Asymmetric activation of the anterior cerebral cortex in recipients of IRECA: preliminary evidence for the energetic effects of an intention-based biofield treatment modality on human neurophysiology.

OBJECTIVES: Neurophysiologic studies of mindfulness link the health benefits of meditation to activation of the left-anterior cerebral cortex. The similarity and functional importance of intention and attentional stance in meditative and biofield therapeutic practices suggest that modulation of recipient anterior asymmetric activation may mediate the energetic effects of intention-based biofield treatments as well. The aim of the current study was to test this hypothesis by using a treatment modality known as IRECA (Istituto di Ricerca sull'Energia Cosmica Applicata). DESIGN: Participants' electroencephalograms (EEG) were recorded over a 5-minute recovery period (subdivided into three 100-second intervals) while participants received genuine IRECA, placebo treatment, or no treatment, after completion of a cognitively demanding task. PARTICIPANTS: 21 undergraduate students (3 men and 18 women; mean age, 22.1 years). All were right-handed and none had a history of neurologic or psychological impairment. OUTCOME MEASURES: (1) Alpha Asymmetry Index (AAI), a standard measure of anterior asymmetric activation of the cerebral cortex, defined as the average right hemisphere minus left hemisphere log alpha power of EEG recordings for homologous pairs of electrodes in frontal and prefrontal regions; (2) self-report measures of state anxiety obtained at baseline, before treatment, and after treatment, using a short form of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. RESULTS: In line with predictions, recipients of IRECA showed enhanced left-anterior activation of the cerebral cortex relative to placebo and no-treatment controls (as indicated by significantly higher and significantly positive AAI scores) during the first 100 seconds of treatment, and they reported greater overall reduction in state anxiety relative to baseline measures. CONCLUSIONS: The current study provides preliminary supporting evidence for an intention-based biofield therapeutic modality offsetting the negative effects of stress via sympathetic activation of recipients' left-anterior cerebral cortex.

Exploring modality switching effects in negated sentences: further evidence for grounded representations.

Theories of embodied cognition (e.g., Perceptual Symbol Systems Theory; Barsalou, 1999, 2009) suggest that modality specific simulations underlie the representation of concepts. Supporting evidence comes from modality switch costs: participants are slower to verify a property in one modality (e.g., auditory, BLENDER-loud) after verifying a property in a different modality (e.g., gustatory, CRANBERRIES-tart) compared to the same modality (e.g., LEAVES-rustling, Pecher et al., 2003). Similarly, modality switching costs lead to a modulation of the N400 effect in event-related potentials (ERPs; Collins et al., 2011; Hald et al., 2011). This effect of modality switching has also been shown to interact with the veracity of the sentence (Hald et al., 2011). The current ERP study further explores the role of modality match/mismatch on the processing of veracity as well as negation (sentences containing "not"). Our results indicate a modulation in the ERP based on modality and veracity, plus an interaction. The evidence supports the idea that modality specific simulations occur during language processing, and furthermore suggest that these simulations alter the processing of negation.

Switching Modalities in A Sentence Verification Task: ERP Evidence for Embodied Language Processing.

In an event related potential (ERP) experiment using written language materials only, we investigated a potential modulation of the N400 by the modality switch effect. The modality switch effect occurs when a first sentence, describing a fact grounded in one modality, is followed by a second sentence describing a second fact grounded in a different modality. For example, "A cellar is dark" (visual), was preceded by either another visual property "Ham is pink" or by a tactile property "A mitten is soft." We also investigated whether the modality switch effect occurs for false sentences ("A cellar is light"). We found that, for true sentences, the ERP at the critical word "dark" elicited a significantly greater frontal, early N400-like effect (270-370 ms) when there was a modality mismatch than when there was a modality-match. This pattern was not found for the critical word "light" in false sentences. Results similar to the frontal negativity were obtained in a late time window (500-700 ms). The obtained ERP effect is similar to one previously obtained for pictures. We conclude that in this paradigm we obtained fast access to conceptual properties for modality-matched pairs, which leads to embodiment effects similar to those previously obtained with pictorial stimuli.

Evaluation of a novel technique for assessing speech discrimination in children.

Methods used to assess children's speech perception and recognition in the clinical setting are out of step with current methods used to investigate these experimentally. Traditional methods of assessing speech discrimination, such as picture pointing, yield accuracy scores which may fail to detect subtle perceptual difficulties. This paper will report a novel method of assessing speech input processing that uses measurement of children's eye movements to provide information on speed and confidence as well as accuracy in discriminating phonological contrasts. Participants were typically developing children aged 2-7 years. Pairs of pictures representing auditory minimal pairs which varied in type and degree of phonological contrast were presented on a computer screen while the child heard a word matching one of these pictures. The child's eye movements in response to these stimuli were videorecorded for subsequent analysis of duration and direction of gaze. The effects of age and stimulus type on eye gaze were examined. The results were compared with those of a traditional picture pointing task using the same stimuli. The informativeness of the novel technique is evaluated on the basis of the findings.

The interaction of discourse context and world knowledge in online sentence comprehension. Evidence from the N400.

In an ERP experiment we investigated how the recruitment and integration of world knowledge information relate to the integration of information within a current discourse context. Participants were presented with short discourse contexts which were followed by a sentence that contained a critical word that was correct or incorrect based on general world knowledge and the supporting discourse context, or was more or less acceptable based on the combination of general world knowledge and the specific local discourse context. Relative to the critical word in the correct world knowledge sentences following a neutral discourse, all other critical words elicited an N400 effect that began at about 300 ms after word onset. However, the magnitude of the N400 effect varied in a way that suggests an interaction between world knowledge and discourse context. The results indicate that both world knowledge and discourse context have an effect on sentence interpretation, but neither overrides the other.

The on-line study of sentence comprehension: an examination of dual task paradigms.

This paper presents three studies which examine the susceptibility of sentence comprehension to intrusion by extra-sentential probe words in two on-line dual-task techniques commonly used to study sentence processing: the cross-modal lexical priming paradigm and the unimodal all-visual lexical priming paradigm. It provides both a general review and a direct empirical examination of the effects of task-demand in the on-line study of sentence comprehension. In all three studies, sentential materials were presented to participants together with a target probe word which constituted either a better or a worse continuation of the sentence at a point at which it was presented. Materials were identical for all three studies. The manner of presentation of the sentence materials was, however, manipulated; presentation was either visual, auditory (normal rate) or auditory (slow rate). The results demonstrate that a technique in which a visual target probe interrupts ongoing sentence processing (such as occurs in unimodal visual presentation and in very slow auditory sentence presentation) encourages the integration of the probe word into the on-going sentence. Thus, when using such 'sentence interrupting' techniques, additional care to equate probes is necessary. Importantly, however, the results provide strong evidence that the standard use of fluent cross-modality sentence investigation methods are immune from such external probe word intrusions into ongoing sentence processing and are thus accurately reflect underlying comprehension processes.

EEG theta and gamma responses to semantic violations in online sentence processing.

We explore the nature of the oscillatory dynamics in the EEG of subjects reading sentences that contain a semantic violation. More specifically, we examine whether increases in theta ( approximately 3-7 Hz) and gamma (around 40 Hz) band power occur in response to sentences that were either semantically correct or contained a semantically incongruent word (semantic violation). ERP results indicated a classical N400 effect. A wavelet-based time-frequency analysis revealed a theta band power increase during an interval of 300-800 ms after critical word onset, at temporal electrodes bilaterally for both sentence conditions, and over midfrontal areas for the semantic violations only. In the gamma frequency band, a predominantly frontal power increase was observed during the processing of correct sentences. This effect was absent following semantic violations. These results provide a characterization of the oscillatory brain dynamics, and notably of both theta and gamma oscillations, that occur during language comprehension.

Integration of word meaning and world knowledge in language comprehension.

Although the sentences that we hear or read have meaning, this does not necessarily mean that they are also true. Relatively little is known about the critical brain structures for, and the relative time course of, establishing the meaning and truth of linguistic expressions. We present electroencephalogram data that show the rapid parallel integration of both semantic and world knowledge during the interpretation of a sentence. Data from functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed that the left inferior prefrontal cortex is involved in the integration of both meaning and world knowledge. Finally, oscillatory brain responses indicate that the brain keeps a record of what makes a sentence hard to interpret.