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Multitalker situations confront listeners with a plethora of competing auditory inputs, and hence require selective attention to relevant information, especially when the perceptual saliency of distracting inputs is high. This study augmented the classical forced-attention dichotic listening paradigm by adding an interaural intensity manipulation to investigate developmental differences in the interplay between perceptual saliency and attentional control during auditory processing between early and middle childhood. We found that older children were able to flexibly focus on instructed auditory inputs from either the right or the left ear, overcoming the effects of perceptual saliency. In contrast, younger children implemented their attentional focus less efficiently. Direct comparisons of the present data with data from a recently published study of younger and older adults from our group suggest that younger children and older adults show similar levels of performance. Critically, follow-up comparisons revealed that younger children's performance restrictions reflect difficulties in attentional control only, whereas older adults' performance deficits also reflect an exaggerated reliance on perceptual saliency. We conclude that auditory attentional control improves considerably from middle to late childhood and that auditory attention deficits in healthy aging cannot be reduced to a simple reversal of child developmental improvements.

Background: We examined the blood-oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) activation in brain regions that signal errors and their association with intraindividual behavioural variability and adaptation to errors in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Methods: We acquired functional MRI data during a Flanker task in medication-naive children with ADHD and healthy controls aged 8-12 years and analyzed the data using independent component analysis. For components corresponding to performance monitoring networks, we compared activations across groups and conditions and correlated them with reaction times (RT). Additionally, we analyzed post-error adaptations in behaviour and motor component activations. Results: We included 25 children with ADHD and 29 controls in our analysis. Children with ADHD displayed reduced activation to errors in cingulo-opercular regions and higher RT variability, but no differences of interference control. Larger BOLD amplitude to error trials significantly predicted reduced RT variability across all participants. Neither group showed evidence of post-error response slowing; however, post-error adaptation in motor networks was significantly reduced in children with ADHD. This adaptation was inversely related to activation of the right-lateralized ventral attention network (VAN) on error trials and to task-driven connectivity between the cingulo-opercular system and the VAN. Limitations: Our study was limited by the modest sample size and imperfect matching across groups. Conclusion: Our findings show a deficit in cingulo-opercular activation in children with ADHD that could relate to reduced signalling for errors. Moreover, the reduced orienting of the VAN signal may mediate deficient post- error motor adaptions. Pinpointing general performance monitoring problems to specific brain regions and operations in error processing may help to guide the targets of future treatments for ADHD., Introduction Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is the most frequent disorder in child and adolescent mental health services, affecting 3%-5% of children. (1) Several pathways and processes have been identified in the [...]

In studies on auditory speech perception, participants are often asked to perform active tasks, e.g. decide whether the perceived sound is a speech sound or not. However, information about the stimulus, inherent in such tasks, may induce expectations that cause altered activations not only in the auditory cortex, but also in frontal areas such as inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and motor cortices, even in the absence of an explicit task. To investigate this, we applied spectral mixes of a flute sound and either vowels or specific music instrument sounds (e.g. trumpet) in an fMRI study, in combination with three different instructions. The instructions either revealed no information about stimulus features, or explicit information about either the music instrument or the vowel features. The results demonstrated that, besides an involvement of posterior temporal areas, stimulus expectancy modulated in particular a network comprising IFG and premotor cortices during this passive listening task. (Contains 3 figures.)

This study focused on predicting dyslexia in children ahead of formal literacy training. Because dyslexia is a constitutional impairment, risk factors should be seen in preschool. It was hypothesized that data gathered at age 5 using questions targeting the dyslexia endophenotype should be reliable and valid predictors of dyslexia at age 11. A questionnaire was given to caretakers of 120 5-year-old children, and a risk index score was calculated based on questions regarding health, laterality, motor skills, language, special needs education and heredity. An at-risk group (n = 25) and matched controls (n = 24) were followed until age 11, when a similar questionnaire and literacy tests were administered to the children who participated in the follow-up study (22 at risk and 20 control). Half of the at-risk children and two of the control children at age 5 were identified as having dyslexia at age 11 (8 girls and 5 boys). It is concluded that it is possible to identify children at the age of 5 who will have dyslexia at the age of 11 through a questionnaire approach. (Contains 1 figure and 5 tables.)

A common assumption is that phonetic sounds initiate unique processing in the superior temporal gyri and sulci (STG/STS). The anatomical areas subserving these processes are also implicated in the processing of non-phonetic stimuli such as music instrument sounds. The differential processing of phonetic and non-phonetic sounds was investigated in this study by applying a "sound-morphing" paradigm, where the presence of phonetic features were parametrically varied, creating a step-wise transition from a non-phonetic sound into a phonetic sound. The stimuli were presented in an event-related fMRI design. The fMRI-BOLD data were analysed using parametric contrasts. The results showed a higher sensitivity for sounds containing phonetic features compared to non-phonetic sounds in the middle part of STG, and in the anterior part of the planum temporale (PT) bilaterally. Although the same areas were involved in the processing of non-phonetic sounds, a difference in activation was evident in the STG, with an increase in activation related to increment of phonetic features in the sounds. The results indicate a stimulus-driven, bottom-up process that utilizes general auditory resources in the secondary auditory cortex, depending on specific phonetic features in the sounds. (Contains 1 table and 3 figures.)

Objective: The present study investigates teacher and parent reports of inattention and emotional symptoms in 6,229 primary school children. Method: The assessment included the Emotional Symptoms subscale and the Impact scale from the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and the inattention items from the Swanson, Nolan, and Pelham IV Questionnaire. Results: Children defined as inattentive showed a high risk of being defined as high scorers on the Emotional Symptoms subscale. A high score on both the Inattention and Emotional Symptoms subscales was associated with a high impact score. Teachers but not parents reported a higher risk of such co-occurrence of symptoms in girls than in boys. Conclusion: Inattentive children should be screened for emotional problems by use of the multi-informants method. (Contains 3 tables.)

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.

Using 12 participants we conducted an fMRI study involving two tasks, word reversal and rhyme judgment, based on pairs of natural speech stimuli, to study the neural correlates of manipulating auditory imagery under taxing conditions. Both tasks engaged the left anterior superior temporal gyrus, reflecting previously established perceptual mechanisms. Engagement of the left inferior frontal gyrus in both tasks relative to baseline could only be revealed by applying small volume corrections to the region of interest, suggesting that phonological segmentation played only a minor role and providing further support for factorial dissociation of rhyming and segmentation in phonological awareness. Most importantly, subtraction of rhyme judgment from word reversal revealed activation of the parietal lobes bilaterally and the right inferior frontal cortex, suggesting that the dynamic manipulation of auditory imagery involved in mental reversal of words seems to engage mechanisms similar to those involved in visuospatial working memory and mental rotation. This suggests that reversing spoken items is a matter of mind twisting rather than tongue twisting and provides support for a link between language processing and manipulation of mental imagery.

Background and Hypotheses Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) is not only a common symptom in schizophrenia but also observed in individuals in the general population. Despite extensive research, AVHs are poorly understood, especially their underlying neuronal architecture. Neuroimaging methods have been used to identify brain areas and networks that are activated during hallucinations. A characteristic feature of AVHs is, however, that they fluctuate over time, with varying frequencies of starts and stops. An unanswered question is, therefore, what neuronal events co-occur with the initiation and inhibition of an AVH episode. Study Design We investigated brain activation with fMRI in 66 individuals who experienced multiple AVH-episodes while in the scanner. We extracted time-series fMRI-data and monitored changes second-by-second from 10 s before to 15 s after participants indicated the start and stop of an episode, respectively, by pressing a hand-held response-button. Study Results We found a region in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) which showed a significant increase in activation initiated a few seconds before participants indicated the start of an episode, and a corresponding decrease in activation initiated a few seconds before the end of an episode. Conclusions The consistent increase and decrease in activation in this area in advance of the consciously experienced presence or absence of the "voice" imply that this region may act as a switch in turning episodes on and off. The activation is unlikely to be confounded by motor responses. The findings could have clinical implications for brain stimulation treatments, like transcranial magnetic stimulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present study was to investigate differences in brain activation in a family with SLI as compared to intact individuals with normally developed language during processing of language stimuli. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to monitor changes in neuronal activation in temporal and frontal lobe areas in 5 Finnish family members with specific language impairment (SLI) and 6 individuals in an intact control group. Magnetic resonance (MR) image acquisitions were made while the participants listened to series of isolated vowel sounds, pseudowords, and real words. The stimuli were digitized single Finnish vowel sounds, 3-phoneme pseudowords, and 3- and 4-phoneme real words. MR scanning was made with a 1.5 T Siemens Vision Plus scanner, and the auditory stimuli were presented according to an event-related fMRI design. The results showed significant differences between the family with SLI and the intact control group with regard to brain activation in areas in the temporal and frontal lobes. Temporal lobe activation differences were most pronounced in the middle temporal gyrus bordering the superior temporal sulcus. The control participants also activated an area in the inferior frontal lobe in BA 44. It is concluded that individuals with SLI showed reduced activation in brain areas that are critical for speech processing and phonological awareness. The present functional brain imaging data fit well with other recent imaging data that also showed structural abnormalities in the same and neighboring areas.

A cue-target visual attention task was administered to 25 children (ages 10-12) with dyslexia. Results showed a general pattern of slower responses in the children with dyslexia compared to controls. Subjects also had longer reaction times in the short and long cue-target interval conditions (covert and overt shift of attention). (Contains references.) (Author/CR)