Rehabilitation of post-stroke aphasia by a single protocol targeting phonological, lexical, and semantic deficits with speech output tasks: a randomized controlled trial.

Background: The defective spoken output of persons with aphasia has anomia as a main clinical manifestation. Improving anomia is therefore a main goal of any language treatment.

Aim: This study assessed the effectiveness of a novel, 2-week, rehabilitation protocol (PHOLEXSEM), focused on PHonological, SEmantic, and LExical deficits, aiming at improving lexical retrieval, and, generally, spoken output.

Visual self-face and self-body recognition in a left-brain-damaged prosopagnosic patient.

The present case study describes the patient N.G., who reported prosopagnosia along with difficulty in recognising herself in the mirror following a left-sided temporo-occipital hemispheric stroke.

In Myotonic Dystrophy Type 1 Head Repositioning Errors Suggest Impaired Cervical Proprioception.

Myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) is a rare multisystemic genetic disorder with motor hallmarks of myotonia, muscle weakness and wasting. DM1 patients have an increased risk of falling of multifactorial origin, and proprioceptive and vestibular deficits can contribute to this risk. Abnormalities of muscle spindles in DM1 have been known for years.

Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine: say relational or functional, not holistic.

Modern medicine tends to privilege disciplines promising "objective" laws governing body parts (from molecules to organs). Studies on a person's illness and disability are (apparently) confined to "subjectivity." The Specialty of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine is often regarded as a humanitarian approach, belonging at best to the family of "soft," "qualitative," or "quasi-experimental" sciences.

Reversed Mirror Therapy (REMIT) after Stroke-A Proof-of-Concept Study.

In mirror training (MIT), stroke patients strive to move their hands while looking at the reflected image of the unaffected one. The recruitment of the mirror neurons and visual-proprioceptive conflict are expected to facilitate the paretic voluntary movement. Here, a reversed MIT (REMIT) is presented, which requires moving hands while looking at the reflected image of the paretic one, giving the illusion of being unable to move the unimpaired hand.

Cervical Proprioception Assessed through Targeted Head Repositioning: Validation of a Clinical Test Based on Optoelectronic Measures.

Neck proprioception is commonly assessed with head repositioning tests. In such a test, an operator rotates the head of a blindfolded individual to a target position. After returning to the rest position, the participant actively repositions the head to the target.

Validation of "Neurit.Space": Three Digital Tests for the Neuropsychological Evaluation of Unilateral Spatial Neglect.

Patients suffering from Unilateral Spatial Neglect (USN) fail to pay attention to, respond to, and report sensory events occurring in the contralesional side of space. The traditional neuropsychological assessment of USN is based on paper-and-pencil tests, whose data recording and scoring may be subjected to human error. The utilization of technological devices can be expected to improve the assessment of USN.

A multi-center international study on the spinal cord independence measure, version IV: Rasch psychometric validation.

Context: The Spinal Cord Independence Measure is a comprehensive functional rating scale for individuals with spinal cord lesion (SCL).

Objective: To validate the scores of the three subscales of SCIM IV, the fourth version of SCIM, using advanced statistical methods.

Study Design: Multi-center cohort study.

Determinants of age-related decline in walking speed in older women.

Background: Walking speed is reduced with aging. However, it is not certain whether the reduced walking speed is associated with physical and coordination fitness. This study explores the physical and coordination determinants of the walking speed decline in older women.

Interpreting results from Rasch analysis 2. Advanced model applications and the data-model fit assessment.

The present paper presents developments and advanced practical applications of Rasch's theory and statistical analysis to construct questionnaires for measuring a person's traits. The flaws of questionnaires providing raw scores are well known. Scores only approximate objective, linear measures.

Interpreting results from Rasch analysis 1. The "most likely" measures coming from the model.

The present article summarises the characteristics of Rasch's theory, providing an original metrological model for persons' measurements. Properties describing the person "as a whole" are key outcome variables in Medicine. This is particularly true in Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, targeting the person's interaction with the outer world.

Balance impairment in myotonic dystrophy type 1: Dynamic posturography suggests the coexistence of a proprioceptive and vestibular deficit.

Falls are frequent in Myotonic Dystrophy type 1 (DM1), but the pathophysiology of the balance impairment needs further exploration in this disease. The current work aims to provide a richer understanding of DM1 imbalance. Standing balance in 16 patients and 40 controls was tested in two posturographic tests (EquiTest™).

Why Questionnaire Scores Are Not Measures: A Question-Raising Article.

Any person is provided by characteristics that can be neither located in body parts nor directly observed (so-called latent variables): these may be behaviors, attitudes, perceptions, motor and cognitive skills, knowledge, emotions, and the like. Physical and rehabilitation medicine frequently faces variables of this kind, the target of many interventions. Latent variables can only be observed through representative behaviors (e.

Telephone-based Frontal Assessment Battery (t-FAB): standardization for the Italian population and clinical usability in neurological diseases.

Background: Despite the relevance of telephone-based cognitive screening tests in clinical practice and research, no specific test assessing executive functioning is available. The present study aimed at standardizing and providing evidence of clinical usability for the Italian telephone-based Frontal Assessment Battery (t-FAB).

Methods: The t-FAB (ranging 0-12), comprising two subtests, has two versions: one requiring motor responses (t-FAB-M) and the other verbal responses (t-FAB-V).

Balance Impairment in Fahr's Disease: Mixed Signs of Parkinsonism and Cerebellar Disorder. A Case Study.

Fahr's disease is a rare idiopathic degenerative disease characterized by calcifications in the brain, and has also been associated with balance impairment. However, a detailed analysis of balance in these patients has not been performed. A 69-year-old woman with Fahr's disease presented with a long-lasting subjective imbalance.

Efficacy of Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for Acute Central Post-stroke Pain: A Case Study.

Although rare, central post-stroke pain remains one of the most refractory forms of neuropathic pain. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has been reported to be effective in chronic cases. However, there are no data on the effects in the acute and subacute phases after stroke.

Kinematic patterns during walking in children: Application of principal component analysis.

The relative displacements of body segments during walking can be reduced to a small number of multi-joint kinematic patterns, pm, through Principal Component Analysis (PCA). These patterns were extracted from two groups of children (n = 8, aged 6-9 years, 4 males, and n = 8, aged 10-13 years, 4 males) and 7 adults (21-29 years, 1 male), walking on a treadmill at various velocities, normalized to body stature (adimensional Froude number, Fr). The three-dimensional coordinates of body markers were captured by an optoelectronic system.

Reliability Validity and Responsiveness of the Spinal Cord Independence Measure 4th Version in a Multicultural Setup.

Objective: To examine the fourth version of the Spinal Cord Independence Measure for reliability and validity.

Design: Partly blinded comparison with the criterion standard Spinal Cord Independence Measure III, and between examiners and examinations.

Setting: A multicultural cohort from 19 spinal cord injury units in 11 countries.

Standard Psychometric Criteria for Measurements in Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine.

Measurements of person's variable, such as behavior, perceptions, or attitudes, are essential to physical and rehabilitation medicine in both clinical practice and research. These measurements are commonly based on cumulative questionnaires and follow special statistical rules, belonging to the domain of psychometrics. Selecting the most appropriate measurement is critical.

The curvature peaks of the trajectory of the body centre of mass during walking: A new index of dynamic balance.

During walking, falling is most likely to occur towards the side of the supporting lower limb during the single stance. Timely lateral redirection of the centre of mass (CoM) preceding the no-return position is necessary for balance. We analysed the curvature peaks (the inverse of the radius of curvature) of the three-dimensional path of the CoM during the entire stride.

Velocity of the Body Center of Mass During Walking on Split-Belt Treadmill.

Walking on split-belt treadmills (each belt rotating at a different velocity) has inspired a growing number of researchers to study gait adaptation and rehabilitation. An overlooked peculiarity of this artificial form of gait is that the mean velocity adopted by the participant, considered as a whole system represented by the body Center of Mass, can be different from the mean velocity of the two belts. Twelve healthy adults (21-34 yrs) were requested to walk for 15 mins on a treadmill with belts rotating at 0.

A theoretical framework to improve the construct for chronic pain disorders using fibromyalgia as an example.

Fibromyalgia (FM) is a frequent, complex condition of chronic musculoskeletal pain with no evidence for biological correlates. For this reason, despite many efforts from the medical community, its construct still appears ill defined. Promising candidate biomarkers are critically reviewed.

The illness-disease dichotomy and the biological-clinical splitting of medicine.

In a recent paper, Sharpe and Greco (2019) argue that some clinical conditions, such as chronic fatigue syndrome (sometimes called myalgic encephalomyelitis), should be treated by altering the patient's experience and response to symptoms without necessarily searching for an underlying cause. As a result, we should allow for the existence of 'illnesses without (underlying) diseases'. Wilshire and Ward (2019) reply that this possibility requires unwarranted causal assumptions about the psychosocial origins of conditions not predicted by a disease model.