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Rolando Toro's Biodanza (SRT) is a therapeutic strategy that uses movement, music, and emotions to induce integrative living experiences. The present study aims to explore the efficacy of a three-month SRT intervention on motor, cognitive, and behavioral symptoms in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). This study employed a randomized between-group design. Twenty-eight non-demented PD patients were enrolled in this study. Out of these, fourteen patients were assigned to the active treatment group using the Biodanza SRT system and fourteen to the untreated control group. The study group attended 2 h SRT classes once a week, completing twelve lessons in twelve weeks. All patients underwent: (i) a neurological examination to measure the severity of motor symptoms, balance, mobility, and risk of falls, and (ii) a neuropsychological battery to assess cognitive status, apathy, depressive symptomatology, and perceived quality of life (QoL), at study entry (T0) and at twelve weeks (T1, end of dance training). At T1, we observed a significant improvement in motor (i.e., severity of motor symptoms and balance) and cognitive parameters (i.e., working memory and delayed verbal memory) in all treated patients compared with the controls. Furthermore, a significant improvement in the social support dimension was found in all treated patients compared to the controls. A trend toward increased apathy was found in untreated patients at T1. The three-month Biodanza intervention significantly ameliorated the motor parameters of PD patients, with a parallel improvement in cognitive and QoL status. Hence, Biodanza intervention can, in the short term, represent a useful personalized medical intervention for the management of Parkinson's disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To improve the performance of an athlete or to identify an incorrect postures that can cause injuries, it is essential to study the kinematics of the movements. Normally,are used approaches that "photograph"the execution of the gesture and look at the angular opening of the joint of interest, ignoring its dynamics. These types of analyses have major limitations. In fact, they do not allow to observe the execution of a movement on all three anatomical planes at the same time and also provide mostly qualitative information. In fact, in order to obtain three-dimensional data, it is necessary to have three cameras that record the same execution of the gesture from different points of view (one for each anatomical plane), or a single camera that at each gesture execution is positioned with respect to a different anatomical plane.Furthermore, analysing the movement without his dynamic information limits its study because all the information related to the chained execution of kinematic, kinetic and muscular activities are lost. To overcome these limits and to obtain more complete and accurate information, the aim of this study is to propose a new method for analysing the kinematics of a sports gesture, which takes into account the all range of motion of a joint. In fact, it calculates the angular excursions between identifying events of the gesture, thus evaluating the angular variation of the joint between peaks of flexion and extension. This approach is more informative, compared to the classic space-time analyses, and therefore can be considered useful in the study of the kinematics of a sports gesture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background A complex relationship exists between postural control and cognition in the elderly. Namely, neural mechanisms that are required for the regulation of posture have been variably associated with cognitive dysfunctions. Parkinson's disease ( PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease among the elderly, and it has been associated with both cognitive and postural abnormalities such as Pisa syndrome ( PS). Although its onset has been considered to be multifactorial, the pathophysiological mechanisms underpinning PS are still not fully explained. Until now, no study investigated the possible contribution of cognitive dysfunction to occurrence of PS in PD. Patients and methods Twenty PD patients with PS and 20 PD patients without PS were enrolled. All patients with PD underwent neuropsychological battery to assess behavioural disturbances, memory, attention, frontal/executive and visuospatial functions. Results The two groups did not differ on demographic features, age at PD onset and disease duration, whereas they significantly differed on UPDRS-Part III, and levodopa-equivalent daily dose ( LEDD). MANCOVA with above-mentioned clinical variable as covariates revealed significant differences on tasks tapping verbal long-term memory, and attentional and visuoperceptual abilities between groups. The binary logistic regression revealed that higher LEDD and lower performance on visuospatial task (Benton Judgment of Lines Orientation test) significantly predicted occurrence of PS. Conclusion Our results revealed a significant association of PS with altered attention and visuoperceptual functions in PD, suggesting that the occurrence of PS may be associated with alteration of both frontal-striatal systems and posterior cortical areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]