Publications by authors named "Livio Finos"

When analyzing data, researchers make some choices that are either arbitrary, based on subjective beliefs about the data-generating process, or for which equally justifiable alternative choices could have been made. This wide range of data-analytic choices can be abused and has been one of the underlying causes of the replication crisis in several fields. Recently, the introduction of multiverse analysis provides researchers with a method to evaluate the stability of the results across reasonable choices that could be made when analyzing data.

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Sound localization is essential to perceive the surrounding world and to interact with objects. This ability can be learned across time, and multisensory and motor cues play a crucial role in the learning process. A recent study demonstrated that when training localization skills, reaching to the sound source to determine its position reduced localization errors faster and to a greater extent as compared to just naming sources' positions, despite the fact that in both tasks, participants received the same feedback about the correct position of sound sources in case of wrong response.

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Introduction: The auditory system of dolphins and whales allows them to dive in dark waters, hunt for prey well below the limit of solar light absorption, and to communicate with their conspecific. These complex behaviors require specific and sufficient functional circuitry in the neocortex, and vicarious learning capacities. Dolphins are also precocious animals that can hold their breath and swim within minutes after birth.

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Background: Mixed-effects models are the current standard for the analysis of behavioral studies in psycholinguistics and related fields, given their ability to simultaneously model crossed random effects for subjects and items. However, they are hardly applied in neuroimaging and psychophysiology, where the use of mass univariate analyses in combination with permutation testing would be too computationally demanding to be practicable with mixed models.

New Method: Here, we propose and validate an analytical strategy that enables the use of linear mixed models (LMM) with crossed random intercepts in mass univariate analyses of EEG data (lmeEEG).

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We propose a permutation-based method for testing a large collection of hypotheses simultaneously. Our method provides lower bounds for the number of true discoveries in any selected subset of hypotheses. These bounds are simultaneously valid with high confidence.

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A vast majority of individuals with autism spectrum disorder experience impairments in motor skills. Those are often labelled as additional developmental coordination disorder despite the lack of studies comparing both disorders. Consequently, motor skills rehabilitation programmes in autism are often not specific but rather consist in standard programmes for developmental coordination disorder.

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The spatial Stroop task measures the ability to resolve interference between relevant and irrelevant spatial information. We recently proposed a four-choice spatial Stroop task that ensures methodological advantages over the original color-word verbal Stroop task, requiring participants to indicate the direction of an arrow while ignoring its position in one of the screen corners. However, its peripheral spatial arrangement might represent a methodological weakness and could introduce experimental confounds.

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Background: Loss of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)/TrkB (tropomyosin kinase receptor B) signaling accounts for brain and cardiac disorders. In neurons, β-adrenergic receptor stimulation enhances local BDNF expression. It is unclear if this occurs in a pathophysiological relevant manner in the heart, especially in the β-adrenergic receptor-desensitized postischemic myocardium.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study addresses functional alignment issues in fMRI group analyses, revealing that standard templates often fail to align subjects effectively.
  • It introduces the ProMises model, which enhances alignment by integrating anatomical data and improving uniqueness in transformation results.
  • Simulations and real fMRI data indicate that ProMises outperforms existing hyperalignment methods, leading to better classification accuracy and interpretability among subjects.
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When describing motion along both the horizontal and vertical axes, languages from different families express the elements encoding verticality before those coding for horizontality (e.g., instead of ).

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  • PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are widespread environmental pollutants that accumulate in marine mammals, including bottlenose dolphins, leading to potential health concerns.
  • Researchers developed an immortalized cell line from dolphin skin to study how different PFAS compounds affect cell viability and the cell cycle by analyzing nuclear morphometry and phase distributions.
  • Findings showed that exposure to PFOS, PFBS, and PFBA increased cells in the G0+G1 phase, decreased cells in the S and M phases, and reduced the prevalence of senescent cells, indicating possible tumorigenic effects, while C6O4 did not cause significant changes.
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In marine organisms, differing degree of sensitivity to ocean acidification (OA) is expected for each life stage, and disturbance at one stage can carry over into the following stage or following generation. In this study we investigated phenotypic changes of sperm and larvae of the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus in response to different pH conditions (8.0, 7.

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Article Synopsis
  • The Procrustes-based perturbation model allows for minimizing the difference between matrices but faces challenges like non-identifiability and issues with high-dimensional data.
  • The authors introduce the ProMises model, which uses a proper prior distribution to enhance interpretability and estimation speed, particularly in high-dimensional contexts like neuroimaging.
  • The Efficient ProMises model significantly improves analysis in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) by integrating topological brain information for better alignment of data.
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  • Impulsivity is being studied as a potential genetic marker for bipolar disorder (BD) and may influence both prognosis and quality of life.
  • Researchers conducted a study comparing individuals with BD to healthy controls, genotyping them for three specific SNPs and assessing impulsivity using the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-11).
  • The findings showed that BD individuals had higher impulsivity scores, but the only genetic link found related to BDNF rs6265, which was associated with lower impulsivity scores, while the 5-HTTLPR SS genotype was linked to higher scores in females.
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The number of likes and comments received to social media posts and images are influential for users' self-presentation and problematic Facebook use. The aim of this study was to highlight the most relevant factors predicting the popularity (i.e.

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Background: Alterations in insular grey matter (GM) volume has been consistently reported for affective and non-affective psychoses both in chronic and first-episode patients, ultimately suggesting that the insula might represent a good region to study in order to assess the longitudinal course of psychotic disorders. Therefore, in this longitudinal Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) study, we aimed at further investigating the key role of insular volumes in psychosis.

Material And Methods: 68 First-Episode Psychosis (FEP) patients, 68 patients with Schizophrenia (SCZ), 47 Bipolar Disorder (BD) patients, and 94 Healthy Controls (HC) were enrolled and underwent a 1.

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Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) is a pathological condition characterized by impaired motor skills. Current theories advance that a deficit of the internal models is mainly responsible for DCD children's altered behavior. Yet, accurate movement execution requires not only correct movement planning, but also integration of sensory feedback into body representation for action (Body Schema) to update the state of the body.

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The aim is to assess the commonalities and interdependence referred to body-image avoidance among 118 couples newly introduced to first-level assisted reproductive techniques. Results showed non-clinical functioning levels, and partners showed a correlated, yet low, dyadic adjustment. The couple-effect was modeled through an Actor Partner Interdependence Model.

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Cetartiodactyls include terrestrial and marine species, all generally endowed with a comparatively lateral position of their eyes and a relatively limited binocular field of vision. To this day, our understanding of the visual system in mammals beyond the few studied animal models remains limited. In the present study, we examined the primary visual cortex of Cetartiodactyls that live on land (sheep, Père David deer, giraffe); in the sea (bottlenose dolphin, Risso's dolphin, long-finned pilot whale, Cuvier's beaked whale, sperm whale and fin whale); or in an amphibious environment (hippopotamus).

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C6O4 (difluoro{[2,2,4,5-tetrafluoro-5-(trifluoromethoxy)-1,3-dioxolan-4-yl]oxy}acetic acid) is a new surfactant and emulsifier used as a substitute of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). Recently, C6O4 has been detected in aquatic environments, but, at present, no information concerning the effects of C6O4 on aquatic species, such as bivalves, are available in the literature. Therefore, in this study we evaluated for the first time the effects of C6O4 (0.

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CO-driven ocean acidification (OA) affects many aspects of sea urchin biology. However, even in the same species, OA effects are often not univocal due to non-uniform exposure setups or different ecological history of the experimental specimens. In the present work, two groups of adult sea urchins Paracentrotus lividus from different environments (the Lagoon of Venice and a coastal area in the Northern Adriatic Sea) were exposed to OA in a long-term exposure.

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Article Synopsis
  • Pedophilia is a complex disorder linked to child sexual offenses, with research showing mixed results on brain abnormalities connected to this behavior.
  • This study conducted a meta-analysis of previous research to examine the neural aspects of pedophilia, revealing that acquired forms of the disorder are associated with specific brain regions important for self-control and social understanding.
  • The findings indicate that idiopathic (original causes) and acquired pedophilia may represent distinct conditions, which could help in developing better treatment approaches for affected individuals.
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Humans evolution is distinctly characterized by their exquisite mastery of tools, allowing them to shape their environment in more elaborate ways compared to other species. This ability is present ever since infancy and most theories indicate that children become proficient with tool use very early. In adults, tool use has been shown to plastically modify metric aspects of the arm representation, as indexed by changes in movement kinematics.

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In this study the effects of a mixture of glyphosate (herbicide), 17a-ethinylestradiol (synthetic estrogen) and amyl salicylate (fragrance) to the mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis were evaluated. Mussels were exposed for 7 days to two realistic concentrations of the mixture (10 and 100 ng/L) and the effects on total haemocyte counts, haemocyte diameter and volume, haemocyte proliferation, haemolymph lactate dehydrogenase activity and haemocyte lysate lysozyme activity were measured. In addition, superoxide dismutase, catalase, acetylcholinesterase, glutathione-S-transferase and glutathione reductase activities were measured in gills and digestive gland.

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