Auditory Personalization of EMDR Treatment to Relieve Trauma Effects: A Feasibility Study [EMDR+].

According to the WHO (World Health Organization), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an elective therapy to treat people with post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD). In line with the personalization of therapeutic strategies, through this pilot study, we assessed in people suffering from the effects of trauma the feasibility, safety, acceptance, and efficacy of EMDR enriched with sound stimulation (by administering neutral sounds synchronized with the guided bilateral alternating stimulation of the gaze) and musical reward (musical listening based on the patients' predisposition and personal tastes). Feasibility, quantified by the number of patients who completed the treatment, was excellent as this was the case in 12 out of the 12 enrolled people with psychological trauma. Safety and acceptance, assessed by self-compiled questionnaires, were excellent, with an absence of side effects and high satisfaction. Efficacy, quantified by the number of EMDR treatment sessions required to reach the optimal scores on the Subjective Units of Disturbance (SUD) and Validity of Cognition (VOC) scales typical of EMDR protocols, revealed an average duration of 8.5 (SD 1.2) sessions, which is well below the 12 sessions considered a standard EMDR treatment duration. EMDR+ appears to be a relevant personalization of EMDR, particularly in music-sensitive people, consolidating the therapeutic alliance through a multisensory communicative bond for trauma treatment.

Hemispheric functional asymmetries and sex effects in visual bistable perception.

This study investigates bistable perception as a function of the presentation side of the ambiguous figures and of participants' sex, to evaluate left-right hemispheric (LH-RH) asymmetries related to consciousness. In two experiments using the divided visual field paradigm, two Rubin's vase-faces figures were projected simultaneously and continuously 180 s long to the left (LVF) and right (RVF; Experiment 1) or to the upper (UVF) and lower (DVF; Experiment 2) visual hemifields of 48 healthy subjects monitored with eye-tracker. Experiment 1 enables stimulus segregation from the LVF to the RH and from the RVF to the LH, whereas Experiment 2 does not. Results from Experiment 1 show that males perceived the face profiles for more time in the LVF than in the RVF, with an opposite trend for the vase, whereas females show a similar pattern of perception in the two hemifields. A related result confirmed the previously reported possibility to have simultaneously two different percepts (qualia) in the two hemifields elicited by the two identic ambiguous stimuli, which was here observed to occur more frequently in males. Similar effects were not observed in Experiment 2. These findings suggest that the percepts display the processing abilities of the hemisphere currently processing the stimulus eliciting them (e.g., RH-faces), and that females and males reflect in bistable perception, a genuine manifestation of consciousness, the well-known hemispheric asymmetry differences they show in ordinary perception.

The effects of transcranial random noise stimulation on motor function: A comprehensive review of the literature.

The present review considers all papers published on the topic up to the end of the year 2022. Transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) is a non-invasive neuromodulation technique introduced about 15 years ago whose use is becoming increasingly widespread in neuroscience. It consists of the application over the scalp of a weak, white noise-like current, through electrodes having a surface of several square centimetres, for a duration ranging from seconds to minutes. Despite its relatively low spatial and temporal resolution, tRNS has well defined effects on central motor excitability, which critically depend on stimulation parameters. These effects seem to be chiefly based on an effect on neuronal membrane sodium channels and can last much longer than the stimulation itself. While the effects at the cellular level in the motor cortex are becoming progressively clear, much more studies are needed to understand the effects of tRNS on motor behaviour and performance, where initial research results are nevertheless promising, in both basic and applied research.

A tentative I/O curve with consciousness: Effects of multiple simultaneous ambiguous figures presentation on perceptual reversals and time estimation.

This study was aimed at investigating mechanisms of consciousness using bistable perception. In 4 experimental conditions, 1, 2, 4 or 8 Rubin's face-vase ambiguous figures were presented for 3 min.In Experiment 1, 40 subjects looked at the center of the screen and pressed a specific key correspondent to the figure where they perceived a reversal. In Experiment 2, 32 subjects controlled with eye-tracker performed a similar task in which they pressed the spacebar whenever they perceived a reversal in any of the figures.At the end of each condition subjects estimated its duration. Results showed that changing the number of figures does not alter the number of reversals, producing a flat I/O curve between the two parameters. Estimated time lapse showed a negative correlation with the number of reversals. These findings are discussed considering the relationships between bistable perception, attention, and consciousness, as well as the time perception literature.

How head and visual movements affect evaluations of food products.

Many studies suggest that specific movements or postures with shared social meaning can influence mainly verbal stimuli evaluation. On the other hand, several visuospatial biases can interact with this influence. Thus, we tested whether both head and stimuli movements can influence individual attitude towards food pictures. In two experiments, we used images of common foods with a weak positive valence in association with two kinds of movements. In Experiment 1, head movement was induced by presenting food pictures with a vertical or horizontal continuous movement on a computer screen. Conversely, Experiment 2 was conducted to test the effects of participants' own head movements with respect to the same food pictures presented in a fixed position. In neither case did head movements influence product evaluation. However, Experiment 1 revealed that the continuous movement left-right-left in the horizontal condition improved the desire to buy and eat, as well as the willingness to pay for the product shown. Two further experiments, the Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated, respectively, that this effect disappears if the stimulus does not make the return direction, and that it does not depend on the starting or final placement of the images on the screen. These findings are discussed in the context of embodied cognition and visuospatial bias theories.

How emotional is a banknote? The affective basis of money perception.

Previous studies have shown that money possesses affective properties even when it is not at stake within a given task. Smaller economic values are generally perceived as less arousing and neutral in valence, whereas larger ones are perceived as more arousing and positive in valence. Moreover, numerical cognitive processes seem to be less prominent than affective ones in the way we perceive economic values. To shed light on the basic affective components of monetary values, we ran three experiments on the perception of banknotes to test (i) whether banknotes with different values (5€ and 100€) trigger different emotional states, (ii) if values are horizontally mapped based on their valence, rather than on their numerical magnitude, and (iii) whether the lateralized sight (in the left or right visual field) of a positive (higher) monetary value interferes with the classification of a negative stimulus. Results showed a coherent pattern that corroborates the idea that money is indeed an affective stimulus, even when it is not at stake within the task. A higher monetary value was shown (i) to have intrinsic rewarding properties that influence the evaluation of a subsequent target, (ii) to be mentally mapped on the right side, which is related to positive approaching of affective stimuli in right-handers, and (iii) to be in conflict with negative-withdrawing targets, but only when the values were presented on the right-positive side of respondents. Results are discussed considering existing theories of the psychological value of money, highlighting the hedonic characteristics of this special affective stimulus.

Shall I Show My Emotions? The Effects of Facial Expressions in the Ultimatum Game.

Over the past fifteen years, research has demonstrated the central role of interpersonal emotions in communicating intentions, goals and desires. These emotions can be conveyed through facial expressions during specific social interactions, such as in the context of coordination between economic agents, where information inferred from them can influence certain decision-making processes. We investigated whether four facial expressions (happiness, neutral, angry and disgusted) can affect decision-making in the Ultimatum Game (UG). In this economic game, one player (proposer) plays the first move and proposes how to allocate a given amount of money in an anonymous one-shot interaction. If the other player (responder) accepts the proposal, each player receives the allocated amount of money; if he/she rejects the offer, both players receive nothing. During the task, participants acted as the responder (Experiment 1) or the proposer (Experiment 2) while seeing the opponent's facial expression. For the responders, the results show that the decision was mainly driven by the fairness of the offer, with a small main effect of emotion. No interaction effect was found between emotion and offer. For the proposers, the results show that participants modulated their offers on the basis of the responders' expressed emotions. The most generous/fair offers were proposed to happy responders. Less generous/fair offers were proposed to neutral responders. Finally, the least generous/fair offers were proposed to angry and disgusted responders.

Crossmodal congruency effects between sound and food pictures in a forced-choice task.

Research using short musical sequences and musical tracks created by means of computer algorithms has demonstrated that individuals with or without musical skills can match these soundtracks to specific tastes with above-chance accuracy. More recently, a study that investigated implicit effects associated with crossmodal congruency/incongruency between auditory cues and food images found that such soundtracks are effective in eliciting facilitating effects of taste quality classification with congruent food images as well. In the present study, we tested whether this crossmodal congruency between auditory cues and food images may also influence food image choice by means of a forced-choice task. We selected and used sweet and salty soundtracks as stimuli and food images including both low- and high-calorie exemplars and asked participants to select which food they would prefer to eat (one sweet and one salty) while listening to the soundtracks. We found a general greater proportion of food choices in the soundtracks matching tastes conditions, and that soundtracks matching tastes are effective in influencing congruent food image choices, supporting previous research and adding new interesting outcomes.

Memory for item-location bindings is enhanced in older adults with appetitive motivationally laden pictures.

Both the selection and consumption of food are biologically necessary for survival. Consequently, individuals may consider food as a primary and biologically relevant stimulus. In addition, recent findings support specific patterns of food preference during the lifespan development. Indeed, the preference for sweet taste largely observed in newborns and children seems to decline in young adults and then re-emerge again in older adults. This motivational preference for sweet food in older adults may be potentially useful in the cognitive domain since many studies have found that motivationally or emotionally laden information is more likely to be detected, stored in memory and retrieved better than neutral information. To address this issue, we designed an item-location binding task with sweet food, savory food and object pictures, and asked young and older adults to maintain information in working memory and respond based on memory for either individual features or feature combination (i.e., identification, location, or combined identification + location information). Results evidenced a significant enhancement of older adults' performance in the binding of motivationally relevant stimuli and their location, evidencing the potential usefulness of motivationally laden stimuli in promoting more effective binding processes and probably, more general working memory processes.

Affective perception of Euro banknotes: cognitive factors and interindividual differences.

Money can be a tool to achieve a wide range of goals in everyday life. Different studies have reported that both the mere exposure to money and its use as a reward can determine cognitive and social effects. Nevertheless, little is known about the basic affective perception of Euro banknotes. Thus, in the present study we aim to assess differences in valence, arousal and familiarity evaluations of banknote pictures (from 5 to 500€) by taking into account gender, socioeconomic status and Love of Money (LoM) score, which measures the subjective attitude toward money, in a sample of participants. We found that valence and arousal increase with the nominal value of the banknotes, and that the relationship between these affective scores and the nominal value appears to be logarithmic (Weber's law) rather than linear. High value banknotes were evaluated as pleasant, highly arousing, and less familiar. Low value banknotes instead were evaluated as more familiar, less arousing and neutrally valenced. Finally, we found that valence and arousal evaluations are mainly influenced by the LoM score of our participants. Instead, gender and economic condition influenced only arousal scores. These findings suggest the importance of deepening the study of these variables to shed light on money-related biases and abnormal economic behaviors.

A computationally efficient method for the attenuation of alternating current stimulation artifacts in electroencephalographic recordings.

OBJECTIVE: Recent studies suggest that the use of noninvasive closed-loop neuromodulation combining electroencephalography (EEG) and transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) may be a promising avenue for the treatment of neurological disorders. However, the attenuation of tACS artifacts in EEG data is particularly challenging, and computationally efficient methods are needed to enable closed-loop neuromodulation experiments. Here we introduce an original method to address this methodological issue. APPROACH: Our alternating current regression (AC-REG) method is an adaptive (time-varying) spatial filtering method. It relies on a data buffer of preset size, on which principal component analysis (PCA) is applied. The resulting components are used to build a spatial filter capable of regressing periodic signals in phase with the stimulation. PCA is performed each time that a new sample enters the buffer, such that the spatial filter can be continuously updated and applied to the EEG data. MAIN RESULTS: The AC-REG accuracy in terms of tACS artifact attenuation was assessed using simulated and real EEG data. Alternative offline processing techniques, such as the superimposition of moving averages (SMA) and the Helfrich method (HeM), were used as benchmark. Using simulations, we found that AC-REG can yield a more reliable reconstruction of the stimulation signal for any frequency between 1 and 80 Hz. Analysis of real EEG data of 18 healthy volunteers showed that AC-REG was able to better recover hidden neural activity as compared to SMA and HeM. Also, significantly higher correlations between power spectrum densities in tACS on and off conditions, respectively, were obtained using AC-REG (r = 0.90) than using SMA (r = 0.80) and HeM (r = 0.86). SIGNIFICANCE: Thanks to its low computational complexity, the AC-REG method can be employed in noninvasive closed-loop neuromodulation experiments, with potential applications both in healthy individuals and in neurological patients.

Independent perceptual reversals for simultaneously presented ambiguous figures.

In two successive experiments using the divided visual field paradigm with vertical or horizontal division, two ambiguous figures, the Rubin's vase-face or the Necker cube, were projected to the right and left or to the upper and lower visual hemifields of 108 healthy volunteers. Stimulation time was 120 s. The main hypotheses were (a) that different percepts of the same ambiguous figure may be simultaneously experienced in the two hemifields and (b) that the type (vertical vs. horizontal) of visual field division influences the reversal frequency and the temporal interdependence of the percepts. Results from the first experiment showed that the temporal interdependence of reversals was very low for both ambiguous figures, suggesting that during part of the stimulation time the subjects could experience different percepts of the same figure (e.g. a vase in the right and face profiles in the left visual hemifields). The second experiment showed that this perceptual dissociation occurred on average during one third of the stimulation time. In both experiments the type of visual field division did not influence either frequency or temporal interdependence of the reversals. When one single ambiguous figure was presented in the centre of the screen, the number of reversals was approximately the sum of the reversals observed with two figures presented simultaneously each in one hemifield.

The effects of music on spatial reasoning.

Studies on the effects of music on spatial reasoning report conflicting results. Some studies show slight effects, and others show no effects but few seem to replicate the strong findings of the first study published in Rauscher et al. Nature, 365(6447), 611-612, (1993). Nonetheless, the debate about the performance enhancing "Mozart effect" remains to be of great interest. In this study, we manipulated different physical parameters of sound traces (amplitude and frequency) to investigate whether particular dimensions may explain the enhancement effects found in spatial tasks following music listening. To this end, we asked 179 undergraduates and 183 older adults to listen to 5-min sound traces (Mozart KV 448, amplitude modulation tone, frequency modulation tone, white noise) and then complete a spatial reasoning task. In particular, results showed that repetitive frequency changes, as occurring in Mozart's melodies or in a frequency modulation tone, enhance performance.

Healthiness or calories? Side biases in food perception and preference.

The visual perception of a product and the ability to categorize it play a central role in food choice. People's opinion of the healthiness and caloric content of a food is influenced substantially by its appearance. Despite that, few studies have analyzed i) which one of the two dimensions of caloric content and healthiness is preferred to categorize food, ii) if these dimensions are mapped on the individuals' horizontal space, and iii) if such biases could influence food preferences. Therefore, through 4 experiments, we investigated which dimension, healthiness or caloric content, is more often used to categorize foods. We also evaluated whether a healthiness/caloric content side bias could be able to influence food preferences. We found that foods were mainly categorized as "Healthy" or "High-calorie" and the latter label was used more often when presented on the right of a foodstuff. Also, foods were categorized as healthier when the "Healthy" label was anchored to the left and the "Unhealthy" one to the right side of a visual analogue scale. Then, we found a more positive evaluation of transformed food when the key assigned to the "Pleasant" choice was on the right compared to the left. Lastly, we found that when presented on the left side, low-calorie was preferred compared to high-calorie food. Our findings shed light on both the fields of food categorization and side biases in food perception and preferences, suggesting the possibility to use these biases to promote a healthy diet and emphasizing the importance of considering this potential confounder in experimental setups.

Lateralized embodiment of ambiguous human silhouettes: Data on sex differences.

Whereas the role of observers' sex has already been addressed in research on embodied cognition, so far it has been neglected as regards laterality effects in embodied cognition. Here, we report further analyses of the data used in our paper "Hemispheric asymmetries in the processing of body sides: A study with ambiguous human silhouettes" [1], where participants had to indicate the perceived orientation of silhouettes with ambiguous front/back orientation and handedness presented in the right and left hemifield. Specifically, the variables examined in the associated paper (the number of right- and left-sided silhouettes perceived as front- and back-facing in each hemifield; the number of silhouettes perceived as right- and left-handed in each hemifield) are analyzed by also factoring in participant's sex). Moreover, data are provided and analyses are performed both for the total sample of participants and for the sample of right-handed participants only. For further details, as well as for the interpretation and discussion of the data, the reader is referred to the main article [1] and its Supplementary Material.

The influence of age on the rubber hand illusion.

The rubber hand illusion is a perceptual illusion whereby a model hand is embodied during tactile stimulation. The aim of the present study is to investigate the onset time of the illusion in relation to age. We used two sensors, made using Arduino NANO, in order to record the onset time in which the participants said to start perceiving the illusion. The subjects involved in the experiment were divided in 3 age groups: 16-20, 21-50, and 51-88 years. We observed a clear-cut stronger manifestation of the illusion in the younger group both in terms of proportion of responders vs. non-responders, which was higher in the first age group, and in terms of illusion onset time which was shorter in the same group. These results were substantiated by the responses to a questionnaire measuring subjective perception of the illusion.

Guessing Meaning From Word Sounds of Unfamiliar Languages: A Cross-Cultural Sound Symbolism Study.

Sound symbolism refers to a non-arbitrary relationship between the sound of a word and its meaning. With the aim to better investigate this relationship by using natural languages, in the present cross-linguistic study 215 Italian and Polish participants were asked to listen to words pronounced in 4 unknown non-indo-European languages (Finnish, Japanese, Swahili, Tamil) and to try to guess the correct meaning of each word, by choosing among 3 alternatives visualized on a computer screen. The alternatives were presented in the mother tongue of participants. Three different word categories were presented: nouns, verbs and adjectives. A first overall analysis confirmed a semantic role of sound symbols, the performance of participants being higher than expected by chance. When analyzed separately for each language and for each word category, the results were significant for Finnish and Japanese, whereas the recognition rate was not significantly better than chance for Swahili and Tamil. Results were significant for nouns and verbs, but not for adjectives. We confirm the existence of sound symbolic processing in natural unknown languages, and we speculate that some possible difference in the iconicity of the languages could be the basis for the difference we found. Importantly, the evidence that there were no differences between Italian and Polish participants allows us to conclude that the sound symbolism is independent of the mother tongue of the listener.