Camillo Porcaro

University of Padua | UNIPD · Department of Neurosciences

Introduction: We investigated whether interictal thalamic dysfunction in migraine without aura (MO) patients is a primary determinant or the expression of its functional disconnection from proximal or distal areas along the somatosensory pathway. Methods: Twenty MO patients and twenty healthy volunteers (HVs) underwent an electroencephalographic...

Brain activity is complex; a reflection of its structural and functional organization. Among other measures of complexity, the fractal dimension is emerging as being sensitive to neuronal damage secondary to neurological and psychiatric diseases. Here, we calculated Higuchi's fractal dimension (HFD) in resting-state eyes-closed electroencephalograp...

A number of electroencephalography (EEG) studies have investigated the time course of brain activation during overt word production. The interpretation of their results is complicated by the fact that articulatory movements may mask the cognitive components of interest. The first aim of the present study was to investigate when speech artifacts occ...

EEG quality is a crucial issue when acquiring combined EEG-fMRI data, particularly when the focus is on using single trial (ST) variability to integrate the data sets. The most common method for improving EEG data quality following removal of gross MRI artefacts is independent component analysis (ICA), a completely blind source separation technique...

Neuroimaging, investigating how specific brain sources play a particular role in a definite cognitive or sensorimotor process, can be achieved from non-invasive electrophysiological (EEG, EMG, MEG) and multimodal (concurrent EEG-fMRI) recordings. However, especially for the non-invasive electrophysiological techniques, the signals measured at the s...

Objective. This study aims to address the challenges associated with data-driven electroencephalographic (EEG) data analysis by introducing a standardised library called BIDSAlign. This library efficiently processes and merges heterogeneous EEG datasets from different sources into a common standard template. The goal of this work is to create an en...

Climbing gyms aim to continuously improve their offerings and make the best use of their infrastructure to provide a unique experience for their clients, the climbers. One approach to achieve this goal is to track and analyze climbing sessions from the beginning of the ascent until the climber’s descent. Detecting the climber’s descent is crucial b...

Objectives An important challenge in epilepsy is to define biomarkers of response to treatment. Many electroencephalography (EEG) methods and indices have been developed mainly using linear methods, e.g., spectral power and individual alpha frequency peak (IAF). However, brain activity is complex and non-linear, hence there is a need to explore EEG...

Neurodegenerative diseases are increasing in the general population and have been defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Alzheimer's Disease International (ADI) as a global public health priority. Data from the WHO Global Action Plan 2017-2025 indicates that in 2015, neurodegeneration-related diseases affected 47 million people worldwid...

One of the challenges for climbing gyms is to find out popular routes for the climbers to improve their services and optimally use their infrastructure. This problem must be addressed preserving both the privacy and convenience of the climbers and the costs of the gyms. To this aim, a hardware prototype is developed to collect data using accelerome...

Introduction The formation and functioning of neural networks hinge critically on the balance between structurally homologous areas in the hemispheres. This balance, reflecting their physiological relationship, is fundamental for learning processes. In our study, we explore this functional homology in the resting state, employing a complexity measu...

Over the past 40 years, from its classical application in the characterization of geometrical objects, fractal analysis has been progressively applied to study time series in several different disciplines. In neuroscience, starting from identifying the fractal properties of neuronal and brain architecture, attention has shifted to evaluating brain...

Among the significant advances in the understanding of the organization of the neuronal networks that coordinate the body and brain, their complex nature is increasingly important, resulting from the interaction between the very large number of constituents strongly organized hierarchically and at the same time with “self-emerging.” This awareness...

Background Higuchi's fractal dimension (FD) captures brain dynamics complexity and may be a promising method to analyze resting‐state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data and detect the neuronal interaction complexity underlying Parkinson's disease (PD) cognitive decline. Objectives The aim was to compare FD with a more established in...

The proposed approach is a "human-in-the-loop" system that uses a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) to capture cognitive responses from the user's brain. EEG signals, specifically Error-related Potentials (ErrP), are classified in real-time to trigger event signals. These signals are then utilized by a Robot Operating System (ROS) package to generate...

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has emerged as an invasive neuromodulation technique for the treatment of several neurological disorders, but the mechanisms underlying its effects remain partially elusive. In this context, the application of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) in patients treated with DBS represents an intriguing approach to inves...

Stroke is a major cause of disability because of its motor and cognitive sequelae even when the acute phase of stabilization of vital parameters is overcome. The most important improvements occur in the first 8–12 weeks after stroke, indicating that it is crucial to improve our understanding of the dynamics of phenomena occurring in this time windo...

Human-in-the-loop approaches can greatly enhance the human–robot interaction by making the user an active part of the control loop, who can provide a feedback to the robot in order to augment its capabilities. Such feedback becomes even more important in all those situations where safety is of utmost concern, such as in assistive robotics. This stu...

The role of the hypothalamus and the limbic system at the onset of a migraine attack has recently received significant interest. We analyzed diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) parameters of the entire hypothalamus and its subregions in 15 patients during a spontaneous migraine attack and in 20 control subjects. We also estimated the non-linear measure...

An accurate diagnosis of the disorder of consciousness (DOC) is essential for generating tailored treatment programs. Accurately diagnosing patients with a vegetative state (VS) and patients in a minimally conscious state (MCS), however, might be very complicated, reaching a misdiagnosis of approximately 40% if clinical scales are not carefully adm...

Gait is a common but rather complex activity that supports mobility in daily life. It requires indeed sophisticated coordination of lower and upper limbs, controlled by the nervous system. The relationship between limb kinematics and muscular activity with neural activity, referred to as neurokinematic and neuromuscular connectivity (NKC/NMC) respe...

Over the last decades, the exuberant development of next-generation sequencing has revolutionized gene discovery. These technologies have boosted the mapping of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across the human genome, providing a complex universe of heterogeneity characterizing individuals worldwide. Fractal dimension (FD) measures the degre...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia that involves a progressive and irrevocable decline in cognitive abilities and social behavior, thus annihilating the patient’s autonomy. The theoretical assumption that disease-modifying drugs are most effective in the early stages hopefully in the prodromal stage called mild cognitive...

Deductive and inductive reasoning are fundamental logical processes critical to the solution of common practical problems in daily life. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the brain networks involved in Contradictory, Deductive, and Inductive judgments. The experimental paradigm was based on categorical propositions...

Physiological movement develops on the basis of sensorimotor integration through synchronisation between the copy of signals sent to the effector muscles and the incoming flow of sensory information. Our aim is to study corticomuscular coherence (CMC), the most widely used measure of synchronization between brain and muscle electrical activities, i...

Background Merging of sensory information is a crucial process for adapting the behaviour to the environment in all species. It is not known if this multisensory integration might be dysfunctioning interictally in migraine without aura, where sensory stimuli of various modalities are processed abnormally when delivered separately. To investigate th...

When treating patients with a disorder of consciousness (DOC), it is essential to obtain an accurate diagnosis as soon as possible to generate individualized treatment programs. However, accurately diagnosing patients with DOCs is challenging and prone to errors when differentiating patients in a Vegetative State/Unresponsive Wakefulness Syndrome (...

When treating patients with a disorder of consciousness (DOC), it is essential to obtain an accurate diagnosis as soon as possible to generate individualized treatment programs. However, accurately diagnosing patients with DOCs is challenging and prone to errors when differentiating patients in a Vegetative State/Unresponsive Wakefulness Syndrome (...

The ability to control external devices through thought is increasingly becoming a reality. Human beings can use the electrical signals of their brain to interact or change the surrounding environment and more. The development of this technology called brain-computer interface (BCI) will increasingly allow people with motor disabilities to communic...

Objective: Brain-computer interface (BCI) aims to establish communication paths between the brain processes and external devices. Different methods have been used to extract human intentions from electroencephalography (EEG) recordings. Those based on motor imagery (MI) seem to have a great potential for future applications. These approaches rely o...

Multidomain comfort theories have been demonstrated to interpret human thermal comfort in buildings by employing human-centered physiological measurements coupled with environmental sensing techniques. Thermal comfort has been correlated with brain activity through electroencephalographic (EEG) measurements. However, the application of low-cost wea...

The hypothalamus has been attributed an important role during the premonitory phase of a migraine attack. Less is known about the role played by the hypothalamus in the interictal period and its relationship with the putative neurocognitive networks previously identified in the pathophysiology of migraine. Our aim was to test whether the hypothalam...

Disorders of Consciousness (DOC) are a spectrum of pathologies affecting one’s ability to interact with the external world. Two possible conditions of patients with DOC are Unresponsive Wakefulness Syndrome/Vegetative State (UWS/VS) and Minimally Conscious State (MCS). Analysis of spontaneous EEG activity and the Heart Rate Variability (HRV) are ef...

Assistive robots operate in complex environments and in presence of human beings, but the interaction between them can be affected by several factors, which may lead to undesired outcomes: wrong sensor readings, unexpected environmental conditions, or algorithmic errors represent just a few examples of the possible scenarios. When the safety of the...

Fatigue is a hidden symptom of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) disease that nevertheless impacts severely on patients’ everyday life. Evidence indicates the involvement of the sensorimotor network and its inter-nodes communication at the basis of this symptom. Two randomized controlled trials (RCTs) showed that the personalized neuromodulation called Fatig...

Here we reviewed the last evidence on the application of electroencephalography (EEG) as a non-invasive and portable neuroimaging method useful to extract hallmarks of neuroplasticity induced by virtual reality (VR) rehabilitation approaches in stroke patients. In the neurorehabilitation context, VR training has been used extensively to hamper the...

Background: Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) is becoming more reliable, thanks to the advantages of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Recently, hybrid Deep Learning (hDL), which combines different DL algorithms, has gained momentum over the past five years. In this work, we proposed a review on hDL-based BCI starting from the seminal studies in 2015. O...

It is widely recognized that continuous sensory feedback plays a crucial role in accurate motor control in everyday life. Feedback information is used to adapt force output and to correct errors. While primary motor cortex contralateral to the movement (cM1) plays a dominant role in this control, converging evidence supports the idea that ipsilater...

The scan of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) can provide three views for brain activities. These views are basically the X_axis (sagittal Plane), Y_axis (coronal plane) and Z_axis (axial plane). To the best of the obtained knowledge, studying brain activities for all of these views has not been considered before together with Deep Learn...

The brain is the main controller of the vital processes and functional studies. The Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) can provide useful indications to explain the functional activities of brain. Especially with utilizing the three image views of X_axis (Sagittal Plane) split the brain into left and right segment, Y_axis (Coronal plane)...

Background: Chronic migraine (CM) can be associated with aberrant long-range connectivity of MRI-derived resting-state networks (RSNs). Here, we investigated how the fractal dimension (FD) of blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) activity may be used to estimate the complexity of RSNs, reflecting flexibility and/or efficiency in information pro...

Functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have documented the resting human brain to be functionally organized in multiple large‐scale networks, called resting‐state networks (RSNs). Other brain imaging techniques, such as electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG), have been used for investigating the electrophysiological ba...

Intrinsic brain activity is organized into large-scale networks displaying specific structural-functional architecture, known as resting-state networks (RSNs). RSNs reflect complex neurophysiological processes and interactions, and have a central role in distinct sensory and cognitive functions, making it crucial to understand and quantify their an...

Background - Chronic migraine (CM)can be associated with aberrant long-range connectivity of MRI-derived resting-state networks (RSNs). Here, we investigated how the fractal dimension (FD) of blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) activity maybe used to estimatethe complexity of RSNs, reflecting flexibility and/or efficiency in information proces...

Background Chronic migraine (CM) can be associated with aberrant long-range connectivity of MRI-derived resting-state networks (RSNs). Here, we investigated how the fractal dimension (FD) of blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) activity may be used to estimate the complexity of RSNs, reflecting flexibility and/or efficiency in information proce...

Background and Objectives An Error related Potential (ErrP) can be noninvasively and directly measured from the scalp through electroencephalography (EEG), as response, when a person realizes they are making an error during a task (as a consequence of a cognitive error performed from the user). It has been shown that ErrPs can be automatically dete...

The people with multiple sclerosis (MS) often report that fatigue restricts their life. Nowadays, pharmacological treatments are poorly effective accompanied by relevant side effects. A 5-day transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) targeting the somatosensory representation of the whole body (S1) delivered through an electrode personalized b...

Hemodynamic fluctuations in the default mode network (DMN), observed through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), have been linked to electrophysiological oscillations detected by electroencephalography (EEG). It has been reported that, among the electrophysiological oscillations, those in the alpha frequency range (8–13 Hz) are the most d...

Background: Breast cancer (BC) is one of the most common invasive types of cancer among women, with important consequences on both physical and psychological functioning. Patients with BC have a great risk of developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but few studies have evaluated the efficacy of psychological interventions to treat it. Furt...

This study investigated the nature of the interference effect of semantically related distractors in the picture-word interference paradigm, which has been claimed to be caused by either competition between lexical representations of target and distractor or by a late response exclusion mechanism that removes the distractor from a response buffer....

Intrinsic brain activity is organized in spatial–temporal patterns, called resting‐state networks (RSNs), exhibiting specific structural–functional architecture. These networks presumably reflect complex neurophysiological processes and have a central role in distinct perceptual and cognitive functions. In this work, we propose an innovative approa...

Backgroung: Multiple sclerosis (MS) results in a broad range of symptoms, including motor, visual, cognitive, and neuropsychiatric deficits. Some studies, considering affective facial expressions to study emotion processing, demonstrated emotion recognition difficulties in MS patients. Objective: We investigated the impact of MS on the emotional...

With the greying population, it is increasingly necessary to establish robust and individualized markers of cognitive decline. This requires the combination of well-established neural mechanisms, and the development of increasingly sensitive methodologies. The P300 event-related potential (ERP) has been one of the most heavily investigated neural m...

Electroencephalography (EEG) signals recorded during simultaneous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) are contaminated by strong artifacts. Among these, the ballistocardiographic (BCG) artifact is the most challenging, due to its complex spatio-temporal dynamics associated with ongoing cardiac activity. The presence of BCG residuals in EEG...