Search results for "Neurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry"
showing 10 items of 652 documents
Ecological stoichiometry: a link between developmental speed and physiological stress in an omnivorous insect
2019
The elemental composition of organisms is a part of a suite of functional traits that may adaptively respond to fluctuating selection pressures. Life history theory predicts that predation risk and resource limitations impose selection pressures on organisms’ developmental time and are further associated with variability in energetic and behavioral traits. Between-individual differences in developmental speed, behaviors and physiology have been explained using the pace-of-life syndrome (POLS) hypothesis. However, how an organism’s developmental speed is linked with elemental body composition, metabolism and behavior is not well understood. We compared elemental body composition, latency to …
Beta Rebound as an Index of Temporal Integration of Somatosensory and Motor Signals
2020
Modulation of cortical beta rhythm (15-30 Hz) is present during preparation for and execution of voluntary movements as well as during somatosensory stimulation. A rebound in beta synchronization is observed after the end of voluntary movements as well as after somatosensory stimulation and is believed to describe the return to baseline of sensorimotor networks. However, the contribution of efferent and afferent signals to the beta rebound remains poorly understood. Here, we applied electrical median nerve stimulation (MNS) to the right side followed by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) on the left primary motor cortex after either 15 or 25 ms. Because the afferent volley reaches the …
Mobile Phone Chips Reduce Increases in EEG Brain Activity Induced by Mobile Phone-Emitted Electromagnetic Fields
2018
Recent neurophysiological studies indicate that exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMFs) generated by mobile phone radiation can exert effects on brain activity. One technical solution to reduce effects of EMFs in mobile phone use is provided in mobile phone chips that are applied to mobile phones or attached to their surfaces. To date, there are no systematical studies on the effects of mobile phone chip application on brain activity and the underlying neural mechanisms. The present study investigated whether mobile phone chips that are applied to mobile phones reduce effects of EMFs emitted by mobile phone radiation on electroencephalographic (EEG) brain activity in a laboratory study. T…
Social Housing Conditions Modulate the Long-Lasting Increase in Cocaine Reward Induced by Intermittent Social Defeat
2019
Social defeat is considered the most representative animal model for studying the consequences of social stress. Intermittent social defeat (ISD) has proved to enhance the response to cocaine hedonic properties. In the present research, we evaluated if different social housing conditions, as housing with a familiar conspecific or with a female, exert a protective effect modulating the negative consequences of ISD as the increased sensitivity to cocaine and the induction of anxiety-like behavior. To achieve this objective, non-stressed or ISD OF1 male mice were divided into five different experimental groups according to their social environment: standard housing (four adult males per cage);…
Negative and Positive Bias for Emotional Faces: Evidence from the Attention and Working Memory Paradigms
2021
Visual attention and visual working memory (VWM) are two major cognitive functions in humans, and they have much in common. A growing body of research has investigated the effect of emotional information on visual attention and VWM. Interestingly, contradictory findings have supported both a negative bias and a positive bias toward emotional faces (e.g., angry faces or happy faces) in the attention and VWM fields. We found that the classical paradigms—that is, the visual search paradigm in attention and the change detection paradigm in VWM—are considerably similar. The settings of these paradigms could therefore be responsible for the contradictory results. In this paper, we compare previou…
A Systematic Review on the Impact of the Social Confinement on People with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Their Caregivers during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
2021
The COVID-19 pandemic had imposed a variety of containment measures on the general population for prolonged periods. Confinement has had, and still has, social, economic, educational, health, and psychological consequences on the entire population. Objective: In this article, a systematic search has been performed based on studies carried out since the beginning of the pandemic, regarding the impact of these containment measures on the autism spectrum disorder (ASD) population and their caregivers. Method: We consulted six databases (i.e., PubMed, Medline, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, and Science Direct) and selected ten studies that met the inclusion criteria. The chosen studies have be…
ID4 Is Required for Normal Ependymal Cell Development
2021
Ependymal cells are radial glia-derived multiciliated cells lining the lateral ventricles of the brain and spinal cord. Correct development and coordinated cilia beating is essential for proper cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flow and neurogenesis modulation. Dysfunctions of ependymal cells were associated with transcription factor deregulation. Here we provide evidence that the transcriptional regulator ID4 is involved in ependymal cell development and maturation. We observed that Id4-deficient mice display altered ventricular cell cytoarchitecture, decreased ependymal cell number and enlarged ventricles. In addition, absence of ID4 during embryonic development resulted in decreased ependymal ce…
The Neural Bases of Event Monitoring across Domains: a Simultaneous ERP-fMRI Study.
2017
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…
Cannabinoids in the management of spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis.
2008
Anna Maria Malfitano, Maria Chiara Proto, Maurizio BifulcoDipartimento di Scienze Farmaceutiche, Università degli Studi di SalernoAbstract: The endocannabinoid system and cannabinoid-based treatments have been involved in a wide number of diseases. In particular, several studies suggest that cannabinoids and endocannabinoids may have a key role in the pathogenesis and therapy of multiple sclerosis (MS). In this study we highlight the main findings reported in literature about the relevance of cannabinoid drugs in the management and treatment of MS. An increasing body of evidence suggests that cannabinoids have beneficial effects on the symptoms of MS, including spasticity and pai…
Expanding the Active Inference Landscape: More Intrinsic Motivations in the Perception-Action Loop
2018
Active inference is an ambitious theory that treats perception, inference and action selection of autonomous agents under the heading of a single principle. It suggests biologically plausible explanations for many cognitive phenomena, including consciousness. In active inference, action selection is driven by an objective function that evaluates possible future actions with respect to current, inferred beliefs about the world. Active inference at its core is independent from extrinsic rewards, resulting in a high level of robustness across e.g.\ different environments or agent morphologies. In the literature, paradigms that share this independence have been summarised under the notion of in…