The Immediate Effects of Immersive Virtual Reality on Autonomic Nervous System Function in Patients with Disorders of Consciousness after Severe Acquired Brain Injury: A Pilot Study.

Disorders of Consciousness (DoCs) after severe acquired brain injury involve substantial impairment of cognition and physical functioning, requiring comprehensive rehabilitation and support. Technological interventions, such as immersive Virtual Reality (VR), have shown promising results in promoting neural activity and enhancing cognitive and motor recovery. VR can induce physical sensations that may activate the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) and induce ANS-regulated responses.

The effectiveness of an immersive virtual reality and telemedicine-based cognitive intervention on prospective memory in Parkinson's disease patients with mild cognitive impairment and healthy aged individuals: design and preliminary baseline results of a placebo-controlled study.

Introduction: Prospective memory (PM) impairments have been extensively documented in individuals with Parkinson's disease associated with mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI) and in those with healthy aging. Considering how PM failure decreases individuals' quality of life and functional independence in the activities of daily living, training to enhance this ability could be a prior target of intervention.

Objective: Here, we aimed to present the study protocol and preliminary results of a novel immersive virtual reality (IVR) and telemedicine-based (TM) cognitive intervention focused on executive abilities (i.

Challenges and Perspectives for Clinical Applications of Immersive and Non-Immersive Virtual Reality.

The development of rehabilitative technologies able to increase the intensity and the amount of time for daily treatment as well as the patients' motivation and interest is a high-priority area of scientific research [...

Key drivers involved in the telemonitoring of covid-19 for self-health management: an exploratory factor analysis.

Background: The recent COVID-19 pandemic and the shortage of general practitioners has determined a strong pressure on the Italian health system. This critical issue highlighted the fundamental support of e-health services not only to lighten the workload of doctors, but also to offer patients a health service tailored to real needs. Therefore, the digital engagement platforms represent a valid aid, as they reconcile the efficiency needs of the healthcare system with the benefits for the patients involved.

Wearing same- and opposite-sex virtual bodies and seeing them caressed in intimate areas.

Immersive virtual reality enables people to undergo the experience of owning an artificial body and vicariously feeling tactile stimuli delivered to it. However, it is currently unknown how such experiences are modified by the sexual congruency between the human and the artificial agent. In two studies, heterosexual men (Experiment 1) and women (Experiment 2) embodied same-sex and opposite-sex avatars and were asked to evaluate the experience (e.

Management of oxygen saturation monitoring in preterm newborns in the NICU: the Italian picture.

Background: Although many studies emphasize the importance of using oxygen saturation (SpO) targets in the NICUs, there is a wide variability in used saturation ranges among centers. Primary aim was to draw a representative picture on how the management of oxygen monitoring is performed in the Italian NICUs. Second aim was to identify healthcare-professionals related factors associated with oxygen targeting in the preterm population.

DomainSenticNet: An Ontology and a Methodology Enabling Domain-Aware Sentic Computing.

In recent years, SenticNet and OntoSenticNet have represented important developments in the novel interdisciplinary field of research known as sentic computing, enabling the development of a variety of Sentic applications. In this paper, we propose an extension of the OntoSenticNet ontology, named DomainSenticNet, and contribute an unsupervised methodology to support the development of domain-aware Sentic applications. We developed an unsupervised methodology that, for each concept in OntoSenticNet, mines semantically related concepts from WordNet and Probase knowledge bases and computes domain distributional information from the entire collection of Kickstarter domain-specific crowdfunding campaigns.

Heterosexual, gay, and lesbian people's reactivity to virtual caresses on their embodied avatars' taboo zones.

Embodying an artificial agent through immersive virtual reality (IVR) may lead to feeling vicariously somatosensory stimuli on one's body which are in fact never delivered. To explore whether vicarious touch in IVR reflects the basic individual and social features of real-life interpersonal interactions we tested heterosexual men/women and gay men/lesbian women reacting subjectively and physiologically to the observation of a gender-matched virtual body being touched on intimate taboo zones (like genitalia) by male and female avatars. All participants rated as most erogenous caresses on their embodied avatar taboo zones.

Immersive virtual reality reveals that visuo-proprioceptive discrepancy enlarges the hand-centred peripersonal space.

Vision and proprioception, informing the system about the body position in space, seem crucial in defining the boundary of the peripersonal space (PPS). What happens to the PPS representation when a conflict between vision and proprioception arises? We capitalize on the Immersive Virtual Reality to dissociate vision and proprioception by presenting the participants' 3D hand image in congruent/incongruent positions with respect to the participants' real hand. To measure the hand-centred PPS, we exploit multisensory integration occurring when visual stimuli are delivered simultaneously with tactile stimuli applied to a body district; i.

Midline frontal and occipito-temporal activity during error monitoring in dyadic motor interactions.

Discrepancies between sensory predictions and action outcome are at the base of error coding. However, these phenomena have mainly been studied focussing on individual performance. Here, we explored EEG responses to motor prediction errors during a human-avatar interaction and show that Theta/Alpha activity of the frontal error-monitoring system works in phase with activity of the occipito-temporal node of the action observation network.

Stable or able? Effect of virtual reality stimulation on static balance of post-stroke patients and healthy subjects.

Over the last decades, virtual reality (VR) emerged as a potential tool for developing new rehabilitation treatments in neurological patients. However, despite the increasing number of studies, a clear comprehension about the impact of immersive VR-treatment on balance and posture is still scarce. In the present study, we aimed to investigate the effects of VR cues on balance performances of subjects affected by stroke, age-matched healthy subjects, and young healthy subjects.

Characterizing Body Image Distortion and Bodily Self-Plasticity in Anorexia Nervosa via Visuo-Tactile Stimulation in Virtual Reality.

We combined virtual reality and multisensory bodily illusion with the aim to characterize and reduce the perceptual (body overestimation) and the cognitive-emotional (body dissatisfaction) components of body image distortion (BID) in anorexia nervosa (AN). For each participant (20 anorexics, 20 healthy controls) we built personalized avatars that reproduced their own body size, shape, and verisimilar increases and losses of their original weight. Body overestimation and dissatisfaction were measured by asking participants to choose the avatar that best resembled their real and ideal body.

Hand blink reflex in virtual reality: The role of vision and proprioception in modulating defensive responses.

Our research focused on the role of vision and proprioception in modulating a defensive reflex (hand blink reflex, HBR) whose magnitude is enhanced when the threatened hand is inside the peripersonal space of the face. We capitalized on virtual reality, which allows dissociating vision and proprioception by presenting a virtual limb in congruent/incongruent positions with respect to the participants' limb. In experiment 1, participants placed their own stimulated hand in far/near positions with respect to their face (postural manipulation task), while observing a virtual empty scenario.

Embodying their own wheelchair modifies extrapersonal space perception in people with spinal cord injury.

Despite the many links between body representation, acting and perceiving the environment, no research has to date explored whether specific tool embodiment in conditions of sensorimotor deprivation influences extrapersonal space perception. We tested 20 spinal cord injured (SCI) individuals to investigate whether specific wheelchair embodiment interacts with extrapersonal space representation. As a measure of wheelchair embodiment, we used a Body View Enhancement Task in which participants (either sitting in their own wheelchair or in one which they had never used before) were asked to respond promptly to flashing lights presented on their above- and below-lesion body parts.

Virtual reality in cognitive and motor rehabilitation: facts, fiction and fallacies.

Introduction: Over recent decades many researchers and clinicians have started to use Virtual Reality (VR) as a new technology for implementing innovative rehabilitation treatments in cognitive and motor domains. However, the expression 'VR' has often also been improperly used to refer to video games. Further, VR efficacy, often confused with that of video-game exercises, is still debated.

Wronger than wrong: Graded mapping of the errors of an avatar in the performance monitoring system of the onlooker.

EEG studies show that observing errors in one's own or others' actions triggers specific electro-cortical signatures in the onlooker's brain, but whether the brain error-monitoring system operates according to graded or discrete rules is still largely unknown. To explore this issue, we combined immersive virtual reality with EEG recording in participants who observed an avatar reaching-to-grasp a glass from a first-person perspective. The avatar could perform correct or erroneous actions.

C reactive protein in healthy term newborns during the first 48 hours of life.

Background: Early-onset neonatal sepsis (EOS) is a serious and potentially life-threatening disease in newborns. C reactive protein (CRP) is the most used laboratory biomarker for the detection of EOS. Little is known about normal reference values of CRP during the perinatal period as several factors are able to influence it.

The association in a two-way contingency table through log odds ratio analysis: the case of Sarno river pollution.

In this paper we are proposing a general framework for the analysis of the complete set of log Odds Ratios (ORs) generated by a two-way contingency table. Starting from the RC (M) association model and hypothesizing a Poisson distribution for the counts of the two-way contingency table we are obtaining the weighted Log Ratio Analysis that we are extending to the study of log ORs. Particularly we are obtaining an indirect representation of the log ORs and some synthesis measures.