Posterior cortical atrophy and Alzheimer’s disease : a meta-analytic review of neuropsychological and brain morphometry studies

This paper presents the first systematic review and meta-analysis of neuropsychological and brain morphometry studies comparing posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) to typical Alzheimer's disease (tAD). Literature searches were conducted for brain morphometry and neuropsychological studies including a PCA and a tAD group. Compared to healthy controls (HC), PCA patients exhibited significant decreases in temporal, occipital and parietal gray matter (GM) volumes, whereas tAD patients showed extensive left temporal atrophy. Compared to tAD patients, participants with PCA showed greater GM volume reduction in the right occipital gyrus extending to the posterior lobule. In addition, PCA patients showed less GM volume loss in the left parahippocampal gyrus and left hippocampus than tAD patients. PCA patients exhibit significantly greater impairment in Immediate Visuospatial Memory as well as Visuoperceptual and Visuospatial Abilities than patients with tAD. However, tAD patients showed greater impairment in Delayed Auditory/Verbal Memory than patients with PCA. PCA is characterized by significant atrophy of the occipital and parietal regions and severe impairments in visuospatial functioning.JA is funded by a doctoral grant from the Foundation for Science and Technology, FCT (SFRH/BD/64457/2009, co-funded by FSE/POPH). JA and AS are funded by project PIC/IC/83290/2007, which is supported by FEDER (POFC-COMPETE) and FCT. JMS is supported by a fellowship of the project SwitchBox-FP7-HEALTH-2010-grant 259772-2. These organizations had no role in the study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, or in the decision to submit the paper for publication

La camera preliminare della corte penale internazionale : garanzia di legittimit\ue0 o garanzia politica dell\u2019azione penale internazionale?

The Pre-Trial Chamber is an unprecedented institution in international criminal justice, which lies at the heart of the preliminary phase of the proceedings before the International Criminal Court as a compromise achieved at the Rome Conference. The feature of Pre-Trial Chamber as "check and balance" of the autonomy granted to the Prosecutor especially in the context of the trigger mechanism of the Court's jurisdiction based on the Prosecutor's proprio motu action seems to reveal the political nature of Pre-Trial Chamber s standing within the Court. Although never put into practice to date, the judicial review power conferred on the Chamber may potentially enable it to steer the Court s policy in accordance with the principle of complementarity. Moreover, the Pre-Trial Chamber is intended to meet due process requirements from the beginning of the proceedings. In this respect, although not entirely comparable to the juge d instruction of the inquisitorial tradition, the Pre-Trial Chamber is largely inspired by the French and Italian legal systems rather than by the common law judicial model which traditionally characterizes international criminal trials, where no interplay between the judge and the parties is provided during pre-trial proceedings. In fact, the Chamber has so far actively played its role of ensuring proceedings fairness, favoring a broad and teleological interpretation of the Rome Statute and of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence. Through the analysis of the travaux pr\ue9paratoires of the International Criminal Court and of the Statute and Rules relevant provisions as well as of the early case-law of the Court, the work aims to discuss whether the Pre-Trial Chamber represents a guarantee of the Court s policy rather than of international criminal proceedings legitimacy or either