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Biomedical subjects

E Sechi

Publications and source records attributed to E Sechi.

8 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2004

Executive function impairment in early-treated PKU subjects with normal mental development.

Executive functions were studied in 14 early and continuously treated PKU subjects (age 10.8 years, range 8-13) in comparison with controls matched for IQ, sex, age and socioeconomic status. Brain MRI examination was normal in all PKU patients. Neuropsychological evaluation included Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, Rey-Osterreith Complex Figure Test, Elithorn's Perceptual Maze Test, Weigl's Sorting Test, Tower of London, Visual Search and Motor Motor Learning Test. Whatever the IQ, PKU subjects performed worse than controls in tests exploring executive functions. Subgrouping the PKU subjects according to the quality of dietary control for the entire follow-up period (using 400 micromol/L as cut-off value for blood phenylalanine (Phe) concentration) showed that patients with worse dietary control performed more poorly than both the PKU group with the best dietary control and the control group. However, a mild impairment of executive functions was still found in PKU patients with a good dietary control (Phe <400 micromol/L) compared to controls. Concerning the PKU group as a whole, no linear correlation was found between neuropsychological performance and historical and concurrent biochemical parameters. We conclude that (a) PKU patients, even when treated early, rigorously and continuously, show an impairment of frontal lobe functions; (b) a protracted exposure to moderately high levels of Phe can affect frontal lobe functions independently of the possible effect of the same exposure on IQ; (c) in order to reduce the risk of frontal lobe dysfunction, the target of dietary therapy should be to maintain blood Phe concentration below 400 micromol/L.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1986

Reading strategies in children with learning disabilities and minor neurological dysfunction.

The connexions between minor neurological dysfunction (MND) and learning disabilities (LD) are analysed in 48 children with LD with and without MND. The two groups did not differ in a set of reading/writing tests or in neuropsychological tests. What proved to be different were the profiles of correlation internal to reading and between reading and presupposed neuropsychological functions. The results highlight the importance of studying the connexions between MND and LD and the need to take neuromotor parameters into account in the construction of clinical subtypes of learning disabilities.

Child↗
PubMed1983

Abnormalities of visual evoked potentials by checkerboards in children with specific reading disability.

Visual evoked potentials by checkerboards of varying check sizes were recorded in the two hemispheres of 16 specific reading disabled and 8 normal children. In most of the disabled subjects a gross hemisphere asymmetry was assessed, while in the control group the usual evoked potential symmetry was observed. In some disabled subjects the evoked potentials had a larger amplitude in the right hemisphere, while in others the amplitude was larger in the left hemisphere. In a small subgroup the evoked potentials were symmetrical, but they had a smaller amplitude than in the control subjects. The results, giving evidence of a dysfunction in basic visual processing, are discussed in the context of current literature on clinical subgroups and the interhemispheric relationship in the dyslexic syndrome.

Child↗
PubMed1982

Language disorders and prognosis for reading disabilities in developmental age.

2 groups of language-disordered children were studied regarding the reading levels reached at the end of the first year of school. The first group was composed by children with language retardation mainly on phonological level, the second group was composed by children with retardation also on semantic-syntactic level. The results confirmed the strong association between reading disability and language disorders and yielded significant differences between the two groups: the reading achievement seemed to be associated mainly to semantic and syntactic competences.

Achievement↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Nature of phonological delay in children with specific language impairment.

This study investigated the nature of phonological delay in a group of children with specific language impairment. It was asked whether phonological errors in this group of children were generated by a slow but normal language learning process or whether they reflected a selective impairment in some representations that enhance normal acquisition and use of a language phonology. A group of 10 children with SLI (mean age = 5.1) was compared with three groups of normal children who were matched in age (age control group, mean age = 5.1), in sentence comprehension and recalling (grammar control group, mean age = 3.7), or who exhibited a phonological performance lower than the age average (group with low phonological performance, mean age = 4.4). The four groups of children were assessed in terms of: (1) responses to a mispronunciation detection task; and (2) error profiles with complex and simple syllabic structures. Performance on the mispronunciation detection task showed that the group with SLI could distinguish a target lexical item from acoustic non-word stimuli that were highly similar to it in terms of phonetic characteristics. An analysis of overall error rate at this task showed, however, that four children with SLI had a much lower performance than normal children of the same age, even when the auditory stimuli were tokens of the target word, or non-words that were phonetically different from the target. A difficulty in coordinating vocal actions in an articulatory plan accounted for error profiles with simple syllabic structures both for some children with SLI and normal children with phonological performance lower than the age average. A severe difficulty with representing complex syllabic structures was a homogeneous characteristic of the group with SLI and worked as the main indicator of impaired, rather than simply slow, phonological development.

Articulation Disorders↗