exquisitely sensitive to fine-grained spectro-temporal differences between speech sound contrasts, and the ability of the brainstem to discriminate between these contrasts is important for speech perception. Recent work has described a novel method for translating brainstem timing differences in response to speech contrasts into frequency-specific phase differentials. Results from this method have shown that the human brainstem response is surprisingly sensitive to phase differences inherent to the stimuli across a wide extent of the spectrum. Here we use an animal model of the auditory brainstem to examine whether the stimulus-specific phase signatures measured in human brainstem responses represent an epiphenomenon associated with far-field (i.e., scalp-recorded) measurement of neural activity, or alternatively whether these specific activity patterns are also evident in auditory nuclei that contribute to the scalp-recorded response, thereby representing a more fundamental temporal processing phenomenon. Responses in anaesthetized guinea pigs to three minimally-contrasting consonant-vowel stimuli were collected simultaneously from the cortical surface vertex and directly from central nucleus of the inferior colliculus (ICc), measuring volume conducted neural activity and multiunit, near-field activity, respectively. Guinea pig surface responses were similar to human scalp-recorded responses to identical stimuli in gross morphology as well as phase characteristics. Moreover, surface-recorded potentials shared many phase characteristics with near-field ICc activity. Response phase differences were prominent during formant transition periods, reflecting spectro-temporal differences between syllables, and showed more subtle differences during the identical steady state periods. ICc encoded stimulus distinctions over a broader frequency range, with differences apparent in the highest frequency ranges analyzed, up to 3000 Hz. Based on the similarity of phase encoding across sites, and the consistency and sensitivity of response phase measured within ICc, results suggest that a general property of the auditory system is a high degree of sensitivity to fine-grained phase information inherent to complex acoustical stimuli. Furthermore, results suggest that temporal encoding in ICc contributes to temporal features measured in speech-evoked scalp-recorded responses.	\N	\N
21949873	The modulation of brain activity as a function of auditory location was investigated using electro-encephalography in combination with standardized low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography. Auditory stimuli were presented at various positions under anechoic conditions in free-field space, thus providing the complete set of natural spatial cues. Variation of electrical activity in cortical areas depending on sound location was analyzed by contrasts between sound locations at the time of the N1 and P2 responses of the auditory evoked potential. A clear-cut double dissociation with respect to the cortical locations and the points in time was found, indicating spatial processing (1) in the primary auditory cortex and posterodorsal auditory cortical pathway at the time of the N1, and (2) in the anteroventral pathway regions about 100 ms later at the time of the P2. Thus, it seems as if both auditory pathways are involved in spatial analysis but at different points in time. It is possible that the late processing in the anteroventral auditory network reflected the sharing of this region by analysis of object-feature information and spectral localization cues or even the integration of spatial and non-spatial sound features.	\N	\N
21957257	Children use information from both the auditory and visual modalities to aid in understanding speech. A dramatic illustration of this multisensory integration is the McGurk effect, an illusion in which an auditory syllable is perceived differently when it is paired with an incongruent mouth movement. However, there are significant interindividual differences in McGurk perception: some children never perceive the illusion, while others always do. Because converging evidence suggests that the posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) is a critical site for multisensory integration, we hypothesized that activity within the STS would predict susceptibility to the McGurk effect. To test this idea, we used BOLD fMRI in 17 children aged 6-12 years to measure brain responses to the following three audiovisual stimulus categories: McGurk incongruent, non-McGurk incongruent, and congruent syllables. Two separate analysis approaches, one using independent functional localizers and another using whole-brain voxel-based regression, showed differences in the left STS between perceivers and nonperceivers. The STS of McGurk perceivers responded significantly more than that of nonperceivers to McGurk syllables, but not to other stimuli, and perceivers' hemodynamic responses in the STS were significantly prolonged. In addition to the STS, weaker differences between perceivers and nonperceivers were observed in the fusiform face area and extrastriate visual cortex. These results suggest that the STS is an important source of interindividual variability in children's audiovisual speech perception.	\N	\N
21959609	The literature suggests that contralateral acoustic stimulation (CAS) alters the amplitude of the distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs), but it is still unknown whether the DPOAE Input/Output (I/O) functions are also affected. To elucidate this aspect of the DPOAEs, the present study assessed the effects of CAS on DPOAE I/O functions at the frequencies of 2 kHz and 4 kHz, in a sample of term neonatal subjects. Sixty randomly selected neonates were included in the study. The DPOAE I/O functions were obtained at 2 kHz and 4 kHz, in the presence of a 60 dB SPL broad band-contralateral white noise, using the TDH39 headphones contralaterally. DPOAEs were recorded up to a stimulus level of L2 = 35 dB peSPL. Significant DPOAE amplitude suppression effects were observed at various L2 stimulus levels for both tested frequencies at 2 and 4 kHz. In contrast, the corresponding DPOAE slopes showed various alterations that were not statistically significant. The data from the present study show that contralateral acoustic stimulation significantly affects only the amplitude of the DPOAE I/O functions; the slope is affected, but not significantly. This observation can shed light on the nature of CAS, suggesting that the latter is primarily a linear phenomenon without the cochlear compression and non-linear components seen in the healthy cochlea. From the available data it is not possible to infer whether the sample size has influenced the obtained results and the study should be repeated with a larger sample size and assessing more frequencies.	\N	\N
21964385	Temporal summation of C-fiber evoked responses generates an increase in action potential discharge in second-order neurons and in perceived pain intensity (wind-up). This may be related to the central serotonergic system which modulates and partly inhibits sensory input. Aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between wind-up and serotonergic activity using loudness dependence of auditory evoked potentials (LDAEP). 18 healthy subjects were compared to 18 patients with major depression, a disease with a putative serotonin deficit. They were examined with quantitative sensory testing (QST) using the protocol of the German Research Network on Neuropathic Pain (DFNS), including the wind-up ratio (WUR), LDAEP, and psychometric measurements. We found a slight positive correlation between WUR and LDAEP both in healthy controls and depressed patients combined (r=0.340, p=0.043), indicating that WUR may be modulated by serotonergic activity. It can be concluded that inhibitory control to noxious stimuli is partly associated with the central serotonergic function as indicated by LDAEP.	\N	\N
21972849	Filmmakers use continuity editing to engender a sense of situational continuity or discontinuity at editing boundaries. The goal of this study was to assess the impact of continuity editing on how people perceive the structure of events in a narrative film and to identify brain networks that are associated with the processing of different types of continuity editing boundaries. Participants viewed a commercially produced film and segmented it into meaningful events, while brain activity was recorded with functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We identified three degrees of continuity that can occur at editing locations: edits that are continuous in space, time, and action; edits that are discontinuous in space or time but continuous in action; and edits that are discontinuous in action as well as space or time. Discontinuities in action had the biggest impact on behavioral event segmentation, and discontinuities in space and time had minor effects. Edits were associated with large transient increases in early visual areas. Spatial-temporal changes and action changes produced strikingly different patterns of transient change, and they provided evidence that specialized mechanisms in higher order perceptual processing regions are engaged to maintain continuity of action in the face of spatiotemporal discontinuities. These results suggest that commercial film editing is shaped to support the comprehension of meaningful events that bridge breaks in low-level visual continuity, and even breaks in continuity of spatial and temporal location.	\N	\N
21973370	Within an auditory channel, the speech waveform contains both temporal envelope (E(O)) and temporal fine structure (TFS) information. Vocoder processing extracts a modified version of the temporal envelope (E') within each channel and uses it to modulate a channel carrier. The resulting signal, E'(Carr), has reduced information content compared to the original "E(O) + TFS" signal. The dynamic range over which listeners make additional use of E(O) + TFS over E'(Carr) cues was investigated in a competing-speech task. The target-and-background mixture was processed using a 30-channel vocoder. In each channel, E(O) + TFS replaced E'(Carr) at either the peaks or the valleys of the signal. The replacement decision was based on comparing the short-term channel level to a parametrically varied "switching threshold," expressed relative to the long-term channel level. Intelligibility was measured as a function of switching threshold, carrier type, target-to-background ratio, and replacement method. Scores showed a dependence on all four parameters. Derived intensity-importance functions (IIFs) showed that E(O) + TFS information from 8-13 dB below to 10 dB above the channel long-term level was important. When E(O) + TFS information was added at the peaks, IIFs peaked around -2 dB, but when E(O) + TFS information was added at the valleys, the peaks lay around +1 dB.	\N	\N
21973372	Deutsch's octave illusion occurs when two tones that are spaced an octave apart are repeatedly presented in alternation; the sequence is presented to both ears simultaneously but offset by one tone, so that two dichotic chords are repeatedly presented in alternation. The most common illusory percept consists of an intermittent high tone in one ear alternating with an intermittent low tone in the other ear. The aim of this study was to investigate whether, once the illusory percept has emerged, the illusion will persist when the original sequence is followed by another sequence consisting of the repeated presentation of one of the two dichotic chords. Forty naïve subjects were tested with stimuli consisting first of a priming sequence containing dichotic octaves alternating between ears followed immediately by a test sequence consisting of a single dichotic octave presented repeatedly. The durations of the priming and test sequences were manipulated. The findings showed that the illusory percept is maintained after the switch from alternation to repetition and that the relative length of the priming and test sequences has a negligible influence on the persistence of the illusory percept.	\N	\N
21974490	Naive listeners' perceptual assimilations of non-native vowels to first-language (L1) categories can predict difficulties in the acquisition of second-language vowel systems. This study demonstrates that listeners having two slightly different dialects as their L1s can differ in the perception of foreign vowels. Specifically, the study shows that Bohemian Czech and Moravian Czech listeners assimilate Dutch high front vowels differently to L1 categories. Consequently, the listeners are predicted to follow different paths in acquiring these Dutch vowels. These findings underscore the importance of carefully considering the specific dialect background of participants in foreign- and second-language speech perception studies.	\N	\N
21981669	The neural representation of segmental and tonal phonological distinctions has been shown by means of the MMN ERP, yet this is not the case for intonational discourse contrasts. In Catalan, a rising-falling intonational sequence can be perceived as a statement or as a counterexpectational question, depending exclusively on the size of the pitch range interval of the rising movement. We tested here, using the MMN, whether such categorical distinctions elicited distinct neurophysiological patterns of activity, supporting their specific neural representation. From a behavioral identification experiment, we set the boundary between the two categories and defined four stimuli across the continuum. Although the physical distance between each pair of stimuli was kept constant, the central pair represented an across-category contrast, whereas the other pairs represented within-category contrasts. These four auditory stimuli were contrasted by pairs in three different oddball blocks. The mean amplitude of the MMN was larger for the across-category contrast, suggesting that intonational contrasts in the target language can be encoded automatically in the auditory cortex. These results are in line with recent findings in other fields of linguistics, showing that, when a boundary between categories is crossed, the MMN response is not just larger but rather includes a separate subcomponent.	\N	\N
21985220	The high energy demand of the auditory and visual pathways render these sensory systems prone to diseases that impair mitochondrial function. Primary open-angle glaucoma, a neurodegenerative disease of the optic nerve, has recently been associated with a spectrum of mitochondrial abnormalities. This study sought to investigate auditory processing in individuals with open-angle glaucoma. DESIGN/STUDY SAMPLE: Twenty-seven subjects with open-angle glaucoma underwent electrophysiologic (auditory brainstem response), auditory temporal processing (amplitude modulation detection), and speech perception (monosyllabic words in quiet and background noise) assessment in each ear. A cohort of age, gender and hearing level matched control subjects was also tested. While the majority of glaucoma subjects in this study demonstrated normal auditory function, there were a significant number (6/27 subjects, 22%) who showed abnormal auditory brainstem responses and impaired auditory perception in one or both ears. The finding that a significant proportion of subjects with open-angle glaucoma presented with auditory dysfunction provides evidence of systemic neuronal susceptibility. Affected individuals may suffer significant communication difficulties in everyday listening situations.	\N	\N
21987910	When the fundamental frequency (f0) is removed from a complex stimulus, the pitch of the f0 is still perceived by the listener. Through the use of the scalp-recorded frequency-following response, this study examined the relative contributions of thef0 and its harmonics in pitch processing by systematically manipulating the speech stimulus to remove component frequencies. 12 American and 12 Chinese adults were recruited. There were statistically significant effects of pitch strength and frequency error for the experimental-condition factor. There were significantly larger responses to the harmonics-only conditions than those obtained in the f0-only and control conditions. No statistically significant difference was observed between the two groups of participants. These findings indicate that neural responses associated with individual harmonics dominate the pitch processing in the human brainstem, irrespective of whether the listener's native language is nontonal or tonal.	\N	\N
22000998	Recent years have seen a growing debate concerning the function of the cerebellum. Here we used a pitch discrimination task and PET to test for cerebellar involvement in the active control of sensory data acquisition. Specifically, we predicted greater cerebellar activity during active pitch discrimination compared to passive listening, with the greatest activity when pitch discrimination was most difficult. Ten healthy subjects were trained to discriminate deviant tones presented with a slightly higher pitch than a standard tone, using a Go/No Go paradigm. To ensure that discrimination performance was matched across subjects, individual psychometric curves were assessed beforehand using a two-step psychoacoustic procedure. Subjects were scanned while resting in the absence of any sounds, while passively listening to standard tones, and while detecting deviant tones slightly higher in pitch among these standard tones at four different performance levels. Consistent with our predictions, 1) passive listening alone elicited cerebellar activity (lobule IX), 2) cerebellar activity increased during pitch discrimination as compared to passive listening (crus I and II, lobules VI, VIIB, and VIIIB), and 3) this increase was correlated with the difficulty of the discrimination task (lobules V, VI, and IX). These results complement recent findings showing pitch discrimination deficits in cerebellar patients (Parsons et al., 2009) and further support a role for the cerebellum in sensory data acquisition. The data are discussed in the light of anatomical and physiological evidence functionally connecting auditory system and cerebellum.	\N	\N
22002633	Attentional blink (AB) refers to a phenomenon where the correct identification of a first target (i.e., target) impairs the processing of a second target (i.e., probe) nearby in time. In the present study, we investigate the influence of temporal attention on auditory AB by means of scalp-recorded event-related potentials. Participants were instructed to focus their attention on a particular time interval following the target (i.e., short, middle, or long temporal position) in order to detect the occurrence of the probe in a rapid series of distractor sounds. We found a large probe processing deficit when the probe occurred immediately after the target. This AB decreased as the time interval between the target and the probe increased and coincided with the generation of a positive wave at parietal sites (i.e., P3b). The P3b elicited by the probe peaked earlier when the probe occurred at the designated time than when it occurred at another position in time. The results indicate that temporal attention can be deployed to a particular time, which facilitates short-term consolidation of the probe.	\N	\N
22004192	Speech processing requires sensitivity to long-term regularities of the native language yet demands listeners to flexibly adapt to perturbations that arise from talker idiosyncrasies such as nonnative accent. The present experiments investigate whether listeners exhibit dimension-based statistical learning of correlations between acoustic dimensions defining perceptual space for a given speech segment. While engaged in a word recognition task guided by a perceptually unambiguous voice-onset time (VOT) acoustics to signal beer, pier, deer, or tear, listeners were exposed incidentally to an artificial "accent" deviating from English norms in its correlation of the pitch onset of the following vowel (F0) to VOT. Results across four experiments are indicative of rapid, dimension-based statistical learning; reliance on the F0 dimension in word recognition was rapidly down-weighted in response to the perturbation of the correlation between F0 and VOT dimensions. However, listeners did not simply mirror the short-term input statistics. Instead, response patterns were consistent with a lingering influence of sensitivity to the long-term regularities of English. This suggests that the very acoustic dimensions defining perceptual space are not fixed and, rather, are dynamically and rapidly adjusted to the idiosyncrasies of local experience, such as might arise from nonnative-accent, dialect, or dysarthria. The current findings extend demonstrations of "object-based" statistical learning across speech segments to include incidental, online statistical learning of regularities residing within a speech segment.	\N	\N
22005285	Feelings of deliciousness during having foods are mainly produced by perceptions of sensory information extracted from foods themselves, such as taste and olfaction. However, environmental factors might modify the feeling of deliciousness. In the present study, we investigated how the condition of audio-visual environments affects the feeling of deliciousness during having sweet foods. Electroencephalograms (EEGs) were recorded from the frontal region of the scalp of healthy participants under virtual scenes of tearoom and construction work, respectively. The participants were asked to rate deliciousness after the recordings. Frequency analyses were performed from the EEGs. During having the foods, occupancy rates of beta frequency band between tearoom scenes and construction work scenes were markedly different, but not in other frequency bands. During having no food, in contrast, there was no difference of occupancy rates in respective frequency bands between the two different scenes. With regard to deliciousness during having sweet foods, all participants rated high scores under the scenes of tearoom than those under the scenes of construction work. Interestingly, there is a positive correlation between occupancy rates of beta frequency band and scores of deliciousness. These findings suggest that comfortable audio-visual environments play an important role in increasing the feeling of deliciousness during having sweet foods, in which beta frequency rhythms may be concerned with producing comprehensive feelings of deliciousness.	\N	\N
22005291	Neural sensitivity to acoustic regularities supports fundamental human behaviors such as hearing in noise and reading. Although the failure to encode acoustic regularities in ongoing speech has been associated with language and literacy deficits, how auditory expertise, such as the expertise that is associated with musical skill, relates to the brainstem processing of speech regularities is unknown. An association between musical skill and neural sensitivity to acoustic regularities would not be surprising given the importance of repetition and regularity in music. Here, we aimed to define relationships between the subcortical processing of speech regularities, music aptitude, and reading abilities in children with and without reading impairment. We hypothesized that, in combination with auditory cognitive abilities, neural sensitivity to regularities in ongoing speech provides a common biological mechanism underlying the development of music and reading abilities. We assessed auditory working memory and attention, music aptitude, reading ability, and neural sensitivity to acoustic regularities in 42 school-aged children with a wide range of reading ability. Neural sensitivity to acoustic regularities was assessed by recording brainstem responses to the same speech sound presented in predictable and variable speech streams. Through correlation analyses and structural equation modeling, we reveal that music aptitude and literacy both relate to the extent of subcortical adaptation to regularities in ongoing speech as well as with auditory working memory and attention. Relationships between music and speech processing are specifically driven by performance on a musical rhythm task, underscoring the importance of rhythmic regularity for both language and music. These data indicate common brain mechanisms underlying reading and music abilities that relate to how the nervous system responds to regularities in auditory input. Definition of common biological underpinnings for music and reading supports the usefulness of music for promoting child literacy, with the potential to improve reading remediation.	\N	\N
22005389	Several studies demonstrated that active exploration as compared to passive observation of a variety of objects leads to improved performance concerning these actively studied objects later on. These results may be specifically due to an improvement in perceptual recognition but in principle they may also be due to a speeding up of responses to actively studied objects. Recently, however, it was suggested that the benefit of active exploration on perceptual recognition may be restricted to a specific class of (biologically relevant) stimuli. By employing measures derived from signal detection theory we were able to show in all our three experiments that active exploration of virtual 3D objects leads to improved perceptual sensitivity in a subsequent test phase. The improvement with these objects means that the benefit of active exploration is not restricted to a specific class of biologically relevant stimuli. The results of our second experiment further demonstrate that the benefit of active exploration is even strong enough to fully compensate for the effect of perceptual degradation, thereby emphasizing the major impact of active exploration. In our third experiment, we explored the possibility that effects of active exploration might be due to major changes in attentional strategies rather than to the action-related aspect. Results revealed that an attentional requirement left the active-passive difference by and large intact supporting the view that the advantage of active object exploration lies in the action itself.	\N	\N
22006524	This article provides a demonstration of an analytical technique that can be used to investigate the causes of perceptual phenomena. The technique is based on the concept of the ideal observer, an optimal signal classifier that makes decisions that maximize the probability of a correct response. To demonstrate the technique, an analysis was conducted to investigate the role of the auditory periphery in the production of temporal masking effects. The ideal observer classified output from four models of the periphery. Since the ideal observer is the best of all possible observers, if it demonstrates masking effects, then all other observers must as well. If it does not demonstrate masking effects, then nothing about the periphery requires masking to occur, and therefore masking would occur somewhere else. The ideal observer exhibited several forward masking effects but did not exhibit backward masking, implying that the periphery has a causal role in forward but not backward masking. A general discussion of the strengths of the technique and supplementary equations are also included.	\N	\N
22010902	Language acquisition involves both acquiring a set of words (i.e. the lexicon) and learning the rules that combine them to form sentences (i.e. syntax). Here, we show that consonants are mainly involved in word processing, whereas vowels are favored for extracting and generalizing structural relations. We demonstrate that such a division of labor between consonants and vowels plays a role in language acquisition. In two very similar experimental paradigms, we show that 12-month-old infants rely more on the consonantal tier when identifying words (Experiment 1), but are better at extracting and generalizing repetition-based srtuctures over the vocalic tier (Experiment 2). These results indicate that infants are able to exploit the functional differences between consonants and vowels at an age when they start acquiring the lexicon, and suggest that basic speech categories are assigned to different learning mechanisms that sustain early language acquisition.	\N	\N
22015572	Sparse and clustered-sparse temporal sampling fMRI protocols have been devised to reduce the influence of auditory scanner noise in the context of auditory fMRI studies. Here, we report an improvement of the previously established clustered-sparse acquisition scheme. The standard procedure currently used by many researchers in the field is a scanning protocol that includes relatively long silent pauses between image acquisitions (and therefore, a relatively long repetition time or cluster-onset asynchrony); it is during these pauses that stimuli are presented. This approach makes it unlikely that stimulus-induced BOLD response is obscured by scanner-noise-induced BOLD response. It also allows the BOLD response to drop near baseline; thus, avoiding saturation of BOLD signal and theoretically increasing effect size. A possible drawback of this approach is the limited number of stimulus presentations and image acquisitions that are possible in a given period of time, which could result in an inaccurate estimation of effect size (higher standard error). Since this line of reasoning has not yet been empirically tested, we decided to vary the cluster-onset asynchrony (7.5, 10, 12.5, and 15 s) in the context of a clustered-sparse protocol. In this study sixteen healthy participants listened to spoken sentences. We performed whole-brain fMRI group statistics and region of interest analysis with anatomically defined regions of interest (auditory core and association areas). We discovered that the protocol, which included a short cluster-onset asynchrony (7.5 s), yielded more advantageous results than the other protocols, which involved longer cluster-onset asynchrony. The short cluster-onset asynchrony protocol exhibited a larger number of activated voxels and larger mean effect sizes with lower standard errors. Our findings suggest that, contrary to prior experience, a short cluster-onset asynchrony is advantageous because more stimuli can be delivered within any given period of time. Alternatively, a given number of stimuli can be presented in less time, and this broadens the spectrum of possible fMRI applications.	\N	\N
22046436	The present study investigated the minimum amount of auditory stimulation that allows differentiation of spoken voices, instrumental music, and environmental sounds. Three new findings were reported. 1) All stimuli were categorized above chance level with 50 ms-segments. 2) When a peak-level normalization was applied, music and voices started to be accurately categorized with 20 ms-segments. When the root-mean-square (RMS) energy of the stimuli was equalized, voice stimuli were better recognized than music and environmental sounds. 3) Further psychoacoustical analyses suggest that the categorization of extremely brief auditory stimuli depends on the variability of their spectral envelope in the used set. These last two findings challenge the interpretation of the voice superiority effect reported in previously published studies and propose a more parsimonious interpretation in terms of an emerging property of auditory categorization processes.	\N	\N
22047947	Predictive coding theories posit that the perceptual system is structured as a hierarchically organized set of generative models with increasingly general models at higher levels. The difference between model predictions and the actual input (prediction error) drives model selection and adaptation processes minimizing the prediction error. Event-related brain potentials elicited by sensory deviance are thought to reflect the processing of prediction error at an intermediate level in the hierarchy. We review evidence from auditory and visual studies of deviance detection suggesting that the memory representations inferred from these studies meet the criteria set for perceptual object representations. Based on this evidence we then argue that these perceptual object representations are closely related to the generative models assumed by predictive coding theories.	\N	\N
22051554	Relative blindsight is said to occur when different levels of subjective awareness are obtained at equality of objective performance. Using metacontrast masking, Lau and Passingham (2006) reported relative blindsight in normal observers at the shorter of two stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs) between target and mask. Experiment 1 replicated the critical asymmetry in subjective awareness at equality of objective performance. We argue that this asymmetry cannot be regarded as evidence for relative blindsight because the observers' responses were based on different attributes of the stimuli (criterion contents) at the two SOAs. With an invariant criterion content (Experiment 2), there was no asymmetry in subjective awareness across the two SOAs even though objective performance was the same. Experiment 3 examined the effect of criterion level on estimates of relative blindsight. Collectively, the present results question whether metacontrast masking is a suitable paradigm for establishing relative blindsight. Implications for theories of consciousness are discussed.	\N	\N
22056506	Behavioral and neurophysiological studies have shown an enhancement of visual perception in crossmodal audiovisual stimulation conditions, both for sensitivity and reaction times, when the stimulation in the two sensory modalities occurs in condition of space and time congruency. The purpose of the present work is to verify whether congruent visual and acoustic stimulations can improve the detection of visual stimuli in people affected by low vision. Participants were asked to detect the presence of a visual stimulus (yes/no task) either presented in isolation (i.e., unimodal visual stimulation) or simultaneously with auditory stimuli, which could be placed in the same spatial position (i.e., crossmodal congruent conditions) or in different spatial positions (i.e., crossmodal incongruent conditions). The results show for the first time audiovisual integration effects in low vision individuals. In particular, it has been observed a significant visual detection benefit in the crossmodal congruent as compared to the unimodal visual condition. This effect is selective for visual stimulation that occurs in the portion of visual field that is impaired, and disappears in the region of space in which vision is spared. Surprisingly, there is a marginal crossmodal benefit when the sound is presented at 16 degrees far from the visual stimulus. The observed crossmodal effect seems to be determined by the contribution of both senses to a model of optimal combination, in which the most reliable provides the highest contribution. These results, indicating a significant beneficial effect of synchronous and spatially congruent sounds in a visual detection task, seem very promising for the development of a rehabilitation approach of low vision diseases based on the principles of multisensory integration.	\N	\N
22070077	To analyze the hearing loss profiles in patients with tinnitus, and then provide clinical foundation for further studying the etiology and examination methods of tinnitus. Ear specialist examination, acoustic impedance test,normal frequency pure tone audiometry and extended high frequency audiometry were applied to 200 patients with chief complaint of subjective tinnitus. Among the 200 tinnitus cases, 123 (61.5%) patients were diagnosed with unilateral tinnitus, 77 (38.5%) patients with bilateral tinnitus and 46 (23.0%) cases with normal hearing. In those patients with unilateral tinnitus, by comparing the hearing threshold of affected side and contralateral side (0.125-8 kHz), the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05), but in extended high frequency (> 10 kHz), the difference between two groups was not statistically significant (P > 0.05). There was significant difference in hearing threshold between tinnitus patients with normal and abnormal hearing in normal frequency (P < 0.05), meantime the detection rate in abnormal hearing group was lower than the normal group. Tinnitus can occur in people with normal hearing. Early in tinnitus,further study need be undertaken on whether the audiometry extended high frequency can offer the early evidence of hearing loss for tinnitus patients or not.	\N	\N
22072599	Difficulty understanding speech in background noise, even with amplification to restore audibility, is a common problem for hearing-impaired individuals and is especially frequent in older adults. Despite the debilitating nature of the problem the cause is not yet completely clear. This review considers the role of spatial processing ability in understanding speech in noise, highlights the potential impact of disordered spatial processing, and attempts to establish if aging leads to reduced spatial processing ability. Evidence supporting and opposing the hypothesis that spatial processing is disordered among the aging population is presented. With a few notable exceptions, spatial processing ability was shown to be reduced in an older population in comparison to young adults, leading to poorer speech understanding in noise. However, it is argued that to conclude aging negatively effects spatial processing ability may be oversimplified or even premature given potentially confounding factors such as cognitive ability and hearing impairment. Further research is required to determine the effect of aging and hearing impairment on spatial processing and to investigate possible remediation options for spatial processing disorder.	\N	\N
22073602	The effectiveness of bone anchored hearing aid (BAHA) for the patients with congenital aural atresia was evaluated by multicenter clinical study in Japan. Twenty patients (17 bilateral and 3 hemilateral) of congenital auricular atresia were registered for this study and finally, 18 of them (15 bilateral and 3 unilateral) were subjected to further evaluation. Primary endpoint of this study was free sound-field pure-tone audiometory and speech threshold hearing test in quiet and noisy circumstances. Secondary endpoint of this study was patient's satisfaction based upon APHAB (Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit) questionnaire survey. These results were compared between before and 12 weeks after BAHA surgery. Both hearing level of pure tone and speech threshold significantly improved after BAHA surgery. APHAB scores also suggested the improvement of the QOL after BAHA usage, except for the scores that concerned with unpleasantness of noisy sound. BAHA is one of the useful options for the treatment of congenital auricular atresia.	\N	\N
22080221	Gender is salient, socially critical information obtained from faces and voices, yet the brain processes underlying gender discrimination have not been well studied. We investigated neural correlates of gender processing of voices in two ERP studies. In the first, ERP differences were seen between female and male voices starting at 87 ms, in both spatial-temporal and peak analyses, particularly the fronto-central N1 and P2. As pitch differences may drive gender differences, the second study used normal, high- and low-pitch voices. The results of these studies suggested that differences in pitch produced early effects (27-63 ms). Gender effects were seen on N1 (120 ms) with implicit pitch processing (study 1), but were not seen with manipulations of pitch (study 2), demonstrating that N1 was modulated by attention. P2 (between 170 and 230 ms) discriminated male from female voices, independent of pitch. Thus, these data show that there are two stages in voice gender processing; a very early pitch or frequency discrimination and a later more accurate determination of gender at the P2 latency.	\N	\N
22087889	The effect of temporal asymmetry on amplitude modulation detection was studied using sawtooth modulators with rising (ramped) or falling (damped) temporal envelopes within each period of modulation. For pure-tone carriers, damped modulation was more detectable than ramped modulation for a 5-kHz carrier (by a threshold difference of 3.2 dB on average) but not for a 1-kHz carrier. The threshold difference obtained at 5 kHz between the ramped and damped modulators was consistent across modulation rates (8-128 Hz). This carrier frequency dependence suggests that the effect of temporally asymmetry on modulation detection originates from envelope-based, within-channel mechanisms.	\N	\N
22087927	Speech-in-noise-measurements are important in clinical practice and have been the subject of research for a long time. The results of these measurements are often described in terms of the speech reception threshold (SRT) and SNR loss. Using the basic concepts that underlie several models of speech recognition in steady-state noise, the present study shows that these measures are ill-defined, most importantly because the slope of the speech recognition functions for hearing-impaired listeners always decreases with hearing loss. This slope can be determined from the slope of the normal-hearing speech recognition function when the SRT for the hearing-impaired listener is known. The SII-function (i.e., the speech intelligibility index (SII) against SNR) is important and provides insights into many potential pitfalls when interpreting SRT data. Standardized SNR loss, sSNR loss, is introduced as a universal measure of hearing loss for speech in steady-state noise. Experimental data demonstrates that, unlike the SRT or SNR loss, sSNR loss is invariant to the target point chosen, the scoring method or the type of speech material.	\N	\N
22088028	Monolingual Peruvian Spanish listeners identified natural tokens of the Canadian French (CF) and Canadian English (CE) /ɛ/ and /æ/, produced in five consonantal contexts. The results demonstrate that while the CF vowels were mapped to two different native vowels, /e/ and /a/, in all consonantal contexts, the CE contrast was mapped to the single native vowel /a/ in four out of five contexts. Linear discriminant analysis revealed that acoustic similarity between native and target language vowels was a very good predictor of context-specific perceptual mappings. Predictions are made for Spanish learners of the /ɛ/-/æ/ contrast in CF and CE.	\N	\N
22090001	The primary purpose of this study was to evaluate a group of postlingually deafened adults, whose aided speech recognition exceeded commonly accepted candidacy criteria for implantation. The study aimed to define performance and qualitative outcomes of cochlear implants in these individuals compared with their optimally fitted hearing aid(s). Retrospective case series. Tertiary referral center. All postlingually deafened subjects (N = 27), who were unsuccessful hearing aid users implanted between 2000 and 2010 with a preimplantation Hearing in Noise Test (HINT) score of 60% or more were included. We compared patients' preoperative performance (HINT score) with hearing aids to postoperative performance with the cochlear implant after 12 months of device use. In addition, the Hearing Handicap Inventory questionnaire was used to quantify the hearing-related handicap change perceived after the implantation. The study group demonstrated significant postoperative improvement on all outcome measures; most notably, the mean HINT score improved from 68.4% (standard deviation, 8.3) to 91.9% (standard deviation, 9.7). Additionally, there was a significant improvement in hearing-related handicap perceived by all patients. The envelope of implantation candidacy criteria continues to expand as shown by this study's cohort. Patient satisfaction and speech recognition results are very encouraging in support of treating those who currently perform at a level above the conventional candidacy threshold but struggle with optimally fitted hearing aids.	\N	\N
22099165	Behavioral and electrophysiological measures of target and distractor processing were examined in an auditory selective attention task before and after three weeks of distractor suppression training. Behaviorally, training improved target recognition and led to less conservative and more rapid responding. Training also effectively shortened the temporal distance between distractors and targets needed to achieve a fixed level of target sensitivity. The effects of training on event-related potentials were restricted to the distracting stimulus: earlier N1 latency, enhanced P2 amplitude, and weakened P3 amplitude. Nevertheless, as distractor P2 amplitude increased, so too did target P3 amplitude, connecting experience-dependent changes in distractor processing with greater distinctiveness of targets in working memory. We consider the effects of attention training on the processing priorities, representational noise, and inhibitory processes operating in working memory.	\N	\N
22100742	Tinnitus occurs with or without prior noise exposure (noise-induced tinnitus (NIT) and spontaneous tinnitus (ST)), and is considered a symptom related to permanent hearing impairment (HI) or temporary hearing threshold shift (TTS). To carry out a cross-sectional interview study on TTS, ST and NIT during a standard audiometric screening of 756 7-year-old children in Gothenburg. 41% out of 756 children reported either NIT or ST on several occasions, 17% reported recurrent TTS and 7% failed the audiometry screening. The probability of ST was 27% for children with no HI or TTS (OR=1.23 (95% CI 1.12 to 1.34)) but 63% (OR=1.16 (95% CI 1.02 to 1.33)) if exhibiting both HI and TTS. This study confirms an increased occurrence of spontaneous tinnitus in children with TTS or HI and in children with both TTS and HI, in particular, but also in children with normal hearing. Possibly, tinnitus in young children correlates with stress as in adolescents and adults.	\N	\N
22107443	The objective of this study was to compare two recently proposed methods for fast measurements of psychophysical tuning curves (fast-PTCs) in terms of resulting tuning curve features and training effects. Fast-PTCs with swept-noise (SN) and gated-noise (GN) maskers were measured at signal frequencies of 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz. The effect of amplitude modulating the signal in the GN condition was evaluated. Two PTC runs were obtained for each condition to assess training effects. Eight normally-hearing young adults participated in the study. The SN and GN methods resulted in similar estimates of frequency selectivity when training effects were considered. Amplitude modulating the tone in the GN method reduced the effect of training. On average, SN-PTCs were most repeatable compared to the two other methods and they were not affected by training. Estimation of the shift in the PTC tip frequency was not affected by the measurement method or training effects. Fast-PTC methods resulted in similar estimates of tuning as compared to published notched-noise data. The SN method and the GN procedure with amplitude modulated signals allowed for time-efficient estimation of frequency selectivity that was unaffected by training.	\N	\N
22115727	We used a qualitative dissociation procedure to assess semantic priming from spatially attended and unattended masked words. Participants categorized target words that were preceded by parafoveal prime words belonging to either the same (20%) or the opposite (80%) category as the target. Using this paradigm, only non-strategic use of the prime would result in facilitation of the target responses in related trials. Primes were immediately masked or masked with a delay, while spatial attention was allocated to the primes' location or away from the primes' location. Immediate masked, strongly related primes facilitated target responses irrespective of the spatial attention. Delayed masked, related primes led to reversed (strategic) or facilitatory priming depending on whether they were cued or uncued. These findings demonstrate that perceiving a stimulus with or without awareness depends on both stimulus quality and attention orienting and that non-strategic priming can be observed from clear visible but spatially unattended words.	\N	\N
22119398	Impairment in long-term memory is one of the most salient alterations in cognitive aging. Findings of age-related deficits in source monitoring and recollection have revealed a selective decline in memory for detailed information. The underlying mechanism of this phenomenon is not well understood. We hypothesized that the influence of task-irrelevant visual stimuli present in our environment interferes with retrieval of detailed memories more for older than younger adults. We compared memory performance on a recall test for visual details when older adult participants' eyes were closed versus performance when their eyes were open and irrelevant visual stimuli were presented. The results showed that the presence of irrelevant visual information diminished long-term memory performance based on an objective measure of recollection for visual details. Comparison of the current results to findings from our earlier study using the same experimental paradigm with younger adults revealed that visual distraction disrupted recollection of relevant details to a greater degree in older than younger adults. This result suggests that visual distraction overwhelms older adults' declining cognitive control resources that are instrumental in the retrieval and selection of mnemonic details. More generally, these findings explicate a mechanistic basis for selective impairment of recollection in normal aging.	\N	\N
22124890	Interaural time differences (ITDs) can be used to localize sounds in the horizontal plane. ITDs can be extracted from either the fine structure of low-frequency sounds or from the envelopes of high-frequency sounds. Studies of the latter have included stimuli with periodic envelopes like amplitude-modulated tones or transposed stimuli, and high-pass filtered Gaussian noises. Here, four experiments are presented investigating the perceptual relevance of ITD cues in synthetic and recorded "rustling" sounds. Both share the broad long-term power spectrum with Gaussian noise but provide more pronounced envelope fluctuations than Gaussian noise, quantified by an increased waveform fourth moment, W. The current data show that the JNDs in ITD for band-pass rustling sounds tended to improve with increasing W and with increasing bandwidth when the sounds were band limited. In contrast, no influence of W on JND was observed for broadband sounds, apparently because of listeners' sensitivity to ITD in low-frequency fine structure, present in the broadband sounds. Second, it is shown that for high-frequency rustling sounds ITD JNDs can be as low as 30 μs. The third result was that the amount of dominance for ITD extraction of low frequencies decreases systematically with increasing amount of envelope fluctuations. Finally, it is shown that despite the exceptionally good envelope ITD sensitivity evident with high-frequency rustling sounds, minimum audible angles of both synthetic and recorded high-frequency rustling sounds in virtual acoustic space are still best when the angular information is mediated by interaural level differences.	\N	\N
22127548	The present acoustic-phonetic study explores whether voicing and devoicing assimilations of French fricatives are equivalent in magnitude and whether they operate similarly (i.e., complete vs. gradient, obligatory vs. optional, regressive vs. progressive). It concurrently assesses the contribution of speakers' articulation rate to the proportion of voicing (i.e., voicing ratios) in /s/ and /z/ embedded in fricative#stop sequences. Data analyses show that voicing and devoicing assimilation are similar in many regards: the absolute amounts of voicing change are equivalent in magnitude (0.77, 0.78) for the two processes: changes in voicing ratios are accompanied by changes in fricative and preceding vowel durations. These concomitant alterations result in the increased acoustic-phonetic similarity between the assimilated and the non-assimilated forms, suggesting that the two processes might be complete. In addition, the two processes operate regressively and across word-boundary. However, data show that the voicing assimilation of /s/ is not rate dependent, which suggest that it might be obligatory, while the devoicing assimilation of /z/ is rate dependent, which suggest that it might be optional.	\N	\N
22133279	To investigate the relationship between plasma reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels and severity of age-related hearing impairment in humans. We recruited 302 adult subjects aged 40-77 years with normal or symmetrical sensorineural hearing loss. The association of plasma ROS levels on pure tone average of low frequencies (PTA-low) and pure tone average of high frequencies (PTA-high) were analyzed. Luminol-dependent chemiluminescence signals, which reflect hydrogen peroxide (H(2)O(2)), hypochlorite (HOCl/OCl(-)) and hydroxyl radicals (•OH) levels, showed significant positive association with PTA-low and PTA-high after adjusting for age, gender, central obesity, systemic diseases, and health-related habits (smoking, drinking, antioxidant intake). Lucigenin-dependent chemiluminescence signals, which mainly reflect superoxide anion (O(2)•(-)) levels, showed significant positive association with PTA-low, but not with PTA-high after adjusting for other variables. We concluded that plasma ROS levels were associated with severity of age-related hearing impairment in humans. Various ROS may differently affect auditory dysfunctions.	\N	\N
22162387	In typically developing (TD) individuals, behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) studies suggest that audiovisual (AV) integration enables faster and more efficient processing of speech. However, little is known about AV speech processing in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). This study examined ERP responses to spoken words to elucidate the effects of visual speech (the lip movements accompanying a spoken word) on the range of auditory speech processing stages from sound onset detection to semantic integration. The study also included an AV condition, which paired spoken words with a dynamic scrambled face in order to highlight AV effects specific to visual speech. Fourteen adolescent boys with ASD (15-17 years old) and 14 age- and verbal IQ-matched TD boys participated. The ERP of the TD group showed a pattern and topography of AV interaction effects consistent with activity within the superior temporal plane, with two dissociable effects over frontocentral and centroparietal regions. The posterior effect (200-300 ms interval) was specifically sensitive to lip movements in TD boys, and no AV modulation was observed in this region for the ASD group. Moreover, the magnitude of the posterior AV effect to visual speech correlated inversely with ASD symptomatology. In addition, the ASD boys showed an unexpected effect (P2 time window) over the frontocentral region (pooled electrodes F3, Fz, F4, FC1, FC2, FC3, FC4), which was sensitive to scrambled face stimuli. These results suggest that the neural networks facilitating processing of spoken words by visual speech are altered in individuals with ASD.	\N	\N
22171057	Neural activity in the auditory system decreases with repeated stimulation, matching stimulus probability in multiple timescales. This phenomenon, known as stimulus-specific adaptation, is interpreted as a neural mechanism of regularity encoding aiding auditory object formation. However, despite the overwhelming literature covering recordings from single-cell to scalp auditory-evoked potential (AEP), stimulation timing has received little interest. Here we investigated whether timing predictability enhances the experience-dependent modulation of neural activity associated with stimulus probability encoding. We used human electrophysiological recordings in healthy participants who were exposed to passive listening of sound sequences. Pure tones of different frequencies were delivered in successive trains of a variable number of repetitions, enabling the study of sequential repetition effects in the AEP. In the predictable timing condition, tones were delivered with isochronous interstimulus intervals; in the unpredictable timing condition, interstimulus intervals varied randomly. Our results show that unpredictable stimulus timing abolishes the early part of the repetition positivity, an AEP indexing auditory sensory memory trace formation, while leaving the later part (≈ >200 ms) unaffected. This suggests that timing predictability aids the propagation of repetition effects upstream the auditory pathway, most likely from association auditory cortex (including the planum temporale) toward primary auditory cortex (Heschl's gyrus) and beyond, as judged by the timing of AEP latencies. This outcome calls for attention to stimulation timing in future experiments regarding sensory memory trace formation in AEP measures and stimulus probability encoding in animal models.	\N	\N
22172209	Using online measures of familiar word recognition in the looking-while-listening procedure, this prospective longitudinal study revealed robust links between processing efficiency and vocabulary growth from 18 to 30 months in children classified as typically developing (n = 46) and as "late talkers" (n = 36) at 18 months. Those late talkers who were more efficient in word recognition at 18 months were also more likely to "bloom," showing more accelerated vocabulary growth over the following year, compared with late talkers less efficient in early speech processing. Such findings support the emerging view that early differences in processing efficiency evident in infancy have cascading consequences for later learning and may be continuous with individual differences in language proficiency observed in older children and adults.	\N	\N
22174701	In this review paper aimed at the non-specialist, we explore the use that neuroscientists and musicians have made of perceptual illusions based on ambiguity. The pivotal issue is auditory scene analysis (ASA), or what enables us to make sense of complex acoustic mixtures in order to follow, for instance, a single melody in the midst of an orchestra. In general, ASA uncovers the most likely physical causes that account for the waveform collected at the ears. However, the acoustical problem is ill-posed and it must be solved from noisy sensory input. Recently, the neural mechanisms implicated in the transformation of ambiguous sensory information into coherent auditory scenes have been investigated using so-called bistability illusions (where an unchanging ambiguous stimulus evokes a succession of distinct percepts in the mind of the listener). After reviewing some of those studies, we turn to music, which arguably provides some of the most complex acoustic scenes that a human listener will ever encounter. Interestingly, musicians will not always aim at making each physical source intelligible, but rather express one or more melodic lines with a small or large number of instruments. By means of a few musical illustrations and by using a computational model inspired by neuro-physiological principles, we suggest that this relies on a detailed (if perhaps implicit) knowledge of the rules of ASA and of its inherent ambiguity. We then put forward the opinion that some degree perceptual ambiguity may participate in our appreciation of music.	\N	\N
22177410	The study of the neural basis of syntactic processing has greatly benefited from neuroimaging techniques. Research on syntactic processing in bilinguals has used a variety of techniques, including mainly functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and event-related potentials (ERP). This paper reports on a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) study on syntactic processing in highly proficient young adult speakers of Portuguese (mother tongue) (L1) and French (second language) (L2). They made a syntactic judgment of visually presented sentences, which either did or did not contain noun-verb agreement violations. The results showed that syntactic processing in both languages resulted in significant activation in anterior frontal regions of the left hemisphere and in the temporal superior posterior areas of the right hemisphere, with a more prominent activation for L2 in some areas. These findings corroborate previously reported neuroimaging evidence, showing the suitability of fNIRS for the study of syntactic processing in the bilingual brain.	\N	\N
22178743	Rhythm is a phenomenon that fundamentally affects the perception of events unfolding in time. In language, we define 'rhythm' as the temporal structure that underlies the perception and production of utterances, whereas 'meter' is defined as the regular occurrence of beats (i.e. stressed syllables). In stress-timed languages such as German, this regularity functions as a powerful temporal and structural cue in speech comprehension. Recent evidence shows that it also interacts with higher level linguistic faculties such as syntax (Schmidt-Kassow & Kotz, 2009a). The current ERP experiment investigated the impact of metric structure on lexico-semantic processing, comparing the effects of semantic and metric expectancy in regular and irregular metric sentence contexts. We predicted that (1) semantically unexpected words would result in an increased N400 amplitude and (2) metric context modulates the N400 amplitude. Our results confirm these predictions: semantically unexpected words elicit an N400 that is significantly smaller in a metrically regular than a metrically irregular sentence context. The current findings support the idea that metric regularity enhances the prediction of stress locations in a sentence context, which in turn facilitates lexico-semantic integration.	\N	\N
22183282	Different studies have been carried out in order to correlate audiometric thresholds and distortion product otoacoustic emissions measurements (DPOAE). However, high variability and external interferences make hearing thresholds estimates by means of the DPOAE very little sensitive. The aim of this study was to check the correspondence between the pure tone thresholds and the cochlear response thresholds by DPOAE Input/output functions, considering the influence of the following variables: gender, past of acute otitis media, and ear side. Prospective study comprehending 69 normal hearing individuals. Multiple mix regression models were applied to evaluate the correspondence between the two measurements studied. Statistically significant positive correlation was observed among all the frequencies compared (2000, 3000, 4000 e 6000 Hz). The 1 dB HL resolution pure tone thresholds and the above-mentioned variables had a direct impact on the high correlation between the measures studied, and it also reduced response variability. Nevertheless, response variability was still high, limiting the use of DPOAE I/O functions for hearing threshold estimates. We suggest that these variables should be considered for future studies with pure tone thresholds estimations by DPOAE I/O functions.	\N	\N
22197571	This study aimed to assess the effect of musical training in statistical learning of tone sequences using Magnetoencephalography (MEG). Specifically, MEG recordings were used to investigate the neural and functional correlates of the pre-attentive ability for detection of deviance, from a statistically learned tone sequence. The effect of long-term musical training in this ability is investigated by means of comparison of MMN in musicians to non-musicians. Both groups (musicians and non-musicians) showed a mismatch negativity (MMN) response to the deviants and this response did not differ amongst them neither in amplitude nor in latency. Another interesting finding of this study is that both groups revealed a significant difference between the standards and the deviants in the response of P50 and this difference was significantly larger in the group of musicians. The increase of this difference in the group of musicians underlies that intensive, specialized and long term exercise can enhance the ability of the auditory cortex to discriminate new auditory events from previously learned ones according to transitional probabilities. A behavioral discrimination task between the standard and the deviant sequences followed the MEG measurement. The behavioral results indicated that the detection of deviance was not explicitly learned by either group, probably due to the lack of attentional resources. These findings provide valuable insights on the functional architecture of statistical learning.	\N	\N
22199192	The effects of type of stimuli (i.e., nonspeech vs. speech), speech (i.e., natural vs. synthetic), gender of speaker and listener, speaker (i.e., self vs. other), and frequency alteration in self-produced speech on the late auditory cortical evoked potential were examined. Young adult men (n = 15) and women (n = 15), all with normal hearing, participated. P1-N1-P2 components were evoked with the following stimuli: 723-Hz tone bursts; naturally produced male and female /a/ tokens; synthetic male and female /a/ tokens; an /a/ token self-produced by each participant; and the same /a/ token produced by the participant but with a shift in frequency. In general, P1-N1-P2 component latencies were significantly shorter when evoked with the tonal stimulus versus speech stimuli and natural versus synthetic speech (p < .05). Women had significantly shorter latencies for only the P2 component (p < .05). For the tonal versus speech stimuli, P1 amplitudes were significantly smaller, and N1 and P2 amplitudes were significantly larger (p < .05). There was no significant effect of gender on the P1, N1, or P2 amplitude (p > .05). These findings are consistent with the notion that spectrotemporal characteristics of nonspeech and speech stimuli affect P1-N1-P2 latency and amplitude components.	\N	\N
22201556	Congenital amusia is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is characterized primarily by difficulties in the pitch domain. The aim of the present study was to investigate the perception of musical timbre in a group of individuals with congenital amusia by probing discrimination and short-term memory for real-world timbral stimuli as well as examining the ability of these individuals to sort instrumental tones according to their timbral similarity. Thirteen amusic individuals were matched with thirteen non-amusic controls on a range of background variables. The discrimination task included stimuli of two different durations and pairings of instrumental tones that reflected varying distances in a perceptual timbre space. Performance in the discrimination task was at ceiling for both groups. In contrast, amusic individuals scored lower than controls on the short-term timbral memory task. Amusic individuals also performed worse than controls on the sorting task, suggesting differences in the higher-order representation of musical timbre. These findings add to the emerging picture of amusia as a disorder that has consequences for the perception and memory of musical timbre, as well as pitch.	\N	\N
22209062	To investigate the relationships between objective measures and the results of subjective assessment of voice quality and speech intelligibility in patients submitted to total laryngectomy and tracheoesophageal (TE) puncture. Retrospective. Twenty patients implanted with voice prosthesis were studied. After surgery, the entire sample performed speech rehabilitation. The assessment protocol included maximum phonation time (MPT), number of syllables per deep breath, acoustic analysis of the sustained vowel /a/ and of a bisyllabic word, perceptual evaluation (pleasantness and intelligibility%), and self-assessment. The correlation between pleasantness and intelligibility% was statistically significant. Both the latter were significantly correlated with the acoustic signal type, the number of formant peaks, and the F2-F1 difference. The intelligibility% and number of formant peaks were significantly correlated with the MPT and number of syllables per deep breath. Moreover, significant correlations were found between the number of formant peaks and both intelligibility% and pleasantness. The higher the number of syllables per deep breath and the longer the MPT, significantly higher was the number of formant peaks and the intelligibility%. The study failed to show significant correlation between patient's self-assessment of voice quality and both pleasantness and communication effectiveness. The multidimensional assessment seems to be a reliable tool to evaluate the TE functional outcome. Particularly, the results showed that both pleasantness and intelligibility of TE speech are correlated to the availability of expired air and the function of the vocal tract.	\N	\N
22213748	To determine the efficacy of cochlear implantation (CI) in prelingually deafened adolescent children and to evaluate predictive variables for successful outcomes. Retrospective medical record review. Children aged 10 to 17 years with prelingual hearing loss (mean length of deafness, 11.5 years) who received a unilateral CI (mean age at CI, 12.9 years). Unilateral CI. Standard speech perception testing (Consonant-Nucleus-Consonant [CNC] monosyllabic word test and Hearing in Noise [HINT] sentence test) was performed preoperatively, 1 year postoperatively (year 1), and at the last follow-up/end of the study (EOS). There was a highly significant improvement in speech perception scores for both HINT sentence and CNC word testing from the preoperative testing to year 1 (mean change score, 51.10% and 32.23%, respectively; P < .001) and from the preoperative testing to EOS (mean change score, 60.02% and 38.73%, respectively; P < .001), with a significantly greater increase during the first year (P < .001). In addition, there was a highly significant correlation between improvements in performance scores on the CNC word and HINT sentence speech perception tests and both age at CI and length of deafness at the year 1 testing (P ≤.009) but not from the year 1 testing to EOS testing. Adolescents with progressive deafness and those using oral communication before CI performed significantly better than age-matched peers. Adolescents with prelingual deafness undergoing unilateral CI show significant improvement in objective hearing outcome measures. Patients with shorter lengths of deafness and earlier age at CI tend to outperform their peers. In addition, patients with progressive deafness and those using oral communication have significantly better objective outcomes than their peers.	\N	\N
22218296	Visual attention has temporal limitations. In the attentional blink (AB) a stream of stimuli such as letters or digits are presented to a participant on a computer monitor at a rapid rate. Embedded in the stream are two targets that the participant must try to identify. Identification of the second target is severely impaired if it is presented within approximately 500ms of the first target. This is the 'blink' in visual attention. In this study we examined the role of the magnocellular visual pathway in the AB. This fast conducting pathway has high temporal resolution and contrast sensitivity. It is also insensitive to the direction of chromatic contrast, and this attribute was exploited in order to isolate its contributions to temporal attention. Colour defined, luminance noise masked AB streams were compared to AB streams of varying achromatic contrast. The four observers, (2F and 2M) aged between 21 and 35years, had normal visual acuity and colour vision. The colour stimuli produced a similar blink to the moderate contrast achromatic stimuli. This indicates that the magnocellular pathway does not have a privileged role in the attentional blink. We provide an explanation of previous apparently contradictory findings in terms of the role of different types of visual masking in the attentional blink.	\N	\N
22232388	The goal of this study was to compare clinical and research-based cochlear implant (CI) measures using telehealth versus traditional methods. This prospective study used an ABA design (A = laboratory, B = remote site). All measures were made twice per visit for the purpose of assessing within-session variability. Twenty-nine adult and pediatric CI recipients participated. Measures included electrode impedance, electrically evoked compound action potential thresholds, psychophysical thresholds using an adaptive procedure, map thresholds and upper comfort levels, and speech perception. Subjects completed a questionnaire at the end of the study. Results for all electrode-specific measures revealed no statistically significant differences between traditional and remote conditions. Speech perception was significantly poorer in the remote condition, which was likely due to the lack of a sound booth. In general, subjects indicated that they would take advantage of telehealth options at least some of the time, if such options were available. Results from this study demonstrate that telehealth is a viable option for research and clinical measures. Additional studies are needed to investigate ways to improve speech perception at remote locations that lack sound booths and to validate the use of telehealth for pediatric services (e.g., play audiometry), sound-field threshold testing, and troubleshooting equipment.	\N	\N
22232404	Older adults exhibit difficulty understanding speech that has been experimentally degraded. Age-related changes to the speech mechanism lead to natural degradations in signal quality. We tested the hypothesis that older adults with hearing loss would exhibit declines in speech recognition when listening to the speech of older adults, compared with the speech of younger adults, and would report greater amounts of listening effort in this task. Nineteen individuals with age-related hearing loss completed speech recognition and listening effort scaling tasks. Both were conducted in quiet, when listening to high- and low-predictability phrases produced by younger and older speakers, respectively. No significant difference in speech recognition existed when stimuli were derived from younger or older speakers. However, perceived effort was significantly higher when listening to speech from older adults, as compared with younger adults. For older individuals with hearing loss, natural degradations in signal quality may require greater listening effort. However, they do not interfere with speech recognition-at least in quiet. Follow-up investigation of the effect of speaker age on speech recognition and listening effort under more challenging noise conditions appears warranted.	\N	\N
22232413	The ability to detect a tone added to a random masker improves when a preview of the masker is provided. In 2 experiments, the authors explored the role that perceptual organization plays in this release from masking. Detection thresholds were measured in informational masking studies. The maskers were drawn at random prior to each trial. Masker or signal-plus-masker precursors preceded the detection interval, and the time between the precursor and the detection interval was systematically altered. In Experiment 1, the signal frequency was either fixed or random. In Experiment 2, the random masker was composed of harmonics of a common fundamental frequency (F (0)), and the randomly chosen signal frequency was either harmonically related to, or mistuned from, the masker's F (0). For a masker precursor, the release from informational masking withstood longer precursor-detection interval delays (a) when the signal frequency was fixed versus random and (b) when the signal was mistuned relative to a harmonic of the masker's F (0). These results suggest that listeners' ability to attend to the signal may contribute to the long-lived release from masking with a masker precursor.	\N	\N
22237163	The aim of this study was to investigate potential effects of age on the ability of normal-hearing (NH) adult listeners to utilize spectral and temporal cues when performing a voice gender identification task. Ten younger and 10 older NH adult listeners were measured on their ability to correctly identify the speaker gender of six different vowel tokens (H-/vowel/-D) when spoken by eight speakers (four male and four female). Spectral (number of channels) and temporal cues (low-pass cut-off frequency for temporal envelope extraction) were systematically manipulated using noiseband vocoding techniques; stimuli contained 1, 4, 8, 16, or 32 spectral channels, while the low-pass cut-off frequency of the temporal envelope filter was 20, 50, 100, 200, or 400 Hz. Furthermore, the fundamental frequencies (F0s) of the vowel tokens were manipulated to create two conditions: "Expanded" (large range of F0 values) and "Compressed" (small range of F0 values). In general, younger listeners performed better than the older listeners but only when stimuli were spectrally degraded. For both the Expanded and Compressed conditions, the overall performance of the younger listeners was better than that of the older listeners, suggesting age-related deficits in both spectral and temporal processing. Furthermore, a significant interaction between age group and temporal envelope cues revealed that older listeners received less benefit from increasing temporal envelope information compared with the benefit observed among younger listeners. In particular, the performance of the younger NH group (collapsed across number of channels), but not the older NH group, improved as the temporal envelope cut-off frequency was increased from 50 to 400 Hz. The results reported here support previous findings of senescent declines in perceiving spectrally reduced speech and temporal amplitude modulation processing. These results suggest that when F0 values are similar to one another, younger listeners can use temporal cues alone to glean voice-pitch information but older listeners exhibit a lessened ability to use such cues. Previous studies have demonstrated the importance of temporal envelope cues in periodicity perception (e.g., gender recognition) by cochlear implant listeners. The results of this study suggest that aging affects the use of such cues, and consequently gender recognition might be poorer among older cochlear implant recipients.	\N	\N
22245012	An event-related potential, the Phonological Mapping Negativity (PMN), has been reported to reflect recognition of phonological mismatches in speech stimuli. The purpose of the present study was to explore how the PMN response to the auditory nonsense syllable reflects phonological processing in isolation without the letter prime or lexical/semantic context. Sixty-four nonsense syllable stimuli were composed for each of three stimulus conditions: phonological match (PM), phonological mismatch with similar sound (PMMS), and phonological mismatch with different sound (PMMD), making a total of 192 stimuli. The PMN was measured from fourteen normal-hearing listeners. Electroencephalogram (EEG) activity was recorded while subjects were listening to the stimuli and responding behaviorally. Subjects were asked to determine what vowel-consonant-vowel (VCV) (e.g. /apa/) would be formed from the combination of the preceding vowel (V) (e.g. /a/) and consonant-vowel (CV) (e.g. /pa/), and press a 'correct' or 'incorrect' response button as soon as they decided whether the target VCV stimulus matched their expectation. In this way, along with the PMN, behavioral response accuracy and reaction times were obtained. The results were as follows: (1) PMN amplitude was not different by stimulus condition, (2) PMN amplitude was larger over frontal and central than posterior regions, but not different between the left versus right hemisphere, (3) PMN was detected in the absence of N400, and (4) behavioral responses were more accurate and faster in PMMD than PM and PMMS. Results indicate that the PMN can reflect phonological processing of auditory nonsense syllables in isolation. The scalp distribution of PMN is most dominant in the fronto-central regions without lateralization. Lastly, behavioral response accuracy and reaction times appear to be influenced by the extent of the task difficulty or processing demand rather than by the extent of phonological violation.	\N	\N
22247221	We employed a variant of the mask-onset delay paradigm in order to limit the availability of visual information in central and peripheral vision within individual fixations during scene viewing. Subjects viewed full-color scene photos with instructions to search for a target object (Experiment 1) or to study them for a later memory test (Experiment 2). After a fixed interval following the onset of each eye fixation (50-100 ms), the scene was scrambled either in the central visual field or over the entire display. The intact scene was presented when the subject made an eye movement. Our results reconcile different sets of findings from prior research regarding the masking of central and peripheral visual information at different intervals following fixation onset. In particular, we found that when the entire display was scrambled, both search and memory performance were impaired even at relatively long mask-onset intervals. In contrast, when central vision was scrambled, there were subtle impairments that depended on the viewing task. In the 50-ms mask-onset interval, subjects were selectively impaired at identifying, but not in locating, the search target (Experiment 1), while memory performance (Experiment 2) was unaffected in this condition, and hence, the reliance on central and peripheral visual information depends partly on the viewing task.	\N	\N
22251050	Given that semantic processes mediate early processes in the elicitation of emotions, we expect that already activated emotion-specific information can influence the elicitation of an emotion. In Experiment 1, participants were exposed to masked International Affective Picture System (IAPS) pictures that elicited either disgust or fear. Following the presentation of the primes, other IAPS pictures were presented as targets that elicited either disgust or fear. The participants' task was to classify the target picture as either disgust or fear evoking. In Experiment 2, we substituted the IAPS primes with facial expressions of either disgust or fear. In Experiment 3, we substituted the IAPS primes with the words disgust or fear. In all three experiments, we found that prime-target combinations of the same emotion were responded to faster than prime-target combinations of different emotions. Our findings suggest that the influence of primes on the elicitation of emotion is mediated by activated schemata or appraisal processes.	\N	\N
22253008	Auditory brainstem implants (ABIs) can provide highly beneficial hearing sensations to individuals deafened by bilateral vestibular schwannomas (neurofibromatosis type 2). Relatively little is known about the status of stimulated neurons after long-term ABI use. Direct examination of the cochlear nuclear complex (CN) of one 5-year ABI user indicated no deleterious effect. Recently, we examined the brainstem of a patient who used his ABI daily for 15 years with excellent performance. There was good preservation of CN cell size, morphology, and packing density, a very favorable sign considering that a number of infants are now receiving ABIs.	\N	\N
22264101	Our findings show that all cochlear implanted temporal bones had a varied degree of trauma and inflammatory reaction from cochlear implantation. No definitive relationship was observed from our limited number of specimens between residual spiral ganglion cells (SGCs) in implanted temporal bones and clinical speech performance. We hypothesize that there is a relationship between residual SGCs in cochlear implanted temporal bones and clinical speech performance. Our aim was to examine the histopathology of multi-channel cochlear implant temporal bones and to evaluate the relationship of residual SGC counts to clinical hearing performance. Temporal bones from four cochlear implant patients were examined histologically. Comparisons were made between implanted and nonimplanted temporal bones. Clinical performance data were obtained from patient charts. There were varying amounts of inflammation in the basal turn of the cochleae in all four implanted temporal bones. Trauma to the facial nerve at the facial recess was noticed in one case. Surviving dendrites varied from 5% to 30% among four cases, with no relationship to clinical performance. The speech recognition scores, measured with Central Institute of the Deaf (CID) sentence score, varied among patients from 4% to 89%, while the patient with the highest SGCs had the best clinical outcome.	\N	\N
22280721	A psychophysical pitch function, describing the relation of perceived magnitude of pitch to the frequency of a pure tone, was determined by absolute magnitude estimation. Pitch estimates were made by listeners with relative pitch and by absolute pitch possessors for 27 tones spanning a frequency range of 31.5-12,500 Hz in 1/3 octave steps. Results show that the pitch function, plotted in log-log coordinates, is steeper below 200 Hz than at higher frequencies. It is hypothesized that the pitch function's bend may reflect the diversity of neurophysiological mechanisms of pitch encoding in frequency ranges below and above 200 Hz. The variation of the function's slope implies that pitch distances between tones with the same frequency ratios are perceived as larger below 200 Hz than at higher frequencies. It is argued that this implication may apply only to a purely sensory concept of pitch distance and cannot be extended to the perception of musical intervals, a phenomenon governed by musical cognitive principles. The results also show that pitch functions obtained for listeners with relative and absolute pitch have a similar shape, which means that quantitative pitch relations determined for both groups of listeners do not differ appreciably along the frequency scale.	\N	\N
22289507	In this event-related potential (ERP) study a masking technique that prevents conscious perception of words and non-words through attentional distraction was used to reveal the temporal dynamics of word processing under non-conscious and conscious conditions. In the non-conscious condition, ERP responses differed between masked words and non-words from 112 to 160 ms after stimulus-onset over posterior brain areas. The early onset of the word-non-word differences was compatible with previous studies that reported non-conscious access to orthographic information within this time period. Moreover, source localisations provided evidence for automatic activation of prelexical phonological information, whereas no evidence for non-conscious semantic processing was found. When subjects were informed about the masking technique, lexical differences occurred at later time intervals, suggesting conscious access to additional word related information. These results indicate that early visual word processing does not depend entirely on attentional resources, but that non-conscious processing probably is restricted to rather lower-level linguistic information.	\N	\N
22290344	Synesthesia is a sensory disorder where the stimulation of one sensory modality can lead to a reaction in another which would not usually be expected to respond; for instance, someone might see a color on hearing a word such as a day of the week. Disordered perception of sensory information also appears to contribute to the pathophysiology of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). The purpose of this exploratory study was to ascertain whether these two conditions might be linked in any way. Two hundred consecutive IBS outpatients were screened for synesthesia and compared with 200 matched healthy volunteers (controls). Positive responders were tested for two types of synesthesia (grapheme-color and music-color/shape) using a questionnaire which was repeated after 3 months to test for reproducibility. Of the 200 IBS outpatients screened, 26 (13%) patients and six (3%) controls claimed to be synesthetic (P < 0.001). Reproducibility was more variable in IBS patients than controls but despite this variability, 15 (7.5%) patients compared with 5 (2.5%) controls had greater than 75% consistency (P = 0.036), and 19 (9.5%) patients and 6 (3%) controls had greater than 50% consistency (P = 0.012). A reproducibility of less than 50% was observed in seven (3.5%) patients and no controls (0%) (P = 0.015), and these individuals were classified as having pseudo-synesthesia. IBS patients clearly differ from controls in terms of claiming to have synesthetic experiences. These results justify additional studies on the relationship between IBS and synesthesia to further understand the neural mechanisms underpinning these two conditions and to establish whether they may be linked.	\N	\N
22292985	The effects of the use of cochlear implant (CI) on speech intelligibility, speaking rate, and vowel formant characteristics and the relationships between speech intelligibility, speaking rate, and vowel formant characteristics for children are clinically important. The purposes of this study were to report on the comparisons for speaking rate and vowel space area, and their relationship with speech intelligibility, between 24 Mandarin-speaking children with CI and 24 age-sex-education level matched normal hearing (NH) controls. Participants were audio recorded as they read a designed Mandarin intelligibility test, repeated prolongation of each of the three point vowels /i/, /a/, and /u/ five times, and repeated each of three sentences carrying one point vowel five times. Compared to the NH group, the CI group exhibited: (1) mild-to-moderate speech intelligibility impairment; (2) significantly reduced speaking rate mainly due to significantly longer inter-word pauses and larger pause proportion; and (3) significantly less vowel reduction in the horizontal dimension in sustained vowel phonation. The limitations of speech intelligibility development in children after cochlear implantation were related to atypical patterns and to a smaller degree in vowel reduction and slower speaking rate resulting from less efficient articulatory movement transition.	\N	\N
22302814	Understanding speech in noisy environments is often taken for granted; however, this task is particularly challenging for people with cochlear hearing loss, even with hearing aids or cochlear implants. A significant limitation to improving auditory prostheses is our lack of understanding of the neural basis for robust speech perception in noise. Perceptual studies suggest the slowly varying component of the acoustic waveform (envelope, ENV) is sufficient for understanding speech in quiet, but the rapidly varying temporal fine structure (TFS) is important in noise. These perceptual findings have important implications for cochlear implants, which currently only provide ENV; however, neural correlates have been difficult to evaluate due to cochlear transformations between acoustic TFS and recovered neural ENV. Here, we demonstrate the relative contributions of neural ENV and TFS by quantitatively linking neural coding, predicted from a computational auditory nerve model, with perception of vocoded speech in noise measured from normal hearing human listeners. Regression models with ENV and TFS coding as independent variables predicted speech identification and phonetic feature reception at both positive and negative signal-to-noise ratios. We found that: (1) neural ENV coding was a primary contributor to speech perception, even in noise; and (2) neural TFS contributed in noise mainly in the presence of neural ENV, but rarely as the primary cue itself. These results suggest that neural TFS has less perceptual salience than previously thought due to cochlear signal processing transformations between TFS and ENV. Because these transformations differ between normal and impaired ears, these findings have important translational implications for auditory prostheses.	\N	\N
22304406	Children ask questions and learn from the responses they receive; however, little is known about how children learn from listening to others ask questions. Five experiments examined preschoolers' (N = 179) ability to solve simple problems using information gathered from listening to question-and-answer exchanges between 2 parties present in the same room. Overall, the ability to efficiently use information gathered from overheard exchanges improved between ages 3 and 5. Critically, however, across ages children solved the majority of problems correctly, suggesting preschoolers are capable of learning from others' questions. Moreover, children learned from others' questions without explicit instruction and when engaged in another activity. Implications for the development of problem-solving skills are discussed.	\N	\N
22317269	The purpose of this study was to assess normal hearing listeners' performance in detecting a stationary backup alarm signal and to quantify the linear distance at detection point. Detection distances for 12 participants with normal hearing were measured while they were fitted with 7 hearing protectors and while they were unoccluded (open ear). A standard (narrowband) backup alarm signal and a broadband (pulsed white noise) backup alarm signal from Brigade[1] were used. The method of limits, with distance as the physical measurement variable and threshold detection as the task, was employed to find at which distance the participant could first detect the backup alarms. A within-subject Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) revealed a significant main effect of the listening conditions on the detection distance in feet. Post hoc analyses indicated that the Bilsom L3HV conventional passive earmuff (at 1132.2 ft detection distance) was significantly poorer compared to all other HPDs and the open ear in detection distance achieved, and that there were no statistically-significant differences between the unoccluded ear (1652.3 ft), EB-15-Lo BlastPLGTM (1546.2 ft), EB-15-Hi BlastPLGTM (1543.4 ft), E-A-R/3M Combat ArmsTM earplug-nonlinear, level-dependent state (1507.8 ft), E-A-R/3M HiFiTM earplug (1497.7 ft), and Bilsom ImpactTM dichotic electronic earmuff (1567.2 ft). In addition, the E-A-R/3M Combat ArmsTM earplug-passive steady state resulted in significantly longer detection distances than only the open ear condition, at 1474.1 ft versus 1652.3 ft for the open ear. ANOVA also revealed a significant main effect of the backup alarm type on detection distance. The means were 1600.9 ft for the standard (narrowband) backup alarm signal, and a significantly closer 1379.4 ft was required for the Brigade broadband backup alarm signal. For on-ground workers, it is crucial to detect backup alarm signals as far away as possible rather than at close distances since this will provide them more time to react to approaching vehicles. The results of this study suggest that as the attenuation of the hearing protectors increases, precautions should be considered by safety professionals. This is because, as it was the case with the Bilsom passive earmuff and E-A-R/3M Combat ArmsTM earplug-passive steady state, high attenuation minimizes the detection distance and as a result on-foot workers will have less time to react to any approaching vehicle. The main effects of the type of backup alarm signal demonstrated a statistically-significant advantage of the standard backup alarm over the broadband backup alarm on detection distance in feet. The magnitude of the improvement produced by the standard backup alarm was 221.5 feet, a very large margin. For example, with a vehicle backing at 10 mph, the 221.5 ft decrease in detection distance with the Brigade alarm equates to the vehicle arriving 15 seconds sooner at the worker from the point at which its alarm was first heard.	\N	\N
22321294	This study was designed to separately test the effect of the cued/cueless nature of deviant stimuli and that of temporal distance between sound and deviance onsets on the mismatch negativity (MMN) as well as to look for discrepancies between behavioural discrimination performances and MMN amplitude when deviants are cueless. Ten healthy adults passively listened to stimuli that were contrasted by the presence or absence of a frequency sweep starting early or late within the sound. Discrimination performances were collected after the electrophysiological sessions. MMNs were much larger for cued than for cueless deviants. The temporal distance between sound and deviance onsets affected MMNs evoked by both cued and cueless deviants, even to the point of abolishing the MMN when cueless deviance occurred late in the stimulus. Behavioural data were at ceiling levels for all conditions, contrasting with the absence of MMN evoked by cueless deviants with late onset. Two mechanisms contribute to the MMN evoked by cued deviants: the memory comparison process and the adaptation/fresh-afferent one. Within the temporal window of integration, the delay at which each component disappears is different. Comparing waveforms evoked by cued versus cueless deviants provides a fairly simple way of isolating the MMN memory-based component.	\N	\N
22323627	The ability to detect and track relevant acoustic signals embedded in a background of other sounds is crucial for hearing in complex acoustic environments. This ability is exemplified by a perceptual phenomenon known as "rhythmic masking release" (RMR). To demonstrate RMR, a sequence of tones forming a target rhythm is intermingled with physically identical "Distracter" sounds that perceptually mask the rhythm. The rhythm can be "released from masking" by adding "Flanker" tones in adjacent frequency channels that are synchronous with the Distracters. RMR represents a special case of auditory stream segregation, whereby the target rhythm is perceptually segregated from the background of Distracters when they are accompanied by the synchronous Flankers. The neural basis of RMR is unknown. Previous studies suggest the involvement of primary auditory cortex (A1) in the perceptual organization of sound patterns. Here, we recorded neural responses to RMR sequences in A1 of awake monkeys in order to identify neural correlates and potential mechanisms of RMR. We also tested whether two current models of stream segregation, when applied to these responses, could account for the perceptual organization of RMR sequences. Results suggest a key role for suppression of Distracter-evoked responses by the simultaneous Flankers in the perceptual restoration of the target rhythm in RMR. Furthermore, predictions of stream segregation models paralleled the psychoacoustics of RMR in humans. These findings reinforce the view that preattentive or "primitive" aspects of auditory scene analysis may be explained by relatively basic neural mechanisms at the cortical level.	\N	\N
22337498	In this study, the authors (a) investigated whether a group of people with severe aphasia could learn a vocabulary of pantomime gestures through therapy and (b) compared their learning of gestures with their learning of words. The authors also examined whether gesture therapy cued word production and whether naming therapy cued gestures. Fourteen people with severe aphasia received 15 hr of gesture and naming treatments. Evaluations comprised repeated measures of gesture and word production, comparing treated and untreated items. Baseline measures were stable but improved significantly following therapy. Across the group, improvements in naming were greater than improvements in gesture. This trend was evident in most individuals' results, although 3 participants made better progress in gesture. Gains were item specific, and there was no evidence of cross-modality cueing. Items that received gesture therapy did not improve in naming, and items that received naming therapy did not improve in gesture. Results show that people with severe aphasia can respond to gesture and naming therapies. Given the unequal gains, naming may be a more productive therapy target than gesture for many (although not all) individuals with severe aphasia. The communicative benefits of therapy were not examined but are addressed in a follow-up article.	\N	\N
22352496	The standard method for the calibration of audiometric bone vibrators requires the use of an artificial mastoid, a device that converts vibratory energy to an electrical analog. The mechanical input impedance of the device is designed to represent the average mechanical impedance of the human head. For calibration purposes, it is not necessary that the coupling device represent the impedance of the head. It is only necessary that it provides a repeatable measurement of the output of the vibrator that can be related to the normal threshold of hearing at each test frequency. In addition to the mechanical output that serves as the stimulus for the hearing test, bone vibrators produce an acoustic signal that is proportional to the mechanical force delivered to the head. By determining the transfer function relating the acoustic sound pressure to the mechanical force, the acoustic signal can serve as a proxy for the vibratory stimulus. This article describes the design and validation of an acoustic coupler for the calibration of audiometric bone vibrators.	\N	\N
22352502	The reliability of distortion-product otoacoustic emission (DPOAE) measurements and their relation to loudness measurements was examined in 16 normal-hearing subjects and 58 subjects with hearing loss. The level of the distortion product (L(d)) was compared across two sessions and resulted in correlations that exceeded 0.90. The reliability of DPOAEs was less when parameters from nonlinear fits to the input/output (I/O) functions were compared across visits. Next, the relationship between DPOAE I/O parameters and the slope of the low-level portion of the categorical loudness scaling (CLS) function (soft slope) was assessed. Correlations of 0.65, 0.74, and 0.81 at 1, 2, and 4 kHz were observed between CLS soft slope and combined DPOAE parameters. Behavioral threshold had correlations of 0.82, 0.83, and 0.88 at 1, 2, and 4 kHz with CLS soft slope. Combining DPOAEs and behavioral threshold provided little additional information. Lastly, a multivariate approach utilizing the entire DPOAE I/O function was used to predict the CLS rating for each input level (dB SPL). Standard error of the estimate when using this method ranged from 2.4 to 3.0 categorical units (CU), suggesting that DPOAE I/O functions can predict CLS measures within the CU step size used in this study (5).	\N	\N
22352514	Cross-generational and cross-dialectal variation in vowels among speakers of American English was examined in terms of vowel identification by listeners and vowel classification using pattern recognition. Listeners from Western North Carolina and Southeastern Wisconsin identified 12 vowel categories produced by 120 speakers stratified by age (old adults, young adults, and children), gender, and dialect. The vowels /ɝ, o, ʊ, u/ were well identified by both groups of listeners. The majority of confusions were for the front /i, ɪ, e, ɛ, æ/, the low back /ɑ, ɔ/ and the monophthongal North Carolina /aɪ/. For selected vowels, generational differences in acoustic vowel characteristics were perceptually salient, suggesting listeners' responsiveness to sound change. Female exemplars and native-dialect variants produced higher identification rates. Linear discriminant analyses which examined dialect and generational classification accuracy showed that sampling the formant pattern at vowel midpoint only is insufficient to separate the vowels. Two sample points near onset and offset provided enough information for successful classification. The models trained on one dialect classified the vowels from the other dialect with much lower accuracy. The results strongly support the importance of dynamic information in accurate classification of cross-generational and cross-dialectal variations.	\N	\N
22352516	This study examined whether speech-on-speech masking is sensitive to variation in the degree of similarity between the target and the masker speech. Three experiments investigated whether speech-in-speech recognition varies across different background speech languages (English vs Dutch) for both English and Dutch targets, as well as across variation in the semantic content of the background speech (meaningful vs semantically anomalous sentences), and across variation in listener status vis-à-vis the target and masker languages (native, non-native, or unfamiliar). The results showed that the more similar the target speech is to the masker speech (e.g., same vs different language, same vs different levels of semantic content), the greater the interference on speech recognition accuracy. Moreover, the listener's knowledge of the target and the background language modulate the size of the release from masking. These factors had an especially strong effect on masking effectiveness in highly unfavorable listening conditions. Overall this research provided evidence that that the degree of target-masker similarity plays a significant role in speech-in-speech recognition. The results also give insight into how listeners assign their resources differently depending on whether they are listening to their first or second language.	\N	\N
22352522	Automatic speech recognition (ASR) refers to the task of extracting a transcription of the linguistic content of an acoustical speech signal automatically. Despite several decades of research in this important area of acoustic signal processing, the accuracy of ASR systems is still far behind human performance, especially in adverse acoustic scenarios. In this context, one of the most challenging situations is the one concerning simultaneous speech in cocktail-party environments. Although source separation methods have already been investigated to deal with this problem, the separation process is not perfect and the resulting artifacts pose an additional problem to ASR performance. In this paper, a specific training to improve the percentage of recognized words in real simultaneous speech cases is proposed. The combination of source separation and this specific training is explored and evaluated under different acoustical conditions, leading to improvements of up to a 35% in ASR performance.	\N	\N
22352609	There is substantial performance variability among listeners who transcribe degraded speech. Error patterns from 88 listeners who transcribed dysarthric speech were examined to identify differential use of syllabic strength cues for lexical segmentation. Transcripts from listeners were divided into four groups (ranging from Better- to Poorer- performing). Phrases classified as Higher- and Lower-intelligibility were analyzed separately for each performance group to assess the independent variable of severity. Results revealed that all four listener groups used syllabic strength cues for lexical segmentation of Higher-intelligibility speech, but only the Poorer listeners persisted with this strategy for the Lower-intelligibility phrases. This finding and additional analyses suggest testable hypotheses to address the role of cue-use and performance patterns.	\N	\N
22353676	Age-related declines in auditory and cognitive processing may contribute to the difficulties with listening in noise that are often reported by older adults. Such difficulties are reported even by those who have relatively good audiograms that could be considered "normal" for their age (ISO 7029-2000 [ISO, 2000]). The Speech, Spatial, and Qualities of Hearing Scale (SSQ; Gatehouse and Noble, 2004) is a questionnaire developed to measure a listener's self-reported ability to hear in a variety of everyday situations, such as those that are challenging for older adults, and it can provide insights into the possible contributions of auditory and cognitive factors to their listening difficulties. The SSQ has been shown to be a sensitive and reliable questionnaire to detect benefits associated with the use of different hearing technologies and potentially other forms of intervention. Establishing how age-matched listeners with audiograms "normal" for their age rate the items on the SSQ could enable an extension of its use in audiological assessment and in setting rehabilitative goals. The main purpose of this study was to investigate how younger and older adults who passed audiometric screening and who had thresholds considered to be "normal" for their age responded on the SSQ. It was also of interest to compare these results to those reported previously for older listeners with hearing loss in an attempt to tease out the relative effects of age and hearing loss. The SSQ was administered to 48 younger (mean age = 19 yr; SD = 1.0) and 48 older (mean age = 70 yr, SD = 4.1) adults with clinically normal audiometric thresholds below 4 kHz. The younger adults were recruited through an introductory psychology course, and the older adults were volunteers from the local community. Both age groups completed the SSQ. The differences between the groups were analyzed. Correlations were used to compare the pattern of results across items for the two age groups in the present study and to assess the relationship between SSQ scores and objective measures of hearing. Comparisons were also made to published results for older adults with hearing loss. The pattern of reported difficulty across items was similar for both age groups, but younger adults had significantly higher scores than older adults on 42 of the 46 items. On average, younger adults scored 8.8 (SD = 0.6) out of 10 and older adults scored 7.7 (SD = 1.2) out of 10. By comparison, scores of 5.5 (SD = 1.9) have been reported for older adults (mean age = 71 yr, SD = 8.1) with moderate hearing loss (Gatehouse and Noble, 2004). By establishing the best scores that could reasonably be expected from younger and older adults with "normal" hearing thresholds, these results provide clinicians with information that should assist them in setting realistic targets for interventions for adults of different ages.	\N	\N
22355005	To determine (a) the effect of fundamental frequency (f₀) on speech intelligibility, acceptability, and perceived gender in electrolaryngeal (EL) speakers, and (b) the effect of known gender on speech acceptability in EL speakers. A 2-part study was conducted. In Part 1, 34 healthy adults provided speech recordings using electrolarynges set at 75 Hz, 130 Hz, and 175 Hz, and 36 listeners transcribed the recordings. In Part 2, 22 speech samples were presented to 16 listeners. First, listeners identified the gender of each speaker and judged his or her speech acceptability using rating scales. Second, listeners judged the same samples for speech acceptability when gender information was provided. In Part 1, speakers were significantly more intelligible when using 75-Hz devices. In Part 2, the f₀ of the speech signal significantly impacted listeners' accuracy in perceiving the speaker's gender: In gender-incongruent conditions (males using 175-Hz devices, females using 75-Hz devices), listeners were unable to identify female speakers. Speech acceptability judgments were directly related to intelligibility. Finally, listeners differentially penalized female speakers who used 75-Hz devices when gender information was known. Low f₀ facilitated speech intelligibility. However, at low f₀, listeners were unable to identify females as female, and females were differentially penalized for speech acceptability. Results may have implications for rehabilitation.	\N	\N
22355541	The potentiality to find precursors of human language in nonhuman primates is questioned because of differences related to the genetic determinism of human and nonhuman primate acoustic structures. Limiting the debate to production and acoustic plasticity might have led to underestimating parallels between human and nonhuman primates. Adult-young differences concerning vocal usage have been reported in various primate species. A key feature of language is the ability to converse, respecting turn-taking rules. Turn-taking structures some nonhuman primates' adult vocal exchanges, but the development and the cognitive relevancy of this rule have never been investigated in monkeys. Our observations of Campbell's monkeys' spontaneous vocal utterances revealed that juveniles broke the turn-taking rule more often than did experienced adults. Only adults displayed different levels of interest when hearing playbacks of vocal exchanges respecting or not the turn-taking rule. This study strengthens parallels between human conversations and nonhuman primate vocal exchanges.	\N	\N
22361165	Sensory-motor interactions between auditory and articulatory representations in the dorsal auditory processing stream are suggested to contribute to speech perception, especially when bottom-up information alone is insufficient for purely auditory perceptual mechanisms to succeed. Here, we hypothesized that the dorsal stream responds more vigorously to auditory syllables when one is engaged in a phonetic identification/repetition task subsequent to perception compared to passive listening, and that this effect is further augmented when the syllables are embedded in noise. To this end, we recorded magnetoencephalography while twenty subjects listened to speech syllables, with and without noise masking, in four conditions: passive perception; overt repetition; covert repetition; and overt imitation. Compared to passive listening, left-hemispheric N100m equivalent current dipole responses were amplified and shifted posteriorly when perception was followed by covert repetition task. Cortically constrained minimum-norm estimates showed amplified left supramarginal and angylar gyri responses in the covert repetition condition at ~100ms from stimulus onset. Longer-latency responses at ~200ms were amplified in the covert repetition condition in the left angular gyrus and in all three active conditions in the left premotor cortex, with further enhancements when the syllables were embedded in noise. Phonetic categorization accuracy and magnitude of voice pitch change between overt repetition and imitation conditions correlated with left premotor cortex responses at ~100 and ~200ms, respectively. Together, these results suggest that the dorsal stream involvement in speech perception is dependent on perceptual task demands and that phonetic categorization performance is influenced by the left premotor cortex.	\N	\N
22364395	Young infants perceive an object's trajectory as continuous across occlusion provided the temporal or spatial gap in perception is small. In 3 experiments involving 72 participants the authors investigated the effects of different forms of auditory information on 4-month-olds' perception of trajectory continuity. Provision of dynamic auditory information about the object's trajectory enhanced perception of trajectory continuity. However, a smaller positive effect was also obtained when the sound was continuous but provided no information about the object's location. Finally, providing discontinuous auditory information or auditory information that was dislocated relative to vision had negative effects on trajectory perception. These results are discussed relative to the intersensory redundancy hypothesis and emphasize the need to take an intersensory approach to infant perception.	\N	\N
22364434	Vowels with extreme articulatory-acoustic properties act as natural referents. Infant perceptual asymmetries point to an underlying bias favoring these referent vowels. However, as language experience is gathered, distributional frequency of speech sounds could modify this initial bias. The perception of the /i/-/e/ contrast was explored in 144 Catalan- and Spanish-learning infants (2 languages with a different distribution of vowel frequency of occurrence) at 4, 6, and 12 months. The results confirmed an acoustic bias at 4 and 6 months in all infants. However, at 12 months, discrimination was not affected by the acoustic bias but by the frequency of occurrence of the vowel.	\N	\N
22366801	Many studies have shown that the visual cortex of blind humans is activated in non-visual tasks. However, the electrophysiological signals underlying this cross-modal plasticity are largely unknown. Here, we characterize the neuronal population activity in the visual and auditory cortex of congenitally blind humans and sighted controls in a complex cognitive task. We recorded magnetoencephalographic responses from participants performing semantic categorization of meaningful sounds that followed the presentation of a semantically related or unrelated haptic object. Source analysis of the spectrally resolved magnetoencephalography data revealed that: (i) neuronal responses to sounds were stronger and longer lasting in the auditory cortex of blind subjects; (ii) auditory stimulation elicited strong oscillatory responses in the visual cortex of blind subjects that closely resembled responses to visual stimulation in sighted humans; (iii) the signal in the gamma frequency range was modulated by semantic congruency between the sounds and the preceding haptic objects; and (iv) signal power in the gamma range was correlated on a trial-by-trial basis between auditory and visual cortex in blind subjects, and the strength of this correlation was modulated by semantic congruency. Our results suggest that specifically oscillatory activity in the gamma range reflects non-visual processing in the visual cortex of blind individuals. Moreover, our results provide evidence that the deprived visual cortex is functionally integrated into a larger network that serves non-visual functions.	\N	\N
22367585	In recent years, it has become evident that neural responses previously considered to be unisensory can be modulated by sensory input from other modalities. In this regard, visual neural activity elicited to viewing a face is strongly influenced by concurrent incoming auditory information, particularly speech. Here, we applied an additive-factors paradigm aimed at quantifying the impact that auditory speech has on visual event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited to visual speech. These multisensory interactions were measured across parametrically varied stimulus salience, quantified in terms of signal to noise, to provide novel insights into the neural mechanisms of audiovisual speech perception. First, we measured a monotonic increase of the amplitude of the visual P1-N1-P2 ERP complex during a spoken-word recognition task with increases in stimulus salience. ERP component amplitudes varied directly with stimulus salience for visual, audiovisual, and summed unisensory recordings. Second, we measured changes in multisensory gain across salience levels. During audiovisual speech, the P1 and P1-N1 components exhibited less multisensory gain relative to the summed unisensory components with reduced salience, while N1-P2 amplitude exhibited greater multisensory gain as salience was reduced, consistent with the principle of inverse effectiveness. The amplitude interactions were correlated with behavioral measures of multisensory gain across salience levels as measured by response times, suggesting that change in multisensory gain associated with unisensory salience modulations reflects an increased efficiency of visual speech processing.	\N	\N
22371164	The finding that serial recall performance for visually presented items is impaired by concurrently presented task-irrelevant speech or sounds is referred to as the irrelevant-speech/-sound effect (ISE). Substantial evidence has indicated that the impairment of serial rehearsal can result in an ISE, and this may be explained by several models. The present series of experiments has demonstrated an ISE in surprise nonserial recognition tasks in which participants were unaware of the need to maintain a large number of visual items for a later memory test, suggesting that neither the rehearsal nor maintenance of order information is necessary for observing the ISE. This effect was observed for both steady-state and changing-state irrelevant sounds, suggesting that the present results do not derive from a confusion of order information, but instead provide evidence that identity representations can also be impaired by irrelevant sound.	\N	\N
22371616	Auditory streaming and visual plaids have been used extensively to study perceptual organization in each modality. Both stimuli can produce bistable alternations between grouped (one object) and split (two objects) interpretations. They also share two peculiar features: (i) at the onset of stimulus presentation, organization starts with a systematic bias towards the grouped interpretation; (ii) this first percept has 'inertia'; it lasts longer than the subsequent ones. As a result, the probability of forming different objects builds up over time, a landmark of both behavioural and neurophysiological data on auditory streaming. Here we show that first percept bias and inertia are independent. In plaid perception, inertia is due to a depth ordering ambiguity in the transparent (split) interpretation that makes plaid perception tristable rather than bistable: experimental manipulations removing the depth ambiguity suppressed inertia. However, the first percept bias persisted. We attempted a similar manipulation for auditory streaming by introducing level differences between streams, to bias which stream would appear in the perceptual foreground. Here both inertia and first percept bias persisted. We thus argue that the critical common feature of the onset of perceptual organization is the grouping bias, which may be related to the transition from temporally/spatially local to temporally/spatially global computation.	\N	\N
22371621	Auditory stream segregation involves linking temporally separate acoustic events into one or more coherent sequences. For any non-trivial sequence of sounds, many alternative descriptions can be formed, only one or very few of which emerge in awareness at any time. Evidence from studies showing bi-/multistability in auditory streaming suggest that some, perhaps many of the alternative descriptions are represented in the brain in parallel and that they continuously vie for conscious perception. Here, based on a predictive coding view, we consider the nature of these sound representations and how they compete with each other. Predictive processing helps to maintain perceptual stability by signalling the continuation of previously established patterns as well as the emergence of new sound sources. It also provides a measure of how well each of the competing representations describes the current acoustic scene. This account of auditory stream segregation has been tested on perceptual data obtained in the auditory streaming paradigm.	\N	\N
22379692	The attentional blink (AB) is a well-established paradigm in which identification of a target T2 is reduced shortly after presentation of an earlier target T1. An important question concerns the importance of backward masking during the AB. While task switching has been found to be a strong modulator mediating the AB without any masking of T2, the present study investigated whether spatial switching could similarly produce an AB without masking. Using a spatial AB paradigm in which items appeared at different locations; we found (a) a significant AB without backward masking of T2 but no AB when no distractors followed T2, (b) no evidence for Lag 1 sparing. These findings show that when there is a spatial switch between the targets, presenting the distractor following T2 at the same location than T2 (backward masking) is not a necessary condition for the AB to occur, but T2 has to be followed by surrounding distractors (appearing at different locations than T2). This pattern of data confirms that spatial switching is a robust modulator of the AB, but to a less extent than task switching.	\N	\N
22384765	Hemodynamic changes can be noninvasively real-time monitored in stroke patients by means of transcranial Doppler sonography (TCD). The aim of this pilot study was to assess hemodynamic changes in both middle cerebral arteries (MCA) in aphasic stroke patients by means of TCD during verbal stimulation. Eight aphasic patients with stroke in the territory of the left MCA were tested by modified Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (BDAE) within 3 days of stroke onset. Both MCA were monitored simultaneously by means of TCD with 2 MHz probes. Basic MCA mean blood flow velocity (MBFV) values were assessed and monitored during verbal stimulation. Verbal stimulation was performed with 30 photos of objects for daily usage, arranged by function. The same test was performed in 16 right-handed healthy controls. In stroke patients, the mean MBFV were 56 cm/s in the left MCA and 56 cm/s in the right MCA. A mean 30% increase was observed in the left MCA and 22% in the right MCA. In healthy controls, a mean 21.7% increase was observed in the left MCA and 18% in the right MCA. A trend toward higher percentage of MBFV increase was observed in the left MCA during verbal stimulations in aphasic patients as compared to control subjects.	\N	\N
22390292	Human multisensory systems are known to bind inputs from the different sensory modalities into a unified percept, a process that leads to measurable behavioral benefits. This integrative process can be observed through multisensory illusions, including the McGurk effect and the sound-induced flash illusion, both of which demonstrate the ability of one sensory modality to modulate perception in a second modality. Such multisensory integration is highly dependent upon the temporal relationship of the different sensory inputs, with perceptual binding occurring within a limited range of asynchronies known as the temporal binding window (TBW). Previous studies have shown that this window is highly variable across individuals, but it is unclear how these variations in the TBW relate to an individual's ability to integrate multisensory cues. Here we provide evidence linking individual differences in multisensory temporal processes to differences in the individual's audiovisual integration of illusory stimuli. Our data provide strong evidence that the temporal processing of multiple sensory signals and the merging of multiple signals into a single, unified perception, are highly related. Specifically, the width of right side of an individuals' TBW, where the auditory stimulus follows the visual, is significantly correlated with the strength of illusory percepts, as indexed via both an increase in the strength of binding synchronous sensory signals and in an improvement in correctly dissociating asynchronous signals. These findings are discussed in terms of their possible neurobiological basis, relevance to the development of sensory integration, and possible importance for clinical conditions in which there is growing evidence that multisensory integration is compromised.	\N	\N
22390745	The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of the Global Voice Therapy Model (GVTM) on acoustic, aerodynamic, and perceptual voice measures of four adults seeking voice therapy for a voice disorder. A speech-language pathologist facilitated speaking voice therapy with the four participants using the GVTM. Participants completed acoustic, aerodynamic, and perceptual voice measures at pre- and post-therapy time points. Differences were seen in the voice measures from pre- to post-therapy. The GVTM was successful in facilitating an improvement in the acoustic, aerodynamic, and perceptual measures of the participants.	\N	\N
22395654	Tactile sensation, which is one of the earliest developing sensory systems, is very important in the perception of an individual's body and the surrounding physical environment, especially in newborns. However, currently, only little is known about the response of a newborn's brain to tactile sensation. The objective of the present study was to determine the response of a newborn's brain to tactile sensation and to compare the brain responses to various sensory stimuli. Ten healthy newborns, 2-9 days after birth, were enrolled. A multichannel near-infrared spectroscopy system was used to measure brain responses. The probe array covered broad cortical areas, including the parietal, temporal, and occipital areas. We measured cortical hemodynamic changes in response to three different types of stimuli: tactile, auditory, and visual. Activated areas were analyzed by t-tests, and the number of activated channels among the three different stimuli was compared by χ²-tests. The results showed that when the brain responded to each type of stimulation, the corresponding primary sensory area was activated, and tactile stimuli induced broader areas of brain activation than the other two types of stimuli (auditory or visual). Thus, broad brain areas, including the temporal and parietal areas, were activated by tactile stimuli in early newborn periods. These results suggest that there are differences in newborns' reactions to various types of sensory stimuli, which may reflect the importance of tactile sensation in the early newborn period.	\N	\N
22403933	Often it is difficult to find a natural explanation as to why a surprising coincidence occurs. In attempting to find one, people may be inclined to accept paranormal explanations. The objective of this study was to investigate whether people with a lower threshold for being surprised by coincidences have a greater propensity to become believers compared to those with a higher threshold. Participants were exposed to artificial coincidences, which were formally defined as less or more probable, and were asked to provide remarkability ratings. Paranormal belief was measured by the Australian Sheep-Goat Scale. An analysis of the remarkability ratings revealed a significant interaction effect between Sheep-Goat score and type of coincidence, suggesting that people with lower thresholds of surprise, when experiencing coincidences, harbor higher paranormal belief than those with a higher threshold. The theoretical aspects of these findings were discussed.	\N	\N
22405960	Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and neuroimaging studies suggest a functional link between the emotion-related brain areas and the motor system. It is not well understood, however, whether the motor cortex activity is modulated by specific emotions experienced during music listening. In 23 healthy volunteers, we recorded the motor evoked potentials (MEP) following TMS to investigate the corticospinal excitability while subjects listened to music pieces evoking different emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, and displeasure), an emotionally neutral piece, and a control stimulus (musical scale). Quality and intensity of emotions were previously rated in an additional group of 30 healthy subjects. Fear-related music significantly increased the MEP size compared to the neutral piece and the control stimulus. This effect was not seen with music inducing other emotional experiences and was not related to changes in autonomic variables (respiration rate, heart rate). Current data indicate that also in a musical context, the excitability of the corticomotoneuronal system is related to the emotion expressed by the listened piece.	\N	\N
22405961	Conceptual knowledge is classically supposed to be abstract and represented in an amodal unitary system, distinct from the sensory and motor brain systems. A more recent embodiment view of conceptual knowledge, however, proposes that concepts are grounded in distributed modality-specific brain areas which typically process sensory or action-related object information. Recent neuroimaging evidence suggested the significance of left auditory association cortex encompassing posterior superior and middle temporal gyrus in coding conceptual sound features of everyday objects. However, a causal role of this region in processing conceptual sound information has yet to be established. Here we had the unique chance to investigate a patient, JR, with a focal lesion in left posterior superior and middle temporal gyrus. To test the necessity of this region in conceptual and perceptual processing of sound information we administered four different experimental tasks to JR: Visual word recognition, category fluency, sound recognition and voice classification. Compared with a matched control group, patient JR was consistently impaired in conceptual processing of sound-related everyday objects (e.g., "bell"), while performance for non-sound-related everyday objects (e.g., "armchair"), animals, whether they typically produce sounds (e.g., "frog") or not (e.g., "tortoise"), and musical instruments (e.g., "guitar") was intact. An analogous deficit pattern in JR was also obtained for perceptual recognition of the corresponding sounds. Hence, damage to left auditory association cortex specifically impairs perceptual and conceptual processing of sounds from everyday objects. In support of modality-specific theories, these findings strongly evidence the necessity of auditory association cortex in coding sound-related conceptual information.	\N	\N
22410432	This article reports on an investigation of graphophonological processes in deaf readers of French over a 1-year period. Deaf readers are known to have a phonological deficit compared to hearing peers, and conclusions from studies on this question are often conflicting. Among the different types of phonological processing, we can identify graphophonological processes based on correspondences between the oral and the written language. In this investigation, we evaluated graphophonemic and graphosyllabic processes using, in each case, two different tasks varying in their degree of cognitive constraints (CC- vs. CC+). Nineteen 11 year-old deaf students were compared to younger normal readers of the same reading level (RA, n = 17) and to normal readers of the same age (CA, n = 20). Two variables were considered in the analyses: accuracy and response latency. Results show that deaf readers do process written items at the graphophonological level and that graphophonological processes are related to reading ability. Also, results indicate main effects of task (CC- vs. CC+), time (T1 vs. T2), and group. In general, deaf participants' performances are comparable to those of RA and differ from those of CA. Results are discussed within the framework of the study of phonology in deaf readers and its relation to reading acquisition.	\N	\N
22411494	To determine the effects of noise and speech style on word learning in typically developing school-age children. Thirty-one participants ages 9;0 (years;months) to 10;11 attempted to learn 2 sets of 8 novel words and their referents. They heard all of the words 13 times each within meaningful narrative discourse. Signal-to-noise ratio (noise vs. quiet) and speech style (plain vs. clear) were manipulated such that half of the children heard the new words in broadband white noise and half heard them in quiet; within those conditions, each child heard one set of words produced in a plain speech style and another set in a clear speech style. Children who were trained in quiet learned to produce the word forms more accurately than those who were trained in noise. Clear speech resulted in more accurate word form productions than plain speech, whether the children had learned in noise or quiet. Learning from clear speech in noise and plain speech in quiet produced comparable results. Noise limits expressive vocabulary growth in children, reducing the quality of word form representation in the lexicon. Clear speech input can aid expressive vocabulary growth in children, even in noisy environments.	\N	\N
22411713	This article describes the development and evaluation of The University of Western Ontario (UWO) Plurals Test, which is an English language measure of detection of the word-final fricative cue for plurality. Normative data are provided for 26 listeners with normal hearing and 24 listeners with hearing impairment (children and adults), as are evaluations of the acoustical properties of the stimuli, the test's test-retest reliability, and the test's sensitivity to changes in hearing aid signal processing (e.g., nonlinear frequency compression). Results indicate reliable, repeated outcome measurement at the level of the individual. When compared to a global measure of real-world listening preference, the UWO Plurals Test was found to be somewhat sensitive to the effects of changes in hearing aid signal processing. Findings suggest potential use of the UWO Plurals Test to evaluate aided and unaided ability of listeners between the ages of 6 and 81 years to detect the word-final fricatives /s/ and /z/ as they occur in English plural nouns.	\N	\N
22414595	Musicians' skills in auditory processing depend highly on instrument, performance practice, and on level of expertise. Yet, it is not known though whether the style/genre of music might shape auditory processing in the brains of musicians. Here, we aimed at tackling the role of musical style/genre on modulating neural and behavioral responses to changes in musical features. Using a novel, fast and musical sounding multi-feature paradigm, we measured the mismatch negativity (MMN), a pre-attentive brain response, to six types of musical feature change in musicians playing three distinct styles of music (classical, jazz, rock/pop) and in non-musicians. Jazz and classical musicians scored higher in the musical aptitude test than band musicians and non-musicians, especially with regards to tonal abilities. These results were extended by the MMN findings: jazz musicians had larger MMN-amplitude than all other experimental groups across the six different sound features, indicating a greater overall sensitivity to auditory outliers. In particular, we found enhanced processing of pith and sliding up to pitches in jazz musicians only. Furthermore, we observed a more frontal MMN to pitch and location compared to the other deviants in jazz musicians and left lateralization of the MMN to timbre in classical musicians. These findings indicate that the characteristics of the style/genre of music played by musicians influence their perceptual skills and the brain processing of sound features embedded in a musical context. Musicians' brain is hence shaped by the type of training, musical style/genre, and listening experiences.	\N	\N
22415447	Although it has been well documented that the spatial inhibitory effect induced by repetition of location (i.e., spatial inhibition of return, or IOR) occurs cross-modally, we do not yet know whether nonspatial (e.g., color-based) repetition-induced inhibition occurs in a cross-modal fashion as well. In the present study, a novel cross-modal paradigm with regard to color-based repetition was adopted. An intervening neutral cue, whose semantic identity was different from those of both the prime and the target, was introduced between the prime and the target in a repetition-priming task. The modalities of the prime, the neutral cue, and the target could be either visual or auditory, and the prime and the target could refer either to the same or to different semantic identities. By adopting this paradigm, we aimed to answer two questions: (1) What are the specific conditions under which cross-modal semantic-based repetition inhibition occurs? (2) Are the representations inhibited in the semantic-based repetition inhibition effect supramodal or modality-specific? Our results suggested that semantic-based repetition inhibition occurs only when the prime and the neutral cue are from the same sensory modality, and it occurs irrespective of whether the modality of the target is cued and irrespective of whether the modality of the target is auditory or visual. Taken together, our results suggest that the occurrence of cross-modal nonspatial repetition inhibition is conditional and that the nonspatial representations inhibited by the repetition inhibition are supramodal.	\N	\N
22419678	Infants must learn to make sense of real-world auditory environments containing simultaneous and overlapping sounds. In adults, event-related potential studies have demonstrated the existence of separate preattentive memory traces for concurrent note sequences and revealed perceptual dominance for encoding of the voice with higher fundamental frequency of 2 simultaneous tones or melodies. Here, we presented 2 simultaneous streams of notes (15 semitones apart) to 7-month-old infants. On 50% of trials, either the higher or the lower note was modified by one semitone, up or down, leaving 50% standard trials. Infants showed mismatch negativity (MMN) to changes in both voices, indicating separate memory traces for each voice. Furthermore, MMN was earlier and larger for the higher voice as in adults. When in the context of a second voice, representation of the lower voice was decreased and that of the higher voice increased compared with when each voice was presented alone. Additionally, correlations between MMN amplitude and amount of weekly music listening suggest that experience affects the development of auditory memory. In sum, the ability to process simultaneous pitches and the dominance of the highest voice emerge early during infancy and are likely important for the perceptual organization of sound in realistic environments.	\N	\N
22423819	Hearing-aid wearers have reported sound source locations as being perceptually internalized (i.e., inside their head). The contribution of hearing-aid design to internalization has, however, received little attention. This experiment compared the sensitivity of hearing-impaired (HI) and normal-hearing listeners to externalization cues when listening with their own ears and simulated behind-the-ear hearing-aids in increasingly complex listening situations and reduced pinna cues. Participants rated the degree of externalization using a multiple-stimulus listening test for mixes of internalized and externalized speech stimuli presented over headphones. The results showed that HI listeners had a contracted perception of externalization correlated with high-frequency hearing loss.	\N	\N
22427328	Imaging studies in blind subjects have consistently shown that sensory and cognitive tasks evoke activity in the occipital cortex, which is normally visual. The precise areas involved and degree of activation are dependent upon the cause and age of onset of blindness. Here, we investigated the cortical language network at rest and during an auditory covert naming task in five bilaterally anophthalmic subjects, who have never received visual input. When listening to auditory definitions and covertly retrieving words, these subjects activated lateral occipital cortex bilaterally in addition to the language areas activated in sighted controls. This activity was significantly greater than that present in a control condition of listening to reversed speech. The lateral occipital cortex was also recruited into a left-lateralized resting-state network that usually comprises anterior and posterior language areas. Levels of activation to the auditory naming and reversed speech conditions did not differ in the calcarine (striate) cortex. This primary 'visual' cortex was not recruited to the left-lateralized resting-state network and showed high interhemispheric correlation of activity at rest, as is typically seen in unimodal cortical areas. In contrast, the interhemispheric correlation of resting activity in extrastriate areas was reduced in anophthalmia to the level of cortical areas that are heteromodal, such as the inferior frontal gyrus. Previous imaging studies in the congenitally blind show that primary visual cortex is activated in higher-order tasks, such as language and memory to a greater extent than during more basic sensory processing, resulting in a reversal of the normal hierarchy of functional organization across 'visual' areas. Our data do not support such a pattern of organization in anophthalmia. Instead, the patterns of activity during task and the functional connectivity at rest are consistent with the known hierarchy of processing in these areas normally seen for vision. The differences in cortical organization between bilateral anophthalmia and other forms of congenital blindness are considered to be due to the total absence of stimulation in 'visual' cortex by light or retinal activity in the former condition, and suggests development of subcortical auditory input to the geniculo-striate pathway.	\N	\N
22431327	Previous neuroimaging studies have shown that the patterns of brain activity during the processing of personally relevant names (e.g., own name, friend's name, partner's name, etc.) and the names of famous people (e.g., celebrities) are different. However, it is not known how the activity in this network is influenced by the modality of the presented stimuli. In this fMRI study, we investigated the pattern of brain activations during the recognition of aurally and visually presented full names of the subject, a significant other, a famous person and unknown individuals. In both modalities, we found that the processing of self-name and the significant other's name was associated with increased activation in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). Acoustic presentations of these names also activated bilateral inferior frontal gyri (IFG). This pattern of results supports the role of MPFC in the processing of personally relevant information, irrespective of their modality.	\N	\N
22432606	Contact quotient (CQ), measured by electroglottogram (EGG), is a ratio which illustrates the duration of vocal fold contact during one vocal fold period. In the present study CQ(EGG) was calculated from a sustained vowel phonation in three different phonation types (breathy, normal, pressed) at three amplitude threshold levels (25%, 35%, 50%). CQ(EGG) values were compared with experts' perceptual evaluation of the firmness of phonation. The contact time of the vocal folds differed significantly between the different phonation types at all threshold levels (P < 0.01). Perceptual evaluation correlated best with CQ(EGG) at threshold levels 25% and 35%. The results of the linear regression model suggested that by using threshold level 25% the effect of F0 and SPL on CQ(EGG) were not significant.	\N	\N
22434397	Female as opposed to male listeners were better able to use a delayed informative cue at the end of a long sentence to report an earlier word which was disrupted by noise. Informative (semantically related) or uninformative (semantically unrelated) word cues were presented 2, 6, or 10 words after a target word whose initial phoneme had been replaced with noise. A total of 84 young adults (45 males) listened to each sentence and then repeated it after its offset. The semantic benefit effect (SBE) was the difference in the accuracy of report of the disrupted target word during informative vs. uninformative sentences. Women had significantly higher SBEs than men even though there were no significant sex differences in terms of number of non-target words reported, the effect of distance between the disrupted target word and the informative cue, or kinds of errors generated. We suggest that the superior ability of women to use delayed semantic information to decode an earlier ambiguous speech signal may be linked to women's tendency to engage the hemispheres more bilaterally than men during word processing. Since the maintenance of semantic context under ambiguous conditions demands more right than left hemispheric resources, this may give women an advantage.	\N	\N
22454230	Vibrant Soundbridge (VSB) has been recommended for both adults and children with all types of hearing loss. The aim of this study was to evaluate the objective and subjective benefits with VSB and the difference in benefits for patients with different types of hearing loss. A retrospective case review was conducted on seven consecutive patients who had received VSB implantations at the National University Hospital of Singapore from March 2006 to November 2009. Patients were divided into the Sensorineural Hearing Loss (SNHL) Group and Conductive Hearing Loss (CHL)/Mixed Hearing Loss (MHL) Group. Surgical complications were evaluated, and objective and subjective results were compared between the two groups. No major complications were observed during the follow-up of up to 4 years. Greater objective and subjective benefits were observed in the CHL/MHL Group. Subjective benefits were consistent with objective improvements. Pre-operative counseling for realistic expectations is important, especially for patients with SNHL.	\N	\N
22459559	This study examined the role of modality in correct recognition and misinformation acceptance in a naturalistic event cognition task that reflected an everyday life sequence of events. Participants heard, observed or acted out a sequence of events and were tested on memory for these events after being presented with an accurate description of the events or a description containing misinformation. The results indicated that recognition of unaltered information was higher in the enactment condition than the auditory or visual conditions and that this effect persisted over time. Misinformation acceptance for the immediate recognition test was lowest in the auditory condition but this advantage disappeared over time. Modality congruence of the auditory condition with the modality in which misinformation was presented and different retrieval processes underlying recognition of altered and unaltered information may explain these findings.	\N	\N
22463939	This case study describes a 45-yr-old female with bilateral, profound sensorineural hearing loss due to Ménière's disease. She received her first cochlear implant in the right ear in 2008 and the second cochlear implant in the left ear in 2010. The case study examines the enhancement to speech recognition, particularly in noise, provided by bilateral cochlear implants. Speech recognition tests were administered prior to obtaining the second implant and at a number of test intervals following activation of the second device. Speech recognition in quiet and noise as well as localization abilities were assessed in several conditions to determine bilateral benefit and performance differences between ears. The results of the speech recognition testing indicated a substantial improvement in the patient's ability to understand speech in noise and her ability to localize sound when using bilateral cochlear implants compared to using a unilateral implant or an implant and a hearing aid. In addition, the patient reported considerable improvement in her ability to communicate in daily life when using bilateral implants versus a unilateral implant. This case suggests that cochlear implantation is a viable option for patients who have lost their hearing to Ménière's disease even when a number of medical treatments and surgical interventions have been performed to control vertigo. In the case presented, bilateral cochlear implantation was necessary for this patient to communicate successfully at home and at work.	\N	\N
22465324	Nonverbal emotional vocalizations are one of the most elementary ways of communicating in humans. We examined the impact of sex differences on neural responses to laughter and crying produced by the same and opposite sex. Thirty subjects (15 women) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging during a sex identification task for laughter, crying, and neutral voices. The parahippocampal gyrus was involved in both men and women while hearing laughter of the same sex, suggesting greater positive emotional processing and greater attention toward emotional context in response to laughter of the same sex than of the opposite sex. The posterior cingulate was involved in both men and women while hearing crying of the opposite sex, suggesting that empathic processing may occur more in response to crying of the opposite sex than of the same sex. Furthermore, brain responses to crying of the opposite sex seem to reflect upon men's efforts to perform emotional regulation and women's empathic concerns.	\N	\N
22465475	Neglect is a neurological syndrome characterised by a lack of conscious perception of events localised in the contralesional side of space. Here, we consider the possible multisensory nature of this disorder, critically reviewing the literature devoted to multisensory manifestations and processing in neglect. Although its most striking manifestations have been observed in the visual domain, a number of studies demonstrate that neglect can affect virtually any sensory modality, in particular touch and audition. Furthermore, a few recent studies have reported a correlation in severity between visual and non-visual neglect-related deficits evaluated in the same patients, providing some preliminary support for a multisensory conception of neglect. Sensory stimulation and sensorimotor adaptation techniques, aimed at alleviating neglect, have also been shown to affect several sensory modalities, including some that were not directly affected by the intervention. Finally, in some cases neglect can bias multisensory interactions known to occur in healthy individuals, leading to abnormal behaviour or uncovering multisensory compensation mechanisms. This evidence, together with neurophysiological and neuroimaging data revealing the multisensory role played by the areas that are most commonly damaged in neglect patients, seems to speak in favour of neglect as a multisensory disorder. However, since most previous studies were not conducted with the specific purpose of systematically investigating the multisensory nature of neglect, we conclude that more research is needed to appropriately assess this question, and suggest some methodological guidelines that we hope will help clarify this issue. At present, the conception of neglect as a multisensory disorder remains a promising working hypothesis that may help define the pathophysiology of this syndrome.	\N	\N
22476724	That auditory perceptual training may alleviate tinnitus draws on two observations: (1) tinnitus probably arises from altered activity within the central auditory system following hearing loss and (2) sound-based training can change central auditory activity. Training that provides sound enrichment across hearing loss frequencies has therefore been hypothesised to alleviate tinnitus. We tested this prediction with two randomised trials of frequency discrimination training involving a total of 70 participants with chronic subjective tinnitus. Participants trained on either (1) a pure-tone standard at a frequency within their region of normal hearing, (2) a pure-tone standard within the region of hearing loss or (3) a high-pass harmonic complex tone spanning a region of hearing loss. Analysis of the primary outcome measure revealed an overall reduction in self-reported tinnitus handicap after training that was maintained at a 1-month follow-up assessment, but there were no significant differences between groups. Secondary analyses also report the effects of different domains of tinnitus handicap on the psychoacoustical characteristics of the tinnitus percept (sensation level, bandwidth and pitch) and on duration of training. Our overall findings and conclusions cast doubt on the superiority of a purely acoustic mechanism to underpin tinnitus remediation. Rather, the nonspecific patterns of improvement are more suggestive that auditory perceptual training affects impact on a contributory mechanism such as selective attention or emotional state.	\N	\N
22480025	In grammar books, the various functions of and as phrasal coordinator and clausal conjunction are treated as standard knowledge. In addition, studies on the uses of and in everyday talk-in-interaction have described its discourse-organizational functions on a more global level. In the phonetic literature, in turn, a range of phonetic forms of and have been listed. Yet, so far few studies have related the phonetic features of and to its function. This contribution surveys a range of phonetic forms of and in a corpus of private American English telephone conversations. It shows that the use of forms such as [ænd], [εn], or [en], among others, is not random but, in essence, correlates with the syntactic-pragmatic scope of and and the cognitive closeness of the items the and connects. This, in turn, allows the phonetic design of and to contribute to the organization of turn-taking. The findings presented are based on conversation-analytic and interactional-linguistic methodology, which includes quantitative analyses.	\N	\N
22480027	This paper investigates hearers' use of response tokens (back-channels), in maintaining and differentiating their actions. Initial observations suggest that hearers produce a sequence of phonetically similar responses to disengage from the current topic, and dissimilar responses to engage with the current topic. This is studied systematically by combining detailed interactional and phonetic analysis in a collection of naturally-occurring talk in Norwegian. The interactional analysis forms the basis for labeling actions as maintained ('doing the same') and differentiated ('NOT doing the same'), which is then used as a basis for phonetic analysis. The phonetic analysis shows that certain phonetic characteristics, including pitch, loudness, voice quality and articulatory characteristics, are associated with 'doing the same', as different from 'NOT doing the same'. Interactional analysis gives further evidence of how this differentiation is of systematic relevance in the negotiations of a next turn. This paper addresses phonetic variation and variability by focusing on the relationship between sequence and phonetics in the turn-by-turn development of meaning. This has important implications for linguistic/phonetic research, and for the study of back-channels.	\N	\N
22492193	The auditory system codes spatial locations in a way that deviates from the spatial representations found in other modalities. This difference is especially striking in the cortex, where neurons form topographical maps of visual and tactile space but where auditory space is represented through a population rate code. In this hemifield code, sound source location is represented in the activity of two widely tuned opponent populations, one tuned to the right and the other to the left side of auditory space. Scientists are only beginning to uncover how this coding strategy adapts to various spatial processing demands. This review presents the current understanding of auditory spatial processing in the cortex. To this end, the authors consider how various implementations of the hemifield code may exist within the auditory cortex and how these may be modulated by the stimulation and task context. As a result, a coherent set of neural strategies for auditory spatial processing emerges.	\N	\N
22500627	Behavior varies from trial to trial even when the stimulus is maintained as constant as possible. In many models, this variability is attributed to noise in the brain. Here, we propose that there is another major source of variability: suboptimal inference. Importantly, we argue that in most tasks of interest, and particularly complex ones, suboptimal inference is likely to be the dominant component of behavioral variability. This perspective explains a variety of intriguing observations, including why variability appears to be larger on the sensory than on the motor side, and why our sensors are sometimes surprisingly unreliable.	\N	\N
22501070	Judgments of whether a sinusoidal probe is higher or lower in frequency than the closest partial ("target") in a multi-partial complex are improved when the target is pulsed on and off. These experiments explored the contribution of reduction in perceptual confusion and recovery from adaptation to this effect. In experiment 1, all partials except the target were replaced by noise to reduce perceptual confusion. Performance was much better than when the background was composed of multiple partials. When the level of the target was reduced to avoid ceiling effects, no effect of pulsing the target occurred. In experiment 2, the target and background partials were irregularly and independently amplitude modulated. This gave a large effect of pulsing the target, suggesting that if recovery from adaptation contributes to the effect, amplitude fluctuations do not prevent this. In experiment 3, the background was composed of multiple steady partials, but the target was irregularly amplitude modulated. This gave better performance than when the target was unmodulated and a moderate effect of pulsing the target. It is argued that when the target and background are steady tones, pulsing the target may result both in reduction of perceptual confusion and recovery from adaptation.	\N	\N
22501078	Research on children's speech perception and production suggests that consonant voicing and place contrasts may be acquired early in life, at least in word-onset position. However, little is known about the development of the acoustic correlates of later-acquired, word-final coda contrasts. This is of particular interest in languages like English where many grammatical morphemes are realized as codas. This study therefore examined how various non-spectral acoustic cues vary as a function of stop coda voicing (voiced vs. voiceless) and place (alveolar vs. velar) in the spontaneous speech of 6 American-English-speaking mother-child dyads. The results indicate that children as young as 1;6 exhibited many adult-like acoustic cues to voicing and place contrasts, including longer vowels and more frequent use of voice bar with voiced codas, and a greater number of bursts and longer post-release noise for velar codas. However, 1;6-year-olds overall exhibited longer durations and more frequent occurrence of these cues compared to mothers, with decreasing values by 2;6. Thus, English-speaking 1;6-year-olds already exhibit adult-like use of some of the cues to coda voicing and place, though implementation is not yet fully adult-like. Physiological and contextual correlates of these findings are discussed.	\N	\N
22501083	This study tested the hypothesis that the reduction in spatial release from masking (SRM) resulting from sensorineural hearing loss in competing speech mixtures is influenced by the characteristics of the interfering speech. A frontal speech target was presented simultaneously with two intelligible or two time-reversed (unintelligible) speech maskers that were either colocated with the target or were symmetrically separated from the target in the horizontal plane. The difference in SRM between listeners with hearing impairment and listeners with normal hearing was substantially larger for the forward maskers (deficit of 5.8 dB) than for the reversed maskers (deficit of 1.6 dB). This was driven by the fact that all listeners, regardless of hearing abilities, performed similarly (and poorly) in the colocated condition with intelligible maskers. The same conditions were then tested in listeners with normal hearing using headphone stimuli that were degraded by noise vocoding. Reducing the number of available spectral channels systematically reduced the measured SRM, and again, more so for forward (reduction of 3.8 dB) than for reversed speech maskers (reduction of 1.8 dB). The results suggest that non-spatial factors can strongly influence both the magnitude of SRM and the apparent deficit in SRM for listeners with impaired hearing.	\N	\N
22511719	Monkeys can easily form lasting central representations of visual and tactile stimuli, yet they seem unable to do the same with sounds. Humans, by contrast, are highly proficient in auditory long-term memory (LTM). These mnemonic differences within and between species raise the question of whether the human ability is supported in some way by speech and language, e.g., through subvocal reproduction of speech sounds and by covert verbal labeling of environmental stimuli. If so, the explanation could be that storing rapidly fluctuating acoustic signals requires assistance from the motor system, which is uniquely organized to chain-link rapid sequences. To test this hypothesis, we compared the ability of normal participants to recognize lists of stimuli that can be easily reproduced, labeled, or both (pseudowords, nonverbal sounds, and words, respectively) versus their ability to recognize a list of stimuli that can be reproduced or labeled only with great difficulty (reversed words, i.e., words played backward). Recognition scores after 5-min delays filled with articulatory-suppression tasks were relatively high (75-80% correct) for all sound types except reversed words; the latter yielded scores that were not far above chance (58% correct), even though these stimuli were discriminated nearly perfectly when presented as reversed-word pairs at short intrapair intervals. The combined results provide preliminary support for the hypothesis that participation of the oromotor system may be essential for laying down the memory of speech sounds and, indeed, that speech and auditory memory may be so critically dependent on each other that they had to coevolve.	\N	\N
22516238	Over the years, a large body of work on the brain basis of language comprehension has accumulated, paving the way for the formulation of a comprehensive model. The model proposed here describes the functional neuroanatomy of the different processing steps from auditory perception to comprehension as located in different gray matter brain regions. It also specifies the information flow between these regions, taking into account white matter fiber tract connections. Bottom-up, input-driven processes proceeding from the auditory cortex to the anterior superior temporal cortex and from there to the prefrontal cortex, as well as top-down, controlled and predictive processes from the prefrontal cortex back to the temporal cortex are proposed to constitute the cortical language circuit.	\N	\N
22516315	The primary goal of this study was to evaluate a nonlinear dynamic approach to the acoustic analysis of dysphonia associated with vocal fold scar and sulcus vocalis. Case-control study. Acoustic voice samples from scar/sulcus patients and age-/sex-matched controls were analyzed using correlation dimension (D2) and phase plots, time-domain based perturbation indices (jitter, shimmer, signal-to-noise ratio [SNR]), and an auditory-perceptual rating scheme. Signal typing was performed to identify samples with bifurcations and aperiodicity. Type 2 and 3 acoustic signals were highly represented in the scar/sulcus patient group. When data were analyzed irrespective of signal type, all perceptual and acoustic indices successfully distinguished scar/sulcus patients from controls. Removal of type 2 and 3 signals eliminated the previously identified differences between experimental groups for all acoustic indices except D2. The strongest perceptual-acoustic correlation in our data set was observed for SNR and the weakest correlation was observed for D2. These findings suggest that D2 is inferior to time-domain based perturbation measures for the analysis of dysphonia associated with scar/sulcus; however, time-domain based algorithms are inherently susceptible to inflation under highly aperiodic (ie, type 2 and 3) signal conditions. Auditory-perceptual analysis, unhindered by signal aperiodicity, is therefore a robust strategy for distinguishing scar/sulcus patient voices from normal voices. Future acoustic analysis research in this area should consider alternative (e.g., frequency- and quefrency-domain based) measures alongside additional nonlinear approaches.	\N	\N
22522205	There is ample evidence that individuals with dyslexia have a phonological deficit. A growing body of research also suggests that individuals with dyslexia have problems with categorical perception, as evidenced by weaker discrimination of between-category differences and better discrimination of within-category differences compared to average readers. Whether the categorical perception problems of individuals with dyslexia are a result of their reading problems or a cause has yet to be determined. Whether the observed perception deficit relates to a more general auditory deficit or is specific to speech also has yet to be determined. To shed more light on these issues, the categorical perception abilities of children at risk for dyslexia and chronological age controls were investigated before and after the onset of formal reading instruction in a longitudinal study. Both identification and discrimination data were collected using identical paradigms for speech and non-speech stimuli. Results showed the children at risk for dyslexia to shift from an allophonic mode of perception in kindergarten to a phonemic mode of perception in first grade, while the control group showed a phonemic mode already in kindergarten. The children at risk for dyslexia thus showed an allophonic perception deficit in kindergarten, which was later suppressed by phonemic perception as a result of formal reading instruction in first grade; allophonic perception in kindergarten can thus be treated as a clinical marker for the possibility of later reading problems.	\N	\N
22524348	The present manuscript summarizes and discusses the implications of recent neuroimaging studies, which have investigated the relationship between musical expertise and structural, as well as functional, changes in an auditory-related association cortex, namely, the planum temporale (PT). Since the bilateral PT is known to serve as a spectrotemporal processor that supports perception of acoustic modulations in both speech and music, it comes as no surprise that musical expertise corresponds to functional sensitivity and neuroanatomical changes in cortical architecture. In this context, we focus on the following question: To what extent does musical expertise affect the functioning of the left and right plana temporalia? We discuss the relationship between behavioral, hemodynamic, and neuroanatomical data obtained from musicians in light of maturational and developmental issues. In particular, we introduce two studies of our group that show to what extent brains of musicians are more proficient in phonetic task performance.	\N	\N
22524375	Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental condition characterized by atypical social and communication skills, repetitive behaviors, and atypical visual and auditory perception. Studies in vision have reported enhanced detailed ("local") processing but diminished holistic ("global") processing of visual features in ASD. Individuals with ASD also show enhanced processing of simple visual stimuli but diminished processing of complex visual stimuli. Relative to the visual domain, auditory global-local distinctions, and the effects of stimulus complexity on auditory processing in ASD, are less clear. However, one remarkable finding is that many individuals with ASD have enhanced musical abilities, such as superior pitch processing. This review provides a critical evaluation of behavioral and brain imaging studies of auditory processing with respect to current theories in ASD. We have focused on auditory-musical processing in terms of global versus local processing and simple versus complex sound processing. This review contributes to a better understanding of auditory processing differences in ASD. A deeper comprehension of sensory perception in ASD is key to better defining ASD phenotypes and, in turn, may lead to better interventions.	\N	\N
22529921	Overall success of current tinnitus therapies is low, which may be due to the heterogeneity of tinnitus patients. Therefore, subclassification of tinnitus patients is expected to improve therapeutic allocation, which, in turn, is hoped to improve therapeutic success for the individual patient. The present study aims to define factors that differentially influence subjectively perceived tinnitus loudness and tinnitus-related distress. In a questionnaire-based cross-sectional survey, the data of 4705 individuals with tinnitus were analyzed. The self-report questionnaire contained items about subjective tinnitus loudness, type of onset, awareness and localization of the tinnitus, hearing impairment, chronic comorbidities, sleep quality, and psychometrically validated questionnaires addressing tinnitus-related distress, depressivity, anxiety, and somatic symptom severity. In a binary step-wise logistic regression model, we tested the predictive power of these variables on subjective tinnitus loudness and tinnitus-related distress. The present data contribute to the distinction between subjective tinnitus loudness and tinnitus-related distress. Whereas subjective loudness was associated with permanent awareness and binaural localization of the tinnitus, tinnitus-related distress was associated with depressivity, anxiety, and somatic symptom severity. Subjective tinnitus loudness and the potential presence of severe depressivity, anxiety, and somatic symptom severity should be assessed separately from tinnitus-related distress. If loud tinnitus is the major complaint together with mild or moderate tinnitus-related distress, therapies should focus on auditory perception. If levels of depressivity, anxiety or somatic symptom severity are severe, therapies and further diagnosis should focus on these symptoms at first.	\N	\N
22530620	The effortfulness hypothesis implies that difficulty in decoding the surface form, as in the case of age-related sensory limitations or background noise, consumes the attentional resources that are then unavailable for semantic integration in language comprehension. Because ageing is associated with sensory declines, degrading of the surface form by a noisy background can pose an extra challenge for older adults. In two experiments, this hypothesis was tested in a self-paced moving window paradigm in which younger and older readers' online allocation of attentional resources to surface decoding and semantic integration was measured as they read sentences embedded in varying levels of visual noise. When visual noise was moderate (Experiment 1), resource allocation among young adults was unaffected but older adults allocated more resources to decode the surface form at the cost of resources that would otherwise be available for semantic processing; when visual noise was relatively intense (Experiment 2), both younger and older participants allocated more attention to the surface form and less attention to semantic processing. The decrease in attentional allocation to semantic integration resulted in reduced recall of core ideas in both experiments, suggesting that a less organized semantic representation was constructed in noise. The greater vulnerability of older adults at relatively low levels of noise is consistent with the effortfulness hypothesis.	\N	\N
22533977	For pediatric cochlear implant (CI) users, CI processor technology, map characteristics, and fitting strategies are known to have a substantial impact on speech perception scores at young ages. It is unknown whether these benefits continue over time as these children reach adolescence. To document changes in CI technology, map characteristics, and speech perception scores in children between elementary grades and high school, and to describe relations between map characteristics and speech perception scores over time. A longitudinal design with participants 8-9-yr-old at session 1 and 15-18-yr-old at session 2. Participants were 82 adolescents with unilateral CIs, who are a subset of a larger longitudinal study. Mean age at implantation was 3.4 yr (range: 1.7-5.4), and mean duration of device use was 5.5 yr (range: 3.8-7.5) at session 1 and 13.3 yr (range: 10.9-15) at session 2. Speech perception tests at sessions 1 and 2 were the Lexical Neighborhood Test (LNT) presented at 70 dB SPL (LNT-70) and Bamford-Kowal-Bench sentences in quiet (BKB-Q) presented at 70 dB SPL. At session 2, the LNT was also administered at 50 dB SPL (LNT-50), and BKB sentences were administered in noise with a +10 dB SNR (BKB-N). CI processor technology type and CI map characteristics (coding strategy, number of electrodes, threshold levels, and comfort levels) were obtained at both sessions. Electrical dynamic range was computed, and descriptive statistics, correlations, and repeated-measures ANOVAs were employed. Participants achieved significantly higher LNT and BKB scores, at 70 dB SPL, at ages 15-18 than at ages 8-9 yr. Forty-two participants had 1-3 electrodes either activated or deactivated in their map between test sessions, and 40 had no change in number of active electrodes (mean change: -0.5; range: -3 to +2). After conversion from arbitrary clinical map units to charge-per-phase in nanocoulombs (nC), no significant difference was found for T levels across time. Average comfort levels (C levels) decreased by 19 nC. Seventy-three participants (89%) upgraded their CI processor technology type. At both sessions, significant correlations were found between electrical dynamic range (EDR) and all speech perception measures except LNT-50 (r range: .31 to .47; p < 0.01). Similarly, significant correlations were also found between C levels and all speech perception measures (r range: .29 to .49; p < 0.01). At session 2, a significant correlation was found between processor technology type and the LNT-50 scores (r = .38; p < 0.01). Significant improvement in speech scores was observed between elementary grades and high school for children who had used a CI since preschool. On average, T levels (nC) and electrode function remained stable for these long-term pediatric users. Analyses of maps did not allow for the determination of the exact cause of C level reductions, though power limitations in new processor systems and changes in perceived loudness over time are possible. Larger EDRs and higher C levels were associated with better speech scores. Newer speech processor technology was associated with better speech scores at a softer level.	\N	\N
22542616	Individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) have deviations in auditory perception perhaps attributable to altered neural oscillatory response properties in thalamo-cortical and/or local cortico-cortical circuits. Previous EEG studies of auditory steady-state responses (aSSRs; a measure of sustained neuronal entrainment to repetitive stimulation) in SZ have indicated attenuated gamma range (≈40 Hz) neural entrainment. Stimuli in most such studies have been relatively brief (500-1000 ms) trains of 1 ms clicks or amplitude modulated pure tones (1000 Hz) with short, fixed interstimulus intervals (200-1000 ms). The current study used extended (1500 ms), more aurally dense broadband stimuli (500-4000 Hz noise; previously demonstrated to elicit larger aSSRs) with longer, variable interstimulus intervals (2700-3300 ms). Dense array EEG (256 sensor) was collected while 17 SZ and 16 healthy subjects passively listed to stimuli modulated at 15 different frequencies spanning beta and gamma ranges (16-44 Hz in 2 Hz steps). Results indicate that SZ have augmented aSSRs that were most extreme in the gamma range. Results also constructively replicate previous findings of attenuated low frequency auditory evoked responses (2-8 Hz) in SZ. These findings (i) highlight differential characteristics of low versus high frequency and induced versus entrained oscillatory auditory responses in both SZ and healthy stimulus processing, (ii) provide support for an NMDA-receptor hypofunction-based pharmacological model of SZ, and (iii) report a novel pattern of aSSR abnormalities suggesting that gamma band neural entrainment deviations among SZ may be more complex than previously supposed, including possibly being substantially influenced by physical stimulus properties.	\N	\N
22546730	Pseudoneglect is a normal left sided spatial bias observed with attempted bisections of horizontal lines and a normal upward bias observed with attempted bisections of vertical lines. Horizontal pseudoneglect has been attributed to right hemispheric dominance for the allocation of attention. The goal of this study was to test the hypothesis that the upward bias in vertical line bisection may also relate to right hemispheric dominance for the allocation of attention and/or action-intention. Twenty right handed healthy adults were asked to bisect vertical lines presented in the midsagittal plane (center space) and in sagittal planes to the left and right of the midsagittal plane (left and right hemispace) when using a pen held in either the right or left hand. Vertical line bisections were biased upward in all three sagittal planes and higher in left than right hemispace. However, bisections made with the left hand were lower than those made with the right hand. Whereas these results suggest a left hemispace-right hemispheric visuospatial attentional upward bias and a relative left hemispheric-right hand upward action-intentional bias, further studies are needed to document this intentional versus attentional bias and to understand the brain mechanisms that produce these biases.	\N	\N
22553024	The temporal context of an acoustic signal can greatly influence its perception. The present study investigated the neural correlates underlying perceptual facilitation by regular temporal contexts in humans. Participants listened to temporally regular (periodic) or temporally irregular (nonperiodic) sequences of tones while performing an intensity discrimination task. Participants performed significantly better on intensity discrimination during periodic than nonperiodic tone sequences. There was greater activation in the putamen for periodic than nonperiodic sequences. Conversely, there was greater activation in bilateral primary and secondary auditory cortices (planum polare and planum temporale) for nonperiodic than periodic sequences. Across individuals, greater putamen activation correlated with lesser auditory cortical activation in both right and left hemispheres. These findings suggest that temporal regularity is detected in the putamen, and that such detection facilitates temporal-lobe cortical processing associated with superior auditory perception. Thus, this study reveals a corticostriatal system associated with contextual facilitation for auditory perception through temporal regularity processing.	\N	\N
22553042	Signal duration is important for identifying sound sources and determining signal meaning. Duration-tuned neurons (DTNs) respond preferentially to a range of stimulus durations and maximally to a best duration (BD). Duration-tuned neurons are found in the auditory midbrain of many vertebrates, although studied most extensively in bats. Studies of DTNs across vertebrates have identified cells with BDs and temporal response bandwidths that mirror the range of species-specific vocalizations. Neural tuning to stimulus duration appears to be universal among hearing vertebrates. Herein, we test the hypothesis that neural mechanisms underlying duration selectivity may be similar across vertebrates. We instantiated theoretical mechanisms of duration tuning in computational models to systematically explore the roles of excitatory and inhibitory receptor strengths, input latencies, and membrane time constant on duration tuning response profiles. We demonstrate that models of duration tuning with similar neural circuitry can be tuned with species-specific parameters to reproduce the responses of in vivo DTNs from the auditory midbrain. To relate and validate model output to in vivo responses, we collected electrophysiological data from the inferior colliculus of the awake big brown bat, Eptesicus fuscus, and present similar in vivo data from the published literature on DTNs in rats, mice, and frogs. Our results support the hypothesis that neural mechanisms of duration tuning may be shared across vertebrates despite species-specific differences in duration selectivity. Finally, we discuss how the underlying mechanisms of duration selectivity relate to other auditory feature detectors arising from the interaction of neural excitation and inhibition.	\N	\N
22555987	Although it is well known that cisplatin is associated with ototoxicity, there is still a lack of knowledge concerning the ototoxicity of cisplatin, especially in Japanese head and neck cancer patients. The objectives of this study were to determine the incidence rate of cisplatin ototoxicity and to determine the threshold dose causing ototoxicity in the Japanese population. Before-and-after study in a tertiary referral hospital. The distortion product otoacoustic emission (DPOAE) was measured 1 week after each administration of cisplatin in 44 Japanese head and neck cancer patients treated at Kyoto University Hospital. We determined the incidence and threshold dose of cisplatin ototoxicity according to DPOAE data. The incidence of ototoxicity detected by DPOAE was 77.3%. The average DPOAE value was significantly lower in patients who received more than 200 mg/m(2) cisplatin than the baseline DPOAE value. The threshold dose for cisplatin ototoxicity was lower in Japanese patients than in European patients. Our data suggest that Japanese patients are more susceptible to cisplatin-induced ototoxicity. This is presumably caused by a genetic difference.	\N	\N
22559374	Previous studies investigating sensitivity to step changes in tempo and prediction of tone onset time have generally utilized isochronous sequences. This study investigates subjects' ability to detect deviations from a gradual change in the tempo of a tone sequence (experiment 1) and their judgment of the perceptually optimal timing of this tone (experiment 2). In experiment 1, inter-onset-intervals within pairs of eight-tone sequences followed a geometric progression to create a gradual tempo change. In one sequence, the final tone was presented either earlier or later than specified by the progression. Subjects performed well at detecting deviations that exaggerated the tempo progression but poorly when it was counteracted. Experiment 2 used similar pairs except that the final tone was always presented earlier in one sequence than the other. Final interval length was adaptively adjusted to subjects' judgments; it was adjudged in best agreement with the progression when its length was roughly half way between the mathematically correct value and the length of the penultimate interval. The data support "multiple-look" and entrainment models of tempo sensitivity and suggest that temporal prediction is based less on the tempo contour of a whole sequence than on the duration of the preceding interval.	\N	\N
22559382	Recent evidence suggests that spectral change, as measured by cochlea-scaled entropy (CSE), predicts speech intelligibility better than the information carried by vowels or consonants in sentences. Motivated by this finding, the present study investigates whether intelligibility indices implemented to include segments marked with significant spectral change better predict speech intelligibility in noise than measures that include all phonetic segments paying no attention to vowels/consonants or spectral change. The prediction of two intelligibility measures [normalized covariance measure (NCM), coherence-based speech intelligibility index (CSII)] is investigated using three sentence-segmentation methods: relative root-mean-square (RMS) levels, CSE, and traditional phonetic segmentation of obstruents and sonorants. While the CSE method makes no distinction between spectral changes occurring within vowels/consonants, the RMS-level segmentation method places more emphasis on the vowel-consonant boundaries wherein the spectral change is often most prominent, and perhaps most robust, in the presence of noise. Higher correlation with intelligibility scores was obtained when including sentence segments containing a large number of consonant-vowel boundaries than when including segments with highest entropy or segments based on obstruent/sonorant classification. These data suggest that in the context of intelligibility measures the type of spectral change captured by the measure is important.	\N	\N
22561890	The basic deficits underlying the severe and persistent reading difficulties in dyslexia are still highly debated. One of the major topics of debate is whether these deficits are language specific, or affect both verbal and non-verbal stimuli. Recently, Ahissar and colleagues proposed the "anchoring-deficit hypothesis" (Ahissar, Lubin, Putter-Katz, & Banai, 2006), which suggests that dyslexics have a general difficulty in automatic extraction of stimulus regularities from auditory inputs. This hypothesis explained a broad range of dyslexics' verbal and non-verbal difficulties. However, it was not directly tested in the context of reading and verbal memory, which poses the main stumbling blocks to dyslexics. Here we assessed the abilities of adult dyslexics to efficiently benefit from ("anchor to") regularities embedded in repeated tones, orally presented syllables, and written words. We also compared dyslexics' performance to that of individuals with attention disorder (ADHD), but no reading disability. We found an anchoring effect in all groups: all gained from stimulus repetition. However, in line with the anchoring-deficit hypothesis, controls and ADHD participants showed a significantly larger anchoring effect in all tasks. This study is the first that directly shows that the same domain-general deficit, poor anchoring, characterizes dyslexics' performance in perceptual, working memory and reading tasks.	\N	\N
22562828	The evidence of a deficit in working memory in specific language impairment (SLI) is of sufficient magnitude to suggest a primary role in developmental language disorder. However, little research has investigated memory in late talkers who recover from their early delay. Drawing on a longitudinal, community sample, this study compared the memory profiles of 3 groups of 5-year-olds: children with SLI who had been identified as late talkers, resolved late talkers (RLTs), and children with typical language development (TLD). Participants were 25 children with SLI, 45 RLTs, and 32 children with TLD. Subtests from the Working Memory Test Battery for Children and the Children's Memory Scale plus recalling sentences and nonword repetition tasks were administered to test the components of Baddeley's working memory model. The SLI group showed significantly poorer performance than the RLT and TLD groups on measures of the phonological loop and episodic buffer. The RLT and TLD groups scored similarly on all memory measures. The results support previous findings that sentence recall and nonword repetition are markers of SLI. Although residual effects of late-talking status may emerge over time, RLTs do not necessarily show memory deficits at 5 years of age despite delayed early vocabulary development.	\N	\N
22564904	This investigation examined the effect of repeated exposure to novel and repeated spoken words in typical environments on the intelligibility of 2 synthesized voices and human recorded speech in preschools. Eighteen preschoolers listened to and repeated single words presented in human-recorded speech, DECtalk Paul, and AT&T Voice Michael during 5 experimental sessions. Stimuli consisted of repeated and novel words presented in each speech output condition during each session. Sessions took place in the presence of typically occurring noise in classroom or home settings. There was a significant main effect for voice as participants accurately identified significantly more words in the human-recorded speech and AT&T Voice than in the DECtalk speech output condition. When averaged across speech output conditions, children increased their accuracy as they participated in additional sessions. There was a statistically significant interaction between session and voice. DECtalk had a slightly larger effect of session than did AT&T Voice and human-recorded speech.	\N	\N
22568633	Elevated levels of hypoxia-inducible factor 1α (HIF-1α) in middle ear effusion may play an important role in the pathogenesis of bone conduction impairment associated with otitis media with effusion (OME). The mechanism may be related to the up-regulation of nitric oxide (NO) expression. This study was undertaken to investigate the role of HIF-1α in the pathogenesis of sensorineural hearing loss associated with OME. One hundred and eight OME patients were divided into two groups: OME without bone conduction impairment (group 1) and OME with bone conduction impairment (group 2). The levels of HIF-1α, NO, and quinolinic acid (QUIN) in the middle ear effusion and serum of these patients were investigated. The relationship between these factors and the bone conduction threshold (BCT) differences were analyzed. The levels of HIF-1α and NO concentrations in the middle ear effusion were found to be signiﬁcantly higher in group 2 than in group 1 (both p < 0.05). The OME patients' BCT differences at 4000 Hz were correlated with the levels of HIF-1α and the NO concentrations in the middle ear effusion. Furthermore, the HIF-1α levels were correlated with the levels of NO but not with the levels of QUIN in the effusion.	\N	\N
22568993	Both 80 Hz auditory steady state responses (ASSRs) and tone burst auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) have been shown to provide reasonable estimates of the behavioral thresholds. Although ASSRs provide statistically objective estimates that can be easily automated by computers, they present no information for the neurophysiological interpretation of the results. ABRs, on the other hand, do not provide easily automated information and usually need expert interpretation of the recorded waveforms. A recently developed continuous loop averaging deconvolution algorithm offers an alternative solution by acquiring slightly jittered 80 Hz quasi auditory steady state responses (QASSRs), thus enabling the acquisition of both recordings simultaneously. The purpose of this study is to investigate a specially developed 80 Hz QASSR paradigm for simultaneous acquisition for both responses for threshold detection purposes. Sixteen ears from eight adults with normal hearing were tested. Amplitude modulated QASSRs were obtained using slightly jittered temporal sequences of tone bursts presented at a mean rate of 78.125 Hz. Four carrier frequencies (500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz) at several stimulus intensity levels were monaurally presented and QASSRs to 128 sweeps blocks were recorded. The ABRs were extracted using the CLAD algorithm. Wave V was visually identified and analyzed in the time domain as in everyday clinical practice. In addition, statistically objective ƒMP computation method was used to automatically detect ABR threshold as well. The QASSRs were analyzed in the frequency domain and magnitudes, phase delays, and thresholds were obtained. Phasor (polar plot) diagrams were constructed. QASSR and ABR hearing thresholds were obtained and compared with behavioral thresholds. Study reveals that the QASSR method provides accurate objective estimation of the audiometric thresholds from extracted ASSRs and latency/amplitude information from extracted ABRs. The largest mean threshold difference for QASSR was within 5 dB for all carrier frequencies including 500 Hz. For auditory threshold estimation in adults with normal hearing, the Hotelling's T-Square test in four dimensions in the frequency domain was more accurate than the ƒMP or visual ABR threshold detection in the time domain. Simultaneously recorded ASSR and ABR from QASSRs provide accurate and effective method for frequency-specific hearing threshold estimation with neurophysiological information in adults with normal hearing. Further research is required for hearing-impaired adults, newborns, and infants.	\N	\N
22570723	Multisensory learning and resulting neural brain plasticity have recently become a topic of renewed interest in human cognitive neuroscience. Music notation reading is an ideal stimulus to study multisensory learning, as it allows studying the integration of visual, auditory and sensorimotor information processing. The present study aimed at answering whether multisensory learning alters uni-sensory structures, interconnections of uni-sensory structures or specific multisensory areas. In a short-term piano training procedure musically naive subjects were trained to play tone sequences from visually presented patterns in a music notation-like system [Auditory-Visual-Somatosensory group (AVS)], while another group received audio-visual training only that involved viewing the patterns and attentively listening to the recordings of the AVS training sessions [Auditory-Visual group (AV)]. Training-related changes in cortical networks were assessed by pre- and post-training magnetoencephalographic (MEG) recordings of an auditory, a visual and an integrated audio-visual mismatch negativity (MMN). The two groups (AVS and AV) were differently affected by the training. The results suggest that multisensory training alters the function of multisensory structures, and not the uni-sensory ones along with their interconnections, and thus provide an answer to an important question presented by cognitive models of multisensory training.	\N	\N
22571383	Previous studies of source monitoring and auditory hallucinations (AH) have often conflated spatial source (internal-external) with source agency (self-other). Other studies have used suboptimal manipulations of auditory space (e.g., imagine saying vs. saying aloud). We avoided these problems by presenting experimenter-generated stimuli over headphones in the voice of another person so that the location of the voice sounded either internal or external to the participant's head. Participants (N=121) studied 96 words and indicated for each whether it was presented internally or externally (online spatial source monitoring). At test, studied words were presented visually, intermixed randomly with 96 unstudied words. Participants indicated whether each item was old or new (item memory) and whether it was presented internally or externally during study (spatial source memory). Independent measures of memory accuracy and response bias were derived for online source monitoring, item memory and source memory using signal detection theory. Performance on these measures was compared between two groups of 30 participants who scored low or high on a measure of AH proneness. ANOVAs revealed no differences between the high- and low-AH groups in online spatial source monitoring, item memory, or spatial source memory. We found no evidence that proneness to AH in a sample of healthy volunteers was related to any of the measures of spatial source monitoring performance. We recommend that the methods introduced be applied to future investigations of spatial source monitoring with patient groups and with individuals at-risk for psychosis.	\N	\N
22584229	Children's language skills develop rapidly with increasing age, and several studies indicate that they use language- and age-specific strategies to understand complex sentences. In the present experiment, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and behavioral measures were used to investigate the acquisition of case-marking cues for sentence interpretation in the developing brain of German preschool children with a mean age of 6 years. Short sentences were presented auditorily, consisting of a transitive verb and two case-marked arguments with canonical subject-initial or non canonical object-initial word order. Overall group results revealed mainly left hemispheric activation in the perisylvian cortex with increased activation in the inferior parietal cortex (IPC), and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) for object-initial compared to subject-initial sentences. However, single-subject analysis suggested two distinct activation patterns within the group which allowed a classification into two subgroups. One subgroup showed the predicted activation increase in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) for the more difficult object-initial compared to subject-initial sentences, while the other group showed the reverse effect. This activation in the left IFG can be taken to reflect the degree to which adult-like sentence processing strategies, necessary to integrate case-marking information, are applied. Additional behavioral data on language development tests show that these two subgroups differ in their grammatical knowledge. Together with these behavioral findings, the results indicate that the use of a particular processing strategy is not dependent on age as such, but rather on the child's individual grammatical knowledge and the ability to use specific language cues for successful sentence comprehension.	\N	\N
22595658	The aim of this experiment was to examine the preattentive processing of syllables in 9-11-year-old children with dyslexia and matched controls using the Mismatch Negativity (MMN), an auditory Event-Related brain potential (ERP) related to preattentive discrimination. Children were presented with a sequence of syllables that included standards (the syllable "Ba") and deviants in vowel frequency, vowel duration and Voice Onset Time (VOT) that were either close to or far from the standard (Small and Large deviants). No between-group differences were found for frequency deviants. However, whilst normal-reading children showed larger MMNs to Large than to Small deviants in vowel duration and VOT, no such deviance size effect was found in children with dyslexia. These results are taken to indicate that the preattentive processing of vowel duration and VOT is impaired in children with dyslexia, with no impairment in the processing of vowel frequency deviants. By revealing processing deficits of both duration and VOT deviants, these results suggest a strong link between acoustical and phonological processing.	\N	\N
22609772	Older adults often find it more difficult than younger adults to attend to a target talker when there are other people talking. One possible reason for this difficulty is that it may take them longer to perceptually segregate the target speech from competing speech. This study investigated age-related differences in the time it takes to segregate target speech from either a speech spectrum noise masker or a babble masker (many people talking simultaneously). Specifically, we employed five different delays (0.1 s-1.1 s) between masker onset and target speech onset. Four signal-to-masker ratios were employed at each delay to determine the 50% thresholds for word recognition accuracy when target words were masked by either speech spectrum noise or multi-talker babble. Thresholds for word recognition decreased exponentially as a function of the masker-word-onset delay, at the same rate for younger and older adults, when the masker was speech spectrum noise. When the masker was babble, thresholds for younger adults decreased exponentially with delay at the same rate as they did when the masker was speech spectrum noise. The word recognition thresholds for older adults, however, did not appear to change over the range of delays explored in this study. In addition, the average difference between word recognition thresholds for younger and older adults (younger adult thresholds < older adult thresholds) was significantly larger when the masker was babble than when it was noise. These results indicate that older adults are as fast as younger adults at separating speech from a steady-state noise masker, but are not as capable as younger adults of taking advantage of the delayed onset of the speech target when the masker is babble. The potential contributions of age-related sensory and cognitive declines to these stream segregation effects are discussed. Finally, we conclude that age-related differences in the timeline for stream segregation contribute to the difficulties older adults experience in listening to speech in a background of babble.	\N	\N
22633004	While perceiving speech, people see mouth shapes that are systematically associated with sounds. In particular, a vertically stretched mouth produces a /woo/ sound, whereas a horizontally stretched mouth produces a /wee/ sound. We demonstrate that hearing these speech sounds alters how we see aspect ratio, a basic visual feature that contributes to perception of 3D space, objects and faces. Hearing a /woo/ sound increases the apparent vertical elongation of a shape, whereas hearing a /wee/ sound increases the apparent horizontal elongation. We further demonstrate that these sounds influence aspect ratio coding. Viewing and adapting to a tall (or flat) shape makes a subsequently presented symmetric shape appear flat (or tall). These aspect ratio aftereffects are enhanced when associated speech sounds are presented during the adaptation period, suggesting that the sounds influence visual population coding of aspect ratio. Taken together, these results extend previous demonstrations that visual information constrains auditory perception by showing the converse - speech sounds influence visual perception of a basic geometric feature.	\N	\N
22641191	The present study uses a systems engineering approach to delineate the relationship between tinnitus and hyperacusis as a result of either hearing loss in the ear or an imbalanced state in the brain. Specifically examined is the input-output function, or loudness growth as a function of intensity in both normal and pathological conditions. Tinnitus reduces the output dynamic range by raising the floor, while hyperacusis reduces the input dynamic range by lowering the ceiling or sound tolerance level. Tinnitus does not necessarily steepen the loudness growth function but hyperacusis always does. An active loudness model that consists of an expansion stage following a compression stage can account for these key properties in tinnitus and hyperacusis loudness functions. The active loudness model suggests that tinnitus is a result of increased central noise, while hyperacusis is due to increased nonlinear gain. The active loudness model also generates specific predictions on loudness growth in tinnitus, hyperacusis, hearing loss or any combinations of the three conditions. These predictions need to be verified by experimental data and have explicit implications for treatment of tinnitus and hyperacusis.	\N	\N
22646514	Sensory consequences of our own actions are perceived differently from the sensory stimuli that are generated externally. The present event-related potential (ERP) study examined the neural responses to self-triggered stimulation relative to externally-triggered stimulation as a function of delays between the motor act and the stimulus onset. While sustaining a vowel phonation, subjects clicked a mouse and heard pitch-shift stimuli (PSS) in voice auditory feedback at delays of either 0 ms (predictable) or 500-1000 ms (unpredictable). The motor effect resulting from the mouse click was corrected in the data analyses. For the externally-triggered condition, PSS were delivered by a computer with a delay of 500-1000 ms after the vocal onset. As compared to unpredictable externally-triggered PSS, P2 responses to predictable self-triggered PSS were significantly suppressed, whereas an enhancement effect for P2 responses was observed when the timing of self-triggered PSS was unpredictable. These findings demonstrate the effect of the temporal predictability of stimulus delivery with respect to the motor act on the neural responses to self-triggered stimulation. Responses to self-triggered stimulation were suppressed or enhanced compared with the externally-triggered stimulation when the timing of stimulus delivery was predictable or unpredictable. Enhancement effect of unpredictable self-triggered stimulation in the present study supports the idea that sensory suppression of self-produced action may be primarily caused by an accurate prediction of stimulus timing, rather than a movement-related non-specific suppression.	\N	\N
22648606	According to many theories of decision making, of which signal detection theory is the most prominent, randomness is the main factor responsible for imperfect performance. These theories imply that correcting for attenuation due to randomness should result in perfect scores as long as the participants use nonextreme decision criteria. On the basis of a recent advance termed potential performance theory (Trafimow & Rice, Psychological Review 115:447-462, 2008), we performed auditory and visual detection experiments and corrected the scores for attenuation. Most participants in both experiments tended to perform at a less-than-perfect level, even after their scores were corrected. The findings demonstrate that at least one systematic factor influences detection that is not included in signal detection theory.	\N	\N
22653919	The authors investigated lengthening effects in child-directed speech (CDS) across the sentence, testing the additive effects on duration of Word Position, Register, Focus, and Sentence Mode (statement/question). Five theater students produced 6 sentences containing 5 monosyllabic words in a simulated dialogue, varying in Register, Focus, and Sentence Mode. The authors segmented a total of 1,800 sentences using forced-alignment tools, and they analyzed the duration of each word. The results show significant effects of Register, Word Position, and their interactions. The simple effect of Register was significant in all 5 word positions, indicating a global elongation effect in CDS. Interestingly, there was no proportional increase of the final word in CDS. In addition, the 3-way interactions Register × Word Position × Focus and Register × Word Position × Sentence Mode were significant, which converge to the conclusion that the utterance-final word in CDS is additively elongated when it is focused and in a statement. Elongation in CDS is a global effect, but the additive effects of duration demonstrated in the authors' data suggest that the effect of enhanced utterance-final lengthening in CDS in naturalistic samples may be a by-product of discourse characteristics of CDS.	\N	\N
22664896	To examine the association between dehiscence length in patients with superior semicircular canal dehiscence syndrome and their clinical findings, including objective audiometric and vestibular testing results. Retrospective study. Tertiary referral center. Patients included in this study were diagnosed with superior semicircular canal dehiscence syndrome and underwent surgical repair of the dehiscence through middle fossa craniotomy. The dehiscence length was measured intraoperatively in all cases. Correlation between dehiscence length with pure-tone average (PTA), average bone-conduction threshold, maximal air-bone gap, cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potential thresholds, and presenting signs and symptoms. The correlation between dehiscence length and maximal air-bone gap was statistically significant on both univariate and multivariate regression analyses. The correlations between dehiscence length and PTA, average bone-conduction threshold, cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potential threshold, and presenting signs and symptoms were not statistically significant. The dehiscence length correlated positively with the maximal air-bone gap in patients with superior semicircular canal dehiscence. The correlation was statistically significant. The dehiscence length did not correlate with the other variables examined in this study.	\N	\N
22666781	The purpose of the study was to acoustically compare the performance of children who do and do not stutter on diadochokinesis tasks in terms of syllable duration, syllable periods, and peak intensity. In this case-control study, acoustical analyses were performed on 26 children who stutter and 20 aged-matched normally fluent children (both groups stratified into preschoolers and school-aged children) during a diadochokinesis task: the repetition of articulatory segments through a task testing the ability to alternate movements. Speech fluency was assessed using the Fluency Profile and the Stuttering Severity Instrument. The children who stutter and those who do not did not significantly differ in terms of the acoustic patterns they produced in the diadochokinesis tasks. Significant differences were demonstrated between age groups independent of speech fluency. Overall, the preschoolers performed poorer. These results indicate that the observed differences are related to speech-motor age development and not to stuttering itself. Acoustic studies demonstrate that speech segment durations are most variable, both within and between subjects, during childhood and then gradually decrease to adult levels by the age of eleven to thirteen years. One possible explanation for the results of the present study is that children who stutter presented higher coefficients of variation to exploit the motor equivalence to achieve accurate sound production (i.e., the absence of speech disruptions).	\N	\N
22672110	Auditory spatial deficits occur frequently after hemispheric damage; a previous case report suggested that the explicit awareness of sound positions, as in sound localisation, can be impaired while the implicit use of auditory cues for the segregation of sound objects in noisy environments remains preserved. By assessing systematically patients with a first hemispheric lesion, we have shown that (1) explicit and/or implicit use can be disturbed; (2) impaired explicit vs. preserved implicit use dissociations occur rather frequently; and (3) different types of sound localisation deficits can be associated with preserved implicit use. Conceptually, the dissociation between the explicit and implicit use may reflect the dual-stream dichotomy of auditory processing. Our results speak in favour of systematic assessments of auditory spatial functions in clinical settings, especially when adaptation to auditory environment is at stake. Further, systematic studies are needed to link deficits of explicit vs. implicit use to disability in everyday activities, to design appropriate rehabilitation strategies, and to ascertain how far the explicit and implicit use of spatial cues can be retrained following brain damage.	\N	\N
22686693	The goal of an action can consist of generating a change in the environment (to produce an effect) or changing one's own situation in the environment (to move to a physical target). To investigate whether the mechanisms of effect-directed and target-directed action control are similar, participants performed continuous reversal movements. They either synchronized movement reversals with regularly presented tones (temporal targets) or produced tones at reversals isochronously (temporal effects). In both goal conditions an irrelevant goal characteristic was integrated into the goal representation (loudness, Experiment 1). When targets and effects were presented within the same reversal movement, similarities were enhanced (Experiment 2). When the task posed spatial demands in addition to temporal demands, target- and effect-directed movement kinematics changed equally with tempo (Experiment 3). Correlations between target-directed and effect-directed movements in temporal variability indicated similar timing mechanisms (Experiments 1 and 2). Only gradual differences between target- and effect-directed movements were observed. We conclude that the same mechanisms of action control, including the anticipation of upcoming events, underlie effect-directed and target-directed movements. Ideomotor theories of action control should incorporate action targets as goals similar to action effects.	\N	\N
22696248	We examined the effects of hedges and the discourse marker like on how people recalled specific details about precise quantities in spontaneous speech. We found that listeners treated hedged information differently from like-marked information, although both are thought to be indicators of uncertainty or vagueness. In addition, hedges had different effects depending on whether speakers were (1) retelling conversations to another person or (2) answering questions about material they had heard. When retelling to another person, listeners were more likely to report information that was either unmarked or marked with a like than hedged information (Experiment 1). Yet when answering questions by themselves, hedges enhanced memory for details, in comparison with likes (Experiment 2). Hedges appear to provide pragmatic cues about what information is reliable enough to repeat in a conversational context. But although hedged information may be left out, it is not forgotten.	\N	\N
22696304	This study determined the effects of phonology and semantics on the distribution of cortical activity to the second of a pair of words in first and second language (mixed pairs). The effects of relative proficiency in the two languages and linguistic setting (monolinguistic or mixed) are reported in a companion paper. Ten early bilinguals and 14 late bilinguals listened to mixed pairs of words in Arabic (L1) and Hebrew (L2) and indicated whether both words in the pair had the same or different meanings. The spatio-temporal distribution of current densities of event-related potentials were estimated for each language and according to semantic and phonologic relationship (same or different) compared with the first word in the pair. During early processing (<300 ms), brain activity in temporal and temporoparietal auditory areas was enhanced by phonologic incongruence between words in the pair and in Wernicke's area by both phonologic and semantic priming. In contrast, brain activities during late processing (>300 ms) were enhanced by semantic incongruence between the two words, particularly in temporal areas and in left hemisphere Broca's and Wernicke's areas. The latter differences were greater when words were in L2. Surprisingly, no significant effects of relative proficiency on processing the second word in the pair were found. These results indicate that the distribution of brain activity to the second of two words presented bilingually is affected differently during early and late processing by both semantic and phonologic priming by- and incongruence with the immediately preceding word.	\N	\N
22698777	Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), a non-invasive neuroimaging optical technique which measures the cortical concentration changes in oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin (O(2)Hb and HHb, respectively), has been extensively utilized in language studies. Most of these studies investigated the ventrolateral/dorsolateral cortex responses, while few language studies on the frontopolar cortex are reported. The aim of this study was to investigate by fNIRS the frontopolar cortex response to a letter verbal fluency task (VFT) in single healthy subjects to better understand the symmetry/asymmetry of language processing. The O(2)Hb and HHb changes were measured on 33 University students by a 8-channel fNIRS system. A significant increase in O(2)Hb (p<0.001), accompanied by a smaller significant decrease in HHb (p<0.001), was observed in each measurement point. However, the laterality index of 21 out of the 33 subjects evidenced a hemispheric dominance (right 9, left 12). Although these results have confirmed a bilateral activation over the frontopolar cortex upon VFT, no clear pattern of lateralization was found. Considering the importance of establishing a response pattern related to cognitive functions in clinical populations, the fNIRS investigation of the frontopolar cortex (and other areas involved in language) in single subject and the use of the laterality index are recommended.	\N	\N
22699985	To report and review the clinical experiences of patients who required reimplantation from an ongoing trial of patients with partial deafness who were treated with electroacoustic stimulation (EAS) cochlear implantation. Retrospective case series review. Tertiary referral center. Two patients with partial deafness, 1 child and 1 adult, who required reimplantation because of device failure occurring 12 to 18 months after hearing preservation cochlear implantation with a Med-El Sonata Flex-EAS electrode array. Reimplantation (with full insertion) of a Med-El Sonata Flex-EAS array (child) and the new complete cochlear coverage Med-El Sonata Flex-28 electrode array (adult). Surgical techniques used include round window insertion with slow insertion speed and the use of preoperative systemic steroids and preoperative, perioperative, and postimplantation intratympanic steroids. Preservation of residual hearing. Both patients had complete preservation of residual hearing after reimplantation. The adult patient had stable improvement in hearing from 750 to 2,000 Hz of 5 to 10 dB. Both patients reported increased benefit after reimplantation. We report a case series of successful pediatric and adult EAS reimplantation, in the adult hearing improvement after reimplantation with a deep insertion electrode was observed. Reimplantation with preservation of residual hearing in patients with EAS is possible with current surgical hearing preserving techniques and atraumatic electrode arrays of variable length.	\N	\N
22709398	Infants begin to segment novel words from speech by 7.5 months, demonstrating an ability to track, encode and retrieve words in the context of larger units. Although it is presumed that word recognition at this stage is a prerequisite to constructing a vocabulary, the continuity between these stages of development has not yet been empirically demonstrated. The goal of the present study is to investigate whether infant word segmentation skills are indeed related to later lexical development. Two word segmentation tasks, varying in complexity, were administered in infancy and related to childhood outcome measures. Outcome measures consisted of age-normed productive vocabulary percentiles and a measure of cognitive development. Results demonstrated a strong degree of association between infant word segmentation abilities at 7 months and productive vocabulary size at 24 months. In addition, outcome groups, as defined by median vocabulary size and growth trajectories at 24 months, showed distinct word segmentation abilities as infants. These findings provide the first prospective evidence supporting the predictive validity of infant word segmentation tasks and suggest that they are indeed associated with mature word knowledge. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxzLi5oLZQ8.	\N	\N
22717191	Patients with schizophrenia consistently demonstrate information processing abnormalities assessed with visual masking (VM) tasks, and these deficits have been linked to clinical and functional severity. It has been suggested that VM impairments may be a vulnerability marker in individuals at risk for developing psychosis. Forward and backward VM performance was assessed in 72 first-episode (FE) psychosis patients, 98 subjects at risk (AR) for psychosis and 98 healthy controls (HC) using two identification tasks (with either a high- or low-energy mask) and a location task. VM was examined for stability in a subgroup (FE, n=15; AR, n=35; HC, n=21) and assessed relative to clinical and functional measures. In the identification tasks, backward VM deficits were observed in both FE and AR relative to HC whereas forward VM deficits were only present in FE patients compared to HC. In the location task, AR subjects demonstrated superior performance in forward VM relative to HC. VM performance was stable over time, and VM deficits were associated with baseline functional measures and predicted future negative symptom severity in AR subjects. Visual information processing deficits, as indexed by backward VM, are present before and after the onset of frank psychosis, and probably represent a stable vulnerability marker that is associated with negative symptoms and functional decline. Additionally, the paradoxically better performance of AR subjects in select forward tasks suggests that early compensatory changes may characterize an emerging psychotic state.	\N	\N
22721630	Vocal expressions commonly elicit activity in superior temporal and inferior frontal cortices, indicating a distributed network to decode vocally expressed emotions. We examined the involvement of this fronto-temporal network for the decoding of angry voices during attention towards (explicit attention) or away from emotional cues in voices (implicit attention) based on a reanalysis of previous data (Frühholz, S., Ceravolo, L., Grandjean, D., 2012. Cerebral Cortex 22, 1107-1117). The general network revealed high interconnectivity of bilateral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) to different bilateral voice-sensitive regions in mid and posterior superior temporal gyri. Right superior temporal gyrus (STG) regions showed connectivity to the left primary auditory cortex and secondary auditory cortex (AC) as well as to high-level auditory regions. This general network revealed differences in connectivity depending on the attentional focus. Explicit attention to angry voices revealed a specific right-left STG network connecting higher-level AC. During attention to a nonemotional vocal feature we also found a left-right STG network implicitly elicited by angry voices that also included low-level left AC. Furthermore, only during this implicit processing there was widespread interconnectivity between bilateral IFG and bilateral STG. This indicates that while implicit attention to angry voices recruits extended bilateral STG and IFG networks for the sensory and evaluative decoding of voices, explicit attention to angry voices solely involves a network of bilateral STG regions probably for the integrative recognition of emotional cues from voices.	\N	\N
22723356	The integration of facial gestures and vocal signals is an essential process in human communication and relies on an interconnected circuit of brain regions, including language regions in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Studies have determined that ventral prefrontal cortical regions in macaques [e.g., the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC)] share similar cytoarchitectonic features as cortical areas in the human IFG, suggesting structural homology. Anterograde and retrograde tracing studies show that macaque VLPFC receives afferents from the superior and inferior temporal gyrus, which provide complex auditory and visual information, respectively. Moreover, physiological studies have shown that single neurons in VLPFC integrate species-specific face and vocal stimuli. Although bimodal responses may be found across a wide region of prefrontal cortex, vocalization responsive cells, which also respond to faces, are mainly found in anterior VLPFC. This suggests that VLPFC may be specialized to process and integrate social communication information, just as the IFG is specialized to process and integrate speech and gestures in the human brain.	\N	\N
22724279	The main goal of this study was to investigate the effects of acoustic characteristics, including timbre and fundamental frequency (F0), on the musical pitch discrimination of cochlear implant users. Eight postlingually deafened cochlear implant users were recruited, along with 8 control subjects with normal hearing. Pitch discrimination tests were carried out using test stimuli from 4 musical instruments plus synthetic complex stimuli. Three reference tones with different F0s were used. The mean difference limens were 1.8 to 10.7 semitones in the just-noticeable difference task and 2.1 to 13.6 semitones in the pitch-direction discrimination task for different timbre and F0 combinations. Three-way analysis of variance showed that the acoustic characteristics of the musical stimuli, such as timbre and F0, significantly influenced pitch discrimination performance. Acoustic characteristics determine the complexity of the electrical stimulation pattern, which directly affects performance in pitch discrimination. A place pattern with a clear and regular low-order harmonic structure is most important for good pitch discrimination. A clear F0-related temporal pattern is also useful when the F0 is low. Pitch perception performance will worsen when there is interference in the high-frequency channels.	\N	\N
22727355	The objective of this study was to evaluate the relationship between developmental delays and speech perception in pre-lingually deafened cochlear implant recipients. This study was a retrospective review of patient charts conducted at a tertiary referral center. Thirty-five pre-lingually deafened children underwent multichannel cochlear implantation and habilitation at the Kyoto University Hospital Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. A pre-operative cognitive-adaptive developmental quotient was evaluated using the Kyoto scale of psychological development. Post-operative speech performance was evaluated with speech perception tests two years after cochlear implantation. We computed partial correlation coefficients (controlled for age at the time of implantation and the average pre-operative aided hearing level) between the cognitive-adaptive developmental quotient and speech performance. A developmental delay in the cognitive-adaptive area was weakly correlated with speech perception (partial correlation coefficients for consonant-vowel syllables and phrases were 0.38 and 0.36, respectively). A pre-operative developmental delay was only weakly associated with poor post-operative speech perception in pre-lingually deafened cochlear implant recipients.	\N	\N
22728130	The neural processing of auditory information engages pathways that begin initially at the cochlea and that eventually reach forebrain structures. At these higher levels, the computations necessary for extracting auditory source and identity information rely on the neuroanatomical connections between the thalamus and cortex. Here, the general organization of these connections in the medial geniculate body (thalamus) and the auditory cortex is reviewed. In addition, we consider two models organizing the thalamocortical pathways of the non-tonotopic and multimodal auditory nuclei. Overall, the transfer of information to the cortex via the thalamocortical pathways is complemented by the numerous intracortical and corticocortical pathways. Although interrelated, the convergent interactions among thalamocortical, corticocortical, and commissural pathways enable the computations necessary for the emergence of higher auditory perception.	\N	\N
22731996	The influence of top-down cognitive control on 2 putatively distinct forms of distraction was investigated. Attentional capture by a task-irrelevant auditory deviation (e.g., a female-spoken token following a sequence of male-spoken tokens)-as indexed by its disruption of a visually presented recall task-was abolished when focal-task engagement was promoted either by increasing the difficulty of encoding the visual to-be-remembered stimuli (by reducing their perceptual discriminability; Experiments 1 and 2) or by providing foreknowledge of an imminent deviation (Experiment 2). In contrast, distraction from continuously changing auditory stimuli ("changing-state effect") was not modulated by task-difficulty or foreknowledge (Experiment 3). We also confirmed that individual differences in working memory capacity--typically associated with maintaining task-engagement in the face of distraction--predict the magnitude of the deviation effect, but not the changing-state effect. This convergence of experimental and psychometric data strongly supports a duplex-mechanism account of auditory distraction: Auditory attentional capture (deviation effect) is open to top-down cognitive control, whereas auditory distraction caused by direct conflict between the sound and focal-task processing (changing-state effect) is relatively immune to such control.	\N	\N
22753470	A visual scene is perceived in terms of visual objects. Similar ideas have been proposed for the analogous case of auditory scene analysis, although their hypothesized neural underpinnings have not yet been established. Here, we address this question by recording from subjects selectively listening to one of two competing speakers, either of different or the same sex, using magnetoencephalography. Individual neural representations are seen for the speech of the two speakers, with each being selectively phase locked to the rhythm of the corresponding speech stream and from which can be exclusively reconstructed the temporal envelope of that speech stream. The neural representation of the attended speech dominates responses (with latency near 100 ms) in posterior auditory cortex. Furthermore, when the intensity of the attended and background speakers is separately varied over an 8-dB range, the neural representation of the attended speech adapts only to the intensity of that speaker but not to the intensity of the background speaker, suggesting an object-level intensity gain control. In summary, these results indicate that concurrent auditory objects, even if spectrotemporally overlapping and not resolvable at the auditory periphery, are neurally encoded individually in auditory cortex and emerge as fundamental representational units for top-down attentional modulation and bottom-up neural adaptation.	\N	\N
22764349	Presenting synchronous auditory and visual stimuli in separate locations creates the illusion that the sound originates from the direction of the visual stimulus. Participants' auditory localization bias, called the ventriloquism effect, has revealed factors affecting the perceptual integration of audio-visual stimuli. However, many studies on audio-visual processes have focused on performance in simplified experimental situations, with a single stimulus in each sensory modality. These results cannot necessarily explain our perceptual behavior in natural scenes, where various signals exist within a single sensory modality. In the present study we report the contributions of a cognitive factor, that is, the audio-visual congruency of speech, although this factor has often been underestimated in previous ventriloquism research. Thus, we investigated the contribution of speech congruency on the ventriloquism effect using a spoken utterance and two videos of a talking face. The salience of facial movements was also manipulated. As a result, when bilateral visual stimuli are presented in synchrony with a single voice, cross-modal speech congruency was found to have a significant impact on the ventriloquism effect. This result also indicated that more salient visual utterances attracted participants' auditory localization. The congruent pairing of audio-visual utterances elicited greater localization bias than did incongruent pairing, whereas previous studies have reported little dependency on the reality of stimuli in ventriloquism. Moreover, audio-visual illusory congruency, owing to the McGurk effect, caused substantial visual interference to auditory localization. This suggests that a greater flexibility in responding to multi-sensory environments exists than has been previously considered.	\N	\N
22768163	Auditory sensory modulation difficulties are common in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and may stem from a faulty arousal system that compromises the ability to regulate an optimal response. To study neurophysiological correlates of the sensory modulation difficulties, we recorded magnetic field responses to clicks in 14 ASD and 15 typically developing (TD) children. We further analyzed the P100m, which is the most prominent component of the auditory magnetic field response in children and may reflect preattentive arousal processes. The P100m was rightward lateralized in the TD, but not in the ASD children, who showed a tendency toward P100m reduction in the right hemisphere (RH). The atypical P100m lateralization in the ASD subjects was associated with greater severity of sensory abnormalities assessed by Short Sensory Profile, as well as with auditory hypersensitivity during the first two years of life. The absence of right-hemispheric predominance of the P100m and a tendency for its right-hemispheric reduction in the ASD children suggests disturbance of the RH ascending reticular brainstem pathways and/or their thalamic and cortical projections, which in turn may contribute to abnormal arousal and attention. The correlation of sensory abnormalities with atypical, more leftward, P100m lateralization suggests that reduced preattentive processing in the right hemisphere and/or its shift to the left hemisphere may contribute to abnormal sensory behavior in ASD.	\N	\N
22773778	Because acoustic landscapes are complex and rapidly changing, auditory systems have evolved mechanisms that permit rapid detection of novel sounds, sound source segregation, and perceptual restoration of sounds obscured by noise. Perceptual restoration is particularly important in noisy environments because it allows organisms to track sounds over time even when they are masked. The continuity illusion is a striking example of perceptual restoration with sounds perceived as intact even when parts of them have been replaced by gaps and rendered inaudible by being masked by an extraneous sound. The mechanisms of auditory filling-in are complex and are currently not well-understood. The present study used the high temporal resolution of EEG to examine brain activity related to continuity illusion perception. Masking noise loudness was adjusted individually for each subject so that physically identical sounds on some trials elicited a continuity illusion (failure to detect a gap in a sound) and on other trials resulted in correct gap detection. This design ensured that any measurable differences in brain activity would be due to perceptual differences rather than physical differences among stimuli. We found that baseline activity recorded immediately before presentation of the stimulus significantly predicted the occurrence of the continuity illusion in 10 out of 14 participants based on power differences in γ-band EEG (34-80 Hz). Across all participants, power in the β and γ (12- to 80-Hz range) was informative about the subsequent perceptual decision. These data suggest that a subject's baseline brain state influences the strength of continuity illusions.	\N	\N
22774804	The issue investigated in the present research is the nature of the information that is responsible for producing masked priming effects (e.g., semantic information or stimulus-response [S-R] associations) when responding to number stimuli. This issue was addressed by assessing both the magnitude of the category congruence (priming) effect and the nature of the priming distance effect across trials using single-digit primes and targets. Participants made either magnitude (i.e., whether the number presented was larger or smaller than 5) or identification (i.e., press the left button if the number was either a 1, 2, 3, or 4 or the right button if the number was either a 6, 7, 8, or 9) judgments. The results indicated that, regardless of task instruction, there was a clear priming distance effect and a significantly increasing category congruence effect. These results indicated that both semantic activation and S-R associations play important roles in producing masked priming effects.	\N	\N
22776903	Stuttering is generally considered to be a speech disorder that affects ∼1% of the global population. Various forms of speech feedback have been shown to reduce overt stuttered speaking, and in particular, second speech signal through speech feedback has drastically reduced utterances of stuttered speech in adults with persistent stuttering. This study reports data for increased overt fluency of speech in an adult stuttering population, whereby the vocalization of the speaker is captured by a microphone or an accelerometer, signal processed, and returned as mechanical tactile speech feedback to the speaker's skin. A repeated measures analysis of variance was used to show that both the microphone and the accelerometer speaking conditions were significantly more fluent than a control (no feedback) condition, with the microphone-driven tactile feedback reducing instances of stuttering by 71% and the accelerometer-driven tactile feedback reducing instances of stuttering by 80%. It is apparent that self-generated tactile feedback can be used to enhance fluency significantly in those who stutter.	\N	\N
22777734	A growing literature has suggested that processing of visual information presented near the hands is facilitated. In this study, we investigated whether the near-hands superiority effect also occurs with the hands moving. In two experiments, participants performed a cyclical bimanual movement task requiring concurrent visual identification of briefly presented letters. For both the static and dynamic hand conditions, the results showed improved letter recognition performance with the hands closer to the stimuli. The finding that the encoding advantage for near-hand stimuli also occurred with the hands moving suggests that the effect is regulated in real time, in accordance with the concept of a bimodal neural system that dynamically updates hand position in external space.	\N	\N
22788230	Altered auditory feedback can facilitate speech fluency in adults who stutter. However, other findings suggest that adults who stutter show anomalies in 'audiovocal integration', such as longer phonation reaction times to auditory stimuli and less effective pitch tracking. To study audiovocal integration in adults who stutter using the pitch-shift paradigm. Fourteen adult stuttering participants and 16 normally fluent adults produced the vowel /a/while monitoring their own voice through earphones. Unanticipated pitch-shifts were applied in the upward or downward direction for 500 ms. Short latency pitch-shift responses (or pitch-shift responses) were elicited in all participants. In stuttering participants, vocal response onset latency was significantly delayed and amplitude tended to be reduced. Atypical audiovocal responses could be associated with stuttering. It is not clear how audiovocal integration influences stuttering, but could signal inadequate activation of internal models.	\N	\N
22796516	In the present study we examined the effect of positional noise on spatial resolution in younger and older observers. We used a yes/no discrimination task in which observers indicated whether the size of two gaps in a Landolt-C-like contour was the same or not. The proportion of trials observers perceived one gap larger was measured when gaps-position was fixed (low positional noise) and random (high positional noise). Specifically, we compared, across conditions and groups, the values of threshold, lower and upper asymptote of the psychometric function. In the younger group, noise does not prevent detection of gap-size difference although sensitivity is lower, as revealed by higher threshold and lower upper asymptote, i.e., the proportion of responses "I see a larger gap" at the largest gap-size difference (asymptotic performance). In the older group detection is prevented, as revealed by threshold, lower and upper asymptote data. This may be because, at stimulus onset, high positional noise has associated coarse filter analysers averaging across the two gaps, which cannot be switched off.	\N	\N
22799761	Little is known about how sex influences functional brain maturation. The current study investigated sex differences in the maturation of event-related potential (ERP) amplitudes during an auditory oddball task (N = 170; age = 6-17 years). Performance improved with age. N200 amplitude declined with age: parietal sites showed earlier development than temporal and frontal locations. Girls showed greater bilateral frontal P300 amplitude development, approaching the higher values observed in boys during childhood. After controlling for age, right frontal P300 amplitude was associated with reaction time in girls. The findings demonstrate sex differences in ERP maturation in line with behavioral and neuroimaging studies.	\N	\N
22802637	Unlike nonhuman primates, songbirds learn to vocalize very much like human infants acquire spoken language. In humans, Broca's area in the frontal lobe and Wernicke's area in the temporal lobe are crucially involved in speech production and perception, respectively. Songbirds have analogous brain regions that show a similar neural dissociation between vocal production and auditory perception and memory. In both humans and songbirds, there is evidence for lateralization of neural responsiveness in these brain regions. Human infants already show left-sided dominance in their brain activation when exposed to speech. Moreover, a memory-specific left-sided dominance in Wernicke's area for speech perception has been demonstrated in 2.5-mo-old babies. It is possible that auditory-vocal learning is associated with hemispheric dominance and that this association arose in songbirds and humans through convergent evolution. Therefore, we investigated whether there is similar song memory-related lateralization in the songbird brain. We exposed male zebra finches to tutor or unfamiliar song. We found left-sided dominance of neuronal activation in a Broca-like brain region (HVC, a letter-based name) of juvenile and adult zebra finch males, independent of the song stimulus presented. In addition, juvenile males showed left-sided dominance for tutor song but not for unfamiliar song in a Wernicke-like brain region (the caudomedial nidopallium). Thus, left-sided dominance in the caudomedial nidopallium was specific for the song-learning phase and was memory-related. These findings demonstrate a remarkable neural parallel between birdsong and human spoken language, and they have important consequences for our understanding of the evolution of auditory-vocal learning and its neural mechanisms.	\N	\N
22805019	To establish the method of conducting electrical evoked middle latency response (EMLR) monitoring in cochlear implantation operation and further to assess the neural response of auditory pathway under electrical stimulation. Twenty cases of cochlear implantation subjects were investigated in this study. Fourteen cases were pre-lingual deaf and 6 were post-lingual deaf. The surface recording electrodes were placed on the patients under general anesthesia, with language processor connected to the triggering port of the auditory evoked potential device. After the electrode was implanted, the electrode No.3 was selected to conduct. The electrically evoked auditory nerve compound active potentials (ECAP) were firstly tested in all patients, thereafter the EABR mode was selected, and the stimulation parameters were changed to EMLR mode with monopole biphasic, alternation stimulation, pulse width from 50 to 100 µs, the stimulation intensity decreased or increased from 20 CL above the strength of the ECAP threshold to the reaction threshold with a step of 5CL. To evaluate the correlation between the ECAP thresholds and EMLR, another 6 cases of normal hearing healthy subjects were recruited to record their short-sound evoked auditory middle-latency response (AMLR), as the control of morphology and latency of MLR by electrical stimulation. The typical AMLR waveforms could be recorded by the composition of five waves in the 6 cases of normal hearing healthy subjects, with an average response threshold of (12.5±8.6) dBnHL, close to the behavioral audiometric threshold (10.8±7.3) dBHL. The EMLR waveforms could be recorded in 20 patients, which was similar to the AMLR waveforms. However, the wave latency and wave interval shortened. There were lower volatility and longer latency in pre-lingual deaf than post-lingual deaf. The EMLR threshold (140.55±9.92) CL was significantly lower than the ECAP threshold (160.75±13.34) CL (t=10.467, P<0.01), a positive correlation between the thresholds was detected (r=0.763, P<0.01). We successfully established the method of EMLR monitoring in cochlear implantation surgery. The EMLR threshold is lower than the ECAP threshold but it is close to the behavioral audiometric threshold; EMLR can provide neural response information closer to the auditory center, and can serve as an effective objective method to evaluate the effect of hearing rehabilitation.	\N	\N
22829158	The aim of this study was to describe the outcome and possible complications of subtotal petrosectomy (SP) for Vibrant Soundbridge (VSB) device surgery in a tertiary referral center. A secondary objective was the evaluation of hearing results in a subgroup of subjects who received the VSB device. Between 2009 and early 2011, 22 adult subjects with chronic otitis media (COM) underwent a SP, blind sac closure of the external auditory canal and abdominal fat obliteration to facilitate the application of an active middle ear implant (AMEI) in a staged procedure. Indications consisted of mixed hearing loss after previous tympanomastoplasty and failure of hearing rehabilitation with a hearing aid or bone conduction device in COM. Pre- and postoperative pure-tone audiograms were analyzed in respect to deterioration of inner ear function, unaided and aided (hearing aid, bone-anchored hearing aid and VSB) speech audiograms were compared to verify improvements in communications skills and functional gains. Incidence and type of complications were reviewed. No significant change was observed regarding mean bone conduction thresholds after the first stage procedure. Some minor wound healing problems were noted. Speech perception using the VSB (n = 16) showed a mean aided speech discrimination at 65-dB SPL of 75 % [standard deviation (SD) 28.7], at 80-dB SPL of 90 % (SD 25.1). Our results suggest that for selected patients with open mastoid cavities and chronic middle ear disease, SP with abdominal fat obliteration is an effective and safe technique to facilitate safe AMEI placement.	\N	\N
22832675	Auditory-perceptual evaluation of dysphonia may be influenced by the type of speech/voice task used to render judgements during the clinical evaluation, i.e., sustained vowels versus continuous speech. This study explored (a) differences in listener dysphonia severity ratings on the basis of speech/voice tasks, (b) the influence of speech/voice task on dysphonia severity ratings of stimuli that combined sustained vowels and continuous speech, and (c) the differences in inter-rater reliability of dysphonia severity ratings between both speech tasks. Five experienced listeners rated overall dysphonia severity in sustained vowels, continuous speech and concatenated speech samples elicited by 39 subjects with various voice disorders and degrees of hoarseness. Data confirmed that sustained vowels are rated significantly more dysphonic than continuous speech. Furthermore, dysphonia severity in concatenated speech samples is least determined by the sustained vowel. Finally, no significant difference was found in inter-rater reliability between dysphonia severity ratings of sustained vowels versus continuous speech. Based upon the results, both types of speech/voice tasks (i.e., sustained vowel and continuous speech) should be elicited and judged by clinicians in the auditory-perceptual rating of dysphonia severity.	\N	\N
22844984	A fundamental issue in the design and the interpretation of experimental studies of perception relates to the question of whether the participants in these experiments could perform the perceptual task assigned to them using another feature, or cue, than that intended by the experimenter. An approach frequently used by auditory- and visual-perception researchers to guard against this possibility involves applying random variations to the stimuli across presentations or trials so as to make the "unwanted" cue unreliable for the participants. However, the theoretical basis of this widespread practice is not well developed. In this article, we describe a 2-channel model based on general principles of psychophysical signal detection theory, which can be used to assess the respective contributions of the unwanted cue and of the primary cue to performance or thresholds measured in perceptual discrimination experiments involving stimulus randomization. Example applications of the model to the analysis of results obtained in representative studies from the auditory- and visual-perception literature are provided. In several cases, the results of the model-based analyses indicate that the effectiveness of the randomization procedure was less than originally assumed by the authors of these studies. These findings underscore the importance of quantifying the potential influence of unwanted cues on the results of psychophysical experiments, even when stimulus randomization is used.	\N	\N
22846767	Previous studies have demonstrated that human evaluation of subjective loudness and acoustic comfort depends on a series of factors in a particular situation rather than only on sound pressure levels. In the present study, a large-scale subjective survey has been undertaken on underground shopping streets in Harbin, China, to determine how individual sound sources influence subjective loudness and acoustic comfort evaluation. Based on the analysis of case study results, it has been shown that all individual sound sources can increase subjective loudness to a certain degree. However, their levels of influence on acoustic comfort are different. Background music and the public address system can increase acoustic comfort, with a mean difference of 0.18 to 0.32 and 0.21 to 0.27, respectively, where a five-point bipolar category scale is used. Music from shops and vendor shouts can decrease acoustic comfort, with a mean difference of -0.11 to -0.38 and -0.39 to -0.62, respectively. The feasibility of improving acoustic comfort by changing certain sound sources is thus demonstrated.	\N	\N
22866682	Two experiments tested the effects of preview sentences and headings on the quality of college students' outlines of informational texts. Experiment 1 found that performance was much better in the preview sentences condition than in a no-signals condition for both printed text and text-to-speech (TTS) audio rendering of the printed text. In contrast, performance in the headings condition was good for the printed text but poor for the auditory presentation because the TTS software failed to communicate nonverbal information carried by the visual headings. Experiment 2 compared outlining performance for five headings conditions during TTS presentation. Using a theoretical framework, "signaling available, relevant, accessible" (SARA) information, to provide an analysis of the information content of headings in the printed text, the manipulation of the headings systematically restored information that was omitted by the TTS application in Experiment 1. The result was that outlining performance improved to levels similar to the visual headings condition of Experiment 1. It is argued that SARA is a useful framework for guiding future development of TTS software for a wide variety of text signaling devices, not just headings.	\N	\N
22891070	Perceptual training with spectrally degraded environmental sounds results in improved environmental sound identification, with benefits shown to extend to untrained speech perception as well. The present study extended those findings to examine longer-term training effects as well as effects of mere repeated exposure to sounds over time. Participants received two pretests (1 week apart) prior to a week-long environmental sound training regimen, which was followed by two posttest sessions, separated by another week without training. Spectrally degraded stimuli, processed with a four-channel vocoder, consisted of a 160-item environmental sound test, word and sentence tests, and a battery of basic auditory abilities and cognitive tests. Results indicated significant improvements in all speech and environmental sound scores between the initial pretest and the last posttest with performance increments following both exposure and training. For environmental sounds (the stimulus class that was trained), the magnitude of positive change that accompanied training was much greater than that due to exposure alone, with improvement for untrained sounds roughly comparable to the speech benefit from exposure. Additional tests of auditory and cognitive abilities showed that speech and environmental sound performance were differentially correlated with tests of spectral and temporal-fine-structure processing, whereas working memory and executive function were correlated with speech, but not environmental sound perception. These findings indicate generalizability of environmental sound training and provide a basis for implementing environmental sound training programs for cochlear implant (CI) patients.	\N	\N
22892280	Three studies investigated developmental changes in facial expression processing, between 3 years-of-age and adulthood. For adults and older children, the addition of sunglasses to upright faces caused an equivalent decrement in performance to face inversion. However, younger children showed better classification of expressions of faces wearing sunglasses than children who saw the same faces un-occluded. When the mouth area was occluded with a mask, children under nine years showed no impairment in expression classification, relative to un-occluded faces. An early selective focus of attention on the eyes may be optimal for socialization, but mediate against accurate expression classification. The data support a model in which a threshold level of attentional control must be reached before children can develop adult-like configural processing skills and be flexible in their use of face- processing strategies.	\N	\N
22892586	We introduce a new version of the perceptual retouch model. This model was used for explaining properties of temporal interaction of successive objects in reaching conscious representation. The new model incorporates two interactive binding operations - binding features for objects and binding the bound feature-objects with a large scale oscillatory system that corresponds to perceptual consciousness. Here, the typical result of masking experiments - second object advantage in conscious perception - is achieved by applying the effects of a common synchronizing oscillator with a delay. This delayed modulation of each of the feature-binding first-order oscillators that represent emerging and decaying neural activities of each of the objects guarantees that the oscillating synchrony of the feature-neurons of the following object is higher than the synchrony of the feature-neurons of the first presented object. Thus we model the fact that the following object dominates the preceding object in conscious perception. We also show the capacity of the model to simulate illusory misbinding of features from different objects. The third qualitative effect, the relative release of the first object from backward masking is achieved by priming the non-specific oscillatory modulation ahead in time.	\N	\N
22894217	Green [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 87, 2662-2674 (1990)] suggested an efficient, maximum-likelihood-based approach for adaptively estimating thresholds. Such procedures determine the signal strength on each trial by first identifying the most likely psychometric functions among the pre-proposed alternatives based on responses from previous trials, and then finding the signal strength at the "sweet point" on that most likely function. The sweet point is the point on the psychometric function that is associated with the minimum expected variance. Here, that procedure is extended to reduce poor estimates that result from lapses in attention. The sweet points for the threshold, slope, and lapse parameters of a transformed logistic psychometric function are derived. In addition, alternative stimulus placement algorithms are considered. The result is a relatively fast and robust estimation of a three-parameter psychometric function.	\N	\N
22894232	Speaker variability and noise are two common sources of acoustic variability. The goal of this study was to examine whether these two sources of acoustic variability affected native and non-native perception of Mandarin fricatives to different degrees. Multispeaker Mandarin fricative stimuli were presented to 40 native and 52 non-native listeners in two presentation formats (blocked by speaker and mixed across speakers). The stimuli were also mixed with speech-shaped noise to create five levels of signal-to- noise ratios. The results showed that noise affected non-native identification disproportionately. By contrast, the effect of speaker variability was comparable between the native and non-native listeners. Confusion patterns were interpreted with reference to the results of acoustic analysis, suggesting native and non-native listeners used distinct acoustic cues for fricative identification. It was concluded that not all sources of acoustic variability are treated equally by native and non-native listeners. Whereas noise compromised non-native fricative perception disproportionately, speaker variability did not pose a special challenge to the non-native listeners.	\N	\N
22895701	Critical periods in language acquisition have been discussed primarily with reference to studies of people who are deaf or bilingual. Here, we provide evidence on the opening of sensitivity to the linguistic environment by studying the response to a change of phoneme at a native and nonnative phonetic boundary in full-term and preterm human infants using event-related potentials. Full-term infants show a decline in their discrimination of nonnative phonetic contrasts between 9 and 12 months of age. Because the womb is a high-frequency filter, many phonemes are strongly degraded in utero. Preterm infants thus benefit from earlier and richer exposure to broadcast speech. We find that preterms do not take advantage of this enriched linguistic environment: the decrease in amplitude of the mismatch response to a nonnative change of phoneme at the end of the first year of life was dependent on maturational age and not on the duration of exposure to broadcast speech. The shaping of phonological representations by the environment is thus strongly constrained by brain maturation factors.	\N	\N
22897876	Neurophysiological studies of infant speech suggest that mismatch responses (MMRs) have predictive value for later language. Their value, however, is diminished because unexplained differences in the MMR patterns are seen across studies. The current study aimed to identify the functional nature of infant MMRs by recording event-related-potentials (ERPs) to an infrequent English vowel change in internal or final positions of a sequence of ten vowels in six-month-old monolingually and bilingually exposed infants. Increased negativity of the MMR (infrequent minus frequent) was found in final compared to internal positions and correlated with an index of increased attention to the final position. This pattern helps explain the overall greater negativity to the speech sounds in the bilingually exposed female infants. These findings substantially advance our understanding of neural indices of speech perception development and show promise for furthering our understanding of bilingual language development.	\N	\N
22907183	Although central nervous system abnormalities are incidentally detected in preoperative brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies in pediatric cochlear implant (CI) candidates, the clinical significance of the abnormalities remains unclear. We aimed to assess post-implantation auditory and speech performance in patients with brain lesions seen on MRI. Pediatric CI recipients (n = 177) who underwent preoperative MRI scans of the brain between January 2002 and June 2009 were included in this study. Patients with brain lesions on MRI were reviewed and categorized into the following groups: brain parenchymal lesions (focal vs. diffuse), ventriculomegaly, and extra-axial lesion. The main communication mode as well as progress in auditory perception and speech production were evaluated preoperatively and at 3, 6, 12, and 24 months postoperatively. Performance in patients with brain lesions was compared with the age- and sex-matched control group. Various brain lesions were found in 27 out of 177 patients. Children with brain lesions who received CIs showed gradual progress in auditory and speech outcomes for 2 years, though performance was reduced compared with the control group. In addition, there was a significant difference in the main communication mode between the two groups at 2 years following cochlear implantation. This difference was especially significant in patients with diffuse brain parenchymal lesions after further stratification of the brain lesion group. Preoperative brain MRI may have a role in improving the prediction of adverse outcomes in pediatric CI recipients. In particular, children with diffuse brain parenchymal lesions should be counseled regarding the poor prognosis preoperatively, and followed up with special attention.	\N	\N
22922236	Cognitive models propose that auditory verbal hallucinations arise through inner speech misidentification. However, such models cannot explain why the voices in hallucinations often have identities different from the hearer. This study investigated whether a general voice identity recognition difficulty might be present in schizophrenia and related to auditory verbal hallucinations. Twenty-five schizophrenia patients and 13 healthy controls were tested on recognition of famous voices. Signal detection theory was used to calculate perceptual sensitivity and response criterion measures. Schizophrenia patients obtained fewer hits and had lower perceptual sensitivity to detect famous voices than healthy controls did. There were no differences between groups in false alarm rate or response criterion. A symptom-based analysis demonstrated that especially those patients with auditory verbal hallucinations performed poorly in the task. The results indicate that patients with hallucinations are impaired at voice identity recognition because of decreased sensitivity, which may result in inner speech misidentification.	\N	\N
22922606	To evaluate, with a long-term follow-up, the speech perception and language development in children with cytomegalovirus (CMV)-related deafness after cochlear implantation. A retrospective study on CMV-related profound deafness and cochlear implantation was performed from 1995 to 2010. Six children with an average follow-up of 10 years were included in this research. Medical history, imaging, cognitive delay, speech perception and production data were reviewed. Two of the 6 patients developed a functional language with the use of phrases and word sequences based on morphological and syntactic rules; the others demonstrated the development of a preverbal or transitional language with the use of single words only. Patients with CMV-related deafness benefit from cochlear implantation; however, the expectations of the parents must be evaluated in a series of counseling efforts prior to the surgery.	\N	\N
22923209	Autism spectrum disorder is typically associated with social deficits and is often specifically linked to difficulty with processing faces and other socially relevant stimuli. Emerging research has suggested that children with autism might also have deficits in basic perceptual abilities including multisensory processing (e.g., simultaneously processing visual and auditory inputs). The current study examined the relationship between multisensory temporal processing (assessed via a simultaneity judgment task wherein participants were to report whether a visual stimulus and an auditory stimulus occurred at the same time or at different times) and self-reported symptoms of autism (assessed via the Autism Spectrum Quotient questionnaire). Data from over 100 healthy adults revealed a relationship between these two factors as multisensory timing perception correlated with symptoms of autism. Specifically, a stronger bias to perceive auditory stimuli occurring before visual stimuli as simultaneous was associated with greater levels of autistic symptoms. Additional data and analyses confirm that this relationship is specific to multisensory processing and symptoms of autism. These results provide insight into the nature of multisensory processing while also revealing a continuum over which perceptual abilities correlate with symptoms of autism and that this continuum is not just specific to clinical populations but is present within the general population.	\N	\N
22925516	We live in a world rich in sensory information, and consequently the brain is challenged with deciphering which cues from the various sensory modalities belong together. Determinations regarding the relatedness of sensory information appear to be based, at least in part, on the spatial and temporal relationships between the stimuli. Stimuli that are presented in close spatial and temporal correspondence are more likely to be associated with one another and thus 'bound' into a single perceptual entity. While there is a robust literature delineating behavioral changes in perception induced by multisensory stimuli, maturational changes in multisensory processing, particularly in the temporal realm, are poorly understood. The current study examines the developmental progression of multisensory temporal function by analyzing responses on an audiovisual simultaneity judgment task in 6- to 23-year-old participants. The overarching hypothesis for the study was that multisensory temporal function will mature with increasing age, with the developmental trajectory for this change being the primary point of inquiry. Results indeed reveal an age-dependent decrease in the size of the 'multisensory temporal binding window', the temporal interval within which multisensory stimuli are likely to be perceptually bound, with changes occurring over a surprisingly protracted time course that extends into adolescence.	\N	\N
22926436	The results of two experiments are presented which explore the effect of distractor items on face and voice recognition. Following from the suggestion that voice processing is relatively weak compared to face processing, it was anticipated that voice recognition would be more affected by the presentation of distractor items between study and test compared to face recognition. Using a sequential matching task with a fixed interval between study and test that either incorporated distractor items or did not, the results supported our prediction. Face recognition remained strong irrespective of the number of distractor items between study and test. In contrast, voice recognition was significantly impaired by the presence of distractor items regardless of their number (Experiment 1). This pattern remained whether distractor items were highly similar to the targets or not (Experiment 2). These results offer support for the proposal that voice processing is a relatively vulnerable method of identification.	\N	\N
22946856	Motivational interviewing (MI) is a directive, client-centered therapeutic method employed in the treatment of substance abuse, with strong evidence of effectiveness. To date, the sole mechanism of action in MI with any consistent empirical support is "change talk" (CT), which is generally defined as client within-session speech in support of a behavior change. "Sustain talk" (ST) incorporates speech in support of the status quo. MI maintains that during treatment, clients essentially talk themselves into change. Multiple studies have now supported this theory, linking within-session speech to substance use outcomes. Although a causal chain has been established linking therapist behavior, client CT, and substance use outcome, the neural substrate of CT has been largely uncharted. We addressed this gap by measuring neural responses to clients' own CT using magnetoencephalography (MEG), a noninvasive neuroimaging technique with excellent spatial and temporal resolution. Following a recorded MI session, MEG was used to measure brain activity while participants heard multiple repetitions of their CT and ST utterances from that session, intermingled and presented in a random order. Results suggest that CT processing occurs in a right-hemisphere network that includes the inferior frontal gyrus, insula, and superior temporal cortex. These results support a representation of CT at the neural level, consistent with the role of these structures in self-perception. This suggests that during treatment sessions, clinicians who are able to evoke this special kind of language are tapping into neural circuitry that may be essential to behavior change.	\N	\N
22951258	Comprehension of spoken narratives requires coordination of multiple language skills. As such, for normal children narrative skills develop well into the school years and, during this period, are particularly vulnerable in the face of brain injury or developmental disorder. For these reasons, we sought to determine the developmental trajectory of narrative processing using longitudinal fMRI scanning. 30 healthy children between the ages of 5 and 18 enrolled at ages 5, 6, or 7, were examined annually for up to 10 years. At each fMRI session, children were presented with a set of five, 30s-long, stories containing 9, 10, or 11 sentences designed to be understood by a 5 year old child. fMRI data analysis was conducted based on a hierarchical linear model (HLM) that was modified to investigate developmental changes while accounting for missing data and controlling for factors such as age, linguistic performance and IQ. Performance testing conducted after each scan indicated well above the chance (p<0.002) comprehension performance. There was a linear increase with increasing age in bilateral superior temporal cortical activation (BAs 21 and 22) linked to narrative processing. Conversely, age-related decreases in cortical activation were observed in bilateral occipital regions, cingulate and cuneus, possibly reflecting changes in the default mode networks. The dynamic changes observed in this longitudinal fMRI study support the increasing role of bilateral BAs 21 and 22 in narrative comprehension, involving non-domain-specific integration in order to achieve final story interpretation. The presence of a continued linear development of this area throughout childhood and teenage years with no apparent plateau, indicates that full maturation of narrative processing skills has not yet occurred and that it may be delayed to early adulthood.	\N	\N
22957659	The Adaptive Tests of Temporal Resolution (ATTR©) software provides within-channel (WC) and across-channel (AC) adaptive measures of temporal resolution that are feasible for clinical applications. The purpose of the present study was to obtain normative values for young adults on two of the ATTR tests: the narrow-band noise within-channel (NBN-WC) test and the narrow-band noise across-channel (NBN-AC) test, at different stimulus intensities. Gap detection thresholds were measured at five sensation levels. A Latin square design was used to control for practice effects. The NBN-WC group and the NBN-AC group each consisted of 25 young adults with normal hearing. Gap detection thresholds for both conditions decreased with increasing stimulus intensity, and stimulus intensities above 20 dB SL were not associated with large improvements in performance. Variability was larger in the NBN-AC condition. Values obtained for the NBC-WC condition were very similar to previously reported ATTR results despite equipment and design differences. Results provide normative values for NBN-WC and NBN-AC performance on the ATTR and suggest that the ATTR is a robust test for clinical use.	\N	\N
22963230	Properties of auditory working memory for sounds that lack strong semantic associations and are not readily verbalized or sung are poorly understood. We investigated auditory working memory capacity for lists containing 2-6 easily discriminable abstract sounds synthesized within a constrained timbral space, at delays of 1-6 s (Experiment 1), and the effect of greater perceptual variability among list items on capacity estimates at delays of 1-6 s (Experiment 2). Working memory capacity estimates of 1-2 items were found in all conditions and increased significantly as the perceptual variability among the list items increased. Nonetheless, the capacity estimates were smaller than the commonly observed average working memory capacity limit of 3-5 items. Decay profiles in both experiments were comparable with those previously reported in the verbal and auditory working memory literature. The results help define boundary conditions on capacity estimates for nonverbalizable timbres that lack strong long-term memory associations.	\N	\N
22978899	A common complaint of the hearing impaired is the inability to understand speech in noisy environments even with their hearing assistive devices. Only a few single-channel algorithms have significantly improved speech intelligibility in noise for hearing-impaired listeners. The current study introduces a cochlear noise reduction algorithm. It is based on a cochlear representation of acoustic signals and real-time derivation of a binary speech mask. The contribution of the algorithm for enhancing word recognition in noise was evaluated on a group of 42 normal-hearing subjects, 35 hearing-aid users, 8 cochlear implant recipients, and 14 participants with bimodal devices. Recognition scores of Hebrew monosyllabic words embedded in Gaussian noise at several signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) were obtained with processed and unprocessed signals. The algorithm was not effective among the normal-hearing participants. However, it yielded a significant improvement in some of the hearing-impaired subjects under different listening conditions. Its most impressive benefit appeared among cochlear implant recipients. More than 20% improvement in recognition score of noisy words was obtained by 12, 16, and 26 hearing-impaired at SNR of 30, 24, and 18 dB, respectively. The algorithm has a potential to improve speech intelligibility in background noise, yet further research is required to improve its performances.	\N	\N
22978901	The auditory octave illusion arises when dichotically presented tones, one octave apart, alternate rapidly between the ears. Most subjects perceive an illusory sequence of monaural tones: A high tone in the right ear (RE) alternates with a low tone, incorrectly localized to the left ear (LE). Behavioral studies suggest that the perceived pitch follows the RE input, and the perceived location the higher-frequency sound. To explore the link between the perceived pitches and brain-level interactions of dichotic tones, magnetoencephalographic responses were recorded to 4 binaural combinations of 2-min long continuous 400- and 800-Hz tones and to 4 monaural tones. Responses to LE and RE inputs were distinguished by frequency-tagging the ear-specific stimuli at different modulation frequencies. During dichotic presentation, ipsilateral LE tones elicited weaker and ipsilateral RE tones stronger responses than when both ears received the same tone. During the most paradoxical stimulus-high tone to LE and low tone to RE perceived as a low tone in LE during the illusion-also the contralateral responses to LE tones were diminished. The results demonstrate modified binaural interaction of dichotic tones one octave apart, suggesting that this interaction contributes to pitch perception during the octave illusion.	\N	\N
22981882	Dyslexia is heritable and associated with auditory processing deficits. We investigate whether temporal auditory processing is compromised in young children at-risk for dyslexia and whether it is associated with later language and reading skills. We recorded EEG from 17 months-old children with or without familial risk for dyslexia to investigate whether their auditory system was able to detect a temporal change in a tone pattern. The children were followed longitudinally and performed an intelligence- and language development test at ages 4 and 4.5 years. Literacy related skills were measured at the beginning of second grade, and word- and pseudo-word reading fluency were measured at the end of second grade. The EEG responses showed that control children could detect the temporal change as indicated by a mismatch response (MMR). The MMR was not observed in at-risk children. Furthermore, the fronto-central MMR amplitude correlated with preliterate language comprehension and with later word reading fluency, but not with phonological awareness. We conclude that temporal auditory processing differentiates young children at risk for dyslexia from controls and is a precursor of preliterate language comprehension and reading fluency.	\N	\N
22982103	Production of actions is highly dependent on concurrent sensory information. In speech production, for example, movement of the articulators is guided by both auditory and somatosensory input. It has been demonstrated in non-human primates that self-produced vocalizations and those of others are differentially processed in the temporal cortex. The aim of the current study was to investigate how auditory and motor responses differ for self-produced and externally produced speech. Using functional neuroimaging, subjects were asked to produce sentences aloud, to silently mouth while listening to a different speaker producing the same sentence, to passively listen to sentences being read aloud, or to read sentences silently. We show that that separate regions of the superior temporal cortex display distinct response profiles to speaking aloud, mouthing while listening, and passive listening. Responses in anterior superior temporal cortices in both hemispheres are greater for passive listening compared with both mouthing while listening, and speaking aloud. This is the first demonstration that articulation, whether or not it has auditory consequences, modulates responses of the dorsolateral temporal cortex. In contrast posterior regions of the superior temporal cortex are recruited during both articulation conditions. In dorsal regions of the posterior superior temporal gyrus, responses to mouthing and reading aloud were equivalent, and in more ventral posterior superior temporal sulcus, responses were greater for reading aloud compared with mouthing while listening. These data demonstrate an anterior-posterior division of superior temporal regions where anterior fields are suppressed during motor output, potentially for the purpose of enhanced detection of the speech of others. We suggest posterior fields are engaged in auditory processing for the guidance of articulation by auditory information.	\N	\N
22984436	Amplitude modulation can serve as a cue for segregating streams of sounds from different sources. Here we evaluate stream segregation in humans using ABA- sequences of sinusoidally amplitude modulated (SAM) tones. A and B represent SAM tones with the same carrier frequency (1000, 4000 Hz) and modulation depth (30, 100%). The modulation frequency of the A signals (f(modA)) was 30, 100 or 300 Hz, respectively. The modulation frequency of the B signals was up to four octaves higher (Δf(mod)). Three different ABA- tone patterns varying in tone duration and stimulus onset asynchrony were presented to evaluate the effect of forward suppression. Subjects indicated their 1- or 2-stream percept on a touch screen at the end of each ABA- sequence (presentation time 5 or 15 s). Tone pattern, f(modA), Δf(mod), carrier frequency, modulation depth and presentation time significantly affected the percentage of a 2-stream percept. The human psychophysical results are compared to responses of avian forebrain neurons evoked by different ABA- SAM tone conditions [1] that were broadly overlapping those of the present study. The neurons also showed significant effects of tone pattern and Δf(mod) that were comparable to effects observed in the present psychophysical study. Depending on the carrier frequency, modulation frequency, modulation depth and the width of the auditory filters, SAM tones may provide mainly temporal cues (sidebands fall within the range of the filter), spectral cues (sidebands fall outside the range of the filter) or possibly both. A computational model based on excitation pattern differences was used to predict the 50% threshold of 2-stream responses. In conditions for which the model predicts a considerably larger 50% threshold of 2-stream responses (i.e., larger Δf(mod) at threshold) than was observed, it is unlikely that spectral cues can provide an explanation of stream segregation by SAM.	\N	\N
22992710	Auditory perception of vowels in background noise is enhanced when combined with visually perceived speech features. The objective of this study was to investigate whether the influence of visual cues on vowel perception extends to incongruent vowels, in a manner similar to the McGurk effect observed with consonants. Identification of Dutch front vowels /i, y, e, Y/ that share all features other than height and lip-rounding was measured for congruent and incongruent audiovisual conditions. The audio channel was systematically degraded by adding noise, increasing the reliance on visual cues. The height feature was more robustly carried over through the auditory channel and the lip-rounding feature through the visual channel. Hence, congruent audiovisual presentation enhanced identification, while incongruent presentation led to perceptual fusions and thus decreased identification. Visual cues influence the identification of congruent as well as incongruent audiovisual vowels. Incongruent visual information results in perceptual fusions, demonstrating that the McGurk effect can be instigated by long phonemes such as vowels. This result extends to the incongruent presentation of the visually less reliably perceived height. The findings stress the importance of audiovisual congruency in communication devices, such as cochlear implants and videoconferencing tools, where the auditory signal could be degraded.	\N	\N
22993261	Temporal selection poses unique challenges to the perceptual system. Selection is needed to protect goal-relevant stimuli from interference from new sensory input. In addition, contextual information that occurs at the same time as goal-relevant stimuli may be critical for learning. Using fMRI, we characterized how visual cortical regions respond to the temporal selection of auditory and visual stimuli. Critically, we focused on brain regions that are not involved in processing the target itself. Participants pressed a button when they heard a prespecified target tone and did not respond to other tones. Although more attention was directed to auditory input when the target tone was selected, activity in primary visual cortex increased more after target tones than after distractor tones. In contrast to spatial attention, this effect was larger in V1 than in V2 and V3. It was present in regions not typically involved in representing the target stimulus. Additional experiments demonstrated that these effects were not due to multimodal processing, rare targets, or motor responses to the targets. Thus temporal selection of behaviorally relevant stimuli enhances, rather than reduces, activity in perceptual regions involved in processing other information.	\N	\N
22995182	Auditory feedback plays an important role in monitoring vocal output and determining when adjustments are necessary. In this study a group of untrained singers participated in a frequency altered feedback experiment to examine if accuracy at matching a note could predict the degree of compensation to auditory feedback that was shifted in frequency. Participants were presented with a target note and instructed to match the note in pitch and duration. Following the onset of the participants' vocalizations their vocal pitch was shifted down one semi-tone at a random time during their utterance. This altered auditory feedback was instantaneously presented back to them through headphones. Results indicated that note matching accuracy did not correlate with compensation magnitude, however, a significant correlation was found between baseline variability and compensation magnitude. These results suggest that individuals with a more stable baseline fundamental frequency rely more on feedforward control mechanisms than individuals with more variable vocal production. This increased weighting of feedforward control means they are less sensitive to mismatches between their intended vocal production and auditory feedback.	\N	\N
23000118	Users of a cochlear implant together with a hearing aid in the non-implanted ear currently use devices that were developed separately and are often fitted separately. This results in very different growth of loudness with level in the two ears, potentially leading to decreased wearing comfort and suboptimal perception of interaural level differences. A loudness equalisation strategy, named 'SCORE bimodal', is proposed. It equalises loudness growth for the two modalities using existing models of loudness for acoustic and electric stimulation, and is suitable for implementation in wearable devices. Loudness balancing experiments were performed with six bimodal listeners to validate the strategy. In a first set of experiments, the function of each loudness model used was validated by balancing the loudness of four harmonic complexes of different bandwidths, ranging from 200 Hz to 1000 Hz, separately for each ear. Both the electric and acoustic loudness models predicted the data well. In a second set of experiments, binaural balancing was done for the same stimuli. It was found that SCORE significantly improved binaural balance.	\N	\N
23000801	Cochlear implants (CIs) help many deaf children achieve near-normal speech and language (S/L) milestones. Nevertheless, high levels of unexplained variability in S/L outcomes are limiting factors in improving the effectiveness of CIs in deaf children. The objective of this study was to longitudinally assess the role of verbal short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) capacity as a progress-limiting source of variability in S/L outcomes after CI in children. Longitudinal study of 66 children with CIs for prelingual severe-to-profound hearing loss. Outcome measures included performance on digit span forward (DSF), digit span backward (DSB), and four conventional S/L measures that examined spoken-word recognition (Phonetically Balanced Kindergarten word test), receptive vocabulary (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test ), sentence-recognition skills (Hearing in Noise Test), and receptive and expressive language functioning (Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals Fourth Edition Core Language Score; CELF). Growth curves for DSF and DSB in the CI sample over time were comparable in slope, but consistently lagged in magnitude relative to norms for normal-hearing peers of the same age. For DSF and DSB, 50.5% and 44.0%, respectively, of the CI sample scored more than 1 SD below the normative mean for raw scores across all ages. The first (baseline) DSF score significantly predicted all endpoint scores for the four S/L measures, and DSF slope (growth) over time predicted CELF scores. DSF baseline and slope accounted for an additional 13 to 31% of variance in S/L scores after controlling for conventional predictor variables such as: chronological age at time of testing, age at time of implantation, communication mode (auditory-oral communication versus total communication), and maternal education. Only DSB baseline scores predicted endpoint language scores on Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and CELF. DSB slopes were not significantly related to any endpoint S/L measures. DSB baseline scores and slopes taken together accounted for an additional 4 to 19% of variance in S/L endpoint measures after controlling for the conventional predictor variables. Verbal STM/WM scores, process measures of information capacity, develop at an average rate in the years after cochlear implantation, but were found to consistently lag in absolute magnitude behind those reported for normal-hearing peers. Baseline verbal STM/WM predicted long-term endpoint S/L outcomes, but verbal STM slopes predicted only endpoint language outcomes. Verbal STM/WM processing skills reflect important underlying core elementary neurocognitive functions and represent potential intervention targets for improving endpoint S/L outcomes in pediatric CI users.	\N	\N
23014760	In this paper, we present a Bayesian framework for the active multimodal perception of 3-D structure and motion. The design of this framework finds its inspiration in the role of the dorsal perceptual pathway of the human brain. Its composing models build upon a common egocentric spatial configuration that is naturally fitting for the integration of readings from multiple sensors using a Bayesian approach. In the process, we will contribute with efficient and robust probabilistic solutions for cyclopean geometry-based stereovision and auditory perception based only on binaural cues, modeled using a consistent formalization that allows their hierarchical use as building blocks for the multimodal sensor fusion framework. We will explicitly or implicitly address the most important challenges of sensor fusion using this framework, for vision, audition, and vestibular sensing. Moreover, interaction and navigation require maximal awareness of spatial surroundings, which, in turn, is obtained through active attentional and behavioral exploration of the environment. The computational models described in this paper will support the construction of a simultaneously flexible and powerful robotic implementation of multimodal active perception to be used in real-world applications, such as human-machine interaction or mobile robot navigation.	\N	\N
23015425	Depth-electrode recordings from the auditory cortex of humans undergoing presurgical evaluation for epilepsy allow the recording of ensemble responses to pitch in the form of local field potentials. These recordings allow another test of the hypothesis that there is a specialized neural ensemble for pitch within auditory cortex. Moreover, the technique allows recordings from multiple sites with millisecond temporal resolution to allow modeling of the effective connectivity between these sites. Here we argue that this takes the form of a hierarchical network of pitch-sensitive regions. Activity can be understood as reflecting predictive coding, in which perceptual predictions and error messages are continuously exchanged between a higher pitch center and lower-level auditory cortex.	\N	\N
23025156	Change blindness is the failure of observers to notice otherwise obvious changes to a visual scene when those changes are masked in some way (eg by blotches or a blanking ofthe screen). Typically, change blindness is taken as evidence that our representation of the visual world is capacity limited. The locus of this capacity limit is thought to be visual short-term memory (vSTM). The capacity of vSTM is usually estimated with a high-threshold model which assumes that each element in the stimulus array is either fully encoded or not encoded at all, and, furthermore, that false alarms can arise only by guessing, not by noise. Low-threshold models, by contrast, suggest that false alarms can arise by noise at the level of detection/discrimination and/or decision. In this study, we use a well-controlled stimulus display in which a single element changes over a blanking of the screen and contrast predictions from a popular high-threshold model of vSTM with the predictions of a low-threshold model (specifically, the sample-size model) of visual search and vSTM. The data were better predicted by the low-threshold model.	\N	\N
23025164	Cross-sensory correspondences automatically intrude on performance in elaborate laboratory tasks (see Spence 2011 Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 73 971-995, for a review). Outside such tasks, might they be responsible for some popular misconceptions about natural phenomena? Four simple demonstrations reveal how the correspondences between surface-lightness and weight, and between surface-lightness and auditory pitch, generate misconceptions about the weight and movement of objects and the vocalisations of animals. Specifically, people expect darker objects to be heavier than lighter-coloured objects, to free-fall more quickly, to roll across a table more slowly, and to make lower-pitched vocalisations when they come to life.	\N	\N
23028516	We physically interact with external stimuli when they occur within a limited space immediately surrounding the body, i.e., Peripersonal Space (PPS). In the primate brain, specific fronto-parietal areas are responsible for the multisensory representation of PPS, by integrating tactile, visual and auditory information occurring on and near the body. Dynamic stimuli are particularly relevant for PPS representation, as they might refer to potential harms approaching the body. However, behavioural tasks for studying PPS representation with moving stimuli are lacking. Here we propose a new dynamic audio-tactile interaction task in order to assess the extension of PPS in a more functionally and ecologically valid condition. Participants vocally responded to a tactile stimulus administered at the hand at different delays from the onset of task-irrelevant dynamic sounds which gave the impression of a sound source either approaching or receding from the subject's hand. Results showed that a moving auditory stimulus speeded up the processing of a tactile stimulus at the hand as long as it was perceived at a limited distance from the hand, that is within the boundaries of PPS representation. The audio-tactile interaction effect was stronger when sounds were approaching compared to when sounds were receding. This study provides a new method to dynamically assess pps representation: The function describing the relationship between tactile processing and the position of sounds in space can be used to estimate the location of PPS boundaries, along a spatial continuum between far and near space, in a valuable and ecologically significant way.	\N	\N
23029113	An auditory neuron can preserve the temporal fine structure of a low-frequency tone by phase-locking its response to the stimulus. Apart from sound localization, however, much about the role of this temporal information for signal processing in the brain remains unknown. Through psychoacoustic studies we provide direct evidence that humans employ temporal fine structure to discriminate between frequencies. To this end we construct tones that are based on a single frequency but in which, through the concatenation of wavelets, the phase changes randomly every few cycles. We then test the frequency discrimination of these phase-changing tones, of control tones without phase changes, and of short tones that consist of a single wavelet. For carrier frequencies below a few kilohertz we find that phase changes systematically worsen frequency discrimination. No such effect appears for higher carrier frequencies at which temporal information is not available in the central auditory system.	\N	\N
23029492	Findings on song perception and song production have increasingly suggested that common but partially distinct neural networks exist for processing lyrics and melody. However, the neural substrates of song recognition remain to be investigated. The purpose of this study was to examine the neural substrates involved in the accessing "song lexicon" as corresponding to a representational system that might provide links between the musical and phonological lexicons using positron emission tomography (PET). We exposed participants to auditory stimuli consisting of familiar and unfamiliar songs presented in three ways: sung lyrics (song), sung lyrics on a single pitch (lyrics), and the sung syllable 'la' on original pitches (melody). The auditory stimuli were designed to have equivalent familiarity to participants, and they were recorded at exactly the same tempo. Eleven right-handed nonmusicians participated in four conditions: three familiarity decision tasks using song, lyrics, and melody and a sound type decision task (control) that was designed to engage perceptual and prelexical processing but not lexical processing. The contrasts (familiarity decision tasks versus control) showed no common areas of activation between lyrics and melody. This result indicates that essentially separate neural networks exist in semantic memory for the verbal and melodic processing of familiar songs. Verbal lexical processing recruited the left fusiform gyrus and the left inferior occipital gyrus, whereas melodic lexical processing engaged the right middle temporal sulcus and the bilateral temporo-occipital cortices. Moreover, we found that song specifically activated the left posterior inferior temporal cortex, which may serve as an interface between verbal and musical representations in order to facilitate song recognition.	\N	\N
23033450	This study aimed to compare sound production errors arising due to phonological processing impairment with errors arising due to motor speech impairment. Two speakers with similar clinical profiles who produced similar consonant cluster simplification errors were examined using a repetition task. We compared both overall accuracy and acoustic details of hundreds of productions with target consonant clusters to tokens with singletons. Changes in accuracy over the course of the study were also compared. In target words with consonant cluster simplification, the individual whose errors reflected phonological impairment produced articulatory timing consistent with singleton onsets. These productions improved when resyllabification was possible, but error rates were not affected by exposure. In contrast, the individual with motoric-based errors produced simplifications that contained the articulatory timing associated with clusters. Accuracy was not affected by the ability to resyllabify, but it did significantly improve following repeated production. Our findings reveal clear differences between errors arising in phonological processing and in motor planning that reflect the underlying systems. The changes over the course of the study suggest that error types with different sources are responsive to different intervention strategies.	\N	\N
23036182	The present event-related potential (ERP) study examined the developmental mechanisms of auditory-vocal integration in normally developing children. Neurophysiological responses to altered auditory feedback were recorded to determine whether they are affected by age and sex. Forty-two children were pairwise matched for sex and were divided into a group of younger (10-12years) and a group of older (13-15years) children. Twenty healthy young adults (20-25years) also participated in the experiment. ERPs were recorded from the participants who heard their voice pitch feedback unexpectedly shifted -50, -100, or -200 cents during sustained vocalization. P1 amplitudes became smaller as subjects increased in age from childhood to adulthood, and males produced larger N1 amplitudes than females. An age-related decrease in the P1-N1 latencies was also found: latencies were shorter in young adults than in school children. A complex age-by-sex interaction was found for the P2 component, where an age-related increase in P2 amplitudes existed only in girls, and boys produced longer P2 latencies than girls but only in the older children. These findings demonstrate that neurophysiological responses to pitch errors in voice auditory feedback depend on age and sex in normally developing children. The present study provides evidence that there is a sex-specific development of the neural mechanisms involved in auditory-vocal integration.	\N	\N
23047260	To determine the effect of oral steroid treatment on hearing in unilateral Ménière's disease and endolymphatic hydrops patients. Retrospective chart review. Tertiary referral center. All patients presenting during the 2010 calendar year with confirmed unilateral Ménière's disease or endolymphatic hydrops. Those with a first visit and second visit audiogram (n = 58) were included in the analysis of oral steroid treatment effect. Steroid treatment for hearing loss. Change in hearing, as defined by change in affected ear threshold values or speech discrimination score from pretreatment visit to posttreatment visit. Hearing (threshold, speech discrimination score) in patients' affected ear did not significantly change from first visit to second visit after treatment with steroids relative to patients who did not receive steroid treatment. The results of this and other studies would indicate that a Ménière's disease or endolymphatic hydrops patient is unlikely to experience an improvement in hearing from a short course of oral steroid. Clinically observed temporary improvement did not sustain over several months. Further work to elucidate the mechanisms underlying hearing loss in hydrops, perhaps focusing on the dendrite damage noted in animal models of hydrops, is warranted.	\N	\N
23056592	Time-compressed speech, a form of rapidly presented speech, is harder to comprehend than natural speech, especially for non-native speakers. Although it is possible to adapt to time-compressed speech after a brief exposure, it is not known whether additional perceptual learning occurs with further practice. Here, we ask whether multiday training on time-compressed speech yields more learning than that observed during the initial adaptation phase and whether the pattern of generalization following successful learning is different than that observed with initial adaptation only. Two groups of non-native Hebrew speakers were tested on five different conditions of time-compressed speech identification in two assessments conducted 10-14 days apart. Between those assessments, one group of listeners received five practice sessions on one of the time-compressed conditions. Between the two assessments, trained listeners improved significantly more than untrained listeners on the trained condition. Furthermore, the trained group generalized its learning to two untrained conditions in which different talkers presented the trained speech materials. In addition, when the performance of the non-native speakers was compared to that of a group of naïve native Hebrew speakers, performance of the trained group was equivalent to that of the native speakers on all conditions on which learning occurred, whereas performance of the untrained non-native listeners was substantially poorer. Multiday training on time-compressed speech results in significantly more perceptual learning than brief adaptation. Compared to previous studies of adaptation, the training induced learning is more stimulus specific. Taken together, the perceptual learning of time-compressed speech appears to progress from an initial, rapid adaptation phase to a subsequent prolonged and more stimulus specific phase. These findings are consistent with the predictions of the Reverse Hierarchy Theory of perceptual learning and suggest constraints on the use of perceptual-learning regimens during second language acquisition.	\N	\N
23059750	The ability to identify stop consonants from brief onset spectra was compared between a group of Chinese children with phonological dyslexia (the PD group, with a mean age of 10 years 4 months) and a group of chronological age-matched control children. The linguistic context, which included vowels and speakers, and durations of stop onset spectra were varied. Children with PD showed lower identification accuracy and exhibited a smaller vowel context effect for some stop-vowel combinations compared with the chronological age-matched control group. Further analyses revealed that the PD group had more variable response patterns, and their responses were less consistent with the acoustic characteristics of stop onset spectra. The results suggest that Chinese children with PD do not show greater sensitivity to allophonic acoustic variability compared with control children and exhibit a generally less robust response pattern to phonetic categories.	\N	\N
23085111	Recent electrophysiological studies have reported short latency modulations in cortical regions for multisensory stimuli, thereby suggesting a subcortical, possibly thalamic origin of these modulations. Concurrently, there is an ongoing debate, whether multisensory interplay reflects automatic, bottom-up driven processes or relies on top-down influences. Here, we dissociated the effects of task set and stimulus configurations on BOLD-signals in the human thalamus with event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We orthogonally manipulated temporal and spatial congruency of audio-visual stimulus configurations, while subjects judged either their temporal or spatial congruency. Voxel-based fMRI results revealed increased fMRI-signals for the temporal versus spatial task in posterior and central thalamus, respectively. A more sensitive region of interest (ROI)-analysis confirmed that the posterior thalamic nuclei showed a preference for the temporal task and central thalamic nuclei for the spatial task. Moreover, the ROI-analysis also revealed enhanced fMRI-signals for spatially incongruent stimuli in the central thalamus. Together, our results demonstrate that both audio-visual stimulus configurations and task-related processing of spatial or temporal stimulus features selectively modulate thalamic processing and thus are in a position to influence cortical processing at an early stage.	\N	\N
23088507	Sensitivity to frequency ratios is essential for the perceptual processing of complex sounds and the appreciation of music. This study assessed the effect of ratio simplicity on ratio discrimination for pure tones presented either simultaneously or sequentially. Each stimulus consisted of four 100-ms pure tones, equally spaced in terms of frequency ratio and presented at a low intensity to limit interactions in the auditory periphery. Listeners had to discriminate between a reference frequency ratio of 0.97 octave (about 1.96:1) and target frequency ratios, which were larger than the reference. In the simultaneous condition, the obtained psychometric functions were nonmonotonic: as the target frequency ratio increased from 0.98 octave to 1.04 octaves, discrimination performance initially increased, then decreased, and then increased again; performance was better when the target was exactly one octave (2:1) than when the target was slightly larger. In the sequential condition, by contrast, the psychometric functions were monotonic and there was no effect of frequency ratio simplicity. A control experiment verified that the non-monotonicity observed in the simultaneous condition did not originate from peripheral interactions between the tones. Our results indicate that simultaneous octaves are recognized as "special" frequency intervals by a mechanism that is insensitive to the sign (positive or negative) of deviations from the octave, whereas this is apparently not the case for sequential octaves.	\N	\N
23094319	The paper reports on a perception experiment in German that investigated the neuro-cognitive processing of information structural concepts and their prosodic marking using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Experimental conditions controlled the information status (given vs. new) of referring and non-referring target expressions (nouns vs. adjectives) and were elicited via context sentences, which did not - unlike most previous ERP studies in the field--trigger an explicit focus expectation. Target utterances displayed prosodic realizations of the critical words which differed in accent position and accent type. Electrophysiological results showed an effect of information status, maximally distributed over posterior sites, displaying a biphasic N400--Late Positivity pattern for new information. We claim that this pattern reflects increased processing demands associated with new information, with the N400 indicating enhanced costs from linking information with the previous discourse and the Late Positivity indicating the listener's effort to update his/her discourse model. The prosodic manipulation registered more pronounced effects over anterior regions and revealed an enhanced negativity followed by a Late Positivity for deaccentuation, probably also reflecting costs from discourse linking and updating respectively. The data further lend indirect support for the idea that givenness applies not only to referents but also to non-referential expressions ('lexical givenness').	\N	\N
23095266	A retrospective review was performed of patients treated for middle ear cholesteatoma with bone defects of the skull base via a combined transmastoid/middle fossa approach at the University of Tsukuba Hospital from 2006 through 2011 to determine the safety and effectiveness of a combined transmastoid/middle fossa approach for the treatment of cholesteatoma involving the middle cranial fossa. The bone defects of the skull base were reconstructed with a galeal flap pedicled with a parietal branch of the superficial temporal artery and an autologous bone flap. The clinical and radiological data were analyzed. This series included 8 patients (6 men and 2 women) with a mean age of 46.3 years (range 10-67 years). One of the patients preoperatively exhibited meningoencephalocele of the middle fossa skull base, and in the remaining 7 patients, petrous bone involvement such as involvement of the supralabyrinthine cells was observed. The cholesteatoma lesion was totally removed and inner ear function preserved in all the patients. Cerebrospinal fluid leakage was observed in 1 patient during and after the surgery. Neither meningitis nor recurrence was observed in any patient during the follow-up periods (mean 29.4 months, range 6-64 months). The combined transmastoid/middle fossa approach allowed complete removal of cholesteatoma with middle cranial fossa involvement while preserving hearing and preventing postoperative cerebrospinal fluid leakage and meningitis.	\N	\N
23102977	For children, learning often occurs in the presence of background noise. As such, there is growing desire to improve a child's access to a target signal in noise. Given adult musicians' perceptual and neural speech-in-noise enhancements, we asked whether similar effects are present in musically-trained children. We assessed the perception and subcortical processing of speech in noise and related cognitive abilities in musician and nonmusician children that were matched for a variety of overarching factors. Outcomes reveal that musicians' advantages for processing speech in noise are present during pivotal developmental years. Supported by correlations between auditory working memory and attention and auditory brainstem response properties, we propose that musicians' perceptual and neural enhancements are driven in a top-down manner by strengthened cognitive abilities with training. Our results may be considered by professionals involved in the remediation of language-based learning deficits, which are often characterized by poor speech perception in noise.	\N	\N
23103362	Adolescence is a time of great change in the brain in terms of structure and function. It is possible to track the development of neural function across adolescence using auditory event-related potentials (ERPs). We measured passive auditory ERPs to pure tones and consonant-vowel (CV) syllables in 90 children and adolescents aged 10-18 years, as well as 10 adults. With one exception, the pattern of results were the same for tones and speech: Across adolescence, the P1 ERP peak decreased in size and latency, the N1 increased in size and decreased in latency, the P2 remained constant in size, and the N2 decreased in size but remained stable across adolescence. The exception was P2 latency, which increased for speech but remained stable for tones. Interesting step-like changes were observed for N1 latency for both tones and speech stimuli in 15- to 16-year-olds. These may stem from rapid hormonal changes that affect neurotransmitter activity of the ERP-generating neurons.	\N	\N
23103517	The present study builds on our previous study within the framework of Wyer and Collin's comprehension-elaboration theory of humor processing. In this study, an attempt is made to segregate the neural substrates of incongruity detection and incongruity resolution during the comprehension of verbal jokes. Although a number of fMRI studies have investigated the incongruity-resolution process, the differential neurological substrates of comprehension are still not fully understood. The present study utilized an event-related fMRI design incorporating three conditions (unfunny, nonsensical and funny) to examine distinct brain regions associated with the detection and resolution of incongruities. Stimuli in the unfunny condition contained no incongruities; stimuli in the nonsensical condition contained irresolvable incongruities; and stimuli in the funny condition contained resolvable incongruities. The results showed that the detection of incongruities was associated with greater activation in the right middle temporal gyrus and right medial frontal gyrus, and the resolution of incongruities with greater activation in the left superior frontal gyrus and left inferior parietal lobule. Further analysis based on participants' rating scores provided converging results. Our findings suggest a three-stage neural circuit model of verbal humor processing: incongruity detection and incongruity resolution during humor comprehension and inducement of the feeling of amusement during humor elaboration.	\N	\N
23106730	The acquisition of the function of case-marking is a key step in the development of sentence processing for German-speaking children since case-marking reveals the relations between sentential arguments. In this study, we investigated the development of the processing of case-marking and argument structures in children at 3, 4;6 and 6 years of age, as well as its processing in adults. Using EEG, we measured event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to object-initial compared to subject-initial German sentences including transitive verbs and case-marked noun phrases referring to animate arguments. We also tested children's behavioral competence in a sentence-picture matching task. Word order and case-marking were manipulated in German main clauses. Adults' behavioral performance was close to perfect and their ERPs revealed a negativity for the processing of the topicalized accusative marked noun phrase (NP1) and no effect for the second NP (NP2) in the object-initial structure. Children's behavioral data showed a significant above-chance outcome in the subject-initial condition for all age groups, but not for the object-initial condition. In contrast to adults, the ERPs of 3-year-olds showed a positivity at NP1, indicating difficulties in processing the non-canonical object-initial structures. Children at the age of 4;6 did not differ in the processing patterns of object-initial vs. subject-initial sentences at NP1 but showed a slight positivity at NP2. This positivity at NP2, which implies syntactic integration difficulties, is more pronounced in 6-year-olds but is absent in adults. At NP1, however, 6-year-olds show the same negativity as adults. In sum, the behavioral and electrophysiological findings demonstrate that children in each age group use different strategies, which are indicative of their developmental stage. While 3-year-olds merely detect differences in the two sentence structures without being able to use this information for sentence comprehension, 4;6-year-olds proceed to use mainly a word-order strategy, processing NP1 in both conditions in the same manner, which leads to processing difficulties upon detecting case-marking cues at NP2. At the age of 6, children are able to use case-marking cues for comprehension but still show enhanced effort for correct thematic-role assignment.	\N	\N
23106737	Integrating the multisensory features of talking faces is critical to learning and extracting coherent meaning from social signals. While we know much about the development of these capacities at the behavioral level, we know very little about the underlying neural processes. One prominent behavioral milestone of these capacities is the perceptual narrowing of face-voice matching, whereby young infants match faces and voices across species, but older infants do not. In the present study, we provide neurophysiological evidence for developmental decline in cross-species face-voice matching. We measured event-related brain potentials (ERPs) while 4- and 8-month-old infants watched and listened to congruent and incongruent audio-visual presentations of monkey vocalizations and humans mimicking monkey vocalizations. The ERP results indicated that younger infants distinguished between the congruent and the incongruent faces and voices regardless of species, whereas in older infants, the sensitivity to multisensory congruency was limited to the human face and voice. Furthermore, with development, visual and frontal brain processes and their functional connectivity became more sensitive to the congruence of human faces and voices relative to monkey faces and voices. Our data show the neural correlates of perceptual narrowing in face-voice matching and support the notion that postnatal experience with species identity is associated with neural changes in multisensory processing (Lewkowicz & Ghazanfar, 2009).	\N	\N
23110123	The common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) is a small New World primate that has increasingly been used as a non-human model in the fields of sensory, motor, and cognitive neuroscience. However, little knowledge exists regarding behavioral methods in this species. Developing an understanding of the neural basis of perception and cognition in an animal model requires measurement of both brain activity and behavior. Here we describe an operant conditioning behavioral training method developed to allow controlled psychoacoustic measurements in marmosets. We demonstrate that marmosets can be trained to consistently perform a Go/No-Go auditory task in which a subject licks at a feeding tube when it detects a sound. Correct responses result in delivery of a food reward. Crucially, this operant conditioning task generates little body movement and is well suited for pairing behavior with single-unit electrophysiology. Successful implementation of an operant conditioning behavior opens the door to a wide range of new studies in the field of auditory neuroscience using the marmoset as a model system.	\N	\N
23110674	Evaluation of pure-tone audiometry (PTA) in hearing screening of a population with mild to profound intellectual disability (ID). PTA was performed at six frequencies at the screening level 20 dB HL. Referral criteria were threshold levels ≥ 25 dB HL at two or more frequencies for one ear or both. 1478 participants aged 7-91 years were included. 1470 (99.5%) people cooperated in screening of which 1325 (90%) could be tested on both ears at all six frequencies. A majority, 987 (66.8%), performed ordinary PTA, 234 (15.8%) conditioned play audiometry, and 249 (16.9%) behavioural observation audiometry. Six hundred and sixty-nine (45%) passed and 809 (55%) failed according to referral criteria. Of those failing, 441 (54.5%) accepted referral to clinical evaluation. PTA with slight modifications is applicable for screening of a population with mild to profound intellectual disability. The most challenging and time-consuming activity is to introduce the test procedure in a way that reduces anxiety and establishes trust.	\N	\N
23116815	The supratemporal plane contains several functionally heterogeneous subregions that respond strongly to speech. Much of the prior work on the issue of speech processing in the supratemporal plane has focused on neural responses to single speech vs. non-speech sounds rather than focusing on higher-level computations that are required to process more complex auditory sequences. Here we examined how information is integrated over time for speech and non-speech sounds by quantifying the BOLD fMRI response to stochastic (non-deterministic) sequences of speech and non-speech naturalistic sounds that varied in their statistical structure (from random to highly structured sequences) during passive listening. Behaviorally, the participants were accurate in segmenting speech and non-speech sequences, though they were more accurate for speech. Several supratemporal regions showed increased activation magnitude for speech sequences (preference), but, importantly, this did not predict sensitivity to statistical structure: (i) several areas showing a speech preference were sensitive to statistical structure in both speech and non-speech sequences, and (ii) several regions that responded to both speech and non-speech sounds showed distinct responses to statistical structure in speech and non-speech sequences. While the behavioral findings highlight the tight relation between statistical structure and segmentation processes, the neuroimaging results suggest that the supratemporal plane mediates complex statistical processing for both speech and non-speech sequences and emphasize the importance of studying the neurocomputations associated with auditory sequence processing. These findings identify new partitions of functionally distinct areas in the supratemporal plane that cannot be evoked by single stimuli. The findings demonstrate the importance of going beyond input preference to examine the neural computations implemented in the superior temporal plane.	\N	\N
23117057	Introducing coherent masker envelope modulation to frequency regions neighboring the signal frequency can reduce detection thresholds for a pure-tone signal. Verhey and Ernst (2009) reported that irregular masker modulation conferred greater benefit than regular modulation when the masker was broadband, but that there was no difference when the masker was narrowband. The present study evaluated two possible explanations for this result: one based on modulation adaptation and the other based on the introduction of relatively long-duration modulation minima in the irregular masker modulation condition. The first experiment replicated the results of Verhey and Ernst (2009), but also included conditions in which a 12.5-ms signal was presented in a 12.5-ms modulation minimum, which was exempted from envelope jitter. The second experiment used a continuous masker and suspended jitter during epochs associated with either a 12.5- or 87.5-ms signal. No benefit of masker envelope irregularity before or after the signal was observed in either experiment. These findings are inconsistent with an explanation based on modulation adaptation, implicating instead the introduction of relatively long-duration modulation minima in the large masking release obtained for a long-duration signal in an irregularly modulated masker.	\N	\N
23123219	The current study was undertaken to investigate changes in forward masking patterns using on-frequency and off-frequency maskers of 7 and 10 kHz probes in the Sprague-Dawley rat. Off-frequency forward masking growth functions have been shown in humans to be non-linear, while on-frequency functions behave linearly. The non-linear nature of the off-frequency functions is attributable to active processing from the outer hair cells, and was therefore expected to be sensitive to noise-induced cochlear damage. For the study, nine Sprague-Dawley rats' auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) were recorded with and without forward maskers. Forward masker-induced changes in latency and amplitude of the initial positive peak of the rats' auditory brainstem responses were assessed with both off-frequency and on-frequency maskers. The rats were then exposed to a noise designed to induce 20-40 dB of permanent threshold shift. Twenty-one days after the noise exposure, the forward masking growth functions were measured to assess noise-induced changes in the off-frequency and on-frequency forward masking patterns. Pre-exposure results showed compressive non-linear masking effects of the off-frequency conditions on both latency and amplitude of the auditory brainstem response. The noise rendered the off-frequency forward masking patterns more linear, consistent with human behavioral findings. On- and off-frequency forward masking growth functions were calculated, and they displayed patterns consistent with human behavioral functions, both prior to noise and after the noise exposure.	\N	\N
23132604	Common-coding theory posits that (1) perceiving an action activates the same representations of motor plans that are activated by actually performing that action, and (2) because of individual differences in the ways that actions are performed, observing recordings of one's own previous behavior activates motor plans to an even greater degree than does observing someone else's behavior. We hypothesized that if observing oneself activates motor plans to a greater degree than does observing others, and if these activated plans contribute to perception, then people should be able to lipread silent video clips of their own previous utterances more accurately than they can lipread video clips of other talkers. As predicted, two groups of participants were able to lipread video clips of themselves, recorded more than two weeks earlier, significantly more accurately than video clips of others. These results suggest that visual input activates speech motor activity that links to word representations in the mental lexicon.	\N	\N
23135616	The objective was to develop and evaluate a new sentence test, the Sentence Test with Adaptive Randomized Roving levels, intended to emulate everyday listening experience, using both normal-hearing (NH) and cochlear implant (CI) groups, examining practicality, learning, test-retest variability, and interlist variability. In experiment 1, each of 25 NH adults was tested using five lists, each comprising 30 sentences. One male and one female speaker each spoke 15 sentences. Ten sentences were presented at each of three presentation levels: 50, 65, and 80 dB SPL. The relative level of a speech-shaped noise was varied adaptively to estimate the speech reception threshold (SRT). Counterbalance for list order was achieved by staggering the allocation of lists to participants. To allow assessment of learning effects, no practice was given. The variability of mean SRTs across lists was small, but correction factors were derived for each list so that, after correction, all lists gave the same mean SRT. Test-retest variability was estimated by examining the corrected SRTs for each subject's five lists. In experiment 2, 25 CI users each received one test list after a small amount of practice. Experiment 3 examined the effect of speech rate using time-compressed speech, for age-matched NH and CI users. The mean SRT for the NH participants was approximately -6 dB and was similar for the male and female speakers. There was a small but significant improvement in SRTs between the first and later lists administered, but no further improvement for subsequent lists. On the basis of the variability of the corrected SRTs within each participant, a 2.2 dB difference in SRT is meaningful for comparisons using one test list per condition, for a single participant. The percentage of key words correct varied with presentation level over a 13% range, being best at 65 dB SPL. Only 40% of the CI group achieved an SRT lower than 20 dB for both speakers. There was large individual variability in the SRTs, and SRTs were higher for the female than for the male speaker. For the CI participants, the percentage of key words correct varied markedly with level, from 19% at the lowest level to 57% at the medium level. Time compression had a small effect for NH participants but a very large effect for CI participants. The Sentence Test with Adaptive Randomized Roving levels seems practical to administer and is reasonably sensitive. For NH participants, a 2.2 dB difference in SRT is meaningful for a single list per condition and a single participant. Although learning effects were small for NH participants, it seems prudent to provide some practice sentences when testing hearing-impaired or CI participants. The very large effect of time compression for the CI group has implications for live voice testing of children, because speech rate is only poorly controlled in such testing.	\N	\N
23144191	This is the first study on adults' physiological reactivity to infant cry sounds and the association with intended harsh parenting using salivary α-amylase (sAA) as a novel and noninvasive marker of autonomic nervous system activity. The sample consisted of 184 adult twin pairs. In an experimental design, cry sounds were presented and adults' perception and their intended caregiving responses were measured. Saliva samples were collected after each cry sound. For the majority of the sample, a decrease in sAA across the cry paradigm was observed. However, adults who indicated that they would respond in a harsh way to the crying infant were significantly less likely to show a decrease in sAA. Consistent with previous studies on physiological hyperreactivity in abusive parents, these findings suggest that failure to habituate to repeated infant crying may be one of the mediating mechanisms through which excessive, inconsolable, and high-pitched infant crying triggers less optimal caregiving.	\N	\N
23145600	Subjective evaluation of acoustics was studied by recording nine concert halls with a simulated symphony orchestra on a seat 12 m from the orchestra. The recorded music was spatially reproduced for subjective listening tests and individual vocabulary profiling. In addition, the preferences of the assessors and objective parameters were gathered. The results show that concert halls were discriminated using perceptual characteristics, such as Envelopment/Loudness, Reverberance, Bassiness, Proximity, Definition, and Clarity. With these perceptual dimensions the preference ratings can be explained. Seventeen assessors were divided into two groups based on their preferences. The first group preferred concert halls with relatively intimate sound, in which it is quite easy to hear individual instruments and melody lines. In contrast, the second group preferred a louder and more reverberant sound with good envelopment and strong bass. Even though all halls were recorded exactly at the same distance, the preference is best explained with subjective Proximity and with Bassiness, Envelopment, and Loudness to some extent. Neither the preferences nor the subjective ratings could be fully explained by objective parameters (ISO3382-1:2009), although some correlations were found.	\N	\N
23151776	To examine and compare the family environment of preschool- and school-age children with cochlear implants and assess its influence on children's executive function and spoken language skills. Retrospective between-subjects design. Outpatient research laboratory. Prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants and no additional disabilities and their families. Cochlear implantation and speech-language therapy. Parents completed the Family Environment Scale and the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (or the preschool version). Children were tested using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-4 and either the Preschool Language Scales-4 or the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-4. The family environments of children with cochlear implants differed from normative data obtained from hearing children, but average scores were within 1 standard deviation of norms on all subscales. Families of school-age children reported higher levels of control than those of preschool-age children. Preschool-age children had fewer problems with emotional control when families reported higher levels of support and lower levels of conflict. School-age children had fewer problems with inhibition but more problems with shifting of attention when families reported lower levels of conflict. School-age children's receptive vocabularies were enhanced by families with lower levels of control and higher levels of organization. Family environment and its relation to language skills and executive function development differed across the age groups in this sample of children with cochlear implants. Because family dynamics is one developmental/environmental factor that can be altered with therapy and education, the present results have important clinical implications for family-based interventions for deaf children with cochlear implants.	\N	\N
23151778	To present the preliminary results of new malleus replacement prosthesis combined with a total ossicular prosthesis in middle ear reconstruction in patients missing the malleus and stapes. Prospective experimental and nonrandomized clinical study. Tertiary referral center. An original titanium malleus replacement prosthesis (MRP) was designed to be inserted into the external auditory canal and to replace a missing malleus for various middle ear pathologies. The MRP was tested experimentally and clinically. The vibratory properties of the new prosthesis were measured using laser Doppler vibrometry. Ninety patients with missing malleus and stapes, undergoing 92 ossicular reconstructions were enrolled in this study from September 1994 to March 2012. Comparative analyses were made between a group of 34 cases of ossicular reconstructions with total prosthesis (TORP) positioned from the tympanic membrane to the stapes footplate (TM-to-footplate assembly) and a group of 58 cases of ossicular reconstructions with TORP positioned from a newly designed malleus replacement prosthesis (MRP) to the stapes footplate (MRP-to-footplate assembly). Preoperative and postoperative audiometric evaluation using conventional audiometry, that is, air-bone gap (ABG), bone-conduction thresholds (BC), and air-conduction thresholds (AC) were assessed. Experimentally, the vibratory properties of the MRP are promising and remain very good even when the MRP is cemented into the bony canal wall mimicking its complete osseous-integration, if this were to occur. This finding supports the short-term clinical results as in the TM-to-footplate group; the 3-month postoperative mean ABG was 23.3 dB compared with 12.5 dB in the MRP-to-footplate group (difference, 10.8; 95% confidence interval, 4.0-17.6); 37.0% of patients from the TM-to-footplate group had a postoperative ABG of 10 dB or less, and 48.1% of patients had a postoperative ABG of 20 dB or less, as compared with 58.1% and 79.1%, respectively, in the MRP-to-footplate group. The average gain in AC was 11.0 dB in the TM-to-footplate group as compared with 21.3 dB in the MRP-to-footplate group (difference, -10.3; 95% confidence interval, -18.2 to -2.4). The results of this study indicate that superior postoperative hearing thresholds could be achieved using a MRP-to-footplate assembly, compared with a TM-to-footplate assembly in patients with an absent malleus undergoing ossiculoplasty. The postoperative AC thresholds, after 3 months and 1 year, are significantly lower in patients treated with the MRP-to-footplate assembly.	\N	\N
23156899	The study presented in this paper aimed to investigate the pattern of semantic priming effects, under masked and unmasked conditions, in the lexical decision task, manipulating type of semantic relation and associative strength. Three different kinds of word relations were examined in two experiments: only-semantically related words [e.g., codo (elbow)-rodilla (knee)] and semantic/associative related words with strong [e.g., mesa (table)-silla (chair) and weak association strength [e.g., sapo (toad)-rana (frog)]. In Experiment 1 a masked priming procedure was used with a prime duration of 56 ms, and in Experiment 2, the prime was presented unmasked for 150 ms. The results showed that there were masked priming effects with strong associates, but no evidence of these effects was found with weak associates or only-semantic related word pairs. When the prime was presented unmasked, the three types of relations produced significant priming effects and they were not influenced by association strength.	\N	\N
23165224	This study describes a vocoder-based frequency-lowering system that enhances spectral cues for nonsonorant consonants differing in place of articulation. The goal of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of this system for speech recognition by hearing-impaired listeners. Experiment 1 evaluated fricative consonant recognition in quiet. Eight fricatives in /VCV/ context were used. Experiment 2 evaluated consonant recognition in quiet with 22 consonants. Six listeners with steeply sloping high-frequency sensorineural hearing loss participated in experiment 1. The same six listeners and three additional listeners with flat/mid-frequency sensorineural hearing loss participated in experiment 2. Two processing conditions-frequency lowering and conventional amplification-were tested in each experiment. Insertion gains based on the NAL-RP formula were provided up to 8000 Hz for each processing condition. In addition, speech stimuli were low-pass (LP) filtered at 1000, 1500, and 2000 Hz to evaluate the effect of lack of high-frequency speech information on consonant perception with and without frequency lowering. For these LP speech conditions, amplification was provided up to the cutoff frequencies. Overall percent correct and percent information transmission were calculated for each processing and speech condition. The frequency-lowering system provided significant benefit for the perception of fricative consonants and perception of the place-of-articulation feature for hearing-impaired listeners without affecting their perception of sonorant consonants and other consonant features (i.e., voicing and nasality). The improvement of fricative consonant perception was observed for both wideband and LP speech conditions for the steeply sloping hearing-loss listeners. The results indicate that individuals with unaidable hearing loss above 1000 to 2000 Hz would receive significant benefit with the system compared with conventional amplification for the perception of fricative consonants, and more importantly, significant benefit for the perception of place of articulation.	\N	\N
23165382	To objectively determine changes in sensorineural hearing in children with mucopolysaccharidosis (MPS) by comparing audiological data before and after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). Retrospective medical chart analysis. Tertiary referral hospital. Thirty pediatric patients with the diagnosis of MPS who underwent HSCT and had audiological data before and after HSCT. Data were extracted from medical charts for patients seen at our institution from January 1, 1999, to December 1, 2009. Hearing was assessed using behavioral audiometry testing and auditory brainstem responses (ABR) before and after HSCT. Patient demographics, diagnosis, and age at HSCT were also evaluated. Thirty patients with MPS were included. Four (13%) had MPS type 3a, 2 (7%) had MPS type 2, and 24 (80%) had MPS type 1. The average age at HSCT was 19 months (range, 5-44 months). Hearing improvement was evaluated by audiogram (20 patients), ABR (8 patients), and qualitative measures (30 patients). On average, patients did not show improvement on audiogram (P = .28; paired t test). The ABR click threshold improved 19 dB on average (P < .001). Qualitatively, 3 patients had normal hearing before and after HSCT. Of the remaining 27 patients, 20 (67%) showed improvement in sensorineural hearing (P < .001). Five (17%) had hearing loss and did not improve. Two (7%) had worsening hearing. Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation at the age of 25 months or younger was significantly correlated with hearing improvement (P = .03). Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation may provide improvement in MPS-associated sensorineural hearing loss. Hearing improvement is more likely to occur in patients who undergo transplantation at 25 months or younger.	\N	\N
23166292	Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was employed to identify neural regions engaged during the encoding of contextual features belonging to different modalities. Subjects studied objects that were presented to the left or right of fixation. Each object was paired with its name, spoken in either a male or a female voice. The test requirement was to discriminate studied from unstudied pictures and, for each picture judged old, to retrieve its study location and the gender of the voice that spoke its name. Study trials associated with accurate rather than inaccurate location memory demonstrated enhanced activity in the fusiform and parahippocampal cortex and the hippocampus and reduced activity (a negative subsequent memory effect) in the medial occipital cortex. Successful encoding of voice information was associated with enhanced study activity in the right middle superior temporal sulcus and activity reduction in the right superior frontal cortex. These findings support the proposal that encoding of a contextual feature is associated with enhanced activity in regions engaged during its online processing. In addition, they indicate that negative subsequent memory effects can also demonstrate feature-selectivity. Relative to other classes of study trials, trials for which both contextual features were later retrieved demonstrated enhanced activity in the lateral occipital complex and reduced activity in the temporo-parietal junction. These findings suggest that multifeatural encoding was facilitated when the study item was processed efficiently and study processing was not interrupted by redirection of attention toward extraneous events.	\N	\N
23167712	Despite its fundamental relevance for representing the emotional world surrounding us, human affective neuroscience research has widely neglected the auditory system, at least in comparison to the visual domain. Here, we have investigated the spatiotemporal dynamics of human affective auditory processing using time-sensitive whole-head magnetoencephalography. A novel and highly challenging affective associative learning procedure, 'MultiCS conditioning', involving multiple conditioned stimuli (CS) per affective category, was adopted to test whether previous findings from intramodal conditioning of multiple click-tones with an equal number of auditory emotional scenes (Bröckelmann et al., 2011 J. Neurosci., 31, 7801) would generalise to crossmodal conditioning of multiple click-tones with an electric shock as single aversive somatosensory unconditioned stimulus (UCS). Event-related magnetic fields were recorded in response to 40 click-tones before and after four contingent pairings of 20 CS with a shock and the other half remaining unpaired. In line with previous findings from intramodal MultiCS conditioning we found an affect-specific modulation of the auditory N1m component 100-150 ms post-stimulus within a distributed frontal-temporal-parietal neural network. Increased activation for shock-associated tones was lateralised to right-hemispheric regions, whereas unpaired safety-signalling tones were preferentially processed in the left hemisphere. Participants did not show explicit awareness of the contingent CS-UCS relationship, yet behavioural conditioning effects were indicated on an indirect measure of stimulus valence. Our findings imply converging evidence for a rapid and highly differentiating affect-specific modulation of the auditory N1m after intramodal as well crossmodal MultiCS conditioning and a correspondence of the modulating impact of emotional attention on early affective processing in vision and audition.	\N	\N
23168357	We investigated gender differences in the identification of personally familiar voices in a gender-balanced sample of 40 listeners. From various types of utterances, listeners had to identify by name 20 speakers (10 female) among a set of 70 possible classmates who were all 12th grade pupils from the same local secondary school. Mean identification rates were 67% from sentences, and around 35% for an isolated /Hello/ or a VCV syllable. Even from non-verbal harrumphs, speakers were identified with an accuracy of 18%, i.e. highly above chance levels. Substantial individual differences were observed between listeners. Importantly, superior overall performance of female listeners was qualified by an interaction between voice gender and listener gender. Male listeners exhibited an own-gender bias (i.e. better identification for male than female voices), whereas female listeners identified voices of both genders at similar levels. Individual own-gender identification biases were correlated with differences in reported contact to a speaker's voice and voice distinctiveness. Overall, the present study establishes a number of factors that account for substantial individual differences in personal voice identification.	\N	\N
23169196	Patients with single-sided deafness (SSD), where one ear has an unaidable hearing loss and the other ear has normal or aidable hearing, often complain of difficulties understanding speech and localizing sound sources, and report a higher self-perceived hearing disability. Patients with SSD may benefit from using contralateral routing of signal (CROS) or bilateral contralateral routing of the signal (BiCROS) amplification. Dissatisfaction of previously available (Bi)CROS devices has been reported, such as, interfering transmissions, low-fidelity sound quality, poor "user-friendly" set-up, and a bulky and cosmetically cumbersome appearance. Recent advances in hearing aid technology have improved (Bi)CROS hearing aids; however, these devices have not been experimentally evaluated. We hypothesized that newer technology with reports of improved digital signal processing, wireless transmission, and physical design would be as good, or better than, our participants' previous-generation BiCROS systems. A within-subjects, pretest-posttest design was executed. Thirty-nine veterans (one female, 38 males; mean age = 74 yr, range = 49-85 yr) from the Audiology Section of the Bay Pines Veterans Affair Healthcare System participated. All participants were previously experienced BiCROS hearing aid users with varying degrees of sensorinerual hearing impairment in their better ear. Participants were provided at least 4 wk of consistent use with the new BiCROS. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSES: Participants completed three research visits. At Visit 1, with their previous BiCROS, and at Visit 3, with their new BiCROS, the following objective and subjective measures were obtained: (1) soundfield speech-in-noise testing using the Words-In-Noise (WIN) test; (2) speech, spatial, and qualities of the hearing scale (SSQ) questionnaire; (3) selected questions from the MarkeTrak questionnaire; and, (4) three open-ended questions. Data were analyzed using parametric and nonparametric statistics. Overall, the objective (WIN) and subjective (SSQ, MarkeTrak, and open-ended questions) measures indicated that the new BiCROS provided better outcomes than the previous BiCROS system. In addition, an overlap of favorable results was seen across measures. Of the 39 participants, 95% reported improvements with the new BiCROS and chose to utilize the device regularly. The favorable objective and subjective outcomes indicate that the new BiCROS system is as good, or better than, what was previously utilized by our sample of veterans.	\N	\N
23174416	Speech contains a variety of acoustic cues to auditory and phonetic contrasts that are exploited by the listener in decoding the acoustic signal. In three experiments, we tried to elucidate whether listeners rely on formant peak frequencies or whole spectrum attributes in vowel discrimination. We created two vowel continua in which the acoustic distance in formant frequencies was constant but the continua differed in spectral moments (i.e., the whole spectrum modeled as a probability density function). In Experiment 1, we measured reaction times and response accuracy while listeners performed a go/no-go discrimination task. The results indicated that the performance of the listeners was based on the spectral moments (especially the first and second moments), and not on formant peaks. Behavioral results in Experiment 2 showed that, when the stimuli were presented in noise eliminating differences in spectral moments between the two continua, listeners employed formant peak frequencies. In Experiment 3, using the same listeners and stimuli as in Experiment 1, we measured an automatic brain potential, the mismatch negativity (MMN), when listeners did not attend to the auditory stimuli. Results showed that the MMN reflects sensitivity only to the formant structure of the vowels. We suggest that the auditory cortex automatically and pre-attentively encodes formant peak frequencies, whereas attention can be deployed for processing additional spectral information, such as spectral moments, to enhance vowel discrimination.	\N	\N
23178211	Blind people may compensate for their visual loss by the increased use of auditory spatial information, thus showing normal or even supra-normal ability to localize sources of sound. However, the problem of how blind persons develop and maintain an internal concept of the topography of the auditory space in the absence of calibration by visual information is still unsolved. The present study demonstrated a substantial superiority of blind subjects in perception of auditory motion: The minimum audible movement angle of blind subjects (mean 3°) was about half the value found in matched sighted controls, whereas no such advantage was demonstrable for localization of stationary sound. There were no significant differences between early or congenitally blind subjects and late blind subjects, suggesting that long-term visual deprivation per se, independently of the point in time of its onset, was relevant for the superiority in auditory motion perception. The results were compatible with the hypothesis that in the absence of visual input the calibration of the auditory space is performed by audiomotor feedback, that is, by the evaluation of systematic changes of auditory spatial cues resulting from head and body movements. It is reasonable to assume that with blindness the neuronal circuits specifically concerned with the analysis of auditory motion are more intensely trained than in sighted people. It seems possible that the higher demand of motion analysis associated with blindness is related to processes of reorganization in the brain, as have been previously reported to occur also in areas known to be involved in auditory and/or visual motion analysis in sighted persons.	\N	\N
23231122	Measures of spectral ripple resolution have become widely used psychophysical tools for assessing spectral resolution in cochlear-implant (CI) listeners. The objective of this study was to compare spectral ripple discrimination and detection in the same group of CI listeners. Ripple detection thresholds were measured over a range of ripple frequencies and were compared to spectral ripple discrimination thresholds previously obtained from the same CI listeners. The data showed that performance on the two measures was correlated, but that individual subjects' thresholds (at a constant spectral modulation depth) for the two tasks were not equivalent. In addition, spectral ripple detection was often found to be possible at higher rates than expected based on the available spectral cues, making it likely that temporal-envelope cues played a role at higher ripple rates. Finally, spectral ripple detection thresholds were compared to previously obtained speech-perception measures. Results confirmed earlier reports of a robust relationship between detection of widely spaced ripples and measures of speech recognition. In contrast, intensity difference limens for broadband noise did not correlate with spectral ripple detection measures, suggesting a dissociation between the ability to detect small changes in intensity across frequency and across time.	\N	\N
23231815	Normal temporal processing is important for the perception of speech in quiet and in difficult listening situations. Temporal resolution is commonly measured using a behavioral gap detection task, where the patient or subject must participate in the evaluation process. This is difficult to achieve with subjects who cannot reliably complete a behavioral test. However, recent research has investigated the use of evoked potential measures to evaluate gap detection. The purpose of the current study was to record N1-P2 responses to gaps in broadband noise in normal hearing young adults. Comparisons were made of the N1 and P2 latencies, amplitudes, and morphology to different length gaps in noise in an effort to quantify the changing responses of the brain to these stimuli. It was the goal of this study to show that electrophysiological recordings can be used to evaluate temporal resolution and measure the influence of short and long gaps on the N1-P2 waveform. This study used a repeated-measures design. All subjects completed a behavioral gap detection procedure to establish their behavioral gap detection threshold (BGDT). N1-P2 waveforms were recorded to the gap in a broadband noise. Gap durations were 20 msec, 2 msec above their BGDT, and 2 msec. These durations were chosen to represent a suprathreshold gap, a near-threshold gap, and a subthreshold gap. Fifteen normal-hearing young adult females were evaluated. Subjects were recruited from the local university community. Latencies and amplitudes for N1 and P2 were compared across gap durations for all subjects using a repeated-measures analysis of variance. A qualitative description of responses was also included. Most subjects did not display an N1-P2 response to a 2 msec gap, but all subjects had present clear evoked potential responses to 20 msec and 2+ msec gaps. Decreasing gap duration toward threshold resulted in decreasing waveform amplitude. However, N1 and P2 latencies remained stable as gap duration changed. N1-P2 waveforms can be elicited by gaps in noise in young normal-hearing adults. The responses are present as low as 2 msec above behavioral gap detection thresholds (BGDT). Gaps that are below BGDT do not generally evoke an electrophysiological response. These findings indicate that when a waveform is present, the gap duration is likely above their BGDT. Waveform amplitude is also a good index of gap detection, since amplitude decreases with decreasing gap duration. Future studies in this area will focus on various age groups and individuals with auditory disorders.	\N	\N
23231816	Most cochlear implant (CI) users describe music as a noise-like and unpleasant sound. Using behavioral tests, most prior studies have shown that perception of pitch-based melody and timbre is poor in CI users. This article will focus on cortical encoding of timbre changes in CI users, which may allow us to find solutions to further improve CI benefits. Furthermore, the value of using objective measures to reveal neural encoding of timbre changes may be reflected in this study. A case-control study of the mismatch negativity (MMN) using electrophysiological technique was conducted. To derive MMNs, three randomly arranged oddball paradigms consisting of standard/deviant instrumental pairs: saxophone/piano, cello/trombone, and flute/French horn, respectively, were presented. Ten CI users and ten normal-hearing (NH) listeners participated in this study. After filtering, epoching, and baseline correction, independent component analysis (ICA) was performed to remove artifacts. The averaged waveforms in response to the standard stimuli (STANDARD waveform) and the deviant stimuli (DEVIANT waveform) in each condition were separately derived. The responses from nine electrodes in the fronto-central area were averaged to form one waveform. The STANDARD waveform was subtracted from the DEVIANT waveform to derive the difference waveform, for which the MMN was judged to be present or absent. The measures used to evaluate the MMN included the MMN peak latency and amplitude as well as MMN duration. The MMN, which reflects the ability to automatically detect acoustic changes, was present in all NH listeners but only approximately half of CI users. In CI users with present MMNs, the MMN peak amplitude and duration were significantly smaller and shorter compared to those in NH listeners. Our electrophysiological results were consistent with prior behavioral results that CI users' performance in timbre perception was significantly poorer than that in NH listeners. Our results may suggest that timbre information is poorly registered in the auditory cortex of CI users and the capability of automatic detection of timbre changes is degraded in CI users. Although there are some limitations of the MMN in CI users, along with other objective auditory evoked potential tools, the MMN may be a useful objective tool to indicate the extent of sound registration in auditory cortex in the future efforts of improving CI design and speech strategy.	\N	\N
23237416	Children with phonological impairment (PI) often have difficulties perceiving insufficiencies in their own speech. The use of recordings has been suggested as a way of directing the child's attention toward his/her own speech, despite a lack of evidence that children actually recognize their recorded voice as their own. We present two studies of children's self-voice identification, one exploring developmental aspects, and one exploring potential effects of having a PI. The results indicate that children from 4 to 8 years recognize their recorded voice well (around 80% accuracy), regardless of whether they have a PI or not. A subtle change in this ability from 4 to 8 years is observed that could be linked to a development in short-term memory. Clinically, one can indeed expect an advantage of using recordings in therapy; this could constitute an intermediate step toward the more challenging task of online self-monitoring.	\N	\N
23238175	To investigate the relationship between the threshold and the interaural amplitude difference ratio (IADR) in cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potential (cVEMP) testing and pursuit the clinical significance of the parameters. cVEMP responses were recorded while the SCM contraction was controlled using a pressure cuff. The intensities of the sound stimulation decreased from 95 dB n HL by 5 dB, until no responses were evoked. Thresholds, interaural threshold difference (ITD), amplitudes, and interaural amplitude difference ratio at the stimulation of 95 dB n HL were calculated and the relationship between them was examined. All subjects showed cVEMP responses bilaterally. Thresholds measured were overall 76 dB n HL and most (92%) ears showed the ITD of 0 or 5 dB. The amplitudes of cVEMP responses showed a positive correlation with the sound intensities, and more specifically with the sound intensity above each threshold value. There was no significant difference in IADR values by the ITD. Based on our study, the ITD is less than 10 dB in most normal subjects and estimation of threshold should be added to cVEMP testing for probing vestibular asymmetry. Getting a threshold might be helpful in determining whether the abnormal interaural amplitude difference ratio is related to the abnormal ITD.	\N	\N
23241212	Coloured-hearing (CH) synesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon in which an acoustic stimulus (the inducer) initiates a concurrent colour perception (the concurrent). Individuals with CH synesthesia "see" colours when hearing tones, words, or music; this specific phenomenon suggesting a close relationship between auditory and visual representations. To date, it is still unknown whether the perception of colours is associated with a modulation of brain functions in the inducing brain area, namely in the auditory-related cortex and associated brain areas. In addition, there is an on-going debate as to whether attention to the inducer is necessarily required for eliciting a visual concurrent, or whether the latter can emerge in a pre-attentive fashion. By using the EEG technique in the context of a pre-attentive mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm, we show that the binding of tones and colours in CH synesthetes is associated with increased MMN amplitudes in response to deviant tones supposed to induce novel concurrent colour perceptions. Most notably, the increased MMN amplitudes we revealed in the CH synesthetes were associated with stronger intracerebral current densities originating from the auditory cortex, parietal cortex, and ventral visual areas. The automatic binding of tones and colours in CH synesthetes is accompanied by an early pre-attentive process recruiting the auditory cortex, inferior and superior parietal lobules, as well as ventral occipital areas.	\N	\N
23249352	Psychophysical experiments show that auditory change detection can be disturbed in situations in which listeners have to monitor complex auditory input. We made use of this change deafness effect to segregate the neural correlates of physical change in auditory input from brain responses related to conscious change perception in an fMRI experiment. Participants listened to two successively presented complex auditory scenes, which consisted of six auditory streams, and had to decide whether scenes were identical or whether the frequency of one stream was changed between presentations. Our results show that physical changes in auditory input, independent of successful change detection, are represented at the level of auditory cortex. Activations related to conscious change perception, independent of physical change, were found in the insula and the ACC. Moreover, our data provide evidence for significant effective connectivity between auditory cortex and the insula in the case of correctly detected auditory changes, but not for missed changes. This underlines the importance of the insula/anterior cingulate network for conscious change detection.	\N	\N
23258317	Steady state responses (SSRs), between 75 and 110 Hz, evoked by auditory amplitude modulated single or multiple tone stimuli, may be used to estimate objective hearing threshold. The aim of this study was to compare SSRs and click-evoked auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) in both ears of 20 adults (10 males and 10 females, aged between 24 and 36 years) with normal hearing threshold. Mean ABR threshold was found at 21.25 (± 5.9) dB nHL. Mean SSR threshold was found at 15.6 (± 9.6) dB nHL after a single frequency stimulus (1 kHz); at 10.5 (± 18.2) dB nHL and at 7.1 (± 12.4) dB nHL after bifrequency stimulation (0.5 and 2 kHz). SSR thresholds after multifrequency stimulation (0.5, 1, 2 and 4 kHz) were found, respectively, at 12.1 (± 12.9) dB nHL, 12.2 (± 12.8) dB nHL, 12.3 (± 8.3) dB nHL and 18.9 (± 17.2) dB nHL. Mean duration of the recording session was 6 min in the case of ABRs, while it was 25 min in the single frequency condition and 29 min in the multifrequency condition in the case of SSRs. SSRs can be used for frequency-specific objective audiometry. The multifrequency stimulation greatly reduces the whole testing time.	\N	\N
23258616	Modern digital hearing aids have provided improved fidelity over those of earlier decades for speech. The same however cannot be said for music. Most modern hearing aids have a limitation of their "front end," which comprises the analog-to-digital (A/D) converter. For a number of reasons, the spectral nature of music as an input to a hearing aid is beyond the optimal operating conditions of the "front end" components. Amplified music tends to be of rather poor fidelity. Once the music signal is distorted, no amount of software manipulation that occurs later in the circuitry can improve things. The solution is not a software issue. Some characteristics of music that make it difficult to be transduced without significant distortion include an increased sound level relative to that of speech, and the crest factor- the difference in dB between the instantaneous peak of a signal and its RMS value. Clinical strategies and technical innovations have helped to improve the fidelity of amplified music and these include a reduction of the level of the input that is presented to the A/D converter.	\N	\N
23263015	Anesthesiology requires performing visually oriented procedures while monitoring auditory information about a patient's vital signs. A concern in operating room environments is the amount of competing information and the effects that divided attention has on patient monitoring, such as detecting auditory changes in arterial oxygen saturation via pulse oximetry. The authors measured the impact of visual attentional load and auditory background noise on the ability of anesthesia residents to monitor the pulse oximeter auditory display in a laboratory setting. Accuracies and response times were recorded reflecting anesthesiologists' abilities to detect changes in oxygen saturation across three levels of visual attention in quiet and with noise. Results show that visual attentional load substantially affects the ability to detect changes in oxygen saturation concentrations conveyed by auditory cues signaling 99 and 98% saturation. These effects are compounded by auditory noise, up to a 17% decline in performance. These deficits are seen in the ability to accurately detect a change in oxygen saturation and in speed of response. Most anesthesia accidents are initiated by small errors that cascade into serious events. Lack of monitor vigilance and inattention are two of the more commonly cited factors. Reducing such errors is thus a priority for improving patient safety. Specifically, efforts to reduce distractors and decrease background noise should be considered during induction and emergence, periods of especially high risk, when anesthesiologists has to attend to many tasks and are thus susceptible to error.	\N	\N
23268357	Fine structure in the frequency response of distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) can severely limit the usefulness of DPOAEs in estimating auditory thresholds. Here, fine structure is removed by extracting the primary-source DPOAE component using the onset-decomposition technique (Vetešník et al., 2009) and auditory threshold estimates are compared to those obtained from DPOAEs in response to conventional, continuous two-tone stimulation. Auditory thresholds are predicted using the estimated distortion product thresholds (EDPTs), obtained from linear regression of input-output (I/O) functions of DPOAE pressure amplitude versus second-tone stimulus level (Boege and Janssen, 2002). The accuracy of the auditory-threshold predictions is derived by comparison with measured auditory thresholds. The parameters of the two primary stimulus tones of frequency f(1) and f(2) and levels of L(1) and L(2) are chosen as: f(2)/f(1) = 1.2 with 1.5 ≤ f(2) ≤ 2.5 kHz, and L(1) = 0.4L(2) + 39 dB SPL, with 25 ≤ L(2) ≤ 65 dB SPL. Data are from 12 normal-hearing subjects with profound DPOAE fine structure. 255 DPOAE I/O functions were measured for each of the two DPOAE paradigms. An EDPT value was accepted as reliable if: 1) the squared correlation coefficient, r(2) ≥ 0.8, 2) the regression slope, s(I/O) ≥ 0.2 μPa/dB, and 3) the standard deviation of the EDPT, σ(EDPT) ≤ 10 dB. The proportion of rejected I/O functions was 8% for onset-decomposition DPOAEs, and 25% for continuous-tone DPOAEs. Removal of data points from the saturation region of the DPOAE I/O function by an automated algorithm reduced the rejection rate, to zero for onset-decomposition DPOAEs, but to only 13% for continuous-tone DPOAEs. In the absence of saturated DPOAE responses, auditory thresholds were predicted with standard deviation of only 4 dB for onset-decomposition DPOAEs, but 12 dB for continuous-tone DPOAEs. In summary, by extracting the primary-source component of the DPOAE by the method of onset-decomposition it is possible to predict human auditory threshold with hitherto unattainable accuracy.	\N	\N
23268783	According to predictive coding models of sensory processing, stimulus expectations have a profound effect on sensory cortical responses. This was supported by experimental results, showing that fMRI repetition suppression (fMRI RS) for face stimuli is strongly modulated by the probability of stimulus repetitions throughout the visual cortical processing hierarchy. To test whether processing of voices is also affected by stimulus expectations, here we investigated the effect of repetition probability on fMRI RS in voice-selective cortical areas. Changing ('alt') and identical ('rep') voice stimulus pairs were presented to the listeners in blocks, with a varying probability of alt and rep trials across blocks. We found auditory fMRI RS in the nonprimary voice-selective cortical regions, including the bilateral posterior STS, the right anterior STG and the right IFC, as well as in the IPL. Importantly, fMRI RS effects in all of these areas were strongly modulated by the probability of stimulus repetition: auditory fMRI RS was reduced or not present in blocks with low repetition probability. Our results revealed that auditory fMRI RS in higher-level voice-selective cortical regions is modulated by repetition probabilities and thus suggest that in audition, similarly to the visual modality, processing of sensory information is shaped by stimulus expectation processes.	\N	\N
23274182	Speech recognition is improved when complementary visual information is available, especially under noisy acoustic conditions. Functional neuroimaging studies have suggested that the superior temporal sulcus (STS) plays an important role for this improvement. The spectrotemporal dynamics underlying audiovisual speech processing in the STS, and how these dynamics are affected by auditory noise, are not well understood. Using electroencephalography, we investigated how auditory noise affects audiovisual speech processing in event-related potentials (ERPs) and oscillatory activity. Spoken syllables were presented in audiovisual (AV) and auditory only (A) trials at three different auditory noise levels (no, low, and high). Responses to A stimuli were subtracted from responses to AV stimuli, separately for each noise level, and these responses were subjected to the statistical analysis. Central ERPs differed between the no noise and the two noise conditions from 130 to 150 ms and 170 to 210 ms after auditory stimulus onset. Source localization using the local autoregressive average procedure revealed an involvement of the lateral temporal lobe, encompassing the superior and middle temporal gyrus. Neuronal activity in the beta-band (16 to 32 Hz) was suppressed at central channels around 100 to 400 ms after auditory stimulus onset in the averaged AV minus A signal over the three noise levels. This suppression was smaller in the high noise compared to the no noise and low noise condition, possibly reflecting disturbed recognition or altered processing of multisensory speech stimuli. Source analysis of the beta-band effect using linear beamforming demonstrated an involvement of the STS. Our study shows that auditory noise alters audiovisual speech processing in ERPs localized to lateral temporal lobe and provides evidence that beta-band activity in the STS plays a role for audiovisual speech processing under regular and noisy acoustic conditions.	\N	\N
23275424	Fitting a cochlear implant (CI) for optimal speech perception does not necessarily optimize listening effort. This study aimed to show that listening effort may change between CI processing conditions for which speech intelligibility remains constant. Nineteen normal-hearing participants listened to CI simulations with varying numbers of spectral channels. A dual-task paradigm combining an intelligibility task with either a linguistic or nonlinguistic visual response-time (RT) task measured intelligibility and listening effort. The simultaneously performed tasks compete for limited cognitive resources; changes in effort associated with the intelligibility task are reflected in changes in RT on the visual task. A separate self-report scale provided a subjective measure of listening effort. All measures showed significant improvements with increasing spectral resolution up to 6 channels. However, only the RT measure of listening effort continued improving up to 8 channels. The effects were stronger for RTs recorded during listening than for RTs recorded between listening. The results suggest that listening effort decreases with increased spectral resolution. Moreover, these improvements are best reflected in objective measures of listening effort, such as RTs on a secondary task, rather than intelligibility scores or subjective effort measures.	\N	\N
23290461	The white matter bundles that underlie comprehension and production of language have been investigated for a number of years. Several studies have examined which fiber bundles (or tracts) are involved in auditory language processing, and which kind of language information is transmitted by which fiber tract. However, there is much debate about exactly which fiber tracts are involved, their precise course in the brain, how they should be named, and which functions they fulfill. Therefore, the present article reviews the available language-related literature, and educes a neurocognitive model of the pathways for auditory language processing. Besides providing an overview of the current methods used for relating fiber anatomy to function, this article details the precise anatomy of the fiber tracts and their roles in phonological, semantic and syntactic processing, articulation, and repetition.	\N	\N
23297922	Previous studies have suggested that cochlear implant users may have particular difficulties exploiting opportunities to glimpse clear segments of a target speech signal in the presence of a fluctuating masker. Although it has been proposed that this difficulty is associated with a deficit in linking the glimpsed segments across time, the details of this mechanism are yet to be explained. The present study introduces a method called Zebra-speech developed to investigate the relative contribution of simultaneous and sequential segregation mechanisms in concurrent speech perception, using a noise-band vocoder to simulate cochlear implants. One experiment showed that the saliency of the difference between the target and the masker is a key factor for Zebra-speech perception, as it is for sequential segregation. Furthermore, forward masking played little or no role, confirming that intelligibility was not limited by energetic masking but by across-time linkage abilities. In another experiment, a binaural cue was used to distinguish the target and the masker. It showed that the relative contribution of simultaneous and sequential segregation depended on the spectral resolution, with listeners relying more on sequential segregation when the spectral resolution was reduced. The potential of Zebra-speech as a segregation enhancement strategy for cochlear implants is discussed.	\N	\N
23298012	The present study explored the acoustic characteristics of prosodic cues that indicate a speaker's reluctance when giving permission or agreement using a single word ("okay"). Eight speakers (four male, four female) produced the recorded materials that were subsequently validated through a listening experiment using 12 normal-hearing listeners. Acoustic analyses revealed that significantly longer word duration was the cue used most consistently across speakers to communicate reluctance. Voice quality, fundamental voice frequency, and intensity cues also differed significantly between the two prosodic conditions, but the manner in which these cues were applied varied greatly across speakers.	\N	\N
23301004	For humans and animals, the ability to discriminate speech and conspecific vocalizations is an important physiological assignment of the auditory system. To reveal the underlying neural mechanism, many electrophysiological studies have investigated the neural responses of the auditory cortex to conspecific vocalizations in monkeys. The data suggest that vocalizations may be hierarchically processed along an anterior/ventral stream from the primary auditory cortex (A1) to the ventral prefrontal cortex. To date, the organization of vocalization processing has not been well investigated in the auditory cortex of other mammals. In this study, we examined the spike activities of single neurons in two early auditory cortical regions with different anteroposterior locations: anterior auditory field (AAF) and posterior auditory field (PAF) in awake cats, as the animals were passively listening to forward and backward conspecific calls (meows) and human vowels. We found that the neural response patterns in PAF were more complex and had longer latency than those in AAF. The selectivity for different vocalizations based on the mean firing rate was low in both AAF and PAF, and not significantly different between them; however, more vocalization information was transmitted when the temporal response profiles were considered, and the maximum transmitted information by PAF neurons was higher than that by AAF neurons. Discrimination accuracy based on the activities of an ensemble of PAF neurons was also better than that of AAF neurons. Our results suggest that AAF and PAF are similar with regard to which vocalizations they represent but differ in the way they represent these vocalizations, and there may be a complex processing stream between them.	\N	\N
23306571	The phenomenon of Late-Onset Unilateral Auditory Deprivation was first reported in 1984. However, a high number of unilateral hearing aid fittings are still carried out in cases of bilateral hearing loss, justified by non-auditory factors such as cost, vanity, misinformation and public health policies. To carry out behavioral and electrophysiological assessment of the auditory performance of adults using unilateral amplification compared with individuals exposed to bilateral symmetric auditory stimulation. Thirty five adults, all with symmetric bilateral sensorineural hearing loss, regular users of unilateral hearing aid, bilateral hearing aids and not users of hearing aids, were assessed on behavioral and electrophysiological tests. Variance analysis revealed that in the unilaterally fitted group, P300 latency was significantly greater in ears with auditory deprivation compared with those fitted with the hearing aid (p < 0.05). This same group also had poorer performance on the Sentence Recognition Test in Noise held in free field. These results corroborate findings in the literature showing that unilateral auditory deprivation can lead to physiological and perceptual changes.	\N	\N
23307427	Using a tactile variant of the negative-priming paradigm, we analyzed the influence of Gestalt grouping on the ability of participants to ignore distracting tactile information. The distance between participants' hands, to which the target and distractor stimuli were simultaneously delivered, was varied (near/touching hands vs. hands far apart). In addition, the influence of touching hands was controlled, as participants wore gloves and their hands were blocked from vision by a cover. The magnitude of the tactile negative-priming effect was modulated by the interaction between hand separation and whether or not gloves were worn. When the hands were touching, negative priming emerged only while wearing gloves that prevented direct skin-to-skin contact. In contrast, when the separation between the participants' hands was larger, negative priming emerged only when gloves were not worn. This pattern of results is interpreted in terms of the competing influences of two interacting Gestalt principles--namely, connectedness and proximity--on the processing of tactile distractors.	\N	\N
23316925	The event-related potential (ERP) correlates of sound detection are attenuated when eliciting sounds coincide with our own actions. The role of attention in this effect was investigated in two experiments by presenting tones separated by random intervals. In the homogeneous condition of Experiments 1 and 2, the same tone was repeated, whereas in the mixed condition of Experiment 1, tones with five different frequencies were presented. Participants performed a time-interval production task by marking intervals with keypresses in Experiment 1, and tried to produce keypress-tone coincidences in Experiment 2. Although the auditory ERPs were attenuated for coincidences, no modulation by the multiplicity of tone frequencies in Experiment 1, or by the task-relevancy of tones and coincidences in Experiment 2, was found. This suggests that coincidence-related ERP attenuation cannot be fully explained by voluntary attentional mechanisms.	\N	\N
23321588	To assess the auditory performance of Digisonic(®) cochlear implant users with electric stimulation (ES) and electro-acoustic stimulation (EAS) with special attention to the processing of low-frequency temporal fine structure. Six patients implanted with a Digisonic(®) SP implant and showing low-frequency residual hearing were fitted with the Zebra(®) speech processor providing both electric and acoustic stimulation. Assessment consisted of monosyllabic speech identification tests in quiet and in noise at different presentation levels, and a pitch discrimination task using harmonic and disharmonic intonating complex sounds ( Vaerenberg et al., 2011 ). These tests investigate place and time coding through pitch discrimination. All tasks were performed with ES only and with EAS. Speech results in noise showed significant improvement with EAS when compared to ES. Whereas EAS did not yield better results in the harmonic intonation test, the improvements in the disharmonic intonation test were remarkable, suggesting better coding of pitch cues requiring phase locking. These results suggest that patients with residual hearing in the low-frequency range still have good phase-locking capacities, allowing them to process fine temporal information. ES relies mainly on place coding but provides poor low-frequency temporal coding, whereas EAS also provides temporal coding in the low-frequency range. Patients with residual phase-locking capacities can make use of these cues.	\N	\N
23327452	In order to provide effective intervention for children with specific language impairment (SLI), it is crucial that there is an understanding of the underlying deficit in SLI. This study utilized a battery of phonological processing tasks to compare the phonological processing skills of children with SLI to typically-developing peers matched for age or language. The children with SLI had significantly poorer performance than age-matched peers on measures of phonological representations, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, phonological short-term memory, and one measure of working memory. Of particular significance, the SLI group also demonstrated significantly weaker performance than language-matched peers on one measure of phonological representations, and one measure of working memory. The findings provide some support for a phonological processing account of SLI and highlight the utility of using tasks that draw on a comprehensive model of speech processing to profile and consider children's phonological processing skills in detail.	\N	\N
23331545	The auditory N1 event-related potential has previously been observed to be attenuated for tones that are triggered by human actions. This attenuation is thought to be generated by motor prediction mechanisms and is considered to be important for agency attribution. The present study was designed to rigorously test the notion of action prediction-based sensory attenuation. Participants performed one of four voluntary actions on each trial, with each button associated with either predictable or unpredictable action effects. In addition, actions with each hand could result in action effects that were either congruent or incongruent with hand-specific prediction. We observed no significant differences in N1 amplitude between predictable and unpredictable tones. When contrasting action effects that were congruent or incongruent with hand-specific prediction, we observed significant attenuation for prediction-congruent compared to prediction-incongruent action-effects. These novel findings suggest that accurate action-effect prediction drives sensory attenuation of auditory stimuli. These findings have important implications for understanding the mechanisms of action-effect prediction and sensory attenuation, and may have clinical implications for studies investigating action awareness and agency in schizophrenia.	\N	\N
23334356	Several studies have shown that the ability to identify the timbre of musical instruments is reduced in cochlear implant (CI) users compared with normal-hearing (NH) listeners. However, most of these studies have focused on tasks that require specific musical knowledge. In contrast, the present study investigates the perception of timbre by CI subjects using a multidimensional scaling (MDS) paradigm. The main objective was to investigate whether CI subjects use the same cues as NH listeners do to differentiate the timbre of musical instruments. Three groups of 10 NH subjects and one group of 10 CI subjects were asked to make dissimilarity judgments between pairs of instrumental sounds. The stimuli were 16 synthetic instrument tones spanning a wide range of instrument families. All sounds had the same fundamental frequency (261 Hz) and were balanced in loudness and in perceived duration before the experiment. One group of NH subjects listened to unprocessed stimuli. The other two groups of NH subjects listened to the same stimuli passed through a four-channel or an eight-channel noise vocoder, designed to simulate the signal processing performed by a real CI. Subjects were presented with all possible combinations of pairs of instruments and had to estimate, for each pair, the amount of dissimilarity between the two sounds. These estimates were used to construct dissimilarity matrices, which were further analyzed using an MDS model. The model output gave, for each subject group, an optimal graphical representation of the perceptual distances between stimuli (the so-called "timbre space"). For all groups, the first two dimensions of the timbre space were strikingly similar and correlated strongly with the logarithm of the attack time and with the center of gravity of the spectral envelope, respectively. The acoustic correlate of the third dimension differed across groups but only accounted for a small proportion of the variance explained by the MDS solution. Surprisingly, CI subjects and NH subjects listening to noise-vocoded simulations gave relatively more weight to the spectral envelope dimension and less weight to the attack-time dimension when making their judgments than NH subjects listening to unprocessed stimuli. One possible reason for the relatively higher salience of spectral envelope cues in real and simulated CIs may be that the degradation of local fine spectral details produced a more stable spectral envelope across the stimulus duration. The internal representation of musical timbre for isolated musical instrument sounds was found to be similar in NH and in CI listeners. This suggests that training procedures designed to improve timbre recognition in CIs will indeed train CI subjects to use the same cues as NH listeners. Furthermore, NH subjects listening to noise-vocoded sounds appear to be a good model of CI timbre perception as they show the same first two perceptual dimensions as CI subjects do and also exhibit a similar change in perceptual weights applied to these two dimensions. This last finding validates the use of simulations to evaluate and compare training procedures to improve timbre perception in CIs.	\N	\N
23336003	A large-scale subjective survey was conducted in six shopping malls in Harbin City, China, to determine the influence of social and behavioural characteristics of users on their evaluation of subjective loudness and acoustic comfort. The analysis of social characteristics shows that evaluation of subjective loudness is influenced by income and occupation, with correlation coefficients or contingency coefficients of 0.10 to 0.40 (p<0.05 or p<0.01). Meanwhile, evaluation of acoustic comfort evaluation is influenced by income, education level, and occupation, with correlation coefficients or contingency coefficients of 0.10 to 0.60 (p<0.05 or p<0.01). The effect of gender and age on evaluation of subjective loudness and acoustic comfort is statistically insignificant. The effects of occupation are mainly caused by the differences in income and education level, in which the effects of income are greater than that of education level. In terms of behavioural characteristics, evaluation of subjective loudness is influenced by the reason for visit, frequency of visit, and length of stay, with correlation coefficients or contingency coefficients of 0.10 to 0.40 (p<0.05 or p<0.01). Evaluation of acoustic comfort is influenced by the reason for visit to the site, the frequency of visit, length of stay, and also season of visit, with correlation coefficients of 0.10 to 0.30 (p<0.05 or p<0.01). In particular, users who are waiting for someone show lower evaluation of acoustic comfort, whereas users who go to shopping malls more than once a month show higher evaluation of acoustic comfort. On the contrary, the influence of the period of visit and the accompanying persons are found insignificant.	\N	\N
23339556	This study explored the developmental trends and phonetic category formation in bilingual children and adults. Participants included 30 fluent Spanish-English bilingual children, aged 8-11, and bilingual adults, aged 18-40. All completed gating tasks that incorporated code-mixed Spanish-English stimuli. There were significant differences in performance according to phonotactic construction of the stimuli, with fastest word recognition on words with voiceless initial consonants. Analysis of developmental trends revealed significant differences in children's performance by grade level and fastest recognition on English voiceless initial consonants than Spanish voiceless initial consonants. Differences in voice onset time between English and Spanish may have contributed to quicker recognition of English voiceless consonants than Spanish voiceless consonants. It is also possible that increased exposure to both spoken and written English may account for faster recognition of English voiceless words than Spanish voiceless words. In conclusion, multiple factors may influence perception of a second language.	\N	\N
23340379	Since deafness is the most common sensorineural disorder in humans, better understanding of the underlying causes is necessary to improve counseling and rehabilitation. A Dutch family with autosomal dominantly inherited sensorineural hearing loss was clinically and genetically assessed. The MYO6 gene was selected to be sequenced because of similarities with other, previously described DFNA22 phenotypes and a pathogenic c.3610C > T (p.R1204W) mutation was found to co-segregate with the disease. This missense mutation results in a flat configured audiogram with a mild hearing loss, which becomes severe to profound and gently to steeply downsloping later in life. The age-related typical audiograms (ARTA) constructed for this family resemble presbyacusis. Speech audiometry and results of loudness scaling support the hypothesis that the phenotype of this specific MYO6 mutation mimics presbyacusis.	\N	\N
23341954	Two experiments investigated deaf individuals' ability to discriminate between same-sex talkers based on vibrotactile stimulation alone. Nineteen participants made same/different judgments on pairs of utterances presented to the lower back through voice coils embedded in a conforming chair. Discrimination of stimuli matched for F0, duration, and perceived magnitude was successful for pairs of spoken sentences in Experiment 1 (median percent correct = 83%) and pairs of vowel utterances in Experiment 2 (median percent correct = 75%). Greater difference in spectral tilt between "different" pairs strongly predicted their discriminability in both experiments. The current findings support the hypothesis that discrimination of complex vibrotactile stimuli involves the cortical integration of spectral information filtered through frequency-tuned skin receptors.	\N	\N
23351131	The suppression of the auditory N1 event-related potential (ERP) to self-initiated sounds became a popular tool to tap into sensory-specific forward modeling. It is assumed that processing in the auditory cortex is attenuated due to a match between sensory stimulation and a specific sensory prediction afforded by a forward model of the motor command. The present study shows that N1 suppression was dramatically increased with long (≈ 3 s) stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA), whereas P2 suppression was equal in all SOA conditions (0.8, 1.6, 3.2 s). Thus, the P2 was found to be more sensitive to self-initiation effects than the N1 with short SOAs. Moreover, only the unspecific but not the sensory-specific N1 components were suppressed for self-initiated sounds suggesting that N1-suppression effects mainly reflect an attenuated orienting response. We argue that the N1-suppression effect is a rather indirect measure of sensory-specific forward models.	\N	\N
23351849	This work investigates the nature of the comprehension impairment in Wernicke's aphasia (WA), by examining the relationship between deficits in auditory processing of fundamental, non-verbal acoustic stimuli and auditory comprehension. WA, a condition resulting in severely disrupted auditory comprehension, primarily occurs following a cerebrovascular accident (CVA) to the left temporo-parietal cortex. Whilst damage to posterior superior temporal areas is associated with auditory linguistic comprehension impairments, functional-imaging indicates that these areas may not be specific to speech processing but part of a network for generic auditory analysis. We examined analysis of basic acoustic stimuli in WA participants (n = 10) using auditory stimuli reflective of theories of cortical auditory processing and of speech cues. Auditory spectral, temporal and spectro-temporal analysis was assessed using pure-tone frequency discrimination, frequency modulation (FM) detection and the detection of dynamic modulation (DM) in "moving ripple" stimuli. All tasks used criterion-free, adaptive measures of threshold to ensure reliable results at the individual level. Participants with WA showed normal frequency discrimination but significant impairments in FM and DM detection, relative to age- and hearing-matched controls at the group level (n = 10). At the individual level, there was considerable variation in performance, and thresholds for both FM and DM detection correlated significantly with auditory comprehension abilities in the WA participants. These results demonstrate the co-occurrence of a deficit in fundamental auditory processing of temporal and spectro-temporal non-verbal stimuli in WA, which may have a causal contribution to the auditory language comprehension impairment. Results are discussed in the context of traditional neuropsychology and current models of cortical auditory processing.	\N	\N
23354172	Visual speech inputs can enhance auditory speech information, particularly in noisy or degraded conditions. The natural statistics of audiovisual speech highlight the temporal correspondence between visual and auditory prosody, with lip, jaw, cheek and head movements conveying information about the speech envelope. Low-frequency spatial and temporal modulations in the 2-7 Hz range are of particular importance. Dyslexic individuals have specific problems in perceiving speech envelope cues. In the current study, we used an audiovisual noise-vocoded speech task to investigate the contribution of low-frequency visual information to intelligibility of 4-channel and 16-channel noise vocoded speech in participants with and without dyslexia. For the 4-channel speech, noise vocoding preserves amplitude information that is entirely congruent with dynamic visual information. All participants were significantly more accurate with 4-channel speech when visual information was present, even when this information was purely spatio-temporal (pixelated stimuli changing in luminance). Possible underlying mechanisms are discussed.	\N	\N
23357092	Here we present two experiments investigating the implicit orienting of attention over time by entrainment to an auditory rhythmic stimulus. In the first experiment, participants carried out a detection and discrimination tasks with auditory and visual targets while listening to an isochronous, auditory sequence, which acted as the entraining stimulus. For the second experiment, we used musical extracts as entraining stimulus, and tested the resulting strength of entrainment with a visual discrimination task. Both experiments used reaction times as a dependent variable. By manipulating the appearance of targets across four selected metrical positions of the auditory entraining stimulus we were able to observe how entraining to a rhythm modulates behavioural responses. That our results were independent of modality gives a new insight into cross-modal interactions between auditory and visual modalities in the context of dynamic attending to auditory temporal structure.	\N	\N
23362674	It has been shown that humans are able to recognise their own movement. While visual cues have been amply studied, the contribution of auditory cues is not clear. Our aim was to investigate the role of temporal auditory cues in the identification of one's own or others' performance in a complex movement--a golf swing. We investigated whether golfers are able to discriminate between the sounds associated with their own swings and other golfers' swings, by using the relative timing and the overall duration of the movement. The sounds produced by the participants performing 65 m shots have been recorded and used to create the stimuli. The experimental conditions were: participants' swing sounds and the sounds of other golfers having equal both relative timing and overall duration, equal relative timing but different overall duration, different relative timing but equal overall duration, and both different relative timing and overall duration. The task of the participants was to say whether each sound corresponded or did not correspond to their own swing. Results show that golfers are able to recognise their own movements, but they also recognise as their own the sound produced by other athletes having equal both relative timing and overall duration.	\N	\N
23363116	Detection thresholds for 100 ms of either 5- or 20-Hz frequency modulation (FM) were measured at various temporal positions within a 600-ms, 4-kHz pure-tone carrier. The results indicated that the temporal position of the signal relative to the fringe influences detection thresholds, including an effect that is reminiscent of auditory backward recognition masking. A task involving frequency increments, rather than sinusoidal FM, yielded similar results. Additional manipulation of total carrier duration indicated that FM detection thresholds improve as the duration of the forward fringe increases, while a backward fringe only degrades performance in the absence of any forward fringe. The results suggest that listeners are insensitive to subtle frequency changes that occur at the onset of a longer stimulus and that the interaction between the opposing effects of the forward and backward fringes is not additive.	\N	\N
23363122	The vocal tract length of a speaker is the primary determinant of the range of formant frequencies (FFs) produced by that speaker. Listeners have demonstrated sensitivity to the average FFs produced by voices, for example, in estimating the relative heights of two speakers based on their speech. However, it is not known whether they can learn to identify voices based on the acoustic characteristic associated with the average FFs produced by a voice (this characteristic will be referred to as FF-scaling). To investigate this, a series of vowels corresponding to voices that differed in their average f0 and/or FF-scaling were synthesized. Listeners (n = 71) were trained to identify these voices using a training procedure where, for each trial, they heard the vowels representing a voice and then had to identify the stimulus voice from among a series of candidate voices that differed in terms of their FF-scaling and/or their f0. Results indicate that listeners can identify voices on the basis of FF-scaling quite accurately and consistently after only a short training session and that, although f0 weakly influences these estimates, they are most strongly determined by the stimulus FFs.	\N	\N
23363188	Good localization accuracy depends on an auditory spatial map that provides consistent binaural information across frequency and level. This study investigated whether mapping bilateral cochlear implants (CIs) independently contributes to distorted perceptual spatial maps. In a meta-analysis, interaural level differences necessary to perceptually center sound images were calculated for 127 pitch-matched pairs of electrodes; many needed large current adjustments to be perceptually centered. In a separate experiment, lateralization was also found to be inconsistent across levels. These findings suggest that auditory spatial maps are distorted in the mapping process, which likely reduces localization accuracy and target-noise separation in bilateral CIs.	\N	\N
23363191	Listeners presented with noise were asked to press a key whenever they heard the vowels [a] or [i:]. The noise had a random spectrum, with levels in 60 frequency bins changing every 0.5 s. Reverse correlation was used to average the spectrum of the noise prior to each key press, thus estimating the features of the vowels for which the participants were listening. The formant frequencies of these reverse-correlated vowels were similar to those of their respective whispered vowels. The success of this response-triggered technique suggests that it may prove useful for estimating other internal representations, including perceptual phenomena like tinnitus.	\N	\N
23363193	Speech understanding difficulties for older adults (OAs) are well documented. Very little is known about whether age-related changes affect their speech production as well. Intelligibility of conversational and clear speech sentences produced by five OA talkers was examined. The results of the sentence-in-noise listening tests revealed that OAs enhanced their intelligibility for young adult (YA) listeners through clear speech modifications. Importantly, though, OAs were less effective at improving their speech to benefit listeners compared to YA talkers [reported in Smiljanic and Bradlow, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 118(3), 1677-1688 (2005)]. The results suggest that auditory and cognitive changes across lifespan can affect OA's speech patterns and intelligibility.	\N	\N
23363194	Stilp and Kluender [(2010). Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 107(27), 12387-12392] reported measures of sensory change over time (cochlea-scaled spectral entropy, CSE) reliably predicted sentence intelligibility for normal-hearing listeners. Here, implications for listeners with atypical hearing were explored using noise-vocoded speech. CSE was parameterized as Euclidean distances between biologically scaled spectra [measured before sentences were noise vocoded (CSE)] or between channel amplitude profiles in simulated cochlear-implant processing [measured after vocoding (CSE(CI))]. Sentence intelligibility worsened with greater amounts of information replaced by noise; patterns of performance did not differ between CSE and CSE(CI). Results demonstrate the importance of information-bearing change for speech perception in simulated electric hearing.	\N	\N
23366748	Emotional arousal, or affective patterns, can be probed using observable bioelectric signals, in particular using the fluctuations of electroencephalographic potentials from the human scalp. Hearing impairment related to increased threshold of audio tone detection may cause the loss of intelligibility of speech resulting in an innate automatic emotional response. An adaptive support vector machine can be trained to identify a subject's unique affective response based upon an audiogram hearing test. This paper presents the efficacy of our model, initial SVM classification data, and discusses potential application.	\N	\N
23398728	Superior semi-circular canal dehiscence (SSCD) is a known cause of hearing loss. This study quantifies hearing loss in SSCD ears in a frequency-specific fashion. A meta-analysis of English language literature pertaining to SSCD was performed, with extraction and evaluation of available human audiometric data. Our own institution's case series of SSCD patients was also similarly analysed. Hearing loss in SSCD ears was compared to same patient control ears and to age-matched normative audiometric data. Ears with SSCD had statistically significant worse hearing as compared to both normative data and to own normal ear controls at 2000 Hz and below. The effect appears to diminish with increasing frequency. The presence of statistically significant conductive hearing loss in the low frequencies was confirmed for SSCD ears. SSCD may also predispose ears to high frequency sensorineural hearing loss.	\N	\N
23404529	The purpose of the study was to investigate the potential clinical advantages of incorporating a contralateral routing of signals (CROS) microphone in unilateral cochlear implant (CI) users. A prospective study was undertaken on a group of 21 postlingually deafened adults who were all implanted with the same multichannel CI system. Performance with a unilateral CI was compared with performance using both a unilateral implant and a CROS microphone system worn on the opposite site (CI-CROS). Speech understanding using the AzBio sentence was evaluated in quiet, with speech presented at 0° and 270° azimuth in the horizontal plane. Speech understanding in noise was performed with speech at 0°, and noise at 0°, 90°, and 270°. A significant gain in speech understanding using CI-CROS compared to the unilateral CI alone was found in quiet when speech was presented at 270° (average improvement of 8.8%, P < .01). Participants also demonstrated statistically significant improvement using CI-CROS compared with the unilateral CI alone when noise was presented at 90° and speech at 0° (average improvement of 6.7%, P < .01). Adding a contralateral microphone to a unilateral CI resulted in a significant improvement in speech understanding in different conditions. This method could provide a greater cost/benefit ratio than bilateral CIs and be a potential improvement for those who are not candidates for bilateral CIs.	\N	\N
23418635	Cochlear implantation (CI) has proven in long term prospective trials to reduce significantly incapacitating tinnitus in single sided deafness (SSD). Discussion arises whether electrical stimulation near the round window (RW) is also able to reduce tinnitus. to assess whether electrical stimulation of the basal first 4 intracochlear electrodes of a CI could sufficiently reduce tinnitus and to compare these results with stimulation with all CI electrodes. 7 patients who met the criteria of severe tinnitus due to SSD were implanted with a Med-El Sonata Ti100 with a FlexSoftTM or Flex24TM electrode. After 4 weeks only the basal electrode pair (E12) nearest to the RW was activated. Each week the following pair was activated until the 4th pair.Thereafter all electrodes were activated. Tinnitus was assessed before CI surgery and before each electrode pair was activated. When all electrodes were fitted, evaluation was done after 1, 3 and 6 months.Tinnitus was assessed with Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) for loudness, psychoacoustic tinnitus loudness comparison at 1 kHz and Tinnitus Questionnaire (TQ) for the effect on quality of life. To evaluate the natural evolution, a tightly matched control group with severe tinnitus due to SSD was followed prospectively. All the tinnitus outcome measures remained unchanged with 1, 2, 3 or 4 activated electrode pairs. With complete CI activation, the tinnitus decreased significantly comparable with earlier reports.Pre-implantation the tinnitus loudness was 8.2/10 on the VAS and was reduced to 4.1/10 6 months postimplantation.Psychometrically the loudness level went from 21.7 dB SL (SD: 16.02) to 7.5 dB SL (SD: 5.24)and the TQ from 60/84 to 39/84. The non-implanted group had no decrease of the tinnitus, the average VAS remained stable at 8.9/10 throughout the follow-up period of 6 months. with the current stimulation parameters electrical stimulation in the first 8e10 mm of the basal part of the scala tympani is insufficient to reduce tinnitus. However, stimulation over the complete CI length yields immediate tinnitus reduction confirming earlier results.	\N	\N
23421638	BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: The perception of naturalistic events depends on the ability to integrate perceptual information from multiple sensory systems. Currently, little is known about how multisensory integration is affected by normal aging. The authors conducted two experiments to investigate audiovisual temporal processing in younger (18-29 years) and older (70+ years) adults. In both experiments, participants were presented with a brief visual stimulus and a brief auditory stimulus separated by various temporal offsets, and participants judged which stimulus was presented first. In Experiment 1, the auditory and visual stimuli were presented from the same perceived location, whereas in Experiment 2 they were presented from different locations. The authors found no effect of stimulus location, and no evidence of age-related declines in performance in either experiment. Older adults appear to retain the ability to discriminate the temporal order of audiovisual stimuli and can perform similarly to younger adults.	\N	\N
23422927	Prosody includes suprasegmental components of speech, such as intonation and rate, which add meaning beyond the words being spoken. Sensitivity to pragmatic prosody could improve communication within conversations. These studies investigated adults' and preschoolers' sensitivity to pragmatic prosody. Experiment 1 demonstrated that adults and children comprehend pragmatic prosody; they selected fast actions when descriptions were spoken fast versus when descriptions were spoken slowly. Experiment 2 demonstrated that adults and children spontaneously produce pragmatic prosody-their descriptions of fast actions were faster than their descriptions of slow actions-even when it was not necessary for the task. These studies conclude that children, like adults, are capable of using and producing pragmatic prosody; however, children are less sensitive than adults to subtle prosodic distinctions.	\N	\N
23426091	To maintain optimal understanding, persons with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) often report a need for increased attention, concentration, and "listening effort" compared with persons without hearing loss. It is generally assumed that this increased effort is related to subjective reports of mental fatigue in persons with hearing loss. Although the benefits of hearing aids for improving intelligibility are well documented, their impact on listening effort and mental fatigue are less clear. This study used subjective and objective measures to examine the effects of hearing aid use and advanced hearing aid features on listening effort and mental fatigue in adults with SNHL. Sixteen adults (aged 47-69 years) with mild to severe sloping SNHL participated. A dual-task paradigm assessed word recognition, word recall, and visual reaction times (RTs) to objectively quantify listening effort and fatigue. Mental fatigue was operationally defined as a decrement in performance over the duration of the experiment (approximately 1 hr). Participants were fitted with study hearing aids and tested unaided and in two aided conditions (omnidirectional and with directional processing and digital noise reduction active). Subjective ratings of listening effort experienced during the day and ratings of fatigue and attentiveness immediately before and after the dual-task were also obtained. Word recall was better and dual-task RTs were significantly faster in the aided compared with unaided conditions, suggesting a decrease in listening effort when listening aided. Word recognition and recall in unaided and aided conditions remained relatively stable over the duration of the dual-task, suggesting these processes were resistant to mental fatigue. In contrast, dual-task RTs systematically increased over the duration of the speech task when listening unaided, consistent with development of mental fatigue. However, dual-task RTs remained stable over time in both aided conditions suggesting that hearing aid use reduced susceptibility to mental fatigue. Subjective ratings of fatigue and attentiveness also increased significantly after completion of the dual-task; however, no differences between unaided and aided subjective ratings were observed. Correlation analyses between subjective and objective measures of listening effort and mental fatigue showed no strong or consistent relationship. Likewise, subject variables such as age and degree of hearing loss showed no strong or consistent relationship to either subjective or objective measures of listening effort or mental fatigue. Results from subjective and select objective measures suggest sustained speech-processing demands can lead to mental fatigue in persons with hearing loss. It is important to note that the use of clinically fit hearing aids may reduce listening effort and susceptibility to mental fatigue associated with sustained speech-processing demands. The present study design did not reveal additional benefits, in terms of reduced listening effort or fatigue, from use of directional processing and digital noise-reduction algorithms. However, experimental design limitations suggest further work in this area is needed. Finally, subjective and objective measures of listening effort and mental fatigue due to sustained speech-processing demands, were not strongly associated, suggesting that these measures may assess different aspects of listening effort and mental fatigue.	\N	\N
23438484	Two experiments tested the effect of exposure to masked phobic stimuli at a very brief stimulus onset asynchrony on reducing the subjective experience of fear caused by in vivo exposure to a feared object. In the main experiment, 35 spider-fearful and 35 non-fearful participants were identified with a questionnaire and a behavioural avoidance test (BAT) with a live tarantula. One week later, they were individually administered one of two continuous series of masked images: spiders or flowers. They engaged in the BAT again immediately thereafter. They provided ratings of subjective fear at the end of each BAT (pre- and post-manipulation). Very brief exposure to images of spiders reduced the fearful group's and not the non-fearful group's experience of fear at the end of the BAT. This effect was replicated with another sample of 26 spider-fearful participants from the same population. Theoretical implications are discussed.	\N	\N
23442566	Performance in tone perception and production are correlated in prelingually deafened pediatric cochlear implant (CI) users across individuals. Demographic variables, such as age at implantation, contribute to the performance variability. Poor representation of pitch information in CI devices hinders pitch perception and affects perception of lexical tones in cochlear implant users who speak tonal languages. One hundred ten Mandarin-speaking, prelingually deafened CI subjects and 125 typically developing, normal-hearing subjects were recruited from Beijing, China. Lexical tone perception was measured using a computerized tone contrast test. Tone production was judged by native Mandarin-speaking adult listeners as well as analyzed acoustically and with an artificial neural network. A general linear model analysis was performed to determine factors that accounted for performance variability. CI subjects scored ≈ 67% correct on the lexical tone perception task. The degree of differentiation of tones produced by the CI group was significantly lower than the control group as revealed by acoustic analysis. Tone production performance assessed by the neural network was highly correlated with that evaluated by human listeners. There was a moderate correlation between the overall tone perception and production performance across CI subjects. Duration of implant use and age at implantation jointly explained ≈ 29% of the variance in the tone perception performance. Age at implantation was the only significant predictor for tone production performance in the CI subjects. Tone production performance in pediatric CI users is dependent on accurate perception. Early implantation predicts a better outcome in lexical tone perception and production.	\N	\N
23446715	It is generally agreed that the auditory perception skills of children with developmental language disorders are more limited than those of typically developing children. It is not easy to determine exactly how the capacity to discriminate and the capacity to pronounce phonemes influence each other in children with language disorders. For most authors, the inability to discriminate certain phonemes accurately causes a developmental delay in pronunciation, whereas others claim the influence is mutual. The aim of this study is to determine in which consonants perceptive difficulty is more likely to occur and in which cases there is a greater probability of difficulty when it comes to articulating them. The sample used in the study consisted of 86 children with a mean age of 4 years and 7 months. The phonological processes involved in simplifying speech were identified. Their errors were used as the basis on which to construct and apply a specific speech perception test. The relationship between the articulatory and perceptive skills of children with substitutive processes were analysed by means of two comparisons: first, in all the processes detected taken as a whole and, second, in the three most frequent substitutive processes. These analyses were carried out to determine whether the nature of the consonant implied a greater probability of perceptive difficulty. The findings provide information about a relation between the articulatory and perceptive skills, and about whether the nature of the consonant determines a higher probability of perceptive or articulatory difficulties. These results can be of value in the assessment, design and effectiveness of speech therapy programmes.	\N	\N
23448103	To evaluate the auditory brainstem response (ABR) amplitudes evoked by tone pip and narrowband chirp (NB CE-Chirp) stimuli when testing post-screening newborns and to determine the difference in estimated hearing level correction values. Tests were performed with tone pips and NB CE-Chirps at 4 kHz or 1 kHz. The response amplitude, response quality (Fmp), and residual noise were compared for both stimuli. Thirty babies (42 ears) who passed our ABR discharge criterion at 4 kHz following referral from their newborn hearing screen. Overall, NB CE-Chirp responses were 64% larger than the tone pip responses, closer to those evoked by clicks. Fmp was significantly higher for NB CE-Chirps. It is anticipated that there could be significant reductions in test time for the same signal to noise ratio by using NB CE-Chirps when testing newborns. This effect may vary in practice and is likely to be most beneficial for babies with low amplitude ABR responses. We propose that the ABR nHL threshold to eHL correction for NB CE-Chirps should be approximately 5 dB less than the corrections for tone pips at 4 and 1 kHz.	\N	\N
23453221	This study examined the ability of prelingually deaf children with bilateral implants to identify emotion (i.e. happiness or sadness) in speech and music. Participants in Experiment 1 were 14 prelingually deaf children from 5-7 years of age who had bilateral implants and 18 normally hearing children from 4-6 years of age. They judged whether linguistically neutral utterances produced by a man and woman sounded happy or sad. Participants in Experiment 2 were 14 bilateral implant users from 4-6 years of age and the same normally hearing children as in Experiment 1. They judged whether synthesized piano excerpts sounded happy or sad. Child implant users' accuracy of identifying happiness and sadness in speech was well above chance levels but significantly below the accuracy achieved by children with normal hearing. Similarly, their accuracy of identifying happiness and sadness in music was well above chance levels but significantly below that of children with normal hearing, who performed at ceiling. For the 12 implant users who participated in both experiments, performance on the speech task correlated significantly with performance on the music task and implant experience was correlated with performance on both tasks. Child implant users' accurate identification of emotion in speech exceeded performance in previous studies, which may be attributable to fewer response alternatives and the use of child-directed speech. Moreover, child implant users' successful identification of emotion in music indicates that the relevant cues are accessible at a relatively young age.	\N	\N
23458475	The purpose of this study was to measure real-ear aided and saturated responses of SpeechEasy™ devices and compare responses while devices delivered altered auditory feedback (AAF) and non-altered feedback (NAF). A repeated measures quasi-experimental design was employed. Ten people fitted with completely-in-the-canal or open fit behind-the-ear devices participated. Probe microphone measures were obtained with speech, and 17 chirp stimuli presented at 75 dB and 85 dB SPL, respectively. Measurements were compared with devices delivering AAF (i.e. delayed and frequency shifted) versus NAF. Maximum outputs were approximately 100-105 dB SPL in the 2000-4000 Hz range. Statistically significant differences in device SPL output as a function of device setting (AAF vs. NAF) were found for seven chirp stimuli (p <.05) when levels were sampled at points that were not temporally aligned with the output chirps but not for speech stimulus (p = .17). Device output varied across individuals and with open fit devices dominated by ear canal resonance effects. Real-ear aided responses were equivalent with speech input when devices delivered AAF and NAF. Real-ear saturated responses were not, however, comparable between AAF and NAF settings and may be underestimated if AAF delay is not accounted for.	\N	\N
23461765	Advantages associated with the left ear (right brain hemisphere) have been reported in some studies. Of these, some have specifically suggested that the left ear has a more heightened ability to detect emotional tones. Meanwhile others have pointed to factors such as age and gender as potentially leading to manifestations of human laterality. This study investigates which brain hemisphere is more involved in emotional processing of auditory information in Arab participants. We aimed to replicate the previous studies because no single study has been done in the Arabic region previously. Additionally, people in this region prefer to use the right side of their body, e.g., hand, ear, foot, etc., for most daily tasks. To acquire data a dichotic listening task (DLT) was administered to 28 male and 23 female (Edinburgh, UK) university students aged 19 to 38; 13 were left-handed and 38 were right-handed. The results showed a significant left ear advantage in the auditory processing of emotional information. There was a significant negative correlation between ear preference and handedness. Left ear advantage related only to handedness. Thus right-handed participants were more likely than left-handers to have a left ear advantage. The relationship between ear preference and gender was non-significant. The conclusion that might be drawn from this study is that the left ear (right hemisphere) is more involved in emotional processing than the right ear (left hemisphere), especially for right-handed people.	\N	\N
23462430	We set out to determine whether extra-striate ventral stream function was compromised in amblyopia and to compare any observed deficit with previous data on comparable dorsal stream function. We devised a multi-element orientation task where orientation coherence sensitivity could be measured in a comparable way to motion coherence. The use of spatial frequency narrowband elements allowed for accurate correction of any upstream contrast sensitivity influence and ensured that the orientation bandwidth of our elements did not covary with the measured coherence. Using a standard equivalent noise analysis, we varied both the local orientation bandwidth of individual elements as well as the global orientation bandwidth of the element array to obtain estimates of both local and global internal noise and efficiency. The results show that for this ventral stream task there is only a subtle amblyopic deficit in processing global orientation relative to control observers. This deficit is present for both amblyopic and fixing eyes, and appears to reflect poorer efficiency in processing local orientation, suggesting a subtle deficit at the input stage to extra-striate cortex where orientation coherence is processed.	\N	\N
23463992	A decision weight analysis is used to investigate transition bandwidths [Berg (2007). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 121, 3639-2645]. The psychophysical task is similar to a standard profile analysis experiment except that the spacing of the tones comprising the stimuli is linear and very narrow (e.g., 20 Hz). An increment in the level of the central tone constitutes the signal. Pitch cues and single channel energy cues are degraded with randomization procedures. Thresholds increase as the number of tones comprising the stimulus (n) increases up to a transition bandwidth and then decrease or stay constant with further increases in n. It is proposed that the transition bandwidth reflects a discrete change in the underlying process, with a temporal process (e.g., envelope processor) dominating for stimulus bandwidths less than the transition bandwidth and a process of spectral profile analysis at wider bandwidths. Estimates of decision weights support the proposal.	\N	\N
23464020	Just noticeable differences in interaural correlation (ρ-jnds) from diffuse sound field reference correlations are obtained. In a three-interval, three-alternative forced-choice procedure, ρ-jnds are measured for positive and negative deviations from nine narrowband reference conditions. Stimuli are 1 equivalent rectangular bandwidth wide noise bursts with center frequencies between 165 and 1500 Hz. The frequency dependent reference correlation (ρref) is determined by the simulated interaural correlation under ideal diffuse sound field conditions. Results show that the interaural correlation at threshold for deviation toward the positive correlation range follows the reference curve in a nonlinear fashion. For deviation toward the negative correlation range the interaural correlation at threshold is further afar the reference curve and does not markedly resemble its trend. The results indicate that the previously found asymmetry for correlation discrimination from uncorrelated broadband stimuli to the positive and negative correlation range becomes less pronounced for narrowband stimuli. For positive deviation, the highest jnds are found for the region where the reference curve occupies the global minimum in ρref; despite that, the interaural correlation at threshold for positive deviation exhibits its lowest value at that point.	\N	\N
23464027	Acousticians generally assess the acoustic qualities of a concert hall or any other room using impulse response-based measures such as the reverberation time, clarity index, and others. These parameters are used to predict perceptual attributes related to the acoustic qualities of the room. Various studies show that these physical measures are not able to predict the related perceptual attributes sufficiently well under all circumstances. In particular, it has been shown that physical measures are dependent on the state of occupation, are prone to exaggerated spatial fluctuation, and suffer from lacking discrimination regarding the kind of acoustic stimulus being presented. Accordingly, this paper proposes a method for the derivation of signal-based measures aiming at predicting aspects of room acoustic perception from content specific signal representations produced by a binaural, nonlinear model of the human auditory system. Listening tests were performed to test the proposed auditory parameters for both speech and music. The results look promising; the parameters correlate with their corresponding perceptual attributes in most cases.	\N	\N
23464028	Several lines of evidence indicate that auditory temporal resolution improves over childhood, whereas other data implicate the development of processing efficiency. The present study used the masking period pattern paradigm to examine the maturation of temporal processing in normal-hearing children (4.8 to 10.7 yrs) compared to adults. Thresholds for a brief tone were measured at 6 temporal positions relative to the period of a 5-Hz quasi-square-wave masker envelope, with a 20-dB modulation depth, as well as in 2 steady maskers. The signal was a pure tone at either 1000 or 6500 Hz, and the masker was a band of noise, either spectrally wide or narrow (21.3 and 1.4 equivalent rectangular bandwidths, respectively). Masker modulation improved thresholds more for wide than narrow bandwidths, and adults tended to receive more benefit from modulation than young children. Fits to data for the wide maskers indicated a change in window symmetry with development, reflecting relatively greater backward masking for the youngest listeners. Data for children >6.5 yrs of age appeared more adult-like for the 6500- than the 1000-Hz signal. Differences in temporal window asymmetry with listener age cannot be entirely explained as a consequence of a higher criterion for detection in children, a form of inefficiency.	\N	\N
23464037	In spoken word identification and memory tasks, stimulus variability from numerous sources impairs performance. In the current study, the influence of foreign-accent variability on spoken word identification was evaluated in two experiments. Experiment 1 used a between-subjects design to test word identification in noise in single-talker and two multiple-talker conditions: multiple talkers with the same accent and multiple talkers with different accents. Identification performance was highest in the single-talker condition, but there was no difference between the single-accent and multiple-accent conditions. Experiment 2 further explored word recognition for multiple talkers in single-accent versus multiple-accent conditions using a mixed design. A detriment to word recognition was observed in the multiple-accent condition compared to the single-accent condition, but the effect differed across the language backgrounds tested. These results demonstrate that the processing of foreign-accent variation may influence word recognition in ways similar to other sources of variability (e.g., speaking rate or style) in that the inclusion of multiple foreign accents can result in a small but significant performance decrement beyond the multiple-talker effect.	\N	\N
23466938	Change deafness describes the failure to perceive even intense changes within complex auditory input, if the listener does not attend to the changing sound. Remarkably, previous psychophysical data provide evidence that this effect occurs independently of successful stimulus encoding, indicating that undetected changes are processed to some extent in auditory cortex. Here we investigated cortical representations of detected and undetected auditory changes using electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings and a change deafness paradigm. We applied a one-shot change detection task, in which participants listened successively to three complex auditory scenes, each of them consisting of six simultaneously presented auditory streams. Listeners had to decide whether all scenes were identical or whether the pitch of one stream was changed between the last two presentations. Our data show significantly increased middle-latency Nb responses for both detected and undetected changes as compared to no-change trials. In contrast, only successfully detected changes were associated with a later mismatch response in auditory cortex, followed by increased N2, P3a and P3b responses, originating from hierarchically higher non-sensory brain regions. These results strengthen the view that undetected changes are successfully encoded at sensory level in auditory cortex, but fail to trigger later change-related cortical responses that lead to conscious perception of change.	\N	\N
23467170	Cochlear implant (CI) users typically have excellent speech recognition in quiet but struggle with understanding speech in noise. It is thought that broad current spread from stimulating electrodes causes adjacent electrodes to activate overlapping populations of neurons which results in interactions across adjacent channels. Current focusing has been studied as a way to reduce spread of excitation, and therefore, reduce channel interactions. In particular, partial tripolar stimulation has been shown to reduce spread of excitation relative to monopolar stimulation. However, the crucial question is whether this benefit translates to improvements in speech perception. In this study, we compared speech perception in noise with experimental monopolar and partial tripolar speech processing strategies. The two strategies were matched in terms of number of active electrodes, microphone, filterbanks, stimulation rate and loudness (although both strategies used a lower stimulation rate than typical clinical strategies). The results of this study showed a significant improvement in speech perception in noise with partial tripolar stimulation. All subjects benefited from the current focused speech processing strategy. There was a mean improvement in speech recognition threshold of 2.7 dB in a digits in noise task and a mean improvement of 3 dB in a sentences in noise task with partial tripolar stimulation relative to monopolar stimulation. Although the experimental monopolar strategy was worse than the clinical, presumably due to different microphones, frequency allocations and stimulation rates, the experimental partial-tripolar strategy, which had the same changes, showed no acute deficit relative to the clinical.	\N	\N
23489145	Under adverse listening conditions, speech comprehension profits from the expectancies that listeners derive from the semantic context. However, the neurocognitive mechanisms of this semantic benefit are unclear: How are expectancies formed from context and adjusted as a sentence unfolds over time under various degrees of acoustic degradation? In an EEG study, we modified auditory signal degradation by applying noise-vocoding (severely degraded: four-band, moderately degraded: eight-band, and clear speech). Orthogonal to that, we manipulated the extent of expectancy: strong or weak semantic context (±con) and context-based typicality of the sentence-last word (high or low: ±typ). This allowed calculation of two distinct effects of expectancy on the N400 component of the evoked potential. The sentence-final N400 effect was taken as an index of the neural effort of automatic word-into-context integration; it varied in peak amplitude and latency with signal degradation and was not reliably observed in response to severely degraded speech. Under clear speech conditions in a strong context, typical and untypical sentence completions seemed to fulfill the neural prediction, as indicated by N400 reductions. In response to moderately degraded signal quality, however, the formed expectancies appeared more specific: Only typical (+con +typ), but not the less typical (+con -typ) context-word combinations led to a decrease in the N400 amplitude. The results show that adverse listening "narrows," rather than broadens, the expectancies about the perceived speech signal: limiting the perceptual evidence forces the neural system to rely on signal-driven expectancies, rather than more abstract expectancies, while a sentence unfolds over time.	\N	\N
23495123	We assessed the automaticity of spatial-numerical and spatial-musical associations by testing their intentionality and load sensitivity in a dual-task paradigm. In separate sessions, 16 healthy adults performed magnitude and pitch comparisons on sung numbers with variable pitch. Stimuli and response alternatives were identical, but the relevant stimulus attribute (pitch or number) differed between tasks. Concomitant tasks required retention of either color or location information. Results show that spatial associations of both magnitude and pitch are load sensitive and that the spatial association for pitch is more powerful than that for magnitude. These findings argue against the automaticity of spatial mappings in either stimulus dimension.	\N	\N
23503620	Abnormal auditory adaptation is a standard clinical tool for diagnosing auditory nerve disorders due to acoustic neuromas. In the present study we investigated auditory adaptation in auditory neuropathy owing to disordered function of inner hair cell ribbon synapses (temperature-sensitive auditory neuropathy) or auditory nerve fibres. Subjects were tested when afebrile for (i) psychophysical loudness adaptation to comfortably-loud sustained tones; and (ii) physiological adaptation of auditory brainstem responses to clicks as a function of their position in brief 20-click stimulus trains (#1, 2, 3 … 20). Results were compared with normal hearing listeners and other forms of hearing impairment. Subjects with ribbon synapse disorder had abnormally increased magnitude of loudness adaptation to both low (250 Hz) and high (8000 Hz) frequency tones. Subjects with auditory nerve disorders had normal loudness adaptation to low frequency tones; all but one had abnormal adaptation to high frequency tones. Adaptation was both more rapid and of greater magnitude in ribbon synapse than in auditory nerve disorders. Auditory brainstem response measures of adaptation in ribbon synapse disorder showed Wave V to the first click in the train to be abnormal both in latency and amplitude, and these abnormalities increased in magnitude or Wave V was absent to subsequent clicks. In contrast, auditory brainstem responses in four of the five subjects with neural disorders were absent to every click in the train. The fifth subject had normal latency and abnormally reduced amplitude of Wave V to the first click and abnormal or absent responses to subsequent clicks. Thus, dysfunction of both synaptic transmission and auditory neural function can be associated with abnormal loudness adaptation and the magnitude of the adaptation is significantly greater with ribbon synapse than neural disorders.	\N	\N
23506662	Various dimensions of auditory processing, especially the perception of speech in the presence of background competition, have been shown to deteriorate with age. A persistent problem in the assessment of these age-related changes has been the high prevalence of age-related high-frequency hearing loss in elderly persons. Some investigators have suggested that a more fruitful approach to the study of age-related decline might be to study middle-aged, rather than elderly, persons, where confounding high-frequency hearing loss is less prevalent. To determine whether an increase in the left-ear disadvantage (LED) in dichotic listening could be demonstrated in a group of middle-aged persons. The N400 component of the auditory event-related potential (AERP) was utilized to evaluate interaural asymmetry in a quasi-dichotic competing speech task. Electrophysiological responses were obtained on a word-pair semantic categorization task presented through a front loudspeaker while the listener ignored competing speech presented through either left (competition left [CL]) or right (competition right [CR]) loudspeakers. Study Samples: Twenty young (18-24 yr) and 20 middle-aged (44-57 yr) females with normal hearing sensitivity. Individual, as well as grand-averaged, AERP waveforms and scalp topographies were analyzed for the word pairs. Peak amplitude and latency measures of the N400 component were subjected to a mixed design analysis of variance (ANOVA). No significant interaural asymmetry was found in the AERP waveform for the reference word condition in either age group. In response to the second word of the pair, however, middle-aged females showed significantly greater N400 negativity in the CR condition than in the CL condition. No significant laterality effect was found in the young females. The study of young versus middle-aged participants may be an effective way of avoiding the confound of high-frequency hearing loss in elderly persons when studying age effects on auditory processing.	\N	\N
23507387	It was the aim of this study to delineate the areas along the right superior temporal sulcus (STS) for processing of faces, voices, and face-voice integration using established functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) localizers and to assess their structural connectivity profile with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). We combined this approach with an fMRI adaptation design during which the participants judged emotions in facial expressions and prosody and demonstrated response habituation in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) which occurred irrespective of the sensory modality. These functional data were in line with DTI findings showing separable fiber projections of the three different STS modules converging in the OFC which run through the external capsule for the voice area, through the dorsal superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) for the face area and through the ventral SLF for the audiovisual integration area. The OFC was structurally connected with the supplementary motor area (SMA) and activation in these two areas was correlated with faster stimulus evaluation during repetition priming. Based on these structural and functional properties, we propose that the OFC is part of the extended system for perception of emotional information in faces and voices and constitutes a neural interface linking sensory areas with brain regions implicated in generation of behavioral responses.	\N	\N
23518401	This study investigated the development of children's skills in identifying ecologically relevant sound objects within naturalistic listening environments, using a non-linguistic analog of the classic 'cocktail-party' situation. Children aged 7-12.5 years completed a closed-set identification task in which brief, commonly encountered environmental sounds were presented at varying signal-to-noise ratios. To simulate the complexity of real-world acoustic environments, target sounds were embedded in either a single, stereophonically presented scene, or in one of two different scenes, with each scene presented to a single ear. Each target sound was either congruent or incongruent with the auditory context. Identification accuracy improved with increasing age, particularly in trials with low signal-to-noise ratios. Performance was most accurate when target sounds were incongruent with the background scene, and when sounds were presented in a single background scene. The presence of two backgrounds disproportionately disrupted children's performance relative to that of previously tested adults, and reduced children's sensitivity to contextual cues. Successful identification of familiar sounds in complex auditory contexts is the outcome of a protracted learning process, with children reaching adult levels of performance after a decade or more of experience.	\N	\N
23523270	The ability to perceive and produce speech undergoes important changes in late adulthood. The goal of the present study was to characterize functional and structural age-related differences in the cortical network that support speech perception and production, using magnetic resonance imaging, as well as the relationship between functional and structural age-related changes occurring in this network. We asked young and older adults to observe videos of a speaker producing single words (perception), and to observe and repeat the words produced (production). Results show a widespread bilateral network of brain activation for Perception and Production that was not correlated with age. In addition, several regions did show age-related change (auditory cortex, planum temporale, superior temporal sulcus, premotor cortices, SMA-proper). Examination of the relationship between brain signal and regional and global gray matter volume and cortical thickness revealed a complex set of relationships between structure and function, with some regions showing a relationship between structure and function and some not. The present results provide novel findings about the neurobiology of aging and verbal communication.	\N	\N
23534128	The aim of this study was to establish the expression rate of autoimmunity in patients with sudden sensorineural hearing loss and to determine whether a positive marker is associated with a higher rate of hearing recovery after steroid treatment. A prospective study was performed on 137 patients who experienced sudden sensorineural hearing loss and underwent immunoserologic investigations. Autoantibodies evaluated on the day of admission included anti-double-stranded DNA, rheumatoid factor, antiphospholipid immunoglobulins G and M, antinuclear antibody, and complements C3 and C4. Of 137 patients, 75 were male and 62 were female (mean age, 45.1 years). Hearing loss was found on the left side in 61 patients and on the right side in 76 patients. Elevation of at least 1 autoantibody or abnormal complement levels were found in 80 patients (58%), and abnormalities of 2 or more antibodies were found in 28 (20%). There were no statistically significant correlations between autoantibody abnormalities and age, initial hearing level, or positive treatment response. There is no clear evidence of a correlation between autoimmunity and hearing improvement in patients with autoantibody abnormalities. A high (but not significant) expression rate of autoantibody abnormality and complement level was seen in patients with sudden sensorineural hearing loss.	\N	\N
23539259	Cochlear implant systems that combine electric and acoustic stimulation in the same ear are now commercially available and the number of patients using these devices is steadily increasing. In particular, electric-acoustic stimulation is an option for patients with severe, high frequency sensorineural hearing impairment. There have been a range of approaches to combining electric stimulation and acoustic hearing in the same ear. To develop a better understanding of fitting practices for devices that combine electric and acoustic stimulation, we conducted a systematic review addressing three clinical questions: what is the range of acoustic hearing in the implanted ear that can be effectively preserved for an electric-acoustic fitting?; what benefits are provided by combining acoustic stimulation with electric stimulation?; and what clinical fitting practices have been developed for devices that combine electric and acoustic stimulation? A search of the literature was conducted and 27 articles that met the strict evaluation criteria adopted for the review were identified for detailed analysis. The range of auditory thresholds in the implanted ear that can be successfully used for an electric-acoustic application is quite broad. The effectiveness of combined electric and acoustic stimulation as compared with electric stimulation alone was consistently demonstrated, highlighting the potential value of preservation and utilization of low frequency hearing in the implanted ear. However, clinical procedures for best fitting of electric-acoustic devices were varied. This clearly identified a need for further investigation of fitting procedures aimed at maximizing outcomes for recipients of electric-acoustic devices.	\N	\N
23540912	The present study investigated phonological encoding skills in children who stutter (CWS) and those who do not (CNS). Participants were 9 CWS (M=11.8 years, SD=1.5) and 9 age and sex matched CNS (M=11.8 years, SD=1.5). Participants monitored target phonemes located at syllable onsets and offsets of bisyllabic words. Performance in the phoneme monitoring task was compared to an auditory tone monitoring task. Repeated measures analysis of the response time data revealed significant Group×Task×Position interaction with the CWS becoming progressively slower than the CNS in monitoring subsequent phonemes located within the bisyllabic words; differences were not observed in the auditory tone monitoring task. Repeated measures analysis of the error data indicated that the groups were comparable in the percent errors in phoneme vs. tone monitoring. The CWS group was also significantly slower in a picture naming task compared to the CNS. Present findings suggest that CWS experience temporal asynchronies in one or more processes leading up to phoneme monitoring. The findings are interpreted within the scope of contemporary theories of stuttering. At the end of this activity the reader will be able to: (a) discuss the literature on phonological encoding skills in children who stutter, (b) identify theories of phonological encoding in stuttering, (c) define the process of phonological encoding and its implications for fluent speech, (d) suggest future areas of research in the investigation of phonological encoding abilities in children who stutter.	\N	\N
23544047	Because classical music has greatly affected our life and culture in its long history, it has attracted extensive attention from researchers to understand laws behind it. Based on statistical physics, here we use a different method to investigate classical music, namely, by analyzing cumulative distribution functions (CDFs) and autocorrelation functions of pitch fluctuations in compositions. We analyze 1,876 compositions of five representative classical music composers across 164 years from Bach, to Mozart, to Beethoven, to Mendelsohn, and to Chopin. We report that the biggest pitch fluctuations of a composer gradually increase as time evolves from Bach time to Mendelsohn/Chopin time. In particular, for the compositions of a composer, the positive and negative tails of a CDF of pitch fluctuations are distributed not only in power laws (with the scale-free property), but also in symmetry (namely, the probability of a treble following a bass and that of a bass following a treble are basically the same for each composer). The power-law exponent decreases as time elapses. Further, we also calculate the autocorrelation function of the pitch fluctuation. The autocorrelation function shows a power-law distribution for each composer. Especially, the power-law exponents vary with the composers, indicating their different levels of long-range correlation of notes. This work not only suggests a way to understand and develop music from a viewpoint of statistical physics, but also enriches the realm of traditional statistical physics by analyzing music.	\N	\N
23544676	Sound sequences, such as music, are usually organized perceptually into concurrent "streams." The mechanisms underlying this "auditory streaming" phenomenon are not completely known. The present study sought to test the hypothesis that synchrony limits listeners' ability to separate sound streams. To test this hypothesis, both perceptual-organization judgments and performance measures were used. In Experiment 1, listeners indicated whether they perceived sequences of alternating or synchronous tones as a single stream or as two streams. In Experiments 2 and 3, listeners detected rare changes in the intensity of "target" tones at one frequency in the presence of synchronous or asynchronous random-intensity "distractor" tones at another frequency. The results of these experiments showed that, for large frequency separations between the tones, the probability of perceiving two streams was lower on average for synchronous than for alternating tones, and that sensitivity to intensity changes in the target sequence was greater for asynchronous than for synchronous distractors. Overall, these results are consistent with the hypothesis that synchrony limits listeners' ability to form separate streams and/or to attend selectively to certain sounds in the presence of other sounds, even when the target and distractor sounds are well separated from each other in frequency.	\N	\N
23547103	Intertrial repetition priming plays a striking role in visual search. For instance, when searching for a target with a unique color, performance is substantially better when the specific color of the target repeats on successive trials (Maljkovic & Nakayama, 1994). Recent research has relied on objective measures of performance to show that priming improves the perceptual quality of the repeated target. Here, we examined the relation between priming and conscious perception of the target by adding a subjective measure of perception. We used backward masking to create liminal perception, that is, different levels of subjectively conscious perception of the target using exactly the same stimulus conditions. The displays in either probe trials (in which priming benefits are measured, experiment 1) or in prime trials (in which memory traces are laid down, experiment 2) were masked. The results showed that intertrial priming improves full access to awareness of the repeated target but only for targets that already achieved partial access to awareness. In addition, they show that full awareness of the target is necessary in both the prime and probe trials for intertrial priming effects to emerge. Implications for the role of implicit short-term memory in visual search are discussed.	\N	\N
23547105	When two objects are flashed at one location in close temporal proximity in the visual periphery, an intriguing illusion occurs whereby a single flash presented concurrently at another location appears to flash twice (the visual double-flash illusion: Chatterjee et al., 2011, Wilson & Singer, 1981). Here, for the first time, we investigate the time course of the effect, and directly compare it to the time course of the auditory (sound-induced flash illusion) effect, for both fission (single test flash, double inducer) and fusion (double test flash, single inducer) conditions, across stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 30 to 250 ms. In addition, using a novel audiovisual stimulus, we directly compare the cue strength of the two modalities, and whether they are additive in effect. The results show that the time course of fission and fusion is different for visual inducers, but not for auditory inducers. In audiovisual conditions, in situations of uncertainty, observers tended to follow the more reliable (auditory) cue. There was little evidence for a superadditive effect of auditory and visual cues; rather, observers tended to follow one or the other modality. The results suggest that the visually induced flash illusion and the auditory-induced effect may both stem from perceptual uncertainty, with the difference in time courses attributable to the lower temporal resolution of vision compared to audition.	\N	\N
23555217	The processing characteristics of neurons in the central auditory system are directly shaped by and reflect the statistics of natural acoustic environments, but the principles that govern the relationship between natural sound ensembles and observed responses in neurophysiological studies remain unclear. In particular, accumulating evidence suggests the presence of a code based on sustained neural firing rates, where central auditory neurons exhibit strong, persistent responses to their preferred stimuli. Such a strategy can indicate the presence of ongoing sounds, is involved in parsing complex auditory scenes, and may play a role in matching neural dynamics to varying time scales in acoustic signals. In this paper, we describe a computational framework for exploring the influence of a code based on sustained firing rates on the shape of the spectro-temporal receptive field (STRF), a linear kernel that maps a spectro-temporal acoustic stimulus to the instantaneous firing rate of a central auditory neuron. We demonstrate the emergence of richly structured STRFs that capture the structure of natural sounds over a wide range of timescales, and show how the emergent ensembles resemble those commonly reported in physiological studies. Furthermore, we compare ensembles that optimize a sustained firing code with one that optimizes a sparse code, another widely considered coding strategy, and suggest how the resulting population responses are not mutually exclusive. Finally, we demonstrate how the emergent ensembles contour the high-energy spectro-temporal modulations of natural sounds, forming a discriminative representation that captures the full range of modulation statistics that characterize natural sound ensembles. These findings have direct implications for our understanding of how sensory systems encode the informative components of natural stimuli and potentially facilitate multi-sensory integration.	\N	\N
23556554	Auditory and visual digit span tests were administered to a group of absolute pitch (AP) possessors, and a group of AP nonpossessors matched for age, and for age of onset and duration of musical training. All subjects were speakers of English. The AP possessors substantially and significantly outperformed the nonpossessors on the auditory test, while the two groups did not differ significantly on the visual test. It is conjectured that a large auditory memory span, including memory for speech sounds, facilitates the development of associations between pitches and their verbal labels early in life, so promoting the acquisition of AP.	\N	\N
23556594	Thresholds for sinusoids interaurally in phase (S0) and antiphase (Sπ) were measured in the presence of a diotic notched-noise masker (N0) as a function of notch width. The signal frequency was 250, 500, 1000, or 2000 Hz. For all signal frequencies, the difference between N0S0 and N0Sπ thresholds (binaural masking-level difference, BMLD) decreased continuously as the notch width increased. Model simulations showed that this result cannot be accounted for by a model that only processes the output of the auditory filter centered at the signal frequency, even if the nonlinear behavior of the monaural frequency selectivity or interaural differences in the filter shape are considered. The data were predicted well if a detrimental across-channel process was included, either by an addition of portions of the output of adjacent filters to the output of the on-frequency filter or by a notch-width dependent adverse shift in interaural phase in the binaural stage. The strength of this detrimental across-channel process tends to decrease with increasing signal frequencies.	\N	\N
23573184	Stress is prevalent in human life and threatens both physical and mental health; stress coping is thus of adaptive value for individual's survival and well-being. Although there has been extensive research on how the neural and physiological systems respond to stressful stimulation, relatively little is known about how the brain dynamically copes with stress evoked by this stimulation. Here we investigated how stress is relieved by a popular coping behavior, namely, gum chewing. In an fMRI study, we used loud noise as an acute stressor and asked participants to rate their feeling of stress in gum-chewing and no-chewing conditions. The participants generally felt more stressful when hearing noise, but less so when they were simultaneously chewing gum. The bilateral superior temporal sulcus (STS) and the left anterior insula (AI) were activated by noise, and their activations showed a positive correlation with the self-reported feeling of stress. Critically, gum chewing significantly reduced the noise-induced activation in these areas. Psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analysis showed that the functional connectivity between the left AI and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) was increased by noise to a lesser extent when the participants were chewing gum than when not chewing gum. Dynamic causality modeling (DCM) demonstrated that gum chewing inhibited the connectivity from the STS to the left AI. These findings demonstrate that gum chewing relieves stress by attenuating the sensory processing of external stressor and by inhibiting the propagation of stress-related information in the brain stress network.	\N	\N
23575462	It would be clinically valuable if an electrophysiological validation of hearing aid effectiveness in conveying speech information could be performed when a device is first provided to the individual after electroacoustic verification. This study evaluated envelope following responses (EFRs) elicited by English vowels in a steady state context and in natural sentences. It was the purpose of this study to determine whether EFRs could be detected rapidly enough to be clinically useful. EFRs were elicited using 5 vowels spanning the English vowel space, /i/, /ε/, /æ/, /(Equation is included in full-text article.)/, and /u/. These were presented either as concatenated steady state vowels (total duration 10.04 seconds) or in three 5-word sentences (total duration 11.77 seconds), where each vowel appeared once per sentence. Single-channel electroencephalogram was recorded from vertex (Cz) to the nape of the neck for 190 and 160 repetitions of the steady state vowels and sentences, respectively. The stimuli were presented at 70 dBA SPL. The fundamental frequency (f0) track from the stimuli was used with a Fourier analyzer to estimate the EFRs to each vowel. Noise amplitudes were also calculated at neighboring frequencies. Fifteen normal-hearing subjects who were 20 to 34 years of age participated in the experiment. In the analysis of steady state vowels, the mean response amplitude of /i/ was statistically the largest at 173 nV. The other 4 steady state vowels did not differ in mean response amplitude, which varied between 73 and 106 nV. In the analysis of vowels from the 3 sentences, the largest response amplitudes tended to be for /u/. Mean amplitudes for /u/ were 164, 111, and 140 nV for the words "booed," "food," and "Sue," respectively. The vowel /u/ produced statistically larger responses than /i/, /ε/, and /(Equation is included in full-text article.)/ when grouped across words, whereas other vowels did not differ. Mean response amplitudes for the other vowel categories in the sentences varied between 82 and 105 nV. All subjects showed significant EFRs in response to the words "Bee's" and "booed," but only 9 subjects showed significant EFRs for "pet," "bed," and "Bob." The authors were readily able to detect significant EFRs elicited by vowels in a steady state context and from 3 natural sentences. These results are promising as an early step in developing a clinical tool for validating that vowel stimuli are at least partially encoded at the level of the auditory brainstem. Future research will require evaluation of the technique with aided listeners, where the natural sentences are expected to be treated as typical speech by hearing aid signal-processing algorithms.	\N	\N
23576809	Major depression goes along with affective and social-cognitive deficits. Most research on affective deficits in depression has, however, only focused on unimodal emotion processing, whereas in daily life, emotional perception is often highly dependent on the evaluation of multimodal inputs. We thus investigated emotional audiovisual integration in patients with depression and healthy subjects. Subjects rated the expression of happy, neutral and fearful faces while concurrently being exposed to emotional or neutral sounds. Results demonstrated group differences in left inferior frontal gyrus and inferior parietal cortex when comparing incongruent to congruent happy facial conditions, mainly due to a failure of patients to deactivate these regions in response to congruent stimulus pairs. Moreover, healthy subjects decreased activation in right posterior superior temporal gyrus/sulcus and midcingulate cortex when an emotional stimulus was paired with a neutral rather than another emotional one. In contrast, patients did not show such deactivation when neutral stimuli were integrated. These results demonstrate aberrant neural response in audiovisual processing in depression, indicated by failure to deactivate regions involved in inhibition and salience processing when congruent and neutral audiovisual stimuli pairs are integrated, providing a possible mechanism of constant arousal and readiness to act in this patient group.	\N	\N
23591684	Migraine attacks consist of head pain and hypersensitivities to somatosensory, visual, auditory, and olfactory stimuli. Investigating how the migraine brain simultaneously processes and responds to multiple incoming stimuli may yield insights into migraine pathophysiology and migraine symptoms. The presence and intensity of hypersensitivity to one stimulus type are positively associated with the presence and intensity of hypersensitivities to other stimuli and to headache intensity. Furthermore, exposure to visual, auditory, and olfactory stimuli can trigger migraine attacks. These relationships suggest a role for multisensory integration in migraine. Multisensory integration of somatosensory, visual, auditory, and olfactory stimuli by the migraine brain may be an important concept for understanding migraine.	\N	\N
23593198	It has been proposed that the loudness dependence of auditory evoked potentials (LDAEP) would be a reliable indicator of central serotonin system activity in humans. Serotonin levels and turnover are also increased by brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). The aim of the present study was to determine whether there is an association between genetic polymorphisms of BDNF and the LDAEP in healthy Korean young adults. The cohort comprised 211 mentally and physically healthy subjects, all of whom were nonsmokers (111 males, 100 females; age: 20∼32 years). To avoid hormonal effects, the LDAEP was measured during days 2-5 after the beginning of menstruation for female subjects. In addition, BDNF polymorphisms (rs6265, rs2030324, and rs1491850) were genotyped. The strength of the LDAEP differed significantly among the BDNF genotype groups. Furthermore, the distribution of genotypic frequencies differed significantly between subjects with high and low LDAEPs. In particular, subjects with the Val/Met (A/G) genotype for rs6265, the T/T genotype for rs2030324, or the C/C genotype for rs1491850 had a higher LDAEP, indicating lower central serotonergic activity. A low LDAEP was more prevalent than a high LDAEP among those with the C-T haplotype (C genotype for rs2030424 and T genotype for rs1491850). Our results concur with previous findings on BDNF polymorphisms and serotonergic drug responses in psychiatric disorder patients. The present results suggest the possibility that BDNF polymorphisms and LDAEP patterns can predict altered serotonergic activity.	\N	\N
23603423	Language is more than a source of information for accessing higher-order conceptual knowledge. Indeed, language may determine how people perceive and interpret visual stimuli. Visual processing in linguistic contexts, for instance, mirrors language processing and happens incrementally, rather than through variously-oriented fixations over a particular scene. The consequences of this atypical visual processing are yet to be determined. Here, we investigated the integration of visual and linguistic input during a reasoning task. Participants listened to sentences containing conjunctions or disjunctions (Nancy examined an ant and/or a cloud) and looked at visual scenes containing two pictures that either matched or mismatched the nouns. Degree of match between nouns and pictures (referential anchoring) and between their expected and actual spatial positions (spatial anchoring) affected fixations as well as judgments. We conclude that language induces incremental processing of visual scenes, which in turn becomes susceptible to reasoning errors during the language-meaning verification process.	\N	\N
23613083	The lack of fine structure information in conventional cochlear implant (CI) encoding strategies presumably contributes to the generally poor music perception with CIs. To improve CI users' music perception, a harmonic-single-sideband-encoder (HSSE) strategy was developed , which explicitly tracks the harmonics of a single musical source and transforms them into modulators conveying both amplitude and temporal fine structure cues to electrodes. To investigate its effectiveness, vocoder simulations of HSSE and the conventional continuous-interleaved-sampling (CIS) strategy were implemented. Using these vocoders, five normal-hearing subjects' melody and timbre recognition performance were evaluated: a significant benefit of HSSE to both melody (p < 0.002) and timbre (p < 0.026) recognition was found. Additionally, HSSE was acutely tested in eight CI subjects. On timbre recognition, a significant advantage of HSSE over the subjects' clinical strategy was demonstrated: the largest improvement was 35% and the mean 17% (p < 0.013). On melody recognition, two subjects showed 20% improvement with HSSE; however, the mean improvement of 7% across subjects was not significant (p > 0.090). To quantify the temporal cues delivered to the auditory nerve, the neural spike patterns evoked by HSSE and CIS for one melody stimulus were simulated using an auditory nerve model. Quantitative analysis demonstrated that HSSE can convey temporal pitch cues better than CIS. The results suggest that HSSE is a promising strategy to enhance music perception with CIs.	\N	\N
23615803	Although the ferret has become an important model species for studying both fundamental and clinical aspects of spatial hearing, previous behavioral work has focused on studies of sound localization and spatial release from masking in the free field. This makes it difficult to tease apart the role played by different spatial cues. In humans and other species, interaural time differences (ITDs) and interaural level differences (ILDs) play a critical role in sound localization in the azimuthal plane and also facilitate sound source separation in noisy environments. In this study, we used a range of broadband noise stimuli presented via customized earphones to measure ITD and ILD sensitivity in the ferret. Our behavioral data show that ferrets are extremely sensitive to changes in either binaural cue, with levels of performance approximating that found in humans. The measured thresholds were relatively stable despite extensive and prolonged (>16 weeks) testing on ITD and ILD tasks with broadband stimuli. For both cues, sensitivity was reduced at shorter durations. In addition, subtle effects of changing the stimulus envelope were observed on ITD, but not ILD, thresholds. Sensitivity to these cues also differed in other ways. Whereas ILD sensitivity was unaffected by changes in average binaural level or interaural correlation, the same manipulations produced much larger effects on ITD sensitivity, with thresholds declining when either of these parameters was reduced. The binaural sensitivity measured in this study can largely account for the ability of ferrets to localize broadband stimuli in the azimuthal plane. Our results are also broadly consistent with data from humans and confirm the ferret as an excellent experimental model for studying spatial hearing.	\N	\N
23616552	The combined use of multisensory signals is often beneficial. Based on neuronal recordings in the superior colliculus of cats, three basic rules were formulated to describe the effectiveness of multisensory signals: the enhancement of neuronal responses to multisensory compared with unisensory signals is largest when signals occur at the same location ("spatial rule"), when signals are presented at the same time ("temporal rule"), and when signals are rather weak ("principle of inverse effectiveness"). These rules are also considered with respect to multisensory benefits as observed with behavioral measures, but do they capture these benefits best? To uncover the principles that rule benefits in multisensory behavior, we here investigated the classical redundant signal effect (RSE; i.e., the speedup of response times in multisensory compared with unisensory conditions) in humans. Based on theoretical considerations using probability summation, we derived two alternative principles to explain the effect. First, the "principle of congruent effectiveness" states that the benefit in multisensory behavior (here the speedup of response times) is largest when behavioral performance in corresponding unisensory conditions is similar. Second, the "variability rule" states that the benefit is largest when performance in corresponding unisensory conditions is unreliable. We then tested these predictions in two experiments, in which we manipulated the relative onset and the physical strength of distinct audiovisual signals. Our results, which are based on a systematic analysis of response time distributions, show that the RSE follows these principles very well, thereby providing compelling evidence in favor of probability summation as the underlying combination rule.	\N	\N
23627836	Theories of auditory attention suggest that humans decompose complex auditory input into individual auditory objects, which then compete for attention to dominate auditory perception. Since emotional significance of external stimuli has been argued to provide cues for sensory prioritization and allocation of attention, emotionally salient auditory objects can receive attention to dominate auditory perception. On the basis of the function of audition as an alarm system that informs the organism about its immediate surroundings, and on empirical evidence that emotion can modulate auditory perception, we argue that auditory stimuli with greater emotional saliency would dominate perception in multisource environments. To test our hypothesis, we employed a change detection task in which participants were asked to indicate whether multisource auditory scenes were identical or different. Participants were better at detecting changes at the presence of an emotionally negative environment compared to neutral environment. Further, we found that participants were better at detecting changes of emotionally negative targets compared to neutral targets. Our results demonstrate that detecting changes in auditory scenes is influenced by emotion. The findings are discussed in the light of the theories of auditory attention, emotional modulation of attention, and the adaptive function of emotion for perception.	\N	\N
23632885	It has been suggested that an auditory phantom percept is the result of multiple, parallel but overlapping networks. One of those networks encodes tinnitus loudness and is electrophysiologically separable from a nonspecific distress network. The present study investigates how these networks anatomically overlap, what networks are involved, and how and when these networks interact. Electroencephalography data of 317 tinnitus patients and 256 healthy subjects were analyzed, using independent component analysis. Results demonstrate that tinnitus is characterized by at least 2 major brain networks, each consisting of multiple independent components. One network reflects tinnitus distress, while another network reflects the loudness of the tinnitus. The component coherence analysis shows that the independent components that make up the distress and loudness networks communicate within their respective network at several discrete frequencies in parallel. The distress and loudness networks do not intercommunicate for patients without distress, but do when patients are distressed by their tinnitus. The obtained data demonstrate that the components that build up these 2 separable networks communicate at discrete frequencies within the network, and only between the distress and loudness networks in those patients in whom the symptoms are also clinically linked.	\N	\N
23632973	The purpose of this study was to determine how the bandwidth of the hearing aid (HA) fitting affects bimodal speech recognition of listeners with a cochlear implant (CI) in one ear and severe-to-profound hearing loss in the unimplanted ear (but with residual hearing sufficient for wideband amplification using National Acoustic Laboratories Revised, Profound [NAL-RP] prescriptive guidelines; unaided thresholds no poorer than 95 dB HL through 2000 Hz). Recognition of sentence material in quiet and in noise was measured with the CI alone and with CI plus HA as the amplification provided by the HA in the high and mid-frequency regions was systematically reduced from the wideband condition (NAL-RP prescription). Modified bandwidths included upper frequency cutoffs of 2000, 1000, or 500 Hz. On average, significant bimodal benefit was obtained when the HA provided amplification at all frequencies with aidable residual hearing. Limiting the HA bandwidth to only low-frequency amplification (below 1000 Hz) did not yield significant improvements in performance over listening with the CI alone. These data suggest the importance of providing amplification across as wide a frequency region as permitted by audiometric thresholds in the HA used by bimodal users.	\N	\N
23639338	To investigate auditory perception, speech production, and language ability of prelingually deaf toddlers with cerebral palsy (CP) who were implanted within a sensitive period and who received proper speech therapy. Comparison of their outcomes with age- and sex-matched CI recipients without additional disabilities was also performed. We retrospectively reviewed a cohort of pediatric CI in Samsung Medical Center. Eight CP subjects who received CI before 3 years of age and age-sex matched control recipients who had no additional disabilities except idiopathic sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) were included for the analysis. Preoperative evaluation included the Categories of Auditory Performance (CAP) score, Korean Version of the Ling's Stage (K-Ling), Sequenced Language Scale for Infants (SELSI), Bailey Scales of Infant Development II assessment, Social Maturity Scale test, and grading of CP severity using severity level and Gross Motor Function Classification System for CP (GMFCS). To measure the outcome, the CAP scores, K-Ling, and SELSI were performed at 3, 6, 12, and 24 months after implantation. Four CP children with outstanding performances showed comparable achievement with matched control recipients. These patients had less severe motor disabilities (mild-moderate severity, GMFCS level 1-3), better social quotient, and better cognitive abilities. Although the others showed poor language abilities and hardly produced meaningful speech, their CAP scores reached 1 or 2 in 24 months after implantation. Deaf children with CP could have various ranges of benefits up to the levels of normal peers whose only disability was hearing loss, when CI was performed within a critical period. Especially, children with mild or moderate CP had a favorable outcome after CI, equivalent to that of normal peers.	\N	\N
23653412	It has previously been shown that the perceived roughness of a surface touched by one digit is influenced by the roughness of a different surface touched simultaneously by another digit on the same hand. The present study was designed to examine whether this is the case when surfaces of varying roughness are touched using digits on separate hands. Participants touched pairs of sandpaper surfaces, in sequence, using the same digit, and identified which of the two was rougher. Roughness discrimination was measured in the presence of distractor surfaces touched simultaneously with the target surface, but using a different digit either on the same or on the other hand. The overall perception of roughness of the attended surfaces was better on the left than on the right hand. Perceived roughness also varied systematically with the roughness of the distractor surfaces. Attended surfaces were more likely to be perceived as smoother when they were paired with smooth rather than rough distractors. Likewise, attended surfaces tended to be perceived as rougher with rough distractors. This pattern of results occurred whether the attended and distractor digits were on the same hand or different hands. These data confirm that it is difficult to restrict tactile attention for roughness to a single digit and show that this difficulty extends to restricting attention to a single hand. Furthermore, the effect of a stimulus at an unattended body location was not simply to impair perception in general, but to bias it in the roughness direction of the distractor surface.	\N	\N
23654389	Auditory filter bandwidths are measured for a temporal process using an amplitude-modulation detection task. The signal is a 200 Hz wide, sinusoidally amplitude-modulated band of noise centered within an unmodulated notched-noise masker. A modulation rate of 10 Hz is used to avoid possible information loss at more central processing levels for high modulation rates. Threshold functions are obtained for 10-14 notch widths for each of four different center frequencies (0.6, 1, 2, and 4 kHz) to determine the maximum notch width at which the masker has an effect. The ratio of center frequency to maximum notch width is ~2 at all center frequencies. It is proposed that the bandwidths observed in temporal tasks, which are consistently greater than expected from the viewpoint of critical band theory, be characterized as "temporal critical bands." This proposal does not oppose, but provides a complement to the traditional critical band obtained in tasks involving spectral discrimination.	\N	\N
23654392	Measurement of sensitivity to differences in the rate of change of auditory signal parameters is complicated by confounds among duration, extent, and velocity of the changing signal. Dooley and Moore [(1988) J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 84(4), 1332-1337] proposed a method for measuring sensitivity to rate of change using a duration discrimination task. They reported improved duration discrimination when an additional intensity or frequency change cue was present. The current experiments were an attempt to use this method to measure sensitivity to the rate of change in intensity and spatial position. Experiment 1 investigated whether duration discrimination was enhanced when additional cues of rate of intensity change, rate of spatial position change, or both were provided. Experiment 2 determined whether participant listening experience or the testing environment influenced duration discrimination task performance. Experiment 3 assessed whether duration discrimination could be used to measure sensitivity to rates of changes in intensity and spatial position for stimuli with lower rates of change, as well as emphasizing the constancy of the velocity cue. Results of these experiments showed that duration discrimination was impaired rather than enhanced by the additional velocity cues. The findings are discussed in terms of the demands of listening to concurrent changes along multiple auditory dimensions.	\N	\N
23654413	Inharmonicity of piano tones is an essential property of their timbre that strongly influences the tuning, leading to the so-called octave stretching. It is proposed in this paper to jointly model the inharmonicity and tuning of pianos on the whole compass. While using a small number of parameters, these models are able to reflect both the specificities of instrument design and tuner's practice. An estimation algorithm is derived that can run either on a set of isolated note recordings, but also on chord recordings, assuming that the played notes are known. It is applied to extract parameters highlighting some tuner's choices on different piano types and to propose tuning curves for out-of-tune pianos or piano synthesizers.	\N	\N
23656101	In this study, two methods are proposed to modify the normalized covariance metric (NCM) measure to reduce the effects of gain-induced nonlinear distortions introduced by most noise-suppression algorithms. Considering that the gain-induced distortions behave differently dependent on the signal-to-noise ratio between the noise-reduced speech and the noise, the first approach introduces a penalty factor involving this ratio in the modified NCM measure. The second approach deemphasizes segments marked with amplification distortions that contribute less to intelligibility via adaptive thresholding. Significantly higher correlations with intelligibility scores were obtained from the modified NCM measures compared with the original NCM measures.	\N	\N
23656102	A reference-free speech quality measure is proposed and assessed for hearing aid applications. The proposed speech quality metric is validated with subjective ratings obtained from hearing impaired listeners under a number of noisy and reverberant conditions. In addition, a comparison is drawn between the proposed measure and a state-of-the-art electroacoustic measure that relies on a clean reference signal. The results showed that the reference-free measure had a lower correlation with the subjective ratings of hearing aid speech quality in comparison to the correlations achieved by the measure utilizing a reference signal. Nevertheless, advantages of the reference-free approach are discussed.	\N	\N
23658664	In reverberant rooms with multiple-people talking, spatial separation between speech sources improves recognition of attended speech, even though both the head-shadowing and interaural-interaction unmasking cues are limited by numerous reflections. It is the perceptual integration between the direct wave and its reflections that bridges the direct-reflection temporal gaps and results in the spatial unmasking under reverberant conditions. This study further investigated (1) the temporal dynamic of the direct-reflection-integration-based spatial unmasking as a function of the reflection delay, and (2) whether this temporal dynamic is correlated with the listeners' auditory ability to temporally retain raw acoustic signals (i.e., the fast decaying primitive auditory memory, PAM). The results showed that recognition of the target speech against the speech-masker background is a descending exponential function of the delay of the simulated target reflection. In addition, the temporal extent of PAM is frequency dependent and markedly longer than that for perceptual fusion. More importantly, the temporal dynamic of the speech-recognition function is significantly correlated with the temporal extent of the PAM of low-frequency raw signals. Thus, we propose that a chain process, which links the earlier-stage PAM with the later-stage correlation computation, perceptual integration, and attention facilitation, plays a role in spatially unmasking target speech under reverberant conditions.	\N	\N
23665378	The integration of auditory feedback with vocal motor output is important for the control of voice fundamental frequency (F0). We used a pitch-shift paradigm where subjects respond to an alteration, or shift, of voice pitch auditory feedback with a reflexive change in F0. We presented varying magnitudes of pitch shifted auditory feedback to subjects during vocalization and passive listening and measured event related potentials (ERPs) to the feedback shifts. Shifts were delivered at +100 and +400 cents (200 ms duration). The ERP data were modeled with dynamic causal modeling (DCM) techniques where the effective connectivity between the superior temporal gyrus (STG), inferior frontal gyrus and premotor areas were tested. We compared three main factors: the effect of intrinsic STG connectivity, STG modulation across hemispheres and the specific effect of hemisphere. A Bayesian model selection procedure was used to make inference about model families. Results suggest that both intrinsic STG and left to right STG connections are important in the identification of self-voice error and sensory motor integration. We identified differences in left-to-right STG connections between 100 cent and 400 cent shift conditions suggesting that self- and non-self-voice error are processed differently in the left and right hemisphere. These results also highlight the potential of DCM modeling of ERP responses to characterize specific network properties of forward models of voice control.	\N	\N
23667666	Audition--what listeners hear--is generally studied in terms of the physical properties of sound stimuli and physiological properties of the auditory system. Based on recent work in vision, we here consider an alternative perspective that sensory percepts are based on past experience. In this framework, basic auditory qualities (e.g., loudness and pitch) are based on the frequency of occurrence of stimulus patterns in natural acoustic stimuli. To explore this concept of audition, we examined five well-documented psychophysical functions. The frequency of occurrence of acoustic patterns in a database of natural sound stimuli (speech) predicts some qualitative aspects of these functions, but with substantial quantitative discrepancies. This approach may offer a rationale for auditory phenomena that are difficult to explain in terms of the physical attributes of the stimuli as such.	\N	\N
23678126	For effective interactions with our dynamic environment, it is critical for the brain to integrate motion information from the visual and auditory senses. Combining fMRI and psychophysics, this study investigated how the human brain integrates auditory and visual motion into benefits in motion discrimination. Subjects discriminated the motion direction of audiovisual stimuli that contained directional motion signal in the auditory, visual, audiovisual, or no modality at two levels of signal reliability. Therefore, this 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design manipulated: (1) auditory motion information (signal vs noise), (2) visual motion information (signal vs noise), and (3) reliability of motion signal (intact vs degraded). Behaviorally, subjects benefited significantly from audiovisual integration primarily for degraded auditory and visual motion signals while obtaining near ceiling performance for "unisensory" signals when these were reliable and intact. At the neural level, we show audiovisual motion integration bilaterally in the visual motion areas hMT+/V5+ and implicate the posterior superior temporal gyrus/planum temporale in auditory motion processing. Moreover, we show that the putamen integrates audiovisual signals into more accurate motion discrimination responses. Our results suggest audiovisual integration processes at both the sensory and response selection levels. In all of these regions, the operational profile of audiovisual integration followed the principle of inverse effectiveness, in which audiovisual response suppression for intact stimuli turns into response enhancements for degraded stimuli. This response profile parallels behavioral indices of audiovisual integration, in which subjects benefit significantly from audiovisual integration only for the degraded conditions.	\N	\N
23684863	In ordinary conversations, literal meanings of an utterance are often quite different from implicated meanings and the inference about implicated meanings is essentially required for successful comprehension of the speaker's utterances. Inference of finding implicated meanings is based on the listener's assumption that the conversational partner says only relevant matters according to the maxim of relevance in Grice's theory of conversational implicature. To investigate the neural correlates of comprehending implicated meanings under the maxim of relevance, a total of 23 participants underwent an fMRI task with a series of conversational pairs, each consisting of a question and an answer. The experimental paradigm was composed of three conditions: explicit answers, moderately implicit answers, and highly implicit answers. Participants were asked to decide whether the answer to the Yes/No question meant 'Yes' or 'No'. Longer reaction time was required for the highly implicit answers than for the moderately implicit answers without affecting the accuracy. The fMRI results show that the left anterior temporal lobe, left angular gyrus, and left posterior middle temporal gyrus had stronger activation in both moderately and highly implicit conditions than in the explicit condition. Comprehension of highly implicit answers had increased activations in additional regions including the left inferior frontal gyrus, left medial prefrontal cortex, left posterior cingulate cortex and right anterior temporal lobe. The activation results indicate involvement of these regions in the inference process to build coherence between literally irrelevant but pragmatically associated utterances under the maxim of relevance. Especially, the left anterior temporal lobe showed high sensitivity to the level of implicitness and showed increased activation for highly versus moderately implicit conditions, which imply its central role in inference such as semantic integration. The right hemisphere activation, uniquely found in the anterior temporal lobe for highly implicit utterances, suggests its competence for integrating distant concepts in implied utterances under the relevance principle.	\N	\N
23691185	Listening to and understanding people in a "cocktail-party situation" is a remarkable feature of the human auditory system. Here we investigated the neural correlates of the ability to localize a particular sound among others in an acoustically cluttered environment with healthy subjects. In a sound localization task, five different natural sounds were presented from five virtual spatial locations during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Activity related to auditory stream segregation was revealed in posterior superior temporal gyrus bilaterally, anterior insula, supplementary motor area, and frontoparietal network. Moreover, the results indicated critical roles of left planum temporale in extracting the sound of interest among acoustical distracters and the precuneus in orienting spatial attention to the target sound. We hypothesized that the left-sided lateralization of the planum temporale activation is related to the higher specialization of the left hemisphere for analysis of spectrotemporal sound features. Furthermore, the precuneus - a brain area known to be involved in the computation of spatial coordinates across diverse frames of reference for reaching to objects - seems to be also a crucial area for accurately determining locations of auditory targets in an acoustically complex scene of multiple sound sources. The precuneus thus may not only be involved in visuo-motor processes, but may also subserve related functions in the auditory modality.	\N	\N
23694737	Multiple auditory steady-state responses (ASSRs) to air- and bone-conduction stimuli were recorded in young children with otitis media with effusion (OME). After treatment for OME, differences between pre-treatment bone-conduction ASSR levels and post-treatment conditioned orientation reflex (COR) or air-conduction ASSR levels were examined, and compared with ASSR-estimated air-bone gap (ABG) before treatment. Navigator Pro with Master was used to assess the threshold of air- and bone-conduction ASSR in both ears at 500Hz, 1000Hz, 2000Hz and 4000Hz. For bone-conduction ASSR, RadioEar B-71 bone-vibrator placed on the mastoid was used with white-noise masking on the contralateral ear. After ventilation tube placement, the thresholds of COR got closer to those of pre-treatment bone-conduction ASSR in young children with OME. Moreover, post-treatment air-conduction ASSR thresholds also got closer to those of pre-treatment bone-conduction ASSR. The differences between pre-treatment bone-conduction ASSR thresholds and post-treatment COR or air-conduction ASSR thresholds became much smaller than ASSR-estimated ABG before treatment. These findings suggest that bone-conduction ASSR can assess the normal or near normal cochlear sensitivity in young children with conductive hearing loss. It is also suggested that ASSR-estimated ABG can be used clinically to predict their accurate ABG.	\N	\N
23694738	The aim of our study is to investigate the relationship between the complaint of speech understanding in noisy environments and the findings of contralateral suppression of transient evoked otoacoustic emissions and speech recognition in noise test methods in individuals with normal hearing. Sixty-nine subjects between 18 and 53 years of age with normal hearing participated in the present study. The subjects were assigned to one of two groups, reported difficulty understanding speech in noise or no reported difficulty understanding speech in noise. After hearing and immitancemetric evaluation, contralateral suppression of transient evoked otoacoustic emissions and speech recognition in noise tests were administered to both groups. Suppression was calculated in half-octave frequency bands centered at 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0kHz. We found out that the speech recognition in noise scores and contralateral suppression values were lower in subjects with the complaint of speech understanding in noise than those who do not have such complaints. We concluded that the complaint of speech understanding in noise may be related to the medial efferent system dysfunction, so central auditory nervous system.	\N	\N
23700960	We investigated the effects of focusing attention towards auditory or somatosensory stimuli on perceptual sensitivity and response bias using a signal detection task. Participants (N = 44) performed an unspeeded detection task in which weak (individually calibrated) somatosensory or auditory stimuli were delivered. The focus of attention was manipulated by the presentation of a visual cue at the start of each trial. The visual cue consisted of the word "warmth" or the word "tone". This word cue was predictive of the corresponding target on two-thirds of the trials. As hypothesised, the results showed that cueing attention to a specific sensory modality resulted in a higher perceptual sensitivity for validly cued targets than for invalidly cued targets, as well as in a more liberal response criterion for reporting stimuli in the valid modality than in the invalid modality. The value of this experimental paradigm for investigating excessive attentional focus or hypervigilance in various non-clinical and clinical populations is discussed.	\N	\N
23705807	Cochlear implantation (CI) is a standard treatment for severe-profound sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). However, consensus has yet to be reached on its effectiveness for hearing loss caused by auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD). This review aims to summarize and synthesize current evidence of the effectiveness of CI in improving speech recognition in children with ANSD. Systematic review. A total of 27 studies from an initial selection of 237. All selected studies were observational in design, including case studies, cohort studies, and comparisons between children with ANSD and SNHL. Most children with ANSD achieved open-set speech recognition with their CI. Speech recognition ability was found to be equivalent in CI users (who previously performed poorly with hearing aids) and hearing-aid users. Outcomes following CI generally appeared similar in children with ANSD and SNHL. Assessment of study quality, however, suggested substantial methodological concerns, particularly in relation to issues of bias and confounding, limiting the robustness of any conclusions around effectiveness. Currently available evidence is compatible with favourable outcomes from CI in children with ANSD. However, this evidence is weak. Stronger evidence is needed to support cost-effective clinical policy and practice in this area.	\N	\N
23708733	Dyslexic and non-dyslexic readers engaged in a short training aimed at learning eight basic letter-speech sound correspondences within an artificial orthography. We examined whether a letter-speech sound binding deficit is behaviorally detectable within the initial steps of learning a novel script. Both letter knowledge and word reading ability within the artificial script were assessed. An additional goal was to investigate the influence of instructional approach on the initial learning of letter-speech sound correspondences. We assigned children from both groups to one of three different training conditions: (a) explicit instruction, (b) implicit associative learning within a computer game environment, or (c) a combination of (a) and (b) in which explicit instruction is followed by implicit learning. Our results indicated that dyslexics were outperformed by the controls on a time-pressured binding task and a word reading task within the artificial orthography, providing empirical support for the view that a letter-speech sound binding deficit is a key factor in dyslexia. A combination of explicit instruction and implicit techniques proved to be a more powerful tool in the initial teaching of letter-sound correspondences than implicit training alone.	\N	\N
23714710	To investigate safety and efficacy of a new transcutaneous bone conduction hearing implant, over a 3-month follow-up period. Prospective, single-subject repeated-measures design in which each subject serves as his/her own control. Departments of Otolaryngology at 4 hospitals in Germany and Austria. Subjects were 12 German-speaking adults who suffered from conductive or mixed hearing loss. The upper bone conduction threshold limit was set to 45 dB HL at frequencies between 500 Hz and 4 kHz. Implantation of a transcutaneous bone conduction hearing implant. Subjects' speech perception (word recognition scores and SRT 50%) and audiometric thresholds (air conduction, bone conduction and sound field at frequencies 500 Hz to 8 kHz) were assessed preoperatively, 1 month postoperatively and 3 months postoperatively. The subjects were monitored for adverse events and given a questionnaire to assess their satisfaction levels. Speech perception as measured by word recognition scores and SRT 50% improved on average about 78.8% and 25 dB HL, respectively, 3 months after implantation. Aided thresholds also improved postoperatively at all tested frequencies and continued to improve from 1 to 3 months postoperatively. Air conduction and bone conduction thresholds showed no significant changes, confirming that subjects' residual unaided hearing was not deteriorated by the treatment. Only minor adverse events were reported and resolved by the end of the study. The new transcutaneous bone conduction implant was demonstrated to be safe and effective in adults up to 3 months of device use.	\N	\N
23715097	In this study, we used magnetoencephalography and a mismatch paradigm to investigate speech processing in stroke patients with auditory comprehension deficits and age-matched control subjects. We probed connectivity within and between the two temporal lobes in response to phonemic (different word) and acoustic (same word) oddballs using dynamic causal modelling. We found stronger modulation of self-connections as a function of phonemic differences for control subjects versus aphasics in left primary auditory cortex and bilateral superior temporal gyrus. The patients showed stronger modulation of connections from right primary auditory cortex to right superior temporal gyrus (feed-forward) and from left primary auditory cortex to right primary auditory cortex (interhemispheric). This differential connectivity can be explained on the basis of a predictive coding theory which suggests increased prediction error and decreased sensitivity to phonemic boundaries in the aphasics' speech network in both hemispheres. Within the aphasics, we also found behavioural correlates with connection strengths: a negative correlation between phonemic perception and an inter-hemispheric connection (left superior temporal gyrus to right superior temporal gyrus), and positive correlation between semantic performance and a feedback connection (right superior temporal gyrus to right primary auditory cortex). Our results suggest that aphasics with impaired speech comprehension have less veridical speech representations in both temporal lobes, and rely more on the right hemisphere auditory regions, particularly right superior temporal gyrus, for processing speech. Despite this presumed compensatory shift in network connectivity, the patients remain significantly impaired.	\N	\N
23716019	Our environment is richly structured, with objects producing correlated information within and across sensory modalities. A prominent challenge faced by our perceptual system is to learn such regularities. Here, we examined statistical learning and addressed learners' ability to track transitional probabilities between elements in the auditory and visual modalities. Specifically, we investigated whether cross-modal information affects statistical learning within a single modality. Participants were familiarized with a statistically structured modality (e.g., either audition or vision) accompanied by different types of cues in a second modality (e.g., vision or audition). The results revealed that statistical learning within either modality is affected by cross-modal information, with learning being enhanced or reduced according to the type of cue provided in the second modality.	\N	\N
23716122	Cross-orientation masking (XOM) occurs when the detection of a test grating is masked by a superimposed grating at an orthogonal orientation, and is thought to reveal the suppressive effects mediating contrast normalization. Medina and Mullen (2009) reported that XOM was greater for chromatic than achromatic stimuli at equivalent spatial and temporal frequencies. Here we address whether the greater suppression found in binocular color vision originates from a monocular or interocular site, or both. We measure monocular and dichoptic masking functions for red-green color contrast and achromatic contrast at three different spatial frequencies (0.375, 0.75, and 1.5 cpd, 2 Hz). We fit these functions with a modified two-stage masking model (Meese & Baker, 2009) to extract the monocular and interocular weights of suppression. We find that the weight of monocular suppression is significantly higher for color than achromatic contrast, whereas dichoptic suppression is similar for both. These effects are invariant across spatial frequency. We then apply the model to the binocular masking data using the measured values of the monocular and interocular sources of suppression and show that these are sufficient to account for color binocular masking. We conclude that the greater strength of chromatic XOM has a monocular origin that transfers through to the binocular site.	\N	\N
23716218	High-frequency pure tones (>6 kHz), which alone do not produce salient melodic pitch information, provide melodic pitch information when they form part of a harmonic complex tone with a lower fundamental frequency (F0). We explored this phenomenon in normal-hearing listeners by measuring F0 difference limens (F0DLs) for harmonic complex tones and pure-tone frequency difference limens (FDLs) for each of the tones within the harmonic complexes. Two spectral regions were tested. The low- and high-frequency band-pass regions comprised harmonics 6-11 of a 280- or 1,400-Hz F0, respectively; thus, for the high-frequency region, audible frequencies present were all above 7 kHz. Frequency discrimination of inharmonic log-spaced tone complexes was also tested in control conditions. All tones were presented in a background of noise to limit the detection of distortion products. As found in previous studies, F0DLs in the low region were typically no better than the FDL for each of the constituent pure tones. In contrast, F0DLs for the high-region complex were considerably better than the FDLs found for most of the constituent (high-frequency) pure tones. The data were compared with models of optimal spectral integration of information, to assess the relative influence of peripheral and more central noise in limiting performance. The results demonstrate a dissociation in the way pitch information is integrated at low and high frequencies and provide new challenges and constraints in the search for the underlying neural mechanisms of pitch.	\N	\N
23716223	We report a series of psychophysics experiments that investigated listeners' sensitivity to changes in complex acoustic scenes. Specifically, we sought to test the hypothesis that change detection is supported by sensitivity to change-related transients (an abrupt change in stimulus power within a certain frequency band, associated with the appearance or disappearance of a scene element). This hypothesis, in the context of natural scenes, is commonly dismissed on account that the elements of the scene may themselves be characterized by on-going energy fluctuations that would mask any genuine change-related transients. We created artificial 'scenes' populated by multiple pure-tone components. Tones were modulated (by a square wave at a distinct rate) so as to mimic the fluctuation properties of complex sounds. "Change" was defined as the appearance or disappearance of one such element. Importantly, such scenes lack semantic attributes, which may have been a limiting factor in interpreting previous auditory change-detection studies, thus allowing us to probe the low-level, pre-semantic, processes involved in auditory change perception. In Experiment 1 we measured listeners' ability to detect item appearance and disappearance in conditions where change-related transients are masked by a silent gap. In Experiment 2, we investigated the effect of an acoustic distractor - a brief signal that occurs at the time of change, but does not mask any scene components. The data show that gaps adversely affected the processing of item appearance but not disappearance. However, distractors reduced both -appearance and disappearance detection. Together our results suggest a role for sensitivity to transients in the process of auditory change detection, similar to what has been demonstrated for visual change detection.	\N	\N
23716230	Advances in the design of cochlear implants (CIs), as well as improved CI surgical techniques, have led to an increase in the number of patients who retain some residual low-frequency acoustic hearing in the implanted ear. Many of these patients also possess some hearing in the unimplanted ear. Although their low-frequency audiometric configurations will likely be asymmetrical across ears, they may nevertheless be able to process interaural time differences (ITDs) which might aid them in localizing sound sources and achieving a spatial release from masking. We recently published research (Brown and Yost 2011) showing how sensitivity to ITD differences was affected when the stimulus bandwidths were varied between the ears, to simulate asymmetrical hearing loss in the low-frequency region. We showed that ITD discrimination thresholds decreased as the bandwidth of the noise presented to one ear increased beyond that presented to the other ear. In the current experiment, we expand upon those conditions to ­further explore ITD processing in the presence of interaural spectral differences. ITD sensitivity was measured when a fixed band of noise was presented to one ear and the center frequency of a spectral band of the same width was moved upward in frequency in the other ear. The data suggest that listeners have difficulty attending to ITD differences in one spectral region when there are other spectral regions that contain conflicting or inconsistent spatial information, which is likely to be the case for many CI patients who possess bilateral residual hearing.	\N	\N
23716240	Jørgensen and Dau (J Acoust Soc Am 130:1475-1487, 2011) proposed the speech-based envelope power spectrum model (sEPSM) in an attempt to overcome the limitations of the classical speech transmission index (STI) and speech intelligibility index (SII) in conditions with nonlinearly processed speech. Instead of considering the reduction of the temporal modulation energy as the intelligibility metric, as assumed in the STI, the sEPSM applies the signal-to-noise ratio in the envelope domain (SNRenv). This metric was shown to be the key for predicting the intelligibility of reverberant speech as well as noisy speech processed by spectral subtraction. The key role of the SNRenv metric is further supported here by the ability of a short-term version of the sEPSM to predict speech masking release for different speech materials and modulated interferers. However, the sEPSM cannot account for speech subjected to phase jitter, a condition in which the spectral structure of the intelligibility of speech signal is strongly affected, while the broadband temporal envelope is kept largely intact. In contrast, the effects of this distortion can be predicted -successfully by the spectro-temporal modulation index (STMI) (Elhilali et al., Speech Commun 41:331-348, 2003), which assumes an explicit analysis of the spectral "ripple" structure of the speech signal. However, since the STMI applies the same decision metric as the STI, it fails to account for spectral subtraction. The results from this study suggest that the SNRenv might reflect a powerful decision metric, while some explicit across-frequency analysis seems crucial in some conditions. How such across-frequency analysis is "realized" in the auditory system remains unresolved.	\N	\N
23716257	We recently showed that listeners with normal hearing thresholds vary in their ability to direct spatial attention and that ability is related to the fidelity of temporal coding in the brainstem. Here, we recruited additional middle-aged listeners and extended our analysis of the brainstem response, measured using the frequency-following response (FFR). We found that even though age does not predict overall selective attention ability, middle-aged listeners are more susceptible to the detrimental effects of reverberant energy than young adults. We separated the overall FFR into orthogonal envelope and carrier components and used an existing model to predict which auditory channels drive each component. We find that responses in mid- to high-frequency auditory channels dominate envelope FFR, while lower-frequency channels dominate the carrier FFR. Importantly, we find that which component of the FFR predicts selective attention performance changes with age. We suggest that early aging degrades peripheral temporal coding in mid-to-high frequencies, interfering with the coding of envelope interaural time differences. We argue that, compared to young adults, middle-aged listeners, who do not have strong temporal envelope coding, have more trouble following a conversation in a reverberant room because they are forced to rely on fragile carrier ITDs that are susceptible to the degrading effects of reverberation.	\N	\N
23716261	Humans and other animals can attend to one of multiple sounds, and -follow it selectively over time. The neural underpinnings of this perceptual feat remain mysterious. Some studies have concluded that sounds are heard as separate streams when they activate well-separated populations of central auditory neurons, and that this process is largely pre-attentive. Here, we propose instead that stream formation depends primarily on temporal coherence between responses that encode various features of a sound source. Furthermore, we postulate that only when attention is directed toward a particular feature (e.g., pitch or location) do all other temporally coherent features of that source (e.g., timbre and location) become bound together as a stream that is segregated from the incoherent features of other sources. Experimental -neurophysiological evidence in support of this hypothesis will be presented. The focus, however, will be on a computational realization of this idea and a discussion of the insights learned from simulations to disentangle complex sound sources such as speech and music. The model consists of a representational stage of early and cortical auditory processing that creates a multidimensional depiction of various sound attributes such as pitch, location, and spectral resolution. The following stage computes a coherence matrix that summarizes the pair-wise correlations between all channels making up the cortical representation. Finally, the perceived segregated streams are extracted by decomposing the coherence matrix into its uncorrelated components. Questions raised by the model are discussed, especially on the role of attention in streaming and the search for further neural correlates of streaming percepts.	\N	\N
23720086	The CHRNA4 gene is known to be associated with individual differences in attention. However, its associations with other cognitive functions remain to be elucidated. In the present study, we investigated the effects of genetic variations in CHRNA4 on rapid scene categorization by 100 healthy human participants. In Experiment 1, we also conducted the Attention Network Test (ANT) in order to examine whether the genetic effects could be accounted for by attention. CHRNA4 was genotyped as carrying the TT, CT, or CC allele. The scene categorization task required participants to judge whether the category of a scene image (natural or man-made) was consistent with a cue word displayed at the response phase. The target-mask stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) ranged from 13 to 93 ms. In comparison with CC-allele carriers, CT- and TT-allele carriers responded more accurately at the long SOA (93 ms) only during natural-scene categorization. In contrast, we observed no consistent association between CHRNA4 and the ANT, and no intertask correlation between scene categorization and the ANT. To validate our natural-scene categorization results, Experiment 2, carried out with an independent sample of 100 participants and a different stimulus set, successfully replicated the association between CHRNA4 genotypes and natural-scene categorization accuracy at long SOAs (67 and 93 ms). Our findings demonstrate, for the first time, that genetic variations in CHRNA4 can moderately contribute to individual differences in natural-scene categorization performance.	\N	\N
23727710	Successful interactions between people are dependent on rapid recognition of social cues. We investigated whether head direction--a powerful social signal--is processed in the absence of conscious awareness. We used continuous flash interocular suppression to render stimuli invisible and compared the reaction time for face detection when faces were turned towards the viewer and turned slightly away. We found that faces turned towards the viewer break through suppression faster than faces that are turned away, regardless of eye direction. Our results suggest that detection of a face with attention directed at the viewer occurs even in the absence of awareness of that face. While previous work has demonstrated that stimuli that signal threat are processed without awareness, our data suggest that the social relevance of a face, defined more broadly, is evaluated in the absence of awareness.	\N	\N
23734220	To understand why human sensitivity for complex objects is so low, we study how word identification combines eye and ear or parts of a word (features, letters, syllables). Our observers identify printed and spoken words presented concurrently or separately. When researchers measure threshold (energy of the faintest visible or audible signal) they may report either sensitivity (one over the human threshold) or efficiency (ratio of the best possible threshold to the human threshold). When the best possible algorithm identifies an object (like a word) in noise, its threshold is independent of how many parts the object has. But, with human observers, efficiency depends on the task. In some tasks, human observers combine parts efficiently, needing hardly more energy to identify an object with more parts. In other tasks, they combine inefficiently, needing energy nearly proportional to the number of parts, over a 60∶1 range. Whether presented to eye or ear, efficiency for detecting a short sinusoid (tone or grating) with few features is a substantial 20%, while efficiency for identifying a word with many features is merely 1%. Why? We show that the low human sensitivity for words is a cost of combining their many parts. We report a dichotomy between inefficient combining of adjacent features and efficient combining across senses. Joining our results with a survey of the cue-combination literature reveals that cues combine efficiently only if they are perceived as aspects of the same object. Observers give different names to adjacent letters in a word, and combine them inefficiently. Observers give the same name to a word's image and sound, and combine them efficiently. The brain's machinery optimally combines only cues that are perceived as originating from the same object. Presumably such cues each find their own way through the brain to arrive at the same object representation.	\N	\N
23742322	This study tested the hypothesis that the reduced spatial release from speech-on-speech masking typically observed in listeners with sensorineural hearing loss results from increased energetic masking. Target sentences were presented simultaneously with a speech masker, and the spectral overlap between the pair (and hence the energetic masking) was systematically varied. The results are consistent with increased energetic masking in listeners with hearing loss that limits performance when listening in speech mixtures. However, listeners with hearing loss did not exhibit reduced spatial release from masking when stimuli were filtered into narrow bands.	\N	\N
23742375	This study investigates the effectiveness of three high variability training paradigms in training 42 speakers of American English to correctly perceive and produce Spanish intervocalic /d, r, r/. Since Spanish spirantization and English flapping both affect /d/ intervocalically, the acquisition of the /d/-/r/ contrast proves difficult for English learners of Spanish. The acquisition of the trill /r/ is also problematic because it is a new phoneme for English learners and is articulatorily difficult to produce. Past research reported that high-variability perceptual training improves both perception and production [Bradlow et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 101, 2299-2310 (1997); Wang et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 113, 1033-1043 (2003)] and that production training improves both as well [Hirata, Comp. Assisted Lang. Learning 17, 357-376 (2004)]. However, trainees were able to listen to stimuli during production training, making it unclear whether production training alone transfers to perception. This study systematically controls both training modalities so they can be directly compared and introduces a third training methodology that includes both perception and production. All three training paradigms proved effective. While perception and production trainees primarily made gains in perception, combination trainees made gains in production. The effectiveness of each training modality depended on the nature of the contrast being trained and the modality of the test.	\N	\N
23751862	We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to localize brain activity related to the retention of tones differing in pitch. Participants retained one or two simultaneously presented tones. After a two second interval a test tone was presented and the task was to determine if that tone was in memory. We focused on brain activity during the retention interval that increased as the number of sounds retained in auditory short-term memory (ASTM) increased. Source analyses revealed that the superior temporal gyrus in both hemispheres is involved in ASTM. In the right hemisphere, the inferior temporal gyrus, the inferior frontal gyrus, and parietal structures also play a role. Our method provides good spatial and temporal resolution for investigating neuronal correlates of ASTM and, as it is the first MEG study using a memory load manipulation without using sequences of tones, it allowed us to isolate brain regions that most likely reflect the simple retention of tones.	\N	\N
23751864	Neurobiological correlates of adaptation to spectrally degraded speech were investigated with fMRI before and after exposure to a portable real-time speech processor that implements an acoustic simulation model of a cochlear implant (CI). The speech processor, in conjunction with isolating insert earphones and a microphone to capture environment sounds, was worn by participants over a two week chronic exposure period. fMRI and behavioral speech comprehension testing were conducted before and after this two week period. After using the simulator each day for 2h, participants significantly improved in word and sentence recognition scores. fMRI shows that these improvements came accompanied by changes in patterns of neuronal activation. In particular, we found additional recruitment of visual, motor, and working memory areas after the perceptual training period. These findings suggest that the human brain is able to adapt in a short period of time to a degraded auditory signal under a natural learning environment, and gives insight on how a CI might interact with the central nervous system. This paradigm can be furthered to investigate neural correlates of new rehabilitation, training, and signal processing strategies non-invasively in normal hearing listeners to improve CI patient outcomes.	\N	\N
23757047	Temporal orienting--that is, selective attention to instants in time--has been shown to modulate performance in terms of faster responses in a variety of paradigms. Electrophysiological recordings have shown that temporal orienting modulates neural processing at early, probably perceptual, and late, probably decision- or response-related, stages. Recently, it was shown that the effect of temporal orienting on early auditory brain potentials is independent of the effect of the physical sound feature intensity. This indicates that temporal orienting might not affect stimulus processing by increasing the sensory gain of attended stimuli. In the present study, we investigated whether the independence of temporal-orienting and sound-intensity effects could be replicated behaviorally. Sequences were presented that were either rhythmic, most likely creating temporal expectations, or arrhythmic, presumably not creating such expectations. As hypothesized, the main effects of temporal expectation and sound intensity on reaction times were independent (Experiment 1). The exact pattern of results was replicated with a slightly altered paradigm (Experiment 2) and with a different kind of task (Experiment 3). In sum, these results corroborate the notion that the effect of temporal orienting might not rely on the same processes as the effect of sound intensity does.	\N	\N
23760984	The neural mechanisms of pitch coding have been debated for more than a century. The two main mechanisms are coding based on the profiles of neural firing rates across auditory nerve fibers with different characteristic frequencies (place-rate coding), and coding based on the phase-locked temporal pattern of neural firing (temporal coding). Phase locking precision can be partly assessed by recording the frequency-following response (FFR), a scalp-recorded electrophysiological response that reflects synchronous activity in subcortical neurons. Although features of the FFR have been widely used as indices of pitch coding acuity, only a handful of studies have directly investigated the relation between the FFR and behavioral pitch judgments. Furthermore, the contribution of degraded neural synchrony (as indexed by the FFR) to the pitch perception impairments of older listeners and those with hearing loss is not well known. Here, the relation between the FFR and pure-tone frequency discrimination was investigated in listeners with a wide range of ages and absolute thresholds, to assess the respective contributions of subcortical neural synchrony and other age-related and hearing loss-related mechanisms to frequency discrimination performance. FFR measures of neural synchrony and absolute thresholds independently contributed to frequency discrimination performance. Age alone, i.e., once the effect of subcortical neural synchrony measures or absolute thresholds had been partialed out, did not contribute to frequency discrimination. Overall, the results suggest that frequency discrimination of pure tones may depend both on phase locking precision and on separate mechanisms affected in hearing loss.	\N	\N
23761928	In vision, humans use summary statistics (e.g., the average facial expression of a crowd) to efficiently perceive the gist of groups of features. Here, we present direct evidence that ensemble coding is also important for auditory processing. We found that listeners could accurately estimate the mean frequency of a set of logarithmically spaced pure tones presented in a temporal sequence (Experiment 1). Their performance was severely reduced when only a subset of tones from a given sequence was presented (Experiment 2), which demonstrates that ensemble coding is based on a substantial number of the tones in a sequence. This precise ensemble coding occurred despite very limited representation of individual tones from the sequence: Listeners were poor at identifying specific individual member tones (Experiment 3) and at determining their positions in the sequence (Experiment 4). Together, these results indicate that summary statistical coding is not limited to visual processing and is an important auditory mechanism for extracting ensemble frequency information from sequences of sounds.	\N	\N
23769004	A 3-year longitudinal study was conducted to investigate changes in vocal quality as a result of singing training at a tertiary level conservatorium in Australia. Singers performed a messa di voce (MDV) at intervals of 6 months over the 3-year period of training. The study investigated the evolving acoustic features of the singers' voices exhibited during the MDV, including sound pressure level (SPL), short-term energy ratio (STER), duration, and vibrato parameters of the fundamental frequency (F0), SPL, and STER. The maximum SPL exhibited a marginal systematic increase over the training period, but the maximum STER did not systematically change. F0 vibrato extent increased significantly, whereas the extent of SPL and STER vibrato did not change significantly.	\N	\N
23772828	Noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) is the most reported occupational health disease in the Netherlands. The internet-based speech-in-noise test Earcheck (Albrecht et al, 2005; Leensen et al, 2011b) is designed to detect beginning NIHL and can be a valuable tool in occupational hearing health surveillance. The aim of this study is to investigate the validity of Earcheck compared to regular screening audiometry. Subjects performed online Earcheck tests at home. The results are compared to a pure-tone screening audiogram obtained during regular occupational health examination. A subgroup performed the measurements twice to assess test-retest reliability. Two hundred and forty-nine male construction employees who recently had a periodic occupational health examination participated. An average learning effect of -1.6 dB was found, that reduced with increasing test number. The test-retest variability was 1.6 dB. Sensitivity to detect beginning NIHL was 68%, with a specificity of 71%. Although sensitivity and specificity values are only moderate, the broad internet application still promises a valuable addition to current practice. The relatively high learning effect indicates that more reliable results can be obtained after a longer test session. When this is put into practice some improvement in sensitivity and specificity may be expected as well.	\N	\N
23774181	A linguistic construction is typically viewed as encoding the pairing of syntactic form and semantic information that is independent of the meaning of constituent words. Here with the event-related potentials (ERPs) we demonstrate that such a construction can also encode pragmatic constraints (event likelihood) that immediately influence online sentence comprehension and the associated neural activity. The lian…dou…construction in Chinese (similar to even in English) normally describes an event of low expectedness (a semantic constraint); it also introduces a pragmatic scale implying that any event with a higher likelihood than the event described must occur (pragmatic inference). By embedding a highly likely event (a rich man buying a house) or an underspecified event (a man buying a house) in the construction, we created an incongruent condition and an underspecified condition and compared both with a control condition in which an event of low expectedness (a poor man buying a house) was described. ERPs on the main verb phrases showed an N400 with a maximum in the right hemisphere followed by a late negativity with an anterior maximum for both the incongruent and underspecified conditions, with a larger N400 effect for the former than for the latter. ERPs on the sentence-final phrases showed a sustained negativity for the incongruent, but not for the underspecified condition. The N400 effect may reflect the increased difficulty in unifying the current event into the lian…dou… construction. The late negativity may reflect a second-pass revision according to the likelihood scale to satisfy the pragmatic constraints of the construction.	\N	\N
23786393	The purpose of this study was to test the ability to discriminate low-frequency pure-tone stimuli for ears with and without contralateral dead regions, in subjects with bilateral high-frequency hearing loss; we examined associations between hearing loss characteristics and frequency discrimination of low-frequency stimuli in subjects with high-frequency hearing loss. Cochlear dead regions were diagnosed using the TEN-HL test. A frequency discrimination test utilizing an adaptive three-alternative forced choice method provided difference limens for reference frequencies 0.25 kHz and 0.5 kHz. Among 105 subjects with bilateral high-frequency hearing loss, unilateral dead regions were found in 15 subjects. These, and an additional 15 matched control subjects without dead regions, were included in the study. Ears with dead regions performed best at the frequency discrimination test. Ears with a contralateral dead region performed significantly better than ears without a contralateral dead region at 0.5 kHz, the reference frequency closest to the mean audiogram cut-off, while the opposite result was obtained at 0.25 kHz. Results may be seen as sign of a contralateral effect of unilateral dead regions on the discrimination of stimuli with frequencies well below the audiogram cut-off in adult subjects with bilateral high-frequency hearing loss.	\N	\N
23786439	Most theories of human language production assume that generating a sentence involves several stages, including an initial stage where the prelinguistic message is determined and a subsequent stage of grammatical encoding. However, it is contentious whether grammatical encoding involves separate stages of grammatical-function assignment and linearization. To address this question, we examined the mapping between the message level and grammatical encoding in two structural priming experiments in which German speakers choose between three different structures expressing ditransitive events. Although speakers showed a tendency to repeat the order of constituents (noun phrase-prepositional phrase, NP-PP, vs. NP-NP), they were additionally primed to repeat the order of thematic roles when constituent structure was constant (NPRECIPIENT-NPTHEME vs. NPTHEME-NPRECIPIENT). Experiment 2 found that the latter effect could not be due to persistence of the order of phrases referring to animate and inanimate entities. These results suggest a direct mapping of thematic roles to word order, consistent with a model in which the message is mapped onto syntactic structure in a single stage.	\N	\N
23787044	Coordinating movements to music is often considered a uniquely human skill. A new study dispels this notion by showing that male Australian lyrebirds also perform 'dance' moves which are predictably matched with specific songs in their display routines.	\N	\N
23789391	Auditory evoked response and mismatch negativity potential have been studied using the reversed odd-ball paradigm of standard and deviant stimulus presentation. In the experiments, three types of spatial sound stimuli (stationary and moving either gradually or abruptly from the head midline) were presented in three configurations. Each configuration employed one stimulus type as standard and the other two types as deviants. It was demonstrated that the configuration reversals influenced significantly the evoked response and mismatch negativity. The results obtained are discussed as the possible evidence of the categorical perception of auditory motion revealed at the earlier stages of sound processing in the hearing system.	\N	\N
23789637	Pickering & Garrod (P&G) put forward the interesting idea that language production relies on forward modeling operating at multiple processing levels. The evidence currently available to substantiate this idea mostly concerns sensorimotor processes and not more abstract linguistic levels (e.g., syntax, semantics, phonology). The predictions that follow from the claim seem too general, in their current form, to guide specific empirical tests.	\N	\N
23789872	We welcome the proposal to use forward models to understand predictive processes in language processing. However, Pickering & Garrod (P&G) miss the opportunity to provide a strong framework for future work. Forward models need to be pursued in the context of learning. This naturally leads to questions about what prediction error these models aim to minimize.	\N	\N
23790043	Although the target article emphasizes the important role of prediction in language use, prediction may well also play a key role in the initial formation of linguistic representations, that is, in language development. We outline the role of prediction in three relevant language-learning domains: transitional probabilities, statistical preemption, and construction learning.	\N	\N
23792078	Abundant evidence from both field and lab studies has established that conspecific vocalizations (CVs) are of critical ecological significance for a wide variety of species, including humans, non-human primates, rodents, and other mammals and birds. Correspondingly, a number of experiments have demonstrated behavioral processing advantages for CVs, such as in discrimination and memory tasks. Further, a wide range of experiments have described brain regions in many species that appear to be specialized for processing CVs. For example, several neural regions have been described in both mammals and birds wherein greater neural responses are elicited by CVs than by comparison stimuli such as heterospecific vocalizations, nonvocal complex sounds, and artificial stimuli. These observations raise the question of whether these regions reflect domain-specific neural mechanisms dedicated to processing CVs, or alternatively, if these regions reflect domain-general neural mechanisms for representing complex sounds of learned significance. Inasmuch as CVs can be viewed as complex combinations of basic spectrotemporal features, the plausibility of the latter position is supported by a large body of literature describing modulated cortical and subcortical representation of a variety of acoustic features that have been experimentally associated with stimuli of natural behavioral significance (such as food rewards). Herein, we review a relatively small body of existing literature describing the roles of experience, learning, and memory in the emergence of species-typical neural representations of CVs and auditory system plasticity. In both songbirds and mammals, manipulations of auditory experience as well as specific learning paradigms are shown to modulate neural responses evoked by CVs, either in terms of overall firing rate or temporal firing patterns. In some cases, CV-sensitive neural regions gradually acquire representation of non-CV stimuli with which subjects have training and experience. These results parallel literature in humans describing modulation of responses in face-sensitive neural regions through learning and experience. Thus, although many questions remain, the available evidence is consistent with the notion that CVs may acquire distinct neural representation through domain-general mechanisms for representing complex auditory objects that are of learned importance to the animal. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled "Communication Sounds and the Brain: New Directions and Perspectives".	\N	\N
23792769	This event-related potential (ERP) study examines the time course of context-dependent talker normalization in spoken word identification. We found three ERP components, the N1 (100-220 ms), the N400 (250-500 ms) and the Late Positive Component (500-800 ms), which are conjectured to involve (a) auditory processing, (b) talker normalization and lexical retrieval, and (c) decisional process/lexical selection respectively. Talker normalization likely occurs in the time window of the N400 and overlaps with the lexical retrieval process. Compared with the nonspeech context, the speech contexts, no matter whether they have semantic content or not, enable listeners to tune to a talker's pitch range. In this way, speech contexts induce more efficient talker normalization during the activation of potential lexical candidates and lead to more accurate selection of the intended word in spoken word identification.	\N	\N
23809517	Cochlear implantation has significant effects on language abilities and reading skills. The current study compared the reading performance of children with cochlear implants with that of typically developing children in second and third grades. This descriptive-analytic study was performed including 24 children with cochlear implants and 24 typically developing peers. The grade range of the participants was second and third grades. All of students were selected from Tehran city elementary schools. The reading performance of children was assessed by the "Nama" reading test. The results showed that the means of reading scores of typically developed children were significantly greater than the children with cochlear implants (P < 0.01) and there was a significant relationship between reading skills and age of surgery (P < 0.05). Also, there was a significant relationship between reading skills and the period of cochlear implantation (P < 0.05). Children with cochlear implants showed a weak performance in reading skills in comparison to typically developing children due to lower accessibility to phonological information. However, this limitation can be compensated for partly by early surgery. Parents should refer their deaf children for cochlear implantation before the age of language learning.	\N	\N
23815480	The origin of the Western preference for consonance remains unresolved, with some suggesting that the preference is innate. In Experiments 1 and 2 of the present study, 6-month-old infants heard six different consonant/dissonant pairs of stimuli, including those tested in previous research. In contrast to the findings of others, infants in the present study failed to listen longer to consonant stimuli. After 3 minutes of exposure to consonant or dissonant stimuli in Experiment 3, 6-month-old infants listened longer to the familiar stimulus, whether consonant or dissonant. Our findings are inconsistent with innate preferences for consonant stimuli. Instead, the effect of short-term exposure is consistent with the view that familiarity underlies the origin of the Western preference for consonant intervals.	\N	\N
23819616	In an earlier study ( Beach et al, 2012 ), detailed noise exposure measurements were obtained through individual dosimetry. In this further analysis of the data we ask the question "Can the effort required to converse in noise be used to estimate the experienced A-weighted noise level?" The noise levels experienced during specific activities were obtained from the analysis of dosimetry results from personal noise exposure meters worn by study participants. The measured noise levels from particular events were compared to a subjectively judged 'loudness rating' reported by the person wearing the dosimeter during the measured event. Volunteers (females = 20, males = 22) between 18 and 35 years (average age = 26.8) willing to wear dosimeters and keep a simple activity log. The relation between the objectively measured and the subjectively judged levels was consistent for the group over a large number of events. The subjective loudness rating index was shown to be a convenient tool that can be utilized for the retrospective estimation of noise levels from individual activities.	\N	\N
23824440	In this study, the authors examined the effects of aging and residual hearing on the identification of acoustically similar and dissimilar vowels in adults with postlingual deafness who use hearing aids (HAs) and/or cochlear implants (CIs). The authors used two groups of acoustically similar and dissimilar vowels to assess vowel identification. Also, the Consonant-Nucleus-Consonant Word Recognition Test (Peterson & Lehiste, 1962) and sentences from the Hearing in Noise Test (Nilsson, Soli, & Sullivan, 1994) were administered. Forty CI recipients with postlingual deafness (ages 31-81 years) participated in the study. Acoustically similar vowels were more difficult to identify than acoustically dissimilar vowels. With increasing age, performance deteriorated when identifying acoustically similar vowels. Vowel identification was also affected by the use of a contralateral HA and the degree of residual hearing prior to implantation. Moderate correlations were found between speech perception and vowel identification performance. Identification performance was affected by the acoustic similarity of the vowels. Older adults experienced more difficulty identifying acoustically similar confusable vowels than did younger adults. The findings might lend support to the ease of language understanding model (Ronnberg, Rudner, Foo, & Lunner, 2008), which proposes that the quality and perceptual robustness of acoustic input affects speech perception.	\N	\N
23833281	The relations of phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness and vocabulary to word reading and spelling were examined for 304 first-grade children who were receiving differentiated instruction in a Response to Intervention (RtI) model of instruction. First-grade children were assessed on their phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness; expressive vocabulary; word reading; and spelling. Year-end word reading and spelling were outcome variables, and phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness; expressive vocabulary; and RtI status (Tiers 1, 2, & 3) were predictor variables. The 3 linguistic awareness skills were unique predictors of word reading, and phonological and orthographic awareness were unique predictors of spelling. The contributions that these linguistic awareness skills and vocabulary made to word reading and spelling did not differ by children's RtI tier status. These results, in conjunction with previous studies, suggest that even beginning readers and spellers draw on multiple linguistic awareness skills for their word reading and spelling regardless of their level of literacy abilities. Educational implications are discussed.	\N	\N
23833989	To investigate hidden hearing loss in tinnitus patients with normal audiograms by means of auditory brainstem response (ABR) and explore the origin of tinnitus. Pure tone thresholds, ABR thresholds, amplitude of wave I and wave V of ABR were analyzed in 40 tinnitus patients and 15 controls. There was no significantly difference in pure tone thresholds and ABR thresholds between those tinnitus patients and controls while a reduced amplitude of wave I and normal amplitude of wave V of ABR in the tinnitus patients became evident. Tinnitus patients with normal audiograms have hidden hearing loss at the level of primary auditory nerve and the generation of tinnitus is likely attributed to a homeostatic response of neurons in brainstem.	\N	\N
23846434	CHENFIT-AMP is a novel nonlinear strategy that combines the fitting (gain prescription) and amplification (gain implementation) procedures for cochlear hearing loss. The fitting part of CHENFIT-AMP prescribes gain for outer hair cell (OHC) and inner hair cell (IHC) loss, respectively. The gain for OHC loss varies with the cochlear gain decided by the value of OHC loss and the input level. The gain for IHC loss varies with the value of IHC loss only and will be limited to a constant if there is a "dead region." The amplification part of CHENFIT-AMP is responsible for estimating the input level and cochlear gain based on Chen's loudness model. CHENFIT-AMP is evaluated with four typical audiograms and nine individual audiograms. A widely used nonlinear fitting procedure, NAL-NL2, is evaluated to compare prescription results with CHENFIT-AMP; a standard nonlinear amplification algorithm, multichannel compression (MCC), with the parameters provided by NAL-NL2, is also evaluated to compare amplification results with CHENFIT-AMP. For long-term average speech spectrum (LTASS) inputs, CHENFIT-AMP generally prescribes similar gain as NAL-NL2 for the typical audiograms; however, gain prescribed by CHENFIT-AMP is more individualized than NAL-NL2 for the individual audiograms, especially when the audiograms have big deviations in the slope. For LTASS-shaped noise input, the gain implemented by MCC with parameters provided by NAL-NL2 cannot completely realize the gain prescribed by NAL-NL2. For speech sentence inputs, average ratings by subjects indicated that amplification by CHENFIT-AMP was preferred and led to a louder perception than that by MCC with parameters from NAL-NL2.	\N	\N
23846719	Inner speech is one of the most common, but least investigated, mental activities humans perform. It is an internal copy of one's external voice and so is similar to a well-established component of motor control: corollary discharge. Corollary discharge is a prediction of the sound of one's voice generated by the motor system. This prediction is normally used to filter self-caused sounds from perception, which segregates them from externally caused sounds and prevents the sensory confusion that would otherwise result. The similarity between inner speech and corollary discharge motivates the theory, tested here, that corollary discharge provides the sensory content of inner speech. The results reported here show that inner speech attenuates the impact of external sounds. This attenuation was measured using a context effect (an influence of contextual speech sounds on the perception of subsequent speech sounds), which weakens in the presence of speech imagery that matches the context sound. Results from a control experiment demonstrated this weakening in external speech as well. Such sensory attenuation is a hallmark of corollary discharge.	\N	\N
23847464	Evaluating series of complex sounds like those in speech and music requires sequential comparisons to extract task-relevant relations between subsequent sounds. With the present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we investigated whether sequential comparison of a specific acoustic feature within pairs of tones leads to a change in lateralized processing in the auditory cortex (AC) of humans. For this we used the active categorization of the direction (up vs. down) of slow frequency modulated (FM) tones. Several studies suggest that this task is mainly processed in the right AC. These studies, however, tested only the categorization of the FM direction of each individual tone. In the present study we ask the question whether the right lateralized processing changes when, in addition, the FM direction is compared within pairs of successive tones. For this we use an experimental approach involving contralateral noise presentation in order to explore the contributions made by the left and right AC in the completion of the auditory task. This method has already been applied to confirm the right-lateralized processing of the FM direction of individual tones. In the present study, the subjects were required to perform, in addition, a sequential comparison of the FM direction in pairs of tones. The results suggest a division of labor between the two hemispheres such that the FM direction of each individual tone is mainly processed in the right AC whereas the sequential comparison of this feature between tones in a pair is probably performed in the left AC.	\N	\N
23850664	Over the last four decades, a range of different neuroimaging tools have been used to study human auditory attention, spanning from classic event-related potential studies using electroencephalography to modern multimodal imaging approaches (e.g., combining anatomical information based on magnetic resonance imaging with magneto- and electroencephalography). This review begins by exploring the different strengths and limitations inherent to different neuroimaging methods, and then outlines some common behavioral paradigms that have been adopted to study auditory attention. We argue that in order to design a neuroimaging experiment that produces interpretable, unambiguous results, the experimenter must not only have a deep appreciation of the imaging technique employed, but also a sophisticated understanding of perception and behavior. Only with the proper caveats in mind can one begin to infer how the cortex supports a human in solving the "cocktail party" problem. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled Human Auditory Neuroimaging.	\N	\N
23855264	Accurate tuning is an important aspect of singing in harmony in the context of a choir or vocal ensemble. Tuning and 'pitch drift' are concerning factors in performance for even the most accomplished professional choirs when singing a cappella (unaccompanied). In less experienced choirs tuning often lacks precision, typically because individual singers have not developed appropriate listening skills. In order to investigate accuracy of tuning in ensemble singing situations, a chorally appropriate reference is required against which frequency measurements can be made. Since most basic choral singing involves chords in four parts, a four-part reference template is used in which the fundamental frequencies of the notes in each chord can be accurately set. This template can now be used in experiments where three of the reference parts are tuned in any musical temperament (tuning system), in this case equal and just temperaments, and played over headphones to a singer to allow her/his tuning strategy to be investigated. This paper describes a practical implementation of a four-part choral synthesis system in Pure Data (Pd) and its use in an investigation of tuning of notes by individual singers using an exercise originally written to explore pitch drift in a cappella choral singing.	\N	\N
23859060	To examine the relationship between portable digital audio player listening behaviours and (1) measured sound pressure levels, (2) audiometric measures, (3) self-reported hearing loss symptoms. A questionnaire to evaluate listening behaviours, including self-reported hearing loss symptoms and listening duration/volume settings. Multivariate regression analysis was used to determine the relationship between these variables, audiometric evaluation, calculated exposure levels, Lex(8hr), and measured sound pressure levels, Leq(32sec). This study included 103 males and 134 female subjects aged 10 to 17 years. Calculated Lex(8hr) and measured Leq(32sec) levels increased with age and self-reported usage time. Audiometric thresholds averaged over 4 and 8 kHz were higher when usage exceeded five years as compared to less than one year. Higher measured sound pressure levels were associated with worse audiometric thresholds at (0.5, 1, 2 kHz, averaged) and 4 kHz. Self-reported hearing loss symptoms were reported by 33% to 50% of subjects. In this cohort sample, our results support a statistical association between hearing acuity and (1) Self-reported weekly usage in hours; (2) Tightness of fit; (3) Years of usage; and (4) Measured sound pressure levels. Generalizing these results beyond the current sample would require additional research.	\N	\N
23862816	Tone-in-noise detection has been studied for decades; however, it is not completely understood what cue or cues are used by listeners for this task. Model predictions based on energy in the critical band are generally more successful than those based on temporal cues, except when the energy cue is not available. Nevertheless, neither energy nor temporal cues can explain the predictable variance for all listeners. In this study, it was hypothesized that better predictions of listeners' detection performance could be obtained using a nonlinear combination of energy and temporal cues, even when the energy cue was not available. The combination of different cues was achieved using the logarithmic likelihood-ratio test (LRT), an optimal detector in signal detection theory. A nonlinear LRT-based combination of cues was proposed, given that the cues have Gaussian distributions and the covariance matrices of cue values from noise-alone and tone-plus-noise conditions are different. Predictions of listeners' detection performance for three different sets of reproducible noises were computed with the proposed model. Results showed that predictions for hit rates approached the predictable variance for all three datasets, even when an energy cue was not available.	\N	\N
23862818	A number of precedence-effect models have been developed to simulate the robust localization performance of humans in reverberant conditions. Although they are able to reduce reverberant information for many conditions, they tend to fail for ongoing stimuli with truncated on/offsets, a condition human listeners master when localizing a sound source in the presence of a reflection, according to a study by Dizon and Colburn [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 119, 2947-2964 (2006)]. This paper presents a solution for this condition by using an autocorrelation mechanism to estimate the delay and amplitude ratio between the leading and lagging signals. An inverse filter is then used to eliminate the lag signal, before it is localized with a standard localization algorithm. The current algorithm can operate on top of a basic model of the auditory periphery (gammatone filter bank, half-wave rectification) to simulate psychoacoustic data by Braasch et al. [Acoust. Sci. Tech. 24, 293-303 (2003)] and Dizon and Colburn. The model performs robustly with these on/offset truncated and interaural level difference based stimuli and is able to demonstrate the Haas effect.	\N	\N
23862821	In noise repetition-detection tasks, listeners have to distinguish trials of continuously running noise from trials in which noise tokens are repeated in a cyclic manner. Recently, it has been shown that using the exact same noise token across several trials ("reference noise") facilitates the detection of repetitions for this token [Agus et al. (2010). Neuron 66, 610-618]. This was attributed to perceptual learning. Here, the nature of the learning was investigated. In experiment 1, reference noise tokens were embedded in trials with or without cyclic presentation. Naïve listeners reported repetitions in both cases, thus responding to the reference noise even in the absence of an actual repetition. Experiment 2, with the same listeners, showed a similar pattern of results even after the design of the experiment was made explicit, ruling out a misunderstanding of the task. Finally, in experiment 3, listeners reported repetitions in trials containing the reference noise, even before ever hearing it presented cyclically. The results show that listeners were able to learn and recognize noise tokens in the absence of an immediate repetition. Moreover, the learning mandatorily interfered with listeners' ability to detect repetitions. It is concluded that salient perceptual changes accompany the learning of noise.	\N	\N
23862833	Effective communication between staff members is key to patient safety in hospitals. A variety of patient care activities including admittance, evaluation, and treatment rely on oral communication. Surprisingly, published information on speech intelligibility in hospitals is extremely limited. In this study, speech intelligibility measurements and occupant evaluations were conducted in 20 units of five different U.S. hospitals. A variety of unit types and locations were studied. Results show that overall, no unit had "good" intelligibility based on the speech intelligibility index (SII > 0.75) and several locations found to have "poor" intelligibility (SII < 0.45). Further, occupied spaces were found to have 10%-15% lower SII than unoccupied spaces on average. Additionally, staff perception of communication problems at nurse stations was significantly correlated with SII ratings. In a targeted second phase, a unit treated with sound absorption had higher SII ratings for a larger percentage of time as compared to an identical untreated unit. Taken as a whole, the study provides an extensive baseline evaluation of speech intelligibility across a variety of hospitals and unit types, offers some evidence of the positive impact of absorption on intelligibility, and identifies areas for future research.	\N	\N
23862901	Categorical perception experiments were performed on an English /b-p/ voice onset time (VOT) continuum with native (American English) and non-native (Korean) listeners to examine whether and how phonetic categorization is modulated by prosodic boundary and language experience. Results demonstrated perceptual shifting according to prosodic boundary strength: A longer VOT was required to identify a sound as /p/ after an intonational phrase than a word boundary, regardless of the listeners' language experience. This suggests that segmental perception is modulated by the listeners' computation of an abstract prosodic structure reflected in phonetic cues of phrase-final lengthening and domain-initial strengthening, which are common across languages.	\N	\N
23862903	A previous report [Margolis and Stiepan (2012). "Acoustic method for calibration of audiometric bone vibrators," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 131, 1221-1225] described a reliable, inexpensive, acoustic method for calibration of audiometric bone vibrators. As a follow up to that report harmonic distortion measurements were made with the standard electromechanical method and the acoustic method using five Radioear B71 vibrators and one Radioear B81 prototype vibrator. Lower distortion was seen for measurements made with the acoustic method compared to the electromechanical method and for the Radioear B81 vibrator compared to the Radioear B71 vibrator.	\N	\N
23865332	Masking therapy can make patients accustom to tinnitus. This therapy is safe and easy to implement, so that it has become a widely used treatment of curing tinnitus. According to surveys of tinnitus sounds, cicada sound is one of the most usual tinnituses. Meanwhile, we have not hitherto found published papers concerning how to synthesize cicada sound and to use it to ameliorate tinnitus. Inspired by the human acoustics theory, we proposed a method to synthesize medical masking sound and to realize the diversity by illustrating the process of synthesizing various cicada sounds. In addition, energy attenuation problem in spectrum shifting process has been successfully solved. Simulation results indicated that the proposed method achieved decent results and would have practical value for the future applications.	\N	\N
23867553	We study the developmental trajectory of morphology and function of the superior temporal cortex (STC) in children (8-9 years), adolescents (14-15 years) and young adults. We analyze cortical surface landmarks and functional MRI (fMRI) responses to voices, other natural categories and tones and examine how hemispheric asymmetry and inter-subject variability change across age. Our results show stable morphological asymmetries across age groups, including a larger left planum temporale and a deeper right superior temporal sulcus. fMRI analyses show that a rightward lateralization for voice-selective responses is present in all groups but decreases with age. Furthermore, STC responses to voices change from being less selective and more spatially diffuse in children to highly selective and focal in adults. Interestingly, the analysis of morphological landmarks reveals that inter-subject variability increases during development in the right--but not in the left--STC. Similarly, inter-subject variability of cortically-realigned functional responses to voices, other categories and tones increases with age in the right STC. Our findings reveal asymmetric developmental changes in brain regions crucial for auditory and voice perception. The age-related increase of inter-subject variability in right STC suggests that anatomy and function of this region are shaped by unique individual developmental experiences.	\N	\N
23882002	To determine the relative importance of acoustic parameters (fundamental frequency [F0], formant frequencies [FFs], aperiodicity, and spectrum level [SL]) on voice gender perception, the authors used a novel parameter-morphing approach that, unlike spectral envelope shifting, allows the application of nonuniform scale factors to transform formants and more direct comparison of parameter impact. In each of 2 experiments, 16 listeners with normal hearing (8 female, 8 male) classified voice gender for morphs between female and male speakers, using syllable tokens from 2 male-female speaker pairs. Morphs varied single acoustic parameters (Experiment 1) or selected combinations (Experiment 2), keeping residual parameters androgynous, as determined in a baseline experiment. The strongest cue related to gender perception was F0, followed by FF and SL. Aperiodicity did not systematically influence gender perception. Morphing F0 and FF in conjunction produced convincing changes in perceived gender-changes that were equivalent to those for Full morphs interpolating all parameters. Despite the importance of F0, morphing FF and SL in combination produced effective changes in voice gender perception. The most important single parameters for gender perception are, in order, F0, FF, and SL. At the same time, F0 and vocal tract resonances have a comparable impact on voice gender perception.	\N	\N
23883861	The observation that near-threshold low-contrast visual distractors can equally influence perceptual state and goal-directed motor responses was recently taken as an argument against a sharp separation between a conscious vision for perception and an unconscious vision for action. However, data supporting the dual visual system theory have principally involved high-contrast stimuli. In the present study, we assessed the effect of varying the contrast of a near-threshold visual distractor while keeping its visibility constant with backward noise masks. Eight participants performed fast manual reaching movements toward a highly visible target while subsequently reporting the presence/absence of a near-threshold distractor appearing at the opposite location with respect to the body midline. For all distractor contrasts, hand trajectory deviations toward the distractor were observed when the distractor was present and detected. When the distractor remained undetected deviations also occurred, but for higher contrasts. The subliminal motor effect traditionally observed in visual masking studies may therefore primarily depend on the luminance contrast of the interfering stimuli. These results suggest that dissociations between perceptual and motor responses can be explained by a single-signal model involving differential thresholds for perception and action that are specifically modulated as a function of both the requirements of the task and the contrast level of the stimuli. Such modulation is compatible with neurophysiological accounts of visual masking in which feedforward activation to--and feedback activation from--higher visual areas are correlated with the actual presence of the stimulation and its conscious perception, respectively.	\N	\N
23902521	This study investigated the effect of electrode configuration, stimulus rate, and EEG rejection level on the efficiency of ABR testing in babies. ABR to click stimuli at 40 dB nHL were simultaneously recorded from two electrode configurations, ipsilateral mastoid to high forehead (Mi-Fh) and nape to high forehead (N-Fh), with two EEG rejection levels (± 5 μV and ± 10 μV). Stimulus rates were between 39.1 and 69.1 per second. Efficiency was measured by confidence in the ABR for a given test time. Thirty babies who had passed a targeted newborn hearing screen with ABR thresholds ≤ 40 dB nHL. The N-Fh configuration, as expected, gave on average a larger response amplitude compared to the Mi-Fh configuration but was only marginally significantly better in terms of test efficiency. There was no significant effect of stimulus rate on test efficiency between 39.1/s and 59.1/s. The lower ± 5 μV EEG rejection level was more test efficient. This study provides some evidence that, for ABR threshold testing in babies, alternatives of ipsilateral mastoid or nape electrode and a range of stimulus rates have little or no effect on test efficiency. The results support the use of low EEG rejection limits.	\N	\N
23915050	In everyday listening situations, we need to constantly switch between alternative sound sources and engage attention according to cues that match our goals and expectations. The exact neuronal bases of these processes are poorly understood. We investigated oscillatory brain networks controlling auditory attention using cortically constrained fMRI-weighted magnetoencephalography/EEG source estimates. During consecutive trials, participants were instructed to shift attention based on a cue, presented in the ear where a target was likely to follow. To promote audiospatial attention effects, the targets were embedded in streams of dichotically presented standard tones. Occasionally, an unexpected novel sound occurred opposite to the cued ear to trigger involuntary orienting. According to our cortical power correlation analyses, increased frontoparietal/temporal 30-100 Hz gamma activity at 200-1400 msec after cued orienting predicted fast and accurate discrimination of subsequent targets. This sustained correlation effect, possibly reflecting voluntary engagement of attention after the initial cue-driven orienting, spread from the TPJ, anterior insula, and inferior frontal cortices to the right FEFs. Engagement of attention to one ear resulted in a significantly stronger increase of 7.5-15 Hz alpha in the ipsilateral than contralateral parieto-occipital cortices 200-600 msec after the cue onset, possibly reflecting cross-modal modulation of the dorsal visual pathway during audiospatial attention. Comparisons of cortical power patterns also revealed significant increases of sustained right medial frontal cortex theta power, right dorsolateral pFC and anterior insula/inferior frontal cortex beta power, and medial parietal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex gamma activity after cued versus novelty-triggered orienting (600-1400 msec). Our results reveal sustained oscillatory patterns associated with voluntary engagement of auditory spatial attention, with the frontoparietal and temporal gamma increases being best predictors of subsequent behavioral performance.	\N	\N
23920156	The current study investigated the role of resumption in the interpretation of object relative clauses (RCs) in Persian-speaking children. Sixty-four (N=64) children aged 3;2-6;0 (M=4;8) completed a referent selection task that tested their comprehension of subject RCs, gapped object RCs, and object RCs containing either a resumptive pronoun or an object clitic. The results showed that the presence of a resumptive element (pronoun or clitic) had a facilitative effect on children's processing of object RCs. In both cases object RCs with resumptive elements were interpreted more accurately than gapped subject and object RCs, suggesting that resumptive elements ease processing burden in syntactically complex contexts because they provide local cues to thematic role assignment.	\N	\N
23926291	Previously, Gygi and Shafiro (2011) found that when environmental sounds are semantically incongruent with the background scene (e.g., horse galloping in a restaurant), they can be identified more accurately by young normal-hearing listeners (YNH) than sounds congruent with the scene (e.g., horse galloping at a racetrack). This study investigated how age and high-frequency audibility affect this Incongruency Advantage (IA) effect. In Experiments 1a and 1b, elderly listeners ( N = 18 for 1a; N = 10 for 1b) with age-appropriate hearing (EAH) were tested on target sounds and auditory scenes in 5 sound-to-scene ratios (So/Sc) between -3 and -18 dB. Experiment 2 tested 11 YNH on the same sound-scene pairings lowpass-filtered at 4 kHz (YNH-4k). The EAH and YNH-4k groups exhibited an almost identical pattern of significant IA effects, but both were at approximately 3.9 dB higher So/Sc than the previously tested YNH listeners. However, the psychometric functions revealed a shallower slope for EAH listeners compared with YNH listeners for the congruent stimuli only, suggesting a greater difficulty for the EAH listeners in attending to sounds expected to occur in a scene. These findings indicate that semantic relationships between environmental sounds in soundscapes are mediated by both audibility and cognitive factors and suggest a method for dissociating these factors.	\N	\N
23927115	Laback et al. [(2011). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 129, 888-897] investigated the additivity of nonsimultaneous masking using short Gaussian-shaped tones as maskers and target. The present study involved Gaussian stimuli to measure the additivity of simultaneous masking for combinations of up to four spectrally separated maskers. According to most basilar membrane measurements, the maskers should be processed linearly at the characteristic frequency (CF) of the target. Assuming also compression of the target, all masker combinations should produce excess masking (exceeding linear additivity). The results for a pair of maskers flanking the target indeed showed excess masking. The amount of excess masking could be predicted by a model assuming summation of masker-evoked excitations in intensity units at the target CF and compression of the target, using compressive input/output functions derived from the nonsimultaneous masking study. However, the combinations of lower-frequency maskers showed much less excess masking than predicted by the model. This cannot easily be attributed to factors like off-frequency listening, combination tone perception, or between-masker suppression. It was better predicted, however, by assuming weighted intensity summation of masker excitations. The optimum weights for the lower-frequency maskers were smaller than one, consistent with partial masker compression as indicated by recent psychoacoustic data.	\N	\N
23927133	Much recent interest surrounds listeners' abilities to adapt to various transformations that distort speech. An extreme example is spectral rotation, in which the spectrum of low-pass filtered speech is inverted around a center frequency (2 kHz here). Spectral shape and its dynamics are completely altered, rendering speech virtually unintelligible initially. However, intonation, rhythm, and contrasts in periodicity and aperiodicity are largely unaffected. Four normal hearing adults underwent 6 h of training with spectrally-rotated speech using Continuous Discourse Tracking. They and an untrained control group completed pre- and post-training speech perception tests, for which talkers differed from the training talker. Significantly improved recognition of spectrally-rotated sentences was observed for trained, but not untrained, participants. However, there were no significant improvements in the identification of medial vowels in /bVd/ syllables or intervocalic consonants. Additional tests were performed with speech materials manipulated so as to isolate the contribution of various speech features. These showed that preserving intonational contrasts did not contribute to the comprehension of spectrally-rotated speech after training, and suggested that improvements involved adaptation to altered spectral shape and dynamics, rather than just learning to focus on speech features relatively unaffected by the transformation.	\N	\N
23933145	Prepulse inhibition (PPI) of startle is a measure of inhibitory function in which a weak leading stimulus suppresses the startle response to an intense stimulus. Usually, startle blink reflexes to an intense sound are used for measuring PPI. A recent magnetoencephalographic study showed that a similar phenomenon is observed for auditory change-related cortical response (Change-N1m) to an abrupt change in sound features. It has been well established that nicotine enhances PPI of startle. Therefore, in the present magnetoencephalographic study, the effects of acute nicotine on PPI of the Change-N1m were studied in 12 healthy subjects (two females and 10 males) under a repeated measures and placebo-controlled design. Nicotine (4 mg) was given as nicotine gum. The test Change-N1m response was elicited with an abrupt increase in sound pressure by 6 dB in a continuous background sound of 65 dB. PPI was produced by an insertion of a prepulse with a 3-dB-louder or 6-dB-weaker sound pressure than the background 75 ms before the test stimulus. Results show that nicotine tended to enhance the test Change-N1m response and significantly enhanced PPI for both prepulses. Therefore, nicotine's enhancing effect on PPI of the Change-N1m was similar to that on PPI of the startle. The present results suggest that the two measures share at least some mechanisms.	\N	\N
23973563	The physical intensity of a sound, usually expressed in dB on a logarithmic ratio scale, can easily be measured using technical equipment. Loudness is the perceptual correlate of sound intensity, and is usually determined by means of some sort of psychophysical scaling procedure. The interrelation of sound intensity and perceived loudness is still a matter of debate, and the physiological correlate of loudness perception in the human auditory pathway is not completely understood. Various studies indicate that the activation in human auditory cortex is more a representation of loudness sensation rather than of physical sound pressure level. This raises the questions (1), at what stage or stages in the ascending auditory pathway is the transformation of the physical stimulus into its perceptual correlate completed, and (2), to what extent other factors affecting individual loudness judgements might modulate the brain activation as registered by auditory neuroimaging. An overview is given about recent studies on the effects of sound intensity, duration, bandwidth and individual hearing status on the activation in the human auditory system, as measured by various approaches in auditory neuroimaging. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled Human Auditory Neuroimaging.	\N	\N
23974947	Tonal music is characterized by a continuous flow of tension and resolution. This flow of tension and resolution is closely related to processes of expectancy and prediction and is a key mediator of music-evoked emotions. However, the neural correlates of subjectively experienced tension and resolution have not yet been investigated. We acquired continuous ratings of musical tension for four piano pieces. In a subsequent functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment, we identified blood oxygen level-dependent signal increases related to musical tension in the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex (pars orbitalis of the inferior frontal gyrus). In addition, a region of interest analysis in bilateral amygdala showed activation in the right superficial amygdala during periods of increasing tension (compared with decreasing tension). This is the first neuroimaging study investigating the time-varying changes of the emotional experience of musical tension, revealing brain activity in key areas of affective processing.	\N	\N
23990061	We aim to evaluate the incidence and clinical manifestations of sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) in adult patients with acute otitis media (AOM). Seventy-five patients (age > 18 years; 83 ears) diagnosed with AOM between January 2008 and March 2011 at our clinic were enroled and retrospectively reviewed. We detected audiometrically confirmed SNHL during the course of AOM in eight patients. The clinical course, treatment, and audiometric final outcome of each case were reviewed. SNHL was associated with AOM in 8 out of 83 ears (9.3%). The mean age of patients was 57.5 years, and the mean follow-up period was 21.1 months (range 0.6-46.3 months). The most common symptom was tinnitus. Mean bone conduction hearing threshold was 39.5 dB in pure tone audiometry. All patients showed high-frequency HL, and three showed pan-frequency HL. All patients were treated with oral antibiotics at the initial visit. Seven ears were treated with a combination of oral steroids. Myringotomy was also performed. Seven of eight patients showed improvement; however, 8 kHz thresholds were not improved. This suggested that the inflammation spread through the round window. The mean duration of recovery was 18.6 days. SNHL associated with AOM in adult patients occurs during the early phases of the disease course. High-frequency hearing was commonly affected and was well treated with oral antibiotics, myringotomy, and steroid therapy. Audiometry can be helpful for treating adult patients with AOM. Active treatment, including myringotomy, should be performed during the early phase, if SNHL is suspected.	\N	\N
23992133	The development of presbycusis, or age-related hearing loss, is determined by a combination of genetic and environmental factors. The auditory periphery exhibits a progressive bilateral, symmetrical reduction of auditory sensitivity to sound from high to low frequencies. The central auditory nervous system shows symptoms of decline in age-related cognitive abilities, including difficulties in speech discrimination and reduced central auditory processing, ultimately resulting in auditory perceptual abnormalities. The pathophysiological mechanisms of presbycusis include excitotoxicity, oxidative stress, inflammation, aging and oxidative stress-induced DNA damage that results in apoptosis in the auditory pathway. However, the originating signals that trigger these mechanisms remain unclear. For instance, it is still unknown whether insulin is involved in auditory aging. Auditory aging has preclinical lesions, which manifest as asymptomatic loss of periphery auditory nerves and changes in the plasticity of the central auditory nervous system. Currently, the diagnosis of preclinical, reversible lesions depends on the detection of auditory impairment by functional imaging, and the identification of physiological and molecular biological markers. However, despite recent improvements in the application of these markers, they remain under-utilized in clinical practice. The application of antisenescent approaches to the prevention of auditory aging has produced inconsistent results. Future research will focus on the identification of markers for the diagnosis of preclinical auditory aging and the development of effective interventions.	\N	\N
23992488	The state of hearing in 75-year old persons was measured in a population based epidemiological study with the aim of studying if hearing had changed during a time span of 29 years. An epidemiological study of generational effects in three age cohorts. Three age cohorts were included: cohort 1 (n: 267) born in 1976-77, cohort 4 (n: 197) in 1990-91, and cohort 6 (n: 570) in 2005. The same test procedures using pure-tone audiometry and a short questionnaire were applied to the three cohorts of 75-year old residents in the same city. The hearing was essentially unchanged during the span of the investigation-almost three decades. Low-frequency hearing was up to about 10 dB poorer in the most recently studied cohort compared to the previously studied cohorts. The reason for this difference is considered to depend on methodological factors. Self-assessed hearing and tinnitus was mainly unchanged, or had minor changes both to the better and to the worse. The hearing, both measured with pure-tone audiometry and with a short questionnaire, of 75-year old persons has not changed at all, or only marginally, over three decades.	\N	\N
23994183	Speech comprehension relies on auditory as well as visual information, and is enhanced in healthy subjects, when audiovisual (AV) information is present. Patients with schizophrenia have been reported to have problems regarding this AV integration process, but little is known about which underlying neural processes are altered. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was performed in 15 schizophrenia patients (SP) and 15 healthy controls (HC) to study functional connectivity of Broca's area by means of a beta series correlation method during perception of audiovisually presented bisyllabic German nouns, in which audio and video either matched or did not match. Broca's area of SP showed stronger connectivity with supplementary motor cortex for incongruent trials whereas HC connectivity was stronger for congruent trials. The right posterior superior temporal sulcus (RpSTS) area showed differences in connectivity for congruent and incongruent trials in HC in contrast to SP where the connectivity was similar for both conditions. These smaller differences in connectivity in SP suggest a less adaptive processing of audiovisually congruent and incongruent speech. The findings imply that AV integration problems in schizophrenia are associated with maladaptive connectivity of Broca's and RpSTS area in particular when confronted with incongruent stimuli. Results are discussed in light of recent AV speech perception models.	\N	\N
23998484	Electrode impedance increases following implantation and undergoes transitory reduction with onset of electrical stimulation. The studies in this paper measured the changes in access resistance and polarization impedance in vivo before and following electrical stimulation, and recorded the time course of these changes. Impedance measures recorded in (a) four cats following 6 months of cochlear implant use, and (b) three cochlear implant recipients with 1.5-5 years cochlear implant experience. Both the experimental and clinical data exhibited a reduction in electrode impedance, 20 and 5% respectively, within 15-30 minutes of stimulation onset. The majority of these changes occurred through reduction in polarization impedance. Cessation of stimulation was followed by an equivalent rise in impedance measures within 6-12 hours. Stimulus-induced reductions in impedance exhibit a rapid onset and are evident in both chronic in vivo models tested, even several years after implantation. Given the impedance changes were dominated by the polarization component, these findings suggest that the electrical stimulation altered the electrode surface rather than the bulk tissue and fluid in the cochlea.	\N	\N
24001008	Classical theories of semantic memory assume that concepts are represented in a unitary amodal memory system. In challenging this classical view, pure or hybrid modality-specific theories propose that conceptual representations are grounded in the sensory-motor brain areas, which typically process sensory and action-related information. Although neuroimaging studies provided evidence for a functional-anatomical link between conceptual processing of sensory or action-related features and the sensory-motor brain systems, it has been argued that aspects of such sensory-motor activation may not directly reflect conceptual processing but rather strategic imagery or postconceptual elaboration. In the present ERP study, we investigated masked effects of acoustic and action-related conceptual features to probe unconscious automatic conceptual processing in isolation. Subliminal feature-specific ERP effects at frontocentral electrodes were observed, which differed with regard to polarity, topography, and underlying brain electrical sources in congruency with earlier findings under conscious viewing conditions. These findings suggest that conceptual acoustic and action representations can also be unconsciously accessed, thereby excluding any postconceptual strategic processes. This study therefore further substantiates a grounding of conceptual and semantic processing in action and perception.	\N	\N
24002965	Dual-system models of visual category learning posit the existence of an explicit, hypothesis-testing reflective system, as well as an implicit, procedural-based reflexive system. The reflective and reflexive learning systems are competitive and neurally dissociable. Relatively little is known about the role of these domain-general learning systems in speech category learning. Given the multidimensional, redundant, and variable nature of acoustic cues in speech categories, our working hypothesis is that speech categories are learned reflexively. To this end, we examined the relative contribution of these learning systems to speech learning in adults. Native English speakers learned to categorize Mandarin tone categories over 480 trials. The training protocol involved trial-by-trial feedback and multiple talkers. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the effect of manipulating the timing (immediate vs. delayed) and information content (full vs. minimal) of feedback. Dual-system models of visual category learning predict that delayed feedback and providing rich, informational feedback enhance reflective learning, while immediate and minimally informative feedback enhance reflexive learning. Across the two experiments, our results show that feedback manipulations that targeted reflexive learning enhanced category learning success. In Experiment 3, we examined the role of trial-to-trial talker information (mixed vs. blocked presentation) on speech category learning success. We hypothesized that the mixed condition would enhance reflexive learning by not allowing an association between talker-related acoustic cues and speech categories. Our results show that the mixed talker condition led to relatively greater accuracies. Our experiments demonstrate that speech categories are optimally learned by training methods that target the reflexive learning system.	\N	\N
24003904	In a system where tens of thousands of words are made up of a limited number of phonemes, many words are bound to sound alike. This similarity of the words in the lexicon as characterized by phonological neighbourhood density (PhND) has been shown to affect speed and accuracy of word comprehension and production. Whereas there is a consensus about the interfering nature of neighbourhood effects in comprehension, the language production literature offers a more contradictory picture with mainly facilitatory but also interfering effects reported on word production. Here we report both of these two types of effects in the same study. Multiple regression mixed models analyses were conducted on PhND effects on errors produced in a naming task by a group of 21 participants with aphasia. These participants produced more formal errors (interfering effect) for words in dense phonological neighbourhoods, but produced fewer nonwords and semantic errors (a facilitatory effect) with increasing density. In order to investigate the nature of these opposite effects of PhND, we further analysed a subset of formal errors and nonword errors by distinguishing errors differing on a single phoneme from the target (corresponding to the definition of phonological neighbours) from those differing on two or more phonemes. This analysis confirmed that only formal errors that were phonological neighbours of the target increased in dense neighbourhoods, while all other errors decreased. Based on additional observations favouring a lexical origin of these formal errors (they exceeded the probability of producing a real-word error by chance, were of a higher frequency, and preserved the grammatical category of the targets), we suggest that the interfering effect of PhND is due to competition between lexical neighbours and target words in dense neighbourhoods.	\N	\N
24003982	This study employed Boothroyd and Nittrouer's k (1988) to directly quantify effectiveness in native versus non-native listeners' use of semantic cues. Listeners were presented speech-perception-in-noise sentences processed at three levels of concurrent multi-talker babble and reverberation. For each condition, 50 sentences with multiple semantic cues and 50 with minimum semantic cues were randomly presented. Listeners verbally reported and wrote down the target words. The metric, k, was derived from percent-correct scores for sentences with and without semantics. Ten native and 33 non-native listeners participated. The presence of semantics increased recognition benefit by over 250% for natives, but access to semantics remained limited for non-native listeners (90-135%). The k was comparable across conditions for native listeners, but level-dependent for non-natives. The k for non-natives was significantly different from 1 in all conditions, suggesting semantic cues, though reduced in importance in difficult conditions, were helpful for non-natives. Non-natives as a group were not as effective in using semantics to facilitate English sentence recognition as natives. Poor listening conditions were particularly adverse to the use of semantics in non-natives, who may rely on clear acoustic-phonetic cues before benefitting from semantic cues when recognizing connected speech.	\N	\N
24005532	It has been hypothesized that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI)-induced sexual dysfunction can occur more frequently in patients with higher central serotonergic activity, and that this higher serotonergic activity can induce inhibition of sexual desire, ejaculation, and orgasm. Thus, the aim of this study was to determine the relationship between SSRI-induced sexual dysfunction and increased serotonin. Event-related potentials for the loudness dependence of auditory evoked potentials (LDAEP) were measured in 46 patients at a single time point. The subjects' scores on the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and Antidepressant Side-Effect Checklist were also determined by the investigators at the same time point. All patients had received SSRI monotherapy. Overall, 37 % (17/46) of the patients experienced some form of SSRI-induced sexual dysfunction: lack of sexual desire, impotence, orgasm, and menstrual abnormality or mastalgia were experienced by 21.7, 8.3, 15.2, and 20.6 % of the patients, respectively. The subjects were thus divided into two groups-those with and without sexual dysfunction-and their data were compared. There was a tendency for the LDAEP to be lower in the group with sexual dysfunction (1.04 ± 0.77 μV) than the group without sexual dysfunction (1.45 ± 0.86 μV), although the difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.086). Furthermore, the distribution of the frequency of SSRI-induced sexual dysfunction differed marginally significantly between patients with low and high LDAEP, dichotomized according to the median LDAEP on the Cz electrode (χ (2) = 3.664, p = 0.056). There was a relatively high frequency of SSRI-induced sexual dysfunction in patients with low LDAEP.	\N	\N
24009759	Recent studies employing speech stimuli to investigate 'cocktail-party' listening have focused on entrainment of cortical activity to modulations at syllabic (5 Hz) and phonemic (20 Hz) rates. The data suggest that cortical modulation filters (CMFs) are dependent on the sound-frequency channel in which modulations are conveyed, potentially underpinning a strategy for separating speech from background noise. Here, we characterize modulation filters in human listeners using a novel behavioral method. Within an 'inverted' adaptive forced-choice increment detection task, listening level was varied whilst contrast was held constant for ramped increments with effective modulation rates between 0.5 and 33 Hz. Our data suggest that modulation filters are tonotopically organized (i.e., vary along the primary, frequency-organized, dimension). This suggests that the human auditory system is optimized to track rapid (phonemic) modulations at high sound-frequencies and slow (prosodic/syllabic) modulations at low frequencies.	\N	\N
24022792	Processing multiple complex features to create cohesive representations of objects is an essential aspect of both the visual and auditory systems. It is currently unclear whether these processes are entirely modality specific or whether there are amodal processes that contribute to complex object processing in both vision and audition. We investigated this using a dual-stream target detection task in which two concurrent streams of novel visual or auditory stimuli were presented. We manipulated the degree to which each stream taxed processing conjunctions of complex features. In two experiments, we found that concurrent visual tasks that both taxed conjunctive processing strongly interfered with each other but that concurrent auditory and visual tasks that both taxed conjunctive processing did not. These results suggest that resources for processing conjunctions of complex features within vision and audition are modality specific.	\N	\N
24023379	Effects of clicks and tonebursts on early and late auditory middle latency response (AMLR) components were evaluated in young and older cigarette smokers and nonsmokers. Participants ( n = 49) were categorized by smoking and age into 4 groups: (a) older smokers, (b) older nonsmokers, (c) young smokers, and (d) young nonsmokers. Monaural, 2-channel AMLRs were acquired from Fz and Cz electrodes with 3 stimuli (clicks, 500 Hz, and 3000 Hz). Group differences included significantly higher V-Na amplitude in young adults and shorter Pb latency in older nonsmokers. Young smokers had a significantly higher Nb-Pb amplitude and shorter Nb latency than other groups. Toneburst stimuli yielded significantly longer V, Na, and Pa latencies compared to clicks. Pb latency was shorter at Fz than at Cz. Relative amplitudes were significantly higher at Fz than at Cz overall; Pa-Nb and Nb-Pb were significantly lower for 3000 Hz than for 500 Hz and clicks. Responses from young smokers revealed a higher amplitude and shorter latency for later AMLR waves, reflecting an arousal effect of smoking in cortical and subcortical generators. AMLR differences in older adults may be due to age-related neurochemical changes in the central nervous system. Stimulus and electrode differences plus smoking and aging effects can guide neurodiagnostic AMLR protocols, especially in young adult smokers.	\N	\N
24026024	To standardize the information for families of children having functional surgery for middle ear malformations, we describe the audiometric results of the subgroup of patients with the most favorable anatomic conditions: viable auditory canal, intact tympanic membrane, mobile stapes, and corresponding to a Jahrsdoerfer score of 8 or higher. Case series, tertiary referral center. Charts of patients undergoing functional surgery for congenital middle ear malformations were reviewed for demographic data, preoperative Jahrsdoerfer score, ossicular chain status, type of ossiculoplasty, and audiometric data before and 6 months postsurgery. Eighteen consecutive interventions were performed on 13 patients (average age of 9 years, 8 girls and 5 boys) between 2004 and 2011. The ossiculoplasties performed were as follows: incus repositioning (4), double-layer tragal cartilage (5), intact native chain reconstruction (3), and partial ossicular prosthesis (6). Mean air bone gap (ABG) was 40.8 ± 12.4 dB preoperatively and 20.9 ± 12.9 dB postoperatively (p < 0.0001). Preoperative and postoperatively mean air conduction PTA thresholds were 49.9 ± 9.5 and 30.0 ± 14.1 dB, respectively (p < 0.0001). All ears operated on except one had air conduction improvement. There were no complications. Functional surgery for congenital middle ear malformations gives variable hearing outcomes. In this study, with the most favorable anatomic conditions, 12 ears (67%) of 18 had air conduction improvement below 30 dB.	\N	\N
24028890	Most hearing aid prescriptions focus on the optimization of a metric derived from the long-term average spectrum of speech, and do not consider how the prescribed values might distort the temporal envelope shape. A growing body of evidence suggests that such distortions can lead to systematic errors in speech perception, and therefore hearing aid prescriptions might benefit by including preservation of the temporal envelope shape in their rationale. To begin to explore this possibility, we designed a genetic algorithm (GA) to find the multiband compression settings that preserve the shape of the original temporal envelope while placing that envelope in the listener's audiometric dynamic range. The resulting prescription had a low compression threshold, short attack and release times, and a combination of compression ratio and gain that placed the output signal within the listener's audiometric dynamic range. Initial behavioral tests of individuals with impaired hearing revealed no difference in speech-in-noise perception between the GA and the NAL-NL2 prescription. However, gap detection performance was superior with the GA in comparison to NAL-NL2. Overall, this work is a proof of concept that consideration of temporal envelope distortions can be incorporated into hearing aid prescriptions.	\N	\N
24041778	Congenital amusia is a neuro-developmental disorder of music perception and production. Recent findings have demonstrated that this deficit is linked to an impaired short-term memory for tone sequences. As it has been shown before that non-musicians' implicit knowledge of musical regularities can improve short-term memory for tone information, the present study investigated if this type of implicit knowledge could also influence amusics' short-term memory performance. Congenital amusics and their matched controls, who were non-musicians, had to indicate whether sequences of five tones, presented in pairs, were the same or different; half of the pairs respected musical regularities (tonal sequences) and the other half did not (atonal sequences). As previously reported for non-musician participants, the control participants showed better performance (as measured with d') for tonal sequences than for atonal ones. While this improvement was not observed in amusics, both control and amusic participants showed faster response times for tonal sequences than for atonal sequences. These findings suggest that some implicit processing of tonal structures is potentially preserved in congenital amusia. This observation is encouraging as it strengthens the perspective to exploit implicit knowledge to help reducing pitch perception and memory deficits in amusia.	\N	\N
24043402	Our previous studies using fMRI have demonstrated that activations in human auditory cortex (AC) are strongly dependent on the characteristics of the task. The present study tested whether source estimation of scalp-recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) can be used to investigate task-dependent AC activations. Subjects were presented with frequency-varying two-part tones during pitch discrimination, pitch n-back memory, and visual tasks identical to our previous fMRI study (Rinne et al., J Neurosci 29:13338-13343, 2009). ERPs and their minimum-norm source estimates in AC were strongly modulated by task at 200-700 ms from tone onset. As in the fMRI study, the pitch discrimination and pitch memory tasks were associated with distinct AC activation patterns. In the pitch discrimination task, increased activity in the anterior AC was detected relatively late at 300-700 ms from tone onset. Therefore, this activity was probably not associated with enhanced pitch processing but rather with the actual discrimination process (comparison between the two parts of tone). Increased activity in more posterior areas associated with the pitch memory task, in turn, occurred at 200-700 ms suggesting that this activity was related to operations on pitch categories after pitch analysis was completed. Finally, decreased activity associated with the pitch memory task occurred at 150-300 ms consistent with the notion that, in the demanding pitch memory task, spectrotemporal analysis is actively halted as soon as category information has been obtained. These results demonstrate that ERP source analysis can be used to complement fMRI to investigate task-dependent activations of human AC.	\N	\N
24043565	What conditions, if any, can fully prevent attentional capture (i.e., involuntary allocation of spatial attention to an irrelevant object) has been a matter of debate. In a previous study, Folk, Ester, and Troemel (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 16:127-132, 2009) suggested that attentional capture can be blocked entirely when attention is already engaged in a different object. This conclusion relied on the finding that in a search for a known-color target in a rapid serial visual presentation stream, a peripheral distractor with the target color did not further impair target identification performance when a distractor also with the target color that appeared in the stream had already captured attention. In the present study, we argue that this conclusion is unwarranted, because the effects of the central and peripheral distractors could not be disentangled. In order to isolate the effect of the peripheral distractor, we introduced a distractor-target letter compatibility manipulation. Our results showed that the peripheral distractor summoned attention, irrespective of whether attention had just been engaged. We conclude that neither spatially focused attention nor attentional engagement is sufficient to prevent attentional capture.	\N	\N
24055624	This study investigated the perceptual relationship between acoustic and electric stimuli presented to CI users with functional contralateral hearing. Fourteen subjects with unilateral profound deafness implanted with a MED-EL CI scaled the perceptual differences between pure tones presented to the acoustic hearing ear and electric biphasic pulse trains presented to the implanted ear. The differences were analyzed with a multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis. Additionally, speech performance in noise was tested using sentence material presented in different spatial configurations while patients listened with both their acoustic hearing and implanted ears. Results of alternating least squares scaling (ALSCAL) analysis consistently demonstrate that a change in place of stimulation is in the same perceptual dimension as a change in acoustic frequency. However, the relative perceptual differences between the acoustic and the electric stimuli varied greatly across subjects. A degree of perceptual separation between acoustic and electric stimulation (quantified by relative dimensional weightings from an INDSCAL analysis) was hypothesized that would indicate a change in perceptual quality, but also be predictive of performance with combined acoustic and electric hearing. Perceptual separation between acoustic and electric stimuli was observed for some subjects. However, no relationship between the degree of perceptual separation and performance was found.	\N	\N
24059596	To establish the reliability and validity of an automated hearing screening test system for children. Cross-sectional within a comparative study of subjects. Subjects were 325 first-grade and second-grade children (6-10 years old) from primary schools in Shenzhen, China. Using the conventional pure-tone screening test with the pass/refer criterion set as 25 dB HL, as the 'gold standard", the sensitivity and specificity of the automated hearing screening test was 0.63 and 0.82, respectively. No specific pattern in the failure rates was observed to relate to the students' grade. There was no statistically significant age effect or gender effect. The results suggest that with further improvement in terms of its sensitivity and specificity, it may be feasible to use the automated hearing screening test system to conduct routine school hearing screenings.	\N	\N
24067501	To confirm an increased susceptibility to informational masking among individuals with single-sided deafness (SSD). To demonstrate a reduction in informational masking when SSD is treated with an integrated bone conduction hearing aid (IBC). To identify the acoustic cues that contribute to IBC-aided masking release. To determine the effects of device experience on the IBC advantage. Informational masking was evaluated with the coordinate-response measure. Participants performed the task by reporting color and number coordinates that changed randomly within target sentences. The target sentences were presented in free field accompanied by zero to three distracting sentences. Target and distracting sentences were spoken by different talkers and originated from different source locations, creating two sources of information for auditory streaming. Susceptibility to informational masking was inferred from the error rates of unaided SSD patients relative to normal controls. These baseline measures were derived by testing inexperienced IBC users without the device on the day of their initial fitting. The benefits of IBC-aided listening were assessed by measuring the aided performance of users who had at least 3 months' device experience. The acoustic basis of the listening advantage was isolated by correlating response errors with the voice pitch and location of distracting sentences. The effects of learning on cue effectiveness were evaluated by comparing the error rates of experienced and inexperienced users. Unaided SSD participants (inexperienced users) performed as well as normal controls when tested without distracting sentences but produced significantly higher error rates when tested with distracting sentences. Most errors involved responding with coordinates that were contained in distracting sentences. This increased susceptibility to informational masking was significantly reduced when experienced IBC users were tested with the device. The listening advantage was most strongly correlated with the availability of voice pitch cues, although performance was also influenced by the location of distracting sentences. Directional asymmetries appear to be dictated by location-dependent cues that are derived from the distinctive transmission characteristics of IBC stimulation. Experienced users made better use of these cues than inexperienced users. These results suggest that informational masking is a significant source of communication impairment among individuals with SSD. Despite the lateralization of auditory function, unaided SSD subjects experience informational masking when distractors occur in either the deaf or normal spatial hemifield. Restoration of aural sensitivity in the deaf hemifield with an IBC enhances speech intelligibility under complex listening conditions, presumably by providing additional sound-segregation cues that are derived from voice pitch and spatial location. The optimal use of these cues is not immediate, but a significant listening advantage is observed after 3 months of unstructured use.	\N	\N
24071587	Stereo vision has a well-known anisotropy: At low frequencies, horizontally oriented sinusoidal depth corrugations are easier to detect than vertically oriented corrugations (both defined by horizontal disparities). Previously, Serrano-Pedraza and Read (2010) suggested that this stereo anisotropy may arise because the stereo system uses multiple spatial-frequency disparity channels for detecting horizontally oriented modulations but only one for vertically oriented modulations. Here, we tested this hypothesis using the critical-band masking paradigm. In the first experiment, we measured disparity thresholds for horizontal and vertical sinusoids near the peak of the disparity sensitivity function (0.4 cycles/°), in the presence of either broadband or notched noise. We fitted the power-masking model to our results assuming a channel centered on 0.4 cycles/°. The estimated channel bandwidths were 2.95 octaves for horizontal and 2.62 octaves for vertical corrugations. In our second experiment we measured disparity thresholds for horizontal and vertical sinusoids of 0.1 cycles/° in the presence of band-pass noise centered on 0.4 cycles/° with a bandwidth of 0.5 octaves. This mask had only a small effect on the disparity thresholds, for either horizontal or vertical corrugations. We simulated the detection thresholds using the power-masking model with the parameters obtained in the first experiment and assuming either single-channel and multiple-channel detection. The multiple-channel model predicted the thresholds much better for both horizontal and vertical corrugations. We conclude that the human stereo system must contain multiple independent disparity channels for detecting horizontally oriented and vertically oriented depth modulations.	\N	\N
24073696	To investigate the effects of emotional music on visual processes, we analyzed visual evoked magnetic fields (VEF) on listening to emotional music in 14 healthy subjects. Positive and negative pieces of music were delivered during VEF recording following stimulation by emotionally neutral pictures of faces and landscapes. VEF components at 100 (M100) and 150 (M170)ms after stimulus onset were analyzed, and the estimated current strength for M170 following face stimulation was enhanced with negative compared to positive music in the right hemisphere. The equivalent current dipole for M100 and M170 was estimated in the primary visual cortex (V1) and inferior temporal area (IT), respectively. The present results indicate that background music showed a top-down control of the visual processes in IT, which is a core site responsible for the interpretation of facial expression. The emotional contents of music could alter visual processes, especially those involving the face.	\N	\N
24076424	For much of the past 30 years, investigations of auditory perception and language have been enhanced or even driven by the use of functional neuroimaging techniques that specialize in localization of central responses. Beginning with investigations using positron emission tomography (PET) and gradually shifting primarily to usage of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), auditory neuroimaging has greatly advanced our understanding of the organization and response properties of brain regions critical to the perception of and communication with the acoustic world in which we live. As the complexity of the questions being addressed has increased, the techniques, experiments and analyses applied have also become more nuanced and specialized. A brief review of the history of these investigations sets the stage for an overview and analysis of how these neuroimaging modalities are becoming ever more effective tools for understanding the auditory brain. We conclude with a brief discussion of open methodological issues as well as potential clinical applications for auditory neuroimaging. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled Human Auditory Neuroimaging.	\N	\N
24076425	Harmonic complexes that generate highly modulated temporal envelopes on the basilar membrane (BM) mask a tone less effectively than complexes that generate relatively flat temporal envelopes, because the non-linear active gain of the BM selectively amplifies a low-level tone in the dips of a modulated masker envelope. The present study examines a similar effect in speech recognition. Speech reception thresholds (SRTs) were measured for a voice masked by harmonic complexes with partials in sine phase (SP) or in random phase (RP). The masker's fundamental frequency (F0) was 50, 100 or 200 Hz. SRTs were considerably lower for SP than for RP maskers at 50-Hz F0, but the two converged at 100-Hz F0, while at 200-Hz F0, SRTs were a little higher for SP than RP maskers. The results were similar whether the target voice was male or female and whether the masker's spectral profile was flat or speech-shaped. Although listening in the masker dips has been shown to play a large role for artificial stimuli such as Schroeder-phase complexes at high levels, it contributes weakly to speech recognition in the presence of harmonic maskers with different crest factors at more moderate sound levels (65 dB SPL).	\N	\N
24086676	The auditory illusory perception "scale illusion" occurs when a tone of ascending scale is presented in one ear, a tone of descending scale is presented simultaneously in the other ear, and vice versa. Most listeners hear illusory percepts of smooth pitch contours of the higher half of the scale in the right ear and the lower half in the left ear. Little is known about neural processes underlying the scale illusion. In this magnetoencephalographic study, we recorded steady-state responses to amplitude-modulated short tones having illusion-inducing pitch sequences, where the sound level of the modulated tones was manipulated to decrease monotonically with increase in pitch. The steady-state responses were decomposed into right- and left-sound components by means of separate modulation frequencies. It was found that the time course of the magnitude of response components of illusion-perceiving listeners was significantly correlated with smooth pitch contour of illusory percepts and that the time course of response components of stimulus-perceiving listeners was significantly correlated with discontinuous pitch contour of stimulus percepts in addition to the contour of illusory percepts. The results suggest that the percept of illusory pitch sequence was represented in the neural activity in or near the primary auditory cortex, i.e., the site of generation of auditory steady-state response, and that perception of scale illusion is maintained by automatic low-level processing.	\N	\N
24089491	The strategies by which the central nervous system decodes the properties of sensory stimuli, such as sound source location, from the responses of a population of neurons are a matter of debate. We show, using the average firing rates of neurons in the inferior colliculus (IC) of awake rabbits, that prevailing decoding models of sound localization (summed population activity and the population vector) fail to localize sources accurately due to heterogeneity in azimuth tuning across the population. In contrast, a maximum-likelihood decoder operating on the pattern of activity across the population of neurons in one IC accurately localized sound sources in the contralateral hemifield, consistent with lesion studies, and did so with a precision consistent with rabbit psychophysical performance. The pattern decoder also predicts behavior in response to incongruent localization cues consistent with the long-standing "duplex" theory of sound localization. We further show that the pattern decoder accurately distinguishes two concurrent, spatially separated sources from a single source, consistent with human behavior. Decoder detection of small amounts of source separation directly in front is due to neural sensitivity to the interaural decorrelation of sound, at both low and high frequencies. The distinct patterns of IC activity between single and separated sound sources thereby provide a neural correlate for the ability to segregate and localize sources in everyday, multisource environments.	\N	\N
24095845	Pitch is derived by the auditory system through complex spectrotemporal processing. Pitch extraction is thought to depend on both spectral cues arising from lower harmonics that are resolved by cochlear filters in the inner ear, and on temporal cues arising from the pattern of action potentials contained in the cochlear output. Adults are capable of extracting pitch in the absence of robust spectral cues, taking advantage of the temporal cues that remain. However, recent behavioral evidence suggests that infants have difficulty discriminating between stimuli with different pitches when resolvable spectral cues are absent. In the current experiments, we used the mismatch negativity (MMN) component of the event related potential derived from electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings to examine a cortical representation of pitch discrimination for iterated rippled noise (IRN) stimuli in 4- and 8-month-old infants. IRN stimuli are pitch-evoking sounds generated by repeatedly adding a segment of white noise to itself at a constant delay. We created IRN stimuli (delays of 5 and 6ms creating pitch percepts of 200 and 167Hz) and high-pass filtered them to remove all resolvable spectral pitch cues. In experiment 1, we did not find EEG evidence that infants could detect the change in the pitch of these IRN stimuli. However, in Experiment 2, after a brief period of pitch-priming during which we added a sine wave component to the IRN stimulus at its perceived pitch, infants did show significant MMN in response to pitch changes in the IRN stimuli with sine waves removed. This suggests that (1) infants can use temporal cues to process pitch, although such processing is not mature and (2) that a short amount of pitch-priming experience can alter pitch representations in auditory cortex during infancy.	\N	\N
24105268	This study examined the ability of click auditory brainstem response (ABR) undertaken below the age of 6 months (from expected date of delivery) to differentiate between conductive and sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), using the latency of wave V measured 20 dB above threshold. Subjects were recruited if they had an ABR threshold of ≥ 40 dB nHL and ≤ 70 dB nHL in one or both ears measured below the age of 6 months and they had also attended follow-up appointments for behavioral assessment of their hearing in which the type of hearing loss had been confirmed. Forty-five children (84 ears) with SNHL, 82 children (141 ears) with temporary conductive hearing loss (TCHL), and 5 children (10 ears) with permanent conductive hearing loss (PCHL) were recruited. The differences between mean wave V latencies measured 20 dB above ABR threshold were examined using the independent t-test for the groups of cases with SNHL, TCHL, and PCHL. Signal-detection theory was used to examine the relationship between sensitivity and specificity when the latency of wave V 20 dB above threshold was used to identify the presence of SNHL. Receiver operating characteristics were generated and the coordinates of the curve examined for the best compromise between sensitivity and false-alarm rate. The specificity, positive predictive value, and probability of missing a true case were determined for the most promising criteria. There were significant differences between the two groups with SNHL and TCHL. The mean latency of wave V 20 dB above threshold was 1 msec shorter in those with SNHL compared with those with TCHL. There were significant differences between children with PCHL and SNHL but no difference between those with PCHL and TCHL. When a criterion of < 7.6 msec was chosen to predict the presence of SNHL the test sensitivity was 0.98, test specificity 0.71, and positive predictive value was 0.66. Nine out of 10 of those with a latency 20 dB above threshold of < 7.0 msec had an SNHL. The latency of wave V 20 dB above threshold measured using click ABR is a useful indicator of the type of hearing loss in babies referred from newborn hearing screening.	\N	\N
24108804	Synchronizing movements with rhythmic inputs requires tight coupling of sensory and motor neural processes. Here, using a novel approach based on the recording of steady-state-evoked potentials (SS-EPs), we examine how distant brain areas supporting these processes coordinate their dynamics. The electroencephalogram was recorded while subjects listened to a 2.4-Hz auditory beat and tapped their hand on every second beat. When subjects tapped to the beat, the EEG was characterized by a 2.4-Hz SS-EP compatible with beat-related entrainment and a 1.2-Hz SS-EP compatible with movement-related entrainment, based on the results of source analysis. Most importantly, when compared with passive listening of the beat, we found evidence suggesting an interaction between sensory- and motor-related activities when subjects tapped to the beat, in the form of (1) additional SS-EP appearing at 3.6 Hz, compatible with a nonlinear product of sensorimotor integration; (2) phase coupling of beat- and movement-related activities; and (3) selective enhancement of beat-related activities over the hemisphere contralateral to the tapping, suggesting a top-down effect of movement-related activities on auditory beat processing. Taken together, our results are compatible with the view that rhythmic sensorimotor synchronization is supported by a dynamic coupling of sensory and motor related activities.	\N	\N
24110502	Bone-conducted ultrasound (BCU) is perceived even by the profoundly sensorineural deaf. A novel hearing aid using the perception of amplitude-modulated BCU (BCU hearing aid: BCUHA) has been developed. However, there is room for improvement particularly in terms of articulation and sound quality. BCU speech is accompanied by a strong high-pitched tone and contain some distortion. In this study, transposed modulation, that can be expected to reduce the high-pitched tone was newly employed as a modulation method in the BCUHA, and its resulting articulation, intelligibility and sound quality were evaluated. The results showed that transposed modulation showed nearly equal articulation and intelligibility scores to and better sound quality than the existing method, DSB-TC modulation. These results provide useful information for further development of the BCUHA.	\N	\N
24111102	Auditory Brainstem Responses (ABRs) are commonly used in clinical practice to determine hearing impairments and hearing thresholds. Although many research groups work on automatic recognition of ABRs - in order to decrease the acquisition times - measures to determine the quality of ABR measurements objectively are still missing. In fact, recently released new standards for electroencephalographic measurements in auditory examinations require an objective measurement quality assessment for neurodiagnostic devices. Thus there is a pressing need for the development and evaluation of such a quality control. In this study, we propose (a) a novel technique for the assessment of the ABR measurement quality and (b) evaluate and compare this technique to two other approaches which have been suggested in literature as required by the new standards.	\N	\N
24116424	Speech reception thresholds were obtained in normally hearing listeners for sentence targets masked by harmonic complexes constructed with different phase relationships. Maskers had either a constant fundamental frequency (F0), or had F0 changing over time, following a pitch contour extracted from natural speech. The median F0 of the target speech was very similar to that of the maskers. In experiment 1 differences in the masking produced by Schroeder positive and Schroeder negative phase complexes were small (around 1.5 dB) for moderate levels [60 dB sound pressure level (SPL)], but increased to around 6 dB for maskers at 80 dB SPL. Phase effects were typically around 1.5 dB larger for maskers that had naturally varying F0 contours than for maskers with constant F0. Experiment 2 showed that shaping the long-term spectrum of the maskers to match the target speech had no effect. Experiment 3 included additional phase relationships at moderate levels and found no effect of phase. Therefore, the phase relationship within harmonic complexes appears to have only minor effects on masking effectiveness, at least at moderate levels, and when targets and maskers are in the same F0 range.	\N	\N
24121087	Functional hemispheric differences for speech and language processing have been traditionally studied by using verbal dichotic-listening paradigms. The commonly observed right-ear preference for the report of dichotically presented syllables is taken to reflect the left hemispheric dominance for speech processing. However, the results of recent functional imaging studies also show that both hemispheres - not only the left - are engaged by dichotic listening, suggesting a more complex relationship between behavioral laterality and functional hemispheric activation asymmetries. In order to more closely examine the hemispheric differences underlying dichotic-listening performance, we report an analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data of 104 right-handed subjects, for the first time combining an interhemispheric difference and conjunction analysis. This approach allowed for a distinction of homotopic brain regions which showed symmetrical (i.e., brain region significantly activated in both hemispheres and no activation difference between the hemispheres), relative asymmetrical (i.e., activated in both hemispheres but significantly stronger in one than the other hemisphere), and absolute asymmetrical activation patterns (i.e., activated only in one hemisphere and this activation is significantly stronger than in the other hemisphere). Symmetrical activation was found in large clusters encompassing temporal, parietal, inferior frontal, and medial superior frontal regions. Relative and absolute left-ward asymmetries were found in the posterior superior temporal gyrus, located adjacent to symmetrically activated areas, and creating a lateral-medial gradient from symmetrical towards absolute asymmetrical activation within the peri-Sylvian region. Absolute leftward asymmetry was also found in the post-central and medial superior frontal gyri, while rightward asymmetries were found in middle temporal and middle frontal gyri. We conclude that dichotic listening engages a bihemispheric cortical network, showing a symmetrical and mostly leftward asymmetrical pattern. The here obtained functional (a)symmetry map might serve as a basis for future studies which - by studying the relevance of the here identified regions - clarify the relationship between behavioral laterality measures and hemispheric asymmetry.	\N	\N
24121711	The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of contingent auditory feedback on the development of infant reaching. Eleven full-term infants were observed biweekly from the age of 10 weeks to 16 weeks, and their arm kinematics were recorded. Auditory feedback that was contingent on arm kinematics was provided in the form of: (a) the mother's voice; and (b) musical tones. Results showed that providing auditory feedback (mother's voice or musical tones): (i) increased the amplitude of exploratory arm movements before the onset of reaching; and (ii) increased the number of reaches at the onset of reaching. These results show that infants are able to use contingent auditory feedback to explore the relevant possibilities for action that are subsequently shaped into goal-directed movements.	\N	\N
24122619	To determine the effectiveness of simultaneous versus sequential bilateral cochlear implantation on postoperative outcomes in children with bilateral deafness and to evaluate the impact of the inter-implant interval and age at second implantation on postoperative outcomes in children who already received their first cochlear implant. PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science. All studies comparing the effects of simultaneous with sequential bilateral cochlear implantation on postoperative outcomes and those evaluating the impact of the inter-implant interval and age at second implantation were retrieved. Four studies compared the effects of simultaneous with sequential bilateral cochlear implantation. All studies lacked randomization. Of these, three reported better speech perception and expressive language development at one year of bilateral experience for simultaneous cochlear implantation. Of the nineteen publications on the impact of the inter-implant interval on postoperative outcomes, the risk of bias was low-moderate for seven studies which were derived from five different study populations. In two of these populations no impact of the inter-implant interval was found, while in three a longer inter-implant interval was associated with poorer speech and language development. Observational studies suggest that simultaneous implantation in children may be associated with improved speech and language development, and that a prolonged inter-implant interval between both implantations may have a negative impact on these postoperative outcomes. Randomized trials are, however, needed to demonstrate whether simultaneous implantation indeed is superior to sequential bilateral implantation in children with bilateral deafness. NA.	\N	\N
24125574	It is not unusual to find it stated as a fact that the left hemisphere is specialized for the processing of rapid, or temporal aspects of sound, and that the dominance of the left hemisphere in the perception of speech can be a consequence of this specialization. In this review we explore the history of this claim and assess the weight of this assumption. We will demonstrate that instead of a supposed sensitivity of the left temporal lobe for the acoustic properties of speech, it is the right temporal lobe which shows a marked preference for certain properties of sounds, for example longer durations, or variations in pitch. We finish by outlining some alternative factors that contribute to the left lateralization of speech perception.	\N	\N
24125858	Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) are the experience of hearing voices in the absence of any speaker, often associated with a schizophrenia diagnosis. Prominent cognitive models of AVHs suggest they may be the result of inner speech being misattributed to an external or non-self source, due to atypical self- or reality monitoring. These arguments are supported by studies showing that people experiencing AVHs often show an externalising bias during monitoring tasks, and neuroimaging evidence which implicates superior temporal brain regions, both during AVHs and during tasks that measure verbal self-monitoring performance. Recently, efficacy of noninvasive neurostimulation techniques as a treatment option for AVHs has been tested. Meta-analyses show a moderate effect size in reduction of AVH frequency, but there has been little attempt to explain the therapeutic effect of neurostimulation in relation to existing cognitive models. This article reviews inner speech models of AVHs, and argues that a possible explanation for reduction in frequency following treatment may be modulation of activity in the brain regions involving the monitoring of inner speech.	\N	\N
24132709	Three cross-modal priming experiments examined the influence of preexposure to pictures and printed words on the speed of spoken word recognition. Targets for auditory lexical decision were spoken Dutch words and nonwords, presented in isolation (Experiments 1 and 2) or after a short phrase (Experiment 3). Auditory stimuli were preceded by primes, which were pictures (Experiments 1 and 3) or those pictures' printed names (Experiment 2). Prime-target pairs were phonologically onset related (e.g., pijl-pijn, arrow-pain), were from the same semantic category (e.g., pijl-zwaard, arrow-sword), or were unrelated on both dimensions. Phonological interference and semantic facilitation were observed in all experiments. Priming magnitude was similar for pictures and printed words and did not vary with picture viewing time or number of pictures in the display (either one or four). These effects arose even though participants were not explicitly instructed to name the pictures and where strategic naming would interfere with lexical decision making. This suggests that, by default, processing of related pictures and printed words influences how quickly we recognize spoken words.	\N	\N
24165303	Distortion-product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) collected after sound pressure level (SPL) calibration are susceptible to standing waves that affect measurements at the plane of the probe microphone due to overlap of incident and reflected waves. These standing-wave effects can be as large as 20 dB, and may affect frequencies both above and below 4 kHz. It has been shown that forward pressure level (FPL) calibration minimizes standing-wave effects by isolating the forward-propagating component of the stimulus. Yet, previous work has failed to demonstrate more than a small difference in test performance and behavioral-threshold prediction with DPOAEs after SPL and FPL calibration. One potential limitation in prior studies is that measurements were restricted to octave and interoctave frequencies; as a consequence, data were not necessarily collected at the standing-wave null frequency. In the present study, DPOAE responses were measured with f2 set to each participant's standing-wave frequency in an effort to increase the possibility that differences in test performance and threshold prediction would be observed for SPL and FPL calibration methods. Data were collected from 42 normal-hearing participants and 93 participants with hearing loss. DPOAEs were measured with f2 set to 4 kHz and at each participant's notch frequency after SPL and FPL calibration. DPOAE input/output functions were obtained from -10 to 80 dB in 5 dB steps for each calibration/stimulus condition. Test performance was evaluated using clinical decision theory. Both area under receiver operating characteristic curves for all stimulus levels and cumulative distributions when L2 = 50 dB (a level at which the best performance was observed regardless of calibration method) were used to evaluate the accuracy with which auditory status was determined. A bootstrap procedure was used to evaluate the significance of the differences in test performance between SPL and FPL calibrations. DPOAE predictions of behavioral threshold were evaluated by correlating actual behavioral thresholds and predicted thresholds using a multiple linear regression model. First, larger DPOAE levels were measured after SPL calibration than after FPL calibration, which demonstrated the expected impact of standing waves. Second, for both FPL and SPL calibration, test performance was best for moderate stimulus levels. Third, differences in test performance between calibration methods were evident at low- and high-stimulus levels. Fourth, there were small but statistically significant improvements in test performance after FPL calibration for clinically relevant conditions. Fifth, calibration method had no effect on threshold prediction. Standing waves after SPL calibration have an impact on DPOAE levels. Although the effect of calibration method on test performance was small, test performance was better after FPL calibration than after SPL calibration. There was no effect of calibration method on predictions of behavioral threshold.	\N	\N
24167235	A phonological deficit is thought to affect most individuals with developmental dyslexia. The present study addresses whether the phonological deficit is caused by difficulties with perceptual learning of fine acoustic details. A demanding test of nonverbal auditory memory, "noise learning," was administered to both adults with dyslexia and control adult participants. On each trial, listeners had to decide whether a stimulus was a 1-s noise token or 2 abutting presentations of the same 0.5-s noise token (repeated noise). Without the listener's knowledge, the exact same noise tokens were presented over many trials. An improved ability to perform the task for such "reference" noises reflects learning of their acoustic details. Listeners with dyslexia did not differ from controls in any aspect of the task, qualitatively or quantitatively. They required the same amount of training to achieve discrimination of repeated from nonrepeated noises, and they learned the reference noises as often and as rapidly as the control group. However, they did show all the hallmarks of dyslexia, including a well-characterized phonological deficit. The data did not support the hypothesis that deficits in basic auditory processing or nonverbal learning and memory are the cause of the phonological deficit in dyslexia.	\N	\N
24174656	Despite the prevalence of poverty worldwide, little is known about how early socioeconomic adversity affects auditory brain function. Socioeconomically disadvantaged children are underexposed to linguistically and cognitively stimulating environments and overexposed to environmental toxins, including noise pollution. This kind of sensory impoverishment, we theorize, has extensive repercussions on how the brain processes sound. To characterize how this impoverishment affects auditory brain function, we compared two groups of normal-hearing human adolescents who attended the same schools and who were matched in age, sex, and ethnicity, but differed in their maternal education level, a correlate of socioeconomic status (SES). In addition to lower literacy levels and cognitive abilities, adolescents from lower maternal education backgrounds were found to have noisier neural activity than their classmates, as reflected by greater activity in the absence of auditory stimulation. Additionally, in the lower maternal education group, the neural response to speech was more erratic over repeated stimulation, with lower fidelity to the input signal. These weaker, more variable, and noisier responses are suggestive of an inefficient auditory system. By studying SES within a neuroscientific framework, we have the potential to expand our understanding of how experience molds the brain, in addition to informing intervention research aimed at closing the achievement gap between high-SES and low-SES children.	\N	\N
24180796	This article investigates the relationship between the shape of the mouthpiece and its acoustical properties in brass instruments. The hypothesis is that not only different volumes but also particular cup shapes affect the embouchure and the tone quality in both a physical and perceivable way. Three professional trumpet players were involved, and two different internal cup contours characterized by a "U" and a "V" shape with two types of throat junction (round and sharp) were chosen, based on a Vincent Bach 1 [1/2] C medium mouthpiece. A third intermediate contour was designed as a combination of these. Over 600 sound samples were produced under controlled conditions, the study involving four different stages: (1) Simulation of air-flow, (2) analysis of the sound spectra, (3) study of the players' subjective responses, and (4) perceptual analysis of their timbral differences. Results confirm the U shape is characterized by a stronger air recirculation and produces stronger spectral components above 8 kHz, compared to the V shape. A round throat junction may also be preferable to a sharp one in terms of playability. There is moderate agreement on the aural perception of these differences although the verbal attributes used to qualify these are not shared.	\N	\N
24181980	The role of visual cues in native listeners' perception of speech produced by nonnative speakers has not been extensively studied. Native perception of English sentences produced by native English and Korean speakers in audio-only and audiovisual conditions was examined. Korean speakers were rated as more accented in audiovisual than in the audio-only condition. Visual cues enhanced word intelligibility for native English speech but less so for Korean-accented speech. Reduced intelligibility of Korean-accented audiovisual speech was associated with implicit visual biases, suggesting that listener-related factors partially influence the efficiency of audiovisual integration for nonnative speech perception.	\N	\N
24184174	Expert musicians are able to time their actions accurately and consistently during a musical performance. We investigated how musical expertise influences the ability to reproduce auditory intervals and how this generalises across different techniques and sensory modalities. We first compared various reproduction strategies and interval length, to examine the effects in general and to optimise experimental conditions for testing the effect of music, and found that the effects were robust and consistent across different paradigms. Focussing on a 'ready-set-go' paradigm subjects reproduced time intervals drawn from distributions varying in total length (176, 352 or 704 ms) or in the number of discrete intervals within the total length (3, 5, 11 or 21 discrete intervals). Overall, Musicians performed more veridical than Non-Musicians, and all subjects reproduced auditory-defined intervals more accurately than visually-defined intervals. However, Non-Musicians, particularly with visual stimuli, consistently exhibited a substantial and systematic regression towards the mean interval. When subjects judged intervals from distributions of longer total length they tended to regress more towards the mean, while the ability to discriminate between discrete intervals within the distribution had little influence on subject error. These results are consistent with a Bayesian model that minimizes reproduction errors by incorporating a central tendency prior weighted by the subject's own temporal precision relative to the current distribution of intervals. Finally a strong correlation was observed between all durations of formal musical training and total reproduction errors in both modalities (accounting for 30% of the variance). Taken together these results demonstrate that formal musical training improves temporal reproduction, and that this improvement transfers from audition to vision. They further demonstrate the flexibility of sensorimotor mechanisms in adapting to different task conditions to minimise temporal estimation errors.	\N	\N
24192718	Dexamethasone administered prior to cochlear implantation has been shown to reduce the loss of residual hearing in experimental settings. However, its effect on the tissue response around the implant has not been extensively studied. In this study dexamethasone sodium phosphate was administered to guinea pigs via local delivery to the round window (2% dexamethasone for 120 min prior to surgery, 'local 2/120', or 20% dexamethasone for 30 min prior to surgery) or intravenously (2 mg/kg dexamethasone for 60 min) prior to implantation. Auditory brainstem responses (ABR) were monitored for 3 months, after which the cochleae were embedded in Spurr's resin and sectioned. The extent of the tissue response and the survival of the neurosensory structures were analysed. Both local 2/120 and systemically delivered dexamethasone improved ABR thresholds when compared with control animals. Systemic dexamethasone also reduced the tissue response around the electrode. This suggests that whilst both locally and systemically administered dexamethasone can protect residual hearing after cochlear implantation, their effects upon the tissue response to implantation may differ.	\N	\N
24198087	Cognitive skills, such as processing speed, memory functioning, and the ability to divide attention, are known to diminish with aging. The present study shows that, despite these changes, older adults can successfully compensate for degradations in speech perception. Critically, the older participants of this study were not pre-selected for high performance on cognitive tasks, but only screened for normal hearing. We measured the compensation for speech degradation using phonemic restoration, where intelligibility of degraded speech is enhanced using top-down repair mechanisms. Linguistic knowledge, Gestalt principles of perception, and expectations based on situational and linguistic context are used to effectively fill in the inaudible masked speech portions. A positive compensation effect was previously observed only with young normal hearing people, but not with older hearing-impaired populations, leaving the question whether the lack of compensation was due to aging or due to age-related hearing problems. Older participants in the present study showed poorer intelligibility of degraded speech than the younger group, as expected from previous reports of aging effects. However, in conditions that induce top-down restoration, a robust compensation was observed. Speech perception by the older group was enhanced, and the enhancement effect was similar to that observed with the younger group. This effect was even stronger with slowed-down speech, which gives more time for cognitive processing. Based on previous research, the likely explanations for these observations are that older adults can overcome age-related cognitive deterioration by relying on linguistic skills and vocabulary that they have accumulated over their lifetime. Alternatively, or simultaneously, they may use different cerebral activation patterns or exert more mental effort. This positive finding on top-down restoration skills by the older individuals suggests that new cognitive training methods can teach older adults to effectively use compensatory mechanisms to cope with the complex listening environments of everyday life.	\N	\N
24198324	Temporal pole (TP) cortex is associated with higher-order sensory perception and/or recognition memory, as human patients with damage in this region show impaired performance during some tasks requiring recognition memory (Olson et al. 2007). The underlying mechanisms of TP processing are largely based on examination of the visual nervous system in humans and monkeys, while little is known about neuronal activity patterns in the auditory portion of this region, dorsal TP (dTP; Poremba et al. 2003). The present study examines single-unit activity of dTP in rhesus monkeys performing a delayed matching-to-sample task utilizing auditory stimuli, wherein two sounds are determined to be the same or different. Neurons of dTP encode several task-relevant events during the delayed matching-to-sample task, and encoding of auditory cues in this region is associated with accurate recognition performance. Population activity in dTP shows a match suppression mechanism to identical, repeated sound stimuli similar to that observed in the visual object identification pathway located ventral to dTP (Desimone 1996; Nakamura and Kubota 1996). However, in contrast to sustained visual delay-related activity in nearby analogous regions, auditory delay-related activity in dTP is transient and limited. Neurons in dTP respond selectively to different sound stimuli and often change their sound response preferences between experimental contexts. Current findings suggest a significant role for dTP in auditory recognition memory similar in many respects to the visual nervous system, while delay memory firing patterns are not prominent, which may relate to monkeys' shorter forgetting thresholds for auditory vs. visual objects.	\N	\N
24210181	A time interval between the onset and the offset of a continuous sound (filled interval) is often perceived to be longer than a time interval between two successive brief sounds (empty interval) of the same physical duration. The present study examined whether and how this phenomenon, sometimes called the filled duration illusion (FDI), occurs for short time intervals (40-520 ms). The investigation was conducted with the method of adjustment (Experiment 1) and the method of magnitude estimation (Experiment 2). When the method of adjustment was used, the FDI did not appear for the majority of the participants, but it appeared clearly for some participants. In the latter case, the amount of the FDI increased as the interval duration lengthened. The FDI was more likely to occur with magnitude estimation than with the method of adjustment. The participants who showed clear FDI with one method did not necessarily show such clear FDI with the other method.	\N	\N
24218156	Declarative memory evaluation is an essential step in the clinical and neuropsychological assessment of a variety of neurological disorders. It typically addresses the issue of normality/abnormality of an individual's performance. Another clinical application of the neuropsychological assessment of declarative memory is the longitudinal evaluation of an individual's performance change. In fact, in a variety of neurological conditions repeated assessments are needed to evaluate the modifications of a memory disorder as a function of time or in response to a pharmacological or rehabilitation treatment. This study was aimed at collecting data for measuring and interpreting performance change on a memory test for verbal material. For this purpose, we administered to 100 healthy subjects (age range 20-80 years; years of formal education range 8-17 years) three parallel forms of a test requiring the immediate and delayed recall of a 15-word list. The subjects performed the recall test three times (each time with a different list) at least 1 week apart. The order of the lists was randomized across subjects. Results revealed that performance on the three lists was highly correlated and did not vary as a function of the order of presentation. However, accuracy of recall was slightly better on a list compared to the others. Based on a method devised by Payne and Jones (J Clin Psychol 13:115-121, 1957), we provide normative data for establishing whether a discrepancy in recall accuracy on two versions of the test exceeds the discrepancy expected based on the performance of normal controls.	\N	\N
24218332	Sound localization is important for orienting and focusing attention and for segregating sounds from different sources in the environment. In humans, horizontal sound localization mainly relies on interaural differences in sound arrival time and sound level. Despite their perceptual importance, the neural processing of interaural time and level differences (ITDs and ILDs) remains poorly understood. Animal studies suggest that, in the brainstem, ITDs and ILDs are processed independently by different specialized circuits. The aim of the current study was to investigate whether, at higher processing levels, they remain independent or are integrated into a common code of sound laterality. For that, we measured late auditory cortical potentials in response to changes in sound lateralization elicited by perceptually matched changes in ITD and/or ILD. The responses to the ITD and ILD changes exhibited significant morphological differences. At the same time, however, they originated from overlapping areas of the cortex and showed clear evidence for functional coupling. These results suggest that the auditory cortex contains an integrated code of sound laterality, but also retains independent information about ITD and ILD cues. This cue-related information might be used to assess how consistent the cues are, and thus, how likely they would have arisen from the same source.	\N	\N
24224991	Today's compression hearing aids with noise reduction systems may not manage transient noises effectively because of the short duration of these sounds compared to the onset times of the compressors and/or noise reduction algorithms. The current study was designed to evaluate the effect of a transient noise reduction (TNR) algorithm on listening comfort, speech intelligibility in quiet, and preferred wearer gain in the presence of transients. A single-blinded, repeated-measures design was used. Thirteen experienced hearing aid users with bilaterally symmetrical (≤7.5 dB) sensorineural hearing loss participated in the study. Speech identification in quiet (no transient noise) was identical between the TNR On and the TNR Off conditions. The participants showed subjective preference for the TNR algorithm when "comfortable listening" was used as the criterion. Participants preferred less gain than the default prescription in the presence of transient noise sounds. However, the preferred gain was 2.9 dB higher when the TNR was activated than when it was deactivated. This translated to 12.1% improvement in phoneme identification over the TNR Off condition for soft speech. This study demonstrated that the use of the TNR algorithm would not negatively affect speech identification. The results also suggested that this algorithm may improve listening comfort in the presence of transient noise sounds and ensure consistent use of prescribed gain. Such an algorithm may ensure more consistent audibility across listening environments.	\N	\N
24225652	The aim of this study was to comprehensively evaluate the auditory phenotype in Niemann-Pick disease, type C1 (NPC1), to understand better the natural history of this complex, heterogeneous disorder, and to define further the baseline auditory deficits associated with NPC1 so that use of potentially ototoxic interventions (e.g., 2-hydroxypropyl-ß-cyclodextrin) may be more appropriately monitored and understood. Fifty patients with NPC1 ranging in age from 4 months to 21 years (mean = 9.3 years) enrolled in a natural history/observational study at the National Institutes of Health. The auditory test battery included, when possible, immittance audiometry, pure-tone and speech audiometry, otoacoustic emission testing, and a neurotologic auditory brainstem response study. Longitudinal data were collected on a subset of patients. Over half of the cohort exhibited hearing loss involving the high frequencies ranging from a slight to moderate degree, and 74% of patients presented with clinically significant hearing loss involving the frequencies most important to speech understanding (0.5, 1, 2, 4 kHz). Despite the heterogeneity of the sample, results among patients were sufficiently consistent to implicate retrocochlear dysfunction in the majority (66%) of individuals, with (22%) or without (44%) accompanying cochlear involvement. Some patients (10%) presented with a profile for auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder. The combination of cross-sectional and longitudinal data indicates these patients are at risk for a progressive decline in auditory function. This is the largest cohort of patients with NPC1 evaluated comprehensively for auditory dysfunction, and results implicate the pathological processes of NPC1 in the manifestation of hearing loss. Patients with NPC1 should be monitored audiologically throughout their lives, beginning at the time of diagnosis. Clinicians and researchers should be aware of this historically overlooked aspect of the phenotype.	\N	\N
24227733	Previous imaging studies of congenital blindness have studied individuals with heterogeneous causes of blindness, which may influence the nature and extent of cross-modal plasticity. Here, we scanned a homogeneous group of blind people with bilateral congenital anophthalmia, a condition in which both eyes fail to develop, and, as a result, the visual pathway is not stimulated by either light or retinal waves. This model of congenital blindness presents an opportunity to investigate the effects of very early visual deafferentation on the functional organization of the brain. In anophthalmic animals, the occipital cortex receives direct subcortical auditory input. We hypothesized that this pattern of subcortical reorganization ought to result in a topographic mapping of auditory frequency information in the occipital cortex of anophthalmic people. Using functional MRI, we examined auditory-evoked activity to pure tones of high, medium, and low frequencies. Activity in the superior temporal cortex was significantly reduced in anophthalmic compared with sighted participants. In the occipital cortex, a region corresponding to the cytoarchitectural area V5/MT+ was activated in the anophthalmic participants but not in sighted controls. Whereas previous studies in the blind indicate that this cortical area is activated to auditory motion, our data show it is also active for trains of pure tone stimuli and in some anophthalmic participants shows a topographic mapping (tonotopy). Therefore, this region appears to be performing early sensory processing, possibly served by direct subcortical input from the pulvinar to V5/MT+.	\N	\N
24230923	The Rey Auditory-Verbal Learning Test is an easy to administer test that assesses many memory domains and is, therefore, widely used in the area of clinical neuropsychology. The purpose of this study was to provide normative data for an elderly population living in Spain. The sample of this study was comprised of 156 volunteers over 60 years of age, which were grouped into six different age groups. These groups comprised of 10 participants between the ages of 61 and 65 in the first group, 23 participants (66-70) in the second, 28 participants (71-75) in the third, 35 participants (76-80) in the fourth, 32 participants (81-85)in the fifth and 28 participants (86-95) in the sixth group. Demographic data were collected and means, deviations, and ranges of all the measures were evaluated. Normative data were calculated from the percentiles, and then converted into age-corrected scaled scores with a mean of 10 and a standard deviation of 3.	\N	\N
24231418	In the basic sciences, many researchers now use gap pre-pulse inhibition of the acoustic startle reflex (GPIAS) to determine if an animal has tinnitus after exposure to an ototoxic drug or intense noise. Tinnitus is assumed to be present if the silent gap in an ongoing narrow band noise (NBN) fails to suppress the startle reflex response evoked by an intense noise burst. The lack of gap pre-pulse inhibition presumably occurs because tinnitus fills in the silent intervals in the background noise. To test the perceptual aspects of this hypothesis, we asked hearing impaired subjects with tinnitus if they could perceive 50 ms silent intervals presented in a NBN, which was located above, below or at the subject's tinnitus pitch. The same tests were performed on normal hearing subjects without tinnitus. All subjects, with and without tinnitus, could detect the 50 ms gaps. Thus, using the stimulus parameters similar to those employed in animal and human GPIAS studies, we found that the tinnitus percept does not fill in the silent interval in a perceptual gap detection task; however, these finding do not rule out the possibility that tinnitus interferes with pre-attentive filtering of sensory stimuli in the GPIAS sensorimotor gating paradigm.	\N	\N
24232066	Compare preoperative and postoperative performance in patients undergoing cochlear implantation (CI) for unilateral severe-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss (single-sided deafness, SSD). IRB-approved, prospective Tertiary center Twenty-nine patients have undergone CI for SSD. SSD was due to Ménière's disease (MD) in 10 subjects; these also suffered from recalcitrant vertigo spells and in these 10 patients along with 2 others the CI was placed simultaneous with a labyrinthectomy. CI with or without labyrinthectomy. CNC word and AzBio sentences in quiet were administered to the implanted ear. A multiple-loudspeaker sound localization test was administered in the bilateral listening condition. All data were collected preoperatively and 3, 6, and 12 months postoperatively with postoperative data available for 19 subjects. Additionally, a tinnitus handicap questionnaire is administered pre- and 12-months post-operatively. CNC word and AzBio sentence scores showed improvement in the implanted ear. Sound localization appeared to improve in an experience-dependent fashion in some patients. Most patients reported diminished tinnitus after cochlear implantation. All patients undergoing labyrinthectomy experienced resolution of vertigo attacks. CI restores auditory function to the deafened ear. Additionally, the binaural input appears to improve sound localization for most patients. In patients with severe hearing loss and recalcitrant vertigo attacks because of MD, simultaneous labyrinthectomy and CI effectively relieves vertigo attacks and improves auditory function.	\N	\N
24234167	Are listeners able to adapt to a foreign-accented speaker who has, as is often the case, an inconsistent accent? Two groups of native Dutch listeners participated in a cross-modal priming experiment, either in a consistent-accent condition (German-accented items only) or in an inconsistent-accent condition (German-accented and nativelike pronunciations intermixed). The experimental words were identical for both groups (words with vowel substitutions characteristic of German-accented speech); additional contextual words differed in accentedness (German-accented or nativelike words). All items were spoken by the same speaker: a German native who could produce the accented forms but could also pass for a Dutch native speaker. Listeners in the consistent-accent group were able to adapt quickly to the speaker (i.e., showed facilitatory priming for words with vocalic substitutions). Listeners in the inconsistent-accent condition showed adaptation to words with vocalic substitutions only in the second half of the experiment. These results indicate that adaptation to foreign-accented speech is rapid. Accent inconsistency slows listeners down initially, but a short period of additional exposure is enough for them to adapt to the speaker. Listeners can therefore tolerate inconsistency in foreign-accented speech.	\N	\N
24238764	Two experiments examined when monolingual, English-learning 19-month-old infants learn a second object label. Two experimenters sat together. One labeled a novel object with one novel label, whereas the other labeled the same object with a different label in either the same or a different language. Infants were tested on their comprehension of each label immediately following its presentation. Infants mapped the first label at above chance levels, but they did so with the second label only when requested by the speaker who provided it (Experiment 1) or when the second experimenter labeled the object in a different language (Experiment 2). These results show that 19-month-olds learn second object labels but do not readily generalize them across speakers of the same language. The results highlight how speaker and language spoken guide infants' acceptance of second labels, supporting sociopragmatic views of word learning.	\N	\N
24256043	The procedure maximally retains the physiological structure of the middle ear and external auditory canal, thus effectively improving the patient's hearing ability. We explored the clinical outcomes of treating chronic suppurative otitis media using improved intact canal wall radical mastoidectomy with sandwich graft tympanoplasty. We chose to perform intact canal wall radical mastoidectomy with sandwich graft tympanoplasty in patients with chronic suppurative otitis media. A total of 170 patients were included in the study. Statistical analysis was carried out using software SPSS18.0, adjusted with the chi-squared test. In all, 140 cases were shown to have been treated effectively (82.35%, 140/170). The increased auditory threshold of preoperative bone conduction was not related to the duration of disease and/or the presence of cholesteatoma (p > 0.05), but was associated with ossicular chain disruption or fixation (p < 0.05), specifically the ossicular chain destruction/absorption, granulation tissue wrapping, and consequent fixation. During the procedure, the sleeve-like pedicle flap of external auditory canal and tympanic membrane is covered with graft, allowing good fixation with maintenance of the tympanic membrane's natural shape. The auditory threshold test revealed equal or above normal levels (30 dB) for 126 cases (74.12%, 126/170). The primary healing rate of tympanic membrane achieved was 96.47% (164/170).	\N	\N
24258458	While bilateral cochlear implants (CIs) provide some binaural benefits, these benefits are limited compared to those observed in normal-hearing (NH) listeners. The large frequency-to-electrode allocation bandwidths (BWs) in CIs compared to auditory filter BWs in NH listeners increases the interaural fluctuation rate available for binaural unmasking, which may limit binaural benefits. The purpose of this work was to investigate the effect of interaural fluctuation rate on correlation change discrimination and binaural masking-level differences in NH listeners presented a CI simulation using a pulsed-sine vocoder. In experiment 1, correlation-change just-noticeable differences (JNDs) and tone-in-noise thresholds were measured for narrowband noises with different BWs and center frequencies (CFs). The results suggest that the BW, CF, and/or interaural fluctuation rate are important factors for correlation change discrimination. In experiment 2, the interaural fluctuation rate was systematically varied and dissociated from changes in BW and CF by using a pulsed-sine vocoder. Results indicated that the interaural fluctuation rate did not affect correlation change JNDs for correlated reference noises; however, slow interaural fluctuations increased correlation change JNDs for uncorrelated reference noises. In experiment 3, the BW, CF, and vocoder pulse rate were varied while interaural fluctuation rate was held constant. JNDs increased for increasing BW and decreased for increasing CF. In summary, relatively fast interaural fluctuation rates are not detrimental for detecting changes in interaural correlation. Thus, limiting factors to binaural benefits in CI listeners could be a result of other temporal and/or spectral deficiencies from electrical stimulation.	\N	\N
24260183	In the real world, human speech recognition nearly always involves listening in background noise. The impact of such noise on speech signals and on intelligibility performance increases with the separation of the listener from the speaker. The present behavioral experiment provides an overview of the effects of such acoustic disturbances on speech perception in conditions approaching ecologically valid contexts. We analysed the intelligibility loss in spoken word lists with increasing listener-to-speaker distance in a typical low-level natural background noise. The noise was combined with the simple spherical amplitude attenuation due to distance, basically changing the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Therefore, our study draws attention to some of the most basic environmental constraints that have pervaded spoken communication throughout human history. We evaluated the ability of native French participants to recognize French monosyllabic words (spoken at 65.3 dB(A), reference at 1 meter) at distances between 11 to 33 meters, which corresponded to the SNRs most revealing of the progressive effect of the selected natural noise (-8.8 dB to -18.4 dB). Our results showed that in such conditions, identity of vowels is mostly preserved, with the striking peculiarity of the absence of confusion in vowels. The results also confirmed the functional role of consonants during lexical identification. The extensive analysis of recognition scores, confusion patterns and associated acoustic cues revealed that sonorant, sibilant and burst properties were the most important parameters influencing phoneme recognition. . Altogether these analyses allowed us to extract a resistance scale from consonant recognition scores. We also identified specific perceptual consonant confusion groups depending of the place in the words (onset vs. coda). Finally our data suggested that listeners may access some acoustic cues of the CV transition, opening interesting perspectives for future studies.	\N	\N
24271979	Integrating visual and auditory language information is critical for reading. Suppression and congruency effects in audiovisual paradigms with letters and speech sounds have provided information about low-level mechanisms of grapheme-phoneme integration during reading. However, the central question about how such processes relate to reading entire words remains unexplored. Using ERPs, we investigated whether audiovisual integration occurs for words already in beginning readers, and if so, whether this integration is reflected by differences in map strength or topography (aim 1); and moreover, whether such integration is associated with reading fluency (aim 2). A 128-channel EEG was recorded while 69 monolingual (Swiss)-German speaking first-graders performed a detection task with rare targets. Stimuli were presented in blocks either auditorily (A), visually (V) or audiovisually (matching: AVM; nonmatching: AVN). Corresponding ERPs were computed, and unimodal ERPs summated (A + V = sumAV). We applied TANOVAs to identify time windows with significant integration effects: suppression (sumAV-AVM) and congruency (AVN-AVM). They were further characterized using GFP and 3D-centroid analyses, and significant effects were correlated with reading fluency. The results suggest that audiovisual suppression effects occur for familiar German and unfamiliar English words, whereas audiovisual congruency effects can be found only for familiar German words, probably due to lexical-semantic processes involved. Moreover, congruency effects were characterized by topographic differences, indicating that different sources are active during processing of congruent compared to incongruent audiovisual words. Furthermore, no clear associations between audiovisual integration and reading fluency were found. The degree to which such associations develop in beginning readers remains open to further investigation.	\N	\N
24278326	The purpose of this study was to design and to verify a new hearing-aid fitting strategy (Aescu HRL-1) based on the acoustic features of Mandarin. The subjective and objective outcomes were compared to those fitted with NAL-NL1 (National Acoustic Laboratory Non-Linear, version1) in Mandarin-speaking hearing-aid users. Fifteen subjects with sensorineural hearing loss participated in this preliminary study. Each subject wore a pair of four-channel hearing aids fitted with the Aescu HRL-1 and NAL-NL1 prescriptions alternatively for 1 month. Objective and subjective tests including the Mandarin Monosyllable Recognition Test (MMRT), Mandarin Hearing in Noise Test (MHINT), International Outcome Inventory for Hearing Aids (IOI-HA), and a sound-quality questionnaire were used to evaluate the performance of the two prescriptions. The mean MMRT scores were 79.9% and 81.1% for NAL-NL1 and Aescu HRL-1 respectively. They are not statistically different. The corresponding MHINT signal-to-noise ratios were 0.87 and 0.85 dB, also, no significant difference was found between these two strategies. However, in subjective questionnaires, overall, the sound-quality and IOI-HA scores were higher for Aescu HRL-1. The speech recognition performance based on Aescu HRL-1 is as good as that of NAL-NL1 for Mandarin-speaking hearing-aid users. Moreover, the subjects generally responded that Aescu HRL-1 provides a more natural, richer, and better sound quality than does NAL-NL1.	\N	\N
24296543	The acoustic basis of intelligibility associated with varied clear speech instructions was studied. Twelve healthy speakers read 18 sentences in 'habitual', 'clear', 'hearing impaired' and 'overenunciate' conditions. The latter 3 conditions are varieties of clear speech. Acoustic measures included tense and lax vowel space area, a measure of vowel spectral change, articulation rate and sentence-level vocal intensity. Sentences were mixed with multitalker babble to prevent ceiling effects and were orthographically transcribed by 40 listeners. Percent-correct scores were obtained for each speaker and condition. Regression analyses were used to quantify relationships between acoustic measures and intelligibility. Univariate regressions indicated that greater magnitudes of acoustic change in nonhabitual conditions were associated with greater increases in intelligibility. Multivariate regression analysis further indicated that lax vowel space, articulation rate and vocal intensity were significant predictors of intelligibility. Acoustic variables associated with intelligibility differed depending on whether relationships were examined using univariate or multivariate statistics. Multivariate statistics indicated that articulation rate was the strongest predictor of improvements in intelligibility above and beyond all other variables studied. The findings have implications for optimizing therapeutic use of clear speech for clinical populations.	\N	\N
24302571	The activity of sensory neural populations carries information about the environment. This may be extracted from neural activity using different strategies. In the auditory brainstem, a recent theory proposes that sound location in the horizontal plane is decoded from the relative summed activity of two populations in each hemisphere, whereas earlier theories hypothesized that the location was decoded from the identity of the most active cells. We tested the performance of various decoders of neural responses in increasingly complex acoustical situations, including spectrum variations, noise, and sound diffraction. We demonstrate that there is insufficient information in the pooled activity of each hemisphere to estimate sound direction in a reliable way consistent with behavior, whereas robust estimates can be obtained from neural activity by taking into account the heterogeneous tuning of cells. These estimates can still be obtained when only contralateral neural responses are used, consistently with unilateral lesion studies. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.01312.001.	\N	\N
24311693	Dyslexia is a severe and persistent reading and spelling disorder caused by impairment in the ability to manipulate speech sounds. We combined functional magnetic resonance brain imaging with multivoxel pattern analysis and functional and structural connectivity analysis in an effort to disentangle whether dyslexics' phonological deficits are caused by poor quality of the phonetic representations or by difficulties in accessing intact phonetic representations. We found that phonetic representations are hosted bilaterally in primary and secondary auditory cortices and that their neural quality (in terms of robustness and distinctness) is intact in adults with dyslexia. However, the functional and structural connectivity between the bilateral auditory cortices and the left inferior frontal gyrus (a region involved in higher-level phonological processing) is significantly hampered in dyslexics, suggesting deficient access to otherwise intact phonetic representations.	\N	\N
24312408	Nucleus cochlear implant systems incorporate a fast-acting front-end automatic gain control (AGC), sometimes called a compression limiter. The objective of the present study was to determine the effect of replacing the front-end compression limiter with a newly proposed envelope profile limiter. A secondary objective was to investigate the effect of AGC speed on cochlear implant speech intelligibility. The envelope profile limiter was located after the filter bank and reduced the gain when the largest of the filter bank envelopes exceeded the compression threshold. The compression threshold was set equal to the saturation level of the loudness growth function (i.e. the envelope level that mapped to the maximum comfortable current level), ensuring that no envelope clipping occurred. To preserve the spectral profile, the same gain was applied to all channels. Experiment 1 compared sentence recognition with the front-end limiter and with the envelope profile limiter, each with two release times (75 and 625 ms). Six implant recipients were tested in quiet and in four-talker babble noise, at a high presentation level of 89 dB SPL. Overall, release time had a larger effect than the AGC type. With both AGC types, speech intelligibility was lower for the 75 ms release time than for the 625 ms release time. With the shorter release time, the envelope profile limiter provided higher group mean scores than the front-end limiter in quiet, but there was no significant difference in noise. Experiment 2 measured sentence recognition in noise as a function of presentation level, from 55 to 89 dB SPL. The envelope profile limiter with 625 ms release time yielded better scores than the front-end limiter with 75 ms release time. A take-home study showed no clear pattern of preferences. It is concluded that the envelope profile limiter is a feasible alternative to a front-end compression limiter.	\N	\N
24317426	Previous research demonstrates that meaningfully related sounds enhance visual sensitivity to point-light displays of human movement. Here we report two psychophysical studies that investigated whether, and if so when, this facilitation is modulated by the temporal relationship between auditory and visual stimuli. In Experiment 1, participants detected point-light walkers in masks while listening to footsteps that were either synchronous or out-of-phase with point-light footfalls. The relative timing of auditory and visual walking did not impact performance. Experiment 2 further tested the importance of multisensory timing by disrupting the rhythm of the auditory and visual streams. Participants detected point-light walkers while listening to footstep or tone sounds that were either synchronous or temporally random with regards to point-light footfalls. Heard footsteps improved visual sensitivity over heard tones regardless of timing. Taken together, these results suggest that during the detection of others' actions, the perceptual system makes use of meaningfully related sounds whether or not they are synchronous. These results are discussed in relation to the unity assumption theory as well as recent empirical data that suggest that temporal correspondence is not always a critical factor in multisensory perception and integration.	\N	\N
24329490	To link outcome measures used in audiological research to the ICF classification and thereby describe audiological research from the ICF perspective. Through a peer-reviewed or a joint linking procedure, link outcome measures to the ICF classification system using standardized ICF linking rules. Additional linking rules were developed in combination with the established rules to overcome difficulties when connecting audiological data to ICF. Absolute and relative frequencies of ICF categories were reported. The identified outcome measures from the previous study (Part I) constituted the empirical material. In total, 285 ICF categories were identified. The most prevalent categories were related to listening, hearing functions, auditory perceptions, emotions and the physical environment, such as noise and hearing aids. Categories related to communication showed lower relative frequencies, as did categories related to the social and attitudinal environment. Based on the linked outcome measures, communication as a research topic is subordinated to other research topics. The same conclusion can be drawn for research targeting the social and attitudinal environment of adults with HL. Difficulties in the linking procedure were highlighted and discussed, and suggestions for future revisions of the ICF from the audiological perspective were described.	\N	\N
24333301	Mutations in the connexin 26 gene (GJB2) are the most common genetic cause of deafness, leading to congenital bilateral non-syndromic sensorineural hearing loss. Here we report the generation of a mouse model for a connexin 26 (Cx26) mutation, in which cre-Sox10 drives excision of the Cx26 gene from non-sensory cells flanking the auditory epithelium. We determined that these conditional knockout mice, designated Gjb2-CKO, have a severe hearing loss. Immunocytochemistry of the auditory epithelium confirmed absence of Cx26 in the non-sensory cells. Histology of the organ of Corti and the spiral ganglion neurons (SGNs) performed at ages 1, 3, or 6 months revealed that in Gjb2-CKO mice, the organ of Corti began to degenerate in the basal cochlear turn at an early stage, and the degeneration rapidly spread to the apex. In addition, the density of SGNs in Rosenthal's canal decreased rapidly along a gradient from the base of the cochlea to the apex, where some SGNs survived until at least 6 months of age. Surviving neurons often clustered together and formed clumps of cells in the canal. We then assessed the influence of brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene therapy on the SGNs of Gjb2-CKO mice by inoculating Adenovirus with the BDNF gene insert (Ad.BDNF) into the base of the cochlea via the scala tympani or scala media. We determined that over-expression of BDNF beginning around 1 month of age resulted in a significant rescue of neurons in Rosenthal's canal of the cochlear basal turn but not in the middle or apical portions. This data may be used to design therapies for enhancing the SGN physiological status in all GJB2 patients and especially in a sub-group of GJB2 patients where the hearing loss progresses due to ongoing degeneration of the auditory nerve, thereby improving the outcome of cochlear implant therapy in these ears.	\N	\N
24342151	The purpose of the study was to identify structural brain differences in school-age children with residual speech sound errors. Voxel based morphometry was used to compare gray and white matter volumes for 23 children with speech sound errors, ages 8;6-11;11, and 54 typically speaking children matched on age, oral language, and IQ. We hypothesized that regions associated with production and perception of speech sounds would differ between groups. Results indicated greater gray matter volumes for the speech sound error group relative to typically speaking controls in bilateral superior temporal gyrus. There was greater white matter volume in the corpus callosum for the speech sound error group, but less white matter volume in right lateral occipital gyrus. Results may indicate delays in neuronal pruning in critical speech regions or differences in the development of networks for speech perception and production.	\N	\N
24344364	Previous studies in both humans and animals have documented improved performance following discrimination training. This enhanced performance is often associated with cortical response changes. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that long-term speech training on multiple tasks can improve primary auditory cortex (A1) responses compared to rats trained on a single speech discrimination task or experimentally naïve rats. Specifically, we compared the percent of A1 responding to trained sounds, the responses to both trained and untrained sounds, receptive field properties of A1 neurons, and the neural discrimination of pairs of speech sounds in speech trained and naïve rats. Speech training led to accurate discrimination of consonant and vowel sounds, but did not enhance A1 response strength or the neural discrimination of these sounds. Speech training altered tone responses in rats trained on six speech discrimination tasks but not in rats trained on a single speech discrimination task. Extensive speech training resulted in broader frequency tuning, shorter onset latencies, a decreased driven response to tones, and caused a shift in the frequency map to favor tones in the range where speech sounds are the loudest. Both the number of trained tasks and the number of days of training strongly predict the percent of A1 responding to a low frequency tone. Rats trained on a single speech discrimination task performed less accurately than rats trained on multiple tasks and did not exhibit A1 response changes. Our results indicate that extensive speech training can reorganize the A1 frequency map, which may have downstream consequences on speech sound processing.	\N	\N
24344815	Dyslexia is commonly attributed to a phonological deficit, but whether it effectively compromises the phonological grammar or lower level systems is rarely explored. To address this question, we gauge the sensitivity of dyslexics to grammatical phonological restrictions on spoken onset clusters (e.g., bl in block). Across languages, certain onsets are preferred to others (e.g., blif ≻ bnif ≻ bdif, where ≻ indicates a preference). Here, we show that dyslexic participants (adult native speakers of Hebrew) are fully sensitive to these phonological restrictions, and they extend them irrespective of whether the onsets are attested in their language (e.g., bnif vs. bdif) or unattested (e.g., mlif vs. mdif). Dyslexics, however, showed reduced sensitivity to phonetic contrasts (e.g., blif vs. belif; ba vs. pa). Together, these results suggest that the known difficulties of dyslexics in speech processing could emanate not from the phonological grammar, but rather from lower level impairments to acoustic/phonetic encoding, lexical storage, and retrieval.	\N	\N
24349414	The diagnosis of tinnitus relies on self-report. Psychoacoustic measurements of tinnitus pitch and loudness are essential for assessing claims and discriminating true from false ones. For this reason, the quantification of tinnitus remains a challenging research goal. We aimed to: (1) assess the precision of a new tinnitus likeness rating procedure with a continuous-pitch presentation method, controlling for music training, and (2) test whether tinnitus psychoacoustic measurements have the sensitivity and specificity required to detect people faking tinnitus. Musicians and non-musicians with tinnitus, as well as simulated malingerers without tinnitus, were tested. Most were retested several weeks later. Tinnitus pitch matching was first assessed using the likeness rating method: pure tones from 0.25 to 16 kHz were presented randomly to participants, who had to rate the likeness of each tone to their tinnitus, and to adjust its level from 0 to 100 dB SPL. Tinnitus pitch matching was then assessed with a continuous-pitch method: participants had to match the pitch of their tinnitus to an external tone by moving their finger across a touch-sensitive strip, which generated a continuous pure tone from 0.5 to 20 kHz in 1-Hz steps. The predominant tinnitus pitch was consistent across both methods for both musicians and non-musicians, although musicians displayed better external tone pitch matching abilities. Simulated malingerers rated loudness much higher than did the other groups with a high degree of specificity (94.4%) and were unreliable in loudness (not pitch) matching from one session to the other. Retest data showed similar pitch matching responses for both methods for all participants. In conclusion, tinnitus pitch and loudness reliably correspond to the tinnitus percept, and psychoacoustic loudness matches are sensitive and specific to the presence of tinnitus.	\N	\N
24350693	To investigate the predicted threshold shift associated with the use of nonlinear hearing aids fitted to the NAL-NL2 or the DSL m[i/o] prescription for children with the same audiograms. For medium and high input levels, we asked: (1) How does predicted asymptotic threshold shifts (ATS) differ according to the choice of prescription? (2) How does predicted ATS vary with hearing level for gains prescribed by the two prescriptions? A mathematical model consisting of the modified power law combined with equations for predicting temporary threshold shift (Macrae, 1994b) was used to predict ATS. Predicted threshold shift were determined for 57 audiograms at medium and high input levels. For the 57 audiograms, DSL m[i/o] gains for high input levels were associated with increased risk relative to NAL-NL2. The variation of ATS with hearing level suggests that NAL-NL2 gains became unsafe when hearing loss > 90 dB HL. The gains prescribed by DSL m[i/o] became unsafe when hearing loss > 80 dB HL at a medium input level, and > 70 dB HL at a high input level. There is a risk of damage to hearing for children using nonlinear amplification. Vigilant checking for threshold shift is recommended.	\N	\N
24357104	Middle ear disease is the primary cause of hearing loss in children and has a significant impact on language development and academic performance. Multiple prognostic factors have previously been examined, but there is little published data regarding frequency-specific hearing outcomes. To examine the relationship between type I tympanoplasty in a pediatric population and frequency-specific hearing changes, as well as the relationship between several prognostic factors and graft retention. Retrospective medical chart review (February 2006 to October 2011) of 492 consecutive pediatric otolaryngology patients undergoing type I tympanoplasty for tympanic membrane (TM) perforation of any etiology at a tertiary-care pediatric otolaryngology practice. Type I tympanoplasty. Preoperative and postoperative audiometric data were collected for patients undergoing successful TM repair. It was hypothesized before data collection that conductive hearing would improve at all frequencies with no significant change in sensorineural hearing. Data collected included air conduction at 250 to 8000 Hz, speech reception thresholds, bone conduction at 500 to 4000 Hz, and air-bone gap at 500 to 4000 Hz. Demographic data obtained included sex, age, size, mechanism, location of perforation, and operative repair technique. Of 492 patients, 320 were excluded; results were thus examined for 172 patients. Surgery was successful for 73.8% of patients. Perforation size was significantly associated with repair success (mean [SD] surgical success rate of 38.6% [15.3%] vs surgical failure rate of 31.4% [15.0%]; P < .01); however, mean (SD) age (9.02 [3.89] years [surgical success] vs 8.52 [3.43] years [surgical failure]; P > .05) and repair technique (medial [73.08%] vs lateral [76.47%] graft success; P > .99) were not. Air conduction significantly improved from 250 to 2000 Hz (P < .001), did not significantly improve at 4000 Hz (P = .08), and there was a nonsignificant decline at 8000 Hz (P = .12). Speech reception threshold significantly improved (20 vs 15 dB; P < .001). This large review found an association of TM perforation size with surgical success and an improvement in speech reception threshold, air conduction at 250 to 2000 Hz, air-bone gap at 500 to 2000 Hz, and worsening bone conduction at 4000 Hz. Patients with high-frequency hearing loss due to TM perforation should not anticipate significant recovery from type I tympanoplasty. Hearing loss at higher frequencies may require postoperative hearing rehabilitation.	\N	\N
24364392	Previous research has shown that damage to the left temporal pole (LTP) is associated with impaired retrieval of words for unique entities, including names of famous people and landmarks. However, it is not known whether retrieving names for famous melodies is associated with the LTP. The aim of this study was to investigate the hypothesis that damage to the LTP would be associated with impaired naming of famous musical melodies. A Melody Naming Test was administered to patients with LTP damage, brain damaged comparison (BDC) patients, and normal comparison participants (NC). The test included various well-known melodies (e.g., "Pop Goes the Weasel"). After hearing each melody, participants were asked to rate their familiarity with the melody and identify it by name. LTP patients named significantly fewer melodies than BDC and NC participants. Recognition of melodies did not differ significantly between groups. The findings suggest that LTP supports retrieval of names for famous melodies. More broadly, these results extend support for the theoretical notion that LTP is important for retrieving proper names for unique concepts, irrespectively of stimulus modality or category.	\N	\N
24366693	The visual cues involved in auditory speech processing are not restricted to information from lip movements but also include head or chin gestures and facial expressions such as eyebrow movements. The fact that visual gestures precede the auditory signal implicates that visual information may influence the auditory activity. As visual stimuli are very close in time to the auditory information for audiovisual syllables, the cortical response to them usually overlaps with that for the auditory stimulation; the neural dynamics underlying the visual facilitation for continuous speech therefore remain unclear. In this study, we used a three-word phrase to study continuous speech processing. We presented video clips with even (without emphasis) phrases as the frequent stimuli and with one word visually emphasized by the speaker as the non-frequent stimuli. Negativity in the resulting ERPs was detected after the start of the emphasizing articulatory movements but before the auditory stimulus, a finding that was confirmed by the statistical comparisons of the audiovisual and visual stimulation. No such negativity was present in the control visual-only condition. The propagation of this negativity was observed between the visual and fronto-temporal electrodes. Thus, in continuous speech, the visual modality evokes predictive coding for the auditory speech, which is analysed by the cerebral cortex in the context of the phrase even before the arrival of the corresponding auditory signal.	\N	\N
24372066	In this study, 35 young, healthy adults were tested on whether speech-like stimuli evoke a unique response in the auditory efferent system. To this end, descending cortical influences on medial olivocochlear (MOC) activity were indirectly evaluated by studying the effects of contralateral suppression on distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) under four conditions: (a) in the absence of any contralateral noise (Baseline), (b) presence of contralateral broadband noise (Noise Baseline), (c) vowel discrimination-in-noise task (VDN) and (d) tone discrimination-in-noise (TDN) task. A statistically significant release from suppression was evident across all tested DPOAE frequencies (1, 1.5 and 2 kHz) only for the VDN task (p < 0.05), which yielded greater release from suppression than the TDN task. These findings indicate that during active listening in the presence of noise, the MOC activity may be differentially modulated depending on the type of stimulus (vowel vs. tone). Specifically, in the presence of background noise, vowels may show a greater release from suppression in the cochlea than frequency, intensity and duration matched tones.	\N	\N
24376601	During sentence production, linguistic information (semantics, syntax, phonology) of words is retrieved and assembled into a meaningful utterance. There is still debate on how we assemble single words into more complex syntactic structures such as noun phrases or sentences. In the present study, event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to investigate the time course of syntactic planning. Thirty-three volunteers described visually animated scenes using naming formats varying in syntactic complexity: from simple words ('W', e.g., "triangle", "red", "square", "green", "to fly towards"), to noun phrases ('NP', e.g., "the red triangle", "the green square", "to fly towards"), to a sentence ('S', e.g., "The red triangle flies towards the green square."). Behaviourally, we observed an increase in errors and corrections with increasing syntactic complexity, indicating a successful experimental manipulation. In the ERPs following scene onset, syntactic complexity variations were found in a P300-like component ('S'/'NP'>'W') and a fronto-central negativity (linear increase with syntactic complexity). In addition, the scene could display two actions - unpredictable for the participant, as the disambiguation occurred only later in the animation. Time-locked to the moment of visual disambiguation of the action and thus the verb, we observed another P300 component ('S'>'NP'/'W'). The data show for the first time evidence of sensitivity to syntactic planning within the P300 time window, time-locked to visual events critical of syntactic planning. We discuss the findings in the light of current syntactic planning views.	\N	\N
24376662	Previous research suggests that deficits in attention-emotion interaction are implicated in schizophrenia symptoms. Although disruption in auditory processing is crucial in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia, deficits in interaction between emotional processing of auditorily presented language stimuli and auditory attention have not yet been clarified. To address this issue, the current study used a dichotic listening task to examine 22 patients with schizophrenia and 24 age-, sex-, parental socioeconomic background-, handedness-, dexterous ear-, and intelligence quotient-matched healthy controls. The participants completed a word recognition task on the attended side in which a word with emotionally valenced content (negative/positive/neutral) was presented to one ear and a different neutral word was presented to the other ear. Participants selectively attended to either ear. In the control subjects, presentation of negative but not positive word stimuli provoked a significantly prolonged reaction time compared with presentation of neutral word stimuli. This interference effect for negative words existed whether or not subjects directed attention to the negative words. This interference effect was significantly smaller in the patients with schizophrenia than in the healthy controls. Furthermore, the smaller interference effect was significantly correlated with severe positive symptoms and delusional behavior in the patients with schizophrenia. The present findings suggest that aberrant interaction between semantic processing of negative emotional content and auditory attention plays a role in production of positive symptoms in schizophrenia. (224 words).	\N	\N
24384081	Large variations in perceptual directional microphone benefit, which far exceed the variation expected from physical performance measures of directional microphones, have been reported in the literature. The cause for the individual variation has not been systematically investigated. To determine the factors that are responsible for the individual variation in reported perceptual directional benefit. A correlational study. Physical performance measures of the directional microphones obtained after they had been fitted to individuals, cognitive abilities of individuals, and measurement errors were related to perceptual directional benefit scores. Fifty-nine hearing-impaired adults with varied degrees of hearing loss participated in the study. All participants were bilaterally fitted with a Motion behind-the-ear device (500 M, 501 SX, or 501 P) from Siemens according to the National Acoustic Laboratories' non-linear prescription, version two (NAL-NL2). Using the Bamford-Kowal-Bench (BKB) sentences, the perceptual directional benefit was obtained as the difference in speech reception threshold measured in babble noise (SRTn) with the devices in directional (fixed hypercardioid) and in omnidirectional mode. The SRTn measurements were repeated three times with each microphone mode. Physical performance measures of the directional microphone included the angle of the microphone ports to loudspeaker axis, the frequency range dominated by amplified sound, the in situ signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and the in situ three-dimensional, articulation-index weighted directivity index (3D AI-DI). The cognitive tests included auditory selective attention, speed of processing, and working memory. Intraparticipant variation on the repeated SRTn's and the interparticipant variation on the average SRTn were used to determine the effect of measurement error. A multiple regression analysis was used to determine the effect of other factors. Measurement errors explained 52% of the variation in perceptual directional microphone benefit (95% confidence interval [CI]: 34-78%), while another 37% of variation was explained primarily by the physical performance of the directional microphones after they were fitted to individuals. The most contributing factor was the in situ 3D AI-DI measured across the low frequencies. Repeated SRTn measurements are needed to obtain a reliable indication of the perceptual directional benefit in an individual. Further, to obtain optimum benefit from directional microphones, the effectiveness of the microphones should be maximized across the low frequencies.	\N	\N
24386719	Listener retention of silent, gap-length duration was studied. Just noticeable differences (JNDs) for gap length within standard and comparison stimuli were obtained for intervals with and without intervening noise bursts, including a condition with gapped intervening bursts. Outcomes indicate that gap duration itself can be determinant. Also, JNDs were similar whether intervening stimuli were present or absent, differing from results reported for pitch, loudness, and timbre retention. The latter suggests additional/alternative cortical resources might be employed for retention of auditory-temporal information.	\N	\N
24408329	To investigate the auditory behavior of patients with chronic renal failure (CRF) undergoing kidney transplantation. Thirty patients were evaluated, 10 (33.33%) females and 20 (66.67%) males, aging from 13 to 26 years (average, 16.97 years; standard deviation, 3.60 years). Patients underwent the following procedures: anamnesis, otolaryngological examination, audiological evaluation (pure tone and high frequency), acoustic impedance measurements and central auditory processing evaluation. A control group was used to compare the high-frequency audiometry results. The following observations were made: absence of auditory complaints at the time of anamnesis; pure-tone audiometry was predominantly normal; patients presented lower hearing levels at the high-frequency audiometry, when compared to the control group, and as for the acoustic impedance measurements, curves of the type A were predominant; there was a change of the central auditory processing for 14 patients (46.67%) in the Staggered Spondaic Word Test (SSW); there was a significant difference between the age variable and the result of the pure-tone audiometry, that is, hearing sensitivity in thresholds from 250Hz to 8,000Hz decreased with advancing age; and the relation between the type of donor and the SSW test result was significant. Rates were higher when the patients had been transplanted from deceased donors compared to living donors. There were no changes in conventional audiological and high-frequency evaluation, or in the central auditory processing. Professionals involved in the care of kidney transplantation recipients must be better informed about the care, prevention, and early identification of auditory disorders.	\N	\N
24408330	The objective of this research was to assess the auditory abilities of Portuguese children and compare such abilities to the score of the Scale of Auditory Behaviors (SAB). Fifty-one children were evaluated with audiometry, speech audiometry, acoustic immittance measures, and eight behavioral tests involving dichotic listening, monotic listening, temporal processing, and sound localization. Their parents filled in the SAB questionnaire adapted to European A. SAB scores and auditory tests scores were submitted to Pearson's correlation coefficient. There is significant correlation between the score on SAB questionnaire and the auditory processing tests. The greatest coefficient was observed in temporal processing test (p=0.000). There was correlation between the score of SAB and the performance in auditory processing tests, suggesting that the SAB may be used for auditory processing screening.	\N	\N
24413019	The neural underpinnings of auditory information processing have often been investigated using the odd-ball paradigm, in which infrequent sounds (deviants) are presented within a regular train of frequent stimuli (standards). Traditionally, this paradigm has been applied using either high temporal resolution (EEG) or high spatial resolution (fMRI, PET). However, used separately, these techniques cannot provide information on both the location and time course of particular neural processes. The goal of this study was to investigate the neural correlates of auditory processes with a fine spatio-temporal resolution. A simultaneous auditory evoked potentials (AEP) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technique (AEP-fMRI), together with an odd-ball paradigm, were used. Six healthy volunteers, aged 20-35 years, participated in an odd-ball simultaneous AEP-fMRI experiment. AEP in response to acoustic stimuli were used to model bioelectric intracerebral generators, and electrophysiological results were integrated with fMRI data. fMRI activation evoked by standard stimuli was found to occur mainly in the primary auditory cortex. Activity in these regions overlapped with intracerebral bioelectric sources (dipoles) of the N1 component. Dipoles of the N1/P2 complex in response to standard stimuli were also found in the auditory pathway between the thalamus and the auditory cortex. Deviant stimuli induced fMRI activity in the anterior cingulate gyrus, insula, and parietal lobes. The present study showed that neural processes evoked by standard stimuli occur predominantly in subcortical and cortical structures of the auditory pathway. Deviants activate areas non-specific for auditory information processing.	\N	\N
24419006	Three experiments investigated the role of memory and rehearsal in a dichotic emotion recognition task by manipulating the response procedure as well as the interval between encoding and retrieval while taking into account order of report. For all experiments, right-handed undergraduates were presented with dichotic pairs of the words bower, dower, power, and tower pronounced in a sad, angry, happy, or neutral tone of voice. Participants were asked to report the two emotions presented on each trial by clicking on the corresponding drawings or words on a computer screen, either following no delay or a five second delay. Experiment 1 applied the delay conditions as a between-subjects factor whereas it was a within-subject factor in Experiment 2. In Experiments 1 and 2, more correct responses occurred for the left than the right ear, reflecting a left ear advantage (LEA) that was slightly larger with a nonverbal than a verbal response. The LEA was also found to be larger with no delay than with the 5s delay. In addition, participants typically responded first to the left ear stimulus. In fact, the first response produced a LEA whereas the second response produced a right ear advantage. Experiment 3 involved a concurrent task during the delay to prevent rehearsal. In Experiment 3, the pattern of results supported the claim that rehearsal could account for the findings of the first two experiments. The findings are interpreted in the context of the role of rehearsal and memory in models of dichotic listening.	\N	\N
24429136	How humans solve the cocktail party problem remains unknown. However, progress has been made recently thanks to the realization that cortical activity tracks the amplitude envelope of speech. This has led to the development of regression methods for studying the neurophysiology of continuous speech. One such method, known as stimulus-reconstruction, has been successfully utilized with cortical surface recordings and magnetoencephalography (MEG). However, the former is invasive and gives a relatively restricted view of processing along the auditory hierarchy, whereas the latter is expensive and rare. Thus it would be extremely useful for research in many populations if stimulus-reconstruction was effective using electroencephalography (EEG), a widely available and inexpensive technology. Here we show that single-trial (≈60 s) unaveraged EEG data can be decoded to determine attentional selection in a naturalistic multispeaker environment. Furthermore, we show a significant correlation between our EEG-based measure of attention and performance on a high-level attention task. In addition, by attempting to decode attention at individual latencies, we identify neural processing at ∼200 ms as being critical for solving the cocktail party problem. These findings open up new avenues for studying the ongoing dynamics of cognition using EEG and for developing effective and natural brain-computer interfaces.	\N	\N
24429520	Historically, the study of speech processing has emphasized a strong link between auditory perceptual input and motor production output. A kind of 'parity' is essential, as both perception- and production-based representations must form a unified interface to facilitate access to higher-order language processes such as syntax and semantics, believed to be computed in the dominant, typically left hemisphere. Although various theories have been proposed to unite perception and production, the underlying neural mechanisms are unclear. Early models of speech and language processing proposed that perceptual processing occurred in the left posterior superior temporal gyrus (Wernicke's area) and motor production processes occurred in the left inferior frontal gyrus (Broca's area). Sensory activity was proposed to link to production activity through connecting fibre tracts, forming the left lateralized speech sensory-motor system. Although recent evidence indicates that speech perception occurs bilaterally, prevailing models maintain that the speech sensory-motor system is left lateralized and facilitates the transformation from sensory-based auditory representations to motor-based production representations. However, evidence for the lateralized computation of sensory-motor speech transformations is indirect and primarily comes from stroke patients that have speech repetition deficits (conduction aphasia) and studies using covert speech and haemodynamic functional imaging. Whether the speech sensory-motor system is lateralized, like higher-order language processes, or bilateral, like speech perception, is controversial. Here we use direct neural recordings in subjects performing sensory-motor tasks involving overt speech production to show that sensory-motor transformations occur bilaterally. We demonstrate that electrodes over bilateral inferior frontal, inferior parietal, superior temporal, premotor and somatosensory cortices exhibit robust sensory-motor neural responses during both perception and production in an overt word-repetition task. Using a non-word transformation task, we show that bilateral sensory-motor responses can perform transformations between speech-perception- and speech-production-based representations. These results establish a bilateral sublexical speech sensory-motor system.	\N	\N
24431427	The new DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) include sensory disturbances in addition to the well-established language, communication, and social deficits. One sensory disturbance seen in ASD is an impaired ability to integrate multisensory information into a unified percept. This may arise from an underlying impairment in which individuals with ASD have difficulty perceiving the temporal relationship between cross-modal inputs, an important cue for multisensory integration. Such impairments in multisensory processing may cascade into higher-level deficits, impairing day-to-day functioning on tasks, such as speech perception. To investigate multisensory temporal processing deficits in ASD and their links to speech processing, the current study mapped performance on a number of multisensory temporal tasks (with both simple and complex stimuli) onto the ability of individuals with ASD to perceptually bind audiovisual speech signals. High-functioning children with ASD were compared with a group of typically developing children. Performance on the multisensory temporal tasks varied with stimulus complexity for both groups; less precise temporal processing was observed with increasing stimulus complexity. Notably, individuals with ASD showed a speech-specific deficit in multisensory temporal processing. Most importantly, the strength of perceptual binding of audiovisual speech observed in individuals with ASD was strongly related to their low-level multisensory temporal processing abilities. Collectively, the results represent the first to illustrate links between multisensory temporal function and speech processing in ASD, strongly suggesting that deficits in low-level sensory processing may cascade into higher-order domains, such as language and communication.	\N	\N
24437771	Auditory deprivation and stimulation can change the threshold of the acoustic middle ear reflex as well as loudness in adult listeners. However, it has remained unclear whether changes in these measures are due to the same mechanism. In this study, deprivation was achieved using a monaural earplug that was worn by listeners for 7 days. Acoustic reflex thresholds (ARTs) and categorical loudness ratings were measured using a blinded design in which the experimenter was unaware of which ear had been plugged. Immediately after terminating unilateral deprivation, ARTs were obtained at a lower sound pressure level in the ear that had been fitted with an earplug and at a higher sound pressure level in the control ear. In contrast, categorical judgments of loudness changed in the same direction in both ears with a given stimulus level reported as louder after unilateral deprivation. The relationship between changes to the ART and loudness judgments was not statistically significant. For both the ARTs and the categorical loudness judgments, most of the changes had disappeared within 24 h after earplug removal. The changes in ARTs, as a consequence of unilateral sound deprivation, are consistent with a gain control mechanism; however, the lack of relationship with the categorical loudness judgments, and the different pattern of findings for each measure, suggests the possibility of multiple gain mechanisms.	\N	\N
24437774	The discrimination of interaural phase differences (IPDs) requires accurate binaural temporal processing and has been used as a measure of sensitivity to temporal envelope and temporal fine structure (TFS). Previous studies found that TFS-IPD discrimination declined with age and with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), but age and SNHL have often been confounded. The aim of this study was to determine the independent contributions of age and SNHL to TFS and envelope IPD discrimination by using a sample of adults with a wide range of ages and SNHL. A two-interval, two-alternative forced-choice procedure was used to measure IPD discrimination thresholds for 20-Hz amplitude-modulated tones with carrier frequencies of 250 or 500 Hz when the IPD was in either the stimulus envelope or TFS. There were positive correlations between absolute thresholds and TFS-IPD thresholds, but not envelope-IPD thresholds, when age was accounted for. This supports the idea that SNHL affects TFS processing independently to age. Age was positively correlated with envelope-IPD thresholds at both carrier frequencies and TFS-IPD thresholds at 500 Hz, when absolute thresholds were accounted for. These results suggest that age negatively affects the binaural processing of envelope and TFS at some frequencies independently of SNHL.	\N	\N
24441742	Abnormal hearing tests have been noted in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients in several studies, but the nature of the hearing deficit has not been clearly defined. The authors performed a cross-sectional study of both HIV+ and HIV- individuals in Tanzania by using an audiological test battery. The authors hypothesized that HIV+ adults would have a higher prevalence of abnormal central and peripheral hearing test results compared with HIV- controls. In addition, they anticipated that the prevalence of abnormal hearing assessments would increase with antiretroviral therapy (ART) use and treatment for tuberculosis (TB). Pure-tone thresholds, distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs), tympanometry, and a gap-detection test were performed using a laptop-based hearing testing system on 751 subjects (100 HIV- in the United States, plus 651 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, including 449 HIV+ [130 ART- and 319 ART+], and 202 HIV-, subjects. No U.S. subjects had a history of TB treatment. In Tanzania, 204 of the HIV+ and 23 of the HIV- subjects had a history of TB treatment. Subjects completed a video and audio questionnaire about their hearing, as well as a health history questionnaire. HIV+ subjects had reduced DPOAE levels compared with HIV- subjects, but their hearing thresholds, tympanometry results, and gap-detection thresholds were similar. Within the HIV+ group, those on ART reported significantly greater difficulties understanding speech in noise, and were significantly more likely to report that they had difficulty understanding speech than the ART- group. The ART+ group had a significantly higher mean gap-detection threshold compared with the ART- group. No effects of TB treatment were seen. The fact that the ART+/ART- groups did not differ in measures of peripheral hearing ability (DPOAEs, thresholds), or middle ear measures (tympanometry), but that the ART+ group had significantly more trouble understanding speech and had higher gap-detection thresholds indicates a central processing deficit. These data suggest that: (1) hearing deficits in HIV+ individuals could be a CNS side effect of HIV infection, (2) certain ART regimens might produce CNS side effects that manifest themselves as hearing difficulties, and/or (3) some ART regimens may treat CNS HIV inadequately, perhaps due to insufficient CNS drug levels, which is reflected as a central hearing deficit. Monitoring of central hearing parameters could be used to track central effects of either HIV or ART.	\N	\N
24447236	This discussion paper aims to synthesise the literature on patient-centred care from a range of health professions and to relate this to the field of rehabilitative audiology. Through review of the literature, this paper addresses five questions: What is patient-centred care? How is patient-centred care measured? What are the outcomes of patient-centred care? What are the factors contributing to patient-centred care? What are the implications for audiological rehabilitation? Literature review and synthesis. Publications were identified by structured searches in PubMed, Cinahl, Web of Knowledge, and PsychInfo, and by inspecting the reference lists of relevant articles. Few publications from within the audiology profession address this topic and consequently a review and synthesis of literature from other areas of health were used to answer the proposed questions. This paper concludes that patient-centred care is in line with the aims and scope of practice for audiological rehabilitation. However, there is emerging evidence that we still need to inform the conceptualisation of patient-centred audiological rehabilitation. A definition of patient-centred audiological rehabilitation is needed to facilitate studies into the nature and outcomes of it in audiological rehabilitation practice.	\N	\N
24456399	Crossmodal integration of auditory and visual information, such as phonemes and graphemes, is a critical skill for fluent reading. Previous work has demonstrated that white matter connectivity along the arcuate fasciculus (AF) is predicted by reading skill and that crossmodal processing particularly activates the posterior STS (pSTS). However, the relationship between this crossmodal activation and white matter integrity has not been previously reported. We investigated the interrelationship of crossmodal integration, both in terms of behavioral performance and pSTS activity, with AF tract coherence using a rhyme judgment task in a group of 47 children with a range of reading abilities. We demonstrate that both response accuracy and pSTS activity for crossmodal (auditory-visual) rhyme judgments was predictive of fractional anisotropy along the left AF. Unimodal (auditory-only or visual-only) pSTS activity was not significantly related to AF connectivity. Furthermore, activity in other reading-related ROIs did not show the same AV-only AF coherence relationship, and AV pSTS activity was not related to connectivity along other language-related tracts. This study is the first to directly show that crossmodal brain activity is specifically related to connectivity in the AF, supporting its role in phoneme-grapheme integration ability. More generally, this study helps to define an interdependent neural network for reading-related integration.	\N	\N
24488957	In categorical perception (CP), continuous physical signals are mapped to discrete perceptual bins: mental categories not found in the physical world. CP has been demonstrated across multiple sensory modalities and, in audition, for certain over-learned speech and musical sounds. The neural basis of auditory CP, however, remains ambiguous, including its robustness in nonspeech processes and the relative roles of left/right hemispheres; primary/nonprimary cortices; and ventral/dorsal perceptual processing streams. Here, highly trained musicians listened to 2-tone musical intervals, which they perceive categorically while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Multivariate pattern analyses were performed after grouping sounds by interval quality (determined by frequency ratio between tones) or pitch height (perceived noncategorically, frequency ratios remain constant). Distributed activity patterns in spheres of voxels were used to determine sound sample identities. For intervals, significant decoding accuracy was observed in the right superior temporal and left intraparietal sulci, with smaller peaks observed homologously in contralateral hemispheres. For pitch height, no significant decoding accuracy was observed, consistent with the non-CP of this dimension. These results suggest that similar mechanisms are operative for nonspeech categories as for speech; espouse roles for 2 segregated processing streams; and support hierarchical processing models for CP.	\N	\N
24489819	This study tested the hypothesis that the previously reported advantage of musicians over non-musicians in understanding speech in noise arises from more efficient or robust coding of periodic voiced speech, particularly in fluctuating backgrounds. Speech intelligibility was measured in listeners with extensive musical training, and in those with very little musical training or experience, using normal (voiced) or whispered (unvoiced) grammatically correct nonsense sentences in noise that was spectrally shaped to match the long-term spectrum of the speech, and was either continuous or gated with a 16-Hz square wave. Performance was also measured in clinical speech-in-noise tests and in pitch discrimination. Musicians exhibited enhanced pitch discrimination, as expected. However, no systematic or statistically significant advantage for musicians over non-musicians was found in understanding either voiced or whispered sentences in either continuous or gated noise. Musicians also showed no statistically significant advantage in the clinical speech-in-noise tests. Overall, the results provide no evidence for a significant difference between young adult musicians and non-musicians in their ability to understand speech in noise.	\N	\N
24490946	Studies of face recognition in older adults (60 years of age and older) report increases in false alarms over younger adults (usually 18-30 years of age), but no age differences in hits. To examine this phenomenon, we compared older and younger adults in categorical perception of faces. We hypothesized that face representations in older adults would be broadly tuned, resulting in overlapping representations, manifested by a shallower slope in identity categorization than in younger adults, and age-related reductions in the advantage for between-categories, as compared with within-category, face discrimination. We morphed faces to change linearly from one identity to another. We used familiar or unfamiliar faces in separate conditions to examine the role of familiarity. Categorical perception was assessed in an identity-classification task and a discrimination task. Older adults showed a shallower slope and poorer discrimination compared with younger adults, and both groups exhibited better performance with familiar than unfamiliar faces. Enhanced discriminability for between-categories as compared with within-category faces was seen for both familiar and unfamiliar faces in younger adults, but only for familiar faces in older adults. The more broadly tuned representations of unfamiliar faces in older adults may lead to misidentification and greater false alarms for unfamiliar faces, but not for familiar faces.	\N	\N
24496288	This study evaluated effects of nonlinear frequency compression (NLFC) processing in children with hearing loss for consonant identification in quiet and for spondee identification in competing noise or speech. It was predicted that participants would benefit from NLFC for consonant identification in quiet when access to high-frequency information was critical, but that NLFC would be less beneficial, or even detrimental, when identification relied on mid-frequency cues. Further, it was hypothesized that NLFC could result in greater susceptibility to masking in the spondee task. The rationale for these predictions is that improved access to high-frequency information comes at the cost of decreased spectral resolution. A repeated-measures design compared speech-perception outcomes in 17 pediatric hearing aid users (9 to 17 years of age) wearing Naida V SP "laboratory" hearing aids with NLFC on and off. Data were also collected in an initial baseline session in which children wore their personal hearing aids. Children with a wide range of audiometric configurations were included, but all participants were full-time users of hearing aids with active NLFC. For each hearing aid condition, speech perception was assessed in the sound field by using a closed-set 12-alternative consonant-vowel identification measure in quiet, and a closed-set four-alternative spondee-identification measure in a speech-shaped noise or in a two-talker speech masker. No significant differences in performance were observed between laboratory hearing aid conditions with NLFC activated or deactivated for either speech-perception measure. An unexpected finding was that the majority of participants had no difficulty identifying the high-frequency consonant /s/ even when NLFC was deactivated. Investigation into individual differences revealed that subjects with a greater difference in audible bandwidth with NLFC on versus NLFC off were less likely to demonstrate improvements in high-frequency consonant identification in quiet, but were more likely to demonstrate improvements in spondee identification in speech-shaped noise. Group results observed in the initial baseline assessment using personal aids fitted with more aggressive NLFC settings than used in laboratory aids indicated better consonant identification accuracy in quiet. However, spondee identification in the two-talker masker was poorer with personal compared with laboratory hearing aids. Comparisons across personal and laboratory hearing aids are tempered, however, by the potential of an order effect. The observation of comparable performance with NLFC on and NLFC off in the laboratory aids provides evidence that NLFC is neither detrimental nor advantageous when modest in strength. Results with personal hearing aids fitted with stronger compression settings than laboratory aids (NLFC on) highlight the critical need for further research to determine the impact of NLFC processing on speech perception for a wider range of speech-perception measures and compression settings.	\N	\N
24503772	The bone-anchored hearing device (BAHD) was not introduced in China until 2010. To our knowledge, this is the first study to assess the efficacy of Chinese Mandarin-speaking patients with bilateral aural atresia. To evaluate the speech recognition of Chinese Mandarin-speaking patients with BAHDs as well as patients' satisfaction using 2 questionnaires. A retrospective case review of 16 patients with bilateral aural atresia conducted at a tertiary referral center. A BAHD was implanted during auricle reconstruction surgery or after the auricle was rebuilt. A surgical method to combine the BAHD implantation with the second stage of ear reconstruction was introduced. Speech audiometry test and mean pure-tone threshold results were compared among patients with unaided hearing and those with BAHDs. Scores from the BAHD user questionnaire and Glasgow Children's Benefit Inventory (GCBI) were used to measure patients' satisfaction and subjective health benefit. The mean (SD) speech discrimination scores measured in a sound field with a presentation level of 45 dB HL (hearing level) were 6.7% (7.4%) unaided and 86.5% (4.4%) with a BAHD. Scores with a presentation level of 65 dB HL were 56.5% (7.4%) unaided and 90.1% (3.4%) with a BAHD. The speech reception threshold was 60.6 (7.5) dB HL unaided and 24.7 (5.0) dB HL with a BAHD. The mean (SD) pure-tone threshold of the patients was 61.6 (7.8) dB HL unaided and 23.8 (5.9) dB HL with a BAHD. The BAHD application questionnaire demonstrated excellent patient satisfaction. The mean (SD) benefit score of GCBI was 45.6 (14.4). For aural atresia, the BAHD has been one of the most reliable methods of auditory rehabilitation. It can improve the patient's word recognition performance and quality of life. The technique of BAHD implantation combined with auricular reconstruction in a 2-stages-in-1 surgery and the modified incision of patients with reconstructed auricle proved to be safe and effective.	\N	\N
24508369	Acoustic communication requires gathering, transforming, and interpreting diverse sound cues. To achieve this, all the spatial and temporal features of complex sound stimuli must be captured in the firing patterns of the primary sensory neurons and then accurately transmitted along auditory pathways for additional processing. The mammalian auditory system relies on several synapses with unique properties in order to meet this task: the auditory ribbon synapses, the endbulb of Held, and the calyx of Held. Each of these synapses develops morphological and electrophysiological characteristics that enable the remarkably precise signal transmission necessary for conveying the miniscule differences in timing that underly sound localization. In this article, we review the current knowledge of how these synapses develop and mature to acquire the specialized features necessary for the sense of hearing.	\N	\N
24508791	Amblyopia is a developmental disorder that results in both monocular and binocular deficits. Although traditional treatment in clinical practice (i.e., refractive correction, or occlusion by patching and penalization of the fellow eye) is effective in restoring monocular visual acuity, there is little information on how binocular function, especially stereopsis, responds to traditional amblyopia treatment. We aim to evaluate the effects of perceptual learning on stereopsis in observers with amblyopia in the current study. Eleven observers (21.1 ± 5.1 years, six females) with anisometropic or ametropic amblyopia were trained to judge depth in 10 to 13 sessions. Red-green glasses were used to present three different texture anaglyphs with different disparities but a fixed exposure duration. Stereoacuity was assessed with the Fly Stereo Acuity Test and visual acuity was assessed with the Chinese Tumbling E Chart before and after training. Averaged across observers, training significantly reduced disparity threshold from 776.7″ to 490.4″ (P < 0.01) and improved stereoacuity from 200.3″ to 81.6″ (P < 0.01). Interestingly, visual acuity also significantly improved from 0.44 to 0.35 logMAR (approximately 0.9 lines, P < 0.05) in the amblyopic eye after training. Moreover, the learning effects in two of the three retested observers were largely retained over a 5-month period. Perceptual learning is effective in improving stereo vision in observers with amblyopia. These results, together with previous evidence, suggest that structured monocular and binocular training might be necessary to fully recover degraded visual functions in amblyopia. Chinese Abstract.	\N	\N
24514158	This study analyses the meaning spaces of German pitch contours using two modes of melodic movement: continuous or in steps of sustained pitch. Both the continuous and stepped movements are represented by a set of five basic patterns, the latter being derived from the former. Thirty-six German native speakers judged the pattern sets on a 12-scale semantic differential. The semantic profiles confirm that stepped contours can be conceived of as stylized intonation, in a formal as well as in a functional sense. On the one hand, continuous (non-stylized) and stepped (stylized) contours are assigned different overall meanings (especially on the scales astonished - commonplace and interested - not interested). On the other hand, listeners organize the two contour sets in a similar fashion, which speaks in favour of parallel pattern inventories of continuous and stepped movement, respectively. However, the meaning space of the stylized patterns is affected by formal restrictions, for instance in the step transformation of continuous rises.	\N	\N
24525262	What are the temporal dynamics of perceptual sampling during visual search tasks, and how do they differ between a difficult (or inefficient) and an easy (or efficient) task? Does attention focus intermittently on the stimuli, or are the stimuli processed continuously over time? We addressed these questions by way of a new paradigm using periodic fluctuations of stimulus information during a difficult (color-orientation conjunction) and an easy (+ among Ls) search task. On each stimulus, we applied a dynamic visual noise that oscillated at a given frequency (2-20 Hz, 2-Hz steps) and phase (four cardinal phase angles) for 500 ms. We estimated the dynamics of attentional sampling by computing an inverse Fourier transform on subjects' d-primes. In both tasks, the sampling function presented a significant peak at 2 Hz; we showed that this peak could be explained by nonperiodic search strategies such as increased sensitivity to stimulus onset and offset. Specifically in the difficult task, however, a second, higher-frequency peak was observed at 9 to 10 Hz, with a similar phase for all subjects; this isolated frequency component necessarily entails oscillatory attentional dynamics. In a second experiment, we presented difficult search arrays with dynamic noise that was modulated by the previously obtained grand-average attention sampling function or by its converse function (in both cases omitting the 2 Hz component to focus on genuine oscillatory dynamics). We verified that performance was higher in the latter than in the former case, even for subjects who had not participated in the first experiment. This study supports the idea of a periodic sampling of attention during a difficult search task. Although further experiments will be needed to extend these findings to other search tasks, the present report validates the usefulness of this novel paradigm for measuring the temporal dynamics of attention.	\N	\N
24533757	The effect of deactivating indiscriminable cochlear implant (CI) electrodes for unilaterally implanted adults was evaluated using the BKB (Bamford-Kowal-Bench) sentence test in quiet and in pink noise (signal-to-noise ratio of +10dBA) and the adaptive Coordinate Response Measure (CRM). Each CI recipient who failed electrode differentiation (ED) in at least one electrode-pair, based on results of a pure-tone pitch-ranking task received two research programmes to try out in a cross-over study. Research programmes (RP) either employed discriminable electrodes only or the most discriminable two-thirds of the electrodes in the electrode array for CI recipients failing ED for more than a third of the electrodes. The participants were also asked to subjectively report improvement of or decline in sound quality in everyday listening situations. There was significant improvement in CRM speech reception thresholds (SRTs) (Z = -3.24, N = 15, P = 0.001), BKB sentence scores in quiet (t = 3.17, df = 24, P < 0.005) and also in pink noise (t = 2.26, df = 19, P < 0.005) after deactivating indiscriminable electrodes.	\N	\N
24548324	Not much is known about how people comprehend ironic utterances, and to date, most studies have simply compared processing of ironic versus non-ironic statements. A key aspect of the graded salience hypothesis, distinguishing it from other accounts (such as the standard pragmatic view and direct access view), is that it predicts differences between processing of familiar and unfamiliar ironies. Specifically, if an ironic utterance is familiar, then the ironic interpretation should be available without the need for extra inferential processes, whereas for unfamiliar ironies, the literal interpretation would be computed first, and a mismatch with context would lead to a re-interpretation of the statement as being ironic. We recorded participants' eye movements while they were reading (Experiment 1), and electrical brain activity while they were listening to (Experiment 2), familiar and unfamiliar ironies compared to non-ironic controls. Results show disruption to eye movements and an N400-like effect for unfamiliar ironies only, supporting the predictions of the graded salience hypothesis. In addition, in Experiment 2, a late positivity was found for both familiar and unfamiliar ironic materials, compared to non-ironic controls. We interpret this positivity as reflecting ongoing conflict between the literal and ironic interpretations of the utterance.	\N	\N
24557002	The rapidly evolving field of early diagnostics after the introduction of newborn hearing screening requires rapid, valid, and objective methods, which have to be thoroughly evaluated in adults before use in infants. The aim was to study cross-correlation analysis of interleaved auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) in a wide dynamic range in normal-hearing adults. Off-line analysis allowed for comparison with psychoacoustical click threshold (PCT), pure-tone threshold, and determination of ABR input/output function. Specifically, nonfiltered and band-pass filtered ABRs were studied in various time segments along with time elapsed for ensemble of sweeps reaching a specific detection criterion. Fourteen healthy normal-hearing subjects (18 to 35 years of age, 50% females) without any history of noise exposure participated. They all had pure-tone thresholds better than 20 dB HL (125 to 8000 Hz). ABRs were recorded in both ears using 100 μsec clicks, from 71.5 dB nHL down to -18.5 dB nHL, in 10 dB steps (repetition rate, 39 Hz; time window, 15 msec; filter, 30 to 8000 Hz). The number of sweeps increased from 2000 at 71.5 dB nHL, up to 30000 at -18.5 dB nHL. Each sweep was stored in a data base for off-line analysis. Cross-correlation analysis between two subaverages of interleaved responses was performed in the time domain for nonfiltered and digitally band-pass filtered (300 to 1500 Hz) entire and time-windowed (1 to 11 and 5 to 11 msec) responses. PCTs were measured using a Bekesy technique with the same insert phone and stimulus as used for the ABR (repetition rate, 20 Hz). Time elapsed (≈ number of accepted sweeps/repetition rate) for the ensemble of sweeps needed to reach a cross-correlation coefficient (ρ) of 0.70 (=3.7 dB signal-to-noise ratio [SNR]) was analyzed. Mean cross-correlation coefficients exceeded 0.90 in both ears at stimulus levels ≥11.5 dB nHL for the entire nonfiltered ABR. At 1.5 dB nHL, mean(SD) ρ was 0.53(0.32) and 0.44(0.40) for left and right ears, respectively (n = 14) (=0 dB SNR). In comparison, mean(SD) PCT was -1.9(2.9) and -2.5(3.2) dB nHL for left and right ears, respectively (n = 14), while mean pure-tone average (500 to 2000 Hz) was 2.5 dB HL (n = 28). Almost no effect of band-pass filtering or reduced analysis time window existed. Average time elapsed needed to reach ρ = 0.70 was approximately 20 seconds or less at stimulus levels ≥41.5 dB nHL, and ≈30 seconds at 31.5 dB nHL. The average (interpolated) stimulus level corresponding to ρ=0.70 for the entire nonfiltered ABR was 6.5 dB nHL (n = 28), which coincided with the estimated psychoacoustical threshold for single clicks. ABR could be identified in a short period of time using cross-correlation analysis between interleaved responses. The average stimulus level corresponding to 0 dB SNR in the entire nonfiltered ABR occurred at 1.5 dB nHL, 4 dB above the average PCT. The mean input/output function for the ensemble of sweeps required to reach ρ = 0.70 increased monotonically with increasing stimulus level, in parallel with the ABR based on all sweeps (≥1.5 dB nHL). Time domain cross-correlation analysis of ABR might form the basis for automatic response identification and future threshold-seeking procedures.	\N	\N
24564623	To evaluate the hearing of adolescents with diabetes mellitus type 1(DM1) by otoacoustic emissions (OAEs), and by comparing different tests with pure-tone audiometry to identify potential early cochlear impairments. Pure-tone audiometry, transient evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOAEs), and distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) were performed in a group of adolescents with and without DM1. Clinical characteristics, disease duration, and glycated haemoglobin levels were studied. Participants were 40 adolescents with DM1 and 40 healthy subjects. Sensorineural hearing loss, affecting frequencies of 6000 and 8000 Hz, was found only in DM1 subjects when compared to the controls (7.7% vs. 0%, p < 0.05). A higher prevalence of cochlear damage was detected by DPOAE responses, 32% belonging from the diabetic group, vs. 3.7% in the control group. Absent TEOAE responses were observed in only three individuals, all from the diabetic group (5.1% of the tests performed in the diabetic group). Additionally, hearing thresholds were better in diabetic subjects with good control when compared to ones with regular or poor control (p = 0.00). Hearing thresholds were higher in poorly controlled diabetics when compared to subjects with good (p = 0.000) or regular control (p = 0.006). Early evidence of cochlear damage was detected in adolescents with DM1 leading to hearing loss at high frequencies. Abnormal DPOAEs responses were found more frequently than the alterations in TEOAEs and pure-tone audiometry, suggesting that DPOAEs evaluation is the most sensitive and it could be used for monitoring the progression of cochlear damage during the early stages of hearing impairment.	\N	\N
24564624	Detailed information on the hearing threshold levels (HTLs) of young Australians was gathered as part of a large-scale study of the relationship between HTL and leisure-noise exposure in young Australians. HTL data for the study population (18-35 year olds) was carefully collected, as well as otoscopy, tympanometry, contra-lateral acoustic reflexes, and otoacoustic emissions (transient and distortion product), together with a comprehensive hearing health history - both past and present. The sample cohort consisted of 1407 individuals, females and males. Prior to analysis, HTL data were filtered according to both a 'Low' and 'High' set of exclusion criteria. The results obtained for both high-screen and low-screen datasets were around +5 dB above the traditionally accepted values of audiometric zero. This is consistent with previous published reports. Comparison with 'ISO 7029 Acoustics: Statistical distribution of hearing thresholds as a function of age' indicated that threshold values for this dataset have a similar distribution to those of the Standard. This data provides a suitable reference HTL ('normative') database for young Australians.	\N	\N
24564688	To characterize the impulse noise exposure and auditory risk for youth recreational firearm users engaged in outdoor target shooting events. The youth shooting positions are typically standing or sitting at a table, which places the firearm closer to the ground or reflective surface when compared to adult shooters. Acoustic characteristics were examined and the auditory risk estimates were evaluated using contemporary damage-risk criteria for unprotected adult listeners and the 120-dB peak limit suggested by the World Health Organization (1999) for children. Impulses were generated by 26 firearm/ammunition configurations representing rifles, shotguns, and pistols used by youth. Measurements were obtained relative to a youth shooter's left ear. All firearms generated peak levels that exceeded the 120 dB peak limit suggested by the WHO for children. In general, shooting from the seated position over a tabletop increases the peak levels, LAeq8 and reduces the unprotected maximum permissible exposures (MPEs) for both rifles and pistols. Pistols pose the greatest auditory risk when fired over a tabletop. Youth should utilize smaller caliber weapons, preferably from the standing position, and always wear hearing protection whenever engaging in shooting activities to reduce the risk for auditory damage.	\N	\N
24568928	A new study reports that activations of superior temporal regions for speech are normal in dyslexia, although being less well connected to downstream frontal regions. These findings support the hypothesis of a deficit in the access to phonological representations rather than in the representations themselves.	\N	\N
24569986	Viewing behavior exhibits temporal and spatial structure that is independent of stimulus content and task goals. One example of such structure is horizontal biases, which are likely rooted in left-right asymmetries of the visual and attentional systems. Here, we studied the existence, extent, and mechanisms of this bias. Left- and right-handed subjects explored scenes from different image categories, presented in original and mirrored versions. We also varied the spatial spectral content of the images and the timing of stimulus onset. We found a marked leftward bias at the start of exploration that was independent of image category. This left bias was followed by a weak bias to the right that persisted for several seconds. This asymmetry was found in the majority of right-handers but not in left-handers. Neither low- nor high-pass filtering of the stimuli influenced the bias. This argues against mechanisms related to the hemispheric segregation of global versus local visual processing. Introducing a delay in stimulus onset after offset of a central fixation spot also had no influence. The bias was present even when stimuli were presented continuously and without any requirement to fixate, associated to both fixation- and saccade-contingent image changes. This suggests the bias is not caused by structural asymmetries in fixation control. Instead the pervasive horizontal bias is compatible with known asymmetries of higher-level attentional areas related to the detection of novel events.	\N	\N
24580021	To evaluate the impact on voice of 2 hours of continuous oral reading. Fifty normophonic women underwent two sessions of voice loading in which the required intensity level varied: 60-65 dB(A) for the first session, and 70-75 dB(A) for the second session. Ten expert judges evaluated the breathiness of one sentence recorded before and after each loading session. Pairs of stimuli were presented randomly to the judges, who were asked to designate the breathiest sample. A significant decrease in breathiness was observed following both sessions, suggesting an improvement of voice subsequent to loading. When comparing the two intensity levels, no difference was found for breathiness after vocal loading.	\N	\N
24584899	The ability of humans to echolocate has been recognized since the 1940s. Little is known about what determines individual differences in echolocation ability, however. Although hearing ability has been suggested as an important factor in blind people and sighted-trained echolocators, there is evidence to suggest that this may not be the case for sighted novices. Therefore, non-auditory aspects of human cognition might be relevant. Previous brain imaging studies have shown activation of the early 'visual', i.e. calcarine, cortex during echolocation in blind echolocation experts, and also during visual imagery in blind and sighted people. Therefore, here we investigated the relationship between echolocation ability and vividness of visual imagery (VVI). Twenty-four sighted echolocation novices completed Marks' (Br J Psychol 1:17-24, 1973) VVI questionnaire and they also performed an echolocation size-discrimination task. Furthermore, they participated in a battery of auditory tests that determined their ability to detect fluctuations in sound frequency and intensity, as well as hearing differences between the right and left ear. A correlational analysis revealed a significant relationship between participants' VVI and echolocation ability, i.e. participants with stronger VVI also had higher echolocation ability, even when differences in auditory abilities were taken into account. In terms of underlying mechanisms, we suggest that either the use of visual imagery is a strategy for echolocation, or that visual imagery and echolocation both depend on the ability to recruit calcarine cortex for cognitive tasks that do not rely on retinal input.	\N	\N
24588528	To investigate the occurrence of 27 chronic medical conditions in a cohort of adults with and without hearing impairment, and to examine the association between these conditions and hearing ability. The National Longitudinal Study on Hearing (NL-SH study) is a large prospective study among adults aged 18 to 70 years, conducted via the internet in the Netherlands. Hearing ability was measured with a digits-in-noise test and comorbidity was assessed through self-report. Cross-sectional data of 890 hearing-impaired and 975 normally-hearing adults were analyzed. Both descriptive statistics and multinomial logistic regression analyses were conducted. Of the NL-SH participants with insufficient or poor hearing ability, 78.5% reported to suffer from at least one additional chronic condition. This proportion was larger than in the normally-hearing group (68.6% with one or more chronic conditions and 37.7% with two or more). After adjustment for age and gender, 'dizziness causing falling', 'diabetes' and 'arthritis types other than osteoarthritis and rheumatic arthritis' were significantly associated with poor hearing ability. Our results show that some previously reported associations do not only occur in older age groups, but also in younger cohorts. Comorbidity is relevant in the rehabilitation (multi-disciplinary care) and the clinical encounter.	\N	\N
24598525	Changes in amplitude and frequency jointly determine much of the communicative significance of complex acoustic signals, including human speech. We have previously described responses of neurons in the core auditory cortex of awake rhesus macaques to sinusoidal amplitude modulation (SAM) signals. Here we report a complementary study of sinusoidal frequency modulation (SFM) in the same neurons. Responses to SFM were analogous to SAM responses in that changes in multiple parameters defining SFM stimuli (e.g., modulation frequency, modulation depth, carrier frequency) were robustly encoded in the temporal dynamics of the spike trains. For example, changes in the carrier frequency produced highly reproducible changes in shapes of the modulation period histogram, consistent with the notion that the instantaneous probability of discharge mirrors the moment-by-moment spectrum at low modulation rates. The upper limit for phase locking was similar across SAM and SFM within neurons, suggesting shared biophysical constraints on temporal processing. Using spike train classification methods, we found that neural thresholds for modulation depth discrimination are typically far lower than would be predicted from frequency tuning to static tones. This "dynamic hyperacuity" suggests a substantial central enhancement of the neural representation of frequency changes relative to the auditory periphery. Spike timing information was superior to average rate information when discriminating among SFM signals, and even when discriminating among static tones varying in frequency. This finding held even when differences in total spike count across stimuli were normalized, indicating both the primacy and generality of temporal response dynamics in cortical auditory processing.	\N	\N
24606277	While many studies have assessed the efficacy of similarity-based cues for auditory stream segregation, much less is known about whether and how the larger-scale structure of sound sequences support stream formation and the choice of sound organization. Two experiments investigated the effects of musical melody and rhythm on the segregation of two interleaved tone sequences. The two sets of tones fully overlapped in pitch range but differed from each other in interaural time and intensity. Unbeknownst to the listener, separately, each of the interleaved sequences was created from the notes of a different song. In different experimental conditions, the notes and/or their timing could either follow those of the songs or they could be scrambled or, in case of timing, set to be isochronous. Listeners were asked to continuously report whether they heard a single coherent sequence (integrated) or two concurrent streams (segregated). Although temporal overlap between tones from the two streams proved to be the strongest cue for stream segregation, significant effects of tonality and familiarity with the songs were also observed. These results suggest that the regular temporal patterns are utilized as cues in auditory stream segregation and that long-term memory is involved in this process.	\N	\N
24606289	For assessing hearing aid algorithms, a method is sought to shift the threshold of a speech-in-noise test to (mostly positive) signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) that allow discrimination across algorithmic settings and are most relevant for hearing-impaired listeners in daily life. Hence, time-compressed speech with higher speech rates was evaluated to parametrically increase the difficulty of the test while preserving most of the relevant acoustical speech cues. A uniform and a non-uniform algorithm were used to compress the sentences of the German Oldenburg Sentence Test at different speech rates. In comparison, the non-uniform algorithm exhibited greater deviations from the targeted time compression, as well as greater changes of the phoneme duration, spectra, and modulation spectra. Speech intelligibility for fast Oldenburg sentences in background noise at different SNRs was determined with 48 normal-hearing listeners. The results confirmed decreasing intelligibility with increasing speech rate. Speech had to be compressed to more than 30% of its original length to reach 50% intelligibility at positive SNRs. Characteristics influencing the discrimination ability of the test for assessing effective SNR changes were investigated. Subjective and objective measures indicated a clear advantage of the uniform algorithm in comparison to the non-uniform algorithm for the application in speech-in-noise tests.	\N	\N
24606291	The present study investigated the importance of overall segment amplitude and intrinsic segment amplitude modulation of consonants and vowels to sentence intelligibility. Sentences were processed according to three conditions that replaced consonant or vowel segments with noise matched to the long-term average speech spectrum. Segments were replaced with (1) low-level noise that distorted the overall sentence envelope, (2) segment-level noise that restored the overall syllabic amplitude modulation of the sentence, and (3) segment-modulated noise that further restored faster temporal envelope modulations during the vowel. Results from the first experiment demonstrated an incremental benefit with increasing resolution of the vowel temporal envelope. However, amplitude modulations of replaced consonant segments had a comparatively minimal effect on overall sentence intelligibility scores. A second experiment selectively noise-masked preserved vowel segments in order to equate overall performance of consonant-replaced sentences to that of the vowel-replaced sentences. Results demonstrated no significant effect of restoring consonant modulations during the interrupting noise when existing vowel cues were degraded. A third experiment demonstrated greater perceived sentence continuity with the preservation or addition of vowel envelope modulations. Overall, results support previous investigations demonstrating the importance of vowel envelope modulations to the intelligibility of interrupted sentences.	\N	\N
24606310	Musicians have been shown to better perceive pitch and timbre cues in speech and music, compared to non-musicians. It is unclear whether this "musician advantage" persists under conditions of spectro-temporal degradation, as experienced by cochlear-implant (CI) users. In this study, gender categorization was measured in normal-hearing musicians and non-musicians listening to acoustic CI simulations. Recordings of Dutch words were synthesized to systematically vary fundamental frequency, vocal-tract length, or both to create voices from the female source talker to a synthesized male talker. Results showed an overall musician effect, mainly due to musicians weighting fundamental frequency more than non-musicians in CI simulations.	\N	\N
24606491	This research employed a forward-masking paradigm to estimate the current spread of monopolar (MP) and bipolar (BP) maskers, with current amplitudes adjusted to elicit the same loudness. Since the spatial separation between active and return electrodes is smaller in BP than in MP configurations, the BP current spread is more localized and presumably superior in terms of speech intelligibility. Because matching the loudness requires higher current in BP than in MP stimulation, previous forward-masking studies show that BP current spread is not consistently narrower across subjects or electrodes within a subject. The present forward-masking measures of current spread differ from those of previous studies by using the same BP probe electrode configuration for both MP and BP masker configurations, and adjusting the current levels of the MP and BP maskers so as to match them in loudness. With this method, the estimate of masker current spread would not be contaminated by differences in probe current spread. Forward masking was studied in four cochlear implant patients, two females and two males, with speech recognition scores higher than 50%; that is, their auditory-nerve survival status was more than adequate to carry out the experiments. The data showed that MP and BP masker configurations produce equivalent masking patterns (and current spreads) in three participants. A fourth participant displayed asymmetrical patterns with enhancement rather than masking in some cases, especially when the probe and masker were at the same location. This study showed equivalent masking patterns for MP and BP maskers when the BP masker current amplitude was increased to match the loudness of the MP masker, and the same BP probe configuration is used with both maskers. This finding could help to explain why cochlear implant users often fail to accrue higher speech intelligibility benefit from BP stimulation.	\N	\N
24610168	Longitudinal analysis of audiometric data of a large population of noise-exposed workers provides insight into the development of noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) as a function of noise exposure and age, particularly during the first decade of noise exposure. Data of pure-tone audiometry of 17,930 construction workers who underwent periodic occupational hearing screening at least twice during a 4-year period were available for analysis. These concerned all follow-up measurements of the baseline cohort described by Leensen et al. (Int Arch Occup Environ Health 84:577-590, 2011). Linear mixed models explored the relationship between the annual rate of change in hearing and noise exposure level, exposure duration, and age. Data of 3,111 workers who were tested on three occasions were used to investigate the pattern of hearing loss development. The mean annual deterioration in hearing in this study population was 0.54 dB/yr, and this became larger with increasing noise exposure level and increasing age. Remarkably, during the first decade of noise exposure, an improvement in hearing threshold levels (HTLs) was observed. The change in hearing over three measurements showed a concave development of hearing loss as a function of time, which corresponds to NIHL development. Overall, hearing deteriorated over the measurement period. Because HTLs at follow-up were better than those obtained at baseline, no statement can be made about the NIHL development during the first decade of noise exposure. This improvement in HTLs rather resembles the result of measurement variation in occupational screening audiometry than an actual improvement in hearing ability.	\N	\N
24611446	The role in which two tones are first encountered in an unattended oddball sequence affects how deviance detection, reflected by mismatch negativity, treats them later when the roles reverse: a "primacy bias." We tested whether this effect is modulated by previous behavioral relevance assigned to the two tones. To this end, sequences in which the roles of the two tones alternated were preceded by a go/no-go task in which tones were presented with equal probability. Half of the participants were asked to respond to the short sounds, the other half to long sounds. Primacy bias was initially abolished but returned dependent upon the go-stimulus that the participant was assigned. Results demonstrate a long-term impact of prior learning on deviance detection, and that even when prior importance/equivalence is learned, the bias ultimately returns. Results are discussed in terms of persistent go-stimulus specific changes in responsiveness to sound.	\N	\N
24616979	The aim of this study is to evaluate the development of auditory performance and speech intelligibility within the first year after hearing aid fitting in children with moderate or severe hearing loss, investigate the effects of hearing level on auditory performance and speech intelligibility and provide a clinical database for their hearing and speech habilitation. Twenty-nine children participated in this study, ranging in age at hearing aid fitting from 3 to 8 years old with a mean of 5. 6 years old. 19 were boys and 10 were girls. According to their hearing level, they were divided into two groups. 14 children were in group of moderate hearing loss (41-60 dB HL). 15 children were in group of severe hearing loss (61-80 dB HL). The categories of auditory performance (CAP) and speech intelligibility rating (SIR) were used to evaluate their auditory performance and speech intelligibility. The evaluation was performed before hearing aid fitting and 1, 3, 6, 9, 12 months after fitting. There was significant difference in mean score of CAP between group of moderate hearing loss and severe hearing loss before hearing aid fitting (P < 0.05). However, no significant differences were observed between these two groups at 1, 3, 6, 9, 12 months after fitting (P > 0.05). There was also significant difference in mean score of SIR between group of moderate hearing loss and severe hearing loss before hearing aid fitting (P < 0.05). How ever, no significant differences were also observed between these two groups at 1, 3, 6, 9, 12 months after fitting (P > 0.05). The mean scores of CAP for group of moderate hearing loss at 6, 9, 12 months after fitting were significantly superior in comparison with the score before hearing aid fitting (P < 0.05). The mean scores of SIR for group of moderate hearing loss at 6, 9, 12 months after fitting were significantly superior in comparison with the score before hearing aid fitting (P < 0.05); the mean score at 12 months after fitting was also significantly superior in comparison with the score at 1 month after fitting (P < 0.05). The mean scores of CAP for group of severe hearing loss at 3, 6, 9, 12 months after fitting were significantly superior in comparison with the score before hearing aid fitting (P < 0.05); the mean scores at 9,12 months after fitting were significantly superior in comparison with the score at 1 month after fitting (P < 0.05). The mean scores of SIR for group of severe hearing loss at 3, 6, 9, 12 months after fitting were significantly superior in comparison with the score before hearing aid fitting (P < 0.05); the mean scores at 6, 9, 12 months after fitting were also significantly superior in comparison with the score at 1 month after fitting (P < 0.05). Auditory performance and speech intelligibility in children with moderate or severe hearing loss improved significantly within the first year after hearing aid fitting. The development followed different trajectory.	\N	\N
24621149	Since being approved in 2009, bilateral simultaneous cochlear implantation (CI) has been the standard treatment for children in the UK who meet the criteria for CI. The aim was to report surgical outcomes of bilateral CI in the UK. Between January 2010 and December 2011, 14 UK CI centres collected data prospectively: demographics, aetiology, use of imaging, device type, surgery duration, use of intra-operative electrophysiology, length of stay, and post-operative complications. 1397 CI procedures in 961 CI recipients were included; 436 bilateral simultaneous, 394 bilateral sequential, and 131 unilateral. The majority (85%) were congenitally deaf. The commonest causes of acquired deafness were meningitis and cytomegalovirus infection. The median age for congenitally deaf bilateral simultaneous CI was 2.2 years, mean surgical duration 4.5 hours. 6.3% surgeries were day case procedures. Eight cases (2.0%) of planned bilateral CI had unilateral surgery. The overall major complication rate was 1.6% (0.9% excluding device failures), including explantation due to infection (0.2%), cerebrospinal fluid leak (0.2%), and meningitis (0.1%). There were no permanent facial nerve palsies and no deaths. Sixty-two (6.5%) immediate minor complications included 12 (1.3%) children with significant vestibular impairment. The complication rate was similar following bilateral CI compared to sequential and unilateral CI, and is comparable to other published series. This prospective multi-centre audit provides evidence that bilateral paediatric CI is a safe procedure in the UK, thus endorsing its role as a major therapeutic intervention in childhood deafness.	\N	\N
24626890	Auditory steady-state responses (ASSR) are an important tool to detect objectively frequency-specific hearing thresholds. Pure-tone audiometry is the gold-standard for hearing evaluation, although sometimes it may be inconclusive, especially in children and uncooperative adults. Compare pure tone thresholds (PT) with ASSR thresholds in normal hearing subjects. In this prospective cross-sectional study we included 26 adults (n = 52 ears) of both genders, without any hearing complaints or otologic diseases and normal puretone thresholds. All subjects had clinical history, otomicroscopy, audiometry and immitance measurements. This evaluation was followed by the ASSR test. The mean pure-tone and ASSR thresholds for each frequency were calculated. The mean difference between PTand ASSR thresholdswas 7,12 for 500 Hz, 7,6 for 1000 Hz, 8,27 for 2000 Hz and 9,71 dB for 4000 Hz. There were no difference between PT and ASSR means at either frequency. ASSR thresholds were comparable to pure-tone thresholds in normal hearing adults. Nevertheless it should not be used as the only method of hearing evaluation.	\N	\N
24627225	The goal of this study was to tease apart the roles of phonological awareness (pA) and phonological short-term memory (pSTM) in sentence comprehension, sentence production, and word reading. Children 6- to 10-years of age (N = 377) completed standardized tests of pA ('Elision') and pSTM ('Nonword Repetition') from the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing. Concepts and Following Directions (CFD) and Formulated Sentences (FS) were taken from the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Fourth Edition, as measures of sentence comprehension and production, respectively. Children also completed the Word Identification (Word Id) and Word Attack (Word Att) subtests of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test-Third Edition. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses controlling for age and nonverbal IQ revealed that Elision was the only significant predictor of CFD and FS. While Elision was the strongest predictor of Word Id and Word Att, Nonword Repetition accounted for additional variance in both reading measures. These results emphasize the usefulness of breaking down phonological processing into multiple components and they also have implications language and reading disordered populations.	\N	\N
24630052	To investigate the clinical usefulness of the LS-chirp auditory brainstem response for estimation of behavioral thresholds in young children with mild to severe hearing losses. 68 infants (136 ears) aged 6-12 months (mean age=9.2 months) with bilateral mild to severe hearing losses were studied at Children's Hospital of Fudan University. In all cases, the children were referred for LS-chirp ABR and visual reinforcement audiometric (VRA) measurements. The low-frequency band chirp (LF-chirp) thresholds (frequency band=0.1-0.85kHz) were compared to the average VRA thresholds (frequency band=0.25-0.5kHz), whereas the high-frequency band chirp (HF-chirp) thresholds (frequency band=1-10kHz) were compared to the average VRA thresholds (frequency band=1-4kHz) using statistical correlation coefficient values. The LS-chirp ABR thresholds are very close to behavioral hearing levels. The mean differences between chirp-ABR and VRA thresholds were within 5dBHL for all measurements. The smallest mean threshold difference (<3dBHL) was obtained for the severe hearing loss group. The correlation coefficient values (r) were 0.97 at low-frequency and high-frequency bands. For each carrier frequency, the best correlations between chirp-ABR thresholds and VRA thresholds were obtained at VRA frequency of 0.25kHz/LF-chirp (r=0.98) and VRA frequency of 1kHz/HF-chirp (r=0.98). This study demonstrates the effectiveness using chirp-ABR predicted frequency-specific thresholds, especially of low and middle frequencies. LS-chirp ABR thresholds determined behavioral thresholds in patients with severe hearing losses were better than for mild hearing losses. The use of a chirp-ABR testing ensures higher sensitivity and accuracy than that of auditory stead-state evoked response (ASSR) for measuring frequency-specific thresholds in young children.	\N	\N
24631260	The left anterior temporal lobe (LATL) is robustly implicated in semantic processing by a growing body of literature. However, these results have emerged from two distinct bodies of work, addressing two different processing levels. On the one hand, the LATL has been characterized as a 'semantic hub׳ that binds features of concepts across a distributed network, based on results from semantic dementia and hemodynamic findings on the categorization of specific compared to basic exemplars. On the other, the LATL has been implicated in combinatorial operations in language, as shown by increased activity in this region associated with the processing of sentences and of basic phrases. The present work aimed to reconcile these two literatures by independently manipulating combination and concept specificity within a minimal MEG paradigm. Participants viewed simple nouns that denoted either low specificity (fish) or high specificity categories (trout) presented in either combinatorial (spotted fish/trout) or non-combinatorial contexts (xhsl fish/trout). By combining these paradigms from the two literatures, we directly compared the engagement of the LATL in semantic memory vs. semantic composition. Our results indicate that although noun specificity subtly modulates the LATL activity elicited by single nouns, it most robustly affects the size of the composition effect when these nouns are adjectivally modified, with low specificity nouns eliciting a much larger effect. We conclude that these findings are compatible with an account in which the specificity and composition effects arise from a shared mechanism of meaning specification.	\N	\N
24632323	This study investigated audiovisual synchrony perception in a rhythmic context, where the sound was not consequent upon the observed movement. Participants judged synchrony between a bouncing point-light figure and an auditory rhythm in two experiments. Two questions were of interest: (1) whether the reference in the visual movement, with which the auditory beat should coincide, relies on a position or a velocity cue; (2) whether the figure form and motion profile affect synchrony perception. Experiment 1 required synchrony judgment with regard to the same (lowest) position of the movement in four visual conditions: two figure forms (human or non-human) combined with two motion profiles (human or ball trajectory). Whereas figure form did not affect synchrony perception, the point of subjective simultaneity differed between the two motions, suggesting that participants adopted the peak velocity in each downward trajectory as their visual reference. Experiment 2 further demonstrated that, when judgment was required with regard to the highest position, the maximal synchrony response was considerably low for ball motion, which lacked a peak velocity in the upward trajectory. The finding of peak velocity as a cue parallels results of visuomotor synchronization tasks employing biological stimuli, suggesting that synchrony judgment with rhythmic motions relies on the perceived visual beat.	\N	\N
24636747	Similar to other zona pellucida mutations in the alpha-tectorin (TECTA) gene, the p.Y1870C alteration in DFNA8/12 causes prelingual, nonsyndromic, autosomal dominant hearing loss. Here we investigated the effect of p.Y1870C on reverse transduction by audiometric studies in the family. Pure tone audiometry, brainstem evoked response audiometry, the Freiburger test for speech understanding and transient evoked and distortion product otoacoustic emissions were assessed in three available affected members bearing p.Y1870C. Pure tone audiometry showed U-shaped curves with moderate to severe degrees of hearing impairment confirmed by brainstem evoked response audiometry. Transient evoked and distortion product otoacoustic emissions were completely absent in all affected family members whereas word recognition scores were up to 95%. Although the missense p.Y1870C TECTA mutation leads to complete failure of the cochlear amplifier in humans, very high speech perception scores can be achieved with appropriate therapy.	\N	\N
24639033	Although individuals with autism are known to have significant communication problems, the cellular mechanisms responsible for impaired communication are poorly understood. Valproic acid (VPA) is an anticonvulsant that is a known risk factor for autism in prenatally exposed children. Prenatal VPA exposure in rats causes numerous neural and behavioral abnormalities that mimic autism. We predicted that VPA exposure may lead to auditory processing impairments which may contribute to the deficits in communication observed in individuals with autism. In this study, we document auditory cortex responses in rats prenatally exposed to VPA. We recorded local field potentials and multiunit responses to speech sounds in primary auditory cortex, anterior auditory field, ventral auditory field. and posterior auditory field in VPA exposed and control rats. Prenatal VPA exposure severely degrades the precise spatiotemporal patterns evoked by speech sounds in secondary, but not primary auditory cortex. This result parallels findings in humans and suggests that secondary auditory fields may be more sensitive to environmental disturbances and may provide insight into possible mechanisms related to auditory deficits in individuals with autism.	\N	\N
24647432	Different brain areas integrate information over different timescales, and this capacity to accumulate information increases from early sensory areas to higher order perceptual and cognitive areas. It is currently unknown whether the timescale capacity of each brain area is fixed or whether it adaptively rescales depending on the rate at which information arrives from the world. Here, using functional MRI, we measured brain responses to an auditory narrative presented at different rates. We asked whether neural responses to slowed (speeded) versions of the narrative could be compressed (stretched) to match neural responses to the original narrative. Temporal rescaling was observed in early auditory regions (which accumulate information over short timescales) as well as linguistic and extra-linguistic brain areas (which can accumulate information over long timescales). The temporal rescaling phenomenon started to break down for stimuli presented at double speed, and intelligibility was also impaired for these stimuli. These data suggest that 1) the rate of neural information processing can be rescaled according to the rate of incoming information, both in early sensory regions as well as in higher order cortexes, and 2) the rescaling of neural dynamics is confined to a range of rates that match the range of behavioral performance.	\N	\N
24657592	Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is a common inherited cause of intellectual disability that results from a CGG repeat expansion in the FMR1 gene. Large repeat expansions trigger both transcriptional and translational suppression of Fragile X protein (FMRP) production. Fragile X-associated Tremor/Ataxia Syndrome (FXTAS) is an allelic neurodegenerative disease caused by smaller "pre-mutation" CGG repeat expansions that enhance FMR1 transcription but lead to translational inefficiency and reduced FMRP expression in animal models. Sensorimotor gating as measured by pre-pulse inhibition (PPI) is altered in both FXS patients and Fmr1 knock out (KO) mice. Similarly, FXTAS patients have demonstrated PPI deficits. Recent work suggests there may be overlapping synaptic defects between Fmr1 KO and CGG knock-in premutation mouse models (CGG KI). We therefore sought to interrogate PPI in CGG KI mice. Using a quiet PPI protocol more akin to human testing conditions, we find that Fmr1 KO animals have significantly impaired PPI. Using this same protocol, we find CGG KI mice demonstrate an age-dependent impairment in PPI compared to wild type (WT) controls. This study describes a novel phenotype in CGG KI mice that can be used in future therapeutic development targeting premutation associated symptoms.	\N	\N
24660803	This study investigates the extent to which age-related language processing difficulties are due to a decline in sensory processes or to a deterioration of cognitive factors, specifically, attentional control. Two facets of attentional control were examined: inhibition of irrelevant information and divided attention. Younger and older adults were asked to categorize the initial phoneme of spoken syllables ("Was it m or n?"), trying to ignore the lexical status of the syllables. The phonemes were manipulated to range in eight steps from m to n. Participants also did a discrimination task on syllable pairs ("Were the initial sounds the same or different?"). Categorization and discrimination were performed under either divided attention (concurrent visual-search task) or focused attention (no visual task). The results showed that even when the younger and older adults were matched on their discrimination scores: (1) the older adults had more difficulty inhibiting lexical knowledge than did younger adults, (2) divided attention weakened lexical inhibition in both younger and older adults, and (3) divided attention impaired sound discrimination more in older than younger listeners. The results confirm the independent and combined contribution of sensory decline and deficit in attentional control to language processing difficulties associated with aging. The relative weight of these variables and their mechanisms of action are discussed in the context of theories of aging and language.	\N	\N
24663012	The present study aimed to vocally assess a group of rock singers who use growl voice and reinforced falsetto. A group of 21 rock singers and a control group of 18 pop singers were included. Singing and speaking voice was assessed through acoustic, perceptual, functional and laryngoscopic analysis. No significant differences were observed between groups in most of the analyses. Acoustic and perceptual analysis of the experimental group demonstrated normality of speaking voice. Endoscopic evaluation showed that most rock singers presented during singing voice a high vertical laryngeal position, pharyngeal compression and laryngeal supraglottic compression. Supraglottic activity during speaking voice tasks was also observed. However, overall vocal fold integrity was demonstrated in most of the participants. Slightly abnormal observations were demonstrated in few of them. Singing voice handicap index revealed that the most affected variable was the physical sphere, followed by the social and emotional spheres. Although growl voice and reinforced falsetto represent laryngeal and pharyngeal hyperfunctional activity, they did not seem to contribute to the presence of any major vocal fold disorder in our subjects. Nevertheless, we cannot rule out the possibility that more evident vocal fold disorders could be found in singers who use these techniques more often and during a longer period of time.	\N	\N
24672005	The inner ear receives two types of efferent feedback from the brainstem: one pathway provides gain control on outer hair cells' contribution to cochlear amplification, and the other modulates the excitability of the cochlear nerve. Although efferent feedback can protect hair cells from acoustic injury and thereby minimize noise-induced permanent threshold shifts, most prior studies focused on high-intensity exposures (>100 dB SPL). Here, we show that efferents are essential for long-term maintenance of cochlear function in mice aged 1 year post-de-efferentation without purposeful acoustic overexposure. Cochlear de-efferentation was achieved by surgical lesion of efferent pathways in the brainstem and was assessed by quantitative analysis of immunostained efferent terminals in outer and inner hair cell areas. The resultant loss of efferent feedback accelerated the age-related amplitude reduction in cochlear neural responses, as seen in auditory brainstem responses, and increased the loss of synapses between hair cells and the terminals of cochlear nerve fibers, as seen in confocal analysis of the organ of Corti immunostained for presynaptic and postsynaptic markers. This type of neuropathy, also seen after moderate noise exposure, has been termed "hidden hearing loss", because it does not affect thresholds, but can be seen in the suprathreshold amplitudes of cochlear neural responses, and likely causes problems with hearing in a noisy environment, a classic symptom of age-related hearing loss in humans. Since efferent reflex strength varies among individuals and can be measured noninvasively, a weak reflex may be an important risk factor, and prognostic indicator, for age-related hearing impairment.	\N	\N
24681401	Voice control is critical to communication. To date, studies have used behavioral, electrophysiological and functional data to investigate the neural correlates of voice control using perturbation tasks, but have yet to examine the interactions of these neural regions. The goal of this study was to use structural equation modeling of functional neuroimaging data to examine network properties of voice with and without perturbation. Results showed that the presence of a pitch shift, which was processed as an error in vocalization, altered connections between right STG and left STG. Other regions that revealed differences in connectivity during error detection and correction included bilateral inferior frontal gyrus, and the primary and pre motor cortices. Results indicated that STG plays a critical role in voice control, specifically, during error detection and correction. Additionally, pitch perturbation elicits changes in the voice network that suggest the right hemisphere is critical to pitch modulation.	\N	\N
24681402	Converging evidence suggests that understanding our first-language (L1) results in reactivation of experiential sensorimotor traces in the brain. Surprisingly, little is known regarding the involvement of these processes during second-language (L2) processing. Participants saw L1 or L2 words referring to entities with a typical location (e.g., star, mole) (Experiment 1 & 2) or to an emotion (e.g., happy, sad) (Experiment 3). Participants responded to the words' ink color with an upward or downward arm movement. Despite word meaning being fully task-irrelevant, L2 automatically activated motor responses similar to L1 even when L2 was acquired rather late in life (age >11). Specifically, words such as star facilitated upward, and words such as root facilitated downward responses. Additionally, words referring to positive emotions facilitated upward, and words referring to negative emotions facilitated downward responses. In summary our study suggests that reactivation of experiential traces is not limited to L1 processing.	\N	\N
24684405	We sought to determine whether the results of audiological tests and tinnitus characteristics, particularly tinnitus pitch and minimum masking level (MML), depend on tinnitus etiology, and what other etiology-specific tinnitus characteristics there are. The patients answered questions concerning tinnitus laterality, duration, character, aggravation, alleviation, previous treatment, and circumstances of onset. The results of tympanometry, pure-tone audiometry, distortion-product otoacoustic emissions, tinnitus likeness spectrum, MML, and uncomfortable loudness level were evaluated. Patients with several tinnitus etiological factors were excluded. The remaining participants were divided into groups according to medical history: acute acoustic trauma: 67 ears; chronic acoustic trauma: 82; prolonged use of oral estrogen and progesterone contraceptives: 46; Ménière's disease: 25; congenital hearing loss: 19; sensorineural sudden deafness: 40; dull head trauma: 19; viral labyrinthitis: 53; stroke: 6; presbycusis: 152. Data of 509 ears were analysed. Tinnitus pitch was highest in patients with acute acoustic trauma and lowest in patients receiving estrogen and progesterone. MML was lowest after acute acoustic trauma and in congenital hearing loss, and highest after a stroke and in the case of presbytinnitus. Tinnitus pitch and MML are etiology dependent.	\N	\N
24686520	PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to investigate how linguistic knowledge interacts with indexical knowledge in older children's perception under demanding listening conditions created by extensive talker variability. METHOD Twenty-five 9- to 12-year-old children, 12 from North Carolina (NC) and 13 from Wisconsin (WI), identified 12 vowels in isolated /hVd/ words produced by 120 talkers representing the 2 dialects (NC and WI), both genders, and 3 age groups (generations) of residents from the same geographic locations as the listeners. RESULTS Identification rates were higher for responses to talkers from the same dialect as the listeners and for female speech. Listeners were sensitive to systematic positional variations in vowels and their dynamic structure (formant movement) associated with generational differences in vowel pronunciation resulting from sound change in a speech community. Overall identification rate was 71.7%, which is 8.5% lower than for the adults responding to the same stimuli in Jacewicz and Fox (2012). CONCLUSION Typically developing older children were successful in dealing with both phonetic and indexical variation related to talker dialect, gender, and generation. They were less consistent than the adults, most likely because of less efficient encoding of acoustic-phonetic information in the speech of multiple talkers and relative inexperience with indexical variation.	\N	\N
24686901	PURPOSE The aim of this study was to evaluate the understanding of English sentences produced by native (English) and nonnative (Spanish) talkers by listeners with normal hearing (NH) and listeners with cochlear implants (CIs). METHOD Sentence recognition in noise was measured in adult subjects with CIs and subjects with NH, all of whom were native talkers of American English. Test sentences were from the Hearing in Noise Test (HINT) database and were produced in English by four native and eight nonnative talkers. Subjects also rated the intelligibility and accent for each talker. RESULTS The speech recognition thresholds in noise of subjects with CIs and subjects with NH were 4.23 dB and 1.32 dB poorer with nonnative talkers than with native talkers, respectively. Performance was significantly correlated with talker intelligibility and accent ratings for subjects with CIs but only correlated with talker intelligibility ratings for subjects with NH. For all subjects, performance with individual nonnative talkers was significantly correlated with talkers' number of years of residence in the United States. CONCLUSION CI users exhibited a larger deficit in speech understanding with nonnative talkers than did subjects with NH, relative to native talkers. Nonnative talkers' experience with native culture contributed strongly to speech understanding in noise, intelligibility ratings, and accent ratings of both listeners with NH and listeners with CIs.	\N	\N
24686915	The purpose of this study was to develop a task to evaluate children's English and Spanish speech perception abilities in either noise or competing speech maskers. Eight bilingual Spanish-English and 8 age-matched monolingual English children (ages 4.9-16.4 years) were tested. A forced-choice, picture-pointing paradigm was selected for adaptively estimating masked speech reception thresholds. Speech stimuli were spoken by simultaneous bilingual Spanish-English talkers. The target stimuli were 30 disyllabic English and Spanish words, familiar to 5-year-olds and easily illustrated. Competing stimuli included either 2-talker English or 2-talker Spanish speech (corresponding to target language) and spectrally matched noise. For both groups of children, regardless of test language, performance was significantly worse for the 2-talker than for the noise masker condition. No difference in performance was found between bilingual and monolingual children. Bilingual children performed significantly better in English than in Spanish in competing speech. For all listening conditions, performance improved with increasing age. Results indicated that the stimuli and task were appropriate for speech recognition testing in both languages, providing a more conventional measure of speech-in-noise perception as well as a measure of complex listening. Further research is needed to determine performance for Spanish-dominant listeners and to evaluate the feasibility of implementation into routine clinical use.	\N	\N
24687018	Although a number of questionnaires are available to assess hearing aid benefit and general hearing disability, relatively few investigate spatial hearing ability in more complex listening situations. The aim of this study was to document the performance of individuals with normal hearing using the Spatial Hearing Questionnaire (SHQ; Tyler, Perreau, & Ji, 2009) and to compare performance with published data from cochlear implant (CI) users. Fifty-one participants with normal hearing participated. All participants completed the 24-item SHQ. Also, a factor analysis and reliability tests were performed. Performance on the SHQ was high (87%) for the participants with normal hearing. Subjective ratings varied across different listening situations: Understanding speech in quiet (98%) was rated higher than sound localization (84%) and understanding speech in a background of noise (85%). Compared with previously published data (Tyler, Perreau, & Ji, 2009), listeners with normal hearing rated their spatial hearing ability significantly better than bilateral and unilateral CI users. Results confirmed that the SHQ is a reliable measure of spatial hearing ability for listeners with normal hearing. Overall, results indicated that the SHQ is able to capture expected differences between individuals with normal hearing and CI users. These new data can be used as targets following the provision of hearing devices.	\N	\N
24687041	To describe the inheritance patterns and auditory phenotype features of 3 Canadian families with mutations in 2 X-linked "deafness" genes (DFNX). Audiological, medical, and family histories were collected and family members interviewed to compare hearing thresholds and case histories between cases with mutations in SMPX versus POU3F4. The family pedigrees reveal characteristic X-linked inheritance patterns. Phenotypic features associated with the SMPX (DFNX4) mutation include early onset in males with rapid progression from mild and flat to sloping sensorineural loss, with highly variable onset and hearing loss severity in females. In contrast, phenotypic features associated with the POU3F4 (DFNX2) mutation are characterized by an early onset, mixed hearing loss with fluctuation in males, and a normal hearing phenotype reported for females. The study shows how this unique inheritance pattern and both gender and mutation-specific phenotype variations can alert audiologists to the presence of X-linked genetic etiologies in their clinical practice. By incorporating this knowledge into clinical decision making, audiologists can facilitate the early identification of X-linked hearing loss and contribute to the effective team management of affected families.	\N	\N
24704377	Perceptual synchrony and multisensory integration both vary as a function of stimulus onset asynchrony, but evidences from behavioral, patient, and lesion studies all support some dissociation between these two processes. Although it has been found that both perceptual synchrony and multisensory integration are recalibrated after exposure to asynchronous multisensory stimuli, no studies have directly compared these two recalibration patterns. We addressed this by using McGurk speech and requiring participants to perform simultaneity judgments and a syllable identification task in separate sessions. The results revealed that after exposure to asynchrony, both perceptual synchrony and McGurk fusion shifted toward the temporal lag. The recalibration aftereffects (i.e., the magnitude of shifts) of these two processes have no significant difference and correlation. In addition, McGurk fusion increased strongly at the direction of the temporal lag, which could not be fully explained by fusion shifts. Thus, the present research implies that recalibration patterns of explicit and implicit timing represented by perceptual synchrony and multisensory integration have both similarity and difference.	\N	\N
24709357	Although there is an extensive literature on the study of the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) this is a subject that is far from being considered over. In this paper we present a novel experimental paradigm, based on binocular rivalry, to study internally and externally generated conscious experiences. We called this procedure bimodal rivalry. In addition, and assuming the non-linear nature of the EEG signals, we propose the use of fractal dimension to characterize the complexity of the EEG signal associated with each percept. Analysis of the data showed a significant difference in complexity between the internally generated and externally generated percepts. Moreover, EEG complexity was dissimilar for externally generated auditory and visual percepts. These results support fractal dimension analyses as a new tool to characterize conscious perception.	\N	\N
24715101	The current study investigated the mechanism underlying subliminal inhibition using the negative compatibility effect (NCE) paradigm. We hypothesized that a decrease in prime activation affects the subsequent inhibitory process, delaying onset of inhibition and reducing its strength. Two experiments tested this hypothesis using arrow stimuli as primes and targets. Two different irrelevant masks (i.e., a mask sharing no prime features) were presented in succession in each trial to not only ensure that primes were processed subliminally, but also avoid feature updating between primes and masks. Prime/target compatibility and prime background density were manipulated in Experiment 1. Results showed that under subliminal inhibitory condition, the NCE disappears when the density increases (i.e., pixel density in the prime's background of 25 %) in Experiment 1. However, when we fixed the prime's background at the density of 25 % and manipulated prime/target compatibility as well as inter-stimuli-interval (ISI) between mask and target in Experiment 2, behavioral results showed marginally significant NCEs in the 150-ms ISI condition. Electrophysiological evidence showed the lateralized readiness potential for compatible trials was significantly more positive than that for incompatible trials during the two consecutive time windows (i.e., 400-450 and 450-500 ms) in the 150-ms ISI condition. In addition, the NCE size was significant smaller in Experiment 2 than in Experiment 1. All of the results support predictions of the continuous subliminal inhibitory mechanism hypothesis which posits that decreases in prime activation strength lead to delay in inhibitory onset and decline in inhibitory strength.	\N	\N
24727491	The binaural cues used by terrestrial animals for sound localization in azimuth may not always suffice for accurate sound localization underwater. The purpose of this research was to examine the theoretical limits of interaural timing and level differences available underwater using computational and physical models. A paired-hydrophone system was used to record sounds transmitted underwater and recordings were analyzed using neural networks calibrated to reflect the auditory capabilities of terrestrial mammals. Estimates of source direction based on temporal differences were most accurate for frequencies between 0.5 and 1.75 kHz, with greater resolution toward the midline (2°), and lower resolution toward the periphery (9°). Level cues also changed systematically with source azimuth, even at lower frequencies than expected from theoretical calculations, suggesting that binaural mechanical coupling (e.g., through bone conduction) might, in principle, facilitate underwater sound localization. Overall, the relatively limited ability of the model to estimate source position using temporal and level difference cues underwater suggests that animals such as whales may use additional cues to accurately localize conspecifics and predators at long distances.	\N	\N
24735233	The dichotic listening task is typically administered by presenting a consonant-vowel (CV) syllable to each ear and asking the participant to report the syllable heard most clearly. The results tend to show more reports of the right ear syllable than of the left ear syllable, an effect called the right ear advantage (REA). The REA is assumed to be due to the crossing over of auditory fibres and the processing of language stimuli being lateralised to left temporal areas. However, the tendency for most dichotic listening experiments to use only CV syllable stimuli limits the extent to which the conclusions can be generalised to also apply to other speech phonemes. The current study re-examines the REA in dichotic listening by using both CV and vowel-consonant (VC) syllables and combinations thereof. Results showed a replication of the REA response pattern for both CV and VC syllables, thus indicating that the general assumption of left-side localisation of processing can be applied for both types of stimuli. Further, on trials where a CV is presented in one ear and a VC is presented in the other ear, the CV is selected more often than the VC, indicating that these phonemes have an acoustic or processing advantage.	\N	\N
24735850	To form a coherent percept of the environment, the brain needs to bind sensory signals emanating from a common source, but to segregate those from different sources [1]. Temporal correlations and synchrony act as prominent cues for multisensory integration [2-4], but the neural mechanisms by which such cues are identified remain unclear. Predictive coding suggests that the brain iteratively optimizes an internal model of its environment by minimizing the errors between its predictions and the sensory inputs [5,6]. This model enables the brain to predict the temporal evolution of natural audiovisual inputs and their statistical (for example, temporal) relationship. A prediction of this theory is that asynchronous audiovisual signals violating the model's predictions induce an error signal that depends on the directionality of the audiovisual asynchrony. As the visual system generates the dominant temporal predictions for visual leading asynchrony, the delayed auditory inputs are expected to generate a prediction error signal in the auditory system (and vice versa for auditory leading asynchrony). Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we measured participants' brain responses to synchronous, visual leading and auditory leading movies of speech, sinewave speech or music. In line with predictive coding, auditory leading asynchrony elicited a prediction error in visual cortices and visual leading asynchrony in auditory cortices. Our results reveal predictive coding as a generic mechanism to temporally bind signals from multiple senses into a coherent percept.	\N	\N
24736111	The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between serum albumin, affective prosody, and symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) found coincidentally in a recently published study. Here, serum albumin levels were assessed as a covariate. Twenty healthy male adults (controls) and 20 adult male patients with ADHD participated in the study on two study days. Serum albumin levels and performance in an affective prosody task were assessed, and correlations were determined. Serum albumin had a significant correlation with performance on an affective prosody task on both of the 2 study days. The same correlations were not significant in the healthy control group. There was no difference in the serum albumin level between patients with ADHD and healthy controls. The association between serum albumin and affective prosody in adults with ADHD is a novel finding. However, to date, there is no clear theory that explains this association. Future research should analyze whether serum albumin influences causes changes in performance in affective prosody using experimental designs.	\N	\N
24736186	We investigated whether unattended visual, auditory and tactile stimuli compete for capacity-limited early sensory processing across senses. In three experiments, we probed competitive audio-visual, visuo-tactile and audio-tactile stimulus interactions. To this end, continuous visual, auditory and tactile stimulus streams ('reference' stimuli) were frequency-tagged to elicit steady-state responses (SSRs). These electrophysiological oscillatory brain responses indexed ongoing stimulus processing in corresponding senses. To induce competition, we introduced transient frequency-tagged stimuli in same and/or different senses ('competitors') during reference presentation. Participants performed a separate visual discrimination task at central fixation to control for attentional biases of sensory processing. A comparison of reference-driven SSR amplitudes between competitor-present and competitor-absent periods revealed reduced amplitudes when a competitor was presented in the same sensory modality as the reference. Reduced amplitudes indicated the competitor's suppressive influence on reference stimulus processing. Crucially, no such suppression was found when a competitor was presented in a different than the reference modality. These results strongly suggest that early sensory competition is exclusively modality-specific and does not extend across senses. We discuss consequences of these findings for modeling the neural mechanisms underlying intermodal attention.	\N	\N
24738537	Neuroscientific and musicological approaches to music cognition indicate that listeners familiarized in the Western tonal tradition expect a musical phrase boundary at predictable time intervals. However, phrase boundary prediction processes in music remain untested. We analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs) and event-related induced power changes at the onset and offset of a boundary pause. We made comparisons with modified melodies, where the pause was omitted and filled by tones. The offset of the pause elicited a closure positive shift (CPS), indexing phrase boundary detection. The onset of the filling tones elicited significant increases in theta and beta powers. In addition, the P2 component was larger when the filling tones started than when they ended. The responses to boundary omission suggest that listeners expected to hear a boundary pause. Therefore, boundary prediction seems to coexist with boundary detection in music segmentation.	\N	\N
24744448	Interest in the perception of the material of objects has been growing. While material perception is a critical ability for animals to properly regulate behavioral interactions with surrounding objects (e.g., eating), little is known about its underlying processing. Vision and audition provide useful information for material perception; using only its visual appearance or impact sound, we can infer what an object is made from. However, what material is perceived when the visual appearance of one material is combined with the impact sound of another, and what are the rules that govern cross-modal integration of material information? We addressed these questions by asking 16 human participants to rate how likely it was that audiovisual stimuli (48 combinations of visual appearances of six materials and impact sounds of eight materials) along with visual-only stimuli and auditory-only stimuli fell into each of 13 material categories. The results indicated strong interactions between audiovisual material perceptions; for example, the appearance of glass paired with a pepper sound is perceived as transparent plastic. Rating material-category likelihoods follow a multiplicative integration rule in that the categories judged to be likely are consistent with both visual and auditory stimuli. On the other hand, rating-material properties, such as roughness and hardness, follow a weighted average rule. Despite a difference in their integration calculations, both rules can be interpreted as optimal Bayesian integration of independent audiovisual estimations for the two types of material judgment, respectively.	\N	\N
24750038	Alarms are ubiquitous in anaesthetic practice, but their net effect on anaesthesiologists' performance and patient safety is debated. In this study, 27 anaesthesiologists performed two simulation sessions in random order; one session was programmed to include an alarm condition, with a standard, frequent, clearly audible alarm sound. During these sessions, adverse events were simulated and anaesthesiologists' response times to these events were recorded. Perceived workload was assessed with the NASA Task Load Index. Response times to adverse events and perceived workload were similar in both groups. Pooled response times to atrial fibrillation and desaturation were fast, with a median (range [IQR]) of 8 (4-14 [1-41]) s and 9 (6-16 [1-44]) s, respectively. Pooled response times to an ST segment elevation on the ECG and an obstructed intravenous line were significantly slower, with median (IQR[range]) times of 34 (21-76[4-300]) s and 227 (95-399 [2-600]) s, respectively (p < 0.001). This study shows that in a simulated anaesthesia environment, response times to adverse events are similar in the absence or presence of an audible alarm, and that response times to various critical events differ.	\N	\N
24751750	To prospectively evaluate hearing outcomes in patients with osteogenesis imperfecta undergoing primary stapes surgery and to isolate prognostic factors for success. A nonrandomized, open, prospective case series. A tertiary referral center. Twenty-five consecutive patients who underwent 32 primary stapedotomies for osteogenesis imperfecta with evidence of stapes fixation and available postoperative pure-tone audiometry. Primary stapedotomy with vein graft interposition and reconstruction with a regular Teflon piston or bucket handle-type piston. Preoperative and postoperative audiometric evaluation using conventional 4-frequency (0.5, 1, 2, and 4 kHz) audiometry. Air-conduction thresholds, bone-conduction thresholds, and air-bone gap were measured. The overall audiometric results as well as the results of audiometric evaluation at 3 months and at least 1 year after surgery were used. Overall, postoperative air-bone gap closure to within 10 dB was achieved in 88% of cases. Mean (standard deviation) gain in air-conduction threshold was 22 (9.4) dB for the entire case series, and mean (standard deviation) air-bone gap closure was 22 (9.0) dB. Backward multivariate logistic regression showed that a model with preoperative air-bone gap closure and intraoperatively established incus length accurately predicts success after primary stapes surgery. Stapes surgery is a feasible and safe treatment option in patients with osteogenesis imperfecta. Success is associated with preoperative air-bone gap and intraoperatively established incus length.	\N	\N
24754219	Diachronic velar palatalization is taken as the case study for modeling the emergence of a new phoneme category. The spread of a palatalized variant through the lexicon is treated as a stochastic classification task for the listener/learner. The model combines two measures of similarity to determine classification within an exemplar-theoretic framework: acoustic distance and phonotactic expectation. There are three model outcomes: contrast, allophony, or contextual neutralization between the plain and palatalized velars. It is shown, through a series of simulations, that these can be predicted from the distribution of sounds within the pre-change lexicons, namely, the ratio of the /k-vowel/ sequences containing naturally palatalizing vowels (i, I, e), to those containing non-palatalizers. "Unnatural" phonotactic associations can arise in individual lexicons, but are sharply limited due to the large size of the lexicon and the local nature of the phoneme changes. "Anti-natural" distributions, which categorically violate the proposed implicational relationship between palatalization and frontness/height, are absent. This work provides an explicit and restrictive model of phoneme change. The results also serve as an existence proof for an outcome-blind mechanism of avoiding over-generation.	\N	\N
24755208	A wide range of literature is available on the features of ataxic dysarthria, investigating segmental and prosodic characteristics by acoustic and perceptual means. However, very few studies have been published that look closely at the relationship between the observed phonetic disturbances and their perceptual sequelae, particularly in the area of prosody. The aim of the current study was therefore to examine the stress production of eight individuals with ataxic dysarthria and matched healthy controls, and to relate the results of phonological and perceptual evaluations to phonetic performances to better understand the relationship between these three components for speech outcomes. Speakers performed a sentence stress task which was analysed phonologically in terms of inventory, distribution, implementation and function of pitch accentuation. These data were then evaluated in relation to previously published phonetic and perceptual results on the same speaker group by the authors. Results indicated that the speakers with ataxia used a wide range of pitch patterns, but pitch-accented a higher number of words, and produced shorter phrases. The increased number of pitch accents per phrase was furthermore reflected in a reduced percentage of de-accented words in post-focal position. Perceptual results established this pattern as the main cause for listener errors in identifying the intended stressed item in an utterance. In addition, the performances of two speakers are discussed in greater detail. Although they were unable to de-accent, they nevertheless marked stress appropriately through phonetic compensatory strategies. After reading this article the reader will be able to (1) explain the relevance of phonology and phonetics in the perception of stress production in ataxic dysarthria; (2) describe the different levels of intonational analysis; and (3) understand the observed intonation patterns in ataxic dysarthria as well as the compensatory mechanisms speakers may adopt to produce stress.	\N	\N
24763046	Obesity-related disorders are closely associated with the development of age-related hearing impairment (ARHI). Adiponectin (APN) exerts protective effects against obesity-related conditions including endothelial dysfunction and atherosclerosis. Here, we investigated the impact of APN on ARHI. APN-knockout (APN-KO) mice developed exacerbation of hearing impairment, particularly in the high frequency range, compared with wild-type (WT) mice. Supplementation with APN prevented the hearing impairment in APN-KO mice. At 2 months of age, the cochlear blood flow and capillary density of the stria vascularis (SV) were significantly reduced in APN-KO mice as compared with WT mice. APN-KO mice also showed a significant increase in terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL)-positive apoptotic cells in the organ of Corti in the cochlea at 2 months of age. At the age of 6 months, hair cells were lost at the organ of Corti in APN-KO mice. In cultured auditory HEI-OC1 cells, APN reduced apoptotic activity under hypoxic conditions. Clinically, plasma APN levels were significantly lower in humans with ARHI. Multiple logistic regression analysis identified APN as a significant and independent predictor of ARHI. Our observations indicate that APN has an important role in preventing ARHI.	\N	\N
24764261	We investigated the relative effects of simple and complex auditory-visual discrimination training using an adapted alternating treatments design to establish derived stimulus relations in 2 children who had been diagnosed with autism and 1 typically developing peer. Emergence of untrained conditional relations was observed after training in both conditions, with a possible advantage of simple-sample training for 1 participant. Results of generalization and follow-up probes were mixed.	\N	\N
24769166	Although alterations of the limbic system have been linked to tinnitus persistence, the neural networks underlying such alteration are unclear. The present study investigated the effect of tinnitus on emotional processing in middle-aged adults using functional magnetic resonance imaging and stimuli from the International Affective Digital Sounds database. There were three groups of participants: bilateral hearing loss with tinnitus (TIN), age- and gender-matched controls with bilateral hearing loss without tinnitus (HL) and matched normal hearing controls without tinnitus (NH). In the scanner, subjects rated sounds as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. The TIN and NH groups, but not the HL group, responded faster to affective sounds compared to neutral sounds. The TIN group had elevated response in bilateral parahippocampus and right insula compared to the NH group, and left parahippocampus compared to HL controls for pleasant relative to neutral sounds. A region-of-interest analysis detected increased activation for NH controls in the right amygdala when responding to affective stimuli, but failed to find a similar heightened response in the TIN and HL groups. All three groups showed increased response in auditory cortices for the affective relative to neutral sounds comparisons. Our results suggest that the emotional processing network is altered in tinnitus to rely on the parahippocampus and insula, rather than the amygdala, and this alteration may maintain a select advantage for the rapid processing of affective stimuli despite the hearing loss. The complex interaction of tinnitus and the limbic system should be accounted for in development of new tinnitus management strategies.	\N	\N
24769280	Lexical access during speech comprehension comprises numerous computations, including activation, competition, and selection. The spatio-temporal profile of these processes involves neural activity in peri-auditory cortices at least as early as 200 ms after stimulation. Their oscillatory dynamics are less well understood, although reports link alpha band de-synchronization with lexical processing. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to examine whether these alpha-related oscillations reflect the speed of lexical access, as would be predicted if they index lexical activation. In an auditory semantic priming protocol, monosyllabic nouns were presented while participants performed a lexical decision task. Spatially-localizing beamforming was used to examine spectro-temporal effects in left and right auditory cortex time-locked to target word onset. Alpha and beta de-synchronization (10-20 Hz ERD) was attenuated for words following a related prime compared to an unrelated prime beginning about 270 ms after stimulus onset. This timing is consistent with how information about word identity unfolds incrementally in speech, quantified in information-theoretic terms. These findings suggest that alpha de-synchronization during auditory word processing is associated with early stages of lexical access.	\N	\N
24769430	In this study meaningful social stimuli were used as probes in a task requiring the judgment of semantic appropriateness to investigate contextual integration ability to test the ability of people with Williams syndrome (WS) to integrate information, as opposed to the use of meaningless syllables in audiovisual studies (the McGurk effect). Participants were presented with background auditory primes followed by targets that were either congruent or incongruent with the prime. Two modes of target were presented: a visual target (AV task) or an auditory target (AA task). Participants were asked to respond yes to contextually appropriate pairs and no to those that were contextually inappropriate. The congruency effect was measured as an index of successful central coherence. Similar to normally developing controls, people with WS showed shorter response latencies and greater accuracy in recognizing congruent pairs compared with incongruent pairs. Their performance did not differ from that of controls matched by mental age, but was inferior to that of controls matched by chronological age. The results revealed generalized contextual integration for auditory primes in both tasks, consistent with previous studies using visual presentation of social-related stimuli in people with WS (Hsu, 2013a, 2013c). Further demonstration of the presence of a modality effect on contextual coherence implies that cross-modal learning may be advantageous compared with unimodal learning.	\N	\N
24783989	To assist the human operator, modern auditory interfaces increasingly rely on sound spatialisation to display auditory information and warning signals. However, we often operate in environments that apply vibrations to the whole body, e.g. when driving a vehicle. Here, we report three experiments investigating the effect of sinusoidal vibrations along the vertical axis on spatial hearing. The first was a free-field, narrow-band noise localisation experiment with 5- Hz vibration at 0.88 ms(-2). The other experiments used headphone-based sound lateralisation tasks. Experiment 2 investigated the effect of vibration frequency (4 vs. 8 Hz) at two different magnitudes (0.83 vs. 1.65 ms(-2)) on a left-right discrimination one-interval forced-choice task. Experiment 3 assessed the effect on a two-interval forced-choice location discrimination task with respect to the central and two peripheral reference locations. In spite of the broad range of methods, none of the experiments show a reliable effect of whole-body vibrations on localisation performance. We report three experiments that used both free-field localisation and headphone lateralisation tasks to assess their sensitivity to whole-body vibrations at low frequencies. None of the experiments show a reliable effect of either frequency or magnitude of whole-body vibrations on localisation performance.	\N	\N
24809252	The aim of this work was to investigate perceived loudness change in response to melodies that increase (up-ramp) or decrease (down-ramp) in acoustic intensity, and the interaction with other musical factors such as melodic contour, tempo, and tonality (tonal/atonal). A within-subjects design manipulated direction of linear intensity change (up-ramp, down-ramp), melodic contour (ascending, descending), tempo, and tonality, using single ramp trials and paired ramp trials, where single up-ramps and down-ramps were assembled to create continuous up-ramp/down-ramp or down-ramp/up-ramp pairs. Twenty-nine (Exp 1) and thirty-six (Exp 2) participants rated loudness continuously in response to trials with monophonic 13-note piano melodies lasting either 6.4s or 12s. Linear correlation coefficients >.89 between loudness and time show that time-series loudness responses to dynamic up-ramp and down-ramp melodies are essentially linear across all melodies. Therefore, 'indirect' loudness change derived from the difference in loudness at the beginning and end points of the continuous response was calculated. Down-ramps were perceived to change significantly more in loudness than up-ramps in both tonalities and at a relatively slow tempo. Loudness change was also greater for down-ramps presented with a congruent descending melodic contour, relative to an incongruent pairing (down-ramp and ascending melodic contour). No differential effect of intensity ramp/melodic contour congruency was observed for up-ramps. In paired ramp trials assessing the possible impact of ramp context, loudness change in response to up-ramps was significantly greater when preceded by down-ramps, than when not preceded by another ramp. Ramp context did not affect down-ramp perception. The contribution to the fields of music perception and psychoacoustics are discussed in the context of real-time perception of music, principles of music composition, and performance of musical dynamics.	\N	\N
24809744	Since Köhler's experiments in the 1920s, researchers have demonstrated a correspondence between words and shapes. Dubbed the "Bouba-Kiki" effect, these auditory-visual associations extend across cultures and are thought to be universal. More recently the effect has been shown in other modalities including taste, suggesting the effect is independent of vision. The study presented here tested the "Bouba-Kiki" effect in the auditory-haptic modalities, using 2D cut-outs and 3D models based on Köhler's original drawings. Presented with shapes they could feel but not see, sighted participants showed a robust "Bouba-Kiki" effect. However, in a sample of people with a range of visual impairments, from congenital total blindness to partial sight, the effect was significantly less pronounced. The findings suggest that, in the absence of a direct visual stimulus, visual imagery plays a role in crossmodal integration.	\N	\N
24811450	Mice are emerging as an important behavioral model for studies of auditory perception and acoustic communication. These mammals frequently produce ultrasonic vocalizations, although the details of how these vocalizations are used for communication are not entirely understood. An important step in determining how they might be differentiating their calls is to measure discrimination and identification of the dimensions of various acoustic stimuli. Here, behavioral operant conditioning methods were employed to assess frequency difference limens for pure tones. We found that their thresholds were similar to those in other rodents but higher than in humans. We also asked mice, in an identification paradigm, whether they would use frequency or duration differences to classify stimuli varying on those two dimensions. We found that the mice classified the stimuli based on frequency rather than duration.	\N	\N
24815249	Personal audio refers to the creation of a listening zone within which a person, or a group of people, hears a given sound program, without being annoyed by other sound programs being reproduced in the same space. Generally, these different sound zones are created by arrays of loudspeakers. Although these devices have the capacity to achieve different sound zones in an anechoic environment, they are ultimately used in normal rooms, which are reverberant environments. At high frequencies, reflections from the room surfaces create a diffuse pressure component which is uniform throughout the room volume and thus decreases the directional characteristics of the device. This paper shows how the reverberant performance of an array can be modeled, knowing the anechoic performance of the radiator and the acoustic characteristics of the room. A formulation is presented whose results are compared to practical measurements in reverberant environments. Due to reflections from the room surfaces, pressure variations are introduced in the transfer responses of the array. This aspect is assessed by means of simulations where random noise is added to create uncertainties, and by performing measurements in a real environment. These results show how the robustness of an array is increased when it is designed for use in a reverberant environment.	\N	\N
24815280	Recent studies on binary masking techniques make the assumption that each time-frequency (T-F) unit contributes an equal amount to the overall intelligibility of speech. The present study demonstrated that the importance of each T-F unit to speech intelligibility varies in accordance with speech content. Specifically, T-F units are categorized into two classes, speech-present T-F units and speech-absent T-F units. Results indicate that the importance of each speech-present T-F unit to speech intelligibility is highly related to the loudness of its target component, while the importance of each speech-absent T-F unit varies according to the loudness of its masker component. Two types of mask errors are also considered, which include miss and false alarm errors. Consistent with previous work, false alarm errors are shown to be more harmful to speech intelligibility than miss errors when the mixture signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is below 0 dB. However, the relative importance between the two types of error is conditioned on the SNR level of the input speech signal. Based on these observations, a mask-based objective measure, the loudness weighted hit-false, is proposed for predicting speech intelligibility. The proposed objective measure shows significantly higher correlation with intelligibility compared to two existing mask-based objective measures.	\N	\N
24815292	Behind-the-ear (BTE) processors of cochlear implant (CI) devices offer little to almost no protection from wind noise in most incidence angles. To assess speech intelligibility, eight CI recipients were tested in 3 and 9 m/s wind. Results indicated that speech intelligibility decreased substantially when the wind velocity, and in turn the wind sound pressure level, increased. A two-microphone wind noise suppression strategy was developed. Scores obtained with this strategy indicated substantial gains in speech intelligibility over other conventional noise reduction strategies tested.	\N	\N
24820112	This study aimed to propose an ototoxicity grading system sensitive to the effect of ototoxicity on specific daily life situations like speech intelligibility and the perception of ultra-high sounds and to test its feasibility compared to current criteria. Pure tone averages (PTAs) for speech perception (1-2-4 kHz) and ultra-high frequencies (8-10-12.5 kHz) were incorporated. Threshold shift and hearing level posttreatment were taken into account. Criteria were tested on head and neck cancer patients treated with (chemo-)radiotherapy ([C]RT) and compared with the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events version 4 (CTCAEv4) and the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association criteria (ASHA). Grades 1 and 2 were based on threshold shifts from baseline (in dB) and subjective complaints. Grades 3 and 4 were defined as treatment-induced hearing loss of ≥ 35 dB at PTA 1-2-4 kHz and ≥ 70 dB at PTA 1-2-4 kHz, respectively. In high-dose cisplatin CRT incidences by the new criteria, CTCAEv4 and ASHA were comparable (78%-88%). In RT and low-dose cisplatin CRT, incidences were 36% to 39% in the new criteria versus 22% to 53% in CTCAEv4 and ASHA. The new criteria show an increased sensitivity to ototoxicity compared to CTCAEv4 and ASHA and provide insight into the effect of hearing loss on certain daily life situations. The new grading system seems feasible for clinic and research purposes.	\N	\N
24834939	Our results indicated that electric acoustic stimulation (EAS) is beneficial for Japanese-speaking patients, including those with less residual hearing at lower frequencies. Comparable outcomes for the patients with less residual hearing indicated that current audiological criteria for EAS could be expanded. Successful hearing preservation results, together with the progressive nature of loss of residual hearing in these patients, mean that minimally invasive full insertion of medium/long electrodes in cochlear implantation (CI) surgery is a desirable solution. The minimally invasive concepts that have been obtained through EAS surgery are, in fact, crucial for all CI patients. This study was conducted to evaluate hearing preservation results and speech discrimination outcomes of hearing preservation surgeries using medium/long electrodes. A total of 32 consecutive minimally invasive hearing preservation CIs (using a round window approach with deep insertion of a flexible electrode) were performed in 30 Japanese patients (two were bilateral cases), including patients with less residual hearing. Hearing preservation rates as well as speech discrimination/perception scores were investigated on a multicenter basis. Postoperative evaluation after full insertion of the flexible electrodes (24 mm, 31.5 mm) showed that residual hearing was well preserved in all 32 ears. In all patients, speech discrimination and perception scores were improved postoperatively.	\N	\N
24840132	Helmets provide soldiers with ballistic and fragmentation protection but impair auditory spatial processing. Missed auditory information can be fatal for a soldier; therefore, helmet design requires compromise between protection and optimal acoustics. Twelve soldiers localised two sound signals presented from six azimuth angles and three levels of elevation presented at two intensity levels and with three background noises. Each participant completed the task while wearing no helmet and with two U.S. Army infantry helmets - the Personnel Armor System for Ground Troops (PASGT) helmet and the Advanced Combat Helmet (ACH). Results showed a significant effect of helmet type on the size of both azimuth and elevation error. The effects of level, background noise, azimuth and elevation were found to be significant. There was no effect of sound signal type. As hypothesised, localisation accuracy was greatest when soldiers did not wear helmet, followed by the ACH. Performance was worst with the PASGT helmet.	\N	\N
24840711	Test data were used to explore the neurocognitive processing of a group of children with cochlear implants (CIs) whose language development is below expectations. This cross-sectional study examines the relationship between neurocognitive processing, as assessed by the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children-Second Edition, and verbal language standard scores, assessed using either the Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language or the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals in 22 school-age children with CIs. Processing scores of CI recipients with language scores below expectations were compared to those of children meeting or exceeding language expectations. Multiple linear regression estimated the associations of simultaneous and sequential processing with language scores. Though simultaneous processing scores between the two groups were similar, the mean sequential processing score (91.2) in the below expectations group (n = 13) was significantly lower (P = 0.002) than that of children (n = 9) meeting expectations (110.8). After adjusting for age at implantation, a 10-point higher sequential processing score was associated with a 7.4 higher language score (P = 0.027). Simultaneous processing capacity was at least within the average range of cognitive performance, and was not associated with language performance in children with CIs. Conversely, reduced sequential processing capacity was significantly associated with lower language scores. Neurocognitive skills, specifically cognitive sequencing, serial ordering, and auditory-verbal memory may be targets for therapeutic intervention. Intensive cognitive and educational habilitation and in milieu intervention may improve language learning in children with CIs.	\N	\N
24841996	Auditory objects, like their visual counterparts, are perceptually defined constructs, but nevertheless must arise from underlying neural circuitry. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings of the neural responses of human subjects listening to complex auditory scenes, we review studies that demonstrate that auditory objects are indeed neurally represented in auditory cortex. The studies use neural responses obtained from different experiments in which subjects selectively listen to one of two competing auditory streams embedded in a variety of auditory scenes. The auditory streams overlap spatially and often spectrally. In particular, the studies demonstrate that selective attentional gain does not act globally on the entire auditory scene, but rather acts differentially on the separate auditory streams. This stream-based attentional gain is then used as a tool to individually analyze the different neural representations of the competing auditory streams. The neural representation of the attended stream, located in posterior auditory cortex, dominates the neural responses. Critically, when the intensities of the attended and background streams are separately varied over a wide intensity range, the neural representation of the attended speech adapts only to the intensity of that speaker, irrespective of the intensity of the background speaker. This demonstrates object-level intensity gain control in addition to the above object-level selective attentional gain. Overall, these results indicate that concurrently streaming auditory objects, even if spectrally overlapping and not resolvable at the auditory periphery, are individually neurally encoded in auditory cortex, as separate objects.	\N	\N
24847936	False physiologic monitor alarms are extremely common in the hospital environment. High false alarm rates have the potential to lead to alarm fatigue, leading nurses to delay their responses to alarms, ignore alarms, or disable them entirely. Recent evidence from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and The Joint Commission has demonstrated a link between alarm fatigue and patient deaths. Yet, very little scientific effort has focused on the rigorous quantitative measurement of alarms and responses in the hospital setting. We developed a system using multiple temporarily mounted, minimally obtrusive video cameras in hospitalized patients' rooms to characterize physiologic monitor alarms and nurse responses as a proxy for alarm fatigue. This allowed us to efficiently categorize each alarm's cause, technical validity, actionable characteristics, and determine the nurse's response time. We describe and illustrate the methods we used to acquire the video, synchronize and process the video, manage the large digital files, integrate the video with data from the physiologic monitor alarm network, archive the video to secure servers, and perform expert review and annotation using alarm "bookmarks." We discuss the technical and logistical challenges we encountered, including the root causes of hardware failures as well as issues with consent, confidentiality, protection of the video from litigation, and Hawthorne-like effects. The description of this video method may be useful to multidisciplinary teams interested in evaluating physiologic monitor alarms and alarm responses to better characterize alarm fatigue and other patient safety issues in clinical settings.	\N	\N
24848460	Behavioral and neural findings demonstrate that animals can locate low-frequency sounds along the azimuth by detecting microsecond interaural time differences (ITDs). Information about ITDs is also available in the amplitude modulations (i.e., envelope) of high-frequency sounds. Since medial superior olivary (MSO) neurons encode low-frequency ITDs, we asked whether they employ a similar mechanism to process envelope ITDs with high-frequency carriers, and the effectiveness of this mechanism compared with the process of low-frequency sound. We developed a novel hybrid in vitro dynamic-clamp approach, which enabled us to mimic synaptic input to brain-slice neurons in response to virtual sound and to create conditions that cannot be achieved naturally but are useful for testing our hypotheses. For each simulated ear, a virtual sound, computer generated, was used as input to a computational auditory-nerve model. Model spike times were converted into synaptic input for MSO neurons, and ITD tuning curves were derived for several virtual-sound conditions: low-frequency pure tones, high-frequency tones modulated with two types of envelope, and speech sequences. Computational models were used to verify the physiological findings and explain the biophysical mechanism underlying the observed ITD coding. Both recordings and simulations indicate that MSO neurons are sensitive to ITDs carried by spectrotemporally complex virtual sounds, including speech tokens. Our findings strongly suggest that MSO neurons can encode ITDs across a broad-frequency spectrum using an input-slope-based coincidence-detection mechanism. Our data also provide an explanation at the cellular level for human localization performance involving high-frequency sound described by previous investigators.	\N	\N
24851353	The purpose of this chapter is to describe the vocabulary development and promising, evidence-based vocabulary interventions for English learners (ELs) from preschool through second grade. To achieve this purpose, we have taken six steps. First, we describe the elements of language development in the native language (L1) and a second language (L2) and how these elements relate to three phases of reading development (i.e., the prereading phase, the learning to read phase, and the reading to learn phase). We contend that in order for ELs to succeed in school, they need a strong language foundation prior to entering kindergarten. This language foundation needs to continue developing during the "learning to read" and "reading to learn" phases. Second, we describe the limitations of current practice in preschool for ELs related to vocabulary instruction and to family involvement to support children's language development. Third, we report curricular challenges faced by ELs in early elementary school, and we relate these challenges to the increase in reading and language demands outlined in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Specific language activities that can help meet some of the demands are provided in a table. Fourth, we synthesize the research on evidence-based vocabulary instruction and intervention and discuss implications for practice with ELs. Fifth, we describe two intervention projects under development that have the potential to improve EL vocabulary and language proficiency in the early grades. We conclude with a summary of the chapter and provide additional resources on the topic.	\N	\N
24856412	The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between perceived discrimination and psychotic experiences (PE) using validated measures of discrimination and a racially/ethnically diverse population-level sample. Data were drawn from two population-level surveys (The National Latino and Asian American Survey and The National Survey of American Life), which were analyzed together using survey weights and stratification variables. The analytic sample (N=8990) consisted of Latino, Asian, African-American, and Afro-Caribbean adults living in the United States. Separate unadjusted and adjusted multivariable logistic regression models were used, first to examine the crude bivariate relationship between perceived discrimination and PE, and second to examine the relationship adjusting for demographic variables. Adjusted logistic regression models were also used to examine the relationships between perceived discrimination and specific sub-types of PE (auditory and visual hallucinatory experiences, and delusional ideation). When compared to individuals who did not report any discrimination, those who reported the highest levels of discrimination were significantly more likely to report both 12-month PE (Adjusted OR=4.590, p<0.001) and lifetime PE (adjusted OR=4.270, p<0.001). This held true for visual hallucinatory experiences (adjusted OR=3.745, p<0.001), auditory hallucinatory experiences (adjusted OR=5.649, p<0.001), and delusional ideation (adjusted OR=7.208, p<0.001). Perceived discrimination is associated with the increased probability of reporting psychotic experiences in a linear Fashion in the US general population.	\N	\N
24861540	Considerable evidence suggests that performance across a variety of cognitive tasks is effectively supported by the use of verbal and nonverbal strategies. Studies exploring the usefulness of such strategies in children with specific language impairment (SLI) are scarce and report inconsistent findings. To examine the effects of induced labelling and auditory cues on the performance of children with and without SLI during a categorization task. Sixty-six school-age children (22 with SLI, 22 age-matched controls, 22 language-matched controls) completed three versions of a computer-based categorization task: one baseline, one requiring overt labelling and one with auditory cues (tones) on randomized trial blocks. Labelling had no effect on performance for typically developing children but resulted in lower accuracy and longer reaction time in children with SLI. The presence of tones had no effect on accuracy but resulted in faster reaction time and post-error slowing across groups. Verbal strategy use was ineffective for typically developing children and negatively affected children with SLI. All children showed faster performance and increased performance monitoring as a result of tones. Overall, effects of strategy use in children appear to vary based on task demands, strategy domain, age and language ability. Results suggest that children with SLI may benefit from auditory cues in their clinical intervention but that further research is needed to determine when and how verbal strategies might similarly support performance in this population.	\N	\N
24867743	The prevalence of deformational plagiocephaly has risen dramatically in recent years, now affecting 15 percent or more of infants. Prior research using developmental scales suggests that these children may be at elevated risk for developmental delays. However, the low positive predictive value of such instruments in identifying long-term impairment, coupled with their poor reliability in infants, warrants the development of methods to more precisely measure brain function in craniofacial patients. Event-related potentials offer a direct measure of cortical activity that is highly applicable to young populations and has been implemented in other disorders to predict long-term cognitive functioning. The current study used event-related potentials to contrast neural correlates of auditory perception in infants with deformational plagiocephaly and typically developing children. Event-related potentials were recorded while 16 infants with deformational plagiocephaly and 18 nonaffected controls passively listened to speech sounds. Given prior research suggesting their association with subsequent functioning, analyses focused on the P150 and N450 event-related potential components. Deformational plagiocephaly patients and normal controls showed comparable cortical responses to speech sounds at both auditory event-related potential components. Children with deformational plagiocephaly demonstrate neural responses to language that are consistent with normative expectations and comparable to those of typical children. These results indicate that head shape deformity secondary to supine sleep is not associated with impairments in auditory processing. The applicability of the current methods in early infancy suggests that electrophysiologic brain recordings represent a promising method of monitoring brain development in children with cranial disorders. Risk, II.	\N	\N
24869441	Hearing preservation surgery requires specially a traumatic technique. Having some preoperative anatomical data of the size of patient's cochlea surgeon can design his or her insertion depth. In the study we have evaluated a relation between hearing preservation rate and angular insertion depth estimated intraoperatively and postoperatively having measured insertion angle from radiological assessment and calculations given by Escude. There has not been no statistically significant difference between insertion depth angle, either estimated intraoperatively and measured and calculated post-operatively, and hearing preservation rate in the group. This analysis confirms a traumaticy of insertion in hearing preservation surgery.	\N	\N
24869443	To establish whether complex signal processing is beneficial for users of bone anchored hearing aids. Review and analysis of two studies from our own group, each comparing a speech processor with basic digital signal processing (either Baha Divino or Baha Intenso) and a processor with complex digital signal processing (either Baha BP100 or Baha BP110 power). The main differences between basic and complex signal processing are the number of audiologist accessible frequency channels and the availability and complexity of the directional multi-microphone noise reduction and loudness compression systems. Both studies show a small, statistically non-significant improvement of speech understanding in quiet with the complex digital signal processing. The average improvement for speech in noise is +0.9 dB, if speech and noise are emitted both from the front of the listener. If noise is emitted from the rear and speech from the front of the listener, the advantage of the devices with complex digital signal processing as opposed to those with basic signal processing increases, on average, to +3.2 dB (range +2.3 … +5.1 dB, p ≤ 0.0032). Complex digital signal processing does indeed improve speech understanding, especially in noise coming from the rear. This finding has been supported by another study, which has been published recently by a different research group. When compared to basic digital signal processing, complex digital signal processing can increase speech understanding of users of bone anchored hearing aids. The benefit is most significant for speech understanding in noise.	\N	\N
24908093	Inconsistent information from different modalities can be delusive for perception. This phenomenon can be observed with simultaneously presented inconsistent numbers of brief flashes and short tones. The conflict of bimodal information is reflected in double flash or fission, and flash fusion illusions, respectively. The temporal resolution of the vision system plays a fundamental role in the development of these illusions. As the parallel, dorsal and ventral pathways have different temporal resolution we presume that these pathways play different roles in the illusions. We used pathway-optimized stimuli to induce the illusions on separately driven visual streams. Our results show that both pathways support the double flash illusion, while the presence of the fusion illusion depends on the activated pathway. The dorsal pathway, which has better temporal resolution, does not support fusion, while the ventral pathway which has worse temporal resolution shows fusion strongly.	\N	\N
24909603	The current pupillometry study examined the impact of speech-perception training on word recognition and cognitive effort in older adults with hearing loss. Trainees identified more words at the follow-up than at the baseline session. Training also resulted in an overall larger and faster peaking pupillary response, even when controlling for performance and reaction time. Perceptual and cognitive capacities affected the peak amplitude of the pupil response across participants but did not diminish the impact of training on the other pupil metrics. Thus, we demonstrated that pupillometry can be used to characterize training-related and individual differences in effort during a challenging listening task. Importantly, the results indicate that speech-perception training not only affects overall word recognition, but also a physiological metric of cognitive effort, which has the potential to be a biomarker of hearing loss intervention outcome.	\N	\N
24911919	It is usually easy to understand speech, but when several people are talking at once it becomes difficult. The brain must select one speech stream and ignore distracting streams. We tested a theory about the neural and computational mechanisms of attentional selection. The theory is that oscillating signals in brain networks phase-lock with amplitude fluctuations in speech. By doing this, brain-wide networks acquire information from the selected speech, but ignore other speech signals on the basis of their non-preferred dynamics. Two predictions were supported: first, attentional selection boosted the power of neuroelectric signals that were phase-locked with attended speech, but not ignored speech. Second, this phase selectivity was associated with better recall of the attended speech.	\N	\N
24919347	Auditory stimuli often facilitate visual perception. Audiovisual integration requires spatial and/or temporal proximity between visual and auditory stimuli; additionally, sensory processing speed affects the audiovisual integration process. In the present study we examined the relationship between processing speed and the auditory facilitation effect on visual representations by manipulating dot quantity patterns. We hypothesized that the auditory facilitation effect would be observed in longer interstimulus interval conditions with more dot quantities. This is because more processing time would be required to integrate visual and auditory stimuli. During a backward masking paradigm used in experiment 1, the auditory facilitation effect depended on dot quantity among patterns and the interval between visual stimuli and masks. Moreover, differences in processing time required to integrate visual and auditory stimuli between dot quantities was confirmed from a same-different discrimination task in experiment 2. Therefore, dot quantity affects sensory processing time, and a longer processing time is required for integrating visual and auditory stimuli when visual dot quantity is high.	\N	\N
24920615	The human voice carries speech as well as important nonlinguistic signals that influence our social interactions. Among these cues that impact our behavior and communication with other people is the perceived emotional state of the speaker. A theoretical framework for the neural processing stages of emotional prosody has suggested that auditory emotion is perceived in multiple steps (Schirmer and Kotz, 2006) involving low-level auditory analysis and integration of the acoustic information followed by higher-level cognition. Empirical evidence for this multistep processing chain, however, is still sparse. We examined this question using functional magnetic resonance imaging and a continuous carry-over design (Aguirre, 2007) to measure brain activity while volunteers listened to non-speech-affective vocalizations morphed on a continuum between anger and fear. Analyses dissociated neuronal adaptation effects induced by similarity in perceived emotional content between consecutive stimuli from those induced by their acoustic similarity. We found that bilateral voice-sensitive auditory regions as well as right amygdala coded the physical difference between consecutive stimuli. In contrast, activity in bilateral anterior insulae, medial superior frontal cortex, precuneus, and subcortical regions such as bilateral hippocampi depended predominantly on the perceptual difference between morphs. Our results suggest that the processing of vocal affect recognition is a multistep process involving largely distinct neural networks. Amygdala and auditory areas predominantly code emotion-related acoustic information while more anterior insular and prefrontal regions respond to the abstract, cognitive representation of vocal affect.	\N	\N
24923315	The present study examines the articulation and acoustics of the typologically rare and understudied 'whistled' fricative sound in Xitsonga, a Southern Bantu language. Using ultrasound imaging and video recording, we examine the lingual and labial articulation of the whistled fricative. For the acoustic analysis, we employ the multitaper spectral analysis, which ensures reliable spectral estimates. The results revealed an interplay between multiple articulators involved in the production of the sound: the retroflex lingual gesture and the narrowing of the lower lip toward the upper teeth. Acoustically, the spectra of the whistled fricative are more peaked and compact than the acoustically similar palatoalveolar fricative, and the differences manifest themselves most clearly in two acoustic parameters, dynamic amplitude (Ad) and M2 (variance). The acoustic differences are also manifested in F2 and F3 in the surrounding vowels. Additionally, the 'whistled' fricative in Xitsonga is not quite whistled, contrary to the label given to the sound in previous studies. Building on the current articulatory and acoustic results, we discuss two different aerodynamic models for the whistled fricatives in Southern Bantu languages and conclude that the whistled fricative in Xitsonga is best characterized as a retroflex segment accompanied by weak whistling.	\N	\N
24923465	It has been suggested that high-frequency audiometry (HFA) could represent a useful preventive measure in exposed workers. The aim was to investigate the effects of age, ultrasound and noise on high-frequency hearing thresholds. We tested 24 industrial ultrasound-exposed subjects, 113 industrial noise-exposed subjects and 148 non-exposed subjects. Each subject was tested with both conventional-frequency (0.125-8 kHz) and high-frequency (9-18 kHz) audiometry. The hearing threshold at high frequency deteriorated as a function of age, especially in subjects more than 30 years old. The ultrasound-exposed subjects had significantly higher hearing thresholds than the non-exposed ones at the high frequencies, being greatest from 10 to 14 kHz. This hearing loss was already significantly evident in subjects with exposure <5 years and increased with years of exposure and advancing age. The noise exposure group had significantly higher hearing thresholds than the non-exposed group at the conventional frequencies 4 and 6 kHz and at the high frequency of 14 kHz. After stratification for age, there was a significant difference between the two groups at 9-10 and 14-15 kHz only for those under 30 years of age. Multivariate analysis indicated that age was the primary predictor, and noise and ultrasound exposure the secondary predictors of hearing thresholds in the high-frequency range. The results suggest that HFA could be useful in the early diagnosis of noise-induced hearing loss in younger groups of workers (under 30 years of age).	\N	\N
24923619	The investigators compared event-related potential (ERP) amplitudes and event-related oscillations across a broad frequency range during an auditory oddball task using a comprehensive analysis approach to describe shared and unique neural auditory processing characteristics among healthy subjects (HP), schizophrenia probands (SZ) and their first-degree relatives, and bipolar disorder I with psychosis probands (BDP) and their first-degree relatives. This Bipolar-Schizophrenia Network on Intermediate Phenotypes sample consisted of clinically stable SZ (n = 229) and BDP (n = 188), HP (n = 284), first-degree relatives of schizophrenia probands (n = 264), and first-degree relatives of bipolar disorder I with psychosis probands (n = 239). They were administered an auditory oddball task in the electroencephalography environment. Principal components analysis derived data-driven frequency bands evoked power. Spatial principal components analysis reduced ERP and frequency data to component waveforms for each subject. Clusters of time bins with significant group differences on response magnitude were assessed for proband/relative differences from HP and familiality. Nine variables survived a linear discriminant analysis between HP, SZ, and BDP. Of those, two showed evidence (deficit in relatives and familiality) as genetic risk markers more specific to SZ (N1, P3b), one was specific to BDP (P2) and one for psychosis in general (N2). This study supports for both shared and unique deficits in early sensory and late cognitive processing across psychotic diagnostic groups. Additional ERP and time-frequency component alterations (frontal N2/P2, late high, early, mid, and low frequency) may provide insight into deficits in underlying neural architecture and potential protective/compensatory mechanisms in unaffected relatives.	\N	\N
24933411	Cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEPs) were obtained for vowel tokens presented in an oddball stimulus paradigm. Perceptual measures of vowel discrimination were obtained using a visually-reinforced head-turn paradigm. The hypothesis was that CAEP latencies and amplitudes would differ as a function of vowel type and be correlated with perceptual performance. Twenty normally hearing infants aged 4-12 months were evaluated. CAEP component amplitudes and latencies were measured in response to the standard, frequent token /a/ and for infrequent, deviant tokens /i/, /o/ and /u/, presented at rates of 1 and 2 tokens/s. The perceptual task required infants to make a behavioral response for trials that contained two different vowel tokens, and ignore those in which the tokens were the same. CAEP amplitudes were larger in response to the deviant tokens, when compared to the control condition in which /a/ served as both standard and deviant. This was also seen in waveforms derived by subtracting the response to standard /a/ from the responses to deviant tokens. CAEP component latencies in derived responses at 2/s also demonstrated some sensitivity to vowel contrast type. The average hit rate for the perceptual task was 68.5%, with a 25.7% false alarm rate. There were modest correlations of CAEP amplitudes and latencies with perceptual performance. The CAEP amplitude differences for vowel contrasts could be used as an indicator of the underlying neural capacity to encode spectro-temporal differences in vowel sounds. This technique holds promise for translation to clinical methods for evaluating speech perception.	\N	\N
24936778	To understand the third mobile window effect of chronic otitis media with cholesteatoma with inner ear fistula on the bone conduction threshold, we examined changes in the bone conduction audiogram after tympanoplasty with mastoidectomy for chronic otitis media with cholesteatoma with canal fistula. Retrospective case review. Tertiary referral center. According to the intraoperative classification of Dornhoffer and Milewski, we focused especially on Type IIa (anatomic bony fistula with no perilymph leak). We checked the bone conduction threshold at least 3 times: just before, just after, and 6 months after surgery in 20 ears with Type IIa lateral semicircular canal fistula. Tympanoplasty with mastoidectomy. Bone conduction thresholds before and after tympanoplasty with mastoidectomy. Compared with the preoperative bone conduction threshold, 6 cases were better, 12 cases were unchanged, and 2 cases were worse within the first postoperative week. Finally, 1 case was better, 15 cases were unchanged, and 4 cases were worse at the sixth postoperative month. Patients with a better bone conduction threshold in the low-tone frequencies immediately after surgery had a tendency to show no preoperative fistula symptoms. Postoperative spontaneous nystagmus had a tendency to be observed in patients with a worse bone conduction threshold in the high-tone frequencies. The better bone conduction threshold at low-tone frequencies immediately after tympanoplasty with mastoidectomy and no preoperative fistula symptoms might imply the third mobile window theory. The worse bone conduction threshold in high-tone frequencies with spontaneous nystagmus after surgery might indicate inner ear damage.	\N	\N
24937187	Change deafness is the failure to notice changes in an auditory scene. In this study, we sought to determine if change deafness is a perceptual error, rather than only a reflection of verbal memory limitations. We also examined how successful encoding of objects within a scene is related to successful detection of changes. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while listeners completed a change-detection and an object-encoding task with scenes composed of recognizable sounds or unrecognizable temporally scrambled versions of the recognizable sounds. More change deafness occurred for the unrecognizable, compared to recognizable sounds, indicating that change deafness is a perceptual error and not solely a product of verbal memory. ERPs from both the recognizable and unrecognizable scenes revealed an enhanced P3b (at PZ/1/2, POZ/3/4 from 350 to 750ms) to detected changes, a marker that conscious change detection has occurred. Recognizable scenes resulted in an enhanced T400 (at T8/TP8, C6/CP6 from 315 to 660ms) to detected changes, possibly indicating activation of established memory representations. Unrecognizable scenes elicited an enhanced P3a (at FCZ/1/2 from 280 to 600ms) to detected changes, indicating enhanced orienting to acoustic change. Performance on the object-encoding task revealed that change deafness was reduced, but not eliminated, when performance on the object-encoding task was accurate.	\N	\N
24937544	Executive functions (EF) are cognitive capacities that allow for planned, controlled behavior and strongly correlate with academic abilities. Several extracurricular activities have been shown to improve EF, however, the relationship between musical training and EF remains unclear due to methodological limitations in previous studies. To explore this further, two experiments were performed; one with 30 adults with and without musical training and one with 27 musically trained and untrained children (matched for general cognitive abilities and socioeconomic variables) with a standardized EF battery. Furthermore, the neural correlates of EF skills in musically trained and untrained children were investigated using fMRI. Adult musicians compared to non-musicians showed enhanced performance on measures of cognitive flexibility, working memory, and verbal fluency. Musically trained children showed enhanced performance on measures of verbal fluency and processing speed, and significantly greater activation in pre-SMA/SMA and right VLPFC during rule representation and task-switching compared to musically untrained children. Overall, musicians show enhanced performance on several constructs of EF, and musically trained children further show heightened brain activation in traditional EF regions during task-switching. These results support the working hypothesis that musical training may promote the development and maintenance of certain EF skills, which could mediate the previously reported links between musical training and enhanced cognitive skills and academic achievement.	\N	\N
24949818	During childhood, verbal learning and memory are important for academic performance. Recent functional MRI studies have reported on the functional correlates of verbal memory proficiency, but few have reported the underlying structural correlates. The present study sought to test the relationship between fronto-temporal white matter integrity and verbal memory proficiency in children. Diffusion weighted images were collected from 17 Black children (age 8-11 years) who also completed the California Verbal Learning Test. To index white matter integrity, fractional anisotropy values were calculated for bilateral uncinate fasciculus. The results revealed that low anisotropy values corresponded to poor verbal memory, whereas high anisotropy values corresponded to significantly better verbal memory scores. These findings suggest that a greater degree of myelination and cohesiveness of axonal fibers in uncinate fasciculus underlie better verbal memory proficiency in children.	\N	\N
24952106	This study evaluated the clinical effectiveness of wireless contralateral routing of offside signals hearing aids (CROS) in patients with severe to profound unilateral sensorineural hearing loss (USNHL). Twenty-one patients with USNHL were enrolled in this prospective study. The change of subjective satisfaction was evaluated using three questionnaires (K-HHIE, K-IOI-HA, K-SSQ). Changes in objective measurements were evaluated with sound localization test (SLT) and hearing in noise test (HINT). These tests were performed at pre-CROS fitting, 2 and 4 weeks after use of CROS. Subjects were grouped according to the age: young (<40 years) vs. old (≥40 years) group. The average K-HHIE and K-SSQ scores significantly improved with the use of CROS. SLT result revealed that hit rate and error degree improved in the young group and lateralization ability improved in both groups. In quiet environments, the reception threshold for speech also indicated a significant benefit in the young group. When the noise was presented to the normal ear, HINT revealed benefit of CROS, while loss of performance with CROS use was significant when noise was presented to the impaired ear. Wireless CROS provided increased satisfaction and overall improvement of localization and hearing. Although true binaural hearing cannot be obtained, CROS is a practical option for rehabilitation of USNHL.	\N	\N
24959621	Accurate and effective voice activity detection (VAD) is a fundamental step for robust speech or speaker recognition. In this study, we proposed a hierarchical framework approach for VAD and speech enhancement. The modified Wiener filter (MWF) approach is utilized for noise reduction in the speech enhancement block. For the feature selection and voting block, several discriminating features were employed in a voting paradigm for the consideration of reliability and discriminative power. Effectiveness of the proposed approach is compared and evaluated to other VAD techniques by using two well-known databases, namely, TIMIT database and NOISEX-92 database. Experimental results show that the proposed method performs well under a variety of noisy conditions.	\N	\N
24960432	Research on unconscious or unaware vision has demonstrated that unconscious processing can be flexibly adapted to the current goals of human agents. The present review focuses on one area of research, masked visual priming. This method uses visual stimuli presented in a temporal sequence to lower the visibility of one of these stimuli. In this way, a stimulus can be masked and even rendered invisible. Despite its invisibility, a masked stimulus if used as a prime can influence a variety of executive functions, such as response activation, semantic processing, or attention shifting. There are also limitations on the processing of masked primes. While masked priming research demonstrates the top-down dependent usage of unconscious vision during task-set execution it also highlights that the set-up of a new task-set depends on conscious vision as its input. This basic distinction captures a major qualitative difference between conscious and unconscious vision.	\N	\N
24961249	The sound-induced flash illusion (SIFI) is a multisensory perceptual phenomenon in which the number of brief visual stimuli perceived by an observer is influenced by the number of concurrently presented sounds. While the strength of this illusion has been shown to be modulated by the temporal congruence of the stimuli from each modality, there is conflicting evidence regarding its dependence upon their spatial congruence. We addressed this question by examining SIFIs under conditions in which the spatial reliability of the visual stimuli was degraded and different sound localization cues were presented using either free-field or closed-field stimulation. The likelihood of reporting a SIFI varied with the spatial cue composition of the auditory stimulus and was highest when binaural cues were presented over headphones. SIFIs were more common for small flashes than for large flashes, and for small flashes at peripheral locations, subjects experienced a greater number of illusory fusion events than fission events. However, the SIFI was not dependent on the spatial proximity of the audiovisual stimuli, but was instead determined primarily by differences in subjects' underlying sensitivity across the visual field to the number of flashes presented. Our findings indicate that the influence of auditory stimulation on visual numerosity judgments can occur independently of the spatial relationship between the stimuli.	\N	\N
24972303	Groove-based rhythm is a basic and much appreciated feature of Western popular music. It is commonly associated with dance, movement and pleasure and is characterized by the repetition of a basic rhythmic pattern. At various points in the musical course, drum breaks occur, representing a change compared to the repeated pattern of the groove. In the present experiment, we investigated the brain response to such drum breaks in a repetitive groove. Participants were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while listening to a previously unheard naturalistic groove with drum breaks at uneven intervals. The rhythmic pattern and the timing of its different parts as performed were the only aspects that changed from the repetitive sections to the breaks. Differences in blood oxygen level-dependent activation were analyzed. In contrast to the repetitive parts, the drum breaks activated the left cerebellum, the right inferior frontal gyrus (RIFG), and the superior temporal gyri (STG) bilaterally. A tapping test using the same stimulus showed an increase in the standard deviation of inter-tap-intervals in the breaks versus the repetitive parts, indicating extra challenges for auditory-motor integration in the drum breaks. Both the RIFG and STG have been associated with structural irregularity and increase in musical-syntactical complexity in several earlier studies, whereas the left cerebellum is known to play a part in timing. Together these areas may be recruited in the breaks due to a prediction error process whereby the internal model is being updated. This concurs with previous research suggesting a network for predictive feed-forward control that comprises the cerebellum and the cortical areas that were activated in the breaks.	\N	\N
24972535	The aim of this study was to establish a multiparameter voice assessment profile using objective multiparameter test and subjective voice quality assessment. We assessed 50 patients with voice disorders before and after operation. The assessment incorporates (1) subjective voice quality assessment, (2) patients' self-assessment, and (3) objective acoustic analysis. The subjective voice quality assessment uses GRABS system to evaluates the grade of hoarseness (G), proposed by the Japanese Society for Logopedics and Phoniatrics. Patients' self-assessment is modified based on the Chinese version of voice handicap index (VHI) scale, composed of functional (F), physiological (P), emotional (E) part, and a total score (T). The acoustical analysis evaluate the patients' voice sample by voice analysis software "Dr. Speech". Three parameters, jitter (J), shimmer(S), and normalized noise energy (NNE), were taken in analysis. We observed high correlations among subentries F, P, and the total score TvH of the VHI scale in patients' subjective assessment. Parameter E does not correlate well with other assessed parameters. The Chinese version of VHI, which incorporate multifactors including age, education, and especially the cultural difference may account for the inconsistent correction in parameter E. In the objective acoustic analysis, high correlation among the three parameters J, S, and NNE is observed. Systemic assessment combining a subjective voice quality assessment, an objective acoustic analysis, and a self-assessment is helpful in clinical practice in the diagnosis and treatment for voice disorders. The E component in VHI scale assessment may not be a reliable parameter to evaluate treatment outcome.	\N	\N
24975453	The Hearing Implant Sound Quality Index (HISQUI19) seems to be a valid tool for quantifying the self-perceived level of auditory benefit that cochlear implant (CI) users experience in everyday listening situations. Additional research is, however, required. To develop and validate a user-friendly instrument for quantifying the self-perceived level of auditory benefit that CI users experience in everyday listening situations. This was an explorative, uncontrolled, single-group, cross-sectional study. Items for the HISQUI19 were decided upon using user input and verified by professionals. The HISQUI19 was assessed on 75 CI users from hearing implant centres in Germany and Austria to determine the questions. The HISQUI19, consisting of 19 items scored on a 7-point Likert scale, was validated. Subjects older than 60 years at time of implantation did not have significantly higher mean values than subjects younger than 60 years. Gender and whether subjects are unilateral or bilateral implant CI users did not influence self-perceived functioning. Subjects with ≤20 years of hearing loss reported no significantly higher functioning than those with >20 years of hearing loss.	\N	\N
24980742	The motivation for infants' non-word vocalizations in the second half of the first year of life and later is unclear. This study of hearing infants and infants with profound hearing loss with and without cochlear implants addressed the hypothesis that vocalizations are primarily motivated by auditory feedback. Early access to cochlear implants has created unique conditions of auditory manipulation that permit empirical tests of relations between auditory perception and infant behavior. Evidence from two separate tests of the research hypothesis showed that, before cochlear implantation, infants with profound hearing loss vocalized significantly less often than hearing infants; however, soon after cochlear implantation, they vocalized at levels commensurate with hearing peers. In contrast, vocal behaviors that are typically considered reflexive or emotion-based signals (e.g., crying) were infrequent overall and did not vary with auditory access. These results support the hypothesis that auditory feedback is a critical component motivating early vocalization frequency.	\N	\N
24990679	The human music faculty might have evolved from rudimentary components that occur in non-human animals. The evolutionary history of these rudimentary perceptual features is not well understood and rarely extends beyond a consideration of vertebrates that possess a cochlea. One such antecedent is a preferential response to what humans perceive as consonant harmonic sounds, which are common in many animal vocal repertoires. We tested the phonotactic response of female túngara frogs (Physalaemus pustulosus) to variations in the frequency ratios of their harmonically structured mating call to determine whether frequency ratio influences attraction to acoustic stimuli in this vertebrate that lacks a cochlea. We found that the ratio of frequencies present in acoustic stimuli did not influence female response. Instead, the amount of inner ear stimulation predicted female preference behaviour. We conclude that the harmonic relationships that characterize the vocalizations of these frogs did not evolve in response to a preference for frequency intervals with low-integer ratios. Instead, the presence of harmonics in their mating call, and perhaps in the vocalizations of many other animals, is more likely due to the biomechanics of sound production rather than any preference for 'more musical' sounds.	\N	\N
24993544	Three experiments investigated memory for semantic information with the goal of determining boundary conditions for the manifestation of semantic auditory distraction. Irrelevant speech disrupted the free recall of semantic category- exemplars to an equal degree regardless of whether the speech coincided with presentation or test phases of the task (Experiment 1), and this occurred regardless of whether it comprised random words or coherent sentences (Experiment 2). The effects of background speech were greater when the irrelevant speech was semantically related to the to-be-remembered material, but only when the irrelevant words were high in output dominance (Experiment 3). The implications of these findings in relation to the processing of task material and the processing of background speech are discussed.	\N	\N
24993633	To compare the Naida CI UltraZoom adaptive beamformer and T-Mic settings in a real life environment. Speech reception thresholds (SRTs) were measured in a moderately reverberant room, using the German Oldenburger sentence test. The speech signal was always presented from the front loudspeaker at 0° azimuth and fixed masking noise was presented either simultaneously from all eight loudspeakers around the subject at 0°, ±45°, ±90°, ±135°, and 180° azimuth or from five loudspeakers positioned at ±70°, ±135°, and 180° azimuth. In the third test setup, an additional roving noise was added to the six loudspeaker arrangement. There was a significant difference in mean SRTs between the Naida CI T-Mic and UltraZoom in each of the three test setups. The largest improvements were seen in the six speaker roving and fixed noise conditions. Adding ClearVoice to the Naida CI T-Mic setting significantly improved the SRT in both fixed noise conditions, but not in the roving noise condition. In each setup, the lowest SRTs were obtained with the UltraZoom plus ClearVoice setting. The degree of improvement was consistent with previous beamforming studies. In the most challenging listening situation, with noise from eight speakers and speech and noise presented coincidentally from the front, UltraZoom still provided a significant benefit. When a moving noise source was added, the improvement in SRT provided by UltraZoom was maintained. When tested in challenging and realistic noise environments, the Naida CI UltraZoom adaptive beamformer resulted in significantly lower mean SRTs than when the T-Mic alone was used.	\N	\N
24995902	Neuroplasticity (NPL), neuromodulation (NM), and neuroprotection (NPT) are ongoing biophysiological processes that are linked together in sensory systems, the goal being the maintenance of a homeostasis of normal sensory function in the central nervous system. It is hypothesized that when the balance between excitatory - inhibitory action is broken in sensory systems, predominantly due to neuromodulatory activity with reduced induced inhibition and excitation predominates, sensory circuits become plastic with adaptation at synaptic levels to environmental inputs(1). Tinnitus an aberrant auditory sensation, for all clinical types, is clinically considered to reflect a failure of NPL, NM, and NPT to maintain normal auditory function at synaptic levels in sensory cortex and projected to downstream levels in the central auditory system in brain and sensorineural elements in ear. Clinically, the tinnitus sensation becomes behaviorally manifest with varying degrees of annoyance, reflecting a principle of sensory physiology that each sensation has components, i.e. sensory, affect/behavior, psychomotor and memory. Modalities of tinnitus therapies, eg instrumentation, pharmacology, surgery, target a particular component of tinnitus, with resultant activation of neuromodulators at multiple neuromodulatory centers in brain and ear. Effective neuromodulation at sensory neuronal synaptic levels results in NPL in sensory cortex, NPT and tinnitus relief. Functional brain imaging, metabolic (PET brain) and electrophysiology quantitative electroencephalography (QEEG) data in a cochlear implant soft failure patient demonstrates what is clinically considered to reflect NPL, NM, NPT. The reader is provided with a rationale for tinnitus diagnosis and treatment, with a focus on ES, reflecting the biology underlying NPL, NM, NPT.	\N	\N
25013945	Music as alternate engagement (MAE) can be used effectively to distract children during painful or anxiety-provoking medical procedures. For such interventions to be successful, it would seem important to assess the degree to which a child can attend to musical stimuli. The purposes of this study were as follows: (a) To establish construct validity by determining the extent to which the Music Attentiveness Screening Assessment (MASA) measures auditory attention; and (b) to gather evidence regarding MASA test-retest and inter-observer reliability. The Auditory Attention (AA) subtest from the NEPSY-II (NEPSY, Second Edition) and the two items from MASA were administered to a nonclinical sample of children (N = 50) aged 5 to 9 years. There was a statistically significant proportion of AA score variance shared with MASA (both items), R (2) = .21, F(2, 47) = 6.34, p = .004. Test-retest reliability on the first MASA item was moderately high (Pearson r = .84) while on the second item it was lower (r = .63). Similarly, interobserver agreement was high for Item I (intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC] = .95) and lower for Item II (ICC = .71). Evidence suggests that MASA measures, at least in part, auditory attention. Despite this finding, a large proportion of unexplained variance remains. Furthermore, reliability estimates (test-retest and interobserver agreement) differ between both items. These findings are discussed with particular attention paid to the ways in which MASA should be revised and further study conducted.	\N	\N
25016092	Lesion and neuroimaging studies indicate that the insula mediates motor aspects of speech production, specifically, articulatory control. Although it has direct connections to Broca's area, the canonical speech production region, the insula is also broadly connected with other speech and language centres, and may play a role in coordinating higher-order cognitive aspects of speech and language production. The extent of the insula's involvement in speech and language processing was assessed using the Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) method. Meta-analyses of 42 fMRI studies with healthy adults were performed, comparing insula activation during performance of language (expressive and receptive) and speech (production and perception) tasks. Both tasks activated bilateral anterior insulae. However, speech perception tasks preferentially activated the left dorsal mid-insula, whereas expressive language tasks activated left ventral mid-insula. Results suggest distinct regions of the mid-insula play different roles in speech and language processing.	\N	\N
25026154	The purpose of this study was to compare 3 T and 1.5 T fMRI results during emotional music listening. Stimuli comprised of psychoacoustically balanced instrumental musical pieces, with three different affective expressions (fear, neutral, joy). Participants (N=32) were split into two groups, one subjected to fMRI scanning using 3 T and another group scanned using 1.5 T. Whole brain t-tests (corrected for multiple comparisons) compared joy and fear in each of the two groups. The 3 T group showed significant activity differences between joy and fear localized in bilateral superficial amygdala, bilateral hippocampus and bilateral auditory cortex. The 1.5 T group showed significant activity differences between joy and fear localized in bilateral auditory cortex and cuneus. This is the first study to compare results obtained under different field strengths with regard to affective processes elicited by means of auditory/musical stimulation. The findings raise concern over false negatives in the superficial amygdala and hippocampus in affective studies conducted under 1.5 T and caution that imaging improvements due to increasing magnetic field strength can be influenced by region-specific characteristics.	\N	\N
25031365	The neural mechanisms underlying the attainment of fear memory accuracy for appropriate discriminative responses to aversive and nonaversive stimuli are unclear. Considerable evidence indicates that coactivator of transcription and histone acetyltransferase cAMP response element binding protein (CREB) binding protein (CBP) is critically required for normal neural function. CBP hypofunction leads to severe psychopathological symptoms in human and cognitive abnormalities in genetic mutant mice with severity dependent on the neural locus and developmental time of the gene inactivation. Here, we showed that an acute hypofunction of CBP in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) results in a disruption of fear memory accuracy in mice. In addition, interruption of CREB function in the mPFC also leads to a deficit in auditory discrimination of fearful stimuli. While mice with deficient CBP/CREB signaling in the mPFC maintain normal responses to aversive stimuli, they exhibit abnormal responses to similar but nonrelevant stimuli when compared to control animals. These data indicate that improvement of fear memory accuracy involves mPFC-dependent suppression of fear responses to nonrelevant stimuli. Evidence from a context discriminatory task and a newly developed task that depends on the ability to distinguish discrete auditory cues indicated that CBP-dependent neural signaling within the mPFC circuitry is an important component of the mechanism for disambiguating the meaning of fear signals with two opposing values: aversive and nonaversive.	\N	\N
25032683	Categorization is an important cognitive process. However, the correct categorization of a stimulus is often challenging because categories can have overlapping boundaries. Whereas perceptual categorization has been extensively studied in vision, the analogous phenomenon in audition has yet to be systematically explored. Here, we test whether and how human subjects learn to use category distributions and prior probabilities, as well as whether subjects employ an optimal decision strategy when making auditory-category decisions. We asked subjects to classify the frequency of a tone burst into one of two overlapping, uniform categories according to the perceived tone frequency. We systematically varied the prior probability of presenting a tone burst with a frequency originating from one versus the other category. Most subjects learned these changes in prior probabilities early in testing and used this information to influence categorization. We also measured each subject's frequency-discrimination thresholds (i.e., their sensory uncertainty levels). We tested each subject's average behavior against variations of a Bayesian model that either led to optimal or sub-optimal decision behavior (i.e. probability matching). In both predicting and fitting each subject's average behavior, we found that probability matching provided a better account of human decision behavior. The model fits confirmed that subjects were able to learn category prior probabilities and approximate forms of the category distributions. Finally, we systematically explored the potential ways that additional noise sources could influence categorization behavior. We found that an optimal decision strategy can produce probability-matching behavior if it utilized non-stationary category distributions and prior probabilities formed over a short stimulus history. Our work extends previous findings into the auditory domain and reformulates the issue of categorization in a manner that can help to interpret the results of previous research within a generative framework.	\N	\N
25033791	Noise has the potential to impair cognitive performance. For nonnative speakers, the effect of noise on performance is more severe than their native counterparts. What remains unknown is the effectiveness of countermeasures such as noise attenuating devices in such circumstances. Therefore, the main aim of the present research was to examine the effectiveness of active noise attenuating countermeasures in the presence of simulated aircraft noise for both native and nonnative English speakers. Thirty-two participants, half native English speakers and half native German speakers completed four recognition (cued) recall tasks presented in English under four different audio conditions, all in the presence of simulated aircraft noise. The results of the research indicated that in simulated aircraft noise at 65 dB(A), performance of nonnative English speakers was poorer than for native English speakers. The beneficial effects of noise cancelling headphones in improving the signal to noise ratio led to an improved performance for nonnative speakers. These results have particular importance for organizations operating in a safety-critical environment such as aviation.	\N	\N
25046122	Behavioral investigations of the acquisition of some have shown that children favor its logical interpretation (some and possibly all). Adults, however, use the pragmatic interpretation (some but not all) derived by a scalar implicature. Certain experimental manipulations increase children's rates of adult-like responses, indicating that children are capable of computing implicatures. A functional MRI (fMRI) study examining adults linked the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) to implicature computation, and prefrontal regions, the left middle frontal gyrus (MFG), and medial frontal gyrus (MeFG), to processing the mismatch between implicatures and the context in which they were presented. In the current fMRI study, we aimed to determine whether children's failure to give pragmatic interpretations to some results from a failure in implicature computation or in implicature-mismatch processing. We explored children's brain activations with the same experimental task administered to adults. In a region-of-interest analysis, children showed an activational pattern similar to the one observed in adults in the left IFG with increased activations for the implicature conditions. By contrast, in the left MFG, children showed decreased activation for the mismatched implicatures compared with matched and no implicature conditions. No difference between the conditions was observed in the MeFG. For both implicature conditions, no activation in the left IFG was observed when comparing adults and children directly. However, for mismatched implicatures, adults showed greater activation in the prefrontal regions compared with children. Our results suggest that children may have an adult-like computation of implicatures (even when their behavior does not necessarily indicate that), but they fail in resolving implicature-mismatch situations.	\N	\N
25056109	There is converging evidence for the notion that pain affects a broad range of attentional domains. This study investigated the influence of pain on the involuntary capture of attention as indexed by the P3a component in the event-related potential derived from the electroencephalogram. Participants performed in an auditory oddball task in a pain-free and a pain condition during which they submerged a hand in cold water. Novel, infrequent and unexpected auditory stimuli were presented randomly in a series of frequent standard and infrequent target tones. P3a and P3b amplitudes were observed to novel, unexpected and target-related stimuli, respectively. Both electrophysiological components were characterized by reduced amplitudes in the pain compared with the pain-free condition. Hit rate and reaction time to target stimuli did not differ between the two conditions presumably because the experimental task was not difficult enough to exceed attentional capacities under pain conditions. These results indicate that voluntary attention serving the maintenance and control of ongoing information processing (reflected by the P3b amplitude) is impaired by pain. In addition, the involuntary capture of attention and orientation to novel, unexpected information (measured by the P3a) is also impaired by pain. Thus, neurophysiological measures examined in this study support the theoretical positions proposing that pain can reduce attentional processing capacity. These findings have potentially important implications at the theoretical level for our understanding of the interplay of pain and cognition, and at the therapeutic level for the clinical treatment of individuals experiencing ongoing pain.	\N	\N
25064434	The present magnetoencephalography study used the cortically constrained minimum-norm estimates of human brain activity to elucidate functional roles of neural generators for detecting different magnitudes of lexical tones changes. A multiple-deviant oddball paradigm was used in which the syllable "yi" with a low-dipping tone (T3) was the common standard sound and the same syllable with a high-level tone (T1) or a high-rising tone (T2) were the large and small deviant sounds, respectively. The data revealed a larger magnetic mismatch field (MMNm) for large deviant in the left hemisphere. The source analysis also confirmed that the MMNm to lexical tone changes was generated in bilateral superior temporal gyri and only the large deviant revealed left lateralization. A set of frontal generators was activated at a later time and revealed differential sensitivities to the degree of deviance. The left anterior insula, the right anterior cingulate cortex, and the right ventral orbital frontal cortex were activated when detecting a large deviant, whereas the right frontal-opercular region was sensitive to the small deviant. These frontal generators were thought to be associated with various top-down mechanisms for attentional modulation. The time frequency (TF) analysis showed that large deviants yielded large theta band (5-7Hz) activity over the left anterior scalp and the left central scalp, while small deviants yielded large alpha band activity (9-11Hz) over the posterior scalp. The results of TF analyses implied that mechanisms of working memory and functional inhibition involved in the processes of acoustic change detection.	\N	\N
25074900	Studies of visual masking have provided a wide range of important insights into the processes involved in visual coding. However, very few of these studies have employed natural scenes as masks. Little is known on how the particular features found in natural scenes affect visual detection thresholds and how the results obtained using unnatural masks relate to the results obtained using natural masks. To address this issue, this paper describes a psychophysical study designed to obtain local contrast detection thresholds for a database of natural images. Via a three-alternative forced-choice experiment, we measured thresholds for detecting 3.7 cycles/° vertically oriented log-Gabor noise targets placed within an 85 × 85-pixels patch (1.9° patch) drawn from 30 natural images from the CSIQ image database (Larson & Chandler, Journal of Electronic Imaging, 2010). Thus, for each image, we obtained a masking map in which each entry in the map denotes the root mean squared contrast threshold for detecting the log-Gabor noise target at the corresponding spatial location in the image. From qualitative observations we found that detection thresholds were affected by several patch properties such as visual complexity, fineness of textures, sharpness, and overall luminance. Our quantitative analysis shows that except for the sharpness measure (correlation coefficient of 0.7), the other tested low-level mask features showed a weak correlation (correlation coefficients less than or equal to 0.52) with the detection thresholds. Furthermore, we evaluated the performance of a computational contrast gain control model that performed fairly well with an average correlation coefficient of 0.79 in predicting the local contrast detection thresholds. We also describe specific choices of parameters for the gain control model. The objective of this database is to provide researchers with a large ground-truth dataset in order to further investigate the properties of the human visual system using natural masks.	\N	\N
25080602	In an ever-changing environment, selecting appropriate responses in conflicting situations is essential for biological survival and social success and requires cognitive control, which is mediated by dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). How these brain regions communicate during conflict processing (detection, resolution, and adaptation), however, is still unknown. The Stroop task provides a well-established paradigm to investigate the cognitive mechanisms mediating such response conflict. Here, we explore the oscillatory patterns within and between the DMPFC and DLPFC in human epilepsy patients with intracranial EEG electrodes during an auditory Stroop experiment. Data from the DLPFC were obtained from 12 patients. Thereof four patients had additional DMPFC electrodes available for interaction analyses. Our results show that an early θ (4-8 Hz) modulated enhancement of DLPFC γ-band (30-100 Hz) activity constituted a prerequisite for later successful conflict processing. Subsequent conflict detection was reflected in a DMPFC θ power increase that causally entrained DLPFC θ activity (DMPFC to DLPFC). Conflict resolution was thereafter completed by coupling of DLPFC γ power to DMPFC θ oscillations. Finally, conflict adaptation was related to increased postresponse DLPFC γ-band activity and to θ coupling in the reverse direction (DLPFC to DMPFC). These results draw a detailed picture on how two regions in the prefrontal cortex communicate to resolve cognitive conflicts. In conclusion, our data show that conflict detection, control, and adaptation are supported by a sequence of processes that use the interplay of θ and γ oscillations within and between DMPFC and DLPFC.	\N	\N
25090306	It is widely acknowledged that individuals with elevated depressive symptoms exhibit deficits in inter-personal communication. Research has primarily focused on speech production in individuals with elevated depressive symptoms. Little is known about speech perception in individuals with elevated depressive symptoms, especially in challenging listening conditions. Here, we examined speech perception in young adults with low- or high-depressive (HD) symptoms in the presence of a range of maskers. Maskers were selected to reflect various levels of informational masking (IM), which refers to cognitive interference due to signal and masker similarity, and energetic masking (EM), which refers to peripheral interference due to signal degradation by the masker. Speech intelligibility data revealed that individuals with HD symptoms did not differ from those with low-depressive symptoms during EM, but they exhibited a selective deficit during IM. Since IM is a common occurrence in real-world social settings, this listening deficit may exacerbate communicative difficulties.	\N	\N
25092665	What do we hear when someone speaks and what does auditory cortex (AC) do with that sound? Given how meaningful speech is, it might be hypothesized that AC is most active when other people talk so that their productions get decoded. Here, neuroimaging meta-analyses show the opposite: AC is least active and sometimes deactivated when participants listened to meaningful speech compared to less meaningful sounds. Results are explained by an active hypothesis-and-test mechanism where speech production (SP) regions are neurally re-used to predict auditory objects associated with available context. By this model, more AC activity for less meaningful sounds occurs because predictions are less successful from context, requiring further hypotheses be tested. This also explains the large overlap of AC co-activity for less meaningful sounds with meta-analyses of SP. An experiment showed a similar pattern of results for non-verbal context. Specifically, words produced less activity in AC and SP regions when preceded by co-speech gestures that visually described those words compared to those words without gestures. Results collectively suggest that what we 'hear' during real-world speech perception may come more from the brain than our ears and that the function of AC is to confirm or deny internal predictions about the identity of sounds.	\N	\N
25096108	The summation of loudness across ears is often studied by measuring the level difference required for equal loudness (LDEL) of monaural and diotic sounds. Typically, the LDEL is ∼5-6 dB, consistent with the idea that a diotic sound is ∼1.5 times as loud as the same sound presented monaurally at the same level, as predicted by the loudness model of Moore and Glasberg [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 121, 1604-1612 (2007)]. One might expect that the LDEL would be <5-6 dB for hearing-impaired listeners, because loudness recruitment leads to a more rapid change of loudness for a given change in level. However, previous data sometimes showed similar LDEL values for normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners. Here, the LDEL was measured for hearing-impaired listeners using narrowband and broadband noises centered at 500 Hz, where audiometric thresholds were near-normal, and at 3000 or 4000 Hz, where audiometric thresholds were elevated. The mean LDEL was 5.6 dB at 500 Hz and 4.2 dB at the higher center frequencies. The results were predicted reasonably well by an extension of the loudness model of Moore and Glasberg.	\N	\N
25096138	The effects of audiovisual versus auditory training for speech-in-noise identification were examined in 60 young participants. The training conditions were audiovisual training, auditory-only training, and no training (n = 20 each). In the training groups, gated consonants and words were presented at 0 dB signal-to-noise ratio; stimuli were either audiovisual or auditory-only. The no-training group watched a movie clip without performing a speech identification task. Speech-in-noise identification was measured before and after the training (or control activity). Results showed that only audiovisual training improved speech-in-noise identification, demonstrating superiority over auditory-only training.	\N	\N
25113242	This study investigates the influence of rhythmic expectancies on language processing. It is assumed that language rhythm involves an alternation of strong and weak beats within a linguistic domain. Hence, in some contexts rhythmically induced stress shifts occur in order to comply with the Rhythm Rule. In English, this rule operates to prevent clashes of stressed adjacent syllables or lapses of adjacent unstressed syllables. While previous studies investigated effects on speech production and perception, this study focuses on brain responses to structures either obeying or deviating from this rule. Event-related potentials show that rhythmic regularity is relevant for language processing: rhythmic deviations evoked different ERP components reflecting the deviance from rhythmic expectancies. An N400 effect found for shifted items reflects higher costs in lexical processing due to stress deviation. The overall results disentangle lexical and rhythmical influences on language processing and complement the findings of previous studies on rhythmical processing.	\N	\N
25118042	To compare the fitting time requirements and the efficiency in achieving improvements in speech perception during the first 6 months after initial stimulation of computer-assisted fitting with the Fitting to Outcome eXpert' (FOX) and a standard clinical fitting procedure. Twenty-seven post-lingually deafened adults, newly implanted recipients of the Advanced Bionics HiRes 90K™ cochlear implant from Germany, the UK, and France took part in a controlled, randomized, clinical study. Speech perception was measured for all participants and fitting times were compared across groups programmed using FOX and conventional programming methods. The fitting time for FOX was significantly reduced at 14 days (P < 0.001) but equivalent over the 6-month period. The groups were not well matched for duration of deafness; therefore, speech perception could not be compared across groups. Despite including more objective measures of performance than a standard fitting approach and the adjustment of a greater range of parameters during initial fitting, FOX did not add to the overall fitting time when compared to the conventional approach. FOX significantly reduced the fitting time in the first 2 weeks and by providing a standard fitting protocol, reduced variability across centres. FOX computer-assisted fitting can be successfully used at switch on, in different clinical environments, reducing fitting time in the first 2 weeks and is efficient at providing a usable program.	\N	\N
25121623	The current study provides evidence that the absence of a syntactically expected item leads to a sustained cognitive processing demand. Event-related potentials were measured at the omission of a syntactically expected object argument in a speech sequence. English monolingual adults listened to paired sentences. The first sentence in the pair established a context. The second sentence provided a response to the first sentence that was either grammatically correct by containing an overt object argument in the form of a pronoun, or was syntactically unacceptable by omitting the expected object pronoun. Event-related potentials measured at the omission of the object argument showed a prolonged positivity for 100-600 ms with a broad scalp distribution, and for 600-1000 ms with a focus in the anterior region. This observed omitted stimulus potential may contain characteristics of the P300 component, associated with the detection of the deviation of an expected stimulus, and the classical P600 related to syntactic reanalysis. Further, the late anterior P600 may indicate an increased memory demand in sentence comprehension. Thus, this linguistic omitted stimulus potential is a cognitive indicator of language processing that can be used to investigate the organization of linguistic knowledge.	\N	\N
25126691	To evaluate the relationship between conductive hearing loss and maxillary constriction. A total of 120 people, aged from 7 to 40 years, who were referred to an audiologist when taking out health insurance or for school pre-registration check-up, were selected for this study. A total of 60 participants who had hearing threshold levels greater than 15 dB in both ears were chosen as the conductive hearing loss group. The remaining 60, with normal hearing thresholds of less than 15 dB, were used as the control group. All participants were referred to an orthodontic clinic. Participants who had a posterior crossbite and high palatal vault were considered to suffer from maxillary constriction. There were no significant differences between the sex ratios and mean ages of the groups. However, participants with conductive hearing loss were 3.5 times more likely than controls to suffer from maxillary constriction. Patients who suffer from conductive hearing loss are likely to show a maxillary abnormality when examined by an orthodontist.	\N	\N
25139422	We investigated global integration (wrap-up) processes at the boundaries of musical phrases by comparing the effects of well and non-well formed phrases on event-related potentials time-locked to two boundary points: the onset and the offset of the boundary pause. The Closure Positive Shift, which is elicited at the boundary offset, was not modulated by the quality of phrase structure (well vs. non-well formed). In contrast, the boundary onset potentials showed different patterns for well and non-well formed phrases. Our results contribute to specify the functional meaning of the Closure Positive Shift in music, shed light on the large-scale structural integration of musical input, and raise new hypotheses concerning shared resources between music and language.	\N	\N
25150964	Timbre is an important attribute of sound both in music and nature. Previously, using an operant conditioning paradigm, we found that black-capped chickadees and humans show similar response patterns in discriminating triadic chords of the same timbre and transferred this discrimination to a novel key center (novel absolute pitch). The current study examined how varying the timbre of the chords influenced discrimination. Using a similar operant conditioning procedure, we trained humans (Experiment 1) and chickadees (Experiments 2 and 3) to discriminate a major chord from 6 other chord types that had semitone deviations from the major chord. The pattern of errors of the 2 species replicated our previous findings. We then tested participants with novel timbres. We found that humans readily transferred their discrimination to novel timbres, suggesting they were attending to triadic pitch relations. The chickadees failed to transfer to novel timbres, suggesting they were using a different strategy to perform the original chord discrimination. We conducted an acoustic analysis examining frequency ranges that are biologically relevant to chickadees. We found that the relative intensity within each chord of the frequencies used in black-capped chickadee song significantly correlated with chickadees' percent response during probe testing. In Experiment 3, we trained a new set of chickadees by including either expanded pitch or timbre training before testing. Although chickadees showed some transfer to novel chords following this expanded training, we found that neither type of expanded training helped the chickadees when probe tested with novel stimuli.	\N	\N
25151640	Congenital amusia has been described as a lifelong deficit of music perception and production, notably including amusic individuals' difficulties to recognize a familiar tune without the aid of lyrics. The present study aimed to evaluate whether amusic individuals might have acquired long-term knowledge of familiar music, and to test for the minimal amount of acoustic information necessary to access this knowledge (if any) in amusia. Segments of familiar and unfamiliar instrumental musical pieces were presented with increasing duration (250, 500, 1000 msec etc.), and participants provided familiarity judgments for each segment. Results showed that amusic individuals succeeded in differentiating familiar from unfamiliar excerpts with as little acoustic information as did control participants (i.e., within 500 msec). The findings reveal that amusic individuals have stored musical pieces in long-term memory (LTM), and, together with other recent findings, they suggest that congenital amusia might impair conscious access to music processing rather than music processing per se.	\N	\N
25158372	Cortical auditory-evoked potentials (CAEPs), an objective measure of human speech encoding in individuals with normal or impaired auditory systems, can be used to assess the outcomes of hearing aids and cochlear implants in infants, or in young children who cannot co-operate for behavioural speech discrimination testing. The current study aimed to determine whether naturally produced speech stimuli /m/, /g/ and /t/ evoke distinct CAEP response patterns that can be reliably recorded and differentiated, based on their spectral information and whether the CAEP could be an electrophysiological measure to differentiate between these speech sounds. CAEPs were recorded from 18 school-aged children with normal hearing, tested in two groups: younger (5 - 7 years) and older children (8 - 12 years). Cortical responses differed in their P1 and N2 latencies and amplitudes in response to /m/, /g/ and /t/ sounds (from low-, mid- and high-frequency regions, respectively). The largest amplitude of the P1 and N2 component was for /g/ and the smallest was for /t/. The P1 latency in both age groups did not show any significant difference between these speech sounds. The N2 latency showed a significant change in the younger group but not in the older group. The N2 latency of the speech sound /g/ was always noted earlier in both groups. This study demonstrates that spectrally different speech sounds are encoded differentially at the cortical level, and evoke distinct CAEP response patterns. CAEP latencies and amplitudes may provide an objective indication that spectrally different speech sounds are encoded differently at the cortical level.	\N	\N
25158615	To evaluate methods for measuring long-term benefits of cochlear implantation in a patient with single-sided deafness (SSD) with respect to spatial hearing and to document improved quality of life because of reduced tinnitus. A single adult male with profound right-sided sensorineural hearing loss and normal hearing in the left ear who underwent right-sided cochlear implantation. The subject was evaluated at 6, 9, 12, and 18 months after implantation on speech intelligibility with specific target-masker configurations, sound localization accuracy, audiologic performance, and tinnitus handicap. Testing conditions involved the acoustic (NH) ear only, the cochlear implant (CI) ear (acoustic ear plugged), and the bilateral condition (CI+NH). Measures of spatial hearing included speech intelligibility improvement because of spatial release from masking (SRM) and sound localization. In addition, traditional measures known as "head shadow," "binaural squelch," and "binaural summation" were evaluated. The best indicator for improved speech intelligibility was SRM, in which both ears are activated, but the relative locations of target and masker(s) are manipulated. Measures that compare performance with a single ear to performance using bilateral auditory input indicated evidence of the ability to integrate inputs across the ears, possibly reflecting early binaural processing, with 12 months of bilateral input. Sound localization accuracy improved with addition of the implant, and a large improvement with respect to tinnitus handicap was observed. Cochlear implantation resulted in improved sound localization accuracy when compared with performance using only the NH ear, and reduced tinnitus handicap was observed with use of the implant. The use of SRM addresses some of the current limitations of traditional measures of spatial and binaural hearing, as spatial cues related to target and maskers are manipulated, rather than the ear(s) tested. Sound testing methods and calculations described here are therefore recommended for assessing performance of a larger sample size of individuals with SSD who receive a CI.	\N	\N
25167217	Objective To investigate the effect of increasing phase duration (pulse width, T-pulse) using a biphasic pulse composed of an initial anodic active phase followed by a balancing cathodic phase on the electrically evoked auditory brainstem responses (eABRs) recorded at the time of cochlear implantation. Design eABRs recorded during 188 surgeries for cochlear implantation from 1999 to 2006 in a single center were retrospectively reviewed by two independent observers. All patients were fitted with a NEURELEC cochlear implant (CI) device, initially DIGISONIC(®) then DIGISONIC SP(®) (2004-2006). Result Immediately following cochlear implantation, stimulation by the CI resulted in reliable wave III and V eABR waveforms (mean wave III latency 2.23 ± 0.38 ms SD and wave V latency 4.28 ± 0.42 ms SD). Latencies followed an apical to basal gradient (0.32 ms increase in mean eV latency and 0.12 ms for eIII latency). With increasing phase duration, wave III and wave V latencies significantly decreased in association with a shortening of the eIII-eV interwave gap, while amplitudes of both waves increased. Conclusion The impact of increasing phase duration on latency and amplitude of brainstem responses in a large set of patients implanted with NEURELEC CIs was reported.	\N	\N
25170794	The neural resonance theory of musical meter explains musical beat tracking as the result of entrainment of neural oscillations to the beat frequency and its higher harmonics. This theory has gained empirical support from experiments using simple, abstract stimuli. However, to date there has been no empirical evidence for a role of neural entrainment in the perception of the beat of ecologically valid music. Here we presented participants with a single pop song with a superimposed bassoon sound. This stimulus was either lined up with the beat of the music or shifted away from the beat by 25% of the average interbeat interval. Both conditions elicited a neural response at the beat frequency. However, although the on-the-beat condition elicited a clear response at the first harmonic of the beat, this frequency was absent in the neural response to the off-the-beat condition. These results support a role for neural entrainment in tracking the metrical structure of real music and show that neural meter tracking can be disrupted by the presentation of contradictory rhythmic cues.	\N	\N
25176617	Verbal memory is a fundamental prerequisite for language learning. This study investigated 7-month-olds' (N = 62) ability to remember the identity and order of elements in a multisyllabic word. The results indicate that infants detect changes in the order of edge syllables, or the identity of the middle syllables, but fail to encode the order of middle syllables. This suggests that the representational format of multisyllabic words is determined by core mnemonic biases, which favor accurate encoding of edges and limits the encoding of temporal order for internal segments. The studies support accounts proposing that content and order are encoded separately; in addition, the data show that this dissociation occurs early in development.	\N	\N
25185802	In two studies based on Stanley Milgram's original pilots, we present the first systematic examination of cyranoids as social psychological research tools. A cyranoid is created by cooperatively joining in real-time the body of one person with speech generated by another via covert speech shadowing. The resulting hybrid persona can subsequently interact with third parties face-to-face. We show that naïve interlocutors perceive a cyranoid to be a unified, autonomously communicating person, evidence for a phenomenon Milgram termed the "cyranic illusion." We also show that creating cyranoids composed of contrasting identities (a child speaking adult-generated words and vice versa) can be used to study how stereotyping and person perception are mediated by inner (dispositional) vs. outer (physical) identity. Our results establish the cyranoid method as a unique means of obtaining experimental control over inner and outer identities within social interactions rich in mundane realism.	\N	\N
25188354	Although active listening is an influential behavior, which can affect the social responses of others, the neural correlates underlying its perception have remained unclear. Sensing active listening in social interactions is accompanied by an improvement in the recollected impressions of relevant experiences and is thought to arouse positive feelings. We therefore hypothesized that the recognition of active listening activates the reward system, and that the emotional appraisal of experiences that had been subject to active listening would be improved. To test these hypotheses, we conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on participants viewing assessments of their own personal experiences made by evaluators with or without active listening attitude. Subjects rated evaluators who showed active listening more positively. Furthermore, they rated episodes more positively when they were evaluated by individuals showing active listening. Neural activation in the ventral striatum was enhanced by perceiving active listening, suggesting that this was processed as rewarding. It also activated the right anterior insula, representing positive emotional reappraisal processes. Furthermore, the mentalizing network was activated when participants were being evaluated, irrespective of active listening behavior. Therefore, perceiving active listening appeared to result in positive emotional appraisal and to invoke mental state attribution to the active listener.	\N	\N
25190323	In a standard center cueing paradigm, participants are asked to identify a target object presented either to the left or the right of a center cue (e.g., eye gaze, head-turn, arrow, etc.). When the center cue is non-predictive (e.g., the arrow points to the correct location of the target only 50 % of the time), the target can still be identified faster at the validly cued location than at the invalidly cued location. However, the abrupt onset of an object can elicit reflexive attention orientation. It is important to investigate whether this abrupt onset effect interferes with the cueing effect elicited by center cues because this interference effect, if it exists, should be controlled for in order to improve the test validity of the center cueing task. In an attentional cueing paradigm, we examined how the abrupt appearance of an exogenous target object mitigates the influence of center cues involving either a head turn (Experiment 1) or an arrow (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, a non-predictive head-turn cue was followed by a target object (circle or square) presented in the left or right visual field. In the non-distractor condition, the target object was presented by itself. In this case, it is assumed that the sudden appearance of the target provides an orienting cue to the observer. To equalize the cueing effect of the target object, we presented a competing distractor object (triangle) in the opposite visual field to the target object. The participant's task was to categorize the target object as either a circle or square while ignoring the non-target triangle object in the opposite visual field. In Experiment 2, the arrow version of the cued recognition task was used, in which a single-headed arrow pointed to the object. The results from both experiments showed that both the non-predictive head-turn and arrow cues produced a reliable cueing effect in the distractor and non-distractor conditions. However, the magnitude of the cueing effect was greater in the distractor condition than in the non-distractor condition, suggesting that the abrupt onset of the target object acts like an exogenous signal, thereby reducing the impact of the internal head turn and arrow cues.	\N	\N
25190394	Factors that might affect perceptual pitch match between acoustic and electric stimulation were examined in 25 bimodal listeners using magnitude estimation. Pre-operative acoustic thresholds in both ears, and duration of severe-profound loss, were first examined as correlates with degree of match between the measured pitch and that predicted by the spiral ganglion frequency-position model. The degree of match was examined with respect to (1) the ratio between the measured and predicted pitch percept on the most apical electrode and (2) the ratio between the slope of the measured and predicted pitch function. Second, effect of listening experience was examined to assess whether adaptation occurred over time to match the frequency assignment to electrodes. Pre-experience pitch estimates on the apical electrode were within the predicted range in only 28% of subjects, and the slope of the electrical pitch function was lower than predicted in all except one subject. Subjects with poorer hearing tended to have a lower pitch and a shallower electrical pitch function than predicted by the model. Pre-operative hearing thresholds in the contralateral ear and hearing loss duration were not correlated with the degree of pitch match, and there was no significant group effect of listening experience.	\N	\N
25190407	Normal-hearing (NH) listeners make use of context, speech redundancy and top-down linguistic processes to perceptually restore inaudible or masked portions of speech. Previous research has shown poorer perception and restoration of interrupted speech in CI users and NH listeners tested with acoustic simulations of CIs. Three hypotheses were investigated: (1) training with CI simulations of interrupted sentences can teach listeners to use the high-level restoration mechanisms more effectively, (2) phonemic restoration benefit, an increase in intelligibility of interrupted sentences once its silent gaps are filled with noise, can be induced with training, and (3) perceptual learning of interrupted sentences can be reflected in clinical speech audiometry. To test these hypotheses, NH listeners were trained using periodically interrupted sentences, also spectrally degraded with a noiseband vocoder as CI simulation. Feedback was presented by displaying the sentence text and playing back both the intact and the interrupted CI simulation of the sentence. Training induced no phonemic restoration benefit, and learning was not transferred to speech audiometry measured with words. However, a significant improvement was observed in overall intelligibility of interrupted spectrally degraded sentences, with or without filler noise, suggesting possibly better use of restoration mechanisms as a result of training.	\N	\N
25194209	Roles of subcortical structures in language processing are vague, but, interestingly, basal ganglia and thalamic Deep Brain Stimulation can go along with reduced lexical capacities. To deepen the understanding of this impact, we assessed word processing as a function of thalamic versus subthalamic Deep Brain Stimulation. Ten essential tremor patients treated with thalamic and 14 Parkinson׳s disease patients with subthalamic Deep Brain Stimulation performed an acoustic Lexical Decision Task ON and OFF stimulation. Combined analysis of task performance and event-related potentials allowed the determination of processing speed, priming effects, and N400 as neurophysiological correlate of lexical stimulus processing. 12 age-matched healthy participants acted as control subjects. Thalamic Deep Brain Stimulation prolonged word decisions and reduced N400 potentials. No comparable ON-OFF effects were present in patients with subthalamic Deep Brain Stimulation. In the latter group of patients with Parkinson' disease, N400 amplitudes were, however, abnormally low, whether under active or inactive Deep Brain Stimulation. In conclusion, performance speed and N400 appear to be influenced by state functions, modulated by thalamic, but not subthalamic Deep Brain Stimulation, compatible with concepts of thalamo-cortical engagement in word processing. Clinically, these findings specify cognitive sequels of Deep Brain Stimulation in a target-specific way.	\N	\N
25196041	Cognitive enhancement resulting from nicotinic acetylcholine receptor stimulation may be evidenced by increased efficiency of the auditory-frontal cortex network of auditory discrimination, which is impaired in schizophrenia, a cognitive disorder associated with excessive tobacco use. Investigating automatic (preattentive) detection of acoustic change with the mismatch negativity (MMN) brain event-related potential in response to nicotine in individuals with varying baseline levels of auditory discrimination may provide useful insight into the cholinergic regulation of this neural network and its potential amelioration with novel nicotinic agents. Sixty healthy, non-smoking male volunteers were presented with an 'optimal' multi-feature MMN paradigm in a randomized, placebo controlled double-blind design with 6 mg of nicotine gum. Participants with low, medium, and high baseline amplitudes responded differently to nicotine (vs. placebo), and nicotine response was feature specific. Whereas MMN in individuals with high amplitudes was diminished by nicotine, MMN increased in those with low amplitudes. Nicotine effects were not shown in medium amplitude participants. These findings provide preliminary support for the role of nicotinic neurotransmission in sensory memory processing of auditory change and suggest that nicotinic receptor modulation can both enhance and diminish change detection, depending on baseline MMN and its eliciting stimulus feature.	\N	\N
25201816	Evidence suggests that deafness-induced changes in visual perception, cognition and attention may compensate for a hearing loss. Such alterations, however, may also negatively influence adaptation to a cochlear implant. This study investigated whether involuntary attentional capture by salient visual stimuli is altered in children who use a cochlear implant. Thirteen experienced implant users (aged 8-16 years) and age-matched normally hearing children were presented with a rapid sequence of simultaneous visual and auditory events. Participants were tasked with detecting numbers presented in a specified color and identifying a change in the tonal frequency whilst ignoring irrelevant visual distractors. Compared to visual distractors that did not possess the target-defining characteristic, target-colored distractors were associated with a decrement in visual performance (response time and accuracy), demonstrating a contingent capture of involuntary attention. Visual distractors did not, however, impair auditory task performance. Importantly, detection performance for the visual and auditory targets did not differ between the groups. These results suggest that proficient cochlear implant users demonstrate normal capture of visuospatial attention by stimuli that match top-down control settings.	\N	\N
25208843	When an action produces an effect, both events are perceived to be shifted in time toward each other. This shift is called Intentional Binding (IB) effect. First evidence shows that this shift does not depend on the statistical predictability of the produced effect's identity (Desantis, Hughes, & Waszak, 2012). We confirm this result by comparing the perceived duration of action-effect intervals before valid and invalid action effects using the method of constant stimuli. The perceived duration of action-effect intervals did not differ for valid and invalid effects. This result was true for different durations of the action-effect interval (Experiments 1-4: 250 ms, Experiments 1 & 2: 400 ms), different effect modalities (Experiments 1 & 3: visual, Experiments 2-4: auditive), and two types of validity variations (Experiments 1 & 2: 80% valid, Experiments 3 & 4: 100% valid vs. random). We validated our results by using a clock paradigm and a numerical duration estimation task (Experiment 4). We conclude that the IB effect is not the result of internal prediction due to action-effect bindings, but might rely on higher-order processes.	\N	\N
25214304	Prior studies of spatial negative priming indicate that distractor-assigned keypress responses are inhibited as part of visual, but not auditory, processing. However, recent evidence suggests that static keypress responses are not directly activated by spatially presented sounds and, therefore, might not call for an inhibitory process. In order to investigate the role of response inhibition in auditory processing, we used spatially directed responses that have been shown to result in direct response activation to irrelevant sounds. Participants localized a target sound by performing manual joystick responses (Experiment 1) or head movements (Experiment 2B) while ignoring a concurrent distractor sound. Relations between prime distractor and probe target were systematically manipulated (repeated vs. changed) with respect to identity and location. Experiment 2A investigated the influence of distractor sounds on spatial parameters of head movements toward target locations and showed that distractor-assigned responses are immediately inhibited to prevent false responding in the ongoing trial. Interestingly, performance in Experiments 1 and 2B was not generally impaired when the probe target appeared at the location of the former prime distractor and required a previously withheld and presumably inhibited response. Instead, performance was impaired only when prime distractor and probe target mismatched in terms of location or identity, which fully conforms to the feature-mismatching hypothesis. Together, the results suggest that response inhibition operates in auditory processing when response activation is provided but is presumably too short-lived to affect responding on the subsequent trial.	\N	\N
25215617	Previous studies of frequency discrimination training (FDT) for tinnitus used repetitive task-based training programmes relying on extrinsic factors to motivate participation. Studies reported limited improvement in tinnitus symptoms. To evaluate FDT exploiting intrinsic motivations by integrating training with computer-gameplay. Sixty participants were randomly assigned to train on either a conventional task-based training, or one of two interactive game-based training platforms over six weeks. Outcomes included assessment of motivation, tinnitus handicap, and performance on tests of attention. Participants reported greater intrinsic motivation to train on the interactive game-based platforms, yet compliance of all three groups was similar (∼ 70%) and changes in self-reported tinnitus severity were not significant. There was no difference between groups in terms of change in tinnitus severity or performance on measures of attention. FDT can be integrated within an intrinsically motivating game. Whilst this may improve participant experience, in this instance it did not translate to additional compliance or therapeutic benefit. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02095262.	\N	\N
25218167	Knowing the context of a discourse is an essential prerequisite for comprehension. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to disclose brain networks supporting context-dependent speech comprehension. During fMRI, 20 participants listened to 1-min spoken narratives preceded by pictures that were either contextually matching or mismatching with the narrative. Matching pictures increased narrative comprehension, decreased hemodynamic activity in Broca׳s area, and enhanced its functional connectivity with left anterior superior frontal gyrus, bilateral inferior parietal cortex, as well as anterior and posterior cingulate cortex. Further, the anterior (BA 45) and posterior (BA 44) portions of Broca׳s area differed in their functional connectivity patterns. Both BA 44 and BA 45 have shown increased connectivity with right angular gyrus and supramarginal gyrus. Whereas BA 44 showed increased connectivity with left angular gyrus, left inferior/middle temporal gyrus and left postcentral gyrus, BA 45 showed increased connectivity with right posterior cingulate cortex, right anterior inferior frontal gyrus, lateral occipital cortex and anterior cingulate cortex. Our results suggest that a fronto-parietal functional network supports context-dependent narrative comprehension, and that Broca׳s area is involved in resolving ambiguity from speech when appropriate contextual cues are lacking.	\N	\N
25223106	A sound's duration provides important information about the event producing it. Although many of the sounds we hear every day are 'percussive' in nature (ie resulting from two objects impacting) and therefore exhibit decaying/damped amplitude envelopes, perceptual experiments frequently use tones synthesized with 'flat' or abruptly ending envelopes. Such sounds afford an estimation strategy involving calculating the elapsed time between tone onset and offset--a strategy that would be problematic for ecologically pervasive decaying sounds. Here we compare duration judgments for tones with percussive (ie gradually decaying) and flat (ie abruptly ending) amplitude envelopes, finding evidence for the use of different strategies. This result is discussed in terms of its implications for dominant theories and models of sensory perception that are often assessed using artificial sounds (ie 'flat tones') affording strategies that may not be optimal or even available for everyday listening.	\N	\N
25224031	In human and nonhuman primates, the cortical motor system comprises a collection of brain areas primarily related to motor control. Existing evidence suggests that no other mammalian group has the number, extension, and complexity of motor-related areas observed in the frontal lobe of primates. Such diversity is probably related to the wide behavioral flexibility that primates display. Indeed, recent comparative anatomical, psychophysical, and neurophysiological studies suggest that the evolution of the motor cortical areas closely correlates with the emergence of high cognitive abilities. Advances in understanding the cortical motor system have shown that these areas are also related to functions previously linked to higher-order associative areas. In addition, experimental observations have shown that the classical distinction between perceptual and motor functions is not strictly followed across cortical areas. In this paper, we review evidence suggesting that evolution of the motor system had a role in the shaping of different cognitive functions in primates. We argue that the increase in the complexity of the motor system has contributed to the emergence of new abilities observed in human and nonhuman primates, including the recognition and imitation of the actions of others, speech perception and production, and the execution and appreciation of the rhythmic structure of music.	\N	\N
25226375	We seek to determine the extent of age-related decline in speech perception performance among cochlear implant recipients as quantified by various metrics. Retrospective chart review. Tertiary referral center. The records of 70 postlingually deafened adults who received cochlear implants between 2004 and 2013 were reviewed. Unilateral cochlear implantation. Postoperative AzBio and Consonant-Nucleus-Consonant (CNC) scores at greater than 3 months postactivation. Group analyses comparing patients aged 65 years and older (elderly) with younger adult patients (control). In addition, multivariate linear regression analyses were performed that incorporated preoperative pure-tone audiograms, duration of deafness, duration of follow-up, sex, and laterality of the implanted ear to quantitate the dependence of AzBio and CNC results on age at implantation (AAI). Performance on AzBio for the control and elderly groups were 74.6% ± 4.1% and 59.5% ± 4.5% (p = 0.032), respectively. Performance on CNC scores were 63.9% ± 3.4% and 55.3% ± 3.3% (p = 0.098), respectively. Multiple linear regression showed a significant correlation of AzBio with AAI, whereas CNC did not correlate significantly (correlation coefficients = -0.006 and -0.003, p = 0.019 and 0.081, respectively). Patients implanted at a later age performed more poorly on AzBio sentences. A similar trend was noted with CNC scores although not significant. The variability in correlation coefficients and significance between both speech perception tests and AAI suggests that, as patients age, their performance on each individual test will be affected to a varying degree.	\N	\N
25234731	Mandarin Chinese is a lexical tone language that has four tones, with a change in tone denoting a change in lexical meaning. There are few studies regarding lexical tone identification abilities in deafened children using either cochlear implants (CIs) or hearing aids (HAs). Furthermore, no study has compared the lexical tone identification abilities of deafened children with their hearing devices turned on and off. The present study aimed to investigate the lexical tone identification abilities of deafened children with CIs or HAs. Forty prelingually deafened children (20 with CIs and 20 with HAs) participated in the study. In the HA group, 20 children were binaurally aided. In the CI group, all of the children were unilaterally implanted. All of the subjects completed a computerized lexical tone pairs test with their hearing devices turned on and off. The correct answers of all items were recorded as the total score and the correct answers of the tone pairs were recorded as subtotal scores. No significant differences in the tone pair identification scores were found between the CI group and HA group either with the devices turned on or off (t=1.62, p=0.11; t=1.863, p=0.07, respectively). The scores in the aided condition were higher than in the unaided condition regardless of the device used (t=22.09, p<0.001, in the HA group; t=20.20, p<0.001, in the CI group). Significantly higher scores were found in the tone pairs that contained tone 4. Age at fitting of the devices was correlated with tone identification abilities in both the CI and HA groups. Other demographic factors were not correlated with tone identification ability. The hearing device, whether a hearing aid or cochlear implant, is beneficial for tone identification. The lexical tone identification abilities were similar regardless of whether the subjects wore a HA or CI. Lexical tone pairs with different durations and dissimilar tone contour patterns are more easily identified. Receiving devices at earlier age tends to produce better lexical tone identification abilities in prelingually deafened children.	\N	\N
25234885	This study examined the ability of listeners to utilize syntactic structure to extract a target stream of speech from among competing sounds. Target talkers were identified by voice or location, which was held constant throughout a test utterance, and paired with correct or incorrect (random word order) target sentence syntax. Both voice and location provided reliable cues for identifying target speech even when other features varied unpredictably. The target sentences were masked either by predominantly energetic maskers (noise bursts) or by predominantly informational maskers (similar speech in random word order). When the maskers were noise bursts, target sentence syntax had relatively minor effects on identification performance. However, when the maskers were other talkers, correct target sentence syntax resulted in significantly better speech identification performance than incorrect syntax. Furthermore, conformance to correct syntax alone was sufficient to accurately identify the target speech. The results were interpreted as supporting the idea that the predictability of the elements comprising streams of speech, as manifested by syntactic structure, is an important factor in binding words together into coherent streams. Furthermore, these findings suggest that predictability is particularly important for maintaining the coherence of an auditory stream over time under conditions high in informational masking.	\N	\N
25235005	The contribution of recovered envelopes (RENVs) to the utilization of temporal-fine structure (TFS) speech cues was examined in normal-hearing listeners. Consonant identification experiments used speech stimuli processed to present TFS or RENV cues. Experiment 1 examined the effects of exposure and presentation order using 16-band TFS speech and 40-band RENV speech recovered from 16-band TFS speech. Prior exposure to TFS speech aided in the reception of RENV speech. Performance on the two conditions was similar (∼50%-correct) for experienced listeners as was the pattern of consonant confusions. Experiment 2 examined the effect of varying the number of RENV bands recovered from 16-band TFS speech. Mean identification scores decreased as the number of RENV bands decreased from 40 to 8 and were only slightly above chance levels for 16 and 8 bands. Experiment 3 examined the effect of varying the number of bands in the TFS speech from which 40-band RENV speech was constructed. Performance fell from 85%- to 31%-correct as the number of TFS bands increased from 1 to 32. Overall, these results suggest that the interpretation of previous studies that have used TFS speech may have been confounded with the presence of RENVs.	\N	\N
25243615	It is well established that categorising the emotional content of facial expressions may differ depending on contextual information. Whether this malleability is observed in the auditory domain and in genuine emotion expressions is poorly explored. We examined the perception of authentic laughter and crying in the context of happy, neutral and sad facial expressions. Participants rated the vocalisations on separate unipolar scales of happiness and sadness and on arousal. Although they were instructed to focus exclusively on the vocalisations, consistent context effects were found: For both laughter and crying, emotion judgements were shifted towards the information expressed by the face. These modulations were independent of response latencies and were larger for more emotionally ambiguous vocalisations. No effects of context were found for arousal ratings. These findings suggest that the automatic encoding of contextual information during emotion perception generalises across modalities, to purely non-verbal vocalisations, and is not confined to acted expressions.	\N	\N
25247311	Neonatal necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is associated with an increased incidence of poor neurodevelopment. The knowledge of underlying neurophysiology is very limited, and the influence of NEC on the preterm brainstem is very poorly understood. To assess the effect of NEC on the immature auditory brainstem by excluding any possible confounding effect of preterm birth. We recorded and analyzed brainstem auditory evoked response (BAER) at different click rates in preterm babies (30-34 weeks gestation) after NEC. The results were compared with those in age-matched healthy preterm babies who had no NEC. At click rate 21/s, the latencies of BAER waves I and III in the preterm NEC babies were similar to those babies without NEC. However, wave V latency was longer in the NEC babies than in those without NEC. The I-V interpeak interval was also longer in the NEC babies than in those without NEC. These abnormalities were persistent at higher click rates 51 and 91/s. Wave I amplitude in the preterm NEC babies did not differ significantly from that in those without NEC, but wave III and V amplitudes were smaller than in those without NEC at all 21-91/s clicks. Compared with healthy preterm babies, preterm babies after NEC showed a major increase in wave V latency and I-V interval at all 21-91/s clicks. Brainstem auditory function is impaired in preterm NEC babies after excluding the possible confounding effect of preterm birth. Neonatal NEC and associated perinatal conditions adversely affect the premature brainstem.	\N	\N
25248101	Using an auditory variant of task switching, we examined the ability to intentionally switch attention in a dichotic-listening task. In our study, participants responded selectively to one of two simultaneously presented auditory number words (spoken by a female and a male, one for each ear) by categorizing its numerical magnitude. The mapping of gender (female vs. male) and ear (left vs. right) was unpredictable. The to-be-attended feature for gender or ear, respectively, was indicated by a visual selection cue prior to auditory stimulus onset. In Experiment 1, explicitly cued switches of the relevant feature dimension (e.g., from gender to ear) and switches of the relevant feature within a dimension (e.g., from male to female) occurred in an unpredictable manner. We found large performance costs when the relevant feature switched, but switches of the relevant feature dimension incurred only small additional costs. The feature-switch costs were larger in ear-relevant than in gender-relevant trials. In Experiment 2, we replicated these findings using a simplified design (i.e., only within-dimension switches with blocked dimensions). In Experiment 3, we examined preparation effects by manipulating the cueing interval and found a preparation benefit only when ear was cued. Together, our data suggest that the large part of attentional switch costs arises from reconfiguration at the level of relevant auditory features (e.g., left vs. right) rather than feature dimensions (ear vs. gender). Additionally, our findings suggest that ear-based target selection benefits more from preparation time (i.e., time to direct attention to one ear) than gender-based target selection.	\N	\N
25255036	In human face-to-face communication, language comprehension is a multi-modal, situated activity. However, little is known about how we combine information from different modalities during comprehension, and how perceived communicative intentions, often signaled through visual signals, influence this process. We explored this question by simulating a multi-party communication context in which a speaker alternated her gaze between two recipients. Participants viewed speech-only or speech+gesture object-related messages when being addressed (direct gaze) or unaddressed (gaze averted to other participant). They were then asked to choose which of two object images matched the speaker's preceding message. Unaddressed recipients responded significantly more slowly than addressees for speech-only utterances. However, perceiving the same speech accompanied by gestures sped unaddressed recipients up to a level identical to that of addressees. That is, when unaddressed recipients' speech processing suffers, gestures can enhance the comprehension of a speaker's message. We discuss our findings with respect to two hypotheses attempting to account for how social eye gaze may modulate multi-modal language comprehension.	\N	\N
25261772	Amazing progress has been made in providing useful hearing to hearing-impaired individuals using cochlear implants, but challenges remain. One such challenge is understanding the effects of partial degeneration of the auditory nerve, the target of cochlear implant stimulation. Here we review studies from our human and animal laboratories aimed at characterizing the health of the implanted cochlea and the auditory nerve. We use the data on cochlear and neural health to guide rehabilitation strategies. The data also motivate the development of tissue-engineering procedures to preserve or build a healthy cochlea and improve performance obtained by cochlear implant recipients or eventually replace the need for a cochlear implant. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled <Lasker Award>.	\N	\N
25263528	Although children can use social categories to intelligently select informants, children's preference for in-group informants has not been consistently demonstrated across age and context. This research clarifies the extent to which children use social categories to guide learning by presenting participants with a live or video-recorded action demonstration by a linguistic in-group and/or out-group model. Participants' (N = 104) propensity to imitate these actions was assessed. Nineteen-month-olds did not selectively imitate the actions of the in-group model in live contexts, though in-group preferences were found after watching the demonstration on video. Three-year-olds selectively imitated the actions demonstrated by the in-group member regardless of context. These results indicate that in-group preferences have a more nuanced effect on social learning than previous research has indicated.	\N	\N
25269621	Despite the fact that no invariant acoustic property corresponds to a single stop consonant coupled with different vowels (e.g., [da], [de], and [du]), adults effortlessly identify the same consonant embedded in different syllables. In so doing, they solve the invariance problem. Can 3- and 6-month-olds solve it as well? To answer this question, we developed a novel methodology based on pupillometry. In Experiment 1, we demonstrated for the first time that infants are sensitive to the distinction between frequent and infrequent acoustic stimuli, showing greater pupil dilation in response to infrequent stimuli. Building on this effect, in Experiment 2, we showed that 6-month-olds, but not 3-month-olds, solve the invariance problem. Moreover, this ability develops before, and therefore independently of, the ability to produce well-formed syllables.	\N	\N
25275862	To compare within-subject bilateral-binaural and bimodal complementary abilities between bimodal (cochlear implant and hearing aid; CI/HA) and bilateral CI hearing (CI/CI), thereby enabling better-informed counseling of experienced CI/HA users contemplating contralateral implantation. Comparative within-subject case review. Outpatient hearing clinic. Ten experienced adult CI/HA users with severe-to-profound hearing loss in the HA ear, who converted to CI/CI between 2 and 11 years after initial implantation. Task-specific testing of bilateral-binaural hearing (sound lateralization, binaural summation/redundancy/unmasking, head-shadow effect), bimodal complementary benefit (contribution of low-frequency information), and a self-report Speech, Spatial, and Qualities of Hearing (SSQ) questionnaire, all before and 1 year after contralateral cochlear implantation. Test result differences between CI/HA and CI/CI conditions. CI/CI hearing was better than CI/HA for speech lateralization and for perception of semantically unpredictable sentences in speech noise with speech at 0 degrees and noise at +90 degrees azimuth on the old CI side. CI/HA was better than CI/CI only for differences between perception of natural prosody speech and of speech with flattened fundamental frequency (F0) contour with speech and noise in front (at 0 degrees azimuth). Total scores on the SSQ questionnaire were higher in CI/CI than in CI/HA users. Counseling regarding contralateral implantation for CI/HA users with severe-to-profound hearing loss in the HA ear, though generally positive, should consider individual functional needs, and cover expectations about the expected trade-off between gaining improved understanding and speech lateralization in challenging listening conditions and losing some low-frequency cues still available with CI/HA hearing.	\N	\N
25280122	Both psychological stress and predictive signals relating to expected sensory input are believed to influence perception, an influence which, when disrupted, may contribute to the generation of auditory hallucinations. The effect of stress and semantic expectation on auditory perception was therefore examined in healthy participants using an auditory signal detection task requiring the detection of speech from within white noise. Trait anxiety was found to predict the extent to which stress influenced response bias, resulting in more anxious participants adopting a more liberal criterion, and therefore experiencing more false positives, when under stress. While semantic expectation was found to increase sensitivity, its presence also generated a shift in response bias towards reporting a signal, suggesting that the erroneous perception of speech became more likely. These findings provide a potential cognitive mechanism that may explain the impact of stress on hallucination-proneness, by suggesting that stress has the tendency to alter response bias in highly anxious individuals. These results also provide support for the idea that top-down processes such as those relating to semantic expectation may contribute to the generation of auditory hallucinations.	\N	\N
25281311	Interactions between ourselves and the external world are mediated by a multisensory representation of the space surrounding the body, i.e. the peripersonal space (PPS). In particular, a special interplay is observed among tactile stimuli delivered on a body part, e.g. the hand, and visual or auditory external inputs presented close, but not far, from the same body part, e.g. within hand PPS. This coding of multisensory stimuli as a function of their distance from the hand has a role in upper limb actions. However, it remains unclear whether PPS representation affects the motor system only when stimuli occur specifically at the hand location or when they move within a continuous portion of space where the hand can potentially act. Here, in order to study these two alternatively hypotheses, we assessed the critical distance at which moving sounds have a direct effect on hand corticospinal excitability by using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS). Specifically, TMS single pulses were delivered when a sound source was perceived at six different positions in space: from very close to subjects' hand (15 cm) to far away (90 cm). Moreover, sound direction was manipulated to test if stimuli approaching and receding from the hand might have the same relevance for the motor system. MEPs amplitude was enhanced when sounds were delivered within a limited distance from the hand (around 60 cm) as compared to when the sounds were beyond this space. This effect captures the spatial boundaries within which PPS representation modulates hand cortico-motor excitability. This spatially-dependent modulation of corticospinal activity was not further affected by the sound direction. Such findings support a strict link between the multisensory representation of the space around the body and the motor representation of potential approaching or defensive acts within that space.	\N	\N
25282057	A fundamental question in language development is how infants start to assign meaning to words. Here, using three Electroencephalogram (EEG)-based measures of brain activity, we establish that preverbal 11-month-old infants are sensitive to the non-arbitrary correspondences between language sounds and concepts, that is, to sound symbolism. In each trial, infant participants were presented with a visual stimulus (e.g., a round shape) followed by a novel spoken word that either sound-symbolically matched ("moma") or mismatched ("kipi") the shape. Amplitude increase in the gamma band showed perceptual integration of visual and auditory stimuli in the match condition within 300 msec of word onset. Furthermore, phase synchronization between electrodes at around 400 msec revealed intensified large-scale, left-hemispheric communication between brain regions in the mismatch condition as compared to the match condition, indicating heightened processing effort when integration was more demanding. Finally, event-related brain potentials showed an increased adult-like N400 response - an index of semantic integration difficulty - in the mismatch as compared to the match condition. Together, these findings suggest that 11-month-old infants spontaneously map auditory language onto visual experience by recruiting a cross-modal perceptual processing system and a nascent semantic network within the first year of life.	\N	\N
25301567	Previous research has shown that the human auditory system continuously monitors its acoustic environment, detecting a variety of irregularities (e.g., deviance from prior stimulation regularity in pitch, loudness, duration, and (perceived) sound source location). Detection of irregularities can be inferred from a component of the event-related brain potential (ERP), referred to as the mismatch negativity (MMN), even in conditions in which participants are instructed to ignore the auditory stimulation. The current study extends previous findings by demonstrating that auditory irregularities brought about by a change in room acoustics elicit a MMN in a passive oddball protocol (acoustic stimuli with differing room acoustics, that were otherwise identical, were employed as standard and deviant stimuli), in which participants watched a fiction movie (silent with subtitles). While the majority of participants reported no awareness for any changes in the auditory stimulation, only one out of 14 participants reported to have become aware of changing room acoustics or sound source location. Together, these findings suggest automatic monitoring of room acoustics.	\N	\N
25305712	The pathophysiology of nonfluent primary progressive aphasia (nfvPPA) remains poorly understood. Here, we compared quantitatively speech parameters in patients with nfvPPA versus healthy older individuals under altered auditory feedback, which has been shown to modulate normal speech output. Patients (n=15) and healthy volunteers (n=17) were recorded while reading aloud under delayed auditory feedback [DAF] with latency 0, 50 or 200 ms and under DAF at 200 ms plus 0.5 octave upward pitch shift. DAF in healthy older individuals was associated with reduced speech rate and emergence of speech sound errors, particularly at latency 200 ms. Up to a third of the healthy older group under DAF showed speech slowing and frequency of speech sound errors within the range of the nfvPPA cohort. Our findings suggest that (in addition to any anterior, primary language output disorder) these key features of nfvPPA may reflect distorted speech input signal processing, as simulated by DAF. DAF may constitute a novel candidate pathophysiological model of posterior dorsal cortical language pathway dysfunction in nfvPPA.	\N	\N
25306203	Reduced auditory P300 amplitude is a robust schizophrenia deficit exhibiting the qualities of a viable genetic endophenotype. These include heritability, test-retest reliability, and trait-like stability. Recent evidence suggests that P300 may also serve as a predictive biomarker for transition to psychosis during the schizophrenia prodrome. Historically, the utility of the P300 has been limited by its clinical nonspecificity, cross-site measurement variability, and required EEG expertise. The Consortium on the Genetics of Schizophrenia (COGS-2) study provided an opportunity to examine the consistency of the measure across multiple sites with varying degrees of EEG experience, and to identify important modulating factors that contribute to measurement variability. Auditory P300 was acquired from 649 controls and 587 patients at 5 sites. An overall patient deficit was observed with effect size 0.62. Each site independently observed a significant patient deficit, but site differences also existed. In patients, site differences reflected clinical differences in positive symptomatology and functional capacity. In controls, site differences reflected differences in racial stratification, smoking and substance use history. These factors differentially suppressed the P300 response, but only in control subjects. This led to an attenuated patient-control difference among smokers and among African Americans with history of substance use. These findings indicate that the P300 can be adequately assessed quantitatively, across sites, without substantial EEG expertise. Measurements are suitable for both genetic endophenotype analyses and studies of psychosis risk and conversion. However, careful attention must be given to selection of appropriate comparison samples to avoid misleading false negative results.	\N	\N
25313714	Perception of spoken language requires attention to acoustic as well as visible phonetic information. This article reviews the known differences in audiovisual speech perception in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and specifies the need for interventions that address this construct. Elements of an audiovisual training program are described. This researcher-developed program delivered via an iPad app presents natural speech in the context of increasing noise, but supported with a speaking face. Children are cued to attend to visible articulatory information to assist in perception of the spoken words. Data from four children with ASD ages 8-10 are presented showing that the children improved their performance on an untrained auditory speech-in-noise task.	\N	\N
25319676	Subjective tinnitus is the perception of sound in the absence of a corresponding external sound for which there is no known medical etiology. For a minority of individuals with tinnitus, the condition impacts their ability to lead a normal lifestyle and is severely debilitating. There is no known cure for tinnitus, so current therapy focuses on reducing the effect of tinnitus on the patient's quality of life. Tinnitus retraining therapy (TRT) uses nonpsychiatric tinnitus-specific educational counseling and sound therapy in a habituation-based protocol to reduce the patient's tinnitus-evoked negative reaction to, and awareness of, the tinnitus, with the ultimate goal of reducing the tinnitus impact on the patient's quality of life. Some studies support the efficacy of TRT, but no trial to date has compared TRT with the current standard of care or evaluated the separate contributions of TRT counseling and sound therapy. The Tinnitus Retraining Therapy Trial (TRTT) is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter trial for individuals with intolerable tinnitus. The TRTT is enrolling active-duty and retired military personnel and their dependents with functionally adequate hearing sensitivity and severe tinnitus at US Air Force, Navy, and Army medical centers. Eligible study participants are randomized to TRT, partial TRT, or standard care to determine the efficacy of TRT and its components (TRT counseling and sound therapy). The primary outcome is change in score on the Tinnitus Questionnaire assessed longitudinally between baseline and follow-up (3, 6, 12, and 18 months following treatment). Secondary outcomes include subscale score changes in the Tinnitus Questionnaire, overall and subscale score changes in the Tinnitus Functional Index and Tinnitus Handicap Inventory, and change in the visual analog scale of the TRT Interview Form. Audiological outcomes include tinnitus pitch and loudness match and measures of loudness discomfort levels. The incidence of depression as a safety measure is assessed at each visit using the Beck Depression Inventory Fast Screen. Clinicaltrials.gov NCT01177137.	\N	\N
25324150	Recent literature reviews have highlighted the need to better understand the relation between speaker and listener behavior when teaching learners with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The current study used a modified parallel-treatments design to compare directly the degree to which tact and listener behavior emerged during instruction in the opposite relation for 4 children with ASD. Results showed tact training to be either equally or more efficient than listener training for all participants. However, varied patterns of emergent responding across participants indicate a need for further research. Data on collateral responding during instruction did not suggest that the presence or absence of overt collateral behaviors were predictive of emergence. The results highlight the importance for clinicians and educators to assess emergent tact and listener repertoires periodically.	\N	\N
25324726	Our concepts of sound localization in the vertebrate brain are widely based on the general assumption that both the ability to detect air-borne sounds and the neuronal processing are homologous in archosaurs (present day crocodiles and birds) and mammals. Yet studies repeatedly report conflicting results on the neuronal circuits and mechanisms, in particular the role of inhibition, as well as the coding strategies between avian and mammalian model systems. Here we argue that mammalian and avian phylogeny of spatial hearing is characterized by a convergent evolution of hearing air-borne sounds rather than by homology. In particular, the different evolutionary origins of tympanic ears and the different availability of binaural cues in early mammals and archosaurs imposed distinct constraints on the respective binaural processing mechanisms. The role of synaptic inhibition in generating binaural spatial sensitivity in mammals is highlighted, as it reveals a unifying principle of mammalian circuit design for encoding sound position. Together, we combine evolutionary, anatomical and physiological arguments for making a clear distinction between mammalian processing mechanisms and coding strategies and those of archosaurs. We emphasize that a consideration of the convergent nature of neuronal mechanisms will significantly increase the explanatory power of studies of spatial processing in both mammals and birds.	\N	\N
25325783	Visual crowding is generally thought to affect recognition mostly or only at the level of feature combination. Calling this assertion into question, recent studies have shown that if a target object and its flankers belong to different categories crowding is weaker than if they belong to the same category. Nevertheless, these results can be explained in terms of featural differences between categories. The current study tests if category-level (i.e., high-level) interference in crowding occurs when featural differences are controlled for. First, replicating previous results, we found lower critical spacing for targets and flankers belonging to different categories. Second, we observed the same, albeit weaker, category-specific effect when objects in both categories had the exact same feature set, suggesting that category-specific effects persist even when featural differences are fully controlled for. Third, we manipulated the semantic content of the flankers while keeping their feature set constant, by using upright or rotated objects, and found that meaning modulated crowding. An exclusively feature-based account of crowding would predict no differences due to such changes in meaning. We conclude that crowding results from not only the well-documented feature-level interactions but also additional interactions at a level where objects are grouped by meaning.	\N	\N
25326606	What is the perceptual fate of invisible stimuli-are they processed at all and does their processing have consequences for the perception of other stimuli? As has been shown previously in the somatosensory system, even stimuli that are too weak to be consciously detected can influence our perception: Subliminal stimulation impairs perception of near-threshold stimuli and causes a functional deactivation in the somatosensory cortex. In a recent study, we showed that subliminal visual stimuli lead to similar responses, indicated by an increase in alpha-band power as measured with electroencephalography (EEG). In the current study, we investigated whether a behavioral inhibitory mechanism also exists within the visual system. We tested the detection of peripheral visual target stimuli under three different conditions: Target stimuli were presented alone or embedded in a concurrent train of subliminal stimuli either at the same location as the target or in the opposite hemifield. Subliminal stimuli were invisible due to their low contrast, not due to a masking procedure. We demonstrate that target detection was impaired by the subliminal stimuli, but only when they were presented at the same location as the target. This finding indicates that subliminal, low-intensity stimuli induce a similar inhibitory effect in the visual system as has been observed in the somatosensory system. In line with previous reports, we propose that the function underlying this effect is the inhibition of spurious noise by the visual system.	\N	\N
25332098	Development and evolution of auditory hindbrain nuclei are two major unsolved issues in hearing research. Recent characterization of transgenic mice identified the rhombomeric origins of mammalian auditory nuclei and unraveled genes involved in their formation. Here, we provide an overview on these data by assembling them into rhombomere-specific gene regulatory networks (GRNs), as they underlie developmental and evolutionary processes. To explore evolutionary mechanisms, we compare the GRNs operating in the mammalian auditory hindbrain with data available from the inner ear and other vertebrate groups. Finally, we propose that the availability of genomic sequences from all major vertebrate taxa and novel genetic techniques for non-model organisms provide an unprecedented opportunity to investigate development and evolution of the auditory hindbrain by comparative molecular approaches. The dissection of the molecular mechanisms leading to auditory structures will also provide an important framework for auditory processing disorders, a clinical problem difficult to tackle so far. These data will, therefore, foster basic and clinical hearing research alike.	\N	\N
25344346	It is increasingly recognized that motor routines dynamically shape the processing of sensory inflow (e.g., when hand movements are used to feel a texture or identify an object). In the present research, we captured the shaping of auditory perception by movement in humans by taking advantage of a specific context: music. Participants listened to a repeated rhythmical sequence before and after moving their bodies to this rhythm in a specific meter. We found that the brain responses to the rhythm (as recorded with electroencephalography) after body movement were significantly enhanced at frequencies related to the meter to which the participants had moved. These results provide evidence that body movement can selectively shape the subsequent internal representation of auditory rhythms.	\N	\N
25346316	In the United States, falls are the leading cause of accidental deaths in adults aged over 65 years. Epidemiologic studies indicate that there is a correlation between hearing loss and the risk of falling among older people. The vestibular, proprioceptive, and visual systems are known to contribute to postural stability, but the contribution of audition to maintaining balance has not yet been determined. Cross-sectional study to measure postural stability in bilateral hearing-aid users aged over 65 years in aided and unaided conditions. Balance was assessed using the Romberg on foam test and the tandem stance test. Tests were administered in the presence of a point-source broadband white-noise sound (0-4 kHz) source in both unaided and aided conditions in the dark. Subjective measures of balance were made using the Activities-specific Balance Confidence Scale. Performance was significantly better in the aided than the unaided condition (P = 0.005 for both tests). No statistically significant relationship between improvement in balance, and hearing was identified. Participants did not report that they perceived a difference in balance between the two conditions. These results indicate that hearing aids are a novel treatment modality for imbalance in older adults with hearing loss and suggest that wearing hearing aids may offer a significant public-health benefit for avoiding falls in this population.	\N	\N
25350757	This study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to assess effects of low-level prenatal lead exposure on auditory recognition memory in 2-month-old infants. Infants were divided into four groups according to cord-blood lead concentration: (1) <2.00 μ g/dL, (2) 2.00-2.99 μ g/dL, (3) 3.0-3.7 μ g/dL, and (4) ≥3.7 μ g/dL. The first group showed the normally expected differences in P2, P750, and late slow wave (LSW) amplitudes elicited by mothers' and strangers' voices. These differences were not observed for one or more ERP components in the other groups. Thus, there was electrophysiological evidence of poorer auditory recognition memory at 2 months with cord-blood lead ≥2.00 μ g/dL.	\N	\N
25358027	To evaluate a speech-processing strategy in which the lowest frequency channel is conveyed using an asymmetric pulse shape and "phantom stimulation", where current is injected into one intra-cochlear electrode and where the return current is shared between an intra-cochlear and an extra-cochlear electrode. This strategy is expected to provide more selective excitation of the cochlear apex, compared to a standard strategy where the lowest-frequency channel is conveyed by symmetric pulses in monopolar mode. In both strategies all other channels were conveyed by monopolar stimulation. Within-subjects comparison between the two strategies. Four experiments: (1) discrimination between the strategies, controlling for loudness differences, (2) consonant identification, (3) recognition of lowpass-filtered sentences in quiet, (4) sentence recognition in the presence of a competing speaker. Eight users of the Advanced Bionics CII/Hi-Res 90k cochlear implant. Listeners could easily discriminate between the two strategies but no consistent differences in performance were observed. The proposed method does not improve speech perception, at least in the short term.	\N	\N
25358716	Information processing of all acoustic stimuli involves temporal lobe regions referred to as auditory cortices, which receive direct afferents from the auditory thalamus. However, the perception of music (as well as speech or spoken language) is a complex process that also involves secondary and association cortices that conform a large functional network. Using different analytical techniques and stimulation paradigms, several studies have shown that certain areas are particularly sensitive to specific acoustic characteristics inherent to music (e.g., rhythm). This chapter reviews the functional anatomy of the auditory cortices, and highlights specific experiments that suggest the existence of distinct cortical networks for the perception of music and speech.	\N	\N
25373970	Otoacoustic emission (OAE) tests of the medial-olivocochlear reflex (MOCR) in humans were assessed for viability as clinical assays. Two reflection-source OAEs [TEOAEs: transient-evoked otoacoustic emissions evoked by a 47 dB sound pressure level (SPL) chirp; and discrete-tone SFOAEs: stimulus-frequency otoacoustic emissions evoked by 40 dB SPL tones, and assessed with a 60 dB SPL suppressor] were compared in 27 normal-hearing adults. The MOCR elicitor was a 60 dB SPL contralateral broadband noise. An estimate of MOCR strength, MOCR%, was defined as the vector difference between OAEs measured with and without the elicitor, normalized by OAE magnitude (without elicitor). An MOCR was reliably detected in most ears. Within subjects, MOCR strength was correlated across frequency bands and across OAE type. The ratio of across-subject variability to within-subject variability ranged from 2 to 15, with wideband TEOAEs and averaged SFOAEs giving the highest ratios. MOCR strength in individual ears was reliably classified into low, normal, and high groups. SFOAEs using 1.5 to 2 kHz tones and TEOAEs in the 0.5 to 2.5 kHz band gave the best statistical results. TEOAEs had more clinical advantages. Both assays could be made faster for clinical applications, such as screening for individual susceptibility to acoustic trauma in a hearing-conservation program.	\N	\N
25385771	The ability to perceive a regular beat in music and synchronize to this beat is a widespread human skill. Fundamental to musical behaviour, beat and meter refer to the perception of periodicities while listening to musical rhythms and often involve spontaneous entrainment to move on these periodicities. Here, we present a novel experimental approach inspired by the frequency-tagging approach to understand the perception and production of rhythmic inputs. This approach is illustrated here by recording the human electroencephalogram responses at beat and meter frequencies elicited in various contexts: mental imagery of meter, spontaneous induction of a beat from rhythmic patterns, multisensory integration and sensorimotor synchronization. Collectively, our observations support the view that entrainment and resonance phenomena subtend the processing of musical rhythms in the human brain. More generally, they highlight the potential of this approach to help us understand the link between the phenomenology of musical beat and meter and the bias towards periodicities arising under certain circumstances in the nervous system. Entrainment to music provides a highly valuable framework to explore general entrainment mechanisms as embodied in the human brain.	\N	\N
25385777	Physiological rhythms are sensitive to social interactions and could contribute to defining social rhythms. Nevertheless, our knowledge of the implications of breathing in conversational turn exchanges remains limited. In this paper, we addressed the idea that breathing may contribute to timing and coordination between dialogue partners. The relationships between turns and breathing were analysed in unconstrained face-to-face conversations involving female speakers. No overall relationship between breathing and turn-taking rates was observed, as breathing rate was specific to the subjects' activity in dialogue (listening versus taking the turn versus holding the turn). A general inter-personal coordination of breathing over the whole conversation was not evident. However, specific coordinative patterns were observed in shorter time-windows when participants engaged in taking turns. The type of turn-taking had an effect on the respective coordination in breathing. Most of the smooth and interrupted turns were taken just after an inhalation, with specific profiles of alignment to partner breathing. Unsuccessful attempts to take the turn were initiated late in the exhalation phase and with no clear inter-personal coordination. Finally, breathing profiles at turn-taking were different than those at turn-holding. The results support the idea that breathing is actively involved in turn-taking and turn-holding.	\N	\N
25401380	Interference between a target and simultaneous maskers occurs both at the cochlear level through energetic masking and more centrally through informational masking (IM). Hence, quantifying the amount of IM requires a strict control of the energetic component. Presenting target and maskers on different sides (i.e., dichotically) reduces energetic masking but provides listeners with important lateralization cues that also drastically reduce IM. The main purpose of this study (Experiment 1) was to evaluate a "switch" manipulation aiming at restoring most of the IM despite dichotic listening. Experiment 2 was designed to investigate the source of the difficulty induced by this switching dichotic condition. In Experiment 1, the authors presented 60 normal-hearing young adults with a detection task in which a regularly repeating target was embedded in a randomly varying background masker. The authors evaluated spatial masking release induced by three different dichotic listening conditions in comparison with a diotic baseline. Dichotic stimuli were presented in either a nonswitching or a switching condition. In the latter case, the presentation sides of dichotic target and maskers alternated several times throughout 10 sec sequences. The impact of the number of switches on IM was investigated parametrically, with both pure and complex tone sequences. In Experiment 2, the authors compared performance of 13 young, normal-hearing listeners in a monotic and dichotic version of the rapidly switching condition, using pure-tone sequences. When target and maskers switched rapidly within sequences, IM was significantly stronger than in nonswitching dichotic sequences and was comparable with the masking effect induced by diotic sequences. Furthermore, Experiment 2 suggests that rapidly switching target and maskers prevent listeners from relying on lateralization cues inherent to the dichotic condition, hence preserving important amounts of IM. This paradigm thus provides an original tool to isolate IM in signal and maskers having overlapping spectra.	\N	\N
25412406	Speech comprehension studies have generally focused on the isolation and function of regions with positive blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signals with respect to a resting baseline. Although regions with negative BOLD signals in comparison to a resting baseline have been reported in language-related tasks, their relationship to regions of positive signals is not fully appreciated. Based on the emerging notion that the negative signals may represent an active function in language tasks, the authors test the hypothesis that negative BOLD signals during receptive language are more associated with comprehension than content-free versions of the same stimuli. Regions associated with comprehension of speech were isolated by comparing responses to passive listening to natural speech to two incomprehensible versions of the same speech: one that was digitally time reversed and one that was muffled by removal of high frequencies. The signal polarity was determined by comparing the BOLD signal during each speech condition to the BOLD signal during a resting baseline. As expected, stimulation-induced positive signals relative to resting baseline were observed in the canonical language areas with varying signal amplitudes for each condition. Negative BOLD responses relative to resting baseline were observed primarily in frontoparietal regions and were specific to the natural speech condition. However, the BOLD signal remained indistinguishable from baseline for the unintelligible speech conditions. Variations in connectivity between brain regions with positive and negative signals were also specifically related to the comprehension of natural speech. These observations of anticorrelated signals related to speech comprehension are consistent with emerging models of cooperative roles represented by BOLD signals of opposite polarity.	\N	\N
25415467	To determine differences in speech perception outcomes for patients who received a CI422 and a Contour cochlear implant. Retrospective case review. Tertiary referral center. Thirty-two adults who underwent cochlear implantation. Cochlear implantation using a CI422 or Contour device. Bamford-Kowal-Bench (BKB) speech perception scores at 3 and 9 months after activation. The mean BKB scores at 3 months for the CI422 device were 86.0% in quiet and 55.1% in noise. This compares with 86.0% in quiet and 62.3% in noise for the Contour device. At 9 months, the mean BKB scores were 85.9% in quiet and 67.1% in noise for the CI422 and 90.1% in quiet and 77.6% in noise for the Contour device. There was no statistically significant difference (p > 0.05) between speech perception outcomes at 3 or 9 months. This study suggests that CI422 and Contour electrode both improve speech perception outcomes postoperatively, and there does not appear to be any significant difference in outcome between the two types of devices.	\N	\N
25415938	Embodied music cognition stresses the role of the human body as mediator for the encoding and decoding of musical expression. In this paper, we set up a low dimensional functional model that accounts for 70% of the variability in the expressive body movement responses to music. With the functional principal component analysis, we modeled individual body movements as a linear combination of a group average and a number of eigenfunctions. The group average and the eigenfunctions are common to all subjects and make up what we call the commonalities. An individual performance is then characterized by a set of scores (the individualities), one score per eigenfunction. The model is based on experimental data which finds high levels of coherence/consistency between participants when grouped according to musical education. This shows an ontogenetic effect. Participants without formal musical education focus on the torso for the expression of basic musical structure (tempo). Musically trained participants decode additional structural elements in the music and focus on body parts having more degrees of freedom (such as the hands). Our results confirm earlier studies that different body parts move differently along with the music.	\N	\N
25421408	Individuals lip read themselves more accurately than they lip read others when only the visual speech signal is available (Tye-Murray et al., Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 20, 115-119, 2013). This self-advantage for vision-only speech recognition is consistent with the common-coding hypothesis (Prinz, European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 9, 129-154, 1997), which posits (1) that observing an action activates the same motor plan representation as actually performing that action and (2) that observing one's own actions activates motor plan representations more than the others' actions because of greater congruity between percepts and corresponding motor plans. The present study extends this line of research to audiovisual speech recognition by examining whether there is a self-advantage when the visual signal is added to the auditory signal under poor listening conditions. Participants were assigned to sub-groups for round-robin testing in which each participant was paired with every member of their subgroup, including themselves, serving as both talker and listener/observer. On average, the benefit participants obtained from the visual signal when they were the talker was greater than when the talker was someone else and also was greater than the benefit others obtained from observing as well as listening to them. Moreover, the self-advantage in audiovisual speech recognition was significant after statistically controlling for individual differences in both participants' ability to benefit from a visual speech signal and the extent to which their own visual speech signal benefited others. These findings are consistent with our previous finding of a self-advantage in lip reading and with the hypothesis of a common code for action perception and motor plan representation.	\N	\N
25436670	Sound waves emitted by two or more simultaneous sources reach the ear as one complex waveform. Auditory scene analysis involves parsing a complex waveform into separate perceptual representations of the sound sources [Bregman, A. S. Auditory scene analysis: The perceptual organization of sounds. London: MIT Press, 1990]. Harmonicity provides an important cue for auditory scene analysis. Normally, harmonics at integer multiples of a fundamental frequency are perceived as one sound with a pitch corresponding to the fundamental frequency. However, when one harmonic in such a complex, pitch-evoking sound is sufficiently mistuned, that harmonic emerges from the complex tone and is perceived as a separate auditory object. Previous work has shown that the percept of two objects is indexed in both children and adults by the object-related negativity component of the ERP derived from EEG recordings [Alain, C., Arnott, S. T., & Picton, T. W. Bottom-up and top-down influences on auditory scene analysis: Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 27, 1072-1089, 2001]. Here we examine the emergence of object-related responses to an 8% harmonic mistuning in infants between 2 and 12 months of age. Two-month-old infants showed no significant object-related response. However, in 4- to 12-month-old infants, a significant frontally positive component was present, and by 8-12 months, a significant frontocentral object-related negativity was present, similar to that seen in older children and adults. This is in accordance with previous research demonstrating that infants younger than 4 months of age do not integrate harmonic information to perceive pitch when the fundamental is missing [He, C., Hotson, L., & Trainor, L. J. Maturation of cortical mismatch mismatch responses to occasional pitch change in early infancy: Effects of presentation rate and magnitude of change. Neuropsychologia, 47, 218-229, 2009]. The results indicate that the ability to use harmonic information to segregate simultaneous sounds emerges at the cortical level between 2 and 4 months of age.	\N	\N
25445239	In this study we validate passive language fMRI protocols designed for clinical application in pediatric epilepsy surgical planning as they do not require overt participation from patients. We introduced a set of quality checks that assess reliability of noninvasive fMRI mappings utilized for clinical purposes. We initially compared two fMRI language mapping paradigms, one active in nature (requiring participation from the patient) and the other passive in nature (requiring no participation from the patient). Group-level analysis in a healthy control cohort demonstrated similar activation of the putative language centers of the brain in the inferior frontal (IFG) and temporoparietal (TPG) regions. Additionally, we showed that passive language fMRI produced more left-lateralized activation in TPG (LI=+0.45) compared to the active task; with similarly robust left-lateralized IFG (LI=+0.24) activations using the passive task. We validated our recommended fMRI mapping protocols in a cohort of 15 pediatric epilepsy patients by direct comparison against the invasive clinical gold-standards. We found that language-specific TPG activation by fMRI agreed to within 9.2mm to subdural localizations by invasive functional mapping in the same patients, and language dominance by fMRI agreed with Wada test results at 80% congruency in TPG and 73% congruency in IFG. Lastly, we tested the recommended passive language fMRI protocols in a cohort of very young patients and confirmed reliable language-specific activation patterns in that challenging cohort. We concluded that language activation maps can be reliably achieved using the passive language fMRI protocols we proposed even in very young (average 7.5 years old) or sedated pediatric epilepsy patients.	\N	\N
25449865	Utilizing the high temporal resolution of event-related potentials (ERPs), we examined the effects of temporal reliability of sounds on visual detection. Significantly faster reaction times to visual target stimuli were observed when reliable temporal information was provided by a task-irrelevant auditory stimulus. Three main ERP components related to the effects of auditory temporal reliability were found: the first at 180-240 ms over a wide central area, the second at 300-400 ms over an anterior area, and the third at 300-380 ms over bilateral temporal areas. Our results support the hypothesis that temporal reliability affects visual detection and indicate that auditory facilitation of visual detection is partly due to spread of attention and thus results from implicit temporal linking of auditory and visual information at a relatively late processing stage.	\N	\N
25473957	To examine the differences in quality of life for vestibular schwannoma patients undergoing conservative management, gamma knife, and surgery. Vestibular schwannoma patients without a diagnosis of NF2. Vestibular schwannoma treatment or conservative management. Penn Acoustic Neuroma Quality of Life (PANQOL) survey scores (0-100). One hundred eighty-six patients (98 conservative, 49 gamma knife, 39 surgery) were included. Mean patient age (years) of the surgery group (49 ± 14) was significantly younger than both the conservative (58 ± 13) and gamma knife group (59 ± 12) (p < 0.001). Mean follow-up time was 2.6 years.Tumor size (mm) was found to be significantly different between the conservative (8 ± 4.8), gamma knife (18 ± 5.9), and surgery (22 ± 8.3) groups (p < 0.001). Speech recognition threshold and speech discrimination percentage were significantly better for the conservative group compared to the gamma knife or surgery groups (p < 0.001).The hearing domain scores seemed better for the conservative group (62 ± 26) when compared to the surgery group (47 ± 25). The general and total domain scores were similar for all treatment groups, whereas the quality-of-life scores for gamma knife and surgery were similar. Although surgery groups' significantly larger tumors and worse hearing were apparent in specific PANQOL domains, all patients achieved a similar general level of quality of life.	\N	\N
25474416	One of the major complaints of people with a single-sided deafness is the inability to localize sound sources. Evidence suggests that subjects with a hearing loss can benefit from the use of a cochlear implant (CI) in sound localization. This study aimed to determine the effect of CI use on localization ability in unilaterally deafened subjects. Sixteen adult subjects with postlingual unilateral deafness, fitted with a CI on the deaf side, were included in this study. The auditory speech sounds evaluation (A§E) localization test was used to determine localization with a CI on (binaural) and a CI off (monaural). The root mean square error was used as a measure of the subject's localization performance. Stratified analyses were performed to test the influence of gender, age of implantation (<55 years and >55 years), and the duration of deafness (<10 years and >10 years) on localization ability. Subjects with a CI on localized significantly better than without a CI. Gender, age, and the duration of deafness had no effect on the localization ability of the subjects. Cochlear implantation is effective in improving localization abilities in subjects with unilateral deafness. The root mean square error dropped significantly with binaural hearing compared to monaural hearing.	\N	\N
25477777	For multimodal Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), it is very useful to identify the modalities on which the user is currently processing information. This would enable a system to select complementary output modalities to reduce the user's workload. In this paper, we develop a hybrid Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) which uses Electroencephalography (EEG) and functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to discriminate and detect visual and auditory stimulus processing. We describe the experimental setup we used for collection of our data corpus with 12 subjects. On this data, we performed cross-validation evaluation, of which we report accuracy for different classification conditions. The results show that the subject-dependent systems achieved a classification accuracy of 97.8% for discriminating visual and auditory perception processes from each other and a classification accuracy of up to 94.8% for detecting modality-specific processes independently of other cognitive activity. The same classification conditions could also be discriminated in a subject-independent fashion with accuracy of up to 94.6 and 86.7%, respectively. We also look at the contributions of the two signal types and show that the fusion of classifiers using different features significantly increases accuracy.	\N	\N
25480056	Mounting evidence suggests that listeners perceptually compensate for the adverse effects of reverberation in rooms when listening to speech monaurally. However, it is not clear whether the underlying perceptual mechanism would be at all effective in the high levels of stimulus uncertainty that are present in everyday listening. Three experiments investigated monaural compensation with a consonant identification task in which listeners heard different speech on each trial. Consonant confusions frequently arose when a greater degree of reverberation was added to a test-word than to its surrounding context, but compensation became apparent in conditions where the context reverberation was increased to match that of the test-word; here, the confusions were largely resolved. A second experiment shows that information from the test-word itself can also effect compensation. Finally, the time course of compensation was examined by applying reverberation to a portion of the preceding context; consonant identification improves as this portion increases in duration. These findings indicate a monaural compensation mechanism that is likely to be effective in everyday listening, allowing listeners to recalibrate as their reverberant environment changes.	\N	\N
25486827	Temporal summation in masking has been measured simultaneously with a resolution of the masker's spectral structure to find psychoacoustic characteristics for estimation of speech intelligibility, to detect the manifestation of peripheral processes in auditory perception in humans. For this, detection thresholds of a test signal with different durations were determined. The test signal was pulse with a Gaussian envelope and a sine-wave carrier. It was presented simultaneously with a noise masker. The minimal pulse duration was inversely proportional to width of the critical bands of hearing, formed at the pulse's center frequency. The maximal pulse duration always was 50 ms. We adopted pulses with duration of 1-10 ms as a model of consonants and pulses with duration of 20-50 ms as a model of vowels. The band pass noises with rippled structure of the amplitude spectrum of two types were used as maskers. The central frequency of one masker coincided with a spectral hump and the central frequency of the other--with the spectral failure. If the pulses and maskers central frequencies were equal, the first and second maskers were called on- and - off- maskers. If the auditory system could discriminate the rippled structure of the masker's spectra, the difference in the detection thresholds of the pulses, which was presented with each of the maskers, was not equal to zero. The difference in the detection thresholds allows us to estimate resolution of the masker's spectra, i.e. frequency selectivity. Changes in the pulse's and masker's central frequencies allow us to evaluate the hearing ability in certain frequency domain. Changes in the masker's levels allow us to find influence of nonlinear dynamic properties of cochlea on temporal summation and frequency selectivity. This paper presents the results of measurements of temporal summation in masking, obtained in two frequency domains 2 and 4 kHz, in 4 subjects with normal hearing and in 1 subject with age-related hearing loss, who complained about deterioration of speech intelligibility. It has been found an increasing temporal summation and an improving the resolution of the rippled structure of the amplitude spectra for the maskers with average levels. We believe, the reasons could be found in the properties of the peripheral pulse coding, such as (1) the stabilization zones of excitation of the basilar.membrane, the range of the characteristic frequencies and the number of excited auditory nerve fibers and the number ofspikes, generated by fibers, due to the nonlinearity of the dynamic properties of the cochlea, (2) increasing synchronization of a reaction of the excited fibers and shortening in time of this reaction, due to thefiber's refractory properties.	\N	\N
25514452	Temporal processing ability has been linked to speech understanding ability and older adults often complain of difficulty understanding speech in difficult listening situations. Temporal processing can be evaluated using gap detection procedures. There is some research showing that gap detection can be evaluated using an electrophysiological procedure. However, there is currently no research establishing gap detection threshold using the N1-P2 response. The purposes of the current study were to 1) determine gap detection thresholds in younger and older normal-hearing adults using an electrophysiological measure, 2) compare the electrophysiological gap detection threshold and behavioral gap detection threshold within each group, and 3) investigate the effect of age on each gap detection measure. This study utilized an older adult group and younger adult group to compare performance on an electrophysiological and behavioral gap detection procedure. The subjects in this study were 11 younger, normal-hearing adults (mean = 22 yrs) and 11 older, normal-hearing adults (mean = 64.36 yrs). All subjects completed an adaptive behavioral gap detection procedure in order to determine their behavioral gap detection threshold (BGDT). Subjects also completed an electrophysiologic gap detection procedure to determine their electrophysiologic gap detection threshold (EGDT). Older adults demonstrated significantly larger gap detection thresholds than the younger adults. However, EGDT and BGDT were not significantly different in either group. The mean difference between EGDT and BGDT for all subjects was 0.43 msec. Older adults show poorer gap detection ability when compared to younger adults. However, this study shows that gap detection thresholds can be measured using evoked potential recordings and yield results similar to a behavioral measure.	\N	\N
25517630	Auditory processing disorder patients may have deficits in auditory temporal resolution. This study explored: (1) the ear specific norms for young adults using the adaptive tests of temporal resolution (ATTR); (2) the reliability of ATTR using two different modes of stimuli presentation; and (3) the concurrent validity of ATTR with reference to the gaps-in-noise (GIN) test. GIN and ATTR were administered through a standard audiometer and headphones. As ATTR can also be completed using a computer with commercially available headphones, thresholds from these two variants were compared. Thirty normal-hearing young adults were recruited. The mean ATTR gap detection thresholds (GDTs) derived under audiometer administration were 4.60 ms (SD 1.49) and 4.97 ms (SD 1.98) for the left and right ear, respectively. The approximated threshold (A. th.), an equivalent measure to the GDT in the GIN, mean values were 5.37 ms (SD 0.98) and 5.33 ms (SD 1.07) for left and right ears, respectively. No significant threshold difference was found between the ATTR variants. A positive, moderate correlation was found, and Bland-Altman plot analysis revealed good agreement, between GDT and A.th. ATTR and GIN results were moderately associated. Moreover, the ATTR was found to have high test-retest reliability and high specificity for the current participants.	\N	\N
25521593	A new approach for the segregation of monaural sound mixtures is presented based on the principle of temporal coherence and using auditory cortical representations. Temporal coherence is the notion that perceived sources emit coherently modulated features that evoke highly-coincident neural response patterns. By clustering the feature channels with coincident responses and reconstructing their input, one may segregate the underlying source from the simultaneously interfering signals that are uncorrelated with it. The proposed algorithm requires no prior information or training on the sources. It can, however, gracefully incorporate cognitive functions and influences such as memories of a target source or attention to a specific set of its attributes so as to segregate it from its background. Aside from its unusual structure and computational innovations, the proposed model provides testable hypotheses of the physiological mechanisms of this ubiquitous and remarkable perceptual ability, and of its psychophysical manifestations in navigating complex sensory environments.	\N	\N
25534365	The temporal masking curve (TMC) method is a behavioral technique for inferring human cochlear compression. The method relies on the assumptions that in the absence of compression, forward-masking recovery is independent of masker level and probe frequency. The present study aimed at testing the validity of these assumptions. Masking recovery was investigated for eight listeners with sensorineural hearing loss carefully selected to have absent or nearly absent distortion product otoacoustic emissions. It is assumed that for these listeners basilar membrane responses are linear, hence that masking recovery is independent of basilar membrane compression. TMCs for probe frequencies of 0.5, 1, 2, 4, and 6 kHz were available for these listeners from a previous study. The dataset included TMCs for masker frequencies equal to the probe frequencies plus reference TMCs measured using a high-frequency probe and a low, off-frequency masker. All of the TMCs were fitted using linear regression, and the resulting slope and intercept values were taken as indicative of masking recovery and masker level, respectively. Results for on-frequency TMCs suggest that forward-masking recovery is generally independent of probe frequency and of masker level and hence that it would be reasonable to use a reference TMC for a high-frequency probe to infer cochlear compression at lower frequencies. Results further show, however, that reference TMCs were sometimes shallower than corresponding on-frequency TMCs for identical probe frequencies, hence that compression could be overestimated in these cases. We discuss possible reasons for this result and the conditions when it might occur.	\N	\N
25536846	We explored the functional units of speech segmentation in Japanese using dichotic presentation and a detection task requiring no intentional sublexical analysis. Indeed, illusory perception of a target word might result from preattentive migration of phonemes, morae, or syllables from one ear to the other. In Experiment I, Japanese listeners detected targets presented in hiragana and/or kanji. Phoneme migrations did occur, suggesting that orthography-independent sublexical constituents play some role in segmentation. However, syllable and especially mora migrations were more numerous. This pattern of results was not observed in French speakers (Experiment 2), suggesting that it reflects native segmentation in Japanese. To control for the intervention of kanji representations (many words are written in kanji, and one kanji often corresponds to one syllable), in Experiment 3, Japanese listeners were presented with target loanwords that can be written only in katakana. Again, phoneme migrations occurred, while the first mora and syllable led to similar rates of illusory percepts. No migration occurred for the second, "special" mora (/J/ or/N/), probably because this constitutes the latter part of a heavy syllable. Overall, these findings suggest that multiple units, such as morae, syllables, and even phonemes, function independently of orthographic knowledge in Japanese preattentive speech segmentation.	\N	\N
25546030	A study was conducted to determine whether modifications to input compression and input frequency response characteristics can improve music-listening satisfaction in cochlear implant users. Experiment 1 compared three pre-processed versions of music and speech stimuli in a laboratory setting: original, compressed, and flattened frequency response. Music excerpts comprised three music genres (classical, country, and jazz), and a running speech excerpt was compared. Experiment 2 implemented a flattened input frequency response in the speech processor program. In a take-home trial, participants compared unaltered and flattened frequency responses. Ten and twelve adult Nucleus Freedom cochlear implant users participated in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively. Experiment 1 revealed a significant preference for music stimuli with a flattened frequency response compared to both original and compressed stimuli, whereas there was a significant preference for the original (rising) frequency response for speech stimuli. Experiment 2 revealed no significant mean preference for the flattened frequency response, with 9 of 11 subjects preferring the rising frequency response. Input compression did not alter music enjoyment. Comparison of the two experiments indicated that individual frequency response preferences may depend on the genre or familiarity, and particularly whether the music contained lyrics.	\N	\N
25556198	The auditory steady-state response, which measures the ability of neural ensembles to entrain to rhythmic auditory stimuli, has been used in human electroencephalogram studies to assess sensory processing and electrical oscillatory deficits. Patients with schizophrenia show a deficit in auditory steady-state response at 40 Hz, and therefore this may be a useful biomarker to study this disorder. We used auditory steady-state response recordings from the primary auditory cortex, hippocampus, and vertex electroencephalogram sites in awake behaving rats to determine whether pharmacological impairment of excitatory or inhibitory neurotransmission mimics auditory steady-state response abnormalities in schizophrenia. We found the most robust response to auditory stimuli in the primary auditory cortex, in line with previous studies suggesting this region is the primary generator of the auditory steady-state response in humans. Acute MK-801 (0.1mg/kg i.p.) increased primary auditory cortex intertrial coherence during auditory steady-state response at 20 and 40 Hz. Chronic MK-801 (21-day exposure at this daily dose) had no significant effect on 40-Hz auditory steady-state response. Furthermore, we found no effect of acute or chronic picrotoxin (a GABA-A antagonist) on intertrial coherence. Our data indicate that acute N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor antagonism increases synchronous activity in the primary auditory cortex in a frequency-specific manner, supporting the widely held view that acute N-methyl-d-aspartate antagonism augments gamma oscillations. Thus, rodent auditory steady-state response could be a valuable method to study the cortical ability to support synchronous activity at specific frequencies.	\N	\N
25561538	Some of the psychological abilities that underlie human speech are shared with other species. One hallmark of speech is that linguistic context affects both how speech sounds are categorized into phonemes, and how different versions of phonemes are produced. We here confirm earlier findings that swamp sparrows categorically perceive the notes that constitute their learned songs and then investigate how categorical boundaries differ according to context. We clustered notes according to their acoustic structure, and found statistical evidence for clustering into 10 population-wide note types. Examining how three related types were perceived, we found, in both discrimination and labeling tests, that an "intermediate" note type is categorized with a "short" type when it occurs at the beginning of a song syllable, but with a "long" type at the end of a syllable. In sum, three produced note-type clusters appear to be underlain by two perceived categories. Thus, in birdsong, as in human speech, categorical perception is context-dependent, and as is the case for human phonology, there is a complex relationship between underlying categorical representations and surface forms. Our results therefore suggest that complex phonology can evolve even in the absence of rich linguistic components, like syntax and semantics.	\N	\N
25565661	The objective of this study was to examine the hypothesis that between-channel gap detection, which includes between-frequency and between-ear gap detection, and perception of stop consonants, which is mediated by the length of voice-onset time (VOT), share common mechanisms, namely relative-timing operation in monitoring separate perceptual channels. The authors measured gap detection thresholds and identification functions of /ba/ and /pa/ along VOT in 49 native young adult Japanese listeners. There were three gap detection tasks. In the between-frequency task, the leading and trailing markers differed in terms of center frequency (Fc). The leading marker was a broadband noise of 10 to 20,000 Hz. The trailing marker was a 0.5-octave band-passed noise of 1000-, 2000-, 4000-, or 8000-Hz Fc. In the between-ear task, the two markers were spectrally identical but presented to separate ears. In the within-frequency task, the two spectrally identical markers were presented to the same ear. The /ba/-/pa/ identification functions were obtained in a task in which the listeners were presented synthesized speech stimuli of varying VOTs from 10 to 46 msec and asked to identify them as /ba/ or /pa/. The between-ear gap thresholds were significantly positively correlated with the between-frequency gap thresholds (except those obtained with the trailing marker of 4000-Hz Fc). The between-ear gap thresholds were not significantly correlated with the within-frequency gap thresholds, which were significantly correlated with all the between-frequency gap thresholds. The VOT boundaries and slopes of /ba/-/pa/ identification functions were not significantly correlated with any of these gap thresholds. There was a close relation between the between-ear and between-frequency gap detection, supporting the view that these two types of gap detection share common mechanisms of between-channel gap detection. However, there was no evidence for a relation between the perception of stop consonants and the between-frequency/ear gap detection in native Japanese speakers.	\N	\N
25571013	Binaural beat (BB) illusions are experienced as continuous central pulsations when two sounds with slightly different frequencies are delivered to each ear. It has been shown that steady-state auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) to BBs can be captured and investigated. The authors recently developed a new method of evoking transient AEPs to binaural beats using frequency modulated stimuli. This methodology was able to create single BBs in predetermined intervals with varying carrier frequencies. This study examines the effects of the BB duration and the frequency modulating component of the stimulus on the binaural beats and their evoked potentials. Normal hearing subjects were tested with a set of four durations (25, 50, 100, and 200 ms) with two stimulation configurations, binaural dichotic (binaural beats) and diotic (frequency modulation). The results obtained from the study showed that out of the given durations, the 100 ms beat, was capable of evoking the largest amplitude responses. The frequency modulation effect showed a decrease in peak amplitudes with increasing beat duration until their complete disappearance at 200 ms. Even though, at 200 ms, the frequency modulation effects were not present, the binaural beats were still perceived and captured as evoked potentials.	\N	\N
25571287	The pathologic auditory sensation in decompensated tinnitus patients is accompanied by the inability to habituate even temporary to this sound. This disability might originate from simultaneous activation of brain areas for the appraisal of the stimulus valence as, e.g., the limbic system. This coactivation of limbic areas is likely to modulate the degree and persistence of selective attention assigned to the tinnitus stream, which in turn could also explain interindividual differences in tinnitus loudness perception. Preliminary studies demonstrate that the amount of allocated attention and the habituation deficit can be mapped to changes in auditory late evoked responses (ALRs). Utilizing a numerical model for the simulation of ALRs we were able to predict a general habituation behavior in two patient groups with different degrees of tinnitus severity. Evaluating the instantaneous phase of simulated and measured ALRs by its von Mises concentration parameter, we verify a habituation deficit relative to the degree of decompensation and thus provide additional support for our neurofunctional model of limbic influences on neural processing of sensory information.	\N	\N
25577901	People with one eye show altered sensory processing. Such changes might reflect a central reweighting of sensory information that might impact on how multisensory cues are integrated. We assessed whether people who lost an eye early in life differ from controls with respect to audiovisual integration. In order to quantify the relative weightings assigned to each sensory system, participants were asked to spatially localize audiovisual events that have been previously shown to be optimally combined and perceptually fused from the point of view of location in a normal population, where the auditory and visual components were spatially disparate. There was no difference in the variability of localizing unimodal visual and auditory targets by people with one eye compared to controls. People with one eye did however, demonstrate slower reaction times to localize visual stimuli compared to auditory stimuli and were slower than binocular and eye-patched control groups. When localizing bimodal targets, the weightings assigned to each sensory modality in both people with one eye and controls were predictable from their unimodal performance, in accordance with Maximum Likelihood Estimation and the time it took all three groups to localize the bimodal targets was faster than for vision alone. Regardless of demonstrating a longer response time to visual stimuli, people with one eye appear to integrate the auditory and visual components of multisensory events optimally when determining spatial location.	\N	\N
25597464	There is a paucity of published studies examining how children with hearing loss understand speech over the telephone. Previous studies on adults with hearing aids have suggested that adults with bilateral hearing aids experience significant difficulty recognizing speech on the telephone when listening with one ear, but the provision of telephone input to both ears substantially improved speech understanding. The objectives of this study were to measure speech recognition in quiet and in noise for a group of older children with hearing loss over the telephone and to evaluate the effects of binaural hearing (e.g., DuoPhone) on speech recognition over the telephone. A cross-sectional, repeated-measures design was used in this study. A total of 14 children, ages 6-14 yr, participated in the study. Participants were obtained using convenience sampling from a nonprofit clinic population. Speech recognition in quiet and in noise with binaural versus monaural telephone input was compared in pediatric participants. Monosyllabic word recognition was assessed in quiet and classroom noise set at 50 dBA in conditions with monaural and binaural (DuoPhone) telephone input. The children's speech recognition in quiet and in noise was significantly better with binaural telephone input relative to monaural telephone input. To obtain optimal performance on the telephone, the following considerations may apply: (1) use of amplification with binaural streaming capabilities (e.g., DuoPhone), (2) counseling of family and children on how to best use the telephone, (3) provision of telecoil with microphone attenuation for improved signal-to-noise ratio, and (4) use of probe tube measures to verify the appropriateness of the telephone programs.	\N	\N
25597465	In order to differentiate between a conductive hearing loss (CHL) and a sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) in the hearing-impaired individual, we compared thresholds to air conduction (AC) and bone conduction (BC) auditory stimulation. The presence of a gap between these thresholds (an air-bone gap) is taken as a sign of a CHL, whereas similar threshold elevations reflect an SNHL. This is based on the assumption that BC stimulation directly excites the inner ear, bypassing the middle ear. However, several of the classic mechanisms of BC stimulation such as ossicular chain inertia and the occlusion effect involve middle ear structures. An additional mode of auditory stimulation, called soft tissue conduction (STC; also called nonosseous BC) has been demonstrated, in which the clinical bone vibrator elicits hearing when it is applied to soft tissue sites on the head, neck, and thorax. The purpose of this study was to assess the relative contributions of threshold determinations to stimulation by STC, in addition to AC and osseous BC, to the differential diagnosis between a CHL and an SNHL. Baseline auditory thresholds were determined in normal participants to AC (supra-aural earphones), BC (B71 bone vibrator at the mastoid, with 5 N application force), and STC (B71 bone vibrator) to the submental area and to the submandibular triangle with 5 N application force) stimulation in response to 0.5, 1.0, 2.0, and 4.0 kHz tones. A CHL was then simulated in the participants by means of an ear plug. Separately, an SNHL was simulated in these participants with 30 dB effective masking. STUDY SAMPLE consisted of 10 normal-hearing participants (4 males; 6 females, aged 20-30 yr). AC, BC, and STC thresholds were determined in the initial normal state and in the presence of each of the simulations. The earplug-induced CHL simulation led to a mean AC threshold elevation of 21-37 dB (depending on frequency), but not of BC and STC thresholds. The masking-induced SNHL led to a mean elevation of AC, BC, and STC thresholds (23-36 dB, depending on frequency). In each type of simulation, the BC threshold shift was similar to that of the STC threshold shift. These results, which show a similar threshold shift for STC and for BC as a result of these simulations, together with additional clinical and laboratory findings, provide evidence that BC thresholds likely represent the threshold of the nonosseous BC (STC) component of multicomponent BC at the BC stimulation site, and thereby succeed in clinical practice to contribute to the differential diagnosis. This also provides evidence that STC (nonosseous BC) stimulation at low intensities probably does not involve components of the middle ear, represents true cochlear function, and therefore can also contribute to a differential diagnosis (e.g., in situations where the clinical bone vibrator cannot be applied to the mastoid or forehead with a 5 N force, such as in severe skull fracture).	\N	\N
25605693	Tetramethylpyrazine has been suggested to have a therapeutic effect on impaired hearing that is induced by aminoglycoside antibiotics. However, its effectiveness on streptomycin ototoxicity and its cellular mechanisms are relatively unknown. Here we investigate the protective effect of tetramethylpyrazine on streptomycin-induced ototoxicity in guinea pig cochlea. Prospective randomized laboratory study. Hearing Research Laboratory of China Medical University. Adult guinea pigs were randomized to 4 groups. Hearing sensitivity of guinea pigs was tested by auditory brainstem response measurements before streptomycin exposure and again 10 days later. The cochlear tissues were prepared for electron microscopy and immunohistochemical staining of heat shock protein 70 (HSP70). The effect of tetramethylpyrazine on streptomycin-induced activation of caspase-3 was evaluated by Western blotting. Co-therapy with tetramethylpyrazine reduced a profound streptomycin-induced auditory threshold shift compared with streptomycin treatment alone (P = .0002 or P = .00008). Tetramethylpyrazine also attenuated the structural disruption in streptomycin-treated outer hair cells and marginal cells of vascular stria by transmission electronic microscopy and scanning electronic microscopy, respectively. Moreover, tetramethylpyrazine decreased the streptomycin-stimulated expressions of HSP70 and caspase-3. The correlation analysis demonstrated that HSP70 expression had a positive correlation with auditory brainstem response thresholds (|R| = 0.6-0.9, P = .0073 or P = .0169). Our data suggest that the protective effect of tetramethylpyrazine on hearing function is associated with the reduction of stress response and inhibition of apoptosis. Tetramethylpyrazine may have therapeutic potential for patients with ototoxicity diseases.	\N	\N
25611857	This study reviewed whether advanced age should be a consideration when revision cochlear implantation is warranted. To examine whether age at revision cochlear implantation is related to postrevision speech perception performance. A retrospective analysis was performed in an academic tertiary care center. Participants included 14 younger adults (<65 years) and 15 older adults (≥65 years) who underwent revision cochlear implantation. Revision cochlear implantation. Speech perception performance, as measured with consonant-nucleus-consonant [CNC] words in quiet, at the best prerevision interval as well as the 3- and 6-month postrevision intervals were compared between the 2 cohorts. The CNC word test consists of 10 lists of 50 phonemically balanced monosyllabic words, scored with a range of 0% to 100% correct. Both cohorts experienced a restoration in speech perception scores after revision cochlear implantation compared with their best performance before the revision (mean [SD] CNC word test scores for the younger cohort: 43.9% [25.6%] before revision and 47.7% [21.3%] at 3 months and 47.6% [19.8%] at 6 months after revision; for the older cohort: 36.3% [19.1%] before revision and 35.3% [17.2%] at 3 months and 39.9% [16.3%] at 6 months after revision; F₂,₅₄= 0.93; P = .40). There was no interaction between age at revision surgery and speech perception performance at each assessment interval (F₂,₅₄= 0.51; P = .60). In this study, age at revision cochlear implantation was not related to postrevision speech perception performance. Advanced age should not be considered a contraindication to revision cochlear implantation.	\N	\N
25613931	To study electrical stimulation, auditory functionality, and language development in patients with inner ear malformations involving the anterior labyrinth who underwent cochlear implantation. Retrospective case review. Reference hospital for cochlear implantation. Review of 14 cases of severe hearing loss with major (common cavity deformity and cochlear hypoplasia) or minor (e.g., incomplete partition and basal turn aplasia) malformations. After cochlear implantation, data were gathered on the threshold (THR) and maximum comfort level (MCL) of the electrical stimulation and the number of functioning electrodes. Auditory responses to speech (EARS protocol) subtests were used to evaluate auditory functionality and language acquisition at 6, 12, and 24 months post-implantation. Tests used were: LIP profile, MTP (3, 6 and 12 words), OLD (open set test) and CLD (close set test). Results were compared with findings in a control group of 28 cochlear implantation patients without these malformations and with congenital hearing loss. The mean THR was 11.02μC in patients with malformations versus 3.5μC in those without, a significant difference. The THR also significantly differed between groups with major and minor malformations. Fewer functioning electrodes were used in patients with malformations. Auditory functionality scores were best in controls than in patients with malformations, who scored ≤50%, finding the lowest scores in those with major malformations. Patients with inner ear malformations undergoing cochlear implantation require greater stimuli to obtain an auditory response and have worse auditory functionality outcomes; these differences are greater in those with major versus minor malformations Nevertheless, cochlear implantation appears to be beneficial for all patients with these malformations to a greater or lesser extent.	\N	\N
25617593	We examined 4- and 6-month-old infants' sensitivity to the perceptual association between pitch and object size. Crossmodal correspondence effects were observed in 6-month-old infants but not in younger infants, suggesting that experience and/or further maturation is needed to fully develop this crossmodal association.	\N	\N
25618049	An acoustic survey of secondary schools in England has been undertaken. Room acoustic parameters and background noise levels were measured in 185 unoccupied spaces in 13 schools to provide information on the typical acoustic environment of secondary schools. The unoccupied acoustic and noise data were correlated with various physical characteristics of the spaces. Room height and the amount of glazing were related to the unoccupied reverberation time and therefore need to be controlled to reduce reverberation to suitable levels for teaching and learning. Further analysis of the unoccupied data showed that the introduction of legislation relating to school acoustics in England and Wales in 2003 approximately doubled the number of school spaces complying with current standards. Noise levels were also measured during 274 lessons to examine typical levels generated during teaching activities in secondary schools and to investigate the influence of acoustic design on working noise levels in the classroom. Comparison of unoccupied and occupied data showed that unoccupied acoustic conditions affect the noise levels occurring during lessons. They were also related to the time spent in disruption to the lessons (e.g., students talking or shouting) and so may also have an impact upon student behavior in the classroom.	\N	\N
25618071	Listeners can use pitch changes in speech to identify talkers. Individuals exhibit large variability in sensitivity to pitch and in accuracy perceiving talker identity. In particular, people who have musical training or long-term tone language use are found to have enhanced pitch perception. In the present study, the influence of pitch experience on talker identification was investigated as listeners identified talkers in native language as well as non-native languages. Experiment 1 was designed to explore the influence of pitch experience on talker identification in two groups of individuals with potential advantages for pitch processing: musicians and tone language speakers. Experiment 2 further investigated individual differences in pitch processing and the contribution to talker identification by testing a mediation model. Cumulatively, the results suggested that (a) musical training confers an advantage for talker identification, supporting a shared resources hypothesis regarding music and language and (b) linguistic use of lexical tones also increases accuracy in hearing talker identity. Importantly, these two types of hearing experience enhance talker identification by sharpening pitch perception skills in a domain-general manner.	\N	\N
25618091	This study reports a finding about vocal expressions of emotion in Mandarin Chinese. Production and perception experiments used the same tone and mixed tone sequences to test whether pitch variation is restricted due to the presence of lexical tones. Results showed that the restriction of pitch variation occurred in all high level tone sequences (tone 1 group) with the expression of happiness but did not happen for other dynamic tone groups. However, perception analysis revealed that all the emotions in every tone group received high identification rates; this indicates that listeners used other cues for encoding happiness in the tone 1 group. This study demonstrates that the restriction of pitch variation does not affect the perception of vocal emotions.	\N	\N
25618101	Speech perception studies generally focus on the acoustic information present in the frequency regions below 6 kHz. Recent evidence suggests that there is perceptually relevant information in the higher frequencies, including information affecting speech intelligibility. This experiment examined whether listeners are able to accurately identify a subset of vowels and consonants in CV-context when only high-frequency (above 5 kHz) acoustic information is available (through high-pass filtering and masking of lower frequency energy). The findings reveal that listeners are capable of extracting information from these higher frequency regions to accurately identify certain consonants and vowels.	\N	\N
25628152	The aim of the present study was to investigate whether the saliency effect for word beginnings reported in children with dyslexia (Marshall & Van der Lely, 2009) can be found also in typically developing children. Thirty-four typically developing Italian children aged 8-10 years completed two specifically designed tasks: a production task and a perception task. Both tasks used nonwords containing clusters consisting of plosive plus liquid (e.g. pl). Clusters could be either in a stressed or in an unstressed syllable and could be either in initial position (first syllable) or in medial position (second syllable). In the production task, children were asked to repeat the nonwords. In the perception task, the children were asked to discriminate between two nonwords differing in one phoneme belonging to a cluster by reporting whether two repetitions were the same or different. Results from the production task showed that children are more accurate in repeating stressed than unstressed syllables, but there was no difference with respect to position of the cluster. Results from the perception task showed that children performed more accurately when discriminating word initial contrasts than when discriminating word medial contrasts, especially if the cluster was unstressed. Implications of this finding for clinical assessments are discussed.	\N	\N
25630393	The objective of this study was to test if stimulating multiple electrodes can improve temporal pitch ranking performance at low and high stimulation rates. Temporal pitch cues are usually based on modifying the stimulation rate of the implant and thereby provide a continuum of pitches on a single electrode up to approximately 300 Hz. Ten cochlear implant subjects were asked to pitch rank stimuli presented with direct electrical stimulation. The pulses were applied on one, three, six, or eleven electrodes. In one of the conditions the current amplitude of each pulse was randomly varied between 0 and 100%. Their frequency ranged from 100 up to 500 pps. Listeners showed the previously reported performance pattern in most conditions with very good performance at the lowest standard rates and deteriorating performance to near chance level at the highest rate tested. Performance with eleven electrodes was significantly better than performance with one electrode at 500 pps. Stimulating on multiple electrodes can improve temporal pitch perception.	\N	\N
25634776	To compare some perceptual and acoustic characteristics of the voices of children who use the advanced combination encoder (ACE) or fine structure processing (FSP) speech coding strategies, and to investigate whether these characteristics differ from children with normal hearing. Acoustic analysis of the sustained vowel /a/ was performed using the multi-dimensional voice program (MDVP). Analyses of sequential and spontaneous speech were performed using the real time pitch. Perceptual analyses of these samples were performed using visual-analogic scales of pre-selected parameters. Seventy-six children from three years to five years and 11 months of age participated. Twenty-eight were users of ACE, 23 were users of FSP, and 25 were children with normal hearing. Although both groups with CI presented with some deviated vocal features, the users of ACE presented with voice quality more like children with normal hearing than the users of FSP. Sound processing of ACE appeared to provide better conditions for auditory monitoring of the voice, and consequently, for better control of the voice production. However, these findings need to be further investigated due to the lack of comparative studies published to understand exactly which attributes of sound processing are responsible for differences in performance.	\N	\N
25636271	The major purpose of this study was to explore the changes in the local/global gamma-band neural synchronies during target/non-target processing due to task difficulty under an auditory three-stimulus oddball paradigm. Multichannel event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from fifteen healthy participants during the oddball task. In addition to the conventional ERP analysis, we investigated the modulations in gamma-band activity (GBA) and inter-regional gamma-band phase synchrony (GBPS) for infrequent target and non-target processing due to task difficulty. The most notable finding was that the difficulty-related changes in inter-regional GBPS (33-35 Hz) at P300 epoch (350-600 ms) completely differed for target and non-target processing. As task difficulty increased, the GBPS significantly reduced for target processing but increased for non-target processing. This result contrasts with the local neural synchrony in gamma-bands, which was not affected by task difficulty. Another major finding was that the spatial patterns of functional connectivity were dissociated for target and non-target processing with regard to the difficult task. The spatial pattern for target processing was compatible with the top-down attention network, whereas that for the non-target corresponded to the bottom-up attention network. Overall, we found that the inter-regional gamma-band neural synchronies during target/non-target processing change significantly with task difficulty and that this change is dissociated between target and non-target processing. Our results indicate that large-scale neural synchrony is more relevant for the difference in information processing between target and non-target stimuli.	\N	\N
25638938	When one hears footsteps in the hall, one is able to instantly recognise it as a person: this is an everyday example of auditory biological motion perception. Despite the familiarity of this experience, research into this phenomenon is in its infancy compared with visual biological motion perception. Here, two experiments explored sensitivity to, and recognition of, auditory stimuli of biological and nonbiological origin. We hypothesised that the cadence of a walker gives rise to a temporal pattern of impact sounds that facilitates the recognition of human motion from auditory stimuli alone. First a series of detection tasks compared sensitivity with three carefully matched impact sounds: footsteps, a ball bouncing, and drumbeats. Unexpectedly, participants were no more sensitive to footsteps than to impact sounds of nonbiological origin. In the second experiment participants made discriminations between pairs of the same stimuli, in a series of recognition tasks in which the temporal pattern of impact sounds was manipulated to be either that of a walker or the pattern more typical of the source event (a ball bouncing or a drumbeat). Under these conditions, there was evidence that both temporal and nontemporal cues were important in recognising theses stimuli. It is proposed that the interval between footsteps, which reflects a walker's cadence, is a cue for the recognition of the sounds of a human walking.	\N	\N
25646513	Neural overlap in processing music and speech, as measured by the co-activation of brain regions in neuroimaging studies, may suggest that parts of the neural circuitries established for language may have been recycled during evolution for musicality, or vice versa that musicality served as a springboard for language emergence. Such a perspective has important implications for several topics of general interest besides evolutionary origins. For instance, neural overlap is an important premise for the possibility of music training to influence language acquisition and literacy. However, neural overlap in processing music and speech does not entail sharing neural circuitries. Neural separability between music and speech may occur in overlapping brain regions. In this paper, we review the evidence and outline the issues faced in interpreting such neural data, and argue that converging evidence from several methodologies is needed before neural overlap is taken as evidence of sharing.	\N	\N
25653354	Perceptual phase entrainment improves speech intelligibility by phase-locking the brain's high-excitability and low-excitability phases to relevant or irrelevant events in the speech input. However, it remains unclear whether phase entrainment to speech can be explained by a passive "following" of rhythmic changes in sound amplitude and spectral content or whether entrainment entails an active tracking of higher-level cues: in everyday speech, rhythmic fluctuations in low-level and high-level features always covary. Here, we resolve this issue by constructing novel speech/noise stimuli with intelligible speech but without systematic changes in sound amplitude and spectral content. The probability of detecting a tone pip, presented to human listeners at random moments during our speech/noise stimuli, was significantly modulated by the rhythmic changes in high-level information. Thus, perception can entrain to the speech rhythm even without concurrent fluctuations in sound amplitude or spectral content. Strikingly, the actual entrainment phase depended on the tone-pip frequency, with tone pips within and beyond the principal frequency range of the speech sound modulated in opposite fashion. This result suggests that only those neural populations processing the actually presented frequencies are set to their high-excitability phase, whereas other populations are entrained to the opposite, low-excitability phase. Furthermore, we show that the perceptual entrainment is strongly reduced when speech intelligibility is abolished by presenting speech/noise stimuli in reverse, indicating that linguistic information plays an important role for the observed perceptual entrainment.	\N	\N
25656953	This study investigated the sensitivity of 9-month-old infants to the alignment between prosodic and gesture prominences in pointing-speech combinations. Results revealed that the perception of prominence is multimodal and that infants are aware of the timing of gesture-speech combinations well before they can produce them.	\N	\N
25665752	This study compared the timing of appearance of three components of age-related hearing loss that determine the pattern and severity of presbycusis: the functional and structural pathologies of sensory cells and neurons and changes in gap detection (GD), the latter as an indicator of auditory temporal processing. Using UM-HET4 mice, genetically heterogeneous mice derived from four inbred strains, we studied the integrity of inner and outer hair cells by position along the cochlear spiral, inner hair cell-auditory nerve connections, spiral ganglion neurons (SGN), and determined auditory thresholds, as well as pre-pulse and gap inhibition of the acoustic startle reflex (ASR). Comparisons were made between mice of 5-7, 22-24 and 27-29 months of age. There was individual variability among mice in the onset and extent of age-related auditory pathology. At 22-24 months of age a moderate to large loss of outer hair cells was restricted to the apical third of the cochlea and threshold shifts in the auditory brain stem response were minimal. There was also a large and significant loss of inner hair cell-auditory nerve connections and a significant reduction in GD. The expression of Ntf3 in the cochlea was significantly reduced. At 27-29 months of age there was no further change in the mean number of synaptic connections per inner hair cell or in GD, but a moderate to large loss of outer hair cells was found across all cochlear turns as well as significantly increased ABR threshold shifts at 4, 12, 24 and 48 kHz. A statistical analysis of correlations on an individual animal basis revealed that neither the hair cell loss nor the ABR threshold shifts correlated with loss of GD or with the loss of connections, consistent with independent pathological mechanisms.	\N	\N
25669257	Individual factors beyond the audiogram, such as age and cognitive abilities, can influence speech intelligibility and speech quality judgments. This paper develops a neural network framework for combining multiple subject factors into a single model that predicts speech intelligibility and quality for a nonlinear hearing-aid processing strategy. The nonlinear processing approach used in the paper is frequency compression, which is intended to improve the audibility of high-frequency speech sounds by shifting them to lower frequency regions where listeners with high-frequency loss have better hearing thresholds. An ensemble averaging approach is used for the neural network to avoid the problems associated with overfitting. Models are developed for two subject groups, one having nearly normal hearing and the other mild-to-moderate sloping losses.	\N	\N
25673838	Critical periods are developmental windows during which the stimuli an animal encounters can reshape response properties in the affected system to a profound degree. Despite this window's importance, the neural mechanisms that regulate it are not completely understood. Pioneering studies in visual cortex initially indicated that norepinephrine (NE) permits ocular dominance column plasticity during the critical period, but later research has suggested otherwise. More recent work implicating NE in experience-dependent plasticity in the adult auditory cortex led us to re-examine the role of NE in critical period plasticity. Here, we exposed dopamine β-hydroxylase knock-out (Dbh(-/-)) mice, which lack NE completely from birth, to a biased acoustic environment during the auditory cortical critical period. This manipulation led to a redistribution of best frequencies (BFs) across auditory cortex in our control mice, consistent with prior work. By contrast, Dbh(-/-) mice failed to exhibit the expected redistribution of BFs, even though NE-deficient and NE-competent mice showed comparable auditory cortical organization when reared in a quiet colony environment. These data suggest that while intrinsic tonotopic patterning of auditory cortical circuitry occurs independently from NE, NE is required for critical period plasticity in auditory cortex.	\N	\N
25685775	The aim of this research was to analyze temporal auditory processing and phonological awareness in school-age children with benign childhood epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes (BECTS). Patient group (GI) consisted of 13 children diagnosed with BECTS. Control group (GII) consisted of 17 healthy children. After neurological and peripheral audiological assessment, children underwent a behavioral auditory evaluation and phonological awareness assessment. The procedures applied were: Gaps-in-Noise test (GIN), Duration Pattern test, and Phonological Awareness test (PCF). Results were compared between the groups and a correlation analysis was performed between temporal tasks and phonological awareness performance. GII performed significantly better than the children with BECTS (GI) in both GIN and Duration Pattern test (P < 0.001). GI performed significantly worse in all of the 4 categories of phonological awareness assessed: syllabic (P = 0.001), phonemic (P = 0.006), rhyme (P = 0.015) and alliteration (P = 0.010). Statistical analysis showed a significant positive correlation between the phonological awareness assessment and Duration Pattern test (P < 0.001). From the analysis of the results, it was concluded that children with BECTS may have difficulties in temporal resolution, temporal ordering, and phonological awareness skills. A correlation was observed between auditory temporal processing and phonological awareness in the suited sample.	\N	\N
25693304	When we interact with objects in our environment, as a general rule we are not aware of the proximal stimulation they provide, but we directly experience the external object. This process of assigning an external cause is known as distal attribution. It is extremely difficult to measure how distal attribution emerges because it arises so early in life and appears to be automatic. Sensory substitution systems give us the possibility to measure the process as it occurs online. With these devices, objects in our environment produce novel proximal stimulation patterns and individuals have to establish the link between the proximal stimulation and the distal object. This review disentangles the contributing factors that allow the nervous system to assign a distal cause, thereby creating the experience of an external world. In particular, it highlights the role of the assumption of a stable world, the role of movement, and finally that of calibration. From the existing sensory substitution literature it appears that distal attribution breaks down when one of these principles is violated and as such the review provides an important piece to the puzzle of distal attribution.	\N	\N
25698006	The present study investigated the possibility that the human auditory system demonstrates frequency selectivity to spectro-temporal amplitude modulations. Threshold modulation depth for detecting sinusoidal spectro-temporal modulations was measured using a generalized masked threshold pattern paradigm with narrowband masker modulations. Four target spectro-temporal modulations were examined, differing in their temporal and spectral modulation frequencies: a temporal modulation of -8, 8, or 16 Hz combined with a spectral modulation of 1 cycle/octave and a temporal modulation of 4 Hz combined with a spectral modulation of 0.5 cycles/octave. The temporal center frequencies of the masker modulation ranged from 0.25 to 4 times the target temporal modulation. The spectral masker-modulation center-frequencies were 0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, and 2 times the target spectral modulation. For all target modulations, the pattern of average thresholds for the eight normal-hearing listeners was consistent with the hypothesis of a spectro-temporal modulation filter. Such a pattern of modulation-frequency sensitivity was predicted on the basis of psychoacoustical data for purely temporal amplitude modulations and purely spectral amplitude modulations. An analysis of separability indicates that, for the present data set, selectivity in the spectro-temporal modulation domain can be described by a combination of a purely spectral and a purely temporal modulation filter function.	\N	\N
25721795	Music and speech are skills that require high temporal precision of motor output. A key question is how humans achieve this timing precision given the poor temporal resolution of somatosensory feedback, which is classically considered to drive motor learning. We hypothesise that auditory feedback critically contributes to learn timing, and that, similarly to visuo-spatial learning models, learning proceeds by correcting a proportion of perceived timing errors. Thirty-six participants learned to tap a sequence regularly in time. For participants in the synchronous-sound group, a tone was presented simultaneously with every keystroke. For the jittered-sound group, the tone was presented after a random delay of 10-190 ms following the keystroke, thus degrading the temporal information that the sound provided about the movement. For the mute group, no keystroke-triggered sound was presented. In line with the model predictions, participants in the synchronous-sound group were able to improve tapping regularity, whereas the jittered-sound and mute group were not. The improved tapping regularity of the synchronous-sound group also transferred to a novel sequence and was maintained when sound was subsequently removed. The present findings provide evidence that humans engage in auditory feedback error-based learning to improve movement quality (here reduce variability in sequence tapping). We thus elucidate the mechanism by which high temporal precision of movement can be achieved through sound in a way that may not be possible with less temporally precise somatosensory modalities. Furthermore, the finding that sound-supported learning generalises to novel sequences suggests potential rehabilitation applications.	\N	\N
25724819	Older adults, even with clinically normal hearing sensitivity, often report difficulty understanding speech in the presence of background noise. Part of this difficulty may be related to age-related degradations in the neural representation of speech sounds, such as formant transitions. Frequency-following responses (FFRs), which are dependent on phase-locked neural activity, were elicited using sounds consisting of linear frequency sweeps, which may be viewed as simple models of formant transitions. Eighteen adults (ten younger, 22-24 years old, and nine older, 51-67 years old) were tested. FFRs were elicited by tonal sweeps in six conditions. Two directions of frequency change, rising or falling, were used for each of three rates of frequency change. Stimulus-to-response cross correlations revealed that older adults had significantly poorer representation of the tonal sweeps, and that FFRs became poorer for faster rates of change. An additional FFR signal-to-noise ratio analysis based on time windows revealed that across the FFR waveforms and rates of frequency change, older adults had smaller (poorer) signal-to-noise ratios. These results indicate that older adults, even with clinically-normal hearing sensitivity, have degraded phase-locked neural representations of dynamic frequency.	\N	\N
25726264	Speech is a complex acoustic signal showing a quasiperiodic structure at several timescales. Integrated neural signals recorded in the cortex also show periodicity at different timescales. In this chapter we outline the neural mechanisms that potentially allow the auditory cortex to segment and encode continuous speech. This chapter focuses on how the human auditory cortex uses the temporal structure of the acoustic signal to extract phonemes and syllables, the two major constituents of connected speech. We argue that the quasiperiodic structure of collective neural activity in auditory cortex represents the ideal mechanical infrastructure to fractionate continuous speech into linguistic constituents of variable sizes.	\N	\N
25726287	Neural disorders of the auditory nerve are associated with particular disorders of auditory perceptions dependent on processing of acoustic temporal cues. These include: (1) speech perception; (2) localizing a sound's origin in space; and (3) identifying sounds in background noise. Auditory neuropathy (AN) is a consequence of: (1) presynaptic disorders affecting inner hair cell ribbon synapses; (2) postsynaptic disorders of auditory nerve dendrites; and (3) postsynaptic disorders of auditory nerve axons. The etiologies of these disorders are diverse, similar to other cranial or peripheral neuropathies. The pathologies cause attenuated and dyssynchronous auditory nerve discharges. Therapies and management of patients with AN are reviewed.	\N	\N
25726290	Neglect is a neurologic disorder, typically associated with lesions of the right hemisphere, in which patients are biased towards their ipsilesional - usually right - side of space while awareness for their contralesional - usually left - side is reduced or absent. Neglect is a multimodal disorder that often includes deficits in the auditory domain. Classically, auditory extinction, in which left-sided sounds that are correctly perceived in isolation are not detected in the presence of synchronous right-sided stimulation, has been considered the primary sign of auditory neglect. However, auditory extinction can also be observed after unilateral auditory cortex lesions and is thus not specific for neglect. Recent research has shown that patients with neglect are also impaired in maintaining sustained attention, on both sides, a fact that is reflected by an impairment of auditory target detection in continuous stimulation conditions. Perhaps the most impressive auditory symptom in full-blown neglect is alloacusis, in which patients mislocalize left-sided sound sources to their right, although even patients with less severe neglect still often show disturbance of auditory spatial perception, most commonly a lateralization bias towards the right. We discuss how these various disorders may be explained by a single model of neglect and review emerging interventions for patient rehabilitation.	\N	\N
25730449	To assess whether recombinant growth factor (hGH) therapy has an effect on cochlear implant (CI) performance. Two pediatric CI recipients (S1, S2) who underwent treatment with hGH for short stature were identified for review. S1 has bilateral labyrinthine dysplasia and received implants at ages 10 months (right) and 4 years 3 months (left). S2 was diagnosed with severe to progressive sensorineural hearing loss bilaterally and received a CI at age 9 years 10 months (left). Case series. Cochlear implant, hGH, and speech perception data were collected. Phonetically Balanced Kindergarten (PBK) and Consonant Nucleus Consonant (CNC) word recognition scores were reviewed to assess auditory perception. Electrode impedances, threshold levels, and comfort levels were also reviewed. After 4 months of hGH, word recognition scores for S1 were observed to decrease from 90 to 72% (right) and were stable at 40% (left). Despite troubleshooting, performance continued to decline bilaterally to 52% (right) and 28% (left), and the decision was made to discontinue hGH. One month after cessation of hGH, word recognition scores began improving to 74% (right) and 68% (left). Word recognition scores for S2 were observed to have decreased from 92% the previous year to 82% after taking hGH for 2 months. Given both our previous experience with S1 and discussions with S2's parents, hGH was discontinued after 10 months of therapy. Two months after cessation of hGH, S2's word recognition had improved to 86% (left). Our case studies illustrate that implanted children undergoing treatment with hGH may experience a decrease in speech perception, which recovers after the cessation of treatment. Since hGH use has become more prevalent in recent years, it is important to inquire whether children undergoing, or who have undergone, implantation are receiving hGH so that they may be appropriately monitored.	\N	\N
25731581	While potentially improving audibility for listeners with considerable high frequency hearing loss, the effects of implementing nonlinear frequency compression (NFC) for listeners with moderate high frequency hearing loss are unclear. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of activating NFC for listeners who are not traditionally considered candidates for this technology. Participants wore study hearing aids with NFC activated for a 3-4 week trial period. After the trial period, they were tested with NFC and with conventional processing on measures of consonant discrimination threshold in quiet, consonant recognition in quiet, sentence recognition in noise, and acceptableness of sound quality of speech and music. Seventeen adult listeners with symmetrical, mild to moderate sensorineural hearing loss participated. Better ear, high frequency pure-tone averages (4, 6, and 8 kHz) were 60 dB HL or better. Activating NFC resulted in lower (better) thresholds for discrimination of /s/, whose spectral center was 9 kHz. There were no other significant effects of NFC compared to conventional processing. These data suggest that the benefits, and detriments, of activating NFC may be limited for this population.	\N	\N
25731582	To evaluate wideband amplification and non-linear frequency compression (NLFC) as a means to improve speech recognition for children with mild/moderate hearing loss. Randomized within-subject design with repeated measures across test conditions. Eleven children with mild to moderate hearing loss were evaluated with: (1) Phonak BTE without NLFC, (2) Phonak BTE with NLFC, and (3) Oticon BTE with wideband response extending to 8000 Hz. Use of NLFC provided better detection and recognition of high-frequency stimuli (e.g. /sh/ and /s/). No difference in performance between conditions was observed for speech recognition when measured with the University of Western Ontario (UWO) plurals test and the UWO distinctive features difference test. Finally, there were no differences between conditions on the BKB-SIN test. Children with mild to moderate hearing loss have good access to high-frequency phonemes presented at fixed levels (e.g. 50 to 60 dBA) with both wideband and NLFC technology. Similarly, sentence recognition in noise was similar with wideband and NLFC. Adaptive test procedures that probe performance at lower input levels showed small but significant improvements in the detection and recognition of the phonemes /s/ and /sh/ with NLFC condition when compared to the NLFC Off and wideband conditions.	\N	\N
25733362	With the growing number of older adults receiving cochlear implants (CI), there is general agreement that substantial benefits can be gained. Nonetheless, variability in speech perception performance is high, and the relative contribution and interactions among peripheral, central-auditory, and cognitive factors are not fully understood. The goal of the present study was to compare auditory-cognitive processing in older-adult CI recipients with that of older normal-hearing (NH) listeners by means of behavioral and electrophysiologic manifestations of a high-load cognitive task. Auditory event-related potentials (AERPs) were recorded from 9 older postlingually deafened adults with CI (age at CI >60) and 10 age-matched listeners with NH, while performing an auditory Stroop task. Participants were required to classify the speaker's gender (male/female) that produced the words 'mother' or 'father' while ignoring the irrelevant congruent or incongruent word meaning. Older CI and NH listeners exhibited comparable reaction time, performance accuracy, and initial sensory-perceptual processing (i.e. N1 potential). Nonetheless, older CI recipients showed substantially prolonged and less efficient perceptual processing (i.e. P3 potential). Congruency effects manifested in longer reaction time (i.e. Stroop effect), execution time, and P3 latency to incongruent versus congruent stimuli in both groups in a similar fashion; however, markedly prolonged P3 and shortened execution time were evident in older CI recipients. Collectively, older adults (CI and NH) employed a combined perceptual and postperceptual conflict processing strategy; nonetheless, the relative allotment of perceptual resources was substantially enhanced to maintain adequate performance in CI recipients. In sum, the recording of AERPs together with the simultaneously obtained behavioral measures during a Stroop task exposed a differential time course of auditory-cognitive processing in older CI recipients that was not manifested in the behavioral end products of processing. These data may have implications regarding clinical evaluation and rehabilitation procedures that should be tailored specifically for this unique group of patients.	\N	\N
25734571	This study assesses attention and response control through visual and auditory stimuli in a primary care pediatric sample. The sample consisted of 191 participants aged between 7 and 13 years old. It was divided into 2 groups: (a) 90 children with ADHD, according to diagnostic (DSM-IV-TR) (APA, 2002) and clinical (ADHD Rating Scale-IV) (DuPaul, Power, Anastopoulos, & Reid, 1998) criteria, and (b) 101 children without a history of ADHD. The aims were: (a) to determine and compare the performance of both groups in attention and response control, (b) to identify attention and response control deficits in the ADHD group. Assessments were carried out using the Integrated Visual and Auditory Continuous Performance Test (IVA/CPT, Sandford & Turner, 2002). Results showed that the ADHD group had visual and auditory attention deficits, F(3, 170) = 14.38; p < .01, deficits in fine motor regulation (Welch´s t-test = 44.768; p < .001) and sensory/motor activity (Welch'st-test = 95.683, p < .001; Welch's t-test = 79.537, p < .001). Both groups exhibited a similar performance in response control, F(3, 170) = .93, p = .43.Children with ADHD showed inattention, mental processing speed deficits, and loss of concentration with visual stimuli. Both groups yielded a better performance in attention with auditory stimuli.	\N	\N
25740521	Speech recognition in noise can be challenging for older adults and elicits elevated activity throughout a cingulo-opercular network that is hypothesized to monitor and modify behaviors to optimize performance. A word recognition in noise experiment was used to test the hypothesis that cingulo-opercular engagement provides performance benefit for older adults. Healthy older adults (N = 31; 50-81 years of age; mean pure tone thresholds <32 dB HL from 0.25 to 8 kHz, best ear; species: human) performed word recognition in multitalker babble at 2 signal-to-noise ratios (SNR = +3 or +10 dB) during a sparse sampling fMRI experiment. Elevated cingulo-opercular activity was associated with an increased likelihood of correct recognition on the following trial independently of SNR and performance on the preceding trial. The cingulo-opercular effect increased for participants with the best overall performance. These effects were lower for older adults compared with a younger, normal-hearing adult sample (N = 18). Visual cortex activity also predicted trial-level recognition for the older adults, which resulted from discrete decreases in activity before errors and occurred for the oldest adults with the poorest recognition. Participants demonstrating larger visual cortex effects also had reduced fractional anisotropy in an anterior portion of the left inferior frontal-occipital fasciculus, which projects between frontal and occipital regions where activity predicted word recognition. Together, the results indicate that older adults experience performance benefit from elevated cingulo-opercular activity, but not to the same extent as younger adults, and that declines in attentional control can limit word recognition.	\N	\N
25770375	Arthur Lessac developed a voice training approach that concentrated on three energies: structural action, tonal action, and consonant action. In Lessac-Madsen Resonant Voice Therapy (LMRVT), speech-language pathologists help patients achieve a resonant voice through structural posturing and awareness of tonal changes. However, LMRVT many not necessarily include the third component of Lessac's approach: consonant action.This study examines the effect that increased effort on consonant production has on the speaking voice-particularly regarding vocal loudness and projection. Audio samples were collected from eight actor participants who read a monologue using three distinct styles: normal articulation, poor articulation (elicited using a bite block), and overarticulation (elicited using a Lessac-based training intervention). Twenty graduate students of speech-language pathology listened to speech samples from the different conditions and made comparative judgments regarding articulation, loudness, and projection. Group results showed a strong correlation between the articulatory condition and the level of perceived loudness and projection. That is, as precision of articulation increased, the ratings of perceived loudness and projection increased, as well. These findings indicate that articulation treatment may have a positive influence on the perception of vocal loudness and projection. This has implications for future directions in expanding voice therapy modalities.	\N	\N
25773636	Most people derive pleasure from music. Neuroimaging studies show that the reward system of the human brain is central to this experience. Specifically, the dorsal and ventral striatum release dopamine when listening to pleasurable music, and activity in these structures also codes the reward value of musical excerpts. Moreover, the striatum interacts with cortical mechanisms involved in perception and valuation of musical stimuli. Recent studies have begun to explore individual differences in the way that this complex system functions. Development of a questionnaire for music reward experiences has allowed the identification of separable factors associated with musical pleasure, described as music-seeking, emotion-evocation, mood regulation, sensorimotor, and social factors. Applying this questionnaire to a large sample uncovered approximately 5% of the population with low sensitivity to musical reward in the absence of generalized anhedonia or depression. Further study of this group revealed that there are individuals who respond normally both behaviorally and psychophysiologically to rewards other than music (e.g., monetary value) but do not experience pleasure from music despite normal music perception ability and preserved ability to identify intended emotions in musical passages. This specific music anhedonia bears further study, as it may shed light on the function and dysfunction of the reward system.	\N	\N
25774428	The perception of near-threshold visual stimuli has been shown to depend in part on the phase (i.e., time in the cycle) of ongoing alpha (8-13 Hz) oscillations in the visual cortex relative to the onset of that stimulus. However, it is currently unknown whether the phase of the ongoing alpha activity can be manipulated by top-down factors such as attention or expectancy. Using three variants of a cross-modal attention paradigm with constant predictable stimulus onsets, we examined if cues signaling to attend to either the visual or the auditory domain influenced the phase of alpha oscillations in the associated sensory cortices. Importantly, intermixed in all three experiments, we included trials without a target to estimate the phase at target presentation without contamination from the early evoked responses. For these blank trials, at the time of expected target and distractor onset, we examined (1) the degree of the uniformity in phase angles across trials, (2) differences in phase angle uniformity compared with a pretarget baseline, and (3) phase angle differences between visual and auditory target conditions. Across all three experiments, we found that, although the cues induced a modulation in alpha power in occipital electrodes, neither the visual condition nor the auditory cue condition induced any significant phase-locking across trials during expected target or distractor presentation. These results suggest that, although alpha power can be modulated by top-down factors such as attention and expectation, the phase of the ongoing alpha oscillation is not under such control.	\N	\N
25774653	The effect of stimulation history on the perception of a current event can yield two opposite effects, namely: adaptation or hysteresis. The perception of the current event thus goes in the opposite or in the same direction as prior stimulation, respectively. In audiovisual (AV) synchrony perception, adaptation effects have primarily been reported. Here, we tested if perceptual hysteresis could also be observed over adaptation in AV timing perception by varying different experimental conditions. Participants were asked to judge the synchrony of the last (test) stimulus of an AV sequence with either constant or gradually changing AV intervals (constant and dynamic condition, respectively). The onset timing of the test stimulus could be cued or not (prospective vs. retrospective condition, respectively). We observed hysteretic effects for AV synchrony judgments in the retrospective condition that were independent of the constant or dynamic nature of the adapted stimuli; these effects disappeared in the prospective condition. The present findings suggest that knowing when to estimate a stimulus property has a crucial impact on perceptual simultaneity judgments. Our results extend beyond AV timing perception, and have strong implications regarding the comparative study of hysteresis and adaptation phenomena.	\N	\N
25781179	Lifestyle including smoking, noise exposure with MP3 player and drinking alcohol are considered as risk factors for affecting hearing synergistically. However, little is known about the association of cigarette smoking with hearing impairment among subjects who carry a lifestyle without using MP3 player and drinking alcohol. We showed here the influence of smoking on hearing among Bangladeshi subjects who maintain a lifestyle devoid of using MP3 player and drinking alcohol. A total of 184 subjects (smokers: 90; non-smokers: 94) were included considering their duration and frequency of smoking for conducting this study. The mean hearing thresholds of non-smoker subjects at 1, 4, 8 and 12 kHz frequencies were 5.63 ± 2.10, 8.56±5.75, 21.06 ± 11.06, 40.79 ± 20.36 decibel (dB), respectively and that of the smokers were 7 ± 3.8, 13.27 ± 8.4, 30.66 ± 12.50 and 56.88 ± 21.58 dB, respectively. The hearing thresholds of the smokers at 4, 8 and 12 kHz frequencies were significantly (p<0.05) higher than those of the non-smokers, while no significant differences were observed at 1 kHz frequency. We also observed no significant difference in auditory thresholds among smoker subgroups based on smoking frequency. In contrast, subjects smoked for longer duration (>5 years) showed higher level of auditory threshold (62.16 ± 19.87 dB) at 12 kHz frequency compared with that (41.52 ± 19.21 dB) of the subjects smoked for 1-5 years and the difference in auditory thresholds was statistically significant (p<0.0002). In this study, the Brinkman Index (BI) of smokers was from 6 to 440 and the adjusted odds ratio showed a positive correlation between hearing loss and smoking when adjusted for age and body mass index (BMI). In addition, age, but not BMI, also played positive role on hearing impairment at all frequencies. Thus, these findings suggested that cigarette smoking affects hearing level at all the frequencies tested but most significantly at extra higher frequencies.	\N	\N
25786320	The spatial specificity of auditory approaching and withdrawing aftereffects was investigated in an anechoic chamber. The adapting and testing stimuli were presented from loudspeakers located in front of the subject at the distance of 1.1 m (near) and 4.5 m (far) from the listener's head. Approach and withdrawal of stimuli were simulated by increasing or decreasing the amplitude of the wide-noise impulse sequence. The listeners were required to determine the movement direction of test stimulus following each 5-s adaptation period. The listeners' "withdrawal" responses were used for psychometric functions plotting and for quantitative assessment of auditory aftereffect. The data summarized for all 8 participants indicated that the asymmetry of approaching and withdrawing aftereffects depended on spatial localization of adaptor and test. The asymmetry of aftereffects was largest when adaptor and test were presented from the same loudspeaker (either near or far). Adaptation to the approach induced a directionally dependent displacement of the psychometric functions relative to control condition without adaptation and adaptation to the withdrawal was not. The magnitude of approaching aftereffect was greater when adaptor and test were located in near spatial domain than when they came from far domain. When adaptor and test were presented from the distinct loudspeakers, magnitude approaching aftereffect was decreasing in comparison to the same spatial localization, but after adaptation to withdrawal it was increasing. As a result, the directionally dependent displacements of the psychometric functions relative to control condition were observed after adaptation as to approach and to withdrawal. The discrepancy of the psychometric functions received after adaptation to approach and to withdrawal at near and far spatial domains was greater under the same localization of adaptor and test in comparison to their distinct localization. We assume that the peculiarities of approaching and withdrawing aftereffects observed reflect their spatial specificity. It is possible that spatial peculiarities of approaching and withdrawing aftereffects can be associated with specialized mechanisms for analysis of motion at the different distance from subject.	\N	\N
25786957	Performing a secondary task while listening to speech has a detrimental effect on speech processing, but the locus of the disruption within the speech system is poorly understood. Recent research has shown that cognitive load imposed by a concurrent visual task increases dependency on lexical knowledge during speech processing, but it does not affect lexical activation per se. This suggests that "lexical drift" under cognitive load occurs either as a post-lexical bias at the decisional level or as a secondary consequence of reduced perceptual sensitivity. This study aimed to adjudicate between these alternatives using a forced-choice task that required listeners to identify noise-degraded spoken words with or without the addition of a concurrent visual task. Adding cognitive load increased the likelihood that listeners would select a word acoustically similar to the target even though its frequency was lower than that of the target. Thus, there was no evidence that cognitive load led to a high-frequency response bias. Rather, cognitive load seems to disrupt sublexical encoding, possibly by impairing perceptual acuity at the auditory periphery.	\N	\N
25788705	Spatial crowding refers to impaired target identification when the target is surrounded by other stimuli in space temporal crowding refers to impaired target identification when the target is surrounded by other stimuli in time previously, when spatial and temporal crowding were measured in the fovea they were interrelated with amblyopic observers but almost absent with normal observers bonneh, sagi, & polat, 2007. In the current study we examined whether reliable temporal crowding can be found for normal observers with peripheral presentation 9° of eccentricity, and whether similar relations between temporal and spatial crowding will emerge to that end, we presented a sequence of three displays separated by a varying interstimulus interval (ISI). Each display included either one letter : experiments 1a ,: 1b ,: 1c or three letters separated by a varying interletter spacing: Experiments 2a ,: 2b). One of these displays included an oriented T. Observers indicated the T's orientation. As expected, we found spatial crowding: accuracy improved as the interletter spacing increased. Critically, we also found temporal crowding: in all experiments accuracy increased as the ISI increased, even when only stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs) larger than 150 ms were included, ensuring this effect does not reflect mere ordinary masking. Thus, with peripheral presentation, temporal crowding also emerged for normal observers. However, only a weak interaction between temporal and spatial crowding was found.	\N	\N
25798581	Contralateral masking is the phenomenon where a masker presented to one ear affects the ability to detect a signal in the opposite ear. For normal hearing listeners, contralateral masking results in masking patterns that are both sharper and dramatically smaller in magnitude than ipsilateral masking. The goal of this study was to investigate whether medial olivocochlear (MOC) efferents are needed for the sharpness and relatively small magnitude of the contralateral masking function. To do this, bilateral cochlear implant patients were tested because, by directly stimulating the auditory nerve, cochlear implants circumvent the effects of the MOC efferents. The results indicated that, as with normal hearing listeners, the contralateral masking function was sharper than the ipsilateral masking function. However, although there was a reduction in the magnitude of the contralateral masking function compared to the ipsilateral masking function, it was relatively modest. This is in sharp contrast to the results of normal hearing listeners where the magnitude of the contralateral masking function is greatly reduced. These results suggest that MOC function may not play a large role in the sharpness of the contralateral masking function but may play a considerable role in the magnitude of the contralateral masking function.	\N	\N
25816820	The Fukuda stepping test is commonly used to assess peripheral vestibular function. It has, however, been suggested that its maximal sensitivity and specificity are 70 per cent and 50 per cent, respectively. This study was undertaken to evaluate environmental factors that may influence the reliability of this assessment and hence to 'sharpen' its use in a clinical setting. Forty-four participants aged between 20 and 43 years were asked to perform the Fukuda stepping test in both a standard clinic room and a soundproofed room under the following conditions in a randomised order: on the floor versus on foam; with and without a sound-localising source; and with and without ear defenders. Significant differences in the extent of rotation were found when comparing the results obtained in several settings, including standing on the floor in a standard room versus a soundproofed room (p = 0.036), and standing on foam in a standard room versus a soundproofed room (p = 0.015). Our results suggest that certain alterations to the test environment may improve the sensitivity of this clinical examination.	\N	\N
25832187	Previous studies have shown that discrimination sensitivity in 2AFC tasks depends on the presentation order of the standard and comparison stimulus. The present study examined whether this so-called Type B effect generalizes across different standard magnitudes. Therefore, Experiment 1 employed an auditory duration discrimination task with short (100 ms) and long (1,000 ms) standard durations and a constant interstimulus interval (ISI) of 1,000 ms. For both standard durations, a clear Type B effect emerged. In Experiment 2, discrimination sensitivity was assessed for short (300 ms) and long (1,000 ms) ISIs and a constant standard duration of 100 ms, in order to examine whether the Type B effect diminishes or even reverses when both stimuli are presented in rapid succession, as was suggested by previous studies. In the short, but not the long ISI condition, the Type B effect was virtually eliminated. Taken together, the present experiments suggest that the Type B effect is robust across standard magnitude, but diminishes when the time interval between both stimuli is reduced. This result pattern is discussed within the framework of the Internal Reference Model and the Sensation Weighting Model. It is also demonstrated that both models provide a quantitative account of the present results.	\N	\N
25878263	Amplitude modulations are fundamental features of natural signals, including human speech and nonhuman primate vocalizations. Because natural signals frequently occur in the context of other competing signals, we used a forward-masking paradigm to investigate how the modulation context of a prior signal affects cortical responses to subsequent modulated sounds. Psychophysical "modulation masking," in which the presentation of a modulated "masker" signal elevates the threshold for detecting the modulation of a subsequent stimulus, has been interpreted as evidence of a central modulation filterbank and modeled accordingly. Whether cortical modulation tuning is compatible with such models remains unknown. By recording responses to pairs of sinusoidally amplitude modulated (SAM) tones in the auditory cortex of awake squirrel monkeys, we show that the prior presentation of the SAM masker elicited persistent and tuned suppression of the firing rate to subsequent SAM signals. Population averages of these effects are compatible with adaptation in broadly tuned modulation channels. In contrast, modulation context had little effect on the synchrony of the cortical representation of the second SAM stimuli and the tuning of such effects did not match that observed for firing rate. Our results suggest that, although the temporal representation of modulated signals is more robust to changes in stimulus context than representations based on average firing rate, this representation is not fully exploited and psychophysical modulation masking more closely mirrors physiological rate suppression and that rate tuning for a given stimulus feature in a given neuron's signal pathway appears sufficient to engender context-sensitive cortical adaptation.	\N	\N
25885195	To verify the effect of long-term use of hearing aids with frequency compression for verbal behavior tests and daily activities. Thirty-two adults, aged between 30 and 60 years old, with moderate to severe sensorineural hearing loss at high frequencies with steeply sloping configuration were divided into two groups: 16 with hearing aids with frequency compression algorithm enabled and 16 not enabled. All participants underwent the detection tests of consonant sounds, monosyllable recognition in quiet environments, identification of fricative monosyllables, and Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit (APHAB) questionnaire in five times throughout a 12-month trial. Detection of consonant sounds, recognition of monosyllables in quiet environments and identification of fricative monosyllables improved significantly with frequency compression enabled. Participants had their APHAB scores improved whether they were adapted to the frequency compression or not. Frequency compression provides the anticipated improvement in audibility, detection of high-frequency consonant sounds, and recognition of monosyllables.	\N	\N
25913551	Since 1972, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared noise as a pollutant. Over the last decades, the quality of the urban environment has attracted the interest of researchers due to the growing urban sprawl, especially in developing countries. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of noise exposure in six urban soundscapes: Areas with high and low levels of noise in scenarios of leisure, work, and home. Cross-sectional study. The study was conducted in two steps: Evaluation of noise levels, with the development of noise maps, and health related inquiries. 180 individuals were interviewed, being 60 in each scenario, divided into 30 exposed to high level of noise and 30 to low level. Chi-Square test and Ordered Logistic Regression Model (P < 0,005). 70% of the interviewees reported noticing some source of noise in the selected scenarios and it was observed an association between exposure and perception of some source of noise (P < 0.001). 41.7% of the interviewees reported some degree of annoyance, being that this was associated with exposure (P < 0.001). There was also an association between exposure in different scenarios and reports of poor quality of sleep (P < 0.001). In the scenarios of work and home, the chance of reporting annoyance increased when compared with the scenario of leisure. We conclude that the use of this sort of assessment may clarify the relationship between urban noise exposure and health.	\N	\N
25914528	The possible relationship between audiometric hearing thresholds and cognitive performance on language tests was analyzed in a cross-sectional cohort of older adults aged ≥65 years (N=98) with different degrees of cognitive impairment. Participants were distributed into two groups according to Reisberg's Global Deterioration Scale (GDS): a normal/predementia group (GDS scores 1-3) and a moderate/moderately severe dementia group (GDS scores 4 and 5). Hearing loss (pure-tone audiometry) and receptive and production-based language function (Verbal Fluency Test, Boston Naming Test, and Token Test) were assessed. Results showed that the dementia group achieved significantly lower scores than the predementia group in all language tests. A moderate negative correlation between hearing loss and verbal comprehension (r=-0.298; P<0.003) was observed in the predementia group (r=-0.363; P<0.007). However, no significant relationship between hearing loss and verbal fluency and naming scores was observed, regardless of cognitive impairment. In the predementia group, reduced hearing level partially explains comprehension performance but not language production. In the dementia group, hearing loss cannot be considered as an explanatory factor of poor receptive and production-based language performance. These results are suggestive of cognitive rather than simply auditory problems to explain the language impairment in the elderly.	\N	\N
25920851	Broadened auditory filters associated with sensorineural hearing loss have clearly been shown to diminish speech recognition in noise for adults, but far less is known about potential effects for children. This study examined speech recognition in noise for adults and children using simulated auditory filters of different widths. Specifically, 5 groups (20 listeners each) of adults or children (5 and 7 yrs), were asked to recognize sentences in speech-shaped noise. Seven-year-olds listened at 0 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) only; 5-yr-olds listened at +3 or 0 dB SNR; and adults listened at 0 or -3 dB SNR. Sentence materials were processed both to smear the speech spectrum (i.e., simulate broadened filters), and to enhance the spectrum (i.e., simulate narrowed filters). Results showed: (1) Spectral smearing diminished recognition for listeners of all ages; (2) spectral enhancement did not improve recognition, and in fact diminished it somewhat; and (3) interactions were observed between smearing and SNR, but only for adults. That interaction made age effects difficult to gauge. Nonetheless, it was concluded that efforts to diagnose the extent of broadening of auditory filters and to develop techniques to correct this condition could benefit patients with hearing loss, especially children.	\N	\N
25994736	A follow-up experiment to those conducted by Brown and Yost [(2011). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 130, 358-364; (2013). Basic Aspects of Hearing: Physiology and Perception (Springer, London, UK)] examined interaural time difference (ITD) discrimination for a low-frequency target noise band flanked by monotic noise bands that were either lower-frequency than the target band, higher-frequency, or both. The flanking bands were either spectrally contiguous with the target band or spectrally separated. Significant interference in ITD processing occurred in the presence of the high-frequency flanking band. Results are discussed by way of a comparison of the conditions in the present study to those in studies of binaural interference. The possible role of attention is also discussed.	\N	\N
25997868	In cochlear implant (CI) recipients with unilateral hearing loss (UHL) and normal hearing (NH) in the contralateral ear, the central auditory system receives signals of different auditory modalities, i.e. electrically via the CI ear as well as acoustically via the NH ear. The present study investigates binaural integration of bimodal stimulation in the central auditory system of 10 CI subjects with UHL by applying a modified version of the Rapidly Alternating Speech Perception (RASP) test to characterise speech recognition ability under monotic and dichotic listening arrangements. Subsequently, the results for each monotic and dichotic test condition were compared to quantify the binaural benefit from CI usage. The study results demonstrate significantly improved speech recognition under dichotic compared to monotic listening conditions, providing evidence that there is binaural integration of acoustically and electrically transmitted speech segments in the central nervous system at brainstem and cortical levels. In contrast to more commonly used tests of binaural integration, such as localisation, the RASP test provides the clinical option to investigate binaural integration involving structures at the cortical level.	\N	\N
25998097	Recommendation for cochlear implant (CI) treatment for individuals with severe to profound single-sided deafness (SSD) and asymmetrical hearing loss (AHL) is on the rise. This raises the need for greater consistency in the definition of CI candidacy for these cases and in the assessment methods of patient-related benefits to permit effective comparison and interpretation of the outcomes with both conventional and implantable options across studies. During a dedicated seminar on implant treatment in AHL patients, the panellists of the closing round table reviewed the clinical experience presented with the aim to define clear audiometric characteristics for both AHL and SSD cases, as well as a common data set enabling consistent evaluation of hearing benefits in this population. The panellists agreed on a clear differentiation between AHL and SSD CI candidates, defining average pure-tone thresholds up to 4 kHz for better and poorer ears. Agreement was reached on a minimum set of assessment procedures, and included the necessity of trials with conventional CROS/BICROS hearing aids and bone conduction devices before considering CI treatment. Objective assessment of sound localisation abilities was identified as the most relevant criterion to quantify performance before and after treatment. In parallel, subjective assessment of overall hearing ability was recommended via the Speech, Spatial and Qualities of hearing questionnaire. Longitudinal follow-up of these parameters and the hours of daily use were considered essential to reflect the potential treatment benefits for this population. The consistency in the data collection and its report will further support health authorities in their decision on acceptable gains from available hearing loss treatment options.	\N	\N
26017796	To compare the efficacy and feasibility of teleaudiometry with that of sweep audiometry in elementary school children, using pure-tone audiometry as the gold standard. A total of 243 students with a mean age of 8.3 years participated in the study. Of these, 118 were boys, and 125 were girls. The following procedures were performed: teleaudiometry screening with software that evaluates hearing at frequencies of 1,000, 2000 and 4000 Hz at 25 dBHL; sweep audiometry screening in an acoustic booth (20 dBHL at the same frequencies); pure-tone audiometry thresholds in an acoustic booth (frequencies of 500, 1000, 2000 and 4000 Hz); and acoustic immittance measurements. The diagnostic capacities of the teleaudiometry/sweep audiometry screening methods were as follows: sensitivity  ϝ  58%/65%; specificity  ϝ  86%/99%; positive predictive value  ϝ  51%/91%; negative predictive value  ϝ  89%/92%; and accuracy  ϝ  81%/92%. Teleaudiometry and sweep audiometry showed moderate agreement. Furthermore, the use of these methods in series with immittance testing improved the specificity, whereas parallel testing improved the sensitivity. Teleaudiometry was found to be reliable and feasible for screening hearing in school children. Moreover, teleaudiometry is the preferred method for remote areas where specialized personnel and specific equipment are not available, and its use may reduce the costs of hearing screening programs.	\N	\N
26025759	Our fMRI study investigates auditory rhyme processing in spoken language to further elucidate the topic of functional lateralization of language processing. During scanning, 14 subjects listened to four different types of versed word strings and subsequently performed either a rhyme or a meter detection task. Our results show lateralization to auditory-related temporal regions in the right hemisphere irrespective of task. As for the left hemisphere we report responses in the supramarginal gyrus as well as in the opercular part of the inferior frontal gyrus modulated by the presence of regular meter and rhyme. The interaction of rhyme and meter was associated with increased involvement of the superior temporal sulcus and the putamen of the right hemisphere. Overall, these findings support the notion of right-hemispheric specialization for suprasegmental analyses during processing of spoken sentences and provide neuroimaging evidence for the influence of metrics on auditory rhyme processing.	\N	\N
26055197	The timely diagnosis and treatment of acquired hearing loss in the pediatric population has significant implications for a child's development. Audiological assessment in children, however, carries both technological and logistical challenges. Typically, specialized methods (such as play audiometry) are required to maintain the child's attention and can be resource intensive. These challenges were previously addressed by a novel, calibrated, interactive play audiometer for Apple(®) iOS(®) called "ShoeBOX Audiometry". This device has potential applications for deployment in environments where traditional clinical audiometry is either unavailable or impractical. The objective of this study was to assess the screening capability of the tablet audiometer in an uncontrolled environment using consumer ear-bud headphones. Consecutive patients presenting to the Audiology Clinic at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (ages 4 and older) were recruited. Participants' hearing was evaluted using the tablet audiometer calibrated to Apple(®) In-Ear headphones. The warble tone thresholds obtained were compared to gold standard measurements taken with a traditional clinical audiometer inside a soundbooth. 80 patients were enrolled. The majority of participants were capable of completing an audiologic assessment using the tablet computer. Due to ambient noise levels outside a soundbooth, thresholds obtained at 500Hz were not consistent with traditional audiometry. Excluding 500Hz threholds, the tablet audiometer demonstrated strong negative predictive value (89.7%) as well as strong sensitivity (91.2%) for hearing loss. Thresholds obtained in an uncontrolled setting are not reflective of diagnostic thresholds due to the uncalibrated nature of the headphones and variability of the setting without a booth. Nevertheless, the tablet audiometer proved to be both a valid and sensitive instrument for unsupervised screening of warble-tone thresholds in children.	\N	\N
26065403	To date, there have been less than 30 cases of cochlear implantation (CI) in patients with superficial siderosis (SS) reported in the literature. The primary objective of the current study is to evaluate CI outcomes in six additional patients (seven ears) with SS and sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) and to perform a systematic review of the literature. Case series and systematic review of the literature. Two tertiary academic CI centers. All patients with SS who underwent CI between 2007 and 2014. Cochlear implantation. Pre- and post-implantation speech perception scores and durability of benefit. A total of seven ears (four males; median age 52 yr) with SS and SNHL met inclusion criteria. All patients developed progressive bilateral SNHL that was no longer amenable to conventional hearing aids. Additional presenting symptoms included vestibulopathy (n = 4), cerebellar ataxia (n = 3), mild dementia (n = 1), and myelopathy (n = 1). All patients underwent uncomplicated CI, and intraoperative device telemetry revealed normal responses in all electrodes. The median postoperative auditory threshold average was 32.5 dB HL (range 16-36 dB) and the median postoperative CNC word score was 51% (range 46-64%). The median duration of follow-up was 15.5 months (range 3-64 mo). All patients demonstrated initial improvement in speech perception testing. Two patients had performance decline and worsening dementia resulting from progressive SS. Cochlear implantation is a viable strategy for auditory rehabilitation in patients with SS and associated SNHL. Most individuals enjoy benefit from CI; however, patients should be counseled regarding the risks of performance decline with progressive SS.	\N	\N
26093425	Natural auditory scenes often consist of several sound sources overlapping in time, but separated in space. Yet, location is not fully exploited in auditory grouping: spatially separated sounds can get perceptually fused into a single auditory object and this leads to difficulties in the identification and localization of concurrent sounds. Here, the brain mechanisms responsible for grouping across spatial locations were explored in magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings. The results show that the cortical representation of a vowel spatially separated into two locations reflects the perceived location of the speech sound rather than the physical locations of the individual components. In other words, the auditory scene is neurally rearranged to bring components into spatial alignment when they were deemed to belong to the same object. This renders the original spatial information unavailable at the level of the auditory cortex and may contribute to difficulties in concurrent sound segregation.	\N	\N
26093429	Sound focusing is to create a concentrated acoustic field in the region surrounded by a loudspeaker array. This problem was tackled in the previous research via the Helmholtz integral approach, brightness control, acoustic contrast control, etc. In this paper, the same problem was revisited from the perspective of beamforming. A source array model is reformulated in terms of the steering matrix between the source and the field points, which lends itself to the use of beamforming algorithms such as minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) and linearly constrained minimum variance (LCMV) originally intended for sensor arrays. The beamforming methods are compared with the conventional methods in terms of beam pattern, directional index, and control effort. Objective tests are conducted to assess the audio quality by using perceptual evaluation of audio quality (PEAQ). Experiments of produced sound field and listening tests are conducted in a listening room, with results processed using analysis of variance and regression analysis. In contrast to the conventional energy-based methods, the results have shown that the proposed methods are phase-sensitive in light of the distortionless constraint in formulating the array filters, which helps enhance audio quality and focusing performance.	\N	\N
26093435	Working memory capacity has been linked to performance on many higher cognitive tasks, including the ability to perceive speech in noise. Current efforts to train working memory have demonstrated that working memory performance can be improved, suggesting that working memory training may lead to improved speech perception in noise. A further advantage of working memory training to improve speech perception in noise is that working memory training materials are often simple, such as letters or digits, making them easily translatable across languages. The current effort tested the hypothesis that working memory training would be associated with improved speech perception in noise and that materials would easily translate across languages. Native Mandarin Chinese and native English speakers completed ten days of reversed digit span training. Reading span and speech perception in noise both significantly improved following training, whereas untrained controls showed no gains. These data suggest that working memory training may be used to improve listeners' speech perception in noise and that the materials may be quickly adapted to a wide variety of listeners.	\N	\N
26093448	Physiological measures of neural activity in the auditory cortex have revealed plasticity following unilateral deafness. Central projections from the remaining ear reorganize to produce a stronger cortical response than normal. However, little is known about the perceptual consequences of this increase. One possibility is improved sound intensity discrimination. Intensity difference limens were measured in 11 individuals with unilateral deafness that were previously shown to exhibit increased cortical activity to sounds heard by the intact ear. Significantly smaller mean difference limens were observed compared with controls. These results provide evidence of the perceptual consequences of plasticity in humans following unilateral deafness.	\N	\N
26107084	To examine the voice and personality characteristics of patients diagnosed with organic dysphonia secondary to vocal fold immobility. The study comprised patients of both genders, attending the Clinic School of Speech Therapy of the Federal University of Paraíba, with otorhinolaryngological diagnosis of vocal fold immobility and speech therapy diagnosis of dysphonia. The self-assessment of voice was measured through a Vocal Screening Protocol and Voice Symptoms Scale (VoiSS), the voice was collected for auditory-perceptive evaluation, and the Factorial Personality Battery (FPB) was used. Descriptive statistical analysis was performed to determine the frequency, mean, and standard deviation of the studied variables. Eight patients participated in the study, of both genders, with average age of 40.4 ± 16.9 years. The more frequent risk factors were the personal ones (4.7 ± 2.1). In the VoiSS, the patients presented a higher average in the limitation score (34.1 ± 15.7). From the auditory-perceptive evaluation, moderate intensity of vocal deviation was obtained, with predominant vocal roughness (57.7 ± 25.2). In the FPB, the patients had an average higher than the cutoff scores in neuroticism (3.8 ± 1.4) and accomplishment (5.2 ± 1.0). The predominant vocal parameter was roughness. The patients referred to a few risk factors that compromise the vocal behavior and presented the neuroticism and realization factors as a highlight in their personality. Thus, individuals with vocal fold immobility show personality characteristics that may be a reflection of their voice disorder, not a factor that determines their dysphonia.	\N	\N
26121827	To assess the clinical effeetiveness of prelingually deaf children after cochlear implantation at different ages so as to provide reasonable expectations for the patients and guidance for the clinical treatment. Electronic databases PubMed, YZ365. COM, WANFANG DATA, CMJD, CHKD, CNKI were searched using relevant keywords. Extracted data included author, year of publication, diagnosis, et al. Reported treatment outcomes were clustered into speech discrimination and hearing abilities. Meta-analyses were performed on studies with numerical results using random or fixed effects model. There were eight randomized control studies including 442 patients. Comparing speech perception of prelingually deaf children after cochlear implantation younger than three years old (experimental group) and 3-6 years old (control group), three and six months after operation showed that experimental group performed significantly worse than control group; 12 months after operation showed that experimental group performed significantly better than control group. Comparing hearing abilities, three and six months after operation showed that experimental group performed significantly worse than control group; 12 months after operation showed showed that experimental group performed significantly better than control group. Comparing speech perception of younger or older than 4. 5 years old children showed that after 1.5-2 years of operation children implanted younger than 4.5 years of age performed significantly better than children implanted older than 4.5 years old. Comparing speech perception of 7-12 years old children showed that after 3, 6, 12 months of operation patients of 7-12 years old performed significantly better than those children older than 12 years old. Comparing speech perception of implantation younger or older than 18 years old (7-14 yeas old was group A, > 14-18 yeas old was group B, older than 18 yeas old was group C) showed that after one and four years of operation A > B > C, and there were significant differences among them. Comparing warble tone threshold average (WTA) showed that after one year of operation A < B < C, and there were significant differences among them. However, after four years of operation, there was no significant difference among them. Prelinguistically deafened patients younger than three years old with cochlear implantation, insisting on scienctific rehabilitation training for a long period of time can receive the optimal recovery effect. The older patients are suggested as early as possible receiving cochlear implantation. The longer they are implanted, the better results they will receive. Moreover, the younger age they are implanted, the faster postoperative language progress they will receive. Further controlled studies with longer follow-up periods and more person included may make the effectiveness of cochlear implantaion more reliable.	\N	\N
26152053	During the first years of life, sensory modalities communicate with each other. This process is fundamental for the development of unisensory and multisensory skills. The absence of one sensory input impacts on the development of other modalities. Since 2008 we have studied these aspects and developed our cross-sensory calibration theory. This theory emerged from the observation that children start to integrate multisensory information (such as vision and touch) only after 8-10 years of age. Before this age the more accurate sense teaches (calibrates) the others; when one calibrating modality is missing, the other modalities result impaired. Children with visual disability have problems in understanding the haptic or auditory perception of space and children with motor disabilities have problems in understanding the visual dimension of objects. This review presents our recent studies on multisensory integration and cross-sensory calibration in children and adults with and without sensory and motor disabilities. The goal of this review is to show the importance of interaction between sensory systems during the early period of life in order to correct perceptual development to occur.	\N	\N
26152058	Echolocation can be used by blind and sighted humans to navigate their environment. The current study investigated the neural activity underlying processing of path direction during walking. Brain activity was measured with fMRI in three blind echolocation experts, and three blind and three sighted novices. During scanning, participants listened to binaural recordings that had been made prior to scanning while echolocation experts had echolocated during walking along a corridor which could continue to the left, right, or straight ahead. Participants also listened to control sounds that contained ambient sounds and clicks, but no echoes. The task was to decide if the corridor in the recording continued to the left, right, or straight ahead, or if they were listening to a control sound. All participants successfully dissociated echo from no echo sounds, however, echolocation experts were superior at direction detection. We found brain activations associated with processing of path direction (contrast: echo vs. no echo) in superior parietal lobule (SPL) and inferior frontal cortex in each group. In sighted novices, additional activation occurred in the inferior parietal lobule (IPL) and middle and superior frontal areas. Within the framework of the dorso-dorsal and ventro-dorsal pathway proposed by Rizzolatti and Matelli (2003), our results suggest that blind participants may automatically assign directional meaning to the echoes, while sighted participants may apply more conscious, high-level spatial processes. High similarity of SPL and IFC activations across all three groups, in combination with previous research, also suggest that all participants recruited a multimodal spatial processing system for action (here: locomotion).	\N	\N
26177161	Code-blends (simultaneous words and signs) are a unique characteristic of bimodal bilingual communication. Using fMRI, we investigated code-blend comprehension in hearing native ASL-English bilinguals who made a semantic decision (edible?) about signs, audiovisual words, and semantically equivalent code-blends. English and ASL recruited a similar fronto-temporal network with expected modality differences: stronger activation for English in auditory regions of bilateral superior temporal cortex, and stronger activation for ASL in bilateral occipitotemporal visual regions and left parietal cortex. Code-blend comprehension elicited activity in a combination of these regions, and no cognitive control regions were additionally recruited. Furthermore, code-blends elicited reduced activation relative to ASL presented alone in bilateral prefrontal and visual extrastriate cortices, and relative to English alone in auditory association cortex. Consistent with behavioral facilitation observed during semantic decisions, the findings suggest that redundant semantic content induces more efficient neural processing in language and sensory regions during bimodal language integration.	\N	\N
26185045	Discourse structure enables us to generate expectations based upon linguistic material that has already been introduced. The present magnetoencephalography (MEG) study addresses auditory perception of test sentences in which discourse coherence was manipulated by using presuppositions (PSP) that either correspond or fail to correspond to items in preceding context sentences with respect to uniqueness and existence. Context violations yielded delayed auditory M50 and enhanced auditory M200 cross-correlation responses to syllable onsets within an analysis window of 1.5s following the PSP trigger words. Furthermore, discourse incoherence yielded suppression of spectral power within an expanded alpha band ranging from 6 to 16Hz. This effect showed a bimodal temporal distribution, being significant in an early time window of 0.0-0.5s following the PSP trigger and a late interval of 2.0-2.5s. These findings indicate anticipatory top-down mechanisms interacting with various aspects of bottom-up processing during speech perception.	\N	\N
26185046	A number of studies have shown that from an early age, bilinguals outperform their monolingual peers on executive control tasks. We previously found that bilingual children and adults also display greater attention to unexpected language switches within speech. Here, we investigated the effect of a bilingual upbringing on speech perception in one language. We recorded monolingual and bilingual toddlers' event-related potentials (ERPs) to spoken words preceded by pictures. Words matching the picture prime elicited an early frontal positivity in bilingual participants only, whereas later ERP amplitudes associated with semantic processing did not differ between groups. These results add to the growing body of evidence that bilingualism increases overall attention during speech perception whilst semantic integration is unaffected.	\N	\N
26200250	Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) demonstrate that human auditory cortical responses are sensitive to changes in static pitch as indexed by the pitch onset response (POR), a negativity generated at the initiation of acoustic periodicity. Yet, it is still unclear if this brain signature is sensitive to dynamic, time-varying properties of pitch more characteristic of those found in naturalistic speech and music. Neuroelectric PORs were recorded in response to contrastive pitch patterns differing in their pitch height, time-variance, and directionality (i.e., rise vs. fall). Broadband noise followed by contiguous iterated rippled noise (producing salient pitch sweeps) was used to temporally separate neural activity coding the onset of acoustic energy from the onset of time-varying pitch. Analysis of PORs revealed distinct modulations in response latency that distinguished static from time-varying pitch contours (steady-state<dynamic) and pitch height (high<low). However, PORs were insensitive to the direction of pitch sweeps (rise=fall). Our findings suggest that the POR signature provides a useful neural index of auditory cortical pitch processing for some, but not all pitch-evoking stimuli.	\N	\N
26222937	To analyze the occurrence of acoustic reflex and its threshold on newborns using the 226 and 1,000 Hz probes. Thirty-six newborns with "PASS" results in newborn hearing screening and tympanogram with one or two peaks for both probe tones were included. Group I comprised 20 full-term newborns without risk indicator for hearing loss, and Group II comprised 16 newborns with at least one risk indicator. The study about ipsilateral acoustic reflex thresholds was conducted in 500, 1,000, 2,000, and 4,000 Hz. The groups presented the acoustic reflex thresholds between 50 and 100 dB for both probe tones. In the comparison between the probes, there were differences in all frequencies evaluated in Group I, with the lowest threshold mean for the 1,000 Hz probe. In Group II, differences were detected at 2,000 Hz. The mean acoustic reflex thresholds were similar in both groups for the 226 Hz probe. There was a difference for the 1,000 Hz probe in all tested frequencies. The percentage of response was higher in both groups for the 1,000 Hz probe. The kappa test showed extremely poor agreement in the comparison of results between both probes. The occurrence of acoustic reflex was higher in newborns and its thresholds were lower with the 1,000 Hz probe both for healthy newborns and for newborns at risk.	\N	\N
26290244	Plasticity in the visual cortex of blind individuals provides a rare window into the mechanisms of cortical specialization. In the absence of visual input, occipital ("visual") brain regions respond to sound and spoken language. Here, we examined the time course and developmental mechanism of this plasticity in blind children. Nineteen blind and 40 sighted children and adolescents (4-17 years old) listened to stories and two auditory control conditions (unfamiliar foreign speech, and music). We find that "visual" cortices of young blind (but not sighted) children respond to sound. Responses to nonlanguage sounds increased between the ages of 4 and 17. By contrast, occipital responses to spoken language were maximal by age 4 and were not related to Braille learning. These findings suggest that occipital plasticity for spoken language is independent of plasticity for Braille and for sound. We conclude that in the absence of visual input, spoken language colonizes the visual system during brain development. Our findings suggest that early in life, human cortex has a remarkably broad computational capacity. The same cortical tissue can take on visual perception and language functions. Studies of plasticity provide key insights into how experience shapes the human brain. The "visual" cortex of adults who are blind from birth responds to touch, sound, and spoken language. To date, all existing studies have been conducted with adults, so little is known about the developmental trajectory of plasticity. We used fMRI to study the emergence of "visual" cortex responses to sound and spoken language in blind children and adolescents. We find that "visual" cortex responses to sound increase between 4 and 17 years of age. By contrast, responses to spoken language are present by 4 years of age and are not related to Braille-learning. These findings suggest that, early in development, human cortex can take on a strikingly wide range of functions.	\N	\N
26323201	To determine if differences between dyslexic and typical readers in their reading scores and verbal IQ are evident as early as first grade and whether the trajectory of these differences increases or decreases from childhood to adolescence. The subjects were the 414 participants comprising the Connecticut Longitudinal Study, a sample survey cohort, assessed yearly from 1st to 12th grade on measures of reading and IQ. Statistical analysis employed longitudinal models based on growth curves and multiple groups. As early as first grade, compared with typical readers, dyslexic readers had lower reading scores and verbal IQ, and their trajectories over time never converge with those of typical readers. These data demonstrate that such differences are not so much a function of increasing disparities over time but instead because of differences already present in first grade between typical and dyslexic readers. The achievement gap between typical and dyslexic readers is evident as early as first grade, and this gap persists into adolescence. These findings provide strong evidence and impetus for early identification of and intervention for young children at risk for dyslexia. Implementing effective reading programs as early as kindergarten or even preschool offers the potential to close the achievement gap.	\N	\N
26336746	Dynamics of activity in the frequency band of theta waves during of procedures, listening of the acoustic image of the own EEG was investigated. The formation of the acoustic image EEG was performed with a significant reduction of musical properties. It is shown that the increase in activity in the theta range depends on the level of synchronization and consistency of the presentation of the acoustic image own EEG relative to the current bioelectrical activity of the brain. The maximum increase in activity in the theta range was observed with minimum time delay and maximum consistency requirements of sounds with the current EEG. It is concluded that the increase in activity in the range of theta waves in the listening environment acoustic image own EEG is determined by the correlation of sounds with the current bioelectric activity of the brain.	\N	\N
26377472	Human cortex is comprised of specialized networks that support functions, such as visual motion perception and language processing. How do genes and experience contribute to this specialization? Studies of plasticity offer unique insights into this question. In congenitally blind individuals, "visual" cortex responds to auditory and tactile stimuli. Remarkably, recent evidence suggests that occipital areas participate in language processing. We asked whether in blindness, occipital cortices: (1) develop domain-specific responses to language and (2) respond to a highly specialized aspect of language-syntactic movement. Nineteen congenitally blind and 18 sighted participants took part in two fMRI experiments. We report that in congenitally blind individuals, but not in sighted controls, "visual" cortex is more active during sentence comprehension than during a sequence memory task with nonwords, or a symbolic math task. This suggests that areas of occipital cortex become selective for language, relative to other similar higher-cognitive tasks. Crucially, we find that these occipital areas respond more to sentences with syntactic movement but do not respond to the difficulty of math equations. We conclude that regions within the visual cortex of blind adults are involved in syntactic processing. Our findings suggest that the cognitive function of human cortical areas is largely determined by input during development. Human cortex is made up of specialized regions that perform different functions, such as visual motion perception and language processing. How do genes and experience contribute to this specialization? Studies of plasticity show that cortical areas can change function from one sensory modality to another. Here we demonstrate that input during development can alter cortical function even more dramatically. In blindness a subset of "visual" areas becomes specialized for language processing. Crucially, we find that the same "visual" areas respond to a highly specialized and uniquely human aspect of language-syntactic movement. These data suggest that human cortex has broad functional capacity during development, and input plays a major role in determining functional specialization.	\N	\N
26380997	The usage of personal listening devices (PLDs) is associated with risks of hearing loss. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effects of music exposure from these devices on high-frequency hearing thresholds of PLD users. A total of 282 young adults were questioned regarding their listening habits and symptoms associated with PLD listening. Their audiogram thresholds were determined at high (3-8 kHz) frequencies and extended high frequencies (EHFs, 9-16 kHz). The preferred listening volumes of PLD users were used to compute their overall 8-h equivalent music exposure levels (LAeq8h). Approximately 80% of the subjects were regular PLD users. Of these, 20.1% had LAeq8h of ≥75 dBA, while 4.4% of them had LAeq8h of ≥85 dBA, which carries a high risk of hearing damage. Compared with those exposed to LAeq8h of <75 dBA, subjects who had LAeq8h of ≥75 dBA reported a significantly higher incidence of tinnitus and difficulty in hearing others immediately after using PLDs. PLD users who were exposed to LAeq8h of ≥75 dBA and had been using their devices for ≥4 years also showed significantly higher mean audiogram thresholds compared with non-users at most EHFs tested. In addition, the thresholds of PLD users at EHFs showed a weak but significant positive correlation with their LAeq8h. The present findings suggest that excessive exposure to music among PLD users may lead to initial effects on their hearing at very high frequencies.	\N	\N
26536965	It has been shown that musicians are at risk of noise-induced hearing loss. The aim of the study has been to evaluate the temporary changes of hearing in the case of orchestral musicians after group rehearsals. The study group comprised 18 orchestral musicians, aged 30-58 years old (mean: 40 years old) having 12-40 years (mean: 22 years) of professional experience. The temporary changes in hearing after group rehearsals were determined using transient-evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOAEs). Noise exposures during group rehearsals were also evaluated. Musicians' hearing threshold levels were higher (worse) than expected for the equivalent non-noise-exposed population. Moreover, the high frequency notched audiograms were observed in some of them. After rehearsals, during which musicians were exposed to orchestral noise at A-weighted equivalent-continuous sound pressure level (normalized to 8-h working day) varied from 75.6-83.1 dB (mean: 79.4 dB). The significant post-exposure reductions of TEOAE amplitudes (approx. 0.7 dB) both for the total response and frequency bands of 2000 and 3000 Hz were noted. However, there were no significant differences between pre- and postexposure reproducibility of TEOAE. Obtained results have confirmed that orchestral musicians are at risk of hearing loss due to their professional activities, even at exposures to orchestral noise less than the limit values for occupational noise.	\N	\N
26538659	Deficits in auditory emotion recognition (AER) are a core feature of schizophrenia and a key component of social cognitive impairment. AER deficits are tied behaviorally to impaired ability to interpret tonal ("prosodic") features of speech that normally convey emotion, such as modulations in base pitch (F0M) and pitch variability (F0SD). These modulations can be recreated using synthetic frequency modulated (FM) tones that mimic the prosodic contours of specific emotional stimuli. The present study investigates neural mechanisms underlying impaired AER using a combined event-related potential/resting-state functional connectivity (rsfMRI) approach in 84 schizophrenia/schizoaffective disorder patients and 66 healthy comparison subjects. Mismatch negativity (MMN) to FM tones was assessed in 43 patients/36 controls. rsfMRI between auditory cortex and medial temporal (insula) regions was assessed in 55 patients/51 controls. The relationship between AER, MMN to FM tones, and rsfMRI was assessed in the subset who performed all assessments (14 patients, 21 controls). As predicted, patients showed robust reductions in MMN across FM stimulus type (p = 0.005), particularly to modulations in F0M, along with impairments in AER and FM tone discrimination. MMN source analysis indicated dipoles in both auditory cortex and anterior insula, whereas rsfMRI analyses showed reduced auditory-insula connectivity. MMN to FM tones and functional connectivity together accounted for ∼50% of the variance in AER performance across individuals. These findings demonstrate that impaired preattentive processing of tonal information and reduced auditory-insula connectivity are critical determinants of social cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia, and thus represent key targets for future research and clinical intervention. Schizophrenia patients show deficits in the ability to infer emotion based upon tone of voice [auditory emotion recognition (AER)] that drive impairments in social cognition and global functional outcome. This study evaluated neural substrates of impaired AER in schizophrenia using a combined event-related potential/resting-state fMRI approach. Patients showed impaired mismatch negativity response to emotionally relevant frequency modulated tones along with impaired functional connectivity between auditory and medial temporal (anterior insula) cortex. These deficits contributed in parallel to impaired AER and accounted for ∼50% of variance in AER performance. Overall, these findings demonstrate the importance of both auditory-level dysfunction and impaired auditory/insula connectivity in the pathophysiology of social cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia.	\N	\N
26562889	Visual search is an essential task for many lifesaving professions; airport security personnel search baggage X-ray images for dangerous items and radiologists examine radiographs for tumors. Accuracy is critical for such searches; however, there are potentially negative influences that can affect performance; for example, the displays can be cluttered and can contain multiple targets. Previous research has demonstrated that clutter can hurt search performance and a second target is less likely to be detected in a multiple-target search after a first target has been found, which raises a concern-how does clutter affect multiple-target search performance? The current study explored clutter in a multiple-target search paradigm, where there could be one or two targets present, and targets appeared in varying levels of clutter. There was a significant interaction between clutter and target number: Increasing levels of clutter did not affect single-target detection but did reduce detection of a second target. Multiple-target search accuracy is known to be sensitive to contextual influences, and the current results reveal a specific effect wherein clutter disproportionally affected multiple-target search accuracy. These results suggest that the detection and processing of a first target might enhance the masking effects of clutter around a second target.	\N	\N
26575193	We examined short-term memory for sequences of visual stimuli embedded in varying multisensory contexts. In two experiments, subjects judged the structure of the visual sequences while disregarding concurrent, but task-irrelevant auditory sequences. Stimuli were eight-item sequences in which varying luminances and frequencies were presented concurrently and rapidly (at 8 Hz). Subjects judged whether the final four items in a visual sequence identically replicated the first four items. Luminances and frequencies in each sequence were either perceptually correlated (Congruent) or were unrelated to one another (Incongruent). Experiment 1 showed that, despite encouragement to ignore the auditory stream, subjects' categorization of visual sequences was strongly influenced by the accompanying auditory sequences. Moreover, this influence tracked the similarity between a stimulus's separate audio and visual sequences, demonstrating that task-irrelevant auditory sequences underwent a considerable degree of processing. Using a variant of Hebb's repetition design, Experiment 2 compared musically trained subjects and subjects who had little or no musical training on the same task as used in Experiment 1. Test sequences included some that intermittently and randomly recurred, which produced better performance than sequences that were generated anew for each trial. The auditory component of a recurring audiovisual sequence influenced musically trained subjects more than it did other subjects. This result demonstrates that stimulus-selective, task-irrelevant learning of sequences can occur even when such learning is an incidental by-product of the task being performed.	\N	\N
26753216	The stress response has been well documented in past music therapy literature. However, hypometabolism, or the relaxation response, has received much less attention. Music therapists have long utilized various music-assisted relaxation techniques with both live and recorded music to elicit such a response. The ongoing proliferations of relaxation music through commercial media and the dire lack of evidence to support such claims warrant attention from healthcare professionals and music therapists. The purpose of these 3 studies was to investigate the correlational relationships between 12 psychophysical properties of music, preference, familiarity, and degree of perceived relaxation in music. Fourteen music therapists recommended and analyzed 30 selections of relaxation music. A group of 80 healthy adults then rated their familiarity, preference, and degree of perceived relaxation in the music. The analysis provided a detailed description of the intrinsic properties in music that were perceived to be relaxing by listeners. These properties included tempo, mode, harmonic, rhythmic, instrumental, and melodic complexities, timbre, vocalization/lyrics, pitch range, dynamic variations, and contour. In addition, music preference was highly correlated with listeners' perception of relaxation in music for both music therapists and healthy adults. The correlation between familiarity and degree of relaxation reached significance in the healthy adult group. Results from this study provided an in-depth operational definition of the intrinsic parameters in relaxation music and also highlighted the importance of preference and familiarity in eliciting the relaxation response.	\N	\N
26891543	PROBLEM/OBJECTIVES: Maxillary constriction and high palatal arch are associated with increased risk of chronic eustachian tube dysfunction and conductive hearing loss (CHL) due to chronic effusion. However, this relationship has not been clearly demonstrated. This study assessed CHL in school children with a narrowed maxilla and deep palatal vault. Thirty-two children with maxillary constriction were randomly selected for the study group and 28 children with normal transverse maxillary development were selected for the control group. Pure-tone audiograms were obtained for all children, and hearing levels and air-bone gaps were measured. Air-bone gap measurements in the control group ranged from 5.50 to 14.50 decibels (dB), and in the study group they were between 5.00 and 24.00 dB. In the study group, 14 (43.8%) children had slight CHL, and the remaining 18 (56.2%) children had normal hearing levels. In the control group, all of the children had normal hearing levels. Hearing levels and air-bone gaps were greater in the study group than the control group. This study showed that children with a narrowed maxilla and deep palatal vault may have slight CHL. Therefore, the onset of CHL should be followed with hearing screening programs.	\N	\N
26941686	Actions that produce sounds infuse our daily lives. Some of these sounds are a natural consequence of physical interactions (such as a clang resulting from dropping a pan), but others are artificially designed (such as a beep resulting from a keypress). Although the relationship between actions and sounds has previously been examined, the frame of reference of these associations is still unknown, despite it being a fundamental property of a psychological representation. For example, when an association is created between a keypress and a tone, it is unclear whether the frame of reference is egocentric (gesture-sound association) or exocentric (key-sound association). This question is especially important for artificially created associations, which occur in technology that pairs sounds with actions, such as gestural interfaces, virtual or augmented reality, and simple buttons that produce tones. The frame of reference could directly influence the learnability, the ease of use, the extent of immersion, and many other factors of the interaction. To explore whether action-sound associations are egocentric or exocentric, an experiment was implemented using a computer keyboard's number pad wherein moving a finger from one key to another produced a sound, thus creating an action-sound association. Half of the participants received egocentric instructions to move their finger with a particular gesture. The other half of the participants received exocentric instructions to move their finger to a particular number on the keypad. All participants were performing the same actions, and only the framing of the action varied between conditions by altering task instructions. Participants in the egocentric condition learned the gesture-sound association, as revealed by a priming paradigm. However, the exocentric condition showed no priming effects. This finding suggests that action-sound associations are egocentric in nature. A second part of the same session further confirmed the egocentric nature of these associations by showing no change in the priming effect after moving to a different starting location. Our findings are consistent with an egocentric representation of action-sound associations, which could have implications for applications that utilize these associations.	\N	\N
22619989	The paper involves exposure to noise of the State Police officers connected with the use of firearms. The noise generated by these weapons is of short duration and high intensity. The research was carried out during the sessions of firearm training of State Police officers to assess exposure to noise. The values of the various investigations, both audiometric and phonometric, carried out made it possible to demonstrate a significant exposure and a temporary increase in the threshold, above the frequency of 6000 Hz. Even taking account of the abatement from use of headphones, an exposure was demonstrated that was above the statutory limits, as was confirmed by the temporary hearing threshold shift.	\N	\N
19933712	Despite robust evidence of hippocampal abnormalities in schizophrenia, it is unclear whether hippocampal dysfunction predates the onset of psychosis. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate hippocampal function in subjects with an at-risk mental state (ARMS). Eighteen subjects meeting criteria for an ARMS and 22 healthy controls, matched for age, gender, and premorbid IQ, were scanned while performing a version of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott false memory task. During an encoding phase, subjects read lists of words aloud. Following a delay, they were presented with 24 target words, 24 semantically related lure words, and 24 novel words and required to indicate if each had been presented before. Behaviorally, the ARMS group made more false alarm responses for novel words than controls (P = .04) and had a lower discrimination accuracy for target words (P = .02). During encoding, ARMS subjects showed less activation than healthy controls in the left middle frontal gyrus, the bilateral medial frontal gyri, and the left parahippocampal gyrus. Correct recognition relative to false alarms was associated with differential engagement of the hippocampus bilaterally in healthy controls, but this difference was absent in the ARMS group. The ARMS was associated with altered function in the medial temporal cortex, as well as in the prefrontal regions, during both verbal encoding and recognition. These neurofunctional differences were associated with diminished recognition performance and may reflect the greatly increased risk of psychosis associated with the ARMS.	\N	\N
20146593	Top-down control of visual sensory cortex has long been tied to the orienting of visual spatial attention on a rapid, moment-to-moment basis. Here, we examined whether sensory responses in visual cortex are also modulated by natural and comparatively slower fluctuations in whether or not one is paying attention to the task at hand. Participants performed a simple visual discrimination task at fixation as the ERPs to task-irrelevant probes in the upper visual periphery were recorded. At random intervals, participants were stopped and asked to report on their attentional state at the time of stoppage-either "on-task" or "off-task." ERPs to the probes immediately preceding these subjective reports were then examined as a function of whether attention was in an on-task versus off-task state. We found that sensory-evoked responses to the probes were significantly attenuated during off-task relative to on-task states, as measured by the visual P1 ERP component. In two additional experiments, we replicated this effect while (1) finding that off-task sensory attenuation extends to the auditory domain, as measured by the auditory N1 ERP component, and (2) eliminating state-dependent shifts in general arousal as a possible explanation for the effects. Collectively, our findings suggest that sensory gain control in cortex is yoked to the natural ebb and flow in how much attention we pay to the current task over time.	\N	\N
20213858	Cognitive assessment in individuals with cancer requires both measured performance on neuropsychological tests and self-report of effectiveness in functioning. Few instruments are available to assess the perceived impact of cognitive alterations on daily functioning in individuals treated for cancer. In this study, we investigated the psychometric properties of a theoretically based instrument, and the Attentional Function Index (AFI), designed to measure perceived effectiveness in common activities requiring attention and working memory, particularly the ability to formulate plans, carry out tasks, and function effectively in daily life. Women (N=172), ages 27-86 years, completed the questionnaire before primary treatment for early stage breast cancer. Construct validity was established using exploratory principal component factor analysis with varimax rotation. A 13-item instrument emerged with 3 subscales, namely effective action, attentional lapses, and interpersonal effectiveness, which explained 74.69% of total variance. The internal consistency coefficients (Cronbach's α) were 0.92 for the total instrument, and ranged from 0.80 to 0.92 for the 3 subscales. Further examination of validity indicated that the scores on the AFI (1) showed expected correlations with established measures of ability to concentrate, cognitive failures, states of confusion, and mental fatigue, and (2) could distinguish differences in perceived cognitive functioning between younger and older age groups. AFI scores were not significantly associated with years of education or presence of comorbid conditions. The brief AFI has demonstrated usefulness for assessment of perceived cognitive functioning in populations with life-threatening and chronic illness, such as breast cancer.	\N	\N
20350175	Grapheme-color synesthesia is a heritable trait where graphemes ("2") elicit the concurrent perception of specific colors (red). Researchers have questioned whether synesthetic experiences are meaningful or simply arbitrary associations and whether these associations are perceptual or conceptual. To address these fundamental questions, ERPs were recorded as 12 synesthetes read statements such as "The Coca-Cola logo is white and 2," in which the final grapheme induced a color that was either contextually congruous (red) or incongruous ("...white and 7," for a synesthetes who experienced 7 as green). Grapheme congruity was found to modulate the amplitude of the N1, P2, N300, and N400 components in synesthetes, suggesting that synesthesia impacts perceptual as well as conceptual aspects of processing. To evaluate whether observed ERP effects required the experience of colored graphemes versus knowledge of grapheme-color pairings, we ran three separate groups of controls on a similar task. Controls trained to a synesthete's associations elicited N400 modulation, indicating that knowledge of grapheme-color mappings was sufficient to modulate this component. Controls trained to synesthetic associations and given explicit visualization instructions elicited both N300 and N400 modulations. Lastly, untrained controls who viewed physically colored graphemes ("2" printed in red) elicited N1 and N400 modulations. The N1 grapheme congruity effect began earlier in synesthetes than colored grapheme controls but had similar scalp topography. Data suggest that, in synesthetes, achromatic graphemes engage similar visual processing networks as colored graphemes in nonsynesthetes and are in keeping with models of synesthesia that posit early feed-forward connections between form and color processing areas in extrastriate cortex. The P2 modulation was unique to the synesthetes and may reflect neural activity that underlies the conscious experience of the synesthetic induction.	\N	\N
20459310	Understanding the relation between prestimulus neural activity and subsequent stimulus processing has become an area of active investigation. Computational modeling, as well as in vitro and in vivo single-unit recordings in animal preparations, have explored mechanisms by which background synaptic activity can influence the responsiveness of cortical neurons to afferent input. How these mechanisms manifest in humans is not well understood. Although numerous EEG/MEG studies have considered the role of prestimulus alpha oscillations in the genesis of visual-evoked potentials, no consensus has emerged, and divergent reports continue to appear. The present work addresses this problem in three stages. First, a theoretical model was developed in which the background synaptic activity and the firing rate of a neural ensemble are related through a sigmoidal function. The derivative of this function, referred to as local gain, has an inverted-U shape and is postulated to be proportional to the trial-by-trial response evoked by a transient stimulus. Second, the theoretical model was extended to noninvasive studies of human visual processing, where the model variables are reinterpreted in terms of ongoing EEG oscillations and event-related potentials. Predictions were derived from the model and tested by recording high-density scalp EEG from healthy volunteers performing a trial-by-trial cued spatial visual attention task. Finally, enhanced stimulus processing by attention was linked to an increase in the overall slope of the sigmoidal function. The commonly observed reduction of alpha magnitude with attention was interpreted as signaling a shift of the underlying neural ensemble toward an optimal excitability state that enables the increase in global gain.	\N	\N
20525771	Efficient attention is pivotal for cognitive functioning, and individual differences in attentional functions are likely related to variations in structural properties of the brain. Attention is supported by separate processes, and models of the relationship between attention and brain structure must take this into account. The Attention Network Test (ANT) yields behavioral measures of 3 independent attentional components: executive control (EC), alerting, and orienting. EC relates to resolving cognitive interference, alerting refers to continuous maintenance of a vigilant state, and orienting to selection of and orienting toward sensory information. Evidence from functional neuroimaging studies suggests that the ANT components recruit different cortical networks. However, the structural correlates are not established. Therefore, ANT scores were correlated with cortical thickness across the brain surface in 268 healthy adults spanning 20-84 years of age. Specific correlations were found between cortical thickness and EC and alerting in regions implicated by functional neuroimaging and lesion studies, including anterior cingulate, lateral prefrontal, and right inferior frontal gyri for EC and parietal areas for alerting. The brain-behavior correlations were relatively stable across adulthood, indicating that factors influencing cortical maturation rather than aging-related atrophy specifically were instrumental in shaping the structural foundation for visuospatial attention in adults.	\N	\N
20525773	Contemporary sensory gating definitions are generally tied to the perceptual and attentional phenomenology described by McGhie and Chapman, including abnormalities in the quality of sensory input, heightened awareness of background noises, and poor selective attention reported by individuals with schizophrenia. Despite these explicit phenomenological origins, little is known about the experiential phenomena underlying contemporary operationalizations of the sensory gating construct, such as whether the construct is restricted to experiences associated with the modulation of sensory percepts includes selective attention and distractibility or even whether the construct is accessible via self-report. Because clarification of these issues has important implications for the development and testing of psychological theories and the study of psychopathology, a series of studies was conducted to (a) empirically identify the major dimensions of sensory gating-like perceptual and attentional phenomenology in healthy young adults and (b) develop a psychometrically sound self-report rating scale to capture these dimensions, the Sensory Gating Inventory (SGI). Factor analyses of Likert items measuring a broad range of sensory gating-like subjective experiences revealed 1 primary factor that encompassed anomalies of perceptual modulation (eg, perceptions of heightened stimulus sensitivity and sensory inundation) and 3 other factors measuring disturbances in the processes of focal and radial attention as well as exacerbation of sensory gating-like anomalies by fatigue and stress. Psychometrically, the SGI demonstrated strong reliability and validity. An empirically based conceptual demarcation of the sensory gating construct is offered, and directions for future research are described.	\N	\N
20529417	Anorexia nervosa (AN), at the stage of starvation and emaciation, is characterized by abnormalities in cognitive function, including memory performance. It is unclear whether memory impairment persists or is reversible following weight restoration, and whether memory function differs between AN subtypes. The aim of the present study was to investigate general memory performance in currently ill and fully weight-restored patients of different AN subtypes. Memory performance was assessed using the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised (WMS-R) in a total of 99 participants, including 34 restricting-type AN patients (AN-RESTR), 19 binge-eating/purging-type AN patients (AN-PURGE), 16 weight-restored AN patients (AN-W-R) and 30 healthy controls (CONTROL). Cognitive evaluation included a battery of standardized neuropsychological tasks for validating the findings on memory function. Deficits were found with respect to immediate and delayed story recall in currently ill AN patients irrespective of AN subtype. These deficits persisted in weight-restored AN patients. Currently ill and weight-restored AN patients did not differ significantly from healthy controls with respect to working memory or other measures of neuropsychological functioning. The findings suggest that impaired memory performance is either a stable trait characteristic or a scar effect of chronic starvation that may play a role in the development and/or persistence of the disorder.	\N	\N
20530459	This study evaluated the alerting, orienting, and executive attention abilities of children with ADHD and their typically developing (TD) peers using a modified version of the adult attention network test (ANT-I). A total of 25 children with ADHD, Combined Type (ADHD-C, mean age = 9.20 years), 20 children with ADHD, Predominantly Inattentive Type (ADHD-I, mean age = 9.58 years), and 45 TD children (mean age = 9.41 years) matched on age and intelligence to the ADHD group completed the ANT-I. As hypothesized, children with ADHD (n = 45) displayed significantly weaker alerting and executive attention than TD children (n = 45) but did not differ from TD children in orienting ability. Children with ADHD-C (n = 25) did not differ from children with ADHD-I (n = 20) on any of the three networks. Results supported the growing body of evidence that has found alerting and executive attention deficits in children with ADHD.	\N	\N
20629939	Actigraphic (ACT) recordings are used widely in schoolchildren as a less intrusive and more extended approach to evaluation of sleep problems. However, critical assessment of the validity and reliability of ACT against overnight polysomnography (NPSG) are unavailable. Thus, we explored the degree of concordance between NPSG and ACT in school-aged children to delineate potential ACT boundaries when interpreting pediatric sleep. Non-dominant wrist ACT was recorded simultaneously with NPSG in 149 healthy school-aged children (aged 4.1-8.8 years, 41.7% boys, 80.4% Caucasian) recruited from the community. Analyses were limited to the Actiware (MiniMitter-64) calculated parameters originating from 1-min epoch sampling and medium sensitivity threshold value of 40; i.e. sleep period time (SPT), total sleep time (TST) and wake after sleep onset (WASO). SPT was not significantly different between ACT and NPSG. However, ACT underestimated TST significantly by 32.2±33.4 min and overestimated WASO by 26.3±34.4 min. The decreased precision of ACT was also evident from moderate to small concordance correlation coefficients (0.47 for TST and 0.09 for WASO). ACT in school-aged children provides reliable assessment of sleep quantity, but is relatively inaccurate during determination of sleep quality. Thus, caution is advocated in drawing definitive conclusions from ACT during evaluation of the sleep-disturbed child.	\N	\N
20645311	Impaired understanding of others' sensations and emotions as well as abnormal experience of their own emotions and sensations is frequently reported in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). It is hypothesized that these abnormalities are based on altered connectivity within "shared" neural networks involved in emotional awareness of self and others. The insula is considered a central brain region in a network underlying these functions, being located at the transition of information about bodily arousal and the physiological state of the body to subjective feelings. The present study investigated the intrinsic functional connectivity properties of the insula in 14 high-functioning participants with ASD (HF-ASD) and 15 typically developing (TD) participants in the age range between 12 and 20 years by means of "resting state" or "nontask" functional magnetic resonance imaging. Essentially, a distinction was made between anterior and posterior regions of the insular cortex. The results show a reduced functional connectivity in the HF-ASD group, compared with the TD group, between anterior as well as posterior insula and specific brain regions involved in emotional and sensory processing. It is suggested that functional abnormalities in a network involved in emotional and interoceptive awareness might be at the basis of altered emotional experiences and impaired social abilities in ASD, and that these abnormalities are partly based on the intrinsic functional connectivity properties of such a network.	\N	\N
20663569	The processing of emotional stimuli is thought to be negatively biased in major depression. This study investigates this issue using musical, vocal and facial affective stimuli. 23 depressed in-patients and 23 matched healthy controls were recruited. Affective information processing was assessed through musical, vocal and facial emotion recognition tasks. Depression, anxiety level and attention capacity were controlled. The depressed participants demonstrated less accurate identification of emotions than the control group in all three sorts of emotion-recognition tasks. The depressed group also gave higher intensity ratings than the controls when scoring negative emotions, and they were more likely to attribute negative emotions to neutral voices and faces. Our in-patient group might differ from the more general population of depressed adults. They were all taking anti-depressant medication, which may have had an influence on their emotional information processing. Major depression is associated with a general negative bias in the processing of emotional stimuli. Emotional processing impairment in depression is not confined to interpersonal stimuli (faces and voices), being also present in the ability to feel music accurately.	\N	\N
20668875	Action perception may involve a mirror-matching system, such that observed actions are mapped onto the observer's own motor representations. The strength of such mirror system activation should depend on an individual's experience with the observed action. The motor interference effect, where an observed action interferes with a concurrently executed incongruent action, is thought to arise from mirror system activation. However, this view was recently challenged. If motor interference arises from mirror system activation, this effect should be sensitive to prior sensorimotor experience with the observed action. To test this prediction, we measured motor interference in two groups of participants observing the same incongruent movements. One group had received brief visuo-motor practice with the observed incongruent action, but not the other group. Action observation induced a larger motor interference in participants who had practiced the observed action. This result thus supports a mirror system account of motor interference.	\N	\N
20704645	We studied a novel non-contact biomotion sensor, which has been developed for identifying sleep/wake patterns in adult humans. The biomotion sensor uses ultra low-power reflected radiofrequency waves to determine the movement of a subject during sleep. An automated classification algorithm has been developed to recognize sleep/wake states on a 30-s epoch basis based on the measured movement signal. The sensor and software were evaluated against gold-standard polysomnography on a database of 113 subjects [94 male, 19 female, age 53±13years, apnoea-hypopnea index (AHI) 22±24] being assessed for sleep-disordered breathing at a hospital-based sleep laboratory. The overall per-subject accuracy was 78%, with a Cohen's kappa of 0.38. Lower accuracy was seen in a high AHI group (AHI >15, 63 subjects) than in a low AHI group (74.8% versus 81.3%); however, most of the change in accuracy can be explained by the lower sleep efficiency of the high AHI group. Averaged across subjects, the overall sleep sensitivity was 87.3% and the wake sensitivity was 50.1%. The automated algorithm slightly overestimated sleep efficiency (bias of +4.8%) and total sleep time (TST; bias of +19min on an average TST of 288min). We conclude that the non-contact biomotion sensor can provide a valid means of measuring sleep-wake patterns in this patient population, and also allows direct visualization of respiratory movement signals.	\N	\N
20709594	We investigated the role of the frontostriatal system in contextual processing, by examining neural correlates of local contextual processing in Parkinson's disease (PD). Local context was defined as the occurrence of a short predictive series of visual stimuli occurring before delivery of a target event. EEG was recorded in eight PD patients and eight controls. Recording blocks consisted of targets preceded by randomized sequences of standards and by sequences including a predictive sequence signaling the occurrence of a subsequent target event. Subjects pressed a button in response to targets. Peak P3b amplitude and latency were evaluated for targets after predictive and non-predictive sequences. Behavioral and electrophysiological measures showed that controls processed predicted and random targets differentially, while PD patients processed these similarly. Reaction times were shorter for predictable than for random targets in controls but not in patients. PD patients failed to generate the expected P3b latency shift between predicted and random targets, which is observed in controls. These findings show that predictive local context effects on target detection are altered in PD patients. The findings suggest a key role for the frontostriatal system in contextual processing.	\N	\N
20723021	The concept of 'repression' dates back to Freud, assuming that undesirable memories can become suppressed and that dreams ease repression by permitting these memories to be reinstated. Here, we followed this idea adopting the 'directed forgetting' approach of experimental psychology. The voluntary suppression of unwanted memories results in impaired later retrieval. Because sleep is known to benefit consolidation of newly learned materials, including cognitive skills, we hypothesized that memory suppression would be enhanced by sleep, and perhaps particularly by rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is associated more often with dream reports. Subjects (n=42) learned a list of word-pairs and, subsequently, the first (cue) words of the pairs were presented again; for half these words subjects had to recall respective second words (response pairs) and for the other half they had to keep respective second words out of mind (suppression pairs). Retrieval of both response and suppression pairs was tested after 8h of sleep or wakefulness (main experiment) or after 3-h periods of early slow wave sleep (SWS)-rich or late REM-rich sleep (supplementary experiment). Response pairs were generally recalled better after sleep than wakefulness (P<0.05). Recall of suppression pairs was, as expected, worse than of response pairs. Contrary to our hypothesis, memory for suppression pairs was not affected differentially by sleep. In the supplementary experiment, compared to SWS-rich sleep, REM-rich sleep even improved recall of suppression pairs (P<0.05). Thus, sleep does not benefit the forgetting of unwanted memories but, on the contrary, REM sleep might even counteract the voluntary suppression of memories making them more accessible for retrieval.	\N	\N
20723987	We examined the contributions of risk factors to the psychological and neuroendocrine status of children admitted to a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), and explored the feasibility of a full-scale study of these risk factors. A prospective, correlational design was used. Risk factors included parental stress, parental anxiety, child anxiety, severity of the child's illness, and invasive procedures administered to the child. Outcomes variables were pediatric posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and salivary cortisol levels. Measures were taken at 3 time points over 3 months. The mothers' state anxiety significantly increased over time, whereas the children's PTSD symptoms decreased. Most children with average or high anxiety demonstrated varying degrees of PTSD symptomatology, whereas children with low anxiety exhibited doubtful or mild symptoms of PTSD. As the severity of PTSD symptoms increased over time, the level of salivary cortisol decreased at two weeks and three months after hospital discharge. Predicted trends in data were found and warrant further investigation, using a similar methodology in a full-scale study with an emphasis on recruiting the most seriously ill children.	\N	\N
20727700	We evaluated the cyclic alternating pattern (CAP) during the first year of life in order to obtain information on the maturation of arousal mechanisms during NREM sleep and to provide normative data for CAP parameters in this age range (5-16months). Eleven healthy children (mean age 7.9±3.3months, seven boys) were studied while they slept in the morning. They underwent a 3-h video-EEG-polysomnographic recording at the Pediatric Sleep Unit of Sant'Andrea Hospital in Rome, Italy. Sleep was scored visually for sleep architecture and CAP analysis using standard criteria. Our results were complemented by CAP data from a previous sample of healthy infants (2-4months), studied when they slept during the morning, in order to correlate CAP parameters with age. The total sample comprised 24 children. The sleep period was approximately 2h, with a first REM latency of about 30min, and a clear distinction between stages N1, N2, and N3. The arousal index was 12±2.1 events/hour of sleep. The total CAP rate was 23.7±7.6%, and it increased progressively with the deepness of sleep; the highest values were observed during stage N3 and the lowest values during stage N1. A1 phases were the most numerous (78.2%), followed by A2 (14%) and A3 (7.7%) phases. The A1 index was higher than the A2 and A3 indices, whereas the mean duration of B was higher than that of A. The correlation showed that the CAP rate, A1, A2, A3 indices, A2, A3 percentages, and the average duration of B increased with age, whereas the A1 percentage decreased. We provide the first data on CAP analysis in children aged 5-16months, studied when they slept during the morning. Our results confirm the trend toward an increase in CAP rate during the first year of life. In addition, we observed a progressive increase in CAP rate with deepness of sleep, and with age, reflecting maturation of slow-wave activity. The decreased percentage of A1 subtypes may reflect the maturation of arousability.	\N	\N
20809377	Three experiments explored attention to eye gaze, which is incompletely understood in typical development and is hypothesized to be disrupted in autism. Experiment 1 (n = 26 typical adults) involved covert orienting to box, arrow, and gaze cues at two probabilities and cue-target times to test whether reorienting for gaze is endogenous, exogenous, or unique; experiment 2 (total n = 80: male and female children and adults) studied age and sex effects on gaze cueing. Gaze cueing appears endogenous and may strengthen in typical development. Experiment 3 tested exogenous, endogenous, and gaze-based orienting in 25 typical and 27 Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) children. ASD children made more saccades, slowing their reaction times; however, exogenous and endogenous orienting, including gaze cueing, appear intact in ASD.	\N	\N
20813504	To determine whether increased physiological arousal immediately after trauma or at emergency admission can predict post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in motor vehicle accident (MVA) survivors with physical injuries. We included 119 MVA survivors with physical injuries. In this prospective cohort study, heart rate (HR) and blood pressure (BP) were assessed during ambulance transport (T1) and at hospital admission (T2). One and four months after the accident, we assessed patients for PTSD (Davidson trauma scale, confirmed with the structured clinical interview for DSM-IV axis I disorders). Multivariate logistic regression models assessed the relationship between HR or BP and PTSD. PTSD was diagnosed in 54 (45.4%) patients at 1 month and in 39 (32.8%) at 4 months. In the multivariate analysis, HR at T1 or at T2 predicted PTSD at 1 month (OR=1.156, 95% CI [1.094;1.221] p<0.0001). Only HR at T1 (not at T2) predicted PTSD at 4 months (OR=1.059, 95% CI [1.013; 1.108] p=0.012). Injury severity predicted PTSD at 4 months (OR=1.207, 95% CI [1.085; 1.342] p=0.001). A cut-off of 84 beats per minute yielded a sensitivity of 62.5% and a specificity of 75.0% for PTSD. HR measured at the scene of MVA and severity of injury predicted PTSD 4 months later.	\N	\N
20817320	Recently there has been much interest in social coordination of motor movements, or as it is referred to by some researchers, joint action. This paper reviews the cognitive perspective's common coding/mirror neuron theory of joint action, describes some of its limitations and then presents the behavioral dynamics perspective as an alternative way of understanding social motor coordination. In particular, behavioral dynamics' ability to explain the temporal coordination of interacting individuals is detailed. Two experiments are then described that demonstrate how dynamical processes of synchronization are apparent in the coordination underlying everyday joint actions such as martial art exercises, hand-clapping games, and conversations. The import of this evidence is that emergent dynamic patterns such as synchronization are the behavioral order that any neural substrate supporting joint action (e.g., mirror systems) would have to sustain.	\N	\N
20822301	The attentional blink is the marked deficit in awareness of a 2nd target (T2) when it is presented shortly after the 1st target (T1) in a stream of distractors. When the distractors between T1 and T2 are replaced by even more targets, the attentional blink is reduced or absent, indicating that the attentional blink results from online selection mechanisms that act in response to distracting input rather than being the result of T1-induced cognitive resource depletion. However, Dell'Acqua, Jolicoeur, Luria, and Pluchino (2009) recently contended that an attentional blink is found in the multiple-target case as long as the appropriate trial context and analyses are used, thus reinstating resource-based explanations of the attentional blink and challenging the selection account. Specifically, an attentional blink reemerges when target performance is analyzed contingent on previous target accuracy. We argue on theoretical and empirical grounds that neither the trial context nor the type of analysis poses a serious problem for selection accounts. We show that the attentional blink and previous target contingency effects can be dissociated, with the latter depending more on low-level, short-range competition. We conclude that selection mechanisms involved in filtering for targets still provide a strong and coherent explanation of the attentional blink.	\N	\N
20832868	Bipolar disorder (BD) and adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) usually manifest with shared clinical symptoms, proving quite challenging to thoroughly differentiate one from another. Previous research has characterized these two disorders independently, but no study compared both pathologies from a neuropsychological perspective. The aim of this study was to compare the neuropsychological profile of adult ADHD and BD with each other and against a control group, in order to understand the way in which comprehensive cognitive assessment can contribute to their discrimination as distinct clinical entities as well as their differential diagnosis. All groups were successfully matched for age, sex, years of education, and premorbid IQ. Participants were assessed with an extensive neuropsychological battery evaluating multiple domains. Compared to controls, BD patients had a poorer performance on immediate verbal memory tasks. Both clinical groups exhibited significantly lower scores than controls on the recognition phase of verbal and non-verbal memory tasks, as well as on a task of executive functioning with high working memory demand. Noticeably, however, ADHD had significantly better performance than BD on the recognition phase of both the Rey list memory task and the Rey Figure. The better performance of ADHD patients over BD may reflect the crucial role of the executive component on their memory deficits and gives empirical support to further differentiate the neuropsychological profile of BD and adult ADHD patients in clinical practice.	\N	\N
20835973	Fundamental to adaptive behaviour is the ability to select environmental objects that best satisfy current needs and preferences. Here we investigated whether temporary changes in food preference influence visual selective attention. To this end, we exploited the fact that when a food is eaten to satiety its motivational value and perceived pleasantness decrease relative to other foods not eaten in the meal, an effect termed sensory-specific satiety. A total of 26 hungry participants were fed until sated with one of two palatable foods. Before and after selective satiation, participants rated the pleasantness of the two foods and then viewed the same as stimuli on a computer screen while attention was assessed by a visual probe task. Results showed that the attentional bias for the food eaten decreased markedly from pre- to postsatiety, along with the subjective pleasantness for that food. By contrast, subjective pleasantness and attentional bias for the food not eaten did not show any such decrease. These findings suggest that the allocation of visual selective attention is flexibly and rapidly adjusted to reflect temporary shift in relative preference for different foods.	\N	\N
20838776	Abuse and neglect are highly prevalent in children and have enduring neurobiological effects. Stressful early life environments perturb the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which in turn may predispose to psychiatric disorders in adulthood. However, studies of childhood maltreatment and adult HPA function have not yet rigorously investigated the differential effects of maltreatment subtypes, including physical abuse. In this study, we sought to replicate our previous finding that childhood maltreatment was associated with attenuated cortisol responses to stress and determine whether the type of maltreatment was a determinant of the stress response. Salivary cortisol response to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) was examined in a non-clinical sample of women (n = 110). Subjects had no acute medical problems and were not seeking psychiatric treatment. Effects of five maltreatment types, as measured by the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, on cortisol response to the TSST were investigated. To further examine the significant (p < 0.005) effect of one maltreatment type, women with childhood physical abuse (PA) (n = 20) were compared to those without past PA (n = 90). Women reporting childhood PA displayed a significantly blunted cortisol response to the TSST compared with subjects without PA, after controlling for estrogen use, age, other forms of maltreatment, and other potential confounds. There were no differences between PA and control groups with regard to physiological arousal during the stress challenge. In a non-clinical sample of women with minimal or no current psychopathology, physical abuse is associated with a blunted cortisol response to a psychosocial stress task.	\N	\N
20859069	The purpose of this study was to examine relationships among gait and mobility under single and dual task conditions in older adults. Community-dwelling older adults (n=41, mean age=75) completed mobility and gait tasks. Mobility was assessed with the Timed-Up-and-Go (TUG). Select gait parameters were examined while individuals walked at their preferred speed across the GAITRite electronic walkway. Two age groups were studied (younger age group=65-75; older age group=76+). Multiple linear regression analyses were used to examine the relationship between gait and mobility under single vs dual conditions. Older adults required more time to complete the TUG when concurrently performing a second cognitive task (10.84 sec vs 15.77 sec). In addition, one or more gait characteristic such as stride length, cadence and stance explained (a) a high percentage of variance in mobility performance under single task conditions (TUG 74%) and (b) a smaller portion of variance in mobility performance under dual task conditions (TUGc 25%). No salient age group differences were observed in TUG performance, but gait characteristics accounted for a larger portion of variance in TUGc performance (46%) for the older age group (mean age=81) than for the younger age group (mean age=69; TUGc 18%).	\N	\N
20883507	The prior entry hypothesis of attention holds that attended stimuli are perceived earlier than unattended stimuli. Whereas this speeding of perceptual processing has been repeatedly demonstrated for spatial attention, it has not been reported within the temporal domain. To fill this gap, we tested whether temporal attention accelerates auditory perceptual processing by employing event-related potentials as on-line indicators of perceptual processing. In a modified oddball paradigm, we presented a single tone in each trial, either a frequent standard tone or an infrequent deviant or target tone. Temporal attention to tones was manipulated via constant foreperiods. We observed that the latency of the N2, an event-related potential reflecting perceptual processing, is shortened by temporal attention. This result provides first evidence for the idea that temporal attention accelerates perceptual processing as suggested by the prior entry hypothesis.	\N	\N
20920531	Obesity and drug addiction, both a result of aberrant motivated behavior, are growing problems in western society. Increased dopamine neurotransmission occurs with both drug-seeking and ingestive behaviors and has been linked to effort related functions. Hypocretin/orexin (Hcrt/ox) neurons have long been known to mediate arousal and feeding. Over the last 5 years, hcrt/ox has been demonstrated to play a novel role in mediating a variety of reward-seeking behaviors and can modulate the activity and output of dopamine neurons. Here, we propose that hcrt/ox action on mesolimbic dopamine circuitry serves to promote effort to obtain highly salient natural or drug rewards.	\N	\N
20934190	Major depressive disorder (MDD) is characterized by the presence of disturbances in emotional processing. However, the neural correlates of these alterations, and how they may be affected by therapeutic interventions, remain unclear. The present study addressed these issues in a preliminary investigation using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine neural responses to positive, negative, and neutral pictures in unmedicated MDD patients (N = 22) versus controls (N = 14). After this initial scan, MDD patients were treated with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and scanned again after treatment. Within regions that showed pre-treatment differences between patients and controls, we tested the association between pre-treatment activity and subsequent treatment response as well as activity changes from pre- to post-treatment. This study yielded three main findings. First, prior to treatment and relative to controls, patients exhibited overall reduced activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (PFC), diminished discrimination between emotional and neutral items in the amygdala, caudate, and hippocampus, and enhanced responses to negative versus positive stimuli in the left anterior temporal lobe (ATL) and right dorsolateral PFC. Second, CBT-related symptom improvement in MDD patients was predicted by increased activity at baseline in ventromedial PFC as well as the valence effects in the ATL and dorsolateral PFC. Third, from pre- to post-treatment, MDD patients exhibited overall increases in ventromedial PFC activation, enhanced arousal responses in the amygdala, caudate, and hippocampus, and a reversal of valence effects in the ATL. The study was limited by the relatively small sample that was able to complete both scan sessions, as well as an inability to determine the influence of comorbid disorders within the current sample. Nevertheless, components of the neural networks corresponding to emotion processing disturbances in MDD appear to resolve following treatment and are predictive of treatment response, possibly reflecting improvements in emotion regulation processes in response to CBT.	\N	\N
20969453	We conducted a study of the relationships between Internet self-efficacy, sensation seeking, the need for cognition, and problematic use of the Internet. The study was based on a randomly selected sample of 979 adult Internet users. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis of these subjects' responses on a questionnaire consisting of relevant items indicated that Internet self-efficacy and sensation seeking positively predicted problematic Internet use. Contrastingly, the need for cognition was significantly negatively associated with problematic Internet use.	\N	\N
20977513	There is profound knowledge that sleep restriction increases tonic (event-unrelated) electroencephalographic (EEG) activity. In the present study we focused on time-locked activity by means of phasic (event-related) EEG analysis during a psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) over the course of sleep deprivation. Twenty healthy subjects (10 male; mean age ± SD: 23.45 ± 1.97 years) underwent sleep deprivation for 24 h. Subjects had to rate their sleepiness hourly (Karolinska Sleepiness Scale) and to perform a PVT while EEG was recorded simultaneously. Tonic EEG changes in the δ (1-4 Hz), θ (4-8 Hz) and α (8-12 Hz) frequency range were investigated by power spectral analyses. Single-trial (phase-locking index, PLI) and event-related potential (ERP) analyses (P1, N1) were used to examine event-related changes in EEG activity. Subjective sleepiness, PVT reaction times and tonic EEG activity (delta and theta spectral power) significantly increased over the night. In contrast, event-related EEG parameters decreased throughout sleep deprivation. Specifically, the ERP component P1 diminished in amplitude, and delta and theta PLI estimates decreased progressively over the night. It is suggested that event-related EEG measures (such as the amplitude of the P1 and especially delta/theta phase-locking) serve as a complimentary method to track the deterioration of attention and performance during sleep loss. As these measures actually reflect the impaired response to specific events rather than tonic changes during sleep deprivation they are a promising tool for future sleep research.	\N	\N
21035107	The aim of this work is to determine the influence of multisensory (visual-haptic) integration and the level of interaction (seeing photographs, seeing the actual product, touching it and using it) on the perception of products, including perceived ergonomics. The product selected for the experiment was the hammer, as this will help to establish whether emotional design studies can also apply to 'commercial' products. Subjective opinions of users were evaluated through semantic differential tests. A factor analysis identified six semantic factors or axes (Quality/Robustness, Ergonomics/Appearance, Innovation, Lightness, Dynamic Effects, and Efficacy). Results show that Lightness and Dynamic Effects are quite sensitive to the level of interaction, while Ergonomics/Appearance is partially affected. However, the perceptions of Innovation, Quality/Robustness and Efficacy are not so affected and they could be detected through a lower level of interaction (i.e. seeing photographs). This suggests that commercial products seem sensitive to emotional design studies and that multisensory integration enhances the perception of the factors that are clearly linked with physical interaction between users and tools, i.e. Ergonomics/Appearance, Lightness and Dynamic Effects. Additionally, it should be highlighted that some aspects related with the ergonomics and ease of use of products are also perceived at different stages of interaction.	\N	\N
21035195	Although false memories and confabulation have been linked to both executive dysfunction and greater suggestibility, similar associations with the emergence of delusional thinking remain unexamined. We therefore compared healthy individuals who scored high and low on the Peters Delusional Inventory (PDI: Peters et al., 1999) on measures of set-shifting (the intra-extradimensional set shift task: IED) planning (the Stockings of Cambridge Task: SOC). Additionally, we examined whether high delusion-prone individuals show greater suggestibility on the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale (GSS 2: Gudjonsson, 1987). On the IED task, the high group made more pre-extradimensional shift errors than the low PDI group, and this was especially notable for reversal learning. By contrast, no differences emerged on any aspect of the SOC. Finally, and intriguingly, the high PDI group was less likely than the low PDI group to change their responses after receiving suggestive negative feedback. We propose that delusional-style thinking may be underpinned by an orbitofrontal-based reversal learning difficulty affecting the flexibility to adapt responses to changing contingencies and external pressure.	\N	\N
21056046	The brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a member of the neurotrophin family, is involved in nerve growth and survival. Especially, a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the BDNF gene, Val66Met, has gained a lot of attention, because of its effect on activity-dependent BDNF secretion and its link to impaired memory processes. We hypothesize that the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism may have modulatory effects on the visual sensory (iconic) memory performance. Two hundred and eleven healthy German students (106 female and 105 male) were included in the data analysis. Since BDNF is also discussed to be involved in the pathogenesis of depression, we additionally tested for possible interactions with depressive mood. The BDNF Val66Met polymorphism significantly influenced iconic-memory performance, with the combined Val/Met-Met/Met genotype group revealing less time stability of information stored in iconic memory than the Val/Val group. Furthermore, this stability was positively correlated with depressive mood exclusively in the Val/Val genotype group. Thus, these results show that the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism has an effect on pre-attentive visual sensory memory processes.	\N	\N
21062120	Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy improved not only apnea-hypopnea during sleep and sleep structure but also sleep-related deglutition, especially respiratory phase patterns associated with deglutition. Sleep-related deglutition and related respiratory phase patterns in patients with obstructive sleep apnea-hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS) under CPAP therapy were investigated. Deglutition during sleep was examined in 10 patients who had severe OSAHS under CPAP therapy via time-matched recordings of polysomnography and surface electromyography. The mean number of swallows per hour during the total sleep time was 1.6 ± 1.3. The mean period of the longest absence of deglutition was 66.4 ± 19.6 min. Deglutition was related to the sleep stage. The mean number of swallows per hour was 6.8 ± 8.4 during stage 1 sleep, 1.1 ± 0.8 during stage 2 sleep, 0.1 ± 0.4 during stage 3 sleep, and 0 during stage 4 sleep. The deeper the sleep stage, the lower the mean deglutition frequency. The mean number of swallows per hour was 0.8 ± 0.5 during REM sleep. Most deglutition occurred in association with spontaneous electroencephalographic arousal. Swallows followed by inspiration were markedly reduced. Under CPAP therapy, sleep-related deglutition and its respiratory phase pattern had normalized.	\N	\N
21062948	One hundred thirty child sexual abusers were diagnosed using each of following four methods: (a) phallometric testing, (b) strict application of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text revision [DSM-IV-TR]) criteria, (c) Rapid Risk Assessment of Sex Offender Recidivism (RRASOR) scores, and (d) "expert" diagnoses rendered by a seasoned clinician. Comparative utility and intermethod consistency of these methods are reported, along with recidivism data indicating predictive validity for risk management. Results suggest that inconsistency exists in diagnosing pedophilia, leading to diminished accuracy in risk assessment. Although the RRASOR and DSM-IV-TR methods were significantly correlated with expert ratings, RRASOR and DSM-IV-TR were unrelated to each other. Deviant arousal was not associated with any of the other methods. Only the expert ratings and RRASOR scores were predictive of sexual recidivism. Logistic regression analyses showed that expert diagnosis did not add to prediction of sexual offence recidivism over and above RRASOR alone. Findings are discussed within a context of encouragement of clinical consistency and evidence-based practice regarding treatment and risk management of those who sexually abuse children.	\N	\N
21071267	Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to examine neural responses to face stimuli in a masking paradigm. Images of faces (neutral or fearful) and objects were presented in subthreshold, threshold, and suprathreshold conditions (exposure durations of approximately 20, 30 and 300 ms, respectively), followed by a 1000-ms pattern mask. We recorded ERP responses at Oz, T5, T6, Cz and Pz. The effects of physical stimulus features were examined by inverted stimuli. The occipital N1 amplitude (approximately 160 ms) was significantly smaller in response to faces than objects when presented at a subthreshold duration. In contrast, the occipitotemporal N170 amplitude was significantly greater in the threshold and suprathreshold conditions compared with the subthreshold condition for faces, but not for objects. The P1 amplitude (approximately 120 ms) elicited by upright faces in the subthreshold condition was significantly larger than for inverted faces. P1 and N1 components at Oz were sensitive to subthreshold faces, which suggests the presence of fast face-specific process(es) prior to face-encoding. The N170 reflects the robustness of the face selective response in the occipitotemporal area. Even when presented for a subthreshold duration, faces were processed differently to images of objects at an early stage of visual processing.	\N	\N
21073480	To study defensive mobilization elicited by the exposure to interoceptive arousal sensations, we exposed highly anxiety sensitive students to a symptom provocation task. Symptom reports, autonomic arousal, and the startle eyeblink response were monitored during guided hyperventilation and a recovery period in 26 highly anxiety sensitive persons and 22 controls. Normoventilation was used as a non-provocative comparison condition. Hyperventilation led to autonomic arousal and a marked increase in somatic symptoms. While high and low anxiety sensitive persons did not differ in their defensive activation during hyperventilation, group differences were detected during early recovery. Highly anxiety sensitive students exhibited a potentiation of startle response magnitudes and increased autonomic arousal after hyper- as compared to after normoventilation, indicating defensive mobilization evoked by the prolonged presence of feared somatic sensations.	\N	\N
21077720	Negative priming (NP) refers to the finding that people's responses to probe targets previously presented as prime distractors are usually slower and more error prone than to unrepeated stimuli. In a typical NP experiment, each probe target is accompanied by a distractor. It is an accepted, albeit puzzling, finding that the NP effect depends on the presence of these probe distractors; for, without probe distractors, NP diminishes. This phenomenon causes severe problems for the majority of theoretical accounts of NP. In the present study, we follow a simple argument, namely that without probe distractors, the difficulty of responding to the probe is so low that NP becomes irrelevant. Hence, by increasing perceptual processing difficulty, as well as by increasing conceptual processing difficulty, significant NP effects with constantly absent probe distractors can be reliably observed. In addition, our results also show that NP without probe distractors can be found by exclusively manipulating probe display processing. This finding furthers our understanding of the processes causing NP.	\N	\N
21094573	Learning movement sequences is thought to develop from an initial controlled attentive phase to a more automatic inattentive phase. Furthermore, execution of sequences becomes faster with practice, which may result from changes at a general motor processing level rather than at an effector specific motor processing level. In the current study, we examined whether these changes are already present during preparation. Fixed series of six keypresses, either familiar or unfamiliar, had to be prepared and executed/withheld after a go/nogo signal. Reaction time results confirmed that familiar sequences were executed faster than unfamiliar sequences. Results derived from the electroencephalogram showed a decreased demand on general motor preparation and visual-working memory before familiar sequences as compared to unfamiliar sequences. We propose that with familiar sequences the presetting segments of responses is less demanding than with unfamiliar sequences, as familiar sequences can be regarded as less complex than unfamiliar sequences. Finally, the decreasing demand on visual-working memory before familiar sequences suggests that sequence learning indeed develops from an attentive to an automatic phase.	\N	\N
21106695	To examine resource allocation and sentence processing, this study examined the effects of auditory distraction on grammaticality judgment (GJ) of sentences varied by semantics (reversibility) and short-term memory requirements. Experiment 1: Typical young adult females (N = 60) completed a whole-sentence GJ task in distraction (Quiet, Noise, or Talk). Participants judged grammaticality of Passive sentences varied by sentence (length), grammaticality, and reversibility. Reaction time (RT) data were analyzed using a mixed analysis of variance. Experiment 2: A similar group completed a self-paced reading GJ task using the similar materials. Experiment 1: Participants responded faster to Bad and to Nonreversible sentences, and in the Talk distraction. The slowest RTs were noted for Good-Reversible-Padded sentences in the Quiet condition. Experiment 2: Distraction did not differentially affect RTs for sentence components. Verb RTs were slower for Reversible sentences. Results suggest that narrative distraction affected GJ, but by speeding responses, not slowing them. Sentence variables of memory and reversibility slowed RTs, but narrative distraction resulted in faster processing times regardless of individual sentence variables. More explicit, deliberate tasks (self-paced reading) resulted in less effect from distraction. Results are discussed in terms of recent theories about auditory distraction.	\N	\N
21108940	Previous research has demonstrated that cross-language activation is present even when proficient bilinguals perform a task only in one language. The present study investigated the time-course of cross-language activation during word production in a second language (L2) by using a picture-word interference paradigm with event-related potentials (ERPs). Spanish-English bilinguals living in an L2 environment named pictures in their L2 English while ignoring L2 English distractor words that were visually presented with the pictures. Participants named pictures more slowly when distractors were semantically related or phonologically related to either the English name of the picture or the Spanish name of the picture than when picture and distractor word were unrelated. Interference was also detectable in the mean amplitude of the N2 peak (200-260 ms) and the N3 range (350-400 ms). The results suggest that lexical alternatives from both languages compete for selection in the process of L2 speech planning in a predominantly L2 context.	\N	\N
21112093	There is substantial evidence that cognitive deficits and brain structural abnormalities are present in patients with Bipolar Disorder (BD) and in their first-degree relatives. Previous studies have demonstrated associations between cognition and functional outcome in BD patients but have not examined the role of brain morphological changes. Similarly, the functional impact of either cognition or brain morphology in relatives remains unknown. Therefore we focused on delineating the relationship between psychosocial functioning, cognition and brain structure, in relation to disease expression and genetic risk for BD. Clinical, cognitive and brain structural measures were obtained from 41 euthymic BD patients and 50 of their unaffected first-degree relatives. Psychosocial function was evaluated using the General Assessment of Functioning (GAF) scale. We examined the relationship between level of functioning and general intellectual ability (IQ), memory, attention, executive functioning, symptomatology, illness course and total gray matter, white matter and cerebrospinal fluid volumes. Cross-sectional design. Multiple regression analyses revealed that IQ, total white matter volume and a predominantly depressive illness course were independently associated with functional outcome in BD patients, but not in their relatives, and accounted for a substantial proportion (53%) of the variance in patients' GAF scores. There were no significant domain-specific associations between cognition and outcome after consideration of IQ. Our results emphasise the role of IQ and white matter integrity in relation to outcome in BD and carry significant implications for treatment interventions.	\N	\N
21147519	Numerous investigations into schizophrenia have reported impairment in self-other source monitoring, and studies on healthy subjects have suggested that the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is a critical region underlying self-monitoring abilities. In the current study, we examined the mPFC-related modulation of other brain regions in schizophrenia during self-other monitoring using a psychophysiological interaction approach. Twenty-three patients with schizophrenia and 33 healthy controls performed a self-other source monitoring task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning. Independent component analysis was used to identify the mPFC region of interest, and the averaged mPFC time course was extracted and entered into a general linear regression model for use with the psychophysiological interaction analysis, with Self vs. Other monitoring being the psychological condition of interest. Results suggested that connectivity between the mPFC and the left superior temporal gyrus (LSTG) was greater in the Other than the Self condition for the healthy subjects, but this was reversed for the schizophrenia patients, such that mPFC-LSTG connectivity was greater during Self than the Other condition. The modified functional connectivity associated with the performance of recollection of self-source information suggests that schizophrenia patients invoke circuits normally involved in retrieving other-generated information when processing self-generated information, thereby providing a possible biological basis for the self-other confusion characteristic of schizophrenia.	\N	\N
21147857	The presence of distracting stimuli during eating increases the meal size and could thereby contribute to overeating and obesity. However, the effects of within-meal distraction on later food intake are less clear. We sought to test the hypothesis that distraction inhibits memory encoding for a meal, which, in turn, increases later food intake. The current study assessed the effects of playing solitaire (a computerized card-sorting game) during a fixed lunch, which was eaten at a fixed rate, on memory for lunch and food intake in a taste test 30 min later. A between-subjects design was used with 44 participants. Participants in the no-distraction group ate the same lunch in the absence of any distracting stimuli. Distracted individuals were less full after lunch, and they ate significantly more biscuits in the taste test than did nondistracted participants (mean intake: 52.1 compared with 27.1 g; P = 0.017). Furthermore, serial-order memory for the presentation of the 9 lunch items was less accurate in participants who had been distracted during lunch. These findings provide further evidence that distraction during one meal has the capacity to influence subsequent eating. They may also help to explain the well-documented association between sedentary screen-time activities and overweight.	\N	\N
21148667	The aim of this study was to explore if the divergent results regarding attentional functions in patients with mood disorders are due to selective impairments in higher level or more basic and distinctive attentional subcomponents. We compared outpatients with current major depressive disorders (MDD; n = 37) and MDD with comorbid anxiety disorder (MDDA; n = 24) with healthy controls (n = 92) on Stroop and Attentional Network Test (ANT). The current data indicate that significant impairment in attentional functions corresponds to the presence of MDD and MDDA. MDDA displayed significantly lower performance on the Stroop variables, and MDD were significantly impaired in the alerting function in ANT. These results show impairments on different levels of attention in mood disorders. MDDA show impairments on higher level executive attention functions, whereas MDD display deficits at the basic attentional level. These findings suggest that including comorbid anxiety disorder in MDD is important for future research.	\N	\N
21159327	Worry-prone individuals have less residual working memory capacity during worry compared to low-worriers (Hayes, Hirsch, & Mathews, 2008). People typically worry in verbal form, and the present study investigated whether verbal worry depletes working memory capacity more than worry in imagery-based form. High and low-worriers performed a working memory task, random interval generation, whilst thinking about a worry in verbal or imagery form. High (but not low) worriers had less available working memory capacity when worrying in verbal compared to imagery-based form. The findings could not be accounted for by general attentional control, amount of negatively-valenced thought, or appraisals participants made about worry topics. The findings indicate that the verbal nature of worry is implicated in the depletion of working memory resources during worry among high-worriers, and point to the potential value of imagery-based techniques in cognitive-behavioural treatments for problematic worry.	\N	\N
21176782	A recent physiologically based model of human sleep is extended to incorporate the effects of caffeine on sleep-wake timing and fatigue. The model includes the sleep-active neurons of the hypothalamic ventrolateral preoptic area (VLPO), the wake-active monoaminergic brainstem populations (MA), their interactions with cholinergic/orexinergic (ACh/Orx) input to MA, and circadian and homeostatic drives. We model two effects of caffeine on the brain due to competitive antagonism of adenosine (Ad): (i) a reduction in the homeostatic drive and (ii) an increase in cholinergic activity. By comparing the model output to experimental data, constraints are determined on the parameters that describe the action of caffeine on the brain. In accord with experiment, the ranges of these parameters imply significant variability in caffeine sensitivity between individuals, with caffeine's effectiveness in reducing fatigue being highly dependent on an individual's tolerance, and past caffeine and sleep history. Although there are wide individual differences in caffeine sensitivity and thus in parameter values, once the model is calibrated for an individual it can be used to make quantitative predictions for that individual. A number of applications of the model are examined, using exemplar parameter values, including: (i) quantitative estimation of the sleep loss and the delay to sleep onset after taking caffeine for various doses and times; (ii) an analysis of the system's stable states showing that the wake state during sleep deprivation is stabilized after taking caffeine; and (iii) comparing model output successfully to experimental values of subjective fatigue reported in a total sleep deprivation study examining the reduction of fatigue with caffeine. This model provides a framework for quantitatively assessing optimal strategies for using caffeine, on an individual basis, to maintain performance during sleep deprivation.	\N	\N
21213194	This study examined whether the process of temporal preparation for a target stimulus is the same regardless of the task required by the target stimulus. To this end, the same variable-foreperiod design was used in a temporal discrimination task (Experiment 1) and a reaction time task (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, both temporal sensitivity and perceived duration increased as a function of foreperiod, whereas in Experiment 2, foreperiod did not influence reaction time. Furthermore, both temporal sensitivity and perceived duration revealed an asymmetric sequential effect of foreperiod, but the pattern of this effect was opposite to the pattern observed in the reaction time task. Together these dissociative patterns of foreperiod effects suggest that the mechanism of temporal preparation depends on the task required by the target stimulus.	\N	\N
21215298	The N2pc component of the event-related potentials is assumed to indicate attentional filtering processes during visual search tasks. In this study, we investigated the effects of physical disparity between a target stimulus and distracter stimuli and discrimination difficulty of the target item, on N2pc component by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) while subjects completed a visual search task. In the visual search task, we presented a round array of stimuli and manipulated the color disparity between the target and distracters and the discriminative difficulty of the target's form. The results showed that higher amplitude of N2pc was elicited in the high color disparity condition compared to the low disparity condition. However, no significant effect was found for the discriminative difficulty. The results suggested that the N2pc component could be modulated by the physical disparity between the target item and the distracters in the searching processes, which most likely reflects allocation of attention to select an object based on the perceptual saliency of that object.	\N	\N
21221825	Lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 (Lp-PLA2), a novel marker of vulnerable plaque to prone rupture, is a predictor of both cardiovascular event and cerebrovascular event, and highly sensitive-C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) is an acute-phase response protein implicated in a broad range of cardiovascular diseases. We aimed to examine the association between periodic limb movements in sleep (PLMs) with circulating Lp-PLA2 and hs-CRP levels in patients with PLMs. Seventy patients with newly diagnosed PLM with polysomnography were enrolled this study. Patients were divided into two groups according to PLM index (normal PLM index, <15; elevated PLM index, ≥15). Lp-PLA2 and hs-CRP concentrations were measured in serum samples by turbidimetric and nephelometric methods, respectively. The concentrations of these parameters were compared between two groups and correlation analysis was performed between PLMs and Lp-PLA2 and hs-CRP levels. Lp-PLA2 levels and hs-CRP were significantly increased in elevated PLM index group compared with the control group (206.8 ± 78.1 vs 157.8 ± 56.7, p = 0.003, and 4.2 ± 3.5 vs 2.4 ± 2.1, p = 0.02, respectively). PLM index was positively correlated with Lp-PLA2 levels (r = 0.40, p = 0.001) and hs-CRP (r = 0.24, p = 0.05). In the linear regression model, Lp-PLA2 was an independent predictor of PLM index (R(2) = 0.36, p = 0.005). This study demonstrated an independent linear relation between PLM index and Lp-PLA2. In addition, it was seen increased Lp-PLA2 and hs-CRP levels in patients with elevated PLM index. Based on these results, we can suggest that risk of vascular events may be increased in patients with PLMs and with increased PLM index.	\N	\N
21232884	The iris regulates the intensity of light that stimulates the retina. The pupils dilate also in response to mental activities as sign of attention. We hypothesized that the response of the foetal pupil to vibro-acoustic stimulation (VAS) reflects foetal attention. To determine whether the changes in the foetal pupil produced by vibroacoustic stimulation is a sign of foetal attention. We studied sonographically the pupils and iris of 151 foetuses between 27 and 41 weeks of gestation, using maximum ultrasonic zoom. 160 human foetuses between the 27th and the 41st week of gestation. The diameters of the pupil and iris were compared before and after VAS. At baseline, the pupils were miotic. We observed a response to VAS, manifest as a prominent pupillary dilatation in all foetuses. At all gestational ages, the percent increase in pupillary diameter was ≥57% (mean 87%; range: 57-135%). VAS dilated the foetal pupil. Sonographic assessment of the foetal pupil provided important insights in the development of foetal neurological functions.	\N	\N
21249517	This study examined two potential developmental pathways through which the temperament risk factor of negative emotionality (NE) leads to prospective increases in depressive symptoms through the mediating role of stressors and anxious symptoms in a sample of early to middle adolescents (N = 350, 6th-10th graders). The primary hypothesized model was that baseline NE leads to increased stressors, which results in increases in anxious arousal, which culminates with elevated depressive symptoms. An alternate model hypothesized that baseline NE leads to increased anxious arousal, which results in increases in stressors, and this culminates in elevated depressive symptoms. Youth completed self-report measures of NE, stressors, anxious arousal, and depressive symptoms at four time-points. Path analysis supported the primary model and showed that the mediating influence of stressors and anxious arousal explained 78% of the association between NE and prospective elevations in depressive symptoms. The alternate model was not supported. Neither gender nor age were moderators.	\N	\N
21264619	Traditional "activation" views of masked priming explain the identity priming effect in terms of facilitation due to 'pre-activation' of stored representations. Norris and Kinoshita's (2008) Bayesian Reader theory of masked priming instead explains priming in terms of the evidence that the prime contributes towards the decision required to the target. In support of the Bayesian Reader account, Norris and Kinoshita showed that the absence of priming for nonwords in the lexical decision task and for targets requiring a Different decision in the same-different match task can be explained based on a single principle. Against this, Bowers (2010) argued that the absence of priming should be explained instead by a combination of sublexical priming and "familiarity bias". As evidence, Bowers cited Bodner and Masson's (1997) finding that nonword priming did emerge with targets presented in visually unfamiliar cAsE-AlTeRnAtEd format. We present evidence that this finding was due to the use of an ambiguous letter in case-alternated format; when using unambiguous letters, we consistently failed to find priming of case-alternated nonwords. We suggest that the Bayesian Reader, rather than the familiarity bias hypothesis, explains the absence of priming.	\N	\N
21264645	Studies of electrophysiological indices of performance monitoring, such as the error-related negativity (ERN), posterror positivity (Pe), and N2 components of the event-related potential (ERP), suggest that increased ERN and Pe amplitudes and decreased N2 amplitudes are associated with better cognitive flexibility and cognitive control abilities; however, few studies have directly examined the relationship between cognitive performance and ERP indices of performance monitoring. We examined the neuropsychological profile of 89 healthy individuals who performed a modified flanker task. The neuropsychological domains tested included memory, verbal fluency, and attention/executive functioning. Pearson's correlations and multiple regression analyses showed a significant relationship between measures of attention/executive functioning and ERN amplitude, even when negative affect, reaction time interference, and posterror slowing were controlled. N2 amplitude related only to posterror slowing. The amplitude of the Pe was not significantly related to any cognitive domains. These findings are consistent with recent work indicating that performance monitoring requires attention skills and cognitive flexibility. Implications for the conflict-monitoring and reinforcement-learning theories are discussed.	\N	\N
21264726	This study demonstrates that when people attempt to identify a facial expression of emotion (FEE) by haptically exploring a 3D facemask, they are affected by viewing a simultaneous, task-irrelevant visual FEE portrayed by another person. In comparison to a control condition, where visual noise was presented, the visual FEE facilitated haptic identification when congruent (visual and haptic FEEs same category). When the visual and haptic FEEs were incongruent, haptic identification was impaired, and error responses shifted toward the visually depicted emotion. In contrast, visual emotion labels that matched or mismatched the haptic FEE category produced no such effects. The findings indicate that vision and touch interact in FEE recognition at a level where featural invariants of the emotional category (cf. precise facial geometry or general concepts) are processed, even when the visual and haptic FEEs are not attributable to a common source. Processing mechanisms behind these effects are considered.	\N	\N
21266181	Dynamic stimuli are ubiquitous in natural viewing conditions implying that grouping operations need to operate, not only in space, but also jointly in space and time. Moreover, in natural viewing, attention plays an important role in controlling how resources are allocated. We investigated how attention interacts with spatio-temporal perceptual grouping by using a bistable stimulus, called the Ternus-Pikler display. Ternus-Pikler displays can give rise to two different motion percepts, called Element Motion (EM) and Group Motion (GM), the former dominating at short Inter-Stimulus Intervals (ISIs) and the latter at long ISIs. Our results indicate that GM grouping requires more attentional resources than EM grouping. Different theoretical accounts of perceptual grouping and attention are discussed and evaluated in the light of the current results.	\N	\N
21267599	Nocturnal polyuria, nocturnal detrusor overactivity and high arousal thresholds are central in the pathogenesis of enuresis. An underlying mechanism on the brainstem level is probably common to these mechanisms. Enuretic children have an increased risk for psychosocial comorbidity. The primary evaluation of the enuretic child is usually straightforward, with no radiology or invasive procedures required, and can be carried out by any adequately educated nurse or physician. The first-line treatment, once the few cases with underlying disorders, such as diabetes, kidney disease or urogenital malformations, have been ruled out, is the enuresis alarm, which has a definite curative potential but requires much work and motivation. For families not able to comply with the alarm, desmopressin should be the treatment of choice. In therapy-resistant cases, occult constipation needs to be ruled out, and then anticholinergic treatment-often combined with desmopressin-can be tried. In situations when all other treatments have failed, imipramine treatment is warranted, provided the cardiac risks are taken into account.	\N	\N
21272839	Witt et al. (2008) have recently shown that golfers who putt with more success perceive the hole to be bigger than golfers who putt with less success. In three experiments, we systematically examined whether this phenomenon, labelled action-specific perception, depends on directing visual attention towards the action target. In Experiment 1 we replicated previously reported action-specific effects on perception in golf putting. In Experiments 2 and 3 we directly assessed whether action-specific effects on perception in golf putting are dependent on focusing visual attention on the target. To this end, the participants performed the putting task while visual attention towards the target was either completely withheld (Experiment 2) or divided over the target and other task-relevant objects (Experiment 3). No action-specific effects were found when visual attention towards the action target was occluded or partially diverted from the target. Together, our results provide evidence to suggest that focusing visual attention on the target while performing the action is a prerequisite for the emergence of action-specific perception.	\N	\N
21276839	This study characterized preferential choice in binary trials and investigated intra-session variations in response time (RT). In Experiment 1, participants (N=77) were asked to choose the preferred of two images of body wash; all unique combinations of 19 images were presented. The results showed: (a) marked and consistent individual preferences for specific stimuli; (b) RT decreased monotonically with increasing exposure to each stimulus; (c) RT decreased exponentially as a function of relative preference ranking of the 2 images in a trial; and (d) a regression model efficiently predicted trial RT as a function of exposure and relative preference. Experiment 2 (N=112) explored the effect of amount of exposure on RT, and relative preference as a function of the type of choice task (a previously completed vs. a new choice task). The results showed that: (a) within a single choice task, amount of exposure and relative preference between the stimuli predicted the systematic changes in RT observed in Exp. 1; and (b) when the choice task changed, the effects of previous amount of exposure, and relative stimulus preference did not transfer to the new task.	\N	\N
21282341	Visual salience maps are assumed to mediate target selection decisions in a motor-unspecific manner; accordingly, modulations of salience influence yes/no target detection or left/right localization responses in manual key-press search tasks, as well as ocular or skeletal movements to the target. Although widely accepted, this core assumption is based on little psychophysical evidence. At least four modulations of salience are known to influence the speed of visual search for feature singletons: (i) feature contrast, (ii) cross-trial dimension sequence and (iii) semantic pre-cueing of the target dimension, and (iv) dimensional target redundancy. If salience guides also manual pointing movements, their initiation latencies (and durations) should be affected by the same four manipulations of salience. Four experiments, each examining one of these manipulations, revealed this to be the case. Thus, these effects are seen independently of the motor response required to signal the perceptual decision (e.g., directed manual pointing as well as simple yes/no detection responses). This supports the notion of a motor-unspecific salience map, which guides covert attention as well as overt eye and hand movements.	\N	\N
21285440	Frequency-of-occurrence effects (e.g., effects of word frequency or familiarity) are widely thought to arise through differences in resting levels of activation in localist input-output modules. A different account posits that these effects at least partially reflect the strength of connections between various localist modules. Given that Arabic numerals appear more frequently than their alphabetic counterparts, we contrasted reaction times to stimuli in both formats in a naming/reading-aloud task and a parity-judgment task. The script effect (the difference between reaction times to Arabic and to alphabetic formats) was large in the parity-judgment task but absent in the naming/reading-aloud task. This script-by-task interaction follows naturally from the idea that at least part of the effect of frequency of occurrence of a printed word or digit (and other instances of familiarity) resides in the strength of connections between specialized localist input-output modules and a localist semantic module. This conclusion is likely applicable across a variety of domains.	\N	\N
21286495	To explore the time of day effects of alcohol on sleep, we examined sleep following alcohol administered at four times of day and three homeostatic loads during a 20-hr forced desynchrony (FD) protocol. Twenty-six healthy young adults (21-25 yrs) were studied. Participants were dosed at 4 clock times: 0400 (n = 6; 2 females), 1600 (n = 7; 4 females), 1000 (n = 6; 1 female) or 2200 (n = 7; 2 females). Participants slept 2300 to 0800 for at least 12 nights before the in-lab FD study. Double blind placebo and alcohol (vodka tonic targeting 0.05g% concentration) beverages were each administered three times during FD at different homeostatic loads: low (4.25 or 2.24 hrs awake), medium (8.25 or 6.25 hrs awake), high (12.25 or 10.25 hrs awake) in the 0400 and 1600 or 1000 and 2200 groups, respectively. Sleep was staged and subjected to spectral analysis. Breath Alcohol Concentration (BrAC) confirmed targeted maximal levels. At bedtime, BrAC was 0 in the low and medium homeostatic load conditions; however, at high homeostatic load, BrAC was still measurable. Spectral characteristics of sleep were unaffected with alcohol at any time of day. Few alcohol related changes were seen for sleep stages; however, with alcohol given at 0400 at a high homeostatic load there was an increase in wake. These data lend support to the idea that alcohol may be disruptive to sleep; however, our findings are inconsistent with the idea that a low dose of alcohol is a useful sleep aid when attempting to sleep at an adverse circadian phase.	\N	\N
21286898	In this study, we examined a source-monitoring phenomenon that arises from reactivated related information from the study phase. Three experiments showed that source attributions for target events were influenced not only by the target item itself, but also by studied information about related items. In Experiment 1, source memory for target items that have a high forward association value to a single related study item (e.g., credit) were affected by the source of the associated information (e.g., card), so that memory performance was better when associated items were presented in the same source rather than a different source. A similar effect occurred with bidirectional associates (Exp. 2), as well as with synonymous pairs of words (Exp. 3). We argue that the source information of the reactivated material can be commingled with information about a candidate during a source judgment at retrieval and thereby can affect performance.	\N	\N
21288505	Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a mental disorder characterized by depressed mood and inability to experience pleasure. Mismatch negativity (MMN) has been established as a correlate of preattentive change detection. In this study, preattentive processing of visual information in MDD patients was investigated using visual MMN (vMMN), and an abnormal vMMN was predicted in depressed patients relative to healthy participants because of dysfunction at the preattentive level. The processes underlying vMMN in MDD patients were also explored, and memory-based comparison preattentive processing was hypothesized to be impaired in MDD patients. Subjects included 14 medication-free patients (41.4 ± 12.6 years) with a DSM-IV diagnosis of MDD and 14 age-matched healthy volunteers (41.7 ± 17.5 years). vMMN was investigated using event-related potentials. The protocol used both an equiprobable sequence and a traditional oddball sequence, and three kinds of difference waves (i.e., deviant-minus-standard, deviant-minus-control, and control-minus-standard) were investigated. Mean amplitudes and peak latencies were subjected to repeated-measures analysis of variance. Although MDD patients showed no reduction in the oddball-vMMN (deviant-minus-standard), they showed a significantly decreased deviant-minus-control difference waves and a trend for an increased control-minus-standard difference waves compared with healthy participants. These data provide evidence for anomalous preattentive information processing in MDD patients. In particular, the abnormality may be due to an attenuated memory-based comparison process and an enhanced refractory process.	\N	\N
21289533	Atypical sensory-based behaviors are a ubiquitous feature of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). In this article, we review the neural underpinnings of sensory processing in autism by reviewing the literature on neurophysiological responses to auditory, tactile, and visual stimuli in autistic individuals. We review studies of unimodal sensory processing and multisensory integration that use a variety of neuroimaging techniques, including electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG), and functional MRI. We then explore the impact of covert and overt attention on sensory processing. With additional characterization, neurophysiologic profiles of sensory processing in ASD may serve as valuable biomarkers for diagnosis and monitoring of therapeutic interventions for autism and reveal potential strategies and target brain regions for therapeutic interventions.	\N	\N
21293871	Limb-girdle muscular dystrophy 2I (LGMD2I) is a neuromuscular disorder with a heterogeneous phenotype. It is caused by mutations in the Fukutin Related Protein (FKRP) gene, which is ubiquitously expressed in human tissues. FKRP functions in CNS are largely unknown. To investigate possible cognitive impairment in LGMD2I and to describe brain MRI features. Ten LGMD2I patients (four males and six females, mean age 44 years, age range 19-69 years) were assessed with an extensive neuropsychological battery, psychopathological tests and neuromuscular specific quality-of-life questionnaire. Adults were compared with ten matched healthy controls. All patients underwent complete neurological examination, and nine underwent brain MRI scanning. Patients showed a fairly specific cognitive profile with mild impairment in executive functions and visuo-spatial planning without substantial impairment in global and logic IQ. MRI findings were heterogeneous: four patients showed non-specific white matter abnormalities; two patients showed moderate ventriculomegaly; three patients showed mild enlargement of subarachnoid spaces, without a specific pattern. Cerebellar atrophy was marked in one patient. Abnormal glycosylation of α-dystroglycan in LGMD2I may interfere with brain development and cognitive performances involving the frontal and posterior parietal regions, but does not result in specific brain MRI abnormalities.	\N	\N
21296417	Growing evidence indicates that neuromedin U (NmU) neuropeptide system plays an integral role in mediating the stress response through the corticotrophin-releasing factor (CRF) pathways. Stress is often associated with alteration in sleep-wake architecture both in human and laboratory animals. Here, we investigated whether activation of the NmU₂ receptor, a major high affinity receptor for NmU predominantly expressed in the brain, affects sleep behavior in rats. Effects of single (acute) intracebroventricular (icv) infusion of 2.5 nmol of the full agonists porcine NmU8 and rat NmU23 were assessed on sleep-wake architecture in freely moving rats, which were chronically implanted with EEG and EMG electrodes. In addition, repeated once daily administration of NmU8 at 2.5 nmol during 8 consecutive days (sub-chronic) was studied. Acute icv infusion of NmU23 elicited a robust alteration in sleep-wake architecture, namely enhanced wakefulness and suppressed sleep during the first 4h after administration. Acute infusion NmU8 had no effect on spontaneous sleep-wake architecture. However, sub-chronic icv infusion of NmU8 increased the amount of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and intermediate stage (IS), while decreased light sleep. Additionally, NmU8 increased transitions from sleep states towards wakefulness suggesting a disruption in sleep continuity. The present results show that central-activation of NmU₂ receptor markedly reduced sleep duration and disrupted the mechanisms underlying NREM-REM sleep transitions. Given that sleep-wakefulness cycle is strongly influenced by stress and the role of NmU/NmU₂ receptor signaling in stress response, the disruption in sleep pattern associated with peptides species may support at least some signs of stress.	\N	\N
21298569	Affective stimuli are increasingly used in emotion research. Typically, stimuli are selected from databases providing affective norms. The validity of these norms is a critical factor with regard to the applicability of the stimuli for emotion research. We therefore probed the validity of the Leipzig Affective Norms for German (LANG) by correlating valence and arousal ratings across different sensory modalities. A sample of 120 words was selected from the LANG database, and auditory recordings of these words were obtained from two professional actors. The auditory stimuli were then rated again for valence and arousal. This cross-modal validation approach yielded very high correlations between auditory and visual ratings (>.95). These data confirm the strong validity of the Leipzig Affective Norms for German and encourage their use in emotion research.	\N	\N
21315746	Recent neuropsychological studies have attempted to distinguish between different types of anxiety by contrasting patterns of brain organisation or activation; however, lateralisation for processing emotional stimuli has received relatively little attention. This study examines the relationship between strength of lateralisation for the processing of facial expressions of emotion and three measures of anxiety: state anxiety, trait anxiety and social anxiety. Across all six of the basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise) the same patterns of association were found. Participants with high levels of trait anxiety were more strongly lateralised to the right hemisphere for processing facial emotion. In contrast, participants with high levels of self-reported physiological arousal in response to social anxiety were more weakly lateralised to the right hemisphere, or even lateralised to the left hemisphere, for the processing of facial emotion. There were also sex differences in these associations: the relationships were evident for males only. The finding of distinct patterns of lateralisation for trait anxiety and self-reported physiological arousal suggests different neural circuitry for trait and social anxiety.	\N	\N
21319930	The serotonin transporter promoter region polymorphism (5-HTTLPR) is associated with neural response to negative images in brain regions involved in the experience of emotion. However, the behavioral implications of this sensitivity have been studied far less extensively. The current study used eye-tracking methodology to examine how individuals genotyped for the 5-HTTLPR, including the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs25531, allocated attention during prolonged (30-s) exposure to face stimuli depicting positive and negative emotion. Short 5-HTTLPR allele carriers and carriers of the long allele with guanine at the sixth nucleotide (S/LG) displayed a stronger gaze bias (total fixation time, number of fixations, mean fixation length) for positive than for sad, threat, or neutral stimuli. In contrast, those homozygous for the long 5-HTTLPR allele with adenine at the sixth nucleotide (LA) viewed the emotion stimuli in an unbiased fashion. Time course analyses indicated no initial 5-HTTLPR group differences; however, S/LG 5-HTTLPR allele carriers were more likely than LA 5-HTTLPR homozygotes to direct gaze toward happy than toward sad stimuli over time. This bias toward positive stimuli during the later stages of information processing likely reflects a strategic effort to downregulate heightened reactivity to negative stimuli among 5-HTTLPR S/LG allele carriers.	\N	\N
21325507	During coordinated eye-hand movements, saccade reaction times (SRTs) and reach reaction times (RRTs) are correlated in humans and monkeys. Reaction times (RTs) measure the degree of movement preparation and can correlate with movement speed and accuracy. However, RTs can also reflect effector nonspecific influences, such as motivation and arousal. We use a combination of behavioral psychophysics and computational modeling to identify plausible mechanisms for correlations in SRTs and RRTs. To disambiguate nonspecific mechanisms from mechanisms specific to movement coordination, we introduce a dual-task paradigm in which a reach and a saccade are cued with a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). We then develop several variants of integrate-to-threshold models of RT, which postulate that responses are initiated when the neural activity encoding effector-specific movement preparation reaches a threshold. The integrator models formalize hypotheses about RT correlations and make predictions for how each RT should vary with SOA. To test these hypotheses, we trained three monkeys to perform the eye-hand SOA task and analyzed their SRTs and RRTs. In all three subjects, RT correlations decreased with increasing SOA duration. Additionally, mean SRT decreased with decreasing SOA, revealing facilitation of saccades with simultaneous reaches, as predicted by the model. These results are not consistent with the predictions of the models with common modulation or common input but are compatible with the predictions of a model with mutual excitation between two effector-specific integrators. We propose that RT correlations are not simply attributable to motivation and arousal and are a signature of coordination.	\N	\N
21327341	The placebo effect is an important phenomenon whereby real changes occur in response to an otherwise inert intervention. Despite increasing research attention, it remains unclear exactly which processes are amenable to placebo effects. The current study tested whether an instructional manipulation could produce placebo effects on a nonconscious cognitive task, namely implicit learning. Four hundred and sixty-four university students completed a visual search task while smelling an odor or no odor, in alternating blocks. Unknown to them, the task contained a contingency whereby on half the trials the target's location was cued by the pattern of distractors, which was achieved by repeating some configurations of targets and distractors. Prior to the task, participants received positive, negative, or no information about the odor's possible effects on performance. Those given positive information demonstrated faster reaction times on cued trials than other participants. Those given negative information showed slower reaction times on cued trials compared with participants given no information. Further, the cuing effect appeared to be nonconscious, with participants' ability to recognize the repeated configurations equivalent to chance and no evidence that performance on a recognition test was related to the magnitude of the cuing effect. This suggests that instructional manipulations can produce placebo effects on some nonconscious processes.	\N	\N
21327350	Many theories of contingency learning assume (either explicitly or implicitly) that predicting whether an outcome will occur should be easier than making a causal judgment. Previous research suggests that outcome predictions would depart from normative standards less often than causal judgments, which is consistent with the idea that the latter are based on more numerous and complex processes. However, only indirect evidence exists for this view. The experiment presented here specifically addresses this issue by allowing for a fair comparison of causal judgments and outcome predictions, both collected at the same stage with identical rating scales. Cue density, a parameter known to affect judgments, is manipulated in a contingency learning paradigm. The results show that, if anything, the cue-density bias is stronger in outcome predictions than in causal judgments. These results contradict key assumptions of many influential theories of contingency learning.	\N	\N
21327356	A picture-word interference experiment examined the origin of the distractor frequency effect, the effect that pictures are named slower in the context of low-frequency than high-frequency words (Miozzo & Caramazza, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 132, 228-252, 2003). We compared two accounts of the effect: an early, input-related account and a late, response-related account. Participants named high and low-frequency pictures with low and high-frequency distractors in two conditions. In the immediate naming condition, picture and distractor were presented simultaneously. In the delayed naming condition, the distractor was presented 1,000 ms after the picture; pictures had to be named upon distractor presentation. There was a distractor frequency effect in both conditions, but an effect of picture frequency only in the immediate naming condition (showing that in the delayed naming condition, lexical selection had been completed). These results support a late origin of the distractor frequency effect.	\N	\N
21333960	When the interval between a warning signal (WS) and an imperative signal (IS), termed the foreperiod (FP), is variable across trials, reaction time (RT) to the IS typically decreases with increasing FP length. Here we examined the auditory filled-FP effect, which refers to a performance decrement after FPs filled with irrelevant auditory stimulation compared to FPs without additional stimulation. According to one account, irrelevant stimulation distracts individuals from processing time and probability information during the FP (distraction-during-FP hypothesis). This should predominantly affect long-FP trials. Alternatively, the filled-FP effect may arise from a failure to shift attention from FP modality to IS modality (attention-to-modality hypothesis). The first hypothesis focuses on preparatory processing, predicting a selective RT increase on long-FP trials, whereas the second hypothesis focuses on target processing, only predicting a global RT increase irrespective of FP length. Across four experiments, a filled-FP (compared to a blank-FP) condition consistently yielded a selective RT increase on long-FP trials, irrespective of FP-IS modality pairing. This pattern of results contradicts the attention-to-modality hypothesis but corroborates the distraction-during-FP hypothesis. More generally, these data have theoretical implications by supporting a multi-process view of temporal preparation under time uncertainty.	\N	\N
21347239	Few finance theories consider the influence of "skewness" (or large and asymmetric but unlikely outcomes) on financial choice. We investigated the impact of skewed gambles on subjects' neural activity, self-reported affective responses, and subsequent preferences using functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI). Neurally, skewed gambles elicited more anterior insula activation than symmetric gambles equated for expected value and variance, and positively skewed gambles also specifically elicited more nucleus accumbens (NAcc) activation than negatively skewed gambles. Affectively, positively skewed gambles elicited more positive arousal and negatively skewed gambles elicited more negative arousal than symmetric gambles equated for expected value and variance. Subjects also preferred positively skewed gambles more, but negatively skewed gambles less than symmetric gambles of equal expected value. Individual differences in both NAcc activity and positive arousal predicted preferences for positively skewed gambles. These findings support an anticipatory affect account in which statistical properties of gambles--including skewness--can influence neural activity, affective responses, and ultimately, choice.	\N	\N
21357280	Obesity has been associated with increased cardiac sympathetic activation during wakefulness, but the effect on sleep-related sympathetic modulation is not known. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of fat gain on cardiac autonomic control during wakefulness and sleep in humans. We performed a randomized, controlled study to assess the effects of fat gain on heart rate variability. We recruited 36 healthy volunteers, who were randomized to either a standardized diet to gain ≈4 kg over 8 weeks followed by an 8-week weight loss period (n=20) or to serve as a weight-maintainer control (n=16). An overnight polysomnogram with power spectral analysis of heart rate variability was performed at baseline, after weight gain, and after weight loss to determine the ratio of low-frequency to high-frequency power and to examine the relationship between changes in heart rate variability and changes in insulin, leptin, and adiponectin levels. Mean weight gain was 3.9 kg in the fat gain group versus 0.1 kg in the maintainer group. Low frequency/high frequency increased both during wakefulness and sleep after fat gain and returned to baseline after fat loss in the fat gain group and did not change in the control group. Insulin, leptin, and adiponectin also increased after fat gain and fell after fat loss, but no clear pattern of changes was seen that correlated consistently with changes in heart rate variability. Short-term fat gain in healthy subjects is associated with increased cardiac sympathetic activation during wakefulness and sleep, but the mechanisms remain unclear.	\N	\N
21371485	Patients with lesions in rostral prefrontal cortex (PFC) often experience problems in everyday-life situations requiring multitasking. A key cognitive component that is critical in multitasking situations is prospective memory, defined as the ability to carry out an intended action after a delay period filled with unrelated activity. The few functional imaging studies investigating prospective memory have shown consistent activation in both medial and lateral rostral PFC but also in more posterior prefrontal regions and non-frontal regions. The aim of this study was to determine regions that are necessary for prospective memory performance, using the human lesion approach. We designed an experimental paradigm allowing us to assess time-based (remembering to do something at a particular time) and event-based (remembering to do something in a particular situation) prospective memory, using two types of material, words and pictures. Time estimation tasks and tasks controlling for basic attention, inhibition and multiple instructions processing were also administered. We examined brain-behaviour relationships with a voxelwise lesion method in 45 patients with focal brain lesions and 107 control subjects using this paradigm. The results showed that lesions in the right polar prefrontal region (in Brodmann area 10) were specifically associated with a deficit in time-based prospective memory tasks for both words and pictures. This deficit could not be explained by impairments in basic attention, detection, inhibition or multiple instruction processing, and there was also no deficit in event-based prospective memory conditions. In addition to their prospective memory difficulties, these polar prefrontal patients were significantly impaired in time estimation ability compared to other patients. The same region was found to be involved using both words and pictures, suggesting that right rostral PFC plays a material nonspecific role in prospective memory. This is the first lesion study showing that rostral PFC is crucial for time-based prospective memory. The findings suggest that time-based and event-based prospective memory might be supported at least in part by distinct brain regions. Two particularly plausible explanations for the deficit rest upon a possible role for polar prefrontal structures in supporting in time estimation, and/or in retrieving an intention to act. More broadly, the results are consistent with the view that the deficit of rostral patients in multitasking situations might at least in part be explained by a deficit in prospective memory.	\N	\N
21371916	To report on minor modification of laparoscopic Vecchietti vaginoplasty and to examine the quality of sexual life after the operation. A retrospective study to examine the role of minor modification during laparoscopic Vecchietti operation to prevent injuries and to evaluate the sexual function of patients with neovagina. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Pécs, Faculty of Medicine, a tertiary supply center in Hungary. PATICIPANTS: Twenty-three adolescents or young adults, ages 16 to 26 with vaginal agenesis (Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome) were operated. Twenty-five sexually active patients with matched age served as controls. Laparoscopic Vecchietti operation was modified with the use of endovaginal ultrasound transducer to visualize the narrow vesico-rectal space. The quality of sexual life 2-11 years after the operation was measured by the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI). Complications occurring during operations; desire, arousal, orgasm, satisfaction, lubrication, and pain during sexual intercourse. The technical modification of the operation, with endovaginal transducer, improved the method. Serious injuries of the bladder or rectum could be avoided. Anatomic and functional results shown by the total FSFI scores did not differ from that of the control group. Desire, arousal, orgasm, and satisfaction of the operated patients were similar to controls; however, patients with neovagina tended to have less lubrication and more pain during sexual intercourse. Laparoscopic Vecchietti operation modified by the use of endovaginal transducer is a safe procedure to create a neovagina, which guarantees good quality of sexual life with high satisfaction for patients.	\N	\N
21372116	The impact of lesion location on cognitive functioning was assessed in a group of 97 patients with a clinically isolated syndrome. Using the Brief Repeatable Battery, we evidenced that 24% of patients showed at least one abnormal test, 20% at least two and 15% at least three. Verbal learning performances were inversely associated with presence of lesions in Broca's area, in the right frontal lobe and in the splenium while spatial learning performances were inversely correlated to the presence of lesions in the deep white matter. No associations were evidenced between lesion location and performance of tasks exploring attention and executive functions.	\N	\N
21373192	The ability to coordinate with others' head and eye orientation to look in the same direction is considered a key step towards an understanding of others mental states like attention and intention. Here, we investigated the ontogeny and habituation patterns of gaze following into distant space and behind barriers in nine hand-raised wolves. We found that these wolves could use conspecific as well as human gaze cues even in the barrier task, which is thought to be more cognitively advanced than gazing into distant space. Moreover, while gaze following into distant space was already present at the age of 14 weeks and subjects did not habituate to repeated cues, gazing around a barrier developed considerably later and animals quickly habituated, supporting the hypothesis that different cognitive mechanisms may underlie the two gaze following modalities. More importantly, this study demonstrated that following another individuals' gaze around a barrier is not restricted to primates and corvids but is also present in canines, with remarkable between-group similarities in the ontogeny of this behaviour. This sheds new light on the evolutionary origins of and selective pressures on gaze following abilities as well as on the sensitivity of domestic dogs towards human communicative cues.	\N	\N
21382218	High levels of multidimensional perfectionism may be dysfunctional in their own right and can also impact on the maintenance and treatment of Axis I psychiatric disorders. This paper sought to describe the behavioural expressions and imagery associated with perfectionism in a non-clinical sample. Participants (n = 59) completed a newly developed questionnaire to assess behavioural expressions of perfectionism, and an adapted interview to assess perfectionism-related intrusive mental images. The study found that those high in perfectionism took longer to complete tasks, experienced more checking and safety behaviour whilst carrying out tasks, and had greater trouble actually completing tasks compared to those low in perfectionism. In addition, those with higher levels of perfectionism experienced intrusive mental imagery, which was more distressing, harder to dismiss, and had more impact on behaviour than those with lower levels of perfectionism. This research provides an initial exploration of the specific behaviours and intrusive mental imagery associated with perfectionism. The new behavioural measure of perfectionism could prove useful clinically in the assessment of change; however, these findings are preliminary and warrant replication in a clinical sample in order to examine their treatment implications.	\N	\N
21389102	Recent studies have shown that a variety of aftereffects occurs in a non-retinotopic frame of reference. These findings have been taken as strong evidence that remapping of visual information occurs in a hierarchic manner in the human cortex with an increasing magnitude from early to higher levels. Other studies, however, failed to find non-retinotopic aftereffects. These experiments all relied on paradigms involving eye movements. Recently, we have developed a new paradigm, based on the Ternus-Pikler display, which tests retinotopic vs. non-retinotopic processing without the involvement of eye movements. Using this paradigm, we found strong evidence that attention, form, and motion processing can occur in a non-retinotopic frame of reference. Here, we show that motion and tilt aftereffects are largely retinotopic.	\N	\N
21392554	Research has shown that during emotional imagery, valence and arousal each modulate the startle reflex. Here, two imagery-startle experiments required participants to attend to the startle probe as a simple reaction time cue. In experiment 1, four emotional conditions differing in valence and arousal were examined. Experiment 2, to accentuate potential valence effects, included two negative high arousal, a positive high arousal and a negative low arousal condition. Imagery effectively manipulated emotional valence and arousal, as indicated by heart rate and subjective ratings. Compared to baseline, imagery facilitated startle responses. However, valence and arousal failed to significantly affect startle magnitude in both experiments and startle latency in Experiment 1. Results suggest that emotional startle modulation is eclipsed when the probe is significant for task completion and/or cues a motor response. Findings suggest that an active, rather than defensive, response set may interfere with affective startle modulation, warranting further investigation.	\N	\N
21398561	Dependent on criteria used, between 35% and 53% of the participants with cerebral palsy fulfilled the criteria of clinically relevant executive function problems as defined by Conners' (1994) Continuous Performance Test. Executive function problems were noticed mainly in participants with bilateral brain lesions and who had been born preterm. Findings highlight the need to check for attention problems in children with cerebral palsy.	\N	\N
21401233	In two experiments, we examined the effects of emotional valence and arousal on associative binding. Participants studied negative, positive, and neutral word pairs, followed by an associative recognition test. In Experiment 1, with a short-delayed test, accuracy for intact pairs was equivalent across valences, whereas accuracy for rearranged pairs was lower for negative than for positive and neutral pairs. In Experiment 2, we tested participants after a one-week delay and found that accuracy was greater for intact negative than for intact neutral pairs, whereas rearranged pair accuracy was equivalent across valences. These results suggest that, although negative emotional valence impairs associative binding after a short delay, it may improve binding after a longer delay. The results also suggest that valence, as well as arousal, needs to be considered when examining the effects of emotion on associative memory.	\N	\N
21404129	An influential account of how cognitive control deals with conflicting sources of information holds that conflict is monitored by a module that automatically recruits attention to resolve the conflict. This leads to reduced effects of conflict on the subsequent trial, a phenomenon termed conflict adaptation. A prominent question is whether control processes are domain specific--that is, recruited only by the particular type of conflict they resolve. Previous studies that have examined this question used two-choice tasks in which feature repetition effects could be responsible for domain-specific adaptation effects. We report two experiments using four-choice (Experiment 1) and five-choice (Experiment 2) tasks that contain two types of irrelevant sources of potentially conflicting information: stimulus location (Simon conflict) and distractors (flanker conflict). In both experiments, we found within-type conflict adaptation for both types of conflict after eliminating trials on which stimulus features were repeated from one trial to the next. Across-type conflict adaptation, however, was not significant. Thus, conflict adaptation was due to domain-specific recruitment of cognitive control. Our results add converging evidence to the idea that multiple independent control processes are involved in reactive cognitive control, although whether control is always local remains to be determined.	\N	\N
21407245	Inter-individual variability in perception, thought and action is frequently treated as a source of 'noise' in scientific investigations of the neural mechanisms that underlie these processes, and discarded by averaging data from a group of participants. However, recent MRI studies in the human brain show that inter-individual variability in a wide range of basic and higher cognitive functions - including perception, motor control, memory, aspects of consciousness and the ability to introspect - can be predicted from the local structure of grey and white matter as assessed by voxel-based morphometry or diffusion tensor imaging. We propose that inter-individual differences can be used as a source of information to link human behaviour and cognition to brain anatomy.	\N	\N
21420518	We present recent empirical and theoretical advances in conflict and error monitoring in the Simon task. On the basis of the adaptation by binding account for conflict adaptation and the orienting account for post-error slowing, we predict a dissociation between conflict and error monitoring. This prediction is tested and confirmed as conflict adaptation is task-specific while post-error slowing is not.	\N	\N
21426626	Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a highly heritable neurodevelopmental disorder with complex genetic aetiology. The identification of candidate intermediate phenotypes may facilitate the detection of susceptibility genes and neurobiological mechanisms underlying the disorder. Electroencephalography (EEG) is an ideal neuroscientific approach, providing a direct measurement of neural activity that demonstrates reliability, developmental stability and high heritability. This systematic review evaluates the utility of a subset of electrophysiological measures as potential intermediate phenotypes for ADHD: quantitative EEG indices of arousal and intraindividual variability, and functional investigations of attention, inhibition and performance monitoring using the event-related potential (ERP) technique. Each measure demonstrates consistent and meaningful associations with ADHD, a degree of genetic overlap with ADHD and potential links to specific genetic variants. Investigations of the genetic and environmental contributions to EEG/ERP and shared genetic overlap with ADHD might enhance molecular genetic studies and provide novel insights into aetiology. Such research will aid in the precise characterisation of the clinical deficits seen in ADHD and guide the development of novel intervention and prevention strategies for those at risk.	\N	\N
21429025	Although the treatment of early gastric cancer with endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) has been widely carried out, a standardized method of sedation for ESD has not been established. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of sedation with dexmedetomidine (DEX). We conducted a randomized study involving 90 patients with gastric tumors who were intended to be treated with ESD. The patients were sedated either with DEX (i.v. infusion of 3.0 µg/kg per h over 5 min followed by continuous infusion at 0.4 µg/kg per h [n = 30]), propofol (PF [n = 30]), or midazolam (MDZ [n = 30]). In all groups, 1 mg MDZ was added i.v. as needed. En bloc resection of the gastric tumor was achieved in 88 (98%) patients. None of the DEX-sedated patients showed a significant reduction of the oxygen saturation level. The percentage of patients who showed body movement in the DEX group was significantly lower than those in the PF and MDZ groups, and the mean dose of additional MDZ in the DEX group was significantly smaller than that in the MDZ group. The rate of effective sedation was significantly higher in the DEX group compared with the MDZ or PF group. The mean length of ESD in the DEX group was 65 min, which was significantly shorter than in the other two groups. No DEX-sedated patient developed major surgical complications. Sedation with DEX is effective and safe for patients with gastric tumors who are undergoing ESD.	\N	\N
21429736	We consider the potential role of oscillations in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in mediating attention, working memory and memory consolidation. Activity in the theta, beta, and gamma bands is related to communication between PFC and different brain areas. While gamma/beta oscillations mediate bottom-up and top-down interactions between PFC and visual cortices, related to attention, theta rhythms are engaged by hippocampal/PFC interplay. These interactions are dynamic, depending on the nature and relevance of the information currently being processed. The profound modifications of the PFC neuronal network associated with changes in oscillatory coherence are controlled by neuromodulators such as dopamine, which thereby allow or prevent the formation of cell assemblies for information encoding and storage.	\N	\N
21432617	We established a neuropsychological testing profile among Turkish adults presenting with ADHD controlling for general intelligence and comorbid psychiatric conditions. Adults with ADHD frequently present with comorbid conditions (e.g., mood and substance use/abuse disorders) that may have a detrimental impact on neurocognitive function. Hence, we excluded patients with ADHD meeting criteria for comorbid psychiatric syndromes. A comprehensive neuropsychological test battery was administered to adults with ADHD attending a general psychiatry clinic in Istanbul, Turkey, and healthy control participants. Adults with ADHD demonstrated performance deficits on tests of attention, information processing speed, and general and working memory. Patients with ADHD also reported a significantly greater number of symptoms associated with frontal lobe syndromes (i.e., dysexecutive symptoms and disinhibition). Patients with ADHD demonstrated rather striking deficits on tests of verbal and nonverbal memory. Once information was encoded, however, patients with ADHD do not demonstrate significant information loss. Patients with ADHD and healthy controls did not differ on tests of alternation learning, inhibitory control (error rates), and ToM skills. Findings support the contention that dorsal-prefrontal (rather than ventral-prefrontal) dysfunction is associated with adult ADHD. Unexpectedly, groups did not differ on executive control and fluency tasks. Yet patients with ADHD obtained substantially higher scores on a self-report measure of executive dysfunction. This suggests that dysexecutive symptoms among patients with ADHD in the current study do not reflect set-shifting or organizational deficits. Rather, symptoms may reflect attentional and working memory deficits as well as diminished information processing speed.	\N	\N
21435770	The experiments conducted aimed to investigate whether reduced accuracy when counting stimuli presented in rapid temporal sequence in adults with dyslexia could be explained by a sensory processing deficit, a general slowing in processing speed or difficulties shifting attention between stimuli. To achieve these aims, the influence of the inter-stimulus interval (ISI), stimulus duration, and sequence length were evaluated in two experiments. In the first that used skilled readers only, significantly more errors were found with presentation of long sequences when the ISI or stimulus durations were short. Experiment 2 used a wider range of ISIs and stimulus durations. Compared to skilled readers, a group with dyslexia had reduced accuracy on two-stimulus sequences when the ISI was short, but not when the ISI was long. Although reduced accuracy was found on all short and long sequences by the group with dyslexia, when performance on two-stimulus sequences was used as an index of sensory processing efficiency and controlled, group differences were found with presentation of stimuli of short duration only. We concluded that continuous, repetitive stimulation to the same visual area can produce a capacity limitation on rapid counting tasks in all readers when the ISIs or stimulus durations are short. While reduced accuracy on rapid sequential counting tasks can be explained by a sensory processing deficit when the stimulus duration is long, slower processing speed in the group with dyslexia explains the greater inaccuracy found as sequence length is increased when the stimulus duration is short.	\N	\N
21437989	Kava (Piper methysticum) elicits dose-dependent psychotropic effects and thus may potentially deleteriously affect cognitive performance. Clinical trials have assessed the effects of kava on cognition, however, to our knowledge no systematic review has been conducted in this area. To systematically review the effects of kava on cognition, providing an analysis of the individual study's methodological quality, results and effect sizes. A systematic review was conducted of publications up to June 15th 2010, using the electronic databases MEDLINE, PsychINFO, CINAHL, Web of Science and The Cochrane Library. The search criteria involved kava and cognition related terms, e.g. memory and attention. Ten human clinical trials met inclusion criteria (acute n = 7, chronic n = 3). One acute study found that kava significantly improved visual attention and working memory processes while another found that kava increased body sway. One chronic study found that kava significantly impaired visual attention during high-cognitive demand. Potential enhanced cognition may be attributed to the ability of kava to inhibit re-uptake of noradrenaline in the pre-frontal cortex, while increased body sway may be due to GABA pathway modulation. The majority of evidence suggests that kava has no replicated significant negative effects on cognition.	\N	\N
21440073	According to the default-mode interference hypothesis, suboptimal performance in tasks requiring selective attention occurs when off-task processing (e.g., mind wandering) supported by default-mode regions interferes with on-task processing (e.g., attention) enabled by task-positive regions. In the present functional MRI study, we therefore investigated whether suboptimal performance in a selective attention task was linked to heightened interactions between a key default-mode region (the posterior cingulate cortex; PCC) and a key task-positive region (the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; DLPFC). We also investigated whether heightened interactions between the PCC and the left DLPFC were linked to enhanced future performance, consistent with prior data suggesting that such interactions index adaptive changes to the cognitive system. In line with both of these predictions, increases of current-trial functional connectivity between the PCC and the left DLPFC were linked to increases of response time in the current trial (i.e., suboptimal performance), but to decreases of response time in the next trial (i.e., enhanced performance). This double dissociation provides novel support for the default-mode interference hypothesis. Moreover, it suggests the possibility that, in at least some cases, default-mode interference indexes processes that optimize future performance.	\N	\N
21441920	Selective attention filters information to limit what is encoded and maintained in working memory. Although the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is central to both selective attention and working memory, the underlying neural processes that link these cognitive abilities remain elusive. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging to guide repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation with electroencephalographic recordings in humans, we perturbed PFC function at the inferior frontal junction in participants before they performed a selective-attention, delayed-recognition task. This resulted in diminished top-down modulation of activity in posterior cortex during early encoding stages, which predicted a subsequent decrement in working memory accuracy. Participants with stronger fronto-posterior functional connectivity displayed greater disruptive effects. Our data further suggests that broad alpha-band (7-14 Hz) phase coherence subserved this long-distance top-down modulation. These results suggest that top-down modulation mediated by the prefrontal cortex is a causal link between early attentional processes and subsequent memory performance.	\N	\N
21444327	to determine if there are age-related differences in locomotor targeting (LT) performance and step length (SL) regulatory behaviour under structural interference. forty older (n = 20, mean age = 77.9) and younger (n = 20, mean age = 25.2) participants walked 11.6 m while stepping on a target positioned at the 9.5 m point. Participants completed seven trials under each of three conditions, including the control (C) (no structural interference), low structural interference (L) and high structural interference (H). The structural interference conditions required participants to engage in LT while simultaneously verbally identifying letters that were visually presented on one of two monitors. One monitor was located near the target (low interference), while the other monitor was elevated to require participants to direct their gaze further away from the target to identify a letter (high interference). Outcome measures included LT error, SL, SL variability and the distribution of SL adjustment. structural interference had a detrimental effect on the LT accuracy of the older group (2.75 cm mean increase in absolute error) but not on the younger group (1.05 cm mean increase in absolute error), even though the interference caused the older group alone to adopt a more conservative gait pattern involving shorter SLs. The older participants exhibited shorter mean SL with each increase in structural interference (conditions C vs. L, P = 0.004; conditions L vs. H, P = 0.050), whereas the younger participants' mean SL did not differ across conditions. The manner in which older and younger participants distributed SL adjustment across the steps in advance of the target did not differ. the results confirmed that LT demands more attention from older adults than it does from younger adults, and revealed that a consequence of this age difference is a decline in LT accuracy among older adults. The study implicates age-related impaired visual attention switching as a potential source of impaired walking performance among older adults.	\N	\N
21452076	As a rule, the discriminability of multiple symmetries from random patterns increases with the number of symmetry axes, but this number does not seem to be the only determinant. In particular, multiple symmetries with orthogonal axes seem better discriminable than multiple symmetries with nonorthogonal axes. In six experiments on imperfect two-fold symmetry, we investigated whether this is due to extra structure in the form of so-called correlation rectangles, which arise only in the case of orthogonal axes, or to the relative orientation of the axes as such. The results suggest that correlation rectangles are not perceptually relevant and that the percept of a multiple symmetry results from an orientation-dependent interaction between the constituent single symmetries. The results can be accounted for by a model involving the analysis of symmetry at all orientations, smoothing (averaging over neighboring orientations), and extraction of peaks.	\N	\N
21452088	Stressful life events can result into declined memory performance at later age. One hypothesis suggests that stress affects the hippocampus, a brain area important for memory functioning. This study explored a potential relationship between the number of negative stressful life events and hippocampus-dependent declarative but not hippocampus-independent procedural memory performance in a community sample of 255 children, aged 6-12 years. The findings revealed that negative stressful life events were negatively related to verbal declarative memory, but not to nonverbal declarative and procedural memory. The memory impairments could not be accounted for by attention and sleep disturbances, and parenting characteristics as perceived by the child did not influence the vulnerability for the stress-related memory impairments. These findings provide further insight into the deleterious effects of negative stressful life events on learning in school-aged children.	\N	\N
21455862	Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) is a chronic disease characterized by recurrent episodes of partial or complete upper airway collapse and obstruction during sleep, associated with intermittent oxygen desaturation, sleep fragmentation, and symptoms of disruptive snoring and daytime sleepiness. Increasing focus is being placed on the relationship between OSAS and all-cause and cardiovascular disease-related mortality, but it still largely unclear whether this association is causative or simply speculative and epidemiological. Basically, reliable clinical evidence supports the hypothesis that OSAS might be associated with essential and resistant hypertension, as well as with an incremental risk of developing stroke, cardiac rhythm perturbations (e.g., atrial fibrillation, bradyarrhythmias, supraventricular and ventricular arrhythmias), coronary artery disease, acute myocardial infarction, and heart failure. Although it is still unclear whether OSAS might represent an independent risk factor for several acute or chronic conditions, or rather might trigger cardiovascular disease in the presence of traditional cardiovascular risk factors (e.g., obesity, diabetes, and dyslipidemia), there is a plausible biological background underlying this association, in that most of the mechanisms implicated in the pathogenesis of OSAS (i.e., hypoxia, hypercapnia, negative intrathoracic pressure, micro-arousal, sympathetic hyperactivity, metabolic and hormonal changes, oxidative stress, phlogosis, endothelial dysfunction, hypercoagulability, and genetic predisposition) might also be involved in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disorders. In this article we discuss the different aspects of the relationship between OSAS and pathogenically different conditions such as systemic hypertension, coronary artery disease, stroke, metabolic abnormalities, arrhythmias, and heart failure, and we also discuss the kaleidoscope of phenomena implicated in the pathogenesis of this challenging disease.	\N	\N
21457759	When multiple objects are present in a visual scene, salient and behaviorally relevant objects are attentionally selected and receive enhanced processing at the expense of less salient or less relevant objects. Here we examined three lateralized components of the event-related potential (ERP) - the N2pc, Ptc, and SPCN - as indices of target and distractor processing in a visual search paradigm. Participants responded to the orientation of a target while ignoring an attentionally salient distractor and ERPs elicited by the target and the distractor were obtained. Results indicate that both the target and the distractor elicit an N2pc component which may index the initial attentional selection of both objects. In contrast, only the distractor elicited a significant Ptc, which may reflect the subsequent suppression of distracting or irrelevant information. Thus, the Ptc component appears to be similar to another ERP component - the Pd - which is also thought to reflect distractor suppression. Furthermore, only the target elicited an SPCN component which likely reflects the representation of the target in visual short term memory.	\N	\N
21458476	We investigated the organization of eye-movement classes in a natural and dynamical setup. To mimic the goals and objectives of the natural world in a controlled environment, we studied eye-movements while participants played Breakout, an old Atari game which remains surprisingly entertaining, often addictive, in spite of its graphic and structural simplicity. Our results show that eye-movement dynamics can be explained in terms of simple principles of moments of prediction and urgency of action. We observed a consistent anticipatory behavior (gaze was directed ahead of ball trajectory) except during the moment in which the ball bounced either in the walls, or in the paddle. At these moments, we observed a refractory period during which there are no blinks and saccades. Saccade delay caused the gaze to fall behind the ball. This pattern is consistent with a model by which participants postpone saccades at the bounces while predicting the ball trajectory and subsequently make a catch-up saccade directed to a position which anticipates ball trajectory. During bounces, trajectories were smooth and curved interpolating the V-shape function of the ball with minimal acceleration. These results pave the path to understand the taxonomy of eye-movements on natural configurations in which stimuli and goals switch dynamically in time.	\N	\N
21459622	People can maintain accurate representations of visual changes without necessarily being aware of them. Here, we investigate whether a similar phenomenon (implicit change detection) also exists in touch. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants detected the presence of a change between two consecutively-presented tactile displays. Tactile change blindness was observed, with participants failing to report the presence of tactile change. Critically, however, when participants had to make a forced choice response regarding the number of stimuli presented in the two displays, their performance was significantly better than chance (i.e., implicit change detection was observed). Experiment 3 demonstrated that tactile change detection does not necessarily involve a shift of spatial attention toward the location of change, regardless of whether the change is explicitly detected. We conclude that tactile change detection likely results from comparing representations of the two displays, rather than by directing spatial attention to the location of the change.	\N	\N
21466088	An internal clock model has often been used to explain disruptions in timing production that occur when temporal and nontemporal tasks are performed simultaneously. In this study, participants' ability to walk 8 m in 8 sec. while executing various secondary concurrent nontemporal tasks was assessed for 16 children enrolled in sports at school. Children participated in six trials under five randomized task conditions involving different coordinative and cognitive workloads. The duration of timing production increased as the attention requirements or cognitive demands placed upon the completion of the task increased. However, participants also showed learning of timing over the six trials. Significant differences were found between the timing task and the concurrent nontemporal tasks depending on the difficulty and cognitive load of the secondary tasks. Results are discussed using attention models of time estimation and production.	\N	\N
21470571	The purpose of this study was to investigate sex differences in cognitive control as measured by the stimulus-locked N2 component of the event-related potential (ERP). High-density ERPs were obtained from 114 healthy individuals (60 females, 54 males) who completed a modified Eriksen Flanker Task. Behavioral measures (i.e., error rates, reaction times) and N2 amplitudes were analyzed. On the flanker task, females responded significantly slower and committed more errors than males. For N2 amplitude, there was a significant main effect of congruency, with increased amplitude to incongruent trials. Importantly, sexes differed as a function of congruency, with males showing significantly larger incongruent N2 amplitudes than females. Sex differences in N2 amplitude remained in a subgroup of participants that did not differ for behavioral, demographic, and affective variables. No sex differences were shown for electrophysiological or behavioral indices of conflict adaptation. Results indicate sex differences in brain activation associated with conflict monitoring. Findings may be explained by two contradictory possibilities: (1) females more effectively monitor conflict as indicated by less neural activation than males for similar behavioral performance in a matched subsample, or, (2) females less effectively monitor conflict than males.	\N	\N
21474638	There is a lack of studies related to virtual reality (VR)-augmented balance training on postural control in people with Parkinson disease (PD). The purposes of this study were: (1) to examine the effects of VR-augmented balance training on the sensory integration of postural control under varying attentional demands and (2) to compare the results with those of a conventional balance training (CB) group and an untrained control group. A longitudinal, randomized controlled trial was used. The intervention was conducted in the clinic, and the assessment was performed in a research laboratory. Forty-two people with PD (Hoehn and Yahr stages II-III) were recruited. The VR and CB groups received a 6-week balance training program. The sensory organization tests (SOTs) of computerized posturography with single- and dual-task conditions were conducted prior to training, after training, and at follow-up. Equilibrium scores, sensory ratios, and verbal reaction times (VRTs) were recorded. There were no significant differences in equilibrium scores or VRTs between the VR and CB groups. However, the equilibrium scores in SOT-6 (ie, unreliable vision and somatosensation) of the VR group increased significantly more than that of the control group after training. The equilibrium scores in SOT-5 (ie, unreliable somatosensation with eyes closed) of the CB group also increased significantly more than that of the control group after training. The functional significance of the improvements in equilibrium scores in the SOTs was not known, and the sample size was small. Both VR and CB training improved sensory integration for postural control in people with PD, especially when they were deprived of sensory redundancy. However, the attentional demand for postural control was not changed after either VR or CB training.	\N	\N
21476025	This study examined the relationship between the developmental trajectories of neuropsychological functioning and ADHD symptomatology in a longitudinal sample of children ages 9 to 14. Participants and measures were derived from the Multimodal Treatment Study for ADHD including 534MTA participants and 254 normal controls. Despite improvement over time, MTA participants continued to receive higher ratings of ADHD symptomatology and exhibit greater difficulties across the majority of neuropsychological outcomes. No relations were found between improvements in neuropsychological functioning and ADHD symptomatology over time. Findings provide support for the persistence of neuropsychological functioning and ADHD symptomatology. Findings did not support the hypothesized relation between improvements in frontally-mediated neuropsychological functioning and ADHD symptomatology possibly due to the brief 1-year lag and limited assessment battery. Findings are discussed in relation to neuropsychological development including recommendations for future research.	\N	\N
21480683	The immediate emotional and situational antecedents of ad-libitum smoking are still not well understood. We reanalyzed data from ecological momentary assessment using novel point process analyses to assess how craving, mood, and social setting influence smoking rate, as well as to assess the moderating effects of gender and nicotine dependence. Smokers (N = 304) recorded craving, mood, and social setting using electronic diaries when smoking and at random nonsmoking times over 16 days of smoking. Point process analysis, which makes use of the known random sampling scheme for momentary variables, examined main effects of setting and interactions with gender and dependence. Increased craving was associated with higher rates of smoking, particularly among women. Negative affect was not associated with smoking rate, even in interaction with arousal, but restlessness was associated with substantially higher smoking rates. Women's smoking tended to be less affected by negative affect. Nicotine dependence had little moderating effect on situational influences. Smoking rates were higher when smokers were alone or with others who were smoking, and smoking restrictions reduced smoking rates. However, the presence of others who are smoking undermined the effects of restrictions. The more sensitive point process analyses confirmed earlier findings, including the surprising conclusion that negative affect by itself was not related to smoking rates. Contrary to hypothesis, men's and not women's smoking was influenced by negative affect. Both smoking restrictions and the presence of others who are not smoking suppress smoking, but the presence of others who are not smoking undermines the effects of restrictions. Point process analyses of ecological momentary assessment data can bring out even small influences on smoking rate.	\N	\N
21487761	Low-grade gliomas are slow-growing tumors invading eloquent areas and white matter pathways. For many decades these tumors were considered inoperable because of their high tropism for eloquent areas. However, the young age of the patients and the inescapable anaplastic transformation have recently suggested more aggressive treatments. We analyzed the neurological and neuro-oncological outcome of 12 patients who underwent surgery fully awake for the resection of LGG, harboring eloquent areas. 10 right- and 2 left-handed patients underwent pre-operative assessment: Karnofsky Performance Status, Edinburgh Handedness Inventory Score; neuropsychological and neurophysiological evaluations, according to the tumor location. During surgery we performed: sensory-motor-evoked potentials, continuous electro-corticography and bipolar/monopolar cortico-subcortical mapping during neuropsychological tests. The resection rate was calculated with neuro-imaging elaboration software. No permanent post-operative deficits were reported; 2 patients improved after surgery. No impairment of cognitive functions was reported. The KPS improved in 8 patients and was steady in the others. The mean resection rate was 78.3%. The resection allowed the control of pre-operative seizures without increasing the drug intake. Awake surgery allowed a good resection rate despite the eloquent location of the tumors, without post-operative deficit. The neuropsychological outcome was unchanged after surgery. The resection seems to improve seizure control. All the patients came back to normal life and work. In conclusion, awake surgery is reliable and feasible in removal of LGG, even if invading the main eloquent areas and networks. All the patients experienced a normal life after surgery, without permanent deficits.	\N	\N
21489866	Studies indicate that the change from closed to open eyes in a resting condition results in an increase in skin conductance level (SCL) and a global decrease in EEG alpha activity, both indicative of increased arousal. Other studies show that ingestion of caffeine also produces SCL increase and alpha reduction. This study investigated the additivity of the effects of these two independent arousing variables. EEG activity and SCL were recorded from 22 university students during both eyes-closed and eyes-open resting conditions, under the action of both caffeine and placebo, in a counterbalanced randomised double-blind study. SCL increased significantly from eyes-closed to eyes-open conditions, and from placebo to caffeine, with no interaction. Global reductions in EEG alpha amplitude were apparent with opening of the eyes and caffeine ingestion; again, there was no interaction. Caffeine had a larger effect than opening the eyes on SCL, but their relative effect sizes were reversed in alpha. The two dependent measures showed the predicted negative correlation in both eyes-closed placebo and eyes-open caffeine conditions, with the latter substantially reduced relative to the former. Caffeine and opening the eyes have additive effects on two measures of arousal, increasing SCL and reducing global EEG alpha. However, the independent variable effects are not equivalent, suggesting that one or both measures reflect additional non-arousal processes. As caffeine is widely used by both children and adults, knowledge of the additivity of arousal effects of caffeine and opening the eyes is important in controlling participant state in EEG studies. The current results confirm the use of mean global alpha amplitude as a measure of resting-state arousal, but also point to non-arousal effects of visual input.	\N	\N
21493707	Object-based attention facilitates the processing of features that form the object. Two hypotheses are conceivable for how object-based attention is deployed to an object's features: first, the object is attended by selecting its features; alternatively, a configuration of features as such is attended by selecting the object representation they form. Only for the latter alternative, the perception of a feature configuration as entity ("objecthood") is a necessary condition for object-based attention. Disentangling the two alternatives requires the comparison of identical feature configurations that induce the perception of an object in one condition ("bound") and do not do so in another condition ("unbound"). We used an ambiguous stimulus, whose percept spontaneously switches between bound and unbound, while the stimulus itself remains unchanged. We tested discrimination on the boundary of the diamond as well as detection of probes inside and outside the diamond. We found discrimination performance to be increased if features were perceptually bound into an object. Furthermore, detection performance was higher within and lower outside the bound object as compared to the unbound configuration. Consequently, the facilitation of processing by object-based attention requires objecthood, that is, a unified internal representation of an "object"-not a mere collection of features.	\N	\N
21497444	Psychological stress prompts activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis resulting in increased release of cortisol. Long-term HPA aberrations have been observed for stress-related affective disorders but research into acute effects of cortisol on affect-regulation has only recently begun. Previous studies reported that exogenous cortisol acutely attenuated automatic attentional processing of task-irrelevant threatening information. This has been taken to suggest that cortisol may have acute anxiolytic properties, possibly through facilitating inhibition of threatening information. However, the role of cortisol in attentional inhibition of non-threatening arousing stimuli remained unclear. Therefore acute effects of 40 mg cortisol on performance of a masked and unmasked emotional Stroop task (EST) were assessed. Results for only the unmasked task demonstrated EST interference (interpreted as increased automatic attention) for erotic stimuli which was abolished by cortisol administration. This implies that effects of cortisol may not be restricted to attenuation of specifically anxiogenic information processing, as previously suggested.	\N	\N
21500047	In order to truly empathise with another, we need to recognise and understand how they feel. Perception-action models of empathy predict that attending to another's emotion will spontaneously activate the observer's own conceptual knowledge for the state, but it is unclear how this activation is related to facial mimicry, trait empathy, or attention to emotion more generally. In the current study, participants did spontaneously encode background facial expressions at a conceptual level even though they were irrelevant to the task (the Emostroop effect; Preston & Stansfield, 2008), but this encoding was not associated with mimicry of the faces, trait empathy, the ability to resolve competing semantic representations (Colour-naming Stroop task), or the tendency to be distracted by emotional information more generally (Intrusive Cognitions task). Our results suggest that trait empathy increases attention to emotional information, but conceptual encoding occurs across individuals as a natural consequence of attended perception.	\N	\N
21500317	Recordings of event-related potentials (ERPs) were combined with structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the timing and localization of stimulus selection processes during visual-spatial attention to pattern-reversing gratings. Pattern reversals were presented in random order to the left and right visual fields at a rapid rate, while subjects attended to the reversals in one field at a time. On separate runs, stimuli were presented in the upper and lower visual quadrants. The earliest ERP component (C1, peaking at around 80 ms), which inverted in polarity for upper versus lower field stimuli and was localized in or near visual area V1, was not modulated by attention. In the latency range 80-250 ms, multiple components were elicited that were increased in amplitude by attention and were colocalized with fMRI activations in specific visual cortical areas. The principal anatomical sources of these attention-sensitive components were localized by fMRI-seeded dipole modeling as follows: P1 (ca. 100 ms-source in motion-sensitive area MT+), C2 (ca. 130 ms-same source as C1), N1a (ca. 145 ms-source in horizontal intraparietal sulcus), N1b (ca. 165 ms-source in fusiform gyrus, area V4/V8), N1c (ca. 180 ms-source in posterior intraparietal sulcus, area V3A), and P2 (ca. 220 ms-multiple sources, including parieto-occipital sulcus, area V6). These results support the hypothesis that spatial attention acts to amplify both feed-forward and feedback signals in multiple visual areas of both the dorsal and ventral streams of processing.	\N	\N
21500944	Previous work suggested the association between intentionality and the reported time of action was exclusive, with intentionality as the primary facilitator to the mental time compression between the reported time of action and its effect (Haggard, Clark, & Kalogeras, 2002). In three experiments, we examined whether mental time compression could also be observed in an unintended action. Participants performed an externally cued key press task that elicited one of two possible tones. The reported time of action shifted closer to the tone when the tone was used to indicate the winner of a race (Exp.2) compared to when the tone was meaningless and did not indicate winning (Exp.1). This suggests that reported time of an unintended action could shift toward the effect in some contexts. Furthermore, the results from Exp.2 and Exp.3 (tones were substituted with verbal feedback) showed that a presumed winning action was judged to occur earlier whereas a presumed losing action was judged to be later. These findings therefore support the view that the reported time of action is reconstructed from known temporal information rather than determined by intentionality.	\N	\N
21504670	The principal goal of this study was to verify whether it was possible to obtain both aversive and appetitive electrodermal classical conditioning, using pictures as conditioned stimuli (CS), and unconditioned stimuli (US). Additionally, we tried to verify whether, as a consequence of such conditioning, diminution of the unconditioned response (UR) was observed. With this aim, IAPS («International Affective Picture System») pictures were selected as stimuli. A picture showing a burnt face was used as the aversive US (USav), and a picture showing a scene with erotic content was used as the appetitive US (USap). As the aversive CS (CSav), and appetitive CS (CSap), two images with intermediate values of valence and arousal showing male faces were selected. In the experimental group, 10 CSav/USav and 10 CSap/USap trials were presented. In the control group 10 CSav, CSap, USav, and USap trials were presented in pseudorandom order. Skin conductance response (SCR) elicited by both the CSs and the USs was scored. Results showed aversive conditioning, but neither appetitive conditioning nor UR diminution. Problems to obtain conditioning using pictures as stimuli and possible options to overcome them in future research are discussed.	\N	\N
21507423	We investigated the associations of appraisal and coping styles with emotion regulation in a community sample of preadolescents (N=196, 9-12 years of age), with appraisal, coping styles, and emotion regulation measured at a single time point. In a previous study, we identified five frustration and four anxiety emotion regulation profiles based on children's physiological, behavioral, and self-reported reactions to emotion-eliciting tasks. In this study, preadolescents' self-reported appraisal and coping styles were associated with those emotion regulation profiles. Overall, findings revealed that children who were more effective at regulating their emotions during the emotion-eliciting tasks had higher levels of positive appraisal and active coping when dealing with their own problems. Conversely, children who regulated their emotions less effectively had higher levels of threat appraisal and avoidant coping.	\N	\N
21518064	This was a realistic military-type exercise assessing unexpected, abrupt early-morning awakening effects on immediate 'executive function' and the ability to comprehend and deal with a sudden emergency under a changing situation. Twenty (average age 21years) healthy, highly motivated junior officer reservists were assigned randomly to two equal, independent groups, unforewarned as to what would happen. The experimental group was woken abruptly at 03:00h (<3h sleep) and confronted immediately with a 'paper exercise' of an enemy attack, requiring a feasible plan of engagement with minimal loss of resources, to be completed within 15min. A control group slept until 07:30h; they were then presented with the identical emergency 1h later. Participants worked individually, under time pressure, receiving written information, map and other details, all containing relevant, irrelevant and misleading information. Halfway through, they were given (unexpectedly) a critical update necessitating a change of tactics. Performance was scored blind by instructors, under five categories. Eight of the experimental group versus three controls failed overall, with significant group differences on three specific categories relying on flexible decision-making: 'identification of available cover', 'use of available assets' and 'extraction of relevant from irrelevant information'. Other, logical and highly trained skills were unimpaired. Ours was a 'worst case scenario', combining short sleep, circadian 'trough' and sleep inertia, all of which differentiated the two groups, unlike typical laboratory studies. Nevertheless, it was relevant to real-life situations involving highly motivated, trained individuals making critical innovative decisions in the early morning versus the normal waking day.	\N	\N
21518701	Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists, such as leuprorelin, are recommended in the patients with pedophilia at highest risk of offending. However, the cerebral mechanisms of the effects of these testosterone-decreasing drugs are poorly known. This study aimed to identify changes caused by leuprorelin in a pedophilic patient's brain responses to pictures representing children. Clinical, endocrine, and fMRI investigations were done of a man with pedophilia before leuprorelin therapy and 5 months into leuprorelin therapy. Patient was compared with an age-matched healthy control also assessed 5 months apart. Before therapy, pictures of boys elicited activation in the left calcarine fissure, left insula, anterior cingulate cortex, and left cerebellar vermis. Five months into therapy, all the above-mentioned activations had disappeared. No such activations and, consequently, no such decreases occurred in the healthy control. The results of this pilot study suggest that leuprorelin decreased activity in regions known to mediate the perceptual, motivational, and affective responses to visual sexual stimuli.	\N	\N
21526441	The aim of the present study is to investigate visual orientation in hospitalized boys with severe early onset conduct disorder and borderline intellectual functioning. It is tested whether boys with the dual diagnosis have a stronger action-oriented response style to visual-cued go signals than the norm. To this end, boys with the dual diagnosis were compared with a peer control group on Posner's (1980) visual-spatial detection test. Here, on each trial, a visual cue points either in the direction of the location of a subsequent go signal (valid cue), or points in the opposite direction away from the location of the subsequent go signal (invalid cue). Findings indicated superior orientation (a strong action-oriented response style) of children with the dual diagnosis in valid-cued trials as well as in invalid-cued trials in both the left and the right visual hemifield. Findings were controlled for attention scores on the Child Behavior Checklist -Teacher Form and IQ scores.	\N	\N
21534030	Eight participants with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) were trained to recall names of countries using the spaced-retrieval memory intervention. Six training sessions were administered on alternate days over a 2-week period. Half of the participants studied a target country alone and the other half studied a target country along with eight distractor countries. Training stimuli appeared in text-only format in half of the sessions and text with a color photograph of the country in the other sessions. On each trial, participants selected the target at increasingly longer retention intervals, contingent upon successful recall. Results indicated that the mean proportion of correct trials and longest duration achieved increased across training sessions, confirming the success of the spaced-retrieval intervention. Pictorial illustrations enhanced explicit memory for target country names. Implications of these data for current views on memory remediation in cognitively impaired older adults are discussed.	\N	\N
21534031	In two experiments recognition of actions of a robbery presented in a video was examined in older and younger adults. In both experiments older adults had more false alarms and showed less accurate recognition than younger adults. In addition, when participants were asked in Experiment 1 to indicate Remember/Know/Guess judgments for actions they considered true, older adults accepted more false actions with Remember judgments. And when participants were asked in Experiment 2 to attribute the source (i.e., perpetrator), the older adults were less able to attribute actions that occurred during the robbery to their correct sources. Furthermore, we found a robust positive correlation between source attribution ability and recognition accuracy. Thus, source-memory deficits may contribute to older adults' false memories in real-life eyewitness situations.	\N	\N
21534706	We investigated how people interpret conditionals and how stable their interpretation is over a long series of trials. Participants were shown the colored patterns on each side of a 6-sided die and were asked how sure they were that a conditional holds of the side landing upward when the die is randomly thrown. Participants were presented with 71 trials consisting of all combinations of binary dimensions of shape (e.g., circles and squares) and color (e.g., blue and red) painted onto the sides of each die. In 2 experiments (N₁ = 66, N₂ = 65), the conditional event was the dominant interpretation, followed by conjunction, and material conditional responses were negligible. In both experiments, the percentage of participants giving a conditional event response increased from around 40% at the beginning of the task to nearly 80% at the end, with most participants shifting from a conjunction interpretation. The shift was moderated by the order of shape and color in each conditional's antecedent and consequent: Participants were more likely to shift if the antecedent referred to a color. In Experiment 2 we collected response times: Conditional event interpretations took longer to process than conjunction interpretations (mean difference = 500 ms). We discuss implications of our results for mental models theory and probabilistic theories of reasoning.	\N	\N
21534986	Schizophrenia (SZ) patients showed increased volitional saccade latencies, suggesting deficient volitional initiation of action. Yet increased volitional saccade latencies may also result from deficits in attention shifts. To dissociate attention shifting and saccade initiation, we asked 25 SZ patients and 25 healthy subjects to make saccades toward newly appearing (onset) targets and toward the loci of disappearing (offset) targets. Similar onsets and offsets were also used as attention cues in a Posner-type manual task. As expected, onsets and offsets had similar effects on attention. In contrast, saccade latencies were considerably longer with offset compared to onset targets, reflecting additional time for volitional saccade initiation. Unexpectedly, SZ patients had normal saccade latencies. Presumably, the expected deficit was compensated by decreased fixation-related neural activity, which was induced by the disappearance of fixation stimuli.	\N	\N
21545293	Wearable medical devices have enabled unobtrusive monitoring of vital signs and emerging biofeedback services in a pervasive manner. This article describes a wearable respiratory biofeedback system based on a generalized body sensor network (BSN) platform. The compact BSN platform was tailored for the strong requirements of overall system optimizations. A waist-worn biofeedback device was designed using the BSN. Extensive bench tests have shown that the generalized BSN worked as intended. In-situ experiments with 22 subjects indicated that the biofeedback device was discreet, easy to wear, and capable of offering wearable respiratory trainings. Pilot studies on wearable training patterns and resultant heart rate variability suggested that paced respirations at abdominal level and with identical inhaling/exhaling ratio were more appropriate for decreasing sympathetic arousal and increasing parasympathetic activities.	\N	\N
21545978	Despite the importance of determining the effects of interletter spacing on visual-word recognition, this issue has often been neglected in the literature. The goal of the present study is to shed some light on this topic. The rationale is that a thin increase in interletter spacing, as in casino, may reduce lateral interference among internal letters without destroying a word's integrity and/or allow a more precise encoding of a word's letter positions. Here we examined whether identification times for word stimuli in a lexical decision task were faster when the target word had a slightly wider than default interletter spacing value relative to the default settings (e.g., casino vs. casino). In Experiment 1, we examined whether interletter spacing interacted with word-frequency, whereas in Experiment 2, we examined whether interletter spacing interacted with word length. Results showed that responses to words using a thin increase in interletter spacing were faster than the responses to words using the default settings-regardless of word-frequency and word length. Thus, interletter spacing plays an important role at modulating the identification of visually presented words.	\N	\N
21547070	We aimed to investigate whether novel stimulus relations would emerge from stimulus correlations when those relations explicitly conflicted with reinforced relations. In a symbolic matching-to-sample task using kanji characters as stimuli, we arranged class-specific incorrect comparison stimuli in each of three classes. After presenting either Ax or Cx stimuli as samples, choices of Bx were reinforced and choices of Gx or Hx were not. Tests for symmetry, and combined symmetry and transitivity, showed the emergence of three 3-member (AxBxCx) stimulus classes in 5 of 5 human participants. Subsequent tests for all possible emergent relations between Ax, Bx, Cx and the class-specific incorrect comparisons Gx and Hx showed that these relations emerged for 4 of 5 the participants after extended overtraining of the baseline relations. These emergent relations must have been based on stimulus-stimulus correlations, and were not properties of the trained discriminated operants, because they required control by relations explicitly extinguished during training. This result supports theoretical accounts of emergent relations that emphasize stimulus correlation over operant contingencies.	\N	\N
21547759	According to the Proust phenomenon, olfactory memory triggers are more evocative than other-modality triggers resulting in more emotional and detailed memories. An experimental paradigm was used to investigate this in aversive memories, similar to those experienced by patients with posttraumatic stress disorder. Seventy healthy participants watched an aversive film, while simultaneously being exposed to olfactory, auditory and visual triggers, which were matched on intensity, valence, arousal and salience. During a second session one week later, participants were randomly exposed to one of the three triggers, and asked to think back about the film and to rate the resulting memory. Results revealed that odour-evoked memories of aversive events were more detailed, unpleasant and arousing than memories evoked by auditory, but not visual, triggers.	\N	\N
21547763	Although laughter plays an essential part in emotional vocal communication, little is known about the acoustical correlates that encode different emotional dimensions. In this study we examined the acoustical structure of laughter sounds differing along four emotional dimensions: arousal, dominance, sender's valence, and receiver-directed valence. Correlation of 43 acoustic parameters with individual emotional dimensions revealed that each emotional dimension was associated with a number of vocal cues. Common patterns of cues were found with emotional expression in speech, supporting the hypothesis of a common underlying mechanism for the vocal expression of emotions.	\N	\N
21555734	Previous studies have estimated that wake-up strokes comprise 8%to 28% of all ischemic strokes, but these studies were either small or not population-based. We sought to establish the proportion and event rate of wake-up strokes in a large population-based study and to compare patients who awoke with stroke symptoms with those who were awake at time of onset. First-time and recurrent ischemic strokes among residents of the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky region (population 1.3 million) in 2005 were identified using International Classification of Diseases-9 codes 430-436 and verified via study physician review. Ischemic strokes in patients aged 18 years and older presenting to an emergency department were included. Baseline characteristics were ascertained, along with discharge modified Rankin Scale scores and 90-day mortality. We identified 1,854 ischemic strokes presenting to an emergency department, of which 273 (14.3%) were wake-up strokes. There were no differences between wake-up strokes and all other strokes with regard to clinical features or outcomes except for minor differences in age and baseline retrospective NIH Stroke Scale score. The adjusted wake-up stroke event rate was 26.0/100,000. Of the wake-up strokes, at least 98 (35.9%) would have been eligible for thrombolysis if arrival time were not a factor. Within our population, approximately 14% of ischemic strokes presenting to an emergency department were wake-up strokes. Wake-up strokes cannot be distinguished from other strokes by clinical features or outcome. We estimate that approximately 58,000 patients with wake-up strokes presented to an emergency department in the United States in 2005.	\N	\N
21555787	The Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT) is commonly used to evaluate an individual's switching attention and processing speed. However, its test-retest reliability and practice effect are not well known in patients with stroke, limiting its utility in both clinical and research settings. The present study examined the two aforementioned psychometric properties of the oral-format SDMT on a group of 30 outpatients with stroke. The oral-format SDMT demonstrated excellent test-retest reliability (ICC = 0.89) and a small practice effect (Cohen's d = 0.26) within a 1-week interval. A practice effect-corrected reliable change index [-5.29, 10.89] was also provided to help clinicians and researchers interpret their clients' test results. Patients' characteristics and the test-retest interval should be considered before applying the findings of the present study to clinical settings.	\N	\N
21564270	Theories of embodied cognition hold that the conceptual system uses perceptual simulations for the purposes of representation. A strong prediction is that perceptual phenomena should emerge in conceptual processing, and, in support, previous research has shown that switching modalities from one trial to the next incurs a processing cost during conceptual tasks. However, to date, such research has been limited by its reliance on the retrieval of familiar concepts. We therefore examined concept creation by asking participants to interpret modality-specific compound phrases (i.e., conceptual combinations). Results show that modality switching costs emerge during the creation of new conceptual entities: People are slower to simulate a novel concept (e.g., auditory jingling onion) when their attention has already been engaged by a different modality in simulating a familiar concept (e.g., visual shiny penny). Furthermore, these costs cannot be accounted for by linguistic factors alone. Rather, our findings support the embodied view that concept creation, as well as retrieval, requires situated perceptual simulation.	\N	\N
21568633	The specific role of different parietal regions to episodic retrieval is a topic of intense debate. According to the Attention to Memory (AtoM) model, dorsal parietal cortex (DPC) mediates top-down attention processes guided by retrieval goals, whereas ventral parietal cortex (VPC) mediates bottom-up attention processes captured by the retrieval output or the retrieval cue. This model also hypothesizes that the attentional functions of DPC and VPC are similar for memory and perception. To investigate this last hypothesis, we scanned participants with event-related fMRI whereas they performed memory and perception tasks, each comprising an orienting phase (top-down attention) and a detection phase (bottom-up attention). The study yielded two main findings. First, consistent with the AtoM model, orienting-related activity for memory and perception overlapped in DPC, whereas detection-related activity for memory and perception overlapped in VPC. The DPC overlap was greater in the left intraparietal sulcus, and the VPC overlap in the left TPJ. Around overlapping areas, there were differences in the spatial distribution of memory and perception activations, which were consistent with trends reported in the literature. Second, both DPC and VPC showed stronger connectivity with medial-temporal lobe during the memory task and with visual cortex during the perception task. These findings suggest that, during memory tasks, some parietal regions mediate similar attentional control processes to those involved in perception tasks (orienting in DPC vs. detection in VPC), although on different types of information (mnemonic vs. sensory).	\N	\N
21570431	Research has shown that standard chewing gum can affect aspects of both attention and memory. The present study examined the effects of Think Gum®, a caffeinated-herbal chewing gum, on both concentration and memory using a series of paper-based and online testing. Compared to standard chewing gum and a no-gum control, chewing caffeinated-herbal gum during testing improved aspects of memory, but did not affect concentration. The findings suggest that caffeinated-herbal chewing gum is an effective memory aid.	\N	\N
21593013	Evidence suggests that gait is influenced by higher order cognitive and cortical control mechanisms. However, less is known about the functional correlates of cortical control of gait. Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy, the current study was designed to evaluate whether increased activations in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) were detected in walking while talking (WWT) compared with normal pace walking (NW) in 11 young and 11 old participants. Specifically, the following two hypotheses were evaluated: (a) Activation in the PFC would be increased in WWT compared with NW. (b) The increase in activation in the PFC during WWT as compared with NW would be greater in young than in old participants. Separate linear mixed effects models with age as the two-level between-subject factor, walking condition (NW vs WWT) as the two-level repeated within-subject factor, and HbO2 levels in each of the 16 functional near-infrared spectroscopy channels as the dependent measure revealed significant task effects in 14 channels, indicating a robust bilateral increased activation in the PFC in WWT compared with NW. Furthermore, the group-by-task interaction was significant in 11 channels with young participants showing greater WWT-related increase in HbO2 levels compared with the old participants. This study provided the first evidence that oxygenation levels are increased in the PFC during WWT compared with NW in young and old individuals. This effect was modified by age suggesting that older adults may under-utilize the PFC in attention-demanding locomotion tasks.	\N	\N
21607816	The present study investigated working memory consolidation in focused and distributed attention tasks by examining the time course of the consolidation process (Experiment 1) and its dependence on capacity-limited central resources (Experiment 2) in both tasks. In a match-to-sample design using masks at various intervals to vary consolidation rates, the participants performed either an identification task (focused attention) or a mean estimation task (distributed attention) with (Experiment 1) or without (Experiment 2) prior knowledge of what task they were to perform. We found that consolidation in the distributed attention task was more efficient and was about twice as fast as in the focused attention task. In addition, both tasks suffered interference when they had to be performed together, indicating that both types of attention rely on a common set of control processes. These findings can be attributed to differences in the resolution of object representations and in the scope of attention associated with focused and distributed attention.	\N	\N
21611188	Visual search tasks have been used to understand how, where and when attention influences visual processing. Current theories suggest the involvement of a high-level "saliency map" that selects a candidate location to focus attentional resources. For a parallel (or "pop-out") task, the first chosen location is systematically the target, but for a serial (or "difficult") task, the system may cycle on a few distractors before finally focusing on the target. This implies that attentional effects upon early visual areas, involving feedback from higher areas, should be visible at longer latencies during serial search. A previous study from Juan & Walsh (2003) had used Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to support this conclusion; however, only a few post-stimulus delays were compared, and no control TMS location was used. Here we applied TMS double-pulses (sub-threshold) to induce a transient inhibition of area V1 at every post-stimulus delay between 100 ms and 500 ms (50 ms steps). The search array was presented either at the location affected by the TMS pulses (previously identified by applying several pulses at supra-threshold intensity to induce phosphene perception), or in the opposite hemifield, which served as a retinotopically-defined control location. Two search tasks were used: a parallel (+ among Ls) and a serial one (T among Ls). TMS specifically impaired the serial, but not the parallel search. We highlight an involvement of V1 in serial search 300 ms after the onset; conversely, V1 did not contribute to parallel search at delays beyond 100 ms. This study supports the idea that serial search differs from parallel search by the presence of additional cycles of a select-and-focus iterative loop between V1 and higher-level areas.	\N	\N
21614702	The present study explored the nature of attention control problems associated with ruminative traits. Experiment 1 aimed to establish the validity of a modified mental counting task that assesses individuals' ability to switch attention between internal mental representations. Reaction time and brain activity (event related potential; ERP) measures were examined, and results showed that the task was sensitive to internal attention switching effects. Experiment 2 assessed how the relationship between ruminative tendencies and switching performance differs when participants attend to neutral versus affective materials under different mood states. Although reaction-time analysis suggested that both mood condition and stimulus affectivity were not significant in altering this association, ERP analysis suggested otherwise. A significant task type×trait rumination × mood condition effect was found for switch-related ERP responses, whereby high ruminators were found to deploy more neuronal resources when switching affective materials in sad mood state.	\N	\N
21616989	The purpose of this study was to determine if sound-field amplification (SFA) devices affected student performance in 3 different types of classrooms. The classroom performance of 147 children (77 males, 70 females, ages 8;2 [years;months] ± 5 months) was measured at the beginning and end of the second semester of their third year in 1 of 4 primary schools in Brisbane, Australia. Each school contained 2 participating classrooms, 1 with and 1 without an SFA device. The SFA devices contributed to small but significant improvements in student listening (p < .01) and auditory analysis (p < .05) skills, but only in the school where the participating classrooms were in a brick building (vs. a demountable building) with neighboring classrooms separated by solid walls (vs. open spaces). The classrooms in this school showed the lowest background noise measures (47-50 dB 1 hr, A weighted) and the second lowest reverberation times (0.87-0.91 s) overall, although these values still exceeded the maximums recommended by American National Standards Institute S12.60-2002 (2002). These results suggest that any potential benefits of SFA devices are more likely to be realized in classrooms with better acoustics.	\N	\N
21621179	To test whether cueing by color can affect orienting without first computing the location of the cued color, the impact of reorienting on the validity effect was examined. In Experiment 1 subjects were asked to detect a black dot target presented at random on either of two colored forms. The forms started being presented 750 ms before the onset of a central cue (either an arrow or a colored square). In some proportion of the trials the colors switched locations 150 ms after cue onset, simultaneously with target onset. The color switch was not found to retard responses following a color cue more than following a location cue. Furthermore, it did not reduce the validity effect of the color cue: Though the validity effect of the location cue was quite larger than the validity effect of the color cue, both effects were additive with the presence/absence of a color switch. In Experiment 2, subjects were rather asked to detect a change in shape of one of the colored forms. In this case, color switch was found to affect performance even less following a color cue. The fact that across experiments, color switch did not retard neither responding nor orienting selectively in the color cue condition, indicates that when attention is set to a certain color, reorienting to a new object following color switch does not require re-computing the address of the cued color. That finding is argued to embarrass a strong space-based view of visual attention.	\N	\N
21621549	Sleep plays a role in the consolidation of declarative memories. Although this influence has attracted much attention at the level of behavioural performance, few reports have searched for neural correlates. Here, we studied the impact of sleep upon memory for the context in which stimuli were learned at both behavioural and neural levels. Participants retrieved the association between a presented foreground object and its encoding context following a 12-h retention interval including either wake only or wake plus a night of sleep. Since sleep has been shown to selectively enhance some forms of emotional memory, we examined both neutral and emotionally valenced contexts. Behaviourally, less forgetting was observed across retention intervals containing sleep than retention intervals containing only wakefulness, and this benefit was accompanied by stronger responses in hippocampus and superior parietal cortex. This sleep-related reduction in forgetting did not differ between neutral and negative contexts, but there was a clear interaction between sleep and context valence at the functional level, with left amygdala, right parahippocampus, and other components of the episodic memory system all responding more strongly during correct memory for emotional contexts post-sleep. Connectivity between right parahippocampus and bilateral amygdala/periamygdala was also enhanced during correct post-sleep attribution of emotional contexts. Because there was no interaction between sleep and valence in terms of context memory performance these functional results may be associated with memory for details about the emotional encoding context rather than for the link between that context and the foreground object. Overall, our data show that while context memory decays less across sleep than across an equivalent period of wake, the sleep-related protection of such associations is not influenced by context emotionality in the same way as direct recollection of emotional information.	\N	\N
21632030	The three experiments reported here test whether object-modulated attentional spreading can be obtained when the target location is 100% certain. Experiment 1 uses the reaction time (RT)-based flanker task similar to Shomstein and Yantis (2002), and replicates the null result of the object-modulated attentional spreading. RT and accuracy (ACC) have been shown to reflect different processes: postperceptual decision vs. perceptual process (Santee & Egeth, 1982). Experiment 2 adopts the data-limited ACC-based measure and reports that attention could spread within the attended object. To avoid ceiling effects, Experiment 3 adjusts the presentation time based on the trials where the target and flankers were compatible and on the same objects, and provides the convergent evidence supporting the object-modulated attentional spreading. These results suggest that because the RT-based measure is less sensitive in reflecting the quality of perceptual representations, it is not sufficiently a strong evidence to distinguish between sensory enhancement and scanning prioritization accounts.	\N	\N
21639611	We continue the process of investigating the probabilistic paired associate paradigm in an effort to understand the memory access control processes involved and to determine whether the memory structure produced is in transition between episodic and semantic memory. In this paradigm two targets are probabilistically paired with a cue across a large number of short lists. Participants can recall the target paired with the cue in the most recent list (list specific test), produce the first of the two targets that have been paired with that cue to come to mind (generalised test), and produce a free association response (semantic test). Switching between a generalised test and a list specific test did not produce a switching cost indicating a general similarity in the control processes involved. In addition, there was evidence for a dissociation between two different strength manipulations (amount of study time and number of cue-target pairings) such that number of pairings influenced the list specific, generalised and the semantic test but amount of study time only influenced the list specific and generalised test.	\N	\N
21639619	Being able to wait is an essential part of self-regulation. In the present study, the authors examined the developmental course of changes in the latency to and duration of target-waiting behaviors by following 65 boys and 55 girls from rural and semirural economically strained homes from ages 18 months to 48 months. Age-related changes in latency to and duration of children's anger expressions and attention focus (e.g., self-initiated distraction) during an 8-min wait for a gift were found. On average, at 18 and 24 months of age, children were quick to react angrily and slower to shift attention away from the desired object than they were at later ages. Over time, children were quicker to distract themselves. By 36 months, distractions occurred before children expressed anger, and anger expressions were briefer. At 48 months, children typically made a quick bid to their mothers about having to wait before distracting themselves; on average, they did not appear angry until the latter half of the wait. Unexpectedly, children bid to their mothers as much at age 48 months as they had at 18 months; however, bids became less angry as children got older. Developmental changes in distraction and bidding predicted age-related changes in the latency to anger. Findings are discussed in terms of the neurocognitive control of attention around age 30 months, the limitations of children's self-regulatory efforts at age 48 months, and the importance of fostering children's ability to forestall, as well as modulate, anger.	\N	\N
21641942	A variety of event-related potential (ERP) based studies have shown differences in neuronal processes underlying attention, inhibition and error processing in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) compared to controls. However, so far there are no studies that have compared children with ADHD and typically developing (TD) children regarding effects in ERP components associated with the attention network test (ANT). The ANT allows to differentiate between three particular aspects of attention: alerting, orienting, conflict. Twenty-five children with ADHD and 19 TD children (comparable with respect to age, sex, and IQ) performed the ANT while ERPs were recorded. Based on DSM-IV, the group of children with ADHD was divided in an inattentive (ADHDin, n=10) and a combined (ADHDcom, n=15) subgroup. On the performance level, the ADHD group showed a significantly higher variability of reaction times. Concerning ERP measures, smaller cue-P3 amplitudes were found in the ADHD group indicating that children with ADHD allocate less attentional resources for cue processing. In addition, the target-P3 in ADHD showed smaller amplitudes. Subgroup analysis revealed reduced cue-P3 amplitudes in both subgroups and reduced target-P3 amplitudes in ADHDin compared to TD children. Except for a higher alerting score in ADHD after correction for cue-P3 group differences, performance data revealed no group differences specific for the three attention networks. No group differences related to the attention networks were observed at the ERP level. Our results suggest that deviant attentional processing in children with ADHD is only partly related to ANT-specific effects. Findings are compatible with the model of a suboptimal energetic state regulation in ADHD. Furthermore, our results suggest that deviant cue processing in ADHD and related differences in task modulations should be accounted for in data analysis.	\N	\N
21643485	This case describes the clinical course of a cannabis-dependent individual entering a 12-week abstinence-based research program. The case illustrates the effects of chronic, heavy cannabis use on executive functions at three time points: 1) 24 hours of abstinence; 2) 4 weeks of abstinence; and 3) 12 weeks of abstinence. It is followed by discussions by two clinical psychologists and a psychiatrist. The findings described here have important clinical implications, as executive functions have a vital role in treatment participation and in sustaining recovery. It should be of particular interest to clinicians who work with people with cannabis use disorders.	\N	\N
21646824	While neuropsychological impairment in bipolar disorder is well documented, the effect size of this impairment is rarely compared directly to that in other clinically familiar cognitive disorders. This study compares neuropsychological functioning of euthymic bipolar patients to those with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) as well as healthy controls. Following evaluation during regular follow-up in a mood disorders clinic, 58 euthymic adult bipolar subjects were administered a validated and fully computerized cognitive assessment (Mindstreams; NeuroTrax Corp., N.Y., USA). Study data were compared to existing data for MCI and cognitively healthy individuals tested with the same assessment. Final analyses were based on 51 bipolar patients, 162 MCI patients and 495 healthy comparison subjects. Significant (p < 0.001) group effects were found for every parameter. Post hoc analysis revealed that the bipolar and MCI groups showed statistically equivalent functioning in memory, executive function, verbal function, and information processing speed. In the domains of visual-spatial processing, attention, and motor skills, the MCI group outperformed the bipolar group. In every domain, the healthy control group outperformed both the bipolar and the MCI groups. The cognitive function of euthymic bipolar patients and those diagnosed with MCI was found to be similar in most but not all domains. Both groups performed significantly less well than the comparison group of healthy subjects. It may be helpful for clinicians to conceptualize the overall level of cognitive impairment in bipolar patients as similar to that in MCI.	\N	\N
21649633	To test the main and interactive effects of activities derived from the Need-Driven Dementia-Compromised Behavior model for responding to behavioral symptoms in nursing home residents. Randomized double-blind clinical trial. Nine community-based nursing homes. One hundred twenty-eight cognitively impaired residents randomly assigned to activities adjusted to functional level (FL) (n=32), personality style of interest (PSI) (n=33), functional level and personality style of interest (FL+PSI) (n=31), or active control (AC) (n=32). Three weeks of activities provided twice daily. Agitation, passivity, engagement, affect, and mood assessed from video recordings and real-time observations during baseline, intervention, random times outside of intervention, and 1 week after intervention. All treatments improved outcomes during intervention except mood, which worsened under AC. During intervention the PSI group demonstrated greater engagement, alertness, and attention than the other groups; the FL+PSI group demonstrated greater pleasure. During random times, engagement returned to baseline levels except in the FL group in which it decreased. There was also less agitation and passivity in groups with a component adjusted to PSI. One week after the intervention, mood, anxiety, and passivity improved over baseline; significantly less pleasure was displayed after withdrawal of treatment. The hypothesis that activities adjusted to FL+PSI would improve behavioral outcomes to a greater extent than partially adjusted or nonadjusted activities was partially supported. PSI is a critical component of individualized activity prescription.	\N	\N
21652032	It has been proposed that the most fundamental units of attentional selection are "objects" that are grouped according to Gestalt factors such as similarity or connectedness. Previous studies using event-related potentials (ERPs) have shown that object-based attention is associated with modulations of the visual-evoked N1 component, which reflects an early cortical mechanism that is shared with spatial attention. However, these studies only examined the case of perceptually continuous objects. The present study examined the case of separate objects that are grouped according to feature similarity (color, shape) by indexing lateralized potentials at posterior sites in a sustained-attention task that involved bilateral stimulus arrays. A behavioral object effect was found only for task-relevant shape similarity. Electrophysiological results indicated that attention was guided to the task-irrelevant side of the visual field due to achromatic-color similarity in N1 (155-205 ms post-stimulus) and early N2 (210-260 ms) and due to shape similarity in early N2 and late N2 (280-400 ms) latency ranges. These results are discussed in terms of selection mechanisms and object/group representations.	\N	\N
21652777	In three experiments, we tested whether people can protect their ongoing goal pursuits from antagonistic priming effects by using if-then plans (i.e., implementation intentions). In Experiment 1, concept priming did not influence lexical decision time for a critical stimulus when participants had formed if-then plans to make fast responses to that stimulus. In Experiment 2, participants who were primed with a prosocial goal allowed a confederate who asked for help to interrupt their work on a focal task for a longer time if they had merely formed goal intentions to perform well than if they had also formed implementation intentions for concentrating on the task. In Experiment 3, priming the goal of being fast increased driving speed and errors for participants who had formed mere goal intentions to drive only as fast as safety allowed or who had formed no goal intentions, whereas the driving of participants who had formed such goal intentions as well as implementation intentions showed no such priming effects. Our findings indicate that implementation intentions are an effective self-regulatory tool for shielding actions from disruptive concept- or goal-priming effects.	\N	\N
21660498	Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been associated with sensory hypersensitivity. A recent study reported visual acuity (VA) in ASD in the region reported for birds of prey. The validity of the results was subsequently doubted. This study examined VA in 34 individuals with ASD, 16 with schizophrenia (SCH), and 26 typically developing (TYP). Participants with ASD did not show higher VA than those with SCH and TYP. There were no substantial correlations of VA with clinical severity in ASD or SCH. This study could not confirm the eagle-eyed acuity hypothesis of ASD, or find evidence for a connection of VA and clinical phenotypes. Research needs to further address the origins and circumstances associated with altered sensory or perceptual processing in ASD.	\N	\N
21664936	The processing of successive targets requires that attention be engaged and disengaged. Whereas attentional engagement can be studied by means of the N2pc component of the event-related potential (ERP), no ERP component has been linked to attentional disengagement. Here, we report the finding of such a component using an RSVP paradigm with multiple, successive targets and with a spatial-cuing paradigm. In both experiments, disengagement of attention was necessary to attend to subsequent targets. A distinct waveform following the N2pc, which we call the P4pc (Positivity 400 ms post-target posterior contralateral), was found. The P4pc was found when a lateralized cue indicated that attention would be needed for the processing of a target at either the same or a different location as the cue, but not when only the cue was to be responded to, indicating that the need to disengage attention is a prerequisite for the P4pc to occur. We expect the P4pc to provide a valuable addition to the set of electrophysiological measures used to study the dynamics and mechanisms of visual attention and visual search.	\N	\N
21664952	Visual perception is influenced at early processing stages by geometric spatiotemporal context regularities (consistent with the "vision-as-inference" view) and by attention, yet little is known about the interaction between these two influences on visual processing. Here, we investigate the temporal dynamics of the interaction between attention and spatiotemporal context regularity in target detection using event-related potentials (ERP). Spatial attention was withdrawn from the context by a secondary task in Experiment 1, and the role of task-relevance was explored in Experiment 2 by including a passive viewing condition. The ERP correlates of spatiotemporal regularity reported in an earlier study were replicated in single task (Experiment 1) and active viewing (Experiment 2): P1 and N1 peak-latency was shorter when the target was preceded by a context. Latency first differentiated between the two context conditions at N1, where latency was shortest for targets preceded by a context with both spatial and temporal regularities (compared with temporal regularity only). In dual task and passive viewing, this N1 latency-shift was abolished. Comparisons of "low-attention" (dual task or passive viewing) with "high-attention" conditions (single task or active viewing) revealed that attention only shortened N1 peak-latency when the target was preceded by stimulus sequences with spatial and temporal regularity. P1 latency was unaffected by manipulation of top-down attention factors. Attentional factors are likely to modulate influences of spatiotemporal context through re-afferent projections at later stages of visual processing in regions of extrastriate cortex associated with the generators of the N1 waveform.	\N	\N
21665985	Principles of saccadic eye movement control in the real world have been derived by the study of self-paced well-known tasks such as sandwich or tea making. Little is known whether these principles generalize to high-speed sensorimotor tasks and how they are affected by learning and automatization. In the present study, right-handers practiced the speed-stacking task in 14 consecutive daily training sessions, while their eye movements were recorded. Speed stacking is a high-speed sensorimotor task that requires grasping, moving, rotating, and placing of objects. The following main results emerged. Throughout practice, the eyes led the hands, displayed by a positive eye-hand time span. Moreover, visual information was gathered for the subsequent manual sub-action, displayed by a positive eye-hand unit span. With automatization, the eye-hand time span became shorter, yet it increased when corrected by the decreasing trial duration. In addition, fixations were mainly allocated to the goal positions of the right hand or objects in the right hand. The number of fixations decreased while the fixation rate remained constant. Importantly, all participants fixated on the same task-relevant locations in a similar scan path across training days, revealing a long-term memory-based mode of attention control after automatization of a high-speed sensorimotor task.	\N	\N
21668095	Affective priming studies have shown that participants are faster to pronounce affectively polarized target words that are preceded by affectively congruent prime words than affectively polarized target words that are preceded by affectively incongruent prime words. We examined whether affective priming of naming responses depends on the valence proportion (i.e., the proportion of stimuli that are affectively polarized). In one group of participants, experimental trials were embedded in a context of filler trials that consisted of affectively polarized stimulus materials (i.e., high valence proportion condition). In a second group, the same set of experimental trials was embedded in a context of filler trials consisting of neutral stimuli (i.e., low valence proportion condition). Results showed that affective priming of naming responses was significantly stronger in the high valence proportion condition than in the low valence proportion condition. We conclude that (a) subtle aspects of the procedure can influence affective priming of naming responses, (b) finding affective priming of naming responses does not allow for the conclusion that affective stimulus processing is unconditional, and (c) affective stimulus processing depends on selective attention for affective stimulus information.	\N	\N
21668098	In laboratory experiments, infants are sensitive to patterns of visual features that co-occur (e.g., Fiser & Aslin, 2002). Once infants learn the statistical regularities, however, what do they do with that knowledge? Moreover, which patterns do infants learn in the cluttered world outside of the laboratory? Across 4 experiments, we show that 9-month-olds use this sensitivity to make inferences about object properties. In Experiment 1, 9-month-old infants expected co-occurring visual features to remain fused (i.e., infants looked longer when co-occurring features split apart than when they stayed together). Forming such expectations can help identify integral object parts for object individuation, recognition, and categorization. In Experiment 2, we increased the task difficulty by presenting the test stimuli simultaneously with a different spatial layout from the familiarization trials to provide a more ecologically valid condition. Infants did not make similar inferences in this more distracting test condition. However, Experiment 3 showed that a social cue did allow inferences in this more difficult test condition, and Experiment 4 showed that social cues helped infants choose patterns among distractor patterns during learning as well as during test. These findings suggest that infants can use feature co-occurrence to learn about objects and that social cues shape such foundational learning in distraction-filled environments.	\N	\N
21676591	We present results from continuous intracranial electroencephalographic (iEEG) monitoring in 6 dogs with naturally occurring epilepsy, a disorder similar to the human condition in its clinical presentation, epidemiology, electrophysiology and response to therapy. Recordings were obtained using a novel implantable device wirelessly linked to an external, portable real-time processing unit. We demonstrate previously uncharacterized intracranial seizure onset patterns in these animals that are strikingly similar in appearance to human partial onset epilepsy. We propose: (1) canine epilepsy as an appropriate model for testing human antiepileptic devices and new approaches to epilepsy surgery, and (2) this new technology as a versatile platform for evaluating seizures and response to therapy in the natural, ambulatory setting.	\N	\N
21677255	This study examined the influence of thyroid markers (TSH and FT4) on cognition in a sample of rural-dwelling women. Data were analyzed from 81 women who were enrolled in an ongoing study of rural health, Project FRONTIER. Cognition was assessed with the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS). TSH levels were significantly related to the RBANS Attention Index, and FT4 levels were significantly related to the RBANS Language Index. The current study found that TSH and FT4 were differentially related to neurocognitive domains, with TSH being related only to measures of attention and FT4 to measures of language.	\N	\N
21679910	The fate of irrelevant and overtly presented stimuli that was temporally aligned with an attended target in a separate task was explored. Seitz and Watanabe (2003) demonstrated that if an irrelevant motion stimulus was implicit (i.e., subthreshold), a later facilitation for the same motion direction was observed if the previously presented implicit motion (of the same direction) was temporally aligned with the presence of an attended target. Later research, however, demonstrated that if the motion stimulus aligned with the attended target was explicit (i.e., suprathreshold), a later inhibition was observed (Tsushima, Seitz, & Watanabe, 2008). The current study expands on this by using more salient stimuli (words and pictures) in an inattentional blindness paradigm, and suggests that when attention is depleted, recognition for target-aligned task-irrelevant items is impaired in a subsequent recognition task. Participants were required to respond to either immediate picture, or word, repetitions in a stream of simultaneously presented line drawings and written words, and later given a surprise recognition test that measured recognition for the words or the pictures. When analyzing word recognition performance after attention had been directed to the pictures, words that had appeared simultaneously with a picture repetition in the repetition detection task were recognized at levels significantly below chance. The same inhibition was mirrored when testing for picture recognition after having attended to the words in the repetition detection task. These data suggest an inhibitory mechanism that is exhibited in later recognition tests for salient information that was previously unattended and had been simultaneously being presented with an attended target in a different task.	\N	\N
21684179	Research has shown repeatedly that attention influences implicit learning effects. In a similar vein, interoceptive awareness might be involved in unaware fear conditioning: The fact that the CS is repeatedly presented in the context of aversive bodily experiences might facilitate the development of conditioned responding. We investigated the role of interoceptive attention in a subliminal conditioning paradigm. Conditioning was embedded in a spatial cueing task with subliminally presented cues that were followed by a masking stimulus. Response times to the targets that were either validly or invalidly predicted by the cues served as index of conditioning. Interoceptive attention was manipulated between-subjects. Half the participants completed a heartbeat detection task before conditioning. This task tunes attention to one's own bodily signals. We found that conditioned responding was facilitated in this latter group of participants. These results are in line with the hypothesis that a rise interoceptive attention enhances unaware conditioned responding.	\N	\N
21684618	The primary purpose of the present study was to examine kinematic characteristics and force control during a golf-putting task under a pressure condition. The secondary purpose was to provide an exploratory investigation of the relationship between changes in behavior (kinematics and force control) and performance on the one hand, and psychological (attention and affect) and physiological (arousal level) changes on the other hand. Twenty male novices performed 150 acquisition trials, followed by 10 test trials during a pressure condition induced by performance-contingent distracters: a cash reward or punishment. A three-dimensional motion analysis revealed that, during the pressure test, angular displacements of rotational movements at the horizontal plane and movement time of the arms and club during the backswing and downswing phases all decreased, while acceleration of the elbows during the downswing phase increased. Mean performance indices in all participants' were unchanged in spite of the kinematic changes under the pressure condition. Multiple regression analyses indicated that the decrement in performance, as well as increased variability of movement time and speed, were more likely to increase when participants shifted their attention to movements. Furthermore, changes in heart rate and negative affect were related to both the increase in movement acceleration and a decrease in grip force. These findings suggest that performance and behavioral changes during golf-putting under pressure can be associated with attentional changes, along with the influences of physiological-emotional responses.	\N	\N
21688874	There is a wealth of evidence showing enhanced attention toward drug-related information (i.e., attentional bias) in substance abusers. However, little is known about attentional bias in deregulated behaviors without substance use such as abnormal gambling. This study examined whether problem gamblers (PrG, as assessed through self-reported gambling-related craving and gambling dependence severity) exhibit attentional bias for gambling-related cues. Forty PrG and 35 control participants performed a change detection task using the flicker paradigm, in which two images differing in only one aspect are repeatedly flashed on the screen until the participant is able to report the changing item. In our study, the changing item was either neutral or related to gambling. Eye movements were recorded, which made it possible to measure both initial orienting of attention as well as its maintenance on gambling information. Direct (eye-movements) and indirect (change in detection latency) measures of attention in individuals with problematic gambling behaviors suggested the occurrence of both engagement and of maintenance attentional biases toward gambling-related visual cues. Compared to nonproblematic gamblers, PrG exhibited (a) faster reaction times to gambling-cues as compared to neutral cues, (b) higher percentage of initial saccades directed toward gambling pictures, and (c) an increased fixation duration and fixation count on gambling pictures. In the PrG group, measures of gambling-related attentional bias were not associated with craving for gambling and gambling dependence severity. Theoretical and clinical implications of these results are discussed.	\N	\N
21691865	This study examined the hypothesis of an atypical interaction between attention and language in ASD. A dual-task experiment with three conditions was designed, in which sentences were presented that contained errors requiring attentional focus either at (a) low level, or (b) high level, or (c) both levels of language. Speed and accuracy for error detection were measured from 16 high-functioning adults with ASD, and 16 matched controls. For controls, there was an attentional cost of dual level processing for low level performance but not for high level performance. For participants with ASD, there was an attentional cost both for low level and for high level performance. These results suggest a compensatory strategic use of attention during language processing in ASD.	\N	\N
21697709	To examine the relationship between self-assessed attentional skills and objective neuropsychological measures of attention in Parkinson disease (PD) and controls. The reliable self-assessment of one's own cognitive skills and deficits is an important but difficult task, especially in a chronic neurological condition like PD. Theories point out that brain structures involved in a realistic self-appraisal might be affected in PD. No study directly examined the association between self-assessed attentional skills and objective neuropsychological measures of attention in PD. We applied a case control design with 54 participants in the PD group and 54 healthy controls. PD patients and controls completed questionnaires on depression and self-assessed attention and were examined with computerized tests of attention. PD patients differed from controls in subjective and objective assessment of attention. Depression and self-assessed attention share a significant amount of variance, but are unrelated to objective measures of attention in both groups. In PD patients, there are no associations between functional outcome and objective and subjective measures of attention. Conscious reports in PD patients and controls are based on different processes rather than actual attentional performance. These processes are not differentially affected in PD. Nevertheless, patients' self-assessments are not an accurate indicator of their level of objective attentional functioning. Without a definite validity criterion, it cannot be decided whether the objective or subjective assessment of attention is more valid. Therefore, a multidimensional approach integrating different sources of information is most adequate in the assessment of attentional capacities and their meaning for everyday life in PD patients.	\N	\N
21698055	The mechanisms of the increased cardiac and vascular events in patients with OSA are not well understood. Arousal which is an important component of OSA was associated with increased sympathetic activation and electrocardiographic changes which prone to arrhythmias. We planned to examine the association among arousal, circulating Lp-PLA2 and total antioxidant capacity in male patients with OSA. Fifty male patients with newly diagnosed OSA were enrolled the study. A full-night polysomnography was performed and arousal index was obtained. Lp-PLA2 concentrations were measured in serum samples with the PLAC Test. Total antioxidant capacity in patients was determined with Antioxidant Assay Kit. Arousal was positively correlated with LP-PLA2 levels (r=0.43, p=0.002) and was negatively correlated with total antioxidant capacity (r= -0.29, p=0.04). Elevated LP-PLA2 levels and decreased total antioxidant activities were found in the highest arousal quartile compared with the lowest and 2nd quartiles (p=0.02, p=0.05, respectively). LP-PLA2 was an independently predictor of arousal index in regression model (β=0.357, p=0.002) This study demonstrated a moderate linear relationship between arousal and LP-PLA2 levels. Also, total antioxidant capacities were decreased in the higher arousal index. Based on the study result, the patients with higher arousal index may be prone to vascular events.	\N	\N
21707217	Previous research has proposed that tests enhance retention more than do restudy opportunities because they promote the effectiveness of mediating information--that is, a word or concept that links a cue to a target (Pyc & Rawson, 2010). Although testing has been shown to promote retention of mediating information that participants were asked to generate, it is unknown what type of mediators are spontaneously activated during testing and how these contribute to later retention. In the current study, participants learned cue-target pairs through testing (e.g., Mother: _____) or restudying (e.g., Mother: Child) and were later tested on these items in addition to a never-before-presented item that was strongly associated with the cue (e.g., Father)--that is, the semantic mediator. Compared with participants who learned the items through restudying, those who learned the items through testing exhibited higher false alarm rates to semantic mediators on a final recognition test (Experiment 1) and were also more likely to recall the correct target from the semantic mediator on a final cued recall test (Experiment 2). These results support the mediator effectiveness hypothesis and demonstrate that semantically related information may be 1 type of natural mediator that is activated during testing.	\N	\N
21715631	Gamma-band (25-90 Hz) peaks in local field potential (LFP) power spectra are present throughout the cerebral cortex and have been related to perception, attention, memory, and disorders (e.g., schizophrenia and autism). It has been theorized that gamma oscillations provide a "clock" for precise temporal encoding and "binding" of signals about stimulus features across brain regions. For gamma to function as a clock, it must be autocoherent: phase and frequency conserved over a period of time. We computed phase and frequency trajectories of gamma-band bursts, using time-frequency analysis of LFPs recorded in macaque primary visual cortex (V1) during visual stimulation. The data were compared with simulations of random networks and clock signals in noise. Gamma-band bursts in LFP data were statistically indistinguishable from those found in filtered broadband noise. Therefore, V1 LFP data did not contain clock-like gamma-band signals. We consider possible functions for stochastic gamma-band activity, such as a synchronizing pulse signal.	\N	\N
21722739	Both the size and location of injury in the brain influences the type and severity of cognitive or sensorimotor dysfunction. However, even with advances in MR imaging and analysis, the correspondence between lesion location and clinical deficit remains poorly understood. Here, structural and diffusion images from 14 healthy subjects are used to create spatially unbiased white matter connectivity importance maps that quantify the amount of disruption to the overall brain network that would be incurred if that region were compromised. Some regions in the white matter that were identified as highly important by such maps have been implicated in strategic infarct dementia and linked to various attention tasks in previous studies. Validation of the maps is performed by investigating the correlations of the importance maps' predicted cognitive deficits in a group of 15 traumatic brain injury patients with their cognitive test scores measuring attention and memory. While no correlation was found between amount of white matter injury and cognitive test scores, significant correlations (r>0.68, p<0.006) were found when including location information contained in the importance maps. These tools could be used by physicians to improve surgical planning, diagnosis, and assessment of disease severity in a variety of pathologies like multiple sclerosis, trauma, and stroke.	\N	\N
21726855	Cognitive-behavioural models of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) suggest that mirrors can act as a trigger for individuals with BDD, resulting in a specific mode of cognitive processing, characterised by an increase in self-focussed attention and associated distress. The aim of the current study was to investigate these factors experimentally by exposing participants with BDD (n=25) and without BDD (n=25) to a mirror in a controlled setting. An additional aim was to ascertain the role of duration of mirror gazing in the maintenance of distress and self-consciousness by manipulating the length of gazing (short check vs. long gazing). Findings demonstrated that contrary to what was predicted, not only participants with BDD, but also those without BDD experienced an increase in distress and self-focused attention upon exposure to the mirror. In addition, people without BDD, unlike those with BDD, experienced more distress when looking in the mirror for a long period of time as opposed to a short period of time. This lends some support to the idea that, for people with BDD, gazing in a mirror, regardless of duration, might act as an immediate trigger for an abnormal mode of processing and associated distress, and that this association has developed from past excessive mirror gazing. Further theoretical implications of these findings, as well as subsidiary research questions relating to additional cognitive factors are discussed.	\N	\N
21728402	Previous research has shown that the picture superiority effect (PSE) is seen in tests of associative recognition for random pairs of line drawings compared to pairs of concrete words (Hockley, 2008). In the present study we demonstrated that the PSE for associative recognition is still observed when subjects have correctly identified the individual items of each pair as old (Experiment 1), and that this effect is not due to rehearsal borrowing (Experiment 2). The PSE for associative recognition also is shown to be present but attenuated for mixed picture-word pairs (Experiment 3), and similar in magnitude for pairs of simple black and white line drawings and coloured photographs of detailed objects (Experiment 4). The results are consistent with the view that the semantic meaning of nameable pictures is activated faster than that of words thereby affording subjects more time to generate and elaborate meaningful associations between items depicted in picture form.	\N	\N
21729104	Phobic fear is accompanied by intense bodily responses modulated by the amygdala. An amygdala moderated psychophysiological measure related to arousal is electrodermal activity. We evaluated the contributions of electrodermal activity to amygdala-parahippocampal regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) during phobic memory encoding in subjects with spider or snake phobia. Recognition memory was increased for phobia-related slides and covaried with rCBF in the amygdala and the parahippocampal gyrus. The covariation between parahippocampal rCBF and recognition was related to electrodermal activity suggesting that parahippocampal memory processes were associated with sympathetic activity. Electrodermal activity further mediated the amygdala effect on parahippocampal activity. Memory encoding during phobic fear therefore seems contingent on amygdala's influence on arousal and parahippocampal activity.	\N	\N
21742561	We examined whether anxiodepressive patients with left temporal lobe epilepsy could be differentiated from those with depression but without epilepsy on tasks that investigate attentional bias toward and explicit judgment of emotional stimuli. Eight depressive patients, eight anxiodepressive patients with epilepsy, and eight controls participated in the present study. Anxiodepressive with epilepsy and depressive patients had comparable depression scores and the same cognitive profile. Two distinct emotional tasks were used: the decision lexical task and the number comparison task. Three emotional connotations were presented: neutral, positive, and negative. The pattern of results showed an attentional bias toward negative words and pictures in depressive patients and only toward negative words in anxiodepressive patients with epilepsy. Moreover, depressive patients explicitly judged negative stimuli with lower intensity and anxiodepressive patients judged neutral stimuli with higher intensity. The present study specifies the emotional functioning in depression with or without left temporal lobe epilepsy.	\N	\N
21744949	During the first half of the 2nd year of life, infants struggle to use phonemic distinctions in label-object association tasks. Prior experiments have demonstrated that exposure to the phonemes in distinct lexical forms (e.g., /d/ and /t/ in daddy and tiger, respectively) facilitates infants' use of phonemic contrasts but also that they struggle to generalize the use of phonemic contrasts to novel syllabic contexts (Thiessen, 2007; Thiessen & Yee, 2010). Further, in prior research, infants have been provided only with experience in lexical forms that refer to novel objects, while many lexical forms in the natural environment do not have easily identified visual referents. The experiments in this article show that even lexical forms without referents can facilitate use of phonemic contrasts. Additionally, the results indicate that when lexical forms provide infants with enough variability (for example, a consonant followed by multiple different vowels), infants are able to generalize to novel contexts.	\N	\N
21749372	In two birth cohort studies with genetic, sensitive parenting, and attachment data of more than 1,000 infants in total, we tested main and interaction effects of candidate genes involved in the dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin systems (DRD4, DRD2, COMT, 5-HTT, OXTR) on attachment security and disorganization. Parenting was assessed using observational rating scales for parental sensitivity (Ainsworth, Bell, & Stayton, 1974), and infant attachment was assessed with the Strange Situation Procedure. We found no consistent additive genetic associations for attachment security and attachment disorganization. However, specific tests revealed evidence for a codominant risk model for COMT Val158Met, consistent across both samples. Children with the Val/Met genotype showed higher disorganization scores (combined effect size d = .22, CI = .10-.34, p < .001). Gene-by-environment interaction effects were not replicable across the two samples. This unexpected finding might be explained by a broader range of plasticity in heterozygotes, which may increase susceptibility to environmental influences or to dysregulation of emotional arousal. This study is unique in combining the two largest attachment cohorts with molecular genetic and observed rearing environment data to date.	\N	\N
21751991	In the typical visual search experiment, participants search for targets that are present on half of the trials and absent on the other half. However, many real-world tasks involve targets that are present only occasionally. Given this, it is important to know how people deal with the problem of finding targets they have little experience with. One possibility is that they develop an awareness of the degree to which they have effectively completed a search through complex target-absent scenes. To test this hypothesis, we had participants complete two relatively long search tasks in which only a minority of trials included targets. Stimuli were cluttered real-world scenes, and targets were defined by category. We examined participants' ability to terminate search on the target-absent scenes based on an accurate assessment of scene difficulty. Scene difficulty was estimated by computing the mean correct-trial response time (RT) for each of the target-absent scenes across all participants. These group RTs were then correlated with each participants' individual correct-trial RTs for the same stimuli to assess the degree to which a given participant's search-termination times were correlated with those of the group. These correlations successfully predicted participants' target-detection success in both experiments. These experiments suggest that an integral part of visual search is the need to calibrate search behaviour to scenes of varying levels of complexity even when no targets are present.	\N	\N
21757505	We asked how visual similarity relationships affect search guidance to categorically defined targets (no visual preview). Experiment 1 used a web-based task to collect visual similarity rankings between two target categories, teddy bears and butterflies, and random-category objects, from which we created search displays in Experiment 2 having either high-similarity distractors, low-similarity distractors, or "mixed" displays with high-, medium-, and low-similarity distractors. Analysis of target-absent trials revealed faster manual responses and fewer fixated distractors on low-similarity displays compared to high-similarity displays. On mixed displays, first fixations were more frequent on high-similarity distractors (bear = 49%; butterfly = 58%) than on low-similarity distractors (bear = 9%; butterfly = 12%). Experiment 3 used the same high/low/mixed conditions, but now these conditions were created using similarity estimates from a computer vision model that ranked objects in terms of color, texture, and shape similarity. The same patterns were found, suggesting that categorical search can indeed be guided by purely visual similarity. Experiment 4 compared cases where the model and human rankings differed and when they agreed. We found that similarity effects were best predicted by cases where the two sets of rankings agreed, suggesting that both human visual similarity rankings and the computer vision model captured features important for guiding search to categorical targets.	\N	\N
21767062	The ability to detect a change, to accurately assess the magnitude of the change, and to react to that change in a commensurate fashion are of critical importance in many decision domains. Thus, it is important to understand the factors that systematically affect people's reactions to change. In this article we document a novel effect: decision makers' reactions to a change (e.g., a visual change, a technology change) were systematically affected by the type of categorizations they encountered in an unrelated prior task (e.g., the response categories associated with a survey question). We found that prior exposure to narrow, as opposed to broad, categorizations improved decision makers' ability to detect change and led to stronger reactions to a given change. These differential reactions occurred because the prior categorizations, even though unrelated, altered the extent to which the subsequently presented change was perceived as either a relatively large change or a relatively small one.	\N	\N
21787078	It has been suggested that downward pointing triangles convey negative valence, perhaps because they mimic an underlying primitive feature present in negative facial expressions (Larson, Aronoff, and Stearns, 2007). Here, we test this proposition using a flanker interference paradigm in which participants indicated the valence of a central face target, presented between two adjacent distracters. Experiment 1 showed that, compared with face flankers, downward pointing triangles had little influence on responses to face targets. However, in Experiment 2, when attentional competition was increased between target and flankers, downward pointing triangles slowed responses to positively valenced face targets, and speeded them to negatively valenced targets, consistent with valence-based flanker compatibility effects. These findings provide converging evidence that simple geometric shapes may convey emotional valence.	\N	\N
21787101	Face processing has several distinctive hallmarks that researchers have attributed either to face-specific mechanisms or to extensive experience distinguishing faces. Here, we examined the face-processing hallmark of selective attention failure--as indexed by the congruency effect in the composite paradigm--in a domain of extreme expertise: chess. Among 27 experts, we found that the congruency effect was equally strong with chessboards and faces. Further, comparing these experts with recreational players and novices, we observed a trade-off: Chess expertise was positively related to the congruency effect with chess yet negatively related to the congruency effect with faces. These and other findings reveal a case of expertise-dependent, facelike processing of objects of expertise and suggest that face and expert-chess recognition share common processes.	\N	\N
21791293	An interocular conflict arises when different images are presented to each eye at the same spatial location. The visual system resolves this conflict through binocular rivalry: observers consciously perceive spontaneous alternations between the two images. Visual attention is generally important for resolving competition between neural representations. However, given the seemingly spontaneous and automatic nature of binocular rivalry, the role of attention in resolving interocular competition remains unclear. Here we test whether visual attention is necessary to produce rivalry. Using an EEG frequency-tagging method to track cortical representations of the conflicting images, we show that when attention was diverted away, rivalry stopped. The EEG data further suggested that the neural representations of the dichoptic images combined without attention. Thus, attention is necessary for dichoptic images to be engaged in sustained rivalry and may be generally required for resolving conflicting, potentially ambiguous input and giving a single interpretation access to consciousness.	\N	\N
21804667	Pulse transit time (PPT) has been introduced as a useful screening tool to diagnose sleep disordered breathing (SDB). Since the prevalence of SDB increases with age, the question is whether PTT could be used to diagnose SDB in the elderly. We assess the effectiveness of PTT for SDB screening in a large healthy elderly population. Community-based sample in home and research clinical settings. N/A. Seven hundred eighty volunteers, free of cardiac and neurologic disease, aged 68.6 ± 1.0 years, underwent ambulatory polygraphy to measure the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI). The presence of SDB was defined as an AHI of 15 or greater. The PTT was continuously monitored during the nocturnal study, and the overall autonomic arousal index (AAI) was calculated. SDB was diagnosed in 447 (57.3%) subjects. In these subjects, the Bland-Altman plot for AAI revealed an underestimation with a bias of -8.04 ± 16.55 events per hour (mean ± 95% confidence interval). Receiver operating characteristic curves constructed for an AHI of 15 or greater defined an area under the curve of 0.67 and a cutoff point to AAI 32.3 events per hour, giving a sensitivity of 70.5% and a specificity of 54.7%. For prediction of an AHI of at least 30, the area under the curve was equal to 0.74 for a cutoff point of 56.3 events per hour, giving a better specificity (94.7%) but a lower sensitivity (32.2%). In a healthy older population, the AAI showed moderate sensitivity for predicting SDB. This data does not allow us to use PTT as a screening tool for the diagnosis of SDB in the elderly. NCT 00759304 and NCT 00766584.	\N	\N
21811130	The primary aim of the present study was to test diazepam (DZ) effect, a benzodiazepine (BDZ) usually prescribed to reduce anxiety and to induce sleep, on EEG activity while performing a visual sustained attention task. The EEG activity was recorded in a double-blind placebo experiment, and prestimulus spectral power and inter- and intrahemispheric temporal coupling were assessed during visual sustained attention task performance. A single DZ dose (5 mg) was enough to increase reaction times during visual sustained attention task responses. DZ decreased prestimulus EEG power in the 1- to 6-, 8- to 12-, and 19- to 35-Hz bands and disrupted right intrahemispheric temporal coupling in the α-frequency range (8-12 Hz). The combined reduction in power and temporal coupling suggests both local and interregional DZ-induced disruption of neuronal synchronicity especially in the right hemisphere in agreement with the prominent attention-related networks in this hemisphere. These data support the notion that the influence of DZ on behavior goes beyond sedative effects and can potentially compromise higher cognitive functions with negative consequences to daily life situations.	\N	\N
21812567	The human cognitive system is highly efficient in extracting information from our visual environment. This efficiency is based on acquired knowledge that guides our attention toward relevant events and promotes the recognition of individual objects as they appear in visual scenes. The experience-based representation of such knowledge contains not only information about the individual objects but also about relations between them, such as the typical context in which individual objects co-occur. The present EEG study aimed at exploring the availability of such relational knowledge in the time course of visual scene processing, using oscillatory evoked gamma-band responses as a neural correlate for a currently activated cortical stimulus representation. Participants decided whether two simultaneously presented objects were conceptually coherent (e.g., mouse-cheese) or not (e.g., crown-mushroom). We obtained increased evoked gamma-band responses for coherent scenes compared with incoherent scenes beginning as early as 70 msec after stimulus onset within a distributed cortical network, including the right temporal, the right frontal, and the bilateral occipital cortex. This finding provides empirical evidence for the functional importance of evoked oscillatory activity in high-level vision beyond the visual cortex and, thus, gives new insights into the functional relevance of neuronal interactions. It also indicates the very early availability of experience-based knowledge that might be regarded as a fundamental mechanism for the rapid extraction of the gist of a scene.	\N	\N
21812705	The repetition-lag training procedure developed by Jennings and Jacoby (2003 , Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 14, 417) has been shown to improve older adults' performance in the recognition memory task used for training, and to improve performance in a variety of other memory and executive function tasks ( Jennings, Webster, Kleykamp, & Dagenbach, 2005 , Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 12, 278). The present study examined the effects of concurrent interference tasks during the study or test phases of training to localize the source of gains. Overall, the results suggest that training is resilient and resistant to interference, but also that the processes used during the test phases of training are more important to the gains seen in the primary task and in the transfer tasks than those used in the study phases.	\N	\N
21819388	Circadian rhythms in mammals are regulated by a system of endogenous circadian oscillators (clock cells) in the brain and in most peripheral organs and tissues. One group of clock cells in the hypothalamic SCN (suprachiasmatic nuclei) functions as a pacemaker for co-ordinating the timing of oscillators elsewhere in the brain and body. This master clock can be reset and entrained by daily LD (light-dark) cycles and thereby also serves to interface internal with external time, ensuring an appropriate alignment of behavioural and physiological rhythms with the solar day. Two features of the mammalian circadian system provide flexibility in circadian programming to exploit temporal regularities of social stimuli or food availability. One feature is the sensitivity of the SCN pacemaker to behavioural arousal stimulated during the usual sleep period, which can reset its phase and modulate its response to LD stimuli. Neural pathways from the brainstem and thalamus mediate these effects by releasing neurochemicals that inhibit retinal inputs to the SCN clock or that alter clock-gene expression in SCN clock cells. A second feature is the sensitivity of circadian oscillators outside of the SCN to stimuli associated with food intake, which enables animals to uncouple rhythms of behaviour and physiology from LD cycles and align these with predictable daily mealtimes. The location of oscillators necessary for food-entrained behavioural rhythms is not yet certain. Persistence of these rhythms in mice with clock-gene mutations that disable the SCN pacemaker suggests diversity in the molecular basis of light- and food-entrainable clocks.	\N	\N
21823798	In older adults, difficulties processing complex auditory scenes, such as speech comprehension in noisy environments, might be due to a specific impairment of temporal processing at early, automatic processing stages involving auditory sensory memory (ASM). Even though age effects on auditory temporal processing have been well-documented, there is a paucity of research on how ASM processing of more complex tone-patterns is altered by age. In the current study, age effects on ASM processing of temporal and frequency aspects of two-tone patterns were investigated using a passive listening protocol. The P1 component, the mismatch negativity (MMN) and the P3a component of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to tone frequency and temporal pattern deviants were recorded in younger and older adults as a measure of auditory event detection, ASM processing, and attention switching, respectively. MMN was elicited with smaller amplitude to both frequency and temporal deviants in older adults. Furthermore, P3a was elicited only in the younger adults. In conclusion, the smaller MMN amplitude indicates that automatic processing of both frequency and temporal aspects of two-tone patterns is impaired in older adults. The failure to initiate an attention switch, suggested by the absence of P3a, indicates that impaired ASM processing of patterns may lead to less distractibility in older adults. Our results suggest age-related changes in ASM processing of patterns that cannot be explained by an inhibitory deficit.	\N	\N
21828324	Sleep-disordered breathing (characterized by recurrent arousals from sleep and intermittent hypoxemia) is common among older adults. Cross-sectional studies have linked sleep-disordered breathing to poor cognition; however, it remains unclear whether sleep-disordered breathing precedes cognitive impairment in older adults. To determine the prospective relationship between sleep-disordered breathing and cognitive impairment and to investigate potential mechanisms of this association. Prospective sleep and cognition study of 298 women without dementia (mean [SD] age: 82.3 [3.2] years) who had overnight polysomnography measured between January 2002 and April 2004 in a substudy of the Study of Osteoporotic Fractures. Sleep-disordered breathing was defined as an apnea-hypopnea index of 15 or more events per hour of sleep. Multivariate logistic regression was used to determine the independent association of sleep-disordered breathing with risk of mild cognitive impairment or dementia, adjusting for age, race, body mass index, education level, smoking status, presence of diabetes, presence of hypertension, medication use (antidepressants, benzodiazepines, or nonbenzodiazepine anxiolytics), and baseline cognitive scores. Measures of hypoxia, sleep fragmentation, and sleep duration were investigated as underlying mechanisms for this relationship. Adjudicated cognitive status (normal, dementia, or mild cognitive impairment) based on data collected between November 2006 and September 2008. Compared with the 193 women without sleep-disordered breathing, the 105 women (35.2%) with sleep-disordered breathing were more likely to develop mild cognitive impairment or dementia (31.1% [n = 60] vs 44.8% [n = 47]; adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 1.85; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.11-3.08). Elevated oxygen desaturation index (≥15 events/hour) and high percentage of sleep time (>7%) in apnea or hypopnea (both measures of disordered breathing) were associated with risk of developing mild cognitive impairment or dementia (AOR, 1.71 [95% CI, 1.04-2.83] and AOR, 2.04 [95% CI, 1.10-3.78], respectively). Measures of sleep fragmentation (arousal index and wake after sleep onset) or sleep duration (total sleep time) were not associated with risk of cognitive impairment. Among older women, those with sleep-disordered breathing compared with those without sleep-disordered breathing had an increased risk of developing cognitive impairment.	\N	\N
21839179	Top-down attention enhances neural processing, but its effect on metabolic activity in primary visual cortex (V1) is unclear. Combined blood flow and oxygenation measurements provide the best tool for investigating modulations of oxidative metabolism. We measured the human V1 response to a peripheral low contrast stimulus using fMRI and found a larger fractional modulation of blood flow with attention compared to the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) response, thus indicating a much larger modulation of oxygen metabolism than was previously thought. These findings point to different aspects of neural activity driving flow and metabolic changes to different degrees. We propose that V1 flow is driven strongly but not exclusively by the initial sensory-driven neural activity, which dominates the response in the unattended condition, while V1 oxygen metabolism is driven strongly by the overall neural activity, which is modulated by top-down signals related to attention.	\N	\N
21839675	This study sought to better characterize the contributions of deficits in attention allocation and distracter inhibition to the poor performance on attention tasks often seen in children with ADHD. Electrophysiological (Nd, P3b) and behavioral measures (speed and accuracy) were examined during an auditory selective attention task in children with ADHD, children with typical development (TD), and adults. Thirty children (15 ADHD; 13 females) between the ages of 7 and 13 and 16 adults (8 females) participated. Nd waveforms were elicited from adults and children with TD, but not from children with ADHD. Further, those with ADHD exhibited significantly smaller auditory responses at 100 ms (Ta). P3bs were elicited in all three groups by targets but not by unattended deviants. Performance was significantly poorer in children with ADHD than TD and RTs were more variable. Children with ADHD evidenced poorer attention allocation, as measured by Nd and hits, but were not more distracted by unattended deviants, as measured by P3b and false alarms, than children with TD. Findings for Nd, P3b, and Ta considered together suggest that deficits in auditory selective attention in children with ADHD may be attributable to reduced information early in the processing stream.	\N	\N
21853782	Attention plays an important role in the design of human-machine interfaces. However, current knowledge about attention is largely based on data obtained when using devices of moderate display size. With advancement in display technology comes the need for understanding attention behavior over a wider range of viewing sizes. The effect of display size on test participants' visual search performance was studied. The participants (N = 12) performed two types of visual search tasks, that is, parallel and serial search, under three display-size conditions (16 degrees, 32 degrees, and 60 degrees). Serial, but not parallel, search was affected by display size. In the serial task, mean reaction time for detecting a target increased with the display size.	\N	\N
21854681	Individual differences in emotional processing are likely to contribute to vulnerability and resilience to emotional disorders such as depression and anxiety. Genetic variation is known to contribute to these differences but they remain incompletely understood. The serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) and α2B-adrenergic autoreceptor (ADRA2B) insertion/deletion polymorphisms impact on two separate but interacting monaminergic signalling mechanisms that have been implicated in both emotional processing and emotional disorders. Recent studies suggest that the 5-HTTLPR s allele is associated with a negative attentional bias and an increased risk of emotional disorders. However, such complex behavioural traits are likely to exhibit polygenicity, including epistasis. This study examined the contribution of the 5-HTTLPR and ADRA2B insertion/deletion polymorphisms to attentional biases for aversive information in 94 healthy male volunteers and found evidence of a significant epistatic effect (p<0.001). Specifically, in the presence of the 5-HTTLPR s allele, the attentional bias for aversive information was attenuated by possession of the ADRA2B deletion variant whereas in the absence of the s allele, the bias was enhanced. These data identify a cognitive mechanism linking genotype-dependent serotonergic and noradrenergic signalling that is likely to have implications for the development of cognitive markers for depression/anxiety as well as therapeutic drug effects and personalized approaches to treatment.	\N	\N
21861678	Recent neuroimaging evidence indicates that visual consciousness of objects is reflected by the activation in the lateral occipital cortex as well as in the frontal and parietal cortex. However, most previous studies used behavioral paradigms in which attention raised or enhanced visual consciousness (visibility or recognition performance). This co-occurrence made it difficult to reveal whether an observed cortical activation is related to visual consciousness or attention. The present fMRI study investigated the dissociability of neural activations underlying these two cognitive phenomena. Toward this aim, we used a visual backward masking paradigm in which directing attention could either enhance or reduce the object visibility. The participants' task was to report the level of subjective visibility for a briefly presented target object. The target was presented in the center with four flankers, which was followed by the same number of masks. Behavioral results showed that attention to the flankers enhanced the target visibility, whereas attention to the masks attenuated it. The fMRI results showed that the occipito-temporal sulcus increased activation in the attend flankers condition compared with the attend masks condition, and occipito-temporal sulcus activation levels positively correlated with the target visibility in both attentional conditions. On the other hand, the inferior frontal gyrus and the intraparietal sulcus increased activation in both the attend flankers and attend masks compared with an attend neither condition, and these activation levels were independent of target visibility. Taken together, present results showed a clear dissociation in neural activities between conscious visibility and attention.	\N	\N
21870308	Anxiety sensitivity refers to the extent of beliefs that anxiety symptoms or arousal can have harmful consequences. There is growing evidence for anxiety sensitivity as a risk factor for anxiety disorders. Anxiety sensitivity is elevated in panic disorder as well as other anxiety disorders. It is thought to contribute to the maintenance and severity of anxiety symptoms. Studies have shown that anxiety sensitivity more specifically predicts the future occurrence of panic attacks. The Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI), which measures the construct of anxiety sensitivity, has three subscales, namely, the ASI-Physical subscale, ASI-Social subscale and ASI-Mental Incapacitation Concerns subscale. The dimension reflecting "fear of physical sensations" of anxiety sensitivity is the most predictive one of panic attacks and panic disorder. Research on the ASI has demonstrated that persons diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and social anxiety disorder all had ASI scores higher than normal controls. Depression was speculated to hold a positive correlation to high anxiety sensitivity scores. The relationships between anxiety sensitivity, alcohol and substance use disorders are still unknown. There is evidence that anxiety sensitivity is related with "drinking used as a way of coping". Since anxiety sensitivity is a cognitive construct, it should be taken into consideration when evaluating patients with anxiety and psychotherapeutic formulations.	\N	\N
21871503	In the current study, rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task combined with event related potentials (ERP) was used to investigate attention biases toward body-related words in a nonclinical sample of body dissatisfied females. Consistent with the hypotheses, the amplitudes of N100, N170 and P3 are sensitive to different body-related words in the RSVP paradigm only among body weight dissatisfied women (WD group), while control group did not show this difference. The early anterior N100 and bi-lateral parietal and occipital N170 amplitudes elicited by fatness-related words were larger than those elicited by thinness-related and neutral words among WD group, a finding which is consistent with the presence of a 'negativity bias'. Also, WD group women showed significantly different amplitudes in response to three categories of stimuli with thin words eliciting the largest P3 amplitudes, followed by fat words and the least neutral words. The current findings indicated that attention biases toward body weight related words were evident during both sensory and cognitive stages of information processing. Findings are also consistent with hypotheses of cognitive-behavioral accounts of body weight dissatisfaction which propose, in part, that individual differences on cognitive tasks reveal underlying psychopathology; attentional biases reflect disordered body schema, not disordered eating, and can therefore be seen in non-clinical samples.	\N	\N
21872853	Brain regions simultaneously activated during any cognitive process are functionally connected, forming large-scale networks. These functional networks can be examined during active conditions [i.e., task-functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)] and also in passive states (resting-fMRI), where the default mode network (DMN) is the most widely investigated system. The role of the DMN remains unclear, although it is known to be responsible for the shift between resting and focused attention processing. There is also some evidence for its malleability in relation to previous experience. Here we investigated brain connectivity patterns in 16 healthy young subjects by using an n-back task with increasing levels of memory load within the fMRI context. Prior to this working memory (WM) task, participants were trained outside fMRI with a shortened test version. Immediately after, they underwent a resting-state fMRI acquisition followed by the full fMRI n-back test. We observed that the degree of intrinsic correlation within DMN and WM networks was maximal during the most demanding n-back condition (3-back). Furthermore, individuals showing a stronger negative correlation between the two networks under both conditions exhibited better behavioural performance. Interestingly, and despite the fact that we considered eight different resting-state fMRI networks previously identified in humans, only the connectivity within the posteromedial parts of the DMN (precuneus) prior to the fMRI n-back task predicted WM execution. Our results using a data-driven probabilistic approach for fMRI analysis provide the first evidence of a direct relationship between behavioural performance and the degree of negative correlation between the DMN and WM networks. They further suggest that in the context of expectancy for an imminent cognitive challenge, higher resting-state activity in the posteromedial parietal cortex may be related to increased attentional preparatory resources.	\N	\N
21875215	Dissociable prototype learning systems have been demonstrated behaviorally and with neuroimaging in younger adults as well as with patient populations. In A/not-A (AN) prototype learning, participants are shown members of category A during training, and during test are asked to decide whether novel items are in category A or are not in category A. Research suggests that AN learning is mediated by a perceptual learning system. In A/B (AB) prototype learning, participants are shown members of category A and B during training, and during test are asked to decide whether novel items are in category A or category B. In contrast to AN, research suggests that AB learning is mediated by a declarative memory system. The current study examined the effects of normal aging on AN and AB prototype learning. We observed an age-related deficit in AB learning, but an age-related advantage in AN learning. Computational modeling supports one possible interpretation based on narrower selective attentional focus in older adults in the AB task and broader selective attention in the AN task. Neuropsychological testing in older participants suggested that executive functioning and attentional control were associated with better performance in both tasks. However, nonverbal memory was associated with better AN performance, while visual attention was associated with worse AB performance. The results support an interactive memory systems approach and suggest that age-related declines in one memory system can lead to deficits in some tasks, but to enhanced performance in others.	\N	\N
21875701	Though the humans are more susceptible to unpleasant stimuli of higher intensity, how the valence intensity of unpleasant stimuli impacts subsequent cognitive processing, and whether this impact increases with the unpleasantness, require clarification. For this purpose, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded for highly negative (HN), mildly negative (MN) and neutral cueing pictures, and subsequently for the non-emotional target picture while subjects were required to discriminate the location of the target. Cue-induced ERPs showed more negative deflections for the HN than for the neutral pictures in the 450-650 ms time interval. The emotion effect for the MN cueing stimuli, however, was non-significant in this interval. In contrast, target-induced P3 amplitudes were significantly more negative following MN versus neutral cueing pictures, while the P3 amplitudes were not significantly different between HN and neutral conditions, irrespective of cueing validity. Thus, despite weak immediate impact, MN stimuli influenced subsequent target processing more heavily than HN stimuli. This suggests that the impact of unpleasant events on cognition doesn't necessarily increase with the unpleasantness. Mild unpleasant stimulus, which is weak in immediate emotion arousal, should not be neglected due to the likelihood of producing a sustained impact.	\N	\N
21879613	This study investigated the effects of stimulus modality, standard duration, sex, and laterality in duration discrimination by musicians and nonmusicians. Seventeen musicians (M age = 24.1 yr.) and 22 nonmusicians (M age = 26.8 yr.) participated. Auditory (1,000 Hz) and tactile (250 Hz) sinusoidal suprathreshold stimuli with varying durations were used. The standard durations tested were 0.5 and 3.0 sec. Participants discriminated comparison stimuli which had durations slightly longer and shorter than the standard durations. Difference limens were found by the method of limits and converted to Weber fractions based on the standard durations. Musicians had lower, i.e., better, Weber fractions than nonmusicians in the auditory modality, but there was no significant difference between musicians and nonmusicians in the tactile modality. Auditory discrimination was better than tactile discrimination. Discrimination improved when the standard duration was increased both for musicians and nonmusicians. These results support previous findings of superior auditory processing by musicians. Significant differences between discrimination in the millisecond and second ranges may be due to a deviation from Weber's law and the discontinuity of timing in different duration ranges reported in the literature.	\N	\N
21883941	Recent nationally representative studies documenting event-level sexual behavior have included samples that are predominantly heterosexual, resulting in limited information on the sexual repertoire of gay and bisexually identified men. This study sought to document the sexual behaviors that gay and bisexually identified men report during their most recent male-partnered sexual event and to describe the situational characteristics and participants' evaluation of these events. Via an internet-based survey, data were collected from 24,787 gay and bisexually identified men (ages 18-87 years) from 50 US states and the District of Columbia. Measures included items related to sociodemographics, recent sexual behavior history, situational characteristics, orgasm, and ratings of arousal and pleasure. Participants' mean age was 39.2 years; ethnicities included white (84.6%), Latino (6.4%), and African American (3.6%); and most men (79.9%) identified as homosexual. The most commonly reported behavior was kissing a partner on the mouth (74.5%), followed by oral sex (72.7%), and partnered masturbation (68.4%). Anal intercourse occurred among less than half of participants (37.2%) and was most common among men ages 18-24 (42.7%). Sex was most likely to occur in the participant's home (46.8%), with less frequently reported locations including hotels (7.4%) and public spaces (3.1%). The number of behaviors engaged in during last sexual event varied with most (63.2%) including 5-9 different sexual behaviors. These data provide one of the first examinations of sexual behaviors during the most recent male-partnered sexual event among gay and bisexually identified men in the United States. Findings from this study suggest that gay and bisexually identified men have a diverse sexual repertoire and that partnered sexual behaviors are not limited solely to acts of penile insertion.	\N	\N
21887382	Successful integration of various simultaneously perceived perceptual signals is crucial for social behavior. Recent findings indicate that this multisensory integration (MSI) can be modulated by attention. Theories of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) suggest that MSI is affected in this population while it remains unclear to what extent this is related to impairments in attentional capacity. In the present study Event-related potentials (ERPs) following emotionally congruent and incongruent face-voice pairs were measured in 23 high-functioning, adult ASD individuals and 24 age- and IQ-matched controls. MSI was studied while the attention of the participants was manipulated. ERPs were measured at typical auditory and visual processing peaks, namely, P2 and N170. While controls showed MSI during divided attention and easy selective attention tasks, individuals with ASD showed MSI during easy selective attention tasks only. It was concluded that individuals with ASD are able to process multisensory emotional stimuli, but this is differently modulated by attention mechanisms in these participants, especially those associated with divided attention. This atypical interaction between attention and MSI is also relevant to treatment strategies, with training of multisensory attentional control possibly being more beneficial than conventional sensory integration therapy.	\N	\N
21899000	In this paper, we reviewed the brain imaging studies of male sexual function in recent years from three aspects: the brain mechanism of normal sexual function, the brain mechanism of sexual dysfunction, and the mechanism of drug therapy for sexual dysfunction. Studies show that the development stages of male sexual activities, such as the excitement phase, plateau phase and orgasm phase, are controlled by different neural networks. The mesodiencephalic transition zone may play an important role in the start up of male ejaculation. There are significant differences between sexual dysfunction males and normal males in activation patterns of the brain in sexual arousal. The medial orbitofrontal cortex and inferior frontal gyrus in the abnormal activation pattern are correlated with sexual dysfunction males in sexual arousal. Serum testosterone and morphine are commonly used drugs for male sexual dysfunction, whose mechanisms are to alter the activating levels of the medial orbitofrontal cortex, insula, claustrum and inferior temporal gyrus.	\N	\N
21903462	Studies on brain computer interfaces (BCIs) have been mainly concerned with algorithm improvement for better signal classification. Fewer studies, however, have addressed to date the role of cognitive mechanisms underlying the elicitation of brain-signals in BCIs. We tested the effect of visuospatial attention orienting on a P300-guided BCI, by comparing the effectiveness of three visual interfaces, which elicited different modalities of visuospatial attention orienting (exogenous vs. endogenous). Twelve healthy participants performed 20 sessions, using the abovementioned P300-guided BCI interfaces to control a cursor. Brain waves were recorded on each trial and were subsequently classified on-line using an ad hoc algorithm. Each time the P300 was correctly classified, the cursor moved towards the target position. The "endogenous" interface was associated with significantly higher performance than the other two interfaces during the testing sessions, but not in the follow-up sessions. Endogenous visuospatial attention orienting can be effectively implemented to increase the performance of P300-guided BCIs. The study of visuospatial attention underlying participants' performance is essential for implementing efficient visual BCIs.	\N	\N
21903593	Visual search for feature singletons is slowed when a task-irrelevant, but more salient distracter singleton is concurrently presented. While there is a consensus that this distracter interference effect can be influenced by internal system settings, it remains controversial at what stage of processing this influence starts to affect visual coding. Advocates of the "stimulus-driven" view maintain that the initial sweep of visual processing is entirely driven by physical stimulus attributes and that top-down settings can bias visual processing only after selection of the most salient item. By contrast, opponents argue that top-down expectancies can alter the initial selection priority, so that focal attention is "not automatically" shifted to the location exhibiting the highest feature contrast. To precisely trace the allocation of focal attention, we analyzed the Posterior-Contralateral-Negativity (PCN) in a task in which the likelihood (expectancy) with which a distracter occurred was systematically varied. Our results show that both high (vs. low) distracter expectancy and experiencing a distracter on the previous trial speed up the timing of the target-elicited PCN. Importantly, there was no distracter-elicited PCN, indicating that participants did not shift attention to the distracter before selecting the target. This pattern unambiguously demonstrates that preattentive vision is top-down modifiable.	\N	\N
21905997	Neuroimaging studies have found that alcohol dependent patients display dopaminergic dysfunction in the ventral striatum, which is associated with alcohol craving. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) was introduced as a promising new treatment option for depression, and among other neurobiological mechanisms, it is able to stimulate the striatal dopaminergic system. The aim of our study was to investigate the effect of high frequency rTMS of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex compared to sham stimulation on craving and mood in alcohol dependent women. Furthermore, the impact on an attentional blink (AB) paradigm to pictures with neutral, emotional and alcohol-related contents was proofed. Nineteen female detoxified patients were randomized either to a high frequency rTMS (20 Hz) over the left DLPFC (n = 10) or a sham stimulations (n = 9) at 10 days. Alcohol craving was determined with the Obsessive Compulsive Drinking Scale, depressive symptoms were registered by means of Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and Beck' Depression Inventory. For the AB paradigm an age-matched control group was investigated. There were no significantly differences between both groups regarding alcohol craving or mood. In the AB paradigm, real stimulated patients detected alcohol related T2 targets incorrectly in comparison to the sham stimulated and control subjects. Although there were no differences in clinical parameters such as craving or mood after real high frequency rTMS compared to sham stimulation, we found an interesting difference between the real and the sham stimulated group and controls in the AB paradigm indicating an increase of the AB effect to alcohol-related pictures after real stimulation. Further studies are needed to replicate these findings and correlate them to clinical and neurophysiological data.	\N	\N
21910776	Central nervous system (CNS) histamine is low in individuals with narcolepsy, a disease characterized by severe fragmentation of both sleep and wake. We have developed a primate model, the squirrel monkey, with which we can examine the role of the CNS in the wake-consolidation process, as these primates are day-active, have consolidated wake and sleep and have cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) that is readily accessible. Using this model and three distinct protocols, we report herein on the role of CNS histamine in the wake consolidation process. CSF histamine has a robust daily rhythm, with a mean of 24.9 ± 3.29 pg mL(-1) , amplitude of 31.7 ± 6.46 pg mL(-1) and a peak at 17:49 ± 70.3 min (lights on 07:00-19:00 hours). These levels are not significantly affected by increases (up to 161 ± 40.4% of baseline) or decreases (up to 17.2 ± 2.50% of baseline) in locomotion. In direct contrast to the effects of sleep deprivation in non-wake-consolidating mammals, in whom CSF histamine increases, pharmacologically induced sleep (γ-hydroxybutyrate) and wake (modafinil) have no direct effects on CSF histamine concentrations. These data indicate that the time-course of histamine in CSF in the wake-consolidated squirrel monkey is robust against variation in activity and sleep and wake-promoting pharmacological compounds, and may indicate that histamine physiology plays a role in wake-consolidation such as is present in the squirrel monkey and humans.	\N	\N
21923791	Visuo-spatial representations of the alphabet (so-called 'alphabet forms') may be as common as other types of sequence-space synaesthesia, but little is known about them or the way they relate to implicit spatial associations in the general population. In the first study, we describe the characteristics of a large sample of alphabet forms visualized by synaesthetes. They most often run from left to right and have salient features (e.g., bends, breaks) at particular points in the sequence that correspond to chunks in the 'Alphabet Song' and at the alphabet mid-point. The Alphabet Song chunking suggests that the visuo-spatial characteristics are derived, at least in part, from those of the verbal sequence learned earlier in life. However, these synaesthetes are no faster at locating points in the sequence (e.g., what comes before/after letter X?) than controls. They tend to be more spatially consistent (measured by eye tracking) and letters can act as attentional cues to left/right space in synaesthetes with alphabet forms (measured by saccades), but not in non-synaesthetes. This attentional cueing suggests dissociation between numbers (which reliably act as attentional cues in synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes) and letters (which act as attentional cues in synaesthetes only).	\N	\N
21931715	Successful completion of many everyday tasks depends on interactions between voluntary attention, which acts to maintain current goals, and reflexive attention, which enables responding to unexpected events by interrupting the current focus of attention. Past studies, which have mostly examined each attentional mechanism in isolation, indicate that volitional and reflexive orienting depend on two functionally specialized cortical networks in the human brain. Here we investigated how the interplay between these two cortical networks affects sensory processing and the resulting overt behavior. By combining measurements of human performance and electrocortical recordings with a novel analytical technique for estimating spatiotemporal activity in the human cortex, we found that the subregions that comprise the reflexive ventrolateral attention network dissociate both spatially and temporally as a function of the nature of the sensory information and current task demands. Moreover, we found that together with the magnitude of the early sensory gain, the spatiotemporal neural dynamics accounted for the high amount of the variance in the behavioral data. Collectively these data support the conclusion that the ventrolateral attention network is recruited flexibly to support complex behaviors.	\N	\N
21948954	The influence of personality on the neural correlates of emotional processing is still not well characterized. We investigated the relationship between extraversion and neuroticism and emotional perception using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a group of 23 young, healthy women. Using a parametric modulation approach, we examined how the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal varied with the participants' ratings of arousal and valence, and whether levels of extraversion and neuroticism were related to these modulations. In particular, we wished to test Eysenck's biological theory of personality, which links high extraversion to lower levels of reticulothalamic-cortical arousal, and neuroticism to increased reactivity of the limbic system and stronger reactions to emotional arousal. Individuals high in neuroticism demonstrated reduced sustained activation in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and attenuated valence processing in the right temporal lobe while viewing emotional images, but an increased BOLD response to emotional arousal in the right medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). These results support Eysenck's theory, as well as our hypothesis that high levels of neuroticism are associated with attenuated reward processing. Extraversion was inversely related to arousal processing in the right cerebellum, but positively associated with arousal processing in the right insula, indicating that the relationship between extraversion and arousal is not as simple as that proposed by Eysenck.	\N	\N
21957705	The influence of internal (movement focus) and external (outcome focus) attentional-focusing instructions on muscular endurance were investigated using three exercise protocols with experienced exercisers. Twenty-three participants completed a maximal repetition, assisted bench-press test on a Smith's machine. An external focus of attention resulted in significant (p < .05) improvements in performance compared to the internal focus of attention, but not the control condition. Seventeen participants completed repetitions to failure at 75% 1-RM on free bench press and squat exercises. In both tasks, externally focused instructions resulted in significantly greater repetitions to failure than control and internal focus conditions (p < .05). These results support previous research showing beneficial effects of externally focused instructions on movement efficiency.	\N	\N
21963321	Age-related cognitive impairments have been attributed to deficits in inhibitory processes that mediate both motor restraint and sensory filtering. However, behavioral studies have failed to show an association between tasks that measure these distinct types of inhibition. In the present study, we hypothesized neural markers reflecting each type of inhibition may reveal a relationship across inhibitory domains in older adults. Electroencephalography (EEG) and behavioral measures were used to explore whether there was an across-participant correlation between sensory suppression and motor inhibition. Sixteen healthy older adult participants (65-80 years) engaged in two separate experimental paradigms: a selective attention, delayed-recognition task and a stop-signal task. Findings revealed no significant relationship existed between neural markers of sensory suppression (P1 amplitude; N170 latency) and markers of motor inhibition (N2 and P3 amplitude and latency) in older adults. These distinct inhibitory domains are differentially impacted in normal aging, as evidenced by previous behavioral work and the current neural findings. Thus a generalized inhibitory deficit may not be a common impairment in cognitive aging. Given that some theories of cognitive aging suggest age-related failure of inhibitory mechanisms may span different modalities, the present findings contribute to an alternative view where age-related declines within each inhibitory modality are unrelated.	\N	\N
21963529	The last decade underwent a revival of interest in the perception of time and duration. The present short essay does not compete with the many other recent reviews and books on this topic. Instead, it is meant to emphasize the notion that humans (and most likely other animals) have at their disposal more than one time measuring device and to propose that they use these devices jointly to appraise the passage of time. One possible consequence of this conjecture is that the same physical duration can be judged differently depending on the reference 'clock' used in any such judgment. As this view has not yet been tested empirically, several experimental manipulations susceptible to directly test it are suggested. Before, are summarized a number of its latent precursors, namely the relativity of perceived duration, current trends in modeling time perception and its neural and pharmacological substrate, the experimental literature supporting the existence of multiple 'clocks' and a selected number of experimental manipulations known to induce time perception illusions which together with many others are putatively accountable in terms of alternative clock readings.	\N	\N
21965547	Cortisol concentration in both serum and saliva sharply increases and reaches a peak within the first hour after waking in the morning. This phenomenon is known as the cortisol awakening response (CAR) and is used as an index of hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis function. We examined whether ovarian steroid concentrations increased after awakening as with the CAR in the HPA axis. To do this, cortisol, estradiol-17β (E(2)), and progesterone (P(4)) concentrations were determined in saliva samples collected immediately upon awakening and 30 and 60 min after awakening in women with regular menstrual cycles and postmenopausal women. We found that both E(2) and P(4) concentrations increased during the post-awakening period in women with regular menstrual cycles, but these phenomena were not seen in any postmenopausal women. The area under the E(2) and P(4) curve from the time interval immediately after awakening to 60 min after awakening (i.e. E(2)auc and P(4)auc) in women with regular menstrual cycles were greater than those in the postmenopausal women. E(2) and P(4) secretory activity during the post-awakening period was influenced by the phase of the menstrual cycle. E(2)auc in the peri-ovulatory phase and P(4)auc in the early to mid-luteal phase were greater than in the menstrual phase. Meanwhile, cortisol secretory activity during the post-awakening period was not influenced by menstrual status or the phase of menstrual cycle. These findings indicate that, as with the CAR in the HPA axis function, ovarian steroidogenic activity increased after awakening and is closely associated with menstrual status and phase of menstrual cycle.	\N	\N
21965551	Both visual attention and visual short-term memory (VSTM) have been shown to have capacity limits of 4 ± 1 objects, driving the hypothesis that they share a visual processing buffer. However, these capacity limitations also show strong individual differences, making the degree to which these capacities are related unclear. Moreover, other research has suggested a distinction between attention and VSTM buffers. To explore the degree to which capacity limitations reflect the use of a shared visual processing buffer, we compared individual subject's capacities on attentional and VSTM tasks completed in the same testing session. We used a multiple object tracking (MOT) and a VSTM change detection task, with varying levels of distractors, to measure capacity. Significant correlations in capacity were not observed between the MOT and VSTM tasks when distractor filtering demands differed between the tasks. Instead, significant correlations were seen when the tasks shared spatial filtering demands. Moreover, these filtering demands impacted capacity similarly in both attention and VSTM tasks. These observations fail to support the view that visual attention and VSTM capacity limits result from a shared buffer but instead highlight the role of the resource demands of underlying processes in limiting capacity.	\N	\N
21969076	Stimulus over-selectivity occurs when one aspect of the environment controls behavior at the expense of other equally salient aspects. Participants were trained on a match-to-sample (MTS) discrimination task. Levels of over-selectivity in a group of children (4-18 years) with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) were compared with a mental-aged matched typically-developing group. There was more over-selectivity in the ASD group. When retention intervals were added between the sample and comparisons in the MTS task, both groups showed an increased level of over-selectivity, with the ASD group showing a more pronounced effect.	\N	\N
21981900	Previous studies demonstrate that attentional selection can be object-based, in which the object is defined in terms of Gestalt principles or lexical organizations. Here we investigate how attentional selection functions when the two types of objects are manipulated jointly. Experiment 1 replicated Li and Logan (2008) by showing that attentional shift between two Chinese characters is more efficient when they form a compound word than when they form a nonword. Experiment 2A presented characters either alone or within rectangles (Egly, Driver, & Rafal, 1994) and the characters in a rectangle formed either a word or a nonword. Experiment 2B differed from Experiment 2A in that the two characters forming a word were in different rectangles. Experiment 3A presented the two characters of a word either within a rectangle or in different rectangles. Experiment 3B used the same design as Experiment 3A but presented stimuli of different types in random orders, rather than in blocks as in Experiments 2A, 2B and 3A. In blocked presentation, detection responses to the target color on a character were faster when this character and the cue character formed a word than when they did not, and the size of this lexical-based object effect did not vary according to whether the two characters were presented alone or within or between rectangles. In random presentation, however, the lexical-based object effect was diminished when the two characters of a word were presented in different rectangles. Overall, these findings suggest that the processes that constrain attention deployment over conjoined objects can be strategically adjusted.	\N	\N
21982581	Even when focused on an effortful task we retain the ability to detect salient environmental information, and even irrelevant visual stimuli can be automatically detected. However, to which extent unattended information affects attentional control is not fully understood. Here we provide evidences of how the brain spontaneously organizes its cognitive resources by shifting attention between a selective-attending and a stimulus-driven modality within a single task. Using a spatial cueing paradigm we investigated the effect of cue-target asynchronies as a function of their probabilities of occurrence (i.e., relative frequency). Results show that this accessory information modulates attentional shifts. A valid spatial cue improved participants' performance as compared to an invalid one only in trials in which target onset was highly predictable because of its more robust occurrence. Conversely, cuing proved ineffective when spatial cue and target were associated according to a less frequent asynchrony. These patterns of response depended on asynchronies' probability and not on their duration. Our findings clearly demonstrate that through a fine decision-making, performed trial-by-trial, the brain utilizes implicit information to decide whether or not voluntarily shifting spatial attention. As if according to a cost-planning strategy, the cognitive effort of shifting attention depending on the cue is performed only when the expected advantages are higher. In a trade-off competition for cognitive resources, voluntary/automatic attending may thus be a more complex process than expected.	\N	\N
21986189	Changes in blood glucose are hypothesized to influence cognitive performance and these changes can be affected by certain nutrients. This double-blind 4-period cross-over study evaluated the effects of a slow-release modified sucrose (isomaltulose) in combination with a high concentration of lactose on cognitive performance of 5-6 year old children. Thirty children received a standard growing upmilk (Std GUM), reformulated growing up milk (Reform GUM), standard growing up milk with lactose-isomaltulose (Iso GUM), and a standard glucose drink (Glucose). The CDR System, a computerised cognitive assessment system, was used to assess various measures of attention and memory of the children at baseline (T=0), 60 (T=1), 120 (T=2), and 180 (T=3) minutes following the intake of test products. Overall, there was a decline in performance over the morning on almost every cognitive task. Children showed better attention following consumption of Iso GUM compared to Std GUM but attention was not significantly different than Reform GUM and glucose. Also, Iso GUM conferred a beneficial effect over both Reform GUM and glucose on sensitivity index of numeric working memory with no difference observed between Iso GUM and Std GUM. Surprisingly, glucose group showed lowest decline in the sensitivity index of spatial working memory and highest speed in picture recognition, although the latter was significantly better than Reform GUM only. For speed of spatial working memory, Reform GUM had the lowest decline but was significantly different only with Std GUM. There was, however, no significant difference among conditions for continuity of attention, speed of numeric working memory and picture recognition sensitivity. Despite the small sample size, the findings are intriguing as carbohydrate composition seems to influence some aspects of cognitive performance such as attention and memory. However, further studies are needed to confirm these findings.	\N	\N
21988891	Doing two things at once is difficult. When two tasks have to be performed within a short interval, the second is sharply delayed, an effect called the Psychological Refractory Period (PRP). Similarly, when two successive visual targets are briefly flashed, people may fail to detect the second target (Attentional Blink or AB). Although AB and PRP are typically studied in very different paradigms, a recent detailed neuromimetic model suggests that both might arise from the same serial stage during which stimuli gain access to consciousness and, as a result, can be arbitrarily routed to any other appropriate processor. Here, in agreement with this model, we demonstrate that AB and PRP can be obtained on alternate trials of the same cross-modal paradigm and result from limitations in the same brain mechanisms. We asked participants to respond as fast as possible to an auditory target T1 and then to a visual target T2 embedded in a series of distractors, while brain activity was recorded with magneto-encephalography (MEG). For identical stimuli, we observed a mixture of blinked trials, where T2 was entirely missed, and PRP trials, where T2 processing was delayed. MEG recordings showed that PRP and blinked trials underwent identical sensory processing in visual occipito-temporal cortices, even including the non-conscious separation of targets from distractors. However, late activations in frontal cortex (>350 ms), strongly influenced by the speed of task-1 execution, were delayed in PRP trials and absent in blinked trials. Our findings suggest that PRP and AB arise from similar cortical stages, can occur with the same exact stimuli, and are merely distinguished by trial-by-trial fluctuations in task processing.	\N	\N
21992968	The review of literature in sociology and distributed artificial intelligence reveals that the occurrence of conflict is a remarkable precursor to the disruption of multi-agent systems. The study of this concept could be applied to human factors concerns, as man-system conflict appears to provoke perseveration behavior and to degrade attentional abilities with a trend to excessive focus. Once entangled in such conflicts, the human operator will do anything to succeed in his current goal even if it jeopardizes the mission. In order to confirm these findings, an experimental setup, composed of a real unmanned ground vehicle, a ground station is developed. A scenario involving an authority conflict between the participants and the robot is proposed. Analysis of the effects of the conflict on the participants' cognition and arousal is assessed through heart-rate measurement (reflecting stress level) and eye-tracking techniques (index of attentional focus). Our results clearly show that the occurrence of the conflict leads to perseveration behavior and can induce higher heart rate as well as excessive attentional focus. These results are discussed in terms of task commitment issues and increased arousal. Moreover, our results suggest that individual differences may predict susceptibility to perseveration behavior.	\N	\N
22001768	Attentional scanning was studied in anxious and non-anxious participants, using a modified change detection paradigm. Participants detected changes in pairs of emotional scenes separated by two task irrelevant slides, which contained an emotionally valenced scene (the 'distractor scene') and a visual mask. In agreement with attentional control theory, change detection latencies were slower overall for anxious participants. Change detection in anxious, but not non-anxious, participants was influenced by the emotional valence and exposure duration of distractor scenes. When negative distractor scenes were presented at subliminal exposure durations, anxious participants detected changes more rapidly than when supraliminal negative scenes or subliminal positive scenes were presented. We propose that for anxious participants, subliminal presentation of emotionally negative distractor scenes stimulated attention into a dynamic state in the absence of attentional engagement. Presentation of the same scenes at longer exposure times was accompanied by conscious awareness, attentional engagement, and slower change detection.	\N	\N
22004198	The differential effects of task and response conflict in priming paradigms where associations are strengthened between a stimulus, a task, and a response have been demonstrated in recent years with neuroimaging methods. However, such effects are not easily disentangled with only measurements of behavior, such as reaction times (RTs). Here, we report the application of ex-Gaussian distribution analysis on task-switching RT data and show that conflict related to stimulus-response associations retrieved after a switch of tasks is reflected in the Gaussian component. By contrast, conflict related to the retrieval of stimulus-task associations is reflected in the exponential component. Our data confirm that the retrieval of stimulus-task and -response associations affects behavior differently. Ex-Gaussian distribution analysis is a useful tool for pulling apart these different levels of associative priming that are not distinguishable in analyses of RT means.	\N	\N
22004518	Eye tracking has indicated that older and young adults process distracters similarly when reading single sentences. The present study extended this approach by presenting short paragraphs, sentence by sentence. Eye tracking measures included reading times per word, and the duration of the first fixation and total fixations to the distracters and target words. Comprehension was tested following each paragraph, and recognition of distracters and target words was assessed. The results indicated that young adults were able to learn to ignore the distracters as they read through the paragraphs, whereas older adults were less successful at learning to ignore the distracters.	\N	\N
22006524	This article provides a demonstration of an analytical technique that can be used to investigate the causes of perceptual phenomena. The technique is based on the concept of the ideal observer, an optimal signal classifier that makes decisions that maximize the probability of a correct response. To demonstrate the technique, an analysis was conducted to investigate the role of the auditory periphery in the production of temporal masking effects. The ideal observer classified output from four models of the periphery. Since the ideal observer is the best of all possible observers, if it demonstrates masking effects, then all other observers must as well. If it does not demonstrate masking effects, then nothing about the periphery requires masking to occur, and therefore masking would occur somewhere else. The ideal observer exhibited several forward masking effects but did not exhibit backward masking, implying that the periphery has a causal role in forward but not backward masking. A general discussion of the strengths of the technique and supplementary equations are also included.	\N	\N
22006528	In visual search tasks, the relative proportions of target-present and -absent trials have important effects on behavior. Miss error rates rise as target prevalence decreases (Wolfe, Horowitz, & Kenner, Nature 435, 439-440, 2005). At the same time, search termination times on target-absent trials become shorter (Wolfe & Van Wert, Current Biology 20, 121-124, 2010). These effects must depend on some implicit or explicit knowledge of the current prevalence. What is the nature of that knowledge? In Experiment 1, we conducted visual search tasks at three levels of prevalence (6%, 50%, and 94%) and analyzed performance as a function of "local prevalence," the prevalence over the last n trials. The results replicated the usual effects of overall prevalence but revealed only weak or absent effects of local prevalence. In Experiment 2, the overall prevalence in a block of trials was 20%, 50%, or 80%. However, a 100%-valid cue informed observers of the prevalence on the next trial. These explicit cues had a modest effect on target-absent RTs, but explicit expectation could not explain the full prevalence effect. We conclude that observers predict prevalence on the basis of an assessment of a relatively long prior history. Each trial contributes a small amount to that assessment, and this can be modulated but not overruled by explicit instruction.	\N	\N
22007628	Stroke patients are at a higher risk of falling than the community-dwelling elderly, and many falls are due to contact with an obstacle. This study compared the effects of the simultaneous addition of a cognitive task during obstacle crossing between stroke patients and community-dwelling older adults (control subjects). Participants comprised 20 stroke patients who could walk with or without supervision and 20 control subjects matched for age and height with the stroke patients. Participants were asked to cross a 4-cm-high obstacle while walking at a self-selected speed. The number of failures and the spatial and temporal parameters were compared between a single-task condition (i.e., crossing task only) and a dual-task condition (i.e., verbal fluency task: listing vegetables or animals). Under the dual-task condition, six stroke patients (30%) and three community-dwelling elderly individuals (15%) failed to complete the motor task. Task failure was only due to heel-obstacle contact after toe clearance. In both groups, obstacle-heel distance after clearance was reduced, and the time from heel contact to toe clearance and stride time were significantly increased under dual-task condition versus single-task condition. In addition, group-task interaction for the time from heel contact to toe clearance of the obstacle was significant; this increase in time was significantly greater under dual-task condition in stroke patients than in control subjects. Obstacle crossing in stroke patients involved an increase in crossing performance time and a risk of heel-obstacle contact after crossing. These tendencies appeared stronger under the dual-task condition.	\N	\N
22021081	Previous studies have indicated that increasing working memory (WM) load can affect the attentional selection of signals originating from one object/location. Here we assessed whether WM load affects also the selection of multiple objects/locations (divided attention). Participants monitored either two object-categories (vs. one category; object-based divided attention) or two locations (vs. one location; space-based divided attention) while maintaining in WM either a variable number of objects (object-based WM load) or locations (space-based WM load). Behavioural results showed that WM load affected attentional performance irrespective of divided or focused attention. However, fMRI results showed that the activity associated with object-based divided attention increased linearly with increasing object-based WM load in the left and right intraparietal sulcus (IPS); while, in the same areas, activity associated with space-based divided attention was not affected by any type of WM load. These findings support the hypothesis that WM contributes to the maintenance of resource-demanding attentional sets in a domain-specific manner. Moreover, the dissociable impact of WM load on performance and brain activity suggests that increased IPS activation reflects a recruitment of additional, domain-specific processing resources that enable dual-task performance under conditions of high WM load and high attentional demand.	\N	\N
22022989	Child maltreatment is associated with heightened risk for depression; however, not all individuals who experience maltreatment develop depression. Previous research indicates that maltreatment contributes to an attention bias for emotional cues, and that depressed individuals show attention bias for sad cues. The present study examined attention patterns for sad, depression-relevant cues in children with and without experience of maltreatment. We also explored whether individual differences in physiological reactivity and emotion regulation in response to a sad emotional state predict heightened attention to sad cues associated with depression. Children who experienced high levels of maltreatment showed an increase in attention bias for sad faces throughout the course of the study, such that they showed biased attention for sad faces following the initiation of a sad emotional state. Maltreated children who had high levels of trait rumination showed an attention bias toward sad faces across all time points. These data suggest that maltreated children show heightened attention for depression-relevant cues in certain contexts (e.g. after experience of a sad emotional state). Additionally, maltreated children who tend to engage in rumination show a relatively stable pattern of heightened attention for depression-relevant cues. These patterns may identify which maltreated children are most likely to exhibit biased attention for sad cues and be at heightened risk for depression.	\N	\N
22024021	Persistent genital arousal disorder (PGAD) is a rare condition in women that causes a lot of suffering. The pathophysiology is not well understood and an approach promising effective treatment has not been established so far. This study aims to make colleagues aware of two treatment options, which proved to be successful in one case each and which might be worth further investigation. Subjective distress from unwanted sexual arousal, unwanted orgasms, and pain in the genital area. Treatment of two women--36 and 41 years old--suffering from PGAD with duloxetine and pregabalin, respectively. In both women, the treatment proved to be very successful over a long period of time. One of them experienced full remission (duloxetine) and the other one experienced substantial improvement (pregabalin), over a period now lasting for more than a year. Pregabalin and duloxetine, in particular, should be further investigated as possible medication for the treatment of PGAD.	\N	\N
22033363	The human 'pain network' includes cortical areas that are activated during the response to painful stimuli (termed category 1) or during psychological processes that modulate pain, for example, distraction (termed category 2). These categories include parts of the parasylvian (PS), medial frontal (MF), and paracentral cortex (S1&M1). Here we test the hypothesis that causal interactions both within and between category 1 and category 2 modules occur during attention to a painful stimulus. Event-related causality (ERC) was calculated from local field potentials recorded directly from these cortical areas during the response to a painful cutaneous laser stimulus in patients being monitored for epilepsy. The number of electrodes involved in pairs with significant ERC in category 1 was greater for pre-stimulus vs post-stimulus and for attention vs distraction. This is consistent with our prior evidence that the category 1 'pain network' changes rapidly with time intervals and tasks. In contrast, the interaction between categories was often unchanged or stable across intervals and tasks, particularly in MF. The proportion of contacts involved in interactions with PS was greater during distraction vs attention while activation was less, which suggests that distraction involves an inhibitory process in PS. Functional interactions between categories were overwhelmingly in the direction from category 2>1, particularly for contacts in MF which often had a driver role. These results demonstrate that MF is densely interconnected throughout the 'pain network' so that stimulation of MF might be used to disrupt the 'pain network' as a therapy for pain.	\N	\N
22035945	It is common to use verbal instructions when performing complex tasks. To evaluate how such instructions contribute to cognitive control, mixing costs (as a measure of sustained concentration on task) were evaluated in two task-switching experiments combining the list and alternating runs paradigms. Participants responded to bivalent stimuli according to a characteristic explicitly defined by a visually presented instructional cue. The processing of the cue was conducted under four conditions across the two experiments: Silent Reading, Reading Aloud, Articulatory Suppression, and dual mode (visual and audio) presentation. The type of cue processing produced a substantial impact on the mixing costs, where its magnitude was greatest with articulatory suppression and minimal with reading aloud and dual mode presentations. Interestingly, silently reading the cue only provided medium levels of mixing cost. The experiments demonstrate that relevant verbal instructions boost sustained concentration on task goals when maintaining multiple tasks.	\N	\N
22039917	Three experiments explored online recognition in a nonspeech domain, using a novel experimental paradigm. Adults learned to associate abstract shapes with particular melodies, and at test they identified a played melody's associated shape. To implicitly measure recognition, visual fixations to the associated shape versus a distractor shape were measured as the melody played. Degree of similarity between associated melodies was varied to assess what types of pitch information adults use in recognition. Fixation and error data suggest that adults naturally recognize music, like language, incrementally, computing matches to representations before melody offset, despite the fact that music, unlike language, provides no pressure to execute recognition rapidly. Further, adults use both absolute and relative pitch information in recognition. The implicit nature of the dependent measure should permit use with a range of populations to evaluate postulated developmental and evolutionary changes in pitch encoding.	\N	\N
22041529	The objective of this study was to clarify the relationship between feeling upon awakening (FA) and time spent using information technology (IT) devices by children in kindergartens, elementary schools, and junior high schools in Shimane, Japan. In October 2008, a self-report survey was distributed to 2075 children in kindergartens (n = 261), elementary schools (n = 1162), and junior high schools (n = 652) in Shimane, Japan. The questionnaire gathered data on sex, school year, feeling upon awakening, and time spent using IT devices after school (television, videos on television, video games, personal computers, and cellular phones). After adjusting for sex and school year, data were analyzed by multivariate logistic regression analysis to calculate odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). A total of 2030 children completed this survey (response rate, 97.8%). Negative FA was associated with watching television more than 2 hours/day (OR = 1.51, 95% CI = 1.23-1.85), playing video games more than 30 minutes/day (1.50, 1.20-1.87), and using personal computers more than 30 minutes/day (1.35, 1.04-1.75). Time spent using IT devices affected the FA of children in kindergarten through junior high school. We propose the development of guidelines regarding the appropriate amount of time this population should spend using IT devices.	\N	\N
22043127	Women report increasing sleep difficulties during menopause, but polysomnographic measures do not detect sleep disturbances. We examined whether two spectral analysis sleep measures, delta and beta power, were related to menopausal status. The Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN) Sleep Study compared cross-sectionally spectral sleep measures in women in different stages of menopause. Sleep EEG was recorded in the participants' homes with ambulatory recorders. A multi-ethnic cohort of premenopausal and early perimenopausal (n = 189), late perimenopausal (n = 73), and postmenopausal (n = 59) women. EEG power in the delta and beta frequency bands was calculated for all night NREM and all night REM sleep. Physical, medical, psychological, and socioeconomic data were collected from questionnaires and diaries. Beta EEG power in NREM and REM sleep in late perimenopausal and postmenopausal women exceeded that in pre- and early perimenopausal women. Neither all night delta power nor the trend in delta power across the night differed by menopausal status. In a multivariate model that controlled for the physical, demographic, behavioral, psychological, and health-related changes that accompany menopause, beta power in both NREM and REM sleep EEG was significantly related to menopausal status. The frequency of hot flashes explained part but not all of the relation of beta power to menopausal status. Elevated beta EEG power in late perimenopausal and postmenopausal women provides an objective measure of disturbed sleep quality in these women. Elevated beta EEG activity suggests that arousal level during sleep is higher in these women.	\N	\N
22048563	The regulation of sleep and wakefulness is well modeled with two underlying processes: a circadian and a homeostatic one. So far, the parameters and mechanisms of additional sleep-permissive and wake-promoting conditions have been largely overlooked. The present overview focuses on one of these conditions: the effect of skin temperature on the onset and maintenance of sleep, and alertness. Skin temperature is quite well suited to provide the brain with information on sleep-permissive and wake-promoting conditions because it changes with most if not all of them. Skin temperature changes with environmental heat and cold, but also with posture, environmental light, danger, nutritional status, pain, and stress. Its effect on the brain may thus moderate the efficacy by which the clock and homeostat manage to initiate or maintain sleep or wakefulness. The review provides a brief overview of the neuroanatomical pathways and physiological mechanisms by which skin temperature can affect the regulation of sleep and vigilance. In addition, current pitfalls and possibilities of practical applications for sleep enhancement are discussed, including the recent finding of impaired thermal comfort perception in insomniacs.	\N	\N
22048613	Typical measures of the useful field of view (UFOV) involve many components of attention. The objective of the current research was to examine the attentional operations that might underlie declines in the UFOV. We used 2 basic attention tasks to characterize the profile of visual attention in UFOV-impaired and -unimpaired observers. Our results suggested that declines in the UFOV result from a deficit in attentional disengagement, not a decrease in attentional breadth or scope. The results suggested that UFOV decline in normal aging can be associated with a specific attentional operation, namely attentional disengagement. These results suggest that the underlying cause of UFOV decline may not be a restriction in the breadth or scope of attention. Because the UFOV is a reliable predictor of driving safety, our results point to attentional components that are critical for the visual behavior of older adults.	\N	\N
22048839	Treatments of female sexual dysfunction have been largely unsuccessful because they do not address the psychological factors that underlie female sexuality. Negative self-evaluative processes interfere with the ability to attend and register physiological changes (interoceptive awareness). This study explores the effect of mindfulness meditation training on interoceptive awareness and the three categories of known barriers to healthy sexual functioning: attention, self-judgment, and clinical symptoms. Forty-four college students (30 women) participated in either a 12-week course containing a "meditation laboratory" or an active control course with similar content or laboratory format. Interoceptive awareness was measured by reaction time in rating physiological response to sexual stimuli. Psychological barriers were assessed with self-reported measures of mindfulness and psychological well-being. Women who participated in the meditation training became significantly faster at registering their physiological responses (interoceptive awareness) to sexual stimuli compared with active controls (F(1,28) = 5.45, p = .03, η(p)(2) = 0.15). Female meditators also improved their scores on attention (t = 4.42, df = 11, p = .001), self-judgment, (t = 3.1, df = 11, p = .01), and symptoms of anxiety (t = -3.17, df = 11, p = .009) and depression (t = -2.13, df = 11, p < .05). Improvements in interoceptive awareness were correlated with improvements in the psychological barriers to healthy sexual functioning (r = -0.44 for attention, r = -0.42 for self-judgment, and r = 0.49 for anxiety; all p < .05). Mindfulness-based improvements in interoceptive awareness highlight the potential of mindfulness training as a treatment of female sexual dysfunction.	\N	\N
22051208	Individuals who are methamphetamine dependent exhibit higher rates of cognitive dysfunction than healthy people who do not use methamphetamine, and this dysfunction may have a negative effect on the success of behavioral treatments for the disorder. Therefore, a medication that improves cognition, such as modafinil (Provigil), may serve as a useful adjunct to behavioral treatments for methamphetamine dependence. Although cognitive-enhancing effects of modafinil have been reported in several populations, little is known about the effects of modafinil in methamphetamine-dependent individuals. We thus sought to evaluate the effects of modafinil on the cognitive performance of methamphetamine-dependent and healthy individuals. Seventeen healthy subjects and 24 methamphetamine- dependent subjects participated in this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study. Effects of modafinil (200 mg, single oral dose) were assessed on participants' performance on tests of inhibitory control, working memory, and processing speed/attention. Across subjects, modafinil improved performance on a test of sustained attention, with no significant improvement on any other cognitive tests. However, within the methamphetamine-dependent group only, participants with a high baseline frequency of methamphetamine use demonstrated a greater effect of modafinil on tests of inhibitory control and processing speed than those participants with low baseline use of methamphetamine. Although modafinil produced limited effects across all participants, methamphetamine-dependent participants with a high baseline use of methamphetamine demonstrated significant cognitive improvement on modafinil relative to those with low baseline methamphetamine use. These results add to the findings from a clinical trial that suggested that modafinil may be particularly useful in methamphetamine-dependent subjects who use the drug frequently.	\N	\N
22059332	Contingent negative variation (CNV) topography, hemispheric asymmetry and time-course were investigated in healthy subjects and non-medicated paranoid schizophrenic patients in two antisaccade paradigms with the short (800-1000 ms) and long (1200-1400 ms) durations of the fixation period. EEG and electrooculogram (EOG) were recorded. Saccade characteristics and mean amplitudes of slow cortical potentials time-locked to peripheral target were analyzed in 23 healthy volunteers and 19 schizophrenic patients. Compared to healthy control subjects, schizophrenic patients had significantly slower antisaccades and committed significantly more erroneous saccades in the both antisaccade tasks. The prolongation of the fixation period resulted in noticeable decrease of error percent in patients group. The analysis of CNV time-course has revealed two distinct stages in both groups. The early CNV stage was represented by a negative wave with the maximal amplitude over midline fronto-central area, and the late stage was characterized by increased CNV amplitude at the midline and left parietal electrode sites. In healthy subjects the simultaneous activation of frontal and parietal areas was observed in the paradigm with the shorter fixation interval; the increase of the fixation period produced consecutive activation of these areas. Schizophrenic patients' CNV amplitude was generally smaller than that of healthy subjects. The most pronounced between-group differences of the negative shift amplitude were revealed at frontal electrode sites during the early CNV stage in both modifications of the antisaccade task. The deficit of frontal activation revealed in patients at the early stage of antisaccade preparatory set in both antisaccadic paradigms may be related to pathogenesis of paranoid schizophrenia.	\N	\N
22060144	In four experiments, task-switching processes were investigated with variants of the alternating runs paradigm and the explicit cueing paradigm. The classical diffusion model for binary decisions (Ratcliff, 1978) was used to dissociate different components of task-switching costs. Findings can be reconciled with the view that task-switching processes take place in successive phases as postulated by multiple-components models of task switching (e.g., Mayr & Kliegl, 2003; Ruthruff, Remington, & Johnston, 2001). At an earlier phase, task-set reconfiguration (Rogers & Monsell, 1995) or cue-encoding (Schneider & Logan, 2005) takes place, at a later phase, the response is selected in accord with constraints set in the first phase. Inertia effects (Allport, Styles, & Hsieh, 1994; Allport & Wylie, 2000) were shown to affect this later stage. Additionally, findings support the notion that response caution contributes to both global as well as to local switching costs when task switches are predictable.	\N	\N
22069145	Hypothesis-testing performance on Wason's (Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 12:129-140, 1960) 2-4-6 task is typically poor, with only around 20% of participants announcing the to-be-discovered "ascending numbers" rule on their first attempt. Enhanced solution rates can, however, readily be observed with dual-goal (DG) task variants requiring the discovery of two complementary rules, one labeled "DAX" (the standard "ascending numbers" rule) and the other labeled "MED" ("any other number triples"). Two DG experiments are reported in which we manipulated the usefulness of a presented MED exemplar, where usefulness denotes cues that can establish a helpful "contrast class" that can stand in opposition to the presented 2-4-6 DAX exemplar. The usefulness of MED exemplars had a striking facilitatory effect on DAX rule discovery, which supports the importance of contrast-class information in hypothesis testing. A third experiment ruled out the possibility that the useful MED triple seeded the correct rule from the outset and obviated any need for hypothesis testing. We propose that an extension of Oaksford and Chater's (European Journal of Cognitive Psychology 6:149-169, 1994) iterative counterfactual model can neatly capture the mechanisms by which DG facilitation arises.	\N	\N
22080448	The flash-drag (FDE) effect refers to the phenomenon in which the position of a stationary flashed object in one location appears shifted in the direction of nearby motion. Over the past decade, it has been debated how bottom-up and top-down processes contribute to this illusion. In this study, we demonstrate that randomly phase-shifting gratings can produce the FDE. In the random motion sequence we used, the FDE inducer (a sinusoidal grating) jumped to a random phase every 125 ms and stood still until the next jump. Because this random sequence could not be tracked attentively, it was impossible for the observer to discern the jump direction at the time of the flash. By sorting the data based on the flash's onset time relative to each jump time in the random motion sequence, we found that a large FDE with a broad temporal tuning occurred around 50 to 150 ms before the jump and that this effect was not correlated with any other jumps in the past or future. These results suggest that as few as two frames of unpredictable apparent motion can preattentively cause the FDE with a broad temporal tuning.	\N	\N
22086650	The effects of bilingual proficiency on recognition memory were examined in an experiment with Spanish-English bilinguals. Participants learned lists of words in English and Spanish under shallow- and deep-encoding conditions. Overall, hit rates were higher, discrimination greater, and response times shorter in the nondominant language, consistent with effects previously observed for lower frequency words. Levels-of-processing effects in hit rates, discrimination, and response time were stronger in the dominant language. Specifically, with shallow encoding, the advantage for the nondominant language was larger than with deep encoding. The results support the idea that memory performance in the nondominant language is impacted by both the greater demand for cognitive resources and the lower familiarity of the words.	\N	\N
22088577	Depression and anxiety disorders (ADs) are highly co-morbid, but the reason for this co-morbidity is unclear. One possibility is that they predispose one another. An informative way to examine interactions between disorders without the confounds present in patient populations is to manipulate the psychological processes thought to underlie the pathological states in healthy individuals. In this study we therefore asked whether a model of the sad mood in depression can enhance psychophysiological responses (startle) to a model of the anxiety in ADs. We predicted that sad mood would increase anxious anxiety-potentiated startle responses. In a between-subjects design, participants (n=36) completed either a sad mood induction procedure (MIP; n=18) or a neutral MIP (n=18). Startle responses were assessed during short-duration predictable electric shock conditions (fear-potentiated startle) or long-duration unpredictable threat of shock conditions (anxiety-potentiated startle). Induced sadness enhanced anxiety- but not fear-potentiated startle. This study provides support for the hypothesis that sadness can increase anxious responding measured by the affective startle response. This, taken together with prior evidence that ADs can contribute to depression, provides initial experimental support for the proposition that ADs and depression are frequently co-morbid because they may be mutually reinforcing.	\N	\N
22090187	In three experiments, we tested whether sequentially coding two visual stimuli can create a spatial misperception of a visual moving stimulus. In Experiment 1, we showed that a spatial misperception, the flash-lag effect, is accompanied by a similar temporal misperception of first perceiving the flash and only then a change of the moving stimulus, when in fact the two events were exactly simultaneous. In Experiment 2, we demonstrated that when the spatial misperception of a flash-lag effect is absent, the temporal misperception is also absent. In Experiment 3, we extended these findings and showed that if the stimulus conditions require coding first a flash and subsequently a nearby moving stimulus, a spatial flash-lag effect is found, with the position of the moving stimulus being misperceived as shifted in the direction of its motion, whereas this spatial misperception is reversed so that the moving stimulus is misperceived as shifted in a direction opposite to its motion when the conditions require coding first the moving stimulus and then the flash. Together, the results demonstrate that sequential coding of two stimuli can lead to a spatial misperception whose direction can be predicted from the order of coding the moving object versus the flash. We propose an attentional sequential-coding explanation for the flash-lag effect and discuss its explanatory power with respect to related illusions (e.g., the Fröhlich effect) and other explanations.	\N	\N
22090272	Prenatal deficit of androgens or androgen action results in atypical genitalia in individuals with XY disorders of sex development (XY,DSD). XY,DSD include mainly disorders of gonadal development and testosterone synthesis and action. Previously, most XY,DSD individuals were assigned to the female sex. Constructive genital surgery allowing heterosexual intercourse, gonadectomy, and hormone therapy for feminization were often performed. However, outcome studies are scarce. Our objective was evaluation of satisfaction with genital surgery and sexual life in adults with XY,DSD. We evaluated 57 individuals with XY,DSD from the German multicenter clinical evaluation study with a condition-specific questionnaire. The individuals were divided into subgroups reflecting the absence/presence of partial androgen effect or genital constructive surgery. Dissatisfaction with function of the surgical result (47.1%) and clitoral arousal (47.4%) was high in XY,DSD partially androgenized females after feminization surgery. Dissatisfaction with overall sex life (37.5%) and sexual anxieties (44.2%) were substantial in all XY,DSD individuals. Problems with desire (70.6%), arousal (52.9%), and dyspareunia (56.3%) were significant in XY,DSD complete females. 46,XY partially androgenized females reported significantly more often partners of female (9.1%) or both sexes (18.2%) and dyspareunia (56.5%) compared with controls. Individuals with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome stated significant problems with desire (81.8%), arousal (63.6%), and dyspareunia (70%). Care should be improved in XY,DSD patients. Constructive genital surgery should be minimized and performed mainly in adolescence or adulthood with the patients' consent. Individuals with DSD and their families should be informed with sensibility about the condition. Multidisciplinary care with psychological and nonprofessional support (parents, peers, and patients' support groups) is mandatory from child to adulthood.	\N	\N
22091581	Much has been learned about the age-related cognitive declines associated with the attentional processes that utilize perceptual features during visual search. However, questions remain regarding the ability of older adults to use scene information to guide search processes, perhaps as a compensatory mechanism for declines in perceptual processes. The authors had younger and older adults search pseudorealistic scenes for targets with strong or no spatial associations. Both younger and older adults exhibited reaction time benefits when searching for a target that was associated with a specific scene region. Eye movement analyses revealed that all observers dedicated most of their time to scanning target-consistent display regions and that guidance to these regions was often evident on the initial saccade of a trial. Both the benefits and costs related to contextual information were larger for older adults, suggesting that this information was relied on heavily to guide search processes towards the target.	\N	\N
22093142	To assess whether an intensive multifactorial treatment can reduce cognitive decrements and cognitive decline in screen-detected type 2 diabetes. The multinational ADDITION-study, a cluster-randomized parallel group trial in patients with screen-detected type 2 diabetes, compared the effectiveness of intensive multifactorial treatment (IT; lifestyle advice and strict regulation of metabolic parameters) with routine care (RC) on cardiovascular outcome. In The Netherlands randomization was stratified according to practice organization. Allocation was concealed from patients. The present study assessed the effect of IT on cognition through two neuropsychological assessments (NPA) on two occasions. The assessments took place three and six years after the start of the intervention. Non-diabetic controls served as reference group. The first NPA was performed in 183 patients (IT: 97; RC: 86) and 69 controls. The second NPA was performed in 135 patients (IT: 71; RC: 64) and 55 controls. Primary outcome was a composite score, including the domains memory, information-processing speed and attention and executive function. Comparisons between the treatment groups were performed with multi-level analyses. The first NPA showed no differences between the treatment groups (mean difference composite z-score: 0.00; 95%-CI -0.16 to 0.16; IT vs RC). Over the next three years cognitive decline in the diabetic groups was within the range of the reference group and did not differ between the treatment arms (difference decline between diabetic groups -0.12; -0.24 to 0.01; IT vs RC). Six years of IT in screen-detected type 2 diabetes had no benefit on cognitive functioning over RC.	\N	\N
22095256	We used a probe-dot procedure to examine the roles of excitatory attentional guidance and distractor suppression in search for movement-form conjunctions. Participants in Experiment 1 completed a conjunction (moving X amongst moving Os and static Xs) and two single-feature (moving X amongst moving Os, and static X amongst static Os) conditions. "Active" participants searched for the target, whereas "passive" participants viewed the displays without responding. Subsequently, both groups located (left or right) a probe dot appearing in either an occupied or an unoccupied location. In the conjunction condition, the active group located probes presented on static distractors more slowly than probes presented on moving distractors, reversing the direction of the difference found within the passive group. This disadvantage for probes on static items was much stronger in conjunction than in single-feature search. The same pattern of results was replicated in Experiment 2, which used a go/no-go procedure. Experiment 3 extended the go/no-go procedure to the case of search for a static target and revealed increased probe localisation times as a consequence of active search, primarily for probes on moving distractor items. The results demonstrated attentional guidance by inhibition of distractors in conjunction search.	\N	\N
22098127	The sustained attention to response task comprises withholding key presses to one in nine of 225 target stimuli; it proved to be a sensitive measure of vigilance in a small group of narcoleptics. We studied sustained attention to response task results in 96 patients from a tertiary narcolepsy referral centre. Diagnoses according to ICSD-2 criteria were narcolepsy with (n=42) and without cataplexy (n=5), idiopathic hypersomnia without long sleep time (n=37), and obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (n=12). The sustained attention to response task was administered prior to each of five multiple sleep latency test sessions. Analysis concerned error rates, mean reaction time, reaction time variability and post-error slowing, as well as the correlation of sustained attention to response task results with mean latency of the multiple sleep latency test and possible time of day influences. Median sustained attention to response task error scores ranged from 8.4 to 11.1, and mean reaction times from 332 to 366ms. Sustained attention to response task error score and mean reaction time did not differ significantly between patient groups. Sustained attention to response task error score did not correlate with multiple sleep latency test sleep latency. Reaction time was more variable as the error score was higher. Sustained attention to response task error score was highest for the first session. We conclude that a high sustained attention to response task error rate reflects vigilance impairment in excessive daytime sleepiness irrespective of its cause. The sustained attention to response task and the multiple sleep latency test reflect different aspects of sleep/wakefulness and are complementary.	\N	\N
22098265	The concept of the "mnemonic scotoma," a spatially circumscribed region of working memory impairment produced by unilateral lesions of the PFC, is central to the view that PFC is critical for the short-term retention of information. Presented here, however, are previously unpublished data that offer an alternative, nonmnemonic interpretation of this pattern of deficit. In their study, Wajima and Sawaguchi [Wajima, K., & Sawaguchi, T. The role of GABAergic inhibiton in suppressing perseverative responses in the monkey prefrontal cortex. Neuroscience Research, 50(Suppl. 1), P3-P317, 2004] applied the GABA(A) antagonist bicuculline methiodide unilaterally to the PFC of two monkeys while they performed an oculomotor delayed-response task. Consistent with previous studies, errors for the initial memory-guided saccade were markedly higher when the cued location fell into the region of the visual field affected by the infusion. These erroneous saccades tended to select an alternative target location (out of a possible 16) that had not been cued on that trial. By extending the analysis window, however, it was observed that the second, "corrective" saccade often acquired the location that had been cued on that trial. Further analysis of the erroneous initial saccades indicated that they tended to be directed to a location that had been relevant on the previous trial. Thus, the deficit was not one of "forgetting" the cued location. Rather, it was one of selecting between currently and previously relevant locations. These findings suggest a need for a reconsideration of the concept of the mnemonic scotoma, which in turn invites a reconsideration of functional interpretations of sustained neuronal activity in PFC.	\N	\N
22099868	Neurophysiological studies to evaluate spatial attention in children with primary headache are lacking. Tactile spatial attention modulates the N140 somatosensory evoked potential (SEP) amplitude. The aims of the study are: (1) to investigate the effect of spatial attention on the N140 amplitude in children with migraine and tension-type headache (TTH) and in healthy children, and (2) to correlate the neurophysiological results with a neuropsychological test for spatial attention. We studied 16 patients with migraine without aura (MoA), 12 TTH children and 10 healthy subjects. "Deux Barrage" test for spatial attention was administered. SEPs were recorded in a neutral condition (NC) and in a spatial attention condition (SAC). No significant differences in neuropsychological measures were found between MoA, TTH and healthy subjects. The N140 amplitude increase during SAC, as compared to NC, was significantly higher in patients than in healthy controls. Migraineurs showed a positive correlation between the N140 amplitude increase during SAC and their neuropsychological performance. Although spatial attention performances in children with headache are as good as in controls, the N140 amplitude increase during SAC in headache patients suggests that the psychophysiological mechanisms subtending spatial attention are different from those in healthy children.	\N	\N
22100147	Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is typically associated with long-term memory dysfunction. The frontal lobes support high-level cognition comprising executive skills and working memory that is vital for daily life functioning. Deficits in these functions have been increasingly reported in TLE. Evidence from both the neuropsychological and neuroimaging literature suggests both executive function and working memory are compromised in the presence of TLE. In relation to executive impairment, particular focus has been paid to set shifting as measured by the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task. Other discrete executive functions such as decision-making and theory of mind also appear vulnerable but have received little attention. With regard to working memory, the medial temporal lobe structures appear have a more critical role, but with emerging evidence of hippocampal dependent and independent processes. The relative role of underlying pathology and seizure spread is likely to have considerable bearing upon the cognitive phenotype and trajectory in TLE. The identification of the nature of frontal lobe dysfunction in TLE thus has important clinical implications for prognosis and surgical management. Longitudinal neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies assessing frontal lobe function in TLE patients pre- and postoperatively will improve our understanding further.	\N	\N
22100380	Self harm is a serious public health problem worldwide. Implicit attitude measures offer a novel method of exploring associations with self harm (SH). Here we used implicit measures in order to (i) examine implicit evaluative and arousal associations with SH (ii) compare the discriminatory power of implicit and explicit attitude measures in a non-clinical sample at high risk of SH. Two experiments using Go No-Go Association (GNAT) tasks designed to tap implicit attitudes toward SH in an undergraduate sample. In Study One logistic regression analysis demonstrated that explicit, rather than implicit measures successfully discriminated between SH cases and controls which contrasts with previous research. Faster reaction times were observed for negative implicit associations (SH and 'I dislike') compared to positive implicit associations (SH and 'I like') for both SH cases and controls. The SH group were faster to respond to arousal implicit associations compared to implicit sedation associations. Study Two extended this finding to demonstrate associations between evaluative/arousal GNATs and self-reported functions of SH. Internal motivations for self harmful behaviour were significantly related to an implicit sedation association with SH, whereas interpersonal motivations were associated with an implicit arousal association with SH. These findings are consonant with existing functional accounts of SH. Longitudinal data is necessary to identify whether the attitudes assessed could predict future SH. The findings provide novel experimental support for the hypothesised role of automatic/affect regulation and social/interpersonal functions of SH. Implications for intervention are discussed.	\N	\N
22104981	This study examined the effect of armodafinil on late-in-shift clinical condition, wakefulness, and overall functioning of patients with shift work disorder. Patients with clinically diagnosed shift work disorder received armodafinil or placebo on nights worked for 6 weeks. Patients included in the study experienced late-in-shift sleepiness between 4 AM and 8 AM (Karolinska Sleepiness Scale ≥6) and were functionally impaired (Global Assessment of Functioning <70). Efficacy was determined by improvements in clinical condition (Clinical Global Impression-Change), late-in-the-shift Karolinska Sleepiness Scale score, and overall Global Assessment of Functioning score. Tolerability was assessed. Patients receiving armodafinil showed significant improvements in late-in-shift clinical condition, wakefulness, and global functioning, compared to placebo at final visit. Armodafinil was generally well tolerated. Armodafinil improved clinical condition and wakefulness late in the night shift of patients with shift work disorder. Overall patient functioning was also improved.	\N	\N
22114879	Contemporary research indicates that brain development occurs during childhood and into early adulthood, particularly in certain regions. A critical question is whether premature or atypical hormone exposures impact brain development (e.g., structure) or function (e.g., neuropsychological functioning). The current study enrolled 40 girls (aged 6-8 years) diagnosed with premature adrenarche (PA) and a comparison group of 36 girls with on-time maturation. It was hypothesized that girls with PA would demonstrate lower IQ and performance on several neuropsychological tasks. The potential for a sexually dimorphic neuropsychological profile in PA was also explored. No significant univariate or multivariate group differences emerged for any neuropsychological instrument. However, effect size confidence intervals contained medium-sized group differences at the subscale level. On-time girls performed better on verbal, working memory, and visuospatial tasks. Girls with PA showed improved attention, but not a sexually dimorphic profile. These results, though preliminary, suggest that premature maturation may influence neuropsychological functioning.	\N	\N
22114988	The present study describes the development and validation of an instrument designed to examine athletes' selective attention returning to competition following a musculoskeletal injury--the attention questionnaire of rehabilitated athletes returning to competition (AQ-RARC). Using a sample of 186 rehabilitated athletes, exploratory factor analysis revealed a 10-item model that examines functional attention and distraction attention. Confirmatory factor analysis further supported the factorial validity of the AQ-RARC with another sample of 184 rehabilitated athletes. The two subscales have good internal consistency and test-retest reliability. The concurrent and discriminant validity of the new instrument were confirmed by examining correlations between the AQ-RARC with other constructs. It is concluded that the AQ-RARC is a valid and reliable instrument that can be used for clinical and research purposes.	\N	\N
22115281	To explore the idea of a perceptual distortion of space in spatial neglect, neglect patients, age-matched healthy controls and right hemisphere control patients judged the vanishing point of horizontally and vertically-moving stimuli. Hemifield of presentation and movement direction of the stimulus presentation was manipulated. The results suggest that neglect patients show a stronger response bias in the direction of the moving stimuli ("representational momentum") than healthy and right hemisphere controls. Furthermore, neglect patients, but not the control groups, showed a direction-specific response whereby the presence of neglect was associated with a larger representational momentum for leftward-moving stimuli. The one left-hemisphere patient with right-sided neglect showed the opposite effect. Thus, neglect patients showed a relative overextension into their neglected side of space. While these findings are in line with the idea of an extension in the representation of contralesional space, other explanations such as deficient spatial remapping, impairments in smooth pursuit and distortions in memorized visuo-motor movements are considered.	\N	\N
22121850	Previous research has shown that social drinkers continue to show attentional bias toward alcohol-related stimuli even after consuming a moderate dose of alcohol. In contrast, little is known about how alcohol acutely affects attentional bias in groups at risk to develop alcohol-related problems, such as adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Such individuals may show increased attentional bias following alcohol relative to nonclinical controls. The present study tested this hypothesis by examining acute alcohol effects on attentional bias in 20 social drinkers with ADHD and 20 social drinkers with no history of ADHD. Participants performed a visual-probe task after receiving the following doses of alcohol: 0.64 g/kg, 0.32 g/kg, and 0.0 g/kg (placebo). Those in the ADHD group showed increased attentional bias under active alcohol doses, whereas attentional bias was similar across doses in the control group. Attentional bias predicted ad libitum alcohol consumption during a taste-rating session. This relation was observed only in the ADHD group. These findings indicate that an acute alcohol dose increases attentional bias in adults with ADHD. Further, attentional bias appears to be a predictor of ad libitum consumption in this group.	\N	\N
22131446	Has evolution optimized visual selective attention to make the best possible use of all information available? If so, then Bayesian optimal performance in a localization task is achieved by optimally weighting the visual evidence with one's prior spatial expectations. In 2 psychophysical experiments, participants conducted covert target localization where both visual cues and prior expectations were available. The amount of information conveyed by the visual evidence was held constant, while the degree of belief was manipulated via peripheral cuing (Experiment 1) and spatial probabilities (Experiment 2). A number of findings result: (1) People appear to optimally combine slightly biased prior beliefs with sensory evidence. (2) These biases are directly comparable to those descriptively accounted for by the Prospect Theory. (3) Probabilistic information about a target's upcoming location is integrated identically, irrespective of whether endogenous or exogenous cuing is used. (4) In localization tasks, spatial attention can be understood and quantitatively modeled as a set of prior expectations over space that modulate incoming noisy sensory evidence.	\N	\N
22133872	A randomized control trial comparing two social communication treatments for children with autism spectrum disorder examined the effect of treatment on object interest. Thirty-two children, 18-60 months, were randomly assigned to the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) or Responsive Education and Prelinguistic Milieu Teaching (RPMT) condition. Assessment of object interest was conducted in an unstructured play session with different toys, activities, adult, and location than experienced in treatment. Results indicated children in the RPMT condition showed greater increases in object interest as compared to children in the PECS condition. Because child characteristics such as interest in objects may influence response to interventions using object play as contexts for treatment, it is important to improve our understanding of whether intervention can affect object interest.	\N	\N
22139023	A series of four experiments investigating gaze behavior and decision making in the context of wayfinding is reported. Participants were presented with screenshots of choice points taken in large virtual environments. Each screenshot depicted alternative path options. In Experiment 1, participants had to decide between them to find an object hidden in the environment. In Experiment 2, participants were first informed about which path option to take as if following a guided route. Subsequently, they were presented with the same images in random order and had to indicate which path option they chose during initial exposure. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate (1) that participants have a tendency to choose the path option that featured the longer line of sight, and (2) a robust gaze bias towards the eventually chosen path option. In Experiment 2, systematic differences in gaze behavior towards the alternative path options between encoding and decoding were observed. Based on data from Experiments 1 and 2 and two control experiments ensuring that fixation patterns were specific to the spatial tasks, we develop a tentative model of gaze behavior during wayfinding decision making suggesting that particular attention was paid to image areas depicting changes in the local geometry of the environments such as corners, openings, and occlusions. Together, the results suggest that gaze during a wayfinding tasks is directed toward, and can be predicted by, a subset of environmental features and that gaze bias effects are a general phenomenon of visual decision making.	\N	\N
22141746	It has been shown that, when observing an action, infants can rely on either outcome selection information (i.e., actions that express a choice between potential outcomes) or means selection information (i.e., actions that are causally efficient toward the outcome) in their goal attribution. However, no research has investigated the relationship between these two types of information when they are present simultaneously. In an experiment that addressed this question directly, we found that when outcome selection information could disambiguate the goal of the action (e.g., the action is directed toward one of two potential targets), but means selection information could not (i.e., the action is not efficiently adjusted to the situational constraints), 7- and 9-month-old infants did not attribute a goal to an observed action. This finding suggests that means selection information takes primacy over outcome selection information. The early presence of this bias sheds light on the nature of the notion of goal in action understanding.	\N	\N
22142207	Past studies have revealed that encountering negative events interferes with cognitive processing of subsequent stimuli. The present study investigates whether negative events affect semantic and perceptual processing differently. Presentation of negative pictures produced slower reaction times than neutral or positive pictures in tasks that require semantic processing, such as natural or man-made judgments about drawings of objects, commonness judgments about objects, and categorical judgments about pairs of words. In contrast, negative picture presentation did not slow down judgments in subsequent perceptual processing (e.g., color judgments about words, size judgments about objects). The subjective arousal level of negative pictures did not modulate the interference effects on semantic or perceptual processing. These findings indicate that encountering negative emotional events interferes with semantic processing of subsequent stimuli more strongly than perceptual processing, and that not all types of subsequent cognitive processing are impaired by negative events.	\N	\N
22145814	We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to evaluate functional activity in the brain of adolescents with spina bifida when performing selective attention and response inhibition tasks. We then compared the results to that of age-matched controls. Our results showed that adolescents with spina bifida had decreased frontal and superior parietal activation and more apparently low involvement of left brain hemisphere during these tasks. Our results indicated activation deficits and possibly abnormal functional organization in adolescents with spina bifida and associated pathologies such as hydrocephalus.	\N	\N
22150963	The present study addresses the suitability of electrodermal lability as an indicator of individual vulnerability to the effects of total sleep deprivation. During two complete circadian cycles, the effects of 48h of total sleep deprivation on physiological measures (electrodermal activity and body temperature), subjective sleepiness (measured by visual analogue scale and tiredness symptom scale) and task performance (reaction time and errors in a go/no go task) were investigated. Analyses of variance with repeated measures revealed substantial decreases of the number of skin conductance responses, body temperature, and increases for subjective sleepiness, reaction time and error rates. For all changes, strong circadian oscillations could be observed as well. The electrodermal more labile subgroup reported higher subjective sleepiness compared with electrodermal more stable participants, but showed no differences in the time courses of body temperature and task performance. Therefore, electrodermal lability seems to be a specific indicator for the changes in subjective sleepiness due to total sleep deprivation and circadian oscillations, but not a suitable indicator for vulnerability to the effects of sleep deprivation per se.	\N	\N
22152279	In healthy individuals and those with insomnia, poor sleep quality is associated with decrements in performance on tests of cognition, especially executive function. Sleep disturbances and cognitive deficits are both prevalent in Parkinson's disease (PD). Sleep problems occur in over 75% of patients, with sleep fragmentation and decreased sleep efficiency being the most common sleep complaints, but their relation to cognition is unknown. We examined the association between sleep quality and cognition in PD. In 35 non-demented individuals with PD and 18 normal control adults (NC), sleep was measured using 24-hr wrist actigraphy over 7 days. Cognitive domains tested included attention and executive function, memory and psychomotor function. In both groups, poor sleep was associated with worse performance on tests of attention/executive function but not memory or psychomotor function. In the PD group, attention/executive function was predicted by sleep efficiency, whereas memory and psychomotor function were not predicted by sleep quality. Psychomotor and memory function were predicted by motor symptom severity. This study is the first to demonstrate that sleep quality in PD is significantly correlated with cognition and that it differentially impacts attention and executive function, thereby furthering our understanding of the link between sleep and cognition.	\N	\N
22154736	The question whether memory aberrations in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) also manifest as an increased production of false memories is important for both theoretical and practical reasons, but is yet unsolved. Therefore, for the present study we investigated veridical and false recognition in PTSD with a new scenic variant of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, which was administered to traumatized individuals with PTSD (n=32), traumatized individuals without PTSD (n=30), and non-traumatized controls (n=30). The PTSD group neither produced higher rates of false memories nor expressed more confidence in errors, but did show inferior memory sensitivity. Whereas depressive symptoms did not correlate with veridical nor false recognition, state dissociation was positively associated with false memories.	\N	\N
22160371	The adaptive threat-detection advantage takes the form of a preferential orienting of attention to threatening scenes. In this study, we compared attention to social scenes in 15 high-functioning individuals with autism (ASD) and matched typically developing (TD) individuals. Eye-tracking was recorded while participants were presented with pairs of scenes, either emotional positive-neutral, emotional negative-neutral or neutral-neutral scenes. Early allocation of attention, the first image fixated in each pair, differed between groups: contrary to TD individuals who showed the typical threat-detection advantage towards negative images, the ASD group failed to show a bias toward threat-related scenes. Later processing of stimuli, indicated by the total fixation to the images during the 3-s presentation, was found unaffected in the ASD group. These results support the hypothesis of an early atypical allocation of attention towards natural social scenes in ASD, that is compensated in later stages of visual processing.	\N	\N
22171909	Insulin resistance (IR) and disorders of glucose metabolism (DGM) are risk factors for cardiovascular diseases. There are different reasons for development of DGM in patients with obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS) and this association is controversial. We investigated the frequency of DGM and IR in patients with OSAS and determining factors for these disorders. One hundred and twelve untreated patients with OSAS and 19 non-apnoeic snoring subjects upon polysomnography were included in this study. Oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) was performed in all subjects who had fasting blood glucose < 125 mg/dl. IR method was analysed using homeostasis assessment model (HOMA-IR). Diabetes mellitus (DM), impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) and impaired fasting glucose (IFG) were defined according to values of OGTT. DGM was defined as having one of the diagnoses of DM, IGT or IFG. Subjective sleepiness of all subjects was assessed with Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS). Excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) was described as ESS score ≥ 10. Fasting glucose and the rate of DGM in patients with OSAS were higher than in non-apnoeic snoring subjects. DGM were shown in % 15.7 of non-apnoeic snoring subjects, 29.6% of mild sleep apnoea, 50% of moderate sleep apnoea and 61.8% of severe sleep apnoea. The rate of DGM in patients with moderate and severe OSAS was higher than in non-apnoeic snoring subjects and in patients with severe OSAS higher than in patients with mild OSAS. DGM are associated with body mass index (BMI), severity of OSAS, arousal index and EDS. In addition, IR is associated with apnoea hypopnoea index, BMI, arousal index and ESS score. Obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome is associated with high frequency of DGM. In addition, the progression of disease from simple snoring and mild OSAS to severe OSAS increases the rate of DGM. Thus, DGM especially in patients with severe OSAS should be examined in regular periods.	\N	\N
22182346	Little is known about the neurobiological foundations of psychotherapy for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Prior studies have shown that PTSD is associated with altered processing of threatening and aversive stimuli. It remains unclear whether this functional abnormality can be changed by psychotherapy. This is the first randomized controlled treatment trial that examines whether narrative exposure therapy (NET) causes changes in affective stimulus processing in patients with chronic PTSD. 34 refugees with PTSD were randomly assigned to a NET group or to a waitlist control (WLC) group. At pre-test and at four-months follow-up, the diagnostics included the assessment of clinical variables and measurements of neuromagnetic oscillatory brain activity (steady-state visual evoked fields, ssVEF) resulting from exposure to aversive pictures compared to neutral pictures. PTSD as well as depressive symptom severity scores declined in the NET group, whereas symptoms persisted in the WLC group. Only in the NET group, parietal and occipital activity towards threatening pictures increased significantly after therapy. Our results indicate that NET causes an increase of activity associated with cortical top-down regulation of attention towards aversive pictures. The increase of attention allocation to potential threat cues might allow treated patients to re-appraise the actual danger of the current situation and, thereby, reducing PTSD symptoms. REGISTRATION OF THE CLINICAL TRIAL: Number: NCT00563888Name: "Change of Neural Network Indicators Through Narrative Treatment of PTSD in Torture Victims" ULR: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00563888.	\N	\N
22185491	The topic of spatial attention is of great relevance for researchers in various fields, including neuropsychology, cognitive neuroscience, and cognitive psychology, as well as for clinical practice. Deficits of spatial attentional arising from parietal brain damage remain largely confined to the left visual field. The mechanisms underlying this hemispheric asymmetry are still elusive. We mimicked the neuropsychological syndrome of contralesional extinction by temporarily inducing a spatial attentional bias in healthy volunteers with TMS. We investigated whether directing covert spatial attention could enhance or, more importantly, counteract the resulting behavioral deficits. Although both the left and right parietal TMS induced contralateral extinction, only left hemifield extinction following right parietal TMS was severely aggravated by a competing stimulus in the ipsilesional (right) hemifield. We put forward the hypothesis that an asymmetry with respect to the ability of detaching attention from a distractor is contributing to the right hemispheric lateralization with regard to extinction. On a broader level, we suggest that "virtual patients" might be used for evaluating neuropsychological treatment in an early stage of development, reducing the burden on actual patients.	\N	\N
22197881	Temporal orienting enhances early (N1) and late (P3) stages of auditory processing. However, the functional significance of these effects has not been settled yet. The present study tested a motor inhibition account on the temporal orienting P3 effect to non-target stimuli. A temporal cuing paradigm was used, where the level of motor preparation (high vs. low) was varied: If motor preparation is higher, more inhibition is necessary to withhold a response when a non-target is presented at the attended time point. Consequently, if the enhanced P3 to temporally attended non-targets reflected increased motor inhibition, higher motor preparation should further enhance the P3. Overall, temporal orienting enhanced both the N1 and the P3, thus replicating earlier findings. Moreover, the temporal orienting P3 effect was larger when motor preparation was higher. Inconsistent with the motor-inhibition account, however, the P3 to temporally attended non-targets did not differ as a function of motor preparation.	\N	\N
22201462	Human actions are guided either by endogenous action plans or by external stimuli in the environment. These two types of action control seem to be mediated by neurophysiologically and functionally distinct systems that interfere if an endogenously planned action suddenly has to be performed in response to an exogenous stimulus. In this case, the endogenous representation has to be deactivated first to give way to the exogenous system. Here we show that interference of endogenous and exogenous action control is not limited to motor-related aspects but also affects the perception of action-related stimuli. Participants associated two actions with contingent sensory effects in learning blocks. In subsequent test blocks, preparing one of these actions specifically impaired responding to the associated effect in an exogenous speeded detection task, yielding a blindness-like effect for arbitrary, learned action effects. In accordance with the theory of event coding, this finding suggests that action planning influences perception even in the absence of any physical similarities between action and to-be-perceived stimuli.	\N	\N
22201464	The attention literature distinguishes two general mechanisms by which attention can benefit performance: gain (or resource) models and orienting (or switching) models. In gain models, processing efficiency is a function of a spatial distribution of capacity or resources; in orienting models, an attentional spotlight must be aligned with the stimulus location, and processing efficiency is a function of when this occurs. Although they involve different processing mechanisms, these models are difficult to distinguish empirically. We compared performance with abrupt-onset and no-onset Gabor patch stimuli in a cued detection task in which we obtained distributions of reaction time (RT) and accuracy as a function of stimulus contrast. In comparison to abrupt-onset stimuli, RTs to miscued no-onset stimuli were increased and accuracy was reduced. Modeling the data with the integrated system model of Philip L. Smith and Roger Ratcliff (2009) provided evidence for reallocation of processing resources during the course of a trial, consistent with an orienting account. Our results support a view of attention in which processing efficiency depends on a dynamic spatiotemporal distribution of resources that has both gain and orienting properties.	\N	\N
22205494	Attention plays a crucial role in the Stroop task, which requires attending to less automatically processed task-relevant attributes of stimuli and the suppression of involuntary processing of task-irrelevant attributes. The experiment assessed the allocation of attention by monitoring eye movements throughout congruent and incongruent trials. Participants viewed two stimulus arrays that differed regarding the amount of items and their numerical value and judged by manual response which of the arrays contained more items, while disregarding their value. Different viewing patterns were observed between congruent (e.g., larger array of numbers with higher value) and incongruent (e.g., larger array of numbers with lower value) trials. The direction of first saccades was guided by task-relevant information but in the incongruent condition directed more frequently towards task-irrelevant information. The data further suggest that the difference in the deployment of attention between conditions changes throughout a trial, likely reflecting the impact and resolution of the conflict. For instance, stimulus arrays in line with the correct response were attended for longer and fixations were longer for incongruent trials, with the second fixation and considering all fixations. By the time of the correct response, this latter difference between conditions was absent. Possible mechanisms underlying eye movement patterns are discussed.	\N	\N
22207631	Previous findings suggest that women are more likely than men to take on the submissive role during sexual activities (e.g., waiting for their partner to initiate and orchestrate sexual activities), often to the detriment of their sexual satisfaction. Extending previous research on gender role motivation, the authors recruited 181 heterosexual couples to examine scripted sexual behavior, motivation for such behavior, and relationship outcomes (sexual satisfaction, perceptions of closeness, and relationship satisfaction) for both women and their partners. Using the actor-partner interdependence model, path analyses revealed that women's submissive behavior had negative links to personal sexual satisfaction and their partner's sexual satisfaction but only when their submission was inconsistent with their sexual preferences. Moreover, the authors show there are negative downstream consequences of diminished sexual satisfaction on perceptions of closeness and overall relationship satisfaction for both partners in the relationship.	\N	\N
22209816	Visual search, a vital task for humans and animals, has also become a common and important tool for studying many topics central to active vision and cognition ranging from spatial vision, attention, and oculomotor control to memory, decision making, and rewards. While visual search often seems effortless to humans, trying to recreate human visual search abilities in machines has represented an incredible challenge for computer scientists and engineers. What are the brain computations that ensure successful search? This review article draws on efforts from various subfields and discusses the mechanisms and strategies the brain uses to optimize visual search: the psychophysical evidence, their neural correlates, and if unknown, possible loci of the neural computations. Mechanisms and strategies include use of knowledge about the target, distractor, background statistical properties, location probabilities, contextual cues, scene context, rewards, target prevalence, and also the role of saliency, center-surround organization of search templates, and eye movement plans. I provide overviews of classic and contemporary theories of covert attention and eye movements during search explaining their differences and similarities. To allow the reader to anchor some of the laboratory findings to real-world tasks, the article includes interviews with three expert searchers: a radiologist, a fisherman, and a satellite image analyst.	\N	\N
22215929	To evaluate reliability of single objective tests in assessing sleepiness. Subjects who completed polysomnography underwent a 4-nap multiple sleep latency test (MSLT) the following day. Prior to each nap opportunity on MSLT, subjects performed the psychomotor vigilance test (PVT) and divided attention driving task (DADT). Results of single versus multiple test administrations were compared using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and adjusted for test administration order effects to explore time of day effects. Measures were explored as continuous and binary (i.e., impaired or not impaired). Community-based sample evaluated at a tertiary, university-based sleep center. 372 adult commercial vehicle operators oversampled for increased obstructive sleep apnea risk. N/A. AS CONTINUOUS MEASURES, ICC WERE AS FOLLOWS: MSLT 0.45, PVT median response time 0.69, PVT number of lapses 0.51, 10-min DADT tracking error 0.87, 20-min DADT tracking error 0.90. Based on binary outcomes, ICC were: MSLT 0.63, PVT number of lapses 0.85, 10-min DADT 0.95, 20-min DADT 0.96. Statistically significant time of day effects were seen in both the MSLT and PVT but not the DADT. Correlation between ESS and different objective tests was strongest for MSLT, range [-0.270 to -0.195] and persisted across all time points. Single DADT and PVT administrations are reliable measures of sleepiness. A single MSLT administration can reasonably discriminate individuals with MSL < 8 minutes. These results support the use of a single administration of some objective tests of sleepiness when performed under controlled conditions in routine clinical care.	\N	\N
22216305	Some authors have speculated that the cognitive component (P3) of the Event-Related Potential (ERP) can function as a psychophysiological measure of sexual interest. The aim of this study was to determine if the P3 ERP component in a workload task can be used as a specific and objective measure of sexual motivation by comparing the neurophysiologic response to stimuli of motivational relevance with different levels of valence and arousal. A total of 30 healthy volunteers watched different films clips with erotic, horror, social-positive and social-negative content, while answering an auditory oddball paradigm. Erotic film clips resulted in larger interference when compared to both the social-positive and auditory alone conditions. Horror film clips resulted in the highest levels of interference with smaller P3 amplitudes than erotic and also than social-positive, social-negative and auditory alone condition. No gender differences were found. Both horror and erotic film clips significantly decreased heart rate (HR) when compared to both social-positive and social-negative films. The erotic film clips significantly increased the skin conductance level (SCL) compared to the social-negative films. The horror film clips significantly increased the SCL compared to both social-positive and social-negative films. Both the highly arousing erotic and non-erotic (horror) movies produced the largest decrease in the P3 amplitude, a decrease in the HR and an increase in the SCL. These data support the notion that this workload task is very sensitive to the attentional resources allocated to the film clip, although they do not act as a specific index of sexual interest. Therefore, the use of this methodology seems to be of questionable utility as a specific measure of sexual interest or as an objective measure of the severity of Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder.	\N	\N
22226937	Cell phone use among pedestrians leads to increased cognitive distraction, reduced situation awareness and increases in unsafe behavior. Performing a dual-task, such as talking or texting with a cell phone while walking, may interfere with working memory and result in walking errors. At baseline, thirty-three participants visually located a target 8m ahead; then vision was occluded and they were instructed to walk to the remembered target. One week later participants were assigned to either walk, walk while talking on a cell phone, or walk while texting on a cell phone toward the target with vision occluded. Duration and final location of the heel were noted. Linear distance traveled, lateral angular deviation from the start line, and gait velocity were derived. Changes from baseline to testing were analyzed with paired t-tests. Participants engaged in cell phone use presented with significant reductions in gait velocity (texting: 33% reduction, p=0.01; talking: 16% reduction, p=0.02). Moreover, participants who were texting while walking demonstrated a 61% increase in lateral deviation (p=0.04) and 13% increase in linear distance traveled (p=0.03). These results suggest that the dual-task of walking while using a cell phone impacts executive function and working memory and influences gait to such a degree that it may compromise safety. Importantly, comparison of the two cell phone conditions demonstrates texting creates a significantly greater interference effect on walking than talking on a cell phone.	\N	\N
22238632	Human morning and evening chronotypes differ in their preferred timing for sleep and wakefulness, as well as in optimal daytime periods to cope with cognitive challenges. Recent evidence suggests that these preferences are not a simple by-product of socio-professional timing constraints, but can be driven by inter-individual differences in the expression of circadian and homeostatic sleep-wake promoting signals. Chronotypes thus constitute a unique tool to access the interplay between those processes under normally entrained day-night conditions, and to investigate how they impinge onto higher cognitive control processes. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we assessed the influence of chronotype and time-of-day on conflict processing-related cerebral activity throughout a normal waking day. Sixteen morning and 15 evening types were recorded at two individually adapted time points (1.5 versus 10.5 hours spent awake) while performing the Stroop paradigm. Results show that interference-related hemodynamic responses are maintained or even increased in evening types from the subjective morning to the subjective evening in a set of brain areas playing a pivotal role in successful inhibitory functioning, whereas they decreased in morning types under the same conditions. Furthermore, during the evening hours, activity in a posterior hypothalamic region putatively involved in sleep-wake regulation correlated in a chronotype-specific manner with slow wave activity at the beginning of the night, an index of accumulated homeostatic sleep pressure. These results shed light into the cerebral mechanisms underlying inter-individual differences of higher-order cognitive state maintenance under normally entrained day-night conditions.	\N	\N
22238852	An analysis of psychological well-being (self-esteem and subjective vitality) of 639 Spanish university students was performed, while accounting for the amount of leisure-time physical activity. The Spanish versions of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and Subjective Vitality Scale were employed. Participants were divided into four groups (Low, Moderate, High, and Very high) depending on estimation of energy expenditure in leisure-time physical activity. Men and women having higher physical activity rated higher mean subjective vitality; however, differences in self-esteem were observed only in men, specifically between Very high and the other physical activity groups.	\N	\N
22238854	Summary.-Images of pleasant scenes usually produce increased activity over the zygomaticus major muscie, as measured by electromyography (EMG), while less activity is elicited by unpleasant images. However, increases in zygomaticus major EMG activity while viewing unpleasant images have occasionally been reported in the literature on affective facial expression (i.e., "grimacing"). To examine the possibility that individual differences in emotion regulation might be responsible for this inconsistently observed phenomenon, the habitual emotion regulation tendencies of 63 participants (32 women) were assessed and categorized according to their regulatory tendencies. Participants viewed emotionally salient images while zygomaticus major EMG activity was recorded. Participants also provided self-report ratings of their experienced emotional valence and arousal while viewing the pictures. Despite demonstrating intact affective ratings, the "grimacing" pattern of zygomaticus major activity was observed in those who were less likely to use the cognitive reappraisal strategy to regulate their emotions.	\N	\N
22239962	In a modified reflexive spatial attention paradigm, when the cue and the target are at the same spatial location, processing of the target is faster when the cue and the target have different shapes compared to same (shape effect). Recent physiological findings suggest distinct population level encoding of shape in ventral versus dorsal cortical visual streams in monkeys. In human observers, we tested whether the effect of shape on reflexive spatial attention could be attributed to ventral and/or dorsal stream encoding of shape. In the modified reflexive spatial attention paradigm, we varied the shapes of the cue and target. Based on data from monkey physiology (Lehky & Sereno, 2007), we selected four pairs of cue and target shapes. In some pairs, cue and target were similarly encoded (similar encoding distance) by a population of cells in the lateral intraparietal cortex, a dorsal stream area, but more dissimilarly encoded (having a greater encoding distance) by a population of cells in the anterior inferotemporal cortex (AIT), a ventral stream area. In other pairs, cue and target were similarly encoded in AIT and had greater dissimilarity in LIP encoding. We found that pairs of cue and target with greater dissimilarity in LIP encoding produced larger and more consistent shape effects up to a cue to target onset asynchrony (CTOA) of 450 ms. The shape effects for cue and target pairs with greater dissimilarity in AIT encoding were smaller and inconsistent, suggesting that shape effects in reflexive spatial attention are largely driven by the dorsal stream.	\N	\N
22245090	In this paper, a rule-based automatic sleep staging method was proposed. Twelve features including temporal and spectrum analyses of the EEG, EOG, and EMG signals were utilized. Normalization was applied to each feature to eliminating individual differences. A hierarchical decision tree with fourteen rules was constructed for sleep stage classification. Finally, a smoothing process considering the temporal contextual information was applied for the continuity. The overall agreement and kappa coefficient of the proposed method applied to the all night polysomnography (PSG) of seventeen healthy subjects compared with the manual scorings by R&K rules can reach 86.68% and 0.79, respectively. This method can integrate with portable PSG system for sleep evaluation at-home in the near future.	\N	\N
22250914	There is converging evidence that the feeling of conscious recollection is usually accompanied by the bound retrieval of context features of the encoding episode (e.g., Meiser, Sattler, & Weiβer, 2008). Recently, however, important limiting conditions have been identified for the binding between context features in memory. For example, focusing on the semantics of the stimuli during encoding eliminates binding between perceptual context features (Meiser & Sattler, 2007). In the present research, we investigated the interplay of the focus of attention during encoding and stimulus characteristics in context-context binding. In particular, it has been suggested that context features differ in the degree to which they can be regarded as intrinsic or extrinsic to the items and that intrinsic features might be given more attentional processing during encoding than extrinsic features (e.g., Ecker, Zimmer, & Groh-Bordin, 2007a). In two experiments, we manipulated the "intrinsicality" of context features to investigate whether context-context binding might be limited to features that are in the focus of processing. Multinomial modeling analyses revealed that while context-context binding was eliminated for incidentally processed extrinsic context features (Experiment 1), it was preserved for intentionally processed extrinsic context features (Experiment 2).	\N	\N
22251291	Previous research has established that infants are unable to perceive causality until 6¼ months of age. The current experiments examined whether infants' ability to engage in causal action could facilitate causal perception prior to this age. In Experiment 1, 4½-month-olds were randomly assigned to engage in causal action experience via Velcro sticky mittens or not engage in causal action because they wore non-sticky mittens. Both groups were then tested in the visual habituation paradigm to assess their causal perception. Infants who engaged in causal action - but not those without this causal action experience - perceived the habituation events as causal. Experiment 2 used a similar design to establish that 4½-month-olds are unable to generalize their own causal action to causality observed in dissimilar objects. These data are the first to demonstrate that infants under 6 months of age can perceive causality, and have implications for the mechanisms underlying the development of causal perception.	\N	\N
22251308	Examine age group effects and sex differences by applying a comprehensive computerized battery of identical behavioral measures linked to brain systems in youths that were already genotyped. Such information is needed to incorporate behavioral data as neuropsychological "biomarkers" in large-scale genomic studies. We developed and applied a brief computerized neurocognitive battery that provides measures of performance accuracy and response time for executive-control, episodic memory, complex cognition, social cognition, and sensorimotor speed domains. We tested a population-based sample of 3,500 genotyped youths ages 8-21 years. Substantial improvement with age occurred for both accuracy and speed, but the rates varied by domain. The most pronounced improvement was noted in executive control functions, specifically attention, and in motor speed, with some effect sizes exceeding 1.8 standard deviation units. The least pronounced age group effect was in memory, where only face memory showed a large effect size on improved accuracy. Sex differences had much smaller effect sizes but were evident, with females outperforming males on attention, word and face memory, reasoning speed, and all social cognition tests and males outperforming females in spatial processing and sensorimotor and motor speed. These sex differences in most domains were seen already at the youngest age groups, and age group × sex interactions indicated divergence at the oldest groups with females becoming faster but less accurate than males. The results indicate that cognitive performance improves substantially in this age span, with large effect sizes that differ by domain. The more pronounced improvement for executive and reasoning domains than for memory suggests that memory capacities have reached their apex before age 8. Performance was sexually modulated and most sex differences were apparent by early adolescence.	\N	\N
22256888	This study examined the test-retest reliability of executive function tasks in preschool children. Measures of working memory, response inhibition, attentional flexibility, and planning were administered to thirty three preschool children between the ages of 36 and 72 months (M = 54.75 months) on two testing occasions approximately three weeks apart (M interval = 21.64 days). Working memory tasks showed higher test-retest reliability than measures of response inhibition. There were significant practice effects on three measures of complex working memory. Implications of these findings for the assessment of executive function in preschool children are discussed.	\N	\N
22259184	In two experiments, we examined the ability of task-irrelevant changes in luminance to capture attention in an irrelevant singleton search. By using uniform increment and decrement arrays, we were able to create changes of the same absolute magnitude, but resulting in a singleton with either higher or lower contrast magnitude, relative to other elements in the search array. A condition where a singleton changed contrast polarity without a concomitant change in the overall contrast magnitude was also included. It was found that only luminance changes resulting in a singleton having increased contrast (or saliency) were effective in capturing attention. In addition, no attentional capture was observed when the irrelevant singleton was characterized by the equivalent amount of static luminance differences, suggesting a unique attentional prioritization of luminance changes that increase singleton saliency.	\N	\N
22264198	The discovery of mirror neurons-neurons that code specific actions both when executed and observed-in area F5 of the macaque provides a potential neural mechanism underlying action understanding. To date, neuroimaging evidence for similar coding of specific actions across the visual and motor modalities in human ventral premotor cortex (PMv)-the putative homologue of macaque F5-is limited to the case of actions observed from a first-person perspective. However, it is the third-person perspective that figures centrally in our understanding of the actions and intentions of others. To address this gap in the literature, we scanned participants with fMRI while they viewed two actions from either a first- or third-person perspective during some trials and executed the same actions during other trials. Using multivoxel pattern analysis, we found action-specific cross-modal visual-motor representations in PMv for the first-person but not for the third-person perspective. Additional analyses showed no evidence for spatial or attentional differences across the two perspective conditions. In contrast, more posterior areas in the parietal and occipitotemporal cortex did show cross-modal coding regardless of perspective. These findings point to a stronger role for these latter regions, relative to PMv, in supporting the understanding of others' actions with reference to one's own actions.	\N	\N
22265727	We investigated response activation and suppression processes in Parkinson's disease patients with freezing of gait (FOG). Fourteen freezers, 14 nonfreezers, and 14 matched healthy controls performed the attention network task (ANT) and the Stroop task. The former task has more stimulus-response overlap and is expected to elicit stronger irrelevant response activation, requiring more inhibition. Congruency effects were used as a general measure of conflict resolution. Supplementary reaction time (RT) distribution analyses were utilized to calculate conditional accuracy functions (CAFs) and delta plots to measure response activation and suppression processes. In agreement with previous research, freezers showed a general conflict resolution deficit compared with nonfreezers and healthy controls. Moreover, CAFs pointed to a strong initial incorrect response activation in FOG. As expected, conflict resolution impairment was only apparent in the ANT, and not in the Stroop task. These results suggest an imbalance between automatic and controlled processes in FOG, leading to a breakdown in both motor and cognitive response control.	\N	\N
22266073	Cognitive theories of anxiety postulate that negative processing biases play a causal role in the pathogenesis of a disorder, while a normalisation of bias drives recovery. To test these assumptions it is essential to investigate whether biases seen in anxiety are treatment-sensitive, or whether they instead represent enduring vulnerability factors. Twenty-nine spider fearfuls were tested before and after brief cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT), with half of them additionally being tested before a waiting period to control for retest effects. Using three cognitive bias tasks, we measured implicit threat evaluation (Extrinsic Affective Simon Task), avoidance tendency (Approach-Avoidance Task), and working memory for threat. CBT significantly enhanced negative implicit evaluation and avoidance. This indicates that these cognitive biases are no stable risk factors and provides further evidence for their potential key role in the development and remission of anxiety.	\N	\N
22266110	A current controversy exists about the relationship between spatial attention and conscious perception. While some authors propose that these phenomena are intimately related (Bartolomeo, 2008; Chun & Marois, 2002; O'Regan & Noë, 2001; Posner, 1994), others report dissociations between them (Kentridge et al., 1999; Koch & Tsuchiya, 2007; Wyart & Tallon-Baudry, 2008). However, spatial attention is not a unitary mechanism, and it is possible that not all forms of attention dissociate from conscious perception. In the present study we used a paradigm in which endogenous and exogenous forms of attention are orthogonally manipulated in order to investigate their relation with conscious perception within the same design. By analyzing two different cue-related components, our results demonstrated that while endogenous attention was electrophysiologically dissociated from conscious perception, exogenous attention was not, consistent with the hypothesis that exogenous attention is an important antecedent of our conscious experience. Our results support previous claims of dissociations between some forms of spatial attention and conscious perception, but also highlight the importance of exogenous orienting on the selection of information for conscious access.	\N	\N
22266172	We present a history of the concepts and developments that have led us to focus on the resting state as an object of study. We then discuss resting state research performed in our laboratory since 2005 with an emphasis on papers of particular interest.	\N	\N
22267203	In vivo translational imaging techniques, such as positron emission tomography and single-photon emission-computed tomography, are the only ways to adequately determine that a drug engages its target. Unfortunately, there are far more experimental mechanisms being tested in the clinic than there are radioligands, impeding the use of this risk-mitigating approach in modern drug discovery and development. Pharmacological magnetic resonance imaging (phMRI) offers an approach for developing new biomarkers with the potential to determine central activity and dose selection in animals and humans. Using phMRI, we characterized the effects of xanomeline on ketamine-induced activation on blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal. In the present studies, xanomeline alone dose-dependently increased the BOLD signal across several regions of interest, including association and motor and sensory cortical regions. It is noteworthy that xanomeline dose-dependently attenuated ketamine-induced brain activation patterns, effects that were antagonized by atropine. In conclusion, the muscarinic 1/4-preferring receptor agonist xanomeline suppressed the effects of the N-methyl-D-aspartate channel blocker ketamine in a number of brain regions, including the association cortex, motor cortex, and primary sensory cortices. The region-specific brain activation observed in this ketamine challenge phMRI study may provide a method of confirming central activity and dose selection for novel antipsychotic drugs in early clinical trials for schizophrenia, if the data obtained in animals can be recapitulated in humans.	\N	\N
22268914	Research with the maintenance-rehearsal paradigm, in which word pairs are rehearsed as distractor material during a series of digit recall trials, has previously indicated that low frequency and new word pairs capture attention to a greater degree than high frequency and old word pairs. This impacts delayed recognition of the pairs and interferes with immediate digit recall. The effect on immediate digit recall may provide the missing converging evidence for the role of attention in memory. In the current study, 3 experiments were conducted to further investigate the role of attention capture and novelty in storage and forgetting. In addition to the previously established effects, the novelty of switching rehearsal between 2 pairs was found to impair both digit recall and memory for the first pair. The attentional effects we obtained were dependent upon participant expectation, and forgetting appears to be due to interference with consolidation rather than decay or traditional associative interference. Finally, the attentional effects we observed in associative recognition were primarily reflected in a lowering of the false alarm rate with increases in the strength of the parent pairs. Although dual-process models can accommodate this finding on the assumption that recollection is invoked at test alongside familiarity, we showed that the level of recall in this paradigm is so small that recollection can be ruled out. Accordingly, our results are challenging for the existing models of associative recognition to accommodate.	\N	\N
22269546	Worldwide, both brake lamps and tail lamps on motor vehicles are required to be red. Previous studies have not examined the effect of this confound in a complex, high-traffic scenario in a driving simulator or on visuomotor behavior. In the first experiment, drivers detected brake lamps on nine lead vehicles and lane changes on two rear vehicles in a 15 min simulated night time highway drive. A second experiment was used to examine the findings in the context of pre-attentive visual processing research. A third experiment analyzed visuomotor behavior and subjective workload during a vigilance task to further evaluate this hypothesis. For all studies, tail lamp color was manipulated, resulting in two conditions: the currently mandated red tail lamps and red brake lamps vs. yellow tail lamps and red brake lamps. Compared to current rear lighting, employing yellow tail lamps with red brake lamps reduced RT, error, subjective workload, improved performance in detecting lane changes and also changed visuomotor behavior. It is suggested that the mechanism allowing better performance is pre-attentive, parallel visual processing.	\N	\N
22276405	This experiment was designed to investigate whether and how decreasing the amount of attentional focus invested in postural control could affect bipedal postural control. Twelve participants were asked to stand upright as immobile as possible on a force platform in one control condition and one cognitive condition. In the latter condition, they performed a short-term digit-span memory task. Decreased center-of-gravity displacements and decreased center-of-foot-pressure displacements minus center-of-gravity displacements were observed in the cognitive condition relative to the control condition. These results suggest that shifting the attentional focus away from postural control by executing a concurrent attention-demanding task could increase postural performance and postural efficiency.	\N	\N
22277309	A growing body of literature investigating the neural correlates of emotion word processing has emerged in recent years. Written words have been shown to represent a suitable means to study emotion processing and most importantly to address the distinct and interactive contributions of the two dimensions of emotion: valence and arousal. The aim of the present review is to integrate findings from electrophysiological (ERP) and hemodynamic neuroimaging (fMRI) studies in order to provide a better understanding of emotion word processing. It provides an up-to-date review of recent ERP studies since the review by Kissler et al. (2006) as well as the first review of hemodynamic brain imaging studies in the field. A discussion of theoretical and methodological issues is also presented, along with suggestions for future research.	\N	\N
22278094	The intranasal application of oxytocin (OT) has been shown to influence behavioral and neural correlates of social processing. These effects are probably mediated by genetic variations within the OT system. One potential candidate could be the CD38 gene, which codes for a transmembrane protein engaged in OT secretion processes. A common variation in this gene (rs3796863) was recently found to be associated with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Using an imaging genetics approach, we studied differential effects of an intranasal OT application on neural processing of social stimuli in 55 healthy young men depending on their CD38 gene variant in a double-blind placebo-controlled crossover design. Genotype had a significant influence on both behavioral and neuronal measures of social processing. Homozygotic risk allele carriers showed slower reaction times (RT) and higher activation of left fusiform gyrus during visual processing of social stimuli. Under OT activation differences between genotypes were more evident (though not statistically significantly increased) and RT were accelerated in homozygotic risk allele carriers. According to our data, rs3796863 mainly influences fusiform gyrus activation, an area which has been widely discussed in ASD research. OT seems to modulate this effect by enhancing activation differences between allele groups, which suggests an interaction between genetic makeup and OT availability on fusiform gyrus activation. These results support recent approaches to apply OT as a pharmacological treatment of ASD symptoms.	\N	\N
22290697	ADHD has been linked to various constructs, yet there is a lack of focus on how its symptom clusters differentially associate with personality, which this study addresses. The current study examines the relationship between impulsive and inattentive ADHD traits and personality, indexed by the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-III), in a sample of undergraduates. Impulsivity was associated with NEO-PI-R and MCMI-III traits characterized by emotional distress, interpersonal problems, and disruptive behavior, whereas inattention was associated only with focus-oriented constructs. ADHD-related inattention is a relatively modest predictor of personality traits, as compared with hyperactivity-impulsivity. These findings have implications regarding the distinctiveness and etiology of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text rev.; DSM-IV-TR) ADHD types.	\N	\N
22291031	Head movement imposes the additional burdens on the visual system of maintaining visual acuity and determining the origin of retinal image motion (i.e., self-motion vs. object-motion). Although maintaining visual acuity during self-motion is effected by minimizing retinal slip via the brainstem vestibular-ocular reflex, higher order visuovestibular mechanisms also contribute. Disambiguating self-motion versus object-motion also invokes higher order mechanisms, and a cortical visuovestibular reciprocal antagonism is propounded. Hence, one prediction is of a vestibular modulation of visual cortical excitability and indirect measures have variously suggested none, focal or global effects of activation or suppression in human visual cortex. Using transcranial magnetic stimulation-induced phosphenes to probe cortical excitability, we observed decreased V5/MT excitability versus increased early visual cortex (EVC) excitability, during vestibular activation. In order to exclude nonspecific effects (e.g., arousal) on cortical excitability, response specificity was assessed using information theory, specifically response entropy. Vestibular activation significantly modulated phosphene response entropy for V5/MT but not EVC, implying a specific vestibular effect on V5/MT responses. This is the first demonstration that vestibular activation modulates human visual cortex excitability. Furthermore, using information theory, not previously used in phosphene response analysis, we could distinguish between a specific vestibular modulation of V5/MT excitability from a nonspecific effect at EVC.	\N	\N
22292831	Auditory discrimination, memory, and attention-related functions were investigated in healthy 2-3-year-olds by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) to changes in five auditory features and two types of novel sounds using the fast multifeature paradigm (MFP). ERP profiles consisting of the mismatch negativity (MMN), P3a, and prominent late discriminative negativities (LDN) were obtained, for the first time, from this age group in a considerably shorter time compared to the traditional paradigms. Statistically significant responses from individual children were obtained mainly for the novel sounds. Thus, the MFP shows promise as a time-efficient paradigm for investigating central auditory functions in toddlers.	\N	\N
22292917	The ability to make accurate judgments and execute effective skilled movements under severe temporal constraints are fundamental to elite performance in a number of domains including sport, military combat, law enforcement, and medicine. In two experiments, we examine the effect of stimulus strength on response time and accuracy in a temporally constrained, real-world, decision-making task. Specifically, we examine the effect of low stimulus intensity (black) and high stimulus intensity (sequin) uniform designs, worn by teammates, to determine the effect of stimulus strength on the ability of soccer players to make rapid and accurate responses. In both field- and laboratory-based scenarios, professional soccer players viewed developing patterns of play and were required to make a penetrative pass to an attacking player. Significant differences in response accuracy between uniform designs were reported in laboratory- and field-based experiments. Response accuracy was significantly higher in the sequin compared with the black uniform condition. Response times only differed between uniform designs in the laboratory-based experiment. These findings extend the literature into a real-world environment and have significant implications for the design of clothing wear in a number of domains.	\N	\N
22293586	Hypothalamic orexin neurons are known to regulate sleep/wake stability, feeding behavior, emotions, autonomic nerve activity, and whole-body energy metabolism. In addition, emerging evidence indicates that orexin contributes to central regulation of glucose homeostasis. Intriguingly, central administration of orexin is reported to cause blood glucose-elevating effect or blood glucose-lowering effect in rodents, depending on the experimental conditions. Here we reviewed the recent reports regarding the mode and mechanism of actions of orexin on these two opposing effects, and discuss the functional significance for the maintenance of glucose homeostasis. The fact that orexin exhibits biphasic effects on autonomic nerve activity and lipolysis suggests that orexin dually regulates the glucose appearance. In fact, orexin neurons are activated not only depending on the demand for glucose but also according to a circadian rhythm in the suprachiasmatic nucleus. The excited orexin neurons appear to alter the sympathetic or parasympathetic outflow to the periphery, and modulate the glucose production and utilization. Furthermore, deficiency of orexin action, particularly reduction of orexin 2 receptor-signaling, disrupts the mechanism for protection against insulin resistance associated with aging or induced by chronic high fat feeding in mice. Taken together, hypothalamic orexin system may manage multiple tasks to coordinate the interconnection among the arousal, feeding, circadian, and glucose homeostasis pathways.	\N	\N
22294809	The Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT) is a widely used assay of behavioral alertness sensitive to the effects of sleep loss and circadian misalignment. The standard 10-minute duration of the PVT is often considered impractical for operational or clinical environments. Therefore, we developed and validated an adaptive-duration version of the PVT (PVT-A) that stops sampling once it has gathered enough information to correctly classify PVT performance. Repeated-measures experiments involving 10-minute PVT assessments every 2 hours across both acute total sleep deprivation (TSD) and 5 days of chronic partial sleep deprivation (PSD). Controlled laboratory environment. Seventy-four healthy subjects (34 women), aged 22 to 45 years. A TSD experiment involving 33 hours awake (n = 31 subjects), and a PSD experiment involving 5 nights of 4 hours time in bed (n = 43 subjects). The PVT-A algorithm was trained with 527 TSD test bouts and validated with 880 PSD test bouts. Based on our primary outcome measure "number of lapses (response times ≥ 500 ms) plus false starts (premature responses or response times < 100 ms)," 10-minute PVT performance was classified into high (≤ 5 lapses and false starts), medium (> 5 and ≤ 16 lapses and false starts), or low (> 16 lapses and false starts). The decision threshold for PVT-A termination was set so that at least 95% of training data-set tests were classified correctly and no test was classified incorrectly across 2 performance categories (i.e., high as low or low as high), resulting in an average test duration of 6.0 minutes (SD 2.4 min). In the validation data set, 95.7% of test bouts were correctly classified, and there were no incorrect classifications across 2 categories. Agreement corrected for chance was excellent (κ = 0.92). Across the 3 performance categories, sensitivity averaged 93.7% (range 87.2%-100%), and specificity averaged 96.8% (range 91.6%-99.9%). Test duration averaged 6.4 minutes (SD 1.7 min), with a minimum of 27 seconds. We developed and validated a highly accurate, sensitive, and specific adaptive-duration version of the 10-minute PVT. Test duration of the adaptive PVT averaged less than 6.5 minutes, with 60 tests (4.3%) terminating after less than 2 minutes, increasing the practicability of the test in operational and clinical settings. The adaptive-duration strategy may be superior to a simple reduction of PVT duration in which the fixed test duration may be too short to identify subjects with moderate impairment (showing deficits only later during the test) but unnecessarily long for those who are either fully alert or severely impaired.	\N	\N
22306518	Spatial attention and eye-movements are tightly coupled, but the precise nature of this coupling is controversial. The influential but controversial Premotor theory of attention makes four specific predictions about the relationship between motor preparation and spatial attention. Firstly, spatial attention and motor preparation use the same neural substrates. Secondly, spatial attention is functionally equivalent to planning goal directed actions such as eye-movements (i.e. planning an action is both necessary and sufficient for a shift of spatial attention). Thirdly, planning a goal directed action with any effector system is sufficient to trigger a shift of spatial attention. Fourthly, the eye-movement system has a privileged role in orienting visual spatial attention. This article reviews empirical studies that have tested these predictions. Contrary to predictions one and two there is evidence of anatomical and functional dissociations between endogenous spatial attention and motor preparation. However, there is compelling evidence that exogenous attention is reliant on activation of the oculomotor system. With respect to the third prediction, there is correlational evidence that spatial attention is directed to the endpoint of goal-directed actions but no direct evidence that this attention shift is dependent on motor preparation. The few studies to have directly tested the fourth prediction have produced conflicting results, so the extent to which the oculomotor system has a privileged role in spatial attention remains unclear. Overall, the evidence is not consistent with the view that spatial attention is functionally equivalent to motor preparation so the Premotor theory should be rejected, although a limited version of the Premotor theory in which only exogenous attention is dependent on motor preparation may still be tenable. A plausible alternative account is that activity in the motor system contributes to biased competition between different sensory representations with the winner of the competition becoming the attended item.	\N	\N
22307939	Inhibition of return (IOR) is thought to reflect inhibition of previously attended but irrelevant stimuli. Deficient IOR would increase the likelihood of revisiting previously searched locations or objects, thus leading to unproductive perseverations. Therefore, using a novel IOR task, we investigated whether high scoring checkers attentional biases to threat would result in dysfunctional inhibitory functioning compared to low checkers. In two tasks, we compared 53 subclinical high and 49 low checkers regarding IOR effects for stimuli that were concordant with the concerns of high but not of low checkers (electrical kitchen appliances: e.g., toaster, kettle). The difference between the two tasks was the cueing procedure. In one task, an appliance was switched "ON" and "OFF" as an unpredictive cue, drawing attention to the functionality of the stimulus. In this task, IOR was specifically attenuated in high checkers. In the other task, however, the cue was more abstract in form of a yellow outline that appeared around one of two appliances. Although the appliance was either "ON" or "OFF," this did not seem to matter and high checkers revealed a typical IOR pattern similar to low checkers. We conclude that IOR mechanisms might not be generally deficient in high checkers; rather only when attention is drawn to the threatening aspects of ecologically valid stimuli, then disengagement of attention is deficient in high checkers. We make suggestions on how our task-specific findings may inform cognitive interventions that target attentional control in the treatment of checking/obsessive-compulsive disorder.	\N	\N
22309824	Maternal stress during pregnancy has been repeatedly associated with problematic child development. According to the fetal programming hypothesis adverse experiences during pregnancy increase maternal cortisol, which is then assumed to exert a negative effect on fetal development. Recent studies in non-pregnant women report significant associations between positive emotionality and low cortisol levels. We tested in a sample of 60 pregnant women whether both negative and positive life events independently predicted third-trimester baseline awakening cortisol levels. While the effect of negative life events proved unrelated positive life events significantly predicted lower cortisol levels. These findings suggest that positive experiences are of relevance regarding maternal morning cortisol levels in pregnancy reflecting a resource with potentially beneficial effects for the mother and the developing fetus. It might be promising for psychological intervention programs to focus on increasing positive experiences of the expecting mother rather than exclusively trying to reduce maternal stress during pregnancy.	\N	\N
22311202	Emotion-eliciting films are commonly used to evoke subjective emotional responses in experimental settings. The main aim of the present study was to investigate whether a set of film clips with discrete emotions were capable to elicit measurable objective physiological responses. The convergence between subjective and objective measures was evaluated. Finally, the effect of gender on emotional responses was investigated. A sample of 123 subjects participated in the study. Individuals were asked to view a set of emotional film clips capable to induce seven emotions: anger, fear, sadness, disgust, amusement, tenderness and neutral state. Skin conductance level (SCL), heart rate (HR) and subjective emotional responses were measured for each film clip. In comparison with neutral films, SCL was significantly increased after viewing fear films, and HR was also significantly incremented for anger and fear films. Physiological variations were associated with arousal measures indicating a convergence between subjective and objective reactions. Women appeared to display significantly greater SCL and HR responses for films inducing sadness. The findings suggest that physiological activation would be more easily induced by emotion-eliciting films that tap into emotions with higher subjective arousal such as anger and fear.	\N	\N
22313064	There has been no research performed concerning the effects of the use of laptops and smartphones in the operating theatre on anaesthetist performance, yet these devices are now in frequent use. This article explores the implications of this phenomenon. The cognitive and environmental factors that support or detract from vigilance and multi-tasking are explored and core anaesthetic literature on the nature of anaesthetic work and operating theatre distractions is reviewed. Experienced anaesthetists are skilled at multi-tasking while maintaining situational awareness, but there are limits. Noise, interruptions and emotional arousal are detrimental to the cognitive performance of anaesthetists. While limited reading during periods of low task load may not reduce vigilance, computer use introduces text-based activities that are more interactive and potentially more distracting. All anaesthetists need to be mindful of the limits to the human attention span which requires observation and limiting distractions. Trainees have less experience and less 'attentional' safety margin, so should avoid adding additional distractions such as discretionary use of laptops or smartphones to their operating theatre work. We provide recommendations for future research on the specific advantages and disadvantages of pervasive computing in the operative theatre.	\N	\N
22317652	This paper presents an analysis of cognitive-ergonomic aspects of e-learning courses, offered by an organism from Brazilian Public Administration. The Cognitive Ergonomic studies conductive and cognitive aspects concerning to the relation between human, physics elements and social elements of the work space. From that usability aspects were evaluated by these points: i) visualization; ii) text comprehension lecture; iii) memory; iv) interface; v) instructional design; and vi) attention and learning. That survey is characterized as having been applied using the following techniques: (1) bibliographic survey, (2) field survey and (3) analysis of the documents. It was chosen the semi-structured questionnaire as the main method of data collection. About the interacting with artifacts, the interface of the courses is classified as direct engagement, because it allows the user to get the feeling that acts directly on the objects. Although the courses are well-structured they have flaws that will be discussed below. Even with these problems, the courses have a good degree of usability.	\N	\N
22318206	Several studies have demonstrated that one exercise session (ES) on a cycloergometer or ergometric treadmill causes a reduction in blood pressure (BP). However, there are few similar studies on walking, which is the exercise modality most available to the elderly. We investigated the immediate and 24-h effects of walking on BP in independent, community-living elderly individuals. Volunteers participated in a single ES and resting control session (CS). Before and after each session, BP was measured by auscultatory and oscillometric methods. After each session, 24-h ambulatory blood pressure monitoring was conducted. An accelerometer was installed 48 h before the sessions and left in place for 5 days. The mean volunteer age was 67.7±3.5 years; 11 were hypertensive patients under treatment, and 12 were normotensive. In the total sample, there were immediate 14mm Hg and 12 mm Hg reductions in systolic BP (SBP) after the ES according to the auscultatory and oscillometric methods, respectively. Diastolic BP (DBP) was reduced by 4 mm Hg after the ES according to both methods. SBP during wakefulness and sleep and DBP during wakefulness were lower after the ES than after the CS (P<0.01), when wakefulness and sleep were determined individually (variable-time pattern) using data from the activity monitors and provided by the volunteers. The variable-time pattern was more effective in detecting reductions in BP than the fixed-time pattern.	\N	\N
22332788	Many cognitive neuroscience studies show that the ability to attend to and identify global or local information is lateralised between the two hemispheres in the human brain; the left hemisphere is biased towards the local level, whereas the right hemisphere is biased towards the global level. Results of two studies show attention-focused people with a right ear preference (biased towards the left hemisphere) are better at local tasks, whereas people with a left ear preference (biased towards the right hemisphere) are better at more global tasks. In a third study we determined if right hemisphere-biased followers who attend to global stimuli are likely to have a stronger relationship between attention and globally based supervisor ratings of performance. Results provide evidence in support of this hypothesis. Our research supports our model and suggests that the interaction between attention and lateral preference is an important and novel predictor of work-related outcomes.	\N	\N
22348638	This commentary highlights some recent trends in sex research that have particular relevance for research on condom use, including studies investigating the meaning of sexual arousal, desire and pleasure; a focus on couple-level investigations; and the relevance of individual differences and personality characteristics to sexual risk-taking. Although historically, sexuality-related issues have received little systematic attention in the field of public health, researchers are now paying more attention to the role of pleasure and sexual arousal in condom use. It is argued that a better integration of findings from the area of sex research into the HIV and sexually transmissible infection (STI) field is needed to develop and improve programs to reduce the risk of STIs and unintended pregnancy.	\N	\N
22354708	The main purpose of this eye tracking study was to map the correlates of gaze performance in a brief test of spontaneous gaze and point-gesture following in young children with autistic disorder (AD), Pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS), or typical development (TD). Gaze measures included the children's spontaneous tendency to look at the correct (attended) toy, and the latency of their correct responses. In addition to group differences (AD vs. TD), we found that in AD, accuracy of performance was specifically related to adaptive communication skills. The study also indicated that the latency of correct gaze shifts is related to verbal intelligence. These results have direct implications for our understanding of (responsive) joint attention impairments in AD.	\N	\N
22360143	The effects of acoustic confusion (phonological similarity), word length, and concurrent articulation (articulatory suppression) are cited as support for Working Memory's phonological loop component (e.g., Baddeley, 2000 , Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 7, 544). Research has focused on younger adults, with no studies examining whether concurrent articulation reduces the word length and acoustic confusion effects among older adults. In the current study, younger and older adults were given lists of similar and dissimilar letters (Experiment 1) or long and short words (Experiment 2) for immediate serial reconstruction of order. Items were presented visually or auditorily, with or without concurrent articulation. As expected, younger and older adults demonstrated effects of acoustic confusion, word length, and concurrent articulation. Further, concurrent articulation reduced the effects of acoustic confusion and word length equally for younger and older adults. This suggests that age-related differences occur in overall performance, but do not reflect an age-related deficiency in the functioning of the phonological loop component of working memory.	\N	\N
22363538	Primary monosymptomatic nocturnal enuresis (PMNE) is a common disorder in school-aged children. Previous studies have suggested that a developmental delay might play a role in the pathology of children with PMNE. However, microstructural abnormalities in the brains of these children have not been thoroughly investigated. In this work, we evaluated structural changes in the brains of children with PMNE using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Two groups consisting of 26 children with PMNE and 26 healthy controls were scanned using magnetic resonance DTI. The diffusion parameters of fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) were subjected to whole-brain, voxel-wise group comparisons using statistical parametric mapping (SPM). When compared to healthy subjects, children with PMNE showed both a decrease in FA and an increase in MD in the thalamus. MD also increased in the frontal lobe, the anterior cingulate cortex and the insula; these areas are all involved in controlling micturition. The significant changes seen in the thalamus could affect both urine storage and arousal from sleep. The microstructure abnormalities were observed in the thalamus, the medial frontal gyrus, the anterior cingulate cortex and the insula, which are involved in micturition control network. This indicates developmental delay in these areas may be the cause of PMNE.	\N	\N
22372566	This study examined the effect of the processing demands of to-be-remembered (TBR) words on item-method directed forgetting. Experiment 1 found that a standard memory group remembered fewer to-be-forgotten (TBF) words than a naming group, in which participants simply named the TBR words during the study phase, even though both groups were equally instructed to forget the TBF words. Experiment 2 manipulated the number of TBR words in the study list, keeping the number of TBF words constant, and found that TBF word forgetting was more difficult in the few TBR words condition than the more TBR words condition. The same pattern was found in the result of Experiment 3 when a cued recall test, instead of a free recall test, was used. In all the experiments, participants were asked to recall the TBF words before the TBR words. These findings are consistent with the cognitive load hypothesis that it is easier to forget when there are fewer cognitive resources available during encoding.	\N	\N
22380663	The tendency to express emotions non-verbally is positively related to perception of emotions in oneself. This study examined its relationship to perception of emotions in others. In 40 healthy adults, EEG theta synchronization was used to indicate emotion processing following presentation of happy, angry, and neutral faces. Both positive and negative expressiveness were associated with higher emotional sensitivity, as shown by cortical responses to facial expressions during the early, unconscious processing stage. At the late, conscious processing stage, positive expressiveness was associated with higher sensitivity to happy faces but lower sensitivity to angry faces. Thus, positive expressiveness predisposes people to allocate fewer attentional resources for conscious perception of angry faces. In contrast, negative expressiveness was consistently associated with higher sensitivity. The effects of positive expressiveness occurred in cortical areas that deal with emotions, but the effects of negative expressiveness occurred in areas engaged in self-referential processes in the context of social relationships.	\N	\N
22390290	Voluntary shifts of attention are often motivated in experimental contexts by using well-known symbols that accurately predict the direction of targets. The authors report 3 experiments, which showed that the presentation of predictive spatial information does not provide sufficient incentive to elicit voluntary shifts of attention. For instance, when allowed to spontaneously choose between using a 100%-valid spatial word cue versus searching without the aid of the cue, observers consistently searched for a unique target without the aid of the cue. Another experiment showed that observers' choice to use spatial word cues could be biased by providing dedicated time to process the cue before the target display appeared (i.e., nonzero, cue-target SOAs). Although this dedicated processing time has routinely been included in spatial cuing experiments, its incentive-inducing role has never been acknowledged. Implications for theories of both voluntary and involuntary control are discussed.	\N	\N
22390708	Although biased attention to emotional stimuli is considered a vulnerability factor for anxiety and dysphoria, research has infrequently related such attentional biases to dimensional models of vulnerability for anxiety and mood disorders. In two studies (Study 1, n = 64; Study 2, n = 168), we evaluate the differential associations of general negative affectivity, anxiety, and dysphoria with biases in selective attention among nonclinical participants selected to vary in both anxiety and dysphoria. Across both studies, preferential processing of angry faces at a 300-ms exposure duration was associated with a general tendency to experience a range of negative affect, rather than being specific to symptoms of either anxiety or dysphoria. In the second study, we found evidence of a suppressor relationship between anxiety and dysphoria in the prediction of delayed attentional biases (1,000 ms) for sad faces. In particular, dysphoria was specifically associated with biased attention toward sad cues, but only after statistically accounting for anxiety; by contrast, anxiety was specifically associated with attentional avoidance of sad cues, but only after statistically accounting for dysphoria. These results suggest that the specificity of relationships between components of negative affectivity and attention to emotional stimuli varies as a function of the time course at which attentional biases are assessed, highlighting the importance of evaluating both anxiety and dysphoria in research on attentional processing of emotional stimuli.	\N	\N
22390710	This study tested whether a performance stressor characterized by social-evaluative threat (SET) elicits more rumination than a stressor without this explicit evaluative component and whether this difference persists minutes, hours, and days later. The mediating role of shame-related cognition and emotion (SRCE) was also examined. During a laboratory visit, 144 undergraduates (50% female) were randomly assigned to complete a speech stressor in a social-evaluative threat condition (SET; n = 86), in which an audience was present, or a nonexplicit social-evaluative threat condition (ne-SET; n = 58), in which they were alone in a room. Participants completed measures of stressor-related rumination 10 and 40 min posttask, later that night, and upon returning to the laboratory 3-5 days later. SRCE and other emotions experienced during the stressor (fear, anger, and sadness) were assessed immediately posttask. As hypothesized, the SET speech stressor elicited more rumination than the ne-SET speech stressor, and these differences persisted for 3-5 days. SRCE-but not other specific negative emotions or general emotional arousal-mediated the effect of stressor context on rumination. Stressors characterized by SET may be likely candidates for eliciting and maintaining ruminative thought immediately and also days later, potentially by eliciting shame-related emotions and cognitions.	\N	\N
22396120	The ability to estimate the time remaining until collision occurs with an approaching object (time-to-collision, TTC) is crucial for any mobile animal. In the present study, we report three experiments examining whether higher level cognitive factors, represented by affective value of approaching objects, could affect judgments of TTC. A theory of TTC estimates based purely on the optical variable tau does not predict an influence of the affective value of an approaching object. In Experiments 1 and 2, we compared TTC estimates of threatening and neutral pictures that approached our participants on a screen and disappeared from view before a collision would have occurred. Images were taken from the International Affective Picture System. Threatening pictures-in particular, the picture of a frontal attack-were judged to collide earlier than neutral pictures. In Experiment 3, the approaching stimuli were faces with different emotional expressions. TTC tended to be underestimated for angry faces. We discuss these results, considering the roles of affective and cognitive mechanisms modulating TTC estimation and general time perception.	\N	\N
22408336	Sexual activity is an important part of the human being's life but this instinct could be influenced by some factors such as diseases, drug using, aging, and menopause. But information about that is limited. The aim of this study is to determine the status of sexual activity among married menopausal women in Amol, Iran. This descriptive analytical study was conducted to describe the sexual activity and sexual dysfunction of women after menopause. Data were collected from health centers in Amol from 280 married women using a questionnaire (self-completed or by interview). Mean age of subjects were 55.9 ± 6.02 years. 23.4% of subjects reported that their sexual intercourse had been low. 70% of subjects reported a decrease in their sexual activities after menopause. Sexual dysfunctions includes sexual desire disorder 80% arousal dysfunction 80%, orgasmic dysfunction 25%, dyspareunia 55.6%, and lack of sexual satisfaction 43.2%. Findings revealed high percentage of sexual desire disorder and sexual arousal disorder in menopausal women. Therefore, we should have emphasis on counseling and education about sexual activities during the menopause period.	\N	\N
22415562	The overall aim of this study was to examine the relationship between subjective memory complaints and objective cognitive performance in perimenopausal women. The specific aims were to determine (1) if subjective complaints of memory problems relate to objective performance on memory tests, (2) if subjective complaints of memory problems relate to other domains of cognitive function, and (3) if subjective memory complaints relate to other noncognitive factors, such as depression, anxiety, and sleep quality. Seventy-five perimenopausal women completed a comprehensive neuropsychological battery, which included measures of attention, working memory, verbal memory, verbal fluency, visuospatial skill, and fine motor dexterity; completed self-report inventories of their perceived memory and menopausal symptoms; and provided serum levels of estradiol and follicle-stimulating hormone. Memory complaints were not associated with verbal learning or verbal memory but were associated with working memory and complex attention/vigilance. Memory complaints were also associated with symptoms of depression, anxiety, somatic complaints, and sleep disturbance. Regression analyses revealed that memory complaints were best predicted by depressive symptoms, somatic complaints, and working memory performance. Memory complaints in the menopausal transition may reflect true difficulties with attentionally mediated cognitive processes. Memory complaints may also be associated with other menopausal-related symptoms.	\N	\N
22417186	Inattention is among the most commonly referred problems for school-aged youth. Research suggests distinct mechanisms may contribute to attention problems in youth with anxiety disorders versus youth with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This study compared children (8-17 years) with anxiety disorders (n = 24) and children (8-16 years) with ADHD (n = 23) on neurocognitive tests of both general and emotion-based attention processes. As hypothesized, children with ADHD demonstrated poorer selective and sustained attention, whereas youth with anxiety disorders demonstrated greater attentional bias toward threatening faces on a visual probe task. Findings suggest the neuropsychological differentiation of attention problems in anxious and ADHD children, despite potentially similar phenotypes.	\N	\N
22423353	While attention bias modification (ABM) is a promising novel treatment for anxiety disorders, clinical trial data remain restricted to adults. The authors examined whether ABM induces greater reductions in pediatric anxiety symptoms and symptom severity than multiple control training interventions. From a target sample of 186 treatment-seeking children at a hospital-based child anxiety clinic, 40 patients with an ongoing anxiety disorder who met all inclusion criteria were enrolled in the study. Children were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: ABM designed to shift attention away from threat; placebo attention training using stimuli identical to those in the ABM condition; and placebo attention training using only neutral stimuli. All participants completed four weekly 480-trial sessions (1,920 total trials). Before and after the attention training sessions, children's clinical status was determined via semistructured interviews and questionnaires. Reduction in the number of anxiety symptoms and their severity was compared across the three groups. Change in the number of anxiety symptoms and their severity differed across the three conditions. This reflected significant reductions in the number of anxiety symptoms and symptom severity in the ABM condition but not in the placebo attention training or placebo-neutral condition. ABM, compared with two control conditions, reduces pediatric anxiety symptoms and severity. Further study of efficacy and underlying mechanisms is warranted.	\N	\N
22424288	People with eating disorders (EDs) have difficulties with social functioning. One explanatory mechanism is a problem with over-sensitivity to rejection and/or low sensitivity to social reward. The aim of this study is to investigate attentional bias to facial stimuli in people with a lifetime diagnosis of EDs and healthy controls (HCs) and to test whether these attentional biases are linked to adverse early experiences. Forty-six participants with a current diagnosis of EDs (29 with anorexia nervosa (AN) and 17 with bulimia nervosa (BN)), 22 participants recovered from an eating disorder (13 with past AN and nine with past BN) and 50 HCs completed a dot-probe task with faces expressing rejection and acceptance. Participants reported on parental style and adverse early experiences. People with a lifetime diagnosis of EDs show an attentional bias to rejecting faces and a difficulty disengaging attention from these stimuli. Also, they had a sustained attentional avoidance of accepting faces. HCs demonstrated the opposite attentional pattern. The attentional bias to rejection was correlated with adverse childhood experiences. People with an EDs show vigilance to rejection and avoidance of social reward. This may contribute to the causation or maintenance of the illness.	\N	\N
22425345	Most types of neuromuscular diseases are known to be associated with a high risk of sleep-disordered breathing. We performed a prospective study in a well individualized group of muscular disorders, congenital muscular dystrophies (CMD), to characterize the frequency of sleep-disordered breathing and thereby to determine the potential usefulness of sleep studies in such patients. Twenty CMD children (12 F, 8 M, aged 4-17 years) were included. Using overnight polysomnography, we determined the following parameters: sleep stages, sleep latency, sleep efficiency index, wake time duration, total sleep time (TST), apnea/hypopnea index (AHI), arterial blood oxygen saturation, and nocturnal paroxysmal EEG activity. As compared to healthy controls, we detected in our study group frequent awakenings, a decreased TST (mean 448 ± 44.4 min) and a decreased REM duration (mean 11.5 ± 3.5% of TST). Significant increase in wake time duration (28-90 min) and decrease in REM duration were observed in 12 patients. An apnea/hypopnea syndrome was detected in 13 patients (65%) with central apneas in 8, obstructive apneas in 2 and 3 mixed apneas in 3 patients. AHI was >10 in 3 cases, <10> 5 in 4 cases and were concomitant with blood oxygen de-saturation in four cases. NPA were detected in 10 patients ranging from 10 to 40% of TST. Our results confirm the high incidence of sleep disordered breathing in children with CMD, and thereby, the usefulness of overnight polysomnography recordings in such patients.	\N	\N
22438275	Characterization of large-scale brain networks using blood-oxygenation-level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging is typically based on the assumption of network stationarity across the duration of scan. Recent studies in humans have questioned this assumption by showing that within-network functional connectivity fluctuates on the order of seconds to minutes. Time-varying profiles of resting-state networks (RSNs) may relate to spontaneously shifting, electrophysiological network states and are thus mechanistically of particular importance. However, because these studies acquired data from awake subjects, the fluctuating connectivity could reflect various forms of conscious brain processing such as passive mind wandering, active monitoring, memory formation, or changes in attention and arousal during image acquisition. Here, we characterize RSN dynamics of anesthetized macaques that control for these accounts, and compare them to awake human subjects. We find that functional connectivity among nodes comprising the "oculomotor (OCM) network" strongly fluctuated over time during awake as well as anaesthetized states. For time dependent analysis with short windows (<60 s), periods of positive functional correlations alternated with prominent anticorrelations that were missed when assessed with longer time windows. Similarly, the analysis identified network nodes that transiently link to the OCM network and did not emerge in average RSN analysis. Furthermore, time-dependent analysis reliably revealed transient states of large-scale synchronization that spanned all seeds. The results illustrate that resting-state functional connectivity is not static and that RSNs can exhibit nonstationary, spontaneous relationships irrespective of conscious, cognitive processing. The findings imply that mechanistically important network information can be missed when using average functional connectivity as the single network measure.	\N	\N
22448903	The bizarreness effect and the orthographic distinctiveness effect (OD effect) are typical cases of secondary-distinctiveness-based effects. This study tested the simple attentional account or processing time hypothesis as a possible explanation of the bizarreness effect and the OD effect. In the bizarreness effect literature, this hypothesis gained support by some studies but was also discredited by other research. In light of these conflicting results, Experiment 1 was devised to test the processing time hypothesis in the bizarreness effect by using black-and-white concrete images and manipulating the time allotted for processing the stimuli (500 ms, 1000 ms, 3000 ms). Concerning the OD effect, no research has directly investigated the impact of processing time by examining the effect under varying amounts of study time. Experiment 2 was thus devised to investigate this same hypothesis in the OD effect and time allotted for processing the stimuli was manipulated (250 ms, 500 ms, 1000 ms, 3000 ms). Results did not support the processing time hypothesis since the magnitude of the bizarreness effect and of the OD effect was not modulated by the amount of time allotted for processing the stimuli. We refer to alternative explanations to account for these two secondary-distinctiveness-based effects.	\N	\N
22449132	The automatic processing of the place-value of digits in a multi-digit number was investigated in 4 experiments. Experiment 1 and two control experiments employed a numerical comparison task in which the place-value of a non-zero digit was varied in a string composed of zeros. Experiment 2 employed a physical comparison task in which strings of digits varied in their physical sizes. In both types of tasks, the place-value of the non-zero digit in the string was irrelevant to the task performed. Interference of the place-value information was found in both tasks. When the non-zero digit occupied a lower place-value, it was recognized slower as a larger digit or as written in a larger font size. We concluded that place-value in a multi-digit number is processed automatically. These results support the notion of a decomposed representation of multi-digit numbers in memory.	\N	\N
22449135	In the 1st reported experiment, we demonstrate that auditory memory is robust over extended retention intervals (RIs) when listeners compare the timbre of complex tones, even when active or verbal rehearsal is difficult or impossible. Thus, our tones have an abstract timbre that resists verbal labeling, they differ across trials so that no "standard" comparison stimulus is built up, and the spectral change to be discriminated is very slight and therefore does not shift stimuli across verbal categories. Nonetheless, performance in this nonverbal immediate memory task was better at short (1-, 2-, or 4-s) than long (8-, 16-, or 32-s) RIs, an outcome predicted by temporal distinctiveness theory whereby at long RIs, tones are closer in time to tones on previous trials. We reject this account in the 2nd experiment, where we demonstrate that the ratio of RI to intertrial interval makes absolutely no difference to performance. We suggest that steady forgetting is consistent with a psychoacoustically derived conception of an auditory memory (the timbre memory model) that embodies time-based forgetting in the absence of feature-specific interference.	\N	\N
22450570	In the present study we examined, first, whether voluntary and involuntary attention manifest differently in people who differ in impulsivity (measured with the Barratt Impulsivity Scale). For Experiment 1, we used the spatial cueing task with informative and noninformative spatial cues to probe voluntary and involuntary attention, respectively. We found that participants with high impulsivity scores exhibited larger involuntary attention effects, whereas participants with low impulsivity scores exhibited larger voluntary attention effects. For Experiment 2, we used the correlated-flanker task to determine whether the differences between groups in Experiment 1 were due to high-impulsive participants being less sensitive to the display contingencies or to high-impulsive participants having a greater spread of spatial attention. Surprisingly, high-impulsive participants showed a greater sensitivity to contingencies in the environment (correlated-flanker effect). Our results illustrate one situation in which involuntary attention associated with high impulsivity can play a useful role.	\N	\N
22455840	In order to execute a correct eye movement to a target in a search display, a saccade program toward the target element must be activated, while saccade programs toward distracting elements must be inhibited. The aim of the present study was to elucidate the role of the frontal eye fields (FEFs) in oculomotor competition. Functional magnetic resonance imaging-guided single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was administered over either the left FEF, the right FEF, or the vertex (control site) at 3 time intervals after target presentation, while subjects performed an oculomotor capture task. When TMS was applied over the FEF contralateral to the visual field where a target was presented, there was less interference of an ipsilateral distractor compared with FEF stimulation ipsilateral to the target's visual field or TMS over vertex. Furthermore, TMS over the FEFs decreased latencies of saccades to the contralateral visual field, irrespective of whether the saccade was directed to the target or to the distractor. These findings show that single-pulse TMS over the FEFs enhances the selection of a target in the contralateral visual field and decreases saccade latencies to the contralateral visual field.	\N	\N
22456823	Amygdala dysfunction has been reported to exist in youths and adults with psychopathic traits. However, there has been disagreement as to whether this dysfunction reflects a primary emotional deficit or is secondary to atypical attentional control. The authors examined the validity of the contrasting predictions. Participants were 15 children and adolescents (ages 10–17 years) with both disruptive behavior disorders and psychopathic traits and 17 healthy comparison youths. Functional MRI was used to assess the response of the amygdala and regions implicated in top-down attentional control (the dorsomedial and lateral frontal cortices) to emotional expression under conditions of high and low attentional load. Relative to youths with disruptive behavior disorders and psychopathic traits, healthy comparison subjects showed a significantly greater increase in the typical amygdala response to fearful expressions under low relative to high attentional load conditions. There was also a selective inverse relationship between the response to fearful expressions under low attentional load and the callous-unemotional component (but not the narcissism or impulsivity component) of psychopathic traits. In contrast, the two groups did not differ in the significant recruitment of the dorsomedial and lateral frontal cortices as a function of attentional load. Youths with disruptive behavior disorders and psychopathic traits showed reduced amygdala responses to fearful expressions under low attentional load but no indications of increased recruitment of regions implicated in top-down attentional control. These findings suggest that the emotional deficit observed in youths with disruptive behavior disorders and psychopathic traits is primary and not secondary to increased top-down attention to nonemotional stimulus features.	\N	\N
22458959	This study investigated the effects of two very commonly used countermeasures against driver sleepiness, opening the window and listening to music, on subjective and physiological sleepiness measures during real road driving. In total, 24 individuals participated in the study. Sixteen participants received intermittent 10-min intervals of: (i) open window (2 cm opened); and (ii) listening to music, during both day and night driving on an open motorway. Both subjective sleepiness and physiological sleepiness (blink duration) was estimated to be significantly reduced when subjects listened to music, but the effect was only minor compared with the pronounced effects of night driving and driving duration. Open window had no attenuating effect on either sleepiness measure. No significant long-term effects beyond the actual countermeasure application intervals occurred, as shown by comparison to the control group (n = 8). Thus, despite their popularity, opening the window and listening to music cannot be recommended as sole countermeasures against driver sleepiness.	\N	\N
22459732	The goal of this study was to investigate the effects of different strategies for regulating emotions associated with smoking on subjective, cognitive, and behavioral correlates of smoking. Emotion regulation was manipulated by instructing participants to reappraise (n = 32), accept (n = 31), or suppress (n = 31) their emotions associated with smoking. The dependent measures included subjective reports of craving, negative affect, and attentional biases, as measured by a modified dot-probe task, and persistence during a task to measure distress tolerance. Individuals who were encouraged to reappraise the consequences of smoking showed diminished craving, lower negative affect, had reduced attentional biases for smoking-related cues, and exhibited greater task persistence than those who were instructed to accept and suppress their urge to smoke. These findings suggest that reappraisal techniques are more effective than acceptance or suppression strategies for targeting smoking-related problems.	\N	\N
22465299	Mechanisms of attention are required to prioritise goal-relevant sensory events under conditions of stimulus competition. According to the perceptual load model of attention, the extent to which task-irrelevant inputs are processed is determined by the relative demands of discriminating the target: the more perceptually demanding the target task, the less unattended stimuli will be processed. Although much evidence supports the perceptual load model for competing stimuli within a single sensory modality, the effects of perceptual load in one modality on distractor processing in another is less clear. Here we used steady-state evoked potentials (SSEPs) to measure neural responses to irrelevant visual checkerboard stimuli while participants performed either a visual or auditory task that varied in perceptual load. Consistent with perceptual load theory, increasing visual task load suppressed SSEPs to the ignored visual checkerboards. In contrast, increasing auditory task load enhanced SSEPs to the ignored visual checkerboards. This enhanced neural response to irrelevant visual stimuli under auditory load suggests that exhausting capacity within one modality selectively compromises inhibitory processes required for filtering stimuli in another.	\N	\N
22468726	The current study focuses on the relationship between alerting and executive attention. Previous studies reported an increased flanker congruency effect following alerting cues. In the first two experiments, we found that the alertness-congruency interaction did not exist for all executive tasks (it appeared for a flanker task but not for a Stroop task). In Experiments 3 and 4, we show that alerting increases the congruency effect in a response selection task only when the relevant and irrelevant information is spatially separated. We suggest that alerting modulates the allocation of attention by prioritizing processing of spatial information presented in the visual field. This process can be adaptive under many circumstances, but it comes at a cost. Alerting could possibly compromise our performance when required to filter out irrelevant spatial information.	\N	\N
22476609	Biased processing of drug-associated stimuli is believed to be a crucial feature of addiction. Particularly, an attentional bias seems to contribute to the disorder's maintenance. Recent studies suggest differential effects for stimuli associated with the beginning (BEGIN-smoking-stimuli) or the terminal stage of the smoking ritual (END-smoking-stimuli), with the former but not the later evoking high cue-reactivity. The current study investigated the neuronal network underlying an attentional bias to BEGIN-smoking-stimuli and END-smoking-stimuli in smokers and tested the hypothesis that the attentional bias is greater for BEGIN-smoking-stimuli. Sixteen non-deprived smokers and 16 non-smoking controls participated in an fMRI study. Drug pictures (BEGIN-smoking-stimuli, END-smoking-stimuli) and control pictures were overlaid with geometrical figures and presented for 300 ms. Subjects had to identify picture content (identification-task) or figure orientation (distraction-task). The distraction-task was intended to demonstrate attentional bias. Behavioral data revealed an attentional bias to BEGIN-smoking-stimuli but not to END-smoking-stimuli in both groups. However, only smokers showed mesocorticolimbic deactivations in the distraction-task with BEGIN-smoking-stimuli. Importantly, these deactivations were significantly stronger for BEGIN- than for END-smoking-stimuli and correlated with the attentional bias score. Several explanations may account for missing group differences in behavioral data. Brain data suggest smokers using regulatory strategies in response to BEGIN-smoking-stimuli to prevent the elicitation of motivational responses interfering with distraction-task performance. These strategies could be reflected in the observed deactivations and might lead to a performance level in smokers that is similar to that of non-smokers.	\N	\N
22477056	Previous studies investigating transfer of perceptual learning between luminance-defined (LD) motion and texture-contrast-defined (CD) motion tasks have found little or no transfer from LD to CD motion tasks but nearly perfect transfer from CD to LD motion tasks. Here, we introduce a paradigm that yields a clean double dissociation: LD training yields no transfer to the CD task, but more interestingly, CD training yields no transfer to the LD task. Participants were trained in two variants of a global motion task. In one (LD) variant, motion was defined by tokens that differed from the background in mean luminance. In the other (CD) variant, motion was defined by tokens that had mean luminance equal to the background but differed from the background in texture contrast. The task was to judge whether the signal tokens were moving to the right or to the left. Task difficulty was varied by manipulating the proportion of tokens that moved coherently across the four frames of the stimulus display. Performance in each of the LD and CD variants of the task was measured as training proceeded. In each task, training produced substantial improvement in performance in the trained task; however, in neither case did this improvement show any significant transfer to the nontrained task.	\N	\N
22480345	Although circadian and sleep research has made extraordinary progress in the recent years, one remaining challenge is the objective quantification of sleepiness in individuals suffering from sleep deprivation, sleep restriction, and excessive somnolence. The major goal of the present study was to apply principal component analysis to the wake electroencephalographic (EEG) spectrum in order to establish an objective measure of sleepiness. The present analysis was led by the hypothesis that in sleep-deprived individuals, the time course of self-rated sleepiness correlates with the time course score on the 2nd principal component of the EEG spectrum. The resting EEG of 15 young subjects was recorded at 2-h intervals for 32-50 h. Principal component analysis was performed on the sets of 16 single-Hz log-transformed EEG powers (1-16 Hz frequency range). The time course of self-perceived sleepiness correlated strongly with the time course of the 2nd principal component score, irrespective of derivation (frontal or occipital) and of analyzed section of the 7-min EEG record (2-min section with eyes open or any of the five 1-min sections with eyes closed). This result indicates the possibility of deriving an objective index of physiological sleepiness by applying principal component analysis to the wake EEG spectrum.	\N	\N
22484996	The purpose of this paper is to review the literature examining subjective and physiological arousal associated with an individual's preferred modes of gambling. Arousal is hypothesised to play a central role in the onset and maintenance of problem gambling. Most studies have failed to differentiate relevant patterns of arousal elicited by stimuli associated with preferred versus non-preferred modes of gambling on the assumption that similar processes motivate all gamblers. At the conceptual level, sub-typing theories of problem gambling propose differences in the motivation to gamble, and the associated role arousal plays in maintaining behaviours. A review of the existing literature reveals preliminary findings that indicate that gamblers respond differentially to preferred compared to non-preferred gambling stimuli, and that gamblers may display greater reactivity in arousal to gambling cues compared to non-gamblers. Understanding differences in such patterns of arousal can be used to inform clinical interventions by effectively targeting the nature and role of arousal associated with preferred modes of gambling, and determining the extent to which non-preferred modes act as secondary reinforces triggering by gambling urges.	\N	\N
22487940	Motor overflow is extraneous movement in a limb not involved in a motor action. Typically, overflow is observed in people with neurological impairments and in healthy children and adults during strenuous and attention-demanding tasks. In the current study, we found that young infants produce vast amounts of motor overflow, corroborating claims of symmetry being the default state of the motor system. While manipulating an object with one hand, all 27 of the typically developing 4.5- to 7.5-month-old infants who we observed displayed overflow movements of the free hand (on 4/5 of unimanual actions). Mirror-image movements of the hands occurred on 1/8 of unimanual actions, and the hands and legs moved in synchrony on 1/3 of unimanual acts. Motor overflow was less frequent when infants were in a sitting posture and when infants watched their acting hand, suggesting that upright posture and visual examination may help to alleviate overflow and break obligatory symmetry in healthy infants.	\N	\N
22502818	The present study highlights the utility of context-specific learning for different probe types in accounting for the commonly observed dependence of negative priming on probe selection. Using a Stroop priming procedure, Experiments 1a and 1b offered a demonstration that Stroop priming effects can differ qualitatively for selection and no-selection probes when probe selection is manipulated between subjects, but not when it is manipulated randomly from trial to trial within subject (see also Moore, 1994). In Experiments 2 and 3, selection and no-selection probes served as two contexts that varied randomly from trial to trial, but for which proportion repeated was manipulated separately. A context-specific proportion repeated effect was observed in Experiment 2, characterized by modest quantitative shifts in the repetition effects as a function of the context-specific proportion repeated manipulation. However, with a longer intertrial interval in Experiment 3, a context-specific proportion repeated manipulation that focused on the no-selection probes changed the repetition effect qualitatively, from negative priming when the proportion repeated was .25 to positive priming when the proportion repeated was .75. The results are discussed with reference to the role of rapid, context-specific learning processes in the integration of prior experiences with current perception and action.	\N	\N
22504294	Recent findings suggest that, relative to negative feedback, positive feedback counteracts conflict processing and subsequent attentional adaptation. Here we hypothesize that this interaction may direct adjustments in perception and action via the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). We recorded EEG while participants performed an arrow flanker task with monetary gain or loss as arbitrary reward feedback between trials. As predicted, we found a reduction in conflict-driven adaptation for trials in which conflict was followed by monetary gain (vs. monetary loss), a behavioral effect accompanied by a modulation in early visual processing related to the processing of the distracters. Moreover, time-frequency analyses showed that ongoing fronto-central theta oscillations induced by previous conflict sustained longer after loss than after gain, an interaction presumably reflecting ACC modulation. These data provide a first important step toward understanding the neural mechanism underlying the affective regulation of conflict-driven behavior.	\N	\N
22507824	Previous studies have documented the positive effects of mindfulness meditation on executive control. What has been lacking, however, is an understanding of the mechanism underlying this effect. Some theorists have described mindfulness as embodying two facets-present moment awareness and emotional acceptance. Here, we examine how the effect of meditation practice on executive control manifests in the brain, suggesting that emotional acceptance and performance monitoring play important roles. We investigated the effect of meditation practice on executive control and measured the neural correlates of performance monitoring, specifically, the error-related negativity (ERN), a neurophysiological response that occurs within 100 ms of error commission. Meditators and controls completed a Stroop task, during which we recorded ERN amplitudes with electroencephalography. Meditators showed greater executive control (i.e. fewer errors), a higher ERN and more emotional acceptance than controls. Finally, mediation pathway models further revealed that meditation practice relates to greater executive control and that this effect can be accounted for by heightened emotional acceptance, and to a lesser extent, increased brain-based performance monitoring.	\N	\N
22508639	In this article, we illustrate how cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can be adapted for the treatment of PTSD among traumatized refugees and ethnic minority populations, providing examples from our treatment, culturally adapted CBT, or CA-CBT. CA-CBT has a unique approach to exposure (typical exposure is poorly tolerated in these groups), emphasizes the treatment of somatic sensations (a particularly salient part of the presentation of PTSD in these groups), and addresses comorbid anxiety disorders and anger. To accomplish these treatment goals, CA-CBT emphasizes emotion exposure and emotion regulation techniques such as meditation and aims to promote emotional and psychological flexibility. We describe 12 key aspects of adapting CA-CBT that make it a culturally sensitive treatment of traumatized refugee and ethnic minority populations. We discuss three models that guide our treatment and that can be used to design culturally sensitive treatments: (a) the panic attack-PTSD model to illustrate the many processes that generate PTSD in these populations, highlighting the role of arousal and somatic symptoms; (b) the arousal triad to demonstrate how somatic symptoms are produced and the importance of targeting comorbid anxiety conditions and psychopathological processes; and (c) the multisystem network (MSN) model of emotional state to reveal how some of our therapeutic techniques (e.g., body-focused techniques: bodily stretching paired with self-statements) bring about psychological flexibility and improvement.	\N	\N
22510246	Despite the interest for the brain correlates of male sexual arousal, few studies investigated neural mechanisms underlying psychogenic erectile dysfunction (ED). Although these studies showed several brain regions active in ED patients during visual erotic stimulation, the dynamics of inhibition of sexual response is still unclear. This study investigated the dynamics of brain regions involved in the psychogenic ED. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and simultaneous penile tumescence (PT) were used to study brain activity evoked in 17 outpatients with psychogenic ED and 19 healthy controls during visual erotic stimulation. Patterns of brain activation related to different phases of sexual response in the two groups were compared. Simultaneous recording of blood oxygen level-dependent fMRI responses and PT during visual erotic stimulation. During visual erotic stimuli, a larger activation was observed for the patient group in the left superior parietal lobe, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and posterior cingulate cortex, whereas the control group showed larger activation in the right middle insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and hippocampus. Moreover, the left superior parietal lobe showed a larger activation in patients than controls especially during the later stage of sexual response. Our results suggest that, among regions more active in patient group, the left superior parietal lobe plays a crucial role in inhibition of sexual response. Previous studies showed that left superior parietal lobe is involved in monitoring of internal body representation. The larger activation of this region in patients during later stages of sexual response suggests a high monitoring of the internal body representation, possibly affecting the behavioral response. These findings provide insight on brain mechanisms involved in psychogenic ED.	\N	\N
22524263	Memory-guided decision making is dynamic and context-dependent, even though many studies describe an enhancement of the P3 for recognized items in memory tasks ("old-new effect"). This study utilized a delay-dependent working memory task during which decision making could be optimized by focusing attention on detected changes instead of recognized similarities. Mean P3 amplitude and delta activity were analyzed from participants who classified probe stimuli as identical or modified. The P3 amplitudes were larger for modified than for identical probes, even when the probe occurred 4,000 ms after the primary stimulus. Enhanced single-trial amplitude, trial-by-trial consistency, and frontoparietal phase coherence of delta activity contributed to the larger P3 for the modified probe. Thus, context-dependent attentional resource allocation supporting memory-guided decisions might explain the enhancement of the P3 for specific probe types.	\N	\N
22524337	This paper outlines the principal behavioral methods used to study music processing in infancy. The advantages of conditioning procedures are offset by high attrition rates and restrictions on the stimuli that can be used. The head-turn preference procedure is more user-friendly but poses greater interpretive challenges. In view of the multidimensional nature of infant attention, no single response measure, whether behavioral, physiological, or neural, can provide unambiguous information about music processing in infancy. Greater use of ecologically valid stimuli is likely to generate increased cooperation from infants and greater generality of the findings.	\N	\N
22526718	Response priming refers to the finding that a prime stimulus preceding a target stimulus influences the response to the following target stimulus. Typically, responses are faster and more accurate if the prime calls for the same response as the target (i.e., compatible trials), as compared with the situation where primes and targets trigger different responses (i.e., incompatible trials). However, the effect depends on presentational and temporal parameters such as the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of prime and target, or prime duration. Until now, the special role of moving stimuli was largely ignored. In the present research, experiments were conducted using clearly visible moving dots as primes and static arrows as targets. Essentially, with short SOAs up to 200 ms, participants responded faster to compatible targets. In contrast, with SOAs above 200 ms, participants responded faster to incompatible targets. The results were compared with response priming with static primes. Here, a different pattern of results emerged, with faster responses to compatible than incompatible targets at a long SOA of 300 ms. Overall, the experiments provide evidence for the existence of an inhibitory mechanism in action control when (distracting) motion stimuli are present. Results could be explained with slight changes to different accounts of negative response priming effects, as well as theories of attention.	\N	\N
22528785	In a category-learning experiment, we assessed whether participants were able to selectively attend to different components of a compound stimulus in two distinct contexts. The participants were presented with stimulus compounds for which they had to learn categorical labels. Each compound comprised one feature from each of two dimensions, and on different trials the compound was presented in two contexts, X and Y. In Context X, Dimension A was relevant to the solution of the categorization task and Dimension B was irrelevant, whereas in Context Y, Dimension A was irrelevant and Dimension B was relevant. The results of transfer tests to novel stimuli suggested that people learned to attend selectively to Dimension A in Context X and Dimension B in Context Y. These findings contribute to the growing body of evidence that people can learn to selectively attend to particular dimensions of stimuli dependent on the context in which the stimuli are presented. Furthermore, the findings demonstrate that context-dependent changes in attention transfer to other categorization tasks involving novel stimuli.	\N	\N
22532384	We have previously reported evidence that repetitions of letters, colors, sizes, and common motion paths are more rapidly detected when they are presented unilaterally (i.e., both in the same visual field) versus bilaterally (one element in each visual field; Butcher and Cavanagh (Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 70:714-724, 2008). Here, we report evidence that this unilateral field advantage (UFA) for repetition detection does not depend on prior experience with the elements that comprise the repetition. In Experiment 1, native English, Persian, and Japanese speakers were tested on a repetition detection task involving characters from Western, Arabic, and Japanese character sets. The character sets were tested in blocks, in each of which subjects were presented with four characters for 16 ms and asked to report whether any two of the characters were identical. The subjects were faster detecting repetitions that were presented unilaterally rather than bilaterally, and there was no interaction with stimulus familiarity. A second experiment replicated this finding with native English speakers only, using a longer stimulus duration (150 ms). We had previously proposed that the UFA arises because the low-level processes that group physically identical items operate more efficiently within than across hemifields. Our data now indicate that this grouping process is insensitive to item familiarity, supporting the claim that the process is low-level.	\N	\N
22537695	Deficits in cognitive functioning are associated with many safety concerns, including difficulties performing activities of daily living, medication errors, motor vehicle accidents, impaired awareness of deficits, decision-making capacity, falls, and travel away from home. Preventing adverse safety outcomes is particularly relevant in rehabilitation patients. Integration of information and recommendations stemming from allied disciplines, such as rehabilitation medicine, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and neuropsychology, is the most effective way to limit poor outcomes. Education and prevention counseling by health care professionals is an important approach in limiting adverse safety outcomes in patients with cognitive impairment.	\N	\N
22545929	Recognition memory for unfamiliar faces is facilitated when contextual cues (e.g., head pose, background environment, hair and clothing) are consistent between study and test. By contrast, inconsistencies in external features, especially hair, promote errors in unfamiliar face-matching tasks. For the construction of facial composites, as carried out by witnesses and victims of crime, the role of external features (hair, ears, and neck) is less clear, although research does suggest their involvement. Here, over three experiments, we investigate the impact of external features for recovering facial memories using a modern, recognition-based composite system, EvoFIT. Participant-constructors inspected an unfamiliar target face and, one day later, repeatedly selected items from arrays of whole faces, with "breeding," to "evolve" a composite with EvoFIT; further participants (evaluators) named the resulting composites. In Experiment 1, the important internal-features (eyes, brows, nose, and mouth) were constructed more identifiably when the visual presence of external features was decreased by Gaussian blur during construction: higher blur yielded more identifiable internal-features. In Experiment 2, increasing the visible extent of external features (to match the target's) in the presented face-arrays also improved internal-features quality, although less so than when external features were masked throughout construction. Experiment 3 demonstrated that masking external-features promoted substantially more identifiable images than using the previous method of blurring external-features. Overall, the research indicates that external features are a distractive rather than a beneficial cue for face construction; the results also provide a much better method to construct composites, one that should dramatically increase identification of offenders.	\N	\N
22560111	Consciousness alterations can be experienced during unstructured, monotonous stimuli. These effects have not been linked to particular cognitive operations; individual differences in response to such stimulation remain poorly understood. We examined the role of hypnotizability and dissociative tendencies in mind-wandering (MW) during a sensory homogenization procedure (ganzfeld). We expected that the influence of ganzfeld on MW would be more pronounced among highly hypnotizable individuals (highs), particularly those high in dissociative tendencies. High and low hypnotizables, also stratified by dissociation, completed the sustained attention to response task during ganzfeld and control conditions. High dissociative highs made more commission errors during ganzfeld, suggesting increased MW, whereas the other groups displayed the opposite pattern. Increases in commission errors from the control condition to ganzfeld were associated with more alterations in consciousness and negative affect, but only among highs. Sensory homogenization had opposite effects on MW depending on the interaction of hypnotizability and dissociation.	\N	\N
22563629	Sounds deviating from an otherwise repeated stream of task-irrelevant auditory stimuli (deviant sounds among standard sounds) are known to capture attention and impact negatively on ongoing behavioral performance (behavioral oddball distraction). Traditional views consider such distraction as the ineluctable consequence of the deviant sounds' low probability of occurrence relative to that of the standard. Contrary to this contention, recent evidence demonstrates that distraction by deviant sounds is not obligatory and occurs only when sounds (standards and deviants), though to be ignored, act as useful warning cues by providing information as to whether and when a target stimulus is to be presented (Parmentier, Elsley, & Ljungberg, 2010). The present study aimed to extend this finding by disentangling the roles of event information (target's probability of occurrence) and temporal information (target's time of occurrence). Comparing performance in a cross-modal oddball task where standard and deviant sounds provided temporal information, event information, both, or none, we found that distraction by deviant sounds emerged when sounds conveyed event information. These results suggest that unexpected changes in a stream of sounds yield behavioral distraction to the extent that standards and deviants carry relevant goal-directed information, specifically, the likelihood of occurrence of an upcoming target.	\N	\N
22563872	The search for predictors of schizophrenia has accelerated with a growing focus on early intervention and prevention of psychotic illness. Studying nonpsychotic relatives of individuals with schizophrenia enables identification of markers of vulnerability for the illness independent of confounds associated with psychosis. The goal of these studies was to develop new auditory continuous performance tests (ACPTs) and evaluate their effects in individuals with schizophrenia and their relatives. We carried out two studies of auditory vigilance with tasks involving working memory (WM) and interference control with increasing levels of cognitive load to discern the information-processing vulnerabilities in a sample of schizophrenia patients, and two samples of nonpsychotic relatives of individuals with schizophrenia and controls. Study 1 assessed adults (mean age = 41), and Study 2 assessed teenagers and young adults age 13-25 (M = 19). Patients with schizophrenia were impaired on all five versions of the ACPTs, whereas relatives were impaired only on WM tasks, particularly the two interference tasks that maximize cognitive load. Across all groups, the interference tasks were more difficult to perform than the other tasks. Schizophrenia patients performed worse than relatives, who performed worse than controls. For patients, the effect sizes were large (Cohen's d = 1.5), whereas for relatives they were moderate (d = ~0.40-0.50). There was no age by group interaction in the relatives-control comparison except for participants <31 years of age. Novel WM tasks that manipulate cognitive load and interference control index an important component of the vulnerability to schizophrenia.	\N	\N
22564396	A previous study reported a method for measuring the spectral transmittance of individual human eyelids. A prototype light mask using narrow-band "green" light (λmax = 527 nm) was used to deliver light through closed eyelids in two within-subjects studies. The first study investigated whether an individual-specific light dose could suppress melatonin by 40% through the closed eyelid without disrupting sleep. The light doses were delivered at three times during the night: 1) beginning (while subjects were awake), 2) middle (during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep), and 3) end (during non-REM sleep). The second study investigated whether two individual-specific light doses expected to suppress melatonin by 30% and 60% and delivered through subjects' closed eyelids before the time of their predicted minimum core body temperature would phase delay the timing of their dim light melatonin onset (DLMO). Compared to a dark control night, light delivered through eyelids suppressed melatonin by 36% (p = 0.01) after 60-minute light exposure at the beginning, 45% (p = 0.01) at the middle, and 56% (p < 0.0001) at the end of the night. In the second study, compared to a dark control night, melatonin was suppressed by 25% (p = 0.03) and by 45% (p = 0.009) and circadian phase, as measured by DLMO, was delayed by 17 minutes (p = 0.03) and 71 minutes (ns) after 60-minute exposures to light levels 1 and 2, respectively. These studies demonstrate that individual-specific doses of light delivered through closed eyelids can suppress melatonin and phase shift DLMO and may be used to treat circadian sleep disorders.	\N	\N
22571890	The present study tested predictions derived from the Risk as Feelings hypothesis about the effects of prior patients' negative treatment outcomes on physicians' subsequent treatment decisions. Two experiments at The University of Chicago, U.S.A., utilized a computer simulation of an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) patient with enhanced realism to present participants with one of three experimental conditions: AAA rupture causing a watchful waiting death (WWD), perioperative death (PD), or a successful operation (SO), as well as the statistical treatment guidelines for AAA. Experiment 1 tested effects of these simulated outcomes on (n = 76) laboratory participants' (university student sample) self-reported emotions, and their ratings of valence and arousal of the AAA rupture simulation and other emotion-inducing picture stimuli. Experiment 2 tested two hypotheses: 1) that experiencing a patient WWD in the practice trial's experimental condition would lead physicians to choose surgery earlier, and 2) experiencing a patient PD would lead physicians to choose surgery later with the next patient. Experiment 2 presented (n = 132) physicians (surgeons and geriatricians) with the same experimental manipulation and a second simulated AAA patient. Physicians then chose to either go to surgery or continue watchful waiting. The results of Experiment 1 demonstrated that the WWD experimental condition significantly increased anxiety, and was rated similarly to other negative and arousing pictures. The results of Experiment 2 demonstrated that, after controlling for demographics, baseline anxiety, intolerance for uncertainty, risk attitudes, and the influence of simulation characteristics, the WWD experimental condition significantly expedited decisions to choose surgery for the next patient. The results support the Risk as Feelings hypothesis on physicians' treatment decisions in a realistic AAA patient computer simulation. Bad outcomes affected emotions and decisions, even with statistical AAA rupture risk guidance present. These results suggest that bad patient outcomes cause physicians to experience anxiety and regret that influences their subsequent treatment decision-making for the next patient.	\N	\N
22574846	In a recent paper published in the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, we assessed the differences between sexually victimized and nonsexually victimized male adolescent sexual abusers ( Burton, Duty, & Leibowitz, 2011 ). We found that the sexually victimized group had more severe developmental antecedents (e.g., trauma and early exposure to pornography) and behavioral difficulties (sexual aggression, arousal, pornography use, and nonsexual offenses). The present study compares sexually victimized and nonsexually victimized adolescent sexual abusers with a group of nonsexually victimized delinquent youth. Findings included that delinquent youth had fewer behavioral and developmental problems than the comparison groups. In addition, sexually victimized sexual abusers had the highest mean scores on trauma and personality measures. Implications for research and treatment are offered.	\N	\N
22579705	Patients with multimodal semantic impairment following stroke (referred to here as 'semantic aphasia' or SA) fail to show the standard effects of frequency in comprehension tasks. Instead, they show absent or even reverse frequency effects: i.e., better understanding of less common words. In addition, SA is associated with poor regulatory control of semantic processing and executive deficits. We used a synonym judgement task to investigate the possibility that the normal processing advantage for high frequency (HF) words fails to emerge in these patients because HF items place greater demands on executive control. In the first part of this study, SA patients showed better performance on more imageable as opposed to abstract items, but minimal or reverse frequency effects in the same task, and these negative effects of word frequency on comprehension were related to the degree of executive impairment. Ratings from healthy subjects indicated that it was easier to establish potential semantic associations between probe and distracter words for HF trials, suggesting that reverse frequency effects might reflect a failure to suppress spurious associations between HF probes and distracters. In a subsequent experiment, the aphasic patients' performance improved when HF probes and targets were presented alongside low frequency distracters, supporting this hypothesis. An additional study with healthy participants used dual task methodology to examine the impact of divided attention on synonym judgement. Although frequently encountered words were processed more efficiently overall, the secondary task selectively disrupted performance for high but not low frequency trials. Taken together, these results show that positive effects of frequency are counteracted in SA by increases in semantic control requirements for HF words.	\N	\N
22579968	Processing in one sensory modality may modulate processing in another. Here we investigate how simply viewing the hand can influence the sense of touch. Previous studies showed that non-informative vision of the hand enhances tactile acuity, relative to viewing an object at the same location. However, it remains unclear whether this Visual Enhancement of Touch (VET) involves a phasic enhancement of tactile processing circuits triggered by the visual event of seeing the hand, or more prolonged, tonic neuroplastic changes, such as recruitment of additional cortical areas for tactile processing. We recorded somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) evoked by electrical stimulation of the right middle finger, both before and shortly after viewing either the right hand, or a neutral object presented via a mirror. Crucially, and unlike prior studies, our visual exposures were unpredictable and brief, in addition to being non-informative about touch. Viewing the hand, as opposed to viewing an object, enhanced tactile spatial discrimination measured using grating orientation judgements, and also the P50 SEP component, which has been linked to early somatosensory cortical processing. This was a trial-specific, phasic effect, occurring within a few seconds of each visual onset, rather than an accumulating, tonic effect. Thus, somatosensory cortical modulation can be triggered even by a brief, non-informative glimpse of one's hand. Such rapid multisensory modulation reveals novel aspects of the specialised brain systems for functionally representing the body.	\N	\N
22580017	Covert spatial attention can increase contrast sensitivity either by changes in contrast gain or by changes in response gain, depending on the size of the attention field and the size of the stimulus (Herrmann et al., 2010), as predicted by the normalization model of attention (Reynolds & Heeger, 2009). For feature-based attention, unlike spatial attention, the model predicts only changes in response gain, regardless of whether the featural extent of the attention field is small or large. To test this prediction, we measured the contrast dependence of feature-based attention. Observers performed an orientation-discrimination task on a spatial array of grating patches. The spatial locations of the gratings were varied randomly so that observers could not attend to specific locations. Feature-based attention was manipulated with a 75% valid and 25% invalid pre-cue, and the featural extent of the attention field was manipulated by introducing uncertainty about the upcoming grating orientation. Performance accuracy was better for valid than for invalid pre-cues, consistent with a change in response gain, when the featural extent of the attention field was small (low uncertainty) or when it was large (high uncertainty) relative to the featural extent of the stimulus. These results for feature-based attention clearly differ from results of analogous experiments with spatial attention, yet both support key predictions of the normalization model of attention.	\N	\N
22582689	Many sports require fine spatiotemporal resolution for optimal performance. Previous studies have compared anticipatory skills and the decision-making process in athletes; however, there is little information on visual skills of elite athletes, particularly hockey players. To assess visual skills of Olympic hockey players and analyze differences by playing position, and to analyze improvement of visual skills after training, 21 Olympic field hockey players were pre- and post-tested on 11 visual tasks following a 10-wk. visual training program consisting of computer-based visual exercises. There were no mean differences at pre-test between players of different positions, suggesting that performance on these visual skills was independent of playing position. However, after training, an improvement was seen in all players (when scores were averaged across all 11 visual tasks) with goalkeepers improving significantly more than any other position. This suggests the possibility of improving visual skills even in an elite population.	\N	\N
22583090	QuikScan (QS) is an innovative design that aims to improve accessibility, comprehensibility, and subsequent recall of expository text by means of frequent within-document summaries that are formatted as numbered list items. The numbers in the QS summaries correspond to numbers placed in the body of the document where the summarized ideas are discussed in full. To examine the influence of QS summaries on participants' perceptions of text quality (i.e., comprehensibility, structure, and interest) and recall, an experimental - control group design compared the effects of a QS text with a structured abstract (SA) text. Forty psychology students participated voluntarily or received course credits. Students first read a control (SA) or experimental (QS) text on flashbulb memory (FBM). Next, their perceptions of text quality were measured through a questionnaire. Recall was assessed with an open answer test with items for facts, comprehension and higher order information. Perceptions of text quality did not vary across conditions. But QS did lead to significantly and substantially (d= 1.57) higher overall recall scores. Participants with the QS text performed significantly better on all item types than participants with the SA text. Studying a QS text led to a substantial improvement in recall compared to an SA text. Further research is needed to examine how readers study QS texts and whether a text model hypothesis or a repetition effect hypothesis accounts for the effectiveness. The first hypothesis posits that the QS summaries support the reader in constructing a text schema. The second attributes the effects of these summaries to their repetition of text topics.	\N	\N
22612165	One approach to understanding working memory (WM) holds that individual differences in WM capacity arise from the amount of information a person can store in WM over short periods of time. This view is especially prevalent in WM research conducted with the visual arrays task. Within this tradition, many researchers have concluded that the average person can maintain approximately 4 items in WM. The present study challenges this interpretation by demonstrating that performance on the visual arrays task is subject to time-related factors that are associated with retrieval from long-term memory. Experiment 1 demonstrates that memory for an array does not decay as a product of absolute time, which is consistent with both maintenance- and retrieval-based explanations of visual arrays performance. Experiment 2 introduced a manipulation of temporal discriminability by varying the relative spacing of trials in time. We found that memory for a target array was significantly influenced by its temporal compression with, or isolation from, a preceding trial. Subsequent experiments extend these effects to sub-capacity set sizes and demonstrate that changes in the size of k are meaningful to prediction of performance on other measures of WM capacity as well as general fluid intelligence. We conclude that performance on the visual arrays task does not reflect a multi-item storage system but instead measures a person's ability to accurately retrieve information in the face of proactive interference.	\N	\N
22612769	Performing two cognitive tasks at the same time can degrade performance for either domain-general reasons (e.g., both tasks require attention) or domain-specific reasons (e.g., both tasks require visual working memory). We tested predictions of these two accounts of interference on the task of driving while using language, a naturally occurring dual task. Using language and driving a vehicle use different perceptual and motor skills. As a consequence, a domain-general explanation for interference in this dual task appears most plausible. However, recent evidence from the language processing literature suggests that when people use language with motor content (e.g., language about actions) or visual content (e.g., language about visible objects and events), they engage their motor and perceptual systems in ways specifically reflecting the actions and percepts that the language is about. This raises the possibility that language might interfere with driving for domain-specific reasons when the language has visual or motor content. To test this, we had participants drive a simulated vehicle while simultaneously answering true-false statements that had motor, visual, or abstract content. A domain-general explanation for interference would predict greater distraction in each of these three conditions compared with control, while a domain-specific explanation would predict greater interference in the motor and visual conditions. Both of these predictions were borne out but on different measures of distraction, suggesting that language-driven distraction during driving and dual tasks involving language in general may be the result not only of domain-general causes but also specific interference caused by linguistic content.	\N	\N
22620487	We previously described dynamic, noncontrast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the female genitalia as a reproducible, nonintrusive, objective means of quantifying sexual arousal response in women without sexual difficulties. These studies showed an increase in clitoral engorgement ranging from 50 to 300% in healthy women during sexual arousal. This study sought to evaluate the genital arousal response in women with female sexual arousal disorder (FSAD) after administration of sildenafil and placebo. We performed a multicenter, double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over study to assess the clitoral engorgement response using dynamic MRI in women with FSAD after administering sildenafil and placebo followed by audiovisual sexual stimulation (AVSS). Nineteen premenopausal women with FSAD underwent two MRI sessions. Subjects were randomized to receive either (i) sildenafil 100 mg during the first session followed by placebo during the second session, or (ii) placebo followed by sildenafil. During each session, baseline MR images were obtained while subjects viewed a neutral video. Subjects then ingested sildenafil or placebo. After 30 minutes, a series of MRIs were obtained at 3-minute intervals for 10 time points while subjects viewed AVSS. A positive sexual arousal response was achieved if clitoral volume increased ≥50% from baseline. Thirteen of 19 (68%) subjects achieved a ≥50% increase in clitoral engorgement from baseline when administered sildenafil or placebo 30 minutes after dose administration. At 60 minutes after administration, 17/19 (89%) subjects receiving sildenafil and 16/19 (84%) subjects receiving placebo had responded (P value 0.3173). Sildenafil did not augment the genital response in women with FSAD. Secondarily, a majority of women in this study did not have impaired clitoral engorgement as measured by MRI, suggesting that FSAD is not predominantly a disorder of genital engorgement.	\N	\N
22621354	Long-haul airline pilots often experience elevated levels of fatigue due to extended work hours and circadian misalignment of sleep and wake periods. During long-haul trips, pilots are typically given 1-3 d off between flights (i.e., layover) to recover from, and prepare for, duty. Anecdotally, some pilots prefer long layovers because it maximizes the time available for recovery and preparation, but others prefer short layovers because it minimizes both the length of the trip, and the degree to which the body clock changes from "home time" to the layover time zone. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of layover length on the sleep, subjective fatigue levels, and capacity to sustain attention of long-haul pilots. Participants were 19 male pilots (10 Captains, 9 First Officers) working for an international airline. Data were collected during an 11- or 12-d international trip. The trips involved (i) 4 d at home prior to the trip; (ii) an eastward flight of 13.5 h across seven time zones; (iii) a layover of either 39 h (i.e., short, n = 9) or 62 h (i.e., long, n = 10); (iv) a return westward flight of 14.3 h across seven time zones; and (v) 4 d off at home after the trip. Sleep was recorded using a self-report sleep diary and wrist activity monitor; subjective fatigue level was measured using the Samn-Perelli Fatigue Checklist; and sustained attention was assessed using the psychomotor vigilance task for a personal digital assistant (PalmPVT). Mixed-model regression analyses were used to determine the effects of layover length (short, long) on the amount of sleep that pilots obtained during the trip, and on the pilots' subjective fatigue levels and capacity to sustain attention. There was no main effect of layover length on ground-based sleep or in-flight sleep, but pilots who had a short layover at the midpoint of their trip had higher subjective fatigue levels and poorer sustained attention than pilots who had a long layover. The results of this study indicate that a short layover during a long-haul trip does not substantially disrupt pilots' sleep, but it may result in elevated levels of fatigue during and after the trip. If short layovers are used, pilots should have a minimum of 4 d off to recover prior to their next long-haul trip.	\N	\N
22624007	The aim of this study was to investigate, using eye-tracking technique, the influence of bottom-up and top-down processes on visual behavior while subjects, naïve to art criticism, were presented with representational paintings. Forty-two subjects viewed color and black and white paintings (Color) categorized as dynamic or static (Dynamism) (bottom-up processes). Half of the images represented natural environments and half human subjects (Content); all stimuli were displayed under aesthetic and movement judgment conditions (Task) (top-down processes). Results on gazing behavior showed that content-related top-down processes prevailed over low-level visually-driven bottom-up processes when a human subject is represented in the painting. On the contrary, bottom-up processes, mediated by low-level visual features, particularly affected gazing behavior when looking at nature-content images. We discuss our results proposing a reconsideration of the definition of content-related top-down processes in accordance with the concept of embodied simulation in art perception.	\N	\N
22628142	To explore treatment response to Osmotic Release Oral System(®) (OROS) methylphenidate in children with ADHD with and without comorbid learning disability (LD). Data were analyzed from two 6-week, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, crossover studies evaluating individually determined doses of OROS methylphenidate versus placebo in 135 children (ages 9 to 12 years) with ADHD with or without an LD in reading, math, or both. The sample was demographically diverse, with 31% females and more than 40% minority, predominantly African American and Hispanic. On two laboratory school days, participants received either OROS methylphenidate or placebo and were given a battery of cognitive and behavioral tests. Treatment with OROS methylphenidate led to improvement in ADHD Rating Scale scores for participants with or without comorbid LD. Both groups performed better during treatment with OROS methylphenidate than placebo on measures of cognitive skills (i.e., Test of Variables of Attention, Finger Windows Backwards), academically related tasks (i.e., Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, Test of Handwriting Skills-Revised, Permanent Product Math Test), and observed classroom behavior (i.e., Swanson, Kotkin, Alger, M-Flynn, and Pelham Scale). In children with ADHD with or without comorbid LD, behavior and performance improved during treatment with OROS methylphenidate.	\N	\N
22637710	Previous studies have shown independent attentional selection of targets in the left and right visual hemifields during attentional tracking (Alvarez & Cavanagh, 2005) but not during a visual search (Luck, Hillyard, Mangun, & Gazzaniga, 1989). Here we tested whether multifocal spatial attention is the critical process that operates independently in the two hemifields. It is explicitly required in tracking (attend to a subset of object locations, suppress the others) but not in the standard visual search task (where all items are potential targets). We used a modified visual search task in which observers searched for a target within a subset of display items, where the subset was selected based on location (Experiments 1 and 3A) or based on a salient feature difference (Experiments 2 and 3B). The results show hemifield independence in this subset visual search task with location-based selection but not with feature-based selection; this effect cannot be explained by general difficulty (Experiment 4). Combined, these findings suggest that hemifield independence is a signature of multifocal spatial attention and highlight the need for cognitive and neural theories of attention to account for anatomical constraints on selection mechanisms.	\N	\N
22648655	Perhaps the most common method of depicting data, in both scientific communication and popular media, is the bar graph. Bar graphs often depict measures of central tendency, but they do so asymmetrically: A mean, for example, is depicted not by a point, but by the edge of a bar that originates from a single axis. Here we show that this graphical asymmetry gives rise to a corresponding cognitive asymmetry. When viewers are shown a bar depicting a mean value and are then asked to judge the likelihood of a particular data point being part of its underlying distribution, viewers judge points that fall within the bar as being more likely than points equidistant from the mean, but outside the bar--as if the bar somehow "contained" the relevant data. This "within-the-bar bias" occurred (a) for graphs with and without error bars, (b) for bars that originated from both lower and upper axes, (c) for test points with equally extreme numeric labels, (d) both from memory (when the bar was no longer visible) and in online perception (while the bar was visible during the judgment), (e) both within and between subjects, and (f) in populations including college students, adults from the broader community, and online samples. We posit that this bias may arise due to principles of object perception, and we show how it has downstream implications for decision making.	\N	\N
22652346	People with schizophrenia have neuro-cognitive deficits that are associated with poor functional outcome, yet their awareness of their cognitive deficiencies is variable. As new treatments for cognition are developed, it will be important that patients are receptive to the need for more therapy. Since insight into symptoms has been associated with treatment compliance, it may be of value to provide psycho-education to improve understanding about cognition in schizophrenia. We report a randomized controlled trial that enrolled 80 subjects in either a brief psycho-education intervention about cognition, or a control condition. Subjects in the two conditions did not differ at baseline in insight or receptiveness to treatment, or on demographic, cognitive, or psychiatric variables. Current cognitive impairment of subjects was evidenced by the indice of working memory, attention and executive functioning abilities, (X=77.45 intervention group; 82.50 control condition), that was significantly below both the normative mean and estimated average premorbid IQs (X=101.3 intervention group; X=104.57 control condition). Multivariate repeated measures ANOVAs indicated that subjects who received the psycho-education did not improve insight into their cognitive deficits or willingness to engage in treatment for cognitive dysfunction. While the failure to find a significant impact of this intervention on awareness of cognitive deficit and receptiveness to cognitive treatment raises questions about the malleability of insight into neuro-cognitive deficits, the intervention was briefer than most reported psycho-education programs and multi-session formats may prove to be more effective.	\N	\N
22659025	Experts sometimes show higher working memory performance than novices but contrary to this finding, evidence for a positive effect of item-specific training is rare. This study provides evidence for item-specific training gains. We presented Chinese characters and artificial patterns (spotted figures) in a change detection task before and after training (varying set size from 1 to 3). A part of the Chinese characters were trained; others and the spotted figures were not trained. Memory capacity was between one and two items. For set size two, memory performance for trained characters was higher than for untrained characters and they were processed faster. Within superior intraparietal sulcus and middle occipital cortex (part of the putative posterior working memory network), the neural activity asymptotically increased with set size. Untrained items reached the activation maximum already at set size two. For this set size, the activity was significantly reduced for trained items so that a further increase from two to three items was observed. We interpret this difference as a correlate of a gain in neural efficiency. The size of this difference correlated with the training gain in memory. We assume that training causes a more efficient neural representation of trained items supported by long-term memory and this allows holding more items in working memory.	\N	\N
22676077	Recent conceptualisations of anxiety posit that equivocal findings related to the time-course of disengaging from threat-relevant stimuli may be attributable to individual differences in associative and rule-based processing. The current study was designed to test the hypothesis that strength of spider-fear associations would indirectly predict reported spider fear via impaired disengagement. One hundred and thirty-one undergraduate volunteer participants completed the Go/No-go Association Task, a visual search task, and self-report spider fear questionnaires. Stronger spider-fear associations were associated with reduced disengagement accuracy, whereas higher levels of reported spider fear were related to faster engagement with and disengagement from spiders. Bootstrapping multiple mediation analyses demonstrated that stronger-spider fear associations evidenced an indirect relationship with reported spider fear via reduced disengagement accuracy, highlighting the importance of fine-grained analyses of different aspects of cognitive bias. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive models of anxiety.	\N	\N
22683449	During covert shifts of tactile spatial attention both somatotopic and external reference frames are employed to encode hand location. When participants cross their hands these frames of references produce conflicting spatial codes which disrupt tactile attentional selectivity. Because attentional shifts are triggered not only in Attention tasks but also during covert movement preparation, the present study aimed at investigating the reference frame employed during such 'motor shifts of attention'. Event related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a Motor task where a visual cue (S1) indicated the relevant hand for a manual movement prior to a tactile Go/Nogo stimulus (S2). For comparison, we ran a tactile Attention task where the same cue (S1) now indicated the relevant hand for a tactile discrimination (S2). Both tasks were performed under uncrossed and crossed hands conditions. In both Attention and Motor tasks similar lateralized components were observed following S1 presentation. Anterior and posterior ERP components indicative of covert attention shifts were exclusively guided by an external reference frame, while a later central negativity operated according to a somatotopic reference frame in both tasks. In the Motor task, this negativity reflected selective activation of the motor cortex in preparation for movement execution. In the Attention task, this component might reflect activity in the somatosensory cortex in preparation for the subsequent tactile discrimination. The presence of multiple and conflicting spatial codes resulted in disruption of tactile attentional selection in the Attention task where attentional modulations of tactile processing were delayed and attenuated with crossed hands as indicated by the analysis of ERPs elicited by S2. In contrast, attentional modulations of S2 processing in the Motor task were largely unaffected by the hand posture manipulation, suggesting that motor attention employs primarily one spatial coordinate system.	\N	\N
22683945	This study investigated whether trauma-related stimuli are preferentially processed at the expense of ongoing processing of neutral stimuli. Participants in the experimental group viewed negative pictures (Trauma) as an analogue trauma induction. Participants in the control group viewed visually similar neutral pictures (Neutral Match). In a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) task participants identified two target pictures. The first target (T1) was a neutral picture, whereas the second target (T2) was a familiar negative or neutral picture or a new neutral or negative picture. In line with hypotheses, only participants in the experimental group showed preferential processing of Trauma pictures. In the experimental group, negative T2 impaired the identification of (neutral) T1 if the T2 immediately followed the T1 in the RSVP stream. The results are consistent with a processing priority of trauma-related information, apparently at the expense of the ongoing processing of neutral information.	\N	\N
22684039	Arousal from sleep is a major defense mechanism in infants against hypoxia and/or hypercapnia. Arousal failure may be an important contributor to SIDS. Areas of the brainstem that have been found to be abnormal in a majority of SIDS infants are involved in the arousal process. Arousal is sleep state dependent, being depressed during AS in most mammals, but depressed during QS in human infants. Repeated exposure to hypoxia causes a progressive blunting of arousal that may involve medullary raphe GABAergic mechanisms. Whereas CB chemoreceptors contribute heavily to arousal in response to hypoxia, serotonergic central chemoreceptors have been implicated in the arousal response to CO(2). Pulmonary or chest wall mechanoreceptors also contribute to arousal in proportion to the ventilatory response and decreases in their input may contribute to depressed arousal during AS. Little is known about specific arousal pathways beyond the NTS. Whether CB chemoreceptor stimulation directly stimulates arousal centers or whether this is done indirectly through respiratory networks remains unknown. This review will focus on arousal in response to hypoxia and CO(2) in the fetus and newborn and will outline what we know (and do not know) about the involvement of the carotid body in this process.	\N	\N
22685575	The attentional set-shifting deficit that has been observed in Parkinson's disease (PD) has long been considered neuropsychological evidence of the involvement of meso-prefrontal and prefrontal-striatal circuits in cognitive flexibility. However, recent studies have suggested that non-dopaminergic, posterior cortical pathologies may also contribute to this deficit. Although several neuroimaging studies have addressed this issue, the results of these studies were confounded by the use of tasks that required other cognitive processes in addition to set-shifting, such as rule learning and working memory. In this study, we attempted to identify the neural correlates of the attentional set-shifting deficit in PD using a compound letter task and 18F-fluoro-deoxy-glucose (FDG) positron emission tomography during rest. Shift cost, which is a measure of attentional set-shifting ability, was significantly correlated with hypometabolism in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, including the putative human frontal eye field. Our results provide direct evidence that dysfunction in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex makes a primary contribution to the attentional set-shifting deficit that has been observed in PD patients.	\N	\N
22686406	Mind wandering occurs when a person's stream of thought moves from the primary task to task-unrelated matters. Some theories of mind wandering suggest that it is caused by decreased attentional control associated with lower working memory (WM) capacity. Others suggest that it is caused by attention being directed toward internally generated thoughts and that it is associated with higher WM capacity. These ideas were assessed testing older adults because they have been argued to have reduced attentional control and lower WM capacity. The first account predicts that mind wandering should increase in older adults, while the second account predicts the opposite. Two experiments show that older adults exhibited a lower rate of mind wandering than younger adults. However, when using text interest as a covariate, the age difference in mind wandering disappeared. These results are further addressed in light of participants' current concerns and preserved situation model processing in cognitive aging.	\N	\N
22687333	A dynamic systems model was used to generate parameters describing a phenotype of Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) behavior in a sample of 36 patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and/or fibromyalgia (FM) and 36 case-matched healthy controls. Altered neuroendocrine function, particularly in relation to somatic symptoms and poor sleep quality, may contribute to the pathophysiology of these disorders. Blood plasma was assayed for cortisol and ACTH every 10 min for 24h. The dynamic model was specified with an ordinary differential equation using three parameters: (1) ACTH-adrenal signaling, (2) inhibitory feedback, and (3) non-ACTH influences. The model was "personalized" by estimating an individualized set of parameters from each participant's data. Day and nighttime parameters were assessed separately. Two nocturnal parameters (ACTH-adrenal signaling and inhibitory feedback) significantly differentiated the two patient subgroups ("fatigue-predominant" patients with CFS only versus "pain-predominant" patients with FM and comorbid chronic fatigue) from controls (all p's<.05), whereas daytime parameters and diurnal/nocturnal slopes did not. The same nocturnal parameters were significantly associated with somatic symptoms among patients (p's<.05). There was a significantly different pattern of association between nocturnal non-ACTH influences and sleep quality among patients versus controls (p<.05). Although speculative, the finding that patient somatic symptoms decreased when more cortisol was produced per unit ACTH, is consistent with cortisol's anti-inflammatory and sleep-modulatory effects. Patients' HPA systems may compensate by promoting more rapid or sustained cortisol production. Mapping "behavioral phenotypes" of stress-arousal systems onto symptom clusters may help disentangle the pathophysiology of complex disorders with frequent comorbidity.	\N	\N
22691441	Recent data suggest that word valence modulates subsequent cognitive processing. However, the contribution of word arousal is less understood. In this study, behavioral and electrophysiological measures to neutral nouns and pseudowords that were preceded by either a high-arousal or a low-arousal word were recorded during a lexical decision task. Effects were found at an electrophysiological level. Target words and pseudowords elicited enhanced N100 amplitudes when they were preceded by high- compared to low-arousing words. This effect may reflect perceptual potentiation during the allocation of attentional resources when the new stimulus is processed. Enhanced amplitudes in a late positivity when target words and pseudowords followed high-arousal primes were also observed, which could be related to sustained attention during supplementary analyses at a post-lexical level.	\N	\N
22694365	Dual-tasking probes divided attention and causes performance changes that are associated with an increased risk for falls in the elderly. There is no systematic review investigating the effect of task type and complexity on the prediction of elderly falls. This article synthesizes research evidence regarding this issue on the contents of dual-tasking walking. Relevant studies were systematically identified from electronic databases of Medline, PubMed, CINAHL, Cochrane CENTRAL and PsycINFO, and the reference lists of identified articles. The selection criteria were defined a priori. Two independent reviewers classified task types based on properties for cognitive demand, assessed the methodological quality with a customized checklist, and calculated the odds ratio of fall prediction. There was one study of reaction time, one of discrimination and decision-making, 10 of mental tracking, three of verbal fluency and five of manual tasks. The methodological heterogeneity was manifested in the selection criteria, faller classification, tasks and measures, resulting in substantial heterogeneity (I(2) 87-92%). Meta-analyses resulted in a significant pooled odds ratio 1.33 (95% CI 1.18-1.50). The mental tracking task was the only type that yielded a significant odds ratio 3.30 (95% CI 2.00-5.44). Running meta-analyses separately for simple and difficult mental tracking task showed similar odds ratios. The mental tracking task yielded significant dual-task-related changes for fall prediction. Most studies successively used an appropriate level of task complexity specific to the specified population of interest. More research is required for definite conclusions regarding the effect of task type and complexity.	\N	\N
22696535	It is well established that the prefrontal cortex is involved during memory-guided tasks whereas visually guided tasks are controlled in part by a frontal-parietal network. However, the nature of the transition from visually guided to memory-guided force control is not as well established. As such, this study examines the spatiotemporal pattern of brain activity that occurs during the transition from visually guided to memory-guided force control. We measured 128-channel scalp electroencephalography (EEG) in healthy individuals while they performed a grip force task. After visual feedback was removed, the first significant change in event-related activity occurred in the left central region by 300 ms, followed by changes in prefrontal cortex by 400 ms. Low-resolution electromagnetic tomography (LORETA) was used to localize the strongest activity to the left ventral premotor cortex and ventral prefrontal cortex. A second experiment altered visual feedback gain but did not require memory. In contrast to memory-guided force control, altering visual feedback gain did not lead to early changes in the left central and midline prefrontal regions. Decreasing the spatial amplitude of visual feedback did lead to changes in the midline central region by 300 ms, followed by changes in occipital activity by 400 ms. The findings show that subjects rely on sensorimotor memory processes involving left ventral premotor cortex and ventral prefrontal cortex after the immediate transition from visually guided to memory-guided force control.	\N	\N
22704744	The Family Smoking Prevention and Control Act gave the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) legal authority to mandate graphic warning labels on cigarette advertising and packaging. The FDA requires that these graphic warning labels be embedded into cigarette advertising and packaging by September 2012. The aim of this study was to examine differences in recall and viewing patterns of text-only versus graphic cigarette warning labels and the association between viewing patterns and recall. Participants (current daily smokers; N=200) were randomized to view a cigarette advertisement with either text-only or graphic warning labels. Viewing patterns were measured using eye-tracking, and recall was later assessed. Sessions were conducted between November 2008 and November 2009. Data analysis was conducted between March 2011 and July 2011. There was a significant difference in percentage correct recall of the warning label between those in the text-only versus graphic warning label condition, 50% vs 83% (χ(2)=23.74, p=0.0001). Time to first viewing of the graphic warning label text and dwell time duration (i.e., time spent looking) on the graphic image were significantly associated with correct recall. Warning labels that drew attention more quickly and resulted in longer dwell times were associated with better recall. Graphic warning labels improve smokers' recall of warning and health risks; these labels do so by drawing and holding attention.	\N	\N
22711264	Conceiving of development with reference to homology can help identify developmental continuity where surface form shows considerable variation across age. I argue that there is a homology of structure between the object-centred, or triadic, interactions that emerge in infancy and later language. The structure of triadic interaction in infancy is first described as involving joint attention and joint engagement about a shared topic, and then a case is made that this structure is maintained through three levels of complexity in language-single word utterances, multiword utterances, and finally complex constructions. A focus on the homological relation between these social interactive structures may be useful in revealing developmental continuities where these may be obscured by quite different surface forms.	\N	\N
22712535	Attentional disengagement from negative affective information and engagement toward positive affective information appears to reflect an avoidant coping mechanism, one that may be associated with the belief that negative emotions are dangerous or undesirable (BNED). To test this hypothesis, we conducted two studies using a dot-probe task measuring attentional preference among college undergraduates. In the first study, BNED was associated with an attentional preference for positive facial cues over negative facial cues, evident after 1000 ms of exposure. In the second study, we included three exposure-time conditions; BNED appeared to be associated with an early disengagement from negative facial cues between 500 and 750 ms post-exposure and a subsequent orientation toward positive facial cues between 750 and 1000 ms post-exposure. We discuss these results in relation to avoidant coping and the relationship between anxiety and attention to affective cues.	\N	\N
22716195	We investigate the effects of exenatide on excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS), driving performance and depression score in patients with type 2 diabetes with EDS. Eight obese patients with diabetes but without obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) participated in a placebo-controlled single-blind study during which multiple wakefulness and sleep latency test, Epworth score, driving performance, depression score, fasting glucose and glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) levels were assessed at baseline, end of placebo and treatment phase at baseline and after 22 weeks of treatment. Mean (±standard error of the mean) age, body mass index (kg m(2) ) and HbA1c [mmol mol(-1) (%)] of patients at baseline were 50 ± 4.9 years, 37.6 ± 1.1 and 65 ± 19 (8.06 ± 0.41), respectively. When compared to placebo, exenatide treatment was associated with a decrease in both subjective and objective sleepiness, based on the Epworth score reduction and the sleep latency increase assessed by multiple objective sleepiness and sustained attention (OSLER) tests, respectively. Mean sleep latency time (adjusted for change in HbA1c and weight) were 32.1 ± 1.7, 29.1 ± 1.7 and 37.7 ± 1.7, respectively (P = 0.002). Modelling for covariates suggested that improvement in mean sleep latency time is predicted by changes in weight (P = 0.003), but not by changes in HbA1c (P = 0.054). Epworth sleepiness score was reduced significantly (values for placebo versus exenatide: 11.3 ± 1.2 versus 5.7 ± 1.3; P = 0.003). No significant change was noted in the depression score and driving performance. Exenatide is associated with a significant reduction in objective sleepiness in obese patients with type 2 diabetes without OSA, independent of HbA1c levels. These findings could form a basis for further studies to investigate the pathophysiological mechanisms of sleepiness in obese patients with type 2 diabetes.	\N	\N
22732031	The present research demonstrates that very brief variations in affect, being around 1 s in length and changing from trial to trial independently from semantic relatedness of primes and targets, modulate the amount of semantic priming. Implementing consonant and dissonant chords (Experiments 1 and 5), naturalistic sounds (Experiment 2), and visual facial primes (Experiment 3) in an (in)direct semantic priming paradigm, as well as brief facial feedback in a summative priming paradigm (Experiment 4), yielded increased priming effects under brief positive compared to negative affect. Furthermore, this modulation took place on the level of semantic spreading rather than on strategic mechanisms (Experiment 5). Alternative explanations such as distraction, motivation, arousal, and cognitive tuning could be ruled out. This phasic affective modulation constitutes a mechanism overlooked thus far that may contaminate priming effects in all priming paradigms that involve affective stimuli. Furthermore, this mechanism provides a novel explanation for the observation that priming effects are usually larger for positive than for negative stimuli. Finally, it has important implications for linguistic research, by suggesting that association norms may be biased for affective words.	\N	\N
22732349	We studied the interaction between the control mechanisms subserving spatial attention and central attention using the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm. Two stimuli, a pure tone (T(1)) and a circular visual array (T(2)), including a salient target and a salient distractor, were presented at varying stimulus onset asynchronies, each requiring a speeded response. Target-specific and distractor-specific lateralized event-related potentials were isolated by placing one of them at a lateral position and the other on the vertical midline. As SOA was decreased, a progressive reduction and postponement of a T(2)-locked N2pc component was observed with a lateral target and a central distractor. No lateralized potentials were associated with a lateral distractor and a central target. The sustained posterior contralateral negativity (SPCN) was observed independently of SOA modulation, only with a lateral target. We also observed an earlier positive deflection, the Ppc (positivity posterior contralateral), that was contralateral to both lateral targets and distractors, whose amplitude and latency were not affected by SOA variations. We conclude that central processing interferes specifically with target processing reflected by the N2pc and SPCN. We propose that the Ppc reflects an initial, bottom-up response to the presence of a salient stimulus, whereas the N2pc and SPCN reflect the controlled deployment of spatial attention to targets and maintenance of target information in visual short-term memory, respectively.	\N	\N
22739547	This study was designed to assess sexual dysfunction in women suffering from type 2 diabetes mellitus. Forty-five type 2 diabetic, non-menopausal married women, aged 20-55 years, who were referred to Shahid Labbafinejad Clinics from March 2008 to June 2009 were included in this study. They were compared to 91 non-diabetic volunteers. Sexual function was evaluated by the sexual function questionnaire. Genitourinary examination was performed in all subjects. Blood sample tests were requested for fasting blood sugar, hemoglobin A(1c), 2-hour postprandial glucose and lipid profile measurements. Ophthalmologic and neurologic examinations (checking deep tendon reflexes) were done for cases. The mean age of cases and controls was 42.17± 5.91 and 34.96 ± 8.30 years, respectively (p < 0.001). The prevalence of a high probability of female sexual dysfunction in 6 domains including desire, arousal sensation, arousal lubrication, orgasm, pain and enjoyment was 71.1, 84.4, 55.6, 71.1, 8.9 and 66.7% in the diabetes mellitus women and 56.6, 67.0, 59.3, 57.1, 25.3 and 53.8% in the non-diabetic volunteers, respectively. Differences were statistically significant in the 3 domains of desire, arousal sensation and pain (p < 0.05). Deep tendon reflexes were normal in all and 12.5% showed diabetic retinopathy. Sexual dysfunction in cases as well as in controls was high; however, further studies with a higher number of patients are needed to confirm the results.	\N	\N
22744778	The aim of this study was to identify the motor, cognitive, and behavioral determinants of driving status and risk factors for driving cessation in Huntington's disease (HD). Seventy-four patients with HD were evaluated for cognitive, motor, psychiatric, and functional status using a standardized battery (Unified Huntington's Disease Rating Scale [UHDRS] and supplemental neuropsychological testing) during a research clinic visit. Chart review was used to categorize patients into two driving status categories: (1) "currently driving" included those driving and driving but with clinician recommendation to restrict, and (2) "not driving" included those with clinician recommendation to cease driving and those not currently driving because of HD. Multi- and univariate logistic regression was used to identify significant clinical predictors of those driving versus not driving. Global cognitive performance and UHDRS Total Functional Capacity scores provided the best predictive model of driving cessation (Nagelkerke R(2) = 0.65; P < 0.0001). Measures of learning (P = 0.006) and psychomotor speed/attention (P = 0.003) accounted for the overall cognitive finding. In univariate analyses, numerous cognitive, motor, and daily functioning items were significantly associated with driving. Although driving status is associated with many aspects of the disease, results suggest that the strongest association is with cognitive performance. A detailed cognitive evaluation is an important component of multidisciplinary clinical assessment in patients with HD who are driving.	\N	\N
22748562	Epidemiological, cross-sectional, and prospective studies suggest that insomnia, chronic pain, and depression frequently co-occur and are mutually interacting conditions. However, the mechanisms underlying these comorbid disorders have yet to be elucidated. Overlapping mechanisms in the central nervous system suggest a common neurobiological substrate(s) may underlie the development and interplay of these disorders. We propose that the mesolimbic dopamine system is an underappreciated and attractive venue for the examination of neurobiological processes involved in the interactions, development, exacerbation, and maintenance of this symptom complex. In the present article, studies from multiple disciplines are reviewed to highlight the role of altered dopaminergic function in the promotion of arousal, pain sensitivity, and mood disturbance. We argue that studies aiming to elucidate common factors accounting for the comorbidity of insomnia, chronic pain, and depression should evaluate functioning within the mesolimbic dopaminergic system and its effect on common processes known to be dysregulated in all three disorders.	\N	\N
22750676	To investigate which frames of reference guide shifts of attention triggered during eye and hand movement preparation and the specificity of their effects on somatosensory processing, we recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in a Go/Nogo task where a cue indicated to prepare an eye movement toward--or a hand movement with--the left or right hand. Before the imperative stimulus, a tactile probe was presented to one hand. Spatially selective modulations of tactile processing were more sustained for hand than eye movements, indicating stronger attentional modulations for the modality of the effector's sensory organ. Importantly, attentional modulations of somatosensory processing as well as lateralized ERP components in the preparation interval were virtually identical under uncrossed and crossed hands conditions, suggesting that shifts of attention triggered during hand and eye movement preparation are guided by a common external reference frame.	\N	\N
22752788	Cognitive functions may be altered in patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) and it has been proposed that vigilance and attention changes play a fundamental role in all aspects of cognitive deficits noted in this disease. The use of event-related potentials (ERPs) is a high-time resolution technique that can be used to explore the presence of cognitive dysfunction. We review 23 empirical articles on ERPs in OSAS in order to contribute to the clarification of the pattern of cognitive deficits that are specific to this disease and to see whether there might be an improvement of abnormal psychophysiological findings with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) treatment. We conclude that ERP studies have contributed to demonstrating changes in cognitive attentive processing in OSAS, mainly in association with altered functioning of the prefrontal cortex, and that CPAP treatment may improve vigilance and attention and generally improve cerebral information processing in these patients. The remaining deficits during sufficient CPAP therapy may, however, reflect irreversible hypoxic cerebral damage.	\N	\N
22776904	Amphetamine-based medications robustly suppress symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but their exact mechanisms remain poorly understood. Recent hemodynamic imaging studies have suggested that amphetamines may modulate the prefrontal and anterior cingulate brain regions, although few studies have been published and the results have not been entirely consistent. Meanwhile, several electrophysiological studies have shown that abnormal fast oscillations (in the γ range) may be closely linked to inattention and other cardinal symptoms of ADHD. In this study, we utilized magnetoencephalography to examine how amphetamines modulate high-frequency brain activity in adults with ADHD. Participants performed an auditory attention task, which required sustained attention in one block and passive listening in a separate block. Participants completed the task twice in the on-medication and off-medication states. All data were analyzed using beamforming techniques to resolve cortical regions showing event-related synchronizations and desynchronizations. Our primary findings indicated that oral administration of amphetamine decreased γ-band event-related desynchronization activity significantly in the medial prefrontal area and decreased event-related synchronization in bilateral superior parietal areas, left inferior parietal, and the left inferior frontal gyrus. These results suggest that psychostimulants strongly modulate γ activity in frontal and parietal cortical areas, which are known to be central to the brain's core attentional networks.	\N	\N
22782542	Heightened anticipation of future events has been characterized as a feature of certain anxiety disorders. In functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, anticipation of fearful/threatening images has been shown to robustly activate the insular cortex and amygdala in healthy subjects, in subjects with high trait anxiety, and in some with anxiety disorders. Blood oxygenation level dependent activation in response to negative image anticipation is also sensitive to anxiolytic treatment, suggesting that image anticipation probes anxiety systems. It is not clear, however, if behavioral responses to image anticipation are also sensitive to anxiolytics. This study tested the hypothesis that anxiety behaviors during anticipation of negative images are sensitive to anxiolytic treatment. This study examined the effects of alprazolam and pregabalin treatment on potentiated startle during affective image anticipation. There was an effect of anticipation type (negative versus neutral versus positive) on startle reactivity and subjective ratings, suggesting that the task was effective in assaying negative anticipatory arousal. Both treatments significantly reduced overall startle magnitude. However, neither treatment specifically affected potentiated startle during aversive anticipation. These data suggest that potentiated startle in response to anticipation of aversive images is not sensitive to anxiolytic treatments in a healthy population, limiting its use as a predictive model of anxiolytic activity. This article is a US Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.	\N	\N
22796982	People suppressing their emotions while facing an emotional event typically remember it less well. However, the neural mechanisms underlying the impairing effect of emotion suppression on successful memory encoding are not well understood. Because successful memory encoding relies on the hippocampus and the amygdala, we hypothesized that memory impairments due to emotion suppression are associated with down-regulated activity in these brain areas. 59 healthy females were instructed either to simply watch the pictures or to down-regulate their emotions by using a response-focused emotion suppression strategy. Brain activity was recorded using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and free recall of pictures was tested afterwards. As expected, suppressing one's emotions resulted in impaired recall of the pictures. On the neural level, the memory impairments were associated with reduced activity in the right hippocampus during successful encoding. No significant effects were observed in the amygdala. In addition, functional connectivity between the hippocampus and the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was strongly reduced during emotion suppression, and these reductions predicted free-recall performance. Our results indicate that emotion suppression interferes with memory encoding on the hippocampal level, possibly by decoupling hippocampal and prefrontal encoding processes, suggesting that response-focused emotion suppression might be an adaptive strategy for impairing hippocampal memory formation in highly arousing situations.	\N	\N
22800656	The goal of the present study was to determine whether female restrained and unrestrained eaters demonstrated differential levels of attentional bias to high calorie foods when they were presented as distractors in a flanker task. This task consisted of four blocks of 68 trials in which three food pictures were briefly presented simultaneously on a computer screen. On each trial a high or low calorie target food was presented in the center of a pair of high or low calorie food flanker pictures and participants' reaction times to answer a basic question about whether they would consume the target food for breakfast were recorded. In Experiment 1, in which all participants were fed a snack prior to engaging in the flanker task, there was no evidence that restrained (n=29) or unrestrained (n=37) eaters had an attentional bias. However, in Experiment 2, when participants completed the flanker task while hungry, restrained eaters (n=27) experienced response conflict only when low calorie targets were flanked by high calorie distractors, whereas unrestrained eaters (n=46) were distracted by high calorie flankers regardless of the caloric content of the target cue. The results from this implicit task indicate that flankers interfere with hungry participants' responses to varying degrees depending on their cognitive restraint. Whether attentional bias to food cues subsequently affects food choices and eating behavior is a topic for further investigation.	\N	\N
22806665	In this research work, we contribute with a behaviour learning process for a hierarchical Bayesian framework for multimodal active perception, devised to be emergent, scalable and adaptive. This framework is composed by models built upon a common spatial configuration for encoding perception and action that is naturally fitting for the integration of readings from multiple sensors, using a Bayesian approach devised in previous work. The proposed learning process is shown to reproduce goal-dependent human-like active perception behaviours by learning model parameters (referred to as "attentional sets") for different free-viewing and active search tasks. Learning was performed by presenting several 3D audiovisual virtual scenarios using a head-mounted display, while logging the spatial distribution of fixations of the subject (in 2D, on left and right images, and in 3D space), data which are consequently used as the training set for the framework. As a consequence, the hierarchical Bayesian framework adequately implements high-level behaviour resulting from low-level interaction of simpler building blocks by using the attentional sets learned for each task, and is able to change these attentional sets "on the fly," allowing the implementation of goal-dependent behaviours (i.e., top-down influences).	\N	\N
22808722	The accuracy and variability of a sustained low-level force contraction (2% of maximum voluntary contraction) was measured while participants viewed unpleasant, pleasant, and neutral images during a feedback occluded force control task. Exposure to pleasant and unpleasant images led to a relative increase in force production but did not alter the variability of force production compared to conditions in which participants viewed neutral images. Findings are discussed with respect to prior work, emphasizing arousal specific changes that emerge at low target force levels.	\N	\N
22815960	The ability to quickly detect changes in our surroundings has been crucial to human adaption and survival. In everyday life we often need to identify whether an object is new and if an object has changed its location. In the current event-related potential (ERP) study we investigated the electrophysiological correlates and the time course in detecting different types of changes of an objecṫs location and identity. In a delayed match-to-sample task participants had to indicate whether two consecutive scenes containing a road, a house, and two objects, were either the same or different. In six randomly intermixed conditions the second scene was identical, one of the objects had changed its identity, one of the objects had changed its location, or the objects had switched locations. The results reveal different time courses for the processing of identity and location changes in spatial scenes. Whereas location changes elicited a posterior N2 effect, indicating early mismatch detection, followed by a P3 effect reflecting post-perceptual processing, identity changes elicited an anterior N3 effect, which was delayed and functionally distinct from the N2 effect found for the location changes. The condition in which two objects switched position elicited a late ERP effect, reflected by a P3 effect similar to that obtained for the location changes. In sum, this study is the first to cohesively show different time courses for the processing of location changes, identity changes, and object switches in spatial scenes, which manifest themselves in different electrophysiological correlates.	\N	\N
22824198	Preterm infants are exposed to loud noises during their stay in the neonatal intensive care unit which can lead to physiologic and behavioral alterations and even hearing loss. The use of earmuffs can reduce sound level and these changes. The objective of the present study is to evaluate the effectiveness of the earmuffs in preterm infants solely cared for in closed incubators. A comparative prospective study comprising 20 clinically stable preterm infants weighing less than 1500 g cared in closed incubator was conducted. Preterm infants acted as their own controls whereby they were observed without earmuffs (Group 1) for 2 days and with earmuffs (Group 2) on consecutive 2 days. The preterm infants' physiologic responses and Anderson Behavioral State Scoring System (ABSS) scores were assessed over 30s every 2h for 8h during daytime for 4 days. Out of 20 preterm infants, 6 were male and 14 female with a mean birth weight of 1220 ± 209 g, gestational age of 29.9 ± 2.1 weeks. The total number of measurements was 320. The mean ABSS scores of Group 1 and 2 were 3.07±1.1 and 1.34 ± 0.3, respectively. Statistically significant difference was noted between the means of ABSS scores (p<0.001). Preterm infants with earmuffs (87.5%) were more frequently observed in a quiet sleep state of ABSS compared with those without earmuffs (29.4%). Noise level reduction was associated with significant improvement in behavioral states of ABSS. We suggest that noise reduction in preterm infants with earmuffs is helpful by improving sleep efficiency and increasing time of quiet sleep.	\N	\N
22834729	This review considers the challenges ahead for developing a generalizable strategy for the use of central thalamic deep brain stimulation (CT/DBS) to support arousal regulation mechanisms in the severely injured brain. Historical efforts to apply CT/DBS to patients with severe brain injuries and a proof-of-concept result from a single-subject study are discussed. Circuit and cellular mechanisms underlying the recovery of consciousness are considered for their relevance to the application of CT/DBS, to improve consciousness and cognition in nonprogressive brain injuries. Finally, directions for development, and testing of generalizable criteria for CT/DBS are suggested, which aim to identify neuronal substrates and behavioral profiles that may optimally benefit from support of arousal regulation mechanisms.	\N	\N
22844142	This multiple-study experiment evaluated the utility of assessing and treating severe self-injurious behavior SIB based on the outcomes of a functional analysis of precursor behavior. In Study 1, a precursor to SIB was identified using descriptive assessment and conditional probability analyses. In Study 2, a functional analysis of precursor behavior was conducted. Finally, study 3 evaluated the effects of a treatment in which precursor behavior produced the maintaining variable identified in the precursor functional analysis. Studies 1 and 3 were conducted in two settings in the participants natural environment, where data collection was ongoing throughout the course of the study. Results showed that it was possible to identify a precursor to infrequent but severe SIB, that a functional analysis of precursor behavior suggested a clear operant function, and that treatment based on the results of the precursor functional analysis reduced SIB in the natural environment.	\N	\N
22851806	Sleep is regulated by circadian and homeostatic processes and is highly organized temporally. Our study was designed to determine whether this organization is preserved in patients receiving mechanical ventilation (MV) and intravenous sedation. Observational study. Academic medical intensive care unit. Critically ill patients receiving MV and intravenous sedation. Continuous polysomnography (PSG) was initiated an average of 2.0 (1.0, 3.0) days after ICU admission and continued ≥ 36 h or until the patient was extubated. Sleep staging and power spectral analysis were performed using standard approaches. We also calculated the electroencephalography spectral edge frequency 95% SEF₉₅, a parameter that is normally higher during wakefulness than during sleep. Circadian rhythmicity was assessed in 16 subjects through the measurement of aMT6s in urine samples collected hourly for 24-48 hours. Light intensity at the head of the bed was measured continuously. We analyzed 819.7 h of PSG recordings from 21 subjects. REM sleep was identified in only 2/21 subjects. Slow wave activity lacked the normal diurnal and ultradian periodicity and homeostatic decline found in healthy adults. In nearly all patients, SEF₉₅ was consistently low without evidence of diurnal rhythmicity (median 6.3 [5.3, 7.8] Hz, n = 18). A circadian rhythm of aMT6s excretion was present in most (13/16, 81.3%) patients, but only 4 subjects had normal timing. Comparison of the SEF₉₅ during the melatonin-based biological night and day revealed no difference between the 2 periods (P = 0.64). The circadian rhythms and PSG of patients receiving mechanical ventilation and intravenous sedation exhibit pronounced temporal disorganization. The finding that most subjects exhibited preserved, but phase delayed, excretion of aMT6s suggests that the circadian pacemaker of such patients may be free-running.	\N	\N
22856389	The development of sustained attention in the preschool years is not yet fully understood. Delineating age-related changes of attentional proficiencies and deficiencies is important for understanding atypical developmental trajectories, specifically in neurodevelopmental disorders that are characterized by attentional difficulties. The objective of the current study was to develop preschool-appropriate measures for assessing sustained attention and to chart developmental changes in attention in early childhood. Using adapted computerized paradigms, the present study investigated age-related changes in visual and auditory sustained attention in seventy typically developing children aged 3 to 6 years. The results indicated that similar age-related gains in performance emerged across both visual and auditory attention tasks. The findings suggest that the adapted measures developed in this study are sensitive enough to capture developmental variations in attention performance.	\N	\N
22871541	The causative mechanisms of type 2 diabetes (T2D) on cognitive dysfunction are still undergoing development. To explore the cognitive dysfunction profile and its relation to the potential role of arterial stiffness in later middle age T2D patients. We studied 37 patients with T2D (age range 45-65 years) and 22 normal controls. All participants underwent comprehensive neuropsychological assessment. The carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (CF-PWV) measurements were taken with the PulsePen device. Our results showed significantly poorer performance on all tests assessing attention/executive functions and processing speed in patients with T2D. In addition to cognitive slowing T2D patients demonstrated significant deficits in almost all measures of verbal episodic memory after adjustment for age, education and blood pressure (BP) levels (p<0.05). Carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (CF-PWV) appeared significantly higher in T2D subjects than in normal controls after adjustment for age and BP level (p<0.001). Significant relationship was observed between CF-PWV and cognitive status. We revealed that arterial stiffness was increased and associated with cognitive impairment in T2D. The cognitive profile indicates hippocampal amnestic type mild cognitive impairment associated with a pronounced dysexecutive syndrome suggesting that diabetes may affect cognition through both vascular and neurodegenerative processes. However, neurodegenerative cognitive profile caused by hippocampal atrophy in a pure vascular process could not be excluded.	\N	\N
22872509	We used the Re-enactment of intention paradigm to investigate whether children would re-enact what an adult intended to do in a video presentation as they do when presented with a live demonstration (Meltzoff in Dev Psychol 31(5):838-850, 1995). Unlike the 18-month-old infants studied by Meltzoff (Dev Psychol 31(5):838-850, 1995), the 18- and 24-month-olds in the current study did not frequently imitate unsuccessful goal-directed actions presented in a video model. Children who performed better in the task also tended to share more of their attention with the experimenter during co-viewing of the video. Performance on the Re-enactment of intention task was positively related to categorization score, an independent measure of cognitive functioning.	\N	\N
22875718	This study was conducted to test interpersonal, attitudinal, and sexual predictors of sexual assertiveness in a Spanish sample of 1,619 men and 1,755 women aged 18-87 years. Participants completed measures of sexual assertiveness, solitary and dyadic sexual desire, sexual arousal, erectile function, sexual attitudes, and frequency of partner abuse. In men, higher sexual assertiveness was predicted by less non-physical abuse, more positive attitudes toward sexual fantasies and erotophilia, higher dyadic desire, and higher sexual arousal. In women, higher sexual assertiveness was predicted by less non-physical abuse, less solitary sexual desire and higher dyadic sexual desire, arousal, erotophilia, and positive attitudes towards sexual fantasies. Results were discussed in the light of prevention and educational programs that include training in sexual assertiveness skills.	\N	\N
22878512	The authors examined longitudinal associations between 2 categories of parent verbal responsiveness and language comprehension and production 1 year later in 40 toddlers and preschoolers with a diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Parent-child play samples using a standard toy set were digitally captured and coded for child engagement with objects and communication acts and for parent verbal responses to play and communication. After controlling for parent education, child engagement, and initial language level, only parent directives for language that followed into the child's focus of attention accounted for unique variance in predicting both comprehension and production 1 year later. A series of exploratory analyses revealed that parent comments that followed into the child's focus of attention also accounted for unique variance in later comprehension and production for children who were minimally verbal at the initial time period. Child developmental level may warrant different types of linguistic input to facilitate language learning. Children with ASD who have minimal linguistic skills may benefit from parent language input that follows into the child's focus of attention. Children with ASD who are verbally fluent may need more advanced language input to facilitate language development.	\N	\N
22878565	Affinity is a computerized assessment tool that combines viewing time and self-report measures of sexual interest. The present study was designed to assess the diagnostic properties of Affinity with respect to sexual interest in prepubescent children. Reliability of both self-report and viewing time components was estimated to be high. The group profile of a sample of pedophilic adult male child molesters (n = 42, all of whom admitted their offenses) differed from the group profiles of male community controls (n = 95) and male nonsexual offenders (n = 27), respectively. More specifically, both ratings and viewing times for images showing small children or prejuvenile children were significantly higher within the child molester sample than in either of the other two groups, attesting to the validity of the measures. Overall classification accuracy, however, was mediocre: A multivariate classification routine yielded 50% sensitivity for child molester status at the cost of 13% false positives. The implications for forensic use of Affinity are discussed.	\N	\N
22882160	Recent studies propose that a mechanism termed "inhibitory tagging" acts upon the processing of the target at the attended location by temporarily blocking the stimulus-response mapping. Here we combined the cue-target paradigm with the Stroop task and measured event-related potential (ERP) responses to the color of a color word presented at the previously attended (cued) or unattended (uncued) location. We found that the conflict-related N450 effect emerged later and had a smaller size at the cued than the uncued location. The overall ERP responses to the target showed lower P1 and N1 amplitude at the cued than the uncued location. Although the P1/N1 effect may reflect deficient perceptual processing of the target, the delay of the N450 suggests that the link between perceptual processing and response activation is temporarily blocked at the previously attended location.	\N	\N
22882736	Previous research with adults indicates that plain packaging increases visual attention to health warnings in adult non-smokers and weekly smokers, but not daily smokers. The present research extends this study to adolescents aged 14-19 years. Mixed-model experimental design, with smoking status as a between-subjects factor and pack type (branded or plain pack) and eye gaze location (health warning or branding) as within-subjects factors. Three secondary schools in Bristol, UK. A convenience sample of adolescents comprising never-smokers (n = 26), experimenters (n = 34), weekly smokers (n = 13) and daily smokers (n = 14). Number of eye movements to health warnings and branding on plain and branded packs. Analysis of variance, irrespective of smoking status revealed more eye movements to health warnings than branding on plain packs, but an equal number of eye movements to both regions on branded packs (P = 0.033). This was observed among experimenters (P < 0.001) and weekly smokers (P = 0.047), but not among never-smokers or daily smokers. Among experimenters and weekly smokers, plain packaging increases visual attention to health warnings and away from branding. Daily smokers, even relatively early in their smoking careers, seem to avoid the health warnings on cigarette packs. Adolescent never-smokers attend the health warnings preferentially on both types of packs, a finding which may reflect their decision not to smoke.	\N	\N
22888795	This study addresses the relationship between trait impulsivity and inhibitory control, two features known to be impaired in a number of psychiatric conditions. While impulsivity is often measured using psychometric self-report questionnaires, the inhibition of inappropriate, impulsive motor responses is typically measured using experimental laboratory tasks. It remains unclear, however, whether psychometrically assessed impulsivity and experimentally operationalized inhibitory performance are related to each other. Therefore, we investigated the relationship between these two traits in a large sample using correlative and latent variable analysis. A total of 504 healthy individuals completed the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-11) and a battery of four prepotent response inhibition paradigms: the antisaccade, Stroop, stop-signal, and go/no-go tasks. We found significant associations of BIS impulsivity with commission errors on the go/no-go task and directional errors on the antisaccade task, over and above effects of age, gender, and intelligence. Latent variable analysis (a) supported the idea that all four inhibitory measures load on the same underlying construct termed "prepotent response inhibition" and (b) revealed that 12% of variance of the prepotent response inhibition construct could be explained by BIS impulsivity. Overall, the magnitude of associations observed was small, indicating that while a portion of variance in prepotent response inhibition can be explained by psychometric trait impulsivity, the majority of variance remains unexplained. Thus, these findings suggest that prepotent response inhibition paradigms can account for psychometric trait impulsivity only to a limited extent. Implications for studies of patient populations with symptoms of impulsivity are discussed.	\N	\N
22888823	The present study investigated parental attention and sensitivity to their child's pain and the moderating role of child's facial pain expressiveness and induced threat. Sixty-two parents (49 mothers; 13 fathers) of schoolchildren observed their child undergoing painful and nonpainful heat trials and were requested to rate the presence of pain after each trial. Painful versus nonpainful trials were signaled by the presence of either a yellow or blue circle; one color served as a cue for possible pain delivery (i.e., conditioned pain cue), whereas the other served as a cue for a nonpainful trial. A subsequent visual search task (VST) assessed attention to pain cues by asking parents to identify a target presented within the conditioned pain cue or one of several other colored circles. Parents were randomly assigned to a "high threat" or "low threat" group in which either threatening or neutral information about the child's pain was provided. Signal detection analyses indicated that parents' ability to detect pain (i.e., sensitivity) was enhanced for parents in the high-threat group and for parents whose children expressed high pain. Visual search analyses indicated attentional engagement to child pain only among parents in the high-threat group whose child showed high-pain expressiveness. In all other circumstances, a tendency to avoid pain cues was observed. These findings attest to the importance of pain-related threat in understanding parent attention to child pain. Theoretical and clinical implications and future research directions are discussed.	\N	\N
22895881	Active exploration of the visual world depends on sequential shifts of gaze that bring prioritized regions of a scene into central vision. The efficiency of this system is commonly attributed to a mechanism of "inhibition of return" (IOR) that discourages re-examination of previously-visited locations. Such a process is fundamental to computational models of attentional selection and paralleled by neurophysiological observations of inhibition of target-related activity in visuomotor areas. However, studies examining eye movements in naturalistic visual scenes appear to contradict the hypothesis that IOR promotes exploration. Instead, these reports reveal a surprisingly strong tendency to shift gaze back to the previously fixated location, suggesting that refixations might even be facilitated under natural conditions. Here we resolve this apparent contradiction, based on a probabilistic analysis of gaze patterns recorded during both free-viewing and search of naturalistic scenes. By simulating saccadic selection based on instantaneous influences alone, we show that the observed frequency of return saccades is in fact substantially less than predicted for a memoryless system, demonstrating that refixation is actively inhibited under natural viewing conditions. Furthermore, these observations reveal that gaze history significantly influences the way in which natural scenes are explored, contrary to accounts that suggest visual search has no memory.	\N	\N
22896722	Item-specific spatial information is essential for interacting with objects and for binding multiple features of an object together. Spatial relational information is necessary for implicit tasks such as recognizing objects or scenes from different views but also for explicit reasoning about space such as planning a route with a map and for other distinctively human traits such as tool construction. To better understand how the brain supports these two different kinds of information, we used functional MRI to directly contrast the neural encoding and maintenance of spatial relations with that for item locations in equivalent visual scenes. We found a double dissociation between the two: whereas item-specific processing implicates a frontoparietal attention network, including the superior frontal sulcus and intraparietal sulcus, relational processing preferentially recruits a cognitive control network, particularly lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) and inferior parietal lobule. Moreover, pattern classification revealed that the actual meaning of the relation can be decoded within these same regions, most clearly in rostrolateral PFC, supporting a hierarchical, representational account of prefrontal organization.	\N	\N
22900551	In this article the author argues that in order to be psychoanalysis, the 'here and now' technical approach needs to be firmly grounded theoretically and technically in a practice that includes the notion of reverie or its equivalent. The author has argued previously that the analyst's theory is the essential 'third' of the two-person analytic situation. She now suggests that it is specifically the theories of temporality and the attitude of 'evenly suspended attention' or its more contemporary development, 'reverie', that are the crucial aspects of that theory. She refers to these essential aspects as the 'theory in practice' in so far as they are more than a technical approach or a theory of practice but reflect directly a particular analyst's internalisation of the whole psychoanalytic theoretical corpus. While she believes this to be an essential component in any true psychoanalysis, in developing her argument the author looks at situations in which the analyst is particularly prone to forgo this temporal aspect, as is the case when patients show an absence of symbolic thinking within the analytic situation. In fact, with those patients reverie and the visual images it produces within the analyst's mind offer perhaps the only hope of a meeting ground between the concrete and the symbolic and the possibility of avoiding an impasse. Impasse, she suggests, has at its root the absence of reverie as a third and temporal element, inevitably giving rise to concrete thinking on the part of patient and analyst and so to a situation that cannot evolve.	\N	\N
22914520	Despite shorter duty hours, fatigue remains a problem among medical residents. The authors tested the effect of a short, mid-day nap on the cognitive functioning and alertness of first-year internal medicine (IM) residents during normal duty hours. This was a controlled, interventional study performed between July 2008 and April 2010. The authors recruited a nap group of 18 residents and a rest (control) group of 11 residents. Investigators connected all participants to an ambulatory sleep monitor before the beginning of their shifts in order to monitor rolling eye movements, a proxy for attention failures. At mid-day, both groups took Conner's Continuous Performance Test (CPT II) to evaluate their cognitive functioning and then were placed in a reclining chair designed for napping. The authors instructed nap group residents to nap for up to 20 minutes and chatted with control group residents to prevent them from napping. All residents took the CPT II again immediately after the intervention. Residents' attention failures were recorded until the end of the workday. The authors compared the mean outcome parameters of the two groups through analysis of variance, using effect-of-treatment and baseline covariates. Nap group participants slept a mean of 8.4±3.0 minutes. Compared with controls whose cognitive functioning and number of attention failures did not change from morning to afternoon, the nap group's cognitive functioning improved and their number of attention failures decreased. A short, mid-day nap can improve cognitive functioning and alertness among first-year IM residents.	\N	\N
22923230	Progressive asphyxia, produced by a prolonged voluntary breath hold (end-expiratory apnoea), evokes large bursts of muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA). These bursts increase in amplitude until the asphyxic break point is reached, at which point the bursts are inhibited. We tested the hypothesis that lung inflation, rather than relief from hypoxia and hypercapnia, is responsible for the inhibition of MSNA. Multiunit MSNA was recorded from motor fascicles of the common peroneal nerve in 11 subjects. Following a period of quiet breathing, subjects were instructed to behave as follows: (i) to hold their breath in expiration for as long as they could (mean duration 32.3 ± 1.9 s); (ii) to take a single breath of room air, 100% N(2) or 10% CO(2) + 90% N(2) at the asphyxic break point; (iii) to exhale and continue the apnoea until the next break point; and then (iv) to resume breathing. All subjects reported relief during inhalation of any gas, and could continue holding their breath for a further 30.7 ± 2.8 s with room air, 18.6 ± 1.7 s with N(2) and 11.8 ± 1.8 s with 10% CO(2) + 90% N(2). Despite the exaggerated chemoreceptor drive in the latter two conditions (hence the significantly shorter latencies to the subsequent asphyxic break point), the inhibition still occurred; moreover, there was no significant difference in duration of the inhibition of MSNA following the single breath of room air (7.6 ± 0.7 s), N(2) (6.2 ± 0.6 s) or 10% CO(2) + 90% N(2) (5.5 ± 0.4 s). Following the resumption of breathing, however, the duration of MSNA inhibition (11.0 ± 1.0 s) was significantly longer than that following a single breath. To investigate the involvement of chemoreceptors in the respiratory modulation of MSNA further, the same gases were used during an inspiratory-capacity apnoea, which causes a brief inhibition of MSNA during the inflation phase and a sustained increase during the hold phase. The duration of the apnoea was shortest after a breath of 10% O(2) + 90% N(2), but the latency until the bursts resumed after the inspiratory breath hold were similar for all gases, which suggests that there is no chemoreceptor involvement during the sympathetic silence seen during the inflation phase of inspiratory-capacity apnoeas. We conclude that neither peripheral nor central chemoreceptors are responsible for the inhibition of muscle vasoconstrictor drive following an end-expiratory apnoea or an end-inspiratory apnoea. Rather, we suggest that the inhibition is evoked by stretch receptors in the lungs and/or chest wall, which may also contribute to the longer inhibition associated with the hyperventilation following the subsequent resumption of rhythmic breathing.	\N	\N
22934427	To investigate the behavior difference of allergic rhinitis with adenoid hypertrophy between study group and control group. One hundred and seventeen children diagnosed as allergic rhinitis with adenoid hypertrophy were enrolled in our study were divided into study group and control group. Forty-two children treated with local steroid nasal spray for two to three months and antihistamine were control group. Seventy-five children treated with endoscopic adenoidectomy and drug treatment were study group; All children' parents were inquired for their clinical presentation. No distinctive differences were found between the two groups (P > 0.05) in adenoid hypertrophy, accompanying nasal problems and clinical questionnaire scoring. Significant statistical distinction were found (P < 0.05) in snoring, sleep disturbance and frequent arousal, nasal obstructive moth-breathing, and recurrent respiratory tract infection between the two groups after three-month follow up. Endoscopic adenoidectomy should be taken into account for allergic rhinitis with adenoid hypertrophy in children. Adenoidectomy would be useful for the improvement of behavior symptoms.	\N	\N
22934682	Theories of motor learning predict that training a movement reduces the amount of attention needed for its performance (i.e., more automatic). If training one movement transfers, then the amount of attention needed for performing a second movement should also be reduced, as measured under dual task conditions. The authors' purpose was to test whether dual task paradigms are feasible for detecting transfer of training between two naturalistic movements. Immediately following motor training, subjects improved performance of a second untrained movement under single and dual task conditions. Subjects with no training did not. Improved performance in the untrained movement was likely due to transfer, and suggests that dual tasks may be feasible for detecting transfer between naturalistic actions.	\N	\N
22935330	We studied the effects of training on auditory attention in healthy adults with a speech perception task involving dichotically presented syllables. Training involved bottom-up manipulation (facilitating responses from the harder-to-report left ear through a decrease of right-ear stimulus intensity), top-down manipulation (focusing attention on the left-ear stimuli through instruction), or their combination. The results showed significant training-related effects for top-down training. These effects were evident as higher overall accuracy rates in the forced-left dichotic listening (DL) condition that sets demands on attentional control, as well as a response shift toward left-sided reports in the standard DL task. Moreover, a transfer effect was observed in an untrained auditory-spatial attention task involving bilateral stimulation where top-down training led to a relatively stronger focus on left-sided stimuli. Our results indicate that training of attentional control can modulate the allocation of attention in the auditory space in adults. Malleability of auditory attention in healthy adults raises the issue of potential training gains in individuals with attentional deficits.	\N	\N
22936100	We conducted a series of experiments to determine whether negative priming is used in the process of target selection for a saccadic eye movement. The key questions addressed the circumstances in which the negative priming of an object takes place, and the distinction between spatial and object-based effects. Experiment 1 revealed that after fixating a target (cricket ball) amongst an array of semantically related distracters, saccadic eye movements in a subsequent display were faster to the target than to the distracters or new objects, irrespective of location. The main finding was that of the facilitation of a recent target, not the inhibition of a recent distracter or location. Experiment 2 replicated this finding by using silhouettes of objects for selection that is based on feature shape. Error rates were associated with distracters with high target-shape similarity; therefore, Experiment 3 presented silhouettes of animals using distracters with low target-shape similarity. The pattern of results was similar to that of Experiment 2, with clear evidence of target facilitation rather than the inhibition of distracters. Experiment 4 and 5 introduced a distracter together with the target into the probe display, to generate a level of competitive selection in the probe condition. In these circumstances, clear evidence of spatial inhibition at the location of the previous distracters emerged. We discuss the implications for our understanding of selective attention and consider why it is essential to supplement response time data with the analysis of eye movement behaviour in spatial negative priming paradigms.	\N	\N
22937090	In this single case study, visuospatial neglect patient P1 demonstrated a dissociation between an intact ability to make appropriate reflexive eye movements to targets in the neglected field with latencies of <400 ms, while failing to report targets presented at such durations in a separate verbal detection task. In contrast, there was a failure to evoke the usually robust Remote Distractor Effect in P1, even though distractors in the neglected field were presented at above threshold durations. Together those data indicate that the tight coupling that is normally shown between attention and eye movements appears to be disrupted for low-level orienting in P1. A comparable disruption was also found for high-level cognitive processing tasks, namely reading and scene scanning. The findings are discussed in relation to sampling, attention and awareness in neglect.	\N	\N
22939462	Left fronto-cortical hypoactivity, thought to reflect reduced activity in approach-related systems, and right parietal hypoactivity, associated with emotional under-arousal, have been noted in major depressive disorder (MDD). Altered theta activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) has also been associated with the disorder. We assessed resting frontal and parietal alpha asymmetry and power in non-medicated MDD (N = 53; 29 females) and control (N = 43; 23 females) individuals. Theta activity was examined using standardized low-resolution electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) in the ACC [BA24ab and BA32 comprising the rostral ACC and BA25/subgenual (sg) ACC]. The MDD group, and particularly depressed males, displayed increased overall frontal and parietal alpha power and left midfrontal hypoactivity (alpha(2)-indexed). They also exhibited increased sgACC theta(2) activity. MDD females had increased right parietal activity, suggesting increased emotive arousal. Thus, unmedicated depressed adults were characterized by lower activity in regions implicated in approach/positive affective tendencies as well as diffuse cortical hypoarousal, though sex specific modulations emerged. Altered theta in the sgACC may reflect emotion regulation abnormalities in MDD.	\N	\N
22948452	The aim of this study was to compare female sexual function after surgical treatment of anterior vaginal prolapse with either small intestine submucosa grafting or traditional colporrhaphy. Subjects were randomly assigned, preoperatively, to the small intestine submucosa graft (n = 29) or traditional colporrhaphy (n = 27) treatment group. Postoperative outcomes were analyzed at 12 months. The Female Sexual Function Index questionnaire was used to assess sexual function. Data were compared with independent samples or a paired Student's t-test. In the small intestine submucosa group, the total mean Female Sexual Function Index score increased from 15.5±7.2 to 24.4±7.5 (p<0.001). In the traditional colporrhaphy group, the total mean Female Sexual Function Index score increased from 15.3±6.8 to 24.2±7.0 (p<0.001). Improvements were noted in the domains of desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, satisfaction, and pain. There were no differences between the two groups at the 12-month follow-up. Small intestine submucosa repair and traditional colporrhaphy both improved sexual function postoperatively. However, no differences were observed between the two techniques.	\N	\N
22948506	To evaluate the influence of climacteric symptoms on the sexual function in middle-aged women. A cross-sectional population study was conducted on a sample of 370 middle-aged women, aged 40 to 65 years-old, cared for at the Basic Health Units in Natal, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. We used a questionnaire containing questions on sociodemographic, clinical, and behavioral characteristics. Sexual function was evaluated by the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI), while the menopause symptoms by the Menopause Rating Scale (MRS). In the studied group, 67% of the women reported risk for sexual dysfunction (FSFI≤26.5). All FSFI domains (desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, satisfaction, and pain) were lower in women with risk for sexual dysfunction (p<0.001). The arousal, orgasm, and pain domains were most likely to contribute to lower FSFI scores. All somatovegetative, urogenital, and psychological MRS symptoms were more elevated in women with risk for sexual dysfunction, being significant for all comparisons (p<0.001). Logistic regression analysis revealed that the likelihood of women with risks of sexual dysfunction to present hot flushes, depression, sexual problems, and vaginal dryness was, respectively, 2.1 (95%CI 1.2 - 3.5); 2.4 (95%CI 1.5 - 4.1); 2.3 (95%CI 1.4 - 3.8), and 2.2 (95%CI 1.3 - 3.6) times higher, respectively, compared to those without any risk. Climacteric symptoms seem to influence the sexual function in middle-aged women.	\N	\N
22954837	Balance training to improve postural control in elderly can contribute to the prevention of falls. Video games that require body movements have the potential to improve balance. However, research about the effects of type of visual feedback (i.e. the exergame) on the quality of movement and experienced workout intensity is scarce. In this study twelve healthy older and younger subjects performed anterior-posterior or mediolateral oscillations on a wobble board, in three conditions: no feedback, real-time visual feedback, and real-time visual feedback with a competitive game element. The Elderly moved slower, less accurately and more irregularly than younger people. Both feedback conditions ensured a more controlled movement technique on the wobble-board and increased experienced workout intensity. The participants enjoyed the attention demanding competitive game element, but this game did not improve balance performance more than interacting with a game that incorporated visual feedback. These results show the potential of exergames with visual feedback to enhance postural control.	\N	\N
22960269	The hyperarousal model of primary insomnia suggests that a deficit of attenuating arousal during sleep might cause the experience of non-restorative sleep. In the current study, we examined EEG spectral power values for standard frequency bands as indices of cortical arousal and sleep protecting mechanisms during sleep in 25 patients with primary insomnia and 29 good sleeper controls. Patients with primary insomnia demonstrated significantly elevated spectral power values in the EEG beta and sigma frequency band during NREM stage 2 sleep. No differences were observed in other frequency bands or during REM sleep. Based on prior studies suggesting that EEG beta activity represents a marker of cortical arousal and EEG sleep spindle (sigma) activity is an index of sleep protective mechanisms, our findings may provide further evidence for the concept that a simultaneous activation of wake-promoting and sleep-protecting neural activity patterns contributes to the experience of non-restorative sleep in primary insomnia.	\N	\N
22963503	We previously found that Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) improves learning and performance in a task where subjects learn to detect potential threats indicated by small target objects hidden in a complex virtual environment. In the present study, we examined the hypothesis that these effects on learning and performance are related to changes in attention. The effects of tDCS were tested for three forms of attention (alerting, orienting, and executive attention) using the Attention Network Task (ANT), which were compared with performance on the object-learning task. Participants received either 0.1 mA (N = 10) or 2.0 mA (N = 9) tDCS during training and were tested for performance in object-identification before training (baseline-test) and again immediately after training (immediate test). Participants next performed the Attention Networks Task (ANT), and were later tested for object-identification performance a final time (delayed test). Alerting, but not orienting or executive attention, was significantly higher for participants receiving 2.0 mA compared with 0.1 mA tDCS (p < 0.02). Furthermore, alerting scores were significantly correlated with the proportion of hits (p < 0.01) for participants receiving 2.0 mA. These results indicate that tDCS enhancement of performance in this task may be related in part to the enhancement of alerting attention, which may benefit the initial identification, learning and/or subsequent recognition of target objects indicating potential threats.	\N	\N
22964544	Since the inception of the field of psychoneuroimmunolology research, there has been an appreciation that the physiological response to stressors includes modulation of immune function. Investigators initially focused on the effect of stress on cellular migration and immunosuppression and the resultant decreases in tumor surveillance, anti-viral T cell immunity and antigen-specific antibody responses. More recently, it has become clear that exposure to stressors also potentiate innate immune processes. Stressor exposure, for example, can change the activation status of myeloid lineage cells such as monocytes, macrophages, neutrophils, and microglia, leading to a primed state. In addition, stressor exposure increases the synthesis and release of a vast cadre' of inflammatory proteins both in the blood and within tissues (i.e., spleen, liver, adipose, vasculature and brain). The mechanisms for stress-evoked innate immune 'arousal' remain unknown. The goals of this presidential address are the following: (1) offer a personalized, brief overview of stress and immunity with a focus on 'aroused' innate immunity; (2) describe sterile inflammatory processes and the role of the inflammasome; and (3) suggest that these same processes likely contribute to primed myeloid cells and inflammatory protein responses (systemic and tissue) produced by stress in the absence of pathogens.	\N	\N
22965527	The aim of this study was to measure forces created by progressive mandibular advancement with an oral device, during natural sleep, in a sample of adult patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS). A pressure transducer system was placed on the acrylic arms of a two-piece oral appliance (Herbst type) used by nine moderate to severe OSAS patients, in addition to all captors routinely used for polysomnography. Strains on the left and right sides were collected, during stable sleep stages without arousal, for each step of 1 mm advancement. The mean force in this sample was 1.18 N/mm and showed an almost linear evolution. Measurements showed intra- and inter-individual variability. The force values recorded in this study may explain the occlusal and skeletal side effects associated with long-term use of these oral appliances. They illustrate the influence of the extent of mandibular advancement, and indicate a possible dose-dependent effect.	\N	\N
22971667	Guide dogs help visually impaired persons both physically and psychologically. More than half of all candidate dogs do not qualify, mainly for behavioral reasons. Improved training efficacy is desirable, and earlier prediction of qualification-related traits would be beneficial. In a previous study, we identified 'Distraction', assessed during the training period, as an important behavioral trait for judging the qualification of guide dogs at the Japan Guide Dog Association. As a second step, we aimed to develop an index that can predict during the puppy period. In this study, candidate guide dogs, 5-month-old Labrador retrievers, were assessed by puppy raisers using a newly developed questionnaire that consisted of 20 items. The same dogs were assessed later, at 15 months, by trainers to determine 'Distraction'. In principal components analysis, nine items, including excitability toward strangers, initiative while out for a walk, and exploration, composed the first principal component (PC1). When we compared PC1 points with 'Distraction' points, the two categories were positively correlated (n=110, r(s)=0.31, P=0.0009). Although the accuracy of the questionnaire should be increased, the results of the present study suggest that it may be possible to assess and predict 'Distraction', which is associated with disqualification for guide dogs, early in the puppy-raising period.	\N	\N
22975896	This study reports an experiment investigating the relative effects of intramodal, crossmodal and bimodal cues on visual and auditory temporal order judgements. Pairs of visual or auditory targets, separated by varying stimulus onset asynchronies, were presented to either side of a central fixation (±45°), and participants were asked to identify the target that had occurred first. In some of the trials, one of the targets was preceded by a short, non-predictive visual, auditory or audiovisual cue stimulus. The cue and target stimuli were presented at the exact same locations in space. The point of subjective simultaneity revealed a consistent spatiotemporal bias towards targets at the cued location. For the visual targets, the intramodal cue elicited the largest, and the crossmodal cue the smallest, bias. The bias elicited by the bimodal cue fell between the intramodal and crossmodal cue biases, with significant differences between all cue types. The pattern for the auditory targets was similar apart from a scaling factor and greater variance, so the differences between the cue conditions did not reach significance. These results provide evidence for multisensory integration in exogenous attentional cueing. The magnitude of the bimodal cueing effect was equivalent to the average of the facilitation elicited by the intramodal and crossmodal cues. Under the assumption that the visual and auditory cues were equally informative, this is consistent with the notion that exogenous attention, like perception, integrates multimodal information in an optimal way.	\N	\N
22993448	Non-motor symptoms are very common among patients with Parkinson's disease since the earliest stage, but little is known about their progression and their relationship with dopaminergic replacement therapy. We studied non-motor symptoms before and after 2 years from dopaminergic therapy introduction in ninety-one newly diagnosed previously untreated PD patients. At baseline, nearly all patients (97.8%) referred at least one non-motor symptom. At follow-up, only few non-motor symptoms significantly changed. Particularly, depression and concentration became less frequent, while weight change significantly increased after introduction of dopamine agonists. We reported for the first time a 2-year prospective study on non-motor symptoms before and after starting therapy in newly diagnosed PD patients. Even if non-motor symptoms are very frequent in early stage, they tend to remain stable during the early phase of disease, being only few non-motor symptoms affected from dopaminergic therapy and, specifically, by the use of dopamine agonists.	\N	\N
22998058	Recent neuroimaging and surgical results support the crucial role of white matter in mediating motor and higher-level processing within the frontal lobe, while suggesting the limited compensatory capacity after damage to subcortical structures. Consequently, an accurate knowledge of the anatomofunctional organization of the pathways running within this region is mandatory for planning safe and effective surgical approaches to different diseases. The aim of this dissection study was to improve the neurosurgeon's awareness of the subcortical anatomofunctional architecture for a lateral approach to the frontal region, to optimize both resection and postoperative outcome. Ten human hemispheres (5 left, 5 right) were dissected according to the Klingler technique. Proceeding lateromedially, the main association and projection tracts as well as the deeper basal structures were identified. The authors describe the anatomy and the relationships among the exposed structures in both a systematic and topographical surgical perspective. Structural results were also correlated to the functional responses obtained during resections of infiltrative frontal tumors guided by direct cortico-subcortical electrostimulation with patients in the awake condition. The eloquent boundaries crucial for a safe frontal lobectomy or an extensive lesionectomy are as follows: 1) the motor cortex; 2) the pyramidal tract and premotor fibers in the posterior and posteromedial part of the surgical field; 3) the inferior frontooccipital fascicle and the superior longitudinal fascicle posterolaterally; and 4) underneath the inferior frontal gyrus, the head of the caudate nucleus, and the tip of the frontal horn of the lateral ventricle in the depth. Optimization of results following brain surgery, especially within the frontal lobe, requires a perfect knowledge of functional anatomy, not only at the cortical level but also with regard to subcortical white matter connectivity.	\N	\N
22999215	Optimized therapy in epilepsy should include individual care for cognitive functions. Here we introduce a computerized screening instrument, called "Computerized Cognitive Testing in Epilepsy" (CCTE), which allows for time-efficient repetitive assessment of the patient's cognitive profile regarding the domains of memory and attention, which are frequently impaired due to side effects of antiepileptic medication. The CCTE battery takes 30min and covers tasks of verbal and figural memory, cognitive speed, attention and working memory. The patient's results are displayed immediately in comparison to age-related normative data. For evaluation of psychometrics and clinical correlations, data from patients of a tertiary referral epilepsy center (n=240) and healthy subjects (n=83) were explored. CCTE subtests show good reliability and concurrent validity compared to standard neuropsychological tests (p<0.01). Adverse cognitive effects of antiepileptic medication can be detected (p<0.05), e.g. significant negative effects of increasing drug load. Specific epilepsy subgroups, e.g. focal versus primary generalized epilepsy or right versus left mesial temporal lobe epilepsy, showed different CCTE profiles. CCTE appears valuable for early detection of individual cognitive alterations related to medication. In addition, it displays interesting differences between epilepsy syndromes. The CCTE battery provides a standardized, time- and personnel-efficient assessment of cognitive functions open to a large number of patients and applicable for clinical and scientific use in epilepsy.	\N	\N
22999984	To compare the frequency of airway complications during removal of the Laryngeal Mask Airway (LMA) in 2 to 6 year old pediatric patients. Prospective randomized study. Operating room at a university hospital. 92 ASA physical status 1 and 2 pediatric patients, aged 2 to 6 years. Participants were randomized to two groups: anesthesia state (anesthesia group) and awake state (awake group). Anesthesia was induced and maintained with sevoflurane. Patients were allowed to maintain spontaneous respiration. In the anesthesia group, the LMA was removed during anesthesia with 2.2% of sevoflurane. In the awake group, the LMA was removed when patients met the recovery criteria, including facial grimace, spontaneous eye opening, and purposeful arm movement. During and after removal of the LMA, the frequencies of airway-related complications including cough, severe salivation, LMA biting or teeth clenching, breath holding, laryngospasm, desaturation (SpO(2) < 95%), and vomiting, were recorded. The frequencies of upper airway obstruction and duration of emergence from anesthesia also were compared. The frequency of airway-related complications was significantly less in the anesthesia group than the awake group (4.8% vs 37.2%, P = 0.001). Of the complications, cough, desaturation, excessive secretion, and LMA biting were less common in the anesthesia group. No differences between groups were noted in the frequency of upper airway obstruction and duration of emergence from anesthesia. In 2 to 6 year old pediatric patients, an adequate anesthetic state is preferable to the awake state during LMA removal, producing fewer complications.	\N	\N
23001075	Urinary and sexual dysfunctions are recognized complications of rectal cancer surgery. Their incidence after robotic surgery is as yet unknown. The aim of this study was to prospectively evaluate the impact of robotic surgery for rectal cancer on sexual and urinary functions in male and female patients. From April 2008 to December 2010, 74 patients undergoing fully robotic resection for rectal cancer were prospectively included in the study. Urinary and sexual dysfunctions affecting quality of life were assessed with specific self-administered questionnaires in all patients undergoing robotic total mesorectal excision (RTME). Results were calculated with validated scoring systems and statistically analyzed. The analyses of the questionnaires completed by the 74 patients who underwent RTME showed that sexual function and general sexual satisfaction decreased significantly 1 month after intervention: 19.1 ± 8.7 versus 11.9 ± 10.2 (P < 0.05) for erectile function and 6.9 ± 2.4 versus 5.3 ± 2.5 (P < 0.05) for general satisfaction in men; 2.6 ± 3.3 versus 0.8 ± 1.4 (P < 0.05) and 2.4 ± 2.5 versus 0.7 ± 1.6 (P < 0.05) for arousal and general satisfaction, respectively, in women. Subsequently, both parameters increased progressively, and 1 year after surgery, the values were comparable to those measured before surgery. Concerning urinary function, the grade of incontinence measured 1 year after the intervention was unchanged for both sexes. RTME allows for preservation of urinary and sexual functions. This is probably due to the superior movements of the wristed instruments that facilitate fine dissection, coupled with a stable and magnified view that helps in recognizing the inferior hypogastric plexus.	\N	\N
23010335	In a forward-masked intensity discrimination task, we manipulated the perceived lateralization of the masker via variation of the interaural time difference (ITD). The maskers and targets were 500 Hz pure tones with a duration of 30 ms. Standards of 30 and 60 dB SPL were combined with 60 or 90 dB SPL maskers. As expected, the presentation of a forward masker perceived as lateralized to the other side of the head as the target resulted in a significantly smaller elevation of the intensity difference limen than a masker lateralized ipsilaterally. This binaural release from masking in forward-masked intensity discrimination cannot be explained by peripheral mechanisms because varying the ITD leaves the neural representation in the monaural channels (i.e., in the auditory nerve) unaltered. Instead, our results are compatible with the assumption that lateralization differences between masker and target promote object segregation and therefore facilitate object-based selective attention to the target.	\N	\N
23011860	Sleep homeostasis occurs during prolonged wakefulness. Drowsiness and sleep pressure are its behavioral manifestations and, when sleep is allowed, there is a sleep rebound of sufficient duration and intensity to compensate for the previous deprivation. Adenosine is one of the molecules involved in sleep homeostasic regulation. Caffeine and theophylline, stimulants widely consumed by the humans, are antagonists. It is an endogenous factor, resulting from ATP metabolism in neurons and glia. Adenosine accumulates in the extracellular space, where it can exert regulatory actions on the sleep-wakefulness cycle circuits. Adenosine acts through the purinergic receptors A1 and A2. This paper reviews: 1) the metabolic pathways of cerebral adenosine, and the mechanisms of its release by neurons and glia to the extracellular space; 2) the actions of adenosine and its antagonists in regions of the central nervous system related to wakefulness, non-REM sleep, and REM sleep, and 3) the synaptic mechanisms involved in these actions.	\N	\N
23017595	It is widely reported that inverting a face dramatically affects its recognition. Previous studies have shown that face inversion increases the amplitude and delays the latency of the face-specific N170 component of the event-related potential (ERP) and also enhances the amplitude of the occipital P1 component (latency 100-132 ms). The present study investigates whether these effects of face inversion can be modulated by visual spatial attention. Participants viewed two streams of visual stimuli, one to the left and one to the right of fixation. One stream consisted of a sequence of alphanumeric characters at 6.67 Hz, and the other stream consisted of a series of upright and inverted images of faces and houses presented in randomized order. The participants' task was to attend selectively to one or the other of the streams (during different blocks) in order to detect infrequent target stimuli. ERPs elicited by inverted faces showed larger P1 amplitudes compared to upright faces, but only when the faces were attended. In contrast, the N170 amplitude was larger to inverted than to upright faces only when the faces were not attended. The N170 peak latency was delayed to inverted faces regardless of attention condition. These inversion effects were face specific, as similar effects were absent for houses. These results suggest that early stages of face-specific processing can be enhanced by attention, but when faces are not attended the onset of face-specific processing is delayed until the latency range of the N170.	\N	\N
23019004	Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ) is activated during detection of salient stimuli, including pain, in the sensory environment. Right TPJ damage more often produces spatial neglect than left TPJ damage. We recently reported a right lateralized system of white matter connectivity of the TPJ. However, lateralization in intrinsic TPJ functional connectivity during a task/stimuli-independent state has not been fully characterized. Here we used resting-state functional MRI in healthy humans to compare the functional connectivity of right and left TPJ with salience- and attention-related brain networks. Independent components analysis revealed that both right and left TPJ were functionally connected with a network that included the anterior insula, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), and mid-cingulate cortex, considered to be the salience/ventral attention network. Dual regression revealed this network was more strongly connected with right TPJ than left TPJ. Seed-based functional connectivity analysis showed 1) negative connectivity the TPJ bilaterally with the "default mode network"; 2) positive connectivity of TPJ bilaterally with the salience/ventral attention network; 3) stronger connectivity between right TPJ compared with left TPJ with regions within the salience/ventral attention network and mid-insula, S2, and temporal/parietal opercula (implicated in pain); and 4) stronger connectivity of left TPJ compared with right TPJ with the "executive control network," including the dorsomedial/medial PFC, inferior frontal gyrus, and cerebellum (crus I/II). Our findings build on classic lesion and neuroimaging studies, demonstrating a complex spatial network organization of lateralization in TPJ functional connectivity in the absence of an overt stimulus.	\N	\N
23022432	The effect of aging on functional network activation associated with task-switching was examined in 24 young (age=25.2±2.73 years) and 23 older adults (age=65.2±2.65 years) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The study goals were to (1) identify a network shared by both young and older adults, (2) identify additional networks in each age group, and (3) examine the relationship between the networks identified and behavioral performance in task-switching. Ordinal trend covariance analysis was used to identify the networks, which takes advantage of increasing activation with greater task demand to isolate the network of regions recruited by task-switching. Two task-related networks were found: a shared network that was strongly expressed by both young and older adults and a second network identified in the young data that was residualized from the shared network. Both networks consisted of regions associated with task-switching in previous studies including the middle frontal gyrus, the precentral gyrus, the anterior cingulate, and the superior parietal lobule. Not only was pattern expression of the shared network associated with reaction time in both age groups, the difference in the pattern expression across task conditions (task-switch minus single-task) was also correlated with the difference in RT across task conditions. On the contrary, expression of the young-residual network showed a large age effect such that older adults do not increase expression of the network with greater task demand as young adults do and correlation between expression and accuracy was significant only for young adults. Thus, while a network related to RT is preserved in older adults, a different network related to accuracy is disrupted.	\N	\N
23030631	Accurate measurement of a child's executive functioning (EF) is important for diagnosis, description of functional impairment, and treatment planning. EF assessment typically consists of administration of a battery of performance-based tests involving abilities such as attention, inhibition, reasoning, planning, and mental flexibility. In recent years, observer (e.g., parent) rating scales have been added to the typical EF battery. However, research has revealed that performance-based tests and parent rating scales are not highly correlated. In other words, level of impairment indicated by one source of data often does not match level of impairment indicated by the other source of data. This disagreement places the clinician in a difficult situation when attempting to interpret evaluation results. The profession of pediatric neuropsychology needs to provide guidance about handling this disagreement. Using the current assessment tools, specific EF subdomains may need to be examined systematically to identify precisely where the disagreements lie. Perhaps the relative validity of the two data sources can be determined, and decisions can be made about what to emphasize and what/when to interpret cautiously. Alternatively, perhaps the goal should be to develop and/or refine measurement tools to increase agreement in order to improve accuracy and validity of test interpretation. At this time, the results of performance-based tests and rating scales of EF are being used together but are not being integrated. Evidence-based practice requires that more work be done to enhance the use of these two sources of data.	\N	\N
23041338	Neuroimaging has demonstrated anatomical overlap between covert and overt attention systems, although behavioral and electrophysiological studies have suggested that the two systems do not rely on entirely identical circuits or mechanisms. In a parallel line of research, topographically-specific modulations of alpha-band power (~8-14 Hz) have been consistently correlated with anticipatory states during tasks requiring covert attention shifts. These tasks, however, typically employ cue-target-interval paradigms where attentional processes are examined across relatively protracted periods of time and not at the rapid timescales implicated during overt attention tasks. The anti-saccade task, where one must first covertly attend for a peripheral target, before executing a rapid overt attention shift (i.e. a saccade) to the opposite side of space, is particularly well-suited for examining the rapid dynamics of overt attentional deployments. Here, we asked whether alpha-band oscillatory mechanisms would also be associated with these very rapid overt shifts, potentially representing a common neural mechanism across overt and covert attention systems. High-density electroencephalography in conjunction with infra-red eye-tracking was recorded while participants engaged in both pro- and anti-saccade task blocks. Alpha power, time-locked to saccade onset, showed three distinct phases of significantly lateralized topographic shifts, all occurring within a period of less than 1s, closely reflecting the temporal dynamics of anti-saccade performance. Only two such phases were observed during the pro-saccade task. These data point to substantially more rapid temporal dynamics of alpha-band suppressive mechanisms than previously established, and implicate oscillatory alpha-band activity as a common mechanism across both overt and covert attentional deployments.	\N	\N
23046905	Correctly processing rapid sequences of sounds is essential for developmental milestones, such as language acquisition. We investigated the sensitivity of two-month-old infants to violations of a temporal regularity, by recording event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in an auditory oddball paradigm from 36 waking and 40 sleeping infants. Standard tones were presented at a regular 300 ms inter-stimulus interval (ISI). One deviant, otherwise identical to the standard, was preceded by a 100 ms ISI. Two other deviants, presented with the standard ISI, differed from the standard in their spectral makeup. We found significant differences between ERP responses elicited by the standard and each of the deviant sounds. The results suggest that the ability to extract both temporal and spectral regularities from a sound sequence is already functional within the first few months of life. The scalp distribution of all three deviant-stimulus responses was influenced by the infants' state of alertness.	\N	\N
23051899	Lifetime experiences shape people's attitudes toward sexual stimuli. Visual sexual stimulation (VSS), for instance, may be perceived as pleasurable by some, but as disgusting or ambiguous by others. VSS depicting explicit penile-vaginal penetration (PEN) is relevant in this respect, because the act of penetration is a core sexual activity. In this study, 20 women without sexual complaints participated. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging and a single-target implicit association task to investigate how brain responses to PEN were modulated by the initial associations in memory (PEN-'hot' vs PEN-disgust) with such hardcore pornographic stimuli. Many brain areas responded to PEN in the same way they responded to disgust stimuli, and PEN-induced brain activity was prone to modulation by subjective disgust ratings toward PEN stimuli. The relative implicit PEN-disgust (relative to PEN-'hot') associations exclusively modulated PEN-induced brain responses: comparatively negative (PEN-disgust) implicit associations with pornography predicted the strongest PEN-related responses in the basal forebrain (including nucleus accumbens and bed nucleus of stria terminalis), midbrain and amygdala. Since these areas are often implicated in visual sexual processing, the present findings should be taken as a warning: apparently their involvement may also indicate a negative or ambivalent attitude toward sexual stimuli.	\N	\N
23062452	Deficits in the communication and identifying of feelings are usually observed in substance abuse. Research in several countries has reported sensation seeking and alexithymia implication in addiction. According to a cognitive-developmental model of emotional experience proposed, alexithymia is a deficit in the cognitive processing of emotion that can be seen as an impairment in the ability to consciously experience feeling in the context of autonomic activation indicate of emotional arousal. The primary objective of this study was to identify certain personality dimensions linked with emotions' regulation, i.e. Zuckerman's sensation seeking, alexithymia, and emotional awareness in ecstasy and cocaine users at techno parties. Subjects were divided in two groups: 37 male ecstasy or cocaine abusers, and 37 male non-drug users. We hypothesized that ecstasy and cocaine users would exhibit high levels of sensation seeking (high level of sensation seeking,), and emotional dysregulation (high level of alexithymia and depression, low level of emotional awareness). The methodology comprised a questionnaire developed for the study, designed to record sociodemographic data and evaluate psychoactive substance use, the MlINI (mini international psychiatric interview), the Zuckerman 40-item Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS-IV), the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS), and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-13). Subjects were recruited during rave-parties. The results showed significantly higher sensation seeking scores for ecstasy and cocaine users for the score total and the disinhibition and experience seeking subdimensions. Ecstasy and cocaine abusers exhibited higher TAS-20 and BDI-13 scores and lower levels of emotional awareness than non-drug users. No correlation between the TAS-20 and depression symptomatology emerged. No significant correlations were found between LEAS and TAS-20. These results provide new elements concerning the profile of drug users at techno parties and illustrate the changing practices of ecstasy use. The LEAS and the TAS-20 were not intercorrelated; it seems plausible that they reflect two sides of the emotional states self-report. These results reinforce the suggestion of combining the use of self-reports with non self-report methods.	\N	\N
23066810	Considerable evidence suggests that subliminal information can trigger cognitive and neural processes. Here, we examined whether elicitation of orienting response by personally significant (PS) verbal information requires conscious awareness of the input. Subjects were exposed to the Concealed Information Test (CIT), in which autonomic responses for autobiographical items are typically larger than for control items. These items were presented subliminally using two different masking protocols: single or multiple presentation of the masked item. An objective test was used to verify unawareness to the stimuli. As predicted, PS items elicited significantly stronger skin conductance responses than the control items in both exposure conditions. The results extend previous findings showing that autonomic responses can be elicited following subliminal exposure to aversive information, and also may have implications on the applied usage of the CIT.	\N	\N
23074247	The neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) can enhance the impact of positive social cues but may reduce that of negative ones by inhibiting amygdala activation, although it is unclear whether the latter causes blunted emotional and mnemonic responses. In two independent double-blind placebo-controlled experiments, each involving over 70 healthy male subjects, we investigated whether OXT affects modulation of startle reactivity by aversive social stimuli as well as subsequent memory for them. Intranasal OXT potentiated acoustic startle responses to negative stimuli, without affecting behavioral valence or arousal judgments, and biased subsequent memory toward negative rather than neutral items. A functional MRI analysis of this mnemonic effect revealed that, whereas OXT inhibited amygdala responses to negative stimuli, it facilitated left insula responses for subsequently remembered items and increased functional coupling between the left amygdala, left anterior insula, and left inferior frontal gyrus. Our results therefore show that OXT can potentiate the protective and mnemonic impact of aversive social information despite reducing amygdala activity, and suggest that the insula may play a role in emotional modulation of memory.	\N	\N
23078760	The current study investigated the time course of the implicit processing of erotic stimuli using event-related potentials (ERPs). ERPs elicited by erotic pictures were compared with those by three other types of pictures: non-erotic positive, negative, and neutral pictures. We observed that erotic pictures evoked enhanced neural responses compared with other pictures at both early (P2/N2) and late (P3/positive slow wave) temporal stages. These results suggested that erotic pictures selectively captured individuals' attention at early stages and evoked deeper processing at late stages. More importantly, the amplitudes of P2, N2, and P3 only discriminated between erotic and non-erotic (i.e., positive, neutral, and negative) pictures. That is, no difference was revealed among non-erotic pictures, although these pictures differed in both valence and arousal. Thus, our results suggest that the erotic picture processing is beyond the valence and arousal.	\N	\N
23083097	The present study provides first evidence that attentional breadth responses can be influenced by proximity-distance goals in adult attachment relationships. In a sample of young couples, we measured attachment differences in the breadth of attentional focus in response to attachment-related cues. Results showed that priming with a negative attachment scenario broadens attention when confronted with pictures of the attachment figure in highly avoidant men. In women, we found that attachment anxiety was associated with a more narrow attentional focus on the attachment figure, yet only at an early stage of information processing. We also found that women showed a broader attentional focus around the attachment figure when their partner was more avoidantly attached. This pattern of results reflects the underlying action of attachment strategies and provides insight into the complex and dynamic influence of attachment on attentional processing in a dyadic context.	\N	\N
23085239	We investigated the precision of orientation representations with two tasks, change detection and recall. Previously change detection has been measured only with relatively large orientation changes compared to psychophysical thresholds. In the first experiment, we measured the observers' ability (d') to detect small changes in orientation (5-30°) with 1-4 Gabor items. With one item even a 10° change was well detected (average d'=2.5). As the amount of change increased to 30°, the d' increased to 5.2. When the number of items was increased, the d's gradually decreased. In the second experiment, we used a recall task and the observers adjusted the orientation of a probe Gabor to match the orientation of a Gabor held in the memory. The standard deviation (s.d.) of errors was calculated from the Gaussian distribution fitted to the data. As the number of items increased from 1 to 6, the s.d. increased from 8.6° to 19.6°. Even with six items, the observers did not make any random adjustments. The results show a square root relation between the d'/s.d. and the number of items. The d' in change detection is directly proportional to the square root of (1/n) and the orientation change. The increase of the s.d. in recall task is inversely proportional to square root of (1/n). The results suggest that limited resources and precision of representations, without additional assumptions, determine the memory performance.	\N	\N
23088575	Reviews of the effects of noise on performance carried out in the 1980s suggested that results depended on the type of noise, nature of the task, and characteristics of the person performing in noise. This general view has been confirmed in the recent meta-analysis and synthesis by Szalma and Hancock (2011). There are, however, some notable omissions from this review. For example, beneficial effects of noise in low alertness states receive no coverage, and yet these provide the strongest support for arousal theories. The importance of predictability and perceived control was also overlooked, yet relevant studies, especially those looking at aftereffects of noise, are crucial for explanations based on compensatory effort. Also neglected was research emphasizing the importance of examining the microstructure of responding and strategies of performance. Recent accounts emphasize the importance of considering the specific processes involved in carrying out a task and show that analyses based on gross characteristics present an inappropriate profile of effects. Laboratory studies of auditory distraction are now largely restricted to investigation of the effects of irrelevant speech. Noise and performance research has also moved toward field studies, including effects of chronic noise exposure on children. Future noise research is likely to focus on different noise parameters and performance outcomes, potentially leading to the investigation of different underlying mechanisms. This type of research will have clear implications for policy and practice.	\N	\N
23095428	Several chronic health conditions of childhood, including pediatric cancers, traumatic brain injury (TBI), and sickle cell disease (SCD) are associated with significant neurocognitive impairments that can compromise educational attainment and future vocational opportunities. The prominence of attentional deficits as part of the neurocognitive sequelae associated with each of these conditions has led some researchers to draw parallels with another chronic condition that manifests in childhood, specifically the inattentive subtype of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Because ADHD shares similar neurocognitive and symptomatological features with pediatric cancer, TBI, and SCD, stimulant medications may be indicated to treat associated deficits in each condition. However, relatively few studies have investigated the safety and effectiveness of stimulant medications in treating neurocognitive sequelae in children with cancer, TBI, or SCD. Thus, clinicians have received little guidance regarding a potentially useful treatment modality for ameliorating the neurocognitive deficits that can profoundly impact the educational, psychosocial, and vocational development of youth with these chronic health conditions. We provide a review of the literature and synthesize current developments in research regarding treatment with stimulant medication for children with cancer, TBI, and SCD, as well as discuss special considerations for each condition.	\N	\N
23104227	Research has shown that water supplementation positively affects cognitive performance in children and adults. The present study considered whether this could be a result of expectancies that individuals have about the effects of water on cognition. Forty-seven participants were recruited and told the study was examining the effects of repeated testing on cognitive performance. They were assigned either to a condition in which positive expectancies about the effects of drinking water were induced, or a control condition in which no expectancies were induced. Within these groups, approximately half were given a drink of water, while the remainder were not. Performance on a thirst scale, letter cancellation, digit span forwards and backwards and a simple reaction time task was assessed at baseline (before the drink) and 20 min and 40 min after water consumption. Effects of water, but not expectancy, were found on subjective thirst ratings and letter cancellation task performance, but not on digit span or reaction time. This suggests that water consumption effects on letter cancellation are due to the physiological effects of water, rather than expectancies about the effects of drinking water.	\N	\N
23106374	In the present study, we tested whether subliminal abrupt-onset cues capture attention in a bottom-up or top-down controlled manner. For our tests, we varied the searched-for target-contrast polarity (i.e., dark or light targets against a gray background) over four experiments. In line with the bottom-up hypothesis, our results indicate that subliminal-onset cues capture attention independently of the searched-for target-contrast polarity (Experiment 1), and this effect is not stronger for targets that matched the searched-for target-contrast polarity (Experiment 2). In fact, even to-be-ignored cues associated with a no-go response captured attention in a salience-driven way (Experiment 3). For supraliminal cues, we found attentional capture only by cues with a matching contrast polarity, reflecting contingent capture (Experiment 4). The results point toward a specific role of subliminal abrupt onsets for attentional capture.	\N	\N
23111150	Epidemiological studies have associated the negative effects of sedentary time and sedentary patterns on health indices. However, these studies have used methodologies that do not directly measure the sedentary state. Recent technological developments in the area of motion sensors have incorporated inclinometers, which can measure the inclination of the body directly, without relying on self-report or count thresholds. This paper aims to provide a detailed description of methodologies used to examine a range of relevant variables, including sedentary levels and patterns from an inclinometer-based motion sensor. The activPAL Professional physical activity logger provides an output which can be interpreted and used without the need for further processing and additional variables were derived using a custom designed MATLAB® computer program. The methodologies described have been implemented on a sample of 44 adolescent females, and the results of a range of daily physical activity and sedentary variables are described and presented. The results provide a range of objectively measured and objectively processed variables, including total time spent sitting/lying, standing and stepping, number and duration of daily sedentary bouts and both bed hours and non-bed hours, which may be of interest when making association between physical activity, sedentary behaviors and health indices.	\N	\N
23117329	The present study examined whether the relationship between light exposure and cognitive functioning is mediated by psychological well-being in elderly persons working night shifts. The role of psychological well-being has been neglected so far in the relationship between bright light and cognitive performance. Sleepiness and mood were applied as indicators of psychological well-being. Cognitive functioning was examined in terms of concentration, working memory, and divided attention. A total of thirty-two test persons worked in three consecutive simulated night shifts, 16 under bright light (3,000 lux) and 16 under room light (300 lux). Concentration, working memory, and divided attention were measured by computerised tasks. The hypothesised mediators were recorded by questionnaires. Mediation analyses were conducted for estimating direct, total, and indirect effects in simple mediation models. Results indicate that sleepiness and mood did not function as mediators in the prediction of concentration, working memory, and/or divided attention by light exposure. Sleepiness led to an underestimation of the positive bright-light effect on concentration performance. Mood showed only a random effect due to the positive bright-light effect on working memory. Sleepiness and mood could completely be excluded as mediators in the relationship between light exposure and cognitive functioning. This study underlines that psychological well-being of elderly persons is not a critical component in the treatment of bright light on cognitive performance in the night shift workplace. In summary, it becomes evident that bright light has a strong direct and independent effect on cognitive performance, particularly on working memory and concentration.	\N	\N
23121170	Interpersonal self-support is an indigenous Chinese personality concept. It represents the idealized notion of the kind of personality traits that help individuals deal with interpersonal problems and develop and maintain the harmonic and appropriate social relationships required in China's collectivistic and interdependent culture. It also was assumed to be a protective personality factor with regard to mental health and was found to be negatively related to psychosomatic symptoms. In the current study, cognitive processing of interpersonal information is assumed to be an underlying mechanism that connects interpersonal self-support with interpersonal relationships and mental health. To test this hypothesis, we conducted two experiments to investigate whether attentional bias on positive and negative interpersonal information was related to high and low interpersonal self-support. A spatial cueing task and the emotional Stroop task were administered to two samples of high and low interpersonal self-support Chinese undergraduate students to measure attentional bias. The results from both experiments suggested that high interpersonal self-support students had an attentional bias toward positive interpersonal information, while low interpersonal self-support students preferentially attended to negative interpersonal information. Study 1 indicated that attentional bias toward positive interpersonal information was easily engaged in the high interpersonal self-support group, while attentional bias toward negative interpersonal information was both easy to engage and difficult to disengage in the low interpersonal self-support students. These results support our hypotheses that high interpersonal self-support people engage in positive processing of interpersonal information, whereas low interpersonal self-support people engage in negative processing of interpersonal information. The differential balance between positive and negative processing on interpersonal information may explain why interpersonal self-support predicts both mental health and interpersonal relationships. In addition, the relational schema may explain why interpersonal self-support is associated with an attentional bias toward interpersonal information.	\N	\N
23124137	Face processing is a neural mechanism that allows understanding social information and cues conveyed by faces, whose dysfunction has been postulated to underlie some of the behavioral impairments characterizing autism spectrum disorders (ASD). A special region of the cortex, the fusiform gyrus (FG), is believed to be the specific area for processing face features and emotions. However, behavioral, fMRI and ERP studies addressed to investigate the role of FG dysfunction in ASD have led to conflicting results. Using a high-density EEG system, we recorded the face-sensitive ERP to neutral and emotional (happiness and fearful) faces, as a measure of early activity of the FG, in children with high functioning ASD. By controlling a number of experimental and clinical variables that could have biased previous research--such as gaze direction, attention to tasks, stimulus appearance and clinical profiles--we aimed to assess the effective role of the FG in the face emotion processing deficit hypothesized in ASD. No significant differences in early face-sensitive ERP components were found between ASD and neurotypical children. However, a systematic latency delay and amplitude reduction of all early potentials were observed in the ASD group, regardless of the stimulus, although more evident for emotions. Therefore, we can assume a diffuse dysfunction of neural mechanisms and networks in driving and integrating social information conveyed by faces, in particular when emotions are involved, rather than a specific impairment of the FG-related face processing circuit. Nevertheless, there is need of further investigation.	\N	\N
23124187	Growing research literature has documented the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions for anxiety and depressive disorders. Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) teaches a series of mindfulness meditation and yoga practices, delivered in a group format during eight weekly sessions plus one full-day session. This case report demonstrates how MBSR was associated with dramatic clinical improvement of an individual with symptoms of panic, generalized anxiety, and depression. Scores on clinical assessment measures suggested clinically severe levels of anxious arousal, generalized anxiety, worry, fear of negative evaluation, and depression at the beginning of the intervention. The scores on all these measures fell well within normal limits 7 weeks later at the end of the intervention, and no remaining symptoms were reported afterward. Increased life satisfaction and quality of life were documented as well. This case illustrates the potential benefit of MBSR as an alternative or adjunctive treatment for comorbid anxiety and depressive disorder symptoms.	\N	\N
23127474	Typing performance involves hierarchically structured control systems: At the higher level, an outer loop generates a word or a series of words to be typed; at the lower level, an inner loop activates the keystrokes comprising the word in parallel and executes them in the correct order. The present experiments examined contributions of the outer- and inner-loop processes to the control of speed and accuracy in typewriting. Experiments 1 and 2 involved discontinuous typing of single words, and Experiments 3 and 4 involved continuous typing of paragraphs. Across experiments, typists were able to trade speed for accuracy but were unable to type at rates faster than 100 ms/keystroke, implying limits to the flexibility of the underlying processes. The analyses of the component latencies and errors indicated that the majority of the trade-offs were due to inner-loop processing. The contribution of outer-loop processing to the trade-offs was small, but it resulted in large costs in error rate. Implications for strategic control of automatic processes are discussed.	\N	\N
23128366	New methods to enhance colorectal cancer (CRC) screening rates are needed. The web offers novel possibilities to educate patients and to improve health behaviors, such as cancer screening. Evidence supports the efficacy of health communications that are targeted and tailored to improve the uptake of recommendations. We identified unscreened women at average risk for CRC from the scheduling databases of obstetrics and gynecology practices in 2 large health care systems. Participants consented to a randomized controlled trial that compared CRC screening uptake after receipt of CRC screening information delivered via the web or in print form. Participants could also be assigned to a control (usual care) group. Women in the interventional arms received tailored information in a high- or low-monitoring Cognitive Social Information Processing model-defined attentional style. The primary outcome was CRC screening participation at 4 months. A total of 904 women were randomized to the interventional or control group. At 4 months, CRC screening uptake was not significantly different in the web (12.2%), print (12.0%), or control (12.9%) group. Attentional style had no effect on screening uptake for any group. Some baseline participant factors were associated with greater screening, including higher income (P = .03), stage of change (P < .001), and physician recommendation to screen (P < .001). A web-based educational intervention was no more effective than a print-based one or control (no educational intervention) in increasing CRC screening rates in women at average risk of CRC. Risk messages tailored to attentional style had no effect on screening uptake. In average-risk populations, use of the Internet for health communication without additional enhancement is unlikely to improve screening participation. clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00459030.	\N	\N
23130782	In three related manuscripts we describe our drug development program for the treatment of Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD). In this first theoretical article we will defend the hypothesis that different causal mechanisms are responsible for the emergence of HSDD: low sexual desire in women (with HSDD) could be due to either a relative insensitive brain system for sexual cues or to enhanced activity of sexual inhibitory mechanisms. This distinction in etiological background was taken into account when designing and developing new pharmacotherapies for this disorder. Irrespective of circulating plasma levels of testosterone, administration of sublingual 0.5 mg testosterone increases the sensitivity of the brain to sexual cues. The effects of an increase in sexual sensitivity of the brain depend on the motivational state of an individual. It might activate sexual excitatory mechanisms in low sensitive women, while it could evoke (or strengthen) sexual inhibitory mechanisms in women prone to sexual inhibition. Sexual stimulation in the brain is necessary for phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitor (PDE5i)-mediated increase in genital sexual response. Accordingly, a single dose of T+PDE5i might enhance sexual responsiveness, especially in women with low sensitivity to sexual cues. In other women sexual stimulation might elicit a prefrontal cortex (PFC)-mediated phasic increase in sexual inhibition, in which activity of 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT, serotonin) is involved. We hypothesize that a single dose of 5-hydroxytryptamine receptor agonist (5-HT(1A)ra) will reduce the sexual-stimulation-induced PFC-mediated sexual inhibition during a short period after administration. Consequently, treatment with T+5-HT(1A)ra will be more effective, in particular in women exhibiting sexual inhibition. Based on the results of our efficacy studies described in parts 2 and 3 of the series, we conclude that tailoring on-demand therapeutics to different underlying etiologies might be a useful approach to treat common symptoms in subgroups of women with HSDD.	\N	\N
23148868	In 3 human predictive learning experiments, we investigated whether the allocation of attention can come under the control of contextual stimuli. In each experiment, participants initially received a conditional discrimination for which one set of cues was trained as relevant in Context 1 and irrelevant in Context 2, and another set was relevant in Context 2 and irrelevant in Context 1. For Experiments 1 and 2, we observed that a second discrimination based on cues that had previously been trained as relevant in Context 1 during the conditional discrimination was acquired more rapidly in Context 1 than in Context 2. Experiment 3 revealed a similar outcome when new stimuli from the original dimensions were used in the test stage. Our results support the view that the associability of a stimulus can be controlled by the stimuli that accompany it.	\N	\N
23151577	Biological clocks are genetically encoded oscillators that allow organisms to anticipate changes in the light-dark environment that are tied to the rotation of Earth. Clocks enhance fitness and growth in prokaryotes, and they are expressed throughout the central nervous system and peripheral tissues of multicelled organisms in which they influence sleep, arousal, feeding and metabolism. Biological clocks capture the imagination because of their tie to geophysical time, and tools are now in hand to analyse their function in health and disease at the cellular and molecular level.	\N	\N
23151960	Many theories of category learning incorporate mechanisms for selective attention, typically implemented as attention weights that change on a trial-by-trial basis. This is because there is relatively little data on within-trial changes in attention. We used eye tracking and mouse tracking as fine-grained measures of attention in three complex visual categorization tasks to investigate temporal patterns in overt attentional behavior within individual categorization decisions. In Experiments 1 and 2, we recorded participants' eye movements while they performed three different categorization tasks. We extended previous research by demonstrating that not only are participants less likely to fixate irrelevant features, but also, when they do, these fixations are shorter than fixations to relevant features. We also found that participants' fixation patterns show increasingly consistent temporal patterns. Participants were faster, although no more accurate, when their fixation sequences followed a consistent temporal structure. In Experiment 3, we replicated these findings in a task where participants used mouse movements to uncover features. Overall, we showed that there are important temporal regularities in information sampling during category learning that cannot be accounted for by existing models. These can be used to supplement extant models for richer predictions of how information is attended to during the buildup to a categorization decision.	\N	\N
23153115	Emerging evidence suggests that some individuals may be simultaneously more responsive to the effects from environmental adversity and enrichment (i.e., differential susceptibility). Given that parenting behavior and a variable number tandem repeat polymorphism in the 3'untranslated region of the dopamine transporter (DAT1) gene are each independently associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), our goal was to evaluate the potential interactive effects of child DAT1 genotype with positive and negative parenting behaviors on childhood ADHD. We recruited an ethnically diverse sample of 150 six- to nine-year-old boys and girls with and without ADHD. Children were genotyped for a common polymorphism of the DAT1 gene, and objective counts of observed parenting behavior (i.e., negativity and praise) were obtained from a valid parent-child interaction task. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the interactive effects of DAT1 and observed parenting with a latent ADHD factor. We detected a significant interaction between observed praise and child DAT1 (coded additively), which suggested that praise was associated with increased ADHD, but only among youth with the 9/10 genotype. In addition, a marginally significant interaction between DAT1 (coded additively and recessively) and observed negativity emerged for ADHD, such that negativity was positively associated with ADHD but only for youth with the 9/9 genotype. Although differential susceptibility theory was not fully supported, these preliminary results suggest that interactive exchanges between parenting behavior and child genotype potentially contribute to the development of ADHD. Clinical implications for interactions between parenting behavior and child genotype are discussed.	\N	\N
23154040	In order to become a proficient user of language, infants must detect temporal cues embedded within the noisy acoustic spectra of ongoing speech by efficient attentional engagement. According to the neuro-constructivist approach, a multi-sensory dysfunction of attentional engagement - hampering the temporal sampling of stimuli - might be responsible for language deficits typically shown in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). In the present study, the efficiency of visual attentional engagement was investigated in 22 children with SLI and 22 typically developing (TD) children by measuring attentional masking (AM). AM refers to impaired identification of the first of two sequentially presented masked objects (O1 and O2) in which the O1-O2 interval was manipulated. Lexical and grammatical comprehension abilities were also tested in both groups. Children with SLI showed a sluggish engagement of temporal attention, and individual differences in AM accounted for a significant percentage of unique variance in grammatical performance. Our results suggest that an attentional engagement deficit - probably linked to a dysfunction of the right fronto-parietal attentional network - might be a contributing factor in these children's language impairments.	\N	\N
23156620	The study was designed to show how driver attention to the road scene and engagement of a choice of secondary tasks are affected by the level of automation provided to assist or take over the basic task of vehicle control. It was also designed to investigate the difference between support in longitudinal control and support in lateral control. There is comparatively little literature on the implications of automation for drivers' engagement in the driving task and for their willingness to engage in non-driving-related activities. A study was carried out on a high-level driving simulator in which drivers experienced three levels of automation: manual driving, semiautomated driving with either longitudinal or lateral control provided, and highly automated driving with both longitudinal and lateral control provided. Drivers were free to pay attention to the roadway and traffic or to engage in a range of entertainment and grooming tasks. Engagement in the nondriving tasks increased from manual to semiautomated driving and increased further with highly automated driving. There were substantial differences in attention to the road and traffic between the two types of semiautomated driving. The literature on automation and the various task analyses of driving do not currently help to explain the effects that were found. Lateral support and longitudinal support may be the same in terms of levels of automation but appear to be regarded rather differently by drivers.	\N	\N
23156621	A driving simulator study compared the effect of changes in workload on performance in manual and highly automated driving. Changes in driver state were also observed by examining variations in blink patterns. With the addition of a greater number of advanced driver assistance systems in vehicles, the driver's role is likely to alter in the future from an operator in manual driving to a supervisor of highly automated cars. Understanding the implications of such advancements on drivers and road safety is important. A total of 50 participants were recruited for this study and drove the simulator in both manual and highly automated mode. As well as comparing the effect of adjustments in driving-related workload on performance, the effect of a secondary Twenty Questions Task was also investigated. In the absence of the secondary task, drivers' response to critical incidents was similar in manual and highly automated driving conditions. The worst performance was observed when drivers were required to regain control of driving in the automated mode while distracted by the secondary task. Blink frequency patterns were more consistent for manual than automated driving but were generally suppressed during conditions of high workload. Highly automated driving did not have a deleterious effect on driver performance, when attention was not diverted to the distracting secondary task. As the number of systems implemented in cars increases, an understanding of the implications of such automation on drivers' situation awareness, workload, and ability to remain engaged with the driving task is important.	\N	\N
23160204	Do stimuli appear to be closer when they are more threatening? We tested people's perceptions of distance to stimuli that they felt were threatening relative to perceptions of stimuli they felt were disgusting or neutral. Two studies demonstrated that stimuli that emitted affective signals of threat (e.g., an aggressive male student) were seen as physically closer than stimuli that emitted affective signals of disgust (e.g., a repulsive male student) or no affective signal. Even after controlling for the direct effects of physiological arousal, object familiarity, and intensity of the negative emotional reaction, we found that threatening stimuli appeared to be physically closer than did disgusting ones (Study 2). These findings highlight the links among biased perception, action regulation, and successful navigation of the environment.	\N	\N
23167479	Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a main cause of mortality and morbidity. Association studies between hospitalization variables and cognitive impairment after TBI are frequently retrospective, including non-consecutive patients showing variable degrees of TBI severity, and poor management of missing (drop out) cases. We assessed prospectively the demographic and hospitalization variables of 234 consecutive patients with severe TBI (admission Glasgow Coma Scale [GCS] ≤8) and determined their independent association with cognitive performance in a representative sample (n = 46) of surviving patients (n = 172) evaluated 3 (±1.8) years after hospitalization. In all, 85% of patients were male and the mean age was 34 (SD ±13) years. The education level was 9 (±4.7) years. As expected, education and age showed a moderately to strong linear relationship with the cognitive performance in 14 of 15 neuropsychological tests (R coefficient = 0.6-0.8). The cognitive test scores were not independently associated with gender, admission GCS, associated trauma, and Marshal CT classification. Admission-elevated blood glucose levels and the presence of sub-arachnoid haemorrhage were independently associated with lower scores on Rey Auditory Verbal Learning retention and Logical Memory-I tests, respectively. After correction for education and age distribution, the variables that are commonly associated with mortality or Glasgow Outcome Scale including admission pupils' examination, Marshal CT Classification, GCS, and serum glucose showed a limited predictive power for long-term cognitive prognosis. Identification of clinical, radiological, and laboratory variables as well as new biomarkers independently associated with cognitive outcome remains an important challenge for further work involving severe TBI patients.	\N	\N
23167664	Clozapine, a second generation antipsychotic which is relatively safe in overdose, has been used as an effective treatment alternative to traditional antipsychotics. The therapeutic use in children remains controversial. However, in accordance with the increasing prescription in adults, the accidental ingestion in childhood becomes more frequent. We report the youngest case of accidental clozapine ingestion. A 13-month-old girl presented with acute respiratory insufficiency and coma of unknown origin. The medical history, laboratory and radiological assessment did not link to aetiology until an almost spontaneous arousal after 22 h pointed towards intoxication. The initial standard drug screening using immunoassay had been negative. Hence, liquid chromatography mass spectrometry/mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) was performed, and clozapine was detected with a serum concentration of 736 ng/mL. This case illustrates the diagnostic and forensic pitfalls in a coma of unknown origin due to the limits of toxicological screening immunoassays. LC-MS/MS analysis by an established method showed clozapine metabolites (norclozapine and clozapine-N-oxide) are detectable for longer period, especially in urine, when compared with clozapine. The clinical course is presented in unique correlation with plasma and urine concentrations of clozapine and its metabolites. The elimination pattern of clozapine in toddlers is similar to adults, and the toxic dose was found to be lower when compared with school-age children and adults.	\N	\N
23179030	This article proposes a means for better understanding the self and consciousness. Data indicate that the basic "emotional brain" continually computes potential survival risk against reward to rank consequent "emotion scores" for all sensory inputs. These scores compete to yield winner-takes-all outcomes that determine the choice of attention or action. This mechanism prevails regardless of whether the competing options gain their emotion scores through a rational or an intuitive pathway. There is no need to postulate any homunculus or inner self in control of such choice; indeed, our belief in a first-person self in overall control is wrong. The self is a passive construct arising from each individual's social development, where language acquisition vastly heightens communication and awareness not only outwardly, but also inwardly, as if to a controlling "inner I." However, when society comes to hold the maturing being accountable for his or her actions, the brain must respond, and it does so in the only way it can, by deeming that this passive, inner self-construct act as if it were the active self in charge. Consciousness emerges when the language-based output of the higher brain is referred for ownership to this artificial self-construct.	\N	\N
23181686	We investigated the role of implicit spatiotemporal learning in the Posner spatial cueing of attention task. During initial training, the proportion of different trial types was altered to produce a complex pattern of spatiotemporal contingencies between cues and targets. For example, in the short invalid and long valid condition, targets reliably appeared either at an uncued location after a short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA; 100 ms) or at a cued location after a long SOA (350 ms). As revealed by postexperiment questioning, most participants were unaware of these manipulations. Whereas prior studies have examined reaction times during training, the current study examined the long-term effect of training on subsequent testing that removed these contingencies. An initial experiment found training effects only for the long SOAs that typically produce inhibition of return (IOR) effects. For instance, after short invalid and long valid training, there was a benefit at long SOAs rather than an IOR effect. A 2nd experiment ruled out target-cue overlap as an explanation of the difference between learning for long versus short SOAs. Rather than a mix of perfectly predictable spatiotemporal contingencies, Experiment 3 used only short SOA trials during training with a probabilistic spatial contingency. There was a smaller but reliable training effect in subsequent testing. These results demonstrate that implicit learning for specific combinations of location and SOA can affect behavior in spatial cueing paradigms, which is a necessary result if more generally spatial cueing reflects learned spatiotemporal regularities.	\N	\N
23200451	Driver distraction is estimated to be one of the leading causes of motor vehicle accidents. However, little is known about the role of emotional distraction on driving, despite evidence that attention is highly biased toward emotion. In the present study, we used a dual-task paradigm to examine the potential for driver distraction from emotional information presented on roadside billboards. This purpose was achieved using a driving simulator and three different types of emotional information: neutral words, negative emotional words, and positive emotional words. Participants also responded to target words while driving and completed a surprise free recall task of all the words at the end of the study. The findings suggest that driving performance is differentially affected by the valence (negative versus positive) of the emotional content. Drivers had lower mean speeds when there were emotional words compared to neutral words, and this slowing effect lasted longer when there were positive words. This may be due to distraction effects on driving behavior, which are greater for positive arousing stimuli. Moreover, when required to process non-emotional target stimuli, drivers had faster mean speeds in conditions where the targets were interspersed with emotional words compared to neutral words, and again, these effects lasted longer when there were positive words. On the other hand, negative information led to better memory recall. These unique effects may be due to separate processes in the human attention system, particularly related to arousal mechanisms and their interaction with emotion. We conclude that distraction that is emotion-based can modulate attention and decision-making abilities and have adverse impacts on driving behavior for several reasons.	\N	\N
23211268	We investigated motion extrapolation in object tracking in two experiments. In Experiment 1, we used a multiple-object-tracking task (MOT; three targets, three distractors) combined with a probe detection task to investigate the distribution of attention around a target object. We found anisotropic probe detection rates with increased probe detection at locations where a target is heading. In Experiment 2, we introduced a black line (wall) in the center of the screen and block-wise manipulated the object's motion: either objects bounced realistically against the wall or objects went through the wall. Just before a target coincided with the wall, a probe could appear either along the bounce path or along the straight path. In addition to MOT, we included a single-object-tracking task (SOT; one target, five distractors) to control for attentional load. We found that linear extrapolation is dominant (better probe detection along the straight path than bounce path) regardless of attentional load and the motion condition. Anticipation of bouncing behavior did occur but only when attentional load was low. We conclude that attention is not tightly bound to moving target objects but encompasses the object's current position and the area in front of it. Furthermore, under the present experimental conditions, the visuo-attentional system does not seem to anticipate object bounces in the MOT task.	\N	\N
23212302	In brain surgery procedures, such as deep brain stimulation, drug-resistant epilepsy and tumour surgery, the patient is intentionally awakened to map functional neural bases via electrophysiological assessment. This assessment can involve patient's body movements; thus, increasing the mechanical load on the head-restraint systems used for keeping the skull still during the surgery. The loads exchanged between the head and the restraining device can potentially result into skin and bone damage. The aim of this work is to assess such loads for laying down the requirements of a surgical robotics system for dynamic head movements compensation by fast moving arms and by an active restraint able to damp such actions. A Mayfield(®) head clamp was tracked and instrumented with strain gages (SGs). SG locations were chosen according to finite element analyses. During an actual brain surgery, displacements and strains were measured and clustered according to events that generated them. Loads were inferred from strain data. The greatest force components were exerted vertically (median 5.5 N, maximum 151.87 N) with frequencies up to 1.5 Hz. Maximum measured displacement and velocity were 9 mm and 60 mm/s, with frequencies up to 2.8 Hz. The analysis of loads and displacements allowed to identify the surgery steps causing maximal loads on the head-restraint device.	\N	\N
23216374	Studies on adults have revealed a disadvantageous effect of negative emotional stimuli on executive functions (EF), and it is suggested that this effect is amplified in children. The present study's aim was to assess how emotional facial expressions affected working memory in 9- to 12-year-olds, using a working memory task with emotional facial expressions as stimuli. Additionally, we explored how degree of internalizing and externalizing symptoms in typically developing children was related to performance on the same task. Before employing the working memory task with emotional facial expressions as stimuli, an independent sample of 9- to 12-year-olds was asked to recognize the facial expressions intended to serve as stimuli for the working memory task and to rate the facial expressions on the degree to which the emotion was expressed and for arousal to obtain a baseline for how children during this age recognize and react to facial expressions. The first study revealed that children rated the facial expressions with similar intensity and arousal across age. When employing the working memory task with facial expressions, results revealed that negatively valenced expressions impaired working memory more than neutral and positively valenced expressions. The ability to successfully complete the working memory task increased between 9 to 12 years of age. Children's total problems were associated with poorer performance on the working memory task with facial expressions. Results on the effect of emotion on working memory are discussed in light of recent models and empirical findings on how emotional information might interact and interfere with cognitive processes such as working memory.	\N	\N
23216771	The unique role of the EEG alpha rhythm in different states of cortical activity is still debated. The main theories regarding alpha function posit either sensory processing or attention allocation as the main processes governing its modulation. Closing and opening eyes, a well-known manipulation of the alpha rhythm, could be regarded as attention allocation from inward to outward focus though during light is also accompanied by visual change. To disentangle the effects of attention allocation and sensory visual input on alpha modulation, 14 healthy subjects were asked to open and close their eyes during conditions of light and of complete darkness while simultaneous recordings of EEG and fMRI were acquired. Thus, during complete darkness the eyes-open condition is not related to visual input but only to attention allocation, allowing direct examination of its role in alpha modulation. A data-driven ridge regression classifier was applied to the EEG data in order to ascertain the contribution of the alpha rhythm to eyes-open/eyes-closed inference in both lighting conditions. Classifier results revealed significant alpha contribution during both light and dark conditions, suggesting that alpha rhythm modulation is closely linked to the change in the direction of attention regardless of the presence of visual sensory input. Furthermore, fMRI activation maps derived from an alpha modulation time-course during the complete darkness condition exhibited a right frontal cortical network associated with attention allocation. These findings support the importance of top-down processes such as attention allocation to alpha rhythm modulation, possibly as a prerequisite to its known bottom-up processing of sensory input.	\N	\N
23217629	This study analyzes the effects of attention disruption factors, such as sending text messages (STM) and performing searching navigation (SN) on driving performance patterns while actively driving, centering on motion signals. To this end, it analyzes not only data on control of the vehicle including the Anterior-Posterior Coefficient of Variation (APCV), Medial-Lateral Coefficient of Variation (MLCV), and Deviation of Vehicle Speed but also motion data such as the Jerk-Cost function (JC). A total of 55 drivers including 28 males (age: 24.1 ± 1.5, driving experience: 1.8 years ± 1.7 years) and 27 females (age: 23.8 ± 2.6, driving experience: 1.5 ± 1.0) participated in this study. All subjects were instructed to drive at a constant speed (90 km/h) for 2 min while keeping a distance of 30 m from the front car also running at a speed of 90 km/h. They were requested to drive for the first 1 min and then drive only (Driving Only) or conduct tasks while driving for the subsequent 1 min (Driving + STM or Driving + SN). The information on APCV, MLCV, and deviation of speed were delivered by a driving simulator. Furthermore, the motion signal was measured using 4 high-speed infrared cameras and based on the measurement results, JCs in a total of 6 parts including left shoulder (L.shoulder), left elbow (L.elbow), left hand (L.hand), right knee (R.knee), right ankle (R.ankle), and right toe (R.toe) were calculated. Differences among the results of 3 conditions of experiment, Driving Only, Driving + STM, and Driving + SN, were compared and analyzed in terms of APCV, MLCV, Deviation of Vehicle Speed, and JC. APCV and Deviation of Vehicle Speed increased in Driving + SN, rather than in Driving Only. MLCV increased in Driving + STM and Driving + SN, rather than in Driving Only. In the case of most JCs except that of L.hand, the values increased in Driving + SN, compared to Driving Only. This study indicated that JC could be a reliable parameter for the evaluation of driving performance patterns. In addition, it was discovered that additional tasks under driving, such as STM and SN, impaired smoothness or proficiency in driving motion, thereby increasing anterior-posterior and medio-lateral variability and deviation of speed.	\N	\N
23221862	The current state of knowledge suggests that disruption of neuronal information integration may be a common mechanism of anesthetic-induced unconsciousness. A neural system critical for information integration is the thalamocortical system whose specific and nonspecific divisions may play the roles for representing and integrating information, respectively. How anesthetics affect the function of these systems individually is not completely understood. The authors studied the effect of propofol on thalamocortical functional connectivity in the specific and nonspecific systems, using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Eight healthy volunteers were instructed to listen to and encode 40 English words during wakeful baseline, light sedation, deep sedation, and recovery in the scanner. Functional connectivity was determined as the temporal correlation of blood oxygen level-dependent signals with seed regions defined within the specific and nonspecific thalamic nuclei. Thalamocortical connectivity at baseline was dominantly medial and bilateral frontal and temporal for the specific system, and medial frontal and medial parietal for the nonspecific system. During deep sedation, propofol reduced functional connectivity by 43% (specific) and 79% (nonspecific), a significantly greater reduction in the nonspecific than in the specific system and in the left hemisphere than in the right. Upon regaining consciousness, functional connectivity increased by 58% (specific) and 123% (nonspecific) during recovery, exceeding their values at baseline. Propofol conferred differential changes in functional connectivity of the specific and nonspecific thalamocortical systems, particularly in left hemisphere, consistent with the verbal nature of stimuli and task. The changes in nonspecific thalamocortical connectivity may correlate with the loss and return of consciousness.	\N	\N
23224515	Fragile X syndrome (FXS) and Williams syndrome (WS) are both genetic disorders which present with similar cognitive-behavioral problems, but distinct social phenotypes. Despite these social differences both syndromes display poor social relations which may result from abnormal social processing. This study aimed to manipulate the location of socially salient information within scenes to investigate the visual attentional mechanisms of: capture, disengagement, and/or general engagement. Findings revealed that individuals with FXS avoid social information presented centrally, at least initially. The WS findings, on the other hand, provided some evidence that difficulties with attentional disengagement, rather than attentional capture, may play a role in the WS social phenotype. These findings are discussed in relation to the distinct social phenotypes of these two disorders.	\N	\N
23228587	Prominent models of social phobia highlight the role played by attentional factors, such as self-focused attention, in the development and maintenance of social phobia. Elevated self-focused attention is associated with increases in self-rated anxiety. Treatments that aim to modify and change attentional processes, specifically self-focused attention, will have a direct effect on social phobia symptoms. Thus, Attention Training targets attentional focus. The present study aimed to investigate the efficacy of Attention Training in comparison to an established treatment for social phobia, Cognitive Therapy. Participants (Intention-to-treat = 45; completers = 30) were allocated to either 6 weeks of Attention Training or Cognitive Therapy. It was hypothesized that both treatments would be effective in reducing social phobia symptoms, but that Attention Training would work primarily by reducing levels of self-focused attention. The results found an overall effectiveness of both treatment conditions in reducing social phobia symptoms. However, Attention Training significantly improved scores on the Self-Focused Attention questionnaire and the Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation questionnaire compared to Cognitive Therapy. Attention Training seems to be a promising treatment for social phobia.	\N	\N
23233157	Working memory (WM) and attention have been studied as separate cognitive constructs, although it has long been acknowledged that attention plays an important role in controlling the activation, maintenance, and manipulation of representations in WM. WM has, conversely, been thought of as a means of maintaining representations to voluntarily guide perceptual selective attention. It has more recently been observed, however, that the contents of WM can capture visual attention, even when such internally maintained representations are irrelevant, and often disruptive, to the immediate external task. Thus, the precise relationship between WM and attention remains unclear, but it appears that they may bidirectionally impact one another, whether or not internal representations are consistent with the external perceptual goals. This reciprocal relationship seems, further, to be constrained by limited cognitive resources to handle demands in either maintenance or selection. We propose here that the close relationship between WM and attention may be best described as a give-and-take interdependence between attention directed toward either actively maintained internal representations (traditionally considered WM) or external perceptual stimuli (traditionally considered selective attention), underpinned by their shared reliance on a common cognitive resource. Put simply, we argue that WM and attention should no longer be considered as separate systems or concepts, but as competing and influencing one another because they rely on the same limited resource. This framework can offer an explanation for the capture of visual attention by irrelevant WM contents, as well as a straightforward account of the underspecified relationship between WM and attention.	\N	\N
23234490	People have significant psychological resources to improve their well-being and performance, but these resources often go unused and could be better harnessed. In the medical domain, it is well established that these resources can be mobilized under certain conditions, for example in the context of the placebo effect. Here we explored whether the placebo principle can be used to enhance cognitive performance. To do so, we employed a modified placebo induction--a bogus priming method that we told participants would unconsciously enhance their knowledge and that they should hence trust their skills in an upcoming knowledge test. Participant performance was indeed enhanced, compared to a group that did not think the priming process would improve their knowledge. The study documents the relevance of the placebo effect outside the medical and therapeutic setting.	\N	\N
23237079	Previous theories about the etiology of cognitive dysfunction in bipolar disorder (BD) emphasized trait factors such as neurological impairment. State factors, other than mood symptoms, that may exacerbate functional deficits have not yet been considered. The purpose of this study was to examine autonomic nervous system (ANS) arousal following cognitive challenge. The study compared patients with BD and healthy controls (HC) in physiological measures and neuropsychological test scores. Thirty euthymic patients with BD and 22 HC completed the study. Participants completed mood [Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) and Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS)], anxiety (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory), and substance abuse (Drug Abuse Screening Test-20 item and Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test) measures. They were connected to an electrogram, a sensitive thermometer for measuring finger temperature, and electrodes that measure galvanic skin response. After a five-min baseline measurement in a restful state, participants completed a computerized neuropsychological battery (CNS Vital Signs). The group with BD reported significantly more mood symptoms (BDI-II, t = 3.71, p < 0.001; YMRS, t = 6.73, p < 0.001) and scored higher on a measure of trait-anxiety (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, t = 2.91, p < 0.001) than HC. A multivariate analysis of variance revealed higher arousal on all physiological measures in the BD group relative to HC at baseline [F(3,48) = 13.1, p < 0.001] and during cognitive testing [F(3,48) = 11.3, p < 0.001]. The increase in physiological arousal from a restful state to the time of testing was higher for the BD group [F(3,37) = 8.06, p < 0.001]. With respect to cognitive data, HC scored higher than patients with BD across the measures of memory (F = 8.5, p < 0.001), sustained (F = 9.5, p < 0.001) and complex (F = 2.7, p < 0.04) attention, processing speed (F = 10.0, p < 0.001), reaction time (F = 7.8, p < 0.001), cognitive flexibility (F = 19.7, p < 0.001), working memory (F = 10.8, p < 0.001), and social acuity (F = 5.7, p < 0.01), with partial eta-squared from 0.18 to 0.62. Correlational analysis revealed significant associations between various cognitive test scores and changes in physiological arousal from baseline to testing (-0.59 ≤ r ≤ 0.22). Relative to HC, patients with BD experience larger changes in ANS arousal between a restful baseline and cognitive testing, and achieve lower cognitive test scores. Further research is needed to determine whether acute physiological symptoms of anxiety directly compromise cognitive functioning in BD.	\N	\N
23237331	The present study investigated whether counter-regulation in affective processing is triggered by emotions. Automatic attention allocation to valent stimuli was measured in the context of positive and negative affective states. Valence biases were assessed by comparing the detection of positive versus negative words in a visual search task (Experiment 1) or by comparing interference effects of positive and negative distractor words in an emotional Stroop task (Experiment 2). Imagining a hypothetical emotional situation (Experiment 1) or watching romantic versus depressing movie clips (Experiment 2) increased attention allocation to stimuli that were opposite in valence to the current emotional state. Counter-regulation is assumed to reflect a basic mechanism underlying implicit emotion regulation.	\N	\N
23242199	Performance of unimanual movements is associated with bihemispheric activity in the motor cortex in old adults. However, the causal functional role of the ipsilateral MC (iMC) for motor control is still not completely known. Here, the behavioral consequences of interference of the iMC during training of a complex motor skill were tested. Healthy old (58-85 years) and young volunteers (22-35 years) were tested in a double-blind, cross-over, sham-controlled design. Participants attended 2 different study arms with either cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation (ctDCS) or sham concurrent with training. Motor performance was evaluated before, during, 90 min, and 24 h after training. During training, a reduced slope of performance with ctDCS relative to sham was observed in old compared with young (F = 5.8, P = 0.02), with a decrease of correctly rehearsed sequences, an effect that was evident even after 2 consecutive retraining periods without intervention. Furthermore, the older the subject, the more prominent was the disruptive effect of ctDCS (R(2) = 0.50, P = 0.01). These data provide direct evidence for a causal functional link between the iMC and motor skill acquisition in old subjects pointing toward the concept that the recruitment of iMC in old is an adaptive process in response to age-related declines in motor functions.	\N	\N
23244316	Rumination, defined as repetitive thinking about negative information, has been found to lead to serious maladaptive consequences, including longer and more severe episodes of major depression. In this review, we present and discuss research findings motivated by the formulation that individual differences in cognitive processes that control how information is processed influence the likelihood that thoughts will become repetitive and negative. Several studies have demonstrated that a tendency to ruminate (i.e., trait rumination) is related to difficulties updating working memory (WM) and disengaging from and forgetting no-longer-relevant information. Other investigators have documented that trait rumination is also associated with an enhanced ability to ignore distracting information and with more stable maintenance of task-relevant information. In contrast to trait rumination, a state of rumination has been found to be related to widespread deficits in cognitive control. In this article, we discuss how the current accounts of control functioning cannot explain this pattern of anomalous control functioning. To explain these findings, including unexpected and contradictory results, we present an attentional scope model of rumination that posits that a constricted array of thoughts, percepts, and actions that are activated in WM or available for selection from long-term memory affects the control functioning of trait ruminators. This model explains, at a cognitive level, why rumination is particularly likely to arise when individuals are in a negative mood state; it also accounts for a number of findings outside of the rumination-control literature and generates several novel predictions.	\N	\N
23250122	Stroke thrombolysis is limited by the "last-seen well" principle, which defines stroke onset time. A significant minority of stroke patients (~15%) awake with their symptoms and are by definition ineligible for thrombolysis because they were "last-seen well" at the time they went to bed implying an interval that is most often greater than three hours. A single-centre prospective, safety study was designed to thrombolyse 20 subjects with stroke-on-awakening. Patients were eligible for inclusion if they were last seen well less than 12 hours previously, specifically including those who awoke from sleep with their stroke deficits. They had a baseline computed tomogram (CT) scan with an ASPECTS score greater than 5, no evidence of well-evolved infarction and a CT angiogram / Trans-cranial Doppler ultrasound study demonstrating an intracranial arterial occlusion. Patients fulfilled all other standard criteria for stroke thrombolysis. The primary outcome was safety defined by symptomatic ICH or death. Among 89 screened patients, 20 were treated with thrombolysis. Two patients (10%) died due to massive carotid territory stroke and two patients (10%) died of stroke complications. Two patients (10%) showed asymptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) (petechial hemorrhage) and none symptomatic ICH. Reasons for exclusion were: (a) ASPECTS ≤ 5 (29); (b) well-evolved infarcts on CT (19); (c) historical mRS > 2 (17); (d) no demonstrable arterial occlusion or were too mild to warrant treatment (10). Patients who awake with their deficits can be safely treated with thrombolysis based upon a tissue window defined by NCCT and CTA/TCD.	\N	\N
23252922	Attention deficit has been reported in both schizophrenia patients and patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). The aim of this study was to elucidate the deficits in sustained attention and associated neural network dysfunctions in schizophrenia patients and MDD patients, and to investigate the difference between the two patient groups. Twelve schizophrenia patients, 12 patients with non-psychotic MDD, and 12 healthy control subjects participated in this study. A sustained attention to response task (SART) was used to measure attention capacity. Cerebral blood flow (CBF) during attention tasks was measured using H(2) (15) O positron emission tomography. Statistical parametric mapping and analysis of covariance were performed to compare the behavioral performance and CBF changes during SART among three groups. Behavioral performances were not significantly different among the three groups except for an increased commission error rate in the schizophrenia group. Regional CBF during SART was significantly reduced in the left inferior frontal gyrus, the left cuneus, and the right superior parietal lobule and increased in the right superior frontal gyrus and the right cuneus in the schizophrenia group compared to the healthy control group. In the MDD group, neither significant regional CBF difference nor behavioral deficit was found compared to the healthy control group. Behavioral performance deficit and perfusion changes in the prefrontal and parietal cortices during SART were observed only in the schizophrenia group. Prefrontal and parietal network dysfunction for sustained attention may be involved in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia.	\N	\N
23261418	The memory for goals model (Altmann & Trafton, 2002) posits the importance of a short delay (the 'interruption lag') before an interrupting task to encode suspended goals for retrieval post-interruption. Two experiments used the theory of soft constraints (Gray, Simms, Fu & Schoelles, 2006) to investigate whether the efficacy of an interruption lag could be improved by increasing goal-state access cost to induce a more memory-based encoding strategy. Both experiments used a copying task with three access cost conditions (Low, Medium, and High) and a 5-s interruption lag with a no lag control condition. Experiment 1 found that the participants in the High access cost condition resumed more interrupted trials and executed more actions correctly from memory when coupled with an interruption lag. Experiment 2 used a prospective memory test post-interruption and an eyetracker recorded gaze activity during the interruption lag. The participants in the High access cost condition with an interruption lag were best at encoding target information during the interruption lag, evidenced by higher scores on the prospective memory measure and more gaze activity on the goal-state during the interruption lag. Theoretical and practical issues regarding the use of goal-state access cost and an interruption lag are discussed.	\N	\N
23265305	To study the sexual activities and prevalence of sexual dysfunctions in midlife Chinese women and their correlations with demographic factors, sexual dissatisfaction and interpersonal difficulty. This is a cross-sectional survey of a convenience sample of women aged 40-60, who requested gynecological checkup or attend social activities at Women's Club. Sexual activities, sexual dysfunctions, sexual dissatisfaction, demographic factors and interpersonal difficulty were assessed by self-administered questionnaire. Among 371 eligible subjects, 22.4% and 39.6% women had low intimacy and coitus frequency (0 to <12 acts in one year), respectively. The odds ratios for low coital frequency in the natural menopausal and surgical menopausal subgroups were 3.00 and 5.09, respectively (95% confidence interval: 1.73-5.19 and 1.77-14.69, respectively). Overall, 77.2% women had at least one type of sexual dysfunctions; this proportion was highest in the surgically menopausal subgroup (88.9%) followed by the naturally menopausal subgroup (79.3%), the perimenopausal subgroup (78.2%) and the premenopausal subgroup (72.2%) (p=0.003). No lubrication (42.9%) was the commonest sexual dysfunction and predominantly affected naturally and surgically menopaused women (p=0.001). Sexual dysfunction was the major contributor to sexual dissatisfaction (0.80), followed by interpersonal difficulty (0.2). Arousal disorder was the pivot of interaction between sexual dissatisfaction, menopausal status and low coital frequency. Chinese women had fewer intimate contacts and less coitus when menopause progressed. No lubrication was the commonest sexual dysfunction and predominantly affected menopaused women. Our model showed that sexual dysfunction is the main contributor to sexual dissatisfaction.	\N	\N
23274853	Behavioral studies suggest that postural control requires increased cognitive control and visuospatial processing with aging. Consequently, performance can decline when concurrently performing a postural and a demanding cognitive task. We aimed to identify the neural substrate underlying this effect. A demanding cognitive task, requiring visuospatial transformations, was performed with varying postural loads. More specifically, old and young subjects performed mental rotations of abstract figures in a seated position and when standing on a force platform. Additionally, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to identify brain regions associated with mental rotation performance. Old as compared to young subjects showed increased blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) responses in a frontoparietal network as well as activations in additional areas. Despite this overall increased activation, they could still modulate BOLD responses with increasing task complexity. Importantly, activity in left lingual gyrus was highly predictive (r = -0.83, adjusted R(2) = 0.65) of the older subjects' degree of success in mental rotation performance when shifting from a sitting to a standing position. More specifically, increased activation in this area was associated with better performance, once postural load increased.	\N	\N
23275056	To assess for the increased risk of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in young children with prenatal methamphetamine exposure from the multicenter, longitudinal Infant Development, Environment, and Lifestyle (IDEAL) study. The IDEAL study enrolled 412 mother-infant pairs at 4 sites (Tulsa, OK; Des Moines, IA; Los Angeles, CA; and Honolulu, HI). Methamphetamine-exposed subjects (n = 204) were identified by self-report and/or gas chromatography/mass spectrometry confirmation of amphetamine and metabolites in infant meconium. Matched subjects (n = 208) denied methamphetamine use and had a negative meconium screen. This analysis included a subsample of 301 subjects who were administered the Conners' Kiddie Continuous Performance Test (K-CPT) at 5.5 years of age (153 exposed and 148 comparison). Hierarchical linear models adjusted for covariates tested exposure effects on K-CPT measures. Using the same covariates, logistic regression was used to determine the effect of exposure on the incidence of a positive ADHD confidence index score, defined as greater than 50%. There were no differences between the groups in omission or commission errors or reaction time for correct trials. However, methamphetamine exposure was associated with subtle differences in other outcomes predictive of ADHD, including increased slope of reaction time across blocks (p < .001), increased variability in reaction time with longer interstimulus intervals (p < .01), and increased likelihood of greater than 50% on the ADHD confidence index (odds ratio, 3.1; 95% confidence interval, 1.2-7.8; p = .02). Prenatal methamphetamine exposure was associated with subtle differences in K-CPT scores at 5.5 years of age. Even at this relatively young age, these children exhibit indicators of risk for ADHD and warrant monitoring.	\N	\N
23276727	Coordinated joint engagement (CJE) is a behavioral measure used in the infant-caregiver interaction paradigm to measure joint attention. To know how mothers scaffold infant attention to prompt joint engagement states, this study attempted to determine (a) which specific maternal attention-directing strategies facilitate CJE in mother-infant interactions and (b) how attention-directing strategies precede a range of infant engagement states. Free play in 33 low-SES dyads was analyzed sequentially, a method that reveals temporal relations between the behaviors involved in an interaction. Maintaining was the only strategy that preceded CJE, and Introducing and Redirecting preceded infant Engagement with Object, Onlooking, and Supported Joint Engagement. The results point to the scaffolding role of Maintaining and the mediating role of Introducing and Redirecting maternal strategies. To understand how low-SES infants attain CJE is important given the relation between joint attention and cognitive development. Implications of the results for interventions aimed at reducing socioeconomic inequities in early cognitive development are discussed.	\N	\N
23279174	Schizophrenia is a complex epigenetic puzzle, the antecedents of which are presumed to lie in neurodevelopmental dysmaturation. This dysmaturation has an impact on children and adolescents at genetic risk for schizophrenia. In this framework, normative mechanisms of brain development that are highly dynamic in adolescence are likely to be disrupted in the at-risk adolescent brain. It is likely that what is affected is the integrity of brain networks that sub-serve fundamental domains of function such as sustained attention. Notably, expansion in proficiency in sustained attention that is characteristic of typical development is likely to be compromised in adolescents at risk for schizophrenia. This confluence of at-risk adolescents and neuro-behavioral domains of inquiry is discussed. We outline the evidence for developmental antecedents of schizophrenia, and their bases in systems and molecular mechanisms in the brain. Then we juxtapose these results against neuro-behavioral evidence of attention deficits in high-risk populations, and fMRI evidence of dysfunctional responses in critical brain regions. We end by advocating the application of systems-based approaches toward understanding the progression of network dysfunction in the adolescent risk-state.	\N	\N
23280545	Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) has shown beneficial aphrodisiac effects in some animal and human studies. The aim of the present study was to assess the safety and efficacy of saffron on selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor-induced sexual dysfunction in women. This was a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled study. Thirty-eight women with major depression who were stabilized on fluoxetine 40 mg/day for a minimum of 6 weeks and had experienced subjective feeling of sexual dysfunction entered the study. The patients were randomly assigned to saffron (30 mg/daily) or placebo for 4 weeks. Measurement was performed at baseline, week 2, and week 4 using the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI). Side effects were systematically recorded. Thirty-four women had at least one post-baseline measurement and completed the study. Two-factor repeated measure analysis of variance showed significant effect of time × treatment interaction [Greenhouse-Geisser's corrected: F(1.580, 50.567) = 5.366, p = 0.012] and treatment for FSFI total score [F(1, 32) = 4.243, p = 0.048]. At the end of the fourth week, patients in the saffron group had experienced significantly more improvement in total FSFI (p < 0.001), arousal (p = 0.028), lubrication (p = 0.035), and pain (p = 0.016) domains of FSFI but not in desire (p = 0.196), satisfaction (p = 0.206), and orgasm (p = 0.354) domains. Frequency of side effects was similar between the two groups. It seems saffron may safely and effectively improve some of the fluoxetine-induced sexual problems including arousal, lubrication, and pain.	\N	\N
23288020	To verify the auditory selective attention in children with stroke. Dichotic tests of binaural separation (non-verbal and consonant-vowel) and binaural integration - digits and Staggered Spondaic Words Test (SSW) - were applied in 13 children (7 boys), from 7 to 16 years, with unilateral stroke confirmed by neurological examination and neuroimaging. The attention performance showed significant differences in comparison to the control group in both kinds of tests. In the non-verbal test, identifications the ear opposite the lesion in the free recall stage was diminished and, in the following stages, a difficulty in directing attention was detected. In the consonant- vowel test, a modification in perceptual asymmetry and difficulty in focusing in the attended stages was found. In the digits and SSW tests, ipsilateral, contralateral and bilateral deficits were detected, depending on the characteristics of the lesions and demand of the task. Stroke caused auditory attention deficits when dealing with simultaneous sources of auditory information.	\N	\N
23297206	Language production and spatial attention are the most salient lateralized cerebral functions, and their complementary specialization has been observed in the majority of the population. To investigate whether the complementary specialization has a causal origin (the lateralization of one function causes the opposite lateralization of the other) or rather is a statistical phenomenon (different functions lateralize independently), we determined the lateralization for spatial attention in a group of individuals with known atypical right hemispheric (RH) lateralization for speech production, based on a previous large-scale screening of left-handers. We show that all 13 participants with RH language dominance have left-hemispheric dominance for spatial attention, and all but one of 16 participants with left-hemispheric language dominance are RH dominant for spatial attention. Activity was observed in the dorsal fronto-parietal pathway of attention, including the inferior parietal sulcus and superior parietal lobule, the frontal eye-movement field, and the inferior frontal sulcus/gyrus, and these regions functionally colateralized in the hemisphere dominant for attention, independently of the side of lateralization. Our results clearly support the Causal hypothesis about the complementary specialization, and we speculate that it derives from a longstanding evolutionary origin. We also suggest that the conclusions about lateralization based on an unselected sample of the population and laterality assessment using coarse functional transcranial Doppler sonography should be interpreted with more caution.	\N	\N
23299718	The neuropeptide orexin is synthesized by neurons exclusively located in the hypothalamus. However, these neurons send axons over virtually the entire brain and spinal cord and therefore constitute a unique central orexinergic system. It is well known that central orexin plays a crucial role in the regulation of various basic non-somatic and somatic physiological functions, including feeding, energy homeostasis, the sleep/wake cycle, reward, addiction, and neuroendocrine, as well as motor control. Moreover, the absence of orexin results in narcolepsy-cataplexy, a simultaneous somatic and non-somatic dysfunction. In this review, we summarize these central functions of the orexinergic system and associated diseases, and suggest that this system may hold a key position in somatic-non-somatic integration.	\N	\N
23300231	This paper focuses on an innovative intersection between education, health and arts. Taking a broad definition of health it examines some social and psychological well-being impacts of extended collaborations between a theatre company and children with communication difficulties. It seeks to test aspects of Fredrickson's(1) broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions in a primary school curriculum context. The researcher participated in a project called Speech Bubbles. The programme was devised by theatre practitioners and aimed at six- and seven-year-olds with difficulties in speech, language and communication. Sessions were observed, videoed and analysed for levels of child well-being using an established scale. In addition, responses regarding perceived improvements in speech, language and communication were gathered from school records and teachers, teaching assistants, practitioners and parents. Data were captured using still images and videos, children's recorded commentaries, conversations, written feedback and observation. Using grounded research methods, themes and categories arose directly from the collected data. Fluency, vocabulary, inventiveness and concentration were enhanced in the large majority of referred children. The research also found significant positive developments in motivation and confidence. Teachers and their assistants credited the drama intervention with notable improvements in attitude, behaviour and relationships over the year. Aspects of many children's psychological well-being also showed marked signs of progress when measured against original reasons for referral and normal expectations over a year. An unexpected outcome was evidence of heightened well-being of the teaching assistants involved. Findings compared well with expectations based upon Fredrickson's theory and also the theatre company's view that theatre-making promotes emotional awareness and empathy. Improvements in both children's well-being and communication were at least in part related to the sustained and playful emphases on the processes and practice of drama, clear values and an inclusive environment.	\N	\N
23303907	Circadian rhythms occur in almost all species and control vital aspects of our physiology, from sleeping and waking to neurotransmitter secretion and cellular metabolism. Epidemiological studies from recent decades have supported a unique role for circadian rhythm in metabolism. As evidenced by individuals working night or rotating shifts, but also by rodent models of circadian arrhythmia, disruption of the circadian cycle is strongly associated with metabolic imbalance. Some genetically engineered mouse models of circadian rhythmicity are obese and show hallmark signs of the metabolic syndrome. Whether these phenotypes are due to the loss of distinct circadian clock genes within a specific tissue versus the disruption of rhythmic physiological activities (such as eating and sleeping) remains a cynosure within the fields of chronobiology and metabolism. Becoming more apparent is that from metabolites to transcription factors, the circadian clock interfaces with metabolism in numerous ways that are essential for maintaining metabolic homeostasis.	\N	\N
23317941	Neonates with hypoplastic left heart syndrome have significant hemodynamic threats to cerebral perfusion and are at risk of reduced neurodevelopmental performance. We hypothesized that cerebral hypoxia, detectable by near-infrared spectroscopy in the early postoperative period, would be related to later neurodevelopmental performance. The study population was a sequential cohort of patients who had undergone stage 1 palliation of hypoplastic left heart syndrome under standard conditions, including neonatal perioperative monitoring with cerebral near-infrared spectroscopy, and who had undergone a neurodevelopmental assessment at age 4 to 5 years. The neonatal demographic and 48-hour perioperative hemodynamic parameters, including cerebral oxygen saturation, were tested for their relationship to 4 domains of neurodevelopmental performance, including visual-motor integration in childhood in univariate and multivariate models. The neurodevelopmental scores were classified as low if less than 85 (-1 standard deviation) and abnormal if less than 70 (-2 standard deviations). For the 51 patients in the surgical cohort, the early survival was 94%, the cumulative survival was 86%, and the neurodevelopmental assessment was completed by 21 (48%) of the survivors, without evidence of an ascertainment bias. At the test age of 56.3 ± 5.5 months, the composite neurodevelopmental index, constructed from equally weighted measures in 4 domains, was 97.6 ± 9.6, not different from the age-based norms, with 3 of 21 in the low range and none abnormal. The mean visual-motor integration was 93.4 ± 14, slightly less than the population norm (P < .05), with 2 of 21 having low scores and 1 abnormal scores. In patients with low to abnormal visual-motor integration, the perioperative stage 1 palliation cerebral oxygenation saturation was significantly lower (63.6 ± 8.1 vs 67.8 ± 8.1, P < .05). Two patients had discrete embolic strokes after their initial hospitalization; the occurrence of late stroke reduced the visual-motor integration performance but was not related to the early cerebral oxygen saturation. Nonlinear relationships of cerebral oxygen saturation to the neurodevelopmental measures found cerebral oxygen saturation thresholds of 49% to 62%. The hours at a cerebral oxygen saturation less than 45% and 55% were related to low visual-motor integration and neurodevelopmental index scores in the univariate and multivariate models. A multivariate model of age and weight at stage 1 palliation, cerebral oxygen saturation, arterial oxygen saturation, cardiopulmonary bypass and deep hypothermic circulatory arrest times, and later stroke predicted visual-motor integration to an important degree (R(2) = 0.53, P < .001). The actual and predicted visual-motor integration and neurodevelopmental index were normal when a cerebral oxygen saturation less than 45% and other risk conditions were avoided. Neurodevelopmental performance was related to demographic, neonatal perioperative physiologic, and later factors. Perioperative cerebral oxygenation assessed by near-infrared spectroscopy can detect hypoxic-ischemic conditions associated with injury and reduced neurodevelopmental performance and was the most significant physiologic factor identified. These data suggest that efforts to avoid cerebral hypoxia are likely to improve the outcomes in this high-risk population.	\N	\N
23328130	The aim of this study was to compare sleep pattern, tiredness sensation and quality of life between different chronotypes in train drivers from a Brazilian transportation company. Ninety-one train drivers, working a rotary work schedule including night shift, were divided into three groups according to their chronotype (morning types, intermediate or evening types) and were assessed for their sleep and quality of life, as characterized by a subjective questionnaire and the Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT), applied before and immediately after the night shift. The pattern of activity and rest was measured for 10 days by actigraphy, and the chronotype was determined through the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire. Forty-one (45.1%) individuals were classified as morning type, 44 (48.4%) were classified as intermediate and 6 (6.6%) as evening type. The evening types had a tendency to remain awake for a longer period of time before the night shift (p = 0.05) and scored worse overall for quality of life compared to morning types (p = 0.11). There was no significant difference between the groups regarding variability in the PVT performance, even when covaried by the period of waking time before the test. There was no significant difference either in feelings of fatigue before and after starting the shift. Although the evening type number was small, evening type individuals scored worse relative to sleep and quality of life than morning type individuals.	\N	\N
23328270	The antiepileptic drug ezogabine (EZG; US adopted name for retigabine [the international nonproprietary name]) reduces neuronal excitability by enhancing potassium channel activity. EZG has been approved as adjunctive treatment for adults with partial-onset seizures. The goal of this study was to examine the impact of coadministration of ethanol 1 g/kg on the safety and tolerability of EZG and the consequences of coadministration on pharmacokinetic (PK) and pharmacodynamic (PD) parameters in healthy volunteers. In a randomized, 4-way crossover, partially double-blind study, volunteers received 4 oral treatments (EZG 200 mg + ethanol placebo [light apple juice]; placebo + ethanol 1 g/kg; EZG 200 mg + ethanol 1 g/kg; or placebo + ethanol placebo) separated by 5 to 21 days. PK and PD parameters were evaluated in 17 healthy volunteers (19 to 55 years) who were currently moderate alcohol drinkers. Ethanol coadministration increased EZG AUC(0-∞) and C(max) by 36% and 23%, respectively. EZG had no impact on ethanol PK. Ethanol alone impaired balance, blurred vision, and increased intoxication and dizziness. Objective tests (reaction times, response accuracy, attention, and manual tracking) were also impaired by ethanol. EZG treatment alone had no impact on PD measures other than a variable, transient increase in blurred vision (vision clear-crisp visual analog scale scores). Treatments were generally tolerated, with no serious adverse events or discontinuations owing to adverse events. Ethanol increased EZG exposure, which did not seem to be clinically relevant. Except for an increase in blurred vision, impairment effects observed were related primarily to ethanol and were not exacerbated by the addition of EZG, which was generally tolerated with or without ethanol.	\N	\N
23331374	Individual variation in serotonergic function is associated with reactivity, risk for affective disorders, as well as an altered response to disease. Our study used a nonhuman primate model to further investigate whether a functional polymorphism in the promoter region for the serotonin transporter gene helps to explain differences in proinflammatory responses. Homology between the human and rhesus monkey polymorphisms provided the opportunity to determine how this genetic variation influences the relationship between a psychosocial stressor and immune responsiveness. Leukocyte numbers in blood and interleukin-6 (IL-6) responses are sensitive to stressful challenges and are indicative of immune status. The neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio and cellular IL-6 responses to in vitro lipopolysaccharide stimulation were assessed in 27 juvenile male rhesus monkeys while housed in stable social groups (NLL  = 16, NS  = 11) and also in 18 animals after relocation to novel housing (NLL  = 13, NS  = 5). Short allele monkeys had significantly higher neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratios than homozygous Long allele carriers at baseline [t(25) = 2.18, P = 0.02], indicative of an aroused state even in the absence of disturbance. In addition, following the housing manipulation, IL-6 responses were more inhibited in short allele carriers (F1,16  = 8.59, P = 0.01). The findings confirm that the serotonin transporter gene-linked polymorphism is a distinctive marker of reactivity and inflammatory bias, perhaps in a more consistent manner in monkeys than found in many human studies.	\N	\N
23332428	Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) tend to be more vulnerable to various forms of voiding dysfunction and nocturnal enuresis (NE). We attempt to compare the clinical manifestations and attentional performance between ADHD children with NE and those without NE. We consecutively enrolled children diagnosed with ADHD in child and adolescent psychiatric clinics. The questionnaires for evaluation of ADHD symptoms and voiding dysfunction symptoms were administered to all study participants. All participants also received the Test Battery for Attention Performance (TAP) for assessment of attentional function. A total of 53 children were enrolled in this study, comprising 47 boys and six girls. The prevalence rate of NE was 28.3%. Children in the NE group had statistically significant higher dysfunctional voiding symptom score (5.40 ± 3.66 vs.3.16 ± 2.74; p = 0.018) and two subscales of "When I wet myself, my underwear is soaked" (p < 0.001) and "I miss having a bowel movement every day" (p = 0.047). There were no significant differences with regard to all psychiatric evaluations between the NE and non-NE groups. In the TAP test, the NE group showed a significantly shorter reaction time in the domain of inhibitory control, working memory, and auditory sustained attention than the non-NE group. Children with ADHD have a high prevalence of NE. ADHD children with NE had a significantly higher dysfunctional voiding symptom score and shorter reaction time in most domains of the TAP test. Further study is needed to discern the impact of NE on the neuropsychological function of ADHD children.	\N	\N
23332817	Inhibition of return (IOR) reflects a bias to preferentially attend to non-previously attended or inspected spatial locations. IOR is paramount to efficiently explore our environment, by avoiding repeated scanning of already visited locations. Patients with left visual neglect after right parietal damage or fronto-parietal disconnection demonstrated impaired manual, but not saccadic, IOR for right-sided targets (Bourgeois et al., 2012). Here we aimed at investigating in healthy participants the causal role of distinct cortical sites within the right hemisphere in manual and saccadic IOR, by evaluating the offline effects of repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) on the right intra-parietal sulcus (IPS) and the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). Our results show that rTMS over both sites lastingly interfered with manual but not saccadic IOR for right-sided targets. This behavioral pattern closely mimicked the performance of neglect patients evaluated with the same paradigm. In contrast, for left-sided targets, rTMS over the right IPS impaired both manual and saccadic IOR, while rTMS over the right TPJ produced no modulation in either task. We concluded that distinct parietal nodes of the dorsal and ventral spatial attention networks of the right hemisphere make different contributions to exogenous orienting processes implicated in IOR, and that such effects are hemifield- and task-dependent.	\N	\N
23336519	The present study addresses gaps in the literature on affect-biased health perceptions by (a) investigating health bias while considering both valence and arousal components of affect; (b) establishing the presence of, and variability in, affective health bias at the daily level; and (c) exploring daily health bias in a non-clinical, community sample of adults. Participants were 477 adults (aged 33-80 years) who reported daily health events, health satisfaction and affect for up to 56 days. Health bias was present when the effect of a given day's health events on that day's health satisfaction was significantly moderated by that day's affect. Multilevel modelling was used to investigate fixed and random within-day effects. Daily health satisfaction. Significant interaction effects indicated the presence of health bias on the daily level: positively valenced affect buffered the negative impact of health events on health satisfaction, whereas negatively valenced affect exacerbated this association; additionally, valence emerged as the most salient characteristic of positive affect, whereas arousal was a differentiating factor for negative affect. The results provide evidence that both valence and arousal components of affect are important to consider when investigating day-level health bias, and that these effects can be detected using a general population of adults.	\N	\N
23337080	Memory tasks combining storage and distracting tasks performed at either encoding or retrieval have provided divergent results pointing towards accounts of forgetting in terms of either temporal decay or event-based interference respectively. The aim of this study was to shed light on the possible sources of such a divergence that could rely on methodological aspects or deeper differences in the memory traces elicited by the different paradigms used. Methodological issues were explored in a first series of experiments by introducing at retrieval computer-paced distracting tasks that involved articulatory suppression, attentional demand, or both. A second series of experiments that used a similar design was intended to induce differences in the nature of memory traces by increasing the time allowed for encoding the to-be-remembered items. Although the introduction of computer-paced distracting tasks allowed for a strict control of temporal parameters, the first series of experiments replicated the effects usually attributed to event-based interference. However, deeper encoding abolished these effects while time-related effects remained unchanged. These findings suggest that the interplay between temporal factors and event-based interference in forgetting at short term is more complex than expected and could depend on the nature of memory traces.	\N	\N
23337616	Previous research has demonstrated that emotional material is more likely to be remembered than neutral material (Hamann, 2001). The present study employed the item-method of directed forgetting in order to examine whether emotionally negative words are not only easier to remember, but also harder to forget. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were additionally measured in order to investigate the processes of selective rehearsal and active inhibition in directed forgetting. The results demonstrated directed forgetting effects for both neutral and negative words, with a stronger effect for negative items. Late positive potentials (LPPs) for 'to-be-remembered' (TBR) relative to 'to-be-forgotten' (TBF) cues were enhanced when the cues followed negative in comparison to neutral words, indicating the greater selective rehearsal of TBR negative items. Frontal positivities to TBF relative to TBR cues were not modulated by word valence, indicating that inhibitory processes were unaffected by emotion. Taken together, the present research demonstrates for the first time that, not only are emotionally negative words prone to the same directed forgetting effects as neutral words, but that these effects are in fact enhanced for negative words and due to increased selective rehearsal of TBR negative items. The discrepancies between the present findings and those of previous studies are discussed.	\N	\N
23345413	Attention to a spatial location or feature in a visual scene can modulate the responses of cortical neurons and affect perceptual biases in illusions. We add attention to a cortical model of spatial context based on a well-founded account of natural scene statistics. The cortical model amounts to a generalized form of divisive normalization, in which the surround is in the normalization pool of the center target only if they are considered statistically dependent. Here we propose that attention influences this computation by accentuating the neural unit activations at the attended location, and that the amount of attentional influence of the surround on the center thus depends on whether center and surround are deemed in the same normalization pool. The resulting form of model extends a recent divisive normalization model of attention (Reynolds & Heeger, 2009). We simulate cortical surround orientation experiments with attention and show that the flexible model is suitable for capturing additional data and makes nontrivial testable predictions.	\N	\N
23347592	Sexual function of women suffering from pelvic organ prolapse (POP) and/or urinary incontinence (UI) is adversely affected. However, our current understanding of the exact relationship between female sexual dysfunction and POP and/or UI is incomplete. A qualitative study can improve our understanding by describing what women themselves perceive as the real problem. To gain a more in-depth understanding of the impact of POP and/or UI on the different categories of female sexual dysfunction by way of a qualitative study. Qualitative semistructured interviews were conducted in 37 women scheduled for pelvic floor surgery, and one was excluded from analysis due to incomplete recordings. The impact of POP and/or UI on female sexual function. Only 17% of women were completely positive about their sex life. Both POP and UI had a negative effect on body image. Women with POP had a negative image of their vagina, which caused them to be insecure about their partner's sexual experience, while women with UI were embarrassed about their incontinence and pad use, and feared smelling of urine. Worries about the presence of POP during sexual activity, discomfort from POP, and reduced genital sensations were the most important reasons for decreased desire, arousal, and difficulty reaching an orgasm in women with POP. Fear of incontinence during intercourse affected desire, arousal, and orgasm and could be a cause for dyspareunia in women with UI. Desire was divided into two main elements: "drive" and "motivation." Although "drive," i.e., spontaneous sexual interest, was not commonly affected by POP and/or UI, a decrease in "motivation" or the willingness to engage in sexual activity was the most common sexual dysfunction mentioned. Body image plays a key role in the sexual functioning of women with POP and/or UI with the biggest impact on women's "motivation."	\N	\N
23350301	This review examines attention research appearing in The American Journal of Psychology over the journal's rich 125-year history. In particular, the review examines studies focused on selective attention's role in modulating the influence of distraction and the methods used to capture the nature of selective attention. Special attention is given to classic articles by Treisman (1964a, 1964b), Neisser (1963), and Eriksen and Rohrbaugh (1970), whose methods and results are examined in detail in light of current theory and research in selective attention.	\N	\N
23351098	Past research suggests that high approach-motivated positive affects narrow attentional scope and cause greater late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes. However, because arousal is related to motivational intensity, arousal may be responsible for these past findings. The present research investigated whether arousal, manipulated independently of affect using physical exercise, would influence attentional and LPP responses to stimuli. Results revealed that appetitive (vs. neutral) pictures evoked larger LPPs over central and left frontal regions, and caused more attentional narrowing. Individual differences in approach motivation predicted more attentional narrowing following appetitive stimuli. However, manipulated arousal did not influence attentional scope or LPPs to neutral or appetitive stimuli. Results suggest that attentional narrowing and LPPs to appetitive stimuli are related to approach motivation rather than enhanced general arousal.	\N	\N
23356511	Previous research regarding anxiety and female sexual functioning has yielded conflicting conclusions. This study examined the effect of state/trait anxiety and anxiety sensitivity on sexual responding and the propensity toward sexual inhibition/excitation in women without an anxiety disorder (n = 100, M age = 28.8 years) compared with women with an anxiety disorder (panic disorder or generalized anxiety disorder, n = 30, M age = 30.2 years). Participants completed self-report measures of state and trait anxiety, anxiety sensitivity, sexual functioning, and sexual inhibition/excitation. Women with an anxiety disorder reported worse sexual functioning compared with those without an anxiety disorder (except for desire, lubrication, and pain) and a greater propensity toward sexual inhibition, because of the threat of performance failure and its consequences. Dispositional anxiety and related worries significantly predicted various types of sexual dysfunctions. Findings suggested the importance of considering the relation between anxiety and sexual functioning to design optimal prevention and therapeutic interventions for women with anxiety disorders.	\N	\N
23356552	The prefrontal cortex and its connections with other cortical areas participate in processing erotic stimuli and hence sexual arousal. Visual erotic stimuli elicit sexual arousal that is associated with changes in electroencephalographic activity. The electroencephalographic correlation analysis provides information on the functional synchronization among areas. This study analyzed the functional interaction among the prefrontal, parietal, and temporal cortices during sexual arousal in young men induced by observing erotic photographs. In 2 groups of heterosexual men-an erotic stimulation group and a neutral stimulation group-the authors recorded electroencephalograms at the F3, F4, T3, T4, P3, and P4 derivations under 2 conditions: baseline and visual stimulation. Heart rate was monitored as a measure of peripheral activation. Participants in the erotic stimulation group reported a moderate degree of sexual arousal and a decrease in heart rate. Decreased inter- and intrahemispheric correlations of the fast frequencies were obtained only in erotic stimulation. These data support differential hemisphere participation in modulating sexual arousal and show that decreased synchronization patterns between prefrontal and posterior cortices (parietal and temporal) favor sexual arousal in young men. The results of this study may contribute to a better understanding of the central nervous system's mechanisms that underlie sexual arousal.	\N	\N
23366539	This paper describes EEG analysis of frontal lobe area in arousal maintenance state against sleepiness. Arousal maintenance state is considered different physiological state from the normal sleep onset. To analyze the EEG of frontal area might be important because we believe that the arousal maintenance state against sleepiness causes neuron activities from the frontal lobe, which coordinates behavior, to hypothalamus, which coordinates wakefulness and sleep. It is, however, hard to use EEG signals in the frontal area consistently because blinking artifacts are mixed in the EEG signals. In this paper, we have analyzed the EEG signals of the frontal lobe in arousal maintenance state against sleepiness after removing the eye-blinking artifact from the scalp EEG signals using an ICA denoising method. As a result, the EEG signals of the frontal area in the arousal maintenance state against sleepiness have wide bandwidth as in the EEG of the occipital area. It strengthens our speculation, i.e., the EEG desynchronization occurs because of the neuron activities from the frontal lobe to hypothalamus in order to maintain arousal state against sleepiness.	\N	\N
23369930	This study examined the effect of pain interference and attentional interference on the anticipatory postural adjustments of trunk muscles in patients with nonspecific chronic low back pain. Fifty-nine patients performed rapid flexion movements of the right arm under 6 conditions, namely a control condition and conditions with different attention demands. The latency between the activations of the shoulder and different trunk muscles, as measured with surface electromyography, was used as the outcome. Using repeated measures analysis of variance, attention conditions and group comparisons were tested between those who scored high and low on pain intensity, fear of movement, or pain catastrophizing. There were significant (although minimal) interactive effects but significant and potentially clinically relevant group and attention main effects. The group with the lowest scores showed delayed activity (14 to 29 ms) relative to those with higher scores. One attention-demanding condition delayed (20 to 35 ms) the latencies of some trunk muscles relative to the control condition, namely the one that was the most attention-demanding according to the reaction time results. These findings suggest that patients with chronic low back pain, who are characterized by higher scores on some pain-related variables (visual analog scale, Tampa Scale of Kinesiophobia, Pain Catastrophizing Scale), react favorably to protect the spine from further pain and injuries but would be at greater risk of injury when performing a complex physical task requiring more attention demand.	\N	\N
23371434	Hyperarousal is a hallmark of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD has been associated with increased blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR) in veteran populations. We retrospectively identified male patients consulted to outpatient psychiatry at the Iowa City Veterans Affairs Healthcare System. Patients were divided into PTSD (n = 88) and non-PTSD (n = 98) groups. All PTSD patients and a subset of non-PTSD patients had documented blast exposure during service. The study investigated whether patients with PTSD had higher systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and heart rate (HR) than patients without PTSD. The effect of trauma exposure on BP was also examined. Mean SBP (133.8 vs. 122.3 mm Hg; p < .001), DBP (87.6 vs. 78.6 mm Hg; p < .001), and HR (78.9 vs. 73.1 bpm; p < .001) were all significantly higher in the PTSD group. Trauma-exposed patients without PTSD had significantly higher BP than nonexposed patients. The prevalence of hypertension (HTN) was 34.1% (diagnosed and undiagnosed) among PTSD patients. Patients with PTSD had higher BP and HR compared to patients without PTSD. Trauma exposure may increase BP in this population. These findings will increase awareness about the cardiovascular implications of PTSD.	\N	\N
23374543	The dominant model that informs clinical training for preventing violence and managing aggression posits arousal as mediated downwards from higher cortical structures. This view results in an often-misplaced reliance on verbal and cognitive techniques for de-escalation. The emergence of sensory modulation, via the Six Core Strategies, is an alternative or complementary approach that is associated with reduced rates of seclusion and restraint. Sensory-based interventions are thought to promote adaptive regulation of arousal and emotion, but this connection has had limited theoretical and empirical development. This paper presents results of a pilot trial of sensory-based interventions in four inpatient mental health units in New Zealand. Narrative analysis of interview and focus group data suggest that modifications to the environment and the use of soothing stimuli moderate or optimize arousal and promote an ability to adaptively regulate emotion. Findings are discussed in light of recent advances in the neurophysiology of emotional regulation and the General Aggression Model that posits arousal and maladaptive emotional regulation as precursors to aggression.	\N	\N
23375117	In recent years, chewing has been discussed as producing effects of maintaining and sustaining cognitive performance. We have reported that chewing may improve or recover the process of working memory; however, the mechanisms underlying these phenomena are still to be elucidated. We investigated the effect of chewing on aspects of attention and cognitive processing speed, testing the hypothesis that this effect induces higher cognitive performance. Seventeen healthy adults (20-34 years old) were studied during attention task with blood oxygenation level-dependent functional (fMRI) at 3.0 T MRI. The attentional network test (ANT) within a single task fMRI containing two cue conditions (no cue and center cue) and two target conditions (congruent and incongruent) was conducted to examine the efficiency of alerting and executive control. Participants were instructed to press a button with the right or left thumb according to the direction of a centrally presented arrow. Each participant underwent two back-to-back ANT sessions with or without chewing gum, odorless and tasteless to remove any effect other than chewing. Behavioral results showed that mean reaction time was significantly decreased during chewing condition, regardless of speed-accuracy trade-off, although there were no significant changes in behavioral effects (both alerting and conflict effects). On the other hand, fMRI analysis revealed higher activations in the anterior cingulate cortex and left frontal gyrus for the executive network and motor-related regions for both attentional networks during chewing condition. These results suggested that chewing induced an increase in the arousal level and alertness in addition to an effect on motor control and, as a consequence, these effects could lead to improvements in cognitive performance.	\N	\N
23377282	Although major depression is projected to be among the top three causes of disability-adjusted life years lost in 2030, relatively little is known concerning the extent to which depressed mood states can bias social-economic decision making away from optimal outcomes. One experimental framework to study the interaction between negative emotion and social-economic decisions is the ultimatum game (UG), where the fair, cooperative player altruistically punishes the unfair, non-cooperative player. To assess a potential susceptibility of altruistic punishment to depressed mood, we repeatedly administered the UG task to a cohort of 20 currently depressed patients with a diagnosis of recurrent major depressive disorder and 20 healthy controls. Furthermore, valence and arousal ratings of emotionally laden pictures were obtained from all participants in order to assess a depressed mood-related distortion of emotion judgments. Compared to healthy controls, depressed patients over-sanctioned unfair proposals in the UG and judged emotional stimuli too negatively. Thus, major depression is associated with a negative emotional bias that hampers social-economic decision making and produces large personal costs.	\N	\N
23381193	Spatial visualization abilities are positively related to performance on science, technology, engineering, and math tasks, but this relationship is influenced by task demands and learner strategies. In two studies, we illustrate these interactions by demonstrating situations in which greater spatial ability leads to problematic performance. In Study 1, chemistry students observed and explained sets of simultaneously presented displays depicting chemical phenomena at macroscopic and particulate levels of representation. Prior to viewing, the students were asked to make predictions at the macroscopic level. Eye movement analyses revealed that greater spatial ability was associated with greater focus on the prediction-relevant macroscopic level. Unfortunately, that restricted focus was also associated with lower-quality explanations of the phenomena. In Study 2, we presented the same displays but manipulated whether participants were asked to make predictions prior to viewing. Spatial ability was again associated with restricted focus, but only for students who completed the prediction task. Eliminating the prediction task encouraged attempts to integrate the displays that related positively to performance, especially for participants with high spatial ability. Spatial abilities can be recruited in effective or ineffective ways depending on alignments between the demands of a task and the approaches individuals adopt for completing that task.	\N	\N
23381483	People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often exhibit superior performance in visual search compared to others. However, most studies demonstrating this advantage have employed simple, uncluttered images with fully visible targets. We compare the performance of high-functioning adults with ASD and matched controls on a naturalistic luggage screening task. Although the two groups were equally accurate in detecting targets, the ASD adults improve in their correct elimination of target-absent bags faster than controls. This feature of their behavior is extremely important for many real-world monitoring tasks that require sustained attention for long time periods. Further analyses suggest that this improvement is attributable neither to the motor speed nor to the level of intelligence of the adults with ASD. These findings may have possible implications for employment opportunities of adult individuals with ASD.	\N	\N
23382513	Although the literature on parent-child interactions in young children with autism has examined dyadic style, synchrony, and sustained engagement, the examination of parental skill in sustaining and developing play skills themselves has not been targeted. This study examined the extent to which parents of young children with autism match and scaffold their child's play. Sixteen dyads of parents and their children with autism participated in this study along with 16 matched dyads of typically developing children. Both groups were administered a structured play assessment and were observed during a 10-min free play situation. Strategies of play were examined and results revealed that parents of children with autism initiated more play schemes and suggested and commanded play acts more than parents of typical children. They also responded to their child's play acts more often with a higher level play act, while parents of typical children matched/expanded their responses to their child. Parent imitation was also related to longer sequences of play. The findings can guide further research and play intervention for parents.	\N	\N
23387907	Sexual health issues for women who have cancer are an important and under-diagnosed and under-treated survivorship issue. Survivorship begins at the time a cancer is detected and addresses health-care issues beyond diagnosis and acute treatment. This includes improving access to care and quality-of-life considerations, as well as dealing with the late effects of treatment. Difficulties with sexual function are one of the more common late effects in women. This article attempted to characterize the etiology, prevalence, and treatment for sexual health concerns for women with gynecological cancer. A systematic survey of currently available relevant literature published in English was conducted. The issue of sexual health for women with cancer is a prevalent medical concern that is rarely addressed in clinical practice. The development of sexual morbidity in the female cancer survivor is a multifactorial problem incorporating psychological, physiologic, and sociological elements. Treatments such as chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgery, and hormonal manipulation appear to have the greatest influence on the development of sexual consequences. Sexual complaints include but are not limited to changes in sexual desire, arousal, and orgasmic intensity and latency. Many women suffer from debilitating vaginal dryness and painful intercourse. Many of the sexual health issues experienced by cancer survivors can be addressed in clinical practice. A multimodal treatment paradigm is necessary to effectively treat these sexual complaints in this special patient population.	\N	\N
23399829	Conceptualizations of emotion regulation have led to the identification of cognitive and behavioral regulatory abnormalities that contribute to the development and maintenance of emotional disorders. However, existing research on emotion regulation in anxiety and mood disorders has primarily focused on the regulation of negative emotions rather than positive emotions. Recent findings indicate that disturbances in positive emotion regulation occur across emotional disorders, and may be a generative target for treatment research. The aims of this paper are to: 1. Present a transdiagnostic model of positive emotion disturbances in emotional disorders; 2. Review evidence for disturbances in positive emotion regulation in emotional disorders across categories of emotion regulation; and 3. Propose treatment strategies that may address these disturbances.	\N	\N
23407975	Multisensory visuo-vestibular cortical areas are important for spatial orientation and facilitate the control of the brainstem-mediated vestibular ocular reflex (VOR). Despite reports of visual input and cognitive tasks modulating the VOR through cortical control, it is unknown whether higher-order visual stimuli such as bistable perception and attention tasks involving visual imagery have an effect on the VOR. This is a possibility since such stimuli recruit cortical areas overlapping with those engaged during vestibular activation. Here we used a novel paradigm in which human subjects view bistable perceptual stimuli or perform complex attention tasks during concurrent vestibular stimulation. Bistable perceptual phenomena and attention tasks asymmetrically modulated the VOR but only if they involved a visuospatial component (e.g., binocular motion rivalry but not color rivalry). Strikingly, the lateralization effect was dependent upon the subjects' handedness, making this report the first behavioral demonstration that vestibular cortical processing is strongly lateralized to the non-dominant hemisphere. Furthermore, we show that perceptual transitions can modulate the dynamics of the vestibular system contingent upon the presence of a spatial component in the perceptual transition stimuli. Both perceptual transitions and attentional tasks are thought to invoke a redirection of spatial attention. We infer that such redirection of spatial attention engages multisensory vestibular cortical areas that modulate low-level vestibular function which, in turn, may contribute to spatial orientation.	\N	\N
23413011	An increasing number of studies have demonstrated that a response in one task can be activated automatically on the basis merely of instructed stimulus-response (S-R) mappings belonging to another task. Such instruction-based response activations are considered to be evidence for the formation of S-R associations on the basis of the S-R mappings for an upcoming, but not yet executed, task. A crucial but somewhat neglected assumption is that instructed S-R associations are formed only under conditions that impose a sufficient degree of task preparation. Accordingly, in the present study we investigated the relation between task preparation and the instruction-based task-rule congruency effect, which is an index of response activation on the basis of instructions. The results from two experiments demonstrated that merely instructed S-R mappings of a particular task only elicit instruction-based response activations when that task is prepared for to a sufficient degree. Implications are discussed for the representation of instructed S-R mappings in working memory.	\N	\N
23417238	A subject's sensitivity to a stimulus variation can be studied by estimating the psychometric function. Generally speaking, three parameters of the psychometric function are of interest: the performance threshold, the slope of the function, and the rate at which attention lapses occur. In the present study, three psychophysical procedures were used to estimate the three-parameter psychometric function for an auditory gap detection task. These were an up-down staircase (up-down) procedure, an entropy-based Bayesian (entropy) procedure, and an updated maximum-likelihood (UML) procedure. Data collected from four young, normal-hearing listeners showed that while all three procedures provided similar estimates of the threshold parameter, the up-down procedure performed slightly better in estimating the slope and lapse rate for 200 trials of data collection. When the lapse rate was increased by mixing in random responses for the three adaptive procedures, the larger lapse rate was especially detrimental to the efficiency of the up-down procedure, and the UML procedure provided better estimates of the threshold and slope than did the other two procedures.	\N	\N
23419275	This study aimed to further understanding of intimate partner stalking victimization in post-abuse women, with particular attention to the definition of stalking (with or without fear and threat) most predictive of posttraumatic stress (PTS) symptoms. In community midlife women with histories of divorce (N = 192), a history of stalking victimization accompanied by fear and threat was positively correlated with PTS symptom severity, after accounting for other partner abuse. The presence, compared with absence, of fear-and-threat stalking history doubled the odds of symptomatic levels of hyperarousal. Greater physical assault and injury chronicity differentiated fear-and-threat stalked women from other stalked women. Stalking contributed to a fuller understanding of PTS symptoms in women, showing particular relevance for hyperarousal.	\N	\N
23419887	To compare a mindfulness-based intervention with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for the group treatment of anxiety disorders. One hundred five veterans (83% male, mean age=46 years, 30% minority) with one or more DSM-IV anxiety disorders began group treatment following randomization to adapted mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) or CBT. Both groups showed large and equivalent improvements on principal disorder severity thru 3-month follow up (ps<.001, d=-4.08 for adapted MBSR; d=-3.52 for CBT). CBT outperformed adapted MBSR on anxious arousal outcomes at follow up (p<.01, d=.49) whereas adapted MBSR reduced worry at a greater rate than CBT (p<.05, d=.64) and resulted in greater reduction of comorbid emotional disorders (p<.05, d=.49). The adapted MBSR group evidenced greater mood disorders and worry at Pre, however. Groups showed equivalent treatment credibility, therapist adherence and competency, and reliable improvement. CBT and adapted MBSR were both effective at reducing principal diagnosis severity and somewhat effective at reducing self-reported anxiety symptoms within a complex sample. CBT was more effective at reducing anxious arousal, whereas adapted MBSR may be more effective at reducing worry and comorbid disorders.	\N	\N
23421322	Two experiments examined the impact of encoding conditions and information content in memory for positive, neutral, and negative pictures. We examined the hypotheses that the positivity effect in memory (i.e., a bias in favor of positive or against negative information in later life) would be reduced when (a) pictures were viewed under structured as opposed to unstructured conditions, and (b) contained social as opposed to nonsocial content. Both experiments found that the positivity effect observed with nonsocial stimuli was absent with social stimuli. In addition, little evidence was obtained that encoding conditions affected the strength of the positivity effect. We argue that some types of social stimuli may engage different types of processing than nonsocial stimuli, perhaps encouraging self-referential processing that engages attention and supports memory. This processing may then conflict with the goal-driven, top-down processing that is hypothesized to drive the positivity effect. Thus, our results identify further boundary conditions associated with the positivity effect in memory, arguing that stimulus factors as well as situational goals may affect its occurrence. Further research awaits to determine if this effect is specific to all social stimuli or specific subsets.	\N	\N
23427480	Accurately assessing how physicians perform in practice remains an unresolved psychometric challenge. Neither chart reviews nor patient surveys indicate when physicians overlook important information, which can result in a missed opportunity for a correct diagnosis and appropriate plan of care. Standardized patient (SP) assessments provide an opportunity for direct observation of clinical behavior and are increasingly used in licensure examinations. (SPs who are sent incognito are termed unannounced standardized patients [USPs].) One study showed that physicians had particular difficulty adapting care to individual patient context ("contextual error"). In a subsequent study with the same actors, SP cases, and outcomes, an intervention was deployed to reduce contextual error among medical students. In an exploratory reanalysis of data from the two studies, clinicians' assessments of SPs and USPs were compared. Participants in the first study were 65 board-certified internists visited by USPs; the 59 participants in the second were fourth-year medical students examining SPs in a clinical performance center. Attending physicians measured with USPs significantly underperformed medical students measured with SPs in the probing of biomedical red flags (odds ratio [OR] = 0.45 [0.30 to 0.67]) and contextual red flags (OR = 0.66 [0.45 to 0.99]) and in planning appropriate care (OR = 0.43 [0.27 to 0.67]). Across these two studies, attending physicians underperformed medical students on the same outcomes, measured with the same patient cases presented by the same actors. Studies that seek to assess elicitation and incorporation of patient information by physicians as measures of individualization of care should weigh the benefits and costs of direct observation by USPs.	\N	\N
23432829	Elucidating the neural basis of joint attention in infancy promises to yield important insights into the development of language and social cognition, and directly informs developmental models of autism. We describe a new method for evaluating responding to joint attention performance in infancy that highlights the 9- to 10-month period as a time interval of maximal individual differences. We then demonstrate that fractional anisotropy in the right uncinate fasciculus, a white matter fiber bundle connecting the amygdala to the ventral-medial prefrontal cortex and anterior temporal pole, measured in 6-month-olds predicts individual differences in responding to joint attention at 9 months of age. The white matter microstructure of the right uncinate was not related to receptive language ability at 9 months. These findings suggest that the development of core nonverbal social communication skills in infancy is largely supported by preceding developments within right lateralized frontotemporal brain systems.	\N	\N
23434910	When sleep followed implicit training on a motor sequence, children showed greater gains in explicit sequence knowledge after sleep than adults. This greater explicit knowledge in children was linked to their higher sleep slow-wave activity and to stronger hippocampal activation at explicit knowledge retrieval. Our data indicate the superiority of children in extracting invariant features from complex environments, possibly as a result of enhanced reprocessing of hippocampal memory representations during slow-wave sleep.	\N	\N
23437628	Our conception of attention is intricately linked to limited processing capacity and the consequent requirement to select, in both space and time, what objects and actions will have access to these limited resources. Seminal studies by Treisman (Cognitive Psychology, 12, 97-136, 1980) and Broadbent (Perception and Psychophysics, 42, 105-113, 1987; Raymond et al. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 18, 849-860, 1992) offered the field tasks for exploring the properties of attention when searching in space and time. After describing the natural history of a search episode we briefly review some of these properties. We end with the question: Is there one attentional "beam" that operates in both space and time to integrate features into objects? We sought an answer by exploring the distribution of errors when the same participant searched for targets presented at the same location with items distributed over time (McLean et al. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 35A, 171-186, 1982) and presented all at once with items distributed over space (Snyder Journal of Experimental Psychology; 92, 428-431, 1972). Preliminary results revealed a null correlation between spatial and temporal slippage suggesting separate selection mechanisms in these two domains.	\N	\N
23443466	Previous research has failed to find a consistent relation between Sluggish Cognitive Tempo (SCT) and executive function (EF) in youth with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) when laboratory-based neuropsychological tasks of EF are used, whereas recent research with youth and adults suggests a significant relation between SCT and ratings of EF. The purpose of this study was to examine ADHD dimensions and SCT symptoms in relation to ratings of EF in adolescents with ADHD. Fifty-two adolescents (ages 12-16; 70 % male) participated in this study. Parents and teachers completed validated measures of SCT, ADHD symptoms, and EF in daily life. Adolescents' intelligence and academic achievement were also assessed. ADHD and SCT symptoms were significantly correlated with ratings of EF. Regression analyses demonstrated that, as hypothesized, ADHD hyperactive-impulsive symptoms were strongly associated with behavioral regulation EF deficits, with ADHD inattentive and SCT symptoms unrelated to behavioral regulation EF when hyperactive-impulsivity symptoms were included in the model. The parent-reported SCT Slow scale measuring motivation, initiative, and apathy predicted both parent- and teacher-reported metacognitive EF deficits above and beyond youth characteristics and ADHD symptoms. In contrast, teacher-reported ADHD inattention was most clearly associated with teacher-reported metacognitive EF deficits. This study provides preliminary evidence for the importance of SCT symptoms in relation to metacognitive EF deficits among adolescents with ADHD and the need to further investigate the overlap and distinctiveness of SCT/ADHD. Further research is needed to replicate and extend these findings.	\N	\N
23446727	Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a very heterogeneous neurobiological condition. It is the most common neurodevelopmental disorder in the childhood population. Its prevalence is estimated to be 3-6% in school-age children. AIM. To review the characteristics of patients with inattentive subtype ADHD, including those who could be grouped in a more homogenous subtype which the DSM-5 proposes for classification as the restrictive subtype. The characteristic triad of symptoms consists of attention deficit, hyperactivity and impulsivity. The diagnostic criteria are defined in the DSM-IV-TR. For those with deterioration due to ADHD with no significant hyperactivity problems, this manual offers a confusing diagnostic label. Indeed, the neurobiological substrate underlying the diverse subtypes seems to be different in certain aspects, since the frontostriatal circuit appears to be more affected in combined ADHD, while the frontoparietal circuit is more compromised in the inattentive subtype. For these and other reasons, the DSM-5 will reformulate the different subtypes of ADHD and will probably include a new subgroup that will comprise those patients who satisfy at least six inattention criteria and fewer than two criteria for hyperactivity-impulsivity (restrictive ADHD). The definition of this subgroup could make it easier to detect some patients who have so far received little attention from the point of view of both research and clinical practice.	\N	\N
23450537	The Lennox-Gastaut syndrome (LGS) is an age-specific disorder, characterised by epileptic seizures, a characteristic electroencephalogram (EEG), psychomotor delay and behavioural disorder. It occurs more frequently in males and onset is usually before the age of eight years, with a peak between three and five years of age. Late cases occurring in adolescence and early adulthood have rarely been reported. Language is frequently affected, with both slowness in ideation and expression in addition to difficulties of motor dysfunction. Severe behavioural disorders (e.g. hyperactivity, aggressiveness and autistic tendencies) and personality disorders are nearly always present. There is also a tendency for psychosis to develop with time. The long-term prognosis is poor; although the epilepsy often improves, complete seizure freedom is rare and conversely the mental and psychiatric disorders tend to worsen with time. To compare the effects of pharmaceutical therapies used to treat LGS in terms of control of seizures and adverse effects. Many people who suffer from this syndrome will already be receiving other antiepileptic medications at the time of their entry into a trial. However, for the purpose of this review we will only consider the effect of the single therapeutic agent being trialled (often as add-on therapy). We searched the Cochrane Epilepsy Group's Specialized Register (18 October 2012), the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL, The Cochrane Library Issue 10 of 12, 2012) and MEDLINE (1946 to October week 2, 2012). We also searched EMBASE (1980 to March 2003). We imposed no language restrictions. We searched the International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number (ISRCTN) register (18 October 2012) for ongoing trials and in addition, we contacted pharmaceutical companies and colleagues in the field to seek any unpublished or ongoing studies. All randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of the administration of drug therapy to patients with LGS. Two review authors independently extracted data. Analysis included assessing study quality, as well as statistical analysis of the effects on overall seizure rates and effects on specific seizure types (e.g. drop attacks), adverse effects and mortality. We found nine RCTs, but were unable to perform any meta-analysis, because each trial looked at different populations, different therapies and considered different outcomes. The optimum treatment for LGS remains uncertain and no study to date has shown any one drug to be highly efficacious; rufinamide, lamotrigine, topiramate and felbamate may be helpful as add-on therapy, clobazam may be helpful for drop seizures. Until further research has been undertaken, clinicians will need to continue to consider each patient individually, taking into account the potential benefit of each therapy weighed against the risk of adverse effects.	\N	\N
23454277	Using electrophysiology, the attentional functions of target selection and distractor filtering were investigated during visual search. Observers searched for multiple tilted line segments amidst vertical distractors. In different conditions, observers were either looking for a specific line orientation ("feature-based" selection), or for any tilted line ("salience-based"). The search array could contain both left- and rightward tilted lines simultaneously (requiring spatial filtering) or only one line type (no filtering). The amplitude of the P1 event-related potential component was reduced during feature-based selection, compared to salience-based selection. The N1 showed a similar effect, at least when filtering was required. Amplitudes were also somewhat reduced when competing nontarget stimuli required filtering. Interactions between selection and filtering became stronger on the N2a and P3. When both feature-based selection and filtering were required, N2a amplitude was highest, and P3 amplitude was lowest. The results support an early locus of feature-based attentional selection in multi-item search.	\N	\N
23457685	Typical interventions for acute pain in children attempt to reduce pain by directing attention away from pain. Conversely, mindfulness involves devoting attention to one's experience in an accepting and nonjudgmental way. However, the effect that instructing children to mindfully devote attention to acute pain has on pain outcomes is unknown. To examine whether mindful attention can help children attend to pain without increasing pain intensity or decreasing pain tolerance; to compare the effects of mindful attention with a well-established intervention designed to take attention away from pain (guided imagery); and to test whether baseline coping style or trait mindfulness alter the effects of these interventions. A total of 82 children (10 to 14 years of age) completed measures of coping style and trait mindfulness. Participants then received either mindful attention or guided imagery instructions designed to direct attention toward or away from pain, respectively, before participating in a cold pressor task. The mindful attention group reported more awareness of the physical sensations of pain and thoughts about those sensations. Overall, there were no between-group differences in measures of pain intensity or pain tolerance during the cold pressor task, and no evidence of an interaction between baseline characteristics of the child and experimental condition. Mindful attention was successful in helping children focus attention on experimental pain without increasing pain intensity or decreasing tolerance compared with a well-established intervention for acute pain reduction.	\N	\N
23460366	Intervention studies indicate that children's early child-care experiences can be leveraged to foster their development of effective self-regulation skills. It is less clear whether typical child-care experiences play a similar role. In addition, evidence suggests that children with a common variant of the DRD4 gene (48-bp VNTR, 7-repeat) may be more sensitive to their experiences than those without this variant. Using data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, we considered the degree to which children's early child-care experiences-quantity, quality, and type-were associated with their attention and self-regulation abilities in prekindergarten, and, in particular, whether these relations were conditional on DRD4 genotype. G × E interactions were evident across multiple neuropsychological and observational measures of children's attention and self-regulation abilities. Across most outcome measures, DRD4 7+ children spending fewer hours in child care showed more effective attention/self-regulation abilities. For those without a copy of the DRD4 7-repeat allele, such associations were typically null. The results for child-care quality and type indicated no interactions with genotype; the main-effect associations were somewhat inconsistent.	\N	\N
23462516	Parkinson's disease (PD) patients frequently develop obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). In order to clarify the clinical significance of OSA in PD, we compared descriptive variables between PD patients with OSA (PD+OSA) and without (PD-OSA), and between the PD+OSA group and a group of OSA patients without PD (control OSA). The apnea hypopnea index (AHI) cutoff of 15 episodes/hour on polysomnogram (PSG) was used to assign 107 PD patients to groups; OSA-related symptoms and PSG findings were then compared. Demographic and PSG variables were compared between PD+OSA patients and 31 OSA controls. Twenty-four patients with PD (22.4%) were classified as PD+OSA. There were no significant differences in descriptive variables between the PD+OSA and PD-OSA groups. The PD+OSA group had a higher arousal index on PSG than the PD-OSA group, although the two groups had similar ESS scores. The PD+OSA patients had a lower respiratory arousal index and a smaller decrease in oxygen saturation than the control OSA group, despite having a similar AHI. The prevalence of OSA in PD did not differ from that in the general elderly population, indicating that the clinical significance of OSA as a contributor to daytime sleepiness in PD is low.	\N	\N
23474283	Changes in gut microbiota have been reported to alter signaling mechanisms, emotional behavior, and visceral nociceptive reflexes in rodents. However, alteration of the intestinal microbiota with antibiotics or probiotics has not been shown to produce these changes in humans. We investigated whether consumption of a fermented milk product with probiotic (FMPP) for 4 weeks by healthy women altered brain intrinsic connectivity or responses to emotional attention tasks. Healthy women with no gastrointestinal or psychiatric symptoms were randomly assigned to groups given FMPP (n = 12), a nonfermented milk product (n = 11, controls), or no intervention (n = 13) twice daily for 4 weeks. The FMPP contained Bifidobacterium animalis subsp Lactis, Streptococcus thermophiles, Lactobacillus bulgaricus, and Lactococcus lactis subsp Lactis. Participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging before and after the intervention to measure brain response to an emotional faces attention task and resting brain activity. Multivariate and region of interest analyses were performed. FMPP intake was associated with reduced task-related response of a distributed functional network (49% cross-block covariance; P = .004) containing affective, viscerosensory, and somatosensory cortices. Alterations in intrinsic activity of resting brain indicated that ingestion of FMPP was associated with changes in midbrain connectivity, which could explain the observed differences in activity during the task. Four-week intake of an FMPP by healthy women affected activity of brain regions that control central processing of emotion and sensation.	\N	\N
23475816	The higher order processes involved in self-regulation are generally thought to depend on cognitive (attentional/executive) functions with limited resources. Experimental studies further show that exerting self-control in a first task results in decreased performance in other following self-control tasks, which may be interpreted as the consequence of either effective or perceived resource depletion outlasting the first task. Given that higher order cognitive/attentional processes are also considered to be involved in pain modulatory mechanisms, we tested the idea that pain could be influenced by prior mobilization of cognitive resources. The present study investigated the consequences of performing a cognitively demanding task on subsequent pain (ratings) and spinal nociceptive responses (nociceptive flexion reflex, NFR) elicited by noxious electrical stimulations in healthy volunteers. Participants received four noxious stimulations immediately after each of six successive blocks (2 min each) of a numerical Stroop task in a neutral condition (low cognitive demand) and six successive blocks in an interference condition (high cognitive demand). Results revealed that pain was rated higher following the condition requiring higher cognitive control. A similar effect was observed on the NFR. These findings suggest that pain regulation mechanisms including the descending pain modulatory system may be less efficient after the performance of tasks requiring high cognitive control resulting in stronger pain experience.	\N	\N
23480071	Sex and disgust seem like strange bedfellows. The premise of this review is that disgust-based mechanisms nevertheless hold great promise for improving our understanding of sexual behavior, including dysfunctions. Disgust is a defensive emotion that protects the organism from contamination. Accordingly, disgust is focused on the border of the self, with the mouth and vagina being the body parts that show strongest disgust sensitivity. Given the central role of these organs in sexual behavior, together with the fact that bodily products are among the strongest disgust elicitors, the critical question seems not whether disgust may interfere with sex but rather how people succeed in having pleasurable sex at all. We argue that sexual arousal plays a critical role in counteracting disgust-induced avoidance via lowering the threshold for engaging in "disgusting sex." Following this, all mechanisms that interfere with the generation of sexual arousal or enhance the disgusting properties of sexual stimuli may hamper the functional transition from a sex-avoidance into an approach disposition. Since prolonged contact is the most powerful means to reduce disgust, disgust-based mechanisms that counteract sexual approach may give rise to a self-perpetuating cycle in which enhanced sexual disgust becomes a chronic feature.	\N	\N
23492952	Our daily life is characterized by multiple response options that need to be cascaded in order to avoid overstrain of restricted response selection resources. While response selection and goal activation in action cascading are likely driven by a process varying from serial to parallel processing, little is known about the underlying neural mechanisms that may underlie interindividual differences in these modes of response selection. To investigate these mechanisms, we used a stop-change paradigm for the recording of event-related potentials and standardized low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography source localizations in healthy subjects. Systematically varying the stimulus onset asynchrony (the temporal spacing of "stop" and "change" signals), we applied mathematical constraints to classify subjects in more parallel or more serial goal activators during action cascading. On that basis, the electrophysiological data show that processes linking stimulus processing and response execution, but not attentional processes, underlie interindividual differences in either serial or parallel response selection modes during action cascading. On a systems level, these processes were mediated via a distributed fronto-parietal network, including the anterior cingulate cortex (Brodman area 32, BA32) and the temporo-parietal junction (BA40). There was a linear relation between the individual degree of overlap in activated task goals and electrophysiological processes.	\N	\N
23499978	There is a long-running debate over the extent to which volitional attention can modulate the appearance of visual stimuli. Here we use monocular rivalry between afterimages to explore the effects of attention on the contents of visual experience. In three experiments, we demonstrate that attended afterimages are seen for longer periods, on average, than unattended afterimages. This occurs both when a feature of the afterimage is attended directly and when a frame surrounding the afterimage is attended. The results of these experiments show that volitional attention can dramatically influence the contents of visual experience.	\N	\N
23506806	We examined (a) what rapid automatized naming (RAN) components (articulation time and/or pause time) predict reading and mathematics ability and (b) what processing skills involved in RAN (speed of processing, response inhibition, working memory, and/or phonological awareness) may explain its relationship with reading and mathematics. A sample of 72 children were followed from the beginning of kindergarten until the end of Grade 1 and were assessed on measures of RAN, general cognitive ability, speed of processing, attention, working memory, phonological awareness, reading, and mathematics. The results indicated that pause time was the critical component in both the RAN-reading and RAN-mathematics relationships and that it shared most of its predictive variance in reading and mathematics with speed of processing and working memory. Our findings further suggested that, unlike the relationship between RAN and reading fluency in Grade 1, there is nothing in the RAN task that is uniquely related to math.	\N	\N
23507254	Post event processing (PEP) in social anxiety disorder involves rumination about social events after the fact, and is thought to be a crucial feature of the maintenance of the disorder. The current experiment aimed to manipulate the use of PEP in individuals with social anxiety disorder. Forty-one individuals with social anxiety disorder completed a videotaped speech. Anxiety ratings and degree of PEP were measured after the task as well as the day following the experiment. Individuals in the distract group reported a greater decrease in anxiety from baseline to post-experimental task than those asked to focus. Individuals in the distract group also reported higher PEP about the task than those instructed to complete a focus task, which appeared to be partially accounted for by baseline differences in symptom severity and state anxiety. Degree of PEP was positively correlated with anxiety ratings, both after the experimental task as well as 24 hours later. These findings suggest that naturalistic PEP is problematic for individuals with social anxiety disorder, especially for those with more severe symptoms. A distraction task, even with breakthrough PEP, appears to have useful short-term effects on anxiety reduction as compared to focus instructions.	\N	\N
23513046	This study compares the behavioral profile of children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) who were diagnosed using the Canadian Guidelines with children with prenatal alcohol exposure who did not meet criteria for a FASD diagnosis. To accomplish this, we used caregiver and teacher questionnaires evaluating different aspects of behavior. Investigated were 170 children, 109 who received a diagnosis of FASD (Diagnosed Group) and 61 who did not (Non-Diagnosed Group). On the caregiver report, children in the Diagnosed Group had more internalizing and externalizing problems on the CBCL, more executive function difficulties on the BRIEF and more attention problems on the Conner's Rating Scale, compared to the Non-Diagnosed Group. On teacher report, children in the Diagnosed Group had more internalizing and externalizing problems on the TRF and more attention problems on the Conner's Rating Scale, compared to the Non-Diagnosed Group. For both informants, more children in the Diagnosed group had scores in the clinically elevated range. Overall, the present results identify key caregiver- and teacher-rated profiles of children with FASD diagnoses. These profiles will aid in better understanding, diagnosing and providing focused treatment approaches for children with FASD.	\N	\N
23516055	Sensory feedback and the required attentional demands are important aspects in prosthesis acceptance. In this study, hand-opening feedback is provided and the performance in a virtual grasping task is investigated. Simultaneously, a secondary task was performed to investigate the attentional demands. Ten nondisabled subjects performed the tasks with and without feedback about the hand opening through an array of eight vibrotactile stimulators on the forearm. Activation of one stimulator corresponded to one hand-opening position. For the dual-task experiments, subjects simultaneously performed a secondary auditory counting task. The addition of vibrotactile feedback increased the performance (expressed in percentages of correct hand positions, mean absolute errors in position, and percentages of deviations up to one hand-opening position), but the duration of the tasks was also increased. Three levels of distraction (no distraction, counting task, count and subtract task) were applied, which did not influence the performance in the grasping tasks except for the highest level of distraction. We concluded that the proposed method to provide hand-opening feedback through an array of eight vibrotactile stimulators is successful because the performance in a grasping task increases but it is not significantly attention demanding.	\N	\N
23516802	With the assumption that circadian rhythms influence human performance, the work of live line electricians was reorganized and evaluated. The hypothesis was that in highly physical and attention-demanding work, the organization of tasks, according to the ideal period of day and day of week, should diminish stress and consequent work risks. There are only a few studies reporting the work of electricians and even fewer approaching work organization. Moreover, these investigations often do not consider human physiological limitations and capabilities as well as task demands. A new work system was proposed with consideration of (a) the circadian cycles and homeostatic processes; (b) the effect of heat, which is a zeitgeber (synchronizer) for the biological clocks; and (c) the degree of physical and mental demands of the different performed tasks, which was assessed on the basis of opinions of the electricians and physiological markers of stress that are controlled by circadian rhythms. The traditional and new systems were compared on the basis of two cognitive indices (the arrangement of matchsticks and the perception of a minute) and three physiological markers of mental-to-physical loads (heart frequency and the level of adrenaline and noradrenaline). Both physical and mental loads were reduced in the new system. Work organization should include consideration of human circadian rhythms, mainly when stressful and high-risk tasks are involved. The findings can be applied in any work design, but they are especially suited for highly demanding work carried out outdoors.	\N	\N
23521354	Children with autism have characteristic difficulties with joint attention. In educational settings, this can present a challenge when directing a child's attention to new objects and activities. Drawing on videotaped interactions between teachers and two children with autism recorded in Finland, we use conversation analysis to examine how teachers manage such transitions during one-to-one teaching. We show how adjusting material objects can be used to manage the child's engagement and how these adjustments can escalate into more conspicuous actions so as to direct the child's attention. Rather than examining participants' use of communicational objects, we are instead concerned with practices that use task-related objects. We thereby offer an empirically grounded account of the interactional practices involved in achieving joint attention through the objects themselves.	\N	\N
23521494	Mental functions are influenced by states of physiological arousal. Afferent neural activity from arterial baroreceptors at systole conveys the strength and timing of individual heartbeats to the brain. We presented words under limited attentional resources time-locked to different phases of the cardiac cycle, to test a hypothesis that natural baroreceptor stimulation influences detection and subsequent memory of words. We show memory for words presented around systole was decreased relative to words at diastole. The deleterious memory effect of systole was greater for words detected with low confidence and amplified in individuals with low interoceptive sensitivity, as indexed using a heartbeat counting task. Our observations highlight an important cardiovascular channel through which autonomic arousal impacts a cognitive function, an effect mitigated by metacognition (perceptual confidence) and interoceptive sensitivity.	\N	\N
23523374	Lifestyles involving sleep deprivation are common, despite mounting evidence that both acute total sleep deprivation and chronically restricted sleep degrade neurobehavioral functions associated with arousal, attention, memory and state stability. Current research suggests dynamic differences in the way the central nervous system responds to acute versus chronic sleep restriction, which is reflected in new models of sleep-wake regulation. Chronic sleep restriction likely induces long-term neuromodulatory changes in brain physiology that could explain why recovery from it may require more time than from acute sleep loss. High intraclass correlations in neurobehavioral responses to sleep loss suggest that these trait-like differences are phenotypic and may include genetic components. Sleep deprivation induces changes in brain metabolism and neural activation that involve distributed networks and connectivity.	\N	\N
23527644	Attention is a complex construct that taps into multiple mechanisms. One type of attention that is underinvestigated in autism is incidentally or implicitly guided attention. The purpose of this study is to characterize how children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) direct spatial attention based on incidental learning. Children with high-functioning ASD and typically developing children engaged in a visual search task. For the first half of the study, over multiple trials, the target was more often found in some locations than other locations. For the second half, the target was equally likely to appear in all locations. We measured search performance for targets located in the high-probability and low-probability locations. Children with ASD were able to direct spatial attention using incidentally learned information about the target's location probability. Although unaware of the experimental manipulation, children with ASD were faster and more efficient in finding a target in the high-probability locations than low-probability locations, and this bias dissipated after the target's location probability was even. The pace and magnitude of learning, as well as later adjustment to new statistics, were comparable between children with ASD and typically developing children. Incidentally learned attention is preserved in children with ASD.	\N	\N
23543105	Humans are thought to be able to form shared representations, considered a keystone of social cognition. However, whether and to what extent such representations are social in nature is still open for debate. In the present study, we address the question of whether action co-representation can be modulated by social attitudes, such as judgments about one's own social status. Two groups of participants performed an Interactive Simon task after the experimental induction of a feeling of social inclusion or exclusion (ostracism) by means of a virtual ball tossing game. Results showed a compatibility effect in included, but not in excluded participants. This indicates that judgments about one's own social status modulate action co-representation. We suggest that this modulation may occur by way of a redirection of one's attentional focus away from others when one experiences social exclusion. This is a far-reaching issue given the increasing need for integration in modern society. Indeed, if integration fails, modern society fails also.	\N	\N
23545077	The present study evaluated the socio-emotional development of very preterm born infants at 12 months corrected age. Forty-one infants born very preterm (<29 weeks of gestation) were compared to 22 infants born full term on a standardized behavioral assessment and a parental temperament questionnaire, both measuring emotional reactivity to joy, anger and fear, as well as sustained attention. The behavioral assessment showed that very preterm infants exhibited as much joy as full term infants during a joy-eliciting episode. However, they expressed a significantly higher reactivity in anger-eliciting situations and a reduced reactivity toward fear-eliciting situations. For all three emotion-eliciting situations, the preterm infants reacted with a higher level of motor activity. The preterm infants also exhibited a distinct attention pattern with a significantly higher initial attention level which declined rapidly throughout the episode. The questionnaire did not show any group differences. The clinical relevance of these results in terms of preliminary hallmarks of later behavioral difficulties such attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder are discussed as well as the inconsistencies observed between the questionnaire and the behavioral assessment.	\N	\N
23548574	Early mother-infant interactions are characterised by periods of synchronous interaction that are interrupted by periods of mismatch; the experience of such mismatches and their subsequent repair is held to facilitate the development of infant self-regulatory capacities (Tronick, Als, Adamson, Wise, & Brazelton, 1978). Infant responding to such interactive challenge is assumed to be a function of both maternal behaviour and pre-existing infant characteristics. However, the latter has received relatively little attention. In a prospective longitudinal study of a sample comprising high and low adversity dyads (n=122), we examined the contributions of both maternal sensitivity and neonatal irritability to infant behavioural and physiological responding to the interactive challenge of the Still Face paradigm. Results indicated that higher levels of maternal sensitivity were associated with more regulated infant behaviour during the Still Face paradigm. Neonatal irritability also predicted poorer behavioural and heart rate recovery following the Still Face challenge. Furthermore, there was an interaction such that irritable infants with insensitive mothers showed the worst behavioural outcomes. The findings highlight the importance of the interplay between maternal and infant characteristics in determining dyadic responding.	\N	\N
23549856	The aim of the study is to examine the health-related quality-of-life (HRQOL) impact of the nocturnal awakenings and the duration of the sleep in the Finnish middle-aged and older population. Cross-sectional sample consisted of 823 community-dwelling persons aged 55-75 living in a single municipality in a rural area of Eastern Finland. Frequency of the nocturnal awakenings was dichotomized as reporting "frequent," if the participant reported subjectively awakening "often" or "very often," and "infrequent" if the participant reported awakening "sometimes" or less frequently. HRQOL was measured with a preference-based HRQOL-index instrument, 15D. Analyses were adjusted for gender, BMI, morbidities, depression, employment and marital status, current smoking and drinking, exercise, recommendation to exercise from a health care professional, and subjective opinion about own exercise habits. Frequent nocturnal awakenings had statistically and clinically significant negative impact on HRQOL, the mean (SE) adjusted marginal HRQOL impact being -0.0416 (0.006). More than 10 and less than 6.5 h of daily sleep were associated with higher probability of having low HRQOL, adjusted odd ratios (95 % CI) being 2.65 (1.11-6.33) and 2.65 (1.55-4.52), respectively. However, the changes in daily sleep duration did not have noticeable influence on the significance or magnitude of the negative HRQOL impact of the frequent nocturnal awakenings. Nocturnal awakenings displayed a strong independent association with decreased HRQOL. The findings suggest that both clinicians and researchers should pay closer attention to nocturnal awakenings and other sleep problems in order to find ways to improve the quality of life in individuals with such conditions.	\N	\N
23557983	In relative terms, Spanish motorcyclists are more likely to be involved in crashes than other drivers and this tendency is constantly increasing. The objective of this study is to identify the factors that are related to being an offender in motorcycle accidents. A binary logit model is used to differentiate between offender and non-offender motorcyclists. A motorcyclist was considered to be offender when s/he had committed at least one traffic offense at the moment previous to the crash. The analysis is based on the official accident database of the Spanish general directorate of traffic (DGT) for the 2003-2008 time period. A number of explanatory variables including motorcyclist characteristics and environmental factors have been evaluated. The results suggest that inexperienced, older females, not using helmets, absent-minded and non-fatigued riders are more likely to be offenders. Moreover, riding during the night, on weekends, for leisure purposes and along roads in perfect condition, mainly on curves, predict offenses among motorcyclists. The findings of this study are expected to be useful in developing traffic policy decisions in order to improve motorcyclist safety.	\N	\N
23558103	In listening to multi-part music, auditory streams can be attended to either selectively or globally. More specifically, musicians rely on prioritized integrative attention which incorporates both stream segregation and integration to assess the relationship between concurrent parts. In this fMRI study, we used a piano duet to investigate which factors of a leader-follower relationship between parts grab the listener's attention and influence the perception of multi-part music. The factors considered included the structural relationship between melody and accompaniment as well as the temporal relationship (asynchronies) between parts. The structural relationship was manipulated by cueing subjects to the part of the duet that had to be prioritized. The temporal relationship was investigated by synthetically shifting the onset times of melody and accompaniment to either a consistent melody or accompaniment lead. The relative importance of these relationship factors for segregation and integration as attentional mechanisms was of interest. Participants were required to listen to the cued part and then globally assess if the prioritized stream was leading or following compared to the second stream. Results show that the melody is judged as more leading when it is globally temporally ahead whereas the accompaniment is not judged as leading when it is ahead. This bias may be a result of the interaction of salience of both leader-follower relationship factors. Interestingly, the corresponding interaction effect in the fMRI-data yields an inverse bias for melody in a fronto-parietal attention network. Corresponding parameter estimates within the dlPFC and right IPS show higher neural activity for attending to melody when listening to a performance without a temporal leader, pointing to an interaction of salience of both factors in listening to music. Both frontal and parietal activation implicate segregation and integration mechanisms and a top-down influence of salience on attention and the perception of leader-follower relations in music.	\N	\N
23567211	Research done in two Polish cities has uncovered an influence of an approaching tram on pedestrian behaviour. The measurements were done by counting pedestrians waiting for a green signal, crossing on red signal safely, or crossing on red signal taking a risk of being hit by a car, differentiating between pedestrians attempting to board a public transport vehicle and other pedestrians. It was expected, that pedestrian behaviour might be influenced by traffic control predictability, therefore two cities were chosen for the task: Wrocław with fixed time traffic control and Poznań with a majority of traffic responsive traffic signals. Data from the measurements was compared in order to find behaviour patterns - the comparison led to a conclusion, that an attempt to get on board of an incoming public transport vehicle can be a major cause for pedestrians to violate a red signal, including an increase of unsafe behaviour. These pedestrians may provoke other pedestrians to cross on a red signal. On the other hand if traffic control guarantees boarding the public transport vehicle, passengers-to-be may be even more obedient than other pedestrians.	\N	\N
23574346	An experiment (N=123) examined how individuals cognitively process online news stories depicting African-American characters with stereotype-consistent and -inconsistent attributes and whether distracting online ads interfere with story processing. Two cognitive control functions, updating and inhibition, were predicted to moderate the effects of distracting ads. Recall of characters' attributes and overall characters' description were included in the study as dependent measures. Findings indicated that distracting online ads hinder recall of information about and descriptions of story characters. Inhibition and updating affect dependent measures and moderate the effects of distracting online ads on characters' descriptions.	\N	\N
23574348	A considerable literature suggests that the right hemisphere is dominant in vigilance for novel and survival-related stimuli, such as predators, across a wide range of species. In contrast to vigilance for change, change blindness is a failure to detect obvious changes in a visual scene when they are obscured by a disruption in scene presentation. We studied lateralised change detection using a series of scenes with salient changes in either the left or right visual fields. In Study 1 left visual field changes were detected more rapidly than right visual field changes, confirming a right hemisphere advantage for change detection. Increasing stimulus difficulty resulted in greater right visual field detections and left hemisphere detection was more likely when change occurred in the right visual field on a prior trial. In Study 2 an intervening distractor task disrupted the influence of prior trials. Again, faster detection speeds were observed for the left visual field changes with a shift to a right visual field advantage with increasing time-to-detection. This suggests that a right hemisphere role for vigilance, or catching attention, and a left hemisphere role for target evaluation, or maintaining attention, is present at the earliest stage of change detection.	\N	\N
23574875	To investigate the correlations between cognitive function and clinical outcome variables. Patients diagnosed for the first time with schizophrenia between January 2004 and June 2010 were cognitively tested in conjunction with diagnostic procedures. Cognitive test data were connected to Danish healthcare registers and patients were followed in the registers from their first contact with psychiatric in- and outpatient care until October 2011. Patients had impaired attention, processing speed and executive function as measured by Trail Making Test part B; their executive functions, as measured by the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), and working memory, as measured by Rigshospitalet's digit span test, were unaffected as compared to norms. The admission rate, from schizophrenia diagnosis to the end of the study, was predicted by Trail Making Test part A, Rey's Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT), RAVLT (total learning), RAVLT (memory), d2 Test of Attention (total) and d2 type 2 error (error of commission), independent of gender, age and schizophrenia subtype. The length of hospitalization after the schizophrenia diagnosis was mainly determined by the schizophrenia subtype (schizophrenia simplex: incidence rate ratio (IRR) 0.24; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.15-0.40, p < 0.001). Diagnosis was secondarily determined by deficits in attention and executive function, Trail Making Test part B, d2 Test of Attention (total), d2 type 1 error (error of omission), d2 type 2 error, and also by age and substance use disorder. The outpatient contact rate from schizophrenia diagnosis to the end of the study was predicted by d2 Test of Attention, Trail Making Test part A, and d2 type 2 error. The annual rate of criminal conviction, institutionalization and social retirement pension was mainly predicted by substance misuse. Cognitive function only predicted hospitalization and outpatient contacts to a minor degree in a cohort of newly diagnosed patients with schizophrenia.	\N	\N
23576114	Looking for a target in a visual scene becomes more difficult as the number of stimuli increases. In a signal detection theory view, this is due to the cumulative effect of noise in the encoding of the distractors, and potentially on top of that, to an increase of the noise (i.e., a decrease of precision) per stimulus with set size, reflecting divided attention. It has long been argued that human visual search behavior can be accounted for by the first factor alone. While such an account seems to be adequate for search tasks in which all distractors have the same, known feature value (i.e., are maximally predictable), we recently found a clear effect of set size on encoding precision when distractors are drawn from a uniform distribution (i.e., when they are maximally unpredictable). Here we interpolate between these two extreme cases to examine which of both conclusions holds more generally as distractor statistics are varied. In one experiment, we vary the level of distractor heterogeneity; in another we dissociate distractor homogeneity from predictability. In all conditions in both experiments, we found a strong decrease of precision with increasing set size, suggesting that precision being independent of set size is the exception rather than the rule.	\N	\N
23586449	Verbal and physical dating aggression is prevalent among college-aged men and women, especially a pattern of mutual aggression in which both partners engage in aggression. Alcohol intoxication and anger arousal have been implicated in the occurrence of aggression, and the ability to regulate one's emotions may interact with both alcohol intoxication and emotional arousal to predict dating aggression. The current study is the first known experimental investigation to examine the effects of alcohol intoxication, alcohol expectancies, emotion regulation, and emotional arousal on dating aggression. Participants were randomized to receive alcohol (n = 48), placebo (n = 48), or no alcohol (n = 48). Intoxicated men and women expressed more verbal and physical aggression intentions than those in the no-alcohol condition, and individuals in the placebo condition did not significantly differ from those in the alcohol and no-alcohol conditions. These results suggest that the pharmacological effects of alcohol were important to the occurrence of dating aggression, whereas the effects of expectancy are less clear. Among those less able to engage in cognitive reappraisal, individuals who consumed or believed they consumed alcohol expressed more verbal and physical aggression intentions than those who received no alcohol. Those with higher arousal who were better able to suppress their emotions expressed fewer verbal and physical aggression intentions than those with lower arousal. In addition to reducing alcohol consumption, interventions for dating aggression might incorporate emotion regulation skills, with a focus on understanding the circumstances in which cognitive reappraisal and emotion suppression are relatively more effective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).	\N	\N
23596189	Alexithymia and increased interoceptive awareness have been associated with affective disorders as well as with altered insula and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) function. Brain imaging studies have demonstrated an association between neurotransmitter function and affective disorders as well as personality traits. Here, we first examined the relationship between alexithymic facets as assessed with the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and interoceptive awareness (assessed with the Body Perception Questionnaire) in 18 healthy subjects. Second, we investigated their association with glutamate and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) concentrations in the left insula and the ACC using 3-Tesla proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Behaviorally, we found a close association between alexithymia and interoceptive awareness. Furthermore, glutamate levels in the left insula were positively associated with both alexithymia and awareness of autonomic nervous system reactivity, while GABA concentrations in ACC were selectively associated with alexithymia. Although preliminary, our results suggest that increased glutamate-mediated excitatory transmission-related to enhanced insula activity-reflects increased interoceptive awareness in alexithymia. Suppression of the unspecific emotional arousal evoked by increased awareness of bodily responses in alexithymics might thus be reflected in decreased neuronal activity mediated by increased GABA concentration in ACC.	\N	\N
23601793	In the present research we explored the role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in memory retrieval process of positive vs. negative emotional stimulus, as a function of the anxiety levels. Anxiety behavior showed a consistent attentional bias toward negative and aversive memories, induced by a right frontal cortical superiority. This effect was analyzed by using a rTMS paradigm that induced a cortical activation of the left DLPFC. Subjects, who were divided in two different groups depending on their anxiety level (high/low-anxiety, State-Trait-Anxiety-Inventory, STAI), were required to perform a task consisting of two experimental phases: an encoding-phase, where some lists composed by positive and negative emotional words were presented to the subjects; and a retrieval-phase, where the old stimuli and new stimuli were presented for a recognition performance. We found that the rTMS stimulation affects the memory retrieval of emotional material. High-anxiety subjects benefit in greater measure from the left DLPFC stimulation with a reduced negative bias. This result suggested that left DLPFC activation favors the memory retrieval of positive emotional information and might limit the "unbalance effect" induced by a right hemispheric superiority at a high level of anxiety. The potentiality of TMS for anxiety behavior modulation was also discussed.	\N	\N
23619205	Past research has reported that a small proportion of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) have excess beta activity in their EEG, rather than the excess theta typical of the syndrome. This atypical group has been tentatively labeled as hyperaroused. The aim of this study was to determine whether these children have a hyperaroused central nervous system. Participants included 104 boys aged 8 to 13 years old, with a diagnosis of either the Combined or Inattentive type of AD/HD (67 combined type), and 67 age-matched male controls. Ten and a half minutes of EEG and skin conductance (SCL) were simultaneously recorded during an eyes-closed resting condition. The EEG was Fourier transformed and estimates of total power, and relative power in the delta, theta, alpha, and beta bands, and the theta/beta ratio, were calculated. AD/HD patients were divided into an excess beta group and a typical excess theta group. Relative to controls, the typical excess theta group had significantly increased frontal total power, theta and theta/beta ratio, with reduced alpha and beta across the scalp. The excess beta group had significantly reduced posterior total power, increased centro-posterior delta, globally reduced alpha, globally increased beta activity, and globally reduced theta/beta ratio. Both AD/HD groups had significantly reduced SCL compared to the control group, but the two groups did not differ from each other on SCL. These results indicate that AD/HD children with excess beta activity are not hyperaroused, and confirm that the theta/beta ratio is not associated with arousal. This is the first study of arousal measures in AD/HD children with excess beta activity, and has implications for existing models of AD/HD.	\N	\N
23620190	Stress contributes to headaches, and effective interventions for headaches routinely include relaxation training (RT) to directly reduce negative emotions and arousal. Yet, suppressing negative emotions, particularly anger, appears to augment pain, and experimental studies suggest that expressing anger may reduce pain. Therefore, we developed and tested anger awareness and expression training (AAET) on people with headaches. Young adults with headaches (N = 147) were randomized to AAET, RT, or a wait-list control. We assessed affect during sessions, and process and outcome variables at baseline and 4 weeks after treatment. On process measures, both interventions increased self-efficacy to manage headaches, but only AAET reduced alexithymia and increased emotional processing and assertiveness. Yet, both interventions were equally effective at improving headache outcomes relative to controls. Enhancing anger awareness and expression may improve chronic headaches, although not more than RT. Researchers should study which patients are most likely to benefit from an emotional expression or emotional reduction approach to chronic pain.	\N	\N
23624574	Transfer-appropriate processing (TAP) and identification-production frameworks predict that repetition priming will be reduced by encoding-phase divided attention (DA) in implicit memory tasks that involve conceptual analysis of test stimuli and require responses that go beyond the identification of the test cue. This prediction was tested using the verb generation task. Verb generation priming was weakly affected by a number classification distracting task at encoding that impacted recognition, was affected more by a more demanding mental arithmetic task, and was abolished entirely by a selective attention manipulation. Priming originating largely from a process unique to the verb generation task was also found to be attention-sensitive. DA affected priming equivalently for high-competition and low-competition items, against the identification-production framework which predicts greater DA effects on priming in high-competition conditions. The results fit comfortably within the TAP framework.	\N	\N
23625323	Minimal hepatic encephalopathy is a syndrome caused by liver cirrhosis and accompanied by a broad spectrum of cognitive symptoms. The objective of the present study was to describe the prevalence of minimal hepatic encephalopathy in cirrhotic patients and to compare their cognitive performance with controls using standardized tests. Patients receiving medication or experiencing comorbidities associated with cognitive disorders were excluded. The final cohort was compared with a control-matched group using the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), as well as Simple Drawing, Clock Drawing, Rey Auditory-Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT), Random Letter, Stroop, Trail-Making Test (TMT) A and B, Boston Naming, Category Verbal Fluency, Digit Span, Constructional Praxis, Processing Speed, and Similarities Tests. The results indicated no differences in the prevalence of cognitive complaints spontaneously reported by 29 patients with cirrhosis versus 22 healthy controls. The most affected tests included: MMSE (26.3 ± 2 vs. 28.1 ± 1.8 points; p = 0.004), learning (35.4 ± 9 vs. 41 ± 9.1 points; p = 0.041), retroactive interference (0.67 ± 0.22 vs. 0.84 ± 0.16 points; p = 0.004), and recognition (8.7 ± 2.6 vs. 11.2 ± 4.1 points; p = 0.024) in RAVLT, TMT-A (63.2 ± 29.3 vs. 47.6 ± 16.5 s; p = 0.029) and TMT-B (197.9 ± 88.1 vs. 146.8 ± 76.5 s; p = 0.03). No differences were observed with respect to age, gender, and education. In conclusion, MMSE proved to be a useful tool for detecting global cognitive impairment experienced by cirrhosis patients. Moreover, the most impaired cognitive functions were verbal episodic memory and information processing speed. These findings suggest that minimal hepatic encephalopathy represents a disorder that affects the medial temporal system and, possibly, the prefrontal cortex, and this requires further study.	\N	\N
23627722	Classification is a flexible process that can be affected by mood. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the idea that mood may modulate categorization behavior through an attentional weighting mechanism in which mood changes the attention afforded to different stimulus dimensions. In two experiments, participants learn and are tested on categories while in a calm or sad mood. In Experiment 1, sad participants are faster to learn one- and two-dimensional category structures, but show no advantage on a three-dimensional category structure. In Experiment 2, the generalized context model of categorization is used to measure dimensional weighting. The results suggest that sad participants have a narrower focus of attention, but that the narrowing tends to be on diagnostic dimensions.	\N	\N
23632202	Repeated action observation has been shown to alter the cortical representation of the observed movement in the motor system. This change in cortical representation is thought to reflect a motor adaptation to observational training (observational training effect). One factor that may impact the observational training effect is the degree of motor system activation that occurs during the observation of the action (i.e., individual differences in the responsiveness of the motor system during action observation). The present study was conducted to test this hypothesis by assessing the relationship between the change in motor system activity during action observation and the change in cortical representation of action following repeated action observation. To this end, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was used to evoke contractions of thumb muscles in two different protocols: 1) during the observation of thumb movements to assess the responsiveness of each individual's corticospinal system during action observation; and, 2) after the observation of 1800 thumb movements to assess the amount of adaptation in the representation of the thumb following repeated action observation. The key finding was the significant positive relationship between the level of corticospinal system activation during action observation and the amount of change in the direction of TMS evoked thumb movements. These data support the hypothesized relationship between motor system activation during action observation and the motor systems adaptation following observational training. They are also consistent with the notion that a common neural mechanism underlies these effects.	\N	\N
23637913	Online social media are increasingly facilitating our social interactions, thereby making available a massive "digital fossil" of human behavior. Discovering and quantifying distinct patterns using these data is important for studying social behavior, although the rapid time-variant nature and large volumes of these data make this task difficult and challenging. In this study, we focused on the emergence of "collective attention" on Twitter, a popular social networking service. We propose a simple method for detecting and measuring the collective attention evoked by various types of events. This method exploits the fact that tweeting activity exhibits a burst-like increase and an irregular oscillation when a particular real-world event occurs; otherwise, it follows regular circadian rhythms. The difference between regular and irregular states in the tweet stream was measured using the Jensen-Shannon divergence, which corresponds to the intensity of collective attention. We then associated irregular incidents with their corresponding events that attracted the attention and elicited responses from large numbers of people, based on the popularity and the enhancement of key terms in posted messages or "tweets." Next, we demonstrate the effectiveness of this method using a large dataset that contained approximately 490 million Japanese tweets by over 400,000 users, in which we identified 60 cases of collective attentions, including one related to the Tohoku-oki earthquake. "Retweet" networks were also investigated to understand collective attention in terms of social interactions. This simple method provides a retrospective summary of collective attention, thereby contributing to the fundamental understanding of social behavior in the digital era.	\N	\N
23639615	Imitation is commonly considered as a hierarchical process. The current study explored the reproduction of a multi-task course in deferred imitation. Eighty-five children between 3.5 and 7.5 years old were divided into five groups and instructed to watch a live human adult demonstrator who performed simple successive actions, such as walking, jumping, grasping, carrying objects from one location to another through six sessions. After a five-minute delay, the children were individually instructed to reproduce the course. Their responses were videotaped and coded in dichotomous data at two hierarchical levels, namely goals and their spatial location. The main findings showed no improvement in the replication of goals due either to age or trials. However, there was an improvement in the integration of the goals' spatial location over trials. This signifies that imitation is an active reconstruction mechanism hierarchically organized.	\N	\N
23640591	Advanced mathematical models have the potential to capture the complex metabolic and physiological processes that result in energy expenditure (EE). Study objective is to apply quantile regression (QR) to predict EE and determine quantile-dependent variation in covariate effects in nonobese and obese children. First, QR models will be developed to predict minute-by-minute awake EE at different quantile levels based on heart rate (HR) and physical activity (PA) accelerometry counts, and child characteristics of age, sex, weight, and height. Second, the QR models will be used to evaluate the covariate effects of weight, PA, and HR across the conditional EE distribution. QR and ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions are estimated in 109 children, aged 5-18 yr. QR modeling of EE outperformed OLS regression for both nonobese and obese populations. Average prediction errors for QR compared with OLS were not only smaller at the median τ = 0.5 (18.6 vs. 21.4%), but also substantially smaller at the tails of the distribution (10.2 vs. 39.2% at τ = 0.1 and 8.7 vs. 19.8% at τ = 0.9). Covariate effects of weight, PA, and HR on EE for the nonobese and obese children differed across quantiles (P < 0.05). The associations (linear and quadratic) between PA and HR with EE were stronger for the obese than nonobese population (P < 0.05). In conclusion, QR provided more accurate predictions of EE compared with conventional OLS regression, especially at the tails of the distribution, and revealed substantially different covariate effects of weight, PA, and HR on EE in nonobese and obese children.	\N	\N
23643925	The cingulate cortex is regarded as the backbone of structural and functional connectivity of the brain. While its functional connectivity has been intensively studied, little is known about its effective connectivity, its modulation by behavioral states, and its involvement in cognitive performance. Given the previously reported effects on cingulate functional connectivity, we investigated how eye-closure and sleep deprivation changed cingulate effective connectivity, estimated from resting-state high-density electroencephalography (EEG) using a novel method to calculate Granger Causality directly in source space. Effective connectivity along the cingulate cortex was dominant in the forward direction. Eyes-open connectivity in the forward direction was greater compared to eyes-closed, in well-rested participants. The difference between eyes-open and eyes-closed connectivity was attenuated and no longer significant after sleep deprivation. Individual variability in the forward connectivity after sleep deprivation predicted subsequent task performance, such that those subjects who showed a greater increase in forward connectivity between the eyes-open and the eyes-closed periods also performed better on a sustained attention task. Effective connectivity in the opposite, backward, direction was not affected by whether the eyes were open or closed or by sleep deprivation. These findings indicate that the effective connectivity from posterior to anterior cingulate regions is enhanced when a well-rested subject has his eyes open compared to when they are closed. Sleep deprivation impairs this directed information flow, proportional to its deleterious effect on vigilance. Therefore, sleep may play a role in the maintenance of waking effective connectivity.	\N	\N
23643938	As planners and public health officials in many cities around the world seek to increase bicycle ridership, bicyclists who are performing a secondary task (such as listening to a portable music device) may pose a risk to public safety. This study examines bicycling safety and potentially distracted behavior in The Hague, the Netherlands, a place where bicycling is a common, everyday travel mode among all walks of life and where bicycling infrastructure is well developed. Based on 1360 observations of bicycling behavior, this study shows that bicyclists who were using a cell phone, listening to a portable music device, or talking with other bicyclists exhibited more unsafe behaviors than those bicyclists who were not performing a secondary task. Furthermore, bicyclists who were performing a secondary task also more frequently created situations where other people had to evade them to avoid an accident. As with distracted car driving, the performance of a secondary task while bicycling may be unsafe for the person engaging in the behavior as well as for other people around them.	\N	\N
23656993	Traumatic coma is associated with disruption of axonal pathways throughout the brain, but the specific pathways involved in humans are incompletely understood. In this study, we used high angular resolution diffusion imaging to map the connectivity of axonal pathways that mediate the 2 critical components of consciousness-arousal and awareness-in the postmortem brain of a 62-year-old woman with acute traumatic coma and in 2 control brains. High angular resolution diffusion imaging tractography guided tissue sampling in the neuropathologic analysis. High angular resolution diffusion imaging tractography demonstrated complete disruption of white matter pathways connecting brainstem arousal nuclei to the basal forebrain and thalamic intralaminar and reticular nuclei. In contrast, hemispheric arousal pathways connecting the thalamus and basal forebrain to the cerebral cortex were only partially disrupted, as were the cortical "awareness pathways." Neuropathologic examination, which used β-amyloid precursor protein and fractin immunomarkers, revealed axonal injury in the white matter of the brainstem and cerebral hemispheres that corresponded to sites of high angular resolution diffusion imaging tract disruption. Axonal injury was also present within the gray matter of the hypothalamus, thalamus, basal forebrain, and cerebral cortex. We propose that traumatic coma may be a subcortical disconnection syndrome related to the disconnection of specific brainstem arousal nuclei from the thalamus and basal forebrain.	\N	\N
23663456	The target article focuses on the predictive coding of "what" and "where" something happened and the "where" and "what" response to make. We extend that scope by addressing the "when" aspect of perception and action. Successful interaction with the environment requires predictions of everything from millisecond-accurate motor timing to far future events. The hierarchical framework seems appropriate for timing.	\N	\N
23663497	It is often helpful to distinguish between a theory (Marr's computational level) and a specific implementation of that theory (Marr's physical level). However, in the target article, a single implementation of predictive coding is presented as if this were the theory of predictive coding itself. Other implementations of predictive coding have been formulated which can explain additional neurobiological phenomena.	\N	\N
23663498	In important ways, Clark's "hierarchical prediction machine" (HPM) approach parallels the research agenda we have been pursuing. Nevertheless, we remain unconvinced that the HPM offers the best clue yet to the shape of a unified science of mind and action. The apparent convergence of research interests is offset by a profound divergence of theoretical starting points and ideal goals.	\N	\N
23663531	Clark offers a powerful description of the brain as a prediction machine, which offers progress on two distinct levels. First, on an abstract conceptual level, it provides a unifying framework for perception, action, and cognition (including subdivisions such as attention, expectation, and imagination). Second, hierarchical prediction offers progress on a concrete descriptive level for testing and constraining conceptual elements and mechanisms of predictive coding models (estimation of predictions, prediction errors, and internal models).	\N	\N
23663865	Predictive processing models of cognition are promising an elegant way to unite action, perception, and learning. However, in the current formulations, they are species-unspecific and have very little particularly human about them. I propose to examine how, in this framework, humans can be able to massively interact and to build shared worlds that are both material and symbolic.	\N	\N
23666554	Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have reported increased activation of the mesolimbic system in response to anticipation of rewarding stimuli. The anticipation of uncertain outcomes evokes activation in the amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus and insula. Drugs known to effect dopaminergic and serotonergic neurons also alter regional activation. Benzylpiperazine (BZP) and/or trifluoromethylphenylpiperazine (TFMPP) have been recreationally used worldwide for more than a decade. BZP affects mainly dopaminergic neurons, while TFMPP has serotonergic effects. We investigated the effects of an acute dose of BZP, TFMPP or a combination of BZP and TFMPP on the anticipation of reward in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study using fMRI. An event-related gambling paradigm was completed by healthy controls 90 min after taking an oral dose of either BZP (200 mg), TFMPP (either 50 or 60 mg), BZP + TFMPP (100 + 30 mg) or placebo. After giving BZP, the anticipation of a $4 reward decreased the activation of the inferior frontal gyrus, insula and occipital regions in comparison to placebo. TFMPP increased the activation of the putamen but decreased the activity in the insula relative to placebo. When BZP and TFMPP were given in combination, activation of the rolandic operculum occurred. The magnitude of reward also affected neural correlates. We propose that the effects of BZP and TFMPP on dopaminergic and serotonergic circuitry, respectively, reflect regional changes. The dopaminergic effects of BZP appear to increase positive arousal and subsequently reduce the response to uncertainty, while TFMPP appears to alter the response to uncertainty by increasing emotional responses.	\N	\N
23677737	Snoring is a common symptom among the adult population, and it is the most common complaint in patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) syndrome. Patients who snore in a sitting position while taking a nap or sleeping may have a narrower upper airway. The aim of this study was to evaluate if snoring in a sitting position is a predictor of OSA in patients. We prospectively enrolled 166 SS+ (with a history of snoring in a sitting position) subjects and 139 SS- (who denied having a history of snoring in a sitting position) patients. All of the participants received questionnaires as well as a standard polysomnography thereafter. Patients with self-reported snoring in a sitting position (with a tilt position greater than 70°, SS+ group) had a higher body mass index as well as greater neck, waist, and buttock circumference and scored higher on the Epworth Sleepiness Scale. During the polysomnographic study, the SS+ group had a higher percentage of N1 sleep and lower percentage of N2 sleep. In addition, the SS+ group had a higher apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) as well as higher arousal index and oxygen desaturation index. The sensitivity and specificity of the SS+ group for OSA (defined as AHI ≥ 5) were 0.59 and 0.73, respectively, with a positive predictive value of 0.93. The likelihood ratio was 2.2. On the other hand, the sensitivity and specificity of the SS+ group for moderate to severe OSA (defined as AHI ≥ 15) were 0.82 and 0.48, respectively. Both SS+ and greater neck circumference have a high likelihood ratio for diagnosing OSA. In the present study, the symptoms of self-reported snoring in a sitting position and greater neck circumference can be useful clinical predictors of OSA in Chinese patients.	\N	\N
23682731	The NAB is a comprehensive battery assessing five cognitive domains (Attention, Language, Memory, Spatial, Executive Function). Despite the advantage of co-normative domain data, its clinical utility is not well established because few studies have reported full-battery findings. The aim of this study was to determine if the NAB was sensitive to well documented hemispheric differences in language and spatial skills after unilateral stroke. We compared demographically matched control participants (n = 52) and individuals after left (LHD, n = 36) or right (RHD, n = 33) hemisphere damage due to stroke on the NAB, parts of the Western Aphasia Battery, and traditional visuospatial tasks. Both stroke groups showed impaired NAB Attention, Spatial, and Executive Functions relative to controls, while the LHD group was more impaired than control and RHD groups on Language and Memory modules. LHD patients with aphasia on traditional measures performed worse than control and non-aphasic LHD patients on all NAB domains. RHD patients with spatial impairment on traditional measures performed worse than controls, but not RHD patients without spatial impairment, on the NAB Spatial domain. Findings suggest the NAB is generally comparable to traditional language and visuospatial measures, and it sufficiently detects attention and executive deficits.	\N	\N
23683312	Cognition research suggests that allocating attention resources to evolutionarily relevant stimuli is facilitated suggesting that sexual stimuli interfere with human information processing. In a group of gay (n = 13) and straight men (n = 13) recruited in Finland, Germany and Italy, we investigated if and how sexually relevant visual stimuli affect information processing of both a target one (T1) and a subsequent target two (T2) in a dual target rapid serial visual presentation procedure. We hypothesized that: (1) due to the attentional blink (AB) phenomenon, the accuracy of reporting of T2 would decrease when following accurately identified sexually preferred T1 compared to accurately identified non-sexually preferred T1; 2) due to the pop out effect, the accuracy of reporting of T1 and T2 would be relatively increased when T1 and T2 were sexually preferred by the participants compared to when they were not. Our findings did not support hypothesis 1 but supported hypothesis 2. We further found that the pop out effect had a good capacity to differentiate sexual preference between the groups of gay and straight men. We conclude that dual target rapid serial visual presentation can be used as an attention-based measurement to differentiate sexual preference in men. Limitations and the applicability in the field of measuring sexual preference were discussed.	\N	\N
23685191	Observers often fail to detect substantial changes in a visual scene. This so-called change blindness is often taken as evidence that visual representations are sparse and volatile. This notion rests on the assumption that the failure to detect a change implies that representations of the changing objects are lost all together. However, recent evidence suggests that under change blindness, object memory representations may be formed and stored, but not retrieved. This study investigated the fate of object memory representations when changes go unnoticed. Participants were presented with scenes consisting of real world objects, one of which changed on each trial, while recording event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants were first asked to localize where the change had occurred. In an additional recognition task, participants then discriminated old objects, either from the pre-change or the post-change scene, from entirely new objects. Neural traces of object memories were studied by comparing ERPs for old and novel objects. Participants performed poorly in the detection task and often failed to recognize objects from the scene, especially pre-change objects. However, a robust old/novel effect was observed in the ERP, even when participants were change blind and did not recognize the old object. This implicit memory trace was found both for pre-change and post-change objects. These findings suggest that object memories are stored even under change blindness. Thus, visual representations may not be as sparse and volatile as previously thought. Rather, change blindness may point to a failure to retrieve and use these representations for change detection.	\N	\N
23685391	The pupil constricts in response to light increments and dilates with light decrements. Here we show that a picture of the sun, introducing a small overall decrease in light level across the field of view, results in a pupillary constriction. Thus, the pictorial representation of a high-luminance object (the sun) can override the normal pupillary dilation elicited by a light decrement. In a series of experiments that control for a variety of factors known to modulate pupil size, we show that the effect (a) does not depend on the retinal position of the images and (b) is modulated by attention. It has long been known that cognitive factors can affect pupil diameter by producing pupillary dilations. Our results indicate that high-level visual analysis (beyond the simple subcortical system mediating the pupillary response to light) can also induce pupillary constriction, with an effect size of about 0.1 mm.	\N	\N
23696214	Many children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) demonstrate deficits in language comprehension, but little is known about how they process spoken language as it unfolds. Real-time lexical comprehension is associated with language and cognition in children without ASD, suggesting that this may also be the case for children with ASD. This study adopted an individual differences approach to characterizing real-time comprehension of familiar words in a group of 34 three- to six-year-olds with ASD. The looking-while-listening paradigm was employed; it measures online accuracy and latency through language-mediated eye movements and has limited task demands. On average, children demonstrated comprehension of the familiar words, but considerable variability emerged. Children with better accuracy were faster to process the familiar words. In combination, processing speed and comprehension on a standardized language assessment explained 63% of the variance in online accuracy. Online accuracy was not correlated with autism severity or maternal education, and nonverbal cognition did not explain unique variance. Notably, online accuracy at age 5½ was related to vocabulary comprehension 3 years earlier. The words typically learned earliest in life were processed most quickly. Consistent with a dimensional view of language abilities, these findings point to similarities in patterns of language acquisition in typically developing children and those with ASD. Overall, our results emphasize the value of examining individual differences in real-time language comprehension in this population. We propose that the looking-while-listening paradigm is a sensitive and valuable methodological tool that can be applied across many areas of autism research.	\N	\N
23698323	We explored the associations of job strain with sleep and alertness of shift working female nurses and nursing assistants. Participants (n=95) were recruited from the Finnish Public Sector Study, from hospital wards that belonged to the top or bottom quartiles on job strain. Participants' own job strain was at least as high in high-strain group or low in low-strain group as the ward's average. The study included three-week measurements with sleep diary and actigraphy. Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT) was performed during one pre-selected morning and night shift and a day off. Sleep efficiency before morning shifts was lower in the high-strain than low-strain group (p=0.03). Low-strain group took more often (72 vs. 45%; p<0.01) and longer naps (62 vs. 35 min; p=0.01) before the first night shift than high-strain group. Difficulties initiating sleep were more common in high-strain group, especially after evening shifts (p<0.01). High-strain group had more often at least one lapse in PVT during the night shift (p=0.02). Average sleep duration (06:49 h) and efficiency (89%) did not differ between these groups. In conclusion, high job strain is associated with difficulties initiating sleep and reduced psychomotor vigilance in night shifts. Shift working contributed to impaired sleep in both high and low job strain group. Individual and organization-based actions are needed to promote sufficient sleep in shift working nurses, especially with high job strain.	\N	\N
23701388	This study extracted the error-related negativity (ERN) waveform component recorded from a visual-spatial attention and a visual short-term memory task to assess rigorously the long-term and cumulative effects of concussions on evaluative processes of cognitive control related to performance monitoring. This study demonstrates that, relative to control athletes, multiply concussed athletes show significant ERN amplitude reduction elicited by error generation. These cumulative effects of concussions on ERN amplitude were found in two distinct experimental paradigms designed to solicit concussion-sensitive cognitive abilities such as attention and short-term memory. This suggests that the mechanisms that contribute to the evaluation of cognitive performance may be significantly affected following multiple concussions even in low-conflict situations.	\N	\N
23707592	Sleep and the functional connectome are research areas with considerable overlap. Neuroimaging studies of sleep based on EEG-PET and EEG-fMRI are revealing the brain networks that support sleep, as well as networks that may support the roles and processes attributed to sleep. For example, phenomena such as arousal and consciousness are substantially modulated during sleep, and one would expect this modulation to be reflected in altered network activity. In addition, recent work suggests that sleep also has a number of adaptive functions that support waking activity. Thus the study of sleep may elucidate the circuits and processes that support waking function and complement information obtained from fMRI during waking conditions. In this review, we will discuss examples of this for memory, arousal, and consciousness after providing a brief background on sleep and on studying it with fMRI.	\N	\N
23707891	In two experiments, participants were required to identify a target stimulus by means of same/different judgments. Previously, they had received simultaneous or blocked pre-exposures to the target and a similar stimulus. Participants' ability to judge pre-exposed stimuli as different was better after simultaneous than after blocked pre-exposures. However, the benefit of the simultaneous schedule disappeared when, after pre-exposure, the distinctive elements were made common (and some common elements made distinctive) by changing their shape and position within the stimulus (Experiment 1). Similar results were obtained when only one of the aforementioned physical features was modified (Experiment 2). These manipulations did not affect performance when the stimuli had been pre-exposed in separate blocks of trials. These findings support the idea that the effect of simultaneous pre-exposure on stimulus differentiation is based on a selective attention process by which attention is selectively directed towards the distinctive features of the stimuli and away from the common features (Gibson, 1969).	\N	\N
23718701	The ability to inhibit is a major developmental dimension. Previous studies examined developmental change in instructed inhibition. The current study, however, focused on intentional inhibition. We examined heart rate responses to intentional action and inhibition, with a focus on developmental differences. Three age groups (8-10, 11-12, and 18-26 years) performed a child-friendly marble paradigm in which they had to choose between intentionally acting on, or inhibiting, a prepotent response. As instructed, all age groups chose to intentionally inhibit on approximately 50 percent of the intentional trials. A pronounced heart rate deceleration was observed during both intentional action and intentional inhibition, but this deceleration was most pronounced for intentional inhibition. Heart rate responses did not differentiate between age groups, suggesting that intentional action and inhibition reach mature levels early in childhood.	\N	\N
23720086	The CHRNA4 gene is known to be associated with individual differences in attention. However, its associations with other cognitive functions remain to be elucidated. In the present study, we investigated the effects of genetic variations in CHRNA4 on rapid scene categorization by 100 healthy human participants. In Experiment 1, we also conducted the Attention Network Test (ANT) in order to examine whether the genetic effects could be accounted for by attention. CHRNA4 was genotyped as carrying the TT, CT, or CC allele. The scene categorization task required participants to judge whether the category of a scene image (natural or man-made) was consistent with a cue word displayed at the response phase. The target-mask stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) ranged from 13 to 93 ms. In comparison with CC-allele carriers, CT- and TT-allele carriers responded more accurately at the long SOA (93 ms) only during natural-scene categorization. In contrast, we observed no consistent association between CHRNA4 and the ANT, and no intertask correlation between scene categorization and the ANT. To validate our natural-scene categorization results, Experiment 2, carried out with an independent sample of 100 participants and a different stimulus set, successfully replicated the association between CHRNA4 genotypes and natural-scene categorization accuracy at long SOAs (67 and 93 ms). Our findings demonstrate, for the first time, that genetic variations in CHRNA4 can moderately contribute to individual differences in natural-scene categorization performance.	\N	\N
23723144	A variety of techniques exist for eliciting acute psychological stress in the laboratory; however, they vary in terms of their ease of use, reliability to elicit consistent responses and the extent to which they represent the stressors encountered in everyday life. There is, therefore, a need to develop simple laboratory techniques that reliably elicit psychobiological stress reactivity that are representative of the types of stressors encountered in everyday life. The multitasking framework is a performance-based, cognitively demanding stressor, representative of environments where individuals are required to attend and respond to several different stimuli simultaneously with varying levels of workload. Psychological (mood and perceived workload) and physiological (heart rate and blood pressure) stress reactivity was observed in response to a 15-min period of multitasking at different levels of workload intensity in a sample of 20 healthy participants. Multitasking stress elicited increases in heart rate and blood pressure, and increased workload intensity elicited dose-response increases in levels of perceived workload and mood. As individuals rarely attend to single tasks in real life, the multitasking framework provides an alternative technique for modelling acute stress and workload in the laboratory.	\N	\N
23724570	Because no studies have examined learning in hypnosis in an academic setting, the current study tested whether learning in hypnosis impacts test performance. Participants (N = 43) were randomly assigned into a hypnosis or a control group. Participants listened to an academic lecture, answered questions about their hypnotic depth, and completed a quiz based on the lecture. The data was analyzed using multilevel modeling predicting test performance from group placement. Learning in the hypnosis predicted significantly worse performance compared to the control group. This relationship was significantly mediated by attention, which had a positive relationship to test performance. However, the altered state of awareness produced by the hypnosis condition was associated with a more significant decrease in test performance.	\N	\N
23727542	Attentional biases to threat are considered central to anxiety disorders, however physiological evidence of their nature and time course is lacking. Event-related potentials (ERPs) characterized sensory and cognitive changes while 20 outpatients with panic disorder (PD), 20 with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and 20 healthy controls (HCs) responded to the color (emotional Stroop task) or meaning of threatening and neutral stimuli. ERPs indicated larger P1 amplitude and longer N1 latency in OCD, and shorter P1 latency in PD, to threatening (versus neutral) stimuli, across instructions to attend to, or ignore, threat content. Emotional Stroop interference correlated with phobic anxiety and was significant in PD. Participants with emotional Stroop interference had augmented P1 and P3 amplitudes to threat (versus neutral) stimuli when color-naming. The results suggest early attentional biases to threat in both disorders, with disorder-specific characteristics. ERPs supported preferential early attentional capture and cognitive elaboration hypotheses of emotional Stroop interference.	\N	\N
23727627	Sleepiness at the wheel is a risk factor for traffic accidents. Past studies have demonstrated the validity of the Maintenance of Wakefulness Test (MWT) scores as a predictor of driving impairment in untreated patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS), but there is limited information on the validity of the maintenance of wakefulness test by MWT in predicting driving impairment in patients with hypersomnias of central origin (narcolepsy or idiopathic hypersomnia). The aim of this study was to compare the MWT scores with driving performance in sleep disorder patients and controls. 19 patients suffering from hypersomnias of central origin (9 narcoleptics and 10 idiopathic hypersomnia), 17 OSAS patients and 14 healthy controls performed a MWT (4×40-minute trials) and a 40-minute driving session on a real car driving simulator. Participants were divided into 4 groups defined by their MWT sleep latency scores. The groups were pathological (sleep latency 0-19 min), intermediate (20-33 min), alert (34-40 min) and control (>34 min). The main driving performance outcome was the number of inappropriate line crossings (ILCs) during the 40 minute drive test. Patients with pathological MWT sleep latency scores (0-19 min) displayed statistically significantly more ILC than patients from the intermediate, alert and control groups (F (3, 46)=7.47, p<0.001). Pathological sleep latencies on the MWT predicted driving impairment in patients suffering from hypersomnias of central origin as well as in OSAS patients. MWT is an objective measure of daytime sleepiness that appears to be useful in estimating the driving performance in sleepy patients.	\N	\N
23731432	Following an emotional experience, individuals are confronted with the persistence of ruminative thoughts that disturb the undertaking of other activities. In the present study, we experimentally tested the idea that experiencing a negative emotion triggers a ruminative process that drains working memory (WM) resources normally devoted to other tasks. Undergraduate participants of high versus low WM capacity were administered the operation-word memory span test (OSPAN) as a measure of availability of WM resources preceding and following the presentation of negative emotional versus neutral material. Rumination was assessed immediately after the second OSPAN session and at a 24-hr delay. Results showed that both the individual's WM capacity and the emotional valence of the material influenced WM performance and the persistence of ruminative thoughts. Following the experimental induction, rumination mediated the relationship between the negative emotional state and the concomitant WM performance. Based on these results, we argue that ruminative processes deplete WM resources, making them less available for concurrent tasks; in addition, rumination tends to persist over time. These findings have implications for the theoretical modeling of the long-term effects of emotions in both daily life and clinical contexts.	\N	\N
23731911	The effect of dopamine agonists (DAs) on cognition in Parkinson's disease (PD) is not yet completely established. Previous papers reported a worsening effect on some cognitive functions with some DAs, but not with others, suggesting that DAs may differently affect cognition in PD patients according to their pharmacological characteristics. We set out to test the effect of rotigotine and cabergoline on cognitive functions in a group of forty non-demented early-mild PD patients (H &Y <2). Subjects were randomly divided into two groups and evaluated in a randomized cross-over study using neuropsychological tests; at the same time, motor function was monitored under three different treatment conditions: DA (rotigotine or cabergoline), L-dopa, and off therapy. Rotigotine and cabergoline were chosen because while they share a mixed D1 and D2 receptor profile, the former is non-ergolinic and the latter ergolinic. No significant differences were found in cognitive function between the basal condition and the DA treatments. On the basis of the present data, which we compare with previous findings regarding pramipexole IR and pergolide, we hypothesize that combined stimulation of both dopamine receptor families, as occurs with rotigotine, cabergoline, L-dopa and pergolide, may preserve cognitive functions more than pure D2 family stimulation.	\N	\N
23735486	It is well-established that environmental and biological risk factors contribute to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). There is also growing consensus that SIDS requires the intersection of multiple risk factors that result in the failure of an infant to overcome cardio-respiratory challenges. Thus, the critical next steps in understanding SIDS are to unravel the physiological determinants that actually cause the sudden death, to synthesize how these determinants are affected by the known risk factors, and to develop novel ideas for SIDS prevention. In this review, we will examine current and emerging perspectives related to cardio-respiratory dysfunctions in SIDS. Specifically, we will review: (1) the role of the preBötzinger complex (preBötC) as a multi-functional network that is critically involved in the failure to adequately respond to hypoxic and hypercapnic challenges; (2) the potential involvement of the preBötC in the gender and age distributions that are characteristic for SIDS; (3) the link between SIDS and prematurity; and (4) the potential relationship between SIDS, auditory function, and central chemosensitivity. Each section underscores the importance of marrying the epidemiological and pathological data to experimental data in order to understand the physiological determinants of this syndrome. We hope that a better understanding will lead to novel ways to reduce the risk to succumb to SIDS.	\N	\N
23744347	The reinforcing properties of nicotine may be mediated through release of various neurotransmitters both centrally and systemically. People who smoke report positive effects such as pleasure, arousal, and relaxation as well as relief of negative affect, tension, and anxiety. Opioid (narcotic) antagonists are of particular interest to investigators as potential agents to attenuate the rewarding effects of cigarette smoking. To evaluate the efficacy of opioid antagonists in promoting long-term smoking cessation. The drugs include naloxone and the longer-acting opioid antagonist naltrexone. We searched the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group Specialised Register for trials of naloxone, naltrexone and other opioid antagonists and conducted an additional search of MEDLINE using 'Narcotic antagonists' and smoking terms in April 2013. We also contacted investigators, when possible, for information on unpublished studies. We considered randomised controlled trials comparing opioid antagonists to placebo or an alternative therapeutic control for smoking cessation. We included in the meta-analysis only those trials which reported data on abstinence for a minimum of six months. We also reviewed, for descriptive purposes, results from short-term laboratory-based studies of opioid antagonists designed to evaluate psycho-biological mediating variables associated with nicotine dependence. We extracted data in duplicate on the study population, the nature of the drug therapy, the outcome measures, method of randomisation, and completeness of follow-up. The main outcome measure was abstinence from smoking after at least six months follow-up in patients smoking at baseline. Abstinence at end of treatment was a secondary outcome. We extracted cotinine- or carbon monoxide-verified abstinence where available. Where appropriate, we performed meta-analysis, pooling risk ratios using a Mantel-Haenszel fixed-effect model. Eight trials of naltrexone met inclusion criteria for meta-analysis of long-term cessation. One trial used a factorial design so five trials compared naltrexone versus placebo and four trials compared naltrexone plus nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) versus placebo plus NRT. Results from 250 participants in one long-term trial remain unpublished. No significant difference was detected between naltrexone and placebo (risk ratio (RR) 1.00; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.66 to 1.51, 445 participants), or between naltrexone and placebo as an adjunct to NRT (RR 0.95; 95% CI 0.70 to 1.30, 768 participants). The estimate was similar when all eight trials were pooled (RR 0.97; 95% CI 0.76 to 1.24, 1213 participants). In a secondary analysis of abstinence at end of treatment, there was also no evidence of any early treatment effect, (RR 1.03; 95% CI 0.88 to 1.22, 1213 participants). No trials of naloxone or buprenorphine reported abstinence outcomes. Based on data from eight trials and over 1200 individuals, there was no evidence of an effect of naltrexone alone or as an adjunct to NRT on long-term smoking abstinence, with a point estimate strongly suggesting no effect and confidence intervals that make a clinically important effect of treatment unlikely. Although further trials might narrow the confidence intervals they are unlikely to be a good use of resources.	\N	\N
23746822	To study the effects of antiepileptic treatment on sleep parameters and video-polysomnography (VPSG) seizures in nocturnal frontal lobe epilepsy (NFLE). Twenty patients with a clinical and VPSG diagnosis of NFLE (baseline polysomnography [PSG]) underwent a clinical follow-up and performed a second VPSG after effective antiepileptic treatment lasting for at least 6 months. Conventional sleep measures, cyclic alternating pattern (CAP) parameters, and objective VPSG seizures were assessed in NFLE patients before and after treatment and were compared with the results of 20 age- and gender-matched control subjects. Antiepileptic treatment determined a partial reduction of objective VPSG seizures of approximately 25% compared to baseline condition. Alterations of most conventional sleep measures recovered normal values, but nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep instability remained pathologically enhanced (CAP rate, +26% compared to controls) and was associated with persistence of daytime sleepiness. Residual epileptic events and high levels of unstable NREM sleep can define a sort of objective resistance of both seizures and disturbed arousal system to the therapeutic purpose of the antiepileptic drugs in NFLE. This finding could determine the need for new therapeutic options in this particular form of epilepsy.	\N	\N
23748945	The tobacco consumption continues being a worrying problem due to the negative consequences in the health. At presents, strategies of prevention based on the persuasion across clue pictures are used, which need to attract the attention of the smoker in order that they are effective. Nevertheless, the number of experimental studies in Spain on attentional biases in smokers is very limited. For it, in this study the aim was to verify the presence of visual attentional biases using the dot probe task in university smokers, stage where the smoking habit is consolidated. The sample was constituted by 337 students of the University of Huelva, with ages between 17 and 30 years. The participation was voluntary and the participants signed an informed assent. 135 subjects presented consumption history, which were distributed, according to classification of the WHO, in daily smokers, occasional smokers and former smokers. A experimental Ex post facto prospective design was used. The results showed that the smokers group was significantly later time to respond to the clue located in the same place that the tobacco picture than the group of not smokers. This shows that the smokers presented more difficulty to disconnect the attention towards smoking cues than not smokers.	\N	\N
23768150	In grapheme-colour synaesthesia, letters, numbers, and words elicit involuntary colour experiences. Recently, there has been much emphasis on individual differences and possible subcategories of synaesthetes with different underlying mechanisms. In particular, there are claims that for some, synaesthesia occurs prior to attention and awareness of the inducing stimulus. We first characterized our sample using two versions of the "Synaesthetic Congruency Task" to distinguish "projector" and "associator" synaesthetes who may differ in the extent to which their synaesthesia depends on attention and awareness. We then used a novel modification of the "Embedded Figures Task" that included a set-size manipulation to look for evidence of preattentive "pop-out" from synaesthetic colours, at both a group and an individual level. We replicate an advantage for synaesthetes over nonsynaesthetic controls on the Embedded Figures Task in accuracy, but find no support for pop-out of synaesthetic colours. We conclude that grapheme-colour synaesthetes are fundamentally similar in their visual processing to the general population, with the source of their unusual conscious colour experiences occurring late in the cognitive hierarchy.	\N	\N
23786210	Cognitive deficits in several domains have been demonstrated in early-onset schizophrenia patients but their profile and relation to depressive symptoms and intelligence need further characterization. The purpose was to characterize the profile of cognitive deficits in chronic, early-onset schizophrenia patients, assess the potential associations with depressive symptom severity, and examine whether cognitive deficits within several domains reflect intelligence impairments. This study compared attention, visual-construction, aspects of visual and verbal memory, and executive functions in chronic, early-onset schizophrenia patients (mean age = 20.7 years) (N = 18) and healthy controls (N = 38). Schizophrenia diagnoses were established at the time of the patients' first clinical presentation during childhood or adolescence and were confirmed five years later. In the chronic phase of early-onset schizophrenia, significant deficits were observed in all specific cognitive functions. The profile of cognitive deficits was jagged, and visual-construction, attention, and one aspect of verbal memory (verbal stories recall) were differentially impaired. Deficits of visual recall, visual recognition, and executive functions were accounted for by deficits in intelligence, while this was not the case for deficits of verbal recall of stories or attention. No significant associations were observed between the severity of cognitive deficits and that of depressive symptoms. Chronic, early-onset schizophrenia is characterized by a broad and jagged profile of cognitive deficits. Deficits of attention and verbal recall of stories appear not to be accounted for by deficits in intelligence, and the severity of cognitive deficits seems independent from that of depressive symptoms.	\N	\N
23797824	Vulnerability to transient insomnia is regarded as a predisposing factor for chronic insomnia. However, most individuals with transient insomnia do not develop chronic insomnia. The current study investigated the differential contributing factors for these two conditions to further the understanding of this phenomenon. Chronic insomnia patients and normal sleepers with high and low vulnerability to transient insomnia completed measures of pre-sleep arousal, dysfunctional sleep beliefs, and sleep-related safety behaviors. Both cognitive and somatic pre-sleep arousals were identified as significant predictors for transient insomnia. Dysfunctional beliefs regarding worry about insomnia and cognitive arousal were predictors for chronic insomnia. Sleep-related safety behavior, although correlated with insomnia severity, was not a significant predictor for both conditions. Dysfunctional beliefs associated with worry and losing control over sleep are the most critical factors in differentiating chronic insomnia from transient insomnia. These factors should be addressed to help prevent individuals with high sleep vulnerability from developing chronic sleep disturbance.	\N	\N
23809860	Although cocaine is known to be a highly addictive drug, there appears to be a select subset of individuals who are able to use the substance recreationally without developing dependence. These individuals do not report experiencing feelings of craving for cocaine, an important distinction from dependent users. However, no prior studies have compared attentional bias with cocaine cues between these groups to confirm this difference. Additionally, previous investigations into cognitive abilities in these individuals have been conflicting, and no research has been conducted on the neurobiological processes underlying cognitive functioning in this group. This study administered the emotional cocaine-word Stroop to 27 recreational cocaine users, 50 stimulant-dependent individuals, and 52 healthy control participants during functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning. Behavioral and functional imaging results were compared between groups to assess attentional bias and cognitive effort to resist salient cocaine stimuli. Recreational users did not exhibit attentional bias to the cocaine words and did not differ from control subjects on task performance. Conversely, stimulant-dependent individuals were significantly more impaired on the task. Recreational participants also displayed a unique pattern of activation during performance, with significant underactivation in the orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortices compared with both dependent users and control subjects. The absence of bias to cocaine-related stimuli in recreational users indicates they do not share attentional preference for these words with dependent users. Their distinct pattern of activation suggests a decreased need for cognitive control due to diminished desire for the drug, potentially serving as a resilience factor against dependence.	\N	\N
23815454	A selective deficit in the recollection of episodic details is frequently reported in Parkinson's disease (PD). Previous explanations implicate dopamine dysregulation in prefrontal structures on which strategic memory processes rely. However, neuroimaging advancements suggest dopaminergic dysregulation of hippocampally dependent memory processes. Accordingly, dopamine agonists, which target D3 receptors in the hippocampus, may impair hippocampal functioning, causing a more pronounced recollection decline. Recognition memory (RM), familiarity, and recollection were examined in 21 patients with mild-to-moderate PD (Hoehn and Yahr mean: 2.67). Patients were subdivided into two subgroups according to dopamine agonist (pramipexole [PPX] or ropinirole [RPR]), and completed matched versions of an RM test in a medicated and unmedicated condition (termed ON and OFF, respectively). Ten demographically matched healthy volunteers (HVs) also completed both RM tasks in two separate sessions. The PD group (PPX and RPR subgroups combined) showed impairments in RM and recollection, but spared familiarity. When subdivided by dopamine agonist, the PPX subgroup's ON-medication recollection performance was significantly lower than that of both the HVs and RPR subgroup. There was no evidence of decline in OFF-medication recollection or familiarity in either the PPX or RPR subgroups. Recollection in both PD subgroups correlated positively with a composite measure of recall, but not prefrontally dependent measures of cognitive control. These findings suggest that mild-to-moderate PD patients may show relatively preserved recollection and familiarity, but that recollection is selectively disrupted by PPX, but not RPR and that this effect may depend on disrupted hippocampal function rather than impaired pre-frontally dependent executive functions.	\N	\N
23832553	In this study, we have investigated the influence of available attentional resources on the dual-task costs of implementing a new action plan and the influence of movement planning on the transfer of information into visuospatial working memory. To approach these two questions, we have used a motor-memory dual-task design in which participants grasped a sphere and planned a placing movement toward a left or right target according to a directional arrow. Subsequently, they encoded a centrally presented memory stimulus (4 × 4 symbol matrix). While maintaining the information in working memory, a visual stay/change cue (presented on the left, center or right) either confirmed or reversed the planned movement direction. That is, participants had to execute either the prepared or the re-planned movement and finally reported the symbols at leisure. The results show that both, shifts of spatial attention required to process the incongruent stay/change cues and movement re-planning, constitute processing bottlenecks as they both reduced visuospatial working memory performance. Importantly, the spatial attention shifts and movement re-planning appeared to be independent of each other. Further, we found that the initial preparation of the placing movement influenced the report pattern of the central working memory stimulus. Preparing a leftward movement resulted in better memory performance for the left stimulus side, while the preparation of a rightward movement resulted in better memory performance for the right stimulus side. Hence, movement planning influenced the transfer of information into the capacity-limited working memory store. Therefore, our results suggest complex interactions in that the processes involved in movement planning, spatial attention and visuospatial working memory are functionally correlated but not linked in a mandatory fashion.	\N	\N
23834356	Motivation is well known to enhance working memory (WM) capacity, but the mechanism underlying this effect remains unclear. The WM process can be divided into encoding, maintenance, and retrieval, and in a change detection visual WM paradigm, the encoding and retrieval processes can be subdivided into perceptual and central processing. To clarify which of these segments are most influenced by motivation, we measured ERPs in a change detection task with differential monetary rewards. The results showed that the enhancement of WM capacity under high motivation was accompanied by modulations of late central components but not those reflecting attentional control on perceptual inputs across all stages of WM. We conclude that the "state-dependent" shift of motivation impacted the central, rather than the perceptual functions in order to achieve better behavioral performances.	\N	\N
23840558	The behavioral approach system (BAS) from Gray's reinforcement sensitivity theory is a neurobehavioral system involved in the processing of rewarding stimuli that has been related to dopaminergic brain areas. Gray's theory hypothesizes that the functioning of reward brain areas is modulated by BAS-related traits. To test this hypothesis, we performed an fMRI study where participants viewed erotic and neutral pictures, and cues that predicted their appearance. Forty-five heterosexual men completed the Sensitivity to Reward scale (from the Sensitivity to Punishment and Sensitivity to Reward Questionnaire) to measure BAS-related traits. Results showed that Sensitivity to Reward scores correlated positively with brain activity during reactivity to erotic pictures in the left orbitofrontal cortex, left insula, and right ventral striatum. These results demonstrated a relationship between the BAS and reward sensitivity during the processing of erotic stimuli, filling the gap of previous reports that identified the dopaminergic system as a neural substrate for the BAS during the processing of other rewarding stimuli such as money and food.	\N	\N
23845453	Attention to general and trauma-relevant threat was examined in individuals with clinical and subthreshold symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Participants' eye gaze was tracked and recorded while they viewed sets of four images over a 6-s presentation (one negative, positive, and neutral image, and either a general threat image or a trauma-relevant threat image). Two trauma-exposed groups (a clinical and a subthreshold PTSD symptom group) were compared to a non-trauma-exposed group. Both the clinical and subthreshold PTSD symptom groups attended to trauma-relevant threat images more than the no-trauma-exposure group, whereas there were no group differences for general threat images. A time course analysis of attention to trauma-relevant threat images revealed different attentional profiles for the trauma-exposed groups. Participants with clinical PTSD symptoms exhibited immediate heightened attention to the images relative to participants with no-trauma-exposure, whereas participants with subthreshold PTSD symptoms did not. In addition, participants with subthreshold PTSD symptoms attended to trauma-relevant threat images throughout the 6-s presentation, whereas participants with clinical symptoms of PTSD exhibited evidence of avoidance. The theoretical and clinical implications of these distinct attentional profiles are discussed.	\N	\N
23849666	Increasing empirical studies suggest that the tripartite posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) model described in the DSM-IV does not accurately account for the underlying PTSD factor structure, and several alternative models have been proposed. The present study investigated a newly refined, five-factor model of PTSD symptoms in a sample of Chinese adolescent survivors of an earthquake. A total of 1198 middle school students (653 females, 526 males) with a mean age of 14.4 years (SD = 1.1, range: 11-18) participated in this study one month after an earthquake. The novel five-factor model comprised of intrusion, avoidance, numbing, dysphoric arousal, and anxious arousal demonstrated significantly better fit than two alternative four-factor models. Further analyses revealed differentiable relations between the PTSD factors and external measures of anxiety and depression. These findings provide empirical support for the robustness of five-factor model, and carry implications for further reorganization of PTSD criteria.	\N	\N
23855999	The role of interoception and its neural basis with relevance to drug addiction is reviewed. Interoception consists of the receiving, processing, and integrating body-relevant signals with external stimuli to affect ongoing motivated behavior. The insular cortex is the central nervous system hub to process and integrate these signals. Interoception is an important component of several addiction relevant constructs including arousal, attention, stress, reward, and conditioning. Imaging studies with drug-addicted individuals show that the insular cortex is hypo-active during cognitive control processes but hyperactive during cue reactivity and drug-specific, reward-related processes. It is proposed that interoception contributes to drug addiction by incorporating an "embodied" experience of drug uses together with the individual's predicted versus actual internal state to modulate approach or avoidance behavior, i.e. whether to take or not to take drugs. This opens the possibility of two types of interventions. First, one may be able to modulate the embodied experience by enhancing insula reactivity where necessary, e.g. when engaging in drug seeking behavior, or attenuating insula when exposed to drug-relevant cues. Second, one may be able to reduce the urge to act by increasing the frontal control network, i.e. inhibiting the urge to use by employing cognitive training. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled 'NIDA 40th Anniversary Issue'.	\N	\N
23856173	Sleep inertia refers to the inability to attain full alertness following awakening from sleep and is a major component of hypersomnia. As event-related potentials (ERPs) are correlated to the degree of consciousness, they allow exploring information processing in transitional states of vigilance. Their modifications during forced awakening (FA) context have been shown to reflect sleep inertia. To assess the diagnostic value of a FA test using an oddball stimulation protocol during a nap in a representative sample of patients with excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS). One hundred and seventy three patients [30 narcolepsy, 62 idiopathic hypersomnia, 33 sleep apnoea syndrome, and 48 other (mainly psychiatric) hypersomnia] performed an auditory target detection stimulation task during pre-, post-nap wakefulness, and during two successive intra-nap FA while the EEG was simultaneously recorded. Both the accuracy of target detection and the ERPs were evaluated. ERPs during forced awakening test were considered to reflect sleep inertia if they presented with a P300 delay and/or sleep negativities (N350/N550). Pre-nap behavior and ERPs were normal in all patients. Behavioral results were significantly worse during FA than during wakefulness for all groups of patients. P300 latencies were significantly delayed on FA conditions in each group of patients except the psychiatric group. Sensitivity and specificity for detection of sleep inertia were 64% and 94%, respectively, with predictive values of 96% (positive) and 50% (negative). Our results suggest that the FA test could be helpful as a diagnostic procedure for discriminating neurological from psychiatric hypersomnia.	\N	\N
23857779	The goals of the present study were to: (i) examine similarities and differences in behavioral/emotional problems manifested by children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and those with anxiety disorder (ANX); (ii) test the ability of each of the eight child behavioral checklist (CBCL) and teacher report form (TRF) syndrome scales to differentiate the ASD group from the ANX group; and (iii) test the ability of an ASD scale derived by Ooi et al. to differentiate the ASD group from the ANX group. Archival CBCL and TRF data from 180 children between 4 and 18 years of age (119 males, 61 females) diagnosed with ASD (n = 86) or ANX (n = 94) at an outpatient child psychiatric clinic in Singapore were analyzed. The ASD group scored significantly higher on Social Problems and Attention Problems but significantly lower on Anxious/Depressed and Somatic Complaints than the ANX group. The groups did not show significant differences on Withdrawn/Depressed and Thought Problems. Both the CBCL and TRF ASD scales were significant predictors of the ASD group, with moderate to high sensitivity and specificity. Our findings for an Asian sample support the diagnostic overlap between ASD and ANX reported for Western samples and underscore the importance of treating ASD as both a unitary disease and as a web of overlapping configurations of underlying problem dimensions.	\N	\N
23857836	SSRIs are known for their sexual side-effects with a variable rate of sexual dysfunction (SD). 5HT2A (rs6311) single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) was found to have significant association with SD. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of female SDD, its clinical correlates and association with 5HT2A (rs6311) SNP in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) treated with SSRIs. This was a cross-sectional study. We evaluated 95 female outpatients with MDD treated with SSRIs who were in remission. Outcome measures were stratified by the presence or absence of SDD. A buccal swab was obtained from each patient and sent for genotyping in the Pharmacogenomics and Medical Biotechnology Laboratory of Universiti Malaya. The overall prevalence of female SD was 32.6%. The prevalence of female SDD was 62.1%. Those with arousal problem, lubrication problem, sexual satisfaction problem, orgasm problem and problematic marriage were more likely to have sexual desire disorder. The majority of participants who had sexual desire disorder had genotype TT (42.4%) but there was no significant association observed. After controlling for age, number of children, education level, SSRI type, lubrication problem, orgasm problem, satisfaction problem and marital problem, only arousal problem significantly enhanced the presence of sexual desire disorder by 8.5 times (odds ratio = 8.46, 95% confidence interval = 1.24-57.58; P = 0.018). This study showed that there was no significant association between SDD and the 5HT2A (rs6311) SNP. Arousal problem significantly enhanced the presence of sexual desire disorder.	\N	\N
23860302	The present study investigates how individuals distribute their attentional resources between a prospective memory task and an ongoing task. Therefore, metacognitive expectations about the attentional demands of the prospective-memory task were manipulated while the factual demands were held constant. In Experiments 1a and 1b, we found attentional costs from a prospective-memory task with low factual demands to be significantly reduced when information about the low to-be-expected demands were provided, while prospective-memory performance remained largely unaffected. In Experiment 2, attentional monitoring in a more demanding prospective-memory task also varied with information about the to-be-expected demands (high vs. low) and again there were no equivalent changes in prospective-memory performance. These findings suggest that attention-allocation strategies of prospective memory rely on metacognitive expectations about prospective-memory task demands. Furthermore, the results suggest that attentional monitoring is only functional for prospective memory to the extent to which anticipated task demands reflect objective task demands.	\N	\N
23862902	Effects of word-level phonetic variation on the recognition of words with different pronunciation variants (e.g., center produced with/(out) [t]) are investigated via the semantic- and pseudoword-priming paradigms. A bias favoring clearly articulated words with canonical variants ([nt]) is found. By reducing the bias, words with different variants show robust and equivalent lexical activation. The equivalence of different word forms highlights a snag for frequency-based theories of lexical access: How are words and word productions with vastly different frequencies recognized equally well by listeners? A process-based account is proposed, suggesting that careful speech induces bottom-up processing and casual speech induces top-down processing.	\N	\N
23862914	This study reports a role of temporal regularity on the perception of auditory streams. Listeners were presented with two-tone sequences in an A-B-A-B rhythm that was either regular or had a controlled amount of temporal jitter added independently to each of the B tones. Subjects were asked to report whether they perceived one or two streams. The percentage of trials in which two streams were reported substantially and significantly increased with increasing amounts of temporal jitter. This suggests that temporal predictability may serve as a binding cue during auditory scene analysis.	\N	\N
23863955	Sleep deprivation immediately following an aversive event reduces fear by preventing memory consolidation during homeostatic sleep. This suggests that acute insomnia might act prophylactically against the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) even though it is also a possible risk factor for PTSD. We examined total sleep deprivation and memory suppression to evaluate the effects of these interventions on subsequent aversive memory formation and fear conditioning. Active suppression of aversive memory impaired retention of event memory. However, although the remembered fear was more reduced in sleep-deprived than sleep-control subjects, suppressed fear increased, and seemed to abandon the sleep-dependent plasticity of fear. Active memory suppression, which provides a psychological model for Freud's ego defense mechanism, enhances fear and casts doubt on the potential of acute insomnia as a prophylactic measure against PTSD. Our findings bring into question the role of sleep in aversive-memory consolidation in clinical PTSD pathophysiology.	\N	\N
23864438	Although the relationship between alexithymia and psychopathology has been studied extensively in adults, research is lacking on alexithymia in childhood psychopathology. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between alexithymia and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The Italian version of the Alexithymia Questionnaire for Children was administered to a sample of 50 children with a DSM-IV diagnosis of ADHD, as assessed by means of the K-SADS PL, and to 100 healthy, age- and sex-matched children without ADHD. The total alexithymia score as well as the difficulty in identifying feelings (DIF) and externally oriented thinking factors were significantly associated with ADHD. The total alexithymia score, the DIF, and the difficulty in describing feelings factors were also significantly associated with symptoms of hyperactivity/impulsivity. No significant relationship between alexithymia and inattentiveness symptoms emerged. Results provide preliminary data on the relationship between alexithymia and ADHD. Findings point to an association between difficulty in identifying emotions and hyperactivity/impulsivity. Future studies conducted on larger patient samples, as well as longitudinal designs, are warranted to confirm our findings.	\N	\N
23865336	Vigilance is defined as the ability to maintain attention or alertness over prolonged periods of time. Since Mid-20th century, following the increasing man-machine communication, high level of vigilance has been demanded in many areas including driving safety, medical care and therapy, aerospace and military affairs, etc. Therefore, finding quick methods to improve the level of vigilance has become a key issue in medical study. Based on physical regulation, chemical regulation and physiological regulation, the research progress has been summarized in this paper. We, furthermore, also try to predict the future trend in this academic area and develop some tentative ideas about seeking more effective and convenient ways to improve the level of brain vigilance.	\N	\N
23875572	One of the most widespread views in vision research is that top-down control over visual selection is achieved by tuning attention to a particular feature value (e.g., red/yellow). Contrary to this view, previous spatial cueing studies showed that attention can be tuned to relative features of a search target (e.g., redder): An irrelevant distractor (cue) captured attention when it had the same relative color as the target (e.g., redder), and failed to capture when it had a different relative color, regardless of whether the distractor was similar or dissimilar to the target. The present study tested whether the same effects would be observed for eye movements when observers have to search for a color or shape target and when selection errors were very noticeable (resulting in an erroneous eye movement to the distractor). The results corroborated the previous findings, showing that capture by an irrelevant distractor does not depend on the distractor's similarity to the target but on whether it matches or mismatches the relative attributes of the search target. Extending on previous work, we also found that participants can be pretrained to select a color target in virtue of its exact feature value. Contrary to the prevalent feature-based view, the results suggest that visual selection is preferentially biased toward the relative attributes of a search target. Simultaneously, however, visual selection can be biased to specific color values when the task requires it, which rules out a purely relational account of attention and eye movements.	\N	\N
23892066	Existing batteries for FMRI do not precisely meet the criteria for comprehensive mapping of cognitive functions within minimum data acquisition times using standard scanners and head coils. The goal was to develop a battery of neuropsychological paradigms for FMRI that can also be used in other brain imaging techniques and behavioural research. Participants were 61 healthy, young adult volunteers (48 females and 13 males, mean age: 22.25 ± 3.39 years) from the university community. The battery included 8 paradigms for basic (visual, auditory, sensory-motor, emotional arousal) and complex (language, working memory, inhibition/interference control, learning) cognitive functions. Imaging was performed using standard functional imaging capabilities (1.5-T MR scanner, standard head coil). Structural and functional data series were analysed using Brain Voyager QX2.9 and Statistical Parametric Mapping-8. For basic processes, activation centres for individuals were within a distance of 3-11 mm of the group centres of the target regions and for complex cognitive processes, between 7 mm and 15 mm. Based on fixed-effect and random-effects analyses, the distance between the activation centres was 0-4 mm. There was spatial variability between individual cases; however, as shown by the distances between the centres found with fixed-effect and random-effects analyses, the coordinates for individual cases can be used to represent those of the group. The findings show that the neuropsychological brain mapping battery described here can be used in basic science studies that investigate the relationship of the brain to the mind and also as functional localiser in clinical studies for diagnosis, follow-up and pre-surgical mapping.	\N	\N
23896527	Utilizing the high temporal resolution of event-related potentials (ERPs), we examined how visual spatial or temporal cues modulated the auditory stimulus processing. The visual spatial cue (VSC) induces orienting of attention to spatial locations; the visual temporal cue (VTC) induces orienting of attention to temporal intervals. Participants were instructed to respond to auditory targets. Behavioral responses to auditory stimuli following VSC were faster and more accurate than those following VTC. VSC and VTC had the same effect on the auditory N1 (150-170 ms after stimulus onset). The mean amplitude of the auditory P1 (90-110 ms) in VSC condition was larger than that in VTC condition, and the mean amplitude of late positivity (300-420 ms) in VTC condition was larger than that in VSC condition. These findings suggest that modulation of auditory stimulus processing by visually induced spatial or temporal orienting of attention were different, but partially overlapping.	\N	\N
23902752	Prolonged adaptation to a stimulus, such as a drifting grating, lowers sensitivity for detecting similar stimuli, and changes their appearance, for example, making gratings of the same orientation appear of lower contrast and move more slowly. It has been suggested that adaptation is increased by sustained attention to the adapting stimulus and is decreased by distracting attention with a competing task. This paper describes a novel 2AFC (spatial) measure of adaptation in which adaptation and bias are carefully distinguished by the random interleaving of different test conditions. The experiment revealed significant adaptation of perceived velocity, but no effect of attentional distraction.	\N	\N
23912366	To assess the prevalence of sexual dysfunction in obese and overweight patients treated at the Professor Alberto Antunes University Hospital (HUPAA - UFAL). This is a descriptive study. The sample consisted of overweight or obese females. Anthropometric data were collected for assessment of body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC). In all subjects we measured the levels of blood glucose, total cholesterol and triglycerides. We applied a Portuguese-validated version of the Female Sexual Function Index (FSDI), which assesses sexual response as for desire, arousal, vaginal lubrication, orgasm, sexual satisfaction and pain. The total score is the sum of scores for each domain multiplied by the corresponding factor and can vary from '2 'to '36', a total score less than or equal to '26 ' being considered risky for sexual dysfunction. We evaluated 23 women with a mean age of 44, where 73.9% were obese and 82.6% had a highly increased risk for metabolic complications (WC e" 88 cm). The increased risk for sexual dysfunction was present in 78.3% of the interviewees, causing biopsychosocial impairment. Hypertension, diabetes and dyslipidemia were present in 33.3%, 22.2% and 61.1%, respectively, of patients at risk for sexual dysfunction. The analysis of the results demonstrates the need for better research and attention of physicians to patients with obesity or overweight.	\N	\N
23915296	Most free-recall experiments employ a paradigm in which participants are given a preset amount of time to retrieve items from a list. While much has been learned using this paradigm, it ignores an important component of many real-world retrieval tasks: the decision to terminate memory search. The present study examines the temporal characteristics underlying memory search by comparing within subjects a standard retrieval paradigm with a finite, preset amount of time (closed interval) to a design that allows participants to terminate memory search on their own (open interval). Calling on the results of several presented simulations, we anticipated that the threshold for number of retrieval failures varied as a function of the nature of the recall paradigm, such that open intervals should result in lower thresholds than closed intervals. Moreover, this effect was expected to manifest in interretrieval times (IRTs). Although retrieval-interval type did not significantly impact the number of items recalled or error rates, IRTs were sensitive to the manipulation. Specifically, the final IRTs in the closed-interval paradigm were longer than those of the open-interval paradigm. This pattern suggests that providing participants with a preset retrieval interval not only masks an important component of the retrieval process (the memory search termination decision), but also alters temporal retrieval dynamics. Task demands may compel people to strategically control aspects of their retrieval by implementing different stopping rules.	\N	\N
23916691	The control of dual-tasking effects is a daily challenge in stroke neurorehabilitation. It maybe one of the reasons why there is poor functional prognosis after a stroke in the right hemisphere, which plays a dominant role in posture control. The purpose of this study was to explore cognitive motor interference in right brain-lesioned and healthy subjects maintaining a standing position while performing three different tasks: a control task, a simple attentional task and a complex attentional task. We measured the sway area of the subjects on a force platform, including the center of pressure and its displacements. Results showed that stroke patients presented a reduced postural sway compared to healthy subjects, who were able to maintain their posture while performing a concomitant attentional task in the same dual-tasking conditions. Moreover, in both groups, the postural sway decreased with the increase in attentional load from cognitive tasks. We also noticed that the stability of stroke patients in dual-tasking conditions increased together with the weight-bearing rightward deviation, especially when the attentional load of the cognitive tasks and lower limb motor impairments were high. These results suggest that stroke patients and healthy subjects adopt a similar postural regulation pattern aimed at maintaining stability in dual-tasking conditions involving a static standing position and different attention-related cognitive tasks. Our results indicate that attention processes might facilitate static postural control.	\N	\N
23920422	We aimed to evaluate the efficacy of the selective H3 receptor inverse agonist MK-0249 to treat excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS). In this three-period, double-blind, crossover study, 125 patients (100 men, 25 women; mean age, 48.6 years) with obstructive sleep apnea receiving nasal continuous positive airway pressure therapy who had refractory EDS were randomized to 2 weeks each of daily MK-0249 (5, 8, 10, or 12 mg, adaptively assigned), modafinil 200 mg, and placebo. At baseline and after each treatment period, six maintenance of wakefulness tests (MWT) and Psychomotor Vigilance Tasks (PVT) were conducted at 2-h intervals, beginning 1h postdose (∼09:00). The Epworth sleepiness scale (ESS), Clinical Global Impression of Severity (CGIS) and Digit Symbol Substitution Test (DSST) also were assessed. The primary end point was MWT sleep latency averaged over the first four time points (MWT-early). MWT-early mean change from baseline sleep latency at week 2 was 1.2 min for placebo, 2.1 min for MK-0249 (top two doses pooled; P>.05 vs. placebo), and 5.9 min for modafinil (P < or = .001 vs. placebo). MK-0249 showed improvements vs placebo on secondary and exploratory end points of ESS, CGIS, PVT, and DSST. Insomnia adverse events (AEs) were greater for MK-0249 (combined doses, 17.5%) than for placebo (0.9%) or modafinil (1.8%). MK-0249 did not significantly affect MWT sleep latency. However, the pattern of improvement on subjective ratings and psychomotor performance end points suggested that MK-0249 was associated with changes in aspects of cognition and performance not captured by the MWT.	\N	\N
23935931	Auditory sensory modulation difficulties and problems with automatic re-orienting to sound are well documented in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Abnormal preattentive arousal processes may contribute to these deficits. In this study, we investigated components of the cortical auditory evoked potential (CAEP) reflecting preattentive arousal in children with ASD and typically developing (TD) children aged 3-8 years. Pairs of clicks ('S1' and 'S2') separated by a 1 sec S1-S2 interstimulus interval (ISI) and much longer (8-10 sec) S1-S1 ISIs were presented monaurally to either the left or right ear. In TD children, the P50, P100 and N1c CAEP components were strongly influenced by temporal novelty of clicks and were much greater in response to the S1 than the S2 click. Irrespective of the stimulation side, the 'tangential' P100 component was rightward lateralized in TD children, whereas the 'radial' N1c component had higher amplitude contralaterally to the stimulated ear. Compared to the TD children, children with ASD demonstrated 1) reduced amplitude of the P100 component under the condition of temporal novelty (S1) and 2) an attenuated P100 repetition suppression effect. The abnormalities were lateralized and depended on the presentation side. They were evident in the case of the left but not the right ear stimulation. The P100 abnormalities in ASD correlated with the degree of developmental delay and with the severity of auditory sensory modulation difficulties observed in early life. The results suggest that some rightward-lateralized brain networks that are crucially important for arousal and attention re-orienting are compromised in children with ASD and that this deficit contributes to sensory modulation difficulties and possibly even other behavioral deficits in ASD.	\N	\N
23935959	There is growing debate on the use of drugs that promote cognitive enhancement. Amphetamine-like drugs have been employed as cognitive enhancers, but they show important side effects and induce addiction. In this study, we investigated the use of modafinil which appears to have less side effects compared to other amphetamine-like drugs. We analyzed effects on cognitive performances and brain resting state network activity of 26 healthy young subjects. A single dose (100 mg) of modafinil was administered in a double-blind and placebo-controlled study. Both groups were tested for neuropsychological performances with the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices II set (APM) before and three hours after administration of drug or placebo. Resting state functional magnetic resonance (rs-FMRI) was also used, before and after three hours, to investigate changes in the activity of resting state brain networks. Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) was employed to evaluate differences in structural connectivity between the two groups. Protocol ID: Modrest_2011; NCT01684306; http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01684306. Results indicate that a single dose of modafinil improves cognitive performance as assessed by APM. Rs-fMRI showed that the drug produces a statistically significant increased activation of Frontal Parietal Control (FPC; p<0.04) and Dorsal Attention (DAN; p<0.04) networks. No modifications in structural connectivity were observed. Overall, our findings support the notion that modafinil has cognitive enhancing properties and provide functional connectivity data to support these effects. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01684306 http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01684306.	\N	\N
23939584	During the learning process, whether students remain attentive throughout instruction generally influences their learning efficacy. If teachers can instantly identify whether students are attentive they can be suitably reminded to remain focused, thereby improving their learning effects. Traditional teaching methods generally require that teachers observe students' expressions to determine whether they are attentively learning. However, this method is often inaccurate and increases the burden on teachers. With the development of electroencephalography (EEG) detection tools, mobile brainwave sensors have become mature and affordable equipment. Therefore, in this study, whether students are attentive or inattentive during instruction is determined by observing their EEG signals. Because distinguishing between attentiveness and inattentiveness is challenging, two scenarios were developed for this study to measure the subjects' EEG signals when attentive and inattentive. After collecting EEG data using mobile sensors, various common features were extracted from the raw data. A support vector machine (SVM) classifier was used to calculate and analyze these features to identify the combination of features that best indicates whether students are attentive. Based on the experiment results, the method proposed in this study provides a classification accuracy of up to 76.82%. The study results can be used as a reference for learning system designs in the future.	\N	\N
23954763	Major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with risk for chronic pain, but the mechanisms contributing to the MDD and pain relationship are unclear. To examine whether disrupted emotional modulation of pain might contribute, this study assessed emotional processing and emotional modulation of pain in healthy controls and unmedicated persons with MDD (14 MDD, 14 controls). Emotionally charged pictures (erotica, neutral, mutilation) were presented in 4 blocks. Two blocks assessed physiological-emotional reactions (pleasure/arousal ratings, corrugator electromyography (EMG), startle modulation, skin conductance) in the absence of pain and 2 blocks assessed emotional modulation of pain and the nociceptive flexion reflex (NFR, a physiological measure of spinal nociception) evoked by suprathreshold electric stimulations. Results indicated pictures generally evoked the intended emotional responses; erotic pictures elicited pleasure, subjective arousal, and smaller startle magnitudes, whereas mutilation pictures elicited displeasure, corrugator EMG activation, and subjective/physiological arousal. However, emotional processing was partially disrupted in MDD, as evidenced by a blunted pleasure response to erotica and a failure to modulate startle according to a valence linear trend. Furthermore, emotional modulation of pain was observed in controls but not MDD, even though there were no group differences in NFR threshold or emotional modulation of NFR. Together, these results suggest supraspinal processes associated with emotion processing and emotional modulation of pain may be disrupted in MDD, but brain to spinal cord processes that modulate spinal nociception are intact. Thus, emotional modulation of pain deficits may be a phenotypic marker for future pain risk in MDD.	\N	\N
23958342	The present study investigates the human brains' sensitivity to the valence strength of emotionally positive and negative chinese words. Event-Related Potentials were recorded, in two different experimental sessions, for Highly Positive (HP), Mildly Positive (MP) and neutral (NP) words and for Highly Negative (HN), Mildly Negative (MN) and neutral (NN) words, while subjects were required to count the number of words, irrespective of word meanings. The results showed a significant emotion effect in brain potentials for both HP and MP words, and the emotion effect occurred faster for HP words than MP words: HP words elicited more negative deflections than NP words in N2 (250-350 ms) and P3 (350-500 ms) amplitudes, while MP words elicited a significant emotion effect in P3, but not in N2, amplitudes. By contrast, HN words elicited larger amplitudes than NN words in N2 but not in P3 amplitudes, whereas MN words produced no significant emotion effect across N2 and P3 components. Moreover, the size of emotion-neutral differences in P3 amplitudes was significantly larger for MP compared to MN words. Thus, the human brain is reactive to both highly and mildly positive words, and this reactivity increased with the positive valence strength of the words. Conversely, the brain is less reactive to the valence of negative relative to positive words. These results suggest that human brains are equipped with increased sensitivity to the valence strength of positive compared to negative words, a type of emotional stimuli that are well known for reduced arousal.	\N	\N
23958795	One approach to hypnosis suggests that for hypnotic experience to occur frontal lobe activity must be attenuated. For example, cold control theory posits that a lack of awareness of intentions is responsible for the experience of involuntariness and/or the subjective reality of hypnotic suggestions. The mid-dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex and the ACC are candidate regions for such awareness. Alcohol impairs frontal lobe executive function. This study examined whether alcohol affects hypnotisability. We administered 0.8 mg/kg of alcohol or a placebo to 32 medium susceptible participants. They were subsequently hypnotised and given hypnotic suggestions. All participants believed they had received some alcohol. Participants in the alcohol condition were more susceptible to hypnotic suggestions than participants in the placebo condition. Impaired frontal lobe activity facilitates hypnotic responding, which supports theories postulating that attenuation of executive function facilitates hypnotic response, and contradicts theories postulating that hypnotic response involves enhanced inhibitory, attentional or other executive function.	\N	\N
23958866	Drugs-of-abuse may increase the salience of drug cues by sensitizing the dopaminergic (DA) system (Robinson and Berridge, 1993), leading to differential attention to smoking stimuli. Event-related potentials (ERPs) have been used to assess attention to smoking cues but not using an ERP component associated with DA-mediated salience evaluation. In this study the DA-related P2a and the P3, were compared in smokers (N = 21) and non-smokers (N = 21) during an attention selection cue exposure task including both cigarette and neutral images. We predicted that both the P2a and P3 would be larger to targets than non-targets, but larger to non-target cigarette images than non-target neutral images only in the smokers, reflecting smokers' evaluation of smoking stimuli as relevant even when they were not targets. Results indicated that smokers showed behavioral cue reactivity, with more false alarms to cigarette images (responding to cigarette images when they were not targets) than non-smokers; however, both smokers and non-smokers had a larger P2a and P3 to cigarette images. Thus, while smokers showed behavioral evidence of differential salience evaluation of the cigarette images, this group difference was not reflected in differential brain activity. These findings may reflect characteristics of the ERPs (both ERP components were smaller in the smokers), the smoking sample (they were not more impulsive, i.e. reward sensitive, than the non-smokers, in contrast to prior studies) and the design (all participants were aware that the aim of the study was related to smoking).	\N	\N
23966452	A growing body of research has illuminated beneficial effects of a single bout of physical activity (i.e., acute exercise) on cognitive function in school-age children. However, the influence of acute exercise on preschoolers' cognitive function has not been reported. To address this shortcoming, the current study examined the effects of a 30-min bout of exercise on preschoolers' cognitive function. Preschoolers' cognitive function was assessed following a single bout of exercise and a single sedentary period. Results revealed that, after engaging in a bout of exercise, preschoolers exhibited markedly better ability to sustain attention, relative to after being sedentary (p = .006, partial eta square = .400). Based on these findings, providing exercise opportunities appears to enhance preschoolers' cognitive function.	\N	\N
23968792	The Western Neuro Sensory Stimulation Profile (WNSSP) presents a hierarchy of items suggestive of a sequence of recovery. The aim of this study was to understand the sequence of recovery of neurobehavioral function in patients with brain injury and determine whether this sequence was consistent with the WNSSP test item order. We conducted a retrospective clinical chart audit of 37 adult inpatients (mean age = 29 yr; 31 men, 6 women) with a diagnosis of traumatic brain injury and a minimum of two medical record entries on the WNSSP. The sequence of recovery was statistically derived from the content and structure of the WNSSP. Our analysis did not support the current item ordering of the WNSSP as a function of the sequence of recovery from coma, with the exception of the Arousal/Attention subscale. WNSSP item performance suggested a sequence of recovery; clinicians may consider a revised item order that reflects this observed order.	\N	\N
23980142	Cognitive emotion regulation has been widely shown in the laboratory to be an effective way to alter the nature of emotional responses. Despite its success in experimental contexts, however, we often fail to use these strategies in everyday life where stress is pervasive. The successful execution of cognitive regulation relies on intact executive functioning and engagement of the prefrontal cortex, both of which are rapidly impaired by the deleterious effects of stress. Because it is specifically under stressful conditions that we may benefit most from such deliberate forms of emotion regulation, we tested the efficacy of cognitive regulation after stress exposure. Participants first underwent fear-conditioning, where they learned that one stimulus (CS+) predicted an aversive outcome but another predicted a neutral outcome (CS-). Cognitive regulation training directly followed where participants were taught to regulate fear responses to the aversive stimulus. The next day, participants underwent an acute stress induction or a control task before repeating the fear-conditioning task using these newly acquired regulation skills. Skin conductance served as an index of fear arousal, and salivary α-amylase and cortisol concentrations were assayed as neuroendocrine markers of stress response. Although groups showed no differences in fear arousal during initial fear learning, nonstressed participants demonstrated robust fear reduction following regulation training, whereas stressed participants showed no such reduction. Our results suggest that stress markedly impairs the cognitive regulation of emotion and highlights critical limitations of this technique to control affective responses under stress.	\N	\N
23982009	We analysed the cognitive influence on walking in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients, in the absence of clinical disability. A case-control study was conducted with 12 MS patients with no disability and 12 matched healthy controls. Subjects were referred for completion a timed walk test of 10 m and a 3D-kinematic analysis. Participants were instructed to walk at a comfortable speed in a dual-task (arithmetic task) condition, and motor planning was measured by mental chronometry. Scores of walking speed and cadence showed no statistically significant differences between the groups in the three conditions. The dual-task condition showed an increase in the double support duration in both groups. Motor imagery analysis showed statistically significant differences between real and imagined walking in patients. MS patients with no disability did not show any influence of divided attention on walking execution. However, motor planning was overestimated as compared with real walking.	\N	\N
23988395	To determine whether the Short-Term Executive Plus (STEP) cognitive rehabilitation program improves executive dysfunction after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Randomized, waitlist controlled trial with minimization and blinded outcome assessment. Community. Participants with TBI and executive dysfunction (N=98; TBI severity 50% moderate/severe; mean time since injury ± SD, 12±14y; mean age ± SD, 45±14y; 62% women; 76% white). STEP program: 12 weeks (9h/wk) of group training in problem solving and emotional regulation and individual sessions of attention and compensatory strategies training. Factor analysis was used to create a composite executive function measure using the Problem Solving Inventory, Frontal Systems Behavior Scale, Behavioral Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome, and Self-Awareness of Deficits Interview. Emotional regulation was assessed with the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale. The primary attention measure was the Attention Rating and Monitoring Scale. Secondary measures included neuropsychological measures of executive function, attention, and memory and measures of affective distress, self-efficacy, social participation, and quality of life. Intention-to-treat mixed-effects analyses revealed significant treatment effects for the composite executive function measure (P=.008) and the Frontal Systems Behavior Scale (P=.049) and Problem Solving Inventory (P=.016). We found no between-group differences on the neuropsychological measures or on measures of attention, emotional regulation, self-awareness, affective distress, self-efficacy, participation, or quality of life. The STEP program is efficacious in improving self-reported post-TBI executive function and problem solving. Further research is needed to identify the roles of the different components of the intervention and its effectiveness with different TBI populations.	\N	\N
23988869	In this study, we assessed whether unspecific attention processes signaled by general reaction times (RTs), as well as specific facilitatory (validity or facilitation effect) and inhibitory (inhibition of return, IOR) effects involved in the attentional orienting network, are affected by low vigilance due to both circadian factors and sleep deprivation (SD). Eighteen male participants performed a cuing task in which peripheral cues were nonpredictive about the target location and the cue-target interval varied at three levels: 200 ms, 800 ms, and 1,100 ms. Facilitation with the shortest and IOR with the longest cue-target intervals were observed in the baseline session, thus replicating previous related studies. Under SD condition, RTs were generally slower, indicating a reduction in the participants' arousal level. The inclusion of a phasic alerting tone in several trials partially compensated for the reduction in tonic alertness, but not with the longest cue-target interval. With regard to orienting, whereas the facilitation effect due to reflexive shifts of attention was preserved with sleep loss, the IOR was not observed. These results suggest that the decrease of vigilance produced by SD affects both the compensatory effects of phasic alerting and the endogenous component involved in disengaging attention from the cued location, a requisite for the IOR effect being observed.	\N	\N
23989094	The updated clinical practice guidelines for the management of pain, agitation, and delirium recommend either daily sedation interruption or maintaining light levels of sedation as methods to improve outcomes for patients who are sedated in the ICU. We review the evidence supporting both methods and discuss whether one method is preferable or if they should be used concurrently. Original research articles identified using the electronic PubMed database. Randomized controlled trials and large prospective cohort studies of mechanically ventilated ICU patients requiring sedation were selected. The methods of daily sedation interruption and targeting light sedation levels (including avoidance of deep sedation) are safe in critically ill patients with no increase, and a potential decrease, in long-term psychiatric disturbances. Randomized trials comparing these methods with standard care, which has traditionally involved moderate to heavy sedation, found that both methods reduced duration of mechanical ventilation and ICU length of stay. Additionally, one trial noted that daily sedation interruption paired with spontaneous breathing trials improved 1-year survival, whereas a large observational study found that deep sedation was associated with decreased 180-day survival. Two common characteristics of these interventions in trials showing benefits were avoidance of deep levels of sedation and significant reductions in sedative doses, especially benzodiazepines. Thus, combining targeted light sedation with daily sedation interruption may be more beneficial than either method alone if sedative doses are reduced and arousal and mobility are facilitated during the ICU stay. Daily sedation interruption and targeting light sedation levels are safe and proven to improve outcomes for sedated ICU patients when these approaches result in reduced sedative exposure and facilitate arousal. It remains unclear as to whether one approach is superior, and further studies are needed to evaluate which patients benefit most from either or both techniques.	\N	\N
23991639	We review neuropsychological evidence for visual selection operating in different reference frames. There is general agreement that there may be a separation of coding space near to and farther from the body, and that deficits in selecting stimuli within each form of spatial representation may be impaired in patients with unilateral neglect. However, there remains a lack of consensus about whether all forms of spatial representation relate to the body or whether there are spatial representations based on reference frames abstracted from the body (allocentric and object-centered spatial codes). Here we will review the evidence for spatial coding in these more abstracted reference frames (allocentric and object-centered but also environmental) and argue for the psychological reality of (at least) allocentric spatial coding. We discuss computational accounts of how such codes may be created as objects are selected.	\N	\N
23992838	To assess the sexual function of young women with spina bifida and myelomeningocele and to determine the factors influencing their sexual function. A postal cross-sectional study using a self-administered questionnaire was performed in 44 women, mean age 27.66 ± 5.89 years, with spina bifida and myelomeningocele. The questionnaire included the Brief Index of Sexual Functioning for Women and questions about voiding mode, urinary symptoms, socioeconomic status, education level, lifestyle, and partnership. In parallel, data were also collected from the paediatric surgery records of patients who returned the questionnaire. The response rate was 56.8% (25/44). All domains of female sexual function (thoughts/desires, arousal, frequency of sexual activity, receptivity/initiation, pleasure/orgasm, relationship satisfaction) were altered. Urinary incontinence was likely to be the main factor responsible for altered sexual function and was associated with lower thoughts/desires, arousal, and receptivity/initiation scores. Wearing pads also constituted a limitation to achieving intimacy. Young myelomeningocele women report poor sexual functioning. The presence of urinary incontinence is associated with lower thoughts/desire, arousal, and receptivity/initiation.	\N	\N
23994913	To study changes in attention and executive functions during psychopharmacotherapy in patients with paranoid schizophrenia, we have examined 120 patients with a first episode of paranoid schizophrenia treated with typical and atypical neuroleptics. Clinical and statistical analyses have revealed the heterogeneity within treatment groups that allowed to define two subgroups. These subgroups were characterized by a differed disease course (favorable or poor type). Before remission was achieved, the effect of atypical neuroleptics on cognitive performance was higher compared to typical neuroleptics. After remission, when doses of neuroleptics were decreased, a type of disease course played a main role. At 6 months after remission, attention and executive functions have improved in subgroups with favorable course of disease regardless of treatment.	\N	\N
24000960	Immediately recalling a witnessed event can increase people's susceptibility to later postevent misinformation. But this retrieval-enhanced suggestibility (RES) effect has been shown only when the initial recall test included specific questions that reappeared on the final test. Moreover, it is unclear whether this phenomenon is affected by the centrality of event details. These limitations make it difficult to generalize RES to criminal investigations, which often begin with free recall prior to more specific queries from legal officials and attorneys. In 3 experiments, we examined the influence of test formats (free recall vs. cued recall) and centrality of event details (central vs. peripheral) on RES. In Experiment 1, both the initial and final tests were cued recall. In Experiment 2, the initial test was free recall and the final test was cued recall. In Experiment 3, both the initial and final tests were free recall. Initial testing increased misinformation reporting on the final test for peripheral details in all experiments, but the effect was significant for central details only after aggregating the data from all 3 experiments. These results show that initial free recall can produce RES, and more broadly, that free recall can potentiate subsequent learning of complex prose materials.	\N	\N
24005260	Selective attention to features of interest facilitates object processing in a cluttered and dynamic environment. Previous research found that distinct networks of regions across cortex are activated depending on the attended feature. These networks typically consist of posterior feature-preferring regions and anterior regions involved in attentional processes. In the current study, we investigated the role of white matter connections between the posterior and anterior regions within these networks for attention to features of novel colored dynamic objects. We asked participants to perform a 1-back feature-attention task while we acquired both functional and diffusion-weighted images. Using tract-based spatial statistics and probabilistic tractography, we found that the right superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) connected posterior and anterior object-processing regions and that voxels within the SLF correlated with response times on the task. Posterior and anterior regions that were anatomically connected also had increased functional connectivity relative to posterior and anterior regions that were not connected. Our results demonstrate that both functional and structural information has to be taken into account to understand selective attention and object perception.	\N	\N
24010959	Although a beneficial role of post-training sleep for declarative memory has been consistently evidenced in children, as in adults, available data suggest that procedural memory consolidation does not benefit from sleep in children. However, besides the absence of performance gains in children, sleep-dependent plasticity processes involved in procedural memory consolidation might be expressed through differential interference effects on the learning of novel but related procedural material. To test this hypothesis, 32 10-12-year-old children were trained on a motor rotation adaptation task. After either a sleep or a wake period, they were first retested on the same rotation applied at learning, thus assessing offline sleep-dependent changes in performance, then on the opposite (unlearned) rotation to assess sleep-dependent modulations in proactive interference coming from the consolidated visuomotor memory trace. Results show that children gradually improve performance over the learning session, showing effective adaptation to the imposed rotation. In line with previous findings, no sleep-dependent changes in performance were observed for the learned rotation. However, presentation of the opposite, unlearned deviation elicited significantly higher interference effects after post-training sleep than wakefulness in children. Considering that a definite feature of procedural motor memory and skill acquisition is the implementation of highly automatized motor behaviour, thus lacking flexibility, our results suggest a better integration and/or automation or motor adaptation skills after post-training sleep, eventually resulting in higher proactive interference effects on untrained material.	\N	\N
24012196	Female sexual dysfunctions include a group of sexual complaints and disorders affecting women of all ages, and stemming from a heterogeneous array of etiologies and contributing factors. The classification system for sexual dysfunctions in the woman has evolved from a linear categorization of sexual desire, arousal, orgasm, and pain disorders to one that is more complex and overlapping. Personal distress is a key factor in defining a sexual problem as a dysfunction. The recently released Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, edition 5, collapses former definitions of female sexual disorders and moves away from the older linear model of diagnostic categories. Physicians should be open to discussing sexual problems with women, and may make use of validated questionnaires in the office setting. Evaluation tools available for assessing sexual function in the woman are in use in the research setting, as are physiological measures of assessment.	\N	\N
24018716	Temporal expectation is expectation with respect to the timing of an event such as the appearance of a certain stimulus. In this paper, temporal expectancy is investigated in the context of the theory of visual attention (TVA), and we begin by summarizing the foundations of this theoretical framework. Next, we present a parametric experiment exploring the effects of temporal expectation on perceptual processing speed in cued single-stimulus letter recognition with unspeeded motor responses. The length of the cue-stimulus foreperiod was exponentially distributed with one of six hazard rates varying between blocks. We hypothesized that this manipulation would result in a distinct temporal expectation in each hazard rate condition. Stimulus exposures were varied such that both the temporal threshold of conscious perception (t0 ms) and the perceptual processing speed (v letters s(-1)) could be estimated using TVA. We found that the temporal threshold t0 was unaffected by temporal expectation, but the perceptual processing speed v was a strikingly linear function of the logarithm of the hazard rate of the stimulus presentation. We argue that the effects on the v values were generated by changes in perceptual biases, suggesting that our perceptual biases are directly related to our temporal expectations.	\N	\N
24022995	It has been suggested that autism-specific imitative deficits may be reduced or even spared in object-related activities. However, most previous research has not sufficiently distinguished object movement reenactment (learning about the ways in which object move) from imitation (learning about the topography of demonstrated actions). Twenty children with autism (CWA) and 20 typically developing children (TDC) were presented with puzzle boxes containing prizes. Test objects and experimental conditions were designed to isolate object- and action-related aspects of demonstrations. There were four types of video demonstrations: (a) a full demonstration by an adult; (b) a ghost demonstration with object movements alone; (c) mimed solutions demonstrated adjacent to the objects; and (d) random actions performed on the surface of the objects. There were no significant between-group differences in the degree to which CWA and TDC matched the full demonstrations, the actual demonstrations or in their times to first solution in any of the conditions. Although there was no clear imitative deficit in the CWA, regression analyses were conducted to explore in more detail whether diagnosis, verbal intelligence quotient (VIQ), nonverbal IQ NVIQ, age or motor coordination predicted performance. The results are discussed in relation to the use of extrinsic vs. intrinsic rewards and the interplay between motor coordination and the relative rigidity vs. pliability of objects.	\N	\N
24025057	Survivors of severe brain injuries may end up in a state of 'wakeful unresponsiveness' or in a minimally conscious state. Pharmacological treatments of patients with disorders of consciousness aim to improve arousal levels and recovery of consciousness. We here provide a systematic overview of the therapeutic effects of amantadine, apomorphine and zolpidem in patients recovering from coma. Evidence from clinical trials using these commonly prescribed pharmacological agents suggests positive changes of the patients' neurological status, leading sometimes to dramatic improvements. These findings are discussed in the context of current hypotheses of these agents' therapeutic mechanisms on cerebral function. In order to improve our understanding of the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms of these drugs, we suggest combining sensitive and specific behavioral tools with neuroimaging and electrophysiological measures in large randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled experimental designs. We conclude that the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of amantadine, apomorphine and zolpidem need further exploration to determine which treatment would provide a better neurological outcome regarding the patient's etiology, diagnosis, time since injury and overall condition.	\N	\N
24035639	The objective of this study was to obtain preliminary data on the cognitive function of children with unilateral hearing loss in order to identify, quantify, and interpret differences in cognitive and language functions between children with unilateral hearing loss and with normal hearing. Fourteen children ages 9-14 years old (7 with severe-to-profound sensorineural unilateral hearing loss and 7 sibling controls with normal hearing) were administered five tests that assessed cognitive functions of working memory, processing speed, attention, and phonological processing. Mean composite scores for phonological processing were significantly lower for the group with unilateral hearing loss than for controls on one composite and four subtests. The unilateral hearing loss group trended toward worse performance on one additional composite and on two additional phonological processing subtests. The unilateral hearing loss group also performed worse than the control group on the complex letter span task. Analysis examining performance on the two levels of task difficulty revealed a significant main effect of task difficulty and an interaction between task difficulty and group. Cognitive function and phonological processing test results suggest two related deficits associated with unilateral hearing loss: (1) reduced accuracy and efficiency associated with phonological processing, and (2) impaired executive control function when engaged in maintaining verbal information in the face of processing incoming, irrelevant verbal information. These results provide a possible explanation for the educational difficulties experienced by children with unilateral hearing loss.	\N	\N
24039108	Improved survival of children with brain tumors (BTs) has increased focus on ameliorating morbidity. To reduce the risk of progressive cognitive decline, remedial strategies need to be instituted early, based upon accurate appraisal of need, yet few studies have investigated cognition in BT children early post-diagnosis. The study aims were to investigate cognition in children with primary BTs 1, 6, and 12 months post-diagnosis compared with healthy children, exploring the impact of disease and treatment variables. Forty-eight children aged 2-16 years with primary BTs, referred to a Regional Neurosurgical Unit over the 2-year study period were eligible for enrollment. The "best friends" model was used to recruit matched controls. Cognition was assessed using age-appropriate Wechsler Intelligence scales; Children's Memory Scale; Test of Everyday Attention for Children, and Wechsler Quicktest. Patients with BTs had significantly reduced performance compared to controls early post-diagnosis in tests of Performance IQ, processing speed, verbal and visual memory, and selective attention. Improved performance over 12 months was seen in patients with BTs although also, for some measures, in controls. Significant deficits in cognitive performance were seen one year post-diagnosis for Verbal IQ; processing speed, visual and verbal immediate memory, and selective attention. Infratentorial site, high tumor grade, hydrocephalus, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy were associated with poorer functioning. Early cognitive impairment is present in BT children, sometimes prior to radiotherapy/chemotherapy treatment, and is associated with hydrocephalus, high tumor grade and infratentorial site. Future studies should investigate the role of early rehabilitation in improving cognition.	\N	\N
24040251	Several highly-cited experiments have presented evidence suggesting that neuroimages may unduly bias laypeople's judgments of scientific research. This finding has been especially worrisome to the legal community in which neuroimage techniques may be used to produce evidence of a person's mental state. However, a more recent body of work that has looked directly at the independent impact of neuroimages on layperson decision-making (both in legal and more general arenas), and has failed to find evidence of bias. To help resolve these conflicting findings, this research uses eye tracking technology to provide a measure of attention to different visual representations of neuroscientific data. Finding an effect of neuroimages on the distribution of attention would provide a potential mechanism for the influence of neuroimages on higher-level decisions. In the present experiment, a sample of laypeople viewed a vignette that briefly described a court case in which the defendant's actions might have been explained by a neurological defect. Accompanying these vignettes was either an MRI image of the defendant's brain, or a bar graph depicting levels of brain activity-two competing visualizations that have been the focus of much of the previous research on the neuroimage bias. We found that, while laypeople differentially attended to neuroimagery relative to the bar graph, this did not translate into differential judgments in a way that would support the idea of a neuroimage bias.	\N	\N
24044427	Joint attention (JA) is a cornerstone of adaptive human social functioning. Little functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research has examined, in interactive paradigms, neural activation underlying bids for JA, met with a congruent or an incongruent social response. We developed a highly naturalistic fMRI paradigm utilizing eye-tracking to create real-time, contingent social responses to participant-initiated JA. During congruent responses to JA bids, we observed increased activation in the right amygdala, the right fusiform gyrus, anterior and dorsal anterior cingulate cortices, striatum, ventral tegmental area, and posterior parietal cortices. Incongruent responses to JA bids elicited increased activity localized to the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and bilateral cerebellum. No differences in eye-gaze patterns were observed during congruent or incongruent trials. Our results highlight the importance of utilizing interactive fMRI paradigms in social neuroscience and the impact of congruency in recruiting integrated social, reward, and attention circuits for processing JA.	\N	\N
24045099	This intervention examined whether fish-oil-supplementation in late infancy modifies free-play test scores and if this is related to blood pressure (BP) and mean RR interval. 83 Danish 9-month-old infants were randomized to ±fish oil (FO) (3.4±1.1mL/d) for 3months and 61 of these completed the free-play-test before and after the intervention. Most of the free-play scores changed during the intervention, but the intervention affected only the number of looks away from the toy, which was increased in +FO and decreased in -FO (p=0.037). The increased numbers of looks away were associated with an increase in erythrocyte eicosapentaenoic acid (r=0.401, p=0.017, n=35) and were also associated with a decrease in systolic-BP (r=-0.511, p<0.001, n=52). The results indicate that n-3 fatty acid intake also in late infancy can influence brain development and that the cognitive and cardiovascular effects may be related.	\N	\N
24053045	Our perspective on resting-state electroencephalogram (EEG) is that it provides a window into the substrate of cognitive and perceptual processing, reflecting the dynamic potential of the brain's current functional state. In an extended research program into the electrophysiology of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD), we have examined resting-state EEG power and coherence, and event-related potentials (ERPs), in children, adolescents, and adults with the disorder. We sought initially to identify consistent AD/HD anomalies in these measures, relative to normal control subjects, and then to understand how these differences related to existing models of AD/HD. An emergent strand in this program has been to clarify the EEG correlates of "arousal" and to understand the role of arousal dysfunction as a core anomaly in AD/HD. To date, findings in this strand serve to rule out a commonly held dictum in the AD/HD field: that elevated theta/beta ratio is an indicator of hypo-arousal. In turn, this requires further work to elucidate the ratio's functional significance in the disorder. Our brain dynamics studies relating prestimulus EEG amplitude and phase states to ERP outcomes are expected to help in this regard, but we are still at a relatively early stage, currently examining these relationships in control children, in order to better understand normal aspects of brain dynamics before turning to children with AD/HD. This range of studies provides a framework for our recent work relating resting-state EEG anomalies, in individuals with AD/HD, to their symptom profile. This has had promising results, indicating links between increased inattention scores and reduced resting EEG gamma power. With resting-state EEG coherence, reduced left lateralized coherences across several bands have correlated negatively with inattention scores, while reduced frontal interhemispheric coherence has been correlated negatively with hyperactivity/impulsivity scores. Such linkages appear to provide encouraging leads for future EEG research in AD/HD.	\N	\N
24054320	The aim of the study was to explore whether temporal information processing can interfere with performance of a non-temporal task. A new methodology based on the Garner paradigm was employed. Participants were asked to classify two-dimensional stimuli according to either length or duration, with and without variation in the other (task-irrelevant) dimension. Garner interference was detected only with respect to classification by length when irrelevant variation in duration was present. Stroop interference was detected only in classification by length across compatible and non-compatible values of length and duration. Classification by length took more time when done with variation in duration than when duration was constant. Classification by length also took more time when length and duration were not compatible than when they were compatible. The findings indicate that the processing of duration is similar to the processing of other perceptual dimensions. The processing of duration consumes attentional resources and can interfere with the processing of other perceptual dimensions. The findings support attentional models of prospective duration judgment.	\N	\N
24056700	Sleep can strengthen memory for emotional information, but whether emotional memories can be specifically targeted and modified during sleep is unknown. In human subjects who underwent olfactory contextual fear conditioning, re-exposure to the odorant context in slow-wave sleep promoted stimulus-specific fear extinction, with parallel reductions of hippocampal activity and reorganization of amygdala ensemble patterns. Thus, fear extinction may be selectively enhanced during sleep, even without re-exposure to the feared stimulus itself.	\N	\N
24057352	Visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) component of event-related potentials is elicited by stimuli violating the category rule of stimulus sequences, even if such stimuli are outside the focus of attention. Category-related vMMN emerges to colors, and color-related vMMN is sensitive to language-related effects. A higher-order perceptual category, bilateral symmetry is also represented in the memory processes underlying vMMN. As a relatively large body of research shows, violating the emotional category of human faces elicits vMMN. Another face-related category sensitive to the violation of regular presentation is gender. Finally, vMMN was elicited to the laterality of hands. As results on category-related vMMN show, stimulus representation in the non-conscious change detection system is fairly complex, and it is not restricted to the registration of elementary perceptual regularities.	\N	\N
24060644	Task performance can be enhanced by the addition of extra information to a visual environment in which observers search for a target stimulus. One example of such information is the repetition of the searched-for stimulus; a form of target redundancy. In the present study, the electrophysiological correlates of such target redundancy were investigated in a visual discrimination task. Observers were asked to look for targets in displays that always contained two salient singletons (tilted lines; targets and/or nontargets) against a background of vertical distractor lines. Displays contained either two redundant targets, two nontargets, or a single target and nontarget, at opposite sides of the visual field. Search was most efficient when two targets were shown, and effects of target redundancy were observed on the event-related potential as well. Target redundancy modulated the anterior N2, and the P3 in both an early and a late window. The results are compatible with models of visual attention that support a relatively late (i.e., central or decisional) locus of redundancy processing.	\N	\N
24065955	Complex neural circuits within the hypothalamus that govern essential autonomic processes and associated behaviors signal using amino acid and monoamine transmitters and a variety of neuropeptide (hormone) modulators, often via G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) and associated cellular pathways. Relaxin-3 is a recently identified neuropeptide that is highly conserved throughout evolution. Neurons expressing relaxin-3 are located in the brainstem, but broadly innervate the entire limbic system including the hypothalamus. Extensive anatomical data in rodents and non-human primate, and recent regulatory and functional data, suggest relaxin-3 signaling via its cognate GPCR, RXFP3, has a broad range of effects on neuroendocrine function associated with stress responses, feeding and metabolism, motivation and reward, and possibly sexual behavior and reproduction. Therefore, this article aims to highlight the growing appreciation of the relaxin-3/RXFP3 system as an important "extrinsic" regulator of the neuroendocrine axis by reviewing its neuroanatomy and its putative roles in arousal-, stress-, and feeding-related behaviors and links to associated neural substrates and signaling networks. Current evidence identifies RXFP3 as a potential therapeutic target for treatment of neuroendocrine disorders and related behavioral dysfunction.	\N	\N
24068814	Cortical activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while human subjects viewed 12 stimulus colors and performed either a color-naming or diverted attention task. A forward model was used to extract lower dimensional neural color spaces from the high-dimensional fMRI responses. The neural color spaces in two visual areas, human ventral V4 (V4v) and VO1, exhibited clustering (greater similarity between activity patterns evoked by stimulus colors within a perceptual category, compared to between-category colors) for the color-naming task, but not for the diverted attention task. Response amplitudes and signal-to-noise ratios were higher in most visual cortical areas for color naming compared to diverted attention. But only in V4v and VO1 did the cortical representation of color change to a categorical color space. A model is presented that induces such a categorical representation by changing the response gains of subpopulations of color-selective neurons.	\N	\N
24070214	Sexual satisfaction is an important indicator of sexual health and is strongly associated with relationship satisfaction. However, research exploring lay definitions of sexual satisfaction has been scarce. We present thematic analysis of written responses of 449 women and 311 men to the question "How would you define sexual satisfaction?" The participants were heterosexual individuals with a mean age of 36.05 years (SD = 8.34) involved in a committed exclusive relationship. In this exploratory study, two main themes were identified: personal sexual well-being and dyadic processes. The first theme focuses on the positive aspects of individual sexual experience, such as pleasure, positive feelings, arousal, sexual openness, and orgasm. The second theme emphasizes relational dimensions, such as mutuality, romance, expression of feelings, creativity, acting out desires, and frequency of sexual activity. Our results highlight that mutual pleasure is a crucial component of sexual satisfaction and that sexual satisfaction derives from positive sexual experiences and not from the absence of conflict or dysfunction. The findings support definitions and models of sexual satisfaction that focus on positive sexual outcomes and the use of measures that incorporate items linked to personal and dyadic sexual rewards for both men and women.	\N	\N
24071775	Although there is evidence to suggest an association between ADHD and alcohol use in college students, results are inconclusive primarily because studies have failed to control for related variables. Thus, this study was designed to systematically compare the relative contributions of inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity to alcohol use and alcohol-related problems in a sample of college students while controlling for effects of antisocial behaviors. A total of 192 undergraduate college students from a rural Midwestern university received class credit for participating in the study. They completed measures of alcohol use, ADHD symptoms, and antisocial behavior. Hierarchical regressions revealed inattention, but not hyperactivity/impulsivity, was related to alcohol-related problems even when controlling for antisocial behavior. However, neither inattention nor hyperactivity/impulsivity was related to alcohol use regardless of whether current antisocial behavior was controlled. Inattention may be an important factor related to alcohol-related problems in college students.	\N	\N
24079062	Post-lunch dip is a well-known phenomenon that results in a substantial deterioration in function and productivity after lunch. To assess whether a new herbal-based potentially wake-promoting beverage is effective in counteracting somnolence and reduced post-lunch performance. Thirty healthy volunteers were studied on three different days at the sleep clinic. On each visit they ate a standard lunch at noontime, followed by a drink of "Wake up," 50 mg caffeine, or a placebo in a cross-over double-blind regimen. At 30 and 120 minutes post-drinking, they underwent a battery of tests to determine the effects of the beverage. These included: a) a subjective assessment of alertness and performance based on a visual analog scale, and b) objective function tests: the immediate word recall test, the digit symbol substitution test (DSST), and hemodynamic measurements. The results of the three visits were compared using one-way analysis of variance, with P < 0.05 considered statistically significant. In all performance tests, subjective vigilance and effectiveness assessment, both Wake up and caffeine were significantly superior to placebo 30 minutes after lunch. However, at 2 hours after lunch, performance had deteriorated in those who drank the caffeine-containing drink, while Wake up was superior to both caffeine and placebo. Blood pressure and pulse were higher 2 hours after caffeine ingestion, compared to both Wake up and placebo. These results suggest that a single dose of Wake up is effective in counteracting the somnolence and reduced performance during the post-lunch hours. In the current study it had no adverse hemodynamic consequences.	\N	\N
24095116	The mind and body are intrinsically and dynamically coupled. Perceptions, thoughts and feelings change, and respond to, the state of the body. This chapter describes the integration of cognitive and affective processes with the autonomic control of bodily arousal, focusing on reciprocal effects of autonomic responses on decision making, error detection, memory and emotions. Neuroimaging techniques are beginning to detail the neuronal substrates mediating these interactions between mental and physiological states, implicating cortical regions (specifically insular and cingulate cortices) alongside subcortical (amygdala) and brainstem (notably dorsal pons) in these mechanisms. The extent to which bodily states influence mental processes is determined in part by "interoceptive sensitivity," an index of individual differences in the ability to detect one's own bodily sensations. Moreover, the misidentification or misattribution of interoceptive responses is implicated in a number of pathologies such as depersonalization, schizophrenia, and anxiety. Increasing knowledge of the mechanisms of body-mind interactions has wide ranging implications, from decision making to empathy, and may serve elucidate potential avenues of intervention for stress-sensitive conditions in which psychological, cognitive, and emotional factors impact on the expression of physical symptoms.	\N	\N
24099547	Four experiments investigated whether infants and adults infer that a novel entity that interacts in a contingent, communicative fashion with an experimenter is itself an intentional agent. The experiments contrasted the hypothesis that such an inference follows from amodal representations of the contingent interaction alone with the hypothesis that features of the experimenter's behavior might also influence intentional attribution. Twelve- to 13-month-old infants and adults observed a novel entity respond contingently to a confederate experimenter, the form of whose actions varied across conditions. For infants, intentionality attribution was assessed by the extent to which they subsequently followed the faceless entity's implied attentional focus. For adults, intentionality attribution was assessed from their use of psychological terms when later describing the entity's behavior. In both groups, construal of the entity as an intentional agent was limited to a subset of contingent interaction conditions. At both ages, the pattern of responses across conditions suggests that whether an observed contingent interaction can be seen as a social interaction influences the attribution of intentional agency. These results further indicate that the agent detection mechanism responding to third-party contingent interactions, as a context-sensitive process, is distinct from the mechanism responding to directly experienced contingent interactions, suggested by prior developmental work to be based solely on amodal representations of an entity's contingent reaction to behaviors of an infant.	\N	\N
24110382	Controlling a brain-actuated device requires the participant to look at and to split his attention between the interaction of the device with its environment and the status information of the Brain-Computer Interface (BCI). Such parallel visual tasks are partly contradictory, with the goal of achieving a good and natural device control. Is there a possibility to free the visual channel from one of these tasks? To address this, a stimulation system based on 6 coin-motors is developed, which provides a spatially continuous tactile illusion as BCI feedback, so that the visual channel can be devoted to the device. Several experiments are conducted in this work, to optimize the tactile illusion patterns and to investigate the influence on the electroencephalogram (EEG). Finally, 6 healthy BCI participants compare visual with tactile feedback in online BCI recordings. The developed stimulator can be used without interfering with the EEG. All subjects are able to perceive this type of tactile feedback well, and no statistical degradation in the online BCI performance could be identified between visual and tactile feedback.	\N	\N
24111051	Aging is a process that is inevitable, and makes our body vulnerable to age-related diseases. Age is the most consistent factor affecting the sleep structure. Therefore, new automatic sleep staging methods, to be used in both of young and elderly patients, are needed. This study proposes an automatic sleep stage detector, which can separate wakefulness, rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep and non-REM (NREM) sleep using only EEG and EOG. Most sleep events, which define the sleep stages, are reduced with age. This is addressed by focusing on the amplitude of the clinical EEG bands, and not the affected sleep events. The age-related influences are then reduced by robust subject-specific scaling. The classification of the three sleep stages are achieved by a multi-class support vector machine using the one-versus-rest scheme. It was possible to obtain a high classification accuracy of 0.91. Validation of the sleep stage detector in other sleep disorders, such as apnea and narcolepsy, should be considered in future work.	\N	\N
24111247	Sleep is a physiological process with an internal program of a number of well defined sleep stages and intermediate wakefulness periods. The sleep stages modulate the autonomous nervous system and thereby the sleep stages are accompanied by different regulation regimes for the cardiovascular and respiratory system. The differences in regulation can be distinguished by new techniques of cardiovascular physics. The number of patients suffering from sleep disorders increases unproportionally with the increase of the human population and aging, leading to very high expenses in the public health system. Therefore, the challenge of cardiovascular physics is to develop highly-sophisticated methods which are able to, on the one hand, supplement and replace expensive medical devices and, on the other hand, improve the medical diagnostics with decreasing the patient's risk. Methods of cardiovascular physics are used to analyze heart rate, blood pressure and respiration to detect changes of the autonomous nervous system in different diseases. Data driven modeling analysis, synchronization and coupling analysis and their applications to biosignals in healthy subjects and patients with different sleep disorders are presented. Newly derived methods of cardiovascular physics can help to find indicators for these health risks.	\N	\N
24111262	This paper proposes a novel feature called differential entropy for EEG-based vigilance estimation. By mathematical derivation, we find an interesting relationship between the proposed differential entropy and the existing logarithm energy spectrum. We present a physical interpretation of the logarithm energy spectrum which is widely used in EEG signal analysis. To evaluate the performance of the proposed differential entropy feature for vigilance estimation, we compare it with four existing features on an EEG data set of twenty-three subjects. All of the features are projected to the same dimension by principal component analysis algorithm. Experiment results show that differential entropy is the most accurate and stable EEG feature to reflect the vigilance changes.	\N	\N
24112932	The introduction of brain stimulation research techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has greatly advanced the understanding of the somatosensory system in humans. Over the last several years, several studies have focused on applying TMS in a variety of contexts to alter transiently the excitability of the somatosensory cortex or regions that project to it and exert some control over its activity in specific behavioral contexts. Specific foci that are discussed in this chapter are methods of repetitive TMS, including theta-burst protocols, delivered to the primary somatosensory cortex that have been shown to affect behavioral indices of somatic sensation such as tactile perception. Similar stimulation techniques can also be applied to distant areas that interact with and modulate activity in somatosensory cortex (i.e., attentional or motor networks). For example, suppression of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex modifies the attention-modulation of somatosensory information in modality-specific cortices. Overall this chapter is focused on understanding the interaction of activity in systems that function with the somatosensory system in behavioral contexts. These include systems such as those that control attention, whether sustained or selective between sensory modalities, or those that control movement based on targets present in other sensory systems.	\N	\N
24113330	To investigate whether pre-attentive auditory discrimination is impaired in patients with essential tremor (ET) and to evaluate the role of age at onset in this function. Seventeen non-demented patients with ET and seventeen age- and sex-matched healthy controls underwent an EEG recording during a classical auditory MMN paradigm. MMN latency was significantly prolonged in patients with elderly-onset ET (>65 years) (p=0.046), while no differences emerged in either latency or amplitude between young-onset ET patients and controls. This study represents a tentative indication of a dysfunction of auditory automatic change detection in elderly-onset ET patients, pointing to a selective attentive deficit in this subgroup of ET patients. The delay in pre-attentive auditory discrimination, which affects elderly-onset ET patients alone, further supports the hypothesis that ET represents a heterogeneous family of diseases united by tremor; these diseases are characterized by cognitive differences that may range from a disturbance in a selective cognitive function, such as the automatic part of the orienting response, to more widespread and complex cognitive dysfunctions.	\N	\N
24116885	Evaluative conditioning (EC) refers to the change in the valence of a conditioned stimulus (CS) due to its pairing with a positive or negative unconditioned stimulus (US). To the extent that core affect can be characterised by the two dimensions of valence and arousal, EC has important implications for the origin of affective responses. However, the distinction between valence and arousal is rarely considered in research on EC or conditioned responses more generally. Measuring the subjective feelings elicited by a CS, the results from two experiments showed that (1) repeated pairings of a CS with a positive or negative US of either high or low arousal led to corresponding changes in both CS valence and CS arousal, (2) changes in CS arousal, but not changes in CS valence, were significantly related to recollective memory for CS-US pairings, (3) subsequent presentations of the CS without the US reduced the conditioned valence of the CS, with conditioned arousal being less susceptible to extinction and (4) EC effects were stronger for high arousal than low arousal USs. The results indicate that the conditioning of affective responses can occur simultaneously along two independent dimensions, supporting evidence in related areas that calls for a consideration of both valence and arousal. Implications for research on EC and the acquisition of emotional dispositions are discussed.	\N	\N
24117699	To better understand the neurobiological mechanisms by which mindfulness-based practices function in a psychotherapeutic context, this article details the definition, techniques, and purposes ascribed to mindfulness training as described by its Buddhist tradition of origin and by contemporary neurocognitive models. Included is theory of how maladaptive mental processes become habitual and automatic, both from the Buddhist and Western psychological perspective. Specific noting and labeling techniques in open monitoring meditation, described in the Theravada and Western contemporary traditions, are highlighted as providing unique access to multiple modalities of awareness. Potential explicit and implicit mechanisms are discussed by which such techniques can contribute to transforming maladaptive habits of mind and perceptual and cognitive biases, improving efficiency, facilitating integration, and providing the flexibility to switch between systems of self-processing. Finally, a model is provided to describe the timing by which noting and labeling practices have the potential to influence different stages of low- and high-level neural processing. Hypotheses are proposed concerning both levels of processing in relation to the extent of practice. Implications for the nature of subjective experience and self-processing as it relates to one's habits of mind, behavior, and relation to the external world, are also described.	\N	\N
24119895	To assess the effects of vaginal discharge on female sexual dysfunction (FSD) by using the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI). In a study at a university hospital in Canakkale, Turkey, women affected by vaginal discharge and age-matched healthy control women were recruited between January and December 2012. Women were grouped in accordance with their vaginal discharge complaints and each participant completed the FSFI questionnaire. A total of 114 women were included in the study. Women in the first group (n=58) had no vaginal discharge or had physiologic vaginal discharge, those in the second group (n=29) had abnormal vaginal discharge with itching, and those in the third group (n=27) had abnormal vaginal discharge without itching. Compared with the first group, women in the second and third groups had higher FSFI scores for desire, arousal, orgasm, and pain, in addition to higher overall FSFI scores. Women with genital malodor had significantly higher FSFI scores than patients without genital malodor (23.83 ± 5.07 vs 21.15 ± 4.78; P=0.008). Women with abnormal vaginal discharges were found to have better FSFI scores for some domains. This finding may be attributed to the adverse effects of sexual intercourse on vaginal infections.	\N	\N
24120431	We investigated effects of inter-modal attention on concurrent visual and tactile stimulus processing by means of stimulus-driven oscillatory brain responses, so-called steady-state evoked potentials (SSEPs). To this end, we frequency-tagged a visual (7.5Hz) and a tactile stimulus (20Hz) and participants were cued, on a trial-by-trial basis, to attend to either vision or touch to perform a detection task in the cued modality. SSEPs driven by the stimulation comprised stimulus frequency-following (i.e. fundamental frequency) as well as frequency-doubling (i.e. second harmonic) responses. We observed that inter-modal attention to vision increased amplitude and phase synchrony of the fundamental frequency component of the visual SSEP while the second harmonic component showed an increase in phase synchrony, only. In contrast, inter-modal attention to touch increased SSEP amplitude of the second harmonic but not of the fundamental frequency, while leaving phase synchrony unaffected in both responses. Our results show that inter-modal attention generally influences concurrent stimulus processing in vision and touch, thus, extending earlier audio-visual findings to a visuo-tactile stimulus situation. The pattern of results, however, suggests differences in the neural implementation of inter-modal attentional influences on visual vs. tactile stimulus processing.	\N	\N
24123615	Adaptive ongoing behavior requires using immediate sensory input to guide upcoming actions. Using a novel paradigm with volitional exploration of visuo-spatial scenes, we revealed novel deficits among hippocampal amnesic patients in effective spatial exploration of scenes, indicated by less-systematic exploration patterns than those of healthy comparison subjects. The disorganized exploration by amnesic patients occurred despite successful retention of individual object locations across the entire exploration period, indicating that exploration impairments were not secondary to rapid decay of scene information. These exploration deficits suggest that amnesic patients are impaired in integrating memory for recent actions, which may include information such as locations just visited and scene content, to plan immediately forthcoming actions. Using a novel task that measured the on-line links between sensory input and behavior, we observed the critical role of the hippocampus in modulating ongoing behavior.	\N	\N
24125802	Drivers are not always aware that they are becoming impaired as a result of sleepiness. Using specific symptoms of sleepiness might assist with recognition of drowsiness related impairment and help drivers judge whether they are safe to drive a vehicle, however this has not been evaluated. In this study, 20 healthy volunteer professional drivers completed two randomized sessions in the laboratory - one under 24h of acute sleep deprivation, and one with alcohol. The Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT) and a 30min simulated driving task (AusEdTM) were performed every 3-4h in the sleep deprivation session, and at a BAC of 0.00% and 0.05% in the alcohol session, while electroencephalography (EEG) and eye movements were recorded. After each test session, drivers completed the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) and the Sleepiness Symptoms Questionnaire (SSQ), which includes eight specific sleepiness and driving performance symptoms. A second baseline session was completed on a separate day by the professional drivers and in an additional 20 non-professional drivers for test-retest reliability. There was moderate test-retest agreement on the SSQ (r=0.59). Significant correlations were identified between individual sleepiness symptoms and the KSS score (r values 0.50-0.74, p<0.01 for all symptoms). The frequency of all SSQ items increased during sleep deprivation (χ(2) values of 28.4-80.2, p<0.01 for all symptoms) and symptoms were related to increased subjective sleepiness and performance deterioration. The symptoms "struggling to keep your eyes open", "difficulty maintaining correct speed", "reactions were slow" and "head dropping down" were most closely related to increased alpha and theta activity on EEG (r values 0.49-0.59, p<0.001) and "nodding off to sleep" and "struggling to keep your eyes open" were related to slow eye movements (r values 0.67 and 0.64, p<0.001). Symptoms related to visual disturbance and impaired driving performance were most accurate at detecting severely impaired driving performance (AUC on ROC curve of 0.86-0.91 for detecting change in lateral lane position greater than the change at a BAC of 0.05%). Individual sleepiness symptoms are related to impairment during acute sleep deprivation and might be able to assist drivers in recognizing their own sleepiness and ability to drive safely.	\N	\N
24128879	The present study investigated age-related attentional changes by comparing event-related potentials (ERPs) in young and older adults during a rapid serial visual presentation task. We focused on analyzing the P3a and the N2 in both the target stimulus and the immediately succeeding irrelevant stimulus. As compared with younger adults, older adults exhibited a marked reduction in the amplitude of the P3a and N2 elicited by the stimulus following the target stimulus. Moreover, in younger adults, the P3a and N2 amplitudes did not differ between both stimuli, whereas in older adults these ERP components were significantly reduced in the subsequent stimulus compared to the target one. The age-related attenuation of P3a and N2 amplitudes for the subsequent stimulus indicates that older adults take longer and have more difficulty shifting their attention from one stimulus to the next one.	\N	\N
24130703	It has been suggested that sleep selectively enhances memories with future relevance. Given that sleep's benefits can vary by item within a learning context, the present study investigated whether the amount of sleep-dependent consolidation may vary across items based on the value of the to-be-learned material. For this purpose, we used a value-based learning paradigm in which participants studied words paired with point values. There were two groups; participants either studied the words in the evening and were tested after a 12 hr interval containing a full night of sleep, or studied the words in the morning and were tested after 12 hr of continuous daytime wake. Free recall (F(1,36) = 19.35, p<.001) and recognition accuracy (F(1,36) = 7.59, p = .01) for words were better following sleep relative to wake. However there was no difference in the linear increase in the probability of delayed recall with increasing word value for sleep and wake groups (p = .74). Thus, while encoding may vary with the value of the to-be-learned item, sleep-dependent consolidation does not.	\N	\N
24131042	This study examines the effects of cognitive reappraisal on the cardiovascular response to affective stimuli. Participants (N = 53) were shown affective images and were asked either to attend to the images, or to downregulate negative affect through reappraisal of negative images or upregulate positive affect through reappraisal of positive images while continuous measures of cardiovascular activity were recorded. Reappraisal of negative images was associated with lower total peripheral resistance and larger cardiac output in the prestimulus period, whereas reappraisal of positive images was associated with less pronounced decreases of heart rate, cardiac output, and mean blood pressure in the viewing period as compared to unregulated conditions. The results indicate that cognitive reappraisal engenders adaptive hemodynamic profiles both during anticipation and during viewing of affective images depending on their valence and the regulatory goal.	\N	\N
24131316	Associations are confusable when they share an item. For example, double-function pairs (with the form AB, BC) are harder to remember than control pairs. Although ambiguous pairs are more difficult on average, it is not clear whether memories for associations compete directly with one another (associative competition hypothesis), as assumed by models that incorporate associative symmetry (bidirectional associations). Alternatively, associative interference results might be explained away by: (a) item suppression hypothesis: competition only between memory for the two target items (A and C are both targets of B); (b) candidate competition hypothesis: The cue (B) retrieves two potential targets, A and C, which compete to be output. These alternative hypotheses could explain previous results in the related, AB/AC learning procedure. Our procedure included a large amount of interference that had to be resolved within a single study set. Participants studied sets of control (single-function) and double-function pairs and were asked to produce one or two associates, respectively, to cue items. Recall of AB and BC were negatively correlated and could not be explained away by item suppression or competition between simultaneously retrieved candidate items. Thus, competition can occur at the level of representation of associations, regardless of which item is the cue, consistent with associative symmetry.	\N	\N
24133250	Using multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA), we studied how distributed visual representations in human occipitotemporal cortex are modulated by attention and link their modulation to concurrent activity in frontal and parietal cortex. We detected similar occipitotemporal patterns during a simple visuoperceptual task and an attention-to-working-memory task in which one or two stimuli were cued before being presented among other pictures. Pattern strength varied from highest to lowest when the stimulus was the exclusive focus of attention, a conjoint focus, and when it was potentially distracting. Although qualitatively similar effects were seen inside regions relatively specialized for the stimulus category and outside, the former were quantitatively stronger. By regressing occipitotemporal pattern strength against activity elsewhere in the brain, we identified frontal and parietal areas exerting top-down control over, or reading information out from, distributed patterns in occipitotemporal cortex. Their interactions with patterns inside regions relatively specialized for that stimulus category were higher than those with patterns outside those regions and varied in strength as a function of the attentional condition. One area, the frontal operculum, was distinguished by selectively interacting with occipitotemporal patterns only when they were the focus of attention. There was no evidence that any frontal or parietal area actively inhibited occipitotemporal representations even when they should be ignored and were suppressed. Using MVPA to decode information within these frontal and parietal areas showed that they contained information about attentional context and/or readout information from occipitotemporal cortex to guide behavior but that frontal regions lacked information about category identity.	\N	\N
24134143	The belief that alcohol makes you cheerful is one of the main reasons for engaging in high-risk drinking, especially among young adults. The aim of the study was to investigate the association between blood alcohol content (BAC) and cheerfulness, focus distraction, and sluggishness among students attending high school parties. Participants included 230 students attending high school parties. BAC, measured by use of a breath analyzer, self-reported cheerfulness (on a score from 0 to 16), focus distraction (score from 0 to 8), and sluggishness (score from 0 to 4) were assessed several times during the party. Data were analyzed by means of linear regression, including robust standard errors and stratified on sex. For girls, cheerfulness increased up to a BAC of 0.113 g% and decreased at higher BACs. At BACs of 0.020, 0.050, 0.100, and 0.150 g% cheerfulness was 11.0 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 10.4 to 11.6), 12.4 (95% CI: 11.8 to 12.9), 13.5 (95% CI: 13.0 to 14.0), and 13.1 (95% CI: 11.9 to 14.4), respectively. For boys, the association was linear with an increase of 0.18 points in cheerfulness (95% CI: 0.01 to 0.36) for every 0.010 g% increase in BAC. Focus distraction increased with increasing BAC: 0.22 (95% CI: 0.16 to 0.28) and 0.24 (95% CI: 0.14 to 0.33) points for girls and boys, respectively, per 0.010 g% increase in BAC. The degree of sluggishness increased only slightly with increasing BAC with 0.02 (95% CI: 0.02 to 0.05) and 0.03 (95% CI: -0.01 to 0.07) points for every 0.010 g% increase in BAC for girls and boys, respectively. Cheerfulness increased up to a certain BAC value for girls, while it increased linearly for boys. Focus distraction increased with increasing BAC.	\N	\N
24162862	Saccadic and manual reactions to a peripherally presented target are facilitated by removing a central fixation stimulus shortly before a target onset (the gap effect). The present study examined the effects of removal of a visible and invisible fixation point on the saccadic gap effect and the manual gap effect. Participants were required to fixate a central fixation point and respond to a peripherally presented target as quickly and accurately as possible by making a saccade (Experiment 1) or pressing a corresponding key (Experiment 2). The fixation point was dichoptically presented, and visibility was manipulated by using binocular rivalry and continuous flash suppression technique. In both saccade and key-press tasks, removing the visible fixation strongly quickened the responses. Furthermore, the invisible fixation, which remained on the display but suppressed, significantly delayed the saccadic response. Contrarily, the invisible fixation had no effect on the manual task. These results indicate that partially different processes mediate the saccadic gap effect and the manual gap effect. In particular, unconscious processes might modulate an oculomotor-specific component of the saccadic gap effect, presumably via subcortical mechanisms.	\N	\N
24188061	Emotion regulation is generally thought to be a critical ingredient for successful interpersonal relationships. Ironically, few studies have investigated the link between how well spouses regulate emotion and how satisfied they are with their marriages. We utilized data from a 13-year, 3-wave longitudinal study of middle-aged (40-50 years old) and older (60-70 years old) long-term married couples, focusing on the associations between downregulation of negative emotion (measured during discussions of an area of marital conflict at Wave 1) and marital satisfaction (measured at all 3 waves). Downregulation of negative emotion was assessed by determining how quickly spouses reduced signs of negative emotion (in emotional experience, emotional behavior, and physiological arousal) after negative emotion events. Data were analyzed using actor-partner interdependence modeling. Findings showed that (a) greater downregulation of wives' negative experience and behavior predicted greater marital satisfaction for wives and husbands concurrently and (b) greater downregulation of wives' negative behavior predicted increases in wives' marital satisfaction longitudinally. Wives' use of constructive communication (measured between Waves 1 and 2) mediated the longitudinal associations. These results show the benefits of wives' downregulation of negative emotion during conflict for marital satisfaction and point to wives' constructive communication as a mediating pathway.	\N	\N
24189992	Recent research has suggested that the extrinsic cognitive load generated by performing a nonlinguistic visual task while perceiving speech increases listeners' reliance on lexical knowledge and decreases their capacity to perceive phonetic detail. In the present study, we asked whether this effect is accounted for better at a lexical or a sublexical level. The former would imply that cognitive load directly affects lexical activation but not perceptual sensitivity; the latter would imply that increased lexical reliance under cognitive load is only a secondary consequence of imprecise or incomplete phonetic encoding. Using the phoneme restoration paradigm, we showed that perceptual sensitivity decreases (i.e., phoneme restoration increases) almost linearly with the effort involved in the concurrent visual task. However, cognitive load had only a minimal effect on the contribution of lexical information to phoneme restoration. We concluded that the locus of extrinsic cognitive load on the speech system is perceptual rather than lexical. Mechanisms by which cognitive load increases tolerance to acoustic imprecision and broadens phonemic categories were discussed.	\N	\N
24210355	The neurodevelopmental disorder Williams syndrome (WS) has been associated with a social phenotype of hypersociability, non-social anxiety and an unusual attraction to faces. The current study uses eye tracking to explore attention allocation to emotionally expressive faces. Eye gaze and behavioural measures of anxiety and social reciprocity were investigated in adolescents and adults with WS when compared to typically developing individuals of comparable verbal mental age (VMA) and chronological age (CA). Results showed significant associations between high levels of behavioural anxiety and attention allocation away from the eye regions of threatening facial expressions in WS. The results challenge early claims of a unique attraction to the eyes in WS and suggest that individual differences in anxiety may mediate the allocation of attention to faces in WS.	\N	\N
24210745	The interpersonal theory of suicidal behavior proposes that fearlessness of death and physical pain insensitivity is a necessary requisite for self-inflicted lethal self-harm. Repeated experiences with painful and provocative events are supposed to cause an incremental increase in acquired capability. The present study examined whether playing a first-person shooter-game in contrast to a first-person racing game increases pain tolerance, a dimension of the acquired capability construct, and risk-taking behavior, a risk factor for developing acquired capability. N=81 male participants were randomly assigned to either play an action-shooter or a racing game before engaging in a game on risk-taking behavior and performing a cold pressor task (CPT). Participants exhibited higher pain tolerance after playing an action shooter game than after playing a racing game. Furthermore, playing an action shooter was generally associated with heightened risk-taking behavior. Group-differences were not attributable to the effects of the different types of games on self-reported mood and arousal. Overall these results indicate that action-shooter gaming alters pain tolerance and risk-taking behavior. Therefore, it may well be that long-term consumption of violent video games increases a person's capability to enact lethal self-harm.	\N	\N
24211372	Many theories of human sexual behavior assume that sexual stimuli obtain arousing properties through associative learning processes. It is widely accepted that classical conditioning contributes to the etiology of both normal and maladaptive human behaviors. Despite the hypothesized importance of basic learning processes in sexual behavior, research on classical conditioning of the sexual response in humans is scarce. In the present paper, animal studies and studies in humans on the role of pavlovian conditioning on sexual responses are reviewed. Animal research shows robust, direct effects of conditioning processes on partner- and place preference. On the contrast, the empirical research with humans in this area is limited and earlier studies within this field are plagued by methodological confounds. Although recent experimental demonstrations of human sexual conditioning are neither numerous nor robust, sexual arousal showed to be conditionable in both men and women. The present paper serves to highlight the major empirical findings and to renew the insight in how stimuli can acquire sexually arousing value. Hereby also related neurobiological processes in reward learning are discussed. Finally, the connections between animal and human research on the conditionability of sexual responses are discussed, and suggestions for future directions in human research are given.	\N	\N
24214215	Prospective memory (PM) refers to the ability to remember to do something in the future, either in response to an event (event-based) or after a certain amount of time has elapsed (time-based). While the distinction between event- and time-based PM is widely acknowledged in the literature, little is known about the processes they share and those they do not. This is particularly true concerning their brain substrates, as almost all neuroimaging studies so far have focused on event-based PM. We proposed a functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm assessing both event-based and time-based PM to 20 healthy young individuals. Analyses revealed that event- and time-based PM both induced activation in the posterior frontal and parietal cortices, and deactivation in the medial rostral prefrontal cortex. In addition, activation more specific to each condition, which may underlie differences in strategic monitoring, was highlighted. Thus, occipital areas were more activated during event-based PM, probably reflecting target-checking, while a network comprising the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the cuneus/precuneus and, to a lesser extent, the inferior parietal lobule, superior temporal gyrus, and the cerebellum, was more activated in time-based PM, which may reflect the involvement of time-estimation processes. These results confirm the allocation of attentional resources to the maintenance of intention for event-based and time-based PM, as well as the engagement of distinct mechanisms reflecting the monitoring strategies specific to each condition.	\N	\N
24215294	Even single words in isolation can evoke emotional reactions, but the mechanisms by which emotion is involved in automatic lexical processing are unclear. Previous studies using extremely similar materials and methods have yielded apparently incompatible patterns of results. In much previous work, however, words' emotional content is entangled with other non-emotional characteristics such as frequency of occurrence, familiarity and age of acquisition, all of which have potential consequences for lexical processing themselves. In the present study, the authors compare different models of emotion using the British Lexicon Project, a large-scale freely available lexical decision database. After controlling for the potentially confounding effects of non-emotional variables, a variety of statistical approaches revealed that emotional words, whether positive or negative, are processed faster than neutral words. This effect appears to be categorical rather than graded; is not modulated by emotional arousal; and is not limited to words explicitly referring to emotions. The authors suggest that emotional connotations facilitate processing due to the grounding of words' meanings in emotional experience.	\N	\N
24219022	People's ability to resist cognitive distraction is crucial in many situations. The present research examines individuals' resistance to attentional distraction under conditions of evaluative pressure. In a series of 4 studies, participants had to complete various attentional tasks while believing their intelligence was or was not under the scrutiny of an experimenter. Using a spatial cuing paradigm, Studies 1 through 3 demonstrated that feeling evaluated led participants to implement stronger feature-based attentional control, which resulted in more (or less) distraction when irrelevant information matched (did not match) the searched-for target. Study 4 ruled out the possibility that the above effects were due to voluntary shifts of attention and demonstrated that the control settings implemented under evaluative pressure resulted in stronger goal-contingent response priming. Thus, the way individuals relate to the task-the performance context in which they are-induces strong attentional selection biases. Altogether, the present findings highlight an overlooked form of top-down modulation of attention based on performance self-relevance. Implications for both the current models of attentional control and the current hypotheses on the impact of evaluative pressure on cognition, as well as the consequences for more complex performances, are discussed.	\N	\N
24219089	It has been suggested that individuals have an inherent acceptance of noise in the presence of speech, and that different acceptance of noise results in different hearing-aid (HA) use. The acceptable noise level (ANL) has been proposed for measurement of this property. It has been claimed that the ANL magnitude can predict hearing-aid use patterns. Many papers have been published reporting on different aspects of ANL, but none have challenged the predictive power of ANL. The purpose of this study was to discuss whether ANL can predict HA use and how more reliable ANL results can be obtained. Relevant literature regarding the ANL was found on Medline, Embase, and Google Scholar. Additional information was found as references in the included papers and through personal contacts, for instance when attending audiology conferences. Forty-five papers published in peer reviewed journals as well as a number of papers from trade journals, posters and oral presentations from audiology conventions. An inherent acceptance of noise in the presence of speech may exist, but no method for precise measurement of ANL is available. The ANL model for prediction of HA use has yet to be proven valid.	\N	\N
24229338	This study examined the impact of cognition on young children's ability to navigate a speech-generating device (SGD) with dynamic paging. Knowledge of which cognitive factors impact navigational skills could help clinicians select the most appropriate SGD for children who have complex communication needs. A total of 65 typically developing children aged 48-77 months were assessed using the Leiter International Performance Scale-Revised (Leiter-R) and the Automated Working Memory Assessment (AWMA). Although significant correlations were found between the ability to navigate an SGD (using a taxonomic organization) and all cognitive factors except for cognitive flexibility, a stepwise linear regression revealed that sustained attention, categorization, and fluid reasoning were the most pragmatic set of factors to predict navigational skills. Future studies are needed to further understand the factors that impact children's navigational skills.	\N	\N
24231166	This article describes the relationship between expressive communication impairments and common challenging behaviors in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Intellectual Disability. The communication challenges of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder/Intellectual Disability are described and several evidence-based intervention strategies are proposed to support communication so as to decrease challenging behaviors. Recommendations for practice are offered.	\N	\N
24231224	Individuals with chronic pain consider improved sleep to be one of the most important outcomes of treatment. Physical activity has been shown to have beneficial effects on sleep in the general population. Despite these findings, the physical activity-sleep relationship has not been directly examined in a sample of people with chronic pain. This study aimed to examine the association between objective daytime physical activity and subsequent objective sleep for individuals with chronic pain while controlling for pain and psychosocial variables. An observational, prospective, within-person study design was used. A clinical sample of 50 adults with chronic pain was recruited. Participation involved completing a demographic questionnaire followed by 5 days of data collection. Over this period, participants wore a triaxial accelerometer to monitor their daytime activity and sleep. Participants also carried a handheld computer that administered a questionnaire measuring pain, mood, catastrophizing, and stress 6 times throughout the day. The results demonstrated that higher fluctuations in daytime activity significantly predicted shorter sleep duration. Furthermore, higher mean daytime activity levels and a greater number of pain sites contributed significantly to the prediction of longer periods of wakefulness at night. The small sample size used in this study limits the generalizability of the findings. Missing data may have led to overestimations or underestimations of effect sizes, and additional factors that may be associated with sleep (eg, medication usage, environmental factors) were not measured. The results of this study suggest that engagement in high-intensity activity and high fluctuations in activity are associated with poorer sleep at night; hence, activity modulation may be a key treatment strategy to address sleep complaints in individuals with chronic pain.	\N	\N
24238471	Navigation without vision is a skill that is often employed in our daily lives, such as walking in the dark at night. Navigating without vision to a remembered target has previously been studied. However, little is known about the impact of age or obstacles on the attentional demands of a blind navigation task. This study examined the impacts of age and obstacles on reaction time (RT) and navigation precision during blind navigation in dual-task conditions. The aims were to determine the effects of age, obstacles, and auditory stimulus location on RT and navigation precision in a blind navigation task. Ten healthy young adults (24.5±2.5 years) and ten healthy older adults (69.5±2.9 years) participated in the study. Participants were asked to walk to a target located 8m ahead. In half the trials, the path was obstructed with hanging obstacles. Participants performed this task in the absence of vision, while executing a discrete RT task. Results demonstrated that older adults presented increased RT, linear distance travelled (LDT), and obstacle contact; that obstacle presence significantly increased RT compared to trials with no obstacles; and that an auditory stimulus emitted early versus late in the path increased LDT. Results suggest that the attentional demands of blind navigation are higher in older than young adults, as well as when obstacles are present. Furthermore, navigation precision is affected by age and when participants are distracted by the secondary task early in navigation, presumably because the secondary task interferes with path estimation.	\N	\N
24245500	Spatial symbols can guide attention to a specific location only when they convey information about both direction and distance. However, the spatial symbols that have been used in previous cuing studies only convey information about direction, but not distance. Consequently, previous studies have only demonstrated that spatial symbols can exert partial control over the guidance of attention to specific locations. The present study investigated whether spatial symbols can also exert a more complete form of control over the guidance of attention to specific locations by presenting symbolic cues that conveyed information about both direction and distance. The effects of each spatial dimension were isolated by varying the spatial validity of each dimension separately. Consistent with the notion of more complete control, the results of 4 experiments showed that observers routinely combined symbolic information about direction and distance to guide their attention to specific locations. Perhaps more importantly, the results also suggested that observers demonstrated greater expertise orienting in response to direction symbols, though this expertise was only observed when these symbols were both familiar and commonly used to orient attention in the outside world. These results extend current theories, and set a new standard for studying symbolic control.	\N	\N
24249815	Organophosphate exposures can affect children's neurodevelopment, possibly due to neurotoxicity induced by acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibition, and may affect boys more than girls. We tested the hypothesis that lower AChE activity is associated with lower neurobehavioral development among children living in Ecuadorian floricultural communities. In 2008, we examined 307 children (age: 4-9 years; 52% male) and quantified AChE activity and neurodevelopment in 5 domains: attention/executive functioning, language, memory/learning, visuospatial processing, and sensorimotor (NEPSY-II test). Associations were adjusted for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics and height-for-age, flower worker cohabitation, and hemoglobin concentration. Mean ± standard deviation AChE activity was 3.14 ± 0.49 U/mL (similar for both genders). The range of scores among neurodevelopment subtests was 5.9 to 10.7 U (standard deviation: 2.6-4.9 U). Girls had a greater mean attention/executive functioning domain score than boys. In boys only, there were increased odds ratios of low (<9th percentile) neurodevelopment among those in the lowest tertile versus the highest tertile of AChE activity (odds ratios: total neurodevelopment: 5.14 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.84 to 31.48]; attention/executive functioning domain: 4.55 [95% CI: 1.19 to 17.38], memory/learning domain: 6.03 [95% CI: 1.17 to 31.05]) after adjustment for socioeconomic and demographic factors, height-for-age, and hemoglobin. Within these domains, attention, inhibition and long-term memory subtests were most affected. Low AChE activity was associated with deficits in neurodevelopment, particularly in attention, inhibition, and memory in boys but not in girls. These critical cognitive skills affect learning and academic performance. Added precautions regarding secondary occupational pesticide exposure would be prudent.	\N	\N
24259568	Attention, the prioritization of goal-relevant stimuli, and expectation, the modulation of stimulus processing by probabilistic context, represent the two main endogenous determinants of visual cognition. Neural selectivity in visual cortex is enhanced for both attended and expected stimuli, but the functional relationship between these mechanisms is poorly understood. Here, we adjudicated between two current hypotheses of how attention relates to predictive processing, namely, that attention either enhances or filters out perceptual prediction errors (PEs), the PE-promotion model versus the PE-suppression model. We acquired fMRI data from category-selective visual regions while human subjects viewed expected and unexpected stimuli that were either attended or unattended. Then, we trained multivariate neural pattern classifiers to discriminate expected from unexpected stimuli, depending on whether these stimuli had been attended or unattended. If attention promotes PEs, then this should increase the disparity of neural patterns associated with expected and unexpected stimuli, thus enhancing the classifier's ability to distinguish between the two. In contrast, if attention suppresses PEs, then this should reduce the disparity between neural signals for expected and unexpected percepts, thus impairing classifier performance. We demonstrate that attention greatly enhances a neural pattern classifier's ability to discriminate between expected and unexpected stimuli in a region- and stimulus category-specific fashion. These findings are incompatible with the PE-suppression model, but they strongly support the PE-promotion model, whereby attention increases the precision of prediction errors. Our results clarify the relationship between attention and expectation, casting attention as a mechanism for accelerating online error correction in predicting task-relevant visual inputs.	\N	\N
24281563	Very few studies have investigated the effects of individual disorder-specific treatment of social phobia (SP) in adolescents. The objective of this study was to compare the effects of individual cognitive therapy for SP, group cognitive behavioural therapy (CBTG) and attentional placebo (AP) among adolescents with a primary diagnosis of SP. A randomized controlled design was used, and a total of 279 adolescents were assessed. Fifty-seven adolescents, between 13 and 16 years old, were allocated to individual cognitive therapy, CBTG or AP. The participants were assessed before treatment, at the end of treatment and at a 12-month follow-up using both self-report and a semi-structured interview. The individual cognitive therapy showed significant reductions in symptoms, impairment and diagnostic criteria both at the end of treatment and at the 12-month follow-up. Compared with CBTG and AP, the individual cognitive therapy group demonstrated significantly greater effects on both symptom reduction and impairment. There were no significant differences between CBTG and AP. In a direct comparison between the most commonly used treatments for adolescent SP, we found that individual therapy was the most effective, yielding better effects than both CBTG and AP.	\N	\N
24292879	The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of two 15-min naps on nurses who work at night in a three-shift system. Of the 15 nurses who were included as study subjects on a night shift, eight took two short naps (the Nap condition), and seven worked without taking a nap (the No-nap condition) during the night shift. We measured sublingual temperature and the bispectral index (BIS), obtained heart rate and heart rate variability measures from an electrocardiogram (ECG), and evaluated sleepiness and fatigue levels every hour using the Visual Analog Scale (VAS). Both subjective sleepiness and fatigue increased between 4:00 and 5:00, with no significant differences observed between the two groups. However, the low- to high-frequency ratio (LF/HF) in the Nap condition group was found to be significantly lower than in the No-nap condition group. Furthermore, a sudden, brief increase in HF values was observed in the No-nap condition group in the morning. The results of this study suggest that taking two short naps may effectively reduce tension and prevent a brief increase in HF values by suppressing sympathetic nervous activity in the morning.	\N	\N
24295123	Attentional network functioning in emotionally neutral conditions and self-reported attentional control (AC) were analysed as predictors of the tendency to engage in dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies. Diminished attentional orienting predicted an increased tendency to engage in brooding rumination, and enhanced alertness predicted a greater chance of suppression, beyond trait anxiety and self-reported AC, which were not predictive of either rumination or suppression. This is the first study to show that some forms of dysfunctional emotion regulation are related to the attentional network functioning in emotionally neutral conditions. Results are discussed in relation to regulatory temperament and anxiety-related attentional biases literature.	\N	\N
24297128	CPAP therapy has remained the standard of care for the treatment of sleep apnea for nearly 4 decades. Its overall effectiveness, however, has been limited by incomplete adherence despite many efforts to improve comfort. Conventional alternative therapies include oral appliances and upper airway surgeries. Recently, several innovative alternatives to CPAP have been developed. These novel approaches include means to increase arousal thresholds, electrical nerve stimulation, oral vacuum devices, and nasal expiratory resistive devices. We will review the physiologic mechanisms and the current evidence for these novel treatments.	\N	\N
24307489	Psychological pain may be helpful in conceptualizing suicidal behavior, in that high motivation to avoid pain combined with painful feelings may contribute to an increased risk of suicide. However, no experimental study has tested this hypothesis. The aim of the present study is to provide empirical evidence for the relationship between anhedonia, pain avoidance motivation, and suicidal ideation. The sample comprised 40 depressed outpatients and 20 healthy control subjects. All participants completed the Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation (BSS), Beck Depression Inventory, Psychache Scale, Three-Dimensional Psychological Pain Scale, the monetary incentive delay (MID), and affective incentive delay (AID) tasks. Based on BSS scores, clinical participants were divided into high suicidal ideation (HSI) and low suicidal ideation (LSI) groups. In the AID task, the HSI group had longer response times (RTs) under the reward condition than those under the punishment condition (p = .002). The LSI and control groups had shorter RTs under the reward condition compared with those under the neural condition (p <.001 and p = .008, respectively). The LSI group also had shorter RTs under the reward condition than under the punishment condition (p = .003). Pain arousal (r = -.33, p <.01) and BSS scores were significantly negatively correlated with differences in RTs between neutral and reward conditions. Pain avoidance (r = .35, p <.01) and BSS scores were positively correlated with differences in RTs between neutral and punishment conditions. The AID task was more sensitive than the MID task for the detection of participants' motivation in approaching hedonic experiences and avoiding pain. A suicidal mindset is manifested as decreased motivation to experience hedonia and increased motivation to avoid pain, which could be strong predictors of suicidal behavior.	\N	\N
24308752	Understanding the factors that contribute to health-related quality of life (HRQOL) is critical for developing the most appropriate interventions for improving or maintaining the HRQOL in polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) patients. This study sought to determine the most significant predictors of the HRQOL in patients with PCOS. This was a cross-sectional study of 300 women with PCOS that was carried out in Kashan, Iran. A sample of women with PCOS was entered into the study and completed the following questionnaires: the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, the Body Image Concern Inventory (BICI), the Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale score, the modified polycystic ovary syndrome health-related quality of life questionnaire, the Female Sexual Function Index. Both direct and indirect relationships among clinical severity, psychological status, self-esteem, body image, and sexual function as independent predictors of HRQOL were examined using structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis. By using the SEM, we simultaneously test a number of possible hypotheses concerning the interrelations among the predictors of HRQOL in PCOS patients. In relation with severity of PCOS, reproductive history and menstrual status explained a high proportion of the variance of clinical variables (factor loading 0.37 and 0.34, respectively). The highest effect on HRQL was exerted by indirect effect of clinical factor (β = 0.90), self-esteem (β = 1.12), body image (β = 1.06), and sexual function (β = 0.26) that influenced negatively HRQOL. The infertility and menstrual domains were the most affected areas of HRQOL. In relation with sexual dysfunction, the most affected domains were desire and arousal. The highest effect of PCOS symptoms on HRQOL impairment among patients was exerted by self-esteem, body image, and sexual dysfunction. With regard to HRQOL in clinical routine, we conclude these mediating factors should be taken into consideration and adequately treated if present.	\N	\N
24308770	The present study addressed the ecological validity of the individual-focused experimental paradigm in sex research. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of partner presence vs. absence in the laboratory testing situation, and of manipulation of attentional focus, on genital and subjective sexual arousal of healthy women and men. Sexually functional heterosexual men (n = 12) and women (n = 12) and their partners participated in this study. During partner presence, the partner sat opposite to the participant; self-focused attention was experimentally manipulated by introducing, respectively, a semi-reflecting glass pane, and a wall-mounted camera. Perceived state self-focused attention and genital and subjective sexual arousal during presentation of audiovisual erotic film stimuli were assessed. Partner presence resulted in higher perceived self-focus (η(p)(2) = 0.22) and lower genital responses to erotic stimulation (η(p)(2) = 0.21). The interaction of partner presence and increased self-focused attention differentially affected genital arousal in female and male participants (η(p)(2) = 0.38). The mean genital response in men was lower during private self-focus than during non-self-focus with the partner present but was higher during private self-focus with the the partner absent (η(p)(2) = 0.23). The genital response in women to public self-focus was lower than to private self-focus and to non-self-focus with their partner present (η(p)(2) = 0.36). With the partner absent, the genital response in women to private self-focus was lower than to non-self-focus (η(p)(2) = 0.23). Retrospective subjective arousal of women was higher with partner present (M = 3.2) than with partner absent (M = 2.9), whereas men reported higher retrospective subjective arousal with their partner absent (M = 3.5) than present (M = 3.1). These findings suggest that mere presence of the partner impacts the sexual response differentially in women and men. Enhancing the ecological validity of the individual-based laboratory paradigm for sex research warrants closer examination in future research.	\N	\N
24311058	The change blindness paradigm, in which participants often fail to notice substantial changes in a scene, is a popular tool for studying scene perception, visual memory, and the link between awareness and attention. Some of the most striking and popular examples of change blindness have been demonstrated with digital photographs of natural scenes; in most studies, however, much simpler displays, such as abstract stimuli or "free-floating" objects, are typically used. Although simple displays have undeniable advantages, natural scenes remain a very useful and attractive stimulus for change blindness research. To assist researchers interested in using natural-scene stimuli in change blindness experiments, we provide here a step-by-step tutorial on how to produce changes in natural-scene images with a freely available image-processing tool (GIMP). We explain how changes in a scene can be made by deleting objects or relocating them within the scene or by changing the color of an object, in just a few simple steps. We also explain how the physical properties of such changes can be analyzed using GIMP and MATLAB (a high-level scientific programming tool). Finally, we present an experiment confirming that scenes manipulated according to our guidelines are effective in inducing change blindness and demonstrating the relationship between change blindness and the physical properties of the change and inter-individual differences in performance measures. We expect that this tutorial will be useful for researchers interested in studying the mechanisms of change blindness, attention, or visual memory using natural scenes.	\N	\N
24321032	Subjects performed Sternberg-type memory recognition tasks (Sternberg paradigm) in four experiments. Category-instance names were used as learning and testing materials. Sternberg's original experiments demonstrated a linear relation between reaction time (RT) and memory-set size (MSS). A few later studies found no relation, and other studies found a nonlinear relation (logarithmic) between the two variables. These deviations were used as evidence undermining Sternberg's serial scan theory. This study identified two confounding variables in the fixed-set procedure of the paradigm (where multiple probes are presented at test for a learned memory set) that could generate a MSS RT function that was either flat or logarithmic rather than linearly increasing. These two confounding variables were task-switching cost and repetition priming. The former factor worked against smaller memory sets and in favour of larger sets whereas the latter factor worked in the opposite way. Results demonstrated that a null or a logarithmic RT-to-MSS relation could be the artefact of the combined effects of these two variables. The Sternberg paradigm has been used widely in memory research, and a thorough understanding of the subtle methodological pitfalls is crucial. It is suggested that a varied-set procedure (where only one probe is presented at test for a learned memory set) is a more contamination-free procedure for measuring the MSS effects, and that if a fixed-set procedure is used, it is worthwhile examining the RT function of the very first trials across the MSSs, which are presumably relatively free of contamination by the subsequent trials.	\N	\N
24333280	During free viewing visual search, observers often refixate the same locations several times before and after target detection is reported with a button press. We analyzed the rate of microsaccades in the sequence of refixations made during visual search and found two important components. One related to the visual content of the region being fixated; fixations on targets generate more microsaccades and more microsaccades are generated for those targets that are more difficult to disambiguate. The other empathizes non-visual decisional processes; fixations containing the button press generate more microsaccades than those made on the same target but without the button press. Pupil dilation during the same refixations reveals a similar modulation. We inferred that generic sympathetic arousal mechanisms are part of the articulated complex of perceptual processes governing fixational eye movements.	\N	\N
24345636	The formation of associations between items and their context has been proposed to rely on mechanisms distinct from those supporting memory for a single item. Although emotional experiences can profoundly affect memory, our understanding of how it interacts with different aspects of memory remains unclear. We performed three experiments to examine the effects of emotion on memory for items and their associations. By presenting neutral and negative items with background contexts, Experiment 1 demonstrated that item memory was facilitated by emotional affect, whereas memory for an associated context was reduced. In Experiment 2, arousal was manipulated independently of the memoranda, by a threat of shock, whereby encoding trials occurred under conditions of threat or safety. Memory for context was equally impaired by the presence of negative affect, whether induced by threat of shock or a negative item, relative to retrieval of the context of a neutral item in safety. In Experiment 3, participants were presented with neutral and negative items as paired associates, including all combinations of neutral and negative items. The results showed both above effects: compared to a neutral item, memory for the associate of a negative item (a second item here, context in Experiments 1 and 2) is impaired, whereas retrieval of the item itself is enhanced. Our findings suggest that negative affect impairs associative memory while recognition of a negative item is enhanced. They support dual-processing models in which negative affect or stress impairs hippocampal-dependent associative memory while the storage of negative sensory/perceptual representations is spared or even strengthened.	\N	\N
24352689	Despite a growing acceptance that attention and memory interact, and that attention can be focused on an active internal mental representation (i.e., reflective attention), there has been a paucity of work focusing on reflective attention to 'sound objects' (i.e., mental representations of actual sound sources in the environment). Further research on the dynamic interactions between auditory attention and memory, as well as its degree of neuroplasticity, is important for understanding how sound objects are represented, maintained, and accessed in the brain. This knowledge can then guide the development of training programs to help individuals with attention and memory problems. This review article focuses on attention to memory with an emphasis on behavioral and neuroimaging studies that have begun to explore the mechanisms that mediate reflective attentional orienting in vision and more recently, in audition. Reflective attention refers to situations in which attention is oriented toward internal representations rather than focused on external stimuli. We propose four general principles underlying attention to short-term memory. Furthermore, we suggest that mechanisms involved in orienting attention to visual object representations may also apply for orienting attention to sound object representations.	\N	\N
24367795	Disturbed sleep is a common problem in both chronic pain and major depressive disorder (MDD). Moreover, many patients with chronic pain are depressed. To examine the effects of depression on the sleep behaviour of chronic pain patients by comparing patients who did or did not meet diagnostic criteria for MDD. A total of 60 patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain underwent structured diagnostic interviews for MDD and insomnia, and completed questionnaires assessing pain severity, disability, sleep quality, beliefs and attitudes about sleep, and sleep hygiene. For four consecutive days, they also completed a sleep diary, and reported on sleep hygiene practices and presleep arousal. Thirty-three patients (55%) met diagnostic criteria for MDD, most of whom (n=32 [97%]) also fulfilled criteria for insomnia disorder. Insomnia was also common among patients without MDD (21 of 27&nbsp;[78%]). Participants with MDD had higher self-reports of pain, disability, dysfunctional beliefs about sleep, and, on a prospective basis, greater presleep arousal and poorer sleep hygiene. However, diary assessments of specific sleep parameters (eg, sleep onset latency, total sleep time, sleep efficiency) did not differ between the groups. Chronic pain patients with comorbid MDD exhibited more dysfunctional beliefs about sleep, poorer sleep hygiene practices and greater presleep arousal; however, diary-recorded sleep characteristics may not differ from those of patients without MDD. Chronic pain itself may disturb sleep so extensively that MDD introduces little additive effect. MDD in chronic pain may be related to the cognitive and behavioural aspects of insomnia, rather than to an incremental disturbance in the initiation or maintenance of sleep.	\N	\N
24368220	Visual marking refers to the phenomenon in which old items in a visual search are excluded from the search when new items appear in the visual field. Visual marking may result from inhibition of irrelevant information at the location of old items before new items appear. Moreover, sensitivity to increments in contrast at the old locations has been shown to be lower than that to increments at the new locations. We used equivalent noise analysis to examine whether the reduction in sensitivity is the result of an increase in internal noise or a decrease in calculation efficiency. Following a search in which reaction time was measured, participants were asked to indicate whether a Gaussian luminance blob was present. Parameters estimated from the threshold-versus-noise contrast function indicated that calculation efficiency at old locations was lower than that at new locations, and internal noise did not increase at old locations but rather decreased slightly. Thus, the reduction in sensitivity at old locations is attributable a decrease in calculation efficiency. These data suggest that an inhibitory template for visual marking may benefit visual search by diverting limited attentional resources, such as time and resolution, away from previewed locations and reserving them for the target search.	\N	\N
24372764	The sympathetic nervous system and children's sleep serve critical arousal regulation functions. Shortened pre-ejection period, a reliable indirect index of greater sympathetic nervous system activity, has been associated with reduced sleep duration and quality in adults, but limited evidence exists in children regarding associations between pre-ejection period and sleep. We examined relations between pre-ejection period reactivity in response to a laboratory-based stressor and multiple parameters of actigraphy-based sleep duration and quality in children. The sample included 123 boys and 112 girls [mean age = 11.31 years, standard deviation (SD) = 0.63 years]. Controlling for body mass index, sex and pre-ejection period baseline, increased sympathetic nervous system reactivity, indexed by a lower level of pre-ejection period during the challenge than the baseline, was associated with worse sleep quality indicated by lower sleep efficiency, greater sleep activity and greater long wake episodes. The findings add to a small literature on relations between sympathetic nervous system functioning and children's sleep, suggesting that poor sleep quality is related to dysregulation of this stress response system.	\N	\N
24374558	The visual system is exquisitely adapted to the task of extracting conceptual information from visual input with every new eye fixation, three or four times a second. Here we assess the minimum viewing time needed for visual comprehension, using rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) of a series of six or 12 pictures presented at between 13 and 80 ms per picture, with no interstimulus interval. Participants were to detect a picture specified by a name (e.g., smiling couple) that was given just before or immediately after the sequence. Detection improved with increasing duration and was better when the name was presented before the sequence, but performance was significantly above chance at all durations, whether the target was named before or only after the sequence. The results are consistent with feedforward models, in which an initial wave of neural activity through the ventral stream is sufficient to allow identification of a complex visual stimulus in a single forward pass. Although we discuss other explanations, the results suggest that neither reentrant processing from higher to lower levels nor advance information about the stimulus is necessary for the conscious detection of rapidly presented, complex visual information.	\N	\N
24379080	Unlike men, heterosexual women's genital arousal is gender nonspecific, such that heterosexual women show relatively similar genital arousal to sexual stimuli depicting men and women but typically report greater subjective arousal to male stimuli. Based on the ovulatory-shift hypothesis-that women show a mid-cycle shift in preferences towards more masculine features during peak fertility-we predicted that heterosexual women's genital and subjective arousal would be gender specific (more arousal towards male stimuli) during peak fertility. Twenty-two naturally-cycling heterosexual women were assessed during the follicular and luteal phases of their menstrual cycle to examine the role of menstrual cycle phase in gender specificity of genital and subjective sexual arousal. Menstrual cycle phase was confirmed with salivary hormone assays; phase at the time of first testing was counterbalanced. Women's genital and subjective sexual arousal patterns were gender nonspecific, irrespective of cycle phase. Cycle phase at first testing session did not influence genital or subjective arousal in the second testing session. Similar to previous research, women's genital and subjective sexual arousal varied with cues of sexual activity, but neither genital nor subjective sexual arousal varied by gender cues, with the exception of masturbation stimuli, where women showed higher genital arousal to the stimuli depicting male compared to female actors. These data suggest that menstrual cycle phase does not influence the gender specificity of heterosexual women's genital and subjective sexual arousal.	\N	\N
24382820	This study examined correlations between surgical recommendations based on either drug-induced sleep endoscopy (DISE) or common awake examination methods in patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS). Prospective, blinded, clinical trial at a university hospital. An otorhinolaryngologist designed surgical plans for patients with OSAS after clinical examination, lateral cephalometry, the Müller maneuver, and Friedman staging. A second otorhinolaryngologist blinded to the previous plans made surgical recommendations after DISE. A third person tested agreement between the two sets of plans using Cohen's kappa statistic and the chi-squared test. One hundred and sixty-two patients (15 females, 147 males) completed the protocol. Good correlation was observed between DISE and Friedman staging regarding recommendations for isolated oropharyngeal or multilevel surgery (kappa = 0.61). Correlations between DISE and clinical examination, lateral cephalometry, and the Müller maneuver regarding surgical procedures on specific structures contributing to upper airway obstruction ranged from fair for velum/tonsil surgery (k = 0.41-0.60) to poor (k = 0.01-0.20) for tongue-base, lateral pharyngeal wall, and epiglottal surgery. The most informative value was DISE versus clinical evaluation, lateral cephalometry, and the Müller maneuver, which changed surgical recommendations concerning the structures contributing to hypopharyngeal or laryngeal obstruction in > 40% of patients. Our results indicate that DISE provides more information about the anatomical locations and pattern of obstruction, particularly regarding the specific structures contributing to hypopharyngeal and laryngeal obstruction. DISE changes surgical decision making compared to awake evaluation methods.	\N	\N
24387832	The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of intention to fall asleep on sleep quality in good sleepers using polysomnographic and subjective nap parameters. We hypothesized that high intention to sleep would lead to arousal, worsening sleep quality. A counterbalanced 2 × 2 experimental design with one intra-individual (neutral versus motivating instruction) and one inter-individual (instruction sequence) variable was used. Thirty-three good sleepers (22 females; mean age: 24.1 ± 8.4 years) each attended two 1-h daytime polysomnographic recording sessions in the laboratory. When providing motivating instruction, the experimenter insisted on the importance of falling asleep as quickly as possible and promised a financial reward. Compared with neutral instruction, motivating instruction was associated with increased waking after sleep onset, number of awakenings and arousal index during napping. No relationship between instruction and subjective nap appraisal was found. The effect of high intention on sleep fragmentation remained significant after controlling for habitual napping, depression, anxiety and sleepiness. Thus, our findings suggest that high intention to fall asleep worsened sleep quality, especially in terms of sleep fragmentation, in good sleepers.	\N	\N
24390823	Attention can modulate processing of visual input according to task-relevant features, even as early as approximately 100 ms after stimulus presentation. In the present study, event-related potential and behavioral data revealed that inhibition of distractor features, rather than activation of target features, is the primary driver of early feature-based selection in human observers. This discovery of inhibition consistent with task goals during early visual processing suggests that inhibition plays a much larger role at an earlier stage of target selection than previously recognized. It also highlights the importance of understanding the role of inhibition (in addition to activation) in attention.	\N	\N
24405496	To assess cognitive function in children and adolescents presenting with acute conversion symptoms. Fifty-seven participants aged 8.5-18 years (41 girls and 16 boys) with conversion symptoms and 57 age- and gender-matched healthy controls completed the IntegNeuro neurocognitive battery, an estimate of intelligence, and self-report measures of subjective emotional distress. Participants with conversion symptoms showed poorer performance within attention, executive function, and memory domains. Poorer performance was reflected in more errors on specific tests: Switching of Attention (t(79) = 2.17, p = .03); Verbal Interference (t(72) = 2.64, p = .01); Go/No-Go (t(73) = 2.20, p = .03); Memory Recall and Verbal Learning (interference errors for memory recall; t(61) = 3.13, p < .01); and short-delay recall (t(75) = 2.05, p < .01) and long-delay recall (t(62) = 2.24, p = .03). Poorer performance was also reflected in a reduced span of working memory on the Digit Span Test for both forward recall span (t(103) = -3.64, p < .001) and backward recall span (t(100) = -3.22, p < .01). There was no difference between participants and controls on IQ estimate (t(94) = -589, p = .56), and there was no correlation between cognitive function and perceived distress. Children and adolescents with acute conversion symptoms have a reduced capacity to manipulate and retain information, to block interfering information, and to inhibit responses, all of which are required for effective attention, executive function, and memory.	\N	\N
24411524	The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that dual-hemisphere transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) could improve performance in a tactile spatial discriminative task, compared with uni-hemisphere or sham tDCS. Nine healthy adults participated in this double-blind, sham-controlled, and cross-over design study. The performance in a grating orientation task (GOT) in the right index finger was evaluated before, during, immediately after and 30min after the dual-hemisphere, uni-hemisphere (1mA, 20min), or sham tDCS (1mA, 30s) over S1. In the dual-hemisphere and sham conditions, anodal tDCS was applied over the left S1, and cathodal tDCS was applied over the right S1. In the uni-hemisphere condition, anodal tDCS was applied over the left S1, and cathodal tDCS was applied over the contralateral supraorbital front. The percentage of correct responses on the GOT during dual-hemisphere tDCS was significantly higher than that in the uni-hemisphere or sham tDCS conditions when the grating width was set to 0.75mm (all p<0.05). Dual-hemisphere tDCS over S1 improved performance in a tactile spatial discrimination task in healthy volunteers. Dual-hemisphere tDCS may be a useful strategy to improve sensory function in patients with sensory dysfunctions.	\N	\N
24411652	The main objective was to explore early-age conditions associated to Substance Use Disorders (SUD) in adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD); secondly, to determine which of those conditions are specific to ADHD subjects; and finally, to compare ADHD and non-ADHD subjects in terms of SUD lifetime prevalence and professional, social and personal adjustment. Comparison between ADHD adults with (n=236) and without lifetime SUD (n=309) regarding clinical characteristics of ADHD, externalization disorders, temperamental traits, environmental factors, academic history and family psychiatric history; secondly, ADHD subjects were compared to a non-ADHD group (n=177) concerning those variables. The following variables were found to be positively associated to SUD in ADHD subjects: ADHD severity, CD and ODD comorbidities, temperamental characteristics ("fearful", "accident prone" and "frequent temper tantrums"), "sexual abuse", "be suspended from school", family history of SUD and ADHD, and male gender; ADHD inattentive subtype and "fearful" were inversely associated to SUD. From those variables, "frequent temper tantrums" was also associated to SUD in non-ADHD subjects. ADHD subjects had higher prevalence of lifetime SUD and greater professional, social and personal impairment than non-ADHD subjects. Findings suggest a significant association between ADHD, SUD and early-age conditions, such as CD and ODD comorbidity; other variables from childhood, namely, ADHD subtype, temper characteristics ("fearful", "accident prone"), "sexual abuse", "be suspended from school" and family history of ADHD are associated to SUD in ADHD subjects, but not in non-ADHD subjects. Moreover, this study confirms both the higher prevalence of lifetime SUD and greater professional, social and personal impairment in ADHD subjects than in non-ADHD subjects.	\N	\N
24415407	We present the German adaptation of the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW; Bradley & Lang in Technical Report No. C-1. Gainsville: University of Florida, Center for Research in Psychophysiology). A total of 1,003 Words-German translations of the ANEW material-were rated on a total of six dimensions: The classic ratings of valence, arousal, and dominance (as in the ANEW corpus) were extended with additional arousal ratings using a slightly different scale (see BAWL: Võ et al. in Behavior Research Methods 41: 531-538, 2009; Võ, Jacobs, & Conrad in Behavior Research Methods 38: 606-609, 2006), along with ratings of imageability and potency. Measures of several objective psycholinguistic variables (different types of word frequency counts, grammatical class, number of letters, number of syllables, and number of orthographic neighbors) for the words were also added, so as to further facilitate the use of this new database in psycholinguistic research. These norms can be downloaded as supplemental materials with this article.	\N	\N
24422248	Patients with extinction fail to report a contralesional stimulus when it is presented at the same time as an ipsilesional stimulus, and patients with unilateral neglect fail to report a contralesional stimulus even when there is no competing ipsilesional stimulus. Whereas extinction and neglect are common following stroke, the related phenomenon of anti-extinction is rare--there are four cases of anti-extinction in the literature, and all four cases demonstrated anti-extinction in the visual modality. Patients with anti-extinction do report a contralesional stimulus when it is presented at the same time as an ipsilesional stimulus; but, like patients with neglect, they fail to report a contralesional stimulus when there is no competing ipsilesional stimulus. We present the first case ofanti-extinction in the tactile modality.	\N	\N
24427146	Researchers studying the emotional impact of music have not traditionally been concerned with the principled relationship between form and function in evolved animal signals. The acoustic structure of musical forms is related in important ways to emotion perception, and thus research on non-human animal vocalizations is relevant for understanding emotion in music. Musical behavior occurs in cultural contexts that include many other coordinated activities which mark group identity, and can allow people to communicate within and between social alliances. The emotional impact of music might be best understood as a proximate mechanism serving an ultimately social function. Recent work reveals intimate connections between properties of certain animal signals and evocative aspects of human music, including (1) examinations of the role of nonlinearities (e.g., broadband noise) in non-human animal vocalizations, and the analogous production and perception of these features in human music, and (2) an analysis of group musical performances and possible relationships to non-human animal chorusing and emotional contagion effects. Communicative features in music are likely due primarily to evolutionary by-products of phylogenetically older, but still intact communication systems. But in some cases, such as the coordinated rhythmic sounds produced by groups of musicians, our appreciation and emotional engagement might be driven by an adaptive social signaling system. Future empirical work should examine human musical behavior through the comparative lens of behavioral ecology and an adaptationist cognitive science. By this view, particular coordinated sound combinations generated by musicians exploit evolved perceptual response biases - many shared across species - and proliferate through cultural evolutionary processes.	\N	\N
24448520	Contextual cueing reflects a memory-based attentional guidance process that develops through repeated exposure to displays in which a target location has been consistently paired with a specific context. In two experiments, we compared 20 younger children's (6-7 years old), 20 older children's (9-10 years old), and 20 young adults' (18-21 years old) abilities to acquire contextual cueing effects from displays in which half of the distracters predicted the location of the target and half did not. Across experiments, we varied the similarity between the predictive and nonpredictive distracters and the target. In Experiment 1, the predictive distracters were visually similar to the target and dissimilar from the nonpredictive distracters. In Experiment 2, the nonpredictive distracters were also similar to the target and predictive distracters. All three age groups exhibited contextual cueing in Experiment 1, although the effect was not as strong for the younger children relative to older children and adults. All participants exhibited weaker contextual cueing effects in Experiment 2, with the younger children not exhibiting significant contextual cueing at all. Apparently, when search processes could not be guided to the predictive distracters on the basis of salient stimulus features, younger children in particular experienced difficulty in implicitly identifying and using aspects of the context to facilitate with the acquisition of contextual cueing effects.	\N	\N
24451416	Mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI) are common, but their outcomes are not very well known. A prospective study was conducted in Annecy hospital, France (CHRA), to assess the incidence of disorders 6 months after the injury and to identify risk factors for persistent disorders. All patients admitted to the emergency department after a mild brain injury between February 2006 and July 2007 were included. They were contacted by telephone 6 months later to detect (by questionnaire) the presence of persistent disorders. Patients reporting disorders were referred to the l ocal brain injury centre for a follow-up check-up. Ninety three of the 795 patients contacted reported disorders: memory disorders (80%), sleep disorders (79%), headaches (65%), irritability (64%), speech disorders (64%) and concentration disorders (62%). Disorders at 6 months were independently associated with age, female gender, presence of headache at the initial examination and CT scan performed in the emergency department. The disorders reported in this study were consistent with the results of previous studies. As these disorders are usually nonspecific, a case-control study or an exposed-unexposed study would be necessary to determine whether or not these disorders are linked to mTBI.	\N	\N
24462326	To assess sexual function among women via self-evaluation of female sexual dysfunction (FSD) and to determine risk factors for FSD among Korean women. A preliminary questionnaire-based study in Ansan, Korea, enrolled 935 women between January and December 2010. Participants completed the Female Sexual Function Index and a self-administered survey. Participants were divided into 2 groups: in the recognized group (RG), women were aware of their sexual problems; in the unrecognized group (URG), women were not. The prevalence of FSD was 46.1% (n=431). The prevalence of recognized FSD was 21.5% (n=201), whereas that of unrecognized FSD was 24.6% (n=230) Younger women showed a significantly more positive attitude toward sex compared with older individuals (P<0.001). Sexual desire, sexual arousal, dyspareunia, lubrication, and sexual satisfaction were factors of sexual dysfunction in the RG. In the URG, sexual arousal, sexual desire, orgasm, dyspareunia, and sexual satisfaction were identified as significant factors. Women in the RG had positive attitudes toward sex, whereas those in the URG had negative attitudes. Women who were unsatisfied with their sexual life did not express a need for treatment. The sociocultural background of Korean women should be considered in the diagnosis and treatment of FSD.	\N	\N
24462384	The standard of care for pediatric patients with ependymoma involves postoperative radiation therapy. Prior research suggests that conformal radiation therapy (CRT) is associated with relative sparing of cognitive and academic functioning, but little is known about the effect of CRT on emotional and behavioral functioning. A total of 113 patients with pediatric ependymoma underwent CRT using photons as part of their enrollment on an institutional trial. Patients completed annual evaluations of neurocognitive functioning during the first 5 years after CRT. Emotional and behavioral functioning was assessed via the Child Behavior Checklist. Before CRT, emotional and behavioral functioning were commensurate with those of the normative population and within normal limits. After 5 years, means remained within normal limits but were significantly below the normative mean. Linear mixed models revealed a significant increase in attention problems over time. These problems were associated with age at diagnosis/CRT, tumor location, and extent of resection. A higher-than-expected incidence of school problems was present at all assessment points after baseline. The use of photon CRT for ependymoma is associated with relatively stable emotional and behavioral functioning during the first 5 years after treatment. The exception is an increase in attention problems. Results suggest that intervening earlier in the survivorship period-during the first year posttreatment-may be beneficial.	\N	\N
24473941	This internet-based study provided descriptive information and exploratory analyses on 1,795 male and 139 female members of the Adult Baby/Diaper Lover (ABDL) community. Based on prior research, some research questions focused on the degree to which ABDL behavior was associated with negative mood states, parental relationships, and attachment style. Based on clinical experience, a second research question focused on discerning two possible subgroups within the ABDL community: persons focused on role play behavior and persons who were primarily interested in sexual arousal in their ABDL behavior. The results showed modest support for the former research questions, but notable support for the last research question. Because of some overlap between the two hypothesized subgroups, additional subgroups may exist. Males in the ABDL community identified their ABDL interests earlier than females and these males may be more focused on sexual aspects of ABDL practices. Both males and females perceived being dominated as important in their ABDL behavior. Most participants were comfortable with their ABDL behavior and reported few problems. ABDL behavior may represent a sexual subculture that is not problematic for most of its participants.	\N	\N
24475313	Illusory line motion (ILM) refers to a motion illusion in which a flash at one end of a bar prior to the bar's instantaneous presentation or removal results in the percept of motion. While some theories attribute the origin of ILM to attention or early perceptual mechanisms, others have proposed that ILM results from impletion mechanisms that reinterpret the static bar as one in motion. The current functional magnetic resonance imaging study examined participants while they made decisions about the direction of motion in which a bar appeared to be removed. Preceding the instantaneous removal of the bar with a flash at one end resulted in a motion percept away from the flash. If this flash and the bar's removal overlapped in time, it appeared that the bar was removed towards the flash (reverse ILM). Independent of the motion type, brain responses indicated activations in areas associated with motion (MT+), endogenous and exogenous attention (intraparietal sulcus, frontal eye fields, and ventral frontal cortex), and response selection (ACC). ILM was associated with lower percept scores and higher activations in ACC relative to real motion, but no differences in shape-selective areas emerged. This pattern of brain activation is consistent with the attentional gradient model or bottom-up accounts of ILM in preference to impletion.	\N	\N
24490947	The human visual system is continuously confronted with dynamic visual input. One challenge that the visual system must solve, therefore, is recognizing when two distinct objects have appeared at a given location despite their brief presentation and rapid succession, that is, temporal object segmentation. Here we examined the role of magnocellular neurons in this process. We measured temporal object segmentation via object substitution masking (OSM), which reflects the failure to distinguish the target and mask as distinct objects through time. We isolated the selective role of magnocellular neurons by comparing performance under conditions of pulsed luminance pedestals, which are designed to saturate the magnocellular response, with that in a steady-pedestal condition that leaves both magnocellular and parvocellular channels available to process the target. Across two experiments, we found that OSM magnitude was enhanced under pulsed-pedestal conditions, in which the magnocellular response was impaired. This indicates that magnocellular neurons contribute to temporal object segmentation. Given that temporal object segmentation has consequences for which stimuli are consciously perceived, this demonstrates a functional mechanism via which magnocellular neurons contribute to determining the contents conscious perception. Implications for models of specialization of dorsal and ventral cortical streams are discussed.	\N	\N
24492883	A physiologically based mathematical model of sleep-wake cycles is used to examine the effects of shift rotation interval (RI) (i.e., the number of days spent on each shift) on sleepiness and circadian dynamics on forward rotating 3-shift schedules. The effects of the schedule start time on the mean shift sleepiness are also demonstrated but are weak compared to the effects of RI. The dynamics are studied for a parameter set adjusted to match a most common natural sleep pattern (i.e., sleep between 0000 and 0800) and for common light conditions (i.e., 350 lux of shift lighting, 200 lux of daylight, 100 lux of artificial lighting during nighttime, and 0 lux during sleep). Mean shift sleepiness on a rotating schedule is found to increase with RI, reach maximum at intermediate RI=6 d, and then decrease. Complete entrainment to shifts within the schedules is not achieved at RI≤10 d. However, circadian oscillations synchronize to the rotation cycles, with RI=1,2 d and RI≥6 d demonstrating regular periodic changes of the circadian rhythm. At rapid rotation, circadian phase stays within a small 4-h interval, whereas slow rotation leads to around-the-clock transitions of the circadian phase with constantly delayed sleep times. Schedules with RI=3-5 d are not able to entrain the circadian rhythms, even in the absence of external circadian disturbances like social commitments and days off. To understand the circadian dynamics on the rotating shift schedules, a shift response map is developed, showing the direction of circadian change (i.e., delay or advance) depending on the relation between the shift start time and actual circadian phase. The map predicts that the un-entrained dynamics come from multiple transitions between advance and delay behavior on the shifts in the schedules. These are primarily caused by the imbalance between the amount of delay and advance on the different shift types within the schedule. Finally, it is argued that shift response maps can aid in the development of shift schedules with desired circadian characteristics.	\N	\N
24493837	Numerous studies have investigated the neural substrates supporting cognitive reappraisal, identifying the importance of cognitive control processes implemented by prefrontal cortex (PFC). This study examined how valence and attention affect the processes used for cognitive reappraisal by asking participants to passively view or to cognitively reappraise positive and negative images with full or divided attention. When participants simply viewed these images, results revealed few effects of valence or attention. However, when participants engaged in reappraisal, there was a robust effect of valence, with the reappraisal of negative relative to positive images associated with more widespread activation, including within regions of medial and lateral PFC. There also was an effect of attention, with more lateral PFC recruitment when regulating with full attention and more medial PFC recruitment when regulating with divided attention. Within two regions of medial PFC and one region of ventrolateral PFC, there was an interaction between valence and attention: in these regions, divided attention reduced activity during reappraisal of positive but not negative images. Critically, participants continued to report reappraisal success even during the Divided Attention condition. These results suggest multiple routes to successful cognitive reappraisal, depending upon image valence and the availability of attentional resources.	\N	\N
24498297	Cognitive impairment is associated with a negative prognosis in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), as well as with clinical specificity. We investigate neuropsychological function in ALS patients without known genetic mutations in a Korean tertiary clinic. Three hundred and eighteen patients were enrolled in a prospective longitudinal cohort from September 2008 to February 2012. At the time of diagnosis of sporadic ALS, we carried out genetic and comprehensive neuropsychological tests on all patients, and collected demographic and clinical characteristics. Six cognitive domains, namely executive function, attention, language, calculation, visuospatial function and memory were evaluated. ANOVA and t-tests were used to assess differences in clinical characteristics and neuropsychological parameters between sporadic ALS patients. The Kaplan-Meier method and Cox proportional hazard model were used for survival analysis. One hundred and sixty-six patients were categorized into five subtypes: normal cognition (ALS pure), cognitive impairment (ALSci), behavioral impairment (ALSbi), frontotemporal dementia (ALS-FTD), and other types of dementia. Seventy patients (70/166, 42.2%) were cognitively or behaviorally impaired. Among the impaired patients, eight (8/166, 4.8%) had FTD-type dementia and one (1/166, 0.6%) was Alzheimer's disease-type. The ALS patients with cognitive impairment (ALSci) and with FTD (ALS-FTD) were more severely impaired in executive function, attention, language and memory than the cognitively intact ALS patients (ALS pure). In a survival analysis, ALSci (β = 1.925, p = 0.025) and ALS-FTD groups (β = 4.150, p = 0.019) tended to have shorter survival than the ALS pure group. About half of ALS patients without known genetic variation have cognitive or behavioral impairment. ALS patients with cognitive abnormalities, especially FTD, have a poorer prognosis than those without cognitive impairment. In neuropsychological profiling, executive tasks were effective in identifying cognitive impairment in the ALS patients. It would be useful for clinicians to classify ALS according to neuropsychological profiles, and screen for subtle cognitive impairment.	\N	\N
24512247	Emotional biases in attention, interpretation, and memory are viewed as important cognitive processes underlying symptoms of depression. To date, there is a limited understanding of the interplay among these processing biases. This study tested the dependence of memory on depression-related biases in attention and interpretation. Subclinically depressed and nondepressed participants completed a computerized version of the scrambled sentences test (measuring interpretation bias) while their eye movements were recorded (measuring attention bias). This task was followed by an incidental free recall test of previously constructed interpretations (measuring memory bias). Path analysis revealed a good fit for the model in which selective orienting of attention was associated with interpretation bias, which in turn was associated with a congruent bias in memory. Also, a good fit was observed for a path model in which biases in the maintenance of attention and interpretation were associated with memory bias. Both path models attained a superior fit compared with path models without the theorized functional relations among processing biases. These findings enhance understanding of how mechanisms of attention and interpretation regulate what is remembered. As such, they offer support for the combined cognitive biases hypothesis or the notion that emotionally biased cognitive processes are not isolated mechanisms but instead influence each other. Implications for theoretical models and emotion regulation across the spectrum of depressive symptoms are discussed.	\N	\N
24534417	Low sexual desire is the most common sexual complaint in women. As a result, many women suffer from sexual dissatisfaction which often negatively interferes with their quality of life. These complaints have been classified as the condition Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD), and have recently been merged with the condition Female Sexual Arousal Disorder (FSAD) into the diagnosis Female Sexual Interest/Arousal Disorder (FSIAD) in the DSM-5. To date, no drug treatment approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA)/European Medicines Agency (EMA) is available to treat women with HSDD/FSIAD. As a result, there is an unmet need for a drug treatment for HSDD/FSIAD. In our search for an adequate treatment we followed a different approach compared to other pharmaceutical companies. Based on a personalized sexual medicine approach we proposed that different mechanisms cause low sexual desire in women, namely an insensitive system for sexual cues or dysfunctional activation of sexual inhibitory mechanisms. Subsequently we developed two new on-demand drug treatments for women with HSDD/FSIAD based on these different causal mechanisms. One treatment (testosterone combined with a phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitor) has been developed for women with HSDD/FSIAD due to a relatively insensitive system for sexual cues, while the second treatment (testosterone combined with a 5-HT₁A receptor agonist) has been developed for women with HSDD/FSIAD due to dysfunctional activation of sexual inhibitory mechanisms.	\N	\N
24547790	Mental arithmetic shows systematic spatial biases. The association between numbers and space is well documented, but it is unknown whether arithmetic operation signs also have spatial associations and whether or not they contribute to spatial biases found in arithmetic. Adult participants classified plus and minus signs with left and right button presses under two counterbalanced response rules. Results from two experiments showed that spatially congruent responses (i.e., right-side responses for the plus sign and left-side responses for the minus sign) were responded to faster than spatially incongruent ones (i.e., left-side responses for the plus sign and right-side responses for the minus sign). We also report correlations between this novel operation sign spatial association (OSSA) effect and other spatial biases in number processing. In a control experiment with no explicit processing requirements for the operation signs there were no sign-related spatial biases. Overall, the results suggest that (a) arithmetic operation signs can evoke spatial associations (OSSA), (b) experience with arithmetic operations probably underlies the OSSA, and (c) the OSSA only partially contributes to spatial biases in arithmetic.	\N	\N
24551458	The ability to concentrate on relevant sounds in the acoustic environment is crucial for everyday function and communication. Converging lines of evidence suggests that transient functional changes in auditory-cortex neurons, "short-term plasticity", might explain this fundamental function. Under conditions of strongly focused attention, enhanced processing of attended sounds can take place at very early latencies (~50 ms from sound onset) in primary auditory cortex and possibly even at earlier latencies in subcortical structures. More robust selective-attention short-term plasticity is manifested as modulation of responses peaking at ~100 ms from sound onset in functionally specialized nonprimary auditory-cortical areas by way of stimulus-specific reshaping of neuronal receptive fields that supports filtering of selectively attended sound features from task-irrelevant ones. Such effects have been shown to take effect in ~seconds following shifting of attentional focus. There are findings suggesting that the reshaping of neuronal receptive fields is even stronger at longer auditory-cortex response latencies (~300 ms from sound onset). These longer-latency short-term plasticity effects seem to build up more gradually, within tens of seconds after shifting the focus of attention. Importantly, some of the auditory-cortical short-term plasticity effects observed during selective attention predict enhancements in behaviorally measured sound discrimination performance.	\N	\N
24553279	The purpose of this study was to identify factors influencing behavior guidance technique utilization among practicing pediatric dentists and explore potential barriers to the incorporation of previously unused techniques. The data for this study were obtained from a web-based survey containing 15 multiple choice questions concerning the practitioners' past, current, and anticipated future behavior guidance technique utilization. Most respondents received hands-on training in 10 of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry behavior guidance techniques. The type of training was associated with the practitioners' level of comfort using a given technique upon graduation and with the current frequency of technique utilization. Residency type impacted hands-on behavior guidance training, with 39 percent of respondents reporting no intravenous sedation training. The type of practice was associated with the frequency of behavior guidance technique utilization, as was graduation decade. Currently practicing dentists cited legal concerns, parental acceptance to change, and limited resources as perceived obstacles in the incorporation of new techniques. Behavior guidance technique selection and utilization among practicing pediatric dentists was influenced by multiple factors, including advanced education training, residency type, graduation decade, and practice type. Obstacles to the incorporation of previously unused techniques appear to be multifactorial.	\N	\N
24561999	Object-based theories of attention propose that the selection of an object's feature leads to the rapid selection of all other constituent features, even those that are task irrelevant. We used magnetoencephalographic recordings to examine the timing and sequencing of neural activity patterns in feature-specific cortical areas as human subjects performed an object-based attention task. Subjects attended to one of two superimposed moving dot arrays that were perceived as transparent surfaces on the basis either of color or speed of motion. When surface motion was attended, the magnetoencephalographic waveforms showed enhanced activity in the motion-specific cortical area starting at ∼ 150 ms after motion onset, followed after ∼ 60 ms by enhanced activity in the color-specific area. When surface color was attended, this temporal sequence was reversed. This rapid sequential activation of the relevant and irrelevant feature modules provides a neural basis for the binding of an object's features into a unitary perceptual experience.	\N	\N
24563397	The electroencephalogram (EEG) of wakefulness, sleep, and anaesthesia changes during childhood. Especially marked are the changes during the first year of life. In the second half of the first year, in most children EEG stages can be classified visually and automatically during anaesthesia which are similar to those observed in older children. In the first months of life, the EEG of anaesthesia is less differentiated, but it is still useful in patient monitoring during anaesthesia.	\N	\N
24571815	The last few years have seen much research on girls with conduct disorder (CD). This article summarizes the gender-specific data regarding prevalence, differences with respect to symptomatology (e.g., subtypes of aggression, callous-unemotional (cu)-traits), and it presents data on the autonomic and neuroendocrine stress system as well as genetic, neurocognitive, and neuroimaging data. Differences in the impact of environmental factors on boys and girls for the development of CD are discussed. Taken together, the data indicate that there is great overlap in symptomatology, personality traits, and neurobiological aberrations in girls and boys with CD. Since fewer girls than boys exhibit CD symptomatology, further investigations on CD in girls might help to identify resilience factors that could improve future therapeutic interventions.	\N	\N
24577097	The present study is an open-label extension (OLE) aimed at evaluating the effect of 100 mg/day of phosphatidylserine enriched with docosahexaenoic acid (PS-DHA) on cognitive performance in nondemented elderly individuals with memory complaints. From the participants who completed the core study, 122 continued with a 15-week OLE. Efficacy was assessed using a computerized tool and the Clinical Global Impression of Change (CGI-C) rating scale. A significant improvement in sustained attention and memory recognition was observed in the PS-DHA naïve group, while the PS-DHA continuers maintained their cognitive status. Additionally, a significant improvement in CGI-C was observed in the naïve group. The results demonstrate that consumption of 100 mg/day of PS-DHA might be associated with improving or maintaining cognitive status in elderly subjects with memory complaints.	\N	\N
24578016	Anxious youth have shown altered behavioral performance on the dot-probe task, but neural activation patterns provoked by the task remain poorly understood. In particular, neural mechanisms of threat disengagement, a clinically relevant construct, have been inadequately explored. During fMRI acquisition, 121 youth (ages 9-13; 90 with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Separation Anxiety Disorder, and/or Social Phobia; 31 nonanxious controls) completed a dot-probe task, which required participants to identify the location of a dot replacing either a neutral or fearful face in a pair containing both faces. We assessed neural substrates of threat disengagement by comparing congruent trials (in which the dot replaces the fearful face) to incongruent trials (in which the dot replaces the neutral face). Across subjects, decreased rostrodorsal anterior cingulate cortex (rdACC) activity was observed specifically during incongruent trials. Nonanxious youth showed a convergent pattern in bilateral parahippocampal and hippocampal regions, whereas anxious youth showed an opposing pattern in these limbic areas, suggesting less integration of response across cortical and limbic areas relevant to threat appraisal. Reduced functional connectivity between rdACC and left parahippocampus/hippocampus was associated with greater anxiety. In the largest dot-probe fMRI sample to date, both anxious and nonanxious youth showed a neural pattern consistent with successful disengagement of threat reactivity in the rdACC. However, anxious youth showed evidence of abnormal disengagement in bilateral parahippocampal/hippocampal clusters when attention was directed away from threat. Early interventions targeting neural mechanisms of threat disengagement may be beneficial, for example, by increasing integration across rdACC and limbic regions.	\N	\N
24578091	It is often the case that stimuli (or aspects of a stimulus) are referred to as being "task-irrelevant." Here, we recount where this label originated and argue that the use of this label is at odds with the concept of "relevance" that has arisen in the contingent-capture literature. This is not merely a matter of labels, but a matter of inference: When people describe a flanker stimulus as being "task-irrelevant," they may be (and sometimes are) tempted to infer that the conditions that were studied in the flanker task generalize to other tasks and other types of stimuli. Here, we show that this generalization is not warranted. The flanker effect exists not because attention has failed at selecting only the target from the display, but rather, the effect arises precisely because attention succeeded at selecting target-like (i.e., attentionally relevant) stimuli from the display. As a result, the flanker effect should not be used to infer how stimuli that are entirely unrelated to a participant's main task would be processed. We propose the use of a new terminology to replace this potentially misleading label.	\N	\N
24587578	To compare sleep microstructure (cyclic alternating pattern, CAP) characteristics in otherwise healthy overweight (OW) and normal weight (NW) children. Polysomnographic cross-sectional study. Sleep laboratory. Fifty-eight (26 NW and 32 OW) 10-year-old children. N/A. Participants were part of a longitudinal study beginning in infancy and free of sleep disorders. Groups were based on body-mass index (BMI) z-score. From polysomnographic overnight recordings, sleep-waking states were scored according to international criteria. CAP analysis was performed visually during NREM sleep. Conventional sleep parameters were similar between groups. BMI was positively related to CAP rate and CAP sequences but inversely related to CAP B phase duration. Differences between groups were confined to slow-wave sleep (SWS), with OW children showing higher CAP rate, CAP cycles, and CAP A1 number and index and shorter CAP cycles and B phase duration. They also showed more CAP class intervals shorter than 30 s, and a suggestive trend for fewer intervals longer than 30 s. Cyclic alternating pattern characteristics in children related to nutritional status and were altered in overweight subjects during slow-wave sleep. We suggest that the more frequent oscillatory pattern of electroencephalographic slow activity in overweight subjects might reflect less stable slow-wave sleep episodes.	\N	\N
24595540	Awake craniotomy is a valuable procedure since it allows brain mapping and live monitoring of eloquent brain functions. The advantage of minimizing resource utilization is also emphasized by some physicians in North America. Data on how well an awake craniotomy is tolerated by patients and how much stress it creates is available from different studies, but this topic has not consequently been summarized in a review of the available literature. Therefore, it is the purpose of this review to shed more light on the still controversially discussed aspect of an awake craniotomy. We reviewed the available English literature published until December 2013 searching for studies that investigated patients' responses to awake craniotomies. Twelve studies, published between 1998 and 2013, including 396 patients with awake surgery were identified. Eleven of these 12 studies set the focus on the perioperative time, one study focused on the later postoperative time. The vast majority of patients felt well prepared and overall satisfaction with the procedure was high. In the majority of studies up to 30 % of the patients recalled considerable pain and 10-14 % experienced strong anxiety during the procedure. The majority of patients reported that they would undergo an awake craniotomy again. A post traumatic stress disorder was present neither shortly nor years after surgery. However, a normal human response to such an exceptional situation can for instance be the delayed appearance of unintentional distressing recollections of the event despite the patients' satisfaction concerning the procedure. For selected patients, an awake craniotomy presents the best possible way to reduce the risk of surgery related neurological deficits. However, benefits and burdens of this type of procedure should be carefully considered when planning an awake craniotomy and the decision should serve the interests of the patient.	\N	\N
24597272	Listeners find it relatively difficult to recognize words that are similar-sounding to other known words. In contrast, when asked to identify spoken nonwords, listeners perform better when the nonwords are similar to many words in their language. These effects of sound similarity have been assessed in multiple ways, and both sublexical (phonotactic probability) and lexical (neighborhood) effects have been reported, leading to models that incorporate multiple stages of processing. One prediction that can be derived from these models is that there may be differences among individuals in the size of these similarity effects as a function of working memory abilities. This study investigates how item-individual characteristics of nonwords (both phonotactic probability and neighborhood density) interact with listener-individual characteristics (such as cognitive abilities and hearing sensitivity) in the perceptual identification of nonwords. A set of nonwords was used in which neighborhood density and phonotactic probability were not correlated. In our data, neighborhood density affected identification more reliably than did phonotactic probability. The first study, with young adults, showed that higher neighborhood density particularly benefits nonword identification for those with poorer attention-switching control. This suggests that it may be easier to focus attention on a novel item if it activates and receives support from more similar-sounding neighbors. A similar study on nonword identification with older adults showed increased neighborhood density effects for those with poorer hearing, suggesting that activation of long-term linguistic knowledge is particularly important to back up auditory representations that are degraded as a result of hearing loss.	\N	\N
24604626	In typical daily life, adults routinely adapt posture so that balance can be maintained while other goal-directed activities are performed. Interestingly, newly standing infants also control posture based on the demands of a task. It is unknown if the ability to properly adapt postural movements as a goal-directed task is performed emerges soon after the acquisition of independent stance or if it is present at earlier key postural milestones, such as independent sitting. In this study, the postural sway patterns of independently sitting infants were compared while either holding or not holding a toy. Infants exhibited less postural sway when holding the toy. This reduction in sway allowed infants to look at and stabilize the toy in their hand. Thus, the ability to adjust postural movements while performing a concurrent goal-directed task emerges long before the acquisition of independent stance.	\N	\N
24617096	A scheme aimed at distracting children in the waiting room of the paediatric ophthalmology department of Bordeaux university hospital was developed and assessed at the end of the first year. Positive results were identified by those involved, benefiting both the children and the caregivers.	\N	\N
24623783	The earliest stages of cortical processing of speech sounds take place in the auditory cortex. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies have provided evidence that the human articulatory motor cortex contributes also to speech processing. For example, stimulation of the motor lip representation influences specifically discrimination of lip-articulated speech sounds. However, the timing of the neural mechanisms underlying these articulator-specific motor contributions to speech processing is unknown. Furthermore, it is unclear whether they depend on attention. Here, we used magnetoencephalography and TMS to investigate the effect of attention on specificity and timing of interactions between the auditory and motor cortex during processing of speech sounds. We found that TMS-induced disruption of the motor lip representation modulated specifically the early auditory-cortex responses to lip-articulated speech sounds when they were attended. These articulator-specific modulations were left-lateralized and remarkably early, occurring 60-100 ms after sound onset. When speech sounds were ignored, the effect of this motor disruption on auditory-cortex responses was nonspecific and bilateral, and it started later, 170 ms after sound onset. The findings indicate that articulatory motor cortex can contribute to auditory processing of speech sounds even in the absence of behavioral tasks and when the sounds are not in the focus of attention. Importantly, the findings also show that attention can selectively facilitate the interaction of the auditory cortex with specific articulator representations during speech processing.	\N	\N
24630049	Recent studies have correlated neurocognitive function and regional brain volumes in children with epilepsy. We tested whether brain volume differences between children with and without epilepsy explained differences in neurocognitive function. The study sample included 108 individuals with uncomplicated non-syndromic epilepsy (NSE) and 36 healthy age- and gender-matched controls. Participants received a standardized cognitive battery. Whole brain T1-weighted MRI was obtained and volumes analyzed with FreeSurfer (TM). Total brain volume (TBV) was significantly smaller in cases. After adjustment for TBV, cases had significantly larger regional grey matter volumes for total, frontal, parietal, and precentral cortex. Cases had poorer performance on neurocognitive indices of intelligence and variability of sustained attention. In cases, TBV showed small associations with intellectual indices of verbal and perceptual ability, working memory, and overall IQ. In controls, TBV showed medium associations with working memory and variability of sustained attention. In both groups, small associations were seen between some TBV-adjusted regional brain volumes and neurocognitive indices, but not in a consistent pattern. Brain volume differences did not account for cognitive differences between the groups. Patients with uncomplicated NSE have smaller brains than controls but areas of relative grey matter enlargement. That this relative regional enlargement occurs in the context of poorer overall neurocognitive functioning suggests that it is not adaptive. However, the lack of consistent associations between case-control differences in brain volumes and cognitive functioning suggests that brain volumes have limited explanatory value for cognitive functioning in childhood epilepsy.	\N	\N
24631246	The human motor system is remarkably proficient in the online control of visually guided movements, adjusting to changes in the visual scene within 100 ms [1-3]. This is achieved through a set of highly automatic processes [4] translating visual information into representations suitable for motor control [5, 6]. For this to be accomplished, visual information pertaining to target and hand need to be identified and linked to the appropriate internal representations during the movement. Meanwhile, other visual information must be filtered out, which is especially demanding in visually cluttered natural environments. If selection of relevant sensory information for online control was achieved by visual attention, its limited capacity [7] would substantially constrain the efficiency of visuomotor feedback control. Here we demonstrate that both exogenously and endogenously cued attention facilitate the processing of visual target information [8], but not of visual hand information. Moreover, distracting visual information is more efficiently filtered out during the extraction of hand compared to target information. Our results therefore suggest the existence of a dedicated visuomotor binding mechanism that links the hand representation in visual and motor systems.	\N	\N
24632819	Given the critical risks to public health and safety that can involve lapses in attention (e.g., through implication in workplace accidents), researchers have sought to develop cognitive-state tracking technologies, capable of alerting individuals engaged in cognitively demanding tasks of potentially dangerous decrements in their levels of attention. The purpose of the present study was to address this issue through an investigation of the reliability of optical measures of cortical correlates of attention in conjunction with machine learning techniques to distinguish between states of full attention and states characterized by reduced attention capacity during a sustained attention task. Seven subjects engaged in a 30 minutes duration sustained attention reaction time task with near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) monitoring over the prefrontal and the right parietal areas. NIRS signals from the first 10 minutes of the task were considered as characterizing the 'full attention' class, while the NIRS signals from the last 10 minutes of the task were considered as characterizing the 'attention decrement' class. A two-class support vector machine algorithm was exploited to distinguish between the two levels of attention using appropriate NIRS-derived signal features. Attention decrement occurred during the task as revealed by the significant increase in reaction time in the last 10 compared to the first 10 minutes of the task (p<.05). The results demonstrate relatively good classification accuracy, ranging from 65 to 90%. The highest classification accuracy results were obtained when exploiting the oxyhemoglobin signals (i.e., from 77 to 89%, depending on the cortical area considered) rather than the deoxyhemoglobin signals (i.e., from 65 to 66%). Moreover, the classification accuracy increased to 90% when using signals from the right parietal area rather than from the prefrontal cortex. The results support the feasibility of developing cognitive tracking technologies using NIRS and machine learning techniques.	\N	\N
24636071	Although pedophilia is defined by a recurrent sexual interest in prepubescent children, little attention has been paid to the stability or fluidity of this sexual interest over time. The aim of the current study was to investigate if patterns of penile tumescence (as a proxy for sexual interest) measured by penile plethysmography testing (PPT) can change. In this retrospective chart review study, PPT results of 43 men diagnosed with pedophilia were collected and analyzed. All participants displayed a pedophilic sexual arousal pattern at the time of their first PPT. To test for change, we compared initial PPT results with subsequent PPT results measured at least 6 months later. Sexual arousal was assessed using PPT by measuring change in penile circumference induced by the presentation of standardized sexual audio stimuli. Approximately half of the sample (n = 21) displayed a change in PPT results. This change was characterized by a significant decrease of sexual arousal in response to pedophilic (child) stimuli and a significant increase of sexual arousal in response to nonpedophilic (adult) stimuli. No differences between sexual interest changers (ICs) and nonchangers (NC) were found for demographic data or for length of time between assessments. However, between-group comparisons revealed that ICs had significantly lower pedophilic indices at the initial assessment than NCs. Results from the current study indicate that relative pedophilic interest, as defined by increase in penile circumference in response to nonpedophilic stimuli as measured by PPT, changed in about 50% of men diagnosed with pedophilia who also had initial pedophilic PPT sexual responses. This represents a significant challenge to the hypothesis that sexual interest in men with pedophilia is unchangeable and should be the focus of future studies.	\N	\N
24636501	A growing body of research has revealed that social evaluative stressors trigger biological and psychological responses that in chronic forms have been linked to aging and disease. Recent research suggests that self-compassion may protect the self from typical defensive responses to evaluation. We investigated whether brief training in self-compassion moderated biopsychological responses to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) in women. Compared to attention (placebo) and no-training control conditions, brief self-compassion training diminished sympathetic (salivary alpha-amylase), cardiac parasympathetic, and subjective anxiety responses, though not HPA-axis (salivary cortisol) responses to the TSST. Self-compassion training also led to greater self-compassion under threat relative to the control groups. In that social stress pervades modern life, self-compassion represents a promising approach to diminishing its potentially negative psychological and biological effects.	\N	\N
24642806	The most common explanation for joint-action effects has been the action co-representation account in which observation of another's action is represented within one's own action system. However, recent evidence has shown that the most prominent of these joint-action effects (i.e., the Social Simon effect), can occur when no co-actor is present. In the current work we examined whether another joint-action phenomenon (a movement congruency effect) can be induced when a participant performs their part of the task with a different effector to that of their co-actor and when a co-actor's action is replaced by an attention-capturing luminance signal. Contrary to what is predicted by the action co-representation account, results show that the basic movement congruency effect occurred in both situations. These findings challenge the action co-representation account of this particular effect and suggest instead that it is driven by bottom-up mechanisms.	\N	\N
24645871	One form of meditation intervention, the integrative body-mind training (IBMT) has been shown to improve attention, reduce stress and change self-reports of mood. In this paper we examine whether short-term IBMT can improve performance related to creativity and determine the role that mood may play in such improvement. Forty Chinese undergraduates were randomly assigned to short-term IBMT group or a relaxation training (RT) control group. Mood and creativity performance were assessed by the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) questionnaire respectively. As predicted, the results indicated that short-term (30 min per day for 7 days) IBMT improved creativity performance on the divergent thinking task, and yielded better emotional regulation than RT. In addition, cross-lagged analysis indicated that both positive and negative affect may influence creativity in IBMT group (not RT group). Our results suggested that emotion-related creativity-promoting mechanism may be attributed to short-term meditation.	\N	\N
24647227	Loss of consciousness in anesthetized healthy participants and in patients with unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS) is associated with substantial alterations of functional connectivity across large-scale brain networks. Yet, a prominent distinction between the two cases is that after anesthesia, brain connectivity and consciousness are spontaneously restored, whereas in patients with UWS this restoration fails to occur, but why? A possible explanation is that the self-organizing capability of the brain is compromised in patients with UWS but not in healthy participants undergoing anesthesia. According to the theory of self-organized criticality, many natural complex systems, including the brain, evolve spontaneously to a critical state wherein system behaviors display spatial and/or temporal scale-invariant characteristics. Here we tested the hypothesis that the scale-free property of brain network organization is in fact fundamentally different between anesthetized healthy participants and UWS patients. We introduced a novel, computationally efficient approach to determine anatomical-functional parcellation of the whole-brain network at increasingly finer spatial scales. We found that in healthy participants, scale-free distributions of node size and node degree were present across wakefulness, propofol sedation, and recovery, despite significant propofol-induced functional connectivity changes. In patients with UWS, the scale-free distribution of node degree was absent, reflecting a fundamental difference between the two groups in adaptive reconfiguration of functional interaction between network components. The maintenance of scale-invariance across propofol sedation in healthy participants suggests the presence of persistent, on-going self-organizing processes to a critical state--a capacity that is compromised in patients with UWS.	\N	\N
24650282	Neuropsychological tests are increasingly applied in research studies and clinical practice in psychiatry. In this context, the detection of poor effort is crucial to adequately interpret data. We measured schizophrenia patients' performance on a memory test designed to detect excessive malingering (the "21-Item Test"), before examining whether a second group of schizophrenia patients would excessively malinger on this test when given an incentive to feign memory impairment. Two independent studies including respectively 49 schizophrenia patients and 100 controls (study 1) and 25 schizophrenia patients and 25 controls (study 2) were conducted. In study 1, participants were asked to complete the 21-Item Test to the best of their ability. In study 2, participants were given a hypothetical scenario in which having a memory impairment would be financially advantageous for them, before completing the 21-Item Test. In study 1, no participant scored at levels indicative of excessive malingering. In study 2, 84% of controls but only 36% of patients scored at excessive levels of malingering, and these patients had higher executive functioning than patients who did not excessively malinger, although it should be noted that a significantly greater proportion of patients excessively malingered in study 2 compared to study 1. These results indicate that schizophrenia patients do not normally feign excessive memory impairment during psychological testing. Furthermore, they are less able and/or less inclined to excessively malinger than controls in situations where a memory impairment would be advantageous, perhaps indicating a better ability to malinger without detection. Potential clinical implications are discussed.	\N	\N
24652341	While inattentional blindness is a modern classic in attention and perception research, analogous phenomena of inattentional deafness have been widely neglected. We here present the first investigation of inattentional deafness in and with music under controlled experimental conditions. Inattentional deafness in music is defined as the inability to consciously perceive an unexpected musical stimulus when attention is focused on a certain facet of the piece. Participants listened to a modification of the first 1'50″ of Richard Strauss' Thus Spake Zarathustra; while the control group just listened, the experimental group had to count the number of timpani beats. An e-guitar solo served as the unexpected event. In Study 1, experimental data from n = 115 participants were analyzed. Non-musicians were compared with musicians to investigate the impact of expertise. In Study 2 (n = 47), the scope of the inattentional deafness effect was investigated with a more salient unexpected stimulus. Results demonstrate an inattentional deafness effect under dynamic musical conditions. Quite unexpectedly, the effect was structurally equivalent even for musicians. Our findings clearly show that sustained inattentional deafness exists in the musical realm, in close correspondence to inattentional blindness with dynamic visual stimuli.	\N	\N
24655152	Flexible and appropriate allocation of attention resources is important during dual-tasking to achieve task goals while maintaining postural safety. This pilot study aimed to examine the influence of explicit prioritization of attention on the dual-task paradigm by employing two levels of difficulty for the postural tasks and reaction time (RT) tasks in healthy young adults. The task entailed standing on a force platform on two feet or on one foot, attending to posture or RT, and completing a simple or choice RT task. Participants verbally responded "top" as soon as the light cue illuminated. In general, attending to RT produced faster RTs (F(1,19) = 30.9, p < 0.001) and improved center of pressure (COP) Displacement (F(1,19) = 5.1, p < 0.05) and 95% Area Ellipse (F(1,19) = 7.1, p < 0.05). These findings suggest that prioritizing attention away from posture may be beneficial for postural performance when completing a second task.	\N	\N
24660887	Higher wake promotion against sleep drive boosts cognitive processing, but it also seems to increase the risk of insomnia by reinforcing an obsession with sleep in neurotic patients. To explore whether a personality trait of neuroticism simultaneously facilitates wake-promoting ability and sleep devaluation via a common regional prefrontal function under a sleep-restricted condition, working memory tasks were administered to 49 healthy humans after a 2-h sleep restriction. Higher wake-promoting ability demonstrated in a high-load task was correlated with lower bilateral prefrontal activation, as measured by near-infrared spectroscopy. Structural equation modeling revealed that neuroticism predicts sleep devaluation and wake-promoting ability via left and right regional prefrontal efficiency, respectively. Our results indicate that neuroticism-related neural efficiency increases resilience to sleepiness, but decreases sleep satisfaction.	\N	\N
24661175	Visual attention and visual working memory exert severe capacity limitations on cognitive processing. Impairments in both functions may exacerbate the social and communication deficits seen in children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study characterizes spatial working memory and visual attention in school-age children with high-functioning autism. Children with ASD, and age, gender, and IQ-matched typically developing (TD) children performed 2 tasks: a spatial working memory task and an attentive tracking task. Compared with TD children, children with ASD showed a more pronounced deficit in the spatial working memory task than the attentive tracking task, even though the latter placed significant demands on sustained attention, location updating, and distractor inhibition. Because both groups of children were sensitive to configuration mismatches between the sample and test arrays, the spatial working memory deficit was not because of atypical organization of spatial working memory. These findings show that attention and working memory are dissociable, and that children with ASD show a specific deficit in buffering visual information across temporal discontinuity.	\N	\N
24661700	All available studies addressing the clinical and legal aspects of child pornography have systematically concerned male abusers. The social lens through which women are viewed tends to play down their responsibility in the sexual abuse of children. Unlike men, women rarely abuse children outside the close or family circle. Furthermore, they have frequently been abused themselves in their childhood. To our knowledge, no cases of women charged with sex-related offences, including child pornography, have been described in the literature. The psychopathological characteristics of female sexual abusers and of the two women in our cases tend to suggest that the deliberate downloading of child pornography images by women is unusual, as their deviant behaviour is not related to paedophile sexual arousal It is hypothesized that the act enables women perpetrators to satisfy the sexual urges of their spouse. Sexual abuse by women exists, but the nature of the abuse appears to be specific to the gender of the perpetrator. We present two cases of women charged with sexual offences concerning minors, including the production of child pornography material.	\N	\N
24672782	Attention allows us to selectively process the vast amount of information with which we are confronted, prioritizing some aspects of information and ignoring others by focusing on a certain location or aspect of the visual scene. Selective attention is guided by two cognitive mechanisms: saliency of the image (bottom up) and endogenous mechanisms (top down). These two mechanisms interact to direct attention and plan eye movements; then, the movement profile is sent to the motor system, which must constantly update the command needed to produce the desired eye movement. A new approach is described here to study how the eye motor control could influence this selection mechanism in clinical behavior: two groups of patients (SCA2 and late onset cerebellar ataxia LOCA) with well-known problems of motor control were studied; patients performed a cognitively demanding task; the results were compared to a stochastic model based on Monte Carlo simulations and a group of healthy subjects. The analytical procedure evaluated some energy functions for understanding the process. The implemented model suggested that patients performed an optimal visual search, reducing intrinsic noise sources. Our findings theorize a strict correlation between the "optimal motor system" and the "optimal stimulus encoders."	\N	\N
24684315	Despite their similarity as visual patterns, we can discriminate and recognize many thousands of faces. This expertise has been linked to 2 coding mechanisms: holistic integration of information across the face and adaptive coding of face identity using norms tuned by experience. Recently, individual differences in face recognition ability have been discovered and linked to differences in holistic coding. Here we show that they are also linked to individual differences in adaptive coding of face identity, measured using face identity aftereffects. Identity aftereffects correlated significantly with several measures of face-selective recognition ability. They also correlated marginally with own-race face recognition ability, suggesting a role for adaptive coding in the well-known other-race effect. More generally, these results highlight the important functional role of adaptive face-coding mechanisms in face expertise, taking us beyond the traditional focus on holistic coding mechanisms.	\N	\N
24687588	The underlying nature of verbal fluency deficits in Alzheimer's disease (AD) was investigated in this study. Participants were 48 individuals with AD and 48 cognitively healthy older adults. Fluency performance on letter and category tasks was analyzed across two 30-s intervals for total words produced, mean cluster size, and total switches. Compared with the control group, AD participants produced fewer words and switches on both fluency tasks and had a reduced category cluster size. The AD group was differentially impaired on category compared with letter fluency and produced more repetitive responses but fewer category exemplars than controls on the category task. A multidimensional scaling approach revealed that AD participants' semantic maps were similar to controls. Overall, the data suggest that executive abilities involving search and retrieval processes and a reduced availability of semantically related words contributed to the AD group's poorer performance despite similar temporal recall and organizational patterns.	\N	\N
24692319	Attentional effort relates to the allocation of limited-capacity attentional resources to meet current task demands and involves the activation of top-down attentional systems in the brain. Pupillometry is a sensitive measure of this intensity aspect of top-down attentional control. Studies relate pupillary changes in response to cognitive processing to activity in the locus coeruleus (LC), which is the main hub of the brain's noradrenergic system and it is thought to modulate the operations of the brain's attentional systems. In the present study, participants performed a visual divided attention task known as multiple object tracking (MOT) while their pupil sizes were recorded by use of an infrared eye tracker and then were tested again with the same paradigm while brain activity was recorded using fMRI. We hypothesized that the individual pupil dilations, as an index of individual differences in mental effort, as originally proposed by Kahneman (1973), would be a better predictor of LC activity than the number of tracked objects during MOT. The current results support our hypothesis, since we observed pupil-related activity in the LC. Moreover, the changes in the pupil correlated with activity in the superior colliculus and the right thalamus, as well as cortical activity in the dorsal attention network, which previous studies have shown to be strongly activated during visual tracking of multiple targets. Follow-up pupillometric analyses of the MOT task in the same individuals also revealed that individual differences to cognitive load can be remarkably stable over a lag of several years. To our knowledge this is the first study using pupil dilations as an index of attentional effort in the MOT task and also relating these to functional changes in the brain that directly implicate the LC-NE system in the allocation of processing resources.	\N	\N
24700789	Lack of insight into illness is a multidimensional phenomenon that has relevant implications on clinical course and therapy compliance. Here, we focused on metacognitive insight in schizophrenia, that is, the ability to monitor one's changes in state of mind and sensations, with the aim of investigating its neuroanatomical, psychopathological, and neuropsychological correlates. Fifty-seven consecutive patients with Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fourth Edition, Text Revision) diagnosis of schizophrenia were administered the Insight Scale, and comprehensive psychopathological and neuropsychological batteries. They underwent a high-resolution T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging investigation. Gray matter (GM) and white matter (WM) volumes were analyzed on a voxel-by-voxel basis using Statistical Parametric Mapping 8. Reduced metacognitive insight was related to reduced GM volumes in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and insula, and bilateral premotor area and putamen. Further, it was related to reduced WM volumes of the right superior longitudinal fasciculum, left corona radiata, left forceps minor, and bilateral cingulum. Increased metacognitive insight was related to increased depression severity and attentional control impairment, while the latter was related to increased GM volumes in brain areas linked to metacognitive insight. Results of this study suggest that prefrontal GM and WM bundles, all implied in cognitive control and self-reflection, may be the neuroanatomical correlates of metacognitive insight in schizophrenia. Further, higher metacognitive insight is hypothesized to be a risk factor for depression which may subsequently impair attention. This line of research may provide the basis for the development of cognitive interventions aimed at improving self-monitoring and compliance to treatment.	\N	\N
24701725	To study the prevalence and associating factors of sexual dysfunction in Thai women using contraception with intrauterine device (IUD). A cross-sectional study was conducted in IUD users at the Family Planning Unit, Siriraj Hospital. Data were recruited between October 2012 and June 2013. The participants answered the questionnaires to collect demographic, obstetric-gynecological data, and female sexual function index (FSFI) score. Two hundred seventy one IUD users participated in this study. The mean age was 32.1 +/- 7.1 years old, mean body mass index (BMI) was 24.1 +/- 5.3 kg/m2. The prevalence of sexual dysfunction in IUD users was 50.9%. The associating factor that affected the sexual dysfunction significantly was observed in BMI group (p-value 0.033). Subgroup analysis illustrated that the underweight group had more sexual dysfunction. The lowest FSFI score was observed in the underweight group. The score was 23.50 +/- 4.52. The significant domains were found to be desirable and arousal domains. The prevalence of female sexual dysfunction in the period after IUD using was 50.9%. The BMI was a significant associating factor Underweight women showed higher trend of sexual dysfunction than other group, especially in the desire and arousal domain.	\N	\N
24702791	Younger brains are noisier information processing systems; this means that information for younger individuals has to allow clearer differentiation between those aspects that are required for the processing task in hand (the 'signal') and those that are not (the 'noise'). We compared toddler-directed and adult-directed TV programmes (TotTV/ATV). We examined how low-level visual features (that previous research has suggested influence gaze allocation) relate to semantic information, namely the location of the character speaking in each frame. We show that this relationship differs between TotTV and ATV. First, we conducted Receiver Operator Characteristics analyses and found that feature congestion predicted speaking character location in TotTV but not ATV. Second, we used multiple analytical strategies to show that luminance differentials (flicker) predict face location more strongly in TotTV than ATV. Our results suggest that TotTV designers have intuited techniques for controlling toddler attention using low-level visual cues. The implications of these findings for structuring childhood learning experiences away from a screen are discussed.	\N	\N
24705203	The nucleus accumbens (NAcc) plays critical roles in healthy motivation and learning, as well as in psychiatric disorders (including schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). Thus, techniques that confer control of NAcc activity might inspire new therapeutic interventions. By providing second-to-second temporal resolution of activity in small subcortical regions, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can resolve online changes in NAcc activity, which can then be presented as "neurofeedback." In an fMRI-based neurofeedback experiment designed to elicit NAcc activity, we found that subjects could increase their own NAcc activity, and that display of neurofeedback significantly enhanced their ability to do so. Subjects were not as capable of decreasing their NAcc activity, however, and enhanced control did not persist after subsequent removal of neurofeedback. Further analyses suggested that individuals who recruited positive aroused affect were better able to increase NAcc activity in response to neurofeedback, and that NAcc neurofeedback also elicited functionally correlated activity in the medial prefrontal cortex. Together, these findings suggest that humans can modulate their own NAcc activity and that fMRI-based neurofeedback may augment their efforts. The observed association between positive arousal and effective NAcc control further supports an anticipatory affect account of NAcc function.	\N	\N
24705681	The existence of a network of brain regions which are activated when one undertakes a difficult visual search task is well established. Two primary nodes on this network are right posterior parietal cortex (rPPC) and right frontal eye fields. Both have been shown to be involved in the orientation of attention, but the contingency that the activity of one of these areas has on the other is less clear. We sought to investigate this question by using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to selectively decrease activity in rPPC and then asking participants to perform a visual search task whilst undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Comparison with a condition in which sham tDCS was applied revealed that cathodal tDCS over rPPC causes a selective bilateral decrease in frontal activity when performing a visual search task. This result demonstrates for the first time that premotor regions within the frontal lobe and rPPC are not only necessary to carry out a visual search task, but that they work together to bring about normal function.	\N	\N
24721302	To explore whether cognitive impairment in breast cancer patients after the completion of chemotherapy treatment in comparisons with breast cancer patients without chemotherapy treatment and matched healthy controls. A neuropsychology battery was applied in all breast cancer patients at our hospital from January 2012 to February 2013. Forty-two breast cancer patients with chemotherapy treatment (CT) underwent neuropsychologic testing before the start of chemotherapy (T1) and after treatment (T2). And 37 patients without chemotherapy treatment (non-CT) and matched healthy controls (HC) underwent the same assessment at matched intervals. The CT group performed significantly worse on attention, memory and executive function tests at T2 versus T1 (P < 0.05). As compared with HC and non-CT groups, the correct numbers of backward, digit symbol, delayed recall and recognition were lower in the CT group (P < 0.05). The reacting time of TMT test B, Stroop test B and Stroop test C were longer in the CT group (P < 0.05). There was significant time interaction in three groups (P < 0.05). There are longitudinal changes in cognitive functioning of memory, attention and executive functions in breast cancer patients on Chemotherapy.	\N	\N
24728130	To date, tactile distractor processing has primarily been investigated by focusing on the spatial characteristics of distractors and the impact of their presentation on the orienting of attention. In two experiments, we examined the influence of tactile distractors when the location of stimulus presentation was kept constant, thus controlling for the effects of spatial attention. A response priming paradigm was used in which two stimuli were sequentially presented from the same (fixated) direction. Typically, target responses are facilitated when the previously presented distractor (i.e., the prime) happens to map on to the same response as compared to the distractor maps on to the opposite response. Similar response priming effects were observed for tactile and visual distractors within a unimodal experimental setting (Experiments 1a and 1b). Interestingly, however, when the targets and distractors were presented in different sensory modalities, only the visual distractors exerted a crossmodal effect on the subsequent processing of vibrotactile targets (Experiment 2). These results therefore indicate that visual stimuli automatically trigger their corresponding response even when the task at hand is not visual, whereas tactile stimuli are only processed up to the level of response generation when the participants' task is tactile.	\N	\N
24729533	Cancer survivors often experience cognitive difficulties after treatment completion. Although chemotherapy enhances risk for cognitive problems, it is likely only one piece of a complex puzzle that explains survivors' cognitive functioning. Loneliness may be one psychosocial risk factor. The current studies included both subjective and objective cognitive measures and tested whether lonelier breast cancer survivors would have more concentration and memory complaints and experience more concentration difficulties than their less lonely counterparts. The relationship between loneliness and cognitive function was tested among three samples of breast cancer survivors. Study 1 was a sample of breast cancer survivors (n = 200) who reported their concentration and memory problems. Study 2a was a sample of breast cancer survivors (n = 185) and noncancer controls (n = 93) who reported their concentration and memory problems. Study 2b was a subsample of Study 2a breast cancer survivors (n = 22) and noncancer controls (n = 21) who completed a standardized neuropsychological test assessing concentration. Studies 1 and 2a revealed that lonelier women reported more concentration and memory problems than less lonely women. Study 2b utilized a standardized neuropsychological continuous performance test and demonstrated that lonelier women experienced more concentration problems than their less lonely counterparts. These studies demonstrated that loneliness is linked to concentration and memory complaints and the experience of concentration problems among breast cancer survivors. The results were also highly consistent across three samples of breast cancer survivors. These data suggest that loneliness may be a risk factor for cognitive difficulties among cancer survivors.	\N	\N
24730739	Recent studies have demonstrated that the contents of working memory capture attention when performing a visual search task. However, it remains an intriguing and unresolved question whether all kinds of items stored in working memory capture attention. The present study investigated this issue by manipulating the attentional tags (target or distractor) associated with information maintained in working memory. The results showed that working memory-driven attentional capture is a flexible process, and that attentional tags associated with items stored in working memory do modulate attentional capture. When items were tagged as a target, they automatically captured attention; however, when items were tagged as a distractor, attentional capture was reduced.	\N	\N
24745467	The anhedonia paradox has been a topic of ongoing study in schizophrenia. Previous research has found that schizophrenia patients report less enjoyment from various activities when compared to their healthy counterparts; however, the two groups appear to have similar in-the-moment emotional ratings of these events (Gard et al., 2007; Herbener et al., 2007; Horan et al., 2006). This study examined these in-the-moment experiences further, by assessing whether they differed between social and non-social experiences. The data were collected from 38 individuals with schizophrenia and 53 matched healthy controls in the greater Chicago area. In-the-moment emotional experience was measured by self-reported arousal and valence ratings for social and non-social stimuli taken from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). Clinical ratings for patients were gathered by the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. A series of ANOVAs revealed that controls were more aroused by the social than nonsocial unpleasant stimuli, whereas patients did not show this distinction. Further, regression analyses revealed that negative symptom severity uniquely predicted lower arousal responses to unpleasant social, but not nonsocial, stimuli. Our results indicate that both subject and stimulus factors appear to contribute to differences in emotional responses in individuals with schizophrenia.	\N	\N
24747873	Responses in the second of two subsequently performed tasks can speed up compatible responses in the temporally preceding first task. Such backward crosstalk effects (BCEs) represent a challenge to the assumption of serial processing in stage models of human information processing, because they indicate that certain features of the second response have to be represented before the first response is emitted. Which of these features are actually relevant for BCEs is an open question, even though identifying these features is important for understanding the nature of parallel and serial response selection processes in dual-task performance. Motivated by effect-based models of action control, we show in three experiments that the BCE to a considerable degree reflects features of intended action effects, although features of the response proper (or response-associated kinesthetic feedback) also seem to play a role. These findings suggest that the codes of action effects (or action goals) can become activated simultaneously rather than serially, thereby creating BCEs.	\N	\N
24750256	Studies of infant looking times over the past 50 years have provided profound insights about cognitive development, but their dependent measures and analytic techniques are quite limited. In the context of infants' attention to discrete sequential events, we show how a Bayesian data analysis approach can be combined with a rational cognitive model to create a rich data analysis framework for infant looking times. We formalize (i) a statistical learning model, (ii) a parametric linking between the learning model's beliefs and infants' looking behavior, and (iii) a data analysis approach and model that infers parameters of the cognitive model and linking function for groups and individuals. Using this approach, we show that recent findings from Kidd, Piantadosi and Aslin (iv) of a U-shaped relationship between look-away probability and stimulus complexity even holds within infants and is not due to averaging subjects with different types of behavior. Our results indicate that individual infants prefer stimuli of intermediate complexity, reserving attention for events that are moderately predictable given their probabilistic expectations about the world.	\N	\N
24754400	Executive functions (EFs) are interrelated cognitive processes that have been studied in relation to behavior, attention, academic achievement, and developmental disorders. Studies of EF skills assessed through parent report and performance-based measures show correlations between them ranging from none to modest. Few studies have examined the relationship between EF skills measured through parent report and performance-based measures in relation to adaptive function. The present study included preschool children born preterm as a population at high risk for EF impairments. Preschool children (N = 149) completed a battery of EF tasks that assess working memory, response inhibition, idea generation, and attention shifting or cognitive flexibility. Parents reported on children's EF and adaptive skills. Preterm children showed more parent-rated and performance-based EF impairments than did full-term children. The combined use of either parent report or performance-based measures resulted in the identification of a large number of children at risk for EF impairment, especially in the preterm group. Both parent report and performance-based EF measures were associated with children's adaptive function. EF skills are measurable in young child'ren, and we suggest that EF skills may serve as targets for intervention to improve functional outcomes. We recommend the use of both parent report and performance-based measures to characterize children's EF profiles and to customize treatment.	\N	\N
24759441	The proliferation of new communication technologies and capabilities has prompted concern about driving safety. This concern is particularly acute for inexperienced adolescent drivers. In addition to being early adopters of technology, many adolescents have not achieved the degree of automaticity in driving that characterizes experienced adults. Consequently, distractions may be more problematic in this group. Yet little is known about the nature or prevalence of distracted driving behaviors or distracting conditions among adolescent drivers. Vehicles of 52 high-school age drivers (N=38 beginners and N=14 more experienced) were equipped for 6 months with unobtrusive event-triggered data recorders that obtain 20-second clips of video, audio, and vehicle kinematic information when triggered. A low recording trigger threshold was set to obtain a sample of essentially random driving segments along with those indicating rough driving behaviors. Electronic device use (6.7%) was the most common single type of distracted behavior, followed by adjusting vehicle controls (6.2%) and grooming (3.8%). Most distracted driver behaviors were less frequent when passengers were present. However, loud conversation and horseplay were quite common in the presence of multiple peer passengers. These conditions were associated with looking away from the road, the occurrence of serious events, and, to a lesser extent, rough driving (high g-force events). Common assumptions about adolescent driver distraction are only partially borne out by in-vehicle measurement. The association of passengers with distraction appears more complex than previously realized. The relationship between distractions and serious events differed from the association with rough driving.	\N	\N
24763127	Successful achievement of task goals depends critically on the ability to adjust ongoing actions in response to environmental changes. The neural substrates underlying action modification have been a topic of great controversy: both, posterior parietal cortex and frontal regions, particularly prefrontal cortex have been previously identified as crucial in this regard, with most studies arguing in favor of one or the other. We aimed to address this controversy and understand whether frontal and parietal regions might play distinct roles during action modification. We tested ipsilesional arm performance of 27 stroke patients with focal lesions to frontal or parietal regions of the left or right cerebral hemisphere, and left or right arm performance of 18 healthy subjects on the classic double-step task in which a target is unpredictably displaced to a new location, requiring modification of the ongoing action. Only right hemisphere frontal lesions adversely impacted the timing of initiation of the modified response, while only left hemisphere parietal lesions impaired the accuracy of the modified action. Patients with right frontal lesions tended to complete the ongoing action to the initially displayed baseline target and initiated the new movement after a significant delay. In contrast, patients with left parietal damage did not accurately reach the new target location, but compared to the other groups, initiated the new action during an earlier phase of motion, before their baseline action was complete. Our findings thus suggest distinct, hemisphere specific contributions of frontal and parietal regions to action modification, and bring together, for the first time, disparate sets of prior findings about its underlying neural substrates.	\N	\N
24764261	We investigated the relative effects of simple and complex auditory-visual discrimination training using an adapted alternating treatments design to establish derived stimulus relations in 2 children who had been diagnosed with autism and 1 typically developing peer. Emergence of untrained conditional relations was observed after training in both conditions, with a possible advantage of simple-sample training for 1 participant. Results of generalization and follow-up probes were mixed.	\N	\N
24766521	This study examined the performance of 198 Veteran research participants deployed during Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and/or Operation New Dawn (OEF/OIF/OND) on four measures of performance validity: the Medical Symptom Validity Test (MSVT), California Verbal Learning Test: Forced Choice Recognition (FCR), Reliable Digit Span (RDS), and TOVA Symptom Exaggeration Index (SEI). Failure on these performance validity tests (PVTs) ranged from 4% to 9%. The overall base rate of poor performance validity, as measured by failure of the MSVT in conjunction with an embedded PVT (FCR, RDS, SEI), was 5.6%. Regression analyses revealed that poor performance validity predicted cognitive test performance and self-reported psychological symptom severity. Furthermore, a greater prevalence of traumatic brain injury (TBI), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), co-morbid TBI/PTSD, and other Axis I diagnoses, was observed among participants with poor effort. Although poor performance validity is relatively uncommon in a research setting, these findings demonstrate that clinicians should be cautious when interpreting psychological symptoms and neuropsychological test performance of Veteran participants who fail effort measures.	\N	\N
24773193	Speakers modulate their prosody to express not only emotional information but also semantic information (e.g., raising pitch for upward motion). Moreover, this information can help listeners infer meaning. Work investigating the communicative role of prosodically conveyed meaning has focused on reference resolution, and potential mnemonic benefits remain unexplored. We investigated the effect of prosody on memory for the meaning of novel words, even when it conveys superfluous information. Participants heard novel words, produced with congruent or incongruent prosody, and viewed image pairs representing the intended meaning and its antonym (e.g., a small and a large dog). Importantly, an arrow indicated the image representing the intended meaning, resolving the ambiguity. Participants then completed 2 memory tests, either immediately after learning or after a 24-hr delay, on which they chose an image (out of a new image pair) and a definition that best represented the word. On the image test, memory was similar on the immediate test, but incongruent prosody led to greater loss over time. On the definition test, memory was better for congruent prosody at both times. Results suggest that listeners extract semantic information from prosody even when it is redundant and that prosody can enhance memory, beyond its role in comprehension.	\N	\N
24773417	The transition from childhood to adulthood is characterized by improved motor and cognitive performance in many domains. Developmental studies focus on average performance in single domains but ignore consistency of performance across domains. Within-individual variability (WIV) provides an index of that evenness and is a potential marker of development. We gave a computerized battery of 14 neurocognitive tests to 9138 youths ages 8-21 from the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort. As expected, performance improved with age, with both accuracy and speed peaking in adulthood. WIV, however, showed a U-shaped course: highest in childhood, declining yearly into mid-adolescence, and increasing again into adulthood. Young females outperformed and were less variable than males, but by early adulthood male performance matched that of females despite being more variable. We conclude that WIV declines from childhood to adolescence as developmental lags are overcome, and then increases into adulthood reflecting the emergence of cognitive specializations related to skill-honing and brain maturation.	\N	\N
24785592	BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: The present study examined the effect of training on age differences in performing a highly practiced task using the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm (Pashler, 1984, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 10, 358-377). Earlier training studies have concentrated on tasks that are not already overlearned. The present question of interest is whether task dual-task integration will be more efficient when single-task performance is approaching asymptotic levels. Task 1 was red/green signal discrimination (green = "go" and red = "wait"; analogous to pedestrian signals) and Task 2 was tone discrimination (white noise vs. a horn "honk"; analogous to traffic sound). The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between Task 1 and Task 2 was varied (50, 150, 600, and 1000 ms). All individuals participated in eight sessions spread over 8 weeks (one session per week). Participants completed a dual-task pretest (Week 1), followed by 6 weeks of single-task testing (Weeks 2-7), followed by a dual-task posttest (Week 8). Although older adults showed larger overall dual-task costs (i.e., PRP effects), they were able to reduce the costs with practice as much as younger adults. However, even when training on Task 1 results in asymptotic performance, this still did not lead to an appreciable reduction in dual-task costs. Also, older adults, but not younger adults, responded more rapidly to green stimuli than to red stimuli in the Task 1 training latency data. The authors confirmed this green/go bias using diffusion modeling, which takes into account response time and error rates at the same time. This green/go bias is potentially dangerous at crosswalks, especially when combined with large dual-task interference, and might contribute to the high rate of crosswalk accidents in the elderly.	\N	\N
24794051	A variety of causes of boredom have been proposed including environmental, motivational, emotional, and cognitive factors. Here, we explore four potential cognitive causes of boredom: inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity, and executive dysfunction. Specifically, we examine the unique and common associations between these factors and boredom propensity. Recent research has established that the two most commonly used measures of boredom propensity (BPS and BSS) are not measuring the same underlying construct. Thus, a second goal of the present project is to determine the unique and common roles of inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity and poor executive system functioning in predicting the BPS and BSS specifically. The findings reveal that inattention, hyperactivity and executive dysfunction predict boredom propensity, with shared variance accounting for the greater part of this effect. Further, executive dysfunction and hyperactivity uniquely predict boredom propensity as measured by the BPS and BSS, respectively.	\N	\N
24800896	Evidence from a growing body of literature suggests that alcohol, even at moderate-dose levels, disrupts the ability to ignore distractors. However, little work has been done to elucidate the neural processes underlying this deficit. The present study was conducted to determine if low-to-moderate alcohol doses affect sensory gating, an electrophysiological phenomenon believed to reflect the pre-attentive filtering of irrelevant sensory information. Sixty social drinkers were administered one of three doses intended to produce breath alcohol concentrations of 0.0% (placebo), 0.04% (i.e., low dose), and 0.065% (i.e., moderate dose). A paired-click paradigm consisting of 100 pairs of identical tones (S1 and S2) was used to assess sensory gating. Amplitudes of P50, N100, and P200 auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) were used to calculate gating difference (S1-S2) and ratio (S2/S1) scores. The moderate alcohol dose significantly decreased P50 and N100 gating relative to placebo. Comparisons between the difference and ratio scores helped characterize the gating mechanisms affected at these stages of information processing. Alcohol did not alter P200 sensory gating. These data suggest that alcohol disrupts pre-attentional sensory-filtering processes at breath alcohol concentrations (BrACs) below the current 0.08% legal limit. Future studies should perform a combined assessment of sensory gating and selective attention to better understand the relationship between these two alcohol-induced deficits.	\N	\N
24806689	The magnitude of repetition suppression (RS) in the Fusiform Face Area is influenced by the probability of repetitions of faces (Summerfield et al., 2008), implying that perceptual expectations affect repetition-related processes. Surprisingly, however, macaque single-cell (Kaliukhovich and Vogels, 2011) and human fMRI (Kovács et al., 2013) studies have failed to find repetition probability [P(rep)] modulations of RS with nonface stimuli in the occipitotemporal cortex, suggesting that the effect is face specific. One possible explanation of this category selectivity is that the extensive experience humans have with faces affects the neural mechanisms of RS specifically, creating P(rep) modulatory effects. To address this question, we used fMRI to test the P(rep) effects for another well trained stimulus category, upright letters of the roman alphabet as well as for unfamiliar false fonts. We observed significant RS for both stimulus sets in the Letter Form Area as well as in the caudodorsal part of the lateral occipital complex. Interestingly, the influence of P(rep) on RS was dependent on the stimulus: while we observed P(rep) modulations for the roman letters, no such effects were found for the unfamiliar false fonts in either area. Our findings suggest that P(rep) effects on RS are manifest for nonface stimuli as well, but that they depend on the experience of the subjects with the stimulus category. This shows, for the first time, that prior experience affects the influence of contextual predictive information on RS in the human occipitotemporal cortex.	\N	\N
24820669	Research has shown that integer comparison is quick and efficient. This efficiency may be a function of the structure of the integer comparison system. The present study tests whether integers are compared with an unlimited capacity system or a limited capacity system. We tested these models using a visual search task with time delimitation. The data from Experiments 1 and 2 indicate that integers are encoded, identified, and compared within an unlimited capacity system. The data from Experiment 3 indicate that 2nd-order magnitude comparisons are processed with a highly efficient limited capacity system.	\N	\N
24826505	This study examines neuropsychological impairments associated with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and explores their association with related clinical factors. Sixty-eight women with CFS were assessed with a neuropsychological battery. Raw scores were adjusted for age and gender and were converted to T scores according to normative data extracted from a local sample of 250 healthy subjects. Neuropsychological dysfunction was calculated using summary impairment indexes (proportion of test scores outside normal limits-T score <40-for each cognitive domain). Finally, a linear regression was calculated to identify predictors of cognitive deficit, including intrinsic factors of the disease (level of fatigue and length of illness) and extrinsic factors (emotional factors, age, and education). Approximately 50% of scores showed impairment in attention and motor functioning, and nearly 40% showed impairment in speed information processing and executive functioning. Fatigue predicted attention and executive functioning impairment, and emotional factors predicted verbal memory dysfunction. According to our findings, cognitive dysfunction in CFS could be explained by pathophysiological processes of the disease. One implication of this would be the need to identify homogeneous subgroups of patients with CFS by taking into account common factors, which, in turn, would help to identify more specific cognitive profiles, which could then serve to implement appropriate therapeutic measures accordingly.	\N	\N
24831114	The serotonin and circadian systems are two important interactive regulatory networks in the mammalian brain that regulate behavior and physiology in ways that are known to impact human mental health. Previous work on the interaction between these two systems suggests that serotonin modulates photic input to the central circadian clock (the suprachiasmatic nuclei; SCN) from the retina and serves as a signal for locomotor activity, novelty, and arousal to shift the SCN clock, but effects of disruption of serotonergic signaling from the raphe nuclei on circadian behavior and on SCN function are not fully characterized. In this study, we examined the effects on diurnal and circadian behavior, and on ex vivo molecular rhythms of the SCN, of genetic deficiency in Pet-1, an ETS transcription factor that is necessary to establish and maintain the serotonergic phenotype of raphe neurons. Pet-1⁻/⁻ mice exhibit loss of rhythmic behavioral coherence and an extended daily activity duration, as well as changes in the molecular rhythms expressed by the clock, such that ex vivo SCN from Pet-1⁻/⁻ mice exhibit period lengthening and sex-dependent changes in rhythmic amplitude. Together, our results indicate that Pet-1 regulation of raphe neuron serotonin phenotype contributes to the period, precision and light/dark partitioning of locomotor behavioral rhythms by the circadian clock through direct actions on the SCN clock itself, as well as through non-clock effects.	\N	\N
24838871	Anxious people show an attentional bias towards threatening information. It was investigated whether an attentional bias exists for cancer-related stimuli in breast cancer survivors and if different levels of fear of cancer recurrence would lead to different patterns of selective attention. Breast cancer survivors with high (n = 35) and low (n = 32) fear of cancer recurrence were compared to 40 healthy female hospital employees. Specificity of attentional biases was investigated using a modified Emotional Stroop Task. Self-report measures were used to assess depression and anxiety, feelings of fatigue, and experienced traumas. Compared to control participants, breast cancer survivors with both high and low levels of fear of cancer recurrence showed increased interference for cancer-related words, but not for other word types. The findings suggest a specific attentional bias for cancer-related words in breast cancer survivors that is independent of level of fear of cancer recurrence.	\N	\N
24839251	To investigate whether acute total sleep deprivation (TSD) leads to decreased cognitive control when food cues are presented during a task requiring active attention, by assessing the ability to cognitively inhibit prepotent responses. Fourteen males participated in the study on two separate occasions in a randomized, crossover within-subject design: one night of TSD versus normal sleep (8.5 hours). Following each nighttime intervention, hunger ratings and morning fasting plasma glucose concentrations were assessed before performing a go/no-go task. Following TSD, participants made significantly more commission errors when they were presented "no-go" food words in the go/no-go task, as compared with their performance following sleep (+56%; P<0.05). In contrast, response time and omission errors to "go" non-food words did not differ between the conditions. Self-reported hunger after TSD was increased without changes in fasting plasma glucose. The increase in hunger did not correlate with the TSD-induced commission errors. Our results suggest that TSD impairs cognitive control also in response to food stimuli in healthy young men. Whether such loss of inhibition or impulsiveness is food cue-specific as seen in obesity-thus providing a mechanism through which sleep disturbances may promote obesity development-warrants further investigation.	\N	\N
24842070	Performance in response inhibition paradigms is typically attributed to inhibitory control. Here we examined the idea that stopping may largely depend on the outcome of a sensory detection process. Subjects performed a speeded go task, but they were instructed to withhold their response when a visual stop signal was presented. The stop signal could occur in the center of the screen or in the periphery. On half of the trials, perceptual distractors were presented throughout the trial. We found that these perceptual distractors impaired stopping, especially when stop signals could occur in the periphery. Furthermore, the effect of the distractors on going was smallest in the central stop-signal condition, medium in a condition in which no signals could occur, and largest in the condition in which stop signals could occur in the periphery. The results show that an important component of stopping is finding a balance between ignoring irrelevant information in the environment and monitoring for the occurrence of occasional stop signals. These findings highlight the importance of sensory detection processes when stopping and could shed new light on a range of phenomena and findings in the response inhibition literature.	\N	\N
24845743	We examine how haptic feedback could enable an implicit human-computer interaction, in the context of an audio stream listening use case where a device monitors a user's electrodermal activity for orienting responses to external interruptions. When such a response is detected, our previously developed system automatically places a bookmark in the audio stream for later resumption of listening. Here, we investigate two uses of haptic feedback to support this implicit interaction and mitigate effects of noisy (false-positive) bookmarking: (a) low-attention notification when a bookmark is placed, and (b) focused-attention display of bookmarks during resumptive navigation. Results show that haptic notification of bookmark placement, when paired with visual display of bookmark location, significant improves navigation time. Solely visual or haptic display of bookmarks elicited equivalent navigation time; however, only the inclusion of haptic display significantly increased accuracy. Participants preferred haptic notification over no notification at interruption time, and combined haptic and visual display of bookmarks to support navigation to their interrupted location at resumption time. Our contributions include an approach to handling noisy data in implicit HCI, an implementation of haptic notifications that signal implicit system behavior, and discussion of user mental models that may be active in this context.	\N	\N
24857238	Schizophrenia is associated with poor Theory of Mind (ToM), particularly in goal and belief attribution to others. It is also associated with abnormal gaze behaviors toward others: individuals with schizophrenia usually look less to others' face and gaze, which are crucial epistemic cues that contribute to correct mental states inferences. This study tests the hypothesis that impaired ToM in schizophrenia might be related to a deficit in visual attention toward gaze orientation. We adapted a previous non-verbal ToM paradigm consisting of animated cartoons allowing the assessment of goal and belief attribution. In the true and false belief conditions, an object was displaced while an agent was either looking at it or away, respectively. Eye movements were recorded to quantify visual attention to gaze orientation (proportion of time participants spent looking at the head of the agent while the target object changed locations). 29 patients with schizophrenia and 29 matched controls were tested. Compared to controls, patients looked significantly less at the agent's head and had lower performance in belief and goal attribution. Performance in belief and goal attribution significantly increased with the head looking percentage. When the head looking percentage was entered as a covariate, the group effect on belief and goal attribution performance was not significant anymore. Patients' deficit on this visual ToM paradigm is thus entirely explained by a decreased visual attention toward gaze.	\N	\N
24859426	Caffeine is the most widely consumed stimulant to counter sleep-loss effects. While the pharmacokinetics of caffeine in the body is well-understood, its alertness-restoring effects are still not well characterized. In fact, mathematical models capable of predicting the effects of varying doses of caffeine on objective measures of vigilance are not available. In this paper, we describe a phenomenological model of the dose-dependent effects of caffeine on psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) performance of sleep-deprived subjects. We used the two-process model of sleep regulation to quantify performance during sleep loss in the absence of caffeine and a dose-dependent multiplier factor derived from the Hill equation to model the effects of single and repeated caffeine doses. We developed and validated the model fits and predictions on PVT lapse (number of reaction times exceeding 500 ms) data from two separate laboratory studies. At the population-average level, the model captured the effects of a range of caffeine doses (50-300 mg), yielding up to a 90% improvement over the two-process model. Individual-specific caffeine models, on average, predicted the effects up to 23% better than population-average caffeine models. The proposed model serves as a useful tool for predicting the dose-dependent effects of caffeine on the PVT performance of sleep-deprived subjects and, therefore, can be used for determining caffeine doses that optimize the timing and duration of peak performance.	\N	\N
24866977	Previous research has shown that loading information on working memory affects selective attention. However, whether the load effect on selective attention is domain-general or domain-specific remains unresolved. The domain-general effect refers to the findings that load in one content (e.g. phonological) domain in working memory influences processing in another content (e.g., visuospatial) domain. Attentional control supervises selection regardless of information domain. The domain-specific effect refers to the constraint of influence only when maintenance and processing operate in the same domain. Selective attention operates in a specific content domain. This study is designed to resolve this controversy. Across three experiments, we manipulated the type of representation maintained in working memory and the type of representation upon which the participants must exert control to resolve conflict and select a target into the focus of attention. In Experiments 1a and 1b, participants maintained digits and nonverbalized objects, respectively, in working memory while selecting a target in a letter array. In Experiment 2, we presented auditory digits with a letter flanker task to exclude the involvement of resource competition within the same input modality. In Experiments 3a and 3b, we replaced the letter flanker task with an object flanker task while manipulating the memory load on object and digit representation, respectively. The results consistently showed that memory load modulated distractibility only when the stimuli of the two tasks were represented in the same domain. The magnitude of distractor interference was larger under high load than under low load, reflecting a lower efficacy of information prioritization. When the stimuli of the two tasks were represented in different domains, memory load did not modulate distractibility. Control of processing priority in selective attention demands domain-specific resources.	\N	\N
24874173	Sex differences in attentional selection of global and local components of stimuli have been hypothesized to underlie sex differences in cognitive strategy choice. A Navon figure paradigm was employed in 32 men, 41 naturally cycling women (22 follicular, 19 luteal) and 19 users of oral contraceptives (OCs) containing first to third generation progestins in their active pill phase. Participants were first asked to detect targets at any level (divided attention) and then at either the global or the local level only (focused attention). In the focused attention condition, luteal women showed reduced global advantage (i.e. faster responses to global vs. local targets) compared to men, follicular women and OC users. Accordingly, global advantage during the focused attention condition related significantly positively to testosterone levels and significantly negatively to progesterone, but not estradiol levels in a multiple regression model including all naturally cycling women and men. Interference (i.e. delayed rejection of stimuli displaying targets at the non-attended level) was significantly enhanced in OC users as compared to naturally cycling women and related positively to testosterone levels in all naturally cycling women and men. Remarkably, when analyzed separately for each group, the relationship of testosterone to global advantage and interference was reversed in women during their luteal phase as opposed to men and women during their follicular phase. As global processing is lateralized to the right and local processing to the left hemisphere, we speculate that these effects stem from a testosterone-mediated enhancement of right-hemisphere functioning as well as progesterone-mediated inter-hemispheric decoupling.	\N	\N
24875233	Hypoxia has been postulated as a key mechanism for neurocognitive impairment in sleep-disordered breathing. However, the effect of hypoxia on the electroencephalogram (EEG) is not clear. We examined quantitative EEG recordings from 20 normal volunteers under three 5-min ventilatory control protocols: progressive hypercapnia with iso-hyperoxia (pO2=150mmHg) (Protocol 1), progressive hypercapnia with iso-hypoxia (pO2=50mmHg) (Protocol 2), and progressive hypoxia with a CO2 scrubber in the circuit (Protocol 3). Each protocol started with a 5-min session of breathing room air as baseline. In Protocol 1, compared to its baseline, iso-hyperoxia hypercapnia led to a lower Alpha% and higher Delta/Alpha (D/A) ratio. Similarly, in Protocol 2, the iso-hypoxia hypercapnia induced a higher Delta%, a lower Alpha% and higher D/A ratio. No difference was found in any EEG spectral band including the D/A ratio when Protocols 1 & 2 were compared. In Protocol 3, the Delta%, Alpha% and D/A ratio recorded during hypoxia were not significantly different from baseline. We found that hypercapnia, but not hypoxia, may play a key role in slowing of the EEG in healthy humans. Hypercapnia may be a greater influence than hypoxia on brain neuroelectrical activities.	\N	\N
24878318	The traditional sleep scoring approach has been invented long before the recognition of strictly local nature of the sleep process. It considers sleep as a whole-organism behavior state, and, thus, it cannot be used for identification of sleep onset in a separate brain region. Therefore, this paper was aimed on testing whether the practically useful, simple and reliable yes-or-no criterion of sleep onset in a particular cortical region might be developed through applying principal component analysis to the electroencephalographic (EEG) spectra. The resting EEG was recorded with 2-hour intervals throughout 43-61-hour prolongation of wakefulness, and during 12 20-minute attempts to nap in the course of 24-hour wakefulness (15 and 18 adults, respectively). The EEG power spectra were averaged on 1-min intervals of each resting EEG record and on 1-min intervals of each napping attempt, respectively. Since we earlier demonstrated that scores on the first and second principal components of the EEG spectrum exhibit dramatic changes during the sleep onset period, a zero-crossing buildup of the first score and a zero-crossing decline of the second score were examined as possible yes-or-no markers of regional sleep onsets. The results suggest that, irrespective of electrode location, sleep onset criterion and duration of preceding wakefulness, a highly significant zero-crossing decline of the second principal component score always occurred within 1-minute interval of transition from wakefulness to sleep. Therefore, it was concluded that such zero-crossing decline can serve as a reliable, simple, and practically useful yes-or-no marker of drop off event in a given cortical area.	\N	\N
24880095	Visual attention has been shown to progress from the most to the least salient item in a given scene. Cognitive and physiological models assume that this orienting of covert attention relies on the collicular pathway, involving the superior colliculus and the pulvinar. Recent studies questioned this statement as they described attentional capture by visual items invisible to the superior colliculus. Electrophysiological studies shown that there is no direct projections from short-wave receptors to the superior colliculus. S-cone stimuli can thus be employed to assess visual processing without the involvement of the collicular pathway. We have attempted to investigate whether this pathway is involved in the salience-based orientation of attention by presenting S-cone stimuli. Volunteers were asked to make a judgment regarding a target among two distractors (all items of unequal sizes). Items' location and size varied randomly, as well as color, randomly black or calibrated for each subject to activate exclusively S-cones. The hierarchical pattern testifying of the salience-based orientation of attention was only found with black stimuli, arguing in favor of an implication of the collicular pathway in salience. In a second experiment, one item was presented at a time in order to test the item-multiplicity effect by comparing experiments. Performance was the most penalized when presenting multiple stimuli in the black condition. Results were interpreted in terms of distinct modes of processing by the collicular and geniculate pathways. The establishment of salience that determines attentional progression appeared to be only possible when the collicular pathway was solicited.	\N	\N
24887007	Sex differences in pain perception are still poorly understood, but they may be related to the way the brains of men and women respond to the affective dimensions of pain. Using a matched pain intensity paradigm, where pain intensity was kept constant across participants but pain unpleasantness was left free to vary among participants, we studied the relationship between pain unpleasantness and pain-evoked brain activity in healthy men and women separately. Experimental pain was provoked using transcutaneous electrical stimulation of the sural nerve while pain-related brain activity was measured using somatosensory-evoked brain potentials with source localization. Cardiac responses to pain were also measured using electrocardiac recordings. Results revealed that subjective pain unpleasantness was strongly associated with increased perigenual anterior cingulate cortex activity in women, whereas it was strongly associated with decreased ventromedial prefrontal cortex activity in men. Only ventromedial prefrontal cortex deactivations in men were additionally associated with increased autonomic cardiac arousal. These results suggest that in order to deal with pain's objectionable properties, men preferentially deactivate prefrontal suppression regions, leading to the mobilization of threat-control circuits, whereas women recruit well-known emotion-processing areas of the brain. This article presents neuroimaging findings demonstrating that subjective pain unpleasantness ratings are associated with different pain-evoked brain responses in men and women, which has potentially important implications regarding sex differences in the risk of developing chronic pain.	\N	\N
24906032	To examine the trajectories of sleep duration and nocturnal awakenings in infants from 6 to 18 months of age and to identify predictors of short sleep duration and nocturnal awakenings. Data for this study come from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study conducted at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. A total of 55,831 mother reports of child sleep were used to estimate the stability and predictors of awakenings and short sleep. Nocturnal awakenings were frequent among 6-month-old children. Although there was an overall reduction in both sleep duration and nocturnal awakenings from 6 to 18 months, the chronicity of sleep problems was high and impacted by prior sleep behavior and sleeping arrangements. Bedsharing was an independent and graded predictor of nocturnal awakenings and short sleep duration, also after controlling for prior sleep. Breastfeeding was related to concurrent nocturnal awakening but was not negatively related to later nocturnal awakenings. Considering the chronicity of nocturnal awakening and its association with bedsharing, our findings support current recommendations of reducing bedsharing to improve sleep among infants.	\N	\N
24912070	Dopaminergic medication in Parkinson's disease has been proposed to improve cognitive processing by modulating the severely depleted dorsal striatum, while impairing reward processing by modulating the relatively intact ventral striatum. However, there is no direct (neural) evidence for this hypothesis. Here we fill this gap by scanning Parkinson's disease patients (n=15) ON and relatively OFF their dopaminergic medication using functional magnetic resonance imaging. During scanning, patients performed a task that enabled the simultaneous measurement of task-switching and reward-related processing. Brain-behavior correlations revealed that medication-related increases (ON-OFF) in switch-related BOLD signal (switch-repeat) in the dorsomedial striatum were associated, on an individual basis, with improvements in task-switching (i.e. a decreased switch cost). Conversely, medication-related increases (ON-OFF) in reward-related BOLD signal (high-low) in the ventromedial striatum were associated, on an individual basis, with impairments in performance in anticipation of reward (i.e. an increased reward cost). Linear regression analyses demonstrated that the positive relationship between medication-related changes in BOLD and the reward cost was unique to the ventromedial striatum, whereas the negative relationship between medication-related changes in BOLD and the switch cost was not unique to the dorsomedial striatum. These findings extend the dopamine overdose hypothesis, according to which dopamine-induced changes in dorsal and ventral striatal processing lead to cognitive improvement and impairment respectively.	\N	\N
24912136	People differ in both their sensitivity for bitter taste and their tendency to respond to emotional stimuli with approach or avoidance. The present study investigated the relationship between these sensitivities in an affective picture paradigm with startle responding. Emotion-induced changes in arousal and attention (pupil modulation), priming of approach and avoidance behavior (startle reflex modulation), and subjective evaluations (ratings) were examined. Sensitivity for bitter taste was assessed with the 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP)-sensitivity test, which discriminated individuals who were highly sensitive to PROP compared to NaCl (PROP-tasters) and those who were less sensitive or insensitive to the bitter taste of PROP. Neither pupil responses nor picture ratings differed between the two taster groups. The startle eye blink response, however, significantly differentiated PROP-tasters from PROP-insensitive subjects. Facilitated response priming to emotional stimuli emerged in PROP-tasters but not in PROP-insensitive subjects at shorter startle lead intervals (200-300ms between picture onset and startle stimulus onset). At longer lead intervals (3-4.5s between picture onset and startle stimulus onset) affective startle modulation did not differ between the two taster groups. This implies that in PROP-sensitive individuals action tendencies of approach or avoidance are primed immediately after emotional stimulus exposure. These results suggest a link between PROP taste perception and biologically relevant patterns of emotional responding. Direct perception-action links have been proposed to underlie motivational priming effects of the startle reflex, and the present results extend these to the sensory dimension of taste.	\N	\N
24918067	Affect recognition deficits found in individuals with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) across the lifespan may bias the development of cognitive control processes implicated in the pathophysiology of the disorder. This study aimed to determine the mechanism through which facial expressions influence cognitive control in young adults diagnosed with ADHD in childhood. Fourteen probands with childhood ADHD and 14 comparison subjects with no history of ADHD were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing a face emotion go/no-go task. Event-related analyses contrasted activation and functional connectivity for cognitive control collapsed over face valence and tested for variations in activation for response execution and inhibition as a function of face valence. Probands with childhood ADHD made fewer correct responses and inhibitions overall than comparison subjects, but demonstrated comparable effects of face emotion on response execution and inhibition. The two groups showed similar frontotemporal activation for cognitive control collapsed across face valence, but differed in the functional connectivity of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, with fewer interactions with the subgenual cingulate cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, and putamen in probands than in comparison subjects. Further, valence-dependent activation for response execution was seen in the amygdala, ventral striatum, subgenual cingulate cortex, and orbitofrontal cortex in comparison subjects but not in probands. The findings point to functional anomalies in limbic networks for both the valence-dependent biasing of cognitive control and the valence-independent cognitive control of face emotion processing in probands with childhood ADHD. This limbic dysfunction could impact cognitive control in emotional contexts and may contribute to the social and emotional problems associated with ADHD.	\N	\N
24918502	To investigate the existence of correlations between the performance of children in auditory temporal tests (Frequency Pattern and Gaps in Noise--GIN) and IQ, attention, memory and age measurements. Fifteen typically developing individuals between the ages of 7 to 12 years and normal hearing participated in the study. Auditory temporal processing tests (GIN and Frequency Pattern), as well as a Memory test (Digit Span), Attention tests (auditory and visual modality) and intelligence tests (RAVEN test of Progressive Matrices) were applied. Significant and positive correlation between the Frequency Pattern test and age variable were found, which was considered good (p<0.01, 75.6%). There were no significant correlations between the GIN test and the variables tested. Auditory temporal skills seem to be influenced by different factors: while the performance in temporal ordering skill seems to be influenced by maturational processes, the performance in temporal resolution was not influenced by any of the aspects investigated.	\N	\N
24932753	A number of studies have shown strong relations between numbers and oriented spatial codes. For example, perceiving numbers causes spatial shifts of attention depending upon numbers' magnitude, in a way suggestive of a spatially oriented, mental representation of numbers. Here, we investigated whether this phenomenon extends to non-symbolic numbers, as well as to the processing of the continuous dimensions of size and brightness, exploring whether different quantitative dimensions are equally mapped onto space. After a numerical (symbolic Arabic digits or non-symbolic arrays of dots; Experiment 1) or a non-numerical cue (shapes of different size or brightness level; Experiment 2) was presented, participants' saccadic response to a target that could appear either on the left or the right side of the screen was registered using an automated eye-tracker system. Experiment 1 showed that, both in the case of Arabic digits and dot arrays, right targets were detected faster when preceded by large numbers, and left targets were detected faster when preceded by small numbers. Participants in Experiment 2 were faster at detecting right targets when cued by large-sized shapes and left targets when cued by small-sized shapes, whereas brightness cues did not modulate the detection of peripheral targets. These findings indicate that looking at a symbolic or a non-symbolic number induces attentional shifts to a peripheral region of space that is congruent with the numbers' relative position on a mental number line, and that a similar shift in visual attention is induced by looking at shapes of different size. More specifically, results suggest that, while the dimensions of number and size spontaneously map onto an oriented space, the dimension of brightness seems to be independent at a certain level of magnitude elaboration from the dimensions of spatial extent and number, indicating that not all continuous dimensions are equally mapped onto space.	\N	\N
24935807	Although perception is typically constrained by limits in available processing resources, these constraints can be overcome if information about environmental properties, such as the spatial location or expected onset time of an object, can be used to direct resources to particular sensory inputs. In this work, we examined these temporal expectancy effects in greater detail in the context of the attentional blink (AB), in which identification of the second of two targets is impaired when the targets are separated by less than about half a second. We replicated previous results showing that presenting information about the expected onset time of the second target can overcome the AB. Uniquely, we also showed that information about expected onset (a) reduces susceptibility to distraction, (b) can be derived from salient temporal consistencies in intertarget intervals across exposures, and (c) is more effective when presented consistently rather than intermittently, along with trials that do not contain expectancy information. These results imply that temporal expectancy can benefit object processing at perceptual and postperceptual stages, and that participants are capable of flexibly encoding consistent timing information about environmental events in order to aid perception.	\N	\N
24953882	Noise stress (NS) is detrimental to many aspects of human health and behavior. Understanding the effect of noise stressors on human cognitive function is a growing area of research and is crucial to helping clinical populations, such as those with schizophrenia, which are particularly sensitive to stressors. A review of electronic databases for studies assessing the effect of acute NS on cognitive functions in healthy adults revealed 31 relevant studies. The review revealed (1) NS exerts a clear negative effect on attention, working memory and episodic recall, and (2) personality characteristics, in particular neuroticism, and sleep influence the impact of noise stressors on performance in interaction with task complexity. Previous findings of consistent impairment in NS-relevant cognitive domains, heightened sensitivity to stressors, elevated neuroticism and sleep disturbances in schizophrenia, taken together with the findings of this review, highlight the need for empirical studies to elucidate whether NS, a common aspect of urban environments, exacerbates cognitive deficits and other symptoms in schizophrenia and related clinical populations.	\N	\N
24954442	The aim of this study was to have a linguistic validation of the Sleep Disturbance Scale for Children (SDSC) in Iranian children with Persian language. The study included a randomly selected sample of children, aged 6-15 years, from three primary and secondary schools located in Isfahan City, Iran. Following the forward-backward translation method, parents completed the SDSC as well as the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL). Reliability (Cronbach's α) and convergent validity (item-subscale and subscale-total correlations) were assessed. The association of SDSC scores with PedsQL scores was evaluated for construct validity. One hundred children were studied; mean age, 9.36±2.58 years, 68 girls. Scale Cronbach's α was 0.82, ranging from 0.40 for 'disorder of arousal' to 0.86 for 'sleep hyperhidrosis' subscales. Convergent validity was acceptable according to the corrected item-subscale correlations (r = 0.22-0.76) and corrected subscale-total correlations (r = 0.30-0.50). The SDSC total score as well as its subscales, except the 'disorder of arousal', were associated with the total PedsQL score and its factors (r = -0.20 to -0.64). The overall psychometric properties of the Persian version of the SDSC seem to be appropriate in Iranian children.	\N	\N
24956002	Older adults fixate less on negative parts of skin cancer videos than younger adults, leading them to feel better (Isaacowitz & Choi, 2012). We extended this paradigm to middle-aged adults (ages 35-59, n = 63), whose fixation patterns were measured as they viewed skin cancer videos; mood and behavior were also assessed. Middle-aged adults looked even less at the videos than the other age groups, especially at the negative clips. They also reported the best moods but relatively low levels of learning and positive skin cancer behavior. In some cases, middle-aged adults may show larger "age-related positivity effects" than older adults.	\N	\N
24956067	The ability to detect and use information from errors is essential during the acquisition of new skills. There is now a wealth of evidence about the brain mechanisms involved in error processing. However, the extent to which those mechanisms are engaged during the acquisition of new motor skills remains elusive. Here we examined rhythm synchronization learning across 12 blocks of practice in musically naïve individuals and tracked changes in ERP signals associated with error-monitoring and error-awareness across distinct learning stages. Synchronization performance improved with practice, and performance improvements were accompanied by dynamic changes in ERP components related to error-monitoring and error-awareness. Early in learning, when performance was poor and the internal representations of the rhythms were weaker we observed a larger error-related negativity (ERN) following errors compared to later learning. The larger ERN during early learning likely results from greater conflict between competing motor responses, leading to greater engagement of medial-frontal conflict monitoring processes and attentional control. Later in learning, when performance had improved, we observed a smaller ERN accompanied by an enhancement of a centroparietal positive component resembling the P3. This centroparietal positive component was predictive of participant's performance accuracy, suggesting a relation between error saliency, error awareness and the consolidation of internal templates of the practiced rhythms. Moreover, we showed that during rhythm learning errors led to larger auditory evoked responses related to attention orientation which were triggered automatically and which were independent of the learning stage. The present study provides crucial new information about how the electrophysiological signatures related to error-monitoring and error-awareness change during the acquisition of new skills, extending previous work on error processing and cognitive control mechanisms to a more ecologically valid context.	\N	\N
24960589	This preliminary study explored differences between adults with and without traumatic brain injury (TBI) for speech processing accuracy, processing speed and effort in various conditions of interference. Ten adults with TBI and six adults without TBI participated. Speech processing was studied using sentence repetition in six listening conditions with different types of interference, including noise and two simultaneous talkers. Participants repeated sentences and rated effort. Participants also completed standardized tests of cognition, including working memory and processing speed measures. Sentence repetition accuracy did not differ between groups. However, the TBI group demonstrated slower processing speed than the control group and also reported significantly greater effort in the two-talker condition. Faster processing speed was also correlated with higher accuracy in the two-talker condition. RESULTS of this study show group similarities in repetition accuracy across listening conditions, but group differences in speed and effort. This preliminary finding, as well as the relationship between processing speed and repetition accuracy, suggests that it is only in the most complex listening conditions that the effects of brain injury may be detectable.	\N	\N
24964082	Predators are known to select food of the same type in non-random sequences or "runs" that are longer than would be expected by chance. If prey are conspicuous, predators will switch between available sources, interleaving runs of different prey types. However, when prey are cryptic, predators tend to focus on one food type at a time, effectively ignoring equally available sources. This latter finding is regarded as a key indicator that animal foraging is strongly constrained by attention. It is unknown whether human foraging is equally constrained. Here, using a novel iPad task, we demonstrate for the first time that it is. Participants were required to locate and touch 40 targets from 2 different categories embedded within a dense field of distractors. When individual target items "popped-out" search was organized into multiple runs, with frequent switching between target categories. In contrast, as soon as focused attention was required to identify individual targets, participants typically exhausted one entire category before beginning to search for the other. This commonality in animal and human foraging is compelling given the additional cognitive tools available to humans, and suggests that attention constrains search behavior in a similar way across a broad range of species.	\N	\N
24967719	Prior findings are mixed regarding the presence and direction of threat-related interference biases in social anxiety. The current study examined general inhibitory control (IC), measured by the classic colour-word Stroop, as a moderator of the relationship between both threat interference biases [indexed by the emotional Stroop (e-Stroop)] and several social anxiety indicators. High socially anxious undergraduate students (N = 159) completed the emotional and colour-word Stroop tasks, followed by an anxiety-inducing speech task. Participants completed measures of trait social anxiety, state anxiety before and during the speech, negative task-interfering cognitions during the speech and overall self-evaluation of speech performance. Speech duration was used to measure behavioural avoidance. In line with hypotheses, IC moderated the relationship between e-Stroop bias and every anxiety indicator (with the exception of behavioural avoidance), such that greater social-threat interference was associated with higher anxiety among those with weak IC, whereas lesser social-threat interference was associated with higher anxiety among those with strong IC. Implications for the theory and treatment of threat interference biases in socially anxious individuals are discussed.	\N	\N
24979861	We report the successful awake tracheal intubation in a patient with hypopharyngeal cancer and gastroesophageal regurgitation with the TaperGuard Evac tracheal tube (TaperGuard) and Pentax-AWS Airwayscope (AWS). A 63-year-old man with hypopharyngeal cancer with invasion to the glottis was scheduled for total laryngectomy under general anesthesia. He had undergone thoracic esophagectomy and could not maintain supine position due to severe gastroesophageal regurgitation. To avoid vomiting after induction of anesthesia, we planned awake intubation in the sitting position with the AWS. After topical anesthesia with 8% lidocaine and infusion of fentanyl and continuous dexmedetomidine, the AWS was inserted into his mouth in the sitting position from the cranial side. The AWS allowed visualizing the glottis avoiding the cancer, leading to safe placement of the tracheal tube.	\N	\N
24999612	To dissociate feature-based and object-based stages in the control of spatial attention during visual search, we employed the N2pc component as an electrophysiological marker of attentional object selection. Participants searched for a target object that was defined by a conjunction of color and shape. Some search displays contained the target or a nontarget object that matched either the target color or its shape among 3 nonmatching distractors. In other displays, the target and a partially target-matching nontarget object appeared together. N2pc results demonstrated that the initial stage of attentional object selection is controlled by local feature-specific signals. Attention is allocated in parallel and independently to objects with target-matching features during this early stage, irrespective of whether another target-matching object is simultaneously present elsewhere. From around 250 ms poststimulus, information is integrated across feature dimensions, and spatially selective attentional processing becomes object-based. These findings demonstrate that feature-based and object-based stages of attentional selectivity in visual search can be dissociated in real time.	\N	\N
25004102	Research using the diffusion model to decompose task-switching effects has contributed to a better understanding of the processes underlying the observed effect in the explicit task cueing paradigm: Previous findings could be reconciled with multiple component models of task switching or with an account on compound-cue retrieval/repetition priming. In the present study, we used two cues for each task in order to decompose task-switch and cue-switch effects. Response time data support previous findings that comparable parts of the switching effect can be attributed to cue-switching and task-switching. A diffusion model analysis of the data confirmed that non-decision time is increased and drift rates are decreased in unpredicted task-switches. Importantly, it was shown that non-decision time was selectively increased in task-switching trials but not in cue-switching trials. Results of the present study specifically support the notion of additional processes in task-switches and can be reconciled with broader multiple component accounts.	\N	\N
25012367	What defines the spatial and temporal boundaries of seizure activity in brain networks? To fully answer this question a precise and quantitative definition of seizures is needed, which unfortunately remains elusive. Nevertheless, it is possible to ask under conditions where clearly divergent patterns of activity occur in large-scale brain networks whether certain activity patterns are part of the seizure while others are not. Here we examine brain network activity during focal limbic seizures, including diverse regions such as the hippocampus, subcortical arousal systems and fronto-parietal association cortex. Based on work from patients and from animal models we describe a characteristic pattern of intense increases in neuronal firing, cerebral blood flow, cerebral blood volume, blood oxygen level dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging (BOLD fMRI) signals and cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen consumption in the hippocampus during focal limbic seizures. Similar increases are seen in certain closely linked subcortical structures such as the lateral septal nuclei and anterior hypothalamus, which contain inhibitory neurons. In marked contrast, decreases in all of these parameters are seen in the subcortical arousal systems of the upper brainstem and intralaminar thalamus, as well as in the fronto-parietal association cortex. We propose that the seizure proper can be defined as regions showing intense increases, while those areas showing opposite changes are inhibited by the seizure network and constitute long-range network consequences beyond the seizure itself. Importantly, the fronto-parietal cortex shows sleep-like slow wave activity and depressed metabolism under these conditions, associated with impaired consciousness. Understanding which brain networks are directly involved in seizures versus which sustain secondary consequences can provide new insights into the mechanisms of brain dysfunction in epilepsy, hopefully leading to innovative treatment approaches.	\N	\N
25035439	General anaesthesia (GA) carries high risks of ventilator dependency with increased morbidity and mortality in patients with severe respiratory disease. It also presents an ethical dilemma if surgery remains the only treatment option for patients with advanced terminal chronic respiratory disease. Thoracic epidural anaesthesia for awake thoracic surgery (TEATS) in high-risk patients with dyspnoea at rest could avoid ventilator dependency and speed up recovery even in patients with severe dyspnoea. This retrospective observational study analysed indications, management and outcome of patients contraindicated to GA undergoing awake thoracic surgery with thoracic epidural anaesthesia. From 716 patients requiring thoracic surgery, nine were contraindicated to GA. Eight patients [American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) 4] had a maximum grade four of the modified Medical Research Council dyspnea scale (MMRC). Two patients (ASA 3, grade 1 MMRC and ASA 4, grade 4 MMRC) refused GA. Patients (female : male ratio 1.25 : 1, age 19-76 years) had the following chronic respiratory diseases: pulmonary fibrosis (n = 2), pulmonary metastases (n = 3), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (n = 1), alveolitis (n = 1) and myopathy (n = 2). Surgical indications were: thoracotomy (n = 6) for pleurectomy to treat recurring pneumothorax (n = 3), pleurostomy (n = 1), emphysema surgery (n = 1), lung biopsy (n = 1) and thoracoscopy (n = 3) for pleural/lung biopsy (n = 2), pneumothorax (n = 1). Lidocaine 20 mg/ml or ropivacaine 7.5 mg/ml was titrated to achieve an anaesthesia level T2-T12. No patient required GA [time of surgery: 46-128 min, mean = 76 min, standard deviation (SD) = 23 min]. Seven patients had light sedation with TCI propofol, remifentanyl or both and remained responsive. Fifty percent of patients received phenylephrine or ephedrine to maintain arterial pressure. Two patients went into hypercapnia, which was reversed with assisted mask ventilation. One patient suffered acute respiratory distress 7 days postoperatively and died of intestinal bleeding on Day 25. There were no postoperative complications in other patients. Excluding Patient 9 always remaining in a medical intensive care unit (ICU), the mean postoperative ICU stay in thoracic surgery was 4.4 days (SD 5.2). Hospital discharge was between 5 and 40 days after surgery. TEATS with/without sedation was an alternative to GA for thoracotomy/thoracoscopy in severely dyspnoeic patients (MMRC grade 4, ASA 4) without postoperative sequelae.	\N	\N
25039045	To examine the association between domain-specific qualities of formal childcare at age 2-3 years and children's task attentiveness and emotional regulation at age 4-5 and 6-7 years. We used data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (n = 1038). Three domain-specific aspects of childcare quality were assessed: provider and program characteristics of care, activities in childcare, and carer-child relationship. Two self-regulatory abilities were considered: task attentiveness and emotional regulation. Associations between domain-specific qualities of childcare and self-regulation were investigated in linear regression analyses adjusted for confounding, with imputation for missing data. There was no association between any provider or program characteristics of care and children's task attentiveness and emotional regulation. The quality of activities in childcare were associated only with higher levels of emotional regulation at age 4-5 years (β = 0.24; 95% CI, 0.03-0.44) and 6-7 years (β = 0.26; 95% CI, 0.04-0.48). Higher-quality carer-child relationships were associated with higher levels of task attentiveness (β = 0.20; 95% CI, 0.05-0.36) and emotional regulation at age 4-5 years (β = 0.19; 95% CI, 0.04-0.34) that persisted to age 6-7 years (β = 0.26; 95% CI, 0.10-0.42; β = 0.31; 95% CI, 0.16-0.47). Among children using formal childcare, those who experienced higher-quality relationships were better able to regulate their attention and emotions as they started school. Higher emotional regulation was also observed for children engaged in more activities in childcare. Beneficial effects were stable over time.	\N	\N
25044928	While forgetfulness is widely reported by breast cancer survivors, studies documenting objective memory performance yield mixed, largely inconsistent, results. Failure to find consistent, objective memory issues may be due to the possibility that cancer survivors misattribute their experience of forgetfulness to primary memory issues rather than to difficulties in attention at the time of learning. To clarify potential attention issues, factor scores for Attention Span, Learning Efficiency, Delayed Memory, and Inaccurate Memory were analyzed for the California Verbal Learning Test-Second Edition (CVLT-II) in 64 clinically referred breast cancer survivors with self-reported cognitive complaints; item analysis was conducted to clarify specific contributors to observed effects, and contrasts between learning and recall trials were compared with normative data. Performance on broader cognitive domains is also reported. The Attention Span factor, but not Learning Efficiency, Delayed Memory, or Inaccurate Memory factors, was significantly affected in this clinical sample. Contrasts between trials were consistent with normative data and did not indicate greater loss of information over time than in the normative sample. Results of this analysis suggest that attentional dysfunction may contribute to subjective and objective memory complaints in breast cancer survivors. These results are discussed in the context of broader cognitive effects following treatment for clinicians who may see cancer survivors for assessment.	\N	\N
25051341	Although previous research had related structural changes and impaired cognition to chronic cigarette smoking, recent neuroimaging studies have associated nicotine, which is a main chemical substance in cigarettes, with improvements in cognitive functions (e.g. improved attention performance). However, information about the alterations of whole-brain functional connectivity after acute cigarette smoking is limited. In this study, 22 smokers underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) after abstaining from smoking for 12 hours (state of abstinence, SOA). Subsequently, the smokers were allowed to smoke two cigarettes (state of satisfaction, SOS) before they underwent a second rs-fMRI. Twenty non-smokers were also recruited to undergo rs-fMRI. In addition, high-resolution 3D T1-weighted images were acquired using the same magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI)scanner for all participants. The results showed that smokers had structural changes in insula, thalamus, medial frontal cortex and several regions of the default mode network (DMN) compared with non-smokers. Voxel-wise group comparisons of newly developed global brain connectivity (GBC) showed that smokers in the SOA condition had higher GBC in the insula and superior frontal gyrus compared with non-smokers. However, smokers in the SOS condition demonstrated significantly lower GBC in several regions of the DMN, as compared with smokers in the SOA condition. These results suggest that structural integrity combined with dysfunction of the DMN might be involved in relapses after a short period of time among smokers.	\N	\N
25073453	Studies that have measured the effects of attentional training have relied on a range of training formats, which may vary in their efficacy. In particular, it is unclear whether programs that practice dual-tasking are more effective in improving divided attention than programs focusing on flexible allocation priority training. The aims of this study were as follows: (1) to compare the efficacy of different types of attentional training formats and (2) to assess transfer to distal measures. Forty-two healthy older adults were randomly assigned to one of three training groups. In the SINGLE training condition, participants practiced a visual detection and an alphanumeric equation task in isolation. In the FIXED training condition, participants practiced both tasks simultaneously with equal attention allocated to each. In the VARIABLE training condition, participants varied the attentional priority allocated to each task. After training, all participants improved their performance on the alphanumeric equation task when performed individually, including those in the SINGLE training condition. Participants in the FIXED training condition improved their divided attention, but only the participants in the VARIABLE training condition showed a greater capacity to vary their attentional priorities according to the instructions. Regarding transfer, all groups improved their performance on the 2-back condition, but only the VARIABLE and FIXED conditions resulted in better performance on the 1-back condition. Overall, the study supports the notion that attentional control capacities in older adults are plastic and can be improved with appropriate training and that the type of training determines its impact on divided attention.	\N	\N
25083012	To determine relationships of polysomnographic (PSG) measures with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a young adult, urban African American population. Cross-sectional, clinical and laboratory evaluation. Community recruitment, evaluation in the clinical research unit of an urban University hospital. Participants (n = 145) were Black, 59.3% female, with a mean age of 23.1 y (SD = 4.8). One hundred twenty-one participants (83.4%) met criteria for trauma exposure, the most common being nonsexual violence. Thirty-nine participants (26.9%) met full (n = 19) or subthreshold criteria (n = 20) for current PTSD, 41 (28.3%) had met lifetime PTSD criteria and were recovered, and 65 (45%) were negative for PTSD. Evaluations included the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) and 2 consecutive nights of overnight PSG. Analysis of variance did not reveal differences in measures of sleep duration and maintenance, percentage of sleep stages, and the latency to and duration of uninterrupted segments of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep by study group. There were significant relationships between the duration of PTSD and REM sleep percentage (r = 0.53, P = 0.001), REM segment length (r = 0.43, P = 0.006), and REM sleep latency (r = -0.34, P < 0.03) among those with current PTSD that persisted when removing cases with, or controlling for, depression. The findings are consistent with observations in the literature of fragmented and reduced REM sleep with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) relatively proximate to trauma exposure and nondisrupted or increased REM sleep with chronic PTSD. Mellman TA, Kobayashi I, Lavela J, Wilson B, Hall Brown TS. A relationship between REM sleep measures and the duration of posttraumatic stress disorder in a young adult urban minority population.	\N	\N
25102420	Activation of frontal and parietal brain regions is associated with attentional control during visual search. We used fMRI to characterize age-related differences in frontoparietal activation in a highly efficient feature search task, detection of a shape singleton. On half of the trials, a salient distractor (a color singleton) was present in the display. The hypothesis was that frontoparietal activation mediated the relation between age and attentional capture by the salient distractor. Participants were healthy, community-dwelling individuals, 21 younger adults (19-29 years of age) and 21 older adults (60-87 years of age). Top-down attention, in the form of target predictability, was associated with an improvement in search performance that was comparable for younger and older adults. The increase in search reaction time (RT) associated with the salient distractor (attentional capture), standardized to correct for generalized age-related slowing, was greater for older adults than for younger adults. On trials with a color singleton distractor, search RT increased as a function of increasing activation in frontal regions, for both age groups combined, suggesting increased task difficulty. Mediational analyses disconfirmed the hypothesized model, in which frontal activation mediated the age-related increase in attentional capture, but supported an alternative model in which age was a mediator of the relation between frontal activation and capture.	\N	\N
25109005	Depth of field (DOF) is defined as the distance range within which objects are perceived as sharp. Previous research has focused on blur discrimination in artificial stimuli and natural photographs. The discrimination of DOF, however, has received less attention. Since DOF introduces blur which is related to distance in depth, many levels of blur are simultaneously present. As a consequence, it is unclear whether discrimination thresholds for blur are appropriate for predicting discrimination thresholds for DOF. We therefore measured discrimination thresholds for DOF using a two-alternative forced-choice task. Ten participants were asked to observe two images and to select the one with the larger DOF. We manipulated the scale of the scene--that is, the actual depth in the scene. We conducted the experiment under stereoscopic and nonstereoscopic viewing conditions. We found that the threshold for a large DOF (39.1 mm) was higher than for a small DOF (10.1 mm), and the thresholds decreased when scale of scene increased. We also found that there was no significant difference between stereoscopic and nonstereoscopic conditions. We compared our results with thresholds predicted from the literature. We concluded that using blur discrimination thresholds to discriminate DOF may lead to erroneous conclusions because the depth in the scene significantly affects people's DOF discrimination ability.	\N	\N
25116758	A phasic change in alertness is produced every time that a warning stimulus precedes a target, and it enhances and maintains the response readiness to an impending stimulus. In the present study, we investigated the Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) phenomenon, as index of phasic alertness, during a S1-S2 paradigm in which the imperative stimulus was represented by a double-choice reaction time task, designed to increase the executive requests at S2. Subjects performed the task at three consecutive time points in order to explore the CNV activity over time. The repetition of a cued double-choice reaction time task reduced the reaction times (RTs), while CNV amplitude remained steady along the sessions. Our data suggest that the continuous recruitment of attentional resources does not undergo habituation when it is related to the brain activity required in the maintenance of working memory when the mental model of the stimulus environment is updated.	\N	\N
25117780	Studies investigating the association between 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] and cognition in the very old (85+) are lacking. Cross-sectional (baseline) and prospective data (up to 3 years follow-up) from 775 participants in the Newcastle 85+ Study were analysed for global (measured by the Standardized Mini-Mental State Examination) and attention-specific (measured by the attention battery of the Cognitive Drug Research test) cognitive performance in relation to season-specific 25(OH)D quartiles. Those in the lowest and highest season-specific 25(OH)D quartiles had an increased risk of impaired prevalent (1.66, 95% confidence interval 1.06-2.60, P = 0.03; 1.62, 95% confidence interval 1.02-2.59, P = 0.04, respectively) but not incident global cognitive functioning or decline in functioning compared with those in the middle quartiles adjusted for sociodemographic, health and lifestyle confounders. Random effects models showed that participants belonging to the lowest and highest 25(OH)D quartiles, compared with those in the middle quartiles, had overall slower (log-transformed) attention reaction times for Choice Reaction Time (lowest, β = 0.023, P = 0.01; highest, β = 0.021, P = 0.02), Digit Vigilance Task (lowest, β = 0.009, P = 0.05; highest, β = 0.01, P = 0.02) and Power of Attention (lowest, β = 0.017, P = 0.02; highest, β = 0.022, P = 0.002) and greater Reaction Time Variability (lowest, β = 0.021, P = 0.02; highest, β = 0.02, P = 0.03). The increased risk of worse global cognition and attention amongst those in the highest quartile was not observed in non-users of vitamin D supplements/medication. Low and high season-specific 25(OH)D quartiles were associated with prevalent cognitive impairment and poorer overall performance in attention-specific tasks over 3 years in the very old, but not with global cognitive decline or incident impairment.	\N	\N
25119128	Bilateral lung transplantation (BLTx) is an established treatment for end-stage pulmonary hypertension (PH). Ventilator weaning failure and death are more common as in BLTx for other indications. We hypothesized that left ventricular (LV) dysfunction is the main cause of early postoperative morbidity or mortality and investigated a weaning strategy using awake venoarterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). In 23 BLTx for severe PH, ECMO used during BLTx was continued for a minimum of 5 days (BLTx-ECMO group). Echocardiography, left atrial (LA) and Swan-Ganz catheters were used for monitoring. Early extubation after transplantation was attempted under continued ECMO. Preoperatively, all patients had severely reduced cardiac index (mean, 2.1 L/min/m2). On postoperative day 2, reduction of ECMO flow resulted in increasing LA and decreasing systemic blood pressures. On the day of ECMO explantation (median, postoperative day 8), LV diameter had increased; LA and blood pressures remained stable. Survival rates at 3 and 12 months were 100% and 96%, respectively. Data were compared to two historic control groups of BLTx without ECMO (BLTx ventilation) or combined heart-lung transplantation for severe PH. Early after BLTx for severe PH, the LV may be unable to handle normalized LV preload. This can be effectively bridged with awake venoarterial ECMO.	\N	\N
25119464	There is enormous interest in designing training methods for reducing cognitive decline in healthy older adults. Because it is impaired with aging, multitasking has often been targeted and has been shown to be malleable with appropriate training. Investigating the effects of cognitive training on functional brain activation might provide critical indication regarding the mechanisms that underlie those positive effects, as well as provide models for selecting appropriate training methods. The few studies that have looked at brain correlates of cognitive training indicate a variable pattern and location of brain changes--a result that might relate to differences in training formats. The goal of this study was to measure the neural substrates as a function of whether divided attentional training programs induced the use of alternative processes or whether it relied on repeated practice. Forty-eight older adults were randomly allocated to one of three training programs. In the single repeated training, participants practiced an alphanumeric equation and a visual detection task, each under focused attention. In the divided fixed training, participants practiced combining verification and detection by divided attention, with equal attention allocated to both tasks. In the divided variable training, participants completed the task by divided attention, but were taught to vary the attentional priority allocated to each task. Brain activation was measured with fMRI pre- and post-training while completing each task individually and the two tasks combined. The three training programs resulted in markedly different brain changes. Practice on individual tasks in the single repeated training resulted in reduced brain activation whereas divided variable training resulted in a larger recruitment of the right superior and middle frontal gyrus, a region that has been involved in multitasking. The type of training is a critical factor in determining the pattern of brain activation.	\N	\N
25122911	The mental chronometry of the human brain's processing of sounds to be categorized as targets has intensively been studied in cognitive neuroscience. According to current theories, a series of successive stages consisting of the registration, identification, and categorization of the sound has to be completed before participants are able to report the sound as a target by button press after ∼300-500 ms. Here we use miniature eye movements as a tool to study the categorization of a sound as a target or nontarget, indicating that an initial categorization is present already after 80-100 ms. During visual fixation, the rate of microsaccades, the fastest components of miniature eye movements, is transiently modulated after auditory stimulation. In two experiments, we measured microsaccade rates in human participants in an auditory three-tone oddball paradigm (including rare nontarget sounds) and observed a difference in the microsaccade rates between targets and nontargets as early as 142 ms after sound onset. This finding was replicated in a third experiment with directed saccades measured in a paradigm in which tones had to be matched to score-like visual symbols. Considering the delays introduced by (motor) signal transmission and data analysis constraints, the brain must have differentiated target from nontarget sounds as fast as 80-100 ms after sound onset in both paradigms. We suggest that predictive information processing for expected input makes higher cognitive attributes, such as a sound's identity and category, available already during early sensory processing. The measurement of eye movements is thus a promising approach to investigate hearing.	\N	\N
25124118	The specific cognitive-affective mechanisms involved in the activation and regulation of the subjective and genital components of sexual arousal are not fully understood yet. The aim of the present study was to investigate the contribution of self-reported thoughts and affect to the prediction of women's subjective and genital responses to erotica. Twenty-eight sexually functional women (mean age = 32, SD = 6.29) were presented with sexually explicit and nonexplicit romantic films. Genital responses, subjective sexual arousal, state affect, and self-reported thoughts were assessed. Vaginal pulse amplitude was measured using a vaginal photoplethysmograph. Subjective sexual arousal, thoughts, and affective responses were assessed through self-report scales. Correlations between subjective and physiological sexual arousal were low (r = -0.05, P > 0.05). Self-reported thoughts and affect were significant predictors of subjective sexual arousal. The strongest single predictor of subjective arousal was sexual arousal thoughts (e.g., "I'm getting excited") (β = 0.63, P < 0.01). None of the cognitive or affective variables predicted women's genital responses. Overall, results support the role of cognitive (self-reported thoughts) and affective dimensions in women's subjective sexual arousal to erotica and, consistent with previous findings, suggest that subjective and physiological sexual arousal may be impacted by different processes.	\N	\N
25142042	There is a paucity of work addressing the distractive, affect-enhancing, and motivational influences of music and video in combination during exercise. We examined the effects of music and music-and-video on a range of psychological and psychophysical variables during treadmill running at intensities above and below ventilatory threshold (VT). Participants (N = 24) exercised at 10 % of maximal capacity below VT and 10 % above under music-only, music-and-video, and control conditions. There was a condition × intensity × time interaction for perceived activation and state motivation, and an intensity × time interaction for state attention, perceived exertion (RPE), and affective valence. The music-and-video condition elicited the highest levels of dissociation, lowest RPE, and most positive affective responses regardless of exercise intensity. Attentional manipulations influence psychological and psychophysical variables at exercise intensities above and below VT, and this effect is enhanced by the combined presentation of auditory and visual stimuli.	\N	\N
25148787	We examined ERP indices of proactive and reactive cognitive control processes in younger and older adults performing a sustained attention Go/No-Go task. Behavioral results showed that older adults were able to maintain a stable level of performance over time, while younger adults exhibited a vigilance decrement. The main ERP findings showed that in older adults, the amplitude of the pre-stimulus slow wave, a marker of proactive control, remained stable with time on task, and that the amplitude of the sustained potential, a marker of reactive control, increased with time on task. On the other hand, in younger adults, the amplitudes of both components decreased over time. Overall, older participants also exhibited larger amplitudes of the error negativity than their younger counterparts. These results suggest that age-related differences in the recruitment of proactive and reactive control over the course of the task can explain age differences in sustained attention performance.	\N	\N
25151518	The current study aimed to explore whether self-reported attentional control (AC) and the attentional network functioning would predict spontaneous emotion downregulation after emotional induction. A total of 117 healthy volunteers were asked to continuously rate their discomfort while looking at affective pictures, as well as for a period of time after exposure. After controlling for trait anxiety, higher self-reported AC significantly predicted a greater spontaneous emotional downregulation after exposure to aversive pictures. Both higher self-reported AC and lower executive control network functioning (i.e., greater interference) predicted a faster spontaneous emotional downregulation after exposure to affectively neutral pictures. Results are discussed focusing on the relationship between AC and emotion regulation difficulties. (PsycINFO Database Record	\N	\N
25153776	Slow oscillations (<1 Hz) during slow wave sleep (SWS) promote the consolidation of declarative memory. Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been shown to display deficits in sleep-dependent consolidation of declarative memory supposedly due to dysfunctional slow brain rhythms during SWS. Using transcranial oscillating direct current stimulation (toDCS) at 0.75 Hz, we investigated whether an externally triggered increase in slow oscillations during early SWS elevates memory performance in children with ADHD. 12 children with ADHD underwent a toDCS and a sham condition in a double-blind crossover study design conducted in a sleep laboratory. Memory was tested using a 2D object-location task. In addition, 12 healthy children performed the same memory task in their home environment. Stimulation enhanced slow oscillation power in children with ADHD and boosted memory performance to the same level as in healthy children. These data indicate that increasing slow oscillation power during sleep by toDCS can alleviate declarative memory deficits in children with ADHD.	\N	\N
25154283	When observers are asked to match the depth of an object according to its height, they often report systematic errors depending on viewing distance. Systematic biases can also arise while vergence distances are induced by binocular disparities. Observers of stereoscopic images tend to overestimate the depth of objects displayed in front of the screen, while the depth of objects displayed behind the screen plane is underestimated. This phenomenon creates a serious problem in that veridicality in depth perception appears distorted when one attempts to render the metrics of a captured 3-D world. These distortions could also subsist with structure-from-motion information and during motion-in-depth. Observers judged the circularity of transparent rotating cylinders that were either static or moving in depth. Crossed results show that participants could precisely retrieve the best modulation between presented depth and width. As this effect could be amplified with stimuli containing stronger perspective cues (ie contour perspective), participants judged the rigidity of spinning cubes, moving along the line of sight, which were either edges-defined or defined by randomly textured surfaces (dots). The results showed that, although depth constancy was not improved by contour perspective, perceived rigidity was increased by perspective when the best scaling estimate was displayed. This finding suggests that appropriate binocular disparity information in combination to monocular signal is necessary for stereoscopic depth perception.	\N	\N
25159702	The implications of sleep for morality are only starting to be explored. Extending the ethics literature, we contend that because bringing morality to conscious attention requires effort, a lack of sleep leads to low moral awareness. We test this prediction with three studies. A laboratory study with a manipulation of sleep across 90 participants judging a scenario for moral content indicates that a lack of sleep leads to low moral awareness. An archival study of Google Trends data across 6 years highlights a national dip in Web searches for moral topics (but not other topics) on the Monday after the Spring time change, which tends to deprive people of sleep. Finally, a diary study of 127 participants indicates that (within participants) nights with a lack of sleep are associated with low moral awareness the next day. Together, these three studies suggest that a lack of sleep leaves people less morally aware, with important implications for the recognition of morality in others.	\N	\N
25173177	Visual cognitive integrative functions need to be evaluated by a behavioral assessment, which requires an experienced evaluator. The Preverbal Visual Assessment (PreViAs) questionnaire was designed to evaluate these functions, both in general pediatric population or in children with high risk of visual cognitive problems, through primary caregivers' answers. We aimed to validate the PreViAs questionnaire by comparing caregiver reports with results from a comprehensive clinical protocol. A total of 220 infants (<2 years old) were divided into two groups according to visual development, as determined by the clinical protocol. Their primary caregivers completed the PreViAs questionnaire, which consists of 30 questions related to one or more visual domains: visual attention, visual communication, visual-motor coordination, and visual processing. Questionnaire answers were compared with results of behavioral assessments performed by three pediatric ophthalmologists. Results of the clinical protocol classified 128 infants as having normal visual maturation, and 92 as having abnormal visual maturation. The specificity of PreViAs questionnaire was >80%, and sensitivity was 64%-79%. More than 80% of the infants were correctly classified, and test-retest reliability exceeded 0.9 for all domains. The PreViAs questionnaire is useful to detect abnormal visual maturation in infants from birth to 24months of age. It improves the anamnesis process in infants at risk of visual dysfunctions.	\N	\N
25173722	Expecting a particular stimulus can facilitate processing of that stimulus over others, but what is the fate of other stimuli that are known to co-occur with the expected stimulus? This study examined the impact of learned association on feature-based attention. The findings show that the effectiveness of an uninformative color transient in orienting attention can change by learned associations between colors and the expected target shape. In an initial acquisition phase, participants learned two distinct sequences of stimulus-response-outcome, where stimuli were defined by shape ('S' vs. 'H'), responses were localized key-presses (left vs. right), and outcomes were colors (red vs. green). Next, in a test phase, while expecting a target shape (80% probable), participants showed reliable attentional orienting to the color transient associated with the target shape, and showed no attentional orienting with the color associated with the alternative target shape. This bias seemed to be driven by learned association between shapes and colors, and not modulated by the response. In addition, the bias seemed to depend on observing target-color conjunctions, since encountering the two features disjunctively (without spatiotemporal overlap) did not replicate the findings. We conclude that associative learning - likely mediated by mechanisms underlying visual object representation - can extend the impact of goal-driven attention to features associated with a target stimulus.	\N	\N
25174852	The lifetime risk of suicide in patients with schizophrenia is estimated to be 4.9-13%. While there are many known risk factors for suicide in schizophrenia, the relationship between cognitive function and suicide risk is unclear, particularly in non-Caucasian populations. In our cross-sectional study, we administered the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) to 316 Han Chinese chronic inpatients with schizophrenia and compared the performance of those who had attempted suicide (n=25) to non-attempters (n=291). The lifetime suicide attempt data were collected from medical records and interviews with patients and their family members. We found a lifetime suicide attempt rate of 7.9%. Suicide attempters were more likely to be single, but showed no significant differences in other demographic factors such as age, gender, or living arrangements. Contrary to our hypothesis, there was no significant relationship between performance on the RBANS test and lifetime risk of suicide attempts in Han Chinese inpatients with schizophrenia. The literature remains mixed on this topic. Culturally influenced differences in suicidal behavior may have affected the outcome of this study and further investigation of this topic is necessary.	\N	\N
25175914	Cannabis-induced psychotic disorder (CIPD) refers to psychotic symptoms that arise in the context of cannabis intoxication. Prepulse inhibition (PPI) deficits have been extensively identified in schizophrenia and in cannabis abusers. We aimed to characterize PPI in CIPD patients. We used a sample of 48 CIPD patients, 54 schizophrenia patients and cannabis abuse (SCHZ), 44 cannabis dependents (CD), and 44 controls. CIPD, SCHZ and CD were abstinent of cannabis consumption for 9 months. Participants were assessed with PPI at 30, 60, and 120 ms. At 30 ms, CIPD showed lower PPI levels than controls, and SCHZ obtained worse functioning than controls and CD. At 60 ms, only SCHZ exhibited worse PPI percentages (of object) than controls. Finally, at 120 ms, CIPD showed higher PPI levels than SCHZ, and SCHZ obtained lower percentages than controls. We found that CIPD and SCHZ patients showed deficits at the most pre-attentional levels, whereas CIPD patients performed better than SCHZ at higher attentional levels. These results suggest that CIPD constitutes a different group of patients than that of SCHZ. Deficits in PPI functioning at 30 ms could be a useful psychophysiological measure to detect CIPD patients, who are frequently confused with cannabis abusers whose symptoms may mimic that of schizophrenia.	\N	\N
25184299	Previous research has shown that adults with dyslexia (AwD) are disproportionately impacted by close spacing of stimuli and increased numbers of distractors in a visual search task compared to controls [1]. Using an orientation discrimination task, the present study extended these findings to show that even in conditions where target search was not required: (i) AwD had detrimental effects of both crowding and increased numbers of distractors; (ii) AwD had more pronounced difficulty with distractor exclusion in the left visual field and (iii) measures of crowding and distractor exclusion correlated significantly with literacy measures. Furthermore, such difficulties were not accounted for by the presence of covarying symptoms of ADHD in the participant groups. These findings provide further evidence to suggest that the ability to exclude distracting stimuli likely contributes to the reported visual attention difficulties in AwD and to the aetiology of literacy difficulties. The pattern of results is consistent with weaker and asymmetric attention in AwD.	\N	\N
25188718	The relevance of sleep instability is poorly appreciated among the metrics of sleep physiology. The cyclic alternating pattern (CAP) is a periodic electroencephalogram activity of non-REM sleep, characterized by sequences of transient electrocortical events that are distinct from the tonic background and recur at up to 1-min intervals. In the dynamic organization of sleep, CAP expresses a condition of instability that reflects the brain's effort in preserving and regulating the physiological structure of sleep. CAP quantification is a topical feature in the evaluation of sleep quality. In addition to duration, depth, and continuity, sleep restorative properties depend on the brain's capacity to determine the periods of sustained stable sleep. This issue is not confined only to the electroencephalogram activities but reverberates upon the ongoing autonomic and behavioral functions, which are mutually entrained in a synchronized oscillation. As a master clock involved in the dynamic organization of sleep, CAP plays a crucial role in numerous sleep disorders and is powerfully influenced by medication and appropriate treatment. This article reviews the scoring, significance, and clinical applications of CAP.	\N	\N
25192605	We aimed to measure the diurnal changes of critical flicker frequency in healthy subjects and cirrhotic patients and to investigate their relationship with sleep disturbance. Cirrhotic patients and healthy volunteers were included. All groups completed the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and a simple sleep questionnaire. Sleep disturbance was defined as a Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index score of >5. Critical flicker frequency was measured twice a day to detect diurnal abnormalities. Overall, 59 cirrhotic patients (54.2% males, Mean Age 59 ± 11 years) and 18 controls (39.9% males, Mean Age 58 ± 9 years) were included. Sleep disturbances were more common in cirrhotics (66.1%) than controls (38.9%, p<0.05). In cirrhotics, the critical flicker frequency was not related to decompensation. The nocturnal values were higher than the morning values in cirrhotics (64.4%), but not in controls (p<0.0001). Additionally, sleep disturbances were more common in cirrhotics who had higher nocturnal values (p<0.05). Changes in the diurnal critical flicker frequency were observed in cirrhotics but not in controls. Sleep disturbances in cirrhotics appear to be associated with deviations of the diurnal rhythm of critical flicker frequency rather than with clinical parameters such as the clinical stages of cirrhosis and the Model For End-Stage Liver Disease and Child-Pugh scores.	\N	\N
25203170	The subthalamic nucleus (STN) has been shown to be implicated in the control of voluntary action, especially during tasks involving conflicting choice alternatives or rapid response suppression. However, the precise role of the STN during nonmotor functions remains controversial. First, we tested whether functionally distinct neuronal populations support different executive control functions (such as inhibitory control or error monitoring) even within a single subterritory of the STN. We used microelectrode recordings during deep brain stimulation surgery to study extracellular activity of the putative associative-limbic part of the STN while patients with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder performed a stop-signal task. Second, 2-4 days after the surgery, local field potential recordings of STN were used to test the hypothesis that STN oscillations may also reflect executive control signals. Extracellular recordings revealed three functionally distinct neuronal populations: the first one fired selectively before and during motor responses, the second one selectively increased their firing rate during successful inhibitory control, and the last one fired selectively during error monitoring. Furthermore, we found that beta band activity (15-35 Hz) rapidly increased during correct and incorrect behavioral stopping. Taken together, our results provide critical electrophysiological support for the hypothesized role of the STN in the integration of motor and cognitive-executive control functions.	\N	\N
25210709	The underlying processes responsible for the differences between morning and afternoon measurements of postural control have not yet been clearly identified. This study was conducted to specify the role played by vestibular, visual, and somatosensory inputs in postural balance and their link with the diurnal fluctuations of body temperature and vigilance level. Nineteen healthy male subjects (mean age: 20.5 ± 1.3 years) participated in test sessions at 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. after a normal night's sleep. Temperature was measured before the subjects completed a sign cancellation test and a postural control evaluation with eyes both open and closed. Our results confirmed that postural control improved throughout the day according to the circadian rhythm of body temperature and sleepiness/vigilance. The path length as a function of surface ratio increased between 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. This is due to a decrease in the centre-of-pressure surface area, which is associated with an increase in path length. Romberg's index did not change throughout the day; however, the spectral analysis (fast Fourier transform) of the centre-of-pressure excursions (in anteroposterior and mediolateral directions) indicated that diurnal fluctuations in postural control may occur via changes in the different processes responsible for readjustment via muscle contractions.	\N	\N
25215475	Previous studies have established that obese adolescents possess a stronger tendency to behave more impulsively and be more inattentive than healthy-weight children. Additionally, gender difference in inattention and impulsivity has also been substantiated by previous researchers. The current study examined the relationship between gender, body weight, and inattention and impulsivity in adolescents. It was hypothesized that obese males and females would have more inattentive and impulsive responses than their healthy-weight peers. Participants were 113 adolescents between the ages of 14 and 19; all participants completed the CPT-II, a measure of inattentive and impulsive response styles. Findings indicated that males who were classified as overweight or obese scored higher on inattention than did obese females, healthy-weight males, and healthy-weight females. Additionally, females committed a greater number of commission errors and were less able to distinguish the target stimuli, suggestive of impulsive responding. These findings indicate a gender difference in regard to impulsive responding, and also reveal an interaction of weight status and gender on inattention. Implications for prevention and treatment are discussed.	\N	\N
25224180	Changes of EEG alpha asymmetry in terms of increased right versus left sided activity in prefrontal cortex are considered to index activation of the withdrawal/avoidance motivational system. The present study aimed to add evidence of the validity of individual differences in the EEG alpha asymmetry response and their relevance regarding the impact of emotional events. The magnitude of the EEG alpha asymmetry response while watching a film consisting of scenes of real injury and death correlated with components of transient cardiac responses to sudden horrifying events happening to persons in the film which index withdrawal/avoidance motivation and heightened attention and perceptual intake. Additionally, it predicted greater mood deterioration following the film and film-related intrusive memories and avoidance over the following week. The study provides further evidence for prefrontal EEG alpha asymmetry changes in response to relevant stimuli reflecting an individual's sensitivity to negative social-emotional cues encountered in everyday life.	\N	\N
25226214	The emotional connotation of a word is known to shift the process of word recognition. Using the electroencephalographic event-related potentials (ERPs) approach it has been documented that early attentional processing of high-arousing negative words is shifted at a stage of processing where a presented word cannot have been fully identified. Contextual learning has been discussed to contribute to these effects. The present study shows that a manipulation of the familiarity with a word's shape interferes with these earliest emotional ERP effects. Presenting high-arousing negative and neutral words in a familiar or an unfamiliar font results in very early emotion differences only in case of familiar shapes, whereas later processing stages reveal similar emotional effects in both font conditions. Because these early emotion-related differences predict later behavioral differences, it is suggested that contextual learning of emotional valence comprises more visual features than previously expected to guide early visual-sensory processing.	\N	\N
25227004	This study investigated neuronal activation differences under two conditions: driving only and distracted driving. Driving and distraction tasks were performed using a Magnetic Resonance (MR)-compatible driving simulator with a driving wheel and pedal. The experiment consisted of three blocks, and each block had both a Rest phase (1 min) and a Driving phase (2 min). During the Rest phase, drivers were instructed to simply look at the stop screen without performing any driving tasks. During the Driving phase, each driver was required to drive at 110 km/h under two conditions: driving only and driving while performing additional distraction tasks. The results show that the precuneus, inferior parietal lobule, supramarginal gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, cuneus, and declive are less activated in distracted driving than in driving only. These regions are responsible for spatial perception, spatial attention, visual processing and motor control. However, the cingulate gyrus and sub-lobar regions (lentiform nucleus and caudate), which are responsible for error monitoring and control of unnecessary movement, show increased activation during distracted driving compared with driving only.	\N	\N
25236921	Comparative judgment is a crucial task in ecological settings, as well as in many experimental studies about basic aspects of perceptual processes. It has long been known that sequential comparison is prone to order effects. This phenomenon has received little attention and has often been discounted as a type of response bias. In the present study, we investigated brightness discrimination of two brief (100 ms) spatially disjoint luminance stimuli. In the first and second experiments, stimuli were presented against a dark background with a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) from 0 to 200 ms, in a paradigm controlling for response bias. In the third experiment, stimuli were presented against a bright background. We demonstrate that the time interval between stimuli modulates and even inverts their perceived brightness difference, enhancing the second stimulus relative to the first. When the background is brighter than the target stimuli, the sign of the effect is inverted, suggesting that the underlying mechanism operates on contrast rather than brightness. The magnitude of this effect is shown to depend on SOA and average luminance level of the target stimuli. Hypotheses in terms of neural and attentional dynamics are proposed.	\N	\N
25241396	Right brain damage often provokes deficits of visuospatial attention. Although the spatial attention networks have been widely investigated in stroke patients as well as in the healthy brain, little is known about the impact of slow growing lesions in the right hemisphere. We here present a longitudinal study of 20 patients who have been undergoing awake brain surgery with per-operative line bisection testing. Our aim was to investigate the impact of tumour presence and of tumour resection on the functional (re)organization of the attention networks. We assessed patients' performance on lateralized target detection, visual exploration and line bisection before surgery, and in the acute and post-acute operative phases after surgery. Clear evidence for transient neglect signs was observed in the acute post-operative phase, although full recovery had invariably occurred in all patients. The resection of the right angular gyrus was associated with transient neglect-like symptoms in all tasks, whereas resection of more anterior regions correlated with transient deficits only in visual exploration or detection (but not in line bisection). The attentional networks showed substantial functional recovery. This impressive pattern of recovery is discussed in terms of involvement of the contralateral left hemisphere and of preservation of long-range white matter pathways within the right hemisphere.	\N	\N
25244118	Working memory (WM) is strongly influenced by attention. In visual WM tasks, recall performance can be improved by an attention-guiding cue presented before encoding (precue) or during maintenance (retrocue). Although precues and retrocues recruit a similar frontoparietal control network, the two are likely to exhibit some processing differences, because precues invite anticipation of upcoming information whereas retrocues may guide prioritization, protection, and selection of information already in mind. Here we explored the behavioral and electrophysiological differences between precueing and retrocueing in a new visual WM task designed to permit a direct comparison between cueing conditions. We found marked differences in ERP profiles between the precue and retrocue conditions. In line with precues primarily generating an anticipatory shift of attention toward the location of an upcoming item, we found a robust lateralization in late cue-evoked potentials associated with target anticipation. Retrocues elicited a different pattern of ERPs that was compatible with an early selection mechanism, but not with stimulus anticipation. In contrast to the distinct ERP patterns, alpha-band (8-14 Hz) lateralization was indistinguishable between cue types (reflecting, in both conditions, the location of the cued item). We speculate that, whereas alpha-band lateralization after a precue is likely to enable anticipatory attention, lateralization after a retrocue may instead enable the controlled spatiotopic access to recently encoded visual information.	\N	\N
25248557	The aim of this study was to elucidate the dimensional structure of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and potential moderators and functional correlates of this structure in disaster-affected adolescents. A population-based sample of 2000 adolescents aged 12-17 years (M = 14.5 years; 51% female) completed interviews on post-tornado PTSD symptoms, substance use, and parent-adolescent conflict between 4 and 13 months (M = 8.8, SD = 2.6) after tornado exposure. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed that all models fit well but a 5-factor dysphoric arousal model provided a statistically significantly better representation of adolescent PTSD symptoms compared to 4-factor dysphoria and emotional numbing models. There was evidence of measurement invariance of the dysphoric arousal model across gender and age, although girls and older adolescents aged 15-17 years had higher mean scores than boys and younger adolescents aged 12-14 years, respectively, on some PTSD dimensions. Differential magnitudes of association between PTSD symptom dimensions and functional correlates were observed, with emotional numbing symptoms most strongly positively associated with problematic substance use since the tornado, and dysphoric arousal symptoms most strongly positively associated with parent-adolescent conflict; both correlations were significantly larger than the corresponding correlations with anxious arousal. Taken together, these results suggest that the dimensional structure of tornado-related PTSD symptomatology in adolescents is optimally characterized by five separate clusters of re-experiencing, avoidance, numbing, dysphoric arousal, and anxious arousal symptoms, which showed unique associations with functional correlates. Findings emphasize that PTSD in disaster-exposed adolescents is not best conceptualized as a homogenous construct and highlight potential differential targets for post-disaster assessment and intervention.	\N	\N
25253260	Along with urbanization of the living environment, the number of patients with circadian rhythm sleep disorder (CRSD) has been increasing. There are several treatment candidates for CRSD, such as light therapy, drugs (melatonin and vitamin B12), and sleep hygiene education. However, successful treatment method has not been established. In free-running type (FRT) CRSD, the endogenous circadian rhythm cannot be entrained to the 24-h light-dark cycle, resulting in free running on a cycle 0.5-2.5 h longer than the 24-h period. This condition is relatively common in blind individuals and is unusual in sighted individuals. Here we report two sighted patients with FRT, successfully treated with a melatonin receptor agonist, ramelteon. Patient 1 (36-year-old female) had suffered from FRT for nearly 4 months after resigning her job. She was given sleep hygiene education together with ramelteon at first and the free-running cycle stopped after treatment day 15. Triazolam was added from the day 25 to promote earlier sleep onset. And the sleep-wake schedule was normalized by the day 34. Patient 2 (33-year-old male) had suffered from FRT for nearly 8 months after starting to take a leave of absence from his job. He was given sleep hygiene education and was treated with ramelteon and methylcobalamin. His sleep-wake schedule was normalized from the first treatment day. By the combined treatment with ramelteon, both patients have maintained favorable sleep-wake schedules. The agonist action of ramelteon at the melatonin 2 receptor may have primarily contributed to the cessation of the free-running cycle in these patients.	\N	\N
25254067	This study investigates the effect of tone inventories on brain activities underlying pitch without focal attention. We find that the electrophysiological responses to across-category stimuli are larger than those to within-category stimuli when the pitch contours are superimposed on nonspeech stimuli; however, there is no electrophysiological response difference associated with category status in speech stimuli. Moreover, this category effect in nonspeech stimuli is stronger for Cantonese speakers. Results of previous and present studies lead us to conclude that brain activities to the same native lexical tone contrasts are modulated by speakers' language experiences not only in active phonological processing but also in automatic feature detection without focal attention. In contrast to the condition with focal attention, where phonological processing is stronger for speech stimuli, the feature detection (pitch contours in this study) without focal attention as shaped by language background is superior in relatively regular stimuli, that is, the nonspeech stimuli. The results suggest that Cantonese listeners outperform Mandarin listeners in automatic detection of pitch features because of the denser Cantonese tone system.	\N	\N
25260191	This study tested the effects of a parent-mediated intervention on parental responsiveness with their toddlers at high risk for an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Participants included caregivers and their 66 toddlers at high risk for ASD. Caregivers were randomized to 12 sessions of an individualized parent education intervention aimed at improving parental responsiveness or to a monitoring control group involving 4 sessions of behavioral support. Parental responsiveness and child outcomes were measured at three time points: at beginning and end of the 3-month treatment and at 12-months post-study entry. Parental responsiveness improved significantly in the treatment group but not the control group. However, parental responsiveness was not fully maintained at follow up. There were no treatment effects on child outcomes of joint attention or language. Children in both groups made significant developmental gains in cognition and language skills over one year. These results support parental responsiveness as an important intervention target given its general association with child outcomes in the extant literature; however, additional supports are likely needed to fully maintain the treatment effect and to affect child outcomes.	\N	\N
25273924	The study used a dual-task (DT) postural paradigm (two tasks performed at once) that included electroencephalography (EEG) to examine cortical interference when a visual working memory (VWM) task was paired with a postural task. The change detection task was used, as it requires storage of information without updating or manipulation and predicts VWM capacity. Ground reaction forces (GRFs) (horizontal and vertical), EMG, and EEG elements, time locked to support surface perturbations, were used to infer the active neural processes underlying the automatic control of balance in 14 young adults. A significant reduction was seen between single task (ST) and DT conditions in VWM capacity (F(1,13) = 6.175, p < 0.05, r = 06) and event-related potential (ERP) N1 component amplitude over the L motor (p < 0.001) and R sensory (p < 0.05) cortical areas. In addition, a significant increase in the COP trajectory peak (pkcopx) was seen in the DT versus ST condition. Modulation of VWM capacity as well as ERP amplitude and pkcopx in DT conditions provided evidence of an interference pattern, suggesting that the two modalities shared a similar set of attentional resources. The results provide direct evidence of the competition for central processing attentional resources between the two modalities, through the reduction in amplitude of the ERP evoked by the postural perturbation.	\N	\N
25294128	The differentiation of the vegetative or unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (VS/UWS) from the minimally conscious state (MCS) is an important clinical issue. The cerebral metabolic rate of glucose (CMRglc) declines when consciousness is lost, and may reveal the residual cognitive function of these patients. However, no quantitative comparisons of cerebral glucose metabolism in VS/UWS and MCS have yet been reported. We calculated the regional and whole-brain CMRglc of 41 patients in the states of VS/UWS (n=14), MCS (n=21) or emergence from MCS (EMCS, n=6), and healthy volunteers (n=29). Global cortical CMRglc in VS/UWS and MCS averaged 42% and 55% of normal, respectively. Differences between VS/UWS and MCS were most pronounced in the frontoparietal cortex, at 42% and 60% of normal. In brainstem and thalamus, metabolism declined equally in the two conditions. In EMCS, metabolic rates were indistinguishable from those of MCS. Ordinal logistic regression predicted that patients are likely to emerge into MCS at CMRglc above 45% of normal. Receiver-operating characteristics showed that patients in MCS and VS/UWS can be differentiated with 82% accuracy, based on cortical metabolism. Together these results reveal a significant correlation between whole-brain energy metabolism and level of consciousness, suggesting that quantitative values of CMRglc reveal consciousness in severely brain-injured patients.	\N	\N
25295649	Diagnosis and management of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in adults is complex and challenging because of the frequent comorbidity of other psychiatric disorders that have symptoms overlapping with those of ADHD. The presence of comorbidities can create challenges to making an accurate diagnosis and also impact treatment options and outcomes. This review discusses disorders that may be comorbid with ADHD in adults, including anxiety, mood, substance use disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and borderline personality disorder. Suggestions for recognizing these comorbidities and distinguishing them from ADHD and perspectives on their possible impact on ADHD treatment are included. Adjunctive nonpharmacologic modalities may be especially helpful in the case of comorbid mood, anxiety, substance abuse, or personality disorders.	\N	\N
25311333	Women at high risk for ovarian cancer due to BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation or family history are recommended to undergo risk-reducing salpingo-oophorectomy (RRSO) after age 35 or completion of childbearing. This potentially life-saving surgery leads to premature menopause, frequently resulting in distressing and unaddressed sexual dysfunction. To pilot a novel sexual health intervention for women with BRCA1/2 mutations who previously underwent RRSO a using a single-arm trial. Feasibility and primary outcomes including sexual dysfunction and psychological distress were assessed. This single-arm trial included a one-time, half-day educational session comprised of targeted sexual health education, body awareness and relaxation training, and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy strategies, followed by two sessions of tailored telephone counseling. Assessments were completed at baseline and 2 months postintervention. Study end points include feasibility and effectiveness as reported by the participant. Thirty-seven women completed baseline and postintervention assessments. At baseline, participants had a mean age of 44.4 (standard deviation [SD] = 3.9) years and mean duration of 3.8 (SD = 2.7) years since RRSO. Overall sexual functioning (P = 0.018), as well as desire (P = 0.003), arousal (P = 0.003), satisfaction (P = 0.028), and pain (P = 0.018), improved significantly. There were significant reductions in somatization (P = 0.029) and anxiety scores (P < 0.001), and, overall, for the Global Severity Index (P < 0.001) of the Brief Symptom Inventory. Sexual self-efficacy and sexual knowledge also improved significantly from baseline to postintervention (both P < 0.001). Women were highly satisfied with the intervention content and reported utilizing new skills to manage sexual dysfunction. This intervention integrates elements of cognitive behavioral therapy with sexual health education to address a much-neglected problem after RRSO. Results from this promising single-arm study provide preliminary data to move toward conducting a randomized, controlled trial.	\N	\N
25314961	To estimate the heritability of child behaviour problems and investigate the association between maternal pre-pregnancy overweight and child behaviour problems in a genetically sensitive design. Observational cross-sectional study. The Twins and Multiple Births Association Heritability Study (TAMBAHS) is an online UK-wide volunteer-based study investigating the development of twins from birth until 5 years of age. A total of 443 (16% of the initial registered members) mothers answered questions on pre-pregnancy weight and their twins' internalising and externalising problems using the Child Behavior Checklist and correcting for important covariates including gestational age, twins' birth weight, age and sex, mother's educational level and smoking (before, during and after pregnancy). The heritability of behaviour problems and their association with maternal pre-pregnancy weight. The genetic analysis suggested that genetic and common environmental factors account for most of the variation in externalising disorders (an ACE model was the most parsimonious with genetic factors (A) explaining 46% (95% CI 33% to 60%) of the variance, common environment (C) explaining 42% (95% CI 27% to 54%) and non-shared environmental factors (E) explaining 13% (95% CI 10% to 16%) of the variance. For internalising problems, a CE model was the most parsimonious model with the common environment explaining 51% (95% CI 44% to 58%) of the variance and non-shared environment explaining 49% (95% CI 42% to 56%) of the variance. Moreover, the regression analysis results suggested that children of overweight mothers showed a trend (OR=1.10, 95% CI 0.58% to 2.06) towards being more aggressive and exhibit externalising behaviours compared to children of normal weight mothers. Maternal pre-pregnancy weight may play a role in children's aggressive behaviour.	\N	\N
25322890	Physiological hyperarousal is manifested acutely by increased heart rate, decreased respiratory sinus arrhythmia, and increased skin conductance level and variability. Yet it is uncertain to what extent such activation occurs with the symptomatic hyperarousal of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We compared 56 male veterans with current PTSD to 54 males who never had PTSD. Subjects wore ambulatory devices that recorded electrocardiograms, finger skin conductance, and wrist movement while in their normal environments. Wrist movement was monitored to estimate sleep and waking periods. Heart rate, but not the other variables, was elevated in subjects with PTSD equally during waking and during actigraphic sleep (effect sizes, Cohen's d, ranged from 0.63 to 0.89). The length of the sleep periods and estimated sleep fragmentation did not differ between groups. Group heart rate differences could not be explained by differences in body activity, PTSD hyperarousal symptom scores, depression, physical fitness, or antidepressant use.	\N	\N
25325493	Alterations in emotional reactivity may play a key role in the pathophysiology of insomnia disorder (ID). However, only few supporting experimental data are currently available. We evaluated in a hypothesis-driven design whether patients with ID present altered amygdale responses to emotional stimuli related and unrelated to the experience of insomnia and, because of chronic hyperarousal, less habituation of amygdala responses. Case-control study. Departments of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy and of Radiology of the University of Freiburg Medical Center. There were 22 patients with ID (15 females; 7 males; age 40.7 ± 12.6 y) and 38 healthy good sleepers (HGS, 21 females; 17 males; age 39.6 ± 8.9 y). N/A. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging session, five different blocks of pictures with varying emotional arousal, valence, and content (insomnia-relatedness) were presented. Pictures were presented twice to test for habituation processes. Results showed that patients with ID, compared to HGS, presented heightened amygdala responses to insomnia-related stimuli. Moreover, habituation of amygdale responses was observed only in HGS, but not in patients with ID who showed a mixed pattern of amygdala responses to the second presentation of the stimuli. The results provide evidence for an insomnia-related emotional bias in patients with ID. Cognitive behavior treatment for ID could benefit from strategies dealing with the emotional charge associated with the disorder. Further studies should clarify the role of ID with respect to habituation of amygdala responses.	\N	\N
25328996	Intermodal integration required for perceptual learning tasks is rife with individual differences. Participants vary in how they use perceptual information to one modality. One participant alone might change her own response over time. Participants vary further in their use of feedback through one modality to inform another modality. Two experiments test the general hypothesis that perceptual-motor fluctuations reveal both information use within modality and coordination among modalities. Experiment 1 focuses on perceptual learning in dynamic touch, in which participants use exploratory hand-wielding of unseen objects to make visually guided length judgments and use visual feedback to rescale their judgments of the same mechanical information. Previous research found that the degree of fractal temporal scaling (i.e., "fractality") in hand-wielding moderates the use of mechanical information. Experiment 1 shows that head-sway fractality moderates the use of visual information. Further, experience with feedback increases head-sway fractality and prolongs its effect on later hand-wielding fractality. Experiment 2 replicates effects of head-sway fractality moderating use of visual information in a purely visual-judgment task. Together, these findings suggest that fractal fluctuations may provide a modal-general window onto not just how participants use perceptual information but also how well they may integrate information among different modalities.	\N	\N
25330316	It has been well known that pediatric allergic rhinitis was associated with poor performance at school due to attention deficit. However, there were no cohort studies for the effect of treatment of allergic rhinitis on attention performance in pediatric population. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate whether attention performance was improved after treatment in children with allergic rhinitis. In this ARCO-Kids (Allergic Rhinitis Cohort Study for Kids), consecutive pediatric patients with rhinitis symptoms underwent a skin prick test and computerized comprehensive attention test. According to the skin prick test results, the children were diagnosed as allergic rhinitis or non- allergic rhinitis. All of the patients were regularly followed up and treated with oral medication or intranasal corticosteroid sprays. The comprehensive attention tests consisted of sustained and divided attention tasks. Each of the tasks was assessed by the attention score which was calculated by the number of omission and commission errors. The comprehension attention test was repeated after 1 year. A total of 797 children with allergic rhinitis and 239 children with non-allergic rhinitis were included. Initially, the attention scores of omission and commission errors on divided attention task were significantly lower in children with allergic rhinitis than in children with non-allergic rhinitis. After 1 year of treatment, children with allergic rhinitis showed improvement in attention: commission error of sustained (95.6±17.0 vs 97.0±16.6) and divided attention task (99.1±15.8 vs 91.8±23.5). Meanwhile, there was no significant difference of attention scores in children with non-allergic rhinitis. Our study showed that management of allergic rhinitis might be associated with improvement of attention.	\N	\N
25338537	In the present study, we investigated how feature- and location-based selection influences visual working memory (VWM) encoding and maintenance. In Experiment 1, cue type (color, location) and cue timing (precue, retro-cue) were manipulated in a change detection task. The stimuli were color-location conjunction objects, and binding memory was tested. We found a significantly greater effect for color precues than for either color retro-cues or location precues, but no difference between location pre- and retro-cues, consistent with previous studies (e.g., Griffin & Nobre in Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 15, 1176-1194, 2003). We also found no difference between location and color retro-cues. Experiment 2 replicated the color precue advantage with more complex color-shape-location conjunction objects. Only one retro-cue effect was different from that in Experiment 1: Color retro-cues were significantly less effective than location retro-cues in Experiment 2, which may relate to a structural property of multidimensional VWM representations. In Experiment 3, a visual search task was used, and the result of a greater location than color precue effect suggests that the color precue advantage in a memory task is related to the modulation of VWM encoding rather than of sensation and perception. Experiment 4, using a task that required only memory for individual features but not for feature bindings, further confirmed that the color precue advantage is specific to binding memory. Together, these findings reveal new aspects of the interaction between attention and VWM and provide potentially important implications for the structural properties of VWM representations.	\N	\N
25348131	To evaluate the frequency, determinants and sleep characteristics of lucid dreaming in narcolepsy. University hospital sleep disorder unit. Case-control study. Consecutive patients with narcolepsy and healthy controls. Participants were interviewed regarding the frequency and determinants of lucid dreaming. Twelve narcolepsy patients and 5 controls who self-identified as frequent lucid dreamers underwent nighttime and daytime sleep monitoring after being given instructions regarding how to give an eye signal when lucid. Compared to 53 healthy controls, the 53 narcolepsy patients reported more frequent dream recall, nightmares and recurrent dreams. Lucid dreaming was achieved by 77.4% of narcoleptic patients and 49.1% of controls (P < 0.05), with an average of 7.6±11 vs. 0.3±0.8 lucid dreams/ month (P < 0.0001). The frequency of cataplexy, hallucinations, sleep paralysis, dyssomnia, HLA positivity, and the severity of sleepiness were similar in narcolepsy with and without lucid dreaming. Seven of 12 narcoleptic (and 0 non-narcoleptic) lucid dreamers achieved lucid REM sleep across a total of 33 naps, including 14 episodes with eye signal. The delta power in the electrode average, in delta, theta, and alpha powers in C4, and coherences between frontal electrodes were lower in lucid than non-lucid REM sleep in spectral EEG analysis. The duration of REM sleep was longer, the REM sleep onset latency tended to be shorter, and the percentage of atonia tended to be higher in lucid vs. non-lucid REM sleep; the arousal index and REM density and amplitude were unchanged. Narcolepsy is a novel, easy model for studying lucid dreaming.	\N	\N
25351450	To evaluate sexual function in women undergoing assisted reproductive techniques. This is a case-control study including 278 women assisted in Human Reproduction services and at the Gynecology Clinic of the University Hospital, Federal University of Goiás, Brazil. The women were divided into a study group (168 infertile women) and a control group (110 fertile women), and they answered the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) questionnaire used the assess the sexual function. We calculated the odds ratio (OR) for the chance of sexual dysfunction in infertile women (p<0.05). Out of the analyzed women, 33.09% reported sexual dysfunction, with no difference in the FSFI score between groups (p=0.29). The prevalence of sexual dysfunction was of 36.30% among infertile women and 28.18% among fertile women; however, there was no difference between FSFI scores (p=0.36). The desire and arousal domains were significantly different among infertile women (p=0.01). Infertile women had the same chances of having sexual dysfunction as fertile women (OR=1.4, 95%CI 0.8-2.4; p=0.2). There were no differences between infertile and fertile women. Infertile women undergoing assisted reproduction techniques require professional approach to sexual health regarding desire and arousal.	\N	\N
25352218	Coordinated attention to information from multiple senses is fundamental to our ability to respond to salient environmental events, yet little is known about brain network mechanisms that guide integration of information from multiple senses. Here we investigate dynamic causal mechanisms underlying multisensory auditory-visual attention, focusing on a network of right-hemisphere frontal-cingulate-parietal regions implicated in a wide range of tasks involving attention and cognitive control. Participants performed three 'oddball' attention tasks involving auditory, visual and multisensory auditory-visual stimuli during fMRI scanning. We found that the right anterior insula (rAI) demonstrated the most significant causal influences on all other frontal-cingulate-parietal regions, serving as a major causal control hub during multisensory attention. Crucially, we then tested two competing models of the role of the rAI in multisensory attention: an 'integrated' signaling model in which the rAI generates a common multisensory control signal associated with simultaneous attention to auditory and visual oddball stimuli versus a 'segregated' signaling model in which the rAI generates two segregated and independent signals in each sensory modality. We found strong support for the integrated, rather than the segregated, signaling model. Furthermore, the strength of the integrated control signal from the rAI was most pronounced on the dorsal anterior cingulate and posterior parietal cortices, two key nodes of saliency and central executive networks respectively. These results were preserved with the addition of a superior temporal sulcus region involved in multisensory processing. Our study provides new insights into the dynamic causal mechanisms by which the AI facilitates multisensory attention.	\N	\N
25366823	This investigation brings together a response-time system identification methodology (e.g., Townsend & Wenger Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 11, 391-418, 2004a) and an accuracy methodology, intended to assess models of integration across stimulus dimensions (features, modalities, etc.) that were proposed by Shaw and colleagues (e.g., Mulligan & Shaw Perception & Psychophysics 28, 471-478, 1980). The goal was to theoretically examine these separate strategies and to apply them conjointly to the same set of participants. The empirical phases were carried out within an extension of an established experimental design called the double factorial paradigm (e.g., Townsend & Nozawa Journal of Mathematical Psychology 39, 321-359, 1995). That paradigm, based on response times, permits assessments of architecture (parallel vs. serial processing), stopping rule (exhaustive vs. minimum time), and workload capacity, all within the same blocks of trials. The paradigm introduced by Shaw and colleagues uses a statistic formally analogous to that of the double factorial paradigm, but based on accuracy rather than response times. We demonstrate that the accuracy measure cannot discriminate between parallel and serial processing. Nonetheless, the class of models supported by the accuracy data possesses a suitable interpretation within the same set of models supported by the response-time data. The supported model, consistent across individuals, is parallel and has limited capacity, with the participants employing the appropriate stopping rule for the experimental setting.	\N	\N
25376192	Evidence from perceptually based implicit memory tasks demonstrates greater priming from distracting information among older compared with younger adults. We examined whether older adults also show greater conceptually based implicit priming from distracting information. We measured priming using a general-knowledge test that was preceded by an incidental-encoding task (a color-naming Stroop task in one experiment and a 1-back task involving pictures with irrelevant words superimposed in a second experiment). Younger adults showed no priming from the distracting information in either experiment, whereas older adults showed reliable priming in both experiments. Thus, unlike young adults, older adults process irrelevant information conceptually and then can use that information to boost their performance on a subsequent task.	\N	\N
25379451	Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been characterized by atypical socio-communicative behavior, sensorimotor impairment and abnormal neurodevelopmental trajectories. DTI has been used to determine the presence and nature of abnormality in white matter integrity that may contribute to the behavioral phenomena that characterize ASD. Although atypical patterns of sensory responding in ASD are well documented in the behavioral literature, much less is known about the neural networks associated with aberrant sensory processing. To address the roles of basic sensory, sensory association and early attentional processes in sensory responsiveness in ASD, our investigation focused on five white matter fiber tracts known to be involved in these various stages of sensory processing: superior corona radiata, centrum semiovale, inferior longitudinal fasciculus, posterior limb of the internal capsule, and splenium. We acquired high angular resolution diffusion images from 32 children with ASD and 26 typically developing children between the ages of 5 and 8. We also administered sensory assessments to examine brain-behavior relationships between white matter integrity and sensory variables. Our findings suggest a modulatory role of the inferior longitudinal fasciculus and splenium in atypical sensorimotor and early attention processes in ASD. Increased tactile defensiveness was found to be related to reduced fractional anisotropy in the inferior longitudinal fasciculus, which may reflect an aberrant connection between limbic structures in the temporal lobe and the inferior parietal cortex. Our findings also corroborate the modulatory role of the splenium in attentional orienting, but suggest the possibility of a more diffuse or separable network for social orienting in ASD. Future investigation should consider the use of whole brain analyses for a more robust assessment of white matter microstructure.	\N	\N
25384235	During search, the disengagement of attention is automatically delayed when a fixated but task-irrelevant object shares features of the search target. We examined whether delayed disengagement based on top-down attention set is potentially functional, resulting in additional processing of the fixated item. To accomplish this, we adapted the oculomotor disengagement paradigm. Participants saccaded to a peripheral object of a particular color and responded to the identity of the letter within it. To initiate search participants made a saccade away from an always irrelevant object at the center of the screen that matched or mismatched the target's color and contained a letter that was congruent or incongruent with the target letter. We found that delayed disengagement based on attention set was associated with deeper processing of the center item: a congruency effect between the center letter and peripheral target letter was only observed when the center object's color matched participants' attention set. Results are consistent with the proposal that delayed disengagement based on attention set is functionally significant, automatically encouraging deeper levels of processing of target-like objects that fall within the focus of attention.	\N	\N
25384520	The aim of this study was to assess sexual function in female patients with myocardial infarction (MI). As research instruments, an interview form of 20 questions that questioned personal characteristics was developed by researchers, Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) that evaluated sexual dysfunction was used. The Beck Depression Inventory was used to evaluate depression. In the course of this study, 45 female patients (62.73 ± 8.55 years) with MI and 50 control women were interviewed. The total FSFI score was 16.41 ± 8.04 in the MI group versus 23.13 ± 3.95 (P < 0.001) in the control group. The prevalence of sexual dysfunction is significantly higher and the mean FSFI score was significantly lower in MI group women in comparison with the control group. Subscale scores of desire, arousal, lubrication and orgasm domains were lower than the other subscale scores in the MI group. Besides, 75.6% of the women in the MI group and 48.2% of women in the control group had a female sexual dysfunction. The frequency of intercourse was significantly lower in women with MI (1.55 ± 0.50 times last month) compared to the control group (2.14 ± 1.04 times last month). No significant differences were detected between the mean total BDI scores. But the correlation between FSFI and BDI total scores indicates that the increasing BDI scores in MI and control groups affected the total FSFI scores negatively. Sexual problems are frequent in women with MI. Sexuality should be evaluated after MI and patients' education and counseling may contribute to a better sexual function.	\N	\N
25428212	Attention orienting is a cognitive process that facilitates the movement of attention focus from one location to another: this may be impaired in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Dorsal and ventral attention networks (DAN and VAN) sub-serve the process of attention orienting. This study investigated the functional connectivity of attention orienting in these networks in ASD using the Posner Cueing Task. Twenty-one adolescents with ASD and 21 age and IQ matched controls underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging. A psychophysical interaction (PPI) analysis was implemented to investigate task-dependent functional connectivity, measuring synchronicity of brain regions during the task. Regions of interest (ROI) were selected to explore functional connectivity in the DAN during cue-only conditions and in the VAN during invalid and valid trials. Behaviourally, the ASD and control groups performed the task in a similar manner. Functional MRI results indicated that the ASD and control groups activated similar brain regions. During invalid trials (VAN), the ASD group showed significant positive functional connectivity to multiple brain regions, whilst the control group demonstrated negative connectivity. During valid trials (VAN), the two groups also showed contrasting patterns of connectivity. In the cue-only conditions (DAN), the ASD group showed weaker functional connectivity. The DAN analysis suggests that the ASD group has weaker coherence between brain areas involved in goal-driven, endogenous attention control. The strong positive functional connectivity exhibited by the ASD group in the VAN during the invalid trials suggests that individuals with ASD may generate compensatory mechanisms to achieve neurotypical behaviour. These results support the theory of abnormal cortical connectivity in autism.	\N	\N
25443228	The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of an internal and external attentional focus on single leg hop jump distance and knee kinematics in patients after ACL reconstruction (ACLR). Experimental. Outpatient physical therapy facility. Sixteen patients after ACLR. Patients received either an instruction with an internal focus or an external focus before performing a single leg hop jump. The jump distance, knee valgus angle at initial contact, peak knee valgus angle, knee flexion angle at initial contact, peak knee flexion angle, total ROM and time to peak angles for the injured and non-injured legs were recorded. A repeated measures MANOVA was used to determine significance between the experimental conditions with the primary outcome measures as dependent variables. The external focus group had significant larger knee flexion angles at initial contact, peak knee flexion, total ROM and time to peak knee flexion for the injured legs. This study demonstrates the applicability of using an external focus during rehabilitation of patients after ACLR to enhance safer movement patterns compared to an internal focus of attention and subsequently may help to reduce second ACL injury risk.	\N	\N
25445180	Efforts to determine and understand the causes of autism are currently hampered by a large disconnect between recent molecular genetics findings that are associated with the condition and the core behavioral symptoms that define the condition. In this perspective piece, we propose a systems biology framework to bridge that gap between genes and symptoms. The framework focuses on basic mechanisms of socialization that are highly-conserved in evolution and are early-emerging in development. By conceiving of these basic mechanisms of socialization as quantitative endophenotypes, we hope to connect genes and behavior in autism through integrative studies of neurodevelopmental, behavioral, and epigenetic changes. These changes both lead to and are led by the accomplishment of specific social adaptive tasks in a typical infant's life. However, based on recent research that indicates that infants later diagnosed with autism fail to accomplish at least some of these tasks, we suggest that a narrow developmental period, spanning critical transitions from reflexive, subcortically-controlled visual behavior to interactional, cortically-controlled and social visual behavior be prioritized for future study. Mapping epigenetic, neural, and behavioral changes that both drive and are driven by these early transitions may shed a bright light on the pathogenesis of autism.	\N	\N
25446944	We review reports of brain activations that occur immediately prior to the onset or following the offset of to-be-remembered information and can predict subsequent mnemonic success. Memory-predictive pre-encoding processes, occurring from fractions of a second to minutes prior to event onset, are mainly associated with activations in the medial temporal lobe (MTL), amygdala and midbrain, and with enhanced theta oscillations. These activations may be considered as the neural correlates of one or more cognitive operations, including contextual processing, attention, and the engagement of distinct computational modes associated with prior encoding or retrieval. Post-encoding activations that correlate with subsequent memory performance are mainly observed in the MTL, sensory cortices and frontal regions. These activations may reflect binding of elements of the encoded information and initiation of memory consolidation. In all, the findings reviewed here illustrate the importance of brain states in the immediate peri-encoding time windows in determining encoding success. Understanding these brain states and their specific effects on memory may lead to optimization of the encoding of desired memories and mitigation of undesired ones.	\N	\N
25448628	The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) state that young people need to have access to the best evidence-based care to improve outcome. The current 'gold standard' ADHD diagnostic assessment combines clinical observation with subjective parent, teacher and self-reports. In routine practice, reports from multiple informants may be unavailable or contradictory, leading to diagnostic uncertainty and delay. The addition of objective tests of attention and activity may help reduce diagnostic uncertainty and delays in initiating treatment leading to improved outcomes. This trial investigates whether providing clinicians with an objective report of levels of attention, impulsivity and activity can lead to an earlier, and more accurate, clinical diagnosis and improved patient outcome. This multisite randomised controlled trial will recruit young people (aged 6-17 years old) who have been referred for an ADHD diagnostic assessment at Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and Community Paediatric clinics across England. Routine clinical assessment will be augmented by the QbTest, incorporating a continuous performance test (CPT) and infrared motion tracking of activity. The participant will be randomised into one of two study arms: QbOpen (clinician has immediate access to a QbTest report): QbBlind (report is withheld until the study end). Primary outcomes are time to diagnosis and diagnostic accuracy. Secondary outcomes include clinician's diagnostic confidence and routine clinical outcome measures. Cost-effective analysis will be conducted, alongside a qualitative assessment of the feasibility and acceptability of incorporating QbTest in routine practice. The findings from the study will inform commissioners, clinicians and managers about the feasibility, acceptability, clinical utility and cost-effectiveness of incorporating QbTest into routine diagnostic assessment of young people with ADHD. The results will be submitted for publication in peer-reviewed journals. The study has received ethical approval. NCT02209116.	\N	\N
25460674	Mounting research shows that the tendency to co-ruminate with peers regarding ongoing problems increases adolescents' depression risk; however, the means by which this interpersonal process fosters risk has not been identified. This said, theorists have proposed that co-rumination increases depression risk, in part, by increasing one's tendency to ruminate when alone. We tested this hypothesis in a study of 201 high-school freshmen who completed two assessments, six months apart. Supporting the proposed model, co-rumination predicted prospective increases in rumination and rumination predicted increases in depressive symptoms. The direct effect of co-rumination on depressive symptom change was not significant. Results indicate that co-rumination with friends may serve to increase rumination, which in turn increases depression risk.	\N	\N
25461224	The present proof-of-concept study investigated the feasibility of skin conductance biofeedback training in reducing seizures in adults with drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), whose seizures are triggered by stress. Skin conductance biofeedback aims to increase levels of peripheral sympathetic arousal in order to reduce cortical excitability. This might seem somewhat counterintuitive, since such autonomic arousal may also be associated with increased stress and anxiety. Thus, this sought to verify that patients with TLE and stress-triggered seizures are not worsened in terms of stress, anxiety, and negative emotional response to this nonpharmacological treatment. Eleven patients with drug-resistant TLE with seizures triggered by stress were treated with 12 sessions of biofeedback. Patients did not worsen on cognitive evaluation of attentional biases towards negative emotional stimuli (P>.05) or on psychometric evaluation with state anxiety inventory (P = .059); in addition, a significant improvement was found in the Negative Affect Schedule (P = .014) and in the Beck Depression Inventory (P = .009). Biofeedback training significantly reduced seizure frequency with a mean reduction of -48.61% (SD = 27.79) (P = .005). There was a correlation between the mean change in skin conductance activity over the biofeedback treatment and the reduction of seizure frequency (r(11) = .62, P = .042). Thus, the skin conductance biofeedback used in the present study, which teaches patients to achieve an increased level of peripheral sympathetic arousal, was a well-tolerated nonpharmacological treatment. Further, well-controlled studies are needed to confirm the therapeutic value of this nonpharmacological treatment in reducing seizures in adults with drug-resistant TLE with seizures triggered by stress.	\N	\N
25462041	During early childhood, girls outperform boys on key dimensions of cognitive functions, including inhibitory control, sustained attention, and working memory. The role of parenting in these sex differences is unknown despite evidence that boys are more sensitive to the effects of the early environment. In this study, we measured parental sensitivity at 14 and 36 months of age, and children's cognitive and executive functions (sustained attention, inhibitory control, and forward/backward memory) at 52 months of age, in a longitudinal cohort (N=752). Boys scored significantly lower than girls on inhibitory control (more Go/NoGo "commission errors") and short-term memory (forward color recall task), but boys did not differ from girls on attention (Go/NoGo "omission errors") or working memory (backward color recall task). In stratified analyses, parental sensitivity at 36 months of age was negatively associated with number of errors of commission (p=.05) and omission (p=.02) in boys, whereas child's age was the only significant predictor of commission and omission errors in girls. A combined analysis of both sexes confirmed an interaction between sex and parenting for omission errors (p=.03). The results indicate that sex differences in cognitive functions are evident in preschoolers, although not across all dimensions we assessed. Boys appear to be more vulnerable to early parenting effects, but only in association with omission errors (attention) and not with the other cognitive function dimensions.	\N	\N
25463351	Much research evidences a system in adults and young children for approximately representing quantity. Here we provide evidence that the bias to attend to discrete quantity versus other dimensions may be mediated by set size and culture. Preschool-age English-speaking children in the United States and Japanese-speaking children in Japan were tested in a match-to-sample task where number was pitted against cumulative surface area in both large and small numerical set comparisons. Results showed that children from both cultures were biased to attend to the number of items for small sets. Large set responses also showed a general attention to number when ratio difficulty was easy. However, relative to the responses for small sets, attention to number decreased for both groups; moreover, both U.S. and Japanese children showed a significant bias to attend to total amount for difficult numerical ratio distances, although Japanese children shifted attention to total area at relatively smaller set sizes than U.S. children. These results add to our growing understanding of how quantity is represented and how such representation is influenced by context--both cultural and perceptual.	\N	\N
25463457	EEG studies of cue-induced visual alpha power (8-13 Hz) lateralization have been conducted on young adults without examining differences that may develop as a consequence of normal aging. Here, we examined age-related differences in spatial attention by comparing healthy older and younger adults. Our key finding is that cue-induced alpha power lateralization was observed in younger, but not older adults, even though both groups exhibited classic event-related potential signatures of spatial orienting. Specifically, both younger and older adults showed significant early directing-attention negativity (EDAN), anterior directing-attention negativity (ADAN), late directing-attention positivity (LDAP) and contingent negative variation (CNV). Furthermore, target-evoked sensory components were enhanced for attended relative to unattended targets in both younger and older groups. This pattern of results suggests that although older adults can successfully allocate spatial attention, they do so without the lateralization of alpha power that is commonly observed in younger adults. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that younger and older adults might engage different neural mechanisms for attentional orienting, and that alpha power lateralization during visual spatial attention is a phenomenon that diminishes during normal aging.	\N	\N
25464934	Some components of generalized anxiety disorder, such as physical symptoms, are thought to reflect autonomic nervous system arousal. This study primarily assessed the relationships between psychophysiological and clinical measures using venlafaxine extended release or applied relaxation, and secondarily, the impact of combination treatment in patients not remitting after 8 weeks. Fifty-eight patients were randomly assigned to 8 weeks of treatment with either venlafaxine or applied relaxation (Phase I). Non-remitted patients received combination treatment for an additional 8 weeks (Phase II). Assessments included the Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAM-A), Beck Depression Inventory, Penn State Worry Questionnaire and the Stroop Color-Word Task coupled with electrophysiological measures (skin conductance and frontalis electromyography (EMG)). In Phase 1, a time effect was found for the clinical and skin conductance measures. Thirteen patients from each group were in remission. In Phase 2, seven additional patients remitted. Baseline psychophysiological measures were not associated with baseline clinical variables or with clinical outcomes. Independently of treatment allocation, a reduction in frontal EMG values at week 4 was significantly associated with a decrease in HAM-A scores at week 8. At week 4, responders from the applied relaxation group had lower electrophysiological activity than the venlafaxine group. Baseline psychophysiological measures were not linked with clinical measures at study inclusion or with treatment response. Frontal EMG response at week 4 is a possible predictor of treatment response. Treatment combination enhances treatment response after initial failure.	\N	\N
25466695	Hallucinations and delusions that complicate Parkinson's disease (PD) could lead to nursing home placement and are linked to increased mortality. Cognitive impairments are typically associated with the presence of hallucinations but there are no data regarding whether such a relationship exists with delusions. We hypothesized that hallucinations would be associated with executive and visuospatial disturbance. An exploratory examination of cognitive correlates of delusions was also completed to address the question of whether they differ from hallucinations. 144 PD subjects completed a neuropsychological battery to assess cognition and the SAPS to examine psychosis. Correlational analyses assessed associations between hallucinations and delusions with cognitive domains. 48 subjects (33%) reported psychotic symptoms: 25 (17%) experienced hallucinations without delusions, 23 (16%) had symptoms dominated by delusions. Severity and/or number of hallucination subtypes were significantly correlated with lower scores in language, memory, attention, executive functioning, and visuospatial ability. Correlations with delusions were non-significant. Tests of differences in the size of the correlations between groups revealed a significant relationship between language and visuospatial performance with hallucinations. Cognitive correlates of hallucinations and delusions appear to be different in PD, suggesting distinct pathogenic mechanisms and possibly anatomical substrates. Hence, delusions may not share the same associations with dementia as hallucinations. Since this is a new finding, further studies will be needed to confirm our results.	\N	\N
25487871	The physiological effects of white-nose syndrome (WNS) in hibernating bats and ultimate causes of mortality from infection with Pseudogymnoascus (formerly Geomyces) destructans are not fully understood. Increased frequency of arousal from torpor described among hibernating bats with late-stage WNS is thought to accelerate depletion of fat reserves, but the physiological mechanisms that lead to these alterations in hibernation behavior have not been elucidated. We used the doubly labeled water (DLW) method and clinical chemistry to evaluate energy use, body composition changes, and blood chemistry perturbations in hibernating little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) experimentally infected with P. destructans to better understand the physiological processes that underlie mortality from WNS. These data indicated that fat energy utilization, as demonstrated by changes in body composition, was two-fold higher for bats with WNS compared to negative controls. These differences were apparent in early stages of infection when torpor-arousal patterns were equivalent between infected and non-infected animals, suggesting that P. destructans has complex physiological impacts on its host prior to onset of clinical signs indicative of late-stage infections. Additionally, bats with mild to moderate skin lesions associated with early-stage WNS demonstrated a chronic respiratory acidosis characterized by significantly elevated dissolved carbon dioxide, acidemia, and elevated bicarbonate. Potassium concentrations were also significantly higher among infected bats, but sodium, chloride, and other hydration parameters were equivalent to controls. Integrating these novel findings on the physiological changes that occur in early-stage WNS with those previously documented in late-stage infections, we propose a multi-stage disease progression model that mechanistically describes the pathologic and physiologic effects underlying mortality of WNS in hibernating bats. This model identifies testable hypotheses for better understanding this disease, knowledge that will be critical for defining effective disease mitigation strategies aimed at reducing morbidity and mortality that results from WNS.	\N	\N
25490078	This paper attempts to integrate child developmental research and early childhood neural-cognitive development within the complexities of the early infant-mother relationship as described by psychoanalytic theory. Accumulating research evidence for the importance of the complex transition from mutual gaze to joint gaze calls into question the origin and analytic significance of the alliance relationship that emerges from the primary relationship between the mother and child. This paper explores the apparently neglected relationship between the respective theories of the therapeutic alliance of Zetzel, Greenson, and Brenner, and the developmental progression from mutual gaze and joint gaze, upon which important aspects of mental and cognitive development rest. Nonblind infants and children rely heavily on the ability to see in order to learn and form representations, while trauma affects these dynamics and perception. This issue is particularly relevant given the high incidence of unresolved childhood trauma in the form of neglect, loss, and abuse in those who seek out therapy. Freud's original conception of developmental phase progression has been unsubstantiated by recent researchers in terms of chronological progression and the receptors through which the infants experience the world. In this paper the author applies specific developmental lenses to this basic conception of the dyadic relationship in psychoanalytic treatment, and will reexamine and redefine both working and therapeutic alliance in the frame of an essential developmental stage of joint visual attention. A clinical example will reveal compromised normal preverbal interactive development, exposing faults in the complex transition from mutual gaze to joint gaze.	\N	\N
25490810	We assess the driving distraction potential of texting with Google Glass (Glass), a mobile wearable platform capable of receiving and sending short-message-service and other messaging formats. A known roadway danger, texting while driving has been targeted by legislation and widely banned. Supporters of Glass claim the head-mounted wearable computer is designed to deliver information without concurrent distraction. Existing literature supports the supposition that design decisions incorporated in Glass might facilitate messaging for drivers. We asked drivers in a simulator to drive and use either Glass or a smartphone-based messaging interface, then interrupted them with an emergency brake event. Both the response event and subsequent recovery were analyzed. Glass-delivered messages served to moderate but did not eliminate distracting cognitive demands. A potential passive cost to drivers merely wearing Glass was also observed. Messaging using either device impaired driving as compared to driving without multitasking. Glass in not a panacea as some supporters claim, but it does point the way to design interventions that effect reduced load in multitasking. Discussions of these identified benefits are framed within the potential of new in-vehicle systems that bring both novel forms of distraction and tools for mitigation into the driver's seat.	\N	\N
25496437	Erectile dysfunction (ED) is frequent in patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and may act as a surrogate of endothelial dysfunction. Furthermore, impairments of vigilance and sustained attention are also commonly associated with OSA. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether there is an association between ED and sustained attention deficits. A prospective cross-sectional cohort of 401 male in-patients undergoing diagnostic polysomnography for suspected OSA and a 25-minute sustained attention test was analyzed. ED was assessed using the 15-item International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF-15) questionnaire. The Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) served as a measure of daytime sleepiness. Severity of impaired erectile function (EF) assessed by the IIEF-15, core task parameters of the sustained attention test (i.e., CR: correct reactions; V-CR: variation of correct reactions, CE: commission errors, RT: reaction time; V-RT: variation of reaction times). Three hundred eighty-one consecutive patients presenting for in-lab polysomnography were included in the analysis. Impaired EF was diagnosed in 246 patients (65%). With increasing impairment of EF, patients scored significantly worse in all vigilance test parameters and demonstrated more severely diminished vigilance (normal EF: 11.9%, moderately impaired EF: 24.1%, and severely impaired EF: 34.9%). Multivariate regression analyses including established risk factors for ED, OSA, or sleepiness revealed a significant independent association between lower scores for EF and impairments on the following vigilance test variables: odds ratio (95% confidence interval) for V-CR: 0.52 (0.34-0.81), CE: 0.87 (0.80-0.95), and V-RT: 0.91 (0.87-0.96). The ESS was independently associated with both measures of performance instability: odds ratio for V-CR: 6.94 (2.97-16.23) and V-RT: 1.28 (1.14-1.44). In OSA patients, the severity of impaired EF was associated with impaired vigilance performance, independent of other known risk factors for ED or OSA and not mediated by sleepiness. Potentially, the findings suggest a direct relationship between vascular or endothelial dysfunction and impairments in both EF and neurobehavioral cognitive function.	\N	\N
25505324	Humans are selective information processors who efficiently prevent goal-inappropriate stimulus information to gain control over their actions. Nonetheless, stimuli, which are both unnecessary for solving a current task and liable to cue an incorrect response (i.e., "distractors"), frequently modulate task performance, even when consistently paired with a physical feature that makes them easily discernible from target stimuli. Current models of cognitive control assume adjustment of the processing of distractor information based on the overall distractor utility (e.g., predictive value regarding the appropriate response, likelihood to elicit conflict with target processing). Although studies on distractor interference have supported the notion of utility-based processing adjustment, previous evidence is inconclusive regarding the specificity of this adjustment for distractor information and the stage(s) of processing affected. To assess the processing of distractors during sensory-perceptual phases we applied EEG recording in a stimulus identification task, involving successive distractor-target presentation, and manipulated the overall distractor utility. Behavioral measures replicated previously found utility modulations of distractor interference. Crucially, distractor-evoked visual potentials (i.e., posterior N1) were more pronounced in high-utility than low-utility conditions. This effect generalized to distractors unrelated to the utility manipulation, providing evidence for item-unspecific adjustment of early distractor processing to the experienced utility of distractor information.	\N	\N
25510197	Cognitive performance in healthy persons varies widely between individuals. Sex differences in cognition are well reported, and there is an emerging body of evidence suggesting that the relationship between dopaminergic neurotransmission, implicated in many cognitive functions, is modulated by sex. Here, we examine the influence of sex and genetic variations along the dopaminergic pathway on aspects of cognitive control. A total of 415 healthy individuals, selected from an international consortium linked to Brain Research and Integrative Neuroscience Network (BRAINnet), were genotyped for two common and functional genetic variations of dopamine regulating genes: the catechol-O-methyltransferase [COMT] gene (rs4680) and the dopamine receptor D2 [DRD2] gene (rs6277). Cognitive measures were selected to explore sustained attention (using a continuous performance task), switching of attention (using a Trails B adaptation) and working memory (a visual computerised adaptation of digit span). While there were no main effects for genotype across any tasks, analyses revealed significant sex by genotype interactions for the capacity to switch attention. In relation to COMT, superior performance was noted in females with the Val/Val genotype and for DRD2, superior performance was seen for TT females and CC males. These findings highlight the importance of considering genetic variation in baseline dopamine levels in addition to sex, when considering the impact of dopamine on cognition in healthy populations. These findings also have important implications for the many neuropsychiatric disorders that implicate dopamine, cognitive changes and sex differences.	\N	\N
25514652	It is solidly established that top-down (goal-driven) and bottom-up (stimulus-driven) attention mechanisms depend on distributed cortical networks, including prefrontal and frontoparietal regions. On the other hand, it is less clear whether the BG also contribute to one or the other of these mechanisms, or to both. The current study was principally undertaken to clarify this issue. Parkinson disease (PD), a neurodegenerative disorder primarily affecting the BG, has proven to be an effective model for investigating the contribution of the BG to different brain functions; therefore, we set out to investigate deficits of top-down and bottom-up attention in a selected cohort of PD patients. With this objective in mind, we compared the performance on three computerized tasks of two groups of 12 parkinsonian patients (assessed without any treatment), one otherwise pharmacologically treated and the other also surgically treated, with that of a group of controls. The main behavioral tool for our study was an attentional capture task, which enabled us to tap the competition between top-down and bottom-up mechanisms of visual attention. This task was suitably combined with a choice RT and a simple RT task to isolate any specific deficit of attention from deficits in motor response selection and initiation. In the two groups of patients, we found an equivalent increase of attentional capture but also comparable delays in target selection in the absence of any salient distractor (reflecting impaired top-down mechanisms) and movement initiation compared with controls. In contrast, motor response selection processes appeared to be prolonged only in the operated patients. Our results confirm that the BG are involved in both motor and cognitive domains. Specifically, damage to the BG, as it occurs in PD, leads to a distinct deficit of top-down control of visual attention, and this can account, albeit indirectly, for the enhancement of attentional capture, reflecting weakened ability of top-down mechanisms to antagonize bottom-up control.	\N	\N
25515099	The rat psychomotor vigilance task (rPVT) was developed as a rodent analog of the human psychomotor vigilance task (hPVT). We examined whether rPVT performance displays time-on-task effects similar to those observed on the hPVT. The rPVT requires rats to respond to a randomly presented light stimulus to obtain a water reward. Rats were water deprived for 22 h prior to each 30-min rPVT session to motivate performance. We analyzed rPVT performance over time on task and as a function of the response-stimulus interval, at baseline and after sleep deprivation. The study was conducted in an academic research vivarium. Male Long-Evans rats were trained to respond to a 0.5 sec stimulus light within 3 sec of stimulus onset. Complete data were available for n = 20 rats. Rats performed the rPVT for 30 min at baseline and after 24 h total sleep deprivation by gentle handling. Compared to baseline, sleep deprived rats displayed increased performance lapses and premature responses, similar to hPVT lapses of attention and false starts. However, in contrast to hPVT performance, the time-on-task performance decrement was not significantly enhanced by sleep deprivation. Moreover, following sleep deprivation, rPVT response times were not consistently increased after short response-stimulus intervals. The rPVT manifests similarities to the hPVT in global performance outcomes, but not in post-sleep deprivation effects of time on task and response-stimulus interval.	\N	\N
25521352	In the current study we show that non-verbal food-evoked emotion scores significantly improve food choice prediction over merely liking scores. Previous research has shown that liking measures correlate with choice. However, liking is no strong predictor for food choice in real life environments. Therefore, the focus within recent studies shifted towards using emotion-profiling methods that successfully can discriminate between products that are equally liked. However, it is unclear how well scores from emotion-profiling methods predict actual food choice and/or consumption. To test this, we proposed to decompose emotion scores into valence and arousal scores using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and apply Multinomial Logit Models (MLM) to estimate food choice using liking, valence, and arousal as possible predictors. For this analysis, we used an existing data set comprised of liking and food-evoked emotions scores from 123 participants, who rated 7 unlabeled breakfast drinks. Liking scores were measured using a 100-mm visual analogue scale, while food-evoked emotions were measured using 2 existing emotion-profiling methods: a verbal and a non-verbal method (EsSense Profile and PrEmo, respectively). After 7 days, participants were asked to choose 1 breakfast drink from the experiment to consume during breakfast in a simulated restaurant environment. Cross validation showed that we were able to correctly predict individualized food choice (1 out of 7 products) for over 50% of the participants. This number increased to nearly 80% when looking at the top 2 candidates. Model comparisons showed that evoked emotions better predict food choice than perceived liking alone. However, the strongest predictive strength was achieved by the combination of evoked emotions and liking. Furthermore we showed that non-verbal food-evoked emotion scores more accurately predict food choice than verbal food-evoked emotions scores.	\N	\N
25547035	To evaluate the reliability of actigraphy to distinguish the features of estimated daytime and nighttime sleep between patients with central disorders of hypersomnolence and healthy controls. Thirty-nine drug-naïve patients with Narcolepsy Type 1, twenty-four drug-naïve patients with Idiopathic Hypersomnia, and thirty age- and sex- matched healthy controls underwent seven days of actigraphic and self-report monitoring of sleep/wake behavior. The following variables were examined: estimated time in bed (eTIB), estimated total sleep time, estimated sleep latency (eSOL), estimated sleep efficiency, estimated wake after sleep onset, number of estimated awakenings (eAwk), number of estimated awakenings longer than 5 minutes, estimated sleep motor activity (eSMA), number of estimated naps, mean duration of the longest estimated nap (eNapD), and daytime motor activity. All actigraphic parameters significantly differentiated the three groups, except eTIB and eSOL. A discriminant score computed combining actigraphic parameters from nighttime (eSMA, eAwk) and daytime (eNapD) periods showed a wide area under the curve (0.935) and a good balance between positive (95%) and negative predictive (87%) values in Narcolepsy Type 1 cases. Actigraphy provided a reliable objective measurement of sleep quality and daytime napping behavior able to distinguish central disorders of hypersomnolence and in particular Narcolepsy Type 1. The nycthemeral profile, combined with a careful clinical evaluation, may be an ecological information, useful to track disease course.	\N	\N
25549505	Boundary extension is a constructive memory error for views of scenes in which viewx tendto be remembered as more spatially expansive than they appeared. In seven experiments xwe examinedwhether local differences in boundary extension within views might exist by presenting par ticipants ith overhead views of single, elongated objects or object pairs on textured ground surfaces i:n whichobjects were oriented either vertically or horizontally. Memory for views' spatial expanse xwas testedwith either a view-recognition test or a border-adjustment test in which participants could ad just thespatial expanse of a test view using the computer's mouse. The border-adjustment test was uused tossess local boundary extension (primarily); the view-recognition test was used to assess paparticipants'emories for the overall spatial expanse of views (ie global boundary extension). Across exexperiments,n the border-adjustment tests specifically, participants showed more spatial expanse along the obobject'songer axis, in some cases restricting the view along the object's shorter axis. In addition, the rerecognition-t data revealed greater boundary extension for views with vertically oriented objects than for x.iviewsth horizontally oriented objects. Taken together, the results suggest that objects in scene x iviews canfect both local and global aspects of memory for spatial expanse of scene views.	\N	\N
25560106	The delivery suite is a high-risk environment. Transitions between low-risk and high-risk can be swift, and sentinel events can occur without warning. The prevention of accidents in this environment rests on the vigilance of the individual practitioner at the frontline. It is, therefore, important that the individual practitioner should develop and maintain the cognitive skills to anticipate, recognize, and intercept unfolding error chains. This commentary gives an overview of a nontechnical skill that is essential for safe practice in a delivery suite: situational awareness. A basic description of situational awareness is provided, using examples of loss of situational awareness in the delivery suite and examples of simple interventions that could promote situational awareness. Involuntary automaticity readily creeps in during performance of routine tasks, and cognitive overload could deplete attentional resources that are, by nature, limited. Strategies and tactics for maintaining situational awareness include proactively seeking and managing information on unfolding events, continually updating individual and team mental models, mindful use of checklists and scoreboards, and avoidance of attentional blindness. These simple interventions require minimal financial resources but could immensely enhance clinical performance and patient safety. Situational awareness should be included in the training of obstetrician-gynecologists and other staff working in a delivery suite.	\N	\N
25569948	Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a common respiratory disorder among adults. Recently we have shown that sedentary lifestyle causes an increase in diurnal leg fluid volume (LFV), which can shift into the neck at night when lying down to sleep and increase OSA severity. The purpose of this work was to investigate various metrics that represent baseline fluid retention in the legs and examine their correlation with neck fluid volume (NFV) and to develop a robust model for predicting fluid accumulation in the neck. In 13 healthy awake non-obese men, LFV and NFV were recorded continuously and simultaneously while standing for 5 minutes and then lying supine for 90 minutes. Simple regression was used to examine correlations between baseline LFV, baseline neck circumference (NC) and change in LFV with the outcome variables: change in NC (ΔNC) and in NFV (ΔNFV90) after lying supine for 90 minutes. An exhaustive grid search was implemented to find combinations of input variables which best modeled outcomes. We found strong positive correlations between baseline LFV (supine and standing) and ΔNFV90. Models developed for predicting ΔNFV90 included baseline standing LFV, baseline NC combined with change in LFV after lying supine for 90 minutes. These correlations and the developed models suggest that a greater baseline LFV might contribute to increased fluid accumulation in the neck. These results give more evidence that sedentary lifestyle might play a role in the pathogenesis of OSA by increasing the baseline LFV. The best models for predicting ΔNC include baseline LFV and NC; they improved accuracies of estimating ΔNC over individual predictors, suggesting that a combination of baseline fluid metrics is a good predictor of the change in NC while lying supine. Future work is aimed at adding additional baseline demographic features to improve model accuracy and eventually use it as a screening tool to predict severity of OSA prior to sleep.	\N	\N
25583612	Selective attention is fundamental for human activity, but the details of its neural implementation remain elusive. One influential theory, the adaptive coding hypothesis (Duncan, 2001, An adaptive coding model of neural function in prefrontal cortex, Nature Reviews Neuroscience 2:820-829), proposes that single neurons in certain frontal and parietal regions dynamically adjust their responses to selectively encode relevant information. This selective representation may in turn support selective processing in more specialized brain regions such as the visual cortices. Here, we use multi-voxel decoding of functional magnetic resonance images to demonstrate selective representation of attended--and not distractor--objects in frontal, parietal, and visual cortices. In addition, we highlight a critical role for task demands in determining which brain regions exhibit selective coding. Strikingly, representation of attended objects in frontoparietal cortex was highest under conditions of high perceptual demand, when stimuli were hard to perceive and coding in early visual cortex was weak. Coding in early visual cortex varied as a function of attention and perceptual demand, while coding in higher visual areas was sensitive to the allocation of attention but robust to changes in perceptual difficulty. Consistent with high-profile reports, peripherally presented objects could also be decoded from activity at the occipital pole, a region which corresponds to the fovea. Our results emphasize the flexibility of frontoparietal and visual systems. They support the hypothesis that attention enhances the multi-voxel representation of information in the brain, and suggest that the engagement of this attentional mechanism depends critically on current task demands.	\N	\N
25594946	Contextual cueing refers to a form of implicit spatial learning where participants incidentally learn to associate a target location with its repeated spatial context. Successful contextual learning produces an efficient visual search through familiar environments. Despite the fact that children exhibit the basic ability of implicit spatial learning, their general effectiveness in this form of learning can be compromised by other development-dependent factors. Learning to extract useful information (signal) in the presence of various amounts of irrelevant or distracting information (noise) characterizes one of the most important changes that occur with cognitive development. This research investigated whether signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) affects contextual cueing differently in children and adults. S/N was operationally defined as the ratio of repeated versus new displays encountered over time. Three ratio conditions were created: high (100%), medium (67%), and low (33%) conditions. Results suggested no difference in the acquisition of contextual learning effects in the high and medium conditions across three age groups (6- to 8-year-olds, 10- to 12-year-olds, and young adults). However, a significant developmental difference emerged in the low S/N condition. As predicted, adults exhibited significant contextual cueing effects, whereas older children showed marginally significant contextual cueing and younger children did not show cueing effects. Group differences in the ability to exhibit implicit contextual learning under low S/N conditions and the implications of this difference are discussed.	\N	\N
25614241	Cluster analysis was used to create patterns of individual differences reflecting infant behaviors during the initial interaction episode of the Face-to-Face Still-Face (FFSF) paradigm. The clusters were used as the basic unit of analysis for studying infant and maternal behavior and dyadic coordination (i.e., matching and reparation) across FFSF. Seventy-five 4-month-old infants participated with their mothers. Cluster analysis identified three patterns: a Socially Engaged cluster (33%) exhibited high levels of social engagement with their mothers; a Disengaged cluster (60%) showed a tendency to be low in social interaction and a Negatively Engaged cluster (7%) showed high negative emotionality. During the Still-Face episode, the Socially Engaged cluster reacted by reducing focus on their mother and shifting their attention elsewhere, while infants in the Disengaged cluster reduced focus on the environment. Although both the Socially Engaged and Disengaged clusters increased in negative emotionality during the Still-Face, the Socially Engaged group largely recovered during the Reunion, whereas the Disengaged group displayed more negative emotion. The Negatively Engaged cluster demonstrated high levels of negative affect throughout the entire procedure. Mothers of Negatively Engaged infants showed less positive engagement and more social monitoring than mothers in other clusters during all episodes. Dyadic interaction differed between groups, with greater levels of matching and reparations in the engaged group, less in the Disengaged group, and very little coordination in the Negatively Engaged cluster. Findings highlight the role of distinctive patterns of infants' individual differences in determining early dyadic functioning.	\N	\N
25624754	There is growing evidence that cognitive training (CT) can improve the cognitive functioning of the elderly. CT may be influenced by cultural and linguistic factors, but research examining CT programs has mostly been conducted on Western populations. We have developed an innovative electroencephalography (EEG)-based brain-computer interface (BCI) CT program that has shown preliminary efficacy in improving cognition in 32 healthy English-speaking elderly adults in Singapore. In this second pilot trial, we examine the acceptability, safety, and preliminary efficacy of our BCI CT program in healthy Chinese-speaking Singaporean elderly. Thirty-nine elderly participants were randomized into intervention (n=21) and wait-list control (n=18) arms. Intervention consisted of 24 half-hour sessions with our BCI-based CT training system to be completed in 8 weeks; the control arm received the same intervention after an initial 8-week waiting period. At the end of the training, a usability and acceptability questionnaire was administered. Efficacy was measured using the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS), which was translated and culturally adapted for the Chinese-speaking local population. Users were asked about any adverse events experienced after each session as a safety measure. The training was deemed easily usable and acceptable by senior users. The median difference in the change scores pre- and post-training of the modified RBANS total score was 8.0 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.0-16.0, P=0.042) higher in the intervention arm than waitlist control, while the mean difference was 9.0 (95% CI: 1.7-16.2, P=0.017). Ten (30.3%) participants reported a total of 16 adverse events - all of which were graded "mild" except for one graded "moderate". Our BCI training system shows potential in improving cognition in both English- and Chinese-speaking elderly, and deserves further evaluation in a Phase III trial. Overall, participants responded positively on the usability and acceptability questionnaire.	\N	\N
25631970	Iron deficiency, associated with a decline in cognitive function, is the most common nutritional deficiency globally. The present study aimed to identify the impact of weekly iron supplements on the attention function of female students from a high school in North Khorasan Province, Iran. This was a blind, controlled, clinical trial study, involving 200 female students who were chosen using the stratified randomised sampling method. First, laboratory studies were performed to detect iron consumption limitations. Next, the 200 students were divided randomly and equally into case and control groups. The case group was treated with 50 mg of ferrous sulfate twice a week for 16 weeks. We compared both groups' data on attention, iron status and erythrocyte indices. Questionnaires were used to collect demographic data, while clinical data was collected using complete blood count and Toulouse-Piéron tests. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics, as well as paired and independent t-tests. The mean attention scores of the case and control groups were 104.8 ± 7.0 and 52.7 ± 9.6, respectively (p < 0.001). The mean haemoglobin levels of the two groups were 12.5 ± 0.9 and 11.2 ± 1.0, respectively (p < 0.001). Compared to the control group, the attention scores and haemoglobin concentrations of the case group were found to be improved by approximately 90% and 10%, respectively. Oral iron supplements (50 mg twice a week for 16 weeks) were able to improve the attention span and haematologic indices of female high school students.	\N	\N
25637852	Attention has been shown to affect the neural processing of pain. However, the exact mechanisms underlying this modulation remain unknown. Here, we used a new method called pain steady-state evoked potentials (PSSEPs) to investigate whether selective spatial attention affects EEG responses to tonic painful stimuli. In general, steady-state evoked potentials reflect changes in the EEG spectrum at a certain frequency that correspond to the frequency of a train of applied stimuli. In this study, high intensity transcutaneous electrical stimulation was delivered to both hands simultaneously with 31 Hz and 37 Hz, respectively. Subject׳s attention was directed to one of the two trains of stimulation in order to detect a small gap that was occasionally interspersed into the stimulus trains. Thereby, they had to ignore the stimulation applied to the other hand. Results show that PSSEPs were induced at 31 Hz and 37 Hz at frontal and central electrodes. PSSEPs occurred contralaterally to the respective hand stimulated with that frequency. Surprisingly, the magnitude of PSSEPs was not modulated by spatial attention towards one of the two stimuli. Our results indicate that attention can hardly be shifted between two simultaneously applied tonic painful stimulations.	\N	\N
25638026	Anabolic-androgenic steroid (AAS) abuse is prevalent not only among elite athletes, but is increasingly common in high school and collegiate sports. AAS are implicated in maladaptive behaviors such as increased aggression and risk taking, which may result from impaired cognition. Because they affect dopamine function in prefrontal cortical (PFC)-striatal circuitry, AAS may disrupt PFC-dependent processes such as behavioral flexibility. This was the focus of the present study. Adolescent male Long-Evans rats were treated chronically with high-dose testosterone (7.5mg/kg in water with 13% cyclodextrin) or vehicle sc, and tested for set-shifting and reversal-learning. For set-shifting, rats were trained on a visual cue task (VCT), then were shifted to a direction cue task (DCT), or vice-versa. For reversal learning, rats were first trained on VCT and were then required to press the opposite lever. 2-cue set-shifting introduced a novel paradigm in which rats shifted from a 1-Light Visual Task (1LVT) to a tone cue task (TCT). Testosterone-treated rats were significantly impaired on the set-shift from DCT to VCT compared to vehicle-treated controls (trials to criterion: vehicle 240.9±29.9, testosterone 388.3±59.3, p<0.05). However, on the set-shift from VCT to DCT, testosterone did not affect performance. During reversal-learning, testosterone significantly increased trials to criterion (vehicle: 495.9±91.8 trials, testosterone: 793.7±96.7 trials, p<0.05). In 2-cue set-shifting, testosterone diminished performance and the difference showed borderline significance (vehicle: 443.2±84.4 trials, testosterone: 800.4±178.2 trials, p=0.09). Our results show that testosterone impairs behavioral flexibility and have implications for understanding cognitive and behavioral changes in human AAS users.	\N	\N
25647070	The etiology of premenstrual disorders, including premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and premenstrual dysphoric disorders (PMDD), is not well understood. In the current study, the relationship between self-focused attention (SFA) and premenstrual disorders was examined to explore the hypothesis that women with premenstrual disorders tend to respond to symptoms in a maladaptive manner. Based on retrospective report, clinical interview, and 30-day prospective recording of premenstrual symptoms, women (N = 52) were categorized as meeting criteria for premenstrual disorders (PMD; n = 24) or not (controls; n = 28). Key findings indicated that women with premenstrual disorders reported greater use of SFA in response to negative affect elicited by laboratory tasks than controls, despite no significant differences in change in negative affect between the two groups. Women with premenstrual disorders also reported greater trait levels of SFA and maladaptive coping styles compared to controls. Women with premenstrual disorders may tend to respond to menstrual cycle changes using increased levels of SFA. The interaction between psychological and physiological menstrual cycle-related changes may lead to increased distress and impairment. Implications for psychological contributions to premenstrual distress and disorders are discussed.	\N	\N
25647484	This study examined the separate influence and joint influences on event-based prospective memory task performance due to the valence of cues and the valence of contexts. We manipulated the valence of cues and contexts with pictures from the International Affective Picture System. The participants, undergraduate students, showed higher performance when neutral compared to valenced pictures were used for cueing prospective memory. In addition, neutral pictures were more effective as cues when they occurred in a valenced context than in the context of neutral pictures, but the effectiveness of valenced cues did not vary across contexts that differed in valence. The finding of an interaction between cue and context valence indicates that their respective influence on event-based prospective memory task performance cannot be understood in isolation from each other. Our findings are not consistent with by the prevailing view which holds that the scope of attention is broadened and narrowed, respectively, by positively and negatively valenced stimuli. Instead, our findings are more supportive of the recent proposal that the scope of attention is determined by the motivational intensity associated with valenced stimuli. Consistent with this proposal, we speculate that the motivational intensity associated with different retrieval cues determines the scope of attention, that contexts with different valence values determine participants' task engagement, and that prospective memory task performance is determined jointly by attention scope and task engagement.	\N	\N
25665861	We set out hypotheses which are based in the technique of Brainspotting (Grand, 2013) [1] but have wider applicability within the range of psychotherapies for post-traumatic and other disorders. We have previously (Corrigan and Grand, 2013) [2] suggested mechanisms by which a Brainspot may be established during traumatic experience and later identified in therapy. Here we seek to formulate mechanisms for the healing processing which occurs during mindful attention to the Brainspot; and we generate hypotheses about what is happening during the time taken for the organic healing process to flow to completion during the therapy session and beyond it. Full orientation to the aversive memory of a traumatic experience fails to occur when a high level of physiological arousal that is threatening to become overwhelming promotes a neurochemical de-escalation of the activation: there is then no resolution. In Brainspotting, and other trauma psychotherapies, healing can occur when full orientation to the memory is made possible by the superior colliculi-pulvinar, superior colliculi-mediodorsal nucleus, and superior colliculi-intralaminar nuclei pathways being bound together electrophysiologically for coherent thalamocortical processing. The brain's response to the memory is "reset" so that the emotional response experienced in the body, and conveyed through the paleospinothalamic tract to the midbrain and thalamus and on to the basal ganglia and cortex, is no longer disturbing. Completion of the orientation "reset" ensures that the memory is reconsolidated without distress and recollection of the event subsequently is no longer dysphorically activating at a physiological level.	\N	\N
25678274	While there is growing understanding of visual selective attention in children, some aspects such as selection in the presence of distractors are not well understood. Adult studies suggest that when presented with a visual search task, an enhanced negativity is seen beginning around 200 ms (the N2pc) that reflects selection of a target item among distractors. However, it is not known if similar selective attention-related activity is seen in children during visual search. This study was designed to investigate the presence of the N2pc in children. Nineteen children (ages 9-12 years) and 21 adults (ages 18-22 years) completed a visual search task in which they were asked to attend to a fixation surrounded by both a target and a distractor stimulus. Three types of displays were analyzed at parietal electrodes P7 and P8; lateral target/lateral distractor, lateral target/midline distractor, and midline target/lateral distractor. Both adults and children showed a significant increased negativity contralateral compared to ipsilateral to the target (reflected in the N2pc) in both displays with a lateral target while no such effect was seen in displays with a midline target. This suggests that children also utilized additional resources to select a target item when distractors are present. These findings demonstrate that the N2pc can be used as a marker of attentional object selection in children.	\N	\N
25681698	Whether or not awareness entails attention is a much debated question. Since iconic memory has been generally assumed to be attention-free, it has been considered an important piece of evidence that it does not (Koch & Tsuchiya, 2007). Therefore the question of the role of attention in iconic memory matters. Recent evidence (Persuh, Genzer, & Melara, 2012), suggests that iconic memory does depend on attention. Because of the centrality of iconic memory to this debate, we looked again at the role of attention in iconic memory using a standard whole versus partial report task of letters in a 3×2 matrix. We manipulated attention to the array by coupling it with a second task that was either easy or hard and by manipulating the probability of which task was to be performed on any given trial. When attention was maximally diverted from the matrix, participants were able to report less than a single item, confirming the prior results and supporting the conclusion that iconic memory entails attention. It is not an instance of attention-free awareness.	\N	\N
25689233	Little attention has been paid to distress in sexual functioning or the sexual satisfaction of people who practice BDSM (Bondage and Discipline, Domination and Submission, Sadism and Masochism). The purpose of this study was to describe sociodemographic characteristics and BDSM practices and compare BDSM practitioners' sexual outcomes (in BDSM and non-BDSM contexts). A convenience sample of 68 respondents completed an online survey that used a participatory research framework. Cronbach's alpha and average inter-item correlations assessed scale reliability, and the Wilcoxon paired samples test compared the total scores between BDSM and non-BDSM contexts separately for men and women. Open-ended questions about BDSM sexual practices were coded using a preexisting thematic tree. We used self-reported demographic factors, including age at the onset of BDSM interest, age at first BDSM experience, and favorite and most frequent BDSM practices. The Global Measure of Sexual Satisfaction measured the amount of sexual distress, including low desire, arousal, maintaining arousal, premature orgasm, and anorgasmia. The participants had an average age of 33.15 years old and were highly educated and waited 6 years after becoming interested in BDSM to act on their interests. The practices in which the participants most frequently engaged did not coincide with the practices in which they were most interested and were overwhelmingly conducted at home. Comparisons between genders in terms of distress in sexual functioning in BDSM and non-BDSM contexts demonstrate that, with the exception of maintaining arousal, we found distress in sexual functioning to be statistically the same in BDSM and non-BDSM contexts for women. For men, we found that distress in sexual functioning, with the exception of premature orgasm and anorgasmia, was statistically significantly lower in the BDSM context. There were no differences in sexual satisfaction between BDSM and non-BDSM contexts for men or women. Our findings suggest that BDSM sexual activity should be addressed in clinical settings that account for BDSM identities, practices, relationships, preferences, sexual satisfaction, and distress in sexual function for men and women. Additional research needs are identified, such as the need to define distressful sexual functioning experiences and expand our understanding of the development of BDSM sexual identities.	\N	\N
25689289	Comparing drug-induced driving impairments with the effects of benchmark blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) is an approved approach to determine the clinical relevance of findings for traffic safety. The present study aimed to collect alcohol calibration data to validate findings of clinical trials that were derived from a representative test course in a dynamic driving simulator. The driving performance of 24 healthy volunteers under placebo and with 0.05% and 0.08% BACs was measured in a double-blind, randomized, crossover design. Trained investigators assessed the subjects' driving performance and registered their driving errors. Various driving parameters that were recorded during the simulation were also analyzed. Generally, the participants performed worse on the test course (P < 0.05 for the investigators' assessment) under the influence of alcohol. Consistent with the relevant literature, lane-keeping performance parameters were sensitive to the investigated BACs. There were significant differences between the alcohol and placebo conditions in most of the parameters analyzed. However, the total number of errors was the only parameter discriminating significantly between all three BAC conditions. In conclusion, data show that the present experimental setup is suitable for future psychopharmacological research. Thereby, for each drug to be investigated, we recommend to assess a profile of various parameters that address different levels of driving. On the basis of this performance profile, the total number of driving errors is recommended as the primary endpoint. However, this overall endpoint should be completed by a specifically sensitive parameter that is chosen depending on the effect known to be induced by the tested drug.	\N	\N
25690831	Neural responses in the auditory cortex have historically been measured from either anesthetized or awake but non-behaving animals. A growing body of work has begun to focus instead on recording from auditory cortex of animals actively engaged in behavior tasks. These studies have shown that auditory cortical responses are dependent upon the behavioral state of the animal. The longer ascending subcortical pathway of the auditory system and unique characteristics of auditory processing suggest that such dependencies may have a more profound influence on cortical processing in the auditory system compared to other sensory systems. It is important to understand the nature of these dependencies and their functional implications. In this article, we review the literature on this topic pertaining to cortical processing of sounds.	\N	\N
25701796	To better understand the contribution of the dorsal system to word reading, we explored transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) effects when adults with developmental dyslexia received active stimulation over the visual extrastriate area MT/V5, which is dominated by magnocellular input. Stimulation was administered in 5 sessions spread over two weeks, and reading speed and accuracy as well as reading fluency were assessed before, immediately after, and a week after the end of the treatment. A control group of adults with developmental dyslexia matched for age, gender, reading level, vocabulary and block-design WAIS-III sub-tests and reading level was exposed to the same protocol but with sham stimulation. The results revealed that active, but not sham stimulation, significantly improved reading speed and fluency. This finding suggests that the dorsal stream may play a role in efficient retrieval from the orthographic input lexicon in the lexical route. It also underscores the potential of tDCS as an intervention tool for improving reading speed, at least in adults with developmental dyslexia.	\N	\N
25704737	We examined longitudinal relations between adult interpartner conflict (referred to as marital conflict) and children's subsequent sleep minutes and quality assessed objectively via actigraphy, and tested parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) activity indexed through respiratory sinus arrhythmia reactivity (RSA-R) and initial sleep as moderators of predictive associations. At Wave 1 (W1), children (85 boys, 75 girls) with a mean age of 9.43 years (SD=.69) reported on marital conflict, and their sleep was assessed with actigraphs for seven nights. Sleep minutes, sleep efficiency, sleep activity, and number of long wake episodes were derived. RSA-R was measured in response to a lab challenge. Sleep parameters were assessed again 1 year later at Wave 2 (W2; mean age=10.39; SD=.64). Analyses consistently revealed 3-way interactions among W1 marital conflict, sleep, and RSA-R as predictors of W2 sleep parameters. Sleep was stable among children with more sleep minutes and better sleep quality at W1 or low exposure to marital conflict at W1. Illustrating conditional risk, marital conflict predicted increased sleep problems (reduced sleep minutes, worse sleep quality) at W2 among children with poorer sleep at W1 in conjunction with less apt physiological regulation (i.e., lower levels of RSA-R or less vagal withdrawal) at W1. Findings build on the scant literature and underscore the importance of simultaneous consideration of bioregulatory systems (PNS and initial sleep in this study) in conjunction with family processes in the prediction of children's later sleep parameters.	\N	\N
25705797	Patients with primary adrenal insufficiency (AI) need to replace glucocorticoids and mineralocorticoids that act on glucocorticoid (GR) and mineralocorticoid receptors (MR). Both receptors are highly expressed in the hippocampus and are closely associated with cognitive function, which might be impaired by insufficient or increased GR and MR stimulation. However, little is known about cognitive function in patients with AI. It was examined whether patients with AI exhibit worse cognitive function compared to sex-, age-, and education-matched controls. Cognitive function (executive function, concentration, verbal memory, visual memory, working memory, and autobiographical memory) was assessed in 30 patients with AI (mean age 52.4 yrs. ±14.4, n=21 women, mean duration of illness 18.2 yrs. ±11.1) and 30 matched controls. We also measured depressive symptoms, body mass index (BMI), and blood pressure. Patients with AI showed more depressive symptoms, had a greater BMI and lower systolic blood pressure compared to controls. Adjusted analyses controlling for these variables revealed that patients with AI performed significantly worse in verbal learning (F=7.8, p=.007). Executive function, concentration, working memory, verbal memory, visuospatial memory, and autobiographical memory did not differ between groups. No clinically relevant cognitive impairment was found in patients with AI compared to matched controls. Even long-term glucocorticoid and mineralocorticoid substitution over almost two decades appears to have only subtle effects on cognition in patients with AI.	\N	\N
25717168	Motor system excitability is transiently suppressed during the preparation of movement. This preparatory inhibition is hypothesized to facilitate response selection and initiation. Given that demands on selection and initiation processes increase with movement complexity, we hypothesized that complexity would influence preparatory inhibition. To test this hypothesis, we probed corticospinal excitability during a delayed-response task in which participants were cued to prepare right- or left-hand movements of varying complexity. Single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied over right primary motor cortex to elicit motor evoked potentials (MEPs) from the first dorsal interosseous (FDI) of the left hand. MEP suppression was greater during the preparation of responses involving coordination of the FDI and adductor digiti minimi relative to easier responses involving only the FDI, independent of which hand was cued to respond. In contrast, this increased inhibition was absent when the complex responses required sequential movements of the two muscles. Moreover, complexity did not influence the level of inhibition when the response hand was fixed for the trial block, regardless of whether the complex responses were performed simultaneously or sequentially. These results suggest that preparatory inhibition contributes to response selection, possibly by suppressing extraneous movements when responses involve the simultaneous coordination of multiple effectors.	\N	\N
25723014	We studied influence of the anxiety-related trait Harm Avoidance and the COMT gene, which is an important modulator of prefrontal functioning, on event-related potentials in oddball paradigm and performance effectiveness of selective attention. For 50 individuals accuracy and time of searching words among letters at any desired rate and then under an instruction to perform the task as quickly and accurate as possible were measured. Scores on the Harm Avoidance scale from Cloninger's Temperament and Character Inventory, N100 and P300 parameters, and COMTVa1158Met genotypes were obtained for them as well. Searching accuracy and time were mainly related to N100 amplitude. The COMT genotype and Harm Avoidance did not affect N100 amplitude; however, the N100 amplitude modulated their effects on accuracy and time dynamics. Harm Avoidance was positively correlated with P300 latency. The results suggest that anxiety and the COMT gene effects on performance effectiveness of selective attention depend on cognitive processes reflected in N100 parameters.	\N	\N
25723016	In order to study spontaneous attentional lapses the experimental task was used that created a moderately high attentional load and involved response choice based on stimulus feature conjunction. The participant's average correct response rate was 85.1%; they made errors in 9.6% trials and response omissions in 5.4% trials. Peak N1 of the evoked potential was consistent across all behavioral outcomes, while peak P2 amplitude was significantly greater before errors and response omissions compared to correct responses. The analysis of polygraphic indexes (ECG, EMG, SGR) did not reveal any arousal level reduction before attentional lapses. The proposed interpretation of the results obtained is based on the assumption that attentional lapses are mediated by the suppression of external stimuli information processing caused by the state of mind-wandering.	\N	\N
25726855	Several organisms irrespective of their complexity in structure and function have an inbuilt circadian rhythm. Zebrafish could be used as an alternate model animal in sleep research as it exhibits similar sleep-wake dynamics as mammals and Drosophila. In this study, we have analysed the adult zebrafish brain for its differential proteome and gene expression during perturbed light/dark cycle. A total of 53 and 25 proteins including sncb, peroxiredoxins and TCR alpha were identified based on two-dimensional gel electrophoresis Fourier transform mass spectrometer/ion trap tandem mass spectrometer and differential in-gel electrophoresis MALDI TOF MS/MS analysis, respectively, with at least 1.5-fold changes between the control and experimental brains. Real time-polymerase chain reaction revealed that many circadian pathway-associated genes, such as per1b, bmal1b, cry1b, bmal2 and nr1d2, were differentially regulated during continuous light/dark exposures. It is hypothesized that the differential regulation of these genes might lead to the discovery of potential diagnostic markers for gaining insight into the light/dark-associated stress in humans.	\N	\N
25737257	The contents of working memory (WM) have been repeatedly found to guide the allocation of visual attention; in a dual-task paradigm that combines WM and visual search, actively holding an item in WM biases visual attention towards memory-matching items during search (e.g., Soto et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 31(2), 248-261, 2005). A key debate is whether such memory-based attentional guidance is automatic or under strategic control. Generally, two distinct task paradigms have been employed to assess memory-based guidance, one demonstrating that attention is involuntarily captured by memory-matching stimuli even at a cost to search performance (Soto et al., 2005), and one demonstrating that participants can strategically avoid memory-matching distractors to facilitate search performance (Woodman & Luck, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 33(2), 363-377, 2007). The current study utilized an individual-differences approach to examine why the different paradigms--which presumably tap into the same attentional construct--might support contrasting interpretations. Participants completed a battery of cognitive tasks, including two types of attentional guidance paradigms (see Soto et al., 2005; Woodman & Luck, 2007), a visual WM task, and an operation span task, as well as attention-related self-report assessments. Performance on the two attentional guidance paradigms did not correlate. Subsequent exploratory regression analyses revealed that memory-based guidance in each task was differentially predicted by visual WM capacity for one paradigm, and by attention-related assessment scores for the other paradigm. The current results suggest that these two paradigms--which have previously produced contrasting patterns of performance--may probe distinct aspects of attentional guidance.	\N	\N
25752211	To determine the effect of mode of delivery and perineal injury on sexual function at 6 and 12 months postpartum. Prospective cohort study. Tertiary women's hospital in Melbourne, Australia. A cohort of 440 primigravid women. The Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) was completed at first visit (7-19 weeks of gestation), and at 6 and 12 months postpartum. A statistically significant difference in total FSFI or domain scores over time according to mode of delivery or perineal injury. In this cohort 54% of women had a normal vaginal delivery, 21% had an instrumental delivery, and 25% gave birth by caesarean section. No difference was found in total FSFI or domain scores according to mode of delivery over time between antenatal assessment and 12 months postpartum. Pain was decreased in the caesarean group only at 6 months postpartum. All groups showed pain scores at 12 months that were comparable with antenatal levels. For those who gave birth vaginally, 27% had an intact perineum, 50% had an episiotomy, and 6%, 14%, and 3% had first, second, and third-degree tears, respectively. The only differences between groups were found over time according to perineal injury at 6 months in the arousal domain. At 12 months, total FSFI and domain scores were no different to initial scores. At 12 months postpartum sexual function has returned to early pregnancy levels, irrespective of mode of delivery or perineal injury.	\N	\N
25761284	Here we show that the pupillary light response reflects exogenous (involuntary) shifts of attention and inhibition of return. Participants fixated in the center of a display that was divided into a bright and a dark half. An exogenous cue attracted attention to the bright or dark side of the display. Initially, the pupil constricted when the bright, as compared to the dark, side of the display was cued, reflecting a shift of attention toward the exogenous cue. Crucially, this pattern reversed about 1 s after cue presentation. This later-occurring, relative dilation (when the bright side was cued) reflected disengagement from the previously attended location, analogous to the behavioral phenomenon of inhibition of return. Indeed, we observed a reliable correlation between "pupillary inhibition" and behavioral inhibition of return. Our results support the view that inhibition of return results from habituation to (or short-term depression of) visual input. We conclude that the pupillary light response is a complex eye movement that reflects how we selectively parse and interpret visual input.	\N	\N
25768854	Methylphenidate (MPH) is a stimulant that is commonly used in the treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in children and adults. Several reports are available regarding the relationship of MPH use and sleep bruxism. We report the case of a 9-year-old boy who presented with severe awake bruxism after his second dose of sustained release form of MPH treatment, which was confirmed on rechallenge. This is the first report of its kind showing such relationship in the literature.	\N	\N
25772915	Available evidences seem to suggest increasing trend in sleep deficit among teenagers worldwide, and there is limited information on this among Nigerian teenagers. This study was carried out to determine the basic sleep schedule and sleep duration among schooling teenagers in Ilorin, Nigeria. This is a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted among 20 selected public secondary schools in Ilorin, Nigeria. A multistage sampling technique was used to randomly select participating schools. A total of 1033 students participated in the study; of these 47.3% were males and 51.7% females. Students mean age (standard deviation) was 15.3 ± 1.6 years with a range of 12-19 years. Majority (76.2%) of participants co-share bed with at least one person and some (23.8%) slept alone in bed. The three leading reasons given for going to bed were: Tiredness - 31.1%, completion of house assignment - 20.5%, and parental directive - 12.4%. 10% of teenagers do make regular phone calls at night and 5.5% surf internet and use computers at night. Regular habits of daytime sleepiness were reported by 8.2% of study participants. Students' mean sleep duration during school days was 9.33 ± 2.29 h compared to 10.09 ± 1.32 h at weekend (P < 0.05). The duration of night time sleep was adequate (>9 h) in 41% of students; borderline (8-9 h) in 44.3% while 13.3% of the students had insufficient nighttime sleep duration (<8 h) P < 0.05. A substantial number of students had borderline nighttime sleep duration and so had potentials to transit into the problematic insufficient range. To prevent this, there is a need to educate schooling teenagers on the dangers associated with prolonged sleep insufficiency.	\N	\N
25782397	Diurnal preference (chronotype) is a useful instrument for studying circadian biology in humans. It harbours trait-like dimensions relating to circadian period and sleep homeostasis, but also has ontogenetic components (morningness increases with age). We used the Morningness-Eveningness questionnaire (MEQ) in the Baependi study, a family-based cohort study based in a small town in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The population is highly admixed and has a cohesive and conservative lifestyle. 825 individuals (497 female) aged 18-89 years (average ± SD = 46.4 ± 16.3) and belonging to 112 different families participated in this study. The average MEQ score was 63.5 ± 11.2 with a significant (P < 0.0001) linear increase with age. Morningness was significantly (P < 0.0001) higher in the rural (70.2 ± 9.8) than in the municipal zone (62.6 ± 11.1), and was also significantly (P = 0.025) higher in male (64.6 ± 10.9) than in female (62.8 ± 11.2) participants. Thus, in spite of universal access to electricity, the Baependi population was strongly shifted towards morningness, particularly in the rural zone. Heritability of MEQ score was 0.48 when adjusted for sex and age, or 0.38 when adjusted for sex, age, and residential zone. The reported MEQ score heritability is more akin to those of previous twin studies than previous family studies.	\N	\N
25784489	Electrical stimulation of upper limb nerves evokes a train of high-frequency wavelets (high-frequency oscillations, HFOs) on the human scalp. These HFOs are related to the influence of arousal-promoting structures on somatosensory input processing, and are generated in the primary somatosensory cortex (post-synaptic HFOs) and the terminal tracts of thalamocortical radiations (pre-synaptic HFOs). We previously reported that HFOs do not undergo habituation to repeated stimulations; here, we verified whether HFOs could be modulated by external sensitizing stimuli. We recorded somatosensory evoked potentials (SSEPs) in 15 healthy volunteers before and after sensitization training with an auditory stimulus. Pre-synaptic HFO amplitudes, reflecting somatosensory thalamic/thalamocortical activity, significantly increased after the sensitizing acoustic stimulation, whereas both the low-frequency N20 SSEP component and post-synaptic HFOs were unaffected. Cross-talk between subcortical arousal-related structures is a probable mechanism for the pre-synaptic HFO effect observed in this study. We propose that part of the ascending somatosensory input encoded in HFOs is specifically able to convey sensitized inputs. This preferential involvement in sensitization mechanisms suggests that HFOs play a critical role in the detection of potentially relevant stimuli, and act at very early stages of somatosensory input processing.	\N	\N
25788036	Recent studies have shown that attentional facilitation lingers at the retinotopic coordinates of a previously attended position after an eye movement. These results are intriguing, because the retinotopic location becomes behaviorally irrelevant once the eyes have moved. Critically, in these studies participants were asked to maintain attention on a blank location of the screen. In the present study, we examined whether the continuing presence of a visual object at the cued location could affect the allocation of attention across eye movements. We used a trans-saccadic cueing paradigm in which the relevant positions could be defined or not by visual objects (simple square outlines). We find an attentional benefit at the spatiotopic location of the cue only when the object (the placeholder) has been continuously present at that location. We conclude that the presence of an object at the attended location is a critical factor for the maintenance of spatial constancy of attention across eye movements, a finding that helps to reconcile previous conflicting results.	\N	\N
25801520	Structural and Electroencephalography (EEG) abnormalities in right temporoparietal cortex have been associated with family history of depression (FH). Here we investigate if functional abnormalities in this area, indexed by attenuated responses to emotionally arousing stimuli, are also family-history-dependent. Neuromagnetic activity for emotional and neutral complex scenes was recorded by Magnetoencephalography (MEG) in 20 depressed patients without, 8 depressed patients with FH, and 15 healthy controls. Emotion-sensitive neuronal steady state responses were cortical source localized and tested for group-by-emotion interactions. The group-by-emotion interaction (F(4, 80)=4.4, p=0.004) was explained by a significant modulation of right temporoparietal cortex activity by emotional arousal in controls and patients without FH. This effect was reduced in FH positive patients. The difference between patient groups remained when clinical variables such as symptom severity were accounted for. All patients were medicated, but differences between patient groups remained after accounting for medication dosage. Further, the sample size was limited, but data-driven resampling statistics showed the robustness of our effects. Finally, the sample consists of female patients only and we cannot generalize our results to male samples. Patients with FH show impaired recruitment of attention-relevant cortical circuitry by emotional stimuli. The neuroanatomical locus of this effect accords with previous reports on structural abnormalities and electrophysiological deficits at rest in individuals with FH. Our results speak to the relevance of right temporoparietal dysfunction in emotional information processing as a potential endophenotype for depression with FH.	\N	\N
25801753	The aim of this study was to find out how people with epilepsy in NE Thailand feel about their levels of stress, sleep, diet, exercise habits, and sex lives using a cross-sectional design. Two hundred and three people with epilepsy (PWE) were randomly recruited from a university epilepsy clinic in Khon Kaen and then completed an interview and a questionnaire. A total of 27.6% of the patients believed that diet had an influence on their epilepsy (of those who reported changes, 41.1% stopped consuming alcohol, while 32.1% stopped drinking caffeinated beverages). A total of 47.2% of the patients exercised at least three times per week, while 52.8% exercised two times or less a week. Daytime sleeping was prevalent, with 43.3% saying that they slept during the day frequently or every day. There were 44.3% of the patients who believed that their sex lives changed after the onset of epilepsy, with decreased sexual arousal being most commonly mentioned. A total of 76.4% of the patients said that they had medium or high levels of stress, and epilepsy was listed as the most common reason for their stress (50.2%). Focusing on the problem was the most common method to reduce stress (80.3%). The findings illuminate the need to increase attention towards improving and promoting self-management of epilepsy. As a whole, diet, exercise, sleep, stress reduction, and sex therapy can be valuable tools to improve the quality of life of people with epilepsy.	\N	\N
25832193	We used contingent attentional capture to investigate whether capture in a given trial n was affected by the cue-target position relations in a preceding trial n-1. Typically, attentional capture by a cue facilitates reaction times for targets in valid conditions (with the cue and target at the same position) relative to invalid conditions (with the cue and target at different positions). Also, this validity effect holds for cues with a feature similar to the searched-for target features (i.e., matching cues), but not for cues dissimilar to the searched-for target features (i.e., nonmatching cues), a pattern termed contingent capture because capture is assumed to be contingent on the match between the cue and top-down control settings. Here, we replicated this contingent-capture pattern with cues that were nonpredictive of the target position. In addition, we showed that during search for white onset targets, red nonmatching color cues also created a validity effect if the same nonmatching cue had been used as a valid cue in trial n-1 (Exps. 1 and 2). This intertrial contingency of the nonmatching cue's validity effect was also found if the cues and targets both changed their positions from trial to trial, rendering position priming unlikely (Exp. 2). A similar intertrial contingency was found for nonmatching white onset cues, but not for matching red color cues during search for red color targets (Exp. 3). These results are discussed in light of explanations of the contingent-capture effect and of intertrial contingencies.	\N	\N
25874883	It is a well-known fact today that driver sleepiness is a contributory factor in crashes. Factors considered as sleepiness contributor are mostly related to time of the day, hours being awake and hours slept. Factors contributing to active and passive fatigue are mostly focusing on the level of cognitive load. Less is known what role external factors, e.g. type of road, sound/noise, vibrations etc., have on the ability to stay awake both under conditions of sleepiness and under active or passive fatigue. The aim of this moving base driving simulator study with 19 drivers participating in a random order day and night time, was to evaluate the effect of low-frequency road noise on driver sleepiness and performance, including both long-term and short-term effects. The results support to some extent the hypothesis that road-induced interior vehicle sound affects driving performance and driver sleepiness. Increased low-frequency noise helps to reduce speed during both day- and night time driving, but also contributes to increase the number of lane crossings during night time.	\N	\N
25878263	Amplitude modulations are fundamental features of natural signals, including human speech and nonhuman primate vocalizations. Because natural signals frequently occur in the context of other competing signals, we used a forward-masking paradigm to investigate how the modulation context of a prior signal affects cortical responses to subsequent modulated sounds. Psychophysical "modulation masking," in which the presentation of a modulated "masker" signal elevates the threshold for detecting the modulation of a subsequent stimulus, has been interpreted as evidence of a central modulation filterbank and modeled accordingly. Whether cortical modulation tuning is compatible with such models remains unknown. By recording responses to pairs of sinusoidally amplitude modulated (SAM) tones in the auditory cortex of awake squirrel monkeys, we show that the prior presentation of the SAM masker elicited persistent and tuned suppression of the firing rate to subsequent SAM signals. Population averages of these effects are compatible with adaptation in broadly tuned modulation channels. In contrast, modulation context had little effect on the synchrony of the cortical representation of the second SAM stimuli and the tuning of such effects did not match that observed for firing rate. Our results suggest that, although the temporal representation of modulated signals is more robust to changes in stimulus context than representations based on average firing rate, this representation is not fully exploited and psychophysical modulation masking more closely mirrors physiological rate suppression and that rate tuning for a given stimulus feature in a given neuron's signal pathway appears sufficient to engender context-sensitive cortical adaptation.	\N	\N
25902810	To validate the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) as a treatment effect measure in narcolepsy, and to compare the SART with the Maintenance of Wakefulness Test (MWT) and the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS). Validation of treatment effect measurements within a randomized controlled trial (RCT). Ninety-five patients with narcolepsy with or without cataplexy. The RCT comprised a double-blind, parallel-group, multicenter trial comparing the effects of 8-w treatments with pitolisant (BF2.649), modafinil, or placebo (NCT01067222). MWT, ESS, and SART were administered at baseline and after an 8-w treatment period. The severity of excessive daytime sleepiness and cataplexy was also assessed using the Clinical Global Impression scale (CGI-C). The SART, MWT, and ESS all had good reliability, obtained for the SART and MWT using two to three sessions in 1 day. The ability to distinguish responders from nonresponders, classified using the CGI-C score, was high for all measures, with a high performance for the SART (r = 0.61) and the ESS (r = 0.54). The Sustained Attention to Response Task is a valid and easy-to-administer measure to assess treatment effects in narcolepsy, enhanced by combining it with the Epworth Sleepiness Scale.	\N	\N
25939700	Memory for multiple features might be limited by the number of features, the number of objects, or both. To focus on the role of features, we tested memory for a variable number of features within a single object. Subjects studied a single ellipse that varied in four features: size, orientation, contrast, and position. We conducted two experiments that differed in how memory was tested. If performance is limited only by the number of objects to be remembered, there should be no effect of the number of relevant features within a single object. Instead, for both experiments, the proportion correct was lower when four features had to be remembered rather than one. The magnitude of these effects varied with the details of the two experiments. Although similar results have been reported for experiments using multiple objects, the present experiments are some of the first to have demonstrated such an effect for a single object. This result is inconsistent with theories in which visual memory has a discrete limit on the number of stored objects, and no limit on the stored features within an object. Instead, it seems likely that objects and features both play roles in limiting performance in memory tasks.	\N	\N
25961880	It is commonly assumed that attentional inhibitory functioning decreases with age, even though empirical evidence is mixed. These inconsistencies possibly stem from methodological artifacts: distractor inhibition is typically assessed with the negative priming paradigm, which confounds inhibition and episodic retrieval. In the present study, we investigated age differences in a sequential distractor repetition paradigm (Giesen, Frings, & Rothermund, 2012) that provides independent estimates of distractor inhibition and episodic retrieval processes. Older (60+ yrs) and younger (below 30 years) adults identified target letters that were flanked by distractors (JKJ). Inhibitory processes were preserved in older adults, who showed reliable distractor repetition benefits resulting from persistent distractor inhibition; however, a significant loss of inhibition was apparent for the older subgroup of participants (65+ yrs) compared with a subgroup of young-old participants (60 to 64 years). No age differences were found for episodic retrieval processes of stimulus-response bindings that were indexed by an interaction of distractor repetition and response relation. Findings highlight the importance of dissociating between distractor inhibition and retrieval processes that are differently implicated in age-related cognitive change.	\N	\N
25962854	Hearing loss often triggers an inescapable buzz (tinnitus) and causes everyday sounds to become intolerably loud (hyperacusis), but exactly where and how this occurs in the brain is unknown. To identify the neural substrate for these debilitating disorders, we induced both tinnitus and hyperacusis with an ototoxic drug (salicylate) and used behavioral, electrophysiological, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques to identify the tinnitus-hyperacusis network. Salicylate depressed the neural output of the cochlea, but vigorously amplified sound-evoked neural responses in the amygdala, medial geniculate, and auditory cortex. Resting-state fMRI revealed hyperactivity in an auditory network composed of inferior colliculus, medial geniculate, and auditory cortex with side branches to cerebellum, amygdala, and reticular formation. Functional connectivity revealed enhanced coupling within the auditory network and segments of the auditory network and cerebellum, reticular formation, amygdala, and hippocampus. A testable model accounting for distress, arousal, and gating of tinnitus and hyperacusis is proposed.	\N	\N
25977319	The aim of this study was to illustrate how a consideration of glance sequences to in-vehicle tasks and their associated distributions can be informative. The rapid growth in the number of nomadic technologies and in-vehicle devices has the potential to create complex, visually intensive tasks for drivers that may incur long in-vehicle glances. Such glances place drivers at increased risk of a motor vehicle crash. We used eye-glance data from a study of distraction training programs to examine the change in glance duration distributions across consecutive glances during the performance of various in-vehicle tasks. The sequential analysis across trained and untrained drivers showed that the proportion of late-sequence glances longer than a 2-s threshold among untrained drivers was almost double the number of such glances for the trained drivers, that the third and later glances were particularly problematic, and that training reduced the proportion of early- and later-sequence glances. Examining how the duration of off-road glances varies as a function of their order in a sequence of glances and the visual demands of the task can offer important insights into the change in the distracting potential of in-vehicle tasks across glances and the effects of training. The sequential analysis of in-vehicle glance data can be useful for researchers and practitioners and has implications for the development and evaluation of training programs as well as for task and interface design.	\N	\N
25994341	The food habit is involved in the onset and development of lifestyle-related diseases. In this review I would like to describe a historical case of vitamin B1 deficiency, as well as our case study of fatty acid metabolism abnormality due to carnitine deficiency. In history, the army and navy personnel in Japan at the end of the 19th century received food rations based on a high-carbohydrate diet including white rice, resulting in the onset of beriberi. An epidemiological study by Kenkan Takaki revealed the relationship between the onset of beriberi and rice intake. Then, Takaki was successful in preventing the onset of beriberi by changing the diet. However, the primary cause had yet to be elucidated. Finally, Christian Eijkman established an animal model of beriberi (chickens) showing peripheral neuropathy, and he identified the existence of an anti-beriberi substance, vitamin B1. This is an example of the successful control of a disease by integrating the results of epidemiological and experimental studies. In our study using a murine model of fatty acid metabolism abnormality caused by carnitine deficiency, cardiac abnormality and fatty liver developed depending on the amount of dietary fat. In addition, the mice showed disturbance of orexin neuron activity related to the sleep-arousal system, which is involved in fatigue symptoms under fasting condition, one of the states showing enhanced fatty acid metabolism. These findings suggest that fatty acid toxicity is enhanced when the mice are more dependent on fatty acid metabolism. Almost simultaneously, a human epidemiological study showed that narcolepsy, which is caused by orexin system abnormality, is associated with the polymorphism of the gene coding for carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1B, which is involved in carnitine metabolism. To understand the pathological mechanism of fatty acid toxicity, not only an experimental approach using animal models, but also an epidemiological approach is necessary. The results will be applied to preventing and treating lifestyle-related diseases associated with fatty acid metabolism abnormality.	\N	\N
26002721	Auditory selective attention is a critical skill for goal-directed behavior, especially where noisy distractions may impede focusing attention. To better understand the developmental trajectory of auditory spatial selective attention in an acoustically complex environment, in the current study we measured auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) across five age groups: 3-5 years; 10 years; 13 years; 16 years; and young adults. Using a naturalistic dichotic listening paradigm, we characterized the ERP morphology for nonlinguistic and linguistic auditory probes embedded in attended and unattended stories. We documented robust maturational changes in auditory evoked potentials that were specific to the types of probes. Furthermore, we found a remarkable interplay between age and attention-modulation of auditory evoked potentials in terms of morphology and latency from the early years of childhood through young adulthood. The results are consistent with the view that attention can operate across age groups by modulating the amplitude of maturing auditory early-latency evoked potentials or by invoking later endogenous attention processes. Development of these processes is not uniform for probes with different acoustic properties within our acoustically dense speech-based dichotic listening task. In light of the developmental differences we demonstrate, researchers conducting future attention studies of children and adolescents should be wary of combining analyses across diverse ages.	\N	\N
26003250	Strokes are the second leading cause of death and the third leading cause of disability worldwide. Thanks in part to better and more available diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation, the vast majority of stroke patients tend to survive strokes, particularly in the industrialized world. Motor disability and cognitive changes such as aphasia and visuospatial disorders are most often considered among the major contributors to stroke burden. This chapter discusses disorders of sexual functions as another frequent sequel of strokes. Strokes generally induce hyposexuality, but in some instances they may be followed by hypersexuality. There is some evidence suggesting that lesions of either hemisphere affect sexual activities, but for different reasons: aphasia and depression after left-hemisphere lesions, a deficit in arousal and perhaps visuospatial disorders after right-hemisphere lesions. Psychologic, psychosocial, and physical factors, as well as medications, play an important role. A better understanding of the psychosocial and physiologic mechanisms underlying sexual functioning can provide insight into improving sexual activity and therefore quality of life in patients affected by strokes and other brain lesions.	\N	\N
26042011	In classical conditioning, an initially neutral stimulus (conditioned stimulus, CS) becomes associated with a biologically salient event (unconditioned stimulus, US), which might be pain (aversive conditioning) or food (appetitive conditioning). After a few associations, the CS is able to initiate either defensive or consummatory responses, respectively. Contrary to aversive conditioning, appetitive conditioning is rarely investigated in humans, although its importance for normal and pathological behaviors (e.g., obesity, addiction) is undeniable. The present study intents to translate animal findings on appetitive conditioning to humans using food as an US. Thirty-three participants were investigated between 8 and 10 am without breakfast in order to assure that they felt hungry. During two acquisition phases, one geometrical shape (avCS+) predicted an aversive US (painful electric shock), another shape (appCS+) predicted an appetitive US (chocolate or salty pretzel according to the participants' preference), and a third shape (CS-) predicted neither US. In a extinction phase, these three shapes plus a novel shape (NEW) were presented again without US delivery. Valence and arousal ratings as well as startle and skin conductance (SCR) responses were collected as learning indices. We found successful aversive and appetitive conditioning. On the one hand, the avCS+ was rated as more negative and more arousing than the CS- and induced startle potentiation and enhanced SCR. On the other hand, the appCS+ was rated more positive than the CS- and induced startle attenuation and larger SCR. In summary, we successfully confirmed animal findings in (hungry) humans by demonstrating appetitive learning and normal aversive learning.	\N	\N
26042057	Emotional experience has a pervasive impact on choice behavior, yet the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Introducing facial-expression primes into a probabilistic learning task, we investigated how affective arousal regulates reward-related choice based on behavioral, model fitting, and feedback-related negativity (FRN) data. Sixty-six paid subjects were randomly assigned to the Neutral-Neutral (NN), Angry-Neutral (AN), and Happy-Neutral (HN) groups. A total of 960 trials were conducted. Subjects in each group were randomly exposed to half trials of the pre-determined emotional faces and another half of the neutral faces before choosing between two cards drawn from two decks with different assigned reward probabilities. Trial-by-trial data were fit with a standard reinforcement learning model using the Bayesian estimation approach. The temporal dynamics of brain activity were simultaneously recorded and analyzed using event-related potentials. Our analyses revealed that subjects in the NN group gained more reward values than those in the other two groups; they also exhibited comparatively differential estimated model-parameter values for reward prediction errors. Computing the difference wave of FRNs in reward vs. non-reward trials, we found that, compared to the NN group, subjects in the AN and HN groups had larger "General" FRNs (i.e., FRNs in no-reward trials minus FRNs in reward trials) and "Expected" FRNs (i.e., FRNs in expected reward-omission trials minus FRNs in expected reward-delivery trials), indicating an interruption in predicting reward. Further, both AN and HN groups appeared to be more sensitive to negative outcomes than the NN group. Collectively, our study suggests that affective arousal negatively regulates reward-related choice, probably through overweighting with negative feedback.	\N	\N
26057772	Encoding of stressful experiences plays an important role in the development of posttraumatic stress disorder. A crucial aspect of memory encoding is binding: the "gluing" of the temporal and spatial elements of an episode into a cohesive unit. This study investigated the effect of emotional arousal on temporal binding and examined whether temporal binding varied as a function of state anxiety and/or state dissociation. Participants saw picture sequences that varied in arousal and valence. After each sequence, participants were presented with all the pictures simultaneously and had to sort the pictures in the original order. Temporal context binding was indexed by sorting accuracy. Binding was generally lower for high than low arousing pictures. Reduced binding of arousing material was specifically pronounced in participants with high state anxiety, whereas it seemed independent of state dissociation. These findings point to the relevance of impaired temporal binding as a component of aberrant memory encoding in stressful situations.	\N	\N
26099122	The main aim of this study was to differentiate the magnitude of a pilot's heart rate variability (HRV) when performing assisted and unassisted flights, as well as simple and complex flight tasks. Cardiac monitoring in flights was carried out using a compact, mobile ECG recorder. A frequency analysis of the heart rate (HR) signal was performed to determine the ratio of low-frequency spectral power (LF) to high-frequency spectral power (HF). The LF/HF ratio observed in the zone (M=1.047, SD=0.059) was significantly different than the LF/HF calculated preflight (M=0.877, SD=0.043) and postflight (M=0.793, SD=0.037). There was no main effect of the flight type (unassisted zone flight vs. zone flight with an instructor) on the LF/HF parameter. However, greater psychophysiological load of a pilot was observed in the training zone flights when compared to simple circle flights (main effect of the flight type). As the LF/HF ratio turned out to be significantly higher in the zone than pre- and postflight, this parameter can be useful for predicting the risk of excessive stress and arousal of pilots during flights. Based on the LF/HF ratio we can also estimate difficulty level of flight tasks, because our research has shown higher values of this parameter in the training zone flights than in simple circle flights.	\N	\N
26140258	Negative emotions can cause discomforting autonomic arousal, which can be difficult to inhibit using willpower alone. Although previous physiological studies have reported that skin pressure at certain bilateral locations reflexively inhibits sympathetic nervous system activity, few studies have tested the effect of this inhibition on emotion-related autonomic arousal in humans. I recorded skin potential response (SPR) and heart rate (HR) in healthy participants in response to loud noises presented concomitantly with or without skin pressure applied bilaterally to the sides of the chest. Weaker SPR and lower HR were observed in response to the noises accompanied by skin pressure. These findings indicate that skin pressure can be an easy and effective method to inhibit autonomic arousal related to negative emotions.	\N	\N
26151610	This meta-analysis examined the effect experimental sleep restriction has on youth's attention and hyperactivity outcomes. Thirteen published studies containing 17 independent samples were included (N = 496). Random- and fixed-effects models were used to estimate pooled effect sizes and moderator effects, respectively. Results indicate that sleep-restricted youth had significantly worse attention outcomes than youth with extended sleep, but no differences were evident regarding hyperactivity. Significant moderators of this effect included age and sex. These results have important implications for both the prevention and treatment of attention problems, highlighting the need for health professionals to screen for and treat underlying sleep issues.	\N	\N
26261317	Episodic memory performance is the result of distinct mental processes, such as learning, memory maintenance, and emotional modulation of memory strength. Such processes can be effectively dissociated using computational models. Here we performed gene set enrichment analyses of model parameters estimated from the episodic memory performance of 1,765 healthy young adults. We report robust and replicated associations of the amine compound SLC (solute-carrier) transporters gene set with the learning rate, of the collagen formation and transmembrane receptor protein tyrosine kinase activity gene sets with the modulation of memory strength by negative emotional arousal, and of the L1 cell adhesion molecule (L1CAM) interactions gene set with the repetition-based memory improvement. Furthermore, in a large functional MRI sample of 795 subjects we found that the association between L1CAM interactions and memory maintenance revealed large clusters of differences in brain activity in frontal cortical areas. Our findings provide converging evidence that distinct genetic profiles underlie specific mental processes of human episodic memory. They also provide empirical support to previous theoretical and neurobiological studies linking specific neuromodulators to the learning rate and linking neural cell adhesion molecules to memory maintenance. Furthermore, our study suggests additional memory-related genetic pathways, which may contribute to a better understanding of the neurobiology of human memory.	\N	\N
26308302	Extracorporeal life support (ECLS) as a bridge to lung transplantation (LuTx) is a promising option for patients with end-stage lung disease on the transplant waiting list. We investigated the outcome of patients bridged to lung transplantation on ECLS technologies, mainly extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). Between January 2007 and October 2013, ECLS was implanted in 30 patients with intention to bridge to LuTx. Twenty-six patients (26/30) were successfully bridged to LuTx on ECLS. The most common diagnosis was cystic fibrosis (N = 12). Venovenous ECMO was used in 10, venoarterial in 4, interventional lung assist in 5, and stepwise combination of them in 7 recipients. Two patients weaned from ECMO, and 2 patients died on ECMO on the waiting list. Median duration of ECLS was 21 days (1-81 years). Six patients were awake and spontaneously breathing during ECLS support. Thirty-day, 1-year, and 2-year survivals were 89%, 68%, and 53%, respectively, for bridged patients and 96%, 85%, and 79%, respectively, for control group (P = 0.001). Three months conditional survivals were 89% and 69% at 1 and 2 years for ECLS group, compared to 92% and 86% for control group (P = 0.03). Cystic fibrosis recipients had 82% survival rate at 1 and 2 years. All recipients bridged to LuTx on awake ECLS (N = 6) are alive with a median follow-up of 10.8 months (range, 6-21 months). Our data show significantly lower survival in this high-risk group compared to patients transplanted without preoperative ECLS. Awake and ambulatory ECLS provides the best prognosis for these high-risk patients.	\N	\N
26320752	In recent years , increasing attention has been given to the development of deaf children, though few studies have included Deaf parents. The present study examined emotional availability (EA) and functions of touch used by Deaf or hearing parents with hearing or deaf infants during free play. Sixty dyads representing four hearing status groups were observed when the infants were 18 months old. Comparisons among all four groups revealed significant differences in regard to parental sensitivity and child responsiveness, with hearing mothers with deaf infants tending to score lowest in the various subcategories of EA. Significant differences were also found for attentional touch and total touch, with deaf mothers of deaf or hearing infants using both types of touch more than hearing mothers of deaf or hearing infants. The importance of support and interventions for hearing mothers with deaf infants is discussed.	\N	\N
26420517	Negative non-specific (nocebo-like) effects of medications and electromagnetic fields are often described as results of mistaken attribution. The current study aimed to find empirical evidence supporting this theory. Participants completed questionnaires assessing modern health worries, health anxiety, and somatosensory amplification, were assigned to one of three conditions (placebo pill with sedative information, sham magnetic field, or control), and completed a 14-min vigilance task. Changes in physiological arousal (heart rate, heart rate variability, and skin conductance) and reported symptoms were also measured. Finally, causal attributions concerning cognitive performance and reported symptoms were assessed. No increase in symptom reports and physiological arousal was measured in the two intervention groups. A perceived negative effect on cognitive performance was attributed to both sham conditions, and attributions were connected to modern health worries. A proportion of reported symptoms was ascribed to the placebo pill but not to the sham magnetic field. Symptom attributions were not related to any assessed psychological variables. An aroused physiological state is not necessary for the automatic causal attribution process. Negative effects attributed to medication and environmental factors can be regarded as unavoidable side effects of human cognitive-emotional functioning; they might be alleviated, but cannot be completely eradicated.	\N	\N
26442340	Although alexithymia is recognized as a set of traitlike deficits in emotion processing, research suggests there are concomitant cognitive issues as well, including what appears to be an unusual pattern of enhanced working memory (WM) despite broader executive dysfunction. It is unknown whether this enhancement includes the executive elements of WM and whether executive control of WM in alexithymia differs for emotional and neutral stimuli. This study examined how alexithymia moderates patterns of interference resolution in WM with valenced and nonvalenced stimuli. Participants (N = 93) completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale and a recency probes WM task containing positive, negative, and neutral stimuli, with some trials containing proactive interference from previous trials. The reaction time difference between interference and noninterference trials indexed degree of interference resolution. Toronto Alexithymia Scale score moderated a within-subject effect such that, when valenced probes were used, there was less proactive interference in the positive relative to negative valence condition; this valence-based interference discrepancy was significant for a subset of highly alexithymic participants. Alexithymia did not moderate proactive interference to negative or neutral stimuli or accuracy of responses. These results suggest that, although alexithymia does not influence executive control in WM for nonemotional items, alexithymic people demonstrate an idiosyncratic response to positive stimuli that might indicate blunted reactivity.	\N	\N
26447746	The Introversion/Extraversion dimension may interact with contextual interference, as random and blocked practice schedules imply distinct levels of variation. This study investigated the effect of different practice schedules in the acquisition of a motor skill in extraverts and introverts. Forty male undergraduate students (M = 24.3 yr., SD = 5.6) were classified as extraverts (n = 20) and introverts (n = 20) by the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and allocated in one of two practice schedules with different levels of contextual interference: blocked (low contextual interference) and random (high contextual interference). Half of each group was assigned to a blocked practice schedule, and the other half was assigned to a random practice schedule. The design had two phases: acquisition and transfer (5 min. and 24 hr.). The participants learned variations of a sequential timing keypressing task. Each variation required the same sequence but different timing; three variations were used in acquisition, and one variation of intermediate length was used in transfer. Results for absolute error and overall timing error (root mean square error) indicated that the contextual interference effect was more pronounced for introverts. In addition, introverts who practiced according to the blocked schedule committed more errors during the 24-hr. transfer, suggesting that introverts did not appear to be challenged by a low contextual interference practice schedule.	\N	\N
26468192	Time is central to cognition. However, the neural basis for time-dependent cognition remains poorly understood. We explore how the temporal features of neural activity in cortical circuits and their capacity for plasticity can contribute to time-dependent cognition over short time scales. This neural activity is linked to cognition that operates in the present or anticipates events or stimuli in the near future. We focus on deliberation and planning in the context of decision making as a cognitive process that integrates information across time. We progress to consider how temporal expectations of the future modulate perception. We propose that understanding the neural basis for how the brain tells time and operates in time will be necessary to develop general models of cognition. Time is central to cognition. However, the neural basis for time-dependent cognition remains poorly understood. We explore how the temporal features of neural activity in cortical circuits and their capacity for plasticity can contribute to time-dependent cognition over short time scales. We propose that understanding the neural basis for how the brain tells time and operates in time will be necessary to develop general models of cognition.	\N	\N
26501048	People do not use condoms consistently but instead rely on intuition to identify sexual partners high at risk for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. The present study examined gender differences of intuitive impressions about HIV risk. Male and female perceivers evaluated portraits of unacquainted male and female targets regarding their risk for HIV, trait characteristics (trust, responsibility, attractiveness, valence, arousal, and health), and willingness for interaction. Male targets were perceived as more risky than female targets for both perceiver genders. Furthermore, male perceivers reported higher HIV risk perception for both male and female targets than female perceivers. Multiple regression indicated gender differences in the association between person characteristics and HIV risk. In male targets, only trustworthiness predicts HIV risk. In female targets, however, HIV risk is related to trustworthiness, attractiveness, health, valence (for male perceivers), and arousal (for female perceivers). The present findings characterize intuitive impressions of HIV risk and reveal differences according to both target and perceiver gender. Considering gender differences in intuitive judgments of HIV risk may help devise effective strategies by shifting the balance from feelings of risk toward a more rational mode of risk perception and the adoption of effective precautionary behaviors.	\N	\N
21895359	Early evidence of social referencing was examined in 5½-month-old infants. Infants were habituated to 2 films of moving toys, one toy eliciting a woman's positive emotional expression and the other eliciting a negative expression under conditions of bimodal (audiovisual) or unimodal visual (silent) speech. It was predicted that intersensory redundancy provided by audiovisual (but not available in unimodal visual) events would enhance detection of the relation between emotional expressions and the corresponding toy. Consistent with predictions, only infants who received bimodal, audiovisual events detected a change in the affect-object relations, showing increased looking during a switch test in which the toy-affect pairing was reversed. Moreover, in a subsequent live preference test, they preferentially touched the 3-dimensional toy previously paired with the positive expression. These findings suggest social referencing emerges by 5½ months in the context of intersensory redundancy provided by dynamic multimodal stimulation and that even 5½-month-old infants demonstrate preferences for 3-dimensional objects on the basis of affective information depicted in videotaped events.	\N	\N
