Travel restrictions during pandemics: A useful strategy?

Though carrying considerable economic and societal costs, restricting individuals' traveling freedom appears as a logical way to curb the spreading of an epidemic. However, whether, under what conditions, and to what extent travel restrictions actually exert a mitigating effect on epidemic spreading are poorly understood issues. Recent studies have actually suggested the opposite, i.

A minimal model of hospital patients' dynamics in COVID-19.

Italy has been one of the countries hardest hit by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. While the overall policy in response to the epidemic was to a large degree centralised, the regional basis of the healthcare system represented an important factor affecting the natural dynamics of the disease induced geographic specificities. Here, we characterise the region-specific modulation of COVID dynamics with a reduced exponential model leveraging available data on sub-intensive and intensive care unit patients made available by all regional councils from the very onset of the disease.

That does not sound right: Sounds affect visual ERPs during a piano sight-reading task.

Prolonged musical training induces important audio-visuo-motor plastic processes. However, little is known about how the musicians' brain resolves multimodal conflicts while preparing for musical action. We run an electroencephalographic (EEG) investigation on how visual processing for action (score reading) is affected by preceding task-irrelevant piano sounds, usually associated to the same or to a different action.

Rhythmic motor behaviour influences perception of visual time.

Temporal processing is fundamental for an accurate synchronization between motor behaviour and sensory processing. Here, we investigate how motor timing during rhythmic tapping influences perception of visual time. Participants listen to a sequence of four auditory tones played at 1 Hz and continue the sequence (without auditory stimulation) by tapping four times with their finger.

The body talks: Sensorimotor communication and its brain and kinematic signatures.

Human communication is a traditional topic of research in many disciplines such as psychology, linguistics and philosophy, all of which mainly focused on language, gestures and deictics. However, these do not constitute the sole channels of communication, especially during online social interaction, where instead an additional critical role may be played by sensorimotor communication (SMC). SMC refers here to (often subtle) communicative signals embedded within pragmatic actions - for example, a soccer player carving his body movements in ways that inform a partner about his intention, or to feint an adversary; or the many ways we offer a glass of wine, rudely or politely.

Attentional bias on motor control: is motor inhibition influenced by attentional reorienting?

Motor inhibition and attentional processing are tightly linked. Recent neurophysiological studies have shown that both processes might rely on similar cognitive and neural mechanisms (Wessel and Aron, Neuron 93:259-280, 2017). However, it remains unclear whether attentional reorientation influences inhibition of a subsequent action.

Motor cortex compensates for lack of sensory and motor experience during auditory speech perception.

Listening to speech has been shown to activate motor regions, as measured by corticobulbar excitability. In this experiment, we explored if motor regions are also recruited during listening to non-native speech, for which we lack both sensory and motor experience. By administering Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) over the left motor cortex we recorded corticobulbar excitability of the lip muscles when Italian participants listened to native-like and non-native German vowels.

Passive sensorimotor stimulation triggers long lasting alpha-band fluctuations in visual perception.

Movement planning and execution rely on the anticipation and online control of the incoming sensory input. Evidence suggests that sensorimotor processes may synchronize visual rhythmic activity in preparation of action performance. Indeed, we recently reported periodic fluctuations of visual contrast sensitivity that are time-locked to the onset of an intended movement of the arm.