EEGManyPipelines: A Large-scale, Grassroots Multi-analyst Study of Electroencephalography Analysis Practices in the Wild.

The ongoing reproducibility crisis in psychology and cognitive neuroscience has sparked increasing calls to re-evaluate and reshape scientific culture and practices. Heeding those calls, we have recently launched the EEGManyPipelines project as a means to assess the robustness of EEG research in naturalistic conditions and experiment with an alternative model of conducting scientific research. One hundred sixty-eight analyst teams, encompassing 396 individual researchers from 37 countries, independently analyzed the same unpublished, representative EEG data set to test the same set of predefined hypotheses and then provided their analysis pipelines and reported outcomes. Here, we lay out how large-scale scientific projects can be set up in a grassroots, community-driven manner without a central organizing laboratory. We explain our recruitment strategy, our guidance for analysts, the eventual outputs of this project, and how it might have a lasting impact on the field.

Cognition, body, and mind: A three-in-one coordinate-based fMRI meta-analysis on cognitive, physical, and meditative trainings.

While mounting evidence shows promising effects of brain training on cognitive functioning in healthy and pathological conditions, the spread of variable training approaches highlights the need to compare their efficacy and identify their neural correlates, representing possible targets for neuromodulation treatments. We performed coordinate-based functional magnetic resonance imaging meta-analyses to compare the neural correlates and the cognitive outcomes of cognitive (n = 22), physical (n = 22), and meditative (n = 20) training in healthy non-expert individuals. Pre/post-training cognitive metrics improved after cognitive and physical training, but their heterogeneity, or even the lack of these measurements in some studies, highlights the need of more structured protocols. Cognitive, physical, and meditative interventions increased brain activity in distinct fronto-medial areas likely mediating training effects on cognitive, action, and attentional control, respectively. The modular, training-specific, engagement of a region that is known to mediate feedback-based learning provides cues for boosting brain training via combined interventions that might jointly outperform their individual effects.

Altered striatal-opercular intrinsic connectivity reflects decreased aversion to losses in alcohol use disorder.

The persistence of addictive behaviours despite their adverse consequences highlights decreased punishment sensitivity as a facet of decision-making impairments in Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD). This attitude departs from the typical loss aversion (LA) pattern, i.e. the stronger sensitivity to negative than positive outcomes, previously associated with striatal and limbic-somatosensory responsiveness in healthy individuals. Consistent evidence highlights decreased LA as a marker of disease severity in AUD, but its neural bases remain largely unexplored. AUD-specific modulations of frontolateral activity by LA were previously related to the higher executive demands of anticipating losses than gains, but the relationship between LA and executive/working-memory performance in AUD is debated. Building on previous evidence of overlapping neural bases of LA during decision-making and at rest, we investigated a possible neural signature of altered LA in AUDs, and its connections with executive skills, in terms of complementary facets of resting-state functioning. In patients, smaller LA than controls, unrelated to executive performance, reflected reduced connectivity within striatal and medial temporal networks, and altered connectivity from these regions to the insular-opercular cortex. AUD-specific loss-related modulations of intrinsic connectivity thus involved structures previously associated both with drug-seeking and with coding the trade-off between appetitive and aversive motivational drives. These findings fit the hypothesis that altered striatal coding of choice-related incentive value, and interoceptive responsiveness to prospective outcomes, enhance neural sensitivity to drug-related stimuli in addictions. LA and its neural bases might prove useful markers of AUD severity and effectiveness of rehabilitation strategies targeting the salience of negative choice outcomes.

Risk perception and behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic: Predicting variables of compliance with lockdown measures.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the measures to counteract it have highlighted the role of individual differences in evaluating and reacting to emergencies, and the challenges inherent in promoting precautionary behaviours. We aimed to explore the psychological and cognitive factors modulating behaviour and intentions during the national lockdown in Italy. We administered an online questionnaire (N = 244) that included tests for assessing personality traits (Temperament and Character Inventory; Locus of Control of Behaviour) and moral judgment (Moral Foundations Questionnaire), alongside behavioural economics tasks addressing different facets of risk attitude (loss aversion, risk aversion and delay discounting). We then assessed the extent to which individual variations in these dimensions modulated participants' compliance with the lockdown norms. When assessing their joint contribution via multiple regressions, lockdown adherence was mostly predicted by internal locus of control, psycho-economic dimensions suggestive of long-sighted and loss-averse attitudes, as well as personality traits related to cautionary behaviour, such as harm avoidance, and the authority moral concern. These findings show that a multi-domain assessment of the factors underlying personal intentions, and thus driving compliance with government measures, can help predict individuals' actions during health emergencies. This evidence points to factors that should be considered when developing interventions and communication strategies to promote precautionary behaviours.

Posterior fronto-medial atrophy reflects decreased loss aversion, but not executive impairment, in alcohol use disorder.

Decreased punishment sensitivity in alcohol use disorder (AUD) might reflect a reduction in the typical human tendency to overweigh negative choice outcomes compared with equivalent positive ones, that is, 'loss aversion.' While this hypothesis is supported by previous reports of reduced loss aversion in AUD, it is still unknown whether such decreased sensitivity to prospective losses represents a specific facet of altered decision-making or a secondary effect of executive/working-memory impairments. We addressed this issue by assessing whether lower loss aversion in 22 AUD patients compared with 19 healthy controls is explained by their differential executive or working-memory performance and by investigating its neural basis in terms of grey matter density and cortical thickness via voxel- and surface-based morphometry, respectively. A significant decrease of loss aversion in patients, unrelated to their impaired executive/working-memory performance, reflected the reduction of posterior fronto-medial grey matter density and right frontopolar cortical thickness. Rather than their executive deficits, patients' reduced loss aversion reflects the structural damage of the posterior fronto-medial cortex previously associated with solving conflicts at the response level, where earlier functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have shown a 'neural loss aversion' pattern of steeper deactivation for losses than activation for gains, and of the frontopolar cortex in charge of managing competing goals. These findings highlight possible directions for addressing AUD patients' high relapse rate, for example, cognitive-behavioural rehabilitative interventions enhancing the awareness of the adverse outcomes of addiction or neurostimulation protocols targeting the regions processing their salience.

A pre-registered, multi-lab non-replication of the action-sentence compatibility effect (ACE).

The Action-sentence Compatibility Effect (ACE) is a well-known demonstration of the role of motor activity in the comprehension of language. Participants are asked to make sensibility judgments on sentences by producing movements toward the body or away from the body. The ACE is the finding that movements are faster when the direction of the movement (e.g., toward) matches the direction of the action in the to-be-judged sentence (e.g., Art gave you the pen describes action toward you). We report on a pre-registered, multi-lab replication of one version of the ACE. The results show that none of the 18 labs involved in the study observed a reliable ACE, and that the meta-analytic estimate of the size of the ACE was essentially zero.

Functional Coherence in Intrinsic Frontal Executive Networks Predicts Cognitive Impairments in Alcohol Use Disorder.

Growing evidence highlights the potential of innovative rehabilitative interventions such as cognitive remediation and neuromodulation, aimed at reducing relapses in Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD). Enhancing their effectiveness requires a thorough description of the neural correlates of cognitive alterations in AUD. Past related attempts, however, were limited by the focus on selected neuro-cognitive variables. We aimed to fill this gap by combining, in 22 AUD patients and 18 controls, an extensive neuro-cognitive evaluation and metrics of intrinsic connectivity as highlighted by resting-state brain activity. We addressed an inherent property of intrinsic activity such as intra-network coherence, the temporal correlation of the slow synchronous fluctuations within resting-state networks, representing an early biomarker of alterations in the functional brain architecture underlying cognitive functioning. AUD patients displayed executive impairments involving working-memory, attention and visuomotor speed, reflecting abnormal coherence of activity and grey matter atrophy within default mode, in addition to the attentional and the executive networks. The stronger relationship between fronto-lateral coherent activity and executive performance in patients than controls highlighted possible compensatory mechanisms counterbalancing the decreased functionality of networks driving the switch from automatic to controlled behavior. These results provide novel insights into AUD patients' cognitive impairments, their neural bases, and possible targets of rehabilitative interventions.

Action Fluency in Parkinson's Disease: A Mini-Review and Viewpoint.

Increasing evidence shows that the typical motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease (PD) are often accompanied, if not preceded, by cognitive dysfunctions that are potentially linked to further complications of the disease. Notably, these cognitive dysfunctions appear to have a significant impact in the domain of action processing, as indicated by specific impairments for action-related stimuli in general, and verbs in particular. In this mini-review, we focus on the use of the action fluency test as a tool to investigate action processing, in PD patients. We discuss the current results within the embodied cognition framework and in relation to general action-related impairments in PD, while also providing an outlook on open issues and possible avenues for future research. We argue that jointly addressing action semantic processing and motor dysfunctions in PD patients could pave the way to interventions where the motor deficits are addressed to improve both motor and communicative skills since the early disease stages, with a likely significant impact on quality of life.

Increased decision latency in alcohol use disorder reflects altered resting-state synchrony in the anterior salience network.

Increased decision latency in alcohol use disorder (AUD) has been generally explained in terms of psychomotor slowing. Recent results suggest that AUD patients' slowed decision-making might rather reflect alterations in the neural circuitry underlying the engagement of controlled processing by salient stimuli. We addressed this hypothesis by testing a relationship between decision latency at the Cambridge Gambling Task (CGT) and intrinsic brain activity in 22 individuals with AUD and 19 matched controls. CGT deliberation time was related to two complementary facets of resting-state fMRI activity, i.e. coherence and intensity, representing early biomarkers of functional changes in the intrinsic brain architecture. For both metrics, we assessed a multiple regression (to test a relationship with deliberation time in the whole sample), and an interaction analysis (to test a significantly different relationship with decision latency across groups). AUD patients' slowed deliberation time (p < 0.025) reflected distinct facets of altered intrinsic activity in the cingulate node of the anterior salience network previously associated with the "output" motor stage of response selection. Its heightened activity in AUD patients compared with controls, tracking choice latency (p < 0.025 corrected), might represent a compensation mechanism counterbalancing the concurrent decrease of its internal coherent activity (p < 0.025 corrected). These findings provide novel insights into the intrinsic neural mechanisms underlying increased decision latency in AUD, involving decreased temporal synchronicity in networks promoting executive control by behaviourally relevant stimuli. These results pave the way to further studies assessing more subtle facets of decision-making in AUD, and their possible changes with rehabilitative treatment.

Neural representation of social concepts: a coordinate-based meta-analysis of fMRI studies.

The possible uniqueness of social stimuli constitutes a key topic for cognitive neuroscience. Growing evidence highlights graded contributions to their semantic processing by the anterior temporal lobe (ATL), where the omni-category response displayed by its ventrolateral sector might reflect the integration of information relayed from other regions. Among these, the superior polar ATL was specifically associated with representing social concepts. However, most previous studies neglected the close relationship between social and emotional semantic features, which might confound interpreting the degree of overlap vs. specificity of social and emotional conceptual processing. We addressed this issue via two activation-likelihood-estimation meta-analyses of neuroimaging studies reporting brain structures associated with processing social or emotional concepts. Alongside a common involvement of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, we found social and emotional concepts to be specifically associated with lateral temporal areas (including the superior polar ATL) and the amygdala, respectively. These results support the specialization of distinct sectors of the fronto-temporo-limbic circuitry for processing social vs. emotional concepts, and the integration of their output in medial prefrontal regions underlying the regulation of social behavior. These results pave the way for further studies addressing the neural bases of conceptual knowledge, its impairment after fronto-temporal brain damage, and the effect of rehabilitative interventions targeting its main functional modules.

Psychological precursors of individual differences in COVID-19 lockdown adherence: Moderated-moderation by personality and moral cognition measures.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the worldwide introduction of containment measures. This emergency scenario produced a conflict between personal freedom and public health, highlighting differences in individual behaviours influenced by psychological traits and moral considerations. In this context, a detailed characterisation of the psychological variables predicting adherence to containment measures is crucial to enhance public awareness and compliance. During the first virus outbreak in Italy, we assessed whether adherence to government measures was explained by the interacting effects of personality traits and moral dispositions. Through an online questionnaire, we collected data on individual endogenous variables related to personality traits, locus of control, and moral dispositions, alongside the tendency to breach the lockdown for outdoor physical activity. The results showed that individual measures of novelty-seeking, harm-avoidance and authority concerns interacted in driving the adherence to the national lockdown: MFQ-Authority moderated the facilitatory effect of novelty-seeking on lockdown violation, but this moderation was itself moderated by higher TCI-harm-avoidance. By assessing a model forecasting the likelihood of violating restrictive norms, these findings show the potential of personality and moral foundation assessments in informing prevention policies and emergency interventions by political and scientific institutions.

Action processing in the motor system: Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) evidence of shared mechanisms in the visual and linguistic modalities.

In two experiments, we compared the dynamics of corticospinal excitability when processing visually or linguistically presented tool-oriented hand actions in native speakers and sequential bilinguals. In a third experiment we used the same procedure to test non-motor, low-level stimuli, i.e. scrambled images and pseudo-words. Stimuli were presented in sequence: pictures (tool + tool-oriented hand action or their scrambled counterpart) and words (tool noun + tool-action verb or pseudo-words). Experiment 1 presented German linguistic stimuli to native speakers, while Experiment 2 presented English stimuli to non-natives. Experiment 3 tested Italian native speakers. Single-pulse trascranial magnetic stimulation (spTMS) was applied to the left motor cortex at five different timings: baseline, 200 ms after tool/noun onset, 150, 350 and 500 ms after hand/verb onset with motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) recorded from the first dorsal interosseous (FDI) and abductor digiti minimi (ADM) muscles. We report strong similarities in the dynamics of corticospinal excitability across the visual and linguistic modalities. MEPs' suppression started as early as 150 ms and lasted for the duration of stimulus presentation (500 ms). Moreover, we show that this modulation is absent for stimuli with no motor content. Overall, our study supports the notion of a core, overarching system of action semantics shared by different modalities.

Is Embodied Cognition Bilingual? Current Evidence and Perspectives of the Embodied Cognition Approach to Bilingual Language Processing.

Accumulating behavioral and neurophysiological evidence supports the idea of language being grounded in sensorimotor processes, with indications of a functional role of motor, sensory and emotional systems in processing both concrete and abstract linguistic concepts. However, most of the available studies focused on native language speakers (L1), with only a limited number of investigations testing embodied language processing in the case of a second language (L2). In this paper we review the available evidence on embodied effects in L2 and discuss their possible integration into existing models of linguistic processing in L1 and L2. Finally, we discuss possible avenues for future research towards an integrated model of L1 and L2 sensorimotor and emotional grounding.

Grasping the Agent's Perspective: A Kinematics Investigation of Linguistic Perspective in Italian and German.

Every day, we primarily experience actions as agents, by having a concrete perspective on our actions, their means and goals. This peculiar perspective is what allows us to successfully plan and execute our actions in a dense social environment. Nevertheless, in this environment actions are also perceived from an observer's perspective. Adopting such a perspective helps us to understand and respond to other's people actions and their outcomes. Importantly, similar experiences of being agent and observer occur also when actions are not physically acted/perceived but are merely linguistically shared. In this paper we present two exploratory studies, one in Italian and one in German, in which we applied a direct comparison of three singular perspectives in combination with different verb categories. First, second and third person pronouns were combined with action and interaction verbs, i.e., verbs implying an interaction with an object - e.g., grasp - or an interaction with an object and another person - e.g., give. By means of kinematics recording, we analyzed participants' reaching-grasping responses to a mouse while they were presented with the different combinations of linguistic stimuli (pronouns and verb type). Results of Experiment 1 on reaching show that, when they are preceded by YOU, interaction verbs reached the velocity peak earlier than action verbs, since a further motor act will follow. Thus pronouns influence perspective taking and while comprehending language we are sensitive to the motor chain organization of verbs. The absence of the same effects in Experiment 2 is likely due to the fact that, being the pronoun in German mandatory, it is perceived as less salient than in Italian. Overall our result supports the idea that language is grounded in the motor system in a flexible way, and highlights the need for cross-linguistic studies in the field of embodied language processing.

Learning to manipulate and categorize in human and artificial agents.

This study investigates the acquisition of integrated object manipulation and categorization abilities through a series of experiments in which human adults and artificial agents were asked to learn to manipulate two-dimensional objects that varied in shape, color, weight, and color intensity. The analysis of the obtained results and the comparison of the behavior displayed by human and artificial agents allowed us to identify the key role played by features affecting the agent/environment interaction, the relation between category and action development, and the role of cognitive biases originating from previous knowledge.

Does listening to action-related sentences modulate the activity of the motor system? Replication of a combined TMS and behavioral study.

The neurophysiological and behavioral correlates of action-related language processing have been debated for long time. A precursor in this field was the study by Buccino et al. (2005) combining transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and behavioral measures (reaction times, RTs) to study the effect of listening to hand- and foot-related sentences. In the TMS experiment, the authors showed a decrease of motor evoked potentials (MEPs) recorded from hand muscles when processing hand-related verbs as compared to foot-related verbs. Similarly, MEPs recorded from leg muscles decreased when participants processed foot-related as compared to hand-related verbs. In the behavioral experiment, using the same stimuli and a semantic decision task the authors found slower RTs when the participants used the body effector (hand or foot) involved in the actual execution of the action expressed by the presented verb to give their motor responses. These findings were interpreted as an interference effect due to a simultaneous involvement of the motor system in both a language and a motor task. Our replication aimed to enlarge the sample size and replicate the findings with higher statistical power. The TMS experiment showed a significant modulation of hand MEPs, but in the sense of a motor facilitation when processing hand-related verbs. On the contrary, the behavioral experiment did not show significant results. The results are discussed within the general debate on the time-course of the modulation of motor cortex during implicit and explicit language processing and in relation to the studies on action observation/understanding.

The impact of social context and language comprehension on behaviour: a kinematic investigation.

We investigated whether and how comprehending sentences that describe a social context influences our motor behaviour. Our stimuli were sentences that referred to objects having different connotations (e.g., attractive/ugly vs. smooth/prickly) and that could be directed towards the self or towards "another person" target (e.g., "The object is ugly/smooth. Bring it to you/Give it to another person"). Participants judged whether each sentence was sensible or non-sensible by moving the mouse towards or away from their body. Mouse movements were analysed according to behavioral and kinematics parameters. In order to enhance the social meaning of the linguistic stimuli, participants performed the task either individually (Individual condition) or in a social setting, in co-presence with the experimenter. The experimenter could either act as a mere observer (Social condition) or as a confederate, interacting with participants in an off-line modality at the end of task execution (Joint condition). Results indicated that the different roles taken by the experimenter affected motor behaviour and are discussed within an embodied approach to language processing and joint actions.

Acting in perspective: the role of body and language as social tools.

We investigated how the reach-to-grasp movement is influenced by the presence of another person (friend or non-friend), who was either invisible (behind) or located in different positions with respect to an object and to the agent, and by the perspective conveyed by linguistic pronouns ("I", "You"). The interaction between social relationship and relative position influenced the latency of both maximal fingers aperture and velocity peak, showing shorter latencies in the presence of a non-friend than in the presence of a friend. However, whereas the relative position of a non-friend did not affect the kinematics of the movement, the position of a friend mattered: latencies were significantly shorter with friends only in positions allowing them to easily reach for the object. Finally, the investigation of the overall reaching movement time showed an interaction between the speaker and the pronoun: participants reached the object more quickly when the other spoke, particularly if she used the "I" pronoun. This suggests that speaking, and particularly using the "I" pronoun, evokes a potential action. Implications of the results for embodied cognition are discussed.