Feto-maternal biology and ethics of human society

The growing interest in human reproduction and the identity of the embryo have prompted us to bring some considerations to the attention of scientists. In particular, we focus on the interactive relationship between the embryo and the mother starting from the earliest stages of development. Principles governing the acceptance and growth of the embryo in the uterus may represent a model for mutual tolerance and peaceful co-existence in human society

MATERNO-FETAL IMMUNOTOLERANCE: AN EVOLUTIONARY VIEW

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MEMORIES OF PROFESSOR GIAN PAOLO PESSINA

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Anatomical Modularity of Verbal Working Memory? Functional Anatomical Evidence from a Famous Patient with Short-Term Memory Deficits.

Cognitive skills are the emergent property of distributed neural networks. The distributed nature of these networks does not necessarily imply a lack of specialization of the individual brain structures involved. However, it remains questionable whether discrete aspects of high-level behavior might be the result of localized brain activity of individual nodes within such networks. The phonological loop of working memory, with its simplicity, seems ideally suited for testing this possibility. Central to the development of the phonological loop model has been the description of patients with focal lesions and specific deficits. As much as the detailed description of their behavior has served to refine the phonological loop model, a classical anatomoclinical correlation approach with such cases falls short in telling whether the observed behavior is based on the functions of a neural system resembling that seen in normal subjects challenged with phonological loop tasks or whether different systems have taken over. This is a crucial issue for the cross correlation of normal cognition, normal physiology, and cognitive neuropsychology. Here we describe the functional anatomical patterns of JB, a historical patient originally described by Warrington et al. (1971), a patient with a left temporo-parietal lesion and selective short phonological store deficit. JB was studied with the H2(15)O PET activation technique during a rhyming task, which primarily depends on the rehearsal system of the phonological loop. No residual function was observed in the left temporo-parietal junction, a region previously associated with the phonological buffer of working memory. However, Broca's area, the major counterpart of the rehearsal system, was the major site of activation during the rhyming task. Specific and autonomous activation of Broca's area in the absence of afferent inputs from the other major anatomical component of the phonological loop shows that a certain degree of functional independence or modularity exists in this distributed anatomical-cognitive system

protected witnesses, media interference, principle of immediacy and right to cross-examination.

We know that science is a precious ally for the judge in the search for truth. But we also know that every coin has its flipside. Science can in fact constitute a false ally for the judge, dangerously channeling the process towards judicial error. The matter is well known. Criminal justice now draws heavily on the results of science, but has to deal with its overt fallibility. Often the process becomes the place where experts and consultants reveal the gaps in those same disciplines that should instead correctly orientate the decisions of criminal judges. Therefore, the Criminal trial always needs witnesses. Especially witnesses against the accused, of course. However testimonial evidence as a fundamental judicial decision making tool is in crisis today. A crisis that has come about as a result of the downsizing of the right of the accused to effectively cross-examine the witnesses testifying against him (or her), thereby reducing the chances for the judge to perceive the witness's story in the best possible way. Hence the risk of significantly lowering the quality standard of criminal sentences. The crisis of testimony in the criminal trial can be attributed to two factors. The first reason. The multiplication of protected witnesses on the trial scene. Figures who, as a sort of counterpart for their contribution to the assessment, require high, constant and diversified levels of protection: "fragile" and vulnerable people, minors, the mentally ill, witnesses of justice, or "anonymous" witnesses" (undercover agents). As we can see, as a rule, we are dealing with persons who usually testify against the accused. At the level of European and Italian law and jurisprudence the trend is clear. The needs of protection for these categories of witnesses result in a reduction in the number of hearings, and therefore the opportunities for dialectical confrontation between the accused and the witness. The may also result in the push to "personalization" of the methods used for that confrontation, by adapting it to the protection needs to be met. In some cases those forms of protection could be used to get more genuine information from the witness, but we also cannot underestimate the opposite risk of obtaining qualitatively less reliable statements: because they might too conditioned by those protection needs, precluding the defender of the accused the possibility of deepening some controversial points. The second reason. At the national and European political level, the idea now prevails that the speed of Criminal justice is the primary instrument by which to calibrate the standard of reliability and solidity of an economically advanced State. This mainstream perspective is the fruit of an exasperated and erroneous conception of the principle of the reasonable duration of the trial (Art. 6 par. 1 ECHR and Art. 111 par. 2 Italian Constitution). The time factor is now an absolute, apical and absorbing value in the Criminal trial, which seems capable of negatively impacting the quality of the witness evidence as well: we refer, in particular, to the recent so-called Cartabia Reform of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure, where a weakening of the fundamental principle of immediacy is clearly perceptible. That is, the judge attending the construction of the oral evidence and the judge who must adopt the judgment must be the same. When the trial judge changes, the idea is that immediacy can be easily replaced by technology (the audiovisual recording of the testimony before the first judge and subsequent viewing of the recording by the new judge)

Structural correlates of semantic and phonemic fluency ability in first and second languages

Category and letter fluency tasks are commonly used clinically to investigate the semantic and phonological processes central to speech production, but the neural correlates of these processes are difficult to establish with functional neuroimaging because of the relatively unconstrained nature of the tasks. This study investigated whether differential performance on semantic (category) and phonemic (letter) fluency in neurologically normal participants was reflected in regional gray matter density. The participants were 59 highly proficient speakers of 2 languages. Our findings corroborate the importance of the left inferior temporal cortex in semantic relative to phonemic fluency and show this effect to be the same in a first language (L1) and second language (L2). Additionally, we show that the pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) and head of caudate bilaterally are associated with phonemic more than semantic fluency, and this effect is stronger for L2 than L1 in the caudate nuclei. To further validate these structural results, we reanalyzed previously reported functional data and found that pre-SMA and left caudate activation was higher for phonemic than semantic fluency. On the basis of our findings, we also predict that lesions to the pre-SMA and caudate nuclei may have a greater impact on phonemic than semantic fluency, particularly in L2 speakers

The Brain in (Willed) Action: A Meta-Analytical Comparison of Imaging Studies on Motor Intentionality and Sense of Agency

Voluntary actions can be fractionated in different phenomena: from the emergence of intentions and the ensuing motor plans and actions, to the anticipation and monitoring of their outcomes, to the appreciation of their congruency with intentions and to the eventual emergence of a sense of agency. It follows that motor intention and the sense of agency should occur at different stages in the normal generation of willed actions. Both these processes have been associated with a fronto-parietal motor network, but no study has investigated to what extent the two experiences can be dissociated for the brain regions involved. To this end, we assessed the PET/fMRI literature on agency and intentionality using a meta-analytic technique based on a hierarchical clustering algorithm. Beside a shared brain network involving the meso-frontal and prefrontal regions, the middle insula and subcortical structures, we found that motor intention and the sense of agency are functionally underpinned by separable sets of brain regions: an “intentionality network,” involving the rostral area of the mesial frontal cortex (middle cingulum and pre-supplementary motor area), the anterior insula and the parietal lobules, and a “self-agency network,” which involves the posterior areas of the mesial frontal cortex (the SMA proper), the posterior insula, the occipital lobe and the cerebellum. We were then able to confirm this functional organization by a subsequent seed-based fMRI resting-state functional connectivity analysis, with seeds derived from the intentionality/sense of agency specific clusters of the medial wall of the frontal lobe. Our results suggest the existence of a rostro-caudal gradient within the mesial frontal cortex, with the more anterior regions linked to the concept of motor intentionality and the brain areas located more posteriorly associated with the direct monitoring between the action and its outcome. This suggestion is reinforced by the association between the sense of agency and the activation of the occipital lobes, to suggest a direct comparison between the movement and its external (e.g., visual) consequences. The shared network may be important for the integration of intentionality and agency in a coherent appreciation of self-generated actions

Clustering the lexicon in the brain: a meta-analysis of the neurofunctional evidence on noun and verb processing

Although it is widely accepted that nouns and verbs are functionally independent linguistic entities, it is less clear whether their processing recruits different brain areas. This issue is particularly relevant for those theories of lexical semantics (and, more in general, of cognition) that suggest the embodiment of abstract concepts, i.e., based strongly on perceptual and motoric representations. This paper presents a formal meta analysis of the neuroimaging evidence on noun and verb processing in order to address this dichotomy more effectively at the anatomical level. We used a hierarchical clustering algorithm that grouped fMRI/PET activation peaks solely on the basis of spatial proximity. Cluster specificity for grammatical class was then tested on the basis of the noun verb distribution of the activation peaks included in each cluster. 32 clusters were identified: three were associated with nouns across different tasks (in the right inferior temporal gyrus, the left angular gyrus, and the left inferior parietal gyrus); one with verbs across different tasks (in the posterior part of the right middle temporal gyrus); and three showed verb specificity in some tasks and noun specificity in others (in the left and right inferior frontal gyrus and the left insula). These results do not support the popular tenets that verb processing is predominantly based in the left frontal cortex and noun processing relies specifically on temporal regions; nor do they support the idea that verb lexical semantic representations are heavily based on embodied motoric information. Our findings suggest instead that the cerebral circuits deputed to noun and verb processing lie in close spatial proximity in a wide network including frontal, parietal, and temporal regions. The data also indicate a predominant \u2013 but not exclusive \u2013 left lateralization of the network

The effect of ethanol and nicotine on ER stress in human placental villous explants

Pregnant mothers continue smoking and drinking during pregnancy. To clarify the mechanisms of nicotine and ethanol toxicity during development, we have examined their effects on endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress in human first trimester and term placental explants. First trimester and term human placental explants were treated with ethanol (2 ‰) or nicotine (15 µM), or their combination. The ER stress markers glucose regulated protein 78 (GRP78/BiP) and inositol requiring enzyme 1 α (IRE1α) were analyzed by immunoblotting. A statistically significant increase (p < 0.05) of GRP78/BiP by nicotine was noted in first trimester placental explants at 48 h, and in term placental explants at 24 h. Ethanol did not change protein expression of GRP78/BiP in either first trimester or term placental explants. IRE1α increased, although not statistically significantly, by all treatments in both first trimester and term placental explants. Thus, regardless of the known structural and functional differences in early and late placenta, both responded very similarly to the toxic compounds studied. These data support our earlier results in BeWo cells (Repo et al., 2014) implicating that nicotine induces ER stress in human placenta and may interfere with placental functions potentially disrupting fetal growth and development