2019
Neuroimage. 2019 Nov 15;202:116092. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.116092
A putative human homologue of the macaque area PEc
The cortical area PEc is anatomically and functionally well-defined in macaque, but it is unknown whether it has a counterpart in human. Since we know that macaque PEc, but not…
Sci Rep. 2019 Mar 18;9(1):4691. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-40447-3
An fMRI study on the neural correlates of social conformity to a sexual minority
Social conformity refers to the tendency to align one's own behaviors, beliefs and values to those of others. Little is known about social influence coming from a minority group. To…
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019 Jul 9;116(28):13897-13902. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1821032116
An interoceptive illusion of effort induced by false heart-rate feedback
Interoception, or the sense of the internal state of the body, is key to the adaptive regulation of our physiological needs. Recent theories contextualize interception within a predictive coding framework,…
PLoS One. 2019 Mar 15;14(3):e0213838. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0213838
Anticipation of wheelchair and rollerblade actions in spinal cord injured people, rollerbladers, and physiotherapists
Embodied Cognition Theories (ECT) postulate that higher-order cognition is heavily influenced by sensorimotor signals. We explored the active role of somatosensory afferents and motor efferents in modulating the perception of…
R Soc Open Sci. 2019 Sep 25;6(9):182023. doi: 10.1098/rsos.182023
Bound to the group and blinded by the leader: ideological leader-follower dynamics in a trust economic game
Understanding the dynamics of trustworthiness in ideological contexts could influence human societies, affect electoral campaigns and ultimately impact democracy. We tested trust behaviour towards political leaders in a sample of…
J Clin Med. 2019 Dec 30;9(1):98. doi: 10.3390/jcm9010098
Characterizing Body Image Distortion and Bodily Self-Plasticity in Anorexia Nervosa via Visuo-Tactile Stimulation in Virtual Reality
We combined virtual reality and multisensory bodily illusion with the aim to characterize and reduce the perceptual (body overestimation) and the cognitive-emotional (body dissatisfaction) components of body image distortion (BID)…
Exp Brain Res. 2019 Jan;237(1):211-222. doi: 10.1007/s00221-018-5416-y
Cognitive load and emotional processing in psoriasis: a thermal imaging study
Psoriasis is a chronic dermatologic disease which is frequently associated with psychological distress. Although studies suggest a relationship between this condition and difficulties in emotion regulation, behavioral and physiological evidence…
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2019 Aug;199:102881. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2019.102881
Contextual and social variables modulate aesthetic appreciation of bodily and abstract art stimuli
Despite the increasing interest in the plasticity of aesthetic appreciation, we know comparatively little about the role of individuals' cultural (e.g. the appreciators' expertise) and of social emotional-cognitive (e.g. the…
Hum Brain Mapp. 2019 Aug 1;40(11):3174-3191. doi: 10.1002/hbm.24589
Egomotion-related visual areas respond to active leg movements
Monkey neurophysiology and human neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that passive viewing of optic flow stimuli activates a cortical network of temporal, parietal, insular, and cingulate visual motion regions. Here, we…
Exp Brain Res. 2019 Oct;237(10):2621-2632. doi: 10.1007/s00221-019-05618-8
Embodying their own wheelchair modifies extrapersonal space perception in people with spinal cord injury
Despite the many links between body representation, acting and perceiving the environment, no research has to date explored whether specific tool embodiment in conditions of sensorimotor deprivation influences extrapersonal space…
Eur J Neurosci. 2019 Oct 19. doi: 10.1111/ejn.14601
Hand blink reflex in virtual reality: The role of vision and proprioception in modulating defensive responses
Our research focused on the role of vision and proprioception in modulating a defensive reflex (hand blink reflex, HBR) whose magnitude is enhanced when the threatened hand is inside the…
Front Hum Neurosci. 2019 Sep 6;13:303. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2019.00303
How neurophysiological measures can be used to enhance the evaluation of remote tower solutions
New solutions in operational environments are often, among objective measurements, evaluated by using subjective assessment and judgment from experts. Anyhow, it has been demonstrated that subjective measures suffer from poor…
Cereb Cortex. 2019 Dec 17;29(12):5302-5314. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhz205
How task interactivity shapes action observation
Action observation triggers imitation, a powerful mechanism permitting interpersonal coordination. Coordination, however, also occurs when the partners' actions are nonimitative and physically incongruent. One influential theory postulates that this is…
Conscious Cogn. 2019 Jan;67:86-97. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2018.11.010
Influence of cognitive stance and physical perspective on subjective and autonomic reactivity to observed pain and pleasure: An immersive virtual reality study
Observing others' pain may induce a reaction called personal distress that may be influenced by top-down (imagine self or other in pain, i.e., self- vs other-oriented stance) and bottom-up (physical…
Cereb Cortex. 2019 Oct 30. pii: bhz195. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhz195
Inhibitory Theta Burst Stimulation Highlights the Role of Left aIPS and Right TPJ during Complementary and Imitative Human-Avatar Interactions in Cooperative and Competitive Scenarios
Competitive and cooperative interactions are based on anticipation or synchronization with the partner's actions. Both forms of interaction may either require performing imitative or complementary movements with respect to those…
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2019 May;196:42-50. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2019.04.003
Interactor's body shape does not affect visuo-motor interference effects during motor coordination
The biological-tuning of the Action Observation Network is highly debated. A current open question relates to whether the morphological appearance (body shape) and/or the biological motion of the observed agent…
HUCAPP 2019-Part of the 14th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications, VISIGRAPP 2019 (pp. 50-61). SciTePress. doi: 10.5220/0007400300500061
Investigating Multimodal Augmentations Contribution to Remote Control Tower Contexts for Air Traffic Management
The present study aims at investigating the contribution of multimodal modalities to the context of Remote Towers. Interactive spatial sound and vibrotactile feedback were used to design 4 different types…
Front Psychol. 2019 Jan 24. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00026
Left threatened by right: Political intergroup bias in the contemporary Italian context
Using different evaluation targets (i.e., politicians’ pictures, ideological words, items referring to features attributed to political ingroup/outgroup) we characterized the intergroup bias among political groups in the Italian context (Study…
Sci Rep. 2019 Feb 8;9(1):1682. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-38213-y
Malleability of the self: electrophysiological correlates of the enfacement illusion
Self-face representation is fundamentally important for self-identity and self-consciousness. Given its role in preserving identity over time, self-face processing is considered as a robust and stable process. Yet, recent studies…
Body Image. 2019 Sep;30:75-80. doi: 10.1016/j.bodyim.2019.05.005
Motherhood status moderates the relationship between perfectionistic self-presentation and breast size dissatisfaction
Perfectionistic self-presentation refers to a desire to create an image of flawlessness in the eyes of the others and has been associated with more negative body image. We extended previous…
Phys Life Rev. 2019 Jan 31. doi: 10.1016/j.plrev.2019.01.022 [Epub ahead of print]
Neural correlates of action monitoring and mutual adaptation during interpersonal motor coordination
Comment on The body talks: Sensorimotor communication and its brain and kinematic signatures by G. Pezzulo et al.
Exp Brain Res. 2019 Dec;237(12):3363-3373. doi: 10.1007/s00221-019-05677-x
Predicting the fate of basketball throws: an EEG study on expert action prediction in wheelchair basketball players
The ability to anticipate and detect changes in human movement helps people to modify their behaviors in ever changing environments. Studies indicate that expertise modulates observation of domain-specific actions in…
J Neurophysiol. 2019 Nov 13. doi: 10.1152/jn.00267.2019
Role of the occipito-temporal Theta rhythm in hand visual identification
Neuroimaging and EEG studies have shown that passive observation of the full body and of specific body parts is associated with: 1) activity of an occipito-temporal region named the Extrastriate…
J Neurophysiol. 2019 Dec 4. doi: 10.1152/jn.00617.2019
The 'embreathment' illusion highlights the role of breathing in corporeal awareness
Recent theories posit that physiological signals contribute to corporeal awareness - the basic feeling that one has a body (body ownership) which acts according to one's will (body agency) and…
Cortex. 2019 Oct 25;123:113-123. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2019.10.001
The enfacement illusion boosts facial mimicry
Facial mimicry, the automatic imitation of another person's emotion, is a mechanism underlying emotion recognition and emotional contagion, a phylogenetically conserved form of empathy that precedes later developing empathic skills.…
Sci Rep. 2019 Jul 8;9(1):9884. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-46384-5
Walking-related locomotion is facilitated by the perception of distant targets in the extrapersonal space
The Gibsonian notion of affordance has been massively employed in cognitive sciences to characterize the tight interdependence between hand-related actions, manipulable objects and peripersonal space. A behavioural facilitation effect, indeed,…
Annals of Operations Research. doi: 10.1007/s10479-019-03272-5
What if versus probabilistic scenarios: a neuroscientific analysis
Nowadays financial products are extremely complex and the decision to choose among them could represent a stressful event for individuals. Information related to the risk/return profile of an investment instrument…
