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Biomedical subjects

Gordon C Baylis

Publications and source records attributed to Gordon C Baylis.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

Brain damage and cortical compensation in foreign accent syndrome.

Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS) is a well-known neurological deficit whose underlying cause has remained obscure despite almost a century of study. Combining structural and functional imaging, our studies suggest that FAS represents a compensatory response to impaired motor regulation of speech. We describe a patient who acquired FAS as a result of an ischemic stroke in the left basal ganglia. In addition to this case being exceptionally clean, we were able to confirm a specific lesion location as well as provide strong evidence that impaired motor speech regulation resulted in compensation by other areas of the cortical motor speech network.

Brain Injuries↗

Auditory extinction: the effect of stimulus similarity and task requirements.

Auditory extinction was examined in six patients with right hemisphere lesions, using an auditory double simultaneous stimulation task using letters spoken in male and female voices. Patients had to detect where the stimuli were located, and identify either the letter or the voice (the task-relevant dimension). Auditory extinction was greatest when the two stimuli were the same on the task-relevant dimension, paralleling previous studies of visual extinction. Furthermore, we found that errors of omission were much less frequent in the contralesional field if the patients were not required to report both identity and the location of stimuli. These results are consistent with the notion that auditory extinction may be due in part to a failure to bind together identity and location.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

The effect of ipsilesional cues on line-bisection errors: the importance of predictive value.

Patients with unilateral neglect were tested on a line-bisection task in which vertical lines were added to the ipsilesional or contralesional end. During some blocks, these vertical lines accurately predicted the horizontal length of the line, while on other blocks the vertical lines had little predictive value. We found that much of the improvement for ipsilesional vertical bars can be explained by their ability to predict the extent of the horizontal line. These results suggest that the predictive value of a ipsilesional cue is responsible for the reduction in line-bisection errors noted by Halligan and Marshall [Neuropsychologia 32 (1994) 13]. This effect of the predictive ipsilesional cue may work in combination with the expanded attentional effects posited by the ipsilesional contraction model that they proposed.

Aged↗

Visual neglect can be object-based or scene-based depending on task representation.

Three patients with visual neglect were tested on their ability to detect target letters at ipsilesional and contralesional locations on a monitor, and at different locations within large shapes on the monitor. When patients were asked to detect targets within the entire monitor, they showed neglect for all the contralesional hemifield. In contrast when they were asked to detect targets within a particular object, they showed object-based neglect. In these two conditions the displays, the targets and the response were identical, with the only difference being the space that is represented for the task. These results show that the reference frame of visual neglect may be altered by task-instructions changing how a structured visual scene is represented, with neglect applying to the contralesional side of this represented space.

Aged↗

Visual extinction with double simultaneous stimulation: what is simultaneous?

Patients with unilateral lesions to the parietal lobe leading to extinction were tested with stimuli presented in both hemifields. In addition to simultaneous presentation of two stimuli, trials were given with the contralesional or ipsilesional side having an onset slightly before the other. In the first experiment, subjects were asked to identify the stimuli. In agreement with di Pellegrino et al. [Neuropsychologia 35(1997)1215], all patients showed maximal extinction when the stimuli were physically simultaneous. In the second experiment, the same patients were requested to report whether the left or right item had been presented first. In accordance with Rorden et al. [Neuropsychologia 35(1997)421], all three patients required the contralesional item to have a significant lead in order to in order to be judged as occurring first. Taken together, these findings appear to present a paradoxical picture of extinction: the first task implies that items compete maximally when they are physically simultaneous, while the second study suggests that the physical simultaneity is not phenomenally special to the patients. Attempts to reconcile these findings with popular models of extinction are discussed.

Aged↗