Search PubMed⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

G Gainotti

Publications and source records attributed to G Gainotti.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources
PubMed1979

Semantic disorders of auditory language comprehension in right brain-damaged patients.

A test of auditory language comprehension was given to 110 right brain-damaged patients and to 94 normal controls in order to check if patients with lesions of the right (nondominant) hemisphere make a significantly higher number of semantic errors than normals. Confirmation of the hypothesis was obtained, but the relationship between semantic errors and lesion of the right hemisphere did not seem a simple and direct one. In fact, most of the lexical-semantic errors were due to associated variables (such as unilateral spatial agnosia and general mental deterioration) and not to the lesion of the right hemisphere per se. These data do not suggest a specific semantic capacity of the nondominant hemisphere but rather stress the fragility of the lexical-semantic organization at the cortical level.

Brain Damage, Chronic↗
PubMed1979

Validity of some neuropsychological tests in the assessment of mental deterioration.

Eighty-three control subjects and 200 patients suspected of diffuse cerebral damage were submitted to the Mental Deterioration Battery. Three independent judges evaluated each patient on the basis of all available data. Only 103 patients, unanimously classed as demented by the three judges were retained. On the basis of controls' performances, the scores obtained by each demented patient in the various tests were corrected for age and educational level. Both single tests and the Battery as a whole discriminated normal controls from demented patients at a very satisfactory level.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1979

The relationships between conceptual and semantic-lexical disorders in aphasia.

A nonverbal test of conceptual thinking was administered to 55 normal controls and to 203 patients with monohemispheric brain lesions (74 aphasics and 129 nonaphasic brain-damaged patients), in order to study the relationships between conceptual impairment of aphasic patients and breakdown of the semantic-lexical level of integration of language. A very high number of aphasic patients (54 out of 74) and a limited number of nonaphasic brain-damaged subjects (31 out of 129) obtained a pathological score on the test of conceptual thinking, but only some components of the aphasic symptomatology seemed closely linked to the conceptual disorder. In fact a non-significant relationship was found between conceptual impairment and: ("fluent" or "non-fluent") clinical type of aphasia; severity of aphasic disturbance. On the contrary, a strong relationship was found between conceptual disorder and impairment of the semantic-lexical level of integration of language. These findings seem to show that conceptual disturbance and semantic-lexical troubles are closely linked in aphasia.

Aphasia↗
PubMed1978

Constructional apraxia and visuoperceptive disabilities in relation to laterality of cerebral lesions.

The main purpose of the present study was to determine whether constructional apraxia is due to a visual perceptual disorder in right but not in left brain-damaged patients. In order to resolve this question, 36 normal controls and 73 brain-damaged patients with lesions restricted to the right (N = 30) or to the left (N = 43) cerebral hemisphere were given a graphomotor and a multiple choice version of the Benton Visual Retention Test. The graphomotor version of the V.R.T. was used as a test of constructional praxis, whereas the multiple choice version of the V.R.T. was used as a test of visual form discrimination. No difference was found between right and left brain-damaged patients with respect to incidence and severity of visuo-constructive and of visuo-perceptive disabilities. Contrary to the hypothesis, the relationship between perceptual and praxic tasks was higher in left than in right brain-damaged patients. The high level of correlation found between graphomotor and perceptual scores within the left hemispheric group was due chiefly to the poor performances obtained on both tasks by aphasic patients. These findings are interpreted as suggesting that the basis for visuoconstructive disturbances is a perceptual disorder, independently of the hemispheric side of lesion. The contrasting results of our intercorrelational study and of analogous studies reported in neuropsychological literature are interpreted as being due to sampling differences, in the absence of clearcut qualitative or quantitative differences between visuo-constructive disabilities of right and left brain-damaged patients.

Adult↗
PubMed1977

Constructional apraxia in left brain-damaged patients: a planning disorder?

The aim of the present study was to verify the hypothesis advanced by Hécaen and Assal (1970), that the presence of landmarks can improve the copying performance of left brain-damaged patients, while leaving unchanged that of right brain-damaged patients. Sixty-two control subjects and 196 brain-damaged patients with lesions restricted to the right (N = 84) or to the left (N = 112) cerebral hemisphere were given two tests of copying drawings. In the first task the patients were asked to directly copy a drawing; to perform the second test they were given guiding landmarks. On both tests no difference was found between the performance of the two hemispheric groups. Right-sided patients used a lower number of guiding landmarks, but this occurred only on the half of the drawings contralateral to the side of the lesion and was apparently due to unilateral spatial neglect.

Apraxias↗
PubMed1977

Gangliosides in the treatment of mental deterioration. A double-blind comparison with placebo.

Thirty patients showing signs of mental deterioration were submitted to a neuropsychological battery before and after treatment with gangliosides. Their performances were compared, in a double-blind study, with those obtained on the same tests by 30 patients affected by similar degrees of dementia and treated with placebo. The improvement shown on Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices and on Immediate Visual Memory by the active group was significantly higher than that shown by the placebo group. Furthermore, an evaluation of the overall effect of gangliosides therapy showed a highly significant difference between the active and placebo group, still in favour of the subjects treated with gangliosides. It is concluded that gangliosides may exert a positive effect in the treatment of demential syndromes.

Clinical Trials as Topic↗
PubMed1977

A neurolinguistic model for the study of aphasia.

After having briefly discussed some of the most important models that are now used to understand or to classify the aphasic troubles, the authors explain the neurolinguistic model they are actually using to study some aspects of aphasics' verbal and nonverbal behavior. This theoretical model distinguishes proper linguistic from extralinguistic disturbances in the various clinical forms of aphasia. The existence in aphasia of extralinguistic components that might, in some way, influence verbal performances, is accepted by most authors. Much less obvious is the existence, at least in some clinical forms of aphasia, of proper linguistic (competence) disturbances. Our theoretical model assumes that in most clinical forms of aphasia some impairment of the semantic (lexical) structures of language exists, and it maintains that this trouble can be found both at the expressive and at the receptive level, both in verbal and in nonverbal tasks. Th results of some experimental investigations which give some support to this theoretical model, are briefly discussed.

Aphasia↗
PubMed1977

Distinctive features of unilateral spatial agnosia in right and left brain-damaged patients.

In order to study the distinctive features of unilateral spatial agnosia shown by right and left brain-damaged patients, a test of copying drawings with guiding landmarks was given to 83 control subjects and to 248 patients affected by right (n = 108) or left (n = 140) hemispheric damage. The test enabled us to obtain a quantitative assessment both of the lines omitted ('omissions') and of the lines wrongly traced ('errors') on the half page contralateral to the damaged hemisphere. Results showed that contralaterally to the hemispheric locus of lesion a clear-cut double dissociation can be found between right and left brain-damaged patients: the former showed a striking tendency to omit the lines lying on the left half of the sheet, whereas the latter tended mainly to trace faulty lines on the right half of the drawings.

Agnosia↗
PubMed1976

[Various current trends in the study and interpretation of asphasic disorders].

This review of the present tendencies in aphasiology intends to put in evidence some features of to-day's aphasiology, in relation both to the methods used to study the language disturbances and to the concepts advanced to explain the clinical and experimental findings. From the methodological point of view, two important novelties are to be stressed : 1) the clinical approach is gradually substituted by a more strict experimental method ; 2) the pathology of language is to-day generally studied by means of linguistic methods, models and techniques. In the interpretation and classification of the aphasic troubles many tendencies are to be noted :--some Authors tend to classify the aphasic disorders on the ground of empirical criteria (such as the distinction between a "fluent" and a "non-fluent" form of aphasia) ;--other writers tend to classify the aphasic disturbances on the ground of linguistic, of neuro-anatomic, or of neuro-linguistic criteria. The results of a few experimental investigations on some dimensions of auditory language comprehension in aphasia are reported and the implication of these results on the concepts advanced by various Authors are discussed.

Aphasia↗
PubMed1976

[Verbal and non-verbal aspects of semantic disintegration in aphasia (author's transl)].

After a review of the explanations offered in the literature on the nature of aphasic disintegration, the author suggests that a nuclear impairment of semantic level of language integration may exist in many forms of aphasia. This hypothesis is supported by personal observations on verbal and non-verbal aspects of semantic impairment in aphasia. The incidence of semantic troubles is very high both at the level of verbal production and comprehension and at a non-verbal study of the "areas of meaning". No relationship was found between the incidence of semantic troubles and the ("fluent" or "non-fluent") clinical form of aphasia. A definite relationship exists between production of semantic paraphasias at the expressive level and number of semantic errors obtained as a verbal comprehension task, and between verbal semantic disorders and pathological performances at the non-verbal task of "semantic relationships".

Aphasia↗
PubMed1976

[Digital agnosia and lesions of the parietal lobe].

130 patients with focal brain damage have been submitted to non-verbal finger identification tasks. The results of this research can be summarized as follows: -when bilateral finger agnosia is studied with non-verbal tasks, no difference can be shown between right and left parietal lesions; -in left brain damaged patients the bilateral form of finger agnosia is generally due to large lesions involving the parietal lobe; -in right brain damaged patients the unilateral form of finger agnosia is almost always due to lesions centered on the parietal region.

Agnosia↗
PubMed1976

[Elementary logic and semantic fields in aphasia].

Modern linguistics, like genetic psychology, postulate a non-linguistic basis for the structurisation of the semantic fields. If such is the case, it should be possible to observe in aphasia, where semantic deficiency predominates, a related disturbance in the semantic fields and logic. Paraxodically, such disturbances have been observed both in Broca's aphasia and in the predominantly semantic aphasia of Wernicke. A qualitative analysis shows that quantitatively identical results in the semantic aphasias of Broca and Wernicke are the result of phenomenological convergence. The related disturbance in the semantic fields and logic appears characteristic of the semantic deficiency which, in aphasic semiology, is marked by the substitution of one word for another. These finding support the theory of the relative autonomy of phonemic and semantic disorders in Wernicke's aphasia. They confirm the linguistic and genetic theory that the structure of vocabulatory is based on extralinguistic factors. They do not however provide an explantation for semantic disorders in aphasia. Further research is required to discover on what functional system articulation of the symbolic function and general operative capacity is based.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1976

[Disorders of the emotional behavior during cerebral lesions].

A systematic study of the emotional behavior of right and left brain-damage patients was conducted on large groups of patients with unilateral cerebral lesions. The incidence of "catastrophic reactions" was found to be significantly higher among the left brain-damaged patients, whereas "indifference reactions" were significantly more frequent in the group with right-sided lesions. The depressive-catastrophic reactions of left brain-damaged patients seemed due chiefly to marked difficulties in verbal expression, while the indifference reactions of the right brain-damaged patients were highly correlated with neglect phenomena for the opposite half of the body and of space. The meaning of the emotional reaction shown by left brain-damaged patients seems easy to understand, if we consider that these subjects are affected by aphasia and by a paresis of the right hand. More surprising and paradoxical is, on the contrary, the emotional behavior of the right brain-damaged patients. The hypothesis is advanced that the indifference of these subjects may be only apparent, and due to a strong need of denying illness. The prevalence of denial of illness among the right brain-damaged patients could be due to the "non verbal" functional organization which is supposed to be characteristic of this half of the brain.

Affective Symptoms↗