Federico Quinzi

• PhD
• Researcher at Magna Graecia University

Background/Objective. Breast Cancer (BC) is a growing medical concern that may heavily influence sexual functioning (SF) and body image (BI) in BC patients. In healthy individuals, physical exercise (PE) has been proposed as a crucial factor to improve BI. However, little is known about the effects of PE on BI and SF in BC patients. Therefore, the...

Background/Objectives: Male infertility is influenced by physiological factors like age, as well as lifestyle factors, including physical activity. However, the specific impact of sport activity on semen parameters, and thus on male fertility, remains unclear. Specifically, the aim of this systematic review is to evaluate how an intense regime of t...

Whole-body vibration (WBV) has been employed for performance-enhancing purposes. WBV may positively affect muscular endurance and its underlying neural mechanisms due to an enhanced muscular blood circulation and oxygen uptake. However, the effects of WBV on endurance-related torque signal complexity have been understudied. This study aims to inves...

This study explored the influence of living settings on physical activity (PA) levels and volition in exercise and their correlation, considering sex differences. Five hundred and sixty-six university students (261 rural and 305 urban) from Calabria region (Italy) attending universities courses filled an online survey where Global Physical Activity...

Background Magnesium is a micronutrient and an intracellular cation responsible for different biochemical reactions involved in energy production and storage, control of neuronal and vasomotor activity, cardiac excitability, and muscle contraction. Magnesium deficiency may result in impaired physical performance. Moreover, magnesium plays an import...

Exercise may differently affect the expression of key molecular markers, including skeletal muscle and circulating miRNAs, involved in cellular and metabolic pathways’ regulation in healthy individuals and in patients suffering from non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Epigenetic factors are emerging as potential therapeutic biomarkers in the prognosi...

Whole-body vibration (WBV) is a widely used training method to increase muscle strength and power. However, its working mechanisms are still poorly understood, and studies investigating the effects of WBV on muscle stiffness are scant. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the acute effects of WBV on stiffness and countermovement jump...

School-settings represent ideal context to promote healthy habits as in adolescence most risk factors may occur or intensify leading to the adoption of unhealthy lifestyles. Thus, a deeper understanding of the factors promoting healthy lifestyles in adolescents is of utmost importance. This observational study aims to investigate: 1) gender-related...

Diet and exercise intervention are the first strategies to counteract obesity. An online home-based exercise program may be a feasible approach in an obese population. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the effects of twelve weeks of online Pilates plus diet on body composition in individuals affected by obesity. Thirty-five females were ra...

Superimposing neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) on voluntary muscle contractions has shown the potential to improve motor performance even more than voluntary exercise alone. Nevertheless, the neurophysiological and neurocognitive mechanisms underlying this technique are still unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the acute re...

This study analysed the acute effects of whole-body vibration (WBV) on quadriceps isometric muscular endurance. Fifteen healthy middle-aged males performed an endurance isometric strength test after three different warm-up conditions: static half squat plus WBV (HSV), static half squat without WBV (HS), and control condition (CC). The endurance iso...

Stimulus identification and action outcome understanding for a rapid and accurate response selection, play a fundamental role in racquet sports. Here, we investigated the neurodynamics of visual anticipation in tennis manipulating the postural and kinematic information associated with the body of opponents by means of a spatial occlusion protocol....

This study aimed to test the effects of specific sport practices on cognitive sensory-motor performance and underlying brain functions in children. Behavioral performance and event-related potentials (ERP) were investigated during a cognitive visuomotor task in 64 preadolescent children practicing racket (Rack) sports, martial arts (Mart), indoor c...

In children, motor competence (MC) and the amount of physical activity are tightly interconnected. In adults with Down syndrome (DS), MC has been poorly addressed, resulting in a limited understanding of the possibility to improve MC over time. Here, we aim to: (1) investigate MC in adults with DS by comparing them with a group of typically develop...

Background: Kicking a ball is a very frequent action in sport and leisure time activities and a low proficiency in this skill could limit the participation in recreational sport activities. This issue is emphasised in individuals with Down syndrome (IDS) for which data about motor competence in kicking are limited to children. Here, we aim at eval...

Background: The increasing need to face the problem of sedentarism, especially in the COVID-19 era, induced teachers and researchers to find new intervention methodologies in school context. Active breaks (ABs) include brief periods of physical activity as a part of the curriculum. This study aimed to investigate the AB acute responses on attentiv...

Proactive and reactive brain activities usually refer to processes occurring in anticipation or in response to perceptual and/or cognitive events. Previous studies found that, in auditory tasks, musical expertise improves performance mainly at the reactive stage of processing. In the present work, we aimed at acknowledging the effects of musical pr...

Introduction Individuals with Down syndrome (DS) show a delayed acquisition of gross motor skills. Among gross motor skills, hopping is a particular form of jumping that can be performed using one leg. Despite its large use during play and physical activity, this skill in adults with DS has not received much attention so far. Here, we aim at invest...

The Stroop task has been largely used to explore the ability to inhibit the automatic process of reading when reporting the ink color of incongruent color-words. Given the extensive literature regarding the processes involved in task performance, here we aimed at exploring the anticipatory brain activities during the Stroop task using the event-rel...

Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients lead a sedentary lifestyle, being unable or unwilling to exercise conventionally, due to physical and mental limitations. The aim of this study was to assess the acute effects of a single session of whole-body electromyostimulation (WB-EMS) on the physical performances and serum levels of the neurotrophic factors i...

The existence of neural correlates of spatial attention is not limited to the reactive stage of stimulus processing: neural activities subtending spatial attention are deployed well ahead of stimulus onset. ERP evidence supporting this proactive (top-down) attentional control is based on trial-by-trial S1–S2 paradigms, where the onset of a directio...

In the present work, we evaluated the possibility to induce changes in the inhibitory control through non-invasive excitatory stimulation of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). To this aim, different montages of the trans-cranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) were adopted in three separate experiments, wherein different cognitive tasks were performed...

In the present study, we investigated scalp-recorded activities of motor and cognitive preparation preceding stimulus presentation in relatively simple and complex visual motor discriminative response tasks (DRTs). Targets and non-targets were presented (with equal probability) in both tasks, and the complexity of the task depended on the discrimin...

It is well established that task complexity can affect both performance and brain processing. Event-related potentials (ERPs) studies have shown modulation of the well-known N2 and P3 components. However, limited information is available on the recently described frontal components associated with processing within the anterior insular cortex. This...

Functional inertial training, a popular high-intensity training mode, provides high neuromuscular activation, developing proprioception, postural control, power, and sprint time. Aim of the study was to assess the acute effects of two types of warm-up (WU), inertial warm-up (IWU) vs. traditional warm-up (TWU), on explosive and reactive strength, sp...

Punching performance of karate can be predicted from lower limb maximal power. However, this relationship was observed only in single actions starting from a static position, thus calling for an investigation on the applicability of this relationship to other conditions. This study aims at investigating whether the relationship between lower limb m...

Previous event‐related potential (ERP) studies mainly from the present research group showed a novel component, that is, the prefrontal negativity (pN), recorded in visual‐motor discriminative tasks during the pre‐stimulus phase. This component is concomitant to activity related to motor preparation, that is, the Bereitschaftspotential (BP). The pN...

PurposeTo verify if pre-performance vibration exposure could negatively affect the postural control in soccer players.Methods Twenty-eight participants, 12 male soccer players (aged 22.4 ± 1.0 years) and 16 sedentary males (aged 26.8 ± 2.7 years), underwent two test sessions: in the first one, the optimal vibration frequency (OVF) was determined fo...

The present study aims at identifying reliable markers of neural preparatory processes during hypnosis. To this goal, we recorded the electroencephalographic activity of 23 volunteers regardless of their hypnotizability score. Somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) were elicited while participants received non‐painful electrical stimuli on the left...

Cognitive Reserve (CR) is a key factor to mitigate the cognitive decline during the aging process. Here, we employed ERPs to target the preparatory brain activities associated with different levels of CR during visuo-motor simple (SRT) and discriminative response tasks (DRT). EEG was recorded from 28 healthy old (Age: 72.2±4.7 years) and 14 young (...

Human locomotion is the product of complex dynamic systems, which rely on physical capacities as well as cognitive functions. In our daily life, we mostly experience forward walking, but also backward stepping can occur, as in protective stepping. In this work, we investigated the electroencephalographic (EEG) correlates of cognitive processing und...

Human brain activity allows to anticipate future events and to prepare the next action accordingly; consistently, event-related potential (ERP) studies found action preparatory brain activities in the premotor and prefrontal cortex. In the present study, we investigated the preparatory activity in the sensory cortical regions. Slow cortical potenti...

In the present study, we investigated neural correlates associated with gender differences in a simple response task (SRT) and in a discriminative response task (DRT) by means of event-related potential (ERP) technique. 120 adults participated in the study, and, based on their sex, were divided into two groups matched for age and education level. B...

The literature on aerobic exercise and neurocognition reports acute post-exercise enhancement of neural activity linked to motor preparation in the premotor area and inhibitory control in the frontoparietal areas. However, the acute effect of vigorous-intensity aerobic exercise (VIAE) on the prefrontal, the insular, and the occipito-parietal activi...

In the present study, we report the results from a large sample of participants (N = 136), selected based on their EEG quality, to obtain event-related potential (ERP) normative data. All participants were tested in Simple Response Task (SRT) and Discriminative Response Task (DRT). A subset of 36 participants was tested also in Passive Vision task....

Spatial attention can improve performance in terms of speed and accuracy; this advantage may be mediated by brain processes at both poststimulus (reactive) and prestimulus (proactive) stages. Here, we studied how visuospatial attention affects both proactive and reactive brain functions using event‐related potentials (ERPs). At reactive stage, effe...

Background: The contribution of higher-order cognitive functions to postural control is poorly understood. It is recognized that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is active after postural perturbations, however little is known about anticipatory PFC activity occurring before an upcoming perturbation. Here we aim at advancing our understanding on the con...

The present study aimed at describing the effects of perceptual load on neurocognitive processes of decision-making. To this aim, we used a visual-motor discriminative task in which pairs of stimuli were assigned to either target or non-target categories. For each category, stimulus configuration was defined as simple or complex according to orient...

Modality-Specific Sensory Anticipation of Upcoming Events Bianco V2, Perri RL1,3, Berchicci M1, Quinzi F2, Spinelli D1,2, & Di Russo F1,2 1Dept. of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome "Foro Italico", Rome - Italy 2Santa Lucia Foundation IRCCS, Rome - Italy 3University of Rome “Niccolò Cusano”, Rome - Italy Abstract Background...

The present work follows recent evidences of studies showing that visual stimuli evoke two early prefrontal event-related potentials (ERP) concomitant to the canonical occipital activities, but originating within the anterior insula (the pN1 and the pP1 components). To clarify the exogenous/endogenous nature of these components, we performed two ex...

Objective: This study aimed at evaluating the acute effect of the combined and single use of two orthotic devices (neck balance system [NBS] and lumbar support [LS]) on muscle activity of neck and back muscles during typical computer working tasks. Background: An excessive activation of neck muscles could threaten the balance between agonist and an...

The Bereitschaftspotential (BP) and the P3 are well-known event-related potentials (ERP) usually observed during self-paced and externally-triggered tasks. Recently, the BP was detected also in externally-triggered tasks before stimulus onset. However, doubts have been raised about the authenticity of the BP in these tasks due to possible overlaps...

Background: Motor and inhibitory control rely on frontal cortex activity, which is known to reach full maturation only in late adolescence. The development of inhibitory control has been studied using event-related potentials (ERP), focusing on reactive processing (i.e. the N2 and the P3 components). Scarce information exists concerning pre-stimul...

Purpose: Although upper limb techniques are largely utilized during karate combat competitions scarce information regarding their NM control is available. This study aims at investigating the effect of karate practice on the NM control of Biceps and Triceps Brachii during isokinetic contractions to enhance current knowledge on neuromuscular contro...

This study aimed at investigating the effects of a novel neck balance system (NBS), which is a baseball cap with counterweights in the occipital part, on neuromuscular fatigue of neck muscles during and after a full‐range repeated neck flexion‐extension task. Surface electromyography (sEMG) of sternocleidomastoid (SCM) and semispinalis capitis (SC)...

The contribution of the ERPs in the investigation of the insular processes of decision-making

Both playing a musical instrument and playing sport produce brain adaptations that might affect sensory-motor functions. While the benefits of sport practice have traditionally been attributed to aerobic fitness, it is still unknown whether playing an instrument might induce similar brain adaptations, or if a specific musical instrument like drums...

Brain plasticity is especially stimulated by complex bimanual tasks, because, as for juggling, they require simultaneous control of multiple movements, high level of bimanual coordination, balance and sustained swapping attention to multiple objects interacting with both hands. Neuroimaging studies on jugglers showed changes in white and grey matte...

Aim: Regular participation in sport activity induces plastic changes in human brain. In well-trained adult athletes, has been found modulation of event-related potentials (ERP) reflecting preparation of voluntary actions sensory, perception and decision-making1. However, evidence concerning the effect of training in children is still at the early s...

Aim: In the last years, a huge body of evidence has focused on karate. This body of literature evidenced that during karate combat competition the greater part of the technical actions performed involves punching (Chaabène et al 2014). Therefore, this study aims at investigating the neuromuscular control of the upper limb, in particular about the e...

Abstract PURPOSE: Training in martial arts is commonly performed by repeating a technical action continuously for a given number of times. This study aims at investigating if the repetition of the task alters the proper technical execution, limiting the training efficacy for the technical evaluation during competition. This aim was pursued analyzin...

Testosterone (T) is a powerful androgenic anabolic steroid (AAS) capable to induce diverse biological modifications both in the nervous system and in the skeletal muscle. Nevertheless, no previous study investigated the effect of T on the neuromuscular control in intact human muscles.PURPOSE: This study aims at assessing the acute effects of reduce...

Purpose: Age-related neuromuscular control adaptations have been investigated mainly in untrained populations, where higher antagonist activation in adults was observed with respect to children. In elite athletes age-related differences in neuromuscular control have scarcely been investigated. Therefore, this study aims at investigating difference...

The aim of this study was to compare muscle activation and cardio-respiratory response during ergometer and on-water rowing. Nine internationally competitive rowers (five Olympic Games medal winners, age 25.6 ± 4.8 years), were requested to perform a 1000m race simulation test in the two conditions. Surface electromyographic (sEMG) signals from tra...

This paper aimed at investigating the neuromuscular response of knee flexor and extensor muscles in elite karateka and karate amateurs (Amateurs) during isokinetic knee flexion/extensions and during the execution of a front kick (FK). Surface electromyograms (sEMG) were recorded from the right vastus lateralis (VL) and biceps femoris (BF) muscles w...