A DNA-Based Semantic Fusion Model for Remote Sensing Data

PubMed Central

Sun, Heng; Weng, Jian; Yu, Guangchuang; Massawe, Richard H.

2013-01-01

Semantic technology plays a key role in various domains, from conversation understanding to algorithm analysis. As the most efficient semantic tool, ontology can represent, process and manage the widespread knowledge. Nowadays, many researchers use ontology to collect and organize data's semantic information in order to maximize research productivity. In this paper, we firstly describe our work on the development of a remote sensing data ontology, with a primary focus on semantic fusion-driven research for big data. Our ontology is made up of 1,264 concepts and 2,030 semantic relationships. However, the growth of big data is straining the capacities of current semantic fusion and reasoning practices. Considering the massive parallelism of DNA strands, we propose a novel DNA-based semantic fusion model. In this model, a parallel strategy is developed to encode the semantic information in DNA for a large volume of remote sensing data. The semantic information is read in a parallel and bit-wise manner and an individual bit is converted to a base. By doing so, a considerable amount of conversion time can be saved, i.e., the cluster-based multi-processes program can reduce the conversion time from 81,536 seconds to 4,937 seconds for 4.34 GB source data files. Moreover, the size of result file recording DNA sequences is 54.51 GB for parallel C program compared with 57.89 GB for sequential Perl. This shows that our parallel method can also reduce the DNA synthesis cost. In addition, data types are encoded in our model, which is a basis for building type system in our future DNA computer. Finally, we describe theoretically an algorithm for DNA-based semantic fusion. This algorithm enables the process of integration of the knowledge from disparate remote sensing data sources into a consistent, accurate, and complete representation. This process depends solely on ligation reaction and screening operations instead of the ontology. PMID:24116207

Early Decomposition in Visual Word Recognition: Dissociating Morphology, Form, and Meaning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Marslen-Wilson, William D.; Bozic, Mirjana; Randall, Billi

2008-01-01

The role of morphological, semantic, and form-based factors in the early stages of visual word recognition was investigated across different SOAs in a masked priming paradigm, focusing on English derivational morphology. In a first set of experiments, stimulus pairs co-varying in morphological decomposability and in semantic and orthographic…

Time Travel: The Role of Temporality in Enabling Semantic Waves in Secondary School Teaching

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Matruglio, Erika; Maton, Karl; Martin, J. R.

2013-01-01

Based on the theoretical understandings from Legitimation Code Theory (Maton, 2013) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (Martin, 2013) underpinning the research discussed in this special issue, this paper focuses on classroom pedagogy to illustrate an important strategy for making semantic waves in History teaching, namely "temporal shifting". We…

Representational similarity analysis reveals commonalities and differences in the semantic processing of words and objects.

PubMed

Devereux, Barry J; Clarke, Alex; Marouchos, Andreas; Tyler, Lorraine K

2013-11-27

Understanding the meanings of words and objects requires the activation of underlying conceptual representations. Semantic representations are often assumed to be coded such that meaning is evoked regardless of the input modality. However, the extent to which meaning is coded in modality-independent or amodal systems remains controversial. We address this issue in a human fMRI study investigating the neural processing of concepts, presented separately as written words and pictures. Activation maps for each individual word and picture were used as input for searchlight-based multivoxel pattern analyses. Representational similarity analysis was used to identify regions correlating with low-level visual models of the words and objects and the semantic category structure common to both. Common semantic category effects for both modalities were found in a left-lateralized network, including left posterior middle temporal gyrus (LpMTG), left angular gyrus, and left intraparietal sulcus (LIPS), in addition to object- and word-specific semantic processing in ventral temporal cortex and more anterior MTG, respectively. To explore differences in representational content across regions and modalities, we developed novel data-driven analyses, based on k-means clustering of searchlight dissimilarity matrices and seeded correlation analysis. These revealed subtle differences in the representations in semantic-sensitive regions, with representations in LIPS being relatively invariant to stimulus modality and representations in LpMTG being uncorrelated across modality. These results suggest that, although both LpMTG and LIPS are involved in semantic processing, only the functional role of LIPS is the same regardless of the visual input, whereas the functional role of LpMTG differs for words and objects.

The Ins and Outs of Meaning: Behavioral and Neuroanatomical Dissociation of Semantically-Driven Word Retrieval and Multimodal Semantic Recognition in Aphasia

PubMed Central

Mirman, Daniel; Zhang, Yongsheng; Wang, Ze; Coslett, H. Branch; Schwartz, Myrna F.

2015-01-01

Theories about the architecture of language processing differ with regard to whether verbal and nonverbal comprehension share a functional and neural substrate and how meaning extraction in comprehension relates to the ability to use meaning to drive verbal production. We (re-)evaluate data from 17 cognitive-linguistic performance measures of 99 participants with chronic aphasia using factor analysis to establish functional components and support vector regression-based lesion-symptom mapping to determine the neural correlates of deficits on these functional components. The results are highly consistent with our previous findings: production of semantic errors is behaviorally and neuroanatomically distinct from verbal and nonverbal comprehension. Semantic errors were most strongly associated with left ATL damage whereas deficits on tests of verbal and non-verbal semantic recognition were most strongly associated with damage to deep white matter underlying the frontal lobe at the confluence of multiple tracts, including the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus, the uncinate fasciculus, and the anterior thalamic radiations. These results suggest that traditional views based on grey matter hub(s) for semantic processing are incomplete and that the role of white matter in semantic cognition has been underappreciated. PMID:25681739

Considering the role of semantic memory in episodic future thinking: evidence from semantic dementia.

PubMed

Irish, Muireann; Addis, Donna Rose; Hodges, John R; Piguet, Olivier

2012-07-01

Semantic dementia is a progressive neurodegenerative condition characterized by the profound and amodal loss of semantic memory in the context of relatively preserved episodic memory. In contrast, patients with Alzheimer's disease typically display impairments in episodic memory, but with semantic deficits of a much lesser magnitude than in semantic dementia. Our understanding of episodic memory retrieval in these cohorts has greatly increased over the last decade, however, we know relatively little regarding the ability of these patients to imagine and describe possible future events, and whether episodic future thinking is mediated by divergent neural substrates contingent on dementia subtype. Here, we explored episodic future thinking in patients with semantic dementia (n=11) and Alzheimer's disease (n=11), in comparison with healthy control participants (n=10). Participants completed a battery of tests designed to probe episodic and semantic thinking across past and future conditions, as well as standardized tests of episodic and semantic memory. Further, all participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging. Despite their relatively intact episodic retrieval for recent past events, the semantic dementia cohort showed significant impairments for episodic future thinking. In contrast, the group with Alzheimer's disease showed parallel deficits across past and future episodic conditions. Voxel-based morphometry analyses confirmed that atrophy in the left inferior temporal gyrus and bilateral temporal poles, regions strongly implicated in semantic memory, correlated significantly with deficits in episodic future thinking in semantic dementia. Conversely, episodic future thinking performance in Alzheimer's disease correlated with atrophy in regions associated with episodic memory, namely the posterior cingulate, parahippocampal gyrus and frontal pole. These distinct neuroanatomical substrates contingent on dementia group were further qualified by correlational analyses that confirmed the relation between semantic memory deficits and episodic future thinking in semantic dementia, in contrast with the role of episodic memory deficits and episodic future thinking in Alzheimer's disease. Our findings demonstrate that semantic knowledge is critical for the construction of novel future events, providing the necessary scaffolding into which episodic details can be integrated. Further research is necessary to elucidate the precise contribution of semantic memory to future thinking, and to explore how deficits in self-projection manifest on behavioural and social levels in different dementia subtypes.

The perirhinal cortex and conceptual processing: Effects of feature-based statistics following damage to the anterior temporal lobes.

PubMed

Wright, Paul; Randall, Billi; Clarke, Alex; Tyler, Lorraine K

2015-09-01

The anterior temporal lobe (ATL) plays a prominent role in models of semantic knowledge, although it remains unclear how the specific subregions within the ATL contribute to semantic memory. Patients with neurodegenerative diseases, like semantic dementia, have widespread damage to the ATL thus making inferences about the relationship between anatomy and cognition problematic. Here we take a detailed anatomical approach to ask which substructures within the ATL contribute to conceptual processing, with the prediction that the perirhinal cortex (PRc) will play a critical role for concepts that are more semantically confusable. We tested two patient groups, those with and without damage to the PRc, across two behavioural experiments - picture naming and word-picture matching. For both tasks, we manipulated the degree of semantic confusability of the concepts. By contrasting the performance of the two groups, along with healthy controls, we show that damage to the PRc results in worse performance in processing concepts with higher semantic confusability across both experiments. Further by correlating the degree of damage across anatomically defined regions of interest with performance, we find that PRc damage is related to performance for concepts with increased semantic confusability. Our results show that the PRc supports a necessary and crucial neurocognitve function that enables fine-grained conceptual processes to take place through the resolution of semantic confusability. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Neural correlates of lexical-semantic memory: A voxel-based morphometry study in mild AD, aMCI and normal aging

PubMed Central

Balthazar, Marcio L.F.; Yasuda, Clarissa L.; Lopes, Tátila M.; Pereira, Fabrício R.S.; Damasceno, Benito Pereira; Cendes, Fernando

2011-01-01

Neuroanatomical correlations of naming and lexical-semantic memory are not yet fully understood. The most influential approaches share the view that semantic representations reflect the manner in which information has been acquired through perception and action, and that each brain area processes different modalities of semantic representations. Despite these anatomical differences in semantic processing, generalization across different features that have similar semantic significance is one of the main characteristics of human cognition. Methods We evaluated the brain regions related to naming, and to the semantic generalization, of visually presented drawings of objects from the Boston Naming Test (BNT), which comprises different categories, such as animals, vegetables, tools, food, and furniture. In order to create a model of lesion method, a sample of 48 subjects presenting with a continuous decline both in cognitive functions, including naming skills, and in grey matter density (GMD) was compared to normal young adults with normal aging, amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and mild Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Semantic errors on the BNT, as well as naming performance, were correlated with whole brain GMD as measured by voxel-based morphometry (VBM). Results The areas most strongly related to naming and to semantic errors were the medial temporal structures, thalami, superior and inferior temporal gyri, especially their anterior parts, as well as prefrontal cortices (inferior and superior frontal gyri). Conclusion The possible role of each of these areas in the lexical-semantic networks was discussed, along with their contribution to the models of semantic memory organization. PMID:29213726

Representational Similarity Analysis Reveals Commonalities and Differences in the Semantic Processing of Words and Objects

PubMed Central

Devereux, Barry J.; Clarke, Alex; Marouchos, Andreas; Tyler, Lorraine K.

2013-01-01

Understanding the meanings of words and objects requires the activation of underlying conceptual representations. Semantic representations are often assumed to be coded such that meaning is evoked regardless of the input modality. However, the extent to which meaning is coded in modality-independent or amodal systems remains controversial. We address this issue in a human fMRI study investigating the neural processing of concepts, presented separately as written words and pictures. Activation maps for each individual word and picture were used as input for searchlight-based multivoxel pattern analyses. Representational similarity analysis was used to identify regions correlating with low-level visual models of the words and objects and the semantic category structure common to both. Common semantic category effects for both modalities were found in a left-lateralized network, including left posterior middle temporal gyrus (LpMTG), left angular gyrus, and left intraparietal sulcus (LIPS), in addition to object- and word-specific semantic processing in ventral temporal cortex and more anterior MTG, respectively. To explore differences in representational content across regions and modalities, we developed novel data-driven analyses, based on k-means clustering of searchlight dissimilarity matrices and seeded correlation analysis. These revealed subtle differences in the representations in semantic-sensitive regions, with representations in LIPS being relatively invariant to stimulus modality and representations in LpMTG being uncorrelated across modality. These results suggest that, although both LpMTG and LIPS are involved in semantic processing, only the functional role of LIPS is the same regardless of the visual input, whereas the functional role of LpMTG differs for words and objects. PMID:24285896

Semantic similarity measure in biomedical domain leverage web search engine.

PubMed

Chen, Chi-Huang; Hsieh, Sheau-Ling; Weng, Yung-Ching; Chang, Wen-Yung; Lai, Feipei

2010-01-01

Semantic similarity measure plays an essential role in Information Retrieval and Natural Language Processing. In this paper we propose a page-count-based semantic similarity measure and apply it in biomedical domains. Previous researches in semantic web related applications have deployed various semantic similarity measures. Despite the usefulness of the measurements in those applications, measuring semantic similarity between two terms remains a challenge task. The proposed method exploits page counts returned by the Web Search Engine. We define various similarity scores for two given terms P and Q, using the page counts for querying P, Q and P AND Q. Moreover, we propose a novel approach to compute semantic similarity using lexico-syntactic patterns with page counts. These different similarity scores are integrated adapting support vector machines, to leverage the robustness of semantic similarity measures. Experimental results on two datasets achieve correlation coefficients of 0.798 on the dataset provided by A. Hliaoutakis, 0.705 on the dataset provide by T. Pedersen with physician scores and 0.496 on the dataset provided by T. Pedersen et al. with expert scores.

The association of personal semantic memory to identity representations: insight into higher-order networks of autobiographical contents.

PubMed

Grilli, Matthew D

2017-11-01

Identity representations are higher-order knowledge structures that organise autobiographical memories on the basis of personality and role-based themes of one's self-concept. In two experiments, the extent to which different types of personal semantic content are reflected in these higher-order networks of memories was investigated. Healthy, young adult participants generated identity representations that varied in remoteness of formation and verbally reflected on these themes in an open-ended narrative task. The narrative responses were scored for retrieval of episodic, experience-near personal semantic and experience-far (i.e., abstract) personal semantic contents. Results revealed that to reflect on remotely formed identity representations, experience-far personal semantic contents were retrieved more than experience-near personal semantic contents. In contrast, to reflect on recently formed identity representations, experience-near personal semantic contents were retrieved more than experience-far personal semantic contents. Although episodic memory contents were retrieved less than both personal semantic content types to reflect on remotely formed identity representations, this content type was retrieved at a similar frequency as experience-far personal semantic content to reflect on recently formed identity representations. These findings indicate that the association of personal semantic content to identity representations is robust and related to time since acquisition of these knowledge structures.

Explaining Semantic Short-Term Memory Deficits: Evidence for the Critical Role of Semantic Control

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hoffman, Paul; Jefferies, Elizabeth; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A.

2011-01-01

Patients with apparently selective short-term memory (STM) deficits for semantic information have played an important role in developing multi-store theories of STM and challenge the idea that verbal STM is supported by maintaining activation in the language system. We propose that semantic STM deficits are not as selective as previously thought…

Effects of semantic neighborhood density in abstract and concrete words.

PubMed

Reilly, Megan; Desai, Rutvik H

2017-12-01

Concrete and abstract words are thought to differ along several psycholinguistic variables, such as frequency and emotional content. Here, we consider another variable, semantic neighborhood density, which has received much less attention, likely because semantic neighborhoods of abstract words are difficult to measure. Using a corpus-based method that creates representations of words that emphasize featural information, the current investigation explores the relationship between neighborhood density and concreteness in a large set of English nouns. Two important observations emerge. First, semantic neighborhood density is higher for concrete than for abstract words, even when other variables are accounted for, especially for smaller neighborhood sizes. Second, the effects of semantic neighborhood density on behavior are different for concrete and abstract words. Lexical decision reaction times are fastest for words with sparse neighborhoods; however, this effect is stronger for concrete words than for abstract words. These results suggest that semantic neighborhood density plays a role in the cognitive and psycholinguistic differences between concrete and abstract words, and should be taken into account in studies involving lexical semantics. Furthermore, the pattern of results with the current feature-based neighborhood measure is very different from that with associatively defined neighborhoods, suggesting that these two methods should be treated as separate measures rather than two interchangeable measures of semantic neighborhoods. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The roles of scene gist and spatial dependency among objects in the semantic guidance of attention in real-world scenes.

PubMed

Wu, Chia-Chien; Wang, Hsueh-Cheng; Pomplun, Marc

2014-12-01

A previous study (Vision Research 51 (2011) 1192-1205) found evidence for semantic guidance of visual attention during the inspection of real-world scenes, i.e., an influence of semantic relationships among scene objects on overt shifts of attention. In particular, the results revealed an observer bias toward gaze transitions between semantically similar objects. However, this effect is not necessarily indicative of semantic processing of individual objects but may be mediated by knowledge of the scene gist, which does not require object recognition, or by known spatial dependency among objects. To examine the mechanisms underlying semantic guidance, in the present study, participants were asked to view a series of displays with the scene gist excluded and spatial dependency varied. Our results show that spatial dependency among objects seems to be sufficient to induce semantic guidance. Scene gist, on the other hand, does not seem to affect how observers use semantic information to guide attention while viewing natural scenes. Extracting semantic information mainly based on spatial dependency may be an efficient strategy of the visual system that only adds little cognitive load to the viewing task. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Graph-Theoretic Properties of Networks Based on Word Association Norms: Implications for Models of Lexical Semantic Memory.

PubMed

Gruenenfelder, Thomas M; Recchia, Gabriel; Rubin, Tim; Jones, Michael N

2016-08-01

We compared the ability of three different contextual models of lexical semantic memory (BEAGLE, Latent Semantic Analysis, and the Topic model) and of a simple associative model (POC) to predict the properties of semantic networks derived from word association norms. None of the semantic models were able to accurately predict all of the network properties. All three contextual models over-predicted clustering in the norms, whereas the associative model under-predicted clustering. Only a hybrid model that assumed that some of the responses were based on a contextual model and others on an associative network (POC) successfully predicted all of the network properties and predicted a word's top five associates as well as or better than the better of the two constituent models. The results suggest that participants switch between a contextual representation and an associative network when generating free associations. We discuss the role that each of these representations may play in lexical semantic memory. Concordant with recent multicomponent theories of semantic memory, the associative network may encode coordinate relations between concepts (e.g., the relation between pea and bean, or between sparrow and robin), and contextual representations may be used to process information about more abstract concepts. Copyright © 2015 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Semantic Edge Based Disparity Estimation Using Adaptive Dynamic Programming for Binocular Sensors

PubMed Central

Zhu, Dongchen; Li, Jiamao; Wang, Xianshun; Peng, Jingquan; Shi, Wenjun; Zhang, Xiaolin

2018-01-01

Disparity calculation is crucial for binocular sensor ranging. The disparity estimation based on edges is an important branch in the research of sparse stereo matching and plays an important role in visual navigation. In this paper, we propose a robust sparse stereo matching method based on the semantic edges. Some simple matching costs are used first, and then a novel adaptive dynamic programming algorithm is proposed to obtain optimal solutions. This algorithm makes use of the disparity or semantic consistency constraint between the stereo images to adaptively search parameters, which can improve the robustness of our method. The proposed method is compared quantitatively and qualitatively with the traditional dynamic programming method, some dense stereo matching methods, and the advanced edge-based method respectively. Experiments show that our method can provide superior performance on the above comparison. PMID:29614028

Semantic Edge Based Disparity Estimation Using Adaptive Dynamic Programming for Binocular Sensors.

PubMed

Zhu, Dongchen; Li, Jiamao; Wang, Xianshun; Peng, Jingquan; Shi, Wenjun; Zhang, Xiaolin

2018-04-03

Disparity calculation is crucial for binocular sensor ranging. The disparity estimation based on edges is an important branch in the research of sparse stereo matching and plays an important role in visual navigation. In this paper, we propose a robust sparse stereo matching method based on the semantic edges. Some simple matching costs are used first, and then a novel adaptive dynamic programming algorithm is proposed to obtain optimal solutions. This algorithm makes use of the disparity or semantic consistency constraint between the stereo images to adaptively search parameters, which can improve the robustness of our method. The proposed method is compared quantitatively and qualitatively with the traditional dynamic programming method, some dense stereo matching methods, and the advanced edge-based method respectively. Experiments show that our method can provide superior performance on the above comparison.

Representation of Semantic Similarity in the Left Intraparietal Sulcus: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Evidence

PubMed Central

Neyens, Veerle; Bruffaerts, Rose; Liuzzi, Antonietta G.; Kalfas, Ioannis; Peeters, Ronald; Keuleers, Emmanuel; Vogels, Rufin; De Deyne, Simon; Storms, Gert; Dupont, Patrick; Vandenberghe, Rik

2017-01-01

According to a recent study, semantic similarity between concrete entities correlates with the similarity of activity patterns in left middle IPS during category naming. We examined the replicability of this effect under passive viewing conditions, the potential role of visuoperceptual similarity, where the effect is situated compared to regions that have been previously implicated in visuospatial attention, and how it compares to effects of object identity and location. Forty-six subjects participated. Subjects passively viewed pictures from two categories, musical instruments and vehicles. Semantic similarity between entities was estimated based on a concept-feature matrix obtained in more than 1,000 subjects. Visuoperceptual similarity was modeled based on the HMAX model, the AlexNet deep convolutional learning model, and thirdly, based on subjective visuoperceptual similarity ratings. Among the IPS regions examined, only left middle IPS showed a semantic similarity effect. The effect was significant in hIP1, hIP2, and hIP3. Visuoperceptual similarity did not correlate with similarity of activity patterns in left middle IPS. The semantic similarity effect in left middle IPS was significantly stronger than in the right middle IPS and also stronger than in the left or right posterior IPS. The semantic similarity effect was similar to that seen in the angular gyrus. Object identity effects were much more widespread across nearly all parietal areas examined. Location effects were relatively specific for posterior IPS and area 7 bilaterally. To conclude, the current findings replicate the semantic similarity effect in left middle IPS under passive viewing conditions, and demonstrate its anatomical specificity within a cytoarchitectonic reference frame. We propose that the semantic similarity effect in left middle IPS reflects the transient uploading of semantic representations in working memory. PMID:28824405

Semantic associative relations and conceptual processing.

PubMed

Di Giacomo, Dina; De Federicis, Lucia Serenella; Pistelli, Manuela; Fiorenzi, Daniela; Passafiume, Domenico

2012-02-01

We analysed the organisation of semantic network using associative mechanisms between different types of information and studied the progression of the use of these associative relations during development. We aimed to verify the linkage of concepts with the use of semantic associative relations. The goal of this study was to analyse the cognitive ability to use associative relations between various items when describing old and/or new concepts. We examined the performance of 100 subjects between the ages of 4 and 7 years on an experimental task using five associative relations based on verbal encoding. The results showed that children are able to use the five semantic associative relations at age 4, but performance with each of the different associative relations improves at different times during development. Functional and part/whole relations develop at an early age, whereas the superordinate relations develop later. Our study clarified the characteristics of the progression of semantic associations during development as well as the roles that associative relations play in the structure and improvement of the semantic store.

The Relation between Thematic Role Computing and Semantic Relatedness Processing during On-Line Sentence Comprehension

PubMed Central

Li, Xiaoqing; Zhao, Haiyan; Lu, Yong

2014-01-01

Sentence comprehension involves timely computing different types of relations between its verbs and noun arguments, such as morphosyntactic, semantic, and thematic relations. Here, we used EEG technique to investigate the potential differences in thematic role computing and lexical-semantic relatedness processing during on-line sentence comprehension, and the interaction between these two types of processes. Mandarin Chinese sentences were used as materials. The basic structure of those sentences is “Noun+Verb+‘le’+a two-character word”, with the Noun being the initial argument. The verb disambiguates the initial argument as an agent or a patient. Meanwhile, the initial argument and the verb are highly or lowly semantically related. The ERPs at the verbs revealed that: relative to the agent condition, the patient condition evoked a larger N400 only when the argument and verb were lowly semantically related; however, relative to the high-relatedness condition, the low-relatedness condition elicited a larger N400 regardless of the thematic relation; although both thematic role variation and semantic relatedness variation elicited N400 effects, the N400 effect elicited by the former was broadly distributed and reached maximum over the frontal electrodes, and the N400 effect elicited by the latter had a posterior distribution. In addition, the brain oscillations results showed that, although thematic role variation (patient vs. agent) induced power decreases around the beta frequency band (15–30 Hz), semantic relatedness variation (low-relatedness vs. high-relatedness) induced power increases in the theta frequency band (4–7 Hz). These results suggested that, in the sentence context, thematic role computing is modulated by the semantic relatedness between the verb and its argument; semantic relatedness processing, however, is in some degree independent from the thematic relations. Moreover, our results indicated that, during on-line sentence comprehension, thematic role computing and semantic relatedness processing are mediated by distinct neural systems. PMID:24755643

The role of the right hemisphere in semantic control: A case-series comparison of right and left hemisphere stroke

PubMed Central

Thompson, Hannah E.; Henshall, Lauren; Jefferies, Elizabeth

2016-01-01

Semantic control processes guide conceptual retrieval so that we are able to focus on non-dominant associations and features when these are required for the task or context, yet the neural basis of semantic control is not fully understood. Neuroimaging studies have emphasised the role of left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) in controlled retrieval, while neuropsychological investigations of semantic control deficits have almost exclusively focussed on patients with left-sided damage (e.g., patients with semantic aphasia, SA). Nevertheless, activation in fMRI during demanding semantic tasks typically extends to right IFG. To investigate the role of the right hemisphere (RH) in semantic control, we compared nine RH stroke patients with 21 left-hemisphere SA patients, 11 mild SA cases and 12 healthy, aged-matched controls on semantic and executive tasks, plus experimental tasks that manipulated semantic control in paradigms particularly sensitive to RH damage. RH patients had executive deficits to parallel SA patients but they performed well on standard semantic tests. Nevertheless, multimodal semantic control deficits were found in experimental tasks involving facial emotions and the ‘summation’ of meaning across multiple items. On these tasks, RH patients showed effects similar to those in SA cases – multimodal deficits that were sensitive to distractor strength and cues and miscues, plus increasingly poor performance in cyclical matching tasks which repeatedly probed the same set of concepts. Thus, despite striking differences in single-item comprehension, evidence presented here suggests semantic control is bilateral, and disruption of this component of semantic cognition can be seen following damage to either hemisphere. PMID:26945505

Losing sight of the future: Impaired semantic prospection following medial temporal lobe lesions

PubMed Central

Race, Elizabeth; Keane, Margaret M.; Verfaellie, Mieke

2012-01-01

The ability to imagine the future (prospection) relies on many of the same brain regions that support memory for the past. To date, scientific research has primarily focused on the neural substrates of episodic forms of prospection (mental simulation of spatiotemporally specific future events) whereas little is known about the neural substrates of semantic prospection (mental simulation of future nonpersonal facts). Of particular interest is the role of the medial temporal lobes, and specifically the hippocampus. While the hippocampus has been proposed to play a key role in episodic prospection, recent evidence suggests that it may not play a similar role in semantic prospection. To examine this possibility, amnesic patients with medial temporal lobe (MTL) lesions were asked to imagine future issues occurring in the public domain. The results showed that patients could list general semantic facts about the future, but when probed to elaborate, patients produced impoverished descriptions that lacked semantic detail. This impairment occurred despite intact performance on standard neuropsychological tests of semantic processing, and did not simply reflect deficits in narrative construction. The performance of a patient with damage limited to the hippocampus was similar to that of the remaining MTL patients and amnesic patients’ impaired elaboration of the semantic future correlated with their impaired elaboration of the semantic past. Together, these results provide novel evidence from MTL amnesia that memory and prospection are linked in the semantic domain and reveal that the medial temporal lobes play a critical role in the construction of detailed, multi-element semantic simulations. PMID:23197413

Distinct behavioural profiles in frontotemporal dementia and semantic dementia

PubMed Central

Snowden, J; Bathgate, D; Varma, A; Blackshaw, A; Gibbons, Z; Neary, D

2001-01-01

OBJECTIVE—To test predictions that frontotemporal dementia and semantic dementia give rise to distinct patterns of behavioural change.
METHODS—An informant based semistructured behavioural interview, covering the domains of basic and social emotions, social and personal behaviour, sensory behaviour, eating and oral behaviour, repetitive behaviours, rituals, and compulsions, was administered to carers of 41 patients with semantic dementia and with apathetic (FTD-A) and disinhibited (FTD-D) forms of frontotemporal dementia.
RESULTS—Consistent with prediction, emotional changes differentiated FTD from semantic dementia. Whereas lack of emotional response was pervasive in FTD, it was more selective in semantic dementia, affecting particularly the capacity to show fear. Social avoidance occurred more often in FTD and social seeking in semantic dementia. Patients with FTD showed reduced response to pain, whereas patients with semantic dementia more often showed exaggerated reactions to sensory stimuli. Gluttony and indiscriminate eating were characteristic of FTD, whereas patients with semantic dementia were more likely to exhibit food fads. Hyperorality, involving inedible objects, was unrelated to gluttony, indicating different underlying mechanisms. Repetitive behaviours were common in both FTD and semantic dementia, but had a more compulsive quality in semantic dementia. Behavioural differences were greater between semantic dementia and FTD-A than FTD-D. A logistic regression analysis indicated that emotional and repetitive, compulsive behaviours discriminated FTD from semantic dementia with 97% accuracy.
CONCLUSION—The findings confirm predictions regarding behavioural differences in frontotemporal and semantic dementia and point to differential roles of the frontal and temporal lobes in affect, social functioning, eating, and compulsive behaviour.

 PMID:11181853

Localising semantic and syntactic processing in spoken and written language comprehension: an Activation Likelihood Estimation meta-analysis.

PubMed

Rodd, Jennifer M; Vitello, Sylvia; Woollams, Anna M; Adank, Patti

2015-02-01

We conducted an Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) meta-analysis to identify brain regions that are recruited by linguistic stimuli requiring relatively demanding semantic or syntactic processing. We included 54 functional MRI studies that explicitly varied the semantic or syntactic processing load, while holding constant demands on earlier stages of processing. We included studies that introduced a syntactic/semantic ambiguity or anomaly, used a priming manipulation that specifically reduced the load on semantic/syntactic processing, or varied the level of syntactic complexity. The results confirmed the critical role of the posterior left Inferior Frontal Gyrus (LIFG) in semantic and syntactic processing. These results challenge models of sentence comprehension highlighting the role of anterior LIFG for semantic processing. In addition, the results emphasise the posterior (but not anterior) temporal lobe for both semantic and syntactic processing. Crown Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Thai Language Sentence Similarity Computation Based on Syntactic Structure and Semantic Vector

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Hongbin; Feng, Yinhan; Cheng, Liang

2018-03-01

Sentence similarity computation plays an increasingly important role in text mining, Web page retrieval, machine translation, speech recognition and question answering systems. Thai language as a kind of resources scarce language, it is not like Chinese language with HowNet and CiLin resources. So the Thai sentence similarity research faces some challenges. In order to solve this problem of the Thai language sentence similarity computation. This paper proposes a novel method to compute the similarity of Thai language sentence based on syntactic structure and semantic vector. This method firstly uses the Part-of-Speech (POS) dependency to calculate two sentences syntactic structure similarity, and then through the word vector to calculate two sentences semantic similarity. Finally, we combine the two methods to calculate two Thai language sentences similarity. The proposed method not only considers semantic, but also considers the sentence syntactic structure. The experiment result shows that this method in Thai language sentence similarity computation is feasible.

Semantic mechanisms may be responsible for developing synesthesia

PubMed Central

Mroczko-Wąsowicz, Aleksandra; Nikolić, Danko

2014-01-01

Currently, little is known about how synesthesia develops and which aspects of synesthesia can be acquired through a learning process. We review the increasing evidence for the role of semantic representations in the induction of synesthesia, and argue for the thesis that synesthetic abilities are developed and modified by semantic mechanisms. That is, in certain people semantic mechanisms associate concepts with perception-like experiences—and this association occurs in an extraordinary way. This phenomenon can be referred to as “higher” synesthesia or ideasthesia. The present analysis suggests that synesthesia develops during childhood and is being enriched further throughout the synesthetes’ lifetime; for example, the already existing concurrents may be adopted by novel inducers or new concurrents may be formed. For a deeper understanding of the origin and nature of synesthesia we propose to focus future research on two aspects: (i) the similarities between synesthesia and ordinary phenomenal experiences based on concepts; and (ii) the tight entanglement of perception, cognition and the conceptualization of the world. Importantly, an explanation of how biological systems get to generate experiences, synesthetic or not, may have to involve an explanation of how semantic networks are formed in general and what their role is in the ability to be aware of the surrounding world. PMID:25191239

Empirical Studies of Interactions of Semantic Roles: The Agent and Patient in Mandarin Chinese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yue, Kun

2010-01-01

This dissertation investigates the interaction between form and function in Mandarin Chinese by empirically examining the interactions of core semantic roles (Agent and Patient) and the syntactic representation of those interactions in semantically transitive events. First, I demonstrate that syntactic structures and functions are intertwined with…

The role of the right hemisphere in semantic control: A case-series comparison of right and left hemisphere stroke.

PubMed

Thompson, Hannah E; Henshall, Lauren; Jefferies, Elizabeth

2016-05-01

Semantic control processes guide conceptual retrieval so that we are able to focus on non-dominant associations and features when these are required for the task or context, yet the neural basis of semantic control is not fully understood. Neuroimaging studies have emphasised the role of left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) in controlled retrieval, while neuropsychological investigations of semantic control deficits have almost exclusively focussed on patients with left-sided damage (e.g., patients with semantic aphasia, SA). Nevertheless, activation in fMRI during demanding semantic tasks typically extends to right IFG. To investigate the role of the right hemisphere (RH) in semantic control, we compared nine RH stroke patients with 21 left-hemisphere SA patients, 11 mild SA cases and 12 healthy, aged-matched controls on semantic and executive tasks, plus experimental tasks that manipulated semantic control in paradigms particularly sensitive to RH damage. RH patients had executive deficits to parallel SA patients but they performed well on standard semantic tests. Nevertheless, multimodal semantic control deficits were found in experimental tasks involving facial emotions and the 'summation' of meaning across multiple items. On these tasks, RH patients showed effects similar to those in SA cases - multimodal deficits that were sensitive to distractor strength and cues and miscues, plus increasingly poor performance in cyclical matching tasks which repeatedly probed the same set of concepts. Thus, despite striking differences in single-item comprehension, evidence presented here suggests semantic control is bilateral, and disruption of this component of semantic cognition can be seen following damage to either hemisphere. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Famous face identification in temporal lobe epilepsy: Support for a multimodal integration model of semantic memory

PubMed Central

Drane, Daniel L.; Ojemann, Jeffrey G.; Phatak, Vaishali; Loring, David W.; Gross, Robert E.; Hebb, Adam O.; Silbergeld, Daniel L.; Miller, John W.; Voets, Natalie L.; Saindane, Amit M.; Barsalou, Lawrence; Meador, Kimford J.; Ojemann, George A.; Tranel, Daniel

2012-01-01

This study aims to demonstrate that the left and right anterior temporal lobes (ATLs) perform critical but unique roles in famous face identification, with damage to either leading to differing deficit patterns reflecting decreased access to lexical or semantic concepts but not their degradation. Famous face identification was studied in 22 presurgical and 14 postsurgical temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) patients and 20 healthy comparison subjects using free recall and multiple choice (MC) paradigms. Right TLE patients exhibited presurgical deficits in famous face recognition, and postsurgical deficits in both famous face recognition and familiarity judgments. However, they did not exhibit any problems with naming before or after surgery. In contrast, left TLE patients demonstrated both pre-and postsurgical deficits in famous face naming but no significant deficits in recognition or familiarity. Double dissociations in performance between groups were alleviated by altering task demands. Postsurgical right TLE patients provided with MC options correctly identified greater than 70% of famous faces they initially rated as unfamiliar. Left TLE patients accurately chose the name for nearly all famous faces they recognized (based on their verbal description) but initially failed to name, although they tended to rapidly lose access to this name. We believe alterations in task demands activate alternative routes to semantic and lexical networks, demonstrating that unique pathways to such stored information exist, and suggesting a different role for each ATL in identifying visually presented famous faces. The right ATL appears to play a fundamental role in accessing semantic information from a visual route, with the left ATL serving to link semantic information to the language system to produce a specific name. These findings challenge several assumptions underlying amodal models of semantic memory, and provide support for the integrated multimodal theories of semantic memory and a distributed representation of concepts. PMID:23040175

Famous face identification in temporal lobe epilepsy: support for a multimodal integration model of semantic memory.

PubMed

Drane, Daniel L; Ojemann, Jeffrey G; Phatak, Vaishali; Loring, David W; Gross, Robert E; Hebb, Adam O; Silbergeld, Daniel L; Miller, John W; Voets, Natalie L; Saindane, Amit M; Barsalou, Lawrence; Meador, Kimford J; Ojemann, George A; Tranel, Daniel

2013-06-01

This study aims to demonstrate that the left and right anterior temporal lobes (ATLs) perform critical but unique roles in famous face identification, with damage to either leading to differing deficit patterns reflecting decreased access to lexical or semantic concepts but not their degradation. Famous face identification was studied in 22 presurgical and 14 postsurgical temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) patients and 20 healthy comparison subjects using free recall and multiple choice (MC) paradigms. Right TLE patients exhibited presurgical deficits in famous face recognition, and postsurgical deficits in both famous face recognition and familiarity judgments. However, they did not exhibit any problems with naming before or after surgery. In contrast, left TLE patients demonstrated both pre- and postsurgical deficits in famous face naming but no significant deficits in recognition or familiarity. Double dissociations in performance between groups were alleviated by altering task demands. Postsurgical right TLE patients provided with MC options correctly identified greater than 70% of famous faces they initially rated as unfamiliar. Left TLE patients accurately chose the name for nearly all famous faces they recognized (based on their verbal description) but initially failed to name, although they tended to rapidly lose access to this name. We believe alterations in task demands activate alternative routes to semantic and lexical networks, demonstrating that unique pathways to such stored information exist, and suggesting a different role for each ATL in identifying visually presented famous faces. The right ATL appears to play a fundamental role in accessing semantic information from a visual route, with the left ATL serving to link semantic information to the language system to produce a specific name. These findings challenge several assumptions underlying amodal models of semantic memory, and provide support for the integrated multimodal theories of semantic memory and a distributed representation of concepts. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Episodic representations support early semantic learning: evidence from midazolam induced amnesia.

PubMed

Merritt, Paul; Hirshman, Elliot; Zamani, Shane; Hsu, John; Berrigan, Michael

2006-07-01

Current controversy exists regarding the role of episodic representations in the formation of long-term semantic memories. Using the drug midazolam to induce temporary amnesia we tested participants' memories for newly learned facts in a semantic cue condition or an episodic and semantic cue condition. Following midazolam administration, memory performance was superior in the episodic and semantic condition, suggesting early semantic learning is supported by episodic representations.

Hierarchical layered and semantic-based image segmentation using ergodicity map

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yadegar, Jacob; Liu, Xiaoqing

2010-04-01

Image segmentation plays a foundational role in image understanding and computer vision. Although great strides have been made and progress achieved on automatic/semi-automatic image segmentation algorithms, designing a generic, robust, and efficient image segmentation algorithm is still challenging. Human vision is still far superior compared to computer vision, especially in interpreting semantic meanings/objects in images. We present a hierarchical/layered semantic image segmentation algorithm that can automatically and efficiently segment images into hierarchical layered/multi-scaled semantic regions/objects with contextual topological relationships. The proposed algorithm bridges the gap between high-level semantics and low-level visual features/cues (such as color, intensity, edge, etc.) through utilizing a layered/hierarchical ergodicity map, where ergodicity is computed based on a space filling fractal concept and used as a region dissimilarity measurement. The algorithm applies a highly scalable, efficient, and adaptive Peano- Cesaro triangulation/tiling technique to decompose the given image into a set of similar/homogenous regions based on low-level visual cues in a top-down manner. The layered/hierarchical ergodicity map is built through a bottom-up region dissimilarity analysis. The recursive fractal sweep associated with the Peano-Cesaro triangulation provides efficient local multi-resolution refinement to any level of detail. The generated binary decomposition tree also provides efficient neighbor retrieval mechanisms for contextual topological object/region relationship generation. Experiments have been conducted within the maritime image environment where the segmented layered semantic objects include the basic level objects (i.e. sky/land/water) and deeper level objects in the sky/land/water surfaces. Experimental results demonstrate the proposed algorithm has the capability to robustly and efficiently segment images into layered semantic objects/regions with contextual topological relationships.

Diagnostic and prognostic role of semantic processing in preclinical Alzheimer's disease.

PubMed

Venneri, Annalena; Jahn-Carta, Caroline; Marco, Matteo De; Quaranta, Davide; Marra, Camillo

2018-06-13

Relatively spared during most of the timeline of normal aging, semantic memory shows a subtle yet measurable decline even during the pre-clinical stage of Alzheimer's disease. This decline is thought to reflect early neurofibrillary changes and impairment is detectable using tests of language relying on lexical-semantic abilities. A promising approach is the characterization of semantic parameters such as typicality and age of acquisition of words, and propositional density from verbal output. Seminal research like the Nun Study or the analysis of the linguistic decline of famous writers and politicians later diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease supports the early diagnostic value of semantic processing and semantic memory. Moreover, measures of these skills may play an important role for the prognosis of patients with mild cognitive impairment.

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Effects on Semantic Processing in Healthy Individuals.

PubMed

Joyal, Marilyne; Fecteau, Shirley

2016-01-01

Semantic processing allows us to use conceptual knowledge about the world. It has been associated with a large distributed neural network that includes the frontal, temporal and parietal cortices. Recent studies using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) also contributed at investigating semantic processing. The goal of this article was to review studies investigating semantic processing in healthy individuals with tDCS and discuss findings from these studies in line with neuroimaging results. Based on functional magnetic resonance imaging studies assessing semantic processing, we predicted that tDCS applied over the inferior frontal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, and posterior parietal cortex will impact semantic processing. We conducted a search on Pubmed and selected 27 articles in which tDCS was used to modulate semantic processing in healthy subjects. We analysed each article according to these criteria: demographic information, experimental outcomes assessing semantic processing, study design, and effects of tDCS on semantic processes. From the 27 reviewed studies, 8 found main effects of stimulation. In addition to these 8 studies, 17 studies reported an interaction between stimulus types and stimulation conditions (e.g. incoherent functional, but not instrumental, actions were processed faster when anodal tDCS was applied over the posterior parietal cortex as compared to sham tDCS). Results suggest that regions in the frontal, temporal, and parietal cortices are involved in semantic processing. tDCS can modulate some aspects of semantic processing and provide information on the functional roles of brain regions involved in this cognitive process. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Explaining semantic short-term memory deficits: Evidence for the critical role of semantic control

PubMed Central

Hoffman, Paul; Jefferies, Elizabeth; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A.

2011-01-01

Patients with apparently selective short-term memory (STM) deficits for semantic information have played an important role in developing multi-store theories of STM and challenge the idea that verbal STM is supported by maintaining activation in the language system. We propose that semantic STM deficits are not as selective as previously thought and can occur as a result of mild disruption to semantic control processes, i.e., mechanisms that bias semantic processing towards task-relevant aspects of knowledge and away from irrelevant information. We tested three semantic STM patients with tasks that tapped four aspects of semantic control: (i) resolving ambiguity between word meanings, (ii) sensitivity to cues, (iii) ignoring irrelevant information and (iv) detecting weak semantic associations. All were impaired in conditions requiring more semantic control, irrespective of the STM demands of the task, suggesting a mild, but task-general, deficit in regulating semantic knowledge. This mild deficit has a disproportionate effect on STM tasks because they have high intrinsic control demands: in STM tasks, control is required to keep information active when it is no longer available in the environment and to manage competition between items held in memory simultaneously. By re-interpreting the core deficit in semantic STM patients in this way, we are able to explain their apparently selective impairment without the need for a specialised STM store. Instead, we argue that semantic STM patients occupy the mildest end of spectrum of semantic control disorders. PMID:21195105

Supervised pixel classification using a feature space derived from an artificial visual system

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Baxter, Lisa C.; Coggins, James M.

1991-01-01

Image segmentation involves labelling pixels according to their membership in image regions. This requires the understanding of what a region is. Using supervised pixel classification, the paper investigates how groups of pixels labelled manually according to perceived image semantics map onto the feature space created by an Artificial Visual System. Multiscale structure of regions are investigated and it is shown that pixels form clusters based on their geometric roles in the image intensity function, not by image semantics. A tentative abstract definition of a 'region' is proposed based on this behavior.

The Role of Simple Semantics in the Process of Artificial Grammar Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Öttl, Birgit; Jäger, Gerhard; Kaup, Barbara

2017-01-01

This study investigated the effect of semantic information on artificial grammar learning (AGL). Recursive grammars of different complexity levels (regular language, mirror language, copy language) were investigated in a series of AGL experiments. In the with-semantics condition, participants acquired semantic information prior to the AGL…

Elements of Network-Based Assessment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gibson, David

2007-01-01

Elements of network-based assessment systems are envisioned based on recent advances in knowledge and practice in learning theory, assessment design and delivery, and semantic web interoperability. The architecture takes advantage of the meditating role of technology as well as recent models of assessment systems. This overview of the elements…

What role does the anterior temporal lobe play in sentence-level processing? Neural correlates of syntactic processing in semantic variant primary progressive aphasia.

PubMed

Wilson, Stephen M; DeMarco, Andrew T; Henry, Maya L; Gesierich, Benno; Babiak, Miranda; Mandelli, Maria Luisa; Miller, Bruce L; Gorno-Tempini, Maria Luisa

2014-05-01

Neuroimaging and neuropsychological studies have implicated the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) in sentence-level processing, with syntactic structure-building and/or combinatorial semantic processing suggested as possible roles. A potential challenge to the view that the ATL is involved in syntactic aspects of sentence processing comes from the clinical syndrome of semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (semantic PPA; also known as semantic dementia). In semantic PPA, bilateral neurodegeneration of the ATLs is associated with profound lexical semantic deficits, yet syntax is strikingly spared. The goal of this study was to investigate the neural correlates of syntactic processing in semantic PPA to determine which regions normally involved in syntactic processing are damaged in semantic PPA and whether spared syntactic processing depends on preserved functionality of intact regions, preserved functionality of atrophic regions, or compensatory functional reorganization. We scanned 20 individuals with semantic PPA and 24 age-matched controls using structural MRI and fMRI. Participants performed a sentence comprehension task that emphasized syntactic processing and minimized lexical semantic demands. We found that, in controls, left inferior frontal and left posterior temporal regions were modulated by syntactic processing, whereas anterior temporal regions were not significantly modulated. In the semantic PPA group, atrophy was most severe in the ATLs but extended to the posterior temporal regions involved in syntactic processing. Functional activity for syntactic processing was broadly similar in patients and controls; in particular, whole-brain analyses revealed no significant differences between patients and controls in the regions modulated by syntactic processing. The atrophic left ATL did show abnormal functionality in semantic PPA patients; however, this took the unexpected form of a failure to deactivate. Taken together, our findings indicate that spared syntactic processing in semantic PPA depends on preserved functionality of structurally intact left frontal regions and moderately atrophic left posterior temporal regions, but no functional reorganization was apparent as a consequence of anterior temporal atrophy and dysfunction. These results suggest that the role of the ATL in sentence processing is less likely to relate to syntactic structure-building and more likely to relate to higher-level processes such as combinatorial semantic processing.

The Body of Evidence: What Can Neuroscience Tell Us about Embodied Semantics?

PubMed Central

Hauk, Olaf; Tschentscher, Nadja

2013-01-01

Semantic knowledge is based on the way we perceive and interact with the world. However, the jury is still out on the question: to what degree are neuronal systems that subserve acquisition of semantic knowledge, such as sensory-motor networks, involved in its representation and processing? We will begin with a critical evaluation of the main behavioral and neuroimaging methods with respect to their capability to define the functional roles of specific brain areas. Any behavioral or neuroscientific measure is a conflation of representations and processes. Hence, a combination of behavioral and neurophysiological interactions as well as time-course information is required to define the functional roles of brain areas. This will guide our review of the empirical literature. Most research in this area has been done on semantics of concrete words, where clear theoretical frameworks for an involvement of sensory-motor systems in semantics exist. Most of this evidence still stems from correlational studies that are ambiguous with respect to the behavioral relevance of effects. Evidence for causal effects of sensory-motor systems on semantic processes is still scarce but evolving. Relatively few neuroscientific studies so far have investigated the embodiment of abstract semantics for words, numbers, and arithmetic facts. Here, some correlational evidence exists, but data on causality are mostly absent. We conclude that neuroimaging data, just as behavioral data, have so far not disentangled the fundamental link between process and representation. Future studies should therefore put more emphasis on the effects of task and context on semantic processing. Strong conclusions can only be drawn from a combination of methods that provide time-course information, determine the connectivity among poly- or amodal and sensory-motor areas, link behavioral with neuroimaging measures, and allow causal inferences. We will conclude with suggestions on how this could be accomplished in future research. PMID:23407791

Causal Evidence for a Mechanism of Semantic Integration in the Angular Gyrus as Revealed by High-Definition Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation

PubMed Central

Peelle, Jonathan E.; Bonner, Michael F.; Grossman, Murray

2016-01-01

A defining aspect of human cognition is the ability to integrate conceptual information into complex semantic combinations. For example, we can comprehend “plaid” and “jacket” as individual concepts, but we can also effortlessly combine these concepts to form the semantic representation of “plaid jacket.” Many neuroanatomic models of semantic memory propose that heteromodal cortical hubs integrate distributed semantic features into coherent representations. However, little work has specifically examined these proposed integrative mechanisms and the causal role of these regions in semantic integration. Here, we test the hypothesis that the angular gyrus (AG) is critical for integrating semantic information by applying high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to an fMRI-guided region-of-interest in the left AG. We found that anodal stimulation to the left AG modulated semantic integration but had no effect on a letter-string control task. Specifically, anodal stimulation to the left AG resulted in faster comprehension of semantically meaningful combinations like “tiny radish” relative to non-meaningful combinations, such as “fast blueberry,” when compared to the effects observed during sham stimulation and stimulation to a right-hemisphere control brain region. Moreover, the size of the effect from brain stimulation correlated with the degree of semantic coherence between the word pairs. These findings demonstrate that the left AG plays a causal role in the integration of lexical-semantic information, and that high-definition tDCS to an associative cortical hub can selectively modulate integrative processes in semantic memory. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT A major goal of neuroscience is to understand the neural basis of behaviors that are fundamental to human intelligence. One essential behavior is the ability to integrate conceptual knowledge from semantic memory, allowing us to construct an almost unlimited number of complex concepts from a limited set of basic constituents (e.g., “leaf” and “wet” can be combined into the more complex representation “wet leaf”). Here, we present a novel approach to studying integrative processes in semantic memory by applying focal brain stimulation to a heteromodal cortical hub implicated in semantic processing. Our findings demonstrate a causal role of the left angular gyrus in lexical-semantic integration and provide motivation for novel therapeutic applications in patients with lexical-semantic deficits. PMID:27030767

Causal Evidence for a Mechanism of Semantic Integration in the Angular Gyrus as Revealed by High-Definition Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation.

PubMed

Price, Amy Rose; Peelle, Jonathan E; Bonner, Michael F; Grossman, Murray; Hamilton, Roy H

2016-03-30

A defining aspect of human cognition is the ability to integrate conceptual information into complex semantic combinations. For example, we can comprehend "plaid" and "jacket" as individual concepts, but we can also effortlessly combine these concepts to form the semantic representation of "plaid jacket." Many neuroanatomic models of semantic memory propose that heteromodal cortical hubs integrate distributed semantic features into coherent representations. However, little work has specifically examined these proposed integrative mechanisms and the causal role of these regions in semantic integration. Here, we test the hypothesis that the angular gyrus (AG) is critical for integrating semantic information by applying high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to an fMRI-guided region-of-interest in the left AG. We found that anodal stimulation to the left AG modulated semantic integration but had no effect on a letter-string control task. Specifically, anodal stimulation to the left AG resulted in faster comprehension of semantically meaningful combinations like "tiny radish" relative to non-meaningful combinations, such as "fast blueberry," when compared to the effects observed during sham stimulation and stimulation to a right-hemisphere control brain region. Moreover, the size of the effect from brain stimulation correlated with the degree of semantic coherence between the word pairs. These findings demonstrate that the left AG plays a causal role in the integration of lexical-semantic information, and that high-definition tDCS to an associative cortical hub can selectively modulate integrative processes in semantic memory. A major goal of neuroscience is to understand the neural basis of behaviors that are fundamental to human intelligence. One essential behavior is the ability to integrate conceptual knowledge from semantic memory, allowing us to construct an almost unlimited number of complex concepts from a limited set of basic constituents (e.g., "leaf" and "wet" can be combined into the more complex representation "wet leaf"). Here, we present a novel approach to studying integrative processes in semantic memory by applying focal brain stimulation to a heteromodal cortical hub implicated in semantic processing. Our findings demonstrate a causal role of the left angular gyrus in lexical-semantic integration and provide motivation for novel therapeutic applications in patients with lexical-semantic deficits. Copyright © 2016 the authors 0270-6474/16/363829-10$15.00/0.

Neural measures of the role of affective prosody in empathy for pain.

PubMed

Meconi, Federica; Doro, Mattia; Lomoriello, Arianna Schiano; Mastrella, Giulia; Sessa, Paola

2018-01-10

Emotional communication often needs the integration of affective prosodic and semantic components from speech and the speaker's facial expression. Affective prosody may have a special role by virtue of its dual-nature; pre-verbal on one side and accompanying semantic content on the other. This consideration led us to hypothesize that it could act transversely, encompassing a wide temporal window involving the processing of facial expressions and semantic content expressed by the speaker. This would allow powerful communication in contexts of potential urgency such as witnessing the speaker's physical pain. Seventeen participants were shown with faces preceded by verbal reports of pain. Facial expressions, intelligibility of the semantic content of the report (i.e., participants' mother tongue vs. fictional language) and the affective prosody of the report (neutral vs. painful) were manipulated. We monitored event-related potentials (ERPs) time-locked to the onset of the faces as a function of semantic content intelligibility and affective prosody of the verbal reports. We found that affective prosody may interact with facial expressions and semantic content in two successive temporal windows, supporting its role as a transverse communication cue.

Episodic Representations Support Early Semantic Learning: Evidence from Midazolam Induced Amnesia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Merritt, Paul; Hirshman, Elliot; Zamani, Shane; Hsu, John; Berrigan, Michael

2006-01-01

Current controversy exists regarding the role of episodic representations in the formation of long-term semantic memories. Using the drug "midazolam" to induce temporary amnesia we tested participants' memories for newly learned facts in a semantic cue condition or an episodic and semantic cue condition. Following midazolam administration, memory…

Semantic Categorization: A Comparison between Deaf and Hearing Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ormel, Ellen A.; Gijsel, Martine A. R.; Hermans, Daan; Bosman, Anna M. T.; Knoors, Harry; Verhoeven, Ludo

2010-01-01

Learning to read is a major obstacle for children who are deaf. The otherwise significant role of phonology is often limited as a result of hearing loss. However, semantic knowledge may facilitate reading comprehension. One important aspect of semantic knowledge concerns semantic categorization. In the present study, the quality of the semantic…

Distinct contributions of the fornix and inferior longitudinal fasciculus to episodic and semantic autobiographical memory.

PubMed

Hodgetts, Carl J; Postans, Mark; Warne, Naomi; Varnava, Alice; Lawrence, Andrew D; Graham, Kim S

2017-09-01

Autobiographical memory (AM) is multifaceted, incorporating the vivid retrieval of contextual detail (episodic AM), together with semantic knowledge that infuses meaning and coherence into past events (semantic AM). While neuropsychological evidence highlights a role for the hippocampus and anterior temporal lobe (ATL) in episodic and semantic AM, respectively, it is unclear whether these constitute dissociable large-scale AM networks. We used high angular resolution diffusion-weighted imaging and constrained spherical deconvolution-based tractography to assess white matter microstructure in 27 healthy young adult participants who were asked to recall past experiences using word cues. Inter-individual variation in the microstructure of the fornix (the main hippocampal input/output pathway) related to the amount of episodic, but not semantic, detail in AMs - independent of memory age. Conversely, microstructure of the inferior longitudinal fasciculus, linking occipitotemporal regions with ATL, correlated with semantic, but not episodic, AMs. Further, these significant correlations remained when controlling for hippocampal and ATL grey matter volume, respectively. This striking correlational double dissociation supports the view that distinct, large-scale distributed brain circuits underpin context and concepts in AM. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Is the difference between right and left ATLs due to the distinction between general and social cognition or between verbal and non-verbal representations?

PubMed

Gainotti, Guido

2015-04-01

The present review aimed to check two proposals alternative to the original version of the 'semantic hub' hypothesis, based on semantic dementia (SD) data, which assumed that left and right anterior temporal lobes (ATLs) store in a unitary, amodal format all kinds of semantic representations. The first alternative proposal is that the right ATL might subsume non-verbal representations and the left ATL lexical-semantic representations and that only in the advanced stages of SD, when atrophy affects the ATLs bilaterally, the semantic impairment becomes 'multi-modal'. The second alternative suggestion is that right and left ATLs might underlie two different domains of knowledge, because general conceptual knowledge might be supported by the left ATL, and social cognition by the right ATL. Results of the review substantially support the first proposal, showing that the right ATL subsumes non-verbal representations and the left ATL lexical-semantic representations. They are less conclusive about the second suggestion, because the right ATL seems to play a more important role in behavioral and emotional functions than in higher level social cognition. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Direct Exploration of the Role of the Ventral Anterior Temporal Lobe in Semantic Memory: Cortical Stimulation and Local Field Potential Evidence From Subdural Grid Electrodes

PubMed Central

Shimotake, Akihiro; Matsumoto, Riki; Ueno, Taiji; Kunieda, Takeharu; Saito, Satoru; Hoffman, Paul; Kikuchi, Takayuki; Fukuyama, Hidenao; Miyamoto, Susumu; Takahashi, Ryosuke; Ikeda, Akio; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A.

2015-01-01

Semantic memory is a crucial higher cortical function that codes the meaning of objects and words, and when impaired after neurological damage, patients are left with significant disability. Investigations of semantic dementia have implicated the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) region, in general, as crucial for multimodal semantic memory. The potentially crucial role of the ventral ATL subregion has been emphasized by recent functional neuroimaging studies, but the necessity of this precise area has not been selectively tested. The implantation of subdural electrode grids over this subregion, for the presurgical assessment of patients with partial epilepsy or brain tumor, offers the dual yet rare opportunities to record cortical local field potentials while participants complete semantic tasks and to stimulate the functionally identified regions in the same participants to evaluate the necessity of these areas in semantic processing. Across 6 patients, and utilizing a variety of semantic assessments, we evaluated and confirmed that the anterior fusiform/inferior temporal gyrus is crucial in multimodal, receptive, and expressive, semantic processing. PMID:25491206

A common type system for clinical natural language processing

PubMed Central

2013-01-01

Background One challenge in reusing clinical data stored in electronic medical records is that these data are heterogenous. Clinical Natural Language Processing (NLP) plays an important role in transforming information in clinical text to a standard representation that is comparable and interoperable. Information may be processed and shared when a type system specifies the allowable data structures. Therefore, we aim to define a common type system for clinical NLP that enables interoperability between structured and unstructured data generated in different clinical settings. Results We describe a common type system for clinical NLP that has an end target of deep semantics based on Clinical Element Models (CEMs), thus interoperating with structured data and accommodating diverse NLP approaches. The type system has been implemented in UIMA (Unstructured Information Management Architecture) and is fully functional in a popular open-source clinical NLP system, cTAKES (clinical Text Analysis and Knowledge Extraction System) versions 2.0 and later. Conclusions We have created a type system that targets deep semantics, thereby allowing for NLP systems to encapsulate knowledge from text and share it alongside heterogenous clinical data sources. Rather than surface semantics that are typically the end product of NLP algorithms, CEM-based semantics explicitly build in deep clinical semantics as the point of interoperability with more structured data types. PMID:23286462

A common type system for clinical natural language processing.

PubMed

Wu, Stephen T; Kaggal, Vinod C; Dligach, Dmitriy; Masanz, James J; Chen, Pei; Becker, Lee; Chapman, Wendy W; Savova, Guergana K; Liu, Hongfang; Chute, Christopher G

2013-01-03

One challenge in reusing clinical data stored in electronic medical records is that these data are heterogenous. Clinical Natural Language Processing (NLP) plays an important role in transforming information in clinical text to a standard representation that is comparable and interoperable. Information may be processed and shared when a type system specifies the allowable data structures. Therefore, we aim to define a common type system for clinical NLP that enables interoperability between structured and unstructured data generated in different clinical settings. We describe a common type system for clinical NLP that has an end target of deep semantics based on Clinical Element Models (CEMs), thus interoperating with structured data and accommodating diverse NLP approaches. The type system has been implemented in UIMA (Unstructured Information Management Architecture) and is fully functional in a popular open-source clinical NLP system, cTAKES (clinical Text Analysis and Knowledge Extraction System) versions 2.0 and later. We have created a type system that targets deep semantics, thereby allowing for NLP systems to encapsulate knowledge from text and share it alongside heterogenous clinical data sources. Rather than surface semantics that are typically the end product of NLP algorithms, CEM-based semantics explicitly build in deep clinical semantics as the point of interoperability with more structured data types.

The role of attention in subliminal semantic processing: A mouse tracking study.

PubMed

Xiao, Kunchen; Yamauchi, Takashi

2017-01-01

Recent evidence suggests that top-down attention facilitates unconscious semantic processing. To clarify the role of attention in unconscious semantic processing, we traced trajectories of the computer mouse in a semantic priming task and scrutinized the extent to which top-down attention enhances unconscious semantic processing in four different stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA: 50, 200, 500, or 1000ms) conditions. Participants judged whether a target digit (e.g., "6") was larger or smaller than five, preceded by a masked priming digit (e.g., "9"). The pre-prime duration changed randomly from trial to trial to disrupt participants' top-down attention in an uncued condition (in a cued condition, a green square cue was presented to facilitate participants' top-down attention). The results show that top-down attention modifies the time course of subliminal semantic processing, and the temporal attention window lasts more than 1000ms; attention facilitated by the cue may amplify semantic priming to some extent, yet the amplification effect of attention is relatively minor.

Practical life log video indexing based on content and context

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tancharoen, Datchakorn; Yamasaki, Toshihiko; Aizawa, Kiyoharu

2006-01-01

Today, multimedia information has gained an important role in daily life and people can use imaging devices to capture their visual experiences. In this paper, we present our personal Life Log system to record personal experiences in form of wearable video and environmental data; in addition, an efficient retrieval system is demonstrated to recall the desirable media. We summarize the practical video indexing techniques based on Life Log content and context to detect talking scenes by using audio/visual cues and semantic key frames from GPS data. Voice annotation is also demonstrated as a practical indexing method. Moreover, we apply body media sensors to record continuous life style and use body media data to index the semantic key frames. In the experiments, we demonstrated various video indexing results which provided their semantic contents and showed Life Log visualizations to examine personal life effectively.

A technological infrastructure to sustain Internetworked Enterprises

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

La Mattina, Ernesto; Savarino, Vincenzo; Vicari, Claudia; Storelli, Davide; Bianchini, Devis

In the Web 3.0 scenario, where information and services are connected by means of their semantics, organizations can improve their competitive advantage by publishing their business and service descriptions. In this scenario, Semantic Peer to Peer (P2P) can play a key role in defining dynamic and highly reconfigurable infrastructures. Organizations can share knowledge and services, using this infrastructure to move towards value networks, an emerging organizational model characterized by fluid boundaries and complex relationships. This chapter collects and defines the technological requirements and architecture of a modular and multi-Layer Peer to Peer infrastructure for SOA-based applications. This technological infrastructure, based on the combination of Semantic Web and P2P technologies, is intended to sustain Internetworked Enterprise configurations, defining a distributed registry and enabling more expressive queries and efficient routing mechanisms. The following sections focus on the overall architecture, while describing the layers that form it.

Acquiring and processing verb argument structure: distributional learning in a miniature language.

PubMed

Wonnacott, Elizabeth; Newport, Elissa L; Tanenhaus, Michael K

2008-05-01

Adult knowledge of a language involves correctly balancing lexically-based and more language-general patterns. For example, verb argument structures may sometimes readily generalize to new verbs, yet with particular verbs may resist generalization. From the perspective of acquisition, this creates significant learnability problems, with some researchers claiming a crucial role for verb semantics in the determination of when generalization may and may not occur. Similarly, there has been debate regarding how verb-specific and more generalized constraints interact in sentence processing and on the role of semantics in this process. The current work explores these issues using artificial language learning. In three experiments using languages without semantic cues to verb distribution, we demonstrate that learners can acquire both verb-specific and verb-general patterns, based on distributional information in the linguistic input regarding each of the verbs as well as across the language as a whole. As with natural languages, these factors are shown to affect production, judgments and real-time processing. We demonstrate that learners apply a rational procedure in determining their usage of these different input statistics and conclude by suggesting that a Bayesian perspective on statistical learning may be an appropriate framework for capturing our findings.

Deep visual-semantic for crowded video understanding

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Deng, Chunhua; Zhang, Junwen

2018-03-01

Visual-semantic features play a vital role for crowded video understanding. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have experienced a significant breakthrough in learning representations from images. However, the learning of visualsemantic features, and how it can be effectively extracted for video analysis, still remains a challenging task. In this study, we propose a novel visual-semantic method to capture both appearance and dynamic representations. In particular, we propose a spatial context method, based on the fractional Fisher vector (FV) encoding on CNN features, which can be regarded as our main contribution. In addition, to capture temporal context information, we also applied fractional encoding method on dynamic images. Experimental results on the WWW crowed video dataset demonstrate that the proposed method outperform the state of the art.

Chinese Conditionals and the Theory of Conditionals.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chierchia, Gennaro

2000-01-01

Summarizes the main features of discourse representation theory, situation-based approaches, and dynamic semantics, and discusses the role the novelty condition plays in each of them, providing the main theoretical coordinates against which to try an assessment of the role of the Chinese conditional and a proposal put forth by Chang and Huang…

What role does the anterior temporal lobe play in sentence-level processing? Neural correlates of syntactic processing in semantic PPA

PubMed Central

Wilson, Stephen M.; DeMarco, Andrew T.; Henry, Maya L.; Gesierich, Benno; Babiak, Miranda; Mandelli, Maria Luisa; Miller, Bruce L.; Gorno-Tempini, Maria Luisa

2014-01-01

Neuroimaging and neuropsychological studies have implicated the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) in sentence-level processing, with syntactic structure-building and/or combinatorial semantic processing suggested as possible roles. A potential challenge to the view that the ATL is involved in syntactic aspects of sentence processing comes from the clinical syndrome of semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (semantic PPA, also known as semantic dementia). In semantic PPA, bilateral neurodegeneration of the anterior temporal lobes is associated with profound lexical semantic deficits, yet syntax is strikingly spared. The goal of this study was to investigate the neural correlates of syntactic processing in semantic PPA, in order to determine which regions normally involved in syntactic processing are damaged in semantic PPA, and whether spared syntactic processing depends on preserved functionality of intact regions, preserved functionality of atrophic regions, or compensatory functional reorganization. We scanned 20 individuals with semantic PPA and 24 age-matched controls using structural and functional MRI. Participants performed a sentence comprehension task that emphasized syntactic processing and minimized lexical semantic demands. We found that in controls, left inferior frontal and left posterior temporal regions were modulated by syntactic processing, while anterior temporal regions were not significantly modulated. In the semantic PPA group, atrophy was most severe in the anterior temporal lobes, but extended to the posterior temporal regions involved in syntactic processing. Functional activity for syntactic processing was broadly similar in patients and controls; in particular, whole-brain analyses revealed no significant differences between patients and controls in the regions modulated by syntactic processing. The atrophic left anterior temporal lobe did show abnormal functionality in semantic PPA patients, however this took the unexpected form of a failure to deactivate. Taken together, our findings indicate that spared syntactic processing in semantic PPA depends on preserved functionality of structurally intact left frontal regions and moderately atrophic left posterior temporal regions, but no functional reorganization was apparent as a consequence of anterior temporal atrophy and dysfunction. These results suggest that the role of the anterior temporal lobe in sentence processing is less likely to relate to syntactic structure-building, and more likely to relate to higher level processes such as combinatorial semantic processing. PMID:24345172

The thematic hierarchy in sentence comprehension: A study on the interaction between verb class and word order in Spanish.

PubMed

Gattei, Carolina A; Dickey, Michael W; Wainselboim, Alejandro J; París, Luis

2015-01-01

Linking is the theory that captures the mapping of the semantic roles of lexical arguments to the syntactic functions of the phrases that realize them. At the sentence level, linking allows us to understand "who did what to whom" in an event. In Spanish, linking has been shown to interact with word order, verb class, and case marking. The current study aims to provide the first piece of experimental evidence about the interplay between word order and verb type in Spanish. We achieve this by adopting role and reference grammar and the extended argument dependency model. Two different types of clauses were examined in a self-paced reading task: clauses with object-experiencer psychological verbs and activity verbs. These types of verbs differ in the way that their syntactic and semantic structures are linked, and thus they provide interesting evidence on how information that belongs to the syntax-semantics interface might influence the predictive and integrative processes of sentence comprehension with alternative word orders. Results indicate that in Spanish, comprehension and processing speed is enhanced when the order of the constituents in the sentence mirrors their ranking on a semantic hierarchy that encodes a verb's lexical semantics. Moreover, results show that during online comprehension, predictive mechanisms based on argument hierarchization are used rapidly to inform the processing system. Our findings corroborate already existing cross-linguistic evidence on the issue and are briefly discussed in the light of other sentence-processing models.

Closed-Loop Lifecycle Management of Service and Product in the Internet of Things: Semantic Framework for Knowledge Integration.

PubMed

Yoo, Min-Jung; Grozel, Clément; Kiritsis, Dimitris

2016-07-08

This paper describes our conceptual framework of closed-loop lifecycle information sharing for product-service in the Internet of Things (IoT). The framework is based on the ontology model of product-service and a type of IoT message standard, Open Messaging Interface (O-MI) and Open Data Format (O-DF), which ensures data communication. (1) BACKGROUND: Based on an existing product lifecycle management (PLM) methodology, we enhanced the ontology model for the purpose of integrating efficiently the product-service ontology model that was newly developed; (2) METHODS: The IoT message transfer layer is vertically integrated into a semantic knowledge framework inside which a Semantic Info-Node Agent (SINA) uses the message format as a common protocol of product-service lifecycle data transfer; (3) RESULTS: The product-service ontology model facilitates information retrieval and knowledge extraction during the product lifecycle, while making more information available for the sake of service business creation. The vertical integration of IoT message transfer, encompassing all semantic layers, helps achieve a more flexible and modular approach to knowledge sharing in an IoT environment; (4) Contribution: A semantic data annotation applied to IoT can contribute to enhancing collected data types, which entails a richer knowledge extraction. The ontology-based PLM model enables as well the horizontal integration of heterogeneous PLM data while breaking traditional vertical information silos; (5) CONCLUSION: The framework was applied to a fictive case study with an electric car service for the purpose of demonstration. For the purpose of demonstrating the feasibility of the approach, the semantic model is implemented in Sesame APIs, which play the role of an Internet-connected Resource Description Framework (RDF) database.

Closed-Loop Lifecycle Management of Service and Product in the Internet of Things: Semantic Framework for Knowledge Integration

PubMed Central

Yoo, Min-Jung; Grozel, Clément; Kiritsis, Dimitris

2016-01-01

This paper describes our conceptual framework of closed-loop lifecycle information sharing for product-service in the Internet of Things (IoT). The framework is based on the ontology model of product-service and a type of IoT message standard, Open Messaging Interface (O-MI) and Open Data Format (O-DF), which ensures data communication. (1) Background: Based on an existing product lifecycle management (PLM) methodology, we enhanced the ontology model for the purpose of integrating efficiently the product-service ontology model that was newly developed; (2) Methods: The IoT message transfer layer is vertically integrated into a semantic knowledge framework inside which a Semantic Info-Node Agent (SINA) uses the message format as a common protocol of product-service lifecycle data transfer; (3) Results: The product-service ontology model facilitates information retrieval and knowledge extraction during the product lifecycle, while making more information available for the sake of service business creation. The vertical integration of IoT message transfer, encompassing all semantic layers, helps achieve a more flexible and modular approach to knowledge sharing in an IoT environment; (4) Contribution: A semantic data annotation applied to IoT can contribute to enhancing collected data types, which entails a richer knowledge extraction. The ontology-based PLM model enables as well the horizontal integration of heterogeneous PLM data while breaking traditional vertical information silos; (5) Conclusion: The framework was applied to a fictive case study with an electric car service for the purpose of demonstration. For the purpose of demonstrating the feasibility of the approach, the semantic model is implemented in Sesame APIs, which play the role of an Internet-connected Resource Description Framework (RDF) database. PMID:27399717

Supporting the self-concept with memory: insight from amnesia

PubMed Central

Verfaellie, Mieke

2015-01-01

We investigated the extent to which personal semantic memory supports the self-concept in individuals with medial temporal lobe amnesia and healthy adults. Participants completed eight ‘I Am’ self-statements. For each of the four highest ranked self-statements, participants completed an open-ended narrative task, during which they provided supporting information indicating why the I Am statement was considered self-descriptive. Participants then completed an episodic probe task, during which they attempted to retrieve six episodic memories for each of these self-statements. Supporting information was scored as episodic, personal semantic or general semantic. In the narrative task, personal semantic memory predominated as self-supporting information in both groups. The amnesic participants generated fewer personal semantic memories than controls to support their self-statements, a deficit that was more pronounced for trait relative to role self-statements. In the episodic probe task, the controls primarily generated unique event memories, but the amnesic participants did not. These findings demonstrate that personal semantic memory, in particular autobiographical fact knowledge, plays a critical role in supporting the self-concept, regardless of the accessibility of episodic memories, and they highlight potential differences in the way traits and roles are supported by personal memory. PMID:25964501

Direct Exploration of the Role of the Ventral Anterior Temporal Lobe in Semantic Memory: Cortical Stimulation and Local Field Potential Evidence From Subdural Grid Electrodes.

PubMed

Shimotake, Akihiro; Matsumoto, Riki; Ueno, Taiji; Kunieda, Takeharu; Saito, Satoru; Hoffman, Paul; Kikuchi, Takayuki; Fukuyama, Hidenao; Miyamoto, Susumu; Takahashi, Ryosuke; Ikeda, Akio; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A

2015-10-01

Semantic memory is a crucial higher cortical function that codes the meaning of objects and words, and when impaired after neurological damage, patients are left with significant disability. Investigations of semantic dementia have implicated the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) region, in general, as crucial for multimodal semantic memory. The potentially crucial role of the ventral ATL subregion has been emphasized by recent functional neuroimaging studies, but the necessity of this precise area has not been selectively tested. The implantation of subdural electrode grids over this subregion, for the presurgical assessment of patients with partial epilepsy or brain tumor, offers the dual yet rare opportunities to record cortical local field potentials while participants complete semantic tasks and to stimulate the functionally identified regions in the same participants to evaluate the necessity of these areas in semantic processing. Across 6 patients, and utilizing a variety of semantic assessments, we evaluated and confirmed that the anterior fusiform/inferior temporal gyrus is crucial in multimodal, receptive, and expressive, semantic processing. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press.

Lexical decision with pseudohomophones and reading in the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia: A double dissociation.

PubMed

Boukadi, Mariem; Potvin, Karel; Macoir, Joël; Jr Laforce, Robert; Poulin, Stéphane; Brambati, Simona M; Wilson, Maximiliano A

2016-06-01

The co-occurrence of semantic impairment and surface dyslexia in the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) has often been taken as supporting evidence for the central role of semantics in visual word processing. According to connectionist models, semantic access is needed to accurately read irregular words. They also postulate that reliance on semantics is necessary to perform the lexical decision task under certain circumstances (for example, when the stimulus list comprises pseudohomophones). In the present study, we report two svPPA cases: M.F. who presented with surface dyslexia but performed accurately on the lexical decision task with pseudohomophones, and R.L. who showed no surface dyslexia but performed below the normal range on the lexical decision task with pseudohomophones. This double dissociation between reading and lexical decision with pseudohomophones is in line with the dual-route cascaded (DRC) model of reading. According to this model, impairments in visual word processing in svPPA are not necessarily associated with the semantic deficits characterizing this disease. Our findings also call into question the central role given to semantics in visual word processing within the connectionist account. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Combinatorial semantics strengthens angular-anterior temporal coupling.

PubMed

Molinaro, Nicola; Paz-Alonso, Pedro M; Duñabeitia, Jon Andoni; Carreiras, Manuel

2015-04-01

The human semantic combinatorial system allows us to create a wide number of new meanings from a finite number of existing representations. The present study investigates the neural dynamics underlying the semantic processing of different conceptual constructions based on predictions from previous neuroanatomical models of the semantic processing network. In two experiments, participants read sentences for comprehension containing noun-adjective pairs in three different conditions: prototypical (Redundant), nonsense (Anomalous) and low-typical but composable (Contrastive). In Experiment 1 we examined the processing costs associated to reading these sentences and found a processing dissociation between Anomalous and Contrastive word pairs, compared to prototypical (Redundant) stimuli. In Experiment 2, functional connectivity results showed strong co-activation across conditions between inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and posterior middle temporal gyrus (MTG), as well as between these two regions and middle frontal gyrus (MFG), anterior temporal cortex (ATC) and fusiform gyrus (FG), consistent with previous neuroanatomical models. Importantly, processing of low-typical (but composable) meanings relative to prototypical and anomalous constructions was associated with a stronger positive coupling between ATC and angular gyrus (AG). Our results underscore the critical role of IFG-MTG co-activation during semantic processing and how other relevant nodes within the semantic processing network come into play to handle visual-orthographic information, to maintain multiple lexical-semantic representations in working memory and to combine existing representations while creatively constructing meaning. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Role of Simple Semantics in the Process of Artificial Grammar Learning.

PubMed

Öttl, Birgit; Jäger, Gerhard; Kaup, Barbara

2017-10-01

This study investigated the effect of semantic information on artificial grammar learning (AGL). Recursive grammars of different complexity levels (regular language, mirror language, copy language) were investigated in a series of AGL experiments. In the with-semantics condition, participants acquired semantic information prior to the AGL experiment; in the without-semantics control condition, participants did not receive semantic information. It was hypothesized that semantics would generally facilitate grammar acquisition and that the learning benefit in the with-semantics conditions would increase with increasing grammar complexity. Experiment 1 showed learning effects for all grammars but no performance difference between conditions. Experiment 2 replicated the absence of a semantic benefit for all grammars even though semantic information was more prominent during grammar acquisition as compared to Experiment 1. Thus, we did not find evidence for the idea that semantics facilitates grammar acquisition, which seems to support the view of an independent syntactic processing component.

The role of attention in subliminal semantic processing: A mouse tracking study

PubMed Central

Xiao, Kunchen; Yamauchi, Takashi

2017-01-01

Recent evidence suggests that top-down attention facilitates unconscious semantic processing. To clarify the role of attention in unconscious semantic processing, we traced trajectories of the computer mouse in a semantic priming task and scrutinized the extent to which top-down attention enhances unconscious semantic processing in four different stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA: 50, 200, 500, or 1000ms) conditions. Participants judged whether a target digit (e.g., “6”) was larger or smaller than five, preceded by a masked priming digit (e.g., “9”). The pre-prime duration changed randomly from trial to trial to disrupt participants’ top-down attention in an uncued condition (in a cued condition, a green square cue was presented to facilitate participants’ top-down attention). The results show that top-down attention modifies the time course of subliminal semantic processing, and the temporal attention window lasts more than 1000ms; attention facilitated by the cue may amplify semantic priming to some extent, yet the amplification effect of attention is relatively minor. PMID:28609460

A User-Centric Knowledge Creation Model in a Web of Object-Enabled Internet of Things Environment

PubMed Central

Kibria, Muhammad Golam; Fattah, Sheik Mohammad Mostakim; Jeong, Kwanghyeon; Chong, Ilyoung; Jeong, Youn-Kwae

2015-01-01

User-centric service features in a Web of Object-enabled Internet of Things environment can be provided by using a semantic ontology that classifies and integrates objects on the World Wide Web as well as shares and merges context-aware information and accumulated knowledge. The semantic ontology is applied on a Web of Object platform to virtualize the real world physical devices and information to form virtual objects that represent the features and capabilities of devices in the virtual world. Detailed information and functionalities of multiple virtual objects are combined with service rules to form composite virtual objects that offer context-aware knowledge-based services, where context awareness plays an important role in enabling automatic modification of the system to reconfigure the services based on the context. Converting the raw data into meaningful information and connecting the information to form the knowledge and storing and reusing the objects in the knowledge base can both be expressed by semantic ontology. In this paper, a knowledge creation model that synchronizes a service logistic model and a virtual world knowledge model on a Web of Object platform has been proposed. To realize the context-aware knowledge-based service creation and execution, a conceptual semantic ontology model has been developed and a prototype has been implemented for a use case scenario of emergency service. PMID:26393609

A User-Centric Knowledge Creation Model in a Web of Object-Enabled Internet of Things Environment.

PubMed

Kibria, Muhammad Golam; Fattah, Sheik Mohammad Mostakim; Jeong, Kwanghyeon; Chong, Ilyoung; Jeong, Youn-Kwae

2015-09-18

User-centric service features in a Web of Object-enabled Internet of Things environment can be provided by using a semantic ontology that classifies and integrates objects on the World Wide Web as well as shares and merges context-aware information and accumulated knowledge. The semantic ontology is applied on a Web of Object platform to virtualize the real world physical devices and information to form virtual objects that represent the features and capabilities of devices in the virtual world. Detailed information and functionalities of multiple virtual objects are combined with service rules to form composite virtual objects that offer context-aware knowledge-based services, where context awareness plays an important role in enabling automatic modification of the system to reconfigure the services based on the context. Converting the raw data into meaningful information and connecting the information to form the knowledge and storing and reusing the objects in the knowledge base can both be expressed by semantic ontology. In this paper, a knowledge creation model that synchronizes a service logistic model and a virtual world knowledge model on a Web of Object platform has been proposed. To realize the context-aware knowledge-based service creation and execution, a conceptual semantic ontology model has been developed and a prototype has been implemented for a use case scenario of emergency service.

MDMA (Ecstasy) use is associated with reduced BOLD signal change during semantic recognition in abstinent human polydrug users: a preliminary fMRI study

PubMed Central

Raj, Vidya; Liang, Han-Chun; Woodward, Neil D.; Bauernfeind, Amy L.; Lee, Junghee; Dietrich, Mary; Park, Sohee; Cowan, Ronald L.

2011-01-01

Objectives MDMA users have impaired verbal memory, and voxel-based morphometry has demonstrated decreased gray matter in Brodmann area (BA) 18, 21 and 45. Because these regions play a role in verbal memory, we hypothesized that MDMA users would show altered brain activation in these areas during performance of an fMRI task that probed semantic verbal memory. Methods Polysubstance users enriched for MDMA exposure participated in a semantic memory encoding and recognition fMRI task that activated left BA 9, 18, 21/22 and 45. Primary outcomes were percent BOLD signal change in left BA 9, 18, 21/22 and 45, accuracy and response time. Results During semantic recognition, lifetime MDMA use was associated with decreased activation in left BA 9, 18 and 21/22 but not 45. This was partly influenced by contributions from cannabis and cocaine use. MDMA exposure was not associated with accuracy or response time during the semantic recognition task. Conclusions During semantic recognition, MDMA exposure is associated with reduced regional brain activation in regions mediating verbal memory. These findings partially overlap with prior structural evidence for reduced gray matter in MDMA users and may, in part, explain the consistent verbal memory impairments observed in other studies of MDMA users. PMID:19304866

"Truth be told" - Semantic memory as the scaffold for veridical communication.

PubMed

Hayes, Brett K; Ramanan, Siddharth; Irish, Muireann

2018-01-01

Theoretical accounts placing episodic memory as central to constructive and communicative functions neglect the role of semantic memory. We argue that the decontextualized nature of semantic schemas largely supersedes the computational bottleneck and error-prone nature of episodic memory. Rather, neuroimaging and neuropsychological evidence of episodic-semantic interactions suggest that an integrative framework more accurately captures the mechanisms underpinning social communication.

Atmosphere-based image classification through luminance and hue

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xu, Feng; Zhang, Yujin

2005-07-01

In this paper a novel image classification system is proposed. Atmosphere serves an important role in generating the scene"s topic or in conveying the message behind the scene"s story, which belongs to abstract attribute level in semantic levels. At first, five atmosphere semantic categories are defined according to rules of photo and film grammar, followed by global luminance and hue features. Then the hierarchical SVM classifiers are applied. In each classification stage, corresponding features are extracted and the trained linear SVM is implemented, resulting in two classes. After three stages of classification, five atmosphere categories are obtained. At last, the text annotation of the atmosphere semantics and the corresponding features by Extensible Markup Language (XML) in MPEG-7 is defined, which can be integrated into more multimedia applications (such as searching, indexing and accessing of multimedia content). The experiment is performed on Corel images and film frames. The classification results prove the effectiveness of the definition of atmosphere semantic classes and the corresponding features.

Semantic effects in sentence recall: the contribution of immediate vs delayed recall in language assessment.

PubMed

Polišenská, Kamila; Chiat, Shula; Comer, Amanda; McKenzie, Kirsty

2014-01-01

Sentence recall is increasingly used to assess language. It is widely debated what the task is actually testing, but one rarely explored aspect is the contribution of semantics to sentence recall. The few studies that have examined the role of semantics in sentence recall have employed an 'intrusion paradigm', following Potter and Lombardi (1990), and their paradigm relies on interference errors with conclusions based on an analysis of error patterns. We have instead manipulated the semantic plausibility of whole sentences to investigate the effects of semantics on immediate and delayed sentence recall. In Study 1, adults recalled semantically plausible and implausible sentences either immediately or after distracter tasks varying in lexical retrieval demands (backward counting and picture naming). Results revealed significant effects of plausibility, delay, and a significant interaction indicating increasing reliance on semantics as the demands of the distracter tasks increased. Study 2, conducted with 6-year-old children, employed delay conditions that were modified to avoid floor effects (delay with silence and forward counting) and a similar pattern of results emerged. This novel methodology provided robust evidence showing the effectiveness of delayed recall in the assessment of semantics and the effectiveness of immediate recall in the assessment of morphosyntax. The findings from our study clarify the linguistic mechanisms involved in immediate and delayed sentence recall, with implications for the use of recall tasks in language assessment. The reader will be able to: (i) define the difference between immediate and delayed sentence recall and different types of distractors, (ii) explain the utility of immediate and delayed recall sentence recall in language assessment, (iii) discuss suitability of delayed recall for the assessment of semantics. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Neural correlates of combinatorial semantic processing of literal and figurative noun noun compound words.

PubMed

Forgács, Bálint; Bohrn, Isabel; Baudewig, Jürgen; Hofmann, Markus J; Pléh, Csaba; Jacobs, Arthur M

2012-11-15

The right hemisphere's role in language comprehension is supported by results from several neuropsychology and neuroimaging studies. Special interest surrounds right temporoparietal structures, which are thought to be involved in processing novel metaphorical expressions, primarily due to the coarse semantic coding of concepts. In this event related fMRI experiment we aimed at assessing the extent of semantic distance processing in the comprehension of figurative meaning to clarify the role of the right hemisphere. Four categories of German noun noun compound words were presented in a semantic decision task: a) conventional metaphors; b) novel metaphors; c) conventional literal, and; d) novel literal expressions, controlled for length, frequency, imageability, arousal, and emotional valence. Conventional literal and metaphorical compounds increased BOLD signal change in right temporoparietal regions, suggesting combinatorial semantic processing, in line with the coarse semantic coding theory, but at odds with the graded salience hypothesis. Both novel literal and novel metaphorical expressions increased activity in left inferior frontal areas, presumably as a result of phonetic, morphosyntactic, and semantic unification processes, challenging predictions regarding right hemispheric involvement in processing unusual meanings. Meanwhile, both conventional and novel metaphorical expressions induced BOLD signal change in left hemispherical regions, suggesting that even novel metaphor processing involves more than linking semantically distant concepts. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Supporting the self-concept with memory: insight from amnesia.

PubMed

Grilli, Matthew D; Verfaellie, Mieke

2015-12-01

We investigated the extent to which personal semantic memory supports the self-concept in individuals with medial temporal lobe amnesia and healthy adults. Participants completed eight 'I Am' self-statements. For each of the four highest ranked self-statements, participants completed an open-ended narrative task, during which they provided supporting information indicating why the I Am statement was considered self-descriptive. Participants then completed an episodic probe task, during which they attempted to retrieve six episodic memories for each of these self-statements. Supporting information was scored as episodic, personal semantic or general semantic. In the narrative task, personal semantic memory predominated as self-supporting information in both groups. The amnesic participants generated fewer personal semantic memories than controls to support their self-statements, a deficit that was more pronounced for trait relative to role self-statements. In the episodic probe task, the controls primarily generated unique event memories, but the amnesic participants did not. These findings demonstrate that personal semantic memory, in particular autobiographical fact knowledge, plays a critical role in supporting the self-concept, regardless of the accessibility of episodic memories, and they highlight potential differences in the way traits and roles are supported by personal memory. © The Author (2015). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

The effect of working memory load on semantic illusions: what the phonological loop and central executive have to contribute.

PubMed

Büttner, Anke Caroline

2012-01-01

When asked how many animals of each kind Moses took on the Ark, most people respond with "two" despite the substituted name (Moses for Noah) in the question. Possible explanations for semantic illusions appear to be related to processing limitations such as those of working memory. Indeed, individual working memory capacity has an impact upon how sentences containing substitutions are processed. This experiment examined further the role of working memory in the occurrence of semantic illusions using a dual-task working memory load approach. Participants verified statements while engaging in either articulatory suppression or random number generation. Secondary task type had a significant effect on semantic illusion rate, but only when comparing the control condition to the two dual-task conditions. Furthermore, secondary task performance in the random number generation condition declined, suggesting a tradeoff between tasks. Response time analyses also showed a different pattern of processing across the conditions. The findings suggest that the phonological loop plays a role in representing semantic illusion sentences coherently and in monitoring for details, while the role of the central executive is to assist gist-processing of sentences. This usually efficient strategy leads to error in the case of semantic illusions.

Mathematical values in the processing of Chinese numeral classifiers and measure words.

PubMed

Her, One-Soon; Chen, Ying-Chun; Yen, Nai-Shing

2017-01-01

A numeral classifier is required between a numeral and a noun in Chinese, which comes in two varieties, sortal classifer (C) and measural classifier (M), also known as 'classifier' and 'measure word', respectively. Cs categorize objects based on semantic attributes and Cs and Ms both denote quantity in terms of mathematical values. The aim of this study was to conduct a psycholinguistic experiment to examine whether participants process C/Ms based on their mathematical values with a semantic distance comparison task, where participants judged which of the two C/M phrases was semantically closer to the target C/M. Results showed that participants performed more accurately and faster for C/Ms with fixed values than the ones with variable values. These results demonstrated that mathematical values do play an important role in the processing of C/Ms. This study may thus shed light on the influence of the linguistic system of C/Ms on magnitude cognition.

Word Problem Solving in Contemporary Math Education: A Plea for Reading Comprehension Skills Training

PubMed Central

Boonen, Anton J. H.; de Koning, Björn B.; Jolles, Jelle; van der Schoot, Menno

2016-01-01

Successfully solving mathematical word problems requires both mental representation skills and reading comprehension skills. In Realistic Math Education (RME), however, students primarily learn to apply the first of these skills (i.e., representational skills) in the context of word problem solving. Given this, it seems legitimate to assume that students from a RME curriculum experience difficulties when asked to solve semantically complex word problems. We investigated this assumption under 80 sixth grade students who were classified as successful and less successful word problem solvers based on a standardized mathematics test. To this end, students completed word problems that ask for both mental representation skills and reading comprehension skills. The results showed that even successful word problem solvers had a low performance on semantically complex word problems, despite adequate performance on semantically less complex word problems. Based on this study, we concluded that reading comprehension skills should be given a (more) prominent role during word problem solving instruction in RME. PMID:26925012

Word Problem Solving in Contemporary Math Education: A Plea for Reading Comprehension Skills Training.

PubMed

Boonen, Anton J H; de Koning, Björn B; Jolles, Jelle; van der Schoot, Menno

2016-01-01

Successfully solving mathematical word problems requires both mental representation skills and reading comprehension skills. In Realistic Math Education (RME), however, students primarily learn to apply the first of these skills (i.e., representational skills) in the context of word problem solving. Given this, it seems legitimate to assume that students from a RME curriculum experience difficulties when asked to solve semantically complex word problems. We investigated this assumption under 80 sixth grade students who were classified as successful and less successful word problem solvers based on a standardized mathematics test. To this end, students completed word problems that ask for both mental representation skills and reading comprehension skills. The results showed that even successful word problem solvers had a low performance on semantically complex word problems, despite adequate performance on semantically less complex word problems. Based on this study, we concluded that reading comprehension skills should be given a (more) prominent role during word problem solving instruction in RME.

Order recall in verbal short-term memory: The role of semantic networks.

PubMed

Poirier, Marie; Saint-Aubin, Jean; Mair, Ali; Tehan, Gerry; Tolan, Anne

2015-04-01

In their recent article, Acheson, MacDonald, and Postle (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 37:44-59, 2011) made an important but controversial suggestion: They hypothesized that (a) semantic information has an effect on order information in short-term memory (STM) and (b) order recall in STM is based on the level of activation of items within the relevant lexico-semantic long-term memory (LTM) network. However, verbal STM research has typically led to the conclusion that factors such as semantic category have a large effect on the number of correctly recalled items, but little or no impact on order recall (Poirier & Saint-Aubin, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 48A:384-404, 1995; Saint-Aubin, Ouellette, & Poirier, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 12:171-177, 2005; Tse, Memory 17:874-891, 2009). Moreover, most formal models of short-term order memory currently suggest a separate mechanism for order coding-that is, one that is separate from item representation and not associated with LTM lexico-semantic networks. Both of the experiments reported here tested the predictions that we derived from Acheson et al. The findings show that, as predicted, manipulations aiming to affect the activation of item representations significantly impacted order memory.

The Role of Context in Remembering Familiar Persons: Insights from Semantic Dementia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Joubert, Sven; Mauries, Sandrine; Barbeau, Emmanuel; Ceccaldi, Mathieu; Poncet, Michel

2004-01-01

Semantic dementia (SD) is a progressive condition characterized by an insidious and gradual breakdown in semantic knowledge. Patients suffering from this condition gradually lose their knowledge of objects and their attributes, concepts, famous persons, and public events. In contrast, these patients maintain a striking preservation of…

Role of Importance and Distinctiveness of Semantic Features in People with Aphasia: A Replication Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mason-Baughman, Mary Beth; Wallace, Sarah E.

2014-01-01

Previous studies suggest that people with aphasia have incomplete lexical-semantic representations with decreased low-importance distinctive (LID) feature knowledge. In addition, decreased LID feature knowledge correlates with ability to discriminate among semantically related words. The current study seeks to replicate and extend previous…

The Role of Semantic Features in Verb Processing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bonnotte, Isabelle

2008-01-01

The present study examined the general hypothesis that, as for nouns, stable representations of semantic knowledge relative to situations expressed by verbs are available and accessible in long term memory in normal people. Regular associations between verbs and past tenses in French adults allowed to abstract two superordinate semantic features…

Personal semantic memory: insights from neuropsychological research on amnesia.

PubMed

Grilli, Matthew D; Verfaellie, Mieke

2014-08-01

This paper provides insight into the cognitive and neural mechanisms of personal semantic memory, knowledge that is specific and unique to individuals, by reviewing neuropsychological research on stable amnesia secondary to medial temporal lobe damage. The results reveal that personal semantic memory does not depend on a unitary set of cognitive and neural mechanisms. Findings show that autobiographical fact knowledge reflects an experience-near type of personal semantic memory that relies on the medial temporal lobe for retrieval, albeit less so than personal episodic memory. Additional evidence demonstrates that new autobiographical fact learning likely relies on the medial temporal lobe, but the extent to which remains unclear. Other findings show that retrieval of personal traits/roles and new learning of personal traits/roles and thoughts/beliefs are independent of the medial temporal lobe and thus may represent highly conceptual types of personal semantic memory that are stored in the neocortex. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

The timing of anterior temporal lobe involvement in semantic processing.

PubMed

Jackson, Rebecca L; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A; Pobric, Gorana

2015-07-01

Despite indications that regions within the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) might make a crucial contribution to pan-modal semantic representation, to date there have been no investigations of when during semantic processing the ATL plays a critical role. To test the timing of the ATL involvement in semantic processing, we studied the effect of double-pulse TMS on behavioral responses in semantic and difficulty-matched control tasks. Chronometric TMS was delivered over the left ATL (10 mm from the tip of the temporal pole along the middle temporal gyrus). During each trial, two pulses of TMS (40 msec apart) were delivered either at baseline (before stimulus presentation) or at one of the experimental time points 100, 250, 400, and 800 msec poststimulus onset. A significant disruption to performance was identified from 400 msec on the semantic task but not on the control assessment. Our results not only reinforce the key role of the left ATL in semantic representation but also indicate that its contribution is especially important around 400 msec poststimulus onset. Together, these facts suggest that the ATL may be one of the neural sources of the N400 ERP component.

Semantically induced memories of love and helping behavior.

PubMed

Lamy, Lubomir; Fischer-Lokou, Jacques; Guéguen, Nicolas

2008-04-01

This study tested the effect of semantically induced thoughts of love on helping behavior. In a natural setting, 253 participants were interviewed and asked to retrieve the memory of a love episode or, in the control condition, a piece of music they loved. They then met another confederate who asked for money. Analysis showed that inducing the idea of love had a significant positive effect on compliance to a request by a male passerby who was asked for help by a female confederate, but not by a female passerby. Theoretical explanations are presented, based on a gender-role expectation hypothesis.

The role of the frontal cortex in memory: an investigation of the Von Restorff effect

PubMed Central

Elhalal, Anat; Davelaar, Eddy J.; Usher, Marius

2014-01-01

Evidence from neuropsychology and neuroimaging indicate that the pre-frontal cortex (PFC) plays an important role in human memory. Although frontal patients are able to form new memories, these memories appear qualitatively different from those of controls by lacking distinctiveness. Neuroimaging studies of memory indicate activation in the PFC under deep encoding conditions, and under conditions of semantic elaboration. Based on these results, we hypothesize that the PFC enhances memory by extracting differences and commonalities in the studied material. To test this hypothesis, we carried out an experimental investigation to test the relationship between the PFC-dependent factors and semantic factors associated with common and specific features of words. These experiments were performed using Free-Recall of word lists with healthy adults, exploiting the correlation between PFC function and fluid intelligence. As predicted, a correlation was found between fluid intelligence and the Von-Restorff effect (better memory for semantic isolates, e.g., isolate “cat” within category members of “fruit”). Moreover, memory for the semantic isolate was found to depend on the isolate's serial position. The isolate item tends to be recalled first, in comparison to non-isolates, suggesting that the process interacts with short term memory. These results are captured within a computational model of free recall, which includes a PFC mechanism that is sensitive to both commonality and distinctiveness, sustaining a trade-off between the two. PMID:25018721

Implicit Word Learning Benefits from Semantic Richness: Electrophysiological and Behavioral Evidence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rabovsky, Milena; Sommer, Werner; Abdel Rahman, Rasha

2012-01-01

Words differ considerably in the amount of associated semantic information. Despite the crucial role of meaning in language, it is still unclear whether and how this variability modulates language learning. Here, we provide initial evidence demonstrating that implicit learning in repetition priming is influenced by the amount of semantic features…

Remote semantic memory is impoverished in hippocampal amnesia

PubMed Central

Klooster, Nathaniel B.; Duff, Melissa C.

2015-01-01

The necessity of the hippocampus for acquiring new semantic concepts is a topic of considerable debate. However, it is generally accepted that any role the hippocampus plays in semantic memory is time limited and that previously acquired information becomes independent of the hippocampus over time. This view, along with intact naming and word-definition matching performance in amnesia, has led to the notion that remote semantic memory is intact in patients with hippocampal amnesia. Motivated by perspectives of word learning as a protracted process where additional features and senses of a word are added over time, and by recent discoveries about the time course of hippocampal contributions to on-line relational processing, reconsolidation, and the flexible integration of information, we revisit the notion that remote semantic memory is intact in amnesia. Using measures of semantic richness and vocabulary depth from psycholinguistics and first and second language-learning studies, we examined how much information is associated with previously acquired, highly familiar words in a group of patients with bilateral hippocampal damage and amnesia. Relative to healthy demographically matched comparison participants and a group of brain-damaged comparison participants, the patients with hippocampal amnesia performed significantly worse on both productive and receptive measures of vocabulary depth and semantic richness. These findings suggest that remote semantic memory is impoverished in patients with hippocampal amnesia and that the hippocampus may play a role in the maintenance and updating of semantic memory beyond its initial acquisition. PMID:26474741

Remote semantic memory is impoverished in hippocampal amnesia.

PubMed

Klooster, Nathaniel B; Duff, Melissa C

2015-12-01

The necessity of the hippocampus for acquiring new semantic concepts is a topic of considerable debate. However, it is generally accepted that any role the hippocampus plays in semantic memory is time limited and that previously acquired information becomes independent of the hippocampus over time. This view, along with intact naming and word-definition matching performance in amnesia, has led to the notion that remote semantic memory is intact in patients with hippocampal amnesia. Motivated by perspectives of word learning as a protracted process where additional features and senses of a word are added over time, and by recent discoveries about the time course of hippocampal contributions to on-line relational processing, reconsolidation, and the flexible integration of information, we revisit the notion that remote semantic memory is intact in amnesia. Using measures of semantic richness and vocabulary depth from psycholinguistics and first and second language-learning studies, we examined how much information is associated with previously acquired, highly familiar words in a group of patients with bilateral hippocampal damage and amnesia. Relative to healthy demographically matched comparison participants and a group of brain-damaged comparison participants, the patients with hippocampal amnesia performed significantly worse on both productive and receptive measures of vocabulary depth and semantic richness. These findings suggest that remote semantic memory is impoverished in patients with hippocampal amnesia and that the hippocampus may play a role in the maintenance and updating of semantic memory beyond its initial acquisition. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Semantic interpretation of search engine resultant

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nasution, M. K. M.

2018-01-01

In semantic, logical language can be interpreted in various forms, but the certainty of meaning is included in the uncertainty, which directly always influences the role of technology. One results of this uncertainty applies to search engines as user interfaces with information spaces such as the Web. Therefore, the behaviour of search engine results should be interpreted with certainty through semantic formulation as interpretation. Behaviour formulation shows there are various interpretations that can be done semantically either temporary, inclusion, or repeat.

Distinct neuroanatomical bases of episodic and semantic memory performance in Alzheimer's disease.

PubMed

Hirni, Daniela I; Kivisaari, Sasa L; Monsch, Andreas U; Taylor, Kirsten I

2013-04-01

Alzheimer's disease (AD) neurofibrillary pathology begins in the medial perirhinal cortex (mPRC) before spreading to the entorhinal cortex (ERC) and hippocampus (HP) in anterior medial temporal lobe (aMTL). While the role of the ERC/HP complex in episodic memory formation is well-established, recent research suggests that the PRC is required to form semantic memories of individual objects. We aimed to test whether commonly used clinical measures of episodic and semantic memory are distinctly associated with ERC/HP and mPRC integrity, respectively, in healthy mature individuals and very early AD patients. One hundred thirty normal controls, 32 amnestic mild cognitive impairment patients, some of whom are in the earliest (i.e., preclinical) stages of AD, and ten early-stage AD patients received neuropsychological testing and high-resolution anatomic and diffusion MRI. Voxel-based regression analyses tested for regions where episodic memory (delayed recall scores on the California Verbal Learning and Rey Osterrieth Complex Figure Tests) and semantic memory (Boston Naming Test, category fluency) performance correlated with gray matter (GM) regions of interest and whole-brain fractional anisotropy (FA) voxel values. When controlling for the opposing memory performance, poorer episodic memory performance was associated with reduced bilateral ERC/HP GM volume and related white matter integrity, but not with mPRC GM volume. Poor semantic memory performance was associated with both reduced left mPRC and ERC/HP GM volume, as well as reduced FA values in white matter tracts leading to the PRC. These results indicate a partial division of labor within the aMTL and suggest that mPRC damage in very early AD may be detectable with common clinical tests of semantic memory if episodic memory performance is controlled. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Using a high-dimensional graph of semantic space to model relationships among words

PubMed Central

Jackson, Alice F.; Bolger, Donald J.

2014-01-01

The GOLD model (Graph Of Language Distribution) is a network model constructed based on co-occurrence in a large corpus of natural language that may be used to explore what information may be present in a graph-structured model of language, and what information may be extracted through theoretically-driven algorithms as well as standard graph analysis methods. The present study will employ GOLD to examine two types of relationship between words: semantic similarity and associative relatedness. Semantic similarity refers to the degree of overlap in meaning between words, while associative relatedness refers to the degree to which two words occur in the same schematic context. It is expected that a graph structured model of language constructed based on co-occurrence should easily capture associative relatedness, because this type of relationship is thought to be present directly in lexical co-occurrence. However, it is hypothesized that semantic similarity may be extracted from the intersection of the set of first-order connections, because two words that are semantically similar may occupy similar thematic or syntactic roles across contexts and thus would co-occur lexically with the same set of nodes. Two versions the GOLD model that differed in terms of the co-occurence window, bigGOLD at the paragraph level and smallGOLD at the adjacent word level, were directly compared to the performance of a well-established distributional model, Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA). The superior performance of the GOLD models (big and small) suggest that a single acquisition and storage mechanism, namely co-occurrence, can account for associative and conceptual relationships between words and is more psychologically plausible than models using singular value decomposition (SVD). PMID:24860525

Using a high-dimensional graph of semantic space to model relationships among words.

PubMed

Jackson, Alice F; Bolger, Donald J

2014-01-01

The GOLD model (Graph Of Language Distribution) is a network model constructed based on co-occurrence in a large corpus of natural language that may be used to explore what information may be present in a graph-structured model of language, and what information may be extracted through theoretically-driven algorithms as well as standard graph analysis methods. The present study will employ GOLD to examine two types of relationship between words: semantic similarity and associative relatedness. Semantic similarity refers to the degree of overlap in meaning between words, while associative relatedness refers to the degree to which two words occur in the same schematic context. It is expected that a graph structured model of language constructed based on co-occurrence should easily capture associative relatedness, because this type of relationship is thought to be present directly in lexical co-occurrence. However, it is hypothesized that semantic similarity may be extracted from the intersection of the set of first-order connections, because two words that are semantically similar may occupy similar thematic or syntactic roles across contexts and thus would co-occur lexically with the same set of nodes. Two versions the GOLD model that differed in terms of the co-occurence window, bigGOLD at the paragraph level and smallGOLD at the adjacent word level, were directly compared to the performance of a well-established distributional model, Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA). The superior performance of the GOLD models (big and small) suggest that a single acquisition and storage mechanism, namely co-occurrence, can account for associative and conceptual relationships between words and is more psychologically plausible than models using singular value decomposition (SVD).

Cue Conflicts in Context: Interplay between Morphosyntax and Discourse Context in Danish Preschoolers' Semantic Role Assignment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thomsen, Ditte Boeg; Poulsen, Mads

2015-01-01

When learning their first language, children develop strategies for assigning semantic roles to sentence structures, depending on morphosyntactic cues such as case and word order. Traditionally, comprehension experiments have presented transitive clauses in isolation, and cross-linguistically children have been found to misinterpret object-first…

Directional effect in double conditionals with a construction task: The semantic hypothesis.

PubMed

Espino, Orlando; Morales, Tarek; Bolaños-Medina, Alicia

2017-09-01

The goal of this paper is to test the main predictions of the semantic hypothesis about the directional effect in double conditionals (such as, 'A only if B/only if C, B') with a construction task. The semantic hypothesis claims that directional effect can be explained by the inherent directionality of the relation between the relatum and the target object of the premises. According to this hypothesis, a directional effect should occur if only one of the end-terms of the premises takes the role of relatum: a) if the end-term that plays the role of relatum is in the first premise, a forward directional effect is predicted (from A to C); and b) if the end-term that plays the role of relatum is in the second premise, a backward directional effect is predicted (from C to A). On the other hand, it claims that there should be no directional effect when both end-terms take the role of relatum or when neither of the end-terms plays the role of relatum. Three experiments confirmed the main predictions of the semantic hypothesis in a construction task. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Ontology design patterns to disambiguate relations between genes and gene products in GENIA

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

Motivation Annotated reference corpora play an important role in biomedical information extraction. A semantic annotation of the natural language texts in these reference corpora using formal ontologies is challenging due to the inherent ambiguity of natural language. The provision of formal definitions and axioms for semantic annotations offers the means for ensuring consistency as well as enables the development of verifiable annotation guidelines. Consistent semantic annotations facilitate the automatic discovery of new information through deductive inferences. Results We provide a formal characterization of the relations used in the recent GENIA corpus annotations. For this purpose, we both select existing axiom systems based on the desired properties of the relations within the domain and develop new axioms for several relations. To apply this ontology of relations to the semantic annotation of text corpora, we implement two ontology design patterns. In addition, we provide a software application to convert annotated GENIA abstracts into OWL ontologies by combining both the ontology of relations and the design patterns. As a result, the GENIA abstracts become available as OWL ontologies and are amenable for automated verification, deductive inferences and other knowledge-based applications. Availability Documentation, implementation and examples are available from http://www-tsujii.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/GENIA/. PMID:22166341

The Topology of a Discussion: The #Occupy Case.

PubMed

Gargiulo, Floriana; Bindi, Jacopo; Apolloni, Andrea

2015-01-01

We analyse a large sample of the Twitter activity that developed around the social movement 'Occupy Wall Street', to study the complex interactions between the human communication activity and the semantic content of a debate. We use a network approach based on the analysis of the bipartite graph @Users-#Hashtags and of its projections: the 'semantic network', whose nodes are hashtags, and the 'users interest network', whose nodes are users. In the first instance, we find out that discussion topics (#hashtags) present a high structural heterogeneity, with a relevant role played by the semantic hubs that are responsible to guarantee the continuity of the debate. In the users' case, the self-organisation process of users' activity, leads to the emergence of two classes of communicators: the 'professionals' and the 'amateurs'. Both the networks present a strong community structure, based on the differentiation of the semantic topics, and a high level of structural robustness when certain sets of topics are censored and/or accounts are removed. By analysing the characteristics of the dynamical networks we can distinguish three phases of the discussion about the movement. Each phase corresponds to a specific moment of the movement: from declaration of intent, organisation and development and the final phase of political reactions. Each phase is characterised by the presence of prototypical #hashtags in the discussion.

Subliminal semantic priming in near absence of attention: A cursor motion study.

PubMed

Xiao, Kunchen; Yamauchi, Takashi

2015-12-15

The role of attention in subliminal semantic priming remains controversial: some researchers argue that attention is necessary for subliminal semantic priming, while others suggest that subliminal semantic processing is free from the influence of attention. The present study employs a cursor motion method to measure priming and evaluate the influence of attention. Specifically, by employing a semantic priming task developed by Naccache, Blandin, and Dehaene (2002), we investigate the extent to which top-down attention influences semantic priming. Results indicate that, consistent with the Naccache et al. (2002) results, attention facilitates priming. However, inconsistent with their theory, significant priming is still observed even in near absence of attention. We suggest that top-down attention helps but is not necessary for subliminal semantic processing. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Regional Brain Dysfunction Associated with Semantic Errors in Comprehension.

PubMed

Shahid, Hinna; Sebastian, Rajani; Tippett, Donna C; Saxena, Sadhvi; Wright, Amy; Hanayik, Taylor; Breining, Bonnie; Bonilha, Leonardo; Fridriksson, Julius; Rorden, Chris; Hillis, Argye E

2018-02-01

Here we illustrate how investigation of individuals acutely after stroke, before structure/function reorganization through recovery or rehabilitation, can be helpful in answering questions about the role of specific brain regions in language functions. Although there is converging evidence from a variety of sources that the left posterior-superior temporal gyrus plays some role in spoken word comprehension, its precise role in this function has not been established. We hypothesized that this region is essential for distinguishing between semantically related words, because it is critical for linking the spoken word to the complete semantic representation. We tested this hypothesis in 127 individuals with 48 hours of acute ischemic stroke, before the opportunity for reorganization or recovery. We identified tissue dysfunction (acute infarct and/or hypoperfusion) in gray and white matter parcels of the left hemisphere, and we evaluated the association between rate of semantic errors in a word-picture verification tasks and extent of tissue dysfunction in each region. We found that after correcting for lesion volume and multiple comparisons, the rate of semantic errors correlated with the extent of tissue dysfunction in left posterior-superior temporal gyrus and retrolenticular white matter. Thieme Medical Publishers 333 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001, USA.

Semantic Relatedness for Evaluation of Course Equivalencies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yang, Beibei

2012-01-01

Semantic relatedness, or its inverse, semantic distance, measures the degree of closeness between two pieces of text determined by their meaning. Related work typically measures semantics based on a sparse knowledge base such as WordNet or Cyc that requires intensive manual efforts to build and maintain. Other work is based on a corpus such as the…

Linking Somatic and Symbolic Representation in Semantic Memory: The Dynamic Multilevel Reactivation Framework

PubMed Central

Reilly, Jamie; Peelle, Jonathan E; Garcia, Amanda; Crutch, Sebastian J

2016-01-01

Biological plausibility is an essential constraint for any viable model of semantic memory. Yet, we have only the most rudimentary understanding of how the human brain conducts abstract symbolic transformations that underlie word and object meaning. Neuroscience has evolved a sophisticated arsenal of techniques for elucidating the architecture of conceptual representation. Nevertheless, theoretical convergence remains elusive. Here we describe several contrastive approaches to the organization of semantic knowledge, and in turn we offer our own perspective on two recurring questions in semantic memory research: 1) to what extent are conceptual representations mediated by sensorimotor knowledge (i.e., to what degree is semantic memory embodied)? 2) How might an embodied semantic system represent abstract concepts such as modularity, symbol, or proposition? To address these questions, we review the merits of sensorimotor (i.e., embodied) and amodal (i.e., disembodied) semantic theories and address the neurobiological constraints underlying each. We conclude that the shortcomings of both perspectives in their extreme forms necessitate a hybrid middle ground. We accordingly propose the Dynamic Multilevel Reactivation Framework, an integrative model premised upon flexible interplay between sensorimotor and amodal symbolic representations mediated by multiple cortical hubs. We discuss applications of the Dynamic Multilevel Reactivation Framework to abstract and concrete concept representation and describe how a multidimensional conceptual topography based on emotion, sensation, and magnitude can successfully frame a semantic space containing meanings for both abstract and concrete words. The consideration of ‘abstract conceptual features’ does not diminish the role of logical and/or executive processing in activating, manipulating and using information stored in conceptual representations. Rather, it proposes that the material on which these processes operate necessarily combine pure sensorimotor information and higher-order cognitive dimensions involved in symbolic representation. PMID:27294419

E-Government Goes Semantic Web: How Administrations Can Transform Their Information Processes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Klischewski, Ralf; Ukena, Stefan

E-government applications and services are built mainly on access to, retrieval of, integration of, and delivery of relevant information to citizens, businesses, and administrative users. In order to perform such information processing automatically through the Semantic Web,1 machine-readable2 enhancements of web resources are needed, based on the understanding of the content and context of the information in focus. While these enhancements are far from trivial to produce, administrations in their role of information and service providers so far find little guidance on how to migrate their web resources and enable a new quality of information processing; even research is still seeking best practices. Therefore, the underlying research question of this chapter is: what are the appropriate approaches which guide administrations in transforming their information processes toward the Semantic Web? In search for answers, this chapter analyzes the challenges and possible solutions from the perspective of administrations: (a) the reconstruction of the information processing in the e-government in terms of how semantic technologies must be employed to support information provision and consumption through the Semantic Web; (b) the required contribution to the transformation is compared to the capabilities and expectations of administrations; and (c) available experience with the steps of transformation are reviewed and discussed as to what extent they can be expected to successfully drive the e-government to the Semantic Web. This research builds on studying the case of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where semantic technologies have been used within the frame of the Access-eGov3 project in order to semantically enhance electronic service interfaces with the aim of providing a new way of accessing and combining e-government services.

Actively learning human gaze shifting paths for semantics-aware photo cropping.

PubMed

Zhang, Luming; Gao, Yue; Ji, Rongrong; Xia, Yingjie; Dai, Qionghai; Li, Xuelong

2014-05-01

Photo cropping is a widely used tool in printing industry, photography, and cinematography. Conventional cropping models suffer from the following three challenges. First, the deemphasized role of semantic contents that are many times more important than low-level features in photo aesthetics. Second, the absence of a sequential ordering in the existing models. In contrast, humans look at semantically important regions sequentially when viewing a photo. Third, the difficulty of leveraging inputs from multiple users. Experience from multiple users is particularly critical in cropping as photo assessment is quite a subjective task. To address these challenges, this paper proposes semantics-aware photo cropping, which crops a photo by simulating the process of humans sequentially perceiving semantically important regions of a photo. We first project the local features (graphlets in this paper) onto the semantic space, which is constructed based on the category information of the training photos. An efficient learning algorithm is then derived to sequentially select semantically representative graphlets of a photo, and the selecting process can be interpreted by a path, which simulates humans actively perceiving semantics in a photo. Furthermore, we learn a prior distribution of such active graphlet paths from training photos that are marked as aesthetically pleasing by multiple users. The learned priors enforce the corresponding active graphlet path of a test photo to be maximally similar to those from the training photos. Experimental results show that: 1) the active graphlet path accurately predicts human gaze shifting, and thus is more indicative for photo aesthetics than conventional saliency maps and 2) the cropped photos produced by our approach outperform its competitors in both qualitative and quantitative comparisons.

Linking somatic and symbolic representation in semantic memory: the dynamic multilevel reactivation framework.

PubMed

Reilly, Jamie; Peelle, Jonathan E; Garcia, Amanda; Crutch, Sebastian J

2016-08-01

Biological plausibility is an essential constraint for any viable model of semantic memory. Yet, we have only the most rudimentary understanding of how the human brain conducts abstract symbolic transformations that underlie word and object meaning. Neuroscience has evolved a sophisticated arsenal of techniques for elucidating the architecture of conceptual representation. Nevertheless, theoretical convergence remains elusive. Here we describe several contrastive approaches to the organization of semantic knowledge, and in turn we offer our own perspective on two recurring questions in semantic memory research: (1) to what extent are conceptual representations mediated by sensorimotor knowledge (i.e., to what degree is semantic memory embodied)? (2) How might an embodied semantic system represent abstract concepts such as modularity, symbol, or proposition? To address these questions, we review the merits of sensorimotor (i.e., embodied) and amodal (i.e., disembodied) semantic theories and address the neurobiological constraints underlying each. We conclude that the shortcomings of both perspectives in their extreme forms necessitate a hybrid middle ground. We accordingly propose the Dynamic Multilevel Reactivation Framework-an integrative model predicated upon flexible interplay between sensorimotor and amodal symbolic representations mediated by multiple cortical hubs. We discuss applications of the dynamic multilevel reactivation framework to abstract and concrete concept representation and describe how a multidimensional conceptual topography based on emotion, sensation, and magnitude can successfully frame a semantic space containing meanings for both abstract and concrete words. The consideration of 'abstract conceptual features' does not diminish the role of logical and/or executive processing in activating, manipulating and using information stored in conceptual representations. Rather, it proposes that the materials upon which these processes operate necessarily combine pure sensorimotor information and higher-order cognitive dimensions involved in symbolic representation.

Lexical Processing in School-Age Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Children with Specific Language Impairment: The Role of Semantics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Haebig, Eileen; Kaushanskaya, Margarita; Weismer, Susan Ellis

2015-01-01

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and specific language impairment (SLI) often have immature lexical-semantic knowledge; however, the organization of lexical-semantic knowledge is poorly understood. This study examined lexical processing in school-age children with ASD, SLI, and typical development, who were matched on receptive…

The Semantics of Complementation in English: A Cognitive Semantic Account of Two English Complement Constructions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smith, Michael B.

2009-01-01

Studies on complementation in English and other languages have traditionally focused on syntactic issues, most notably on the constituent structures of different complement types. As a result, they have neglected the role of meaning in the choice of different complements. This paper investigates the semantics of complementation within the…

The Roles of Semantic Sense and Form-Meaning Connection in Translation Priming

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Luo, Xueying; Cheung, Him; Bel, David; Li, Li; Chen, Lin; Mo, Lei

2013-01-01

This study examines semantic sense and form-meaning connection across the bilingual's languages as factors behind translation priming asymmetry, which refers to semantic priming between translation equivalents with L1 (first language) primes and L2 (second language) targets, but the lack of it in the reverse direction. In Experiment 1, many-sense…

The Interaction between Semantic Representation and Episodic Memory.

PubMed

Fang, Jing; Rüther, Naima; Bellebaum, Christian; Wiskott, Laurenz; Cheng, Sen

2018-02-01

The experimental evidence on the interrelation between episodic memory and semantic memory is inconclusive. Are they independent systems, different aspects of a single system, or separate but strongly interacting systems? Here, we propose a computational role for the interaction between the semantic and episodic systems that might help resolve this debate. We hypothesize that episodic memories are represented as sequences of activation patterns. These patterns are the output of a semantic representational network that compresses the high-dimensional sensory input. We show quantitatively that the accuracy of episodic memory crucially depends on the quality of the semantic representation. We compare two types of semantic representations: appropriate representations, which means that the representation is used to store input sequences that are of the same type as those that it was trained on, and inappropriate representations, which means that stored inputs differ from the training data. Retrieval accuracy is higher for appropriate representations because the encoded sequences are less divergent than those encoded with inappropriate representations. Consistent with our model prediction, we found that human subjects remember some aspects of episodes significantly more accurately if they had previously been familiarized with the objects occurring in the episode, as compared to episodes involving unfamiliar objects. We thus conclude that the interaction with the semantic system plays an important role for episodic memory.

Semantic Role Labeling of Clinical Text: Comparing Syntactic Parsers and Features

PubMed Central

Zhang, Yaoyun; Jiang, Min; Wang, Jingqi; Xu, Hua

2016-01-01

Semantic role labeling (SRL), which extracts shallow semantic relation representation from different surface textual forms of free text sentences, is important for understanding clinical narratives. Since semantic roles are formed by syntactic constituents in the sentence, an effective parser, as well as an effective syntactic feature set are essential to build a practical SRL system. Our study initiates a formal evaluation and comparison of SRL performance on a clinical text corpus MiPACQ, using three state-of-the-art parsers, the Stanford parser, the Berkeley parser, and the Charniak parser. First, the original parsers trained on the open domain syntactic corpus Penn Treebank were employed. Next, those parsers were retrained on the clinical Treebank of MiPACQ for further comparison. Additionally, state-of-the-art syntactic features from open domain SRL were also examined for clinical text. Experimental results showed that retraining the parsers on clinical Treebank improved the performance significantly, with an optimal F1 measure of 71.41% achieved by the Berkeley parser. PMID:28269926

Syntactic and semantic processing of Chinese middle sentences: evidence from event-related potentials.

PubMed

Zeng, Tao; Mao, Wen; Lu, Qing

2016-05-25

Scalp-recorded event-related potentials are known to be sensitive to particular aspects of sentence processing. The N400 component is widely recognized as an effect closely related to lexical-semantic processing. The absence of an N400 effect in participants performing tasks in Indo-European languages has been considered evidence that failed syntactic category processing appears to block lexical-semantic integration and that syntactic structure building is a prerequisite of semantic analysis. An event-related potential experiment was designed to investigate whether such syntactic primacy can be considered to apply equally to Chinese sentence processing. Besides correct middles, sentences with either single semantic or single syntactic violation as well as double syntactic and semantic anomaly were used in the present research. Results showed that both purely semantic and combined violation induced a broad negativity in the time window 300-500 ms, indicating the independence of lexical-semantic integration. These findings provided solid evidence that lexical-semantic parsing plays a crucial role in Chinese sentence comprehension.

Dissociating the semantic function of two neighbouring subregions in the left lateral anterior temporal lobe

PubMed Central

Sanjuán, Ana; Hope, Thomas M.H.; Parker Jones, 'Ōiwi; Prejawa, Susan; Oberhuber, Marion; Guerin, Julie; Seghier, Mohamed L.; Green, David W.; Price, Cathy J.

2015-01-01

We used fMRI in 35 healthy participants to investigate how two neighbouring subregions in the lateral anterior temporal lobe (LATL) contribute to semantic matching and object naming. Four different levels of processing were considered: (A) recognition of the object concepts; (B) search for semantic associations related to object stimuli; (C) retrieval of semantic concepts of interest; and (D) retrieval of stimulus specific concepts as required for naming. During semantic association matching on picture stimuli or heard object names, we found that activation in both subregions was higher when the objects were semantically related (mug–kettle) than unrelated (car–teapot). This is consistent with both LATL subregions playing a role in (C), the successful retrieval of amodal semantic concepts. In addition, one subregion was more activated for object naming than matching semantically related objects, consistent with (D), the retrieval of a specific concept for naming. We discuss the implications of these novel findings for cognitive models of semantic processing and left anterior temporal lobe function. PMID:25496810

The role of the left anterior temporal lobe in semantic composition vs. semantic memory.

PubMed

Westerlund, Masha; Pylkkänen, Liina

2014-05-01

The left anterior temporal lobe (LATL) is robustly implicated in semantic processing by a growing body of literature. However, these results have emerged from two distinct bodies of work, addressing two different processing levels. On the one hand, the LATL has been characterized as a 'semantic hub׳ that binds features of concepts across a distributed network, based on results from semantic dementia and hemodynamic findings on the categorization of specific compared to basic exemplars. On the other, the LATL has been implicated in combinatorial operations in language, as shown by increased activity in this region associated with the processing of sentences and of basic phrases. The present work aimed to reconcile these two literatures by independently manipulating combination and concept specificity within a minimal MEG paradigm. Participants viewed simple nouns that denoted either low specificity (fish) or high specificity categories (trout) presented in either combinatorial (spotted fish/trout) or non-combinatorial contexts (xhsl fish/trout). By combining these paradigms from the two literatures, we directly compared the engagement of the LATL in semantic memory vs. semantic composition. Our results indicate that although noun specificity subtly modulates the LATL activity elicited by single nouns, it most robustly affects the size of the composition effect when these nouns are adjectivally modified, with low specificity nouns eliciting a much larger effect. We conclude that these findings are compatible with an account in which the specificity and composition effects arise from a shared mechanism of meaning specification. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Visual object naming in patients with small lesions centered at the left temporopolar region.

PubMed

Campo, Pablo; Poch, Claudia; Toledano, Rafael; Igoa, José Manuel; Belinchón, Mercedes; García-Morales, Irene; Gil-Nagel, Antonio

2016-01-01

Naming is considered a left hemisphere function that operates according to a posterior-anterior specificity gradient, with more fine-grained information processed in most anterior regions of the temporal lobe (ATL), including the temporal pole (TP). Word finding difficulties are typically assessed using visual confrontation naming tasks, and have been associated with selective damage to ATL resulting from different aetiologies. Nonetheless, the role of the ATL and, more specifically, of the TP in the naming network is not completely established. Most of the accumulated evidence is based on studies on patients with extensive lesions, often bilateral. Furthermore, there is a considerable variability in the anatomical definition of ATL. To better understand the specific involvement of the left TP in visual object naming, we assessed a group of patients with an epileptogenic lesion centered at the TP, and compared their performance with that of a strictly matched control group. We also administered a battery of verbal and non-verbal semantic tasks that was used as a semantic memory baseline. Patients showed an impaired naming ability, manifesting in a certain degree of anomia and semantically related naming errors, which was influenced by concept familiarity. This pattern took place in a context of mild semantic dysfunction that was evident in different types and modalities of semantic tasks. Therefore, current findings demonstrate that a restricted lesion to the left TP can cause a significant deficit in object naming. Of importance, the observed semantic impairment was far from the devastating degradation observed in semantic dementia and other bilateral conditions.

The processing of semantic relatedness in the brain: Evidence from associative and categorical false recognition effects following transcranial direct current stimulation of the left anterior temporal lobe.

PubMed

Díez, Emiliano; Gómez-Ariza, Carlos J; Díez-Álamo, Antonio M; Alonso, María A; Fernandez, Angel

2017-08-01

A dominant view of the role of the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) in semantic memory is that it serves as an integration hub, specialized in the processing of semantic relatedness by way of mechanisms that bind together information from different brain areas to form coherent amodal representations of concepts. Two recent experiments, using brain stimulation techniques along with the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, have found a consistent false memory reduction effect following stimulation of the ATL, pointing to the importance of the ATL in semantic/conceptual processing. To more precisely identify the specific process being involved, we conducted a DRM experiment in which transcranial direct current stimulation (anode/cathode/sham) was applied over the participants' left ATL during the study of lists of words that were associatively related to their non-presented critical words (e.g., rotten, worm, red, tree, liqueur, unripe, cake, food, eden, peel, for the critical item apple) or categorically related (e.g., pear, banana, peach, orange, cantaloupe, watermelon, strawberry, cherry, kiwi, plum, for the same critical item apple). The results showed that correct recognition was not affected by stimulation. However, an interaction between stimulation condition and type of relation for false memories was found, explained by a significant false recognition reduction effect in the anodal condition for associative lists that was not observed for categorical lists. Results are congruent with previous findings and, more importantly, they help to clarify the nature and locus of false memory reduction effects, suggesting a differential role of the left ATL, and providing critical evidence for understanding the creation of semantic relatedness-based memory illusions. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Roles of Semantic and Phonological Information in Word Production: Evidence from Spanish-English Bilinguals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kennison, Shelia M.; Fernandez, Elaine C.; Bowers, J. Michael

2014-01-01

The research investigated the roles of semantic and phonological processing in word production. Spanish-English bilingual individuals produced English target words when cued with definitions that were also written in English. When the correct word was not produced, a secondary task was performed in which participants rated the ease of…

An Ontology of Quality Initiatives and a Model for Decentralized, Collaborative Quality Management on the (Semantic) World Wide Web

PubMed Central

2001-01-01

This editorial provides a model of how quality initiatives concerned with health information on the World Wide Web may in the future interact with each other. This vision fits into the evolving "Semantic Web" architecture - ie, the prospective that the World Wide Web may evolve from a mess of unstructured, human-readable information sources into a global knowledge base with an additional layer providing richer and more meaningful relationships between resources. One first prerequisite for forming such a "Semantic Web" or "web of trust" among the players active in quality management of health information is that these initiatives make statements about themselves and about each other in a machine-processable language. I present a concrete model on how this collaboration could look, and provide some recommendations on what the role of the World Health Organization (WHO) and other policy makers in this framework could be. PMID:11772549

An ontology of quality initiatives and a model for decentralized, collaborative quality management on the (semantic) World-Wide-Web.

PubMed

Eysenbach, G

2001-01-01

This editorial provides a model of how quality initiatives concerned with health information on the World Wide Web may in the future interact with each other. This vision fits into the evolving "Semantic Web" architecture - ie, the prospective that the World Wide Web may evolve from a mess of unstructured, human-readable information sources into a global knowledge base with an additional layer providing richer and more meaningful relationships between resources. One first prerequisite for forming such a "Semantic Web" or "web of trust" among the players active in quality management of health information is that these initiatives make statements about themselves and about each other in a machine-processable language. I present a concrete model on how this collaboration could look, and provide some recommendations on what the role of the World Health Organization (WHO) and other policy makers in this framework could be.

Individual differences in the joint effects of semantic priming and word frequency: The role of lexical integrity

PubMed Central

Yap, Melvin J.; Tse, Chi-Shing; Balota, David A.

2009-01-01

Word frequency and semantic priming effects are among the most robust effects in visual word recognition, and it has been generally assumed that these two variables produce interactive effects in lexical decision performance, with larger priming effects for low-frequency targets. The results from four lexical decision experiments indicate that the joint effects of semantic priming and word frequency are critically dependent upon differences in the vocabulary knowledge of the participants. Specifically, across two Universities, additive effects of the two variables were observed in participants with more vocabulary knowledge, while interactive effects were observed in participants with less vocabulary knowledge. These results are discussed with reference to Borowsky and Besner’s (1993) multistage account and Plaut and Booth’s (2000) single-mechanism model. In general, the findings are also consistent with a flexible lexical processing system that optimizes performance based on processing fluency and task demands. PMID:20161653

Structure at every scale: A semantic network account of the similarities between unrelated concepts.

PubMed

De Deyne, Simon; Navarro, Daniel J; Perfors, Amy; Storms, Gert

2016-09-01

Similarity plays an important role in organizing the semantic system. However, given that similarity cannot be defined on purely logical grounds, it is important to understand how people perceive similarities between different entities. Despite this, the vast majority of studies focus on measuring similarity between very closely related items. When considering concepts that are very weakly related, little is known. In this article, we present 4 experiments showing that there are reliable and systematic patterns in how people evaluate the similarities between very dissimilar entities. We present a semantic network account of these similarities showing that a spreading activation mechanism defined over a word association network naturally makes correct predictions about weak similarities, whereas, though simpler, models based on direct neighbors between word pairs derived using the same network cannot. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Automated Predictive Big Data Analytics Using Ontology Based Semantics.

PubMed

Nural, Mustafa V; Cotterell, Michael E; Peng, Hao; Xie, Rui; Ma, Ping; Miller, John A

2015-10-01

Predictive analytics in the big data era is taking on an ever increasingly important role. Issues related to choice on modeling technique, estimation procedure (or algorithm) and efficient execution can present significant challenges. For example, selection of appropriate and optimal models for big data analytics often requires careful investigation and considerable expertise which might not always be readily available. In this paper, we propose to use semantic technology to assist data analysts and data scientists in selecting appropriate modeling techniques and building specific models as well as the rationale for the techniques and models selected. To formally describe the modeling techniques, models and results, we developed the Analytics Ontology that supports inferencing for semi-automated model selection. The SCALATION framework, which currently supports over thirty modeling techniques for predictive big data analytics is used as a testbed for evaluating the use of semantic technology.

Automated Predictive Big Data Analytics Using Ontology Based Semantics

PubMed Central

Nural, Mustafa V.; Cotterell, Michael E.; Peng, Hao; Xie, Rui; Ma, Ping; Miller, John A.

2017-01-01

Predictive analytics in the big data era is taking on an ever increasingly important role. Issues related to choice on modeling technique, estimation procedure (or algorithm) and efficient execution can present significant challenges. For example, selection of appropriate and optimal models for big data analytics often requires careful investigation and considerable expertise which might not always be readily available. In this paper, we propose to use semantic technology to assist data analysts and data scientists in selecting appropriate modeling techniques and building specific models as well as the rationale for the techniques and models selected. To formally describe the modeling techniques, models and results, we developed the Analytics Ontology that supports inferencing for semi-automated model selection. The SCALATION framework, which currently supports over thirty modeling techniques for predictive big data analytics is used as a testbed for evaluating the use of semantic technology. PMID:29657954

Semantator: semantic annotator for converting biomedical text to linked data.

PubMed

Tao, Cui; Song, Dezhao; Sharma, Deepak; Chute, Christopher G

2013-10-01

More than 80% of biomedical data is embedded in plain text. The unstructured nature of these text-based documents makes it challenging to easily browse and query the data of interest in them. One approach to facilitate browsing and querying biomedical text is to convert the plain text to a linked web of data, i.e., converting data originally in free text to structured formats with defined meta-level semantics. In this paper, we introduce Semantator (Semantic Annotator), a semantic-web-based environment for annotating data of interest in biomedical documents, browsing and querying the annotated data, and interactively refining annotation results if needed. Through Semantator, information of interest can be either annotated manually or semi-automatically using plug-in information extraction tools. The annotated results will be stored in RDF and can be queried using the SPARQL query language. In addition, semantic reasoners can be directly applied to the annotated data for consistency checking and knowledge inference. Semantator has been released online and was used by the biomedical ontology community who provided positive feedbacks. Our evaluation results indicated that (1) Semantator can perform the annotation functionalities as designed; (2) Semantator can be adopted in real applications in clinical and transactional research; and (3) the annotated results using Semantator can be easily used in Semantic-web-based reasoning tools for further inference. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Multimodal Feature Integration in the Angular Gyrus during Episodic and Semantic Retrieval

PubMed Central

Bonnici, Heidi M.; Richter, Franziska R.; Yazar, Yasemin

2016-01-01

Much evidence from distinct lines of investigation indicates the involvement of angular gyrus (AnG) in the retrieval of both episodic and semantic information, but the region's precise function and whether that function differs across episodic and semantic retrieval have yet to be determined. We used univariate and multivariate fMRI analysis methods to examine the role of AnG in multimodal feature integration during episodic and semantic retrieval. Human participants completed episodic and semantic memory tasks involving unimodal (auditory or visual) and multimodal (audio-visual) stimuli. Univariate analyses revealed the recruitment of functionally distinct AnG subregions during the retrieval of episodic and semantic information. Consistent with a role in multimodal feature integration during episodic retrieval, significantly greater AnG activity was observed during retrieval of integrated multimodal episodic memories compared with unimodal episodic memories. Multivariate classification analyses revealed that individual multimodal episodic memories could be differentiated in AnG, with classification accuracy tracking the vividness of participants' reported recollections, whereas distinct unimodal memories were represented in sensory association areas only. In contrast to episodic retrieval, AnG was engaged to a statistically equivalent degree during retrieval of unimodal and multimodal semantic memories, suggesting a distinct role for AnG during semantic retrieval. Modality-specific sensory association areas exhibited corresponding activity during both episodic and semantic retrieval, which mirrored the functional specialization of these regions during perception. The results offer new insights into the integrative processes subserved by AnG and its contribution to our subjective experience of remembering. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Using univariate and multivariate fMRI analyses, we provide evidence that functionally distinct subregions of angular gyrus (AnG) contribute to the retrieval of episodic and semantic memories. Our multivariate pattern classifier could distinguish episodic memory representations in AnG according to whether they were multimodal (audio-visual) or unimodal (auditory or visual) in nature, whereas statistically equivalent AnG activity was observed during retrieval of unimodal and multimodal semantic memories. Classification accuracy during episodic retrieval scaled with the trial-by-trial vividness with which participants experienced their recollections. Therefore, the findings offer new insights into the integrative processes subserved by AnG and how its function may contribute to our subjective experience of remembering. PMID:27194327

Multimodal Feature Integration in the Angular Gyrus during Episodic and Semantic Retrieval.

PubMed

Bonnici, Heidi M; Richter, Franziska R; Yazar, Yasemin; Simons, Jon S

2016-05-18

Much evidence from distinct lines of investigation indicates the involvement of angular gyrus (AnG) in the retrieval of both episodic and semantic information, but the region's precise function and whether that function differs across episodic and semantic retrieval have yet to be determined. We used univariate and multivariate fMRI analysis methods to examine the role of AnG in multimodal feature integration during episodic and semantic retrieval. Human participants completed episodic and semantic memory tasks involving unimodal (auditory or visual) and multimodal (audio-visual) stimuli. Univariate analyses revealed the recruitment of functionally distinct AnG subregions during the retrieval of episodic and semantic information. Consistent with a role in multimodal feature integration during episodic retrieval, significantly greater AnG activity was observed during retrieval of integrated multimodal episodic memories compared with unimodal episodic memories. Multivariate classification analyses revealed that individual multimodal episodic memories could be differentiated in AnG, with classification accuracy tracking the vividness of participants' reported recollections, whereas distinct unimodal memories were represented in sensory association areas only. In contrast to episodic retrieval, AnG was engaged to a statistically equivalent degree during retrieval of unimodal and multimodal semantic memories, suggesting a distinct role for AnG during semantic retrieval. Modality-specific sensory association areas exhibited corresponding activity during both episodic and semantic retrieval, which mirrored the functional specialization of these regions during perception. The results offer new insights into the integrative processes subserved by AnG and its contribution to our subjective experience of remembering. Using univariate and multivariate fMRI analyses, we provide evidence that functionally distinct subregions of angular gyrus (AnG) contribute to the retrieval of episodic and semantic memories. Our multivariate pattern classifier could distinguish episodic memory representations in AnG according to whether they were multimodal (audio-visual) or unimodal (auditory or visual) in nature, whereas statistically equivalent AnG activity was observed during retrieval of unimodal and multimodal semantic memories. Classification accuracy during episodic retrieval scaled with the trial-by-trial vividness with which participants experienced their recollections. Therefore, the findings offer new insights into the integrative processes subserved by AnG and how its function may contribute to our subjective experience of remembering. Copyright © 2016 Bonnici, Richter, et al.

Lexical Processing in School-Age Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Children with Specific Language Impairment: The Role of Semantics.

PubMed

Haebig, Eileen; Kaushanskaya, Margarita; Ellis Weismer, Susan

2015-12-01

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and specific language impairment (SLI) often have immature lexical-semantic knowledge; however, the organization of lexical-semantic knowledge is poorly understood. This study examined lexical processing in school-age children with ASD, SLI, and typical development, who were matched on receptive vocabulary. Children completed a lexical decision task, involving words with high and low semantic network sizes and nonwords. Children also completed nonverbal updating and shifting tasks. Children responded more accurately to words from high than from low semantic networks; however, follow-up analyses identified weaker semantic network effects in the SLI group. Additionally, updating and shifting abilities predicted lexical processing, demonstrating similarity in the mechanisms which underlie semantic processing in children with ASD, SLI, and typical development.

Lexical Processing in School-Age Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Children with Specific Language Impairment: The Role of Semantics

PubMed Central

Haebig, Eileen; Kaushanskaya, Margarita; Weismer, Susan Ellis

2016-01-01

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and specific language impairment (SLI) often have immature lexical-semantic knowledge; however, the organization of lexical-semantic knowledge is poorly understood. This study examined lexical processing in school-age children with ASD, SLI, and typical development, who were matched on receptive vocabulary. Children completed a lexical decision task, involving words with high and low semantic network sizes and nonwords. Children also completed nonverbal updating and shifting tasks. Children responded more accurately to words from high than from low semantic networks; however, follow-up analyses identified weaker semantic network effects in the SLI group. Additionally, updating and shifting abilities predicted lexical processing, demonstrating similarity in the mechanisms which underlie semantic processing in children with ASD, SLI, and typical development. PMID:26210517

On the right side? A longitudinal study of left- versus right-lateralized semantic dementia.

PubMed

Kumfor, Fiona; Landin-Romero, Ramon; Devenney, Emma; Hutchings, Rosalind; Grasso, Roberto; Hodges, John R; Piguet, Olivier

2016-03-01

The typical presentation of semantic dementia is associated with marked, left predominant anterior temporal lobe atrophy and with changes in language. About 30% of individuals, however, present with predominant right anterior temporal lobe atrophy, usually accompanied by behavioural changes and prosopagnosia. Here, we aimed to establish whether these initially distinct clinical presentations evolve into a similar syndrome at the neural and behavioural level. Thirty-one patients who presented with predominant anterior temporal lobe atrophy were included. Based on imaging, patients were categorized as either predominant left (n = 22) or right (n = 9) semantic dementia. Thirty-three Alzheimer's disease patients and 25 healthy controls were included for comparison. Participants completed the Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination, a Face and Emotion Processing Battery and the Cambridge Behavioural Inventory, and underwent magnetic resonance imaging annually. Longitudinal neuroimaging analyses showed greater right temporal pole atrophy in left semantic dementia than Alzheimer's disease, whereas right semantic dementia showed greater orbitofrontal and left temporal lobe atrophy than Alzheimer's disease. Importantly, direct comparisons between semantic dementia groups revealed that over time, left semantic dementia showed progressive thinning in the right temporal pole, whereas right semantic dementia showed thinning in the orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingulate. Behaviourally, longitudinal analyses revealed that general cognition declined in all patients. In contrast, patients with left and right semantic dementia showed greater emotion recognition decline than Alzheimer's disease. In addition, left semantic dementia showed greater motivation loss than Alzheimer's disease. Correlational analyses revealed that emotion recognition was associated with right temporal pole, right medial orbitofrontal and right fusiform integrity, while changes in motivation were associated with right temporal pole cortical thinning. While left and right semantic dementia show distinct profiles at presentation, both phenotypes develop deficits in emotion recognition and behaviour. These findings highlight the pervasive socio-emotional deficits in frontotemporal dementia, even in patients with an initial language presentation. These changes reflect right anterior temporal and orbitofrontal cortex degeneration, underscoring the role of these regions in social cognition and behaviour. © The Author (2016). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

The Role of Self-Teaching in Learning Orthographic and Semantic Aspects of New Words

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ricketts, Jessie; Bishop, Dorothy V. M.; Pimperton, Hannah; Nation, Kate

2011-01-01

This study explores how children learn the meaning (semantics) and spelling patterns (orthography) of novel words encountered in story context. English-speaking children (N = 88) aged 7 to 8 years read 8 stories and each story contained 1 novel word repeated 4 times. Semantic cues were provided by the story context such that children could infer…

The Fluctuating Development of Cross-Linguistic Semantic Awareness: A Longitudinal Multiple-Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zheng, Yongyan

2014-01-01

Second language (L2) learners' awareness of first language-second language (L1-L2) semantic differences plays a critical role in L2 vocabulary learning. This study investigates the long-term development of eight university-level Chinese English as a foreign language learners' cross-linguistic semantic awareness over the course of 10 months. A…

''How To Do Things with Words'': Role of Motor Cortex in Semantic Representation of Action Words

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kana, Rajesh K.; Blum, Elizabeth R.; Ladden, Stacy Levin; Ver Hoef, Lawrence W.

2012-01-01

Language, believed to have originated from actions, not only functions as a medium to access other minds, but it also helps us commit actions and enriches our social life. This fMRI study investigated the semantic and neural representations of actions and mental states. We focused mainly on language semantics (comprehending sentences with "action"…

Knowledge Reasoning with Semantic Data for Real-Time Data Processing in Smart Factory

PubMed Central

Wang, Shiyong; Li, Di; Liu, Chengliang

2018-01-01

The application of high-bandwidth networks and cloud computing in manufacturing systems will be followed by mass data. Industrial data analysis plays important roles in condition monitoring, performance optimization, flexibility, and transparency of the manufacturing system. However, the currently existing architectures are mainly for offline data analysis, not suitable for real-time data processing. In this paper, we first define the smart factory as a cloud-assisted and self-organized manufacturing system in which physical entities such as machines, conveyors, and products organize production through intelligent negotiation and the cloud supervises this self-organized process for fault detection and troubleshooting based on data analysis. Then, we propose a scheme to integrate knowledge reasoning and semantic data where the reasoning engine processes the ontology model with real time semantic data coming from the production process. Based on these ideas, we build a benchmarking system for smart candy packing application that supports direct consumer customization and flexible hybrid production, and the data are collected and processed in real time for fault diagnosis and statistical analysis. PMID:29415444

An investigation of time course of category and semantic priming.

PubMed

Ray, Suchismita

2008-04-01

Low semantically similar exemplars in a category demonstrate the category-priming effect through priming of the category (i.e., exemplar-category-exemplar), whereas high semantically similar exemplars in the same category demonstrate the semantic-priming effect (i.e., direct activation of one high semantically similar exemplar by another). The author asked whether the category- and semantic-priming effects are based on a common memory process. She examined this question by testing the time courses of category- and semantic-priming effects. She tested participants on either category- or semantic-priming paradigm at 2 different time intervals (6 min and 42 min) by using a lexical decision task using exemplars from categories. Results showed that the time course of category priming was different from that of semantic priming. The author concludes that these 2 priming effects are based on 2 separate memory processes.

Limited role of phonology in reading Chinese two-character compounds: evidence from an ERP study.

PubMed

Wong, A W-K; Wu, Y; Chen, H-C

2014-01-03

This study investigates the role of phonology in reading logographic Chinese. Specifically, whether phonological information is obligatorily activated in reading Chinese two-character compounds was examined using the masked-priming paradigm with event-related potential (ERP) recordings. Twenty-two native Cantonese Chinese speakers participated in a lexical decision experiment. The targets were visually presented Chinese two-character strings and the participants were asked to judge whether the target in each trial was a legitimate compound word in Chinese. Each target was preceded by a briefly presented word prime. The prime and target shared an identical constituent character in the Character-related condition, a syllable in the Syllable-related condition, were semantically related in the Semantic-related condition, and were unrelated (both phonologically and semantically) in the control condition. The prime–target relationship was manipulated to probe the effects of word-form (i.e., character- or syllable-relatedness) and word-semantic relatedness on phonological (as indexed by an N250 ERP component) and semantic (as indexed by an N400 ERP component) processing. Significant and comparable facilitation effects in reaction time, relative to the control, were observed in the Character-related and the Semantic-related conditions. Furthermore, a significant reduction in ERP amplitudes (N250), relative to the control, was obtained in the Character-related condition in the time window of 150-250 ms post target. In addition, attenuation in ERP amplitudes was found in the Semantic-related condition in the window of 250-500 ms (N400). However, no significant results (neither behavioral nor ERP) were found in the Syllable-related condition. These results suggest that phonological activation is not mandatory and the role of phonology is minimal at best in reading Chinese two-character compounds.

A Software Engineering Approach based on WebML and BPMN to the Mediation Scenario of the SWS Challenge

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Brambilla, Marco; Ceri, Stefano; Valle, Emanuele Della; Facca, Federico M.; Tziviskou, Christina

Although Semantic Web Services are expected to produce a revolution in the development of Web-based systems, very few enterprise-wide design experiences are available; one of the main reasons is the lack of sound Software Engineering methods and tools for the deployment of Semantic Web applications. In this chapter, we present an approach to software development for the Semantic Web based on classical Software Engineering methods (i.e., formal business process development, computer-aided and component-based software design, and automatic code generation) and on semantic methods and tools (i.e., ontology engineering, semantic service annotation and discovery).

Ontology Research and Development. Part 1-A Review of Ontology Generation.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ding, Ying; Foo, Schubert

2002-01-01

Discusses the role of ontology in knowledge representation, including enabling content-based access, interoperability, communications, and new levels of service on the Semantic Web; reviews current ontology generation studies and projects as well as problems facing such research; and discusses ontology mapping, information extraction, natural…

Semantic Description of Educational Adaptive Hypermedia Based on a Conceptual Model

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Papasalouros, Andreas; Retalis, Symeon; Papaspyrou, Nikolaos

2004-01-01

The role of conceptual modeling in Educational Adaptive Hypermedia Applications (EAHA) is especially important. A conceptual model of an educational application depicts the instructional solution that is implemented, containing information about concepts that must be ac-quired by learners, tasks in which learners must be involved and resources…

Role of Contrastive and Noncontrastive Associates in the Interpretation of Focus Particles

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gotzner, Nicole; Spalek, Katharina

2017-01-01

The present research examines the mechanisms underlying the comprehension of focus alternatives. In particular, we investigate whether listeners determine alternatives based on general semantic priming mechanisms or whether they only consider contrastive alternatives, elements that can replace the expression in focus. In a probe recognition…

A computational modeling of semantic knowledge in reading comprehension: Integrating the landscape model with latent semantic analysis.

PubMed

Yeari, Menahem; van den Broek, Paul

2016-09-01

It is a well-accepted view that the prior semantic (general) knowledge that readers possess plays a central role in reading comprehension. Nevertheless, computational models of reading comprehension have not integrated the simulation of semantic knowledge and online comprehension processes under a unified mathematical algorithm. The present article introduces a computational model that integrates the landscape model of comprehension processes with latent semantic analysis representation of semantic knowledge. In three sets of simulations of previous behavioral findings, the integrated model successfully simulated the activation and attenuation of predictive and bridging inferences during reading, as well as centrality estimations and recall of textual information after reading. Analyses of the computational results revealed new theoretical insights regarding the underlying mechanisms of the various comprehension phenomena.

Language production is facilitated by semantic richness but inhibited by semantic density: Evidence from picture naming.

PubMed

Rabovsky, Milena; Schad, Daniel J; Abdel Rahman, Rasha

2016-01-01

Communicating meaningful messages is the ultimate goal of language production. Yet, verbal messages can differ widely in the complexity and richness of their semantic content, and such differences should strongly modulate conceptual and lexical encoding processes during speech planning. However, despite the crucial role of semantic content in language production, the influence of this variability is currently unclear. Here, we investigate influences of the number of associated semantic features and intercorrelational feature density on language production during picture naming. While the number of semantic features facilitated naming, intercorrelational feature density inhibited naming. Both effects follow naturally from the assumption of conceptual facilitation and simultaneous lexical competition. They are difficult to accommodate with language production theories dismissing lexical competition. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Examining lateralized semantic access using pictures.

PubMed

Lovseth, Kyle; Atchley, Ruth Ann

2010-03-01

A divided visual field (DVF) experiment examined the semantic processing strategies employed by the cerebral hemispheres to determine if strategies observed with written word stimuli generalize to other media for communicating semantic information. We employed picture stimuli and vary the degree of semantic relatedness between the picture pairs. Participants made an on-line semantic relatedness judgment in response to sequentially presented pictures. We found that when pictures are presented to the right hemisphere responses are generally more accurate than the left hemisphere for semantic relatedness judgments for picture pairs. Furthermore, consistent with earlier DVF studies employing words, we conclude that the RH is better at accessing or maintaining access to information that has a weak or more remote semantic relationship. We also found evidence of faster access for pictures presented to the LH in the strongly-related condition. Overall, these results are consistent with earlier DVF word studies that argue that the cerebral hemispheres each play an important and separable role during semantic retrieval. Copyright 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Rule-based support system for multiple UMLS semantic type assignments

PubMed Central

Geller, James; He, Zhe; Perl, Yehoshua; Morrey, C. Paul; Xu, Julia

2012-01-01

Background When new concepts are inserted into the UMLS, they are assigned one or several semantic types from the UMLS Semantic Network by the UMLS editors. However, not every combination of semantic types is permissible. It was observed that many concepts with rare combinations of semantic types have erroneous semantic type assignments or prohibited combinations of semantic types. The correction of such errors is resource-intensive. Objective We design a computational system to inform UMLS editors as to whether a specific combination of two, three, four, or five semantic types is permissible or prohibited or questionable. Methods We identify a set of inclusion and exclusion instructions in the UMLS Semantic Network documentation and derive corresponding rule-categories as well as rule-categories from the UMLS concept content. We then design an algorithm adviseEditor based on these rule-categories. The algorithm specifies rules for an editor how to proceed when considering a tuple (pair, triple, quadruple, quintuple) of semantic types to be assigned to a concept. Results Eight rule-categories were identified. A Web-based system was developed to implement the adviseEditor algorithm, which returns for an input combination of semantic types whether it is permitted, prohibited or (in a few cases) requires more research. The numbers of semantic type pairs assigned to each rule-category are reported. Interesting examples for each rule-category are illustrated. Cases of semantic type assignments that contradict rules are listed, including recently introduced ones. Conclusion The adviseEditor system implements explicit and implicit knowledge available in the UMLS in a system that informs UMLS editors about the permissibility of a desired combination of semantic types. Using adviseEditor might help accelerate the work of the UMLS editors and prevent erroneous semantic type assignments. PMID:23041716

The Influence of rTMS over Prefrontal and Motor Areas in a Morphological Task: Grammatical vs. Semantic Effects

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

LoGerfo, Emanuele; Oliveri, Massimiliano; Torriero, Sara; Salerno, Silvia; Koch, Giacomo; Caltagirone, Carlo

2008-01-01

We investigated the differential role of two frontal regions in the processing of grammatical and semantic knowledge. Given the documented specificity of the prefrontal cortex for the grammatical class of verbs, and of the primary motor cortex for the semantic class of action words, we sought to investigate whether the prefrontal cortex is also…

Towards Semantic e-Science for Traditional Chinese Medicine

PubMed Central

Chen, Huajun; Mao, Yuxin; Zheng, Xiaoqing; Cui, Meng; Feng, Yi; Deng, Shuiguang; Yin, Aining; Zhou, Chunying; Tang, Jinming; Jiang, Xiaohong; Wu, Zhaohui

2007-01-01

Background Recent advances in Web and information technologies with the increasing decentralization of organizational structures have resulted in massive amounts of information resources and domain-specific services in Traditional Chinese Medicine. The massive volume and diversity of information and services available have made it difficult to achieve seamless and interoperable e-Science for knowledge-intensive disciplines like TCM. Therefore, information integration and service coordination are two major challenges in e-Science for TCM. We still lack sophisticated approaches to integrate scientific data and services for TCM e-Science. Results We present a comprehensive approach to build dynamic and extendable e-Science applications for knowledge-intensive disciplines like TCM based on semantic and knowledge-based techniques. The semantic e-Science infrastructure for TCM supports large-scale database integration and service coordination in a virtual organization. We use domain ontologies to integrate TCM database resources and services in a semantic cyberspace and deliver a semantically superior experience including browsing, searching, querying and knowledge discovering to users. We have developed a collection of semantic-based toolkits to facilitate TCM scientists and researchers in information sharing and collaborative research. Conclusion Semantic and knowledge-based techniques are suitable to knowledge-intensive disciplines like TCM. It's possible to build on-demand e-Science system for TCM based on existing semantic and knowledge-based techniques. The presented approach in the paper integrates heterogeneous distributed TCM databases and services, and provides scientists with semantically superior experience to support collaborative research in TCM discipline. PMID:17493289

Investigating Correlation between Protein Sequence Similarity and Semantic Similarity Using Gene Ontology Annotations.

PubMed

Ikram, Najmul; Qadir, Muhammad Abdul; Afzal, Muhammad Tanvir

2018-01-01

Sequence similarity is a commonly used measure to compare proteins. With the increasing use of ontologies, semantic (function) similarity is getting importance. The correlation between these measures has been applied in the evaluation of new semantic similarity methods, and in protein function prediction. In this research, we investigate the relationship between the two similarity methods. The results suggest absence of a strong correlation between sequence and semantic similarities. There is a large number of proteins with low sequence similarity and high semantic similarity. We observe that Pearson's correlation coefficient is not sufficient to explain the nature of this relationship. Interestingly, the term semantic similarity values above 0 and below 1 do not seem to play a role in improving the correlation. That is, the correlation coefficient depends only on the number of common GO terms in proteins under comparison, and the semantic similarity measurement method does not influence it. Semantic similarity and sequence similarity have a distinct behavior. These findings are of significant effect for future works on protein comparison, and will help understand the semantic similarity between proteins in a better way.

Semantic Processing Impairment in Patients with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

PubMed Central

Jaimes-Bautista, Amanda G.; Rodríguez-Camacho, Mario; Martínez-Juárez, Iris E.; Rodríguez-Agudelo, Yaneth

2015-01-01

The impairment in episodic memory system is the best-known cognitive deficit in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Recent studies have shown evidence of semantic disorders, but they have been less studied than episodic memory. The semantic dysfunction in TLE has various cognitive manifestations, such as the presence of language disorders characterized by defects in naming, verbal fluency, or remote semantic information retrieval, which affects the ability of patients to interact with their surroundings. This paper is a review of recent research about the consequences of TLE on semantic processing, considering neuropsychological, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging findings, as well as the functional role of the hippocampus in semantic processing. The evidence from these studies shows disturbance of semantic memory in patients with TLE and supports the theory of declarative memory of the hippocampus. Functional neuroimaging studies show an inefficient compensatory functional reorganization of semantic networks and electrophysiological studies show a lack of N400 effect that could indicate that the deficit in semantic processing in patients with TLE could be due to a failure in the mechanisms of automatic access to lexicon. PMID:26257956

Semantic-gap-oriented active learning for multilabel image annotation.

PubMed

Tang, Jinhui; Zha, Zheng-Jun; Tao, Dacheng; Chua, Tat-Seng

2012-04-01

User interaction is an effective way to handle the semantic gap problem in image annotation. To minimize user effort in the interactions, many active learning methods were proposed. These methods treat the semantic concepts individually or correlatively. However, they still neglect the key motivation of user feedback: to tackle the semantic gap. The size of the semantic gap of each concept is an important factor that affects the performance of user feedback. User should pay more efforts to the concepts with large semantic gaps, and vice versa. In this paper, we propose a semantic-gap-oriented active learning method, which incorporates the semantic gap measure into the information-minimization-based sample selection strategy. The basic learning model used in the active learning framework is an extended multilabel version of the sparse-graph-based semisupervised learning method that incorporates the semantic correlation. Extensive experiments conducted on two benchmark image data sets demonstrated the importance of bringing the semantic gap measure into the active learning process.

Increased functional connectivity in the default mode network in mild cognitive impairment: a maladaptive compensatory mechanism associated with poor semantic memory performance.

PubMed

Gardini, Simona; Venneri, Annalena; Sambataro, Fabio; Cuetos, Fernando; Fasano, Fabrizio; Marchi, Massimo; Crisi, Girolamo; Caffarra, Paolo

2015-01-01

Semantic memory decline and changes of default mode network (DMN) connectivity have been reported in mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Only a few studies, however, have investigated the role of changes of activity in the DMN on semantic memory in this clinical condition. The present study aimed to investigate more extensively the relationship between semantic memory impairment and DMN intrinsic connectivity in MCI. Twenty-one MCI patients and 21 healthy elderly controls matched for demographic variables took part in this study. All participants underwent a comprehensive semantic battery including tasks of category fluency, visual naming and naming from definition for objects, actions and famous people, word-association for early and late acquired words and reading. A subgroup of the original sample (16 MCI patients and 20 healthy elderly controls) was also scanned with resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging and DMN connectivity was estimated using a seed-based approach. Compared with healthy elderly, patients showed an extensive semantic memory decline in category fluency, visual naming, naming from definition, words-association, and reading tasks. Patients presented increased DMN connectivity between the medial prefrontal regions and the posterior cingulate and between the posterior cingulate and the parahippocampus and anterior hippocampus. MCI patients also showed a significant negative correlation of medial prefrontal gyrus connectivity with parahippocampus and posterior hippocampus and visual naming performance. Our findings suggest that increasing DMN connectivity may contribute to semantic memory deficits in MCI, specifically in visual naming. Increased DMN connectivity with posterior cingulate and medio-temporal regions seems to represent a maladaptive reorganization of brain functions in MCI, which detrimentally contributes to cognitive impairment in this clinical population.

The Ventral Anterior Temporal Lobe has a Necessary Role in Exception Word Reading.

PubMed

Ueno, Taiji; Meteyard, Lotte; Hoffman, Paul; Murayama, Kou

2018-06-06

An influential account of reading holds that words with exceptional spelling-to-sound correspondences (e.g., PINT) are read via activation of their lexical-semantic representations, supported by the anterior temporal lobe (ATL). This account has been inconclusive because it is based on neuropsychological evidence, in which lesion-deficit relationships are difficult to localize precisely, and functional neuroimaging data, which is spatially precise but cannot demonstrate whether the ATL activity is necessary for exception word reading. To address these issues, we used a technique with good spatial specificity-repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS)-to demonstrate a necessary role of ATL in exception word reading. Following rTMS to left ventral ATL, healthy Japanese adults made more regularization errors in reading Japanese exception words. We successfully simulated these results in a computational model in which exception word reading was underpinned by semantic activations. The ATL is critically and selectively involved in reading exception words.

How do episodic and semantic memory contribute to episodic foresight in young children?

PubMed

Martin-Ordas, Gema; Atance, Cristina M; Caza, Julian S

2014-01-01

Humans are able to transcend the present and mentally travel to another time, place, or perspective. Mentally projecting ourselves backwards (i.e., episodic memory) or forwards (i.e., episodic foresight) in time are crucial characteristics of the human memory system. Indeed, over the past few years, episodic memory has been argued to be involved both in our capacity to retrieve our personal past experiences and in our ability to imagine and foresee future scenarios. However, recent theory and findings suggest that semantic memory also plays a significant role in imagining future scenarios. We draw on Tulving's definition of episodic and semantic memory to provide a critical analysis of their role in episodic foresight tasks described in the developmental literature. We conclude by suggesting future directions of research that could further our understanding of how both episodic memory and semantic memory are intimately connected to episodic foresight.

Autobiographical memory and well-being in aging: The central role of semantic self-images.

PubMed

Rathbone, Clare J; Holmes, Emily A; Murphy, Susannah E; Ellis, Judi A

2015-05-01

Higher levels of well-being are associated with longer life expectancies and better physical health. Previous studies suggest that processes involving the self and autobiographical memory are related to well-being, yet these relationships are poorly understood. The present study tested 32 older and 32 younger adults using scales measuring well-being and the affective valence of two types of autobiographical memory: episodic autobiographical memories and semantic self-images. Results showed that valence of semantic self-images, but not episodic autobiographical memories, was highly correlated with well-being, particularly in older adults. In contrast, well-being in older adults was unrelated to performance across a range of standardised memory tasks. These results highlight the role of semantic self-images in well-being, and have implications for the development of therapeutic interventions for well-being in aging. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

How do episodic and semantic memory contribute to episodic foresight in young children?

PubMed Central

Martin-Ordas, Gema; Atance, Cristina M.; Caza, Julian S.

2014-01-01

Humans are able to transcend the present and mentally travel to another time, place, or perspective. Mentally projecting ourselves backwards (i.e., episodic memory) or forwards (i.e., episodic foresight) in time are crucial characteristics of the human memory system. Indeed, over the past few years, episodic memory has been argued to be involved both in our capacity to retrieve our personal past experiences and in our ability to imagine and foresee future scenarios. However, recent theory and findings suggest that semantic memory also plays a significant role in imagining future scenarios. We draw on Tulving’s definition of episodic and semantic memory to provide a critical analysis of their role in episodic foresight tasks described in the developmental literature. We conclude by suggesting future directions of research that could further our understanding of how both episodic memory and semantic memory are intimately connected to episodic foresight. PMID:25071690

Orthographic effects in spoken word recognition: Evidence from Chinese.

PubMed

Qu, Qingqing; Damian, Markus F

2017-06-01

Extensive evidence from alphabetic languages demonstrates a role of orthography in the processing of spoken words. Because alphabetic systems explicitly code speech sounds, such effects are perhaps not surprising. However, it is less clear whether orthographic codes are involuntarily accessed from spoken words in languages with non-alphabetic systems, in which the sound-spelling correspondence is largely arbitrary. We investigated the role of orthography via a semantic relatedness judgment task: native Mandarin speakers judged whether or not spoken word pairs were related in meaning. Word pairs were either semantically related, orthographically related, or unrelated. Results showed that relatedness judgments were made faster for word pairs that were semantically related than for unrelated word pairs. Critically, orthographic overlap on semantically unrelated word pairs induced a significant increase in response latencies. These findings indicate that orthographic information is involuntarily accessed in spoken-word recognition, even in a non-alphabetic language such as Chinese.

Comprehension of Concrete and Abstract Words in Patients with Selective Anterior Temporal Lobe Resection and in Patients with Selective Amygdalo-Hippocampectomy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Loiselle, Magalie; Rouleau, Isabelle; Nguyen, Dang Khoa; Dubeau, Francois; Macoir, Joel; Whatmough, Christine; Lepore, Franco; Joubert, Sven

2012-01-01

The role of the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) in semantic memory is now firmly established. There is still controversy, however, regarding the specific role of this region in processing various types of concepts. There have been reports of patients suffering from semantic dementia (SD), a neurodegenerative condition in which the ATL is damaged…

The Pivotal Role of Semantic Memory in Remembering the Past and Imagining the Future

PubMed Central

Irish, Muireann; Piguet, Olivier

2013-01-01

Episodic memory refers to a complex and multifaceted process which enables the retrieval of richly detailed evocative memories from the past. In contrast, semantic memory is conceptualized as the retrieval of general conceptual knowledge divested of a specific spatiotemporal context. The neural substrates of the episodic and semantic memory systems have been dissociated in healthy individuals during functional imaging studies, and in clinical cohorts, leading to the prevailing view that episodic and semantic memory represent functionally distinct systems subtended by discrete neurobiological substrates. Importantly, however, converging evidence focusing on widespread neural networks now points to significant overlap between those regions essential for retrieval of autobiographical memories, episodic learning, and semantic processing. Here we review recent advances in episodic memory research focusing on neurodegenerative populations which has proved revelatory for our understanding of the complex interplay between episodic and semantic memory. Whereas episodic memory research has traditionally focused on retrieval of autobiographical events from the past, we also include evidence from the recent paradigm shift in which episodic memory is viewed as an adaptive and constructive process which facilitates the imagining of possible events in the future. We examine the available evidence which converges to highlight the pivotal role of semantic memory in providing schemas and meaning whether one is engaged in autobiographical retrieval for the past, or indeed, is endeavoring to construct a plausible scenario of an event in the future. It therefore seems plausible to contend that semantic processing may underlie most, if not all, forms of episodic memory, irrespective of temporal condition. PMID:23565081

Semantically Interoperable XML Data

PubMed Central

Vergara-Niedermayr, Cristobal; Wang, Fusheng; Pan, Tony; Kurc, Tahsin; Saltz, Joel

2013-01-01

XML is ubiquitously used as an information exchange platform for web-based applications in healthcare, life sciences, and many other domains. Proliferating XML data are now managed through latest native XML database technologies. XML data sources conforming to common XML schemas could be shared and integrated with syntactic interoperability. Semantic interoperability can be achieved through semantic annotations of data models using common data elements linked to concepts from ontologies. In this paper, we present a framework and software system to support the development of semantic interoperable XML based data sources that can be shared through a Grid infrastructure. We also present our work on supporting semantic validated XML data through semantic annotations for XML Schema, semantic validation and semantic authoring of XML data. We demonstrate the use of the system for a biomedical database of medical image annotations and markups. PMID:25298789

Integrated Semantics Service Platform for the Internet of Things: A Case Study of a Smart Office

PubMed Central

Ryu, Minwoo; Kim, Jaeho; Yun, Jaeseok

2015-01-01

The Internet of Things (IoT) allows machines and devices in the world to connect with each other and generate a huge amount of data, which has a great potential to provide useful knowledge across service domains. Combining the context of IoT with semantic technologies, we can build integrated semantic systems to support semantic interoperability. In this paper, we propose an integrated semantic service platform (ISSP) to support ontological models in various IoT-based service domains of a smart city. In particular, we address three main problems for providing integrated semantic services together with IoT systems: semantic discovery, dynamic semantic representation, and semantic data repository for IoT resources. To show the feasibility of the ISSP, we develop a prototype service for a smart office using the ISSP, which can provide a preset, personalized office environment by interpreting user text input via a smartphone. We also discuss a scenario to show how the ISSP-based method would help build a smart city, where services in each service domain can discover and exploit IoT resources that are wanted across domains. We expect that our method could eventually contribute to providing people in a smart city with more integrated, comprehensive services based on semantic interoperability. PMID:25608216

Integrated semantics service platform for the Internet of Things: a case study of a smart office.

PubMed

Ryu, Minwoo; Kim, Jaeho; Yun, Jaeseok

2015-01-19

The Internet of Things (IoT) allows machines and devices in the world to connect with each other and generate a huge amount of data, which has a great potential to provide useful knowledge across service domains. Combining the context of IoT with semantic technologies, we can build integrated semantic systems to support semantic interoperability. In this paper, we propose an integrated semantic service platform (ISSP) to support ontological models in various IoT-based service domains of a smart city. In particular, we address three main problems for providing integrated semantic services together with IoT systems: semantic discovery, dynamic semantic representation, and semantic data repository for IoT resources. To show the feasibility of the ISSP, we develop a prototype service for a smart office using the ISSP, which can provide a preset, personalized office environment by interpreting user text input via a smartphone. We also discuss a scenario to show how the ISSP-based method would help build a smart city, where services in each service domain can discover and exploit IoT resources that are wanted across domains. We expect that our method could eventually contribute to providing people in a smart city with more integrated, comprehensive services based on semantic interoperability.

Abstract semantics in the motor system? - An event-related fMRI study on passive reading of semantic word categories carrying abstract emotional and mental meaning.

PubMed

Dreyer, Felix R; Pulvermüller, Friedemann

2018-03-01

Previous research showed that modality-preferential sensorimotor areas are relevant for processing concrete words used to speak about actions. However, whether modality-preferential areas also play a role for abstract words is still under debate. Whereas recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies suggest an involvement of motor cortex in processing the meaning of abstract emotion words as, for example, 'love', other non-emotional abstract words, in particular 'mental words', such as 'thought' or 'logic', are believed to engage 'amodal' semantic systems only. In the present event-related fMRI experiment, subjects passively read abstract emotional and mental nouns along with concrete action related words. Contrary to expectation, the results indicate a specific involvement of face motor areas in the processing of mental nouns, resembling that seen for face related action words. This result was confirmed when subject-specific regions of interest (ROIs) defined by motor localizers were used. We conclude that a role of motor systems in semantic processing is not restricted to concrete words but extends to at least some abstract mental symbols previously thought to be entirely 'disembodied' and divorced from semantically related sensorimotor processing. Implications for neurocognitive theories of semantics and clinical applications will be highlighted, paying specific attention to the role of brain activations as indexes of cognitive processes and their relationships to 'causal' studies addressing lesion and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) effects. Possible implications for clinical practice, in particular speech language therapy, are discussed in closing. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

The Yin and the Yang of Prediction: An fMRI Study of Semantic Predictive Processing

PubMed Central

Weber, Kirsten; Lau, Ellen F.; Stillerman, Benjamin; Kuperberg, Gina R.

2016-01-01

Probabilistic prediction plays a crucial role in language comprehension. When predictions are fulfilled, the resulting facilitation allows for fast, efficient processing of ambiguous, rapidly-unfolding input; when predictions are not fulfilled, the resulting error signal allows us to adapt to broader statistical changes in this input. We used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to examine the neuroanatomical networks engaged in semantic predictive processing and adaptation. We used a relatedness proportion semantic priming paradigm, in which we manipulated the probability of predictions while holding local semantic context constant. Under conditions of higher (versus lower) predictive validity, we replicate previous observations of reduced activity to semantically predictable words in the left anterior superior/middle temporal cortex, reflecting facilitated processing of targets that are consistent with prior semantic predictions. In addition, under conditions of higher (versus lower) predictive validity we observed significant differences in the effects of semantic relatedness within the left inferior frontal gyrus and the posterior portion of the left superior/middle temporal gyrus. We suggest that together these two regions mediated the suppression of unfulfilled semantic predictions and lexico-semantic processing of unrelated targets that were inconsistent with these predictions. Moreover, under conditions of higher (versus lower) predictive validity, a functional connectivity analysis showed that the left inferior frontal and left posterior superior/middle temporal gyrus were more tightly interconnected with one another, as well as with the left anterior cingulate cortex. The left anterior cingulate cortex was, in turn, more tightly connected to superior lateral frontal cortices and subcortical regions—a network that mediates rapid learning and adaptation and that may have played a role in switching to a more predictive mode of processing in response to the statistical structure of the wider environmental context. Together, these findings highlight close links between the networks mediating semantic prediction, executive function and learning, giving new insights into how our brains are able to flexibly adapt to our environment. PMID:27010386

The Yin and the Yang of Prediction: An fMRI Study of Semantic Predictive Processing.

PubMed

Weber, Kirsten; Lau, Ellen F; Stillerman, Benjamin; Kuperberg, Gina R

2016-01-01

Probabilistic prediction plays a crucial role in language comprehension. When predictions are fulfilled, the resulting facilitation allows for fast, efficient processing of ambiguous, rapidly-unfolding input; when predictions are not fulfilled, the resulting error signal allows us to adapt to broader statistical changes in this input. We used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to examine the neuroanatomical networks engaged in semantic predictive processing and adaptation. We used a relatedness proportion semantic priming paradigm, in which we manipulated the probability of predictions while holding local semantic context constant. Under conditions of higher (versus lower) predictive validity, we replicate previous observations of reduced activity to semantically predictable words in the left anterior superior/middle temporal cortex, reflecting facilitated processing of targets that are consistent with prior semantic predictions. In addition, under conditions of higher (versus lower) predictive validity we observed significant differences in the effects of semantic relatedness within the left inferior frontal gyrus and the posterior portion of the left superior/middle temporal gyrus. We suggest that together these two regions mediated the suppression of unfulfilled semantic predictions and lexico-semantic processing of unrelated targets that were inconsistent with these predictions. Moreover, under conditions of higher (versus lower) predictive validity, a functional connectivity analysis showed that the left inferior frontal and left posterior superior/middle temporal gyrus were more tightly interconnected with one another, as well as with the left anterior cingulate cortex. The left anterior cingulate cortex was, in turn, more tightly connected to superior lateral frontal cortices and subcortical regions-a network that mediates rapid learning and adaptation and that may have played a role in switching to a more predictive mode of processing in response to the statistical structure of the wider environmental context. Together, these findings highlight close links between the networks mediating semantic prediction, executive function and learning, giving new insights into how our brains are able to flexibly adapt to our environment.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Semantic Memory as a Presymptomatic Biomarker of Alzheimer’s Disease Risk

PubMed Central

Sugarman, Michael A.; Woodard, John L.; Nielson, Kristy A.; Seidenberg, Michael; Smith, J. Carson; Durgerian, Sally; Rao, Stephen M.

2011-01-01

Extensive research efforts have been directed toward strategies for predicting risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD) prior to the appearance of observable symptoms. Existing approaches for early detection of AD vary in terms of their efficacy, invasiveness, and ease of implementation. Several non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging strategies have been developed for predicting decline in cognitively healthy older adults. This review will survey a number of studies, beginning with the development of a famous name discrimination task used to identify neural regions that participate in semantic memory retrieval and to test predictions of several key theories of the role of the hippocampus in memory. This task has revealed medial temporal and neocortical contributions to recent and remote memory retrieval, and it has been used to demonstrate compensatory neural recruitment in older adults, apolipoprotein E ε4 carriers, and amnestic mild cognitive impairment patients. Recently, we have also found that the famous name discrimination task provides predictive value for forecasting episodic memory decline among asymptomatic older adults. Other studies investigating the predictive value of semantic memory tasks will also be presented. We suggest several advantages associated with the use of semantic processing tasks, particularly those based on person identification, in comparison to episodic memory tasks to study AD risk. Future directions for research and potential clinical uses of semantic memory paradigms are also discussed. PMID:21996618

The effects of semantic congruency: a research of audiovisual P300-speller.

PubMed

Cao, Yong; An, Xingwei; Ke, Yufeng; Jiang, Jin; Yang, Hanjun; Chen, Yuqian; Jiao, Xuejun; Qi, Hongzhi; Ming, Dong

2017-07-25

Over the past few decades, there have been many studies of aspects of brain-computer interface (BCI). Of particular interests are event-related potential (ERP)-based BCI spellers that aim at helping mental typewriting. Nowadays, audiovisual unimodal stimuli based BCI systems have attracted much attention from researchers, and most of the existing studies of audiovisual BCIs were based on semantic incongruent stimuli paradigm. However, no related studies had reported that whether there is difference of system performance or participant comfort between BCI based on semantic congruent paradigm and that based on semantic incongruent paradigm. The goal of this study was to investigate the effects of semantic congruency in system performance and participant comfort in audiovisual BCI. Two audiovisual paradigms (semantic congruent and incongruent) were adopted, and 11 healthy subjects participated in the experiment. High-density electrical mapping of ERPs and behavioral data were measured for the two stimuli paradigms. The behavioral data indicated no significant difference between congruent and incongruent paradigms for offline classification accuracy. Nevertheless, eight of the 11 participants reported their priority to semantic congruent experiment, two reported no difference between the two conditions, and only one preferred the semantic incongruent paradigm. Besides, the result indicted that higher amplitude of ERP was found in incongruent stimuli based paradigm. In a word, semantic congruent paradigm had a better participant comfort, and maintained the same recognition rate as incongruent paradigm. Furthermore, our study suggested that the paradigm design of spellers must take both system performance and user experience into consideration rather than merely pursuing a larger ERP response.

Working memory and semantic involvement in sentence processing: a case of pure progressive amnesia.

PubMed

Fossard, Marion; Rigalleau, François; Puel, Michèle; Nespoulous, Jean-Luc; Viallard, Gérard; Démonet, Jean-François; Cardebat, Dominique

2006-01-01

ED, a 83-year-old woman, meets the criteria of pure progressive amnesia, with gradual impairment of episodic and autobiographical memory, sparing of semantic processing and strong working memory (WM) deficit. The dissociation between disturbed WM and spared semantic processing permitted testing the role of WM in processing anaphors like pronouns or repeated names. Results showed a globally normal anaphoric behavior in two experiments requiring anaphoric processing in sentence production and comprehension. We suggest that preserved semantic processing in ED would have compensated for working memory deficit in anaphoric processing.

The Effects of Emotion on Episodic Memory for TV Commercials.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thorson, Esther; Friestad, Marian

Based on the associational nature of memory, the distinction between episodic and semantic memory, and the notion of memory strength, a model was developed of the role of emotion in the memory of television commercials. The model generated the following hypotheses: (1) emotional commercials will more likely be recalled than nonemotional…

Multidatabase Query Processing with Uncertainty in Global Keys and Attribute Values.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Scheuermann, Peter; Li, Wen-Syan; Clifton, Chris

1998-01-01

Presents an approach for dynamic database integration and query processing in the absence of information about attribute correspondences and global IDs. Defines different types of equivalence conditions for the construction of global IDs. Proposes a strategy based on ranked role-sets that makes use of an automated semantic integration procedure…

A Semantic Rule-Based Framework for Efficient Retrieval of Educational Materials

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mahmoudi, Maryam Tayefeh; Taghiyareh, Fattaneh; Badie, Kambiz

2013-01-01

Retrieving resources in an appropriate manner has a promising role in increasing the performance of educational support systems. A variety of works have been done to organize materials for educational purposes using tagging techniques. Despite the effectiveness of these techniques within certain domains, organizing resources in a way being…

Parametric effects of syntactic-semantic conflict in Broca's area during sentence processing.

PubMed

Thothathiri, Malathi; Kim, Albert; Trueswell, John C; Thompson-Schill, Sharon L

2012-03-01

The hypothesized role of Broca's area in sentence processing ranges from domain-general executive function to domain-specific computation that is specific to certain syntactic structures. We examined this issue by manipulating syntactic structure and conflict between syntactic and semantic cues in a sentence processing task. Functional neuroimaging revealed that activation within several Broca's area regions of interest reflected the parametric variation in syntactic-semantic conflict. These results suggest that Broca's area supports sentence processing by mediating between multiple incompatible constraints on sentence interpretation, consistent with this area's well-known role in conflict resolution in other linguistic and non-linguistic tasks. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Semantic congruence enhances memory of episodic associations: role of theta oscillations.

PubMed

Atienza, Mercedes; Crespo-Garcia, Maite; Cantero, Jose L

2011-01-01

Growing evidence suggests that theta oscillations play a crucial role in episodic encoding. The present study evaluates whether changes in electroencephalographic theta source dynamics mediate the positive influence of semantic congruence on incidental associative learning. Here we show that memory for episodic associations (face-location) is more accurate when studied under semantically congruent contexts. However, only participants showing RT priming effect in a conceptual priming test (priming group) also gave faster responses when recollecting source information of semantically congruent faces as compared with semantically incongruent faces. This improved episodic retrieval was positively correlated with increases in theta power during the study phase mainly in the bilateral parahippocampal gyrus, left superior temporal gyrus, and left lateral posterior parietal lobe. Reconstructed signals from the estimated sources showed higher theta power for congruent than incongruent faces and also for the priming than the nonpriming group. These results are in agreement with the attention to memory model. Besides directing top-down attention to goal-relevant semantic information during encoding, the dorsal parietal lobe may also be involved in redirecting attention to bottom-up-driven memories thanks to connections between the medial-temporal and the left ventral parietal lobe. The latter function can either facilitate or interfere with encoding of face-location associations depending on whether they are preceded by semantically congruent or incongruent contexts, respectively, because only in the former condition retrieved representations related to the cue and the face are both coherent with the person identity and are both associated with the same location.

The role of orthography in the semantic activation of neighbors.

PubMed

Hino, Yasushi; Lupker, Stephen J; Taylor, Tamsen E

2012-09-01

There is now considerable evidence that a letter string can activate semantic information appropriate to its orthographic neighbors (e.g., Forster & Hector's, 2002, TURPLE effect). This phenomenon is the focus of the present research. Using Japanese words, we examined whether semantic activation of neighbors is driven directly by orthographic similarity alone or whether there is also a role for phonological similarity. In Experiment 1, using a relatedness judgment task in which a Kanji word-Katakana word pair was presented on each trial, an inhibitory effect was observed when the initial Kanji word was related to an orthographic and phonological neighbor of the Katakana word target but not when the initial Kanji word was related to a phonological but not orthographic neighbor of the Katakana word target. This result suggests that phonology plays little, if any, role in the activation of neighbors' semantics when reading familiar words. In Experiment 2, the targets were transcribed into Hiragana, a script they are typically not written in, requiring readers to engage in phonological coding. In that experiment, inhibitory effects were observed in both conditions. This result indicates that phonologically mediated semantic activation of neighbors will emerge when phonological processing is necessary in order to understand a written word (e.g., when that word is transcribed into an unfamiliar script). PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved.

The Function of Semantics in Automated Language Processing.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pacak, Milos; Pratt, Arnold W.

This paper is a survey of some of the major semantic models that have been developed for automated semantic analysis of natural language. Current approaches to semantic analysis and logical interference are based mainly on models of human cognitive processes such as Quillian's semantic memory, Simmon's Protosynthex III and others. All existing…

Attractor Dynamics and Semantic Neighborhood Density: Processing Is Slowed by Near Neighbors and Speeded by Distant Neighbors

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mirman, Daniel; Magnuson, James S.

2008-01-01

The authors investigated semantic neighborhood density effects on visual word processing to examine the dynamics of activation and competition among semantic representations. Experiment 1 validated feature-based semantic representations as a basis for computing semantic neighborhood density and suggested that near and distant neighbors have…

Semantic-based surveillance video retrieval.

PubMed

Hu, Weiming; Xie, Dan; Fu, Zhouyu; Zeng, Wenrong; Maybank, Steve

2007-04-01

Visual surveillance produces large amounts of video data. Effective indexing and retrieval from surveillance video databases are very important. Although there are many ways to represent the content of video clips in current video retrieval algorithms, there still exists a semantic gap between users and retrieval systems. Visual surveillance systems supply a platform for investigating semantic-based video retrieval. In this paper, a semantic-based video retrieval framework for visual surveillance is proposed. A cluster-based tracking algorithm is developed to acquire motion trajectories. The trajectories are then clustered hierarchically using the spatial and temporal information, to learn activity models. A hierarchical structure of semantic indexing and retrieval of object activities, where each individual activity automatically inherits all the semantic descriptions of the activity model to which it belongs, is proposed for accessing video clips and individual objects at the semantic level. The proposed retrieval framework supports various queries including queries by keywords, multiple object queries, and queries by sketch. For multiple object queries, succession and simultaneity restrictions, together with depth and breadth first orders, are considered. For sketch-based queries, a method for matching trajectories drawn by users to spatial trajectories is proposed. The effectiveness and efficiency of our framework are tested in a crowded traffic scene.

How meaning similarity influences ambiguous word processing: the current state of the literature

PubMed Central

Tokowicz, Natasha

2016-01-01

The majority of words in the English language do not correspond to a single meaning, but rather correspond to two or more unrelated meanings (i.e., are homonyms) or multiple related senses (i.e., are polysemes). It has been proposed that the different types of “semantically-ambiguous words” (i.e., words with more than one meaning) are processed and represented differently in the human mind. Several review papers and books have been written on the subject of semantic ambiguity (e.g., Adriaens, Small, Cottrell, & Tanenhaus, 1988; Burgess & Simpson, 1988; Degani & Tokowicz, 2010; Gorfein, 1989, 2001; Simpson, 1984). However, several more recent studies (e.g., Klein & Murphy, 2001; Klepousniotou, 2002; Klepousniotou & Baum, 2007; Rodd, Gaskell, & Marslen-Wilson, 2002) have investigated the role of the semantic similarity between the multiple meanings of ambiguous words on processing and representation, whereas this was not the emphasis of previous reviews of the literature. In this review, we focus on the current state of the semantic ambiguity literature that examines how different types of ambiguous words influence processing and representation. We analyze the consistent and inconsistent findings reported in the literature and how factors such as semantic similarity, meaning/sense frequency, task, timing, and modality affect ambiguous word processing. We discuss the findings with respect to recent parallel distributed processing (PDP) models of ambiguity processing (Armstrong & Plaut, 2008, 2011; Rodd, Gaskell, & Marslen-Wilson, 2004). Finally, we discuss how experience/instance-based models (e.g., Hintzman, 1986; Reichle & Perfetti, 2003) can inform a comprehensive understanding of semantic ambiguity resolution. PMID:24889119

Discovering Central Practitioners in a Medical Discussion Forum Using Semantic Web Analytics.

PubMed

Rajabi, Enayat; Abidi, Syed Sibte Raza

2017-01-01

The aim of this paper is to investigate semantic web based methods to enrich and transform a medical discussion forum in order to perform semantics-driven social network analysis. We use the centrality measures as well as semantic similarity metrics to identify the most influential practitioners within a discussion forum. The centrality results of our approach are in line with centrality measures produced by traditional SNA methods, thus validating the applicability of semantic web based methods for SNA, particularly for analyzing social networks for specialized discussion forums.

Preserved semantic access in global amnesia and hippocampal damage.

PubMed

Giovagnoli, A R; Erbetta, A; Bugiani, O

2001-12-01

C.B., a right-handed 33-year-old man, presented with anterograde amnesia after acute heart block. Cognitive abilities were normal except for serious impairment of long-term episodic memory. The access to semantic information was fully preserved. Magnetic resonance showed high signal intensity and marked volume loss in the hippocampus bilaterally; the left and right parahippocampal gyrus, lateral occipito-temporal gyrus, inferior temporal gyrus, and lateral temporal cortex were normal. This case underlines that global amnesia associated with hippocampal damage does not affect semantic memory. Although the hippocampus is important in retrieving context-linked information, its role is not so crucial in retrieving semantic contents. Cortical areas surrounding the hippocampus and lateral temporal areas might guide the recall of semantic information.

Semantic knowledge fractionations: verbal propositions vs. perceptual input? Evidence from a child with Klinefelter syndrome.

PubMed

Robinson, Sally J; Temple, Christine M

2013-04-01

This paper addresses the relative independence of different types of lexical- and factually-based semantic knowledge in JM, a 9-year-old boy with Klinefelter syndrome (KS). JM was matched to typically developing (TD) controls on the basis of chronological age. Lexical-semantic knowledge was investigated for common noun (CN) and mathematical vocabulary items (MV). Factually-based semantic knowledge was investigated for general and number facts. For CN items, JM's lexical stores were of a normal size but the volume of correct 'sensory feature' semantic knowledge he generated within verbal item descriptions was significantly reduced. He was also significantly impaired at naming item descriptions and pictures, particularly for fruit and vegetables. There was also weak object decision for fruit and vegetables. In contrast, for MV items, JM's lexical stores were elevated, with no significant difference in the amount and type of correct semantic knowledge generated within verbal item descriptions and normal naming. JM's fact retrieval accuracy was normal for all types of factual knowledge. JM's performance indicated a dissociation between the representation of CN and MV vocabulary items during development. JM's preserved semantic knowledge of facts in the face of impaired semantic knowledge of vocabulary also suggests that factually-based semantic knowledge representation is not dependent on normal lexical-semantic knowledge during development. These findings are discussed in relation to the emergence of distinct semantic knowledge representations during development, due to differing degrees of dependency upon the acquisition and representation of semantic knowledge from verbal propositions and perceptual input.

Cerebellar tDCS Modulates Neural Circuits during Semantic Prediction: A Combined tDCS-fMRI Study.

PubMed

D'Mello, Anila M; Turkeltaub, Peter E; Stoodley, Catherine J

2017-02-08

It has been proposed that the cerebellum acquires internal models of mental processes that enable prediction, allowing for the optimization of behavior. In language, semantic prediction speeds speech production and comprehension. Right cerebellar lobules VI and VII (including Crus I/II) are engaged during a variety of language processes and are functionally connected with cerebral cortical language networks. Further, right posterolateral cerebellar neuromodulation modifies behavior during predictive language processing. These data are consistent with a role for the cerebellum in semantic processing and semantic prediction. We combined transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and fMRI to assess the behavioral and neural consequences of cerebellar tDCS during a sentence completion task. Task-based and resting-state fMRI data were acquired in healthy human adults ( n = 32; μ = 23.1 years) both before and after 20 min of 1.5 mA anodal ( n = 18) or sham ( n = 14) tDCS applied to the right posterolateral cerebellum. In the sentence completion task, the first four words of the sentence modulated the predictability of the final target word. In some sentences, the preceding context strongly predicted the target word, whereas other sentences were nonpredictive. Completion of predictive sentences increased activation in right Crus I/II of the cerebellum. Relative to sham tDCS, anodal tDCS increased activation in right Crus I/II during semantic prediction and enhanced resting-state functional connectivity between hubs of the reading/language networks. These results are consistent with a role for the right posterolateral cerebellum beyond motor aspects of language, and suggest that cerebellar internal models of linguistic stimuli support semantic prediction. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Cerebellar involvement in language tasks and language networks is now well established, yet the specific cerebellar contribution to language processing remains unclear. It is thought that the cerebellum acquires internal models of mental processes that enable prediction, allowing for the optimization of behavior. Here we combined neuroimaging and neuromodulation to provide evidence that the cerebellum is specifically involved in semantic prediction during sentence processing. We found that activation within right Crus I/II was enhanced when semantic predictions were made, and we show that modulation of this region with transcranial direct current stimulation alters both activation patterns and functional connectivity within whole-brain language networks. For the first time, these data show that cerebellar neuromodulation impacts activation patterns specifically during predictive language processing. Copyright © 2017 the authors 0270-6474/17/371604-10$15.00/0.

Semantic priming in the lexical decision task: roles of prospective prime-generated expectancies and retrospective semantic matching.

PubMed

Neely, J H; Keefe, D E; Ross, K L

1989-11-01

In semantic priming paradigms for lexical decisions, the probability that a word target is semantically related to its prime (the relatedness proportion) has been confounded with the probability that a target is a nonword, given that it is unrelated to its prime (the nonword ratio). This study unconfounded these two probabilities in a lexical decision task with category names as primes and with high- and low-dominance exemplars as targets. Semantic priming for high-dominance exemplars was modulated by the relatedness proportion and, to a lesser degree, by the nonword ratio. However, the nonword ratio exerted a stronger influence than did the relatedness proportion on semantic priming for low-dominance exemplars and on the nonword facilitation effect (i.e., the superiority in performance for nonword targets that follow a category name rather than a neutral XXX prime). These results suggest that semantic priming for lexical decisions is affected by both a prospective prime-generated expectancy, modulated by the relatedness proportion, and a retrospective target/prime semantic matching process, modulated by the nonword ratio.

Executive Semantic Processing Is Underpinned by a Large-scale Neural Network: Revealing the Contribution of Left Prefrontal, Posterior Temporal, and Parietal Cortex to Controlled Retrieval and Selection Using TMS

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Whitney, Carin; Kirk, Marie; O'Sullivan, Jamie; Ralph, Matthew A. Lambon; Jefferies, Elizabeth

2012-01-01

To understand the meanings of words and objects, we need to have knowledge about these items themselves plus executive mechanisms that compute and manipulate semantic information in a task-appropriate way. The neural basis for semantic control remains controversial. Neuroimaging studies have focused on the role of the left inferior frontal gyrus…

Semantic categorization: a comparison between deaf and hearing children.

PubMed

Ormel, Ellen A; Gijsel, Martine A R; Hermans, Daan; Bosman, Anna M T; Knoors, Harry; Verhoeven, Ludo

2010-01-01

Learning to read is a major obstacle for children who are deaf. The otherwise significant role of phonology is often limited as a result of hearing loss. However, semantic knowledge may facilitate reading comprehension. One important aspect of semantic knowledge concerns semantic categorization. In the present study, the quality of the semantic categorization of both deaf and hearing children was examined for written words and pictures at two categorization levels. The deaf children performed better at the picture condition compared to the written word condition, while the hearing children performed similarly at pictures and written words. The hearing children outperformed the deaf children, in particular for written words. In addition, the results of the deaf children for the written words correlated to their sign vocabulary and sign language comprehension. The increase in semantic categorization was limited across elementary school grade levels. Readers will be able to: (1) understand several semantic categorization differences between groups of deaf and hearing children; (2) describe factors that may affect the development of semantic categorization, in particular the relationship between sign language skills and semantic categorization for deaf children. Copyright 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From the Bench to the Bedside: The Role of Semantic Web and Translational Medicine for Enabling the Next Generation Healthcare Enterprise

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kashyap, Vipul

The success of new innovations and technologies are very often disruptive in nature. At the same time, they enable novel next generation infrastructures and solutions. These solutions introduce great efficiencies in the form of efficient processes and the ability to create, organize, share and manage knowledge effectively; and the same time provide crucial enablers for proposing and realizing new visions. In this paper, we propose a new vision of the next generation healthcare enterprise and discuss how Translational Medicine, which aims to improve communication between the basic and clinical sciences, is a key requirement for achieving this vision. This will lead therapeutic insights may be derived from new scientific ideas - and vice versa. Translation research goes from bench to bedside, where theories emerging from preclinical experimentation are tested on disease-affected human subjects, and from bedside to bench, where information obtained from preliminary human experimentation can be used to refine our understanding of the biological principles underpinning the heterogeneity of human disease and polymorphism(s). Informatics and semantic technologies in particular, has a big role to play in making this a reality. We identify critical requirements, viz., data integration, clinical decision support and knowledge maintenance and provenance; and illustrate semantics-based solutions wrt example scenarios and use cases.

Somatotopic Semantic Priming and Prediction in the Motor System

PubMed Central

Grisoni, Luigi; Dreyer, Felix R.; Pulvermüller, Friedemann

2016-01-01

The recognition of action-related sounds and words activates motor regions, reflecting the semantic grounding of these symbols in action information; in addition, motor cortex exerts causal influences on sound perception and language comprehension. However, proponents of classic symbolic theories still dispute the role of modality-preferential systems such as the motor cortex in the semantic processing of meaningful stimuli. To clarify whether the motor system carries semantic processes, we investigated neurophysiological indexes of semantic relationships between action-related sounds and words. Event-related potentials revealed that action-related words produced significantly larger stimulus-evoked (Mismatch Negativity-like) and predictive brain responses (Readiness Potentials) when presented in body-part-incongruent sound contexts (e.g., “kiss” in footstep sound context; “kick” in whistle context) than in body-part-congruent contexts, a pattern reminiscent of neurophysiological correlates of semantic priming. Cortical generators of the semantic relatedness effect were localized in areas traditionally associated with semantic memory, including left inferior frontal cortex and temporal pole, and, crucially, in motor areas, where body-part congruency of action sound–word relationships was indexed by a somatotopic pattern of activation. As our results show neurophysiological manifestations of action-semantic priming in the motor cortex, they prove semantic processing in the motor system and thus in a modality-preferential system of the human brain. PMID:26908635

A resource-saving collective approach to biomedical semantic role labeling

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

Background Biomedical semantic role labeling (BioSRL) is a natural language processing technique that identifies the semantic roles of the words or phrases in sentences describing biological processes and expresses them as predicate-argument structures (PAS’s). Currently, a major problem of BioSRL is that most systems label every node in a full parse tree independently; however, some nodes always exhibit dependency. In general SRL, collective approaches based on the Markov logic network (MLN) model have been successful in dealing with this problem. However, in BioSRL such an approach has not been attempted because it would require more training data to recognize the more specialized and diverse terms found in biomedical literature, increasing training time and computational complexity. Results We first constructed a collective BioSRL system based on MLN. This system, called collective BIOSMILE (CBIOSMILE), is trained on the BioProp corpus. To reduce the resources used in BioSRL training, we employ a tree-pruning filter to remove unlikely nodes from the parse tree and four argument candidate identifiers to retain candidate nodes in the tree. Nodes not recognized by any candidate identifier are discarded. The pruned annotated parse trees are used to train a resource-saving MLN-based system, which is referred to as resource-saving collective BIOSMILE (RCBIOSMILE). Our experimental results show that our proposed CBIOSMILE system outperforms BIOSMILE, which is the top BioSRL system. Furthermore, our proposed RCBIOSMILE maintains the same level of accuracy as CBIOSMILE using 92% less memory and 57% less training time. Conclusions This greatly improved efficiency makes RCBIOSMILE potentially suitable for training on much larger BioSRL corpora over more biomedical domains. Compared to real-world biomedical corpora, BioProp is relatively small, containing only 445 MEDLINE abstracts and 30 event triggers. It is not large enough for practical applications, such as pathway construction. We consider it of primary importance to pursue SRL training on large corpora in the future. PMID:24884358

Distributed semantic networks and CLIPS

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Snyder, James; Rodriguez, Tony

1991-01-01

Semantic networks of frames are commonly used as a method of reasoning in many problems. In most of these applications the semantic network exists as a single entity in a single process environment. Advances in workstation hardware provide support for more sophisticated applications involving multiple processes, interacting in a distributed environment. In these applications the semantic network may well be distributed over several concurrently executing tasks. This paper describes the design and implementation of a frame based, distributed semantic network in which frames are accessed both through C Language Integrated Production System (CLIPS) expert systems and procedural C++ language programs. The application area is a knowledge based, cooperative decision making model utilizing both rule based and procedural experts.

Examining the Relationship Between Word Reading Efficiency and Oral Reading Rate in Predicting Comprehension Among Different Types of Readers

PubMed Central

Eason, Sarah H.; Sabatini, John; Goldberg, Lindsay; Bruce, Kelly; Cutting, Laurie E.

2013-01-01

To further explore contextual reading rate, an important aspect of reading fluency, we examined the relationship between word reading efficiency (WRE) and contextual oral reading rate (ORR), the degree to which they overlap across different comprehension measures, whether oral language (semantics and syntax) predicts ORR beyond contributions of word-level skills, and whether the WRE–ORR relationship varies based on different reader profiles. Assessing reading and language of average readers, poor decoders, and poor comprehenders, ages 10 to 14, ORR was the strongest predictor of comprehension across various formats; WRE contributed no unique variance after taking ORR into account. Findings indicated that semantics, not syntax, contributed to ORR. Poor comprehenders performed below average on measures of ORR, despite average WRE, expanding previous findings suggesting specific weaknesses in ORR for this group. Together, findings suggest that ORR draws upon skills beyond those captured by WRE and suggests a role for oral language (semantics) in ORR. PMID:23667307

Levels of processing with free and cued recall and unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy.

PubMed

Lespinet-Najib, Véronique; N'Kaoua, Bernard; Sauzéon, Hélène; Bresson, Christel; Rougier, Alain; Claverie, Bernard

2004-04-01

This study investigates the role of the temporal lobes in levels-of-processing tasks (phonetic and semantic encoding) according to the nature of recall tasks (free and cued recall). These tasks were administered to 48 patients with unilateral temporal epilepsy (right "RTLE"=24; left "LTLE"=24) and a normal group (n=24). The results indicated that LTLE patients were impaired for semantic processing (free and cued recall) and for phonetic processing (free and cued recall), while for RTLE patients deficits appeared in free recall with semantic processing. It is suggested that the left temporal lobe is involved in all aspects of verbal memory, and that the right temporal lobe is specialized in semantic processing. Moreover, our data seem to indicate that RTLE patients present a retrieval processing impairment (semantic condition), whereas the LTLE group is characterized by encoding difficulties in the phonetic and semantic condition.

Imageability and semantic association in the representation and processing of event verbs.

PubMed

Xu, Xu; Kang, Chunyan; Guo, Taomei

2016-05-01

This study examined the relative salience of imageability (the degree to which a word evokes mental imagery) versus semantic association (the density of semantic network in which a word is embedded) in the representation and processing of four types of event verbs: sensory, cognitive, speech, and motor verbs. ERP responses were recorded, while 34 university students performed on a lexical decision task. Analysis focused primarily on amplitude differences across verb conditions within the N400 time window where activities are considered representing meaning activation. Variation in N400 amplitude across four types of verbs was found significantly associated with the level of imageability, but not the level of semantic association. The findings suggest imageability as a more salient factor relative to semantic association in the processing of these verbs. The role of semantic association and the representation of speech verbs are also discussed.

Hippocampal activation during retrieval of spatial context from episodic and semantic memory.

PubMed

Hoscheidt, Siobhan M; Nadel, Lynn; Payne, Jessica; Ryan, Lee

2010-10-15

The hippocampus, a region implicated in the processing of spatial information and episodic memory, is central to the debate concerning the relationship between episodic and semantic memory. Studies of medial temporal lobe amnesic patients provide evidence that the hippocampus is critical for the retrieval of episodic but not semantic memory. On the other hand, recent neuroimaging studies of intact individuals report hippocampal activation during retrieval of both autobiographical memories and semantic information that includes historical facts, famous faces, and categorical information, suggesting that episodic and semantic memory may engage the hippocampus during memory retrieval in similar ways. Few studies have matched episodic and semantic tasks for the degree to which they include spatial content, even though spatial content may be what drives hippocampal activation during semantic retrieval. To examine this issue, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study in which retrieval of spatial and nonspatial information was compared during an episodic and semantic recognition task. Results show that the hippocampus (1) participates preferentially in the retrieval of episodic memories; (2) is also engaged by retrieval of semantic memories, particularly those that include spatial information. These data suggest that sharp dissociations between episodic and semantic memory may be overly simplistic and that the hippocampus plays a role in the retrieval of spatial content whether drawn from a memory of one's own life experiences or real-world semantic knowledge. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Integrating Dynamic Data and Sensors with Semantic 3D City Models in the Context of Smart Cities

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chaturvedi, K.; Kolbe, T. H.

2016-10-01

Smart cities provide effective integration of human, physical and digital systems operating in the built environment. The advancements in city and landscape models, sensor web technologies, and simulation methods play a significant role in city analyses and improving quality of life of citizens and governance of cities. Semantic 3D city models can provide substantial benefits and can become a central information backbone for smart city infrastructures. However, current generation semantic 3D city models are static in nature and do not support dynamic properties and sensor observations. In this paper, we propose a new concept called Dynamizer allowing to represent highly dynamic data and providing a method for injecting dynamic variations of city object properties into the static representation. The approach also provides direct capability to model complex patterns based on statistics and general rules and also, real-time sensor observations. The concept is implemented as an Application Domain Extension for the CityGML standard. However, it could also be applied to other GML-based application schemas including the European INSPIRE data themes and national standards for topography and cadasters like the British Ordnance Survey Mastermap or the German cadaster standard ALKIS.

Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Mechanics:. the Role of Evidence Theory, Quantum Sets, and Modal Logic

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Resconi, Germano; Klir, George J.; Pessa, Eliano

Recognizing that syntactic and semantic structures of classical logic are not sufficient to understand the meaning of quantum phenomena, we propose in this paper a new interpretation of quantum mechanics based on evidence theory. The connection between these two theories is obtained through a new language, quantum set theory, built on a suggestion by J. Bell. Further, we give a modal logic interpretation of quantum mechanics and quantum set theory by using Kripke's semantics of modal logic based on the concept of possible worlds. This is grounded on previous work of a number of researchers (Resconi, Klir, Harmanec) who showed how to represent evidence theory and other uncertainty theories in terms of modal logic. Moreover, we also propose a reformulation of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics in terms of Kripke's semantics. We thus show how three different theories — quantum mechanics, evidence theory, and modal logic — are interrelated. This opens, on one hand, the way to new applications of quantum mechanics within domains different from the traditional ones, and, on the other hand, the possibility of building new generalizations of quantum mechanics itself.

Individual Differences in a Spatial-Semantic Virtual Environment.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chen, Chaomei

2000-01-01

Presents two empirical case studies concerning the role of individual differences in searching through a spatial-semantic virtual environment. Discusses information visualization in information systems; cognitive factors, including associative memory, spatial ability, and visual memory; user satisfaction; and cognitive abilities and search…

Requiem for a Data Base System.

DTIC Science & Technology

1979-01-18

were defined -- - 2) the final syntax and semantics of QUEL were defined 3) protection was figured out 14) EQUEL was designed 5) concurrency control and...features which were not thought about in the initial design (such as concurrency control and recovery) and began worrying about distributed data...made in progress rather than on eventual corrections. Some attention is also given to the role of structured design in a data base system implementation

Grammatical markers switch roles and elicit different electrophysiological responses under shallow and deep semantic requirements.

PubMed

Soshi, Takahiro; Nakajima, Heizo; Hagiwara, Hiroko

2016-10-01

Static knowledge about the grammar of a natural language is represented in the cortico-subcortical system. However, the differences in dynamic verbal processing under different cognitive conditions are unclear. To clarify this, we conducted an electrophysiological experiment involving a semantic priming paradigm in which semantically congruent or incongruent word sequences (prime nouns-target verbs) were randomly presented. We examined the event-related brain potentials that occurred in response to congruent and incongruent target words that were preceded by primes with or without grammatical case markers. The two participant groups performed either the shallow (lexical judgment) or deep (direct semantic judgment) semantic tasks. We hypothesized that, irrespective of the case markers, the congruent targets would reduce centro-posterior N400 activities under the deep semantic condition, which induces selective attention to the semantic relatedness of content words. However, the same congruent targets with correct case markers would reduce lateralized negativity under the shallow semantic condition because grammatical case markers are related to automatic structural integration under semantically unattended conditions. We observed that congruent targets (e.g., 'open') that were preceded by primes with congruent case markers (e.g., 'shutter-object case') reduced lateralized negativity under the shallow semantic condition. In contrast, congruent targets, irrespective of case markers, consistently yielded N400 reductions under the deep semantic condition. To summarize, human neural verbal processing differed in response to the same grammatical markers in the same verbal expressions under semantically attended or unattended conditions.

Event-Based Prospective Memory Is Independently Associated with Self-Report of Medication Management in Older Adults

PubMed Central

Woods, Steven Paul; Weinborn, Michael; Maxwell, Brenton R.; Gummery, Alice; Mo, Kevin; Ng, Amanda R. J.; Bucks, Romola S.

2014-01-01

Background Identifying potentially modifiable risk factors for medication non-adherence in older adults is important in order to enhance screening and intervention efforts designed to improve medication-taking behavior and health outcomes. The current study sought to determine the unique contribution of prospective memory (i.e., “remembering to remember”) to successful self-reported medication management in older adults. Methods Sixty-five older adults with current medication prescriptions completed a comprehensive research evaluation of sociodemographic, psychiatric, and neurocognitive functioning, which included the Memory for Adherence to Medication Scale (MAMS), Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ), and a performance-based measure of prospective memory that measured both semantically-related and semantically-unrelated cue-intention (i.e., when-what) pairings. Results A series of hierarchical regressions controlling for biopsychosocial, other neurocognitive, and medication-related factors showed that elevated complaints on the PM scale of the PRMQ and worse performance on an objective semantically-unrelated event-based prospective memory task were independent predictors of poorer medication adherence as measured by the MAMS. Conclusions Prospective memory plays an important role in self-report of successful medication management among older adults. Findings may have implications for screening for older individuals “at risk” of non-adherence, as well as the development of prospective memory-based interventions to improve medication adherence and, ultimately, long-term health outcomes in older adults. PMID:24410357

Electrophysiological Evidence for Use of the Animacy Hierarchy, but not Thematic Role Assignment, During Verb Argument Processing

PubMed Central

Paczynski, Martin; Kuperberg, Gina R.

2011-01-01

Animacy is known to play an important role in language processing and production, but debate remains as to how it exerts its effects: 1) through links to syntactic ordering, 2) through inherent differences between animate and inanimate entities in their salience/lexico-semantic accessibility, 3) through links to specific thematic roles. We contrasted these three accounts in two event related potential (ERP) experiments examining the processing of direct object arguments in simple English sentences. In Experiment 1, we found a larger N400 to animate than inanimate direct object arguments assigned the Patient role, ruling out the second account. In Experiment 2 we found no difference in the N400 evoked by animate direct object arguments assigned the Patient role (prototypically inanimate) and those assigned the Experiencer role (prototypically animate), ruling out the third account. We therefore suggest that animacy may impact processing through a direct link to syntactic linear ordering, at least on post-verbal arguments in English. We also examined processing on direct object arguments that violated the animacy-based selection restriction constraints of their preceding verbs. These violations evoked a robust P600, which was not modulated by thematic role assignment or reversibility, suggesting that the so-called semantic P600 is driven by overall propositional impossibility, rather than thematic role reanalysis. PMID:22199415

The Role of Semantic Clustering in Optimal Memory Foraging.

PubMed

Montez, Priscilla; Thompson, Graham; Kello, Christopher T

2015-11-01

Recent studies of semantic memory have investigated two theories of optimal search adopted from the animal foraging literature: Lévy flights and marginal value theorem. Each theory makes different simplifying assumptions and addresses different findings in search behaviors. In this study, an experiment is conducted to test whether clustering in semantic memory may play a role in evidence for both theories. Labeled magnets and a whiteboard were used to elicit spatial representations of semantic knowledge about animals. Category recall sequences from a separate experiment were used to trace search paths over the spatial representations of animal knowledge. Results showed that spatial distances between animal names arranged on the whiteboard were correlated with inter-response intervals (IRIs) during category recall, and distributions of both dependent measures approximated inverse power laws associated with Lévy flights. In addition, IRIs were relatively shorter when paths first entered animal clusters, and longer when they exited clusters, which is consistent with marginal value theorem. In conclusion, area-restricted searches over clustered semantic spaces may account for two different patterns of results interpreted as supporting two different theories of optimal memory foraging. Copyright © 2015 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

The role of beat gesture and pitch accent in semantic processing: an ERP study.

PubMed

Wang, Lin; Chu, Mingyuan

2013-11-01

The present study investigated whether and how beat gesture (small baton-like hand movements used to emphasize information in speech) influences semantic processing as well as its interaction with pitch accent during speech comprehension. Event-related potentials were recorded as participants watched videos of a person gesturing and speaking simultaneously. The critical words in the spoken sentences were accompanied by a beat gesture, a control hand movement, or no hand movement, and were expressed either with or without pitch accent. We found that both beat gesture and control hand movement induced smaller negativities in the N400 time window than when no hand movement was presented. The reduced N400s indicate that both beat gesture and control movement facilitated the semantic integration of the critical word into the sentence context. In addition, the words accompanied by beat gesture elicited smaller negativities in the N400 time window than those accompanied by control hand movement over right posterior electrodes, suggesting that beat gesture has a unique role for enhancing semantic processing during speech comprehension. Finally, no interaction was observed between beat gesture and pitch accent, indicating that they affect semantic processing independently. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Dissociation between Semantic Representations for Motion and Action Verbs: Evidence from Patients with Left Hemisphere Lesions

PubMed Central

Taylor, Lawrence J.; Evans, Carys; Greer, Joanna; Senior, Carl; Coventry, Kenny R.; Ietswaart, Magdalena

2017-01-01

This multiple single case study contrasted left hemisphere stroke patients (N = 6) to healthy age-matched control participants (N = 15) on their understanding of action (e.g., holding, clenching) and motion verbs (e.g., crumbling, flowing). The tasks required participants to correctly identify the matching verb or associated picture. Dissociations on action and motion verb content depending on lesion site were expected. As predicted for verbs containing an action and/or motion content, modified t-tests confirmed selective deficits in processing motion verbs in patients with lesions involving posterior parietal and lateral occipitotemporal cortex. In contrast, deficits in verbs describing motionless actions were found in patients with more anterior lesions sparing posterior parietal and lateral occipitotemporal cortex. These findings support the hypotheses that semantic representations for action and motion are behaviorally and neuro-anatomically dissociable. The findings clarify the differential and critical role of perceptual and motor regions in processing modality-specific semantic knowledge as opposed to a supportive but not necessary role. We contextualize these results within theories from both cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience that make claims over the role of sensory and motor information in semantic representation. PMID:28261070

PREDOSE: A Semantic Web Platform for Drug Abuse Epidemiology using Social Media

PubMed Central

Cameron, Delroy; Smith, Gary A.; Daniulaityte, Raminta; Sheth, Amit P.; Dave, Drashti; Chen, Lu; Anand, Gaurish; Carlson, Robert; Watkins, Kera Z.; Falck, Russel

2013-01-01

Objectives The role of social media in biomedical knowledge mining, including clinical, medical and healthcare informatics, prescription drug abuse epidemiology and drug pharmacology, has become increasingly significant in recent years. Social media offers opportunities for people to share opinions and experiences freely in online communities, which may contribute information beyond the knowledge of domain professionals. This paper describes the development of a novel Semantic Web platform called PREDOSE (PREscription Drug abuse Online Surveillance and Epidemiology), which is designed to facilitate the epidemiologic study of prescription (and related) drug abuse practices using social media. PREDOSE uses web forum posts and domain knowledge, modeled in a manually created Drug Abuse Ontology (DAO) (pronounced dow), to facilitate the extraction of semantic information from User Generated Content (UGC). A combination of lexical, pattern-based and semantics-based techniques is used together with the domain knowledge to extract fine-grained semantic information from UGC. In a previous study, PREDOSE was used to obtain the datasets from which new knowledge in drug abuse research was derived. Here, we report on various platform enhancements, including an updated DAO, new components for relationship and triple extraction, and tools for content analysis, trend detection and emerging patterns exploration, which enhance the capabilities of the PREDOSE platform. Given these enhancements, PREDOSE is now more equipped to impact drug abuse research by alleviating traditional labor-intensive content analysis tasks. Methods Using custom web crawlers that scrape UGC from publicly available web forums, PREDOSE first automates the collection of web-based social media content for subsequent semantic annotation. The annotation scheme is modeled in the DAO, and includes domain specific knowledge such as prescription (and related) drugs, methods of preparation, side effects, routes of administration, etc. The DAO is also used to help recognize three types of data, namely: 1) entities, 2) relationships and 3) triples. PREDOSE then uses a combination of lexical and semantic-based techniques to extract entities and relationships from the scraped content, and a top-down approach for triple extraction that uses patterns expressed in the DAO. In addition, PREDOSE uses publicly available lexicons to identify initial sentiment expressions in text, and then a probabilistic optimization algorithm (from related research) to extract the final sentiment expressions. Together, these techniques enable the capture of fine-grained semantic information from UGC, and querying, search, trend analysis and overall content analysis of social media related to prescription drug abuse. Moreover, extracted data are also made available to domain experts for the creation of training and test sets for use in evaluation and refinements in information extraction techniques. Results A recent evaluation of the information extraction techniques applied in the PREDOSE platform indicates 85% precision and 72% recall in entity identification, on a manually created gold standard dataset. In another study, PREDOSE achieved 36% precision in relationship identification and 33% precision in triple extraction, through manual evaluation by domain experts. Given the complexity of the relationship and triple extraction tasks and the abstruse nature of social media texts, we interpret these as favorable initial results. Extracted semantic information is currently in use in an online discovery support system, by prescription drug abuse researchers at the Center for Interventions, Treatment and Addictions Research (CITAR) at Wright State University. Conclusion A comprehensive platform for entity, relationship, triple and sentiment extraction from such abstruse texts has never been developed for drug abuse research. PREDOSE has already demonstrated the importance of mining social media by providing data from which new findings in drug abuse research were uncovered. Given the recent platform enhancements, including the refined DAO, components for relationship and triple extraction, and tools for content, trend and emerging pattern analysis, it is expected that PREDOSE will play a significant role in advancing drug abuse epidemiology in future. PMID:23892295

Semantics-Based Interoperability Framework for the Geosciences

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sinha, A.; Malik, Z.; Raskin, R.; Barnes, C.; Fox, P.; McGuinness, D.; Lin, K.

2008-12-01

Interoperability between heterogeneous data, tools and services is required to transform data to knowledge. To meet geoscience-oriented societal challenges such as forcing of climate change induced by volcanic eruptions, we suggest the need to develop semantic interoperability for data, services, and processes. Because such scientific endeavors require integration of multiple data bases associated with global enterprises, implicit semantic-based integration is impossible. Instead, explicit semantics are needed to facilitate interoperability and integration. Although different types of integration models are available (syntactic or semantic) we suggest that semantic interoperability is likely to be the most successful pathway. Clearly, the geoscience community would benefit from utilization of existing XML-based data models, such as GeoSciML, WaterML, etc to rapidly advance semantic interoperability and integration. We recognize that such integration will require a "meanings-based search, reasoning and information brokering", which will be facilitated through inter-ontology relationships (ontologies defined for each discipline). We suggest that Markup languages (MLs) and ontologies can be seen as "data integration facilitators", working at different abstraction levels. Therefore, we propose to use an ontology-based data registration and discovery approach to compliment mark-up languages through semantic data enrichment. Ontologies allow the use of formal and descriptive logic statements which permits expressive query capabilities for data integration through reasoning. We have developed domain ontologies (EPONT) to capture the concept behind data. EPONT ontologies are associated with existing ontologies such as SUMO, DOLCE and SWEET. Although significant efforts have gone into developing data (object) ontologies, we advance the idea of developing semantic frameworks for additional ontologies that deal with processes and services. This evolutionary step will facilitate the integrative capabilities of scientists as we examine the relationships between data and external factors such as processes that may influence our understanding of "why" certain events happen. We emphasize the need to go from analysis of data to concepts related to scientific principles of thermodynamics, kinetics, heat flow, mass transfer, etc. Towards meeting these objectives, we report on a pair of related service engines: DIA (Discovery, integration and analysis), and SEDRE (Semantically-Enabled Data Registration Engine) that utilize ontologies for semantic interoperability and integration.

Graph-Theoretic Properties of Networks Based on Word Association Norms: Implications for Models of Lexical Semantic Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gruenenfelder, Thomas M.; Recchia, Gabriel; Rubin, Tim; Jones, Michael N.

2016-01-01

We compared the ability of three different contextual models of lexical semantic memory (BEAGLE, Latent Semantic Analysis, and the Topic model) and of a simple associative model (POC) to predict the properties of semantic networks derived from word association norms. None of the semantic models were able to accurately predict all of the network…

Enhancing acronym/abbreviation knowledge bases with semantic information.

PubMed

Torii, Manabu; Liu, Hongfang

2007-10-11

In the biomedical domain, a terminology knowledge base that associates acronyms/abbreviations (denoted as SFs) with the definitions (denoted as LFs) is highly needed. For the construction such terminology knowledge base, we investigate the feasibility to build a system automatically assigning semantic categories to LFs extracted from text. Given a collection of pairs (SF,LF) derived from text, we i) assess the coverage of LFs and pairs (SF,LF) in the UMLS and justify the need of a semantic category assignment system; and ii) automatically derive name phrases annotated with semantic category and construct a system using machine learning. Utilizing ADAM, an existing collection of (SF,LF) pairs extracted from MEDLINE, our system achieved an f-measure of 87% when assigning eight UMLS-based semantic groups to LFs. The system has been incorporated into a web interface which integrates SF knowledge from multiple SF knowledge bases. Web site: http://gauss.dbb.georgetown.edu/liblab/SFThesurus.

Using ontological inference and hierarchical matchmaking to overcome semantic heterogeneity in remote sensing-based biodiversity monitoring

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nieland, Simon; Kleinschmit, Birgit; Förster, Michael

2015-05-01

Ontology-based applications hold promise in improving spatial data interoperability. In this work we use remote sensing-based biodiversity information and apply semantic formalisation and ontological inference to show improvements in data interoperability/comparability. The proposed methodology includes an observation-based, "bottom-up" engineering approach for remote sensing applications and gives a practical example of semantic mediation of geospatial products. We apply the methodology to three different nomenclatures used for remote sensing-based classification of two heathland nature conservation areas in Belgium and Germany. We analysed sensor nomenclatures with respect to their semantic formalisation and their bio-geographical differences. The results indicate that a hierarchical and transparent nomenclature is far more important for transferability than the sensor or study area. The inclusion of additional information, not necessarily belonging to a vegetation class description, is a key factor for the future success of using semantics for interoperability in remote sensing.

Semantic-based crossmodal processing during visual suppression.

PubMed

Cox, Dustin; Hong, Sang Wook

2015-01-01

To reveal the mechanisms underpinning the influence of auditory input on visual awareness, we examine, (1) whether purely semantic-based multisensory integration facilitates the access to visual awareness for familiar visual events, and (2) whether crossmodal semantic priming is the mechanism responsible for the semantic auditory influence on visual awareness. Using continuous flash suppression, we rendered dynamic and familiar visual events (e.g., a video clip of an approaching train) inaccessible to visual awareness. We manipulated the semantic auditory context of the videos by concurrently pairing them with a semantically matching soundtrack (congruent audiovisual condition), a semantically non-matching soundtrack (incongruent audiovisual condition), or with no soundtrack (neutral video-only condition). We found that participants identified the suppressed visual events significantly faster (an earlier breakup of suppression) in the congruent audiovisual condition compared to the incongruent audiovisual condition and video-only condition. However, this facilitatory influence of semantic auditory input was only observed when audiovisual stimulation co-occurred. Our results suggest that the enhanced visual processing with a semantically congruent auditory input occurs due to audiovisual crossmodal processing rather than semantic priming, which may occur even when visual information is not available to visual awareness.

Get rich quick: the signal to respond procedure reveals the time course of semantic richness effects during visual word recognition.

PubMed

Hargreaves, Ian S; Pexman, Penny M

2014-05-01

According to several current frameworks, semantic processing involves an early influence of language-based information followed by later influences of object-based information (e.g., situated simulations; Santos, Chaigneau, Simmons, & Barsalou, 2011). In the present study we examined whether these predictions extend to the influence of semantic variables in visual word recognition. We investigated the time course of semantic richness effects in visual word recognition using a signal-to-respond (STR) paradigm fitted to a lexical decision (LDT) and a semantic categorization (SCT) task. We used linear mixed effects to examine the relative contributions of language-based (number of senses, ARC) and object-based (imageability, number of features, body-object interaction ratings) descriptions of semantic richness at four STR durations (75, 100, 200, and 400ms). Results showed an early influence of number of senses and ARC in the SCT. In both LDT and SCT, object-based effects were the last to influence participants' decision latencies. We interpret our results within a framework in which semantic processes are available to influence word recognition as a function of their availability over time, and of their relevance to task-specific demands. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A neotropical Miocene pollen database employing image-based search and semantic modeling.

PubMed

Han, Jing Ginger; Cao, Hongfei; Barb, Adrian; Punyasena, Surangi W; Jaramillo, Carlos; Shyu, Chi-Ren

2014-08-01

Digital microscopic pollen images are being generated with increasing speed and volume, producing opportunities to develop new computational methods that increase the consistency and efficiency of pollen analysis and provide the palynological community a computational framework for information sharing and knowledge transfer. • Mathematical methods were used to assign trait semantics (abstract morphological representations) of the images of neotropical Miocene pollen and spores. Advanced database-indexing structures were built to compare and retrieve similar images based on their visual content. A Web-based system was developed to provide novel tools for automatic trait semantic annotation and image retrieval by trait semantics and visual content. • Mathematical models that map visual features to trait semantics can be used to annotate images with morphology semantics and to search image databases with improved reliability and productivity. Images can also be searched by visual content, providing users with customized emphases on traits such as color, shape, and texture. • Content- and semantic-based image searches provide a powerful computational platform for pollen and spore identification. The infrastructure outlined provides a framework for building a community-wide palynological resource, streamlining the process of manual identification, analysis, and species discovery.

False memories and lexical decision: even twelve primes do not cause long-term semantic priming.

PubMed

Zeelenberg, René; Pecher, Diane

2002-03-01

Semantic priming effects are usually obtained only if the prime is presented shortly before the target stimulus. Recent evidence obtained with the so-called false memory paradigm suggests, however, that in both explicit and implicit memory tasks semantic relations between words can result in long-lasting effects when multiple 'primes' are presented. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether these effects would generalize to lexical decision. In four experiments we showed that even as many as 12 primes do not cause long-term semantic priming. In all experiments, however, a repetition priming effect was obtained. The present results are consistent with a number of other results showing that semantic information plays a minimal role in long-term priming in visual word recognition.

Developing Visualization Techniques for Semantics-based Information Networks

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Keller, Richard M.; Hall, David R.

2003-01-01

Information systems incorporating complex network structured information spaces with a semantic underpinning - such as hypermedia networks, semantic networks, topic maps, and concept maps - are being deployed to solve some of NASA s critical information management problems. This paper describes some of the human interaction and navigation problems associated with complex semantic information spaces and describes a set of new visual interface approaches to address these problems. A key strategy is to leverage semantic knowledge represented within these information spaces to construct abstractions and views that will be meaningful to the human user. Human-computer interaction methodologies will guide the development and evaluation of these approaches, which will benefit deployed NASA systems and also apply to information systems based on the emerging Semantic Web.

Individual Variation in the Late Positive Complex to Semantic Anomalies

PubMed Central

Kos, Miriam; van den Brink, Danielle; Hagoort, Peter

2012-01-01

It is well-known that, within ERP paradigms of sentence processing, semantically anomalous words elicit N400 effects. Less clear, however, is what happens after the N400. In some cases N400 effects are followed by Late Positive Complexes (LPC), whereas in other cases such effects are lacking. We investigated several factors which could affect the LPC, such as contextual constraint, inter-individual variation, and working memory. Seventy-two participants read sentences containing a semantic manipulation (Whipped cream tastes sweet/anxious and creamy). Neither contextual constraint nor working memory correlated with the LPC. Inter-individual variation played a substantial role in the elicitation of the LPC with about half of the participants showing a negative response and the other half showing an LPC. This individual variation correlated with a syntactic ERP as well as an alternative semantic manipulation. In conclusion, our results show that inter-individual variation plays a large role in the elicitation of the LPC and this may account for the diversity in LPC findings in language research. PMID:22973249

English Learners' Knowledge of Prepositions: Collocational Knowledge or Knowledge Based on Meaning?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mueller, Charles M.

2011-01-01

Second language (L2) learners' successful performance in an L2 can be partly attributed to their knowledge of collocations. In some cases, this knowledge is accompanied by knowledge of the semantic and/or grammatical patterns that motivate the collocation. At other times, collocational knowledge may serve a compensatory role. To determine the…

Method to Identify Deep Cases Based on Relationships between Nouns, Verbs, and Particles

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ide, Daisuke; Kimura, Masaomi

2016-01-01

Deep cases representing the significant meaning of nouns in sentences play a crucial role in semantic analysis. However, a case tends to be manually identified because it requires understanding the meaning and relationships of words. To address this problem, we propose a method to predict deep cases by analyzing the relationship between nouns,…

A Model Based Framework for Semantic Interpretation of Architectural Construction Drawings

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Babalola, Olubi Oluyomi

2011-01-01

The study addresses the automated translation of architectural drawings from 2D Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) data into a Building Information Model (BIM), with emphasis on the nature, possible role, and limitations of a drafting language Knowledge Representation (KR) on the problem and process. The central idea is that CAD to BIM translation is a…

SoyBase Simple Semantic Web Architecture and Protocol (SSWAP) Services

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Semantic web technologies offer the potential to link internet resources and data by shared concepts without having to rely on absolute lexical matches. Thus two web sites or web resources which are concerned with similar data types could be identified based on similar semantics. In the biological...

Speech-associated gestures, Broca’s area, and the human mirror system

PubMed Central

Skipper, Jeremy I.; Goldin-Meadow, Susan; Nusbaum, Howard C.; Small, Steven L

2009-01-01

Speech-associated gestures are hand and arm movements that not only convey semantic information to listeners but are themselves actions. Broca’s area has been assumed to play an important role both in semantic retrieval or selection (as part of a language comprehension system) and in action recognition (as part of a “mirror” or “observation–execution matching” system). We asked whether the role that Broca’s area plays in processing speech-associated gestures is consistent with the semantic retrieval/selection account (predicting relatively weak interactions between Broca’s area and other cortical areas because the meaningful information that speech-associated gestures convey reduces semantic ambiguity and thus reduces the need for semantic retrieval/selection) or the action recognition account (predicting strong interactions between Broca’s area and other cortical areas because speech-associated gestures are goal-direct actions that are “mirrored”). We compared the functional connectivity of Broca’s area with other cortical areas when participants listened to stories while watching meaningful speech-associated gestures, speech-irrelevant self-grooming hand movements, or no hand movements. A network analysis of neuroimaging data showed that interactions involving Broca’s area and other cortical areas were weakest when spoken language was accompanied by meaningful speech-associated gestures, and strongest when spoken language was accompanied by self-grooming hand movements or by no hand movements at all. Results are discussed with respect to the role that the human mirror system plays in processing speech-associated movements. PMID:17533001

Functional magnetic resonance imaging of semantic memory as a presymptomatic biomarker of Alzheimer's disease risk.

PubMed

Sugarman, Michael A; Woodard, John L; Nielson, Kristy A; Seidenberg, Michael; Smith, J Carson; Durgerian, Sally; Rao, Stephen M

2012-03-01

Extensive research efforts have been directed toward strategies for predicting risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD) prior to the appearance of observable symptoms. Existing approaches for early detection of AD vary in terms of their efficacy, invasiveness, and ease of implementation. Several non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging strategies have been developed for predicting decline in cognitively healthy older adults. This review will survey a number of studies, beginning with the development of a famous name discrimination task used to identify neural regions that participate in semantic memory retrieval and to test predictions of several key theories of the role of the hippocampus in memory. This task has revealed medial temporal and neocortical contributions to recent and remote memory retrieval, and it has been used to demonstrate compensatory neural recruitment in older adults, apolipoprotein E ε4 carriers, and amnestic mild cognitive impairment patients. Recently, we have also found that the famous name discrimination task provides predictive value for forecasting episodic memory decline among asymptomatic older adults. Other studies investigating the predictive value of semantic memory tasks will also be presented. We suggest several advantages associated with the use of semantic processing tasks, particularly those based on person identification, in comparison to episodic memory tasks to study AD risk. Future directions for research and potential clinical uses of semantic memory paradigms are also discussed. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Imaging Brain Aging and Neurodegenerative disease. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Somatic Symptom Disorder in Semantic Dementia: The Role of Alexisomia.

PubMed

Gan, Joanna J; Lin, Andrew; Samimi, Mersal S; Mendez, Mario F

Semantic dementia (SD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by loss of semantic knowledge. SD may be associated with somatic symptom disorder due to excessive preoccupation with unidentified somatic sensations. To evaluate the frequency of somatic symptom disorder among patients with SD in comparison to comparably demented patients with Alzheimer׳s disease. A retrospective cohort study was conducted using clinical data from a referral-based behavioral neurology program. Fifty-three patients with SD meeting criteria for imaging-supported semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (another term for SD) were compared with 125 patients with clinically probable Alzheimer disease. Logistic regression controlled for sex, age, disease duration, education, overall cognitive impairment, and depression. The prevalence of somatic symptom disorder was significantly higher among patients with SD (41.5%) compared to patients with Alzheimer disease (11.2%) (odds ratio = 6:1; p < 0.001). Somatic symptom disorder was associated with misidentification and preoccupation with normal bodily sensations such as hunger, bladder filling, borborygmi, rhinorrhea, and reflux; excessive concern over the incompletely understood meaning or source of pain or other symptoms; and Cotard syndrome or the delusion that unidentified somatic symptoms signify death or deterioration. SD, a disorder of semantic knowledge, is associated with somatic symptom disorder from impaired identification of somatic sensations. Their inability to read and name somatic sensations, or "alexisomia," results in disproportionate and persistent concern about somatic sensations with consequent significant disability. Copyright © 2016 The Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

OmniSearch: a semantic search system based on the Ontology for MIcroRNA Target (OMIT) for microRNA-target gene interaction data.

PubMed

Huang, Jingshan; Gutierrez, Fernando; Strachan, Harrison J; Dou, Dejing; Huang, Weili; Smith, Barry; Blake, Judith A; Eilbeck, Karen; Natale, Darren A; Lin, Yu; Wu, Bin; Silva, Nisansa de; Wang, Xiaowei; Liu, Zixing; Borchert, Glen M; Tan, Ming; Ruttenberg, Alan

2016-01-01

As a special class of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), microRNAs (miRNAs) perform important roles in numerous biological and pathological processes. The realization of miRNA functions depends largely on how miRNAs regulate specific target genes. It is therefore critical to identify, analyze, and cross-reference miRNA-target interactions to better explore and delineate miRNA functions. Semantic technologies can help in this regard. We previously developed a miRNA domain-specific application ontology, Ontology for MIcroRNA Target (OMIT), whose goal was to serve as a foundation for semantic annotation, data integration, and semantic search in the miRNA field. In this paper we describe our continuing effort to develop the OMIT, and demonstrate its use within a semantic search system, OmniSearch, designed to facilitate knowledge capture of miRNA-target interaction data. Important changes in the current version OMIT are summarized as: (1) following a modularized ontology design (with 2559 terms imported from the NCRO ontology); (2) encoding all 1884 human miRNAs (vs. 300 in previous versions); and (3) setting up a GitHub project site along with an issue tracker for more effective community collaboration on the ontology development. The OMIT ontology is free and open to all users, accessible at: http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/omit.owl. The OmniSearch system is also free and open to all users, accessible at: http://omnisearch.soc.southalabama.edu/index.php/Software.

What does semantic tiling of the cortex tell us about semantics?

PubMed

Barsalou, Lawrence W

2017-10-01

Recent use of voxel-wise modeling in cognitive neuroscience suggests that semantic maps tile the cortex. Although this impressive research establishes distributed cortical areas active during the conceptual processing that underlies semantics, it tells us little about the nature of this processing. While mapping concepts between Marr's computational and implementation levels to support neural encoding and decoding, this approach ignores Marr's algorithmic level, central for understanding the mechanisms that implement cognition, in general, and conceptual processing, in particular. Following decades of research in cognitive science and neuroscience, what do we know so far about the representation and processing mechanisms that implement conceptual abilities? Most basically, much is known about the mechanisms associated with: (1) feature and frame representations, (2) grounded, abstract, and linguistic representations, (3) knowledge-based inference, (4) concept composition, and (5) conceptual flexibility. Rather than explaining these fundamental representation and processing mechanisms, semantic tiles simply provide a trace of their activity over a relatively short time period within a specific learning context. Establishing the mechanisms that implement conceptual processing in the brain will require more than mapping it to cortical (and sub-cortical) activity, with process models from cognitive science likely to play central roles in specifying the intervening mechanisms. More generally, neuroscience will not achieve its basic goals until it establishes algorithmic-level mechanisms that contribute essential explanations to how the brain works, going beyond simply establishing the brain areas that respond to various task conditions. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The cognitive and neural expression of semantic memory impairment in mild cognitive impairment and early Alzheimer's disease.

PubMed

Joubert, Sven; Brambati, Simona M; Ansado, Jennyfer; Barbeau, Emmanuel J; Felician, Olivier; Didic, Mira; Lacombe, Jacinthe; Goldstein, Rachel; Chayer, Céline; Kergoat, Marie-Jeanne

2010-03-01

Semantic deficits in Alzheimer's disease have been widely documented, but little is known about the integrity of semantic memory in the prodromal stage of the illness. The aims of the present study were to: (i) investigate naming abilities and semantic memory in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), early Alzheimer's disease (AD) compared to healthy older subjects; (ii) investigate the association between naming and semantic knowledge in aMCI and AD; (iii) examine if the semantic impairment was present in different modalities; and (iv) study the relationship between semantic performance and grey matter volume using voxel-based morphometry. Results indicate that both naming and semantic knowledge of objects and famous people were impaired in aMCI and early AD groups, when compared to healthy age- and education-matched controls. Item-by-item analyses showed that anomia in aMCI and early AD was significantly associated with underlying semantic knowledge of famous people but not with semantic knowledge of objects. Moreover, semantic knowledge of the same concepts was impaired in both the visual and the verbal modalities. Finally, voxel-based morphometry analyses revealed that semantic impairment in aMCI and AD was associated with cortical atrophy in the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) region as well as in the inferior prefrontal cortex (IPC), some of the key regions of the semantic cognition network. These findings suggest that the semantic impairment in aMCI may result from a breakdown of semantic knowledge of famous people and objects, combined with difficulties in the selection, manipulation and retrieval of this knowledge. Copyright (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Effects of Iconicity and Semantic Relatedness on Lexical Access in American Sign Language

PubMed Central

Bosworth, Rain G.; Emmorey, Karen

2010-01-01

Iconicity is a property that pervades the lexicon of many sign languages, including American Sign Language (ASL). Iconic signs exhibit a motivated, non-arbitrary mapping between the form of the sign and its meaning. We investigated whether iconicity enhances semantic priming effects for ASL and whether iconic signs are recognized more quickly than non-iconic signs (controlling for strength of iconicity, semantic relatedness, familiarity, and imageability). Twenty deaf signers made lexical decisions to the second item of a prime-target pair. Iconic target signs were preceded by prime signs that were a) iconic and semantically related, b) non-iconic and semantically related, or c) semantically unrelated. In addition, a set of non-iconic target signs was preceded by semantically unrelated primes. Significant facilitation was observed for target signs when preceded by semantically related primes. However, iconicity did not increase the priming effect (e.g., the target sign PIANO was primed equally by the iconic sign GUITAR and the non-iconic sign MUSIC). In addition, iconic signs were not recognized faster or more accurately than non-iconic signs. These results confirm the existence of semantic priming for sign language and suggest that iconicity does not play a robust role in on-line lexical processing. PMID:20919784

The Use of a Context-Based Information Retrieval Technique

DTIC Science & Technology

2009-07-01

provided in context. Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) is a statistical technique for inferring contextual and structural information, and previous studies...WAIS). 10 DSTO-TR-2322 1.4.4 Latent Semantic Analysis LSA, which is also known as latent semantic indexing (LSI), uses a statistical and...1.4.6 Language Models In contrast, natural language models apply algorithms that combine statistical information with semantic information. Semantic

Evidence for degraded low frequency verbal concepts in left resected temporal lobe epilepsy patients.

PubMed

Visser, M; Forn, C; Lambon Ralph, M A; Hoffman, P; Gómez Ibáñez, A; Sunajuán, Ana; Rosell Negre, P; Villanueva, V; Ávila, C

2018-06-01

According to a large neuropsychological and neuroimaging literature, the bilateral anterior temporal lobe (ATL) is a core region for semantic processing. It seems therefore surprising that semantic memory appears to be preserved in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) patients with unilateral ATL resection. However, recent work suggests that the bilateral semantic system is relatively robust against unilateral damage and semantic impairments under these circumstances only become apparent with low frequency specific concepts. In addition, neuroimaging studies have shown that the function of the left and right ATLs differ and therefore left or right ATL resection should lead to a different pattern of impairment. The current study investigated hemispheric differences in the bilateral semantic system by comparing left and right resected TLE patients during verbal semantic processing of low frequency concepts. Picture naming and semantic comprehension tasks with varying word frequencies were included to investigate the pattern of impairment. Left but not right TLE patients showed impaired semantic processing, which was particularly apparent on low frequency items. This indicates that, for verbal information, the bilateral semantic system is more sensitive to damage in the left compared to the right ATL, which is in line with theories that attribute a more prominent role to the left ATL due to connections with pre-semantic verbal regions. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A Tandem Semantic Interpreter for Incremental Parse Selection

DTIC Science & Technology

1990-09-28

syntactic role to semantic role. An exam - ple from Fillmore [10] is the sentence I copied that letter, which can be uttered when point- ing either to...person. We want the word fiddle to have the sort predicate violin as its lexical interpretation, how- ever, notthing. Thus, for Ross went for his fiddle...to receive an interpretation, a sort hierarchy is needed to establish that all violins are things. A well-structured sort hierarchy allows newly added

Mind wandering minimizes mind numbing: Reducing semantic-satiation effects through absorptive lapses of attention.

PubMed

Mooneyham, Benjamin W; Schooler, Jonathan W

2016-08-01

Mind wandering is associated with perceptual decoupling: the disengagement of attention from perception. This decoupling is deleterious to performance in many situations; however, we sought to determine whether it might occur in the service of performance in certain circumstances. In two studies, we examined the role of mind wandering in a test of "semantic satiation," a phenomenon in which the repeated presentation of a word reduces semantic priming for a subsequently presented semantic associate. We posited that the attentional and perceptual decoupling associated with mind wandering would reduce the amount of satiation in the semantic representations of repeatedly presented words, thus leading to a reduced semantic-satiation effect. Our results supported this hypothesis: Self-reported mind-wandering episodes (Study 1) and behavioral indices of decoupled attention (Study 2) were both predictive of maintained semantic priming in situations predicted to induce semantic satiation. Additionally, our results suggest that moderate inattention to repetitive stimuli is not sufficient to enable "dishabituation": the refreshment of cognitive performance that results from diverting attention away from the task at hand. Rather, full decoupling is necessary to reap the benefits of mind wandering and to minimize mind numbing.

Modulation of alpha oscillations is required for the suppression of semantic interference.

PubMed

Melnik, Natalia; Mapelli, Igor; Özkurt, Tolga Esat

2017-10-01

Recent findings on alpha band oscillations suggest their important role in memory consolidation and suppression of external distractors such as environmental noise. However, less attention was given to the phenomenon of internal distracting information being solely inherent to the stimuli content. Human memory may be prone to internal distractions caused by semantic relatedness between the meaning of words (e.g., atom, neutron, nucleus, etc.) to be encoded, i.e., semantic interference. Our study investigates the brain oscillatory dynamics behind the semantic interference phenomenon, whose possible outcome is known as false memories. In this direction, Deese-Roediger-McDermott word lists were appropriated for a modified Sternberg paradigm in auditory modality. Participants received semantically related and unrelated word lists via headphones while EEG data were acquired. Semantic interference triggered the false memory rates to be higher than those of other types of memory errors. Analysis demonstrated that the upper part of alpha band (∼10-12Hz) power decreases on parieto-occipital channels in the retention interval, prior to the probe item for semantically related condition. Our study elucidates the oscillatory mechanisms behind semantic interference by relying on alpha functional inhibition theory. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Mapping the connectivity underlying multimodal (verbal and non-verbal) semantic processing: a brain electrostimulation study.

PubMed

Moritz-Gasser, Sylvie; Herbet, Guillaume; Duffau, Hugues

2013-08-01

Accessing the meaning of words, objects, people and facts is a human ability, made possible thanks to semantic processing. Although studies concerning its cortical organization are proficient, the subcortical connectivity underlying this semantic network received less attention. We used intraoperative direct electrostimulation, which mimics a transient virtual lesion during brain surgery for glioma in eight awaken patients, to map the anatomical white matter substrate subserving the semantic system. Patients performed a picture naming task and a non-verbal semantic association test during the electrical mapping. Direct electrostimulation of the inferior fronto-occipital fascicle, a poorly known ventral association pathway which runs throughout the brain, induced in all cases semantic disturbances. These transient disorders were highly reproducible, and concerned verbal as well as non-verbal output. Our results highlight for the first time the essential role of the left inferior fronto-occipital fascicle in multimodal (and not only in verbal) semantic processing. On the basis of these original findings, and in the lights of phylogenetic considerations regarding this fascicle, we suggest its possible implication in the monitoring of the human level of consciousness related to semantic memory, namely noetic consciousness. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Musical emotions: Functions, origins, evolution

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Perlovsky, Leonid

2010-03-01

Theories of music origins and the role of musical emotions in the mind are reviewed. Most existing theories contradict each other, and cannot explain mechanisms or roles of musical emotions in workings of the mind, nor evolutionary reasons for music origins. Music seems to be an enigma. Nevertheless, a synthesis of cognitive science and mathematical models of the mind has been proposed describing a fundamental role of music in the functioning and evolution of the mind, consciousness, and cultures. The review considers ancient theories of music as well as contemporary theories advanced by leading authors in this field. It addresses one hypothesis that promises to unify the field and proposes a theory of musical origin based on a fundamental role of music in cognition and evolution of consciousness and culture. We consider a split in the vocalizations of proto-humans into two types: one less emotional and more concretely-semantic, evolving into language, and the other preserving emotional connections along with semantic ambiguity, evolving into music. The proposed hypothesis departs from other theories in considering specific mechanisms of the mind-brain, which required the evolution of music parallel with the evolution of cultures and languages. Arguments are reviewed that the evolution of language toward becoming the semantically powerful tool of today required emancipation from emotional encumbrances. The opposite, no less powerful mechanisms required a compensatory evolution of music toward more differentiated and refined emotionality. The need for refined music in the process of cultural evolution is grounded in fundamental mechanisms of the mind. This is why today's human mind and cultures cannot exist without today's music. The reviewed hypothesis gives a basis for future analysis of why different evolutionary paths of languages were paralleled by different evolutionary paths of music. Approaches toward experimental verification of this hypothesis in psychological and neuroimaging research are reviewed.

The trajectory of scientific discovery: concept co-occurrence and converging semantic distance.

PubMed

Cohen, Trevor; Schvaneveldt, Roger W

2010-01-01

The paradigm of literature-based knowledge discovery originated by Swanson involves finding meaningful associations between terms or concepts that have not occurred together in any previously published document. While several automated approaches have been applied to this problem, these generally evaluate the literature at a point in time, and do not evaluate the role of change over time in distributional statistics as an indicator of meaningful implicit associations. To address this issue, we develop and evaluate Symmetric Random Indexing (SRI), a novel variant of the Random Indexing (RI) approach that is able to measure implicit association over time. SRI is found to compare favorably to existing RI variants in the prediction of future direct co-occurrence. Summary statistics over several experiments suggest a trend of converging semantic distance prior to the co-occurrence of key terms for two seminal historical literature-based discoveries.

Semantic and Syntactic Interference in Sentence Comprehension: A Comparison of Working Memory Models

PubMed Central

Tan, Yingying; Martin, Randi C.; Van Dyke, Julie A.

2017-01-01

This study investigated the nature of the underlying working memory system supporting sentence processing through examining individual differences in sensitivity to retrieval interference effects during sentence comprehension. Interference effects occur when readers incorrectly retrieve sentence constituents which are similar to those required during integrative processes. We examined interference arising from a partial match between distracting constituents and syntactic and semantic cues, and related these interference effects to performance on working memory, short-term memory (STM), vocabulary, and executive function tasks. For online sentence comprehension, as measured by self-paced reading, the magnitude of individuals' syntactic interference effects was predicted by general WM capacity and the relation remained significant when partialling out vocabulary, indicating that the effects were not due to verbal knowledge. For offline sentence comprehension, as measured by responses to comprehension questions, both general WM capacity and vocabulary knowledge interacted with semantic interference for comprehension accuracy, suggesting that both general WM capacity and the quality of semantic representations played a role in determining how well interference was resolved offline. For comprehension question reaction times, a measure of semantic STM capacity interacted with semantic but not syntactic interference. However, a measure of phonological capacity (digit span) and a general measure of resistance to response interference (Stroop effect) did not predict individuals' interference resolution abilities in either online or offline sentence comprehension. The results are discussed in relation to the multiple capacities account of working memory (e.g., Martin and Romani, 1994; Martin and He, 2004), and the cue-based retrieval parsing approach (e.g., Lewis et al., 2006; Van Dyke et al., 2014). While neither approach was fully supported, a possible means of reconciling the two approaches and directions for future research are proposed. PMID:28261133

Right fusiform response patterns reflect visual object identity rather than semantic similarity.

PubMed

Bruffaerts, Rose; Dupont, Patrick; De Grauwe, Sophie; Peeters, Ronald; De Deyne, Simon; Storms, Gerrit; Vandenberghe, Rik

2013-12-01

We previously reported the neuropsychological consequences of a lesion confined to the middle and posterior part of the right fusiform gyrus (case JA) causing a partial loss of knowledge of visual attributes of concrete entities in the absence of category-selectivity (animate versus inanimate). We interpreted this in the context of a two-step model that distinguishes structural description knowledge from associative-semantic processing and implicated the lesioned area in the former process. To test this hypothesis in the intact brain, multi-voxel pattern analysis was used in a series of event-related fMRI studies in a total of 46 healthy subjects. We predicted that activity patterns in this region would be determined by the identity of rather than the conceptual similarity between concrete entities. In a prior behavioral experiment features were generated for each entity by more than 1000 subjects. Based on a hierarchical clustering analysis the entities were organised into 3 semantic clusters (musical instruments, vehicles, tools). Entities were presented as words or pictures. With foveal presentation of pictures, cosine similarity between fMRI response patterns in right fusiform cortex appeared to reflect both the identity of and the semantic similarity between the entities. No such effects were found for words in this region. The effect of object identity was invariant for location, scaling, orientation axis and color (grayscale versus color). It also persisted for different exemplars referring to a same concrete entity. The apparent semantic similarity effect however was not invariant. This study provides further support for a neurobiological distinction between structural description knowledge and processing of semantic relationships and confirms the role of right mid-posterior fusiform cortex in the former process, in accordance with previous lesion evidence. © 2013.

A Robust Geometric Model for Argument Classification

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Giannone, Cristina; Croce, Danilo; Basili, Roberto; de Cao, Diego

Argument classification is the task of assigning semantic roles to syntactic structures in natural language sentences. Supervised learning techniques for frame semantics have been recently shown to benefit from rich sets of syntactic features. However argument classification is also highly dependent on the semantics of the involved lexicals. Empirical studies have shown that domain dependence of lexical information causes large performance drops in outside domain tests. In this paper a distributional approach is proposed to improve the robustness of the learning model against out-of-domain lexical phenomena.

ADEpedia: a scalable and standardized knowledge base of Adverse Drug Events using semantic web technology.

PubMed

Jiang, Guoqian; Solbrig, Harold R; Chute, Christopher G

2011-01-01

A source of semantically coded Adverse Drug Event (ADE) data can be useful for identifying common phenotypes related to ADEs. We proposed a comprehensive framework for building a standardized ADE knowledge base (called ADEpedia) through combining ontology-based approach with semantic web technology. The framework comprises four primary modules: 1) an XML2RDF transformation module; 2) a data normalization module based on NCBO Open Biomedical Annotator; 3) a RDF store based persistence module; and 4) a front-end module based on a Semantic Wiki for the review and curation. A prototype is successfully implemented to demonstrate the capability of the system to integrate multiple drug data and ontology resources and open web services for the ADE data standardization. A preliminary evaluation is performed to demonstrate the usefulness of the system, including the performance of the NCBO annotator. In conclusion, the semantic web technology provides a highly scalable framework for ADE data source integration and standard query service.

Semantic Web and Contextual Information: Semantic Network Analysis of Online Journalistic Texts

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lim, Yon Soo

This study examines why contextual information is important to actualize the idea of semantic web, based on a case study of a socio-political issue in South Korea. For this study, semantic network analyses were conducted regarding English-language based 62 blog posts and 101 news stories on the web. The results indicated the differences of the meaning structures between blog posts and professional journalism as well as between conservative journalism and progressive journalism. From the results, this study ascertains empirical validity of current concerns about the practical application of the new web technology, and discusses how the semantic web should be developed.

Using semantic data modeling techniques to organize an object-oriented database for extending the mass storage model

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Campbell, William J.; Short, Nicholas M., Jr.; Roelofs, Larry H.; Dorfman, Erik

1991-01-01

A methodology for optimizing organization of data obtained by NASA earth and space missions is discussed. The methodology uses a concept based on semantic data modeling techniques implemented in a hierarchical storage model. The modeling is used to organize objects in mass storage devices, relational database systems, and object-oriented databases. The semantic data modeling at the metadata record level is examined, including the simulation of a knowledge base and semantic metadata storage issues. The semantic data model hierarchy and its application for efficient data storage is addressed, as is the mapping of the application structure to the mass storage.

Formal Semantics and Implementation of BPMN 2.0 Inclusive Gateways

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Christiansen, David Raymond; Carbone, Marco; Hildebrandt, Thomas

We present the first direct formalization of the semantics of inclusive gateways as described in the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) 2.0 Beta 1 specification. The formal semantics is given for a minimal subset of BPMN 2.0 containing just the inclusive and exclusive gateways and the start and stop events. By focusing on this subset we achieve a simple graph model that highlights the particular non-local features of the inclusive gateway semantics. We sketch two ways of implementing the semantics using algorithms based on incrementally updated data structures and also discuss distributed communication-based implementations of the two algorithms.

Semantic Boost on Episodic Associations: An Empirically-Based Computational Model

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Silberman, Yaron; Bentin, Shlomo; Miikkulainen, Risto

2007-01-01

Words become associated following repeated co-occurrence episodes. This process might be further determined by the semantic characteristics of the words. The present study focused on how semantic and episodic factors interact in incidental formation of word associations. First, we found that human participants associate semantically related words…

Semantic Search of Web Services

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hao, Ke

2013-01-01

This dissertation addresses semantic search of Web services using natural language processing. We first survey various existing approaches, focusing on the fact that the expensive costs of current semantic annotation frameworks result in limited use of semantic search for large scale applications. We then propose a vector space model based service…

The inferior, anterior temporal lobes and semantic memory clarified: novel evidence from distortion-corrected fMRI.

PubMed

Visser, M; Embleton, K V; Jefferies, E; Parker, G J; Ralph, M A Lambon

2010-05-01

The neural basis of semantic memory generates considerable debate. Semantic dementia results from bilateral anterior temporal lobe (ATL) atrophy and gives rise to a highly specific impairment of semantic memory, suggesting that this region is a critical neural substrate for semantic processing. Recent rTMS experiments with neurologically-intact participants also indicate that the ATL are a necessary substrate for semantic memory. Exactly which regions within the ATL are important for semantic memory are difficult to detect from these methods (because the damage in SD covers a large part of the ATL). Functional neuroimaging might provide important clues about which specific areas exhibit activation that correlates with normal semantic performance. Neuroimaging studies, however, have not consistently found anterior temporal lobe activation in semantic tasks. A recent meta-analysis indicates that this inconsistency may be due to a collection of technical limitations associated with previous studies, including a reduced field-of-view and magnetic susceptibility artefacts associated with standard gradient echo fMRI. We conducted an fMRI study of semantic memory using a combination of techniques which improve sensitivity to ATL activations whilst preserving whole-brain coverage. As expected from SD patients and ATL rTMS experiments, this method revealed bilateral temporal activation extending from the inferior temporal lobe along the fusiform gyrus to the anterior temporal regions, bilaterally. We suggest that the inferior, anterior temporal lobe region makes a crucial contribution to semantic cognition and utilising this version of fMRI will enable further research on the semantic role of the ATL. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Heteromodal Cortical Areas Encode Sensory-Motor Features of Word Meaning.

PubMed

Fernandino, Leonardo; Humphries, Colin J; Conant, Lisa L; Seidenberg, Mark S; Binder, Jeffrey R

2016-09-21

The capacity to process information in conceptual form is a fundamental aspect of human cognition, yet little is known about how this type of information is encoded in the brain. Although the role of sensory and motor cortical areas has been a focus of recent debate, neuroimaging studies of concept representation consistently implicate a network of heteromodal areas that seem to support concept retrieval in general rather than knowledge related to any particular sensory-motor content. We used predictive machine learning on fMRI data to investigate the hypothesis that cortical areas in this "general semantic network" (GSN) encode multimodal information derived from basic sensory-motor processes, possibly functioning as convergence-divergence zones for distributed concept representation. An encoding model based on five conceptual attributes directly related to sensory-motor experience (sound, color, shape, manipulability, and visual motion) was used to predict brain activation patterns associated with individual lexical concepts in a semantic decision task. When the analysis was restricted to voxels in the GSN, the model was able to identify the activation patterns corresponding to individual concrete concepts significantly above chance. In contrast, a model based on five perceptual attributes of the word form performed at chance level. This pattern was reversed when the analysis was restricted to areas involved in the perceptual analysis of written word forms. These results indicate that heteromodal areas involved in semantic processing encode information about the relative importance of different sensory-motor attributes of concepts, possibly by storing particular combinations of sensory and motor features. The present study used a predictive encoding model of word semantics to decode conceptual information from neural activity in heteromodal cortical areas. The model is based on five sensory-motor attributes of word meaning (color, shape, sound, visual motion, and manipulability) and encodes the relative importance of each attribute to the meaning of a word. This is the first demonstration that heteromodal areas involved in semantic processing can discriminate between different concepts based on sensory-motor information alone. This finding indicates that the brain represents concepts as multimodal combinations of sensory and motor representations. Copyright © 2016 the authors 0270-6474/16/369763-07$15.00/0.

Semantic size of abstract concepts: it gets emotional when you can't see it.

PubMed

Yao, Bo; Vasiljevic, Milica; Weick, Mario; Sereno, Margaret E; O'Donnell, Patrick J; Sereno, Sara C

2013-01-01

Size is an important visuo-spatial characteristic of the physical world. In language processing, previous research has demonstrated a processing advantage for words denoting semantically "big" (e.g., jungle) versus "small" (e.g., needle) concrete objects. We investigated whether semantic size plays a role in the recognition of words expressing abstract concepts (e.g., truth). Semantically "big" and "small" concrete and abstract words were presented in a lexical decision task. Responses to "big" words, regardless of their concreteness, were faster than those to "small" words. Critically, we explored the relationship between semantic size and affective characteristics of words as well as their influence on lexical access. Although a word's semantic size was correlated with its emotional arousal, the temporal locus of arousal effects may depend on the level of concreteness. That is, arousal seemed to have an earlier (lexical) effect on abstract words, but a later (post-lexical) effect on concrete words. Our findings provide novel insights into the semantic representations of size in abstract concepts and highlight that affective attributes of words may not always index lexical access.

[Effects of punctuation on the processing of syntactically ambiguous Japanese sentences with a semantic bias].

PubMed

Niikuni, Keiyu; Muramoto, Toshiaki

2014-06-01

This study explored the effects of a comma on the processing of structurally ambiguous Japanese sentences with a semantic bias. A previous study has shown that a comma which is incompatible with an ambiguous sentence's semantic bias affects the processing of the sentence, but the effects of a comma that is compatible with the bias are unclear. In the present study, we examined the role of a comma compatible with the sentence's semantic bias using the self-paced reading method, which enabled us to determine the reading times for the region of the sentence where readers would be expected to solve the ambiguity using semantic information (the "target region"). The results show that a comma significantly increases the reading time of the punctuated word but decreases the reading time in the target region. We concluded that even if the semantic information provided might be sufficient for disambiguation, the insertion of a comma would affect the processing cost of the ambiguity, indicating that readers use both the comma and semantic information in parallel for sentence processing.

iSMART: Ontology-based Semantic Query of CDA Documents

PubMed Central

Liu, Shengping; Ni, Yuan; Mei, Jing; Li, Hanyu; Xie, Guotong; Hu, Gang; Liu, Haifeng; Hou, Xueqiao; Pan, Yue

2009-01-01

The Health Level 7 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) is widely accepted as the format for electronic clinical document. With the rich ontological references in CDA documents, the ontology-based semantic query could be performed to retrieve CDA documents. In this paper, we present iSMART (interactive Semantic MedicAl Record reTrieval), a prototype system designed for ontology-based semantic query of CDA documents. The clinical information in CDA documents will be extracted into RDF triples by a declarative XML to RDF transformer. An ontology reasoner is developed to infer additional information by combining the background knowledge from SNOMED CT ontology. Then an RDF query engine is leveraged to enable the semantic queries. This system has been evaluated using the real clinical documents collected from a large hospital in southern China. PMID:20351883

Semantic computing and language knowledge bases

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Lei; Wang, Houfeng; Yu, Shiwen

2017-09-01

As the proposition of the next-generation Web - semantic Web, semantic computing has been drawing more and more attention within the circle and the industries. A lot of research has been conducted on the theory and methodology of the subject, and potential applications have also been investigated and proposed in many fields. The progress of semantic computing made so far cannot be detached from its supporting pivot - language resources, for instance, language knowledge bases. This paper proposes three perspectives of semantic computing from a macro view and describes the current status of affairs about the construction of language knowledge bases and the related research and applications that have been carried out on the basis of these resources via a case study in the Institute of Computational Linguistics at Peking University.

OrganismTagger: detection, normalization and grounding of organism entities in biomedical documents.

PubMed

Naderi, Nona; Kappler, Thomas; Baker, Christopher J O; Witte, René

2011-10-01

Semantic tagging of organism mentions in full-text articles is an important part of literature mining and semantic enrichment solutions. Tagged organism mentions also play a pivotal role in disambiguating other entities in a text, such as proteins. A high-precision organism tagging system must be able to detect the numerous forms of organism mentions, including common names as well as the traditional taxonomic groups: genus, species and strains. In addition, such a system must resolve abbreviations and acronyms, assign the scientific name and if possible link the detected mention to the NCBI Taxonomy database for further semantic queries and literature navigation. We present the OrganismTagger, a hybrid rule-based/machine learning system to extract organism mentions from the literature. It includes tools for automatically generating lexical and ontological resources from a copy of the NCBI Taxonomy database, thereby facilitating system updates by end users. Its novel ontology-based resources can also be reused in other semantic mining and linked data tasks. Each detected organism mention is normalized to a canonical name through the resolution of acronyms and abbreviations and subsequently grounded with an NCBI Taxonomy database ID. In particular, our system combines a novel machine-learning approach with rule-based and lexical methods for detecting strain mentions in documents. On our manually annotated OT corpus, the OrganismTagger achieves a precision of 95%, a recall of 94% and a grounding accuracy of 97.5%. On the manually annotated corpus of Linnaeus-100, the results show a precision of 99%, recall of 97% and grounding accuracy of 97.4%. The OrganismTagger, including supporting tools, resources, training data and manual annotations, as well as end user and developer documentation, is freely available under an open-source license at http://www.semanticsoftware.info/organism-tagger. witte@semanticsoftware.info.

Linguistic and Non-Linguistic Semantic Processing in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders: An ERP Study.

PubMed

Coderre, Emily L; Chernenok, Mariya; Gordon, Barry; Ledoux, Kerry

2017-03-01

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) experience difficulties with language, particularly higher-level functions like semantic integration. Yet some studies indicate that semantic processing of non-linguistic stimuli is not impaired, suggesting a language-specific deficit in semantic processing. Using a semantic priming task, we compared event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to lexico-semantic processing (written words) and visuo-semantic processing (pictures) in adults with ASD and adults with typical development (TD). The ASD group showed successful lexico-semantic and visuo-semantic processing, indicated by similar N400 effects between groups for word and picture stimuli. However, differences in N400 latency and topography in word conditions suggested different lexico-semantic processing mechanisms: an expectancy-based strategy for the TD group but a controlled post-lexical integration strategy for the ASD group.

Contextual Priming in Semantic Anomia: A Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Renvall, Kati; Laine, Matti; Martin, Nadine

2005-01-01

The present case continues the series of anomia treatment studies with contextual priming (CP), being the second in-depth treatment study conducted for an individual suffering from semantically based anomia. Our aim was to acquire further evidence of the facilitation and interference effects of the CP treatment on semantic anomia. Based on the…

Acceptability of Dative Argument Structure in Spanish: Assessing Semantic and Usage-Based Factors

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reali, Florencia

2017-01-01

Multiple constraints, including semantic, lexical, and usage-based factors, have been shown to influence dative alternation across different languages. This work explores whether fine-grained statistics and semantic properties of the verb affect the acceptability of dative constructions in Spanish. First, a corpus analysis reveals that verbs of…

ELE: An Ontology-Based System Integrating Semantic Search and E-Learning Technologies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barbagallo, A.; Formica, A.

2017-01-01

ELSE (E-Learning for the Semantic ECM) is an ontology-based system which integrates semantic search methodologies and e-learning technologies. It has been developed within a project of the CME (Continuing Medical Education) program--ECM (Educazione Continua nella Medicina) for Italian participants. ELSE allows the creation of e-learning courses…

Syntactic and semantic restrictions on morphological recomposition: MEG evidence from Greek.

PubMed

Neophytou, K; Manouilidou, C; Stockall, L; Marantz, A

2018-05-16

Complex morphological processing has been extensively studied in the past decades. However, most of this work has either focused on only certain steps involved in this process, or it has been conducted on a few languages, like English. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the spatiotemporal cortical processing profile of the distinct steps previously reported in the literature, from decomposition to re-composition of morphologically complex items, in a relatively understudied language, Greek. Using magnetoencephalography, we confirm the role of the fusiform gyrus in early, form-based morphological decomposition, we relate the syntactic licensing of stem-suffix combinations to the ventral visual processing stream, somewhat independent from lexical access for the stem, and we further elucidate the role of orbitofrontal regions in semantic composition. Thus, the current study offers the most comprehensive test to date of visual morphological processing and additional, crosslinguistic validation of the steps involved in it. Copyright © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Semantic Agent-Based Service Middleware and Simulation for Smart Cities

PubMed Central

Liu, Ming; Xu, Yang; Hu, Haixiao; Mohammed, Abdul-Wahid

2016-01-01

With the development of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) technology, a variety of embedded and mobile devices is integrated to interact via the platform of the Internet of Things, especially in the domain of smart cities. One of the primary challenges is that selecting the appropriate services or service combination for upper layer applications is hard, which is due to the absence of a unified semantical service description pattern, as well as the service selection mechanism. In this paper, we define a semantic service representation model from four key properties: Capability (C), Deployment (D), Resource (R) and IOData (IO). Based on this model, an agent-based middleware is built to support semantic service enablement. In this middleware, we present an efficient semantic service discovery and matching approach for a service combination process, which calculates the semantic similarity between services, and a heuristic algorithm to search the service candidates for a specific service request. Based on this design, we propose a simulation of virtual urban fire fighting, and the experimental results manifest the feasibility and efficiency of our design. PMID:28009818

Semantic Agent-Based Service Middleware and Simulation for Smart Cities.

PubMed

Liu, Ming; Xu, Yang; Hu, Haixiao; Mohammed, Abdul-Wahid

2016-12-21

With the development of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) technology, a variety of embedded and mobile devices is integrated to interact via the platform of the Internet of Things, especially in the domain of smart cities. One of the primary challenges is that selecting the appropriate services or service combination for upper layer applications is hard, which is due to the absence of a unified semantical service description pattern, as well as the service selection mechanism. In this paper, we define a semantic service representation model from four key properties: Capability (C), Deployment (D), Resource (R) and IOData (IO). Based on this model, an agent-based middleware is built to support semantic service enablement. In this middleware, we present an efficient semantic service discovery and matching approach for a service combination process, which calculates the semantic similarity between services, and a heuristic algorithm to search the service candidates for a specific service request. Based on this design, we propose a simulation of virtual urban fire fighting, and the experimental results manifest the feasibility and efficiency of our design.

Age-related reduction of adaptive brain response during semantic integration is associated with gray matter reduction.

PubMed

Zhu, Zude; Yang, Fengjun; Li, Dongning; Zhou, Lianjun; Liu, Ying; Zhang, Ying; Chen, Xuezhi

2017-01-01

While aging is associated with increased knowledge, it is also associated with decreased semantic integration. To investigate brain activation changes during semantic integration, a sample of forty-eight 25-75 year-old adults read sentences with high cloze (HC) and low cloze (LC) probability while functional magnetic resonance imaging was conducted. Significant age-related reduction of cloze effect (LC vs. HC) was found in several regions, especially the left middle frontal gyrus (MFG) and right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), which play an important role in semantic integration. Moreover, when accounting for global gray matter volume reduction, the age-cloze correlation in the left MFG and right IFG was absent. The results suggest that brain structural atrophy may disrupt brain response in aging brains, which then show less brain engagement in semantic integration.

The Role of Shape in Semantic Memory Organization of Objects: An Experimental Study Using PI-Release.

PubMed

van Weelden, Lisanne; Schilperoord, Joost; Swerts, Marc; Pecher, Diane

2015-01-01

Visual information contributes fundamentally to the process of object categorization. The present study investigated whether the degree of activation of visual information in this process is dependent on the contextual relevance of this information. We used the Proactive Interference (PI-release) paradigm. In four experiments, we manipulated the information by which objects could be categorized and subsequently be retrieved from memory. The pattern of PI-release showed that if objects could be stored and retrieved both by (non-perceptual) semantic and (perceptual) shape information, then shape information was overruled by semantic information. If, however, semantic information could not be (satisfactorily) used to store and retrieve objects, then objects were stored in memory in terms of their shape. The latter effect was found to be strongest for objects from identical semantic categories.

The Role of Accessibility of Semantic Word Knowledge in Monolingual and Bilingual Fifth-Grade Reading

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cremer, M.; Schoonen, R.

2013-01-01

The influences of word decoding, availability, and accessibility of semantic word knowledge on reading comprehension were investigated for monolingual "("n = 65) and bilingual children ("n" = 70). Despite equal decoding abilities, monolingual children outperformed bilingual children with regard to reading comprehension and…

The Effectiveness of Colourful Semantics on Narrative Skills in Children with Intellectual Disabilities in Sri Lanka

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hettiarachchi, Shyamani

2016-01-01

Background: Children diagnosed with intellectual difficulties experience difficulties with narrative skills, due to limited syntactic knowledge. The Colourful Semantics approach with thematic roles and a colour coding system may encourage syntactic development in children experiencing intellectual disabilities. Aim: To evaluate the effectiveness…

The Role of Semantic Clustering in Optimal Memory Foraging

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Montez, Priscilla; Thompson, Graham; Kello, Christopher T.

2015-01-01

Recent studies of semantic memory have investigated two theories of optimal search adopted from the animal foraging literature: Lévy flights and marginal value theorem. Each theory makes different simplifying assumptions and addresses different findings in search behaviors. In this study, an experiment is conducted to test whether clustering in…

Differential Lexical Predictors of Reading Comprehension in Fourth Graders

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Swart, Nicole M.; Muijselaar, Marloes M. L.; Steenbeek-Planting, Esther G.; Droop, Mienke; de Jong, Peter F.; Verhoeven, L.

2017-01-01

The mental lexicon plays a central role in reading comprehension (Perfetti & Stafura, 2014). It encompasses the number of lexical entries in spoken and written language (vocabulary breadth), the semantic quality of these entries (vocabulary depth), and the connection strength between lexical representations (semantic relatedness); as such, it…

Parametric Effects of Syntactic-Semantic Conflict in Broca's Area during Sentence Processing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thothathiri, Malathi; Kim, Albert; Trueswell, John C.; Thompson-Schill, Sharon L.

2012-01-01

The hypothesized role of Broca's area in sentence processing ranges from domain-general executive function to domain-specific computation that is specific to certain syntactic structures. We examined this issue by manipulating syntactic structure and conflict between syntactic and semantic cues in a sentence processing task. Functional…

Principal semantic components of language and the measurement of meaning.

PubMed

Samsonovich, Alexei V; Samsonovic, Alexei V; Ascoli, Giorgio A

2010-06-11

Metric systems for semantics, or semantic cognitive maps, are allocations of words or other representations in a metric space based on their meaning. Existing methods for semantic mapping, such as Latent Semantic Analysis and Latent Dirichlet Allocation, are based on paradigms involving dissimilarity metrics. They typically do not take into account relations of antonymy and yield a large number of domain-specific semantic dimensions. Here, using a novel self-organization approach, we construct a low-dimensional, context-independent semantic map of natural language that represents simultaneously synonymy and antonymy. Emergent semantics of the map principal components are clearly identifiable: the first three correspond to the meanings of "good/bad" (valence), "calm/excited" (arousal), and "open/closed" (freedom), respectively. The semantic map is sufficiently robust to allow the automated extraction of synonyms and antonyms not originally in the dictionaries used to construct the map and to predict connotation from their coordinates. The map geometric characteristics include a limited number ( approximately 4) of statistically significant dimensions, a bimodal distribution of the first component, increasing kurtosis of subsequent (unimodal) components, and a U-shaped maximum-spread planar projection. Both the semantic content and the main geometric features of the map are consistent between dictionaries (Microsoft Word and Princeton's WordNet), among Western languages (English, French, German, and Spanish), and with previously established psychometric measures. By defining the semantics of its dimensions, the constructed map provides a foundational metric system for the quantitative analysis of word meaning. Language can be viewed as a cumulative product of human experiences. Therefore, the extracted principal semantic dimensions may be useful to characterize the general semantic dimensions of the content of mental states. This is a fundamental step toward a universal metric system for semantics of human experiences, which is necessary for developing a rigorous science of the mind.

A neotropical Miocene pollen database employing image-based search and semantic modeling1

PubMed Central

Han, Jing Ginger; Cao, Hongfei; Barb, Adrian; Punyasena, Surangi W.; Jaramillo, Carlos; Shyu, Chi-Ren

2014-01-01

• Premise of the study: Digital microscopic pollen images are being generated with increasing speed and volume, producing opportunities to develop new computational methods that increase the consistency and efficiency of pollen analysis and provide the palynological community a computational framework for information sharing and knowledge transfer. • Methods: Mathematical methods were used to assign trait semantics (abstract morphological representations) of the images of neotropical Miocene pollen and spores. Advanced database-indexing structures were built to compare and retrieve similar images based on their visual content. A Web-based system was developed to provide novel tools for automatic trait semantic annotation and image retrieval by trait semantics and visual content. • Results: Mathematical models that map visual features to trait semantics can be used to annotate images with morphology semantics and to search image databases with improved reliability and productivity. Images can also be searched by visual content, providing users with customized emphases on traits such as color, shape, and texture. • Discussion: Content- and semantic-based image searches provide a powerful computational platform for pollen and spore identification. The infrastructure outlined provides a framework for building a community-wide palynological resource, streamlining the process of manual identification, analysis, and species discovery. PMID:25202648

The role of semantic complexity in treatment of naming deficits: training semantic categories in fluent aphasia by controlling exemplar typicality.

PubMed

Kiran, Swathi; Thompson, Cynthia K

2003-06-01

The effect of typicality of category exemplars on naming was investigated using a single subject experimental design across participants and behaviors in 4 patients with fluent aphasia. Participants received a semantic feature treatment to improve naming of either typical or atypical items within semantic categories, while generalization was tested to untrained items of the category. The order of typicality and category trained was counterbalanced across participants. Results indicated that patients trained on naming of atypical exemplars demonstrated generalization to naming of intermediate and typical items. However, patients trained on typical items demonstrated no generalized naming effect to intermediate or atypical examples. Furthermore, analysis of errors indicated an evolution of errors throughout training, from those with no apparent relationship to the target to primarily semantic and phonemic paraphasias. Performance on standardized language tests also showed changes as a function of treatment. Theoretical and clinical implications regarding the impact of considering semantic complexity on rehabilitation of naming deficits in aphasia are discussed.

The role of semantic complexity in treatment of naming deficits: training semantic categories in fluent aphasia by controlling exemplar typicality.

PubMed

Kiran, Swathi; Thompson, Cynthia K

2003-08-01

The effect of typicality of category exemplars on naming was investigated using a single subject experimental design across participants and behaviors in 4 patients with fluent aphasia. Participants received a semantic feature treatment to improve naming of either typical or atypical items within semantic categories, while generalization was tested to untrained items of the category. The order of typicality and category trained was counterbalanced across participants. Results indicated that patients trained on naming of atypical exemplars demonstrated generalization to naming of intermediate and typical items. However, patients trained on typical items demonstrated no generalized naming effect to intermediate or atypical examples. Furthermore, analysis of errors indicated an evolution of errors throughout training, from those with no apparent relationship to the target to primarily semantic and phonemic paraphasias. Performance on standardized language tests also showed changes as a function of treatment. Theoretical and clinical implications regarding the impact of considering semantic complexity on rehabilitation of naming deficits in aphasia are discussed.

The neural correlates of semantic richness: evidence from an fMRI study of word learning.

PubMed

Ferreira, Roberto A; Göbel, Silke M; Hymers, Mark; Ellis, Andrew W

2015-04-01

We investigated the neural correlates of concrete nouns with either many or few semantic features. A group of 21 participants underwent two days of training and were then asked to categorize 40 newly learned words and a set of matched familiar words as living or nonliving in an MRI scanner. Our results showed that the most reliable effects of semantic richness were located in the left angular gyrus (AG) and middle temporal gyrus (MTG), where activation was higher for semantically rich than poor words. Other areas showing the same pattern included bilateral precuneus and posterior cingulate gyrus. Our findings support the view that AG and anterior MTG, as part of the multimodal network, play a significant role in representing and integrating semantic features from different input modalities. We propose that activation in bilateral precuneus and posterior cingulate gyrus reflects interplay between AG and episodic memory systems during semantic retrieval. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Distinct neural substrates for semantic knowledge and naming in the temporoparietal network.

PubMed

Gesierich, Benno; Jovicich, Jorge; Riello, Marianna; Adriani, Michela; Monti, Alessia; Brentari, Valentina; Robinson, Simon D; Wilson, Stephen M; Fairhall, Scott L; Gorno-Tempini, Maria Luisa

2012-10-01

Patients with anterior temporal lobe (ATL) lesions show semantic and lexical retrieval deficits, and the differential role of this area in the 2 processes is debated. Functional neuroimaging in healthy individuals has not clarified the matter because semantic and lexical processes usually occur simultaneously and automatically. Furthermore, the ATL is a region challenging for functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) due to susceptibility artifacts, especially at high fields. In this study, we established an optimized ATL-sensitive fMRI acquisition protocol at 4 T and applied an event-related paradigm to study the identification (i.e., association of semantic biographical information) of celebrities, with and without the ability to retrieve their proper names. While semantic processing reliably activated the ATL, only more posterior areas in the left temporal and temporal-parietal junction were significantly modulated by covert lexical retrieval. These results suggest that within a temporoparietal network, the ATL is relatively more important for semantic processing, and posterior language regions are relatively more important for lexical retrieval.

Syntactic processing in the absence of awareness and semantics.

PubMed

Hung, Shao-Min; Hsieh, Po-Jang

2015-10-01

The classical view that multistep rule-based operations require consciousness has recently been challenged by findings that both multiword semantic processing and multistep arithmetic equations can be processed unconsciously. It remains unclear, however, whether pure rule-based cognitive processes can occur unconsciously in the absence of semantics. Here, after presenting 2 words consciously, we suppressed the third with continuous flash suppression. First, we showed that the third word in the subject-verb-verb format (syntactically incongruent) broke suppression significantly faster than the third word in the subject-verb-object format (syntactically congruent). Crucially, the same effect was observed even with sentences composed of pseudowords (pseudo subject-verb-adjective vs. pseudo subject-verb-object) without any semantic information. This is the first study to show that syntactic congruency can be processed unconsciously in the complete absence of semantics. Our findings illustrate how abstract rule-based processing (e.g., syntactic categories) can occur in the absence of visual awareness, even when deprived of semantics. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Integrating semantic information into multiple kernels for protein-protein interaction extraction from biomedical literatures.

PubMed

Li, Lishuang; Zhang, Panpan; Zheng, Tianfu; Zhang, Hongying; Jiang, Zhenchao; Huang, Degen

2014-01-01

Protein-Protein Interaction (PPI) extraction is an important task in the biomedical information extraction. Presently, many machine learning methods for PPI extraction have achieved promising results. However, the performance is still not satisfactory. One reason is that the semantic resources were basically ignored. In this paper, we propose a multiple-kernel learning-based approach to extract PPIs, combining the feature-based kernel, tree kernel and semantic kernel. Particularly, we extend the shortest path-enclosed tree kernel (SPT) by a dynamic extended strategy to retrieve the richer syntactic information. Our semantic kernel calculates the protein-protein pair similarity and the context similarity based on two semantic resources: WordNet and Medical Subject Heading (MeSH). We evaluate our method with Support Vector Machine (SVM) and achieve an F-score of 69.40% and an AUC of 92.00%, which show that our method outperforms most of the state-of-the-art systems by integrating semantic information.

Auditory Distraction in Semantic Memory: A Process-Based Approach

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Marsh, John E.; Hughes, Robert W.; Jones, Dylan M.

2008-01-01

Five experiments demonstrate auditory-semantic distraction in tests of memory for semantic category-exemplars. The effects of irrelevant sound on category-exemplar recall are shown to be functionally distinct from those found in the context of serial short-term memory by showing sensitivity to: The lexical-semantic, rather than acoustic,…

Shared Semantics and the Use of Organizational Memories for E-Mail Communications.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schwartz, David G.

1998-01-01

Examines the use of shared semantics information to link concepts in an organizational memory to e-mail communications. Presents a framework for determining shared semantics based on organizational and personal user profiles. Illustrates how shared semantics are used by the HyperMail system to help link organizational memories (OM) content to…

Progress toward a Semantic eScience Framework; building on advanced cyberinfrastructure

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

McGuinness, D. L.; Fox, P. A.; West, P.; Rozell, E.; Zednik, S.; Chang, C.

2010-12-01

The configurable and extensible semantic eScience framework (SESF) has begun development and implementation of several semantic application components. Extensions and improvements to several ontologies have been made based on distinct interdisciplinary use cases ranging from solar physics, to biologicl and chemical oceanography. Importantly, these semantic representations mediate access to a diverse set of existing and emerging cyberinfrastructure. Among the advances are the population of triple stores with web accessible query services. A triple store is akin to a relational data store where the basic stored unit is a subject-predicate-object tuple. Access via a query is provided by the W3 Recommendation language specification SPARQL. Upon this middle tier of semantic cyberinfrastructure, we have developed several forms of semantic faceted search, including provenance-awareness. We report on the rapid advances in semantic technologies and tools and how we are sustaining the software path for the required technical advances as well as the ontology improvements and increased functionality of the semantic applications including how they are integrated into web-based portals (e.g. Drupal) and web services. Lastly, we indicate future work direction and opportunities for collaboration.

Damage to temporo-parietal cortex decreases incidental activation of thematic relations during spoken word comprehension

PubMed Central

Mirman, Daniel; Graziano, Kristen M.

2012-01-01

Both taxonomic and thematic semantic relations have been studied extensively in behavioral studies and there is an emerging consensus that the anterior temporal lobe plays a particularly important role in the representation and processing of taxonomic relations, but the neural basis of thematic semantics is less clear. We used eye tracking to examine incidental activation of taxonomic and thematic relations during spoken word comprehension in participants with aphasia. Three groups of participants were tested: neurologically intact control participants (N=14), individuals with aphasia resulting from lesions in left hemisphere BA 39 and surrounding temporo-parietal cortex regions (N=7), and individuals with the same degree of aphasia severity and semantic impairment and anterior left hemisphere lesions (primarily inferior frontal gyrus and anterior temporal lobe) that spared BA 39 (N=6). The posterior lesion group showed reduced and delayed activation of thematic relations, but not taxonomic relations. In contrast, the anterior lesion group exhibited longer-lasting activation of taxonomic relations and did not differ from control participants in terms of activation of thematic relations. These results suggest that taxonomic and thematic semantic knowledge are functionally and neuroanatomically distinct, with the temporo-parietal cortex playing a particularly important role in thematic semantics. PMID:22571932

A journey to Semantic Web query federation in the life sciences.

PubMed

Cheung, Kei-Hoi; Frost, H Robert; Marshall, M Scott; Prud'hommeaux, Eric; Samwald, Matthias; Zhao, Jun; Paschke, Adrian

2009-10-01

As interest in adopting the Semantic Web in the biomedical domain continues to grow, Semantic Web technology has been evolving and maturing. A variety of technological approaches including triplestore technologies, SPARQL endpoints, Linked Data, and Vocabulary of Interlinked Datasets have emerged in recent years. In addition to the data warehouse construction, these technological approaches can be used to support dynamic query federation. As a community effort, the BioRDF task force, within the Semantic Web for Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group, is exploring how these emerging approaches can be utilized to execute distributed queries across different neuroscience data sources. We have created two health care and life science knowledge bases. We have explored a variety of Semantic Web approaches to describe, map, and dynamically query multiple datasets. We have demonstrated several federation approaches that integrate diverse types of information about neurons and receptors that play an important role in basic, clinical, and translational neuroscience research. Particularly, we have created a prototype receptor explorer which uses OWL mappings to provide an integrated list of receptors and executes individual queries against different SPARQL endpoints. We have also employed the AIDA Toolkit, which is directed at groups of knowledge workers who cooperatively search, annotate, interpret, and enrich large collections of heterogeneous documents from diverse locations. We have explored a tool called "FeDeRate", which enables a global SPARQL query to be decomposed into subqueries against the remote databases offering either SPARQL or SQL query interfaces. Finally, we have explored how to use the vocabulary of interlinked Datasets (voiD) to create metadata for describing datasets exposed as Linked Data URIs or SPARQL endpoints. We have demonstrated the use of a set of novel and state-of-the-art Semantic Web technologies in support of a neuroscience query federation scenario. We have identified both the strengths and weaknesses of these technologies. While Semantic Web offers a global data model including the use of Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI's), the proliferation of semantically-equivalent URI's hinders large scale data integration. Our work helps direct research and tool development, which will be of benefit to this community.

A journey to Semantic Web query federation in the life sciences

PubMed Central

Cheung, Kei-Hoi; Frost, H Robert; Marshall, M Scott; Prud'hommeaux, Eric; Samwald, Matthias; Zhao, Jun; Paschke, Adrian

2009-01-01

Background As interest in adopting the Semantic Web in the biomedical domain continues to grow, Semantic Web technology has been evolving and maturing. A variety of technological approaches including triplestore technologies, SPARQL endpoints, Linked Data, and Vocabulary of Interlinked Datasets have emerged in recent years. In addition to the data warehouse construction, these technological approaches can be used to support dynamic query federation. As a community effort, the BioRDF task force, within the Semantic Web for Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group, is exploring how these emerging approaches can be utilized to execute distributed queries across different neuroscience data sources. Methods and results We have created two health care and life science knowledge bases. We have explored a variety of Semantic Web approaches to describe, map, and dynamically query multiple datasets. We have demonstrated several federation approaches that integrate diverse types of information about neurons and receptors that play an important role in basic, clinical, and translational neuroscience research. Particularly, we have created a prototype receptor explorer which uses OWL mappings to provide an integrated list of receptors and executes individual queries against different SPARQL endpoints. We have also employed the AIDA Toolkit, which is directed at groups of knowledge workers who cooperatively search, annotate, interpret, and enrich large collections of heterogeneous documents from diverse locations. We have explored a tool called "FeDeRate", which enables a global SPARQL query to be decomposed into subqueries against the remote databases offering either SPARQL or SQL query interfaces. Finally, we have explored how to use the vocabulary of interlinked Datasets (voiD) to create metadata for describing datasets exposed as Linked Data URIs or SPARQL endpoints. Conclusion We have demonstrated the use of a set of novel and state-of-the-art Semantic Web technologies in support of a neuroscience query federation scenario. We have identified both the strengths and weaknesses of these technologies. While Semantic Web offers a global data model including the use of Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI's), the proliferation of semantically-equivalent URI's hinders large scale data integration. Our work helps direct research and tool development, which will be of benefit to this community. PMID:19796394

The role of the ventro-lateral prefrontal cortex in idiom comprehension: An rTMS study.

PubMed

Häuser, Katja I; Titone, Debra A; Baum, Shari R

2016-10-01

Previous research is equivocal with respect to the neural substrates of idiom processing. Particularly elusive is the role of the left ventro-lateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), a region implicated in semantic control generally. Although fMRI studies have shown that the left VLPFC is active during idiom processing (see Rapp et al. (2012), for review), rTMS studies have failed to corroborate a clear role of this prefrontal region (e.g., Oliveri et al., 2004). We investigated this issue using a semantic meaningfulness judgment task that compared idiom comprehension following rTMS-stimulation to the left VLPFC relative to a control site (vertex). We also investigated whether individual differences in general cognitive capacity among comprehenders modulated the effects of rTMS. The results indicate that left VLPFC stimulation particularly affected the processing of low-familiar idioms, possibly because these items involve a maximal semantic conflict between a salient literal and less-known figurative meaning. Of note, this pattern only emerged for comprehenders with higher cognitive control capacity, possibly because they were more likely to activate or maintain multiple semantic representations during idiom processing, which required VLPFC integrity. Taken together, the results support the importance of the left VLPFC to idiom processing. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Analysis and visualization of disease courses in a semantically-enabled cancer registry.

PubMed

Esteban-Gil, Angel; Fernández-Breis, Jesualdo Tomás; Boeker, Martin

2017-09-29

Regional and epidemiological cancer registries are important for cancer research and the quality management of cancer treatment. Many technological solutions are available to collect and analyse data for cancer registries nowadays. However, the lack of a well-defined common semantic model is a problem when user-defined analyses and data linking to external resources are required. The objectives of this study are: (1) design of a semantic model for local cancer registries; (2) development of a semantically-enabled cancer registry based on this model; and (3) semantic exploitation of the cancer registry for analysing and visualising disease courses. Our proposal is based on our previous results and experience working with semantic technologies. Data stored in a cancer registry database were transformed into RDF employing a process driven by OWL ontologies. The semantic representation of the data was then processed to extract semantic patient profiles, which were exploited by means of SPARQL queries to identify groups of similar patients and to analyse the disease timelines of patients. Based on the requirements analysis, we have produced a draft of an ontology that models the semantics of a local cancer registry in a pragmatic extensible way. We have implemented a Semantic Web platform that allows transforming and storing data from cancer registries in RDF. This platform also permits users to formulate incremental user-defined queries through a graphical user interface. The query results can be displayed in several customisable ways. The complex disease timelines of individual patients can be clearly represented. Different events, e.g. different therapies and disease courses, are presented according to their temporal and causal relations. The presented platform is an example of the parallel development of ontologies and applications that take advantage of semantic web technologies in the medical field. The semantic structure of the representation renders it easy to analyse key figures of the patients and their evolution at different granularity levels.

Behavior Modification Through Covert Semantic Desensitization

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hekmat, Hamid; Vanian, Daniel

1971-01-01

Results support the hypothesized relationship between meaning and phobia. Semantic desensitization techniques based on counter conditioning of meaning were significantly effective in altering the semantic value of the word from unpleasantness to neutrality. (Author)

Designing Collaborative E-Learning Environments Based upon Semantic Wiki: From Design Models to Application Scenarios

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Li, Yanyan; Dong, Mingkai; Huang, Ronghuai

2011-01-01

The knowledge society requires life-long learning and flexible learning environment that enables fast, just-in-time and relevant learning, aiding the development of communities of knowledge, linking learners and practitioners with experts. Based upon semantic wiki, a combination of wiki and Semantic Web technology, this paper designs and develops…

F-OWL: An Inference Engine for Semantic Web

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Zou, Youyong; Finin, Tim; Chen, Harry

2004-01-01

Understanding and using the data and knowledge encoded in semantic web documents requires an inference engine. F-OWL is an inference engine for the semantic web language OWL language based on F-logic, an approach to defining frame-based systems in logic. F-OWL is implemented using XSB and Flora-2 and takes full advantage of their features. We describe how F-OWL computes ontology entailment and compare it with other description logic based approaches. We also describe TAGA, a trading agent environment that we have used as a test bed for F-OWL and to explore how multiagent systems can use semantic web concepts and technology.

Semantics by analogy for illustrative volume visualization☆

PubMed Central

Gerl, Moritz; Rautek, Peter; Isenberg, Tobias; Gröller, Eduard

2012-01-01

We present an interactive graphical approach for the explicit specification of semantics for volume visualization. This explicit and graphical specification of semantics for volumetric features allows us to visually assign meaning to both input and output parameters of the visualization mapping. This is in contrast to the implicit way of specifying semantics using transfer functions. In particular, we demonstrate how to realize a dynamic specification of semantics which allows to flexibly explore a wide range of mappings. Our approach is based on three concepts. First, we use semantic shader augmentation to automatically add rule-based rendering functionality to static visualization mappings in a shader program, while preserving the visual abstraction that the initial shader encodes. With this technique we extend recent developments that define a mapping between data attributes and visual attributes with rules, which are evaluated using fuzzy logic. Second, we let users define the semantics by analogy through brushing on renderings of the data attributes of interest. Third, the rules are specified graphically in an interface that provides visual clues for potential modifications. Together, the presented methods offer a high degree of freedom in the specification and exploration of rule-based mappings and avoid the limitations of a linguistic rule formulation. PMID:23576827

ODMedit: uniform semantic annotation for data integration in medicine based on a public metadata repository.

PubMed

Dugas, Martin; Meidt, Alexandra; Neuhaus, Philipp; Storck, Michael; Varghese, Julian

2016-06-01

The volume and complexity of patient data - especially in personalised medicine - is steadily increasing, both regarding clinical data and genomic profiles: Typically more than 1,000 items (e.g., laboratory values, vital signs, diagnostic tests etc.) are collected per patient in clinical trials. In oncology hundreds of mutations can potentially be detected for each patient by genomic profiling. Therefore data integration from multiple sources constitutes a key challenge for medical research and healthcare. Semantic annotation of data elements can facilitate to identify matching data elements in different sources and thereby supports data integration. Millions of different annotations are required due to the semantic richness of patient data. These annotations should be uniform, i.e., two matching data elements shall contain the same annotations. However, large terminologies like SNOMED CT or UMLS don't provide uniform coding. It is proposed to develop semantic annotations of medical data elements based on a large-scale public metadata repository. To achieve uniform codes, semantic annotations shall be re-used if a matching data element is available in the metadata repository. A web-based tool called ODMedit ( https://odmeditor.uni-muenster.de/ ) was developed to create data models with uniform semantic annotations. It contains ~800,000 terms with semantic annotations which were derived from ~5,800 models from the portal of medical data models (MDM). The tool was successfully applied to manually annotate 22 forms with 292 data items from CDISC and to update 1,495 data models of the MDM portal. Uniform manual semantic annotation of data models is feasible in principle, but requires a large-scale collaborative effort due to the semantic richness of patient data. A web-based tool for these annotations is available, which is linked to a public metadata repository.

Attention to Distinct Goal-relevant Features Differentially Guides Semantic Knowledge Retrieval.

PubMed

Hanson, Gavin K; Chrysikou, Evangelia G

2017-07-01

A critical aspect of conceptual knowledge is the selective activation of goal-relevant aspects of meaning. Although the contributions of ventrolateral prefrontal and posterior temporal areas to semantic cognition are well established, the precise role of posterior parietal cortex in semantic control remains unknown. Here, we examined whether this region modulates attention to goal-relevant features within semantic memory according to the same principles that determine the salience of task-relevant object properties during visual attention. Using multivoxel pattern analysis, we decoded attentional referents during a semantic judgment task, in which participants matched an object cue to a target according to concrete (i.e., color, shape) or abstract (i.e., function, thematic context) semantic features. The goal-relevant semantic feature participants attended to (e.g., color or shape, function or theme) could be decoded from task-associated cortical activity with above-chance accuracy, a pattern that held for both concrete and abstract semantic features. A Bayesian confusion matrix analysis further identified differential contributions to representing attentional demands toward specific object properties across lateral prefrontal, posterior temporal, and inferior parietal regions, with the dorsolateral pFC supporting distinctions between higher-order properties and the left intraparietal sulcus being the only region supporting distinctions across all semantic features. These results are the first to demonstrate that patterns of neural activity in the parietal cortex are sensitive to which features of a concept are attended to, thus supporting the contributions of posterior parietal cortex to semantic control.

Why all the confusion? Experimental task explains discrepant semantic priming effects in schizophrenia under "automatic" conditions: evidence from Event-Related Potentials.

PubMed

Kreher, Donna A; Goff, Donald; Kuperberg, Gina R

2009-06-01

The schizophrenia research literature contains many differing accounts of semantic memory function in schizophrenia as assessed through the semantic priming paradigm. Most recently, Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) have been used to demonstrate both increased and decreased semantic priming at a neural level in schizophrenia patients, relative to healthy controls. The present study used ERPs to investigate the role of behavioral task in determining neural semantic priming effects in schizophrenia. The same schizophrenia patients and healthy controls completed two experiments in which word stimuli were identical, and the time between the onset of prime and target remained constant at 350 ms: in the first, participants monitored for words within a particular semantic category that appeared only in filler items (implicit task); in the second, participants explicitly rated the relatedness of word-pairs (explicit task). In the explicit task, schizophrenia patients showed reduced direct and indirect semantic priming in comparison with healthy controls. In contrast, in the implicit task, schizophrenia patients showed normal or, in positively thought-disordered patients, increased direct and indirect N400 priming effects compared with healthy controls. These data confirm that, although schizophrenia patients with positive thought disorder may show an abnormally increased automatic spreading activation, the introduction of semantic decision-making can result in abnormally reduced semantic priming in schizophrenia, even when other experimental conditions bias toward automatic processing.

The role of sleep spindles and slow-wave activity in integrating new information in semantic memory.

PubMed

Tamminen, Jakke; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A; Lewis, Penelope A

2013-09-25

Assimilating new information into existing knowledge is a fundamental part of consolidating new memories and allowing them to guide behavior optimally and is vital for conceptual knowledge (semantic memory), which is accrued over many years. Sleep is important for memory consolidation, but its impact upon assimilation of new information into existing semantic knowledge has received minimal examination. Here, we examined the integration process by training human participants on novel words with meanings that fell into densely or sparsely populated areas of semantic memory in two separate sessions. Overnight sleep was polysomnographically monitored after each training session and recall was tested immediately after training, after a night of sleep, and 1 week later. Results showed that participants learned equal numbers of both word types, thus equating amount and difficulty of learning across the conditions. Measures of word recognition speed showed a disadvantage for novel words in dense semantic neighborhoods, presumably due to interference from many semantically related concepts, suggesting that the novel words had been successfully integrated into semantic memory. Most critically, semantic neighborhood density influenced sleep architecture, with participants exhibiting more sleep spindles and slow-wave activity after learning the sparse compared with the dense neighborhood words. These findings provide the first evidence that spindles and slow-wave activity mediate integration of new information into existing semantic networks.

The neural and computational bases of semantic cognition.

PubMed

Ralph, Matthew A Lambon; Jefferies, Elizabeth; Patterson, Karalyn; Rogers, Timothy T

2017-01-01

Semantic cognition refers to our ability to use, manipulate and generalize knowledge that is acquired over the lifespan to support innumerable verbal and non-verbal behaviours. This Review summarizes key findings and issues arising from a decade of research into the neurocognitive and neurocomputational underpinnings of this ability, leading to a new framework that we term controlled semantic cognition (CSC). CSC offers solutions to long-standing queries in philosophy and cognitive science, and yields a convergent framework for understanding the neural and computational bases of healthy semantic cognition and its dysfunction in brain disorders.

A category-specific advantage for numbers in verbal short-term memory: evidence from semantic dementia.

PubMed

Jefferies, Elizabeth; Patterson, Karalyn; Jones, Roy W; Bateman, David; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A

2004-01-01

This study explored possible reasons for the striking difference between digit span and word span in patients with semantic dementia. Immediate serial recall (ISR) of number and non-number words was examined in four patients. For every case, the recall of single-digit numbers was normal whereas the recall of non-number words was impaired relative to controls. This difference extended to multi-digit numbers, and remained even when frequency, imageability, word length, set size and size of semantic category were matched for the numbers and words. The advantage for number words also applied to the patients' reading performance. Previous studies have suggested that semantic memory plays a critical role in verbal short-term memory (STM) and reading: patients with semantic dementia show superior recall and reading of words that are still relatively well known compared to previously known but now semantically degraded words. Additional assessments suggested that this semantic locus was the basis of the patients' category-specific advantage for numbers. Comprehension was considerably better for number than non-number words. Number knowledge may be relatively preserved in semantic dementia because the cortical atrophy underlying the condition typically spares the areas of the parietal lobes thought to be crucial in numerical cognition but involves the inferolateral temporal-lobes known to support general conceptual knowledge.

A Graph-Based Recovery and Decomposition of Swanson’s Hypothesis using Semantic Predications

PubMed Central

Cameron, Delroy; Bodenreider, Olivier; Yalamanchili, Hima; Danh, Tu; Vallabhaneni, Sreeram; Thirunarayan, Krishnaprasad; Sheth, Amit P.; Rindflesch, Thomas C.

2014-01-01

Objectives This paper presents a methodology for recovering and decomposing Swanson’s Raynaud Syndrome–Fish Oil Hypothesis semi-automatically. The methodology leverages the semantics of assertions extracted from biomedical literature (called semantic predications) along with structured background knowledge and graph-based algorithms to semi-automatically capture the informative associations originally discovered manually by Swanson. Demonstrating that Swanson’s manually intensive techniques can be undertaken semi-automatically, paves the way for fully automatic semantics-based hypothesis generation from scientific literature. Methods Semantic predications obtained from biomedical literature allow the construction of labeled directed graphs which contain various associations among concepts from the literature. By aggregating such associations into informative subgraphs, some of the relevant details originally articulated by Swanson has been uncovered. However, by leveraging background knowledge to bridge important knowledge gaps in the literature, a methodology for semi-automatically capturing the detailed associations originally explicated in natural language by Swanson has been developed. Results Our methodology not only recovered the 3 associations commonly recognized as Swanson’s Hypothesis, but also decomposed them into an additional 16 detailed associations, formulated as chains of semantic predications. Altogether, 14 out of the 19 associations that can be attributed to Swanson were retrieved using our approach. To the best of our knowledge, such an in-depth recovery and decomposition of Swanson’s Hypothesis has never been attempted. Conclusion In this work therefore, we presented a methodology for semi- automatically recovering and decomposing Swanson’s RS-DFO Hypothesis using semantic representations and graph algorithms. Our methodology provides new insights into potential prerequisites for semantics-driven Literature-Based Discovery (LBD). These suggest that three critical aspects of LBD include: 1) the need for more expressive representations beyond Swanson’s ABC model; 2) an ability to accurately extract semantic information from text; and 3) the semantic integration of scientific literature with structured background knowledge. PMID:23026233

Episodic and Semantic Memory: Implications for the Role of Emotion in Advertising.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thorson, Esther

In an examination of the way people store and retrieve information from advertising, this paper draws a distinction between "semantic" memory, which stores general knowledge about the world, and "episodic" memory, which stores information about specific events. It then argues that episodic memory plays a more significant role…

The Role of Syntactic Obligatoriness in the Production of Intonational Boundaries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Watson, Duane; Breen, Mara; Gibson, Edward

2006-01-01

Researchers have hypothesized that words that are highly related semantically are more likely to occur within the same intonational phrase (F. zzaq;, 1988; E. O. Selkirk, 1984). D. Watson and E. Gibson (2004) proposed that semantic closeness can be captured by using the argument/adjunct distinction, such that intonational boundaries are more…

Semantic Contamination and Mathematical Proof: Can a Non-Proof Prove?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mejia-Ramos, Juan Pablo; Inglis, Matthew

2011-01-01

The way words are used in natural language can influence how the same words are understood by students in formal educational contexts. Here we argue that this so-called semantic contamination effect plays a role in determining how students engage with mathematical proof, a fundamental aspect of learning mathematics. Analyses of responses to…

Sleep Increases Explicit Solutions and Reduces Intuitive Judgments of Semantic Coherence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zander, Thea; Volz, Kirsten G.; Born, Jan; Diekelmann, Susanne

2017-01-01

Sleep fosters the generation of explicit knowledge. Whether sleep also benefits implicit intuitive decisions about underlying patterns is unclear. We examined sleep's role in explicit and intuitive semantic coherence judgments. Participants encoded sets of three words and after a sleep or wake period were required to judge the potential…

Speech-Associated Gestures, Broca's Area, and the Human Mirror System

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Skipper, Jeremy I.; Goldin-Meadow, Susan; Nusbaum, Howard C.; Small, Steven L.

2007-01-01

Speech-associated gestures are hand and arm movements that not only convey semantic information to listeners but are themselves actions. Broca's area has been assumed to play an important role both in semantic retrieval or selection (as part of a language comprehension system) and in action recognition (as part of a "mirror" or…

SemantGeo: Powering Ecological and Environment Data Discovery and Search with Standards-Based Geospatial Reasoning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Seyed, P.; Ashby, B.; Khan, I.; Patton, E. W.; McGuinness, D. L.

2013-12-01

Recent efforts to create and leverage standards for geospatial data specification and inference include the GeoSPARQL standard, Geospatial OWL ontologies (e.g., GAZ, Geonames), and RDF triple stores that support GeoSPARQL (e.g., AllegroGraph, Parliament) that use RDF instance data for geospatial features of interest. However, there remains a gap on how best to fuse software engineering best practices and GeoSPARQL within semantic web applications to enable flexible search driven by geospatial reasoning. In this abstract we introduce the SemantGeo module for the SemantEco framework that helps fill this gap, enabling scientists find data using geospatial semantics and reasoning. SemantGeo provides multiple types of geospatial reasoning for SemantEco modules. The server side implementation uses the Parliament SPARQL Endpoint accessed via a Tomcat servlet. SemantGeo uses the Google Maps API for user-specified polygon construction and JsTree for providing containment and categorical hierarchies for search. SemantGeo uses GeoSPARQL for spatial reasoning alone and in concert with RDFS/OWL reasoning capabilities to determine, e.g., what geofeatures are within, partially overlap with, or within a certain distance from, a given polygon. We also leverage qualitative relationships defined by the Gazetteer ontology that are composites of spatial relationships as well as administrative designations or geophysical phenomena. We provide multiple mechanisms for exploring data, such as polygon (map-based) and named-feature (hierarchy-based) selection, that enable flexible search constraints using boolean combination of selections. JsTree-based hierarchical search facets present named features and include a 'part of' hierarchy (e.g., measurement-site-01, Lake George, Adirondack Region, NY State) and type hierarchies (e.g., nodes in the hierarchy for WaterBody, Park, MeasurementSite), depending on the ';axis of choice' option selected. Using GeoSPARQL and aforementioned ontology, these hierarchies are constrained based on polygon selection, where the corresponding polygons of the contained features are visually rendered to assist exploration. Once measurement sites are plotted based on initial search, subsequent searches using JsTree selections can extend the previous based on nearby waterbodies in some semantic relationship of interest. For example, ';tributary of' captures water bodies that flow into the current one, and extending the original search to include tributaries of the observed water body is useful to environmental scientists for isolating the source of characteristic levels, including pollutants. Ultimately any SemantEco module can leverage SemantGeo's underlying APIs, leveraged in a deployment of SemantEco that combines EPA and USGS water quality data, and one customized for searching data available from the Darrin Freshwater Institute. Future work will address generating RDF geometry data from shape files, aligning RDF data sources to better leverage qualitative and spatial relationships, and validating newly generated RDF data adhering to the GeoSPARQL standard.

Semantic attributes based texture generation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chi, Huifang; Gan, Yanhai; Qi, Lin; Dong, Junyu; Madessa, Amanuel Hirpa

2018-04-01

Semantic attributes are commonly used for texture description. They can be used to describe the information of a texture, such as patterns, textons, distributions, brightness, and so on. Generally speaking, semantic attributes are more concrete descriptors than perceptual features. Therefore, it is practical to generate texture images from semantic attributes. In this paper, we propose to generate high-quality texture images from semantic attributes. Over the last two decades, several works have been done on texture synthesis and generation. Most of them focusing on example-based texture synthesis and procedural texture generation. Semantic attributes based texture generation still deserves more devotion. Gan et al. proposed a useful joint model for perception driven texture generation. However, perceptual features are nonobjective spatial statistics used by humans to distinguish different textures in pre-attentive situations. To give more describing information about texture appearance, semantic attributes which are more in line with human description habits are desired. In this paper, we use sigmoid cross entropy loss in an auxiliary model to provide enough information for a generator. Consequently, the discriminator is released from the relatively intractable mission of figuring out the joint distribution of condition vectors and samples. To demonstrate the validity of our method, we compare our method to Gan et al.'s method on generating textures by designing experiments on PTD and DTD. All experimental results show that our model can generate textures from semantic attributes.

Using ontology-based semantic similarity to facilitate the article screening process for systematic reviews.

PubMed

Ji, Xiaonan; Ritter, Alan; Yen, Po-Yin

2017-05-01

Systematic Reviews (SRs) are utilized to summarize evidence from high quality studies and are considered the preferred source of evidence-based practice (EBP). However, conducting SRs can be time and labor intensive due to the high cost of article screening. In previous studies, we demonstrated utilizing established (lexical) article relationships to facilitate the identification of relevant articles in an efficient and effective manner. Here we propose to enhance article relationships with background semantic knowledge derived from Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) concepts and ontologies. We developed a pipelined semantic concepts representation process to represent articles from an SR into an optimized and enriched semantic space of UMLS concepts. Throughout the process, we leveraged concepts and concept relations encoded in biomedical ontologies (SNOMED-CT and MeSH) within the UMLS framework to prompt concept features of each article. Article relationships (similarities) were established and represented as a semantic article network, which was readily applied to assist with the article screening process. We incorporated the concept of active learning to simulate an interactive article recommendation process, and evaluated the performance on 15 completed SRs. We used work saved over sampling at 95% recall (WSS95) as the performance measure. We compared the WSS95 performance of our ontology-based semantic approach to existing lexical feature approaches and corpus-based semantic approaches, and found that we had better WSS95 in most SRs. We also had the highest average WSS95 of 43.81% and the highest total WSS95 of 657.18%. We demonstrated using ontology-based semantics to facilitate the identification of relevant articles for SRs. Effective concepts and concept relations derived from UMLS ontologies can be utilized to establish article semantic relationships. Our approach provided a promising performance and can easily apply to any SR topics in the biomedical domain with generalizability. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

HealthCyberMap: a semantic visual browser of medical Internet resources based on clinical codes and the human body metaphor.

PubMed

Kamel Boulos, Maged N; Roudsari, Abdul V; Carso N, Ewart R

2002-12-01

HealthCyberMap (HCM-http://healthcybermap.semanticweb.org) is a web-based service for healthcare professionals and librarians, patients and the public in general that aims at mapping parts of the health information resources in cyberspace in novel ways to improve their retrieval and navigation. HCM adopts a clinical metadata framework built upon a clinical coding ontology for the semantic indexing, classification and browsing of Internet health information resources. A resource metadata base holds information about selected resources. HCM then uses GIS (Geographic Information Systems) spatialization methods to generate interactive navigational cybermaps from the metadata base. These visual cybermaps are based on familiar medical metaphors. HCM cybermaps can be considered as semantically spatialized, ontology-based browsing views of the underlying resource metadata base. Using a clinical coding scheme as a metric for spatialization ('semantic distance') is unique to HCM and is very much suited for the semantic categorization and navigation of Internet health information resources. Clinical codes ensure reliable and unambiguous topical indexing of these resources. HCM also introduces a useful form of cyberspatial analysis for the detection of topical coverage gaps in the resource metadata base using choropleth (shaded) maps of human body systems.

Spatial information semantic query based on SPARQL

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xiao, Zhifeng; Huang, Lei; Zhai, Xiaofang

2009-10-01

How can the efficiency of spatial information inquiries be enhanced in today's fast-growing information age? We are rich in geospatial data but poor in up-to-date geospatial information and knowledge that are ready to be accessed by public users. This paper adopts an approach for querying spatial semantic by building an Web Ontology language(OWL) format ontology and introducing SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language(SPARQL) to search spatial semantic relations. It is important to establish spatial semantics that support for effective spatial reasoning for performing semantic query. Compared to earlier keyword-based and information retrieval techniques that rely on syntax, we use semantic approaches in our spatial queries system. Semantic approaches need to be developed by ontology, so we use OWL to describe spatial information extracted by the large-scale map of Wuhan. Spatial information expressed by ontology with formal semantics is available to machines for processing and to people for understanding. The approach is illustrated by introducing a case study for using SPARQL to query geo-spatial ontology instances of Wuhan. The paper shows that making use of SPARQL to search OWL ontology instances can ensure the result's accuracy and applicability. The result also indicates constructing a geo-spatial semantic query system has positive efforts on forming spatial query and retrieval.

A Research on E - learning Resources Construction Based on Semantic Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rui, Liu; Maode, Deng

Traditional e-learning platforms have the flaws that it's usually difficult to query or positioning, and realize the cross platform sharing and interoperability. In the paper, the semantic web and metadata standard is discussed, and a kind of e - learning system framework based on semantic web is put forward to try to solve the flaws of traditional elearning platforms.

Stylization levels of industrial design objects

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kukhta, M. S.; Sokolov, A. P.; Krauinsh, D. P.; Bouchard, C.

2017-01-01

The urgency of the research of form making problem in design is associated with the necessity of new understanding of visual culture and new approaches to design engineering representing the integration of artistic and designed problems. The aim of this research is to study the levels of stylization of design objects and dependance (relation) on the specific project objectives and existing technologies. On the ground of quantitative evaluation, the stylization measures are emphasized: figurative image, stylized image and abstract image. Theoretic conclusions are complemented by practical problem solution over creating openwork metal lantern. Variants of both the traditional mains supply of the lantern and the autonomic supply system based on solar energy were offered. The role of semantic factor, affecting the depth of perception of design objects semantic space, is represented in this paper.

The shared neural basis of music and language.

PubMed

Yu, Mengxia; Xu, Miao; Li, Xueting; Chen, Zhencai; Song, Yiying; Liu, Jia

2017-08-15

Human musical ability is proposed to play a key phylogenetical role in the evolution of language, and the similarity of hierarchical structure in music and language has led to considerable speculation about their shared mechanisms. While behavioral and electrophysioglocial studies have revealed associations between music and linguistic abilities, results from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies on their relations are contradictory, possibly because these studies usually treat music or language as single entities without breaking down to their components. Here, we examined the relations between different components of music (i.e., melodic and rhythmic analysis) and language (i.e., semantic and phonological processing) using both behavioral tests and resting-state fMRI. Behaviorally, we found that individuals with music training experiences were better at semantic processing, but not at phonological processing, than those without training. Further correlation analyses showed that semantic processing of language was related to melodic, but not rhythmic, analysis of music. Neurally, we found that performances in both semantic processing and melodic analysis were correlated with spontaneous brain activities in the bilateral precentral gyrus (PCG) and superior temporal plane at the regional level, and with the resting-state functional connectivity of the left PCG with the left supramarginal gyrus and left superior temporal gyrus at the network level. Together, our study revealed the shared spontaneous neural basis of music and language based on the behavioral link between melodic analysis and semantic processing, which possibly relied on a common mechanism of automatic auditory-motor integration. Copyright © 2017 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Dissociable identity- and modality-specific neural representations as revealed by cross-modal nonspatial inhibition of return.

PubMed

Chi, Yukai; Yue, Zhenzhu; Liu, Yupin; Mo, Lei; Chen, Qi

2014-08-01

There are ongoing debates on whether object concepts are coded as supramodal identity-based or modality-specific representations in the human brain. In this fMRI study, we adopted a cross-modal "prime-neutral cue-target" semantic priming paradigm, in which the prime-target relationship was manipulated along both the identity and the modality dimensions. The prime and the target could refer to either the same or different semantic identities, and could be delivered via either the same or different sensory modalities. By calculating the main effects and interactions of this 2 (identity cue validity: "Identity_Cued" vs. "Identity_Uncued") × 2 (modality cue validity: "Modality_Cued" vs. "Modality_Uncued") factorial design, we aimed at dissociating three neural networks involved in creating novel identity-specific representations independent of sensory modality, in creating modality-specific representations independent of semantic identity, and in evaluating changes of an object along both the identity and the modality dimensions, respectively. Our results suggested that bilateral lateral occipital cortex was involved in creating a new supramodal semantic representation irrespective of the input modality, left dorsal premotor cortex, and left intraparietal sulcus were involved in creating a new modality-specific representation irrespective of its semantic identity, and bilateral superior temporal sulcus was involved in creating a representation when the identity and modality properties were both cued or both uncued. In addition, right inferior frontal gyrus showed enhanced neural activity only when both the identity and the modality of the target were new, indicating its functional role in novelty detection. Copyright © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The role of semantically related distractors during encoding and retrieval of words in long-term memory.

PubMed

Meade, Melissa E; Fernandes, Myra A

2016-07-01

We examined the influence of divided attention (DA) on recognition of words when the concurrent task was semantically related or unrelated to the to-be-recognised target words. Participants were asked to either study or retrieve a target list of semantically related words while simultaneously making semantic decisions (i.e., size judgements) to another set of related or unrelated words heard concurrently. We manipulated semantic relatedness of distractor to target words, and whether DA occurred during the encoding or retrieval phase of memory. Recognition accuracy was significantly diminished relative to full attention, following DA conditions at encoding, regardless of relatedness of distractors to study words. However, response times (RTs) were slower with related compared to unrelated distractors. Similarly, under DA at retrieval, recognition RTs were slower when distractors were semantically related than unrelated to target words. Unlike the effect from DA at encoding, recognition accuracy was worse under DA at retrieval when the distractors were related compared to unrelated to the target words. Results suggest that availability of general attentional resources is critical for successful encoding, whereas successful retrieval is particularly reliant on access to a semantic code, making it sensitive to related distractors under DA conditions.

Semantic Size of Abstract Concepts: It Gets Emotional When You Can’t See It

PubMed Central

Yao, Bo; Vasiljevic, Milica; Weick, Mario; Sereno, Margaret E.; O’Donnell, Patrick J.; Sereno, Sara C.

2013-01-01

Size is an important visuo-spatial characteristic of the physical world. In language processing, previous research has demonstrated a processing advantage for words denoting semantically “big” (e.g., jungle) versus “small” (e.g., needle) concrete objects. We investigated whether semantic size plays a role in the recognition of words expressing abstract concepts (e.g., truth). Semantically “big” and “small” concrete and abstract words were presented in a lexical decision task. Responses to “big” words, regardless of their concreteness, were faster than those to “small” words. Critically, we explored the relationship between semantic size and affective characteristics of words as well as their influence on lexical access. Although a word’s semantic size was correlated with its emotional arousal, the temporal locus of arousal effects may depend on the level of concreteness. That is, arousal seemed to have an earlier (lexical) effect on abstract words, but a later (post-lexical) effect on concrete words. Our findings provide novel insights into the semantic representations of size in abstract concepts and highlight that affective attributes of words may not always index lexical access. PMID:24086421

Ontology based heterogeneous materials database integration and semantic query

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhao, Shuai; Qian, Quan

2017-10-01

Materials digital data, high throughput experiments and high throughput computations are regarded as three key pillars of materials genome initiatives. With the fast growth of materials data, the integration and sharing of data is very urgent, that has gradually become a hot topic of materials informatics. Due to the lack of semantic description, it is difficult to integrate data deeply in semantic level when adopting the conventional heterogeneous database integration approaches such as federal database or data warehouse. In this paper, a semantic integration method is proposed to create the semantic ontology by extracting the database schema semi-automatically. Other heterogeneous databases are integrated to the ontology by means of relational algebra and the rooted graph. Based on integrated ontology, semantic query can be done using SPARQL. During the experiments, two world famous First Principle Computational databases, OQMD and Materials Project are used as the integration targets, which show the availability and effectiveness of our method.

Age-Related Brain Activation Changes during Rule Repetition in Word-Matching.

PubMed

Methqal, Ikram; Pinsard, Basile; Amiri, Mahnoush; Wilson, Maximiliano A; Monchi, Oury; Provost, Jean-Sebastien; Joanette, Yves

2017-01-01

Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore the age-related brain activation changes during a word-matching semantic-category-based task, which required either repeating or changing a semantic rule to be applied. In order to do so, a word-semantic rule-based task was adapted from the Wisconsin Sorting Card Test, involving the repeated feedback-driven selection of given pairs of words based on semantic category-based criteria. Method: Forty healthy adults (20 younger and 20 older) performed a word-matching task while undergoing a fMRI scan in which they were required to pair a target word with another word from a group of three words. The required pairing is based on three word-pair semantic rules which correspond to different levels of semantic control demands: functional relatedness, moderately typical-relatedness (which were considered as low control demands), and atypical-relatedness (high control demands). The sorting period consisted of a continuous execution of the same sorting rule and an inferred trial-by-trial feedback was given. Results: Behavioral performance revealed increases in response times and decreases of correct responses according to the level of semantic control demands (functional vs. typical vs. atypical) for both age groups (younger and older) reflecting graded differences in the repetition of the application of a given semantic rule. Neuroimaging findings of significant brain activation showed two main results: (1) Greater task-related activation changes for the repetition of the application of atypical rules relative to typical and functional rules, and (2) Changes (older > younger) in the inferior prefrontal regions for functional rules and more extensive and bilateral activations for typical and atypical rules. Regarding the inter-semantic rules comparison, only task-related activation differences were observed for functional > typical (e.g., inferior parietal and temporal regions bilaterally) and atypical > typical (e.g., prefrontal, inferior parietal, posterior temporal, and subcortical regions). Conclusion: These results suggest that healthy cognitive aging relies on the adaptive changes of inferior prefrontal resources involved in the repetitive execution of semantic rules, thus reflecting graded differences in support of task demands.

PREDOSE: a semantic web platform for drug abuse epidemiology using social media.

PubMed

Cameron, Delroy; Smith, Gary A; Daniulaityte, Raminta; Sheth, Amit P; Dave, Drashti; Chen, Lu; Anand, Gaurish; Carlson, Robert; Watkins, Kera Z; Falck, Russel

2013-12-01

The role of social media in biomedical knowledge mining, including clinical, medical and healthcare informatics, prescription drug abuse epidemiology and drug pharmacology, has become increasingly significant in recent years. Social media offers opportunities for people to share opinions and experiences freely in online communities, which may contribute information beyond the knowledge of domain professionals. This paper describes the development of a novel semantic web platform called PREDOSE (PREscription Drug abuse Online Surveillance and Epidemiology), which is designed to facilitate the epidemiologic study of prescription (and related) drug abuse practices using social media. PREDOSE uses web forum posts and domain knowledge, modeled in a manually created Drug Abuse Ontology (DAO--pronounced dow), to facilitate the extraction of semantic information from User Generated Content (UGC), through combination of lexical, pattern-based and semantics-based techniques. In a previous study, PREDOSE was used to obtain the datasets from which new knowledge in drug abuse research was derived. Here, we report on various platform enhancements, including an updated DAO, new components for relationship and triple extraction, and tools for content analysis, trend detection and emerging patterns exploration, which enhance the capabilities of the PREDOSE platform. Given these enhancements, PREDOSE is now more equipped to impact drug abuse research by alleviating traditional labor-intensive content analysis tasks. Using custom web crawlers that scrape UGC from publicly available web forums, PREDOSE first automates the collection of web-based social media content for subsequent semantic annotation. The annotation scheme is modeled in the DAO, and includes domain specific knowledge such as prescription (and related) drugs, methods of preparation, side effects, and routes of administration. The DAO is also used to help recognize three types of data, namely: (1) entities, (2) relationships and (3) triples. PREDOSE then uses a combination of lexical and semantic-based techniques to extract entities and relationships from the scraped content, and a top-down approach for triple extraction that uses patterns expressed in the DAO. In addition, PREDOSE uses publicly available lexicons to identify initial sentiment expressions in text, and then a probabilistic optimization algorithm (from related research) to extract the final sentiment expressions. Together, these techniques enable the capture of fine-grained semantic information, which facilitate search, trend analysis and overall content analysis using social media on prescription drug abuse. Moreover, extracted data are also made available to domain experts for the creation of training and test sets for use in evaluation and refinements in information extraction techniques. A recent evaluation of the information extraction techniques applied in the PREDOSE platform indicates 85% precision and 72% recall in entity identification, on a manually created gold standard dataset. In another study, PREDOSE achieved 36% precision in relationship identification and 33% precision in triple extraction, through manual evaluation by domain experts. Given the complexity of the relationship and triple extraction tasks and the abstruse nature of social media texts, we interpret these as favorable initial results. Extracted semantic information is currently in use in an online discovery support system, by prescription drug abuse researchers at the Center for Interventions, Treatment and Addictions Research (CITAR) at Wright State University. A comprehensive platform for entity, relationship, triple and sentiment extraction from such abstruse texts has never been developed for drug abuse research. PREDOSE has already demonstrated the importance of mining social media by providing data from which new findings in drug abuse research were uncovered. Given the recent platform enhancements, including the refined DAO, components for relationship and triple extraction, and tools for content, trend and emerging pattern analysis, it is expected that PREDOSE will play a significant role in advancing drug abuse epidemiology in future. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Association of KIBRA and memory.

PubMed

Bates, Timothy C; Price, Jackie F; Harris, Sarah E; Marioni, Riccardo E; Fowkes, F Gerry R; Stewart, Marlene C; Murray, Gordon D; Whalley, Lawrence J; Starr, John M; Deary, Ian J

2009-07-24

We report on the association of KIBRA with memory in two samples of older individuals assessed on either memory for semantically unrelated word stimuli (Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, n=2091), or a measure of semantically related material (the WAIS Logical Memory Test of prose-passage recall, n=542). SNP rs17070145 was associated with delayed recall of semantically unrelated items, but not with immediate recall for these stimuli, nor with either immediate or delayed recall for semantically related material. The pattern of results suggests a role for the T-->C substitution in intron 9 of KIBRA in a component of episodic memory involved in long-term storage but independent of processes shared with immediate recall such as rehearsal involved in acquisition and rehearsal or processes.

Using future thinking to reduce temporal discounting: Under what circumstances are the medial temporal lobes critical?

PubMed

Palombo, D J; Keane, M M; Verfaellie, M

2016-08-01

The capacity to envision the future plays an important role in many aspects of cognition, including our ability to make optimal, adaptive choices. Past work has shown that the medial temporal lobe (MTL) is necessary for decisions that draw on episodic future thinking. By contrast, little is known about the role of the MTL in decisions that draw on semantic future thinking. Accordingly, the present study investigated whether the MTL contributes to one form of decision making, namely intertemporal choice, when such decisions depend on semantic consideration of the future. In an intertemporal choice task, participants must select either a smaller amount of money that is available in the present or a larger amount of money that would be available at a future date. Amnesic individuals with MTL damage and healthy control participants performed such a task in which, prior to making a choice, they engaged in a semantic generation exercise, wherein they generated items that they would purchase with the future reward. In experiment 1, we found that, relative to a baseline condition involving standard intertemporal choice, healthy individuals were more inclined to select a larger, later reward over a smaller, present reward after engaging in semantic future thinking. By contrast, amnesic participants were paradoxically less inclined to wait for a future reward following semantic future thinking. This finding suggests that amnesics may have had difficulty "tagging" the generated item(s) as belonging to the future. Critically, experiment 2 showed that when the generated items were presented alongside the intertemporal choices, both controls and amnesic participants shifted to more patient choices. These findings suggest that the MTL is not needed for making optimal decisions that draw on semantic future thinking as long as scaffolding is provided to support accurate time tagging. Together, these findings stand to better clarify the role of the MTL in decision making. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Delineating the Effect of Semantic Congruency on Episodic Memory: The Role of Integration and Relatedness

PubMed Central

Bein, Oded; Livneh, Neta; Reggev, Niv; Gilead, Michael; Goshen-Gottstein, Yonatan; Maril, Anat

2015-01-01

A fundamental challenge in the study of learning and memory is to understand the role of existing knowledge in the encoding and retrieval of new episodic information. The importance of prior knowledge in memory is demonstrated in the congruency effect—the robust finding wherein participants display better memory for items that are compatible, rather than incompatible, with their pre-existing semantic knowledge. Despite its robustness, the mechanism underlying this effect is not well understood. In four studies, we provide evidence that demonstrates the privileged explanatory power of the elaboration-integration account over alternative hypotheses. Furthermore, we question the implicit assumption that the congruency effect pertains to the truthfulness/sensibility of a subject-predicate proposition, and show that congruency is a function of semantic relatedness between item and context words. PMID:25695759

Delineating the effect of semantic congruency on episodic memory: the role of integration and relatedness.

PubMed

Bein, Oded; Livneh, Neta; Reggev, Niv; Gilead, Michael; Goshen-Gottstein, Yonatan; Maril, Anat

2015-01-01

A fundamental challenge in the study of learning and memory is to understand the role of existing knowledge in the encoding and retrieval of new episodic information. The importance of prior knowledge in memory is demonstrated in the congruency effect-the robust finding wherein participants display better memory for items that are compatible, rather than incompatible, with their pre-existing semantic knowledge. Despite its robustness, the mechanism underlying this effect is not well understood. In four studies, we provide evidence that demonstrates the privileged explanatory power of the elaboration-integration account over alternative hypotheses. Furthermore, we question the implicit assumption that the congruency effect pertains to the truthfulness/sensibility of a subject-predicate proposition, and show that congruency is a function of semantic relatedness between item and context words.

UltiMatch-NL: A Web Service Matchmaker Based on Multiple Semantic Filters

PubMed Central

Mohebbi, Keyvan; Ibrahim, Suhaimi; Zamani, Mazdak; Khezrian, Mojtaba

2014-01-01

In this paper, a Semantic Web service matchmaker called UltiMatch-NL is presented. UltiMatch-NL applies two filters namely Signature-based and Description-based on different abstraction levels of a service profile to achieve more accurate results. More specifically, the proposed filters rely on semantic knowledge to extract the similarity between a given pair of service descriptions. Thus it is a further step towards fully automated Web service discovery via making this process more semantic-aware. In addition, a new technique is proposed to weight and combine the results of different filters of UltiMatch-NL, automatically. Moreover, an innovative approach is introduced to predict the relevance of requests and Web services and eliminate the need for setting a threshold value of similarity. In order to evaluate UltiMatch-NL, the repository of OWLS-TC is used. The performance evaluation based on standard measures from the information retrieval field shows that semantic matching of OWL-S services can be significantly improved by incorporating designed matching filters. PMID:25157872

UltiMatch-NL: a Web service matchmaker based on multiple semantic filters.

PubMed

Mohebbi, Keyvan; Ibrahim, Suhaimi; Zamani, Mazdak; Khezrian, Mojtaba

2014-01-01

In this paper, a Semantic Web service matchmaker called UltiMatch-NL is presented. UltiMatch-NL applies two filters namely Signature-based and Description-based on different abstraction levels of a service profile to achieve more accurate results. More specifically, the proposed filters rely on semantic knowledge to extract the similarity between a given pair of service descriptions. Thus it is a further step towards fully automated Web service discovery via making this process more semantic-aware. In addition, a new technique is proposed to weight and combine the results of different filters of UltiMatch-NL, automatically. Moreover, an innovative approach is introduced to predict the relevance of requests and Web services and eliminate the need for setting a threshold value of similarity. In order to evaluate UltiMatch-NL, the repository of OWLS-TC is used. The performance evaluation based on standard measures from the information retrieval field shows that semantic matching of OWL-S services can be significantly improved by incorporating designed matching filters.

LDRD final report :

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Brost, Randolph C.; McLendon, William Clarence,

2013-01-01

Modeling geospatial information with semantic graphs enables search for sites of interest based on relationships between features, without requiring strong a priori models of feature shape or other intrinsic properties. Geospatial semantic graphs can be constructed from raw sensor data with suitable preprocessing to obtain a discretized representation. This report describes initial work toward extending geospatial semantic graphs to include temporal information, and initial results applying semantic graph techniques to SAR image data. We describe an efficient graph structure that includes geospatial and temporal information, which is designed to support simultaneous spatial and temporal search queries. We also report amore » preliminary implementation of feature recognition, semantic graph modeling, and graph search based on input SAR data. The report concludes with lessons learned and suggestions for future improvements.« less

SATware: A Semantic Approach for Building Sentient Spaces

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Massaguer, Daniel; Mehrotra, Sharad; Vaisenberg, Ronen; Venkatasubramanian, Nalini

This chapter describes the architecture of a semantic-based middleware environment for building sensor-driven sentient spaces. The proposed middleware explicitly models sentient space semantics (i.e., entities, spaces, activities) and supports mechanisms to map sensor observations to the state of the sentient space. We argue how such a semantic approach provides a powerful programming environment for building sensor spaces. In addition, the approach provides natural ways to exploit semantics for variety of purposes including scheduling under resource constraints and sensor recalibration.

A Semantic Web-based System for Managing Clinical Archetypes.

PubMed

Fernandez-Breis, Jesualdo Tomas; Menarguez-Tortosa, Marcos; Martinez-Costa, Catalina; Fernandez-Breis, Eneko; Herrero-Sempere, Jose; Moner, David; Sanchez, Jesus; Valencia-Garcia, Rafael; Robles, Montserrat

2008-01-01

Archetypes facilitate the sharing of clinical knowledge and therefore are a basic tool for achieving interoperability between healthcare information systems. In this paper, a Semantic Web System for Managing Archetypes is presented. This system allows for the semantic annotation of archetypes, as well for performing semantic searches. The current system is capable of working with both ISO13606 and OpenEHR archetypes.

Semantic Drift in Espresso-style Bootstrapping: Graph-theoretic Analysis and Evaluation in Word Sense Disambiguation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Komachi, Mamoru; Kudo, Taku; Shimbo, Masashi; Matsumoto, Yuji

Bootstrapping has a tendency, called semantic drift, to select instances unrelated to the seed instances as the iteration proceeds. We demonstrate the semantic drift of Espresso-style bootstrapping has the same root as the topic drift of Kleinberg's HITS, using a simplified graph-based reformulation of bootstrapping. We confirm that two graph-based algorithms, the von Neumann kernels and the regularized Laplacian, can reduce the effect of semantic drift in the task of word sense disambiguation (WSD) on Senseval-3 English Lexical Sample Task. Proposed algorithms achieve superior performance to Espresso and previous graph-based WSD methods, even though the proposed algorithms have less parameters and are easy to calibrate.

Creating personalised clinical pathways by semantic interoperability with electronic health records.

PubMed

Wang, Hua-Qiong; Li, Jing-Song; Zhang, Yi-Fan; Suzuki, Muneou; Araki, Kenji

2013-06-01

There is a growing realisation that clinical pathways (CPs) are vital for improving the treatment quality of healthcare organisations. However, treatment personalisation is one of the main challenges when implementing CPs, and the inadequate dynamic adaptability restricts the practicality of CPs. The purpose of this study is to improve the practicality of CPs using semantic interoperability between knowledge-based CPs and semantic electronic health records (EHRs). Simple protocol and resource description framework query language is used to gather patient information from semantic EHRs. The gathered patient information is entered into the CP ontology represented by web ontology language. Then, after reasoning over rules described by semantic web rule language in the Jena semantic framework, we adjust the standardised CPs to meet different patients' practical needs. A CP for acute appendicitis is used as an example to illustrate how to achieve CP customisation based on the semantic interoperability between knowledge-based CPs and semantic EHRs. A personalised care plan is generated by comprehensively analysing the patient's personal allergy history and past medical history, which are stored in semantic EHRs. Additionally, by monitoring the patient's clinical information, an exception is recorded and handled during CP execution. According to execution results of the actual example, the solutions we present are shown to be technically feasible. This study contributes towards improving the clinical personalised practicality of standardised CPs. In addition, this study establishes the foundation for future work on the research and development of an independent CP system. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Semantic enrichment of clinical models towards semantic interoperability. The heart failure summary use case.

PubMed

Martínez-Costa, Catalina; Cornet, Ronald; Karlsson, Daniel; Schulz, Stefan; Kalra, Dipak

2015-05-01

To improve semantic interoperability of electronic health records (EHRs) by ontology-based mediation across syntactically heterogeneous representations of the same or similar clinical information. Our approach is based on a semantic layer that consists of: (1) a set of ontologies supported by (2) a set of semantic patterns. The first aspect of the semantic layer helps standardize the clinical information modeling task and the second shields modelers from the complexity of ontology modeling. We applied this approach to heterogeneous representations of an excerpt of a heart failure summary. Using a set of finite top-level patterns to derive semantic patterns, we demonstrate that those patterns, or compositions thereof, can be used to represent information from clinical models. Homogeneous querying of the same or similar information, when represented according to heterogeneous clinical models, is feasible. Our approach focuses on the meaning embedded in EHRs, regardless of their structure. This complex task requires a clear ontological commitment (ie, agreement to consistently use the shared vocabulary within some context), together with formalization rules. These requirements are supported by semantic patterns. Other potential uses of this approach, such as clinical models validation, require further investigation. We show how an ontology-based representation of a clinical summary, guided by semantic patterns, allows homogeneous querying of heterogeneous information structures. Whether there are a finite number of top-level patterns is an open question. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Evidence for morphological composition in compound words using MEG.

PubMed

Brooks, Teon L; Cid de Garcia, Daniela

2015-01-01

Psycholinguistic and electrophysiological studies of lexical processing show convergent evidence for morpheme-based lexical access for morphologically complex words that involves early decomposition into their constituent morphemes followed by some combinatorial operation. Considering that both semantically transparent (e.g., sailboat) and semantically opaque (e.g., bootleg) compounds undergo morphological decomposition during the earlier stages of lexical processing, subsequent combinatorial operations should account for the difference in the contribution of the constituent morphemes to the meaning of these different word types. In this study we use magnetoencephalography (MEG) to pinpoint the neural bases of this combinatorial stage in English compound word recognition. MEG data were acquired while participants performed a word naming task in which three word types, transparent compounds (e.g., roadside), opaque compounds (e.g., butterfly), and morphologically simple words (e.g., brothel) were contrasted in a partial-repetition priming paradigm where the word of interest was primed by one of its constituent morphemes. Analysis of onset latency revealed shorter latencies to name compound words than simplex words when primed, further supporting a stage of morphological decomposition in lexical access. An analysis of the associated MEG activity uncovered a region of interest implicated in morphological composition, the Left Anterior Temporal Lobe (LATL). Only transparent compounds showed increased activity in this area from 250 to 470 ms. Previous studies using sentences and phrases have highlighted the role of LATL in performing computations for basic combinatorial operations. Results are in tune with decomposition models for morpheme accessibility early in processing and suggest that semantics play a role in combining the meanings of morphemes when their composition is transparent to the overall word meaning.

Semantics driven approach for knowledge acquisition from EMRs.

PubMed

Perera, Sujan; Henson, Cory; Thirunarayan, Krishnaprasad; Sheth, Amit; Nair, Suhas

2014-03-01

Semantic computing technologies have matured to be applicable to many critical domains such as national security, life sciences, and health care. However, the key to their success is the availability of a rich domain knowledge base. The creation and refinement of domain knowledge bases pose difficult challenges. The existing knowledge bases in the health care domain are rich in taxonomic relationships, but they lack nontaxonomic (domain) relationships. In this paper, we describe a semiautomatic technique for enriching existing domain knowledge bases with causal relationships gleaned from Electronic Medical Records (EMR) data. We determine missing causal relationships between domain concepts by validating domain knowledge against EMR data sources and leveraging semantic-based techniques to derive plausible relationships that can rectify knowledge gaps. Our evaluation demonstrates that semantic techniques can be employed to improve the efficiency of knowledge acquisition.

Impact of action primes on implicit processing of thematic and functional similarity relations: evidence from eye-tracking.

PubMed

Pluciennicka, Ewa; Wamain, Yannick; Coello, Yann; Kalénine, Solène

2016-07-01

The aim of this study was to specify the role of action representations in thematic and functional similarity relations between manipulable artifact objects. Recent behavioral and neurophysiological evidence indicates that while they are all relevant for manipulable artifact concepts, semantic relations based on thematic (e.g., saw-wood), specific function similarity (e.g., saw-axe), and general function similarity (e.g., saw-knife) are differently processed, and may relate to different levels of action representation. Point-light displays of object-related actions previously encoded at the gesture level (e.g., "sawing") or at the higher level of action representation (e.g., "cutting") were used as primes before participants identified target objects (e.g., saw) among semantically related and unrelated distractors (e.g., wood, feather, piano). Analysis of eye movements on the different objects during target identification informed about the amplitude and the timing of implicit activation of the different semantic relations. Results showed that action prime encoding impacted the processing of thematic relations, but not that of functional similarity relations. Semantic competition with thematic distractors was greater and earlier following action primes encoded at the gesture level compared to action primes encoded at higher level. As a whole, these findings highlight the direct influence of action representations on thematic relation processing, and suggest that thematic relations involve gesture-level representations rather than intention-level representations.

A Common Mechanism in Verb and Noun Naming Deficits in Alzheimer’s Patients

PubMed Central

Almor, Amit; Aronoff, Justin M.; MacDonald, Maryellen C.; Gonnerman, Laura M.; Kempler, Daniel; Hintiryan, Houri; Hayes, UnJa L.; Arunachalam, Sudha; Andersen, Elaine S.

2009-01-01

We tested the ability of Alzheimer’s patients and elderly controls to name living and non-living nouns, and manner and instrument verbs. Patient’s error patterns and relative performance with different categories showed evidence of graceful degradation for both nouns and verbs, with particular domain specific impairments for living nouns and instrument verbs. Our results support feature-based, semantic representations for nouns and verbs and support the role of inter-correlated features in noun impairment, and the role of noun knowledge in instrument verb impairment. PMID:19699513

Semantic-Web Technology: Applications at NASA

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ashish, Naveen

2004-01-01

We provide a description of work at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on building system based on semantic-web concepts and technologies. NASA has been one of the early adopters of semantic-web technologies for practical applications. Indeed there are several ongoing 0 endeavors on building semantics based systems for use in diverse NASA domains ranging from collaborative scientific activity to accident and mishap investigation to enterprise search to scientific information gathering and integration to aviation safety decision support We provide a brief overview of many applications and ongoing work with the goal of informing the external community of these NASA endeavors.

Recommendation of standardized health learning contents using archetypes and semantic web technologies.

PubMed

Legaz-García, María del Carmen; Martínez-Costa, Catalina; Menárguez-Tortosa, Marcos; Fernández-Breis, Jesualdo Tomás

2012-01-01

Linking Electronic Healthcare Records (EHR) content to educational materials has been considered a key international recommendation to enable clinical engagement and to promote patient safety. This would suggest citizens to access reliable information available on the web and to guide them properly. In this paper, we describe an approach in that direction, based on the use of dual model EHR standards and standardized educational contents. The recommendation method will be based on the semantic coverage of the learning content repository for a particular archetype, which will be calculated by applying semantic web technologies like ontologies and semantic annotations.

Disorders of representation and control in semantic cognition: Effects of familiarity, typicality, and specificity

PubMed Central

Rogers, Timothy T.; Patterson, Karalyn; Jefferies, Elizabeth; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A.

2015-01-01

We present a case-series comparison of patients with cross-modal semantic impairments consequent on either (a) bilateral anterior temporal lobe atrophy in semantic dementia (SD) or (b) left-hemisphere fronto-parietal and/or posterior temporal stroke in semantic aphasia (SA). Both groups were assessed on a new test battery designed to measure how performance is influenced by concept familiarity, typicality and specificity. In line with previous findings, performance in SD was strongly modulated by all of these factors, with better performance for more familiar items (regardless of typicality), for more typical items (regardless of familiarity) and for tasks that did not require very specific classification, consistent with the gradual degradation of conceptual knowledge in SD. The SA group showed significant impairments on all tasks but their sensitivity to familiarity, typicality and specificity was more variable and governed by task-specific effects of these factors on controlled semantic processing. The results are discussed with reference to theories about the complementary roles of representation and manipulation of semantic knowledge. PMID:25934635

The Role of Context in Producing Item Interactions and False Memories

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tehan, Gerald; Humphreys, Michael S.; Tolan, Georgina Anne; Pitcher, Cameron

2004-01-01

Cued recall with an extralist cue poses a challenge for contemporary memory theory in that there is a need to explain how episodic and semantic information are combined. A parallel activation and intersection approach proposes one such means by assuming that an experimental cue will elicit its preexisting semantic network and a context cue will…

Recall of Details Never Experienced: Effects of Age, Repetition, and Semantic Cues

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Holliday, Robyn E.; Reyna, Valerie F.; Brainerd, Charles J.

2008-01-01

To test theoretical predictions about the role of meaning connections in false memory, the effects of semantic cues and list repetition on children's false memories were evaluated across early childhood to mid-adolescence using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. True recall and false recall increased from 7 to 13 years. Study list…

The Role of Episodic and Semantic Memory in Episodic Foresight

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Martin-Ordas, Gema; Atance, Cristina M.; Louw, Alyssa

2012-01-01

In this paper we describe a special form of future thinking, termed "episodic foresight" and its relation with episodic and semantic memory. We outline the methodologies that have largely been developed in the last five years to assess this capacity in young children and non-human animals. Drawing on Tulving's definition of episodic and semantic…

Decomposing Slavic Aspect: The Role of Aspectual Morphology in Polish and Other Slavic Languages

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lazorczyk, Agnieszka Agata

2010-01-01

This dissertation considers the problem of the semantic function of verbal aspectual morphology in Polish and other Slavic languages in the framework of generative syntax and semantics. Three kinds of such morphology are examined: (i) prefixes attaching directly to the root, (ii) "secondary imperfective" suffixes, and (iii) three prefixes that…

Role of Grammatical Gender and Semantics in German Word Production

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vigliocco, Gabriella; Vinson, David P.; Indefrey, Peter; Levelt, Willem J. M.; Hellwig, Frauke

2004-01-01

Semantic substitution errors (e.g., saying "arm" when "leg" is intended) are among the most common types of errors occurring during spontaneous speech. It has been shown that grammatical gender of German target nouns is preserved in the errors (E. Mane, 1999). In 3 experiments, the authors explored different accounts of the grammatical gender…

Sensitivity to Phonological, Morphological, and Semantic Cues in Early Reading and Writing in Hebrew.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Levin, Iris; Korat, Ofra

1993-01-01

Studied emergent literacy in Hebrew by analyzing nursery and kindergarten children's attempts to write and read pairs of nouns. Found that, with age, children's sensitivity to phonology increased and sensitivity to semantics decreased and that these sensitivities played a greater role in literacy acquisition than did sensitivity to morphology. (MM)

The Role of Semantic Processing in Reading Japanese Orthographies: An Investigation Using a Script-Switch Paradigm

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dylman, Alexandra S.; Kikutani, Mariko

2018-01-01

Research on Japanese reading has generally indicated that processing of the logographic script Kanji primarily involves whole-word lexical processing and follows a semantics-to-phonology route, while the two phonological scripts Hiragana and Katakana (collectively called Kana) are processed via a sub-lexical route, and more in a…

The Role of Polysemy in Masked Semantic and Translation Priming

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Finkbeiner, Matthew; Forster, Kenneth; Nicol, Janet; Nakamura, Kumiko

2004-01-01

A well-known asymmetry exists in the bilingual masked priming literature in which lexical decision is used: namely, masked primes in the dominant language (L1) facilitate decision times on targets in the less dominant language (L2), but not vice versa. In semantic categorization, on the other hand, priming is symmetrical. In Experiments 1-3 we…

Age-related differences in resolving semantic and phonological competition during receptive language tasks.

PubMed

Zhuang, Jie; Johnson, Micah A; Madden, David J; Burke, Deborah M; Diaz, Michele T

2016-12-01

Receptive language (e.g., reading) is largely preserved in the aging brain, and semantic processes in particular may continue to develop throughout the lifespan. We investigated the neural underpinnings of phonological and semantic retrieval in older and younger adults during receptive language tasks (rhyme and semantic similarity judgments). In particular, we were interested in the role of competition on language retrieval and varied the similarities between a cue, target, and distractor that were hypothesized to affect the mental process of competition. Behaviorally, all participants responded faster and more accurately during the rhyme task compared to the semantic task. Moreover, older adults demonstrated higher response accuracy than younger adults during the semantic task. Although there were no overall age-related differences in the neuroimaging results, an Age×Task interaction was found in left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), with older adults producing greater activation than younger adults during the semantic condition. These results suggest that at lower levels of task difficulty, older and younger adults engaged similar neural networks that benefited behavioral performance. As task difficulty increased during the semantic task, older adults relied more heavily on largely left hemisphere language regions, as well as regions involved in perception and internal monitoring. Our results are consistent with the stability of language comprehension across the adult lifespan and illustrate how the preservation of semantic representations with aging may influence performance under conditions of increased task difficulty. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Mandarin-Speaking Children's Speech Recognition: Developmental Changes in the Influences of Semantic Context and F0 Contours.

PubMed

Zhou, Hong; Li, Yu; Liang, Meng; Guan, Connie Qun; Zhang, Linjun; Shu, Hua; Zhang, Yang

2017-01-01

The goal of this developmental speech perception study was to assess whether and how age group modulated the influences of high-level semantic context and low-level fundamental frequency ( F 0 ) contours on the recognition of Mandarin speech by elementary and middle-school-aged children in quiet and interference backgrounds. The results revealed different patterns for semantic and F 0 information. One the one hand, age group modulated significantly the use of F 0 contours, indicating that elementary school children relied more on natural F 0 contours than middle school children during Mandarin speech recognition. On the other hand, there was no significant modulation effect of age group on semantic context, indicating that children of both age groups used semantic context to assist speech recognition to a similar extent. Furthermore, the significant modulation effect of age group on the interaction between F 0 contours and semantic context revealed that younger children could not make better use of semantic context in recognizing speech with flat F 0 contours compared with natural F 0 contours, while older children could benefit from semantic context even when natural F 0 contours were altered, thus confirming the important role of F 0 contours in Mandarin speech recognition by elementary school children. The developmental changes in the effects of high-level semantic and low-level F 0 information on speech recognition might reflect the differences in auditory and cognitive resources associated with processing of the two types of information in speech perception.

Contextually guided very-high-resolution imagery classification with semantic segments

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhao, Wenzhi; Du, Shihong; Wang, Qiao; Emery, William J.

2017-10-01

Contextual information, revealing relationships and dependencies between image objects, is one of the most important information for the successful interpretation of very-high-resolution (VHR) remote sensing imagery. Over the last decade, geographic object-based image analysis (GEOBIA) technique has been widely used to first divide images into homogeneous parts, and then to assign semantic labels according to the properties of image segments. However, due to the complexity and heterogeneity of VHR images, segments without semantic labels (i.e., semantic-free segments) generated with low-level features often fail to represent geographic entities (such as building roofs usually be partitioned into chimney/antenna/shadow parts). As a result, it is hard to capture contextual information across geographic entities when using semantic-free segments. In contrast to low-level features, "deep" features can be used to build robust segments with accurate labels (i.e., semantic segments) in order to represent geographic entities at higher levels. Based on these semantic segments, semantic graphs can be constructed to capture contextual information in VHR images. In this paper, semantic segments were first explored with convolutional neural networks (CNN) and a conditional random field (CRF) model was then applied to model the contextual information between semantic segments. Experimental results on two challenging VHR datasets (i.e., the Vaihingen and Beijing scenes) indicate that the proposed method is an improvement over existing image classification techniques in classification performance (overall accuracy ranges from 82% to 96%).

Modelling Metamorphism by Abstract Interpretation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dalla Preda, Mila; Giacobazzi, Roberto; Debray, Saumya; Coogan, Kevin; Townsend, Gregg M.

Metamorphic malware apply semantics-preserving transformations to their own code in order to foil detection systems based on signature matching. In this paper we consider the problem of automatically extract metamorphic signatures from these malware. We introduce a semantics for self-modifying code, later called phase semantics, and prove its correctness by showing that it is an abstract interpretation of the standard trace semantics. Phase semantics precisely models the metamorphic code behavior by providing a set of traces of programs which correspond to the possible evolutions of the metamorphic code during execution. We show that metamorphic signatures can be automatically extracted by abstract interpretation of the phase semantics, and that regular metamorphism can be modelled as finite state automata abstraction of the phase semantics.

A Tri-network Model of Human Semantic Processing

PubMed Central

Xu, Yangwen; He, Yong; Bi, Yanchao

2017-01-01

Humans process the meaning of the world via both verbal and nonverbal modalities. It has been established that widely distributed cortical regions are involved in semantic processing, yet the global wiring pattern of this brain system has not been considered in the current neurocognitive semantic models. We review evidence from the brain-network perspective, which shows that the semantic system is topologically segregated into three brain modules. Revisiting previous region-based evidence in light of these new network findings, we postulate that these three modules support multimodal experiential representation, language-supported representation, and semantic control. A tri-network neurocognitive model of semantic processing is proposed, which generates new hypotheses regarding the network basis of different types of semantic processes. PMID:28955266

An individual differences approach to semantic cognition: Divergent effects of age on representation, retrieval and selection.

PubMed

Hoffman, Paul

2018-05-25

Semantic cognition refers to the appropriate use of acquired knowledge about the world. This requires representation of knowledge as well as control processes which ensure that currently-relevant aspects of knowledge are retrieved and selected. Although these abilities can be impaired selectively following brain damage, the relationship between them in healthy individuals is unclear. It is also commonly assumed that semantic cognition is preserved in later life, because older people have greater reserves of knowledge. However, this claim overlooks the possibility of decline in semantic control processes. Here, semantic cognition was assessed in 100 young and older adults. Despite having a broader knowledge base, older people showed specific impairments in semantic control, performing more poorly than young people when selecting among competing semantic representations. Conversely, they showed preserved controlled retrieval of less salient information from the semantic store. Breadth of semantic knowledge was positively correlated with controlled retrieval but was unrelated to semantic selection ability, which was instead correlated with non-semantic executive function. These findings indicate that three distinct elements contribute to semantic cognition: semantic representations that accumulate throughout the lifespan, processes for controlled retrieval of less salient semantic information, which appear age-invariant, and mechanisms for selecting task-relevant aspects of semantic knowledge, which decline with age and may relate more closely to domain-general executive control.

Learning the Language of Healthcare Enabling Semantic Web Technology in CHCS

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-09-01

tuples”, (subject, predicate, object), to relate data and achieve semantic interoperability . Other similar technologies exist, but their... Semantic Healthcare repository [5]. Ultimately, both of our data approaches were successful. However, our current test system is based on the CPRS demo...to extract system dependencies and workflows; to extract semantically related patient data ; and to browse patient- centric views into the system . We

A Domain Independent Framework for Extracting Linked Semantic Data from Tables

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-01-01

Evidence - based medicine , the essential role of systematic reviews, and the need for automated text mining tools. In: Proc. 1st ACM Int. Health... based medicine : what it is and what it isn’t. Bmj 312(7023), 71 (1996) 23. Sahoo, S.S., Halb, W., Hellmann, S., Idehen, K., Thibodeau Jr, T., Auer, S., Se...Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 11(1), 95–130 (1999) 22. Sackett, D., Rosenberg, W., Gray, J., Haynes, R., Richardson, W.: Evidence

Learning semantic and visual similarity for endomicroscopy video retrieval.

PubMed

Andre, Barbara; Vercauteren, Tom; Buchner, Anna M; Wallace, Michael B; Ayache, Nicholas

2012-06-01

Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) is a valuable computer vision technique which is increasingly being applied in the medical community for diagnosis support. However, traditional CBIR systems only deliver visual outputs, i.e., images having a similar appearance to the query, which is not directly interpretable by the physicians. Our objective is to provide a system for endomicroscopy video retrieval which delivers both visual and semantic outputs that are consistent with each other. In a previous study, we developed an adapted bag-of-visual-words method for endomicroscopy retrieval, called "Dense-Sift," that computes a visual signature for each video. In this paper, we present a novel approach to complement visual similarity learning with semantic knowledge extraction, in the field of in vivo endomicroscopy. We first leverage a semantic ground truth based on eight binary concepts, in order to transform these visual signatures into semantic signatures that reflect how much the presence of each semantic concept is expressed by the visual words describing the videos. Using cross-validation, we demonstrate that, in terms of semantic detection, our intuitive Fisher-based method transforming visual-word histograms into semantic estimations outperforms support vector machine (SVM) methods with statistical significance. In a second step, we propose to improve retrieval relevance by learning an adjusted similarity distance from a perceived similarity ground truth. As a result, our distance learning method allows to statistically improve the correlation with the perceived similarity. We also demonstrate that, in terms of perceived similarity, the recall performance of the semantic signatures is close to that of visual signatures and significantly better than those of several state-of-the-art CBIR methods. The semantic signatures are thus able to communicate high-level medical knowledge while being consistent with the low-level visual signatures and much shorter than them. In our resulting retrieval system, we decide to use visual signatures for perceived similarity learning and retrieval, and semantic signatures for the output of an additional information, expressed in the endoscopist own language, which provides a relevant semantic translation of the visual retrieval outputs.

Fast Distributed Dynamics of Semantic Networks via Social Media.

PubMed

Carrillo, Facundo; Cecchi, Guillermo A; Sigman, Mariano; Slezak, Diego Fernández

2015-01-01

We investigate the dynamics of semantic organization using social media, a collective expression of human thought. We propose a novel, time-dependent semantic similarity measure (TSS), based on the social network Twitter. We show that TSS is consistent with static measures of similarity but provides high temporal resolution for the identification of real-world events and induced changes in the distributed structure of semantic relationships across the entire lexicon. Using TSS, we measured the evolution of a concept and its movement along the semantic neighborhood, driven by specific news/events. Finally, we showed that particular events may trigger a temporary reorganization of elements in the semantic network.

Fast Distributed Dynamics of Semantic Networks via Social Media

PubMed Central

Carrillo, Facundo; Cecchi, Guillermo A.; Sigman, Mariano; Fernández Slezak, Diego

2015-01-01

We investigate the dynamics of semantic organization using social media, a collective expression of human thought. We propose a novel, time-dependent semantic similarity measure (TSS), based on the social network Twitter. We show that TSS is consistent with static measures of similarity but provides high temporal resolution for the identification of real-world events and induced changes in the distributed structure of semantic relationships across the entire lexicon. Using TSS, we measured the evolution of a concept and its movement along the semantic neighborhood, driven by specific news/events. Finally, we showed that particular events may trigger a temporary reorganization of elements in the semantic network. PMID:26074953

CNTRO: A Semantic Web Ontology for Temporal Relation Inferencing in Clinical Narratives.

PubMed

Tao, Cui; Wei, Wei-Qi; Solbrig, Harold R; Savova, Guergana; Chute, Christopher G

2010-11-13

Using Semantic-Web specifications to represent temporal information in clinical narratives is an important step for temporal reasoning and answering time-oriented queries. Existing temporal models are either not compatible with the powerful reasoning tools developed for the Semantic Web, or designed only for structured clinical data and therefore are not ready to be applied on natural-language-based clinical narrative reports directly. We have developed a Semantic-Web ontology which is called Clinical Narrative Temporal Relation ontology. Using this ontology, temporal information in clinical narratives can be represented as RDF (Resource Description Framework) triples. More temporal information and relations can then be inferred by Semantic-Web based reasoning tools. Experimental results show that this ontology can represent temporal information in real clinical narratives successfully.

Real-time image annotation by manifold-based biased Fisher discriminant analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ji, Rongrong; Yao, Hongxun; Wang, Jicheng; Sun, Xiaoshuai; Liu, Xianming

2008-01-01

Automatic Linguistic Annotation is a promising solution to bridge the semantic gap in content-based image retrieval. However, two crucial issues are not well addressed in state-of-art annotation algorithms: 1. The Small Sample Size (3S) problem in keyword classifier/model learning; 2. Most of annotation algorithms can not extend to real-time online usage due to their low computational efficiencies. This paper presents a novel Manifold-based Biased Fisher Discriminant Analysis (MBFDA) algorithm to address these two issues by transductive semantic learning and keyword filtering. To address the 3S problem, Co-Training based Manifold learning is adopted for keyword model construction. To achieve real-time annotation, a Bias Fisher Discriminant Analysis (BFDA) based semantic feature reduction algorithm is presented for keyword confidence discrimination and semantic feature reduction. Different from all existing annotation methods, MBFDA views image annotation from a novel Eigen semantic feature (which corresponds to keywords) selection aspect. As demonstrated in experiments, our manifold-based biased Fisher discriminant analysis annotation algorithm outperforms classical and state-of-art annotation methods (1.K-NN Expansion; 2.One-to-All SVM; 3.PWC-SVM) in both computational time and annotation accuracy with a large margin.

Semantic annotation in biomedicine: the current landscape.

PubMed

Jovanović, Jelena; Bagheri, Ebrahim

2017-09-22

The abundance and unstructured nature of biomedical texts, be it clinical or research content, impose significant challenges for the effective and efficient use of information and knowledge stored in such texts. Annotation of biomedical documents with machine intelligible semantics facilitates advanced, semantics-based text management, curation, indexing, and search. This paper focuses on annotation of biomedical entity mentions with concepts from relevant biomedical knowledge bases such as UMLS. As a result, the meaning of those mentions is unambiguously and explicitly defined, and thus made readily available for automated processing. This process is widely known as semantic annotation, and the tools that perform it are known as semantic annotators.Over the last dozen years, the biomedical research community has invested significant efforts in the development of biomedical semantic annotation technology. Aiming to establish grounds for further developments in this area, we review a selected set of state of the art biomedical semantic annotators, focusing particularly on general purpose annotators, that is, semantic annotation tools that can be customized to work with texts from any area of biomedicine. We also examine potential directions for further improvements of today's annotators which could make them even more capable of meeting the needs of real-world applications. To motivate and encourage further developments in this area, along the suggested and/or related directions, we review existing and potential practical applications and benefits of semantic annotators.

Proactive interference in a semantic short-term memory deficit: role of semantic and phonological relatedness.

PubMed

Hamilton, A Cris; Martin, Randi C

2007-01-01

Previous research has indicated that patients with semantic short-term memory (STM) deficits demonstrate unusual intrusions of previously presented material during serial recall tasks (Martin and Lesch, 1996). These intrusions suggest excessive proactive interference (PI) from previous lists. Here, we explore one such patient's susceptibility to PI. Experiment 1 demonstrated patient M.L.'s extreme susceptibility to PI using a probe recognition task that manipulates the recency of negative probes (the recent negatives task). When stimuli consisted of letters, M.L. showed greatly exaggerated effects of PI, well outside of the range of healthy control participants. Experiment 2 used a variation of the recent negatives task to examine the relative contribution of semantic and phonological relatedness in PI. This task manipulated semantic and phonological relatedness of probes and recently presented list items. Relative to healthy control participants, patient M.L. showed exaggerated interference effects for both phonological and semantically related probes, both for probes related to the current list and for probes related to the previous list. These data have important implications for theories of semantic STM deficits. Specifically, these data suggest that it is not the rapid decay of semantic representations that is responsible for difficulties in short-term recall, but rather the abnormal persistence of previously presented material. We propose that this susceptibility to PI is the result of a deficit in control processes acting on STM.

Beyond the visual word form area: the orthography-semantics interface in spelling and reading.

PubMed

Purcell, Jeremy J; Shea, Jennifer; Rapp, Brenda

2014-01-01

Lexical orthographic information provides the basis for recovering the meanings of words in reading and for generating correct word spellings in writing. Research has provided evidence that an area of the left ventral temporal cortex, a subregion of what is often referred to as the visual word form area (VWFA), plays a significant role specifically in lexical orthographic processing. The current investigation goes beyond this previous work by examining the neurotopography of the interface of lexical orthography with semantics. We apply a novel lesion mapping approach with three individuals with acquired dysgraphia and dyslexia who suffered lesions to left ventral temporal cortex. To map cognitive processes to their neural substrates, this lesion mapping approach applies similar logical constraints to those used in cognitive neuropsychological research. Using this approach, this investigation: (a) identifies a region anterior to the VWFA that is important in the interface of orthographic information with semantics for reading and spelling; (b) determines that, within this orthography-semantics interface region (OSIR), access to orthography from semantics (spelling) is topographically distinct from access to semantics from orthography (reading); (c) provides evidence that, within this region, there is modality-specific access to and from lexical semantics for both spoken and written modalities, in both word production and comprehension. Overall, this study contributes to our understanding of the neural architecture at the lexical orthography-semantic-phonological interface within left ventral temporal cortex.

Prosodic expectations in silent reading: ERP evidence from rhyme scheme and semantic congruence in classic Chinese poems.

PubMed

Chen, Qingrong; Zhang, Jingjing; Xu, Xiaodong; Scheepers, Christoph; Yang, Yiming; Tanenhaus, Michael K

2016-09-01

In an ERP study, classic Chinese poems with a well-known rhyme scheme were used to generate an expectation of a rhyme in the absence of an expectation for a specific character. Critical characters were either consistent or inconsistent with the expected rhyme scheme and semantically congruent or incongruent with the content of the poem. These stimuli allowed us to examine whether a top-down rhyme scheme expectation would affect relatively early components of the ERP associated with character-to-sound mapping (P200) and lexically-mediated semantic processing (N400). The ERP data revealed that rhyme scheme congruence, but not semantic congruence modulated the P200: rhyme-incongruent characters elicited a P200 effect across the head demonstrating that top-down expectations influence early phonological coding of the character before lexical-semantic processing. Rhyme scheme incongruence also produced a right-lateralized N400-like effect. Moreover, compared to semantically congruous poems, semantically incongruous poems produced a larger N400 response only when the character was consistent with the expected rhyme scheme. The results suggest that top-down prosodic expectations can modulate early phonological processing in visual word recognition, indicating that prosodic expectations might play an important role in silent reading. They also suggest that semantic processing is influenced by general knowledge of text genre. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Beyond the VWFA: The orthography-semantics interface in spelling and reading

PubMed Central

Purcell, Jeremy J.; Shea, Jennifer; Rapp, Brenda

2014-01-01

Lexical orthographic information provides the basis for recovering the meanings of words in reading and for generating correct word spellings in writing. Research has provided evidence that an area of the left ventral temporal cortex, a sub-region of what is often referred to as the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA), plays a significant role specifically in lexical orthographic processing. The current investigation goes beyond this previous work by examining the neurotopography of the interface of lexical orthography with semantics. We apply a novel lesion mapping approach with three individuals with acquired dysgraphia and dyslexia who suffered lesions to left ventral temporal cortex. To map cognitive processes to their neural substrates, this lesion mapping approach applies similar logical constraints as used in cognitive neuropsychological research. Using this approach, this investigation: (1) Identifies a region anterior to the VWFA that is important in the interface of orthographic information with semantics for reading and spelling; (2) Determines that, within this Orthography-Semantics Interface Region (OSIR), access to orthography from semantics (spelling) is topographically distinct from access to semantics from orthography (reading); (3) Provides evidence that, within this region, there is modality-specific access to and from lexical semantics for both spoken and written modalities, in both word production and comprehension. Overall, this study contributes to our understanding of the neural architecture at the lexical orthography-semantic-phonological interface within left ventral temporal cortex. PMID:24833190

Semantic relatedness for evaluation of course equivalencies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yang, Beibei

Semantic relatedness, or its inverse, semantic distance, measures the degree of closeness between two pieces of text determined by their meaning. Related work typically measures semantics based on a sparse knowledge base such as WordNet or Cyc that requires intensive manual efforts to build and maintain. Other work is based on a corpus such as the Brown corpus, or more recently, Wikipedia. This dissertation proposes two approaches to applying semantic relatedness to the problem of suggesting transfer course equivalencies. Two course descriptions are given as input to feed the proposed algorithms, which output a value that can be used to help determine if the courses are equivalent. The first proposed approach uses traditional knowledge sources such as WordNet and corpora for courses from multiple fields of study. The second approach uses Wikipedia, the openly-editable encyclopedia, and it focuses on courses from a technical field such as Computer Science. This work shows that it is promising to adapt semantic relatedness to the education field for matching equivalencies between transfer courses. A semantic relatedness measure using traditional knowledge sources such as WordNet performs relatively well on non-technical courses. However, due to the "knowledge acquisition bottleneck," such a resource is not ideal for technical courses, which use an extensive and growing set of technical terms. To address the problem, this work proposes a Wikipedia-based approach which is later shown to be more correlated to human judgment compared to previous work.

Phase synchronization of delta and theta oscillations increase during the detection of relevant lexical information.

PubMed

Brunetti, Enzo; Maldonado, Pedro E; Aboitiz, Francisco

2013-01-01

During monitoring of the discourse, the detection of the relevance of incoming lexical information could be critical for its incorporation to update mental representations in memory. Because, in these situations, the relevance for lexical information is defined by abstract rules that are maintained in memory, a central aspect to elucidate is how an abstract level of knowledge maintained in mind mediates the detection of the lower-level semantic information. In the present study, we propose that neuronal oscillations participate in the detection of relevant lexical information, based on "kept in mind" rules deriving from more abstract semantic information. We tested our hypothesis using an experimental paradigm that restricted the detection of relevance to inferences based on explicit information, thus controlling for ambiguities derived from implicit aspects. We used a categorization task, in which the semantic relevance was previously defined based on the congruency between a kept in mind category (abstract knowledge), and the lexical semantic information presented. Our results show that during the detection of the relevant lexical information, phase synchronization of neuronal oscillations selectively increases in delta and theta frequency bands during the interval of semantic analysis. These increments occurred irrespective of the semantic category maintained in memory, had a temporal profile specific for each subject, and were mainly induced, as they had no effect on the evoked mean global field power. Also, recruitment of an increased number of pairs of electrodes was a robust observation during the detection of semantic contingent words. These results are consistent with the notion that the detection of relevant lexical information based on a particular semantic rule, could be mediated by increasing the global phase synchronization of neuronal oscillations, which may contribute to the recruitment of an extended number of cortical regions.

Is the Motor System Necessary for Processing Action and Abstract Emotion Words? Evidence from Focal Brain Lesions

PubMed Central

Dreyer, Felix R.; Frey, Dietmar; Arana, Sophie; von Saldern, Sarah; Picht, Thomas; Vajkoczy, Peter; Pulvermüller, Friedemann

2015-01-01

Neuroimaging and neuropsychological experiments suggest that modality-preferential cortices, including motor- and somatosensory areas, contribute to the semantic processing of action related concrete words. Still, a possible role of sensorimotor areas in processing abstract meaning remains under debate. Recent fMRI studies indicate an involvement of the left sensorimotor cortex in the processing of abstract-emotional words (e.g., “love”) which resembles activation patterns seen for action words. But are the activated areas indeed necessary for processing action-related and abstract words? The current study now investigates word processing in two patients suffering from focal brain lesion in the left frontocentral motor system. A speeded Lexical Decision Task on meticulously matched word groups showed that the recognition of nouns from different semantic categories – related to food, animals, tools, and abstract-emotional concepts – was differentially affected. Whereas patient HS with a lesion in dorsolateral central sensorimotor systems next to the hand area showed a category-specific deficit in recognizing tool words, patient CA suffering from lesion centered in the left supplementary motor area was primarily impaired in abstract-emotional word processing. These results point to a causal role of the motor cortex in the semantic processing of both action-related object concepts and abstract-emotional concepts and therefore suggest that the motor areas previously found active in action-related and abstract word processing can serve a meaning-specific necessary role in word recognition. The category-specific nature of the observed dissociations is difficult to reconcile with the idea that sensorimotor systems are somehow peripheral or ‘epiphenomenal’ to meaning and concept processing. Rather, our results are consistent with the claim that cognition is grounded in action and perception and based on distributed action perception circuits reaching into modality-preferential cortex. PMID:26617535

The relation between language experience and receptive-expressive semantic gaps in bilingual children

PubMed Central

Gibson, Todd A.; Peña, Elizabeth D.; Bedore, Lisa M.

2018-01-01

The purpose of the current study was to explore the influence of language experience on the presence of the receptive-expressive gap. Each of 778 Spanish-English bilingual children screened pre-kindergarten in Utah and Texas were assigned to one of five language experience groups, ranging from functionally monolingual to balanced bilingual. Children’s scores from the language screener semantics subtest administered in both Spanish and English were standardized, and receptive and expressive semantic scores were compared. Children presented with a meaningful gap between receptive and expressive semantic knowledge in English but not Spanish. This gap increased as target-language exposure decreased. Results indicate that current language experience plays a dominant role in influencing the appearance and magnitude of the receptive-expressive gap. PMID:29670456

Determination of the Concepts "Profession" and "Role" in Relation to "Nurse Educator".

PubMed

Pennbrant, Sandra

The aim of this study was to clarify the meanings and dimensions of the concepts "profession" and "role." The results from the concept determination were discussed in relation to the profession "nurse educator." This study is based on Koort's semantic analysis methods, using select parts of Eriksson's approach for concept determination, using dictionaries published between the years 1948 and 2015. The findings underline the complexity of the professional role of nurse educators. The nurse educator profession is based on society's trust and requires integration of ability, attitudes, norms, reflection, and theoretical knowledge, along with individual, organizational, and social conditions. Nurse educators must achieve a sufficient degree of pedagogical competence, subject competence, social competence and organizational competence in order to develop their professional role. When nurse educators define their function, a professional role takes form. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Similarity Based Semantic Web Service Match

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Peng, Hui; Niu, Wenjia; Huang, Ronghuai

Semantic web service discovery aims at returning the most matching advertised services to the service requester by comparing the semantic of the request service with an advertised service. The semantic of a web service are described in terms of inputs, outputs, preconditions and results in Ontology Web Language for Service (OWL-S) which formalized by W3C. In this paper we proposed an algorithm to calculate the semantic similarity of two services by weighted averaging their inputs and outputs similarities. Case study and applications show the effectiveness of our algorithm in service match.

Translating standards into practice - one Semantic Web API for Gene Expression.

PubMed

Deus, Helena F; Prud'hommeaux, Eric; Miller, Michael; Zhao, Jun; Malone, James; Adamusiak, Tomasz; McCusker, Jim; Das, Sudeshna; Rocca Serra, Philippe; Fox, Ronan; Marshall, M Scott

2012-08-01

Sharing and describing experimental results unambiguously with sufficient detail to enable replication of results is a fundamental tenet of scientific research. In today's cluttered world of "-omics" sciences, data standards and standardized use of terminologies and ontologies for biomedical informatics play an important role in reporting high-throughput experiment results in formats that can be interpreted by both researchers and analytical tools. Increasing adoption of Semantic Web and Linked Data technologies for the integration of heterogeneous and distributed health care and life sciences (HCLSs) datasets has made the reuse of standards even more pressing; dynamic semantic query federation can be used for integrative bioinformatics when ontologies and identifiers are reused across data instances. We present here a methodology to integrate the results and experimental context of three different representations of microarray-based transcriptomic experiments: the Gene Expression Atlas, the W3C BioRDF task force approach to reporting Provenance of Microarray Experiments, and the HSCI blood genomics project. Our approach does not attempt to improve the expressivity of existing standards for genomics but, instead, to enable integration of existing datasets published from microarray-based transcriptomic experiments. SPARQL Construct is used to create a posteriori mappings of concepts and properties and linking rules that match entities based on query constraints. We discuss how our integrative approach can encourage reuse of the Experimental Factor Ontology (EFO) and the Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBIs) for the reporting of experimental context and results of gene expression studies. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

CNN-based ranking for biomedical entity normalization.

PubMed

Li, Haodi; Chen, Qingcai; Tang, Buzhou; Wang, Xiaolong; Xu, Hua; Wang, Baohua; Huang, Dong

2017-10-03

Most state-of-the-art biomedical entity normalization systems, such as rule-based systems, merely rely on morphological information of entity mentions, but rarely consider their semantic information. In this paper, we introduce a novel convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture that regards biomedical entity normalization as a ranking problem and benefits from semantic information of biomedical entities. The CNN-based ranking method first generates candidates using handcrafted rules, and then ranks the candidates according to their semantic information modeled by CNN as well as their morphological information. Experiments on two benchmark datasets for biomedical entity normalization show that our proposed CNN-based ranking method outperforms traditional rule-based method with state-of-the-art performance. We propose a CNN architecture that regards biomedical entity normalization as a ranking problem. Comparison results show that semantic information is beneficial to biomedical entity normalization and can be well combined with morphological information in our CNN architecture for further improvement.

Semantic technologies in a decision support system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wasielewska, K.; Ganzha, M.; Paprzycki, M.; Bǎdicǎ, C.; Ivanovic, M.; Lirkov, I.

2015-10-01

The aim of our work is to design a decision support system based on ontological representation of domain(s) and semantic technologies. Specifically, we consider the case when Grid / Cloud user describes his/her requirements regarding a "resource" as a class expression from an ontology, while the instances of (the same) ontology represent available resources. The goal is to help the user to find the best option with respect to his/her requirements, while remembering that user's knowledge may be "limited." In this context, we discuss multiple approaches based on semantic data processing, which involve different "forms" of user interaction with the system. Specifically, we consider: (a) ontological matchmaking based on SPARQL queries and class expression, (b) graph-based semantic closeness of instances representing user requirements (constructed from the class expression) and available resources, and (c) multicriterial analysis based on the AHP method, which utilizes expert domain knowledge (also ontologically represented).

The semantic distance task: Quantifying semantic distance with semantic network path length.

PubMed

Kenett, Yoed N; Levi, Effi; Anaki, David; Faust, Miriam

2017-09-01

Semantic distance is a determining factor in cognitive processes, such as semantic priming, operating upon semantic memory. The main computational approach to compute semantic distance is through latent semantic analysis (LSA). However, objections have been raised against this approach, mainly in its failure at predicting semantic priming. We propose a novel approach to computing semantic distance, based on network science methodology. Path length in a semantic network represents the amount of steps needed to traverse from 1 word in the network to the other. We examine whether path length can be used as a measure of semantic distance, by investigating how path length affect performance in a semantic relatedness judgment task and recall from memory. Our results show a differential effect on performance: Up to 4 steps separating between word-pairs, participants exhibit an increase in reaction time (RT) and decrease in the percentage of word-pairs judged as related. From 4 steps onward, participants exhibit a significant decrease in RT and the word-pairs are dominantly judged as unrelated. Furthermore, we show that as path length between word-pairs increases, success in free- and cued-recall decreases. Finally, we demonstrate how our measure outperforms computational methods measuring semantic distance (LSA and positive pointwise mutual information) in predicting participants RT and subjective judgments of semantic strength. Thus, we provide a computational alternative to computing semantic distance. Furthermore, this approach addresses key issues in cognitive theory, namely the breadth of the spreading activation process and the effect of semantic distance on memory retrieval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Differential Medial Temporal Lobe and Parietal Cortical Contributions to Real-world Autobiographical Episodic and Autobiographical Semantic Memory.

PubMed

Brown, Thackery I; Rissman, Jesse; Chow, Tiffany E; Uncapher, Melina R; Wagner, Anthony D

2018-04-18

Autobiographical remembering can depend on two forms of memory: episodic (event) memory and autobiographical semantic memory (remembering personally relevant semantic knowledge, independent of recalling a specific experience). There is debate about the degree to which the neural signals that support episodic recollection relate to or build upon autobiographical semantic remembering. Pooling data from two fMRI studies of memory for real-world personal events, we investigated whether medial temporal lobe (MTL) and parietal subregions contribute to autobiographical episodic and semantic remembering. During scanning, participants made memory judgments about photograph sequences depicting past events from their life or from others' lives, and indicated whether memory was based on episodic or semantic knowledge. Results revealed several distinct functional patterns: activity in most MTL subregions was selectively associated with autobiographical episodic memory; the hippocampal tail, superior parietal lobule, and intraparietal sulcus were similarly engaged when memory was based on retrieval of an autobiographical episode or autobiographical semantic knowledge; and angular gyrus demonstrated a graded pattern, with activity declining from autobiographical recollection to autobiographical semantic remembering to correct rejections of novel events. Collectively, our data offer insights into MTL and parietal cortex functional organization, and elucidate circuitry that supports different forms of real-world autobiographical memory.

Semantic memory impairment for biological and man-made objects in individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment or late-life depression.

PubMed

Callahan, Brandy L; Joubert, Sven; Tremblay, Marie-Pier; Macoir, Joël; Belleville, Sylvie; Rousseau, François; Bouchard, Rémi W; Verret, Louis; Hudon, Carol

2015-06-01

Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and late-life depression (LLD) both increase the risk of developing Alzheimer disease (AD). Very little is known about the similarities and differences between these syndromes. The present study addresses this issue by examining the nature of semantic memory impairment (more precisely, object-based knowledge) in patients at risk of developing AD. Participants were 17 elderly patients with aMCI, 18 patients with aMCI plus depressive symptoms (aMCI/D+), 15 patients with LLD, and 29 healthy controls. All participants were aged 55 years or older and were administered a semantic battery designed to assess semantic knowledge for 16 biological and 16 man-made items. Overall performance of aMCI/D+ participants was significantly worse than the 3 other groups, and performance for questions assessing knowledge for biological items was poorer than for questions relating to man-made items. This study is the first to show that aMCI/D+ is associated with object-based semantic memory impairment. These results support the view that semantic deficits in aMCI are associated with concomitant depressive symptoms. However, depressive symptoms alone do not account exclusively for semantic impairment, since patients with LLD showed no semantic memory deficit. © The Author(s) 2014.

A Role for Semantic Web Technologies in Patient Record Data Collection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ogbuji, Chimezie

Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) are a component of the stack of Web standards that comprise Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Such systems are representative of the architectural framework of modern information systems built in an enterprise intranet and are in contrast to systems built for deployment on the larger World Wide Web. The REST architectural style is an emerging style for building loosely coupled systems based purely on the native HTTP protocol. It is a coordinated set of architectural constraints with a goal to minimize latency, maximize the independence and scalability of distributed components, and facilitate the use of intermediary processors.Within the development community for distributed, Web-based systems, there has been a debate regarding themerits of both approaches. In some cases, there are legitimate concerns about the differences in both architectural styles. In other cases, the contention seems to be based on concerns that are marginal at best. In this chapter, we will attempt to contribute to this debate by focusing on a specific, deployed use case that emphasizes the role of the Semantic Web, a simple Web application architecture that leverages the use of declarative XML processing, and the needs of a workflow system. The use case involves orchestrating a work process associated with the data entry of structured patient record content into a research registry at the Cleveland Clinic's Clinical Investigation department in the Heart and Vascular Institute.

The Fusion Model of Intelligent Transportation Systems Based on the Urban Traffic Ontology

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yang, Wang-Dong; Wang, Tao

On these issues unified representation of urban transport information using urban transport ontology, it defines the statute and the algebraic operations of semantic fusion in ontology level in order to achieve the fusion of urban traffic information in the semantic completeness and consistency. Thus this paper takes advantage of the semantic completeness of the ontology to build urban traffic ontology model with which we resolve the problems as ontology mergence and equivalence verification in semantic fusion of traffic information integration. Information integration in urban transport can increase the function of semantic fusion, and reduce the amount of data integration of urban traffic information as well enhance the efficiency and integrity of traffic information query for the help, through the practical application of intelligent traffic information integration platform of Changde city, the paper has practically proved that the semantic fusion based on ontology increases the effect and efficiency of the urban traffic information integration, reduces the storage quantity, and improve query efficiency and information completeness.

The absoluteness of semantic processing: lessons from the analysis of temporal clusters in phonemic verbal fluency.

PubMed

Vonberg, Isabelle; Ehlen, Felicitas; Fromm, Ortwin; Klostermann, Fabian

2014-01-01

For word production, we may consciously pursue semantic or phonological search strategies, but it is uncertain whether we can retrieve the different aspects of lexical information independently from each other. We therefore studied the spread of semantic information into words produced under exclusively phonemic task demands. 42 subjects participated in a letter verbal fluency task, demanding the production of as many s-words as possible in two minutes. Based on curve fittings for the time courses of word production, output spurts (temporal clusters) considered to reflect rapid lexical retrieval based on automatic activation spread, were identified. Semantic and phonemic word relatedness within versus between these clusters was assessed by respective scores (0 meaning no relation, 4 maximum relation). Subjects produced 27.5 (±9.4) words belonging to 6.7 (±2.4) clusters. Both phonemically and semantically words were more related within clusters than between clusters (phon: 0.33±0.22 vs. 0.19±0.17, p<.01; sem: 0.65±0.29 vs. 0.37±0.29, p<.01). Whereas the extent of phonemic relatedness correlated with high task performance, the contrary was the case for the extent of semantic relatedness. The results indicate that semantic information spread occurs, even if the consciously pursued word search strategy is purely phonological. This, together with the negative correlation between semantic relatedness and verbal output suits the idea of a semantic default mode of lexical search, acting against rapid task performance in the given scenario of phonemic verbal fluency. The simultaneity of enhanced semantic and phonemic word relatedness within the same temporal cluster boundaries suggests an interaction between content and sound-related information whenever a new semantic field has been opened.

When does word meaning affect immediate serial recall in semantic dementia?

PubMed

Jefferies, Elizabeth; Jones, Roy; Bateman, David; Ralph, Matthew A Lambon

2004-03-01

Patients with semantic dementia can show superior immediate recall of words that they still understand relatively well, as compared with more semantically degraded words, suggesting that conceptual knowledge makes a major contribution to phonological short-term memory. However, a number of studies have failed to show such a recall difference, challenging this view. We examined the effect of several methodological factors on the recall of known and degraded words in 4 patients with semantic dementia, in order to investigate possible reasons for this discrepancy. In general, our patients did exhibit poorer recall of the degraded words and made more phonological errors on these items. In addition, set size affected the magnitude of the recall advantage for known words. This finding suggests that semantic degradation influenced the rate of learning in the immediate recall task when the same items were presented repeatedly. The methods used to select known and degraded items also impacted on the recall difference. List length, however, did not affect the advantage for known words. The coherence of items in phonological short-term memory was affected by their semantic status, but not by the length of the material to be retained. The implications of these findings for the role of semantic and phonological representations in verbal short-term memory are discussed.

The role of semantic and phonological factors in word recognition: an ERP cross-modal priming study of derivational morphology.

PubMed

Kielar, Aneta; Joanisse, Marc F

2011-01-01

Theories of morphological processing differ on the issue of how lexical and grammatical information are stored and accessed. A key point of contention is whether complex forms are decomposed during recognition (e.g., establish+ment), compared to forms that cannot be analyzed into constituent morphemes (e.g., apartment). In the present study, we examined these issues with respect to English derivational morphology by measuring ERP responses during a cross-modal priming lexical decision task. ERP priming effects for semantically and phonologically transparent derived words (government-govern) were compared to those of semantically opaque derived words (apartment-apart) as well as "quasi-regular" items that represent intermediate cases of morphological transparency (dresser-dress). Additional conditions independently manipulated semantic and phonological relatedness in non-derived words (semantics: couch-sofa; phonology: panel-pan). The degree of N400 ERP priming to morphological forms varied depending on the amount of semantic and phonological overlap between word types, rather than respecting a bivariate distinction between derived and opaque forms. Moreover, these effects could not be accounted for by semantic or phonological relatedness alone. The findings support the theory that morphological relatedness is graded rather than absolute, and depend on the joint contribution of form and meaning overlap. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Topological Alterations and Symptom-Relevant Modules in the Whole-Brain Structural Network in Semantic Dementia.

PubMed

Ding, Junhua; Chen, Keliang; Zhang, Weibin; Li, Ming; Chen, Yan; Yang, Qing; Lv, Yingru; Guo, Qihao; Han, Zaizhu

2017-01-01

Semantic dementia (SD) is characterized by a selective decline in semantic processing. Although the neuropsychological pattern of this disease has been identified, its topological global alterations and symptom-relevant modules in the whole-brain anatomical network have not been fully elucidated. This study aims to explore the topological alteration of anatomical network in SD and reveal the modules associated with semantic deficits in this disease. We first constructed the whole-brain white-matter networks of 20 healthy controls and 19 patients with SD. Then, the network metrics of graph theory were compared between these two groups. Finally, we separated the network of SD patients into different modules and correlated the structural integrity of each module with the severity of the semantic deficits across patients. The network of the SD patients presented a significantly reduced global efficiency, indicating that the long-distance connections were damaged. The network was divided into the following four distinctive modules: the left temporal/occipital/parietal, frontal, right temporal/occipital, and frontal/parietal modules. The first two modules were associated with the semantic deficits of SD. These findings illustrate the skeleton of the neuroanatomical network of SD patients and highlight the key role of the left temporal/occipital/parietal module and the left frontal module in semantic processing.

What's Unique about Unique Entities? An fMRI Investigation of the Semantics of Famous Faces and Landmarks

PubMed Central

Olson, Ingrid R.

2012-01-01

Famous people and artifacts are referred to as “unique entities” (UEs) due to the unique nature of the knowledge we have about them. Past imaging and lesion experiments have indicated that the anterior temporal lobes (ATLs) as having a special role in the processing of UEs. It has remained unclear which attributes of UEs were responsible for the observed effects in imaging experiments. In this study, we investigated what factors of UEs influence brain activity. In a training paradigm, we systematically varied the uniqueness of semantic associations, the presence/absence of a proper name, and the number of semantic associations to determine factors modulating activity in regions subserving the processing of UEs. We found that a conjunction of unique semantic information and proper names modulated activity within a section of the left ATL. Overall, the processing of UEs involved a wider left-hemispheric cortical network. Within these regions, brain activity was significantly affected by the unique semantic attributes especially in the presence of a proper name, but we could not find evidence for an effect of the number of semantic associations. Findings are discussed in regard to current models of ATL function, the neurophysiology of semantics, and social cognitive processing. PMID:22021913

Semantic Web technologies for the big data in life sciences.

PubMed

Wu, Hongyan; Yamaguchi, Atsuko

2014-08-01

The life sciences field is entering an era of big data with the breakthroughs of science and technology. More and more big data-related projects and activities are being performed in the world. Life sciences data generated by new technologies are continuing to grow in not only size but also variety and complexity, with great speed. To ensure that big data has a major influence in the life sciences, comprehensive data analysis across multiple data sources and even across disciplines is indispensable. The increasing volume of data and the heterogeneous, complex varieties of data are two principal issues mainly discussed in life science informatics. The ever-evolving next-generation Web, characterized as the Semantic Web, is an extension of the current Web, aiming to provide information for not only humans but also computers to semantically process large-scale data. The paper presents a survey of big data in life sciences, big data related projects and Semantic Web technologies. The paper introduces the main Semantic Web technologies and their current situation, and provides a detailed analysis of how Semantic Web technologies address the heterogeneous variety of life sciences big data. The paper helps to understand the role of Semantic Web technologies in the big data era and how they provide a promising solution for the big data in life sciences.

Neural correlates of remembering/knowing famous people: an event-related fMRI study.

PubMed

Denkova, Ekaterina; Botzung, Anne; Manning, Lilianne

2006-01-01

It has been suggested that knowledge about some famous people depends on both a generic semantic component and an autobiographical component [Westmacott, R., & Moscovitch, M. (2003). The contribution of autobiographical significance to semantic memory. Memory and Cognition, 31, 761-774]. The neuropsychological studies of semantic dementia (SD) and Alzheimer disease (AD) demonstrated that the two aspects are very likely to be mediated by different brain structures, with the episodic component being highly dependent upon the integrity of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) [Westmacott, R., Black, S. E., Freedman, M., & Moscovitch, M. (2004). The contribution of autobiographical significance to semantic memory: Evidence from Alzheimer's disease, semantic dementia, and amnesia. Neuropsychologia, 42, 25-48]. Using an fMRI design in healthy participants, we aimed: (i) to investigate the pattern of brain activations sustaining the autobiographical and the semantic aspects of knowledge about famous persons. Moreover, (ii) we examined if the stimulus material (face/name) influences the lateralisation of the cerebral networks. Our findings suggested that different patterns of activation corresponded to the presence or absence of personal significance linked to semantic knowledge; MTL was engaged only in the former case. Although choice of stimulus material did not influence the hemispheric lateralisation in "classical" terms, it did play a role in engaging different cerebral regions.

Functional neuroanatomy of remote episodic, semantic and spatial memory: a unified account based on multiple trace theory

PubMed Central

Moscovitch, Morris; Rosenbaum, R Shayna; Gilboa, Asaf; Addis, Donna Rose; Westmacott, Robyn; Grady, Cheryl; McAndrews, Mary Pat; Levine, Brian; Black, Sandra; Winocur, Gordon; Nadel, Lynn

2005-01-01

We review lesion and neuroimaging evidence on the role of the hippocampus, and other structures, in retention and retrieval of recent and remote memories. We examine episodic, semantic and spatial memory, and show that important distinctions exist among different types of these memories and the structures that mediate them. We argue that retention and retrieval of detailed, vivid autobiographical memories depend on the hippocampal system no matter how long ago they were acquired. Semantic memories, on the other hand, benefit from hippocampal contribution for some time before they can be retrieved independently of the hippocampus. Even semantic memories, however, can have episodic elements associated with them that continue to depend on the hippocampus. Likewise, we distinguish between experientially detailed spatial memories (akin to episodic memory) and more schematic memories (akin to semantic memory) that are sufficient for navigation but not for re-experiencing the environment in which they were acquired. Like their episodic and semantic counterparts, the former type of spatial memory is dependent on the hippocampus no matter how long ago it was acquired, whereas the latter can survive independently of the hippocampus and is represented in extra-hippocampal structures. In short, the evidence reviewed suggests strongly that the function of the hippocampus (and possibly that of related limbic structures) is to help encode, retain, and retrieve experiences, no matter how long ago the events comprising the experience occurred, and no matter whether the memories are episodic or spatial. We conclude that the evidence favours a multiple trace theory (MTT) of memory over two other models: (1) traditional consolidation models which posit that the hippocampus is a time-limited memory structure for all forms of memory; and (2) versions of cognitive map theory which posit that the hippocampus is needed for representing all forms of allocentric space in memory. PMID:16011544

Functional neuroanatomy of remote episodic, semantic and spatial memory: a unified account based on multiple trace theory.

PubMed

Moscovitch, Morris; Rosenbaum, R Shayna; Gilboa, Asaf; Addis, Donna Rose; Westmacott, Robyn; Grady, Cheryl; McAndrews, Mary Pat; Levine, Brian; Black, Sandra; Winocur, Gordon; Nadel, Lynn

2005-07-01

We review lesion and neuroimaging evidence on the role of the hippocampus, and other structures, in retention and retrieval of recent and remote memories. We examine episodic, semantic and spatial memory, and show that important distinctions exist among different types of these memories and the structures that mediate them. We argue that retention and retrieval of detailed, vivid autobiographical memories depend on the hippocampal system no matter how long ago they were acquired. Semantic memories, on the other hand, benefit from hippocampal contribution for some time before they can be retrieved independently of the hippocampus. Even semantic memories, however, can have episodic elements associated with them that continue to depend on the hippocampus. Likewise, we distinguish between experientially detailed spatial memories (akin to episodic memory) and more schematic memories (akin to semantic memory) that are sufficient for navigation but not for re-experiencing the environment in which they were acquired. Like their episodic and semantic counterparts, the former type of spatial memory is dependent on the hippocampus no matter how long ago it was acquired, whereas the latter can survive independently of the hippocampus and is represented in extra-hippocampal structures. In short, the evidence reviewed suggests strongly that the function of the hippocampus (and possibly that of related limbic structures) is to help encode, retain, and retrieve experiences, no matter how long ago the events comprising the experience occurred, and no matter whether the memories are episodic or spatial. We conclude that the evidence favours a multiple trace theory (MTT) of memory over two other models: (1) traditional consolidation models which posit that the hippocampus is a time-limited memory structure for all forms of memory; and (2) versions of cognitive map theory which posit that the hippocampus is needed for representing all forms of allocentric space in memory.

Semantic memory: a feature-based analysis and new norms for Italian.

PubMed

Montefinese, Maria; Ambrosini, Ettore; Fairfield, Beth; Mammarella, Nicola

2013-06-01

Semantic norms for properties produced by native speakers are valuable tools for researchers interested in the structure of semantic memory and in category-specific semantic deficits in individuals following brain damage. The aims of this study were threefold. First, we sought to extend existing semantic norms by adopting an empirical approach to category (Exp. 1) and concept (Exp. 2) selection, in order to obtain a more representative set of semantic memory features. Second, we extensively outlined a new set of semantic production norms collected from Italian native speakers for 120 artifactual and natural basic-level concepts, using numerous measures and statistics following a feature-listing task (Exp. 3b). Finally, we aimed to create a new publicly accessible database, since only a few existing databases are publicly available online.

Discovering discovery patterns with Predication-based Semantic Indexing.

PubMed

Cohen, Trevor; Widdows, Dominic; Schvaneveldt, Roger W; Davies, Peter; Rindflesch, Thomas C

2012-12-01

In this paper we utilize methods of hyperdimensional computing to mediate the identification of therapeutically useful connections for the purpose of literature-based discovery. Our approach, named Predication-based Semantic Indexing, is utilized to identify empirically sequences of relationships known as "discovery patterns", such as "drug x INHIBITS substance y, substance y CAUSES disease z" that link pharmaceutical substances to diseases they are known to treat. These sequences are derived from semantic predications extracted from the biomedical literature by the SemRep system, and subsequently utilized to direct the search for known treatments for a held out set of diseases. Rapid and efficient inference is accomplished through the application of geometric operators in PSI space, allowing for both the derivation of discovery patterns from a large set of known TREATS relationships, and the application of these discovered patterns to constrain search for therapeutic relationships at scale. Our results include the rediscovery of discovery patterns that have been constructed manually by other authors in previous research, as well as the discovery of a set of previously unrecognized patterns. The application of these patterns to direct search through PSI space results in better recovery of therapeutic relationships than is accomplished with models based on distributional statistics alone. These results demonstrate the utility of efficient approximate inference in geometric space as a means to identify therapeutic relationships, suggesting a role of these methods in drug repurposing efforts. In addition, the results provide strong support for the utility of the discovery pattern approach pioneered by Hristovski and his colleagues. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Discovering discovery patterns with predication-based Semantic Indexing

PubMed Central

Cohen, Trevor; Widdows, Dominic; Schvaneveldt, Roger W.; Davies, Peter; Rindflesch, Thomas C.

2012-01-01

In this paper we utilize methods of hyperdimensional computing to mediate the identification of therapeutically useful connections for the purpose of literature-based discovery. Our approach, named Predication-based Semantic Indexing, is utilized to identify empirically sequences of relationships known as “discovery patterns”, such as “drug x INHIBITS substance y, substance y CAUSES disease z” that link pharmaceutical substances to diseases they are known to treat. These sequences are derived from semantic predications extracted from the biomedical literature by the SemRep system, and subsequently utilized to direct the search for known treatments for a held out set of diseases. Rapid and efficient inference is accomplished through the application of geometric operators in PSI space, allowing for both the derivation of discovery patterns from a large set of known TREATS relationships, and the application of these discovered patterns to constrain search for therapeutic relationships at scale. Our results include the rediscovery of discovery patterns that have been constructed manually by other authors in previous research, as well as the discovery of a set of previously unrecognized patterns. The application of these patterns to direct search through PSI space results in better recovery of therapeutic relationships than is accomplished with models based on distributional statistics alone. These results demonstrate the utility of efficient approximate inference in geometric space as a means to identify therapeutic relationships, suggesting a role of these methods in drug repurposing efforts. In addition, the results provide strong support for the utility of the discovery pattern approach pioneered by Hristovski and his colleagues. PMID:22841748

The Role of Animacy and Thematic Relationships in Processing Active English Sentences: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kuperberg, Gina R.; Kreher, Donna A.; Sitnikova, Tatiana; Caplan, David N.; Holcomb, Phillip J.

2007-01-01

Recent event-related potential studies report a P600 effect to incongruous verbs preceded by semantically associated inanimate noun-phrase (NP) arguments, e.g., "eat" in "At breakfast the eggs would eat...". This P600 effect may reflect the processing cost incurred when semantic-thematic relationships between critical verbs and their preceding NP…

Towards a Cognitive Model of Distraction by Auditory Novelty: The Role of Involuntary Attention Capture and Semantic Processing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Parmentier, Fabrice B. R.

2008-01-01

Unexpected auditory stimuli are potent distractors, able to break through selective attention and disrupt performance in an unrelated visual task. This study examined the processing fate of novel sounds by examining the extent to which their semantic content is analyzed and whether the outcome of this processing can impact on subsequent behavior.…

A Learning Perspective on Individual Differences in Skilled Reading: Exploring and Exploiting Orthographic and Semantic Discrimination Cues

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Milin, Petar; Divjak, Dagmar; Baayen, R. Harald

2017-01-01

The goal of the present study is to understand the role orthographic and semantic information play in the behavior of skilled readers. Reading latencies from a self-paced sentence reading experiment in which Russian near-synonymous verbs were manipulated appear well-predicted by a combination of bottom-up sublexical letter triplets (trigraphs) and…

Children's Use of Semantic Organizational Strategies Is Mediated by Working Memory Capacity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schleepen, Tamara M. J.; Jonkman, Lisa M.

2012-01-01

In adults, the ability to apply semantic grouping strategies has been found to depend on working memory. To investigate this relation in children, two sort-recall tasks (one without and one with a grouping instruction) were administered to 6-12-year-olds. The role of working memory was examined by means of mediation analyses and by assessing…

Impact of Machine-Translated Text on Entity and Relationship Extraction

DTIC Science & Technology

2014-12-01

20 1 1. Introduction Using social network analysis tools is an important asset in...semantic modeling software to automatically build detailed network models from unstructured text. Contour imports unstructured text and then maps the text...onto an existing ontology of frames at the sentence level, using FrameNet, a structured language model, and through Semantic Role Labeling ( SRL

Language Networks Associated with Computerized Semantic Indices

PubMed Central

Pakhomov, Serguei V. S.; Jones, David T.; Knopman, David S.

2014-01-01

Tests of generative semantic verbal fluency are widely used to study organization and representation of concepts in the human brain. Previous studies demonstrated that clustering and switching behavior during verbal fluency tasks is supported by multiple brain mechanisms associated with semantic memory and executive control. Previous work relied on manual assessments of semantic relatedness between words and grouping of words into semantic clusters. We investigated a computational linguistic approach to measuring the strength of semantic relatedness between words based on latent semantic analysis of word co-occurrences in a subset of a large online encyclopedia. We computed semantic clustering indices and compared them to brain network connectivity measures obtained with task-free fMRI in a sample consisting of healthy participants and those differentially affected by cognitive impairment. We found that semantic clustering indices were associated with brain network connectivity in distinct areas including fronto-temporal, fronto-parietal and fusiform gyrus regions. This study shows that computerized semantic indices complement traditional assessments of verbal fluency to provide a more complete account of the relationship between brain and verbal behavior involved organization and retrieval of lexical information from memory. PMID:25315785

Item-specific and generalization effects on brain activation when learning Chinese characters

PubMed Central

Deng, Yuan; Booth, James R.; Chou, Tai-Li; Ding, Guo-Sheng; Peng, Dan-Ling

2009-01-01

Neural changes related to learning of the meaning of Chinese characters in English speakers were examined using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We examined item specific learning effects for trained characters, but also the generalization of semantic knowledge to novel transfer characters that shared a semantic radical (part of a character that gives a clue to word meaning, e.g. water for lake) with trained characters. Behavioral results show that acquired semantic knowledge improves performance for both trained and transfer characters. Neuroimaging results show that the left fusiform gyrus plays a central role in the visual processing of orthographic information in characters. The left superior parietal cortex seems to play a crucial role in learning the visual–spatial aspects of the characters because it shows learning related decreases for trained characters, is correlated with behavioral improvement from early to late in learning for the trained characters, and is correlated with better long-term retention for the transfer characters. The inferior frontal gyrus seems to be associated with the efficiency of retrieving and manipulating semantic representations because there are learning related decreases for trained characters and this decrease is correlated with greater behavioral improvement from early to late in learning. PMID:18514678

Levodopa enhances explicit new-word learning in healthy adults: a preliminary study.

PubMed

Shellshear, Leanne; MacDonald, Anna D; Mahoney, Jeffrey; Finch, Emma; McMahon, Katie; Silburn, Peter; Nathan, Pradeep J; Copland, David A

2015-09-01

While the role of dopamine in modulating executive function, working memory and associative learning has been established; its role in word learning and language processing more generally is not clear. This preliminary study investigated the impact of increased synaptic dopamine levels on new-word learning ability in healthy young adults using an explicit learning paradigm. A double-blind, placebo-controlled, between-groups design was used. Participants completed five learning sessions over 1 week with levodopa or placebo administered at each session (five doses, 100 mg). Each session involved a study phase followed by a test phase. Test phases involved recall and recognition tests of the new (non-word) names previously paired with unfamiliar objects (half with semantic descriptions) during the study phase. The levodopa group showed superior recall accuracy for new words over five learning sessions compared with the placebo group and better recognition accuracy at a 1-month follow-up for words learnt with a semantic description. These findings suggest that dopamine boosts initial lexical acquisition and enhances longer-term consolidation of words learnt with semantic information, consistent with dopaminergic enhancement of semantic salience. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Explaining lexical-semantic deficits in specific language impairment: the role of phonological similarity, phonological working memory, and lexical competition.

PubMed

Mainela-Arnold, Elina; Evans, Julia L; Coady, Jeffry A

2010-12-01

In this study, the authors investigated potential explanations for sparse lexical-semantic representations in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing peers. The role of auditory perception, phonological working memory, and lexical competition were investigated. Participants included 32 children (ages 8;5-12;3 [years;months]): Sixteen children with SLI and 16 typically developing age- and nonverbal IQ-matched peers (CA). Children's word definitions were investigated. The words to be defined were manipulated for phonological neighborhood density. Nonword repetition and two lexical competition measures were tested as predictors of word definition abilities. Children with SLI gave word definitions with fewer content details than children in the CA group. Compared with the CA group, the definitions of children in the SLI group were not disproportionately impacted by phonological neighborhood density. Lexical competition was a significant unique predictor of children's word definitions, but nonword repetition was not. Individual differences in richness of lexical semantic representations as well as differences between children with SLI and typically developing peers may-at least, in part-be explained by processes of competition. However, difficulty with auditory perception or phonological working memory does not fully explain difficulties in lexical semantics.

Body-part specific interactions of action verb processing with motor behaviour.

PubMed

Klepp, Anne; Niccolai, Valentina; Sieksmeyer, Jan; Arnzen, Stephanie; Indefrey, Peter; Schnitzler, Alfons; Biermann-Ruben, Katja

2017-06-15

The interaction of action-related language processing with actual movement is an indicator of the functional role of motor cortical involvement in language understanding. This paper describes two experiments using single action verb stimuli. Motor responses were performed with the hand or the foot. To test the double dissociation of language-motor facilitation effects within subjects, Experiments 1 and 2 used a priming procedure where both hand and foot reactions had to be performed in response to different geometrical shapes, which were preceded by action verbs. In Experiment 1, the semantics of the verbs could be ignored whereas Experiment 2 included semantic decisions. Only Experiment 2 revealed a clear double dissociation in reaction times: reactions were facilitated when preceded by verbs describing actions with the matching effector. In Experiment 1, by contrast, there was an interaction between verb-response congruence and a semantic variable related to motor features of the verbs. Thus, the double dissociation paradigm of semantic motor priming was effective, corroborating the role of the motor system in action-related language processing. Importantly, this effect was body part specific. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A hierarchical knowledge-based approach for retrieving similar medical images described with semantic annotations

PubMed Central

Kurtz, Camille; Beaulieu, Christopher F.; Napel, Sandy; Rubin, Daniel L.

2014-01-01

Computer-assisted image retrieval applications could assist radiologist interpretations by identifying similar images in large archives as a means to providing decision support. However, the semantic gap between low-level image features and their high level semantics may impair the system performances. Indeed, it can be challenging to comprehensively characterize the images using low-level imaging features to fully capture the visual appearance of diseases on images, and recently the use of semantic terms has been advocated to provide semantic descriptions of the visual contents of images. However, most of the existing image retrieval strategies do not consider the intrinsic properties of these terms during the comparison of the images beyond treating them as simple binary (presence/absence) features. We propose a new framework that includes semantic features in images and that enables retrieval of similar images in large databases based on their semantic relations. It is based on two main steps: (1) annotation of the images with semantic terms extracted from an ontology, and (2) evaluation of the similarity of image pairs by computing the similarity between the terms using the Hierarchical Semantic-Based Distance (HSBD) coupled to an ontological measure. The combination of these two steps provides a means of capturing the semantic correlations among the terms used to characterize the images that can be considered as a potential solution to deal with the semantic gap problem. We validate this approach in the context of the retrieval and the classification of 2D regions of interest (ROIs) extracted from computed tomographic (CT) images of the liver. Under this framework, retrieval accuracy of more than 0.96 was obtained on a 30-images dataset using the Normalized Discounted Cumulative Gain (NDCG) index that is a standard technique used to measure the effectiveness of information retrieval algorithms when a separate reference standard is available. Classification results of more than 95% were obtained on a 77-images dataset. For comparison purpose, the use of the Earth Mover's Distance (EMD), which is an alternative distance metric that considers all the existing relations among the terms, led to results retrieval accuracy of 0.95 and classification results of 93% with a higher computational cost. The results provided by the presented framework are competitive with the state-of-the-art and emphasize the usefulness of the proposed methodology for radiology image retrieval and classification. PMID:24632078

FN400 potentials are functionally identical to N400 potentials and reflect semantic processing during recognition testing

PubMed Central

Voss, Joel L.; Federmeier, Kara D.

2010-01-01

The “F” in FN400 denotes a more frontal scalp distribution relative to the morphologically similar N400 component—a distinction consistent with the hypothesized distinct roles of FN400 in familiarity memory versus N400 in language. However, no direct comparisons have substantiated these assumed dissimilarities. To this end, we manipulated short-term semantic priming during a recognition test. Semantic priming effects on N400 were indistinguishable from memory effects at the same latency, and semantic priming strongly modulated the “FN400,” despite having no influence on familiarity memory. Thus, no evidence suggested either electrophysiological or functional differences between the N400 and FN400, and findings were contrary to the linking of the “FN400” to familiarity. Instead, it appears that semantic/conceptual priming (reflected in the N400) occurs during recognition tests, and is frequently (mis)labeled as FN400 and attributed to familiarity. PMID:20701709

The sound of enemies and friends in the neighborhood.

PubMed

Pecher, Diane; Boot, Inge; van Dantzig, Saskia; Madden, Carol J; Huber, David E; Zeelenberg, René

2011-01-01

Previous studies (e.g., Pecher, Zeelenberg, & Wagenmakers, 2005) found that semantic classification performance is better for target words with orthographic neighbors that are mostly from the same semantic class (e.g., living) compared to target words with orthographic neighbors that are mostly from the opposite semantic class (e.g., nonliving). In the present study we investigated the contribution of phonology to orthographic neighborhood effects by comparing effects of phonologically congruent orthographic neighbors (book-hook) to phonologically incongruent orthographic neighbors (sand-wand). The prior presentation of a semantically congruent word produced larger effects on subsequent animacy decisions when the previously presented word was a phonologically congruent neighbor than when it was a phonologically incongruent neighbor. In a second experiment, performance differences between target words with versus without semantically congruent orthographic neighbors were larger if the orthographic neighbors were also phonologically congruent. These results support models of visual word recognition that assume an important role for phonology in cascaded access to meaning.

How do associative and phonemic overlap interact to boost illusory recollection?

PubMed

Hutchison, Keith A; Meade, Michelle L; Williams, Nikolas S; Manley, Krista D; McNabb, Jaimie C

2018-05-01

This project investigated the underlying mechanisms that boost false remember responses when participants receive study words that are both semantically and phonologically similar to a critical lure. Participants completed a memory task in which they were presented with a list of words all associated with a critical lure. Included within the list of semantic associates was a target that was either semantically associated (e.g., yawn) to the critical lure (e.g., sleep) or shared the initial (e.g., slam) or final (e.g., beep) phoneme(s) with the critical lure. After hearing the list, participants recalled each list item and indicated whether they just knew it was on the list or if they instead recollected specific contextual details of that item's presentation. We found that inserting an initial phonemic overlap target boosted experiences of recollection, but only when semantically related associates were presented beforehand. The results are consistent with models of spoken word recognition and show that established semantic context plus initial phonemic overlap play important roles in boosting false recollection.

Semantic memory retrieval circuit: role of pre-SMA, caudate, and thalamus.

PubMed

Hart, John; Maguire, Mandy J; Motes, Michael; Mudar, Raksha Anand; Chiang, Hsueh-Sheng; Womack, Kyle B; Kraut, Michael A

2013-07-01

We propose that pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA)-thalamic interactions govern processes fundamental to semantic retrieval of an integrated object memory. At the onset of semantic retrieval, pre-SMA initiates electrical interactions between multiple cortical regions associated with semantic memory subsystems encodings as indexed by an increase in theta-band EEG power. This starts between 100-150 ms after stimulus presentation and is sustained throughout the task. We posit that this activity represents initiation of the object memory search, which continues in searching for an object memory. When the correct memory is retrieved, there is a high beta-band EEG power increase, which reflects communication between pre-SMA and thalamus, designates the end of the search process and resultant in object retrieval from multiple semantic memory subsystems. This high beta signal is also detected in cortical regions. This circuit is modulated by the caudate nuclei to facilitate correct and suppress incorrect target memories. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Effects of saccadic bilateral eye movements on episodic and semantic autobiographical memory fluency.

PubMed

Parker, Andrew; Parkin, Adam; Dagnall, Neil

2013-01-01

Performing a sequence of fast saccadic horizontal eye movements has been shown to facilitate performance on a range of cognitive tasks, including the retrieval of episodic memories. One explanation for these effects is based on the hypothesis that saccadic eye movements increase hemispheric interaction, and that such interactions are important for particular types of memory. The aim of the current research was to assess the effect of horizontal saccadic eye movements on the retrieval of both episodic autobiographical memory (event/incident based memory) and semantic autobiographical memory (fact based memory) over recent and more distant time periods. It was found that saccadic eye movements facilitated the retrieval of episodic autobiographical memories (over all time periods) but not semantic autobiographical memories. In addition, eye movements did not enhance the retrieval of non-autobiographical semantic memory. This finding illustrates a dissociation between the episodic and semantic characteristics of personal memory and is considered within the context of hemispheric contributions to episodic memory performance.

Towards a Semantically-Enabled Control Strategy for Building Simulations: Integration of Semantic Technologies and Model Predictive Control

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Delgoshaei, Parastoo; Austin, Mark A.; Pertzborn, Amanda J.

State-of-the-art building simulation control methods incorporate physical constraints into their mathematical models, but omit implicit constraints associated with policies of operation and dependency relationships among rules representing those constraints. To overcome these shortcomings, there is a recent trend in enabling the control strategies with inference-based rule checking capabilities. One solution is to exploit semantic web technologies in building simulation control. Such approaches provide the tools for semantic modeling of domains, and the ability to deduce new information based on the models through use of Description Logic (DL). In a step toward enabling this capability, this paper presents a cross-disciplinary data-drivenmore » control strategy for building energy management simulation that integrates semantic modeling and formal rule checking mechanisms into a Model Predictive Control (MPC) formulation. The results show that MPC provides superior levels of performance when initial conditions and inputs are derived from inference-based rules.« less

Effects of Saccadic Bilateral Eye Movements on Episodic and Semantic Autobiographical Memory Fluency

PubMed Central

Parker, Andrew; Parkin, Adam; Dagnall, Neil

2013-01-01

Performing a sequence of fast saccadic horizontal eye movements has been shown to facilitate performance on a range of cognitive tasks, including the retrieval of episodic memories. One explanation for these effects is based on the hypothesis that saccadic eye movements increase hemispheric interaction, and that such interactions are important for particular types of memory. The aim of the current research was to assess the effect of horizontal saccadic eye movements on the retrieval of both episodic autobiographical memory (event/incident based memory) and semantic autobiographical memory (fact based memory) over recent and more distant time periods. It was found that saccadic eye movements facilitated the retrieval of episodic autobiographical memories (over all time periods) but not semantic autobiographical memories. In addition, eye movements did not enhance the retrieval of non-autobiographical semantic memory. This finding illustrates a dissociation between the episodic and semantic characteristics of personal memory and is considered within the context of hemispheric contributions to episodic memory performance. PMID:24133435

Semantic MEDLINE for Discovery Browsing: Using Semantic Predications and the Literature-Based Discovery Paradigm to Elucidate a Mechanism for the Obesity Paradox

PubMed Central

Cairelli, Michael J.; Miller, Christopher M.; Fiszman, Marcelo; Workman, T. Elizabeth; Rindflesch, Thomas C.

2013-01-01

Applying the principles of literature-based discovery (LBD), we elucidate the paradox that obesity is beneficial in critical care despite contributing to disease generally. Our approach enhances a previous extension to LBD, called “discovery browsing,” and is implemented using Semantic MEDLINE, which summarizes the results of a PubMed search into an interactive graph of semantic predications. The methodology allows a user to construct argumentation underpinning an answer to a biomedical question by engaging the user in an iterative process between system output and user knowledge. Components of the Semantic MEDLINE output graph identified as “interesting” by the user both contribute to subsequent searches and are constructed into a logical chain of relationships constituting an explanatory network in answer to the initial question. Based on this methodology we suggest that phthalates leached from plastic in critical care interventions activate PPAR gamma, which is anti-inflammatory and abundant in obese patients. PMID:24551329

Selective preservation of memory for people in the context of semantic memory disorder: patterns of association and dissociation.

PubMed

Lyons, Frances; Kay, Janice; Hanley, J Richard; Haslam, Catherine

2006-01-01

A number of single cases in the literature demonstrate that person-specific semantic knowledge can be selectively impaired after acquired brain damage compared with that of object categories. However, there has been little unequivocal evidence for the reverse dissociation, selective preservation of person-specific semantic knowledge. Recently, three case studies have been published which provide support for the claim that such knowledge can be selectively preserved [Kay, J., & Hanley, J. R. (2002). Preservation of memory for people in semantic memory disorder: Further category-specific semantic dissociation. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 19, 113-134; Lyons, F., Hanley, J. R., & Kay, J. (2002). Anomia for common names and geographical names with preserved retrieval of names of people: A semantic memory disorder. Cortex, 38, 23-35; Thompson, S. A, Graham, K. S., Williams, G., Patterson, K., Kapur, N., & Hodges, J. R. (2004). Dissociating person-specific from general semantic knowledge: Roles of the left and right temporal lobes. Neuropsychologia, 42, 359-370]. In this paper, we supply further evidence from a series of 18 patients with acquired language disorder. Of this set, a number were observed to be impaired on tests of semantic association and word-picture matching using names of object categories (e.g. objects, animals and foods), but preserved on similar tests using names of famous people. Careful methodology was applied to match object and person-specific categories for item difficulty. The study also examined whether preservation of person-specific semantic knowledge was associated with preservation of knowledge of 'biological categories' such as fruit and vegetables and animals, or with preservation of 'token' knowledge of singular categories such as countries. The findings are discussed in the context of a variety of accounts that examine whether semantic memory has a categorical structure.

Neural pattern similarity underlies the mnemonic advantages for living words.

PubMed

Xiao, Xiaoqian; Dong, Qi; Chen, Chuansheng; Xue, Gui

2016-06-01

It has been consistently shown that words representing living things are better remembered than words representing nonliving things, yet the underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms have not been clearly elucidated. The present study used both univariate and multivariate pattern analyses to examine the hypotheses that living words are better remembered because (1) they draw more attention and/or (2) they share more overlapping semantic features. Subjects were asked to study a list of living and nonliving words during a semantic judgment task. An unexpected recognition test was administered 30 min later. We found that subjects recognized significantly more living words than nonliving words. Results supported the overlapping semantic feature hypothesis by showing that (a) semantic ratings showed greater semantic similarity for living words than for nonliving words, (b) there was also significantly greater neural global pattern similarity (nGPS) for living words than for nonliving words in the posterior portion of left parahippocampus (LpPHG), (c) the nGPS in the LpPHG reflected the rated semantic similarity, and also mediated the memory differences between two semantic categories, and (d) greater univariate activation was found for living words than for nonliving words in the left hippocampus (LHIP), which mediated the better memory performance for living words and might reflect greater semantic context binding. In contrast, although living words were processed faster and elicited a stronger activity in the dorsal attention network, these differences did not mediate the animacy effect in memory. Taken together, our results provide strong support to the overlapping semantic features hypothesis, and emphasize the important role of semantic organization in episodic memory encoding. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Interconnected growing self-organizing maps for auditory and semantic acquisition modeling.

PubMed

Cao, Mengxue; Li, Aijun; Fang, Qiang; Kaufmann, Emily; Kröger, Bernd J

2014-01-01

Based on the incremental nature of knowledge acquisition, in this study we propose a growing self-organizing neural network approach for modeling the acquisition of auditory and semantic categories. We introduce an Interconnected Growing Self-Organizing Maps (I-GSOM) algorithm, which takes associations between auditory information and semantic information into consideration, in this paper. Direct phonetic-semantic association is simulated in order to model the language acquisition in early phases, such as the babbling and imitation stages, in which no phonological representations exist. Based on the I-GSOM algorithm, we conducted experiments using paired acoustic and semantic training data. We use a cyclical reinforcing and reviewing training procedure to model the teaching and learning process between children and their communication partners. A reinforcing-by-link training procedure and a link-forgetting procedure are introduced to model the acquisition of associative relations between auditory and semantic information. Experimental results indicate that (1) I-GSOM has good ability to learn auditory and semantic categories presented within the training data; (2) clear auditory and semantic boundaries can be found in the network representation; (3) cyclical reinforcing and reviewing training leads to a detailed categorization as well as to a detailed clustering, while keeping the clusters that have already been learned and the network structure that has already been developed stable; and (4) reinforcing-by-link training leads to well-perceived auditory-semantic associations. Our I-GSOM model suggests that it is important to associate auditory information with semantic information during language acquisition. Despite its high level of abstraction, our I-GSOM approach can be interpreted as a biologically-inspired neurocomputational model.

A Complex Network Approach to Distributional Semantic Models

PubMed Central

Utsumi, Akira

2015-01-01

A number of studies on network analysis have focused on language networks based on free word association, which reflects human lexical knowledge, and have demonstrated the small-world and scale-free properties in the word association network. Nevertheless, there have been very few attempts at applying network analysis to distributional semantic models, despite the fact that these models have been studied extensively as computational or cognitive models of human lexical knowledge. In this paper, we analyze three network properties, namely, small-world, scale-free, and hierarchical properties, of semantic networks created by distributional semantic models. We demonstrate that the created networks generally exhibit the same properties as word association networks. In particular, we show that the distribution of the number of connections in these networks follows the truncated power law, which is also observed in an association network. This indicates that distributional semantic models can provide a plausible model of lexical knowledge. Additionally, the observed differences in the network properties of various implementations of distributional semantic models are consistently explained or predicted by considering the intrinsic semantic features of a word-context matrix and the functions of matrix weighting and smoothing. Furthermore, to simulate a semantic network with the observed network properties, we propose a new growing network model based on the model of Steyvers and Tenenbaum. The idea underlying the proposed model is that both preferential and random attachments are required to reflect different types of semantic relations in network growth process. We demonstrate that this model provides a better explanation of network behaviors generated by distributional semantic models. PMID:26295940

The nature and time-course of medial temporal lobe contributions to semantic retrieval: an fMRI study on verbal fluency.

PubMed

Sheldon, Signy; Moscovitch, Morris

2012-06-01

Recent investigations have shown that the medial temporal lobe (MTL), a region thought to be exclusive to episodic memory, can also influence performance on tests of semantic memory. The present study examined further the nature of MTL contributions to semantic memory tasks by tracking MTL activation as participants performed category fluency, a traditional test of semantic retrieval. For categories that were inherently autobiographical (e.g. names of friends), the MTLs were activated throughout the time period in which items were generated, consistent with the MTLs role in retrieving autobiographical memories. For categories that could not benefit from autobiographical or spatial/context information (e.g. governmental offices), the MTL was not implicated at any time point. For categories for which both prototypical and episodically-related information exists (e.g. kitchen utensils), there was more robust MTL activity for the open-ended, late generation periods compared with the more well-defined, early item generation time periods. We interpret these results as suggesting that early in the generation phase, responses are based on well-rehearsed prototypical knowledge whereas later performance relies more on open-ended strategies, such as deriving exemplars from personally relevant contextual information (e.g. imagining one's own kitchen). These findings and interpretation were consistent with the results of an initial, separate behavioral study (Expt 1), that used the distinctiveness of responses as a measure of open-endedness across the generation phase: Response distinctiveness corresponded to the predicted open-endedness of the various tasks at early and late phases. Overall, this is consistent with the view that as generation of semantic information becomes open-ended, it recruits processes from other domains, such as episodic memory, to support performance. Copyright © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Anticipation in turn-taking: mechanisms and information sources.

PubMed

Riest, Carina; Jorschick, Annett B; de Ruiter, Jan P

2015-01-01

During conversations participants alternate smoothly between speaker and hearer roles with only brief pauses and overlaps. There are two competing types of accounts about how conversationalists accomplish this: (a) the signaling approach and (b) the anticipatory ('projection') approach. We wanted to investigate, first, the relative merits of these two accounts, and second, the relative contribution of semantic and syntactic information to the timing of next turn initiation. We performed three button-press experiments using turn fragments taken from natural conversations to address the following questions: (a) Is turn-taking predominantly based on anticipation or on reaction, and (b) what is the relative contribution of semantic and syntactic information to accurate turn-taking. In our first experiment we gradually manipulated the information available for anticipation of the turn end (providing information about the turn end in advance to completely removing linguistic information). The results of our first experiment show that the distribution of the participants' estimation of turn-endings for natural turns is very similar to the distribution for pure anticipation. We conclude that listeners are indeed able to anticipate a turn-end and that this strategy is predominantly used in turn-taking. In Experiment 2 we collected purely reacted responses. We used the distributions from Experiments 1 and 2 together to estimate a new dependent variable called Reaction Anticipation Proportion. We used this variable in our third experiment where we manipulated the presence vs. absence of semantic and syntactic information by low-pass filtering open-class and closed class words in the turn. The results suggest that for turn-end anticipation, both semantic and syntactic information are needed, but that the semantic information is a more important anticipation cue than syntactic information.

Anticipation in turn-taking: mechanisms and information sources

PubMed Central

Riest, Carina; Jorschick, Annett B.; de Ruiter, Jan P.

2015-01-01

During conversations participants alternate smoothly between speaker and hearer roles with only brief pauses and overlaps. There are two competing types of accounts about how conversationalists accomplish this: (a) the signaling approach and (b) the anticipatory (‘projection’) approach. We wanted to investigate, first, the relative merits of these two accounts, and second, the relative contribution of semantic and syntactic information to the timing of next turn initiation. We performed three button-press experiments using turn fragments taken from natural conversations to address the following questions: (a) Is turn-taking predominantly based on anticipation or on reaction, and (b) what is the relative contribution of semantic and syntactic information to accurate turn-taking. In our first experiment we gradually manipulated the information available for anticipation of the turn end (providing information about the turn end in advance to completely removing linguistic information). The results of our first experiment show that the distribution of the participants’ estimation of turn-endings for natural turns is very similar to the distribution for pure anticipation. We conclude that listeners are indeed able to anticipate a turn-end and that this strategy is predominantly used in turn-taking. In Experiment 2 we collected purely reacted responses. We used the distributions from Experiments 1 and 2 together to estimate a new dependent variable called Reaction Anticipation Proportion. We used this variable in our third experiment where we manipulated the presence vs. absence of semantic and syntactic information by low-pass filtering open-class and closed class words in the turn. The results suggest that for turn-end anticipation, both semantic and syntactic information are needed, but that the semantic information is a more important anticipation cue than syntactic information. PMID:25699004

Applying Semantic-based Probabilistic Context-Free Grammar to Medical Language Processing – A Preliminary Study on Parsing Medication Sentences

PubMed Central

Xu, Hua; AbdelRahman, Samir; Lu, Yanxin; Denny, Joshua C.; Doan, Son

2011-01-01

Semantic-based sublanguage grammars have been shown to be an efficient method for medical language processing. However, given the complexity of the medical domain, parsers using such grammars inevitably encounter ambiguous sentences, which could be interpreted by different groups of production rules and consequently result in two or more parse trees. One possible solution, which has not been extensively explored previously, is to augment productions in medical sublanguage grammars with probabilities to resolve the ambiguity. In this study, we associated probabilities with production rules in a semantic-based grammar for medication findings and evaluated its performance on reducing parsing ambiguity. Using the existing data set from 2009 i2b2 NLP (Natural Language Processing) challenge for medication extraction, we developed a semantic-based CFG (Context Free Grammar) for parsing medication sentences and manually created a Treebank of 4,564 medication sentences from discharge summaries. Using the Treebank, we derived a semantic-based PCFG (probabilistic Context Free Grammar) for parsing medication sentences. Our evaluation using a 10-fold cross validation showed that the PCFG parser dramatically improved parsing performance when compared to the CFG parser. PMID:21856440

A Semantic Lexicon-Based Approach for Sense Disambiguation and Its WWW Application

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

di Lecce, Vincenzo; Calabrese, Marco; Soldo, Domenico

This work proposes a basic framework for resolving sense disambiguation through the use of Semantic Lexicon, a machine readable dictionary managing both word senses and lexico-semantic relations. More specifically, polysemous ambiguity characterizing Web documents is discussed. The adopted Semantic Lexicon is WordNet, a lexical knowledge-base of English words widely adopted in many research studies referring to knowledge discovery. The proposed approach extends recent works on knowledge discovery by focusing on the sense disambiguation aspect. By exploiting the structure of WordNet database, lexico-semantic features are used to resolve the inherent sense ambiguity of written text with particular reference to HTML resources. The obtained results may be extended to generic hypertextual repositories as well. Experiments show that polysemy reduction can be used to hint about the meaning of specific senses in given contexts.

Utilizing Linked Open Data Sources for Automatic Generation of Semantic Metadata

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nummiaho, Antti; Vainikainen, Sari; Melin, Magnus

In this paper we present an application that can be used to automatically generate semantic metadata for tags given as simple keywords. The application that we have implemented in Java programming language creates the semantic metadata by linking the tags to concepts in different semantic knowledge bases (CrunchBase, DBpedia, Freebase, KOKO, Opencyc, Umbel and/or WordNet). The steps that our application takes in doing so include detecting possible languages, finding spelling suggestions and finding meanings from amongst the proper nouns and common nouns separately. Currently, our application supports English, Finnish and Swedish words, but other languages could be included easily if the required lexical tools (spellcheckers, etc.) are available. The created semantic metadata can be of great use in, e.g., finding and combining similar contents, creating recommendations and targeting advertisements.

Semantic Feature Distinctiveness and Frequency

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lamb, Katherine M.

2012-01-01

Lexical access is the process in which basic components of meaning in language, the lexical entries (words) are activated. This activation is based on the organization and representational structure of the lexical entries. Semantic features of words, which are the prominent semantic characteristics of a word concept, provide important information…

The role of left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in semantic processing: A transcranial direct current stimulation study.

PubMed

Mitchell, Rachel L C; Vidaki, Kleio; Lavidor, Michal

2016-10-01

For complex linguistic strings such as idioms, making a decision as to the correct meaning may require complex top-down cognitive control such as the suppression of incorrect alternative meanings. In the study presented here, we used transcranial direct current stimulation to test the hypothesis that a domain general dorsolateral prefrontal cognitive control network is involved in constraining the complex processing involved. Specifically, we sought to test prominent theoretical stances on the division of labour across dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in the left- and right-hemispheres of the brain, including the role of salience and fine vs. coarse semantic coding. 32 healthy young adult participants were randomly allocated to one of two stimulation montage groups (LH anodal/RH cathodal or RH anodal/LH cathodal). Participants were tested twice, completing a semantic decision task after either receiving active or sham stimulation. The semantic decision task required participants to judge the relatedness of an idiom and a target word. The target word was figuratively related, literally related, or unrelated to the idiom. Control non-literal non-idiomatic sentences were also included that only had a literal meaning. The results showed that left-hemisphere dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is highly involved in processing figurative language, whereas both left- and right- dorsolateral prefrontal cortex contributed to literal language processing. In comparison, semantic processing for the non-idiomatic control sentences did not require domain general cognitive control as it relates to suppression of the rejected alternative meaning. The results are discussed in terms of the interplay between need for domain general cognitive control in understanding the meaning of complex sentences, hemispheric differences in semantic processing, and salience detection. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Discovering biomedical semantic relations in PubMed queries for information retrieval and database curation

PubMed Central

Huang, Chung-Chi; Lu, Zhiyong

2016-01-01

Identifying relevant papers from the literature is a common task in biocuration. Most current biomedical literature search systems primarily rely on matching user keywords. Semantic search, on the other hand, seeks to improve search accuracy by understanding the entities and contextual relations in user keywords. However, past research has mostly focused on semantically identifying biological entities (e.g. chemicals, diseases and genes) with little effort on discovering semantic relations. In this work, we aim to discover biomedical semantic relations in PubMed queries in an automated and unsupervised fashion. Specifically, we focus on extracting and understanding the contextual information (or context patterns) that is used by PubMed users to represent semantic relations between entities such as ‘CHEMICAL-1 compared to CHEMICAL-2.’ With the advances in automatic named entity recognition, we first tag entities in PubMed queries and then use tagged entities as knowledge to recognize pattern semantics. More specifically, we transform PubMed queries into context patterns involving participating entities, which are subsequently projected to latent topics via latent semantic analysis (LSA) to avoid the data sparseness and specificity issues. Finally, we mine semantically similar contextual patterns or semantic relations based on LSA topic distributions. Our two separate evaluation experiments of chemical-chemical (CC) and chemical–disease (CD) relations show that the proposed approach significantly outperforms a baseline method, which simply measures pattern semantics by similarity in participating entities. The highest performance achieved by our approach is nearly 0.9 and 0.85 respectively for the CC and CD task when compared against the ground truth in terms of normalized discounted cumulative gain (nDCG), a standard measure of ranking quality. These results suggest that our approach can effectively identify and return related semantic patterns in a ranked order covering diverse bio-entity relations. To assess the potential utility of our automated top-ranked patterns of a given relation in semantic search, we performed a pilot study on frequently sought semantic relations in PubMed and observed improved literature retrieval effectiveness based on post-hoc human relevance evaluation. Further investigation in larger tests and in real-world scenarios is warranted. PMID:27016698

Context-rich semantic framework for effective data-to-decisions in coalition networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Grueneberg, Keith; de Mel, Geeth; Braines, Dave; Wang, Xiping; Calo, Seraphin; Pham, Tien

2013-05-01

In a coalition context, data fusion involves combining of soft (e.g., field reports, intelligence reports) and hard (e.g., acoustic, imagery) sensory data such that the resulting output is better than what it would have been if the data are taken individually. However, due to the lack of explicit semantics attached with such data, it is difficult to automatically disseminate and put the right contextual data in the hands of the decision makers. In order to understand the data, explicit meaning needs to be added by means of categorizing and/or classifying the data in relationship to each other from base reference sources. In this paper, we present a semantic framework that provides automated mechanisms to expose real-time raw data effectively by presenting appropriate information needed for a given situation so that an informed decision could be made effectively. The system utilizes controlled natural language capabilities provided by the ITA (International Technology Alliance) Controlled English (CE) toolkit to provide a human-friendly semantic representation of messages so that the messages can be directly processed in human/machine hybrid environments. The Real-time Semantic Enrichment (RTSE) service adds relevant contextual information to raw data streams from domain knowledge bases using declarative rules. The rules define how the added semantics and context information are derived and stored in a semantic knowledge base. The software framework exposes contextual information from a variety of hard and soft data sources in a fast, reliable manner so that an informed decision can be made using semantic queries in intelligent software systems.

Only time will tell - why temporal information is essential for our neuroscientific understanding of semantics.

PubMed

Hauk, Olaf

2016-08-01

Theoretical developments about the nature of semantic representations and processes should be accompanied by a discussion of how these theories can be validated on the basis of empirical data. Here, I elaborate on the link between theory and empirical research, highlighting the need for temporal information in order to distinguish fundamental aspects of semantics. The generic point that fast cognitive processes demand fast measurement techniques has been made many times before, although arguably more often in the psychophysiological community than in the metabolic neuroimaging community. Many reviews on the neuroscience of semantics mostly or even exclusively focus on metabolic neuroimaging data. Following an analysis of semantics in terms of the representations and processes involved, I argue that fundamental theoretical debates about the neuroscience of semantics can only be concluded on the basis of data with sufficient temporal resolution. Any "semantic effect" may result from a conflation of long-term memory representations, retrieval and working memory processes, mental imagery, and episodic memory. This poses challenges for all neuroimaging modalities, but especially for those with low temporal resolution. It also throws doubt on the usefulness of contrasts between meaningful and meaningless stimuli, which may differ on a number of semantic and non-semantic dimensions. I will discuss the consequences of this analysis for research on the role of convergence zones or hubs and distributed modal brain networks, top-down modulation of task and context as well as interactivity between levels of the processing hierarchy, for example in the framework of predictive coding.

The accessibility of semantic knowledge for odours that can and cannot be named.

PubMed

Stevenson, Richard J; Mahmut, Mehmet K

2013-01-01

When faces, objects, or voices are encountered, naming lapses can occur, but this does not preclude knowing other specific semantic information about the nameless thing. In the experiments reported here, we examined whether this is also the case for odours, using a procedure based upon the Pyramid and Palm Trees test. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with a target odour, then two pictures, and had to pick the picture semantically associated with the target. In Experiment 2, participants were presented with a target odour, then two test odours, and again had to pick the semantically associated test stimulus. In each experiment, other tests followed, including a parallel verbal-based test, an odour-naming test, and various ratings. Neither experiment found any evidence of specific semantic knowledge about a target odour, unless the target odour name (Experiment 1) or all of the odour names (Experiment 2) were known. Additional tests suggested that these effects were independent of odour familiarity and similarity. We suggest that the absence of specific semantic information in the absence of a name may reflect poor connectivity between olfactory perceptual and semantic memory systems.

Research on designing ontologies for location-based services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cheng, Gang; Du, Qingyun; Cai, Zhongliang; Huang, Maojun; Zhao, Haiyun

2007-06-01

With the far and wide applications of Location-Based Services (LBS), the call for more semantic and accurate services is emerging. From a semantic viewpoint, the major characteristic of, and challenge for, LBS is the fact that they serve as mediator between a possibly unknown user and possibly a priori unknown services. While some geographic information technology standards provide the basis for syntactic interoperability, they do not yet provide methods for dealing with problems of semantic heterogeneity. In this paper we design ontologies for LBS which are used for the identification and association of semantically corresponding concepts to overcome the semantic problems. In order to better understand the semantic content of the data in LBS, we analyze several elements both data and services involved. Then, we model these data and services in a way that captures their peculiarities and allows their sharing between users and services and exchange among different LBS, when desired. For this, we use the Protégé-OWL plug-in for creating hybrid hierarchy of ontologies to enhance the semantic content both the user information and the services have. To argue about the design choices and show their applicability, we present a simple example from a characteristic real world application.

Model-based document categorization employing semantic pattern analysis and local structure clustering

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fume, Kosei; Ishitani, Yasuto

2008-01-01

We propose a document categorization method based on a document model that can be defined externally for each task and that categorizes Web content or business documents into a target category in accordance with the similarity of the model. The main feature of the proposed method consists of two aspects of semantics extraction from an input document. The semantics of terms are extracted by the semantic pattern analysis and implicit meanings of document substructure are specified by a bottom-up text clustering technique focusing on the similarity of text line attributes. We have constructed a system based on the proposed method for trial purposes. The experimental results show that the system achieves more than 80% classification accuracy in categorizing Web content and business documents into 15 or 70 categories.

Semantic similarity between old and new items produces false alarms in recognition memory.

PubMed

Montefinese, Maria; Zannino, Gian Daniele; Ambrosini, Ettore

2015-09-01

In everyday life, human beings can report memories of past events that did not occur or that occurred differently from the way they remember them because memory is an imperfect process of reconstruction and is prone to distortion and errors. In this recognition study using word stimuli, we investigated whether a specific operationalization of semantic similarity among concepts can modulate false memories while controlling for the possible effect of associative strength and word co-occurrence in an old-new recognition task. The semantic similarity value of each new concept was calculated as the mean cosine similarity between pairs of vectors representing that new concept and each old concept belonging to the same semantic category. Results showed that, compared with (new) low-similarity concepts, (new) high-similarity concepts had significantly higher probability of being falsely recognized as old, even after partialling out the effect of confounding variables, including associative relatedness and lexical co-occurrence. This finding supports the feature-based view of semantic memory, suggesting that meaning overlap and sharing of semantic features (which are greater when more similar semantic concepts are being processed) have an influence on recognition performance, resulting in more false alarms for new high-similarity concepts. We propose that the associative strength and word co-occurrence among concepts are not sufficient to explain illusory memories but is important to take into account also the effects of feature-based semantic relations, and, in particular, the semantic similarity among concepts.

Surface errors without semantic impairment in acquired dyslexia: a voxel-based lesion–symptom mapping study

PubMed Central

Pillay, Sara B.; Humphries, Colin J.; Gross, William L.; Graves, William W.; Book, Diane S.

2016-01-01

Patients with surface dyslexia have disproportionate difficulty pronouncing irregularly spelled words (e.g. pint), suggesting impaired use of lexical-semantic information to mediate phonological retrieval. Patients with this deficit also make characteristic ‘regularization’ errors, in which an irregularly spelled word is mispronounced by incorrect application of regular spelling-sound correspondences (e.g. reading plaid as ‘played’), indicating over-reliance on sublexical grapheme–phoneme correspondences. We examined the neuroanatomical correlates of this specific error type in 45 patients with left hemisphere chronic stroke. Voxel-based lesion–symptom mapping showed a strong positive relationship between the rate of regularization errors and damage to the posterior half of the left middle temporal gyrus. Semantic deficits on tests of single-word comprehension were generally mild, and these deficits were not correlated with the rate of regularization errors. Furthermore, the deep occipital-temporal white matter locus associated with these mild semantic deficits was distinct from the lesion site associated with regularization errors. Thus, in contrast to patients with surface dyslexia and semantic impairment from anterior temporal lobe degeneration, surface errors in our patients were not related to a semantic deficit. We propose that these patients have an inability to link intact semantic representations with phonological representations. The data provide novel evidence for a post-semantic mechanism mediating the production of surface errors, and suggest that the posterior middle temporal gyrus may compute an intermediate representation linking semantics with phonology. PMID:26966139

Semantic Service Design for Collaborative Business Processes in Internetworked Enterprises

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bianchini, Devis; Cappiello, Cinzia; de Antonellis, Valeria; Pernici, Barbara

Modern collaborating enterprises can be seen as borderless organizations whose processes are dynamically transformed and integrated with the ones of their partners (Internetworked Enterprises, IE), thus enabling the design of collaborative business processes. The adoption of Semantic Web and service-oriented technologies for implementing collaboration in such distributed and heterogeneous environments promises significant benefits. IE can model their own processes independently by using the Software as a Service paradigm (SaaS). Each enterprise maintains a catalog of available services and these can be shared across IE and reused to build up complex collaborative processes. Moreover, each enterprise can adopt its own terminology and concepts to describe business processes and component services. This brings requirements to manage semantic heterogeneity in process descriptions which are distributed across different enterprise systems. To enable effective service-based collaboration, IEs have to standardize their process descriptions and model them through component services using the same approach and principles. For enabling collaborative business processes across IE, services should be designed following an homogeneous approach, possibly maintaining a uniform level of granularity. In the paper we propose an ontology-based semantic modeling approach apt to enrich and reconcile semantics of process descriptions to facilitate process knowledge management and to enable semantic service design (by discovery, reuse and integration of process elements/constructs). The approach brings together Semantic Web technologies, techniques in process modeling, ontology building and semantic matching in order to provide a comprehensive semantic modeling framework.

The organization and dissolution of semantic-conceptual knowledge: is the 'amodal hub' the only plausible model?

PubMed

Gainotti, Guido

2011-04-01

In recent years, the anatomical and functional bases of conceptual activity have attracted a growing interest. In particular, Patterson and Lambon-Ralph have proposed the existence, in the anterior parts of the temporal lobes, of a mechanism (the 'amodal semantic hub') supporting the interactive activation of semantic representations in all modalities and for all semantic categories. The aim of then present paper is to discuss this model, arguing against the notion of an 'amodal' semantic hub, because we maintain, in agreement with the Damasio's construct of 'higher-order convergence zone', that a continuum exists between perceptual information and conceptual representations, whereas the 'amodal' account views perceptual informations only as a channel through which abstract semantic knowledge can be activated. According to our model, semantic organization can be better explained by two orthogonal higher-order convergence systems, concerning, on one hand, the right vs. left hemisphere and, on the other hand, the ventral vs. dorsal processing pathways. This model posits that conceptual representations may be mainly based upon perceptual activities in the right hemisphere and upon verbal mediation in the left side of the brain. It also assumes that conceptual knowledge based on the convergence of highly processed visual information with other perceptual data (and mainly concerning living categories) may be bilaterally represented in the anterior parts of the temporal lobes, whereas knowledge based on the integration of visual data with action schemata (namely knowledge of actions, body parts and artefacts) may be more represented in the left fronto-temporo-parietal areas. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Levels of Processing and the Cue-Dependent Nature of Recollection

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mulligan, Neil W.; Picklesimer, Milton

2012-01-01

Dual-process models differentiate between two bases of memory, recollection and familiarity. It is routinely claimed that deeper, semantic encoding enhances recollection relative to shallow, non-semantic encoding, and that recollection is largely a product of semantic, elaborative rehearsal. The present experiments show that this is not always the…

Elaborative Retrieval: Do Semantic Mediators Improve Memory?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lehman, Melissa; Karpicke, Jeffrey D.

2016-01-01

The elaborative retrieval account of retrieval-based learning proposes that retrieval enhances retention because the retrieval process produces the generation of semantic mediators that link cues to target information. We tested 2 assumptions that form the basis of this account: that semantic mediators are more likely to be generated during…

Semantic Similarity of Labels and Inductive Generalization: Taking a Second Look

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fisher, Anna V.; Matlen, Bryan J.; Godwin, Karrie E.

2011-01-01

Prior research suggests that preschoolers can generalize object properties based on category information conveyed by semantically-similar labels. However, previous research did not control for co-occurrence probability of labels in natural speech. The current studies re-assessed children's generalization with semantically-similar labels.…

Are Judgments of Semantic Relatedness Systematically Impaired in Alzheimer's Disease?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hornberger, M.; Bell, B.; Graham, K. S.; Rogers, T. T.

2009-01-01

We employed a triadic comparison task in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and healthy controls to contrast (a) multidimensional scaling (MDS) and accuracy-based assessments of semantic memory, and (b) degraded-store versus degraded-access accounts of semantic impairment in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Similar to other studies using triadic…

Semantic-Aware Components and Services of ActiveMath

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Melis, Erica; Goguadze, Giorgi; Homik, Martin; Libbrecht, Paul; Ullrich, Carsten; Winterstein, Stefan

2006-01-01

ActiveMath is a complex web-based adaptive learning environment with a number of components and interactive learning tools. The basis for handling semantics of learning content is provided by its semantic (mathematics) content markup, which is additionally annotated with educational metadata. Several components, tools and external services can…

Semantic Clustering of Search Engine Results

PubMed Central

Soliman, Sara Saad; El-Sayed, Maged F.; Hassan, Yasser F.

2015-01-01

This paper presents a novel approach for search engine results clustering that relies on the semantics of the retrieved documents rather than the terms in those documents. The proposed approach takes into consideration both lexical and semantics similarities among documents and applies activation spreading technique in order to generate semantically meaningful clusters. This approach allows documents that are semantically similar to be clustered together rather than clustering documents based on similar terms. A prototype is implemented and several experiments are conducted to test the prospered solution. The result of the experiment confirmed that the proposed solution achieves remarkable results in terms of precision. PMID:26933673

Music Recognition in Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration and Alzheimer Disease

PubMed Central

Johnson, Julene K; Chang, Chiung-Chih; Brambati, Simona M; Migliaccio, Raffaella; Gorno-Tempini, Maria Luisa; Miller, Bruce L; Janata, Petr

2013-01-01

Objective To compare music recognition in patients with frontotemporal dementia, semantic dementia, Alzheimer disease, and controls and to evaluate the relationship between music recognition and brain volume. Background Recognition of familiar music depends on several levels of processing. There are few studies about how patients with dementia recognize familiar music. Methods Subjects were administered tasks that assess pitch and melody discrimination, detection of pitch errors in familiar melodies, and naming of familiar melodies. Results There were no group differences on pitch and melody discrimination tasks. However, patients with semantic dementia had considerable difficulty naming familiar melodies and also scored the lowest when asked to identify pitch errors in the same melodies. Naming familiar melodies, but not other music tasks, was strongly related to measures of semantic memory. Voxel-based morphometry analysis of brain MRI showed that difficulty in naming songs was associated with the bilateral temporal lobes and inferior frontal gyrus, whereas difficulty in identifying pitch errors in familiar melodies correlated with primarily the right temporal lobe. Conclusions The results support a view that the anterior temporal lobes play a role in familiar melody recognition, and that musical functions are affected differentially across forms of dementia. PMID:21617528

Semantic size does not matter: "bigger" words are not recognized faster.

PubMed

Kang, Sean H K; Yap, Melvin J; Tse, Chi-Shing; Kurby, Christopher A

2011-06-01

Sereno, O'Donnell, and Sereno (2009) reported that words are recognized faster in a lexical decision task when their referents are physically large than when they are small, suggesting that "semantic size" might be an important variable that should be considered in visual word recognition research and modelling. We sought to replicate their size effect, but failed to find a significant latency advantage in lexical decision for "big" words (cf. "small" words), even though we used the same word stimuli as Sereno et al. and had almost three times as many subjects. We also examined existing data from visual word recognition megastudies (e.g., English Lexicon Project) and found that semantic size is not a significant predictor of lexical decision performance after controlling for the standard lexical variables. In summary, the null results from our lab experiment--despite a much larger subject sample size than Sereno et al.--converged with our analysis of megastudy lexical decision performance, leading us to conclude that semantic size does not matter for word recognition. Discussion focuses on why semantic size (unlike some other semantic variables) is unlikely to play a role in lexical decision.

Lexical-semantic body knowledge in 5- to 11-year-old children: How spatial body representation influences body semantics.

PubMed

Auclair, Laurent; Jambaqué, Isabelle

2015-01-01

This study addresses the relation between lexico-semantic body knowledge (i.e., body semantics) and spatial body representation (i.e., structural body representation) by analyzing naming performances as a function of body structural topography. One hundred and forty-one children ranging from 5 years 2 months to 10 years 5 months old were asked to provide a lexical label for isolated body part pictures. We compared the children's naming performances according to the location of the body parts (body parts vs. head features and also upper vs. lower limbs) or to their involvement in motor skills (distal segments, joints, and broader body parts). The results showed that the children's naming performance was better for facial body parts than for other body parts. Furthermore, it was found that the naming of body parts was better for body parts related to action. These findings suggest that the development of a spatial body representation shapes the elaboration of semantic body representation processing. Moreover, this influence was not limited to younger children. In our discussion of these results, we focus on the important role of action in the development of body representations and semantic organization.

The Semantic Network at Work and Rest: Differential Connectivity of Anterior Temporal Lobe Subregions.

PubMed

Jackson, Rebecca L; Hoffman, Paul; Pobric, Gorana; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A

2016-02-03

The anterior temporal lobe (ATL) makes a critical contribution to semantic cognition. However, the functional connectivity of the ATL and the functional network underlying semantic cognition has not been elucidated. In addition, subregions of the ATL have distinct functional properties and thus the potential differential connectivity between these subregions requires investigation. We explored these aims using both resting-state and active semantic task data in humans in combination with a dual-echo gradient echo planar imaging (EPI) paradigm designed to ensure signal throughout the ATL. In the resting-state analysis, the ventral ATL (vATL) and anterior middle temporal gyrus (MTG) were shown to connect to areas responsible for multimodal semantic cognition, including bilateral ATL, inferior frontal gyrus, medial prefrontal cortex, angular gyrus, posterior MTG, and medial temporal lobes. In contrast, the anterior superior temporal gyrus (STG)/superior temporal sulcus was connected to a distinct set of auditory and language-related areas, including bilateral STG, precentral and postcentral gyri, supplementary motor area, supramarginal gyrus, posterior temporal cortex, and inferior and middle frontal gyri. Complementary analyses of functional connectivity during an active semantic task were performed using a psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analysis. The PPI analysis highlighted the same semantic regions suggesting a core semantic network active during rest and task states. This supports the necessity for semantic cognition in internal processes occurring during rest. The PPI analysis showed additional connectivity of the vATL to regions of occipital and frontal cortex. These areas strongly overlap with regions found to be sensitive to executively demanding, controlled semantic processing. Previous studies have shown that semantic cognition depends on subregions of the anterior temporal lobe (ATL). However, the network of regions functionally connected to these subregions has not been demarcated. Here, we show that these ventrolateral anterior temporal subregions form part of a network responsible for semantic processing during both rest and an explicit semantic task. This demonstrates the existence of a core functional network responsible for multimodal semantic cognition regardless of state. Distinct connectivity is identified in the superior ATL, which is connected to auditory and language areas. Understanding the functional connectivity of semantic cognition allows greater understanding of how this complex process may be performed and the role of distinct subregions of the anterior temporal cortex. Copyright © 2016 Jackson et al.

The Semantic Network at Work and Rest: Differential Connectivity of Anterior Temporal Lobe Subregions

PubMed Central

Jackson, Rebecca L.; Hoffman, Paul; Pobric, Gorana

2016-01-01

The anterior temporal lobe (ATL) makes a critical contribution to semantic cognition. However, the functional connectivity of the ATL and the functional network underlying semantic cognition has not been elucidated. In addition, subregions of the ATL have distinct functional properties and thus the potential differential connectivity between these subregions requires investigation. We explored these aims using both resting-state and active semantic task data in humans in combination with a dual-echo gradient echo planar imaging (EPI) paradigm designed to ensure signal throughout the ATL. In the resting-state analysis, the ventral ATL (vATL) and anterior middle temporal gyrus (MTG) were shown to connect to areas responsible for multimodal semantic cognition, including bilateral ATL, inferior frontal gyrus, medial prefrontal cortex, angular gyrus, posterior MTG, and medial temporal lobes. In contrast, the anterior superior temporal gyrus (STG)/superior temporal sulcus was connected to a distinct set of auditory and language-related areas, including bilateral STG, precentral and postcentral gyri, supplementary motor area, supramarginal gyrus, posterior temporal cortex, and inferior and middle frontal gyri. Complementary analyses of functional connectivity during an active semantic task were performed using a psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analysis. The PPI analysis highlighted the same semantic regions suggesting a core semantic network active during rest and task states. This supports the necessity for semantic cognition in internal processes occurring during rest. The PPI analysis showed additional connectivity of the vATL to regions of occipital and frontal cortex. These areas strongly overlap with regions found to be sensitive to executively demanding, controlled semantic processing. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Previous studies have shown that semantic cognition depends on subregions of the anterior temporal lobe (ATL). However, the network of regions functionally connected to these subregions has not been demarcated. Here, we show that these ventrolateral anterior temporal subregions form part of a network responsible for semantic processing during both rest and an explicit semantic task. This demonstrates the existence of a core functional network responsible for multimodal semantic cognition regardless of state. Distinct connectivity is identified in the superior ATL, which is connected to auditory and language areas. Understanding the functional connectivity of semantic cognition allows greater understanding of how this complex process may be performed and the role of distinct subregions of the anterior temporal cortex. PMID:26843633

LinkEHR-Ed: a multi-reference model archetype editor based on formal semantics.

PubMed

Maldonado, José A; Moner, David; Boscá, Diego; Fernández-Breis, Jesualdo T; Angulo, Carlos; Robles, Montserrat

2009-08-01

To develop a powerful archetype editing framework capable of handling multiple reference models and oriented towards the semantic description and standardization of legacy data. The main prerequisite for implementing tools providing enhanced support for archetypes is the clear specification of archetype semantics. We propose a formalization of the definition section of archetypes based on types over tree-structured data. It covers the specialization of archetypes, the relationship between reference models and archetypes and conformance of data instances to archetypes. LinkEHR-Ed, a visual archetype editor based on the former formalization with advanced processing capabilities that supports multiple reference models, the editing and semantic validation of archetypes, the specification of mappings to data sources, and the automatic generation of data transformation scripts, is developed. LinkEHR-Ed is a useful tool for building, processing and validating archetypes based on any reference model.

A Semantic Web-based System for Mining Genetic Mutations in Cancer Clinical Trials.

PubMed

Priya, Sambhawa; Jiang, Guoqian; Dasari, Surendra; Zimmermann, Michael T; Wang, Chen; Heflin, Jeff; Chute, Christopher G

2015-01-01

Textual eligibility criteria in clinical trial protocols contain important information about potential clinically relevant pharmacogenomic events. Manual curation for harvesting this evidence is intractable as it is error prone and time consuming. In this paper, we develop and evaluate a Semantic Web-based system that captures and manages mutation evidences and related contextual information from cancer clinical trials. The system has 2 main components: an NLP-based annotator and a Semantic Web ontology-based annotation manager. We evaluated the performance of the annotator in terms of precision and recall. We demonstrated the usefulness of the system by conducting case studies in retrieving relevant clinical trials using a collection of mutations identified from TCGA Leukemia patients and Atlas of Genetics and Cytogenetics in Oncology and Haematology. In conclusion, our system using Semantic Web technologies provides an effective framework for extraction, annotation, standardization and management of genetic mutations in cancer clinical trials.

The role of left prefrontal cortex in language and memory

PubMed Central

Gabrieli, John D. E.; Poldrack, Russell A.; Desmond, John E.

1998-01-01

This article reviews attempts to characterize the mental operations mediated by left inferior prefrontal cortex, especially the anterior and inferior portion of the gyrus, with the functional neuroimaging techniques of positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging. Activations in this region occur during semantic, relative to nonsemantic, tasks for the generation of words to semantic cues or the classification of words or pictures into semantic categories. This activation appears in the right prefrontal cortex of people known to be atypically right-hemisphere dominant for language. In this region, activations are associated with meaningful encoding that leads to superior explicit memory for stimuli and deactivations with implicit semantic memory (repetition priming) for words and pictures. New findings are reported showing that patients with global amnesia show deactivations in the same region associated with repetition priming, that activation in this region reflects selection of a response from among numerous relative to few alternatives, and that activations in a portion of this region are associated specifically with semantic relative to phonological processing. It is hypothesized that activations in left inferior prefrontal cortex reflect a domain-specific semantic working memory capacity that is invoked more for semantic than nonsemantic analyses regardless of stimulus modality, more for initial than for repeated semantic analysis of a word or picture, more when a response must be selected from among many than few legitimate alternatives, and that yields superior later explicit memory for experiences. PMID:9448258

Disrupting the brain to validate hypotheses on the neurobiology of language

PubMed Central

Papeo, Liuba; Pascual-Leone, Alvaro; Caramazza, Alfonso

2013-01-01

Comprehension of words is an important part of the language faculty, involving the joint activity of frontal and temporo-parietal brain regions. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) enables the controlled perturbation of brain activity, and thus offers a unique tool to test specific predictions about the causal relationship between brain regions and language understanding. This potential has been exploited to better define the role of regions that are classically accepted as part of the language-semantic network. For instance, TMS has contributed to establish the semantic relevance of the left anterior temporal lobe, or to solve the ambiguity between the semantic vs. phonological function assigned to the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG). We consider, more closely, the results from studies where the same technique, similar paradigms (lexical-semantic tasks) and materials (words) have been used to assess the relevance of regions outside the classically-defined language-semantic network—i.e., precentral motor regions—for the semantic analysis of words. This research shows that different aspects of the left precentral gyrus (primary motor and premotor sites) are sensitive to the action-non action distinction of words' meanings. However, the behavioral changes due to TMS over these sites are incongruent with what is expected after perturbation of a task-relevant brain region. Thus, the relationship between motor activity and language-semantic behavior remains far from clear. A better understanding of this issue could be guaranteed by investigating functional interactions between motor sites and semantically-relevant regions. PMID:23630480

The modulatory influence of the functional COMT Val158Met polymorphism on lexical decisions and semantic priming.

PubMed

Reuter, Martin; Montag, Christian; Peters, Kristina; Kocher, Anne; Kiefer, Markus

2009-01-01

The role of the prefrontal Cortex (PFC) in higher cognitive functions - including working memory, conflict resolution, set shifting and semantic processing - has been demonstrated unequivocally. Despite the great heterogeneity among tasks measuring these phenotypes, due in part to the different cognitive sub-processes implied and the specificity of the stimulus material used, there is agreement that all of these tasks recruit an executive control system located in the PFC. On a biochemical level it is known that the dopaminergic system plays an important role in executive control functions. Evidence comes from molecular genetics relating the functional COMT Val158Met polymorphism to working memory and set shifting. In order determine whether this pattern of findings generalises to linguistic and semantic processing, we investigated the effects of the COMT Val158Met polymorphism in lexical decision making using masked and unmasked versions of the semantic priming paradigm on N = 104 healthy subjects. Although we observed strong priming effects in all conditions (masked priming, unmasked priming with short/long stimulus asynchronies (SOAs), direct and indirect priming), COMT was not significantly related to priming, suggesting no reliable influence on semantic processing. However, COMT Val158Met was strongly associated with lexical decision latencies in all priming conditions if considered separately, explaining between 9 and 14.5% of the variance. Therefore, the findings indicate that COMT mainly influences more general executive control functions in the PFC supporting the speed of lexical decisions.

Affective priming effects of musical sounds on the processing of word meaning.

PubMed

Steinbeis, Nikolaus; Koelsch, Stefan

2011-03-01

Recent studies have shown that music is capable of conveying semantically meaningful concepts. Several questions have subsequently arisen particularly with regard to the precise mechanisms underlying the communication of musical meaning as well as the role of specific musical features. The present article reports three studies investigating the role of affect expressed by various musical features in priming subsequent word processing at the semantic level. By means of an affective priming paradigm, it was shown that both musically trained and untrained participants evaluated emotional words congruous to the affect expressed by a preceding chord faster than words incongruous to the preceding chord. This behavioral effect was accompanied by an N400, an ERP typically linked with semantic processing, which was specifically modulated by the (mis)match between the prime and the target. This finding was shown for the musical parameter of consonance/dissonance (Experiment 1) and then extended to mode (major/minor) (Experiment 2) and timbre (Experiment 3). Seeing that the N400 is taken to reflect the processing of meaning, the present findings suggest that the emotional expression of single musical features is understood by listeners as such and is probably processed on a level akin to other affective communications (i.e., prosody or vocalizations) because it interferes with subsequent semantic processing. There were no group differences, suggesting that musical expertise does not have an influence on the processing of emotional expression in music and its semantic connotations.

English Orthographic Learning in Chinese-L1 Young EFL Beginners.

PubMed

Cheng, Yu-Lin

2017-12-01

English orthographic learning, among Chinese-L1 children who were beginning to learn English as a foreign language, was documented when: (1) only visual memory was at their disposal, (2) visual memory and either some letter-sound knowledge or some semantic information was available, and (3) visual memory, some letter-sound knowledge and some semantic information were all available. When only visual memory was available, orthographic learning (measured via an orthographic choice test) was meagre. Orthographic learning was significant when either semantic information or letter-sound knowledge supplemented visual memory, with letter-sound knowledge generating greater significance. Although the results suggest that letter-sound knowledge plays a more important role than semantic information, letter-sound knowledge alone does not suffice to achieve perfect orthographic learning, as orthographic learning was greatest when letter-sound knowledge and semantic information were both available. The present findings are congruent with a view that the orthography of a foreign language drives its orthographic learning more than L1 orthographic learning experience, thus extending Share's (Cognition 55:151-218, 1995) self-teaching hypothesis to include non-alphabetic L1 children's orthographic learning of an alphabetic foreign language. The little letter-sound knowledge development observed in the experiment-I control group indicates that very little letter-sound knowledge develops in the absence of dedicated letter-sound training. Given the important role of letter-sound knowledge in English orthographic learning, dedicated letter-sound instruction is highly recommended.

The role of semantic processing in reading Japanese orthographies: an investigation using a script-switch paradigm.

PubMed

Dylman, Alexandra S; Kikutani, Mariko

2018-01-01

Research on Japanese reading has generally indicated that processing of the logographic script Kanji primarily involves whole-word lexical processing and follows a semantics-to-phonology route, while the two phonological scripts Hiragana and Katakana (collectively called Kana) are processed via a sub-lexical route, and more in a phonology-to-semantics manner. Therefore, switching between the two scripts often involves switching between two reading processes, which results in a delayed response for the second script (a script switch cost). In the present study, participants responded to pairs of words that were written either in the same orthography (within-script), or in two different Japanese orthographies (cross-script), switching either between Kanji and Hiragana, or between Katakana and Hiragana. They were asked to read the words aloud (Experiments 1 and 3) and to make a semantic decision about them (Experiments 2 and 4). In contrast to initial predictions, a clear switch cost was observed when participants switched between the two Kana scripts, while script switch costs were less consistent when participants switched between Kanji and Hiragana. This indicates that there are distinct processes involved in reading of the two types of Kana, where Hiragana reading appears to bear some similarities to Kanji processing. This suggests that the role of semantic processing in Hiragana (but not Katakana) reading is more prominent than previously thought and thus, Hiragana is not likely to be processed strictly phonologically.

Individual Differences in the Joint Effects of Semantic Priming and Word Frequency Revealed by RT Distributional Analyses: The Role of Lexical Integrity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yap, Melvin J.; Tse, Chi-Shing; Balota, David A.

2009-01-01

Word frequency and semantic priming effects are among the most robust effects in visual word recognition, and it has been generally assumed that these two variables produce interactive effects in lexical decision performance, with larger priming effects for low-frequency targets. The results from four lexical decision experiments indicate that the…

Evaluating CoLiDeS + Pic: The Role of Relevance of Pictures in User Navigation Behaviour

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Karanam, Saraschandra; van Oostendorp, Herre; Indurkhya, Bipin

2012-01-01

CoLiDeS + Pic is a cognitive model of web-navigation that incorporates semantic information from pictures into CoLiDeS. In our earlier research, we have demonstrated that by incorporating semantic information from pictures, CoLiDeS + Pic can predict the hyperlinks on the shortest path more frequently, and also with greater information scent,…

The Role of Semantics in Translation Recognition: Effects of Number of Translations, Dominance of Translations and Semantic Relatedness of Multiple Translations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Laxen, Jannika; Lavaur, Jean-Marc

2010-01-01

This study aims to examine the influence of multiple translations of a word on bilingual processing in three translation recognition experiments during which French-English bilinguals had to decide whether two words were translations of each other or not. In the first experiment, words with only one translation were recognized as translations…

Verbal Semantics Drives Early Anticipatory Eye Movements during the Comprehension of Verb-Initial Sentences.

PubMed

Sauppe, Sebastian

2016-01-01

Studies on anticipatory processes during sentence comprehension often focus on the prediction of postverbal direct objects. In subject-initial languages (the target of most studies so far), however, the position in the sentence, the syntactic function, and the semantic role of arguments are often conflated. For example, in the sentence "The frog will eat the fly" the syntactic object ("fly") is at the same time also the last word and the patient argument of the verb. It is therefore not apparent which kind of information listeners orient to for predictive processing during sentence comprehension. A visual world eye tracking study on the verb-initial language Tagalog (Austronesian) tested what kind of information listeners use to anticipate upcoming postverbal linguistic input. The grammatical structure of Tagalog allows to test whether listeners' anticipatory gaze behavior is guided by predictions of the linear order of words, by syntactic functions (e.g., subject/object), or by semantic roles (agent/patient). Participants heard sentences of the type "Eat frog fly" or "Eat fly frog" (both meaning "The frog will eat the fly") while looking at displays containing an agent referent ("frog"), a patient referent ("fly") and a distractor. The verb carried morphological marking that allowed the order and syntactic function of agent and patient to be inferred. After having heard the verb, listeners fixated on the agent irrespective of its syntactic function or position in the sentence. While hearing the first-mentioned argument, listeners fixated on the corresponding referent in the display accordingly and then initiated saccades to the last-mentioned referent before it was encountered. The results indicate that listeners used verbal semantics to identify referents and their semantic roles early; information about word order or syntactic functions did not influence anticipatory gaze behavior directly after the verb was heard. In this verb-initial language, event semantics takes early precedence during the comprehension of sentences, while arguments are anticipated temporally more local to when they are encountered. The current experiment thus helps to better understand anticipation during language processing by employing linguistic structures not available in previously studied subject-initial languages.

Social and Personal Factors in Semantic Infusion Projects

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

West, P.; Fox, P. A.; McGuinness, D. L.

2009-12-01

As part of our semantic data framework activities across multiple, diverse disciplines we required the involvement of domain scientists, computer scientists, software engineers, data managers, and often, social scientists. This involvement from a cross-section of disciplines turns out to be a social exercise as much as it is a technical and methodical activity. Each member of the team is used to different modes of working, expectations, vocabularies, levels of participation, and incentive and reward systems. We will examine how both roles and personal responsibilities play in the development of semantic infusion projects, and how an iterative development cycle can contribute to the successful completion of such a project.

Semantic querying of relational data for clinical intelligence: a semantic web services-based approach

PubMed Central

2013-01-01

Background Clinical Intelligence, as a research and engineering discipline, is dedicated to the development of tools for data analysis for the purposes of clinical research, surveillance, and effective health care management. Self-service ad hoc querying of clinical data is one desirable type of functionality. Since most of the data are currently stored in relational or similar form, ad hoc querying is problematic as it requires specialised technical skills and the knowledge of particular data schemas. Results A possible solution is semantic querying where the user formulates queries in terms of domain ontologies that are much easier to navigate and comprehend than data schemas. In this article, we are exploring the possibility of using SADI Semantic Web services for semantic querying of clinical data. We have developed a prototype of a semantic querying infrastructure for the surveillance of, and research on, hospital-acquired infections. Conclusions Our results suggest that SADI can support ad-hoc, self-service, semantic queries of relational data in a Clinical Intelligence context. The use of SADI compares favourably with approaches based on declarative semantic mappings from data schemas to ontologies, such as query rewriting and RDFizing by materialisation, because it can easily cope with situations when (i) some computation is required to turn relational data into RDF or OWL, e.g., to implement temporal reasoning, or (ii) integration with external data sources is necessary. PMID:23497556

Towards an Approach of Semantic Access Control for Cloud Computing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hu, Luokai; Ying, Shi; Jia, Xiangyang; Zhao, Kai

With the development of cloud computing, the mutual understandability among distributed Access Control Policies (ACPs) has become an important issue in the security field of cloud computing. Semantic Web technology provides the solution to semantic interoperability of heterogeneous applications. In this paper, we analysis existing access control methods and present a new Semantic Access Control Policy Language (SACPL) for describing ACPs in cloud computing environment. Access Control Oriented Ontology System (ACOOS) is designed as the semantic basis of SACPL. Ontology-based SACPL language can effectively solve the interoperability issue of distributed ACPs. This study enriches the research that the semantic web technology is applied in the field of security, and provides a new way of thinking of access control in cloud computing.

Semantic Information Extraction of Lanes Based on Onboard Camera Videos

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tang, L.; Deng, T.; Ren, C.

2018-04-01

In the field of autonomous driving, semantic information of lanes is very important. This paper proposes a method of automatic detection of lanes and extraction of semantic information from onboard camera videos. The proposed method firstly detects the edges of lanes by the grayscale gradient direction, and improves the Probabilistic Hough transform to fit them; then, it uses the vanishing point principle to calculate the lane geometrical position, and uses lane characteristics to extract lane semantic information by the classification of decision trees. In the experiment, 216 road video images captured by a camera mounted onboard a moving vehicle were used to detect lanes and extract lane semantic information. The results show that the proposed method can accurately identify lane semantics from video images.

SPARQLGraph: a web-based platform for graphically querying biological Semantic Web databases.

PubMed

Schweiger, Dominik; Trajanoski, Zlatko; Pabinger, Stephan

2014-08-15

Semantic Web has established itself as a framework for using and sharing data across applications and database boundaries. Here, we present a web-based platform for querying biological Semantic Web databases in a graphical way. SPARQLGraph offers an intuitive drag & drop query builder, which converts the visual graph into a query and executes it on a public endpoint. The tool integrates several publicly available Semantic Web databases, including the databases of the just recently released EBI RDF platform. Furthermore, it provides several predefined template queries for answering biological questions. Users can easily create and save new query graphs, which can also be shared with other researchers. This new graphical way of creating queries for biological Semantic Web databases considerably facilitates usability as it removes the requirement of knowing specific query languages and database structures. The system is freely available at http://sparqlgraph.i-med.ac.at.

Recognition during recall failure: Semantic feature matching as a mechanism for recognition of semantic cues when recall fails.

PubMed

Cleary, Anne M; Ryals, Anthony J; Wagner, Samantha R

2016-01-01

Research suggests that a feature-matching process underlies cue familiarity-detection when cued recall with graphemic cues fails. When a test cue (e.g., potchbork) overlaps in graphemic features with multiple unrecalled studied items (e.g., patchwork, pitchfork, pocketbook, pullcork), higher cue familiarity ratings are given during recall failure of all of the targets than when the cue overlaps in graphemic features with only one studied target and that target fails to be recalled (e.g., patchwork). The present study used semantic feature production norms (McRae et al., Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 37, 547-559, 2005) to examine whether the same holds true when the cues are semantic in nature (e.g., jaguar is used to cue cheetah). Indeed, test cues (e.g., cedar) that overlapped in semantic features (e.g., a_tree, has_bark, etc.) with four unretrieved studied items (e.g., birch, oak, pine, willow) received higher cue familiarity ratings during recall failure than test cues that overlapped in semantic features with only two (also unretrieved) studied items (e.g., birch, oak), which in turn received higher familiarity ratings during recall failure than cues that did not overlap in semantic features with any studied items. These findings suggest that the feature-matching theory of recognition during recall failure can accommodate recognition of semantic cues during recall failure, providing a potential mechanism for conceptually-based forms of cue recognition during target retrieval failure. They also provide converging evidence for the existence of the semantic features envisaged in feature-based models of semantic knowledge representation and for those more concretely specified by the production norms of McRae et al. (Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 37, 547-559, 2005).

Interconnected growing self-organizing maps for auditory and semantic acquisition modeling

PubMed Central

Cao, Mengxue; Li, Aijun; Fang, Qiang; Kaufmann, Emily; Kröger, Bernd J.

2014-01-01

Based on the incremental nature of knowledge acquisition, in this study we propose a growing self-organizing neural network approach for modeling the acquisition of auditory and semantic categories. We introduce an Interconnected Growing Self-Organizing Maps (I-GSOM) algorithm, which takes associations between auditory information and semantic information into consideration, in this paper. Direct phonetic–semantic association is simulated in order to model the language acquisition in early phases, such as the babbling and imitation stages, in which no phonological representations exist. Based on the I-GSOM algorithm, we conducted experiments using paired acoustic and semantic training data. We use a cyclical reinforcing and reviewing training procedure to model the teaching and learning process between children and their communication partners. A reinforcing-by-link training procedure and a link-forgetting procedure are introduced to model the acquisition of associative relations between auditory and semantic information. Experimental results indicate that (1) I-GSOM has good ability to learn auditory and semantic categories presented within the training data; (2) clear auditory and semantic boundaries can be found in the network representation; (3) cyclical reinforcing and reviewing training leads to a detailed categorization as well as to a detailed clustering, while keeping the clusters that have already been learned and the network structure that has already been developed stable; and (4) reinforcing-by-link training leads to well-perceived auditory–semantic associations. Our I-GSOM model suggests that it is important to associate auditory information with semantic information during language acquisition. Despite its high level of abstraction, our I-GSOM approach can be interpreted as a biologically-inspired neurocomputational model. PMID:24688478

Language networks associated with computerized semantic indices.

PubMed

Pakhomov, Serguei V S; Jones, David T; Knopman, David S

2015-01-01

Tests of generative semantic verbal fluency are widely used to study organization and representation of concepts in the human brain. Previous studies demonstrated that clustering and switching behavior during verbal fluency tasks is supported by multiple brain mechanisms associated with semantic memory and executive control. Previous work relied on manual assessments of semantic relatedness between words and grouping of words into semantic clusters. We investigated a computational linguistic approach to measuring the strength of semantic relatedness between words based on latent semantic analysis of word co-occurrences in a subset of a large online encyclopedia. We computed semantic clustering indices and compared them to brain network connectivity measures obtained with task-free fMRI in a sample consisting of healthy participants and those differentially affected by cognitive impairment. We found that semantic clustering indices were associated with brain network connectivity in distinct areas including fronto-temporal, fronto-parietal and fusiform gyrus regions. This study shows that computerized semantic indices complement traditional assessments of verbal fluency to provide a more complete account of the relationship between brain and verbal behavior involved organization and retrieval of lexical information from memory. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Insights from child development on the relationship between episodic and semantic memory.

PubMed

Robertson, Erin K; Köhler, Stefan

2007-11-05

The present study was motivated by a recent controversy in the neuropsychological literature on semantic dementia as to whether episodic encoding requires semantic processing or whether it can proceed solely based on perceptual processing. We addressed this issue by examining the effect of age-related limitations in semantic competency on episodic memory in 4-6-year-old children (n=67). We administered three different forced-choice recognition memory tests for pictures previously encountered in a single study episode. The tests varied in the degree to which access to semantically encoded information was required at retrieval. Semantic competency predicted recognition performance regardless of whether access to semantic information was required. A direct relation between picture naming at encoding and subsequent recognition was also found for all tests. Our findings emphasize the importance of semantic encoding processes even in retrieval situations that purportedly do not require access to semantic information. They also highlight the importance of testing neuropsychological models of memory in different populations, healthy and brain damaged, at both ends of the developmental continuum.

The structure of semantic person memory: evidence from semantic priming in person recognition.

PubMed

Wiese, Holger

2011-11-01

This paper reviews research on the structure of semantic person memory as examined with semantic priming. In this experimental paradigm, a familiarity decision on a target face or written name is usually faster when it is preceded by a related as compared to an unrelated prime. This effect has been shown to be relatively short lived and susceptible to interfering items. Moreover, semantic priming can cross stimulus domains, such that a written name can prime a target face and vice versa. However, it remains controversial whether representations of people are stored in associative networks based on co-occurrence, or in more abstract semantic categories. In line with prominent cognitive models of face recognition, which explain semantic priming by shared semantic information between prime and target, recent research demonstrated that priming could be obtained from purely categorically related, non-associated prime/target pairs. Although strategic processes, such as expectancy and retrospective matching likely contribute, there is also evidence for a non-strategic contribution to priming, presumably related to spreading activation. Finally, a semantic priming effect has been demonstrated in the N400 event-related potential (ERP) component, which may reflect facilitated access to semantic information. It is concluded that categorical relatedness is one organizing principle of semantic person memory. ©2011 The British Psychological Society.

Is semantic fluency differentially impaired in schizophrenic patients with delusions?

PubMed

Rossell, S L; Rabe-Hesketh, S S; Shapleske, J S; David, A S

1999-10-01

The study of cognitive deficits in schizophrenia has recently focused upon semantics: the study of meaning. Delusions are a plausible manifestation of abnormal semantics because by definition they involve changes in personal meaning and belief. A symptom-based approach was used to investigate semantic and phonological fluency in a group of schizophrenic patients subdivided into those with delusions and those with no current delusions. The results demonstrated that deluded patients only were differentially impaired on a test of semantic fluency in comparison to phonological fluency. All subjects showed the same decline in performance over the time course of both tests indicating that retrieval speed in schizophrenia is no different from that of normal controls. Further analysis of word associations in two semantic categories (animals and body parts), revealed that deluded subjects have a more idiosyncratic organisation for animals. The findings of reduced semantic fluency production and poor logical word associations may represent a disorganised storage of semantic information in deluded patients, which in turn affects efficient access.

An ontological case base engineering methodology for diabetes management.

PubMed

El-Sappagh, Shaker H; El-Masri, Samir; Elmogy, Mohammed; Riad, A M; Saddik, Basema

2014-08-01

Ontology engineering covers issues related to ontology development and use. In Case Based Reasoning (CBR) system, ontology plays two main roles; the first as case base and the second as domain ontology. However, the ontology engineering literature does not provide adequate guidance on how to build, evaluate, and maintain ontologies. This paper proposes an ontology engineering methodology to generate case bases in the medical domain. It mainly focuses on the research of case representation in the form of ontology to support the case semantic retrieval and enhance all knowledge intensive CBR processes. A case study on diabetes diagnosis case base will be provided to evaluate the proposed methodology.

The function of the left anterior temporal pole: evidence from acute stroke and infarct volume

PubMed Central

Tsapkini, Kyrana; Frangakis, Constantine E.

2011-01-01

The role of the anterior temporal lobes in cognition and language has been much debated in the literature over the last few years. Most prevailing theories argue for an important role of the anterior temporal lobe as a semantic hub or a place for the representation of unique entities such as proper names of peoples and places. Lately, a few studies have investigated the role of the most anterior part of the left anterior temporal lobe, the left temporal pole in particular, and argued that the left anterior temporal pole is the area responsible for mapping meaning on to sound through evidence from tasks such as object naming. However, another recent study indicates that bilateral anterior temporal damage is required to cause a clinically significant semantic impairment. In the present study, we tested these hypotheses by evaluating patients with acute stroke before reorganization of structure–function relationships. We compared a group of 20 patients with acute stroke with anterior temporal pole damage to a group of 28 without anterior temporal pole damage matched for infarct volume. We calculated the average percent error in auditory comprehension and naming tasks as a function of infarct volume using a non-parametric regression method. We found that infarct volume was the only predictive variable in the production of semantic errors in both auditory comprehension and object naming tasks. This finding favours the hypothesis that left unilateral anterior temporal pole lesions, even acutely, are unlikely to cause significant deficits in mapping meaning to sound by themselves, although they contribute to networks underlying both naming and comprehension of objects. Therefore, the anterior temporal lobe may be a semantic hub for object meaning, but its role must be represented bilaterally and perhaps redundantly. PMID:21685458

Semantic ambiguity effects on traditional Chinese character naming: A corpus-based approach.

PubMed

Chang, Ya-Ning; Lee, Chia-Ying

2017-11-09

Words are considered semantically ambiguous if they have more than one meaning and can be used in multiple contexts. A number of recent studies have provided objective ambiguity measures by using a corpus-based approach and have demonstrated ambiguity advantages in both naming and lexical decision tasks. Although the predictive power of objective ambiguity measures has been examined in several alphabetic language systems, the effects in logographic languages remain unclear. Moreover, most ambiguity measures do not explicitly address how the various contexts associated with a given word relate to each other. To explore these issues, we computed the contextual diversity (Adelman, Brown, & Quesada, Psychological Science, 17; 814-823, 2006) and semantic ambiguity (Hoffman, Lambon Ralph, & Rogers, Behavior Research Methods, 45; 718-730, 2013) of traditional Chinese single-character words based on the Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus, where contextual diversity was used to evaluate the present semantic space. We then derived a novel ambiguity measure, namely semantic variability, by computing the distance properties of the distinct clusters grouped by the contexts that contained a given word. We demonstrated that semantic variability was superior to semantic diversity in accounting for the variance in naming response times, suggesting that considering the substructure of the various contexts associated with a given word can provide a relatively fine scale of ambiguity information for a word. All of the context and ambiguity measures for 2,418 Chinese single-character words are provided as supplementary materials.

Semantics vs Pragmatics of a Compound Word

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smirnova, Elena A.; Biktemirova, Ella I.; Davletbaeva, Diana N.

2016-01-01

This paper is devoted to the study of correlation between semantic and pragmatic potential of a compound word, which functions in informal speech, and the mechanisms of secondary nomination, which realizes the potential of semantic-pragmatic features of colloquial compounds. The relevance and the choice of the research question is based on the…

Hypermedia-Assisted Instruction and Second Language Learning: A Semantic-Network-Based Approach.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liu, Min

This literature review examines a hypermedia learning environment from a semantic network basis and the application of such an environment to second language learning. (A semantic network is defined as a conceptual representation of knowledge in human memory). The discussion is organized under the following headings and subheadings: (1) Advantages…

Design-Based Guidelines for the Semantic Perception of Emergency Signs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chang, Chin-Wei; Hsiao, Hung-Yi; Tang, Chieh-Hsin; Chuang, Ying-Ji; Lin, Ching-Yuan

2010-01-01

The current study applies semantic differential to explore the semantic perception of emergency signs, in an attempt to analyze the meanings of emergency signs in regard to the psychological exigencies of the general public. The results indicate that problems concerning recognition accuracy have been observed, but also that the evaluation of the…

Semantic Processing of Living and Nonliving Concepts across the Cerebral Hemispheres

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pilgrim, L.K.; Moss, H.E.; Tyler, L.K.

2005-01-01

Studies of patients with category-specific semantic deficits suggest that the right and left cerebral hemispheres may be differently involved in the processing of living and nonliving domains concepts. In this study, we investigate whether there are hemisphere differences in the semantic processing of these domains in healthy volunteers. Based on…

The methodology of semantic analysis for extracting physical effects

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fomenkova, M. A.; Kamaev, V. A.; Korobkin, D. M.; Fomenkov, S. A.

2017-01-01

The paper represents new methodology of semantic analysis for physical effects extracting. This methodology is based on the Tuzov ontology that formally describes the Russian language. In this paper, semantic patterns were described to extract structural physical information in the form of physical effects. A new algorithm of text analysis was described.

Quantifying Semantic Linguistic Maturity in Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hansson, Kristina; Bååth, Rasmus; Löhndorf, Simone; Sahlén, Birgitta; Sikström, Sverker

2016-01-01

We propose a method to quantify "semantic linguistic maturity" (SELMA) based on a high dimensional semantic representation of words created from the co-occurrence of words in a large text corpus. The method was applied to oral narratives from 108 children aged 4;0-12;10. By comparing the SELMA measure with maturity ratings made by human…

Comprehensive Analysis of Semantic Web Reasoners and Tools: A Survey

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Khamparia, Aditya; Pandey, Babita

2017-01-01

Ontologies are emerging as best representation techniques for knowledge based context domains. The continuing need for interoperation, collaboration and effective information retrieval has lead to the creation of semantic web with the help of tools and reasoners which manages personalized information. The future of semantic web lies in an ontology…

Development of Category-based Induction and Semantic Knowledge

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fisher, Anna V.; Godwin, Karrie E.; Matlen, Bryan J.; Unger, Layla

2015-01-01

Category-based induction is a hallmark of mature cognition; however, little is known about its origins. This study evaluated the hypothesis that category-based induction is related to semantic development. Computational studies suggest that early on there is little differentiation among concepts, but learning and development lead to increased…

A novel architecture for information retrieval system based on semantic web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Hui

2011-12-01

Nowadays, the web has enabled an explosive growth of information sharing (there are currently over 4 billion pages covering most areas of human endeavor) so that the web has faced a new challenge of information overhead. The challenge that is now before us is not only to help people locating relevant information precisely but also to access and aggregate a variety of information from different resources automatically. Current web document are in human-oriented formats and they are suitable for the presentation, but machines cannot understand the meaning of document. To address this issue, Berners-Lee proposed a concept of semantic web. With semantic web technology, web information can be understood and processed by machine. It provides new possibilities for automatic web information processing. A main problem of semantic web information retrieval is that when these is not enough knowledge to such information retrieval system, the system will return to a large of no sense result to uses due to a huge amount of information results. In this paper, we present the architecture of information based on semantic web. In addiction, our systems employ the inference Engine to check whether the query should pose to Keyword-based Search Engine or should pose to the Semantic Search Engine.

Determining the semantic similarities among Gene Ontology terms.

PubMed

Taha, Kamal

2013-05-01

We present in this paper novel techniques that determine the semantic relationships among GeneOntology (GO) terms. We implemented these techniques in a prototype system called GoSE, which resides between user application and GO database. Given a set S of GO terms, GoSE would return another set S' of GO terms, where each term in S' is semantically related to each term in S. Most current research is focused on determining the semantic similarities among GO ontology terms based solely on their IDs and proximity to one another in the GO graph structure, while overlooking the contexts of the terms, which may lead to erroneous results. The context of a GO term T is the set of other terms, whose existence in the GO graph structure is dependent on T. We propose novel techniques that determine the contexts of terms based on the concept of existence dependency. We present a stack-based sort-merge algorithm employing these techniques for determining the semantic similarities among GO terms.We evaluated GoSE experimentally and compared it with three existing methods. The results of measuring the semantic similarities among genes in KEGG and Pfam pathways retrieved from the DBGET and Sanger Pfam databases, respectively, have shown that our method outperforms the other three methods in recall and precision.

A novel co-occurrence-based approach to predict pure associative and semantic priming.

PubMed

Roelke, Andre; Franke, Nicole; Biemann, Chris; Radach, Ralph; Jacobs, Arthur M; Hofmann, Markus J

2018-03-15

The theoretical "difficulty in separating association strength from [semantic] feature overlap" has resulted in inconsistent findings of either the presence or absence of "pure" associative priming in recent literature (Hutchison, 2003, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 10(4), p. 787). The present study used co-occurrence statistics of words in sentences to provide a full factorial manipulation of direct association (strong/no) and the number of common associates (many/no) of the prime and target words. These common associates were proposed to serve as semantic features for a recent interactive activation model of semantic processing (i.e., the associative read-out model; Hofmann & Jacobs, 2014). With stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) as an additional factor, our findings indicate that associative and semantic priming are indeed dissociable. Moreover, the effect of direct association was strongest at a long SOA (1,000 ms), while many common associates facilitated lexical decisions primarily at a short SOA (200 ms). This response pattern is consistent with previous performance-based accounts and suggests that associative and semantic priming can be evoked by computationally determined direct and common associations.

Constraint-Based Abstract Semantics for Temporal Logic: A Direct Approach to Design and Implementation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Banda, Gourinath; Gallagher, John P.

interpretation provides a practical approach to verifying properties of infinite-state systems. We apply the framework of abstract interpretation to derive an abstract semantic function for the modal μ-calculus, which is the basis for abstract model checking. The abstract semantic function is constructed directly from the standard concrete semantics together with a Galois connection between the concrete state-space and an abstract domain. There is no need for mixed or modal transition systems to abstract arbitrary temporal properties, as in previous work in the area of abstract model checking. Using the modal μ-calculus to implement CTL, the abstract semantics gives an over-approximation of the set of states in which an arbitrary CTL formula holds. Then we show that this leads directly to an effective implementation of an abstract model checking algorithm for CTL using abstract domains based on linear constraints. The implementation of the abstract semantic function makes use of an SMT solver. We describe an implemented system for proving properties of linear hybrid automata and give some experimental results.

Enhancing biomedical text summarization using semantic relation extraction.

PubMed

Shang, Yue; Li, Yanpeng; Lin, Hongfei; Yang, Zhihao

2011-01-01

Automatic text summarization for a biomedical concept can help researchers to get the key points of a certain topic from large amount of biomedical literature efficiently. In this paper, we present a method for generating text summary for a given biomedical concept, e.g., H1N1 disease, from multiple documents based on semantic relation extraction. Our approach includes three stages: 1) We extract semantic relations in each sentence using the semantic knowledge representation tool SemRep. 2) We develop a relation-level retrieval method to select the relations most relevant to each query concept and visualize them in a graphic representation. 3) For relations in the relevant set, we extract informative sentences that can interpret them from the document collection to generate text summary using an information retrieval based method. Our major focus in this work is to investigate the contribution of semantic relation extraction to the task of biomedical text summarization. The experimental results on summarization for a set of diseases show that the introduction of semantic knowledge improves the performance and our results are better than the MEAD system, a well-known tool for text summarization.

A-DaGO-Fun: an adaptable Gene Ontology semantic similarity-based functional analysis tool.

PubMed

Mazandu, Gaston K; Chimusa, Emile R; Mbiyavanga, Mamana; Mulder, Nicola J

2016-02-01

Gene Ontology (GO) semantic similarity measures are being used for biological knowledge discovery based on GO annotations by integrating biological information contained in the GO structure into data analyses. To empower users to quickly compute, manipulate and explore these measures, we introduce A-DaGO-Fun (ADaptable Gene Ontology semantic similarity-based Functional analysis). It is a portable software package integrating all known GO information content-based semantic similarity measures and relevant biological applications associated with these measures. A-DaGO-Fun has the advantage not only of handling datasets from the current high-throughput genome-wide applications, but also allowing users to choose the most relevant semantic similarity approach for their biological applications and to adapt a given module to their needs. A-DaGO-Fun is freely available to the research community at http://web.cbio.uct.ac.za/ITGOM/adagofun. It is implemented in Linux using Python under free software (GNU General Public Licence). gmazandu@cbio.uct.ac.za or Nicola.Mulder@uct.ac.za Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Neural dynamics associated with semantic and episodic memory for faces: evidence from multiple frequency bands.

PubMed

Zion-Golumbic, Elana; Kutas, Marta; Bentin, Shlomo

2010-02-01

Prior semantic knowledge facilitates episodic recognition memory for faces. To examine the neural manifestation of the interplay between semantic and episodic memory, we investigated neuroelectric dynamics during the creation (study) and the retrieval (test) of episodic memories for famous and nonfamous faces. Episodic memory effects were evident in several EEG frequency bands: theta (4-8 Hz), alpha (9-13 Hz), and gamma (40-100 Hz). Activity in these bands was differentially modulated by preexisting semantic knowledge and by episodic memory, implicating their different functional roles in memory. More specifically, theta activity and alpha suppression were larger for old compared to new faces at test regardless of fame, but were both larger for famous faces during study. This pattern of selective semantic effects suggests that the theta and alpha responses, which are primarily associated with episodic memory, reflect utilization of semantic information only when it is beneficial for task performance. In contrast, gamma activity decreased between the first (study) and second (test) presentation of a face, but overall was larger for famous than nonfamous faces. Hence, the gamma rhythm seems to be primarily related to activation of preexisting neural representations that may contribute to the formation of new episodic traces. Taken together, these data provide new insights into the complex interaction between semantic and episodic memory for faces and the neural dynamics associated with mnemonic processes.

The influence of autonomic arousal and semantic relatedness on memory for emotional words.

PubMed

Buchanan, Tony W; Etzel, Joset A; Adolphs, Ralph; Tranel, Daniel

2006-07-01

Increased memory for emotional stimuli is a well-documented phenomenon. Emotional arousal during the encoding of a stimulus is one mediator of this memory enhancement. Other variables such as semantic relatedness also play a role in the enhanced memory for emotional stimuli, especially for verbal stimuli. Research has not addressed the contributions of emotional arousal, indexed by self-report and autonomic measures, and semantic relatedness on memory performance. Twenty young adults (10 women) were presented neutral-unrelated words, school-related words, moderately arousing emotional words, and highly arousing taboo words while heart rate and skin conductance were measured. Memory was tested with free recall and recognition tests. Results showed that taboo words, which were both semantically related and high arousal were remembered best. School-related words, which were high on semantic relatedness but low on arousal, were remembered better than the moderately arousing emotional words and semantically unrelated neutral words. Psychophysiological responses showed that within the moderately arousing emotional and neutral word groups, those words eliciting greater autonomic activity were better remembered than words that did not elicit such activity. These results demonstrate additive effects of semantic relatedness and emotional arousal on memory. Relatedness confers an advantage to memory (as in the school-words), but the combination of relatedness and arousal (as in the taboo words) results in the best memory performance.

Domain or not domain? That is the question: longitudinal semantic deterioration in Alzheimer's disease.

PubMed

Moreno-Martínez, F Javier; Goñi-Imízcoz, Miguel; Spitznagel, Mary Beth

2011-10-01

Category specific semantic impairment (e.g. living versus nonliving things) has been reported in association with various pathologies, including herpes simplex encephalitis and semantic dementia. However, evidence is inconsistent regarding whether this effect exists in diseases progressively impacting diverse cortical regions, such as Alzheimer's disease (AD). Ceiling effects producing non-Gaussian distributions and poor control for confounds such as nuisance variables (e.g. familiarity) may contribute to this discrepancy. Fourteen AD patients were longitudinally studied examining category effects on three semantic tasks (picture naming, naming to description and word to picture matching) matched across domain on all known nuisance variables (NV). To address non-Gaussian distributions, we run bootstrap analyses to determine whether NV, semantic domain or control performance best predicted AD patient performance. Multiple hierarchical regression analyses revealed that, whilst NV accounted for most of the explained variance in patients in the three tasks, the influence of semantic domain was substantially lower. Individual logistic regression demonstrated a significant category effect in only a few patients and healthy controls. No significant qualitative changes were observed in patients over time. Our results confirm the importance of NVs as predictors of AD patient performance, suggesting that the role of semantic domain is not a useful predictor of the progressive deterioration in AD. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Semantics of the visual environment encoded in parahippocampal cortex

PubMed Central

Bonner, Michael F.; Price, Amy Rose; Peelle, Jonathan E.; Grossman, Murray

2016-01-01

Semantic representations capture the statistics of experience and store this information in memory. A fundamental component of this memory system is knowledge of the visual environment, including knowledge of objects and their associations. Visual semantic information underlies a range of behaviors, from perceptual categorization to cognitive processes such as language and reasoning. Here we examine the neuroanatomic system that encodes visual semantics. Across three experiments, we found converging evidence indicating that knowledge of verbally mediated visual concepts relies on information encoded in a region of the ventral-medial temporal lobe centered on parahippocampal cortex. In an fMRI study, this region was strongly engaged by the processing of concepts relying on visual knowledge but not by concepts relying on other sensory modalities. In a study of patients with the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (semantic dementia), atrophy that encompassed this region was associated with a specific impairment in verbally mediated visual semantic knowledge. Finally, in a structural study of healthy adults from the fMRI experiment, gray matter density in this region related to individual variability in the processing of visual concepts. The anatomic location of these findings aligns with recent work linking the ventral-medial temporal lobe with high-level visual representation, contextual associations, and reasoning through imagination. Together this work suggests a critical role for parahippocampal cortex in linking the visual environment with knowledge systems in the human brain. PMID:26679216

Semantics of the Visual Environment Encoded in Parahippocampal Cortex.

PubMed

Bonner, Michael F; Price, Amy Rose; Peelle, Jonathan E; Grossman, Murray

2016-03-01

Semantic representations capture the statistics of experience and store this information in memory. A fundamental component of this memory system is knowledge of the visual environment, including knowledge of objects and their associations. Visual semantic information underlies a range of behaviors, from perceptual categorization to cognitive processes such as language and reasoning. Here we examine the neuroanatomic system that encodes visual semantics. Across three experiments, we found converging evidence indicating that knowledge of verbally mediated visual concepts relies on information encoded in a region of the ventral-medial temporal lobe centered on parahippocampal cortex. In an fMRI study, this region was strongly engaged by the processing of concepts relying on visual knowledge but not by concepts relying on other sensory modalities. In a study of patients with the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (semantic dementia), atrophy that encompassed this region was associated with a specific impairment in verbally mediated visual semantic knowledge. Finally, in a structural study of healthy adults from the fMRI experiment, gray matter density in this region related to individual variability in the processing of visual concepts. The anatomic location of these findings aligns with recent work linking the ventral-medial temporal lobe with high-level visual representation, contextual associations, and reasoning through imagination. Together, this work suggests a critical role for parahippocampal cortex in linking the visual environment with knowledge systems in the human brain.

Verbal and non-verbal semantic impairment: From fluent primary progressive aphasia to semantic dementia

PubMed Central

Senaha, Mirna Lie Hosogi; Caramelli, Paulo; Porto, Claudia Sellitto; Nitrini, Ricardo

2007-01-01

Selective disturbances of semantic memory have attracted the interest of many investigators and the question of the existence of single or multiple semantic systems remains a very controversial theme in the literature. Objectives To discuss the question of multiple semantic systems based on a longitudinal study of a patient who presented semantic dementia from fluent primary progressive aphasia. Methods A 66 year-old woman with selective impairment of semantic memory was examined on two occasions, undergoing neuropsychological and language evaluations, the results of which were compared to those of three paired control individuals. Results In the first evaluation, physical examination was normal and the score on the Mini-Mental State Examination was 26. Language evaluation revealed fluent speech, anomia, disturbance in word comprehension, preservation of the syntactic and phonological aspects of the language, besides surface dyslexia and dysgraphia. Autobiographical and episodic memories were relatively preserved. In semantic memory tests, the following dissociation was found: disturbance of verbal semantic memory with preservation of non-verbal semantic memory. Magnetic resonance of the brain revealed marked atrophy of the left anterior temporal lobe. After 14 months, the difficulties in verbal semantic memory had become more severe and the semantic disturbance, limited initially to the linguistic sphere, had worsened to involve non-verbal domains. Conclusions Given the dissociation found in the first examination, we believe there is sufficient clinical evidence to refute the existence of a unitary semantic system. PMID:29213389

Biologically Inspired Model for Visual Cognition Achieving Unsupervised Episodic and Semantic Feature Learning.

PubMed

Qiao, Hong; Li, Yinlin; Li, Fengfu; Xi, Xuanyang; Wu, Wei

2016-10-01

Recently, many biologically inspired visual computational models have been proposed. The design of these models follows the related biological mechanisms and structures, and these models provide new solutions for visual recognition tasks. In this paper, based on the recent biological evidence, we propose a framework to mimic the active and dynamic learning and recognition process of the primate visual cortex. From principle point of view, the main contributions are that the framework can achieve unsupervised learning of episodic features (including key components and their spatial relations) and semantic features (semantic descriptions of the key components), which support higher level cognition of an object. From performance point of view, the advantages of the framework are as follows: 1) learning episodic features without supervision-for a class of objects without a prior knowledge, the key components, their spatial relations and cover regions can be learned automatically through a deep neural network (DNN); 2) learning semantic features based on episodic features-within the cover regions of the key components, the semantic geometrical values of these components can be computed based on contour detection; 3) forming the general knowledge of a class of objects-the general knowledge of a class of objects can be formed, mainly including the key components, their spatial relations and average semantic values, which is a concise description of the class; and 4) achieving higher level cognition and dynamic updating-for a test image, the model can achieve classification and subclass semantic descriptions. And the test samples with high confidence are selected to dynamically update the whole model. Experiments are conducted on face images, and a good performance is achieved in each layer of the DNN and the semantic description learning process. Furthermore, the model can be generalized to recognition tasks of other objects with learning ability.

Semantic networks based on titles of scientific papers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pereira, H. B. B.; Fadigas, I. S.; Senna, V.; Moret, M. A.

2011-03-01

In this paper we study the topological structure of semantic networks based on titles of papers published in scientific journals. It discusses its properties and presents some reflections on how the use of social and complex network models can contribute to the diffusion of knowledge. The proposed method presented here is applied to scientific journals where the titles of papers are in English or in Portuguese. We show that the topology of studied semantic networks are small-world and scale-free.

Quantifying Semantic Linguistic Maturity in Children.

PubMed

Hansson, Kristina; Bååth, Rasmus; Löhndorf, Simone; Sahlén, Birgitta; Sikström, Sverker

2016-10-01

We propose a method to quantify semantic linguistic maturity (SELMA) based on a high dimensional semantic representation of words created from the co-occurrence of words in a large text corpus. The method was applied to oral narratives from 108 children aged 4;0-12;10. By comparing the SELMA measure with maturity ratings made by human raters we found that SELMA predicted the rating of semantic maturity made by human raters over and above the prediction made using a child's age and number of words produced. We conclude that the semantic content of narratives changes in a predictable pattern with children's age and argue that SELMA is a measure quantifying semantic linguistic maturity. The study opens up the possibility of using quantitative measures for studying the development of semantic representation in children's narratives, and emphasizes the importance of word co-occurrences for understanding the development of meaning.

Methods and apparatus for capture and storage of semantic information with sub-files in a parallel computing system

DOEpatents

Faibish, Sorin; Bent, John M; Tzelnic, Percy; Grider, Gary; Torres, Aaron

2015-02-03

Techniques are provided for storing files in a parallel computing system using sub-files with semantically meaningful boundaries. A method is provided for storing at least one file generated by a distributed application in a parallel computing system. The file comprises one or more of a complete file and a plurality of sub-files. The method comprises the steps of obtaining a user specification of semantic information related to the file; providing the semantic information as a data structure description to a data formatting library write function; and storing the semantic information related to the file with one or more of the sub-files in one or more storage nodes of the parallel computing system. The semantic information provides a description of data in the file. The sub-files can be replicated based on semantically meaningful boundaries.

Towards comprehensive syntactic and semantic annotations of the clinical narrative

PubMed Central

Albright, Daniel; Lanfranchi, Arrick; Fredriksen, Anwen; Styler, William F; Warner, Colin; Hwang, Jena D; Choi, Jinho D; Dligach, Dmitriy; Nielsen, Rodney D; Martin, James; Ward, Wayne; Palmer, Martha; Savova, Guergana K

2013-01-01

Objective To create annotated clinical narratives with layers of syntactic and semantic labels to facilitate advances in clinical natural language processing (NLP). To develop NLP algorithms and open source components. Methods Manual annotation of a clinical narrative corpus of 127 606 tokens following the Treebank schema for syntactic information, PropBank schema for predicate-argument structures, and the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) schema for semantic information. NLP components were developed. Results The final corpus consists of 13 091 sentences containing 1772 distinct predicate lemmas. Of the 766 newly created PropBank frames, 74 are verbs. There are 28 539 named entity (NE) annotations spread over 15 UMLS semantic groups, one UMLS semantic type, and the Person semantic category. The most frequent annotations belong to the UMLS semantic groups of Procedures (15.71%), Disorders (14.74%), Concepts and Ideas (15.10%), Anatomy (12.80%), Chemicals and Drugs (7.49%), and the UMLS semantic type of Sign or Symptom (12.46%). Inter-annotator agreement results: Treebank (0.926), PropBank (0.891–0.931), NE (0.697–0.750). The part-of-speech tagger, constituency parser, dependency parser, and semantic role labeler are built from the corpus and released open source. A significant limitation uncovered by this project is the need for the NLP community to develop a widely agreed-upon schema for the annotation of clinical concepts and their relations. Conclusions This project takes a foundational step towards bringing the field of clinical NLP up to par with NLP in the general domain. The corpus creation and NLP components provide a resource for research and application development that would have been previously impossible. PMID:23355458

Distinct Effects of Lexical and Semantic Competition during Picture Naming in Younger Adults, Older Adults, and People with Aphasia

PubMed Central

Britt, Allison E.; Ferrara, Casey; Mirman, Daniel

2016-01-01

Producing a word requires selecting among a set of similar alternatives. When many semantically related items become activated, the difficulty of the selection process is increased. Experiment 1 tested naming of items with either multiple synonymous labels (“Alternate Names,” e.g., gift/present) or closely semantically related but non-equivalent responses (“Near Semantic Neighbors,” e.g., jam/jelly). Picture naming was fastest and most accurate for pictures with only one label (“High Name Agreement”), slower and less accurate in the Alternate Names condition, and slowest and least accurate in the Near Semantic Neighbors condition. These results suggest that selection mechanisms in picture naming operate at two distinct levels of processing: selecting between similar but non-equivalent names requires two selection processes (semantic and lexical), whereas selecting among equivalent names only requires one selection at the lexical level. Experiment 2 examined how these selection mechanisms are affected by normal aging and found that older adults had significantly more difficulty in the Near Semantic Neighbors condition, but not in the Alternate Names condition. This suggests that aging affects semantic processing and selection more strongly than it affects lexical selection. Experiment 3 examined the role of the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) in these selection processes by testing individuals with aphasia secondary to stroke lesions that either affected the LIFG or spared it. Surprisingly, there was no interaction between condition and lesion group: the presence of LIFG damage was not associated with substantively worse naming performance for pictures with multiple acceptable labels. These results are not consistent with a simple view of LIFG as the locus of lexical selection and suggest a more nuanced view of the neural basis of lexical and semantic selection. PMID:27458393

Semantic Metrics for Analysis of Software

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Etzkorn, Letha H.; Cox, Glenn W.; Farrington, Phil; Utley, Dawn R.; Ghalston, Sampson; Stein, Cara

2005-01-01

A recently conceived suite of object-oriented software metrics focus is on semantic aspects of software, in contradistinction to traditional software metrics, which focus on syntactic aspects of software. Semantic metrics represent a more human-oriented view of software than do syntactic metrics. The semantic metrics of a given computer program are calculated by use of the output of a knowledge-based analysis of the program, and are substantially more representative of software quality and more readily comprehensible from a human perspective than are the syntactic metrics.