Efficacy of Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for Acute Central Post-stroke Pain: A Case Study.

Although rare, central post-stroke pain remains one of the most refractory forms of neuropathic pain. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has been reported to be effective in chronic cases. However, there are no data on the effects in the acute and subacute phases after stroke.

Phonemic fluency improved after inhibitory transcranial magnetic stimulation in a case of chronic aphasia.

Twenty-six months after a left hemispheric ischemic stroke an aphasic patient showed a significant improvement in verbal fluency following ten daily sessions of inhibitory 1 Hz repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation over the right cortex homologous to the Broca's area.No improvement was observed for other linguistic functions or for executive ones. Results confirm the segregation of neural circuitries subtending phonemic and semantic fluency and suggest a selective usefulness of the repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation treatment.

Dynamic expansion of alert responses to incoming painful stimuli following tool use.

Peripersonal space is the region closely surrounding our bodies. Within its boundaries, avoidance of threatening objects is crucial for surviving. Here we explored autonomic responses to painful stimuli with respect to the dynamic properties of the peripersonal space in healthy individuals.

Sharing social touch in the primary somatosensory cortex.

Touch has an emotional and communicative meaning, and it plays a crucial role in social perception and empathy. The intuitive link between others' somatosensations and our sense of touch becomes ostensible in mirror-touch synesthesia, a condition in which the view of a touch on another person's body elicits conscious tactile sensations on the observer's own body [1]. This peculiar phenomenon may implicate normal social mirror mechanisms [2].

Face age modulates gaze following in young adults.

Gaze-following behaviour is considered crucial for social interactions which are influenced by social similarity. We investigated whether the degree of similarity, as indicated by the perceived age of another person, can modulate gaze following. Participants of three different age-groups (18-25; 35-45; over 65) performed an eye movement (a saccade) towards an instructed target while ignoring the gaze-shift of distracters of different age-ranges (6-10; 18-25; 35-45; over 70).

Understanding others' feelings: the role of the right primary somatosensory cortex in encoding the affective valence of others' touch.

Brain imaging studies in humans have shown the existence of a shared somatosensory representation in the primary somatosensory cortex (S1), putatively involved in understanding others' sensations (Keysers et al., 2010); however, the role of S1 in such a high-level process is still unknown. To ascertain the causal involvement of S1, and its possible hemispheric lateralization, in encoding the affective valence of emotional scenes, depicting, or not, a tactile event, we gave to healthy participants a picture-based affective go/no-go task and low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS).

Multisensory processing after a brain damage: clues on post-injury crossmodal plasticity from neuropsychology.

Current neuropsychological evidence demonstrates that damage to sensory-specific and heteromodal areas of the brain not only disrupts the ability of combining sensory information from multiple sources, but can also cause altered multisensory experiences. On the other hand, there is also evidence of behavioural benefits induced by spared multisensory mechanisms. Thus, crossmodal plasticity can be viewed in both an adaptive and maladaptive context.

Visual perception of bodily interactions in the primary somatosensory cortex.

Brain imaging studies in humans have revealed the existence of a visuo-tactile system, which matches observed touch with felt touch. In this system, the primary somatosensory cortex (SI) appears to play a causal role in the visual processing of tactile events. Whether this visuo-tactile mechanism for touch in SI applies to the sight of 'any' touch, or whether it is restricted to the domain of body-related tactile experiences remains unresolved.

Seeing touch in the somatosensory cortex: a TMS study of the visual perception of touch.

Recent studies suggest the existence of a visuo-tactile mirror system, comprising the primary (SI) and secondary (SII) somatosensory cortices, which matches observed touch with felt touch. Here, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) was used to determine whether SI or SII play a functional role in the visual processing of tactile events. Healthy participants performed a visual discrimination task with tactile stimuli (a finger touching a hand) and a control task (a finger moving without touching).

Neuromodulation of multisensory perception: a tDCS study of the sound-induced flash illusion.

This study explores whether brain polarization could be effective in modulating multisensory audiovisual interactions in the human brain, as measured by the 'sound-induced flash illusion' (Shams et al., 2000). In different sessions, healthy participants performed the task while receiving anodal, cathodal, or sham tDCS (2 mA, 8 min) to the occipital, temporal, or posterior parietal cortices.

Enhancing multisensory spatial orienting by brain polarization of the parietal cortex.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a noninvasive brain stimulation technique that induces polarity-specific excitability changes in the human brain, therefore altering physiological, perceptual and higher-order cognitive processes. Here we investigated the possibility of enhancing attentional orienting within and across different sensory modalities, namely visual and auditory, by polarization of the posterior parietal cortex (PPC), given the putative involvement of this area in both unisensory and multisensory spatial processing. In different experiments, we applied anodal or sham tDCS to the right PPC and, for control, anodal stimulation of the right occipital cortex.