Understanding spoken language requires a complex series of processing stages to translate speech sounds into meaning. In this study, we use functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore the brain regions that are involved in spoken language comprehension, fractionating this system into sound-based and more abstract higher-level processes. We distorted English sentences in three acoustically ...

Therapeutic communication and interpersonal relationships in care homes can help people to improve their mental wellbeing. Assessment of the efficacy of these dynamic and complex processes are necessary for psychosocial planning and management. This paper presents a pilot application of photoplethysmography in synchronized physiological measurements of communications between the care-giver and ...

Early ear infection and trauma, from birth to age 12 are known to have a significant effect on sensory and cognitive development. This effect can be demonstrated through the fMRI study of children who have a history of ear infection compared to a control group. A second research question is the extent to which brain plasticity at an early age can reduce the impact of infection on hearing and co...

Relationships of 'perceptual distortion' and 'cognitive evaluation' components of body image disturbances to brain activity were investigated. Changes in regional cerebral blood (rCBF) of nine patients with anorexia nervosa restrictive type (AN), 13 patients with bulimia nervosa purging type (BN) and 12 controls following three experiments with single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT)...

Motion compensation is a powerful method to compress a video sequence. However, once an error occurs, the error propagates through the frames. Recently, the intra update method was proposed to stop the error propagation at the cost of the compression efficiency. This paper proposes an intra update method based on rate-distortion optimization in error prone environments. The rate and the distort...

We propose an optimal Multiple Description (MD) video coding technique with 3D-Set Partitioning in Hierarchical Tree (3D-SPIHT) algorithm. Multiple Description Coding (MDC) technique generates multiple bitstreams of the video content and has useful applications in packet video networks and error-prone networks. We describe a twodescription MDC system that embraces rate-distortion optimization t...

Human memory is not a literal reproduction of the past, but instead relies on constructive processes that are sometimes prone to error and distortion. Understanding of constructive memory has accelerated during recent years as a result of research that has linked together its cognitive and neural bases. This article focuses on three aspects of constructive memory that have been the target of re...

Some maladaptive thought processes are characterized by reflexive and habitual patterns of cognitive and emotional reactivity. We review theoretical and empirical work suggesting that mindfulness—a state of nonjudgmental awareness of the present moment— can facilitate the discontinuation of such automatic mental operations. We propose a framework that suggests a series of more specific mechanis...