
Michele ScandolaUniversity of Verona | UNIVR · Department of Human Sciences
Michele Scandola
BS, MS, Ph.D. in Cognitive Social Affective Neuroscience
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95
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Introduction
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Education
September 2006 - June 2009
Publications
Publications (95)
The Economy of action hypothesis postulates that bodily states rescale the perception of the individual’s environment’s spatial layout. The estimation of distances and slopes in navigation space (i.e. the space reachable by locomotion) is influenced by sensations relating to body condition and the metabolic cost of the actions. The results of the s...
The shape and texture of humans and humanoid robots provide perceptual information that help us to appropriately categorise these stimuli. However, it remains unclear which features and attributes are driving the assignment into human and non-human categories. To explore this issue, we ran a series of five preregistered experiments wherein we prese...
Pain, as a multidimensional and subjective experience, intertwines with various aspects of body representation, involving sensory, affective and motivational components. This review explores the bidirectional relationship between pain and body representations, emphasizing the impact of the sense of ownership on pain perception, the transformative i...
Limb apraxia is a higher-order motor disorder often occurring post-stroke, which affects skilled actions. It is assessed through tasks involving gesture production or pantomime, recognition, meaningless gesture imitation, complex figure drawing, single and multi-object use. A two-system model for the organisation of actions hypothesizes distinct pa...
The Economy of action hypothesis postulates that bodily states rescale the perception of the individual’s environment’s spatial layout. The estimation of distances and slopes in navigation space (i.e. the space reachable by locomotion) is influenced by sensations relating to body condition and the metabolic cost of the actions. The results of the s...
The experience of empathy for pain is underpinned by sensorimotor and affective dimensions which, although interconnected, are at least in part behaviorally and neurally distinct. Spinal cord injuries (SCI) induce a massive, below‐lesion level, sensorimotor body–brain disconnection. This condition may make it possible to test whether sensorimotor d...
The use of linear mixed models (LMMs) is increasing in psychology and neuroscience research In this article, we focus on the implementation of LMMs in fully crossed experimental designs. A key aspect of LMMs is choosing a random-effects structure according to the experimental needs. To date, opposite suggestions are present in the literature, spann...
Decision conflicts may arise when the costs and benefits of choices are evaluated as a function of outcomes predicted along a temporal dimension. Electrophysiology studies suggest that during performance monitoring a typical oscillatory activity in the theta rhythm, named midfrontal theta, may index conflict processing and resolution. In the presen...
The experience of empathy for pain is underpinned by sensorimotor and affective dimensions which are behaviourally and neurally distinct. Spinal cord injuries (SCI) induce a massive, below-lesion level, sensorimotor body-brain disconnection. This condition may make it possible to test whether sensorimotor deprivation alters specific dimensions of e...
The future of human–robot collaboration relies on people’s ability to understand and predict robots' actions. The machine-like appearance of robots, as well as contextual information, may influence people’s ability to anticipate the behaviour of robots. We conducted six separate experiments to investigate how spatial cues and task instructions modu...
Sense of time is a complex construct, and its neural correlates remain to date in most part unknown. To complicate the frame, physical attributes of the stimulus, such as its intensity or movement, influence temporal perception. Although previous studies have shown that time perception can be compromised after a brain lesion, the evidence on the ro...
The use of Multilevel Linear Models (MLMs) is increasing in Psychology and Neuroscience research. A key aspect of MLMs is choosing a random effects structure according to the experimental needs. To date, opposite suggestions are present in the literature, spanning from keeping all random effects, which produces several singularity and convergence i...
Cognitive flexibility plays a crucial role in psychological health and this research aimed to investigate its assessment. We developed a novel Reversal learning task (RLT) paradigm adding pure reward (+ 100 points, 0) and punishment (− 100 points, 0) conditions to the classic reward–punishment condition (+ 100, − 100); we also analyzed the RLT conv...
Objectives
Anosognosic patients show a lack of awareness for their hemiplegia coupled with a distorted sense of agency for the actions performed by the plegic limbs. Since anosognosia is often associated with right brain damage, this hemisphere seems to play a dominant role in monitoring awareness for motor actions. Therefore, we would expect that...
Action monitoring is crucial to the successful execution of an action and understanding the actions of others. It is often impaired due to brain lesions in particular after stroke. This systematic review aims to map the literature on the neurophysiological correlates of action monitoring in patients with brain lesions. Eighteen studies were identif...
Although in the last three decades philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists have produced numerous studies on human cognition, the debate concerning its nature is still heated and current views on the subject are somewhat antithetical. On the one hand, there are those who adhere to a view implying ‘disembodiment’ which suggests that cognitio...
Personal neglect is a disorder in the perception and representation of the body that causes the patients to behave as if the contralesional side of their body does not exist. This clinical condition has not been adequately investigated in the past as it has been considered a symptom of unilateral spatial neglect, which has mainly been studied with...
Do people ascribe intentions to humanoid robots as they would to humans or non-human-like animated objects? In six experiments, we compared people’s ability to extract non-mentalistic (i.e., where an agent is looking) and mentalistic (i.e., what an agent is looking at; what an agent is going to do) information from gaze and directional cues perform...
Peripersonal Space (PPS) is defined as the space close to the body where all interactions between the individual and the environment take place. Behavioural experiments on PPS exploit multisensory integration, using Multisensory Visuo-Tactile stimuli (MVT), whose visual and tactile components target the same body part (i.e. the face, the hand, the...
Neuropsychological disturbances in the sense of limb ownership provide unique opportunities to study the neurocognitive basis of body ownership. Previous small sample studies that showed discrete cortical lesions cannot explain why multisensory, affective, and cognitive manipulations alter disownership symptoms. We tested the novel hypothesis that...
Fibromyalgia (FM) is characterised by chronic, continuous, widespread pain, often associated with a sense of fatigue, non-restorative sleep and physical exhaustion. Due to the nature of this condition and the absence of other neurological issues potentially able to induce disorders in body representations per se, it represents a perfect model since...
A spinal cord injury causes extensive neuroplastic modifications in our brain, from the sensory–motor structures, to all the brain because of the strict interdependences of brain structures within neural networks.
These modifications have—often subtle—effects on cognitive aspects, such as the representation of the body (in particular regarding the...
Personal neglect is a disorder in the perception and representation of the body that causes the patients to behave as if the contralesional side of their body does not exist. This clinical condition has not been adequately investigated in the past as it has been considered a symptom of unilateral spatial neglect, which has mainly been studied with...
Interpreting the behaviour of autonomous machines will be a daily activity for future generations. Yet, surprisingly little is currently known about how people ascribe intentions to human-like and non-human-like agents or objects. In a series of six experiments, we compared people’s ability to extract non-mentalistic (i.e., where an agent is lookin...
Paraplegia following spinal cord injury (SCI) affects the mental representation and peripersonal space of the paralysed body parts (i.e., lower limbs). Physical rehabilitation programs can improve these aspects, but the benefits are mostly partial and short-lasting. These limits could be due to the absence of trainings focused on SCI-induced cognit...
Objective:
Erroneous gesture execution is at the core of motor cognition difficulties in apraxia. While a taxonomy of errors may provide important information about the nature of the disorder, classifications are currently often inconsistent. This study aims to identify the error categories which distinguish apraxic from non-apraxic patients.
Met...
Experimental and clinical evidence indicate that chronic pain changes individuals' perception of their body. Body distortions are reported in Fibromyalgia (FM) during pain crises (Valenzuela-Moguillansky, 2013) and an increased sensitivity to experimentally induced bodily illusions (Martinez et al., 2018) is described. The possibility that body ima...
The anarchic hand syndrome refers to an inability to control the movements of one’s own hand, which acts as if it has a will of its own. The symptoms may differ depending on whether the brain lesion is anterior, posterior, callosal or subcortical, but the relative classifications are not conclusive. This study investigates the role of white matter...
Neuropsychological disturbances in the sense of limb ownership (DSO) provide a unique opportunity to study the neurocognitive basis of the sense of body ownership. Previous small sample studies focused on discrete cortical lesions and modular accounts, which cannot explain the modulations of DSO by multisensory, affective and cognitive manipulation...
The anarchic hand syndrome refers to an inability to control the movements of one’s own hand which acts as if it had a will of its own. The symptoms may differ depending on whether the brain lesion is anterior, posterior, callosal or subcortical, but the relative classifications are not conclusive. This study investigates the role of white matter d...
Real-world experience is typically multimodal. Evidence indicates that the facilitation in the detection of multisensory stimuli is modulated by the perceptual load, the amount of information involved in the processing of the stimuli. Here, we used a realistic virtual reality environment while concomitantly acquiring Electroencephalography (EEG) an...
Single case studies continue to play an important role in neuropsychological research. However, the range of statistical tools specifically designed for single cases is still limited. The current gold standard is the Crawford’s t-test, but it is crucial to note that this is limited to simple designs and it is not possible to make inferences relevan...
Introduction: Anosognosia for hemiplegia (AHP) is a condition in which patients with paralysis are unaware of their motor deficits. Research into AHP is important for improving its treatment and providing insight into the neurocognitive mechanism of motor awareness. Unfortunately, most studies use assessments with widely recognized limitations.
Th...
Being aware of one's own ability to interact socially is crucial to everyday life. After a brain injury, patients may lose their capacity to understand others' intentions and beliefs, that is, the Theory of Mind (ToM). To date, the debate on the association between ToM and other cognitive deficits (in particular executive functions and behavioural...
The disabling effects of traumatic brain injuries (TBI) present a significant healthcare concern to developed countries. In order to achieve a reliable prognosis, validated assessment scales are used to monitor the cognitive outcome, like the Level of Cognitive Functioning Scale, or the overall functional outcome, namely the Functional Independence...
Objective. Erroneous gesture execution is at the core of motor cognition difficulties in apraxia. While a taxonomy of errors may provide important information about the nature of the disorder, classifications are currently often inconsistent. This study aims to identify the error categories which distinguish apraxic from non-apraxic patients. Metho...
Research in Neuropsychology is based on single cases. However, the range of statistical tools specifically designed for single cases is still limited. The current gold standard is the Crawford's t-test, but it is crucial to note that this is limited to simple designs and it is not possible to make inferences relating to support for the null hypothe...
Behavioural studies on Multisensory Peripersonal Space (PPS) representations are based on seminal findings in single-cell recordings.A classic experimental paradigm used to assess PPS is the Multisensory Integration Paradigm. In this paradigm Visuo-Tactile stimuli are administrated to participants. According to the paradigm, the tactile component v...
Peripersonal space (PPS) representation is modulated by information coming from the body. In paraplegic individuals, whose lower limb sensory-motor functions are impaired or completely lost, the representation of PPS around the feet is reduced. However, passive motion can have short-term restorative effects. What remains unclear is the mechanisms u...
Anosognosia is a multifaceted syndrome characterized by a lack of awareness of motor, cognitive, or emotional deficits. While most studies have focused on basic motor disorders such as hemiplegia, only recently, the issue of whether anosognosia also concerns higher-order motor disorders like apraxia has been addressed. Here, we explore the existenc...
The above article was published online with missing author. The additional author is Michele Scandola.
In a patient suffering from tactile agnosia a comparison was made (using the ABABAB paradigm) between three blocks of neuropsychological rehabilitation sessions involving off-line anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (anodal-tDCS) and three blocks of rehabilitation sessions without tDCS. During the blocks with anodal-tDCS, the stimulation...
Despite the many links between body representation, acting and perceiving the environment, no research has to date explored whether specific tool embodiment in conditions of sensorimotor deprivation influences extrapersonal space perception. We tested 20 spinal cord injured (SCI) individuals to investigate whether specific wheelchair embodiment int...
The syndrome of Anosognosia for Hemiplegia (AHP) can provide unique insights into the neurocognitive processes of motor awareness. Yet, prior studies have only explored predominately discreet lesions. Using advanced structural neuroimaging methods in 174 patients with a right-hemisphere stroke, we were able to identify three neural systems that con...
Peripersonal space (PPS) representation is affected by information coming from body, as demonstrated by patients with spinal cord injury (SCI) in whom a body-brain disconnection leads to deafferentation and deefferentation of the below-lesion body parts. In particular, in paraplegic individuals whose lower limb sensory-motor functions are impaired...
Despite the many links between body representation, acting and perceiving the environment, no research has to date explored whether specific tool embodiment in conditions of sensorimotor deprivation influences extrapersonal space perception. We tested 20 spinal cord injured (SCI) individuals to investigate whether specific wheelchair embodiment int...
Embodied Cognition Theories (ECT) postulate that higher-order cognition is heavily influenced by sensorimotor signals. We explored the active role of somatosensory afferents and motor efferents in modulating the perception of actions in people who have suffered a massive body-brain disconnection because of spinal cord injury (SCI), which leads to s...
Supplementary information of: Anticipation of wheelchairs and rollerblades actions in spinal cord injured people, rollerbladers and physiotherapists
(PDF)
The rare syndrome of Anosognosia for Hemiplegia (AHP) can provide unique insights into the neurocognitive processes of motor awareness. Yet, prior studies have only explored predominately discreet lesions. Using advanced structural neuroimaging methods in 174 patients with a right-hemisphere stroke, we were able to identify three neural networks th...
Spinal cord injury (SCI) interrupts the brain-body input-output exchange and modifies the mental representation of disconnected body parts, with decreased reliance on sensorimotor aspects of body representation and increased weighting of visuospatial ones. We hypothesized that physiotherapy-related benefits might extend to the re-establishment of t...
Cognitive control during conflict monitoring, error processing, and post‐error adjustment appear to be associated with the occurrence of midfrontal theta (MFϴ). While this association is supported by correlational EEG studies, much less is known about the possible causal link between MFϴ and error and conflict processing. In the present study, we a...
Recent studies on recovery of consciousness of subjects in a vegetative state (VS) admitted to rehabilitation units have focused mainly on the identification of prognostic factors, whereas few studies have focused on outcome. The aim of this study was to compare demographic and clinical data and report functional outcome of patients in a VS due to...
To explore the link between Sense of Embodiment (SoE) over a virtual hand and physiological regulation of skin temperature, twenty-four healthy participants were immersed in virtual reality through a Head Mounted Display and had their real limb temperature recorded by means of a high-sensitivity infrared camera. Participants observed a virtual righ...
Introduction: Cross-modal interactions improve the processing of external stimuli, particularly when an isolated sensory modality is impaired. When information from different modalities is integrated, object recognition is facilitated probably as a result of bottomup and top-down processes. The aim of this study was to investigate the potential eff...
Vision is known to be shaped by context, defined by environmental and bodily signals. In the Taylor illusion, the size of an afterimage projected on one's hand changes according to proprioceptive signals conveying hand position. Here, we assessed whether the Taylor illusion does not just depend on the physical hand position, but also on bodily self...
Significance statement:
Vision is influenced by the body: in the Taylor illusion, the size of an afterimage projected on one's hand changes according to tactile and proprioceptive signals conveying hand position. Here, we report a new phenomenon revealing that the perception of afterimages depends not only on bodily signals, but also on the sense...
Introduction and objective:
Testicular torsion must be diagnosed quickly and accurately. The delay of the diagnosis and the subsequent delay of surgery may lead to loss testicular viability and orchidectomy. Aim of our retrospective evaluation was to define which element should be considered as major support to the clinician in distinguishing sper...
Apparent biological motion is the perception of plausible movements when two alternating images depicting the initial and final phase of an action are presented at specific stimulus onset asynchronies. Here, we show lower subjective apparent biological motion perception when actions are observed from a first relative to a third visual perspective....
Peripersonal space (PPS) is the space surrounding us within which we interact with objects. PPS may be modulated by actions (e.g. when using tools) or sense of ownership (e.g. over a rubber hand). Indeed, intense and/or prolonged use of a tool may induce a sense of ownership over it. Conversely, inducing ownership over a rubber hand may activate br...
Apraxia is a well-known syndrome characterized by the sufferer’s inability to perform routine gestures. In an attempt to understand the syndrome better, various different theories have been developed and a number of classifications of different subtypes have been proposed. In this article review, we will address these theories with a specific focus...
Motor imagery (MI) allows one to mentally represent an action without necessarily performing it. Importantly, however, MI is profoundly influenced by the ability to actually execute actions, as demonstrated by the impairment of this ability as a consequence of lesions in motor cortices, limb amputations, movement limiting chronic pain, and spinal c...
Anarchic hand syndrome (AHS) is a rare neurological condition characterized by seemingly purposeful, goal-directed hand movements which the person afflicted by the syndrome is not, however, in control of. By extensively examining a patient with AHS we provide novel neuropsychological and lesion mapping data that shed new light on the possibility of...
Categorizing an individual as a friend or foe plays a pivotal role in navigating the social world. According to the Stereotype Content Model, social perception relies on two fundamental dimensions, Warmth and Competence, which allow us to process the intentions of others and their ability to enact those intentions, respectively. Social cognition re...
Residual forms of awareness have recently been demonstrated in subjects affected by anos