Correlatos neuronales de la inferencia de estados mentales de otros en contextos de cooperación vs no-cooperación

Ciencias Biomedica

Contribution and functional connectivity between cerebrum and cerebellum on sub-lexical and lexical-semantic processing of verbs.

Language comprehension involves both sub-lexical (e.g., phonological) and lexical-semantic processing. We conducted a task using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare the processing of verbs in these two domains. Additionally, we examined the representation of concrete-motor and abstract-non-motor concepts by including two semantic categories of verbs: motor and mental. The findings indicate that sub-lexical processing during the reading of pseudo-verbs primarily involves the left dorsal stream of the perisylvian network, while lexical-semantic representation during the reading of verbs predominantly engages the ventral stream. According to the embodied or grounded cognition approach, modality-specific mechanisms (such as sensory-motor systems) and the well-established multimodal left perisylvian network contribute to the semantic representation of both concrete and abstract verbs. Our study identified the visual system as a preferential modality-specific system for abstract-mental verbs, which exhibited functional connectivity with the right crus I/lobule VI of the cerebellum. Taken together, these results confirm the dissociation between sub-lexical and lexical-semantic processing and provide neurobiological evidence of functional coupling between specific visual modality regions and the right cerebellum, forming a network that supports the semantic representation of abstract concepts. Further, the results shed light on the underlying mechanisms of semantic processing and contribute to our understanding of how the brain processes abstract concepts

Changes in mood and anxiety symptoms throughout an academic year in university students in Northwest Mexico: Neuroticism and Extraversion as predictors

The primary aim of this project is to investigate the fluctuations in anxiety and depression symptoms among university students over an academic year and to evaluate the predictive role of personality traits in these changes, specifically within a Mexican population

Evaluation of the validity of the Emotional Regulation Questionnaire in a Mexican sample and their correlation with empathy and alexithymia

The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) is widely used to measure the individual differences in two emotion regulation strategies: cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. In this study, we examine the psychometric properties of the ERQ (Spanish version) in a Mexican community sample (N = 792). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that the traditional two-factor model (comprising cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression factors) was replicable and an excellent fit to the data. ERQ cognitive reappraisal (α = 0.81) and expressive suppression (α = 0.76) scores had acceptable levels of internal consistency reliability. As expected, women tend to use less expressive suppression than men. We also assessed the correlations of both strategies with alexithymia and empathy. Cognitive reappraisal scores were negatively correlated with alexithymia and positively correlated with higher empathy measures, whereas expressive suppression scores were positively correlated with personal distress and alexithymia, and negatively correlated with cognitive empathy scales and empathic concern. We conclude that, similar to previous findings, the ERQ has strong psychometric properties in a Mexican community sample and can be used in a confident manner with other tests to complement the assessment of affective traits. In addition, considering previous suggestions of the association between emotional regulation strategies and different components of the empathic response, the correlations between empathy measures and the emotional regulation strategies shown in this study opens a pathway to further research such interactions

Activation maps for the comparison between mental and motor verbs.

Graphical representation of GLM’s results, brain regions activated in the contrast mental > motor verbs in red, same contrast when the effect of visual processing (i.e., symbols) is removed, in green, and when the effect of phonological processing (i.e., pseudo-verbs) is removed, in blue. Coordinate z of multislices in cerebellum: a = : a = -24, b = -29, c = -34, and d = -39. Color bars show z scores. LH: left hemisphere; RH: right hemisphere.</p

PPI results for motor, mental and pseudo verbs with respect to symbols.

Graphical representation of PPI results with seeds in L-LOC, L-MTG, L-SMA, and R-cerebellum, brain regions functionally connected in the contrast motor > symbols in red, mental > symbols in green, and pseudo-verbs > symbols in blue. Color bars show z scores. LH: left hemisphere; RH: right hemisphere.</p