Francesco Di Russo

University of Rome "Foro Italico" · Dept. of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome

Deciding whether to act or not to act is a fundamental cognitive function. To avoid incorrect responses, both reactive and proactive modes of control have been postulated. Little is known, however, regarding the brain implementation of proactive mechanisms, which are deployed prior to an actual need to inhibit a response. Via a combination of elect...

Free at https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Z4F5R2DGJRPFW25ICHJK/full?target=10.1080/02640414.2024.2408191

Increasing evidence shows that virtual reality (VR) training is highly effective in cognitive and motor rehabilitation. Another modern form of training is cognitive–motor dual-task training (CMDT), which has been demonstrated to rapidly improve physical and cognitive functions in real environments. This study aims to test whether a VR-based CMDT pr...

In the processing of emotions, the brain prepares and reacts in distinctive manners depending upon the negative or positive nuance of the emotion elicitors. Previous investigations showed that negative elicitors generally evoke more intense neural activities than positive and neutral ones, as reflected in the augmented amplitude of all sub-componen...

Stimulus-driven actions are preceded by preparatory brain activity that can be expressed by event-related potentials (ERP). Literature on this topic has mainly focused on simple actions, such as the finger keypress, finding activity in frontal, parietal, and occipital areas detectable up to two seconds before the stimulus onset. However, little is...

Objectives Simultaneous combinations of cognitive and physical exercises (cognitive-motor dual-task training [CMDT]) are more effective than physical and cognitive training alone in counteracting the decline of older adults and promoting physical and psychological well-being. The CMDT can be particularly effective in improving cognitive and functio...

This chapter presents a series of studies on anticipatory brain activity in cognitive tasks acquired using electroencephalographic methods including event-related potential, frequency, and time-frequency analyses. The main aim is to provide an overview of the range of experimental methods that can be used to study the proactive capabilities of the...

Motor−cognitive dual-task training seems the most favorable form of exercise for functional and cognitive improvements in older individuals. The optimal exercise regime is still uncertain, and the potential benefits of qualitative parameters of exercise prescription such as feedback provision and practice variability are mostly unknown. To verify t...

The Bereitschaftspotential (BP), a scalp potential recorded in humans during action preparation, is characterized by a slow amplitude increase over fronto-central regions as action execution approaches. We recorded TMS evoked-potentials (TEP) stimulating the supplementary motor area (SMA) at different time-points during a Go/No-Go task to assess wh...

This study tested if, in elite basketball players’ training, the integration of a cognitive component within a multi-component training (MCT) could be more effective than an MCT with motor components only to improve both physical and cognitive skills. To this purpose, we designed an MCT focussed on sprint and agility incorporating a cognitive-motor...

The Stroop test represents a widely used task in basic and clinical research for approaching the cognitive system functioning in humans. However, a clear overview of the neurophysiological signatures associated with the different sub-domains of this task remains controversial. In the present study, we leveraged the EEG technique to explore the modu...

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...

The present study aims to investigate the behavioral outcomes and the antecedent brain dynamics during the preparation of tasks in which the discrimination is either about the choice (choice response task; CRT) or the action (Go/No-go), and in a task not requiring discrimination (simple response task; SRT). Using event-related potentials (ERPs), th...

In the current study, we aimed at evaluating the possible sex differences in cognitive-motor dual-task training (CMDT) effects on the sport and cognitive performance of semi-elite basketball athletes. Moreover, we investigated the CMDT effects on proactive brain processing using event-related potential (ERP) analysis. Fifty-two young basketball ath...

Multisensory integration (MSI) is a phenomenon that occurs in sensory areas after the presentation of multimodal stimuli. Nowadays, little is known about the anticipatory top-down processes taking place in the preparation stage of processing before the stimulus onset. Considering that the top-down modulation of modality-specific inputs might affect...

The auditory Positivity (aP) and the visual Negativity (vN) are recently discovered modality-specific event-related potential (ERP) components associated with sensory readiness, which seems promising to study anticipatory perception and attention. However, a crucial aspect of these waves remains to be determined since it is still unclear if these c...

The aim of this study was to describe the spectral features of pre-stimulus event-related potential (ERP) components elicited in visual tasks such as the Bereitschaftspotential (BP), prefrontal negativity (pN) and visual negativity (vN). ERPs are considered time-locked and phase-locked (evoked) activity, but we have also analyzed the non-phase but...

The benefits of sport activity on cognition and especially on executive function development are well-known, and in recent years, several kinds of cognitive-motor training (CMT) have been proven effective in adults and older people. Less is known about possible CMT benefits in children. This study aims to confirm the positive influence played by CM...

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....

Objectives: In this study, we aimed at evaluating the effects of cognitive-motor dual-task training (CMDT) on sport-specific athletic performance and cognitive functions of semi-elite basketball players. Further, we investigated the CMDT effects on reactive brain processing by employing event-related potential (ERP) analysis. Design: A randomize...

Anticipatory event-related potentials (ERPs) precede upcoming events such as stimuli or actions. These ERPs are usually obtained in cued sensory–motor tasks employing a warning stimulus that precedes a probe stimulus as in the contingent negative variation (CNV) paradigms. The CNV wave has been widely studied, from clinical to brain–computer interf...

Elevated anxiety levels degrade task performance, likely because of cognitive function reduction in the frontoparietal brain network. This study aimed to test whether anxiety could impact the frontal cortex anticipatory brain functions and to investigate the possible beneficial effect of response-related feedback on task performance. The electroenc...

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...

Receiving feedback on action correctness is a relevant factor in learning, but only a few recent studies have investigated the neural bases involved in feedback processing and its consequences on performance. Several event-related potentials (ERP) studies investigated the feedback-related negativity, which is an ERP occurring after the presentation...

Nowadays, generalized anxiety disorders (GAD) appear to be highly prevalent and belong to the most common psychiatric conditions. It is defined as a great excess of worry and less control to manage the worries. Moreover, from the neuroscience perspective, increased anxiety is mainly correlated with dysfunction in several brain networks. This includ...

Elevated anxiety levels degrade task performance, likely because of cognitive functions reduction in the frontoparietal brain network. This study is aimed to test whether anxiety could impact on the frontal cortex anticipatory brain functions, and to investigate possible beneficial effect of response-related feedback in visuo-motor task performance...

The aim of this research was to test the possible effects of cognitive–motor training (CMT) on athletes’ sport performance and cognitive functions. Namely, specific athletic tests, brain processes associated with anticipatory event-related potential (ERP) components and behavioral performance during a cognitive discrimination response task were eva...

BACKGROUND It is unclear whether the Bereitschaftspotential (BP) recorded in humans during action preparation mirrors motor areas activation escalation, or if its early and late phases reflect the engagement of different functional networks. OBJECTIVE Here, we aimed at recording the TMS evoked-potentials (TEP) stimulating the supplementary motor a...

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...

The main aim of Cognitive Neuroscience is investigating how brain functions lead to mental processes and behavior [...]

Application of a passive and fully articulated exoskeleton, called Human Body Posturizer (HBP), has been demonstrated to improve mobility, response accuracy and ambulation in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. By using functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) during a visuomotor discrimination task, we performed a pilot study to evaluate the effect of HBP...

The brain is able to gather different sensory information to enhance salient event perception, thus yielding a unified perceptual experience of multisensory events. Multisensory integration has been widely studied, and the literature supports the hypothesis that it can occur across various stages of stimulus processing, including both bottom-up and...

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...

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...

Compelling literature has suggested the possibility of adopting hypnotic suggestions to override the Stroop interference effect. However, most of these studies mainly reported behavioral data and were conducted on highly hypnotizable individuals. Thus, the question of the neural locus of the effects and their generalizability remains open. In the p...

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...

The anticipation of upcoming events is a key-feature of cognition. Previous investigations on anticipatory visuospatial attention mainly adopted transient and–more rarely–sustained tasks, whose main difference consists in the presence of transient or sustained cue stimuli and different involvement of top-down or bottom-up forms of attention. In par...

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...

Available literature shows sex-related differences in both anatomy and functions of the auditory cortex. However, only few data are available on passive listening. By means of event-related potentials (ERPs), we analyzed the proactive and reactive stages of processing related to passive listening in 36 healthy young participants, equally balanced b...

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...

This review focuses on new and/or less standardized event-related potentials methods, in order to improve their knowledge for future clinical applications. The olfactory event-related potentials (OERPs) assess the olfactory functions in time domain, with potential utility in anosmia and degenerative diseases. The transcranial magnetic stimulation-e...

Prediction about event timing plays a leading role in organizing and optimizing behavior. We recorded anticipatory brain activities and evaluated whether temporal orienting processes are reflected by the novel prefrontal negative (pN) component, as already shown for the contingent negative variation (CNV). Fourteen young healthy participants underw...

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 (...

Event-related potentials (ERPs) are obtained from the electroencephalogram (EEG) or the magnetoencephalogram (MEG, event-related fields (ERF)), extracting the activity that is time-locked to an event. Despite the potential utility of ERP/ERF in cognitive domain, the clinical standardization of their use is presently undefined for most of procedures...

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...

How the brain encodes the speech acoustic signal into phonological representations is a fundamental question for the neurobiology of language. Determining whether this process is characterized by tonotopic maps in primary or secondary auditory areas, with bilateral or leftward activity, remains a long-standing challenge. Magnetoencephalographic stu...

A large literature indicated hypnosis as a useful tool to reduce pain perception, especially in high susceptible individuals. However, due to different methodological aspects, it was still not clear whether hypnosis modulates the early sensory processing of the stimuli or if it affects only the later stages of affective processing. In the present s...

Dear Donald, I suggest reading the original paper on Scientific Report 2019

Preparatory cortical activities were investigated in subjects with paraplegia attributed to spinal cord injury (SCI). Electroencephalogram (EEG) and behavioral data were recorded simultaneously in a visual-motor discrimination go/no-go task performed with the right upper limb. Eighteen SCI subjects participated to one, two, or three experimental se...

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...

Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) occurring independently from any stimulus are purely endogenous (emitted potentials) and their neural generators can be unequivocally linked with cognitive processes. In the present study, the subjects performed two similar visual counting tasks: a standard two-stimulus oddball, and an omitted-target oddball task, ch...

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...

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 indicate that simple psychophysics manipulations may change how we process our own face. Specifically, experiencing tact...

How the brain encodes the speech acoustic signal into phonological representations (distinctive features) is a fundamental question for the neurobiology of language. Whether this process is characterized by tonotopic maps in primary or secondary auditory areas, with bilateral or leftward activity, remains a long-standing challenge. Magnetoencephalo...

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...