The Italian version of the Coma Recovery Scale for Pediatrics.

Background: The Coma Recovery Scale for Pediatrics (CRS-P) is a modified version of the Coma Recovery Scale-Revised (CRS-R). This CRS-P looks at behavioral responses and diagnoses Coma, Vegetative State, MCS and E-MCS in pediatric age. It is an ordinal scale consisting of 29 items divided into 6 subscales.

News insights into social cognition in Williams syndrome from a comprehensive assessment and a virtual reality task.

Although the uneven neuropsychological profile of William Syndrome (WS) is well established, less is known about social perception and how profile characteristics may affect the ability to predict other's intentions, a main hallmark of social cognition. This study aimed at examining the neuropsychological profile, including social perception, of adolescents and adults with WS, and at verifying which neuropsychological outcome might account for their social prediction ability. Twenty-six individuals with WS were administered a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment, and a virtual reality scenario designed to assess social prediction in a dynamic, everyday life-like context.

Feasibility and Efficacy of a Virtual Reality Social Prediction Training in Children and Young Adults with Congenital Cerebellar Malformations.

This study tested the feasibility and efficacy of a Virtual Reality (VR) social prediction training (VR-Spirit) specifically designed for patients with congenital cerebellar malformation. The study is a randomised controlled trial in which 28 cerebellar patients aged 7-25 yo were randomly allocated to the VR-Spirit or to a control intervention in VR. The VR-Spirit required participants to compete with different avatars in scenarios that prompted them to form predictions about avatars' intentions.

Hormonal Dysfunction in Paediatric Patients Admitted to Rehabilitation for Severe Traumatic Brain Injury: Analysis of the Associations with Rehabilitation Outcomes.

Traumatic brain injury is often accompanied by defects in hormone levels, caused by either peripheral gland dysfunctions or by an insufficient central stimulation of hormone production. The epidemiology of endocrinological defects after traumatic brain injury is quite well described, but the consequences of hormone defects are largely unknown, especially in paediatric patients undergoing neurological rehabilitation. Only one previous study reported on a cohort of 20 children with traumatic brain injury and found a low incidence of hormone defects and a correlation between some hormone levels and neurological recovery.

Neurorestorative effects of cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation on social prediction of adolescents and young adults with congenital cerebellar malformations.

Background: Converging evidence points to impairments of the predictive function exerted by the cerebellum as one of the causes of the social cognition deficits observed in patients with cerebellar disorders.

Objective: We tested the neurorestorative effects of cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation (ctDCS) on the use of contextual expectations to interpret actions occurring in ambiguous sensory sceneries in a sample of adolescents and young adults with congenital, non-progressive cerebellar malformation (CM).

Methods: We administered an action prediction task in which, in an implicit-learning phase, the probability of co-occurrence between actions and contextual elements was manipulated to form either strongly or moderately informative expectations.