Giant chess game enhances spatial navigational skills in 6-years-old children: preliminary findings.

The game of chess is a valuable extracurricular activity for children, with positive effects on their cognitive skills and academic achievements. We investigated the extent to which the Giant Chess Game (GCG) played on a giant chessboard enhances working memory in "navigational-vista" space and "reaching" space. We also assessed if the GCG enhances mental rotation skills.

Association of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation and Neurofeedback With Declarative Memory and Cerebral Arterial Flow in University Students: Protocol for a Double-blind Randomized Controlled Study.

Background: The performance of a task depends on ongoing brain activity, which can be influenced by attention, excitement, or motivation. Scientific studies have confirmed that mindfulness leads to better performance, health, and well-being. However, these cognitive efficiency modulating factors are nonspecific, can be difficult to control, and are not suitable to specifically facilitate neural processing.

The Contribution of Cognitive Factors to Compulsive Buying Behaviour: Insights from Shopping Habit Changes during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The last decade has seen an increase in compulsive behaviours among young adults worldwide, particularly in 2020, during restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Importantly, even if shopping is an ordinary activity in everyday life, it can become a compulsive behaviour for certain individuals. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of working memory and decision-making style in compulsive behaviour.

Divergent thinking in Italian elementary school children: the key role of probabilistic reasoning style.

Divergent thinking is widely recognised as an individual creative potential and an essential factor in fostering creativity since the early stages of life. Albeit previous research revealed that creativity could be pursued through controlled mental processes (e.g.

Comparing the use of mathematical calculation to a measuring wheel to determine distance walked in three different course configurations of the 6 minute Walk Test in healthy adults.

Introduction: A recent clinical practice guideline set forth recommendations for the administration of the 6 Minute Walk Test, including course set-up and using mathematical calculation to obtain the distance walked. In clinical practice and research, however, deviations from these protocols exist.

Purpose: To assess for differences in total distance walked between use of mathematical calculation and a measuring wheel during three different course configurations of the 6 Minute Walk Test.

DiaNe: A New First-Level Computerized Tool Assessing Memory, Attention, and Visuospatial Processing to Detect Early Pathological Cognitive Decline.

Background: Detecting the beginning of cognitive decay is crucial to guarantee good management and the possible prevention of dementia progression. The present study arises from observations collected during an educational event to promote mental and physical health in which incidental neuropsychological data gathered on 290 citizens showed the importance of routine neuropsychological examination in detecting early signs of cognitive decay, since many individuals were unaware of the decrease in their cognitive efficiency. Accordingly, the availability of a screening tool that is computerized, portable, self-administrable, and sensitive to the main neurocognitive changes testifying the progression towards pathological aging is critical.

Rosai-Dorfman disease mimicking images of meningiomas: Two case reports and literature review.

Background: Rosai-Dorfman disease (RDD) is a rare non-Langerhans cell histiocytic proliferative disorder classically as a massive cervical lymphadenopathy. However, over the years, extranodal locations were confirmed with the central nervous system involvement in less than 5% of cases, which is marked as a significant differential diagnosis of meningiomas, with which they are widely confused due to the similarity of their radiological images.

Case Description: We report a 37-year-old man and 45-year-old man who were diagnosed with intracranial RDD but whose radiological images mimic meningiomas, requiring anatomopathological and tumor's immunohistochemistry for definitive diagnosis.

Do Advanced Spatial Strategies Depend on the Number of Flight Hours? The Case of Military Pilots.

Background: Military pilots show advanced visuospatial skills. Previous studies demonstrate that they are better at mentally rotating a target, taking different perspectives, estimating distances and planning travel and have a topographic memory. Here, we compared navigational cognitive styles between military pilots and people without flight experience.

Sex Differences in Spatial Memory: Comparison of Three Tasks Using the Same Virtual Context.

Spatial memory has been studied through different instruments and tools with different modalities of administration. The cognitive load varies depending on the measure used and it should be taken into account to correctly interpret results. The aim of this research was to analyze how men and women perform three different spatial memory tasks with the same spatial context but with different cognitive demands.

The Role of Gender and Familiarity in a Modified Version of the Almeria Boxes Room Spatial Task.

Individual factors like gender and familiarity can affect the kind of environmental representation that a person acquires during spatial navigation. Men seem to prefer relying on map-like survey representations, while women prefer using sequential route representations. Moreover, a good familiarity with the environment allows more complete environmental representations.

Chatting While Walking Does Not Interfere with Topographical Working Memory.

In the present study, we employed the dual task technique to explore the role of language in topographical working memory when landmarks are present along the path. We performed three experiments to mainly test the effects of language but also motor, spatial motor and spatial environment interferences on topographical working memory. We aimed to clarify both the role of language in navigational working memory per se and the extent to which spatial language interferes with the main task more than the other types of interference.

Travel Planning Ability in Right Brain-Damaged Patients: Two Case Reports.

Planning ability is fundamental for goal-directed spatial navigation. Preliminary findings from patients and healthy individuals suggest that travel planning (TP)-namely, navigational planning-can be considered a distinct process from visuospatial planning (VP) ability. To shed light on this distinction, two right brain-damaged patients without hemineglect were compared with a control group on two tasks aimed at testing VP (i.

Does spatial cognitive style affect how navigational strategy is planned?

People orient themselves in the environment using three different, hierarchically organized, spatial cognitive styles: landmark, route, and survey. Landmark style is based on a representation encompassing only visual information (terrain features); route style is based on a representation that connects landmarks and routes using an egocentric (body-centred) frame of reference; survey style is based on a global map-like representation that mainly involves an allocentric (world-centred) frame of reference. This study was aimed at investigating whether individual spatial cognitive style affected the way to plan a path when searching for a lost object.

How does environmental knowledge allow us to come back home?

Herein, we investigate how the three types of mental spatial representation (landmark, route and survey) are reorganized to perform wayfinding and homing behaviour. We also investigate the contribution of visuo-spatial working memory in reaching and in vista space in performing the retracing of the path. For this purpose, we asked 68 healthy college students to learn and come back along an unknown path in a real environment and to perform two different forward and backward working memory tasks, one in the reaching space (Corsi Block-Tapping Test) and the other in a vista space (Walking Corsi Test).

Object recognition and location: Which component of object location memory for landmarks is affected by gender? Evidence from four to ten year-old children.

Memory for object location requires at least three processes: object recognition, object location, and object-location binding. Gender-related differences during childhood are still a matter of debate, especially concerning memory for object location, where females are expected to outperform males. Memory for object position is pivotal for spatial navigation and its investigation during childhood is crucial in order to understand the roots of gender-related differences in spatial orientation.

How would you describe a familiar route or put in order the landmarks along it? It depends on your cognitive style!

Cognitive style refers to the preference in perceiving, organizing and remembering information. Different cognitive styles have been identified across the years. Amongst others, field-dependence/independence cognitive style is the extent to which the person perceives part of a field as discrete from the surrounding environment as a whole, rather than embedded in the field.

Continuous Environmental Changes May Enhance Topographic Memory Skills. Evidence From L'Aquila Earthquake-Exposed Survivors.

Exposure to environmental contextual changes, such as those occurring after an earthquake, requires individuals to learn novel routes around their environment, landmarks and spatial layout. In this study, we aimed to uncover whether contextual changes that occurred after the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake affected topographic memory in exposed survivors. We hypothesized that individuals exposed to environmental changes-individuals living in L'Aquila before, during and after the earthquake (hereafter called exposed participants, EPs)-improved their topographic memory skills compared with non-exposed participants (NEPs) who moved to L'Aquila after the earthquake, as only EPs had to modify their previous cognitive map of L'Aquila.

Does ventrolateral prefrontal cortex help in searching for the lost key? Evidence from an fNIRS study.

The Key Search Task (KST) is a neuropsychological test that requires strategies for searching a lost key in an imaginary field. This request may involve different cognitive processes as mental imagery and navigation planning. This study was aimed at investigating, by a twenty-channel functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) system, the hemodynamic response (i.

The Key of the Maze: The role of mental imagery and cognitive flexibility in navigational planning.

Spatial navigation planning ability relies on both mental imagery and cognitive flexibility. Considering the importance of planning ability in everyday life, several neuropsychological tests are used in clinical practice for its assessment, although some of these are not aimed at assessing the strategies of navigational planning. The Porteus Maze Test (PMT) and the Key Search Task (KST) require to plan a strategy in a maze and in an imagined space, respectively.

Mental imagery skills predict the ability in performing environmental directional judgements.

Mental imagery plays a crucial role in several cognitive processes, including human navigation. According to the Kosslyn's Model, mental imagery is subserved by three components: generation, inspection and transformation. The role of transformation, where by individuals recognise, from a different perspective, a place they have already visited, is no longer a matter of debate.

Multibreed genetic evaluation in bovines using simulated data employing a composite population.

Genetic evaluations in Brazil are performed within each animal breed; however, with the wide range of extant genetic groups in the country and the increased use of genetic crossing as a form of rapid meat production, more elaborate programs that can jointly evaluate animals of different genetic groups are needed. Genetic evaluation of a composite breed is difficult because of the variation in the genetic composition of a given herd, as well as the inclusion of non-additive genetic effects among breeds that can be important for selecting traits in certain breed combinations. Newer models include additive and non-additive effects; however, few studies have investigated these aspects in tropical breeds.

Does spatial locative comprehension predict landmark-based navigation?

In the present study we investigated the role of spatial locative comprehension in learning and retrieving pathways when landmarks were available and when they were absent in a sample of typically developing 6- to 11-year-old children. Our results show that the more proficient children are in understanding spatial locatives the more they are able to learn pathways, retrieve them after a delay and represent them on a map when landmarks are present in the environment. These findings suggest that spatial language is crucial when individuals rely on sequences of landmarks to drive their navigation towards a given goal but that it is not involved when navigational representations based on the geometrical shape of the environment or the coding of body movements are sufficient for memorizing and recalling short pathways.

[Cervical lymphoadenopathy due to Pseudomonas aeruginosa following mesotherapy].

Mesotherapy is a treatment method devised for controlling several diseases by means of subcutaneous microinjections given at or around the affected areas at short time intervals. It is used to treat a variety of medical conditions, amongst which all orthopaedic diseases and rheumatic pain. Mesotherapy is especially indicated for neck pain.

New burns centre in parma hospital, west emilia hub.

Parma Hospital is the Trauma Centre for SIAT (Trauma Patients Integrated Assistance System) in the West Emilia District in the regional trauma patient project. SIAT's goal is to provide the quickest and most appropriate treatment in major trauma patients. Extensive burns are a multi-organ pathology, i.

Short term analgesia based sedation in the Intensive Care Unit: morphine vs remifentanil + morphine.

Aim: The aim of the study was the evaluation of postoperative short term analgesia-based sedation provided by a continuous i.v. morphine vs morphine+remifentanil infusion in the ICU.