Investigating the relationship between self-reported interoceptive experience and risk propensity.

Risky behaviour may be associated with visceral experiences, such as increased heart rate. Previous studies examining the relationship between perception of such signals (interoception) and risk-taking typically used behavioural tasks with potential for monetary reward. This approach may be less informative for understanding general risk propensity. In addition, such research does not usually consider the varied ways individuals engage with interoceptive signals. However, examining these different forms of engagement may help us understand how subjective experience of interoception influences risk-taking. As such, we performed two surveys (n = 471, primarily young adults) to examine the relationship between self-reported engagement with interoceptive signals (measured using the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness) and a generalised measure of risk propensity (the General Risk Propensity Scale). Results indicated that different ways of interpreting or engaging with interoceptive signals were differentially associated with risk propensity. In particular, they provide preliminary evidence that those with the ability to ignore or not worry about visceral signals when they are uncomfortable display greater risk propensity (and these effects may possibly be gender-specific).

Self-touch facilitates the recognition of the dis-owned left hand in somatoparaphrenia: a single case study.

We investigated whether self-administered tactile stimulation could act as a temporary restorative mechanism for body ownership disorders, both implicitly and explicitly. We tested this hypothesis in a patient with somatoparaphrenia, who displayed increased accuracy in explicitly recognizing their left hand during self-touch. Furthermore, the patient implicitly perceived their hand and the experimenter's hand as more belonging to their own body compared to conditions where vision was the sole sensory input. These findings highlight the importance of self-touch in maintaining a coherent body representation, while also demonstrating the potential dissociation between the recovery of explicit and implicit perceptions of body ownership.

"I feel your fear": superior fear recognition in organised crime members.

Individuals who deviate from social norms by committing crimes may have reduced facial emotion recognition abilities. Nevertheless, a specific category of offenders - i.e. organised crime (OC) members - is characterised by hierarchically organised social networks and a tendency to manipulate others to reach their illicit goals. Since recognising emotions is crucial to building social networks, OC members may be more skilled in recognising the facial emotion expressions of others to use this information for their criminal purposes. Evidence of a difference between OC and non-organised crime (NOC) offenders in terms of facial emotion recognition is still lacking. To fill this gap in the literature, we tested 50 OC, 50 NOC offenders, and 50 non-offender controls for their ability to identify six basic emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise). All participants underwent a cognitive and psychological evaluation to avoid alternative explanations. Results show that OC members were more able to detect the expression of fear in others as compared to NOC. We interpreted this finding in light of the social context and the behavioural criminal attitude of OC members.

Abnormal Brain Circuits Characterize Borderline Personality and Mediate the Relationship between Childhood Traumas and Symptoms: A mCCA+jICA and Random Forest Approach.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a severe personality disorder whose neural bases are still unclear. Indeed, previous studies reported inconsistent findings concerning alterations in cortical and subcortical areas. In the present study, we applied for the first time a combination of an unsupervised machine learning approach known as multimodal canonical correlation analysis plus joint independent component analysis (mCCA+jICA), in combination with a supervised machine learning approach known as random forest, to possibly find covarying gray matter and white matter (GM-WM) circuits that separate BPD from controls and that are also predictive of this diagnosis. The first analysis was used to decompose the brain into independent circuits of covarying grey and white matter concentrations. The second method was used to develop a predictive model able to correctly classify new unobserved BPD cases based on one or more circuits derived from the first analysis. To this aim, we analyzed the structural images of patients with BPD and matched healthy controls (HCs). The results showed that two GM-WM covarying circuits, including basal ganglia, amygdala, and portions of the temporal lobes and of the orbitofrontal cortex, correctly classified BPD against HC. Notably, these circuits are affected by specific child traumatic experiences (emotional and physical neglect, and physical abuse) and predict symptoms severity in the interpersonal and impulsivity domains. These results support that BPD is characterized by anomalies in both GM and WM circuits related to early traumatic experiences and specific symptoms.

Exploring the role of interoception in autobiographical memory recollection.

The way we perceive signals coming from the inside of the body (i.e., interoception) may influence the processing of information related to the self. In this study, we investigated whether interoceptive sensibility may play a role in autobiographical memory processes. We evaluated 41 healthy participants with a modified version of the Autobiographical Memory Test, also assessing specificity, vividness, emotional valence, and intensity for autobiographical and public memories. Participants completed a self-report questionnaire measuring interoceptive sensibility. Results showed that autobiographical memories were recalled with higher specificity, vividness, and emotional intensity than public memories. Interestingly, we found that participants with (self-reported) high interoceptive sensibility recalled more positive events in the autobiographical compared to the public condition. Our findings provided new evidence on the selective role of physiological aspects of bodily self-awareness in autobiographical memory, suggesting that interoception is fundamental for supporting adaptive emotion regulation processes when recollecting engrams related to the self.

Building the bodily self-awareness: Evidence for the convergence between interoceptive and exteroceptive information in a multilevel kernel density analysis study.

Exteroceptive and interoceptive signals shape and sustain the bodily self-awareness. The existence of a set of brain areas, supporting the integration of information coming from the inside and the outside of the body in building the sense of bodily self-awareness has been postulated, yet the evidence remains limited, a matter of discussion never assessed quantitatively. With the aim of unrevealing where in the brain interoceptive and exteroceptive signals may converge, we performed a meta-analysis on imaging studies of the sense of body ownership, modulated by external visuotactile stimulation, and studies on interoception, which involves the self-awareness for internal bodily sensations. Using a multilevel kernel density analysis, we found that processing of stimuli of the two domains converges primarily in the supramarginal gyrus bilaterally. Furthermore, we found a right-lateralized set of areas, including the precentral and postcentral, and superior temporal gyri. We discuss these results and propose this set of areas as ideal candidates to match multiple body-related signals contributing to the creation of a multidimensional representation of the bodily self.

Neuropsychological assessment in acute stroke patients.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The number of people suffering from stroke is strongly increasing, giving rise to multiple cognitive deficits which frequently prevent a full recovery. The identification of both spared and impaired cognitive domains has a key role to plan adequate interventions. However, the existing standard tests are either too expensive in terms of time and efforts for patients in acute stage or they derived from instruments addressing different pathologies such as dementia. METHODS: We developed a brief neuropsychological battery (mental performance in acute stroke, MEPS) to assess different cognitive domains (language, memory, praxis, visual perception) in acute stroke patients. MEPS was validated by enrolling a sample of 204 patients suffering from stroke in acute stage, and 263 healthy controls participants. RESULTS: The results indicated an adequate construct validity and a high ability in discriminating patients from healthy controls. CONCLUSIONS: MEPS can be considered a simple and highly valuable bedside battery, easy to administer, with values of sensitivity and specificity suitable to be proposed as a screening tool for patients with acute stroke.

Psychological outcomes of left ventricular assist device long-term treatment: A 2-year follow-up study.

Left ventricular assist device (LVAD) is an effective therapy for patients with advanced or refractory heart failure. It may represent a temporary treatment in heart transplant (HTX) candidates (Bridge-To-Transplant-BTT), or a permanent therapy for patients unsuitable for HTX (Destination Therapy-DT). Living with the device may be stressful for both the patients and their caregivers. Currently, evidence on the psychological assessment of LVAD recipients, and factors influencing the patients' psychological adaptation to the device in the long-term period is limited. Here, we explored the quality of life in 20 patients who were treated with LVAD with BTT (n = 13) or DT indication (n = 7) before (T0), 1 year (T1) and 2 years (T2) after implantation, using the EuroQoL-5D-5L test. We also analyzed the influence of sociodemographic (eg, age, gender) and clinical variables (eg, the INTERMACS level and number of hospital admissions) on the quality of life at T2. We found a significant improvement in the self-perceived quality of life 2 years after LVAD implantation. Patients significantly improved in the domains of physical activity and anxiety and depression symptoms. Interestingly, we also demonstrated that the treatment indication was related to changes in self-assessed quality of life, which improved over time in patients implanted with DT indication, whereas it decreased from T1 to T2 in patients with BTT indication. Taken together, these findings suggest that LVAD-related emotional distress and coping strategies need to be carefully evaluated before and in the long-term after LVAD implantation.

Dissociation between preserved body structural description and impaired body image following a pediatric spinal trauma.

In adult patients, Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) may influence the mental Body Representation (BR). Currently, there is no evidence on the modulation of SCI on BR during early stages of cognitive development. Here, we investigated BR in a 3-year-old child with complete SCI. The patient was administered with a specific battery assessing different BR components. We found evidence for putative classical neuropsychological dissociation between a preserved topological map with impaired semantic knowledge of the body. This finding sheds new light on the impact of SCI on BR in childhood, as well as on the level of interdependence between BR's components..

The spatial side of somatoparaphrenia: a case study.

The perception of the bodily self in space is a composite cognitive function requiring a dynamic integrated brain mechanism. Somatoparaphrenia (SP), a delusional belief concerning the experienced disownership for the contralesional paralyzed arm, represents the disruption of such mechanism. In two experiments, we have investigated the alteration of limb disownership after spatial manipulations in a right-brain-damaged patient affected by chronic SP. In experiment 1 the patient's spatial attention was switched between the left and right sides of space. SP signs worsened when the patient was interviewed from the left compared to the right bedside. In the second experiment we showed the first systematic transient remission of SP using left caloric vestibular stimulation (CVS), a physiologic manipulation mainly acting on the spatial frame of reference. Taken together, these results shed further light on the spatial nuance of SP and on the importance of vestibular signals for the generation of a coherent body representation. Furthermore, our case study demonstrated the possibility of eliciting more severe SP signs if the patient is interviewed from the left bedside. Additionally, CVS applications may have an important impact on the rehabilitation of these symptoms.

Declarative long-term memory and the mesial temporal lobe: Insights from a 5-year postsurgery follow-up study on refractory temporal lobe epilepsy.

It is largely recognized that the mesial temporal lobe and its substructure support declarative long-term memory (LTM). So far, different theories have been suggested, and the organization of declarative verbal LTM in the brain is still a matter of debate. In the current study, we retrospectively selected 151 right-handed patients with temporal lobe epilepsy with and without hippocampal sclerosis, with a homogeneous (seizure-free) clinical outcome. We analyzed verbal memory performance within a normalized scores context, by means of prose recall and word paired-associate learning tasks. Patients were tested at presurgical baseline, 6months, 2 and 5years after anteromesial temporal lobe surgery, using parallel versions of the neuropsychological tests. Our main finding revealed a key involvement of the left temporal lobe and, in particular, of the left hippocampus in prose recall rather than word paired-associate task. We also confirmed that shorter duration of epilepsy, younger age, and withdrawal of antiepileptic drugs would predict a better memory outcome. When individual memory performance was taken into account, data showed that females affected by left temporal lobe epilepsy for longer duration were more at risk of presenting a clinically pathologic LTM at 5years after surgery. Taken together, these findings shed new light on verbal declarative memory in the mesial temporal lobe and on the behavioral signature of the functional reorganization after the surgical treatment of temporal lobe epilepsy.

Does apolipoprotein E genotype influence cognition in middle-aged individuals?

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: The apolipoprotein ε4 (APOE ε4) allele has been recognized as a risk factor for the late-onset Alzheimer's disease. It may modulate cognitive performance in nondemented younger and older ε4 carriers. Does APOE ε4 genotype affect cognition in mid-aged population as well? In this review, a summary of current evidence concerning the effect of this genotype on cognition in middle-aged individuals will be presented. RECENT FINDINGS: Recent findings did not provide a clear cognitive signature of APOE ε4 genotype in mid-life. A positive, negative, and null effect on cognitive functions has been observed, especially on memory performance. SUMMARY: The discrepancy of the results may be because of several limitations. Future studies should be focused on a narrower participants' age range and a wider level of education range. Moreover, cognition should be explored by means of more sensitive tasks. Finally, interaction between genotype and additional risk factors and other allelic variants should be taken into account to fully understand the APOE genotype effect on brain and cognition.

The nature of the task stimuli affects graphic perseveration severity: Insights from a single case study.

OBJECTIVE: Graphic perseveration in target-cancellation tasks has been frequently described in patients with right brain damage and unilateral spatial neglect. Conversely, among patients with dementia, the spontaneous production of complex graphic perseverations, as well as their triggers and modulating factors, have been poorly understood. Here we describe the case of RM, a patient with Alzheimer's dementia, who produced a rich pattern of complex graphic perseverations at target-cancellation tasks, especially with abstract target stimuli, i.e., lines. METHOD: We developed an ad-hoc behavioral paradigm to investigate patient RM's performance at two versions of a target-cancellation task: fork-cancellation and line-cancellation. In both versions, RM was asked to cross the blue targets, while crossing a red target was considered a false alarm, as a proxy of incorrect response inhibition capacity. Moreover, we classified the presence and intensity of two other graphic perseverative behaviors, i.e., additional marks and scribble perseveration. RESULTS: Complex graphic perseverations and false alarms were more frequent in the line-compared to the fork-cancellation trials. Conversely, the semantic nature of the task did not differentially modulate the occurrence of additional marks and scribble perseverations. CONCLUSIONS: We argue that the breakdown of RM's executive functioning at the semantic-representational level was a prerequisite for such complex graphic perseverations to occur. Furthermore, we provide hints on the potential modulatory effects of stimulus concreteness on the expression of such complex productive behavior.

Skin temperature changes in response to body ownership modulation vary according to the side of stimulation.

A growing body of research has shown that a unilateral alteration in the sense of limb ownership is associated with the cooling of a limb's temperature. However, the recent emergence of contradictory results calls into question the existence of a relationship between this physiological reaction and the sense of body ownership. In the light of evidence that the malleability of the sense of hand ownership differs based on the preferential motor use of the hand to which the illusion is applied, one might observe the same lateralised pattern in the skin temperature cooling. In particular, if skin temperature change is a signature of body ownership, we expected a stronger illusion and reduction in skin temperature when altering ownership alteration of the left hand compared to the right hand in dextral individuals. To test this hypothesis, we selectively perturbated body ownership of the left or right hand in 24 healthy participants in different experimental sessions using the Mirror-Box Illusion (MBI) paradigm. Participants were asked to tap synchronously or asynchronously at a constant rhythm with their left and right index fingers against two parallel mirrors while looking at their reflected right/left hand. Skin temperature was measured before and after each MBI application, and explicit judgments of ownership and proprioceptive drift were collected. The results showed a consistent cooling of the hand's temperature only when the illusion was performed on the left hand. Proprioceptive drift exhibited the same pattern. In contrast, the explicit judgment of ownership of the reflected hand was similar across the two hands. These data provide evidence in favor of a specific laterality effect of the physiological response to an induced alteration of body part ownership. Moreover, they highlight the possibility of a direct link between proprioception and skin temperature.

The Association between Dysnatraemia during Hospitalisation and Post-COVID-19 Mental Fatigue.

COVID-19 may induce short- and long-term cognitive failures after recovery, but the underlying risk factors are still controversial. Here, we investigated whether (i) the odds of experiencing persistent cognitive failures differ based on the patients' disease course severity and sex at birth; and (ii) the patients' electrolytic profile in the acute stage represents a risk factor for persistent cognitive failures. We analysed data from 204 patients suffering from COVID-19 and hospitalised during the first pandemic wave. According to the 7-point WHO-OS scale, their disease course was classified as severe or mild. We investigated the presence of persistent cognitive failures collected after hospital discharge, while electrolyte profiles were collected during hospitalisation. The results showed that females who suffered from a mild course compared to a severe course of COVID-19 had a higher risk of presenting with persistent mental fatigue after recovery. Furthermore, in females who suffered from a mild course of COVID-19, persistent mental fatigue was related to electrolyte imbalance, in terms of both hypo- and hypernatremia, during hospitalisation in the acute phase. These findings have important implications for the clinical management of hospitalised COVID-19 patients. Attention should be paid to potential electrolyte imbalances, mainly in females suffering from mild COVID-19.

Structural Features Predict Sexual Trauma and Interpersonal Problems in Borderline Personality Disorder but Not in Controls: A Multi-Voxel Pattern Analysis.

Child trauma plays an important role in the etiology of Bordeline Personality Disorder (BPD). Of all traumas, sexual trauma is the most common, severe and most associated with receiving a BPD diagnosis when adult. Etiologic models posit sexual abuse as a prognostic factor in BPD. Here we apply machine learning using Multiple Kernel Regression to the Magnetic Resonance Structural Images of 20 BPD and 13 healthy control (HC) to see whether their brain predicts five sources of traumas: sex abuse, emotion neglect, emotional abuse, physical neglect, physical abuse (Child Trauma Questionnaire; CTQ). We also applied the same analysis to predict symptom severity in five domains: affective, cognitive, impulsivity, interpersonal (Zanarini Rating Scale for Borderline Personality Disorder; Zan-BPD) for BPD patients only. Results indicate that CTQ sexual trauma is predicted by a set of areas including the amygdala, the Heschl area, the Caudate, the Putamen, and portions of the Cerebellum in BPD patients only. Importantly, interpersonal problems only in BPD patients were predicted by a set of areas including temporal lobe and cerebellar regions. Notably, sexual trauma and interpersonal problems were not predicted by structural features in matched healthy controls. This finding may help elucidate the brain circuit affected by traumatic experiences and connected with interpersonal problems BPD suffer from.

White matter abnormalities in the amputation variant of body integrity dysphoria.

"Body integrity dysphoria" (BID) is a severe condition affecting nonpsychotic individuals. In the amputation variant of BID, a limb may be experienced as not being part of the body, despite normal anatomical development and intact sensorimotor functions. We previously demonstrated altered brain structural (gray matter) and functional connectivity in 16 men with BID with a long-lasting and exclusive desire for left leg amputation. Here, we aimed to identify, in the same sample, altered patterns of white matter structural connectivity. Fractional anisotropy (FA), derived from diffusion tensor imaging data, was considered as a measure of structural connectivity. Results showed reduced structural connectivity of: (i) the right superior parietal lobule (rSPL) with the right cuneus, with the superior occipital and with the posterior cingulate gyri, (ii) the pars orbitalis of the right middle frontal gyrus (rMFGOrb) with the putamen, and (iii) the left middle temporal gyrus (lMTG) with the pars triangularis of the left inferior frontal gyrus. Increased connectivity was found between the right paracentral lobule (rPLC) and the right caudate nucleus. By using a complementary method of investigation, we confirmed and extended previous results from the same sample of individuals with BID, showing structural alterations between areas tuned to the processing of the sensorimotor representations of the affected leg (rPCL), and to higher-order components of bodily representation such as the body image (rSPL) and visual processing. Alongside this network for bodily awareness, other networks such as the limbic (rMFGOrb) and the mirror (lMTG) systems showed alterations in structural connectivity. These findings consolidate current understanding of the neural correlates of the amputation variant of BID, which might in turn guide diagnostics and rehabilitative treatments.

Attention to body parts prompts thermoregulatory reactions in Body Integrity Dysphoria.

In healthy subjects, the transient perturbation of body part ownership is accompanied by regional skin temperature decrease. This observation leaves an open question about a possible body part-specific thermoregulatory response in pathological conditions, in which the sense of ownership over that body part is altered. For instance, Body Integrity Dysphoria (BID), a poorly understood neuropsychiatric disorder, is characterised by the non-acceptance of one or more of one's extremities. This unsettling feeling pervasively captures the individuals' attention towards the unwanted limb. Previous studies characterised BID in terms of absent ownership feeling with preserved ownership judgment. We explored for the first time whether this altered feeling is also associated with a specific thermoregulatory response. We recorded thermal image sequences of circumscribed regions of the limbs' skin in seven individuals with BID desiring to remove one leg while they were invited to focus their attention toward one particular limb (arm or leg). Their event-related thermoregulatory pattern was compared to a group of healthy matched controls. In individuals with BID but not in control persons, we found a bilateral decrease in leg temperature when focusing their attention on either the unwanted or accepted leg. The event-related thermoregulatory response for both upper limbs was similar between individuals with BID and healthy controls. Our results suggest that the alteration of the sense of body ownership in neuropsychiatric conditions such as BID may critically rest on specific event-related thermoregulatory patterns in response to modulation of attention to body parts.

Online Short-Term Mindfulness-Based Intervention During COVID-19 Quarantine in Italy: Effects on Wellbeing, Stress, and Anxiety.

To limit the first spread of COVID-19 in March 2020, the Italian government imposed strict lockdown measures to the population. Despite necessary to reduce the virus transmission and the burden to the hospitals, social isolation has caused detrimental effects on psychological wellbeing and mental health. Moreover, during this period, it was also difficult to deliver psychological treatments and psychiatric assistance. A short (a weekly session for 9 weeks) mindfulness-based meditation program, named Integral Meditation (IM), was administered entirely online to healthy adults from Italy. This is a two-groups pre-post-quasi-experimental study in which the two groups, treated and control, were not randomized. Through matching procedures aimed at overcoming the absence of randomization, we analyzed a sample of 84 subjects (42 for each group). By applying linear mixed effect models, we tested the hypothesis of a beneficial effect of IM on wellbeing, perceived stress, and state anxiety, as measured by three self-reported questionnaires (WEMWBS, PSS, and STAI-X1, respectively), assuming that this effect could be different according to the level of baseline trait anxiety, as measured by STAI-X2. The results showed a statistically significant effect of STAI-X1 (ß = -8.24 [95%CI -15.39; -1.09], p = 0.02) and WEMWBS (ß = 4.61 [95%CI 0.94; 8.29], p = 0.01) in the higher trait anxiety subgroup only. No statistically significant effect of IM was observed for PSS. These results suggest that our IM, delivered online, may increase mental wellbeing and decrease anxiety specifically in subjects with higher trait anxiety.