Because of its higher diagnostic potential and additional functional information, exercise is the stress of choice when stress echocardiography is used to detect the presence of coronary artery disease. Alternative stresses can be used in patients with nondiagnostic exercise echocardiography. Transesophageal and dipyridamole echocardiography differ in feasibility and diagnostic reliability (higher sensitivity of transesophageal atrial pacing, higher specificity of dipyridamole). These characteristics must be considered when selecting procedures to be used as alternatives to exercise.

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Esthetic experience is the result of the coordination of different cognitive processes. It has been widely reported that top-down processes of orienting of attention interact with bottom-up perceptual facilitation occurring during esthetic experience of artworks. Here we use whole-part ambiguity as a tool to test the effect of global and local prime on esthetic appreciation of complex visual artworks. To this aim 139 healthy young individuals completed an esthetic judgment of Arcimboldo’s ambiguous artworks, which were preceded by a local or global prime. Their perceptual style was also assessed using a Navon task. We found that local prime significantly enhanced esthetic appreciation of ambiguous portraits. Also, we found that prime level interacted with individual’s perceptual style: participants showing local perceptual style liked less ambiguous portraits when they were preceded by global prime. Overall, the present findings shed some light on the processes involved in esthetic experience, pointing towards a pivotal role of re-direction of attention towards perceptual features of the artworks and its interaction with individual factors, such as perceptual style.

Two-dimensional echocardiography (2D echo) and Doppler were performed in a group of patients who had a high probability of having right ventricular (RV) dysplasia (left bundle branch block arrhythmias, no signs of cardiopulmonary diseases) and in a group of age-matched normals. 2D echo showed RV morphofunctional abnormalities (free wall and apical irregularities, wall motion abnormalities) in 25% of patients with suspected RV dysplasia but in none of the normals. Concordance with angiography was good (75% of cases with positive 2D echo study had a positive angiography, while only 33% of the patients with suspected RV dysplasia and negative 2D echo had a positive angiography). In patients with high probability of RV dysplasia (positive 2D echo and angiography) left ventricular filling was similar to that of normal subjects whereas RV filling was markedly rearranged, as demonstrated by the significant decrease in RV early-to-atrial peak flow velocities.

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