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Recent research in comparative psychology suggests that similarities between the behaviour of two individuals may not be the consequence of imitation only, but also of nonimitative social-learning processes. In the present study we aimed to investigate whether these alternative learning processes can take place in human adults, specifically in patients whose ability to imitate has been reduced by brain damage. Left (LBD) and right (RBD) brain-damaged patients were asked to perform four tool use tasks in three experimental conditions: exposure to the apparatus (N); demonstration of the correct solution (C); and demonstration of a failed attempt followed by the correct solution to the problem (I + C). Results suggest that the left hemisphere is indeed critical for action and that selective neuropsychological deficits can affect action imitation and selection of goal-directed movements, independently from each other. Findings also indicate that when the ability to imitate actions is lowered emulation may become available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the case of OTM who presented with dynamic aphasia following a stroke that occurred in the left basal ganglia. He showed drastically reduced spontaneous speech in the context of well preserved naming, repetition and comprehension skills. OTM was particularly impaired in generating words, sentences and phrases when cued by a stimulus allowing many response options. By contrast, when a single response was strongly suggested by a stimulus, he could generate verbal responses adequately. OTM's non-verbal response generation abilities varied across tasks. He performed in the normal range in a motor movement generation test and he produced as many figures as controls when tested on a figural fluency task. He showed, however, many perseverations on this test. Moreover in a random number generation task he produced more responses that were part of ascending and descending series of numbers. The patient's impairments are interpreted as a consequence of two deficits. The first of these consists of an inability to generate verbal responses particularly in situations of high competition and involves the function of left frontal regions. The second deficit is one of impaired novel thought generation as evidenced by perseverations. This second deficit has been proposed to be a function of basal ganglia damage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neurological involvement following coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) is thought to have a neuroinflammatory etiology. Co-ultraPEALut (an anti-inflammatory molecule) and luteolin (an anti-oxidant) have shown promising results as neuroinflammation antagonists. The aim of this study was to describe cognitive impairment in patients with post-COVID-19 treated with co-ultraPEALut. The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), the Prospective–Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ), the Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS), and a subjective assessment were administered at baseline and after 10 months. Patients treated with co-ultraPEALut were retrospectively compared with controls. Twenty-six patients treated with co-ultraPEALut showed a significant improvement in PRMQ (T0: 51.94 ± 10.55, T1: 39.67 ± 13.02, p < 0.00001) and MoCA raw score (T0: 25.76 ± 2.3, T1: 27.2 ± 2, p 0.0260); the MoCA-adjusted score and the FSS questionnaires also showed an improvement, even though it was not statistically significant; and 80.77% of patients reported a subjective improvement. In the control subjects (n = 15), the improvement was not as pronounced (PRMQ T0: 45.77 ± 13.47, T1: 42.33 ± 16.86, p 0.2051; FSS T0: 4.95 ± 1.57, T1: 4.06 ± 1.47, p 0.1352). Patients treated with co-ultraPEALut and corticosteroids were not statistically different from those treated with co-ultraPEALut alone. Neuro-post-COVID-19 patients treated with co-ultraPEALut scored better than controls in MoCA and PRMQ questionnaires after 10 months: this may support the importance of neuroinflammation modulation for neuro-long-COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

FaIk's paper provides a nice cross-species perspective and an interesting background to formulate a theory of the evolution of human language. However the author does not provide a complete overview and analysis of the origins of language and takes for granted the "continuity hypothesis." Also her "infant parking theory" is questionable, as it is not well supported by observations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and purpose: Among the most common post-COVID symptoms, many patients experienced subjective cognitive deficit, commonly named "brain fog," that might be present also in those individuals without severe acute COVID-19 respiratory involvement. Some studies have investigated some of the mechanisms that might be associated with the brain fog with objective techniques including transcranial magnetic stimulation and neuroimaging. Methods: The aim of this study was to investigate the presence of electroencephalographic (EEG) alterations in people with post-COVID self-reported cognitive deficit. Results: Out of the 90 patients attending the post-COVID neurology ambulatory service, twenty patients presenting brain fog at least 4 weeks after acute non-severe COVID-19 infection, and without previous history of epilepsy, were investigated with 19-channel EEG, Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). EEG was found altered in 65% of the sample, among which 69% presented a slowing activity and 31% were characterized by epileptic discharges principally in the frontal areas. None of the patients showed DWI MRI lesions. Conclusions: These findings highlight the usefulness of EEG analysis to objectively describe possible neurophysiological abnormalities in post-COVID patients presenting subjective cognitive deficit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: We present two patients who developed neurogenic stuttering after long COVID-19 related to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Methods and Results: Both patients experienced both physical (e.g., fatigue) and cognitive difficulties, which led to impaired function of attention, lexical retrieval, and memory consolidation. Both patients had new-onset stuttering-like speech dysfluencies: Blocks and repetitions were especially evident at the initial part of words and sentences, sometimes accompanied by effortful and associated movements (e.g., facial grimaces and oro-facial movements). Neuropsychological evaluations confirmed the presence of difficulties in cognitive tasks, while neurophysiological evaluations (i.e., electroencephalography) suggested the presence of "slowed" patterns of brain activity. Neurogenic stuttering and cognitive difficulties were evident for 4-5 months after negativization of SARS-CoV-2 nasopharyngeal swab, with gradual improvement and near-to-complete recovery. Conclusions: It is now evident that SARS-CoV-2 infection may significantly involve the central nervous system, also resulting in severe and long-term consequences, even if the precise mechanisms are still unknown. In the present report, long COVID-19 resulted in neurogenic stuttering, as the likely consequence of a "slowed" metabolism of (pre)frontal and sensorimotor brain regions (as suggested by the present and previous clinical evidence). As a consequence, the pathophysiological mechanisms related to the appearance of neurogenic stuttering have been hypothesized, which help to better understand the broader and possible neurological consequences of COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose STIMA, a short test for ideo-motor apraxia, allowing us to quantify the apraxic deficit according to action meaning and affected body segment. STIMA is based on a neurocognitive model holding that there are two processes involved in action imitation (i.e., a semantic route for recognizing and imitating known gestures, and a direct route for reproducing new gestures). The test allows to identify which imitative process has been selectively impaired by brain damage (direct vs. semantic route) and possible deficits depending on the body segment involved (hand/limb vs. hand/fingers). N = 111 healthy participants were administered with an imitation task in two separated blocks of known and new gestures. In each block, half of the gestures were performed mainly with the proximal part of the upper limb and the remaining half with the distal one. It resulted in 18 known gestures (nine proximal and nine distal) and 18 new gestures (nine proximal and nine distal) for a total of 36. Each gesture was presented up to a maximum of two times. Detailed criteria are used to assign the final imitation score. Cut offs, equivalent scores and main percentile scores were computed for each subscale. Participants imitated better known than new gestures, and proximal better than distal gestures. Age influenced performance on all subscales, while education only affected one subscale. STIMA is easy and quick to administer, and compared to previous tests, it offers important information for planning adequate rehabilitation programs based on the functional locus of the deficit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Normally we can perform a variety of goal-directed movements effortlessly. However, damage to the parietal cortex may dramatically reduce this ability, giving rise to optic ataxia and limb apraxia. Patients with optic ataxia show clear misreaches towards targets when presented in the peripheral visual field, whereas limb apraxia refers to the inability to use common tools or to imitate simple gestures. In the present paper we describe the case of a left-brain damaged patient, who presented both symptoms. We systematically investigated both spatial and temporal parameters of his movements, when asked to reach and grasp common objects to move (Experiment 1) or to use them (Experiment 2), presented either in the central or peripheral visual field. Different movement parameters changed in relation to the goal of the task (grasp to move vs. grasp to use), reflecting a normal modulation of the movement to accomplish tasks with different goals. On the other hand, grip aperture appeared to be more affected from both task goal and viewing condition, with a specific decrement observed when CF was asked to use objects presented peripherally. On the contrary, a neat effect of the viewing condition was observed in the spatial distribution of the end-points of the movements, and of the horizontal end point in particular, which were shifted towards the fixation point when reaching towards peripheral targets. We hypothesized that optic ataxia and limb apraxia have a differential effect on the patient’s performance. The specific presence of optic ataxia would have an effect on the movement trajectory, but both symptoms might interact and influence the grasping component of the movement. As a ‘cognitive side of motor control impairment’, the presence of limb apraxia may have increased the task demands in grasping to use the objects thus exacerbating optic ataxia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]