Financial and numerical abilities: patterns of dissociation in neurological and psychiatric diseases.

The present work investigates whether financial abilities can be associated with numerical abilities and with general cognitive abilities. We compared performance on numerical and financial tests, and on tests routinely used to measure general cognitive performance, in healthy controls and in a group of people with heterogeneous pathological conditions including mild cognitive impairment, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, traumatic brain injury, and schizophrenia. Patients showed lower performances in both numerical and financial abilities compared to controls.

Re-learning mental representation of walking after a brain lesion. Effects of a cognitive-motor training with a robotic orthosis.

Introduction: Stroke-related deficits often include motor impairments and gait dysfunction, leading to a limitation of social activities and consequently affecting the quality of life of stroke survivors. Neurorehabilitation takes advantage of the contribution of different techniques in order to achieve more benefits for patients. Robotic devices help to improve the outcomes of physical rehabilitation.

Transcranial Direct-Current Stimulation and Behavioral Training, a Promising Tool for a Tailor-Made Post-stroke Aphasia Rehabilitation: A Review.

Aphasia is an acquired language disorder resulting from damage to portions of the brain which are responsible for language comprehension and formulation. This disorder can involve different levels of language processing with impairments in both oral and written comprehension and production. Over the last years, different rehabilitation and therapeutic interventions have been developed, especially non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques.

'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.

An Emotional Agent for Moral Impairment Rehabilitation in TBI Patients.

The ability to identify the emotions of others is a key component of what is known as social cognition. Narratives exploit this mechanism to create an emotional bond with the characters and to maintain the engagement of the audience throughout the story. In this paper, we illustrate a case study in emotion understanding in stories that exploits a computational agent to explore emotion impairment in a group of traumatic brain injured people.

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.

Emotion Recognition in Low-Spatial Frequencies Is Partly Preserved following Traumatic Brain Injury.

After a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), emotion recognition is typically impaired. This is commonly attributed to widespread multifocal damage in cortical areas involved in emotion processing as well as to Diffuse Axonal Injury (DAI). However, current models suggest that emotional recognition is subserved by a distributed network cantered on the amygdala, which involves both cortical and subcortical structures.

How does language change after an intensive treatment on imitation?

The main aim of our study was to investigate the role of imitation in improving word-finding difficulties in a group of aphasic subjects. For this purpose, we designed software based on the computerised program described by Lee et al. (2010).

Evaluation of the effectiveness of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and psychosensory stimulation through DOCS scale in a minimally conscious subject.

The aim of our study was to assess the effectiveness of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on alertness improvement in a patient in a minimally conscious state (MCS) by means of disorders of consciousness scale combined with psycho-sensory stimulation. The effects of tDCS on muscle hypertonia through the Ashworth scale were also examined. tDCS was performed through a two-channel intra-cephalic stimulator.

Communicative-pragmatic disorders in traumatic brain injury: The role of theory of mind and executive functions.

Previous research has shown that communicative-pragmatic ability, as well as executive functions (EF) and Theory of Mind (ToM), may be impaired in individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI). However, the role of such cognitive deficits in explaining communicative-pragmatic difficulty in TBI has still not been fully investigated. The study examined the relationship between EF (working memory, planning and flexibility) and ToM and communicative-pragmatic impairment in patients with TBI.

Recovering two languages with the right hemisphere.

Converging evidence suggests that the right hemisphere (RH) plays an important role in language recovery from aphasia after a left hemisphere (LH) lesion. In this longitudinal study we describe the neurological, cognitive, and linguistic profile of A.C.

Concomitant Use of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation and Computer-Assisted Training for the Rehabilitation of Attention in Traumatic Brain Injured Patients: Behavioral and Neuroimaging Results.

Divided attention (DA), the ability to distribute cognitive resources among two or more simultaneous tasks, may be severely compromised after traumatic brain injury (TBI), resulting in problems with numerous activities involved with daily living. So far, no research has investigated whether the use of non-invasive brain stimulation associated with neuropsychological rehabilitation might contribute to the recovery of such cognitive function. The main purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of 10 transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) sessions combined with computer-assisted training; it also intended to explore the neural modifications induced by the treatment.

Cognitive Pragmatic Treatment: A Rehabilitative Program for Traumatic Brain Injury Individuals.

Objective: To verify the efficacy of Cognitive Pragmatic Treatment (CPT), a new rehabilitation training program for improving communicative-pragmatic abilities.

Design: The CPT program consists of 24 group sessions, concerned with improving several communication modalities, theory of mind (ToM), and cognitive components that can affect pragmatic performance, such as awareness and executive functions.

Participants: A sample of 15 adults with severe traumatic brain injury.

Cognitive correlates of narrative impairment in moderate traumatic brain injury.

Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) are often associated with communicative deficits. The incoherent and impoverished language observed in non-aphasic individuals with severe TBI has been linked to a problem in the global organization of information at the text level. The present study aimed to analyze the features of narrative discourse impairment in a group of adults with moderate TBI (modTBI).

A combined robotic and cognitive training for locomotor rehabilitation: evidences of cerebral functional reorganization in two chronic traumatic brain injured patients.

It has been demonstrated that automated locomotor training can improve walking capabilities in spinal cord-injured subjects but its effectiveness on brain damaged patients has not been well established. A possible explanation of the discordant results on the efficacy of robotic training in patients with cerebral lesions could be that these patients, besides stimulation of physiological motor patterns through passive leg movements, also need to train the cognitive aspects of motor control. Indeed, another way to stimulate cerebral motor areas in paretic patients is to use the cognitive function of motor imagery.

Narrative language in traumatic brain injury.

Persons with traumatic brain injury (TBI) often show impaired linguistic and/or narrative abilities. The present study aimed to document the features of narrative discourse impairment in a group of adults with TBI. 14 severe TBI non-aphasic speakers (GCS<8) in the phase of neurological stability and 14 neurologically intact participants were recruited for the experiment.

Rehabilitation treatments for adults with behavioral and psychosocial disorders following acquired brain injury: a systematic review.

This review was aimed at systematically investigating the treatment efficacy and clinical effectiveness of neurobehavioral rehabilitation programs for adults with acquired brain injury and making evidence-based recommendations for the adoption of these rehabilitation trainings. Using a variety of search procedures, 63 studies were identified and reviewed using a set of questions about research methods, treatments, results and outcomes for the 1,094 participants. The 63 studies included treatments falling into three general categories: approaches based on applied behavior analysis, interventions based on cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT), and comprehensive-holistic rehabilitation programs (CHRPs).

Effects of emotional face cueing on line bisection in neglect: a single case study.

One patient with left neglect (FM) and four right brain-damaged controls were tested on a line bisection task with pictures of neutral and emotional faces as unilateral cues. We thus manipulated the attentional salience of the cues (higher for emotional and lower for neutral faces) while keeping constant their physical dimensions. Our findings showed that left emotional faces were more effective than left neutral faces in reducing bisection errors only in FM.

Object-centred neglect for non-verbal visual stimuli.

In a first experiment, 11 neglect patients repeatedly bisected the elongated caricature of a basset hound with head on the right and tail on the left side with respect to the viewer. On the last (critical) trial, in which the figure was left-right reversed, the bisection error towards the ipsilesional side reversed its direction in three patients and significantly decreased in one patient. In a second experiment, 13 different neglect patients had to bisect the elongated caricature of the basset hound with head on the left and tail on the right side.