Search results for "Neurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry"
showing 10 items of 652 documents
Less Effort, Better Results: How Does Music Act on Prefrontal Cortex in Older Adults during Verbal Encoding? An fNIRS Study
2014
Several neuroimaging studies of cognitive aging revealed deficits in episodic memory abilities as a result of prefrontal cortex (PFC) limitations. Improving episodic memory performance despite PFC deficits is thus a critical issue in aging research. Listening to music stimulates cognitive performance in several non-purely musical activities (e.g., language and memory). Thus, music could represent a rich and helpful source during verbal encoding and therefore help subsequent retrieval. Furthermore, such benefit could be reflected in less demand of PFC, which is known to be crucial for encoding processes. This study aimed to investigate whether music may improve episodic memory in older adult…
Characteristics of regular gamblers in Italy: The role of control and emotion regulation
2016
Objective: the main purpose of this study is to investigate the emotional and temperamental characteristics associated with gambling in Italy and to compare different groups of people on the basis of their risk of gambling: low-risk gamblers, problem gamblers, and pathological gamblers. Particularly, we examined the possible discriminant functions of perception of control, locus of control (whether internal or chance-based; that is, devoted to fate), and emotion-regulation strategies (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression). Method: a total of 251 adult regular gamblers (142 males and 109 females) recruited from different betting and bingo halls completed self-report questionnaire…
Cathodal occipital tDCS is unable to modulate the sound induced flash illusion in migraine
2019
Migraine is a highly disabling disease characterized by recurrent pain. Despite an intensive effort, mechanisms of migraine pathophysiology still represent an unsolved issue. Evidence from both animal and human studies suggests that migraine is characterized by hyperresponsivity or hyperexcitability of sensory cortices, especially the visual cortex. This phenomenon, in turn, may affect multisensory processing. Indeed, migraineurs present with an abnormal, reduced, perception of the Sound-induced Flash Illusion (SiFI), a crossmodal illusion that relies on optimal integration of visual and auditory stimuli by the occipital visual cortex. Decreasing visual cortical excitability with transcrani…
Is It Easy to Synchronize Our Minds When We Are Forced to Cooperate?
2019
There is increasing scientific interest in elucidating the biological mechanisms underlying cooperative behaviors. Humans have developed a high degree of complexity in their cooperativity, which has been defined as hyper-cooperativity. An interesting biological marker to study how two individuals are emotionally linked when they cooperate is their psychophysiological synchronization (the overlapping of signals as indicators of Autonomous Nervous System activation). Hence, the main aim of this study was to explore participants&rsquo
Object Localization Does Not Imply Awareness of Object Category at the Break of Continuous Flash Suppression
2017
In continuous flash suppression (CFS), a dynamic noise masker, presented to one eye, suppresses conscious perception of a test stimulus, presented to the other eye, until the suppressed stimulus comes to awareness after few seconds. But what do we see breaking the dominance of the masker in the transition period? We addressed this question with a dual-task in which observers indicated (i) whether the test object was left or right of the fixation mark (localization) and (ii) whether it was a face or a house (categorization). As done recently Stein et al. (2011a), we used two experimental varieties to rule out confounds with decisional strategy. In the terminated mode, stimulus and masker wer…
Emotional modulation of the attentional blink and the relation to interpersonal reactivity
2013
The extent of the attentional blink effect on detection rates in rapid serial visual presentations is modulated by the emotionality of the stimuli. Emotionally salient stimuli are detected more often, even if presented in the attentional blink period, and elicit an enlarged P3 response, which has been interpreted as enhanced consolidation. This effect correlates with individual differences in trait affectivity such as anxiety or dysphoria. Here, we ask if it is also related to the capacity to detect emotions in others, i.e., to interpersonal social traits. We therefore presented emotional and neutral images depicting social scenes as targets in an attentional blink design and measured detec…
Tyramine Actions on Drosophila Flight Behavior Are Affected by a Glial Dehydrogenase/Reductase
2017
The biogenic amines octopamine (OA) and tyramine (TA) modulate insect motor behavior in an antagonistic manner. OA generally enhances locomotor behaviors such as Drosophila larval crawling and flight, whereas TA decreases locomotor activity. However, the mechanisms and cellular targets of TA modulation of locomotor activity are incompletely understood. This study combines immunocytochemistry, genetics and flight behavioral assays in the Drosophila model system to test the role of a candidate enzyme for TA catabolism, named Nazgul (Naz), in flight motor behavioral control. We hypothesize that the dehydrogenase/reductase Naz represents a critical step in TA catabolism. Immunocytochemistry rev…
Cross-Frequency Coupling in Developmental Perspective
2019
It is generally assumed that different electroencephalogram (EEG) frequency bands are somehow related to different computational modes in the brain. Integration of these computational modes is reflected in the phenomenon of cross-frequency coupling (CFC). On slow temporal scales, CFC may reflect trait-like properties, which posits a question of its developmental trends. This is the first study that explored source-level CFC measures in a developmental perspective using both cross-sectional and longitudinal designs. CFC measures demonstrated good test-retest stability and proved to be higher in adults in cortical areas participating in sensory-motor integration, response inhibition, and atte…
Closed-Loop Acoustic Stimulation During Sleep in Children With Epilepsy: A Hypothesis-Driven Novel Approach to Interact With Spike-Wave Activity and …
2019
Slow waves, the electroencephalographic (EEG) hallmark of deep sleep, can be systematically manipulated by acoustic stimulation: stimulation time-locked to the down phase of slow waves reduces, whereas stimulation time-locked to the up phase increases slow waves. Spike-waves during sleep seem to be related to slow waves, raising the question of whether spike-waves can be systematically influenced by such acoustic stimulation. In five pediatric patients, all-night EEG was recorded, combined with real-time slow wave detection. Throughout the night, acoustic stimulation was performed in a 3 × 5-min-block design (no stimulation—stimulation—no stimulation). Tones were applied time-locked either …
Olfactory and cortical projections to bulbar and hippocampal adult-born neurons
2015
New neurons are continually generated in the subependymal layer of the lateral ventricles and the subgranular zone of dentate gyrus during adulthood. In the subventricular zone, neuroblasts migrate a long distance to the olfactory bulb where they differentiate into granule or periglomerular interneurons. In the hippocampus, neuroblasts migrate a short distance from the subgranular zone to the granule cell layer of the dentate gyrus to become granule neurons. In addition to the short-distance inputs, bulbar interneurons receive long-distance centrifugal afferents from olfactory-recipient structures. Similarly, dentate granule cells receive differential inputs from the medial and lateral ento…