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Background Alzheimer’s disease may compromise several musical competences, though no clear data is available in the scientific literature. Furthermore, music is capable of communicating basic emotions, but little is known about the emotional aspect of music in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. We present a systematic investigation of music processing in relation to extra-musical skills, in particular emotional skills in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Methods We tested 30 patients with mild or moderate Alzheimer’s disease and 30 control subjects. We essentially evaluated (a) musical competences, using the extra-linguistic test, Solfeggio test and the recognition test of musical emotions—elaborated by our research team—and the Seashore test, and (b) emotional capacities using emotional memory and emotional prosody tests—made by our research group. Results We significantly observed lower total results of every test assessing cognitive, emotional and music competences in Alzheimer’s disease patients than those in control subjects, but the score of musical emotion recognition test did not reach to a significant difference between the subjects groups. Conclusions Our findings found a global impairment of music competences in Alzheimer patients with cognitive and emotional troubles. Nevertheless, the performances in the recognition test of musical emotions showed a trend towards a performance difference. We can suggest that Alzheimer’s disease currently presents an aphaso-agnoso-apractic-amusia syndrome.

We compared aspects of verbal memory and executive functioning in 51 community-dwelling persons with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and 55 healthy controls matched on age and education. Depressive symptoms were assessed with the Centre for Epidemiological Studies-Depression Scale (CES-D), and illness variables included glomerular filtration rate (GFR) and hemoglobin. Findings indicate that persons with CKD exhibited poorer performance on measures of memory (CVLT-II) and executive functioning (DKEFS Trailmaking Test B and Color-Word Interference Tests) in comparison with healthy controls. Furthermore, performance decrements were magnified in older CKD participants on measures of verbal memory and inhibition. Nearly half of CKD participants aged 61 and older exhibited significant impairments in verbal memory and inhibition in comparison to matched controls. Cognitive performance in CKD was not associated with measures of illness severity. The differences observed were not accounted for by depressive symptoms, which were only weakly associated with cognitive performance, and negatively associated with age. Findings highlight the need for further exploration of the etiologies and functional consequences of the neuropsychological presentation of CKD. (JINS, 2007, 13, 344–353.)

The hemispheric lateralization of certain faculties in the human brain has long been held to be beneficial for functioning. However, quantitative relationships between the degree of lateralization in particular brain regions and the level of functioning have yet to be established. Here we demonstrate that two distinct forms of functional lateralization are present in the left vs. the right cerebral hemisphere, with the left hemisphere showing a preference to interact more exclusively with itself, particularly for cortical regions involved in language and fine motor coordination. In contrast, right-hemisphere cortical regions involved in visuospatial and attentional processing interact in a more integrative fashion with both hemispheres. The degree of lateralization present in these distinct systems selectively predicted behavioral measures of verbal and visuospatial ability, providing direct evidence that lateralization is associated with enhanced cognitive ability.

Clicking is one of the most robust metaphors for social connection. But how do we know when two people \"click\"? We asked pairs of friends and strangers to talk with each other and rate their felt connection. For both friends and strangers, speed in response was a robust predictor of feeling connected. Conversations with faster response times felt more connected than conversations with slower response times, and within conversations, connected moments had faster response times than less-connected moments. This effect was determined primarily by partner responsivity: People felt more connected to the degree that their partner responded quickly to them rather than by how quickly they responded to their partner. The temporal scale of these effects (<250 ms) precludes conscious control, thus providing an honest signal of connection. Using a round-robin design in each of six closed networks, we show that faster responders evoked greater feelings of connection across partners. Finally, we demonstrate that this signal is used by third-party listeners as a heuristic of how well people are connected: Conversations with faster response times were perceived as more connected than the same conversations with slower response times. Together, these findings suggest that response times comprise a robust and sufficient signal of whether two minds “click.”

Metacognition concerns the processes by which we monitor and control our own cognitive processes. It can also be applied to others, in which case it is known as mentalizing. Both kinds of metacognition have implicit and explicit forms, where implicit means automatic and without awareness. Implicit metacognition enables us to adopt a we-mode, through which we automatically take account of the knowledge and intentions of others. Adoption of this mode enhances joint action. Explicit metacognition enables us to reflect on and justify our behaviour to others. However, access to the underlying processes is very limited for both self and others and our reports on our own and others' intentions can be very inaccurate. On the other hand, recent experiments have shown that, through discussions of our perceptual experiences with others, we can detect sensory signals more accurately, even in the absence of objective feedback. Through our willingness to discuss with others the reasons for our actions and perceptions, we overcome our lack of direct access to the underlying cognitive processes. This creates the potential for us to build more accurate accounts of the world and of ourselves. I suggest, therefore, that explicit metacognition is a uniquely human ability that has evolved through its enhancement of collaborative decision-making.

The verb fluency task is considered more challenging than other verbal fluencies and may aid in early diagnosis of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and dementia. The aim of this work was to carry out a scoping review of studies that investigated the assessment of the verb fluency task in individuals with MCI and dementia. This is a scoping review conducted according to the PRISMA-ScR. Papers included needed to measure verb fluency task in individuals with MCI or dementia, with no restrictions on publication period or language. Studies that did not assess verb fluency or focused on other types of verbal fluency in individuals without MCI or dementia were excluded. The databases used for the search were PubMed, LILACS, Scielo, Embase and Scopus. The variables sought were related to the methodology used for assessment, specific patterns produced by the population and the ability of the task to distinguish MCI from dementia. Two reviewers initially screened 977 publications, excluding 269 duplicates. The remaining 708 were assessed by title and abstract, resulting in 37 studies selected for full reading, with 16 included in the scoping review. The majority of publications (93.7%) reported cross-sectional studies. 87.5% used the methodology of analyzing correct verbs, while 25% also used clustering and switching assessment. Error analysis was only conducted in 2 studies. In general (75%), the studies considered a task duration of 1 minute. Individuals with dementia showed significantly greater impairments in verb fluency compared to those with MCI, who also demonstrated reduced performance relative to healthy individuals. The deficits in this task highlight underlying cognitive changes, such as in working memory and executive functions. The temporal lobe was the main identified as dysfunctional in individuals who performed worse. Despite having diverse aims, the works were similar in terms of study design and task assessment methodology. The main result of this scoping review is that the verb fluency task is a sensitive tool for distinguishing individuals with MCI from those with dementia and can highlight underlying cognitive deficits. Future studies should prioritize qualitative analyses, as well as longitudinal findings.

Verbal fluency tasks (VFTs) are valuable for detecting early neurodegenerative disease. Automated VFT scoring methods may enhance dementia diagnosis by extracting metrics of lexical access, semantic clustering, production timings, and acoustic speech features. This research presents an automated dashboard which quantifies and visualizes verbal fluency features, designed to enhance the accessibility and feasibility of using fine-gained performance metrics. Data from adults across the lifespan showcases this tool's sensitivity to age effects from earlier in the lifespan. Seventy-five cognitively healthy adults (aged 20-80 years) completed a VFT battery, with data collection ongoing (target n = 120). Tasks include traditional and novel variants of the verbal fluency paradigm, with category switching, response inhibition, semantic association, and multi-tasking differentially challenged across tests. Audio recordings were processed by the dashboard, outputting metrics including semantic clustering, switch reaction time costs, and pause duration for analyses. The automated pipeline confirmed well-established age-related effects on conventional verbal fluency performance, with young adults producing significantly more responses compared to mid-age and older adults (F(2,60) = 8.92, p < .001, η  = .229). While mid-age adults demonstrated intermediate performance between young and older adults on traditional VFTs, automated metrics revealed additional cognitive changes. Specifically, the switch task showed steeper performance declines in the initial 0-15 seconds for mid-age adults compared to young adults (Age × Time interaction: F(14,420) = 2.47, p = .012, η  = .076). Additionally, mid-age adults exhibited greater dual-task costs (VFT: F(1,60) = 123.76, p < .001) and dissociation costs (M = 1.80s) compared to younger adults (M = 1.39s). Results provide early support for this automated verbal fluency dashboard in detecting subtle cognitive outcomes, particularly with varying executive demands. By establishing normative data across age groups and integrating findings into an interactive clinical dashboard, this research advances development of sensitive diagnostic tools. Future work will incorporate APOE genotype and clinical populations to validate the dashboard's utility in enhancing dementia diagnostics and care, while establishing clinical feasibility and acceptability.

Individuals often interpret the same event in different ways. How do personality traits modulate brain activity evoked by a complex stimulus? Here we report results from a naturalistic paradigm designed to draw out both neural and behavioral variation along a specific dimension of interest, namely paranoia. Participants listen to a narrative during functional MRI describing an ambiguous social scenario, written such that some individuals would find it highly suspicious, while others less so. Using inter-subject correlation analysis, we identify several brain areas that are differentially synchronized during listening between participants with high and low trait-level paranoia, including theory-of-mind regions. Follow-up analyses indicate that these regions are more active to mentalizing events in high-paranoia individuals. Analyzing participants’ speech as they freely recall the narrative reveals semantic and syntactic features that also scale with paranoia. Results indicate that a personality trait can act as an intrinsic “prime,” yielding different neural and behavioral responses to the same stimulus across individuals. Reactions to the same event can vary vastly based on multiple factors. Here the authors show that people with high trait-level paranoia process ambiguous information in a narrative differently and this can be attributed to greater activity in mentalizing brain regions during the moments of ambiguity.

Behavioral rhythms synchronize between humans for communication; however, the relationship of brain rhythm synchronization during speech rhythm synchronization between individuals remains unclear. Here, we conducted alternating speech tasks in which two subjects alternately pronounced letters of the alphabet during hyperscanning electroencephalography. Twenty pairs of subjects performed the task before and after each subject individually performed the task with a machine that pronounced letters at almost constant intervals. Speech rhythms were more likely to become synchronized in human–human tasks than human–machine tasks. Moreover, theta/alpha (6–12 Hz) amplitudes synchronized in the same temporal and lateral-parietal regions in each pair. Behavioral and inter-brain synchronizations were enhanced after human–machine tasks. These results indicate that inter-brain synchronizations are tightly linked to speech synchronizations between subjects. Furthermore, theta/alpha inter-brain synchronizations were also found in subjects while they observed human–machine tasks, which suggests that the inter-brain synchronization might reflect empathy for others' speech rhythms.

Language production and spatial attention are the most salient lateralized cerebral functions, and their complementary specialization has been observed in the majority of the population. To investigate whether the complementary specialization has a causal origin (the lateralization of one function causes the opposite lateralization of the other) or rather is a statistical phenomenon (different functions lateralize independently), we determined the lateralization for spatial attention in a group of individuals with known atypical right hemispheric (RH) lateralization for speech production, based on a previous large-scale screening of left-handers. We show that all 13 participants with RH language dominance have left-hemispheric dominance for spatial attention, and all but one of 16 participants with left-hemispheric language dominance are RH dominant for spatial attention. Activity was observed in the dorsal fronto-parietal pathway of attention, including the inferior parietal sulcus and superior parietal lobule, the frontal eye-movement field, and the inferior frontal sulcus/gyrus, and these regions functionally colateralized in the hemisphere dominant for attention, independently of the side of lateralization. Our results clearly support the Causal hypothesis about the complementary specialization, and we speculate that it derives from a longstanding evolutionary origin. We also suggest that the conclusions about lateralization based on an unselected sample of the population and laterality assessment using coarse functional transcranial Doppler sonography should be interpreted with more caution.