Links Between Painting and Neurology: The Example of Dementia.

Art is a system of human communication arising from symbolic cognition, conveying ideas, experiences, and feelings. The goal of this review is to describe the link between painting and dementia. Individuals with neurodegenerative diseases inevitably experience cognitive dysfunction that has the potential to limit and impair the artist's ability to realize their creative and expressive intentions through painting.

Art is long, life is short. Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828), the suffering artist.

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes is one of the major figures of European art. From royal portraits to bizarre, grotesque illustrations, his legacy demonstrates a tortured genius, generating some of the most compelling art ever produced. His story is also the story of Spain during one of the most tumultuous passages of its history.

Personality and destiny. Francesco Borromini: portrait of a tormented soul.

Francesco Borromini, one of the great geniuses of Baroque architecture, was tormented and solitary, and was increasingly frustrated by the fame and success of his rival, Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Borromini was an unhappy man, constantly dogged by disaster, quarrelling even with his best patrons and closest friends. In the culmination of one of the fits of depression that overcame the architect more and more frequently as his life progressed, Borromini literally fell on his own sword; he lingered in excruciating pain for 24 hours before dying.

Depression, hypertension, and comorbidity: disentangling their specific effect on disability and cognitive impairment in older subjects.

We aimed to demonstrate that depression and hypertension are associated independently of each other with disability and cognitive impairment in older subjects and that such an association is not attributable to number and severity of comorbidities. An observational study was performed on elderly patients admitted to the Hospital Network of the Italian National Research Center on Aging (INRCA) from January 2005 to December 2006. Depression was defined according to 15-item geriatric depression scale (GDS) score; physical disability according to activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) scores; cognitive impairment on the mini-mental state examination (MMSE) test; the number and severity of comorbidities by means of physician-administered cumulative illness rating scale (CIRS).

Opioids for the treatment of chronic non-cancer pain in older people.

Chronic pain occurs in 45-85% of the geriatric population and the need to treat chronic pain is growing substantially. Unfortunately, treatment for chronic pain is not always correctly targeted, which leads to a reduced quality of life, with decreased socialization, depression, sleep disturbances, cognitive impairment, disability and malnutrition. Considering these consequences, healthcare professionals should aim at improving the diagnosis and treatment of chronic pain in older persons.