Soundbeam imitation intervention: Training children with autism to imitate meaningless body gestures through music

Purpose This paper aims to present the application and critical reflection on the effects of a intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD): the Soundbeam Imitation Intervention (SII). The intervention is based on the imitation of meaningless body gestures supported by a musical feedback. The rationale underlying SII is that mirror neurons deficit may represent the cause for the incomplete development of social and motor functioning in children with ASD. Following this assumption, it is possible to hypothesise that a systematic activation of this a system through the simultaneous observation-execution of meaningless body gestures may affect functional changes of mirror-related functions. Design/methodology/approach A sample of 14 children, who were between 5 and 9 years of age, with a diagnosis of ASD were involved in a six weeks’ SII programme. The programme is designed as a three-step progression, where each step includes exercises that focus on an activity: synchronous/one arm imitation, synchronous/two arms imitation and delayed imitation. Exercises are based on repeated movements-melodies associations of increasing difficulty. Motor imitation and social attention were assessed using a synchronous video-modelling task pre and post intervention. Findings Data highlight significant improvements in imitation accuracy and duration of social sustained attention were achieved. Originality/value Data reported in this paper provide preliminary and promising evidence that imitation and social attention skills acquired through SII can be generalised to a video-modelling imitation setting. The SII ordinal execution has included meaningless gestures, usually excluded from previous interventions, and this adds further validity to the training.

Buccofacial Apraxia, Oropharyngeal Dysphagia, and Dementia Severity in Community-Dwelling Elderly Patients

Apraxia occurs frequently in patients with dementia. Buccofacial apraxia (BFA) characteristics have been less investigated than limb or speech apraxia. An association between BFA and oropharyngeal dysphagia (OD) in old patients with dementia has not yet been explored. We aimed to assess the prevalence of BFA in patients with dementia and evaluate the relationship between BFA, OD, and dementia. We have prospectively included 117 outpatients with dementia referred to a geriatric consultation. Oropharyngeal dysphagia was diagnosed using the volume viscosity swallowing test (V-VST). Buccofacial apraxia was evaluated by miming 7 meaningless gestures. A complementary geriatric assessment of 6-domains completed the evaluation. Buccofacial apraxia was present in 54 (48.6%) patients. Proxies reported OD more frequently in the group of patients with BFA compared to the group without ( P = .04). Prevalence of OD assessed with the V-VST was similar between patients with and without apraxia ( P = .9). Patients with BFA had a significant lower Mini-Mental State Examination suggesting a more severe cognitive decline (18.1 ± 4.5 vs 15.8 ± 5, P = .01), a lower activities of daily living relative to disabilities (5 ± 0.8 vs 4.3 ± 1.3, P = .001), and had a lower gait speed that indicated frailty ( P = .03).In conclusion, our results indicate a relationship between BFA and severity of dementia, disability, and frailty with no significant association between BFA and OD.

Learning nouns and verbs in a foreign language: The role of gestures

ABSTRACTWe evaluated the impact of gestures on second language (L2) vocabulary learning with nouns (Experiment 1) and verbs (Experiment 2). Four training methods were compared: the learning of L2 words with congruent gestures, incongruent gestures, meaningless gestures, and no gestures. Better vocabulary learning was found in both experiments when participants learned L2 words with congruent gestures relative to the no gesture condition. This result indicates that gestures have a positive effect on L2 learning when there is a match between the word meaning and the gesture. However, the recall of words in the incongruent and meaningless gesture conditions was lower than that of the no gesture condition. This suggests that gestures might have a negative impact on L2 learning. The facilitation and interference effects we found with the use of gestures in L2 vocabulary acquisition are discussed.

Movement imitation via an abstract trajectory representation in dorsal premotor cortex

ABSTRACTHumans are particularly good at copying novel and meaningless gestures. The mechanistic and anatomical basis for this specialized imitation ability remains largely unknown. One idea is that imitation occurs by matching body configurations. Here we propose an alternative route to imitation that depends on a body-independent representation of the trajectory path of the end-effector. We studied a group of patients with strokes in the left frontoparietal cortices. We found that they were equally impaired at imitating movement trajectories using the ipsilesional limb (i.e., the non-paretic side) that were cued either by an actor using their whole arm or just by a cursor, suggesting that body configuration is not always critical for imitation and that a representation of abstract trajectory shape may suffice. In addition, imitation ability was uncorrelated to the ability to identify the trajectory shape, suggesting a dissociation between producing trajectory shapes and perceiving their paths. Finally, a lesion-symptom mapping analysis found that imitation deficits were associated with lesions in left dorsal premotor but not parietal cortex. Together, these findings suggest a novel body-independent route to imitation that relies on the ability to plan abstract movement trajectories within dorsal premotor cortex.Significance StatementThe ability to imitate is critical for rapidly learning to produce new gestures and actions, but how the brain translates observed movements into motor commands is poorly understood. Examining the ability of patients with strokes affecting the left hemisphere revealed that meaningless gestures can be imitated by succinctly representing only the motion of the hand in space, rather than the posture of the entire arm. Moreover, performance deficits correlated with lesions in dorsal premotor cortex, an area not previously associated with impaired imitation of arm postures. These findings thus describe a novel route to imitation that may also be impaired in some patients with apraxia.

Searching for meaning in meaningless gestures, pathologic activity in amygdala, hippocampus and temporal pole during planning of gestures in schizophrenia

IntroductionSchizophrenia is characterized by poor social interaction contributing to poor functional outcome. Particularly nonverbal communication is disturbed. Neural correlates of impaired gesturing are currently unclear. We thus tested functional correlates of gesturing in schizophrenia patients and healthy controls.MethodsWe tested 22 patients and 25 controls with an event-related fMRI (instructed delay) paradigm to dissociate brain activation during planning and execution of meaningful (e.g. use scissors) and meaningless novel gestures. Preprocessing included realignment, coregistration, normalization and spatial smoothing. We used a two stage mixed effects model for statistical analysis. Conditions were contrasted against a linguistic control within and between groups. We correlated psychopathological characteristics with beta estimates of brain areas with between group effects.ResultsDuring planning and execution of both gesture subtypes both groups activated brain areas of the ventral and dorsal stream. However patients’ activity was less prominent and more left lateralized. During planning patients showed additional activity in bilateral temporal poles, amygdala and hippocampus associated with the level of delusions. Furthermore patients had increased dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and precuneus activity when planning meaningless gestures.ConclusionDuring the planning of meaningless gestures we detected aberrant activation of limbic structures in patients typically implicated in delusion formation, which also correlated with current severity of delusions. Moreover, planning of meaningless gestures relied on areas relevant for strategic control and attention. These results argue for a pathologic search for meaning in neutral gestures and increased control effort during planning of meaningless gestures in schizophrenia.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.