Social cognition in two brothers with Becker muscular dystrophy: an exploratory study revealing divergent behavioral phenotypes.

Background And Objective: Only few studies investigated social cognition in Becker muscular dystrophy (BMD). However, brain dystrophin deficiency could be a neural substrate for cognitive, emotional, and neuropsychological features in BMD.

Methods: We compared interoceptive accuracy and interpersonal comfort distance in two brothers with BMD presenting with the same genetic deletion and a healthy control.

Pregnancy Complications, Correlation With Placental Pathology and Neonatal Outcomes.

Purpose: We aimed to clarify and contribute to a better comprehension of associations and correlations between placental histological findings, pregnancy evolution, and neonatal outcomes.

Study Design: This is a longitudinal and prospective observational study, performed between May 2015 and May 2019, on 506 pregnant women. Clinical data related to pregnancy outcome, neonatal health status, and placental histology were primarily collected.

The analgesic power of pleasant touch in individuals with chronic pain: Recent findings and new insights.

This mini-review covers recent works on the study of pleasant touch in patients with chronic pain (CP) and its potential use as a treatment. While experiments have demonstrated that pleasant touch, through the activation of CT-afferents and the brain regions involved in its affective value, might reduce the unpleasantness and intensity of induced pain, the interaction between pleasant touch and CP remains under-examined. Some experiments show that CP might disrupt the positive aspects of receiving pleasant touch, while in other studies the perception of pleasantness is preserved.

Attentional and cognitive monitoring brain networks in long-term meditators depend on meditation states and expertise.

Meditation practice is suggested to engage training of cognitive control systems in the brain. To evaluate the functional involvement of attentional and cognitive monitoring processes during meditation, the present study analysed the electroencephalographic synchronization of fronto-parietal (FP) and medial-frontal (MF) brain networks in highly experienced meditators during different meditation states (focused attention, open monitoring and loving kindness meditation). The aim was to assess whether and how the connectivity patterns of FP and MF networks are modulated by meditation style and expertise.

Common and distinct lateralised patterns of neural coupling during focused attention, open monitoring and loving kindness meditation.

Meditation has been integrated into different therapeutic interventions. To inform the evidence-based selection of specific meditation types it is crucial to understand the neural processes associated with different meditation practices. Here we explore commonalities and differences in electroencephalographic oscillatory spatial synchronisation patterns across three important meditation types.

Author Correction: Pain perception during social interactions is modulated by self-related and moral contextual cues.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Pain perception during social interactions is modulated by self-related and moral contextual cues.

Despite the growing interest on the effect of the social context on pain, whether and how different facets of interpersonal interactions modulate pain are still unclear. We tested whether personal (i.e.

Error, rather than its probability, elicits specific electrocortical signatures: a combined EEG-immersive virtual reality study of action observation.

Detecting errors in one's own actions, and in the actions of others, is a crucial ability for adaptable and flexible behavior. Studies show that specific EEG signatures underpin the monitoring of observed erroneous actions (error-related negativity, error positivity, mid-frontal theta oscillations). However, the majority of studies on action observation used sequences of trials where erroneous actions were less frequent than correct actions.

Visual reminders of death enhance nociceptive-related cortical responses and event-related alpha desynchronisation.

Previous research suggests that prompting individuals to think on their own mortality affects their perception of painful somatic stimuli and related brain activity. Grounded on the assumption that reminders of mortality may recruit threat-defence mechanisms similar to the ones activated by painful nociceptive stimuli, we hypothesize that the effects exerted by linguistic reminders of death on pain perception and brain activity would be elicited by passive observation of death-related pictures vs. more generic threat-related pictures.

Surgical and pharmacological reassignment: influence on transsexual cardiovascular risk profile.

Background/aim: To evaluate and stratify early cardiovascular risk of transsexuals who underwent pharmacological and/or surgical gender reassignment.

Methods: Fifty-six transsexuals were divided into two groups: group 1 - underwent gonadectomy (orchiectomy for transwomen and hystero-annessiectomy for transmen); group 2 - hormone replacement therapy alone. All participants underwent carotid artery intima-media thickness (C-IMT) and flow-mediated vasodilation (FMD) of brachial artery evaluations.

Painful engrams: Oscillatory correlates of working memory for phasic nociceptive laser stimuli.

Research suggests that working memory (WM) is impaired in chronic pain. Yet, information on how potentially noxious stimuli are maintained in memory is limited in patients as well as in healthy people. We recorded electroencephalography (EEG) in healthy volunteers during a modified delayed match-to-sample task where maintenance in memory of relevant attributes of nociceptive laser stimuli was essential for subsequent cued-discrimination.

Mortality salience modulates cortical responses to painful somatosensory stimulation: Evidence from slow wave and delta band activity.

Social psychology studies show that awareness of one's eventual death profoundly influences human cognition and behaviour by inducing defensive reactions against end-of-life-related anxiety. Much less is known about the impact of reminders of mortality on brain activity. Here we tested whether reminders of mortality can induce a modulation of the slow electroencephalographic activity triggered by somatosensory nociceptive or auditory threatening stimulation and if this modulation is related to mood and anxiety as well as personality traits.

Estimating atmospheric mercury concentrations with lichens.

The uptake kinetics of elemental gaseous Hg (Hg(0)) in three species of epiphytic lichens (Pseudevernia furfuracea, Evernia prunastri, and Xanthoria parietina) were investigated under four different Hg concentrations (10, 15, 30, and 45 μg/m(3)) and three different temperatures (10, 20, and 30 °C) with the aim of evaluating the lichen efficiency for Hg(0) accumulation and their potential use in the estimate of atmospheric concentrations of this metal in the field. The results showed that under our experimental conditions the lichens accumulated Hg according to exposure time and that the metal is not released back to the atmosphere after Hg(0) was removed from the air (clearance). Pseudevernia furfuracea showed the highest Hg accumulation capacity and Evernia prunastri showed the lowest, but in these species the metal uptake kinetics was affected by temperature.

Temporal trends of element concentrations and ecophysiological parameters in the lichen Pseudevernia furfuracea transplanted in and around an industrial area of S Italy.

This study investigated the temporal trends of element concentrations and ecophysiological parameters (integrity of cell membranes, membrane lipid peroxidation, and sample vitality) in thalli of the lichen Pseudevernia furfuracea transplanted in and around an industrial area of S Italy from May 2010 to May 2011, once every 3 months. Element accumulation at levels indicating that the atmosphere of the study area was polluted by most elements occurred only during the third trimester of exposure, and the ecophysiological parameter best reflecting this trend was sample vitality expressed in terms of activity of the enzyme dehydrogenase. Among the available climatological parameters, the different amount of rainfall during the exposure period may influence the results, especially the number of hours with rainfall >16 mm/day, which is the threshold between light-moderate and moderate-heavy rainfall in the Mediterranean area.

The adaptive response of lichens to mercury exposure involves changes in the photosynthetic machinery.

Lichens are an excellent model to study the bioaccumulation of heavy metals but limited information is available on the molecular mechanisms occurring during bioaccumulation. We investigated the changes of the lichen proteome during exposure to constant concentrations of mercury. We found that most of changes involves proteins of the photosynthetic pathway, such as the chloroplastic photosystem I reaction center subunit II, the oxygen-evolving protein and the chloroplastic ATP synthase β-subunit.

The real water consumption behind drinking water: the case of Italy.

The real amount of drinking water available per capita is a topic of great interest for human health and the economic and political management of resources. The global market of bottled drinking water, for instance, has shown exponential growth in the last twenty years, mainly due to reductions in production costs and investment in promotion. This paper aims to evaluate how much freshwater is actually consumed when water is drunk in Italy, which can be considered a mature bottled-water market.

Arsenic-resistant Pseudomonas spp. and Bacillus sp. bacterial strains reducing As(V) to As(III), isolated from Alps soils, Italy.

Five arsenic-resistant bacterial strains (designated MP1400, MP1400a, MP1400d, APSLA3, and BPSLA3) were isolated from soils collected at the Alps region (Italy), which showed no contamination by arsenic. Phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequences assigned them to the genera Pseudomonas and Bacillus. Bacillus sp.

A randomized study comparing triptorelin or expectant management following conservative laparoscopic surgery for symptomatic stage III-IV endometriosis.

Objective: To investigate the role of adjuvant treatment with gonadotropin-releasing-hormone agonist (GnRHa) following conservative surgical treatment of endometriosis.

Study Design: Sixty patients in the reproductive age (mean age 28.6 years), with symptomatic stages III and IV endometriosis following laparoscopic surgery and without previous hormonal treatment were enrolled in a prospective, randomized, controlled trial to compare the effects of 3-month treatment with triptorelin depot-3.

Lichen biomonitoring of ammonia emission and nitrogen deposition around a pig stockfarm.

Effects of high ammonia emissions and nitrogen deposition were investigated on lichens around a pig stockfarm (ca. 7,000 animals) in central Italy. Four sites were selected along a transect at 200, 400, 1000 and 2500 m from the stockfarm, the diversity of epiphytic lichens was measured and transplanted thalli of Xanthoria parietina and Flavoparmelia caperata exposed, together with passive NH3 (diffusion tubes) samplers.

Treatment of chronic pilonidal sinus with local anaesthesia: a randomized trial of closed compared with open technique.

Objective: To compare open with closed treatment of chronic pilonidal sinus.

Patients And Methods: From 1993 to 1996, 100 patients were submitted to excision of chronic pilonidal sinus, with local anaesthesia and were randomized in two groups: group A in which open treatment and group B in which direct suture were performed. The follow-up, ranging from 37 to 89 months, was performed by outpatient visits or by phone.

Clinical and endocrinological effects of 6 months of metformin treatment in young hyperinsulinemic patients affected by polycystic ovary syndrome.

Most patients with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) have hyperinsulinemia; thus it has been postulated that insulin-lowering drugs, such as metformin, might be a useful long-term choice. We evaluated the effects of 6 months' administration of metformin on clinical and endocrine indices in PCOS patients. Forty-two hyperinsulinemic women with PCOS were continuously treated with metformin for 6 months.

Maternal complications associated with cesarean section.

Objective: To assess the prevalence of cesarean section (CS) related maternal complications and to evaluate post-CS complications in relationship with relative risk factors.

Method: 3010 patients who had a CS in the University Hospital of Bari during the period 1988-98 were retrospectively included into the study and 1007 women delivered vaginally at the same institution and in the same period of time, were randomly selected as the control group. For each single patient delivered by CS, the following risk factors were taken into account: age, parity, pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI), and any disease antedating pregnancy or diagnosed during pregnancy.