Children with selective mutism (SM) fail to speak in specific public situations (e.g., school), despite speaking normally in other situations (e.g., at home). The current study explored the phenomenon of SM in a sample of 57 non-clinical children aged 3-6 years. Children performed two speech tasks to assess their absolute amount of spoken words, while their parents completed questionnaires for ...

Heroin-associated spongiform leukoencephalopathy is a rare, and sometimes fatal, condition usually caused by vapor inhalation of heroin. The authors report a 41-year-old man who was diagnosed with delayed spongiform leukoencephalopathy three weeks after injecting heroin intravenously. He had been admitted to another hospital due to acute heroin overdose, which had occurred four hours after intr...

Some vegetative state patients show fMRI responses similar to those of healthy controls when instructed to perform mental imagery tasks. Many authors have argued that this provides evidence that such patients are in fact conscious, as response to commands requires intentional agency. I argue for an alternative reading, on which responsive patients have a deficit similar to that seen in severe f...

kinetic mustism is a dramatic deficit in spontaneous initiation of voluntary motor and speech acts, usually secondary to bilateral lesions of the anterior cingulate cortices and supplementary motor areas [Principles of Neurology, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1989]. Given the obvious limitations of traditional neuropsychological testing in this clinical context, the use of neurophysiological tools suc...

The aim of the study was to explore the association between selective mutism (SM) and attention. In SM social anxiety seems central but language impairment and motor problems are also reported. Attention problems have been described in parental behavioral ratings, while neuropsychological studies are lacking. A neuropsychological test (the Trail Making Test) and parental ratings of attention- a...

Disorders of diminished motivation occur frequently in individuals with traumatic brain injury. Motivation is an ever-present, essential determinant of behavior and adaptation. The major syndromes of diminished motivation are apathy, abulia, and akinetic mutism. Depending on their etiology, disorders of diminished motivation may be a primary clinical disturbance, a symptom of another disorder, ...

Neurologic presentations in children with COVID-19 infection are rare. Reports of pediatric multi-inflammatory syndrome have dominated the literature, although cases pure neurologic manifestations been described.1–3 Akinetic mutism has previously reported steroid-responsive COVID-19-related encephalitis.4 We present case a 16-year-old girl who presented visual hallucinations and ritualistic beh...