Mental time travel and functional daily life activities in neglect patients: Recovery effects of rehabilitation by prism adaptation.

Recent neuropsychological evidence put forward impaired ability in processing particular aspects of time, such as Mental Time Travel (MTT), in brain damaged patients exhibiting a deficit of spatial attention (i.e., neglect) and the possibility to recover this MTT deficit through a manipulation of spatial attention by prism adaptation (PA).

Assessment of Core Competencies of Physical Therapists Among Students and Professionals in Italy: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Objectives: Defining professional competence and identifying the best way to evaluate these skills has become a topic of study for physiotherapists. The aims of this study were: (1) to reveal and compare the level of competence declared by physiotherapy students with that of professional physiotherapists in the investigated competencies, and (2) to show any associations between the level of competences of physiotherapists and their age or education level.

Design: A descriptive cross-sectional survey.

Using the Oxford Cognitive Screen to Detect Cognitive Impairment in Stroke Patients: A Comparison with the Mini-Mental State Examination.

Background: The Oxford Cognitive Screen (OCS) was recently developed with the aim of describing the cognitive deficits after stroke. The scale consists of 10 tasks encompassing five cognitive domains: attention and executive function, language, memory, number processing, and praxis. OCS was devised to be inclusive and un-confounded by aphasia and neglect.

Effects of spatial attention on mental time travel in patients with neglect.

Numerous studies agree that time is represented in spatial terms in the brain. Here we investigate how a deficit in orienting attention in space influences the ability to mentally travel in time, that is to recall the past and anticipate the future. Right brain-damaged patients, with (RBD-N+) and without neglect (RBD-N-), and healthy controls (HC) were subjected to a Mental Time Travel (MTT) task.

Transcranial Random Noise Stimulation Does Not Improve Behavioral and Neurophysiological Measures in Patients with Subacute Vegetative-Unresponsive Wakefulness State (VS-UWS).

The absence of efficient treatments capable to promote central nervous system recovery in patients in vegetative state (VS) due to a severe acquired brain injury highlights the need of exploring alternative neuromodulatory treatments that can lead to neurobehavioral gains. Some encouraging preliminary observations suggest that transcranial direct current stimulation could be effective in disorders of consciousness (DoC) patients, especially when applied on the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in patients with minimally conscious state (MCS) but not in those with VS. The primary aim of the present study was to verify if the application of transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) on the DLPFC might favor improvements of consciousness recovery in subacute VS-UWS.

The assessment of hemineglect syndrome with cancellation tasks: a comparison between the Bells test and the Apples test.

Unilateral spatial neglect (USN) is a frequent consequence of acquired brain injury, especially following right hemisphere damage. Traditionally, unilateral spatial neglect is assessed with cancellation tests such as the Bells test. Recently, a new cancellation test, the Apples test, has been proposed.