Bilingualism as a protection against dementia: Empirical inconsistencies and new methodological proposals

en
Calvo N, Manoiloff L, Muñoz E, Contreras M, Ibáñez A, García AM.
 
elbilinguismo

 
Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación 2016, 68, 3-44.
 
Abstract
Cognitive decline throughout healthy or pathological aging can be slowed down by experiences which foster cognitive reserve. In this sense, some studies have suggested that bilingualism may delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. However, the evidence stems from retrospective approaches yielding contradictory results. The present paper addresses these findings, identifies possible lurking variables, and outlines methodological alternatives thereof. First, we characterize possible confounding factors, namely: the criteria to establish bilingualism, differences in sample design, the instruments used to examine cognitive skills, and variables known to modulate life-long
cognition. Second, we propose that these limitations could be largely circumvented through experimental approaches and the use of adequate instruments to measure such variables. Moreover, future research should incorporate tasks yielding predictable patterns of contrastive performance between bilinguals and monolinguals (bilingual disadvantages in vocabulary, null effects in working memory, advantages in inhibitory control and other executive functions), and other which could offer valuable insights (e.g., proactive interference tasks). Such considerations may shed light not just on the relationship between bilingualism and cognitive reserve, but also on more general mechanisms of cognitive compensation.
Keywords: bilingualism, Alzheimer’s disease, cognitive reserve, research design.


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First symptoms and neurocognitive correlates of behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia.

en

Santamaría-García H, Reyes P, García A, Baéz S, Martinez A, Santacruz JM, Slachevsky A, Sigman M, Matallana D, Ibañez A.

first-symptoms

First Symptoms and Neurocognitive Correlates of Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia.

J Alzheimers Dis. 2016 Aug 18. PMID: 27567867

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Previous works highlight the neurocognitive differences between apathetic and disinhibited clinical presentations of the behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). However, little is known regarding how the early presentation (i.e., first symptom) is associated to the neurocognitive correlates of the disease’s clinical presentation at future stages of disease.

METHODS: We evaluated the neuropsychological, clinical and neuroanatomical (3T structural images) correlates in a group of healthy controls (n=30) and two groups of bvFTD patients (presented with apathy [AbvFTD, n=18] or disinhibition [DbvFTD, n=16]). To differentiate groups according to first symptoms, we used multivariate analyses (factorial Discriminant Analysis (FDA) and Support Vector Machine (SVM)).

RESULTS: The first symptom in patients was critical in describing the course and evolution of the disease. AbvFTD and DbvFTD patients showed increased brain atrophy (voxel based morphometry, VBM) and increased levels of disinhibition and apathy, respectively. Whole brain analyzes in AbvFTD revealed atrophy in the frontal, insular and temporal areas. DbvFTD, in turn, presented atrophy in the prefrontal regions, temporoparietal junction, insula and temporoparietal region. Increased atrophy in DbvFTD patients (compared to AbvFTD) was observed in frontotemporal regions. Multivariate analyses (FDA and SVM) confirmed that a set of brain areas including right orbitofrontal, right dorsolateral prefrontal and left caudate were enough to distinguish the patients’ subgroups.

CONCLUSION: First symptom in bvFTD patients is critical in describing the neuropsychological and neuroanatomical impairments profile after three years of disease (approximation of time of length duration in each group at second stage of assessment), playing an important role in the early detection, disease tracking, and neuroanatomical specification of bvFTD, as well as in future research on potential disease-modifying treatments.

Keywords: bvFTD, disinhibition, apathy, first symptom, VBM.

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Your misery is no longer my pleasure: Reduced schadenfreude in Huntington’s disease families.

en

Baez S, Santamaría-García H, Orozco J, Fittipaldi S, García AM, Pino M, Ibáñez A.

 

yourmisery

Your misery is no longer my pleasure: Reduced schadenfreude in Huntington’s disease families.

Cortex. 2016 Jul 19;83:78-85. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2016.07.009.

Abstract

Schadenfreude –pleasure at others’ misfortunes– has been systematically related to ventral striatum activity. This brain region is affected early in individuals with manifest and pre manifest Huntington’s disease (HD). However, the experience of schadenfreude has not yet been investigated in HD. In this study, 21 manifest HD patients, 19 first-degree asymptomatic relatives, and 23 healthy controls performed an experimental task designed to trigger schadenfreude, envy (another social emotion acting as an affective control condition), and control situations. Both HD patients and first-degree relatives experienced lower schadenfreude in response to others’ misfortunes, with no group differences in ratings of envy and control conditions. These results offer unprecedented evidence of a highly specific impairment in reward processing, extending previous reports in manifest and pre-manifest HD individuals. Moreover, these findings suggest that early striatal impairments may be related to reduced feelings of schadenfreude. In sum, our work contributes to the understanding of emotional impairments in early stages of HD, while shedding light on their neural correlates.

Keywords: Huntington’s disease, first-degree asymptomatic relatives, schadenfreude, envy, social emotions.

 

The road less traveled: Alternative pathways for action-verb processing in Parkinson’s disease

en
Abrevaya S, Sedeño L, Fitipaldi S, Pineda D, Lopera F, Buritica O, Villegas A, Bustamante C, Gomez D, Trujillo N, Pautassi R, Ibáñez A, García AM.
J Alzheimers Dis. 2016 Nov 9.
the-road-less-traveled
 
 
En este estudio de resonancia magnética funcional exploramos el procesamiento verbos de acción en pacientes con enfermedad de Parkinson. Demostramos por primera vez que los pacientes, a diferencia de los sujetos control, procesan dichos verbos mediante circuitos alternativos (no motores), de modo proporcional a la atrofia de los ganglios basales. Este nuevo hallazgo arroja luz sobre la organización de los sistemas lingüísticos y su reconfiguración ante el daño de sustratos críticos.
 
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Social neuroscience: Undoing the schism between neurology and psychiatry.

en
Ibáñez A, García AM, Esteves S, Yoris A, Muñoz E, Reynaldo L, Pietto ML, Adolfi F, Manes F.
socialneuroscience
 
Social neuroscience: Undoing the schism between neurology and psychiatry.
(Más allá del cisma: Neurociencia social en cuadros psiquiátricos y neurológicos)
 
Soc Neurosci.

ABSTRACT

Multiple disorders once jointly conceived as “nervous diseases” became segregated by the distinct institutional traditions forged in neurology and psychiatry. As a result, each field specialized in the study and treatment of a subset of such conditions. Here we propose new avenues for interdisciplinary interaction through a triangulation of both fields with social neuroscience. To this end, we review evidence from five relevant domains (facial emotion recognition, empathy, theory of mind, moral cognition, and social context assessment), highlighting their common disturbances across neurological and psychiatric conditions and discussing their multiple patho-physiological mechanisms. Our proposal is anchored in multidimensional evidence, including behavioral, neurocognitive, and genetic findings. From a clinical perspective, this work paves the way for dimensional and transdiagnostic approaches, new pharmacological treatments, and educational innovations rooted in a combined neuropsychiatric training. Research-wise, it fosters new models of the social brain and a novel platform to explore the interplay of cognitive and social functions. Finally, we identify new challenges for this synergistic framework.

 
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Your perspective and my benefit: multiple lesion models of self-other integration strategies during social bargaining

en

Melloni M, Billeke P, Baez S, Hesse E, de la Fuente L, Forno G, Birba A, García-Cordero I, Serrano C, Plastino A, Slachevsky A, Huepe D, Sigman M, Manes F, García AM, Sedeño L, Ibáñez A.

Brain. 2016 Sep 27

 

 

yourperspective

 

Las relaciones bilaterales entre familiares, empresarios o políticos requieren de estrategias de negociación exitosas. Mediante el empleo de diversas técnicas de neurociencias aplicadas a un modelo de lesión multidimensional, mostramos que la negociación social exitosa depende críticamente de la integridad de áreas frontales. Más aun, encontramos que dicha capacidad se acompaña de una actividad oscilatoria cerebral durante el período de la oferta, que predice las decisiones futuras de los otros sujetos. Finalmente, gracias a un análisis de redes cerebrales basado en resonancia magnética funcional, encontramos que la organización de una red más extensa (fronto-témporo-parietal) estaba asociada al desarrollo de estrategias de largo plazo. Así, este estudio develó por primera vez los múltiples mecanismos neurocognitivos involucrados en la negociación social exitosa.

 

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Variability in functional brain networks predicts expertise during action observation

en
Amoruso L, Ibáñez A, Fonseca B, Gadea S, Sedeño L, Sigman M, García AM, Fraiman R, Fraiman D.
 variability
 
Variability in functional brain networks predicts expertise during action observation
(La variabilidad de las redes cerebrales predice el nivel de experticia durante la observación de la acción)
 
 La experticia produce cambios plásticos, pero poco se sabe acerca de dichos cambios a nivel de la organización de las redes cerebrales. En este estudio demostramos que los expertos bailarines de tango, cuando observan pasos de baile, activan redes cerebrales menos variables y con arquitecturas más robustas que las de los principiantes. Este estudio demuestra que la organización y variabilidad de redes cerebrales durante la observación de la acción es un indicador muy sensible de los efectos de largo plazo del entrenamiento.

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A touch with words: dynamics synergies between manual actions and language

en

García AM, Ibáñez A.

Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2016 May 14. pii: S0149-7634(15)30291-8. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2016.04.022.

 

touch-with-words

 

En un sinfín de situaciones cotidianas, nuestro lenguaje se articula espontáneamente con movimientos manuales. En este trabajo, formulamos hipótesis basadas en la dinámica de redes cerebrales para explicar cómo los procesos lingüísticos interactúan sinérgicamente con dichas acciones concurrentes. A partir de ellas formulamos el primer modelo neurocognitivo que explica los efectos observados en cientos de experimentos de cognición corporizada.

 

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How language flows when movements don’t: An automated analysis of spontaneous discourse in Parkinson’s disease.

en
García AM, Carrillo F, Orozco-Arroyave JR, Trujillo N, Vargas Bonilla JF, Fittipaldi S, Adolfi F, Nöth E, Sigman M, Fernández Slezak D, Ibáñez A, Cecchi GA
lenguaje-flows
 
How language flows when movements don’t: An automated analysis of spontaneous discourse in Parkinson’s disease.
Brain Lang. 2016 Aug 5
Abstract 
To assess the impact of Parkinson’s disease (PD) on spontaneous discourse, we conducted computerized analyses of brief monologues produced by 51 patients and 50 controls. We explored differences in semantic fields (via latent semantic analysis), grammatical choices (using part-of-speech tagging), and word-level repetitions (with graph embedding tools). Although overall output was quantitatively similar between groups, patients relied less heavily on action-related concepts and used more subordinate structures. Also, a classification tool operating on grammatical patterns identified monologues as pertaining to patients or controls with 75% accuracy. Finally, while the incidence of dysfluent word repetitions was similar between groups, it allowed inferring the patients’ level of motor impairment with 77% accuracy.
Our results highlight the relevance of studying naturalistic discourse features to tap the integrity of neural (and, particularly, motor) networks, beyond the possibilities of standard token-level instruments.
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Neural markers of social and monetary rewards in children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorder

en
Gonzalez-Gadea ML, Sigman M, Rattazzi A, Lavin C, Rivera-Rei A, Marino J, Manes F, Ibañez A. 
Sci Rep. 2016 Jul 28;6:30588.
neural-marks
 
 
En este trabajo, usando dos tareas económicas, una de toma de decisiones individual y otra de cooperación social mostramos que los niños controles tiene repuestas cerebrales de recompensa (corteza cingulada) tanto ante las ganancias monetarias como ante la cooperación social. En sujetos con trastorno de déficit atencional e hiperactividad (TDAH), las respuestas tempranas a ambas tareas estuvieron reducidas. En participantes con trastornos del espectro autista (TEA), se observaron respuestas cerebrales normales ante las ganancias económicas, pero la cooperación social no activo el sistema de recompensa. Los resultados apoyan la idea de un sustrato común para la gratificación por ganancias monetarias y cooperación social, y su afectación en cuadros psiquiátricos.
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