Pareidolia are perceptions of recognizable images or meaningful patterns where none exist. In recent years, this phenomenon has been increasingly studied in healthy subjects and patients with neurological or psychiatric diseases. The current study examined pareidolia production in a group of 53 stroke patients and 82 neurologically healthy controls who performed a natural images task. We found a significant reduction of absolute pareidolia production in left- and right-hemispheric stroke patients, with right-hemispheric patients producing overall fewest pareidolic output. Responses were categorized into 28 distinct categories, with ‘Animal’, ‘Human’, ‘Face’, and ‘Body parts' being the most common, accounting for 72% of all pareidolia. Regarding the percentages of the different categories of pareidolia, we found a significant reduction for the percentage of “Body parts” pareidolia in the left-hemispheric patient group as compared to the control group, while the percentage of this pareidolia type was not significantly reduced in right-hemispheric patients compared to healthy controls. These results support the hypothesis that pareidolia production may be influenced by local-global visual processing with the left hemisphere being involved in local and detailed analytical visual processing to a greater extent. As such, a lesion to the right hemisphere, that is believed to be critical for global visual processing, might explain the overall fewest pareidolic output produced by the right-hemispheric patients.

The present study investigates how reading fluency in German, and monolingual versus bilingual language background influence the learning of English as a foreign language (EFL) in primary school. Data of 83 monolingual and bilingual children with varying degrees of German reading skills (including children with dyslexia) were analyzed after they had learned EFL for 1 year. The results showed that lower German reading fluency-but not bilingualism-was associated with poorer English skills. The results suggest that risk factors leading to poor reading skills (including dyslexia) also negatively impact foreign language learning.

Introduction: A restorative sleep is essential for physical and psychological health. Even though literature is highly heterogeneous, stroke patients mostly tend to have a lower sleep efficiency, reduced N2, N3 and REM sleep, and generally a more fragmented sleep, especially in the acute phase. Crucially, there might be an association between an impaired sleep architecture and impaired cognitive outcome. As such, a poor sleep efficiency, a low amount of N2 and N3 and enhanced wakefulness after sleep onset have been linked to an acute impaired outcome. However, the specific role of macrosleep variations for the long-term recovery is still unknown. Therefore, we aim at observing the evolution of sleep macrostructure at several time points after stroke and relating them to the long-term clinical outcome. We will further apply transitional sleep scoring which might allow a more profound insight into sleep stability. Materials and methods: We have measured so far 8 adult stroke patients (6 m, 2f; age±SEM 50.7±4.0 years; range: 27–60; 5 hemispheric, 2 bithalamic, 1 cerebellar) in the acute (day range: 3–17) and 4 of those patients in the subacute phase (day range: 72–120). We applied high-density EEG during a full night of sleep, and investigated the cognitive outcome by neuropsychological examination. We relate our data also to 2 healthy not-yet age-matched controls (31±2.1 years), having spent one night at the hospital. The transitional sleep scoring method classifies the sleep recording epoch- and time-independently, thereby allowing for a detailed and continuous scoring of sleep stages and transitions throughout the night. Results: Our very preliminary analysis shows that in the acute phase, stroke patients, as compared to controls, descriptively tend to sleep less (values expressed as means±SEM; 64.3%3.9 vs. 75.3%±6.5), to be more awake (35.7%±3.9 vs. 24.7%±6.5), to have less N3 (10.6%±1.8 vs. 23.4%±0.5) and presumably less REM sleep (12.1%±2.2 vs. 16.6%±3.8). Patients might exhibit more sleep transitions than controls (211.6±20.7 vs. 157±38.2). In the subacute phase, patients sleep shows non-significant improvements (70.2%±35.1 sleep efficiency, 19.1%±9.5 of N3, 13.9%±6.9 of REM sleep). The classical sleep scoring captured less transitions (211.6±20.7) as compared to the transitional scoring (338.4±42.4) in the acute phase, while the percentage of sleep stayed almost similar (64.3%3.9 vs. 69.8%±3.6). Conclusions: In line with current literature, our preliminary results seem to support the evidence that stroke patients may display variations in macrosleep, especially in the acute phase, having a lower sleep efficiency, less N3 and less REM sleep. Our data also show that all-night high-density EEG recordings are feasible in this hospital setting. Furthermore, transitional scoring may provide a more profound insight into sleep stability. Acknowledgements: This study was funded by the SNF Sinergia Grant (Project number: 160803).