Autoscopic phenomena: case report and review of literature

BACKGROUND: Autoscopic phenomena are psychic illusory visual experiences consisting of the perception of the image of one's own body or face within space, either from an internal point of view, as in a mirror or from an external point of view. Descriptions based on phenomenological criteria distinguish six types of autoscopic experiences: autoscopic hallucination, he-autoscopy or heautoscopic proper, feeling of a presence, out of body experience, negative and inner forms of autoscopy. METHODS AND RESULTS: We report a case of a patient with he-autoscopic seizures. EEG recordings during the autoscopic experience showed a right parietal epileptic focus. This finding confirms the involvement of the temporo-parietal junction in the abnormal body perception during autoscopic phenomena. We discuss and review previous literature on the topic, as different localization of cortical areas are reported suggesting that out of body experience is generated in the right hemisphere while he-autoscopy involves left hemisphere structures

The Italian Draft Law on the \u2018Provisions Concerning the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage\u2019

Intangible cultural heritage in Italy is still in need of a unified approach, capable of providing reliable criteria for identifying its assets and for indicating timescales and means by which they should be safeguarded. In the continued absence of up-to-date, ad hoc state legislation (since the content of those laws which do implement international Conventions is too generic in nature to be sufficiently effective), the Regions have proceeded to act in a somewhat scattered manner, giving rise to an extremely fragmented and very disorderly regulatory framework. The draft law N. 4486, "Provisions Concerning the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage", presented on 12th May 2017 at the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Republic - as the result of the work of an interdisciplinary and inter-university research team coordinated by Marco Giampieretti, who has drafted the final text with the collaboration of Simona Pinton - seeks to fill the serious void that exists in Italian legal system by aligning it to the principles of international and European law, by redirecting the relevant State and Regional legislation, and by satisfying the fundamental requirements of the national community

Low-frequency oscillations employ a general coding of the spatio-temporal similarity of dynamic faces

Brain networks use neural oscillations as information transfer mechanisms. Although the face perception network in occipitotemporal cortex is well-studied, contributions of oscillations to face representation remain an open question. We tested for links between oscillatory responses that encode facial dimensions and the theoretical proposal that faces are encoded in similarity-based “face spaces”. We quantified similarity-based encoding of dynamic faces in magnetoencephalographic sensor-level oscillatory power for identity, expression, physical and perceptual similarity of facial form and motion. Our data show that evoked responses manifest physical and perceptual form similarity that distinguishes facial identities. Low-frequency induced oscillations (< 20 Hz) manifested more general similarity structure, which was not limited to identity, and spanned physical and perceived form and motion. A supplementary fMRI-constrained source reconstruction implicated fusiform gyrus and V5 in this similarity-based representation. These findings introduce a potential link between “face space” encoding and oscillatory network communication, which generates new hypotheses about the potential oscillation-mediated mechanisms that might encode facial dimensions

Giant early components of somatosensory evoked potentials to tibial nerve stimulation in cortical myoclonus

Enlarged cortical components of somatosensory evoked potentials (giant SEPs) recorded by electroencephalography (EEG) and abnormal somatosensory evoked magnetic fields (SEFs) recorded by magnetoencephalography (MEG) are observed in the majority of patients with cortical myoclonus (CM). Studies on simultaneous recordings of SEPs and SEFs showed that generator mechanism of giant SEPs involves both primary sensory and motor cortices. However the generator sources of giant SEPs have not been fully understood as only one report describes clearly giant SEPs following lower limb stimulation. In our study we performed a combined EEG-MEG recording on responses elicited by electric median and tibial nerve stimulation in a patient who developed consequently to methyl bromide intoxication CM with giant SEPs to median and tibial nerve stimuli. SEPs wave shapes were identified on the basis of polarity-latency components (e.g. P15-N20-P25) as defined by earlier studies and guidelines. At EEG recording, the SEP giant component did not appear in the latency range of the first cortical component for median nerve SEP (N20), but appeared instead in the range of the P37 tibial nerve SEP, which is currently identified as the first cortical component elicited by tibial nerve stimuli. Our MEG and EEG SEPs recordings also showed that components in the latency range of P37 were preceded by other cortical components. These findings suggest that lower limb P37 does not correspond to upper limb N20. MEG results confirmed that giant SEFs are the second component from both tibial (N43m-P43m) and median (N27m-P27m) nerve stimulation. MEG dipolar sources of these giant components were located in the primary sensory and motor area

Delayed blink reflex in dementia with Lewy bodies

Blink reflexes (BR) to electric stimuli of the supraorbital nerve were recorded in 26 patients with dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), 26 patients with multiple system atrophy, 26 patients with Parkinson's disease, with or without REM sleep behaviour disorder (RBD), and in 20 patients with Alzheimer's disease and 20 with progressive supranuclear palsy without RBD, and compared with recordings in 30 healthy controls. BR were significantly delayed (p<0.001) only in DLB patients in comparison with controls and with the other groups of patients; 14 (53.8%) patients had BR latency above 2 SD of the control mean, ranging from 36.1 to 46.3 ms. BR latency was not related to the presence of RBD, while a Spearman correlation rho of 0.68 was found for scores assessing the presence of cognitive fluctuations. R2 delay was prominently (71.5%) bilateral

Can β-diversity drive dry pastures conservation priorities?

β-diversity is a major determinant of species diversity at the regional scale. Biological, spatial and environmental determinants have been suggested as drivers of composition variation in semi-natural grasslands. The relative importance of such factors is inconsistent among studies also in relation to scale differences. Our aim is to discuss the influence of the scale in determining the relative contribution of spatial and environmental factors to the variation inβ-diversity. We used data on central Italian dry grassland (Habitat 6210) and considered two different extents. We built dissimilarity matrices based on species abundances, metric coordinates and environmental factors. We used the former as response in a Multiple Regression on distance matrices to obtain a partition of the variance between the other factors. Furthermore, we used Multivariate Regression Trees to identify the major environmental determinants of grassland composition. Our results strongly suggest that, to conserve most of the diversity in dry grasslands of the habitat, we should take into account differences in rainfall at the broadest scale, and in soil development at a local scale

Autonomic Status Epilepticus in a Patient with Parasellar Meningioma: A Case Report

International audienceAutonomic status epilepticus (Aut SE) is a condition characterized by ongoing focal autonomic seizure lasting for &#x3e;30 min. Aut SE can show a variety of clinical manifestations including vomiting, nausea, changes in heart rate, piloerection, pupillary abnormalities, and visual abnormalities. Although Aut SE is a common finding in childhood in the context of Panayiotopoulos syndrome, few reports have described this condition during adulthood. In the present report, we describe a case of Aut SE in an adult patient with parasellar meningioma and bilateral frontotemporal epileptiform activity on EEG record

Autoscopic phenomena: case report and review of literature

Abstract Background Autoscopic phenomena are psychic illusory visual experiences consisting of the perception of the image of one's own body or face within space, either from an internal point of view, as in a mirror or from an external point of view. Descriptions based on phenomenological criteria distinguish six types of autoscopic experiences: autoscopic hallucination, he-autoscopy or heautoscopic proper, feeling of a presence, out of body experience, negative and inner forms of autoscopy. Methods and results We report a case of a patient with he-autoscopic seizures. EEG recordings during the autoscopic experience showed a right parietal epileptic focus. This finding confirms the involvement of the temporo-parietal junction in the abnormal body perception during autoscopic phenomena. We discuss and review previous literature on the topic, as different localization of cortical areas are reported suggesting that out of body experience is generated in the right hemisphere while he-autoscopy involves left hemisphere structures.</p