The nal publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-013-0153-y Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Running title: Ambiguous emotions recognition in TLE.Ambiguous emotion recognition in temporal lobe epilepsy: the role of expression intensity. AbstractThe lateralization of emotion processing is currently debated and may be further explored by examining facial expression recognition (FER) impairments in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE).Furthermore, in individuals with TLE there is debate whether FER deficits are more pronounced in right than left. To shed light on this issue, individuals with TLE were tested with a FER task designed to be more sensitive than those classically used. Twenty-five right and thirty-two left TLE patients, candidates for surgery, and controls underwent a FER task composed of stimulishown not only at full blown intensities (100%) but also morphed to display lower intensity levels (35%, 50%, 75%). Results show that, compared to controls, right TLE patients show deficits in the recognition of all emotional categories. Furthermore, when considering valence, right TLE patients are impaired only in negative emotions recognition, but no deficits for positive emotions have been highlighted in left TLE patients. Finally, only right TLE patients impairment was found to be related to the age of epilepsy onset. Our work demonstrates that FER deficits in TLE span across multiple emotional categories and manifest depending on the laterality of the epileptic focus. Taken together our findings provide strongest evidence for the Right Hemisphere Model, but also partial support for Valence Model. We suggest that actual models are not exhaustive to explain emotional processing cerebral control and that further multistep models should be developed.

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In 2000 Baddeley proposed the existence of a new component of working memory, the episodic buffer, which should contribute to the on-line maintenance of integrated memory traces. The author assumed that this component should be critical for immediate recall of a short story that exceeds the capacity of the phonological store. Accordingly, patients with Alzheimer’s dementia (AD) should suffer of a deficit of the episodic buffer when immediate recall of a short story is impossible. On the other hand, the episodic buffer should be somewhat preserved in such patients when some IR can occur (Baddeley and Wilson, 2002). We adopted this logic for a voxel-based morphometry study. We compared the distribution of grey-matter density of two such groups of AD patients with a group of age-matched controls. We found that both AD groups had a significant atrophy of the left mid-hippocampus; on the other hand, the anterior part of the hippocampus was significantly more atrophic in patients who were also impaired on the immediate prose recall task. Six out of ten patients with no immediate recall were spared at “central executive” tasks. Taken together our findings suggest that the left anterior hippocampus contributes to the episodic buffer of the revised working memory model. We also suggest that the episodic buffer is somewhat independent from the central executive component of working memory.

Friction and wear are responsible for around 23% of the energy consumption in transportation, manufacturing, power generation, and residential sectors. Employed components are exposed to a wide range of operational conditions, therefore a suitable material design is fundamental to decreasing tribological issues, energy consumption, costs, and environmental impact. This study aims to analyze the effect of different solid lubricants on the suitability of copper matrix composites (CuMCs) as a potential solution to reduce the depletion of sliding electrical contacts working under extreme conditions. CuMCs samples are produced by cold-pressing and sintering to merge a high electrical conductivity with the lubricant effect supplied by different species, namely tungsten disulfide micro-powder (WS2), inorganic fullerene-like (IF) tungsten disulfide nanoparticles, and graphene nanoplatelets (GNP). The crystalline structure of the pristine and composite materials is characterized via XRD. The electrical tests show a small decrease of conductivity compared to pure copper, due to the insulating effect of WS2; however, the measured values are still adequate for conduction purposes. Micro-scratch and wear tests highlight the positive effect of the combination of WS2 structures and GNP. The friction coefficient reduction leads to the possibility of extending the lifetime of the components.

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