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Biomedical subjects

G Gainotti

Publications and source records attributed to G Gainotti.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

Pattern of ipsilateral clinical extinction in brain-damaged patients.

A test of double tactile simultaneous stimulation was given to 212 patients affected by focal (178) or diffuse (34) cerebral lesions to study the order of dominance between face, hand, and foot. Both in focal and in diffuse brain-damaged patients, a striking dominance of the face over the hand and foot was found. No significant difference between hand and foot was seen, but a mild prevalence of the foot over the hand was suggested by a cumulative analysis of our results. These findings do not support the hypothesis of a continuous downward gradient of dominance from rostral to caudal regions of the body.

Brain Damage, Chronic↗

Confabulation of denial in senile dementia. An experimental study.

Some forms of confabulation ('confabulation of denial') seem due to the need to deny demential dissolution by replacing information pointing to illness with expressions suggesting normal health and efficiency. Seventy-six unselected patients affected by senile dementia were investigated in order to study the relationships between confabulation of denial and (a) stage attained by the demential process; (b) degree of memory loss, and (c) personality features and cultural models of the patients. Confabulations of denial were absent in the initial and the most advanced stages of dementia, whereas they frequently occurred in the stages of state and of evolution of illness. Memory loss did not seem to be directly responsible of the symptom, while personality features and social cultural models seemed to have a definite valence in the development of confabulation of denial. Some implications of these findings are discussed.

Attitude to Health↗

[Acoustic and semantic disturbances of comprehension in aphasia].

The authors carried out a verbal auditory comprehension test on 115 aphasic patients, 44 patients suffering from a left hemispheric lesion without aphasia and 120 normal subjects used as acontrol group. The test also revealed either disorders in acoustico-phonemic discrimination or difficulities in semantic differentiation. The main aim of the research was to check experimentally the theory propounded by Alajouanine and colleagues (1964) according to which, in Wernicke's aphasia, it is possible to demonstrate a twofold correlation between disorders of comprehension and speech disorders both phonemic and semantic. Only one part of the theory of Alajouanine and colleagues has been confirmed by our experiments for our results have shown that there is a very close correlation between semantic paraphasias and disorders of semantic differentiation whilst no correlation can be found between phonemic paraphasias and disturbances in auditory phonemic discrimination.

Aphasia↗

Qualitative analysis of unilateral spatial neglect in relation to laterality of cerebral lesions.

Two unselected groups of patients, affected by a mono-hemispheric cerebral lesion, were studied in two seperate services by means of various tasks of copying drawings, in order to check the hypothesis of a qualitative difference between unilateral spatial neglect (USN) of right and left brain-damaged patients. In both experimental groups drawing asymmetries were found to be of slight importance among the left hemispheric patients, consisting chiefly in a tendency to omit some figures lying on the right half of the models, and to be definitely more severe in the right braindamaged patients, where the main pattern of USN seemed to be the tendency to leave unfinished the left half of the drawings. A second aim of the study was to describe some less frequent features of USN, sometimes found in patients who were recovering from a severe damage of the minor hemisphere. These patterns of USN seemed to suggest that the core of unilateral spatial neglect consists in a peculiar disorganization of the type of synthesis of the sensory data which seems characteristic of the minor hemisphere.

Apraxias↗