A Case Report of Autoimmune Encephalitis after Anti-SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination: The Role of Cognitive Impairments in the Diagnostic Process.

Objective: Autoimmune encephalitis includes a heterogeneous group of rare and complex diseases, usually presenting with severe and disabling symptoms, such as behavioral changes, cognitive deficits, and seizures.

Method: This report presents the case of a 26-year-old man who was diagnosed with autoimmune encephalitis following SARS-CoV-2 vaccination (<40 days). Symptoms first appeared in February 2022 with a temporal seizure, associated with confusion and memory loss.

Implicit Selective Attention: The Role of the Mesencephalic-basal Ganglia System.

The ability of the brain to recognize and orient attention to relevant stimuli appearing in the visual field is highlighted by a tuning process, which involves modulating the early visual system by both cortical and subcortical brain areas. Selective attention is coordinated not only by the output of stimulus-based saliency maps but is also influenced by top-down cognitive factors, such as internal states, goals, or previous experiences. The basal ganglia system plays a key role in implicitly modulating the underlying mechanisms of selective attention, favouring the formation and maintenance of implicit sensory-motor memories that are capable of automatically modifying the output of priority maps in sensory-motor structures of the midbrain, such as the superior colliculus.