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It is a common feeling that girls speak earlier than boys; however, whether or not there are gender differences in early language acquisition remains controversial. The present paper aims to review the research on gender effects in early language acquisition and development, to determine whether, and from which age, an advantage for girls does eventually emerge. The focus is on the production of actions and communicative gestures, and early lexical comprehension and production, by girls and boys. The data from various studies that were conducted with direct and indirect tools suggest that some gender differences in actions, gesture, and lexical development depend on the interactions of different factors. Studies differ in terms of age ranges, sample sizes, and tools used, and the girl advantage is often slight and/or not evident at all ages considered. Statistical significance for gender differences appears to depend on the greater individual variability among boys, with respect to girls, which results in a greater number of boys classified as children with poor verbal ability. Biological (e.g., different maturational rates), neuropsychological (e.g., different cognitive strategies in solving tasks), and cultural (e.g., differences in the way parents relate socially to boys and girls) factors appear to interact, to create feedback loops of mutual reinforcement., (© 2021 The Authors. Journal of Neuroscience Research published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

The present paper will explore the impacts of the recent pandemic crisis on the Italian Deaf community, as a linguistic minority. Recent research has shown that minorities are suffering much more the effects of the pandemia because their lack of access to services and in a much wider perspective, to education and welfare. We will show that, during the COVID crisis, despite lockdown measures, various actions at the formal political level (from the Italian Deaf Association) and at the informal level (from the members of the community) promoted sign language and the Deaf community within the hearing majority. In particular, we will analyse how social networks were exploited at the grassroot level in order to promote social cohesion and share information about the coronavirus emergency and how the Deaf community shaped the interpreting services on the public media. The role of social networks, however, has gone far beyond the emergency as it has allowed deaf people to create a new virtual space where it was possible to discuss the appropriateness of various linguistic choices related to the COVID lexicon and to argue about the various interpreting services. Furthermore, in such emergency, the interpreting services were shaped following the needs expressed by the Deaf community with the results of an increased visibility of Italian sign language (LIS) and empowerment of the community. Materials spontaneously produced by members of the Deaf Italian community (conferences, debates, fairy tales, and entertainment games) were selected, as well as materials produced by LIS interpreters committed to guaranteeing access to information. By highlighting the strategies that a minority group put in place to deal with the COVID-19 emergency, we can better understand the peculiarities of that community, creating a bridge between worlds that often travel in parallel for respecting the peculiarities of each other (deaf and hearing communities)., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Tomasuolo, Gulli, Volterra and Fontana.)

The aim of this study is to analyze Italian Sign Language (LIS) linguistic skills in two groups of deaf signing children at different ages, and to compare their skills with those of a group of deaf signing adults. For this purpose, we developed a new Sentence Reproduction Task (SRT) for Italian Sign Language (LIS-SRT), which we administered to 33 participants. Participants' scores and type of errors were analyzed to investigate similarities and differences related to both chronological age and age of LIS acquisition. Results showed that signs tended to be omitted more frequently by the younger children than both the older children and adults and that non-manual components produced simultaneously with manual components appear to be the most difficult linguistic elements to be acquired and mastered. Our results are compared to those of previous studies using SRTs for other signed languages.

Analyses of elicited pantomime, primarily of English-speaking children, show that preschool-aged children are more likely to symbolically represent an object with gestures depicting an object's form rather than its function. In contrast, anecdotal reports of spontaneous gesture production in younger children suggest that children use multiple representational techniques. This study examined the spontaneous gestures of sixty-four 2-year-old Italian children and English-speaking Canadian children, primarily from middle-class Caucasian families. The Italian children produced twice as many gestures as Canadian children in a picture-naming task but produced a similar range of representational techniques. Two-year-olds were equally likely to produce gestures depicting function as form. These data suggest young children's communicative skills are supported by a symbolic capacity that reflects contextual communicative demands., (© 2016 The Authors. Child Development © 2016 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.)

In this paper the cognitive, cultural, and linguistic bases for a pattern of conventionalization of two types of iconic handshapes are described. Work on sign languages has shown that handling handshapes (H-HSs: those that represent how objects are handled or manipulated) and object handshapes (O-HSs: those that represent the class, size, or shape of objects) express an agentive/non-agentive semantic distinction in many sign languages. H-HSs are used in agentive event descriptions and O-HSs are used in non-agentive event descriptions. In this work, American Sign Language (ASL) and Italian Sign Language (LIS) productions are compared (adults and children) as well as the corresponding groups of gesturers in each country using "silent gesture." While the gesture groups, in general, did not employ an H-HS/O-HS distinction, all participants (signers and gesturers) used iconic handshapes (H-HSs and O-HSs together) more often in agentive than in no-agent event descriptions; moreover, none of the subjects produced an opposite pattern than the expected one (i.e., H-HSs associated with no-agent descriptions and O-HSs associated with agentive ones). These effects are argued to be grounded in cognition. In addition, some individual gesturers were observed to produce the H-HS/O-HS opposition for agentive and non-agentive event descriptions-that is, more Italian than American adult gesturers. This effect is argued to be grounded in culture. Finally, the agentive/non-agentive handshape opposition is confirmed for signers of ASL and LIS, but previously unreported cross-linguistic differences were also found across both adult and child sign groups. It is, therefore, concluded that cognitive, cultural, and linguistic factors contribute to the conventionalization of this distinction of handshape type., (Copyright © 2014 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.)

One of the most important challenges for embodied and grounded theories of cognition concerns the representation of abstract concepts, such as "freedom." Many embodied theories of abstract concepts have been proposed. Some proposals stress the similarities between concrete and abstract concepts showing that they are both grounded in perception and action system while other emphasize their difference favoring a multiple representation view. An influential view proposes that abstract concepts are mapped to concrete ones through metaphors. Furthermore, some theories underline the fact that abstract concepts are grounded in specific contents, as situations, introspective states, emotions. These approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive, since it is possible that they can account for different subsets of abstract concepts and words. One novel and fruitful way to understand the way in which abstract concepts are represented is to analyze how sign languages encode concepts into signs. In the present paper we will discuss these theoretical issues mostly relying on examples taken from Italian Sign Language (LIS, Lingua dei Segni Italiana), the visual-gestural language used within the Italian Deaf community. We will verify whether and to what extent LIS signs provide evidence favoring the different theories of abstract concepts. In analyzing signs we will distinguish between direct forms of involvement of the body and forms in which concepts are grounded differently, for example relying on linguistic experience. In dealing with the LIS evidence, we will consider the possibility that different abstract concepts are represented using different levels of embodiment. The collected evidence will help us to discuss whether a unitary embodied theory of abstract concepts is possible or whether the different theoretical proposals can account for different aspects of their representation.

A rapid and reliable analytical method has been developed to quantify the melatonergic antidepressant agomelatine in three matrices, and namely saliva, plasma and dried blood spots. The method is based on the use of liquid chromatography with fluorimetric detection exploiting the native fluorescence of agomelatine. For saliva and plasma samples an original microextraction by packed sorbent procedure was implemented obtaining satisfactory extraction yield of the analyte (always higher than 89%) and a good clean-up of the matrices. On the contrary, agomelatine was extracted from dried blood spots by suitable solvent microwave-assisted extraction and injected into chromatographic system. Satisfactory results in terms of sensitivity, linearity, precision, selectivity and accuracy were obtained. Thus, the developed method seems to be suitable for therapeutic drug monitoring of depressed patients under agomelatine therapy., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The capacity to ascribe goals and intentions to others is a fundamental step in child cognitive development. The aim of the present study was to assess the age at which these capabilities are acquired in typically developing children. Two experiments were carried out. In the first experiment, 4 groups of children (age range = 3 years 2 months-7 years 11 months) were shown pictures representing hand-object interactions and asked what the individual was doing (what task) and why (why task). In the why task, observed handgrip could be either congruent with the most typical action performed with that object (e.g., to drink in the case of a mug) or corresponding to the act of putting away the object. In the second experiment, children saw pictures showing a handgrip either within a context suggesting the most typical use of the object or its being put away. Results showed that by 3-4 years, children are able to state the goal relatedness of an observed motor act (what understanding), whereas the ability to report the intention underlying it (why understanding) is a later and gradual acquisition, reaching a high performance by 6-7 years. These results, besides their intrinsic value, provide an important baseline for comparisons with studies on developmental disorders, also highlighting the relevance of distinguishing what and why understanding.

The present study examined whether full access to sign language as a medium for instruction could influence performance in Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks. Three groups of Italian participants (age range: 6-14 years) participated in the study: Two groups of deaf signing children and one group of hearing-speaking children. The two groups of deaf children differed only in their school environment: One group attended a school with a teaching assistant (TA; Sign Language is offered only by the TA to a single deaf child), and the other group attended a bilingual program (Italian Sign Language and Italian). Linguistic abilities and understanding of false belief were assessed using similar materials and procedures in spoken Italian with hearing children and in Italian Sign Language with deaf children. Deaf children attending the bilingual school performed significantly better than deaf children attending school with the TA in tasks assessing lexical comprehension and ToM, whereas the performance of hearing children was in between that of the two deaf groups. As for lexical production, deaf children attending the bilingual school performed significantly better than the two other groups. No significant differences were found between early and late signers or between children with deaf and hearing parents.

Data from 492 Italian infants (8-18 months) were collected with the parental questionnaire MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventories to describe early actions and gestures (A-G) "vocabulary" and its relation with spoken vocabulary in both comprehension and production. A-G were more strongly correlated with word comprehension than word production. A clear developmental pattern for the different types of A-G was found. These findings are similar to those of different Western languages, indicating a common biological and cultural basis. The analysis of individual A-G and their relations with early words with a related meaning showed interesting similarities between the production of A-G with and without object manipulation and the comprehension and production of corresponding words. Results indicate that the transition from A-G to spoken language is mediated by word comprehension., (© 2012 The Authors. Child Development © 2012 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.)

We report on a cross-syndrome comparison of hand, foot, eye and ear laterality in three groups of individuals with different genetic disorders (trisomy 21, del7q11.23, and del22q11.2) to test the relationship between atypical laterality and intellectual disability. These groups were compared to a group of typically developing persons. Hand, foot, eye and ear laterality was assessed using item tasks, conducted twice, and Bishop's card-reaching test. Ordering of the mean IQ score for each of the three groups was as follows: trisomy 21 < del7q11.23 < del22q11.2. We observed the same ordering as for IQ, particularly in mixed handedness, degree of laterality, hand and foot consistency. The existence of a cognitive threshold, below which lateral preference is atypical, advocates for a causal link between cognition and laterality in those with low IQ although unknown other factors underlying both could determine this association.

This study explores the form of representational gestures produced by forty-five hearing children (age range 2 ; 0-3 ; 1) asked to label pictures in words. Five pictures depicting objects and five pictures depicting actions which elicited more representational gestures were chosen for more detailed analysis. The range of gestures produced for each item varied from 3 to 27 for a total of 128 gestures. Gestures have been analyzed with the same parameters used to describe signs produced by deaf children: handshape, location and movement. Results show that gestures for a given picture exhibit similarities in many of the parameters across children. Some motor characteristics found in the production of hearing toddlers' gestures are similar to those described for early signs. Implications of this similarity between gestural and signed linguistic representations in young children are discussed.

Italian children are immersed in a gesture-rich culture. Given the large gesture repertoire of Italian adults, young Italian children might be expected to develop a larger inventory of gestures than American children. If so, do these gestures impact the course of language learning? We examined gesture and speech production in Italian and US children between the onset of first words and the onset of two-word combinations. We found differences in the size of the gesture repertoires produced by the Italian vs. the American children, differences that were inversely related to the size of the children's spoken vocabularies. Despite these differences in gesture vocabulary, in both cultures we found that gesture + speech combinations reliably predicted the onset of two-word combinations, underscoring the robustness of gesture as a harbinger of linguistic development.

Lexical production in children with Down syndrome (DS) was investigated by examining spoken naming accuracy and the use of spontaneous gestures in a picture naming task. Fifteen children with DS (range 3.8-8.3 years) were compared to typically developing children (TD), matched for chronological age and developmental age (range 2.6-4.3 years). Relative to TD children, children with DS were less accurate in speech (producing a greater number of unintelligible answers), yet they produced more gestures overall and of these a significantly higher percentage of iconic gestures. Furthermore, the iconic gestures produced by children with DS accompanied by incorrect or no speech often expressed a concept similar to that of the target word, suggesting deeper conceptual knowledge relative to that expressed only in speech.

Laterality (hand, foot, ear, and eye) was assessed in participants with Trisomy 21 (62) and Williams-Beuren syndrome (WBS) (39). Handedness was also assessed in a card reaching task. The comparison group included 184 typically developing persons. Two independent age sub-groups were formed: 7 to 10 years old and 11 to 34 years old. We confirmed previous data: individuals with T21 were more frequently left- or mixed-handed than typically developing persons; individuals with WBS had intermediate scores. The two groups with genetic disorders had less right foot preference. Manual and foot inconsistencies characterized both groups with genetic disorders. Cross hand-foot preference was lower in the typically developing group. Differences in IQ levels did not correlate with differences in laterality scores. Overall laterality profiles were not the same in the two groups with genetic disorders: the greatest differences were observed between typically developing persons and persons with Trisomy 21.

Persons with trisomy 21 (T21) and Williams-Beuren syndrome (WBS) have different brain abnormalities which may affect manual laterality. We assessed 45 persons with T21 and 34 with WBS (mean age 13) and 81 typically developing children (TD). Manual laterality was assessed with a fifteen-item task administered two times, and Bishop's card-reaching task. We found more left-handers in the T21 group compared to the other two groups. Inconsistent laterality was higher in the two groups with genetic diseases than in the TD group. For Bishop's test, both T21 and WBS participants were less right-oriented than the TD group. They displayed different response patterns in midline crossing when reaching for the cards, but did not display more midline crossing inhibition than the TD group. Is atypical handedness linked to specific genetic syndromes and, more specifically for persons with T21, to the trisomy of some of the genes?

Important claims have been made regarding the contrasting profiles of linguistic and cognitive performance observed in two genetically based syndromes, Williams syndrome (WS) and Down syndrome (DS). Earlier studies suggested a double dissociation, with language better preserved than nonverbal cognition in children and adults with WS, and an opposite profile in children and adults with DS. More recent studies show that this initial characterization was too simple, and that qualitatively different patterns of deficit observed within both language and visual-spatial cognition, in both groups. In the present study, large samples of children and adolescents with WS and age-matched DS are compared with typically developing (TD) controls matched to WS in mental age, on receptive and expressive lexical and grammatical abilities, semantic and phonological fluency, digit span and nonverbal visual-spatial span, and on 2 visual-spatial construction tasks. Study 1 confirmed distinct profiles of sparing and impairment for the 2 groups, within as well as between language and nonlinguistic domains, even after IQ variations were controlled. In Study 2 we compared performance of the children, adolescents and young adults with DS and WS included in the first study, divided on the basis of the chronological age of the participants (under 8 years; over 12 years). Although it is important to stress that these are cross-sectional rather than longitudinal data, the results demonstrated that the profile of younger children is different in respect to those of the older children; initial states of the system cannot be inferred by the final state. Possible neural substrates for these profiles and trajectories are discussed.

Susceptibility to apoptosis changes with age and most of the available data on lymphocytes refer to mitogen stimulated cells. We studied this susceptibility in quiescent, purified CD4+ or CD8+ T cells from a group of Italian old people compared with a group of young people. We found that an apoptotic agent such as 2-deoxy-D-ribose (dRib), which acts via glutathione depletion and oxidative stress, was more effective in CD4+ T cells from young donors, while no difference was found in CD8+ T cells. On the contrary, another agent such as TNF-alpha, which acts via receptor engagement, was more effective in CD8+ T cells from old subjects, and no difference was found in CD4+ T cells. When marker of activation-memory were investigated, no difference between young and old subjects was found when dRib was used. Differently, when TNF-alpha was used, memory and activated CD4+ T cells from old donors were less sensitive than younger counterparts, while memory CD8+ T cells from old donors were more sensitive than younger counterparts. This suggests that age-related changes in susceptibility to apoptosis of resting T cells largely depend on the type of the apoptotic stimulus which is used as well as on the memory phenotype of the cells. These results may also account, at least in part, for the deep remodelling of T cell repertoire that occurs during ageing.

Previous studies of linguistic and memory abilities in Italian-speaking children with Williams syndrome (WS) and Down syndrome (DS)are briefly reviewed. New data on linguistic performance of 6 Italian children with WS between 3 and 6 years of age are presented and compared with data on linguistic performance of 6 children with DS selected from a larger sample and matched for chronological age and vocabulary size and of 6 typically developing (TD) younger children matched for mental age and vocabulary size. The language measures also included a parent report of early phrase structure, a naming test, and a sentence repetition task. Analyses revealed that the 3 groups of children were at the same productive vocabulary level, but showed different patterns in sentence production and repetition. Children with WS produced more complete sentences, similar to TD children at the same vocabulary size, whereas children with DS produced more telegraphic and incomplete sentences. The difference between children with DS and those with WS was more marked on the repetition task, suggesting that phonological short-term memory may play a greater role when sentence production is measured through repetition. In addition, qualitative analysis of errors produced in the repetition test revealed interesting differences among the 3 groups. These results from younger children confirm and extend previous findings with older children and adolescents with WS. They further suggest that the apparently spared linguistic abilities of children with WS could emerge as an artifact of comparisons made to children with DS, whose sentence production competence is more compromised relative to other verbal and nonverbal abilities.

Reboxetine is a new norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (NRI) drug recently introduced in the therapy for depressed patients. It is effective in the treatment of severe depression and safer to use than traditional tricyclic antidepressants. In this paper an original high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method with ultraviolet detection for the determination of reboxetine in human plasma is described. It uses a C8 reversed-phase column and a mobile phase composed of acetonitrile and aqueous tetramethylammonium perchlorate. For the analysis of plasma samples containing very low levels of reboxetine, another HPLC method with fluorimetric detection was developed (limit of quantitation, LOQ=11 ng ml(-1); limit of detection, LOD=4 ng ml(-1)). The fluorimetric method is based on precolumn derivatisation of reboxetine with 9-fluorenylmethyl chloroformate. An accurate sample pretreatment of human plasma samples has been implemented by means of solid-phase extraction (SPE) on Oasis HLB (hydrophilic-lipophilic balance) cartridges with very high extraction yields (>95%). Both methods were applied to the analysis of plasma samples from depressed patients undergoing therapy with reboxetine and gave satisfactory results in terms of precision (RSD<4.5%) and accuracy (mean recovery>94%).

To investigate the relationship between language acquisition and cognition, we evaluated linguistic abilities in 12 Italian-speaking children with Williams syndrome (WS) and 12 with Down syndrome (DS) of comparable global cognitive level. Another control group included 12 typically developing (TD) children, matched for mental age. Linguistic measures included a parent questionnaire to assess vocabulary, a verbal comprehension test, a sentence repetition test and MLU calculated on spontaneous production. No dissociation was evident between lexical and cognitive abilities, but specific morphosyntactic difficulties emerged both in comprehension and production in children with DS. Individuals with WS, albeit less compromised than DS, also had difficulty in the phrase repetition task and, particularly, using content words. Our results demonstrate that the linguistic abilities of infants with WS are not above their cognitive level and that language development in these special populations is not only delayed, but follows a different developmental trajectory.

A rapid and sensitive high-performance capillary electrophoretic method for the determination of clozapine and its main metabolite desmethylclozapine in human plasma was developed. The separation of the two analytes was carried out in an untreated fused-silica capillary [33 cm (8.5 cm effective length) x 50 microm I.D.] filled with a background electrolyte at pH 2.5 containing beta-cyclodextrin. Baseline separation of clozapine and desmethylclozapine was recorded in less than 3 min. An accurate sample pretreatment by means of solid-phase extraction and subsequent concentration allows for reliable quantitation of clozapine in the plasma of schizophrenic patients under treatment with the drug. The method showed good precision (mean RSD = 4.0%) as well as satisfactory extraction yields (approximately 88%) and a good sensitivity (limit of quantitation = 0.075 microg ml(-1), limit of detection = 0.025 microg ml(-1)).

Three different analytical methods for the quality control of clozapine in commercial formulations were developed and compared: a liquid chromatographic (LC) method with UV detection, a capillary zone electrophoretic (CZE) method, and a linear scan voltammetric (LSV) method. The isocratic LC procedure used a C18 reversed-phase column; the CZE method used an uncoated fused-silica capillary and phosphate buffer containing polyvinylpyrrolidone as the background electrolyte; the LSV method analyzed clozapine solutions with acidic phosphate buffer as the supporting electrolyte. The 3 methods gave similar and satisfactory results, in terms of precision and accuracy. Repeatability and intermediate precision were good (RSD% < 2.2) and accuracy, resulting from recovery studies, was between 98 and 102%. The rapidity of analysis was high for all 3 methods, especially for the LSV.

A high-performance liquid chromatographic method with amperometric detection for the analysis of the novel antipsychotic drug olanzapine and its metabolite desmethylolanzapine in human plasma has been developed. The analysis was carried out on a reversed-phase column (C8, 150 x 4.6 mm I.D., 5 microm) using acetonitrile-phosphate buffer, pH 3.8, as the mobile phase. The detection voltage was + 800 mV and the cell and column temperature was 30 degrees C. The flow-rate was 1.2 ml min(-1). Linear responses were obtained between 5 and 150 ng ml(-1), with repeatability <3.3%. A careful pretreatment of the biological samples was implemented by means of solid-phase extraction (SPE) on C8 cartridges. The method requires 500 microl of plasma for one complete analysis. Absolute recovery exceeded 97% for both olanzapine and desmethylolanzapine, and the detection limit was 1 ng ml(-1) for both analytes. Repeatability, intermediate precision and accuracy were satisfactory. This sensitive and selective method has been successfully applied to therapeutic drug monitoring in schizophrenic patients treated with Zyprexa tablets.

The neurotrophin nerve growth factor (NGF) is a major regulator of peripheral and central nervous system development. Serum NGF was measured in normally developing control children (n=26) and in individuals affected by congenital syndromes associated with learning disability: either Williams syndrome (WS; n=12) or Down syndrome (DS; n=21). Participants were assessed at three distinct developmental stages: early childhood (2 to 6 years), childhood (8 to 12 years), and adolescence (14 to 20 years). A sample was taken only once from each individual. Serum NGF levels were markedly higher in participants with WS, than DS and control participants. In addition, different developmental profiles emerged in the three groups: while in normally developing individuals NGF levels were higher in early childhood than later on, children with WS showed constantly elevated NGF levels. When compared to control participants, those with DS showed lower NGF levels only during early childhood. Neuropsychological assessment confirmed previously reported differences among the three groups in the development of linguistic/cognitive abilities. Some features of individuals with WS, such as hyperacusis and hypertension, could be related to high-circulating NGF levels.

Antidepressant, neuroleptic and antiepileptic drugs were identified and determined in pharmaceutical formulations (tablets, capsules and oral solutions) by a rapid high-performance liquid chromatography method. The sample pretreatment consisted of a one-step extraction, filtration and dilution. The chromatographic conditions were: reversed-phase C8 column (150 x 4.6 mm i.d., 5 microm); acetonitrile-tetramethylammonium perchlorate aqueous solution (pH 2.8; 12.6 mM) (45:55, v/v) as the mobile phase; detection wavelength, 230 nm. Calibration curves were linear in the 100-1000 ng ml(-1) range for all tested drugs except for phenobarbital. The repeatability (or intra-day precision), expressed by the relative standard deviation, was better than 2.0%. The accuracy, resulting from recovery studies, was between 98.1 and 101.3%. The amount of drug found agreed with the declared content within the limits specified by United States Pharmacopeia and British Pharmacopeia.

Children with Williams syndrome (WS) have been reported to exhibit an unusual cognitive profile characterized by marked preservation of linguistic abilities and poor visuospatial abilities against a backdrop of generalized mental retardation. Much of the data documenting this profile come from studies of older children and adults with WS. Very few studies have reported findings from the preschool and early school-age period. As a result, little is known about the early development of cognitive processes in children with WS. Capirci, Sabbadini, and Volterra (1996) reported data from a longitudinal case study of early language development in a young child with WS. This article presents the longitudinal profile of visuospatial abilities in this same child. Data on copying and free drawing collected over a period extending from late preschool to early school age are reported. It is clear from these data that this child does indeed exhibit deficits in visuospatial abilities. Her performance clearly improved with age, but deficits persist.

Objective: To gain more understanding about the relationship between human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection and new-onset psychosis, we compared clinical and immunological findings, psychiatric symptoms, global cognitive performance and, when available, computerized tomography (CT) findings between HIV-1-seropositive patients with new-onset psychosis and well-matched nonpsychotic HIV-1-seropositives., Methods: Two groups of subjects: HIV-1-seropositives with new-onset psychosis (n = 12) and HIV-1-seropositives without psychosis (n = 15) were recruited through outpatient departments. Organic Delusional Syndrome and Organic Hallucinosis were clinically diagnosed using DSM-III-R diagnostic criteria. Of the baseline participants, twenty-two participated in the two-year follow-up examination., Results: The prevalence of new-onset psychosis in HIV-1-infected subjects was 3.7 per 100 (95% C.I. = 1.6-5.7). HIV-1-seropositive persons with new-onset psychosis had more frequently a positive past psychiatric history, no antiretroviral therapy, and a lower global cognitive performance than did the nonpsychotic HIV-1-seropositives. CT was positive, showing generalized brain atrophy, in three out of nine patients. Remission of psychotic symptoms was observed only in two HIV-1-seropositive persons with new-onset psychosis. Death occurred in two psychic HIV-1-seropositives with simple loosely held delusions. Autopsy results showed that cortical sulci and ventricle size were graded as with moderate/severe enlargement., Conclusions: New-onset psychosis in HIV infected patients could raise considerable problems in deciding whether a presentation is organic or functional. An interaction of the disease or of psychologically "having" the disease with the presence of a psychotic reaction should also be considered. Interestingly, a protective effect of antiretroviral therapy for new-onset psychosis is suggested.

The present study reports a case of dizygotic twins, one boy with Williams syndrome (WS) and one typically developing girl, and compares their neuropsychological profiles. The goal of the present authors was to verify whether the child with WS displayed a cognitive profile which is unique to the syndrome. Several tests designed to assess visuo-perceptual, visuo-motor, linguistic and memory abilities were administered to both children when they were 10.9 years old. Compared to his sister, the boy with WS displayed a homogeneous developmental delay in both non-verbal and verbal abilities. He achieved a level of performance similar to his sister only in facial recognition, phonological word fluency and memory for phonologically similar words. Furthermore, despite the overall delayed performance of the boy, both the twins displayed a cognitive profile characterized by strength in lexical comprehension and relative weakness in visuo-motor abilities.

Williams syndrome (WS) is a rare (2-5/100,000) genetic human disorder characterised by a typical facies and mental retardation with a deficit in the visuospatial cognitive function and a relative preservation of linguistic abilities in general, and spoken language in particular. This syndrome also includes morphological anomalies, metabolic functional impairments, and likely deficits in the pattern of brain ontogenesis. The genetic basis of WS, recently identified, are presented. A cognitive profile of the WS individuals is defined and compared to Down syndrome (DS) and autism cognitive profiles. Neuroanatomical features of WS, including a reduction in brain volume, preservation of cerebellum and frontal lobes, and a reduction of posterior cortical systems, are described. The possible role of NGF (nerve growth factor)--a neurotrophin involved in the development of brain cholinergic systems and the associated behavioural functions--in the aetiology of the typical mental retardation of WS patients, is critically discussed. Future research avenues, including the identification of potential neurobiological markers in order to precociously diagnose this syndrome, are reviewed.

Some analytical methods (two spectrophotometric and two chromatographic procedures) for the determination of fluoxetine in Prozac capsules are described. All of them are applied to the samples after extracting the drug with a methanol water mixture. The direct and derivative spectrophotometric methods are simple and reliable; the derivative method gives better recovery and lessens interference. Both methods show linearity in the 5-30 microg ml(-1) range of the fluoxetine concentration range. Both HPLC methods (spectrophotometric and spectrofluorimetric detection) use a tetramethylammonium perchlorate buffer-acetonitrile mixture as the mobile phase and a C8 reversed phase column. The UV detection is performed at 226 nm, while the fluorimetric detection is performed by exciting at 230 nm and revealing the emission at 290 nm. The HPLC method with UV detection is more precise, but the procedure with fluorimetric detection is more sensitive.

Fluoxetine is an atypical antidepressant drug, which selectively inhibits the neuronal reuptake of serotonin, and is widely used in the treatment of depressive disorders. The aim of this research is the development of an HPLC method with fluorescence detection for the monitoring of fluoxetine plasma levels. The determination requires no more than 250 microl of plasma, which undergo solid phase extraction (SPE), then are injected in the HPLC. For the analytical separation a reversed phase C8 column (150 x 4.6 mm I.D.) was used, while the mobile phase was a mixture of acetonitrile and water containing perchloric acid and tetramethylammonium perchlorate (flow rate: 1 ml min(-1)). The very low levels of analytes in plasma required the employment of a fluorescence detector (lambda(exc) = 230 nm, lambda(em)=290 nm), which also granted a good selectivity. Fluoxetine is revealed as a single peak at a retention time of 9.7 min, while norfluoxetine, the main metabolite of fluoxetine, is revealed at a retention time of 8.1 min. Linearity was obtained over the concentration range 8-200 ng ml(-1) for both substances. The method seems suitable, in accuracy and precision, for the determination of fluoxetine plasma levels of patients; furthermore, it is rapid and sensitive.

Written texts produced by 10 Italian deaf native signers in four different writing tasks were analyzed. Data analysis focused on linguistic and orthographic nonstandard forms. The written production of deaf subjects with deaf parents (DD) was compared to the written production in two control groups: a group of 10 hearing subjects with deaf parents (HD) and a group of 10 subjects who have had no contact with deaf people or sign language (HH). The results duplicate findings from previous studies. Deaf subjects display a pattern of selective difficulty with Italian grammatical morphology, especially with free-standing function words. The four different writing tasks used in the present study yield results indicating that text type does influence our assessment of deaf writing abilities. A comparison of the texts written by deaf native signers with those of two hearing groups confirms the view that difficulties in the acquisition of written Italian are best explained by deafness itself, not by the influence of a previously acquired Sign Language, and that the specific difficulties with grammatical morphology displayed by our deaf subjects cannot be attributed solely to their limited experience with written Italian.

We describe an educational experience designed to teach Italian Sign Language (LIS) to a group of hearing children. The hypothesis underlying this experience was that learning a visual-gestural language such as LIS may improve children's attentional abilities, visual discrimination, and spatial memory. To examine this hypothesis, we conducted two studies. The first involved an educational experience lasting two years with a group of hearing children attending a Sign Language class from first to second grade. The Raven PM 47 TEST was administered at the beginning and at the end of each school year to children attending the LIS classes and to a control group of children enrolled in the same school but not exposed to LIS. The second study involved an educational experience in first grade. The Raven PM 47 and Corsi's block tapping tests were administered at the beginning and at the end of the school year to the children attending the LIS classes, to children enrolled in the same school but at tending an English class, and to children not exposed to a second language. We found that in both studies the LIS group performed better than the other groups. These results suggest that learning a sign language may lead to a cognitive advancement in hearing children.