Biomedical subjects

G Miceli

Publications and source records attributed to G Miceli.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

Ultrasonography in the early diagnosis of psoriasis-associated enthesopathy.

The aim of the present study was to detect entheseal abnormalities by means of ultrasonography (US) in patients with psoriasis. We evaluated 24 patients with psoriasis who underwent clinical and ultrasonographic examination of both lower limbs at the calcaneal insertions of the Achilles tendons and at the flexor and extensor tendons of all fingers of the hand. Fourteen patients with psoriatic arthritis were used as controls. US was performed using a real-time scanner (ATL SDI 3000) with a 5-12 MHz linear array transducer. Longitudinal and transverse scans of the talocrural joints, Achilles tendons and both the flexor and extensor tendons of the fingers of both hands were obtained at rest and during active and passive movements. On clinical examination no entheseal site was abnormal, but on US examination 33% of patients showed abnormalities. In particular, six psoriasis patients (25%) who were asymptomatic showed effusion around the extensor tendon of the first digit of the left hand and around the extensor tendon of the third and fourth digits of both hands; two patients (8.3%) showed a hypoechoic nodular formation of the flexor tendon sheath of the left hand. We conclude that entheseal abnormalities not detected at clinical examination were present in 33% of patients with psoriasis who underwent US examination. Therefore, we suggest the routine use of ultrasonography in the early diagnosis and in treatment and follow-up of patients with tendon enthesopathy, since these factors may have implications for therapy.

Achilles Tendon↗

PubMed2001

Disorders of single word processing.

In recent years, studies in the cognitive neuropsychology of language have helped in understanding the functional architecture of linguistic processes. It has been shown that recognizing, comprehending and producing a word entails the activation of a complex set of mechanisms, each of which can be selectively impaired as a consequence of brain damage. Investigations of aphasic subjects have demonstrated that the meaning, the pronunciation and the spelling of a word are represented independently, that category information plays a critical role in semantic organization, and that the mental vocabulary represents word class and morphological structure. These distinctions in the architecture of the lexical-semantic system, in turn, have provided the basis for PET and fMRI studies of the neural correlates of single-word processing. These experiments, in agreement with recent neurophysiological investigations, suggest that cognitive/linguistic functions are likely to be represented in distributed neural networks often encompassing more than one lobe, rather than in individual, sharply demarcated neural structures.

Aphasia↗

PubMed2001

The dissociation of color from form and function knowledge.

We report on two brain-damaged subjects who exhibit the uncommon pattern of loss of object color knowledge, but spared color perception and naming. The subject P.C.O., as in previously reported patients, is also impaired in processing other perceptual and functional properties of objects. I.O.C., in contrast, is the first subject on record to have impaired object color knowledge, but spared knowledge of object form, size and function. This pattern of performance is consistent with the view that semantic information about color and other perceptual properties of objects is grounded in modality-specific systems. Lesion analysis suggests that such grounding requires the integrity of the mesial temporal regions of the left hemisphere.

Adult↗

PubMed2001

Word-centred neglect dyslexia: evidence from a new case.

Neglect dyslexia resulting from damage to word-centred representations is extremely rare. We report on a new case. A left-handed subject, SVE, presented with aphasia and neglect dyslexia/dysgraphia following a right hemisphere stroke. In tachistoscopic reading tasks, some of his errors resulted from retina-centred neglect, as he responded more accurately to words flashed in the left visual field than to words flashed in the right visual field. However, the critical aspects of his reading performance indicated word-centred neglect. SVE incorrectly produced the initial elements of four-letter words, regardless of stimulus location (to the left and to the right of fixation, or at fixation), and orientation (horizontal and vertical presentation). A similar distribution of errors was demonstrated in writing (very inaccurate performance on initial letters). This pattern of performance suggests damage to an abstract letter string representation defined by spatial coordinates, rather than to an ordering mechanism. It is most naturally accommodated by models of word recognition which assume a word-centred level of representation, and cannot be explained by models which do not include such a representational level. Consideration of our subject in the light of other similar reports prompts hypotheses on the neural mechanisms involved in computing word-centred representations.

Aged↗

PubMed2001

[Acute poisoning with methomyl and other pesticides in the province of Ragusa, Sicily].

In 1995-96, the Occupational Medicine Service of the province of Ragusa, Sicily, examined all cases of pesticide poisonings among persons seen in two local emergency departments, identifying 86 cases due to unintentional pesticide exposure. Methomyl, a highly toxic carbamate, was indicated for 51% of all cases. The most frequently reported symptoms included nausea and vomiting (48%), excessive perspiration (33%), and dyspnea (16%). Fifty-nine cases (69%) were hospitalized, 5 in intensive care. The methomyl cases occurred more frequently during summer months while the cases from all other pesticides showed no seasonal patterns. These observations point out the relevance of identifying acute pesticide poisonings in the province of Ragusa and suggest that ongoing registration of these events should be a public health priority.

Acute Disease↗

PubMed2001

[National surveillance system for acute poisoning caused by pesticides].

In the present paper is presented the surveillance system for pesticide-related illnesses proposed by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health. Through the collaboration of local or regional poison control centres and local health departments with public hospitals and emergency departments, cases of acute pesticide-related illnesses among persons seeking health care will be registered according to standard procedures. Data collected locally will be transmitted to the Istituto Superiore di Sanità for registration and evaluation of the association between symptoms and type of exposure and for severity of illnesses related to pesticide exposure. These data will be analysed at regular intervals in order to estimate the magnitude of the problem of acute pesticide-related illnesses in Italy and to identify priority areas for implementing public health prevention and intervention programs.

Acute Disease↗

PubMed2000

Separable processing of consonants and vowels.

There are two views about the nature of consonants and vowels. One view holds that they are categorically distinct objects that play a fundamental role in the construction of syllables in speech production. The other view is that they are convenient labels for distinguishing between peak (vowel) and non-peak (consonant) parts of a continuous stream of sound that varies in sonority (roughly the degree of openness of the vocal apparatus during speech), or that they are summary labels for bundles of feature segments. Taking the latter view, consonants and vowels do not have an independent status in language processing. Here we provide evidence for the possible categorical distinction between consonants and vowels in the brain. We report the performance of two Italian-speaking aphasics who show contrasting, selective difficulties in producing vowels and consonants. Their performance in producing individual consonants is independent of the sonority value and feature properties of the consonants. This pattern of results suggests that consonants and vowels are processed by distinct neural mechanisms, thereby providing evidence for their independent status in language production.

Adult↗

PubMed1998

[The solitary benign ulcer of the colon: a report of a case located in the cecum].

The authors report a case of benign solitary cecal ulcer, occurred recently to their observation and diagnosed during operation. The patient was undergo an operation of right hemicolectomy. The preoperative diagnosis of lesion kind and its localization is difficult because it's a rare disease as well as literature reports; in fact the benign solitary colon ulcer can be differentiated with difficult from a perforated appendicitis, an inflammatory disease and a colon carcinoma. The authors discuss about probable etiologic factors, clinical features and surgical treatment.

Aged↗

PubMed1997

Acquired dysgraphia in alphabetic and stenographic handwriting.

We report the unusual case of AZO, who professionally used handwritten shorthand writing, and became dysgraphic after a stroke. AZO suffered from a complex cognitive impairment, and part of her spelling errors resulted from damage to auditory input processing, to phonology-orthography conversion procedures and to the ortographic output lexicon. However, analysis of her writing performance showed that the same variables affected response accuracy in alphabetic and shorthand writing; and, that the same error types, including transpositions, were observed in all tasks in the two types of writing. These observations are consistent with damage to the graphemic buffer. They suggest that, in multiple-code writing systems (e.g., stenography, Japanese, or in the case of multilingual speakers of languages that use different spelling codes), the graphemic buffer is shared by all codes.

Agraphia↗

PubMed1996

The treatment of anomia resulting from output lexical damage: analysis of two cases.

This study describes a treatment project, carried out with two anomic subjects, RBO and GMA failed to name pictures correctly as a consequence of damage to phonological lexical forms; their ability to process word meaning was unimpaired. Words that were consistently comprehended correctly, but produced incorrectly by each subject, were identified. Some words were treated, whereas some served as the control set. A significant improvement was observed in both subjects. As predicted by the model of lexical-semantic processing used as the theoretical background for the study, improvement was restricted to treated items and did not generalize to untreated words, not even to words that were semantically related to those administered during treatment. Improvement was long-lasting, as shown by the fact that 17 months post-therapy GMA's performance on treated words was still significantly better than before treatment. These results are discussed in relation to the claim that cognitive models can be profitably used in the treatment of language disorders.

Adult↗

PubMed1995

Selective deficit in processing double letters.

This paper reports a patient with a selective difficulty in spelling words and pseudowords with geminate (double) consonants. In all writing tasks, deletions of a geminate consonant occurred ten times more often than deletions of a consonant in a non-geminate cluster. In addition, the probability of substituting both geminate consonants was indistinguishable from the probability of substituting one consonant in a non-geminate cluster; and, the probability of substituting only one geminate consonant was close to zero, and significantly lower than the probability of substituting one consonant in a non-geminate cluster. This pattern of performance is consistent with the hypothesis that grapheme quantity and identity are separately represented in orthographic representations. The fact that these errors occurred in the absence of a significant number of geminate transpositions is interpreted as support for the hypothesis that letter gemination is specified by a "doubling feature."

Adult↗

PubMed1994

Morphological errors and the representation of morphology in the lexical-semantic system.

Neuropsychological studies support the hypothesis that morphology is represented autonomously, both at the level of word meaning and at the level of word form. In output processes, morphologically organized semantic information activates lexical representations of roots and affixes, which are composed before production. In input processes, the stimulus is parsed along the morphological dimension, to access root and affix lexical representations, which in turn activate morphologically organized semantic information. Inflectional and derivational morphology are represented independently in the lexicon. Inflected words are fully decomposed; derived words are decomposed into base form+inflection. In aphasia, morphological errors in transcoding tasks always co-occur with semantic and/or phonemic errors. Morphological errors in transcoding tasks require combined damage to morphological representations in the semantic-lexical system and to sublexical conversion procedures; they co-occur with semantic errors when also root representations are damaged. The co-occurrence of morphological and phonemic errors can be accounted for by several hypotheses, but its theoretical meaning is still uncertain.

Aphasia↗

PubMed1994

The interaction of lexical and sublexical processes in reading, writing and repetition.

It has recently been proposed that in the course of repetition, reading aloud and writing to dictation, lexical representations are activated and selected for output by the joint operation of the semantic system and of sublexical conversion mechanisms--the Summation Hypothesis [Hillis and Caramazza, Brain Lang. 40, 106-144, 1991]. The hypothesis predicts that semantic errors in oral reading and in writing to dictation should only occur when both the semantic system and the sublexical component involved in that task (orthography to phonology and phonology to orthography conversion, respectively) are damaged. The performance of Italian patient E.C.A. indicates damage to the semantic system, and to sublexical phonology to phonology and phonology to orthography conversion mechanisms, but with substantial sparing of sublexical orthography to phonology conversion processes. In agreement with expectations derived from the Summation Hypothesis, E.C.A. produced semantic errors in repetition and in writing to dictation, but not in reading aloud. The paucity of semantic errors in speakers of languages with relatively transparent orthographies is discussed in the context of the Summation Hypothesis.

Aged↗

PubMed1991

Selective impairment of thematic role assignment in sentence processing.

We report the performance of a brain-damaged subject showing a particularly pure dissociation between impairment in processing thematic roles and spared ability to process the morphological structure of sentences. The thematic role processing impairment was observed in both comprehension and production of active and passive reversible sentences, although it was more severe for the latter sentence type. This pattern of performance poses interesting challenges for current conceptions of the nature of language breakdown in aphasia and for models of normal sentence processing.

Aphasia, Wernicke↗

PubMed1991

The interaction of lexical and non-lexical processing mechanisms: evidence from anomia.

Patient SF presented with a selective deficit in naming, in the presence of normal auditory, visual and pictorial input processing, and of normal comprehension. The naming disorder was independent of input modality, and resulted in the inability to respond to low-frequency items. The analysis of the patient's performance in the repeated administration of the same set of pictures for oral naming and for written naming demonstrated that both tasks were disrupted to a similar extent--high consistency values were observed both across and within modality. Thus, the profile of the naming disorder observed in this patient was consistent with damage to phonological and orthographic output lexicons. SF's performance in reading and writing was apparently at odds with this account, as he was able to read aloud words with lexically-assigned stress, and to write to dictation words whose spelling is also determined lexically. The co-occurrence of the inability to activate output lexical representations in both oral and written picture naming, in the context of normal ability to activate the same representations in reading and in writing is consistent with the notion that phonological and orthographic output lexicons are distinct, but interact with nonlexical conversion mechanisms.

Anomia↗

PubMed1991

[Plasma levels of beta-endorphin in obese subjects with normal glucose tolerance test and in diabetics].

Forty obese subjects with normal glucose tolerance test (NGTT) thirteen diabetic obese subjects and sixteen normal subjects were studied to evaluate the possible interactions between beta-endorphin (B-Ep) and glucose homeostasis. On the basis of baseline B-Ep levels, two subgroups were selected: one group with normal mean values of B-Ep (7.02 +/- 0.59 pmol/l); another group with elevated mean values of B-Ep (18.95 +/- 1.52 pmol/l). No differences between these subgroups were found as regards body mass index (BMI), insulin and glucagon levels. Normal B-Ep values were found in diabetic obese subjects. No significant correlation was found between B-Ep and BMI, insulin or glucagon. Considering that B-Ep is involved in eating behavior and on the basis of our results, we suggest that elevated B-Ep levels can be found only in those obese NGTT subjects whose obesity is probably related to an abnormal modulation of food intake, such as hyperphagia.

Adult↗

PubMed1990

The structure of graphemic representations.

The analysis of the spelling performance of a brain-damaged dysgraphic subject is reported. The subject's spelling performance was affected by various graphotactic factors, such as the distinction between consonant and vowel and graphosyllabic structure. For example, while the subject produced many consonant and vowel deletion errors when these were part of consonant and vowel clusters, respectively (e.g., sfondo----sondo; giunta----gunta), deletions were virtually never produced for single consonants flanked by two vowels (e.g., onesto----oesto) or for single vowels flanked by two consonants (e.g., tirare----trare). The demonstration that graphosyllabic factors affect spelling performance disconfirms the hypothesis that graphemic representations consist simply of linearly ordered sets of graphemes. It is concluded that graphemic representations are multidimensional structures: one dimension specifies the grapheme identities that comprise the spelling of a word; a second dimension specifies the consonant/vowel status of the graphemes; a third dimension represents the graphosyllabic structure of the grapheme string; and, a fourth dimension provides information about geminate features.

Agraphia↗

PubMed1990

Rabies reference vaccine for use as a regional standard for Latin America and the Caribbean countries.

A candidate rabies reference vaccine of suckling mouse brain (SMB) origin was prepared and standardized at the Pan American Zoonoses Center (PAHO/WHO) and evaluated in a collaborative study involving seven laboratories. On the basis of three different tests, its potency, immunogenicity, and stability were demonstrated to be satisfactory. The vaccine was proposed for consideration of the Latin American and Caribbean countries as a regional standard to determine the potency of SMB vaccines, the most widely used in the Region.

Animals↗