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Biomedical subjects

A Mazzucchi

Publications and source records attributed to A Mazzucchi.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1985

Unilateral visual agnosia.

A case of unilateral visual agnosia for all types of stimuli limited to the left visual hemifield and associated with a right occipital temporal vascular lesion is reported. Questions raised by this case of hemiagnosia as compared to previous ones are discussed.

Agnosia↗
PubMed1984

Exposure-effect and exposure-response relationships between occupational exposure to styrene and neuropsychological functions.

A neuropsychological test battery was administered to 50 workers exposed to styrene and to 50 sex-, intelligence-, and age-matched controls. The main styrene metabolites, ie, mandelic acid (MA) and phenylglyoxylic acid (PGA), were measured as exposure indices in the urine collected on Saturday mornings, just before neuropsychological testing. Exposure-response and exposure-effect relationships were found between the intensity of the exposure (as reflected by the sum of MA and PGA) and the scores of the neuropsychological tests. Verbal learning skills were significantly impaired in workers with a sum of MA and PGA higher than 150 mmole/mole creatinine, corresponding to styrene airborne concentrations higher than 25 ppm (mean daily exposure). Logical memory and visuo-constructive abilities were shown to be significantly affected in workers with MA and PGA higher than 300 mmole/mole creatinine, corresponding to exposure levels of more than 50 ppm of styrene in air.

Adult↗
PubMed1984

Interhemispheric differences in same versus different judgments upon presentation of complex visual stimuli.

An experiment is reported which was aimed at investigating interhemispheric differences upon tachistoscopic presentation of Same vs Different stimuli, i.e. pairs of 16-side Vanderplas and Garvin figures selected for their complexity, unfamiliarity and lack of verbalization. The right hemisphere was found to be faster and more accurate in Same judgements and the left hemisphere in Different judgements. These findings seem to further confirm the assumption that the right hemisphere would mostly use a holistic strategy and the left hemisphere an analytic strategy.

Adult↗
PubMed1983

Contrasting cases of Italian agrammatic aphasia without comprehension disorder.

Two patients with agrammatic speech and unimpaired comprehension are presented and contrasted. Case 1 had an infarction involving precentral gyrus, subjacent white matter, and posterior and superior aspects of the insula, largely sparing Broca's area. His speech was slow and dysarthric, consisting of short disconnected phrases with some omission of lexical verbs. Case 2 had an unusual transient aphasia of acute onset without hemiplegia; speech rate, articulation, and sentence length and complexity appeared normal. Both patients tended to omit function words and finite verb inflections, but Case 2 did so much more than did Case 1. Neither patient showed impairment in any other area of language performance. Tentatively, Case 2 is described as being more morphologically impaired but less syntactically impaired than Case 1, while neither has damage to a central language processor.

Adult↗
PubMed1983

Hemispheric prevalence in acoustical attention.

Two experiments were conducted in which monaural clicks were presented to the right or left ear preceded by binaural verbal (Experiment 1) and musical (Experiment 2) warnings. After the "neutral" warnings, the clicks could be presented to the right or left ear equally often (50%); after the warnings which directed the attention to the left or right ear, the clicks could be presented to either the "expected" (67%) or to the "unexpected" (33%) ear. In Experiment 1 there was a cost effect for the "unexpected" ear and reaction times were significantly faster when the clicks were presented to the right ear. In Experiment 2, the musical warnings brought about a cost effect while no significant ear advantage was observed.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1983

Is prosopagnosia more frequent in males than in females?

A case review of prosopagnosia was carried out and male-female incidence of the disorder compared to relative male-female incidence of cerebro-vascular disease in general. Prosopagnosia was found to occur significantly more frequently in males than in females. Possible implications of this finding vis-à-vis male-female differences in cerebral organization are discussed and topics for further investigation are suggested.

Agnosia↗
PubMed1982

[Lateralization of attention in the acoustic modality].

Posner reported that knowledge of where in space a visual stimulus will occur ("expected" condition), improves detection ("benefit"), as measured by response latencies, while response latencies became longer ("cost") when visual stimulus position is "unexpected" and intermediate when the visual stimulus position is "neutral". The authors have tried to replicate this finding in the acoustical modality. One hundred-twenty acoustical stimuli (clicks) were presented to the right and the left ear of ten right handed subjects, preceded by the biaural verbal warnings "right", "left" or "center". After the "center" verbal warning, the clicks could be presented to the right or the left ear equally often (50%): "neutral" condition; after the "right" or "left" verbal warnings, the clicks could be presented in 80% of cases to the "expected" ear and in 20% of cases in "unexpected" ear. The results suggested that: a) reaction times are significantly faster when the clicks are presented to the right ear; b) the "cost" effect is present but not the "benefit" effect, since no difference was shown between reaction times in the "neutral" and in the "expected" conditions; c) the right ear advantage disappears in the "unexpected" condition after the "right" verbal warning only. The authors discuss the results in relation to the attentional interhemispheric theories.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1982

A case of receptive amusia with prominent timbre perception defect.

A patient with a right temporal lesion is described who, in recognising sounds and noises, complained of deficits which seemed to be most evident when sounds and noises could be recognised mainly by timbre whereas no deficit was noticed when pitch and rhythm were the main indicators. In addition, some global distortions in musical appreciation were complained of and described as "resonance" or "loss of aesthetic pleasure".

Auditory Perceptual Disorders↗
PubMed1981

Hemispheric dominance in the perception of tonal sequences in relation to sex, musical competence and handedness.

Sixty right-handed non-musician subjects, thirty males and thirty females, and thirty right-handed musician subjects, seventeen males and thirteen females, were submitted to dichotically presented tonal sequences. Immediate identification procedure with preliminary training was used. The results point out that both, musicians and non-musicians, males and females, show significant left ear dominance. The left ear dominance was more frequent in musicians. The results are discussed in the light of the "analytic-synthetic" theory of Bever and Chiarello and the "temporal" theory of Gordon.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1981

Focal lesion of the right cingulum: a case report in a child.

A body with a focal lesion of the right cingulum, subjected to cingulectomy for the removal of a tumour, is the first case of an isolated unilateral cingulum lesion to be reported. The presenting symptoms consisted of serious behavioural abnormalities: lack of social restraint, heightened sexuality, bulimia and aggressiveness, all of which ceased after surgery. Neuropsychological tests, done before and after the operation, provided no evidence that the higher cognitive functions, including memory, were impaired.

Astrocytoma↗
PubMed1980

Neuropsychological functions in the follow-up of transient global amnesia.

Sixteen patients, who had suffered only one episode of transient global amnesia and showed no clinically evident abnormalities in their follow-up, were examined with psychometric and memory tests. Deficits in verbal long-term memory and in verbal IQ were found. These observations seem to demonstrate that in transient global amnesia patients regarded as being 'normal' in their follow-up there is no complete recovery and the sequelae seem to conform to a definite pattern. Problems of nosology and localization are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1979

[Problems in differential diagnosis between early presenile dementia and depression in elderly persons (author's transl)].

The difficulties in correct differential diagnosis between depression and early pre-senile dementia syndromes are pointed-out by the AA. They underline that, on the ground of literature reports and clinical experience, the instrumental methods (electroencephalography, cerebral blood flow examination, pneumoencephalography, evoked cerebral responses, etc...) appear of little use in differential diagnosis, if separately considered. A particular attention is called on psychometric tests, in order to worn the non-specialist against any too over-simplified and mechanistic acceptance of test results.

Adjustment Disorders↗