A Dual Centre Study of Pain in Parkinson's Disease and Its Relationship with Other Non-Motor Symptoms.

Background: Pain is a disabling and often underestimated non-motor symptom (NMS) detrimentally affecting the quality of life of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD).

Objective: Here, we conducted a cross-sectional, observational international study on 167 patients with idiopathic PD in order to analyze the potential relationship between pain and other NMS.

Methods: Subjects were assessed with the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) part III, Hoehn and Yahr (H&Y) stage, King's Parkinson's Disease Pain Scale (KPPS), Brief Pain Inventory (BPI), Non-Motor Symptoms Scale (NMSS), and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI).

Thomas Mann and Neurology.

Thomas Mann (1875-1955) is considered one of the most influential writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In addition to his novels and essays, he was well known for his criticisms of the Nazi party, and particularly against the racial nationalism promoted by Adolf Hitler after the First World War, as well as for his depiction of diseases. Here, we provide a quick sketch of Mann's life and his relationship with nineteenth to twentieth century German society.

Charles Bonnet Syndrome and Other Hallucinatory Phenomena.

Descriptions of hallucinatory phenomena have figured prominently since the beginning of recorded history. Jean Etienne Esquirol (1772-1840) is usually credited for having introduced the term in 1817, differentiating between hallucinations and illusions. Both are wrong perceptions, but in illusions, an external stimulus is always present whereas hallucinations are perceptions that occur in the absence of corresponding sensory stimuli.

Thomas Mann's depiction of neurosyphilis and other diseases.

Thomas Mann (1875-1955), a Nobel Prize recipient rightly considered one of the great novelists of the twentieth century, was one of the most medically perceptive writers of recent times. His novels take place against the background of the different plagues (tuberculosis, cholera) that characterized the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. One of Mann's later novels, Doctor Faustus, is set against a background of syphilis.

The Semantic Associative Ability in Preschoolers with Different Language Onset Time.

Aim of the study is to verify the semantic associative abilities in children with different language onset times: early, typical, and delayed talkers. The study was conducted on the sample of 74 preschool children who performed a Perceptual Associative Task, in order to evaluate the ability to link concepts by four associative strategies (function, part/whole, contiguity, and superordinate strategies). The results evidenced that the children with delayed language onset performed significantly better than the children with early language production.

Deterioration of semantic associative relationships in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer Disease.

The aim of this research was to study semantic abilities and their loss in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and in dementia, while analyzing efficiency in the use of associative relations, within verbal and visuoperceptual modalities. Participants were split into 4 groups: 19 participants with amnestic MCI, 16 patients with mild Alzheimer disease (AD), 20 patients with moderate AD, and 20 healthy controls (HCs). All participants performed standardized neuropsychological tests and experimental (naming and semantic associations) tasks to evaluate verbal and visuoperceptual semantic abilities.