A few months into the COVID-19 pandemic, we now know that smell and taste loss are the predominant neurological manifestations of COVID-19. They appear in otherwise asymptomatic individuals, they characterize the acute phase of the disease and we are only starting to understand how smell and taste recover and in which time frame.
Decades of research on the neurobiology of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have generally overlooked the importance of co-occurring anxiety. This is surprising, as neurobiological accounts of ASD and anxiety disorders point to highly overlapping …
The Cinderella sense and what it can tell about how we understand and navigate the world.
We use our hands and arms countless times every day – skillfully, yet effortlessly. By using the upper limbs as a model system and combining behavioral, perceptual, and cognitive tasks I have been able to uncover how the senses influence motor control in both healthy participants and special populations (see my work on autism, multiple sclerosis, head trauma, and Parkinson’s Disease).
In a recent study, Wang et al. (J Neurophysiol 113: 1989–2001, 2015) used a precision grip force control task to unveil the contribution of feedforward and feedback mechanisms to sensorimotor dysfunction in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Impairment …
Imitation is a key socio-cognitive skill impaired in individuals with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC). It is known that the familiarity with an actor facilitates the appearance of imitative abilities. Here, we explore whether a highly familiar and …
The performance of patients with vascular parkinsonism (VPD) on a reach-to-grasp task was compared with that of patients affected by idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (IPD) and age-matched control subjects. The aim of the study was to determine how …
_Background_ Autism spectrum disorders comprise a range of neurodevelopmental pathologies characterized, among other symptoms, by impaired social interactions. Individuals with this diagnosis are reported to often identify people by repetitively …
Many reports in the literature indicate that idiopathic Parkinson's disease (IPD) patients have substantial olfactory dysfunctions even before motor symptoms become evident. It has not yet been clarified, however, if some form of implicit olfactory …