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Abstract: The present case continues the series of anomia treatment studies with contextual priming (CP), being the second in-depth treatment study conducted for an individual suffering from semantically based anomia. Our aim was to acquire further evidence of the facilitation and interference effects of the CP treatment on semantic anomia. Based on the results of the study of , our hypothesis before the treatment was that our participant would show short-term interference and at most modest and short-term benefit from treatment. To acquire such evidence would not only be important for the choice of anomia treatment methods in individual patients, but would also prompt further development of the CP method. The CP technique used for our participant included cycles of repeating and naming items in three contextual conditions (semantic, phonological, and unrelated). As predicted, the overall improvement of naming was modest and short-term. Interestingly, the contextual condition that corresponded with the nature of our patient’s underlying naming deficit (semantic) elicited immediate interference in the form of contextual naming errors, as well as short-term improvement of naming. Based on this and a recent study by , it appears that despite short-term positive effects, in its current form the CP treatment is not sufficient for those aphasics who have a semantic deficit underlying their anomia. The possible mechanism and directions for future research are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We tracked the evolvement of naming-related cortical dynamics with magnetoencephalography when five normal adults successfully learned names and/or meanings of unfamiliar objects. In all subjects, the learning of new names was associated with pronounced cortical effects. The learning effect was of long latency and emerged as a change of activation in the same cortical network that was active during naming of familiar items. In four out of five subjects, the cortical learning effect occurred in the inferior parietal lobe. In three of these subjects, the cortical effect was left-sided. These results suggest that the inferior parietal lobe plays an important role in the acquisition of novel words, presumably as a part of working memory systems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• We examined lexical acquisition in aphasia using a brief novel word learning task. • Most people with aphasia (PWA) demonstrated learning on recall and recognition tests. • Phonological cues on recall testing provide a sensitive measure of learning ability. • Language, cognitive and lesion factors modulate verbal learning ability in PWA. • Brief effective word learning tasks may have clinical value for PWA when validated. Novel word learning ability has been associated with language treatment outcomes in people with aphasia (PWA), and its assessment could inform prognosis and rehabilitation. We used a brief experimental task to examine novel word learning in PWA, determine the value of phonological cueing in assessing learning outcomes, and identify factors that modulate learning ability. Twelve PWA and nineteen healthy controls completed the task, and recall and recognition tests of learning ability. Most PWA showed comparable learning outcomes to those of the healthy controls. Learning assessed via expressive recall was more clearly evidenced with phonological cues. Better single word processing abilities and phonological short-term memory and higher integrity of the left inferior frontal gyrus were related to better learning performance. Brief learning tasks like this one are clinically feasible and hold promise as screening tools of verbal learning in PWA once validated and evaluated for their capacity to predict treatment outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of a study, which presents a new PET method that can be applied to the study of the cortical dynamics of a key neurotransmitter in the brain, dopamine. Regions of interest analysis showed an average decrease of 11.3% of the blood pressure in the ventrolateral frontal cortex and a 14% decrease in the left medial temporal lobe during the verbal working memory task compared to the vigilance task. Even though the ultimate mechanisms at the receptor level remain to be examined as also dopamine-mediated receptor internalization might be involved, the present results provide the first evidence on regional cortical dopaminergic activity in the healthy human brain during cognitive task performance.

Abstract: By employing visual lexical decision and functional MRI, we studied the neural correlates of morphological decomposition in a highly inflected language (Finnish) where most inflected noun forms elicit a consistent processing cost during word recognition. This behavioral effect could reflect suffix stripping at the visual word form level and/or subsequent meaning integration at the semantic-syntactic level. The first alternative predicts increased activation for inflected vs. monomorphemic words in the left occipitotemporal cortex while the second alternative predicts left inferior frontal gyrus and/or left posterior temporal activation increases. The results show significant activation effects in the latter areas. This provides support for the second alternative, i.e., that the morphological processing cost stems from the semantic-syntactic level. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study investigated effects of multisession transcranial direct-current stimulation on learning and maintenance of novel memory content and scrutinised effects of baseline cognitive status and the role of multi-session tDCS on overnight memory consolidation. In a prospective, randomized, double-blind, parallel-group, sham-tDCS controlled design, 101 healthy young and older adults completed a five-day verbal associative learning paradigm while receiving multisession tDCS to the task-relevant left prefrontal cortex. In older adults, active multisession tDCS enhanced recall performance after each daily training session. Effects were maintained the next morning and during follow-up assessments (one week; three months). In young adults, multisession tDCS significantly increased long-term recall. Unlike previous findings in the motor domain, beneficial effects of multisession tDCS on cognitive learning and memory were notexclusively due to enhanced memory consolidation. Positive stimulation effects were primarily found in participants with lower baseline learning ability, suggesting that multisession tDCS may counteract memory impairment in health and disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]