Categoría: Papers con abstracts

Although the notion of world language has been variously defined, most accounts acknowledge inter-user performance variability as a key aspect of the construct. The sociocultural aspects of such a phenomenon have been extensively treated in the literature. However, comparatively little attention has been paid to its neurocognitive underpinnings. This paper addresses the biopsychological bases of performance variability among word-language users, focusing on bilingual speakers of English. Available evidence reveals four neurocognitive determinants of variability, namely manner of appropriation, age of acquisition, level of proficiency, and degree of formal similarity between the native and the non-native language. In its concluding section, the paper highlights the benefits of incorporating neurocognitive evidence into the study and conceptualization of world languages.

BACKGROUND: Medical practitioners such as physicians are continuously exposed to the suffering and the distress of patients. Understanding the way pain perception relates to empathetic dispositions and professional quality of life can contribute to the development of strategies aimed at protecting health professionals from burnout and compassion fatigue. In the present study we investigate the way individual dispositions relate to behavioral measures of pain sensitivity, empathy, and professional quality of life. METHODS: A secure Web-based series of self-report measures and a behavioral task were administered to 1,199 board-certified physicians. Additionally, surveys were used to obtain measures of demographic and professional background; dispositional empathy (empathic concern, personal distress, and perspective taking); positive (compassion satisfaction) and negative (burnout and secondary traumatic stress) aspects of their professional life. In the behavioral task, participants were asked to watch a series of video clips of patients experiencing different levels of pain and provide ratings of pain intensity and induced personal distress. RESULTS: Perceived pain intensity was significantly lower among more experienced physicians but similar across specialty fields with varying demands of emotional stress. Watching videos of patients in pain, however, elicited more personal distress among physicians in highly demanding medical fields, despite comparable empathy dispositions with other fields. The pain of male patients was perceived as less intense than the pain of female patients, and this effect was more marked for female physicians. The effect of dispositional empathy on pain perception and induced personal distress was different for each sub-component, with perspective taking and empathic concern (EC) being predictive of the behavioral outcomes. Physicians who experience both compassion satisfaction and fatigue perceive more pain and suffer more personal distress from it than those who only suffer the negative aspects of professional quality of life. CONCLUSIONS: Professional experience seems to desensitize physicians to the pain of others without necessarily helping them down-regulate their own personal distress. Pain perception is also related with specific aspects of empathy and varies depending on context, as is the case with the gender of their patients. Minimum levels of empathy appear necessary to benefit from the positive aspects of professional quality of life in medicine.

Bipolar disorder (BD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in adults share clinical symptoms. Both disorders present with executive functioning impairment. The detection of executive dysfunction usually requires the administration of an extensive neuropsychological battery. The Institute of Cognitive Neurology (INECO) Frontal Screening (IFS) is an efficient tool, which has been demonstrated to be useful for the detection of executive deficits in other diseases involving the prefrontal cortex. This study assessed the usefulness of the IFS in detecting the executive dysfunction of BD and ADHD adults, by means of a receiver-operating characteristic curve analysis and a multigroup discriminant function analysis. Twenty-four BD, 25 ADHD patients and 25 controls were assessed with a battery that included the IFS and other measures of executive functioning. Our results showed that both patient groups performed significantly lower than controls on the IFS total score. Using a 27.5 point cut-off score, the IFS showed good sensitivity and acceptable specificity to detect executive impairments in BD and ADHD patients. The IFS discriminated between controls and each patient group more reliably than other executive functions measures. Our results suggest that this tool could be a useful instrument to assess executive functions in BD and ADHD patients.

El presente trabajo analiza las variables que inciden en la reincidencia penal. Se analizaron 333 casos del Hospital Psiquiátrico del Servicio Penitenciario Federal Argentino, con el objetivo de hallar diversos indicadores que se asocien al riesgo de reincidencia. Los resultados indican con un grado de significación (p < 0.01), que la edad de inicio de consumo de drogas y la presencia de antecedentes penales se asocian con la reincidencia delictiva. También el nivel educativo presentó una fuerte asociación (p=.006). La presencia de trastornos mentales no ha resultado estadísticamente significativa como variable pronóstico de reincidencia (p=.218), pero en el análisis de ese factor se pudo advertir una diferencia en la tendencia del tipo de delito cometido entre el grupo de personas con diagnóstico de psicosis y el grupo de personas con trastornos de la personalidad. Este tipo de información puede aportar en la toma de decisiones a la hora de planificar o implementar políticas públicas vinculadas a la prevención y a la inclusión social.

Emerging theories on embodied cognition have caused high expectations, ambitious promises, and strong controversies. Several criticisms have been explained elsewhere (Mahon and Caramazza, 2008; Cardona et al., 2014) and will not be discussed further here. In this paper, we will focus on a specific explanatory strategy frequently assessed by the radical embodied cognition approaches: the use of homuncular explanations for the explicit (or implicit) attribution of causal roles in the comprehension of language understanding. We first present this criticism regarding a prototypical example: the mirror neuron system (MNS) (Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2004; Iacoboni and Dapretto, 2006) in the field of language understanding and then extend our conclusions to other programs of embodied cognition. Here we discuss the radical claims that propose the MNS as the putative mechanism for multiple cognitive and social psychology constructs (e.g., Gallese, 2008; Cattaneo and Rizzolatti, 2009; Iacoboni, 2009) and the critical role of the MNS in language understanding (Heyes, 2010a; Hickok, 2013).

En este trabajo se reportan por primera vez los correlatos cerebrales del procesamiento emocional en ex-guerrilleros colombianos (EGC) que participaron en actividades armadas. Aunque los EGC presentaron correlatos cerebrales de procesamiento emocional preservado, se observaron señales neuronales exacerbadas asociadas a la saliencia emocional de los estímulos. Dicha anomalía estuvo asociada a los niveles de empatía y funciones ejecutivas entre los EGC.

Language and action systems are functionally coupled in the brain as demonstrated by converging evidence using Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and lesion studies. In particular, this coupling has been demonstrated using the action-sentence compatibility effect (ACE) in which motor activity and language interact. The ACE task requires participants to listen to sentences that described actions typically performed with an open hand (e.g., clapping), a closed hand (e.g., hammering), or without any hand action (neutral); and to press a large button with either an open hand position or closed hand position immediately upon comprehending each sentence. The ACE is defined as a longer reaction time (RT) in the action-sentence incompatible conditions than in the compatible conditions. Here we investigated direct motor-language coupling in two novel and uniquely informative ways. First, we measured the behavioural ACE in patients with motor impairment (early Parkinson’s disease – EPD), and second, in epileptic patients with direct electrocorticography (ECoG) recordings. In experiment 1, EPD participants with preserved general cognitive repertoire, showed a much diminished ACE relative to non-EPD volunteers. Moreover, a correlation between ACE performance and action-verb processing (kissing and dancing test – KDT) was observed. Direct cortical recordings (ECoG) in motor and language areas (experiment 2) demonstrated simultaneous bidirectional effects: motor preparation affected language processing (N400 at left inferior frontal gyrus and middle/superior temporal gyrus), and language processing affected activity in movement-related areas (motor potential at premotor and M1). Our findings show that the ACE paradigm requires ongoing integration of preserved motor and language coupling (abolished in EPD) and engages motor-temporal cortices in a bidirectional way. In addition, both experiments suggest the presence of a motor-language network which is not restricted to somatotopically defined brain areas. These results open new pathways in the fields of motor diseases, theoretical approaches to language understanding, and models of action-perception coupling.

En este trabajo se revisa el solapamiento genético y neuropatológico de la demencia frontotemporal (DFT) y la esclerosis lateral amiotrófica (ELA), en particular respecto al descubrimiento de la TDP43 (Transactive Response DNA Binding Protein 43 kDa) y la expansión del intron del C9ORF72 (cromosoma 9p21). Finalmente se destaca la necesidad de una aproximación multinivel a estas patologías en base registros nacionales.

The anterior cingulate cortex: an integrative hub for human socially-driven interactions. Autores Lavin C, Melis C, Mikulan E, Gelormini C, Huepe D, Ibanez A.  Año 2013 Journal  Lavin C, Melis C, Mikulan E, Gelormini C, Huepe D, Ibanez A.  Volumen 7: 64. Abstract   Otra información  En este trabajo proponemos la corteza cingulada anterior como un centro convergente (a través de sus conexiones fronto-temporales), de … Leer más

Este estudio evaluó los componentes múltiples de la empatía por dolor (afectivos, cognitivos, morales) en pacientes con demencia frontotemporal (bvFTD) mediante una tarea experimental que presenta acciones cotidianas. Aunque los pacientes presentaron déficits in los tres dominios, solamente la dimensión propiamente empática (empathic concern) resultó ser un déficit primario, no relacionado ni explicado por otros déficits de funciones ejecutivas u otras tareas de cognición social. Dichos resultados son cruciales tanto para la clínica de la bvFTD como para los modelos neuroanatómicos de la empatía.