Visually induced analgesia: seeing the body reduces pain

Given previous reports of strong interactions between vision and somatic senses, we investigated whether vision of the body modulates pain perception. Participants looked into a mirror aligned with their body midline at either the reflection of their own left hand (creating the illusion that they were looking directly at their own right hand) or the reflection of a neutral object. We induced pain using an infrared laser and recorded nociceptive laser-evoked potentials (LEPs). We also collected subjective ratings of pain intensity and unpleasantness. Vision of the body produced clear analgesic effects on both subjective ratings of pain and the N2/P2 complex of LEPs. Similar results were found during direct vision of the hand, without the mirror. Furthermore, these effects were specific to vision of one’s own hand and were absent when viewing another person’s hand. These results demonstrate a novel analgesic effect of non-informative vision of the body

Kinematics fingerprints of leader and follower role-taking during cooperative joint actions

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Brain Dynamics of Action Monitoring in Higher-Order Motor Control Disorders: The Case of Apraxia

Limb apraxia (LA) refers to a high-order motor disorder characterized by the inability to reproduce transitive actions on commands or after observation. Studies demonstrate that action observation and action execution activate the same networks in the human brain, and provides an onlooker’s motor system with appropriate cognitive, motor and sensory-motor cues to flexibly implementing action-sequences and gestures. Tellingly, the temporal dynamics of action monitoring has never been explored in people suffering from LA. To fill this gap, we studied the electro-cortical signatures of error observation in human participants suffering from acquired left-brain lesions with (LA+) and without (LA–) LA, and in a group of healthy controls (H). EEG was acquired while participants observed from a first-person perspective (1PP) an avatar performing correct or incorrect reach-to-grasp a glass action in an immersive-virtual environment. Alterations of typical EEG signatures of error observation in time (early error positivity; Pe) and time-frequency domain (theta band-power) were found reduced in LA+ compared with H. Connectivity analyses showed that LA+ exhibited a decreased theta phase synchronization of both the frontoparietal and frontofrontal network, compared with H and LA–. Moreover, linear regression analysis revealed that the severity of LA [test of upper LA (TULIA) scores] was predicted by mid-frontal error-related theta activity, suggesting a link between error monitoring capacity and apraxic phenotypes. These results provide novel neurophysiological evidence of altered neurophysiological dynamics of action monitoring in individuals with LA and shed light on the performance monitoring changes occurring in this disorder

Risonanze e imitazioni

L\u2019empatia, cio\ue8 la capacit\ue0 di percepire e comprendere gli stati mentali altrui, \ue8 una dote cos\uec indispensabile per lo sviluppo sociale da essere profondamente radicata nel nostro cervello. Che per aiutarci a entrare nei panni degli altri arriva a riprodurne le emozioni, movimenti e sensazioni tattili del dolor

Interhemispheric disconnection syndromes

(from the chapter) Describes interhemispheric disconnection syndromes. The concept of disconnection symptoms presupposea that neural functions are localized and that neural connections are specific. However, typical brain lesions interrupt connections between multiple functional substrates, bringing about constellations of symptoms which constitute disconnection syndromes. The authors describe the historical evolution of the concept of the interhemispheric disconnection syndrome, the symptomatology of interhemispheric disconnection (including visual and auditory symptom, motor control, and memory). Temporary unrelated symptoms, such as diagnostic dispraxia and alien hand phenomenon, are also described. The authors also discuss mind and consciousness in the split brain. In conclusion, the authors argue that the overall unitarity and consistency of the behavior of commissurotomized patients is a fact, whereas inferenced that conceived the split brain as a 2-channel processor, or the organ of a double consciousness are not supported by sufficiently convincing evidence. Possible factors that can maintain unitarity in the control of the behavior of commissurotomy patients are described. ((c) 1999 APA/PsycINFO, all rights reserved

Il tuo dolore nel mio sistema motorio. Uno studio di Stimolazione Magnetica Transcranica

Il sistema motorio \ue8 intimamente legato al dolore e ai processi imitativi ed empatici. Mediante stimolazione magnetica transcranica, abbiamo esplorato le rappresentazioni cortico-spinali di soggetti che osservavano iniezioni che penetravano in mani e piedi di un modello a loro sconosciuto. La semplice visione di un evento doloroso in una parte del corpo \ue8 in grado di produrre una inibizione selettiva della rappresentazione cortico-spinale di quel distretto corporeo, similmente a quanto avviene durante la percezione reale di uno stimolo nocicettivo. Tale inibizione sembrerebbe legata agli aspetti sensoriali, ma non affettivi del dolore altrui. La rappresentazione degli aspetti sensoriali del dolore altrui nel nostro sistema motorio potrebbe essere cruciale per l\u2019apprendimento sociale delle reazioni al dolore

The sensorimotor side of empathy

This chapter revolves around the phenomena and neural mechanisms underlying the human capability to empathize with the actions, emotions, and feelings of other individuals. Special attention is paid to the neural activity induced by observation and imagination of others' pain. It will be shown that representing others' pain brings about the activation of neural structures largely overlapping with those activated during the experience of pain on oneself and that neural structures involved in both emotional and sensorimotor processing may be recruited during empathy for pain

Neuroscienze in società: come lo studio del cervello sociale ci aiuta a capire chi siamo

In spite of the intrinsically social nature of human beings, research in Cognitive Neuroscience has mainly focussed on the individual. Only recently have studies started to explore the neurobiological basis of our social abilities and their evolution and thus gave birth to Social Neuroscience (SN), a new research field at the intersection of the Social sciences and Neurosciences. SN mostly inquires how evolutionary pressure has favoured the emergence of the specialized social brain networks that allowed humans to build up complex societies. Related to SN is the field of cultural neuroscience (CN) a discipline aimed at understanding how Society and Culture shape our minds and brains. Scepticism about the possibility of studying the above complex behaviours using the reductionist and oversimplifying methods of Neuroscience has been expressed by traditional scholars of brain and mind. However, we believe that the increasing sensitivity of neuroscience techniques and theoretical approaches will ultimately allow us to understand the neuroplastic processes that allow social interactions to shape of our brains. It has been demonstrated, for example that even very basic behaviours like reflexive social attention, are influenced by higher-order variables such as social status and political affiliation. This shows how our tendency to form groups on the basis of dispositions, preferences and ideologies can affect fundamental cognitive processes. We believe that neural ad behavioural implicit markers of social preferences and bias complement and extend the knowledge deriving from surveys based on explicit responses. Thus, the SN and CN new approach, promises to be very important for both neuroscience and social psychology