Effectiveness of action observation therapy based on virtual reality technology in the motor rehabilitation of paretic stroke patients: a randomized clinical trial.

Background: The rehabilitation of paretic stroke patients uses a wide range of intervention programs to improve the function of impaired upper limb. A new rehabilitative approach, called action observation therapy (AOT) is based on the discovery of mirror neurons and has been used to improve the motor functions of adult stroke patients and children with cerebral palsy. Recently, virtual reality (VR) has provided the potential to increase the frequency and effectiveness of rehabilitation treatment by offering challenging and motivating tasks.

'Less is more': validation with Rasch analysis of five short-forms for the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Trust Personality Questionnaires (BIRT-PQs).

Background: Previous analyses demonstrated a lack of unidimensionality, item redundancy, and substantial administrative burden for the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Trust Personality Questionnaires (BIRT-PQs).

Objective: To use Rasch Analysis to calibrate five short-forms of the BIRT-PQs, satisfying the Rasch model requirements.

Methods: BIRT-PQs data from 154 patients with severe Acquired Brain Injury (s-ABI) and their caregivers (total sample = 308) underwent Rasch analysis to examine their internal construct validity and reliability according to the Rasch model.

The unidimensionality of the five Brain Injury Rehabilitation Trust Personality Questionnaires (BIRT-PQs) may be improved: preliminary evidence from classical psychometrics.

: To assess the internal construct validity (ICV) of the five Brain Injury Rehabilitation Trust Personality Questionnaires (BIRT-PQ) with Classical Test Theory methods.: Multicenter cross-sectional study involving 11 Italian rehabilitation centers. BIRT-PQs were administered to patients with severe Acquired Brain Injury and their respective caregivers.

Noun-verb dissociation in aphasia: the role of imageability and functional locus of the lesion.

Aphasic patients occasionally manifest a dissociated naming ability between objects and actions: this phenomenon has been interpreted as evidence of a separate organization for nouns and verbs in the mental lexicon. Nevertheless Bird et al. [Bird, H.