Publications by authors named "Edoardo Nicolo Aiello"
Background: This study aimed to assess the screening properties of Foderaro et al.s' updated normative framework for the Italian MMSE in detecting mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia due to neurodegenerative, chronic cerebrovascular, and mixed etiologies, as well as in differentiating between these two syndromes.
Methods: Data on 234 patients with either MCI (N = 83) or dementia (N = 151) due to Alzheimer's disease (N = 112), Lewy body disease (N = 11), frontotemporal lobar degeneration (N = 20), chronic cerebrovascular disease (N = 39), or mixed (N = 47) etiologies having been administered Foderaro et al.
Background: This study aimed to determine whether educational attainment-a common proxy of cognitive reserve (CR)-influences the association between motor and cognitive/behavioural outcomes in a large cohort of ALS patients without dementia.
Methods: N = 726 ALS patients without FTD were assessed for motor (ALSFRS-R), cognitive (Edinburgh Cognitive and Behavioural ALS Screen, ECAS) and behavioural outcomes (ECAS-Carer Interview, ECAS-CI). CR was operationalized via educational attainment (in years).
Article Synopsis
- Poor affect recognition is an early indicator of frontotemporal dementia (FTD), and this study used the Comprehensive Affect Testing System (CATS-A) to assess emotional dysfunction in FTD patients compared to healthy controls.
- The study involved 139 FTD patients of various subtypes and tested them alongside 116 healthy controls, measuring their Affective Recognition Quotient (ARQ) to evaluate emotional recognition accuracy.
- Results showed that the CATS-A effectively differentiated between FTD patients and healthy controls with high accuracy (AUC 0.89) and had robust internal reliability, suggesting it's a valuable clinical tool for assessing emotional dysfunction in FTD.
Background: . The present study aimed at deriving regression-based reliable change indices (RCIs) for the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) in an Italian cohort of non-demented Parkinson's disease (PD) patients.
Methods: N = 33 consecutive, non-demented PD patients were followed-up at a 5-to-8-month interval (M = 6.
Objective: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) improves motor outcomes in Parkinson's disease (PD) but may have adverse long-term effects on specific cognitive domains. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between total electrical energy (TEED) delivered by DBS and postoperative changes in verbal fluency.
Methods: Seventeen PD patients undergoing bilateral STN-DBS were assessed with the Alternate Verbal Fluency Battery (AVFB), which includes phonemic (PVF), semantic (SVF), and alternate verbal fluency (AVF) tests, before surgery (T0) and after 6 (T1) and 12 months (T2).
Background: This study aimed at assessing the clinical utility of the Verbal Fluency Index (VFI) over a classical phonemic verbal fluency test in Italian-speaking amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients.
Methods: N = 343 non-demented ALS patients and N = 226 healthy controls (HCs) were administered the Verbal fluency - S task from the Edinburgh Cognitive and Behavioural ALS Screen (ECAS). The associations between the number of words produced (NoW), the time to read words aloud (TRW) and the VFI (computed as [(60"-TRW)/NoW]) on one hand and both bulbar/respiratory scores from the ALS Functional Rating Scale - Revised (ALSFRS-R) and the ECAS-Executive on the other were tested.
Background: This study aimed to assess whether quantitative susceptibility imaging (QSM)-based measures of iron accumulation in the cerebellum predict cognitive and behavioral features in non-demented amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients.
Methods: A total of ALS patients underwent 3-T MRI and a clinical assessment using the ALS Functional Rating Scale-Revised (ALSFRS-R) and the Edinburgh Cognitive and Behavioural ALS Screen (ECAS). Regression models were applied to each subscale of the cognitive section of the ECAS and the ECAS-Carer Interview to examine the effect of QSM-based measures in white and gray matter (WM; GM) of the cerebellum, separately for right, left, and bilateral cerebellar regions of interest (ROIs).
Background: Parkinson's disease (PD) is often accompanied by gait disorders and freezing of gait (FoG), disabling symptoms that are resistant to conventional dopamine treatments. Given the cerebellum's connectivity with the motor cortex and basal ganglia, and its implication in PD, combining transcranial direct current stimulation targeting the cerebellum (ctDCS) with physical exercise might improve gait and balance.
Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a novel rehabilitation approach that combines noninvasive cerebellar stimulation with motor-cognitive training via an augmented reality treadmill (C-Mill VR) in individuals with PD and FoG.
Article Synopsis
- The study investigates how spatial disorientation and behavioral issues in spatial cognition manifest in prodromal Alzheimer's disease (AD) compared to normal aging and mild cognitive impairment (MCI).
- A sample of 58 elderly participants, including those with mild cognitive impairment, subjective cognitive decline, and healthy controls, was tested using the Detour Navigation Test and smartphone GPS tracking to assess wrong turns and gait patterns.
- Results indicated that MCI patients made more wrong turns than the other groups, and the presence of the ApoE-ε4 genotype was linked to poorer spatial processing and slower gait in real-world navigation tasks.
Article Synopsis
- The study aimed to assess the clinical usability of the Comprehensive Affect Testing System (CATS) in recognizing emotional responses in Italian ALS patients.
- A total of 96 ALS patients and 116 healthy controls participated in neuropsychological assessments, revealing that the CATS-A measures demonstrated good diagnostic accuracy for distinguishing between ALS patients with cognitive impairments and those without.
- The findings suggested that CATS-A ARQ is an effective tool for identifying affect recognition deficits in ALS, which could indicate frontotemporal brain involvement in these patients.
Background: This study aimed at (1) delivering generalizable estimates of the prevalence of frontotemporal-spectrum disorders (FTSDs) in non-demented ALS patients and (2) exploring their motor-functional correlates.
Methods: N = 808 ALS patients without FTD were assessed for motor-functional outcomes-i.e.
Objective: The Clock Drawing Test (CDT) is a widely used test for cognitive screening as its execution taps into a large number of cognitive functions. Because of the involvement of visuospatial abilities, the CDT is also commonly used to assess hemispatial neglect. In the present study, we introduce a new quantitative scoring method for the CDT that aims to measure the use of space for each half of the clock face and asymmetries of space use.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Fibromyalgia (FM) is characterised by chronic widespread pain, often associated with fatigue, sleep disturbance, cognitive and mood impairment. Pain is a complex and multidimensional experience that significantly impacts personal, social, and professional functioning. Psychological factors related to chronic pain include catastrophising and self-efficacy in managing the painful condition.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: It has been recently acknowledged that deficits in experiencing and processing one's own emotions, also termed alexithymia, may possibly feature the frontotemporal-spectrum disorders. This study aims to determine whether alexithymia could be included within the frontotemporal syndromes of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Methods: Alexithymic traits were estimated in a cohort of 68 non-demented ALS patients with the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20).
Background: This study aimed at preliminarily assessing, in a cohort of non-demented amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients, the ecological validity, and more specifically the veridicality, of the Edinburgh Cognitive and Behavioural ALS Screen (ECAS) and the ALS Cognitive Behavioral Screen (ALS-CBS™), by relating their scores to caregiver-report ratings of cognitive changes.
Methods: N = 147 patient-caregiver dyads were recruited. Patients were administered the ECAS and ALS-CBS™, whilst caregiver the Caregiver Behavioral Questionnaire (CBQ) and Beaumont Behavioural Inventory (BBI).
Dystonia is a movement disorder in which sustained muscle contractions give rise to abnormal postures or involuntary movements. It is a disabling and disfiguring disorder that affects activities of daily living and gives people a bizarre appearance often associated with psychological morbidity, embarrassment and social avoidance. Intramuscular injection of botulinum toxin (BoNT) is the most effective treatment for motor symptoms in focal dystonia, but little is known about its impact on the psycho-social dimension.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- The study investigates how deficits in visuospatial long-term memory can forecast navigation difficulties in older adults as they progress from normal aging to Alzheimer's disease (AD).
- It involved assessing 72 participants, including those with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), subjective cognitive decline (SCD), and healthy controls, using a navigation test and a learning task to measure performance.
- Results indicated that higher performance in the learning task correlated with fewer navigation mistakes and hesitations, suggesting the potential of the learning test as a tool for evaluating navigational abilities in individuals at risk for AD.
Introduction: Learning is a long-term memory process heavily influenced by the control processes implemented by working memory, including recognition of semantic properties of items by which subjects generate a semantic structure of engrams.
Aim: The aim of this study is to investigate the verbal learning strategies of patients affected by a tumor in the left frontal lobe to highlight the role of area 9.
Method: Ten patients with frontal low-grade gliomas and ten healthy control subjects, matched for age, sex and education, were recruited and then evaluated with a two-part verbal learning test: multi-trial word list learning in free recall, and multi-trial word list learning preceded by an explicit semantic strategy cue.
Introduction: The present study aimed at testing the longitudinal feasibility of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) in an Italian cohort of non-demented amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients.
Methods: N = 39 non-demented ALS patients were followed-up at a 5-to-10-month interval (M = 6.8; SD = 1.
Background: Verbal fluency (VF) tasks are known as suitable for detecting cognitive impairment (CI) in Parkinson's disease (PD). This study thus aimed to evaluate the psychometrics and diagnostics of the Alternate Verbal Fluency Battery (AVFB) by Costa et al. (2014) in an Italian cohort of non-demented PD patients, as well as to derive disease-specific cut-offs for it.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: This study aimed at exploring (1) the motor and non-motor correlates of counterfactual thinking (CFT) abilities in non-demented amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients and (2) the ability of CFT measures to discriminate these patients from healthy controls (HCs) and patients with and without cognitive impairment.
Methods: = 110 ALS patients and = 51 HCs were administered two CFT tasks, whose sum, resulting in a CFT Index (CFTI), was addressed as the outcome. Patients further underwent an in-depth cognitive, behavioral, and motor-functional evaluation.
Background: This study aimed at developing and standardizing the Telephone Language Screener (TLS), a novel, disease-nonspecific, telephone-based screening test for language disorders.
Methods: The TLS was developed in strict pursuance to the current psycholinguistic standards. It comprises nine tasks assessing phonological, lexical-semantic and morpho-syntactic components, as well as an extra Backward Digit Span task.
Objective: Depression is one of the most disabling non-motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease (PD) and requires proper diagnosis as it negatively impacts patients' and their relatives quality of life. The present study aimed to examine the psychometric and diagnostic properties of the Beck Depression Inventory-I (BDI-I) in a Spanish PD cohort.
Method: Consecutive PD outpatients completed the Spanish version of the BDI-I and other questionnaires assessing anxiety and apathy.
Background: The present study aimed at determining whether, net of motor confounders, neuropsychological features affect functional independence (FI) in activities of daily living (ADLs) in non-demented amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients.
Methods: N = 88 ALS patients without frontotemporal dementia were assessed for FI-Katz's Basic ADL Scale (BADL) and Lawton-Brody's Instrumental ADL Scale (IADL)-, cognition-Edinburgh Cognitive and Behavioural ALS Screen (ECAS)-and behaviour-Beaumont Behavioural Inventory and Dimensional Apathy Scale. The association between cognitive and behavioural measures and BADL/IADL scores was assessed by covarying for demographics, anxiety and depression levels, disease duration and motor confounders-i.