We aimed at verifying the hypothesis that facial mimicry is causally and selectively involved in ... more We aimed at verifying the hypothesis that facial mimicry is causally and selectively involved in emotion recognition. For this purpose, in Experiment 1, we explored the effect of tonic contraction of muscles in upper or lower half of participants' face on their ability to recognize emotional facial expressions. We found that the "lower" manipulation specifically impaired recognition of happiness and disgust, the "upper" manipulation impaired recognition of anger, while both manipulations affected recognition of fear; recognition of surprise and sadness were not affected by either blocking manipulations. In Experiment 2, we verified whether emotion recognition is hampered by stimuli in which an upper or lower half-face showing an emotional expression is combined with a neutral half-face. We found that the neutral lower half-face interfered with recognition of happiness and disgust, whereas the neutral upper half impaired recognition of anger; recognition of fear and sadness was impaired by both manipulations, whereas recognition of surprise was not affected by either manipulation. Taken together, the present findings support simulation models of emotion recognition and provide insight into the role of mimicry in comprehension of others' emotional facial expressions.
Can reading others' emotional states be shaped by expertise? We assessed processing of emotional ... more Can reading others' emotional states be shaped by expertise? We assessed processing of emotional facial expressions in professional actors trained either to voluntary activate mimicry to reproduce character's emotions (as foreseen by the "Mimic Method"), or to infer others' inner states from reading the emotional context (as foreseen by "Stanislavski Method"). In explicit recognition of facial expressions (Experiment 1), the two experimental groups differed from each other and from a control group with no acting experience: the Mimic group was more accurate, whereas the Stanislavski group was slower. Neither acting experience, instead, influenced implicit processing of emotional faces (Experiment 2). We argue that expertise can selectively influence explicit recognition of others' facial expressions, depending on the kind of "emotional expertise".
Can reading others&am... more Can reading others' emotional states be shaped by expertise? We assessed processing of emotional facial expressions in professional actors trained either to voluntary activate mimicry to reproduce character's emotions (as foreseen by the "Mimic Method"), or to infer others' inner states from reading the emotional context (as foreseen by "Stanislavski Method"). In explicit recognition of facial expressions (Experiment 1), the two experimental groups differed from each other and from a control group with no acting experience: the Mimic group was more accurate, whereas the Stanislavski group was slower. Neither acting experience, instead, influenced implicit processing of emotional faces (Experiment 2). We argue that expertise can selectively influence explicit recognition of others' facial expressions, depending on the kind of "emotional expertise".
We investigated whether the extra-/introversion personality dimension can influence processing of... more We investigated whether the extra-/introversion personality dimension can influence processing of others’ eye gaze direction and emotional facial expression during a target detection task. On the basis of previous evidence showing that self-reported trait anxiety can affect gaze-cueing with
emotional faces, we also verified whether trait anxiety can modulate the influence of intro-/extraversion on behavioral performance. Fearful, happy, angry or neutral faces, with either direct or averted gaze, were presented before the target appeared in spatial locations congruent or incongruent with stimuli’s eye gaze direction. Results showed a significant influence of intra-/extraversion dimension on gaze-cueing effect for angry, happy and neutral faces with averted gaze.
Introverts did not show the gaze congruency effect when viewing angry expressions, but did so with happy and neutral faces; extraverts showed the opposite pattern. Importantly, the influence of introextraversion on gaze-cueing was not mediated by trait anxiety. These findings demonstrated that personality differences can shape processing of interactions between relevant social signals.
Abstract Progressive prosopagnosia (PP) is a clinical syndrome characterized by a progressive and... more Abstract Progressive prosopagnosia (PP) is a clinical syndrome characterized by a progressive and selective inability to recognize and identify faces of familiar people. Here we report a patient (GS) with PP, mainly related to a prominent deficit in recognition of familiar faces, without a semantic (cross-modal) impairment. An in-depth evaluation showed that his deficit extended to other classes of objects, both living and non-living.
A 59-year-old man is reported, who became aphasic after left thalamic infarction, shown by CT. Hi... more A 59-year-old man is reported, who became aphasic after left thalamic infarction, shown by CT. His speech was fluent, with reduced voice volume, impaired auditory and reading comprehension, verbal paraphasias but intact repetition skills. A single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) scan to measure regional cerebral flow (rCBF) showed a reduction of flow in the parietotemporal areas of the left hemisphere. It is suggested that thalamic aphasia could result from structural subcortical damage with a homolateral functional cortical deficit leading to the specific aphasic disturbance.
Apathy and depression are behavioral manifestations that may occur often in Alzheimer's disea... more Apathy and depression are behavioral manifestations that may occur often in Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients. AD patients may also show Closing-in (CI) phenomenon, in graphic copying tasks. Recent evidence would suggest that apathetic symptoms are related to frontal dysfunctions in AD patients, whereas the cognitive bases of depressive symptoms in AD are still unclear. Recent studies demonstrated that frontal dysfunctions are also involved in the genesis of CI in AD patients. Since frontal dysfunctions are thought to be more strongly related to apathetic than depressive symptoms, here we tested the hypothesis that CI is significantly associated with apathy in AD patients. Forty-four AD patients were enrolled for this study. All patients completed a neuropsychological evaluation of visuo-spatial, frontal/executive, visuo-constructional, and memory skills. Moreover, graphic copying tasks were employed to detect CI, and behavioral scales to assess apathetic and depressive symptoms...
International journal of geriatric psychiatry, 2002
In recent years several attempts have been made to distinguish frontotemporal dementia (FTD) from... more In recent years several attempts have been made to distinguish frontotemporal dementia (FTD) from Alzheimer's disease (AD) on neuropsychological grounds; in particular, it has been suggested that FTD patients show spared spatial abilities with respect to AD patients. We aimed at verifying whether patients with the frontal variant of frontotemporal dementia (fv-FTD) and AD patients perform differently on visuospatial and constructional tasks. We assessed a wide range of visuospatial abilities and provided a qualitative analysis of constructional performances in 14 fv-FTD patients and 11 AD patients, matched for general cognitive abilities. The two groups of patients achieved similar scores on two copying tasks, presented similar drawing procedures in copying Rey complex figure and made a similar quantitative and qualitative pattern of errors in copying simple geometrical drawings. Moreover, no significant difference was found between fv-FTD and AD patients on a specific battery f...
We report an Italian patient affected by slowly progressive aphasia (SPA) lasting since four year... more We report an Italian patient affected by slowly progressive aphasia (SPA) lasting since four years when he first came to our observation. During the successive four years, we documented a progressive language decline resembling transcortical sensory aphasia, associated with a reading disorder corresponding to surface dyslexia, a form extremely rare in patients with native transparent language. His performance at standard intelligence tasks remained in the normal range, without any variation. CT scan showed left temporal atrophy. We emphasize the heterogeneity of the syndrome of SPA and suggest that it can represent one of the pictures of focal cortical degenerative disease, with variable onset, progression, and evolution.
The aim of the present paper was to investigate articulatory loop in patients with pure motor spe... more The aim of the present paper was to investigate articulatory loop in patients with pure motor speech disturbances. A homogeneous group of 18 patients affected by ataxic dysarthria and without neuropsychological and neuroimaging evidence of cortical damage was s&ctcd. The study comprised four experiments which assessed: (i) immediate and delayed recall of word sequences with and without articulatory suppression; (ii) phonological similarity and word length effects on immediate recall; (iii) articulation rate; and (iv) verbal and spatial span. In agreement with previous studies on patients affected by different types of dysarthria, articulatory loop was found hmctional. However, patients had a slower atticulation rate, and it was argued that this finding can represent a "capacity limitation" of articulatory rehearsal, contributing to the patients' slight verbal short-term memory defect, A widely accepted mode1 of immediate memory is based on the working memory theory . The mode1 foresaw that verbal short-term memory relied upon a language-related slave system, the so-called articulatory loop. Successively, it has been proposed that the articulatory loop is divided into two subcomponents (Baddeley et al. 1984; Vallar and Baddeley 1984; Vallar and Cappa 1987). The former is a passive input phonological store, the latter an active articulatory rehearsal process. Phonologically coded information can be held in the
ABSTRACT The case of a deeply dyslexic patient is reported. The patient, Italian, showed an unusu... more ABSTRACT The case of a deeply dyslexic patient is reported. The patient, Italian, showed an unusual reading ability. He was unable to read nonwords aloud, but he matched nonwords to orally presented stimuli and read aloud the recognized nonwords. Lastly, after a 1-minute interval, the patient could not re-read aloud the stimuli previously recognized and read. An attempt is made to explain this residual reading ability.
Apathy is defined as lack of motivation affecting cognitive, emotional, and behavioral domains an... more Apathy is defined as lack of motivation affecting cognitive, emotional, and behavioral domains and is usually assessed by standardized scales, such as the Apathy Evaluation Scale (AES). Recently, apathy has been recognized as a frequent behavioral symptom in multiple sclerosis (MS). To evaluate applicability and clinical-metric properties of AES in MS and the agreement between patients' and caregivers' evaluation of apathy. Seventy non-demented MS patients underwent a thorough clinical and neuropsychological assessment, including evaluation of apathy according to established clinical criteria. All patients also completed the self-report version of AES (AES-S). AES-S was easy to administer and acceptable, and showed fair internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha, α=0.87). The factorial analysis identified three factors, representing the cognitive dimension (α=0.87), a general aspect of apathy (α=0.84), and the behavioral-emotional aspects (α=0.74), respectively. The factors were significantly correlated with the total AES score (all rrho≥0.73, p<0.001). The total AES score showed fair convergent validity (rrho=0.38) and discriminant validity when compared to Expanded Disability Status Scale (rrho=0.38), Mini Mental State Examination (rrho=-0.17), and Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (rrho=0.37). Receiver-operating characteristic curve analysis demonstrated that a cutoff>35.5 can identify clinically significant apathy with good sensitivity (88%) and specificity (72%); such a cutoff identified apathy in 35.7% of our sample of non-demented MS patients. Total AES score was significantly correlated with reduced global cognitive efficiency and more severe frontal executive dysfunctions. AES-S can be considered as an easy and reliable tool to assess apathy in non-demented MS. The use of AES-S in non-demented MS patients is clinically important since apathy is relatively frequent and is correlated to more severe cognitive dysfunction.
Ongoing signals from one's own body (interoception) allow experience of self-feeling. In earl... more Ongoing signals from one's own body (interoception) allow experience of self-feeling. In early studies interoception strictly referred to the awareness of visceral sensation but recent theories have expanded this concept to denote the ongoing status of the body. Here we asked left and right focal brain-damaged patients to answer questions about their interoceptive feelings, and correlated their responses to a quantitative measure of their lesions (voxel-based symptom-lesion mapping). By these means we could reveal that three key structures contribute to building up the feeling of self, namely insula (interoceptive modulator), amygdala (emotional modulator) and putamen (motor modulator). This brain network may be necessary for the integrity of self-feeling. A dysfunction of this network might impair perception of the inner body state, and also account for psychological disturbances, such as the somatic symptom disorders, in which individuals experience subjective symptoms suggest...
Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 2014
Environmental dependency (ED) phenomena, including utilization behavior and imitation behavior, a... more Environmental dependency (ED) phenomena, including utilization behavior and imitation behavior, are clinical manifestations typically observed in patients with the behavioral variant of fronto-temporal dementia (bvFTD), who may also show the closing-in (CI) phenomenon. Here, we explored the neuropsychological correlates of ED and CI in bvFTD, and the association of ED with CI to clarify the mechanisms underlying these clinical manifestations. Thirty-one bvFTD patients underwent a wide cognitive assessment in addition to special tasks to detect occurrence of CI and ED phenomena. Both ED and CI phenomena were present in more than half of the sample. Logistic regression analyses revealed that both ED and CI phenomena were significantly associated with poor scores on frontal neuropsychological tests. Although ED and CI often co-occurred, 3/12 patients with CI did not show ED, and 5/18 patients with ED did not show CI. A logistic regression model showed that the presence of ED was not significantly associated to CI. CI and ED are associated to progressive derangement of frontal functions in bvFTD. However, specific frontal dysfunctions might explain the occurrence of either phenomenon in isolation. (JINS, 2015, 21, 1-7).
Recent studies indicate that motor imagery is subserved by activation of motor information. Howev... more Recent studies indicate that motor imagery is subserved by activation of motor information. However, at present it is not clear whether the sparing of motor efferent pathways is necessary to perform a motor imagery task. To clarify this issue, we required patients with a selective, severe de-efferentation (lockedin syndrome, LIS) to mentally manipulate hands and three-dimensional objects. Compared with normal controls, LIS patients showed a profound impairment on a modified version of the hand-laterality task and a normal performance on mental rotation of abstract items. Moreover, LIS patients did not present visuomotor compatibility effects between anatomical side of hands and spatial location of stimuli on the computer screen. Such findings confirmed that the motor system is involved in mental simulation of action but not in mental manipulation of visual images. To explain LIS patients' inability in manipulating hand representations, we suggested that the pontine lesion, both determined a complete de-efferentation, and affected a component of the motor system, which is crucial for mental representation of body parts, probably the neural connections between parietal lobes and cerebellum.
Cognitive models for developmental dyslexia are nowadays centered on the hypothesis of a specific... more Cognitive models for developmental dyslexia are nowadays centered on the hypothesis of a specific deficit within the phonologic module of the language system. To ascertain whether defects of spatial cognition are associated with developmental reading disability, we investigated a sample of 43 school children (aged 8–9 years) found to be reading impaired during a wide screening survey for developmental dyslexia
Immediate memory for visuospatial information was assessed in patients affected by Alzheimer-type... more Immediate memory for visuospatial information was assessed in patients affected by Alzheimer-type dementia but with unimpaired visuo-perceptual functions. Patients were given two tasks: one was a traditional visuospatial memory task (Corsi's block tapping test), the second explored specifically immediate memory for visuospatial patterns. The experiment was conducted in two parallel groups of patients in Italy and the United States, each with its own appropriate sample of normal control subjects. Results showed a specific deficit of visual working memory in demented patients, even in a task in which control subjects achieved error-free performance. These data are interpreted in the light of the Working Memory Model, and suggest that in dementia the functions of the Visuospatial Scratchpad, unlike the functions of the verbal subsystems, may be impaired.
We aimed at verifying the hypothesis that facial mimicry is causally and selectively involved in ... more We aimed at verifying the hypothesis that facial mimicry is causally and selectively involved in emotion recognition. For this purpose, in Experiment 1, we explored the effect of tonic contraction of muscles in upper or lower half of participants' face on their ability to recognize emotional facial expressions. We found that the "lower" manipulation specifically impaired recognition of happiness and disgust, the "upper" manipulation impaired recognition of anger, while both manipulations affected recognition of fear; recognition of surprise and sadness were not affected by either blocking manipulations. In Experiment 2, we verified whether emotion recognition is hampered by stimuli in which an upper or lower half-face showing an emotional expression is combined with a neutral half-face. We found that the neutral lower half-face interfered with recognition of happiness and disgust, whereas the neutral upper half impaired recognition of anger; recognition of fear and sadness was impaired by both manipulations, whereas recognition of surprise was not affected by either manipulation. Taken together, the present findings support simulation models of emotion recognition and provide insight into the role of mimicry in comprehension of others' emotional facial expressions.
Can reading others' emotional states be shaped by expertise? We assessed processing of emotional ... more Can reading others' emotional states be shaped by expertise? We assessed processing of emotional facial expressions in professional actors trained either to voluntary activate mimicry to reproduce character's emotions (as foreseen by the "Mimic Method"), or to infer others' inner states from reading the emotional context (as foreseen by "Stanislavski Method"). In explicit recognition of facial expressions (Experiment 1), the two experimental groups differed from each other and from a control group with no acting experience: the Mimic group was more accurate, whereas the Stanislavski group was slower. Neither acting experience, instead, influenced implicit processing of emotional faces (Experiment 2). We argue that expertise can selectively influence explicit recognition of others' facial expressions, depending on the kind of "emotional expertise".
Can reading others&am... more Can reading others' emotional states be shaped by expertise? We assessed processing of emotional facial expressions in professional actors trained either to voluntary activate mimicry to reproduce character's emotions (as foreseen by the "Mimic Method"), or to infer others' inner states from reading the emotional context (as foreseen by "Stanislavski Method"). In explicit recognition of facial expressions (Experiment 1), the two experimental groups differed from each other and from a control group with no acting experience: the Mimic group was more accurate, whereas the Stanislavski group was slower. Neither acting experience, instead, influenced implicit processing of emotional faces (Experiment 2). We argue that expertise can selectively influence explicit recognition of others' facial expressions, depending on the kind of "emotional expertise".
We investigated whether the extra-/introversion personality dimension can influence processing of... more We investigated whether the extra-/introversion personality dimension can influence processing of others’ eye gaze direction and emotional facial expression during a target detection task. On the basis of previous evidence showing that self-reported trait anxiety can affect gaze-cueing with
emotional faces, we also verified whether trait anxiety can modulate the influence of intro-/extraversion on behavioral performance. Fearful, happy, angry or neutral faces, with either direct or averted gaze, were presented before the target appeared in spatial locations congruent or incongruent with stimuli’s eye gaze direction. Results showed a significant influence of intra-/extraversion dimension on gaze-cueing effect for angry, happy and neutral faces with averted gaze.
Introverts did not show the gaze congruency effect when viewing angry expressions, but did so with happy and neutral faces; extraverts showed the opposite pattern. Importantly, the influence of introextraversion on gaze-cueing was not mediated by trait anxiety. These findings demonstrated that personality differences can shape processing of interactions between relevant social signals.
Abstract Progressive prosopagnosia (PP) is a clinical syndrome characterized by a progressive and... more Abstract Progressive prosopagnosia (PP) is a clinical syndrome characterized by a progressive and selective inability to recognize and identify faces of familiar people. Here we report a patient (GS) with PP, mainly related to a prominent deficit in recognition of familiar faces, without a semantic (cross-modal) impairment. An in-depth evaluation showed that his deficit extended to other classes of objects, both living and non-living.
A 59-year-old man is reported, who became aphasic after left thalamic infarction, shown by CT. Hi... more A 59-year-old man is reported, who became aphasic after left thalamic infarction, shown by CT. His speech was fluent, with reduced voice volume, impaired auditory and reading comprehension, verbal paraphasias but intact repetition skills. A single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) scan to measure regional cerebral flow (rCBF) showed a reduction of flow in the parietotemporal areas of the left hemisphere. It is suggested that thalamic aphasia could result from structural subcortical damage with a homolateral functional cortical deficit leading to the specific aphasic disturbance.
Apathy and depression are behavioral manifestations that may occur often in Alzheimer's disea... more Apathy and depression are behavioral manifestations that may occur often in Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients. AD patients may also show Closing-in (CI) phenomenon, in graphic copying tasks. Recent evidence would suggest that apathetic symptoms are related to frontal dysfunctions in AD patients, whereas the cognitive bases of depressive symptoms in AD are still unclear. Recent studies demonstrated that frontal dysfunctions are also involved in the genesis of CI in AD patients. Since frontal dysfunctions are thought to be more strongly related to apathetic than depressive symptoms, here we tested the hypothesis that CI is significantly associated with apathy in AD patients. Forty-four AD patients were enrolled for this study. All patients completed a neuropsychological evaluation of visuo-spatial, frontal/executive, visuo-constructional, and memory skills. Moreover, graphic copying tasks were employed to detect CI, and behavioral scales to assess apathetic and depressive symptoms...
International journal of geriatric psychiatry, 2002
In recent years several attempts have been made to distinguish frontotemporal dementia (FTD) from... more In recent years several attempts have been made to distinguish frontotemporal dementia (FTD) from Alzheimer's disease (AD) on neuropsychological grounds; in particular, it has been suggested that FTD patients show spared spatial abilities with respect to AD patients. We aimed at verifying whether patients with the frontal variant of frontotemporal dementia (fv-FTD) and AD patients perform differently on visuospatial and constructional tasks. We assessed a wide range of visuospatial abilities and provided a qualitative analysis of constructional performances in 14 fv-FTD patients and 11 AD patients, matched for general cognitive abilities. The two groups of patients achieved similar scores on two copying tasks, presented similar drawing procedures in copying Rey complex figure and made a similar quantitative and qualitative pattern of errors in copying simple geometrical drawings. Moreover, no significant difference was found between fv-FTD and AD patients on a specific battery f...
We report an Italian patient affected by slowly progressive aphasia (SPA) lasting since four year... more We report an Italian patient affected by slowly progressive aphasia (SPA) lasting since four years when he first came to our observation. During the successive four years, we documented a progressive language decline resembling transcortical sensory aphasia, associated with a reading disorder corresponding to surface dyslexia, a form extremely rare in patients with native transparent language. His performance at standard intelligence tasks remained in the normal range, without any variation. CT scan showed left temporal atrophy. We emphasize the heterogeneity of the syndrome of SPA and suggest that it can represent one of the pictures of focal cortical degenerative disease, with variable onset, progression, and evolution.
The aim of the present paper was to investigate articulatory loop in patients with pure motor spe... more The aim of the present paper was to investigate articulatory loop in patients with pure motor speech disturbances. A homogeneous group of 18 patients affected by ataxic dysarthria and without neuropsychological and neuroimaging evidence of cortical damage was s&ctcd. The study comprised four experiments which assessed: (i) immediate and delayed recall of word sequences with and without articulatory suppression; (ii) phonological similarity and word length effects on immediate recall; (iii) articulation rate; and (iv) verbal and spatial span. In agreement with previous studies on patients affected by different types of dysarthria, articulatory loop was found hmctional. However, patients had a slower atticulation rate, and it was argued that this finding can represent a "capacity limitation" of articulatory rehearsal, contributing to the patients' slight verbal short-term memory defect, A widely accepted mode1 of immediate memory is based on the working memory theory . The mode1 foresaw that verbal short-term memory relied upon a language-related slave system, the so-called articulatory loop. Successively, it has been proposed that the articulatory loop is divided into two subcomponents (Baddeley et al. 1984; Vallar and Baddeley 1984; Vallar and Cappa 1987). The former is a passive input phonological store, the latter an active articulatory rehearsal process. Phonologically coded information can be held in the
ABSTRACT The case of a deeply dyslexic patient is reported. The patient, Italian, showed an unusu... more ABSTRACT The case of a deeply dyslexic patient is reported. The patient, Italian, showed an unusual reading ability. He was unable to read nonwords aloud, but he matched nonwords to orally presented stimuli and read aloud the recognized nonwords. Lastly, after a 1-minute interval, the patient could not re-read aloud the stimuli previously recognized and read. An attempt is made to explain this residual reading ability.
Apathy is defined as lack of motivation affecting cognitive, emotional, and behavioral domains an... more Apathy is defined as lack of motivation affecting cognitive, emotional, and behavioral domains and is usually assessed by standardized scales, such as the Apathy Evaluation Scale (AES). Recently, apathy has been recognized as a frequent behavioral symptom in multiple sclerosis (MS). To evaluate applicability and clinical-metric properties of AES in MS and the agreement between patients' and caregivers' evaluation of apathy. Seventy non-demented MS patients underwent a thorough clinical and neuropsychological assessment, including evaluation of apathy according to established clinical criteria. All patients also completed the self-report version of AES (AES-S). AES-S was easy to administer and acceptable, and showed fair internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha, α=0.87). The factorial analysis identified three factors, representing the cognitive dimension (α=0.87), a general aspect of apathy (α=0.84), and the behavioral-emotional aspects (α=0.74), respectively. The factors were significantly correlated with the total AES score (all rrho≥0.73, p<0.001). The total AES score showed fair convergent validity (rrho=0.38) and discriminant validity when compared to Expanded Disability Status Scale (rrho=0.38), Mini Mental State Examination (rrho=-0.17), and Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (rrho=0.37). Receiver-operating characteristic curve analysis demonstrated that a cutoff>35.5 can identify clinically significant apathy with good sensitivity (88%) and specificity (72%); such a cutoff identified apathy in 35.7% of our sample of non-demented MS patients. Total AES score was significantly correlated with reduced global cognitive efficiency and more severe frontal executive dysfunctions. AES-S can be considered as an easy and reliable tool to assess apathy in non-demented MS. The use of AES-S in non-demented MS patients is clinically important since apathy is relatively frequent and is correlated to more severe cognitive dysfunction.
Ongoing signals from one's own body (interoception) allow experience of self-feeling. In earl... more Ongoing signals from one's own body (interoception) allow experience of self-feeling. In early studies interoception strictly referred to the awareness of visceral sensation but recent theories have expanded this concept to denote the ongoing status of the body. Here we asked left and right focal brain-damaged patients to answer questions about their interoceptive feelings, and correlated their responses to a quantitative measure of their lesions (voxel-based symptom-lesion mapping). By these means we could reveal that three key structures contribute to building up the feeling of self, namely insula (interoceptive modulator), amygdala (emotional modulator) and putamen (motor modulator). This brain network may be necessary for the integrity of self-feeling. A dysfunction of this network might impair perception of the inner body state, and also account for psychological disturbances, such as the somatic symptom disorders, in which individuals experience subjective symptoms suggest...
Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 2014
Environmental dependency (ED) phenomena, including utilization behavior and imitation behavior, a... more Environmental dependency (ED) phenomena, including utilization behavior and imitation behavior, are clinical manifestations typically observed in patients with the behavioral variant of fronto-temporal dementia (bvFTD), who may also show the closing-in (CI) phenomenon. Here, we explored the neuropsychological correlates of ED and CI in bvFTD, and the association of ED with CI to clarify the mechanisms underlying these clinical manifestations. Thirty-one bvFTD patients underwent a wide cognitive assessment in addition to special tasks to detect occurrence of CI and ED phenomena. Both ED and CI phenomena were present in more than half of the sample. Logistic regression analyses revealed that both ED and CI phenomena were significantly associated with poor scores on frontal neuropsychological tests. Although ED and CI often co-occurred, 3/12 patients with CI did not show ED, and 5/18 patients with ED did not show CI. A logistic regression model showed that the presence of ED was not significantly associated to CI. CI and ED are associated to progressive derangement of frontal functions in bvFTD. However, specific frontal dysfunctions might explain the occurrence of either phenomenon in isolation. (JINS, 2015, 21, 1-7).
Recent studies indicate that motor imagery is subserved by activation of motor information. Howev... more Recent studies indicate that motor imagery is subserved by activation of motor information. However, at present it is not clear whether the sparing of motor efferent pathways is necessary to perform a motor imagery task. To clarify this issue, we required patients with a selective, severe de-efferentation (lockedin syndrome, LIS) to mentally manipulate hands and three-dimensional objects. Compared with normal controls, LIS patients showed a profound impairment on a modified version of the hand-laterality task and a normal performance on mental rotation of abstract items. Moreover, LIS patients did not present visuomotor compatibility effects between anatomical side of hands and spatial location of stimuli on the computer screen. Such findings confirmed that the motor system is involved in mental simulation of action but not in mental manipulation of visual images. To explain LIS patients' inability in manipulating hand representations, we suggested that the pontine lesion, both determined a complete de-efferentation, and affected a component of the motor system, which is crucial for mental representation of body parts, probably the neural connections between parietal lobes and cerebellum.
Cognitive models for developmental dyslexia are nowadays centered on the hypothesis of a specific... more Cognitive models for developmental dyslexia are nowadays centered on the hypothesis of a specific deficit within the phonologic module of the language system. To ascertain whether defects of spatial cognition are associated with developmental reading disability, we investigated a sample of 43 school children (aged 8–9 years) found to be reading impaired during a wide screening survey for developmental dyslexia
Immediate memory for visuospatial information was assessed in patients affected by Alzheimer-type... more Immediate memory for visuospatial information was assessed in patients affected by Alzheimer-type dementia but with unimpaired visuo-perceptual functions. Patients were given two tasks: one was a traditional visuospatial memory task (Corsi's block tapping test), the second explored specifically immediate memory for visuospatial patterns. The experiment was conducted in two parallel groups of patients in Italy and the United States, each with its own appropriate sample of normal control subjects. Results showed a specific deficit of visual working memory in demented patients, even in a task in which control subjects achieved error-free performance. These data are interpreted in the light of the Working Memory Model, and suggest that in dementia the functions of the Visuospatial Scratchpad, unlike the functions of the verbal subsystems, may be impaired.
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Papers by Dario Grossi
emotional faces, we also verified whether trait anxiety can modulate the influence of intro-/extraversion on behavioral performance. Fearful, happy, angry or neutral faces, with either direct or averted gaze, were presented before the target appeared in spatial locations congruent or incongruent with stimuli’s eye gaze direction. Results showed a significant influence of intra-/extraversion dimension on gaze-cueing effect for angry, happy and neutral faces with averted gaze.
Introverts did not show the gaze congruency effect when viewing angry expressions, but did so with happy and neutral faces; extraverts showed the opposite pattern. Importantly, the influence of introextraversion on gaze-cueing was not mediated by trait anxiety. These findings demonstrated that personality differences can shape processing of interactions between relevant social signals.
emotional faces, we also verified whether trait anxiety can modulate the influence of intro-/extraversion on behavioral performance. Fearful, happy, angry or neutral faces, with either direct or averted gaze, were presented before the target appeared in spatial locations congruent or incongruent with stimuli’s eye gaze direction. Results showed a significant influence of intra-/extraversion dimension on gaze-cueing effect for angry, happy and neutral faces with averted gaze.
Introverts did not show the gaze congruency effect when viewing angry expressions, but did so with happy and neutral faces; extraverts showed the opposite pattern. Importantly, the influence of introextraversion on gaze-cueing was not mediated by trait anxiety. These findings demonstrated that personality differences can shape processing of interactions between relevant social signals.