Slowly progressive pure dysgraphia with late apraxia of speech: a further variant of the focal cerebral degeneration

We report a longitudinal neuropsychological investigation of a patient with slowly progressive pure dysgraphia. Cognitive analysis of writing errors suggested a selective impairment of the graphemic buffer. After about seven years, the patient developed an apraxia of speech. No other linguistic or generalized cognitive impairment occurred subsequently, so that, twelve years after the beginning of the disease, the patient showed complete independence in daily life and still remained professionally active. Functional neuroimaging revealed hypoperfusion confined to left fronto-temporal lobe. This well-recognizable syndrome does not fit any of the cases described previously in the literature. This report therefore, adds another variant to heterogeneous clinical spectrum of focal neurodegenerative disorders, further suggesting the opportunity of their distinction from pathological processes leading to dementia.     

Machiavellianism and Theory of Mind in people affected by schizophrenia

CONTEXT: People affected by schizophrenia show deficits in social interaction (Cramer, Bowen, & O'Neill, 1992); such a deficit may stem from an alteration in the representation of mental states. OBJECT: In this study we have examined 42 people affected by schizophrenia, diagnosed according to DSM-IV criteria, by testing them with an instrument (the Mach IV scale, Christie & Geis, 1970) assessing "Machiavellian Intelligence" according to Niccolò Machiavelli's assertions. Schizophrenic subjects were compared to a sample of normal controls, matched for age, sex, and education. OBJECTIVE: The aim of our study was to evaluate if there were correlations between the ability to understand other people's mental states and the capacity for interpreting "Machiavellian expressions." RESULTS: Results show that people affected by schizophrenia are less able to use Machiavellian-style "tactical" abilities than controls. CONCLUSION: Such a disability seems to be correlated to poor mentalising abilities.     

Italian youth subculture: collection, self-esteem, and self-efficacy

63 young people (M age=23.9 yr., SD=2.4, 50 men, 13 women) belonging to four subculture groups (New American Punk, Cyberpunk, Trash Style, and Rasta-Hippy) were studied to examine the relationship between self-esteem, self-efficacy, and the development of a body modification collection. A survey was created to evaluate quality of life, risk behaviour, and body modification. Self-esteem and self-efficacy were assessed using the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale and General Perceived Self-efficacy Scale. Belonging to a group which permits neglect of standard norms of communal life makes it possible to avoid facing up to low self-esteem. Adherence to a group appears, from the results of this study, to be correlated with self-efficacy; inability to cope with life situations suggests a state of malaise in these young people.     

The scholar’s best friend: research trends in dog cognitive and behavioral studies

Animal Cognition - In recent decades, cognitive and behavioral knowledge in dogs seems to have developed considerably, as deduced from the published peer-reviewed articles. However, to date, the...     

Factors Associated with Providers’ Work Engagement and Burnout in Homeless Services: A Cross‐national Study

The complexity of homeless service users’ characteristics and the contextual challenges faced by services can make the experience of working with people in homelessness stressful and can put providers’ well‐being at risk. In the current study, we investigated the association between service characteristics (i.e., the availability of training and supervision and the capability‐fostering approach) and social service providers’ work engagement and burnout. The study involved 497 social service providers working in homeless services in eight different European countries (62% women; mean age = 40.73, SD = 10.45) and was part of the Horizon 2020 European study “Homelessness as Unfairness (HOME_EU).” Using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), findings showed that the availability of training and supervision were positively associated with providers’ work engagement and negatively associated with burnout. However, results varied based on the perceived usefulness of the training and supervision provided within the service and the specific outcome considered. The most consistent finding was the association between the degree to which a service promotes users’ capabilities and all the aspects of providers’ well‐being analyzed. Results are discussed in relation to their implications for how configuration of homeless services can promote social service providers’ well‐being and high‐quality care.     

The role of body image and self‐perception in anorexia nervosa: the neuroimaging perspective

Anorexia nervosa is a severe psychiatric illness characterized by intense fear of gaining weight, relentless pursuit of thinness, deep concerns about food and a pervasive disturbance of body image. Functional magnetic resonance imaging tries to shed light on the neurobiological underpinnings of anorexia nervosa. This review aims to evaluate the empirical neuroimaging literature about self‐perception in anorexia nervosa. This narrative review summarizes a number of task‐based and resting‐state functional magnetic resonance imaging studies in anorexia nervosa about body image and self‐perception. The articles listed in references were searched using electronic databases (PubMed and Google Scholar) from 1990 to February 2016 using specific key words. All studies were reviewed with regard to their quality and eligibility for the review. Differences in brain activity were observed using body image perception and body size estimation tasks showing significant modifications in activity of specific brain areas (extrastriate body area, fusiform body area, inferior parietal lobule). Recent studies highlighted the role of emotions and self‐perception in anorexia nervosa and their neural substrate involving resting‐state networks and particularly frontal and posterior midline cortical structures within default mode network and insula. These findings open new horizons to understand the neural substrate of anorexia nervosa.     

The perceptions of the causes of cardiac diseases: a taxonomy

Objective: This study verifies whether the open-ended question of the B-IPQ can collect causal attributions of patients with cardiac diseases, define the more frequent causal attributions reported, classify them and describe the relation between the classification of the causes and patients’ characteristics.

Design: A group of 2011 patients with cardiac diseases was recruited during the first week of cardiac rehabilitation.

Primary outcome measures: Every participant filled in the B-IPQ and the HADS. The qualitative and quantitative analyses of the text using T-LAB identified the most frequent causal attributions and their co-occurrences.

Results: Among the patients, 26% did not recognise any causal attribution. The likelihood that the patients did not provide an answer was increased in older patients, females, patients with lower levels of education and higher levels of depression. Smoking and stress emerged as the most important attributions, followed by genetics, metabolic syndrome, work and nutrition. Four thematic clusters were identified: ‘work and stress’, ‘metabolic syndrome and hypertension’, ‘displeasures and body care’ and ‘heredity and other related diseases’.

Conclusions: This study suggests a classification of the causal attributions in patients with cardiac diseases and identifies thematic patterns and unknown attributions. The themes identified can serve as categories for future closed-ended questions.     

Goodness of regularity in dot patterns: global symmetry, local symmetry, and their interactions

Goodness is a classic Gestalt notion defined as salience or perceptual strength of a given pattern. All operational models of goodness have assigned a central role to mirror symmetry but not much attention has been paid to the distinction between global and local mirror symmetry, and their possible interactions. We designed eight different types of dot patterns (all consisting of 80 dots), combining different numbers (0, 1, and 2) and relative orientations (parallel or orthogonal to each other) of local and global axes of symmetry (affecting 50% or 100% of the dots, respectively) at different absolute orientations (vertical and horizontal). Each of 640 trials consisted of a short presentation of a new dot pattern, which subjects had to classify as regular or random. We hypothesised that the overall goodness of patterns is not the simple sum of the amount of regularity present in them but depends on the cooperation and competition between symmetries. The results confirmed our hypothesis, showing that performance in this regularity-detection task did not increase in a linear way when some symmetries were added to other symmetries.