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M.A. (Psychology) / The motivation for this research arose from the fact that very little if any empirical research has been done in connection with the cognitive abilities of persons with right hemispheric language representation. Knowledge of the structural and functional correlates of hemispheric asymmetry has thus far been obtained primarily from people with left hemispheric language representation. A further motivation was that the existing knowledge about hemispheric asymmetry has been obtained mainly from studies of patients with brain damage...

Submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree Masters in Research Psychology, University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities, School of Human and Community Development, 2016 / Background: South Africa finds itself at the heart of an ever escalating global trend towards increased multilingualism. Along with this realisation has come an ever growing investigation of the impact of bi/multilingualism on our cognitive abilities; both positively and negatively. Aim: This rationale gets explored here in order to investigate whether multilingualism influences the executive functioning ability of South African youth. Method: This was facilitated through the current study aiming to investigate the relationship between the self reported language experience of 30 young adults and their performance on executive function tasks. The four executive functions that were targeted were planning, inhibition, cognitive flexibility and fluency. Results and Conclusion: Taking the unique South African milieu into consideration results indicated that for the characteristics investigated here cognitive flexibility did not show a significant relationship with language experience. In turn planning and inhibition only produced a moderate degree of significance for their relationships with language experience. Finally fluency showed to have a significant relationship to the language experience of these individuals. The South African reality and history was then engaged with in a discussion around these results. The conclusion was then drawn that the South African population in this sample did not perform to the preconceived internationally recorded influence of the multilingual advantage. / GR2017

Functional brain changes occur rapidly by alterations in synaptic activity, or more slowly, typified by changes in synaptic density and functional neurochemistry. Functional MRI has focused more on the prior than the latter, even though slow brain changes are important for normal brain function and for many brain disorders. With this in mind, I have adapted and optimized MRI-based tools in mice designed to measure ‘slow functional’ changes in the brain - slow changes in linked to synaptic density or slow changes in functional neurochemistry. First, I developed and optimized a series of tools that can map cerebral blood volume (CBV) across the cortical mantle and within cortical layers. I show that this reflects the known functional architecture of the mouse brain and use a whisker-cutting paradigm to show that this approach is sensitive to slow changes in synaptic density. Second, I demonstrate the utility of this approach for mapping slow changes in the brain associated with disease, by pinpointing changes in synaptic density in a novel mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. Third, I implemented and optimized in mice an MR spectroscopy technique designed to measure changes in two neurotransmitters, GABA, and glutamate. I then demonstrate the translational capabilities of this approach by identifying glutamate abnormalities in the brains of patients in the prodromal stages of schizophrenia.

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This study investigated the effects of hemisphericity and field dependence on programming skills. Twenty-five undergraduate university students from two introductory Logo programming courses completed the study. Results suggested that hemisphericity is related to the complexity of program structure (tree depth). Supplementary analyses indicated a negative correlation between previous programming experience and the use of recursion. Implications for education and suggestions for further research are discussed, and specific implications regarding the teaching of Logo are given.