1,721,017 research outputs found
Prism adaptation combined with serious games for improving visual-constructive abilities in stroke patients: randomized clinical trial
Full text linkIntroduction: Visuomotor adaptation to a displacement of the visual field induced by prismatic lenses can help rehabilitate cognitive deficits when combined with digital cognitive training. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach in rehabilitating visual constructive deficits in stroke patients, assess the generalization of improvements to daily living skills, identify which serious games best predicted improvements. Methods: Thirty stroke patients were randomly assigned to either a control group, receiving standard rehabilitation, or an experimental group, receiving a therapy combining prism adaptation with cognitive training through serious games over ten consecutive sessions. Patients were administered a neuropsychological test battery at baseline (T0) and after 10 days (T1). Visual constructive abilities were evaluated using Freehand Copy of Drawings and Copy of Drawings with Landmarks tests. Spatial attention was evaluated using Albert's Line Cancellation and Line Bisection tests. Functional abilities were evaluated with the Barthel Index. Results: Test scores of the Freehand Copy of Drawings improved from T0 to T1 in both the experimental (6.89 ± 2.7 vs. 7.83 ± 2.9; p = 0.01) and the control group (5.84 ± 2.1 vs. 7.51 ± 2.2; p = 0.01). The improvement was comparable between the two groups (p = 0.38). Test scores of the Copy of Drawings with Landmarks improved from T0 to T1 in the experimental (42.94 ± 19.6 vs. 50.2 ± 18.1; p = 0.007), but not in the control group (39.9 ± 19.6 vs. 42.7 ± 20.9; p = 0.41). The improvement was comparable between the two groups (p = 0.28). In the experimental group, Barthel Index scores at T1 correlated with both Free Hand Copy of Drawings scores (R = 0.651; p = 0.009) and Copy of Drawings with Landmarks scores (R = 0.582; p = 0.02). No correlations were found in the Control Group. Serious games targeting attention and motor planning were predictive of improvements in visual construction. Conclusion: prismatic lenses combined with digital cognitive training improve visual construction and functional abilities in stroke patients, providing a novel method to promote stroke rehabilitation
Behavioral and Socio-Emotional Disorders in Intellectual Giftedness: A Systematic Review
Full text linkThis work systematically reviewed past literature to investigate the association between intellectual giftedness and socio-emotional and/or behavioral disorders. Nineteen studies met the inclusion criteria, 17 of which have children and/or adolescents as participants, and 12 have a non-gifted control group. Socio-emotional problems, such as withdrawal, were found in 3 out of 8 studies; internalizing disorders, such as anxiety, were found in 5 out of 9; externalizing disorders, such as hyperactivity, were found in 3 out of 5. The most investigated comorbidity was attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. A univocal conclusion on the relationship between intellectual giftedness and socio-emotional/behavioral problems cannot be drawn, principally because of the heterogeneity of participants' age, informants, and instruments. The review highlights the need for future studies to use multi-informant and comprehensive assessments, to reach more robust findings, and suggests that age and discrepancy between verbal and non-verbal intellectual abilities should be considered critical factors
Executive function and spatial abilities in physically active children: an explorative study
Full text linkBackground: Regular physical activity has consistently shown promise in improving cognitive functioning among children. However, there is a shortage of comprehensive studies that delve into these benefits across various cognitive domains. This preliminary investigation aimed to discern potential disparities in cognitive performance between active and sedentary children, with a specific focus on inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, and visuo-spatial working memory abilities. Methods: The study employed a cross-sectional design encompassing 26 children (mean age 9.53 ± 2.20 years), categorized into two groups: Active and Sedentary. Executive functions were assessed using the NEPSY-II, while visuo-spatial working memory abilities were evaluated through the table version of the Radial Arm Maze (table-RAM) task. All outputs were analyzed with One-way ANOVAS or Kruskal-Wallis Tests to assess differences between Active and Sedentary children in both executive functioning and visuo-spatial working memory processes. Results: The findings revealed that the Active group outperformed the sedentary group in inhibitory control (F1,23 = 4.99, p = 0.03*), cognitive flexibility (F1,23 = 5.77, p = 0.02*), spatial span (F1,23 = 4.40, p = 0.04*), and working memory errors (F1,23 = 8.59, p = 0.01**). Both spatial span and working memory errors are parameters closely associated with visuo-spatial working memory abilities. Conclusions: Although preliminary, these results offer evidence of a positive link between physical activity and cognitive functioning in children. This indicates the importance of promoting active behaviors, especially within educational environments
Overestimation of Phonological Judgments on the Right Side of Space
Full text linkSpatial attentional biases can be observed during the processing of linguistic material. For example, we previously reported that healthy subjects overestimate the semantic distance between word stimuli in the right vs. left space. Here, we explored whether or not attentional biases are also observed in tasks requiring an evaluation of phonological distance between words in the right and left hemifield. Forty-one healthy subjects were presented with triplets of words arranged in space and were asked to indicate the side of the space in which the phonological distance between the middle word and an outer word was smaller. In Experiment 1, real words and pseudowords were used, while in Experiment 2, only pseudowords and consonant strings were used. Subjects overestimated the phonological distance between the middle and outer words in the right space. These findings were specific to word stimuli. These results are consistent with the idea that semantic and phonological information may be internally mapped onto spatial representations
Long Term Improvement of Episodic Memory in Stroke Patients Following a Short Treatment with Prism Adaptation and Serious Games
No full textEpisodic memory deficits are frequently encountered following stroke. Rehabilitation of these deficits is often associated with short term effects that do not persist at follow up times. Neuromodulation tools acting on alterations of excitation/inhibition dynamics could be useful for rehabilitation of episodic memory. Prism adaptation with visual field deviation ipsilateral to the affected hemisphere can specifically modulate brain excitability and lead to improvement of cognitive deficits in post-stroke patients. Here we investigated whether prism adaptation followed by digital cognitive training could induce long term improvement of episodic memory deficits in stroke patients as compared with traditional rehabilitation.Sixty stroke patients were recruited for the study. Thirty patients were treated with prism adaptation combined with serious games targeting executive processes, with a ten days protocol (experimental group); thirty patients were treated with conventional rehabilitation (control group). Patients were tested with a battery of neuropsychological tests, including verbal and visual episodic memory tasks at four times: at baseline (T0); immediately after the end of the rehab protocol (T1); after 3 months (T2); after six months (T3).The main results showed a significant long term effect of the experimental treatment on both immediate and delayed recall phases of the visual episodic memory task. The effects were not linked to the affected hemisphere (right vs. left), nor to the hemorrhagic or ischemic type of stroke nor to the cortical or subcortical site of lesion.These findings show for the first time an improvement of long term memory in stroke patients following the use of a medical device combining prism adaptation and digital cognitive training, paving the way to novel rehabilitation techniques for cognitive deficits in stroke
Modulation of memory by prism adaptation in healthy subjects
Full text link: Recent findings suggest that prism adaptation can extend its effects beyond spatial attention, modulating the performance of different cognitive tasks by acting on cerebellar, parietal and temporal-frontal networks. We tested groups of healthy subjects to investigate the effects of rightward vs. leftward prism adaptation vs. neutral lenses exposure in a series of memory tasks, probing either short-term (Digit span, Corsi span) or long-term memory (Supraspan verbal and spatial learning). In the short-term memory tasks, leftward prism adaptation selectively increased verbal span, while rightward prism adaptation increased spatial span. In the long-term memory tasks, leftward prism adaptation selectively increased verbal supraspan, i.e., increased the number of digits in the correct sequence reproduced and reduced the number of repetitions needed to learn the supraspan sequence. On the other hand, rightward prism adaptation selectively increased spatial supraspan, i.e. it increased the number of spatial positions in the correct sequence reproduced and reduced the number of repetitions needed to learn the supraspan sequence. Moreover, rightward, but not leftward, prism adaptation selectively increased supraspan recall after a delay interval, regardless of the stimulus material, i.e., it increased the number of digits or spatial positions recalled after a delay interval. Neutral lenses exposure did not influence any memory task. These findings suggest that prism adaptation can induce both modality/hemispheric-specific and process-specific effects on short-term and long-term explicit memory
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Trains at 1 Hz Frequency of the Right Posterior Parietal Cortex Facilitate Recognition Memory
Full text linkNeuroimaging, neuropsychological, and brain stimulation studies have led to contrasting findings regarding the potential roles of the lateral parietal lobe in episodic memory. Studies using brain stimulation methods reported in the literature do not offer unequivocal findings on the interactions with stimulation location (left vs. right hemisphere) or timing of the stimulation (encoding vs. retrieval). To address these issues, active and sham 1 Hz repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) trains of 600 stimuli were applied over the right or left posterior parietal cortex (PPC) before the encoding or before the retrieval phase of a recognition memory task of unknown faces in a group of 40 healthy subjects. Active rTMS over the right but not the left PPC significantly improved non-verbal recognition memory performance without any significant modulation of speed of response when applied before the retrieval phase. In contrast, rTMS over the right or the left PPC before the encoding phase did not modulate memory performance. Our results support the hypothesis that the PPC plays a role in episodic memory retrieval that appears to be dependent on both the hemispheric lateralization and the timing of the stimulation (encoding vs. retrieval)
Improvement of phonemic fluency following leftward prism adaptation
Full text linkAnatomo functional studies of prism adaptation (PA) have been shown to modulate a brain frontal-parieto-temporal network, increasing activation of this network in the hemisphere ipsilateral to the side of prism deviation. This effect raises the hypothesis that left prism adaptation, modulating frontal areas of the left hemisphere, could modify subjects' performance on linguistic tasks that map on those areas. To test this hypothesis, 51 healthy subjects participated in experiments in which leftward or rightward prism adaptation were applied before the execution of a phonemic fluency task, i.e., a task with strict left hemispheric lateralization onto frontal areas. Results showed that leftward PA significantly increased the number of words produced whereas rightward PA did not significantly modulate phonemic fluency. The present findings document modulation of a language ability following prism adaptation. The results could have a huge clinical impact in neurological populations, opening new strategies of intervention for language and executive dysfunctions
Low-Frequency Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation of the Right Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Enhances Recognition Memory in Alzheimer’s Disease
No full textBackground: The lack of effective pharmacological or behavioral interventions for memory impairments associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) emphasizes the need for the investigation of approaches based on neuromodulation. Objective: This study examined the effects of inhibitory repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) of prefrontal cortex on recognition memory in AD patients. Methods: In a first experiment, 24 mild AD patients received sham and real 1Hz rTMS over the left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), in different sessions, between encoding and retrieval phases of a non-verbal recognition memory task. In a second experiment, another group of 14 AD patients underwent sham controlled repeated sessions of 1Hz rTMS of the right DLPFC across a two week treatment. Non-verbal recognition memory task was performed at baseline, at the end of the two weeks period and at a follow up of 1 month. Results: Right real rTMS significantly improved memory performance compared to right sham rTMS (p = 0.001). Left real rTMS left the memory performance unchanged as compared with left sham rTMS (p = 0.46). The two sham conditions did not differ between each other (p = 0.24). In the second experiment, AD patients treated with real rTMS showed an improvement of memory performance at the end of the two weeks treatment (p = 0.0009), that persisted at 1-month follow-up (p = 0.002). Conclusion: These findings provide evidence that inhibitory rTMS over the right DLPFC can improve recognition memory function in AD patients. They also suggest the importance of a new approach of non-invasive brain stimulation as a promising treatment in AD
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