Native language, gender, and functional organization of the auditory cortex. (33/3485)

Whole-head magnetoencephalography was employed in 40 normal subjects to investigate whether the basic functional organization of the auditory cortex varies with linguistic environment. Robust activations of the bilateral supratemporal auditory cortices to 1-kHz pure tones, maximum at about 100 ms after stimulus onset, were studied in Finnish and German female and male subject groups with monolingual background. Activations elicited by the tones were mutually indistinguishable in German and Finnish women. In contrast, German men showed significantly stronger auditory responses to pure tones in the left, language-dominant hemisphere than Finnish men. We discuss the possibility that the prominent left-hemisphere activation in German males reflects higher frequency resolution required for distinguishing between German than Finnish vowels and that the clear effect of native language in male but not in female auditory cortex derives from more pronounced functional lateralization in men. The present data suggest that the influence of native language can extend to auditory cortical processing of pure-tone stimuli with no linguistic content and that this effect is conspicuous in the male brain.  (+info)

The generality of parietal involvement in visual attention. (34/3485)

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to determine whether different kinds of visual attention rely on a common neural substrate. Within one session, subjects performed three different attention experiments (each comparing an attentionally demanding task with an easier task using identical stimuli): (1) peripheral shifting, (2) object matching, and (3) a nonspatial conjunction task. Two areas were activated in all three experiments: one at the junction of intraparietal and transverse occipital sulci (IPTO), and another in the anterior intraparietal sulcus (AIPS). These regions are not simply involved in any effortful task, because they were not activated in a fourth experiment comparing a difficult language task with an easier control task. Thus, activity in IPTO and AIPS generalizes across a wide variety of attention-requiring tasks, supporting the existence of a common neural substrate underlying multiple modes of visual selection.  (+info)

Quality at general practice consultations: cross sectional survey. (35/3485)

OBJECTIVES: To measure quality of care at general practice consultations in diverse geographical areas, and to determine the principal correlates associated with enablement as an outcome measure. DESIGN: Cross sectional multipractice questionnaire based study. SETTING: Random sample of practices in four participating regions: Lothian, Coventry, Oxfordshire, and west London. PARTICIPANTS: 25 994 adults attending 53 practices over two weeks in March and April 1998. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Patient enablement, duration of consultation, how well patients know their doctor, and the size of the practice list. RESULTS: A hierarchy of needs or reasons for consultation was created. Similar overall enablement scores were achieved for most casemix presentations (mean 3.1, 95% confidence interval 3.1 to 3.1). Mean duration of consultation for all patients was 8.0 minutes (8.0 to 8.1); however, duration of consultation increased for patients with psychological problems or where psychological and social problems coexisted (mean 9.1, 9.0 to 9.2). The 2195 patients who spoke languages other than English at home were analysed separately as they had generally higher enablement scores (mean 4.5, 4.3 to 4.7) than those patients who spoke English only despite having shorter consultations (mean 7.1 (6. 9 to 7.3) minutes. At individual consultations, enablement score was most closely correlated with duration of consultation and knowing the doctor well. Individual doctors had a wide range of mean enablement scores (1.1-5.3) and mean durations of consultation (3. 8-14.4 minutes). Doctors' ability to enable was linked to the duration of their consultation and the percentage of their patients who knew them well and was inversely related to the size of their practice. At practice level, mean enablement scores ranged from 2.3 to 4.4, and duration of consultation ranged from 4.9 to 12.2 minutes. Correlations between ranks at practice level were not significant. CONCLUSIONS: It may be time to reward doctors who have longer consultations, provide greater continuity of care, and both enable more patients and enable patients more.  (+info)

Satisfaction with methods of Spanish interpretation in an ambulatory care clinic. (36/3485)

OBJECTIVE: To describe the utilization of various methods of language interpretation by Spanish-speaking patients in an academic medical clinic and to determine patients' and physicians' satisfaction with these methods. METHODS: Survey administered to medical residents and Spanish-speaking patients asking about their experience and satisfaction with various methods of language interpretation. MAIN RESULTS: Both patients and residents had the highest level of satisfaction for professional interpreters (92.4% vs 96.1% reporting somewhat or very satisfactory, p =.17). In contrast, patients were significantly more satisfied than residents with using family members and friends (85.1% vs 60.8%, p <.01). Physicians and patients agreed that accuracy, accessibility, and respect for confidentiality were highly important characteristics of interpreters (>90% of both groups reporting somewhat or very important). However, patients were more concerned than residents about the ability of the interpreter to assist them after the physician visit (94% vs 45.1%, p < 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: Using family members and friends as interpreters for Spanish-speaking patients should be more seriously considered; however, in order to optimize patient satisfaction, differences between patients and providers should be taken into account when using interpretation in medical settings.  (+info)

Training Japanese listeners to identify English /r/ and /l/: long-term retention of learning in perception and production. (37/3485)

Previous work from our laboratories has shown that monolingual Japanese adults who were given intensive high-variability perceptual training improved in both perception and production of English /r/-/l/ minimal pairs. In this study, we extended those findings by investigating the long-term retention of learning in both perception and production of this difficult non-native contrast. Results showed that 3 months after completion of the perceptual training procedure, the Japanese trainees maintained their improved levels of performance of the perceptual identification task. Furthermore, perceptual evaluations by native American English listeners of the Japanese trainees' pretest, posttest, and 3-month follow-up speech productions showed that the trainees retained their long-term improvements in the general quality, identifiability, and overall intelligibility of their English/r/-/l/ word productions. Taken together, the results provide further support for the efficacy of high-variability laboratory speech sound training procedures, and suggest an optimistic outlook for the application of such procedures for a wide range of "special populations."  (+info)

Functional differentiation of medial temporal and frontal regions involved in processing novel and familiar words: an fMRI study. (38/3485)

Results of recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of memory are not entirely consistent with lesion studies. Furthermore, although imaging probes have identified neural systems associated with processing novel visual episodic information, auditory verbal memory using a novel/familiar paradigm has not yet been examined. To address this gap, fMRI was used to compare the haemodynamic response when listening to recently learned and novel words. Sixteen healthy adults (6 male, 10 female) learned a 10-item word list to 100% criterion, approximately 1 h before functional scanning. During echo-planar imaging, subjects passively listened to a string of words presented at 6-s intervals. Previously learned words were interspersed pseudo-randomly between novel words. Mean scans corresponding to each word type were analysed with a random-effects model using statistical parametric mapping (SPM96). Familiar (learned) words activated the right prefrontal cortex, posterior left parahippocampal gyrus, left medial parietal cortex and right superior temporal gyrus. Novel words activated the anterior left hippocampal region. The results for the familiar words were similar to those found in other functional imaging studies of recognition and retrieval and implicate the right dorsolateral prefrontal and left posterior medial temporal lobe (MTL) regions. The results for novel words require replication, but are consistent with the substantial lesion and PET literature implicating the anterior MTL as a critical site for processing novel episodic information, presumably to permit encoding. Together, these results provide evidence for an anterior-posterior functional differentiation within the MTL in processing novel and familiar verbal information. The differentiation of MTL functions that was obtained is consistent with a large body of PET activation studies but is unique among fMRI studies, which to date have differed from results with PET. Further, the finding of left MTL lateralization is consistent with lesion-based material-specific models of memory.  (+info)

Recent male-mediated gene flow over a linguistic barrier in Iberia, suggested by analysis of a Y-chromosomal DNA polymorphism. (39/3485)

We have examined the worldwide distribution of a Y-chromosomal base-substitution polymorphism, the T/C transition at SRY-2627, where the T allele defines haplogroup 22; sequencing of primate homologues shows that the ancestral state cannot be determined unambiguously but is probably the C allele. Of 1,191 human Y chromosomes analyzed, 33 belong to haplogroup 22. Twenty-nine come from Iberia, and the highest frequencies are in Basques (11%; n=117) and Catalans (22%; n=32). Microsatellite and minisatellite (MSY1) diversity analysis shows that non-Iberian haplogroup-22 chromosomes are not significantly different from Iberian ones. The simplest interpretation of these data is that haplogroup 22 arose in Iberia and that non-Iberian cases reflect Iberian emigrants. Several different methods were used to date the origin of the polymorphism: microsatellite data gave ages of 1,650, 2,700, 3,100, or 3,450 years, and MSY1 gave ages of 1,000, 2,300, or 2,650 years, although 95% confidence intervals on all of these figures are wide. The age of the split between Basque and Catalan haplogroup-22 chromosomes was calculated as only 20% of the age of the lineage as a whole. This study thus provides evidence for direct or indirect gene flow over the substantial linguistic barrier between the Indo-European and non-Indo-European-speaking populations of the Catalans and the Basques, during the past few thousand years.  (+info)

Recognition of spoken words by native and non-native listeners: talker-, listener-, and item-related factors. (40/3485)

In order to gain insight into the interplay between the talker-, listener-, and item-related factors that influence speech perception, a large multi-talker database of digitally recorded spoken words was developed, and was then submitted to intelligibility tests with multiple listeners. Ten talkers produced two lists of words at three speaking rates. One list contained lexically "easy" words (words with few phonetically similar sounding "neighbors" with which they could be confused), and the other list contained lexically "hard" words (words with many phonetically similar sounding "neighbors"). An analysis of the intelligibility data obtained with native speakers of English (experiment 1) showed a strong effect of lexical similarity. Easy words had higher intelligibility scores than hard words. A strong effect of speaking rate was also found whereby slow and medium rate words had higher intelligibility scores than fast rate words. Finally, a relationship was also observed between the various stimulus factors whereby the perceptual difficulties imposed by one factor, such as a hard word spoken at a fast rate, could be overcome by the advantage gained through the listener's experience and familiarity with the speech of a particular talker. In experiment 2, the investigation was extended to another listener population, namely, non-native listeners. Results showed that the ability to take advantage of surface phonetic information, such as a consistent talker across items, is a perceptual skill that transfers easily from first to second language perception. However, non-native listeners had particular difficulty with lexically hard words even when familiarity with the items was controlled, suggesting that non-native word recognition may be compromised when fine phonetic discrimination at the segmental level is required. Taken together, the results of this study provide insight into the signal-dependent and signal-independent factors that influence spoken language processing in native and non-native listeners.  (+info)