Semantic interference mechanisms on long-term visual memory and their eye-movement signatures in mild cognitive impairment.

Objective: Long-term visual memory representations, measured by recognition performance, degrade as a function of semantic interference, and their strength is related to eye-movement responses. Even though clinical research has examined interference mechanisms in pathological cognitive aging and explored the diagnostic potential of eye-movements in this context, little is known about their interaction in long-term visual memory.

Method: An eye-tracking study compared a Mild Cognitive Impaired group with healthy adults.

Low-Frequency Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation of the Right Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Enhances Recognition Memory in Alzheimer's Disease.

Background: The lack of effective pharmacological or behavioral interventions for memory impairments associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD) emphasizes the need for the investigation of approaches based on neuromodulation.

Objective: This study examined the effects of inhibitory repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) of prefrontal cortex on recognition memory in AD patients.

Methods: In a first experiment, 24 mild AD patients received sham and real 1Hz rTMS over the left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), in different sessions, between encoding and retrieval phases of a non-verbal recognition memory task.

Cost-Effective Technologies to Study the Arctic Ocean Environment .

The Arctic region is known to be severely affected by climate change, with evident alterations in both physical and biological processes. Monitoring the Arctic Ocean ecosystem is key to understanding the impact of natural and human-induced change on the environment. Large data sets are required to monitor the Arctic marine ecosystem and validate high-resolution satellite observations (e.

Frontoparietal Tracts Linked to Lateralized Hand Preference and Manual Specialization.

Humans show a preference for using the right hand over the left for tasks and activities of everyday life. While experimental work in non-human primates has identified the neural systems responsible for reaching and grasping, the neural basis of lateralized motor behavior in humans remains elusive. The advent of diffusion imaging tractography for studying connectional anatomy in the living human brain provides the possibility of understanding the relationship between hemispheric asymmetry, hand preference, and manual specialization.

A pilot study on the use of interferon beta-1a in early Alzheimer's disease subjects.

Despite the fact that multiple sclerosis (MS) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) share common neuroimmunological features, interferon beta 1a (IFNβ1a), the well-established treatment for the prevention of disease progression and cognitive decline in MS patients, has never been used in AD. We evaluated the safety and efficacy of IFNβ1a in subjects affected by mild-to-moderate AD in a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, multicenter pilot study. Forty-two early Alzheimer's patients were randomized to receive either a 22 mcg subcutaneous injection of IFNβ1a or placebo three times per week.

Enhancing memory performance with rTMS in healthy subjects and individuals with Mild Cognitive Impairment: the role of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

A debated question in the literature is the degree of anatomical and functional lateralization of the executive control processes sub-served by the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during recognition memory retrieval. We investigated if transient inhibition and excitation of the left and right DLPFC at retrieval by means of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) modulate recognition memory performance in 100 healthy controls (HCs) and in eight patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Recognition memory tasks of faces, buildings, and words were used in different experiments.

Traumatic brain injury and the frontal lobes: what can we gain with diffusion tensor imaging?

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of death in the young population and long-term disability in relation to pervasive cognitive-behavioural disturbances that follow frontal lobe damage. To date, emphasis has been placed primarily on the clinical correlates of frontal cortex damage, whilst identification of the contribution of subjacent white matter lesion is less clear. Our poor understanding of white matter pathology in TBI is primarily due to the low sensitivity of conventional neuroimaging to identify pathological changes in less severe traumatic injury and the lack of methods to localise white matter pathology onto individual frontal lobe connections.

Cognitive findings after transient global amnesia: role of prefrontal cortex.

The aim of this study is to verify, after recovery, the presence of specific patterns of cognitive dysfunctions in Transient Global Amnesia (TGA). Fourteen patients with the diagnosis of TGA were submitted to a battery of neuropsychological tests and compared to a matched control group. We found significant qualitative and quantitative differences between TGA patients and controls in the California Verbal Learning Test (CLVT) and Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test.

Relationship between clinical variables and cognitive performances in migraineurs with and without aura.

Conflicting data on cognitive defects in migraine could be explained by differences in the clinical variables of the populations studied. We investigated 21 patients with migraine with aura and 24 with migraine without aura, diagnosed according to the International Headache Society criteria. The patients were submitted to a comprehensive battery of neuropsychological tests and grouped according to attack frequency and side of pain.

Cognitive findings in spinocerebellar ataxia type 2: relationship to genetic and clinical variables.

Several authors have recently reported a broad cognitive impairment in autosomal dominant cerebellar ataxias (ADCAs) patients. However, only a few studies on neuropsychological features in spinocerebellar ataxia type 2 (SCA2) patients are present in the current literature. The aim of this study is to evaluate the cognitive impairment in a wide sample of SCA2 patients and to verify the role of different disease-related factors (age of onset, disease duration, and clinical severity) on intellectual abilities.