Association between parental separation, childhood trauma, neuroticism, and depression: a case control study.

Background: Parental separation has been suggested to be associated with depression development in offspring. The new family constellation subsequent to separation could be associated with elevated scores of childhood trauma, shaping more emotionally instable personalities. This could ultimately be a risk factor for mood disorders and particularly the development of depression in life. Methods: To test this hypothesis, we investigated the associations between parental separation, childhood trauma (CTQ) and personality (NEO-FFI) in a sample of N = 119 patients diagnosed with depression and N = 119 age and sex matched healthy controls. Results: While parental separation was associated with elevated scores of childhood trauma, there was no association between parental separation and Neuroticism. Furthermore, in a logistic regression analysis, Neuroticism and childhood trauma were found to be significant predictors for depression diagnosis (yes/no), but not parental separation (yes/no). Conclusion: Parental separation might be associated with depression only indirectly via childhood trauma. Childhood trauma or Neuroticism seem more directly related to the development of depression. However, it is worthwhile to install prevention programs helping parents and children to cope with parental separation in order to minimize the impact of separation and associated stressors.

T-complex measures in bilingual Spanish-English and Turkish-German children and monolingual peers.

BACKGROUND: Lateral temporal neural measures (Na and T-complex Ta and Tb) of the auditory evoked potential (AEP) index maturation of auditory/speech processing. These measures are also sensitive to language experience in adults. This paper examined neural responses to a vowel sound at temporal electrodes in four- to five-year-old Spanish-English bilinguals and English monolinguals and in five- to six-year-old Turkish-German bilinguals and German monolinguals. The goal was to determine whether obligatory AEPs at temporal electrode sites were modulated by language experience. Language experience was defined in terms of monolingual versus bilingual status as well as the amount and quality of the bilingual language experience. METHOD: AEPs were recorded at left and right temporal electrode sites to a 250-ms vowel [Ɛ] from 20 monolingual (American)-English and 18 Spanish-English children from New York City, and from 11 Turkish-German and 13 monolingual German children from Ulm, Germany. Language background information and standardized verbal and non-verbal test scores were obtained for the children. RESULTS: The results revealed differences in temporal AEPs (Na and Ta of the T-complex) between monolingual and bilingual children. Specifically, bilingual children showed smaller and/or later peak amplitudes than the monolingual groups. Ta-amplitude distinguished monolingual and bilingual children best at right electrode sites for both the German and American groups. Amount of experience and type of experience with the target language (English and German) influenced processing. CONCLUSIONS: The finding of reduced amplitudes at the Ta latency for bilingual compared to monolingual children indicates that language specific experience, and not simply maturational factors, influences development of the neural processes underlying the Ta AEP, and suggests that lateral temporal cortex has an important role in language-specific speech perception development.

Suggestion-Induced Modulation of Semantic Priming during Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging during a primed visual lexical decision task, we investigated the neural and functional mechanisms underlying modulations of semantic word processing through hypnotic suggestions aimed at altering lexical processing of primes. The priming task was to discriminate between target words and pseudowords presented 200 ms after the prime word which was semantically related or unrelated to the target. In a counterbalanced study design, each participant performed the task once at normal wakefulness and once after the administration of hypnotic suggestions to perceive the prime as a meaningless symbol of a foreign language. Neural correlates of priming were defined as significantly lower activations upon semantically related compared to unrelated trials. We found significant suggestive treatment-induced reductions in neural priming, albeit irrespective of the degree of suggestibility. Neural priming was attenuated upon suggestive treatment compared with normal wakefulness in brain regions supporting automatic (fusiform gyrus) and controlled semantic processing (superior and middle temporal gyri, pre- and postcentral gyri, and supplementary motor area). Hence, suggestions reduced semantic word processing by conjointly dampening both automatic and strategic semantic processes.

Unconscious automatic brain activation of acoustic and action-related conceptual features during masked repetition priming.

Classical theories of semantic memory assume that concepts are represented in a unitary amodal memory system. In challenging this classical view, pure or hybrid modality-specific theories propose that conceptual representations are grounded in the sensory-motor brain areas, which typically process sensory and action-related information. Although neuroimaging studies provided evidence for a functional-anatomical link between conceptual processing of sensory or action-related features and the sensory-motor brain systems, it has been argued that aspects of such sensory-motor activation may not directly reflect conceptual processing but rather strategic imagery or postconceptual elaboration. In the present ERP study, we investigated masked effects of acoustic and action-related conceptual features to probe unconscious automatic conceptual processing in isolation. Subliminal feature-specific ERP effects at frontocentral electrodes were observed, which differed with regard to polarity, topography, and underlying brain electrical sources in congruency with earlier findings under conscious viewing conditions. These findings suggest that conceptual acoustic and action representations can also be unconsciously accessed, thereby excluding any postconceptual strategic processes. This study therefore further substantiates a grounding of conceptual and semantic processing in action and perception.

Losing the sound of concepts: damage to auditory association cortex impairs the processing of sound-related concepts.

Conceptual knowledge is classically supposed to be abstract and represented in an amodal unitary system, distinct from the sensory and motor brain systems. A more recent embodiment view of conceptual knowledge, however, proposes that concepts are grounded in distributed modality-specific brain areas which typically process sensory or action-related object information. Recent neuroimaging evidence suggested the significance of left auditory association cortex encompassing posterior superior and middle temporal gyrus in coding conceptual sound features of everyday objects. However, a causal role of this region in processing conceptual sound information has yet to be established. Here we had the unique chance to investigate a patient, JR, with a focal lesion in left posterior superior and middle temporal gyrus. To test the necessity of this region in conceptual and perceptual processing of sound information we administered four different experimental tasks to JR: Visual word recognition, category fluency, sound recognition and voice classification. Compared with a matched control group, patient JR was consistently impaired in conceptual processing of sound-related everyday objects (e.g., "bell"), while performance for non-sound-related everyday objects (e.g., "armchair"), animals, whether they typically produce sounds (e.g., "frog") or not (e.g., "tortoise"), and musical instruments (e.g., "guitar") was intact. An analogous deficit pattern in JR was also obtained for perceptual recognition of the corresponding sounds. Hence, damage to left auditory association cortex specifically impairs perceptual and conceptual processing of sounds from everyday objects. In support of modality-specific theories, these findings strongly evidence the necessity of auditory association cortex in coding sound-related conceptual information.

Dissociating the representation of action- and sound-related concepts in middle temporal cortex.

Modality-specific models of conceptual memory propose close links between concepts and the sensory-motor systems. Neuroimaging studies found, in different subject groups, that action-related and sound-related concepts activated different parts of posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG), suggesting a modality-specific representation of conceptual features. However, as these different parts of pMTG are close to each other, it is possible that the observed anatomical difference is merely related to interindividual variability. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we now investigated within the same participant group a possible conceptual feature-specific organization in pMTG. Participants performed lexical decisions on sound-related (e.g., telephone) and action-related (hammer) words. Sound words elicited higher activity in anterior pMTG adjacent to auditory association cortex, but action-related words did so in posterior pMTG close to motion sensitive areas. These results confirm distinct conceptual representations of sound and action in pMTG, just adjacent to the respective modality-specific cortices.

The sound of concepts: four markers for a link between auditory and conceptual brain systems.

Traditionally, concepts are conceived as abstract mental entities distinct from perceptual or motor brain systems. However, recent results let assume modality-specific representations of concepts. The ultimate test for grounding concepts in perception requires the fulfillment of the following four markers: conceptual processing during (1) an implicit task should activate (2) a perceptual region (3) rapidly and (4) selectively. Here, we show using functional magnetic resonance imaging and recordings of event-related potentials, that acoustic conceptual features recruit auditory brain areas even when implicitly presented through visual words. Fulfilling the four markers, the findings of our study unequivocally link the auditory and conceptual brain systems: recognition of words denoting objects, for which acoustic features are highly relevant (e.g.,"telephone"), ignited cell assemblies in posterior superior and middle temporal gyri (pSTG/MTG) within 150 ms that were also activated by sound perception. Importantly, activity within a cluster of pSTG/MTG increased selectively as a function of acoustic, but not of visual and action-related feature relevance. The implicitness of the conceptual task, the selective modulation of left pSTG/MTG activity by acoustic feature relevance, the early onset of this activity at 150 ms and its anatomical overlap with perceptual sound processing are four markers for a modality-specific representation of auditory conceptual features in left pSTG/MTG. Our results therefore provide the first direct evidence for a link between perceptual and conceptual acoustic processing. They demonstrate that access to concepts involves a partial reinstatement of brain activity during the perception of objects.

Phonological deficit in school children is reflected in the Mismatch Negativity.

Deficits in processing of auditory stimuli are known to play an important role in the aetiology of dyslexia. To specify the auditory deficit in children at risk for dyslexia, 19 children with a phonological deficit and 15 controls were tested using the mismatch negativity event-related potential, which reflects preattentive auditory processing. Children with a phonological deficit, not yet suffering from dyslexia, had similar mismatch negativity patterns to dyslexics. The deficit was speech specific, because there were significant group differences only with syllables but not with pure tones.

A holistic account of the own-race effect in face recognition: evidence from a cross-cultural study.

A robust finding in the cross-cultural research is that people's memories for faces of their own race are superior to their memories for other-race faces. However, the mechanisms underlying the own-race effect have not been well defined. In this study, a holistic explanation was examined in which Caucasian and Asian participants were asked to recognize features of Caucasian and Asian faces presented in isolation and in the whole face. The main finding was that Caucasian participants recognized own-race faces more holistically than Asian faces whereas Asian participants demonstrated holistic recognition for both own-race and other-race faces. The differences in holistic recognition between Caucasian and Asian participants mirrored differences in their relative experience with own-race and other-race faces. These results suggest that the own-race effect may arise from the holistic recognition of faces from a highly familiar racial group.