Visuospatial working memory abilities in children analyzed by the bricks game task (BGT)

The study of the development of visuospatial memory processes is useful for devising personalized educational interventions as well as for understanding the changes in cognitive functioning in an era characterized by technological progress. The present research is aimed at investigating spatial working memory ability in children that attended the first three years of primary school by means of the Brick Game Task (BGT), a novel visuospatial working memory test. BGT is a small-scale ecological test inspired by behavioral walking tasks with nine white bricks in different spatial configurations as well as to Corsi Block-Tapping test. 228 Italian children (121 F; mean age: 7.22 ± 1.18) were assigned to three groups based on the primary school class attended: Group 1 (N = 85; 40 F; mean age 6.18 ± .5), Group 2 (N = 61; 36 F; mean age 7.2 ± .83), and Group 3 (N = 82; 44 F; mean age 8.32 ± .94). All participants were asked to complete the Digit Span test, the Corsi Block-Tapping test, and to explore the three spatial configurations of the BGT with the form of Matrix, M-BGT, Cluster, CL-BGT, Cross, CR-BGT. MANOVA revealed a main significant effect for Group (F12,434 = 15.06; p < .0001) indicating that the group of older obtained a better global executive performance than 1 and 2 groups. Multiple linear regression indicated that Corsi Block-Tapping test performance and Age significantly predicted the M-BGT score. Moreover, Corsi Block-Tapping test and Digit Span significantly predicted the CL-BGT performance, showing how a higher score results in a better CL- BGT performance. Finally, Corsi Block-Tapping test, Digit Span, and Age were positively associated with the CR- BGT performance. The present findings evidenced that novel BGT is a sensible visuospatial working memory task suggesting thus its use to assess the children’s executive performance in ecological way. These results open to the development of personalized educational interventions

Sensitivity to gait improvement after levodopa intake in Parkinson’s disease: A comparison study among synthetic kinematic indices

The synthetic indices are widely used to describe balance and stability during gait. Some of these are employed to describe the gait features in Parkinson's disease (PD). However, the results are sometimes inconsistent, and the same indices are rarely used to compare the individuals affected by PD before and after levodopa intake (OFF and ON condition, respectively). Our aim was to investigate which synthetic measure among Harmonic Ratio, Jerk Ratio, Golden Ratio and Trunk Displacement Index is representative of gait stability and harmony, and which of these are more sensitive to the variations between OFF and ON condition. We found that all indices, except the Jerk Ratio, significantly improve after levodopa. Only the improvement of the Trunk Displacement Index showed a direct correlation with the motor improvement measured through the clinical scale UPDRS-III (Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale-part III). In conclusion, we suggest that the synthetic indices can be useful to detect motor changes induced by, but not all of them clearly correlate with the clinical changes achieved with the levodopa administration. In our analysis, only the Trunk Displacement Index was able to show a clear relationship with the PD clinical motor improvement

Brain fingerprint changes across the menstrual cycle correlate with emotional state

Background Menstrual cycle (MC) is the cyclical phenomenon with the greatest impact on women's mood and behavior. To date, little is known about the potential mechanism and neuroanatomical correlates of behavioral and emotional fluctuations across the MC. Brain connectome fingerprinting, a recently introduced technique in the field of brain network analysis, represents a valid approach in assessing the subject-specific connectivity and in predicting clinical impairment in several neurological diseases. Nevertheless, its performance, and clinical utility, in healthy individuals has not yet been investigated. Methods We conducted the Clinical Connectome Fingerprint (CCF) analysis on source-reconstructed magnetoencephalography signals in a cohort of 24 women across the MC. Results All the parameters of identifiability did not differ according to the MC phases. The periovulatory and mid-luteal phases showed a less stable, more variable over time, brain connectome compared to the early follicular phase. This difference in brain connectome stability (especially in the posterior brain regions) was able to significantly predict self-esteem, wellbeing, and mood. Conclusion These results confirm the high reliability of the CCF and its independence from the MC phases and, at the same time, provide neuroanatomical correlates of the emotional and mood aspects that change across the MC

Boosting effect of regular sport practice in young adults: Preliminary results on cognitive and emotional abilities

Several studies have shown that physical exercise (PE) improves behavior and cognitive functioning, reducing the risk of various neurological diseases, protecting the brain from the detrimental effects of aging, facilitating body recovery after injuries, and enhancing self-efficacy and self-esteem. Emotion processing and regulation abilities are also widely acknowledged to be key to success in sports. In this study, we aim to prove that regular participation in sports enhances cognitive and emotional functioning in healthy individuals. A sample of 60 students (mean age = 22.12; SD = 2.40; M = 30), divided into sportive and sedentary, were subjected to a neuropsychological tests battery to assess their overall cognitive abilities (Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices, APM), verbal and graphic fluency (Word Fluency Task and modified Five Point Test, m-FPT), as well as their emotional awareness skills (Toronto Alexithymia Scale, TAS-20). Our results showed that sportive students performed better than sedentary ones in all cognitive tasks. Regarding emotional processing abilities, significant differences were found in the TAS-20 total score as well as in the Difficulty Describing Feelings (DDF) subscale and the Difficulty Identifying Feeling (DIF) subscale. Lastly, gender differences were found in the External-Oriented Thinking (EOT) subscale. Overall, our findings evidence that PE has positive effects on cognitive functioning and emotion regulation, suggesting how sports practice can promote mental health and wellbeing

The kinectome: A comprehensive kinematic map of human motion in health and disease

Human voluntary movement stems from the coordinated activations in space and time of many musculoskeletal segments. However, the current methodological approaches to study human movement are still limited to the evaluation of the synergies among a few body elements. Network science can be a useful approach to describe movement as a whole and to extract features that are relevant to understanding both its complex physiology and the pathophysiology of movement disorders. Here, we propose to represent human movement as a network (that we named the kinectome), where nodes represent body points, and edges are defined as the correlations of the accelerations between each pair of them. We applied this framework to healthy individuals and patients with Parkinson’s disease, observing that the patients’ kinectomes display less symmetrical patterns as compared to healthy controls. Furthermore, we used the kinectomes to successfully identify both healthy and diseased subjects using short gait recordings. Finally, we highlighted topological features that predict the individual clinical impairment in patients. Our results define a novel approach to study human movement. While deceptively simple, this approach is well-grounded, and represents a powerful tool that may be applied to a wide spectrum of framework

Brain flexibility increases during the peri-ovulatory phase of the menstrual cycle

The brain operates in a flexible dynamic regime, generating complex patterns of activity (i.e neuronal avalanches). This study aimed to describe how brain dynamics change according to menstrual cycle (MC) phases. Brain activation patterns were estimated from resting state magnetoencephalography (MEG) scans, acquired women at early follicular (T1), peri-ovulatory (T2) and mid-luteal (T3) phases of MC. We investigated the functional repertoire (number of ways in which large bursts of activity spread through the brain) and the region-specific influence on large-scale dynamics across MC. Finally, we assessed the relationship between sex hormones and changes in brain dynamics. A significantly larger number of visited configuration patterns, in T2 than in T1, in the beta frequency band was observed. No relationship between changes in brain dynamics and sex hormones was showed. Finally, we showed that, in the beta band, the left posterior cingulate gyrus and the right insula were more present in the functional repertoire in T2 than in T1, while the right pallidum was more present in T1 than in T2. In summary, we showed a hormone independent increase of brain dynamics during the ovulatory phase. Moreover, we demonstrated that several specific brain regions play a key role in determining this change

Topological changes of brain network during mindfulness meditation: an exploratory source level magnetoencephalographic study

We have previously evidenced that Mindfulness Meditation (MM) in experienced meditators (EMs) is associated with long-lasting topological changes in resting state condition. However, what occurs during the meditative phase is still debated. Utilizing magnetoencephalography (MEG), the present study is aimed at comparing the topological features of the brain network in a group of EMs (n = 26) during the meditative phase with those of individuals who had no previous experience of any type of meditation (NM group, n = 29). A wide range of topological changes in the EM group as compared to the NM group has been shown. Specifically, in EMs, we have observed increased betweenness centrality in delta, alpha, and beta bands in both cortical (left medial orbital cortex, left postcentral area, and right visual primary cortex) and subcortical (left caudate nucleus and thalamus) areas. Furthermore, the degree of beta band in parietal and occipital areas of EMs was increased too. Our exploratory study suggests that the MM can change the functional brain network and provides an explanatory hypothesis on the brain circuits characterizing the meditative process

Clinical connectome fingerprints of cognitive decline

Brain connectome fingerprinting is rapidly rising as a novel influential field in brain network analysis. Yet, it is still unclear whether connectivity fingerprints could be effectively used for mapping and predicting disease progression from human brain data. We hypothesize that dysregulation of brain activity in disease would reflect in worse subject identification. We propose a novel framework, Clinical Connectome Fingerprinting, to detect individual connectome features from clinical populations. We show that “clinical fingerprints” can map individual variations between elderly healthy subjects and patients with mild cognitive impairment in functional connectomes extracted from magnetoencephalography data. We find that identifiability is reduced in patients as compared to controls, and show that these connectivity features are predictive of the individual Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score in patients. We hope that the proposed methodology can help in bridging the gap between connectivity features and biomarkers of brain dysfunction in large-scale brain networks