To touch or to be touched? comparing appraisal of vicarious execution and reception of interpersonal touch.

Unmyelinated C-Tactile (CT) fibres are activated by caress-like touch, eliciting a pleasant feeling that decreases for static and faster stroking. Previous studies documented this effect also for vicarious touch, hypothesising simulation mechanisms driving the perception and appreciation of observed interpersonal touch. Notably, less is known about appreciation of vicarious execution of touch, that is as referred to the one giving gentle touch. To address this issue, 53 healthy participants were asked to view and rate a series of videoclips displaying an individual being touched by another on hairy (i.e., hand dorsum) or glabrous (i.e., palm) skin sites, with touch being delivered at CT-optimal (5 cm/s) or non-CT optimal velocities (0 cm/s or 30 cm/s). Following the observation of each clip, participants were asked to rate self-referred desirability and model-referred pleasantness of vicarious touch for both executer (toucher-referred) and receiver (touchee-referred). Consistent with the CT fibres properties, for both self-referred desirability and model-referred pleasantness judgements of vicarious touch execution and reception, participants provided higher ratings for vicarious touch delivered at CT-optimal than other velocities, and when observed CT-optimal touch was delivered to the hand-dorsum compared to the palm. However, higher ratings were attributed to vicarious reception compared to execution of CT-optimal touch. Notably, individual differences in interoceptive trusting and attitude to interpersonal touch were positively correlated with, respectively, toucher- and touchee-related overall appraisal ratings of touch. These findings suggest that the appreciation of both toucher- and touchee-referred vicarious touch is specifically attuned to CT-optimal touch, even though they might rely on different neurocognitive mechanisms to understand affective information conveyed by interpersonal tactile interactions.

Feasibility and Efficacy of a Virtual Reality Social Prediction Training in Children and Young Adults with Congenital Cerebellar Malformations.

This study tested the feasibility and efficacy of a Virtual Reality (VR) social prediction training (VR-Spirit) specifically designed for patients with congenital cerebellar malformation. The study is a randomised controlled trial in which 28 cerebellar patients aged 7-25 yo were randomly allocated to the VR-Spirit or to a control intervention in VR. The VR-Spirit required participants to compete with different avatars in scenarios that prompted them to form predictions about avatars' intentions. The control intervention consisted of games currently adopted for motor rehabilitation. Social prediction as well as secondary neuropsychological and behavioural outcomes were assessed at the beginning (T0), at the end (T2) and after 2 months (T3). The experimental group showed a significant increase, compared to the control participants, in social prediction assessed through a VR task. Moreover, at least at T3, the VR-Spirit enhanced the use of contextual predictions in a computer-based action prediction task. Importantly, these effects were generalized to secondary neuropsychological outcomes, specifically theory of mind and, only at T2, inhibition. No differences between the interventions were detected on emotional-behavioural problems. Lastly, both interventions showed high feasibility and acceptability. These findings confirm that it is possible to develop condition-specific rehabilitative training on the basis of neurocognitive functions impaired in case of congenital malformation. The VR-Spirit demonstrated to generalize its effects to theory of mind abilities, and it might be thus extended to other neurodevelopmental disorders that present social perception deficits and alterations of predictive processing.Trial registration: ISRCTN, ID: ISRCTN22332873. Retrospectively registered on 12 March 2018.

Excitatory cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation boosts the leverage of prior knowledge for predicting actions.

The cerebellum causally supports social processing by generating internal models of social events based on statistical learning of behavioral regularities. However, whether the cerebellum is only involved in forming or also in using internal models for the prediction of forthcoming actions is still unclear. We used cerebellar transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (ctDCS) to modulate the performance of healthy adults in using previously learned expectations in an action prediction task. In a first learning phase of this task, participants were exposed to different levels of associations between specific actions and contextual elements, to induce the formation of either strongly or moderately informative expectations. In a following testing phase, which assessed the use of these expectations for predicting ambiguous (i.e. temporally occluded) actions, we delivered ctDCS. Results showed that anodic, compared to sham, ctDCS boosted the prediction of actions embedded in moderately, but not strongly, informative contexts. Since ctDCS was delivered during the testing phase, that is after expectations were established, our findings suggest that the cerebellum is causally involved in using internal models (and not just in generating them). This encourages the exploration of the clinical effects of ctDCS to compensate poor use of predictive internal models for social perception.

Neurorestorative effects of cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation on social prediction of adolescents and young adults with congenital cerebellar malformations.

BACKGROUND: Converging evidence points to impairments of the predictive function exerted by the cerebellum as one of the causes of the social cognition deficits observed in patients with cerebellar disorders. OBJECTIVE: We tested the neurorestorative effects of cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation (ctDCS) on the use of contextual expectations to interpret actions occurring in ambiguous sensory sceneries in a sample of adolescents and young adults with congenital, non-progressive cerebellar malformation (CM). METHODS: We administered an action prediction task in which, in an implicit-learning phase, the probability of co-occurrence between actions and contextual elements was manipulated to form either strongly or moderately informative expectations. Subsequently, in a testing phase, we probed the use of these contextual expectations for predicting ambiguous (i.e., temporally occluded) actions. In a sham-controlled, within-subject design, participants received anodic or sham ctDCS during the task. RESULTS: Anodic ctDCS, compared to sham, improved patients' ability to use contextual expectations to predict the unfolding of actions embedded in moderately, but not strongly, informative contexts. CONCLUSIONS: These findings corroborate the role of the cerebellum in using previously learned contextual associations to predict social events and document the efficacy of ctDCS to boost social prediction in patients with congenital cerebellar malformation. The study encourages the further exploration of ctDCS as a neurorestorative tool for the neurorehabilitation of social cognition abilities in neurological, neuropsychiatric, and neurodevelopmental disorders featured by macro- or micro-structural alterations of the cerebellum.

New Insights into the Neuropsychological Profile and Intellectual Quotient Variability in Joubert Syndrome Compared to Other Congenital Cerebellar Malformations.

The neuropsychological characteristics of the cerebellar cognitive affective syndrome (CCAS) in congenital, non-progressive malformations of the cerebellum have been scarcely investigated, and even less is known for Joubert syndrome (JS), an inherited, non-progressive cerebellar ataxia characterized by the so-called molar tooth sign. The few studies on this topic reported inconsistent results about intellectual functioning and specific neuropsychological impairments. The aim of this research is to examine the neuropsychological profile of JS compared to other congenital cerebellar malformations (CM), considering individual variability of intellectual quotient (IQ) in the two groups. Fourteen patients with JS and 15 patients with CM aged 6-25 years were tested through a comprehensive, standardized neuropsychological battery. Their scores in the neuropsychological domains were inspected through descriptive analysis and compared by mean of MANOVA and ANOVA models, then replicated inserting IQ as covariate. The two groups showed a largely overlapping neuropsychological profile, consistent with CCAS. However, the JS group showed worse performance in visual-spatial memory compared to CM patients, although this difference was mitigated when considering IQ. These findings highlight a divergence between JS and other CM in visual-spatial memory, which might suggest a critical role of the cerebellum in recalling task-relevant memories and might inform rehabilitative interventions.

Is Social Training Delivered with a Head-Mounted Display Suitable for Patients with Hereditary Ataxia?

Social cognition is fundamental in everyday life to understand "others' behavior", which is a key feature of social abilities. Previous studies demonstrated the efficacy of a rehabilitative intervention in semi-immersive virtual reality (VR) controlled by whole-body motion to improve the ability of patients with cerebellar disorders to predict others' intentions (VR-SPIRIT). Patients with severe ataxia that have difficulties at multiple levels of social processing could benefit from this intervention in terms of improving their social prediction skills, but they may have difficulties in controlling VR with whole-body movements. Therefore, we implemented VR-SPIRIT on a wearable, affordable, and easy-to-use technology, such as the Oculus Quest, a head-mounted display. The aim of this work was to evaluate the usability and tolerability of this VR application. We recruited 10 patients (37.7 ± 14.8 years old, seven males) with different types of hereditary ataxia who performed a single VR-SPIRIT session using the Oculus Quest viewer. After the session, patients answered a series of questionnaires to investigate the overall usability of the system and its potential effects in terms of cyber sickness. The preliminary results demonstrated system usability and tolerability. Indeed, only three patients did not complete the session due to different problems (dizziness, nausea, and boredom). In future studies, more patients will be enrolled to assess the effectiveness of the application, paving the way for the implementation of social training that can also be delivered at home.

A contribution to the Italian validation of the Parenting Interaction with Children: Checklist of Observations Linked to Outcome (PICCOLO).

Introduction: PICCOLO (Parenting Interactions with Children: Checklist of Observations Linked to Outcomes) is an observational instrument designed to assess four domains of parenting interactions that promote early child development (Affection, Responsiveness, Encouragement, and Teaching). Although PICCOLO has been validated in the United States for children as young as 4 months of age, the current focus is on parents with children aged between 10 and 47 months. This study contributes to the validation of the Italian translation of the PICCOLO by testing its psychometric properties and examining whether factors such as the child's age and child's sex are related to the four domains of parenting interactions. Methods: To these aims, 152 mothers of children aged 10-47 months from three Italian regions participated in the study. Results: Results indicate that the PICCOLO Italian version has acceptable inter-rater agreement, split-half reliability, and stability over time. Furthermore, the Italian version confirmed the robustness of the factor structure proposed in the original version. While there were no significant differences by child gender on the domains of parenting interactions, the Affection scores decreased with age. Discussion: Overall, these results demonstrate that the Italian version of the PICCOLO is a reliable measure of maternal interactions with children. The psychometric properties of the instrument make it appropriate for general research purposes and for assessment of parenting before and after support interventions.

Cognitive predictors of Social processing in congenital atypical development.

According to current accounts of social cognition, the emergence of verbal and non-verbal components of social perception might rely on the acquisition of different cognitive abilities. These components might be differently sensitive to the pattern of neuropsychological impairments in congenital neurodevelopmental disorders. Here, we explored the association between social and non-social cognitive domains by administering subtests of the NEPSY-II battery to 92 patients with Intellectual and Developmental Disability (IDD). Regardless the level of intellectual functioning and presence of congenital brain malformations, results revealed that visuospatial skills predicted emotion recognition and verbal component of Theory of Mind, whereas imitation predicted the non-verbal one. Future interventions might focus on spatial and sensorimotor abilities to boost the development of social cognition in IDD.

Severity of developmental delay and parenting behavior in toddlers with neurodevelopmental disabilities.

Introduction: The presence of a neurodevelopmental disability (ND) represents an adverse condition for child's development and parent-child relationship, and it is reasonable to assume that the severity of delay may influence parenting behavior. Previous research, however, did not specifically address this issue. Methods: This cross-sectional study compared parental behaviors of mothers of toddlers with moderate/severe or mild/borderline developmental delay and mothers of toddlers with typical development, while considering maternal emotional states. A total of 88 dyads with children aged between 12 and 47 months participated in a 10-min video-recorded interaction then coded with the PICCOLO, a validated observation checklist that assesses four dimensions of parenting: affection, responsiveness, encouragement, and teaching. The mothers also fulfilled two standardized questionnaires assessing parental stress and presence of depressive symptoms. MANOVA and MANCOVA models were used to explore between-group differences in specific parenting dimensions, also considering parental stress. Results: Mothers of toddlers with ND were less responsive than the comparison group, while the presence of a moderate/severe developmental delay specifically affected teaching behaviors. No differences emerged for affection and encouragement behaviors. Importantly, although mothers of toddlers with moderate/severe ND reported higher child-related dysfunctional interaction stress, this did not directly affect parenting behaviors. Discussion: These findings highlight how the presence of a disability and the severity of developmental delay can affect specific dimensions of parenting (i.e., responsiveness, teaching) and might inform clinical practice and research on early parental interventions.

Body Processing in Children and Adolescents with Traumatic Brain Injury: An Exploratory Study.

Dysfunctions in body processing have been documented in adults with brain damage, while limited information is available for children. This study aimed to investigate body processing in children and adolescents with traumatic brain injury (TBI) (N = 33), compared to peers with typical development. Two well-known computerized body-representation paradigms, namely Visual Body Recognition and Visuo-spatial Imagery, were administered. Through the first paradigm, the body inversion and composite illusion effects were tested with a matching to sample task as measures of configural and holistic processing of others' bodies, respectively. The second paradigm investigated with a laterality judgement task the ability to perform first-person and object-based mental spatial transformations of own body and external objects, respectively. Body stimuli did not convey any emotional contents or symbolic meanings. Patients with TBI had difficulties with mental transformations of both body and object stimuli, displaying deficits in motor and visual imagery abilities, not limited to body processing. Therefore, cognitive rehabilitation of body processing in TBI might benefit from the inclusion of both general training on visuo-spatial abilities and specific exercises aimed at boosting visual body perception and motor imagery.

Psychosocial Difficulties in Preschool-Age Children with Beckwith-Wiedemann Syndrome: An Exploratory Study.

Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome (BWS) is a rare overgrowth disease and is not usually associated with intellectual delay. Living with a chronic illness condition such as BWS, however, might affect emotional-behavioral functioning and psychosocial development. To investigate this issue, parents of 30 children with BWS between 1.5 and 6 years old compiled standardized questionnaires assessing the presence of emotional-behavioral and developmental problems. The group mean scores in each scale of behavioral problems fell within the average range. Nevertheless, 23% of the sample presented scores beyond the risk threshold for social withdrawal. As regards psychomotor development, a lower mean score was reliable in the social domain compared to other developmental scales, and in the gross-motor compared to fine-motor functions. Moreover, scores in the at-risk band were reliable in almost half of the children for social development. Notably, older age was overall associated with higher emotional-behavioral and developmental difficulties, while no other socio-demographic or clinical variables accounted for the scores obtained in the questionnaires. These findings ask for a wider consideration by health and educational professionals of the psychosocial functioning of children with BWS, so as to early detect at-risk conditions and eventually promote adequate interventions.

Holistic processing of body stimuli: Evidence of body composite illusion in adults and children.

There is inconsistent evidence that human bodies are processed through holistic processing as it has been widely reported for faces. To assess how configural and holistic processes may develop with age, we administered a visual body recognition task assessing the presence of body inversion and composite illusion effects to white adults (114 participants, 77 women, aged between 18 and 35 years) and children (138 participants, 74 girls, aged between 6 and 11 years). Furthermore, to verify the presence of an own-age bias in body processing, we presented either child or adult bodies to both age groups. Adults and children showed reliable and comparable body inversion and composite illusion effects, confirming the use of configural and holistic body processing. Cross-sectional analysis showed that these perceptual strategies were already reliable in children aged 6-7 years and did not encounter significant changes across childhood. Although we found reliable body inversion and composite illusion effects for both own- and different-age bodies, results pointed to greater composite illusion effects for own-age bodies. This may suggest that sharing similar body structures might facilitate the holistic processing of others' bodies. These findings provide new insights into the development of body-specific perceptual processes and may have theoretical and clinical implications for the evaluation and treatment of body perception disorders in childhood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Social prediction in pediatric patients with congenital, non-progressive malformations of the cerebellum: From deficits in predicting movements to rehabilitation in virtual reality.

It has been proposed that impairments of the predictive function exerted by the cerebellum may account for social cognition deficits. Here, we integrated cerebellar functions in a predictive coding framework to elucidate how congenital, non-progressive cerebellar alterations could affect the predictive processing of others' behavior. Experiment 1 demonstrated that cerebellar patients were impaired in relying on contextual information during prediction of other persons' movement, and this impairment was significantly associated with social cognition abilities. Experiment 2 indicated that children and adolescents with congenital, non-progressive cerebellar malformation showed a domain-general deficit in using contextual information to predict both others' movements and physical events, and that this impairment was independent from patients' cognitive abilities. Experiment 3 provided first evidence that a social-prediction training in virtual reality could boost the ability to use context-based predictions to understand others' intentions. These findings shed new light on the predictive role of the cerebellum and its contribution to social cognition, paving the way for new approaches to the rehabilitation of the Cerebellar Cognitive Affective Syndrome.

How social is the cerebellum? Exploring the effects of cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation on the prediction of social and physical events.

Congenital or acquired cerebellum alterations are associated with a complex pattern of motor, cognitive and social disorders. These disturbances may reflect the involvement of the cerebellum in generating and updating the internal models that sub-serve-the prediction of sensory events. Here, we tested whether the cerebellar involvement in using contextual expectations to interpret ambiguous sensory sceneries is specific for social actions or also extends to physical events. We applied anodic, cathodic and sham cerebellar transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (ctDCS) to modulate the performance of an adult sample in two tasks requiring the prediction of social actions or moving shapes. For both tasks, in an earlier implicit-learning phase (familiarization), we manipulated the probability of co-occurrence between a particular action/shape and contextual elements, which could provide either strongly or moderately informative expectations. The use of these expectations was then tested when participants had to predict the unfolding of temporally occluded videos, in situations of perceptual uncertainty (testing). Results showed that in the testing, but not in the familiarization phase, cathodic as compared to anodic and sham ctDCS hindered participants' sensitivity in predicting actions embedded in strongly, but not moderately, informative contexts. Conversely, anodic as compared to sham ctDCS boosted the prediction of actions embedded in moderately, but not strongly, informative contexts. We observed no ctDCS effects for the shape prediction task, thus pointing to a specific involvement of the cerebellum in forming expectations related to social events. Our results encourage the exploration of rehabilitative effects of ctDCS in patients with social perception deficits.

Premature birth affects visual body representation and body schema in preterm children.

Research has demonstrated that from the first six months of life infants show early sensitivity to body visual features and rely on sensorimotor and proprioceptive inputs in forming representations of their own bodies. Premature birth interferes with typical exposition to visual, sensorimotor and proprioceptive stimulation, thus presumably affecting the development of body representations. Here, we tested this hypothesis by comparing the performance of preterm children with that of age-matched full-termchildren in two tasks assessing, respectively, visual body processing and body schema. We found that preterm children had spared configural processing but altered holistic processing of others' bodies and showed a general difficulty in expressing visuospatial judgements on body stimuli. Furthermore, body-centered visuospatial abilities were associated with specific impairments in operating object-based visuospatial transformations. The findings of this study indicate that preterm birth might interfere with the development of body representations at the levels of body visual perceptual processing and of body schema, with effects even on visuo-spatial abilities for non-bodily stimuli. Body-centered rehabilitative interventions should be proposed to preterm children in order to enhance visuo-spatial abilities and higher-level cognitive functions.

Cerebellar Damage Affects Contextual Priors for Action Prediction in Patients with Childhood Brain Tumor.

Predictive coding accounts of action perception sustain that kinematics information is compared with contextual top-down predictions (i.e., priors) to understand actions in conditions of perceptual ambiguity. It has been previously shown that the cerebellum contributes to motor simulation of observed actions. Here, we tested the hypothesis that a specific contribution of the cerebellum to action perception is to provide contextual priors that guide the sampling of perceptual kinematic information. To this aim, we compared the performance of 42 patients with childhood brain tumor affecting infratentorial (ITT) or supratentorial (STT) areas with that of peers with typical development in an action prediction task. First, participants were exposed to videos depicting a child performing different reaching-to-grasp actions, which were associated with contextual cues in a probabilistic fashion. Then, they were presented with shortened versions of the same videos and asked to infer the action outcome; since kinematics was ambiguous, we expected their responses would be biased toward the previously learned contextual priors. We found that patients with brain tumor were impaired in predicting actions when compared to healthy controls. However, STT patients presented a reliable probabilistic effect, while ITT patients, who had cerebellar damage, did not rely on contextual priors in predicting actions. Furthermore, we found an association between the use of contextual priors and the ability to infer others' mental states as assessed by a standardized test. These results suggest that the cerebellum provides contextual priors to understand others' actions and this predictive function might underlie complex social cognition abilities.

Virtual Reality Social Prediction Improvement and Rehabilitation Intensive Training (VR-SPIRIT) for paediatric patients with congenital cerebellar diseases: study protocol of a randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Patients with cerebellar malformations exhibit not only movement problems, but also important deficits in social cognition. Thus, rehabilitation approaches should not only involve the recovery of motor function but also of higher-order abilities such as processing of social stimuli. In keeping with the general role of the cerebellum in anticipating and predicting events, we used a VR-based rehabilitation system to implement a social cognition intensive training specifically tailored to improve predictive abilities in social scenarios (VR-Spirit). METHODS/DESIGN: The study is an interventional randomised controlled trial that aims to recruit 42 children, adolescents and young adults with congenital cerebellar malformations, randomly allocated to the experimental group or the active control group. The experimental group is administered the VR-Spirit, requiring the participants to compete with different avatars in the reaching of recreational equipment and implicitly prompting them to form expectations about their playing preference. The active control group participates in a VR-training with standard games currently adopted for motor rehabilitation. Both trainings are composed by eight 45-min sessions and are administered in the GRAIL VR laboratory (Motekforce Link, Netherlands), an integrated platform that allows patients to move in natural and attractive VR environments. An evaluation session in VR with the same paradigm used in the VR-Spirit but implemented in a different scenario is administered at the beginning (T0) of the two trainings (T1) and at the end (T2). Moreover, a battery of neurocognitive tests spanning different domains is administered to all participants at T0, T2 and in a follow-up session after 2 months from the end of the two trainings (T3). DISCUSSION: This study offers a novel approach for rehabilitation based on specific neural mechanisms of the cerebellum. We aim to investigate the feasibility and efficacy of a new, intensive, social cognition training in a sample of Italian patients aged 7-25 years with congenital cerebellar malformations. We expect that VR-Spirit could enhance social prediction ability and indirectly improve cognitive performance in diverse domains. Moreover, through the comparison with a VR-active control training we aim to verify the specificity of VR-Spirit in improving social perception skills. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN, ID: ISRCTN 22332873. Retrospectively registered on 12 March 2018.

Early Brain Damage Affects Body Schema and Person Perception Abilities in Children and Adolescents with Spastic Diplegia.

Early brain damage leading to cerebral palsy is associated to core motor impairments and also affects cognitive and social abilities. In particular, previous studies have documented specific alterations of perceptual body processing and motor cognition that are associated to unilateral motor deficits in hemiplegic patients. However, little is known about spastic diplegia (SpD), which is characterized by motorial deficits involving both sides of the body and is often associated to visuospatial, attentional, and social perception impairments. Here, we compared the performance of a sample of 30 children and adolescents with SpD (aged 7-18 years) and of a group of age-matched controls with typical development (TD) at two different tasks tapping on body representations. In the first task, we tested visual and motor imagery abilities as assessed, respectively, by the object-based mental rotation of letters and by the first-person transformations for whole-body stimuli. In the second task, we administered an inversion effect/composite illusion task to evaluate the use of configural/holistic processing of others' body. Additionally, we assessed social perception abilities in the SpD sample using the NEPSY-II battery. In line with previously reported visuospatial deficits, a general mental imagery impairment was found in SpD patients when they were engaged in both object-centered and first-person mental transformations. Nevertheless, a specific deficit in operating an own-body transformation emerged. As concerns body perception, while more basic configural processing (i.e., inversion effect) was spared, no evidence for holistic (i.e., composite illusion) body processing was found in the SpD group. NEPSY-II assessment revealed that SpD children were impaired in both the theory of mind and affect recognition subtests. Overall, these findings suggested that early brain lesions and biased embodied experience could affect higher-level motor cognition and perceptual body processing, thus pointing to a strict link between motor deficits, body schema alterations, and person processing difficulties.

Maternal sensitivity is associated with configural processing of infant's cues in preterm and full-term mothers.

BACKGROUND: Prematurity may affect mother-infant bonding and alter maternal sensitivity to infant's cues. Efficient perception of infants' facial and bodily cues is a crucial aspect of maternal sensitivity and may be challenged by prematurity, as infants' signals may not be easily intelligible. However, it is still unexplored how premature birth impacts the maternal ability to perceive infants' signals. AIMS: To investigate whether prematurity influences the perceptual sensitivity of mothers to infants' cues and, in particular, the configural processing of the faces and bodies of familiar and unfamiliar infants. STUDY DESIGN: The inversion effect paradigm was used to evaluate the configural vs. detail-based processing of the face and body of own or others' infants. Preterm mothers were compared to full-term mothers with either low or high maternal sensitivity. PARTICIPANTS: Forty-three healthy full-term and twenty-one preterm mothers of infants aged about six months. OUTCOME MEASURES: Maternal sensitivity during dyadic interaction, gestational age, accuracy and reaction time in a delayed matching-to-sample task of upright vs. inverted body and face stimuli (i.e., inversion effect). RESULTS: Preterm mothers were found to be less sensitive than the full-term ones. Higher maternal sensitivity during dyadic interaction was associated with lower inversion effect for unfamiliar as compared to own infants' bodies. However, preterm mothers and full-term mothers with low sensitivity showed comparable inversion effect in perceiving unfamiliar infants' faces or bodies. CONCLUSIONS: Preterm birth per se does not directly affect body configural processing, but it may be associated to reduced maternal sensitivity, ultimately leading to a less refined perception of own infant's cues.

The BDNFval66met polymorphism and individual differences in temperament in 4-month-old infants: A pilot study.

Individual differences in infants' temperament are under genetic control. We investigated the association between brain-derived-neurotrophic-factor (BDNFval66met) polymorphism and temperament in 63 full-term infants. Met-carriers (N=25) had lower Regulatory capacities compared to val-homozygotes (N=38). These findings suggest that the BDNF polymorphism affects early temperament individual differences.