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People can use different internal strategies to manage their daily tasks, but systematic research on these strategies and their significance for actual performance is still quite sparse. Here we examined self-reported internal strategy use with a 10-block version of the videogame EPELI (Executive Performance in Everyday LIving) in a group of 202 neurotypical adults of 18–50 years of age. In the game, participants perform lists of everyday tasks from memory while navigating in a virtual apartment. Open-ended strategy reports were collected after each EPELI task block, and for comparison also after an EPELI Instruction Recall task and a Word List Learning task assessing episodic memory. On average, 45% of the participants reported using some strategy in EPELI, the most common types being grouping (e.g., performing the tasks room by room), utilising a familiar action schema, and condensing information (e.g., memorising only keywords). Our pre-registered hypothesis on the beneficial effect of self-initiated strategy use gained support, as strategy users showed better performance on EPELI as compared with no strategy users. One of the strategies, grouping, was identified as a clearly effective strategy type. Block-by-block transitions suggested gradual stabilisation of strategy use over the 10 EPELI blocks. The proneness to use strategies showed a weak but reliable association between EPELI and Word List Learning. Overall, the present results highlight the importance of internal strategy use for understanding individual differences in memory performance, as well as the potential benefit for internal strategy employment when faced with everyday memory tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assumption that everyday language switching trains bilinguals' executive functions (EF) presupposes that language switching engages domain-general EF. This study examined associations between three types of tasks in a group of Finnish-English late bilinguals: everyday language switching frequency assessed with Ecological Momentary Assessment, language switching performance on a cued bilingual naming task, and EF as measured with Simon, Flanker, and Number-letter tasks. Cued switching performance showed mainly positive associations with EF performance, but the associations between everyday language switching and cued switching performance, and between everyday switching and the EF tasks were largely against our hypotheses. The findings indicate that participants with lower monitoring capacity make more everyday language switches. This speaks against the idea that everyday language switching would facilitate executive functioning. The results suggest that associations between language switching and general EF are more complex than current models assume. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accelerated long‐term forgetting (ALF) refers to a rapid loss of information over days or weeks despite normal acquisition/encoding. Notwithstanding its potential relevance as a presymptomatic marker of cognitive dysfunction, no study has addressed the relationship between ALF and Alzheimer's disease (AD) biomarkers. We examined ALF in APOE ɛ4 carriers versus noncarriers, and its relationships with AD cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers. We found ALF over three months in APOE ɛ4 carriers (F(1,19) = 5.60; P < 0.05; Cohen's d = 1.08), and this performance was associated with abnormal levels of the CSF Aβ42/ptau ratio (r = −.614; P < 0.01). Our findings indicate that ALF is detectable in at‐risk individuals, and that there is a relationship between ALF and the pathophysiological processes underlying AD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present short review discusses reasons for the mixed results on the possible enhancement of cognition, especially executive function, in bilingualism. We define three major problem areas that hamper many studies in this field: the use of research designs that are weak for the task at hand, the lack of a detailed theory on how bilingual experience would modify cognition, and the employment of measures of bilingual behaviour and executive function that are troublesome. Potential remedies for these problem areas are discussed, and the emerging research approach where specific aspects of individual bilingual experience are examined and related to specific aspects of executive performance is highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In the event of rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA), mortality is very high. AAA prevalence and incidence of ruptures have been reported to be decreasing. The treatment of AAA has also undergone a change in recent decades with a shift toward endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR). Our aim was to evaluate how these changes have affected the elective and emergency treatment of AAA and their results in Finland.Methods: All patients treated for AAA in Finland, a country with a population of 5.5 million, during 2000 to 2014 were searched from the registry of the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare. Data on all patients who had died of AAA during the same time period were obtained from Statistics Finland. The data were combined and analyzed.Results: The annual incidence of ruptured AAA was 16.4 per 100 000 population over 50 years and decreased significantly during the study period. Over half of the 4949 patients who had a ruptured AAA died outside the hospital. Thirty-day mortality after emergency repair was 39.4%. Intact AAA repairs numbered 4956. The absolute number of annual repairs increased during the study period, and the use of EVAR became the dominant method of elective repair. Thirty-day mortality in elective AAA repair dropped significantly from 6.3% in 2000 to 2004 to 2.7% in 2010 to 2014 mostly because of the increased number of EVAR procedures with lower mortality. Long-term mortality in patients treated with EVAR was higher than in patients treated with open repair. Mortality after elective AAA repair was primarily attributable to cardiovascular causes, but there was a slightly higher proportion of AAA-related late deaths in patients treated with EVAR.Conclusions: Ruptured AAA incidence for men >65 years has declined by nearly 30% in Finland, likely because of the decrease in AAA prevalence. The treatment results have improved as well for both elective and emergency repair. Increased use of EVAR has resulted in a decrease of mortality after elective AAA repair, but results of open repair have improved as well. However, late mortality from elective EVAR is surprisingly high in comparison with open repair, which may have been exaggerated by patient selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Morphology is an important part of language processing but little is known about how adult second language learners acquire morphological rules. Using a word-picture associative learning task, we have previously shown that a brief exposure to novel words with embedded morphological structure (suffix for natural gender) is enough for language learners to acquire the hidden morphological rule. Here we used this paradigm to study the brain signatures of early morphological learning in a novel language in adults. Behavioural measures indicated successful lexical (word stem) and morphological (gender suffix) learning. A day after the learning phase, event-related brain potentials registered during a recognition memory task revealed enhanced N400 and P600 components for stem and suffix violations, respectively. An additional effect observed with combined suffix and stem violations was an enhancement of an early N2 component, most probably related to conflict-detection processes. Successful morphological learning was also evident in the ERP responses to the subsequent rule-generalization task with new stems, where violation of the morphological rule was associated with an early (250–400 ms) and late positivity (750–900 ms). Overall, these findings tend to converge with lexical and morphosyntactic violation effects observed in L1 processing, suggesting that even after a short exposure, adult language learners can acquire both novel words and novel morphological rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning a new language is an incremental process that builds upon previously acquired information. To shed light on the mechanisms of this incremental process, we studied the on-line neurophysiological correlates of the so-called anchor word effect where newly learned words facilitate segmentation of novel words from continuous speech. Higher segmentation performance was observed for speech streams embedded with newly learned anchor words. The anchor words elicited an enhanced Stimulus-preceding negativity (SPN) component considered to be an index of expectation for incoming relevant information. Moreover, we confirmed a previously reported N400 amplitude increase for the to-be-segmented novel words, indicating a bottom-up learning process whereby new memory representations for the novel words emerge. We propose that the anchor word effect indexed by SPN reflects an expectation for an incoming novel word at the offset of the anchor word, thus facilitating the segmentation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This prospective cohort study aimed to examine the associations of trust towards the supervisor (vertical trust) and trust towards co-workers (horizontal trust) with retirement intentions. The participants were 14 840 women and men working in the municipal sector in 2000–12 (Finnish Public Sector Study). Trust (vertical trust towards the supervisor and horizontal trust towards co-workers) and retirement intentions were assessed in repeated surveys. Multivariable multinomial logistic regression analyses were conducted to assess the association between baseline trust and retirement intentions at 3.7 years of follow-up. Demographic characteristics, health, psychological distress, health risk behaviors, personality factors, and psychosocial factors were included as covariates. Of the participants, 67.0% trusted their supervisor and 54.9% trusted their co-workers. Employees who trusted their supervisor (odds ratio (OR) 0.60, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.53–0.67) and employees who trusted their co-workers (odds ratio 0.62, 95% confidence interval 0.55–0.70) at baseline were less likely to have strong retirement intentions at follow-up compared to those who did not trust. These associations largely persisted after adjusting for all covariates and taking into account baseline retirement intentions. In conclusion, trust in the supervisor and co-workers predicted retirement intentions. These observational findings suggest that increasing trust in the workplace may contribute to lengthening working careers and preventing early retirement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans continuously learn new information. Here, we examined the temporal brain dynamics of explicit verbal associative learning between unfamiliar items. In the first experiment, 25 adults learned object-pseudoword associations during a 5-day training program allowing us to track the N400 dynamics across learning blocks within and across days. Successful learning was accompanied by an initial frontal N400 that decreased in amplitude across blocks during the first day and shifted to parietal sites during the last training day. In Experiment 2, we replicated our findings with 38 new participants randomly assigned to a consistent learning or an inconsistent learning group. The N400 amplitude modulations that we found, both within and between learning sessions, are taken to reflect the emergence of novel lexical traces even when learning concerns items for which no semantic information is provided. The shift in N400 topography suggests that different N400 neural generators may contribute to specific word learning steps through a balance between domain-general and language-specific mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A response by the authors of the article "Cognitive neuropsychology has been, is, and will be significant to aphasiology," is presented.

Background: In recent years some critical voices have been raised in regard to the significance of cognitive neuropsychology (CNP) to the study of brain and mind. Given the central role of language disorders in CNP research, it is time to consider the relevance of this research approach in aphasiology. Aims: We analyse the main points of criticism raised against the CNP research approach, evaluate the significance of this approach to the study of acquired language disorders, and make some suggestions concerning further development of the field. Main Contribution: The main points of criticism against CNP (reliance on single-case studies; single-minded hunt for dissociations; emptiness of theorising) have been important long-term concerns but do not take into account the fact that, during its history of circa four decades, the CNP approach has diversified. There are thus CNP studies that rely on case series analyses, focus on error analyses rather than mere dissociations, or employ computational modelling rather than the “boxes-and-arrows” models of the mental architecture. The CNP approach to cognition and its disorders is thus applicable to different research questions and theoretical stances, providing experimental rigour to single-case patient studies. With regard to clinical applications in aphasia diagnostics and treatment, the CNP approach provides a richer view on the strengths and weaknesses of a patient's cognitive-linguistic abilities. Conclusions: We believe that CNP case studies continue to be an important source of information for generating hypotheses and providing converging evidence for research on the mind and on the brain. However, there is a need for further research development especially in computational modelling of language processes, their impairments, and recovery. This research is expected to provide further benefit to clinical diagnostics and treatment of aphasia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated reading and writing in two domestic languages (Swedish and Finnish) and one foreign language (English) among multilingual university students with ( n == 20) versus without dyslexia ( n == 20). Our analyses encompassed overall speed and accuracy measures and an in-depth analysis of grapheme--phoneme--grapheme errors and inflectional errors. Dyslexic impairments were most conspicuous in word and sentence segmentation, accuracy in oral text reading, single word writing to dictation and free writing across the three languages, most prominently in English. The writing tasks exhibited significantly higher proportions of phoneme-to-grapheme errors in the dyslexia group, especially in English, and marginal differences in inflectional errors, again discernible in English. The results indicate that language proficiency and orthographic depth modulate the appearance of high-performing multilinguals' dyslexic problems in reading and writing. These problems surfaced most clearly in a less proficient foreign, orthographically opaque language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been claimed that due to their experience in controlling two languages, bilinguals exceed monolinguals in certain executive functions, especially inhibition of task-irrelevant stimuli. Here we investigated the effects of bilingualism on an executive phonological task, namely the forced-attention dichotic listening task with syllabic stimuli. In the standard non-forced (NF) condition, the participants reported all syllables they heard, be it from the right or the left ear. In the forced-right (FR) and forced-left (FL) attention conditions, they had to direct their attention to either the right- or the left-ear stimulus and inhibit information coming to the other ear. We tested Finnish monolinguals and early simultaneous Finnish–Swedish bilinguals from two age groups: (30–50-year-olds and 60–74-year-olds). The results showed that the bilinguals performed better than the monolinguals in the FR and FL conditions. This supports the idea of a bilingual advantage in directing attention and inhibiting task-irrelevant stimuli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-performing adults with compensated dyslexia pose particular challenges to dyslexia diagnostics. We compared the performance of 20 multilingual Finnish university students with suspected dyslexia with 20 age-matched and education-matched controls on an extensive test battery. The battery tapped various aspects of reading, writing, word retrieval, phonological processing and other cognitive functions relevant for dyslexia. Reading and writing were examined in the two domestic languages, Swedish and Finnish. The most prominent group differences in reading and writing emerged on accuracy measures in both languages (reading text aloud, proofreading, writing to dictation, free writing). The dyslexia group also performed less well on speeded segmentation of written input, complex speeded naming and complex phoneme manipulation. The pattern of results fits the phonological deficit hypothesis of dyslexia and indicates the presence of pervasive underlying defects in compensated dyslexia. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here we review behavioral, neuroimaging, and neuropharmacological studies using a word learning task labeled as the Ancient Farming Equipment paradigm. This task has been used to explore the neural correlates of explicit learning and maintenance of new names for novel objects in the native tongue. The main conclusions drawn from these studies are as follows: (a) Retrieval of both the newly learned and familiar names is subserved by predominantly left hemispheric cortical regions; (b) within this network, retrieval of newly learned words can be accomplished in different ways depending on the exact form of training; (c) patient studies indicate that episodic memory mechanisms subserved by hippocampal structures are related to word acquisition rather than to long-term maintenance of newly learned words; (d) explicit learning and maintenance of novel words can be facilitated by neuropharmacological manipulation that boosts the dopaminergic system; and (b) neural events following completed training may predict long-term retention of newly learned words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: How are adult second language learners able to segment words and map them to referents in the new language? The present study explores this unresolved issue by using a new multimodal learning paradigm that tracks the first steps in learning new words and their mappings to visual referents. It encompasses a continuous audiovisual stream in which transitional probability of syllables is the only acoustic cue available to segment the stream into words, and a visual stream of object images that accompanies the novel words. The objects are systematically varied in terms of constancy of word-picture association and meaningfulness. The results indicated good word-referent mapping and word segmentation after short exposure to the audiovisual stream. Mapping words with pictures was more effective when the visual referents were meaningful objects. In word segmentation, the consistency of the word-picture association affected segmentation performance. The effect of associative strength on segmentation performance was most prominent with meaningful objects, albeit associative strength did not interact significantly with meaningfulness. The present results suggest that word segmentation and word-referent mapping are closely related processes: word segmentation is affected by the consistency of the mapping relationship and both segmentation and mapping can be accomplished under the same short exposure. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Using positron emission tomography (PET), we explored the neural correlates of an executive function, dual tasking, in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and in elderly controls. The experiment employed simple auditory and visual tasks that were presented both in isolation and simultaneously to create a task condition requiring enhanced attentional control. Behaviorally, both groups performed well, albeit the patients made more errors on the visual task. The PET analysis focused at prefrontal regions where group differences in task-related activation patterns were expected. During dual task performance, the patients showed attenuated activity in the left inferior frontal region when compared to the controls. This suggests abnormalities in the neural processes underlying attentional control in aMCI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a Finland-Swedish adaptation of the Sweden-Swedish group screening test for dyslexia for adults and young adults DUVAN™ ( Lundberg & Wolff, 2003 ) together with normative data from 143 Finland-Swedish university students. The test is based on the widely held phonological deficit hypothesis of dyslexia and consists of a self-report and five subtests tapping phonological working memory, phonological representation, phonological awareness, and orthographic skill. We describe the test adaptation procedure and show that the internal reliability of the new test version is comparable to the original one. Our results indicate that the language background (Swedish, Finnish, early simultaneous Swedish-Finnish bilingualism) should be taken into account when interpreting the results on the Finland-Swedish DUVAN test. We show that the FS-DUVAN differentiates a group of students with dyslexia diagnosis from normals, and that a low performance on the FS-DUVAN correlates with a positive self-report on familial dyslexia and with a history of special education in school. Finally, we analyze the sensitivity and specificity of the FS-DUVAN for dyslexia among university students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: We present an anomia treatment study using a modified contextual priming (CP) technique for two anomic participants. The reason for the modification attempt is that the most recent studies have indicated that the CP procedure is less effective in the case of impairment to lexical-semantic processes than in the case of phonological deficits (see Martin, Fink, & Laine, 2004a; Martin, Fink, Laine, & Ayala, 2004b; Renvall, Laine, & Martin, 2005). Aims: Our aim is to study the within- and post-treatment effects of a modified CP procedure and especially whether additional semantic tasks can increase benefits from the CP treatment. Methods & Procedures: The treatment was conducted for two participants with acquired anomia: LV has primarily a semantic component underlying her anomia, while JP suffers primarily from a phoneme-sequencing deficit. The CP procedure encompassed repeated cycles of spontaneous naming attempts and repetition of target names using arrays of multiple pictures where the targets were either semantically related or unrelated. Our modification was to add picture-to-word matching and phonological "rhyming syllable identification" with the targets to the training sequence. The treatment was carried out in a single-subject multiple-baseline design consisting of several baseline measurements, treatment sessions along with within-treatment measurements, and a post-treatment measurement 1.5 months later. Outcomes & Results: Both participants showed short-term facilitation of naming target items in all treatment conditions. For LV, post-treatment improvement of naming was statistically significant in the semantic condition irrespective of additional task type, even though the improvement was strongest when the semantic condition was coupled with the additional semantic tasks. In the case of JP, post-treatment improvement was observed in the semantic condition coupled with additional semantic tasks, and in the unrelated condition with both semantic and phonological tasks. No strong evidence of generalisation to untreated items was observed for either of the participants. Conclusions: The modified CP procedure can provide longer-term improvement of naming target items than the CP training without additional tasks in the face of a lexical-semantic deficit. With lexical-semantic disturbance, the semantic context provided the best results. However, the nature of the additional tasks (semantic vs phonological) appeared to be less important for the treatment of target naming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We explored functional brain changes with positron emission tomography (PET) in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) patients and elderly normal controls by employing an episodic memory task that included two successive encoding trials of semantically related word-pairs and final retrieval. Both groups demonstrated significant learning across the two trials. The control group showed predominantly left frontal activity during encoding, and right frontal plus left temporal activity during retrieval. However, the MCI patients recruited partly different brain regions. They failed to activate right frontal and left temporal areas during retrieval, and failed to show any different activation for encoding on the first and second trials, whereas the controls activated a region of posterior cingulate. There was indication of compensatory increases in rCBF of the occipital cortex during incremental learning and the left frontal lobe during retrieval in the patients. These results suggest different episodic memory processing in the MCI group, and a possible over-reliance on semantic processing. Subtle functional changes occur in the pre-Alzheimer brain before there are marked structural or behavioural abnormalities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Picture naming covers the main stages of word production from concept retrieval to articulation. Cortical correlates of picture naming have been characterized with both haemodynamic and neurophysiological methods but the association of specific activation patterns with the hypothesized processing stages remains elusive. Here we used categorization tasks to selectively highlight different components of picture confrontation, from visual analysis (VIS) to semantic (SEM) and phonological access (PHON), and compared these time courses of activation with that obtained during picture naming (NAM). Brain activity was recorded with whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG). Following the initially similar activation patterns in occipital and parietal areas, task effects (stronger activation in NAM/PHON than in SEM/VIS) emerged after 300 ms, in the sustained activation of the left posterior temporal and bilateral inferior frontal cortex, apparently reflecting enhancement of phonological and phonetic/articulatory processing. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: We report preliminary findings on EEG oscillatory correlates of working memory in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer''s disease (AD). Event-related desynchronization (ERD) and synchronization (ERS) of the 1–20 Hz EEG frequencies were studied using wavelet transforms in elderly controls, MCI patients and mild probable AD patients performing an auditory-verbal Sternberg memory task. Behaviourally, the AD patients made more errors than the controls and the MCI group. Statistically significant differences during the encoding of the memory set were found between the controls and the MCI group, such that the latter group showed ERD in the ∼10–20 Hz frequencies. The findings may reflect different, compensatory encoding strategies in MCI. During retrieval, the most obvious differences were observed between the controls and the AD group: the ERD in the ∼7–17 Hz frequencies was absent in the AD group particularly in anterior and left temporal electrode locations. This finding might indicate that AD is associated with deficient lexical-semantic processing during the retrieval phase in working memory tasks. Future studies with larger patient groups are needed to establish the diagnostic value of ERD/ERS patterns in MCI and AD. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

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]

Event-related desynchronization (ERD) and event-related synchronization (ERS) of the 1–20 Hz EEG frequencies were studied using wavelet transforms in young (n = 10, mean age 22) and elderly subjects (n = 10, mean age 65) performing an auditory Sternberg memory task with words as stimuli. In both age groups, encoding of the four-word memory set elicited ERS in the theta and alpha frequency range. Theta ERS, and ERD in the alpha and beta bands were observed during retrieval. During encoding, the elderly showed greater alpha ERS and smaller theta ERS. During retrieval, smaller alpha ERD and theta ERS was found in the elderly subjects. Also, in the elderly, beta ERD was elicited in the late time window during retrieval. The statistically significant differences between the age groups were more marked during retrieval than during encoding. The results indicate that although the two groups performed equally well behaviorally in the task and the elderly subjects were cognitively intact, normal aging affects oscillatory theta, alpha and beta responses particularly during retrieval from working memory. The ERD/ERS patterns of the elderly resemble those of children found in a recent study, which might suggest that those memory-related brain processes that evolve later in childhood are the first to be affected in older age. [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 describe a study where a specific treatment method for word-finding difficulty (so-called contextual priming technique, which combines massive repetition priming with semantic priming) was applied with three chronic left hemisphere-damaged aphasics. Both before and after treatment, which focused on naming of a series of pictures, naming-related brain activity was measured by magnetoencephalography (MEG). Due to its excellent temporal resolution and good spatial resolution, we were able to track treatment-induced changes in cortical activity. All three subjects showed improved naming of the trained items. In all subjects, a single source area, located in the left inferior parietal lobe, close to the lesioned area, displayed statistically significant training-induced changes. This effect was of long latency as it started 300-600 msec after picture presentation. The change in activation was specific to training, as it could not be accounted for by variation of cortical dynamics associated with increased proportion of correct answers. Our interpretation is that the training effect reflects more effective phonological encoding and storage of the trained items through the engagement of a left hemispheric word-learning system. This is in line with recent functional imaging studies, which have linked left inferior parietal lobe activity to the phonological storage component of the verbal working memory, as well as with theoretical arguments stating that the primary role of the phonological loop is to acquire new words. Finally, the MEG results showed no evidence of increased right hemisphere participation following training, supporting the view that restoration of language-related networks in the damaged left hemisphere is crucial for anomia recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a multiple-baseline single-case treatment study on anomia. Treatment of anomic person with a long-standing anomia with contextual priming; Facilitation of the target naming in all contextual conditions.

We present a cross-sectional, population-based neuropsychological study of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients identified within Tampere University Hospital district, Finland with 440,000 inhabitants. patients with definite SLE in the age range of 16-65 years (n+46) and matched controls (n=46) underwent neurological examination and comprehensive neuropsychological testing. On the basis of medical examination, the SLE patients were divided into neuropsychiatric (MP +; n=15) and nonneuropsychiatric (NP-;n=31) cases. The neuropsychological test results revealed more prevalent cognitive impairment in the NP+ patients, indicating that this subgroup mostly accounts for neuropsychological changes in SLE. Most characteristic changes in NP+ were observed in domains of memory, psychomotor speed, and complex attention. This suggests nonspecific CNS Involvement, which is in line with neurological manifestations of the disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To study neural correlates of category-specific processing, we measured relative cerebral blood flow changes by PET (oxygen-15) in young healthy subjects while they produced exemplars of animals or artefacts to written subcategory prompts. In comparison to a baseline (word reading), production of animal names elicited increased rCBF in the right inferior temporal region. This fits to recent lesion data on semantic impairment with animals, as well as imaging data on object recognition and semantic retrieval. In our study, it may represent an involvement of visual imagery in generation of animal names. In contrast, production of artefact names elicited increased rCBF in frontoparietal regions previously related to attention and mental effort. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study explores the role of morphology in vocabulary knowledge of 3[sup rd] and 6[sup th] grade Finnish elementary school children. In a word definition task, children from both grades performed overall better on derived words than on monomorphemic words. However, the results were modified by the factors Frequency and Productivity. Most strikingly, performance on monomorphemic words was disproportionately weaker than on derived words at the low frequency range. At the high-frequency range, derived words with low-productive suffixes yielded poorest performance. We partly make an appeal to the lexical-statistical properties of the Finnish language to explain the interaction of Frequency and Word Structure. At any rate, the results suggest that Finnish elementary school children benefit significantly from utilizing morphology in determining word meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Magnetoencephalographic (MEG) changes in cortical activity were studied in a chronic Finnish-speaking deep dyslexic patient during single-word and sentence reading. It has been hypothesized that in deep dyslexia, written word recognition and its lexical-semantic analysis are subserved by the intact right hemisphere. However, in our patient, as well as in most nonimpaired readers, lexical-semantic processing as measured by sentence-final semantic-incongruency detection was related to the left superior-temporal cortex activation. Activations around this same cortical area could be identified in single-word reading as well. Another factor relevant to deep dyslexic reading, the morphological complexity of the presented words, was also studied. The effect of morphology was observed only during the preparation for oral output. By performing repeated recordings 1 year apart, we were able to document significant variability in both the spontaneous activity and the evoked responses in the lesioned left hemisphere even though at the behavioural level, the patient's performance was stable. The observed variability emphasizes the importance of estimating consistency of brain activity both within and between measurements in brain-damaged individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hemispheric asymmetries in activation and integration of semantic information were studied in the normal brain. In Experiment 1, categorically related primes and targets (HAND-NOSE) were presented to the left visual field (LVF) or to the right visual field (RVF) in a primed lexical decision task. The ratio of nonword targets in relation to all unrelated targets in the stimulus lists was manipulated. It was assumed that at the low nonword ratio the priming effects would primarily tap automatic semantic processing. At the higher ratio, priming would be generated predominantly by postlexical meaning integration or semantic matching. The results revealed automatic priming in the RVF/left hemisphere and postlexical priming in the LVF/right hemisphere. Experiment 2 measured automatic categorical activation with the lower nonword ratio and by presenting primes at the centre of the field. Bilateral priming was observed. It is suggested that the left hemisphere automatically activates categorically related word meanings in both hemispheres. The right hemisphere contributes by maintaining the meanings active and by retrospectively integrating them to the context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We welcome this opportunity to discuss further our study (Koivisto & Laine, 2000, this issue) and the theoretical conclusions we presented as a model on hemispheric mechanisms in semantic processing. The model put forth claims that when semantic priming occurs within the left visual field/right hemisphere (LVF/RH), it is attributable to postlexical semantic integration, and when priming can be attributed to automatic semantic activation, it only occurs within the right visual field/left hemisphere (RVF/LH). Chiarello (2000, this issue) argues in her commentary that (1) our data supporting this account are weak, (2) our model cannot accommodate the data, and (3) the support for our account from prior literature is not as strong as we claimed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the effects of contextual priming on picture naming in a severely anomic patient suffering from Wernicke's aphasia. The contextual priming method attempts to facilitate impaired lexical retrieval with massive repetition priming of target names, coupled with manipulation of relationships among pictures to-be-named (semantic, phonological and unrelated). We were interested in comparing our patient's results with those of a previously reported case whose underlying mechanisms of anomia were different (Laine and Martin 1996). Both case studies show similar contextual effects on naming error patterns, confirming that the present method has the potential of activating multiple lexical entries in aphasics. At the same time, the two patients show different contextual effects on their rates of correct responses. In particular, only the present case is facilitated by a phonologically related context in naming. The implication for treatment studies is that it is useful to match priming treatments to the deficit that underlies word retrieval difficulty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: We sought to investigate the differential impact of EVAR (endovascular aneurysm repair) vis-à-vis OSR (open surgical repair) on ruptured AAA (abdominal aortic aneurysm) mortality by sex and geographically. Methods: We performed a retrospective study of administrative data on EVAR from state statistical agencies, vascular registries, and academic publications, as well as ruptured AAA mortality rates from the World Health Organization for 14 14 states across Australasia, East Asia, Europe, and North America. Results: Between 2011–2016, the proportion of treatment of ruptured AAAs by EVAR increased from 26.1 to 43.8 percent among females, and from 25.7 to 41.2 percent among males, and age-adjusted ruptured AAA mortality rates fell from 12.62 to 9.50 per million among females, and from 34.14 to 26.54 per million among males. The association of EVAR with reduced mortality was more than three times larger (2.2 vis-à-vis 0.6 percent of prevalence per 10 percentage point increase in EVAR) among females than males. The association of EVAR with reduced mortality was substantially larger (1.7 vis-à-vis 1.1 percent of prevalence per 10 percentage point increase in EVAR) among East Asian states than European+ states. Conclusions: The increasing adoption of EVAR coincided with a decrease in ruptured AAA mortality. The relationship between EVAR and mortality was more pronounced among females than males, and in East Asian than European+ states. Sex and ethnic heterogeneity should be further investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the nature of the morpheme-based lexical access route and its relation to the full-form route by studying recognition of written Finnish nouns. Elicitation of a processing cost by true case-inflection; Observation of a processing cost for morphologically ambiguous nouns and for pseudoambiguous nouns; Inhibitory nature of the relationship between the two lexical access routes.

Two hypotheses concerning the meaning analysis of written inflected words were tested: Either analysis is governed by the stem, or the stem and the suffix receive simultaneous semantic analysis. The method involved a new semantic decision (picture-written word matching) paradigm utilizing the spatial information carried by Finnish locative case endings. Results supported the first hypothesis. In contrast to certain claims in the recent morphological processing literature, suffix-related semantic information is secondary to the stem and it becomes available later than stem-related semantic information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In two lateralized visual lexical decision experiments conducted with normal subjects, we studied hemispheric performance in the recognition of case-inflected Finnish nouns. Previous research employing mainly locative cases has indicated that such noun forms undergo morphological decomposition. The present experiments extend this finding to syntactic cases by showing that nouns with partitive or genitive endings take longer to recognize and elicit more errors than otherwise comparable monomorphemic nominative singular nouns. Morpheme-based recognition of all case-inflected forms would be a particularly appropriate solution for mental lexicon in highly inflecting languages like Finnish: it saves storage space and enables fast recognition of inflected forms not encountered before. In real words, morphological structure did not interact with visual field. However, particularly demanding, morphologically decomposable nonwords elicited more errors in the left visual field/right hemisphere than did nondecomposable nonwords. Our results suggest that at least in Finnish, both hemispheres are capable of morpheme-based access, but this mechanism is more accurate in the left than in the right hemisphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hypotheses for two pervasive phonological features of Finnish were assessed through slips of the tongue. Psycholinguistic (external) evidence supporting these hypotheses has until now been gained solely from language games (secret languages). In general, the language game data have shown that Finnish word-initial syllables are segmented after the first vowel segment (CV hypothesis) and that the word forms created by the games conform to the palatal vowel harmony of the language (naturalness of harmony hypothesis). In the present study we seek to determine whether similar evidence is to be found from spontaneous slips of the tongue. This search is motivated by the fact that language games rely on principles that are different from those of subdoxastic input/output representations and processes which should be the focus of a linguist's attention. In spite of the differences in the causal mechanisms between the data-sources compared, our analyses of three independent slip corpora support the view that the onset plus the first nuclear segment (i.e. CV) form a word-initial subsyllabic unit in Finnish. Moreover, the palatal harmony is shown to be persistent in slips as well as in language games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors respond on several commentaries by Friedemann Pulvermüller on their paper "Cognitive neuropsychology has been, is, and will be significant to aphasiology." Pulvermüller opines that cognitive neuropsychology (CNP) should be relevant to cognitive neuroscience only if it includes neurobiological orientation at the theoretical level. However, the authors note that CNP remains relevant and can be applied to the treatment of language disorders.

Selective attention-related top-down modulation plays a significant role in separating relevant speech from irrelevant background speech when vocal attributes separating concurrent speakers are small and continuously evolving. Electrophysiological studies have shown that such top-down modulation enhances neural tracking of attended speech. Yet, the specific cortical regions involved remain unclear due to the limited spatial resolution of most electrophysiological techniques. To overcome such limitations, we collected both electroencephalography (EEG) (high temporal resolution) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) (high spatial resolution), while human participants selectively attended to speakers in audiovisual scenes containing overlapping cocktail party speech. To utilise the advantages of the respective techniques, we analysed neural tracking of speech using the EEG data and performed representational dissimilarity-based EEG-fMRI fusion. We observed that attention enhanced neural tracking and modulated EEG correlates throughout the latencies studied. Further, attention-related enhancement of neural tracking fluctuated in predictable temporal profiles. We discuss how such temporal dynamics could arise from a combination of interactions between attention and prediction as well as plastic properties of the auditory cortex. EEG-fMRI fusion revealed attention-related iterative feedforward-feedback loops between hierarchically organised nodes of the ventral auditory object related processing stream. Our findings support models where attention facilitates dynamic neural changes in the auditory cortex, ultimately aiding discrimination of relevant sounds from irrelevant ones while conserving neural resources. Selective attention enables separation of overlapping speech in noisy environments. This study shows that attention triggers bidirectional informational flow from sensory regions to regions associated with semantic, syntactic and executive functions during active processing of cocktail-party speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mnemonic strategies can facilitate working memory performance, but our knowledge on strategy use as a function of task characteristics remains limited. We examined self-reported strategy use in several working memory tasks with pretest data from two large-scale online training experiments. A three-level measure of strategy sophistication (no strategy, maintenance, manipulation) was coded based on participants' open-ended strategy reports. A considerable portion of participants reported some memory strategy, and strategy sophistication was associated with objective task performance. We found a consistent effect of stimulus type: verbal stimuli (letters or digits) elicited higher strategy sophistication than nonverbal ones (colours or spatial positions). In contrast, the association between task paradigm and strategy sophistication was less consistent in the two experiments. The present results highlight the importance of self-generated strategies in understanding individual differences in working memory performance and the role of stimulus characteristics as one of the task-related determinants of strategy use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: We studied a sample of cognitively unimpaired individuals, with and without subjective cognitive decline (SCD), in order to investigate accelerated long-term forgetting (ALF) and to explore the relationships between objective and subjective cognitive performance and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) Alzheimer's disease (AD) biomarkers.Methods: Fifty-two individuals were included and SCD was quantified through the Subjective Cognitive Decline Questionnaire (SCD-Q), using its validated cutoff to classify participants as Low SCD-Q (n = 21) or High SCD-Q (n = 31). These groups were further subdivided according to the presence or absence of abnormal levels of CSF Aβ42 . Objective cognitive performance was assessed with the Ancient Farming Equipment Test (AFE-T), a new highly-demanding test that calls for acquisition and retention of novel object/name pairs and allows measuring ALF over a 6-month period.Results: The High SCD-Q group showed a significantly higher free forgetting rate at 3 months compared to the Low SCD-Q (F [1,44] = 4.72; p < 0.05). When stratifying by amyloid status, High SCD-Q/Aβ+ showed a significantly lower performance than High SCD-Q/Aβ-on the final free and cued learning scores (F [1,27] = 6.44, p < 0.05 and F [1,27] = 7.51, p < 0.05, respectively), the 1-week free and cued recall (F [1,24] = 4.49; p < 0.05 and F [1,24] = 7.10; p < 0.01, respectively), the 1-week cued forgetting rate (F [1,24] = 5.13; p < 0.05), and the 3-month cued recall (F [1,24] = 4.27; p < 0.05). Linear regression analyses showed that higher SCD-Q scores were associated with higher forgetting rates on the AFE-T (β = -0.212; p < 0.05).Conclusions: It is possible to detect ALF in individuals with high SCD ratings, appearing especially in those with abnormal CSF Aβ42 levels. Both in research and the clinical field, there is an increasing need of using more demanding cognitive measures, such as the AFE-T, for identifying and tracking the earliest cognitive changes in these populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working memory (WM) training with the N-Back task has been argued to improve cognitive capacity and general cognitive abilities (the Capacity Hypothesis of training), although several studies have shown little or no evidence for such improvements beyond tasks that are very similar to the trained task. Laine et al. demonstrated that instructing young adult participants to use a specific visualisation strategy for N-back training resulted in clear, generalised benefits from only 30 min of training (Strategy Mediation Hypothesis of training). Here, we report a systematic replication and extension of the Laine et al. study, by administering 60 younger and 60 older participants a set of WM tasks before and after a 30-min N-back training session. Half the participants were instructed to use a visualisation strategy, the others received no instruction. The pre-post test battery encompassed a criterion task (digit N-back), two untrained tasks N-back tasks (letters and colours), and three structurally different WM tasks. The instructed visualisation strategy significantly boosted at least some measures of N-back performance in participants of both age groups, although the strategy generally appeared more difficult to implement and less beneficial for older adults. However, the strategy did not improve performance on structurally different WM tasks. We also found significant associations between N-back performance and the type and level of detail of self-generated strategies in the uninstructed participants, as well as age group differences in reported strategy types. WM performance appeared to partly reflect the application of strategies, and Strategy Mediation should be considered to understand the mechanisms of WM training. Claims of efficient training should demonstrate useful improvement beyond task-specific strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The putative bilingual executive advantage has been argued to stem from lifelong experience with executively demanding language behaviors, such as switching between the two languages. However, studies testing for possible associations between language switching frequency and EF in bilinguals have yielded inconsistent results. One reason for this could lie in the methods used that have evaluated the frequency and type of language switches with retrospective self-reports, as well as in problems in reliability and convergent validity of the executive tasks. By using Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) as a reference point for self-reports of language switches, we examined the validity of general retrospective self-reports of language switching. Additionally, we examined associations between language switching and EF using multilevel models. Our results indicated that the commonly used retrospective self-reports of language switching may lack convergent validity. However, we found tentative evidence that contextual language switches, assessed with EMA, may be associated with better inhibitory control, set shifting, and working memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recently developed virtual reality task, EPELI (Executive Performance in Everyday LIving), quantifies goal-directed behavior in naturalistic conditions. Participants navigate a virtual apartment, performing household chores given by a virtual character. EPELI aims to tap attention, executive function, and prospective memory. To ensure its applicability to further research and clinical work and to study its relationship to relevant background factors, we examined several key properties of EPELI in 77 typically developing 9–13-year-old children. These included EPELI's internal consistency, age and gender differences, sensitivity to gaming experience, head-mounted display (HMD) type, and verbal recall ability, as well as its relationships with parent-rated everyday executive problems. Of the eight EPELI measures, the following six showed acceptable internal consistency: task and navigation efficacy, number of correctly performed tasks and overall actions, time monitoring, and controller movement. Some measures were associated with age, gender, or verbal encoding ability. Moreover, EPELI performance was associated with parent-rated everyday executive problems. There were no significant associations of gaming background, task familiarity, or HMD type with the EPELI measures. These results attest to the reliability and ecological validity of this new virtual reality tool for the assessment of attention, executive functions, and prospective memory in children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present meta-analytic study examined brain activation changes following working memory (WM) training, a form of cognitive training that has attracted considerable interest. Comparisons with perceptual-motor (PM) learning revealed that WM training engages domain-general large-scale networks for learning encompassing the dorsal attention and salience networks, sensory areas, and striatum. Also the dynamics of the training-induced brain activation changes within these networks showed a high overlap between WM and PM training. The distinguishing feature for WM training was the consistent modulation of the dorso- and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC/VLPFC) activity. The strongest candidate for mediating transfer to similar untrained WM tasks was the frontostriatal system, showing higher striatal and VLPFC activations, and lower DLPFC activations after training. Modulation of transfer-related areas occurred mostly with longer training periods. Overall, our findings place WM training effects into a general perception-action cycle, where some modulations may depend on the specific cognitive demands of a training task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The diagnosis of ADHD is based on real-life attentional-executive deficits, but they are harder to detect in adults than in children and objective quantitative measures reflecting these everyday problems are lacking. We developed an online version of EPELI 3D videogame for naturalistic and scalable assessment of goal-directed action and prospective memory in adult ADHD. In EPELI, participants perform instructed everyday chores in a virtual apartment from memory. Our pre-registered hypothesis predicted weaker EPELI performances in adult ADHD compared to controls. The sample comprised 112 adults with ADHD and 255 neurotypical controls comparable in age (mean 31, SD = 8 years), gender distribution (71% females) and educational level. Using web-browser, the participants performed EPELI and other cognitive tasks, including Conner's Continuous Performance Test (CPT). They also filled out questionnaires probing everyday executive performance and kept a 5-day diary of everyday prospective memory errors. Self-reported strategy use in the EPELI game was also examined. The ADHD participants' self-ratings indicated clearly more everyday executive problems than in the controls. Differences in the EPELI game were mostly seen in the ADHD participants' higher rates of task-irrelevant actions. Gender differences and a group × gender interaction was found in the number of correctly performed tasks, indicating poorer performance particularly in ADHD males. Discriminant validity of EPELI was similar to CPT. Strategy use strongly predicted EPELI performance in both groups. The results demonstrate the feasibility of EPELI for online assessment and highlight the role of impulsivity as a distinctive everyday life problem in adult ADHD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Verbal short-term memory (STM) deficits are associated with language processing impairments in people with aphasia. Importantly, the integrity of STM can predict word learning ability and anomia therapy gains in aphasia. While the recruitment of perilesional and contralesional homologous brain regions has been proposed as a possible mechanism for aphasia recovery, little is known about the white-matter pathways that support verbal STM in post-stroke aphasia. Here, we investigated the relationships between the language-related white matter tracts and verbal STM ability in aphasia. Nineteen participants with post-stroke chronic aphasia completed a subset of verbal STM subtests of the TALSA battery including nonword repetition (phonological STM), pointing span (lexical-semantic STM without language output) and repetition span tasks (lexical-semantic STM with language output). Using a manual deterministic tractography approach, we investigated the micro- and macrostructural properties of the structural language network. Next, we assessed the relationships between individually extracted tract values and verbal STM scores. We found significant correlations between volume measures of the right Uncinate Fasciculus and all three verbal STM scores, with the association between the right UF volume and nonword repetition being the strongest one. These findings suggest that the integrity of the right UF is associated with phonological and lexical-semantic verbal STM ability in aphasia and highlight the potential compensatory role of right-sided ventral white matter language tracts in supporting verbal STM after aphasia-inducing left hemisphere insult. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]