Showing papers by "Anna Berti published in 1988"

Technetium-99m HM-PAO-SPECT Study of Regional Cerebral Perfusion in Early Alzheimer's Disease

Abstract: Regional cerebral perfusion was evaluated by single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) using technetium-99m hexamethylpropyleneamine oxime ([99mTc]HM-PAO) in sixteen patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) in early clinical phase and in 16 healthy elderly controls. In all patients transmission computed tomography (TCT) and/or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) did not show focal brain abnormalities. Relative to normal subjects, AD patients showed significant reductions in cortical/cerebellar activity ratio: cortical perfusion was globally depressed with the largest reductions in frontal and posterior temporo-parietal cortices. Asymmetries of relative perfusion between cerebral hemispheres were also demonstrated when language was affected or visuospatial functions were unevenly impaired. In patients with early AD, SPECT provides functional information to be compared with clinical and psychometric data.

The Development of Political Understanding in Children Between 6-15 Years Old

Abstract: The origin of political understanding in Italian children from 6-iS years old was investigated by presenting them with a modified version of the story which Adelson and O'Neil (1966) used to study such reasoning in pre-adolescence and adolescence. Subjects (N = 80) were asked to state what several thousand people, who had arrived on a recently discovered island, would do in order to settle on it. Interviews were conducted focusing on the following points: collective needs, political organization, conflicts, and laws; for each topic, children's answers were ordered into developmental sequences. Young children were found to be unaware of conflicts, need for organization, and the function of laws. Eight to nine-year-old children, after some prompting, mentioned "chiefs"governing the island by means of orders and prohibitions, 10 to 11-year-olds mentioned collective needs and political or ganization without any prompting, and the 12 to 13-year-old group expressed the idea that it is the whole community that m...

Prerequisites for the concept of shop profit: Logic and memory

Abstract: Several studies have shown that it is very difficult for children younger than 10 years old to understand the notion of shopkeepers' profits. In order to investigate the relationship between the development of this notion and the development of logico-arithmetical abilities and of STM span, 59 children (about 20 at each school grade from second through fourth) were administered the following tasks: (1) interview on buying and selling and shopkeepers' profits; (2) a task consisting of comparing expenses and income of a shopkeeper selling his goods at cost; (3) digit span forwards and backwards, and Case's (1985) counting span test. There was a strong association between the level of a child's conceptions of how shopkeepers make their living, and the procedures he or she adopted in comparing costs and income. Only low associations were found between the scores of children's performances on the memory tests and the levels they reached in the other two tasks.

hemineglect and mental representation

Abstract: Neuropsychological findings show that a spatially circumscribed brain lesion may not only involve a spatially circumscribed sensory loss, revealing the analog structure of relatively peripheral sensory apparata; it may also involve a circumscribed scotoma in representational space. From which we may infer that mechanisms subserving representational activity which function themselves as analogs, are present in the brain.