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Background: In healthy older adults, excess theta activity is an electroencephalographic (EEG) predictor of cognitive impairment. In a previous study, neurofeedback (NFB) treatment reinforcing reductions theta activity resulted in EEG reorganization and cognitive improvement. Objective: To explore the clinical applicability of this NFB treatment, the present study performed a 1-year follow-up to determine its lasting effects. Methods: Twenty seniors with excessive theta activity in their EEG were randomly assigned to the experimental or control group. The experimental group received an auditory reward when the theta absolute power (AP) was reduced. The control group received the reward randomly. Results: Both groups showed a significant decrease in theta activity at the training electrode. However, the EEG results showed that only the experimental group underwent global changes after treatment. These changes consisted of delta and theta decreases and beta increases. Although no changes were found in any group during the period between the posttreatment evaluation and follow-up, more pronounced theta decreases and beta increases were observed in the experimental group when the follow-up and pretreatment measures were compared. Executive functions showed a tendency to improve two months after treatment which became significant one year later. Conclusion: These results suggest that the EEG and behavioral benefits of this NFB treatment persist for at least one year, which adds up to the available evidence contributing to identifying factors that increase its efficacy level. The relevance of this study lies in its prophylactic features of addressing a clinically healthy population with EEG risk of cognitive decline.

Obesity is a global health problem with a broad set of comorbidities, such as malnutrition, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, systemic hypertension, heart failure, and kidney failure. This review describes recent findings of neuroimaging and two studies of cell density regarding the roles of overnutrition-induced hypothalamic inflammation in neurodegeneration. These studies provided consistent evidence of smaller cortical thickness or reduction in the gray matter volume in people with overweight and obesity; however, the investigated brain regions varied across the studies. In general, bilateral frontal and temporal areas, basal nuclei, and cerebellum are more commonly involved. Mechanisms of volume reduction are unknown, and neuroinflammation caused by obesity is likely to induce neuronal loss. Adipocytes, macrophages of the adipose tissue, and gut dysbiosis in overweight and obese individuals result in the secretion of the cytokines and chemokines that cross the blood-brain barrier and may stimulate microglia, which in turn also release proinflammatory cytokines. This leads to chronic low-grade neuroinflammation and may be an important factor for apoptotic signaling and neuronal death. Additionally, significant microangiopathy observed in rat models may be another important mechanism of induction of apoptosis. Neuroinflammation in neurodegenerative diseases (such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases) may be similar to that in metabolic diseases induced by malnutrition. Poor cognitive performance, mainly in executive functions, in individuals with obesity is also discussed. This review highlights the neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative mechanisms linked to obesity and emphasizes the importance of developing effective prevention and treatment intervention strategies for overweight and obese individuals.

Background. Adults with type two diabetes mellitus (DM2) show cognitive deficits within the executive function domain. The detrimental effects of DM2 over executive function (EF) performance may be mediated by factors such as cognitive reserve (CR). CR mediates cognitive performance by delaying the appearance of clinical symptoms from subjacent brain pathology or attenuating the severity of such symptoms. Our main goal was to study the effects of CR on executive functions of adults with DM2. Methods. Data from a total of 1,034 adults were included (362 women, 672 men). Subjects were categorized into four groups: subjects with DM2 and high CR ( n = 235 ), control subjects with high CR ( n = 265 ), subjects with DM2 and low CR ( n = 298 ), and control subjects with low CR ( n = 236 ). CR was quantified through 3 proxies: education, occupational complexity, and leisure activities. Executive functions were evaluated through visual scanning, verbal fluency, and backwards counting tasks. First, a series of four one-way ANOVAs was performed where group was included as a between-subject factor and executive function as a dependent variable. Second, a hierarchical multiple regression analysis was conducted to assess the weight of each CR proxy on EF performance. Results. CR level significantly affected all executive function scores independently of the diabetes status. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that years of education accounted for most of the variance in the model for executive function performance. In this study, we found that there is a significant effect of CR on executive function performance of DM2 subjects and education is the most important CR proxy.

An explanation for the social dysfunction observed in Williams syndrome may be deficits in social cognition. This study explored aspects of social cognition in children with Williams syndrome with different genotypes. The 12 participants included one with a 1.1 Mb deletion that retained the GTF2IRD1, GTF2I, and GTF2IRD2 genes, seven with a 1.5 Mb deletion that preserved the GTF2IRD2 gene, and four with a 1.8 Mb deletion with loss of all three genes. The participant retaining all three genes was found to have better performance on social judgment and first-order theory of mind tasks than the group with loss of all three genes. These results may reflect the influence of the GTF2I gene family on social cognition in Williams syndrome.

Electroencephalograms (EEGs) of children with reading disorder (RD) are characterized by higher power and coherence in slow frequencies (delta and theta bands) and lower power and coherence in the alpha band compared to EEGs of typically developed children. Neurofeedback (NFB) is useful for treating learning disorders by reinforcing the reduction of the theta/alpha ratio. This efficacy is supported by EEG power normalization and cognitive-behavioral improvement. To further explore brain changes in isolated areas, this study aimed to explore the effects of this NFB protocol on functional connectivity (coherence) in children with RD. Twenty children with RD and an abnormally high theta/alpha ratio underwent 30 sessions of NFB. After treatment, 90% of par-ticipants learned to decrease their theta/alpha ratio, and on average, children increased their reading accuracy and comprehension scores. Interhemispheric coherence diminished in the delta, theta and beta bands, mainly between frontopolar regions. Intrahemispheric coherence decreased in delta, theta and beta bands and increased in alpha band. The reduction in theta coherence be-tween the left frontal area and other regions of the left hemisphere had particular relevance for reading. These results suggest that this NFB treatment could positively impact reading-related functions in the brain networks of children with RD.

Objective To examine the effects of working memory (WM) load and gender agreement on sentence processing as a function of the electroencephalographic risk (i.e., abnormally high values of theta absolute power) of cognitive decline in older adults. Methods Event-related potentials (ERPs) were collected from Spanish speakers (22 older adults belonged to the Risk group, mean age = 67.7 years; 22 older adults belonged to the Control group, mean age = 65.2 years) while reading sentences to detect grammatical errors. Sentences varied with regard to (1) the gender agreement of the noun and adjective, where gender of the adjective either agreed or disagreed with the noun, and (2) WM load (i.e., the number of words between the noun and adjective in the sentence). Results The Risk group showed a lower percentage of correct answers and longer reaction times than the Control group. The Risk group also showed a different pattern of ERP components, which was characterized by smaller amplitude and longer latency of the P600a component under high WM load conditions. Conclusion The findings suggest that the Risk group shows difficulties integrating information associated with the previous sentence context. Significance The electroencephalographic risk factor of cognitive decline might be not only a predictor of but also an indicator of current decline.

Learning disorders (LD) are diagnosed in children impaired in the academic skills of reading, writing and/or mathematics. Children with LD usually show a slower resting-state electroencephalogram (EEG), with EEG patterns corresponding to a neurodevelopmental lag. LD-children also show a consistent cognitive impairment in working memory (WM), including an abnormal task-related EEG with an overall slower EEG activity of more delta and theta power, and less gamma activity in posterior sites; task-related EEG patterns considered indices of an inefficient neural resource management. Neurofeedback (NFB) treatments aimed at normalizing the resting-state EEG of LD-children have shown improvements in cognitive-behavioral indices and diminished EEG abnormalities. Given the typical findings of a WM impairment in LD-children; we aimed to explore the effects of a NFB treatment in the WM of children with LD, by analyzing the WM-related EEG power-spectrum. We recruited 18 children with LD (8-10 years old). They performed a Sternberg-type WM-task synchronized with an EEG of 19 leads (10-20 system) twice in pre-post treatment conditions. They went through either 30 sessions of a NFB treatment (NFB-group, n= 10); or through 30 sessions of a placebo-sham treatment (Sham-group, n= 8). We analyzed the before-after treatment group differences for the behavioral performance and the WM-related power-spectrum. The NFB group showed faster response times in the WM-task post-treatment. They also showed an increased gamma power at posterior sites and a decreased beta power. We explain these findings in terms of NFB improving the maintenance of memory representations coupled with a reduction of anxiety.

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have a psycholinguistic profile evincing multiple syntactic processing impairments. Spanish-speaking children with DLD struggle with gender agreement on clitics, however, the existing evidence comes from offline, elicitation tasks. In the current study, we sought to determine whether converging evidence of this deficit can be found. In particular, we use the real-time processing technique of event-related brain potentials (ERP) with direct-object clitic pronouns in Spanish-speaking children with DLD. Our participants include 15 six-year-old Mexican Spanish-speaking children with DLD and 19 typically developing, age-matched (TD) children. Auditory sentences that matched or did not match the gender features of antecedents represented in pictures were employed as stimuli in a visual–auditory gender agreement task. Gender-agreement violations were associated with an enhanced anterior negativity between 250 and 500 ms post-target onset in the TD children group. In contrast, children with DLD showed no such effect. This absence of the left anterior negativity (LAN) effect suggests weaker lexical representation of morphosyntactic gender features and/or non-adult-like morphosyntactic gender feature checking for the DLD children. We discuss the relevance of these findings for theoretical accounts of DLD. Our findings may contribute to a better understanding of syntactic agreement processing and language disorders.

Older adults have difficulties in sentence comprehension when working memory (WM) load increases (e.g., multiple embedded clauses). Structured physical activity has been related to improvements in cognition; however, incidental physical activity (PA, i.e., unstructured daily physical activities), particularly incidental vigorous activity has been poorly studied in relation to its effects on behavior. Furthermore, no positive effect on language has been reported in either form of physical activity. The aim of this study was to evaluate how two levels of PA (high or low) affect WM processing and how this, in turn, may affect morphosyntactic processing in older adults. Individuals with high PA (n = 18) had a higher WM load effect than those with low PA (n = 18), both behaviorally (greater differences between high and low WM loads in correct responses) and in terms of event-related potentials (only subjects with high PA showed LAN and P600b amplitude differences between high and low WM loads). These findings suggest that PA promotes cognitive strategies to face WM loads and morphosyntactic processing.

Resumen Introduccion Se considera la reserva cognitiva (RC) como la optimizacion de los recursos cerebrales al emplear redes neuronales y estrategias cognitivas alternativas. Se piensa que la RC es una explicacion plausible a un mecanismo potencial que permite al cerebro compensar deficiencias, ya sean causadas por el deterioro cerebral o por el declive funcional. Objetivo Analizar la informacion de la literatura cientifica acerca de los efectos de la RC sobre variables clinicas y cognitivas en pacientes con diversas enfermedades distintas a las demencias. Desarrollo Se realizo una busqueda sistematica en las bases PubMed/Medline y ScienceDirect de articulos que evaluaran la influencia de la RC sobre variables clinicas y cognitivas en pacientes con enfermedades distintas a las demencias, incluyendo estudios empiricos con diseno longitudinal/transversal y observacional/cuasiexperimental. Se incluyeron 107 articulos. Resultados Mayores niveles de RC se relacionan con un menor deterioro cognitivo en una gran variedad de trastornos y con una mejor recuperacion en pacientes con enfermedad neurologica, psiquiatrica, infecciosa, cancer, etc. Tambien hay evidencia sobre el papel de la RC como factor protector para el retraso en el desarrollo de enfermedades neurologicas, neuropsiquiatricas, infecciosas, etc. Limitaciones Podria existir mas bibliografia, pues solo exploramos 2 bases. Conclusion Una aproximacion a la RC podria estar constituida por un conjunto de variables (cognitivas, demograficas, fisicas, etc.) que parecen influir de manera importante sobre aspectos cognitivos, clinicos y funcionales de diversas enfermedades. Se subraya la necesidad de investigar a profundidad el papel de la RC en el proceso de recuperacion y como factor protector en diferentes dolencias.

Variability in neuronal response latency has been typically considered caused by random noise. Previous studies of single cells and large neuronal populations have shown that the temporal variability tends to increase along the visual pathway. Inspired by these previous studies, we hypothesized that functional areas at later stages in the visual pathway of face processing would have larger variability in the response latency. To test this hypothesis, we used magnetoencephalographic data collected when subjects were presented with images of human faces. Faces are known to elicit a sequence of activity from the primary visual cortex to the fusiform gyrus. Our results revealed that the fusiform gyrus showed larger variability in the response latency compared to the calcarine fissure. Dynamic and spectral analyses of the latency variability indicated that the response latency in the fusiform gyrus was more variable than in the calcarine fissure between 70 ms and 200 ms after the stimulus onset and between 4 Hz and 40 Hz, respectively. The sequential processing of face information from the calcarine sulcus to the fusiform sulcus was more reliably detected based on sizes of the response variability than instants of the maximal response peaks. With two areas in the ventral visual pathway, we show that the variability in response latency across brain areas can be used to infer the sequence of cortical activity.

Objective This study aimed to compare cortex thickness and neuronal cell density in postmortem brain tissue from people with overweight or obesity and normal weight. Methods The cortex thickness and neuron density of eight donors with overweight or obesity (mean = 31.6 kg/m2 ; SD = 4.35; n = 8; 6 male) and eight donors with normal weight (mean = 21.8 kg/m2 ; SD = 1.5; n = 8; 5 male) were compared. All participants were Mexican and lived in Mexico City. Randomly selected thickness measures of different cortex areas from the frontal and temporal lobes were analyzed based on high-resolution real-size photographs. A histological analysis of systematic-random fields was used to quantify the number of neurons in postmortem left and right of the first, second, and third gyri of frontal and temporal lobe brain samples. Results No statistical difference was found in cortical thickness between donors with overweight or obesity and individuals with normal weight. A smaller number of neurons was found among the donors with overweight or obesity than the donors with normal weight at different frontal and temporal areas. Conclusions A lower density of neurons is associated with overweight or obesity. The morphological basis for structural brain changes in obesity requires further investigation.

This study investigated the role of L1-L2 morphosyntactic similarity in L2 learners of French. In two experiments, we manipulated the grammatical gender agreement between an adjective and noun in a sentence context. The noun either shared lexical gender across Spanish and French (Experiment 1) or did not (Experiment 2). ERPs were collected from beginner Spanish-speaking learners of French and native French speakers while they read sentences in French. The results for the native speakers revealed a P600 effect on gender agreement violations irrespective of lexical gender overlap across languages. L2 learners exhibited a negativity in the N400 time window in response to gender agreement violations that involved nouns with the same gender in their L1 and L2 (Experiments 1 and 2), whereas no difference was observed to gender agreement violations that involved nouns with contradictory gender across languages (Experiment 2). These results suggest that L2 learners at low levels of L2 proficiency rely on their L1 lexical gender system to detect gender agreement errors in L2, but engage different neurocognitive mechanisms to process similar L2 morphosyntactic knowledge.

To examine the effects of cognitive reserve (CR) and working memory (WM) load on the cognitive performance of young adults, we performed two event-related potential (ERP) experiments. The first experiment aims to show how high CR influences young adult performance as a function of two levels of working memory load (high vs. low) during a Sternberg task. For both positive and negative probes, participants with high and low CR showed larger P300 amplitudes to low WM loads than to high WM loads. Both CR groups showed a longer P300 latency to high WM loads than to low WM loads, but this difference was greater for the low CR group than for the high CR group. The high CR group displayed larger P300 amplitudes for every experimental condition compared to the low CR group. The second experiment analyzed grammatical gender agreement in sentence processing when CR and WM load were manipulated. Sentences varied according to the gender agreement of the noun and adjective, where the gender of the adjective either agreed or disagreed with that of the noun (agreement), and with regard to the number of words between the noun and the adjective in the sentence (WM load). Participants with high CR showed greater modulation of left anterior negativity (LAN) and P600a effects as WM increased than that observed in participants with low CR. The findings together suggest that higher levels of cognitive reserve improve neural efficiency, which may result in better working memory performance and sentence processing.

Introduction: Schizoaffective disorder (SA) is classified into bipolar (bSA) and depressive (dSA) subtypes. Although clinical differences between both have been reported, there is no clear information regarding their specific cognitive profile. Objective: To compare neurocognition between SA subtypes and schizophrenia (SC). Methods: A total of 61 patients were assessed and divided into 3 groups: 35 SC, 16 bSA, and 10 dSA. All participants signed an informed consent letter. The MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery, Central and South American version was used to assess neurocognition. The study was performed at the Instituto Nacional de Psiquiatría “Ramón de la Fuente”. Participants were identified by specialized psychiatrists. Trained neuropsychologists carried out the clinical and cognitive assessment, which lasted 2 h approximately. Results: The cognitive assessment showed a significant difference in Trail Making Test part A subtest (F[2,58] = 4.043; p = 0.023]. Post hoc analyses indicated that dSA obtained a significantly higher score than SC (MD = –11.523; p = 0.018). The f test showed a large effect size (f = 0.401). No statistical differences were observed regarding other cognitive variables. Conclusions: The cognitive profile of SA subtypes and SC is similar since no differences were found in most subtests. However, dSA may be less impaired than SC in measures of processing speed. Further research with larger samples must be conducted.

Introduction: Verbal fluency tasks are useful tools in clinical practice and research studies across languages and contexts, but specific data obtained using Spanish phonological tasks and ...

Introduction Dyscalculia is a specific learning disorder affecting the ability to learn certain math processes, such as arithmetic data recovery. The group of children with dyscalculia is very heterogeneous, in part due to variability in their working memory (WM) deficits. To assess the brain response to arithmetic data recovery, we applied an arithmetic verification task during an event-related potential (ERP) recording. Two effects have been reported: the N400 effect (higher negative amplitude for incongruent than for congruent condition), associated with arithmetic incongruency and caused by the arithmetic priming effect, and the LPC effect (higher positive amplitude for the incongruent compared to the congruent condition), associated with a reevaluation process and modulated by the plausibility of the presented condition. This study aimed to (a) compare arithmetic processing between children with dyscalculia and children with good academic performance (GAP) using ERPs during an addition verification task and (b) explore, among children with dyscalculia, the relationship between WM and ERP effects. Materials and Methods EEGs of 22 children with dyscalculia (DYS group) and 22 children with GAP (GAP group) were recorded during the performance of an addition verification task. ERPs synchronized with the probe stimulus were computed separately for the congruent and incongruent probes, and included only epochs with correct answers. Mixed 2-way ANOVAs for response times and correct answers were conducted. Comparisons between groups and correlation analyses using ERP amplitude data were carried out through multivariate nonparametric permutation tests. Results The GAP group obtained more correct answers than the DYS group. An arithmetic N400 effect was observed in the GAP group but not in the DYS group. Both groups displayed an LPC effect. The larger the LPC amplitude was, the higher the WM index. Two subgroups were found within the DYS group: one with an average WM index and the other with a lower than average WM index. These subgroups displayed different ERPs patterns. Discussion The results indicated that the group of children with dyscalculia was very heterogeneous and therefore failed to show a robust LPC effect. Some of these children had WM deficits. When WM deficits were considered together with dyscalculia, an atypical ERP pattern that reflected their processing difficulties emerged. Their lack of the arithmetic N400 effect suggested that the processing in this step was not useful enough to produce an answer; thus, it was necessary to reevaluate the arithmetic-calculation process (LPC) in order to deliver a correct answer. Conclusion Given that dyscalculia is a very heterogeneous deficit, studies examining dyscalculia should consider exploring deficits in WM because the whole group of children with dyscalculia seems to contain at least two subpopulations that differ in their calculation process.

Williams syndrome (WS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that results from a heterozygous microdeletion on chromosome 7q11.23. Most of the time, the affected region contains ~1.5 Mb of sequence encoding approximately 24 genes. Some 5–8% of patients with WS have a deletion exceeding 1.8 Mb, thereby affecting two additional genes, including GTF2IRD2. Currently, there is no consensus regarding the implications of GTF2IRD2 loss for the neuropsychological phenotype of WS patients. Objectives: The present study aimed to identify the role of GTF2IRD2 in the cognitive, behavioral, and adaptive profile of WS patients. Methods: Twelve patients diagnosed with WS participated, four with GTF2IRD2 deletion (atypical WS group), and eight without this deletion (typical WS group). The age range of both groups was 7–18 years old. Each patient’s 7q11.23 deletion scope was determined by chromosomal microarray analysis. Cognitive, behavioral, and adaptive abilities were assessed with a battery of neuropsychological tests. Results: Compared with the typical WS group, the atypical WS patients with GTF2IRD2 deletion had more impaired visuospatial abilities and more significant behavioral problems, mainly related to the construct of social cognition. Conclusions: These findings provide new evidence regarding the influence of the GTF2IRD2 gene on the severity of behavioral symptoms of WS related to social cognition and certain visuospatial abilities. (JINS, 2018, 24, 896–904)

The following article, Alatorre-Cruz, G.C., Silva-Pereyra, J., Fernández, T., Rodríguez-Camacho, M.A., Castro-Chavira, S.A & Sanchez-Lopez, J. (2018). Effects of age and working memory load on syntactic processing: An event-related potential study. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 12, can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00185. Cognitive changes in aging include working memory (WM) decline, which may hamper language comprehension. An increase in WM demands in older adults would probably provoke a poorer sentence processing performance in this age group. A way to increase the WM load is to separate two lexical units in an agreement relation (i.e., adjective and noun), in a given sentence. To test this hypothesis, event-related potentials (ERPs) were collected from Spanish speakers (30 older adults, mean age = 66.06 years old; and 30 young adults, mean age = 25.7 years old) who read sentences to detect grammatical errors. The sentences varied with regard to (1) the gender agreement of the noun and adjective, where the gender of the adjective either agreed or disagreed with the noun, and (2) the WM load (i.e., the number of words between the noun and adjective in the sentence). No significant behavioral differences between groups were observed in the accuracy of the response, but older adults showed longer reaction times regardless of WM load condition. Compared with young participants, older adults showed a different pattern of ERP components characterized by smaller amplitudes of LAN, P600a, and P600b effects when the WM load was increased. A smaller LAN effect probably reflects greater difficulties in processing the morpho-syntactic features of the sentence, while smaller P600a and P600b effects could be related to difficulties in recovering and mapping all sentence constituents. We concluded that the ERP pattern in older adults showed subtle problems in syntactic processing when the WM load was increased, which was not sufficient to affect response accuracy but was only observed to result in a longer reaction time.

"Este trabajo investiga la respuesta neuronal asociada al procesamiento del significado de los verbos copulativos en español ser y estar por medio de la técnica de potenciales relacionados con eventos (PRE). De acuerdo a distintos enfoques pragmáticos-discursivos (Clements, 2006; Maienborn, 2005), la alternancia ser/estar en construcciones CÓPULA+ADJETIVO con referentes inanimados donde ambas cópulas son aceptables (por ejemplo, La miel es/está dulce) se encuentra determinada por aspectos semánticos y pragmáticos. Mientras que las predicaciones con ser están ligadas a un dominio general de representación, las predicaciones con estar estarían restringidas a una situación específica dentro del discurso. El objetivo de este trabajo fue determinar en qué medida la respuesta neuronal de hablantes nativos del español varía en función de los distintos niveles de interpretación semántica y pragmática asociados al uso de los verbos ser y estar. Los resultados mostraron una mayor amplitud en el componente N400 en respuesta a los adjetivos precedidos por el verbo estar (La miel está dulce) en comparación con los adjetivos precedidos por el verbo ser (La miel es dulce). Las diferencias encontradas en el componente N400 pueden reflejar una mayor activación de información semántica y discursiva generadas durante la interpretación de las predicaciones con estar que con ser. Estos resultados confirman los enfoques pragmáticos-discursivos que sugieren el uso de la información semántica y pragmática en la comprensión de los verbos copulativos ser y estar."

ResumenLa magnetoencefalografía es una técnica de neuroimagen no invasiva que mide, con gran exactitud temporal, los campos magnéticos en la superficie de la cabeza producidos por corrientes neuronales en regiones cerebrales. Esta técnica es sumamente útil en la investigación básica y clínica, porque además permite ubicar el origen de la actividad neural en el cerebro. En esta revisión se abordan aspectos básicos de la biofísica del método y se discuten los hallazgos sobre procesos como la percepción del habla, la atención auditiva y la integración de la información visual y auditiva, que son importantes en la investigación. Igualmente, se ilustran sus ventajas, sus limitaciones y las nuevas tendencias en la investigación con magnetoencefalografía.AbstractMagnetoencephalography is a noninvasive imaging technique that measures the magnetic fields on the surface of the head --produced by neuronal currents in brain regions -- and provides highly accurate temporal information. Magnetoencephalography is extremely useful in basic and clinical research as it can also locate the sources of neural activity in the brain. This review chiefly approaches biophysics-related aspects of the method; findings are also discussed on issues such as speech perception, auditory attention and integration of visual-auditory information, which are quintessential in this type of research. Lastly, this review discusses the benefits and limitations of magnetoencephalography and outlines new trends in research with this technique.

El objetivo del estudio fue determinar las diferencias en el desempeño de una tarea de atención en relación con la pericia en artes marciales.Participaron 12 deportistas de artes marciales expertos y 13 novatos. Se les aplicó el Test of Variables of Attention (Greenberg, 1996) y se analizaron losdatos de la prueba para cada variable, condición y segmentos en los que se divide, con un método estadístico no-paramétrico de permutaciones. Lascomparaciones intergrupos indicaron una tendencia a que el puntaje global de Trastorno por Déficit de Atención e Hiperactividad (TDAH) de la pruebafuera mejor en los expertos que en los novatos. Se hizo un análisis intragrupo para conocer el comportamiento de cada grupo a lo largo de la prueba; losresultados indicaron que los deportistas expertos muestran mayor consistencia en el número de aciertos y tiempos de reacción a lo largo de la prueba, loque se traduce como un mejor desempeño cuando se compara con la forma en que los deportistas novatos responden a la tarea. Los resultados sugierenque el entrenamiento físico y mental de las disciplinas de artes marciales podría producir una mejora en las capacidades de atención de los deportistas.

Patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) have cognitive deficits that cause functional impairments across several domains, including language. There is experimental evidence that basal ganglia and frontostriatal circuits are implicated in phonological processing, which leads to the hypothesis that a dysfunction of these circuits could be expressed behaviorally as phonological deficiencies in patients with PD. Using neuropsychological assessments, the present study aimed to explore the phonological processing abilities of patients in the initial stages of PD while controlling for other cognitive processes. The results showed lower scores in patients with PD on phonological tests with respect to a control group and these differences were independent of processes such as attention/working memory, long-term memory, thinking, and verbal language comprehension. However, there was an association between phonological skills and reading comprehension abilities. This finding implies a specific phonological deficit in terms of word reading. NeuroReport 24:852–855 c 2013 Wolters Kluwer Health | Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. NeuroReport 2013, 24:852‐855

The following article, Sanchez-Lopez, J., Silva-Pereyra, J., Fernández, T., Alatorre-Cruz, G.C., Castro-Chavira, S.A., González-Lopez, M. & Sánchez-Moguel, S.M. (2018). High levels of incidental physical activity are positively associated with cognition and EEG activity in aging. PLoS ONE, 13(1), can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0191561. High levels of physical activity seem to positively influence health and cognition across the lifespan. Several studies have found that aerobic exercise enhances cognition and likely prevents cognitive decline in the elderly. Nevertheless, the association of incidental physical activity (IPA) with health and cognition during aging has not been studied. Thus, the aim of this study was to evaluate the association of IPA level with cognitive functions and resting electroencephalogram (EEG) in healthy old participants. Participants (n = 97) with normal scores on psychometric and neuropsychological tests and normal values in blood analyses were included. A cluster analysis based on the scores of the Yale Physical Activity Scale (YPAS) allowed the formation of two groups: active, with high levels of IPA, and passive, with low levels of IPA. Eyes-closed resting EEG was recorded from the participants; the fast Fourier transform was used offline to calculate absolute power (AP), relative power (RP), and mean frequency (MF) measures. There were no differences in socioeconomic status, cognitive reserve, general cognitive status, or lipid and TSH profiles between the groups. The results of cognitive tests revealed significant differences in the performance variables of the WAIS scores (p = .015), with advantages for the active group. The resting EEG exhibited significantly slower activity involving the frontal, central, and temporal regions in the passive group (p < .05). Specifically, higher delta RP (F7, T3), lower delta MF (F4, C4, T4, T6, Fz, Cz), higher theta AP (C4), higher theta RP (F4, C4, T3, Fz), lower alpha AP (F3, F7, T3), lower alpha RP (F7), and lower total MF (F3, F7, T3, T5, Fz) were found. Altogether, these results suggest that IPA induces a neuroprotective effect, which is reflected both in behavioral and electrophysiological variables during aging.

Language Impairment (LI) is a developmental disorder that mainly manifests impaired language learning and processing. Evidence, largely from English-speaking population studies, has shown that children with LI compared to typically developing (TD) children have low scores in sequential learning tasks but similar performance in declarative learning tasks. According to the declarative/procedural model, LI children compensate for their deficiency in syntactic skills (i.e., deficits in the procedural memory system) by using the declarative memory system (indispensable for vocabulary acquisition). Although there are specific deficits in children with LI depending on the language they speak, it is assumed that this model can explain the shortcomings of such pathology regardless of the language spoken. In the current study, we compared the performance of fifteen school-aged Mexican Spanish-speaking children with LI and twenty TD children during sequential and declarative learning tasks and then analyzed the relationship between their performance in these tasks and their abilities in syntax and semantics. Children with LI displayed lower scores than normal children in the sequential learning task, but no differences were found in declarative learning performance with verbal or visual stimuli. No significant correlations were observed in children with LI between their performance in sequential learning and their abilities in semantics and no significant correlations were observed in TD children between their performance in sequential learning and their abilities in syntax. In contrast, for children with LI, a significant correlation between their performance in declarative learning and their abilities in semantics was observed and for the group of TD children a significant correlation between their performance in declarative learning and their abilities in syntax was observed. This study shows that Spanish-speaking children with LI display a pattern of learning impairment that supports the declarative/procedural model hypothesis. However, they display poor verbal declarative learning skills, probably due to low verbal working memory capacity.

Background. Research on sports has revealed that behavioral responses and event-related brain potentials (ERP) are better in expert than in novice athletes for sport-related tasks. Focused attention is essential for optimal athletic performance across different sports but mainly in combat disciplines. During combat, long periods of focused attention (i.e., sustained attention) are required for a good performance. Few investigations have reported effects of expertise on brain electrical activity and its neural generators during sport-unrelated attention tasks. The aim of the present study was to assess the effect of expertise (i.e., skilled and novice martial arts athletes) analyzing the ERP during a sustained attention task (Continuous Performance Task; CPT) and the cortical three-dimensional distribution of current density, using the sLORETA technique. Methods. CPT consisted in an oddball-type paradigm presentation of five stimuli (different pointing arrows) where only one of them (an arrow pointing up right) required a motor response (i.e., target). CPT was administered to skilled and novice martial arts athletes while EEG were recorded. Amplitude ERP data from target and non-target stimuli were compared between groups. Subsequently, current source analysis for each ERP component was performed on each subject. sLORETA images were compared by condition and group using Statistical Non-Parametric Mapping analysis. Results. Skilled athletes showed significant amplitude differences between target and non-target conditions in early ERP components (P100 and P200) as opposed to the novice group; however, skilled athletes showed no significant effect of condition in N200 but novices did show a significant effect. Current source analysis showed greater differences in activations in skilled compared with novice athletes between conditions in the frontal (mainly in the Superior Frontal Gyrus and Medial Frontal Gyrus) and limbic (mainly in the Anterior Cingulate Gyrus) lobes. Discussion. These results are supported by previous findings regarding activation of neural structures that underlie sustained attention. Our findings may indicate a better-controlled attention in skilled athletes, which suggests that expertise can improve effectiveness in allocation of attentional resources during the first stages of cognitive processing during combat.

In the present study, we propose to explore the Event-Related Potentials components elicited in reading disabled (RD) and normal readers (NR) children by phonological and semantic processes using an auditory sentence comprehension task, that manipulate both phonological and semantic expectancies. Reading deficiencies in both these processes have been demonstrated in RD children, thus similar problems might also be expected for oral language in these children. Twenty-two male children (9-12 years old) with normal IQ, were classified by Neuropsychological Battery for Reading Disabilities into two groups: Normal Readers (NR, n=11) and Reading Disabled (RD, n=11). ERPs were recorded from 19 derivations of the I.S. 10-20. Children were presented with spoken sentences that ended with a word that was either (a) semantically congruent, and phonologically expected, (b) semantically incongruent, but beginning with the same initial phonemes as the congruent completion, or (c) semantically incongruent, and phonologically unexpected. For each type of sentence, ERP were analyzed in two time windows: early time window (330-430 ms) related to phonological processing, as well as a later N400 window (515-615 ms) that would reflect the semantic processing. In both groups, the three types of sentences elicited a negative waveform with an onset at 200 ms that lasted until approximately 900 ms. This negative waveform had greater amplitude in response to semantically incongruent, compared to semantically congruent sentences. Results revealed a probably anomalous phonological processing in RD children, reflected by a greater ERP response to expected, than to unexpected, words in a given sentential context. However, both the N400 responses related to semantic processing, and the behavioral responses related to the correctness of sentences, were comparable between RD and NR children.