Biomedical subjects

Cristina Motto

Publications and source records attributed to Cristina Motto.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Gesture imitation with lower limbs following left hemisphere stroke.

Ideomotor apraxia (IMA) of lower limbs has rarely been investigated systematically. This is the aim of the current study. Thirty-five patients with a unilateral stroke in the left hemisphere were tested within 30 days from onset with an upper limb IMA test and with a newly devised test assessing leg IMA. Seventeen patients presented with arm apraxia, six of them also showed severe leg apraxia. Results suggest that IMA of lower limbs emerges in association with severe arm IMA in patients with large lesions, and is a sign of general severity of the patient's conditions.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Hemisphere asymmetry for imitation of hand and finger movements, Goldenberg's hypothesis reworked.

Goldenberg and co-workers put forward the hypothesis that coding of hand gestures with respect to body parts depends upon the functioning of the left hemisphere while the right hemisphere would be involved in imitation of finger postures. They supported this claim with experimental evidence from lesion studies, however, they failed to back it up with functional neuroimaging data. To verify Goldenberg's hypothesis on hemisphere asymmetries for hand/finger postures imitation, the performance of 35 patients with left hemisphere lesion (L/pts), of 24 patients with right hemisphere lesion (R/pts) and that of 41 matched controls was assessed in two imitation tasks, respectively, taxing hand or finger postures. The data, adjusted for the performance of the controls and for the effect of age were analysed using a multivariate, nonparametric approach. The outcome partly supports Goldenberg and colleagues' hypothesis: hand minus finger performance did differs between the R/pts and L/pts patients, even considering the pertinent hand-finger performances by control participants, however, in line with neuroimaging evidence, the left hemisphere's contribution is greater than that of the right for both finger and hand posture imitation.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

A new account of face apraxia based on a longitudinal study.

The aim of this paper is to provide an interpretation of face apraxia which accounts also for the role of right hemisphere lesions. Thirty-one patients with left hemisphere (L/pts) and 31 patients with right hemisphere (R/pts) lesions entered a cross-sectional study to identify those presenting with either lower or upper face apraxia. The 16L/pts and 8R/pts who presented with face apraxia in the acute stage and could be retested 4 months later, were followed up longitudinally. The degree of recovery did not differ between the two groups of patients. The traditional hypothesis of face apraxia based on the presence of a left-sided praxis centre could not account for these findings. A new trade-off model of face praxis resources distributed across the two hemispheres is presented. This model, based on individual differences in the healthy brain, accounts for the presence and persistence of face apraxia in a proportion of R/pts.

Aged↗

PubMed2002

Utilisation behaviour consequent to bilateral SMA softening.

The case of patient CU, who presented with severe utilisation behaviour, eventually unaccompanied by psychometric signs of frontal involvement, is reported. He suffered from a bilateral stroke within the territory of the anterior cerebral artery. His arterial system was characterised by a unique variant, whereby the right anterior cerebral artery was missing and three trunks originated from the left anterior cerebral artery, each bifurcating into right and left branches. An occlusion of the middle trunk immediately before its partition gave rise to a symmetrical bilateral parasagittal lesion that damaged the supplementary motor areas (medial part of Brodmann's area 6), sparing the lateral regions including the premotor cortices, the corpus callosum and the gyri cinguli. The hypothesis is put forward that utilisation behaviour should be conceived as a double anarchic hand, and its interpretation should rest on the damaged balance between the premotor cortices, responsive to environmental triggers, and the supplementary motor areas, which modulate actions and inhibit them. The imbalance due to the lesion would result in the patients being left at the mercy of environmental stimuli, unable to inhibit inappropriate actions. This intra-frontal hypothesis accounts for the data presented and those from the literature better than the previously held fronto-parietal equipoise.

Brain Mapping↗