We found that mildly cognitive impaired patients with PD and freezing are less impaired than comparable patients with PD and no freezing in action naming rather than in object naming. This effect may ...be attributable to the compensatory activation of Broca’s area. More, the presence of freezing can induce patients to create behavioural strategies, by offering major care on carrying out executive tasks, including verb naming.
The analysis and assessment of motor tasks, such as gait, can provide important information on the progress of neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease (PD). In this paper, we design a Boby ...Sensor Network (BSN)-based system for the characterization of gait in Parkinsonians through the extraction of kinematic features, in both time and frequency domains, embedding information on the status of the PD. The gait features extraction is performed on a set of 34 PD patients using a BSN formed by only three inertial nodes (one on the chest and one per thigh). We investigate also the relationship between the selected kinematic features and the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) scores assigned to patients by expert neurologists. This work extends a previously proposed approach to the analysis of leg agility and sit-to-stand tasks and, as such, represents a further step to develop a system for automatic and comprehensive evaluation of different PD motor tasks. A performance analysis of different classification techniques is carried out, showing the feasibility of an automatic (and, eventually, remote) UPDRS scoring system, suitable for tele-health applications in the realm of affective medicine.
We describe the first report on the genotype-phenotype patterns and 18F fluoro-deoxygluycose (18F-FDG) Positron Emission Tomography (PET) findings in two disease-discordant monozygotic twins with Cri ...du Chat syndrome (CdcS) presenting deletion of 5p, 46, XY, del(5)(p14)/46, XY. One twin showed a severe phenotype; significant 18F-FDG PET hypometabolism (p=0.001) was revealed in the left and right hemispheres, thalamus, cerebellum, and midbrain, whereas hypermetabolism was detected in the left premotor cortex. The other twin presented a mild phenotype; significant hypometabolism was detected only in the right side (parahippoccampal gyrus and cerebellum). Further studies should investigate the causes of phenotypic discordance in twins with CdcS.
Research in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) produced inconsistent results in demonstrating an association between patients’ symptom severity and their cognitive impairments. The process involved ...in volition aspects of behavioral syndromes can be extensively analyzed using specific tests developed in virtual environments, more suitable to manipulate rules and possible breaks of the normal task execution with different, confusing or stopping instructions. The study involved thirty participants (15 OCD patients and 15 controls) during task execution and the relative interferences. At this purpose, the virtual version of Multiple Errands Test was used. Virtual reality setting, with a higher ecological validity respect to a classic neuropsychological battery, allowed us to take into account deficits of volition and the relative dysexecutive functions associated with OCD patients. The proposed paradigm also allows the development of innovative prototypes of coevolving technologies based on new theories and models and deeper understanding of human behavior.
•Only a limited number of studies have investigated users’ experiences with Facebook in mobile and laboratory settings.•The study use psychophysiological responses to understand if Facebook elicit ...stress or provide an optimal experience.•The study showed preliminary results which have a crucial importance for further studies with higher ecological validity.
Social network sites have been studied extensively with an aim to understand users’ experience during their use. Facebook is the most frequently used social network site, with more than one billion active users. However, despite 819 million of active Facebook users currently accessing it using their mobile device, only a limited number of studies have investigated their experiences with Facebook. Our goal was to objectively verify in an experimental setting the subjective experience of users accessing Facebook through a PC and through a smart phone, which has a higher pervasiveness. Psychophysiological correlates of 28 subjects were measured using wearable biosensors, which record signals through an electrocardiogram; a 14-channel Electroencephalogram; facial Electromyography; an Electrooculogram, and a chest Respiration strip. An accurate signal processing permitted to compute twenty psychophysiological measures for the statistical analysis. The results showed significant patterns in arousal, valence, attention, and anxiety, indicating a subjects’ engagement during Facebook navigation, which was also more evident during the mobile session, suggesting an optimal experience during the pervasive use of Facebook. Some hypotheses and the directions for future studies are presented, in particular, the suggestion to make further studies with higher ecological validity, outside the lab, to assess the ubiquitous use of Facebook.
This study examined the ability of the Boston Qualitative Scoring System (BQSS) in comparison to the Osterrieth scoring method to separate Parkinson’s Disease patients without dementia from healthy ...controls at the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure (ROCF) copy. 30 PD participants and 30 healthy participants completed ROCF copy. The performance was scored according to both methods. The results indicated that PD patients performed significantly worse on ROCF. According to ROC analyses, BQSS Copy Total score represented the most suitable index to distinguish between the two groups: a score below or equal to 16 indicates an impaired performance. Moreover, PD participants reported lower performance in the BQSS scores of Planning and Neatness. PD patients’ poor performance in ROCF copy was related to executive difficulties, specifically in terms of planning and impulsivity, instead of global visuo-constructional impairments. An extensive evaluation of copy drawings allowing to disentangle between different involved cognitive domains would be suitable, specifically in those clinical conditions like PD, in which motor impairments affect drawing performance.
Dyslexia is a chronic problem that affects the life of subjects and often influences their life choices. The standard rehabilitation methods all use a classic paper and pencil training format but ...these exercises are boring and demanding for children who may have difficulty in completing the treatments. It is important to develop a new rehabilitation program that would help children in a funny and engaging way. A Wii-based game was developed to demonstrate that a short treatment with an action video game, rather than phonological or orthographic training, may improve the reading abilities in dyslexic children. According to the results, an approach using cues in the context of a virtual environment may represent a promising tool to improve attentional skills. On the other hand, our results do not demonstrate an immediate effect on reading performance, suggesting that a more prolonged protocol may be a future direction.
Gait disorder is a very frequent and disabling symptom in Parkinson's disease (PD). The aim of this study was to identify the main kinetic and kinematic features of PD gait according to different ...disease stages: early (Early Group), intermediate without freezing (Non-Freezers) and intermediate with freezing (Freezers). Kinematic data showed a distal to proximal progression of impairment from the early to the intermediate with freezing stage. The Early Group showed more accentuated ankle dorsiflexion during stance than the other PD subgroups; the Freezers showed a more flexed hip position at initial contact and a reduced range of motion (ROM) during stance compared with the other patients. The individuals in the intermediate stage (with or without freezing) displayed limited knee ROM. Distal to proximal progression of lower limb impairment in PD might be an expression of a rostral to caudal degeneration of locomotor control centers. Evaluation of the relationship between gait features "Masters and servants" in parkinsonian gait: a three-dimensional analysis of biomechanical changes sensitive to disease progression and disease progression may promote the development of tailored rehabilitation programs.
In this paper, by characterizing the leg agility (LA) task, which contributes to the evaluation of the degree of severity of the Parkinson's disease (PD), through kinematic variables (including the ...angular amplitude and speed of thighs' motion), we investigate the link between these variables and unified Parkinson's disease rating scale (UPDRS) scores. Our investigation relies on the use of a few body-worn wireless inertial nodes and represents a first step in the design of a portable system, amenable to be integrated in Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios, for automatic detection of the degree of severity (in terms of UPDRS score) of PD. The experimental investigation is carried out considering 24 PD patients.
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