1,721,110 research outputs found
Health Professionals' Experience Using an Azure Voice-Bot to Examine Cognitive Impairment (WAY2AGE)
No full textVirtual Assistants (VA) are a new groundbreaking tool for screening cognitive impairment by healthcare professionals. By providing the volume of data needed in healthcare guidance, better treatment monitoring and optimization of costs are expected. One of the first steps in the development of these items is the experience of the healthcare professionals in their use. The general goal of the current project, WAY2AGE, is to examine healthcare professionals' experience in using an Azure voice-bot for screening cognitive impairment. In this way, back-end services, such as the ChatBot, Speech Service and databases, are provided by the cloud platform Azure (Paas) for a pilot study. Most of the underlying scripts are implemented in Python, Net, JavaScript and open software. A sample of 30 healthcare workers volunteered to participate by answering a list of question in a survey set-up, following the example provided in the previous literature. Based on the current results, WAY2AGE was evaluated very positively in several categories. The main challenge of WAY2AGE is the articulation problems of some older people, which can lead to errors in the transcription of audio to text that will be addressed in the second phase. Following an analysis of the perception of a group of thirty health professionals on its usability, potential limitations and opportunities for future research are discussed
Topographical working memory in children and adolescents with motor disabilities
Full text linkAim: The aim of the present study was to investigate topographical working memory in individuals with motor disabilities. Methods: Topographical working memory was investigated using the Walking Corsi Test in 89 participants with motor disability, mean age 11.5 years, of which 40 with cerebral palsy, 31 with spina bifida, and 18 with orthopaedic or peripheral symptoms. The participants were grouped according to everyday mobility, i.e. walking outdoors, walking indoors, and using wheelchair. A control group constituted 120 typically developing participants, mean age 9.9 years. Results: Individuals with spina bifida, orthopaedic or peripheral symptoms as well as typically developing participants performed significantly larger walking spans than the cerebral palsy group. With respect to mobility, those walking outdoors had significantly larger span than those walking indoors and those using wheelchair for mobility. Conclusions: Participants with outdoor walking in the community, apart from type of motor disability, seem to have improved topographic memory compared to individuals who don’t walk outside and individuals who are mobile through wheelchair. The results highlight the question of development of spatial cognition to enhance participation in social environments. Future research should focus on prematurity in the cerebral palsy group, and on hydrocephalus in the spina bifida group
Looking into recent and remote past: meta-analytic evidence for cortical re-organization of episodic autobiographical memories
No full textEpisodic autobiographical memory (EAM) is pivotal for the development and maintenance of personal identity. However, a theoretical debate still exists about where EAMs are stored in our brain and about hippocampal unique contribution to their recollection. Here we disentangled this issue performing an Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) meta-analysis on 79 neuroimaging experiments, classified according to the remoteness of EAMs, and meta-analytic connectivity modeling. A wide brain network, spanning from occipital to frontal lobe, was involved in recalling EAMs. However, remote and recent EAMs were processed by different nodes of this network: recent EAMs activated angular gyrus, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and hippocampus/parahippocampal gyrus, that we found to be connected with its contralateral homologous, bilateral middle cingulate cortex, left inferior frontal gyrus and left superior parietal lobule. Instead, remote EAMs activated posterior cingulate cortex, that we found to be connected with hippocampus/parahippocampal gyrus. These results provide new important evidence for the theoretical discussion about where and how EAMs are stored in the brain and new exciting insights into hippocampal contribution to EAM
Environmental orientation and navigation in different types of unilateral neglect
No full textIn this paper, we review several studies that analyze the relationship between lateralized deficits of visuo-spatial processing and deficits in the navigational and topographical domain. In particular, we show that in visuo-spatial or perceptual neglect basic navigational skills are spared. In fact, patients affected by perceptual neglect are able to represent travelled distances and build cognitive maps of real environments despite their difficulty in taking into account left-sided elements. By contrast, although they have no explorative deficits, patients affected by representational neglect show selective impairments in developing, storing and using cognitive maps
Una via parieto- temporo mediale per i processi visuo-spaziali: uno studio di connettività funzionale
No full textInteroceptive awareness selectively predicts timing accuracy in irregular contexts
No full textAwareness of psychophysiological changes has been proposed to play a role in duration perception; however, evidence on whether interoceptive awareness affects timing is mixed, and it is not clear which task features favor the reliance on bodily changes to track time. Here we tested the hypothesis that interoceptive awareness is selectively involved in timing when the context does not provide reliable cues on elapsed time. We developed a novel paradigm assessing interval reproduction in two conditions: 1) with regularly spaced stimuli during the encoding/reproduction phase (regular condition), 2) with irregularly spaced stimuli during the encoding/reproduction phase (irregular condition). Interoceptive awareness was assessed using the “Self-Awareness Questionnaire”, investigating the frequency of common bodily sensations. Interoceptive awareness predicted timing accuracy in the irregular, but not in the regular condition; also, the contribution was specifically due to awareness of visceral sensations rather than somatosensory sensations. Overall, results suggest that individual differences in interoception differently affect timing according to contextual features, consistently with evidence that different mechanisms mediate timing in different conditions
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