Search results for " Cognitive Neuroscience"
showing 10 items of 36 documents
Reading for meaning in dyslexic and young children : distinct neural pathways but common endpoints
2009
Developmental dyslexia is a highly prevalent and specific disorder of reading acquisition characterised by impaired reading fluency and comprehension. We have previously identified fMRI- and ERP-based neural markers of impaired sentence reading in dyslexia that indicated both deviant basic word processing and deviant semantic incongruency processing. However, it remained unclear how specific these impairments are for dyslexia, as they occurred when children with dyslexia (DYS) were compared to chronological age-matched controls (CA) who also differ in the amount of reading experience. Adding a younger control group at a similar reading level (RL) as the dyslexic group, we examined here whic…
Subclinical executive function impairment in children with asymptomatic, treated phenylketonuria: A comparison with children with immunodeficiency vi…
2018
In this study we compared the neuropsychological profile of phenylketonuria (PKU) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to examine the specificity of the executive function (EF) impairment reported in these two patologies. A total of 55 age-matched children and adolescents were assessed, including 11 patients with PKU, 16 patients with HIV and 28 healthy controls, underwent a neuropsychological assessment. Although neither the PKU nor the HIV group scored below the normative ranges, both groups showed lower scores in neuropsychological tests engaging EFs than controls. In addition, compared to patients with PKU the HIV group performed significantly worse in the Trail-Making Test A, Corsi S…
Time processing in children with Tourette's syndrome.
2010
Background: Tourette syndrome (TS) is characterized by dysfunctional connectivity between prefrontal cortex and sub-cortical structures, and altered meso-cortical and/or meso-striatal dopamine release. Since time processing is also regulated by fronto-striatal circuits and modulated by dopaminergic transmission, we hypothesized that time processing is abnormal in TS. Methods: We compared time processing abilities between nine children with TS-only (i.e. without major psychiatric comorbidities) and 10 age-matched healthy children, employing a time reproduction task in which subjects actively reproduce different temporal intervals, and a time comparison task in which subjects judge whether a …
A human post-mortem brain model for the standardization of multi-centre MRI studies
2015
Multi-centre MRI studies of the brain are essential for enrolling large and diverse patient cohorts, as required for the investigation of heterogeneous neurological and psychiatric diseases. However, the multi-site comparison of standard MRI data sets that are weighted with respect to tissue parameters such as the relaxation times (T1, T2) and proton density (PD) may be problematic, as signal intensities and image contrasts depend on site-specific details such as the sequences used, imaging parameters, and sensitivity profiles of the radiofrequency (RF) coils. Water or gel phantoms are frequently used for long-term and/or inter-site quality assessment. However, these phantoms hardly mimic t…
Motor cortical plasticity induced by motor learning through mental practice
2015
Several investigations suggest that actual and mental actions trigger similar neural substrates. Motor learning via physical practice results in long-term potentiation (LTP)-like plasticity processes, namely potentiation of M1 and a temporary occlusion of additional LTP-like plasticity. However, whether this neuroplasticity process contributes to improve motor performance through mental practice remains to be determined. Here, we tested skill learning-dependent changes in primary motor cortex (M1) excitability and plasticity by means of transcranial magnetic stimulation in subjects trained to physically execute or mentally perform a sequence of finger opposition movements. Before and after …
Stability and l1-gain analysis for positive 2D T–S fuzzy state-delayed systems in the second FM model
2014
This paper considers the problems of delay-dependent stability and l"1-gain analysis for a class of positive two-dimensional (2D) Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy linear systems with state delays described by the second FM model. Firstly, the co-positive type Lyapunov function method is applied to establish sufficient conditions of asymptotical stability for the addressed positive 2D T-S fuzzy system. Then, the l"1-gain performance analysis for the positive 2D T-S fuzzy delayed system is studied. All the obtained results are formulated in the form of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) which are computationally tractable. Finally, an illustrative example is given to verify the effectiveness of the p…
Advancing psychotherapy and evidence-based psychological interventions
2013
Psychological models of mental disorders guide research into psychological and environmental factors that elicit and maintain mental disorders as well as interventions to reduce them. This paper addresses four areas. (1) Psychological models of mental disorders have become increasingly transdiagnostic, focusing on core cognitive endophenotypes of psychopathology from an integrative cognitive psychology perspective rather than offering explanations for unitary mental disorders. It is argued that psychological interventions for mental disorders will increasingly target specific cognitive dysfunctions rather than symptom-based mental disorders as a result. (2) Psychotherapy research still lack…
Acetaldehyde, motivation and stress: Behavioral evidence of an addictive ménage à trois
2017
Acetaldehyde contributes to alcohol’s psychoactive effects through its own rewarding properties. Recent studies shed light on the behavioral correlates of acetaldehyde administration and the possible interactions with key neurotransmitters for motivation, reward and stress-related response, such as dopamine and endocannabinoids. This mini review critically examines acetaldehyde psychoactive properties, focusing on behavioral investigations able to unveil acetaldehyde motivational effects and their pharmacological modulation in vivo. Similarly to alcohol, rats spontaneously drink acetaldehyde, whose presence is detected in the brain following chronic self-administration paradigm. Acetaldehyd…
QUALI FENOMENI PER L’ESTETICA EMPIRICA?
2020
Empirical Aesthetics profits from the research in Cognitive Neurosciences and the target article collects multiple evidence on the neurobiological basis of art and aesthetic experience in order to submit that psychological models give a new definition of the field of Psychology of Arts, if they integrate this empirical evidence with the perceptual, emotional and cognitive capacities, which are assumed to give rise to art and aesthetic experience. The opinion article raises questions about the variety of phenomena in the field, the common methodology to experimental research on cognition and aesthetics, the manifold perceptual attributes which support art and aesthetic cognition, the potenti…
Signal reconstruction, modeling and simulation of a vehicle full-scale crash test based on Morlet wavelets
2012
Creating a mathematical model of a vehicle crash is a task which involves considerations and analysis of different areas which need to be addressed because of the mathematical complexity of a crash event representation. Therefore, to simplify the analysis and enhance the modeling process, in this paper a novel wavelet-based approach is introduced to reproduce acceleration pulse of a vehicle involved in a crash event. The acceleration of a colliding vehicle is measured in its center of gravity-this crash pulse contains detailed information about vehicle behavior throughout a collision. Three types of signal analysis are elaborated here: time domain analysis (i.e. description of kinematics of…