3,131 research outputs found
Processing of semantic and grammatical gender in Spanish speakers with aphasia
Published online: 30 May 2021.Background: Previous studies have argued that there are two
types of linguistic gender: grammatical gender, which is arbitrarily
assigned to nouns, and semantic gender, which depends on the
gender of the referent.
Aim: We explore the hypothesis that these two types of gender
entail distinct cognitive processes by investigating the performance
of people with aphasia at the level of sentence processing.
Methods and Procedure: Nine people with aphasia (seven with
fluent aphasia) and a control group of thirteen age-matched healthy
participants took part in a constrained completion choice task. The
participants had to complete sentences in a way that made the last
word gender congruent. The subjects of the sentences had either
Semantic gender (enfermera, nurse; indicating the gender of the
referent), Grammatical gender (silla, chair), or Opaque-Grammatical
gender (tomate, tomato).
Results: People with aphasia performed more poorly in all gender
conditions than healthy controls. They also were less accurate in
both the Grammatical and Opaque-Grammatical conditions than in
the Semantic gender condition.
Conclusion: We propose that because semantic gender provides
more salient information, it is processed faster than grammatical
gender.MC was supported by the postdoctoral Ramón y Cajal fellowship (RYC-2013-14013), Agencia Estatal
de Investigación (AEI, National Research Agency), and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional
(FEDER, European Regional Development Fund) under projects PSI2017-87784-R and RED2018-
102615-T
A new clinical tool for assessing numerical abilities in neurological diseases: numerical activities of daily living
The aim of this study was to build an instrument, the numerical activities of daily living (NADL), designed to identify the specific impairments in numerical functions that may cause problems in everyday life. These impairments go beyond what can be inferred from the available scales evaluating activities of daily living in general, and are not adequately captured by measures of the general deterioration of cognitive functions as assessed by standard clinical instruments like the MMSE and MoCA. We assessed a control group (n = 148) and a patient group affected by a wide variety of neurological conditions (n = 175), with NADL along with IADL, MMSE, and MoCA. The NADL battery was found to have satisfactory construct validity and reliability, across a wide age range. This enabled us to calculate appropriate criteria for impairment that took into account age and education. It was found that neurological patients tended to overestimate their abilities as compared to the judgment made by their caregivers, assessed with objective tests of numerical abilities
Balancing the 2 Hemispheres in Simple Calculation: Evidence From Direct Cortical Electrostimulation
Published: 24 September 2016How do the parietal lobes contribute to simple calculation? Clinical and neuroimaging methods, which are based mainly on
correlational evidence, have provided contrasting results so far. Here we used direct cortical electrostimulation during brain
surgery to causally infer the role of the left and right parietal lobes in simple calculation. Stimulation provoked errors for
addition and multiplication in different parietal areas on both hemispheres. Crucially, an innovative qualitative error
analysis unveiled the functional contrast of the 2 parietal lobes. Right or left stimulation led to different types of
substitution errors in multiplication, unveiling the function of the more active hemisphere. While inhibition of the left
hemisphere led mainly to approximation errors, right hemisphere inhibition enhanced retrieval within a stored repertory.
These results highlight the respective roles of each hemisphere in the network: rote retrieval of possible solutions by the left
parietal areas and approximation to the correct solution by the right hemisphere. The bilateral orchestration between these
functions guarantees precise calculation.This work was supported by the Italian Ministry of Health
(grant RF-2009-1530973); by the University of Padua (Grant
Progetto d’Ateneo CPDA131328 and Progetto strategico
NEURAT) to C.S., and by the Spanish Ministry of Science and
Innovation (grant PSI2014-53351) to E.S. and by financial assistance
as a Severo Ochoa Center of Excellence SEV-2015-0490 to
the BCBL (E.S.)
The impact of economic crises on communicable disease transmission and control: a systematic review of the evidence.
There is concern among public health professionals that the current economic downturn, initiated by the financial crisis that started in 2007, could precipitate the transmission of infectious diseases while also limiting capacity for control. Although studies have reviewed the potential effects of economic downturns on overall health, to our knowledge such an analysis has yet to be done focusing on infectious diseases. We performed a systematic literature review of studies examining changes in infectious disease burden subsequent to periods of crisis. The review identified 230 studies of which 37 met our inclusion criteria. Of these, 30 found evidence of worse infectious disease outcomes during recession, often resulting from higher rates of infectious contact under poorer living circumstances, worsened access to therapy, or poorer retention in treatment. The remaining studies found either reductions in infectious disease or no significant effect. Using the paradigm of the "SIR" (susceptible-infected-recovered) model of infectious disease transmission, we examined the implications of these findings for infectious disease transmission and control. Key susceptible groups include infants and the elderly. We identified certain high-risk groups, including migrants, homeless persons, and prison populations, as particularly vulnerable conduits of epidemics during situations of economic duress. We also observed that the long-term impacts of crises on infectious disease are not inevitable: considerable evidence suggests that the magnitude of effect depends critically on budgetary responses by governments. Like other emergencies and natural disasters, preparedness for financial crises should include consideration of consequences for communicable disease control
Aberrant brain network connectivity in pre-symptomatic and manifest Huntington's disease: a systematic review
Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) has the potential to shed light on the pathophysiological mechanisms of Huntington's disease (HD), paving the way to new therapeutic interventions. A systematic review of the literature was conducted in three online databases according to PRISMA guidelines, using keywords for HD, functional connectivity, and rs-fMRI. We included studies investigating connectivity in pre-symptomatic (pre-HD) and manifest HD gene carriers compared to healthy controls, implementing seed-based connectivity, independent component analysis, regional property and graph analysis approaches. Visual network showed reduced connectivity in manifest HD, while network/areas underpinning motor functions were consistently altered in both manifest HD and pre-HD, showing disease stage-dependent changes. Cognitive networks underlying executive and attentional functions showed divergent anterior-posterior alterations, reflecting possible compensatory mechanisms. The involvement of these networks in pre-HD is still unclear. In conclusion, aberrant connectivity of the sensory-motor network is observed in the early stage of HD while, as pathology spreads, other networks might be affected, such as the visual and executive/attentional networks. Moreover, sensory-motor and executive networks exhibit hyper- and hypo-connectivity patterns following different spatiotemporal trajectories. These findings could help to implement future huntingtin-lowering interventions
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