Search results for "Semantic memory"
showing 10 items of 54 documents
Predicting domain-specific actions in expert table tennis players activates the semantic brain network.
2018
Motor expertise acquired during long-term training in sports enables top athletes to predict the outcomes of domain-specific actions better than nonexperts do. However, whether expert players encode actions, in addition to the concrete sensorimotor level, also at a more abstract, conceptual level, remains unclear. The present study manipulated the congruence between body kinematics and the subsequent ball trajectory in videos of an expert player performing table tennis serves. By using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the brain activity was evaluated in expert and nonexpert table tennis players during their predictions on the fate of the ball trajectory in congruent versus incongruent…
Auditory Distraction by Meaningless Irrelevant Speech: A Developmental Study
2014
Summary The irrelevant sound effect (ISE) typically refers to a disruptive effect of a to-be-ignored sound in serial recall tasks, where lists of visually presented items (digits and letters) must be recalled in serial order. Although extensively studied in adults, studies on developmental aspects of the ISE are scarce. The present study aims to increase our understanding of developmental changes of auditory distraction in children beyond serial recall. Two tasks (i.e., word categorization and evaluation of simple mathematical equations) were designed to test retrieval from semantic memory. Proportion correct and reaction times (adjusted for speed–accuracy tradeoff) were measured in 8–9 and…
Music for the Brain Across Life
2013
Music is highly a versatile and multifaceted form of art and communication that has been an essential part of human societies since their early days. During the past 20 years, neuroimaging studies have shown that music is a powerful stimulant also for the brain, engaging not just the auditory cortex but also a vast network of temporal, frontal, parietal, cerebellar, and limbic brain areas that govern auditory perception, syntactic and semantic processing, attention and memory, emotion and mood control, and motor skills. Especially regions in the right temporal and frontal cortices are needed for the accurate perception and production of music as abnormal neural development or acquired damag…
From Focused Thought to Reveries: A Memory System for a Conscious Robot
2018
© 2018 Balkenius, Tjøstheim, Johansson and Gärdenfors. We introduce a memory model for robots that can account for many aspects of an inner world, ranging from object permanence, episodic memory, and planning to imagination and reveries. It is modeled after neurophysiological data and includes parts of the cerebral cortex together with models of arousal systems that are relevant for consciousness. The three central components are an identification network, a localization network, and a working memory network. Attention serves as the interface between the inner and the external world. It directs the flow of information from sensory organs to memory, as well as controlling top-down influences…
Slowly progressive aphasia: a four-year follow-up study
2001
This paper reports the long-term follow-up of GC, a patient with primary progressive aphasia of the fluent type. GC presented at onset with an anomia characterized by sparing of first letter knowledge, that applied mainly to proper names and living categories. No semantic deficits were observed in the first stage of the disease, and MRI showed a left temporal lobe atrophy with a gradient from the pole to the posterior regions, the latter being less involved. We now report the clinical evolution of GC from the 2nd to the 4th year of disease. As the disease progressed, the anomia became more severe and the phenomenon of first letter sparing was no longer detectable. Also semantic knowledge wa…
Is formal thought disorder in schizophrenia related to structural and functional aberrations in the language network? A systematic review of neuroima…
2018
Formal thought disorder (FTD) is a core feature of schizophrenia, a marker of illness severity and a predictor of outcome. The underlying neural mechanisms are still a matter of debate. This study aimed at 1) reviewing the literature on the neural correlates of FTD in schizophrenia, and 2) testing the hypothesis that FTD correlates with structural and functional aberrations in the language network. Medline, PsychInfo, and Embase were searched for neuroimaging studies, which applied a clinical measure to assess FTD in adults with schizophrenia and were published in English or German in peer-reviewed journals until December 2016. Of 412 articles identified, 61 studies were included in the rev…
The positive effect of music on source memory
2015
Several studies have investigated how to improve episodic memory performance by manipulating the factors that are crucial for successful encoding. There is an ongoing debate about whether a complex stimulus such as music can improve memory, and in particular memory for words, rather than interfere with correct encoding of information. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate whether verbal episodic memory can be improved by background context of instrumental music. Twenty young adults were asked to memorize different lists of words presented against a background of music, environmental sounds or silence. Their episodic memory performance was then tested in terms of item and source …
Subjective Experience of Episodic Memory and Metacognition: A Neurodevelopmental Approach
2013
Episodic retrieval is characterized by the subjective experience of remembering. This experience enables the co-ordination of memory retrieval processes and can be acted on metacognitively. In successful retrieval, the feeling of remembering may be accompanied by recall of important contextual information. On the other hand, when people fail (or struggle) to retrieve information, other feelings, thoughts and information may come to mind. In this review, we examine the subjective and metacognitive basis of episodic memory function from a neurodevelopmental perspective, looking at recollection paradigms (such as source memory, and the report of recollective experience) and metacognitive parad…
The influence of task-irrelevant music on language processing: syntactic and semantic structures.
2011
Recent research has suggested that music and language processing share neural resources, leading to new hypotheses about interference in the simultaneous processing of these two structures. The present study investigated the effect of a musical chord's tonal function on syntactic processing (Experiment 1) and semantic processing (Experiment 2) using a cross-modal paradigm and controlling for acoustic differences. Participants read sentences and performed a lexical decision task on the last word, which was, syntactically or semantically, expected or unexpected. The simultaneously presented (task-irrelevant) musical sequences ended on either an expected tonic or a less-expected subdominant ch…
Semantic processing in children with autism spectrum disorder
2021
El presente estudio analizó el procesamiento semántico de un grupo de niños con trastorno del espectro autista (n= 24), con el objetivo principal de averiguar si presentan diferencias en comparación con un grupo de niños con desarrollo típico (n = 24). Para ello, se realizó un análisis del contenido de los ítems del subtest de información del WPPSY-III, estableciendo una serie de categorías en función del tipo de demanda semántica requerida: asociación significante-significado, relación experiencial y conocimiento general. Los resultados obtenidos apoyan la idea de que los niños con autismo realizarían un procesamiento semántico de la información de la misma manera que los niños sin autismo…