Emotional self reference: Brain structures involved in the processing of words describing one’s own emotions

The present functional magnetic resonance imaging study investigated the role of emotion-related (e.g., amygdala) and self-related brain structures (MPFC in particular) in the processing of emotional words varying in stimulus reference. Healthy subjects (N = 22) were presented with emotional (pleasant or unpleasant) or neutral words in three different conditions: 1) self (e.g., my fear), 2) other (e.g., his fear) and 3) no reference (e.g., the fear). Processing of unpleasant words was associated with increased amygdala and also insula activation across all conditions. Pleasant stimuli were specifically associated with increased activation of amygdala and insula when related to the self (vs. other and no reference). Activity in the MPFC (vMPFC in particular) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) was preferentially increased during processing of self-related emotional words (vs. other and no reference). These results demonstrate that amygdala activation in response to emotional stimuli is modulated by stimulus reference and that brain structures implicated in emotional and self-related processing might be important for the subjective experience of one’s own emotions.

from Neuropsychología

Promoting Healthy Self-Acceptance of Hearing Loss for Students in Schools

Educational audiologists and professionals who work closely with children who have hearing loss are in a unique position to help facilitate positive acceptance of hearing loss in a nonprofessional counselor’s role. To help in this role, it is important to understand how families and children with hearing loss cope with the hearing loss and how to reach the point of a healthy self-concept. Personal experiences of living with a hearing loss are discussed by the author. The importance of support groups for families and students with hearing loss and additional strategies are suggested.

from Seminars in Hearing

“Can You Hear Me Now?” The Validation of a Self-assessment Scale for Telephone Abilities through Structured Conversation Ratings

The ability to communicate freely over the telephone remains a necessity in today’s rapid-paced world. Ease in talking over the telephone can be elusive to individuals with acquired hearing loss and remains, despite advances in technology, a primary concern of hearing aid wearers. Although clients with hearing loss are rightly demanding more from their amplification systems, audiologists are left with little research into the efficacy of telephone-specific communication strategies or the efficacy of telephone communication training for individuals with hearing loss. One reason for the paucity of research is the absence of a standardized method for determining telephone abilities. This study details the validation of a listener/partner self-assessment tool specific to the telephone, the Self Perceived Abilities on the Telephone, through structured conversational ratings. Discussion centers on forces driving the use of conversation-based strategies in audiological rehabilitation diagnosis and treatment.

from Seminars in Hearing

“Can You Hear Me Now?” The Validation of a Self-assessment Scale for Telephone Abilities through Structured Conversation Ratings

The ability to communicate freely over the telephone remains a necessity in today’s rapid-paced world. Ease in talking over the telephone can be elusive to individuals with acquired hearing loss and remains, despite advances in technology, a primary concern of hearing aid wearers. Although clients with hearing loss are rightly demanding more from their amplification systems, audiologists are left with little research into the efficacy of telephone-specific communication strategies or the efficacy of telephone communication training for individuals with hearing loss. One reason for the paucity of research is the absence of a standardized method for determining telephone abilities. This study details the validation of a listener/partner self-assessment tool specific to the telephone, the Self Perceived Abilities on the Telephone, through structured conversational ratings. Discussion centers on forces driving the use of conversation-based strategies in audiological rehabilitation diagnosis and treatment.

from Seminars in Hearing

Therapy Discharge Becomes Part of the Life Story

Despite great strides in the life-participation approach to aphasia therapy and the arduous work of several therapists to include patients in the decision-making and goal-setting process of therapy, the patient’s direct perspective on the experience of treatment is seldom portrayed in academic journals. In the current article, the voices and different agendas of a stroke survivor with aphasia, her speech-language therapists, and an aspiring qualitative researcher are discussed by means of intertwined narratives, dialogues, and discourses. During an in-depth interview process, the researcher hears the effects of a discharge report on the perceptions and life course of a person living with aphasia. The researcher explores her own reactions and thoughts about the discharge process and report writing. The narratives in this article illustrate the potentially serious impact of seemingly routine clinical procedures, such as a discharge report.

from Topics in Stroke Rehabilitation

Multirater Congruence on the Social Skills Assessment of Children with Asperger Syndrome: Self, Mother, Father, and Teacher Ratings

Children with Asperger Syndrome (AS) who attend mainstream settings face social skills deficits that have not been adequately explored. This study aims to examine social skills through self-reports of children with AS (N = 21) and a matched group of typically developing peers, as well as reports from their mothers, fathers, and teachers. Results showed that children with AS had more social skills deficits according to all raters and that they reported more aggressiveness/antisocial behavior, more conceit/haughtiness, more loneliness/social anxiety, and less assertiveness than controls. The level of agreement between raters varied significantly, suggesting that social skills are best studied with multiple informants.

from the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Person-Centred (Deictic) Expressions and Autism

We employed semi-structured tests to determine whether children with autism produce and comprehend deictic (person-centred) expressions such as ‘this’/‘that’, ‘here’/‘there’ and ‘come’/‘go’, and whether they understand atypical non-verbal gestural deixis in the form of directed head-nods to indicate location. In Study 1, most participants spontaneously produced deictic terms, often in conjunction with pointing. Yet only among children with autism were there participants who referred to a location that was distal to themselves with the terms ‘this’ or ‘here’, or made atypical points with unusual precision, often lining-up with an eye. In Study 2, participants with autism were less accurate in responding to instructions involving contrastive deictic terms, and fewer responded accurately to indicative head nods.

from the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Persistence of self in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease

The persistence of self in individuals with probable Alzheimer’s disease was investigated via language and visual self-recognition. Seventy-eight adults (ages 66—103) participated: 26 with mild cognitive impairments, 26 with moderate cognitive impairments, and 26 without impairment. Although frequency of language usage (during an interview) declined across impairment levels, there were no significant differences in either rates or proportions of pronoun and attribute usage. When asked to identify themselves in photographs taken with an instant camera, cognitively impaired individuals — in spite of forgetting the photographic session only minutes earlier — exhibited unimpaired self-recognition, a dissociation consistent with a preserved self. Taken together, these findings indicate a persistence of self in individuals with dementia, and have implications for how Alzheimer’s is characterized and experienced, and how individuals are cared for.

from Dementia

The vestibular component in out-of-body experiences: a computational approach

Neurological evidence suggests that disturbed vestibular processing may play a key role in triggering out-of-body experiences (OBEs). Little is known about the brain mechanisms during such pathological conditions, despite recent experimental evidence that the scientific study of such experiences may facilitate the development of neurobiological models of a crucial aspect of self-consciousness: embodied self-location. Here we apply Bayesian modeling to vestibular processing and show that OBEs and the reported illusory changes of self-location and translation can be explained as the result of a mislead Bayesian inference, in the sense that ambiguous bottom-up signals from the vestibular otholiths in the supine body position are integrated with a top-down prior for the upright body position, which we measure during natural head movements. Our findings have relevance for self-location and translation under normal conditions and suggest novel ways to induce and study experimentally both aspects of bodily self-consciousness in healthy subjects.

from Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

Self-reported disability and handicap after hearing-aid fitting and benefit of hearing aids: comparison of fitting procedures, degree of hearing loss, experience with hearing aids and uni- and bilateral fittings

Abstract Self-reported outcome on hearing disability and handicap as well as overall health-related quality of life were measured after hearing-aid fitting in a large-scale clinical population. Fitting was performed according to two different procedures in a double-blind study design. We used a comparative procedure based on optimizing speech intelligibility scores and a strictly implemented fitting formula. Hearing disability and handicap were assessed with the hearing handicap and disability inventory and benefit of hearing aids with the abbreviated profile of hearing aid benefit. Effects on health-related quality of life and depression were assessed with the EuroQol-5D questionnaire and the geriatric depression scale. We found that hearing-aid fitting according to either procedure had a significantly positive effect on disability and handicap associated with hearing loss. This effect lasted for several months. Only the effect on disability persisted after 1-year of follow-up. Self-reported benefit from hearing aids was comparable for both fitting procedures. Unaided hearing disability was more pronounced in groups of participants with greater hearing loss, while the benefit of hearing aids was independent from the degree of hearing impairment. First-time hearing aid users reported greater benefit from their hearing aids. The added value from a bilateral hearing-aid fitting was not significant. Overall health-related quality of life and incidence of depression did not alter after hearing-aid fitting.

from the European Archives of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology

The self across the senses: an fMRI study of self-face and self-voice recognition

from Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

There is evidence that the right hemisphere is involved in processing self-related stimuli. Previous brain imaging research has found a network of right-lateralized brain regions that preferentially respond to seeing one’s own face rather than a familiar other. Given that the self is an abstract multimodal concept, we tested whether these brain regions would also discriminate the sound of one’s own voice compared to a friend’s voice. Participants were shown photographs of their own face and friend’s face, and also listened to recordings of their own voice and a friend’s voice during fMRI scanning. Consistent with previous studies, seeing one’s own face activated regions in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), inferior parietal lobe and inferior occipital cortex in the right hemisphere. In addition, listening to one’s voice also showed increased activity in the right IFG. These data suggest that the right IFG is concerned with processing self-related stimuli across multiple sensory modalities and that it may contribute to an abstract self-representation.