Search

Copyright of Die MKG-Chirurgie is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Visual exposure to extreme-sized bodies elicits explicit self-body image variations. Several features of such modulation remain to be clarified. In this study we explored whether this effect: (i) acts on implicit mechanisms in modifying one's body-size perception, (ii) is body-exposure-specific also at the implicit level, and (iii) is modulated by interoceptive sensibility. We assigned a covert attention task to 100 women, exposing them to extreme-sized bodies (thin and fat) or extreme-sized objects (thin and fat bottles). Before and after the attentional exposure, we tested the association between the "self/others" and "thin/fat" concepts using an Implicit Association Test. We also collected a measure of interoceptive sensibility by means of a self-report questionnaire. Results showed that participants exposed to fat bodies implicitly presented a stronger association between the "self" and "thin" concepts. This association was significantly weaker in the group exposed to thin bodies. This effect was absent after exposure to thin and fat bottles. Notably, participants with a higher tolerance of negative bodily interoceptive signals were less susceptible to the malleability of body image exerted by the exposure attentional task. Our findings shed new light on the relationship between the perception of internal (e.g., visceral) and external (e.g., visual) signals in the representation of our body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Gold standard recipient arteries in head and neck free flap microvascular reconstruction are currently branches of the external carotid. However, these arteries can be compromised by neck dissection or radiotherapy, resulting in ‘vessel-depleted neck’ and ‘frozen neck’ respectively. In such cases, the transverse cervical artery (TCA) may be a suitable recipient artery.Methods: The origin, course and diameter of the TCA were determined in 46 sides of neck from 23 cadavers. The distances from the origin of the TCA to the angle of the mandible, floor of the mouth and mandibular symphysis were measured to determine the pedicle length required for free flap anastomosis.Results: The TCA was present bilaterally in all subjects investigated and its course across the posterior triangle of the neck was constant between individuals. The mean distances from the origin of the TCA to the angle of mandible, floor of mouth and mandibular symphysis were 10.0, 9.2 and 12.6 cm, respectively. There were no significant differences in these distances between the left and right sides of the neck (p > 0.05 for all comparisons). The distances from the TCA origin to the angle of the mandible and floor of the mouth were significantly longer in males than in females (p = 0.004) and correlated directly with the greater height of males compared to females (p = 0.0004). The mean diameter of the TCA measured 2 cm from its origin was 2.2 mm.Conclusion: The TCA is a suitable and reliable recipient artery for free flap microvascular reconstruction, when branches of the external carotid artery are unavailable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A pediatric cognitive screening tool has been shaped in three versions according to school class to assess spatial and temporal orientation, language, reading, writing, drawing, number knowledge, memory, praxis and executive functions in children aged 6-13. It has been standardized on an Italian sample of 807 children. Raw scores were adjusted for critical variables (child's age and parents' education) and a cut-off for the resulting global cognitive score was made available for clinical practice. In line with previous research, adapting the Mini-Mental State Examination to pediatric neuropsychological assessment turned out to be useful in estimating global cognitive functioning in children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual illusions have been used to explore implicit perception in neglect. Previous studies have highlighted differences between length and surface illusion perception in neglect, but much less is known about depth illusion perception. In the Ponzo illusion (a classic depth illusion), two converging oblique lines modulate the perceived length of two horizontal lines. In the current study, we presented modified versions of the Ponzo illusion in which only one of the converging oblique lines was presented (alternatively the right or the left one). This manipulation allowed us to explore (1) how acute patients with neglect process depth illusions, and (2) whether awareness of both converging lines is necessary for the full effect of the illusion. To examine these questions, we had participants (i.e. healthy controls, patients with neglect and right brain-damaged patients) to make a perceptual judgment regarding the perceived length of the upper versus lower horizontal line within the Ponzo frame in four conditions: (1) the classic Ponzo illusion, (2) a 'modified left' Ponzo illusion with a single oblique line on the left, (3) a 'modified right' Ponzo illusion with a single oblique line on the right and (4) a control condition with parallel lines. The results indicated that all participants perceived the canonical Ponzo illusion and the modified right illusion. Critically, patients with neglect did not perceive the modified left illusion. In addition, for neglect patients, there was no difference in the strength of the perceived illusion when comparing the canonical illusion with the modified right illusion. Importantly, single case analysis revealed a high degree of variability in the neglect group that seemed to be linked with the amount of damage to occipital areas. Overall our results indicate that: (1) the classic Ponzo illusion might be perceived in neglect patients based solely on perception of the right side of the stimulus configuration, and (2) differences between types of illusions (i.e. depth vs. length), and variability between patients suggest that caution is needed when utilizing these kinds of illusions to assess implicit processing in neglect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a motor neuron disease characterized by the progressive atrophy of both the first and the second motor neurons. Although the cognitive profile of ALS patients has already been defined by the occurrence of language dysfunctions and frontal deficit symptoms, it is less clear whether the degeneration of upper and lower motor neurons affects motor imagery abilities. Here, we directly investigated motor imagery in ALS patients by means of an established task that allows to examine the presence of the effects of the biomechanical constraints. Twenty-three ALS patients and 23 neurologically unimpaired participants have been administered with the (1) hand laterality task (HLT) in which participants were asked to judge the laterality of a rotated hand and the (2) mirror letter discrimination task (MLD) in which participants were asked to judge whether a rotated alphanumeric character was in its canonical or mirror-reversed form (i.e. control task). Results show that patients present the same pattern of performance as unimpaired participants at the MLD, while at the HLT, they present only partially with the effects of biomechanical constraints. Taken together, our findings provide evidences that motor imagery abilities, related to the mental simulation of an action, are affected by this progressive disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motor imagery (M.I.) is a mental state in which real movements are evoked without overt actions. There is some behavioural evidence that M.I. declines with ageing. The neurofunctional correlates of these changes have been investigated only in two studies, but none of the these studies has measured explicit correlations between behavioural variables and the brain response, nor the correlation of M.I. and motor execution (M.E.) of the same acts in ageing. In this paper, we report a behavioural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment that aimed to address this issue. Twenty-four young subjects (27 ± 5.6 years) and twenty-four elderly subjects (60 ± 4.6 years) performed two block-design fMRI tasks requiring actual movement (M.E.) or the mental rehearsal (M.I.) of finger movements. Participants also underwent a behavioural mental chronometry test in which the temporal correlations between M.I. and M.E. were measured. We found significant neurofunctional and behavioural differences between the elderly subjects and the young subjects during the M.E. and the M.I. tasks: for the M.E. task, the elderly subjects showed increased activation in frontal and prefrontal (pre-SMA) cortices as if M.E. had become more cognitively demanding; during the M.I. task, the elderly over-recruited occipito-temporo-parietal areas, suggesting that they may also use a visual imagery strategy. We also found between-group behavioural differences in the mental chronometry task: M.I. and M.E. were highly correlated in the young participants but not in the elderly participants. The temporal discrepancy between M.I. and M.E. in the elderly subjects correlated with the brain regions that showed increased activation in the occipital lobe in the fMRI. The same index was correlated with the premotor regions in the younger subjects. These observations show that healthy elderly individuals have decreased or qualitatively different M.I. compared to younger subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graceful aging has been associated with frontal hyperactivations in working- and episodic long-term memory tasks, a compensatory process, according to some, that allows the best normal elders to perform these tasks at a juvenile level, in spite of natural cortical impoverishment. In this study, 24 young and 24 healthy elderly participants were compared. Graceful aging was explored by investigating domains where most healthy elders perform like youngers (e.g. lexical-semantic knowledge) and tasks that are typically more challenging, like episodic long-term recognition memory tasks. With voxel-based morphometry, we also studied to what extent changes of fMRI activation were consistent with the pattern of brain atrophy. We found that hyperactivations and hypoactivations of the elders were not restricted to the frontal lobes, rather they presented with task-dependent patterns. Only hypoactivations and normal levels of activation systematically overlapped with regional atrophy. We conclude that compensatory processes associated with graceful aging may not necessarily be a sign of early saturation of executive resources, if this was to be represented by a systematic frontal hyperactivation, but rather they may represent the ability of recruiting new cognitive strategies. We discuss two possible approaches to further test this hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Charlie Gross on the contributions of three scientists living in different epochs whose ideas were largely ignored by their contemporaries, one by Peter Hoffmann and colleagues on the cellular basis of stereopsis, and one by Maryse Lassonde and colleagues on the human perceptual plasticity.

In this study, a series of tests exploring long-term verbal memory (the Short Story Test), attention (a modified version of Attentional Matrices and the Trail Making Test) and frontal functions (a modified version of the Frontal Assessment Battery) have been standardised on an Italian population of 283 children aged 5–14. Raw scores for each test have been adjusted for a series of variables (child's age, years of parents' education, handedness, gender) and transformed in equivalent scores enabling direct comparison across measures. This study was promoted by LICE (the Italian League Against Epilepsy) in order to provide Italian instruments standardised on the developmental age population and to study some of the most frequently impaired cognitive functions in epilepsy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies the neurophysiological effect of vestibular stimulation on touch perception in a subject with a right brain lesion to determine if vestibular system aids conscious tactile perception by introducing a bias in the neural system. Use of positron emission tomographic regional blood flow measurements; Association of phenomenological consciousness with activation in circumscribed brain areas.

Copyright of Italian Journal of Neurological Sciences is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)