Effects of training of shadowing and reading aloud of second language on working memory and neural systems.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Takeuchi H
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8286220 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Reading aloud involves computing the sound of a word from its visual form. This may be accomplished 1) by direct associations between spellings and phonology and 2) by computation from orthography to meaning to phonology. These components have been studied in behavioral experiments examining lexical properties such as word frequency; length in letters or phonemes; spelling-sound consistency; semantic factors such as imageability, measures of orthographic, or phonological complexity; and others. Effects of these lexical properties on specific neural systems, however, are poorly understood, partially because high intercorrelations among lexical factors make it difficult to determine if they have independent effects. We addressed this problem by decorrelating several important lexical properties through careful stimulus selection. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data revealed distributed neural systems for mapping orthography directly to phonology, involving left supramarginal, posterior middle temporal, and fusiform gyri. Distinct from these were areas reflecting semantic processing, including left middle temporal gyrus/inferior-temporal sulcus, bilateral angular gyrus, and precuneus/posterior cingulate. Left inferior frontal regions generally showed increased activation with greater task load, suggesting a more general role in attention, working memory, and executive processes. These data offer the first clear evidence, in a single study, for the separate neural correlates of orthography-phonology mapping and semantic access during reading aloud.
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Project description:This review focuses on reports that link music training to working memory and neural oscillations. Music training is increasingly associated with improvement in working memory, which is strongly related to both localized and distributed patterns of neural oscillations. Importantly, there is a small but growing number of reports of relationships between music training, working memory, and neural oscillations in adults. Taken together, these studies make important contributions to our understanding of the neural mechanisms that support effects of music training on behavioral measures of executive functions. In addition, they reveal gaps in our knowledge that hold promise for further investigation. The current review is divided into the main sections that follow: (1) discussion of behavioral measures of working memory, and effects of music training on working memory in adults; (2) relationships between music training and neural oscillations during temporal stages of working memory; (3) relationships between music training and working memory in children; (4) relationships between music training and working memory in older adults; and (5) effects of entrainment of neural oscillations on cognitive processing. We conclude that the study of neural oscillations is proving useful in elucidating the neural mechanisms of relationships between music training and the temporal stages of working memory. Moreover, a lifespan approach to these studies will likely reveal strategies to improve and maintain executive function during development and aging.
| S-EPMC7047970 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Working memory training has been the focus of intense research interest. Despite accumulating behavioral work, knowledge about the neural mechanisms underlying training effects is scarce. Here, we show that 7 days of training on an n-back task led to substantial performance improvements in the trained task; furthermore, the experimental group showed cross-modal transfer, as compared with an active control group. In addition, there were two neural effects that emerged as a function of training: first, increased perfusion during task performance in selected regions, reflecting a neural response to cope with high task demand; second, increased blood flow at rest in regions where training effects were apparent. We also found that perfusion at rest was correlated with task proficiency, probably reflecting an improved neural readiness to perform. Our findings are discussed within the context of the available neuroimaging literature on n-back training.
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Project description:Working memory training can improve the performance of tasks that were not trained. Whether auditory-motor integration for voice control can benefit from working memory training, however, remains unclear. The present event-related potential (ERP) study examined the impact of working memory training on the auditory-motor processing of vocal pitch. Trained participants underwent adaptive working memory training using a digit span backwards paradigm, while control participants did not receive any training. Before and after training, both trained and control participants were exposed to frequency-altered auditory feedback while producing vocalizations. After training, trained participants exhibited significantly decreased N1 amplitudes and increased P2 amplitudes in response to pitch errors in voice auditory feedback. In addition, there was a significant positive correlation between the degree of improvement in working memory capacity and the post-pre difference in P2 amplitudes. Training-related changes in the vocal compensation, however, were not observed. There was no systematic change in either vocal or cortical responses for control participants. These findings provide evidence that working memory training impacts the cortical processing of feedback errors in vocal pitch regulation. This enhanced cortical processing may be the result of increased neural efficiency in the detection of pitch errors between the intended and actual feedback.
| S-EPMC4639724 | biostudies-other
Project description:Cognitive impairment is a common comorbidity of epilepsy and adversely impacts people with both frontal lobe (FLE) and temporal lobe (TLE) epilepsy. While its neural substrates have been investigated extensively in TLE, functional imaging studies in FLE are scarce. In this study, we profiled the neural processes underlying cognitive impairment in FLE and directly compared FLE and TLE to establish commonalities and differences. We investigated 172 adult participants (56 with FLE, 64 with TLE and 52 controls) using neuropsychological tests and four functional MRI tasks probing expressive language (verbal fluency, verb generation) and working memory (verbal and visuo-spatial). Patient groups were comparable in disease duration and anti-seizure medication load. We devised a multiscale approach to map brain activation and deactivation during cognition and track reorganization in FLE and TLE. Voxel-based analyses were complemented with profiling of task effects across established motifs of functional brain organization: (i) canonical resting-state functional systems; and (ii) the principal functional connectivity gradient, which encodes a continuous transition of regional connectivity profiles, anchoring lower-level sensory and transmodal brain areas at the opposite ends of a spectrum. We show that cognitive impairment in FLE is associated with reduced activation across attentional and executive systems, as well as reduced deactivation of the default mode system, indicative of a large-scale disorganization of task-related recruitment. The imaging signatures of dysfunction in FLE are broadly similar to those in TLE, but some patterns are syndrome-specific: altered default-mode deactivation is more prominent in FLE, while impaired recruitment of posterior language areas during a task with semantic demands is more marked in TLE. Functional abnormalities in FLE and TLE appear overall modulated by disease load. On balance, our study elucidates neural processes underlying language and working memory impairment in FLE, identifies shared and syndrome-specific alterations in the two most common focal epilepsies and sheds light on system behaviour that may be amenable to future remediation strategies.
| S-EPMC9976988 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Brain activity typically increases with increasing working memory (WM) load, regardless of age, before reaching an apparent ceiling. However, older adults exhibit greater brain activity and reach ceiling at lower loads than younger adults, possibly reflecting compensation at lower loads and dysfunction at higher loads. We hypothesized that WM training would bolster neural efficiency, such that the activation peak would shift towards higher memory loads after training. Pre-training, older adults showed greater recruitment of the WM network than younger adults across all loads, with decline at the highest load. Ten days of adaptive training on a verbal WM task improved performance and led to greater brain responsiveness at higher loads for both groups. For older adults the activation peak shifted rightward towards higher loads. Finally, training increased task-related functional connectivity in older adults, both within the WM network and between this task-positive network and the task-negative/default-mode network. These results provide new evidence for functional plasticity with training in older adults and identify a potential signature of improvement at the neural level.
| S-EPMC7755422 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Most research on working memory (WM) training for children with developmental dyslexia (DD) has focused on western alphabetical languages. Moreover, most of these studies used a combination of training tasks targeting a variety of WM components, making it difficult to determine whether WM training generates a general improvement in overall reading, or improves specific cognitive skills corresponding to the WM components that are targeted in training. We tested the general and specific effects of WM training on the reading skills of 45 Chinese children with DD, grades 3 to 5. In Experiment 1, the experimental group received a program targeting the verbal WM component; in Experiment 2, the experimental group was trained with a program targeting visuospatial WM. In both experiments the control group played a placebo video game. In Experiment 1, the experimental group outperformed the control group on the visual rhyming task, which is highly correlated with verbal WM. In Experiment 2, the experimental group outperformed the control group on the orthographic awareness test, which is highly correlated with visuospatial WM. Furthermore, in both Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, the experimental groups outperformed the control groups on the fast word naming test, which is highly related to both visuospatial WM and verbal WM. Results indicated that WM training improved specific reading-related cognitive skills that are highly correlated with the specific WM components that were the target of training.
| S-EPMC5690665 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Working memory (WM) is often poorer for a second language (L2). In low noise conditions, people listening to a language other than their first language (L1) may have similar auditory perception skills for that L2 as native listeners, but do worse in high noise conditions, and this has been attributed to the poorer WM for L2. Given that WM is critical for academic success in children and young adults, these speech in noise effects have implications for academic performance where the language of instruction is L2 for a student. We used a well-established Speech-in-Noise task as a verbal WM (vWM) test, and developed a model correlating vWM and measures of English proficiency and/or usage to scholastic outcomes in a multi-faceted assessment medical education program. Significant differences in Speech-Noise Ratio (SNR50) values were observed between medical undergraduates who had learned English before or after five years of age, with the latter group doing worse in the ability to extract whole connected speech in the presence of background multi-talker babble (Student-t tests, p < 0.001). Significant negative correlations were observed between the SNR50 and seven of the nine variables of English usage, learning styles, stress, and musical abilities in a questionnaire administered to the students previously. The remaining two variables, Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and the Age of Acquisition of English (AoAoE) were significantly positively correlated with the SNR50, showing that those with a poorer capacity to discriminate simple English sentences from noise had learnt English later in life and had higher levels of stress - all characteristics of the international students. Local students exhibited significantly lower SNR50 scores and were significantly younger when they first learnt English. No significant correlation was detected between the SNR50 and the students' Visual/Verbal Learning Style (r = -0.023). Standard multiple regression was carried out to assess the relationship between language proficiency and verbal working memory (SNR50) using 5 variables of L2 proficiency, with the results showing that the variance in SNR50 was significantly predicted by this model (r (2) = 0.335). Hierarchical multiple regression was then used to test the ability of three independent variable measures (SNR50, age of acquisition of English and English proficiency) to predict academic performance as the dependent variable in a factor analysis model which predicted significant performance differences in an assessment requiring communications skills (p = 0.008), but not on a companion assessment requiring knowledge of procedural skills, or other assessments requiring factual knowledge. Thus, impaired vWM for an L2 appears to affect specific communications-based assessments in university medical students.
| S-EPMC3628612 | biostudies-literature
Project description:This study assesses the impact of a working memory training program on the syntactic complexity of the spontaneous speech of French-speaking children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Thirty-nine 6- to 12-year-old children with DLD were allocated to a WM training (DLDMM, N = 20) or an active control group (DLDSQULA, N = 19). The computerized training sessions took place three times a week, yielding 12 training hours per participant. Syntactic complexity was assessed in storytelling, measuring mean length of utterances, use of embedded clauses and rate of errors in complex utterances. The performance of participants with DLD was first compared to previous spontaneous data of 40 typically-developing (TD) children of the same age. Then, intragroup (pre- vs. post-test) and intergroup (DLDMM vs. DLDSQULA) comparisons were made to assess the impact of the working memory training on the language measures. Global results confirmed syntactic impairment in children with DLD, as opposed to TD children, with large differences for the use of embedded clauses. Findings also suggested gains in the mastery of embedded clauses in children who participated in the WM training, whereas no gains were observed in the DLD control group. These findings confirm deficits in complex syntax in children with DLD, in particular in embedded clauses, and may encourage the clinical use of language sample analysis, which provides an ecological account of children's language performance. While our results should be replicated on a larger scale, they also suggest positive transfer effects of working memory training on the capacity of participants with DLD to produce embedded clauses, in line with previous studies showing a positive effect of WM training on tasks of expressive syntax. It thus seems that working memory training can yield benefits for language, which leaves open the door to new therapeutic approaches for children with DLD.
| S-EPMC9846049 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Impairment of working memory and executive functions is already frequently observed in early stages of Parkinson's disease. Improvements in working memory performance in this cohort could potentially be achieved via working memory training. However, the specific neural mechanisms underlying different working memory processes such as maintenance as opposed to manipulation are largely under-investigated in Parkinson's disease. Moreover, the plasticity of these correlates as a function of working memory training is currently unknown in this population. Thus, the working memory subprocesses of maintenance and manipulation were assessed in 41 cognitively healthy patients with Parkinson's disease using a newly developed working memory paradigm and functional MRI. Nineteen patients were randomized to a 5-week home-based digital working memory training intervention while the remaining patients entered a control, wait list condition. Working memory task-related activation patterns and context-dependent functional connectivity, as well as the change of these neural correlates as a function of training, were assessed. While both working memory processes activated an extended frontoparietal-cerebellar network, only the manipulation of items within working memory also recruited the anterior striatum. The intervention effect on the neural correlates was small, but decreased activation in areas relevant for working memory could be observed, with activation changes correlating with behavioural change. Moreover, training seemed to result in decreased functional connectivity when pure maintenance was required, and in a reorganization of functional connectivity when items had to be manipulated. In accordance with the neural efficacy hypothesis, training resulted in overall reduced activation and reorganized functional connectivity, with a differential effect on the different working memory processes under investigation. Now, larger trials including follow-up examinations are needed to further explore the long-term effects of such interventions on a neural level and to estimate the clinical relevance to potentially delay cognitive decline in cognitively healthy patients with Parkinson's disease.
| S-EPMC7472906 | biostudies-literature