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Biomedical subjects

P Faglioni

Publications and source records attributed to P Faglioni.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

A model-based study of learning and memory following transient global amnesia attacks.

Verbal learning and forgetting were studied in patients one month after an episode of Transient Global Amnesia and in normal control subjects by means of a two-stage stochastic model, which allows independent measurements of encoding, storage and forgetting. We preliminarily ascertained both the necessity and the sufficiency of the model to account for several performance scores of the two experimental groups, and then compared the learning and forgetting functions between groups. In spite of the analytical power of the statistical method adopted. Transient Global Amnesia was not found to entail persistent impairment of encoding and storage, as well as of retaining memory traces and retrieval algorhythm.

Cerebral Cortex↗
PubMed1992

Newest human herpesvirus (HHV-6) in the Guillain-Barré syndrome and other neurological diseases.

To investigate the presence of human herpesvirus-6 (HHV-6) in patients affected by Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) and by other neurological diseases (OND), we examined by indirect immunofluorescence analysis (IFA) the sera and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from 28 GBS and 63 OND. Moreover, we tested 150 blood donors (BD) to appreciate the diffusion of HHV-6 infection in the Italian adult healthy population. We found a significantly higher titre of antibody to HHV-6 in the GBS patients compared with OND and BD, although the pathogenicity of the virus is not known.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Apperceptive and associative forms of prosopagnosia.

Three prosopagnosic patients were given four face tests, two perceptual (an unknown face identification test and an age estimation test) and two also implying memory (a familiarity check test and a famous face recognition test). The patients' performance was assessed with reference to the score distribution of the normal population. A patient was found to fail both perceptual and mnestic tests, without any noticeable difference between them. Also the second patient had poor scores on both kinds of tests, but his impairment was significantly greater on the perceptual ones. The third patient, on the contrary, showed no perceptual deficit and only failed the mnestic tests. His inability to recognize the individuality of an item among members of the same category was strictly confined to faces and never present for other classes of stimuli (cars, coins, personal belongings). This finding is supportive of the thesis that in a few patients the deficit underlying prosopagnosia is face specific.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Natural killer cells and lymphocyte subsets in active MS and acute inflammation of the CNS.

Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and peripheral blood (PB) lymphocyte subsets were determined by flow cytometry (FCM) in 15 patients with active multiple sclerosis (MS) and 15 patients with acute inflammatory diseases (ID) of the central nervous system (CNS) in order to establish correlations between the two groups of diseases, as well as between the CSF and PB subsets distribution. A panel of monoclonal antibodies was applied to all the samples: Leu3 (CD4), Leu4 (CD3), Leu2 (CD8), Anti-HLA-DR, Leu11 (CD16). Statistical analysis did not show differences in CD3+ nor in CD3+ DR+ T-cells both in the CSF and PB in the two groups of patients. CD4+ cells were significantly higher in the CSF than in the PB, while CD8+, DR+ CD3- and CD16+ cells were constantly lower in the CSF without differences between the two groups of diseases.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Right posterior brain-damaged patients are poor at assessing the age of a face.

The ability to order unknown faces by age was investigated in right and left brain-damaged patients, divided into posterior and non-posterior groups on the basis of CT scan findings. A face recognition test and a figure ground discrimination test were also given. All three tests were affected by brain damage, but their sensitivity to the locus and side of lesion varied. While no hemispheric difference was found on the figure ground discrimination test, the face age test significantly discriminated patients with right posterior injury from any other brain-damaged group. The face recognition test occupied an intermediate position, with right posterior patients significantly impaired in comparison with right non-posterior patients and marginally impaired with respect to left posterior patients. Aphasia did not affect the performance of left brain-damaged patients on any of the tests. The findings are interpreted as evidence that damage of the right posterior hemisphere areas disrupts the structural encoding of visual information. Four prosopagnosic patients were also tested. Only those showing signs of apperceptive agnosia failed on the face age test.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1989

DNA repair, sensitivity to gamma radiation and to heat shock in lymphocytes from acute, untreated multiple sclerosis patients.

Increases in spontaneous sister chromatid exchange (SCE) and gamma radiation-induced chromosome aberrations have been reported in peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL) from multiple sclerosis (MS) patients, suggesting the presence of an abnormality in repair in this disease. We tested this hypothesis by measuring the ability to repair DNA and survival, after exposure to low (2-12 Gy) and high (100 Gy) gamma ray doses or to a high temperature (37-45 degrees C), of freshly isolated PBL from 15 patients affected by definite MS and 15 healthy subjects. The MS patients were untreated and in the acute phase of the disease. No significant difference was found between the two groups. We suggest that the previously reported genomic instability may be of viral origin and not due to a genetic defect in repair of DNA in these patients.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1989

Space exploration with and without the aid of vision in hemisphere-damaged patients.

Space exploration carried out under visual control and in its absence (blindfolded condition) was investigated in 20 RBD patients, 10 LBD patients and 20 normal controls with a modified version of Chedru's test (pressing the keys of a keyboard). Conventional tests for visual hemi-inattention permitted to classify RBD patients in a group with visual neglect (RBD VN+) and a group without visual neglect (RBD VN-). On the visual version of the test both RBD groups showed a preference for pressing the keys ipsilateral to the lesion side, but this tendency was more marked in the RBD VN+ group than in any other brain-damaged group. On the tactile version of the test only RBD VN+ patients showed a gradient favouring the pressing of the ipsilateral half of the keyboard. This ipsilateral preference was, however, significantly less marked than that found when the performance was assisted by vision. No relation between neglect in the blindfolded condition and tactile extinction was found. The nature of space exploration in the absence of vision is discussed and the existence of tactile neglect is questioned.

Attention↗
PubMed1989

Attentional shift towards the rightmost stimuli in patients with left visual neglect.

In a search task where four letters were displayed to the right of a central fixation point, right brain-damaged patients with visual neglect showed the fastest response when the target was at the rightmost position and progressively slower responses as it moved towards the center of the display. This finding confirms Kinsbourne's claim that in visual neglect an important role is played by the magnetic attraction that the extreme end of the right structured space exerts on the patient's attention.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Skull asymmetries bear no relation to the occurrence of apraxia. A clinical and CT-scan study in patients with unilateral brain damage.

This study aimed at assessing whether there was a relation between presence or absence of apraxia following a parietal and/or frontal left hemisphere lesion and "typical" skull asymmetries, evidenced by CT scan (prevalence of the left over the right occipital length and width and of the right over the left frontal length and width). Skull asymmetries were measured in a sample of 160 brain-damaged patients and their prevalence was found to agree with those reported by the literature in normal subjects. A subgroup of 72 patients with lesions restricted to the parietal and/or frontal lobe were given a movement imitation test and diagnosed as apraxic, borderline or normal making reference to the performance of 150 control subjects. The incidence in these three groups of typical or atypical occipital and frontal asymmetries was assessed and found not to differ significantly. It is concluded that no consistent relation between hemisphere dominance for praxis and skull asymmetry can be asserted. The study also investigated the relation of idemotor apraxia to the locus of left hemisphere damage and confirmed that both the incidence and the severity of the disorder are much greater following parietal than frontal lesions.

Apraxias↗
PubMed1989

Diagnostic investigations in MS: which is the most sensitive?

In an attempt to establish the efficacy of the different diagnostic tests, 41 multiple sclerosis (MS) patients at different stages of the disease were studied by means of visual evoked potential (VEP) recording, T-lymphocyte subset determination cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) analysis and magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. MR and CSF oligoclonal bands (OB) were the most sensitive techniques for the diagnosis of MS, being positive in 88% of patients, while VEP and helper/suppressor (H/S) T-cell ratio were altered in 54% and 46% of patients respectively. Low significant agreement coefficient were found among the 4 tests and the major value, even though "fairly" significant, was between MR and OB.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1988

Frequency and recognition judgement by young and elderly adults.

The aim of this study was to compare the performance of young and elderly subjects at two different memory tasks (frequency judgement and word recognition) under two retrieval conditions (forced and unforced choice) in order to determine the source of any incidental age-related memory deficit. Fifty young subjects (aged from 15 to 35 yr) and 50 elderly subjects (aged from 60 to 85) participated in this study. The results showed a significant difference between age groups at word recognition independent of retrieval condition, while frequency judgement was found significantly impaired in elderly as compared with young subjects only when an unforced choice procedure was required. It is suggested that age related memory impairment is not dependent on the nature of the task, but rather to the amount of retrieval information which is given to the subjects.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1987

Neurophysiological and CSF immunological study of 19 patients affected by acute idiopatic optic neuritis.

We studied 19 patients affected by acute idiopatic optic neuritis (ON), with neurophysiological tests: visual (VEP), somatosensory (SSEP), acoustic (ABR) evoked potentials and study of the blink reflex (BR), and with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) examination, in order to detect "silent" lesions in the central nervous system (CNS) and/or immunological alterations, suggestive of multiple sclerosis (MS). The percentage of cases with at least one altered CSF IgG parameter (IgG index, IgG synthesis/day and IgG oligoclonal bands) has been higher than that of cases with one or more altered neurophysiological tests, regardless of the apparently intact eye VEP. If we also included this last test, the 2 percentages become identical. The validity of these tests in predicting the evolution of ON in MS is discussed.

Acute Disease↗
PubMed1986

Immune complexes in CSF and serum in various neurological diseases.

A technique whereby immune complexes (ICs) are detected in the CSF and serum from their inhibitory effect on the agglutination of IgG-coated latex particles by rheumatoid factor (RF) has been applied to patients with the following neurological diseases: multiple sclerosis (MS), inflammatory diseases, extradural peripheral neuropathies (EPN), CNS tumors, dementia, and a control group of other neurological diseases (OND). The groups did not differ significantly in respect of IC positivity either in CSF or serum. The MS group was tested for correlations between percentage of IC positives and CSF IgG/Albumin ratio on the one hand and presence of oligoclonal bands on isoelectric focusing on the other. The specificity of ICs to the dysimmune condition is discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

Limb apraxia in patients with damage confined to the left basal ganglia and thalamus.

Limb apraxia was investigated with standardised tests in 14 patients whose CT scan provided evidence of a vascular lesion confined to the left basal ganglia, or the thalamus, or both, and not involving the cortex or adjacent white matter. Five patients were severely impaired in imitating movements and pantomiming object use. Four of them also performed poorly when tested with real objects. In two patients the lesion was primarily thalamic and in three the lesion was primarily in the lenticular nucleus and the posterior limb of the internal capsule. Patients without apraxia generally had smaller injuries, but there were exceptions. Apraxia is currently conceived of as due to damage of cortical areas and their cortico-cortical connections, but the present data suggest that the model should be enlarged to include the deep nuclei and the pathways running through them.

Aged↗
PubMed1979

[Anatomical and functional specialization of the cortex and the organization of gestures. An animal experimental contribution to the study of apraxia].

Apraxia has traditionally been considered the province of clinical investigation, but in recent years a series of animal studies have provided data that appear to be relevant to its interpretation. They are reviewed in the present paper with the aim to integrate and specify the classical model proposed by Liepmann, particularly as far as the roles of the inferior parietal lobe (area 40 in man and part of area 7 in the monkey) and of the motor association cortex (area 6 in man and periarcuate area in the monkey) are concerned. Monkey data suggest that the relation of the inferior parietal lobe to apraxia is not simply due to the interruption of the many sensory pathways that run in the subjacent white matter towards the frontal lobe, as implied by Liepmann's theorization, but rather to its being a center specialized in planning motor programs. Specifically, it would award the gesture with the spatial (directional) features needed to its proper execution. The periarcuate area, on the other hand, would participate in the organization of gesture, programming the temporal sequence of its component movements. It is in a favourable position to do this, because this receives information not only from the sensory association areas and the inferior parietal lobe, but also from the cortex of the depth and around the sulcus principalis, which is committed to keep record of the spatial characteristics of the stimulus as well as of the motor response. The implications of this dual system for the interpretation of apraxia in man are discussed.

Animals↗
PubMed1977

Spatial memory and hemispheric locus of lesion.

Corsi's cube test was given to 40 control and 80 brain-damaged patients to assess the relation of different aspects of spatial memory to the hemispheric locus of lesion. Spatial span was found affected by injury producing visual field defect (VFD), regardless of the side of the lesion. Delayed reproduction of a 3 cube sequence (which was within the span of every patient) was performed more poorly by patients with right hemisphere damage and VFD than by controls. This was true whether the delay was unfilled or filled with a counting activity, the two conditions being equally effective in bringing about the inferiority of the right brain-damaged group. Learning to criterion up to a maximum of 50 trails a supraspan sequence was failed by 65% of right brain-damaged patients with VFD, a percentage significantly higher than that found not only in the control group, but also in any other brain-damaged group. These findings point to the dominant role played by the posterior region of the right hemisphere in subserving spatial memory mechanisms, especially when the acquisition of stable traces is requested.

Brain Damage, Chronic↗