Comprehension of double-center embedded relatives in Italian: a case for hierarchical intervention

Object relatives are more difficult to process than subject relatives. Several sentence processing models have been proposed to explain this difference. As double-center embedding relatives contain several long-distance dependencies, they are an ideal configuration to compare sentence processing models. The main aim of the present study was to compare the predictions of the featural Relativized Minimality approach with the ones of other relevant sentence processing models. 57 Italian-speaking healthy adults answered comprehension questions concerning the first, second, or third verb to appear in both double-center embedding and control sentences. Results show that questions concerning the matrix verb of double-center embedding structures were significantly easier and were associated with faster response times than questions concerning the embedded verbs. Furthermore, in object double-center embedding relatives the questions concerning the verb of the most embedded clause were easier than the ones concerning the verb of the intermediate embedded clause. This pattern of results is consistent with featural Relativized Minimality but cannot be fully explained by other sentence processing models

Stimulating Self-Regulation: A Review of Non-invasive Brain Stimulation Studies of Goal-Directed Behavior

Self-regulation enables individuals to guide their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in a purposeful manner. Self-regulation is thus crucial for goal-directed behavior and contributes to many consequential outcomes in life including physical health, psychological well-being, ethical decision making, and strong interpersonal relationships. Neuroscientific research has revealed that the prefrontal cortex plays a central role in self-regulation, specifically by exerting top-down control over subcortical regions involved in reward (e.g., striatum) and emotion (e.g., amygdala). To orient readers, we first offer a methodological overview of tDCS and then review experiments using non-invasive brain stimulation techniques (especially transcranial direct current stimulation) to target prefrontal brain regions implicated in self-regulation. We focus on brain stimulation studies of self-regulatory behavior across three broad domains of response: persistence, delay behavior, and impulse control. We suggest that stimulating the prefrontal cortex promotes successful self-regulation by altering the balance in activity between the prefrontal cortex and subcortical regions involved in emotion and reward processing

Cortical dynamics underpinning the self-other distinction of touch: A TMS-EEG study

Touch supports processes crucial to human social behaviour, adding a bodily dimension to the perception and understanding of others' feelings. Mirror cortical activity was proposed to underpin the interpersonal sharing of touch, allowing an automatic and unconscious simulation of others' somatic states. However, recent evidence questioned the existence of a tactile shared representation in the primary somatosensory cortex (S1), and the neural correlates of self-other distinction in the somatosensory system remains unknown. We address these issues by exploring S1 reactivity, and the associated neural network oscillations and connectivity, to self and others' touch. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation combined with Electroencephalography (TMS-EEG) recordings were performed during tactile perception and observation, looking for differences in cortical activation and connectivity between felt and seen touch. The sight of a touch directed to a human body part, but not to an object, triggered an early activation of S1 as a felt touch did, which, in both conditions, propagated to fronto-parietal regions. Critically, touch perception and observation shared an effective connectivity network generated in the beta band, which is typically associated to unconscious tactile processing. Conversely, alpha band connectivity, a marker of conscious tactile processing, was detected only for real tactile stimulation. Alpha connectivity within a fronto-parietal pathway seems to underpin the ability to distinguish self and others' somatosensory states, controlling and distinguishing shared tactile representations in S