1,721,026 research outputs found
Benuzzi (F.). — Kenya ou la fugue africaine.
No full textVeyret Paul. Benuzzi (F.). — Kenya ou la fugue africaine. . In: Revue de géographie alpine, tome 39, n°3, 1951. pp. 615-616
Didymus and comedy
No full textDidymus' commentaries on the comic playwrights and his Comic Vocabulary responded to the interests of the readership of Attic comedy primarily in two ways: by summarizing the opinions of previous scholars and by offering a wide range of explanations, useful also to less specialized readers. Although his exegesis of comedy is now preserved only through quotations (mainly in the scholia to Aristophanes), it is still possible to identify the main features and interests of Didymus' interpretative work and highlight its relevance for both ancient and contemporary readers of Greek comedy
The role of emotions in decisional processes: How neuroscience can impact evaluation of patients' ability to will and to act
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Bold temporal dynamics in absence seizures: An EEG-fMRI coregistration study
No full textRecent studies have demonstrated BOLD signal changes related to interictal generalized spike-wave discharge discharges in idiopathic generalized epilepsy (IGE) describing a cortical-subcortical network. Our objective is to describe BOLD dynamics and its temporal variations during absence seizures in patients with IGE. Method: We studied two patients with IGE and Juvenile Absence Epilepsy. Scalp EEG was recorded by means of a 32 channels MRI-compatible EEG recording system. Functional data were acquired with a 3T Philips Achieva MR system. Event-related analysis was performed using absence seizures as regressors convolved with seven standard hemodynamic response function (HRF) starting at: -9, -6, -3 second before EEG onset of absence seizures, time 0 (onset),and +3, +6, +9 second after it. Results: Temporal analysis showed pre-ictal activations in frontal and parieto-occipital cortex. At seizure onset, activations were evident in thalamus, basal ganglia and mesial temporal regions. Deactivations were observed in precuneus from 6 sec before to 9 sec after the seizure onset, and in brainstem, caudate nuclei, anterior cingulate until 6 sec after it. Conclusion: Temporal analysis of absence seizures showed pre-ictal involvement of cortical regions (frontal cortex and precuneus). Then we observed an extended cortical-subcortical network including thalamus,basal ganglia, temporal mesial regions and brainstem. The involvement of these regions started at seizure onset and persisted many seconds after its end
Prognostic factors and health-related quality of life in ocular myasthenia gravis (OMG)
No full textWe evaluate the factors predictive of prognosis in 91 Caucasian patients affected by ocular myasthenia gravis (OMG), followed at our Institution during an observational time, ranging from 12 to 240 months. The Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America (MGFA) clinical classification was used to grade the disease severity. We considered as outcome measures the variation in two subscores, ocular (O-QMG) and nonocular (NO-QMG); the last one reflected bulbar, neck, extremity functions. None of the independent variables evaluated for association with the outcome, as age of onset, type of therapy, length of interval between first and last examinations, and presence of antibodies to acetylcholine receptors (AChR-Abs) significantly affected the evolution of O-QMG and of NO-QMG. Health-related quality of life (HRQol) was assessed in 63 patients. Variations of diplopia or ptosis did not affect significantly physical (PCS) or mental composite subscores (MCS) of the Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36). Human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genotyping was studied to explore whether HLA class I and II allelic distribution differed among MG patients and controls. None of the studied HLA alleles significantly differed between OMG patients and controls. Similarly, none of the alleles with frequencies higher than 15% either in OMG patients or in controls was significantly associated, after Bonferroni correction, with the presence or absence of anti-AChR-Abs in serum. © 2014 Informa Healthcare USA, Inc
Language and motor control
No full textWe investigated the possible influence of automatic word reading on processes of visuo-motor transformation. Subjects reached and grasped an object on which the following Italian words were printed: 'VICINO' (near) or 'LONTAN' (far) on an object either near or far from the agent (experiments 1, 2); PICCOLO (small) or 'GRANDE' (large) on either a small or a large object (experiment 4); and 'ALTO' (high) or 'BASSO' (low) on either a high or a low object (experiment 5). The kinematics of the initial phase of reaching-grasping was affected by the meaning of the printed words. Namely, subjects automatically associated the meaning of the word with the corresponding property of the object and activated a reach and/or a grasp motor program influenced by the word. No effect on initial reach kinematics was observed for words related to object properties not directly involved in reach control (experiment 3). Moreover, in all the experiments, the presented words poorly influenced perceptual judgement of object properties. In experiments 5-7, the effects of the Italian adjectives 'ALTO' (high) and 'BASSO' (low) on reaching-grasping control were compared with those of the Italian adverbs 'SOPRA' (up) and 'SOTTO' (down). Adjectives influenced visual analysis of target-object properties, whereas adverbs more directly influenced the control of the action. We suggest that these effects resemble the structure of a sentence, where adjectives are commonly referred to nouns, and adverbs to verbs. In other words, class of words and, in a broad sense, grammar influenced motor control. The results of the present study show that cognitive functions such as language can affect visuo-motor transformation. They are discussed according to the notion that a strict relation between language and motor control exists, and that the frontal cortex can be involved in interactions between automatic word reading and visuo-motor transformation
Recognising a hand by grasp
No full textThe present study aimed to demonstrate that motor representations are used to recognise biological stimuli. In three experiments subjects were required to judge laterality of hands and forearms presented by pictures. The postures of the hands were those assumed when holding a small, medium and large sphere. In experiment 1, the sphere held in hand was presented, whereas in experiment 2 it was absent. In experiment 3, the same images, showing holding-a-sphere hands, as in experiment 1 were presented, but without forearm. In all experiments one finger of each hand could be absent. In experiment 1 recognition time was longer for those hand postures for which the corresponding grasping motor acts required more accuracy. This was confirmed by a control experiment (experiment 4), in which subjects actually grasped the spheres. Absence of fingers did not influence right-left hand recognition. However, the absence of target object in experiment 2, and of forearm in experiment 3 reduced the effects of the type of holding on hand laterality recognition. The results of the present study indicate that grasp representations are used to recognise hand laterality. In particular, the visual description of how hand and object interact in space (the opposition space [M.A. Arbib, Programs, schemas and neural networks for control of hand movement: beyond the RS frameworks, in: M. Jeannerod (Ed.), Attention and Performance XIII: Motor Representation and Control, Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, 1990, 111-138; M.A. Arbib, T. Iberall, D. Lyons, Coordinated control programs for movements of the hand, in: A.W. Goodman, I. Darian-Smith (Eds.), Hand function and the neocortex, Springer, Berlin, 1985, pp. 135-170]) and the anchoring of the hand to the agent are the features of the grasp representations used in hand-recognition processes. The data are discussed according to the more general notion that motor representations are automatically extracted in the process of intuiting situations, or people's intentions. These motor representations, which are compared with those of other people, contain concrete information on the actions (the motor program) by which a situation is created and on the aim of the agents executing those actions. © 2000 Elsevier Science B.V
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