130,436 research outputs found
Disabilità cognitiva e diagnosi di simulazione: una prova di riconoscimento di numeri a scelta obbligata
No full textObjective: to investigate the usefulness of a Forced Choice Recognition Memory Test for Numbers to detect malingering or exaggeration of cognitive dysfunctions in order to obtain compensation.
Subjects: Malingering was assessed in 2 normal groups, both of 50, and 3 pathological groups: mild traumatic brain injured subjects (n 30), minimal (n 20) and mild Alzheimer subjects (n 20), and mental retarded subjects (n 20).
Test and Procedures: The forced choice recognition memory test for numbers requires subjects to identify wich of two five digit numbers shown on a card was the same as a number seen prior to a brief delay. Two sets of 18 trials have delays of 5 and 10 sec, for a total of 36 trials.
Results: In normal group, who was asked to answer at random, correct choices were the 47%, while in the second normal group, using standard procedure, were at maximum level. Alzheimer patients, specially minimals, performed like normals. Mental retarded showed only mild impairment. Both pathological groups averaged over 90% correct responses, in contrast to a group of suspected malingerers TBI whose correct responses averaged only 25%. Moreover, TBI showed an inconsistency between initial injury severity and level of neuropsychological test performance.
Conclusions: The findings suggest that financial incentives and inconsistency in performance levels are important risk factors with regard to invalid performance during neuropsychological evaluations of traumatic brain injury subjects. The Forced Choice Recognition Memory Test for Numbers appears to offer a good support to detect this possible influence. This Test is a very short and quick procedure that doesn’t require any complex attentive, perceptive and mnesic processes. Even a few errors should raise the suspicion of poor motivation on a test this easy. In fact, administering this task to groups of mild Alzheimer and mental retarded subjects found that both patients groups made almost perfect score. When a disability would be advantageous, complaints that appear to exceed by far what the injury would be expected to cause signal the possibility of malingering. This test is easier and quickler than the others clinical tests currently available and results effective in classifying patients and simulators correctly. So, it can be used in neuropsychological assessment, specially in insurance and litigation context.
However, malingering detection need a thorough neuropsychological examination in conjunction with careful clinical studies and case-history investigation. Only this holistic approach will bring out performance discrepancies that are inconsistent with normal neuropsychological expectations and simultaneously it will avoid underestimation of real cognitive dysfunctions
il test VI. DI. per la valutazione del vissuto della diversità in età infantile: dati preliminari.
No full text
Pediatric chronic migraine severity and maternal stress
No full textPrimary headache is an increasing phenomenon in pediatric age, and very often, it causes disabling limitations in children's daily activities, negatively affecting family well-being. There are conflicting data in the literature on the impact of children's migraines on parental experienced stress. This study aimed to evaluate maternal stress in a sample of school-aged children with a migraine without aura (MwoA) and its correlation with migraine intensity and frequency. A total of 474 mothers aged between 31 and 55 participated in the study: 237 were mothers of children with MwoA, and 237 were mothers of typical developing children. All participants were administered the Parent Stress Index-Short Form (PSI-SF) for the assessment of parental stress; the Pediatric Migraine Disability Assessment (PedMIDAS) was administered to children with MwoA to assess the presence of a related disability migraine. The results showed a significantly higher rate of stress in mothers of MwoA children (p < 0.001) in all the domains explored by the PSI-SF and a statistically significant correlation between the maternal stress total score and the intensity and frequency of migraine attacks (p < 0.0001). This study highlights the need for the holistic contribution of the family to be considered in the clinical management of pediatric migraines
Modulating fluency with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation over right or left inferior frontal gyrus
No full textObjective
In these last years, a growing body of evidence has already indicated that non-invasive brain stimulation techniques, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), can modulate the language system in aphasic populations. The aim of this presentation is to investigate for the first time the effects of inhibitory rTMS over the left and right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) on phonemic fluency tasks.
Participants
Sixty-six right-handed healthy participants participated in the study. Forty-four had administered offline low-frequency (1 Hz) rTMS for 10 minutes and verbal fluency outcome measures were recorded. Twenty-two participants were assigned to the control group, with only measures of verbal fluency recorded, to evaluate the potential contribution of practice effects on verbal fluency tasks.
Results
rTMS-inhibition of the right IFG improved verbal fluency performance while rTMS-inhibition of the left IFG worsened fluency performance. There is no evidence that the results were the subject of practice effects.
Conclusion
These findings suggest that the cerebral network dedicated to verbal fluency processing is facilitated by inhibitory rTMS over the right IFG. We hypothesize that, in healthy participants, the application of inhibitory rTMS over the right IFG may decrease the interhemispheric inhibition to the left frontal regions critical for verbal fluency and improve verbal fluency performance. We suggest that a similar stimulation protocol may be used to enhance phonemic fluency performance in left frontal patients affected by oral language production deficits
Una nuova batteria di test di memoria di riconoscimento verbale e non verbale: uno studio preliminare.
No full textStandardizzazione di tre nuovi test di memoria di riconoscimento verbale e non verbale: uno studio preliminare.
No full textIl lavoro presenta la costruzione e standardizzazione di una nuova batteria di test
neuropsicologici per la valutazione della memoria di riconoscimento verbale e non verbale. La
batteria è composta da tre subtest: parole, volti non familiari ed edifici sconosciuti. I test sono stati
standardizzati su un campione italiano di 308 soggetti normali di entrambi i sessi, di età compresa
tra 20 e 80 anni e scolarità da 5 a 19 anni. I punteggi ai tre test risultano normalmente distribuiti. Le
tre prove risultano di difficoltà uguale e graduata e sono confrontabili tra loro. La batteria consente
di differenziare sia deficit globali che selettivi
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