Ricerc@Sapienza

Discussion regarding the timing of cholecystectomy for acute cholecystitis is still ongoing. This study evaluates the outcomes of patients who underwent surgery for acute cholecystitis after emergency admission at St. Orsola University Hospital of Bologna and Umberto I Hospital La Sapienza University of Rome.
PATIENTS AND METHODS:

BACKGROUND:

Laparoscopy is the gold-standard for cholecystectomy after acute cholecystitis, but the issue is controversial in obese subjects.
PATIENTS AND METHODS:

We reviewed 464 patients operated for acute cholecystitis (59 open and 405 laparoscopic) over the last five years at St Orsola University Hospital-Bologna and Umberto I University Hospital-Rome, comparing retrospectively: 1) BMI 30 (67 patients) and moreover 2) BMI 25 (257 patients).
RESULTS:

A dynamic interplay exists between Internally-Based (IBT) and Externally-Cued (ECT) time processing. While IBT processes support the self-generation of context-independent temporal representations, ECT mechanisms allow constructing temporal representations primarily derived from the structure of the sensory environment. We performed an activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis on 177 fMRI experiments, from 79 articles, to identify brain areas involved in timing; two individual ALEs tested the hypothesis of a neural segregation between IBT and ECT.

Environmental navigation entails the constant integration of information across space and time; however, the relation between spatial and temporal features involved in wayfinding has not been fully established yet. Here we investigated how two key spatio-temporal aspects of navigation – namely the processing of information concerning the order of landmarks along a route, and the duration of tracts connecting the same landmarks – relate to different types of navigational learning.

Field dependence–independence (FDI) is a stable dimension of individual functioning, transversal to different cognitive domains. While the role of some individual variables in time perception has received considerable attention, it is not clear whether and how FDI influences timing abilities. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that FDI differently affects timing performance depending on whether the task requires cognitive restructuring. Participants were assessed for FDI using the embedded figures test (EFT).

The estimation of space and time can interfere with each other, and neuroimaging studies have shown overlapping activation in the parietal and prefrontal cortical areas. We used duration and distance discrimination tasks to determine whether space and time share resources in prefrontal cortex (PF) neurons. Monkeys were required to report which of two stimuli, a red circle or blue square, presented sequentially, were longer and farther, respectively, in the duration and distance tasks.