Bernadette M Jansma

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Verified

Bernadette verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• PhD
• Professor at Maastricht University

Patients with classic galactosemia (CG), an inborn error of galactose metabolism, suffer from impairments in cognition, including language processing. Potential causes are atypical brain oscillations. Recent electroencephalogram (EEG) showed differences in the P300 event‐related‐potential (ERP) and alterations in the alpha/theta‐range during speech...

Classical galactosaemia (CG) is a hereditary disease in galactose metabolism that despite dietary treatment is characterized by a wide range of cognitive deficits, among which is language production. CG brain functioning has been studied with several neuroimaging techniques, which revealed both structural and functional atypicalities. In the presen...

Several theories of predictive processing propose reduced sensory and neural responses to anticipated events. Support comes from M/EEG studies, showing reduced auditory N1 and P2 responses to self- compared to externally generated events, or when the timing and form of stimuli are more predictable. The current study examined the sensitivity of N1 a...

Aims: To measure brain activity in patients with bruxism and temporomandibular disorder (TMD)-related pain in comparison to controls using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and to investigate whether modulations in jaw clenching led to different pain reports and/or changes in neural activity in motor and pain processing areas within and...

Sleep spindles (8 - 16 Hz) are transient electrophysiological events during non-rapid eye movement sleep. While sleep spindles are routinely observed in the cortex using scalp electroencephalography (EEG), recordings of their thalamic counterparts have not been widely studied in humans. Based on a few existing studies, it has been hypothesized that...

Despite good control of phenylalanine (Phe) levels during childhood and adolescence, adults with phenylketonuria (PKU) often show abnormalities in the white matter of the brain, which have been associated with subtle cognitive impairments. However, whether such a relationship exists with cortical gray matter (GM) is still unknown. Therefore, we inv...

Sleep spindles (8 - 16 Hz) are transient electrophysiological events during non-rapid eye movement sleep. While sleep spindles are routinely observed in the cortex using scalp electroencephalography (EEG), recordings of their thalamic counterparts have not been widely studied in humans. Based on a few existing studies, it has been hypothesized that...

Some theories of predictive processing propose reduced sensory and neural responses to anticipated events. Support comes from M/EEG studies, showing reduced auditory N1 and P2 responses to self- compared to externally generated events, or when stimulus properties are more predictable (e.g. prototypical). The current study examined the sensitivity o...

About one third of patients with epilepsy have seizures refractory to the medical treatment. Electrical stimulation mapping (ESM) is the gold standard for the identification of “eloquent” areas prior to resection of epileptogenic tissue. However, it is time-consuming and may cause undesired side effects. Broadband gamma activity (55–200 Hz) recorde...

Predictions of our sensory environment facilitate perception across domains. During speech perception, formal and temporal predictions may be made for phonotactic probability and syllable stress patterns, respectively, contributing to the efficient processing of speech input. The current experiment employed a passive EEG oddball paradigm to probe t...

Electrical stimulation mapping (ESM) is the gold standard for identification of “eloquent” areas prior to resection of epileptogenic tissue, however, it is time consuming and may cause side effects, especially stimulation-induced seizures and after-discharges. Broadband gamma activity (55 – 200 Hz) recorded with subdural electrocorticography (ECoG)...

Introduction Activation of neuronal networks is typically associated with a change in spectral power in electric signals within the network. The role of different spectral bands in mediating cognitive processes is still not fully understood. In human language networks, a hierarchical model has been suggested in which different types of linguistic i...

Sensorimotor integration, the translation between acoustic signals and motoric programs, may constitute a crucial mechanism for speech. During speech perception, the acoustic-motoric translations include the recruitment of cortical areas for the representation of speech articulatory features, such as place of articulation. Selective attention can s...

Patients with classic galactosemia, a genetic metabolic disorder, encounter cognitive impairments, including motor (speech), language, and memory deficits. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to evaluate spontaneous functional connectivity during rest to investigate potential abnormalities in neural networks. We characterized networks usi...

Neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging (NODDI) enables more specific characterization of tissue microstructure by estimating neurite density (NDI) and orientation dispersion (ODI), two key contributors to fractional anisotropy (FA). The present work compared NODDI- with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI)-derived indices for investigating wh...

Analysis pipeline for the TBSS analysis of DTI and NODDI data. (DOCX)

Brain impairments have been observed in patients with classic galactosemia, an inherited metabolic disorder resulting in a particular neuro-cognitive profile. Neuroimaging studies showed abnormalities such as diffuse white mater (WM) abnormalities and grey matter (GM) atrophy. Our current study analysed grey matter density using voxel-based morphom...

The evident degree of heterogeneity observed in reading disabled children has puzzled reading researchers for decades. Recent advances in the genetic underpinnings of reading disability have indicated that the heritable, familial risk for dyslexia is a major risk factor. The present data-driven, classification attempt aims to revisit the possibilit...

In a shooting video game we investigated whether increased distance reduces moral conflict. We measured and analyzed the event related potential (ERP), including the N2 component, which has previously been linked to cognitive conflict from competing decision tendencies. In a modified Go/No-go task designed to trigger moral conflict participants had...

Unlabelled: The brain's circuitry for perceiving and producing speech may show a notable level of overlap that is crucial for normal development and behavior. The extent to which sensorimotor integration plays a role in speech perception remains highly controversial, however. Methodological constraints related to experimental designs and analysis...

Patients with the inherited metabolic disorder classic galactosemia have language production impairments in several planning stages. Here, we assessed potential deviations in recruitment and connectivity across brain areas responsible for language production that may explain these deficits. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to st...

Spoken word recognition and production require fast transformations between acoustic, phonological, and conceptual neural representations. Bilinguals perform these transformations in native and non-native languages, deriving unified semantic concepts from equivalent, but acoustically different words. Here we exploit this capacity of bilinguals to i...

White matter abnormalities have been observed in patients with classic galactosemia, an inborn error of galactose metabolism. However, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data collected in the past were generally qualitative in nature. Our objective was to investigate white matter microstructure pathology and examine correlations with outcome and beha...

Previous studies indicate that people respond defensively to threatening health information, especially when the information challenges self-relevant goals. The authors investigated whether reduced acceptance of self-relevant health risk information is already visible in early attention allocation processes. In two experimental studies, participant...

Bilinguals derive the same semantic concepts from equivalent, but acoustically different, words in their first and second languages. The neural mechanisms underlying the representation of language-independent concepts in the brain remain unclear. Here, we measured fMRI in human bilingual listeners and reveal that response patterns to individual spo...

During sentence production, linguistic information (semantics, syntax, phonology) of words is retrieved and assembled into a meaningful utterance. There is still debate on how we assemble single words into more complex syntactic structures such as noun phrases or sentences. In the present study, event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to investig...

Patients with classic galactosemia, an inborn error of metabolism, have speech and language production impairments. Past research primarily focused on speech (motor) problems, but these cannot solely explain the language impairments. Which specific deficits contribute to the impairments in language production is not yet known. Deficits in semantic...

The current publishing system with its merits and pitfalls is a mending topic for debate among scientists of various disciplines. Editors and reviewers alike, both face difficult decisions about the judgment of new scientific findings. Increasing interdisciplinary themes and rapidly changing dynamics in method development of each field make it diff...

Classic galactosemia is an autosomal recessive disorder due to galactose-1-phosphate uridyltransferase (GALT) deficiency. Newborn screening and early treatment do not completely prevent tremor, speech deficits, and diminished IQ in both sexes and premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) in women. Data on how individuals with galactosemia fare as adult...

This study was designed to investigate the spatio-temporal characteristic of face selection in the context of the Biased Competition (BC) model using electroencephalography (EEG). Pairs of similar (SIM) or dissimilar (DISS) faces were presented simultaneously. Subjects had to attend to one face (ATT) or ignore both faces (IGN). According to the BC...

The identification of a face comprises processing of both visual features and conceptual knowledge. Studies showing that the fusiform face area (FFA) is sensitive to face identity generally neglect this dissociation. The present study is the first that isolates conceptual face processing by using words presented in a person context instead of faces...

An initial stage of speech production is conceptual planning, where a speaker determines which information to convey first (the linearization problem). This fMRI study investigated the linearization process during the production of “before” and “after” sentences. In “after” sentences, a series of events is expressed in the order of event occurrence...

Pronouns are bound to their antecedents by matching syntactic and semantic information. The aim of this functional magnetic resonance imaging study was to localize syntactic and semantic information retrieval and integration during pronoun resolution. Especially we investigated their possible interaction with verbal working memory manipulated by di...

Primary vision segregates information along 2 main dimensions: orientation and spatial frequency (SF). An important question is how this primary visual information is integrated to support high-level representations. It is generally assumed that the information carried by different SF is combined following a coarse-to-fine sequence. We directly add...

Recent evidence indicates that attention is higher for individually tailored as compared to non-tailored health communications. The present study examined whether the predicted increased attention for the tailored as opposed to general nutrition education messages is moderated by presenting high vs. low threat information about the negative consequ...

Most humans are social beings and we express our thoughts and feelings through language. In contrast to the ease with which we speak, the underlying cognitive and neural processes of language production are fairly complex and still little understood. In the hereditary metabolic disease classic galactosemia, failures in language production processes...

Ignoring and selecting relevant faces has a strong impact in everyday life. We often perform tasks where faces may be considered irrelevant (e.g. having a drink in a crowded bar) or tasks where we need to filter out all but one face (e.g. searching for a friend in a crowd). The present study was designed to test Biased Competition (BC) as a suitabl...

Identifying a familiar face involves the access to and activation of semantic knowledge about an individual. Several studies have shown that the Fusiform Face Area (FFA) is involved in face detection and identification. Conventional studies targeting face identification processes are generally limited to visual features, thereby ignoring semantic k...

When processing a face stimulus, the human visual system tends to strongly integrate its constituent features (eyes, nose, mouth, etc) in a so-called holistic representation. Such feature integration mainly occurs in face-sensitive regions located in bilateral fusiform gyrii. Behavioural studies showed that feature integration relies on the extract...

Previous studies indicate that people respond defensively to threatening health information, especially when the information challenges self-relevant goals. The authors investigated whether reduced acceptance of self-relevant health risk information is already visible in early attention processes, that is, attention disengagement processes. In a ra...

We investigated the processing of derived adjectives in German using event-related potentials (ERPs). ERPs were registered to existing adjectives ( freundlich , ‘friendly’), to morphologically complex pseudowords that were synonymous to an existing adjective and thus interpretable (* freundhaft ), and to complex pseudowords that were structurally a...

Emotion is usually not discussed as a relevant variable in rational models of decision making—but may be one. The present electroencephalographic study demonstrates the influence of emotional primes (angry, happy faces) on purchase decisions. In a within-subject design, pictures of an apartment were shown to participants who then had to make Go/NoG...

Event-related potentials were used to investigate the interaction of verbal working memory and gender information during pronoun resolution. Gender information is supposed to be disentangled using sentences about persons (semantic/syntactic) or things (syntactic) followed by gender congruent or incongruent pronouns. Memory was manipulated using dif...

Event-related potentials were used to study whether factors known to influence subject-verb number agreement in production exert analogous effects on sentence comprehension. Participants read Dutch sentences containing subject-verb number agreement errors while their brainwaves were measured. The determiner of the singular head noun could be ambigu...

We report an event-related potential study investigating the neural basis of interference and facilitation in the picture-word interference paradigm with immediate overt naming. We used the high temporal resolution of the electrophysiological response to dissociate general and specific interference processes, by comparing unrelated word distractors...

During speech production the planning of a description of several events requires, among other things, a verbal sequencing of these events. During this process, referred to as linearization during conceptualization, the speaker can choose between different types of temporal connectives such as 'Before' X did A, Y did B' or 'After' Y did B, X did A'...

The present study examines the involvement of syntactic and semantic/conceptual processes in the comprehension of pronouns in Dutch using the technique of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) replicating and extending an earlier study in German. Dutch and German are closely related and share the same logic in referring to non-diminutive and diminu...

Neuroimaging studies of attention often focus on interactions between stimulus representations and top-down selection mechanisms in visual cortex. Less is known about the neural representation of distractor stimuli beyond visual areas, and the interactions between stimuli in linguistic processing areas. In the present study, participants viewed sim...

Background: In language production, conceptualisation of the utterance precedes lemma retrieval, phonological encoding, and articulation. Knowledge about the neural correlates of conceptualisation is scarce. Aims: The study aimed at the delineation of neurophysiological correlates of the macro-planning aspect of conceptualisation by manipulating di...

In event-related potential (ERPs) studies, emotional stimuli usually elicit an enhanced late positive potential (LPP), which is assumed to reflect motivated attention. However, whether a stimulus elicits emotional responses may depend on the individual's state, such as experiencing romantic love. It has been suggested that stimuli that are related...

In psycholinguistics, the coactivation of lexical candidates by partial input has received a lot of attention. More recently, psychophysiological studies have shed more light on this issue and identified two possible time windows in which effects of coactivation of lexical candidates can be observed in event-related potentials (ERPs). However, thes...

We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (erfMRI) to investigate the neural basis of biological and syntactic gender integration during pronoun processing in German sentences about persons or things. German allows for separating both processes experimentally. Overall, syntactic processing activated areas adjacent to Broca's area...

Speech production is an extremely rapid and seemingly effortless process with speech errors in normal subjects being rare. Although psycholinguistic models incorporate elaborate monitoring mechanisms to prevent and correct errors, the brain regions involved in their commitment, detection, and correction have remained elusive. Using event-related br...

An event-related brain potentials (ERP) experiment was carried out to investigate the influence of semantic category membership on syntactic decision-making. Native speakers of German viewed a series of words that were semantically marked or unmarked for gender and made go/no-go decisions about the grammatical gender of those words. The electrophys...

The authors tested whether individually tailored health communications receive more attention from the reader than nontailored health communications in a randomized, controlled trial among student volunteers (N = 24). They used objective measures of attention allocation during the message exposure. In a between-subjects design, participants had to...

An event-related brain potentials (ERP) experiment was carried out to investigate the influence of semantic category membership on syntactic decision-making. Native speakers of German viewed a series of words that were semantically marked or unmarked for gender and made go/no-go decisions about the grammatical gender of those words. The electrophys...

Neurophysiological studies in monkeys show that multiple stimuli presented within the receptive field of a neuron are not processed independently but rather act in a mutually suppressive way. Recently, such suppressive interactions have also been reported in human neuroimaging studies. This is seen as evidence that stimuli compete for neural repres...

It is well known that both semantic and syntactic information play a role in pronoun resolution in sentences. However, it is unclear what the relative contribution of these sources of information is for the establishment of a coreferential relationship between the pronoun and the antecedent in combination with a local structural case constraint on...

This study investigated the monitoring of metrical stress information in internally generated speech. In Experiment 1, Dutch participants were asked to judge whether bisyllabic picture names had initial or final stress. Results showed significantly faster decision times for initially stressed targets (e.g., KAno ''canoe'') than for targets with fin...

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies can provide insight into the neural correlates of hallucinations. Commonly, such studies require self-reports about the timing of the hallucination events. While many studies have found activity in higher-order sensory cortical areas, only a few have demonstrated activity of the primary auditory...

German pronouns (erMALE/masculine, sieFEMALE/feminine) that refer to a person are determined by the biological gender (MALE/FEMALE) and/or syntactic gender (masculine/feminine) of the person. Pronouns (ermasculine, siefeminine) that refer to a thing are determined by the syntactic gender of this thing (Garten [garden]masculine, Tasche [hand-bag]fem...

This study investigated the encoding of syllable boundary information during speech production in Dutch. Based on Levelt's model of phonological encoding, we hypothesized segments and syllable boundaries to be encoded in an incremental way. In a self-monitoring experiment, decisions about the syllable affiliation (first or second syllable) of a pre...

Einleitung: Bei der Sprachproduktion müssen semantische, syntaktische und phonologische Information über das zu produzierende Wort abgerufen werden. Die genaue zeitliche Abfolge der einzelnen Stadien ist Gegenstand der in dieser Übersichtsarbeit zusammengestellten Studien. Methodik: Bei gesunden Probanden wurden ereigniskorrelierte Hirnpotenziale i...

The present study tested the hypothesis whether health communications that are tailored to individual needs receive more attention from the reader than non-tailored health communications. Earlier studies provided some insight into this hypothesis by means of self-report measures that followed message exposure. However, these measures are liable to...

During language production and comprehension, information about a word's syntactic properties is sometimes needed. While the decision about the grammatical gender of a word requires access to syntactic knowledge, it has also been hypothesized that semantic (i.e., biological gender) or phonological information (i.e., sound regularities) may influenc...

This study investigated the time course of phonological encoding during speech production planning. Previous research has shown that conceptual/semantic information precedes syntactic information in the planning of speech production and that syntactic information is available earlier than phonological information. Here, we studied the relative time...

This study investigated the time course of phonological encoding during speech production planning. Previous research has shown that conceptual/semantic information precedes syntactic information in the planning of speech production and that syntactic information is available earlier than phonological information. Here, we studied the relative time...