Biomedical subjects

Mauro Adenzato

Publications and source records attributed to Mauro Adenzato.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Fast recognition of social emotions takes the whole brain: interhemispheric cooperation in the absence of cerebral asymmetry.

Hemispheric asymmetry in emotional perception has been traditionally studied for basic emotions and very little is known about laterality for more complex social emotions. Here, we used the "redundant target paradigm" to investigate interhemispheric asymmetry and cooperation for two social emotions in healthy subjects. Facial expressions of flirtatiousness or arrogance were briefly presented either unilaterally in the left (LVF) or right visual field (RVF), or simultaneously to both visual fields (BVF) while participants responded to the target expression (flirtatious or arrogant, counterbalanced between blocks). In bilateral conditions the faces could show the same emotion (congruent condition) or two different expressions (incongruent condition). No difference between unilateral presentations was found, suggesting that the perception of social emotions is not hemispherically lateralized. Responses were faster and more accurate in bilateral displays with two emotionally congruent but physically different faces (i.e., a male and a female expressing the same emotion) than in unilateral conditions. This "redundant target effect" was consistent with a neural summation model, thereby showing that interhemispheric cooperation may occur for social emotions despite major perceptual differences between faces posing the same expression.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Visual experience is not necessary for efficient survey spatial cognition: evidence from blindness.

This study investigated whether the lack of visual experience affects the ability to create spatial inferential representations of the survey type. We compared the performance of persons with congenital blindness and that of blindfolded sighted persons on four survey representation-based tasks (Experiment 1). Results showed that persons with blindness performed better than blindfolded sighted controls. We repeated the same tests introducing a third group of persons with late blindness (Experiment 2). This last group performed better than blindfolded sighted participants, whereas differences between participants with late and congenital blindness were nonsignificant. The present findings are compatible with results of other studies, which found that when visual perception is lacking, skill in gathering environmental spatial information provided by nonvisual modalities may contribute to a proper spatial encoding. It is concluded that, although it cannot be asserted that total lack of visual experience incurs no cost, our findings are further evidence that visual experience is not a necessary condition for the development of spatial inferential complex representations.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

To drive or not to drive (after TBI)? A review of the literature and its implications for rehabilitation and future research.

Development of reliable procedures to assess fitness to safe driving after traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a crucial step in rehabilitation. However, prior studies are highly inconsistent in the choice of measures recommended for predicting driving fitness from different pre-driving measures. In the present paper the relevant literature is reviewed with the aim of shedding light on the reasons for these inconsistencies. The discrepant results reflect investigative choices which differ in five aspects: (1) the type of predictors used as pre-driving screening; (2) the type of measures considered as the criterion for the determination of fitness to drive after TBI; (3) the severity of the TBI in the sample of patients studied; (4) the extent of the neural structures damaged by TBI and the overlap of these areas with those involved in driving tasks; (5) the length of the follow-up considered. The strengths and weaknesses of the different methods and measures are discussed with their implications for future research and clinical rehabilitation. Encouraging findings come from recent studies that combined together medical, psychosocial, and personality measures, thereby improving the explanatory power of the predictors used. The use of post-injury driving fitness measures with great ecological and external validity seems equally promising in assessing actual driving in the real world.

Automobile Driving↗

PubMed2005

How the brain understands intention: different neural circuits identify the componential features of motor and prior intentions.

In this paper we present theoretical and experimental evidence for a set of mechanisms by which intention is understood. We propose that three basic aspects are involved in the understanding of intention. The first aspect to consider is intention recognition, i.e., the process by which we recognize other people's intentions, distinguishing among different types. The second aspect concerns the attribution of intention to its author: the existence of shared neural representations provides a parsimonious explanation of how we recognize other people's intentions (what they are doing), but in and of itself, is not sufficient to determine who the agent is. Once the intention has been recognized and attributed to an agent, the reasons for, and the aim of, the intention are to be considered. Hence, the third aspect concerns the aim-intention motivating the execution of a certain action. We discuss the neural basis of these three theoretical aspects suggesting a conceptual synthesis.

Brain↗

PubMed2004

At the root of embodied cognition: cognitive science meets neurophysiology.

Recent experimental research in the field of neurophysiology has led to the discovery of two classes of visuomotor neurons: canonical neurons and mirror neurons. In light of these studies, we propose here an overview of two classical themes in the cognitive science panorama: James Gibson's theory of affordances and Eleanor Rosch's principles of categorization. We discuss how theoretical perspectives and neuroscientific evidence are converging towards the current paradigm of embodied cognition. From this perspective, we discuss the role of action and simulation in cognitive processes, which lead to the perceptual recognition of objects, and actions and to their conceptual categorization.

Animals↗

PubMed2004

Understanding intentions in social interaction: the role of the anterior paracingulate cortex.

Neuroimaging studies have identified the anterior paracingulate cortex (PCC) as the key prefrontal region subserving theory of mind. We adopt an evolutionary perspective hypothesizing that, in response to the pressures of social complexity, a mechanism for manipulating information concerning social interaction has emerged in the anterior PCC. To date, neuroimaging studies have not properly distinguished between intentions of persons involved in social interactions and intentions of an isolated person. In two separate fMRI experiments, we demonstrated that the anterior PCC is not necessarily involved in the understanding of other people's intentions per se, but primarily in the understanding of the intentions of people involved in social interaction. Moreover, this brain region showed activation when a represented intention implies social interaction and therefore had not yet actually occurred. This result suggests that the anterior PCC is also involved in our ability to predict future intentional social interaction, based on an isolated agent's behavior. We conclude that distinct areas of the neural system underlying theory of mind are specialized in processing distinct classes of social stimuli.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Attachment representations in adults with congenital blindness: association with maternal interactive behaviors during childhood.

This study explores how maternal interactive behaviors experienced during the childhood of adults with congenital blindness are associated with their subsequent development and personality. Many researchers have found a high frequency of maternal directiveness and overprotection in sighted mother-congenitally blind child relationships. One open question is whether these behaviors may have negative effects on congenitally blind children's subsequent development, or whether they may have a functionally adaptive-strategic role. The purpose of this study was to discriminate between the two hypotheses. This objective was pursued by adopting the theory of attachment and administering the Adult Attachment Interview to 15 participants with congenital blindness. Results suggested that directive and overprotective maternal behaviors are experienced by the persons with congenital blindness as encouraging and functional as long as they are accompanied by an affective, loving, and supportive attitude. Results did not support the hypothesis that directive and overprotective maternal interactive behaviors have a necessarily negative effect on the development of persons with congenital blindness.

Adaptation, Psychological↗