117,392 research outputs found
Una nuova fonte per il Ciompo. Niccolò Machiavelli e il "De Nobilitate" di Antonio de’ Ferrariis
No full textUna "tirannide elettiva". Ovvero: ciò che gli umanisti e Machiavelli possono insegnarci sulla dittatura e sullo "stato di eccezione"
No full textPaladini d’argilla. Il “Furioso” sulle maioliche istoriate e la sfida figurativa di Ariosto
No full textRight Inferior Parietal Lobule Activity Is Associated With Handwriting Spontaneous Tempo
No full textHandwriting is a complex activity including motor planning and visuomotor integration and referring to some brain areas identified as “writing centers.” Although temporal features of handwriting are as important as spatial ones, to our knowledge, there is no evidence of the description of specific brain areas associated with handwriting tempo. People with multiple sclerosis (PwMS) show handwriting impairments that are mainly referred to as the temporal features of the task. The aim of this work was to assess differences in the brain activation pattern elicited by handwriting between PwMS and healthy controls (HC), with the final goal of identifying possible areas specific for handwriting tempo. Subjects were asked to write a sentence at their spontaneous speed. PwMS differed only in temporal handwriting features from HC and showed reduced activation with a subset of the clusters observed in HC. Spearman’s correlation analysis was performed between handwriting temporal parameters and the activity in the brain areas resulting from the contrast analysis, HC > PwMS. We found that the right inferior parietal lobule (IPL) negatively correlated with the duration of the sentence, indicating that the higher the right IPL activity, the faster the handwriting performance. We propose that the right IPL might be considered a “writing tempo center.
Is the 12 minute-walk/run test a predictive index of cognitive fitness in young healthy individuals? A pilot study on aerobic capacity and working memory in a real-life scenario
No full textThe aim of this study was to investigate the correlation between a field test assessing aerobic capacity (namely, the 12 minute-walk/run test, 12m-WRT) and the performance of students of distinct school-grade levels at two different working memory (WM)-related tasks. Forty participants (21 males, 19 females, mean age 19.18 ± 6.18 years, range 10-24) have been assessed using the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT) and the Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT) as WM measures, and a walk/run test of 12 minutes to indirectly measure the aerobic capacity (VO2max). We found significant correlations between VO2max and PASAT and between VO2max and SDMT. Two different trends were identified in relation to the individual level of formal education. In particular, aerobic fitness showed higher predictive values on WM performance when investigated with PASAT in primary and secondary school students, whilst increasing predictive values of physical condition on SDMT's scores were observed with the progressing of students’ school career, reaching maximal values in university students. No significant correlations were observed between age and the cognitive tests, nor between age and VO2max. The present findings suggest that the 12m-WRT is associated with WM performance, showing different correlation with PASAT and SDMT according to the school-grade level. This might be due to the different effects that aerobic fitness has on specific neural substrates during development and opens avenues to research new tools able to monitor the health of the brain in young subjects
Mentally simulated motor actions in neurorehabilitation. A pilot study in multiple sclerosis
No full textUpper limb motor training based on task-oriented exercises induces functional brain reorganization in patients with multiple sclerosis
No full textThe aim of this work was to investigate changes in motor performance and in the brain activation pattern during finger movements, following upper limb motor training in multiple sclerosis. Thirty people with multiple sclerosis with mild upper limb sensorimotor deficits were randomly allocated to one of two groups: the experimental group (n = 15) received an upper limb treatment based on voluntary task-oriented movements; the control group (n = 15) underwent passive mobilization of shoulder, elbow, wrist and fingers. All participants completed three treatment sessions per week for eight weeks. Before and after the intervention, all participants were evaluated for motor performance by means of Action Research Arm Test, Nine Hole Peg Test, and grip strength by a dynamometer, and for brain activations by functional magnetic resonance imaging during right finger opposition movements. Similar effects on motor performance were found in the two groups. A significant improvement with time was found in both groups at NHPT and in GRIP strength; a similar trend was found at ARAT. However, only the experimental group showed increased lateralization towards more normal brain activation following treatment, with activation clusters mainly located in the left brain hemisphere and right cerebellum. In conclusion, both active and passive interventions were effective in improving motor performance. However, only the treatment based on voluntary task-oriented movements could induce changes in brain activity that may have reflected skill acquisition by the right hand, reducing the activation of compensatory areas and decreasing brain resource demand
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe 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
The last chance to pass the ball: Investigating the role of temporal expectation and motor resonance in processing temporal errors in motor actions
No full textHumans can acquire information on others' motor outputs (action prediction) and intentions (action understanding) according to their individual motor repertoire and to the detected gesture's features (e.g. temporal patterns). We aimed at dissociating between action prediction and action understanding abilities in soccer players and novices observing soccer action videos including correct timing pass (CTP) or delayed pass (DP). First, we used an occluding paradigm to evaluate participants' ability to predict the correct time to pass the ball. Although soccer players showed reduced reaction times, all subjects showed a similar pattern of performance: during DP observation, responses appeared delayed with respect to the other conditions but anticipated with respect to the observed DP. In a separate experiment, we investigated the ability to recognize CTP vs DP and the modulation of primary motor cortex (M1) excitability associated to video observation. Only soccer players showed selective modulation of M1 according to the plausibility of the observed action, with increased excitability during the observation of the CTP and in a phase preceding the DP. In conclusion, action prediction ability seems to be independent from the individual motor repertoire. By contrast, only subjects with previously acquired sensorimotor skills are able to infer the observed action's long-term intention
Adaptive versus non-adaptive cognitive rehabilitation training based on working memory: effects on people with multiple sclerosis
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