Monthly Archives: January 2010
Brains Can’t Handle All Our Facebook Friends, Can Manage 150 Friends Max
We may be able to amass 5,000 friends on Facebook but humans’ brains are capable of managing a maximum of only 150 friendships, a study has found.
from Resource Shelf
Let’s Hear It For Audiologists, Europe
Hearing professionals working in the NHS have a chance to be recognised as the country’s best following the launch of an exciting audiology competition.
Environment Crucial to Boosting Child’s Reading Skills
While genes matter, teacher/parent input is key, researchers find
from HealthScout.com
Sonomax Hearing Healthcare enters into agreement with Benvest New Look Income Fund
Sonomax Hearing Healthcare Inc. (SHH: TSX Venture) is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement with Benvest New Look Income Fund (BCI:UN: TSX), a Québec-based income trust, that will provide gross proceeds to Sonomax of approximately $1.74 million in non-dilutive capital, concurrent with a corporate reorganization of Sonomax.
from News-Medical.net
Minister sounds off on speech therapists’ shortage
Bangalore: Urban Development Minister S. Suresh Kumar on Friday said it was disheartening that there were only 2,000 speech therapists, speech language pathologists and audiologists in a country where nearly 10 per cent of the population has either speech or hearing disabilities.
from Topix.net
Team Finds Childhood Clues to Adult Schizophrenia
Years before adults develop schizophrenia, there is a pattern of cognitive difficulties they experience as children, including problems with verbal reasoning, working memory, attention and processing speed.
from ScienceDaily.com
Driven to distraction: New study shows driving hinders talking
It is well known that having a conversation (for example on a cell phone) impairs one’s driving. A new study indicates the reverse is also true: Driving reduces one’s ability to comprehend and use language.
from EurekAlert.org
Isn’t It Ironic? An Electrophysiological Exploration of Figurative Language Processing
Although the neurocognitive processes underlying the comprehension of figurative language, especially metaphors and idioms, have been studied extensively, less is known about the processing of irony. In two experiments using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), we examined the types of cognitive processes involved in the comprehension of ironic and literal sentences and their relative time course. The experiments varied in modality (auditory, visual), task demands (comprehension task vs. passive reading), and probability of stimulus occurrence. ERPs consistently revealed a large late positivity (i.e., P600 component) in the absence of an N400 component for irony compared to equivalent literal sentences independent of modality. This P600 was shown to be unaffected by the factors task demands and probability of occurrence. Taken together, the findings suggest that the observed P600 is related to irony processing, and might be a reflection of pragmatic interpretation processes. During the comprehension of irony, no semantic integration difficulty arises (absence of N400), but late inferential processes appear to be necessary for understanding ironic meanings (presence of P600). This finding calls for a revision of current models of figurative language processing.
from the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
ERP Correlates of Word Production before and after Stroke in an Aphasic Patient
Changes in brain activity characterizing impaired speech production after brain damage have usually been investigated by comparing aphasic speakers with healthy subjects because prestroke data are normally not available. However, when interpreting the results of studies of stroke patients versus healthy controls, there is an inherent difficulty in disentangling the contribution of neuropathology from other sources of between-subject variability. In the present work, we had an unusual opportunity to study an aphasic patient with severe anomia who had incidentally performed a picture naming task in an event-related electrophysiological (ERP) study as a control subject one year before suffering a left hemisphere stroke. The fortuitous recording of this patient’s brain activity before his stroke allows direct comparison of his pre- and poststroke brain activity in the same language production task. The subject did not differ from other healthy subjects before his stroke, but presented major electrophysiological differences after stroke, both in comparison to himself before stroke and to the control group. ERP changes consistently appeared after stroke in a specific time window starting about 250 msec after picture onset, characterized by a single divergent but stable topographic configuration of the scalp electric field associated with a cortical generator abnormally limited to left temporal posterior perilesional areas. The patient’s pattern of anomia revealed a severe lexical–phonological impairment and his ERP responses diverged from those of healthy controls in the time window that has previously been associated with lexical–phonological processes during picture naming. Given that his prestroke ERPs were indistinguishable from those of healthy controls, it seems highly likely that the change in his poststroke ERPs is due to changes in language production processes as a consequence of stroke. The patient’s neurolinguistic deficits, combined with the ERPs results, provide unique evidence for the role of left temporal cortex in lexical–phonological processing from about 250 to 450 msec during word production.
from the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
Musicians and the Metric Structure of Words
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 event-related brain potentials 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.
from the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
Cutting caffeine won’t quiet ringing in the ears
If you suffer from ringing in the ears, imbibing caffeine won’t make it worse, and giving up caffeinated beverages won’t make it better, new research from the UK shows.
from Medline Plus
Treating Swimmer’s Ear Just Got Simpler
When treating the pain and inflammation of swimmer’s ear, antibiotic drops are the most effective and safest therapy, finds a new review of studies.
Callier Series to Explore Language, Hearing and More
The UT Dallas Callier Center for Communication Disorders kicks off the spring semester FLASH (Friday Language and Speech, Hearing) brown-bag series at noon on Jan. 15.
The series will include presentations about hearing, speech and language topics as they relate to both children and adults. Dr. Jennell Vick and Dr. Diane Ogiela, postdoctoral fellows in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, organized the spring semester series.
E-A-R™ Hearing Conservation Clinics Presented By 3M
2010 marks the 30th year of the E-A-R™ Hearing Conservation Clinics. These educational seminars, presented by 3M, provide practical information on how to enhance hearing conservation programs that help protect workers who are exposed to on-the-job noise. The Clinics are FREE and are accredited for professionals by the American Board of Industrial Hygiene Certification Program, American Association of Occupational Health Nurses and American Academy of Audiology.
Want to convince? Use abstract rather than concrete language
When consumers talk to each other about products, they generally respond more favorably to abstract language than concrete descriptions, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.
from EurekAlert.org
