Enzo Grossi

• Prof.
• Scientific Director at Foundation Villa Santa Maria

Artificial intelligence (AI) has its roots in the history of philosophy and of applied mathematics of the 17 th , 18 th and 19 th centuries. Throughout the 20 th century , significant advancements in mathematics and computer science laid the groundwork for modern AI, culminating in the establishment of the field as a formal discipline during the Da...

Quasi nessuno sarebbe disposto a negare l'impatto della religiosità da un punto di vista psicologico, sociale ed economico, e quindi l'influenza indiretta che questa componente può esercitare su aspetti come la longevità e il livello di soddisfazione della vita. Ma pensare alla religiosità come ad uno dei maggiori fattori determinanti la salute fis...

Mi è stato chiesto di fare una carrellata sulle metodologie impiegabili per misurare gli esiti della partecipazione culturale. Ovviamente qui abbiamo diversi targets e su ognuno di questi targets abbiamo a disposizione delle metodologie, più o meno sofisticate, di misurazione.

Anche se in termini di salute pubblica, le interazioni con lo "spazio blu" sono considerate prevalentemente in termini negativi, c'è un interesse crescente per l'uso potenziale degli ambienti acquatici esterni, o spazio blu, nell'ambito della promozione della salute e del benessere umano.

The 4 P's medicine represents a movement of thought that was born under the impetus of a series of factors that are listed in this slide: the explosion of chronic diseases, the resulting economic deficit, the change in citizens' expectations of health, and the strong development of artificial intelligence applied to so-called big data. Here, then,...

Quali sono le evidenze scientifiche per promuovere la partecipazione culturale some strategia per un nuovo tipo di welfare? Il corpus delle evidenze scientifiche è formidabile come dimostrano questi numeri: I primi studi pionieristici condotti da Bygren sulla longevità legata alla partecipazione culturale hanno attratto l'attenzione di ricercatori...

A few months after the close of EXPO 2015, in May 2016, the United Nations, inspired by the Milan Charter, proclaimed the years 2016-2025 as a decade for global action on nutrition. Our country was among the first to co-sponsor an event with FAO and WHO to engage governments in the fight against malnutrition, an event held in New York in September...

Contrast media are very useful for artificial intelligence

• La pandemia di COVID-19 sta favorendo la transizione digitale in molti settori e nella società nel suo complesso. • L'assistenza sanitaria sta rispondendo alla prima fase della pandemia attraverso la rapida adozione di soluzioni digitali e di strumenti tecnologici avanzati. • Su 70.000 Voci bibliografiche su Pub.Med da Gennaio 2020 ben 600 di que...

Let's start reminding which are the properties of AI intersting for medical applications in general • AI adapts to the problem by letting the data itself shape the models regardless of their nature or complexity. • Analyzes data more and more in depth, allowing new discoveries. • Reaches a very high, sometimes incredible precision • Allows inferenc...

In questa relazione è affrontato il tema dello sviluppo della IA nell'imaging diagnostico. visto come vite parallele e destini incrociati.

Oggi tutti parlano di intelligenza artificiale. In questa relazione vedremo perché una materia così difficile e lontana dalla logica a cui eravamo abituati ha fatto il suo ingresso prepotente in medicina, qual è il suo stato dell’arte oggi e quali sono le prospettive per il futuro.

Numerosi studi epidemiologici hanno messo in evidenza il ruolo dei fattori gravidici nella patogenesi dell’autismo. Una serie di problemi metodologici ostacola la messa a terra di questo corpo di conoscenze. La complessità della interazione tra ambiente e geni richiede un approccio statistico-matematico in grado di cogliere al meglio le associazion...

Molti musei stanno spostando la propria mission e ruolo da centri per l'apprendimento e l’educazione a centri per il benessere individuale e sociale. Tutta una serie di studi qualitativi, ma anche quantitativi e randomizzati, suggeriscono che i musei promuovono la salute ed il benessere in diversi modi: attraverso esperienze sociali positive che ri...

Le funzioni fisiologiche, l'espressione di molte malattie e gli effetti dei farmaci sono sensibili allo scorrere del tempo e variano a seconda dell'ora del giorno. Il danno apportato all'orologio biologico nei topi provoca disfunzioni cardio-metaboliche, immunologiche e neurologiche; il disallineamento circadiano con la desincronia forzata aumenta...

Today, many people spend more than 90 per cent of their lives in buildings. Studies indicate that the aesthetic qualities of architecture have an impact on our mood, cognitive functioning, behavior and even health. The salutogenic design seeks to address these needs with a transdisciplinary approach, where architecture, psychology and medicine are...

A growing number of studies depict the major role of cultural participation in improving well-being. The evidence comes from cross-sectional population studies carried out in different countries on large numbers of subjects, from observational longitudinal studies, where culturally engaged participants had higher well-being concurrently and many ye...

I risultati di una serie di studi qualitativi e quantitativi suggeriscono che l'arte figurativa e astratta possono avere effetti positivi sul benessere dei pazienti ricoverati, dei loro famigliari e degli operatori. Le proprietà distrattive dell'arte si sono rivelate utili durante e dopo procedure dolorose o durante la terapia del dolore cronico e...

L'arteterapia utilizza il processo creativo del fare arte attraverso vari mezzi espressivi con un facilitatore professionista per migliorare il benessere mentale, emotivo e fisico. Si basa sull'idea che il processo creativo dell'espressione artistica di sé aiuti le persone a sviluppare le capacità interpersonali, a risolvere i conflitti, ad aument...

Il numero di studi scientifici sulla “Cinema Therapy” è aumentato molto negli ultimi anni, a conferma di un nuovo interesse sull’argomento in campo medico. Tali articoli scientifici spaziano dall’utilizzo del cinema come prevenzione delle idee suicidarie a quello educativo-formativo, ad esempio per insegnare i principi delle cure palliative, ma anc...

Background: Restrictive repetitive behaviors (RRBs) and sensory processing disorders are core symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Their relationship is reported, but existing data are conflicting as to whether they are related but distinct, or different aspects of the same phenomenon. Aims: This study investigates this relationship using ar...

Background The pharmacological treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is based largely on cholinesterase inhibitors (ChEI). Objective To investigate whether or not some non-pharmacological and contextual factors measured prior to starting treatment such as past occupation, lifestyles, marital status, degree of autonomy and cognitive impairment, liv...

Autistic children are on the increase and have difficulty in emotional regulation. Most places of culture have not yet developed specific projects for autistic children, even though cultural participation produces undeniable effects on psycho-physical well-being, as in terms of emotional regulation. Therefore, there is a mismatch between the "patie...

Different forms of beauty from visual art, music, nature, and architecture improve mental health and exert neurotrophic effects on different brain parts. This in turn improves physical health, prolongs life expectancy, and reduces the risk of serious degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and cancer. These beneficial actions would not be underst...

The themes of accessibility and inclusion in museums increasingly involve people with different forms of medical disabilities and social disadvantages. Many governments are now, finally, concentrated on this theme, including Italy, which has recently created within the MIBACT (Department of Cultural Heritage) a specific working group for public mus...

Il presente studio ha cercato di portare in evidenza l’evoluzione del benessere psicologico individuale nella categoria dei giovani (19-25 anni) nel periodo 2008 – 2023 attraverso lo strumento del PGWBI. Le analisi hanno proposto due livelli di approfondimento: ad un primo livello, attraverso il quale sono stati analizzati i risultati in riferiment...

Storytelling and creative writing can improve empathy and well-being. Few randomized controlled trials have been carried out so far in health care settings, generally with small sample sizes. In this study 175 health professionals working in a large general Hospital were randomized into two groups: group 1 received theoretical narrative medicine ed...

Artificial intelligence (AI) holds the potential to address various challenges in environmental rheumatology. These challenges include the need for better understanding of complex relationships within environmental data, fast prediction of environment-related parameters, risk assessment, and environmental decision-making. AI can assist in analyzing...

This study aimed to investigate the role of the thymus in influencing long-term outcomes of COVID-19 by comparing the thymic appearance in patients with and without COVID-19 pulmonary sequelae at chest computed tomography (CT). A total of 102 adult patients previously hospitalized for COVID-19 underwent a follow-up chest CT three months after disch...

The research strands of recent decades show how music has an impact on various medical specialties. The scientific corpus is very broad and includes randomized clinical trials, mixed methods, and mechanistic research in the field of neuroscience examining psychosocial and physiological responses to specific musical interventions. The literature has...

Background Based on the present global burden of oral diseases, unmet dental needs affect a more significant population worldwide. It is characterised by the need for dental care but receiving delayed or no care. The contributing factors include lack of knowledge about oral health, its consequences, and the availability of dental services. We need...

Michelangelo Buonarroti, according to psychiatrists could have suffered from Asperger's disorder, an interpretation that has been the subject of debate. A rare feature of Asperger syndrome is a prodigious eidetic memory, and, in this article, several facts are reviewed to prove its existence in Michelangelo, with special reference to the drawing of...

A new pre-processing approach to EEG data to detect topological EEG features has been applied to a continuous segment of artifact-free EEG data lasting 10 minutes in ASCII format, derived from 50 ASD children and 50 children with other Neuro-Psychiatric Disorders (NPD), matched for age and male/female ratios. Each EEG is transformed into a triangul...

Background and aims: Due to the improvements in cancer detection and treatments, the field of oncological rehabilitation is becoming increasingly important. To improve the effectiveness of oncological rehabilitation, mind-body interventions, such as art therapy (AT), may be implemented in the oncological rehabilitation to help patients in understan...

The exposure to different forms of beauty coming from visual art, music, nature, architecture, improves mental health and exerts neurotrophic effects on different parts of the brain. This in turn improves physical health, prolongs life expectancy, and reduces the risk of serious degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and cancer. These beneficial...

BACKGROUND. The leisure-rehabilitation programs offered to children and adolescents with autism convey feelings like emotional, social, cognitive, and physical engagement, fun, adventure, and sense of novelty. Each activity however has an intrinsic power to influence the emotional pattern in different ways. AIM. To define how each type of rehabilit...

BACKGROUND. The leisure-rehabilitation programs offered to children and adolescents with autism convey feelings like emotional, social, cognitive, and physical engagement, fun, adventure, and sense of novelty. Each activity however has an intrinsic power to influence the emotional pattern in different ways. AIM. To define how each type of rehabilit...

Background The leisure-rehabilitation programs offered to children and adolescents with autism convey feelings like emotional, social, cognitive, and physical engagement, fun, adventure, and sense of novelty. Each activity however has an intrinsic power to influence the emotional pattern in different ways. Aim To define how each type of rehabilitat...

The study of epidemic spread has generally relied on the description of certain number of cases of an infectious diseases like COVID-19 in relation to time occurrence of disease manifestations rather than to the exact place of occurrence. In recent times, computer generated dot maps have facilitated the modeling of the spread of infectious epidemic...

A new pre-processing approach of EEG data to detect topological EEG features has been applied to a continuous segment of artifact-free EEG data lasting 10 minutes in ASCII format derived from 50 ASD children and 50 children with other Neuro-Psychiatric Disorders (NPD), matched for age and male/female ratios. Each EEG is transformed in a triangular...

The leisure-rehabilitation programs offered to children and adolescents with autism convey feelings like emotional, social, cognitive, and physical engagement, fun, adventure and sense of novelty. Each activity however has an intrinsic power to influence the emotional pattern in different ways. To define how each type of rehabilitation program can...

The leisure-rehabilitation programs offered to children and adolescents with autism convey feelings like emotional, social, cognitive, and physical engagement, fun, adventure and sense of novelty. Each activity however has an intrinsic power to influence the emotional pattern in different ways. To define how each type of rehabilitation program can...

Background The correlation between food and Parkinson's disease (PD) indicates that there are positive benefits from the Mediterranean diet (MeD). Objective To find the correlation between PD and food expenditure/consumption in the various regions of Italy in 2016. Methods The food expenditure/quantities in kilograms of 56 distinct food categories...

L'evidenza di differenze di genere è stata descritta in molte malattie croniche come il diabete, i disturbi cardiovascolari, le malattie neurologiche, i disturbi mentali, il cancro e l'autoimmunità, nonché in processi fisiologici complessi come l'invecchiamento fisico e cognitivo. Inoltre, le differenze di genere negli stili di vita, come l'aliment...

The exposure to different form of beauty coming from visual art, music, nature, architecture, improves mental health and exerts neurotrophic effects on different parts of the brain. This in turn improves physical health, prolongs life expectancy, and reduces the risk of serious degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and cancer. These beneficial...

Background: The correlation between food and Parkinson's disease (PD) shows that the Mediterranean diet (MeD) brings positive benefits. Objective: To find the correlation between PD and food components in the various regions of Italy in 2016. Methods: The protein, fat, mineral and vitamin content of 275 foods belonging to 56 distinct food categorie...

I filoni di ricerca degli ultimi decenni mostrano come la musica abbia un impatto su diverse specialità mediche. Il corpus scientifico è molto ampio e comprende studi clinici randomizzati, metodologie miste e ricerche meccanicistiche nel campo delle neuroscienze che esaminano le risposte psicosociali e fisiologiche a specifici interventi musicali....

The term “toe walking” describes walking on the toes with a lack of heel strike upon initiation of the stance phase of gait. In individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), this phenomenon, or “tip‐toe behavior” (TTB), can be present in a substantial proportion of subjects even during standing. In this study, we investigated TTB in 50 persons w...

Background: The incidence of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) has been rapidly ramped up worldwide. Hence, there is an urgent need to non-invasively detect NCDs possibly by exploiting saliva as a ‘liquid biopsy’ to identify biomarkers of the health status. Since, the absence of standardized procedures of collection/analysis and the lack of normal ra...

Background: Human Papilloma virus (HPV) is very common virus in the global population. It is mainly transmitted through sexual contact and can also be transmitted from mother to child during childbirth. There are more than 100 different types of HPV, and most infected individuals do not present symptoms. However, some types of HPV can cause genital...

Music listening is widely used in therapeutic music-based interventions across various clinical contexts. However, relating the diverse and overlapping musical elements to their potential effects is a complex task. Furthermore, the considerable subjectivity of musical preferences and perceptual components of music, influenced by factors like cultur...

This is the collection of 44 posters presented by Villa Santa Maria Institute at INSAR annual meetings from 2014 to 2023

Diversi studi epidemiologici condotti dal mio gruppo negli ultimi 15 anni hanno osservato che la esposizione all'arte e la partecipazione culturale si associano ad uno stato di benessere psicologico più elevato, a conferma che quello che percepiamo nella nostra vita quotidiana ha una base scientifica. Altrettanto scientifica è connessione tra il du...

The sophisticated questionnaire, PGWBI which stands for psychological general well-being index, has been used for several decades as a measurement to evaluate psychological well-being stated by a summary score. In this study, we look at the score extracted from this Questionnaire from the non-parametric approach, Kruscal-Wallis test, and modern met...

Enzo Grossi and Vittorio Terruzzi, respectively Scientific Director and Medical Director at the Villa Santa Maria Neuropsychiatry Multiservice Centre, are the authors of a diary on the scientific evidence that has swirled around the COVID pandemic in the time between April 2020 and the end of the health emergency. Reading this diary, written in It...

Culture and creative production have an important but somewhat elusive role in urban development. None of the many conceptual paradigms that have been proposed so far to explain it has turned out entirely satisfactory. We argue that the main reason behind this failure is the implicit linear thinking that informs all these approaches: namely, the id...

In determining the so-called “body burden”, hair has been widely accepted for assessing toxic element exposure. However, its role in assessing essential elements is controversial. This study investigates the possible relationship between hair minerals, metabolic syndrome (MetS) and cardiovascular (CV) risk in non-occupationally exposed subjects wit...

Although abnormal pain sensitivity has become one of the key diagnostic criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), this area is still underinvestigated. Specifically, a very few studies focused on the affective-cognitive component characterizing pain experience in autism. The present study was aimed at investigating psychophysiological responses...

CONCLUSIONS ➢ Individuals with ASD diagnosed according to DSM-5 criteria and a diagnosis confirmation using the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) were involved in the study. ➢ TTB was quantified during structured static and dynamic tasks using a video-recording approach, previously described 2. All the tests were performed without shoes...

There has been recent interest in the relationship between socioeconomic status, urbanicity level, and the diagnosis of autism in children. Studies in the United States have found lower rates of autism diagnosis associated with lower socioeconomic status, while studies in other countries report no association or the opposite. In a large Danish regi...

Autism spectrum disorder ( is a genetically heterogeneous disorder and may be caused by both inherited and de novo gene variants Increasing evidence points to a contribution of environmental and epigenetic factors in ASD, but their connections are still largely unexplored Aim of the present pilot study was to apply the Auto Contractive Map algorith...

“Sensoria ® Smart Socks” seems to be a feasible and acceptable wearable sensors approach for quantifying TTB in individuals with severe ASD and TTB Further research is required to confirm these preliminary results

Background: The relationship between foods and cancers has been documented in many epidemiological and cohort studies of the Mediterranean Diet (MeD). Objective: Correlation between food expenditure in Italy and the prevalence of nine cancers: breast, prostate, colon, pancreas, TBL (throat-bronchial-lung), bladder in males and females, uterus, and...

Exposure to environmental stressors during pregnancy plays an important role in influencing subsequent susceptibility to certain chronic diseases through the modulation of epigenetic mechanisms, including DNA methylation. Our aim was to explore the connections between environmental exposures during gestation with DNA methylation of placental cells,...

Obesity is a severe health problem linked to an increased risk of comorbidity and mortality and its etiopathogenesis includes genetic, epigenetic, microbiota composition, and environmental factors, such as dietary habits. The olfactory system plays an important role in controlling food intake and meal size, influencing body weight and energy balanc...

Although medical research has been performed predominantly on men both in preclinical and clinical studies, continuous efforts have been made to overcome this gender bias. Examining retrospectively 21 data sets containing sex as one of the descriptive variables, it was possible to verify how many times our AI protocol decided to keep gender informa...

In a previous study we applied artificial neural networks with the aim to evaluate the differential frequency of several potential risk factors related to pregnancy, peri, and early postnatal period, investigated through a careful interview of mothers of autistic children in comparison with mothers of typical children, and to assess the predictive...

Una delle sfide maggiori dei prossimi anni per quanto riguarda laricerca biomedica sarà quella di trovare il modo di assegnare il migliortrattamento ad un determinato paziente sulla base dell'esperienzamaturata in una grande popolazioni di pazienti.

L'obesità rappresenta un grave problema di salute associato ad aumentato rischio di mortalità e di comorbidità e la sua eziopatogenesi include fattori genetici, epigenetici, composizione del microbiota e fattori ambientali, come le abitudini alimentari. Il sistema olfattivo svolge un ruolo importante nel controllo dell'assunzione degli alimenti e d...

Study objectives: Disorder of arousal (DOA) and sleep-related hypermotor epilepsy (SHE) are complex, often bizarre, involuntary sleep behaviors, whose differential diagnosis may be challenging because they share some clinical features, such as sleep fragmentation. Mounting evidence highlights the critical role of sleep in cognitive functions. Cont...

Although medical research has been performed predominantly on men both in preclinical and clinical studies, continuous efforts have been made to overcome this gender bias. Examining retrospectively 21 data sets containing sex as one of the descriptive variables, it was possible to verify how many times our AI protocol decided to keep gender informa...

Aim and methods: Artificial neural networks were used to unravel connections among blood gene methylation levels, sex, maternal risk factors and symptom severity evaluated using the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule 2 (ADOS-2) score in 58 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Results: Methylation levels of MECP2, HTR1A and OXTR genes w...

Background: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder, resulting in an impairment of socio-communicative interaction, restricted interests, and repetitive behaviors [1]. Growing evidence suggests that individuals with ASD may show sensorimotor deficits. Toe walking (TW) is a possible finding during gait observation in...

One hundred-six subjects (mean age: 11.27±4.95yrs; range: 3.66-24.83yrs; 83 males) diagnosed with ASD according to DSM-5 or ICD-10 criteria were included. ✓ The presence of TTB was evaluated by a physiotherapist through direct observation and a structured interview of the main caregiver [1]. ✓ The SM and GM length were assessed using a manual gonio...

We assessed SM and GM length values in a sample of ten subject with ASD (5 with TTB and 5 without TTB), diagnosed following the DSM-5 criteria.  The ASD severity was assessed using the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ver. 2) calibrated severity score.  To assess TTB presence or absence we applied a standardized qualitative assessment prev...

Atypical sensory processing is frequently reported in persons with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and it is one of the described diagnostic criteria for ASD. There is also mounting literature supporting the presence of motor impairments in individuals with ASD. Among these motor signs, tip-toe behavior (TTB) is a possible clinical finding, but it...

Il benessere emotivo e la felicità hanno ricevuto poca attenzione nel campo dell'autismo. Quando ci si concentra sul benessere, spesso lo si fa da una prospettiva negativa, ovvero la mancanza di funzionamento di cui si presuppone un ruolo fondamentale nell'assicurare una buona qualità della vita. Basandosi sui principi della psicologia positiva è o...

Le tecniche statistiche tradizionali non possono proiettare in uno spazio bidimensionale un elevato numero di variabili secondo la matrice delle loro distanze reciproche perché il tempo computazionale tende all'infinito. Anche l'inerente non-linearità crea difficoltà. Un nuovo approccio matematico consiste nel misurare la dipendenza generale di var...

This systematic review summarizes the evidence about toe walking (TW) interventions in persons with autism. Following the PRISMA guidelines, a systematic search of MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, The Cochrane Library, Google Scholar, and Opengrey was performed. Nine articles (all case reports or case series) were included. Methodological quality was ass...

Many different mathematical approaches have been tested in the last few years to disentangle the EEG data complexity and determine if it is possible to distinguish children with ASD from typically developing children or children with other neuropsychiatric disorders. An electroencephalogram (EEG) records the electrical activity of the brain by reco...

COVID 19 pandemic has forced almost all activities as businesses, schools, and entire countries to move completely online For children and adolescents requiring special education like those affected by neuropsychiatric disorders ( a particular effort was needed to ensure good results A special program called “Smart School” has been developed betwee...

Toe-walking is a phenomenon present in 20-30% of ASD subjects1. Using a qualitative structured assessment, we previously described three mutually exclusive clinical functional classes of tip toe behavior (TTB) of increasing severity: during running (TTB1); during walking and running (TTB2); during standing, walking and running (TTB3)2. In another s...

A new pre-processing approach to EEG data to detect topological EEG features has been applied to a continuous segment of artifact-free EEG data lasting 10 minutes in ASCII format derived from 50 ASD children and 50 children with other Neuro-Psychiatric Disorders (NPD), matched for age and male/female ratios. Each EEG is transformed into a triangula...