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Biomedical subjects

P Schönle

Publications and source records attributed to P Schönle.

9 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1999

Selective color constancy deficits after circumscribed unilateral brain lesions.

The color of an object, when part of a complex scene, is determined not only by its spectral reflectance but also by the colors of all other objects in the scene (von Helmholtz, 1886; Ives, 1912; Land, 1959). By taking global color information into account, the visual system is able to maintain constancy of the color appearance of the object, despite large variations in the light incident on the retina arising from changes in the spectral content of the illuminating light (Hurlbert, 1998; Maloney, 1999). The neural basis of this color constancy is, however, poorly understood. Although there seems to be a prominent role for retinal, cone-specific adaptation mechanisms (von Kries, 1902; Pöppel, 1986; Foster and Nascimento, 1994), the contribution of cortical mechanisms to color constancy is still unclear (Land et al., 1983; D'Zmura and Lennie, 1986). We examined the color perception of 27 patients with defined unilateral lesions mainly located in the parieto-temporo-occipital and fronto-parieto-temporal cortex. With a battery of clinical and specially designed color vision tests we tried to detect and differentiate between possible deficits in central color processing. Our results show that color constancy can be selectively impaired after circumscribed unilateral lesions in parieto-temporal cortex of the left or right hemisphere. Five of 27 patients exhibited significant deficits in a color constancy task, but all of the 5 performed well in color discrimination or higher-level visual tasks, such as the association of colors with familiar objects. These results indicate that the computations underlying color constancy are mediated by specialized cortical circuitry, which is independent of the neural substrate for color discrimination and for assigning colors to objects.

Adaptation, Physiological↗
PubMed1998

Deficits and recovery of first- and second-order motion perception in patients with unilateral cortical lesions.

Unilateral lesions in the posterior parietal cortex can degrade motion perception in the contralesional visual hemifield. Our aim was to investigate whether deficits caused by cortical lesions may be different for first- and second-order motion perception, and to study the time scale of any potential recovery. In nine patients with circumscribed lesions mainly in the parietal and fronto-parietal cortex, thresholds for direction discrimination were measured for stimuli presented peripherally in their ipsi- and contralesional hemifield. Subjects had to identify the direction of a vertically moving object embedded in a background of dynamic random dot noise. The object consisted of various proportions of signal and noise dots. Signal dots were either (a) coherently moving in the same direction as the object (first-order), (b) stationary (second-order: drift-balanced), or (c) coherently moving in the opposite direction (second-order: theta). Noise dots were flickering. Two patients showed significant threshold elevations for all three types of motion stimuli presented in their contralesional hemifield, while thresholds for ipsilesional targets were unaffected. Neither showed any selective deficit of first- versus second-order motion perception, but second-order motion was more impaired. Their lesions probably included the motion area V5-MT, which was spared in the other seven patients. One of the patients, who was retested several times during a 27-month postlesional period, showed complete recovery for first- and second-order motion direction discrimination, as well as for the detection of speed differences.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

A kinematic analysis of anticipatory coarticulation in the speech of anterior aphasic subjects using electromagnetic articulography.

An investigation was made into the extent and time course of anticipatory coarticulation in the speech of two normal and two anterior aphasic, German-speaking subjects. Both labial and velar coarticulation gestures were investigated. Subjects produced sentences containing target words contrasting in postconsonantal vowel rounding (e.g., [geli:ge]/[gely:gel]) and in nasality (e.g., [ti:de]/[ti:ne]). Speech kinematics were monitored by means of electromagnetic articulography. The data revealed that for correct productions, aphasic speakers' coarticulatory patterns were more highly variable than those of control subjects. These differences, however, were found chiefly for spatial displacement characteristics, while the temporal aspects of articulator movement necessary for anticipatory coarticulation appeared largely intact. Articulator mistiming did not appear to explain a small corpus of stop/nasal substitution errors produced by one of the aphasic speakers.

Aphasia↗
PubMed1988

Transcranial magnetic stimulation of the human brain: responses in muscles supplied by cranial nerves.

The present investigation demonstrates that time-varying magnetic fields induced over the skull elicit distinct types of responses in muscles supplied by the cranial nerves both on the ipsilateral and the contralateral side. When the center of the copper coil was positioned 4 cm lateral to the vertex on a line from the vertex to the external auditory meatus, bilateral responses in the masseter, orbicularis oculi, mentalis, and sternocleidomastoideus muscles with a delay of about 10 to 14 ms after the stimulus occurred. Similar to the transcranially evoked muscle responses in hand muscles, the responses in the cranial muscles can be influenced in latency and amplitude by background excitation. It is concluded that these responses are induced by excitation of the face-associated motor cortex followed by multiple I-waves in the corticonuclear tract with both ipsilateral and contralateral projections to the corresponding motoneurones. Additionally, at higher stimulation strengths "short-latency" ipsilateral responses in muscles supplied by the trigeminal, facial, and accessory nerves occurred which we suggest are induced by direct stimulation of the peripheral cranial nerves in their intracisternal course. The present study confirms the bilateral projection of corticonuclear tracts in awake unanesthetised human subjects which has been observed by electrical stimulation on the exposed cortex during surgical procedures already decades ago. The present investigation will serve as a basis for the assessment of pathophysiological mechanisms involving the corticonuclear system or the peripheral cranial nerves in their proximal parts in awake humans.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

[Transcranial brain stimulation. Methods and results].

Since the end of last century direct electric brain stimulations have produced remarkable neurophysiological results. Unfortunately, this method can be used only during neurosurgical operations. With the introduction of transcranial electric brain stimulation in 1980, for the first time, it became possible to perform brain stimulations on non-anaesthetized subjects. Magnetic brain stimulation, available since 1985, allows brain stimulation without any discomfort of the subject. This paper is dealing with methodological aspects of both methods and presents first results of neurophysiological and clinical applications.

Brain↗
PubMed1988

[Assessment of motor cranial nerve functions using transcranial magnetic stimulation].

Transcranial magnetic stimulation applied over one cerebral hemisphere evokes bilateral responses in the muscles supplied by cranial nerves (masseter, mentalis, sternomastoid, genioglossus) (Tabl. 1). The relatively long latencies of these responses and the influence that preactivation of the muscle has on them, suggests that they are cortically evoked. Shorter latency and exclusively ipsilateral responses can be obtained if the position of the stimulating coil over the head is more lateral. These responses are uninfluenced by pre-activation of the muscle which suggests that they arise from stimulation of the peripheral nerve itself. By considering the conduction velocity of the nerve and the response latency such stimulation probably occurs in the proximal intracisternal segment (Fig. 2). The results obtained using magnetic stimulation of the cortex in patients with unilateral cerebral hemisphere lesions lend support to the idea of a bilateral projection from each cerebral hemisphere to the motor nuclei of the facial and hypoglossal nerves on both sides: stimulations over the intact hemisphere produces bilateral responses, whereas stimulations over the damaged hemisphere produce no responses (Fig. 1). In patients with idiopathic facial palsy no short latency responses were obtained on the affected side either during the acute (less than 10 days) or during the chronic phase (greater than 3 months) of the illness-despite clinical improvement during the chronic stage (Fig. 3, 4). However cortically evoked responses were obtainable in patients seen during the chronic phase indicating that facial motoneurones could be excited transsynaptically (Fig. 3).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Cerebral Infarction↗
PubMed1979

Speech and respiration.

This investigation deals with the temporal aspects of air volume changes during speech. Speech respiration differs fundamentally from resting respiration. In resting respiration the duration and velocity of inspiration (air flow or lung volume change) are in a range similar to that of expiration. In speech respiration the duration of inspiration decreases and its velocity increases; conversely, the duration of expiration increases and the volume of air flow decreases dramatically. The following questions arise: are these two respiration types different entities, or do they represent the end points of a continuum from resting to speech respiration? How does articulation without the generation of speech sound affect breathing? Does (verbalized?) thinking without articulation or speech modify the breathing pattern? The main test battery included four tasks (spontaneous speech, reading, serial speech, arithmetic) performed under three conditions (speaking aloud, articulating subvocally, quiet performance by tryping to exclusively 'think' the tasks). Respiratory movements were measured with a chest pneumograph and evaluated in comparison with a phonogram and the identified spoken text. For quiet performance the resulting respiratory time ratio (relation of duration of inspiration versus expiration) showed a gradual shift in the direction of speech respiration--the least for reading, the most for arithmetic. This change was even more apparent for the subvocal tasks. It is concluded that (a) there is a gradual automatic change from resting to speech respiration and (b) the degree of internal verbalization (activation of motor speech areas) defines the degree of activation of the speech respiratory pattern.

Adult↗