1,720,985 research outputs found
Picture and spoken word presentation in repetition training for anomia: does stimulus order matter? Evidence obtained from 12 individuals with chronic aphasia using a computer based telemedicine approach
No full textBackground: Presenting pictures accompanied by the corresponding spoken words to be repeated is a commonly used method for treating naming impairments in aphasic people.
Aims: In this study, we investigated whether the presentation order of pictures and words in repetition training affects treatment outcome.
Methods & Procedures: We administered a computer-based word repetition protocol at a distance to 12 individuals with chronic pure anomia. The words to be repeated were presented with the corresponding pictures. We manipulated the timing of word and picture presentation. In one condition Picture-Word condition (Pic-Wd), the picture onset preceded that of the corresponding spoken word; in the other condition Word-Picture (Wd-Pic), the presentation order was reversed. Data were analyzed at the group and the single subject
level to determine the relative efficacy of the two experimental conditions and the cognitive features predicting therapy success.
Outcomes & Results: The study demonstrates the substantial equivalence of the two presentation orders at the group level. At the single subject level in a minority of cases, there are hints of an asymmetrical response favoring either the Pic-Wd or the Wd-Pic treatment. Non-word repetition skills were the only feature in the participants’ cognitive profile that was reliably linked to therapy outcome.
Conclusions: When pictures are presented alongside the corresponding word in repetition training, stimuli presentation order seems to have only a minor effect on therapy outcome. Potential advantages of both treatments are discussed with reference to the cognitive profile of treated patients
Cognitive and mental health changes and their vulnerability factors related to COVID-19 lockdown in Italy
Full text linkThe COVID-19 pandemic and government imposed social restrictions like lockdown exposed most individuals to an unprecedented stress, increasing mental health disorders worldwide. We explored subjective cognitive functioning and mental health changes and their possible interplay related to COVID-19-lockdown. We also investigated potential risk factors to identify more vulnerable groups. Across Italy, 1215 respondents completed our Qualtrics-based online-survey during the end of a seven to 10-week imposed lockdown and home confinement (from April 29 to May 17, 2020). We found subjective cognitive functioning and mental health severely changed in association with the lockdown. Under government regulations, cognitive complaints were mostly perceived in routine tasks involving attention, temporal orientation and executive functions—with no changes in language abilities. A paradoxical effect was observed for memory, with reduced forgetfulness compared to pre-lockdown. We found higher severity and prevalence of depression, anxiety disorders, abnormal sleep, appetite changes, reduced libido and health anxiety: with mild-to-severe depression and anxiety prevalence climbing to 32 and 36 percent, respectively, under restrictions. Being female, under 45 years, working from home or being underemployed were all identified as relevant risk factors for worsening cognition and mental health. Frequent consumers of COVID-19 mass media information or residents in highly infected communities reported higher depression and anxiety symptoms, particularly hypochondria in the latter. If similar restrictions are reimposed, governments must carefully consider these more vulnerable groups in their decisions, whilst developing effective global and long-term responses to the cognitive and mental health challenges of this type of pandemic; as well as implementing appropriate psychological interventions with specific guidelines: particularly regarding exposure to COVID-19 mass-media reports
Ruolo del sistema dopaminergico nella coordinazione interpersonale in pazienti con Malattia di Parkinson
No full textProspective memory functioning in mild cognitive impairment
No full textThe present study aimed to investigate prospective memory (PM) in persons with mild cognitive impairment (MCI)
Time-based prospective memory functioning in mild cognitive impairment associated with parkinson's disease: Relationship with autonomous management of daily living commitments
Full text linkProspective memory (PM), that is, the ability to keep in memory and carry out intentions in the future, is reported to be impaired in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD). PM failure may be also associated with reduced daily living functioning in these patients. Little is known, however, about the relationship between mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and time-based PM functioning in PD patients and the possible impact of PM deficits on patients' autonomy in daily living. Here we aimed to investigate whether MCI associated with PD affects time-based PM. We also wished to determine whether PM impairment accounts for reduced autonomous management of medication in these patients
Embodying action errors in virtual reality: preliminary EEG data on Parkinson’s Disease
No full textEven simple daily actions, such as grasping a glass, can become challenging in patients with Parkinson’s Disease (PD). In addition to the motor execution deficits, PD patients seem to show a deficient functioning of the performance monitoring system (Farooqui et al., 2011). Previous studies on error monitoring in people with PD showed contrasting results; a few studies found the typical error-related signatures (i.e. error-related negativity, ERN; positivity error, Pe; theta oscillations) comparable to the ones showed by healthy elderly, while others showed a general decreased cortical response to erroneous actions. In particular, the evidence on the effects of the dopaminergic medication on the brain response to errors is still unclear (Holroyd et al., 2002; Stemmer et al., 2007; Willemssen et al., 2008; Cavanagh et al., 2018).
In the present work, by combining EEG and immersive virtual reality (CAVE system), we investigated the mechanisms underlying the performance monitoring system in PD patients during the observation of reach-to-grasp a glass actions performed by an avatar in first person perspective. The preliminary sample included 8 PD tested twice, at a 2-weeks interval. Each patient was tested in two different states namely soon after assuming dopaminergic medication (‘Dopa-ON’) and 12-hour after assuming the medication (overnight washout; ‘Dopa-OFF’). The order of the medication state was counterbalanced across patients. 10 healthy elderly controls were also tested.
Preliminary results replicate and expand our previous findings in young healhty participants (Pavone et al., 2016; Spinelli et al., 2017; Pezzetta et al., 2018) by showing that also healthy elderly exhibit an increased theta power activity (4-8Hz) after the observation of erroneous actions. Interestingly, the same pattern was not found in the PD group, regardless of whether they were in Dopa -ON or -OFF state. We also found a significant difference between correct and erroneous actions in the beta range (12-30Hz), with greater beta power in the erroneous actions, in elderly controls and Dopa-OFF participants. No such result was found in Dopa-ON participants, suggesting a link between the dopaminergic intake and the beta response to actions. Concerning the time-domain, we did not find an ERN, but all three groups showed the typical Positivity Error in response to the erroneous actions. However, in both Dopa-ON and -OFF groups the cortical potential showed lower amplitude compared to the healthy elderly.
Although preliminary, these data can help to better understand the neural dynamics of action monitoring in Parkinson’s Disease
Does Dopamine Depletion Trigger a Spreader Lexical-Semantic Activation in Parkinson’s Disease? Evidence from a Study Based on Word Fluency Tasks
Full text linkIt has been hypothesised that, in Parkinson’s disease (PD), dopamine might modulate spreading activation of lexical-semantic representations. We aimed to investigate this hypothesis in individuals with PD without dementia by assessing word frequency and typicality in verbal fluency tasks. We predicted that the average values of both of these parameters would be lower in PD patients with respect to healthy controls (HC). We administered letter-cued and category-cued fluency tasks to early PD patients in two experimental conditions: the tasks were administered both after 12–18 hours of dopaminergic stimulation withdrawal (“OFF” condition) and after the first daily dose of dopaminergic therapy (“ON” condition). HC were also given the two tasks in two conditions with the same intersession delay as PD patients but without taking drugs. Results showed that in both OFF and ON treatment conditions PD patients did not differ from HC in word frequency or typicality. Moreover, in the PD group, no significant difference was found between the experimental conditions. Our results show that semantic spreading was not altered in the PD sample examined; this suggests that in early PD the functioning of the semantic system is relatively independent from the activity of dopamine brain networks
Implicit Prototype Learning in Patients With Memory Deficit: Evidence From a Study With Alzheimer’s Disease Patients
No full textObjective: In a previous study (Zannino et al., 2012), it was demonstrated that individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) were unimpaired on a new prototype learning task consisting of morphed faces (face prototype learning task [FPLT]). This paradigm was devised to improve on the classical dot pattern task by ruling out any reliance on residual episodic memory or working memory resources. In the present study, we aimed to demonstrate: first, that people with even more severe episodic memory impairment than MCI are unimpaired on a fully implicit prototype learning task and second, that the dot pattern task, at variance with the FPLT, requires a no negligible contribution from the episodic memory system. Method: Twenty-four persons with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 48 healthy controls took part in this experiment. As in the original study, in addition to the FPLT, they were also administered the classical dot pattern task and an ordinary forced-choice face recognition task. Results: AD performed like normal controls in the FPLT but scored significantly worse on the dot pattern task and the face recognition task. Interestingly, although performance on the face recognition task did not correlate with that on the FPLT, a significant correlation was observed between the face recognition and the dot pattern task. Conclusions: Results support both of our claims: first, that also severe amnesic people can learn new visual prototypes with a fully implicit paradigm and, second, that the classical dot pattern task requires some degree of episodic resources. Further research is needed to rule out the role of working memory in solving the FPLT
Subjective organization in the episodic memory of individuals with Parkinson’s disease associated with mild cognitive impairment
No full textWord clustering (i.e., the ability to reproduce the same word pairs in consecutive recall trials of an unrelated word list) has been extensively investigated as a proxy of subjective organization (SO) of memorandum. In healthy subjects and in groups of brain-damaged patients, the rate of SO generally predicts accuracy of word list recall. This study aimed at evaluating SO in the performance of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) on a word list recall task in order to investigate the basic mechanisms of episodic memory impairment that are frequently observed in these patients. For this purpose, 56 PD patients, who were stratified according to the presence and quality of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and a group of healthy controls (HCs) were administered a word list task and an extensive battery of neuropsychological tests. Results showed that recall accuracy on the word list task progressively decreased passing from HC to PD patients without cognitive impairment, to patients with single-domain dysexecutive MCI and to patients with multiple-domain dysexecutive and amnesic MCI. Conversely, only the latter PD group showed a lower SO score than that achieved by the other groups. In the overall PD group, correlational and regression analyses demonstrated that SO scores and a composite score of executive functions were not reciprocally related, but both provided an independent and significant contribution to the prediction of word list recall accuracy. These data are discussed in terms of the contribution of executive functions and hippocampal storage processes to the onset of memory impairment in PD
Apathy in individuals with Parkinson's disease associated with mild cognitive impairment. A neuropsychological investigation
No full textApathy is frequently reported in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) and is hypothesized to be associated with frontal-striatal related cognitive functions. Available data, however, do not provide univocal results. Moreover, this relationship has been poorly investigated in PD patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). This study was aimed at investigating the association between severity of apathy of PD patients and their performance on neuropsychological tests investigating executive abilities.Individuals with PD (i.e., with and without MCI) and healthy controls (HCs) were administered a neuropsychological test battery that investigated episodic memory, language, short-term memory and attention, visual-spatial abilities and executive functions. Subjects were also administered additional neuropsychological tests to evaluate the different executive subcomponents (i.e., planning/abstract reasoning, self-monitoring/response inhibition, working memory, shifting and fluency). The Apathy Evaluation Scale (AES) was administered to assess apathy severity.Linear regression analyses were applied to the data; results showed that in the PD group with MCI, the best cognitive factor associated to the AES score was patients' scores on the executive tests and, in particular, their scores on tests examining planning/abstract reasoning. By contrast, in the PD group without MCI, the cognitive performance was not significantly associated to apathy severity.Findings of the study document a specific association between reduced efficiency of the executive system and apathy severity in individuals with PD and MCI. This association indirectly supports the hypothesis of a relationship between motivational disorders and dysregulation of the activity of the frontal-striatal networks in PD patients
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