Marika Berchicci

University of Chieti-Pescara | UNICH · Department of Psychological Sciences Humanities and Territory

Sensory–motor integration represents a complex process requiring proper orchestration among multiple sources of sensory information to ensure the best task-related motor output [...]

Aggressiveness and unethical behaviors are an important problem in sports today. Understanding how to properly measure and manage an athlete's aggressive tendency is a crucial lesson to be learned within the rulesets of a sporting environment. This study aims at validating the Italian version of the Competitive Aggressiveness and Anger Scale (CAAS)...

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...

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...

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...

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...

This chapter examines the state of the art on the psychophysiological mechanisms underpinning mind-body interaction in sport, highlighting the unknown on the brain-heart relationship by means of five major questions. Specifically, the answer to the first methodological question provides basic information on the measures used in sport psychophysiolo...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Background: Movement-Related Cortical Potentials (MRCPs) are widely used in studying brain dynamics of motor control. However, limited information is available on complex tasks such as locomotion for which the appropriate identification of gait initiation trigger is still a technical challenge. Thus, it is conceivable that recorded brain activity...

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...

Using two independent electrical neuroimaging techniques (BESA and sLORETA), we tested a fMRI-seeded source modeling indicating that in visual discriminative tasks the anterior insula (aIns) participates in the generation of three prefrontal ERP components: the pN1 (at 115 ms), the pP1 (at 170 ms), and the pP2 (at 300 ms). This latter component rep...

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

Key points Monovision is an optical correction for presbyopes that consists of correcting one eye for far distance and the other for near distance, creating a superimposition of an in‐focus with a blurred image. Brain adaptation to monovision was studied in unexperienced observers by measuring visual evoked potentials from 64‐channels. The first cl...

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...

Proactive brain control optimizes upcoming actions and inhibits unwanted responses. In the present event-related potential (ERP) study, participants freely decided in advance whether to respond or not to an upcoming stimulus, then prepared or not the action according to their decision; finally, a stimulus was delivered, and subjects had to respond...

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...

Research on preparatory brain processes taking place before acting shows unexpected connections with cognitive processing. From 50 years, we know that motor-related brain activity can be measured by electrocortical recordings 1–3 s before voluntary actions. This readiness potential has been associated with increasing excitably of premotor and motor...

Flexible and adaptive behavior requires the ability to contextually stop inappropriate actions and select the right one as quickly as possible. Recently, it has been proposed that three brain regions, i.e., the inferior frontal gyrus (iFg), the anterior insula (aIns), and the anterior intraparietal sulcus (aIPs), play an important role in several p...

Practicing sport at top level requires excellent physical and cognitive skills. The goal of the present study was to investigate whether specific sport practice may affect the preparation-perception-action stages of processing during a visuo-motor task requiring perceptual discrimination and fast response. We recruited 39 participants (two groups o...

Neuroimaging studies suggested that the anterior insula (aIns) might contribute to perceptual decision-making. A recent study suggested that the aIns is the neural source of a complex of prefrontal post-stimulus ERPs in the visuo-motor tasks: the pN1 (at 115 ms), the pP1 (at 170 ms), and the pP2 component (at 300 ms). In the present study, we emplo...

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...

Previous ERP studies revealed that the visual decision tasks evoke three prefrontal components within the 400 ms after the stimulus onset. The earliest component is a prefrontal negativity at 110 ms (pN1), while the other two are positive at 170 ms and 350 ms (pP1 and pP2, respectively). The pP2 has been extensively described as the correlate of th...

In cognitive tasks, error commission is usually followed by a performance characterized by post-error slowing (PES) and post-error improvement of accuracy (PIA). Three theoretical accounts were hypothesized to support these post-error adjustments: the cognitive, the inhibitory, and the orienting account. The aim of the present ERP study was to inve...

Studies on perceptual decision-making showed that manipulating the proportion of target and non-target stimuli affects the behavioral performance. Tasks with high frequency of targets are associated to faster response times (RTs) conjunctively to higher number of errors (reflecting a response bias characterized by speed/accuracy trade-off) when com...

In discriminative response tasks, researchers have largely debated about the meaning of the N2 component (which peaks approximately 250-300 ms after a stimulus) that is larger and more anterior for no-go than go stimuli (typically referred to as the “go/no-go N2 effect”). Most studies have pointed to the no-go N2 component as reflecting the respons...

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...

Very little is known about plasticity in the adult visual cortex. In recent years psychophysical studies have shown that short-term monocular deprivation alters visual perception in adult humans. Specifically, after 150 minutes of monocular deprivation the deprived eye strongly dominates the dynamics of binocular rivalry, reflecting homeostatic pla...

The aim of the study was to evaluate whether the presence/absence of visual cues specifying the onset of an upcoming, action-related stimulus modulates pre-stimulus brain activity, associated with the proactive control of goal-directed actions. To this aim we asked 12 subjects to perform an equal probability Go/No-go task with four stimulus configu...

The association between a fit body and a fit brain in children has led to a rise of behavioral and neuroscientific research. Yet, the relation of cardiorespiratory fitness on premotor neurocognitive preparation and early visual processing have received little attention. Here, 41 healthy, lower- and higher-fit preadolescent children were administere...

The investigation of the functional changes in the sensorimotor cortex has important clinical implications as deviations from normal development can anticipate developmental disorders. The functional properties of the sensorimotor cortex can be characterized through the rolandic mu rhythm, already present during infancy. However, how the sensorimot...

Objective: The aim of the present study was to investigate the cortical correlates of the intraindividual coefficient of variation (ICV) in a go/no-go task, focusing on the prefrontal cortex (PFC) contribution and evaluating both pre- and poststimulus brain activity. Method: We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) in 40 subjects, arranged a...

The present work aimed at investigating the effects of mechanically amplified tremor on cortico-muscular coherence (CMC) in the alpha band. The study of CMC in this specific band is of particular interest because this coherence is usually absent in healthy individuals and it is an aberrant feature in patients affected by pathological tremors; under...

The study investigates the neurocognitive stages involved in the speed-accuracy trade-off (SAT). Contrary to previous approach, we did not manipulate speed and accuracy instructions: participants were required to be fast and accurate in a go/no-go task, and we selected post-hoc the groups based on the subjects' spontaneous behavioral tendency. Base...

Emotional perception has been extensively studied, but only a few studies have investigated the brain activity preceding exposure to emotional stimuli, especially when they are triggered by the subject himself. Here, we sought to investigate the emotional expectancy by means of movement related cortical potentials (MRCPs) in a self-paced task, in w...