At First Sight: Fetal Eye Movements Reveal a Preference for Face-Like Configurations From 26 Weeks of Gestation.

Previous research indicates that both adults and newborns show enhanced electrophysiological and behavioral responses to schematic face-like configurations (FCs-three dots composing a downward-pointing triangle), as compared to the inverted configurations (ICs). Even fetuses, when exposed to light stimuli projected through the uterine wall, preferentially orient their heads toward FCs rather than ICs. However, when this effect emerges along the third trimester of pregnancy and in relation to the maturation of which brain structures is still unknown.

Shared body representation constraints in human and non-human primates behavior.

Previous studies indicated that the sense of body ownership (i.e., the feeling that our body parts belong to us; SBO) can be experimentally modulated in humans.

Brain Encoding of Naturalistic, Continuous, and Unpredictable Tactile Events.

Studies employing EEG to measure somatosensory responses have been typically optimized to compute event-related potentials in response to discrete events. However, tactile interactions involve continuous processing of nonstationary inputs that change in location, duration, and intensity. To fill this gap, this study aims to demonstrate the possibility of measuring the neural tracking of continuous and unpredictable tactile information.

Balancing the Senses: Electrophysiological Responses Reveal the Interplay between Somatosensory and Visual Processing During Body-Related Multisensory Conflict.

In the study of bodily awareness, the predictive coding theory has revealed that our brain continuously modulates sensory experiences to integrate them into a unitary body representation. Indeed, during multisensory illusions (e.g.

Dissecting abstract, modality-specific and experience-dependent coding of affect in the human brain.

Emotion and perception are tightly intertwined, as affective experiences often arise from the appraisal of sensory information. Nonetheless, whether the brain encodes emotional instances using a sensory-specific code or in a more abstract manner is unclear. Here, we answer this question by measuring the association between emotion ratings collected during a unisensory or multisensory presentation of a full-length movie and brain activity recorded in typically developed, congenitally blind and congenitally deaf participants.

Modulation of Motor Awareness: A Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study in the Healthy Brain.

Previous studies on the mechanisms underlying willed actions reported that the premotor cortex may be involved in the construction of motor awareness. However, its exact role is still under investigation. Here, we investigated the role of the dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) in motor awareness by modulating its activity applying inhibitory rTMS to PMd, before a specific motor awareness task (under three conditions: without stimulation, after rTMS and after Sham stimulation).

Abnormal sense of agency in eating disorders.

The feeling of controlling one's own actions and, through them, impacting the external environment (i.e. Sense of Agency-SoA) can be relevant in the eating disorders (EDs) symptomatology.

Can static Rorschach stimuli perceived as in motion affect corticospinal excitability?

It has been proposed that seeing human movement or activity (M), while trying to say what the static Rorschach inkblot design look like, is accompanied by Mirror Neuron System (MNS)-like mirroring activity in the brain. The present study aimed to investigate whether the Rorschach cards eliciting M responses could affect the excitability of the motor cortex by recording motor evoked potentials (MEPs) elicited by single-pulse TMS over the primary motor cortex (M1). We hypothesized that Rorschach inkblot stimuli triggering the viewer's experience of human movement would increase corticospinal excitability.

The role of early attachment experiences in modulating defensive peripersonal space.

Selecting appropriate defensive behaviours for threats approaching the space surrounding the body (peripersonal space, PPS) is crucial for survival. The extent of defensive PPS is measured by recording the hand-blink reflex (HBR), a subcortical defensive response. Higher-order cortical areas involved in PPS representation exert top-down modulation on brainstem circuits subserving HBR.

Spatial proximity to others induces plastic changes in the neural representation of the peripersonal space.

Peripersonal space (PPS) is a highly plastic "invisible bubble" surrounding the body whose boundaries are mapped through multisensory integration. Yet, it is unclear how the spatial proximity to others alters PPS boundaries. Across five experiments (N = 80), by recording behavioral and electrophysiological responses to visuo-tactile stimuli, we demonstrate that the proximity to others induces plastic changes in the neural PPS representation.

A modality-independent proto-organization of human multisensory areas.

The processing of multisensory information is based upon the capacity of brain regions, such as the superior temporal cortex, to combine information across modalities. However, it is still unclear whether the representation of coherent auditory and visual events requires any prior audiovisual experience to develop and function. Here we measured brain synchronization during the presentation of an audiovisual, audio-only or video-only version of the same narrative in distinct groups of sensory-deprived (congenitally blind and deaf) and typically developed individuals.

Multisensory-driven facilitation within the peripersonal space is modulated by the expectations about stimulus location on the body.

Compelling evidence from human and non-human studies suggests that responses to multisensory events are fastened when stimuli occur within the space surrounding the bodily self (i.e., peripersonal space; PPS).

Bodily self-recognition in patients with pathological embodiment.

The ability to discriminate between one's own and others' body parts can be lost after brain damage, as in patients who misidentify someone else's hand as their own (pathological embodiment). Surprisingly, these patients do not use visual information to discriminate between the own and the alien hand. We asked whether this impaired visual discrimination emerges only in the ecological evaluation when the pathological embodiment is triggered by the physical alien hand (the examiner's one) or whether it emerges also when hand images are displayed on a screen.

Reach planning with someone else's hand.

To investigate the relationship between the sense of body ownership and motor control, we capitalized on a rare bizarre disorder wherein another person's hand is misattributed to their own body, i.e., a pathological form of embodiment (E+).

Moving without sensory feedback: online TMS over the dorsal premotor cortex impairs motor performance during ischemic nerve block.

The study investigates the role of dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) in generating predicted sensory consequences of movements, i.e. corollary discharges.

Wearing a Mask Shapes Interpersonal Space during COVID-19 Pandemic.

Social distancing norms have been promoted after the COVID-19 pandemic. In this work, we tested interpersonal space (IPS) in 107 subjects through a reaching-comfort distance estimation task. In the main experiment, subjects had to estimate the comfort and reach space between an avatar wearing or not wearing a face mask.

The rubber hand illusion in microgravity and water immersion.

Our body has evolved in terrestrial gravity and altered gravitational conditions may affect the sense of body ownership (SBO). By means of the rubber hand illusion (RHI), we investigated the SBO during water immersion and parabolic flights, where unconventional gravity is experienced. Our results show that unconventional gravity conditions remodulate the relative weights of visual, proprioceptive, and vestibular inputs favoring vision, thus inducing an increased RHI susceptibility.

Structural connectivity associated with the sense of body ownership: a diffusion tensor imaging and disconnection study in patients with bodily awareness disorder.

The brain mechanisms underlying the emergence of a normal sense of body ownership can be investigated starting from pathological conditions in which body awareness is selectively impaired. Here, we focused on pathological embodiment, a body ownership disturbance observed in brain-damaged patients who misidentify other people's limbs as their own. We investigated whether such body ownership disturbance can be classified as a disconnection syndrome, using three different approaches based on diffusion tensor imaging: (i) reconstruction of disconnectome maps in a large sample ( = 70) of stroke patients with and without pathological embodiment; (ii) probabilistic tractography, performed on the age-matched healthy controls ( = 16), to trace cortical connections potentially interrupted in patients with pathological embodiment and spared in patients without this pathological condition; (iii) probabilistic '' tractography on two patients without and one patient with pathological embodiment.

Behavioural evidence of altered sensory attenuation in obesity.

(i.e., the conscious belief of owning a body) and (i.

Diametrical modulation of tactile and visual perceptual thresholds during the rubber hand illusion: a predictive coding account.

During the rubber hand illusion (RHI), the synchronous stroking of the participants' concealed hand and a visible rubber hand induces a conflict among visuo-tactile inputs, leading healthy subjects to perceive the illusion of being touched on the rubber hand, as if it were part of their body. The predictive coding theory suggests that the RHI emerges to settle the conflict, attenuating somatosensory inputs in favour of visual ones, which "capture" tactile sensations. Here, we employed the psychophysical measure of perceptual threshold to measure a behavioural correlate of the somatosensory and visual modulations, to better understand the mechanisms underpinning the illusion.

Seeming confines: Electrophysiological evidence of peripersonal space remapping following tool-use in humans.

The peripersonal space (PPS) is a special portion of space immediately surrounding the body, where the integration between tactile stimuli delivered on the body and auditory or visual events emanating from the environment occurs. Interestingly, PPS can widen if a tool is employed to interact with objects in the far space. However, electrophysiological evidence of such tool-use dependent plasticity in the human brain is scarce.

Tonic somatosensory responses and deficits of tactile awareness converge in the parietal operculum.

Although clinical neuroscience and the neuroscience of consciousness have long sought mechanistic explanations of tactile-awareness disorders, mechanistic insights are rare, mainly because of the difficulty of depicting the fine-grained neural dynamics underlying somatosensory processes. Here, we combined the stereo-EEG responses to somatosensory stimulation with the lesion mapping of patients with a tactile-awareness disorder, namely tactile extinction. Whereas stereo-EEG responses present different temporal patterns, including early/phasic and long-lasting/tonic activities, tactile-extinction lesion mapping co-localizes only with the latter.

Monochannel Preference in Autism Spectrum Conditions Revealed by a Non-Visual Variant of Rubber Hand Illusion.

Individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) are less susceptible to multisensory delusions, such as rubber hand illusion (RHI). Here, we investigate whether a monochannel variant of RHI is more effective in inducing an illusory feeling of ownership in ASC. To this aim, we exploit a non-visual variant of the RHI that, excluding vision, leverages only on the somatosensory channel.

Bimanual coupling effect during a proprioceptive stimulation.

Circle-line drawing paradigm is used to study bimanual coupling. In the standard paradigm, subjects are asked to draw circles with one hand and lines with the other hand; the influence of the concomitant tasks results in two "elliptical" figures. Here we tested whether proprioceptive information evoked by muscle vibration inducing a proprioceptive illusion (PI) of movement at central level, was able to affect the contralateral hand drawing circles or lines.

Corrigendum: Major Stress-Related Symptoms During the Lockdown: A Study by the Italian Society of Psychophysiology and Cognitive Neuroscience.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2021.