Cognitive Neuroscience of Communication Lab at Wilfrid Laurier University

New research is a step toward predicting which children will have problems learning to read. Reading is a relatively modern skill. Nevertheless, it is a skill that all children must now learn in order to fully participate in society. Some children struggle to learn to read and research has found that poor readers also perform poorly on tests of auditory processing. New research published in the journal PLOS Biology pushes us one step closer to being able to predict whether a ...young child may have difficulty learning to read in the future. Nina Kraus at Northwestern University and her colleagues conducted a series of experiments where they recorded EEG measures (frequency-following responses; FFR) of 112 children who were between the ages of 3 and 14 years. During the experiments the children listened to the speech sound 'da' mixed with noise (six people talking) in their right ear, and the soundtrack from a movie in their left ear. Three measures of the brain responses that indexed the stability, timing and fidelity of the neural coding of the speech in noise were able to allow the researchers to statistically predict the young children’s performance on pre-reading tests, and then one year later, predict performance of the preschoolers’ on tests of emergent literacy. "If the brain's response to sound isn't optimal, it can't keep up with the fast, difficult computations required to process in noise," Kraus said in a press release. "Sound is a powerful, invisible force that is central to human communication. Everyday listening experiences bootstrap language development by cluing children in on which sounds are meaningful. If a child can't make meaning of these sounds through the background noise, they won't develop the linguistic resources needed when reading instruction begins." The study is a promising step toward the use of neurophysiological measures to diagnose potential issues with learning, and allow early intervention to ensure the best outcome for children. -- JAJ Link to research article: http://j.mp/1DJ53fc

Are you left brained, or right brained? Despite what you may read, these descriptions are more metaphorical -- unless you are a split-brain patient. A recent article in The Atlantic presents a very brief history of how split-brain patients paved the way for modern-day understandings of perception, consciousness, and the self. Split-brain patients have their corpus callosum, the main connection for communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, surg...ically severed to reduce the effects of epileptic seizures. Incredibly, this neurosurgery was first performed in 1939. Starting in the 1960’s, Michael Gazzaniga and Roger Sperry conducted pioneering experiments that changed the way we understand the brain. These experiments helped refine our views about the dominant functions of each hemisphere, and provided insight into how the hemispheres work together. Link to article by Emily Esfahani Smith: http://j.mp/1PgEG1B One thing to note when you are reading the article, though. Smith gives an incomplete explanation for why items that are presented to our left visual field are processed in the right hemisphere and items presented to our right visual field are processed in the left hemisphere. Objects presented to our left visual field are processed on the right side of the brain because light projected from our left hits the right side of the retina in both eyes. The right half of each retina is ‘wired’ to the right hemisphere, and the left half of each retina is wired to the left hemisphere. Link to a nice diagram of eye-to-brain wiring: http://j.mp/1gYmdLW It is true that the left hemisphere controls the action of the right hand, but this crossover of the wiring from one side of the body to the other may in fact have evolved because of the way vision works. It may be advantageous for the motor system that controls our body to be located in the same hemisphere as the visual processing of information from that same side of the body. In addition to shedding more light on the lateralization of brain function, Michael Gazzaniga's work on split-brain patients was a stepping stone toward the emergence of the field of cognitive neuroscience. -- JAJ

Most people do not need another reason to have a cup of coffee. But researchers at the University of Bari Aldo Moro in Italy are giving us one anyway. Dr. Vincenzo Solfrizzi and colleagues analyzed the coffee consumption of 1,445 individuals between 65 and 84 years old, and found that drinking 1-2 cups of coffee each day may reduce your risk of developing mild cognitive impairment (MCI) as you age. Mild cognitive impairment involves memory, language, and thought problems tha...t are more severe than what is part of normal aging. Individuals with mild cognitive impairment are at a significant risk of developing dementia caused by Alzheimer's disease and other neurological conditions. In a press release Dr. Solfrizzi said moderate and regular coffee consumption may have neuroprotective effects ... against MCI, confirming previous studies on the long-term protective effects of coffee, tea, or caffeine consumption ... against cognitive decline and dementia. The positive effects of coffee appear to be dose dependent. Individuals who drank 1-2 cups of coffee had a reduced incidence of MCI compared to individuals who never or rarely consumed coffee, or individuals who drank more than 2 cups of coffee. I should point out that the study was a correlational study, so there may be other related factors that explain the differences in the development of mild cognitive impairment. But, this study along with a number of other studies that support moderate coffee consumption might be another reason to enjoy a ‘cup of joe’. -- JAJ Link to research paper: http://j.mp/1eRGmBp

A team of scientists and engineers at Harvard University have developed nanotechnology that has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the brain, and may lead to novel treatments for diseases such as Parkinson’s disease. The team, led by chemistry professor Charles Lieber, invented a method of manufacturing a mesh of conductive polymer filaments. The mesh is extremely bendable and is injected into the brain by a glass needle that has an inner diameter of 95 m (m...icrometers). It is the mesh’s small size and incredible flexibility that allows it to roll up as it is passed through the needle and then unfold once injected into the brain. Existing techniques are crude relative to the way the brain is wired, said Lieber in a Harvard press release. Whether it’s a silicon probe or flexible polymers they cause inflammation in the tissue that requires periodically changing the position or the stimulation. But with our injectable electronics, it’s as if it’s not there at all. They are one million times more flexible than any state-of-the-art flexible electronics and have subcellular feature sizes. They’re what I call ‘neuro-philic’ they actually like to interact with neurons. The mesh itself can include nanoscale electrodes that can be used to record neural activity, or in the future, stimulate the surrounding neurons. For their pilot study published in the June issue of Nature Nanotechnology, the researchers fabricated the mesh with 16 tiny electrodes and injected it into the brain (lateral ventricle and hippocampus) of anaesthetized mice. They were able to accurately record activity from the surrounding neurons. Many (most actually) aspects of the brain remain a mystery. An ultimate goal for neuroscientists is to uncover how individual neurons work together to generate perception, thought, and emotion. Although there is certainly a lot of work to do before this type of technology is in the hands of neuroscientists and neurosurgeons, injectable nanoelectronics have the potential to accelerate neuroscience and advance treatments for brain injury and disease. -- JAJ Link to research article: http://goo.gl/dWLxuW

We are looking for people who stutter to participate in a research study. The aim of the study is to understand if individuals who stutter use auditory information differently than individuals who do not stutter. The study is taking place at both Toronto and Waterloo locations. For more information, please click below.