Touch me or touch me not: Emotion regulation by affective touch in human adults

In mammals, including humans, affective touch (AT) supports the establishment and maintenance of social connections and mitigates the effects of social conflict and ostracism. AT is used to describe slowly moving, low-forced mechanical stimulation that is frequently perceived as pleasant. In humans, AT has been addressed particularly for its role in promoting bonding and emotional regulation during early development; however, more recent studies have suggested that AT also preserves physical and emotional well-being in adulthood. Here, we investigated whether AT can buffer adults' experience of negative emotions as reflected in their behavioral and physiological responses to emotionally arousing stimuli. Participants were stimulated on their forearms using AT or tapping (T) while they viewed a series of emotionally arousing and neutral images, and we measured their skin conductance response and their explicit rating of the images' unpleasantness. We found that AT, but not T, reduced the arousal and perceived unpleasantness of the emotional stimuli but not the neutral ones, revealing the soothing role of AT in emotional contexts. The second aim of the study was to explore the possibility that AT might benefit some individuals more than others, according to their individual differences. To this aim, we assessed individuals' empathy and sensory processing sensitivity, as well as their perception of AT itself. Results revealed that while empathy did not predict changes in emotional processing irrespective of tactile stimulation, individuals with higher sensitivity reported AT as less pleasant. We discuss the possible factors mediating the observed interindividual variability in AT perception. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The emergence of the multisensory brain: From the womb to the first steps

The becoming of the human being is a multisensory process that starts in the womb. By integrating spontaneous neuronal activity with inputs from the external world, the developing brain learns to make sense of itself through multiple sensory experiences. Over the past ten years, advances in neuroimaging and electrophysiological techniques have allowed the exploration of the neural correlates of multisensory processing in the newborn and infant brain, thus adding an important piece of information to behavioral evidence of early sensitivity to multisensory events. Here, we review recent behavioral and neuroimaging findings to document the origins and early development of multisensory processing, particularly showing that the human brain appears naturally tuned to multisensory events at birth, which requires multisensory experience to fully mature. We conclude the review by highlighting the potential uses and benefits of multisensory interventions in promoting healthy development by discussing emerging studies in preterm infants.

Intuitive mapping between nonsymbolic quantity and observed action across development

Adults' concurrent processing of numerical and action information yields bidirectional interference effects consistent with a cognitive link between these two systems of representation. This link is in place early in life: infants create expectations of congruency across numerical and action-related stimuli (i.e., a small [large] hand aperture associated with a smaller [larger] numerosity). Although these studies point to a developmental continuity of this mapping, little is known about the later development and thus how experience shapes such relationships. We explored how number-action intuitions develop across early and later childhood using the same methodology as in adults. We asked 3-, 6-, and 8-year-old children, as well as adults, to relate the magnitude of an observed action (a static hand shape, open vs. closed, in Experiment 1; a dynamic hand movement, opening vs. closing, in Experiment 2) to either a small or large nonsymbolic quantity (numerosity in Experiment 1 and numerosity and/or object size in Experiment 2). From 6 years of age, children started performing in a systematic congruent way in some conditions, but only 8-year-olds (added in Experiment 2) and adults performed reliably above chance in this task. We provide initial evidence that early intuitions guiding infants' mapping between magnitude across nonsymbolic number and observed action are used in an explicit way only from late childhood, with a mapping between action and size possibly being the most intuitive. An initial coarse mapping between number and action is likely modulated with extensive experience with grasping and related actions directed to both arrays and individual objects.

Neural signatures to prosocial and antisocial interactions in young infants

Preverbal infants appear to be more attracted by prosocial characters and events, as typically assessed using preferential looking times and manual choice. However, infants' neural correlates of observed prosocial and antisocial interactions are still scarce. Here, we familiarized 5-month-old (N = 24) infants with a prosocial and antisocial scene (i.e., a character either helping or hindering) and infants' Event-Related Potentials (ERP) were recorded in response to the presentation of short video clips of the prosocial and antisocial interaction. On a neural level, results revealed that infants could discriminate between helping and hindering events at an early stage of processing, as shown by a larger N290 response to the former compared to the latter. Further, while the Nc - typically indexing attentional processes - was larger for antisocial over prosocial events, the LPP, indexing cognitive evaluation of the stimuli, was larger for prosocial over antisocial actions. Finally, infants' higher scores on the effortful control temperamental subscale were related to infants' increased N290 neural sensitivity to antisocial scenes. Together, these findings provide new evidence of the time course of infants' ERP responses during the observation of helping and hindering interactions, which involves both attentional and socially relevant processes.

Embodied language of emotions: Predicting human intuitions with linguistic distributions in blind and sighted individuals

Recent constructionist theories have suggested that language and sensory experience play a crucial role not only in how individuals categorise emotions but also in how they experience and shape them, helping to acquire abstract concepts that are used to make sense of bodily perceptions associated with specific emotions. Here, we aimed to investigate the role of sensory experience in conceptualising bodily felt emotions by asking 126 Italian blind participants to freely recall in which part of the body they commonly feel specific emotions (N = 15). Participants varied concerning visual experience in terms of blindness onset (i.e., congenital vs late) and degree of visual experience (i.e., total vs partial sensory loss). Using an Italian semantic model to estimate to what extent discrete emotions are associated with body parts in language experience, we found that all participants' reports correlated with the model predictions. Interestingly, blind - and especially congenitally blind - participants' responses were more strongly correlated with the model, suggesting that language might be one of the possible compensative mechanisms for the lack of visual feedback in constructing bodily felt emotions. Our findings present theoretical implications for the study of emotions, as well as potential real-world applications for blind individuals, by revealing, on the one hand, that vision plays an essential role in the construction of felt emotions and the way we talk about our related bodily (emotional) experiences. On the other hand, evidence that blind individuals rely more strongly on linguistic cues suggests that vision is a strong cue to acquire emotional information from the surrounding world, influencing how we experience emotions. While our findings do not suggest that blind individuals experience emotions in an atypical and dysfunctional way, they nonetheless support the view that promoting the use of non-visual emotional signs and body language since early on might help the blind child to develop a good emotional awareness as well as good emotion regulation abilities.

Age-dependent changes in intuitive and deliberative cooperation

Cooperation is one of the most advantageous strategies to have evolved in small- and large-scale human societies, often considered essential to their success or survival. We investigated how cooperation and the mechanisms influencing it change across the lifespan, by assessing cooperative choices from adolescence to old age (12-79 years, N = 382) forcing participants to decide either intuitively or deliberatively through the use of randomised time constraints. As determinants of these choices, we considered participants' level of altruism, their reciprocity expectations, their optimism, their desire to be socially accepted, and their attitude toward risk. We found that intuitive decision-making favours cooperation, but only from age 20 when a shift occurs: whereas in young adults, intuition favours cooperation, in adolescents it is reflection that favours cooperation. Participants' decisions were shown to be rooted in their expectations about other people's cooperative behaviour and influenced by individuals' level of optimism about their own future, revealing that the journey to the cooperative humans we become is shaped by reciprocity expectations and individual predispositions.

SARS-CoV-2 caused a surge in antibiotic consumption causing a silent pandemic inside the pandemic. A retrospective analysis of Italian data in the first half of 2022

BACKGROUND

The phenomenon of antibiotic resistance shows no sign of stopping, despite global policies to combat it that have been in place for several years. The risk of forms of pathogenic microorganisms that are increasingly resistant to common antibiotics has led health authorities around the world to pay greater attention to the phenomenon. The worrying situation, has led to further recommendations from the World Health Organization (WHO) and national recommendations in Italy through the new National Plan against Antibiotic Resistance 2022-2025 (PNCAR 2022-2025).

AIM

This manuscript aims to raise the awareness of all health professionals to follow what is suggested by regulatory agencies and scientific societies.

METHOD

We conducted a retrospective study of antibiotic pharmacoutilization in Italy, in the Campania region at the Azienda Sanitaria Locale (ASL) Napoli 3 Sud, on consumption in the first half of 2022 in a population of more than 1 million people.

RESULT

The results indicate that consumption, based on defined daily doses (DDDs), is above the national average. Probably the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced this growth in prescriptions.

CONCLUSIONS

Our study suggests an informed and appropriate use of antibiotics, so as to embark on a virtuous path in the fight against antibiotic resistance.

Preverbal infants tune manual choices on subliminal affective information

Human behaviour is often shaped by unconscious emotional cues. From early on, infants are able to process emotional signals even if presented subliminally; however, whether subliminal emotional expressions are capable to affect infants' behaviour remains unknown. The current study aimed to fill this gap, recording 8-10-month-old infants' looking time and manual choice toward two objects previously associated to subliminal emotional faces. Results demonstrated that infants' manual choice, but not looking time, was guided by the previously presented subliminal emotional signal, as infants preferred to choose the object associated to the happy face. Overall, our findings show that preverbal infants tune their behaviour based on affective information, which drives them towards or away from previous encounters, even outside conscious awareness.

The Long-Term Effects of Bullying, Victimization, and Bystander Behavior on Emotion Regulation and Its Physiological Correlates

Bullying at school is a serious social problem that influences the wellbeing of everyone involved, that is, victims, perpetrators, and bystanders. Among the many health and psychological problems that these individuals may develop, emotion dysregulation appears to be a common marker. To date, however, it remains unclear whether bullying experienced during the school years is associated with emotion dysregulation also in adulthood. In this study, by adopting a retrospective approach, we investigated whether involvement in bullying at school-either as a bully, victim, or bystander-could put these individuals at risk of presenting deficits in emotion regulation in adulthood, as assessed with behavioral (explicit) and physiological (implicit) indexes (i.e., skin conductance), and whether the association between the involvement in bullying and emotion regulation was direct or mediated by other factors, such as somatic complaints and sensation seeking. A total of 58 young adults were asked to control their emotional reactions in front of images with strong emotional content, and to explicitly evaluate them with ratings, while their arousal was measured through skin conductance. They also responded to questionnaires about retrospective involvement in bullying, somatic complaints, and sensation seeking. Results revealed that victimization and bystander behavior were directly and negatively associated with emotion regulation as assessed with skin conductance, whereas bullying was positively associated with implicit emotion regulation through the mediation of sensation seeking. Interestingly, emotion regulation as assessed with explicit ratings was not associated with any of the characteristics of the participants. Our study suggests that being directly (as victim) but also indirectly (as bystander) involved in bullying at school time is associated with difficulties in emotional wellbeing in adulthood. Furthermore, it reveals that behavioral and physiological indexes associated with emotion regulation dissociate, suggesting that subtle physiological changes may remain hidden from explicit behavior.

Do children selectively trust leaders and prosocial agents in an economic exchange?

Most cooperative interactions involve interpersonal trust and the expectation of mutual reciprocation. Thus, understanding when and how humans acquire interpersonal trust can help unveil the origins and development of children's cooperative behavior. Here, we investigated whether prior sociomoral information about trading partners modulates the choice of preschool (4-5 years) and school-age children (7-8 years) to share their own goods in a child-friendly version of the trust game. In this game, the trustee partner can repay the child's initial investment or keep everything and betray the trustor. In two studies, we addressed whether trust is modulated by trustees exhibiting prosocial versus antisocial behaviors (Study 1, "helper and hinderer"), or respect-based versus fear-based power (Study 2, "leader and bully"). Preschoolers trusted the leader reliably more than the bully, and the hinderer reliably less than a neutral agent. The tendency to trust the helper more than the hinderer increased with age as a result of the increased propensity to trust the prosocial agent. Overall, these findings indicate that, by age 5, children understand complex cooperative exchanges and start relying on sociomoral information when deciding whom to trust. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Signatures of functional visuospatial asymmetries in early infancy

Adults present a large number of asymmetries in visuospatial behavior that are known to be supported by functional brain lateralization. Although there is evidence of lateralization for motor behavior and language processing in infancy, no study has explored visuospatial attention biases in the early stages of development. In this study, we tested for the presence of a leftward visuospatial bias (i.e., pseudoneglect) in 4- and 5-month-old infants using an adapted version of the line bisection task. Infants were trained to identify the center of a horizontal line (Experiment 1) while their eye gazes were monitored using a remote eye-tracking procedure to measure their potential gazing error. Infants exhibited a robust pseudoneglect, gazing leftward with respect to the veridical midpoint of the horizontal line. To investigate whether infants' pseudoneglect generalizes to any given object or is dependent on the horizontal dimension, in Experiment 2 we assessed infants' gaze deployment in vertically oriented lines. No leftward bias was found, suggesting that early visuospatial attention biases in infancy are constrained by the orientation of the visual plane in which the information is organized. The interplay between biological and cultural factors that might contribute to the early establishment of the observed leftward bias in the allocation of visuospatial attention is discussed.

Mirror-touch experiences in the infant brain

Several adult studies have proved the existence of a shared neural circuit in the somatosensory cortices that responds to both the body being touched and the sight of the body being touched. Despite the fundamental role of touch in infancy, the existence of similar visuo-tactile mirroring processes, supporting both felt and seen touch, still needs an in-depth empirical investigation. To this aim, we explored 8-month-olds mu desynchronization over somatosensory sites in response to felt and observed touch in a live experimental setting. EEG desynchronization (6-8 Hz mu frequency range) was measured during three experimental conditions: i) infants were stroked on their right hand by a parent (Touch condition); ii) infants observed a right hand being stroked (Observation Touch condition); iii) infants observed a right hand moving over the left hand without making contact (Action Control condition). Mu desynchronization of somatosensory sites contralateral to the hand being stroked emerged in response to both Touch and Observation Touch conditions, but not in the Action control condition. Further, greater mu desynchronization was found in the Touch and Observation Touch conditions as compared to the Action control condition. Our results highlight the early involvement of a shared somatosensory system, likely supporting infants' understanding of others' tactile sensations.

A systematic review on the efficacy and safety of IL-6 modulatory drugs in the treatment of COVID-19 patients

The pandemic caused by the new SARS-CoV2 coronavirus has led to an effort to find treatments that are effective against this disease that the World Health Organization calls COVID-19. In severe cases of COVID-19, there is an increase in cytokines, among which IL-6 seems to play an important role. A search has been performed for studies using IL-6 blocking drugs (tocilizumab, siltuximab, and sarilumab) in PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus. Also, a search of ongoing trials registered at clinicaltrials.gov was performed. We found very little published clinical experience with these drugs, consisting mainly of case reports or case series with few patients. The results of clinical trials are necessary to clarify the role of these drugs in patients with COVID-19.

Children can optimally integrate multisensory information after a short action-like mini game training

Combining information across different sensory modalities is of critical importance for the animal's survival and a core feature of human's everyday life. In adulthood, sensory information is often integrated in a statistically optimal fashion, so that the combined estimates of two or more senses are more reliable than the best single one. Several studies have shown that young children use one sense to calibrate the others, which results in unisensory dominance and undermines their optimal multisensory integration abilities. In this study we trained children aged 4-5 years with action-like mini games, to determine whether it could improve their multisensory as well as their visuo-spatial skills. Multisensory integration abilities were assessed using a visuo-haptic size discrimination task, while visuo-spatial attention skills were investigated using a multiple object tracking task (MOT). We found that 2-weeks training were sufficient to observe both optimal multisensory integration and visuo-spatial enhancements selectively in the group trained with action-like mini games. This plastic change persisted up to 3 months, as assessed in a follow-up. Our novel findings reveal that abilities that are commonly known to emerge in late childhood can be promoted in younger children through action-like mini games and have long-lasting effects. Our data have clinical implications, in that they suggest that specific trainings could potentially help children with multisensory integration deficits.

Action Shapes the Sense of Body Ownership Across Human Development

In this study we investigated, both in childhood and adulthood, the role of action in promoting and shaping the sense of body ownership, which is traditionally viewed as dependent on multisensory integration. By means of a novel action-based version of the rubber hand illusion (RHI), in which participants could actively self-stroke the rubber hand, with (Version 1) or without visual feedback (Version 2) of their own actions, we showed that self-generated actions promote the emergence of a sense of ownership over the rubber hand in children, while it interferes with the embodiment of the rubber hand in adults. When the movement is missing (Version 3, i.e., mere view of the rubber hand being stroked concurrently with one's own hand), the pattern of results is reversed, with adults showing embodiment of the rubber hand, but children lacking to do so. Our novel findings reveal a dynamic and plastic contribution of the motor system to the emergence of a coherent bodily self, suggesting that the development of the sense of body ownership is shaped by motor experience, rather than being purely sensory.

Role of imaging techniques in the diagnosis and follow-up of muscle-invasive bladder carcinoma

INTRODUCTION

Muscle-invasive bladder malignancies represent 20-30% of all bladder cancers. These patients require imaging tests to determine the regional and distant staging.

OBJECTIVE

To describe the role of various imaging tests in the diagnosis, staging and follow-up of muscle-invasive bladder cancer. To assess recent developments in radiology aimed at improving the sensitivity and specificity of local staging and treatment response.

ACQUISITION OF EVIDENCE

We conducted an updated literature review.

SYNTHESIS OF THE EVIDENCE

Computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are the tests of choice for performing proper staging prior to surgery. Computed tomography urography is currently the most widely used technique, although it has limitations in local staging. Ultrasonography still has a limited role. Recent developments in MRI have improved its capacity for local staging. MRI has been suggested as the test of choice for the follow-up, with promising results in assessing treatment response. Positron emission tomography could improve the detection of adenopathies and extrapelvic metastatic disease.

CONCLUSIONS

Imaging tests are essential for the diagnosis, staging and follow-up of muscle-invasive bladder cancer. Recent technical developments represent important improvements in local staging and have opened the possibility of assessing treatment response.

Multisensory Motion Perception in 3-4 Month-Old Infants

Human infants begin very early in life to take advantage of multisensory information by extracting the invariant amodal information that is conveyed redundantly by multiple senses. Here we addressed the question as to whether infants can bind multisensory moving stimuli, and whether this occurs even if the motion produced by the stimuli is only illusory. Three- to 4-month-old infants were presented with two bimodal pairings: visuo-tactile and audio-visual. Visuo-tactile pairings consisted of apparently vertically moving bars (the Barber Pole illusion) moving in either the same or opposite direction with a concurrent tactile stimulus consisting of strokes given on the infant's back. Audio-visual pairings consisted of the Barber Pole illusion in its visual and auditory version, the latter giving the impression of a continuous rising or ascending pitch. We found that infants were able to discriminate congruently (same direction) vs. incongruently moving (opposite direction) pairs irrespective of modality (Experiment 1). Importantly, we also found that congruently moving visuo-tactile and audio-visual stimuli were preferred over incongruently moving bimodal stimuli (Experiment 2). Our findings suggest that very young infants are able to extract motion as amodal component and use it to match stimuli that only apparently move in the same direction.

Multisensory emotion perception in congenitally, early, and late deaf CI users

Emotions are commonly recognized by combining auditory and visual signals (i.e., vocal and facial expressions). Yet it is unknown whether the ability to link emotional signals across modalities depends on early experience with audio-visual stimuli. In the present study, we investigated the role of auditory experience at different stages of development for auditory, visual, and multisensory emotion recognition abilities in three groups of adolescent and adult cochlear implant (CI) users. CI users had a different deafness onset and were compared to three groups of age- and gender-matched hearing control participants. We hypothesized that congenitally deaf (CD) but not early deaf (ED) and late deaf (LD) CI users would show reduced multisensory interactions and a higher visual dominance in emotion perception than their hearing controls. The CD (n = 7), ED (deafness onset: <3 years of age; n = 7), and LD (deafness onset: >3 years; n = 13) CI users and the control participants performed an emotion recognition task with auditory, visual, and audio-visual emotionally congruent and incongruent nonsense speech stimuli. In different blocks, participants judged either the vocal (Voice task) or the facial expressions (Face task). In the Voice task, all three CI groups performed overall less efficiently than their respective controls and experienced higher interference from incongruent facial information. Furthermore, the ED CI users benefitted more than their controls from congruent faces and the CD CI users showed an analogous trend. In the Face task, recognition efficiency of the CI users and controls did not differ. Our results suggest that CI users acquire multisensory interactions to some degree, even after congenital deafness. When judging affective prosody they appear impaired and more strongly biased by concurrent facial information than typically hearing individuals. We speculate that limitations inherent to the CI contribute to these group differences.

Audio-Visual, Visuo-Tactile and Audio-Tactile Correspondences in Preschoolers

Interest in crossmodal correspondences has recently seen a renaissance thanks to numerous studies in human adults. Yet, still very little is known about crossmodal correspondences in children, particularly in sensory pairings other than audition and vision. In the current study, we investigated whether 4-5-year-old children match auditory pitch to the spatial motion of visual objects (audio-visual condition). In addition, we investigated whether this correspondence extends to touch, i.e., whether children also match auditory pitch to the spatial motion of touch (audio-tactile condition) and the spatial motion of visual objects to touch (visuo-tactile condition). In two experiments, two different groups of children were asked to indicate which of two stimuli fitted best with a centrally located third stimulus (Experiment 1), or to report whether two presented stimuli fitted together well (Experiment 2). We found sensitivity to the congruency of all of the sensory pairings only in Experiment 2, suggesting that only under specific circumstances can these correspondences be observed. Our results suggest that pitch-height correspondences for audio-visual and audio-tactile combinations may still be weak in preschool children, and speculate that this could be due to immature linguistic and auditory cues that are still developing at age five.

The Development of a Cross-Modal Sense of Body Ownership

In this study, we investigated the contribution of tactile and proprioceptive cues to the development of the sense of body ownership by testing the susceptibility of 4- to 5-year-old children, 8- to 9-year-old children, and adults to the somatic rubber-hand illusion (SRHI). We found that feelings of owning a rubber hand in the SHRI paradigm, as assessed by explicit reports (i.e., questionnaire), are already present by age 4 and do not change throughout development. In contrast, the effect of the illusion on the sense of hand position, as assessed by a pointing task, was present only in 8- to 9-year-old children and adults; the magnitude of such capture increased with age. Our findings reveal that tactile-proprioceptive interactions contributed differently to the two aspects characterizing the SRHI: Although the contribution of such interactions to an explicit sense of self was similar across age groups, their contribution to the more implicit recalibration of hand position is still developing by age 9.

Skin conductance reveals the early development of the unconscious processing of emotions

The ability to rapidly distinguish between positive and negative facial expressions of emotions is critical for adaptive social behaviour. Increasing evidence has shown that emotions can be processed even at an unconscious level in adults. Yet, very little is still known about the early ontogeny of the unconscious processing of emotional signals conveyed by faces. Here, we investigated the processing of subliminally presented face emotional stimuli in infants as young as 3-4 months of age and sought to clarify its neural underpinnings by exploring the role of the autonomic nervous system. Using a visual preference paradigm, Experiment 1 determined the visibility threshold for happy and angry faces and established that infants detected both happy and angry faces at 200- but not at 100 msec. By measuring skin conductance response (SCR), Experiment 2 showed that the autonomic nervous system of infants reacted to both subliminally (100 msec) and supraliminally (200 msec) presented face expressions of emotions, and that SCR were higher for angry than happy facial expressions. Results revealed that 3-4 month-old infants respond to positive and negative emotions even at an unconscious level, but also show that angry faces possess an intrinsic alerting characteristics, suggestive of an adaptive meaning of the physiological response. Findings are discussed in terms of subcortical learning of emotions, and the possibility that the amygdala may be involved in such process.

Short-term visual deprivation reduces interference effects of task-irrelevant facial expressions on affective prosody judgments

Several studies have suggested that neuroplasticity can be triggered by short-term visual deprivation in healthy adults. Specifically, these studies have provided evidence that visual deprivation reversibly affects basic perceptual abilities. The present study investigated the long-lasting effects of short-term visual deprivation on emotion perception. To this aim, we visually deprived a group of young healthy adults, age-matched with a group of non-deprived controls, for 3 h and tested them before and after visual deprivation (i.e., after 8 h on average and at 4 week follow-up) on an audio–visual (i.e., faces and voices) emotion discrimination task. To observe changes at the level of basic perceptual skills, we additionally employed a simple audio–visual (i.e., tone bursts and light flashes) discrimination task and two unimodal (one auditory and one visual) perceptual threshold measures. During the 3 h period, both groups performed a series of auditory tasks. To exclude the possibility that changes in emotion discrimination may emerge as a consequence of the exposure to auditory stimulation during the 3 h stay in the dark, we visually deprived an additional group of age-matched participants who concurrently performed unrelated (i.e., tactile) tasks to the later tested abilities. The two visually deprived groups showed enhanced affective prosodic discrimination abilities in the context of incongruent facial expressions following the period of visual deprivation; this effect was partially maintained until follow-up. By contrast, no changes were observed in affective facial expression discrimination and in the basic perception tasks in any group. These findings suggest that short-term visual deprivation per se triggers a reweighting of visual and auditory emotional cues, which seems to possibly prevail for longer durations.

Both developmental and adult vision shape body representations

Sense of body ownership and body representation are fundamental parts of human consciousness, but the contribution of the visual modality to their development remains unclear. We tested congenitally and late blind adults on a somatosensory version of the rubber hand illusion, and on the Aristotle illusion, in which sighted controls touching a single sphere with crossed fingers commonly report perceiving two. We found that congenitally and late blind individuals did not report subjectively experiencing the rubber hand illusion. However, in an objective measure, the congenitally blind did not show a recalibration of the position of their hand towards the rubber hand while late blind and sighted individuals did. By contrast, all groups experienced the Aristotle illusion. This pattern of results provides evidence for a dissociation of the concepts of body ownership and spatial recalibration and, furthermore, suggests different reference frames for hands (external space) and fingers (anatomical space).

Audio-tactile integration in congenitally and late deaf cochlear implant users

Several studies conducted in mammals and humans have shown that multisensory processing may be impaired following congenital sensory loss and in particular if no experience is achieved within specific early developmental time windows known as sensitive periods. In this study we investigated whether basic multisensory abilities are impaired in hearing-restored individuals with deafness acquired at different stages of development. To this aim, we tested congenitally and late deaf cochlear implant (CI) recipients, age-matched with two groups of hearing controls, on an audio-tactile redundancy paradigm, in which reaction times to unimodal and crossmodal redundant signals were measured. Our results showed that both congenitally and late deaf CI recipients were able to integrate audio-tactile stimuli, suggesting that congenital and acquired deafness does not prevent the development and recovery of basic multisensory processing. However, we found that congenitally deaf CI recipients had a lower multisensory gain compared to their matched controls, which may be explained by their faster responses to tactile stimuli. We discuss this finding in the context of reorganisation of the sensory systems following sensory loss and the possibility that these changes cannot be “rewired” through auditory reafferentation.

Expression of Genes Related to Activity of Oxaliplatin and 5-Fluorouracil in Endoscopic Biopsies of Primary Esophageal Cancer in Patients Receiving Oxaliplatin, 5-Flourouracil and Radiation: Characterization and Exploratory Analysis with Survival

With a goal of identifying relations between gene expression and response (mucosal or pathological) or survival in esophageal cancer patients (stages II to IV) receiving oxaliplatin, 5-fluorouracil (5FU) and radiation, we measured in endoscopic primary tumor biopsies from 38 patients, the expression of seven genes (gammaGCS, gammaGT, MRP-2, ERCC-1, XPA, TS and DPD) prior to treatment, 1 week following oxaliplatin alone and at the end of the combined radio-chemotherapy cycle using real time QRT-PCR. A higher pretreatment level of XPA was related to shorter survival with a hazard ratio of 2.43 (90% confidence interval 1.09 to 5.43) using Cox regression modeling. However, multivariate analysis with a Cox model indicated low expression of XPA or TS and combined stages II and III had a higher probability of survival (for XPA: hazard ratio 3.0 and 90% C.I. of 1.3 to 6.9, with adjustment for stage included; for TS: hazard ratio is 1.98 with 90% C.I. of 0.94 to 4.20. The expression of TS, gammaGCS, ERCC-1 and MRP-2 declined from D 1 to the end of the cycle (p<0.05, sign test). A validation and further understanding of the findings need to be carried out in a larger study with a more homogeneous population of patients.

Adaptation and maladaptation insights from brain plasticity

Evolutionary concepts such as adaptation and maladaptation have been used by neuroscientists to explain brain properties and mechanisms. In particular, one of the most compelling characteristics of the brain, known as neuroplasticity, denotes the ability of the brain to continuously adapt its functional and structural organization to changing requirements. Although brain plasticity has evolved to favor adaptation, there are cases in which the same mechanisms underlying adaptive plasticity can turn into maladaptive changes. Here, we will consider brain plasticity and its functional and structural consequences from an evolutionary perspective, discussing cases of adaptive and maladaptive plasticity and using examples from typical and atypical development.

Independence of sleep-wakefulness cycle in an implanted head 'encephale isole'

A quantitative study was carried out on the sleep-wakefulness cycle by means of EEG recordings taken simultaneously from a dog's implanted head and its host. During survival (108 h), neurological activities of the implanted head were similar to those of classic 'encéphale isolé' preparations. In spite of a common circulation, the sleep-wakefulness cycles of the implanted head and host animal were independent. Independence was manifested by: (1) differing percentages of respective phases of their cycles; (2) periods of coincident phases in both heads, only occasionally beginning and/or stopping simultaneously; and (3) the implanted 'encéphale isolé' showed a monotonous cycle with numerous periods of short duration throughout night or day. The host presented a nycthemeral rhythm.

Spatial hearing with a single cochlear implant in late-implanted adults

We assessed sound localisation abilities of late-implanted adults fitted with a single cochlear implant (CI) and examined whether these abilities are affected by the duration of implant use. Ten prelingually and four postlingually deafened adults who received a unilateral CI were tested in a sound-source identification task. Above chance performance was observed in those prelingual CI recipients who had worn their implant for longer time (9 years on average), revealing some monaural sound localisation abilities in this population but only after extensive CI use. On the contrary, the four postlingual recipients performed equal or better with respect to the best prelingual participants despite shorter experience with the monaural implant (11 months on average). Our findings reveal that some sound localisation ability can emerge in prelingually deafened adults fitted with a single implant, at least in a controlled laboratory setting. This ability, however, appears to emerge only after several years of CI use. Furthermore, the results of four postlingually deafened adults suggest that early experience with auditory cues may result in more rapid acquisition of spatial hearing with a single CI.

[Evaluation of patients' satisfaction of home care services]

The satisfaction level of a patient that receives home care, is an indicator that is rarely ever evaluated. This is also due to the fact that it is objectively difficult to gather data concerning this issue and there are a countless number of variables that could influence an evaluation. The objective of this study is to quantify the satisfaction level of those that use the Home Care Services of the Trento District. A validated questionnaire with 30 questions was used to explore the organizational, relational and professional aspects, communication, information and patient education in addition to the satisfaction level of certain aspects that concerned the availability/delivery of medical supplies and aids. Together with this information, data was also gathered concerning the patient's formal and informal social network. 122 patients, that received care by the nursing services of the territory and that received home care at least twice a week, were enrolled in the survey. The responses that emerged from this sample of patients, concerning the satisfaction level, were very positive. Each aspect had a high satisfaction percentage that was always beyond 75%. This survey must be used within the trust's continuous quality improvement plan, by addressing the needs that have been expressed and not, by empowering human and organizational resources and by integrating the numerous health care operators that work within the territory to improve citizens' health.

Dose distributions in phantoms irradiated in thermal columns of two different nuclear reactors

In-phantom dosimetry studies have been carried out at the thermal columns of a thermal- and a fast-nuclear reactor for investigating: (a) the spatial distribution of the gamma dose and the thermal neutron fluence and (b) the accuracy at which the boron concentration should be estimated in an explanted organ of a boron neutron capture therapy patient. The phantom was a cylinder (11 cm in diameter and 12 cm in height) of tissue-equivalent gel. Dose images were acquired with gel dosemeters across the axial section of the phantom. The thermal neutron fluence rate was measured with activation foils in a few positions of this phantom. Dose and fluence rate profiles were also calculated with Monte Carlo simulations. The trend of these profiles do not show significant differences for the thermal columns considered in this work.

Preliminary evaluations of the undesirable patient dose from a BNCT treatment at the ENEA-TAPIRO reactor

Boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) is an experimental technique for the treatment of certain kinds of tumors. Research in BNCT is performed utilizing both thermal and epithermal neutron beams. Epithermal neutrons (0.4 eV-10 keV) penetrate more deeply into tissue and are thus used in non-superficial clinical applications such as the brain glioma. In the last few years, the fast reactor TAPIRO (ENEA-Casaccia Rome) has been employed as a neutron source for research into BNCT applications. Recently, an 'epithermal therapeutic column' has been designed and its construction has been completed. The Monte Carlo code MCNPX was employed to optimize the design of the column and to evaluate the dose profiles and the therapeutic parameters in the cranium of the anthropomorphic phantom ADAM. In the same context, some preliminary evaluations of the undesirable doses to the patient were performed with MCNPX. A hermaphrodite phantom derived from ADAM and EVA was employed to evaluate the energy deposition in some organs during a standard BNCT treatment. The total dose consists of the contributions from the primary neutron beam, the neutron interactions with boron and the neutron induced photons generated in the epithermal column structures and in the patient's tissues. The paper summarizes the computational procedure and provides a general dosimetric framework of the patient radiological protection aspects related to a BNCT treatment scenario at the TAPIRO reactor.

Monte Carlo optimisation of a BNCT facility for treating brain gliomas at the TAPIRO reactor

An epithermal boron neutron capture therapy facility for treating brain gliomas is currently under construction at the 5 kW fast-flux reactor TAPIRO located at ENEA, Casaccia, near Rome. In this work, the sensitivity of the results to the boron concentrations in healthy tissue and tumour is investigated and the change in beam quality on modifying the moderator thickness (within design limits) is studied. The Monte Carlo codes MCNP and MCNPX were used together with the DSA in-house variance reduction patch. Both usual free beam parameters and the in-phantom treatment planning figures-of-merit have been calculated in a realistic anthropomorphic phantom ('ADAM').

The TRADE experiment: shielding calculations for the building hosting the subcritical system

The TRADE project (TRiga Accelerator Driven Experiment), to be performed at the existing TRIGA reactor at ENEA Casaccia, has been proposed as a validation of the accelerator-driven system (ADS) concept. TRADE will be the first experiment in which the three main components of an ADS--the accelerator, spallation target and sub-critical blanket--are coupled at a power level sufficient to encounter reactivity feedback effects. As such, TRADE represents the necessary intermediate step in the development of hybrid transmutation systems, its expected outcomes being considered crucial--in terms of proof of stability of operation, dynamic behaviour and licensing issues--for the subsequent realisation of an ADS Transmutation Demonstrator. An essential role in the feasibility study of the experiment is played by radioprotection calculations. Such a system exhibits new characteristics with respect to a traditional reactor, owing to the presence of the proton accelerator. As beam losses always occur under normal operating conditions of an accelerator, shielding studies need to be performed not only around the reactor but also along the beam line from the accelerator to the spallation target. This paper illustrates a preliminary evaluation, using Monte Carlo methods, of the additional shielding to be located around the reactor structures, the beam transport line and the existing reactor building to allow access into the reactor hall and to restrict the doses outside to their legal limits.

An epithermal facility for treating brain gliomas at the TAPIRO reactor

An epithermal facility for treating patients with brain gliomas has been designed and is under construction at the fast reactor TAPIRO at ENEA Casaccia (Italy). The calculational design tools employed were the Monte Carlo codes MCNP/MCNPX together with the DSA in-house variance reduction patch. A realistic anthropomorphic phantom ("ADAM") was included to optimise dose profiles and in-phantom treatment-planning figures-of-merit. The adopted approach was to minimise the treatment time whilst maintaining a reasonable therapeutic ratio. It is shown that TAPIRO, in spite of its low power of 5 kW, is able to provide an epithermal beam that is of good quality and of sufficient intensity to allow a single beam patient irradiation, under conservative assumptions, of 50 min.