Topographical working memory in children and adolescents with motor disabilities

Aim: The aim of the present study was to investigate topographical working memory in individuals with motor disabilities. Methods: Topographical working memory was investigated using the Walking Corsi Test in 89 participants with motor disability, mean age 11.5 years, of which 40 with cerebral palsy, 31 with spina bifida, and 18 with orthopaedic or peripheral symptoms. The participants were grouped according to everyday mobility, i.e. walking outdoors, walking indoors, and using wheelchair. A control group constituted 120 typically developing participants, mean age 9.9 years. Results: Individuals with spina bifida, orthopaedic or peripheral symptoms as well as typically developing participants performed significantly larger walking spans than the cerebral palsy group. With respect to mobility, those walking outdoors had significantly larger span than those walking indoors and those using wheelchair for mobility. Conclusions: Participants with outdoor walking in the community, apart from type of motor disability, seem to have improved topographic memory compared to individuals who don’t walk outside and individuals who are mobile through wheelchair. The results highlight the question of development of spatial cognition to enhance participation in social environments. Future research should focus on prematurity in the cerebral palsy group, and on hydrocephalus in the spina bifida group

Peculiar body representation alterations in hemineglect:a case report

We report the case of FP affected by personal and extrapersonal neglect and a body representation deficit characterized by delusional ideas. When FP performed the human figure, he placed body parts to the left, despite his extrapersonal neglect. Differently, when he performed the car figure, he placed all parts to the right, in line with his deficit. Comparing FP with a small patient group with the same clinical features without delusional ideas about body emerged that he was the only one to suffer from a specific body representation deficit characterized by a lack of body ownership sense

Neural representations underlying mental imagery as unveiled by representation similarity analysis

It is commonly acknowledged that visual imagery and perception rely on the same content-dependent brain areas in the high-level visual cortex (HVC). However, the way in which our brain processes and organizes previous acquired knowledge to allow the generation of mental images is still a matter of debate. Here, we performed a representation similarity analysis of three previous fMRI experiments conducted in our laboratory to characterize the neural representation underlying imagery and perception of objects, buildings and faces and to disclose possible dissimilarities in the neural structure of such representations. To this aim, we built representational dissimilarity matrices (RDMs) by computing multivariate distances between the activity patterns associated with each pair of stimuli in the content-dependent areas of the HVC and HC. We found that spatial information is widely coded in the HVC during perception (i.e. RSC, PPA and OPA) and imagery (OPA and PPA). Also, visual information seems to be coded in both preferred and non-preferred regions of the HVC, supporting a distributed view of encoding. Overall, the present results shed light upon the spatial coding of imagined and perceived exemplars in the HVC

One's own country and familiar places in the mind's eye:different topological representations for navigational and non-navigational contents

Visual mental imagery is a process that draws on different cognitive abilities and is affected by the contents of mental images. Several studies have demonstrated that different brain areas subtend the mental imagery of navigational and non-navigational contents. Here, we set out to determine whether there are distinct representations for navigational and geographical images. Specifically, we used a Spatial Compatibility Task (SCT) to assess the mental representation of a familiar navigational space (the campus), a familiar geographical space (the map of Italy) and familiar objects (the clock). Twenty-one participants judged whether the vertical or the horizontal arrangement of items was correct. We found that distinct representational strategies were preferred to solve different categories on the SCT, namely, the horizontal perspective for the campus and the vertical perspective for the clock and the map of Italy. Furthermore, we found significant effects due to individual differences in the vividness of mental images and in preferences for verbal versus visual strategies, which selectively affect the contents of mental images. Our results suggest that imagining a familiar navigational space is somewhat different from imagining a familiar geographical space

"Where am I?" A snapshot of the developmental topographical disorientation among young Italian adults

In the last decade, several cases affected by Developmental Topographical Disorientation (DTD) have been described. DTD consists of a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting the ability to orient in the environment despite well-preserved cognitive functions, and in the absence of a brain lesion or other neurological or psychiatric conditions. Described cases showed different impairments in navigational skills ranging from topographic memory deficits to landmark agnosia. All cases lacked a mental representation of the environment that would allow them to use high-order spatial orientation strategies. In addition to the single case studies, a group study performed in Canada showed that the disorder is more widespread than imagined. The present work intends to investigate the occurrence of the disorder in 1,698 young Italian participants. The sample is deliberately composed of individuals aged between 18 and 35 years to exclude people who could manifest the loss of the ability to navigate as a result of an onset of cognitive decline. The sample was collected between 2016 and 2019 using the Qualtrics platform, by which the Familiarity and Spatial Cognitive Style Scale and anamnestic interview were administered. The data showed that the disorder is present in 3% of the sample and that the sense of direction is closely related to town knowledge, navigational strategies adopted, and gender. In general, males use more complex navigational strategies than females, although DTD is more prevalent in males than in females, in line with the already described cases. Finally, the paper discusses which protective factors can reduce DTD onset and which intervention measures should be implemented to prevent the spread of navigational disorders, which severely impact individuals' autonomy and social relationships

Exploring the relationship between perceived loneliness and subjective cognitive decline in older individuals.

OBJECTIVE: Loneliness has been associated to a greater risk of cognitive decline and dementia in older individuals. However, evidence on whether this association also exists for older individuals who complain of cognitive problems is limited. We conducted a survey to examine the association between subjective cognitive decline in the working memory domain, perceived loneliness, depression, anxiety, and stress in older individuals with different profiles. METHODS: A total of 302 healthy, old individuals completed 3 questionnaires to assess subjective cognitive problems in attention, executive functions, storage, depression, anxiety, stress, and perceived loneliness. RESULTS: We conducted a cluster analysis and 3 clusters of individuals with different profiles emerged. Individuals with greater subjective cognitive problems (cluster 1) in the attention and storage domains, reported higher perceived loneliness and stress but not depression. In contrast, individuals with the least subjective cognitive problems (cluster 3) in the storage domain, reported lower perceived loneliness. CONCLUSIONS: Individuals with higher subjective cognitive decline also report higher levels of perceived loneliness but not more depression than their peers. However, this correlation is present only for individuals with mild subjective cognitive decline (cluster 2). The implications for future research and interventions are discussed

The effects of financialisation and financial development on investment: Evidence from firm-level data in Europe

In this paper we estimate the effects of financialization on physical investment in selected western European countries using panel data based on the balance-sheets of publicly listed non-financial companies (NFCs) supplied by Worldscope for the period 1995-2015. We find robust evidence of an adverse effect of both financial payments (interests and dividends) and financial incomes on investment in fixed assets by the NFCs. This finding is robust for both the pool of all Western European firms and single country estimations. The negative impacts of financial incomes are non-linear with respect to the companies’ size: financial incomes crowd-out investment in large companies, and have a positive effect on the investment of only small, relatively more credit-constrained companies. Moreover, we find that a higher degree of financial development is associated with a stronger negative effect of financial incomes on companies’ investment. This finding challenges the common wisdom on ‘finance-growth nexus’. Our findings support the ‘financialization thesis’ that the increasing orientation of the non-financial sector towards financial activities is ultimately leading to lower physical investment, hence to stagnant or fragile growth, as well as long term stagnation in productivity

Comparing phoneme frequency, age of acquisition, and loss in aphasia:Implications for phonological universals

Phonological complexity may be central to the nature of human language. It may shape the distribution of phonemes and phoneme sequences within languages, but also determine age of acquisition and susceptibility to loss in aphasia. We evaluated this claim using frequency statistics derived from a corpus of phonologically transcribed Italian words (phonitalia, available at phonitalia,org), rankings of phoneme age of acquisition (AoA) and rate of phoneme errors in patients with apraxia of speech (AoS) as an indication of articulatory complexity. These measures were related to cross-linguistically derived markedness rankings. We found strong correspondences. AoA, however, was predicted by both apraxic errors and frequency, suggesting independent contributions of these variables. Our results support the reality of universal principles of complexity. In addition they suggest that these complexity principles have articulatory underpinnings since they modulate the production of patients with AoS, but not the production of patients with more central phonological difficulties

Know Thyself: Behavioral Evidence for a Structural Representation of the Human Body

Background: Representing one's own body is often viewed as a basic form of self-awareness. However, little is known about structural representations of the body in the brain.Methods and Findings: We developed an inter-manual version of the classical "in-between'' finger gnosis task: participants judged whether the number of untouched fingers between two touched fingers was the same on both hands, or different. We thereby dissociated structural knowledge about fingers, specifying their order and relative position within a hand, from tactile sensory codes. Judgments following stimulation on homologous fingers were consistently more accurate than trials with no or partial homology. Further experiments showed that structural representations are more enduring than purely sensory codes, are used even when number of fingers is irrelevant to the task, and moreover involve an allocentric representation of finger order, independent of hand posture.Conclusions: Our results suggest the existence of an allocentric representation of body structure at higher stages of the somatosensory processing pathway, in addition to primary sensory representation