Previous studies have shown that non-invasive stimulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) could modulate experimentally induced pain and working memory (WM) in healthy subjects. However, the two aspects have never been assessed concomitantly. The present study was set up to investigate the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of the DLPFC on thermal pain and WM in the same population of healthy volunteers. In a randomized and balanced order of different sessions separated by 1 week, 20 min of 2 mA anodal, cathodal or sham tDCS were applied to the left or right DLPFC in two separate experiments. Twelve healthy volunteers were enrolled for each stimulated hemisphere. Warm and cold detection thresholds, heat and cold pain thresholds as well as heat pain tolerance thresholds were measured before, during and following tDCS. WM was assessed by a 2-back task applied once during cortical stimulation. Anodal tDCS of the right DLPFC led to an increase of tolerance to heat pain. The 2-back task revealed fewer outliers during cathodal tDCS of the left DLPFC. The present data show an involvement of the DLPFC in the processing of pain and WM. There was no correlation between these findings, suggesting that the analgesic effects of cortical stimulation are not associated with cognitive processing. However, this conclusion is difficult to affirm because of some limitations of the study regarding the parameters of stimulation or a ceiling effect of the 2-back task for instance.
The reversed handedness effect during bimanual coordination suggests a complex relationship between handedness and task requirements in adults with Down syndrome.
The authors' aim was to understand how persons with Down syndrome (DS) perform different tasks and to assess if there were any differences in performance based on the type of instructions. This is important because of neurological differences in persons with DS and neurological demands for performing different types of tasks. Twenty right-handed participants with DS, 20 chronological age-matched (CA), and 20 mental age-matched (MA) performed unimanual, bimanual, discrete, and continuous drumming following visual, auditory, and verbal instructions. Overall, discrete drumming was performed with shorter movement times than continuous drumming and unimanual drumming was performed with shorter movement amplitude than bimanual drumming. With respect to instructions, persons with DS performed with smaller amplitudes, thus more efficient movements, following the visual instructions than auditory and verbal instructions for all types of tasks, whereas CA performed similarly with all instructions and MA performed with smaller amplitudes with visual instructions than auditory instructions. These results suggest that visual instruction provides the best information for people with DS to aid in performance of many different types of movements.
-The present study examined continuous and discrete bimanual drumming in response to different instructions in 10 adults with Down syndrome, 10 mental age-matched and 10 chronological age-matched groups. For continuous drumming, participants hit two drums with both hands at the same time following verbal (e.g., "up" and "down"), visual (e.g., video of both drumsticks moving up and down together) and auditory (e.g., sound of both drums being hit, then symbol being hit) instructions for 10 s. For discrete drumming participants hit two drums with both hands at the same time once in response to the instructions described above. In general, for all groups spatial measures showed a performance advantage when using the visual metronome in continuous tasks but no advantage with any instructions for discrete tasks.
This paper analyzes the relationship between the humor mechanism and figurative language of the comedy program <Talk Show Conference>, which is very popular in China, focusing on rhetorical techniques. Humor is a kind of language play, but it is also closely related to society and culture. As much as the content of speech is important, the effect of humor is more prominent depending on the environment in which speech is made, because the social and cultural background acts as a decoding code for us to understand humor. As a result of analyzing the types of humor in <Talk Show Conference>, the fact that there was a lot of satire and philosophical humor throughout seasons 1 to 4 would be a proof that popular culture is closely related to society. The popularity of the program is very meaningful in that humor exists at the intersection of society, culture and language. As a result of analyzing the rhetoric of 111 texts, focusing on satire and philosophical humor, it was confirmed that 'figurative language' was used a lot among the humor languages of <Talk Show Conference>. Also, it was interesting that metaphor, not exaggeration, accounted for the most weight among them.
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