Electrophysiological correlates of the cognitive control processes underpinning mixing and switching costs

Typically, in task-switching contexts individuals are slower and less accurate when repeating a task in mixed blocks compared to single-task blocks (mixing cost) and when switching to a new task compared to repeating a previous one (switch cost). Previous research has shown that distinct electrophysiological correlates underlie these two phenomena. However, this evidence is not a consistent result. The goal of this study was to better characterize differences between the control processes involved in mixing and switch costs. To this aim, we examined event-related potentials (ERPs) evoked during a cued task-switching experiment. In order to minimize the confounding effects of cognitive deman…

Effects of low-gamma tACS on primary motor cortex in implicit motor learning

Abstract In the primary motor cortex (M1), rhythmic activity in the gamma frequency band has been found during movement planning, onset and execution. Although the role of high-gamma oscillatory activity in M1 is well established, the contribution of low-gamma activity is still unexplored. In this study, transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) was used with the aim to specifically modulate low-gamma frequency band in M1, during an implicit motor learning task. A 40 Hz-tACS was applied over the left M1 while participants performed a serial reaction time task (SRTT) using their right hand. The task required the repetitive execution of sequential movements in response to sequences …

Subclinical executive function impairment in children with asymptomatic, treated phenylketonuria: A comparison with children with immunodeficiency virus

In this study we compared the neuropsychological profile of phenylketonuria (PKU) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to examine the specificity of the executive function (EF) impairment reported in these two patologies. A total of 55 age-matched children and adolescents were assessed, including 11 patients with PKU, 16 patients with HIV and 28 healthy controls, underwent a neuropsychological assessment. Although neither the PKU nor the HIV group scored below the normative ranges, both groups showed lower scores in neuropsychological tests engaging EFs than controls. In addition, compared to patients with PKU the HIV group performed significantly worse in the Trail-Making Test A, Corsi S…

The Neuropsychological Profile of Infantile Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy

It has been shown that children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) exhibit specific cognitive deficits. However, the neuropsychological profile has not yet been fully characterized. In order to control for the contribution of motor impairments as a confounding variable that is usually present when assessing children with muscular pathologies, we compared children with DMD to a group of children with an autoimmune pathology that does not entail either brain or cognitive dysfunction but does imply motor impairment: juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA). An extensive neuropsychological evaluation was administered, including intelligence, perception, language, memory and learning, attention, …

Co-registering kinematics and evoked related potentials during visually guided reach-to-grasp movements.

Background:In non-human primates grasp-related sensorimotor transformations are accomplished in a circuit involving the anterior intraparietal sulcus (area AIP) and both the ventral and the dorsal sectors of the premotor cortex (vPMC and dPMC, respectively). Although a human homologue of such a circuit has been identified, the time course of activation of these cortical areas and how such activity relates to specific kinematic events has yet to be investigated.Methodology/Principal Findings:We combined kinematic and event-related potential techniques to explicitly test how activity within human grasping-related brain areas is modulated in time. Subjects were requested to reach towards and g…

The effects of 8-weeks Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program on cognitive control: an EEG study

Objectives: Mindfulness practice can enhance different aspects of attentional functions, such as the ability to sustain the attentional focus over time. However, it is still unclear whether this practice might indeed impact higher cognitive functions, such as control mechanisms that allow the appropriate and flexible allocation of attentional resources. In this longitudinal study, changes associated with a mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program were investigated, with a focus on proactive and reactive cognitive control mechanisms, namely, the ability to maintain task-relevant information and to prepare in advance the response, and the ability to promptly adjust overlearned behavi…

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Trains at 1 Hz Frequency of the Right Posterior Parietal Cortex Facilitate Recognition Memory

Neuroimaging, neuropsychological, and brain stimulation studies have led to contrasting findings regarding the potential roles of the lateral parietal lobe in episodic memory. Studies using brain stimulation methods reported in the literature do not offer unequivocal findings on the interactions with stimulation location (left vs. right hemisphere) or timing of the stimulation (encoding vs. retrieval). To address these issues, active and sham 1 Hz repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) trains of 600 stimuli were applied over the right or left posterior parietal cortex (PPC) before the encoding or before the retrieval phase of a recognition memory task of unknown faces in a grou…

Reward motivation and neurostimulation interact to improve working memory performance in healthy older adults: A simultaneous tDCS-fNIRS study.

Abstract Several studies have evaluated the effect of anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the prefrontal cortex (PFC) for the enhancement of working memory (WM) performance in healthy older adults. However, the mixed results obtained so far suggest the need for concurrent brain imaging, in order to more directly examine tDCS effects. The present study adopted a continuous multimodal approach utilizing functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to examine the interactive effects of tDCS combined with manipulations of reward motivation. Twenty-one older adults (mean age = 69.7 years; SD = 5.05) performed an experimental visuo-spatial WM task before, during and after …

Impact of physical activity on response to stress in people aged 65 and over during COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.

Background: The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected the lives of many people. In particular, restrictions of physical activity (PA) due to pandemic-related lockdown have impacted their psychological status. The aim of this work was to investigate the relationship between PA habits, before the pandemic and during the lockdown, and responses to stress due to home isolation during the lockdown, in older people. Methods: To this aim, an online survey addressed to people aged 65 years and over was conducted during the first pandemic wave in Italy (Study 1). To explore the effect of PA restrictions on responses to stress over time, the survey was replicated during the second…

Assessing inter- and intra-individual cognitive variability in patients at risk for cognitive impairment: the case of minimal hepatic encephalopathy

Recent evidence reveals that inter- and intra-individual variability significantly affects cognitive performance in a number of neuropsychological pathologies. We applied a flexible family of statistical models to elucidate the contribution of inter- and intra-individual variables on cognitive functioning in healthy volunteers and patients at risk for hepatic encephalopathy (HE). Sixty-five volunteers (32 patients with cirrhosis and 33 healthy volunteers) were assessed by means of the Inhibitory Control Task (ICT). A Generalized Additive Model for Location, Scale and Shape (GAMLSS) was fitted for jointly modeling the mean and the intra-variability of Reaction Times (RTs) as a function of so…

Sensory Processing Disorders in Children and Adolescents: Taking Stock of Assessment and Novel Therapeutic Tools

Sensory processing disorders (SPDs) can be described as difficulty detecting, modulating, interpreting, and/or responding to sensory experiences. Because SPDs occur in many individuals with autism spectrum disorder and in other populations with neurodevelopmental disorders, it is important to distinguish between typical and atypical functioning in sensory processes and to identify early phenotypic markers for developing SPDs. This review considers different methods for diagnosing SPDs to outline a multidisciplinary approach useful for developing valid diagnostic measures. In particular, the advantages and limitations of the most commonly used tools in assessment of SPDs, such as caregiver r…

Sociocognitive factors associated with nonadherence to medication after hospital discharge

Poor adherence to prescribed medication is a well-known problem and continues to be a major challenge in all medical specialties. Unlike previous studies that have mainly focused on nonadherence behaviors in specific diseases, this study sought to examine socio-cognitive factors associated with nonadherence behavior in a sample of a general clinical population. A questionnaire investigating socio-demographic and cognitive factors and a telephone follow-up interview were administered to 84 patients recruited in a General Medicine Unit before their discharge. Half of the participants were informed about that follow-up procedure. One month after hospital discharge, 42% of uninformed patients r…

The Neural Bases of Event Monitoring across Domains: a Simultaneous ERP-fMRI Study.

The ability to check and evaluate the environment over time with the aim to detect the occurrence of target stimuli is supported by sustained/tonic as well as transient/phasic control processes, which overall might be referred to as event monitoring. The neural underpinning of sustained attentional control processes involves a fronto-parietal network. However, it has not been well-defined yet whether this cortical circuit acts irrespective of the specific material to be monitored and whether this mediates sustained as well as transient monitoring processes. In the current study, the functional activity of brain during an event monitoring task was investigated and compared between two cognit…

Neuropsychological performance 10 years after immunization in infancy with thimerosal-containing vaccines

OBJECTIVE. Thimerosal, a mercury compound used as a preservative in vaccines administered during infancy, has been suspected to affect neuropsychological development. We compared the neuropsychological performance, 10 years after vaccination, of 2 groups of children exposed randomly to different amounts of thimerosal through immunization. METHODS. Children who were enrolled in an efficacy trial of pertussis vaccines in 1992–1993 were contacted in 2003. Two groups of children were identified, according to thimerosal content in vaccines assigned randomly in the first year of life (cumulative ethylmercury intake of 62.5 or 137.5 μg), and were compared with respect to neuropsychological outcome…

Impaired cognitive control in patients with brain tumors

Though the assessment of cognitive functions is proven to be a reliable prognostic indicator in patients with brain tumors, some of these functions, such as cognitive control, are still rarely investigated. The objective of this study was to examine proactive and reactive control functions in patients with focal brain tumors and to identify lesioned brain areas more at "risk" for developing impairment of these functions. To this end, a group of twenty-two patients, candidate to surgery, were tested with an AX-CPT task and a Stroop task, along with a clinical neuropsychological assessment, and their performance was compared to that of a well-matched healthy control group. Although overall ac…

Efficacy of a Training on Executive Functions in Potentiating Rehabilitation Effects in Stroke Patients

Cognitive impairment after a stroke has a direct impact on patients’ disability. In particular, impairment of Executive Functions (EFs) interferes with re-adaptation to daily life. The aim of this study was to explore whether adding a computer-based training on EFs to an ordinary rehabilitation program, regardless of the specific brain damage and clinical impairment (motor, language, or cognitive), could improve rehabilitation outcomes in patients with stroke. An EF training was designed to have minimal motor and expressive language demands and to be applied to a wide range of clinical conditions. A total of 37 stroke patients were randomly assigned to two groups: a training group, which pe…

Behavioral and electrophysiological correlates of cognitive control in ex-obese adults

Impaired cognitive control functions have been documented in obesity. It remains unclear whether these functions normalize after weight reduction. We compared ex-obese individuals, who successfully underwent substantial weight loss after bariatric surgery, to normal-weight participants on measures of resistance to interference, cognitive flexibility and response inhibition, obtained from the completion of two Stroop tasks, a Switching task and a Go/NoGo task, respectively. To elucidate the underlying brain mechanisms, event-related potentials (ERPs) in the latter two tasks were examined. As compared to controls, patients were more susceptible to the predominant but task-irrelevant stimulus …

Age-related differences in the neural correlates of remembering time-based intentions.

The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to explore the effect of age on the neural correlates of monitoring processes involved in time-based prospective memory.In both younger and older adults, the addition of a time-based prospective memory task to an ongoing task led to a sustained ERP activity broadly distributed over the scalp. Older adults, however, did not exhibit the slow wave activity observed in younger adults over prefrontal regions, which is considered to be associated with retrieval mode. This finding indicates that age-related decline in intention maintenance might be one source of the impaired prospective memory performance displayed by older adults. An 'anterio…

Functional Role of Cerebellar Gamma Frequency in Motor Sequences Learning: a tACS Study

Although the role of the cerebellum in motor sequences learning is widely established, the specific function of its gamma oscillatory activity still remains unclear. In the present study, gamma (50 Hz)—or delta (1 Hz)—transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) was applied to the right cerebellar cortex while participants performed an implicit serial reaction time task (SRTT) with their right hand. The task required the execution of motor sequences simultaneously with the presentation of a series of visual stimuli. The same sequence was repeated across multiple task blocks (from blocks 2 to 5 and from blocks 7 to 8), whereas in other blocks, new/pseudorandom sequences were reproduce…

The impact of a concurrent motor task on auditory and visual temporal discrimination tasks

Previous studies have shown the presence of an interference effect on temporal perception when participants are required to simultaneously execute a nontemporal task. Such interference likely has an attentional source. In the present work, a temporal discrimination task was performed alone or together with a self-paced finger-tapping task used as concurrent, nontemporal task. Temporal durations were presented in either the visual or the auditory modality, and two standard durations (500 and 1, 500 ms) were used. For each experimental condition, the participant’s threshold was estimated and analyzed. The mean Weber fraction was higher in the visual than in the auditory modality, but only for…

Aging and prospective memory: the role of working memory and monitoring processes

Background and aims: Remembering to execute an earlier planned action is essential in everyday life, and is a prerequisite for independent living in old age. The purpose of the present study was to determine the influence of age in performing a prospective memory (PM) task and to analyze the differential contribution of working memory and attentional monitoring demands. Methods: In Experiment 1, a group of young and two groups of old adults were assigned to one of two low-demanding conditions: a picture-naming task (only-Naming) and a picture-naming plus a PM task (Naming+PM). In Experiment 2, a group of young and two groups of old adults performed one of two high-demanding conditions, in w…

The time course of temporal discrimination: An ERP study

Objective: The question of how temporal information is processed by the brain is still a matter of debate. This study aimed to elucidate the brain electrical activity associated with a visual temporal discrimination task. Methods: For this purpose, 44 participants were required to compare pairs of sequentially presented time intervals: a fixed standard interval (1000 ms), and an equal-to-standard, longer (1200 ms) or shorter (800 ms) comparison interval. Behavioural data and event-related potentials (ERPs) were analyzed. Results: Long intervals were more rapidly identified than short intervals. The amplitude of the contingent negative variation (CNV) found at frontocentral sites before the …

Ring 17 syndrome: first clinical report without intellectual disability

Ring chromosomes are rare abnormalities caused by the fusion of the telomeric regions. Three-ring chromosome syndromes (Cr 20, Cr 17 and Cr 14) cause epilepsy with variable phenotypes. In ring 17 patients with mild phenotype, some authors have shown an epilepsy syndrome similar to that of ring 20. We report the first case of a girl with ring chromosome 17 and a normal neurological and general cognitive profile. She had had, from 9 years old, focal pharmacoresistant epilepsy associated with episodes of non-convulsive status epilepticus with mainly autonomic features. Cytogenetic analysis revealed an abnormal karyotype characterised by the presence of de novo ring chromosome 17 in 19% of meta…

An investigation of the neural circuits underlying reaching and reach-to-grasp movements: from planning to execution

Experimental evidence suggests the existence of a sophisticated brain circuit specifically dedicated to reach-to-grasp planning and execution, both in human and non-human primates (Castiello, 2005). Studies accomplished by means of neuroimaging techniques suggest the hypothesis of a dichotomy between a "reach-to-grasp" circuit, involving the anterior intraparietal area, the dorsal and ventral premotor cortices (PMd and PMv - Castiello and Begliomini, 2008; Filimon, 2010) and a "reaching" circuit involving the medial intraparietal area and the superior parieto-occipital cortex (Culham et al., 2006). However, the time course characterizing the involvement of these regions during the planning …

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and Neuroimaging Coregistration

The development of neuroimaging techniques is one of the most impressive advancements in neuroscience. The main reason for the widespread use of these instruments lies in their capacity to provide an accurate description of neural activity during a cognitive process or during rest. This important advancement is related to the possibility to selectively detect changes of neuronal activity in space and time by means of different biological markers. Specifically, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), positron emission tomography (PET), single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), and nearinfrared spectroscopy (NIRS) use metabolic markers of ongoing neuronal activity to provide a…

Structural hemispheric asymmetries underlie verbal Stroop performance

Performance on tasks involving cognitive control such as the Stroop task is often associated with left lateralized brain activations. Based on this neuro-functional evidence, we tested whether leftward structural grey matter asymmetries would also predict inter-individual differences in combatting Stroop interference. To check for the specificity of the results, both a verbal Stroop task and a spatial one were administered to a total of 111 healthy young individuals, for whom T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images were also acquired. Surface thickness and area estimations were calculated using FreeSurfer. Participants' hemispheres were registered to a symmetric template and Lat…

Fronto-parietal homotopy in resting-state functional connectivity predicts task-switching performance

Homotopic functional connectivity reflects the degree of synchrony in spontaneous activity between homologous voxels in the two hemispheres. Previous studies have associated increased brain homotopy and decreased white matter integrity with performance decrements on different cognitive tasks across the life-span. Here, we correlated functional homotopy, both at the whole-brain level and specifically in fronto-parietal network nodes, with task-switching performance in young adults. Cue-to-target intervals (CTI: 300 vs. 1200 ms) were manipulated on a trial-by-trial basis to modulate cognitive demands and strategic control. We found that mixing costs, a measure of task-set maintenance and moni…

Automatic Temporal Expectancy: A High-Density Event-Related Potential Study

How we compute time is not fully understood. Questions include whether an automatic brain mechanism is engaged in temporally regular environmental structure in order to anticipate events, and whether this can be dissociated from task-related processes, including response preparation, selection and execution. To investigate these issues, a passive temporal oddball task requiring neither time-based motor response nor explicit decision was specifically designed and delivered to participants during high-density, event-related potentials recording. Participants were presented with pairs of audiovisual stimuli (S1 and S2) interspersed with an Inter-Stimulus Interval (ISI) that was manipulated acc…

Behavioral and hemodynamic effects of prefrontal anodal stimulation in healthy older adults: a simultaneous tDCS/fNIRS study

Time-on-Task in Children with ADHD: An ex-Gaussian Analysis

AbstractAlthough it is widely known that high intra-individual variability (IIV) is a key characteristic of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a detailed exploration of the IIV pattern during the time course of a cognitive task has never been carried out. In this study, 30 children with ADHD and 30 controls, were administered the Conners’ Continuous Performance Task (CPT-II). The across-block individual performance of the groups was analyzed using an ex-Gaussian approach, which enabled a clearer understanding of how individual response times (RTs) fluctuate during a task in comparison with conventional measures of central tendency. While the conventional measures showed a sign…

Electrophysiological correlates of strategic monitoring in event-based and time-based prospective memory

Prospective memory (PM) is the ability to remember to accomplish an action when a particular event occurs (i.e., event-based PM), or at a specific time (i.e., time-based PM) while performing an ongoing activity. Strategic Monitoring is one of the basic cognitive functions supporting PM tasks, and involves two mechanisms: a retrieval mode, which consists of maintaining active the intention in memory; and target checking, engaged for verifying the presence of the PM cue in the environment. The present study is aimed at providing the first evidence of event-related potentials (ERPs) associated with time-based PM, and at examining differences and commonalities in the ERPs related to Strategic M…

Repetitive TMS over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex modulates the error positivity: An ERP study

Abstract Error processing is a critical step towards an efficient adaptation of our behavior to achieve a goal. Little research has been devoted to investigate the contribution of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in supporting error processing. In this study, the causal relationship of the DLPFC in error commission was examined by means of a repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation protocol (rTMS). Specifically, the effects of an inhibitory protocol were assessed by examining the electroencephalographic signal recorded during the execution of a Go/No-Go task. To this aim, a group of 15 healthy young participants performed a three-session study. At each session, either the righ…

Spatiotemporal Neurodynamics Underlying Internally and Externally Driven Temporal Prediction: A High Spatial Resolution ERP Study

Abstract Temporal prediction (TP) is a flexible and dynamic cognitive ability. Depending on the internal or external nature of information exploited to generate TP, distinct cognitive and brain mechanisms are engaged with the same final goal of reducing uncertainty about the future. In this study, we investigated the specific brain mechanisms involved in internally and externally driven TP. To this end, we employed an experimental paradigm purposely designed to elicit and compare externally and internally driven TP and a combined approach based on the application of a distributed source reconstruction modeling on a high spatial resolution electrophysiological data array. Specific spatiotemp…

Developmental Trajectories of Internally and Externally Driven Temporal Prediction.

The ability to generate temporal prediction (TP) is fundamental to our survival since it allows us to selectively orient our attention in time in order to prioritize relevant environmental information. Studies on adult participants showed that externally and internally driven mechanisms can be engaged to establish TP, both resulting in better behavioural performance. However, few studies on children have investigated the ability to engage internally and externally driven TP, especially in relation to how these mechanisms change across development. In this study, 111 participants (88 children between six and eleven years of age, and 23 adults) were tested by means of a simple reaction time p…

TMS-evoked long-lasting artefacts: A new adaptive algorithm for EEG signal correction

Abstract Objective During EEG the discharge of TMS generates a long-lasting decay artefact (DA) that makes the analysis of TMS-evoked potentials (TEPs) difficult. Our aim was twofold: (1) to describe how the DA affects the recorded EEG and (2) to develop a new adaptive detrend algorithm (ADA) able to correct the DA. Methods We performed two experiments testing 50 healthy volunteers. In experiment 1, we tested the efficacy of ADA by comparing it with two commonly-used independent component analysis (ICA) algorithms. In experiment 2, we further investigated the efficiency of ADA and the impact of the DA evoked from TMS over frontal, motor and parietal areas. Results Our results demonstrated t…

Impact of Perceived Stress and Immune Status on Decision-Making Abilities during COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown.

The ability to make risky decisions in stressful contexts has been largely investigated in experimental settings. We examined this ability during the first months of COVID-19 pandemic, when in Italy people were exposed to a prolonged stress condition, mainly caused by a rigid lockdown. Participants among the general population completed two cognitive tasks, an Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), which measures individual risk/reward decision-making tendencies, and a Go/No-Go task (GNG), to test impulsivity, together with two questionnaires, the Perceived Stress Scale and the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scales. The Immune Status Questionnaire was additionally administered to explore the impact of t…

Does predictability matter? Effects of cue predictability on neurocognitive mechanisms underlying prospective memory

Prospective memory (PM) represents the ability to successfully realize intentions when the appropriate moment or cue occurs. In this study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to explore the impact of cue predictability on the cognitive and neural mechanisms supporting PM. Participants performed an ongoing task and, simultaneously, had to remember to execute a pre-specified action when they encountered the PM cues. The occurrence of the PM cues was predictable (being signalled by a warning cue) for some participants and was completely unpredictable for others. In the predictable cue condition, the behavioural and ERP correlates of strategic monitoring were observed mainly in the ongoing…

Low-frequency rTMS inhibitory effects in the primary motor cortex: Insights from TMS-evoked potentials

The neuromodulatory effects of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) have been mostly investigated by peripheral motor-evoked potentials (MEPs). New TMS-compatible EEG systems allow a direct investigation of the stimulation effects through the analysis of TMS-evoked potentials (TEPs).We investigated the effects of 1-Hz rTMS over the primary motor cortex (M1) of 15 healthy volunteers on TEP evoked by single pulse TMS over the same area. A second experiment in which rTMS was delivered over the primary visual cortex (V1) of 15 healthy volunteers was conducted to examine the spatial specificity of the effects. Single-pulse TMS evoked four main components: P30, N45, P60 and N100. M…

Effect of duration of breastfeeding on neuropsychological development at 10 to 12years of age in a cohort of healthy children

Aim The aim of this article was to explore the effect of duration of breastfeeding on neurocognitive development. Method The long-term effect of breastfeeding on neurodevelopment was examined through a battery of neuropsychological tests in 1403 children (693 females, 710 males; mean age 11y 9mo [SD 6mo], range: 10y 3mo-12y 8mo) who were originally recruited at 6 to 12weeks of age for a clinical trial on acellular pertussis vaccines. An estimated IQ was obtained from scores of the vocabulary, similarities, block design, and coding tests. Breastfeeding data had been prospectively collected throughout the first year of life. Duration of exclusive breastfeeding was defined as the time during w…

Electrophysiological evidence for a differential activation of the brain network associated with temporal discrimination processing

Object size modulates fronto-parietal activity during reaching movements

In both monkeys and humans, reaching-related sensorimotor transformations involve the activation of a wide fronto-parietal network. Recent neurophysiological evidence suggests that some components of this network host not only neurons encoding the direction of arm reaching movements, but also neurons whose involvement is modulated by the intrinsic features of an object (e.g. size and shape). To date, it has yet to be investigated whether a similar modulation is evident in the human reaching-related areas. To fill this gap, we asked participants to reach towards either a small or a large object while kinematic and electroencephalographic signals were recorded. Behavioral results showed that …

Behavioral and Socio-Emotional Disorders in Intellectual Giftedness: A Systematic Review

AbstractThis work systematically reviewed past literature to investigate the association between intellectual giftedness and socio-emotional and/or behavioral disorders. Nineteen studies met the inclusion criteria, 17 of which have children and/or adolescents as participants, and 12 have a non-gifted control group. Socio-emotional problems, such as withdrawal, were found in 3 out of 8 studies; internalizing disorders, such as anxiety, were found in 5 out of 9; externalizing disorders, such as hyperactivity, were found in 3 out of 5. The most investigated comorbidity was attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. A univocal conclusion on the relationship between intellectual giftedness and so…