Pediatric Awake Craniotomy for Brain Lesions.

Awake craniotomy is a special method to prevent motor deficits during the resection of lesions that are located in, or close to, functional areas. Although it is more commonly performed in adult patients, reports of pediatric cases undergoing awake craniotomy are limited in the literature. In our clinic, where we frequently use awake craniotomy in adult patients, we performed this method in 2 selected pediatric cases for lesion surgery. At an early age, these 2 cases diagnosed with epilepsy presented cerebral lesions, but since the lesions enclosed functional areas, surgical resection was not regarded as a treatment option at this time. In these 2 pediatric cases, we successfully completed lesion surgery with awake craniotomy. The method and the techniques employed during surgery are presented concomitant with other reports in the literature.

Stroke rehabilitation using noninvasive cortical stimulation: aphasia.

Poststroke aphasia results from the lesion of cortical areas involved in the motor production of speech (Broca's aphasia) or in the semantic aspects of language comprehension (Wernicke's aphasia). Such lesions produce an important reorganization of speech/language-specific brain networks due to an imbalance between cortical facilitation and inhibition. In fact, functional recovery is associated with changes in the excitability of the damaged neural structures and their connections. Two main mechanisms are involved in poststroke aphasia recovery: the recruitment of perilesional regions of the left hemisphere in case of small lesion and the acquisition of language processing ability in homotopic areas of the nondominant right hemisphere when left hemispheric language abilities are permanently lost. There is some evidence that noninvasive cortical stimulation, especially when combined with language therapy or other therapeutic approaches, can promote aphasia recovery. Cortical stimulation was mainly used to either increase perilesional excitability or reduce contralesional activity based on the concept of reciprocal inhibition and maladaptive plasticity. However, recent studies also showed some positive effects of the reinforcement of neural activities in the contralateral right hemisphere, based on the potential compensatory role of the nondominant hemisphere in stroke recovery.

Fluidez en la lectura y procesamiento morfolexical: estudios de desarrollo en Italia / Reading fluency and morpho-lexical processing: developmental studies in Italian

Se ha sugerido que, al aprender a leer, los lectores de ortografías transparentes se basan en unidades de lectura de reducido tamaño, como grafemas y fonemas. El presente artículo muestra que los lectores en desarrollo en Italia utilizan la lectura lexical y morfolexical desde los primeros grados elementales. Asimismo, se revisan varios estudios que documentan la presencia de efectos lexicales y morfolexicales en disléxicos evolutivos italianos. Se sostiene que, incluso en ortografías transparentes, las unidades de lectura de amplio tamaño, como morfemas y palabras completas, son necesarias para adquirir fluidez en la lectura

It has been suggested that readers of transparent orthographies rely on small-size reading units, such as graphemes and phonemes, in learning to read. The present paper shows that lexical and morpholexical reading is used by developing readers of Italian since the first elementary grades. Several studies that report the presence of lexical and morpholexical effects in Italian developmental dyslexics are also reviewed. It is argued that large-size reading units such as morphemes and whole-words are necessary, even in a transparent orthography, in order to attain reading fluency