A study of brain functional connectivity and cognitive processes in long COVID-19 patients

In this work, a prospective study conducted at the IRCCS Istituto delle Scienze Neurologiche di Bologna is presented. The aim was to investigate the brain functional connectivity of a cohort of patients (N=23) suffering from persistent olfactory dysfunction after SARS-CoV-2 infection (Post-COVID-19 syndrome), as compared to a matching group of healthy controls (N=26). In particular, starting from individual resting state functional-MRI data, different analytical approaches were adopted in order to find potential alterations in the connectivity patterns of patients’ brains. Analyses were conducted both at a whole-brain level and with a special focus on brain regions involved in the processing of olfactory stimuli (Olfactory Network). Statistical correlations between functional connectivity alterations and the results of olfactory and neuropsychological tests were investigated, to explore the associations with cognitive processes. The three approaches implemented for the analysis were the seed-based correlation analysis, the group-level Independent Component analysis and a graph-theoretical analysis of brain connectivity. Due to the relative novelty of such approaches, many implementation details and methodologies are not standardized yet and represent active research fields. Seed-based and group-ICA analyses’ results showed no statistically significant differences between groups, while relevant alterations emerged from those of the graph-based analysis. In particular, patients’ olfactory sub-graph appeared to have a less pronounced modular structure compared to the control group; locally, a hyper-connectivity of the right thalamus was observed in patients, with significant involvement of the right insula and hippocampus. Results of an exploratory correlation analysis showed a positive correlation between the graphs global modularity and the scores obtained in olfactory tests and negative correlations between the thalamus hyper-connectivity and memory tests scores.

I fumetti e la glottodidattica: Proposte di insegnamento per l'italiano ls.

This study explores comics as an educational tool in teaching Italian as a foreign language, and shows that, in this perspective, the potential of this medium goes beyond the idea that pictures can help to understand words. Comics has to be understood as a unified text, where it is precisely the combination of pictures and words that promotes the development of the students' linguistic and communicative competences. The general educational potential of comics is analyzed in Chapter 1, with a focus on the notions of closure, cartooning and here and now, which are in harmony with the application of ludic teaching theories; an analysis then follows on the features of comics that can be exploited in the field of language teaching; finally a description is provided of the linguistic competences whose development can be favored by comics. Emphasis was placed only on those competences that are most affected by the context of use, i.e, lexical, textual, pragmatic and (inter-)cultural competences. In Chapter 2, three Italian comic books are analyzed with an eye to their use as teaching material in three ideally homogeneous classes, respectively belonging to the Common European Framework of Reference for Language A2, B2 and C2 levels. The cognitive processes carried out by students to achieve a global understanding of each book are postulated both for picture-to-picure and picture-to-word relations. After an overview of the main planning phases of a language-learning pathway, the educational approach adopted in Chapter 3 places the students at the core of the learning process, and emphasizes the need for a cooperative and interactional relationship between learners and teachers. In Chapter 4, three hypothetical learning pathways are described. Their main goal is to develop the linguistic and communicative competences of the students, who would then be able to understand and produce text not merely as learners, but rather as readers, hence users of an Italian cultural product.

Analysis of human posterior EEG alpha frequency as a function of implicit learning of probabilistic lateralized stimuli in a visual detection task

Alpha oscillatory activity has long been associated with perceptual and cognitive processes related to attention control. The aim of this study is to explore the task-dependent role of alpha frequency in a lateralized visuo-spatial detection task. Specifically, the thesis focuses on consolidating the scientific literature's knowledge about the role of alpha frequency in perceptual accuracy, and deepening the understanding of what determines trial-by-trial fluctuations of alpha parameters and how these fluctuations influence overall task performance. The hypotheses, confirmed empirically, were that different implicit strategies are put in place based on the task context, in order to maximize performance with optimal resource distribution (namely alpha frequency, associated positively with performance): “Lateralization” of the attentive resources towards one hemifield should be associated with higher alpha frequency difference between contralateral and ipsilateral hemisphere; “Distribution” of the attentive resources across hemifields should be associated with lower alpha frequency difference between hemispheres; These strategies, used by the participants according to their brain capabilities, have proven themselves adaptive or maladaptive depending on the different tasks to which they have been set: "Distribution" of the attentive resources seemed to be the best strategy when the distribution probability between hemifields was balanced: i.e. the neutral condition task. "Lateralization" of the attentive resources seemed to be more effective when the distribution probability between hemifields was biased towards one hemifield: i.e., the biased condition task.