Publications by authors named "Francesco Bez"

Pridopidine is a small molecule in clinical development for the treatment of Huntington's disease. It was recently found to have high binding affinity to the sigma-1 receptor, a chaperone protein involved in cellular defense mechanisms and neuroplasticity. Here, we have evaluated the neuroprotective and neurorestorative effects of pridopidine in a unilateral 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) lesion model of parkinsonism in mice.

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Multiple system atrophy (MSA) is a rapidly progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by widespread oligodendroglial cytoplasmic inclusions of filamentous α-synuclein, and neuronal loss in autonomic centres, basal ganglia and cerebellar circuits. It has been suggested that primary oligodendroglial α-synucleinopathy may represent a trigger in the pathogenesis of MSA, but the mechanisms underlying selective vulnerability and disease progression are unclear. The post-mortem analysis of MSA brains provides a static final picture of the disease neuropathology, but gives no clear indication on the sequence of pathogenic events in MSA.

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Mice with striatal 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) lesions are widely used as a model to study the effects of neurorestorative, symptomatic, or antidyskinetic treatments for Parkinson's disease (PD). The standard praxis is to utilize young adult mice with relatively acute 6-OHDA lesions. However, long post-lesion intervals may be required for longitudinal studies of treatment interventions, and the long-term stability of the model's behavioral and cellular phenotypes is currently unknown.

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The sigma-1 receptor, an endoplasmic reticulum-associated molecular chaperone, is attracting great interest as a potential target for neuroprotective treatments. We provide the first evidence that pharmacological modulation of this protein produces functional neurorestoration in experimental parkinsonism. Mice with intrastriatal 6-hydroxydopamine lesions were treated daily with the selective sigma-1 receptor agonist, PRE-084, for 5 weeks.

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Here we present an overview of some published papers of interest for the marketing research employing electroencephalogram (EEG) and magnetoencephalogram (MEG) methods. The interest for these methodologies relies in their high-temporal resolution as opposed to the investigation of such problem with the functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) methodology, also largely used in the marketing research. In addition, EEG and MEG technologies have greatly improved their spatial resolution in the last decades with the introduction of advanced signal processing methodologies.

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The aim of this research is to analyze the changes in the EEG frontal activity during the observation of commercial videoclips. In particular, we aimed to investigate the existence of EEG frontal asymmetries in the distribution of the signals' power spectra related to experienced pleasantness of the video, as explicitly rated by the eleven experimental subjects investigated. In the analyzed population, maps of Power spectral density (PSD) showed an asymmetrical increase of theta and alpha activity related to the observation of pleasant (unpleasant) advertisements in the left (right) hemisphere.

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