Sara Bottiroli

Sara Bottiroli
University of Pavia | UNIPV · Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences

PhD

About

97
Publications
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2,196
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Publications

Publications (97)
Article
Full-text available
Background miR-155 is involved in the generation and maintenance of inflammation and pain, endothelial function and immune system homeostasis, all functions that are relevant for migraine. The present study aims to assess the levels of miR-155 in migraine subtypes (episodic and chronic) in comparison to age- and sex-matched healthy controls. Metho...
Preprint
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The increasing number of dementia cases has determined a growing interest in prevention, with a specific focus on modifiable risk factors (MRFs). In this context, cognitive reserve (CR) may have a role in moderating the association between pathology and neurological symptoms and in buffering the effects of unhealthy MRFs on the clinical manifestati...
Article
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Background Currently, the impact of drug therapies on neurodegenerative conditions is limited. Therefore, there is a strong clinical interest in non-pharmacological interventions aimed at preserving functionality, delaying disease progression, reducing disability, and improving quality of life for both patients and their caregivers. This longitudin...
Article
Full-text available
Migraine is a common and debilitating neurological disorder characterized by the recurrent attack of pulsating headaches typically localized on one side of the head associated with other disabling symptoms, such as nausea, increased sensitivity to light, sound and smell and mood changes. Various clinical factors, including the excessive use of migr...
Article
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Introduction: Habituation is a physiological phenomenon, characterized by response reduction to repeated stimulus presentation. In headache disorders, habituation studies have involved different paradigms with several stimulation parameters and sensory modalities, and consistently showed impaired habituation in primary headaches in the interictal p...
Article
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Theory of Mind (ToM) is the ability to infer one's own and others' mental states. Growing research indicates that ToM is impaired in Chronic Migraine with Medication Overuse (CM + MO). However, the research in this field has been conducted using static scenario-based tasks, often failing to test mentalization in everyday situations and measuring on...
Article
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Resistant migraine characterizes those patients who have failed at least three classes of migraine prophylaxis. These difficult-to-treat patients are likely to be characterized by a high prevalence of psychological disturbances. A dysfunction of the endocannabinoid system (ECS), including alteration in the levels of endocannabinoid congeners, may u...
Preprint
Full-text available
Theory of Mind (ToM) is the ability to infer one's own and others' mental states. Growing research indicates that ToM is impaired in Chronic Migraine with Medication Overuse (CM + MO). However, the research in this field has been conducted using static scenario-based tasks, often failing to test mentalization in everyday situations and measuring on...
Article
Full-text available
Background To date, there is still a lack of consensus for identifying the ideal candidate for cognitive telerehabilitation (TR). The main goal of the present study is to identify the factors associated to the preference for either TR or in-person cognitive training (CT) programs in older adults at risk of dementia or with early cognitive impairmen...
Article
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Background: Chronic headache (CH) is a condition that includes different subtypes of headaches and that can impair different life domains. Personality traits can play a relevant role both in the development and in coping with this medical condition. The first aim of the present study is to realize a systematic review of the personality traits asso...
Article
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Background Social cognition refers to all mental operations to decipher information needed in social interactions. Here we aimed to outline the socio-cognitive profile of Chronic Migraine with Medication Overuse (CM + MO), given they are recognized to be at risk of socio-cognitive difficulties. Given the multidimensionality of this construct, we co...
Preprint
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Background Social cognition refers to all mental operations to decipher information needed in social interactions. Here we aimed to outline the socio-cognitive profile of Chronic Migraine with Medication Overuse (CM + MO), given they are recognized to be at risk of socio-cognitive difficulties. Given the multidimensionality of this construct, we co...
Article
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Background Telerehabilitation has enabled a broader application of cognitive rehabilitation programs. We have recently developed HomeCoRe, a system for supporting cognitive intervention remotely with the assistance of a family member. The main goal of the present study was to determine usability and user experience of HomeCoRe in individuals at ris...
Article
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The present study aimed to identify clusters of cognitive profiles as well as to explore the effects of these clusters on demographic/individual characteristics and on improvements after a computer-based cognitive training (CCT) in early cognitive impairment. Fifty-seven subjects underwent to an adaptive CCT for 3 weeks (4 individual face-to-face s...
Article
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Background: given the limited efficacy, tolerability, and accessibility of pharmacological treatments for chronic migraine (CM), new complementary strategies have gained increasing attention. Body ownership illusions have been proposed as a non-pharmacological strategy for pain relief. Here, we illustrate the protocol for evaluating the efficacy i...
Article
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Background: In Italy, monoclonal antibodies targeting the CGRP pathway are subsidized for the preventive treatment of high frequency and chronic migraine (CM) in patients with a MIgraine Disability ASsessment (MIDAS) score ≥ 11. Eligibility to treatment continuation requires a ≥ 50% MIDAS score reduction at three months (T3). In this study, we eva...
Article
Objective: Several studies have shown a strong association between alexithymia and psychological distress in both healthy and clinical populations. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence and association between alexithymia and psychological distress in individuals with fibromyalgia (FM) and chronic migraine (CM) compared with healt...
Chapter
Full-text available
Neurological disorders are one of the most common causes of motor/cognitive impairments leading to adult disability. Neurorehabilitation is defined as a complex rehabilitation process directed to recovery from a nervous system injury, and to minimize or compensate the associated functional limitations. The frequent incomplete recovery of the neurol...
Chapter
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The chapter provides the reader with an updated narrative review on the technology-aided solutions available to promote healthcare of neurodegenerative diseases. Strengths and weaknesses of the reviewed studies were critically discussed and practical insights for both future research and practice were emphasized.
Article
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Aim First, we investigated whether the exposure to different visual feedback conditions may modulate pain perception by means of visual induced analgesia in patients with chronic migraine. Second, to comprehend the way emotional face expressions could induce visual analgesia, we evaluated the degree of identification with the four experimental cond...
Article
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Background The prevalence of neurodegenerative diseases is expected to increase over the next years, therefore, new methods able to prevent and delay cognitive decline are needed.AimsTo evaluate the effectiveness of a combined treatment protocol associating a computerized cognitive training (CoRe) with anodal transcranial direct current stimulation...
Chapter
Persons with neurodegenerative diseases may have behavioral, cognitive, emotional, motor, and social impairments due to their clinical conditions. The objective of this article is to provide the reader with the newest empirical contributions available and a comprehensive critical overview on the use of assistive technology-based interventions and v...
Article
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Background: Given the limited effectiveness of pharmacological treatments for cognitive decline, non-pharmacological interventions have gained increasing attention. Evidence exists on the effectiveness of cognitive rehabilitation in preventing elderly subjects at risk of cognitive decline and in reducing the progression of functional disability in...
Article
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Background Post-coma patients emerging from a minimally conscious state may have extensive motor disabilities and pose serious challenges to medical centers and home settings. Objectives To promote academic performance and communication skills of post-coma individuals with traumatic brain injuries emerging from a minimally conscious state through...
Article
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Background Monoclonal antibodies (mABs) targeting the calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) pathway represent the first disease-specific preventive migraine therapy. Growing evidence suggests that they are effective in the preventive treatment of difficult-to-treat patients. In this study, we evaluated the psychological predictors of the outcome o...
Article
Full-text available
Following the publication of the original article [1], we were notified that the Sara Bottiroli’s first and last name had been mistakenly swapped. Originally published name: Bottiroli Sara. Corrected name: Sara Bottiroli. The original article has been corrected.
Article
Aims In this study, we tested the validity of the Severity of Dependence Scale in detecting dependence behaviours in patients with chronic migraine and medication overuse (CM + MO) using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) and the Leeds Dependence Questionnaire as gold standard measures. Methods Four hundred and fift...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background Monoclonal antibodies (mABs) targeting the calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) pathway represent the first disease-specific preventive migraine therapy. A wealth of evidence has shown that they are effective in the preventive treatment of difficult-to-treat patients. In this study, we evaluated the psychological predictors of the outc...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Background: Migraine is one of the most prevalent neurological disorders worldwide [1]. A large number of studies suggest that migraines are associated with the mental state of the patients, and especially with negative emotions [2]. One option to regulate negative emotions or the negative affective state in chronic migraine patients is by using vi...
Article
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Background: Psychosocial variables are key factors influencing psycho-physical equilibrium in migraine patients. Social isolation and vulnerability to stressors may prevent efficient psychological adjustment negatively affecting adaptation to life changes, as that imposed during Covid-19 lockdown. Here, we explored psychosocial dimensions and chan...
Article
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Background: The effectiveness of computer-based cognitive training (CCT) remains controversial, especially in older adults with neurodegenerative diseases. Aims: To evaluate the efficacy of CCT in patients with Parkinson's disease and mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI). Methods: In this randomized controlled trial, 53 patients were randomized...
Article
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In catastrophic situations such as pandemics, patients' healthcare including admissions to hospitals and emergency services are challenged by the risk of infection and by limitations of healthcare resources. In such a setting, the use of telemedicine interventions has become extremely important. New technologies have proved helpful in pandemics as...
Article
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Background: Smart Aging is a serious game (SG) platform that generates a 3D virtual reality environment in which users perform a set of screening tasks designed to allow evaluation of global cognition. Each task replicates activities of daily living performed in a familiar environment. The main goal of the present study was to ascertain whether Sma...
Article
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The COVID-19 poses an ongoing threat to lives around the world and challenges the existing public health and medical service delivery. The lockdown or quarantine measures adopted to prevent the spread of COVID-19 has caused the interruption in ongoing care and access to medical care including to patients with existing neurological conditions. Besid...
Article
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The COVID-19 pandemic is a global health problem that is radically transforming public and private healthcare organizations around the world, negatively affecting the rehabilitative treatments of non-COVID pathologies as well. In this situation, it becomes crucial to be able to guarantee the continuity of care also to all those patients with neurod...
Chapter
The chapter provides the reader with a concise overview on the virtual setups available for assessing and recovering neurodegenerative diseases
Article
Full-text available
The current COVID-19 pandemic presents unprecedented new challenges to public health and medical care delivery. To control viral transmission, social distancing measures have been implemented all over the world, interrupting the access to routine medical care for many individuals with neurological diseases. Cognitive disorders are common in many ne...
Article
Introduction: Anti-calcitonin gene-related peptide antibodies proved effective in the preventive treatment of chronic migraine. In this open label study, we aim to assess the effects of erenumab administration on neurophysiological and biomolecular profiles in a representative cohort of chronic migraine patients. Methods: Forty patients with a h...
Article
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Background: Persons with neurodegenerative diseases may have behavioral, cognitive, emotional, motor, and social impairments due to their clinical conditions. Accordingly, they can experience isolation and passivity, which may seriously hamper their social image, desirability and status with negative outcomes on their quality of life. Objective: T...
Article
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A significant body of experimental evidence has demonstrated that it is possible to induce the illusion of ownership of a fake limb or even an entire fake body using multisensory correlations. Recently, immersive virtual reality has allowed users to experience the same sensations of ownership over a virtual body inside an immersive virtual environm...
Article
CoRe is a system for cognitive rehabilitation that has been successfully used for several years in hospital settings. Leveraging on the positive survey results from the potential final users (patients and their home caregivers), we developed HomeCoRe. This new version of the system will allow discharged patients to continue the rehabilitation treat...
Article
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Over the past decades, memory training interventions have been developed in an attempt to stabilize or enhance memory functioning in aging. Only recently has attention been paid to individual differences in training gains and consequently to predictors of such gains. The aim of the present study was to identify which specific cognitive mechanisms/p...
Article
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We describe a patient affected by migraine with visual and somatosensory aura, whose symptoms were consistently attenuated by noninvasive peripheral vagal nerve stimulation (nVNS) in multiple prospectively recorded attacks. When compared with the current standard of care, nVNS significantly reduced the duration of visual aura in all the attacks (n...
Article
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Background: Early traumatic experiences and Stressful episodes appear to be associated to the development and perpetuation of chronic pain disorders and to dependence-related behaviors. Objective: The present study evaluated whether these factors can be predictors, together with psychiatric conditions, of the outcome of a detoxification treatment i...
Article
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Background: Early traumatic experiences and Stressful episodes appear to be associated to the development and perpetuation of chronic pain disorders and to dependence-related behaviors. Objective: The present study evaluated whether these factors can be predictors, together with psychiatric conditions, of the outcome of a detoxification treatment i...
Article
Aim: To identify factors that may be predictors of the outcome of a detoxification treatment in medication-overuse headache. Methods: Consecutive patients entering a detoxification program in six centres in Europe and Latin America were evaluated and followed up for 6 months. We evaluated anxious and depressive symptomatology (though patients wi...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Many factors are involved in the prognosis and outcome of Chronic Migraine and Medication Overuse Headache (CM+MOH), and their understanding is a topic of interest. It is well known that CM+MOH patients experience increased psychiatric comorbidity, such as anxiety, depression, or personality disorders. Other psychological factors still...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Many factors are involved in the prognosis and outcome of Chronic Migraine and Medication Overuse Headache (CM+MOH), and their understanding is a topic of interest. It is well known that CM+MOH patients experience increased psychiatric comorbidity, such as anxiety, depression, or personality disorders. Other psychological factors still...
Article
Full-text available
Background and aim: Factors implicated in the evolution of episodic migraine into chronic migraine are largely elusive. Medication overuse is considered to be one of the main determinants, but other possible clinical and psychological factors can play a role. The aim of this study is to identify factors that are associated with chronic migraine wi...
Article
Full-text available
Background Previous research has suggested that there is a degree of variability among older adults’ response to memory training, such that some individuals benefit more than others. The aim of the present study was to identify the profile of older adults who were likely to benefit most from a strategic memory training program that has previously p...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Smart Aging is a Serious games (SGs) platform in a 3D virtual environment in which users perform a set of screening tests that address various cognitive skills. The tests are structured as 5 tasks of activities of daily life in a familiar environment. The main goal of the present study is to compare a cognitive evaluation made with Smar...
Article
The dubbing versus subtitling debate has been a recurrent topic in the audiovisual translation literature, but empirical research into the reception of both modes is still lacking. This article presents the results of an experiment that aimed to investigate to what extent comprehension, memory, and enjoyment of a film differ in a dubbed and a subti...
Conference Paper
Objectives To evaluate whether Medication Overuse Headache patients (MOH) (progressed from migraine) differ from episodic migraine patients (MIG) as regards decision making and whether, within MOH patients, this ability is influenced by the duration of chronification. Methods In order to to explore whether possible differences between groups were...
Article
Background: Alexithymia is a term used to describe a disorder where patients have difficulty in expressing their own feelings in words. Aims: The analysis of alexithymia in patients suffering from chronic migraine (CM) or episodic migraine (EM) compared to healthy controls. Methods: Two clinical samples formed by 80 CM patients (21 males and 5...
Article
Full-text available
Age-related effects in working memory updating were investigated by administering a response time-based task to three adult age groups (young, young-old, and old-old). The task differentiated objects to update; participants were asked to update single memory contents or content-context bindings. The data showed an overall delay of response latencie...
Article
Objectives: The goal of the present research was to examine the potential of a learner-oriented approach to improving older adults' performance in tasks that are similar to real-life situations that require strategic deployment of cognitive resources. A crucial element of this approach involves encouraging older adults to explicitly analyze tasks...
Article
Aims To evaluate the impact of treatment success on depression and anxiety symptoms in medication-overuse headache (MOH) and whether depression and anxiety can be predictors of treatment outcome. Methods All consecutive patients entering the detoxification program were analysed in a prospective, non-randomised fashion over a six-month period. Depr...
Article
Theory of Mind (ToM) refers to the ability to attribute mental states to the self and others in order to explain and predict social behaviour. Meta-analytic results have shown a decline in ToM abilities in healthy older adults. Recent research has also highlighted the possibility of enhancing older adults' ToM performance through group conversation...
Article
Full-text available
Recent research on the reception of interlingual subtitling revealed that it is cognitively effective: watching a subtitled film results in a good understanding of the film content, it does not require a significant tradeoff between image processing and text processing, and it leads to a good performance in the recognition of the words and expressi...
Article
Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate the psychological factors associated with a negative outcome following detoxification in a 2-month follow-up in medication-overuse headache. Methods: All consecutive patients entering the detoxification program were analysed in a prospective, non-randomised fashion. Psychiatric conditions and personalit...
Article
Objectives: Previous research has shown that individual differences in Theory of Mind (ToM) are crucial for people's social relationships. However, very few studies have investigated this issue in ageing. The present study was designed to fill this gap and examine the associations between ToM and social relationships in elderly adults. In doing so...
Conference Paper
This paper presents the design and usability validation of a telematic test aimed at the early detection of Mild Cognitive Impairments in persons ageing between 50 and 80. The test represents a 3D domestic environment in which users perform 5 daily life activities that involve various cognitive skills: short-term and mid-term memory, attention, exe...
Article
Objectives: Theory of Mind (ToM) is a complex human ability that allows people to make inferences on others' mental states such as beliefs, emotions and desires. Previous studies on ToM in normal aging have provided heterogeneous findings. In the present study we examined whether a mixed calculation of different aspects of ToM may have contributed...