Your place or mine:Shared sensory experiences elicit a remapping of peripersonal space

Our perceptual systems integrate multisensory information about objects that are close to our bodies, which allow us to respond quickly and appropriately to potential threats, as well as act upon and manipulate useful tools. Intriguingly, the representation of this area close to our body, known as the multisensory 'peripersonal space' (PPS), can expand or contract during social interactions. However, it is not yet known how different social interactions can alter the representation of PPS. In particular, shared sensory experiences, such as those elicited by bodily illusions such as the enfacement illusion, can induce feelings of ownership over the other's body which has also been shown to increase the remapping of the other's sensory experiences onto our own bodies. The current study investigated whether such shared sensory experiences between two people induced by the enfacement illusion could alter the way PPS was represented, and whether this alteration could be best described as an expansion of one's own PPS towards the other or a remapping of the other's PPS onto one's own. An audio-tactile integration task allowed us to measure the extent of the PPS before and after a shared sensory experience with a confederate. Our results showed a clear increase in audio-tactile integration in the space close to the confederate's body after the shared experience. Importantly, this increase did not extend across the space between participant and confederate, as would be expected if the participant's PPS had expanded. Thus, the pattern of results is more consistent with a partial remapping of the confederate's PPS onto the participant's own PPS. These results have important consequences for our understanding of interpersonal space during different kinds of social interactions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Can you feel the body that you see? On the relationship between interoceptive accuracy and body image

Interoception and exteroception for body signals are two different ways of perceiving the self: the first from within, the second from outside. We investigated the relationship between Interoceptive Accuracy (IAcc) and external perception of the body and we tested if seeing the body from an external perspective can affect IAcc. Fifty-two healthy female subjects performed a standard heartbeat perception task to assess the IAcc, before and after the Body Image Revealer (BIR), which is a body perception task designed to assess the different aspects of body-image. The performance of the lower IAcc group in the heartbeat perception task significantly improved after the exteroceptive task. These findings highlight the relations between interoceptive and exteroceptive body-representations, supporting the view that these two kinds of awareness are linked and interact with each other

Sharing Space: The Presence of Other Bodies Extends the Space Judged as Near

Background: As social animals we share the space with other people. It is known that perceived extension of the peripersonal space (the reaching space) is affected by the implicit representation of our own and other's action potentialities. Our issue concerns whether the co-presence of a body in the scene influences our extrapersonal space (beyond reaching distance) categorization. Methodology/Principal Findings: We investigated, through 3D virtual scenes of a realistic environment, whether egocentric spatial categorization can be influenced by the presence of another human body (Exp. 1) and whether the effect is due to her action potentialities or simply to her human-like morphology (Exp. 2). Subjects were asked to judge the location ("Near" or "Far") of a target object located at different distances from their egocentric perspective. In Exp. 1, the judgment was given either in presence of a virtual avatar (Self-with-Other), or a non-corporeal object (Self-with-Object) or nothing (Self). In Exp. 2, the Self condition was replaced by a Self-with-Dummy condition, in which an inanimate body (a wooden dummy) was present. Mean Judgment Transition Thresholds (JTTs) were calculated for each subject in each experimental condition. Self-with-Other condition induced a significant extension of the space judged as "Near" as compared to both the Selfwith- Object condition and the Self condition. Such extension was observed also in Exp. 2 in the Self-with-Dummy condition. Results suggest that the presence of others impacts on our perception of extrapersonal space. This effect holds also when the other is a human-like wooden dummy, suggesting that structural and morphological shapes resembling human bodies are sufficient conditions for the effect to occur. Conclusions: The observed extension of the portion of space judged as near could represent a wider portion of "accessible" space, thus an advantage in the struggle to survive in presence of other potential competing individuals

Guaiane-rich phytochemical profile of Centaurea kotschyi subsp. persica (Boiss.) Wagenitz and identification of hypoglycaemic metabolites

: Phytochemical investigation of the aerial parts obtained from the Turkish plant Centaurea kotschyi subsp. persica led to the isolation of nine sesquiterpene lactones belonging to the guaiane class, including the undescribed kotschyols A and B, a monoterpene lactone (daphnauranin E), four known lignans (matairesinol, matairesinoside, arctiin and arctigenin) and an undescribed dihydrobenzofuran neolignan (4-O-glucosylcrataegifin A). The structures of these compounds were defined by spectroscopic analysis, including ECD and 1D/2D NMR, and chemical conversion. Spurred from the traditional use of C. kotschyi subsp. persica and previous reports on the activity of its extracts, the isolated compounds were evaluated for their hypoglycaemic activity disclosing the bioactive components

Telehealth. a winning weapon to face the COVID-19 outbreak for patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension

COVID-19 pandemic severely affected national health systems, altering the modality and the type of care of patients with acute and chronic diseases. To minimize the risk of exposure to SARS-CoV2 for patients and health professionals, face-to-face visits were cancelled or postponed and the use of telemedicine was strongly encouraged. This reorganization involved especially patients with rare diseases needing periodic comprehensive assessment, such as pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH)

Assessment of the interlaboratory variability and robustness of JAK2V617Fmutation assays: A study involving a consortium of 19 Italian laboratories

To date, a plenty of techniques for the detection of JAK2V617Fis used over different laboratories, with substantial differences in specificity and sensitivity. Therefore, to provide reliable and comparable results, the standardization of molecular techniques is mandatory.A network of 19 centers was established to 1) evaluate the inter- and intralaboratory variability in JAK2V617Fquantification, 2) identify the most robust assay for the standardization of the molecular test and 3) allow consistent interpretation of individual patient analysis results. The study was conceived in 3 different rounds, in which all centers had to blindly test DNA samples with different JAK2V617Fallele burden (AB) using both quantitative and qualitative assays. The positivity of samples with an AB < 1% was not detected by qualitative assays. Conversely, laboratories performing the quantitative approach were able to determine the expected JAK2V617FAB. Quantitative results were reliable across all mutation loads with moderate variability at low AB (0.1 and 1%; CV = 0.46 and 0.77, respectively). Remarkably, all laboratories clearly distinguished between the 0.1 and 1% mutated samples. In conclusion, a qualitative approach is not sensitive enough to detect the JAK2V617Fmutation, especially at low AB. On the contrary, the ipsogen JAK2 MutaQuant CE-IVD kit resulted in a high, efficient and sensitive quantification detection of all mutation loads. This study sets the basis for the standardization of molecular techniques for JAK2V617Fdetermination, which will require the employment of approved operating procedures and the use of certificated standards, such as the recent WHO 1st International Reference Panel for Genomic JAK2V617F