Comparing Self-Report vs. Performance Measures of Attentional Control and Efficiency.

The Attention Control Scale (ATTC) is a widely used self-report measure of attentional control capacities. However, research questions whether it accurately substitutes for objective attention control tasks. This study investigated ATTC's correlation with the Attention Network Test (ANT) across alerting, orienting, and executive control networks.

Behavioural stochastic resonance across the lifespan.

Stochastic resonance (SR) is the phenomenon wherein the introduction of a suitable level of noise enhances the detection of subthreshold signals in non linear systems. It manifests across various physical and biological systems, including the human brain. Psychophysical experiments have confirmed the behavioural impact of stochastic resonance on auditory, somatic, and visual perception.

Atypical Time to Contact Estimation in Young Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) present atypical sensory processing in the perception of moving stimuli and biological motion. The present study aims to explore the performance of young adults with ASD in a time to contact (TTC) estimation task involving social and non-social stimuli. TTC estimation involves extrapolating the trajectory of a moving target concealed by an occluder, based on the visible portion of its path, to predict the target's arrival time at a specific position.

Real-time cortical dynamics during motor inhibition.

The inhibition of action is a fundamental executive mechanism of human behaviour that involve a complex neural network. In spite of the progresses made so far, many questions regarding the brain dynamics occurring during action inhibition are still unsolved. Here, we used a novel approach optimized to investigate real-time effective brain dynamics, which combines transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) with simultaneous electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings.

On the relationship between foveal mask interference and mental imagery in peripheral object recognition.

A delayed foveal mask affects perception of peripheral stimuli. The effect is determined by the timing of the mask and by the similarity with the peripheral stimulus. A congruent mask enhances performance, while an incongruent one impairs it.

The role of parietal beta-band activity in the resolution of visual crowding.

Visual crowding is the difficulty in identifying an object when surrounded by neighbouring flankers, representing a bottleneck for object perception. Crowding arises not only from the activity of visual areas but also from parietal areas and fronto-parietal network activity. Parietal areas would provide the dorsal-to-ventral guidance for object identification and the fronto-parietal network would modulate the attentional resolution.

An Illusory Motion in Stationary Stimuli Alters Their Perceived Duration.

Despite having equal duration, stimuli in physical motion are perceived to last longer than static ones. Here, we investigate whether illusory motion stimuli produce a time-dilation effect similar to physical motion. Participants performed a duration discrimination task that compared the perceived duration of static stimuli with and without illusory motion to a reference stimulus.

Noise in the brain: Transcranial random noise stimulation and perceptual noise act on a stochastic resonance-like mechanism.

Stochastic resonance (SR) is a phenomenon in which a certain amount of random noise added to a weak subthreshold stimulus can enhance signal detectability. It is unknown how external noise interacts with neural noise in producing an SR-like phenomenon and whether this interaction results in a modulation of either network efficiency or the efficiency of single neurons. Using random dot motion stimuli and noninvasive brain stimulation, we attempted to unveil the specific mechanism of action of the SR-like phenomenon in motion perception, if present.

The Role of Foveal Cortex in Discriminating Peripheral Stimuli: The Sketchpad Hypothesis.

Foveal (central) and peripheral vision are strongly interconnected to provide an integrated experience of the world around us. Recently, it has been suggested that there is a feedback mechanism that links foveal and peripheral vision. This peripheral-to-foveal feedback differs from other feedback mechanisms in that during visual processing a novel representation of a stimulus is formed in a different cortical region than that of the feedforward representation.

Investigating the role of the foveal cortex in peripheral object discrimination.

Peripheral object discrimination is hindered by a central dynamic mask presented between 150 and 300 ms after stimulus onset. The mask is thought to interfere with task-relevant feedback coming from higher visual areas to the foveal cortex in V1. Fan et al.

Vision recovery with perceptual learning and non-invasive brain stimulation: Experimental set-ups and recent results, a review of the literature.

Background: Vision is the sense which we rely on the most to interact with the environment and its integrity is fundamental for the quality of our life. However, around the globe, more than 1 billion people are affected by debilitating vision deficits. Therefore, finding a way to treat (or mitigate) them successfully is necessary.

Motion processing impaired by transient spatial attention: Potential implications for the magnocellular pathway.

Spatial cues presented prior to the presentation of a static stimulus usually improve its perception. However, previous research has also shown that transient exogenous cues to direct spatial attention to the location of a forthcoming stimulus can lead to reduced performance. In the present study, we investigated the effects of transient exogenous cues on the perception of briefly presented drifting Gabor patches.

Neural dynamics driving audio-visual integration in autism.

Audio-visual (AV) integration plays a crucial role in supporting social functions and communication in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, behavioral findings remain mixed and, importantly, little is known about the underlying neurophysiological bases. Studies in neurotypical adults indicate that oscillatory brain activity in different frequencies subserves AV integration, pointing to a central role of (i) individual alpha frequency (IAF), which would determine the width of the cross-modal binding window; (ii) pre-/peri-stimulus theta oscillations, which would reflect the expectation of AV co-occurrence; (iii) post-stimulus oscillatory phase reset, which would temporally align the different unisensory signals.

Contrast adaptation of flankers reduces collinear facilitation and inhibition.

Increase (facilitation) or decrease (inhibition) of contrast sensitivity for a Gabor patch presented between two collinear flankers is a well-studied contextual modulation phenomenon. It has been suggested that this effect has its neural bases in the primary visual cortex, specifically the horizontal connections between hypercolumns with similar orientation and spatial frequency selectivity. Another typical phenomenon dependent on early visual areas is contrast adaptation, in which the neural response to a contrast stimulus is decreased after exposure.

Feasibility and Reliability of the AWIN Welfare Assessment Protocol for Dairy Goats in Semi-extensive Farming Conditions.

The aim of this study was to test the feasibility and reliability of the Animal Welfare Indicators (AWIN) protocol for welfare assessment of dairy goats when applied to semi-extensive farming conditions. We recruited 13 farms located in the NW Italian Alps where three assessors individually and independently applied a modified version of the AWIN welfare assessment protocol for goats integrated with some indicators derived from the AWIN welfare assessment protocol for sheep. The applied protocol consisted of nine individual-level (body condition score, hair coat condition, abscesses, overgrown claws, udder asymmetry, fecal soiling, nasal discharge, ocular discharge, and improper disbudding) and seven group-level (severe lameness, Qualitative Behavior Assessment-QBA, thermal stress, oblivion, Familiar Human Approach Test-FHAT, synchrony at grazing, synchrony at resting) animal-based indicators.

Evidence of weight-based representations of gravitational motion.

A hypothesis gaining increasing popularity is that laypeople's representations of physical phenomena might be driven by internalized physical laws. In three experiments, we tested if such hypothesis holds true for the representation of gravitational motion. Participants were presented with realistic, real-scale virtual spheres falling vertically downward from about 2 m high.

Evaluation of Inter-Observer Reliability of Animal Welfare Indicators: Which Is the Best Index to Use?

This study focuses on the problem of assessing inter-observer reliability (IOR) in the case of dichotomous categorical animal-based welfare indicators and the presence of two observers. Based on observations obtained from Animal Welfare Indicators (AWIN) project surveys conducted on nine dairy goat farms, and using udder asymmetry as an indicator, we compared the performance of the most popular agreement indexes available in the literature: Scott's π, Cohen's k, kPABAK, Holsti's H, Krippendorff's α, Hubert's Γ, Janson and Vegelius' J, Bangdiwala's B, Andrés and Marzo's ∆, and Gwet's γ(AC1). Confidence intervals were calculated using closed formulas of variance estimates for π, k, kPABAK, H, α, Γ, J, ∆, and γ(AC1), while the bootstrap and exact bootstrap methods were used for all the indexes.

Binding Mechanisms in Visual Perception and Their Link With Neural Oscillations: A Review of Evidence From tACS.

Neurophysiological studies in humans employing magneto- (MEG) and electro- (EEG) encephalography increasingly suggest that oscillatory rhythmic activity of the brain may be a core mechanism for binding sensory information across space, time, and object features to generate a unified perceptual representation. To distinguish whether oscillatory activity is causally related to binding processes or whether, on the contrary, it is a mere epiphenomenon, one possibility is to employ neuromodulatory techniques such as transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS). tACS has seen a rising interest due to its ability to modulate brain oscillations in a frequency-dependent manner.

Perceptual learning improves visual functions in patients with albinistic bilateral amblyopia: A pilot study.

Background: Several visual functions are impaired in patients with oculocutaneous albinism (OCA) associated to albinistic bilateral amblyopia (ABA).

Objective: In this study, we aimed at exploring whether perceptual learning (PL) can improve visual functions in albinism.

Method: Six patients and six normal sighted controls, were trained in a contrast detection task with lateral masking.

Dyslexia and the magnocellular-parvocellular coactivaton hypothesis.

Previous studies showed that the lateral masking of a fast-moving low spatial frequency (SF) target was strong when exerted by static flankers of lower or equal to the target SF and absent when flankers' SF was higher than the target's one. These masking and unmasking effects have been interpreted as due to Magnocellular-Magnocellular (M-M) inhibition and Parvocellular-on-Magnocellular (P-M) disinhibitory coactivation, respectively. Based on the hypothesis that the balance between the two systems is perturbed in Developmental Dyslexia (DD), we asked whether dyslexic children (DDs) behaved differently than Typically Developing children (TDs) in conditions of lateral masking.

Sustainability of Four Dairy Farming Scenarios in an Alpine Environment: The Case Study of Toma di Lanzo Cheese.

The dairy sector accounts for a large share of all European agricultural production, at the same time however, it is one of the most ascribed sector contributors to the environmental impact of agriculture, particularly for greenhouse gas emissions. Simultaneously, it is a strategic sector for the economy but generates increasing debate in the community regarding the social aspects mainly related to the use of resources and the food-feed competition of livestock involving the reduction of human-edible crops. In this general framework, this study aims to compare four different dairy farming scenarios characterized by different use of environmental resources in the Alpine area, considering as a case study the production of the Toma di Lanzo cheese (a traditional cheese produced in the mountainous regions of Piedmont-Northwest Italy).

A New Approach to LCA Evaluation of Lamb Meat Production in Two Different Breeding Systems in Northern Italy.

Lamb meat production provides vital landscape-management and ecosystem services; however, ruminant farming produces a considerable share of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. To measure and compare the advantages and disadvantages of the intensification of livestock farming, an integrative analysis was conducted in this study by combining environmental impact analysis and animal welfare assessment. This approach is the first of its kind and is the innovative aspect of this paper.