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Biomedical subjects

A Bava

Publications and source records attributed to A Bava.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2005

Italian Right Hemisphere Language Battery: the normative study.

Clinical neurolinguistics still lacks consolidated and standardised tools for the assessment of impairments of pragmatics of verbal communication. In the present paper we present norms of the Italian version of the Right Hemisphere Language Battery (Batteria del Linguaggio dell'Emisfero Destro, BaLED) originally devised by Bryan. The normative study has been conducted with the recruitment of 440 healthy subjects. The battery of tests was not intended to be cognitively oriented, by providing evidence of the cognitive impairments underpinning verbal pragmatic deficits; on the contrary, it permits the detection of the presence/absence of impairments in processing the main pragmatic features of verbal communication traditionally associated with right hemisphere lesions. Thus, apart from being a clinical tool for diagnosing pragmatic impairments of verbal communication, the BaLED represents a useful initial battery of tests for clinical assessment and for selecting specific populations of neurological patients suitable for investigation in further experimental studies.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Rivastigmine superior to aspirin plus nimodipine in subcortical vascular dementia: an open, 16-month, comparative study.

Recent data indicate that patients with vascular dementia (VaD) show a cholinergic deficit. Having obtained good results in a previous study comparing rivastigmine, an inhibitor of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and butyrylcholine-sterase (BuChE), vs. aspirin, we aimed to compare the efficacy and tolerability of rivastigmine vs. aspirin plus nimodipine. Patients with a diagnosis of dementia and probable VaD received rivastigmine 3-6 mg/day (n = 32) or aspirin plus nimodipine (n = 32) in an open study for 16 months. Patients treated with rivastigmine showed superior benefits, compared with those receiving aspirin plus nimodipine, in attention, executive function, instrumental activities of daily living, and behavioural and psychotic disturbances. Side-effects in both groups were tolerable and there were no study withdrawals. The benefits observed with rivastigmine may reflect its inhibitory effects on AChE and BuChE, and the drug's affinity for frontal brain areas.

Aged↗
PubMed2003

Corticobasal degeneration: structural and functional MRI and single-photon emission computed tomography.

We studied seven patients with corticobasal degeneration (CBD) from a clinical and imaging perspective. We describe the main morphological features of CBD and, using functional MRI, try to define the possible role of the parietal lobe in simple and complex learned motor sequences. We showed decreased activation of the parietal lobe contralateral to the more affected arm, when movements, simple or complex, are performed with that hand. Moreover we found that functional imaging can demonstrate parietal and motor cortex dysfunction before structural, and even single-photon emission computed tomography changes become evident.

Aged↗
PubMed2002

Learned movements in a left-handed pianist: an f-MRI evaluation.

The spatial arrangement of neuronal sources for digit movement is non somatotopic, and is structured as extensively arranged through different regional cortex. We have functionally examined the cerebro-cortical activation during simple and complex motor sequences, before and after learning sessions, in healthy volunteers, both considering left- and right-dominant hand use, and left non dominant hand use, skillfulness and educational level. We discuss the results with a review on the topic.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

Crying of a newborn child: alarm signal or protocommunication?

The purpose of the study was to explore whether the new-born cry is a simple alarm signal or differentiated cries with different meanings. 12 digital audio taped recordings of 6 full-term healthy babies were analysed. Cries of 6 newborns in this preliminary study were recorded in a pain condition after a prick for the hematic check-up the third day after delivery and then while crying spontaneously in the cradle. The sounds were sampled at 44100 Hz with a 16-bit resolution and converted to the .wav format. All the analyses were performed with a software written in the MAT-LAB environment. The most important result was that these new-born children modulated the supralaryngeal tract considerably more in cries following the painful stimulus than in "spontaneous" ones, as would be expected by the hypothesis of crying as "protolanguage."

Arousal↗
PubMed2001

Bilingual aphasia and subcortical-cortical lesions.

The use of the mother tongue relies on implicit memory procedures that are mainly controlled by subcortical structures. A second language depends on the integrity of the explicit memory system, largely subserved by cortical areas. Therefore, bilinguals can be considered as neurolinguistic models which contribute to the understanding of how the cortical and subcortical language systems communicate while maintaining independent functions. We describe a patient who developed an impairment of the mother tongue after an infarct of the caudate. During follow-up, a dramatic improvement of the mother tongue accompanied by worsening of the second language became evident after the extension of the ischemic lesion to the cortex.

Amygdala↗
PubMed1999

Effects of praying and a working memory task in participants trained in meditation and controls on the occurrence of spontaneous thoughts.

So-called "intrusive thoughts" appear independently from external stimuli and are the cause of severe disturbances in depressed patients. Following Baddeley's 1986 discoveries regarding "articulatory suppression," we investigated the influence of praying and of a working memory task on the number of spontaneous thoughts reported by 20 subjects compared to the control (quiet) state. Two groups of subjects were tested: those trained in meditation and controls. Significant reduction in simultaneous thought arousal was obtained during both the working memory task and the recitation of prayer. In all three experimental conditions, meditation practitioners reported significantly fewer spontaneous thoughts.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

Speaking speed effects on delayed auditory feedback disruption of speech fluency.

24 Italian medical students performed a task of verbal fluency. 12 students (the control group) receiving Normal Auditory Feedback and 12 students receiving Delayed Auditory Feedback (delay of 200 msec.) performed six trials in six different experimental settings: normal or increased speaking rate, and, for each condition, once with bilateral input of the auditory feedback, once to the right ear, and once to the left ear. At the normal speaking rate, the disruptive effect of delayed feedback was confirmed. As the speaking rate increased, the total number of errors increased within the control group but decreased within the group given delayed feedback, although the total number of errors was always greater for the latter. In addition, speech was more disrupted when the auditory input was returned to the right ear (left hemisphere) for all the different conditions: Normal and Delayed Auditory Feedback, normal and increased speaking rate. In particular, the left hemisphere was less resistant to the disruptive effect of the delayed feedback than the right hemisphere. From these results, we suggest that, when speaking more quickly, one uses more central mechanisms of movement programming (cortical-cerebellum-thalamus-cortical, cortical-corpus striatum-thalamus-cortical, and cortical-thalamus-cortical circuits), or attentional control (cortico-reticular-cortical circuits) than peripheral mechanisms (tactile, proprioceptive, and acoustic circuits). This may explain the decreased disruptive influence of delayed auditory feedback on speed, fluency, and quality at increased speaking rates. Hemispheric specialization processes, however, may explain the more pronounced susceptibility of the left hemisphere or the less pronounced susceptibility of the right hemisphere during the delayed feedback condition. In fact, the former processes phonemic, grammatical, and lexical features of words whilst the latter is competent in using metaphors and prosody in controlling the emotional aspects of language. Moreover, the right hemisphere is more active on attentional tasks.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1998

Encoding and recall of parsed stories in hypnosis.

To define the relationship between aspects of memory concerning encoding and recall of short texts and hypnosis, standardized stories were narrated to 12 subjects, both during ordinary state of consciousness and after hypnotic induction by means of the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale (Form C). The narrative material used as a stimulus was based on several stories taken from popular oral tradition, previously analyzed according to the classic criteria proposed by Rumelhart in 1975 and Mandler and Johnson in 1977. The subjects' memory performance during both experimental conditions was tape-recorded and compared with the analysis of the original stories (Terminal Nodes) as well as with the higher linguistic structures of the scheme (Basic Nodes), according to Rumelhart's typology. During hypnosis, the subjects recalled significantly fewer narrative elements at both levels of analysis (Terminal Nodes and Basic Nodes). We conclude that hypnosis does not enhance recent memory.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

Effects of hypnosis on the fundamental frequency of voice in different emotional imitations.

The modifications of human vocal fundamental frequency (fa) were studied in six emotional imitations of a sequence during normal and hypnotic conditions. In hypnosis the fundamental frequency was significantly lower than in the normal condition; in particular, in this altered state of consciousness two emotional imitations (angry and crying conditions) were significantly different with respect to the normal condition.

Emotions↗
PubMed1996

Effects of left basal ganglia lesions on language production.

Three patients with lesions mainly confined to the left basal ganglia were studied with a series of neuropsychological and neurolinguistic tests. Two patients were nonfluent, whereas one presented with fluent spontaneous speech. All of them produced agrammatic sentences and lexical and semantic mistakes. Perserverations and echolalias were two further characteristic disorders of their speech production. The linguistic symptoms observed in these three patients suggest that the left basal ganglia play an important role (a) in regulating arousal and speech initiation, (b) in monitoring the semantic and lexical aspects of language, and (c) in switching from one linguistic element to the following during language production.

Aged↗
PubMed1996

Asymmetries of facial motility during the dissimulation of emotion.

The asymmetrics of facial expression were estimated in a sample of 14 experimental subjects with the Facial Action Coding System during voluntary control of facial mimicry while viewing videotapes. The subjects were instructed to express facially the emotion experienced or to dissimulate their true emotion with a facial expression opposite (incongruous) to what they actually felt. Only during dissimulation did facial mimicry show an asymmetric distribution toward the lower left side of the face.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

Effects of speaking speed on cerebral lateralization of speech assessed by a dual-task interference paradigm.

Cerebral asymmetry for speech was assessed by means of a verbal-manual interference paradigm in a sample of 16 right-handed men at two different speaking rates. Normal speech rate disrupted the right hand significantly more than the left, whereas increased speech rate showed no differences between right and left hands during verbal-manual interference tasks. This result suggests a role of speaking speed in modifying cerebral motor functions related to speech production.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Hemispheric asymmetry for the auditory recognition of true and false statements.

A group of right-handed adult subjects (24 males and 24 females) were asked to judge phrases as to their truthfulness of falsehood, by listening to them via earphones either with the right or with the left ear. These phrases, which had been previously recorded by two non-actors (1 male and 1 female) and two actors (1 male and 1 female), were either true or false. The number of correct judgements made by the subjects was significantly higher than the number of wrong judgements. The subjects correctly recognised significantly more true phrases than false ones. Moreover, they better recognised true phrases pronounced by the actors and false phrases pronounced by the non-actors. True phrases pronounced by male speakers and false phrases pronounced by female speakers were better recognised. A left-ear advantage was found in the recognition of true statements.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Effects of ethyl alcohol on hemispheric specialization of language and on hand movements.

Hemispheric specialization for linguistic functions was assessed by means of a dual-task (verbal-manual) paradigm and a dichotic listening test in 16 right-handed men after the administration of a moderate dose of ethyl alcohol. No statistical evidence supporting the hypothesis that moderate doses of alcohol affect motor or perceptive aspects of hemispheric specialization was found.

Adult↗