Transcranial electrical stimulation for procedural learning and rehabilitation.

Procedural learning is the acquisition of motor and non-motor skills through a gradual process that increases with practice. Impairments in procedural learning have been consistently demonstrated in neurodevelopmental, neurodegenerative, and neuropsychiatric disorders. Considering that noninvasive brain stimulation modulates brain activity and boosts neuroplastic mechanisms, we reviewed the effects of coupling transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) with training methods for motor and non-motor procedural learning to explore tDCS potential use as a tool for enhancing implicit learning in healthy and clinical populations.

Spatial and temporal (non)binding of audiovisual rhythms in sensorimotor synchronisation.

Human movement synchronisation with moving objects strongly relies on visual input. However, auditory information also plays an important role, since real environments are intrinsically multimodal. We used electroencephalography (EEG) frequency tagging to investigate the selective neural processing and integration of visual and auditory information during motor tracking and tested the effects of spatial and temporal congruency between audiovisual modalities.

Impacts of COVID-19 Sanitary Cues on Hedonic Appreciation of Foods.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to several lifestyle changes, including eating behavior. Herein, we aimed to evaluate how pandemic-related sanitary cues presented in food videos impact food appraisal and desire to eat, and their priming after-effects on subsequent food pictures presented without such cues. In two online sessions, separated by 4 to 7 days, participants watched either a Non-Pandemic or a Pandemic video of a woman eating, the latter containing sanitary elements adopted during the pandemic.

Lateralised dynamic modulations of corticomuscular coherence associated with bimanual learning of rhythmic patterns.

Human movements are spontaneously attracted to auditory rhythms, triggering an automatic activation of the motor system, a central phenomenon to music perception and production. Cortico-muscular coherence (CMC) in the theta, alpha, beta and gamma frequencies has been used as an index of the synchronisation between cortical motor regions and the muscles. Here we investigated how learning to produce a bimanual rhythmic pattern composed of low- and high-pitch sounds affects CMC in the beta frequency band.

Mind Wandering and Task-Focused Attention: ERP Correlates.

Previous studies looking at how Mind Wandering (MW) impacts performance in distinct Focused Attention (FA) systems, using the Attention Network Task (ANT), showed that the presence of pure MW thoughts did not impact the overall performance of ANT (alert, orienting and conflict) performance. However, it still remains unclear if the lack of interference of MW in the ANT, reported at the behavioral level, has a neurophysiological correspondence. We hypothesize that a distinct cortical processing may be required to meet attentional demands during MW.

Ostracism via virtual chat room-Effects on basic needs, anger and pain.

Ostracism is characterized by a social pain provoked by being excluded and ignored. In order to address the effects of social ostracism in virtual non-physical interactions, we developed a more realistic paradigm as an alternative to Cyberball and assessed its effects on participant's expression of basic social needs, emotional experience and painful feeling. The chat room consisted of controlled social dialogue interactions between participants and two other (confederate) chat room partners.

Human biological and nonbiological point-light movements: Creation and validation of the dataset.

Human action perception is so powerful that people can identify movement efficiently in the absence of pictorial information, such as in point-light displays. Interest is growing in this type of stimulus for research in neuroscience. This interest stems from the advantage of separating the component of pure human action kinematics from other pictorial information, such as facial expression and muscle contraction.

Tuning and disrupting the brain-modulating the McGurk illusion with electrical stimulation.

In the so-called McGurk illusion, when the synchronized presentation of the visual stimulus /ga/ is paired with the auditory stimulus /ba/, people in general hear it as /da/. Multisensory integration processing underlying this illusion seems to occur within the Superior Temporal Sulcus (STS). Herein, we present evidence demonstrating that bilateral cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of this area can decrease the McGurk illusion-type responses.

Transcranial direct current stimulation modulates ERP-indexed inhibitory control and reduces food consumption.

Food craving can be defined as the "urge to eat a specific food". Previous findings suggest impairment of inhibitory control, specifically a regulatory deficit in the lateral prefrontal circuitry that is associated with a compulsion for food. As demonstrated by three previous studies, bilateral transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) (anode right/cathode left) reduces food craving and caloric intake.

Bilateral temporal cortex transcranial direct current stimulation worsens male performance in a multisensory integration task.

Somatosensory integration is a critical cognitive function for human social interaction. Though somatosensory integration has been highly explored in cognitive studies; only a few studies have explored focal modulation of cortical excitability using a speech perception paradigm. In the current study, we aimed to investigate the effects of tDCS applied over the temporal cortex of healthy subjects during a go-no-go task in which stimuli were shapes and non-words.

Non-invasive brain stimulation to assess and modulate neuroplasticity in Alzheimer's disease.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative and progressive disease related to a gradual decline in cognitive functions such as memory, attention, perceptual-spatial abilities, language, and executive functions. Recent evidence has suggested that interventions promoting neural plasticity can induce significant cognitive gains especially in subjects at risk of or with mild AD. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) are non-invasive techniques that can induce significant and long-lasting changes in focal and non-focal neuroplasticity.