A new clinical tool for assessing numerical abilities in neurological diseases: numerical activities of daily living

Semenza, Carlo; Meneghello, Francesca; Arcara, Giorgio; Burgio, Francesca; Gnoato, Francesca; Facchini, Silvia; Benavides-Varela, Silvia; Clementi, Maurizio; Butterworth, Brian

doi:10.3389/fnagi.2014.00112

Cited by 44 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…A recent study of Benavides-Varela et al [21] further examined this issue by testing 30 right hemisphere patients on a comprehensive battery of numerical abilities (numerical activities of daily living, NADL, [22]), and a variety of neuropsychological tests. Patients performed below the cut-offs in number comprehension, transcoding and written operations ( particularly in subtraction and multiplication).…”

Section: (I) Groups Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reassessing lateralization in calculation

Semenza

Benavides-Varela

2018

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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The role of the left hemisphere in calculation has been unequivocally demonstrated in numerous studies in the last decades. The right hemisphere, on the other hand, had been traditionally considered subsidiary to the left hemisphere functions, although its role was less clearly defined. Recent clinical studies as well as investigations conducted with other methodologies (e.g. neuroimaging, transcranial magnetic stimulation and direct cortical electro-stimulation) leave several unanswered questions about the contribution of the right hemisphere in calculation. In particular, novel clinical studies show that right hemisphere acalculia encompasses a wide variety of symptoms, affecting even simple calculation, which cannot be easily attributed to spatial disorders or to a generic difficulty effect as previously believed. The studies reported here also show how the right hemisphere has its own specific role and that only a bilateral orchestration between the respective functions of each hemisphere guarantees, in fact, precise calculation. Vis-à-vis these data, the traditional wisdom that attributes to the right hemisphere a role mostly confined to spatial aspects of calculation needs to be significantly reshaped. The question for the future is whether it is possible to precisely define the specific contribution of the right hemisphere in several aspects of calculation while highlighting the nature of the cross-talk between the two hemispheres.This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'The origins of numerical abilities'.

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Section: (I) Groups Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reassessing lateralization in calculation

Semenza

Benavides-Varela

2018

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…The crucial distinction is that, although instruction in numeracy occurs in both types of activities, teachings are embedded in everyday tasks only in indirect numerical activities. In adults, recent studies have shown that formal mathematical performance and the use of numerical information in everyday activities might dissociate both at the behavioral (Semenza et al, 2014 ) and the neural level (Benavides-Varela et al, 2015 ). In children, to the best of our knowledge, only one study has been conducted so far showing how indirect experiences at home relate to children's quantitative skills.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical Activities and Information Learned at Home Link to the Exact Numeracy Skills in 5–6 Years-Old Children

et al. 2016

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It is currently accepted that certain activities within the family environment contribute to develop early numerical skills before schooling. However, it is unknown whether this early experience influences both the exact and the approximate representation of numbers, and if so, which is more important for numerical tasks. In the present study the mathematical performance of 110 children (mean age 5 years 11 months) was evaluated using a battery that included tests of approximate and exact numerical abilities, as well as everyday numerical problems. Moreover, children were assessed on their knowledge of number information learned at home. The parents of the participants provided information regarding daily activities of the children and socio-demographic characteristics of the family. The results showed that the amount of numerical information learned at home was a significant predictor of participants' performance on everyday numerical problems and exact number representations, even after taking account of age, memory span and socio-economic and educational status of the family. We also found that particular activities, such as board games, correlate with the children's counting skills, which are foundational for arithmetic. Crucially, tests relying on approximate representations were not predicted by the numerical knowledge acquired at home. The present research supports claims about the importance and nature of home experiences in the child's acquisition of mathematics.

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“…Whereas in AD both subitizing and counting were affected by the disease, in the prodromal stage only counting was found to decline, with preserved accuracy for small numerosities within the subitizing range. Evidence of impaired numerical abilities in prodromal patients has already been highlighted in studies [39] adopting a paper-and-pencil subtest of the Numerical Activities of Daily Living battery [40] which consisted in comparing the number of stimuli in two displays presented simultaneously. The fact that MCI patients showed a relatively preserved performance for small target quantities is in line with previous studies reporting that AD impairs enumeration abilities in the subitizing range only in a later stage of the disease [28,29].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Neural Dynamics of Multiple Object Processing in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s Disease: Future Early Diagnostic Biomarkers?

Bagattini

Mazza

Panizza

et al. 2017

JAD

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The aim of this study was to investigate the behavioral and electrophysiological dynamics of multiple object processing (MOP) in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD), and to test whether its neural signatures may represent reliable diagnostic biomarkers. Behavioral performance and event-related potentials [N2pc and contralateral delay activity (CDA)] were measured in AD, MCI, and healthy controls during a MOP task, which consisted in enumerating a variable number of targets presented among distractors. AD patients showed an overall decline in accuracy for both small and large target quantities, whereas in MCI patients, only enumeration of large quantities was impaired. N2pc, a neural marker of attentive individuation, was spared in both AD and MCI patients. In contrast, CDA, which indexes visual short term memory abilities, was altered in both groups of patients, with a non-linear pattern of amplitude modulation along the continuum of the disease: a reduction in AD and an increase in MCI. These results indicate that AD pathology shows a progressive decline in MOP, which is associated to the decay of visual short-term memory mechanisms. Crucially, CDA may be considered as a useful neural signature both to distinguish between healthy and pathological aging and to characterize the different stages along the AD continuum, possibly becoming a reliable candidate for an early diagnostic biomarker of AD pathology.

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A new clinical tool for assessing numerical abilities in neurological diseases: numerical activities of daily living

Cited by 44 publications

References 32 publications

Reassessing lateralization in calculation

Reassessing lateralization in calculation

Numerical Activities and Information Learned at Home Link to the Exact Numeracy Skills in 5–6 Years-Old Children

Neural Dynamics of Multiple Object Processing in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s Disease: Future Early Diagnostic Biomarkers?

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