1,721,001 research outputs found

    Patterns of peripheral paralexia: pure alexia and the forgotten visual dyslexia?

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    The concept of visual dyslexia put forward by Marshall and Newcombe (1973) is assessed. After a long period of neglect it was resurrected in the late 1990s in a narrow form. In the current paper it is proposed that a wider form of the functional syndrome is useful to include amongst other conditions attentional dyslexia and neglect dyslexia. The variety of sub-forms would correspond to the behavioural effects of the different ways in which the orthographic processing systems can be impaired. What distinguishes the broader form from pure alexia is that the patient lacks the capacity to use a serial letter processing strategy, and so interpretation of visual dyslexia in terms of the impairment to the orthographic processing systems is not contaminated by the use of a compensatory strategy that results in processing operations which are qualitatively very different from the normal and highly opaque. The lack of a serial letter processing strategy makes visual dyslexia a much more transparent functional syndrome

    Resting state brain networks: literature review and clinical applications.

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    This review focuses on resting-state functional connectivity, a functional MRI technique which allows the study of spontaneous brain activity generated under resting conditions. This approach is useful to explore the brain's functional organization and to examine if it is altered in neurological or psychiatric diseases. Resting-state functional connectivity has revealed a number of networks which are consistently found in healthy subjects and represent specific patterns of synchronous activity. In this review, we examine the behavioral, physiological and neurological evidences relevant to this coherent brain activity and, in particular, to each network. The investigation of functional connectivity appears promising from a clinical perspective, considering the amount of evidence regarding the importance of spontaneous activity and that resting-state paradigms are inherently simple to implement. We also discuss some examples of existing clinical applications, such as in Alzheimer's disease, and emerging possibilities such as in pre-operative mapping and disorders of consciousness

    Qualitatively different forms of pure alexia.

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    In this study we investigated two patients with pure alexia, F. C. and L. D. S., in order to make inferences about how processes and levels involved in the early stage of visual word recognition are organized and how they can be selectively damaged. Moreover, we investigated whether pure alexia can be caused by different functional deficits. F. C. and L. D. S. were presented with tasks of letter processing and tasks of orthographic integration. There was a clear double dissociation between the pattern of performance of F. C. and L. D. S. F. C. was able to process single letters rapidly and accurately, but was unable to group together the letters that he had correctly identified. By contrast, L. D. S. was slower and more impaired at letter identification, but she could use letter groups to assist reading. Thus, two different forms of pure alexia emerged: F. C. has a higher level deficit in integrating letters, whereas L. D. S. has a lower level deficit in letter processing. The results support the assumption of a functional organization of the reading process that involves a series of orthographic units ( i.e., single letters, sub-lexical letter groups, and the lexical unit), which can be selectively damaged. Finally, our data present difficulties for models of pure alexia that assume all patients to have a low-level processing deficit

    Qualitatively different forms of pure alexia

    No full text
    In this study we investigated two patients with pure alexia, F.C. and L.D.S., in order to make inferences about how processes and levels involved in the early stage of visual word recognition are organized and how they can be selectively damaged. Moreover, we investigated whether pure alexia can be caused by different functional deficits. F.C. and L.D.S. were presented with tasks of letter processing and tasks of orthographic integration. There was a clear double dissociation between the pattern of performance of F.C. and L.D.S. F.C. was able to process single letters rapidly and accurately, but was unable to group together the letters that he had correctly identified. By contrast, L.D.S. was slower and more impaired at letter identification, but she could use letter groups to assist reading. Thus, two different forms of pure alexia emerged: F.C. has a higher level deficit in integrating letters, whereas L.D.S. has a lower level deficit in letter processing. The results support the assumption of a functional organization of the reading process that involves a series of orthographic units (i.e., single letters, sublexical letter groups, and the lexical unit), which can be selectively damaged. Finally, our data present difficulties for models of pure alexia that assume all patients to have a low-level processing deficit

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

    Spatial correspondence between functional MRI (fMRI) activations and cortical current density maps of Event-Related Potentials (ERP): A study with four tasks.

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    We investigated the spatial correspondence between functional MRI (fMRI) activations and cortical current density maps of event-related potentials (ERPs) reconstructed without fMRI priors. The presence of a significant spatial correspondence is a prerequisite for direct integration of the two modalities, enabling to combine the high spatial resolution of fMRI with the high temporal resolution of ERPs. Four separate tasks were employed: visual stimulation with a pattern-reversal chequerboard, recognition of images of nameable objects, recognition of written words, and auditory stimulation with a piano note. ERPs were acquired with 19 recording channels, and source localisation was performed using a realistic head model, a standard cortical mesh and the multiple sparse priors method. Spatial correspondence was evaluated at group level over 10 subjects, by means of a voxel-by-voxel test and a test on the distribution of local maxima. Although not complete, it was significant for the visual stimulation task, image and word recognition tasks (P < 0.001 for both types of test), but not for the auditory stimulation task. These findings indicate that partial but significant spatial correspondence between the two modalities can be found even with a small number of channels, for three of the four tasks employed. Absence of correspondence for the auditory Stimulation task was caused by the unfavourable situation of the activated cortex being perpendicular to the overlying scalp, whose consequences were exacerbated by the small number of channels. The present study corroborates existing literature in this field, and may be of particular relevance to those interested in combining fMRI with ERPs acquired with the standard 10-20 system
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