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Publications (195)
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0246388.].
Objectives:
Fibromyalgia (FM) is characterised by chronic widespread pain, often associated with fatigue, sleep disturbance, cognitive and mood impairment. Pain is a complex and multidimensional experience that significantly impacts personal, social, and professional functioning. Psychological factors related to chronic pain include catastrophisin...
It has been recently acknowledged that deficits in experiencing and processing one’s own emotions, also termed alexithymia, may possibly feature the frontotemporal-spectrum disorders. This study aims to determine whether alexithymia could be included within the frontotemporal syndromes of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Alexithymic traits were...
This study aimed at preliminarily assessing, in a cohort of non-demented amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients, the ecological validity, and more specifically the veridicality, of the Edinburgh Cognitive and Behavioural ALS Screen (ECAS) and the ALS Cognitive Behavioral Screen (ALS-CBS™), by relating their scores to caregiver-report ratings...
Background: Routine outcome monitoring with immediate clinical feedback can improve the effectiveness of psychotherapy. This protocol study represents the first Italian randomized controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate the effectiveness of Feedback Informed Therapy (FIT) to improve patient mental health outcomes and processes. In it, we test a state-of...
Objective
Little is known about amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)‐nonspecific cognitive deficits – most notably memory disturbance – and their biological underpinnings. We investigated the associations of the Alzheimer's disease (AD) genetic risk factor APOE and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers Aβ and tau proteins with cognitive and motor phe...
Dystonia is a movement disorder in which sustained muscle contractions give rise to abnormal postures or involuntary movements. It is a disabling and disfiguring disorder that affects activities of daily living and gives people a bizarre appearance often associated with psychological morbidity, embarrassment and social avoidance. Intramuscular inje...
Background: Oropharyngeal dysphagia (OD) is a common symptom in Huntington’s disease (HD) and is associated with severe health and psychosocial consequences. Different OD phenotypes are defined on the basis of characteristic patterns at fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES), and they may vary during disease progression. Objective: T...
Background: Spatial navigation deficits are reported as early symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) alongside episodic memory ones. The aim of the present study was to ascertain whether neuropsychological deficits of visuospatial long-term memory can predict behavioral alterations during the navigation of older adults in novel urban environments alo...
Background
Learning is a long-term memory process, influenced by working memory control processes, including recognition of semantic properties of items by which subjects generate a semantic structure of engrams.
Aim
The aim of the study is to investigate the verbal learning strategies of Parkinson’s disease patients.
Methods
Thirty patients with...
Background
The identification and staging of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) represent a challenge, especially in the prodromal stage of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), when cognitive changes can be subtle. Worldwide efforts were dedicated to select and harmonize available neuropsychological instruments. In Italy, the Italian Network of Neuroscience and...
Introduction:
The present study aimed at testing the longitudinal feasibility of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) in an Italian cohort of non-demented amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients.
Methods:
N = 39 non-demented ALS patients were followed-up at a 5-to-10-month interval (M = 6.8; SD = 1.4) with the MoCA and the Edinburgh Cog...
Background
Verbal fluency (VF) tasks are known as suitable for detecting cognitive impairment (CI) in Parkinson’s disease (PD). This study thus aimed to evaluate the psychometrics and diagnostics of the Alternate Verbal Fluency Battery (AVFB) by Costa et al. (2014) in an Italian cohort of non-demented PD patients, as well as to derive disease-speci...
Previous research has highlighted the positive impact of greater health-related quality of life (Hr-QoL) and subjective well-being (SWB) on chronic diseases’ severity and progression. There is a paucity of studies investigating the long-term trajectories of these variables among hypertensive patients. The present study aims to investigate the relat...
The advent of computerized medical recording systems in healthcare facilities has made data retrieval tasks easier, compared with manual recording. Nevertheless, the potential of the information contained within medical records remains largely untapped, mostly due to the time and effort required to extract data from unstructured documents. Natural...
Objectives
This study aimed at exploring (1) the motor and non-motor correlates of counterfactual thinking (CFT) abilities in non-demented amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients and (2) the ability of CFT measures to discriminate these patients from healthy controls (HCs) and patients with and without cognitive impairment.
Methods
N = 110 AL...
Objective
Depression is one of the most disabling non-motor symptoms in Parkinson’s disease (PD) and requires proper diagnosis as it negatively impacts patients’ and their relatives quality of life. The present study aimed to examine the psychometric and diagnostic properties of the Beck Depression Inventory-I (BDI-I) in a Spanish PD cohort.
Metho...
The present study aimed at determining whether, net of motor confounders, neuropsychological features affect functional independence (FI) in activities of daily living (ADLs) in non-demented amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients.
N = 88 ALS patients without frontotemporal dementia were assessed for FI—Katz’s Basic ADL Scale (BADL) and Lawton...
This study is aimed at assessing the clinimetric properties and feasibility of the Italian version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) in patients with Huntington’s disease (HD).
N = 39 motor-manifest HD patients, N = 74 Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients and N = 92 matched HCs were administered the MoCA. HD patients further underwent the Un...
Background:
Learning is a long-term memory process, influenced by working memory control processes, including recognition of semantic properties of items by which subjects generate a semantic structure of engrams.
Objectives:
The aim of the study is to investigate the verbal learning strategies of individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD).
Meth...
Objectives
In amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) both upper (UMNs) and lower motor neurons (LMNs) are involved in the process of neurodegeneration, accounting for the great disease heterogeneity. We evaluated the associations of the burden of UMN impairment, assessed through the Penn Upper Motor Neuron Score (PUMNS), with demographic and clinical...
We describe a case of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and review the literature about the coexistence of the two entities, highlighting the following: mean age at onset is 63.8 years, with slight female predominance; ALS tends to manifest after cognitive impairment and often begins in the bulbar region;...
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a well-established treatment that significantly improves the motor symptoms of patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD); however, patients may experience post-operative psychological distress and social maladjustments. This phenomenon has been shown to be related to patients’ pre-operative cognitive representations, su...
Background
This study aimed at: (1) assessing, in an Italian cohort of non-demented Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients, the construct validity of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) against both first- and second-level cognitive measures; (2) delivering an exhaustive and updated evaluation of its diagnostic properties.
Methods
A retrospective...
Background:
The ecological validity of performance-based cognitive screeners needs to be tested in order for them to be fully recommended for use within clinical practice and research.
Objectives:
To examine, within an Italian cohort of non-demented PD patients, the ecological validity of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), by assessing it...
Background
This study aimed at clarifying the role of bulbar involvement (BI) as a risk factor for cognitive impairment (CI) in non-demented amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients.
Methods
Data on N = 347 patients were retrospectively collected. Cognition was assessed via the Edinburgh Cognitive and Behavioral ALS Screen (ECAS). On the basis...
Objective:
This study aimed to evaluate the experience with telemedicine in patients with cognitive impairments and their caregivers.
Methods:
We conducted a survey-based study of patients who completed neurological consultation via video link between January and April 2022.
Results:
A total of 62 eligible neurological video consultations were...
Introduction:
Plasma levels of phosphorylated tau (P-tau181) have been recently reported to be increased in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and associated with lower motor neuron (LMN) impairment.
Patients and methods:
We quantified plasma P-tau181 (pP-tau181) in a cohort of 29 deeply phenotyped ALS patients using the new fully automated Lum...
This study aimed at assessing the clinimetrics of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) in an Italian cohort of patients with adult-onset idiopathic focal dystonia (AOIFD). N = 86 AOIFD patients and N = 92 healthy controls (HCs) were administered the MoCA. Patients further underwent the Trail-Making Test (TMT) and Babcock Memory Test (BMT), bein...
The present study aimed at deriving, by means of a traditional "2 standard deviation-based" (2SD) approach, single task-level cutoffs for the Italian version of the Edinburgh Cognitive and Behavioral ALS Screen (ECAS). Cutoffs were derived - as M-2*SD - from the sample of healthy participants (HPs) included within 2016 Poletti et al.'s normative st...
Introduction:
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by decreased cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) Aβ42 and Aβ42/Aβ40 ratio. Aβ peptides can now be measured also in plasma and are promising peripheral biomarkers for AD. We evaluated the relationships of plasma Aβ species with their CSF counterparts, kidney function, and serum/CSF albumin ratio (Q-Alb)...
Introduction:
This study aimed at validating and providing Italian norms for the Single-Matrix Digit Cancellation Test (SMDCT), a cancellation task to screen for selective attention deficits, as well as providing clinical usability evidence for it in acute stroke patients.
Methods:
The SMDCT stimulus is a specular, 4-quadrant, horizontally orien...
Background
The present study aimed at deriving equating norms to estimate scores on the Edinburgh Cognitive and Behavioural ALS Screen (ECAS) based on those on the ALS Cognitive Behavioral Screen (ALS-CBS™) in an Italian cohort of non-demented ALS patients.MethodsALS-CBS™ and ECAS scores of 293 ALS patients without frontotemporal dementia were retr...
Increasing evidence shows that disease spreading in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) follows a preferential pattern with more frequent involvement of contiguous regions from the site of symptom onset. Aim of our study is to assess if: 1) burden of upper (UMN) and lower motor neuron (LMN) involvement influences directionality of disease spreading...
Background:
This study aimed at assessing the clinical usability of the Story-Based Empathy Task (SET) in non-demented amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients.
Methods:
N = 106 non-demented ALS patients and N = 101 healthy controls (HCs) were administered the SET, which includes three subtests assessing Emotion Attribution (SET-EA), Intenti...
The customization of the intervention using patient feedback is an evidence-based practice aimed at the continuous evaluation, during the course of treatment, of the patient's change at a clinical level. There are few easy-to-use tools for common assessment of psychological distress, designed to be used for screening and during treatment to monitor...
Background
This study aimed at assessing the cross-sectional and longitudinal clinimetrics and feasibility of the Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) in non-demented Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients.
Methods
N = 109 PD patients underwent the FAB and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). A subsample of patients further underwent a thorough motor,...
Objective:
To investigate the relationship between serum levels of the neuroaxonal degeneration biomarker neurofilament light chain (NFL) and phenotype in ALS.
Materials and methods:
Serum NFL (sNFL) concentration was quantified in 209 ALS patients and 46 neurologically healthy controls (NHCs).
Results:
sNFL was clearly increased in ALS patien...
Background
The UNC13A gene is an established susceptibility locus for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and a determinant of shorter survival after disease onset, with up to 33.0 months difference in life expectancy for carriers of the rs12608932 risk genotype. However, its overall effect on other clinical features and ALS phenotypic variability...
Background
The present study aimed to determine whether patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease (AD), semantic verbal fluency (SVF), and the semantic-phonemic discrepancy (SPD) could predict abnormal cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) phosphorylated tau (P-tau181) and total tau (T-tau) levels.Methods
Phonemic ve...
Background: Mindfulness trainings have shown promising results as treatment for behavioural symptoms in several pathologies. In addition, mindfulness protocols induced an improvement in memory and attention. Therefore, mindfulness could be an effective intervention for patients affected by Parkinson’s disease (PD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI...
Emerging evidence indicates that the etiologic agent responsible for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), can cause neurological complications. COVID-19 may induce cognitive impairment through multiple mechanisms. The aim of the present study was to describe the possible neuropsychological and metabolic neuroimaging consequences of COVID-19 12 mont...
Background
The present investigation aimed at testing the psychometrics and diagnostics of the Italian version of the Caregiver Behavioral Questionnaire (CBQ) from the ALS Cognitive Behavioral Screen (ALS-CBS™), as well as its case–control discrimination, in a cohort of non-demented patients with ALS.
Methods
The caregivers of N = 265 non-demented...
Objectives: In amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), verbal fluency index (Vfi) is used to investigate fluency accounting for motor impairment. This study has three aims: (1) to provide Vfi reference values from a cohort of Italian healthy subjects; (2) to assess the ability of Vfi reference values (vs standard verbal fluency test [VFT]) in distingu...
Introduction
Depression is one of the most disabling neuropsychiatric manifestations of Parkinson’s disease (PD) and requires proper screening and diagnosis because it affects the overall prognosis and quality of life of patients. This study aimed to assess the psychometric and diagnostic properties of the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) in a...
Background
We analysed the relationship between cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)/serum albumin quotient (Q-Alb) and phenotype in a large cohort of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).Methods
Three hundred twenty-eight single-centre consecutive patients with ALS were evaluated for Q-Alb, basic epidemiological and clinical data, motor phenotyp...
Long-COVID is a clinical condition in which patients affected by SARS-CoV-2 usually report a wide range of physical and cognitive symptoms from 3 to 6 months after the infection recovery. The aim of the current study was to assess the link between self-reported long-COVID symptoms and reaction times (RTs) in a self-administered Visual Detection Tas...
Objective:
to longitudinally investigate the effects of individual's factors on subsequent burn-out/psychological distress in a sample of mental health practitioners, testing if higher attachment anxiety and avoidance, and lower reflective functioning (i.e., certainty and uncertainty of mental states) and well-being at baseline may lead to a great...
Background
The present study aimed at (1) providing further validity and reliability evidence for the Italian version of the cognitive section of the ALS Cognitive Behavioral Screen (ALS-CBS™) and (2) testing its diagnostics within an Italian ALS cohort, as well as at (3) exploring its capability to discriminate patients from healthy controls (HCs)...
Objective:
To compare serum levels of the astrocyte biomarker glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and neurologically healthy controls and to analyze the relations between serum GFAP (sGFAP) and phenotype in ALS.
Methods:
We studied 114 ALS patients and 38 controls. sGFAP was quantified with...
Introduction
Functional hypothalamic amenorrhea (FHA) is a clinical condition associated with high levels of physiological and psychological stress ranging from weight loss to maladaptive behavior and coping skills. A reliable measure of the psychophysiological response to stress and the ability to cope with stimuli is heart rate variability (HRV)....
Background
This study aimed at testing the ability of the frontal assessment battery (FAB) to differentiate between patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease (AD), as well as comparing its discriminative power to that of the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE).
Methods
The present retrospective cohort i...
Background
This study aimed at assessing the diagnostic properties of the Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) as to its capability to (1) discriminate healthy controls (HCs) from patients with Huntington’s disease (HD) and (2) identify cognitive impairment in this population.
Materials
Thirty-eight consecutive HD patients were compared to 73 HCs on t...
Background:
The cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)/serum albumin quotient (Q-Alb) is a marker of the blood-CSF barrier (BCSFB) and possibly of the blood-brain barrier (BBB). The latter is known to be altered in Alzheimer's disease (AD) based on neuropathological and neuroimaging studies. Following investigations performed on clinically diagnosed cohorts, w...
Background
This study aimed at providing diagnostic properties and normative cut-offs for the Italian ECAS Carer Interview (ECAS-CI).
Materials
N = 292 non-demented ALS patients and N = 107 healthy controls (HCs) underwent the ECAS-CI and the Frontal Behavioural Inventory (FBI). Two ECAS-CI measures were addressed: (1) the number of symptoms (NoS;...
Background
The semiology and determinants of apathy are largely unknown across amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson’s disease (PD), and Huntington’s disease (HD), due to both motor and non-motor confounders. This study thus aimed at (1) profiling apathy in ALS, PD, and HD and (2) exploring its clinical determinants.
Materials
Consecutive...
Background
The aim of this study was to explore the construct validity and diagnostic properties of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) in non-demented patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Materials
A total of 61 consecutive patients and 50 healthy controls (HCs) were administered the 36-item RMET. Additionally, patients und...
Objective:
This study aimed at estimating the prevalence of language impairment (LI) in a large, clinic-based cohort of non-demented ALS patients and assessing its underpinnings at motor and non-motor levels.
Methods:
N=348 non-demented ALS patients underwent the Edinburgh Cognitive and Behavioural ALS Screen (ECAS), as well as an assessment of...
Introduction
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) individuals carrying the hexanucleotide repeat expansion (HRE) in the C9orf72 gene (C9Pos) have been described as presenting distinct features compared to the general ALS population (C9Neg). We aim to identify the phenotypic traits more closely associated with the HRE and analyse the role of the repe...
This study aimed at providing standardized regression-based (SRB) reliable change indices (RCIs) for the Italian Edinburgh Cognitive and Behavioral ALS Screen (ECAS). Thirty-one consecutive ALS patients undergoing the ECAS were followed-up (T1) at 6.5 ± 1 months (range = 5–8). Ceiling/floor effects, practice effect, and test–retest reliability were...
Background:
Doll therapy (DT) is a non-pharmacological intervention for the treatment of the behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD). We designed a single-blind randomized controlled trial of the 30-day efficacy of DT in reducing the BPSD, professional caregivers' distress and patients' biomarkers of stress, and in improving the...
Background
The present study aimed at evaluating the diagnostic properties of the Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) in non-demented ALS patients by addressing the Edinburgh Cognitive Behavioural ALS Screen (ECAS) as the gold standard, as well as by examining the association between its administrability and scores with motor-functional measures.
Mat...
Background
The present study aimed at (1) assessing the diagnostic properties of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) in non-demented ALS patients and at (2) exploring the MoCA administrability according to motor-functional status.
Materials
N = 348 patients were administered the MoCA and Edinburgh Cognitive and Behavioural ALS Screen (ECAS)....
Objectives:
This study aimed at testing whether CSF levels of amyloid β42 (Aβ42), Aβ40, total tau and phosphorylated tau (P-tau181) individually contribute to the identification of atypical phenotypes among a retrospective cohort of probable AD patients diagnosed by means of the ratio between Aβ42 and Aβ40 (Aβ42/40).
Methods:
The retrospective s...
Background
Among clinicians and researchers, it is common knowledge that, in ALS, cognitive and behavioral involvement within the spectrum of frontotemporal degenerations (FTDs) begun to be regarded as a fact in the late 1990s of the twentieth century. By contrast, a considerable body of evidence on cognitive/behavioral changes in ALS can be traced...
Background
This study aims at reviewing, within the framework of motor neuron disease-frontotemporal degeneration (MND-FTD)- spectrum disorders, evidence on the co-occurrence between primary progressive aphasia (PPA) and MND in order to profile such a complex at pathological, genetic and clinical levels.
Methods
This review was pre-registered ( os...
Background
Neuropsychological testing plays a cardinal role in the diagnosis and monitoring of Alzheimer’s disease. A major concern is represented by the heterogeneity of the neuropsychological batteries currently adopted in memory clinics and healthcare centers. The current study aimed to solve this issue.
Methods
Following the initiative of the...
The transmembrane protein 106B (TMEM106B) gene is a susceptibility factor and disease modifier of frontotemporal dementia, but few studies have investigated its role in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The aim of this work was to assess the impact of the TMEM106B rs1990622 (A–major risk allele; G–minor allele) on phenotypic variability of 865 patient...
Background
This study aimed at comparing, within the 2018 NIA-AA amyloidosis/tauopathy/neurodegeneration (ATN) framework, the distribution of T ± profiles across A + patients with MCI and dementia in a retrospective, single-center, clinic-based cohort.Methods
We retrospectively collected data on N = 168 A + patients with either MCI due to AD (N = 5...
In the present study, we aimed to investigate the resting-state functional connectivity (RS-FC) of the globus pallidus (GP) in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) compared to healthy controls, and the relationship between RS-FC changes and disgust recognition. Twenty-six pure-motor ALS patients and 52 healthy controls underwent RS fun...
Objective:
Previous research provides support for the role of psychosocial variables in the progression of hypertension. However, few studies have rigorously tested the longitudinal interplay between blood pressure and depressive symptoms, quality of life, and well-being. Fewer still disaggregate the effects of changes of these psychological varia...
Psychological variables may be crucial in favoring or discouraging health-related behaviors, including vaccine acceptance. This study aimed to extend the previous literature by outlining the psychological profile associated with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in a sample of Italian citizens. Between April and May 2021, 1122 Italian volunteers completed...
Eye movement abnormalities in association with cognitive and emotional deficits have been described in neurological, neurodevelopmental, and psychiatric disorders. Eye-Tracking (ET) techniques could therefore enhance cognitive interventions by contingently providing feedback to patients. Since no consensus has been reached thus far on this approach...
Background
Parkinsonian syndromes may rarely occur in motor neuron disease (MND). However, previous studies are heterogeneous and mostly case reports or small case series. Therefore, we aimed to identify and characterize patients with concurrent parkinsonian syndromes extracted from a cohort of 1,042 consecutive cases diagnosed with MND at a tertia...
This study investigated the relationship between emotion processing and resting-state functional connectivity (rs-FC) of the brain networks in frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD). Eighty FTLD patients (including cases with behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia, primary progressive aphasia, progressive supranuclear palsy syndrome, motor...
Emotional processing impairments, resulting in a difficulty to decode emotions from faces especially for negative emotions, are characteristic non-motor features of Parkinson’s disease (PD). There is limited evidence about the specific contribution of the cerebellum to the recognition of emotional contents in facial expressions even though patients...
To define the presence and type of frontotemporal dysfunction in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), different screening tools have been created. Currently, the most used screening tests are the Edinburgh cognitive and behavioural ALS screen (ECAS) and the ALS cognitive behavioural screen (ALS-CBS). The objective of this study was to compare the a...
Background:
Oropharyngeal dysphagia is generally recognized to increase the risk of malnutrition, however, its role in patients with neurodegenerative disease has still to be determined. The cross-sectional study aimed to investigate the impact of swallowing function on malnutrition risk in patients with neurodegenerative diseases.
Methods:
Pati...
Objective
The aim of the present study was to investigate whether patients with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) had changes in their level of performance in extra-dimensional shifting by implementing a novel analysis method, utilizing the new alternate phonemic/semantic fluency test.
Method
We used machine learning (ML) in order to develop high accuracy...
Background:
Cognitive dysfunction has been observed following recovery from COVID-19. To the best of our knowledge, however, no study has assessed the progression of cognitive impairment after one year. We aimed to assess cognitive functioning at one year from hospital discharge, and eventual associations with specific clinical variables.
Methods...
Excessive use of technology has become a worldwide problem due to its high prevalence, fast growth rate, and undesirable consequences. However, little is known about underlying psychological mechanisms that maintain excessive use of technology. We investigated the mediating role of self-esteem, novelty seeking, and persistence on the relationship b...
From the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of surgical masks became widespread. However, they occlude an important part of the face and make it difficult to decode and interpret other people’s emotions. To clarify the effect of surgical masks on configural and featural processing, participants completed a facial emotion recognition task to di...
Objectives
Despite the large amount of literature examining the potential influence of subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation (STN-DBS) on psychiatric symptoms and cognitive disorders, only a few studies have focused on its effect on personality. We investigated the correlation between total electrical energy delivered (TEED) and the occurrence...
Background and aim
Increasing evidence shows that approximately half of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) displays cognitive (ALSci) or behavioural (ALSbi) impairment, or both (ALScbi). Aim of our study is to assess whether the burden of upper (UMN) and lower motor neuron (LMN) involvement is associated with the presence of cognitiv...
Background
The impairment in detecting disgust in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) has been hypothesized to be related with the integrity of subcortical structures. However, this has not been demonstrated yet and was the aim of the study.
Method
Twenty ALS patients without cognitive/behavioural symptoms and 52 matched healthy controls (HC) unde...
Even though increasing literature describes changes in emotional processing in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), efforts to summarize relevant findings are lacking in the field. A systematic literature review was performed to provide a critical and up-to-date account of emotional abilities in ALS. References were identified by searches of PubMed...
The Italian state adopted serious safety measures to manage the COVID-19 pandemic in the year 2020. The lockdown was associated with negative psychological consequences in healthy populations, mostly in terms of anxiety, distress, depression, and even traumatic symptoms. This longitudinal study aimed at briefly documenting the psychological impact...