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Introduction: The paper examines the discrimination of lexical stress contrasts in a foreign language from a neural perspective. The aim of the study was to identify the areas associated with word stress processing (in comparison with vowel processing), when listeners of a fixed-stress language have to process stress in a foreign free-stress language. Methods: We asked French-speaking participants to process stress and vowel contrasts in Spanish, a foreign language that the participants did not know. Participants performed a discrimination task on Spanish word pairs differing either with respect to word stress (penultimate or final stressed word) or with respect to the final vowel while functional magnetic resonance imaging data was acquired. Results: Behavioral results showed lower accuracy and longer reaction times for discriminating stress contrasts than vowel contrasts. The contrast Stress > Vowel revealed an increased bilateral activation of regions shown to be associated with stress processing (i.e., supplementary motor area, insula, middle/superior temporal gyrus), as well as a stronger involvement of areas related to more domain-general cognitive control functions (i.e., bilateral inferior frontal gyrus). The contrast Vowel > Stress showed an increased activation in regions typically associated with the default mode network (known for decreasing its activity during attentionally more demanding tasks). Conclusion: When processing Spanish stress contrasts as compared to processing vowel contrasts, native listeners of French activated to a higher degree anterior networks including regions related to cognitive control. They also show a decrease in regions related to the default mode network. These findings, together with the behavioral results, reflect the higher cognitive demand, and therefore, the larger difficulties, for French-speaking listeners during stress processing as compared to vowel processing.

Introduction: Harmonized neuropsychological assessment for neurocognitive disorders, an international priority for valid and reliable diagnostic procedures, has been achieved only in specific countries or research contexts.Methods: To harmonize the assessment of mild cognitive impairment in Europe, a workshop (Geneva, May 2018) convened stakeholders, methodologists, academic, and non-academic clinicians and experts from European, US, and Australian harmonization initiatives.Results: With formal presentations and thematic working-groups we defined a standard battery consistent with the U.S. Uniform DataSet, version 3, and homogeneous methodology to obtain consistent normative data across tests and languages. Adaptations consist of including two tests specific to typical Alzheimer's disease and behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia. The methodology for harmonized normative data includes consensus definition of cognitively normal controls, classification of confounding factors (age, sex, and education), and calculation of minimum sample sizes.Discussion: This expert consensus allows harmonizing the diagnosis of neurocognitive disorders across European countries and possibly beyond.

INTRODUCTION: Harmonized neuropsychological assessment for neurocognitive disorders, an international priority for valid and reliable diagnostic procedures, has been achieved only in specific countries or research contexts. METHODS: To harmonize the assessment of mild cognitive impairment in Europe, a workshop (Geneva, May 2018) convened stakeholders, methodologists, academic, and non-academic clinicians and experts from European, US, and Australian harmonization initiatives. RESULTS: With formal presentations and thematic working-groups we defined a standard battery consistent with the U.S. Uniform DataSet, version 3, and homogeneous methodology to obtain consistent normative data across tests and languages. Adaptations consist of including two tests specific to typical Alzheimer's disease and behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia. The methodology for harmonized normative data includes consensus definition of cognitively normal controls, classification of confounding factors (age, sex, and education), and calculation of minimum sample sizes. DISCUSSION: This expert consensus allows harmonizing the diagnosis of neurocognitive disorders across European countries and possibly beyond.