Predictors of Function, Activity, and Participation of Stroke Patients Undergoing Intensive Rehabilitation: A Multicenter Prospective Observational Study Protocol.

The complex nature of stroke sequelae, the heterogeneity in rehabilitation pathways, and the lack of validated prediction models of rehabilitation outcomes challenge stroke rehabilitation quality assessment and clinical research. An integrated care pathway (ICP), defining a reproducible rehabilitation assessment and process, may provide a structured frame within investigated outcomes and individual predictors of response to treatment, including neurophysiological and neurogenetic biomarkers. Predictors may differ for different interventions, suggesting clues to personalize and optimize rehabilitation.

The Visual Scanning Test: a newly developed neuropsychological tool to assess and target rehabilitation of extrapersonal visual unilateral spatial neglect.

Purpose: Visual unilateral spatial neglect (VUSN) is a neuropsychological condition commonly experienced after stroke whereby patients are unable to attend to stimuli on the controlesional side of their space. VUSN can occur in the personal, peripersonal, and/or extrapersonal portion of patient's space. Traditional paper-and-pencil neuropsychological tests are widely used to evaluate VUSN, but they assess peripersonal VUSN.

Long-term services for the care and rehabilitation of people with severe acquired brain injury: a multicentre, cross-sectional study of 536 Italian families.

Background: People with severe acquired brain injuries (ABIs) require complex, long-term multidisciplinary healthcare, and social welfare programmes, and their families experience social and emotional consequences that profoundly condition their quality of life.

Objective: To investigate whether the possibility of gaining access to local rehabilitation and other services positively influences not only the quality of life of the patients but also the quality of life of their families.

Methods: The sample consisted of 536 families of patients with severe ABIs.

ERK pathway activation bidirectionally affects visual recognition memory and synaptic plasticity in the perirhinal cortex.

ERK 1,2 pathway mediates experience-dependent gene transcription in neurons and several studies have identified its pivotal role in experience-dependent synaptic plasticity and in forms of long term memory involving hippocampus, amygdala, or striatum. The perirhinal cortex (PRHC) plays an essential role in familiarity-based object recognition memory. It is still unknown whether ERK activation in PRHC is necessary for recognition memory consolidation.

Divided attention during retrieval suppresses false recognition in confabulation.

The present research tested the hypothesis that false recognition in confabulating patients results, at least in part, from sustained processing of irrelevant information about test items. Thus, we predicted that false recognition would be reduced if cognitive resources available for such a processing are experimentally reduced. Two experiments provided evidence consistent with this proposal.