The embodied typist: Bimanual actions are modulated by words' implied motility and number of evoked limbs.

The planning and execution of manual actions can be influenced by concomitant processing of manual action verbs. However, this phenomenon manifests in varied ways throughout the literature, ranging from facilitation to interference effects. Suggestively, stimuli across studies vary randomly in two potentially relevant variables: verb motility and effector quantity (i.e., the amount of movement and the number of hands implied by the word, respectively). Here we examine the role of these factors during keyboard typing, a strategic bimanual task validated in previous works. Forty-one participants read and typed high and low motility items from four categories: bimanual, unimanual, and non-manual action verbs, as well as minimally motoric verbs. Motor planning and execution were captured by first-letter lag (the lapse between word presentation and first keystroke) and whole-word lag (the lapse between the first and last keystroke). We found that verb motility modulated action planning and execution, both stages being delayed by high (relative to low) motility verbs. Effector quantity also influenced both stages, which were facilitated by bimanual verbs relative to unimanual verbs and non-manual verbs (this effect being confined to high motility items during action execution). Accordingly, motor-language coupling effects seem sensitive to words' implied motility and number of evoked limbs. These findings refine our understanding of how semantics influences bodily movement.

Comparing mnemonic effects of iconic gestures and pictures on word memory.

Previous studies using intermodal semantic priming have found that gestures improve language memory. In the present study, we ask whether the inherent characteristics of representative gestures (iconic gestures) facilitate word memory, or it is simply the semantic content shared with the words. Two analogous experiments were carried out presenting iconic gestures, pictures, or null primes to target words (nouns and action verbs). In Experiment 1, participants performed a free word recall task. In Experiment 2, the task was one of recognition. The results showed that participants recalled (Experiment 1) an equivalent number of words preceded by gestures or pictures compared with words alone, with no prime. However, a significantly higher number of words were recognised (Experiment 2) when they were primed by iconic gestures compared with the other two conditions, an advantage also found in reaction times (RTs) and both effects being larger in verbs than in nouns. These findings are discussed regarding the differences between recall and recognition processes as well as the particular characteristics of representative gestures.

Phenotypic characterisation of early COPD: a prospective case-control study.

The phenotypic characteristics of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in individuals younger than 50 years of age (early COPD) are not well defined. This prospective, multicentre, case-control study sought to describe these characteristics and compare them with those of smokers (≥10 pack-years) of similar age with normal spirometry (controls). We studied 92 cases (post-bronchodilator forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1)/forced vital capacity (FVC) <0.7) and 197 controls. Results were contrasted with participants with similar inclusion criteria recruited into the ECLIPSE and COPDGene cohorts. Cases had moderate airflow limitation (FEV1 71.3±20.8%) but were often symptomatic, used healthcare resources frequently, had air trapping (residual volume 150.6±55.5% ref.), had reduced diffusing capacity (84.2±20.7% ref.) and had frequent evidence of computed tomography (CT) emphysema (61%). Of note, less than half of cases (46%) had been previously diagnosed with COPD. Interestingly, they also often reported a family history of respiratory diseases and had been hospitalised because of respiratory problems before the age of 5 years more frequently than controls (12% versus 3%, p=0.009). By and large, these observations were reproduced when available in the ECLIPSE and COPDGene cohorts. These results show that early COPD is associated with substantial health impact and significant structural and functional abnormalities, albeit it is often not diagnosed (hence, treated). The fact that a sizeable proportion of patients with early COPD report a family history of respiratory diseases and/or early-life events (including hospitalisations before the age of 5 years) renders further support to the possibility of early-life origin of COPD.

Constituent frequency effects in the written production of Spanish compound words.

The debate about whether compound words are accessed as whole words or via their constituents remains unresolved, especially in the field of language production. In this study, three experiments used a copying task to examine whether compound words are accessed via their constituents in handwriting production. In Experiment 1, production of compound words and noncompounds was compared. The last interletter interval within the first constituent of compounds was observed to be shorter than the same interval in noncompounds, revealing that writing durations are sensitive to morphological processing. In Experiments 2 and 3, the first and second constituent frequency was manipulated respectively. The frequency of both constituents affected writing onset times. Interestingly, the interval between the last two letters of the first constituent was shorter when the second constituent was of high frequency, suggesting that the effect obtained in this position in Experiment 1 was related to the anticipation of the second constituent. Our findings indicate that both constituents are activated before the initiation of the written response and that the second component is reactivated before the production of the first constituent has finished.

Attentional modulation of orthographic neighborhood effects during reading: Evidence from event-related brain potentials in a psychological refractory period paradigm.

It is often assumed that word reading proceeds automatically. Here, we tested this assumption by recording event-related potentials during a psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm, requiring lexical decisions about written words. Specifically, we selected words differing in their orthographic neighborhood size-the number of words that can be obtained from a target by exchanging a single letter-and investigated how influences of this variable depend on the availability of central attention. As expected, when attentional resources for lexical decisions were unconstrained, words with many orthographic neighbors elicited larger N400 amplitudes than those with few neighbors. However, under conditions of high temporal overlap with a high priority primary task, the N400 effect was not statistically different from zero. This finding indicates strong attentional influences on processes sensitive to orthographic neighbors during word reading, providing novel evidence against the full automaticity of processes involved in word reading. Furthermore, in conjunction with the observation of an underadditive interaction between stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) and orthographic neighborhood size in lexical decision performance, commonly taken to indicate automaticity, our results raise issues concerning the standard logic of cognitive slack in the PRP paradigm.

Impact of a van der Waals interface on intrinsic and extrinsic defects in an MoSe2 monolayer.

In this work, we study growth and migration of atomic defects in MoSe2 on graphene using multiple advanced transmission electron microscopy techniques to explore defect behavior in vdW heterostructures. A MoSe2/graphene vdW heterostructure is prepared by a direct growth of both monolayers, thereby attaining an ideal vdW interface between the monolayers. We investigate the intrinsic defects (inversion domains and grain boundaries) in synthesized MoSe2, their evolution amid growth processing steps, and their influence on the formation and movement of extrinsic defects. Electron diffraction identifies a preferential interlayer orientation of 2° between MoSe2 and graphene, which is caused by the presence of intrinsic IBD defects. Extrinsic defects (point and line defects) are generated by in situ electron irradiation in the MoSe2 layer. Our results shed light on how to independently modify the MoSe2 atomic structure in vdW heterostructures for potential utilization in device processing.

Syllabic parsing in children: a developmental study using visual word-spotting in Spanish.

Some inconsistency is observed in the results from studies of reading development regarding the role of the syllable in visual word recognition, perhaps due to a disparity between the tasks used. We adopted a word-spotting paradigm, with Spanish children of second grade (mean age: 7 years) and sixth grade (mean age: 11 years). The children were asked to detect one-syllable words that could be found at the beginning of pseudo-words, with the boundary between the word and the remaining letters being manipulated. The end of the embedded word could either match the syllabic boundary (e.g. the word FIN in the pseudo-word FINLO, where the syllable boundary is between N and L) or not (e.g. FINUS, where the syllable boundary is located between I and N). The results showed that children of both grades were faster in the syllabic than the non-syllabic condition, and that the magnitude of this effect was the same regardless of reading ability. The results suggest an early universality in the use of syllables in Spanish, regardless of reading level.

Effects of grapheme-to-phoneme probability on writing durations.

The relative involvement of the lexical and sublexical routes across different writing tasks remains a controversial topic in the field of handwriting production research. The present article reports two experiments examining whether or not the probability of a grapheme-to-phoneme (G-P) mapping affected production during copy of polyvalent graphemes embedded in French (Exps. 1a and 1b) and Spanish (Exp. 2) known words. The relative probabilities of two different G-P mappings associated with the same polyvalent grapheme were manipulated (higher vs. lower probability). In Experiment 1a, we used the polyvalent French grapheme E. Writing durations revealed that the interletter intervals (ILIs) located before and after this letter were shorter and that the letter itself was executed faster in the condition of higher probability of the G-P mapping (e.g., S E RVICE, "service") than in the lower-probability condition (e.g., S E MAINE, "week"). In Experiment 1b, we used the sequence TI (e.g., VIC TI ME-MAR TI EN, "victim-Martian"), which is less frequent. In this case, we failed to observe significant differences between the conditions. In Experiment 2, effects similar to those obtained in Experiment 1a were found with Spanish words using different pronunciations of the letter C (e.g., DES C ANSO-DES C ENSO, "rest-descent"). Altogether, these results reveal that the link between a grapheme and a phoneme is weighted according to its probability in the language. Moreover, they suggest that a two-phase route linking graphemes to phonemes and phonemes to graphemes is functional during copy.

Lexical and phonological processing in visual word recognition by stuttering children: evidence from Spanish

A number of studies have pointed out that stuttering-like disfluencies could be the result of failures in central and linguistic processing. The goal of the present paper is to analyze if stuttering implies deficits in the lexical and phonological processing in visual word recognition. This study compares the performance of 28 children with and without stuttering in a standard lexical decision task in a transparent orthography: Spanish. Word frequency and syllable frequency were manipulated in the experimental words. Stutterers were found to be considerably slower (in their correct responses) and produced more errors than the non- stutterers (χ(1) = 36.63, p < .001, η2 = .60). There was also a facilitation effect of syllable frequency, restricted to low frequency words and only in the stutterers group (t1(10) = 3.67, p < .005; t2(36) = 3.10, p < .001). These outcomes appear to suggest that the decoding process of stutterers exhibits a deficit in the interface between the phonological-syllabic level and the word level (AU)

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Coda optimization in the segmentation of English polysyllabic letter-strings.

A word-spotting experiment is reported whereby participants determined whether a polysyllabic pseudoword began with a real word or not. All target words ended in a single consonant (e.g., slam) which either did or did not form a complex coda with the consonant that followed it. When it did (e.g., the mp of slampora), target detection was harder than when the target was followed by a vowel (e.g., slamorpa). When it did not (e.g., the mc of slamcora), target detection was easier. These results demonstrate a bias toward maximization of the coda when segmenting a polysyllabic letter-string which is argued to reflect the way in which polysyllabic words are represented in the mental lexicon.

Lexical and phonological processing in visual word recognition by stuttering children: evidence from Spanish.

A number of studies have pointed out that stuttering-like disfluencies could be the result of failures in central and linguistic processing. The goal of the present paper is to analyze if stuttering implies deficits in the lexical and phonological processing in visual word recognition. This study compares the performance of 28 children with and without stuttering in a standard lexical decision task in a transparent orthography: Spanish. Word frequency and syllable frequency were manipulated in the experimental words. Stutterers were found to be considerably slower (in their correct responses) and produced more errors than the non- stutterers (χ(1) = 36.63, p < .001, η2 = .60). There was also a facilitation effect of syllable frequency, restricted to low frequency words and only in the stutterers group (t1(10) = 3.67, p < .005; t2(36) = 3.10, p < .001). These outcomes appear to suggest that the decoding process of stutterers exhibits a deficit in the interface between the phonological-syllabic level and the word level.

Sublexical and lexico-syntactic factors in gender access in Spanish.

The influence of sublexical and lexico-syntactic factors during the grammatical gender assignment process in Spanish was studied in two experiments using the gender decision task. In Experiment 1, the regularity of the ending of gender-marked nouns (masculine nouns ended in -o and feminine nouns ended in -a) and of nouns with gender-correlated but unmarked word-endings (e.g., -ad) was manipulated. The results showed that regularity affected reaction times and error rates only in the case of gender-marked nouns, suggesting that the mere statistical distribution of a word-ending across genders is not responsible for the regularity effect. In Experiment 2, gender-marked nouns and gender-unmarked nouns were preceded by a masked prime which could be a definite article (which provides information about the gender of the noun) or a possessive pronoun (which does not contain gender information). The presentation of the definite article led to shorter reaction times and less errors only when the word-ending was different from -o or -a. Taken together, these results indicate that gender assignment in Spanish is carried out through different processes depending on the noun ending: gender decisions for gender-marked nouns are based on the gender-to-ending distribution. Meanwhile, gender decisions for unmarked nouns seem to require the retrieval of the corresponding definite grammatical article, regardless of the statistical distribution of the noun ending across genders.

Beyond decoding deficit: inhibitory effect of positional syllable frequency in dyslexic Spanish children.

This study explores whether activation and inhibition word processes contribute to the characteristic speed deficits found in transparent orthographies (Wimmer, Appl Psycholinguist 14:1-33, 1993). A second and fourth grade sample of normal school readers and dyslexic school readers participated in a lexical decision task. Words were manipulated according to two factors: word frequency (high vs. low) and syllable frequency (high vs. low). It has been repeatedly found that words with high-frequency syllables require extra time for deactivating the lexical syllabic neighbors: the so-called inhibitory effect of positional frequency syllable (Carreiras et al., J Mem Lang 32:766-780, 1993). We hypothesized that dyslexic readers would show a stronger inhibitory effect than normal readers because they are slower decoders and they may also be slower at the activation and inhibition of word representations that are competing (i.e., syllabic candidates). Results indicated an interaction between word and syllable frequency (i.e., a strong inhibitory effect was found in the low-frequency word condition). According to our hypothesis, the inhibitory effect size was almost three times bigger in dyslexics than in the normal readers. This difference shows an alteration, not a developmental lag. Interestingly, the inhibitory effect size did not interact with school grade. Thus, reading experience did not impact the lexical processes involved on the inhibitory effect. Our outcomes showed how activation and/or inhibition of lexical processes can contribute to the lack of speed beyond decoding deficit.

Nanocrystallization in Fluorochlorozirconate Glass-Ceramics.

Heat treating fluorochlorozirconate (FCZ) glasses nucleates nanocrystals in the glass matrix, resulting in a nanocomposite glass-ceramic that has optical properties suitable for use as a medical imaging plate. Understanding the way in which the nanocrystal nucleation proceeds is critical to controlling the optical behavior. The nucleation and growth of nanocrystals in FCZ glass-ceramics was investigated with in situ transmission electron microscopy heating experiments. The experiments showed the nucleation and growth of previously unreported BaF2 nanocrystals in addition to the expected BaCl2 nanocrystals. Chemical analysis of the BaF2 nanocrystals shows an association with the optically active dopant previously thought only to interact with BaCl2 nanocrystals. The association of the dopant with BaF2 crystals suggests that it plays a role in the photoluminescent (PL) properties of FCZ glass-ceramics.

Processing prefixes and suffixes in handwriting production.

Previous research showed that handwriting production is mediated by linguistically oriented processing units such as syllables and graphemes. The goal of this study was to investigate whether French adults also activate another kind of unit that is more related to semantics than phonology, namely morphemes. Experiment 1 revealed that letter duration and inter-letter intervals were longer for suffixed words than for pseudo-suffixed words. These results suggest that the handwriting production system chunks the letter components of the root and suffix into morpheme-sized units. Experiment 2 compared the production of prefixed and pseudo-prefixed words. The results did not yield significant differences. This asymmetry between suffix and prefix processing has also been observed in other linguistic tasks. In suffixed words, the suffix would be processed on-line during the production of the root, in an analytic fashion. Prefixed words, in contrast, seem to be processed without decomposition, as pseudo-affixed words.

Phonological effects in handwriting production: evidence from the implicit priming paradigm.

In the present article, we report 3 experiments using the odd-man-out variant of the implicit priming paradigm, aimed at determining the role played by phonological information during the handwriting process. Participants were asked to write a small set of words learned in response to prompts. Within each block, response words could share initial segments (constant homogeneous) or not (heterogeneous). Also, 2 variable homogeneous blocks were created by including a response word that did not share orthographic onset with the other response (odd-man-out). This odd-man-out could be phonologically related to the targets or not. Experiment 1 showed a preparation effect in the constant homogeneous condition, which disappeared (spoil effect) in the variable condition not phonologically related. However, no spoil effect was found when the odd-man-out shared the phonological initial segment with the targets. In Experiment 2, we obtained a spoil effect in the variable phonologically related condition, but it was significantly smaller than in the variable not phonologically related condition. The effects observed in Experiment 2 vanished in Experiment 3 under articulatory suppression, suggesting that they originated at a sublexical level. These findings suggest that phonological sublexical information is used during handwriting and provide evidence that the implicit priming paradigm (and the odd-man-out version of this) is a suitable tool for handwriting production research.

Efectos de la frecuencia silábica en la producción escrita del español / Syllable frequency effects in Spanish handwriting production

Esta investigación se ocupa de la naturaleza de las unidades subléxicas funcionales durante el proceso de escritura en adultos normales. En concreto, se centra en el papel de las sílabas en el español escrito. Se pidió a los participantes que escribieran palabras trisilábicas a mano. Mediante una tableta gráfica, se manipuló la frecuencia de la segunda sílaba en los estímulos, mientras se controlaba por la frecuencia de bigramas. Se midieron las latencias, la duración de las letras y los intervalos temporales entre letras. Los resultados mostraron un efecto de frecuencia silábica en el intervalo entre la primera y la segunda letra de la segunda sílaba: fue más corto para las sílabas de frecuencia alta que para las de frecuencia baja. Se observó el efecto opuesto para la duración de la primera letra de la sílaba crítica. No se observó ningún efecto en el intervalo anterior a la segunda sílaba. Estos resultados confirman hallazgos recientes que respaldan la postura de que las sílabas están implicadas en el proceso de producción escrita y proporcionan nueva información acerca de los mecanismos que subyacen en estos efectos silábicos (AU)

This study was concerned with the nature of the sublexical units that are functional during the process of writing words in normal adults. Specifically, we focused on the role of syllables in Spanish handwriting. Participants were asked to write down trisyllabic words. In the experiment, a graphic tablet was used and the frequency of the second syllable was manipulated in the stimuli while controlling for bigram frequency. The latencies, letter durations and temporal intervals between letters were measured. The results showed an effect of syllable frequency on the interval between the first and second letter of the second syllable: the interval was shorter for high-frequency than for low-frequency syllables. An opposite effect was observed for the duration of the first letter of the critic syllable. No effect was found on the interval previous to the second syllable. These results confirm recent findings supporting the claim that syllables are involved during the handwriting production process and provide new information on the mechanisms underlying these syllabic effects (AU)

Processing inflectional and derivational morphology: electrophysiological evidence from Spanish.

The goal of this paper is to study possible differences between the processing of inflectional vs. derivational morphology in Spanish word recognition using electrophysiological measures. A lexical decision task to target words preceded by morphological-related (or unrelated) primes was used. The orthographic and phonological overlap and the grammatical class for the two experimental conditions were exactly the same. Examples of the related conditions were, for inflection, NIÑO-NIÑA ("girl"-"boy"), and for derivation, RAMO-RAMA ("bunch"-"branch"). These conditions were compared with unrelated pairs without orthographic, phonological or semantic relationships. An attenuation of the N-400 component was found for both related conditions from 300 ms until 450 ms (until 500 ms for inflections only). In addition, different locations were suggested by the source analysis. These findings are consistent with accounts that argue for differences between the processing of inflections and derivations.

Interaction between ghrelin and the ghrelin receptor (GHS-R1a), a NMR study using living cells.

The study of the interaction of ghrelin (1), the endogenous ligand for the GH secretagogues receptor (GHS-R1a), and des-acyl ghrelin (2) with the GHS-R1a by NMR using living cells is presented, using GHS-R1a stably transfected cell lines (CHO and HEK 293) and wild type cells. Therefore, the interaction of 1 and 2 with the GHS-R1a receptor has been performed using quasi-physiological conditions. Ghrelin (1), showed a higher number of residues affected by chemical shift perturbation (CSP) or chemical shift exchange (CSE) effects: Ser3, Phe4, Leu5, Val12, Gln13/Gln14, Lys16/Lys19, Glu17 and Lys24 were much more affected in 1 than in des-acyl ghrelin (2). The chemical shift index CSI values indicated the presence of a possible alpha-helical region between Glu8 and Lys20 for ghrelin (1). After analysing the NMR data, two possible structures have arisen, which present different proline rotamers: the EEZE and the EZEZ conformers, at positions Pro7, Pro21, Pro22 and Pro27, respectively, keeping a left-handed alpha-helix from Glu8 to Lys20. These experimental evidences might imply that the GHS-R1a receptor is acting as a prolyl-cis/trans isomerase.

Role of obestatin on growth hormone secretion: An in vitro approach.

Obestatin, the ghrelin-associated peptide, showed to activate MAPK signaling with no effect on Akt nor cell proliferating activity in rat tumor somatotroph cells (growth cells, GC). A sequential analysis of the obestatin transmembrane signaling pathway indicated a route involving the consecutive activation of G(i), PI3k, novel PKCepsilon, and Src for ERK1/2 activation. Furthermore, obestatin treatment triggers growth hormone (GH) release in the first 30min, being more acute at 15min. At 1h, obestatin treated cells showed the same levels in GH secretion than controls. Added to this functionality, obestatin was secreted by GC cells. Based on the capacity to stimulate GH release from somatotroph cells, obestatin may act directly in the pituitary through an autocrine/paracrine mechanism.