Language Mapping Research Articles

Applying the LOT Methodology to a Public Bus Transport Ontology aligned with Transmodel: Challenges and Results

We present an ontology that describes the domain of Public Transport by bus, which is common in cities around the world. This ontology is aligned to Transmodel, a reference model which is available as a UML specification and which was developed to foster interoperability of data about transport systems across Europe. The alignment with this non-ontological resource required the adaptation of the Linked Open Terms (LOT) methodology, which has been used by our team as the methodological framework for the development of many ontologies used for the publication of open city data. The ontology is structured into three main modules: (1) agencies, operators and the lines that they manage, (2) lines, routes, stops and journey patterns, and (3) planned vehicle journeys with their timetables and service calendars. Besides reusing Transmodel concepts, the ontology also reuses common ontology design patterns from GeoSPARQL and the SOSA ontology. As part of the LOT data-driven validation stage, RDF data has been generated taking as input the GTFS feeds (General Transit Feed Specification) provided by the Madrid public bus transport provider (EMT). Mapping rules from structured data sources to RDF were developed using the RDF Mapping Language (RML) to generate RDF data, and queries corresponding to competency questions were tested.

Awake Craniotomy Language Mapping in Children With Drug-Resistant Epilepsy due to Focal Cortical Dysplasia

BackgroundLanguage mapping during awake craniotomy can allow for precise resection of epileptogenic lesions, while reducing the risk of damage to eloquent cortex. There are few reports in the literature of language mapping during awake craniotomy in children with epilepsy. Some centers may avoid awake craniotomy in the pediatric age group due to concerns that children are unable to cooperate with such procedures. MethodsWe reviewed pediatric patients from our center with drug-resistant focal epilepsy who underwent language mapping during awake craniotomy and subsequent resection of the epileptogenic lesion. ResultsTwo patients were identified, both female, aged 17 years and 11 years at the time of surgery. Both patients had frequent and disabling focal seizures despite trials of multiple antiseizure medications. Both patients had resection of their epileptogenic lesions with the aid of intraoperative language mapping; in both cases pathology was consistent with focal cortical dysplasia. Both patients had transient language difficulties in the immediate postoperative period but no deficits at six-month follow-up. Both patients are now seizure-free. ConclusionsAwake craniotomy should be considered in pediatric patients with drug-resistant epilepsy in whom the suspected epileptogenic lesion is in close proximity to cortical language areas.

Technical Aspects of Motor and Language Mapping in Glioma Patients.

Gliomas are infiltrative primary brain tumors that often invade functional cortical and subcortical regions, and they mandate individualized brain mapping strategies to avoid postoperative neurological deficits. It is well known that maximal safe resection significantly improves survival, while postoperative deficits minimize the benefits associated with aggressive resections and diminish patients' quality of life. Although non-invasive imaging tools serve as useful adjuncts, intraoperative stimulation mapping (ISM) is the gold standard for identifying functional cortical and subcortical regions and minimizing morbidity during these challenging resections. Current mapping methods rely on the use of low-frequency and high-frequency stimulation, delivered with monopolar or bipolar probes either directly to the cortical surface or to the subcortical white matter structures. Stimulation effects can be monitored through patient responses during awake mapping procedures and/or with motor-evoked and somatosensory-evoked potentials in patients who are asleep. Depending on the patient's preoperative status and tumor location and size, neurosurgeons may choose to employ these mapping methods during awake or asleep craniotomies, both of which have their own benefits and challenges. Regardless of which method is used, the goal of intraoperative stimulation is to identify areas of non-functional tissue that can be safely removed to facilitate an approach trajectory to the equator, or center, of the tumor. Recent technological advances have improved ISM's utility in identifying subcortical structures and minimized the seizure risk associated with cortical stimulation. In this review, we summarize the salient technical aspects of which neurosurgeons should be aware in order to implement intraoperative stimulation mapping effectively and safely during glioma surgery.

Intraoperative Testing During the Mapping of the Language Cortex.

Intracranial lesions, particularly in the language-eloquent areas of the brain, can affect one's speaking ability. Despite advances in surgery, the excision of these lesions can be challenging. Intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring (IONM) during awake craniotomies can help identify language-eloquent areas and minimize postoperative impairments. Preoperative language testing is performed to establish a baseline before intraoperative language testing. This involves subjecting patients to predetermined tasks in the operating room to evaluate their phonological, semantic, and syntactic capabilities. The current state and future directions of intraoperative language testing procedures are discussed in this paper. The most common intraoperative tasks are counting and picture naming. However, some experts recommend utilizing more nuanced tasks that involve regions affected by infrequently occurring tumor patterns. Low-frequency bipolar Penfield stimulation is optimal for language mapping. Exception cases are discussed where awake craniotomies are not feasible. When dealing with multilingual patients, the patient's age of learning and skill level can be accounted for in terms of making informed task choices and mapping techniques to avoid any damage to language areas.

Transforming 3D Models to Semantic Web Representation

"The purpose of the present paper is to research a rule-based approach for transforming X3D (eXtensible 3D) models to RDF (Resource Description Framework). The transformation is performed by using the RDF Mapping Language (RML). Its advantages are summarized, which are mainly due to the fact that the rules created build a knowledge base. By applying SPARQL (SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language) queries to it, the possibility of explore in order to validate and improve the defined RML rules themselves, is pointed out. An approach for reversing from the RDF triples to the original X3D in a unique way is considered, and the types of SPARQL queries needed for its implementation are systematized. Rules are formulated for all elements defined in the X3D schema, their attributes and properties are described. Their accessibility is ensured. The conversion of X3D models to RDF is confirmed to be consistent with guidelines and best practices for creating accessible, understandable, and reusable ontologies on the Web. The systematized SPARQL query types for reversing from RDF triples to the original X3D are checked for specific elements and sample data, and the obtained results establish their correctness. The prerequisites and limitations of the represented approach are explained. The proposed approach allows building a comprehensive knowledge base that includes the RML rules, the transformed X3D models and the domain-specific ontology and its use to analyzing data and semantic reasoning. The electronic libraries that include 3D content could take advantage from the benefits and possible future applications of the solutions discussed in this study."

The current state of the art of primary motor mapping for tumor resection: A focused survey

IntroductionCortical and subcortical motor mapping has advanced the notion of maximal safe resection of intra-axial brain tumours, thereby preserving neurological functions as well as improving survival. Despite being an age-old and established neurosurgical procedure across the world, the strategy and techniques involved in motor mapping have a gamut of variation due to a lack of defined standard protocols. MethodsWe disseminated a structured survey among focused group of neurosurgeons with established practices involving brain mapping. It consisted of 40 questions, split into five sections assessing the practice description, general approach for motor mapping, preference for asleep versus awake mapping, operative techniques and approach to representative tumor cases. Practice-patterns during primary motor mapping for brain tumours were analysed from responses of 51 neurosurgeons. Results60.8 % felt that any lesion even near (without infiltration) was suffice to define “involvement” of the cortical/subcortical motor pathways. 82.4 % felt that motor mapping was necessary for brain tumours involving motor pathways, irrespective of the tumor histology or patient age. 90.2 % opined that tumor location was the predominant factor affecting their choice between awake or asleep mapping. 31.4 % believed that all cases should be performed awake unless patient-related medical, psychological, or anaesthetic contraindications exist, whereas 45.1 % felt that all cases should be performed asleep unless language mapping is required. MRI, DTI-based tractography and intra-operative fluorescence were the most commonly employed surgical adjuncts. ConclusionsThe data from this survey may serve as a preliminary foundation for a more standardized approach to patient selection and the approach to motor mapping for brain tumors.

Identification of the Language Network from Resting-State fMRI in Patients with Brain Tumors: How Accurate Are Experts?

Resting-state fMRI helps identify neural networks in presurgical patients who may be limited in their ability to undergo task-fMRI. The purpose of this study was to determine the accuracy of identifying the language network from resting-state-fMRI independent component analysis (ICA) maps. Through retrospective analysis, patients who underwent both resting-state-fMRI and task-fMRI were compared by identifying the language network from the resting-state-fMRI data by 3 reviewers. Blinded to task-fMRI maps, these investigators independently reviewed resting-state-fMRI ICA maps to potentially identify the language network. Reviewers ranked up to 3 top choices for the candidate resting-state-fMRI language map. We evaluated associations between the probability of correct identification of the language network and some potential factors. Patients included 29 men and 14 women with a mean age of 41 years. Reviewer 1 (with 17 years' experience) demonstrated the highest overall accuracy with 72%; reviewers 2 and 3 (with 2 and 7 years' experience, respectively) had a similar percentage of correct responses (50% and 55%). The highest accuracy used ICA50 and the top 3 choices (81%, 65%, and 60% for reviewers 1, 2, and 3, respectively). The lowest accuracy used ICA50, limiting each reviewer to the top choice (58%, 35%, and 42%). We demonstrate variability in the accuracy of blinded identification of resting-state-fMRI language networks across reviewers with different years of experience.

Presurgical Language Mapping: What Are We Testing?

Gliomas are brain tumors infiltrating healthy cortical and subcortical areas that may host cognitive functions, such as language. If these areas are damaged during surgery, the patient might develop word retrieval or articulation problems. For this reason, many glioma patients are operated on awake, while their language functions are tested. For this practice, quite simple tests are used, for example, picture naming. This paper describes the process and timeline of picture naming (noun retrieval) and shows the timeline and localization of the distinguished stages. This is relevant information for presurgical language testing with navigated Magnetic Stimulation (nTMS). This novel technique allows us to identify cortical involved in the language production process and, thus, guides the neurosurgeon in how to approach and remove the tumor. We argue that not only nouns, but also verbs should be tested, since sentences are built around verbs, and sentences are what we use in daily life. This approach's relevance is illustrated by two case studies of glioma patients.

Virtual Reality-Assisted Awake Craniotomy: A Retrospective Study.

Awake craniotomy (AC) with brain mapping for language and motor functions is often performed for tumors within or adjacent to eloquent brain regions. However, other important functions, such as vision and visuospatial and social cognition, are less frequently mapped, at least partly due to the difficulty of defining tasks suitable for the constrained AC environment. The aim of this retrospective study was to demonstrate, through illustrative cases, how a virtual reality headset (VRH) equipped with eye tracking can open up new possibilities for the mapping of language, the visual field and complex cognitive functions in the operating room. Virtual reality (VR) tasks performed during 69 ACs were evaluated retrospectively. Three types of VR tasks were used: VR-DO80 for language evaluation, VR-Esterman for visual field assessment and VR-TANGO for the evaluation of visuospatial and social functions. Surgery was performed on the right hemisphere for 29 of the 69 ACs performed (42.0%). One AC (1.5%) was performed with all three VR tasks, 14 ACs (20.3%) were performed with two VR tasks and 54 ACs (78.3%) were performed with one VR task. The median duration of VRH use per patient was 15.5 min. None of the patients had "VR sickness". Only transitory focal seizures of no consequence and unrelated to VRH use were observed during AC. Patients were able to perform all VR tasks. Eye tracking was functional, enabling the medical team to analyze the patients' attention and exploration of the visual field of the VRH directly. This preliminary experiment shows that VR approaches can provide neurosurgeons with a way of investigating various functions, including social cognition during AC. Given the rapid advances in VR technology and the unbelievable sense of immersion provided by the most recent devices, there is a need for ongoing reflection and discussions of the ethical and methodological considerations associated with the use of these advanced technologies in AC and brain mapping procedures.

Paulina Bounds, Jennifer Cramer, & Susan Tamasi, Linguistic planets of belief: Mapping language attitudes in the American South. Abingdon: Routledge. Pp. 180. Pb. £35.

Paulina Bounds, Jennifer Cramer, & Susan Tamasi, Linguistic planets of belief: Mapping language attitudes in the American South. Abingdon: Routledge. Pp. 180. Pb. £35.

The Linguistic Survey of India’s Experiment in Mapping Languages, 1896–1927

ABSTRACT The Linguistic Survey of India (LSI), supervised by the Anglo-Irish linguist and civil servant George A. Grierson, surveyed and classified more than seven hundred languages and dialects. An integral part of the state-funded survey was mapping where languages were spoken in India, which resulted in the publication of 45 language maps between 1899 and 1927. As individual maps they are comparable to other thematic maps of the period. As a series of language maps, however, they are inconsistent in scale, colour, use of relief and labels, and depiction of boundaries. This paper argues that the inconsistency in presentation reflected the LSI’s experimental approach to mapping language, trying to reconcile the approximate representation of a complex geographical phenomenon with the colonial state’s expectation for accurate and up-to-date language maps.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Diffusion Tensor Imaging for Language Mapping in Brain Tumor Surgery: Validation With Direct Cortical Stimulation and Cortico-Cortical Evoked Potential.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging-derived tractography (DTI-t) contribute to the localization of language areas, but their accuracy remains controversial. This study aimed to investigate the diagnostic performance of preoperative fMRI and DTI-t obtained with a simultaneous multi-slice technique using intraoperative direct cortical stimulation (DCS) or corticocortical evoked potential (CCEP) as reference standards. This prospective study included 26 patients (23-74 years; male:female, 13:13) with tumors in the vicinity of Broca's area who underwent preoperative fMRI and DTI-t. A site-by-site comparison between preoperative (fMRI and DTI-t) and intraoperative language mapping (DCS or CCEP) was performed for 226 cortical sites to calculate the sensitivity and specificity of fMRI and DTI-t for mapping Broca's areas. For sites with positive signals on fMRI or DTI-t, the true-positive rate (TPR) was calculated based on the concordance and discordance between fMRI and DTI-t. Among 226 cortical sites, DCS was performed in 100 sites and CCEP was performed in 166 sites. The specificities of fMRI and DTI-t ranged from 72.4% (63/87) to 96.8% (122/126), respectively. The sensitivities of fMRI (except for verb generation) and DTI-t were 69.2% (9/13) to 92.3% (12/13) with DCS as the reference standard, and 40.0% (16/40) or lower with CCEP as the reference standard. For sites with preoperative fMRI or DTI-t positivity (n = 82), the TPR was high when fMRI and DTI-t were concordant (81.2% and 100% using DCS and CCEP, respectively, as the reference standards) and low when fMRI and DTI-t were discordant (≤ 24.2%). fMRI and DTI-t are sensitive and specific for mapping Broca's area compared with DCS and specific but insensitive compared with CCEP. A site with a positive signal on both fMRI and DTI-t represents a high probability of being an essential language area.

Sustainable Learning of Computer Programming Languages Using Mind Mapping

In the current era of information technology, students need to learn modern programming languages efficiently. The art of teaching/learning programming requires many logical and conceptual skills. So it’s a challenging task for the instructors/learners to teach/learn these programming languages effectively and efficiently. Mind mapping is a useful visual tool for establishing ideas and connecting them to solve problems. This research proposed an effective way to teach programming languages through visual tools. This experimental study uses a mind mapping tool to teach two programming environments: Text-based Programming and Blocks-based Programming. We performed the experiments with one hundred and sixty undergraduate students of two public sector universities in the Asia Pacific region. Four different instructional approaches, including block-based language (BBL), text-based languages (TBL), mind map with text-based language (MMTBL) and mind mapping with block-based (MMBBL) are used for this purpose. The results show that instructional approaches using a mind mapping tool to help students solve given tasks in their critical thinking are more effective than other instructional techniques.

Linguistic Factors Impacting Reliability of Classic Navigated Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (nTMS)-based Language Mapping in Glioma Patients with Non-fluent Aphasia

Linguistic Factors Impacting Reliability of Classic Navigated Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (nTMS)-based Language Mapping in Glioma Patients with Non-fluent Aphasia

Comparison of fMRI language laterality with and without sedation in pediatric epilepsy

Functional MRI is an essential component of presurgical language mapping. In clinical settings, young children may be sedated for the MRI with the functional stimuli presented passively. Research has found that sedation changes language activation in healthy adults and children. However, there is limited research comparing sedated and unsedated functional MRI in pediatric epilepsy patients. We compared language activation patterns in children with epilepsy who received sedation for functional MRI to the ones who did not.We retrospectively identified the patients with focal epilepsy who underwent presurgical functional MRI including Auditory Descriptive Decision Task at Boston Children's Hospital from 2014 to 2022. Patients were divided into sedated and awake groups, based on their sedation status during functional MRI. Auditory Descriptive Decision Task stimuli were presented passively to the sedated group per clinical protocol. We extracted language activation maps contrasted against a control task (reverse speech) in the Frontal and Temporal language regions and calculated separate language laterality indexes for each region. We considered positive laterality indexes as left dominant, negative laterality indexes as right dominant, and absolute laterality indexes <0.2 as bilateral. We defined 2 language patterns: typical (i.e., primarily left-sided) and atypical. Typical pattern required at least one left dominant region (either frontal or temporal) and no right dominant region. We then compared the language patterns between the sedated and awake groups.Seventy patients met the inclusion criteria, 25 sedated, and 45 awake. Using the Auditory Descriptive Decision Task paradigm, when adjusted for age, handedness, gender, and laterality of lesion in a weighted logistic regression model, the odds of the atypical pattern were 13.2 times higher in the sedated group compared to the awake group (Confidence Interval: 2.55–68.41, p-value < 0.01).Sedation may alter language activation patterns in pediatric epilepsy patients. Language patterns on sedated functional MRI with passive tasks may not represent language networks during wakefulness, sedation may differentially suppress some networks, or require a different task or method of analysis to capture the awake language network. Given the critical surgical implication of these findings, additional studies are needed to better understand how sedation impacts the functional MRI blood oxygenation level-dependent signal. Consistent with current practice, sedated functional MRI should be interpreted with greater caution and requires additional validation as well as research on post-surgical language outcomes.

How to Say Bussy in Another Language: Sociolingvistička rasprava i lični osvrt

I begin this bilingual (Bosnian-English) hybrid (scholarly-personal-fictional) essay, with my search for queer languages of my own, a fraught, complex process both due to my personal circumstances of immigration, and the larger history of suppression of queer expression in the Balkans and beyond. For the throughline of the discussion, I use the relatively recent portmanteau in English, bussy (boy+pussy for the anus), that has given birth to a wealth of Internet memes often featuring similar coinages, and my attempt to find its equivalents in several other languages. English and Bosnian will alternate, with their subcategories ranging from academic to confessional — so only those who read both will be able to understand everything. I first look at the Soviet Russian gay slang recorded by Vladimir Kozlovsky and then move to a fuller discussion of the Turkish queer jargon named Lubunca, which like its Greek counterpart Kaliardá, has a prominent corpus of Romani borrowings. Some of these words appear in an almost identical form, with the same or similar meanings, in a number of European languages that I am familiar with: Bosnian, English, French, and German. While my queerness does not happen to provide a sense of linguistic belonging, it does enable me to note a much-neglected postcolonial queer aspect of the European language map, the Romani element, which I happily write about in the essay. As for bussy and its translations, I argue that such terms – playfully confusing and reassigning holes in English and other languages, in recent and distant times – present occasions for queerer, more pleasurable and expansive imaginings of human bodies, desires, and the world around us.

Maplib: Interactive, Literal RDF Model Mapping for Industry

Knowledge graphs are important for industrial digitalization. Industrial knowledge graphs are often mapped from multiple existing large data sources, and creating a mapping requires the time of scarce subject matter experts (SME). Interactive, literal programming for large scale mapping would allow mapping engineers to make good use of SME time, and document their work. Currently, there are no open source tools supporting such a process. To solve this problem, we implement maplib, which leverages existing tooling from data science. In data science, there is widespread use of literate programming using frameworks such as Jupyter notebooks to interactively prepare data and create analyses using in-memory tables called DataFrames. Maplib is implemented in Rust using Polars DataFrames and has Python bindings, allowing us to leverage tooling used in data science. Maplib implements the OTTR mapping language, which is highly suited for industrial use cases. Maplib features a SPARQL engine defined directly on DataFrames, making querying possible immediately after mapping. We evaluate our approach by comparing mapping and querying performance with Morph-KGC and SPARQL Anything on the GTFS Madrid benchmark. Our approach materializes the graph and is ready to query 47x-182x faster, and scales to models that are over twice as large. Morph-KGC and SPARQL Anything perform better for most, but not all of the queries once the graph has been constructed. On the end-to-end task of mapping and querying however, which is very important for interactive mapping, maplib performs better for most queries.

Linguistic Cartography: Exploring the Power and Potential of Mapping Language Resources Within Classroom Communities

ABSTRACT To inform the design of humanizing pedagogies that draw on the whole of learners’ linguistic resources, educators must come to know students as language users, and, more centrally, support students to become aware of the dynamism of their own linguistic repertoires. We highlight one instructional approach—“linguistic cartography”—for making these language resources visible. Linguistic cartography engages participants in mapping and reflecting on all of their language resources learned across a range of contexts and for diverse social purposes. We examine the use of linguistic cartography in one focal middle-grade classroom (23 students, ages 11–13) in a linguistically-restrictive English-only school district in the United States. Through analysis of fieldnotes and interviews conducted with the classroom teacher and with three focal students, we highlight the potential instructional affordances of linguistic cartography for questioning and speaking back to discourses that serve to pathologize plurilingualism in linguistically-restrictive school contexts.

Passive functional mapping of receptive language cortex during general anesthesia using electrocorticography

ObjectiveTo investigate the feasibility of passive functional mapping in the receptive language cortex during general anesthesia using electrocorticographic (ECoG) signals. MethodsWe used subdurally placed ECoG grids to record cortical responses to speech stimuli during awake and anesthesia conditions. We identified the cortical areas with significant responses to the stimuli using the spectro-temporal consistency of the brain signal in the broadband gamma (BBG) frequency band (70–170 Hz). ResultsWe found that ECoG BBG responses during general anesthesia effectively identify cortical regions associated with receptive language function. Our analyses demonstrated that the ability to identify receptive language cortex varies across different states and depths of anesthesia. We confirmed these results by comparing them to receptive language areas identified during the awake condition. Quantification of these results demonstrated an average sensitivity and specificity of passive language mapping during general anesthesia to be 49±7.7% and 100%, respectively. ConclusionOur results demonstrate that mapping receptive language cortex in patients during general anesthesia is feasible. SignificanceOur proposed protocol could greatly expand the population of patients that can benefit from passive language mapping techniques, and could eliminate the risks associated with electrocortical stimulation during an awake craniotomy.

Mapping Language Learning With Emojis: From Phatic Communication to Idioms and Flash Fiction

"Mapping Language Learning with Emojis: From Phatic Communication to Idioms and Flash Fiction. By roaming around digital resources in search of a customised learning approach, language learners often identify as netizens accustomed to a coded Internet language which is rarely juxtaposed with the language taught in the ESP classroom. To keep pace with shifting trends in online communication, teachers often need to expand the discursive membership by empowering learners to turn from users into content creators. By referring to the potential of using emojis in the framework of speech acts, the current paper aims to indicate directions of embedding emojis as social marking tokens and instruments of developing language and digital literacy skills in the foreign language class. The process of embedding emojis in language teaching stems from the integration of emoji as markers in the teaching of phatic communication, to reinforce the locutionary and illocutionary act of speech. Moreover, emojis can be used as an extension of teaching idioms, whereas the illocutionary and perlocutionary function of emoji is explored in interactive vocabulary practice tasks or within gamified sequences. Eventually, using emojis as perlocutionary acts in language learning is applied to storytelling as a mechanism of developing a multiliterate discourse, by means of which learners are introduced to writing emoji stories and flash fictions and then to translating them into words. Keywords: emojis, content creators, speech acts, multimodality, participatory culture "