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Publications (158)
Unmyelinated C-Tactile (CT) fibres are activated by caress-like touch, eliciting a pleasant feeling that decreases for static and faster stroking. Previous studies documented this effect also for vicarious touch, hypothesising ‘mirror-neurons’ mechanisms driving the perception and appreciation of observed interpersonal touch. Notably, less is known...
Both acquired injuries and congenital malformations often cause lifelong disabilities in children, with a significant impact on cognitive abilities. Remote computerized cognitive training (CCT) may be delivered in ecological settings to favour rehabilitation continuity. This randomized clinical trial (RCT) evaluated the efficacy of an 8-week multi-...
Social cognition is fundamental in everyday life to understand “others’ behavior”, which is a key feature of social abilities. Previous studies demonstrated the efficacy of a rehabilitative intervention in semi-immersive virtual reality (VR) controlled by whole-body motion to improve the ability of patients with cerebellar disorders to predict othe...
The neuropsychological characteristics of the cerebellar cognitive affective syndrome (CCAS) in congenital, non-progressive malformations of the cerebellum have been scarcely investigated, and even less is known for Joubert syndrome (JS), an inherited, non-progressive cerebellar ataxia characterized by the so-called molar tooth sign. The few studie...
Objective: To identify a convergent neuroanatomical substrate for novelty seeking (NS), a stable personality trait, which could serve as a therapeutic target for transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).
Methods: We analyzed two independent datasets (total n=136) in which the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) was used to document alterations...
Inferring intentions from verbal and nonverbal human behaviour is critical for everyday social life. Here, we combined Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) with a behavioural priming paradigm to test whether key nodes of the Theory of Mind network (ToMn) contribute to understanding others' intentions by integrating prior knowledge about an agent...
Successful action comprehension requires the integration of motor information and semantic cues about objects in context. Previous evidence suggests that while motor features are dorsally encoded in the fronto-parietal action observation network (AON); semantic features are ventrally processed in temporal structures. Importantly, these dorsal and v...
Body inversion effects (BIEs) reflect the deployment of the configural processing of body stimuli. BIE modulates the activity of body-selective areas within both the dorsal and the ventral streams, which are tuned to low (LSF) or high spatial frequencies (HSF), respectively. The specific contribution of different bands to the configural processing...
Dysfunctions in body processing have been documented in adults with brain damage, while limited information is available for children. This study aimed to investigate body processing in children and adolescents with traumatic brain injury (TBI) (N = 33), compared to peers with typical development. Two well-known computerized body-representation par...
Rehabilitation treatments involving the use of advanced technologies, such as Virtual Reality (VR), are rapidly growing. Due to the possibility
to simulate everyday situations within a yet controlled environment, this technology can be useful in the treatment of patients who require
highly controllable and intensive interventions, such as patient...
For proper action understanding we can infer action intention from the kinematic features of movement (the event in terms of sensorial evidence) and/or from the contextual scenario in which the action occurs. In line with predictive coding theories, the implicit learning of statistical regularities between events and contextual cues strongly biases...
According to current accounts of social cognition, the emergence of verbal and non-verbal components of social perception might rely on the acquisition of different cognitive abilities. These components might be differently sensitive to the pattern of neuropsychological impairments in congenital neurodevelopmental disorders. Here, we explored the a...
Protracted exposure to specific stimuli causes biased visual aftereffects at both low-and high-level dimensions of a stimulus. Recently, it has been proposed that alterations of these aftereffects could play a role in body misperceptions. However, since previous studies have mainly addressed manipulations of body size, the relative contribution of...
There is inconsistent evidence that human bodies are processed through holistic processing as it has been widely reported for faces. To assess how configural and holistic processes may develop with age, we administered a visual body recognition task assessing the presence of body inversion and composite illusion effects to white adults (114 partici...
Background
Research evidence suggests that physiological state of hunger might affect preference for female body weight, such that hungrier, compared to satiate, men prefer heavier body weight and rate as more attractive heavier female figures. Here, we seek to extend these findings by comparing the effects of fasting and snack on aesthetics judgem...
In relation to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, a large body of research has identified a negative impact on individuals' affectivity, frequently documented by increased prevalence of anxiety and depression symptoms. For children, this research was less extensive, was mainly based on caregivers' reports and neglected personality assessment. In order...
We examined whether visual processing mechanisms of the body of conspecifics are different in women and men and whether these rely on westernised socio-cultural ideals and body image concerns. Twenty-four women and 24 men performed a visual discrimination task of upright or inverted images of female or male bodies and faces (Experiment 1) and objec...
Consistent evidence suggests that motor imagery involves the activation of several sensorimotor areas also involved during action execution, including the dorsal premotor cortex (dPMC) and the primary somatosensory cortex (S1). However, it is still unclear whether their involvement is specific for either kinesthetic or visual imagery or whether the...
It has been proposed that impairments of the predictive function exerted by the cerebellum may account for social cognition deficits. Here, we integrated cerebellar functions in a predictive coding framework to elucidate how congenital, non-progressive cerebellar alterations could affect the predictive processing of others’ behavior. Experiment 1 d...
Despite the fact that ageing causes dramatic changes in bodily appearance, little is known about how self-body recognition changes across life span. Here, we investigated whether older, compared to younger women, differed in the ability of recognising their own than other women’s body parts and whether this effect was associated to negative body im...
In everyday-life scenarios, prior expectations provided by the context in which actions are embedded support action prediction. However, it is still unclear how newly learned action–context associations can drive our perception and motor responses. To fill this gap, we measured behavioral (Experiment 1) and motor responses (Experiment 2) during two...
Perceiving art is known to elicit motor cortex activation in an observer's brain. This motor activation has often been attributed to a covert approach response associated with the emotional valence of an art piece (emotional reaction hypothesis). However, recent accounts have proposed that aesthetic experiences could be grounded in the motor simula...
Background
Over 80% of the global population consider themselves religious with even more identifying as spiritual, but the neural substrates of spirituality and religiosity remain unresolved.
Methods
In two independent brain lesion datasets (N1=88; N2=105), we apply lesion network mapping to test whether lesion locations associated with spiritual...
Congenital or acquired cerebellum alterations are associated with a complex pattern of motor, cognitive and social disorders. These disturbances may reflect the involvement of the cerebellum in generating and updating the internal models that sub-serve-the prediction of sensory events. Here, we tested whether the cerebellar involvement in using con...
Purpose: Despite the fact that ageing causes dramatic changes in bodily appearance, little is known about how self-body recognition changes across life span. Here, we investigated whether older, compared to younger women, differed in the ability of recognising their own than other women’s body parts and whether this effect was associated to negativ...
It has been proposed that impairments of the predictive function exerted by the cerebellum may account for social cognition deficits. Here, we integrated cerebellar functions in a predictive coding framework to elucidate how cerebellar alterations could affect the predictive processing of others' behavior. Experiment 1 demonstrated that cerebellar...
We examined whether visual processing mechanisms of the body of conspecifics are different in women and men and whether these rely on westernised socio-cultural ideals and body image concerns. Twenty-four women and 24 men performed a visual discrimination task of upright or inverted images of female or male bodies and faces (Experiment 1) and objec...
Predictive coding accounts of action perception sustain that kinematics information is compared with contextual top-down predictions (i.e., priors) to understand actions in conditions of perceptual ambiguity. It has been previously shown that the cerebellum contributes to motor simulation of observed actions. Here, we tested the hypothesis that a s...
Research has demonstrated that from the first six months of life infants show early sensitivity to body visual features and rely on sensorimotor and proprioceptive inputs in forming representations of their own bodies. Premature birth interferes with typical exposition to visual, sensorimotor and proprioceptive stimulation, thus presumably affectin...
Our ability to recognize other people’s actions is central to everyday life. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies have shown that observing an action induces activity in the observer’s motor system that replicates the muscle selectivity, direction and temporal profile of the observed movement when executed. This motor resonant activity h...
Autism is associated with difficulties in making predictions based on contextual cues. Here, we investigated whether the distribution of autistic traits in the general population, as measured through the Autistic Quotient (AQ), is associated with alterations of context-based predictions of social and non-social stimuli. Seventy-eight healthy partic...
Understanding object-directed actions performed by others is central to everyday life. This ability is thought to rely on the interaction between the dorsal action observation network (AON) and a ventral object recognition pathway. On this view, the AON would encode action kinematics, and the ventral pathway, the most likely intention afforded by t...
The human body conveys socially relevant information, including a person’s gender. Several studies have shown that both shape and motion inform gender judgments of bodies. However, while body shape seems to influence more the judgment of female bodies, body motion seems to play a major role in the judgments of male bodies. Yet, the interdependence...
Purpose:
Effects of tumor location on cognitive performance of patients with brain tumor are controversial: some studies reported higher risks related to supratentorial locations, some to infratentorial locations, and still others did not find any differences. We aimed to address this issue by comparing school-aged children with supratentorial or...
Computerized cognitive training programs (CCTP) are based on the assumption that cognitive abilities may be boosted by repetitively performing challenging tasks. The integration of game-like features in these programs, associated with the goal of amusing or rewarding participants,may contribute to generate cognitive benefits. Indeed, reinforcement...
Cognitive rehabilitation may compensate for cognitive deficits of children with acquired brain injury (ABI), capitalizing on the use-dependent plasticity of a developing brain. Remote computerized cognitive training (CCT) may be delivered to patients in ecological settings, ensuring rehabilitation continuity. This work evaluated cognitive and psych...
Many existing findings indicate that processing of emotional information is pre-attentive, largely immune from attentional control. Nevertheless, inconsistent evidence on the interference of emotional cues on cognitive processing suggests that this influence may be a highly conditional phenomenon. The aim of the present study was twofold: (1) to ex...
Background:
Patients with cerebellar malformations exhibit not only movement problems, but also important deficits in social cognition. Thus, rehabilitation approaches should not only involve the recovery of motor function but also of higher-order abilities such as processing of social stimuli. In keeping with the general role of the cerebellum in...
Background: Patients with cerebellar malformations exhibit not only movement problems, but also important deficits in social cognition. Thus, rehabilitation approaches should not only involve the recovery of motor function but also of higher-order abilities, such as processing of social stimuli. In keeping with the general role of the cerebellum in...
Background: Patients with cerebellar malformations exhibit not only movement problems, but also important deficits in social cognition. Thus, rehabilitation approaches should not only involve the recovery of motor function but also of higher-order abilities, such as processing of social stimuli. In keeping with the general role of the cerebellum in...
Consistent evidence suggests that the cerebellum contributes to the processing of emotional facial expressions. However, it is not yet known whether the cerebellum is recruited when emotions are expressed by body postures or movements, or whether it is recruited differently for positive and negative emotions. In this study, we asked healthy partici...
Early brain damage leading to cerebral palsy is associated to core motor impairments and also affects cognitive and social abilities. In particular, previous studies have documented specific alterations of perceptual body processing and motor cognition that are associated to unilateral motor deficits in hemiplegic patients. However, little is known...
Bayesian accounts of autism suggest that this disorder may be rooted in an impaired ability to estimate the probability of future events, possibly owing to reduced priors. Here, we tested this hypothesis within the action domain in children with and without autism using a behavioural paradigm comprising a familiarization and a testing phase. During...
Introduction:
Multidisciplinary rehabilitation interventions are considered to be a need for children with acquired brain injury (ABI), in order to remediate the important sequelae and promote adjustment. Technology-based treatments represent a promising field inside the rehabilitation area, as they allow delivering interventions in ecological set...
Recently, the empirical interest in religiousness and spirituality has grown, showing the association between the activity of a complex network of subcortical and fronto-parietal areas and explicit and implicit religious/spiritual representations. Importantly, while the causal link between parietal stimulation and implicit religiousness/spiritualit...
Children with congenital heart disease (CHD) are at increased risk of neuropsychological impairments, but few studies are available on the nonlinguistic neuropsychological abilities of children with CHD. We conducted neuropsychological evaluations using the NEPSY II on a cohort of 17 school-age Italian children with diagnoses of Class 1 CHD, no gen...
Background: Patients with cerebellar malformations exhibit not only movement problems, but also important deficits in social cognition. Thus, rehabilitation approaches should not only involve the recovery of motor function but also of higher-order abilities, such as processing of social stimuli. In keeping with the general role of the cerebellum in...
Evidence exists about the influence of interoception on time-keeping functions. In the current study we further addressed this topic by testing the effect of fasting and snack on the ability to estimate the duration of reinforcement-oriented grasping actions. We found that, after fasting, the time estimation for the grasping of a primary reinforcem...
In the last years, there has been a growing interest in the application of different non-invasive brain stimulation techniques to induce neuroplasticity and to modulate cognition and behavior in adults. Very recently, different attempts have been made to induce functional plastic changes also in pediatric populations. Importantly, not only sensorim...
Autism is associated with difficulties in predicting and understanding other people’s actions. There is evidence that autistic traits are distributed across a spectrum and that subclinical forms of autistic impairments can also be measured in the typical population. To investigate the association between autistic traits and motor responses to other...
Representations of own and others’ body play a crucial role in social interaction. While extensive knowledge has been gathered on the neuropsychological deficits affecting body representation in adult brain lesion patients, little is known on how acquired damage to a developing brain may affect this process. We tested it on pediatric brain tumor su...
Background:
Prematurity may affect mother-infant bonding and alter maternal sensitivity to infant's cues. Efficient perception of infants' facial and bodily cues is a crucial aspect of maternal sensitivity and may be challenged by prematurity, as infants' signals may not be easily intelligible. However, it is still unexplored how premature birth i...
Objectives
Pediatric brain damage is associated with various cognitive deficits. Cognitive rehabilitation may prevent and reduce cognitive impairment. In recent years, home-based computerized cognitive training (CCT) has been introduced in clinical practice to increase treatment opportunities for patients (telerehabilitation). However, limited rese...
Home-based computerized cognitive training for pediatric patients with congenital or acquired brain injury: A randomized controlled trial.
(DOCX)
CONSORT 2010 checklist.
(DOC)
Context facilitates the recognition of forthcoming actions by pointing to which intention is likely to drive them. This intention is thought to be estimated in a ventral pathway linking MTG with frontal regions and to further impact on the implementation of sensory predictions within the action observation network (AON). Additionally, when conflict...
Previous studies showed that observing deceptive actions modulates the activity of the observer's motor system. However, it is unclear whether this modulation reflects the coding of deceptive intentions or the mapping of the kinematic adaptations required to attain deceptive actions. Here, we used single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation to m...
We like an object more when we see someone else reaching for it. To what extent is action observation causally linked to object valuation? In this study, we set out to answer to this question by applying continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) over the left inferior parietal lobule (IPL). Previous studies pointed to this region as critical in the...
Preliminary data about the performances of pediatric patients with cerebellar malformations vs. IQ and age-matched patients with syndromes not involving cerebellum and age-matched healthy controls in an action-prediction task.
Accurate encoding of the spatio-temporal properties of others’ actions is essential for the successful implementation of daily activities and, even more, for successful sportive performance, given its role in movement coordination and action anticipation. Here we investigated whether athletes are provided with special perceptual processing of spati...
Explicit negative attitudes towards obese individuals are well documented and seem to modulate the activity of perceptual areas, such as the Extrastriate Body Area (EBA) in the lateral occipito-temporal cortex, which is critical for body-shape perception. Nevertheless, it is still unclear whether EBA serves a role in implicit weight-stereotypical b...
Objectives:
Performance on neurocognitive tasks develops with age, but it is still unknown whether this performance differs between children from different cultures. We compared cross-sectionally the development of neurocognitive functions in 3- to 15-year-old children from three countries: Finland, Italy, and the United States (N=2745).
Methods:...
Background:
The neuropsychological literature on preterm-born children with spastic diplegia due to periventricular leukomalacia is convergent in reporting deficits in non-verbal intelligence and in visuo-spatial abilities. Nevertheless, other cognitive functions have found to be impaired, but data are scant and not correlated with neuroimaging fi...
Significance statement:
Previous studies indicate that, when we observe other people's actions, the context in which actions take place influences intention understanding. However, little is known about the precise mechanisms involved in the contextual modulation of action representation (i.e., inhibition vs facilitation) and how they unfold in ti...
Socially situated thought and behaviour are pervasive and vitally important in human society. The social brain has become a focus of study for researchers in the neurosciences, psychology, biology and other areas of behavioural science, and it is becoming increasingly clear that social behaviour is heavily dependent on shared representations. Any s...
Previous neuroimaging studies have shown that body aesthetic appreciation involves the activation of both visual and motor areas, supporting a role of sensorimotor embodiment in aesthetic processing. Causative evidence, however, that neural activity in these areas is crucial for reliable aesthetic body appreciation has so far provided only for extr...
In everyday life we need to continuously regulate our emotional responses according to their social context. Strategies of emotion regulation allow individuals to control time, intensity, nature and expression of emotional responses to environmental stimuli. The left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) is involved in the cognitive control of the selectio...
Body shape may influence performance in aesthetic sports (e.g., gymnastics) and the desire/pressure to get a leaner shape in these settings may play a role in the initiation of Eating Disorders (EDs). Here, we investigated how perception of implied motion and body weight influences body aesthetic evaluation in aesthetic and non-aesthetic sports. Se...
Repeated exposures to thin-idealized body shapes may alter women's perceptions of what normal (e.g., accepted) and ideal (e.g., desired) bodies in a cultural environment look like. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether exposure to thin and round body shapes may change the subsequent esthetic appreciation of others' bodies and the...
