An Emotionally Inexpressive (Type C) Coping Style Influences HIV Disease Progression at Six and Twelve Month Follow-ups

This study examined the effects of specific psychosocial factors on the progression of HIV infection in 200 HIV-1 seropositive but asymptomatic men and women. At baseline, participants' disease status was determined, and they were administered self-report assessments of coping style, social support and loneliness. Participants were classified at 6 and 12 month follow-ups as progressed or unchanged, compared to their baseline status. In logistic regression analyses, higher baseline Type C coping scores (indicating emotional inexpressiveness and decreased recognition of needs and feelings) significantly predicted progression at 6 months ( p <0.01) and 12 months ( p <0.02), but only among participants classified at baseline as CDC-A2 (between 200-499 CD4 cells/mm 3 ). In participants originally classified as CDC-A1 (CD4 cell counts > 500/mm 3 ), no psychosocial variable showed any significant relationship. Results emphasize the need to consider the disease context, as well as the interaction between biological and psychological factors in contributing to disease progression.     

How Neighborhood Structural and Institutional Features Can Shape Neighborhood Social Connectedness: A Multilevel Study of Adolescent Perceptions

According to the norms and collective efficacy model, the levels of social connectedness within a local community are a function of neighborhood structural characteristics, such as socioeconomic status and ethnic composition. The current work aims to determine whether neighborhood structural and institutional features (neighborhood wealth, percentage of immigrants, population density, opportunities for activities and meeting places) have an impact on different components of neighborhood social connectedness (intergenerational closure, trust and reciprocity, neighborhood-based friendship and personal relationships with neighbors). The study involved a representative sample of 389 early and middle adolescents aged 11–15 years old, coming from 31 Italian neighborhoods. Using hierarchical linear modeling, our findings showed that high population density, ethnic diversity, and physical and social disorder might represent obstacles for the creation of social ties within the neighborhood. On the contrary, the presence of opportunities for activities and meeting places in the neighborhood was associated with higher levels of social connectedness among residents.     

Logic and Mathematics in the Seventeenth Century

According to the received view (Bocheński, Kneale), from the end of the fourteenth to the second half of nineteenth century, logic enters a period of decadence. If one looks at this period, the richness of the topics and the complexity of the discussions that characterized medieval logic seem to belong to a completely different world: a simplified theory of the syllogism is the only surviving relic of a glorious past. Even though this negative appraisal is grounded on good reasons, it overlooks, however, a remarkable innovation that imposes itself at the beginning of the sixteenth century: the attempt to connect the two previously separated disciplines of logic and mathematics. This happens along two opposite directions: the one aiming to base mathematical proofs on traditional (Aristotelian) logic; the other attempting to reduce logic to a mathematical (algebraical) calculus. This second trend was reinforced by the claim, mainly propagated by Hobbes, that the activity of thinking was the same as that of performing an arithmetical calculus. Thus, in the period of what Bocheński characterizes as ‘classical logic’, one may find the seeds of a process which was completed by Boole and Frege and opened the door to the contemporary, mathematical form of logic.     

Exploring Maternal Representations During Pregnancy in Normal and At‐Risk Samples: The Use of the Interview of Maternal Representations During Pregnancy

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the potentiality of the Interview of Maternal Representations during Pregnancy‐Revised Version (IRMAG‐R; M. Ammaniti & R. Tambelli, 2010) in exploring maternal representations in at‐risk and nonrisk conditions. Maternal representations were assessed during the last trimester of pregnancy in 411 nonrisk women and in 255 depressed and/or psychosocially at‐risk women. The results showed a prevalence of Integrated/Balanced representations in nonrisk women and a higher frequency of Not Integrated/Ambivalent representations in at‐risk women. Data obtained confirm that the IRMAG‐R is a valid instrument for exploring maternal representation during the last trimester of pregnancy in both the absence and presence of risk conditions.     

Tower of London test: a comparison between conventional statistic approach and modelling based on artificial neural network in differentiating fronto-temporal dementia from Alzheimer's disease

The early differentiation of Alzheimer's disease (AD) from frontotemporal dementia (FTD) may be difficult. The Tower of London (ToL), thought to assess executive functions such as planning and visuo-spatial working memory, could help in this purpose. Twentytwo Dementia Centers consecutively recruited patients with early FTD or AD. ToL performances of these groups were analyzed using both the conventional statistical approaches and the Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) modelling. Ninety-four non aphasic FTD and 160 AD patients were recruited. ToL Accuracy Score (AS) significantly (p < 0.05) differentiated FTD from AD patients. However, the discriminant validity of AS checked by ROC curve analysis, yielded no significant results in terms of sensitivity and specificity (AUC 0.63). The performances of the 12 Success Subscores (SS) together with age, gender and schooling years were entered into advanced ANNs developed by Semeion Institute. The best ANNs were selected and submitted to ROC curves. The non-linear model was able to discriminate FTD from AD with an average AUC for 7 independent trials of 0.82. The use of hidden information contained in the different items of ToL and the non linear processing of the data through ANNs allows a high discrimination between FTD and AD in individual patients.     

The Interaction Between Culture, Health and Psychological Well-Being: Data Mining from the Italian Culture and Well-Being Project

The purpose of this study is to understand the impact of health status and cultural participation upon psychological well-being, with special attention to the interaction between patterns of cultural access and other factors known to affect psychological well-being. Data for this report were collected from a sample of 1,500 Italian citizens. A multi-step random sampling method was adopted to draw a large representative sample from the Italian population. Subjects underwent a standard questionnaire for psychological well-being [the Italian short form of the Psychological General Well Being Index (PGWBI)], and a questionnaire related to the frequency of participation to 15 different kinds of cultural activities during the previous year. The results show that, among the various potential factors considered, cultural access unexpectedly rankes as the second most important determinant of psychological well-being, immediately after the absence or presence of diseases, and outperforming factors such as job, age, income, civil status, education, place of living and other important factors. According to a semantic map generated by a powerful data mining algorithm, it turns out that different factors (among which cultural access and health status in particular) may be viewed as concurrent elements of a complex multi-causal scheme that seems to play a primary role in determining psychological distress or well-being. In particular, distress seems to be tightly connected with: living in the Southern part of Italy, average income level, living in semi-urban and urban areas, age group 46–60, presence of more than two concomitant diseases and a low level of cultural access. Well being, on the other hand, is tightly connected with: male gender, high cultural access, and absence of diseases. Some of these associations are confirmed by Principal Component Analysis.     

The subjective duration of audiovisual looming and receding stimuli

Looming visual stimuli (log-increasing in proximal size over time) and auditory stimuli (of increasing sound intensity over time) have been shown to be perceived as longer than receding visual and auditory stimuli (i.e., looming stimuli reversed in time). Here, we investigated whether such asymmetry in subjective duration also occurs for audiovisual looming and receding stimuli, as well as for stationary stimuli (i.e., stimuli that do not change in size and/or intensity over time). Our results showed a great temporal asymmetry in audition but a null asymmetry in vision. In contrast, the asymmetry in audiovision was moderate, suggesting that multisensory percepts arise from the integration of unimodal percepts in a maximum-likelihood fashion.     

Persistent Vegetative State: A Presumption to Treat

The article briefly analyzes the concept of a person, arguing that personhood does not coincide with the actual enjoyment of certain intellectual capacities, but is coextensive with the embodiment of a human individual. Since in PVS patients we can observe a human individual functioning as a whole, we must conclude that these patients are still human persons, even if in a condition of extreme impairment. It is then argued that some forms of minimal treatment may not be futile for these patients; they may constitute a form of respect for their human dignity and benefit these patients, even if they are not aware of that. Moreover, it is important to consider the symbolic significance of care: while many believe that PVS is a kind of imprisonment, for others providing food and fluids is the only way to testify our proximity to these persons. The best policy would be to provide, as a general rule, artificial nutrition and hydration to PVS patients: this treatment could be withdrawn, after a period of observation and reflection by the family and proxies, on the basis of the proxies' objection to the continuation or of the patient's advance directives specifically referring to this situation.