151 research outputs found
Early traumatic experiences and eating disorders: a focus on the endogenous stress response system
No full textImpulsivity, trauma and insecure attachment as mediators of suicidality in eating disorders
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“Dentro lo sguardo”: percorso integrato di black out televisivo, riscoperta dei giochi antichi ed educazione socio-affettiva realizzato in una scuola elementare
No full textER transcriptional activity during menopause transition and aging
No full textMolecular imaging, i.e. the non-invasive imaging of targeted macromolecules and of biological processes in living organisms is providing a novel, very powerful, technology for the progress of biomedical research by facilitating the study of physio-pathological events in living organisms and improving the discovery of novel drugs. The ERE-Luc mouse has been generated in 2001, this mouse is the first prototype of reporter animal in which a luciferase reporter gene driven by an estrogen-responsive promoter is expressed in all tissues. The gene encoding the firefly luciferase is a reporter gene, an enzyme that reacting with the substrate luciferine, causes the production of photons detectable quantitatively, by a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera. The use of in vivo imaging of the ERE-Luc mice provided us with the opportunity to study the physiological fluctuations of ERs in mice during estrous and to demonstrate that the state of ER transcriptionally activity is regulated by circulating estradiol only in reproductive organs and liver. In organ with not associated reproductive functions ERs are activated by hormones other than estradiol. We still do not have a clear understanding of the consequences of menopause on the state of activity of ERs in non reproductive organs. Our working hypothesis is that, after cessation of ovary functions, in non reproductive organs ERs might still be transcriptionally active due to a mechanism of unligated activation. Therefore, the principle objective of our work is the study of ER transcriptional activity at the menopause transition and during aging. Briefly, we quantified photon emission, in vivo, after systemic injection of the luciferase substrate luciferine, and luciferase activity by an in vitro enzymatic assay on tissue extracts as a measure of reporter gene expression. Furthermore, the data obtained from the quantification of luciferase activity were validated, by measuring extract the content of specific mRNA encoded by genes known to be direct targets of estrogens, in collected tissues. These experiments show how and the extent to which ER transcriptional activity changes from 6 up to 22 months of age. The addition of a group of ovx animals shows whether surgical ovx affects ER activity differently from natural menopause. The extent to which at menopause and after ERs are activated by different factors than estradiol is relevant for the understanding of the causal link between menopause and onset of disorders associated with aging
Electronic Dictionaries for Information Retrieval, Automatic Textual Analysis and Semantic-Based Data Mining Software
No full textToday Lexicon-Grammar (LG) remains one of the most consistent
Natural Language Processing (NLP) approaches, especially for
Semantic-Based Data Mining (SBDM) and Semantic Web. Its main goal
is to describe all mechanisms of word combinations closely related to the
concrete use of lexical units and to sentence creation. Also, it gives an
exhaustive description of lexical and syntactic structures of several
languages. LG was set up by the French linguist Maurice Gross during
the ‘60s, and subsequently developed for and applied to Italian by
Annibale Elia, Emilio D’Agostino and Maurizio Martinelli. Its
theoretical approach is prevalently based on Zelig Sabbettai Harris’
Operator-Argument Grammar, which assumes that each human language
is a self-organizing system, and that the syntactic and semantic properties
of a given word may be calculated on the basis of the relationships this
word has with all other co-occurring words inside given sentence
contexts. Simple sentences2 are the minimal linguistic meaning structures
upon which LG founds its studies on natural language syntactic features.
In the last twenty years, LG has also reached important results in the
domain of automatic textual analysis and parsing with NLP-oriented
software such as INTEX3, UNITEX4, and more recently NOOJ5.
1 Alberto Postiglione is author of paragraph 4.1. Mario Monteleone is author of
paragraphs 3.1 and 4. Federica Marano is author of paragraphs 3.2 and 4.3. Johanna
Monti is author of sections 1 and 2. Antonella Napoli is author of paragraph 4.2.
2 In LG, a simple sentence is formed by a unique predicative element (a verb, but
also a name or an adjective) plus all the necessary arguments it selects to achieve
acceptability and grammaticality. The study of simple sentences is completed analyzing
the rules of co-occurrence and selection restriction, which are distributional and
transformational rules based on predicate syntactic-semantic properties.
3 For more on INTEX, see http://intex.univ-fcomte.fr/.
4 For more on UNITEX, see http://www-igm.univ-mlv.fr/~unitex/.
5 For more on NooJ, see http://www.nooj4nlp.net/pages/nooj.html.
ALBERTO POSTIGLIONE - MARIO MONTELEONE -
FEDERICA MARANO - JOHANNA MONTI - ANTONELLA NAPOLI1
Università degli Studi di Salerno
ELECTRONIC DICTIONARIES FOR INFORMATION RETRIEVAL,
AUTOMATIC TEXTUAL ANALYSIS AND SEMANTIC-BASED
DATA MINING SOFTWARE
1. Theoretical and analytical framework: Lexicon-Gramma
La Necropoli a domus de janas di Ena Cuada-Villanova Monteleone (SS)
No full textLa necropoli di Ena Cuada consta di dieci ipogei situati nella parte N-O del territorio di Villanova Monteleone, non lontano dal confine comunale con Ittiri. Delle dieci sepolture conosciamo lo sviluppo planimetrico di nove; l'ultima, a causa del riempimento, è inaccessibile. Le domus de janas presentano generalmente planimetria atipica: solo tre di esse, la II, la III e la VIII, pare avessero, nel
primo impianto, sviluppo a "T", variato, in seguito, dall'aggiunta di altri ambienti, creati, probabilmente, per sopraggiunte necessità
Insecure Attachment and Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis Functioning in People With Eating Disorders
No full textOBJECTIVE: Childhood attachment experiences affect adult emotion regulation and ability to cope with stressors. Therefore, insecure attachment may influence the functioning of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and a dysregulation of HPA axis has been found in insecure attached healthy individuals. The effects of attachment on HPA axis activity have never been investigated in eating disorders (EDs). Therefore, we assessed the relationships between insecure attachment and the cortisol awakening response (CAR) in adults with EDs.METHODS: Seventy-eight patients with EDs (43 with anorexia nervosa, 35 with bulimia nervosa) were recruited. They completed the Experience in Close Relationships questionnaire, which provides a rating of two insecure attachment dimensions (anxiety and avoidance) and collected saliva samples to measure the CAR. Differences in the CAR between groups with high and low attachment anxiety and between groups with high and low attachment avoidance were evaluated by repeated measures two-way analysis of variance.RESULTS: Patients with high attachment anxiety showed a reduced CAR compared with those with low attachment anxiety (F1,76 = 7.31, p = .008). The CAR did not differ between the groups with high and low attachment avoidance (F1,76 = 0.01, p = .93). Patients with high levels of insecure attachment showed a more severe eating-related psychopathology.CONCLUSIONS: Our data show, for the first time, a specific association of the anxious attachment with the HPA axis activity in EDs and suggest a possible role of attachment in the biological vulnerability to stress of adult patients with EDs
Oxytocin secretion in anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa: investigation of its relationships to temperament personality dimensions
No full textEmotional reactivity and eating disorder related attitudes in response to the Trier Social Stress Test: an experimental study in people with Anorexia Nervosa and with Bulimia Nervosa
No full textBackground: In order to experimentally asses the role of socio-emotional problems in Eating Disorder (ED) psychopathology, we have measured affective states and ED-related attitudes in response to an acute psycho- social stress and their relationships with interpersonal sensitivity in people with Anorexia Nervosa (AN) and Bulimia Nervosa (BN).
Methods: Twenty-one women with AN, 21 with BN and 27 healthy women underwent an acute psycho-social challenge, the Trier Social Stress Test. Anxiety feelings, hunger perception, amount of desired food and body dissatisfaction were measured throughout the experimental procedure. The relationships between these vari- ables and with interpersonal sensitivity measures were explored through Pearson's correlation and mediation analyses.
Results: Stress-induced anxiety was increased in people with EDs. People with AN showed reduced hunger perception, decreased desire for food and a negative association between anxiety feelings and desire for food. In people with EDs, baseline ineffectiveness predicted post-stress body dissatisfaction through the mediation of post-stress anxiety levels.
Limitations: The relatively low sample size and the lack of an experimental control condition are the main limitations of the study.
Conclusions: The present findings show, for the first time, the relationships between socio-emotional distress and ED-related attitudes in people with EDs, providing experimental support to the interpersonal model of EDs. This gives empirical evidence to treatments targeting interpersonal problems in EDs
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