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Biomedical subjects

G Gainotti

Publications and source records attributed to G Gainotti.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources
PubMed1985

Are drawing errors different in right-sided and left-sided constructional apraxics?

The drawings of 70 control subjects, 95 right and 118 left brain-damaged patients (BDP) were evaluated by two independent judges having no knowledge of the literature on constructional apraxia, who were requested to give both a quantitative and a qualitative evaluation of each drawing. Scoring made it possible to classify the BDP as affected or not affected by constructional apraxia. Qualitative errors were classified in two groups: (A) "executive" errors: increased number of right angles, structural simplification of the models and omission of details and (B) "visualspatial" errors: inattention to lateral elements or omission of one half of the figures, errors in spatial relations and diagonal orientation of the drawings. Contrary to expectations, no clear qualitative difference was observed between the drawing errors of right and left BDP. The types of errors most frequently observed in constructional apraxics were very similar, irrespective of lesion side, and consisted in difficulty in reproducing the spatial relations between the various parts of the models and in a tendency to oversimplify the most difficult designs. The only type of error which differentiated right apraxics from left apraxics was omission of lines or of whole figures on the half space contralateral to the damaged hemisphere, but this type of error could not be responsible for right-sided constructional apraxia, since judges had been instructed to base their assessment only on the parts of the models actually reproduced by the patients without scoring as errors manifestations of neglect. These results do not support the hypothesis that two different mechanisms, "executive", and "visual-spatial", underlie constructive disabilities of left and right brain-damaged patients.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Dementia in Parkinson's disease: possible specific involvement of the frontal lobes.

We carried out a neuropsychological study on cognitive impairment in 57 subjects affected by idiopathic Parkinson's Disease (PD) and 32 subjects affected by Alzheimer's Disease (AD). First, we found two different subgroups of Parkinsonian patients, the first one with and the second without dementia. We clearly identified these two distinct subclinical entities regardless of mean age, age of onset, duration of treatment; on the contrary, the type of treatment seems to play a specific role in the appearance of dementia in PD, anticholinergics being assumed almost exclusively by demented Parkinsonian patients. Second, we observed two main differences for cognitive impairment between PD with dementia and AD. In fact, cognitive impairment is consistently more evident in Alzheimer patients than in Parkinsonian ones with dementia; in addition, demented Parkinsonians show a pattern of impairment similar to that exhibited by patients affected by frontal lobe lesions. This result supports neuroanatomical and neurochemical data on the involvement of the whole dopaminergic system in PD and the role played by the ventromedial tegmental area projecting to the frontal cortex in causing cognitive dysfunction in this disease.

Aged↗
PubMed1984

Some methodological problems in the study of the relationships between emotions and cerebral dominance.

The findings of studies involving brain-damaged patients and those with normal subjects are considered separately in a review of the most important investigations that have led to the hypothesis that the right hemisphere is dominant for various aspects of emotional behavior. This paper examines some of the methodological problems encountered in studies of laterality of emotions, again looking at investigations of brain-damaged patients and of normal subjects. Future directions for research into emotional lateralization are suggested.

Brain Damage, Chronic↗
PubMed1983

The production of morphological and lexical opposites in aphasia.

Four unselected groups of Broca's, Wernicke's, conduction, amnesic aphasic patients and a group of normal controls were asked to produce the best opposite of 60 adjectives. For half of the stimuli the expected opposite was morphologically related to the stimulus word (e.g. "formal"/"informal"), for the other half it could be obtained only by selecting a new base-form within the lexicon (e.g. "good"/"bad"). Following some neurolinguistic observations by Hécaen et al., it was predicted that amnesic patients should produce mainly morphological opposites, whereas conduction aphasics should produce mainly lexical antonyms. Results confirmed the predictions, since amnesic aphasics showed a prevalent impairment in the selection lexical opposites, whereas conduction aphasics showed a selective impairment in the production of morphological antonyms.

Anomia↗
PubMed1983

Drawing objects from memory in aphasia.

The ability of aphasic patients to draw from memory objects with a characteristic shape has been investigated. Their capacity to reproduce the form of real objects was studied by showing them for a short time line drawings of simple objects. When the patient had analysed and recognized the figure, the model was hidden from view and the subject was asked to draw the same object from memory. This Drawing from Memory task was administered to 54 aphasics, 67 patients with right hemisphere lesions, 44 nonaphasic left brain-damaged patients and 23 normal controls. The influence of visuoconstructive disabilities was controlled by administering to the same patients a standard test for constructional apraxia (copying 10 geometrical figures). The severity and clinical form of the aphasia and the presence of semantic-lexical impairment at the receptive level were also examined in the aphasic patients. The following results were obtained. (1) Aphasic patients scored significantly less well than the control groups on the Drawing from Memory task and the intergroup differences became greater when the scores from the test for constructional apraxia were included by an analysis of covariance. (2) No significant correlation was detected between the severity and clinical form of the aphasia and the scores obtained on the Drawing from Memory task. (3) There was a significant correlation between impaired drawing from memory and disruption at the semantic-lexical level of language integration.

Aged↗
PubMed1983

Acute administration of individual optimal dose of physostigmine fails to improve mnesic performances in Alzheimers Presenile Dementia.

Eight patients affected by Alzheimer's Presenile Dementia (AD) received acute administration of physostigmine individual optimal dose per os (n = 4) or subcutaneously (n = 4). The individual physostigmine dose was assessed by means of serum cholinesterase activity monitoring. The possible beneficial effects after treatment were evaluated by using two memory tests: Reys' 15 words and Digit Span from Wechsler memory scale. Although a slight behavioral activation was noted in all patients after treatment, the comparison between mean scores obtained by AD patients in mnesic tests before and after the acute physostigmine administration, with either therapeutic modality, failed to reach the level of statistical significance. Some implications of these disappointing results are briefly discussed.

Alzheimer Disease↗
PubMed1983

[Emotions and hemispheric lateralization. Review of the literature].

In the last 10 years a very large number of clinical and experimental investigations have been devoted to the study of the relationships between emotions and cerebral dominance. The aim of the present survey is to summarize the most important results obtained along the following lines of research: --analysis of emotional behavior associated with unilateral brain lesions; --experimental research conducted both in brain-damaged patients and in normal subjects to study the processing of emotional informations and the expression of emotions; --investigations conducted in patients with right and left temporal-lobe epilepsy; --studies conducted on psychiatric patients. Two main interpretations of the relationships between emotions and cerebral dominance are considered: a) the first assumes the existence at the level of the right and left hemisphere of two specific mechanisms underlying opposite (positive vs negative) aspects of mood; b) the second assumes, on the contrary, an overall dominance of the right hemisphere for various kinds of emotions and affects. Data in favour of either interpretation are reported and some implications for psychopathology are shortly discussed.

Brain↗
PubMed1982

Neurophysiological study of normal pressure hydrocephalus.

A neuropsychological Mental Deterioration Battery (MDB) was used to identify deterioration profiles of 43 patients afflicted with normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH) (n = 18) or other forms of dementia (n = 25). The NPH patients submitted to a shunt-intervention (n = 10) were also evaluated after surgery. A comparison of profiles, obtained from the experimental and control groups, shows that NPH patients seem to be more impaired in tests designed to detect frontal lobe involvement. Some implications of the relatively greater impairment of frontal functions in NPH dementia are discussed.

Cerebrospinal Fluid Shunts↗
PubMed1982

Oral administration of chronic physostigmine does not improve cognitive or mnesic performances in Alzheimer's presenile dementia.

Physostigmine was administered orally 1 mg q.i.d. for one month to 8 patients with a clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's presenile dementia. The possible beneficial effects of the drug were evaluated by means of a neuropsychological battery administered to all patients before and after treatment. The performances obtained by demented patients on retest did not show any difference in comparison with performances obtained on the first neuropsychologic assessment. Some implications of these negative results are briefly discussed.

Alzheimer Disease↗
PubMed1981

Contiguity versus similarity paraphasic substitutions in Broca's and in Wernicke's aphasia.

The present research was carried out to determine whether Jakobson's claim that Broca's aphasic patients emit chiefly semantic paraphasias of the similarity type, whereas Wernicke's aphasic patients produce mainly paraphasic substitutions of the contiguity type, can be supported by data gathered for clinical purposes under controlled conditions. Semantic paraphasias produced by 96 aphasic patients on a standard test of visual naming were taken into account. Three independent judges, blind to aphasia type, classified all responses retained as semantic substitutions into one of the following four categories: those having 1) a strong similarity, 2) a strong contiguity, 3) a mild similarity, and 4) a mild contiguity relation to the correct word. No relationship was found between type of semantic paraphasias and clinical form of aphasia. Furthermore, irrespective of the clinical form of aphasia, aphasics tend to give more similarity substitutions than contiguity substitutions.

Anomia↗
PubMed1981

The relationship between type of naming error and semantic-lexical discrimination in aphasic patients.

When submitted to confrontation naming tasks, aphasic patients show different types of naming errors: phonetic, phonemic and verbal-semantic paraphasias, neologisms and anomia, but it is generally difficult to decide whether these errors are mainly due to a breakdown of the semantic systems or to post-lexical phonological disorders. In order to clarify this issue, 118 aphasic patients were given 3 tests of confrontation naming and 3 tests of semantic-lexical discrimination. Naming errors on confrontation were used to classify aphasic patients in various subgroups (according to the prevalence of a given type of naming error), whereas performances obtained on tests of semantic-lexical discrimination were taken as an index of disorganization of the semantic systems. The performances on semantic discrimination tests of patients showing a prevalence of phonetic, phonemic and verbal-semantic paraphasias, neologisms and anomia on confrontation naming tasks were compared. A very small number of semantic discrimination errors was obtained by patients showing a prevalence of phonetic and phonemic transformations on confrontation, whereas a much larger number of semantic discrimination errors was obtained by patients showing a prevalence of verbal-semantic paraphasias, neologisms and anomia.

Anomia↗
PubMed1981

Neuropsychological correlates of localized cerebral lesions in non-aphasic brain-damaged patients.

A neuropsychological test battery made up of verbal, visual-spatial, and intelligence tests was administered to 82 right and 67 on-aphasic left brain-damaged patients with localized cerebral lesions, in order to draw impairment profiles of the various subgroups. Separate analyses were undertaken on patients with unilobar and multilobar lesions. As for hemisphere effects, LH patients performed worse than RH subjects on verbal tests, while the reverse was true for visual-spatial tasks. As for lobe effects, patients with frontal lobe damage fared worse than other subgroups on word fluency, independent of the side of the lesion. RH patients with multilobar posterior lesions were significantly more impaired than other RH subgroups on the test of Copying Drawings with Landmarks, probably owing to the detrimental effect of unilateral spatial neglect on tasks requiring an accurate visual-spatial analysis.

Brain Damage, Chronic↗
PubMed1981

Influence of age, sex, literacy and pathologic lesion on incidence, severity and type of aphasia.

The influence of sex, age, educational level and pathologic lesion on incidence, severity and clinical form of aphasia was investigated in 390 right-handed, left brain-damaged patients. Sex and educational level were not related to any parameter. Etiology of lesion and age were related to both incidence and type of aphasia. Incidence of aphasia increased with age and was higher in patients with cerebrovascular accidents than in subjects with other types of brain lesions. Non-fluent forms of aphasia were more frequent in young patients suffering from acute cerebrovascular accidents, whereas anomia prevailed in neoplastic subjects and Wernicke's aphasia increased regularly in frequency with age. Some tentative explanations of these findings are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1981

Choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) activity differs in right and left human temporal lobes.

Choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) activity was studied in different areas and in sequential sections of the cortical layers in the first temporal gyrus of left and right hemispheres of four human brains. The ChAT activity values obtained in all the samples from left hemisphere were significantly higher than in the right hemisphere. Furthermore, the study of ChAT activity in the cortical layers in Brodmann area 22 shows a greater left prevalence of enzymatic activity in cortical layers II and IV. The biochemical data seem to suggest a possible morphologic and/or functional difference between the two hemispheres.

Aged↗
PubMed1980

Biochemical differences between the left and right hemispheres. Preliminary observations on choline acetyl transferase (CAT) activity.

Choline acetyltransferase (CHAT) activity was studied in different areas in the first temporal gyrus of left and right hemispheres of human brains. The CHAT activity values obtained in all the samples from left hemisphere wee significantly higher than in the right hemisphere. The biochemical data seems to suggest a possible morphological and/or functional differences between the two hemispheres.

Aged↗