Search results for " psicologia."
showing 10 items of 1980 documents
Cognitive functioning in orthostatic hypotension due to pure autonomic failure.
2004
Psychophysiological science proposes close interactions between cognitive processes and autonomic responses, yet the consequences of autonomic failure on cognitive functioning have not been documented. This pilot study investigates, for the first time, the cognitive profile of 14 patients with Pure Autonomic Failure (PAF). Each patient was administered a comprehensive battery of neuropsychological tests and neuroimaging investigation. A number of patients (n = 6) presented with cognitive impairment. The two most frequent types of impairment were: deficits of speed and attention, and executive functioning. Impairments of free recall memory, intellectual functioning, nominal and calculation f…
Verbal Fluency in Mild Alzheimer's Disease: Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation over the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex
2021
Background: Recent studies showed that in healthy controls and in aphasic patients, inhibitory trains of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over the right prefrontal cortex can improve phonemic fluency performance, while anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the left prefrontal cortex can improve performance in naming and semantic fluency tasks. Objective: This study aimed at investigating the effects of cathodal tDCS over the left or the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) on verbal fluency tasks (VFT) in patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Methods: Forty mild AD patients participated in the study (mean age 73.17±5.61 years). All part…
Reward motivation and neurostimulation interact to improve working memory performance in healthy older adults: A simultaneous tDCS-fNIRS study.
2019
Abstract Several studies have evaluated the effect of anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the prefrontal cortex (PFC) for the enhancement of working memory (WM) performance in healthy older adults. However, the mixed results obtained so far suggest the need for concurrent brain imaging, in order to more directly examine tDCS effects. The present study adopted a continuous multimodal approach utilizing functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to examine the interactive effects of tDCS combined with manipulations of reward motivation. Twenty-one older adults (mean age = 69.7 years; SD = 5.05) performed an experimental visuo-spatial WM task before, during and after …
Evaluation of chronic alcohol self-administration by a 3-bottle choice paradigm in adult male rats. Effects on behavioural reactivity, spatial learni…
2011
Chronic ethanol consumption is able to modify emotional behaviour and cognition in humans. In particular, the effects exerted by alcohol may depend on doses, time and modalities of administration. In this study we investigated, in adult male rats, ethanol self-administration and preference patterns using a 3-bottle choice paradigm with water, 10% ethanol solution, and white wine (10%, v/v), along a four-week period. The influence of alcohol free-access on novelty-induced explorative behaviour in the open field, and on spatial learning and reference memory in the Morris water maze was also evaluated. Our results indicate that: (i) rats show a higher preference for alcohol, in the first two w…
Early detection of memory impairments in older adults: standardization of a short version of the verbal and nonverbal Recognition Memory Test
2018
In several neurological conditions, in elderly and cognitively impaired subjects, memory functioning must be evaluated to early detect the cognitive deterioration processes. In particular, recognition memory assessment is an essential step in the clinical and neuropsychological evaluation of early memory impairments. The Recognition Memory Test (RMT) developed by Smirni et al. (G Ital Psicol XXXVII(1):325-343, 2010) is an effective instrument to assess verbal and nonverbal recognition memory in the Italian population. The current study provides a new, brief, and reliable RMT format to evaluate recognition memory on elderly subjects and it reports normative data in an older adult Italian pop…
MRI-visible perivascular spaces: relationship to cognition and small vessel disease MRI markers in ischaemic stroke and TIA.
2013
Background MRI-visible perivascular spaces (PVS) are potential neuroimaging markers of cerebral small vessel disease, but their functional significance and mechanisms remain uncertain. We investigated the association between PVS and cognitive impairment, and other MRI markers of small vessel disease, in a patient cohort of ischaemic stroke/transient ischaemic attack (TIA) referrals. Methods Data were collected from a prospective observational database. Standardised detailed neuropsychological testing was performed. A validated visual rating scale on T-2-weighted MRI was used to categorise PVS severity; validated scales were used to assess white matter hyperintensities (WMH), cerebral microb…
West syndrome followed by juvenile myoclonic epilepsy: a coincidental occurrence?
2013
Background: West syndrome is an age-dependent epilepsy with onset peak in the first year of life whose aetiology may be symptomatic or cryptogenic. Long-term cognitive and neurological prognosis is usually poor and seizure outcome is also variable. Over the past two decades a few patients with favourable cognitive outcome and with total recovery from seizures were identified among the cryptogenic group suggesting an idiopathic aetiology. Recent research has described two children with idiopathic WS who later developed a childhood absence epilepsy. Case presentation: We reviewed the medical records of patients with West syndrome admitted to the our Child Neuropsychiatry Unit in the last 15 y…
Temporal abnormalities in children with developmental dyscalculia.
2012
Recent imaging studies have associated Developmental dyscalculia (DD) to structural and functional alterations corresponding Parietal and the Prefrontal cortex (PFC). Since these areas were shown also to be involved in timing abilities, we hypothesized that time processing is abnormal in DD. We compared time processing abilities between 10 children with pure DD (8 years old) and 11 age-matched healthy children. Results show that the DD group underestimated duration of a sub-second scale when asked to perform a time comparison task. The timing abnormality observed in our DD participants is consistent with evidence of a shared fronto-parietal neural network for representing time and quantity.…
Intact cross-modality text-specific repetition priming in patients with Alzheimer’s disease
2001
This study was aimed at investigating the basic mechanisms of the normal repetition priming evoked by text re-reading procedures in Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients (Monti, Gabrieli, Wilson, & Reminger, 1994; Monti et al., 1997). For this purpose, we contrasted the reading facilitation elicited by previous reading or listening to a text in a sample of AD patients and a group of age-matched normal controls. Consistent with previous evidence in normal undergraduates (Levy & Kirsner, 1989), previous listening to a text decreased the successive reading time of the same text (cross-modality priming). However, the reading facilitation elicited by previous reading of the same text (within…
Differential involvement of the left frontal and temporal regions in verb naming: A tDCS treatment study
2012
Purpose: In aphasic patients, some studies have already emphasized the efficacy of transcranial direct current stim- ulation (tDCS) during the treatment of noun retrieval deficits. To date, in the same population, there are have been no studies addressing tDCS effects in the recovery of verb retrieval deficits. In this study, we wanted to test the potential of tDCS to improve verb production in a group of aphasic patients. Methods: Seven chronic subjects participated in an intensive language training for their difficulties in action naming. Each subject was treated with tDCS (20 min., 1 mA) over the left hemisphere in three different conditions: anodic tDCS over Wernicke's area, anodic tDCS…