Children with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) often display motor problems that may impact their daily lives. Studying specific motor characteristics related to spatiotemporal control may inform us about the mechanisms underlying their challenges. Fifty-eight children with varying neurodevelopmental symptoms load (median age: 5.6 years, range: 2.7–12.5 years) performed an...
Physical exercise reduces the effects of aging and cognitive decline by improving synaptic plasticity and spatial learning. However, the underlying neurobiological mechanisms are unclear. A total of 45 Male SPF Sprague–Dawley rats were acclimatized and then allocated into three groups, 15 in each group: the saline control (DC) group, D-gal-induced aging (DA) group, and D-gal...
Previous studies have identified a ‘defensive graded field’ in the peripersonal front space where potential threatening stimuli induce stronger blink responses, mainly modulated by top–down mechanisms, which include various factors, such as proximity to the body, stimulus valence, and social cues. However, very little is known about the mechanisms responsible for representation...
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) leads to disturbed brain discharge rhythm, elevated excitability, anxiety-like behaviors, and decreased learning and memory capabilities. Cognitive dysfunctions severely affect the quality of life and prognosis of TBI patients, requiring effective rehabilitation treatment. Evidence indicates that moderate exercise after brain injury decreases TBI...
Alertness, or one’s general readiness to respond to stimulation, has previously been shown to affect spatial attention. However, most of this previous research focused on speeded, laboratory-based reaction tasks, as opposed to the classical line bisection task typically used to diagnose deficits of spatial attention in clinical settings. McIntosh et al. (Cogn Brain Res 25:833–850...
Accumulating evidence indicates that microglia-mediated neuroinflammation in the hippocampus contributes to the development of perioperative neurocognitive disorder (PND). P38MAPK, a point of convergence for different signaling processes involved in inflammation, can be activated by various stresses. This study aims to investigate the role of the P38MAPK/ATF2 signaling pathway in...
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is one of the most common and complex Neurodegeneration, with an inherited metabolic disorder. Fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21), an endocrine hormone that belongs to the fibroblast growth factor superfamily, plays an extensive role in metabolic regulation. However, our understandings of the specific function and mechanisms of FGF21 on PD are still...
The vestibular apparatus provides spatial information on the position of the head in space and with respect to gravity. Low-frequency sinusoidal galvanic vestibular stimulation (sGVS), a means of selectively changing the firing of vestibular afferents, induces a frequency-dependent perception of sway and, in some individuals, induces nausea. Given that vestibular afferents...
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies typically focus on suprathreshold motor evoked potentials (MEPs), overlooking small MEPs representing subthreshold corticomotor pathway activation. Assessing subthreshold excitability could provide insights into corticomotor pathway integrity and function, particularly in neurological conditions like stroke. The aim of the study was...
We investigated whether and how social power affects the representation of peri-personal space (PPS). We applied a multisensory interaction task to assess PPS representation and the Personal Sense of Power Scale to assess participants’ feelings of power over others’ behaviors and over others’ opinions. In Study 1, we probed PPS representation in a virtual social context...
The mental representation of the body in action can be explored using motor imagery (MI) tasks. MI tasks can be allocated along a continuum going from more implicit to more explicit tasks, where the discriminant is the degree of action monitoring required to solve the tasks (which is the awareness of using the mental representation of our own body to monitor our motor imagery...
Previous work has shown that exposure to auditory white noise (WN) can improve cognitive performance in children with ADHD, but it is unknown whether this improvement generalizes to other sensory modalities. To address this knowledge gap, we tested the effect of Stochastic Vestibular Stimulation (SVS) on cognitive performance and reaction time (RT) variability in two groups...
Patients with left-sided neglect dyslexia often omit whole words positioned on the left, termed whole-word errors, or commit errors on the left-sided letters of words, termed unilateral paralexias. In addition, the errors have been shown to be exacerbated by simultaneously presented distractors, which has been interpreted as a failure of selective attention. In two experiments...
Professional hand percussionists who play the darbuka (a drum from the Middle East) show fast and stable bimanual finger coordination compared to amateur players. A cross-recurrence quantification analysis clarifies how stable bimanual coordination is achieved by dissociating stochastic noise and attractor strength in the dynamic system. This study employed a cross-recurrence...
To elucidate the underlying physiological mechanisms of muscle synergies, we investigated long-range functional connectivity by cortico-muscular (CMC), intermuscular (IMC) and cortico-synergy (CSC) coherence. Fourteen healthy participants executed an isometric upper limb task in synergy-tuned directions. Cortical activity was recorded using 32-channel electroencephalography (EEG...
The sense of limb position is important, because it is believed to contribute to our sense of self-awareness. Muscle spindles, including both primary and secondary endings of spindles, are thought to be the principal position sensors. Passive spindles possess a property called thixotropy which allows their sensitivity to be manipulated. Here, thixotropic patterns of position...
Ocular microtremor (OMT) is the smallest of three involuntary fixational micro eye movements, which has led to it being under researched in comparison. The link between OMT and brain function generates a strong rationale for further study as there is potential for its use as a biomarker in populations with neurological injury and disease. This structured review focused on...
The sense of controlling one’s actions and their consequences is a critical aspect of successful motor activity. While motor performance typically improves with learning, it is unclear whether, how, and why higher order aspects of motor cognition are also affected. Here, we used an implicit measure of sense of agency—the ‘intentional binding’ effect—as participants learned to...
Pseudoneglect, that is the tendency to pay more attention to the left side of space, is typically assessed with paper-and-pencil tasks, particularly line bisection. In the present study, we used an everyday task with more complex stimuli. Subjects’ task was to look for pre-specified objects in images of real-world scenes. In half of the scenes, the search object was located on...
The sensory consequences of our actions appear attenuated to us. This effect has been reported for external sensations that are evoked by auditory or visual events and for body-related sensations which are produced by self-touch. In the present study, we investigated the effects of prolonged exposure to a delay between an action and the generated sensation on sensory attenuation...
Binary feedback, providing information solely about task success or failure, can be sufficient to drive motor learning. While binary feedback can induce explicit adjustments in movement strategy, it remains unclear if this type of feedback also induces implicit learning. We examined this question in a center-out reaching task by gradually moving an invisible reward zone away from...
The effects of hypergravity and the associated increased pressure on the human body have not yet been studied in detail, but are of great importance for the safety of astronauts on space missions and could have a long-term impact on rehabilitation strategies for neurological patients. Considering the plans of international space agencies with the exploration of Mars and Moon, it...
Distortions of duration perception are often observed in response to highly arousing stimuli, but the exact mechanisms that evoke these variations are still under debate. Here, we investigate the effect of induced physiological arousal on time perception. Thirty-eight university students (22.89 ± 2.5; 28 females) were tested with spontaneous finger-tapping tasks and a time...