Search results for "Psicobiologia"
showing 10 items of 285 documents
Processing Past Tense in the left cerebellum
2014
We report the case of a patient with ischemic lesion of the left cerebellum, who showed specific deficits in processing past versus future tense of action verbs. These findings confirm, in the presence of cerebellar damage, previous results obtained with transcranial magnetic stimulation in healthy subjects and suggest a specificity of the left cerebellum for preparation of responses to the past tense of action verbs. As part of the procedural brain, the cerebellum could play a role in applying the linguistic rules for selection of morphemes typical of past and future tense formation.
Selective sparing of face learning in a global amnesic patient
2001
Objective - To test the hypothesis that visual memory for faces can be dissociated from visual memory for topographical material. Method - A patient who developed a global amnesic syndrome after acute carbon monoxide poisoning is described. A neuroradiological examination documented severe bilateral atrophy of the hippocampi. Results - Despite a severe anterograde memory disorder involving verbal information, abstract figures, concrete objects, topographical scenes, and spatial information, the patient was still able to learn previously unknown human faces at a normal (and, in some cases, at a higher) rate. Conclusions - Together with previous neuropsychological evidence documenting selecti…
Remembering what but not where: independence of spatial and visual working memory in the human brain
2001
We report the neuropsychological and MRI investigation of a patient (MV) who developed a selective impairment of visual-spatial working memory (WM) with preservation not only of verbal, but also of visual shape WM, following an ischemic lesion in the cerebral territory supplied by one of the terminal branches of the right anterior cerebral artery. MV was defective in visual-spatial WM whether the experimental procedure involved arm movement for target pointing or not. Also, in agreement with the role generally assigned to visual-spatial WM in visual imagery. MV was extremely slow in the mental rotation of visually and verbally presented objects. In striking contrast with the WM deficit, MV'…
In vivo definition of parieto-motor connections involved in planning of grasping movements
2010
We combined bifocal transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) tractography to investigate in humans the contribution of connections originating from different parietal areas in planning of different reaching to grasp movements. TMS experiments revealed that in the left hemisphere functional connectivity between the primary motor cortex (M1) and a portion of the angular gyrus (AG) close to the caudal intraparietal sulcus was activated during early preparation of reaching and grasping movements only when the movement was made with a whole hand grasp (WHG) towards objects in contralateral space. In contrast, a different pathway, linking M1 with a part of the su…
“My Mind Is Doing It All”
2015
Objective: To study whether pressure of speech in jargon aphasia arises out of disturbances to core language or executive processes, or at the intersection of conceptual preparation. Background: Conceptual preparation mechanisms for speech have not been well studied. Several mechanisms have been proposed for jargon aphasia, a fluent, well-articulated, logorrheic propositional speech that is almost incomprehensible. Methods: We studied the vast quantity of jargon speech produced by patient J.A., who had suffered an infarct after the clipping of a middle cerebral artery aneurysm. We gave J.A. baseline cognitive tests and experimental word-and sentencegeneration tasks that we had designed for …
Voluntary wheel running protects against the increase in ethanol consumption induced by social stress in mice
2020
Abstract Previous studies have shown that exposure to social defeat (SD), a model of social stress, produces a long-term increase in the consumption of ethanol, most likely through an increase in the neuroinflammation response. The aim of the present study was to evaluate whether exposure to physical activity in the form of voluntary wheel running (VWR) could block the increase in ethanol consumption and the neuroinflammatory response induced by social stress. Mice were exposed to either 4 sessions of repeated social defeat (RSD) or a non-stressful experience. During the whole procedure, half of the mice were exposed to controlled physical activity, being allowed 1 h access to a low-profile…
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 …
Decreased kynurenine pathway potentiate resilience to social defeat effect on cocaine rewa
2021
The kynurenine (KYN) pathway of tryptophan (TRP) degradation is activated by stress and inflammatory factors. It is now well established that social stress induces the activation of the immune system, with central inflammation and KYN metabolism being two of the main factors linking stress with depression. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the long-lasting changes in the KYN pathway induced by social defeat (SD) associated with the resilience or susceptibility to an increase in the conditioned rewarding effects of cocaine. Mice were exposed to repeated SD and 3 weeks later, a conditioned place preference (CPP) induced by a subthreshold dose of cocaine (1.5 mg/kg) was developed. K…