1,721,050 research outputs found
Considerations on nosology for HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders: it is time to update?
No full textAims: The prognosis and the clinical manifestations of HIV infection have changed with the introduction of the potent combination antiretroviral therapy (cART); however, up to 50% of patients meet research criteria for "HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders" (HAND) according with current nosology. The majority of patients affected by HAND, especially in cohorts with suppressed plasma viremia, showed an Asymptomatic Neurocognitive Impairment (ANI), without any functional impairment. After more than 10 years from the introduction of the current so-called "Frascati criteria", this mini-review aimed to address the emerging limitations in current diagnosis procedures.
Methods: We discussed the most relevant literature on HAND prevalence, etiology, and diagnosis.
Results: We addressed three main emerging issues: (1) the unclear clinical relevance of ANI entity; (2) the evidences that Frascati criteria could produce a significant overestimation of HAND; (3) the need to better identify patients with a higher risk to develop HAND requiring routine neuropsychological examinations.
Conclusions: Frascati criteria should be updated to better respond to the present characteristics of HIV + cohorts and to help clinicians in their cognitive and global management
The deficit for the word-class "verb" in corticobasal degeneration: Linguistic expression of the movement disorder?
No full textWe describe five patients with corticobasal degeneration who had apraxia with an ideational component and reduced action/verb naming ability. Patients also had difficulty in a series of tasks devised to explore the conceptual representation of actions associated with manipulable objects, such as action recognition, action miming and pantomime recognition; however, their ability to name manipulable objects was comparatively preserved. According to the current interpretation of ideational apraxia [De Renzi, E., & Lucchelli, F. (1988). Ideational apraxia. Brain, 111, 1173-1185] we considered the patients' apraxic disorder as the motor expression of decay of the action representation and we hypothesized that this may also have contributed to the action-naming deficit. The results are discussed within a "multimodal model" of semantic memory in which the concept of action is seen as the product of the integration between sensorial and motor attributes. We suggest that corticobasal degeneration might offer a unique opportunity to validate this model because it is typically characterized by a frontoparietal damage [Gibb, W. R., Luthert, P. J., & Marsden, C. D. (1989). Corticobasal degeneration. Brain, 1, 1171-1192] that prevents integration of sensory and motor information. We conclude that the selective impairment of action/verb should also be studied from the point of view of a movement disorder and not only in terms of a lexical-semantic deficit. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
Semantic memory in object use
No full textWe studied five patients with semantic memory disorders, four with semantic dementia and one with herpes simplex virus encephalitis, to investigate the involvement of semantic conceptual knowledge in object use. Comparisons between patients who had semantic deficits of different severity, as well as the follow-up, showed that the ability to use objects was largely preserved when the deficit was mild but progressively decayed as the deficit became more severe. Naming was generally more impaired than object use. Production tasks (pantomime execution and actual object use) and comprehension tasks (pantomime recognition and action recognition) as well as functional knowledge about objects were impaired when the semantic deficit was severe. Semantic and unrelated errors were produced during object use, but actions were always fluent and patients performed normally on a novel tools task in which the semantic demand was minimal. Patients with severe semantic deficits scored borderline on ideational apraxia tasks. Our data indicate that functional semantic knowledge is crucial for using objects in a conventional way and suggest that non-semantic factors, mainly non-declarative components of memory, might compensate to some extent for semantic disorders and guarantee some residual ability to use very common objects independently of semantic knowledge. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
Naming of grammatical classes in frontotemporal dementias: Linguistic and non linguistic factors contribute to noun-verb dissociation
No full textWe studied noun and verb naming in three main variants of frontotemporal dementia: the frontal variant(Fv-FTD), primary progressive aphasia (PPA) and semantic dementia (SD). We further distinguished PPA in nonfluent and fluent forms and restricted diagnosis of SD to subjects with progressive semantic breakdown leading to agnosia for words and objects. Fv-FTD and nonfluent-PPA named objects better than actions, SD showed an inverse dissociation and no specific pattern emerged in fluent-PPA. In this last group, in spite of the broad definition of fluent aphasia, quite heterogeneous patterns of language disorders and word class dissociation emerged when single-subject analyses were performed. In fv-FTD correlations between executive tasks and action naming were stronger than between executive tasks and object naming. We conclude that both linguistic and non linguistic factors, in particular an executive deficit, contribute to grammatical class dissociation. We also suggest that the fluent vs. nonfluent distinction does not reflect the complexity of primary aphasia. © 2007 - IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved
Unilateral Spatial Neglect in Degenerative Brain Pathology
No full textObjective: In an attempt to interpret neglect as a disconnection syndrome, it is currently proposed that the disorder results from disorganization of large-scale networks involved in attentional spatial processes rather than of individual brain areas. We hypothesize that as degenerative brain diseases are " system pathologies," degeneration could be restricted to some of the neural subsystems implicated in the functional organization of spatial attention and different neglect syndromes could emerge depending on the patterns of the subsystems involved. Method: We studied five neglect patients: one with corticobasal degeneration (CBD), three with Posterior Cortical Atrophy (PCA) and one with frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Results: The patient with CBD and left parietoccipital atrophy showed right allocentric neglect; the three patients with PCA mostly distributed in the right posterior regions showed left egocentric extrapersonal neglect; the patient with FTD, who displayed more severe frontotemporal atrophy on the right, had left motor-executive neglect for both personal and extrapersonal space. All patients also presented a deep breakdown of spatial working memory. Conclusion: Our data would confirm that left neglect is more frequent than right neglect also in degenerative pathology and that damage to different neural substrates can produce different types of neglect. Our findings are also consistent with the hypothesis that both lateralized and nonlateralized attention disorders contribute to generate the syndrome. We suggest that evidence from degenerative diseases may contribute to construction of models of spatial attention. © 2011 American Psychological Association
Introduzione/Premessa
No full textIntroduzione alla "Festschrift" in onore di Mauro Visentin, con interventi di: G. Sasso, A. Ardovino, A. Bellocci, E. Berti, R. Berutti, A. Brancacci, M. Cacciari, M. Cardenas, G. Cherchi, P. Ciccarelli, G. Di Tommaso, M. Donà, M. Ferrari, S. Ghisu, A. Gnoli, M. Herling, S. Maschietti, L. Messinese, N. Parise, G. Perazzoli, S. Petrucciani, M. Pisano, L. Ruggiu, A. Savorelli, D. Spanio, A. Tagliapietra, L. Vero Tarca, U. Ugazio, D. Zucca
Il passato come risorsa. Aree interne e proposte di turismo culturale
No full textIl patrimonio storico, materiale e immateriale, può costituire un volano per il rilancio delle aree interne, se veicolato da professionalità appositamente formate e con il coinvolgimento delle popolazioni local
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
- …
