Costanza Papagno

Università degli Studi di Trento | UNITN · CIMEC - Center for Mind/Brain Sciences

Background: Mild cognitive impairment in Parkinson's disease (PD-MCI) includes deficits in different cognitive domains, and one domain to explore for neurocognitive impairment following the DSM-V is social cognition. However, this domain is not included in current criteria for PD-MCI diagnosis. Moreover, tests vary across studies. It is, therefore,...

Innovative digital solutions are shaping a new concept of dementia care, opening additional venues for prevention, diagnosis, monitoring and treatment. Hereby, we report the development of a tablet-based teleneuropsychology platform (Tenèpsia®), from concept to certification as Medical Device (MD) Class IIA, as per new MD regulation 745/2017. The p...

Semantic interference (SI) and phonological facilitation (PF) effects occur when multiple representations are co-activated simultaneously in complex naming paradigms, manipulating the context in which word production is set. Although the behavioral consequences of these psycholinguistic effects are well-known, the involved brain structures are stil...

Background The use of computerized devices for neuropsychological assessment (CNADs) as an effective alternative to the traditional pencil-and-paper modality has recently increased exponentially, both in clinical practice and research, especially due to the pandemic. However, several authors underline that the computerized modality requires the sam...

PSEN1 mutations are typically associated with early-onset familial Alzheimer's disease but also atypical extrapiramidal phenotypes have been described. We report the case of a patient with dystonia-parkinsonism and non-progressive cognitive impairment carrying a novel truncating PSEN1 variant. Cerebrospinal fluid and imaging biomarkers indicated th...

In Parkinson's disease (PD), impairment of Theory of Mind (ToM) has recently attracted an increasing number of neuroscientific investigations. If and how functional connectivity of the ToM network is altered in PD is still an open question. First, we explored whether ToM network connectivity shows potential PD-specific functional alterations when c...

Deaf individuals may report difficulties in social interactions. However, whether these difficulties depend on deafness affecting social brain circuits is controversial. Here, we report the first meta-analysis comparing brain activations of hearing and (prelingually) deaf individuals during social perception. Our findings showed that deafness does...

Functional alterations in brain connectivity have previously been described in Parkinson's disease, but it is not clear whether individual differences in connectivity profiles might be also linked to severity of motor-symptom manifestation. Here we investigated the relevance of individual functional connectivity patterns measured with resting-state...

The role of either short-term memory (STM) or working memory (WM) in sentence comprehension is a matter of debate. Although it is commonly accepted that memory resources are necessary for sentence comprehension, there is no agreement regarding the nature of their role. The aim of this review is to investigate and synthesize assessment tools and cor...

It has been suggested that the inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF) may play an important role in several aspects of language processing such as visual object recognition, visual memory, lexical retrieval, reading, and specifically, in naming visual stimuli. In particular, the ILF appears to convey visual information from the occipital lobe to th...

The concreteness effect (CE), namely a better performance with concrete compared to abstract concepts, is a constant feature in healthy people, and it usually increases in persons with aphasia (PWA). However, a reversal of the CE has been reported in patients affected by the semantic variant of Primary Progressive Aphasia (svPPA), a neurodegenerati...

Background: Experimental investigations and clinical observations have shown that not only faces but also voices are predominantly processed by the right hemisphere. Moreover, right brain-damaged patients show more difficulties with voice than with face recognition. Finally, healthy subjects undergoing right temporal anodal stimulation improve the...

Background: Social cognition deficits are reported in several neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson's disease (PD). However, the availability of tasks for the clinical assessment is still limited, preventing the full characterization of socio-cognitive dysfunctions in neurological patients. This study aims to present a new task to assess...

Background: The comprehension profile of people with agrammatism is a debated topic. Syntactic complexity and cognitive resources, in particular phonological short-term memory (pSTM), are considered as crucial components by different interpretative accounts. Aim: To investigate the interaction of syntactic complexity and of pSTM in sentence comp...

We administered to large groups of patients with neoplastic or degenerative damage affecting the right or left ATL, the 'Famous People Recognition Battery' (FPRB), in which subjects are required to recognize the same 40 famous people through their faces, voices and names, to clarify which components of famous people recognition are lateralized. At...

Phonemic and semantic fluency are neuropsychological tests widely used to assess patients’ language and executive abilities and are highly sensitive tests in detecting language deficits in glioma patients. However, the networks that are involved in these tasks could be distinct and suggesting either a frontal (phonemic) or temporal (semantic) invol...

The Cognitive Reserve (CR) hypothesis accounts for individual differences in vulnerability to age- or pathological-related brain changes. It suggests lifetime influences (e.g., education) increase the effectiveness of cognitive processing in later life. While evidence suggests CR proxies predict cognitive performance in older age, it is less clear...

Background Emotion recognition and social deficits have been previously reported in Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, the extent of these impairments is still unclear and social cognition is excluded from the cognitive domains considered in the current criteria for PD mild cognitive impairment (MCI). This study aims to analyze emotion recognition,...

The study of patients after glioma resection offers a unique opportunity to investigate brain reorganization. It is currently unknown how the whole-brain connectomic profile evolves longitudinally after surgical resection of a glioma and how this may be associated with tumor characteristics and cognitive outcome. In this longitudinal study, we inve...

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) or globus pallidum internus (GPi) improves motor functions in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) but may cause a decline in specific cognitive domains. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to assess the long-term (1-3 years) effects of STN or GPi DBS on four cognit...

In this chapter, the literature concerning the dissociation between concrete and abstract words is reviewed, with a specific focus on the role of the temporal lobes. A number of studies have demonstrated the so-called “concreteness effect,” that is, the superior processing of concrete versus abstract words. However, some neuropsychological patients...

Una lesione nel territorio dell’arteria cerebrale anteriore può provocare neglect motorio, cioè il mancato o scarso utilizzo degli arti controlaterali alla lesione in assenza di deficit sensori-motori. Il neglect motorio viene descritto in letteratura per lesioni frontali e parietali oppure sottocorticali che includono corpo calloso, connessioni fr...

The assessment of recognition memory is useful in several neurological conditions, but normative data for visual recognition memory of complex figures are still missing for the Italian population. The aim of this study is to present a new short test of visual recognition memory that consists in a supplementary task to be administered after the free...

Several clinical studies have reported a double dissociation between abstract and concrete concepts, suggesting that they are processed by at least partly different networks in the brain. However, neuroimaging data seem not in line with neuropsychological reports. Using the ALE method, we run a meta-analysis on 32 brain-activation imaging studies t...

Up to 35–40% of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) present with language deficits falling within the spectrum of frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD). It is currently debated whether frontotemporal involvement occurs or not in motor neuron disease (MND) phenotypes that differ from classical ALS (i.e., both different-from-ALS MNDs...

The coronavirus-disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak precipitated prolonged lock-down measures. The subsequent social distancing, isolation, and reduction in mobility increased psychological stress, which may worsen Parkinson’s disease (PD). Therefore, telemedicine has been proposed to provide care to PD patients. To evaluate the effects of lock-down o...

In this chapter, after a brief introduction in which we try to clarify the correct use of the term “verbal short-term memory” (STM) in the psychological and neuropsychological literature, we review the evidence concerning its neural correlates. Neurosurgical reports have often mixed up outcomes concerning memory, not differentiating among the vario...

In this chapter, after an introduction in which we describe the psychological and neuropsychological literature concerning proper names retrieval, we review its neural correlates investigated by means of different methodologies. Neurosurgical reports are very limited in the case of proper name retrieval, in general describing long-distance effects,...

Data gathered in the field of the experimental social psychology have shown that it is more difficult to recognize a person through his/her voice than through his/her face and that false alarms (FA) are produced more in voice than in face recognition. Furthermore, some neuropsychological investigations have suggested that in patients with damage to...

Objectives: Neurocognitive disorders in Parkinson's disease (PD) are common and heterogeneous. The aim of this study was to use a data-driven method to describe different cognitive phenotypes in PD and to explore anxiety, depression, and motor disturbances across the different cognitive profiles. Method: Latent profile analysis was applied to th...

Cognitive function impairment due to high altitude exposure has been reported with some contradictory results regarding the possible selective cognitive domain involvement. We prospectively evaluated in 36 lowlanders, exposed for 3 consecutive days to an altitude of 3,269 m, specific cognitive abilities (attention, processing speed, and decision-ma...

Introduction: Parkinson's Disease (PD) is characterized by motor and non-motor symptoms, among which deficits in social cognition might affect ~20% of patients. This study aims to evaluate the role of social cognitive abilities in the perceived impact of COVID-19 emergency, and the effects of lockdown measures on patients' social network and caregi...

Background: It has long been debated whether in Williams syndrome (WS) there is a preferential processing of local with respect to global forms, in contrast to the typical 'global advantage' in healthy individuals, which in WS seems to exist only for faces. Aims: We aimed at verifying it and to assess the role of stimulus familiarity by comparin...

Several studies have investigated how abstract and concrete concepts are processed in the brain, but data are controversial, in particular neuroimaging data contrast with clinical neuropsychological observations. A possible explanation could be that previous meta-analyses considered different types of stimuli (nouns, verbs, literal and figurative s...

Background. Up to 35-40% of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) present with language deficits falling within the spectrum of frontotemporal degeneration (FTD). It is currently debated whether frontotemporal involvement occurs or not in motor neuron disease (MND) phenotypes that differ from classical ALS (i.e., both non-ALS MNDs and n...

Background: Memory priming seems possible even during apparently adequate anaesthesia. However, the effects of different anaesthetics and type of stimuli, by virtue of their specific neural underpinnings, have not been considered. Objective: To determine if intra-operative implicit memory is affected by the type of anaesthesia (propofol or sevof...

Congresso Nazionale SINP 2020

Recent literature suggests that the primary somatosensory cortex (S1), once thought to be a low-level area only modality-specific, is also involved in higher-level, cross-modal, cognitive functions. In particular, electrophysiological studies have highlighted that the cross-modal activation of this area may also extend to visual Working Memory (WM)...

Acquired prosopagnosia is usually a consequence of bilateral or right hemisphere lesions and is often associated with topographical disorientation and dyschromatopsia. Left temporo-occipital lesions sometimes result in a face recognition disorder but in a context of visual object agnosia with spared familiarity feelings for faces, usually in left-h...

People identity recognition and the neural correlates underlying this process are still a matter of debate. While neuropsychological reports on single cases show a crucial role of the left anterior temporal lobe (ATL) in proper naming, and of the right ATL in people’s identification, reviews are less consistent. Moreover, it is still controversial...

PurposeAwake surgery is an established technique for resection of low-grade gliomas, while its possible benefit for resection of high-grade gliomas (HGGs) needs further confirmations. This retrospective study aims to compare overall survival, extent of resection (EOR) and cognitive outcome in two groups of HGGs patients submitted to asleep or awake...

In 2018 the SINch (Italian Society of Neurosurgery) Neuro-Oncology section, AINO (Italian Association of Neuro-Oncology) and SIN (Italian Association of Neurology) Neuro-Oncology section formed a collaborative Task Force to look at the diagnosis and treatment of low-grade gliomas (LGGs). The Task Force included neurologists, neurosurgeons, neuro-on...

Emotion processing impairment is a common non‐motor symptom in Parkinson’s Disease (PD). Previous literature reported conflicting results concerning, in particular, the performance for different emotions, the relation with cognitive and neuropsychiatric symptoms and the affected stage of processing. This study aims at assessing emotion recognition...

Introduction: Verbs and nouns can be selectively impaired, suggesting that they are processed, at least in part, by distinct neural structures. While several tests of object naming are available, tasks involving action verb naming with normative data are lacking. We report the construction and standardization of a new test for the assessment of pi...

Research over the past 30 years has developed several protocols to investigate the anatomo-functional architecture of the mental lexicon. The first is the neuropsychological approach, based on anatomo-clinical correlations in selected groups of brain-damaged patients and on single case studies, in which association and/or dissociation between a dam...

Disagreement exists regarding representational and connectionist interpretations of semantic knowledge subserved by the right versus left anterior temporal lobes (ATLs). These interpretations predict a different pattern of impairment in patients with a right unilateral ATL lesion. We conducted a neuropsychological study of a selective semantic pict...

Objectives Within the large topic of naming disorders, an important and separated chapter belongs to proper names. Defects of proper naming could be a selective linguistic problem. Sometimes, it includes names belonging to various kinds of semantically unique entities, but other times, it has been observed for famous people proper names only. Accor...

Verbs and nouns can be selectively impaired, suggesting that they are processed, at least in part, by distinct neural structures. While several tests of object naming are available, tasks involving action verb naming with normative data are lacking. We report the construction and standardization of a new test for the assessment of picture naming of...

Purpose: The practical management of cavernous angioma located within eloquent brain area before, during and after surgical resection is poorly documented. We assessed the practical pre-operative, intra-operative, and post-operative management of cavernous angioma located within eloquent brain area. Method: An online survey composed of 61 items...

The relationship between verbal-auditory short-term memory (STM) and language is an open area of debate and contrasting hypotheses have been proposed, suggesting either that STM would strongly rely on language-related processes, or that it depends on a dedicated system related to language, but independent from it. In this study we examined 103 pati...

Deaf individuals may compensate for the lack of the auditory input by showing enhanced capacities in certain visual tasks. Here we assessed whether this also applies to recognition of emotions expressed by bodily and facial cues. In Experiment 1, we compared deaf participants and hearing controls in a task measuring recognition of the six basic emo...

In the last decade, the effects of NIBS on language recovery in post-stroke aphasia have been evaluated, but little is known about the long-term effectiveness. To this aim, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to determine whether positive effects, mainly on naming performance, are maintained in time, and rTMS and/or tDCS (either as a...

A wide range of human activities are performed sequentially in few seconds. We need to maintain a correct temporal order of words in language, movements in actions, directions in navigation, etc. Therefore, it is plausible, in a more economical perspective, that our brain is equipped with a dedicated mechanism for storing a temporal sequence for a...

BACKGROUND The postoperative outcomes and the predictors of seizure control are poorly studied for supratentorial cavernous angiomas (CA) within or close to the eloquent brain area. OBJECTIVE To assess the predictors of preoperative seizure control, postoperative seizure control, and postoperative ability to work, and the safety of the surgery. M...

Objective Neuromodulation of regions involved in food processing is increasingly used in studies on eating behaviors, but results are controversial. We assessed the effects of anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (a‐tDCS) on food and body implicit preferences in patients with eating disorders (EDs). Method Thirty‐six ED patients and 36 h...

Background: Conscious perception of external stimuli has been related to recurrent activity in distributed cortical networks, although brain mechanisms controlling unconscious processing and stimuli access to conscious report need to be clarified. Objective: This study aims at investigating modulations in cortical excitability related to conscio...

In this study, we investigated whether auditory deprivation leads to a more balanced bilateral control of spatial attention in the haptic space. We tested four groups of participants: early deaf, early blind, deafblind, and control (normally hearing and sighted) participants. Using a haptic line bisection task, we found that while normally hearing...

The Publisher regrets that this article is an accidental duplication of an article that has already been published, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2018.11.002. The duplicate article has therefore been withdrawn. The full Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal can be found at https://www.elsevier.com/about/our-business/policies/article-withdrawal.

Objectives Since evidence on executive control among women with Anorexia or Bulimia Nervosa (AN/BN) are somehow inconclusive, we aimed to explore whether performance in set-shifting in AN/BN might be influenced by Facial Emotion Recognition (FER). Methods We randomly recruited women with a diagnosis of AN or BN, from an Eating Disorders Outpatient...

Background The International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) proposed a diagnostic scheme for psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES). The debate on ethical aspects of the diagnostic procedures is ongoing, the treatment is not standardized, and management might differ according to the age groups. Objective To reach an expert and stakeholder consen...

The existence of the functional syndrome of auditory-verbal short-term storage impairment was used as strong supporting evidence for the presence of a phonological buffer in the first version of the Baddeley–Hitch working memory model. In later versions the syndrome corresponded to the selective impairment of the phonological input buffer. The pres...

We discuss the literature concerning the role of auditory-verbal short-term memory (phonological loop) in sentence comprehension. We critically analyze data concerning patients with a selective deficit of the phonological loop, then we examine aphasic patients with deficit of auditory-verbal short-term memory and we consider the effect of STM treat...

Neuropsychological, neuroimaging and electrophysiological studies demonstrate that abstract and concrete word processing relies not only on the activity of a common bilateral network but also on dedicated networks. The neuropsychological literature has shown that a selective sparing of abstract relative to concrete words can be documented in lesion...

People with schizophrenia often exhibit difficulties to comprehend figurative expressions, such as irony, proverbs, metaphors and idioms, with a general proneness to neglect the figurative meaning and to accept the more literal one. This inability is usually referred to as concretism and it constitutes a clinical manifestation of the broader langua...

Abstract Background Post-stroke depression (PSD) is among the most frequent neuropsychiatric consequences of stroke, negatively affecting the patient's functional recovery and the quality of life. While pharmacological therapy has limited efficacy and important side effects, new appropriate treatments based on specific physiological mechanisms fo...

Data concerning the neural basis of noun and verb processing are inconsistent. Some authors assume that action-verb processing is based on frontal areas while nouns processing relies on temporal regions; others argue that the circuits processing verbs and nouns are closely interconnected in a predominantly left-lateralized fronto-temporal-parietal...

In this normative study, we investigated famous people recognition through personal name, using as stimuli the names of the same 40 Italian famous persons whose faces and voices had been utilized for the normative study of the Famous People Recognition Battery. For each famous people, we assessed name familiarity, person identification (when the na...

In this chapter, the neuropsychologic literature concerning memory deficits following parietal lesions is reviewed. Left inferior parietal lobule lesions definitely cause verbal short-term memory impairments, while right parietal lesions disrupt visuospatial short-term memory. Episodic memory, as well as autobiographic memory, does not seem to be i...

Objectives: To explore whether facial emotion recognition (FER), impaired in both schizophrenia and alcohol and substance use disorders (AUDs/SUDs), is additionally compromised among comorbid subjects, also considering the role of COMT Val158Met. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study, randomly recruiting 67 subjects with a DSM-IVTR diagnosi...

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease characterized by motor symptoms such as rigidity, rest tremor, and bradykinesia. However, a growing body of evidence demonstrated that PD encompasses several non-motor disturbances as well, such as cognitive impairment. Cognitive defects can be present since early stages of the dis...

Patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) can experience several behavioral symptoms, such as apathy, agitation, hypersexuality, stereotypic movements, pathological gambling, abuse of antiparkinsonian drugs, and REM sleep behavioral disorders. Psychoses and hallucinations, depression and anxiety disorders, and difficulties in recognizing and experienc...

We applied conversation analysis in an unselected continuous series of 70 patients to discriminate patients with psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES) from patients with epilepsy. Two psychologists examined the patients' recorded reports. Patients were also submitted to an extensive neuropsychological battery in order to verify whether specific...

In recent years, neurosurgical patients have highly contributed to research in behavioural neurology. This development is in part due to the use of direct electrical stimulation during brain surgery. Indeed, during surgery for a tumour, involving both grey and white matter, it has become a common clinical practice to awaken patients with the aim of...