Pragmatic comprehension deficit in Parkinson's disease

Dopaminergic System in Linguistic Comprehension and Grammar: fMRI study of Parkinsons Disease

This objective of this study is how grammar is implemented in the brain, with special attention to a neurotransmitter dopamine. Among numerous kinds of molecules known to exist in the nervous system, several molecules are known to function as “neurotransmitters”, which mediate gaps between neurons (i.e., synapses) when a neuron transmits signals to another. In this study, a neurotransmitter dop...

Electrophysiology and Pragmatic Language Comprehension

Pragmatic Comprehension in Schizophrenia: Metaphor and Irony

Many schizophrenic patients are reported to have impaired theory-of-mind (ToM) and/or formal thought disorder and as these terms will be referred to throughout the research it is important to briefly clarify their meanings. The ability to make appropriate inferences about other people's thoughts when the objective facts do not allow these thoughts to be directly understood is referred to as the...

Automatic, unsupervised classification of dyskinesia in patients with Parkinsons Disease

One of the characteristic symptoms of patients with Parkinson Disease (PD) is a rigidity of movement. These symptoms disappear after administration of Levodopa. However, the long-term use of levodopa causes involuntary movements (dyskinesia). A proper diagnosis requires an automatic, unsupervised method for the detection and classification of levodopa induced dyskinesia. The main problem, howev...

Neural correlates of pragmatic language comprehension in autism spectrum disorders.

Difficulties with pragmatic aspects of communication are universal across individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Here we focused on an aspect of pragmatic language comprehension that is relevant to social interaction in daily life: the integration of speaker characteristics inferred from the voice with the content of a message. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we ...