1,720,965 research outputs found
Naming of objects and actions in Multiple Sclerosis
Full text linkObjective Aim of the present study was to explore differences in the performances of patients affected by Multiple Sclerosis (MS) in naming objects and actions, as possible cognitive marker at early stages of the disease.
Background Several studies have shown an impairment of the mental representation of the movement in diseases involving motor system, such as Parkinson’s disease, as a consequence of degenerative pathologies of the central nervous system.
Methods The study was conducted with 72 participants (age:24-58, education>8). The sample was divided into 4 groups: 12 patients with Early Relapsing- Remitting MS [ERR group] (EDSS=0.95(0.62); disease duration=3.22(2.49)); 14 with Late Relapsing-Remitting MS [LRR group] (EDSS =1.25(0.80); disease duration=11.71(3.71)); 10 with Secondary Progressive MS [SP] (EDSS=8.55(5.63); disease duration=15.6(4.37)); 36 healthy controls [HC] matched with the other groups by age, sex, and educational level. All the groups performed the Boston Naming Test, to assess objects naming, and an Action Naming Task composed of 70 figures gathered from the “International Picture Naming Project” (IPNP), chosen on the basis of frequency and visual complexity.
Results The performance of the groups was compared using a 4 (groups) X 2 (Objects and Actions) ANOVA for repeated measures. Analysis revealed a significant main effect on Groups and on Naming and a significant interaction effect between Groups and Naming (all p's<.001). All the patients are significantly more efficient in naming objects than actions.
Conclusions The Action Naming Task is effective in identifying patients, even at an early stage of disease. Further investigations are needed on a larger sample to assess if the impairment is related to a dysfunction in parietal-premotor network
Verbal and visuoperceptive semantic association in aMCI and AD patients
No full text"Objectives: The semantic impairment in Alzheimer’s patients was been largely studied. The deficit was observed by analyzing the categorization process, the event recalls, the recognition of the word/picture. Few studies were conducted on loss mechanisms of the knowledge and in specify in the degradation of semantic store and the decrease of categorization ability (see Peraita,2004). Few studies were oriented to verify the semantic associative ability. Passafiume (2012) suggested the in the semantic degradation in the dementia the information were lost by processes that initially interest the abstract relations and later on, with the progression of the cognitive degeneration, the relation more related at the perceptual storage system. Aim of study is to verify the progression of the loss of associative relations in cognitive deterioration not only in the dementia but in Mild Cognitive Impairment already. . Methods: The sample recruited in the study was divided in 4 groups: a) 19 subjects with Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (aMCI) (mean age 71,0); 16 patients with mild Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) (mean age 72,0); 20 patients with moderate AD (mean age 74,3); 20 Normal Control (NC) (mean age 68,3). An experimental tasks battery carried out to evaluate the verbal and visuoperceptual semantic association abilities and to naming tasks (verbal naming and visuoperceptive naming). Results. Our results suggest a progressive impairment in the categorization ability tested by each experimental condition: in the naming tasks the AD patients have worse performances than NC and aMCI subjects. The statistical analysis show the performance in associative relations decreasing in the pathological groups and evidence the similar trend in semantic degradation both in visuoperceptual and verbal semantic associative tasks(F(12, 177,5)=8,2,p=0,000). The most interesting difference are in the comparison between the performance of aMCi and AD groups. The trend is confirmed even analyzing the performance of each of the 4 associative relation examined (the Function relation is the better preserved, while the Superordinate relation is the worse). . Conclusions: Our data seems to confirm the degradation of semantic store and to clear up the loss of semantic associative relations They suggest a degradation process based on gradual loss that in first time involve the information linked in abstract cognitive area and in a second time the information better related to the perceptive storage..
Deterioration of semantic associative relationships in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer Disease
Full text linkObject decision and multiple sclerosis: A preliminary study
No full textThe aim of this research was to study cognitive dysfunctions in multiple sclerosis (MS) by exploring subtle cognitive tasks, usually not included in the standard neuropsychological assessment. We wished to investigate whether it is possible to identify object decision deficits in MS patients without evident cognitive impairment; secondary objectives were to understand whether these deficits can be detected in the early stages of the disease and whether there are differences related to different phenotypes. Participants were divided into four groups: (a) 12 patients with early relapsing-remitting MS [ERR]; (b) 14 with late relapsing-remitting MS [LRR]; (c) 10 with secondary progressive MS [SP]; (d) 36 healthy controls [HCs]. All participants performed a series of experimental tasks: an object decision task (recognition of chimeric and real figures) and naming and visual discrimination tasks. Our results suggest that object decision disorders are detectable in patients without overt cognitive impairments and that performances on these tasks are related to phenotypes. On the other hand, the Chimeric Figures task is not appropriate for identifying cognitive dysfunctions in early MS
Environmental Emotional Sounds in AD Recognition of Environmental Emotional Sounds in Alzheimer’s Disease
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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