Multimodal Cognition

Background: Childhood-onset schizophrenia (COS) is a rare, severe form of the adult-onset disorder (AOS). Our previous resting-state fMRI study identified attenuated functional connectivity in COS compared with controls. Here, we ask whether COS and AOS patients and their siblings exhibit similar abnormalities of functional connectivity. Methods: A whole-brain, data-driven approach was used to assess resting-state functional connectivity differences in COS (patients/siblings/controls, n: 26/28/33) and AOS (n: 19/28/30). There were no significant differences in age, sex, or head motion across groups in each dataset and as designed, the COS dataset has a significantly lower age than the AOS. Results: Both COS and AOS patients showed decreased functional connectivity relative to controls among a wide set of brain regions (P b 0.05, corrected), but their siblings did not. Decreased connectivity in COS and AOS patients showed no amplitude differences and was not modulated by age-at-onset or medication doses. Cluster analysis revealed that these regions fell into two large-scale networks: one sensorimotor network and one centered on defaultmode network regions, but including higher-order cognitive areas only in COS. Decreased connectivity between these two networks was notable (P b 0.05, corrected) for both patient groups. Conclusions: A shared pattern of attenuated functional connectivity was found in COS and AOS, supporting the continuity of childhood-onset and adult-onset schizophrenia. Connections were altered between sensorimotor areas and default-mode areas in both COS and AOS, suggesting potential abnormalities in processes of self-monitoring and sensory prediction. The absence of substantial dysconnectivity in siblings indicates that attenuation is staterelated.

Objective: Schizophrenia is a complex functionally debilitating neurodevelopmental disorder, with associated social cognitive impairment. Corpus Callosum (CC) white matter tracts deficits are reported for people with schizophrenia; however, few studies focus on interhemispheric processing relative to social cognition tasks. This study aimed to determine if a relationship between the CC and social cognition exists. Method: In this cross-section study, a sample of n = 178 typical controls and n = 58 people with schizophrenia completed measures of mentalising (Reading the Mind in the Eyes), emotion recognition outcome and reaction time (Emotion Recognition Test), and clinical symptoms (Positive and Negative Symptom Scale), alongside diffusion-based tract imaging. The CC and its subregions, i.e., the genu, body, and splenium were the regions of interest (ROI). Results: Reduced white matter tract integrity was observed in the CC for patients when compared to controls. Patients performed ...

Background-Dysconnectivity between brain regions is thought to underlie the cognitive abnormalities that characterise schizophrenia (SZ). Consistent with this notion functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies in SZ have reliably provided evidence of abnormalities in functional integration and in white matter connectivity. Yet little is known about how alterations at the functional level related to abnormalities in anatomical connectivity. Methods-We obtained fMRI data during the 2-back working memory task from 25 patients with SZ and 19 healthy controls matched for age, sex and IQ. DTI data were also acquired in the

Background: Disturbed functional and structural brain connectivity in schizophrenia has been shown in a large number of studies. There is evidence from several neuroimaging and post mortem studies that altered neuronal myelination may in part account for this deficit. Recent investigations have suggested that variations of the genes that encode the Neuregulin 1 (NRG1) ErbB4 receptor complex might be associated with schizophrenia illness. As NRG1 and ErbB4 have been implicated in myelination and neuronal proliferation. We investigated whether cerebral micro and macrostructure is predicted by two risk haplotypes of the ErbB4 gene. Methods: The effects of two single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) rs2289086 and rs4673628 were investigated by diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis in 51 healthy subjects (mean age 22.6±1.8 years). Reaction time (RT) was measured during an attentional paradigm (visual oddball). Results: For both rs2289086 and rs4673628, we found higher fractional anisotropy (FA) in the A/A genotype group in left temporal lobe white matter. In addition, higher FA in the rs4673628 A/A genotype group was demonstrated in the subventricular zone. Conclusions: As FA is considered to index structural integrity of WM, to which neuronal fiber myelination is contributing, our results suggest that variations of the ErbB4 genotype may confer risk for schizophrenia illness via its impact on structural connectivity in human brain.

Schizophrenia is still considered unknown disease that needs more study and analysis. In this case Multimodal fusion is a good way to make analysis on the joint information found on the different imaging modalities related to this disease. This paper discusses Schizophrenia analysis using two approaches of the common Brian Imaging multimodal fusion approaches (Joint ICA and Parallel ICA). The aim of this study is to investigate these two approaches for more understanding showing their strengths, limitations, and analysis strategies.

Popular approaches to natural language processing create word embeddings based on textual co-occurrence patterns, but often ignore embodied, sensory aspects of language. Here, we introduce the Python package comp-syn, which provides grounded word embeddings based on the perceptually uniform color distributions of Google Image search results. We demonstrate that comp-syn significantly enriches models of distributional semantics. In particular, we show that (1) comp-syn predicts human judgments of word concreteness with greater accuracy and in a more interpretable fashion than word2vec using low-dimensional word-color embeddings, and (2) comp-syn performs comparably to word2vec on a metaphorical vs. literal wordpair classification task. comp-syn is open-source on PyPi and is compatible with mainstream machine-learning Python packages. Our package release includes word-color embeddings for over 40,000 English words, each associated with crowd-sourced word concreteness judgments.

Los textos islamicos ensenan que cualquier manera de hablar de Dios no es sino una metafora, es decir, una manera de hablar acerca de Dios de tal modo que el ser humano pueda comprender facilmente (cf. Bausani, 1980: 16-17). En este sentido, se trata de metaforas conceptuales tal como son explicadas por la Linguistica Cognitiva: cuando el Qur an, o la Biblia, u otros textos sagrados hablan de la Divinidad en terminos humanos, usan metaforas, y se recurre esencialmente a la metafora conceptual de alto nivel ABSTRACTO ES CONCRETO. ?Como se relacionan los creyentes y practicantes de hoy, y no solamente los teologos, con ciertas metaforas transmitidas por su fe?, y ?que pueden decirnos dichas metaforas sobre los conceptos que los individuos tienen sobre si mismos? Por otra parte, ?de que manera mantiene el creyente una representacion viable de si mismo y del mundo que le rodea a pesar de los aspectos aparentemente contradictorios de sus representaciones? En este articulo intento mostrar...

The hierarchical organization of speech rhythm into meter putatively confers cognitive affordances for perception, memory, and motor coordination. Meter also aligns with phrasal structure in systematic ways. In this paper, we show that this alignment affects the robustness of syntactic comprehension and discuss possible underlying mechanisms. In two experiments, we manipulated meter-syntax alignment while sentences with relative clause structures were either read as text (experiment 1, n = 40) or listened to as speech (experiment 2, n = 40). In experiment 2, we also measured the stability with which participants could tap in time with the metrical accents in the sentences they were comprehending. In addition to making more mistakes, sensorimotor synchronization was disrupted when syntactic cues clashed with the metrical context. We suggest that this reflects a tight coordination of top-down linguistic knowledge with the sensorimotor system to optimize comprehension.

Background: Antipsychotic drugs influence brain morphology in schizophrenia and usually require 3 weeks for marked effect. We used a comprehensive computational morphometry analysis to investigate brain volumetric changes after 3 weeks of antipsychotic exposure in a prospective, longitudinal, cohort of anti-psychotic-naïve individuals newly diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Clinical evidence and structural neuroimaging studies linked cerebellar deficits to cognitive-related symptoms in schizophrenia. Yet, in functional neuroimaging literature to date, the role of the cerebellum in schizophrenia was not explored in a systematic fashion. Here, we reviewed 234 functional magnetic resonance imaging studies indexed by PubMed and published in 1997-2010 that had at least one group of schizophrenia patients, used blood oxygenation level dependent contrast and the general linear model to assess neuronal activity. We quantified presence/absence of cerebellar findings and the frequency of hypo-and hyperactivations (ie, less or more activity in patients relative to healthy controls). We used peaks of activations reported in these studies to build a topographical representation of group differences on a cerebellar map. Cerebellar activity was reported in patients in 41.02% of the articles, with more than 80% of these dedicated to cognitive, emotional, and executive processes in schizophrenia. Almost two-thirds of group comparisons resulted in cerebellar hypoactivation, with a frequency that presented an inverted U shape across different age categories. The majority of the hypoactivation foci were located in the medial portion of the anterior lobe and the lateral hemispheres (lobules IV-V) of the cerebellum. Even though most experimental manipulations did not target explicitly the cerebellum's functions in schizophrenia, the cerebellar findings are frequent and cerebellar hypoactivations predominant. Therefore, although the cerebellum seems to play an important functional role in schizophrenia, the lack of reporting and interpretation of these data may hamper the full understanding of the disorder.

se recurre esencialmente a la metáfora conceptual de alto nivel ABSTRACTO ES CONCRETO. ¿Cómo se relacionan los creyentes y practicantes de hoy, y no solamente los teólogos, con ciertas metáforas transmitidas por su fe?, y ¿qué pueden decirnos dichas metáforas sobre los conceptos que los individuos tienen sobre sí mismos? Por otra parte, ¿de qué manera mantiene el creyente una representación viable de sí mismo,y del mundo,que le rodea a pesar de los aspectos aparentemente,contradictorios de sus representaciones? En este artículo intento mostrar que la Lingüística Cognitiva puede ofrecer una nueva perspectiva en el tratamiento de estas cuestiones, y que las metáforas que se refieren a los conceptos “más significativos”,como el concepto de persona y el de lo transcendente, están profunda y firmemente enraizadas en nuestro sistema conceptual individual, poniendo en evidencia asociaciones metafóricas y metonímicas que a menudo no son del todo evidentes. 2. METÁFORAS SOBRE DIOS EN TEXTOS ...

" Los gestos son un lenguaje que pintan los objetos en nuestros ojos, y nos hablan por medio de las expresiones, actitudes, posturas diferentes, movimientos corporales y acción" Court de Gebelin Planteamiento del problema Aún hay muchos misterios del hombre que se relacionan con la cognición, pero al tratarse de una dimensión abstracta, su estudio se vuelve complejo. Por eso, para estudiar la cognición es necesario acercarse a sus formas de expresión. Una de ellas es la metáfora. Sin embargo, éste ha sido abordado desde lo verbal pero muy poco desde lo gestual, el cual también es otra manifestación de la cognición. ¿El lenguaje no verbal puede expresar la misma información que provee el lenguaje verbal? ¿En el lenguaje no verbal se encuentra relación con los gestos y la metáfora? En esta investigación se busca dar algunas respuestas a la relación existente entre la metáfora orientacional y la expresión gestual en español. Justificación La publicación de "Metáforas de la vida cotidiana", el famoso libro que Lakoff y Johnson escribieron en 1980, fue desencadenante de cambios radicales en el estudio de la metáfora. Para dichos autores, ésta no debía ser entendida como un mero ornamento del lenguaje, sino como una herramienta de dominio conceptual que impregna el pensamiento y la acción cotidianos, permitiendo la comprensión tanto de ideas simples cuanto complejas, siendo admisible su análisis desde campos como la lingüística, la filosofía, o la psicología cognitiva.

The embodied cognition paradigm has stimulated ongoing debate about whether sensory data – including color – contributes to the semantic structure of abstract concepts. Recent uses of linguistic data in the study of embodied cognition have been focused on textual corpora, which largely precludes the direct analysis of sensory information. Here, we develop an automated approach to multimodal content analysis that detects associations between words based on the color distributions of their Google Image search results. Crucially, we measure color using a transformation of colorspace that closely resembles human color perception. We find that words in the abstract domains of academic disciplines, emotions, and music genres, cluster in a statistically significant fashion according to their color distributions. Furthermore, we use the lexical ontology WordNet and crowdsourced human judgments to show that this clustering reflects non-arbitrary semantic structure, consistent with metaphor-based accounts of embodied cognition. In particular, we find that images corresponding to more abstract words exhibit higher variability in colorspace, and semantically similar words have more similar color distributions. Strikingly, we show that color associations often reflect shared affective dimensions between abstract domains, thus revealing patterns of aesthetic coherence in everyday language. We argue that these findings provide a novel way to synthesize metaphor-based and affect-based accounts of embodied semantics.

I can think of few disciplines better suited for developing a sense of humility than humanities and computing. As scholars, we possess an intimate familiarity with a very old technology, namely text. And more to the point, we use it mindfully. We bring an explicit awareness of the rules – past and present – that govern its use. We are aware that we are part of an intellectual project that extends to ancient times. We respect its conventions. We celebrate its innovations. And we teach others to do the same. At the same time, however, we are also proponents of a new technology: the computer. As with text, we proceed on the basis that the computer is a mind technology, or cognitive tool. Its purpose is to free us from lower-level cognitive skills such as memorization, and to support the development and exercise of higher-order skills such as analysis and interpretation. And since its properties as a medium are different from paper, we also proceed on the assumption that the computer is...

Multimodal fusion fMRI sMRI Diffusion MRI EEG Brain connectivity Despite significant advances in multimodal imaging techniques and analysis approaches, unimodal studies are still the predominant way to investigate brain changes or group differences, including structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI), functional MRI (fMRI), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and electroencephalography (EEG). Multimodal brain studies can be used to understand the complex interplay of anatomical, functional and physiological brain alterations or development, and to better comprehend the biological significance of multiple imaging measures. To examine the function-structure associations of the brain in a more comprehensive and integrated manner, we reviewed a number of multimodal studies that combined two or more functional (fMRI and/or EEG) and structural (sMRI and/or DTI) modalities. In this review paper, we specifically focused on multimodal neuroimaging studies on cognition, aging, disease and behavior. We also compared multiple analysis approaches, including univariate and multivariate methods. The possible strengths and limitations of each method are highlighted, which can guide readers when selecting a method based on a given research question. In particular, we believe that multimodal fusion approaches will shed further light on the neuronal mechanisms underlying the major structural and functional pathophysiological features of both the healthy brain (e.g. development) or the diseased brain (e.g. mental illness) and, in the latter case, may provide a more sensitive measure than unimodal imaging for disease classification, e.g. multimodal biomarkers, which potentially can be used to support clinical diagnosis based on neuroimaging techniques.

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In previous mate choice experiments, female red jungle fowl, Gallus gallus, preferred males with long, bright red combs, red eyes, and (in one case) long tail feathers. When the colour and/or length of the comb was manipulated experimentally by placing artificial Latex combs over the natural ones, hens seemed to ignore the manipulated character and focused instead on traits such as hackle feather colour that had been secondary in importance in previous mate choice tests conducted with unmanipulated birds, but not as much so as the comb or eye characters. Similar results were obtained when tail length was experimentally lengthened or shortened. Rather than using only one or two traits as criteria of choice, females may rely on an additive or redundant suite of characters, with each providing part of the information used in making mate choice decisions.

Directionality is a key feature of vocalizations in birds and can provide insight into vocalizations' function and propagation. Despite recent interest in birds' production of nonvocal acoustic signals, little is known about the directionality of these sounds. here, we examine the directionality of the drumming display of male Ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus), a nonvocal acoustic signal used in mate attraction and territorial defense. We recorded drumming males with a low-frequency microphone and measured sound-pressure levels with a soundlevel meter from three orientations: front (0°), behind (180°), and side (90°). The sound-pressure level was significantly higher in front of and behind a drumming male than on the sides, indicating that the drumming sound radiates primarily along the displaying bird's longitudinal axis. Spectral analyses of the recordings did not, however, yield consistent differences in frequency among the three orientations. The acoustic radiation pattern of the drumming display differs from that of vocalizations in that the sound-pressure levels are just as high behind the bird as they are in front of it. This directionality likely affects estimation of distance by predators and intended receivers as well as potentially limiting the number of receivers able to perceive the signal.

Schizophrenia (SZ), bipolar disorder (BP) and schizoaffective disorder (SAD) share some common symptoms, and there is still a debate about whether SAD is an independent category. To the best of our knowledge, no study has been done to differentiate these three disorders or to investigate the distinction of SAD as an independent category using fMRI data. This study is aimed to explore biomarkers from resting-state fMRI networks for differentiating these disorders and investigate the relationship among these disorders based on fMRI networks with an emphasis on SAD. Firstly, a novel group ICA method, group information guided independent component analysis (GIG-ICA), was applied to extract subject-specific brain networks from fMRI data of 20 healthy controls (HC), 20 SZ patients, 20 BP patients, 20 patients suffering from SAD with manic episodes (SADM), and 13 patients suffering from SAD with depressive episodes exclusively (SADD). Then, five-level one-way analysis of covariance and mul...

In a study of social recognition in domestic hens, Gallus gallus domesticus, the suitability of video images as social stimuli was investigated. With live birds behind clear Perspex as stimuli, hens took longer to begin feeding near unfamiliar conspecifics than flockmates, and also discriminated between dominant and subordinate flockmates. When life-size colour video sequences of the same birds were substituted, however, there was no discrimination on the basis of either familiarity or rank, although hens took longer to begin feeding near to videos showing hens with a threat-like posture than hens with normal posture. In a second video experiment, hens again failed to discriminate flockmates from unfamiliar birds. Behavioural observations showed that in early trials, subjects appeared to attend to the stimulus and occasionally moved in synchrony with the video bird or pecked at its head. In later trials these responses were never seen, and hens approached the screen more readily. Despite these behavioural changes, discrimination of flockmates from unfamiliar birds was not found at any stage. Various possible reasons for this failure to discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar conspecifics on video are discussed, and the findings contrasted with other published work in which videos were shown to be adequate substitutes for social stimuli in fowl (Gallus sp.).

The corpus callosum has been implicated as a region of dysfunctional connectivity in schizophrenia, but the association between age and callosal pathology is unclear. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and diffusiontensor imaging (DTI) were performed on adults (n¼34) and adolescents (n¼17) with schizophrenia and adult (n¼ 33) and adolescent (n¼15) age-and sex-matched healthy controls. The corpus callosum was manually traced on each participant's MRI, and the DTI scan was co-registered to the MRI. The corpus callosum was divided into five anteroposterior segments. Area and anisotropy were calculated for each segment. Both patient groups demonstrated reduced callosal anisotropy; however, the adolescents exhibited reductions mostly in anterior regions while the reductions were more prominent in posterior regions of the adults. The adolescent patients showed greater decreases in absolute area as compared with the adult patients, particularly in the anterior segments. However, the adults showed greater reductions when area was considered relative to whole brain white matter volume. Our results suggest that the initial stages of the illness are characterized by deficiencies in frontal connections, and the chronic phase is characterized by deficits in the posterior corpus callosum; or, alternatively, adolescent-onset schizophrenia may represent a different or more severe form of the illness.

Multimodal brain imaging data have shown increasing utility in answering both scientifically interesting and clinically relevant questions. Each brain imaging technique provides a different view of brain function or structure, while multimodal fusion capitalizes on the strength of each and may uncover hidden relationships that can merge findings from separate neuroimaging studies. However, most current approaches have focused on pair-wise fusion and there is still relatively little work on N-way data fusion and examination of the relationships among multiple data types. We recently developed an approach called "mCCA + jICA" as a novel multi-way fusion method which is able to investigate the disease risk factors that are either shared or distinct across multiple modalities as well as the full correspondence across modalities. In this paper, we applied this model to combine resting state fMRI (amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation, ALFF), gray matter (GM) density, and DTI (fractional anisotropy, FA) data, in order to elucidate the abnormalities underlying schizophrenia patients (SZs, n = 35) relative to healthy controls (HCs, n = 28). Both modality-common and modality-unique abnormal regions were identified in SZs, which were then used for successful classification for seven modality-combinations, showing the potential for a broad applicability of the mCCA + jICA model and its results. In addition, a pair of GM-DTI components showed significant correlation with the positive symptom subscale of Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), suggesting that GM density changes in default model network along with white-matter disruption in anterior thalamic radiation are associated with increased positive PANSS. Findings suggest the DTI anisotropy changes in frontal lobe may relate to the corresponding functional/structural changes in prefrontal cortex and superior temporal gyrus that are thought to play a role in the clinical expression of SZ.

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Through recent artistic practices and technology of interactive systems for music, composition and improvisation have more and more blended and interconnected with each other – a sui generis situation now called comprovisation. The concept of comprovisation applies equally well to the spontaneous generation and manipulation of computer graphics, especially as such graphics are systematically coordinated audio-visually, while being subject to spontaneous manipulation by a performer.
This is explained in terms of the Fluxations and FluxNoisations Human Body Interfaces, interactive dance systems that generate music and graphics spontaneously in response to hand and body movement. They enable spontaneous expressive shaping of coherent complexity and variety. Thus a multi-layered multimodal experience arises. The aesthetic experience of this multimedia spectacle relates to experiences of various prior music and visual art of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, as well as to hypothetical physical realities. Thus a kind of cybernetic phenomenology of art is pursued and enacted through an embodied cybersynthesis of art with simulated alternate reality. Call it a pragmatic speculative realism, an adventurous technoetic ‘what if.’ As compared to more traditional forms of improvisation, the opportunities for risk-taking and aesthetic exploration rise to a new level of uncertainty, as the reactions of the improviser simultaneously draw from and target both visual and aural modalities, such that the intentions toward each fuse together."

Male chickens, Gallus gallus domesticus, usually produce characteristic 'food' calls upon discovering edible objects, and are more likely to do so in the presence of a hen. Food calling is thus dependent upon food and modulated by social context, which is consistent with the idea that hens respond because they anticipate a feeding opportunity. An alternative model suggests that female behaviour is not mediated by the predicted presence of food but rather by social information, such as a low probability of male aggression. We conducted two playback experiments to explore the type of information encoded in food-associated vocal signals. Isolated hens were played recorded food calls and we compared their responses with those evoked by ground alarm calls (which have similar acoustic characteristics) and by contact calls (which are produced under similar social circumstances). Hens responded to food call playbacks by fixating downwards with the frontal binocular field. This anticipatory feeding movement was specific to food calls and did not occur in either of the control conditions. Food calls also affected looking downwards selectively. There were no differences between the call types in their effects on social behaviour, such as approach and contact calling, nor were there differences in the nonspecific effects of sound playback, such as orienting towards the loudspeaker or increased locomotor activity. Chicken food calls appear to provide conspecifics with information about the presence of food. This property has not hitherto been demonstrated in any natural system of animal acoustic signals.

The disconnection hypothesis suggests that the core symptoms of schizophrenia (SZ) are related to aberrant, or 'dys-', connectivity between distinct brain regions. A proliferation of functional and structural neuroimaging studies have been conducted to investigate this hypothesis, across the full course of the disorder; from people at Ultra-High-Risk of developing psychosis to patients with chronic SZ. However the results of these studies have not always been consistent, and to date, there have been no attempts to summarise the results of both methodologies in conjunction. In this article, we systematically review both the structural and functional connectivity literature in SZ. The main trends to emerge are that schizophrenia is associated with connectivity reductions, as opposed to increases, relative to healthy controls, and that this is particularly evident in the connections involving the frontal lobe. These two trends appear to apply across all stages of the disorder, and to be independent of the neuroimaging methodology employed. We discuss the potential implications of these trends, and identify possible future investigative directions.

Multi-modal fusion is an effective approach in biomedical imaging which combines multiple data types in a joint analysis and overcomes the problem that each modality provides a limited view of the brain. In this paper, we propose an exploratory fusion model, we term "mCCA+jICA", by combining two multivariate approaches: multi-set canonical correlation analysis (mCCA) and joint independent component analysis (jICA). This model can freely combine multiple, disparate data sets and explore their joint information in an accurate and effective manner, so that high decomposition accuracy and valid modal links can be achieved simultaneously. We compared mCCA+jICA with its alternatives in simulation and applied it to real fMRI-DTImethylation data fusion, to identify brain abnormalities in schizophrenia. The results replicate previous reports and add to our understanding of the neural correlates of schizophrenia, and suggest more generally a promising approach to identify potential brain illness biomarkers.

OBJECTIVE: Disruption within the working memory (WM) neural network is considered an integral feature of schizophrenia. The WM network, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in particular, undergo significant remodeling in late adolescence. Potential interactions between developmental changes in the WM network and disease-related processes for schizophrenia remain unclear. The aim of this study was to determine whether DLPFC activation and functional connectivity are impaired during WM in patients with early-onset schizophrenia (EOS; age of onset <18 years).

METHOD: We used functional magnetic resonance imaging and psychophysiological interaction analysis to respectively measure blood oxygenation level-dependent signal and to derive functional connectivity estimates in response to the two-back WM task from 25 youths with EOS and 20 matched healthy adolescents.

RESULTS: Compared with healthy adolescents, patients with EOS showed reduced engagement of the DLPFC, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and frontal operculum, and had reduced DLPFC connectivity within the WM network. Patients with EOS showed abnormal reduction in the coupling of the DLPFC with the ACC, the inferior parietal lobule, and the middle occipital gyrus. In contrast to healthy adolescents, patients with EOS expressed age-related decrease in the activity of the DLPFC and an increase in its connectivity with the ACC.

CONCLUSIONS: Patients with EOS show dysfunctional engagement and reduced integration within the WM neural network. The pattern of abnormal age-related correlations in DLPFC activity and connectivity suggests that schizophrenia-related processes have an impact on brain regions that show significant late developmental changes.

BACKGROUND: Dysconnectivity between brain regions is thought to underlie the cognitive abnormalities that characterise schizophrenia (SZ). Consistent with this notion functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies in SZ have reliably provided evidence of abnormalities in functional integration and in white matter connectivity. Yet little is known about how alterations at the functional level related to abnormalities in anatomical connectivity.

METHODS: We obtained fMRI data during the 2-back working memory task from 25 patients with SZ and 19 healthy controls matched for age, sex and IQ. DTI data were also acquired in the same session. In addition to conventional unimodal analyses we extracted "features" [contrast maps for fMRI and fractional anisotropy (FA) for DTI] that were subjected to joint independent component analysis (JICA) in order to examine interactions between fMRI and DTI data sources.

RESULTS: Conventional unimodal analyses revealed both functional and structural deficits in patients with SZ. The JICA identified regions of joint, multimodal brain sources that differed in patients and controls. The fMRI source implicated regions within the anterior cingulate and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and in the cuneus where patients showed relative hypoactivation and within the frontopolar cortex where patients showed relative hyperactivation. The DTI source localised reduced FA in patients in the splenium and posterior cingulum.

CONCLUSIONS: This study promotes our understanding of structure-function relationships in SZ by characterising linked functional and white matter changes that contribute to working memory dysfunction in this disorder.

Many animal signals have been produced by selection operating upon behavioural precursors that lack signal function, a process known as 'ritualization'. When the precursor remains in the repertoire, comparisons of its structure with that of the derived signal permit inference of the forces responsible. Selection for signal efficacy and recognition produce characteristic changes (e.g., increases in intensity and duration, and repetition). The tidbitting display of male fowl, Gallus gallus, has long been considered an example of ritualization. However, the changes associated with this evolutionary process have never been characterized, nor has there been any test of whether the signal is perceived as distinct from its putative precursor (self-feeding). To address this, we first analysed video recordings of males feeding and tidbitting. We found a significant increase in the intensity, duration and repetition of specific movements during the tidbitting display compared to feeding. These results suggest that tidbitting is a ritualized form of self-feeding behaviour, but the critical test requires assessment of receiver response. If females recognized the tidbitting signal as distinct from male feeding behaviour, we predicted that females would food search significantly more in response to tidbitting. The results of high-definition video playbacks support this hypothesis. This is the first empirical demonstration of the perceptual and functional predictions made by a classic ethological hypothesis.

In Europe and North America, scholars are beginning to shed the assumptions of print culture. They are also only beginning to perceive the possibilities of a computerized, electro-magnetic culture. In this first decade of the twenty-first century, historians face a challenge: how, and to what extent, are we to appropriate the 3D-immersive environment as an instrument of representation and interaction? In many ways, the situation is analogous to that faced by scholars at the close of the Roman Empire. Virtual Reality (VR) - the generation of artificial, three-dimensional, immersive environments by the computer - is the codex of our time. As a medium of communication, it presents new methods for representation, narration and instruction. In this study I suggest how using the 3D Virtual Buildings Project as a framework for discussing what is currently possible and as a prototype for discussing what will soon be possible.

Los textos islámicos enseñan que cualquier manera de hablar de Dios no es sino una metáfora, es decir, una manera de hablar acerca de Dios de tal modo que el ser humano pueda comprender fácilmente (cf. Bausani, 1980: 16-17). En este sentido, se trata de metáforas conceptuales tal como son explicadas por la Lingüística Cognitiva: cuando el Qur´an, o la Biblia, u otros textos sagrados hablan de la Divinidad en términos humanos, usan metáforas, y se recurre esencialmente a la metáfora conceptual de alto nivel ABSTRACTO ES CONCRETO.

¿Cómo se relacionan los creyentes y practicantes de hoy, y no solamente los teólogos, con ciertas metáforas transmitidas por su fe?, y ¿qué pueden decirnos dichas metáforas sobre los conceptos que los individuos tienen sobre sí mismos? Por otra parte, ¿de qué manera mantiene el creyente una representación viable de sí mismo y del mundo que le rodea a pesar de los aspectos aparentemente contradictorios de sus representaciones?

En este artículo intento mostrar que la Lingüística Cognitiva puede ofrecer una nueva perspectiva en el tratamiento de estas cuestiones, y que las metáforas que se refieren a los conceptos “más significativos”, como el concepto de persona y el de lo transcendente, están profunda y firmemente enraizadas en nuestro sistema conceptual individual, poniendo en evidencia asociaciones metafóricas y metonímicas que a menudo no son del todo evidentes.