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The BLAS2T (bilingual aphasia in stroke-study team) initiative has been a multi-center attempt to investigate longitudinal changes in language function in a cohort of stroke subjects. This report discusses linguistic performance in four cases from the BLAS2T database who demonstrated coprolalia as an irresistible urge to say obscene words.  Coprolalia was found to partly resolve in a 30-day follow-up in three cases. Recognition of coprolalia and language recovery patterns in bilingual aphasic patients with stroke would potentially lead to their even better individualized care and neurolinguistic/cognitive rehabilitation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The assessment of schizotypy allows to identify people at risk to develop psychosis. For this purpose, psychometric tools have been developed, such as the Magical Ideation Scale (MIS). This scale investigates attenuated forms of thought transmission experiences, thought withdrawal and aberrant beliefs, related to positive schizotypy. This study aims at providing an Italian version of the MIS and its normative data in the general population from childhood to adulthood, being the first study evaluating subjects under 17 year-old. The Italian MIS version was translated by three independent operators and administered to 1378 non-clinical participants, stratified into four age groups (i.e., 8–13, 14–17, 18–24 and 25–34). The unidimensionality of the scale was supported, and its internal consistency was satisfactory (i.e., ordinal Cronbach's α s ranging from 0.86 to 0.90 in different age groups), as well as test–retest reliability (i.e., 1-month ICC of 0.82 in a retested sub-sample). Normative data for the age groups were provided. Specific gender and age-related differences in MIS score were found, i.e. females scored higher than males in the 25–34 age group, which in general, as a group, scored lower than all the other age groups. This study provided evidence of reliability for the Italian version of the MIS in childhood and adolescence, for the first time, as well as in adulthood, showing specific gender and age effects in the early adult cohort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mindfulness meditation is a form of attention control training. The training exercises the ability to repeatedly focus attention. We addressed the activation changes related to an 8-weeks mindfulness-oriented focused attention meditation training on an initially naïve subject cohort. Before and after training participants underwent an fMRI experiment, thus, although not strictly a cross over design, they served as their internal own control. During fMRI they exercised focused attention on breathing and body scan as compared to resting. We found increased and decreased activation in different parts of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) by comparing pre- vs. post-mindfulness training (MT) during breathing and body scan meditation exercises that were compared against their own resting state. In the post-MT (vs. pre-MT) meditation increased activation in the right dorsolateral PFC and in the left caudate/anterior insula and decreased activation in the rostral PFC and right parietal area 3b. Thus a brief mindfulness training caused increased activation in areas involved in sustaining and monitoring the focus of attention (dorsolateral PFC), consistent with the aim of mindfulness that is exercising focused attention mechanisms, and in the left caudate/anterior insula involved in attention and corporeal awareness and decreased activation in areas part of the "default mode" network and is involved in mentalizing (rostral PFC), consistent with the ability trained by mindfulness of reducing spontaneous mind wandering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]