1,721,359 research outputs found
F. BENEDETTI, Studi su Oppiano.
No full textDonnet Daniel. F. BENEDETTI, Studi su Oppiano. . In: L'antiquité classique, Tome 76, 2007. pp. 306-307
The interplay between inflammation and neural plasticity determines serotoninergic antidepressant efficacy
Full text linkMajor Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a multifaceted disorder that imposes an enormous medical, societal and economic burden. Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) are the most commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs. However, their efficacy is variable and incomplete and there is still limited understanding of the factors determining their beneficial action. With the purpose to identify these factors and develop more effective therapeutic strategies for MDD, we carried out preclinical studies exploiting a multidisciplinary strategy, spanning from molecular to cellular and behavioral assessment. We focused on inflammation and neural plasticity because, though these have been widely reported as key factors in determining SSRI outcome, their interplay has been limitedly explored. The results obtained show, on the one hand, that the increased neural plasticity induced by SSRI administration regulates inflammation counterbalancing both the activation and suppression of immune response, and, on the other, that any deviation towards an extreme immune activation or suppression results in reduced neural plasticity. These findings indicate that neural plasticity and inflammation are mutually regulating processes and that inflammatory levels should be kept within a strict physiological range to be permissive for neural plasticity. As further step, we explored a polypharmacological strategy aimed at increasing SSRI efficacy through the add-on treatment with metformin, a drug able to improve metabolic profile, which has been shown to be implicated in antidepressant efficacy. This approach is aimed at producing two concerted effects –increasing neural plasticity (i.e. SSRI) and regulating metabolism (i.e. metformin)—that together should lead to a more effective therapeutic strategy for MDD than the SSRI alone. The results suggest that the combined treatment has an improved efficacy and that multifactorial disorders such as MDD may be more effectively treated with strategies able to targeting several biological processes. Overall, our findings underpin the implementation of the precision medicine paradigm in the psychiatric field. Indeed, information concerning not only the patients’ mood but also selected physiological endpoints (e.g. inflammatory levels and metabolic profile) should be considered for an effective antidepressant therapeutic strategy
Trancranial Doppler: value in clinical practice
No full textThe value of TCD in clinical practice is well established since it can be used to measure cerebral vasomotor reactivity and to detect and grade vasospasm (VSP) following subarachnoid haemorrhage and cerebral blood perfusion consequences of extracranial ICA stenosis or occlusion. Intracranial steno-occlusive disease can be detected more reliably by transcranial color-coded imaging (TCCI) that provides a two-dimensional imaging of parenchymal and vascular anatomy of brain too. In patients with suspected brain TCD diagnostic criteria for brain death have a sensitivity of 91 to 100% and specificity of 97 to 100% and they are particularly useful when clinical and EEG evaluations are difficult. TCD is a sensitive technique for real time detection of microembolic signals (MES) from prosthetic cardiac valves, myocardial infarction site, atrial fibrillation, aortic arch atheroma and this suggests the use of TCD for monitoring response to antithrombotic therapy. There is also a high correlation between contrast-enhanced TCD and traps-esophageal echocardiography for detecting paradoxical embolism through right-to-left cardiac or pulmonary shunts. Microembolization detected by TCD monitoring may confirm features of unstable carotid artery plaques as imaged by Duplex scanning and there is an increasing evidence that asymptomatic MES from unstable carotid plaques are an independent factor for ischemic stroke. TCD can be used as a monitoring tool during cardiac surgery and cerebrovascular operations to determine critical hemodynamic changes in cerebral arteries and to identify high-intensity transients referred to air or particulate emboli. Several research studies of the past 10 years have shown that MES may be detected by TCD during all phases of CEA and CAS and that sustained microembolism after carotid flow restoration is an indication of impending postoperative or post-procedural occlusion. Our series showed a clear difference between the number of patients with MES and the incidence rate of MES in each patient submitted to CAS (100% of cases with 35-250 MES in each case) and to CEA (74% of cases with 2-30 MES in each case). We also observed a decrease in the incidence rate of microembolic events by TCD during CAS with or without brain protection devices, 18.% and 40%, respectively. There is a statistically significant difference between the neurological deficit related to embolism during CEA (1.8% of cases) and during CAS(9%). Furthermore DWI has shown a higher prevalence of postoperative small areas of brain ischenua due to asymptomatic embolism occurring during CAS than after carotid surgery according with a higher incidence of patients suffering from neuropsychological impairment after CAS as compared with those submitted to CEA. The use of TCD can provide new insights into pathophysiology of cerebral steno-occlusive and functional diseases, it can helps in risk stratifications of patients with cardioembolic sources and in the choice and monitoring of medical, surgical or endovascular treatment. TCD monitoring during carotid revascularization either surgical or endovascular can alert the operator to take appropriate measures to avoid brain ischemia and provides useful data for choice and control of the different brain protection devices. [Int Angiol 2009;28:249-53
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
Variations on the Author
Full text link“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
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Le costruzioni e la piccola impresa: il ruolo dell’artigianato in un’economia di frontiera
No full textDispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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