196,078 research outputs found
“Manichette per scrivere, forbicette, ditale e aghirolo”. L’educazione femminile presso le Clarisse Cappuccine di Lugano
No full textRepresenting tools as hand movements: Early and somatotopic visuomotor transformations
No full textAbstractThe term affordance defines a property of objects, which relates to the possible interactions that an agent can carry out on that object. In monkeys, canonical neurons encode both the visual and the motor properties of objects with high specificity. However, it is not clear if in humans exists a similarly fine-grained description of these visuomotor transformations. In particular, it has not yet been proven that the processing of visual features related to specific affordances induces both specific and early visuomotor transformations, given that complete specificity has been reported to emerge quite late (300–450ms). In this study, we applied an adaptation-stimulation paradigm to investigate early cortico-spinal facilitation and hand movements׳ synergies evoked by the observation of tools. We adapted, through passive observation of finger movements, neuronal populations coding either for precision or power grip actions. We then presented the picture of one tool affording one of the two grasps types and applied single-pulse Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to the hand primary motor cortex, 150ms after image onset. Cortico-spinal excitability of the Abductor Digiti Minimi and Abductor Pollicis Brevis showed a detailed pattern of modulations, matching tools׳ affordances. Similarly, TMS-induced hand movements showed a pattern of grip-specific whole hand synergies. These results offer a direct proof of the emergence of an early visuomotor transformation when tools are observed, that maintains the same amount of synergistic motor details as the actions we can perform on them
The ontogenesis of action syntax
No full textLanguage and action share similar organizational principles. Both are thought to be hierarchical and recursive in nature. Here we address the relationship between language and action from developmental and neurophysiological perspectives. We discuss three major aspects: The extent of the analogy between language and action; the necessity to extend research on the yet largely neglected aspect of action syntax; the positive contribution of a developmental approach to this topic. We elaborate on the claim that adding an ontogenetic approach will help to obtain a comprehensive picture about both the interplay between language and action and its development, and to answer the question whether the underlying mechanisms of detecting syntactic violations of action sequences are similar to or different from the processing of language syntactic violations
Editorial: Understanding the socio-emotional and socio-cognitive developmental pathways in children with sensory impairment
No full text
A multistatic tomographic approach to microwave imaging of dielectric targets
No full textIn the last years, the development of microwave imaging systems, aimed at reconstructing images of the dielectric properties of unknown targets from measures of the scattered field, has been a continuously pursued target. There are mainly two topics that must be faced. First of all, it is necessary to create fast and efficient measurement setups for obtaining the samples of the scattered electric field. Secondly, it is necessary to develop numerical methods able to extract from such measured values the needed information. In this paper, a multistatic measurement setup and an efficient reconstruction procedure are presented. Experimental results are provided in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system
Abnormal elevation of international normalized ratio in a patient during the coadministration of elvitegravir/cobicistat/emtricitabine/tenofovir alafenamide and warfarin: a case report
No full textMicrowave axial tomograph for medical applications: Preliminary set-up configuration
No full textImaging approaches based on the use of microwaves are acquiring an ever growing importance in several fields. Recently, applications of such approaches to medical imaging, e.g., for breast tumor identification, have also been proposed in the scientific literature. The present Authors are developing a microwave tomograph able to create images of a predefined investigation area by solving the inverse scattering problem which relates the measured electric field data to the dielectric properties of the investigated objects. In the present paper, a description of such system is reported and some advances needed to adapt it for medical imaging are devised by means of numerical simulation involving simplified models
Reconstruction of metallic inclusions inside dielectric targets by means of a microwave tomographic system
No full textExperimental results concerning the inspection at microwave frequencies of wood material with metallic inclusions are reported. They have been obtained by inverting samples of the scattered electromagnetic field collected by a prototype of an imaging system. The system is able to acquire multi-illumination multiview data in a tomographic arrangement. The retrieved maps of the dielectric permittivity and electric conductivity of the cross sections of unknown targets are obtained by applying the distorted-wave Born approximation to the electric field integral equation governing the scattering phenomenon
Electromagnetic imaging of dielectric targets by using a tomographic systems
No full textThe reconstruction of plastic targets by using an electromagnetic imaging system working at microwave frequencies is considered. A prototype of a tomograph is used to measure field scattered data in a multi-illumination multi-view arrangement. The samples of the field are used to retrieve the two-dimensional distributions of the dielectric parameters of the target under test. Experimental results are provided and the overall reconstruction quality is evaluated
- …
