Art Jacobs | Freie Universität Berlin (original) (raw)

Papers by Art Jacobs

A long tradition of research including classical rhetoric, esthetics and poetics theory, formalis... more A long tradition of research including classical rhetoric, esthetics and poetics theory, formalism and structuralism, as well as current perspectives in (neuro)cognitive poetics has investigated structural and functional aspects of literature reception. Despite a wealth of literature published in specialized journals like Poetics, however, still little is known about how the brain processes and creates literary and poetic texts. Still, such stimulus material might be suited better than other genres for demonstrating the complexities with which our brain constructs the world in and around us, because it unifies thought and language, music and imagery in a clear, manageable way, most often with play, pleasure, and emotion (Schrott and Jacobs, 2011). In this paper, I discuss methods and models for investigating the neuronal and cognitive-affective bases of literary reading together with pertinent results from studies on poetics, text processing, emotion, or neuroaesthetics, and outline current challenges and future perspectives. Aesthetic value, then, is like the wind—we know of its existence only through its effects (Iser, 1976).

While watching movies, the brain integrates the visual information and the musical soundtrack int... more While watching movies, the brain integrates the visual information and the musical soundtrack into a coherent percept. Multisensory integration can lead to emotion elicitation on which soundtrack valences may have a modulatory impact. Here, dynamic kissing scenes from romantic comedies were presented to 22 participants (13 females) during functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning. The kissing scenes were either accompanied by happy music, sad music or no music. Evidence from cross-modal studies motivated a predefined three-region network for multisensory integration of emotion, consisting of fusiform gyrus (FG), amygdala (AMY) and anterior superior temporal gyrus (aSTG). The interactions in this network were investigated using dynamic causal models of effective connectivity. This revealed bilinear modulations by happy and sad music with suppression effects on the connectivity from FG and AMY to aSTG. Non-linear dynamic causal modeling showed a suppressive gating effect of aSTG on fusiform–amygdalar connectivity. In conclusion, fusiform to amygdala coupling strength is modulated via feedback through aSTG as region for multisensory integration of emotional material. This mechanism was emotion-specific and more pronounced for sad music. Therefore, soundtrack valences may modulate emotion elicitation in movies by differentially changing preprocessed visual information to the amygdala.

The temporal pole (TP) has been associated with diverse functions of social cognition and emotion... more The temporal pole (TP) has been associated with diverse functions of social cognition and emotion processing. Although the underlying mechanism remains elusive, one possibility is that TP acts as domain-general hub integrating socioemotional information. To test this, 26 participants were presented with 60 empathy-evoking film clips during fMRI scanning. The film clips were preceded by a linguistic sad or neutral context and half of the clips were accompanied by sad music. In line with its hypothesized role, TP was involved in the processing of sad context and furthermore tracked participants’ empathic concern. To examine the neuromodulatory impact of TP, we applied nonlinear dynamic causal modeling to a multisensory integration network from previous work consisting of superior temporal gyrus (STG), fusiform gyrus (FG), and amygdala, which was extended by an additional node in the TP. Bayesian model comparison revealed a gating of STG and TP on fusiform–amygdalar coupling and an increase of TP to FG connectivity during the integration of contextual information. Moreover, these backward projections were strengthened by emotional music. The findings indicate that during social cognition, TP integrates information from different modalities and top-down modulates lower-level perceptual areas in the ventral visual stream as a function of integration demands.

Abstract Previous research using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) suggested that phonologica... more Abstract Previous research using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) suggested that phonological processing in visual word recognition occurs rather late, typically after semantic or syntactic processing. Here, we show that phonological activation in visual word recognition can be observed much earlier. Using a lexical decision task, we show that ERPs to pseudohomophones (PsHs)(eg, ROZE) differed from well-matched spelling controls (eg, ROFE) as early as 150 ms (P150) after stimulus onset.

During reading, the probability of refixations increases and the duration of first fixations decr... more During reading, the probability of refixations increases and the duration of first fixations decreases with growing distance of the initial fixation position from a word's center (ie, the optimal viewing position, OVP). The question, whether or not refixation-OVP and firstfixation duration inverted-OVP curves are modulated by the lexical characteristics of the actually fixated stimulus is still a matter of debate.

Exploration of the real world usually expresses itself through a perceptual behaviour that is com... more Exploration of the real world usually expresses itself through a perceptual behaviour that is complex and adaptive—an interplay between external visual and internal cognitive states. However, up to now, the measurement of electrophysiological correlates of cognitive processes has been limited to situations, in which the experimental setting confined visual exploration to the mere reception of a strict serial order of events.

Abstract It is hypothesized that written languages differ in the preferred grain size of units th... more Abstract It is hypothesized that written languages differ in the preferred grain size of units that emerge during reading acquisition. Smaller units (graphemes, phonemes) are thought to play a dominant role in relatively consistent orthographies (eg, German), whereas larger units (bodies, rhymes) are thought to be more important in relatively inconsistent orthographies (eg, English).

Recent neurocognitive studies of visual word recognition provide information about neuronal netwo... more Recent neurocognitive studies of visual word recognition provide information about neuronal networks correlated with processes involved in lexical access and their time course (eg,[Holcomb, Ph. J., Grainger J. and O'Rourke, T.(2002). An Electrophysiological Study of the Effects of Orthographic Neighborhood Size on Printed Word Perception, J. of Cogn. Neurosci. 14 938–950; Binder, JR, McKiernan, KA, Parsons, ME, Westbury, CF, Possing, ET, Kaufman, JN and Buchanan, L.(2003).

Zusammenfassung. Vor zehn Jahren wurde eine Reform der deutschen Orthografie beschlossen. Anhand ... more Zusammenfassung. Vor zehn Jahren wurde eine Reform der deutschen Orthografie beschlossen. Anhand einer Blickbewegungsstudie, an der sowohl erwachsene Leser als auch Kinder teilnahmen, sollte untersucht werden, welche Auswirkungen die Rechtschreibreform auf das Lesen hatte. Die Ergebnisse liefern erste Hinweise dafür, dass die Rechtschreibreform die Worterkennung insgesamt nicht beeinträchtigt hat.

The present study investigated the nature of the inhibitory syllable frequency effect, recently r... more The present study investigated the nature of the inhibitory syllable frequency effect, recently reported for normal readers, in a German-speaking dyslexic patient. The reading impairment was characterized as a severe deficit in naming single letters or words in the presence of spared lexical processing of visual word forms.

We investigated phonological processing in normal readers to answer the question to what extent p... more We investigated phonological processing in normal readers to answer the question to what extent phonological recoding is active during silent reading and if or how it guides lexico-semantic access. We addressed this issue by looking at pseudohomophone and baseword frequency effects in lexical decisions with event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The results revealed greater activation in response to pseudohomophones than for well-controlled pseudowords in the left inferior/superior frontal and middle temporal cortex, left insula, and left superior parietal lobule. Furthermore, we observed a baseword frequency effect for pseudohomophones (e.g., FEAL) but not for pseudowords (e.g., FEEP). This baseword frequency effect was qualified by activation differences in bilateral angular and left supramarginal, and bilateral middle temporal gyri for pseudohomophones with low-compared to high-frequency basewords. We propose that lexical decisions to pseudohomophones involves phonology-driven lexico-semantic activation of their basewords and that this is converging neuroimaging evidence for automatically activated phonological representations during silent reading in experienced readers. Ó 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. on behalf of IBRO. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). (M. Braun). Abbreviations: AG, angular gyrus; ANOVA, analysis of variance; DRC, dual-route cascaded model; fMRI, functional magnetic resonance imaging; IPL, inferior parietal lobule; MROM-P, multiple read-out model including phonology; pIO, posterior inferior occipital gyrus; pSTS, posterior superior temporal sulcus; SFG, superior frontal gyrus; SMA, supplementary motor area; SMG, supramarginal gyrus; TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation; vOT, ventral occipito-temporal cortex. Neuroscience 295 (2015) 151-163

Many neurocognitive studies investigated the neural correlates of visual word recognition, some o... more Many neurocognitive studies investigated the neural correlates of visual word recognition, some of which manipulated the orthographic neighborhood density of words and nonwords believed to influence the activation of orthographically similar representations in a hypothetical mental lexicon. Previous neuroimaging research failed to find evidence for such global lexical activity associated with neighborhood density. Rather, effects were interpreted to reflect semantic or domain general processing. The present fMRI study revealed effects of lexicality, orthographic neighborhood density and a lexicality by orthographic neighborhood density interaction in a silent reading task. For the first time we found greater activity for words and nonwords with a high number of neighbors. We propose that this activity in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex reflects activation of orthographically similar codes in verbal working memory thus providing evidence for global lexical activity as the basis of the neighborhood density effect. The interaction of lexicality by neighborhood density in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex showed lower activity in response to words with a high number compared to nonwords with a high number of neighbors. In the light of these results the facilitatory effect for words and inhibitory effect for nonwords with many neighbors observed in previous studies can be understood as being due to the operation of a fast-guess mechanism for words and a temporal deadline mechanism for nonwords as predicted by models of visual word recognition. Furthermore, we propose that the lexicality effect with higher activity for words compared to nonwords in inferior parietal and middle temporal cortex reflects the operation of an identification mechanism based on local lexico-semantic activity.

Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 2014

Background: Attention deficits and impaired reading performance co-occur more often than expected... more Background: Attention deficits and impaired reading performance co-occur more often than expected by chance; however, the underlying mechanism of this association still remains rather unexplored. Method: In two consecutive studies, children aged 8 to 12 years with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and children with reading disability (RD) were examined using a 2 (ADHD versus no ADHD) × 2 (RD versus no RD) factorial design. To further delineate deficient interference control from reading processes, we used a newly developed self-paced word/nonword reading task (Experiment 1, n = 68) and a modified computerized Stroop paradigm, including an orthographic phonological neighbor (OPN) condition (Experiment 2, n = 84). Results: RD (compared to non-RD groups) was associated with impairments in both word and nonword reading, while children with ADHD also showed impaired nonword reading. In the Stroop task, RD, but not ADHD, had a significant impact on task performance. Interestingly, a significant interaction between ADHD, RD, and task condition emerged, which was due to particularly slower reaction times to nonwords in children with RD only, while task performance in children with comorbid ADHD and RD resembled that of ADHD only. Conclusions: Thus, our results demonstrate that impairments in nonword reading were not specific to RD but were also present in children with ADHD. In addition, RD and not ADHD was characterized by poor interference control in the Stroop task. These findings question whether unique cognitive deficits are specific to either ADHD or RD.

Neuroscience Letters, 2009

Psychological Research, 2008

A perceptual frequency variant of the orthographic cue (OC) hypothesis was tested in two perceptu... more A perceptual frequency variant of the orthographic cue (OC) hypothesis was tested in two perceptual identification experiments using the variable viewing position technique: German nouns and non-nouns that are most frequently perceived with or without initial letter capitalization, respectively, were tachistoscopically presented in uppercase, lower-case, or with initial capitalization. The results indicated that words were best recognized in the form they are most frequently perceived in, which suggests that during reading acquisition abstract as well as case-and item-specific OCs may be learned and used for recognition.

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2014

This study investigates the spatiotemporal brain dynamics of emotional information processing dur... more This study investigates the spatiotemporal brain dynamics of emotional information processing during reading using a combination of surface and intracranial electroencephalography (EEG). Two different theoretical views were opposed. According to the standard psycholinguistic perspective, emotional responses to words are generated within the reading network itself subsequent to semantic activation. According to the neural re-use perspective, brain regions that are involved in processing emotional information contained in other stimuli (faces, pictures, smells) might be in charge of the processing of emotional information in words as well. We focused on a specific emotiondisgustwhich has a clear locus in the brain, the anterior insula. Surface EEG showed differences between disgust and neutral words as early as 200 ms. Source localization suggested a cortical generator of the emotion effect in the left anterior insula. These findings were corroborated through the intracranial recordings of two epileptic patients with depth electrodes in insular and orbitofrontal areas. Both electrodes showed effects of disgust in reading as early as 200 ms. The early emotion effect in a brain region (insula) that responds to specific emotions in a variety of situations and stimuli clearly challenges classic sequential theories of reading in favor of the neural re-use perspective.

Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 2012

There is an ongoing debate whether deaf individuals access phonology when reading and if so, what... more There is an ongoing debate whether deaf individuals access phonology when reading and if so, what impact the ability to access phonology might have on reading achievement. However, the debate so far has been theoretically unspecific on two accounts: 1) the phonological units deaf individuals may have of oral language have not been specified 2) there seem to be no explicit cognitive models specifying how phonology and other factors operate in reading by deaf individuals. We propose that deaf individuals have representations of the sub-lexical structure of oral-aural language which are based on mouth shapes, and that these sub-lexical units are activated during reading by deaf individuals. We specify the sublexical units of deaf German readers as 11 'visemes', and incorporate the viseme-set into a working model of single word reading by deaf adults based on Coltheart et al.'s (2001) Dual Route Cascaded Model of reading aloud (DRC). We assessed the indirect route of this model by investigating the 'pseudo-homoviseme' effect using a lexical decision task in deaf German reading adults. We found a main effect of pseudo-homovisemy suggesting that at least some deaf individuals do automatically access sub-lexical structure during single word reading.

A long tradition of research including classical rhetoric, esthetics and poetics theory, formalis... more A long tradition of research including classical rhetoric, esthetics and poetics theory, formalism and structuralism, as well as current perspectives in (neuro)cognitive poetics has investigated structural and functional aspects of literature reception. Despite a wealth of literature published in specialized journals like Poetics, however, still little is known about how the brain processes and creates literary and poetic texts. Still, such stimulus material might be suited better than other genres for demonstrating the complexities with which our brain constructs the world in and around us, because it unifies thought and language, music and imagery in a clear, manageable way, most often with play, pleasure, and emotion (Schrott and Jacobs, 2011). In this paper, I discuss methods and models for investigating the neuronal and cognitive-affective bases of literary reading together with pertinent results from studies on poetics, text processing, emotion, or neuroaesthetics, and outline current challenges and future perspectives. Aesthetic value, then, is like the wind—we know of its existence only through its effects (Iser, 1976).

While watching movies, the brain integrates the visual information and the musical soundtrack int... more While watching movies, the brain integrates the visual information and the musical soundtrack into a coherent percept. Multisensory integration can lead to emotion elicitation on which soundtrack valences may have a modulatory impact. Here, dynamic kissing scenes from romantic comedies were presented to 22 participants (13 females) during functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning. The kissing scenes were either accompanied by happy music, sad music or no music. Evidence from cross-modal studies motivated a predefined three-region network for multisensory integration of emotion, consisting of fusiform gyrus (FG), amygdala (AMY) and anterior superior temporal gyrus (aSTG). The interactions in this network were investigated using dynamic causal models of effective connectivity. This revealed bilinear modulations by happy and sad music with suppression effects on the connectivity from FG and AMY to aSTG. Non-linear dynamic causal modeling showed a suppressive gating effect of aSTG on fusiform–amygdalar connectivity. In conclusion, fusiform to amygdala coupling strength is modulated via feedback through aSTG as region for multisensory integration of emotional material. This mechanism was emotion-specific and more pronounced for sad music. Therefore, soundtrack valences may modulate emotion elicitation in movies by differentially changing preprocessed visual information to the amygdala.

The temporal pole (TP) has been associated with diverse functions of social cognition and emotion... more The temporal pole (TP) has been associated with diverse functions of social cognition and emotion processing. Although the underlying mechanism remains elusive, one possibility is that TP acts as domain-general hub integrating socioemotional information. To test this, 26 participants were presented with 60 empathy-evoking film clips during fMRI scanning. The film clips were preceded by a linguistic sad or neutral context and half of the clips were accompanied by sad music. In line with its hypothesized role, TP was involved in the processing of sad context and furthermore tracked participants’ empathic concern. To examine the neuromodulatory impact of TP, we applied nonlinear dynamic causal modeling to a multisensory integration network from previous work consisting of superior temporal gyrus (STG), fusiform gyrus (FG), and amygdala, which was extended by an additional node in the TP. Bayesian model comparison revealed a gating of STG and TP on fusiform–amygdalar coupling and an increase of TP to FG connectivity during the integration of contextual information. Moreover, these backward projections were strengthened by emotional music. The findings indicate that during social cognition, TP integrates information from different modalities and top-down modulates lower-level perceptual areas in the ventral visual stream as a function of integration demands.

Abstract Previous research using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) suggested that phonologica... more Abstract Previous research using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) suggested that phonological processing in visual word recognition occurs rather late, typically after semantic or syntactic processing. Here, we show that phonological activation in visual word recognition can be observed much earlier. Using a lexical decision task, we show that ERPs to pseudohomophones (PsHs)(eg, ROZE) differed from well-matched spelling controls (eg, ROFE) as early as 150 ms (P150) after stimulus onset.

During reading, the probability of refixations increases and the duration of first fixations decr... more During reading, the probability of refixations increases and the duration of first fixations decreases with growing distance of the initial fixation position from a word's center (ie, the optimal viewing position, OVP). The question, whether or not refixation-OVP and firstfixation duration inverted-OVP curves are modulated by the lexical characteristics of the actually fixated stimulus is still a matter of debate.

Exploration of the real world usually expresses itself through a perceptual behaviour that is com... more Exploration of the real world usually expresses itself through a perceptual behaviour that is complex and adaptive—an interplay between external visual and internal cognitive states. However, up to now, the measurement of electrophysiological correlates of cognitive processes has been limited to situations, in which the experimental setting confined visual exploration to the mere reception of a strict serial order of events.

Abstract It is hypothesized that written languages differ in the preferred grain size of units th... more Abstract It is hypothesized that written languages differ in the preferred grain size of units that emerge during reading acquisition. Smaller units (graphemes, phonemes) are thought to play a dominant role in relatively consistent orthographies (eg, German), whereas larger units (bodies, rhymes) are thought to be more important in relatively inconsistent orthographies (eg, English).

Recent neurocognitive studies of visual word recognition provide information about neuronal netwo... more Recent neurocognitive studies of visual word recognition provide information about neuronal networks correlated with processes involved in lexical access and their time course (eg,[Holcomb, Ph. J., Grainger J. and O'Rourke, T.(2002). An Electrophysiological Study of the Effects of Orthographic Neighborhood Size on Printed Word Perception, J. of Cogn. Neurosci. 14 938–950; Binder, JR, McKiernan, KA, Parsons, ME, Westbury, CF, Possing, ET, Kaufman, JN and Buchanan, L.(2003).

Zusammenfassung. Vor zehn Jahren wurde eine Reform der deutschen Orthografie beschlossen. Anhand ... more Zusammenfassung. Vor zehn Jahren wurde eine Reform der deutschen Orthografie beschlossen. Anhand einer Blickbewegungsstudie, an der sowohl erwachsene Leser als auch Kinder teilnahmen, sollte untersucht werden, welche Auswirkungen die Rechtschreibreform auf das Lesen hatte. Die Ergebnisse liefern erste Hinweise dafür, dass die Rechtschreibreform die Worterkennung insgesamt nicht beeinträchtigt hat.

The present study investigated the nature of the inhibitory syllable frequency effect, recently r... more The present study investigated the nature of the inhibitory syllable frequency effect, recently reported for normal readers, in a German-speaking dyslexic patient. The reading impairment was characterized as a severe deficit in naming single letters or words in the presence of spared lexical processing of visual word forms.

We investigated phonological processing in normal readers to answer the question to what extent p... more We investigated phonological processing in normal readers to answer the question to what extent phonological recoding is active during silent reading and if or how it guides lexico-semantic access. We addressed this issue by looking at pseudohomophone and baseword frequency effects in lexical decisions with event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The results revealed greater activation in response to pseudohomophones than for well-controlled pseudowords in the left inferior/superior frontal and middle temporal cortex, left insula, and left superior parietal lobule. Furthermore, we observed a baseword frequency effect for pseudohomophones (e.g., FEAL) but not for pseudowords (e.g., FEEP). This baseword frequency effect was qualified by activation differences in bilateral angular and left supramarginal, and bilateral middle temporal gyri for pseudohomophones with low-compared to high-frequency basewords. We propose that lexical decisions to pseudohomophones involves phonology-driven lexico-semantic activation of their basewords and that this is converging neuroimaging evidence for automatically activated phonological representations during silent reading in experienced readers. Ó 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. on behalf of IBRO. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). (M. Braun). Abbreviations: AG, angular gyrus; ANOVA, analysis of variance; DRC, dual-route cascaded model; fMRI, functional magnetic resonance imaging; IPL, inferior parietal lobule; MROM-P, multiple read-out model including phonology; pIO, posterior inferior occipital gyrus; pSTS, posterior superior temporal sulcus; SFG, superior frontal gyrus; SMA, supplementary motor area; SMG, supramarginal gyrus; TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation; vOT, ventral occipito-temporal cortex. Neuroscience 295 (2015) 151-163

Many neurocognitive studies investigated the neural correlates of visual word recognition, some o... more Many neurocognitive studies investigated the neural correlates of visual word recognition, some of which manipulated the orthographic neighborhood density of words and nonwords believed to influence the activation of orthographically similar representations in a hypothetical mental lexicon. Previous neuroimaging research failed to find evidence for such global lexical activity associated with neighborhood density. Rather, effects were interpreted to reflect semantic or domain general processing. The present fMRI study revealed effects of lexicality, orthographic neighborhood density and a lexicality by orthographic neighborhood density interaction in a silent reading task. For the first time we found greater activity for words and nonwords with a high number of neighbors. We propose that this activity in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex reflects activation of orthographically similar codes in verbal working memory thus providing evidence for global lexical activity as the basis of the neighborhood density effect. The interaction of lexicality by neighborhood density in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex showed lower activity in response to words with a high number compared to nonwords with a high number of neighbors. In the light of these results the facilitatory effect for words and inhibitory effect for nonwords with many neighbors observed in previous studies can be understood as being due to the operation of a fast-guess mechanism for words and a temporal deadline mechanism for nonwords as predicted by models of visual word recognition. Furthermore, we propose that the lexicality effect with higher activity for words compared to nonwords in inferior parietal and middle temporal cortex reflects the operation of an identification mechanism based on local lexico-semantic activity.

Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 2014

Background: Attention deficits and impaired reading performance co-occur more often than expected... more Background: Attention deficits and impaired reading performance co-occur more often than expected by chance; however, the underlying mechanism of this association still remains rather unexplored. Method: In two consecutive studies, children aged 8 to 12 years with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and children with reading disability (RD) were examined using a 2 (ADHD versus no ADHD) × 2 (RD versus no RD) factorial design. To further delineate deficient interference control from reading processes, we used a newly developed self-paced word/nonword reading task (Experiment 1, n = 68) and a modified computerized Stroop paradigm, including an orthographic phonological neighbor (OPN) condition (Experiment 2, n = 84). Results: RD (compared to non-RD groups) was associated with impairments in both word and nonword reading, while children with ADHD also showed impaired nonword reading. In the Stroop task, RD, but not ADHD, had a significant impact on task performance. Interestingly, a significant interaction between ADHD, RD, and task condition emerged, which was due to particularly slower reaction times to nonwords in children with RD only, while task performance in children with comorbid ADHD and RD resembled that of ADHD only. Conclusions: Thus, our results demonstrate that impairments in nonword reading were not specific to RD but were also present in children with ADHD. In addition, RD and not ADHD was characterized by poor interference control in the Stroop task. These findings question whether unique cognitive deficits are specific to either ADHD or RD.

Neuroscience Letters, 2009

Psychological Research, 2008

A perceptual frequency variant of the orthographic cue (OC) hypothesis was tested in two perceptu... more A perceptual frequency variant of the orthographic cue (OC) hypothesis was tested in two perceptual identification experiments using the variable viewing position technique: German nouns and non-nouns that are most frequently perceived with or without initial letter capitalization, respectively, were tachistoscopically presented in uppercase, lower-case, or with initial capitalization. The results indicated that words were best recognized in the form they are most frequently perceived in, which suggests that during reading acquisition abstract as well as case-and item-specific OCs may be learned and used for recognition.

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2014

This study investigates the spatiotemporal brain dynamics of emotional information processing dur... more This study investigates the spatiotemporal brain dynamics of emotional information processing during reading using a combination of surface and intracranial electroencephalography (EEG). Two different theoretical views were opposed. According to the standard psycholinguistic perspective, emotional responses to words are generated within the reading network itself subsequent to semantic activation. According to the neural re-use perspective, brain regions that are involved in processing emotional information contained in other stimuli (faces, pictures, smells) might be in charge of the processing of emotional information in words as well. We focused on a specific emotiondisgustwhich has a clear locus in the brain, the anterior insula. Surface EEG showed differences between disgust and neutral words as early as 200 ms. Source localization suggested a cortical generator of the emotion effect in the left anterior insula. These findings were corroborated through the intracranial recordings of two epileptic patients with depth electrodes in insular and orbitofrontal areas. Both electrodes showed effects of disgust in reading as early as 200 ms. The early emotion effect in a brain region (insula) that responds to specific emotions in a variety of situations and stimuli clearly challenges classic sequential theories of reading in favor of the neural re-use perspective.

Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 2012

There is an ongoing debate whether deaf individuals access phonology when reading and if so, what... more There is an ongoing debate whether deaf individuals access phonology when reading and if so, what impact the ability to access phonology might have on reading achievement. However, the debate so far has been theoretically unspecific on two accounts: 1) the phonological units deaf individuals may have of oral language have not been specified 2) there seem to be no explicit cognitive models specifying how phonology and other factors operate in reading by deaf individuals. We propose that deaf individuals have representations of the sub-lexical structure of oral-aural language which are based on mouth shapes, and that these sub-lexical units are activated during reading by deaf individuals. We specify the sublexical units of deaf German readers as 11 'visemes', and incorporate the viseme-set into a working model of single word reading by deaf adults based on Coltheart et al.'s (2001) Dual Route Cascaded Model of reading aloud (DRC). We assessed the indirect route of this model by investigating the 'pseudo-homoviseme' effect using a lexical decision task in deaf German reading adults. We found a main effect of pseudo-homovisemy suggesting that at least some deaf individuals do automatically access sub-lexical structure during single word reading.