News

A lens to the language deficit in schizophrenia: Verbal memory and voxel based morphometry in first episode non-affective psychosis

A lens to the language deficit in schizophrenia: Verbal memory and voxel based morphometry in first episode non-affective psychosis Speaker: Prof. Rosa Ayesa-Arriola (Centro de Investigación Biomedica En Red del Área de Salud Mental, Psychiatry Department, University Hospital Marques de Valdecillapeech Therapist) Overview: Deficits in auditory-verbal memory have been reported by the vast majority of published research in schizophrenia and also detected in first episode psychosis (FEP), confirming they are already present at the early stages of the illness. However, the specific neurocognitive constructs underlying defective verbal memory and their neuroanatomical correlates remains poorly understood in patients of schizophrenia spectrum disorders. In this talk I will explore results from both the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) and structural MRI using voxel based morphometry taken from a large cohort of FEP patients and healthy controls. I will discuss how the RAVLT provides insight into language processing, specifically through distinct memory processes, including: a) acquisition/learning b) sensitivity to interference c) retrieval; d) retention or rate of forgetting; e) and retrieval efficiency. In combination with the RAVLT we have used patient and control brain morphometry to identify significant correlations between lateralized proactive and retroactive interference in the frontal lobe, retention with the right occipital cortex, and the role of grey matter reduction in the frontal and occipital cortical areas with retention and interference. Our findings suggest specific relationships between different neuroanatomical structures and discrete memory processes with these structures playing an important role in verbal memory deficits found in FEP.

Online adjustment of phonetic expectation of lexical tones to accommodate speaker variation

Online adjustment of phonetic expectation of lexical tones to accommodate speaker variation Speaker: Dr Zhang Caicai (Assistant Professor Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University) Overview: An unresolved question in speech perception is how speech signals with speaker variation are mapped onto their perceptual representations. In this study, this issue was examined using a written-word/spoken-word matching paradigm, where listeners could adjust phonetic expectations of spoken words carrying lexical tones according to speaker-specific F0 cues contained in a preceding speech context, to analyse the tone of the incoming spoken word. Behavioural results showed that Cantonese listeners perceived spoken words differently, in a way compatible with the adjustment of F0 expectations of lexical tones to accommodate between- and within-speaker variation in F0. Electrophysiologically, effects of F0 expectation adjustment were found in the phonological mapping negativity (PMN) time-window (250-310 ms after spoken word onset). These results suggest that phonetic representations of lexical tones are adjustable in a speaker- and context-specific manner, with the adjustment occurring no later than pre-lexical phonemic processing. These findings are consistent with the exemplar theory.

Prosodic Primitives in Vocalizations of Infants with Different Mother Tongues

Prosodic Primitives in Vocalizations of Infants with Different Mother Tongues Speaker: Prof. Kathleen Wermke (Center for Pre-Speech Development & Developmental Disorders, Bavarian Julius-Maximilians-University, Würzburg, Germany) Overview: The eyes are the windows of human mind to perceive and process the information in the visual world. Prosodic features such as melody, intensity, and rhythm are essential for an infant acquiring language. There is compelling evidence that infants are sensitive to melodic features of their native language long before speech-like babbling sounds are uttered or first words are produced. Early vocal development is characterized by a universal, unidirected sequence of so-called “vocal stages”, from crying via cooing, marginal and canonical babbling to word and sentence production. Cultural factors, like the ambient language, are known to modify acoustic properties of infant vocalization while the mentioned developmental sequence stays unaffected. Our cross-cultural infant studies lend support to universal as well as culture (language)- specific phenomena in early vocal behaviour. The presentation will sketch typical vocal phenomena of infants by displaying (graphs and sound) melody /sound patterns. The presentation will sketch early vocalization development in terms of frequency modulation as essential component of tone, of combinatorial complexification of melody structure and of increasing interaction between laryngeal and supra-laryngeal sound production. The development of melodic skills precedes by far any symbolic word use and rule-based grammar constructions and is a rich inventory for a later assimilation of intonation prototypes in speech.