Stimulus position is coded even if it is task-irrelevant, leading to faster response times when the stimulus and the response locations are compatible (spatial Stimulus-Response Compatibility-spatial ...SRC). Faster responses are also found when the handle of a visual object and the response hand are located on the same side; this is known as affordance effect (AE). Two contrasting accounts for AE have been classically proposed. One is focused on the recruitment of appropriate grasping actions on the object handle, and the other on the asymmetry in the object shape, which in turn would cause a handle-hand correspondence effect (CE). In order to disentangle these two accounts, we investigated the possible transfer of practice in a spatial SRC task executed with a S-R incompatible mapping to a subsequent affordance task in which objects with either their intact handle or a broken one were used. The idea was that using objects with broken handles should prevent the recruitment of motor information relative to object grasping, whereas practice transfer should prevent object asymmetry in driving handle-hand CE. A total of three experiments were carried out. In Experiment 1 participants underwent an affordance task in which common graspable objects with their intact or broken handle were used. In Experiments 2 and 3, the affordance task was preceded by a spatial SRC task in which an incompatible S-R mapping was used. Inter-task delays of 5 or 30 min were employed to assess the duration of transfer effect. In Experiment 2 objects with their intact handle were presented, whereas in Experiment 3 the same objects had their handle broken. Although objects with intact and broken handles elicited a handle-hand CE in Experiment 1, practice transfer from an incompatible spatial SRC to the affordance task was found in Experiment 3 (broken-handle objects), but not in Experiment 2 (intact-handle objects). Overall, this pattern of results indicate that both object asymmetry and the activation of motor information contribute to the generation of the handle-hand CE effect, and that the handle AE cannot be reduced to a SRC effect.
According to the authors, these findings support the notion that the semantic processing of photos and written nouns referring to graspable objects, is due to common neural substrates, crucially ...involving the motor system. ...the affordance competition hypothesis does not seem to support this time course of attention allocation since in this account action selection and specification are parallel and not serial processes. ...the proposal that the neural substrates devoted to processing photos depicting graspable objects and nouns referring to the same object category may be shared and crucially involve the motor system.
Recently, the Simon effect (SE) has been observed in
social contexts when two individuals share a two-choice task. This joint SE
(JSE) has been interpreted as evidence that people co-represent their ...actions.
However, it is still not clear if the JSE is driven by social factors or
low-level mechanisms. To address this question, we applied a common paradigm to
a joint Simon task (Experiments 1 and 4), a standard Simon task (Experiment 2),
and a go/no-go task (Experiment 3). The results showed that both the JSE and the
SE were modulated by the repetition/non-repetition of task features. Moreover,
the JSE was differently modulated by the gender composition of the two
individuals involved in the shared task and by their interpersonal relationship.
Taken together, our results do not support a pure social explanation of the JSE,
nevertheless, they show the independent role of different social factors in
modulating the effect.
Mucosal healing has been proposed as an important sign of the efficacy of medical treatment of inflammatory bowel disease; however, direct evidence in ulcerative colitis (UC) is scarce. We evaluated ...the usefulness of colonoscopy and bowel ultrasound (US) as indexes of response to short-term therapy and as predictors of subsequent outcome in UC.
A total of 83 patients with moderate-to-severe UC were recruited; endoscopic and US severity was graded 0-3 at entry according to validated scores. Of the recruited patients, 74, who were clinically responsive to steroids, were followed up with repeated colonoscopy and bowel US at 3, 9, and 15 months from recruitment. Concordance between clinical, endoscopic, and US scores at various visits was determined by kappa statistics. Multiple unconditional logistic regression models were used to assess the predictivity of clinical, endoscopic, and US scores measured at 3 and 9 months on the development of endoscopic UC relapse within 15 months.
A variable concordance was found over time between endoscopic and clinical score (weighted kappa between 0.38 and 0.95), with high and consistent concordance between endoscopic and US scores (weighted kappa between 0.76 and 0.90). On logistic regression analysis, moderate-to-severe endoscopic and US scores at 3 months were associated with a high risk of endoscopic activity at 15 months (odds ratio (OR): 5.2; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.6-17.6 and OR: 9.1; 95% CI: 2.5-33.5, respectively).
Bowel US may be used as a surrogate of colonoscopy in assessing the short-term response of severe forms of UC to therapy. Both US score and endoscopic score after 3 months of steroid therapy predict outcome of disease at 15 months.
Two experiments were carried out to investigate whether and how one important characteristic of the motor system, that is its goal-directed organization in motor chains, is reflected in language ...processing. This possibility stems from the embodied theory of language, according to which the linguistic system re-uses the structures of the motor system. The participants were presented with nouns of common tools preceded by a pair of verbs expressing grasping or observational motor chains (i.e., grasp-to-move, grasp-to-use, look-at-to-grasp, and look-at-to-stare). They decided whether the tool mentioned in the sentence was the same as that displayed in a picture presented shortly after. A primacy of the grasp-to-use motor chain over the other motor chains in priming the participants' performance was observed in both the experiments. More interestingly, we found that the motor information evoked by the noun was modulated by the specific motor-chain expressed by the preceding verbs. Specifically, with the grasping chain aimed at using the tool, the functional motor information prevailed over the volumetric information, and
with the grasping chain aimed at moving the tool (Experiment 2). Instead, the functional and volumetric information were balanced for those motor chains that comprise at least an observational act (Experiment 1). Overall our results are in keeping with the embodied theory of language and suggest that understanding sentences expressing an action directed toward a tool drives a chained activation of the motor system.
Conscious perception of external stimuli has been related to recurrent activity in distributed cortical networks, although brain mechanisms controlling unconscious processing and stimuli access to ...conscious report need to be clarified.
This study aims at investigating modulations in cortical excitability related to conscious perception and unconscious processing of face stimuli with different visibility levels.
We used TMS-EEG over the right occipital face area (rOFA), or the right premotor cortex (rPMC) as control site, to measure cortical excitability during a backward masking paradigm with individually defined stimuli visibility.
Event related potentials showed significant differences for faces compared to houses, and detected faces compared to missed ones, 200 ms post target onset. TMS over rOFA, but not over rPMC, triggered a relative positivity starting 150 ms post target when faces with high visibility were consciously reported. Moreover, rOFA TMS evoked differential responses for high versus low visible faces in conscious and unconscious processing at 290–390 and 180–240 ms, respectively.
Results unveiled a causal link between rOFA excitability and late responses related to access to conscious perception, suggesting a critical role of recurrent activity, but distinct components, for consciously perceived stimuli and unconscious face processing.
•TMS-EGG revealed cortical excitability modulations in a backward masking paradigm.•rOFA TMS triggered differential responses for face awareness and visibility.•TMS evoked modulations resulted in late and wide-spread components.•Awareness and unconscious processing are related to distinct recurrent neural activity.
Background Individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) feel rejected even when socially included. The pathophysiological mechanisms of this rejection bias are still unknown. Using the ...Cyberball paradigm, we investigated whether patients with BPD, display altered physiological responses to social inclusion and ostracism, as assessed by changes in Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA). Methods The sample comprised 30 patients with BPD, 30 with remitted Major Depressive Disorder (rMDD) and 30 Healthy Controls (HC). Self-report ratings of threats toward one's fundamental need to belong and RSA reactivity were measured immediately after each Cyberball condition. Results Participants with BPD showed lower RSA at rest than HC. Only patients with BPD, reported higher threats to fundamental needs and exhibited a further decline in RSA after the Inclusion condition. Conclusions Individuals with BPD experience a biased appraisal of social inclusion both at the subjective and physiological level, showing higher feelings of ostracism and a breakdown of autonomic regulation to including social scenarios. Keywords: Respiratory sinus arrhythmia, Rejection bias, Cyberball paradigm, Polyvagal theory
Wertheimer's (1923, Psychologische Forschung 4 301–350) idea that the perceptual world is articulated according to factors of organisation is widely acknowledged as one of the most original ...contributions of Gestalt psychology and stands as a milestone in the history of vision research. An inquiry focused on the forerunners of some of Wertheimer's factors of perceptual organisation is documented here. In fact, in 1900 Schumann described grouping by proximity and by vertical symmetry, and in 1903 G E Müller identified the factors of sameness/similarity and contour. Other authors contributed to the early description of these factors, such as Rubin, who in 1922 originally illustrated grouping by similarity. Even though Wertheimer himself granted these authors due recognition, later psychologists have paid little attention to their contributions. Some possible reasons for this negligence are briefly discussed.
Clinical in-stent restenosis (CISR) is the main limitation of coronary angioplasty with stent implantation.
Describe the clinical and angiographic characteristics of CISR and the outcomes over a ...minimum follow-up of 12 months after its diagnosis and treatment.
We analyzed in 110 consecutive patients with CISR the clinical presentation, angiographic characteristics, treatment and combined primary outcomes (cardiovascular death, nonfatal acute myocardial infarction AMI) and combined secondary (unstable angina with hospitalization, target vessel revascularization and target lesion revascularization) during a minimal follow-up of one year.
Mean age was 61 ± 11 years (68.2% males). Clinical presentations included acute coronary syndrome (ACS) in 62.7% and proliferative ISR in 34.5%. CISR was treated with implantation of drug-eluting stents (DES) in 36.4%, Bare Metal Stent (BMS) in 23.6%, myocardial revascularization surgery in 18.2%, balloon angioplasty in 15.5% and clinical treatment in 6.4%. During a median follow-up of 19.7 months, the primary outcome occurred in 18 patients, including 6 (5.5%) deaths and 13 (11.8%) AMI events. Twenty-four patients presented a secondary outcome. Predictors of the primary outcome were CISR with DES (HR = 4.36 1.44-12.85; p = 0.009) and clinical treatment for CISR (HR = 10.66 2.53-44.87; p = 0.001). Treatment of CISR with BMS (HR = 4.08 1.75-9.48; p = 0.001) and clinical therapy (HR = 6.29 1.35-29.38; p = 0.019) emerged as predictors of a secondary outcome.
Patients with CISR present in most cases with ACS and with a high frequency of adverse events during a medium-term follow-up.
We investigated the conceptual processing of nouns referring to objects characterized by a highly typical color and orientation. We used a go/no-go task in which we asked participants to categorize ...each noun as referring or not to natural entities (e.g., animals) after a selective adaptation of color-edge neurons in the posterior LV4 region of the visual cortex was induced by means of a McCollough effect procedure. This manipulation affected categorization: the green-vertical adaptation led to slower responses than the green-horizontal adaptation, regardless of the specific color and orientation of the to-be-categorized noun. This result suggests that the conceptual processing of natural entities may entail the activation of modality-specific neural channels with weights proportional to the reliability of the signals produced by these channels during actual perception. This finding is discussed with reference to the debate about the grounded cognition view.
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