A review of the genus Eugaster Serville, 1838 (Orthoptera, Tettigoniidae, Hetrodinae): a multifaceted approach.

Overall coloration, size and thoracic morphology have formed the basis for taxonomic differentiation of taxa within the genus Eugaster at specific or subspecific levels over the years. The present study employs a range of methods to examine the morphology of 58 specimens (18♂♂ and 40♀♀) from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, collected from altitudes varying between 10 and 1795 metres AMSL. Moroccan sampling sites include localities on both the north and south of the High Atlas and from either side of the Middle Atlas, i.

Gender differences in the observation of gesture direction: a physiological study.

Intransitive gestures are expressive and symbolic, whereas pantomimes are object-related actions. These gestures convey different meanings depending on whether they are directed toward (TB) or away from the body (AB). TB gestures express mental states (intransitive) or hygiene/nutritional activities (pantomime), while AB gestures modify the behaviour of the observer (intransitive) or demonstrate tool use with an object (pantomime).

The contribution of eye gaze and movement kinematics to the expression and identification of social intention in object-directed motor actions.

The intention to include another person in an interaction (i.e., social intention) is known to influence the spatio-temporal characteristics of motor performances.

The Neurocognitive Bases of Meaningful Intransitive Gestures: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Neuropsychological Studies.

Researchers and clinicians have long used meaningful intransitive (i.e., not tool-related; MFI) gestures to assess apraxia-a complex and frequent motor-cognitive disorder.

Spatial representations of objects used away and towards the body: The effect of near and far space.

An action with an object can be accomplished only if we encode the position of the object with respect to our body (i.e., egocentrically) and/or to another element in the environment (i.

Cortical Correlates of Visuospatial Switching Processes Between Egocentric and Allocentric Frames of Reference: A fNIRS Study.

Human beings represent spatial information according to egocentric (body-to-object) and allocentric (object-to-object) frames of reference. In everyday life, we constantly switch from one frame of reference to another in order to react effectively to the specific needs of the environment and task demands. However, to the best of our knowledge, no study to date has investigated the cortical activity of switching and non-switching processes between egocentric and allocentric spatial encodings.

Paying attention to the outcome of others' actions has dissociated effects on observer's peripersonal space representation and exploitation.

The representation of peripersonal space (PPS representation) and the selection of motor actions within it (PPS exploitation) are influenced by action outcomes and reward prospects. The present study tested whether observing the outcome of others' actions altered the observer's PPS representation and exploitation. Participants (observers) performed a reachability-judgement task (assessing PPS representation) before and after having observed a confederate (actors) performing a stimuli-selection task on a touch-screen table.

The 'healthy side' of anosognosia for hemiplegia: Increased sense of agency for the unimpaired limb or motor compensation?

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 anosognosic patients show distorted awareness and sense of agency also for actions performed with the unimpaired limb.

Representational Processes of Actions Toward and Away from the Body.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of mental representation processes during the planning, reaching, and use phases of actions with tools commonly used toward the body (TB, e.g., toothbrush) or away from the body (AB, e.

Pantomime of tool use: looking beyond apraxia.

Pantomime has a long tradition in clinical neuropsychology of apraxia. It has been much more used by researchers and clinicians to assess tool-use disorders than real tool use. Nevertheless, it remains incompletely understood and has given rise to controversies, such as the involvement of the left inferior parietal lobe or the nature of the underlying cognitive processes.

Uncover the Offensive Side of Disparagement Humor: An fMRI Study.

Disparagement humor is a kind of humor that denigrates, belittles an individual or a social group. In the aim to unveil the offensive side of these kinds of jokes, we have run an event-related fMRI study asking 30 healthy volunteers to judge the level of fun of a series of verbal stimuli that ended with a sentence that was socially inappropriate but funny (disparagement joke -DJ), socially inappropriate but not funny (SI) or neutral (N). Behavioral results showed disparagement jokes are perceived as funny and at the same time offensive.

Semantic and action tool knowledge in the brain: Identifying common and distinct networks.

Most cognitive models of apraxia assume that impaired tool use results from a deficit occurring at the conceptual level, which contains dedicated information about tool use, namely, semantic and action tool knowledge. Semantic tool knowledge contains information about the prototypical use of familiar tools, such as function (e.g.

Identifying hotspots of non-indigenous species' high impact in the Maltese islands (Central Mediterranean Sea).

Several invasive non-indigenous species (NIS) cause ecological and socio-economic impacts. A good understanding of the impacts of invasive NIS in Mediterranean habitats is important for managing and prioritising measures in the marine environment. We applied a conservative additive model to sum up the Cumulative IMPacts of invasive Alien (CIMPAL) species of 19 invasive marine NIS on 13 habitats in Maltese waters.

Towards and away from the body: The relevance of the direction of use in the coding of object-related actions.

This study examines whether the perception of an object automatically activates the representation of the direction of use of that object. To this aim, we carried out two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to explicitly categorise objects as used either away from the body (AB, for example, a hammer) or towards the body (TB, for example, a toothbrush).

Affective, Social, and Informative Gestures Reproduction in Human Interaction: Hyperscanning and Brain Connectivity.

Gestural communication characterizes daily individuals' interactions in order to share information and to modify others' behavior. Social neuroscience has investigated the neural bases which support recognizing of different gestures. The present research, through the use of the hyperscanning approach, that allows the simultaneously recording of the activity of two or more individuals involved in a joint action, aims to investigate the neural bases of gestural communication.

The role of mental imagery in pantomimes of actions towards and away from the body.

This study aimed to explore the relationship between action execution and mental rotation modalities. To this end, pantomime gesture (i.e.

The combined effects of motor and social goals on the kinematics of object-directed motor action.

Voluntary actions towards manipulable objects are usually performed with a particular motor goal (i.e., a task-specific object-target-effector interaction) and in a particular social context (i.

Effect of test instructions: The example of the pantomime production task.

The production of pantomime is a sensible task to detect praxis deficits. It is usually assessed by presenting objects visually or by verbal command. Verbal instructions are given either by providing the name of the object (e.

Non-indigenous species refined national baseline inventories: A synthesis in the context of the European Union's Marine Strategy Framework Directive.

Refined baseline inventories of non-indigenous species (NIS) are set per European Union Member State (MS), in the context of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). The inventories are based on the initial assessment of the MSFD (2012) and the updated data of the European Alien Species Information Network, in collaboration with NIS experts appointed by the MSs. The analysis revealed that a large number of NIS was not reported from the initial assessments.

Activation of manipulation and function knowledge during visual search for objects.

This study aimed at comparing the time course of the activation of function and manipulation knowledge during object identification. The influence of visual similarity and context information was also assessed. In 3 eye-tracking experiments, conducted with the Visual-World-Paradigm, participants heard the name of an object and had to identify it among four pictures.

Gestures convey different physiological responses when performed toward and away from the body.

We assessed the sympathetic and parasympathetic activation associated to the observation of Pantomime (i.e. the mime of the use of a tool) and Intransitive gestures (i.