Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Fraction Magnitude Understanding Across Learning Formats: An Fmri Study, Chloe A. Henry

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Knowledge of fraction magnitudes are an important, but notoriously difficult mathematical concept to master. Behavioural work has begun to explore and compare the instructional tools used for fraction learning. However, how fraction instructional tools are processed in the brain remains an underexplored question. Therefore, in the present thesis, we used functional brain MRI methodology to examine the neural activity of adult participants while completing a fraction verification task using the number line and area model, two common methods of fraction learning. We found that both models commonly recruited fronto-parietal activity, the neural regions typically implicated in number processing. However, we …

Role Of The Default-Mode Network During Narrative Integration In Major Depressive Disorder, Darren Ri-Sheng Liang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

How brain activity is synchronized across individuals during narrative comprehension has previously been characterized by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in healthy and patient populations. To our knowledge, there has been limited investigation as to how it is affected by major depressive disorder (MDD). We addressed this issue with fMRI through examination of inter-subject synchronization in the default mode network (DMN), brain structures which have previously been implicated in MDD pathology. Twenty-two patients with MDD and 20 matched control participants listened to Intact versus Scrambled versions of an auditory narrative; these experimental conditions differed in the degree of temporal integration …

Neural Markers Of Musical Memory In Young And Older Adults, Avital Sternin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Memory for music can be preserved in the presence of neurodegenerative disorders even when other memories are forgotten. However, understanding how the brain remembers music has proven difficult despite decades of research. The central goal of this thesis was to elucidate the neural correlates of musical memory by exploring how the presence of language and music information affect the way young and older adults remember music. To that end, I 1) used a controlled training paradigm to familiarize participants with novel stimuli that manipulated the presence of language and music, and 2) collected functional magnetic resonance imaging data to compare …

Cognitive, Neural, And Educational Contributions To Mathematics Performance: A Closer Look At The Roles Of Numerical And Spatial Skills, Zachary C.K. Hawes

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The principal aims of this thesis were to (1) provide new insights into the cognitive and neural associations between spatial and mathematical abilities, and (2) translate and apply findings from the field of numerical cognition to the teaching and learning of early mathematics.

Study 1 investigated the structure and interrelations amongst cognitive constructs related to numerical, spatial, and executive function (EF) skills and mathematics achievement in 4- to 11-year old children (N=316). Results revealed evidence of highly related, yet separable, cognitive constructs. Together, numerical, spatial, and EF skills explained 84% of the variance in mathematics achievement (controlling for chronological age). …

Characterizing The Familiar-Voice Benefit To Intelligibility, Beatriz Ysabel Domingo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Everyday listening often occurs in the presence of background noise. Listeners with normal hearing can often successfully segregate competing sounds from the signal of interest. To do this, listeners exploit a variety of cues to facilitate the separation of simultaneous sounds into separate sources, and group sequential sounds into intelligible speech streams. One of the cues that has been shown to be an effective facilitator of speech intelligibility is familiarity with a talker’s voice. A recent study by Johnsrude et al. (2013) measured speech intelligibility of a naturally familiar voice (i.e., that of a long-term spouse) and showed a …

The Neural And Cognitive Basis Of Cumulative Lifetime Familiarity Assessment, Devin Duke

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Perirhinal cortex (PrC) has been implicated as a brain region in the medial temporal lobes (MTL) that critically contributes to familiarity-based recognition memory, a process that allows for recognition to occur independently of contextual recollection. Informed by neurophysiological research in non-human primates, fMRI, as well as behavioural work in humans, the current thesis research tests the novel hypothesis that PrC cortex functioning also underlies the ability to assess cumulative lifetime familiarity with object concepts that are characterized by a lifetime of experiences. In Chapter 2, a patient (NB) with a left anterior temporal lobe (ATL) lesion that included PrC as …

Representation Of Faces In Perirhinal Cortex, Edward B. O'Neil

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The prevailing view of medial temporal lobe (MTL) functioning holds that its structures are dedicated to long-term declarative memory. Recent evidence challenges this view, suggesting that perirhinal cortex (PrC), which interfaces the MTL with the ventral visual pathway, supports highly integrated object representations that contribute to both recognition memory and perceptual discrimination. Here, I used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine PrC activity, as well as its broader functional connectivity, during perceptual and mnemonic tasks involving faces, a stimulus class proposed to rely on integrated representations for discrimination. In Chapter 2, I revealed that PrC involvement was related to task …

The Influence Of Proficiency And Age Of Acquisition On Second Language Processing: An Fmri Study Of Mandarin-English Bilinguals, Emily S. Nichols

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Research investigating the neural correlates of second language (L2) processing has usually studied age of acquisition (AoA) and proficiency separately. Presently, we examined both in parallel, treated as continuous variables. We used fMRI to study neural activity for L2 processing in adult native Mandarin speakers who are L2 English speakers. Behavioral measures of language proficiency and AoA were obtained from subjects prior to performing a picture-word matching task during an fMRI scan. Brain activity during L2 English processing was shown to be independently affected by AoA and proficiency; activity in left superior temporal gyrus and right parahippocampal gyrus was modulated …