Publications by authors named "Daniela Peto"

Postural instability is a common complication in advanced Parkinson's disease (PD) associated with recurrent falls and fall-related injuries. The test of retropulsion, consisting of a rapid balance perturbation by a pull in the backward direction, is regarded as the gold standard for evaluating postural instability in PD and is a key component of the neurological examination and clinical rating in PD (e.g.

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Background: Gait impairment is a key feature in later stages of Parkinson's disease (PD), which often responds poorly to pharmacological therapies. Neuromodulatory treatment by low-intensity noisy galvanic vestibular stimulation (nGVS) has indicated positive effects on postural instability in PD, which may possibly be conveyed to improvement of dynamic gait dysfunction.

Objective: To investigate the effects of individually tuned nGVS on normal and cognitively challenged walking in PD patients with mild-to-moderate gait dysfunction.

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Article Synopsis
  • Postural instability in progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) may result from abnormal vestibulospinal reflexes, and low-intensity noisy galvanic vestibular stimulation (nGVS) has been investigated as a non-invasive treatment to improve balance.* -
  • In a study with 16 PSP patients, nGVS at various intensities was tested for its effects on body sway, specifically looking for a bell-shaped response curve indicative of stochastic resonance (SR).* -
  • Results showed that nGVS significantly reduced body sway in 56% of patients, with some experiencing improvements that were clinically meaningful, suggesting nGVS could be an effective strategy for managing postural symptoms in PSP.*
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Background: Left/right judgement (LRJ) of body parts is commonly used to assess the ability to perform implicit motor imagery and the integrity of brain-grounded maps of the body. Clinically, LRJ are often undertaken using a mobile tablet, but the concurrent validity and reliability of this approach has not yet been established.

Objectives: To evaluate the concurrent validity and test-retest reliability of a mobile tablet for assessing LRJ.

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Aims: Non-nociceptive somatosensory input, such as tactile or proprioceptive information, always precedes nociceptive input during a painful event. This relationship provides clear opportunities for predictive associative learning, which may shape future painful experiences. In this differential classical conditioning study we tested whether pain-associated tactile cues (conditioned stimuli; CS) could alter the perceived intensity of painful stimulation, and whether this depends on duration of the CS-seeing that CS duration might allow or prevent conscious expectation.

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