Biomedical subjects

Gesualdo M Zucco

Publications and source records attributed to Gesualdo M Zucco.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Cross-modal interactions between olfaction and vision when grasping.

This study used kinematics to investigate the integration between vision and olfaction during grasping movements. Participants were requested to smell an odorant and then grasp an object presented in central vision. The results indicate that if the target was small (e.g., a strawberry), the time and amplitude of maximum hand aperture were later and greater, respectively, when the odor evoked a larger object (e.g., an orange) than when the odor evoked an object of a similar size as the target or no odor was presented. Conversely, the time and amplitude of maximum hand aperture were earlier and reduced, respectively, when the target was large (e.g., a peach) and the odor evoked a smaller sized object (e.g., an almond) than when the odor evoked an object of a similar size as the target or no odor was presented. Taken together, these results support the evidence of cross-modal links between olfaction and vision and extend this notion to goal-directed actions.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Olfactory deficits in patients affected by minimal hepatic encephalopathy: a pilot study.

Minimal hepatic encephalopathy (MHE) is the earliest stage of hepatic encephalopathy and is associated with changes in cognitive functions, in electrophysiological parameters, and in cerebral neurochemical/neurotransmitter homeostasis. MHE can be observed in patients with cirrhosis who have no clinical evidence of hepatic encephalopathy (HE). At present, no data are available on a possible olfactory dysfunction in such a syndrome, although the pathophysiology of HE may alter olfactory functions since some of the neurotransmitters impaired in the syndrome are involved in the transmission of olfactory information. In the present paper, we performed a preliminary study aimed at detecting whether identification and recognition odor memory is altered in patients with MHE. Twelve patients diagnosed as MHE on the basis of their scores at the portosystemic encephalopathy (PSE)-syndrome test battery, and 12 age-matched controls were studied. Consistent with the hypothesis, patients performed significantly worse than controls for both odor identification and recognition tasks. In addition, a significant correlation between the two olfactory tests and the PSE-syndrome test score was found. This pattern supports the notion that olfactory alterations related to cognitive dysfunction in patients with MHE may be linked to the pathophysiology of HE.

Aged↗

PubMed2004

Olfactory deficits in HIV-infected patients with and without AIDS dementia complex.

The aim of the present study was to examine the effect of HIV infection on odour memory. Recognition and identification olfactory tests were administered to six groups of patients defined according to a decrease in cellular immunity: asymptomatic HIV seropositive (HIV+), symptomatic HIV+, HIV+ AIDS, and three groups with a mild, moderate, and severe degree of dementia (AIDS dementia complex [ADC]). Consistent with the literature, the general results show that HIV infection is associated with a decrease in olfactory ability. In addition, a polynomial linear trend analysis indicates a constant decrease in performance from the first to the sixth group of patients, related to the number of CD4 T lymphocytes circulating and to the severity of the pathology. An interesting result regards the drop in performance exhibited by ADC patients on the identification task. Reasonably, such an effect is not attributable to a decline in olfactory ability only, bit rather to a severe semantic memory deficit. It follows that the two tasks used here can be useful clinical supports to discriminate between the mental operations involved in a low cognitive demand task (recognition) and in a high cognitive demand task (identification).

AIDS Dementia Complex↗