This poster outlines an Ecological Theory of Language Acquisition (ETLA). The theory views the early phases of the language acquisition process as an emergent consequence of the interaction between the infant and its linguistic environment. The newborn infant is considered to be linguistically and phonetically naïve but endowed with the ability to register a wide range of multi-sensory inputs a...

Sensory-selective local anesthesia has long been a key goal in local anesthetic development. For example, it allows women to be pain-free during labor without compromising their ability to push. Here we show that prolonged sensory-selective nerve block can be produced by specific concentrations of surfactants-such as are used to enhance drug flux across skin-in combination with QX-314, a lidoca...

Most organisms feed on a variety of food items that may differ dramatically in their physical and behavioural characteristics (e.g. mobility, mass, texture, etc.). Thus the ability to modulate prey transport behaviour in accordance with the characteristics of the food appears crucial. Consequently, prey reduction and transport movements must be adjusted to the natural variation in material prop...

Cognitive tasks such as communication and speech comprehension rely on the brain’s ability to exploit and integrate sensory information of different modalities. Accordingly, the appropriate development of multisensory speech integration (MSI) greatly influences a child’s ability to successfully relate with others. Several experimental findings have shown that speech intelligibility is affected ...

The sensory disturbance in schizophrenia is often described as an inability to filter out extraneous noise from meaningful sensory inputs. The neurobiological basis of this inability to filter has been examined using auditory evoked potentials, which are computerized averages of the brain's electrical response to sound. The sounds are presented in pairs to test the ability of the brain to inhib...

Three Cynomolgus monkeys (Macaca fascicularis) took part in an experiment on visual learning set in an automatic apparatus. Each new visual discrimination problem was solved using a visual secondary reinforcer consisting of a white line. If the monkey chose the correct stimulus (by touching it), the white line appeared over the correct stimulus. Primary food reward was delivered only after a ne...

Sensory hair cells in the inner ears of nonmammalian vertebrates can regenerate after injury. In many species, replacement hair cells are produced by the proliferation of epithelial supporting cells. Thus, the ability of supporting cells to undergo renewed proliferation is a key determinant of regenerative ability. The present study used cultures of isolated inner ear sensory epithelia to ident...

OBJECTIVE: Diabetes mellitus is one of the most common endocrine diseases with micro-vascular complications and is a common cause of polyneuropathy. We studied the effect of enalapril on electrophysiologic criteria and clinical symptoms of patients with type II diabetes and sensory neuropathy. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A double blind study was conducted on 45 Patients with type II diabetes and ne...

Sensory gating represents the nervous system's ability to inhibit responding to irrelevant environmental stimuli. In order to characterize the early development of acoustic sensory gating, suppression of auditory evoked potential component P1 (i.e. P50) in response to paired clicks was measured during REM sleep in healthy infants (1-4 months) that were without genetic risk for disrupted sensory...