In this paper we mainly discuss two topics of the face studies. First topic is typical and atypical development of face processing. Recently to investigate the atypical social development, infants' research with high risks is hot topic. In this case under 12 month old babies who have an older sibling diagnosed with the disorder were selected for high-risk infants. Plenty of data has documented impairments in face processing in individuals with autism spectrum disorders(ASD). And recently, suggestion has been made that these impairments may arise from abnormal development of a subcortical system involved in face processing that originates in the magnocellular pathway of the primate visual system. McCleery et al(2007)found that contrast sensitivity of the high-risk infants exhibited greater sensitivities than that of control infants. Second topic is verbal and non-verbal communication studies. In developmental studies we found similarity of the development pattern between language and face processing. Further, we discuss importance of the infant's ability to learn faces in poor resolution. Infant's face learning model(Valentin et al,2003)showed that poor image faces(low-pass faces)made facial learning easy, additionally this low-pass face learning could generalize to the normal faces. In a sense, infant's poor acuity decreases the information in the face processing and this makes face learning easy. high risks is hot topic. In this case under 12 month old babies who have an older sibling diagnosed with the disorder were selected for high-risk infants. Plenty of data has documented impairments in face processing in individuals with autism spectrum disorders(ASD). And recently, suggestion has been made that these impairments may arise from abnormal development of a subcortical system involved in face processing that originates in the magnocellular pathway of the primate visual system. McCleery et al(2007)found that contrast sensitivity of the high-risk infants exhibited greater sensitivities than that of control infants. Second topic is verbal and non-verbal communication studies. In developmental studies we found similarity of the development pattern between language and face processing. Further, we discuss importance of the infant's ability to learn faces in poor resolution. Infant's face learning model(Valentin et al, 2003)showed that poor image faces(low-pass faces)made facial learning easy, additionally this low-pass face learning could generalize to the normal faces. In a sense, infant's poor acuity decreases the information in the face processing and this makes face learning easy.

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   This report demonstrates the relationship between joint attention and language acquisition among children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder(ASD). Uchiyama(2009, 2012)had participants with ASD who could not communicate via oral language, but who showed interest in kana letters, trained using picture cards and kana word cards. Participants exhibited improvement in auditory comprehension, and face-to-face gaze toward communication partners. Uchiyama therefore argued that kana letters facilitate language acquisition and promote the development of joint attention in children with ASD.
   In the current study, an eye tracker was used to determine whether a child with ASD could look at various stimuli(a photo of her mother's face, a picture of a familiar object, a picture of an unfamiliar object,and kana letters). The results suggested that the child with ASD was not able to identify the gaze direction of her mother's face; thus, the participant was unable to share joint attention with her mother. The control typically developing participant gazed at the indicated object by understanding the meaning of his mother's gaze direction; therefore, the control participant was able to establish shared joint attention.
    The ASD participant who acquired spoken language from letters, focused on letters when a voice was introduced. This indicates that children with ASD can develop joint attention through the aid of kana letters. In this case, language might be acquired by connecting a voice and letters. could not communicate via oral language, but who showed interest in kana letters, trained using picture cards and kana word cards. Participants exhibited improvement in auditory comprehension, and face-to-face gaze toward communication partners. Uchiyama therefore argued that kana letters facilitate language acquisition and promote the development of joint attention in children with ASD.In the current study, an eye tracker was used to determine whether a child with ASD could look at various stimuli(a photo of her mother's face, a picture of a familiar object, a picture of an unfamiliar object,and kana letters). The results suggested that the child with ASD was not able to identify the gaze direction of her mother's face; thus, the participant was unable to share joint attention with her mother. The control typically developing participant gazed at the indicated object by understanding the meaning of his mother's gaze direction; therefore, the control participant was able to establish shared joint attention.The ASD participant who acquired spoken language from letters, focused on letters when a voice was introduced. This indicates that children with ASD can develop joint attention through the aid of kana letters. In this case, language might be acquired by connecting a voice and letters.

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   Previously I and my colleagues reported that a right-handed 48-year-old man developed severe personality changes and a frontal-like syndrome, i.e. “acquired sociopathy”, after recovery from acute-onset impairment of consciousness at age 43. Other neurological and neuropsychological disturbances, especially verbal and visual amnesia, were unremarkable. MRI showed a very small infarct in the left paramedian area of the thalamus, mainly involving the dorsomedial nucleus(DM). This case shows dissociation between memory(Papez)and emotional circuits(Yakovlev). Recent functional neuroanatomy study results suggest three primary frontal circuits: dorsolateral, orbitofrontal, and anterior cingulate; all connected to the DM, which plays an important role also in schizophrenia , i.e. “developmental sociopathy”. Personality is a matter of society, and personality disorders in schizophrenia and personality changes in stroke, which are evaluated by non-verbal communication and behavior observations, seem to have common basis in the pathomechanism.

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   Broca's area, which comprises the inferior frontal gyrus and its surrounding regions, is associated with language function, Recet functional imaging studies showed that it is also related to processing nonverbal communication. We study aimed to determine the types of action disorders that occur after damage to Broca's area.
   Here, we report four patients with left inferior frontal lesions that included Broca's area. All patients exhibited impaired gestures in response to verval commands, while the performances regarding imitation and actual tool use were better.
    These results indicate that Broca's area mediates action production and that a lesion in this area can case ideomotor apraxia. We conclude that Broca's area imay be not only associated with language function but also with nonverbal, such as social cognition.

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   This article presented the neural basis on sentence production and comprehension from the viewpoint of what is the sine qua non for sentence production and comprehension. I investigated 23 right handed aphasic patients with focal brain damage administrating various tasks of sentence production and comprehension, and analyzed the error patterns. The results suggested that frontal regions subserve aspects of decision and alteration of the view point before the sentence production and in the process of sentence comprehension. The parietal might support vigilance during the sentence processing.

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   Linguistic information is processed at distinct levels from words to sentences and discourse. The left frontal regions play an important role in the process of constructing sentence structures by applying grammatical knowledge. We have used functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI), and shown that the left inferior frontal gyrus(L. IFG)and the left lateral premotor cortex(L. LPMC)are critically involved in syntactic processing. Moreover, we have demonstrated that a glioma in the L. IFG or L. LPMC is sufficient to cause selective deficits in syntactic processing. Furthermore, we have recently visualized three syntax─related networks by detailed analyses of abnormal activation patterns in the agrammatic patients, and have revealed that deficits in syntactic processing are associated with the functional reorganization of these networks. These results support the module hypothesis of human language.

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   Agrammatism is grammatical disease caused by brain injury. Agrammatic speech is characterized by omission and/or misuse of grammatical morphemes, for example, “case particles” in Japanese, “determiners” in English, omission and/or misuse of verbs, and reduced syntactic complexity. Many agrammatic patients also suffer from sentence comprehension deficits.
   We administered a picture description test to ten individuals with aphasia, seven with left frontal lesion mainly(LF)and three with left temporal lesion mainly(LT). All subjects were impaired in understanding sentences and presented errors in case particles in their speech. We examined whether or not errors in case particles and arguments disappear from their picture description when an inflected verb is provided. All LF's and two LT's errors in case particles and semantic roles did not decrease when an inflected verb was given, whereas there was one LT whose errors disappeared completely.
   The lesion location of the one LT with fluent aphasia whose errors disappeared completely when an inflected verb was given was the left temporal lobe only. The lesion location in all LF's whose errors remained involved the left inferior frontal gyrus, and the two LTs with fluent aphasia involved the left temporal lobe and left parietal lobe.
   From these results, in these cases verb retrieval in sentence production was influenced by a left temporal lesion and syntactic processing was influenced not only by a left frontal lesion, but also a left temporal and parietal lesion.

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   This treatment study compared the two verb retrieval therapy, and examined whether two verb retrieval therapy have influence on sentence production. Utilising a single-subject ABBA design, three individuals (two Broca type, one Wernicke type)who have verb retrieval disorder, verb comprehension disorder, and sentence production disorder were trained under two conditions‐argument structure treatment and phonological treatment. Verbs were controlled for syllable length, familiarity, transitivity and argument structure properties. Narrative speech using four pictures was examined before and after each treatment. As a result, all three individuals showed significant effect in facilitating verb retrieval after treatment, and generalized improvement has occurred for untrained verbs. Both treatments revealed significant effects in increasing the number of verbs, argument structure, and morphologically correct argument structure in narrative speech. But postpositional particle disorder in narrative speech had remained in all individuals. It was found that verb retrieval treatment emphasizing phonology and argument structure have impact on facilitating verb retrieval and sentence production without direct treatment on sentence production.

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   The present study investigated motor planning ability of individuals with Parkinson's disease. Sixteen patients(Hoehn and Yahr stage 2 4) and the same number of young controls performed the ESC(End State Comfort)task. In this task, the participants grabbed a horizontal dowel placed on a support either with an overhand or underhand grip, and put a specified end of the dowel on the goal position vertically. The participants started to move their hand when a visual stimulus appeared on a computer screen. The stimulus also specified the target end which should be put on the goal. We recorded whether the end state of the hand posture was comfortable or hyperpronated, and also measured reaction time and movement duration. Comparisons between the groups indicated that the PD patients planed movement taking account of the future end state of the movement; PD patients selected the given grips in order to make the following hand posture appropriate or comfortable as the control group did. In addition, superiority of preferred hand on the ESC effect and overhand grip preference were observed in both groups. The analyses of reaction time and movement duration suggested that the movement was planned before execution of the movement, and that planning time were prolonged by the same mechanism as movement time prolongation which causes clinical bradykinesia. It is important to notify that motor planning ability with regard to ESC among others was left unimpaired in PD patients.

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   Objective: To evaluate the validity of a simple rating scale to assess executive dysfunction in the copy task of the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure(ROCF). Patients: 97 patients with dementia with a Mini-Mental State Examination(MMSE)score of 15 through 25 who underwent the digit span test, Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale(ADAS), and Frontal Assessment Battery(FAB)as well as the copy task of the ROCF test. Methods: We used a total of 7 assessment items: 2 items to assess the strategy of copying for efficient order in the copy process and 5 items to assess the extraction of configural elements for systematic copying. The copy of the ROCF in each patient was scored 1(positive)or 0(negative)for each item. We carried out multivariate logistic regression analyses with the score of each item as a dependent variable, MMSE score and educational attainment as covariates and one of the following as an independent variable: age, one of the cognitive measures(scores of ADAS Word Recall, Construction, Ideational Praxis, Orientation and Word Recognition), and the total score of FAB. Results: After excluding the effects of educational attainment and overall severity of cognitive dysfunction, the scores of the 5 items(2 for the strategy of copying and 3 for the extraction of configural elements)correlated with the total scores of FAB. A multiple linear regression analysis with the total score of these 5 items as a dependent variable and with MMSE score and educational attainment as covariates showed a significant partial regression coefficient for the total scores of FAB. Conclusion: A relationship between 5 of the assessment items and executive dysfunction was confirmed. A scale with these items may be a simple and effective tool in daily clinical practice, including a memory clinic, to assess executive dysfunction in patients with dementia.

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   Subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation(STN-DBS)is known to improve motor functions of individuals with Parkinson's disease but some adverse effects may also have been reported including cognitive and/or affective dysfunction. In the present study, the effect of STN-DBS on verbal learning was investigated in Parkinson's disease. The participants were 45 patients with Parkinson's disease who received bilateral STN-DBS. The mean age of the participants was 62.8 ± 8.9 years. The motor function of the patients significantly improved and the dosage of dopaminergic agents successfully decreased postoperatively. Scores on the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test(RAVLT)were measured and compared pre-and postoperatively as well as those on the Digit Span, MMSE, and Modified Stroop Test. Verbal learning activities as indexed by delayed recall scores and recognition scores of RAVLT were equivalent pre-and postoperatively. However, close observation of the serial learning curve of RAVLT demonstrated dullness of improvement in the 4^th and 5^th trials following STN-DBS, which suggests impaired learning efficacy postoperatively. In addition, Digit Span, overall MMSE scores, Modified Stroop Test particularly in the condition with response inhibion, also showed deterioration following STN-DBS. The results suggest that STN-DBS did not impair long-term verbal learning capacity per se, but did impair learning efficacy in mnemonic activities as well as simple and complex attention caused by STN-DBS.

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   In this study, we examined the relationship between language function and practical communicative ability of aphasics by analyzing their language abilities. The Standard Language Test of Aphasia(SLTA)and the test of Communicative Ability of Daily Living(CADL)short form were conducted twice for 88 patients with aphasia. Results of factor and cluster analyses indicated the following factors as SLTA factors; “language comprehension”, “utterance”, “high level language function and writing”. We investigated the relationship between these SLTA factors and the level of communicative competencies. “Language comprehension” factor was related to the CADL level 3 that indicates need of partial support for communication, and “utterance” factor was related to the CADL level 4 that indicates competence in practical communication. The factors of “high level language function and writing” were related to the CADL level 5 indicating independence in communication. During the recovery of language impairments,improvement was observed in “language comprehension” factor first for the patient group that needed total support in communication and in “utterance” factor for the group that needed partial support. In patients who can communicate in a practical level, improvement was initially seen in scores for “high level language function and writing”. Our results suggest a relationship between language function and communicative ability.

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   We reported the effects of a structured floral arrangement(SFA)rehabilitation program in a chronic phase case with left─side spatial neglect. The SFA was developed as a training program for cognitive ability, especially visuospatial recognition. In the SFA program, the order sequence for placing each of the natural materials was predetermined. The case was required to identify where and when to place each material in order to complete a symmetrical floral arrangement. Before rehabilitation intervention, the case neglected two vertical rows of stimuli on the left side in the line cancellation test of the Behavioral Inattention Test(BIT); however, he could recognize all lines, including left-side stimuli, after SFA intervention. The score on the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure test also improved after the intervention. The case was able to copy quite accurately the complex figure in the center of a paper. The signs of left-side spatial neglect had nearly disappeared in the two tests after intervention. These effects were maintained 5 months after intervention. Our results showed that on SFA program may positively stimulate visuospatial ability and improve unilateral spatial neglect for a long time in chronic cases.

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   Several assessments have been used to identify unsafe post-stroke drivers with cognitive impairments. Our first aim was to investigate the relationships between neuropsychological tests and on-road assessment for post-stroke patients. The second aim was to determine the cut-off points of neuropsychological tests and establish their sensitivity and specificity. We conducted a retrospective study involving 93 stroke patients. They were categorized into two groups based on the results of on-road assessment:namely,pass or fail. We conducted four neuropsychological tests:namely, the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), the Kohs Block Design(Kohs)and Trail Making Test(TMT-A, TMT-B), as well as standard on-road driving assessment. We compared the results of MMSE, Kohs, TMT-A and TMT-B to the on-road driving assessment. Analysis of data was performed using unpaired t-test or U-test. p ＜0.05 was considered significant. All neuropsychological tests were significant(MMSE:p =0.018; Kohs:p =0.047; TMT-A:p =0.001; TMT-B:p =0.009). Furthermore, multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed including an age parameter, and TMT-A was adopted. Receiver Operating Characteristics curve analyses were performed also for each group who took TMT-A(cut-off point:119 seconds)and the sensitivity(55 %)and specificity(79 %)were determined. The findings suggested that TMT-A influenced driving assessment, and inattention including poor visual searching related to driving skills of a failed stroke driver.

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   The case has been suffering from brain injury for many years whose main lesions were bilateral anterior prefrontal cortices or Brodmann area 10s (BA10). Despite no detectable impairment on a range of tradi tional neuropsychological tests, he showed deterioration in tests of multi-task and he could not imagine or plan for the future. He could successfully execute a simple single task such as cooking or going on errands if he was requested by his family. His mother's chief complaint was that he only lives his life in the present.
   BA10 is activated when the solution to an overall problem can be arrived at only by the simultaneous consideration of multiple sub-problems(Ramnani 2004). Also, recent PET studies show that greater activity is observed in fontopolar and medial temporal regions when the future is imagined than when the past is remembered(Schacter 2007).
    We concluded that he could not set long─term future goals, therefore he was unable to integrate the necessary information such as remembering his past experiences, counting his rewards and planning the effective execution. The impairment of planning for the future is one of the cognitive dysfunctions.

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