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Our pilot data seem to suggest that active music therapy sessions could be of aid in improving autistic symptoms, as well as personal musical skills in young adults with severe autism.

The Sunnybrook Facial Grading System (SFGS) is one of the most employed scales to assess the severity of facial palsy. The aim of our study was to produce an Italian version of the SFGS and of its explanatory criteria, and to test their measurement properties when employed by Italian physicians. A multidisciplinary committee translated and adapted the scale and its criteria into Italian. Six native Italian physicians, four of whom experienced in facial palsy and two novices, rated independently 29 videos of facial palsy patients twice. Internal consistency, agreement and repeatability were evaluated. The Italian version of the SFGS showed a high degree of internal consistency with a Cronbach's α of 0.91. The test-retest reliability was high for both inter-rater and intra-rater measures with an ICC of 0.96 and 0.98, respectively. The scores given by the novice physicians were comparable with the scores given by the expert physicians. Our study suggests that the Italian version of the SFGS has excellent internal consistency and reproducibility, comparable to the original scale. Our study confirms in an independent case record the high measurement properties of SFGS and provides the first validated Italian scale for the assessment of facial palsy.

disability and they hypothesized that personality traits could modulate this relation, but no study up has investigated this issue. The aim of this study was to determine and quantify how personality traits modulate the well-known relation between neuromuscular impairment and perception of physical and social disability in patients with facial palsy. Methods Subjects We included in the study patients with peripheral facial paralysis of different etiologies evaluated between January 2010 and March 2013 in our outpatient clinic of the Rehabilitation Unit, IRCCS Policlinico S. Matteo Foundation, Pavia, Italy. Patients unable to answer the questions for linguistic problems or cognitive impairment were excluded. Sixty-one patients agreed to take part to the study and gave their written informed consent. The study protocol was approved by Ethics Committee of our Institution. Patients had a mean age of 49.7 years, SD 13.92, 41 (67,2%) were females, 34 (55.7%) had right side affected.

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